Feb. 4, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n Listen to this article\u00a0\u00b7 20:45 min\u00a0Learn more<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Leer en espa\u00f1ol<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n In Elon Musk\u2019s first two weeks in government, his lieutenants gained access to closely held financial and data systems, casting aside career officials who warned that they were defying protocols. They moved swiftly to shutter specific programs \u2014 and even an entire agency that had come into Mr. Musk\u2019s cross hairs. They bombarded federal employees with messages suggesting they were lazy and encouraging them to leave their jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Empowered by President Trump, Mr. Musk is waging a largely unchecked war against the federal bureaucracy \u2014 one that has already had far-reaching consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Musk\u2019s aggressive incursions into at least half a dozen government agencies have challenged congressional authority and potentially breached civil service protections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Top officials at the Treasury Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development who objected to the actions of his representatives were swiftly pushed aside. And Mr. Musk\u2019s efforts to shut down U.S.A.I.D., a key source of foreign assistance, have reverberated around the globe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Musk, the world\u2019s richest man, is sweeping through the federal government as a singular force, creating major upheaval as he looks to put an ideological stamp on the bureaucracy and rid the system of those who he and the president deride as \u201cthe deep state.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The rapid moves by Mr. Musk, who has a multitude of financial interests before the government, have represented an extraordinary flexing of power by a private individual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The speed and scale have shocked civil servants, who have been frantically exchanging information on encrypted chats, trying to discern what is unfolding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Senior White House staff members have at times also found themselves in the dark, according to two officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive discussions. One Trump official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said Mr. Musk was widely seen as operating with a level of autonomy that almost no one can control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Musk, the leader of SpaceX, Tesla and X, is working with a frantic, around-the-clock energy familiar to the employees at his various companies, flanked by a cadre of young engineers, drawn in part from Silicon Valley. He has moved beds into the headquarters of the federal personnel office a few blocks from the White House, according to a person familiar with the situation, so he and his staff, working late into the night, could sleep there, reprising a tactic he has deployed at Twitter and Tesla.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This time, however, he carries the authority of the president, who has bristled at some of Mr. Musk\u2019s ready-fire-aim impulses but has praised him publicly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe\u2019s a big cost-cutter,\u201d Mr. Trump told reporters on Sunday. \u201cSometimes we won\u2019t agree with it and we\u2019ll not go where he wants to go. But I think he\u2019s doing a great job. He\u2019s a smart guy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Musk, who leads a cost-cutting initiative the administration calls the Department of Government Efficiency, boasted on Saturday that his willingness to work weekends was a \u201csuperpower\u201d that gave him an advantage over his adversary. The adversary he was referring to was the federal work force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cVery few in the bureaucracy actually work the weekend, so it\u2019s like the opposing team just leaves the field for 2 days!\u201d Mr. Musk\u00a0posted on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is no precedent for a government official to have Mr. Musk\u2019s scale of conflicts of interest, which include domestic holdings and foreign connections such as business relationships in China. And there is no precedent for someone who is not a full-time employee to have such ability to reshape the federal work force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The historian Douglas Brinkley described Mr. Musk as a \u201clone ranger\u201d with limitless running room. He noted that the billionaire was operating \u201cbeyond scrutiny,\u201d saying: \u201cThere is not one single entity holding Musk accountable. It\u2019s a harbinger of the destruction of our basic institutions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Several former and current senior government officials \u2014 even those who like what he is doing \u2014 expressed a sense of helplessness about how to handle Mr. Musk\u2019s level of unaccountability. At one point after another, Trump officials have generally relented rather than try to slow him down. Some hoped Congress would choose to reassert itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Trump himself sounded a notably cautionary note on Monday, telling reporters: \u201cElon can\u2019t do and won\u2019t do anything without our approval. And we\u2019ll give him the approval where appropriate, where not appropriate, we won\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf there\u2019s a conflict,\u201d he added, \u201cthen we won\u2019t let him get near