Pentagon touts $80M in DOGE cuts, but public receipts don't add up
In a video posted to social media Monday evening, a Pentagon spokesperson read from a list of $80 million in savings found by the Department of Government Efficiency, billionaire Elon Musk's chainsaw effort to cut the federal government.
'$80 million in wasteful spending, just right here,' Press Secretary Sean Parnell said after reading a short list.
'Today's actions are just the start,' Parnell added, promising more this week.
But after checking these numbers against the public ledger posted on DOGE's website, the two don't add up.
Online, Musk's team lists about $11 million in Defense Department savings identified so far. Adding the various items Parnell mentioned in the video, which don't appear on DOGE's website, would bring the total to around $25 million.
The Defense Department declined to share the list Parnell read. It also refused to respond to questions about why there was a disparity between the two numbers and when the full receipts would be posted online.
President Donald Trump said in February that DOGE would find 'hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse' in the military, tasking Musk to lead the effort.
The Biden administration's last budget request for the Pentagon was just under $850 billion. The first round of DOGE's Pentagon cuts represents about .009% of that budget.
DOGE says it updates its 'wall of receipts' — which lists federal contracts, grants and building leases that the organization has terminated in recent months — on a weekly basis. The site was last updated March 2, a lag that could account for the discrepancy. It's also possible that some of the contracts making up the $80 million touted by the department haven't been canceled yet and are therefore not included on DOGE's list.
Numerous media outlets have found errors in the organization's accounting, including typos that skew contract values or the inclusion of agreements that ended before DOGE was created. The organization says the numbers it posts come directly from government contracting officials.
The website currently features nine Defense Department contracts worth approximately $4.8 million. Funding for many of them has been fully obligated, meaning there was no money to gain from canceling them early — like canceling a yearlong subscription six months in. The remaining three would yield about $2.5 million in savings.
Included among those is a $3.6 million contract the Air Force awarded in 2023 to Digitas Technologies for diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility training. The service has already obligated $1.4 million in funding, so canceling the agreement a year early would net about $2.2 million in savings.
Musk's department also lists 12 DOD-funded building leases that have been terminated, but doesn't offer details about when they were canceled. The website claims it saved $8.5 million by consolidating organizations, moving employees to other federal workspaces and closing entire offices.
The projected savings for many of the leases assumes they would have continued another five years. For example, DOGE claims $2.7 million in savings from canceling a Defense Contract Management Agency building lease agreement in Buffalo, New York, that cost about $550,000 annually.
The DOGE-led cuts follow others promised in the Pentagon under the second Trump administration. In February, the Pentagon said it planned to fire 5,400 civilian employees, part of an early effort to reduce the workforce by 5% to 8%. And the acting Pentagon leadership has said it intends to redirect around $50 billion toward new priorities, offering little detail on what would be sacrificed.
Meanwhile, Republicans in the Senate are calling for a massive defense buildup, potentially adding $200 billion to the defense budget over the next two years.
