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That's Shopify.com slash tech. You look at the kind of waste, fraud, and abuse that this country is going through, and we have to straighten it out. We have great people going into the military in terms of we need ships, we need a lot of things, we have great people, we have business people going in. But when you look at what's happened to our purchasing, the purchasing, and when you look at the USAID, when you look at the things that they're giving to them, the billions, the billions of dollars that they're giving to, and it doesn't make sense. And that is the president of the United States talking about the cost cutting that Doge is doing and the exposure of the fraud and abuse that's taking place and the programs that there are seem to be, for the most part, politically driven. And when there is a program that's good, that was more effective, originally cut, it was put back in place.
And it was PEPFAR. And that was put originally by AIDS and HIV medicines to underserved struggling countries. It was put forward by George W. Bush. It saved millions of lives.
And that was cut and was put right back into play. But for the most part, you're looking at some things that are just pure ideological. You're going to tell me that we need $1 million for gender diverse support in Bangladesh. You're going to tell me we need $1.9 million for Guatemalan transgender support. You're going to tell me we need $70,000 for a DEI musical in Ireland or $2.5 million to make sure that Vietnam is using electric vehicles. Assistant migrants in Colombia, $19 million, assisting migrants in Colombia. Are you kidding?
So these are some of the things that USAID cannot explain and Elon Musk says we should cut. Catherine Boyle is a former Washington Post reporter turned venture capital. She is a general partner, Andreessen Horowitz, and the co-founder of the firm's American dynamism arm, which invests in companies that build to support national interests. Catherine, welcome back. Thanks so much for having me. Great to be here. Well, first off, just on some of the cuts and some of the blowback that Elon Musk has felt and took two days ago.
Your thoughts about some of these programs and what his approach has been. Yeah, well, I mean, the thing that I think people are stunned by is the approach. And my answer to them is welcome to Silicon Valley. This is how things get done. This is how our great businesses in America are built. They are built fast. They are built with extraordinary engineering talent.
And people make decisions quickly because the timelines for a venture backed company or for one of something like SpaceX, you have to move so much faster. When Elon says that I sleep on the factory floor, he means that literally. He sleeps on the floor of his factories if he needs to be there.
It works 20 hour days. We know for a fact, I mean, we know some of the people who are in there, they are spending Saturdays and Sundays, 18 hour days going through line by line to do this important work and transparent work on behalf of the American people. And so this is how things get done. It's messy. It's very different than what Washington is used to.
It's very different than what many in the establishment are used to. But this is how we build in America. And I think it's great that it's finally being applied to the bureaucracy in Washington, D.C. And he's ready to take the fire. He understands it, too.
And he's trying to explain it. For example, Doge yesterday announced they have 199 contracts across 35 agencies that he cut over two days. The Education Department, he ended 89 contracts with $881 million. He canceled $101 million for DEI training. We all know about that.
HHS acts $182 million in administrative expenses. What I also think that he can do, Catherine, intuitively is figure out systems and get the latest tech to make things more efficient with less manpower necessary to make things effective. We're not talking about taking people's Medicare away, but can you imagine we can make Medicare run more efficiently?
Totally. I mean, we have the best technologist in the history of the 21st century. I mean, he is the best technologist living today, working with the federal government to try to bring efficiency and technology into the bureaucracy. It is an extraordinary service to the country.
It's also not new. Like other administrations have tried this. There was the Grace Commission during Reagan. The Clinton administration tried this. There's been calls from both Democrats and Republicans to bring efficiency to the federal government.
But because of their methods, it just never got done. You know, you can you can spend two years writing a report that Congress looks at and nothing gets done with it. But the way that Elon Musk works is he goes into an organization and he fixes things immediately. He brings the best and brightest talent and he brings what he knows about technology. And that's what he's doing for the American people. And President Trump has a mandate to do this.
This is something that the American people want and they're doing it in the most transparent way possible. What about since you do know, Elon Musk, what about the way he's working with President Trump and President Trump has mentioned to people that you would think a guy in charge would have trouble taking instruction or checking in. And he says it's just the opposite. And that some have speculated that he's almost been like a father figure to him.
Could you could you talk about what you know about him? So I think Elon respects high integrity. He respects people who are straight shooters.
He doesn't like this sort of managerial bureaucratic class of lawyers that tends to run everything in major companies in Washington, D.C. He likes people who shoot straight. And so, you know, from looking on the outside and I can it doesn't surprise me they have a great relationship because they're two straight shooters. They say what they think. They're probably two of the people who who you know what they say in private is also what they say in public.
