 |
|
|
|||||
On January 29, President Donald Trump celebrated the latest victory in unelected billionaire Elon Musk’s crusade against inefficiency in the government: stopping $50 million from, according to Trump, being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas. Fact-checkers diplomatically pointed out that no evidence exists for this claim, which, if it were true, would work out to 1.5 billion condoms for some 2.1 million Gazans. They also noted that for several years, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which provides food, medical care, and humanitarian aid abroad, had not sent any condoms anywhere in the Middle East. In a press conference on Tuesday, Musk appeared to concede that this might have been a mistake. (One theory: He got confused by the fact that the U.S. government funds disease prevention in Gaza Province, Mozambique.) But the condoms for Hamas story took on a life of its own on X, the social media platform Musk bought in 2022, where the outraged blue-check accounts that dominate feeds and replies treated it as incontrovertible proof of the righteousness of Mucks mission. Tip of the iceberg, Musk wrote on January 28, quoting an account called Autism Capital, which had shared a clip of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt making the condoms claim. As of this writing, the Autism Capital tweet has been viewed 54 million times; Musks retweet is not far behind, at 47 million. In the weeks since, Musk has been working diligently to dismantle USAID, which he has described as a criminal organization that needs to die. Under his direction, the agency was gutted by a rapid-fire series of furloughs, firings, and spending freezes intended to reduce staffing by roughly 95%. Some smaller organizations that received USAID funding were forced to fold immediately; other luckier ones are scrambling to figure out what they will do if they exhaust their cash reserves sometime in the next few months. A federal judge temporarily blocked parts of these orders from taking effect, but on Monday morning, staffers still found themselves locked out of their offices and were instructed to telework until further notice. In the meantime, USAID-funded soup kitchens in famine-stricken areas have already closed, and refugee hospitals are turning patients away; in Uganda, workers said that dozens of newborns were contracting HIV daily after funding for antiretroviral drugs disappeared. Even if some federal judge eventually rescues USAID from Musks clammy grasp, people will suffer and die because Trump turned the government over to a Big Tech reactionary who believes that money spent on poor people is money wasted. We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper, Musk tweeted on the evening of Sunday, February 2. Could [have] gone to some great parties. Did that instead. Musks war on USAID is the fullest realization yet of his efforts to turn X into a Musk-inflected agitprop factory. By replacing the legacy Twitter verification system with one that makes algorithmic boosts freely available for purchase, Musk created an environment in which anyone with a paid account can turn their favorite conspiracy theory into a trending topic. When Musk, as he so often does, weighs in on a post that catches his attention, his cosign amplifies it to his more than 200 million followers, who read, digest, and repeat it to the point where it might work its way to the top of the trending-topics page again. It is an unprecedented level of being Too Online: Musk is both driven by news cycles on X and driving news cycles on X all by himself. Before the election, the byproduct of this dynamic was typically just an unfunny tweet with the cry-laughing emoji appended. Now, with Trump in the White House and apparently happy to serve out his term getting puppeteered by the worlds richest man, the stakes are considerably higher: If a stupid viral tweet about condoms sufficiently piques his interest, Musk has the power to ruin lives overnight. As the Washington Post reports, Musks obsession with USAID appears to originate from Mike Benz, a former Trump administration official who, prior to his stints in government, seems to have moonlit as a pseudonymous alt-right streamer warning of the looming dangers of white genocide. Benzs thesis, as outlined in a blizzard of color-coded tweets and hours-long videos that make the Pepe Silvia guy look like the paragon of rational thinking, is that USAID is a front group for American intelligence involved in mass censorship, leftist indoctrination, and/or clandestine anti-Trump machinations executed by shadowy figures at the highest levels of government. Most of Musks anti-USAID tweets in recent weeks, according to NBC News, are interactions with Benz and other blue-check X accounts pushing the same narrative. (Among them: a clip from Benzs December appearance on Joe Rogans podcast.) Musks triumphant wood chipper tweet, for example, quoted a tweet from Benz that called USAID the Terror Titanic, which in turn quoted a tweet from Milo Yiannopoulos that described USAID as the most gigantic global terror organization in history. There is a simple moral argument for one of the worlds wealthiest countries spending a fraction of its annual budget to fight starvation and epidemic and poverty abroad, especially when its annual military spendingthe same military that drops bombs on other countries whenever U.S. politicians deem that particular form of intervention more usefulis more than $800 billion, or roughly 20 times the $40 billion budget of USAID. But you do not have to buy this argument to understand how USAIDs work benefits the economy, or national security, or whatever else you might include in a term as nebulous as American