Journalists like *Wired*'s Vittoria Elliott, Leah Feiger, and Tim Marchman are crushing it when it comes to Musk's DOGE coup:
https://www.wired.com/author/vittoria-elliott/
Nathan Tankus is doing incredible work all on his own, just blasting out scoops:
But for me, it was Tkacik - as usual - in the pages of *The American Prospect* who pulled it all together in a way that finally made it make sense, transforming the blitzkreig Muskian chaos into a recognizable playbook.
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While most of the coverage of Musk's wrecking crew has focused on the broccoli-haired Gen Z brownshirts who are wilding through the server rooms at giant, critical government agencies, Tkacik homes in on their boss, Tom Krause, whom she memorably dubs "the Fagin figure leading Elon Musk’s merry band of pubescent sovereignty pickpockets" (I told you she was a great writer!):
https://prospect.org/power/2025-02-06-private-equity-hatchet-man-leading-lost-boys-of-doge/
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Krause is a private equity looter. He's the guy who basically invented the playbook for PE takeovers of large tach companies, from Broadcom to Citrix to VMWare, converting their businesses from selling things to renting them out, loading them up with junk fees, slashing quality, jacking up prices over and over, and firing everyone who was good at their jobs. He is a *master* enshittifier, an enshittification *ninja*.
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