Dissecting Elon Musk’s Hostile Takeover with Anne Applebaum, Eoin Higgins & Ryan Mac

On with Kara Swisher

New York Magazine

News Commentary, News, Society & Culture

4.2 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Elon Musk and a band of young DOGE engineers are taking control of key government infrastructure. The scale and speed with which they’re hijacking control of the federal government is shocking, and even President Donald Trump appears not to know all that Musk is doing. In order to analyze what’s actually happening and understand how and why other tech billionaires are also cozying up to Trump, we’re joined by Anne Applebaum, Eoin Higgins & Ryan Mac. Applebaum is a staff writer for The Atlantic, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, and author of the recently released Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run The World. Higgins is a reporter for the IT Brew and author of Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left. And Mac covers corporate accountability across the global technology industry for the New York Times, and he is the co-author of Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter. This episode was recorded on Monday February 3rd. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram and TikTok @onwithkaraswisher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, everyone from New York Magazine in the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is on with Carrow Swisher, and I'm
0:17.7	Karo Swisher. We're currently in the middle of a hostile takeover of the federal
0:21.8	government orchestrated by Elon Musk. He's bringing his Twitter destruction playbook to the U.S.
0:27.5	government and unfortunately, much of the mainstream media is covering it with a big shrug as if it's
0:32.7	just another Tuesday. It is not, and it's really important that the media step up and really understand what's
0:39.1	happening at each of these federal agencies, which are being run roughshed over by Elon Musk and his
0:45.9	team at Doge. So I've gathered three of the sharpest journalists I know to begin unpacking this
0:51.1	unprecedented government takeover, which is still unfolding, as I said.
0:55.3	Anne Applebaum is a staff writer at the Atlantic and a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian.
0:59.9	Her latest book is Autocracy Inc. The Dictators who want to Run the World.
1:04.4	Owen Higgins is a reporter with IT Brew, who covers cybersecurity, IT jobs, and government tech.
1:10.2	He's just published a book called Owned,
1:12.3	how tech billionaires on the right bought the loudest voices on the left. And Ryan Mack is a New York
1:18.5	Times reporter who covers corporate accountability across the global technology industry. His book
1:23.8	is Character Limit, how Elon Musk destroyed Twitter. And it's required required reading if you want to understand what Musk is doing to the federal government right now.
1:32.5	So stick around.
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