NGOs funded by the US may be the "biggest scam ever" and "America is going bankrupt" in funding them, according to President Donald Trump's key adviser and billionaire Elon Musk. The remarks cast a shadow on several NGOs that came up during the Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden administrations and provide credence to allegations that Washington DC used such organisations to effect regime change and policy interference globally.
Musk, who owns microblogging platform X, now heads the newly created Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE under the Donald Trump administration. The department says they are working to cut wasteful spending and save billions in taxpayer money.
In a podcast with Joe Rogan, Musk said the "whole NGO thing is a nightmare".
"Small decisions result in multi-billion-dollar outcomes. So, you know, as a case where we saw, one person was getting $1.9 billion sent to their NGO, which basically got formed about a year ago and had really no prior activity. The whole NGO thing is a nightmare. And it's, a misnomer because if you have a government-funded non-governmental organisation, you're simply a government-funded organisation. It's an oxymoron," he said.
He then said several people are becoming "very wealthy" through these non-profit organisations. "Government-funded NGOs are a way to do things, that would be illegal if they were the government but are somehow made legal if it is sent to a so-called non-profit... people cash out these non-profits. They become very wealthy through non-profits. They pay themselves enormous sums."
Earlier, Musk had alleged that departments such as USAID were laundering money. "(It's) one of the biggest, maybe the biggest scam ever. I think there's a total number of NGOs, probably millions, but, in terms of large NGOs, tens of thousands. I mean, it's kind of a hack to the system where, you know, someone can get an NGO stood up for a fairly small amount of money." he said.
The 'X' boss then referred to billionaire George Soros, who the ruling BJP has accused of trying to foment trouble in India in collusion with the Congress. The main Opposition has trashed these allegations.
"George Soros was really good at this. George Soros is like a system hacker. Like he figured out how to hack the system. He's a genius at arbitrage. I mean, these days he's pretty old, but a genius at arbitrage. So he figured out that you could leverage a small amount of money to create a non-profit, then lobby the politicians to send a ton of money to that non-profit. So you can take what might be, you know, a $10 million donation to a non-profit to create a non-profit and leverage that into a billion-dollar NGO," Musk said.
"A non-profit is a weird word. It's just a non-governmental organisation. And then the government continues to fund that every year. And it'll have a nice-sounding name like the Institute for Peace or something like that. But really, it's a graph machine," he added.
Asked what were the requirements to set up such NGOs, Musk replied, "Just really no requirements at all. So they just get grants and the government just assumes that they're doing good work. I think a lot of people in the government know that they're not doing good work. But it's a giant graph machine. I mean, people online are like unpacking this, you know. It almost seems fake."
When Rogan asked if this was "a giant propaganda machine" or "a giant regime change machine", Musk replied, "Yes, yeah."
The 'X' boss, however, said not all money sent to NGOs was wasteful expenditure. "So there's going to be some percent good that they add in there, but it might be 5 per cent or 10 per cent good, but 90-95 per cent not. I mean, we have continued to fund things that appear to be legitimate, if there's even the flimsiest excuse. Like I just said, send me a picture of the thing. Like you could literally have AI generate the picture, but if you're not even willing to try to trick me, then we're not going to send the money," he said.
Musk referred to a mistakenly cancelled grant that DOGE eventually reversed. "Like work for like Ebola prevention. I actually don't even know if this work is even effective. It may or may not be, it could be the kind of thing where you sort of fund Ebola prevention, but it turns out that actually you're funding a lab that develops new Ebola recipes or something, you know? And they claim it's Ebola prevention, but it's actually Ebola creation. So some of these things, I don't know."
Referring to the cost-cutting exercise through DOGE, he said the US government is now losing $2 trillion a year and has been failing audits. "There's a case where, I think Senator (Susan) Collins was telling me about how she gave the Navy $12 billion for more submarines, (but) got no extra submarines. And then held a hearing to say where did the $12 billion go. And they were like, we don't know," he said. "So, you know, the reason I'm putting so much effort into this is that I think it is a very dire situation. It's not optional basically. America's going bankrupt. That just can't happen."
Musk said payments are made through a main computer -- payments master database that is responsible for almost $5 trillion of payments a year.
"And, when we came there, we are looking at PAM and it's like you could put a payment through with no payment categorisation code and, and no description on the payment. Like basically untraceable blank checks. This is the kind of thing that if it was done as a public company, the company would be immediately delisted and the executive team would be thrown in prison, but this is just normal at the government," he said.
Musk detailed how payments to various NGOs continued uninterrupted. "There's a lot of payments that someone just approved, but then that payment officer changed jobs or retired or died. And the payments just keep going. You know, it's like if you forget to pay your gym membership or something like that."
"There's this four-point something trillion dollars, they kind of don't know where it went. They don't know that," says Musk.
