Who Let the DOGEs Out?

WHAT’S INSIDE

• Tech In The News: Tariffs, DOGE, EU AI Act, OpenAI, Starlink

• Companies to watch: Kalshi, Heritable Agriculture, Hero, EssilorLuxottica

• Feature: DOGE starts cuts, 20-year old genius tech-bros review systems

• Buzzy Tools: Deep Research, Virtual Lab, Hero, Agentuity, Xanadu

• Deep Tech: Fusion, ChromoGen, “Stem-like T cells”, Mach 4 Turbojet

• Space Tech: Moon mining, Starship Flight 8, Sierra inflatable habitat

• Crypto: Tariff Crash, $TRUMP, 4-Yr cycle over? Tether on Bitcoin, lightning

TECH IN THE NEWS

Trade War — Trump’s 25% tariffs on Canada and added 10% on China kicked in at 12:01AM ET today. Tariffs on Mexico were delayed by a month after Sheinbaum talks. Trump also threatened tariffs on the EU. Markets were down Monday.

Treasury Access — Elon Musk's DOGE staff gained access to the $6T Treasury system; two USAID officials sanctioned for denying classified access amid reports of merger into the State Department. Several govt public-health datasets — including CDC — went offline to comply with exec orders.

EU AI Rules Begin — The EU activates first phase of AI Act, banning 'unacceptably risky' AI systems and imposing penalties of up to €35M for breaches.

OpeningUp? — Sam Altman hinted at releasing some model weights publicly in response to the DeepSeek challenge. No firm open-source commitments were made.

Star-Crossed — Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, Canada announced the province is "ripping up" its $68M contract with Elon Musk's Starlink.

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COMPANIES TO WATCH

Kalshi — The prediction market platform to offer election and event betting through traditional brokerages.

Heritable Agriculture — A new moonshot from Google X is using AI/ML to enhance crop breeding and yields.

Hero — A Meta alumni-founded startup that combines a productivity app with powerful AI assistant tech raised a $4M seed. Combines notes, scheduling, & todos.

EssilorLuxottica — The FDA approved its Nuance audio glasses for US/EU launch. The glasses provide unique AI-powered directional hearing aids for mild hearing loss.

THE HOTTEST THING IN TECH
Who Let the DOGEs Out?

The evolution of Department of Government Efficiency “DOGE” and what they are accomplishing in a short time has been both disruptive and interesting. It is certainly ruffling feathers in D.C. and Media circles. Of note is the fact that 20 year old tech genius Luke Farritor and a handful of other gifted young tech bros have been unleashed on the antiquated US governmental bureaucratic systems. As Arthur MacWaters, Co-Founder of YC-grad Legion Health put it: “Bureaucrats have never had to fight autistic tech bros and they're really going to learn the hard way.”

So, Who Did Let the DOGEs Out?

DOGE was given access by Scott Bessant to the Treasury Department’s payment system, which is responsible for $6 trillion in federal disbursements. Critics across the aisle such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren have sounded the alarm on a number of risks, including a potential U.S. debt default. Musk’s team are ‘moving fast and breaking things’, disrupting various agencies at a rapid pace.

Scaling Vesuvius

Farritor, as a teen, almost single-handedly architected a novel piece of AI-powered software to decode a 2,000 year old scroll without unrolling it to win the Vesuvius Challenge run by Nat Friedman’s AIgrant.org. Having him auditing the inefficiencies of central agencies is very likely something the bureaucrats never saw coming. 

Elon Musk's team has reportedly installed beds in the Office of Personal Management so "the team can work around the clock," per Reuters. This is standard practice in the fast-paced tech startup world) where ‘sprints’ or ‘skunkworks’ have always been a common and effective way to ship major chunks of work in mind-blowing time. It’s just not common or appreciated by those in the more static government or journalism world where the focus is all too often on stability of employment and preserving the status quo, for good or for bad.

Media and Political Backlash

Coverage has been quick to discredit the DOGE efforts focusing on more controversial aspects such as the long hours and on-site beds and Musk’s inflammatory critiques of identity-politics and DEI policies. Another common trope that Musk and Trump are seeking to “infiltrate” and “sabotage” federal agencies to further their personal wealth and conflicts of interest (perceived or real). Musk could likely find easier ways to make a profit than taking on this mammoth task, so the latter doesn’t hold much water. Most media coverage neglects to even acknowledge that it might, in-fact, also be a fundamentally good and timely, yet disruptive thing to modernize an inefficient and outdated government record-keeping apparatus. 

