Four days after Donald Trump’s inauguration, Elon Musk’s top lieutenants at the Treasury Department asked its acting secretary, a career civil servant, to immediately shut off all USAID payments using the department’s own ultra-sensitive payment processing system.

Elon Musk, the billionaire adviser to President Trump, has targeted the U.S. Agency for International Development as part of the Trump administration’s push to slash federal spending.In less than two weeks,

USAID and SpaceX worked together to support Ukraine’s war effort against Russia, and provided internet to multiple African countries.

Killing USAID by contrast is, as experts have noted, a gift to Russia and China. It's a gift to Russia because the current largest line item the USAID budget goes to Ukraine, which has been as devastated by the Russian invasion as many of those European countries were by the Nazis in 1945.

Elon Musk now has access to the $6-trillion U.S. federal payment system, and has other government departments in his crosshairs. Is the richest man in the world launching a soft takeover of the U.S. government?