Tim Higgins (3:25)

He has talked at great length about how he wants to cut government spending. But in a lot of ways, probably more important to Elon is the idea of cutting government regulations, relations that he thinks are burdensome or cumbersome or overreaching. He's not the first CEO to complain about Washington overreaching. The unique thing here is the potential of him getting in there and being able to identify things to actually be cut. Now, the question will be, is he actually able to do it? Doge or the Department of Government Efficiency is not an actual department. He's not going to be an employee of the government. His power, in a lot of ways, will come from the bully pulpit. His X platform, where he's followed by the most amount of people, more than 200 million followers. His ability to command attention on topics that on any other given day, maybe people wouldn't even care about. He can rally that interest. So that's very important. And also his relationship with Donald Trump will be very interesting the first few months to see where they target what they suggest for cutting and the reaction on Capitol Hill, where they'll need support, most likely for some of their plans.

James Rundle (4:38)

Yeah, I think that's really interesting. He has a reputation for being a demanding boss and sometimes a mercurial figure in business. What challenges do you see for him operating inside a government role as opposed to the private sector, when he meets that immovable force of federal bureaucracy?

Tim Higgins (4:54)

Well, Elon Musk is accustomed to being the boss, and, you know, it's not a democracy. His word is the way. And he accomplished this as in a couple of ways. He inspires people, gets them to do things they didn't think was possible. But also he doesn't suffer fools. He doesn't have a lot of patience, and he is very confident in what he thinks is the way to go. If the idea isn't working out, he'll pivot to try to figure out A way to make it work. So that works in business. If somebody doesn't want to go along, they can leave or he will quickly get rid of them. These sorts of things. Government is a little bit different. There are protections for people. There's also a lot of, let's say, stakeholders, if you will, in a lot of the government spending, it's likely that they would not want that government spending to go away and will be pushing back. Elon has acknowledged this. He expects there's going to be a lot of pushback to what he's doing. But one of the things that he has that he's shown in business is the ability to inspire people. And so we've already seen kind of efforts by him to inspire support for what he is proposing. And so what's going to be interesting is can he build groundwork, swell of support for these proposals that overcome the natural entrenchment of Washington, D.C. regulatory issues, spending, these sorts of things. People have talked about cutting government spending for generations. It is easier to talk about it and get people rallying about it than it actually is to do it.

James Rundle (6:27)

It's interesting how you describe him. He likes being the boss. He doesn't like challenges to his authority. He likes big ideas. He likes to move fast and take on established norms. All of those things could also be applied to Donald Trump as well. So we now have these two big personalities in government. Both have their own way of doing things. Both have strong commercial interests. How do you see that relationship between Musk and Trump evolving?

Tim Higgins (6:51)

It's interesting. They have a little bit of a history in their relationship. The first Trump administration, Elon Musk, was involved in some ancillary roles and ultimately pulled out very publicly because of disagreements with the Trump administration during the election season. Trump wasn't Elon's first pick. And it seems as if in the last few months they have grown very close. And it might be an example of the pragmatic nature of Elon Musk in that a close relationship with Trump will be beneficial not just for him, but also for kind of the policies that he's been supporting, some of the political goals he's been supporting. How long they stay close. That is one of the parlor Games in Washington, D.C. that's definitely one of the parlor games here in Silicon Valley. Valley, where I am. People are curious. Can these two titans make nice and continue their partnership, which has so far been very successful for at least Trump? And you can see the potential success for Elon, his company's valuations in the last few weeks have gone up, in part by investor enthusiasm for the excitement they see ahead in a world where Elon has support from the US government.

James Rundle (8:03)

Coming up, what's on the agenda for Elon Musk's business empire in 2025 while he's running Doge? That's after the break.

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James Rundle (8:51)

Elon Musk is obviously a man with many commercial interests. Does his proximity now to the nerve center of power in the US Government benefit his various enterprises?

Tim Higgins (8:59)

It could. It doesn't hurt to have somebody in the White House who is your friend when you're a big contractor with the government, that's for sure. There are just some questions about some of the policies in the Trump administration, how they might affect Tesla. For example, there's a conventional wisdom that the $7,500 federal tax credits for the purchase of electric vehicles could be diminished in a Trump administration. Tesla has definitely benefited from that. It helps make its vehicles more affordable. Elon has said he's okay with these kinds of government subsidies going away. He wants them to go away for all kind of programs, not just electric cars, but oil and these other things. He wants the market to decide. And in some ways he can say that because Tesla has become so successful at making electric cars profitably, it is making vehicles that are increasingly affordable in comparison to some of its US Rivals, which are really struggling. The investors are definitely thinking that a close Musk Trump relationship will benefit its companies.

James Rundle (10:05)

Yes. I was going to ask what's going to happen to his various projects and companies while he's doing this role with Doge?

Tim Higgins (10:10)

They continue Even before Doge, he was a very busy person running Tesla, SpaceX. He has the social media platform X. He has an AI company called xai. Forget about his brain computer. He has a tunneling company. All of these companies are fueled in part by growth and the belief in the future of growth for these companies. Tesla, the electric car company, is expected to bring out some cheaper vehicles. SpaceX has a lot on its agenda. Not only is it working very quickly and very feverishly to develop that giant spacecraft that NASA is hoping can reach the moon and Musk wants to go to Mars with the Starship. It has lots of work ahead there. There's Xai Elon's AI startup, which has been growing rapidly. It recently raised just a ton of money, and we at the Wall Street Journal have reported that they're probably going to use some of that money to continue that growth. They've been building what they called the colossus in Memphis, Tennessee, which is a giant hub of GPUs used for developing AI technology. It's expected that money will go in to double the number of chips in the Colossus, which would just be a Colossus in itself. And so we're expecting to see kind of that movement as well. So lots ahead in his business world.

James Rundle (11:41)

That was our columnist Tim Higgins. And that's it for Tech News Briefing. Today's show was produced by Judy Chang with supervising producer Katherine Milsop. I am James Rundle for the Wall Street Journal. Thanks for listening.

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