Tech billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency task force has proudly identified a new piece of government waste it will be flagging for elimination — but it's nowhere near as impressive as it sounds, national security expert Marcy "Empty Wheel" Wheeler noted in a post on Tuesday morning.
The official DOGE account on Musk's X platform announced that after a Social Security Administration "audit," it had identified "4 redundant survey tools, ranging from $118K-$1.8M/year; Paying for 10,000 UI Path licenses; only using 5,011; Paying for 20,600 Tableau licenses; only using 11,560; Fixes in work."
But not so fast, Wheeler noted in response.
"Even assuming THIS TIME DOGE got the numbers right, which they have yet to do, Elon's Five Bullets email cost far more than this, and will likely have to be scrapped AND will cost millions more in litigation," wrote Wheeler.
The "Five Bullets" email is a mass blast to federal workers that Musk sent Saturday, instructing them to list five things they accomplished as part of their jobs this week, under the threat of termination if they do not respond.
Several federal agencies have had to step in and clarify that nonresponse to this email will not actually be grounds for dismissal. The Department of Health and Human Services even told employees that, should they choose to respond to it, they should assume any reply can be read by "malign foreign actors."
DOGE was introduced as a project to trim government waste and identify cases of fraudulent use of taxpayer money. However, critics claim that, so far, Musk and his crack team of software engineers have barely identified any actual cases of fraud, instead singling out mostly lawfully created programs that they disagree with the purpose of.
Much of DOGE's operations are currently facing lawsuits in various federal courts.