Trump, Musk – and system latency

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A lot has been said and written about President Trump's policies in the short period of 47 days. This administration piques the interest of pundits further because of one important addition: Elon Musk's role as the head of the newly minted Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has raised many eyebrows.

Many fear that Donald Trump is dismantling the Western-dominated world order to please some of his foreign friends, particularly Russia. This concern stems from the inquiry into alleged Russian involvement in securing Trump's victory in 2016. That would imply that the 45th and now the 47th US President is a Russian plant. However, this theory, like the aforementioned inquiry, has a fatal flaw - it disregards the agency of the American people.

Suppose he is a Russian asset, and the American people still chose him over his exceptionally gifted opponents (for the second time, with an indisputable majority). What does that say about their agency and free will? And that is not all. While insinuations abound, we have seen no concrete evidence to support this claim.

Seen through a similar lens, Elon Musk is painted as a greedy, power-hungry, Nazi-adjacent oligarch who seeks to punish bureaucrats who challenge his exponential growth. This theory, too, has fatal flaws. If he is truly in proximity to racist white nationalism, why did all liberals turn a blind eye to his convictions just ten years ago, when he was being hailed as a bleeding-heart liberal hero and the saviour of Mother Earth?

Furthermore, thanks to the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission verdict and the resulting lobbying, the business class already exercises unfettered power in America. Why, then, would the world's richest man expose himself to scrutiny, mudslinging and hatred when he could have achieved the same ends through carefully placed sub-cabinet appointments?

So, what should we make of President Trump's foreign policy and DOGE's persistent rattling of the American bureaucracy? Judging by the promises he campaigned on and the voter response he received in the elections, I would hazard a guess that it has much to do with the political and administrative system's inertia. Call it latency, path dependence or systemic inertia — institutions and systems rarely adapt to changing times, even in the world's most advanced democracies.

This resistance is not necessarily rooted in corruption. Yet, to disaffected people, it invariably looks like corruption. And let's face it, when it comes to a country as powerful as the US, where money is considered free speech, you cannot rule out foul play either. Hence, the campaign promise of "draining the swamp".

To understand this path dependence, let me offer an analogy. If you use a smartphone, you must have experienced a moment when you delete a sizable file, but the phone does not immediately show an increase in available memory. You check the trash folder, but the file is not there either.

Only when you empty the trash does the memory free up. This delay is due to system latency, UI lag, or a refresh delay. Now, consider the voter's reality. A voter invariably has one main lever — the vote. But imagine that the voter is pressing the button repeatedly, yet nothing changes. What does the voter do next? Get a hammer. That is precisely what happened.

Before operationalising this analogy, let's address the theoretical backdrop. Many experts have written about the inertia of systems and bureaucracies. One of the loudest voices is Charles Lindblom. In his Politics and Markets (1977), he states: "The market system and its associated political arrangements —  tend to perpetuate themselves not because they are ideal but because they are there."

Political scientist Paul Pierson elaborates on this idea: "Once established, patterns of political mobilisation, the institutional rules of the game, and even citizens' basic ways of thinking about the political world will often generate self-reinforcing dynamics."

And here is Max Weber in Economy and Society (1922): "Once it is fully established, bureaucracy is among those social structures which are the hardest to destroy."

Now, let us apply this to the international system. Some institutions were created solely with the Cold War in mind. Yet, the Cold War ended 34 years ago, and these institutions have since struggled to find a new purpose. Critics argue that such institutions manufacture threats to justify their existence. Russians, for instance, accuse NATO of failing to extricate itself from a Cold War mentality, making conflict a self-fulfilling prophecy. Similarly, critics of the CIA claim that its pivot from the Cold War to the Global War on Terror exacerbated the rise of terrorism. This is a classic observer effect, intertwined with conspiracy theories masquerading as analysis.

However, two real-world events profoundly shook the average American's faith in the system: the Iraq invasion and the 2008 financial crisis. Obama was supposed to be the iconoclast, the ultimate repudiation of the system. But when he bailed out nearly every culpable institution and individual, disillusionment set in. Voters then reached for the "break the glass" option.

During Trump's first term, swing voters remained wary of his intentions, partly due to the ongoing Russia inquiry and the mainstream media's relentless campaign. Then along came COVID. President Biden won and attempted to implement positive changes, but public distrust in bureaucracy deepened.

That is why, when media and Democrats painted "Project 2025" as a threat, the average American saw it in a positive light.

This brings us back to Elon Musk. He, too, was growing wary of the system. Recall how he was excluded from a White House meeting on green energy. It is astonishing that one of the industry's leading figures was left out of the loop. Figures like Musk must have concluded that ideology had replaced pragmatic policymaking. Hence, his crusade against the so-called "woke virus".

However, everything being done today was telegraphed well in advance by the Republican campaign. Perhaps the most revealing discovery is not financial waste but the continued use of COBOL in government record offices — an emblem of the system's failure to renew itself.

Federal workers are understandably anxious. One hopes they find a way through this upheaval. As for the international system, a growing consensus among American allies suggests that this is a phase of reorganisation, not destruction. And for that to happen America's chosen leader will have to be shown the deference that builds on the agenda of peace through strength. In the end, a stronger, richer America serves the free world's interests.