When Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, he laid off thousands of employees, stopped paying rent and auctioned off coffee makers and office chairs in hopes of a big turnaround.
Now the world’s richest man has brought the same slash-and-burn strategy to the federal government, and some people who experienced Musk’s takeover at Twitter have a warning: Expect chaos, cuts driven by ideology as much as by cost concerns, intimidation and plenty of lawsuits.
Since assuming leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency, Musk has consolidated control over large swaths of the government with President Donald Trump ‘s blessing, sidelined career officials, gained access to sensitive databases and invited a constitutional clash over the limits of presidential authority.
Emily Horne, who was head of Twitter’s policy communications before joining the Biden administration, describes Musk’s modus operandi as: “Take it over, ruthlessly purge anyone who he sees as opposition and crash operations to remake it in his worldview.”
It’s unclear whether his push for “extremely hardcore” changes at Twitter has paid off. Revenue at the company now called X has plunged, the number of users has dwindled and even Musk himself has expressed frustration at how long it is taking to turn around the company’s finances.
“It isn’t working,” said Ross Gerber, a minority stockholder at X who has written down his stake to zero and expects Musk to fail in Washington, too. “The federal government is going to eat him up and spit him out.”
By some measures, X is still a success. The platform continues to attract hundreds of millions of users worldwide and has cemented Musk’s political influence. But exactly how it is faring financially is difficult to say because the company is private.
The same week that Musk’s teams at DOGE were threatening to lay off tens of thousands of federal workers, bankers who loaned him billions of dollars to buy Twitter were bracing for losses and trying to unload the loans on others. Musk has apparently given up hope of attracting key advertisers back to the platform and has sued some of them.
Examples of budget-minded business leaders who brought their skills to government work abound, but Musk made clear — at both Twitter and DOGE — that his priorities go beyond efficiency into rooting out a “woke” agenda.
Long before fighting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts became a centerpiece of Trump’s third presidential campaign, Musk eliminated Twitter’s DEI initiatives and the people administering them.
“The culture of Twitter died,” said former employee Theodora Skeadas, whose job was cut in the weeks after Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022. “For a lot of these agencies and organizations, that may be in their future.”
Another tactic that Musk appears to be bringing to the government: “performances of loyalty.”
That is how former Twitter executive Rumman Chowdhury describes Musk’s drive to make workers prove the value of their work in a way she says demonstrated fealty. For instance, engineers were told to print out code then line up to have an inexperienced engineer evaluate it.
“It’s a fear and intimidation tactic,” Chowdhury said. “I don’t know if it’s the best leadership style long term, as demonstrated by how abysmal Twitter/X is doing.”
Musk later sought to rehire some of the engineers he fired. His instinct to threaten also backfired with advertisers.
Within months of Musk’s takeover, advertising revenue plunged by half as brands fled X over fears he was loosening content moderation too much. But instead of courting the companies, Musk took to X threatening to “thermonuclear name & shame” them for leaving his platform. Later at a conference, he used an expletive and urged them, “Don’t advertise.”
