摘要：New York CNN —In November 2022, days after Elon Musk took control of the company then called Twitter, employees received an email
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The ‘Muskification’ of the federal government is in full swing
Analysis by Clare Duffy, CNN
4 minute read
Published 2:17 PM EST, Wed January 29, 2025
联邦政府的 “马斯克化” 全面展开
克莱尔·达菲 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）分析报道
阅读时长4分钟
美国东部时间2025年1月29日周三下午2:17发布
Tesla CEO Elon Musk arrives for the inauguration ceremony before Donald Trump is sworn in as the 47th US President in the US Capitol Rotunda.
Chip Somodevilla/Pool/AFP/Getty Images
特斯拉首席执行官埃隆·马斯克出席唐纳德·特朗普在美国国会大厦圆形大厅宣誓就任第47任美国总统前的就职典礼。（奇普·索莫德维拉/普尔/法新社/盖蒂图片社 供图）
New York CNN — In November 2022, days after Elon Musk took control of the company then called Twitter, employees received an email with the subject line: “A fork in the road.” Now he’s turned his attention to the US government, and federal workers just received a memo with the same subject line.
美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）纽约消息——2022年11月，埃隆·马斯克接管当时名为推特（Twitter）的公司几天后，员工收到一封主题为 “岔路口” 的电子邮件。如今，他将目光投向了美国政府，联邦工作人员刚刚收到一份同样主题的备忘录。
The Twitter email offered workers an ultimatum: commit to “exceptional performance” and working “extremely hardcore” or leave the company. On Tuesday, the memo to federal government employeesgave them a nearly identical choice: commit to “excellence,” and being “reliable, loyal, trustworthy,” among other things, or resign and take a buyout.
The strikingly similar language is perhaps the clearest sign yet that Musk — who is now a top advisor to President Donald Trump, with an office in the White House — appears to be bringing his Twitter takeover playbook to the federal government. And it’s raising questions about whether America’s government could rapidly slash staff like a tech company, and whether it will suffer the same consequences as Twitter, including the broken systems and sharp decline in value that has bedeviled the social media company following his acquisition.
那封推特邮件给员工下了最后通牒：要么致力于 “卓越表现”，“极度拼命” 工作，要么离开公司。周二，发给联邦政府雇员的备忘录给出了几乎相同的选择：要么致力于 “追求卓越”，做到 “可靠、忠诚、值得信赖” 等，要么辞职并接受买断方案。
这种惊人相似的措辞，或许是迄今最明显的迹象，表明如今身为唐纳德·特朗普总统高级顾问且在白宫拥有办公室的马斯克，似乎正将他收购推特的策略运用到联邦政府。这引发了诸多疑问：美国政府是否会像科技公司那样迅速裁员？它是否会遭受与推特同样的后果，比如系统崩溃和价值大幅缩水，自马斯克收购推特后，这些问题一直困扰着这家社交媒体公司。
“The freeze in all federal spending feels eerily familiar to this former Twitter employee to when Elon took over,” Lara Cohen, who left her post after Musk’s takeoveras Twitter’s global head of marketing and partners, said in a Threads post Tuesday. “They come in, get no context, turn off everything without knowing who does what… That was a social media company. This is the country and this will hurt people beyond repair.”
On the campaign trail, Musk talked frequently about downsizing the federal government. And he played an integral part in the rollout of Tuesday’s federal government buyouts, an official told CNN, through his position leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
And it makes sense why Trump would be on board with such a plan, said William Klepper, a professor of management at Columbia Business School. “Trump is used to being in a reality show, right? He’s used to firing people. That’s a script that he has,” Klepper said.
But one environment is not necessarily like the other.
“所有联邦开支冻结，这让身为前推特员工的我感到似曾相识，就像埃隆刚接管推特时一样。” 劳拉·科恩周二在Threads平台发文称。她在马斯克接管推特后辞去了推特全球营销与合作伙伴负责人一职。“他们一来，不了解情况，也不清楚谁负责什么，就关停一切…… 那只是一家社交媒体公司。而这可是整个国家，这将对民众造成无法挽回的伤害。”
在竞选活动中，马斯克频繁谈及精简联邦政府规模。一位官员向CNN透露，通过领导政府效率部（DOGE），他在周二联邦政府买断方案的推出过程中发挥了不可或缺的作用。
哥伦比亚商学院管理学教授威廉·克莱珀表示，特朗普支持这样的计划并不奇怪。“特朗普习惯了参加真人秀节目，对吧？他习惯解雇员工。这是他熟悉的套路。”
但这两种环境并非完全相同。
“Government is not business,” he said. “In business, the winning formula is the one that results in providing greater value to customers than your competitors and gives you superior profitability. In government, it’s a different perspective, for the most part you (trying to) create greater value for your constituents in terms of what you’re offering them in programming and services.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt sidestepped a question Wednesday from CNN about Musk’s involvement in the buyout, instead saying Musk’s work at DOGE has been “incredibly productive.”