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San Francisco Chronicle
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- San Francisco Chronicle
Exclusive: DHS secretary seeks military arrests in Los Angeles in leaked letter
One day before the Trump administration deployed U.S. Marines to confront protesters in Los Angeles, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to direct the military to detain or arrest 'lawbreakers,' a move one expert called 'a grave escalation.' A letter sent Sunday from Noem to Hegseth, obtained by the Chronicle, requested that the Pentagon give 'Direction to DoD forces to either detain, just as they would at any federal facility guarded by military, lawbreakers under Title 18 until they can be arrested and processed by federal law enforcement, or arrest them.' The military is generally barred under federal laws from taking part in domestic law enforcement. Noem's request may be a step toward the administration sidestepping those laws by invoking the Insurrection Act, two legal experts said in interviews. Noem also asked Hegseth for 'drone surveillance support' as well as weapons and logistics assistance in Los Angeles. By Monday, the Defense Department had deployed 700 Marines to Los Angeles, where they were to join more than 2,000 federalized California National Guard troops in quelling raucous immigration protests. The Pentagon and Homeland Security did not immediately return requests for comment Monday, as California sued over the deployment of troops to Los Angeles and as immigration protests spread to other cities including San Francisco. In the letter, Noem referred to an 'emergent Request for Assistance (RFA) to aid in resolving the situation in Los Angeles,' and used strong language to describe what she said was the threat posed by people protesting a series of raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. 'We need … support to our law enforcement officers and agents across Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and Federal Protective Services (FPS),' Noem wrote, 'as they defend against invasive, violent, insurrectionist mobs that seek to protect invaders and military aged males belonging to identified foreign terrorist organizations, and who seek to prevent the deportation of criminal aliens.' It's not clear what Noem meant by her reference to terrorist organizations. In the past, the Trump Administration has used the term terrorist organizations to refer to gangs. 'This is a grave escalation,' said William Banks, a Syracuse University law professor and leading expert on national security law and the domestic role of the military. 'It may presage the invocation of the Insurrection Act.' Stephen Dycus, an expert in national security law and the Insurrection Act, called the requests in the memo extraordinary given that local authorities appeared to be in control of the protests. In the rare cases that such military force has been used in the past, the Vermont Law and Graduate School professor emeritus said, local law enforcement had either lost control or was refusing to act. 'Viewed all together, and more importantly in the current context, these requests can be seen as using the military, or at a minimum using that threat, to instill fear in the American people and discourage the kinds of protests that are going on in Los Angeles,' Dycus said. 'So this could be viewed as a preparation for invoking the Insurrection Act, or it could be viewed as part of a larger effort to frighten people who otherwise would exercise their first amendment guarantee of free speech and protest.' The Insurrection Act of 1792 was last used during the 1992 riots following the Rodney King police beating and trial in Los Angeles, when California's then-governor, Pete Wilson, requested military aid from President George H.W. Bush. Banks said the act should be used rarely and only in dire emergencies. 'Our society is founded on the idea that laws are enforced by civilians, first of all,' he said. 'And second, that problems going on in the states, other than the most grave situations, should be handled by the states.' Kyndra Rotunda, professor of military and international law at Chapman University, said the military's role will ultimately be decided by more than just the executive branch. 'The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the military from engaging in domestic law enforcement without authorization from Congress,' Rotunda said. 'In light of this provision, presumably Congress or the courts will eventually weigh in as this situation continues to develop.' State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, called Noem's request an ominous step. 'This isn't what happens in a democracy, this is what happens in a dictatorship,' Wiener said. 'We have a time-honored tradition in the United States that the military does not enforce civilian law.' Military use of drones for domestic purposes carries a number of restrictions, and is largely limited to training and disaster response. Under Defense Department policy, the military can use drones within its borders in support of a request from federal or state officials, but only with approval from the secretary. Federal agencies used military drones to monitor protests following George Floyd's murder and Black Lives Matter protests. Noem asked Hegseth in her letter for 'logistical support and the transportation of munitions' from Fort Benning and Wyoming. The letter did not specify what weapons were needed nor why they were requested from those two locations. State Sen. Tom Umberg, a retired Army colonel and Judge Advocate General officer, said he found the letter's requests alarming. 'It looks like a preparation for a military assault,' said Umberg, a Democrat from Santa Ana. 'This looks like a subterfuge to create some sort of rationale for some sort of invocation of the Insurrection Act.' Umberg said he was also concerned that the letter did not explicitly say people should only be arrested or detained based on reasonable suspicion or probable cause. It would be false imprisonment to detain someone unless those conditions are met, which is a crime, he said. 'As a former federal prosecutor and former JAG officer, I find it to be outrageous that two cabinet secretaries are basically attempting to provoke a situation where both law enforcement as well as other individuals could be hurt,' Umberg said. Noem also asked for graduates 'of an advanced intermediate level school, like the Marines' School of Advanced Warfighting, to aid in developing SOPs (standard operating procedures) and TTPs (tactics, techniques and procedures) going forward for when DHS and DoD have to setup a joint operation center and work in conjunction with each other in these situations.' 'At the President's direction,' Noem wrote, 'DHS is seeking to put an end to the migrant invasion and these lawless riots.' Noem wrote that she would send a formal request 'in the coming days.'
