I question how he can be involved in a government that claims China is the number one threat while he directs a company that has to play nice with the CCP to keep access to their markets, Tesla.

Stop payments to his competitors?

Never mind the biggest capitalist in the world – it's the glaring conflicts of interest that smack me in the head here. I grew up in a middle-income Southeast Asian country that built a whole lot of infrastructure projects while I was growing up and this is _still_ an absurd level of corruption to me.

I am decidedly opposed to this, but since you didn't get an answer, I'll try to steelman one.

It gives him the ability to excise unwise spending. He can figure out where the money is going, and if it's being spent badly, he can stop it (possibly directly, possibly through pre-existing channels). It avoids getting caught up in the bureaucracy, which cannot fix itself but needs to be replaced from outside.

I'm fairly certain that this is not in fact what is going to happen, and that the real goal is to gather data on his enemies and harass them. But we'll see who's right soon enough.