Antonio Gracias: DOGE updates, Voter fraud, Finding 'Big Balls' | All-In Live from Miami

So, Antonio, we know you're very busy because you decided, like a couple of our other friends, to take a second job working in our government for 100 or so days. Give him a round of applause for that.

Trump is a unique individual in all the world. He may be polarizing in some ways, but one thing that's not polarizing is DOGE. I think everybody wants to see waste, fraud, and abuse, and controlled spending in government. Maybe there are some questions about how fast it's going, but we all know you and Elon like to go at a brisk pace.

You joined a little later in the process. You joined maybe 15 or 20 days ago.

I've been there for 8 weeks.

8 weeks. So, around 60 days, and you went public with it maybe a couple of weeks ago.

I was in Woodlawn, Maryland, for the first 4 weeks, so you didn't know I was there.

How bad is it? How messed up is our government? How insane are the processes? You're a process guy. We both worked on the Twitter acquisition and the transfer there, and did all the zero-based budgeting. Maybe compare and contrast it to that, which was one of the most horrific corporate entities I've ever seen in my life, and how that was being run.

It was tough. Well, let me start with, thank you guys. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. It's great to be down here to see everybody.

Let me also say that it's an honor to serve America. Whatever I am doing, I am grateful to be able to do it. I'm grateful to my partners for allowing me to do it and my clients for supporting it. It truly is an honor to be there. There are many great people in the government trying to help.

It is a sacrifice, right? You're taking time out of your day job.

It's definitely a sacrifice, but I feel very grateful that I have the capacity and 30 years of training in leading operations, so I can be useful. That feels very—I feel gratitude.

How bad is it?

If Twitter was like the JV league, this is like the NBA. It's the most complex thing I've ever seen. In our office in D.C., I've mapped, as an example, the entire system from basically the border to the benefits programs.

It's about a 40-foot board, and it looks like a bowl. I mean, it's an incredible spaghetti diagram of stuff. I've never seen anything so complex in my life. So, the answer to your question is, it's worse than I thought—much, much worse than what we saw at Twitter, now X. America, Americans, and all of you—we deserve better.

If we were to look at $1 spent by our government—waste, fraud, and abuse—how many pennies on the dollar is it? If you had to estimate, just based on what you've seen so far, here's the sad part: how much is it?

If you go into any company, any company you guys have ever seen that isn't super well run, you can easily cut 15%. Easy, easy, easy. This is where the trillion-dollar number came from: 15% of $7 billion.

I think if we had the political will, you'd easily get that 15%, no problem, without cutting the core entitlement programs. It's definitely there. The question is whether people want to do it or not.

Remember, every dollar we take, we are taking from an NGO or a Beltway consultant. People are screaming about this because we're taking money from them. Whatever you read in the news media, I have to tell you, it isn't true. I think 88% of the people who have left the government have taken packages. The packages are very lucrative. They're sort of 9 months or so of severance, and they're voluntary.

The people who work in government who are good—there are lots of good people in the government that I have met and who have pointed out all this stuff to us—they deserve better. Imagine trying to be a civil servant. You want to do the right thing. You're working there because you care about America, and you're in this massive bureaucratic morass with all this stuff on top of you.

I've seen OIG reports where people have reported sex trafficking to OIG, and they turn it in and nothing happens—literally nothing happens. That's very frustrating, and they stick it out. They keep going and working hard for America.

I think it's not just about the cost cuts; it's about the culture—the culture change of allowing good people who are in the government to understand that someone's listening, that when they want to make an improvement or change, or when they find fraud, waste, and abuse, they can do it, and there's an avenue now to do it.

I think that's actually going to be one of the most important lasting things we leave: this idea that your voice matters in the government, that there are good people in the government, and when they want to do the right thing, there's a way to do it.

And you've got people coming back to work in the office?

Oh, I have to tell you. We've been pilloried often in the press for security where I started. Here are the facts: when I got there, just like at Twitter, the parking lot was empty. I'm talking about stadium-sized—empty. The office was empty. There was no one in the headquarters office in Woodlawn, Maryland.

