The DOGE Takeover Is Worse Than You Think

WIRED

27-02-2025

Feb 27, 2025 10:08 AM What's happening to the US government right now is bad. What comes next is worse. Photo-illustration: WIRED Staff; Getty Images
If you've felt overwhelmed by all the DOGE news, you're not alone. You'd need too much cork board and yarn to keep track of which agencies it has occupied by now, much less what it's doing there. Here's a simple rubric, though, to help contextualize the DOGE updates you do have time and energy to process: It's worse than you think.
DOGE is hard to keep track of. This is by design; the only information about the group outside of its own mistake-ridden ledger of 'savings' comes from media reports. So much for being 'maximally transparent,' as Elon Musk has promised. The blurriness is also partly a function of the speed and breadth with which DOGE has operated. Keeping track of the destruction is like counting individual bricks scattered around a demolition site.
You may be aware, for instance, that a 19-year-old who goes by 'Big Balls' online plays some role in all this. Seems bad. But you may have missed that Edward Coristine has since been installed at the nation's top cybersecurity agency. And the State Department and the Small Business Administration, and he has a Department of Homeland Security email address, and by the way also had a recent side gig selling AI Discord bots to Russians. See? Worse than you think.
Even if that feels like old news, remember that it's actually still happening, every day a fresh incursion by Big Balls and his cohort of 20-something technologists. (In fairness, they're not all young; some of them are old enough to present conflicts of interest so flagrant that they literally lack modern precedent.)
Similarly, you've likely heard that the United States Agency for International Development has been gutted and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been put on ice. All true, all bad. But here's what that means in practice: Fewer people globally have access to vaccines than they did a month ago. More babies are being born with HIV/AIDS. From here on out, anyone who gets ripped off by payday loan companies—or, say, social media platforms moonlighting as payments services—has lost their most capable defender.
Keep going. The thousands of so-called probationary employees DOGE has fired included a significant number of experienced workers who just got promoted or transferred. National Science Foundation staffing cuts and proposed National Institutes of Health grant limits will combine to kneecap scientific research in the United States for a generation. Terminations at the US Department of Agriculture have sent programs designed to help farmers into disarray. On Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration cancelled a meeting that would have given guidance on this year's flu vaccine composition. It hasn't been rescheduled.
Don't care about science or vaccines? The Social Security Administration is reportedly going to cut its staff in half. The Department of Housing and Urban Development is going to be cut by as much as 84 percent. Hundreds of workers who keep the power grid humming in the Pacific Northwest were fired before a scramble to rehire a few of them. The National Parks Service, the Internal Revenue Service, all hit hard. So don't make any long-term bets on getting your checks on time, keeping your lights on, buying a home for the first time, or enjoying Yosemite. Don't assume all the things that work now will still work tomorrow.
Speaking of which, let's not forget that DOGE has fired people working to prevent bird flu and to safeguard the US nuclear arsenal. (The problem with throwing a chainsaw around is that you don't make clean cuts.) The agencies in question have reportedly tried to hire those workers back. Fine. But even if they're able to, the long-term question that hasn't been answered yet is: Who would stay? Who would work under a regime so cocksure and incompetent that it would mistakenly fire the only handful of people who actually know how to take care of the nukes? According to a recent report from The Bulwark, that brain drain is already underway.
And this is all before the real reductions-in-force begin, mass purges of civil servants that will soon be conducted, it seems, with an assist from DOGE-modified, automated software. The US government is about to lose decades of institutional knowledge across who knows how many agencies, including specialists that aren't readily replaced by loyalists.
Elon Musk has, at least, acknowledged that DOGE will make mistakes, and promised fast fixes. He even called one out specifically Wednesday, the cancelation of a USAID program designed to prevent the spread of Ebola. 'We restored the Ebola prevention immediately,' he said during an appearance at Trump's first cabinet meeting. 'And there was no interruption.'
This is not the case, as The Washington Post first reported. Not only has Ebola prevention not been restored—it was and remains severely diminished—but the Trump administration also said Wednesday it would terminate nearly 10,000 contracts and grants from USAID and the State Department. Many of those contracts represent an attempt to lessen some form of suffering in some part of the world. It's too many individual stories to tell, too many tragedies unfolding too far away.
It's worse than you think in the same way that your brain breaks a little when you try to picture how deep the ocean is. It's worse than you think because by the time the courts catch up, the damage will already have been done. It's worse than you think because the people running the government seem to have no higher mission than to watch it burn.
Federal agencies could absolutely be more efficient, but we're long past the point where efficiency is a plausible goal. DOGE's cuts have no apparent regard for civil society or opportunity costs or long-term strategic thinking. Their targets are Elon Musk's and Project 2025's targets. They have found no fraud, just democracy at work. They're apparently eager to see what happens when it no longer does.
It's worse than you think because so far all DOGE has done is drop a boulder into the middle of a pond. If you think this is bad, wait for the ripples. The Chatroom
What will be the most lasting impact of the DOGE cuts?
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🔗 DOGE Quietly Deletes the 5 Biggest Spending Cuts It Celebrated Last Week: The parade of casual incompetence continues. (The New York Times)
🔗 Trump Administration to Cut 92% of USAID Foreign Aid Contracts: This is reportedly going to 'save' $60 billion. The federal budget is $6.8 trillion. As discussed above, the true cost will be incalculable. (Axios)
🔗 Is What DOGE Is Doing Legal?: Great question! Wish the courts would get around to answering it! (The Washington Post) The Download
Check out this week's special-edition podcast episode, WIRED News Update: DOGE's Many Conflicts of Interest & Elon's Weekend Email Chaos. I joined global editorial director Katie Drummond to dig into all things DOGE. Listen now.
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