The New Yorker:

Joe Gebbia, a risd grad and an Airbnb billionaire, may soon lead the federal cost-cutting effort known as doge. Could there be clues to his methods in his art-school days?

By Charles Bethea

Who will help lead the Department of Government Efficiency now that Elon Musk has left the scene? News reports have mentioned Joe Gebbia, a Tesla board member and a co-founder of Airbnb, as a possible replacement. Gebbia is forty-three. Like Musk—his close friend—he is a billionaire, a resident of Austin, Texas, and the rumored recipient of a hair transplant. Gebbia formally announced his political conversion on X in January, posting that, after years of supporting Democrats, he finally “did [his] own research” and concluded that Donald Trump “deeply cares about our nation.” His feed has a maha flavor: Big Food exposés (“The truth about Ketchup”) alternate with digs at liberals suffering from “TDS,” or Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Unlike Musk, Gebbia was trained not as an engineer but as a designer. Upon joining doge, in February, he pledged to bring his “designer brain and startup spirit” to the task of cutting two trillion dollars from the federal budget. One of his early projects: digitizing the retirement process for federal workers. He mused to Fox News’ Bret Baier that, under doge’s influence, interacting with the government could soon resemble “an Apple Store-like experience.”

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