 "Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk arrives to the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump in the Rotunda of the US Capitol on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. File Image/Reuters")
Billionaire Elon Musk’s empire of six companies overlaps heavily with the work he is set to oversee under his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The conflicts of interest he may soon have are not difficult to spot at all.
Musk is the CEO of SpaceX. That company has substantial government contracts with Nasa and the US military. Its rocket launches are also regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
The 53-year-old billionaire is also the CEO of the electric car-maker, Tesla– a company that several federal agencies ranging from The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to the Securities and Exchange Commission have probed, Bloomberg reported.
Staff of Musk-led DOGE is now embedded at agencies across the government, including the General Services Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Treasury Department.
The question then is who will police Musk’s conflicts of interest? It couldn’t be an easy task, given Musk’s top position within the Trump 2.0 administration.
What has Trump decided?
But the White House has conveyed a solution.
The White House said Musk, who is leading the government’s cost-cutting efforts, will police himself!
He will be responsible for determining if there are conflicts of interest between his work reviewing federal spending and his overlapping empire of six companies.
“The president was already asked to answer this question this week,” said at a briefing Wednesday.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, in a briefing on Wednesday (February 5) said that President Donald Trump has said that “if Elon Musk comes across a conflict of interest with the contracts and the funding that DOGE is overseeing, that Elon will excuse himself from those contracts.”
Impact Shorts
More ShortsThe system of leaving the person who might have a conflict of interest in charge of policing them seems simple enough.
In actuality, it’s just simplistic to the point of a big fault.
Bloomberg quoted Donald Kettl, a professor emeritus and former dean at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, as saying that “…self-determination of a conflict of interest is itself a conflict of interest.”
“I don’t know of any other case, anywhere, in which an individual could determine for himself whether he had a conflict of interest,” he added.
Musk is subject to conflict of interest rules, but those are largely enforced by White House officials.
For now, the simple answer may work.