WIRED report: The five tech and political trends shaping 2025

Brian Barrett: This week I was looking at some of our first DOGE reports and remembered what a crazy couple of months it’s been like. So, as a reminder to people who were asleep during the first half of the year, A, I’m jealous. I respect that.

Zoe Schiffer: I was just going to say, good for you.

Brian Barrett: The Department of Government Efficiency came about when Elon Musk and Donald Trump got together and Trump gave Elon Musk a kind of freedom to do whatever he wanted, and I’m not really exaggerating here, within the federal government. Therefore, Musk’s allies took control of several government agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management, a kind of human resources for the entire government, and the General Services Administration, which is essentially an IT department. And from there, they kind of spread across agencies and were responsible for a lot of the chaos that we saw in this early administration, massive job cuts, huge cuts at USAID, regulation cuts, not always for the good, and everyone in the federal government having to write a five-point email of what they did that week and send it off so it would never be read. DOGE isn’t done doing what it set out to do.

The idea was to cut a trillion dollars from the budget, which you literally can’t do unless you cut entitlement programs, which DOGE had no control over, and B, is politically indefensible. So, Zoe, what did they do?

Zoe Schiffer: Yes, I think the goal ostensibly was to eradicate fraud and waste, and eliminate inefficiency.

Brian Barrett: I believe that abuse, fraud, waste and abuse.

Zoe Schiffer: Fraud, waste and exploitation. I was going to say that and I said, I don’t even know exactly what that means,