Citation Needed: DOGE and Space
For anyone familiar with Mike Judge’s “OfficeSpace,” what I’m about to write will probably be familiar.[1] For readers who haven’t seen that movie, you should stop reading this right now and watch it. It’s that good. It’s that funny. And it’s still that relevant, even though more than 25 years have passed since it debuted.
What About (the) Bobs?
So, when I (and others) observe that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is his version of “the Bobs,” some of you understand exactly what I mean. Except, I thought a little more about the concept of the Bobs. I began to realize that what DOGE does is less intelligent, less efficient, and certainly not anything new in the U.S. Many U.S. citizens (those not in government jobs) deal with the idea of being fired at any time at work all the time. It’s deceptively called the “right to work.”
I won’t get into the arguments surrounding that law, but I am also not a fan.
One thing that the Bobs did in the film is research. DOGE isn’t doing that. The Bobs took their time. They talked with people. They seemed to honestly want to help the business become leaner and more profitable without disrupting the whole company. Also, they were there at the business’s invitation because it perceived a need for change. They weighed the company’s needs, such as efficiency (how many bosses?), expertise, and capability.
DOGE isn’t like the Bobs. There’s no calculation and research, just reduction. There are no external citations justifying DOGE's actions, either. Any justification that is provided is a self-pleasuring self-citation. That might be fine for those who trust people who have several obvious conflicts of interest, but not for adults. And U.S. government organizations aren’t Initech (and for those believing any U.S. agency should be run like a business–there’s a juice box for you in the fridge).
Weighing Efficiency
Take the word “efficiency,” for example. Efficiency is a feel-good word that can mean many things (no pedantic comments, please). It tells people how much gas a car will consume. Some people link it to battery usage in smartphones and laptops. Regarding office work, efficiency points to ways to save or create money. While people consider efficiency necessary, it might not be the criteria for selecting a product or a service; it is merely one of many.
An extremely efficient vehicle, for example, is not the most desirable (the plethora of pickups and SUVs I see every day tells me this). An efficient smartphone may not run desired apps quickly or at all. However, people know what efficiency means in those scenarios and make decisions about how much efficiency they want in the product they use.
Too much, and the everyday smartphone experience would be very laggy and might be extremely grating. Too little, and rising gas prices might impact a beer budget. Efficiency that negatively impacts office morale could cause employees to quit and would diminish whatever service or product it could produce. No boss has ever said out loud that they need to get rid of people to make a product or service better. They usually like having more people to boss around.
However, what does efficiency mean to DOGE and the current administration? That’s not clear because it’s deliberately clouding its actions while marketing that it’s saving taxpayers a lot of money (and that marketing is misleading). The actions we’ve witnessed from DOGE show that its decisions aren’t even as nuanced as deciding which smartphone is the best one to buy. The problem is that DOGE’s decisions have a longer-term impact. Its choices (if they are judged to be legal) regarding U.S. government space stakeholders alone will:
- Endanger U.S. coastal communities (which includes basically all of Florida).
- Push premiere U.S. space scientists, engineers, and others out of NASA (and most will probably not work for SpaceX).
- Place U.S. military space R&D behind China’s.
This is not to say that U.S. agencies are perfectly run, responsive, and efficient. They aren’t, but that is probably not a shocking statement to American citizens. After all, U.S. agencies are made up of people, and who among us is perfect? Worse, however, is that these agencies NEED people to run them (just like businesses). That means the imperfections are there to stay unless there’s an initiative to eliminate ALL the people because, logically, any number of people will have imperfections.
Efficiency and perfection aren’t the point of government, either. The whole point of the U.S. government, its laws, and its agencies is protection. It’s protection of ourselves and our rights from being violated by others in the U.S. It’s protection of the same from those outside the U.S. I’ll bet that even the Bobs understood this. That mandate extends to protection from nature, too. Note that this protection is what helped SpaceX sue the Air Force for more launch contracts.
Imperfect but Useful
Even so, while the U.S. government isn’t perfect, it was pretty good at protecting its citizens. It’s even better at protection when using space. And, despite the incessant pointing out that SLS is still in development, space has made some of the U.S. government’s services more efficient.
