'People seem dumbstruck' - Inside Musk's race to upend government

After days of speculation over the precise role the world's richest man would play in Donald Trump's White House - how much power he would hold, whether he is a government employee at all - he took to the social media platform he owns to clarify.
"My preferred title is just 'Tech ,'" Elon Musk wrote on X on Tuesday. It was a knowing understatement.
As the head of the nascent Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), Musk has emerged as a dominant force in the dizzying start to Trump's second istration.
In just two weeks he has led efforts to seize access to the federal payment system, dismantled an entire agency and offered millions of civil servants an ultimatum - quit or face being fired.
But Musk's increasingly bold attempt to remake the federal government with the same blunt force he used to take control of companies like Twitter have put him on a collision course with the Washington establishment.
And while he has secured a place in Trump's inner circle, observers wonder if a showdown between these two powerful personalities could be looming.
Musk's journey from billionaire entrepreneur to White House power player was not straightforward. By his own ing, Musk had - for decades - been a reliable vote for the Democrats.
But unhappy with Biden's position on issues from labour laws to transgender rights, Musk began to look to the other side of the aisle in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election.
Initially, Musk called for Trump to "hang up his hat & sail into the sunset" and had backed his rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, for the Republican nomination. But he soon became the president's biggest booster, contributing $288m to Trump and other Republican candidates and becoming a key adviser on the campaign.
By the time of Trump's inauguration, Musk was his right-hand man, seated just behind the president's left shoulder on the dais - an unmistakable symbol of his influence.
"You know I always say we have to be protective of our geniuses because we don't have too many. But that one is a good one," Trump said of Musk, after welcoming him on stage at a rally the day before.
Musk has been a near constant presence in the nation's capital ever since.

Almost immediately after his election Trump tapped Musk to run Doge, and this new role has seemingly empowered him in a far-reaching mission to slash and transform the federal government, pushing for massive reforms with stunning speed.
Although Trump had said Musk would not be given an office in the West Wing, the tech leader and his team have moved beds into the federal personnel office next door to the White House, according to the New York Times.
He has top secret security clearance, a Trump istration official confirmed, potentially giving him access to a broad swathe of highly classified information.
His tactics - relentless, sometimes ruthless - are reminiscent of how he ran his previous companies, former employees say.
A former programme manager at Tesla, who spoke to the BBC on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said Musk "did not care" about the human cost of his decisions.
"He's only concerned with the objective at hand. I think he views interpersonal issues and conflicts as ancillary things that are not worth his time," he said.
Occasionally, Musk tended toward the impulsive. The manager recalled seeing Musk fire a fellow Tesla employee on the spot over an overflowing rubbish can.
"He interpreted that as a sign that this person didn't take as much pride in his work as he should," he said. "That was the nuance to it… but at the end of the day someone got fired because they itted that their trash can was overflowing."
The approach yielded a committed workforce, the employee said. If you were on board with Musk's mission, that single-minded focus was motivating, he said, and helped fuel regular 13 plus-hour days on the job.
"He can get more out of people than anyone else I have ever seen," he recalled, although he added that the intensity at Tesla was par for the course in Silicon Valley.
But for those in the federal government, the employee added, "it's gotta be a culture shock."
Nowhere has Musk's purported work on behalf of Trump been felt as intensely as USAID.
The government agency responsible for international development went from dispensing billions in aid to programmes around the world to an effective dead stop in just over two weeks.
Trump already curtailed USAID's work significantly when he ordered a 90-day pause in US foreign spending, while the istration reviewed the funds in order to make sure they were in line with the president's policy goals.
But in recent days, employees have watched with increasing alarm as Musk set his sights directly on USAID, labelling their agency a "criminal organisation" on X.
Musk's increasingly harsh rhetoric has coincided with equally drastic changes at USAID.
On 1 February, the USAID website stopped working; its X appeared to vanish not long after. That same weekend, two top security officials were placed on istrative leave after a confrontation with Doge representatives over access to a secure facility used for reviewing classified information, the Washington Post and other US outlets reported.
On Monday, USAID employees were told to stay at home while hundreds of employees were locked out of their email. CBS, the BBC's US news partner, reports USAID employees are being pulled out of their respective countries worldwide by Friday.
"It's beyond repair," Musk said of the agency during his 50-minute conversation on X Spaces early Monday morning.
"I went over it with him in detail, and he agreed that we should shut it down," Musk said of his conversation with Trump. "And I actually checked with him a few times [and] said 'are you sure"Reuters Protesters carrying signs outside of US Agency for International Development building One sign reads: Musk & Trump, Keep your fascist hands off USAid" class="sc-d1200759-0 dvfjxj"/>Reuters