Is Elon Musk Really Stepping Back From DOGE?

Elon Musk says he’s stepping back from his role with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency to turn his attention to his businesses—most urgently to Tesla, which has faced global sales slumps in recent months. In this episode, we discuss how our understanding of DOGE has evolved over the past five months and what we think will happen when Musk scales back.

You can follow Michael Calore on Bluesky at @snackfight, Lauren Goode on Bluesky at @laurengoode, and Katie Drummond on Bluesky at @katie-drummond. Write to us at uncannyvalley@wired.com.

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Transcript

Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.

Michael Calore: Hey, this is Mike. Before we start, I want to take the chance to remind you that we want to hear from you. Do you have a tech related question that’s been on your mind, or maybe you have a topic that you wish we talk about on the show? If so, you can write to us at uncannyvalley@wired.com, and if you listen to and enjoy our episodes, please rate it and leave your review on your podcast app of choice. It really helps other people find us. Hi folks, co-hosts. How’s it going?

Katie Drummond: Ugh.

Michael Calore: That good?

Katie Drummond: That was me, Katie. That was me speaking. No, it’s going all right. It’s been a stressful 90 minutes leading up to recording this podcast, but I’m okay.

Michael Calore: Did you just fly through Newark?

Katie Drummond: No, actually I didn’t. Although I know that that is in your cards, in the near future. I actually rescheduled a flight to avoid Newark, so I’m now taking a red eye for no reason other than I don’t want to fly into Newark Airport.

Lauren Goode: Smart.

Katie Drummond: Thank you.

Michael Calore: I’m jealous.

Lauren Goode: Mike, I’m sending you all of the good wishes.

Michael Calore: Thank you. I hope to listen to this podcast on an airplane that took off on time and lands on time without incident on Thursday.

Lauren Goode: I hope you return next week able to tape another podcast because you didn’t get stuck somewhere.

Michael Calore: I think metaphysically, we’re all stuck somewhere right now, I think.

Lauren Goode: Yeah, we’re in the middle of some big transitions. That’s probably the one thing that we have in common with Elon Musk.

Katie Drummond: Touché.

Michael Calore: Back in the first week of January, we put out an episode of this show that was all about DOGE, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. I would say it was our very first DOGE episode, if I’m remembering correctly. And we talked about the key players, the goals of the group, and the ins and outs of government spending. A lot has happened since then. And now, Elon Musk, says that he’s stepping back from his full-time role at DOGE. There are still many unanswered questions about where DOGE stands now, including if and when Elon’s exit will happen, but we’re wondering what actually has been accomplished during Musk’s time with the DOGE Bros. So, today in the show, the latest on DOGE and what it may look like post-Elon. This is WIRED’s Uncanny Valley, a show about the people, power, and influence of Silicon Valley. I’m Michael Calore, Director of Consumer Tech and Culture here at WIRED.

Lauren Goode: I’m Lauren Goode, I’m a Senior Writer at WIRED.

Katie Drummond: And I’m Katie Drummond, WIRED’s Global Editorial Director.

Michael Calore: So, I want to start by asking a question that we asked in our last deep dive on DOGE, because I think the answer may have changed since then. At this moment, just a few months into Trump’s second term as President, May 2025, what exactly is DOGE?

Lauren Goode: Well, I wish it was a figment of our imagination.

Katie Drummond: Yes, I wish that it was a fever dream, but that is still the big question, incredibly enough. And I think at WIRED, we’ve actually been very careful when we characterize DOGE in our reporting, we often, or always, use the term, “so-called.” The so-called Department of Government Efficiency, because it doesn’t really actually exist.

And as some WIRED reporters pointed out last month, I think it was Zoë and Kate, it’s almost a metaphysical question at this point. And that was in relation to employees at the General Services Administration, despite the fact that there are at least half a dozen DOGE operatives on payroll at that administration, despite the fact that there is a section of that building that is for DOGE use only and is a secure facility within the GSA, that the acting head of the GSA actually said, in an all-hands, that there was no DOGE team working at the GSA. Which begs the question, well, who are these people then and who do they work for?

I think in a more practical way, there are two DOGEs. There’s US Digital Service, which was essentially hijacked and repurposed by the administration, now known as the US DOGE Service. Sure. And then there’s a temporary organization within the US DOGE service, called, obviously, the US DOGE Service Temporary Organization. And that organization is ostensibly in charge of carrying out the DOGE agenda.

