DOGEs, DOGs, and the Future of Unstoppable American Cities

American cities are at a crossroads. Legacy systems, slow-moving bureaucracies, and outdated infrastructure are piling up problems faster than they can be solved. Meanwhile, technology is accelerating—becoming more powerful, cost-efficient, and adaptable every day.

If America wants to win the tech arms race, it needs states and cities to rethink how they operate. