Silicon governance: Elon Musk and the techno-libertarian crisis in public administration

The 2025 Musk-Trump collaboration, represented in efforts of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), demonstrates how a techno-libertarian perspective, which combines faith in technological disruption with skepticism toward state institutions, reduces governance to efficiency and spectacle. By collapsing civic meaning into managerial metrics, techno-libertarianism undermines the civic, pluralistic, and moral foundations that are essential to democratic public administration. Drawing on Selznick’s distinction between organizations and institutions, Terry’s concept of the administrative conservator, and Farmer’s framework of epistemic pluralism, this article argues that DOGE hollowed out institutional stewardship and pluralistic reasoning, replacing them with oligarchic bravado and self-serving theatrics. Musk’s brandishing of a chainsaw as a symbol of slashing government “waste” in February 2025 constituted a political stunt that replaced civic responsibility with spectacle and bravado. Taking the U.S. Department of Education and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as focal points, the analysis reveals that oligarchic influence and managerial reductionism threaten the legitimacy of governance, underscoring the need for a pluralistic, ethically grounded approach to public administration and democratic governance.