Thomas L. Knapp

Photo by Avens O’Brien

“Chaos.” That seems to be America’s go-to descriptor for the federal government since Jan. 20. Depending on who you ask, President Donald Trump, “special government employee” Elon Musk and their “Department of Government Efficiency” are either cutting a bunch of government waste and inefficiency, or gutting a bunch of useful and necessary government functionality. Some people are very sure of which, but nobody seems very clued in to how.

So I asked Grok, the generative AI chatbot associated with Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) platform, to “suggest the most efficient organizational chart for the federal government’s executive branch.”

Grok’s reply (summarized):

First, the ol’ “unitary executive” theory with the president “as the executive power’s focal point.”

Secondly, a “lean inner circle” consisting of the White House chief of staff, the vice-president as a “flexible deputy” and three “directors” — one for Security,” one for “Prosperity” and one for “Governance” — with the 15 cabinet secretaries getting demoted to “deputy directors” and agency heads either “slotting” into those “buckets” or reporting to the chief of staff.

This setup, Grok tells me, “trims the fat” and provides “clearer chains of command” and “less duplication.”

I don’t know that Grok necessarily speaks for Musk, but I’d be surprised to learn he hadn’t asked it this sort of question himself, and when I read that answer I keep coming back to another question:

What should we want government to be “efficient” at?

The assumption underlying Grok’s answer is that government should be efficient at centralizing power into 1) as few hands as possible, and 2) hands that are loyal to and answerable to one person (the president) rather than to any higher power (the U.S. Constitution, for example) or to any moral principle other than  the German Third Reich’s “fuhrerprinzip” or “leader principle.”

A snippet from Grok’s summary of the fuhrerprinzip itself: “In essence, it was a cult of personality masquerading as a governance model, designed to consolidate power and eliminate dissent.”

If Musk’s AI model reflects his own thinking, we may have our answer as to whether his controversial gesture at Trump’s inauguration was or wasn’t a “Nazi salute.”

I’m personally enjoying the chaos, at least a little, but not because I want “efficiency” or centralization of state power into the hands of one man and his loyalists. I want a weaker state, not a just smaller and less expensive state.

I don’t trust Trump or Musk to deliver.

Editor’s note: Thomas L. Knapp is a director and senior news analyst at The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism, where this was first published. He lives in north central Florida. Please send your comments to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.