In the first few weeks of Donald Trump’s second term in the White House, the president dispatched the world’s richest man, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and an army of engineers to hack and slash the federal bureaucracy.

Elon Musk, standing beside President Trump in the Oval Office on Tuesday, defended the Department of Government Efficiency's efforts to drastically cut spending and dismiss workers across the federal government,

Parts of the US bureaucracy are no doubt bloated and inefficient, and need modernisation. Most American voters support this idea. Reforming creaking bureaucracies often requires radical efforts. Yet it also needs detailed planning,