So, I think all of this semantic BS aside, what is DOGE? Well, it is the brainchild of Elon Musk. It is something that the president got on board with very early, and DOGE is effectively a collection of typically young, I think almost always male, technologists who come from companies that Musk and Peter Thiel do run or have run. Despite what the acting head of GSA says, there is a DOGE, and it is made up of these dozens and dozens of technologists who are working inside all of these different agencies. That is what DOGE is, whether it’s a real department or agency or not, that’s what it is. And we have a pretty good sense now, in May, of what they’re actually doing.

Michael Calore: And it’s important to note that they did make a number of hires, dozens and dozens of people who they hired to be a part of DOGE, who are now installed in various agencies around the federal government.

Lauren Goode: And a lot more layoffs too.

Michael Calore: Yeah. Well, we have been doing a lot of reporting on DOGE. As Katie, as you just mentioned, WIRED has been on top of the story ever since the beginning, because we know Elon and we know his playbook. So, what are some of the stories that WIRED has done over the last few months on DOGE that have just totally blown your mind?

Katie Drummond: Wow. There are a lot. I think the reporting that we have done around what DOGE is doing using AI and using all of the data that they’ve been able to access to actually surveil immigrants, I think that that reporting is incredibly disturbing. I think it is beyond the worst fears of folks in late January, early February as DOGE’s work was getting underway, the idea that this kind of thing could happen and that it could happen so quickly, it certainly was talked about. It was speculated in terms of what do you think they’re going to do? What are they after? There were a lot of hypotheses at the time. I don’t think anyone anticipated that we would see that kind of work happen so quickly and in such a dystopian way.

And then, I think, it hasn’t blown my mind, but I really like the coverage that we’ve done around how recruiting for DOGE happens. And we just published another story on this recently, I think it was a couple of weeks ago. It was in early May, from Caroline Haskins and Tori Elliot, that was about another round of recruiting that’s happening for DOGE. And this recruiting always seems to happen in these Slack groups for alumni of various tech companies, this time it was Palantir, and this guy, this entrepreneur, went into the Slack room and basically said, “Hey, I’m looking for people who would be excited to design and deploy AI agents who could free up at least 70,000 full-time government workers over the next year.” And in the way he phrased it, he was saying, “These agents could free up these 70,000 people for,” quote, “higher impact work.” Which begs the question, higher impact work in the private sector after you fire all of them? Exactly what is the plan?

And that story was really interesting to me because of how, first of all, I think how the recruiting happens is really interesting. I think the fact that it’s happening, they’re specifically targeting alums from certain companies, that this is happening in Slack groups and message boards. I think that’s interesting. But I thought that the way that message was received was fascinating, given that we’re now in May. And so, people have seen DOGE play out over the last few months. We wrote, “Eight people reacted with clown face emojis, three reacted with a custom emoji of a man licking a boot. Two reacted with a custom emoji of Joaquin Phoenix giving a thumbs down in the movie Gladiator. And three reacted with a custom emoji with the word ‘fascist.'”

So, it was just interesting to me to note that alums of a company like Palantir are looking at that message, and at least some of them are saying, like, “Nah, I see what you’re doing here. And this is not only not compelling to me as a recruitment effort, but actually fascist.”

Lauren Goode: Now, I should mention that I happen to have been on a short book leave at the start of this year—

Katie Drummond: Good timing.

Lauren Goode: When … Great timing. Katie knows I came back, and I was lamenting to her via our Slack, like, “Katie, I’m literally never taking leave again because so much happened.” And starting in late January, I started to see WIRED’s incredible reporting, watching it from afar and seeing all this news come out about DOGE, and just was like, “What is happening?” And one of the things that stood out to me almost immediately was this juxtaposition of cuts to the federal workforce and also cuts to federal spending, like the $1 limit that was placed on federal employees credit cards—

Michael Calore: Oh, gosh.

Lauren Goode: And how much this limited their ability to do their job, like running out of toilet paper, running out of printer paper, not being able to just do office functions as a federal employee, juxtaposed with Trump’s incredibly lavish candlelight dinners and the crypto scheme we talked about last week, and all of the ways in which it seems like there are members of this administration who are simply lining their pockets as they have dispatched DOGE to make all of these cuts. If you just step back from that, it’s hard to see, at this point, how this benefits America. What has actually happened here?

