Elon Musk and DOGE team give behind the scenes look at their mission

Fox News presents an inside look at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), where Elon Musk and a team of entrepreneurs and engineers are working to reduce federal spending. According to the network’s coverage, the initiative aims to cut the deficit by one trillion dollars within 130 days by eliminating alleged waste and fraud across government agencies.

In Fox News’s Own Words

“Our goal is to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars, from a nominal deficit of 2 trillion to try to cut the deficit in half to 1 trillion.”

“The sheer amount of waste in the government, it is astonishing, it’s mind-blowing. We routinely encounter wastes of a billion dollars or more casually.”

“The most you could do is 8,000 a month and even in normal circumstances it can take 6 to 9 months just to have your retirement paperwork processed.”

The video features interviews with multiple DOGE team members, each detailing alleged inefficiencies in different agencies. Musk claims in the footage that a simple 10-question survey, which he alleges could be done with Survey Monkey for about $10,000, was being charged to the government at nearly a billion dollars. He attributes such findings to a lack of feedback loops and accountability in government spending.

According to the team, one striking discovery involves federal retirement processing. Fox News reports that Joe Gebbia, Airbnb co-founder, found that all retirement paperwork is still processed manually using a Pennsylvania mine housing 22,000 filing cabinets with 400 million pieces of paper—a system allegedly unchanged since the 1950s. The team claims this limits retirement processing to 8,000 cases per month and plans to digitize the entire process.

The video highlights alleged cybersecurity and fraud vulnerabilities. Software engineer Arun Mandasi tells Fox News that approximately 40 percent of phone calls to Social Security requesting direct deposit changes are allegedly from fraudsters. The team also claims there are over 15 million Social Security numbers marked as active for people supposedly over age 120, representing alleged fraud opportunities that have persisted despite being identified in inspector general reports since 2008.

Brad Smith, working at Health and Human Services, describes alleged inefficiencies at the National Institutes of Health, claiming 27 different centers operate 700 separate IT systems that cannot communicate with each other. The video suggests this fragmentation hampers medical research and administrative efficiency.

Tom Krutwig, working at Treasury, tells Fox News that until recently, the federal government operated essentially one bank account for all disbursements, with over 580 agencies able to make payments without adequate verification. He claims the government cannot pass an audit and experiences $500 billion in alleged fraud annually, plus hundreds of billions in alleged improper payments.

Other alleged findings detailed in the video include: 4.6 million government credit cards for approximately 2.3 million employees; over $300 million in Small Business Administration loans allegedly issued to people under age 11 and another $300 million to people over 120; and 1,400 IRS employees dedicated solely to provisioning laptops and phones.

The team emphasizes to Fox News that workforce reductions are occurring primarily through voluntary means—early retirement, voluntary separation payments, and an 8-month severance program. Anthony Armstrong claims that less than 0.15 percent of the federal workforce has received reduction-in-force notices at the time of filming.

Musk addresses criticism in the interview, stating the approach involves measuring “twice if not thrice” before making cuts and correcting mistakes quickly when they occur. He asserts that legitimate Social Security recipients will receive more benefits, not less, as a result of fraud reduction efforts.

This initiative represents what Musk characterizes to Fox News as essential to American solvency, claiming that without such intervention, the country faces bankruptcy. The team’s work has generated significant controversy, with critics questioning the legality and impact of the cuts, though supporters argue that eliminating waste and fraud serves both fiscal responsibility and the interests of legitimate benefit recipients who allegedly suffer under current systems.