interests. The reason Congress created and continues to fund USAID is to strategically build soft power and goodwill; that this often takes the form of providing badly needed (and relatively inexpensive) humanitarian aid is mostly a happy coincidence. When a country is still struggling to address, say, chronic food shortages or an antibiotic-resistant strain of tuberculosis, planning ambitious new ventures with U.S. businesses probably wont be at the tippy-top of its priority list. Musks purported interest in government efficiency has always been about accumulating power, and his decision to single out USAID is unsubtle even by his standards. He is implementing a farcically literal version of America First, eager to cut off people whose lives, in his opinion, are not worth the trouble of improving, let alone saving from preventable death. In some ways, the Musk-USAID odyssey follows a familiar pattern: conspiracy theories bubbling up from the murkiest depths of the right-wing media ecosystem, which tweaks, launders, and repackages stories to the point where they’re coherent enough for the opinion section of the Wall Street Journal, the front page of Drudge, and/or the A-block on Fox & Friends. During the first Trump administration, there was no better way to track the presidents official position on pretty much any issue of substance by reviewing whatever Steve Doocy and Ainsley Earhardt had spent the morning gabbing about. Eight years later, however, stories no longer need to appear in a Murdoch-owned media property to rocket to the top of the White House agenda. If you are a conservative activist who wants to influence the trajectory of American politicsor, for that matter, if you are a member of a foreign intelligence agency looking to do the samethe single smartest investment you can make is a monthly subscription for an X account that earns a coveted Wow! reply from Musk. Or, even better, Looking into this. The proliferation of fringe views on X aligns nicely with Musks policy preferences. But it is also good for the long-term viability of the X platform, which Musk frames as a tool for citizen journalists to report on stories that the traditional news media fails to cover accurately, thoroughly, or both. Musk often exhorts X users to remember they are the media now”and of the four X accounts NBC News identifies as peddling anti-USAID content boosted by Musk, one promises unfiltered breaking news, and another claims to be a citizen journalist. Omitted from Musks rhetoric is the simple fact that X does not subject content to a meaningful vetting process; in practice, citizenship journalism is a euphemism for empowering anyone to label anything as news and trust the algorithm to make it so, no matter how disconnected from reality it may be. When Musk calls X the future of journalism, he isnt saying he wants people on X to report on the shuttering of USAID or the deaths of the people it serves. He wants people on X to drown out the journalists who report these things. For people steeped in the closed, pay-to-play universe hes built, whatever is happening on X is the story. If it isnt happening on X, is it even happening in the first place? Nobodys going to bat a thousand, Musk said in his White House press conference after a reporter asked about the condom falsehood. We will make mistakes, but well act quickly to correct any mistakes. Shortly thereafter, he tweeted a clip of himself speaking at the press conference, along with the caption, $50M of condoms is a LOT of condoms. It has 59 million views and counting.
Category:
E-Commerce
Though only a few weeks old, already the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is radically changing the face of bureaucracy in D.C. The Elon Musk-led agency has slashed government spending, gained full access to the Treasury Departments payments systems, and pushed federal employees to resign. While Democrats and union groups have raised concerns about the effect on the American people, DOGE and Musk appear to have President Trumps full support. Hes a big businessman. Hes a successful guy. Thats why we want him doing this, Trump said in a press conference on Tuesday, emphasizing that DOGE has a lot of work, a lot of smart people involved. So, who are these “smart people,” whos actually behind the organizational shake-up in Washington? Heres everything you need to know so far about the DOGE staffers. Jennifer Balajadia, 36 Balajadia worked as an operations coordinator for the Boring Company, founded in 2016 by Elon Musk, for almost eight years. According to the New York Times, she is an official member of DOGE, traveling with Musk and helping him with scheduling and daily tasks. Alexandra T. Beynon, 36 Beynon was the head of engineering for her husband, Dylan’s, startup, Mindbloom, a guided at-home ketamine-therapy company. She previously worked for Symphony.com as a director in engineering and at Goldman Sachs as a software developer. According to ProPublica, when asked about her role in the new administration and DOGE, she said, I have no idea what you are talking about. Nicole Hollander, 42 Hollander is working at the General Services Administration. She previously worked at X, where she handled the companys real estate. Before that, she worked at JBG Smith, a commercial real estate and real estate investment trust company, as senior vice president of retail asset management. Hollander is married to Steve Davis, a longtime associate of Musk’s. Kendall M. Lindemann, 24 Lindemann is a member of the DOGE team, according to ProPublica. She worked as a venture associate for Russell Street Ventures, a healthcare firm, founded by another DOGE associate, Brad Smith. After graduating from the University of Tennessee, she worked as a business