‘Who Is Doge?’ Has Become a Metaphysical Question

Wired [no paywall]: “…The ambiguity around who is and is not DOGE starts with the fact that there are in fact two DOGEs: the repurposed US Digital Service, now known as the US DOGE Service, and a temporary organization within the US DOGE Service called, naturally, the US DOGE Service Temporary Organization, which is tasked with carrying out the DOGE agenda. In some cases, DOGE affiliates are hired directly into federal agencies. In other cases, they are detailed to those agencies temporarily. Since Donald Trump retook the White House in January, people with ties to Elon Musk or his companies have popped up all over the federal government. Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla engineer, now leads the Technology Transformation Services. Michael Grimes, an investment banker at Morgan Stanley who helped finance the Twitter deal, is now a senior adviser at the Commerce Department. Even Ehikian, while not a DOGE employee, is married to a former designer at Musk’s social media company X and has taken up the mantle of cost-cutting, targeting 50 percent reductions in spend across the GSA. All appear to be carrying out Trump’s DOGE agenda, although they do not work for DOGE directly. The question of who DOGE is has taken on an almost metaphysical quality as the organization’s mandate has expanded. According to Trump’s January 20 executive order establishing DOGE, every federal agency is required to create a DOGE team of at least four employees. (Ehikan’s claim that there is no DOGE team at the GSA may be technically true, but if so, the agency would seem to be in violation of the order.)…”