We’ll just call SLS a NASA stretch goal.
Let’s take the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). If they’ve heard of NOAA, most U.S. citizens probably know of it because of disastrous weather, such as hurricanes. NOAA is at the forefront of any government climate agency in the world in providing useful information to its citizens, especially when it comes to hurricanes. It’s pretty efficient at it, too.
I wrote an analysis of why breaking up NOAA is a terrible idea, considering the situational awareness it provides saves lives (and why commercial alternatives probably are an even worse option). It also posts estimates of how high a storm surge might get (and the calculations underpinning those calculations rely, in part, on understanding the climate changes). That’s just one example of how NOAA provides warnings and information for U.S. citizens’ protection. It gives them time to protect their property and leave. Why would people not want that? Especially when the alternative is less efficient.
NASA is another example. The purpose of NASA may be less clear to the public. Most might remember that it does cool things like exploring the Solar System with robots and probes. Many associate it with rockets, including SpaceX’s (many media headlines don’t help with this misperception). Believe it or not, NASA does have a mission:
NASA explores the unknown in air and space, innovates for the benefit of humanity, and inspires the world through discovery.
So, there is nothing there about protection. NASA is the U.S. public research and development arm for space. It’s THE place to be to work on the most challenging space problems, attracting motivated and thoughtful people. However, notice that its mission is supposed to inspire the world and explore space, and not pioneer. It’s also the U.S. space science press release expert. Based on the thousands of articles about NASA’s missions and successes throughout the decades, the space agency seems to be accomplishing its mission pretty well.
Even better, its history of accomplishments has attracted not only the best and brightest from the U.S. but works with those from abroad through its various outreach programs. Other nations want to work with NASA, which reduces the probability of fighting the U.S. It’s more civil and efficient to offer astronaut training or launch availability than to send soldiers abroad.
But NASA started as what...a way to beat those Reds to the Moon. It was another way for the U.S. government to protect its citizens from the Soviets by flexing its science and engineering muscle using the smartest people on tap. And it did it, beating the Soviets on the world stage. That gave the president at the time some leverage. But NASA people helped with that and continue to do so. Firing them without cause makes NASA less efficient while cutting the resources that make it a globally recognized and envied space agency.
Then, there’s the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and its Global Positioning System (GPS). I’ve not seen anything from the DOGE Bros about firing the people working with GPS. GPS is useful when used with smartphones, but its public utility was a happy accident of a system designed to give U.S. soldiers and weapons unprecedented locational accuracy. GPS resulted from U.S. military research and development–an activity the new administration thinks is too frou-frou for the military. That's weird, considering how much more lethal GPS makes our soldiers and technology.
GPS does something else, too. It helps people make money. Lots of money. Like, billions of dollars. So, not only is it helping U.S. soldiers become more lethal, but it’s also helping many U.S. citizens become more productive (more efficient, perhaps?). Not too shabby for a military-focused space system.
For those of you thinking that each example does more than I’ve listed…that’s the point! They do a lot, possibly working on some things that may not need to be done. But then, who decides which one is unnecessary? One person’s inefficient launch system might be a child’s inspiration to become an engineer or scientist. One person’s climate hoax is another person’s early warning system for their family.
By all accounts, the DOGE Bros don’t even bother with understanding what’s happening in the workplace. There’s no sitting across the table from various employees to explore the facets of a business. The assumption appears to be that an agency’s best resource, its people, are the cause of all the U.S. spending problems (instead of a Congress that isn’t doing its job).
Aside from some Congresscritters, none of them joined the federal workforce because they wanted to get rich. As noted before, none are perfect, and some might even be toxic. Many chose government careers to make sure Americans are safe, the one thing that the U.S. government is supposed to support.
Is that protection more or less desirable than efficiency? We know where DOGE stands, but its decisions are resulting in inefficiencies while risking the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans. Citations are needed to decide if it's really working.
How will the new administration’s actions impact space even more? If you’re interested in a consultation, please contact me through LinkedIn.
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1. “OfficeSpace” was Judge’s story of the present-day challenges of working in an office. And yet, he was also clairvoyant–he directed “Idiocracy,” too.
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