Steve Wozniak Has Had It With Elon Musk’s Antics

Steve Wozniak, perhaps the last of an old guard of tech guys who generally seem pretty chill, does not think particularly highly of Elon Musk or Donald Trump. The guy credited with sparking the personal computer revolution told CNBC during an interview that Musk and Trump are bullies who are taking a sledgehammer to the federal government.

While Woz told CNBC that he’s in favor of looking for inefficiencies in government, he’d take a much different approach, saying he’d want “a huge department that analyzes bit by bit by bit.” Apple’s co-founder argued that the task of cutting spending and red tape should be done “more surgically, with a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer.”

Instead, Musk and his team at the Department of Government Efficiency have taken the shoot first and ask questions later approach, seemingly almost blindly cutting government contracts and firing off workers that they inevitably have to bring back to actually make agencies function, because it turns out it’s actually a good idea to have people handle nuclear programs and operating air traffic control towers. “Just mass firings…it’s not good for a business to run that way,” Wozniak said. “It’s really to find out what works and what doesn’t, make the changes.”

In general, Woz wasn’t able to shed much of a positive light on Musk or his general view of the world. “Elon Musk, I don’t know what got into his head,” he said. “Sometimes you get so rich at these big companies, and you’re on top it goes to your head, and you’re the most incredible person in the world and the brightest and you’re going to dictate what others will do.” Wozniak said that when it comes to how Musk and Trump have approached governing, “Bullying is the best way to think of it.”

Despite once being a major supporter of Musk, this isn’t the first time Wozniak has offered some criticism—though it’s often pretty gentle because Woz isn’t exactly a rock-the-boat kinda guy. In 2017, he warned there was “way too much hype” surrounding Musk and Tesla, accusing the company and its CEO of regularly overpromising and failing to deliver. He upped that critique in 2018, saying, “I don’t believe anything Elon Musk or Tesla says.”

Perhaps the toughest words Woz has had for Musk came in 2023, when he compared Musk to a cult leader, saying he wants “to be seen as the most important person,” and that “A lot of people will follow them no matter what they say and they get beyond the point of being judged. A lot of cults are like that.” That sure feels like a prescient observation these days.