Yuri Kobzar22:55, 09.02.25

The new US administration believes that the American military is spending money incorrectly.

The new US administration plans to significantly “optimise” Pentagon spending at the same time that Donald Trump is pressuring Europe to sharply increase its defence spending , the Financial Times reports .

The US Department of Defense, whose annual budget is about $800 billion, will soon come under the scrutiny of the “Department of Efficiency” headed by eccentric billionaire Elon Musk, Trump said.

“Let’s audit the military. We’re going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse. You know, the people elected me on that,” Trump said.

Musk’s potential involvement in the Pentagon’s cost-cutting quest has already raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest, given that his companies, SpaceX and Starlink, have government contracts. But Mike Walz, Trump’s national security adviser, dismissed those concerns, saying “all the appropriate safeguards” would be in place.

“The American people have said enough is enough, enough of the bloat, enough of the waste, enough of the debt. We really need some great minds, and we need business leaders to come in and completely reform the Pentagon’s procurement processes,” he said.

The second Trump administration, with Musk at its core, has already made aggressive attempts to halt some federal programs. However, some of these efforts have been blocked in the courts. Democrats are talking about the biggest constitutional crisis in half a century.

Republican Rep. Mike Turner agreed that the spending policy should be looked at critically, but he also said Musk and his department could have been more thoughtful.

“He needs to communicate more professionally with the American public,” Turner said.

(C)UNIAN 2025