Michael Calore: I think probably my favorite story is one of our most recent ones about the Library of Congress, and how two gentlemen showed up to the Library of Congress and said, “Hi, we work here. You need to let us in.” Capitol Police said, “No. Who are you? Can you identify yourselves?” And they showed him a note from DOGE saying that they worked there and that they should let them in. And the Capitol Police turned them away. And it turns out they did actually work there. They had a note from Daddy.

Lauren Goode: Please never call him that again.

Katie Drummond: Oh, boy.

Michael Calore: So, back when we first started talking about DOGE, at the beginning of the year, it was actually two people. It was Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. I think a week after we published that episode, Vivek was out.

Lauren Goode: Has anyone heard from Vivek?

Katie Drummond: I don’t think about him. I don’t know him. I don’t know that man. No. Isn’t he running for governor?

Lauren Goode: I was going to say he’s running for governor of Ohio. Wasn’t that the plan? I like how we’re all Googling this.

Katie Drummond: He’s pivoted.

Michael Calore: Well, it’s important to think about who’s running it now, because Elon says he’s only going to be around one to two days a week. He says he will continue to do work for DOGE and for President Trump until the end of Trump’s term, whatever year that may be. He’s going to be scaling back. He’s going to go on 20% time, basically. So, who are the people who are still there? Who are the people? Who are the names that we now need to know?

Lauren Goode: I think AI agents are going to be running all of it.

Katie Drummond: Well, obviously they’re apparently replacing 70,000 federal workers with them within the year. Obviously, there are some very high-profile members of DOGE after just a few short months. There’s Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, this 19-year-old appointed by Musk who owns Tesla.Sexy LLC. I’m sure everyone is familiar with Big Balls at this point. There are plenty of other young inexperienced engineers working across these agencies, and then there are the adults in the room. There are people like Steve Davis, who is one of Musk’s, really, right-hand men who works closely alongside him at a number of his companies, and has been working with him in the federal government. And we also, of course, know that they are still actively recruiting, again, largely from companies that Musk himself own.

So, I think that the whole point of all of this is that, yes, Elon Musk is scaling back. So, let’s say he scales back, let’s say he decides to part ways with DOGE and the administration altogether. DOGE is already embedded in the federal government. He accomplished what he set out to do, in so far as we now have DOGE team members, DOGE operatives at dozens and dozens and dozens of federal agencies. They very clearly have their marching orders, they’re carrying out work. So, at this point, you can’t claw that all back, and that doesn’t leave the federal government just because Elon Musk potentially leaves the government. The damage is done.

I do think it’s important to note here, and I know this will come up over and over because I’m going to keep bringing it up. Elon Musk at two days a week, is a lot of Elon Musk. 20% of Elon Musk’s time going to the federal government, sure, he won’t be in the weeds seven days a week, 24 hours a day, but that’s a lot of Musk time. So, I do think it’s important to be cautious, and I just say this to all of our listeners and to everyone out there, this idea that Musk is disappearing from the federal government or disappearing from DOGE, the administration might want you to think that that’s what’s happening. I suspect that that is not at all what’s happening. That said, from all appearances, Elon Musk might be less involved in DOGE, but DOGE is going to keep on keeping on.

Michael Calore: And while it’s trucking, what is Elon going to be doing? What does he say?

Lauren Goode: Yeah, what is he going to be doing? Katie, do you have a sense of how much of this is related to the fact that Tesla isn’t doing so well right now?

Katie Drummond: Well, I suspect that that’s a big factor, but I think so much of the narrative externally, and even people at Condé Nast who have come up to me to be like, “Elon, he’s out. Is it Tesla? Why is he leaving DOGE?” This is optics. This is narrative. His company is in the tubes, it is really struggling. They needed a way to change that story, and they needed a way to change that story very quickly. The best way that they could change that story was to say, “No, no, no, no, no. Don’t worry. Elon Musk is not all in on DOGE and the federal government. He is going to be stepping back and he’s going to be focusing on his other companies.”

Even just Trump saying that, Musk saying that, that being the narrative that plays out in the media is incredibly helpful for Musk, particularly in the context of Tesla, and just the board, and shareholders, and their confidence in his ability to bring this company back from the brink. So, do I think that he’s pulling back and will be spending less time with DOGE? Yes. Do I think a lot of this was just smoke, and mirrors, and optics, and narrative and PR? Yes, it was incredibly well-timed right as Tesla was really, really, really in the tubes and getting a ton of bad press. Elon Musk makes this very convenient announcement, right?

