Demystifying the Department of Government Efficiency

Zoë Schiffer: It must have been a long walk.

Lauren Goode: I mean, I heard a lot about jujitsu. 56 minutes of that show was taken up on jujitsu, and then it was also like, “Also, how to live forever.” I don’t know. Yeah.

Michael Calore: I really want to hear that, because I was fascinated when you started talking about it, and Zoë has been talking about him. I don’t want to read his book, but I would listen to him on Joe Rogan. The Big Joe Rogan thing for me was the recent appearance by Marc Andreessen.

Lauren Goode: Ooh, what was that like?

Michael Calore: It was like 18 hours.

Lauren Goode: Wow. You were deep in the broligarchy.

Zoë Schiffer: I listened to it because you were talking about it, and I was like… And it’s relevant for our conversation today, but damn, was it long?

Michael Calore: It is. And this show will not be 18 hours long, but it is relevant to the topic, because we’re going to be talking about DOGE.

Lauren Goode: So once again, the broligarchy.

Michael Calore: The broligarchy.

Lauren Goode: Let’s do it.

Michael Calore: This is WIRED’s Uncanny Valley, a show about the people, power, and influence of Silicon Valley. I’m Michael Calore, director of consumer tech and culture here at WIRED.

Lauren Goode: And I’m Lauren Goode. I’m a senior writer at WIRED.

Zoë Schiffer: And I am Zoë Schiffer, WIRED’s director of business and industry.

Michael Calore: Today, we are demystifying DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, the meme coin. As Lauren calls it, the broligarchy. We’ll talk about the key players, what their proposed plan is for the U.S. government, and what we think is really behind it all. DOGE. Okay. We are talking about DOGE today, and no, not the meme coin.

Zoë Schiffer: Although the meme coin is relevant here, because that is the big joke. That’s why they chose this acronym. So just to give a little background on what that even means, meme coins are a type of cryptocurrency that are based off of a joke. It’s like almost making fun of cryptocurrency itself. So Dogecoin is one that Elon Musk has promoted for a long time now. There are others like BONK and FLOKI that I think are named after his dog, Floki, not BONK. They actually are a type of crypto, but they’re based off of an internet joke.

Lauren Goode: Wasn’t there also a Hawk Tuah coin recently?

Zoë Schiffer: Ew.

Michael Calore: There was. Yes.

Lauren Goode: Yeah. And how did that go?

Michael Calore: Not well.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah.

Michael Calore: Meme coins generally do not go well. But this one has a second life, because now it’s been rebranded as the Department of Government Efficiency, of which Elon Musk is one of the people in charge.

Zoë Schiffer: Yes.

Lauren Goode: And everyone is talking about this DOGE.

[Archival audio]: Two wealthy Trump supporters set to take an axe to federal spending.

Zoë Schiffer: DOGE has gone mainstream, finally.

[Archival audio]: We believe it’s an historic moment for the country, and you’re going to see a lot of change around here and in Washington and the way things are run.

Michael Calore: Let’s start by talking about what DOGE is.

Lauren Goode: Okay. So the first thing to know is that DOGE is not actually an official government organization. It is an initiative that’s being led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.

Vivek Ramaswamy [Archival audio]: Elon Musk and I are in a position to start the mass deportations of millions of unelected federal bureaucrats out of the D.C. bureaucracy. That, too, is how we’re going to save this country.

Lauren Goode: And the idea is that they’re going to take this very Silicon Valley mindset to the federal government and look at some of the bloat that exists in the federal government, and figure out where to make cuts or at least where to suggest Donald Trump make cuts when he’s back in office. So it’s unclear whether or not they’re going to have the authority to directly make changes in federal spending, which are typically controlled by Congress, but they are basically arguing that President-elect Donald Trump has the authority to cut spending authorized by Congress, and that they’re going to make suggestions for how he does that.

Zoë Schiffer: Right. And I feel like if all goes well, their suggestions will be taken really seriously. Donald Trump is becoming president again. The Republicans control both houses of Congress. So presumably, Vivek and Elon make suggestions to Trump. Trump takes them. Congress enacts them, what have you, and their plans, which sound kind of far-fetched and radical at this point, could become reality.

