Reid Hoffman warns of risks in Musk’s effort to remake US government

LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman cautioned that Silicon Valley’s “move fast and break things” mentality should not be applied to the public sector and expressed skepticism about Elon Musk’s efforts to radically reshape the US government.

“There is a reason the government doesn’t work like companies - even though I think there is an efficiency that is really good - and I think we need to respect those reasons,” Hoffman, a partner at Greylock, said in an interview Thursday with Bloomberg Television.

He added that the government “should be a little more compassionate and judicious.”

Hoffman and Musk previously worked together at PayPal, but the two billionaires have clashed in recent years over politics. Hoffman threw his financial weight behind former Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. Musk, meanwhile, went all-in on Donald Trump’s campaign and now serves as a special government employee in the White House, where he oversees the new administration’s initiative to remake the federal bureaucracy.

In that role, Musk has quickly pushed to slash the size of the government, including taking steps to close the US Agency for International Development. Those moves have drawn comparisons to Musk’s substantial cuts at Twitter after acquiring the social media company and rebranding it as X.

“The thing we most want as American citizens is for our government to succeed,” Hoffman said, when asked about whether his support for Harris might lead to retribution from the White House. “That is what I most want.”

Hoffman on Monday unveiled his latest startup, Manas AI, a drug discovery company co-founded with oncologist Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee. Manas has raised $24.6 million in seed funding from Hoffman and General Catalyst.