it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, the president has given Mr. Musk vast power over the bureaucracy that regulates his companies and awards them contracts. He is shaping not just policy but personnel decisions, including successfully pushing for Mr. Trump to pick Troy Meink as the Air Force secretary, according to three people with direct knowledge of his role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Meink previously ran the Pentagon\u2019s National Reconnaissance Office, which helped Mr. Musk secure a multibillion-dollar contract for SpaceX to help build and deploy a spy satellite network for the federal government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since Mr. Trump\u2019s inauguration, Mr. Musk and his allies have taken over the United States Digital Service<\/a>, now renamed United States DOGE Service, which was established in 2014 to fix the federal government\u2019s online services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They have commandeered the federal government\u2019s human resources department<\/a>, the Office of Personnel Management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They have\u00a0gained access<\/a>\u00a0to the Treasury\u2019s payment system \u2014 a powerful tool to monitor and potentially limit government spending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Musk has also taken a keen interest in the federal government\u2019s real estate portfolio, managed by the General Services Administration, moving to terminate leases<\/a>. Internally, G.S.A. leaders have started to discuss eliminating as much as 50 percent of the agency\u2019s budget, according to people familiar with the conversations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps most significant, Mr. Musk has sought to dismantle U.S.A.I.D., the government\u2019s lead agency for humanitarian aid and development assistance. Mr. Trump has already frozen foreign aid spending<\/a>, but Mr. Musk has gone further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,\u201d Mr. Musk gloated on X at 1:54 a.m. Monday. \u201cCould gone to some great parties. Did that instead.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Musk\u2019s allies now aim to inject artificial intelligence tools into government systems, using them to assess contracts and recommend cuts. On Monday, Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla engineer who has been tapped to lead a technology team at G.S.A., told some staff members that he hoped to put all federal contracts into a centralized system so they could be analyzed by artificial intelligence, three people familiar with the meeting said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Musk\u2019s actions have astounded and alarmed Democrats and government watchdog groups. They question if Mr. Musk is breaching federal laws that give Congress the final power to create or eliminate federal agencies and set their budgets, require public disclosure of government actions and prohibit individuals from taking actions that might benefit themselves personally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The New York Times would like to hear from readers who want to share messages and materials with our journalists. nytimes.com\/tips<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n At least<\/a> four lawsuits<\/a> have been filed<\/a> in federal court to challenge his authority and the moves by the new administration, but it remains to be seen if judicial review can keep up with Mr. Musk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The New York Times spoke to more than three dozen current and former administration officials, federal employees and people close to Mr. Musk who described his expanding influence over the federal government. Few were willing to speak on the record, for fear of retribution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBefore Congress and the courts can respond, Elon Musk will have rolled up the whole government,\u201d said one official who works inside an agency where representatives from Mr. Musk\u2019s cost-cutting initiative have asserted control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Feb. 4, 2025, 7:56 p.m. ET<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Musk says he is making long overdue reforms. So far, his team has claimed to help save the federal government more than $1 billion a day through efforts like the cancellation of federal\u00a0building leases<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0contracts<\/a>\u00a0related to diversity, equity and inclusion, although they have provided few specifics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Workers in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which housed some operations for the United States Digital Service, arrived the day after Mr. Trump\u2019s inauguration to find a sticky note with \u201cDOGE\u201d on a door to a suite once used as a work space for senior technologists at the agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was one of the first signs that Mr. Musk\u2019s team had arrived. Inside, black backpacks were strewed about, and unfamiliar young men roamed the halls without the security badges that federal employees typically carried to enter their offices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The quick takeover was similar to the playbook Mr. Musk has used in the private sector, where he has been a ruthless cost cutter, subscribing to the philosophy that it is better to cut too deeply and fix any problems<\/a> that arise later. He routinely pushes his employees to ignore regulations they consider \u201cdumb.