We went to visit a couple of offices. I went to one myself. At the one that I went to, there were about 20 people in the waiting room. There were 7 people at the windows. Of the 7 people, 3 had their shades half down. Those people were taking phone calls because during COVID, they turned everyone into phone operators. What we learned is that they were still running on COVID operations.

Through our efforts and the efforts of the interim administrator, we've now brought everyone back to the office and back to the field offices. We haven't closed one field office—not one—since we've been there. Everything you're reading about service levels is not true.

Imagine how frustrating that is if you're waiting in the waiting room, you see 7 windows out of 25 open, and 3 other people are taking phone calls. Talk about customer service.

So, look, in all the companies that we all run, we always talk about using incentives to shape the outcome you want. I think you keep insisting, which I think is right, that civil servants, by and large, want the right things to happen. That's why they chose to go and work for the government.

So, what is the incentive we need to change? Is it a compensation incentive? What is it?

I think the people who work in the government—it’s a normal distribution of everything, right? It's 2.5 million people in the government, plus contractors. Some people are great, some people aren't great, and a lot of people are in the middle. The people in the middle react to the incentives, as you point out.

I think the most important thing here is transparency of the metrics, so they know how they're doing. These folks aren't there for the money. Many of them are very good because they could make money somewhere else. The incentives we should create are transparency and some basic metrics, so they know how they're doing.

For example, at Social Security, we were criticized for the website uptime. It turns out website uptime has been better since we got there than before. Imagine, we have engineers, and we've now published the metrics on the website publicly so people can see it. The engineering team that manages the website can see whether they're doing a good job, and the public can see whether they're doing a good job.

I don't think financial incentives are always useful, but this is not just about money. For example, if you look at Singapore, the Singaporean approach from Lee Kuan Yew was: let's create a government that is extremely empowered, but let's also make it quite small. Let's make them well compensated, and let's try to find an elite cadre of folks.

Is that approach possible in the United States, or should we even think that we should try something like that?

Singapore is a unique experiment in the world. It's also a place where you might wind up getting caned if you drop chewing gum on the ground.

In America, where we have a different level of freedom and rights, we should strive for a civil service that is professional, well compensated, and mission-oriented. That mission orientation is serving the United States.

There are very good people. They want to do the right thing and serve their country. That's why they're there. I wouldn't make it about the money. I would make it about the mission. There are very good people; they're on mission. I met them. They're the ones pointing all this stuff out to us.

Can you talk about—you guys went on Fox the other day with the DOGE team. Big Balls was there. We were talking about this backstage: all of those guys were like 12 years old. What is it about the role, the opportunity, and the way it was presented that attracted this group of incredibly well-spoken, highly intelligent, clearly extraordinarily motivated individuals?

It’s the sort of caliber of talent that all of us aspire to find and hire, and then they’re on the mission. Is it Elon’s inspiration and the reach he has that made this happen? Is this a particular moment in American history? I was looking at that table and thinking about the Founding Fathers and the age of the Founding Fathers when they wrote the Declaration of Independence. They were all super young, and I was thinking, “Man, this is an opportunity to kind of rewrite how government operates in America today.”

I was just struck by the age and the talent and how that came together. Where do they show up? Do they just apply out of the blue? Do you guys have recruiters out there? Where do these guys come from?

We do have a recruiting team, actually. Baris and Emily do the recruiting, and they’re great. I’ll tell you, I just want to stop for a second and say this: This is extraordinary. These people are extraordinary—all of them. The young people you saw at the table are extraordinary.

They’re amazing engineers. They’re like any one of us would be; they’re 10x engineers we would all be thrilled to have in our companies. Elon, obviously, is an extraordinary leader, so they come for him. But I think they’re really motivated by the mission. They’re motivated by the idea that this is a moment where they can actually make an extraordinary difference to the country, and that is a flywheel that brings more people. They bring their friends, and you recruit other people in. There are extraordinary people there, man.

