Cachet in a time of crisis
DOGE’s credibility among many Americans rests upon the illusion that it is run by qualified individuals. As students, faculty, and alumni, we must use the prestige of our Institute affiliation to dispel this illusion.
It’s easy to conflate distance with displacement and speed with progress. One month of the new Trump administration has shown that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) hopes that we’ve forgotten the difference. To date, the misleadingly named advisory body has propelled the country backwards under the guise of progress by demanding essential government employees be fired, health sciences funding be slashed, and unvetted access be provided for privileged data on millions of Americans. The official DOGE website asserts that this is the will of the people: that they have “voted for major reform.” It’s undeniable that voters want reform and that the federal government — sclerotic when it comes to innovation — needs reform. Yet people’s faith in DOGE’s ability to carry out this work judiciously and effectively rests on the illusion that it is staffed with qualified individuals. This illusion is one which we students, faculty, and alumni must help dispel.
The sleight of hand at play is that the young, inexperienced staffers carrying out DOGE’s dirty work — less-than-affectionately labeled by federal employees as the “muskrats” — make up for both youth and inexperience through sheer brilliance. This gimmick has been convincing. Those who support DOGE point towards supposed brilliance as justification for its actions and as the basis for feeling that the reform is in good hands. Lending additional tangibility to this misdirection are soundbites from friends and family of some muskrats that cast their intelligence in superlative terms. Taken together, it’s a compelling vision of some of America’s best, brightest, and most eager being tasked with tackling some of the most challenging problems we face in governance.
One of the benefits of time spent at the Institute is that we become familiar with uncommon brilliance. With this familiarity comes also intimate knowledge of its limitations. From my time not too long ago, there is the anecdote of the International Math Olympiad medalist who tried to cook dry pasta without water. Most of us know of or have had the backhanded honor of being featured in similar stories. We learn that sheer intellect alone does not make up for inexperience or immaturity.
Cutting federal spending and promoting effective governance are hardly new ideas. Under the Clinton administration, Vice President Al Gore led the bipartisan “National Partnership for Reinventing Government” initiative with those exact goals. Abstaining from Executive overreach, they accomplished reform — not the illusion thereof — by conducting thorough investigations of agencies using those who best knew the system’s flaws: experienced federal workers. While Musk lines his own pockets with government contracts, DOGE’s quest for “efficiency” has exposed little besides the inexperience and immaturity of its staffers and the fact that they are utterly unqualified to carry out the reform that is their stated ambition. As smart as some of the muskrats might be, they have made juvenile errors such as leaving the official DOGE’s database unsecured, allowing anyone to access and modify its contents. They have been fired from previous jobs for leaking proprietary security information and they have called out for the normalization of hate against ethnic minorities on social media. America is about to learn the same lesson that we did about intelligence and its limitations, with much more than a ruined dinner and an evacuated dorm as consequences.
MIT’s cachet, the prestige of its name conferred upon those affiliated, is a tool not to be underestimated. As some of the muskrats are the “best and brightest” to those close to them, so are many of us to our friends and neighbors. From my experience, when we speak with humility and good faith, people listen. As DOGE’s actions begin to spark backlash, even in states that voted for the Trump administration, remember that your voice has disproportionate power within the communities in which you grew up. Call your Congressional representatives, write to your local newspapers, and talk to your friends back home. Dispel the illusion that what DOGE is doing, and what its staffers are capable of, is progress.
Hairuo Guo is a Course 6-3 and Comparative Media Studies graduate from the Class of 2017.