After Killing USAID, MAGA’s Solution: Reinventing USAID, But Worse
The recent book “Character Limit” exposes a perfect case study in destructive arrogance: Twitter was already building more sophisticated versions of everything Musk claimed he wanted. But Musk and his sycophants were so convinced of their own brilliance, and so certain everyone at Twitter was an idiot, they didn’t even bother to understand what was already in place. Instead, they gleefully tore it all down — only to later attempt rebuilding worse versions of the same features, having learned nothing from the ruins.
Now we’re seeing the same thing play out with the US government. Just weeks after illegally killing an agency (which Musk never actually understood) that successfully promoted American interests abroad for decades, the MAGA crew is suddenly discovering they need… an agency that promotes American interests abroad. And just like at Twitter, their “solution” involves rebuilding a stripped-down, flawed version that fundamentally misunderstands what made the original work.
As we recently detailed, USAID’s genius lay in how it wove together humanitarian aid with commercial interests. Every dollar spent fighting disease or supporting development didn’t just protect American health and security — it helped create new markets for US companies. And critically, it did this while maintaining recipient countries’ independence, in stark contrast to China’s Belt & Road Initiative, which deliberately creates debt traps to tie countries to the Chinese economy (and was more directly tied to infrastructure initiatives, rather than broader development goals around health and stability).
The MAGA crew’s sudden amnesia about USAID’s value is particularly striking given their own recent history. Take Marco Rubio, now Secretary of State. Just three years ago, he was one of USAID’s strongest defenders, demanding increased funding specifically to “counter the Chinese Communist Party’s expanding global influence.”
For years, Rubio forcefully argued that USAID’s budget (less than 1% of federal spending) delivered outsized returns for American interests. “I promise you,” he declared in 2017, “it is going to be a lot harder to recruit someone to anti-Americanism and anti-American terrorism if the United States of America is the reason one is even alive today.” He even called out those who wanted to slash foreign aid as liars pushing false narratives about the budget.
But hey, that was three whole years ago. Ancient history!
The cognitive dissonance is reaching absurd levels. Just weeks after killing USAID, Fox News ran a segment bemoaning that America has no answer to China’s Belt & Road Initiative. Trump’s solution to this “crisis”? Apparently it’s Benjamin Black, son of hedge fund giant (and Jeffrey Epstein associate) Leon Black, who Trump is appointing to rebuild what’s left of USAID. Black’s revolutionary idea, as breathlessly reported by the NY Times? Investing in “pro-market” projects.
Here’s the punchline that makes this whole thing darkly comic: USAID was already laser-focused on market development. So focused, in fact, that some of its vocal critics have long complained it prioritized commercial interests over pure humanitarian aid. But USAID understood something Black and his MAGA compatriots don’t: creating sustainable markets requires playing the long game through stability, health, and development.
Black’s grand vision? Moving USAID’s resources to Trump’s pet project from his first term, the International Development Finance Corporation (DFC). His qualification for this role? A Substack essay co-written with Peter Thiel protégé Joe Lonsdale arguing that foreign aid should be… wait for it… market-driven.
It’s USAID all over again, just stripped of the sophistication, expertise, and strategic thinking that made it effective. Another case of destroying something complex to rebuild a worse version that fits on a bumper sticker.
In other words, here are the basics of Black’s revolutionary proposal, which I swear I am not making up:
- Take USAID’s $44 billion budget
- Give it to the DFC for “market-oriented investments”
- ???
- Profit! (No, literally — the proposal promises “returns that would fund future programs”)
The whole thing reads like someone discovered USAID’s actual mission statement, crossed out the sophisticated parts about development and stability, and added “but make it more Finance Bro.” It would be funny if it weren’t so predictable.
And while USAID had its critics on both the left (for being too market-focused) and right (for being “wasteful”), it had evolved sophisticated mechanisms to balance these concerns. The agency’s programs underwent rigorous evaluation and adapted over decades. The DFC, by contrast, largely operates as a standard investment vehicle without this institutional knowledge — it’s like replacing a surgeon with someone who’s played “Operation” once.
Just like Musk “discovering” features Twitter already had, MAGA is now “inventing” development strategies that USAID spent decades refining by actually understanding the realities and nuances of the larger world.
The parallels here are almost too perfect. Just as Musk replaced Twitter’s verification system — which created genuine value through carefully managed trust — with a simplistic “pay for checkmark” scheme, MAGA wants to replace USAID’s sophisticated development strategy with a crude, short-term, “invest for returns” approach. Both changes promise quick, measurable wins while destroying the underlying long-term value and strategic importance that took years to build.
This is the MAGA/Musk playbook in action: take a complex system you don’t understand, declare it broken because you can’t grasp its nuances, tear it down while claiming you’ll build something better, then deliver a simplified version that completely misses the point. Whether it’s Twitter’s trust systems or USAID’s market development strategy, these weren’t just programs — they were calibrated ecosystems built on years of learning and refinement, with longer term goals in mind.
But here’s what makes this pattern truly dangerous: it’s not just ignorance, it’s aggressive ignorance. The Musk/MAGA worldview doesn’t just fail to understand complexity — it treats complexity itself as evidence of incompetence or corruption. They’re not just incapable of seeing the sophistication in these systems; they’re ideologically opposed to admitting such sophistication could exist.