Elon Musk’s government takeover has been as swift as it has been chaotic.

In just two short weeks, Musk, who has been tasked with cutting the federal budget as part of a new Department of Government Efficiency spun up by President Donald Trump, has become a human wrecking ball in Washington.

He’s bullied his way into accessing sensitive government information — including federal payments systems — and has been pushing aside anyone who challenges his authority or gets in his way. Under Musk’s command, DOGE has halted some Treasury Department payments to contractors and is now terminating government office and building leases. He’s reportedly sleeping at the office.

He appears to have single-handedly shut down an entire federal agency, the US Agency for International Development, which was mandatedto “extend assistance to countries recovering from disaster, trying to escape poverty, and engaging in democratic reforms.”

If you feel like you’ve seen this episode of “Elon Deletes Things” before, it’s because you have: After the world’s richest man bought Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022, he walked into the company’s headquarters and immediately started cutting. As I detailed in my book about the takeover, Musk stopped paying vendors, fired people who disagreed with him, and laid off more than half of Twitter’s employees within weeks of owning the company.

When the US government offered more than 2 million federal workers a buyout last week, the language used in the email they received — “Fork In The Road” — mirrored the buyout email that Musk sent to Twitter employees shortly after his takeover.

And just like Musk’s Twitter takeover, his blitz through the government has left a wake of shock, concern — and legal challenges. Union groups already filed suit against the Treasury Department on Monday alleging Musk’s access to the Treasury payments system allowed him to illegally download their members’ private information. Democratic lawmakers have also vowed to take Musk to court to try and rein him in.

But while the similarities between Musk’s government cuts and Musk’s Twitter takeover are striking, there’s an obvious but important distinction: Musk purchased Twitter with private money, and as a privately held business, he was free to make drastic changes as he saw fit. In some cases, those changes came with consequences, like an advertiser boycott, numerous lawsuits and a shrinking valuation.

Contrary to how things may feel, Musk doesn’t own the US government. He hasn’t been elected by the people who will undoubtedly be impacted by whatever aggressive cuts he ultimately makes. And if Musk stiffs vendors, fails to pay severance or makes a technical error that opens the US to national security vulnerabilities, the consequences will come for all of us.

I don’t have a problem with a thorough cleanup of the national budget. With $7 trillion in annual spending, there must be billions of ways to cut this down.

That Musk would recycle his Twitter playbook should come as little surprise. Musk tends to operate the same way — at a million miles per hour without much concern for collateral damage — no matter what industry he’s working in.

It should, though, cause some concern. Musk succeeded in cutting Twitter’s costs. He also eroded some 72% of Twitter’s value. Twitter, now X, still operates, but has lost its place as a cultural cornerstone of the internet. To achieve efficiency, Musk sacrificed some of the key societal elements that made Twitter great.

Let’s hope DOGE doesn’t make the same sacrifices.