analyst for McKinsey & Company. Adam Ramada, 35 Ramada worked as comanaging partner of Spring Tide Capital, a venture capital company. Spring Tide previously invested in Impulse Space, founded by Tom Mueller, a founding member of SpaceX. According to E&E News, Ramada identified himself as an employee of DOGE in court documents involving a union fight against DOGE’s access to sensitive government information. E&E News, acquired by Politico in 2020, stated that he reportedly appeared in the Energy Department and GSA. Ryan Riedel, 37 Riedel worked as a lead network security engineer at SpaceX before becoming chief information officer at the Department of Energy (DOE). His new position was confirmed in a LinkedIn post by Ann Dunkin, former CIO of DOE, on February 9. Riedel previously served in the U.S Army Cyber Command as a network manager. Kyle Schutt, 37 Schutt is a DOGE software engineer working at the GSA. He was previously chief technology officer at Revv, an online donation platform. Before deleting his LinkedIn profile, Schutt wrote that he led the development and launch of WinRed, the Republican Partys major online fundraising program, which according to its website, raised $1.8 billion for Republicans in the 2024 election. Edward Coristine, 19 Coristine, a first-year student at Northeastern University in Boston, spent three months last summer at Neuralink, Musks brain-computer interface company, according to his résumé, which was obtained by Wired. He is part of the young group of DOGE staffers detailed to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). According to internal records reviewed by Wired, Coristine is listed as an expert at OPM. Akash Bobba, 21 Bobba was listed in Wired magazine as another one of the six young engineers picked for Musks DOGE team. He recently graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. He was an intern at Meta and at Palantir, the software and data analytics firm that’s a defense contractor. Bobba has reportedly been able to access internal databases as an expert at OPM. Ethan Shaotran, 22 Shaotran is a member of the DOGE team, according to ProPublica. He recently attended Harvard University where he studied computer science. His LinkedIn account has since been deleted. When he was a student, he received a $100,000 grant from OpenAI to develop an AI scheduling assistant called Spark. He was a finalist in a hackathon organized by Musks AI company, xAI. According to Wired, Shaotran is one of six guys under age 24, who are now playing a critical role in DOGE, tasked with modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity. Luke Farritor, 23 Farritor works as an executive engineer at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), according to ProPublica. He studied computer science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, dropping out before his final semester, and interned at SpaceX, working on its Starlink Wi-Fi team, according to his LinkedIn profile. In March 2024, he received a Thiel fellowship, a two-year program founded by billionaire tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel that awards a $100,000 startup rant to students who drop out of college. Gautier Cole Killian, 24 Killin has a working email associated with DOGE, where he is listed as a volunteer, according to Wired. ProPublica reported that he works at the EPA as a federal detail, which typically allows government employees to transfer between agencies. He worked as an engineer at Jump Trading, which specializes in algorithmic financial trades, and which was stated on an archived version of his now-deleted personal website. Gavin Kliger, 25 Kliger is a special advisor at OPM, according to ProPublica. He is listed in internal records reviewed by Wired as a special advisor to the director for information technology. Kliger spent around five years as a software engineer at Databricks, an AI company. Jordan M. Wick, 28 Wick is a member of the DOGE team, and a recent graduate from MIT, where he studied computer science, according to ProPublica. He was a software engineer at Waymo, where he worked on self-driving cars. He was listed as a cofounder and CTO of Intercept, which is affiliated with California-based tech incubator Y Combinator. Nate Cavanaugh, 28 Cavanaugh is an entrepreneur who cofounded two companies, Brainbase and FlowFi. Brainbase is an intellectual property management firm that was acquired by Constellation Software in 2022. FlowFi is an accounting and finance platform for small businesses. He has been interviewing staffers at the GSA as part of the DOGE team, according to ProPublica. Jacob Altik, 32 Altik is a 2021 graduate of the University of Michigan Law School. He previously clerked for the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Judge Joan L. Larsen and United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee. Last year, he was selected to begin a clerkship for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. James Burnham, 41 Burnham is a former litigation partner at Jones Day and a high-ranking Justice Department and White House official from the first Trump administration. According to his former employers website, Burnham was a senior associate counsel to President Trump and played a critical role in the selection and confirmation processes for Justice Neil Gorsuch, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and then-Judge Amy Coney Barrett. ProPublica reported that his title at DOGE is listed internally as general counsel. Keenan D. Kmiec, 45 Kmiec worked in elite law before transitioning to crypto. According to his LinkedIn, he clerked on the Supreme Court for Chief Justice John Roberts in the 2006-2007 term and then worked at a corporate law firm. He was a