Such efficiency, very defense: Congress, industry waiting for Elon’s DOGE to wow

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — At last week’s Reagan National Defense Forum, the Department of Government Efficiency was a hot topic. 

For some, the initiative — not, it should be noted, actually a department, but rather a backronym to get to DOGE, the favored meme of Elon Musk — is a curiosity, a group with unclear power or influence. For others, it represents a potential threat, either to their business or to their power centers — or a chance to make changes to a system that is designed to resist them.

But with threats to make major cuts to the Defense Department, one thing is clear: There is an expectation that Musk and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, the two co-leads of DOGE, are going to try and shake things up. 

To get a sense of how the defense community views the effort, Breaking Defense has gathered a collection of notable quotes from last weekend’s event. The following have been edited lightly for clarity and brevity. 

The Industry Leaders

Both Musk and Ramaswamy have indicated support for the idea that government can be run more like a business. But what do business leaders think about that? Industry figures were largely positive about the potential that the office could serve as a forcing function to make changes at the Pentagon. 

Chris Calio, RTX CEO: Efficiency is a good thing, I think. We’re all looking for opportunities and I think that’s got to be our general posture. I would balance it with capability — the capabilities that that we’re all bringing to bear, you know, as well, given the threat environment that we’re in.

Dan Jablonsky, Ursa Major CEO: I was a lawyer at the Securities Exchange Commission, and they did a reform initiative, and one of those was to take out a layer and a half, almost two layers, of, sort of, bureaucracy in the middle layer. And it turned out we actually ended up bringing more cases faster. So I’m welcoming any targeted efforts to help make the US government more efficient. I know it’s gonna be hard. 

Alex Karp, Palantir CEO: We have the world’s most successful builder ever [Musk] looking at our institutions. Americans want to know institutions are efficient, safe, and correspond to their purpose. And you know there will be- I’m sure there’ll be some rough patches, but I don’t know how you do better than Elon looking at these things and, you know, I’m pretty supportive.

RELATED: Elon and Vivek, we need to talk

Defense Executive 1, speaking to Breaking Defense on background: I think generally, business-minded people driving outcomes is what we need in a lot of these organizations. So we’ll see what Elon and Vivek do with DOGE. Whatever it is, it’ll be fun to watch. Elon’s generally pretty smart. He generally knows what he’s talking about. 

Defense Executive 2, speaking to Breaking Defense on background: Nobody argues with the waste and the inefficiency of the Pentagon, right? You know, it’s a long running joke. It’s an organization that’s got an $850 billion budget that has no money, right? You’re even seeing Democrats come out — Bernie Sanders was one who’s like, I support DOGE for the DoD, right? There’s just so much juice to squeeze for inefficiencies to open up, not just for [my company], but companies like this, that I am very excited about that. Because there’s just stupid shit that they do with no accountability to it. And specifically on like, the R&D side of the services, it’s really probably the worst.

I think everybody wins. Including the service, because the service will be more streamlined and have faster outcomes. 

The Lawmakers

A number of lawmakers were asked about DOGE, either in interviews or during panels. What is interesting is that across party lines, the reaction was roughly the same: tentative hope that the office could help find real efficiencies or drive reforms, but also a clear concern that the two outsiders are going to be making decisions that fall more rightly into the hands of Congress, be they fiscal or policy. 

Sen Deb Fischer, R-Neb., Senate appropriator and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in an interview with Breaking Defense: It is always a good thing when an administration works with Congress. So I’m excited to be able to work with DOGE on the issues before us. But we have to be able to have, I think, a full understanding of what’s involved. So when I said ‘That’s our job to do that,’ it’s because of all of, obviously, the classified briefings we participate in to be able to have the information, to understand the threats, to really understand what the needs are for this country to provide for our defense. So, once again, I look forward to working with the administration on that. 

I think there are ways we can find efficiencies. But I also will push really hard to make sure that we continue with programs we know work, that we know are necessary, that we know are necessary to defend this country. 