Lauren Goode: Mm-hmm. Right. And this is something that the venture capitalist and Musk’s fellow South African, David Sacks, has said, “It’s just what Musk does.” He said he has these intense bursts where he focuses on something, gets the right people and the structure in place, feels like he understands something, and then he can delegate. And he’s just reached that point with DOGE. He’s in delegation mode.

Katie Drummond: Yes, it seems like he has all the right people in place, and a structure that is so clear and transparent to the American people, that it’s time for him to move on.

Michael Calore: And I do think that he is going to have to figure out the Tesla situation. As you said, the company’s really struggling, and there are a lot of reasons for that. There are no new Tesla models for people to buy, even though they were promised. There have been a bunch of recalls. People are just hesitant about buying a new EV right now anyway, for a number of reasons. But it’s really, it’s him that people don’t like. So much like the damage that he has done to the structure of the federal government with DOGE, similarly, he has done damage to Tesla, the brand, by his association with the policies of the Trump Administration, and his cozying up to the President, and his firing, and destroying the rights of people.

Katie Drummond: And isn’t it also true that all of these problems with Tesla, all of the problems, aside from Elon Musk himself, those problems were happening or were poised to happen regardless, like issues with new models, with recalls, that all predates his work with DOGE, unless I’m drastically misunderstanding how time works. So, those problems with the company existed and were bound to become a bigger deal at some point, and then it really feels like his work with DOGE and the federal government just added fuel to the fire. He just poured gasoline on all of his company’s problems by participating with the Trump Administration in the way that he did. But the fact that Tesla is a troubled company is old news, and has nothing to do with the fact that Elon Musk is not a well-liked individual. So, it’s just problem on top of problem.

Michael Calore: That’s right. That’s right. And the damage is done, I think, at this point. He would probably have to move on from that company in order to fully turn it around.

Katie Drummond: Well, we still have a lot of time left in the year, so we’ll see.

Michael Calore: All right, well let’s take a break and we’ll come right back.

Welcome back to Uncanny Valley. When we talked about DOGE at the beginning of the year, it still felt just like an idea. The tone was decidedly different. We talked about how the group was named after a meme coin, and we all had a good laugh at the absurdity of it all. It was still unclear what would happen. And of course, since then, DOGE has gutted multiple federal agencies, dismantled so many programs, fired a bunch of people, built a giant databases to track and surveil people, among other things.

Katie Drummond: So, I wasn’t actually with you guys on the show when you talked about DOGE in January, but I was listening to the show, and I remember you talking about Musk’s plans to, quote, “open up the books and crunch the numbers to cut costs.” Sounds very exciting. And cutting some of those costs, of course, had to do with laying people off. Now, I remember that because Zoë Schiffer, who hosts the other episode of Uncanny Valley, said she would be surprised if any, quote, “books were even opened.” So, what did we see actually happen from that prediction to now, from January to May?

Lauren Goode: I want to give Zoë a shout-out here because I think the context of that was me saying, “Oh, I wonder how they’re going to go about this careful, methodical process of doing the thing.” And so he was like, “This is going to be utter chaos. They’re not going to open any books.”

Katie Drummond: She was right. It has been chaos.

Lauren Goode: So we also said that the New Yorker reported Vivek had joked at one point that he was going to do a numbers game. You would lose your job if you had the wrong Social Security number. That didn’t actually happen, but Zoë surmised at the time that this was potentially going to be run off of the Twitter/X playbook, run like a chaotic startup. And that’s true. I definitely did think there would be more of a process to what DOGE was doing, so I was wrong. There was process. They have systematically terminated leases for federal office buildings, or taken over other buildings. They’re reportedly building out this big master database. They’ve gutted public agencies like the CDC, and regulatory bodies like the CFPB, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. So they’ve done a lot. I think the part where I thought there would be more process was around the people, the human capital of all this, like the federal workforce. And so, maybe in a lot of ways, this is just like some startup, you’re acting recklessly and worrying about the human beings you’re affecting later.

Michael Calore: And I think the thing that we also predicted correctly was that if DOGE has a chance to shape the regulatory agencies in the federal government, they would shape those agencies in a way that benefit people who are in their industry.

Lauren Goode: Right.

Katie Drummond: I think one of the questions you guys were asking back in January was whether or not the administration was bringing in these guys. It was Musk and Ramaswamy at the time, because they actually wanted them to advise on how technology is used as part of government services, as part of the way the government works, or because they thought the two would be influential over the types of regulations that are rolled back or introduced. So, man, it’s crazy to even say all of that, knowing what we know now about … It’s just interesting, in January, we knew so little, we were so naive. But what do you think now about why Musk, in particular, was actually brought on board?

