It looks like Elon Musk‘s campaign to turn America into an Orwellian, corporate-ruled dystopia is going swimmingly. And why wouldn’t it, when the president has effectively granted Musk the power to dismantle any and all opposition to his schemes from regulatory bodies?
After spending $300 million in campaign ads for Trump, and relentlessly supporting his cause on the biggest social media platform on Earth — which he owns, conveniently enough — the wealthiest billionaire in the United States got everything he wished for and then some, and now not only meddles in domestic and foreign policy as Trump’s closest aide, but is disrupting the workflow of the entire federal government through the newly instated Department of Government Efficiency, aka DOGE.
Musk’s genius idea to curb government spending and bridge the gap between federal revenue and the ever increasing national debt was to use the dubious authority of DOGE to fire thousands of employees. Though considering the fact that all of these efforts barely make a dent in the trillions of dollars the U.S. government has to pay off, one begins to wonder at some point if this is all just an intricate smokescreen to hide that Trump’s gone further on his path to make some nightmarish articles from Project 2025 a reality.
If you want to wrap your head around just how foolish this notion of a Government Efficiency department is, just consider what Musk’s team recently did in regards to NNSA, the federal agency in charge of safeguarding the nation’s nuclear weapon stockpile. DOGE pre-maturely let go of many NNSA employees without retaining their contact information, and now they’re having trouble getting in touch with them again, so apparently even national security is prone to become a casualty of this administration’s clownery.
Now, this latest development is in no way comparable to the blunder of, I don’t know, misplacing the keys and passwords to the nation’s cache of nuclear bombs, but it does make Musk’s actions even more questionable, and highlights the ridiculous idea that DOGE would be completely unbiased and transparent in its actions. He even claimed during that weird White House press conference there would be no conflict of interest when his own work outside politics is involved, but as of this new report, that’s out the window, too.
Indeed, DOGE has just dismissed about 20 FDA workers who were working in the “office of neurological and physical medicine devices.” Several of the staff, per USA Today, were directly involved with reviewing Elon’s Neuralink project and the safety of its clinical application.
For those who don’t know, Neuralink is a brain implant that helps with neurological conditions like paralysis, some forms of blindness, and spinal cord injury. It is also expected to pave the path for human-computer integration. Elon’s company received FDA approval for human clinical trials in 2023, but this new development might throw a wrench in the works.
The letters sent to the fired FDA employees have cited performance issues, even though a source has claimed they received “top-notch rankings” as recently as several weeks ago. Even on the unlikely chance that this has been another mistake by DOGE, it sends a clear message to all FDA employees who may cross paths with Neuralink.
“It’s intimidating to the FDA professionals who are overseeing Neuralink’s trial. We should be worried about the whole trial, and the protection of the people in the trial,” said Victor Krauthamer, a former FDA official.
Musk, Trump, or the White House have not yet provided a comment regarding this latest string of layoffs.