Doxxing DOGE Team

Even more concerning, however, are the personal attacks these young workers (incidentally many are from diverse migrant backgrounds) have faced, including WIRED doxxing them by revealing the names of six engineers in their teens and early twenties working for Musk at DOGE pointing out that none of them “have any high-level experience in the public sector” – which is sort of missing the point. After an anonymous account on X repeated those names in a post, Musk commented: “You have committed a crime” a reference to the clear rules in place in US law and on X governing doxxing, which have been largely consistently enforced under Musk. 

Not everyone is so dismissive of the long hours of effort these young tech workers are putting in to streamline the government. Matteo Franceschetti of sleep startup 8 Sleep sent bed pod units way to DOGE to power their (limited) sleep. Longevity guru Bryan Johnson also publicly announced he is sending boxes of his Blueprint food and nutrition blueprint supplements and longevity stack to keep the team sustained.

A Band-Aid On a Haemorrhage

As for USAID likely being merged into the state department for efficiency, on the face of it, this isn’t necessarily a silly idea if executed well as the US has long used aid as a political stick or carrot to further geopolitical aims such as the costly Biden-directed war in Ukraine. This merger just removes the fiction of neutrality, but not necessarily the long-term funding or mechanism of political aid. Even a broken clock is right twice a day! The Financial Times published a piece entitled: “Pentagon should be target of Musk’s efficiency drive”. It should, and hopefully will be. USAID is intricately linked to that process as “Aid” is often a euphemism for arms deals, which under Biden amounted to $70B of taxpayer money.

Reality Bites

The reality is bureaucratic inefficiency costs taxpayers billions each year. Letting the full force of the world’s most advanced private sector tech systems in AI, digitisation and transparency increasing blockchain systems loose on this system is a disruptive and highly exciting experiment if you are able to put your personal politics or bias aside long enough to appreciate its potential. There aren’t many strong arguments to be made disproving that the gulf between the private and public sectors in tech adaptation and productivity is light years. 

Another reality, is that while Elon Musk may be brash, polarizing, and self-admittedly autistic, however, he also was one of the founders of Paypal, the world’s largest and first online payment provider, and just got FTC approval to launch X Payments in partnership with Visa, as well as building multiple mega companies including SpaceX or Tesla. All critiques of his business practices aside, running a company as complex as these has certainly prepared him well to take on this challenge. Many in the tech and finance world are excited to see the outcome. 

What do markets think of all this?

Markets have been shaken by Trump’s tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China with major indexes down, but bouncing back to pare losses to a few decimals. Elon Musk plans to team up with JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and announced a live X Space with him to convince bond markets that the cost-cutting DOGE is good for U.S. debt.

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BUZZY TOOLS 
Buzzy Tech Tools To Watch & Use

OpenAI — 1. Deep Research for cited reports in 30m | 2. Free o3-mini models for ChatGPT and API | 3. Smartphone replacement device, robotics coming. | 4. Filed patents for smart jewelry, VR and AR headsets, and smartwatches, among others.

Virtual Lab - Stanford develops AI agents for collaborative scientific research.

Hero — Meta alumni launch AI assistant-powered productivity app.

Agentuity — An AI-first autonomous agent cloud platform.

Xanadu — Scalable photon-based quantum computer for ML.

DEEP TECH
The Latest Technology & Trends To Watch

Nuclear Fusion - Cheaper reactors using novel 'electric gun' tech for fusion

AI-Powered Roads - Self-healing AI biomass waste asphalt solves pothole.

ChromoGen - MIT AI predicts 3D genome structures in minutes instead of days

Immune System - “Stem-like T cells” crucial for long-term immune responses.

Mach 4 Turbojet — China tests new ‘blackbird’-rivaling engine for spy planes.

SPACE_RACE

—NASA_Moon mining robot capable of excavating 10,000kg lunar soil per day

—SpaceX_Obtains license for Starship Flight 8, launch expected this month

—Sierra Space_Unveils larger inflatable habitat as potential ISS successor

CRYPTO WATCH

Tariff Crash — BTC dropped to $92k after Trump's new trade tariffs announcement before rebounding to hover around the $100K mark, with ETH falling to $2,100.

$TRUMP — Entities behind President Trump’s crypto coin have accumulated nearly $100M in trading fees in less than two weeks, according to estimates from three blockchain analysis firms.

Policy Shifts — Trump's executive order prioritizes digital asset growth, potentially ending crypto's four-year cycles according to Bitwise CIO.

Tether — Reported a $13B net profit for 2024 from BTC and gold price gains plus US treasury holdings. It also plans to launch a USDT stablecoin on the Bitcoin and Lightning Networks for faster payments.

CFPB Update — The crypto-friendly Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been appointed to the acting CFPB leadership position.

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