Electrical engineer and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has criticised Elon Musk’s “sledgehammer” approach to cutting administrative costs and initiating mass firings in America’s federal agencies.
The tech entrepreneur told CNBC at the Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress, that addressing administrative burdens and red tape in government can be a good thing, but it’s a process that should be done “more surgically, with a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer.”
Musk has been at the helm of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) which was set up by United States President Donald Trump to optimise the federal government and reduce administrative spending.
The tech giant has defended the firings, saying at a White House cabinet meeting in February, “We want to keep everyone who is essential and doing their job well, otherwise they should not be on the public payroll.”
“I definitely think that we should look for inefficiencies in government, but pretty much have a huge department that analyses bit by bit by bit,” said Wozniak.
“Just mass firings … it’s not good for a business to run that way,” he added, “It’s really to find out what works and what doesn’t, make the changes.”
Wozniak, who says he has Ukrainian heritage, went on to also accuse President Trump and Musk of bullying for the treatment of Ukraine and the country’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“Bullying is the best way to think of it,” he told CNBC. “If you’re in school, the bully is going to force their way on the little guy.”
He went on to say he has always favoured the little guy and “favoured the consumer of a good over the producer,” he added, in a reference to Musk's electric vehicle company Tesla.
Additionally Wozniak told CBC he believes he has been banned from Musk’s social platform X following several public criticisms over the quality of Tesla’s vehicles (of which he owns many).
He said he has not violated the platform's community rules and has been unable to unfreeze his account, which he alleges has been blocked for the past two to three months.
“Maybe it’s because I was on the wrong side of Elon,” he added.
Without mentioning Musk by name, Wozniak’s criticisms were also echoed on stage at Mobile Congress, saying the skills for running companies do not necessarily translate well to managing a government.
“I mean, when you run a business, you look round and you look for a consensus and a sharing and if half your employees feel one way and half the other way, you negotiate, you compromise. … But you don’t just say ‘everything is out’ and start fresh.”
Related content
