Is Elon Musk trying to take the world back to the 1930s? Since January 2025, Musk has been officially running the Department of Government Efficiency — or DOGE — at the direct instruction of U.S. President Donald Trump.

What started as a half-joking suggestion during the election campaign quickly became reality, with Musk stepping in as the nation's first-ever Chief Efficiency Officer. But what if, behind the meme-laden name, there's a far more serious vision at play, one that goes back almost a century, to ideas that shaped his own family history?

The goal of DOGE is clear: cut U.S. government waste, streamline operations, and optimise everything through cold, hard data. No politics, no emotions, just numbers. On the surface, it’s hard to argue with that. Government inefficiency is a tired punchline, and Musk’s brand of Silicon Valley disruption promises to sweep away the old ways with technological precision.

But look a little closer, and DOGE starts to feel... familiar. It’s not just the typical billionaire techno-utopian fantasy. There’s something more ideological underneath, something that smells a lot like Technocracy.

Most people have never heard of Technocracy Incorporated. But in the 1930s, at the height of the Great Depression, it was a radical movement that dreamed of replacing politicians with engineers and scientists. Democracy? Outdated. Elections? Useless. The only thing that mattered was efficiency — society run like a well-oiled machine by technical experts making data-driven decisions. No more human messiness. Just the numbers.

Musk’s own maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, was a card-carrying member of Technocracy Inc. in Canada. He gave lectures on the subject. He believed in it enough to risk arrest under wartime security laws. And while his later years in apartheid South Africa leave a stain on his legacy, those early technocratic ideas clearly stayed with him. Is it really such a leap to imagine those same ideas echoing down the family line?

Look at Musk’s business choices. Tesla isn’t just a car company, it’s a vision of an entirely optimised energy future, with human decision-making stripped away in favour of self-driving algorithms and centralised power grids. SpaceX isn't just about exploring space, it's about colonising Mars, reshaping society from the ground up with technology at the center. Neuralink? What’s more technocratic than hardwiring human brains directly into the machine?

Even Twitter — or X, as Musk insists on calling it — fits the pattern. His whole platform overhaul seems to be aimed at cutting out human moderation, replacing messy debates with algorithmic control. He doesn’t just want to own the platform. He wants to optimise the conversation itself.

DOGE is the logical next step. If Musk believes technology can run companies, cars, and entire planets better than humans can... why not governments too? Why not replace bloated bureaucracies with streamlined systems, run by cold, impartial code?

It's a seductive idea, especially in a world where corruption and incompetence are so painfully obvious. But there's a dark side to it. Technocracy, both then and now, has always carried an undercurrent of authoritarianism. Efficiency isn't the same as justice. Data isn't the same as wisdom. A government that answers only to algorithms might be faster, but faster at what? Making sure everyone gets what they need, or simply cutting out the weak to optimise the whole?

In just a few short months, DOGE has already started hollowing out entire sections of the U.S. government. Social programs are being gutted in the name of cost-cutting. Climate change research has been slashed. Federal workers are being replaced by AI systems, systems built by Musk’s own companies. And every time someone raises concerns, the same line gets trotted out: The numbers don't lie.

But numbers can lie. Or at least, they can obscure deeper truths. What happens to human dignity in a world where every decision is made by optimisation algorithms? What happens to those who don't fit neatly into the data model? The sick, the poor, the elderly, the people most in need of protection often look like inefficiencies on a spreadsheet.

Musk would probably deny any connection to Technocracy Inc. He loves to paint himself as a free speech champion, a chaotic agent of disruption. But scratch beneath the surface, and his vision of the future looks far more controlled, far more top-down than he lets on. If DOGE continues unchecked, we might wake up one day in a world where the lines between government and private enterprise, between democracy and algorithmic rule, have quietly disappeared.

Maybe that’s the real joke behind the name DOGE. A meme to distract us while the machine gets built underneath.

The question isn't whether Musk wants to build a more efficient world. Of course he does. The question is: efficient for whom?

Ryan Fortune is an AI Implementation Consultant based in Cape Town. He can be contacted via https://beacons.ai/ryanfortune