Lauren Goode: Well, honestly, I think that they have done both. WIRED has reported that DOGE is building out a master database of sensitive information about private citizens, and a database that will reportedly help them track immigrants. And we know they’re playing around with these AI agents, like you just talked about, Katie. And so, we know that they were brought in to apply that technology building mindset to government services, if you want to call it that.

But I think that they also are influencing policy, because on the policy side, we’ve seen, I mentioned David Sacks, he’s Trump’s crypto and AI Czar, and he’s been weighing in on cryptocurrency and stablecoin regulations. Even if that hasn’t been pushed through yet, he’s certainly in Trump’s ear about it. Musk has also been pushing back on Trump’s tariff policies. Musk has been expressing his opinion on immigration policies. Those are just a few examples, but safe to say, he has Trump’s ear.

Michael Calore: I think at the beginning I was cautiously interested in the IT consultant part of it, like the DOGE mission to come in and modernize the federal government. Obviously, if you’ve ever dealt with federal government agencies, as a person who’s computer-literate, sometimes you are just completely flabbergasted by the tools that you have to use to get access to services in this country. So yes, guys, come in, do your thing, zhuzh it up, make it work better. Of course, that is absolutely not what happened.

But I was excited about the prospect of that maybe happening. And it turns out that they really took the opportunity to take all of the data that are in all of these agencies and put it all together into one giant input, fed into various systems that are going to process that data and find efficiencies in ways that are probably going to affect human beings negatively. A computer is really good at doing very simple tasks over and over again. It doesn’t necessarily understand the nuances of how things are divided up equitably among different sectors of society, it doesn’t understand the nuances of people’s personal situations. So, that’s the modernization that we’re going to see, I think, of government systems. And that’s frightening, that wasn’t what I was expecting.

Katie Drummond: Now, we’ve talked a little bit on and off in this episode already about AI. AI has played a much bigger role with DOGE than maybe we thought it would, maybe we hoped it would, in January. So, let’s talk about that. As far as we know now, what does DOGE aspire to do with AI, and how were you thinking about that in January, if you were thinking about it at all?

Lauren Goode: I still feel like I don’t really understand what they’re trying to do with AI, frankly.

Katie Drummond: Maybe they don’t.

Lauren Goode: We know at this point that there are AI officers and leaders in the federal government. We mentioned David Sacks before, who was put in charge of crypto and AI. There is now the first ever AI officer at the FDA, Jeremy Walsh. WIRED has reported that OpenAI and the FDA are collaborating for an AI assisted scientific review of products. Our colleague, Brian Barrett, has written about the use of AI agents. In particular, Brian wrote, “It’s like asking a toddler to operate heavy machinery.” Social Security Administration has been asked to incorporate an AI chatbot into their jobs. And we’ve also reported on how the GSA, the General Services Administration has launched something called the GSAI bot. But we also later found out that that’s something that was based on an existing code base, a project that existed prior to DOGE taking over the building.

I think the short answer is that when DOGE first started, we didn’t really have a clear sense of how they were going to use AI. And even right now, after saying all that on this podcast, I cannot pretend to understand fully what they are doing with AI. And that’s either due to a lack of transparency, or just the fact that it all seems very disparate, very scattered. I’m not going to sit here on this podcast and pretend to make sense of it.

Michael Calore: With a lot of this stuff, it’s hard to understand where the DOGE initiatives end, and where just other initiatives in the federal government begin. I think simply because there’s a lack of transparency about how these decisions are being made, who’s advising who, and who’s really drafting the memos.

When we think about what is AI going to do, we have to consider what an AI agent is. It is a program that can do the same work as a human being. And that’s just the broad definition of it. So, you can deploy an AI agent to write emails, make phone calls, fill out paperwork, whatever it is. You’re just basically doing admin work, and there is a lot of admins in the federal government, and I think that that is in our future. People have this cozy idea that their experience with AI is maybe ChatGPT or Siri, or something like that. So, “Oh, you have a problem with your taxes, you can just talk to the IRS chatbot and it’ll solve it for you.” That sounds like a nightmare. I can’t imagine that any IRS chatbot is going to be able to solve any problems for me. It’ll probably just make me mad and make the problems worse or the same.

But when you think about, “Okay, here is an opportunity for us to use these AI agents in a way that will increase efficiency across the government,” what you’re really talking about is just we don’t need these people anymore and we just need to replace them with the technology.