Yahoo
2 hours ago
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Why China's auto, tech giants threaten Tesla's self-driving future
By Norihiko Shirouzu AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) -Chinese electric-vehicle makers led by BYD beat Tesla in the competition to produce affordable electric vehicles. Now, many of those same fierce competitors are pulling into the passing lane in the global race to produce self-driving cars. BYD shook up China's smart-EV industry earlier this year by offering its 'God's Eye' driver-assistance package for free, undercutting the technology Tesla sells for nearly $9,000 in China. 'With God's Eye, Tesla's strategy starts to fall apart,' said Shenzhen-based BYD investor Taylor Ogan, an American who has owned several Teslas and driven BYD cars with God's Eye, which he called more capable than Tesla's 'Full Self-Driving' (FSD). It's not just BYD. Other Chinese auto and tech companies are offering affordable EVs with FSD-like technology for a relative pittance. China's Leapmotor and Xpeng, for instance, offer systems capable of highway and urban driving in $20,000 vehicles. A slew of Chinese firms are chasing the same technology, an industry push backed by China's government. BYD's assisted-driving hardware costs are far lower than Tesla's, according to analyses performed for Reuters by companies that dismantle and analyze vehicles for automakers. The comparisons, which have not been previously reported, show that BYD's costs to procure components and build a system with radar and lidar are about the same as Tesla's FSD, which doesn't have such sensors. That undercuts Tesla's unusual technological approach, which aims to save costs by nixing such sensors and relying solely on cameras and artificial intelligence. The rising competition from Chinese smart-EV players is among the chief problems confronting Tesla CEO Elon Musk after his rocky tenure as a Trump administration advisor as he refocuses on his business empire - as Tesla vehicle sales are tanking globally. The stakes are made higher by a moment-of-truth challenge this month in Tesla's home base of Austin, Texas, where it plans to launch a robotaxi trial with 10 or 20 vehicles after a decade of Musk's unfulfilled promises to deliver self-driving Teslas. Tesla did not respond when reached for comment about its Chinese competitors. Previously, Musk has described Chinese car companies as the most competitive in the world. Chinese competition was one factor driving Tesla's strategic pivot away from mass-market EVs last year, when Reuters reported it had killed plans to build an all-new EV expected to cost $25,000. Musk has since staked Tesla's future instead on self-driving robotaxis, the hopes for which now underpin the vast majority of the automaker's stock-market value of roughly $1 trillion. Now Tesla faces the same stiff competition on vehicle autonomy from many of the same Chinese automakers who undercut its affordable-EV plans. Adding to the challenge are tech firms including Chinese smartphone giant Huawei, which supplies autonomous-driving technology to major Chinese automakers. Short of full autonomy, today's driver-assistance systems offer a critical competitive edge in China, the world's largest car market, where Tesla sales are falling amid a protracted price war among scores of homegrown EV brands. Tesla is further handicapped by China's regulations preventing it from using data collected by Tesla cars in China to train the artificial intelligence underpinning FSD. Tesla has been negotiating with Chinese officials, so far without success, to get permission to transfer such data back to the United States for analysis. Tesla's competitors in China do benefit from subsidies and other forms of policy support from Beijing for advanced assisted driving technology. Their advantages also stem from another consequential factor: cut-throat smart-EV competition that has characterized their industry over the past decade. The resulting EV boom created economies of scale and the industry's tendency to forgo some profit margins to expand new technologies' market penetration quickly, leading to lower manufacturing costs. STREETS OF SHENZHEN BYD investor Ogan, of Shenzhen-based Snow Bull Capital, has a front-row seat to China's autonomous-tech battleground. He recently drove several BYD models equipped with God's Eye, he said, and didn't have to take over driving in any of them while traveling the congested streets of Shenzhen, a bustling southern China megalopolis of 18 million people. Another notable smart-EV player in China is Huawei, experts say. Huawei lends its technology and branding to a half dozen automakers including heavyweights Chery, SAIC and Changan, and has lower-profile partnerships with more