\u201d And he is known for taking extreme risks, pushing both Tesla and SpaceX to the brink of bankruptcy before rescuing them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In his current role, Mr. Musk has a direct line to Mr. Trump and operates with little if any accountability or oversight, according to people familiar with the dynamic. He often enters the White House through a side entrance, and drops into meetings. He has a close working relationship with\u00a0Mr. Trump\u2019s top policy adviser, Stephen Miller<\/a>, who shares Mr. Musk\u2019s contempt for much of the federal work force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At one point, Mr. Musk sought to sleep over in the White House residence. He sought and was granted an office in the West Wing but told people that it was too small. Since then, he has told friends he is reveling in the trappings of the opulent Secretary of War Suite in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where he has worked some days. His team is staffed heavily by engineers \u2014 at least one as young as 19 \u2014 who have worked at his companies like X or SpaceX, but have little if any experience in government policy and are seeking security clearances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Officially, Mr. Musk is serving as a special government employee, according to the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt. This is a status typically given to part-time, outside advisers to the federal government who offer advice based on private sector expertise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The White House declined to say if Mr. Musk had been granted a waiver that allowed him to get involved in agencies whose actions could affect his own personal interests. And even if he had been given such a waiver, four former White House ethics lawyers said they could not envision how it could be structured to appropriately cover the range of the work Mr. Musk is overseeing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a statement, Ms. Leavitt said that \u201cElon Musk is selflessly serving President Trump\u2019s administration as a special government employee, and he has abided by all applicable federal laws.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Musk has told Trump administration officials that to fulfill their mission of radically reducing the size of the federal government, they need to gain access to the computers \u2014 the systems that house the data and the details of government personnel, and the pipes that distribute money on behalf of the federal government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Musk has been thinking radically about ways to sharply reduce federal spending for the entire presidential transition. After canvassing budget experts, he eventually became fixated on a critical part of the country\u2019s infrastructure: the Treasury Department payment system that disburses trillions of dollars a year on behalf of the federal government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Musk has told administration officials that he thinks they could balance the budget if they eliminate the fraudulent payments leaving the system, according to an official who discussed the matter with him. It is unclear what he is basing that statement on. The federal deficit for 2024 was $1.8 trillion. The Government Accountability Office estimated in a report that the government made $236 billion in improper payments \u2014 three-quarters of which were overpayments \u2014 across 71 federal programs during the 2023 fiscal year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The push by Mr. Musk into the Treasury Department led to a months-in-the-making standoff last week when a top career official, David Lebryk, resisted giving representatives from the cost-cutting effort access to the federal payment system. Mr. Lebryk was threatened with administrative leave and then retired. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent subsequently approved access for the Musk team, as The Times previously reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Treasury Department\u2019s proprietary system for paying the nation\u2019s financial obligations is an operation traditionally run by a small group of career civil servants with deep technical expertise. The prospect of an intrusion into that system by outsiders such as Mr. Musk and his team has raised alarm among current and former Treasury officials that a mishap could lead to critical government obligations going unpaid, with consequences ranging from missed benefits payments to a federal default.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ms. Leavitt said the access they were granted so far was \u201cread only,\u201d meaning the staff members could not alter payments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Democrats on Monday said they would introduce legislation to try to bar Mr. Musk\u2019s deputies from entering the Treasury system. \u201cThe Treasury secretary must revoke DOGE\u2019s access to the Treasury payment system at once,\u201d said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader. \u201cIf he does not, Congress must act immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another key pipeline is the government\u2019s personnel database, run out of the Office of Personnel Management, where Mr. Musk has quickly asserted his influence. At least five people who have worked for Mr. Musk in some capacity now have key roles in the office, according to people familiar with their roles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last week, the personnel agency sent an email to roughly two million federal workers offering them the option to resign but be paid through the end of September. The email\u2019s subject line, \u201cFork in the Road,\u201d was the same one that Mr. Musk used in an email he sent to Twitter employees offering them severance packages in late 2022. Since then, Mr. Musk has promoted the offer on social media and called it \u201cvery generous.