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The Federal Government Is Not a Startup

Tech billionaires aren’t the bean-counters that balancing the budget will require.
Kevin D. Williamson /
Illustration by The Dispatch. (Photos by Samuel Corum, Justin Sullivan, and Michael M. Santiago via Getty Images.)

People have been saying “We need to run government like a business!”—and trying to do so—for 200 years. The project always fails. The question isn’t whether it is going to fail again this time around, with the Silicon Valley tech mafia leading the way—the question is whether Elon Musk is smart enough to understand why it is going to fail.

Kevin D. Williamson is national correspondent at The Dispatch and is based in Virginia. Prior to joining the company in 2022, he spent 15 years as a writer and editor at National Review, worked as the theater critic at the New Criterion, and had a long career in local newspapers. He is also a writer in residence at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. When Kevin is not reporting on the world outside Washington for his Wanderland newsletter, you can find him at the rifle range or reading a book about literally almost anything other than politics.

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