DOGE
- Berkeley Dialectic
- Feb 23
- 2 min read
This piece is guest authored by Junran Zha.
What is DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency)? Who runs it? According to Joshua Fisher, the White House Director of the Office of Administration, the U.S. DOGE service,which is not an official Cabinet-level department, is a component of the Executive Office of the President—meaning that Susie Wiles, the White House Chief of Staff, is the technical superior of DOGE and its employees.
Elon Musk, on the other hand, is a Senior Advisor to the President and a Special Government Employee under the White House Office, which is also headed by the Chief of Staff. Assuming that Fisher is accurately representing the personnel situation regarding DOGE and Musk, we see that there is no direct relationship whatsoever between them, apart from having the same boss. Why does DOGE listen to Elon Musk? They don’t have to. Moreover, why would government departments even cooperate with DOGE? Since DOGE and Elon Musk have no formal authority to do anything, the power they wield ultimately comes from Donald Trump, the President.
Recently the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration resigned from her position in response to DOGE’s sensitive data requests. President Trump quickly followed the move with a nomination for a new commissioner, who is expected to be confirmed in the coming weeks.The fiasco, to many, indicates that government officials know well that if they do not cooperate with DOGE, Trump will simply find someone who will.
As of mid-February, Elon Musk and DOGE have purged the following agencies: U.S. Agency for International Development, Department of Education, Office of Personnel Management, Health and Human Services, Department of Agriculture, Department of Homeland Security, General Services Administration, Department of Commerce, Environmental Protection Agency, Housing and Urban Development.
The official aim of DOGE is “modernizing federal technology and software to maximize efficiency and productivity.” It seems that what Elon Musk and DOGE mean by “efficiency” is measured by waste of money or “fraud.”
When I first heard about a “Department of Government of Efficiency”, I thought the goal was to make government processes faster by eliminating redundant bureaucracy, but it turned out to be something else entirely. A faster, more responsive government presents greater risks to ordinary people because it would be easier for it to take away our rights. But by the looks of it, DOGE seems to be doing the exact opposite. DOGE does not simply want to save money for departments. It is ordering some of them to freeze operations completely (USAID, etc.), since Musk questions the very purpose of their existence. While we are probably not at risk of direct harm, it remains to be seen how large the impact from passively allowing harm and firing a massive amount of people from government jobs will be, as well as where and how the money “saved” will be spent.
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