To my knowledge the Chief of Staff does not have the power to coerce other people to do things directly. Any "actual" coercion would have to go through someone like the President, right?

And my dumb thought is if DOGE is going around telling OMB and Treasury what to do (and seemingly is willing to call the US Marshalls on people who stand in their way) and the head of the OMB requires senate confirmation... well what are we doing here?

There's a bunch of nuance you can play at a micro level (for example, Musk messaging Trump to do a thing and Trump giving an OK), though in that case that's also newsworthy and important, because it properly associates who is responsible for what is going on!

Right now we have somebody who seems to be running rampant doing whatever he wants, and this lack of explicit association with the rest of the executive make it unclear who is actually calling the shots here. And if Trump isn't calling the shots... again, where's the confirmation?

The chief of staff can relay orders from the president to cabinet members and department heads, but cannot make decisions of this scope.

I don't really know how any of that is relevant, though. Musk is not Trump's chief of staff, and as far as we can tell, is not even employed by the federal government. He is not empowered to give (for example) orders to the head (confirmed or acting) of the OMB.

Plus that project in particular was more about destroying things exponentially faster, than it actually was about building things somewhat faster.

The faster building process was achieved in a relatively linear way at best, and the only thing built was a tool for destruction, no comparable efforts were made toward building things of lasting value which would need to more than compensate or the tech effort is a net loss.

Or, after destruction is induced, a recovery can not be made since the time required for building has the time it took for destruction in the denominator.