Katie Drummond: One of the pieces of this that I think is so consequential, I remember maybe a year and a half ago, talking to a bunch of civil servants, people in decision-making roles across federal agencies, and they were all asking a lot of questions about AI. They were very curious about AI. The Biden Administration executive order had put forth all of these different demands of different agencies to investigate the potential for AI to do X, Y, or Z within their agencies. So they were in that exploratory process. They were very slow to think about how AI could be useful within those agencies, and that’s for the bureaucracy reasons, but it’s also because the work of these federal agencies, you don’t really want to get it wrong.

When we’re talking about the IRS or we’re talking about payments from treasury, we’re talking about evaluating new drugs via the FDA, you want to be right. You want to reduce the risk of error as much as possible. And I think for so many people in technology, there’s this notion that technology outdoes human performance just inevitably. It’s inevitable that a system will do a better job than a human being who is fallible, who makes mistakes. That said, what we know about AI so far, generative AI in particular, is that it makes a lot of mistakes. This is very imperfect technology. AI agents are not even really ready for primetime within a private company for one individual to use in their own home, let alone inside the federal bureaucracy.

So, I do think that a lot of what DOGE has done with AI, like Lauren, to your point about them building on top of this existing AI initiative at the GSA, is they’re taking very preliminary work in AI at these agencies, and they’re just fast tracking it. They’re saying, “This is going to take three years. No, no, we’re doing this in three weeks.” And that’s scary, given what we know about AI and how effective and how reliable it is right now. So, does anything stand out to you guys about that in the context of what we’re talking about around AI and DOGE, and AI in the federal government? What are some of the risks that really stand out to you guys?

Lauren Goode: I think that it is consequential when you think about AI being used in such a way that it ends up impacting people’s jobs, right?

Katie Drummond: Right.

Lauren Goode: But I actually think that that idea of AI agents doing the jobs of humans at this point is a little bit optimistic. And when I think about what feels more consequential, is this idea of AI just becoming a code word or a buzzword for what is essentially very, very, very advanced search. So, if they are able to build this master database that creates some sort of profile of every US citizen, or every US non-citizen, and is pulling in from all these different data sources, both within government agencies, but public documents, and across the web and across social media, and anything you’ve ever tweeted, and anything you’ve ever said, and anything you’ve ever done, and if you’ve ever gotten a parking ticket or a DUI, or you’ve committed a crime, or anything like that, to just hoover that all into one centralized location and be able to pull that up in a citizen of the drop of a hat, that, to me, feels more consequential and potentially more dangerous than going to the Social Security website and having an annoying bot trying to answer your questions for you.

Michael Calore: It’s surveillance creep, really is what it is. And marry that with computer vision, like face recognition and the ability to photograph everybody who’s in a car at the border, cross-reference that with government documentation like passports and driver’s licenses, and you have a whole new level of surveillance that we have not dealt with before in our society.

Katie Drummond: Now, not to be all negative Nelly, because we often are, but does any … What?

Michael Calore: What show are you on?

Katie Drummond: You know me, the Canadian. Does anything stand out to both of you as having actually been good from all of this? So, DOGE takeover January to May, anything potentially exciting? Any bright spots, anything where we should be a little bit more generous in our assessment and say, “You know what, actually, as dystopian and scary as a lot of this is, this potentially a good thing, or this is unequivocally a good thing”? Anything like that that stands out to either of you?

Lauren Goode: I would say that if there’s one area where we could be a little bit more generous, it might be that if this turnaround of the federal government was something that was being done in good faith, then I might give them a pass after just five months. I might say … Katie, you’ve done turnarounds before?

Katie Drummond: I have.

Lauren Goode: They take longer than five months, right?

Katie Drummond: They do.

Lauren Goode: Yes. Okay.

Katie Drummond: Depends on the size of the organization. With the federal government, you’re looking at five to 10 years.

Lauren Goode: Right. Exactly. So there’s that. In terms of the actual cuts to fraud and abuse as promised, as far as we know and has been reported by other outlets, the actual cuts that DOGE has made fall far below what Trump and Musk had promised. Initially, they said that they were going to slash $2 trillion from the federal budget. That goal was cut in half almost immediately. The latest claims are that 160 billion has been saved through firing federal workers, canceling contracts, selling off the buildings, other things. And PR just reported that the tracker on DOGE’s own website is rife with errors and inaccuracies, though. The wall of receipts that DOGE has been posting totals just $63 billion in reductions, and actually, as of late March, government spending was up 10% from a year earlier. Revenue was still low. So, we’re still in a deficit, in terms of federal spending.