You saw the people at the table in that particular interview. I didn’t say a word. Actually, it was you and the other guy. I didn’t say anything. These guys are extraordinary.

One of the men there spoke about this—Ethan. He’s in my son’s class at Harvard. He dropped out of Harvard with 2 classes left to come do this. Big Balls is an example. He’s great. I work with an engineer named Rahm [?], who’s great.

There’s a whole other stratum of people that you didn’t see there who are kind of in their 30s. My buddy Josh is working on the college stuff and a few other things. This guy was a senior executive and rising star at KKR, and he left his job to come do this. There are an innumerable number of people like this. It’s an extraordinary group. I feel honored to be part of it. I feel honored to work with them.

Can I tell you an answer to this?

Yeah.

But I just want to ask: Do you think these guys aren’t going to work in the government forever? They’re coming in, building something, activating, and moving back to their private lives, like the Founding Fathers did at the start of the American government.

Is that a better model for how government should operate, rather than having career employees and career politicians? Treat it more like civil service, where everyone has some role that they should play at some point, like they do in Israel, where you have to go to the army for a few years and everyone is required. It’s the same in Singapore, actually, where everyone kind of has to go spend their time in government, contribute, and participate.

But it doesn’t become a mechanism where there’s an incentive to grow it and get more money flowing through it, because that’s how I, individually, as a politician or employee, would benefit from the government.

Yeah, I think it’s a great point. It’s a great point on Singapore. Actually, I should have brought that up when Chamath asked the question. I think we’re proving there are 2 types of people in government today. There are careerists, as they call them, and politicals.

I think there should be a third type, which is what you’re talking about: people doing public service for a short duration—a shorter duration—whether it’s me, 130 days as an SGE, or a couple of years as an engineer or something. I think a culture of this in America would be great for America, and great not just for what it does to the government, but for how it binds us as a people.

Serving your country, going there, seeing how hard it is, seeing the way it works, and understanding what’s really going on from the inside—I had no idea. It’s like, what part of the government did you work in for your 2-year service or your 18 months? This would be a great thing for America and a great thing for our society, because that culture of public service would bring us closer together.

I had a thought—without saying too much, but you can guess. All of us have known Elon for a really long time. I also worked for another person who’s of that same stature for a long time, and he’s much shorter.

One of his very good friends came to see me recently for lunch, and he asked me this exact same question about Elon. He said, “How is he able to find Big Balls and so many Big Balls?”

I can actually tell you. I’ve seen him find Big Balls. It’s a serious strategy. What he does is respond to emails or tweets. People will say, “I have a solution to this. We should do that.” I’ve been CC’d on messages where he sends them to the right person, and he has people vet them to see if the idea actually works.

I think he’s very opportunistic and doesn’t prejudge where you went to school or what your credentials are. It’s almost the opposite: The fewer credentials you have, the more predisposed he is to think you’re right. Have you solved a problem?

There are a lot of people who can be responsive in email. I think there are a handful of people who are real North Stars for technical talent, but he’s the only one who, when you walk in the room, says, “Here’s this mission.” It is so genuinely otherworldly. Nobody else can really say that.

It is a flywheel, as you said, that is extremely unique. The fact that you can direct that entropy to the United States government, I think, is a blessing. Now the question is: How do we follow up and make it attractive? To your point, I saw those kids in that interview, and if any of my 5 kids had done what they did, I would have been so proud.

I was so impressed with these kids. Very impressive. You’re proud to be an American watching these kids. You saw Elon’s face nodding while they were speaking, with a grin from ear to ear. He was proud. He is proud.

I think it’s important for people to sit back and say that this has all been done in 100 days from a cold start. It’s not like he brought in people—or you brought in people—who were like, “I know the lay of the land here.” It was like, “We’re going to figure this out from first principles, do zero-based budgeting, whatever it is, look at the data, and see where it leads us.”

One of the disturbing things about the data, and one of the most controversial issues in America today, is the border. Why did Biden let so many people through the border? It was kind of a question whether it was even happening. Should we trust these border encounter numbers? It doesn’t seem real.

