Musk brought Silicon Valley mindset to Trump's Washington

Washington has never seen anything like the rule-breaking, powertaking, government-torching, protocol-scorching force of delighted havoc and gleeful mayhem that is Elon Musk. Margaret O’Marahas.

- Mark Z. Barabak

The University of Washington historian charted the spectacular rise and all-swallowing influence of the tech industry and its titans in her excellent, highly readable 2019 work, “The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America.” Musk, who grew rich by age 30 through his start-up work, is a relatively small character in the book, for reasons of narrative and focus. Instead, O’Mara centred her history on the founders and back stories of the major platform companies: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft.

But there’s an attitude, a worldview and a fundamental set of principles that guide the tech industry and its progeny, like a secular catechism. O'Mara sees those beliefs very much in evidence at Musk’s fancifully named Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, and his wrecking-ball efforts to raze huge swaths of the federal government in a single, unfettered swoop. Several elements are present and accounted for.