Musk's beliefs What is behind determination to change face of government?

Elon Musk is not a people person, as millions around the world will be able to attest after the planet's richest man cut off food supplies, healthcare and probably even life itself to some of the most vulnerable without so much as a fore or after thought.

- Chris McGreal

Musk sees himself as a data man, wielding numbers like a machete to slash and burn his way through government waste and corruption as he leads the rightwing charge to capture the US state.

Within days of dispatching his minions to kick down the doors of the US Agency for International Development (USAid) and rifle through its finances, the agency was in effect out of business. Musk claimed USAid was "a criminal organisation" full of Marxists – an assertion called "laughable" by its former administrator under George W Bush, Andrew Natsios, who says he is a Republican.

Musk didn't care. Less than three weeks after Donald Trump was inaugurated as president, the head of the so-called department of government efficiency (Doge) has created a power base in Washington of a kind not seen before. Trump has given Musk free rein to send his operatives into more than a dozen federal agencies to look for evidence of mismanagement and subversion, and generally create chaos, outside of the usual bounds of oversight and regulation.

Crucially, Musk in effect controls the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees federal employment. He has encouraged more than 2 million government workers to resign, with the stated aim of forcing a few hundred thousand out of the door.

It's clear who Musk thinks should be running the country, from his recruitment to Doge of "special government employees" from his own companies and the wider tech industry to storm the federal citadels. They include a significant proportion of young male software engineers of the kind who worship tech billionaires such as Musk.