Department of Government Efficiency representatives went to the Pentagon Friday for meetings with defense officials, marking the start of another project to cut costs in the federal government.
“Great kickoff with @DeptofDefense,” the X account for DOGE said Friday. “Looking forward to working together to safely save taxpayer dollars and eliminate waste, fraud and abuse.”
Two defense officials confirmed DOGE personnel’s visit, but the Defense Department declined to comment on who specifically attended those meetings.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters traveling with him in Europe that he was looking forward to working with DOGE.
“We welcome DOGE to the Pentagon, and I hope to welcome Elon to the Pentagon very soon and his team, working in collaboration with us,” Hegseth said last week. “There are waste, redundancies and headcounts in headquarters that need to be addressed.”
The Defense Department has an annual budget of over $800 billion and more than 3 million personnel, including civilian employees and military service members. The nonpartisan Peter G. Peterson Foundation notes that defense spending represents nearly half of all discretionary spending in the U.S. — 47% in 2024 — and the U.S. spends more than the next nine countries combined on defense.
“Where we can find billions of dollars — and he’s right to say billions — inside the Defense Department, every dollar we save there is a dollar that goes to warfighters, and that’s good for the American people,” Hegseth said, adding that climate programs might be an area to consider for cuts.
He did not elaborate on what other areas of the department’s budget were likely to be targeted.
The Trump administration has been asked whether there is any oversight of DOGE’s cost-cutting effort, since it was created by Elon Musk, whose companies are estimated to have contracts with the federal government totalling billions of dollars through SpaceX, Starlink and Tesla. Reuters noted that SpaceX CEO Gwynne Shotwell has estimated that the company had $22 billion in U.S. contracts, $15 billion from NASA. An exact accounting of Musk’s defense contracts can’t be established, however, because a number of the contracts are classified.
In a lawsuit filed by several Democratic state attorneys general against Mr. Trump and Musk that challenges Musk’s appointment and his access to data in several departments, the White House said Musk is not the administrator of DOGE and is not employed by DOGE. Joshua Fisher, the White House director of the Office of Administration, in a filing with the court defined Musk’s role as special adviser to the president, similar to the role of Anita Dunn in the Biden administration.
In the lawsuit, the state attorneys general are arguing that Mr. Trump “delegated virtually unchecked authority to Mr. Musk without proper legal authorization from Congress.”
The Trump administration has presented Musk as the leader of the cost-cutting effort on several occasions. In the Oval Office last week, Mr. Trump asked Musk to detail what “your team” has found.
“Elon is a great patriot,” Hegseth said during the briefing with reporters in Europe, adding that DOGE and the Defense Department would work in coordination.
“We’re not going to do things that are to the detriment of American operational or tactical capabilities,” Hegseth said.
