2025-03-29
49 分钟In 1998, Elon Musk appeared in an interview on CBS Sunday Morning.
It was the early days of the dot-com boom, before Tesla or even PayPal made Musk famous.
At the time, he was just a 20-something co-founder of a startup called Zip2,
which sold software to newspapers.
He was so broke and so committed to the job,
Musk claimed in that interview, that he moved into the startup's office.
We found that an office was actually cheaper than an apartment in Silicon Valley.
So we got this dinky little office that had a leaky roof.
It was just the nastiest place you can imagine.
And you lived in it too?
And I lived in it too and showered at the YMCA.
Less than 20 years later, beds are appearing in a different office,
the General Services Administration building in Washington, D.C.
The sixth floor of the grand neoclassical building has reportedly been outfitted with IKEA beds.
They're for the doge staffers who are working around the clock.
Its Silicon Valley startup culture meets Washington in the oddest way.
I'm John Prudhoe, and this is Checks and Balance from The Economist.
Each week, we take one big theme shaping American politics and explore it in depth.
This week,
Elon Musk is taking a chainsaw to the government through his Department of Government Efficiency.