Sen. Angus King, I-Maine., member of the Senate Armed Services Committee: I think a program looking for efficiency is good. I think we should be doing that periodically, on a regular basis. My only concern is when you use the term “efficiency” to talk about programmatic programs that may have a policy. In other words, efficiency is one thing, policy is something else. For example, what if they say, well, the Sentinel program is too expensive? There’s a lot of thought and policy that goes into maintaining the three legs of the nuclear triad, and I’m not sure the cost should be necessarily the driving factor. 

Do you see what I mean? I don’t mind Mr. Musk or others who are looking at efficiency and saying, Why do you have all those layers those kinds of things? That’s fine, but I think there’s a danger that they’re implicitly, or maybe explicitly, going to be making policy decisions, [saying] “we don’t need to be doing this anymore.” I think that’s a decision for Congress to make.

Rep Adam Smith, D-Wash., ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, on a panel: The problem with DOGE is it’s two separate conversations that are being blurred into one. And the difference between those two conversations is profound. Conversation one is how can you make the government do whatever it does better and more efficiently. And gosh, that’s important, and there’s going to be a ton of bipartisan support for that. And I think that — I don’t know anything about Ramaswamy per se — but Elon Musk, I know what he did at SpaceX. I think he’s a well positioned person to have that conversation. How can you do think more efficiently and more effectively?

The mistake is everyone’s assuming that that is going to do anything to help us with our fiscal crisis. And that’s the truly insane part of this conversation. You have to sort of forget basic budget math in order to believe that is true. … Maybe Elon Musk [has a magic wand], maybe he’s going to save $2 trillion without hurting absolutely anything. No, he’s not, sorry. I can stop that speculation. It’s just not going to happen. I hope they make gov more efficient, the fiscal conversation is a hell of a lot more difficult.

Smith, in a follow-up interview with Breaking Defense: The need for reform, and the fact that Elon Musk built SpaceX, and that was a company that really made a big difference in getting us to greater competition … He knows how to do it. But does the taking-vengeance-on-your-enemies and ego get in front of that? I don’t know. I’m not optimistic. They seem to have pretty big egos about “I spoke, therefore I’m right, and if you disagree with me, you will be purged.” I don’t think that’s an effective way to run something, certainly [it’s] not the way Elon ran SpaceX. 

So I hope that it’s not the way that Trump and JD Vance and Elon and the others you know, choose to run the government at this point. But there’s some bad early signs, and will they do it just to reward their friends and punish their enemies, as opposed to meeting the interests of the American people?

American flag displayed on a laptop screen and Elon Musk post about DOGE on X displayed on a phone screen are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on November 13, 2024. (Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The Pentagon

Those least likely to dive into the DOGE debate? Unsurprisingly, it was Pentagon officials, who are preparing to navigate the next administration. Here, there seems to be tentative hope that change could be a good thing. 

Gen. Randy George, Army Chief of Staff: I’m all in favor of it. We’ve been on, we don’t have a nickname for it or anything, but we’ve talking about process innovation in the Army for the last year. If it doesn’t make us more lethal or our teams more cohesive, we have to be looking at, you know, should we be doing it? So I think we have to review everything that we’re doing in that light. 

And again, I think that the tough thing is going to be, we also need to be flexible with our government workforce, and that has been, you know, that’s going to be a challenge. We’re going to have to make some adjustments on acquisition and how big those teams are, and as we give things to industry. And some of these changes are going to be hard, but I think we have to make them.

Doug Beck, DIU head: You’ve been hearing from the guys who work at defense firms up here for the opportunity for rapid reform. And there are a few of those things that have to do with the intersection with Congress, between the administration and congress, where I think we could get to a lot more symbiotic relationship, for example with these portfolios of record, I’d love to go after something like that. And there are a whole set of places where there are silly, stupid, bureaucratic don’t-have-to-be there things that slow down a lot of what we’re talking about getting after that I think are ripe for someone going through and trying to clean that out.