Zerodha CEO Nikhil Kamath asks Elon Musk ‘What did DOGE teach you’, Here’s what Tesla CEO replied

Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath, in his recent podcast interview, posed multiple questions to Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. One of the queries was regarding the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which was set up for cost-cutting measures in the government and led by Musk in the first few months of President Donald Trump's second term. Kamath asked, “What did DOGE teach you if you learned one thing?”

Musk described his experience with government operations as an “interesting side quest,” detailing how people there were payment inefficiencies. He also highlighted one change that he believes could save the US government hundreds of billions of dollars annually: requiring a national payment code and a comment field with substantive information for every federal payment.




“There were massive numbers of payments that were going out with no Congressional payment code, and with nothing in the comment field, which makes auditing the payments impossible,” Musk stated, adding this “trivial seeming change” could save $100 billion, or even $200 billion a year.

Musk says DOGE fought against fraud

Musk said that when efforts are made to stop fraudulent and wasteful payments, the entities responsible do not concede. Instead, they leverage sympathetic arguments to defend their funding. Musk recounted instances where he encountered claims that specific funding was essential for “needy people” or “children in Africa.” However, when pressed for verification, the claims fell apart.

“We're not going to send the money unless we can talk to the recipients and confirm they will actually get it,” he emphasised.

Musk also gave an example of how people used sympathy to take money from the government.

“Fraudsters necessarily will come up with a very sympathetic argument. They're not going to say, 'Give us the money for fraud’. It's going to be like the 'Save the Baby Pandas' NGO, which is like, who doesn't want to save the baby pandas? They're adorable,” Musk said, followed by laughter.

“But then it turns out no pandas are being saved in this thing. It's just corruption, essentially. And you're like, 'Well, can you send us a picture of the panda?' They're like, 'No.' 'Okay. Well, how do we know it's going to the pandas then?'" he added.