Michael Lewis's New Book Explains How DOGE Rewired Incentives in Government

Michael Lewis, the author known for "Moneyball" and "The Fifth Risk," published a new book on October 6, 2026, titled "Blockers: Rebels in the Deep State," according to CBS News and Slate. The book profiles seven federal employees who resisted the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the initiative led by Elon Musk that set out to cut what Musk said would be at least $2 trillion from federal spending, as reported by CBS News.

What does 'blocker' mean in Lewis's account?

According to CBS News, "blocker" is a term Musk used for any federal employee seen as standing in the way of DOGE's cost-cutting drive. Lewis's book argues that this label flipped the normal incentive structure in the civil service: instead of being rewarded for following statute and procedure, employees who enforced existing law or data-protection rules risked being treated as obstacles, CBS News reported.

Lewis frames this as a broader shift in what the federal workforce is expected to serve. Based on search results summarizing his Meet the Press interview, Lewis described an effort to move roughly two million federal workers toward answering to a single person rather than to the law or to the agency's mission, which he says changes how employees weigh risk and compliance throughout government.

Case studies in the book

• Kathleen Walters, a former IRS executive, resigned after nearly 20 years — just 23 days before early retirement — after resisting requests from immigration authorities for taxpayer data; she told CBS News, "I was blocking people from violating the law."
• Gavin Kliger, a DOGE operative, pressured an IRS official to share confidential information on seven million taxpayers, prompting the official to lock herself in a conference room, according to Slate's summary of the book.
• Francis Collins, who led the Human Genome Project and headed the NIH, was forced to resign and left carrying a small cardboard box with a few personal items, Slate reported.
• Alexander Maranghides, a wildland-urban interface fire specialist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, retired in his late fifties after budget cuts, according to Slate.

CBS News also reported that the Treasury Department's Inspector General later found that immigration enforcement officials had failed to meet data-"safeguarding standards" in the Walters case, and that federal courts ruled privacy rights had been violated.

What government auditors found about DOGE's claimed savings

Separately from Lewis's book, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report in August 2026 reviewing DOGE's "Wall of Receipts" website, which covered DOGE activity from January 20, 2025, through July 7, 2026. DOGE had reported $110.3 billion in total savings across contract, grant and lease terminations, according to the GAO report.

The GAO report also noted that DOGE declined to respond to the agency's requests for interviews or clarification about how figures were calculated, and recommended that known data-quality issues be disclosed prominently on the public-facing site.

Why this matters

Lewis's central claim, as described by CBS News and Slate, is that the costs of DOGE's approach go beyond any single contract or grant: the departure of experienced staff in areas such as tax administration, public health research and wildfire science removes institutional knowledge that Lewis says took decades to build. The GAO's findings on savings, reached independently of Lewis's reporting, address a separate but related question — whether the stated goal of cutting waste was achieved as advertised.