Michael Calore: So why these two guys? Why Elon? Why Vivek? What is it about their mindset that appeals to Trump and the Republicans coming into power who want to downsize the government?

Lauren Goode: I’m going to let Zoë talk about Elon, but I think we should do some table setting for Vivek here. He’s a really interesting person. He’s just 39 years old. This is one of those moments where you’re like, “Oh, he’s younger than me.” Not me. Do you ever have that moment where you go to see a surgeon, and this person’s going to cut open your body, and you’re like, “Wait, you’re younger than me. What?” Okay.

Michael Calore: It’s an apt metaphor here.

Lauren Goode: Right. He’s Harvard-educated. He went to Yale Law School.

Zoë Schiffer: With JD Vance, we should say. They’re friends.

Lauren Goode: He founded a pharmaceutical company back in 2014. I read a little interesting tidbit about him. The biotech company he founded is called Roivant Sciences. That’s R-O-I-V-A-N-T. And supposedly, the Roi in the company’s name refers to return on investment.

Michael Calore: Of course.

Lauren Goode: Yes. And Vivek also declared his candidacy for the Republican Party nomination in the United States 2024 presidential elections. He eventually dropped out, threw his support behind Trump, and now I guess he is appointed to this non-government government role where he is going to be in charge of slashing the federal government’s budget, alongside Zoë’s favorite person in the world.

Zoë Schiffer: Elon Musk.

Lauren Goode: Elon Musk.

Zoë Schiffer: Yes. Good friend of mine, famously connected over Signal. Just kidding. He never responds to my messages. But Mike, to your point-

Lauren Goode: But you do message him?

Zoë Schiffer: Yes. Well, we have to, to ask for comment. It’s a humiliating process. You’re either getting the poop emoji, or he’s responding with the crying-laughing emoji for me. Anyway, Mike, you said what about their mindset is attractive to Trump, but I actually think a question that’s relevant before we get to the mindset is what’s attractive about their wallets, because Elon Musk threw a ton of money behind Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, and ultimately seems like he was successful in that effort, obviously, to get him reelected. Whether or not he had enormous impact, a little difficult to say. But obviously, he put a lot of effort behind it and a lot of money behind it. So I think there’s a certain level with Trump’s appointments right now where it does look like he’s rewarding people who have been loyal to him, and Elon Musk was one of those people. At the same time, Elon bought Twitter in 2022, transformed it to X, and made it kind of a political machine, which he deployed to get Trump reelected. But at the same time, he made a lot of changes to the company and the company culture that people like Trump find pretty attractive. He cut costs in a pretty ruthless way. He fired more than half the company shortly after taking over, and these are lessons that Trump and other people, who are about to be in charge of the federal government, want him to apply to the government itself.

Michael Calore: Okay. So these guys have hired some of their friends. They’ve hired some government insiders and some government outsiders, and they’re sitting in rooms. They’re having conversations. They’re opening up the books and taking a hard look at the U.S. government. When they look, what do they see? What kinds of things are on the table for them?

Zoë Schiffer: I think it’s generous that you think they’re opening up the books and doing this examination, because I’m a little worried that that’s not what’s happening, but let’s hope it is. The big thing is that the federal budget right now is about $7 trillion. And they’ve thrown around different numbers, but basically say, “I think we could cut around $2 trillion from that budget.” They really see federal spending as being kind of out of control and putting the United States on a bad path where, in their words, it could be on the path to bankruptcy, and this would obviously put everyone in a very bad position. So the first thing that they want to do is cut costs as quickly as possible, and part of that is head count. So firing a lot of people who currently work in the federal government, and reducing the number of government agencies.

Michael Calore: Yeah.

Zoë Schiffer: Aside from just bloated head count that they see is just a government that works way too slow. Elon has said that, with SpaceX in particular, his company can build a rocket faster than the federal government can process the paperwork to allow that rocket to launch. So I think everywhere they look, they’re just like, “These processes are inefficient, and we need to streamline them.”

