George Foote still has vivid memories of the day operatives from Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency arrived at the headquarters of the United States Institute of Peace . The outside general counsel for USIP, he’s been part of the effort to keep the US government from seizing control of the organization. When DOGE operatives arrived at the USIP offices in the spring they came in like a “strike team,” Foote told the audience at WIRED’s Big Interview event on Thursday in San Francisco.

The DOGE team, Foote said, left behind a “half-pound of weed”—more probably, a fellow panelist noted, a half-ounce—and ultimately seemed to have “no idea what to do with the place.” It was, Foote said, indicative of a lot of the work of DOGE, which “arrived as the brass knuckles o

See Full Page