The billionaire and his Silicon Valley allies landed in Washington and immediately moved to cut the size of the federal government, reprising the playbook he used after buying Twitter in 2022.

Elon Musk is only one week into his role in President Donald Trump’s new administration, but the US federal government is already rolling out the Twitter playbook to manage its spending and personnel.

Elon believes he is above everyone else. He used to think he worked on the most important problems. When I met him, he did not presume to be a technical person — he would be the first to say that he lacked the expertise to understand certain data. That happened later. Now, he acts as if he has all the solutions.