partner in a small law firm focused on insider-trading litigation. Kmiec then worked for the Tezos Foundation, tasked with legal project management and other tasks across a cryptocurrency ecosystem, according to his LinkedIn. After that, he served as CEO of a now-defunct startup called InterPop. Anthony Armstrong, 57 Armstrong is a technology banker at Morgan Stanley who worked on Musks $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, now X. He now has a role in the OPM, which handles personnel issues across the federal government. Under the Trump administration, OPM recently directed agencies to submit names of every employee who had underperformed in the past three years and note if any have been on “performance plans.” Riccardo Biasini, 39 Biasini is an engineer and former executive who worked at two of Musks companies, the Boring Company and Tesla. He now has taken a high-ranking role in OPM, reported ProPublica. Biasini was listed as the person of contact for the government-wide email system used to send messages directly from OPM to millions of federal employees across the government, according to a recent document. Brian Bjelde, 44 Bjelde has worked for SpaceX for more than 20 years, currently the vice president of people operations. Previously, he was an associate engineer at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He was referred to in press reports as a top DOGE Lieutenant, working at OPM to slash head count. Steve Davis, 45 Davis worked at SpaceX, X, and the Boring Company, as a senior executive and close associate of Musk’s for more than two decades. He was one of the first people to be associated with DOGE. The New York Times reported that he was on early calls with Musk as they explored ways to cut federal programs. Marko Elez, 25 Elez works at the Treasury Department, according to ProPublica. He graduated from Rutgers in 2021, where he studied computer science. He has reportedly gained access to highly sensitive payment systems of the Treasury Department, according to Wired. But Elez allegedly resigned February 6 after the Wall Street Journal reported that he has links to a social media account that posted racist comments online. Musk said publicly he planned to rehire the engineer. Stephanie Holmes, 43 Holmes runs human resources at DOGE, according to ProPublica. She is a former lawyer with Jones Day, which frequently represented Trump. Holmes also ran her own HR consulting firm, BrighterSideHR, which advised companies to pursue non-woke approaches to DEI, according to 404 Media. Tom Krause, 47 Krause leads a team who have been granted read-only access to the code for the agencys Fiscal Service payment system, which processes payments for programs such as Social Security and Medicare, according to the Treasury Department. The New York Times reported that Krause is affiliated with Musks DOGE team. He previously worked as CEO of Cloud Software Group, which provides enterprise software. Katie Miller, 33 In December, Trump named Miller, who served in the first administration as a press secretary to Vice President Mike Pence, as one of the first members of DOGE. She is married to White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller. Justin Monroe, 36 Monroe is working as an advisor in the office of the director of the FBI, according to ProPublica. He is a seasoned information security professional who served in the U.S. Navy as an information warfare officer. According to NBC News, an unnamed SpaceX employee had been placed in the FBI directors office, but no name was confirmed. Nikhil Rajpal, 30 Rajpal is listed as an expert” for OPM. He is representing DOGE in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), according to Wired. Rajpal’s online presence has since been deleted, but Wired reported he studied computer science at UC Berkeley and worked at Twitter before Musks acquisition. Rachel Riley, 33 Riley works as senior advisor at HHS, according to ProPublica. She previously was a partner for the consultancy firm, McKinsey & Company. Riley has worked closely with Brad Smith, a former health official in Trumps previous administration who ran DOGE during the transition period, as stated in the New York Times. Michael Russo, 67 Russo is a high-ranking technology official at the Social Security Administration (SSA), as reported by ProPublica. Russo spent more than seven years as an executive and senior advisor with Shift4 Payments, which is an investor in SpaceX, according to his LinkedIn. Russos office will oversee the SSAs more than $2 billion IT budget. Amanda Scales, 34 Scales worked in the human resources department at xAI, Musks artificial intelligence company. She was listed as the point of contact for questions after a memo was sent to federal employees, putting them on notice that DEI and accessibility initiatives in the federal government were now barred through an executive order. Scales is now chief of staff at OPM. Thomas Shedd, 28 Shedd, a mechanical engineer, worked at Tesla, building software that operated vehicle and battery factories. He now is the Federal Acquisition Service deputy commissioner and runs the Technology Transformation Services, according to a GSA press release. Brad Smith, 42 Smith served in a series of health-related policy roles during the first Trump administration, including being part of the board on the COVID-19 vaccine development program, Operation Warp Speed. The New York Times reported that he was helping to lead DOGE. Christopher Stanley, 33 Stanley is an experienced information security professional who has worked at multiple Musk-related companies, including SpaceX and X. He is reportedly an aide to Musk at DOGE, according to the New York Times, and has a role at the White House.
