New Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy reports that he’s spoken to Elon Musk’s DOGE team, and invited them to help fix U.S. aviation systems.
Big News – Talked to the DOGE team. They are going to plug in to help upgrade our aviation system.
— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) February 5, 2025
DOGE – the ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ – has been controversial because significant authority appears to have been delegated to unelected individuals. Of course, significant authority is already held by unelected individuals, bureaucrats inside agencies. And it’s controversial because of the unconventional and impolite approach to institutions that it’s taken. They’ve declared that payments being made by the government are improper, moved to cancel contracts, and declared entire agencies (like USAID) on the chopping block.
Much of their work is likely to be stymied by the courts. I never bet against Elon Musk – he’s accomplished impossible things, from reinventing the electric car industry to sending rocket ships into space, and also creates chips let let human brains control machines. But he also makes bold claims that may not come to fruition. That’s part of willing a different world into existence.
My hunch is that he meets his match in the government bureaucracy. Milton Friedman described the idea of changing government’s nature as akin to barking cats,
What would you think of someone who said, ‘I would like to have a cat, provided it barked’ …The biological laws that specify the characteristics of cats are no more rigid than the political laws that specify the behavior of governmental agencies once they are established. The way the FDA now behaves, and the adverse consequences, are not an accident, not a result of some easily corrected human mistake, but a consequence of its constitution in precisely the same way that a meow is related to the constitution of a cat.
Nonetheless, moving quickly is an important tactic and it’s worth considering not whether they achieve their stated objectives but whether they can actually overcome inertia and make some things function better. Put another way, in 2016 Peter Thiel described the disconnect between voters and media on Donald Trump,
I think one thing that should be distinguished here is that the media is always taking Trump literally. It never takes him seriously, but it always takes him literally. … I think a lot of voters who vote for Trump take Trump seriously but not literally.
And the same is likely true of Musk’s efforts with DOGE. Towards that end, there are things that they could do which would actually make the Department of Transportation and FAA in particular more effective at their jobs.
- There aren’t enough air traffic controllers. That isn’t an accident. The FAA has known about this issue for 20 years. There aren’t enough seats in their training academies, and they could both build that out and rely more heavily on collegiate training programs. Administrator Whitaker talked about leaning into these programs more.
- They’re using antiquated technology, and that ties the hands of controllers behind their back. They have to look out at airfields instead of benefiting from data. They still move paper flight strips (and will well into the next decade under current FAA plans, even though Canada moved on from this in 2005).
- Procurement processes are very bad at FAA. They take everyone’s desired specs and put projects out to bid for custom software instead of buying off the shelf like most countries. It takes ages and winds up with buggy products. There is also an institutional bias against technological solutions to lack of controllers like remote towers for some airports.
- The bureaucracy is badly organized. FAA is both service provider for air traffic control, and its regulator. That’s a conflict that minimizes accountability. These functions could be separated out within the department.
These are things that DOGE could potentially fix! They don’t necessarily require legislation. They also don’t involve cuts.
Well then, to our new overlord, we wish you the very best to ‘fix’ it.
Whilst it would scare the F@C% out of me, AI is tailor made for air traffic control.
This idiot musk thinks he is god. He needs to be stopped before he damages everything. Very dangerous person.
Elon’s massive fundraising for Trump is part of the reason Trump regained office. For this reason, F*** Elon. A felonious adulterous bigoted rapist is President of the United States because of Elon.
Elon did not found Tesla. He bought it.
NASA has been launching rockets into space before Musk was born.
AOC has described Elon as the most unintelligent billionaire.
Didn’t the Trump Administration just offer incentive packages to Air Traffic Controls to get more of them to leave?
Good luck meeting those recruitment goals.
Current bureaucrats answer to department heads who are at least confirmed by the Senate (Although apparently the Senate will confirm anyone these days who hasn’t banged a kid.) Elon being able to do anything to any government agency is about as legit as ME doing anything to any government agency.
Musk is going to get thrown under a bus once the ramifications of his cuts to government start to manifest. DJT will say that he never told Elon to do [whatever it is that causes that day’s crisis] and that Elon was never made a government official. DJT will say that Elon “misunderstood” what he was supposed to do and all the problems it is causing is not his [DJT’s] fault.
