It’s not a Musk coup, it’s arrogance and founder blindness

A prominent tech entrepreneur told me years ago that he’d love to be president — so long as he wouldn’t have to campaign. What the country needed, he told me, was the clearheaded direction of an executive unburdened by handshaking and politicking. I gently teased him that campaigning is more or less the defining aspect of a democracy.

I was reminded of the conversation earlier this month when Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a generation-defining tech entrepreneur, stood alongside President Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Together, they fielded questions from the press, with Musk pledging transparency in his unconventional advisory role aimed at overhauling federal spending and processes. In another interview this week, Musk proudly wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase “TECH SUPPORT.”

As a tech journalist with over 15 years of experience running the news organization Technical.ly, I’ve encountered a few billionaires, though none quite like Musk. More often, I spend time with lesser-known engineers and entrepreneurs, brilliant individuals driven by an obsession to solve whatever problem they’ve set their sights on — no matter the cost. This experience has something to teach about what drives a person like Musk and can serve as a warning of what’s to come.

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By 2010, I was among a group of organizers around the country regularly hosting “hackathons” — intense day- or weekend-long events during which software developers rapidly build small products. We emphasized the importance of involving “subject matter experts” to ensure solutions were grounded in real-world contexts. Few sights should prompt more fear than a room full of well-intentioned software and start-up types hyped on coffee and ready to take on homelessness or climate preparedness, but without anyone in the room with industry or lived experience.

Instead, well-balanced hackathons fostered mutual respect among experts in various fields. They helped give rise to the global civic technology movement that is involved in everything from election integrity to internet freedom.

To use an old software joke, government’s perceived sluggishness is a feature, not a bug.

Watching the Musk-Trump news conference, I didn’t foresee an imminent self-coup, some tech-enabled takeover of the federal government to extend or replace current presidential power. Granted, we’re just weeks into the second term of a man who photosynthesizes attention as indiscriminately as the hardiest of weeds soaking in the harshest sun. But to me, the news conference looked more like two boys giving a class presentation they hadn’t prepared.

No coup, then, though certainly a pageant of congressional cowardice, in which an unelected presidential adviser appears to be running roughshod over Senate and House authority. Just 100 days ago, Trump earned a compelling mandate from a diverse coalition of American voters, who gave Republicans control of the entire legislative branch. Rather than make real democratic change with policy, we have Musk, a man who doesn’t appear to comprehend why anyone would impede his efforts to root out what he sees as waste and fraud.

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He reminds me of that tech entrepreneur who wanted to be president without campaigning, or a hackathon engineer preferring to build software that interests him. Expertise in one domain doesn’t translate to another.

Worse, Musk overlooks that a just outcome is impossible without a just approach. Democracy requires the demonstration of the people’s will. And to a majority of Americans, the spectacle of Musk-assigned technophiles invading federal departments is no just approach. But how that will is demonstrated appears partisan at the moment. In a new Pew Research Center poll, 85% of Democratic-leaning Americans view Musk unfavorably, whereas a majority of Republican-leaning voters view him favorably — often characterizing the federal bureaucracy as the original sin Musk is helping to undo.

Under the banner of the cheekily named Department of Government Efficiency, with the crypto-shorthand DOGE, Musk is enacting wide-ranging cuts to personnel and departmental budgets that appear to require congressional approval.

Republican or Democrat though, that is Musk’s defining, undemocratic act: taking a position of power he’d never allow a competing partisan to hold — because in his view, any opposition is either traitorous or ignorant. It’s a move for which he might criticize progressives: assuming he knows best, if only others would get out of the way.

In the 1971 classic A Theory of Justice, political theorist John Rawls argued the best way to organize a society is through a “veil of ignorance,” in which no one would know which position they’d be granted. There’s a correlating democratic principle, call it the “reversible power test”: Don’t wield power you wouldn’t want your political opponent to have.

A proficient engineer first understands how a system operates before attempting to alter it.

In his bewildering advisory role to a chaotic president, Musk could enact great positive change. His companies are responsible for many of the greatest engineering feats of our age — not least of which was SpaceX catching, in midair, a 200-foot-tall rocket booster last fall. Who better to boldly return the world’s most important government to fiscal sustainability, and an innovative growth agenda? But, like other ambitious entrepreneurs whose professional accomplishments I admire, Musk misunderstands the democratic system.

To use an old software joke, government’s perceived sluggishness is a feature, not a bug. Its intricate systems and processes grant it durability. The messy overlap of elected officials and dedicated bureaucrats contributes to its resilience. You can’t be president without campaigning because you need to listen to and engage with everyday people.

A proficient engineer first understands how a system operates before attempting to alter it.

Contrary to at-times popular sentiment, democracies aren’t like businesses. Businesses are tiny monarchies, in which one chief executive is meant to set and lead to a vision, albeit with as much counsel from others as that leader sees fit. Democracies are not that.

Our elected leaders must campaign and endure the scrutiny that comes with public comment. It is a slow, deliberate process. That process ensures our outcomes are a little more just.

Next year marks 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Any honest telling of that revolution must recall how divided many of those leaders were. No one person then, nor now, could speed up the process.

Democracy has no shortcut.

Christopher Wink is a journalist and entrepreneur who is cofounder and CEO of Technical.ly, a news organization with a community of technologists and entrepreneurs. He founded Philly Tech Week, which will be hosted for the 15th year May 5-9.