Meet The Cost-Cutting Enforcer Leading Musk's Government Spending Crackdown

Steve Davis, Elon Musk‘s longtime lieutenant known for efficiency, is bringing his cost-cutting playbook to Washington as coordinator of the Department of Government Efficiency.

Davis’s reputation for aggressive cost reduction was forged at Twitter after Musk’s 2022 acquisition. According to The Wall Street Journal, he scrutinized expenses down to janitorial services at data centers, halted vendor payments to force contract renegotiations, and pushed for dramatic workforce reductions.

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Now he’s applying similar tactics to federal spending. DOGE has gained access to systems across government agencies, including the Treasury’s payment network, which the team is examining for potential waste. However, a federal judge temporarily restricted the access on Saturday and a set hearing for Friday.

Davis’s approach is most visible in the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, a $40-billion foreign assistance agency with 10,000 employees, The Journal said. He’s working closely with Peter Marocco, who oversees USAID’s arrangement under the State Department, the report said. 

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Court records from a 2023 lawsuit against Twitter show allegations concerning Davis’s uncompromising style. When told about financial risks from breaking office leases, Davis allegedly said, “Well, we just won’t pay those. We just won’t pay landlords.” When informed a building permit was required for Musk’s office bathroom, Davis allegedly dismissed the requirement, saying, “We don’t do that; we don’t have to follow those rules.”

An aerospace engineer with degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University, Davis has worked with Musk for over two decades. His career path was unexpectedly shaped by pop culture—in a 2015 interview with journalist Jeff Pearlman cited by the Journal, Davis said watching the 1998 film “Armageddon” as an undergraduate business student inspired him to switch to engineering, leading him to graduate studies in aeronautics and eventually SpaceX.

“In conclusion, my entire life path was redirected by a Bruce Willis movie,” Davis told journalist Pearlman.

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During an earlier Washington stint in 2008, while pursuing economics at George Mason University, he opened a frozen yogurt shop called Mr. Yogato, offering discounts for customers who could sing “Mr. Roboto” or stump him on “Seinfeld” trivia, The Journal said. 

U.S. Attorney Ed Martin publicly offered support for Davis’s mission. “If people are discovered to have broken the law or even acted simply unethically, we will investigate them and chase them to the end of the Earth,” Martin said in a letter last week that he posted on X. 

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