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Musk is also studying the workings of the G.S.A., which manages federal properties. During a visit to the agency last week, accompanied by his young son, whom Mr. Musk named \u201cX \u00c6 A-12,\u201d and a nanny, he spoke with the agency\u2019s new acting administrator, Stephen Ehikian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the meeting, officials discussed a plan to eliminate 50 percent of expenditures, according to people familiar with the discussions. And Mr. Ehikian told staff members in a separate meeting that he wanted them to apply a technique called \u201czero based budgeting,\u201d an approach that Mr. Musk deployed during his Twitter takeover and at his other companies. The idea is to reduce spending of a program or contract to zero, and then argue to restore any necessary dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Russell T. Vought, who served in Mr. Trump\u2019s first administration and is his choice again to lead the Office of Management and Budget, has spoken openly about the Trump team\u2019s plans for dismantling civil service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,\u201d Mr. Vought said<\/a> in a 2023 speech. \u201cWhen they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Musk, who pushed Mr. Vought for the budget office role, for which he is awaiting Senate confirmation, has echoed that rhetoric, portraying career civil servants and the agencies they work for as enemies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n U.S.A.I.D., which oversees civilian foreign aid, is \u201cevil,\u201d Mr. Musk wrote in numerous posts on Sunday<\/a>, while \u201ccareer Treasury officials are breaking the law every hour of every day,\u201d he said in another post<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Musk used the same tactic during his 2022 takeover of Twitter<\/a>, in which he depicted the company\u2019s previous management as malicious and many of its workers as inept and oppositional to his goals. In firing Twitter executives \u201cfor cause\u201d and withholding their exit packages<\/a>, Mr. Musk accused some of them of corruption and attacked them personally in public posts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The tactics by Mr. Musk and his team have kept civil servants unbalanced, fearful of speaking out and uncertain of their futures and their livelihoods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Jan. 27, members of the team entered the headquarters and nearby annex of the aid agency in the Ronald Reagan Building in downtown Washington, U.S. officials said.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The team demanded and was granted access to the agency\u2019s financial and personnel systems, according to two U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the activity and the agency\u2019s inner workings. During this period, an acting administrator at the agency put about 60 senior officials on paid leave and issued stop-work orders that led to the firing of hundreds of contractors with full-time employment and health benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By Saturday, the agency\u2019s website vanished. And when the two top security directors tried to stop members of the team<\/a> from entering a secure area that day to get classified files, they were placed on administrative leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Katie Miller, a member of the Musk initiative, said on X that \u201cno classified material was accessed without proper security clearances.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n By Monday, U.S.A.I.D. was effectively paralyzed. In a live broadcast on his social media platform early Monday, Mr. Musk said the president agreed \u201cthat we should shut it down.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Musk\u2019s team has prioritized secrecy, sharing little outside the roughly 40 people who, as of Inauguration Day, had been working as part of the effort. The billionaire has reposted messages accusing people of trying to \u201cdox,\u201d or publish private information about, his aides when their names have been made public, claiming it is a \u201ccrime\u201d to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The opacity has added to the anxiety within the civil service. A number of the employees across the government said they had been interviewed by representatives of Mr. Musk who had declined to share their surnames. Mr. Musk\u2019s aides have declined to answer questions themselves, consistently describing the sessions as \u201cone-way interviews.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some workers who sat for interviews were asked what projects they were working on and who should be fired from the agency, people familiar with the conversations said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy impression was not one of support or genuine understanding but of suspicion, and questioning,\u201d one General Services Administration employee wrote in an internal Slack message to colleagues, describing the interview process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some of the young workers on Mr. Musk\u2019s team share a similar uniform: blazers worn over T-shirts. At the G.S.A., some staff members began calling the team \u201cthe Bobs,\u201d a reference to management consultant characters from the dark comedy movie \u201cOffice Space\u201d who are responsible for layoffs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many of Mr. Musk\u2019s lieutenants