On Wednesday, Musk claimed in an X post that, “Downsizing government is the most popular issue by far!” The post referenced a Reuters/Ipsos poll that mainly shows opposition to Trump’s executive orders but says that 44% of Americans support ending government “diversity, equity and inclusion” initiatives.
“政府不同于企业，” 他说，“在企业中，成功的模式是为客户提供比竞争对手更多的价值，从而实现卓越的盈利能力。而在政府层面，视角截然不同，大多数情况下，你要在项目规划和服务方面为选民创造更大价值。”
周三，白宫新闻秘书卡罗琳·利维特回避了CNN关于马斯克在买断方案中所起作用的提问，只是表示马斯克在政府效率部的工作 “卓有成效”。
The day before Musk closed his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter, which he’s re-dubbed X, he walked through the front door with a toilet. Starting within hours of his takeover the following day, Musk took something like a hacksaw to the company, moves that he said were essential to “save” the company but that caused chaos.
The billionaire laid off a majority of the company’s staff — and then had to ask dozens of workers to return.
He ordered the closure of at least one data center — and the platform experienced numerous glitches and outages in the following months.
推特收购策略回顾
在马斯克以440亿美元完成对推特（现已更名为X）的收购交易的前一天，他拿着一个马桶走进公司前门。第二天他完成收购后，短短几个小时内，就大刀阔斧地对公司进行改革，他称这些举措对 “拯救” 公司至关重要，但却引发了混乱。
这位亿万富翁裁掉了公司大部分员工，之后又不得不请几十名员工回来。
他下令关闭至少一个数据中心，在接下来的几个月里，该平台出现了大量故障和宕机情况。
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相关报道：富达估计，埃隆·马斯克的X公司市值较其收购时缩水近80%
He slashed the company’s safety teams, dismantled content moderation policies and welcomed White supremacists and misinformation peddlers back to the platform — and many users and advertisers fled.
The company was sued by landlords and vendors who accused it of failing to pay up for rent or agreed upon services. And it was investigated by San Francisco city officials for putting up an illegal sign and over reports that Musk’s team had set up bedrooms in office spaces.
他大幅削减公司的安全团队，废除内容审核政策，欢迎白人至上主义者和传播虚假信息者重返平台，导致许多用户和广告商纷纷逃离。
推特还遭到房东和供应商起诉，他们指控推特拖欠租金或服务费用。旧金山官员还对其进行调查，原因包括设置非法标识，以及有报道称马斯克团队在办公空间设置卧室。
Those and other controversial moves by the world’s richest man — among them, using the site to boost racist conspiracy theories — have by most accounts turned what was once one of the world’s most important and influential sources of real-time information into a more toxic, less reliable and less useful place and fueled the emergence of several competing platforms. (Still, Musk and the company’s other leaders continue to refer to X as a global town square.)
And since Musk’s takeover, the company’s value has fallen by about 80%, Fidelity estimated last fall.
这位世界首富的这些及其他有争议的举动—— 包括利用该平台宣扬种族主义阴谋论 —— 大多被认为将这个曾经是世界上最重要、最具影响力的实时信息来源之一，变成了一个毒性更强、可靠性更低、实用性更差的地方，并促使几个竞争平台的兴起。（尽管如此，马斯克和公司其他领导仍将X称为全球公共广场。）
自马斯克收购推特以来，据富达去年秋季估计，该公司市值已下跌约80%。
Still, while the takeover may have hurt Twitter employees, users, advertisers and – at least in one sense — Musk’s own pocketbook, it has also added to his own personal power. Over the summer, Musk used X to try to sway public opinion in favor of Trump. And since Trump’s reelection, Musk now has the president’s ear and an office in the White House — and he’s become tens of billions of additional dollars richer, on the back of expectations that his connection to Trump will benefit his empire of companies.
And for that reason, he may have little incentive to change his employment – and layoff – strategy in his new role at DOGE.
尽管此次收购可能损害了推特员工、用户、广告商的利益，并且从某种程度上说，也让马斯克自己的钱包瘪了，但这也增加了他个人的权力。去年夏天，马斯克利用X试图引导公众舆论支持特朗普。自特朗普再次当选总统后，马斯克现在能与总统说得上话，还在白宫拥有一间办公室，而且他的财富又增加了数百亿美元，因为人们预期他与特朗普的关系将使他旗下的众多公司受益。
基于这个原因，在政府效率部担任新职的他，或许没有什么动力改变自己的用人及裁员策略。
–CNN’s Samantha Waldenberg and Alayna Treene contributed to this report.
——美国有线电视新闻网 萨曼莎·瓦尔登伯格、阿莱娜·特里内 对本文亦有贡献
文章来源：CNN新闻网站
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