Michael Lewis on Musk, Trump, DOGE, and the Deep State

The bestselling author of Liar’s Poker and The Big Short takes us on a wild ride through the destruction of the American government – and introduces us to the heroes who tried to stop it.

Michael Lewis has spent more than thirty years showing us how money and power really work. He’s exposed the inner workings of high finance, baseball and presidential campaigns; he’s revealed the destruction and chaos of Trump’s first term in office and got a ringside seat to the rise and fall of crypto tycoon Sam Bankman Fried.

Now he’s back to tell us the story of Elon Musk’s DOGE, and to share his insights into what this cruel and chaotic chapter in the history of the American experiment can tell us about the unfolding disaster of Trump’s second term and of Musk’s support for far-right movements across the globe.

In early 2025, the tech bro acolytes of DOGE were on a mission to seek and destroy, by any means necessary. But once inside the government, they came up against a group of people whose courage, commitment, and devotion to the nation they served would quickly earn them the wrath of Musk. He called them Blockers. Find the Blockers, Musk told his band of worshipful young men – and eliminate them.

This is the story of the unsung heroes at the heart of the most powerful machine ever designed by humankind, who fought back when DOGE, and then even darker forces, wanted to smash it all up. One kept Americans’ most sensitive tax data out of the wrong hands, another made sure that politicians and civil servants played by the rules. One figured out how to stop wildfires from destroying suburban neighbourhoods, another delivered the cure to cystic fibrosis. There was also a security guard.

Blockers is a thriller about unlikely rebels and power-drunk villains, told by one of the most compelling and original thinkers of our time. Don’t miss it.