Elon's 'Daily Proctology Exam'

Plus: Vance's AI speech, bubble boy playgrounds, Delaware antagonizes founders, and more...

Musk nailed it: In comments made at the Oval Office last night (as his little son hung out next to him and mimicked his hand gestures), Elon Musk made clear that he intends to not only slash the overgrown federal bureaucracy but also force people in government to actually confront the massive federal deficit.

"If the bureaucracy's in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have?" asked Musk. "If the people cannot vote and have their will be decided by their elected representatives in the form of the president and the Senate and the House, then we don't live in a democracy, we live in a bureaucracy. So it's incredibly important that we close that feedback loop, we fix that feedback loop, and that the public's elected representatives—the president, the House, and the Senate—decide what happens, as opposed to a large, unelected bureaucracy. This is not to say that there are not good people who are in the federal bureaucracy, but you can't have an autonomous federal bureaucracy. You have to have one that's responsive to the people."

A moment later, Musk turned his attention to the deficit:

"We've got a $2 trillion deficit, and if we don't do something about this deficit, the country is going bankrupt. It's really astounding that the interest payments alone on the national debt exceed the Defense Department budget, which is shocking because we spend a lot of money on defense. If that just keeps going, we're essentially going to bank up the country. What I really would say is it's not optional for us to reduce the federal expenses. It's essential. It's essential for America to remain solvent as a country, and it's essential for America to have the resources necessary to provide things to its citizens and not simply be servicing vast amounts of debt."

When asked by reporters about the criticism DOGE and Musk have received, Musk said it feels like a "daily proctology exam." He touted DOGE's transparency, trying to skirt criticism of the mechanisms by which DOGE has been operating. "All of our actions are fully public," Musk told a reporter who asked about conflicts of interest between his business ventures and his role in government. "So if you see anything like, 'Elon, there may be a conflict there,' it's not like people are going to be shy about it. They are going to say it immediately."

"We post our actions…to the DOGE website," Musk said at one point. "All of our actions are maximally transparent. I don't know of a case where an organization has been more transparent than the DOGE organization," he added. But the DOGE website is a black page that simply says "The people voted for major reform." Musk does tweet out his actions but has done little to ease people's worries about unvetted staffers accessing tons of U.S. government data.

Musk could easily put some of this criticism to rest by filing public financial disclosures so that the American public could be assured that he's not engaged in self-dealing. But, "as an unpaid special government employee who is not a commission officer, he will file a confidential financial disclosure report per the norm," a White House official told CNN; this is probably tactically foolish of all of them.

Furthermore, President Donald Trump could pursue congressional authorization for some of his agency-slashing actions, which could help him legally protect himself; then, following that approval, Musk could be deputized to handle the specifics. But instead, the Trump/Musk duo has pursued a much more blunt, slash-and-burn style which has resulted in lots of predictable backlash—both in courts of law and public opinion—and concern about separation of powers. Put differently: Executive overreach doing things I like is still executive overreach.

Still, it is a welcome change to have influential public figures talking about the budget crisis; rooting out Medicare fraud and bringing the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) under the State Department will simply not be enough, but Musk does seem to at least properly identify the problem and be careening toward useful action. Critics might counter he's just picked the low-hanging fruit; let's see whether he reaches his hand up to the top of the tree, too.

Vance in Europe: "We refuse to view AI as a purely disruptive technology that will inevitably automate away our labor force. We believe…AI is going to make our workers more productive, and we expect that they will reap the rewards with higher wages, better benefits, and safer, more prosperous communities," said Vice President J.D. Vance in Paris at a summit on artificial intelligence. "The most immediate applications of AI almost all involve supplementing, not replacing, the work being done by Americans."

"To restrict its development now would not only unfairly benefit incumbents in the space, it would mean paralyzing one of the most promising technologies we have seen in generations," he continued.

Later in his speech, Vance said that "AI must remain free from ideological bias" and that our domestic artificial intelligence models "will not be co-opted into a tool for authoritarian censorship." But it's not clear how exactly that would happen, or how the government could exert influence over the private companies developing these models, or why that would be acceptable. The whole speech felt like classic Vance: I'm nodding along for 80 percent of it, and then there's 20 percent that leaves me wondering whether he wants to weaponize the levers of the state to attempt to bring about his preferred cultural ideal. (Still: I'll take 80 percent agreement any day of the week.)

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Scenes from New York: Spotted at a playground yesterday. Modern American parenting culture is so insanely hypercautious, I've seen things you wouldn't believe.

okay, fuck it, i'm voting for rfk in the next election pic.twitter.com/IncXFMdkd2

— Liz Wolfe (@LizWolfeReason) February 11, 2025

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QUICK HITS

• If you want more on DOGE, watch or listen to the latest Just Asking Questions, featuring economist John Cochrane. For more on the DEI executive order and gutting of the USAID, catch this week's episode, released tomorrow, with Aaron Sibarium (who has been on the show before). We also covered tariffs with Cochrane, and how we ought to think of them in the Trump era:

• President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have come to an agreement regarding the release of Marc Fogel, an American schoolteacher who has been imprisoned since 2021 for coming into Russia with medical marijuana.
• "For the last century, Delaware has been the default for incorporating a business, with 66 percent of the Fortune 500. 80 percent of 2024 IPOs were Delaware-based. Businesses incorporated in Delaware account for nearly a third of the state's revenue," writes Mark Pincus for Pirate Wires. Now, the state has turned aggressively anti-founder.
• A new bill in Illinois, House Bill 2827, would force parents who opt out of traditional school options to now "file a 'Homeschool Declaration Form' which demands private information and gives the Illinois State Board of Education authorization to add more data collection to the annual form without legislative approval." The bill also "empowers a public-school district to demand—without any reason given—that a family produce an 'educational portfolio' which would be approved by a local school official," per the Illinois Family Institute. This is just pointless red tape that makes homeschoolers' lives a little worse in a state that has long been fairly accommodating.
• "Trump said on Monday he would announce reciprocal tariffs over the next two days on all countries that impose duties on U.S. goods, and said he was also looking at separate tariffs on cars, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals," reports Reuters.
• Seems bad:

"We were informed by the White House that if AP did not align its editorial standards with President Donald Trump's executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, AP would be barred from accessing an event in the Oval Office." https://t.co/nBS9oyBBtT

— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) February 11, 2025