Michael Calore: And we should also note that this is not the first time that we’ve had one of these commissions, either within the government or next to the government, that have taken a hard look at the budget and decided to make a bunch of cuts. It happened in the 1940s and ’50s. It happened during the Reagan administration. It happened when Al Gore was vice president. I remember he headed up one of these. So this is yet another opportunity for the government to take a hard look at itself, or in this case, have two outsiders take a hard look at the government and make difficult choices about what to keep and what to throw away. So if you look at the government and you break down what we actually spend money on, there is interest that we pay down on our massive national debt, and then there is mandatory and discretionary spending, and the mandatory and discretionary spending make up for about 90% of the government’s spending. The military, Social Security, unemployment, and labor make up a majority of both discretionary and mandatory government spending. And in total, there are almost 3 million people who work for the federal government. So what fits into that 90%? When we look at all of the different things that we can make cuts to, what is DOGE looking at?

Lauren Goode: Well, Zoë already mentioned cutting the actual workforce, taking a close look at the people who currently work for the federal government. The New Yorker actually reported that Vivek Ramaswamy once said that he would introduce a thought experiment to how this might be done. He would take the 2 million federal civilian employees and say, “If your Social Security number ends in an odd number, you’re out. If it ends in an even number, you’re in. There’s a 50% cut right there.”

Zoë Schiffer: Now we see why him and Elon Musk have such a bromance going on, because that feels very Twitter 2022 cuts.

Lauren Goode: Welcome to the Hunger Games. Yeah. Unclear whether or not that’s actually going to become a reality, but yeah. So they want to slash spending by cutting workers. Supposedly, they want to target $500 billion in spending that is unauthorized by Congress, as well as programs that they think aren’t in line with, quote, unquote, “lawmakers’ intentions.” The biggest source of expired authorizations is in healthcare for veterans. That accounted for $119 billion in 2024, according to the Congressional Budget Office, but the DOGE bros haven’t singled out veterans healthcare as a place where they’d seek to cut. Instead, they’re looking at things like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which receives over $500 million a year, international organizations that they say receive over a billion dollars in grants, Planned Parenthood. Basically, they’re looking at progressive groups as ways to cut spending, in addition to looking at cutting the actual workforce. They also said that they want to require these federal workers to be in the office five days a week, which they think will result in some voluntary termination. So basically, they’re taking the Amazon approach here.

Zoë Schiffer: Wait. Was this on the Marc Andreessen episode of the Joe Rogan podcast, Mike, where they were talking about the fact that… I think Marc Andreessen was saying, “Oh, a lot of these federal workers have actually moved to the Ozarks and stuff, and they’re working remotely, getting this paycheck that’s supposed to cover the cost of living in D.C., but they’re living somewhere much cheaper. They’re never coming into the office, and it’s costing us tax dollars. So those people need to go,” which immediately when you hear that, you’re like, “Is that happening?”

Michael Calore: Yeah.

Zoë Schiffer: It’s really interesting how much animosity they seem to have towards specifically the people who work from home, although I guess if we look at how they run their companies, it makes sense.

Lauren Goode: Yeah. There are definitely shades of Silicon Valley here, which is why we’re talking about it on Uncanny Valley. Musk and Ramaswamy wrote an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal in which they talked about their DOGE plans. They said they want to use embedded agents and advanced technology to first determine the bloat within various departments, and then make suggestions for cutting spending that they then send on to Trump and Congress for consideration, and they’re really going hard. They’re calling themselves crusaders.

Michael Calore: And relying on algorithmic tools to make a lot of these decisions.

Lauren Goode: I don’t know if they’ve specifically said that they’re going to be using AI to do it, but they did just say advanced technology.

Michael Calore: Sure.

Zoë Schiffer: That feels AI-coded, to say the least. I feel like they have mentioned cutting military spending. Am I wrong on that? Because that one surprised me a little bit. I was like, “Planned Parenthood, of course.” Same with NPR and stuff. These are organizations that either Ramaswamy and Musk, or the Republican Party more generally, have had issues with. So I think it’s unsurprising to see that they would be kind of a primary target.