There’s a lack of trust in the government. One side is saying, “Hey, we let all these people in. There are 15 or 20 million extra people here in order to vote Democratic.” That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, since the Republicans have become the working party.

But putting all that aside, you started looking at this, and we had a discussion privately about, “Hey, are these people signing up to vote?” because that would be an indicator that this theory—that people were streaming across the border in order to vote—was true. You found some people who were illegal immigrants who registered to vote. This is confounding.

Yes, this is actually true. We have sampled a handful of states, and in those handful of states we found people registered to vote, and we have found people who actually voted. This is all being done by sampling.

We are sampling DHS data, and then we have to go to the voter rolls, check the voter rolls, and give that to HSI—Homeland Security Investigations—which goes and checks the voter record by subpoena, as well as the voter records and the cards you sign when you vote.

We’ve already had 3 arrests here in Florida, actually, and 1 indictment.

Is that publicly known?

Yes, we posted it. The DOJ—the media has not covered it.

I haven’t seen much about that. So you’re saying these are 3 individuals who legally secured Social Security numbers through the process we talked about last time—asylum or some special program or whatever—and they were given Social Security numbers by filing an I-765 and getting authorization. They registered to vote, and they actually voted in 2020 and/or 2024.

Three have been arrested. I just want to say this carefully: 3 have been arrested, and 1 has been indicted. The one we indicted—I want to just stop on this guy for a minute.

He’s an Iraqi national. He voted in 2020 in New York. He went to prison for shooting somebody—he shot some guy’s hand off—and has charged, if I remember correctly, $60,000 or $70,000 of benefits through Medicaid. We think he’s now in Iraq because he’s active on his Facebook page, and the IP address is from Iraq.

Credit to our friends at HSI, our partners at HSI, and to DOJ for tracking this down. I’ve got to tell you guys, it’s difficult, laborious work. It really is. But think about that a minute: Is that the tip of the iceberg, Antonio, do you think? Or did you guys do a lot of mining and digging to come up with those 4? How big of a magnitude of a problem do you think this is? What’s your intuition tell you, honestly, right now, about whether there’s massive voter fraud or not?

Great question, and I want to be careful how I answer it. I’m going to leave the data and enter the area of my opinion, which is what you’re asking me. My opinion is—and actually, let me step back and tell you what we did for a second, and then give you my opinion—we are sampling by hand.

When you say data mining, we’re not mining. We’re actually doing pick-and-shovel work, going in by hand. This is not mechanized. There’s no AI being applied. We’re using SQL queries. You’re literally pulling a name out of the work authorization database, checking that against the voter roll, and then running it down to the state. It’s super laborious.

With that in mind, my opinion is that this is the tip of the iceberg. How big the iceberg is, I don’t know, and I don’t want to speculate because I don’t think we can do that at this moment. I think we’ll have more data over time, but for sure, if we can sample out of a database—and it takes an engineer about a day to find 20-ish cases—then what DOJ asked for was 10 to 20 cases per state. It just gives you a sense of what’s happening.

It takes an engineer about a day to find 10 to 20 cases per state through sampling. That gives you an idea of how many there are, right?

Are you shocked that people don’t care about this more?

I’m shocked. I think people really do care. My guess is everyone here cares a lot—okay, a lot—about this. I think, for some reason, the news media doesn’t care more.

Should you care? Yes. There’s this idea that there’s always a little bit of fraud, that it’s pervasive, and that we should just accept it because it’s not a big deal. Wrong. Here’s the reality: Every vote that is cast illegally in America nullifies the vote of an American citizen. It is your constitutional right to vote in America, and if we don’t have a zero-defect system, we are violating your constitutional rights.

I’ll tell you: You deserve it. The American public deserves that we strive for a zero-defect system. We make medical devices in America with a zero-defect system. We should make votes with a zero-defect system. If we don’t strive for a zero-defect system, we will get a lot more fraud. This is why the real idea is so important. We should strive for this.