than a dozen other carmakers, Huawei representatives said. Reuters journalists rode in an Aito M9 — a luxury electric SUV from Seres with Huawei driver-assistance technology — as it navigated Shenzhen roadways in April. With a driver's hands off the wheel, the vehicle exited a highway seamlessly into a congested urban zone, where the M9 proceeded cautiously and slowed to a crawl as a construction worker appeared like he might walk into the roadway. At one point the vehicle turned right and slowly drifted left to avoid two men unloading boxes from a parked truck. The vehicle then parallel parked itself at Huawei's Shenzhen headquarters. Huawei was among several Chinese companies, including automakers Zeekr, Changan and Xpeng, that touted progress towards fully-autonomous cars at April's Shanghai auto show, even as Beijing announced a new marketing crackdown on terms such as 'smart' and 'intelligent' driving in the wake of a deadly crash in a Xiaomi vehicle involving driver-assistance technology. Huawei said it's ready to undergo a new validation regime being developed by Chinese regulators to certify so-called Level 3 driving systems, meaning they are capable enough to allow drivers to look away unless notified by the system to take over. Zeekr, a luxury brand of China auto giant Geely, also plans to soon sell cars with Level 3 systems. Tesla has yet to release such an "unsupervised" version of FSD because its technology needs more training to operate without a driver's hands on the wheel and eyes on the road. Tesla plans to launch self-driving robotaxis in Austin this month. Little is known about its plans. The company has said it aims to initially deploy between 10 and 20 fare-collecting driverless robotaxis in restricted geographic areas of the city, which Tesla has not publicly identified. 'GOD'S EYE' ON THE CHEAP Chinese EV makers are moving quickly to develop driver-assistance systems in a market where car-buyers are demanding them at a faster pace than in other regions, analysts say. Their ability to do so at lower costs poses the biggest threat to Tesla's new autonomy-based business model. BYD buyers can get an FSD-comparable version of God's Eye as a standard feature in cars priced at about $30,000. The cheapest FSD-equipped Tesla in China is a Model 3 selling for about $41,500. According to an analysis by A2MAC1, a Paris-based tear-down firm that benchmarks components, the mid-level God's Eye version most comparable to Tesla's FSD runs on an Nvidia computing chip with data collected through 12 cameras, five radars, 12 ultrasonic sensors, and one lidar sensor, at a cost of $2,105. That compares to $2,360 for Tesla's FSD, which uses cameras without sensors and two AI chips, the firm estimates. Cameras, radar and ultrasonic sensors are 40% cheaper in China than comparable devices in Europe and the United States, A2MAC1 estimates. Lidar sensors cost about 20% less, the firm says. Sensor costs have fallen because China's EV boom created economies of scale, said A2MAC1 engineer Elena Zhelondz. The fierce competition also pushed carmakers and suppliers to accept lower profits on driver-assistance equipment, she said. BYD's 22% gross margin will likely fall as it gives away God's Eye but it will benefit from a vehicle-sales boost, said Chris McNally, head of global automotive and mobility research for advisory firm Evercore. MORE CARS, MORE MILES, BETTER AI Falling behind the Chinese brands on driver-assistance technology would compound Tesla's challenges in China, where it's already losing market share to rivals including BYD, which sells an entry-level EV for less than $10,000. The growing scale of BYD and others could also provide a technological advantage: Racking up more miles on China roads helps train the AI technology needed to perfect automated-driving systems. BYD has a 'clear and ongoing market-share driving advantage' over Tesla in gathering such on-road data to refine God's Eye, Evercore's McNally said, adding that advantage might only increase as offering God's Eye for free helps sell more BYD vehicles. BYD's scale also helps lower costs by providing uncommon leverage over suppliers. In November, a BYD executive in charge of passenger-vehicle operations wrote to suppliers telling them that the automaker sold 4.2 million vehicles last year (more than double the number of Teslas sold) because of 'technical innovation, economies of scale, and a low-cost supply chain.' The executive noted the new year would likely bring more growth, but also fiercer competition. Without specifically mentioning God's Eye, he ended the letter by asking the suppliers for an across-the-board 10% price cut on all parts and systems starting on January 1, calling the new year a final 'knockout round.' Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Why China's auto, tech giants threaten Tesla's self-driving future