Lauren Goode: Now, granted, some of this stuff that they’re talking about in terms of procurement processes, expired contracts, or just contracts that haven’t been reevaluated in a long time, as well as the government workforce, they’re not totally off the mark here. If you talk to anyone in government, they’ll say, “Yeah. It’s basically impossible to fire someone in government.” Civil servants have a lot of protections, and for good reason in many cases, but it also means that you have people there who maybe are no longer suitable for the job.

Zoë Schiffer: Totally. I think the fear is just how are they actually going to evaluate who is good at their job and who’s not, because if we look at how they did this process at Twitter, it was super chaotic, and the objective was basically cost savings. And the DOGE commission has two goals here. They’re trying to cut costs as quickly as possible, but they’re also trying to make a point about how good the incoming Trump administration is going to be and how bad they feel the Biden administration was. And I think the worry is that that secondary goal is going to encourage them to move really, really fast, and that humans will be collateral damage.

Michael Calore: So there’s certainly a lot of turmoil ahead. And we still have a lot to talk about, so let’s take a quick break, and we’ll come right back. Welcome back to Uncanny Valley. We are talking about DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. So one of the things that DOGE is tasked with doing is just reducing overall bloat in government and bloated spending budgets, and I think that all of us can identify a point in our lives in the recent past where we have run into some sort of weird bureaucratic nonsense in the government and said, “There has to be a way to make this better.” And I know that this is one of the things that they have talked about, being Silicon Valley guys. They’ve said that, “We’re going to introduce technology into government systems. We’re going to get new computers, because they’re more efficient, and they are more secure than these old, outdated systems that the government has right now.”

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. I mean, I do feel like maybe it’s because we’ve all been listening to too much Joe Rogan, but I think some of what they’re saying makes a lot of sense, generally. A lot of these systems are inefficient, Mike, to your point. A lot of the technology is outdated. Something is broken in this system right now. And having someone come in who’s willing to say, “This doesn’t make sense, and we could do it different,” there’s value to that. It’s just that a lot could be lost along the way, and it’s not clear that they’re going to go about it in the way that they’re saying.

Michael Calore: Yeah. And I think we’ve seen some hints that technologies like AI are going to be used as part of this government efficiency playbook. Trump has tapped David Sacks, the venture capitalist, to take on a free-floating role in his administration, overseeing AI and crypto. And I’m sure that if Elon and Vivek have David Sacks and his team at their disposal, they will probably use it.

Zoë Schiffer: We’re going to see Grok making the decisions over who gets to keep their job.

Lauren Goode: That’s the thing that’s unclear to me, is whether or not they’re bringing in these guys because they want them to actually advise on how technology is used as part of government services, or because they’re going to be hugely influential over the types of regulations that are rolled back or introduced.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah.

Lauren Goode: I think it’s more the latter. I can’t imagine David Sacks rolling up his sleeves and being like, “Let me program generative AI bot to make sure that you can file your taxes better. Also, here’s where you file your crypto, or don’t, because it’s crypto.”

Michael Calore: Right. So we have David Sacks, and who else is involved in this besides our DOGE bros?

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. So some of the other names that are involved in this: Marc Andreessen, who heads up a16z or Andreessen Horowitz; Bill Ackman, who’s a hedge fund manager. And they’ve gotten some support from Democrats, right?

Michael Calore: They have. Yes. Elon Musk has taken to X to post a lot of his opinions about what types of things should be cut and what types of programs don’t make sense, and he’s gotten some support from people who might be kind of surprising, like Ro Khanna, who is a representative who represents Silicon Valley and parts of Northern California; Bernie Sanders-

Lauren Goode: Bernie Sanders. Yeah.

Michael Calore: …from Vermont, have both said, “Some of these ideas are actually good,” because nobody likes waste. Everybody likes to be able to say, “Oh, that is actually a smart thing to cut.”

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. And even with the hiring-firing thing, I have friends who work in government who say that the process of getting hired or letting someone go is totally nuts these days. It’s like, to actually evaluate who should get an interview for a government job, oftentimes they’re taking people’s résumés and their keyword matching the résumés against the job description, and whoever has the closest match gets an interview. These are processes that do need to change.

