Doge wants to replace our institutions with a tech utopia. It won't work Mike Pepi

Elon Musk has stepped away from Doge with very little "efficiency" to show for it. While it may have been more of a showpiece than real policy, this brutal and short experiment in Silicon Valley governance reveals a long-simmering battle between digital utopians and the institutional infrastructures critical to functioning democracies. Doge's website dubiously claims 190bn in savings. The receipts show that they are less about efficiency than they are aimed at effective dissolution, a fate met by USAID, the federal agency responsible for distributing foreign assistance. These brash new reductions are not just your garden-variety small-government crusades or culture-war skirmishes.