If what you don’t know can’t hurt you, Elon Musk may be in luck. With a series of candid posts on X, the White House’s resident broligarch has lately been divulging which aspects of civics and data science he appears to know little about.
Fortunately for anyone following along, a scattered battalion of experts and reporters has received each bumbling post on X like a social media bat signal. Every time Musk posts about, say, the dire need for retired air traffic controllers to get back into the game, or for flight trajectories to look like a straight line, a veteran campaign strategist will explain that air traffic controllers are required by law to retire at age 56, or a journalist will describe how flight plans and prohibited airspace function. Together, these folks have turned Musk’s X feed into one long teachable moment—regardless of whether the primary pupil is paying any attention.
It makes sense that most people wouldn’t know the ins and outs of things like air traffic controller staffing protocol or flight paths. It’s also reasonable to expect that Musk himself wouldn’t know, even as his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team is in the midst of a drastic overhaul of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), at a critical juncture in the public perception of flight safety. What makes no sense, however, is for someone in Musk’s powerful position to find out how such important systems work, through social media rebuttals, only after he’s already suggested sweeping changes within those systems.
Early days of DOGE
When Musk first started planning DOGE’s implementation, he had a golden opportunity to learn about government functionality. According to a recent New York Times report about DOGE’s origins, the task of putting logistics around Musk’s ideas fell to health care entrepreneur Brad Smith, who had previously worked with Jared Kushner during Trump’s first term.
“In the first week after the election, Mr. Smith gave Mr. Musk a presentation that amounted to a basic budget and civics lesson, explaining how Congress appropriated funds and noting major line items like defense and health care,” the report reads. “In one early meeting, Mr. Musk said Mr. Smith was being too careful and offering ‘classic consultant stuff.’ In discussions, Mr. Musk expressed impatience with Mr. Smith’s caution that the team would need a phalanx of lawyers to help with executive orders and regulations. Mr. Musk wanted to tear down the government to the studs, and saw Mr. Smith’s approach as incremental.”
Shoot first, ask questions later
Musk’s apparent distaste for caution has led to a more “shoot first and ask questions later” style of reshaping the federal government. In the parlance of the 2020s, he is the literal embodiment of “FAFO” in action. But it’s those following along on X and Bluesky who are “Finding Out.”
For instance, Musk recently posted an adamant denial on X that DOGE’s cost-cutting has resulted in fewer funds for cancer research, after writer Molly Jong-Fast called him out on it. Of course, Musk had previously griped on X about how much money in endowments from the National Institute of Health were going toward “indirect costs,” which he described as “overhead.” Amid Musk’s denials about cutting funding for cancer research, experts quickly chimed in to explain that, in the realm of NIH funding, all that “overhead” provides critical support for biomedical research and trials, something Musk may not have been aware of.
It’s far from Musk’s only misapprehension around the allocation of government funds.
When he posted “Defund the ACLU” in December, Musk may similarly not have known that the American Civil Liberties Union receives no money from taxpayers whatsoever—something Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was quick to point out in a quote-reply. More galling, however, was Musk’s X post from mid-February, suggesting millions of dead people are currently collecting social security checks. As proof, he posted an excerpt of an Excel spreadsheet purportedly listing people up to 369 years of age receiving benefits. The following afternoon, social security’s acting commissioner, Lee Dudek, clarified: “The reported data are people in our records with a social security number who do not have a date of death associated with their record. These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits.”
Even before Dudek’s statement, though, X users came out of the woodwork to explain that the incredibly high ages listed in the social security database were due to outdated computer systems like COBOL and SQL. (Not that any of these corrections or Dudek’s comments stopped Musk from going on Joe Rogan’s podcast over the weekend to continue peddling false claims about dead people receiving social security checks.) When Musk responded to one user’s suggestion that he doesn’t understand how SQL works, writing, “This [slur] thinks the government uses SQL,” many users explained why the government might, in fact, plausibly use SQL. Even the Community Notes on X joined in on correcting Musk… which may partly explain why he’s announced a plan in the days since to overhaul the Community Notes system.
Moving fast and breaking things
Some of his recent posts suggest he would like to do the same to U.S. democracy altogether.
“What is the point of having democratic elections,” he posted last week, “if unelected activist ‘judges’ can override the clear will of the people?” As U.S. judges attempt to constrain some of DOGE’s maneuvers, such as blocking the group from accessing the Department of Education’s internal data, Musk continues questioning the role of the judiciary in American governance. When he floated the idea of annually firing “the worst 1% of appointed judges, as determined by elected bodies,” an economist wrote on Bluesky that Musk did not seem to understand Congress can already impeach judges. Whether he knew it at that point or not, he certainly does now, as Musk has recently started threatening judges with impeachment.
The head of DOGE previously did not seem to know that the Ebola prevention team, nuclear arsenal experts, and bird flu officials were all indispensable before his department fired them. (And then subsequently attempted to rehire them.) Hopefully, there were no similar information gaps last Friday when DOGE fired hundreds of workers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s tsunami warning centers—and none in the decision process for whichever teams DOGE fires next.
Otherwise, what Musk doesn’t know may end up hurting a great many other people.
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