Michael Calore: Yeah. And that’s part of the reason that DOGE exists and is built the way that it is, because it’s not a government organization. It sits next to the government and advises it, and these guys have come in and said, “We are not politicians. We’re not big government people. We’re entrepreneurs. We know how to cut costs. We know how to move quickly, and that’s the energy that we’re going to bring to the party.”

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. It’s funny because I feel like they’ve been getting some criticism for, like, “Look at these guys who have no experience in politics, who are jumping in, thinking they can do things better.” But when you hear them talk, they actually see that as a huge asset. They say things like, “Career politicians got to go. That’s not a good thing.” And in fact, in the past, in U.S. history, it was normal for someone in business who had had a lot of success to come do a tour in government for a short time and apply the lessons they learned in industry to the government. So they see that as a total positive.

Lauren Goode: And so far, based on what they’re proposing, I still think that some of the negatives potentially outweigh the positives.

Michael Calore: Absolutely.

Lauren Goode: But we’re acknowledging the positives on this podcast.

Michael Calore: We are.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah.

Lauren Goode: We’re acknowledging that there’s a need to cut through some of the bloat that exists in the federal government. We’re acknowledging that this is even creating a general awareness, I think, for a lot of people of how the government works and how government spending works.

Michael Calore: Totally.

Lauren Goode: People are suddenly interested in DOGE, “What is DOGE? What are these guys doing? How are they going to do it?” It’s Elon, that amount of attention being brought to this. I’m sure there are tons of people right now who are reading about the federal budget that didn’t even realize how much was being spent and what was being spent on mandatory versus discretionary spending. I also think some of these big, boldface names could be good for recruitment. People here that Marc Andreessen or David Sacks, or whoever it might be, has some hand in reshaping our government, and all of a sudden, they might be interested in not just making a ton of money in the private sector, but actually doing something for a couple of years that lends itself to bettering the government. Okay. I think the bad here is that, one, bringing that Silicon Valley mindset to the government means you’re bringing, in some instances, an incredible hubris. And this is not like running a startup. This is the government, which also means you could potentially roll back regulations and social services that truly do exist to serve the American people, because this is not the Elon and Vivek Show. We vote for government officials because they work for us. So these guys have to remember that what they’re doing is ultimately to create a government that works for us, the American people.

Michael Calore: To the point you were making earlier, Lauren, when you have these extremely wealthy and powerful businessmen from Silicon Valley hiring other people like them to sit down and make decisions about what should stay and what should go, it is hard to see a future in which they cut things that serve their interests and keep things that work against their interests.

Lauren Goode: Right. And I’ve been talking to some folks who work in government, and one of the things that they said they really want to see is more energetic, smart, tech-savvy people actually getting into government and rolling up their sleeves and doing the work to make the government operate more efficiently. They don’t want to see lists and reports and all these things generated telling people what needs to be fixed, because the government’s been doing that for decades, and it hasn’t been fixed. They need actually people to come in and do the groundwork. And so, maybe that is one of the upsides of having these boldface names there.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. And my response to them would be, I doubt you’ll see a single report, but you may see many, many lists, because if we knew or if we learned anything from the Twitter takeover, it’s that things were done very, very quickly. A lot of lists were generated, and there was very little paperwork involved.

Michael Calore: Yeah.

Lauren Goode: So it depends on what your Social Security number ended in, odd number or even number, at Twitter?

Zoë Schiffer: I mean, one other thing that… The way that they’re talking about cutting spending has this kind of zero-budgeting mindset, which they applied at Twitter, which was basically, “Let’s start from a budget of zero and justify every expense on top of that.” And they’ve said, “Hey, if we do get rid of an agency that was doing important work, we’ll just reinstate it after the fact,” which sounds good in theory, but what happens in the interim if that agency was providing critical services for people?

