Department of Government Efficiency and Mills' Power Elite

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Musk, Musk's son, and Trump in the Oval Office during an executive order signing
(Fowler 2025)

Description
The image above depicts tech entrepreneur Elon Musk with his hands pressed together. Below him is his young son imitating holding a gun. Elon Musk and Donald J. Trump, on the right, are talking to one another in the Oval Office. This image was circulated early 2025, around the time Trump and Musk collaborated to found the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under Trump's federal government. This photo depicts a widely circulated incident with Musk's son, who was heard making fun of politics. The staging in this photo is intentional: a direct line of sight is seen between Musk and Trump, the American and Office of the President flags stand in between them. Musk is pressing his hands together, attempting to be seen as authoritative and knowledgeable and is positioned vertically higher than the President. He is wearing a 'Make America Great Again' hat, which is Trump's campaign motto, showing his support for Trump. Funnily enough, Musk's son seems more fitting to the Oval Office than his father, with the latter wearing a graphic t-shirt under a buttoned dress jacket, whereas his son is seen wearing the expected formal attire of dress shirt, tie, and dress jacket. 

Context
Trump collaborated with tech billionaire Musk in early 2025 to establish a federal government agency called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The agency's purpose lies in "modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity" (White House 2025). The establishment of the department lead to internal crises within the federal government, because Musk arbitrarily claimed that certain parts of the federal government were unnecessary in purpose, in size, or in budget, and downsized the government by terminating federal workers in the federal agencies of his and Trump's choice. Workers were suddenly told to stop coming to work and it seemed that no proper and official guidelines were followed to shape the 'efficiency and productivity' of the federal government. After much legal battle and public outcry, the activities of DOGE stopped when Trump cut ties with Musk in governance. 

Mills' Power Elite (1956)
Mills identifies three domains of power in society: the economy, state/politics, and military. He argues that in each of these domains, there exist highly influential people in positions in prestigious institutions that regularly make major decisions with major consequences. He describes a historical process in which each of these three domains grew larger and larger in its impact where the power elites' decisions affected more and more people. Mills describes that the 'power elite' emerges from the union of these three domains. Therefore, it is possible to think of a general power elite that spans and transcends any of these three domains, indicating a fluidity and free movement of elites from one domain to another (Mills 1956).

Application of Theory
Before his collaboration with Trump, Musk has never had this much political/state power. With the establishment of DOGE, a billionaire power elite of the economic domain has had power in shaping the polity of the federal government without being duly elected. Mills says that the power of the power elite comes from the structure of the institutions themselves that they're part of, rather than their personality or skill or being inherently better. Therefore Musk is in a structurally privileged position since he is a billionaire who also heavily funded Trump's campaign. Since he is a power elite in the Millsian sense, his 'transfer' into the political domain by creating DOGE and firing and downsizing federal agencies without electoral legitimacy makes more sense. Therefore, Musk simply enacted his influence as power elite in a different domain by affecting the salaries, job securities of thousands and the trust of millions in the government, while he previously had the same effect in the economic domain. This fluidity or free movement of power elites between domains (or rather the power elite emerging from the union of the domains) is an important part of Mills' argument.

Sources
Mills, C. Wright. 1956. The Power Elite. 
Fowler, Stephen. Feb 18, 2025. "A federal judge has denied states' bid to halt DOGE and Musk's work." NPR News. https://www.npr.org/2025/02/18/g-s1-49450/elon-musk-doge-leader. Accessed Apr 17, 2026.
White House. Jan 20, 2025. "ESTABLISHING AND IMPLEMENTING THE PRESIDENT’S “DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY.”" https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/establishing-and-implementing-the-presidents-department-of-government-efficiency/. Accessed Apr 17, 2026.

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