There is one thing I’ve heard from folks in Silicon Valley they think is a good thing. It’s Musk’s pushback on some of Trump’s immigration policies, specifically those that affect high-tech workers. During Trump 1.0, the denial rates for H-1B visa spiked, and Trump said he wanted to end, forever, the use of H-1 B visas, he called it a cheap labor program. Now, he has flip-flopped a bit. Stephen Miller, his Homeland Security Advisor, Deputy Chief of Staff, has been pushing for more restrictions on this worker visa. But Musk, who actually understands how critical this visa is for the talent pipeline in Silicon Valley, maybe because he’s an immigrant, I think has managed to sway Trump a bit on that. And so, for obvious reasons, perhaps people in Silicon Valley say, “Well, I think this is actually a good thing that Musk is doing.”

Michael Calore: I’ll point out two things.

Lauren Goode: Go ahead.

Michael Calore: One, the LOLs. The press conference that they did in the Oval Office where Elon brought his child—

Katie Drummond: Oh, that was good.

Michael Calore: That was definitely a big highlight for me. But seriously, the other thing is that people are really engaged now. You talk to people who are somewhat politically minded, and they have opinions about government spending, they have opinions about oversight and transparency, they have opinions about what actually matters to them. Like what do they need from their government, what do they want their government to do for them. Those were all nebulous concepts even five, six months ago that I think are at the top of everybody’s mind now. And I think that is a good thing.

Katie Drummond: Oh, I love that. A galvanized and engaged public—

Michael Calore: That’s right.

Katie Drummond: As a plus side to DOGE. I love it. We’re going to take a quick break and we’ll be right back.

Michael Calore: Welcome back to Uncanny Valley. Before we wrap up, let’s give the people something to think about, our recommendations. Katie, why don’t you go first?

Katie Drummond: I have an extremely specific recommendation. Do either of you use TikTok?

Lauren Goode: I do sometimes.

Michael Calore: Define use.

Katie Drummond: Scroll.

Lauren Goode: Yeah, scroll maybe like once every couple weeks.

Katie Drummond: Do you thumb through TikTok?

Michael Calore: I’m familiar with it, yes.

Katie Drummond: There is an account on TikTok called Amalfi Private Jets. It is the account of a private jet company. This is the most genius marketing I have ever seen in my life. For someone who likes reality TV and trash, which is me. It’s these little 60-second reality TV episodes, where the CEO of Amalfi Private Jets is on the phone or he’s on a Zoom with one of his clients, often, I think her name is McKenna. She’s a young, extremely wealthy, entitled little brat, and she’ll call him up in the clip, he’s at his office. He’s young and handsome, and he’s like, “Hey, McKenna.” And she’s like, “Hey, Colin. So, my dad said that I had to fly from Geneva to London,” and blah, blah, blah. And then there’s this whole dramatic narrative around McKenna and why she needs a $75,000 jet immediately, and she needs it to have vegan spinach wraps refrigerated. It’s just these very dramatic little vignettes of what life is like for the rich and fabulous who are calling Amalfi Private Jets to book their private jets. So there’s that account.

And then, once you go down the rabbit hole of that account, the TikTok algorithm will start serving up these companion accounts they’ve created, like the CEO of the company has one, his girlfriend has one. I think McKenna now has one. And so, there’s this little cinematic universe of Amalfi Private Jets on TikTok, and you get sucked in, and you get to know all of these people. And it’s a little vertical video reality show experience that I highly recommend if you only have 60 seconds, which then turn into two hours, which then turn into pulling an all-nighter to learn everything about Amalfi Private Jets, their CEO, his girlfriend, and their wealthy clientele. This is the TikTok for you. Enjoy.

Michael Calore: This is genius.

Katie Drummond: Thank you.

Lauren Goode: This is the reality TV of the future.

Katie Drummond: It’s incredible.

Lauren Goode: It has arrived.

Katie Drummond: And you know what? And I just did their job for them, because it’s marketing for their company. They got me.

Michael Calore: All right, Lauren, what’s your recommendation?

Lauren Goode: My recommendation might go nicely on your Amalfi Private Jet. Hear me out, peonies. You guys like flowers?

Michael Calore: Oh, peonies.

Lauren Goode: Peonies.

Katie Drummond: I like flowers.