Michael Calore: Total chaos. Also, we have a pretty clear idea about what is in their crosshairs, because these are rich guys from Silicon Valley who run businesses, and they’re probably going to go after the government agencies that regulate their businesses. They’ve talked about undoing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is an agency that was born after the financial crisis of 2008, and it regulates banks, and it regulates the credit card industry, and Silicon Valley has, for a long time, been very hostile towards this agency. So that’s probably gone.

Lauren Goode: Right.

Zoë Schiffer: I think that’s my fear, which is, a lot of this sounds good in theory, but then when they start to talk about specifics, it seems like, “Hey, I don’t know if they’re going after agencies that are wasting taxpayer money. It seems like they’re going after agencies that have a different ideological viewpoint in their mind than they do,” which it seems a little bit like going after their enemies versus going after, I guess, our enemies.

Michael Calore: Yes. And probably, the thing that a lot of people are scared about is that the sort of public safety nets that the administrative state upholds, like Medicare, like Social Security, will fall under the same scrutiny and will be downsized, and that kind of goes against the platform that Trump ran and won on, which is that, “I’m here for you, the little guy. I’m here for the working class.”

Lauren Goode: Right. The working class, the middle class, the populist vote, essentially.

Michael Calore: Yes. And going after those agencies that basically support the working class and support the people who do not have the wealth advantage in this country runs counter to the policies that the administration won on.

Lauren Goode: Right.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. And it feels like the way that they talk about it, it kind of has the trickle-down economics flavor, where it’s like, “Hey, if the government isn’t taxing you as much, if the government is not spending as much money, then there will be more money circulating in the private sector, and people will be able to spend that money how they want.” But that’s kind of been a divide that’s existed for a long time between how liberals and conservatives view the economy.

Michael Calore: Right. So we don’t know what’s going to happen with DOGE. There could be no policies that come out of it. Every agency could be the same, just with half the people, because they did the Social Security number trick. I also just want to float the theory that I’ve heard from several people, which is that DOGE really is just, Trump needed to give these two guys something to do. He just needed them to go sit in a room somewhere so that they would be out of his hair.

Zoë Schiffer: Ooh, I don’t think that that’s true. I feel like he really does respect their intellect and is excited to see what they can do here.

Michael Calore: Okay. At what point do they start butting heads, and then it all falls apart?

Zoë Schiffer: Okay. Well, that’s fair. That’s fair because Trump is incredibly sensitive to looking like he’s a puppet and someone else is pulling the strings. This is famously how he’s fallen out with various family members of his who were part of the federal government previously. So yes, totally possible that him and Elon Musk, two men with famously big egos, will, at some point, have a disagreement. But right now, they’re really useful to each other. So maybe they’ll be friends.

Lauren Goode: Well, there’s also an end date to this project too. Elon and Vivek have said that this project is running until July 4th, 2026, so America’s birthday. At that point, they’ll have sort of concluded the DOGE project, and they hope to have made, I guess, all of their cuts, people’s jobs at that point, and really, what does the workforce look like after that? So the fact that it has an end date makes me think, “Huh. Okay. This could actually be a thing that goes on for the next 18 months,” that we’re going to be, of course, monitoring closely. On the other hand, I just think of Elon as being someone who… He’s actually an incredibly busy person too. He’s running a lot of companies in the private sector, one of which is a federal government contractor. But yes, he’s got a lot going on, and his attention seems to be going in a bunch of different directions at the same time. So can he continue to give DOGE the amount of attention that’s actually going to be required to make these kind of changes without completely fucking up the government?

Michael Calore: I think this is a big win for him. This position is probably more important than those CEO jobs that he has, because he has the power now to influence policy in the U.S. government that benefits those companies.

Lauren Goode: Yeah.

Zoë Schiffer: I actually think there’s a lot of synchronicity between all of his different jobs at this point. The agencies that he proposes cutting are regulating some of his companies. So there’s benefits there. He’s going to be spreading the gospel of DOGE on X, and X will be getting more attention because of this. So it’s like, I totally agree, Lauren. He is a busy man. He’s doing a bunch of different things at the same time. It feels like a lot of these projects are helping one another, and DOGE is kind of the linchpin of all of it in this moment in time.