They don't have any facade. They constantly tell people the truth. And I think that is like that's how Elon works. That's how he works in all of his companies. If someone says to him, I don't know where that can't be done, they immediately get fired, especially if they tell him that something can't be done. That is sort of a history of how he works inside of SpaceX.
If you don't think something's possible, he doesn't want to work with you. And I think they both have that sort of mentality that they can they can accomplish great things. And so it makes sense that they're working well together. So here's what he said from Dubai and in the UAE a few hours ago, cut seven. We really have here rule of the bureaucracy as opposed to rule of the people democracy. We want to restore the rule of the people. And so what that means is reducing the size of the federal government, basically reducing regulation. You know, there's there's a there's a tremendous amount of overregulation that's happened over time. I think we do need to delete entire agencies as opposed to leave part of them behind, because if you leave part of them behind, it's easy. It's kind of like leaving a weed.
If you don't remove the roots of the weed, then it's easy for the weed to grow back. So and that's he was asked about what are exactly doing in America. And that's how he explained it.
Yeah, no, I think I think it makes perfect sense. And he's going back to something which is that we've had rule by agencies for a very long time in this country. And that's not how the framers founded this country. That is not how most Americans think the country is run.
They want to elect people to Congress who make laws and then the executive implements those laws. And I think that people are, frankly, stunned by how much how much waste, fraud and abuse exists in the federal government because of this agency rule. And so Elon shining a light on it. He has a very big megaphone. And again, he's one of these people who says what he thinks. He always tells the truth. He's telling people what he sees inside. And the transparency, I think, is refreshing for most Americans. Hi, everyone.
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That's me undies.com slash Spotify code Spotify. So here's what Congressman Dan Goldman who just gets up every day to try to impeach Trump and stop Republicans cut 11. Just yesterday, Mr. Musk announced that he canceled 89 government contracts worth $881 million in the Department of Education. That's money Congress appropriated.
We have the power of the purse. Maybe it's wasteful. Maybe it's not.
I have no idea. You have no idea. But it's a blatant violation of the law and the Constitution. So they don't get it, but you are allowed to do it is ultimately is going to go to the courts.
Absolutely. I mean, I think I think many of these things are going to go to the courts, but the thing that I would emphasize particularly about what Doge is doing and what what Elon Musk is doing is that they are doing it in public. Like most committees in Washington, most commissions in Washington, people meet in closed rooms for a year and a half and they deliver a report and they talk amongst themselves. And what I think is different for this administration and really different with this initiative is that it is all being done in daylight. Everything is being reported. I mean, you have minute by minute reports coming out on X on the Doge account.
You have press conferences every day where, you know, Caroline is showing the receipts, as she says, where you have Elon standing in press conferences and saying what they found. And that allows the American people to actually know what's going on in their government. And I think that is a well needed change. It's a good change and something that that couldn't be done without without this type of leadership.
A couple of things are happening. You know, for example, that that Elon's got government contracts and a lot of it is, he says, I look at every one of those contracts and they have paid off for the U.S. government. But people are saying there's a conflict of interest there. Here's more from the congressman from New York cut in. Now, how about this committee investigate Elon Musk's rampant conflict of interest, Mr. Chairman? He has six companies that have at least 13 billion dollars of government contracts.
And here he is making decisions about what government contracts should be canceled. So do you think he's working in his own interest to make SpaceX better or is boring company fantastic or the chips in brains more effective? No, I think I think Elon is, again, a very transparent person.
And let's just put this in perspective, too. Elon was the richest man in the world before June when he endorsed President Trump. SpaceX, just to just to give you some numbers on how important SpaceX is to the U.S. and the world. Eighty five percent of global launch in 2024 was a global launch was done by SpaceX. So not only are they the most important launch company in the U.S., they are they are basically dominating space for the entire world. And, you know, SpaceX has been an extraordinary partner to the U.S. government, saving them billions of dollars every year for over a decade. They are the most efficient government contractor when it comes to space.
And that's something that they continue to achieve on. So, you know, is Elon doing this because he wants to win a few more government contracts? I think that's that's that's a silly thing for people to say, just given given what he has accomplished thus far. I think he's doing this to help the American people. I think he's doing this to bring efficiency to government. And I think he's doing it in a way that is shocking to people because business as usual in Washington doesn't often it doesn't involve achieving results. And we are seeing the results every day of what Elon does. And I think it's great that that that this this administration is doing it with such transparency in mind.