are working on multiple projects at different agencies simultaneously, using different email addresses and showing up at different offices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One example is Luke Farritor, a 23-year-old former SpaceX intern, who was among the workers given access to U.S.A.I.D. systems, according to people familiar with his role. He is also listed as an \u201cexecutive engineer\u201d in the office of the secretary of health and human services, and had an email account at the G.S.A., records show. Mr. Farritor did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Musk\u2019s aides, including Mr. Farritor, have requested access to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services systems that control contracts and the more than $1 trillion in payments that go out annually, according to a document seen by The Times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The team reports to a longtime Musk adviser, Steve Davis, who helped lead cost-cutting efforts at X and SpaceX, and has himself amassed extraordinary power across federal agencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In private conversations, Mr. Musk has told friends that he considers the ultimate metric for his success to be the number of dollars saved per day, and he is sorting ideas based on that ranking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe more I have gotten to know President Trump, the more I like him. Frankly, I love the guy,\u201d Mr. Musk said in a live audio conversation on X early Monday morning. \u201cThis is our shot. This is the best hand of cards we\u2019re ever going to have.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reporting was contributed by Erica L. Green, Alan Rappeport, Andrew Duehren, Eric Lipton, Charlie Savage, Edward Wong, Sarah Kliff and Karoun Demirjian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jonathan Swan<\/a> is a White House reporter covering the administration of Donald J. Trump. More about Jonathan Swan<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Theodore Schleifer<\/a> is a Times reporter covering billionaires and their impact on the world. More about Theodore Schleifer<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Maggie Haberman<\/a> is a White House correspondent, reporting on the second, nonconsecutive term of Donald J. Trump. More about Maggie Haberman<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Kate Conger<\/a> is a technology reporter based in San Francisco. She can be reached at kate.conger@nytimes.com. More about Kate Conger<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Ryan Mac<\/a> covers corporate accountability across the global technology industry. More about Ryan Mac<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Madeleine Ngo<\/a> covers U.S. economic policy and how it affects people across the country. More about Madeleine Ngo<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n See more on: Elon Musk<\/a>, Donald Trump<\/a>, U.S. Politics<\/a>, Treasury Securities<\/a>, Agency for International Development<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The billionaire is creating major upheaval as his team sweeps through agencies, in what has been an extraordinary flexing of power by a private individual. By\u00a0Jonathan Swan,Theodore Schleifer, Maggie Haberman, Kate Conger, Ryan Mac\u00a0and\u00a0Madeleine Ngo Feb. 4, 2025 Listen to this article\u00a0\u00b7 20:45 min\u00a0Learn more Leer en espa\u00f1ol In Elon Musk\u2019s first two weeks in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16053"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16053"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16054,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16053\/revisions\/16054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/02\/03\/multimedia\/03dc-musk-takeover-01-jkmc\/03dc-musk-takeover-01-jkmc-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale\")
![\"President](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/02\/03\/multimedia\/03dc-musk-takeover-02-jkmc\/03dc-musk-takeover-02-jkmc-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale\")
![\"A](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/02\/03\/multimedia\/03dc-musk-takeover-03-jkmc\/03dc-musk-takeover-03-jkmc-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale\")
Trump Administration: Live Updates<\/a>\u00a0<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Controlling the Pipes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/02\/03\/multimedia\/03dc-musk-takeover-eisenhower-tzgj\/03dc-musk-takeover-eisenhower-tzgj-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale\")
![\"Treasury](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/02\/03\/multimedia\/03dc-musk-takeover-04-jkmc\/03dc-musk-takeover-04-jkmc-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale\")
Inflicting Trauma<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Photographers](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/02\/03\/multimedia\/03dc-musk-takeover-05-jkmc\/03dc-musk-takeover-05-jkmc-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale\")
![\"A](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/02\/03\/multimedia\/03dc-musk-takeover-07-jkmc\/03dc-musk-takeover-07-jkmc-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale\")
A Culture of Secrecy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/02\/03\/multimedia\/03dc-musk-takeover-08-jkmc\/03dc-musk-takeover-08-jkmc-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale\")
![\"Mr.](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/02\/03\/multimedia\/03dc-musk-takeover-09-jkmc\/03dc-musk-takeover-09-jkmc-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale\")