Lauren Goode: Zoë, you also had a theory that you think X is really going to become the messaging platform for DOGE. Also, someone, I think, on the All-In Podcast, they said that Vivek is going to be doing a Dogecast. I don’t know if that’s true.

Zoë Schiffer: Oh, yeah.

Michael Calore: Can’t wait.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. And they were also asking for cohost recommendations, because I think David Sacks might be a little busy this next year as the AI and crypto czar.

Lauren Goode: Are you going to throw your hat in the ring, Zoë?

Zoë Schiffer: Yes. Pick me, guys. I’ll be part of the jokes as you’re joking about masturbating to The Wall Street Journal op-ed. I’ll just be right in there, throwing it down with the boys.

Michael Calore: Listeners to the All-In Podcast understood that reference.

Lauren Goode: That’s extreme pick-me energy, Zoë. Yeah, exactly.

Zoë Schiffer: No, but I think they already have. There’s a DOGE handle that’s been spreading information relevant to DOGE about, like, “Look at the Social Security Administration. They’ve allowed all of their workers to work from home forever.” And it’s like, I think, supposed to get people kind of riled up about all of the bloat and all of the waste.

Michael Calore: Well, it is just the very beginning of this very long year. So we do not know what is going to happen with DOGE and what cuts they’re going to make, but I’m sure this is not the last time we’re going to talk about it. And actually, before we leave today, we’re going to take another break, and then we’re going to come back and pretend that we have been appointed to DOGE, and we’re going to make our recommendations on what should get cut from the federal government. All right. Lauren and Zoë, the podcast is over, and now you are an intern for DOGE. You’re making your 28.50 an hour, and you have been asked to submit a list of suggestions for things that they should cut. So who wants to go first?

Lauren Goode: Oh, brutal. It has to be something that they would cut? Can it be something that’s additive?

Michael Calore: I think this is your chance to inject some of your own ideology into government efficiency, however you define those things.

Zoë Schiffer: Interpret it how you will.

Michael Calore: Yes.

Lauren Goode: I am not going to suggest that they cut the IRS, but I’m going to suggest that they make it a better tax process for everybody.

Michael Calore: You have a problem with our tax code? Is that what you’re saying?

Lauren Goode: Simplifying the process. Yeah.

Zoë Schiffer: And you’re saying I had pick-me energy? You went straight into taxes.

Lauren Goode: I just think in terms of how we process our taxes, I think that they should be looking at Estonia. God, not things you’re going to hear very often on this podcast.

Zoë Schiffer: Didn’t think you were going to go there.

Michael Calore: Tell us about Estonia.

Lauren Goode: I look to Estonia. Estonia is generally known as having really, really good government services. It’s a much smaller country than the United States, so it’s not entirely applicable. But supposedly, 99% of their government services are online, including procedures for setting up a business and filing all their taxes. Supposedly, the process of filing your taxes can take as little as three minutes. So that’s according to The Economist.

Zoë Schiffer: Whoa.

Lauren Goode: Yes. And so, I can envision this world where we are not only able to file taxes really easily, say from our phones, but we should be able to do it on an ongoing basis. So if you are a contractor or a freelancer, or you have an income stream coming from somewhere other than your standard W-2, you should just be able to use your smartphone to file that income immediately, get an estimate for what it is going to be that you owe. Right now, we can do this using accountants and other cumbersome online services. It should all just be easy. It should all be like, “Here’s what you’re going to owe. Here’s exactly when.” And then when it comes time to file, you literally push a button that says “File.” They have all of the information on our income already living somewhere. Why can we not do this?

Zoë Schiffer: You mean we shouldn’t have a purposefully opaque tax system that makes it really confusing for regular people?

Lauren Goode: Right. We should have private sector software that’s been erroneously charging consumers for years now, until someone finally came in and said, “By the way, you’re supposed to be able to do this for free.” But the free system sucks. So yeah, just make it better.

Michael Calore: I like that.

Lauren Goode: I’m getting passionate. Can you tell?

Michael Calore: Yes.

Lauren Goode: I’m fired up about this.

Michael Calore: And to all of the CPAs out there, on behalf of WIRED, I’m sorry.

