President Trump has tasked Elon Musk with an enormous job to search across the federal government

and root out inefficiencies and waste. But Musk's initial, often chaotic infiltration of various

government departments, has sparked alarm. It's also put the tech entrepreneur at center stage of the

conservative movement, appearing today in front of an audience at

CPAC, wielding a chainsaw he said he'd used to slash the federal bureaucracy. William Brangham

looks at the history of the man at the center of this effort.

If the bureaucracy is in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have?

Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, now standing in the most powerful office in the world.

The people voted for major government reformed. There should be no doubt about that.

But how did this visionary tech leader, a man who once championed clean energy to save the planet and remained politically neutral for much of his career, end up working with President Donald Trump to dramatically scale back the size of the federal government?

Very rarely do you see a business leader essentially camping out in the White House trying to influence

government spending, influence government regulations the way Elon Musk is doing?

The Wall Street Journal's Tim Higgins wrote a book on Musk and Tesla called PowerPlay.

There's also this kind of prove the world wrong mentality. He's got a huge chip on his shoulder. For so long, he's been told that what he was doing wasn't possible, that he was crazy, that he couldn't do it. And when you talk to him, you realize he likes proving people wrong.

He tends to think in terms of missions for himself. So those usually revolve around making a big impact for humanity.

Kate Conger covers Musk for the New York Times and co-authored the book Character Limit about

Musk's takeover of Twitter, which he renamed X.

You see this with SpaceX, where he's trying to extend the life of humanity by establishing

colonies on Mars, with Tesla, where he's trying to cut back on EV emissions and save the planet.

And with X, too, he has given himself this mission of what he sees as protecting and saving

online free speech.

And his approach to the Trump administration is the same.

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