For the last few months, there's been a lot of conversation around the "Department" of Government Efficiency, which is ostensibly an effort at improving government efficency, with a primary narrative being around government spending. This is not the actual purpose of DOGE, and it's worth explaining what's going on here, but first we have to cover a few key background ideas.

A starting point that's important to mention: DOGE is not a Department. It has not been set up as a Presidential Task Force yet, and even if that does eventually happen, that would still not be the same as an actual executive "Department", as those have to be headed by a secretary and approved by Congress. I know they just wanted to pick the name for the stupid acronym, but words mean things. Anyway, let's see what everybody is up to.

Part one: What is procurement?

First, there's the concept of "procurement". This is the process of buying things in the federal government. As you can imagine, it's pretty complicated, though often that's for good reason, usually for historical purposes of avoiding corruption, like keeping people from having the billion-dollar contract to buy flashlights for the Army go to their friend who just happens to make flashlights.

Basically, over time there's evolved a process where things take a little more time and effort in exchange for being less likely to be corrupt in a big way. The classic example of corrupt spending back in the 1980s and 1990s was the famous stories of the government spending $800 to buy a hammer, or $600 to buy a toilet seat. (It's wroth noting, these were mostly folklore; there was never actually a $600 toilet seat.) Having a procurement process lets people review those contracts to make sure that no scams are going on, and encourages everyone to go with the lowest bid for the project.

At the end of the day, procurement basically controls how huge parts of the federal government works. Like anything, you can Follow The Money and see how an agency or department runs. Procurement rules everything around me.

Part two: What is capture?

Next up, there's the idea of "capture". This is a phenomenon that can happen any time something is complicated. If a system is complicated enough, the people who've got the system figured out are the only ones who can really drive it, and then the game is rigged. You know how rich people are the only ones who can pay an acccountant enough to figure out all the loopholes so that they don't have to pay any taxes? That's capture.

Well, the super-rich know exactly how capture works, and that's how they game the refs in everything they do. They don't call it "capture", they just think of it as their regular life, because anything that isn't rigged in their favor feels like it's broken to them! I know it's hard to imagine, but it's true. These guys just can't stand the idea of a level playing field.

Part three: Put it all together

Okay, so now that you understand the pieces, you can see how it all comes together. Tycoons don't like any game that's not rigged in their favor. And right now, government spending at the federal level is mostly controlled by an agency called the General Services Administration, which oversees procurement. Is it complicated? Sure! Sometimes the complexity is for the same reasons that processes are inefficient around the office at your job, and that's frustrating. But sometimes it's good, because they're trying to make sure nobody is buying $800 hammers. It's not perfect, and it's overly complex, but it is not totally captured by the richest guys in the world right now.

Now, imagine you were a tycoon who is also a defense contractor that is trying to sell hundreds of billions of dollars of military equipment to the government, and you know that the procurement process requires them to go with the lowest bidder. But, since you're a dude with hundreds of billions of dollars, it doesn't seem fair that the system isn't even more rigged in your favor. How would you "fix" this system? Well, you'd have to capture procurement, so that it was rigged to only buy stuff from you and your friends, at whatever price you guys want. And if it could screw your competitors along the way, and punish them for not kissing your ass? That would be a bonus.

Enter DOGE.

This isn't new.

"Captured" buying processes aren't new, that kind of corruption has been common around the world for much of the last few centuries, though a lot of Americans may not be as familiar with it. The way it's usually worked goes something like this: Want to succeed as a farmer? Well, you better buy your tractor from Fearless Leader's best friend's tractor company.

Or it could be more like this: Say you're a government employee trying to figure out who to buy rockets from. Maybe it better be from the guy who runs the "department" that's in charge of deciding where money gets spent in the government! But what if you're that government employee and you're still trying to do things by the book, and follow the laws as written, and listen to the process that says you should go with the lowest bidder so you can spend less taxpayer money on things?

Well, wouldn't it be a shame if the guy who runs the "department" also ran a huge social media company, and also had started mentioning individual government employees by name, and had a rabid army of followers who consistently targeted those employees for violent threats — including death threats — and had in fact just carried out two different terrorist attacks in the last week while specifically talking about how enemies of this new regime needed to be targeted for violence? Would that be enough to get you to reconsider following those written policies? Maybe so.

How do we know it's not about efficiency?

People who, in good faith, want to see government get more efficient, may ask, "But what if we really do want to improve government efficiency and reduce spending?" That's great! Lots of us who care about this stuff would love to see those goals achieved. It's worth asking yourself a few questions if you care about those issues:

• Today, 47% of discretionary spending each year by the federal government is on defense, but virtually nothing has been said about cutting defense spending. (It's almost half of the costs they could cut!) Why would they instead be talking about cutting veteran's benefits, which are a tiny fraction of that cost? It's almost like... they're not trying to cut spending to defense contractors.
• Would anyone who sincerely cared about government efficiency begin without talking to anyone who's been working on those problems in the past? Are they likely to make progress if they haven't learned from any of the mistakes made in the decades of earlier attempts?
• Is it likely that any organization is going to become more efficient if its employees are being targeted with threats of violence from strangers? If so, do you think you would be more productive at work if hundreds of strangers were talking about how you should be killed, and would you be comfortable if your name were shared in the group chats of the guys who carried out those New Year's Day attacks?
• Would anyone let any other defense contractor or government vendor run a "department" that was trying to reduce government spending? What if the CEO of Boeing said they were going to cut government spending? A big pharma CEO said he was going to increase government efficiency? Maybe the head of an investment bank was going to come in and reduce spending at the Commerce department? That sound credible to you? What makes these particular corporate executives even remotely credible to do this job? How is it not a massive conflict of interest to put people who sell hundreds of millions of dollars of products directly to the government in charge of reducing government spending?
• If procurement processes are the way in which all the money in the government is spent, and they're too complicated (which they definitely are!) how can you reduce government spending without engaging with the hundreds of advocates and activists who've been fighting to improve things there? Instead of targeting innocent government workers for violence, why not lift up and amplify the good work of folks in the Government Accountability Office, the independent efforts at procement reform, or just ordinary citizens fighting for simpler processes or to reduce paperwork and complexity?

The bad-faith style of engagement, the endangering of workers who have .00005% the wealth of the richest man on earth, the ignoring of obvious waste in defense spending... all of these signs show us that DOGE isn't about what it pretends to be. Instead, we need to look no further than the simple corrupt backroom deals of strong men dictators around the world to see how the friends of leaders get sweetheart deals to sell their stuff at inflated prices (and, usually, inferior quality) while everyone else foots the bill.

It used to be the kind of thing that Americans would point at sadly as an example of how other countries were struggling. Now we're failing to see the same playbook being used against us.