DOGE, The High Mach Startup Founder's Approach To Government
Talking to a high Mach individual means having a patchwork of inconsistent statements, that they will weave together later as any narrative that best suits them.
Even if you agree with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in principle, anytime an organization fires someone, only to rehire them days later things are not going smoothly. This has happened now with DOGE thousands of times, because of judges ruling that firings were illegal. But even if you think the judiciary is meddlesome, consider the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) staff who were fired by DOGE were offered jobs back without any judicial order. Maybe nuclear safety is important enough not to shoot from the hip and ask questions later?
DOGE is following a playbook commonly used by early-stage tech startups with high Mach founders. I’m using "high Mach" in the clinical sense, referring to individuals high in Machiavellianism—a set of traits that, while not a diagnosable disorder in the DSM-5, are prevalent enough to be recognized as a distinct personality profile.
Oh, Hi(gh) Mach(iavellianism)
High Mach individuals lack conventional empathy and emotional connection in relationships, disregard conventional morality, and tend to hold an instrumentalist worldview that prioritizes personal gain over ethical considerations or consistency in belief and action. Oh, and they really like to leverage strategic ambiguity, talking to a high Mach individual means having a patchwork of inconsistent statements, that they will weave together later as any narrative that best suits them.
Not everyone in startups is high Mach, but entrepreneurship has historically rewarded many of these behaviors and everybody knows the type. In contrast, corporate America imposes limits through layers of compliance, legal oversight, and risk management.
High Mach individuals crave environments that lack clarity and structure, exploiting strategic ambiguity to their advantage. While such individuals can be found in corporate and government settings, the most extreme of manipulative tactics are not tolerated in well-established organizations. If a manager tells someone they are hired, and allows them to start working, only to later rescind their job offer and lock the ambiguous former employee out of the company, the manager would face repercussions from the company's legal, HR, and compliance departments.
In a world with enforceable rules, you cannot rescind a job offer when someone is doing the job, as such behavior carries too much legal and PR risk for even corporate weapons to tolerate. Startups operate in a high-opportunity, low-accountability environment, as most are too small to sue and too insignificant to attract media scrutiny. Ambiguity is somewhat unavoidable in a startup, and high Mach people love it.
Slow Is Smooth, Smooth Is Fast, But Ambiguity Feeds The High Mach Soul
To make this about me for a second, I will soon have a hearing for a claim against a startup where the CEO allowed my work to commence telling me I would be hired as CMO, formally offered me the job telling me an agreement would be forthcoming, allowed my work to continue telling me I would be treated like an employee from day one, and eventually claimed he rescinded an offer despite a clear record that I had been working.
I’m sure I will win my claim, but it’s a small amount of money, it will have been over a year before I have my day in court, and even the reporters I see daily wouldn’t waste the metaphorical ink covering a startup that touts its total decade long lifetime revenue as just $2.1 million from over $5 million in funding.
To make this Orwellian, A year will elapse before a courtroom grants me hearing, and the very journalists who traffic in corporate narratives will not deign to record this minor transgression. All and all if the CEO can avoid perjuring himself, his company will end up having had an interest free loan and a low administrative fee, the deal is rotten.
Still about me, I could have seen it coming. But hindsight is 20/20, and every startup is chaotic, and ambiguous. Most founders don’t know how to draft an outline of a contract for a lawyer, communication is often idiosyncratic, money is tight, and in flux. That's how it goes when it's moving fast.
Not about me. My point here is that the methods of startups are pure chaos, and to the extent the chaos is effective at all, any level of risk on the board quickly makes slow, smooth motions far better. At scale ambiguity drives up legal cost, and rational people will create rules to avoid such costs. Because high Mach people thrive on ambiguity, those who cannot learn to turn the behavior down typically get kicked out of organizations as they scale.
DOGE Ambiguity
Elon Musk was announced as co-head of a limited private-sector task force called DOGE in November 2024, by then President-elect Donald Trump. The announcement spawned much discussion on what DOGE would be, a federal advisory committee governed by the Federal Advisory Committee Act, a non-profit entity, or some other form of non-governmental organization.
In January 2025 by executive order Trump established DOGE as a federal government entity operating out of the Executive Office of the President that would dissolve after 18-months. This executive order would have added clarity, but no one can agree on who runs doge. Seriously, the White House has made multiple conflicting claims about who heads DOGE.