Category:
E-Commerce
Branded is a weekly column devoted to the intersection of marketing, business, design, and culture. When a brand goes negative, its usually with a claim that a competitor is somehow inferior. In its recent Super Bowl ad, the telehealth provider Hims & Hers went on the attack against something bigger: the system. Promoting a weight-loss drug positioned as a cheaper Ozempic alternative, the spot dings Big Pharma, and the healthcare industry more generally, as motivated by profits not patients. The ad sparked backlash before it even aired, and the buzz has lingered beyond the big game, fueled partly by criticism from the pharmaceutical business and prominent politicians, among others. In other words, the brand channeled some of the most anti-establishment vibes darkening the 2025 zeitgeist as a way to make a splashand it seems to be working. The short-term payoff may seem limited. Hims & Hers is pushing a cheaper, compounded version of semaglutide, the Novo Nordisk drug sold as Wegovy and Ozempic, which have become blockbusters for their weight-loss effects. (Ozempic can cost in excess of $1,000 a month without insurance, while the compounds can cost $200 or less; Hims & Hers doesnt break out revenue from compounds, but has indicated its broader weight-loss category has grown at a rapid clip and is estimated to reach annual revenue of $100 million by the end of this year.) Compounded-drug versions are permitted when regulators deem a marketplace shortage of an original (patented) drug. Wegovy and Ozempic are currently on that listand their creator, Novo Nordisk, has acknowledged that compounding is affecting its businessbut the drugmaker says it has increased its supply, which will eventually curtail Hims & Hers from selling its copycat. But even when that spike of interest (and presumably sales) runs its course, the company best known for erectile dysfunction, hair-loss, and other treatments has raised its profile to more than just a modern alt-wellness brand. Now its positioning itself as a righteous underdog battling a rigged system on behalf of everyday folk. The actual spot is remarkable for its largely grim and confrontational tone. With Childish Gambinos brooding anthem as the soundtrack, it quick-cuts through sometimes jarring images to describe an obesity epidemic that leads to half a million deaths each year. A narrator declares: Something is broken. With nods to fattening foods, social media, and pricey drug treatments, it continues, The system wasnt built to help us. It was built to keep us sick and stuck. The final pivot is to Hims & Hers, with its affordable doctor-trusted treatments, formulated in the USA as part of a custom treatment plan. People smile and brandish med vials as the narration concludes: Join us in the fight for a healthy America. While a rebel pose is a venerable brand trope, its a bit jarring to see it deployed so starkly with healthcare as its target. But maybe it shouldnt be. Years of healthcare consumer frustrations have been a prelude to a year thats already seen a vaccine skeptic confirmed as the head of Health and Human Services, and the alleged killer of a major healthcare executive treated by some as a folk hero. Politically, vows to fight and smash the system (any system) have never been more prominent. Critics of the ad charged that its (very) small-type disclaimer that the compound-drug versions Hims & Hers offers are not FDA approved was misleading and potentially dangerous. (Brand-name drugs and official generics are more stringently regulated.) They also complained that the ad did not mention potential side effects. The Partnership for Safe Medicines, a nonprofit group focused on pharmaceutical safety, wrote Super Bowl broadcaster Fox a detailed letter urging the network not to air the ad. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a drug-industry-lobbying firm, said the ad misrepresents the safety and efficacy of knockoff products. Senators Richard Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, and Roger Marshall, a Republican from Kansas, asked the FDA to look into the matter. Numerous media outlets covered the controversy. And Novo Nordisk retaliated with print ads emphasizing the weaker regulationand past problemsaround compounds, asking: Do you really know what youre injecting into your body? Hims & Hers is not the only company in the health space to respond to the semaglutide shortage, and its not wrong about the prohibitive cost of brand-name versions. But its tone has been unusual, waving away all charges and critiques as not just fake news but, in effect, evidence of persecution. Weve called out the system, and now the system is asking that our ad get taken down, a spokesperson commented; its site touts the ad Big Pharma doesnt want you to see. And the companys share price is up about 15% since just before the Super Bowl, giving it a valuation of more than $10 billion. Hims & Hers may be taking risks and pushing the regulatory envelope, but antagonizing authority doesnt seem to be a side effect of its strategy, its the prescription.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||