What was Doge? How Elon Musk tried to gamify government
This Guardian Long Read examines Elon Musk's brief 2025 tenure leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), where he attempted to apply gaming, coding, and tech company principles to streamline federal government operations. The article argues that beneath the memes and gaming metaphors lay a serious project to centralize power, expand surveillance capabilities, and target what Musk viewed as 'bugs' in the system - including undocumented immigrants.
Summary
In 2025, Elon Musk joined the Trump administration to head the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), viewing government as a 'poorly configured, big, dumb machine' that could be optimized through technological solutions. Drawing heavily from his experience with Twitter/X and his gaming interests, particularly dungeon crawlers like Diablo 4 and Path of Exile 2, Musk approached government reform as a 'speedrun' - a gaming term for completing objectives as quickly as possible using any available exploits. His office featured gaming equipment and the DOGE website included leaderboards for tracking budget cuts in real-time. Musk's philosophy centered on viewing the state as a database with 'bugs' - inefficiencies, waste, and what he considered illegitimate people, particularly undocumented immigrants whom he characterized as exploiting 'empathy' as a system vulnerability. His team implemented a 'delete, automate, and integrate' approach, using zero-based budgeting to justify all expenses anew while centralizing data from across government agencies into single repositories. This data integration effort, partnering with companies like Palantir, aimed to create unprecedented surveillance capabilities and facilitate mass deportations. The project drew on simulation theory and Matrix metaphors, with Musk positioning himself as reprogramming reality from within. However, after 130 days, Musk left DOGE amid public backlash over cuts to social programs, though many surveillance infrastructure changes remained. The article concludes that while Musk's personal political ambitions may have failed, his tenure successfully implanted tech contractors deeper into government operations and normalized the fusion of gaming culture with state power.
Key Insights
- Musk conceptualized government reform as a gaming 'speedrun' where any exploits could be used to achieve objectives as quickly as possible, drawing directly from his experience playing dungeon crawler video games
- The authors argue that DOGE's primary achievement was expanding the state's surveillance capacities through unprecedented data integration across federal agencies, rather than actual cost savings
- Musk viewed empathy as a 'software vulnerability' or 'exploit' that needed to be patched out of governance systems, treating humanitarian concerns as bugs in the code base
- The Department of Government Efficiency implemented a 'delete, automate, and integrate' strategy using zero-based budgeting powered by AI tools to rebuild government budgets from scratch
- Musk promoted conspiracy theories about undocumented immigrants being used by Democrats to create a permanent electoral majority, tweeting over 1,300 times about immigration fraud in 2024
- The authors contend that Musk's approach differed from typical 'red pill' ideology by seeking to build a better Matrix rather than escape it, positioning himself as the programmer rather than the victim
- DOGE's data integration efforts specifically targeted accelerating mass deportations by creating a master database tracking immigrants across multiple government agencies
- Despite Musk's departure and public backlash over social program cuts, tech contractors like Palantir became more deeply embedded in government operations, with his companies continuing to receive Pentagon contracts
Topics
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