WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 9: White House Senior Advisor Elon Musk walks to the White House after landing in Marine One on the South Lawn with U.S. President Donald Trump (not pictured) on March 9, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump was returning to the White House after spending the weekend at Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Florida. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
Washington D.C. – Elon Musk, tech billionaire, space cowboy, and occasional chaos agent, has once again grabbed the mic—this time to drop some spicy takes on how the U.S. government handles its money. Appearing on Senator Ted Cruz’s podcast (yes, that’s a thing), Musk claimed that the government’s financial system is basically a free-for-all, with payments being made by a handful of computers that seemingly answer to no one.
According to Musk, 14 mysterious computers, mostly at the Treasury Department, are just out here issuing payments without much human oversight. He described the situation as “insane,” comparing it to printing “magic money.” Now, if you’ve ever checked your bank account and wondered where all your money went, you might relate—except in this case, it’s happening at a scale measured in billions of dollars.
Musk went on to accuse the government of some next-level accounting chaos. He claimed that payments are going out with no proper tracking, no explanations, and no clear system to shut them down when they’re no longer needed. According to him, some contracts continue receiving payments even after they’re supposed to be dead and buried.
“In my opinion, it’s like 80% waste and 20% fraud,” Musk said, in a statement that sounds like something he came up with five minutes before the podcast started. He also suggested that non-profits getting government funds without strong oversight could be “maybe the biggest scam of all time.” Bold claim, considering the existence of NFTs.
Financial experts aren’t entirely sure what to make of Musk’s allegations. Hedge fund manager Jay Hatfield speculated that Musk might be referring to the government’s failure to properly use double-entry accounting, a system that most businesses (and responsible adults) use to keep track of their money. While Hatfield admitted that Musk’s claims were surprising, he didn’t completely rule out the possibility that some of it could be true.
That said, “the government is bad at handling money” is hardly a revolutionary concept. If you’ve ever witnessed a billion-dollar defense project go wildly over budget or heard about someone being sent a stimulus check long after they passed away, you know that efficiency isn’t exactly Washington’s strong suit.
As of now, the government has not publicly responded to Musk’s claims, possibly because they have better things to do, or possibly because they, too, are just now realizing their entire financial system might be run on autopilot. If Musk is correct, though, it raises some serious questions about who’s actually keeping an eye on where taxpayer money is going—or if it’s all just one giant Excel sheet nobody’s bothered to check since the ‘90s.
Either way, expect Musk to keep tweeting about it. Because if there’s one thing he loves more than rockets and electric cars, it’s stirring the pot.
