Elon Musk hasn't got a clue how government is meant to work

19th February 2025

Elon Musk might think he's very smart, but his management style - which is controversial in the private sector - is totally alien to the state sector because it relies on the acceptability of failure, and governments must never fail.

lon Musk is wrong.

Now, that's not a very difficult statement to make because I think the vast majority of people in the world right now would agree with that, but I need to be more specific to justify the claim I've just made. Elon Musk is wrong because he doesn't understand government.

Let's be clear: whether Elon Musk is a good business manager or not is something that is open to question. His approach to managing Twitter, for example - which I still like to think of under that name - is questionable, to say the least. He walked in, he sacked 75 per cent of the staff, he saw what broke, and then he filled in a few of the remaining gaps, and this supposedly represented his management philosophy.

And so now, he's transporting that into the federal government in the USA.

He's walked in at the invitation of Donald Trump.

He's effectively taken over running the government.

He's sacking as many people as possible.

He's closing down every type of expenditure that he can.

And he's seeing what will break.

It's very clear that the model that he's using is identical to the one that he used at Twitter. But there are fundamental differences between running a company like Twitter and a state.

If Twitter failed, it would be annoying for those millions and even billions of people around the world who use it.

The political narrative that has been explored through it would, in my case, have been something I would have missed.

But in practice, I've already abandoned it now because I will not tolerate using something that Musk owns.