By Norihiko Shirouzu AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) -Chinese electric-vehicle makers led by BYD beat Tesla in the competition to produce affordable electric vehicles. Now, many of those same fierce competitors are pulling into the passing lane in the global race to produce self-driving cars. BYD shook up China's smart-EV industry earlier this year by offering its 'God's Eye' driver-assistance package for free, undercutting the technology Tesla sells for nearly $9,000 in China. 'With God's Eye, Tesla's strategy starts to fall apart,' said Shenzhen-based BYD investor Taylor Ogan, an American who has owned several Teslas and driven BYD cars with God's Eye, which he called more capable than Tesla's 'Full Self-Driving' (FSD). It's not just BYD. Other Chinese auto and tech companies are offering affordable EVs with FSD-like technology for a relative pittance. China's Leapmotor and Xpeng, for instance, offer systems capable of highway and urban driving in $20,000 vehicles. A slew of Chinese firms are chasing the same technology, an industry push backed by China's government. BYD's assisted-driving hardware costs are far lower than Tesla's, according to analyses performed for Reuters by companies that dismantle and analyze vehicles for automakers. The comparisons, which have not been previously reported, show that BYD's costs to procure components and build a system with radar and lidar are about the same as Tesla's FSD, which doesn't have such sensors. That undercuts Tesla's unusual technological approach, which aims to save costs by nixing such sensors and relying solely on cameras and artificial intelligence. The rising competition from Chinese smart-EV players is among the chief problems confronting Tesla CEO Elon Musk after his rocky tenure as a Trump administration advisor as he refocuses on his business empire - as Tesla vehicle sales are tanking globally. The stakes are made higher by a moment-of-truth challenge this month in Tesla's home base of Austin, Texas, where it plans to launch a robotaxi trial with 10 or 20 vehicles after a decade of Musk's unfulfilled promises to deliver self-driving Teslas. Tesla did not respond when reached for comment about its Chinese competitors. Previously, Musk has described Chinese car companies as the most competitive in the world. Chinese competition was one factor driving Tesla's strategic pivot away from mass-market EVs last year, when Reuters reported it had killed plans to build an all-new EV expected to cost $25,000. Musk has since staked Tesla's future instead on self-driving robotaxis, the hopes for which now underpin the vast majority of the automaker's stock-market value of roughly $1 trillion. Now Tesla faces the same stiff competition on vehicle autonomy from many of the same Chinese automakers who undercut its affordable-EV plans. Adding to the challenge are tech firms including Chinese smartphone giant Huawei, which supplies autonomous-driving technology to major Chinese automakers. Short of full autonomy, today's driver-assistance systems offer a critical competitive edge in China, the world's largest car market, where Tesla sales are falling amid a protracted price war among scores of homegrown EV brands. Tesla is further handicapped by China's regulations preventing it from using data collected by Tesla cars in China to train the artificial intelligence underpinning FSD. Tesla has been negotiating with Chinese officials, so far without success, to get permission to transfer such data back to the United States for analysis. Tesla's competitors in China do benefit from subsidies and other forms of policy support from Beijing for advanced assisted driving technology. Their advantages also stem from another consequential factor: cut-throat smart-EV competition that has characterized their industry over the past decade. The resulting EV boom created economies of scale and the industry's tendency to forgo some profit margins to expand new technologies' market penetration quickly, leading to lower manufacturing costs. STREETS OF SHENZHEN BYD investor Ogan, of Shenzhen-based Snow Bull Capital, has a front-row seat to China's autonomous-tech battleground. He recently drove several BYD models equipped with God's Eye, he said, and didn't have to take over driving in any of them while traveling the congested streets of Shenzhen, a bustling southern China megalopolis of 18 million people. Another notable smart-EV player in China is Huawei, experts say. Huawei lends its technology and branding to a half dozen automakers including heavyweights Chery, SAIC and Changan, and has lower-profile partnerships with more than a dozen other carmakers, Huawei