If Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump wins the election in November, he plans to create a "government efficiency commission" based on ideas from Tesla, SpaceX, and X CEO Elon Musk, who will also lead the body.

Trump spoke of the plans publicly for the first time this week as rumors of such an idea circulated. The former president's speech at the New York Economic Club yesterday is also the first time Trump has said Musk agreed to head the commission, though Musk has alluded to his possible involvement as well.

"I look forward to serving America if the opportunity arises," Musk said on X Thursday morning, prior to Trump's speech.

"No pay, no title, no recognition is needed," the self-described Tesla "Technoking" added.

As for what, exactly, a Musk-led government efficiency committee would be charged with doing, Trump didn't reveal too much aside from broad generalizations.

Trump did explain the committee will be "tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government [and] making recommendations for drastic reforms."

"Elon, because he is not very busy, has agreed to head that task force," Trump added.

Trump said the committee's first order of business will involve developing an action plan to "totally eliminate fraud and improper payments," which Trump said cost taxpayers "hundreds of billions" in 2022 alone, "within six months."

"Elon Musk has dedicated himself to America's future by offering to serve with President Trump to ensure our government works more efficiently and uses America's taxpayer dollars effectively," Trump campaign senior advisor Brian Hughes told The Register in a statement. "The commission will ultimately be staffed and dedicated to this mission, and President Trump is committed to having Mr Musk lead this commission to analyze the functionality of our government."

Musk's idea of efficiency is anything but reassuring

The Trump campaign didn't answer any questions about how the committee will operate, but we can glean insight into what Musk considers to be efficiency by looking at his nearly two-year long tenure at the helm of Twitter/X.

Musk proposed buying Twitter to ostensibly improve it while also delivering a path to profitability, something Twitter has never managed to achieve. Layoffs at the company designed to eliminate redundancy, save money, and make the company more efficient were nearly immediate and incredibly extensive, with around half the company being fired in Musk's opening salvo.

Entire teams were eliminated, and remaining groups were left to make do with minimal staff and resources, facing a go-hardcore-or-quit ultimatum from the new CEO. With so few people left to keep the ship afloat, Twitter started to destabilize pretty quickly.

First came Twitter asking several dozen employees who were laid off to come back because their roles had been cut accidentally, followed by firings that were so unclear employees had to take to Twitter to ask about them - earning a mocking from their former boss in the process. 

Staffing chaos at the company continues to this day, with Australian employees asked in June to return tens of thousands of dollars in accidental severance payments.

That's not to mention what Musk's cuts have done to Twitter's performance.

Musk has been public in his criticisms of Twitter's tech stack, but laying off engineers left the platform unstable in the months following his acquisition and restructuring of the company. Images and links failed on multiple occasions in late 2022 and early 2023, and at least part of the problem can likely be attributed to Musk's refusal to pay bills and scramble for hosting.

Chaos in the wake of Muskian leadership mandates isn't unique to Twitter either. Musk has also declined to pay SpaceX contractors, leading to more than 70 liens being filed against the company since 2019. SpaceX has also been accused of conducting improper layoffs, and Musk has decimated staff in response to problems at Tesla too.

Oh, and let's not forget the sort of results Musk delivers when he's up against a deadline - a repeatedly failed one, no less. We get the Cybertruck.

Expecting a Musk-led committee dedicated to cutting federal spending with a six-month mandate to be anything short of chaos looks like wishful thinking given that track record - and we haven't even begun to consider what sort of conflicts of interest Musk would have in gutting federal agencies that have gone after his companies.

Trump spent much of his presidency attacking federal employees, and has pledged to reinstate a Biden-killed directive that eliminated civil service job protections from political interference. If reinstated, the directive would allow civil service employees to be fired at will, without protections to ensure their jobs don't become political appointments.

Fears that Trump would strip the federal government of expert professionals and replace them with political appointees have been amplified by the Project 2025 document, and Musk's committee could be used to pave the way for such political restructuring.

All of this, of course, hinges on whether Musk would even survive the appointment process for his role as head of the committee and Trump winning the election - neither of which are certain.

Musk hasn't responded to questions. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/09/06/musk_government_efficiency_trump/