It doesn’t matter if it’s 1 vote. It’s easily solved by having the last 15 states that don’t require voter ID simply do that, and that would pretty much end this debate, I think.

I want to tell you, there are states that do require ID. I think REAL ID will solve it because one of the things our engineers are building—and it was already there, but they’re cleaning it up and making it work properly—is a thing called SAVE. There’s a database called SAVE that’s available to the states.

In the Biden administration, they raised the price from about $1 per API call to $3 and change per API call, and all the states stopped using it. SAVE is a database that has the actual citizenship data for the entire country. We’re cleaning it up now and making the actual UI much better. If the states have REAL ID and they use SAVE, you would solve this problem. I cannot understand why a state would not do this.

Whose decision would it be to just change the cost of that API?

Great question, Chamath. The Secretary of Homeland Security—I want to thank her, Secretary Noem—has just signed a policy memo to make it free.

Why is there a charge anyway? It doesn’t make any sense to me.

It should have always been free. Your parents—I know your dad is an immigrant. My parents are both immigrants.

My mother came here without speaking English.

To be clear, pick me. Me too. You’re an immigrant.

Also an immigrant.

Seventh generation.

Who’s not? Is it—oh, Jason.

I’m the All-In presidential candidate by default.

You’re from Mount Olympus, though.

Yes.

How should immigration work in this country? We’ve talked about it on our pod—the point-based system, et cetera. We still want immigration. We need high-skilled immigration. We talked to President Trump about that, and he said he was committed to giving people green cards who have diplomas.

This is a little out of your purview, but how does Antonio Gracias feel about immigration? What do you think we should be doing here as a country? There’s deporting people, potentially with less due process than maybe some of us are comfortable with. What do you think we should be doing?

There’s a lot in that question. Look, I’m an enormous fan of immigration. You will not find a guy who’s more pro-immigration than I am because my parents are immigrants. They came here with nothing and built a life, and I am the American dream. I’m so grateful to this country for what it’s done for my family. This country has been great for us.

The reality is that we need people to work. American GDP is simply a function of the number of people working times productivity. We have roughly 7 million job openings in America. We need people to work. This is the reality.

The system should very simply be that there’s a skilled immigration group, and we figure out what that should be and what jobs we want. By the way, America is the best place to live in the world. We all know that. I believe that if we make this easy, they will come. No problem.

We also need labor. We do. Our farmers need labor. We need labor in the food industry, restaurants, and so on. I think there should be both high-end skilled immigration and a very sensible program for unskilled labor—a work permit program. We’ve got that H-2A program.

There is an H-2A program. I will tell you, I mapped the entire system now. These programs go from DHS to the State Department to Labor. They’re very disconnected, and they’re hard to manage. We are going to work on this.

One of the things we’re going to work on, and hopefully leave behind, is both a sensible answer to the illegal problem and a sensible answer to the legal problem. It’s very important to the team working on this. This is super important for the Trump administration.

There seems to be a bit of—I don’t want to call it a civil war, but a heated debate internally between people like yourself and Elon and others who believe immigration is critical, and then other people who just want to lock the border and deport 20 million people. I’ll call it the Steve Bannon camp. He’s not in the administration, clearly.

I want to be clear on something: I don’t believe in open borders. When a country opens its borders, this country loses its sovereignty. You have to have a border that is controlled. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have legal immigration. It should be a proper process where people can come in who are great for the country and believe in our values, and they should have a chance to become citizens if they believe in our values and support our country.

I really hope that you guys work this out and can have a positive influence, like you’ve had with DOGE, on the administration and really work on this one—which is sensible, kind, empathetic immigration—because you’re all immigrants.

The values I set for our team—I just tell you—the values are focus, intensity, and discipline. I added a fourth value here for our team: compassion.

Antonio, I just want—and I want anyone else to join me in saying this—look, you’re a successful, wealthy, incredibly handsome man.

That’s the best part.

I know the work you’re doing is super hard. We talked backstage about how hard it’s been. I just want to honestly say, as an American, thank you for the work you’re doing.

Thank you, bro.