representatives said. Reuters journalists rode in an Aito M9 — a luxury electric SUV from Seres with Huawei driver-assistance technology — as it navigated Shenzhen roadways in April. With a driver's hands off the wheel, the vehicle exited a highway seamlessly into a congested urban zone, where the M9 proceeded cautiously and slowed to a crawl as a construction worker appeared like he might walk into the roadway. At one point the vehicle turned right and slowly drifted left to avoid two men unloading boxes from a parked truck. The vehicle then parallel parked itself at Huawei's Shenzhen headquarters. Huawei was among several Chinese companies, including automakers Zeekr, Changan and Xpeng, that touted progress towards fully-autonomous cars at April's Shanghai auto show, even as Beijing announced a new marketing crackdown on terms such as 'smart' and 'intelligent' driving in the wake of a deadly crash in a Xiaomi vehicle involving driver-assistance technology. Huawei said it's ready to undergo a new validation regime being developed by Chinese regulators to certify so-called Level 3 driving systems, meaning they are capable enough to allow drivers to look away unless notified by the system to take over. Zeekr, a luxury brand of China auto giant Geely, also plans to soon sell cars with Level 3 systems. Tesla has yet to release such an "unsupervised" version of FSD because its technology needs more training to operate without a driver's hands on the wheel and eyes on the road. Tesla plans to launch self-driving robotaxis in Austin this month. Little is known about its plans. The company has said it aims to initially deploy between 10 and 20 fare-collecting driverless robotaxis in restricted geographic areas of the city, which Tesla has not publicly identified. 'GOD'S EYE' ON THE CHEAP Chinese EV makers are moving quickly to develop driver-assistance systems in a market where car-buyers are demanding them at a faster pace than in other regions, analysts say. Their ability to do so at lower costs poses the biggest threat to Tesla's new autonomy-based business model. BYD buyers can get an FSD-comparable version of God's Eye as a standard feature in cars priced at about $30,000. The cheapest FSD-equipped Tesla in China is a Model 3 selling for about $41,500. According to an analysis by A2MAC1, a Paris-based tear-down firm that benchmarks components, the mid-level God's Eye version most comparable to Tesla's FSD runs on an Nvidia computing chip with data collected through 12 cameras, five radars, 12 ultrasonic sensors, and one lidar sensor, at a cost of $2,105. That compares to $2,360 for Tesla's FSD, which uses cameras without sensors and two AI chips, the firm estimates. Cameras, radar and ultrasonic sensors are 40% cheaper in China than comparable devices in Europe and the United States, A2MAC1 estimates. Lidar sensors cost about 20% less, the firm says. Sensor costs have fallen because China's EV boom created economies of scale, said A2MAC1 engineer Elena Zhelondz. The fierce competition also pushed carmakers and suppliers to accept lower profits on driver-assistance equipment, she said. BYD's 22% gross margin will likely fall as it gives away God's Eye but it will benefit from a vehicle-sales boost, said Chris McNally, head of global automotive and mobility research for advisory firm Evercore. MORE CARS, MORE MILES, BETTER AI Falling behind the Chinese brands on driver-assistance technology would compound Tesla's challenges in China, where it's already losing market share to rivals including BYD, which sells an entry-level EV for less than $10,000. The growing scale of BYD and others could also provide a technological advantage: Racking up more miles on China roads helps train the AI technology needed to perfect automated-driving systems. BYD has a 'clear and ongoing market-share driving advantage' over Tesla in gathering such on-road data to refine God's Eye, Evercore's McNally said, adding that advantage might only increase as offering God's Eye for free helps sell more BYD vehicles. BYD's scale also helps lower costs by providing uncommon leverage over suppliers. In November, a BYD executive in charge of passenger-vehicle operations wrote to suppliers telling them that the automaker sold 4.2 million vehicles last year (more than double the number of Teslas sold) because of 'technical innovation, economies of scale, and a low-cost supply chain.' The executive noted the new year would likely bring more growth, but also fiercer competition. Without specifically mentioning God's Eye, he ended the letter by asking the suppliers for an across-the-board 10% price cut on all parts and systems starting on January 1, calling the new year a final 'knockout round.' Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data