The MAGA people will believe this.
Wow, I don’t like these guys either, but y’all are far more passionate than even I expected.
Many of these recent headlines (Greenland! Panama! Canada! Mexico! Gaza!) almost seem designed to distract us from what is ultimately the pillaging of our government and public funds, in favor of the techno-oligarchs, led by the ‘co-Presidents’ (the official one and the unofficial one, who heads DOGE). So far, they’ve followed the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 plans to a tee–not my preference. Where’s the ‘deep state’ when ya need ’em?
Now where’s @Andy S, @Mantis, @Mark P, and the others, to tell us the ‘party line’?
Does this mean that the Musk acolyte who was a summer camp counselor in CT last year is now in charge of the FAA? Still using his Gmail address from his since-deleted LinkedIn and social media profiles? I feel safer already…
Sorry, I’m not flying anymore. Letting a bunch of teenagers “fix” the FAA is insanity. Airline stocks are going to tank.
Yep, giving access to a ketamine addict and his 20 year old proteges (with zero security clearance or background checks) to the FAA systems is certainly an idea.
You wouldn’t bet against Musk.
I wouldn’t bet against this causing actual safety or security issues with real world consequences. Which will then be blamed on the black folks working there.
But hey, libertarians gotta libertarian.
WOW!!! We’re going to go from “Full Self Drive” to “Full Self Fly”. I mean what could pissibly go wrong?
According to a 2023 Washington Post analysis of NHTSA data, Tesla’s automated driving features are linked to over 700 crashes and at least 19 deaths since 2019.
The only problem with Elon’s solutions is that he won’t care if there are a few Rapid Unscheduled Disassemblies of aircraft along the way!
First things first, SpaceX shall have priority over all airspace and will not have its launches stymied by know nothing bureaucrats.
As someone who knows a number of people involved with some of the things that you say Musk has done, I can assure you that Musk himself had little to do with those successes as far as any of the substantive knowledge required and many of the successes were despite him and not because of him . . . and the disasters were often directly related to his ego.
Reading some of the above comments and I just have to laugh. There are already too many airline accidents and near misses. There is already a massive pillaging of government coffers. Our tax dollars have been working against tax paying citizens for years.
If you haven’t heard, today we learned that Politico has been on the government take for quite some time. Soon we are likely to learn that the reason Kamala was able to raise over $1 billion is because much of it was laundered government funds.
Elan Musk could hardly do any worse.
Wow. Big time immolation going on in this thread. Really, though, how do you guys really feel about Elon? LOL.
@David — Since you seem to ‘know better,’ what’s the plan, sir? You can blame the Democrats or whoever/whatever you want for the past–I’m talking about the future. HOW are they going to ‘fix’ it? ‘Trust me, bro’ (or, just trust Elon) is not really an answer.
@Bill from Maine — I was surprised, too, it seems majority, so far, is not a fan. Maybe the far-right (Bannon types) turned on him (you know, that H-1B visa thing), or they just haven’t gotten here yet.
He’s and alien and we deport aliens now.
Let’s send him back (to Mars).
I hear he will be welcomed.
@Dick said: “AOC has described Elon as the most unintelligent billionaire.”
The failed bartender (or was she a waitress?) comments on world’s richest man??
And you want us to take her opinion, and yours, seriously? LOL
“…Tesla’s automated driving features are linked to over 700 crashes and at least 19 deaths since 2019.”
To be meaningful, this bit of information needs to be juxtaposed to the number of crashes and deaths linked to manual driving of Teslas or other comparable number of cars.
‘ impossible things, from reinventing the electric car industry to sending rocket ships into space, and also creates chips let let human brains control machines’
Sending rocket ships into space is hardly impossible. And there are other companies that are ahead of Neuralink (they just don’t get as much media)
@Gennady
to be meaningful, this bit of information needs to be juxtaposed to the number of crashes and deaths linked to manual driving of Teslas or other comparable number of cars.
Well, we know Musk fanboys give even regular Teslas one of the worst accident rates.
But more importantly, despite Musk promising it for over 7 years now, they’re nowhere near level 4, and nowhere near Waymo