Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” cost the government $9.5 billion in 2025 paying federal employees not to work, the Government Accountability Office found in a Sept. 15 report, and an Aug. 6 GAO audit of DOGE’s “Wall of Receipts” found nearly 2,000 contracts falsely listed as terminated. While 12% of the federal civilian workforce left, the federal budget and the debt both grew.

The people who ran it have done better. About two dozen DOGE alumni have since drawn at least half a billion dollars in federal contracts and venture investment, the Washington Post reported Oct. 12, mostly in cybersecurity and defense software sold to the agencies they had just left. The largest, Cathedral, raised $160 million in July at a $1.4 billion valuation, with firms Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital taking board seats, to sell AI-driven offensive and defensive cyber operations to the military; it has no disclosed contracts or revenue. Its founders include Luke Farritor, who spent six months inside the Energy, Health and Human Services, and General Services departments, and Gavin Kliger, who was named the Pentagon’s chief data officer in March, left in April, and was raising money by May. “They found a new way to monetize government service that is far beyond anything lobbyists ever dreamed of,” an ethics lawyer told the Post.