Now, I hear you. So J.D. Vance is the vice president is tech savvy, Silicon Valley connected, and he's in Paris, France, and he had a message. His message is stop with the suffocating regulations and stop with the suffocating of free speech.
Cut 38. And I would also remind our international friends here today that partnering with such regimes, it never pays off in the long term. From CCTV to 5G equipment, we're all familiar with cheap tech in the marketplace that's been heavily subsidized and exported by authoritarian regimes. But as I know and I think some of this some of us in this room have learned from experience, partnering with them means chaining your nation to an authoritarian master that seeks to infiltrate, dig in and seize your information infrastructure. Should a deal seem too good to be true? Just remember the old adage that we learned in Silicon Valley.
If you aren't paying for the product, you are the product. Your thoughts, you thought that he gave this speech in a way in which he understood it and that many people at a high level know AI, especially in the political world, right? So I will just say I think we have another great communicator on our hands, and I'm not just saying a great communicator. I think he is the great communicator.
I think he understands, can connect with people. I think he can give a speech, you know, not since Reagan have we seen a politician that can do this. And JD Vance's speech, I think it will go down as one of the most important technology speeches ever given.
I've now listened to it three or four times. It is so important that he went to Europe and he said, we are going to stop listening to other countries telling American companies and American innovators what they can and cannot do. He said, we are going to lead in artificial intelligence. We are going to make sure that there is not onerous regulation that stops us from building American dynamism in our country and sharing it with the rest of the world.
We're not going to censor the American people. He was very strong on making sure that we are not going to say that things are misinformation and train AIs to do silly things and to have extraordinary bias. But the most important thing that he said was actually at the end, and this is so unique to JD Vance, he talked about, we are going to have a pro worker AI policy. We are going to make sure that workers and artificial intelligence work hand in hand to improve the American worker to create jobs. And AI is not going to replace the American worker. And I just think it is an extraordinary speech.
I could listen to it again. It's a 15 minute speech, but it is dense with information. He understands the importance of the technology in a way that I think very few politicians do. Do you think they got the message overseas? I'm not sure either one of us are equipped to understand what they're processing, but they think they understand that we're not asking, we're telling and understand that when you partner with China, you're never really a partner with China.
They're looking to dominate you and you'll never end up on the upside. I think they very much understood the message. And actually, I think it was a welcome message.
You know, he started out saying we used to call this conference AI safety. It is now about AI opportunity. America is going to lead the way we want to partner with you. And, you know, I honestly think a lot of the leaders there were found it refreshing. I think they were taking notes. They want to build this kind of success in their own countries.
They want to partner with America. I genuinely think that people were listening, listening with enthusiasm in that room. Maybe not all European leaders who want a fresh innovation in their own countries, but I think a lot of the people in that room were excited about what he was saying. Katherine, I keep hearing from people on the inside how suffocating the Biden administration was to them. Can you tell us what it was like in Silicon Valley during the AI people and the social media people? They really felt as though they didn't have a partner and that the Biden people were picking winners and losers.
Yes. I mean, that was the scary part for, I think, a lot of small tech. We call it little tech companies, the companies that are just coming up where it was basically said through both executive orders and through sort of these closed door rooms, we're going to pick a winner. We're going to pick the company that we want to work with, and then we're going to regulate that company. And I think that, you know, that was what was so incredible about the vice president's speech was he said, that is not what we're going to do. We do not want to believe the doomerism and believe the safety concerns, which then will lead to us working with one massive big tech company where the government is going to regulate it or where a unified global government is going to regulate AI. That is not the path we are going down.
That is a dangerous path. And so I think it was it was a about face from this administration on what the previous administration said about AI and what the world thought about AI. And so I think it was a tremendous speech.
It was an impactful one and one that's going to have ramifications for decades. Absolutely. Katherine Boyle, great, great to have you on. Appreciate it. Thanks so much, Brian. I'm Emily Campagno, host of the Fox True Crime podcast. This week, author and criminal justice reform advocate Toby Doerr joins me to discuss how she smuggled the man she loved out of prison. Listen and follow now at Fox True Crime dot com. Listen to the show ad free on Fox News podcast plus on Apple podcast, Amazon music with your prime membership or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
