There’s a guy in America whose job is to stop nuclear weapons from accidentally going off. (Let’s assume he has a team.

So far, since we are all still here, his success rate is 100%, but there have been some hairy incidents.

In his book The Fifth Risk, Michael Lewis details how in his first presidency Donald Trump tried to dismantle the Department of Energy, where our nuclear hero works, but in the end lost interest.

Neither he nor his people had sufficient attention to detail to even understand what the DoE does.

They assumed they were dealing with climate change zealots and were disappointed to discover a bunch of scientists more interested in evidence than politics.

Under Trump II, his pal Elon Musk looks like a far more dangerous type.

He wants to cut $2 trillion from a federal budget of $7 trillion, clearly regarding most government work as a waste of money.

Musk looks at the DoE and sees not a nuclear disaster avoidance story, but jobs that achieve nothing.

The legendary workaholic and control freak runs companies with brutal drive and determination.

Musk tells staff that “a maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle”, which might be right if you are in the business of making things explode

But not if you are trying to stop them from doing that.

To Musk, a day when nothing went bang is a day wasted.

So Trump’s dream of demolishing the US state actually has a chance this time.

Who is going to stop him, persuade him it is a terrible idea?

Not the private sector, which imagines it can fill the gap left by laid off government workers.

It smells juicy contracts, even if in reality it simply cannot recreate entire departments.

Unions, think tanks, and foreign states need to speak up for US government departments. To say how vital so much government work is, and what happens if those people suddenly stop.

Rome, they say, wasn’t built in a day. But it unravelled very quickly.

Musk makes good cars. That doesn’t qualify him to dismantle, say, the Food and Drug Administration.

As Janan Ganesh writes in today’s FT: “The trope of a business star who enters government and fixes the whole circus is compelling. Actual examples of it – anywhere – are laughably scarce.”

Please send candidates for press release of the day to: Simon.english@roxhillmedia.com