Lauren Goode: Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

Michael Calore: If your Social Security number ends between zero and nine, and you are a CPA-

Lauren Goode: You know what? I’m going to do this Silicon Valley thing here. This is just going to allow you to level up in your career.

Zoë Schiffer: Oh, yeah.

Lauren Goode: You no longer have to push buttons, and-

Zoë Schiffer: You’ll have all that time for creative pursuits.

Michael Calore: Zoë, what would you cut?

Zoë Schiffer: Okay. Well, this is a more state-specific one, but as a lifelong Californian, I want to make it easier to build. I feel like we desperately need more housing. And in Southern California, where I live, it is completely ridiculous how difficult it is to get permits to build more housing, to build more ADUs, and it’s really hurting our housing economy. So that would be kind of my one. Mike, you love this?

Michael Calore: But what about the snowy plovers?

Zoë Schiffer: I know. I know. I get it. The NIMBYism is strong, particularly in the Bay Area, but it just has to happen.

Lauren Goode: And Zoë’s not saying that you should be building on the snowy plover habitats on the beach. She’s saying, “Allow for ADUs or giant parking lots that we don’t need.” Of course, people are going to get mad at me for saying that. People love their parking lots.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. It shouldn’t be this multi-month-long process to get a permit to start building. We desperately need more housing in this state. And so, let’s get on it.

Michael Calore: I think we’re all in agreement on that.

Lauren Goode: But then, wait, who’s going to lose their job now, Zoë, because you’re proposing this?

Zoë Schiffer: Oh.

Lauren Goode: If I destroy the accountants?

Zoë Schiffer: Well, all of the people processing the permits who are doubtlessly working from home from the Ozarks and not actually residing in California, those people have to go.

Lauren Goode: You’re hired. You’re hired into DOGE.

Zoë Schiffer: Okay. Mike, what’s your service?

Michael Calore: I have two. I have two small ones. First, cut all of the large, bloated defense contracts. We don’t need more bombs and laser missile guidance systems and stealth fighters in the world. We have plenty. We have so many, and we’re not really using them. We’re just kind of cruising around up there and keeping America safe. But we feel pretty safe, right?

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. I feel good.

Michael Calore: Okay. Great. Okay. Done. Get rid of it. The other one is that I would love for us to end the billion dollars in subsidies that we give to the fossil fuel industry every year.

Zoë Schiffer: Ooh, Mike does homework.

Michael Calore: I think the fossil fuel industry needs to maybe feel a little bit of pain as far as the way that things need to go, and then make those big changes that they’ve been putting off, because they’ve been getting subsidies from the government, and I know that is a drastic oversimplification of how subsidies work and what the money is used for. But when you see how much money our government pours into keeping fossil fuel industries in business, it is kind of aggravating when we all, as smart, freethinking people in the world who read science publications and work at science publications, know that that is bad and is not what the future should look like. So yeah, cut the subsidies to fossil fuel.

Lauren Goode: You might want to make that suggestion to someone who’s not necessarily in a government position, but a government-adjacent position, who also has an EV company.

Michael Calore: Yeah. Who really likes electric cars?

Lauren Goode: Yeah, really into using battery technology.

Michael Calore: Yeah. Who? Who?

Lauren Goode: I don’t know.

Michael Calore: Who?

Lauren Goode: I’ll get back to you.

Michael Calore: Oh, boy.

Lauren Goode: You’re hired.

Michael Calore: Thank you. Well, that is our show for today. We’re done. We’re just going to go work for DOGE from now on. Just kidding. We’re going to come back next week with an episode where we tell you about the week that we all tried living our daily lives with AI. Thank you for listening to this episode of Uncanny Valley. If you liked what you heard today, make sure to follow our show and rate it on your podcast app of choice. If you’d like to get in touch with us with any questions, comments, or show suggestions, or DOGE suggestions, write to us at uncannyvalley@wired.com. Today’s show is produced by Kyana Moghadam. Amar Lal at Macro Sound mixed this episode. Jordan Bell is our executive producer. Condé Nast’s head of global audio is Chris Bannon.