Elon Musk Is A Tech Bro Wrecking Ball

But he’s approaching his own fork-in-the-road

It is safe to say that Donald Trump is the only president in modern times to take office with a powerful and reckless henchman like Elon Musk at his side. As you know, Musk is carrying out the most destructive element of the Trump agenda—a radical attack on federal workers and their missions. The result has been chaos, driven by a human wrecking ball whose main qualification is being the richest person in the world.

If you know the basics about Musk—the quintessential Silicon Valley tech bro—you know he sort of, kind of, not really, founded the electric car company Tesla and created the rocket-launching outfit SpaceX, which carries out missions for NASA, the military, and private companies. You may also know he bought the social media company Twitter (now called X) and ran it into the ground.

X, which has lost 70 percent of its value under Musk, serves as a cautionary tale when it comes to his philosophy and his assault on the federal government. With 7,500 workers, X was the only large company Musk had ever taken over. Determined to take a meat cleaver to its workforce, he sent every employee an email with the subject line “Fork in the road.” The message? Fall in line with the new regime, take a buyout and resign, or risk being fired.

As about 6,000 employees—80 percent of the workforce—left, the company lost so many key people that the platform’s quality declined precipitously. It lost millions of users. Advertising revenue shrank. Its stock price tanked. In other words, Musk ruined the business.

As someone who has bankrupted half a dozen big companies, Trump doesn’t care about Musk’s failure. He saw his enormous net worth—$420 billion—and concluded, “This is my guy.” Musk was put in charge of a new agency called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and given the power to review government functions across the board to achieve savings. Musk set himself a massive goal: more than $1 trillion. He began this campaign with an email, sent to every federal worker, with the familiar subject line—“Fork in the road.” It urged those who couldn’t be “loyal” to leave. Although the email didn’t state it directly, the message was clear: all federal workers were expected to be personally loyal to Donald Trump.

Uninterested in governing as a president bound by the Constitution, Trump is setting himself up as a king, with Musk as his most trusted knight. Naturally, Sir Elon is swinging his sword in ways that indicate he doesn’t understand that the government is not a business with profit as its purpose. It is, instead, an institution devoted to the defense and welfare of the country. Congress, not the executive branch, sets spending and, in doing so, requires workers to perform essential tasks—from distributing Social Security payments to staffing air traffic control facilities. (Understaffing may have contributed to the recent collision of a passenger jet and an Army helicopter at Washington’s Reagan airport, which killed 67 people.)

By demanding that people either pledge loyalty or leave, Musk will prompt many apolitical federal employees to quit. Among them will be some of the most important and skilled workers—the ones who will have the easiest time finding new jobs. As they depart, agencies and departments will struggle to fulfill their missions, unable to find qualified replacements. With the country already facing a shortage of nurses, how will the Veterans Administration attract new ones to replace those who resign? What about the workers who manage Social Security? What happens when seniors’ claims aren’t processed or payments are delayed?

Musk’s DOGE team has already shown what it is willing to do with the "disloyal." When officials at USAID (the U.S. Agency for International Development) refused to hand over classified documents, they rightly noted that the DOGE group lacked proper security clearance. In response, they were suddenly fired. Then the agency itself was shut down.

As Musk and DOGE pursue their mission, it’s important to ask whether they can be slowed—or even stopped. A personal scandal could bring Musk down, but this is unlikely. Just look at how he got away with flashing two apparent Nazi salutes at a recent Trump rally. This leaves us with the courts and Congress.

It is conceivable that as Musk violates both Congress’s authority and federal law, he could reach a “fork in the road” where the courts intervene. They could require Trump to obtain approval from both the House and Senate to allow Musk to continue his efforts. Public pressure, combined with a desire to preserve the legislature’s prerogatives, might sway a handful of GOP House members to break ranks and pause the chaos. Failing that, Senate Democrats could use the filibuster to slow Musk down.

And so, there is hope. Thus far, Musk is following the Silicon Valley mantra: “Move fast and break things.” He is succeeding in the short run—but the game is not over.