DOGE Chief/non-Chief Elon Musk is officially a White House Senior Advisor. Interim Director of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Amy Gleason has no reporting relationship with Musk. Huh?
The DOGE secret sauce is like financial magic performed by private equity underwriters (PEU). Edward Siedle shares excuses used by PEUs over the years for not sharing the most basic information:
“In order for us to work our “magic,” we must be allowed to operate in secrecy.”
“Do not look behind the curtain or the magic won’t work.”
“If everyone knew what we were doing—the secret sauce—the best deals would be snatched from us by others.”
“Secrecy is your friend, not your enemy.”
Reveal it and "poof" it disappears. Really? Reveal the person in charge and DOGE evaporates? That is absurd on its face. Frankly, it all sounds like a con and for a con to be maintained the people on the inside have to comply.
Siedle speaks directly about PEU secrecy:
I have written extensively about the first two pillars of private equity secrecy:1. Wall Street gets investors to contractually agree to keep confidential information regarding its misdeeds; and2. Wall Street gets investors to agree to allow firms to withhold information from them which might be embarrassing or harmful to the firms if disclosed.But getting clients to be complicit in the Wall Street secrecy scheme is not enough.The third pillar in the secrecy scheme involves requiring Wall Street insiders— employees and former employees—to keep industry secrets. This requires a “carrot and stick” approach.First, employees must, as a condition of employment or separation, sign agreements prohibiting disclosure and reporting of potential wrongdoing to anyone, including law enforcement and regulators. Of course, current and former employees must be led to believe such contracts are enforceable.Second, current and former employees must fear losing any deferred compensation they may have coming to them if they violate these secrecy agreements.
The DOGE variation is the external employment angle, especially those employed by any of Elon Musk's six companies. Many of those are on leave and still have access to their employee stock holdings. Loyal DOGE workers will be handsomely rewarded for their work in government but even more so by their home companies.
DOGE is the TechGod takeover of government, utilizing the private equity playbook. Their garbage-in, garbage-out AI is a secret. Their junk software is a secret. Their "customer service" is known by everyone in the country as "horrific, abysmal, non-existent" but will be implemented in government anyway. Their systems track employees actions and words 24/7. Real "tech support" is so sparse, multiple hours are lost a day by systems being down or staying on hold waiting for tech support to answer.
The PEU buyout of a company begins one nightmare. DOGE's PEU imitation in its federal government takeover is a series of ever scarier nightmares, as there is an accumulation effect as DOGE eviscerates department after department. TechGods are both more impatient and have less people skills than PEUs. I'm sure many who've been through a PEU takeover thought that not possible.
Why is this allowed? Because politicians Red & Blue love PEU and have for decades. Business practices eventually make their way to government, even the very worst. Elected officials took the PEU money, from billionaire founders and their thousands of affiliate companies. The monster they enabled, got picked up by TechGods and it's eating government employees. At least something is eating....
Bombs, blowing up, "God's view".....how long before we're all DOGE food?