Michael Calore: Sure.

Lauren Goode: Do you like peonies?

Katie Drummond: I couldn’t tell one from another, but I like them.

Lauren Goode: They’re beautiful. It’s peony season here. I’m saying that now with the O annunciated, which is how I would do if I was giving my architectural digest home tour.

Michael Calore: I see.

Lauren Goode: Yes, these are peonies.

Katie Drummond: Oh, I’m just looking at Google images of them. They’re very nice.

Lauren Goode: Aren’t they beautiful?

Katie Drummond: They’re very nice.

Lauren Goode: The cool thing is they do have a very short-lived season. In this part of the world, it’s typically late May through June. If you plant them, they only bloom for a short period of time. If you buy them, they’re these closed balls, not to be confused with Edward Coristine “Big Balls.” They’re these closed balls, and then after a few days they open up and they’re the most magnificent looking things. They’re really, really pretty. And I got some last week at the flower shop, and when they opened, I was like, “Oh my God.” It just made me so happy. And they’re bright pink. And so, if you’re just looking to do something nice for yourself, or someone you just want to pick up a nice little thoughtful gift for someone, get them some peonies. You know what? I didn’t check to see if they’re toxic to pets. So, check that first, folks. But, yes.

Michael Calore: That’s great.

Katie Drummond: Mike, what’s yours?

Michael Calore: So, I’m going to recommend an app. If you follow me on Instagram, Snackfight in Instagram, you may notice that I have not posted in a long time, and that’s because I stopped posting on Instagram, and I basically just use it as a direct message platform now. But there are still parts of my brain that enjoy sharing photos with my friends, so I found another app to go share photos on and it’s called Retro.

Lauren Goode: Yeah, Retro.

Michael Calore: So, it’s been around for a while, but I went casting about for other things out there, and I found that there was a group of my friends who are on Retro, and I was like, “Oh, this is great.” It’s very private. By default, somebody can only see back a couple of weeks. But if you would like to, you can give the other user a key, which unlocks your full profile so that they can look at all of your photos going back to the beginning of time, according to whenever you started posting on Retro. I really like that about it, the fact that when I post a photo, I know exactly who’s going to see it. There are no Reels, there’s no ads, there’s no messaging features, there’s no weird soft-core porno on there, there’s no memes. It’s just pictures. And I really like that. It’s like riding a bicycle through the countryside after driving a car through a city. It’s like a real different way to experience photo sharing, because it’s exactly like the original way of experiencing photo sharing, and I’d forgotten what that feels like.

Katie Drummond: Oh, it sounds lovely.

Lauren Goode: What’s cool about the app too is when you open it and you haven’t filled out that week’s photos, when you tap on it, it automatically identifies those photos from that week in your camera roll. It’s like, “You shot these photos between Sunday and Saturday, and here’s where you can fill this weekend.”

Michael Calore: And—

Lauren Goode: It’s pretty cool.

Michael Calore: And all the photos from the week stack up. So, if you post 12 photos, and then you look at my profile, you can just tap through all 12 photos, and then that’s it. That’s all you get.

Lauren Goode: Good job, Nathan and team.

Michael Calore: Who’s Nathan? Who are you shouting out?

Lauren Goode: Nathan Sharp is one of the cofounders of it. He’s a former Instagram guy. I think his cofounder is as well. It was founded by two ex Instagram employees. And the whole idea is they’re trying to make, it’s not the anti-Instagram, but it is more private.

Michael Calore: Feels like the anti-Instagram right now.

Lauren Goode: It’s nice. It’s a nice place to hang out.

Michael Calore: Well, thanks to both of you for those great recommendations.

Lauren Goode: Thanks, Mike, for yours.

Katie Drummond: Yeah, Mike, thanks.

Lauren Goode: Thanks, Mike.

Katie Drummond: Bye.

Lauren Goode: See you on the jet.

Michael Calore: And thanks to you for listening to Uncanny Valley. If you liked what you heard today, make sure to follow our show and rate it on your podcast app of choice. If you’d like to get in touch with us with any questions, comments, or show suggestions, please write to us at uncannyvalley@wired.com. We’d love to hear from you.

Today’s show is produced by Kyana Moghadam, Amar Lal at Macro Sound mixed this episode. Jake Loomis was our New York Studio engineer. Daniel Roman fact-checked this episode. Jordan Bell is our Executive Producer. Katie Drummond is WIRED’s Global Editorial Director, and Chris Bannon is the Head of Global Audio.