A court filing from the White House in February 2025 states Musk isn't an employee of DOGE. Later in February Trump said in a speech to the Future Investment Initiative Institute in Miami Beach, Florida, “I signed an order creating the Department of Government Efficiency and put a man named Elon Musk in charge.” Still later in February the White House said that Amy Gleason is the administrator of DOGE, implying she always headed the agency.
In March 2025 six sources told ProPublica that Gleason did not appear to be running DOGE, and that longtime Musk lieutenant Steve Davis seems to head the agency. Also in March 2025 Trump said in an address before Congress that DOGE was “headed by Elon Musk.”
Musk’s role in government is unknown, and it is the full high Mach startup move; create ambiguity with a carnival of contradictions, warp reality to whatever you need at any given moment, generically dispute everything, lie so much truth is almost unknowable, but at all times have a scape-goating way to argue the lie was true, avoid allowing any document to be a single definitive place of record even if it costs you.
Ambiguous Musk, CEO Of High Mach Founders
Musk, like other high Mach individuals, nearly exclusively says things that benefit him. They may believe what they say, but that doesn’t make the statements accurate. Common among the high Mach individuals is, again, an instrumentalist worldview, one often expressing as delusional hope.
A playbook in which, if something is said, and it becomes true even if they have to lie to make it happen, it was therefore always true. So nothing was a lie, and no one has a problem. It’s sort of the Oliver Wendell Holmes' "bad man" theory of law, where understanding a law, requires thinking of it from the standpoint of someone who is concerned only with material consequences of their actions.
Open your playbook to February 2009 when Musk sent a letter to Tesla customers saying that Tesla would be getting a $350 million loan from the Department of Energy in a few months. Tesla had no certainty at that time they would receive the loan. This was clarified at the time by a Tesla spokesperson who had to balance what Musk said, and what was true. A difficult job, as Musk was lying.
This is not the only lie Musk has told about Tesla, or even Tesla’s funding. As pointed out by Venture Beat, in a May 2009 issue of Car and Driver, Musk told that magazine’s readers that General Electric had become an investor. It hadn’t, and it never did, according to Andy Katell, a GE spokesman who spoke with Venture Beat at the time. Per the same article, Musk also claimed that Tesla and Toyota planned to jointly develop several models of cars and build them at NUMMI. Something SEC filings later showed to be false.
Speaking of the SEC, let’s take a look at the August 2018 chapter on the now infamous funding secured Tweet Musk sent out, claiming he secured funding to take Tesla private at $420 a share. The SEC forced Musk to step down as Tesla’s board chair and issued fines of $40 million ($20 paid by Musk, and $20, paid by Tesla). In February 2023 Musk was found not liable for a class-action securities fraud trial brought by Tesla shareholders, to be clear this was an issue separate from the SEC.
This is not the only of Musk’s issues with the SEC. In January 2025, the SEC filed suit alleging that Musk failed to properly disclose his Twitter stock purchases back in 2022, potentially underpaying for the shares.
Flipping back to Tesla, wasn’t it funny when Musk settled a lawsuit brought by Martin Eberhard for libel, slander, and breach of contract alleging Musk orchestrated his ouster and attempted to take credit for Tesla's early success? The out of court settlement agreement allows Musk ,JB Straubel and Ian Wright, to claim the title of Tesla founder, along with original founders Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.
Turn now to October 2016 when Musk, now officially a founder of Tesla Tweeted a video showcasing Tesla’s self-driving, saying, “Tesla drives itself (no human input at all) thru urban streets to highway to streets, then finds a parking spot” but it later came out that the video was faked? Ashok Elluswamy, director of Autopilot software at Tesla said under oath in a deposition for a fatal crash that the video was fake.
Everybody Knows, That The Captain Lied
High Mach individuals will continue to thrive in environments that reward ambiguity and strategic manipulation. While their tactics may be effective in the short term, they ultimately undermine trust and cooperation, making it difficult to build sustainable organizations. This is probably why Musk, and most other founders are removed from organizations as they scale.
Most people who behave as Musk, wouldn’t be able to lead a company the size of Starlink. Money is a short cut to helming a big company, the problem is the high Mach tactics, and more importantly the environment high Mach’s create to feel safe, grow more detrimental with scale. The U.S. federal government is a little too big to run like a startup, and the attempt should give everybody this broken feeling like their father or their dog just died.
"Elon Musk overlooking the remains of F9R" by jurvetson is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
For the algorithm.
Elon Musk seems to be a bad person, and a lot of people want to be like him, because they are also bad people.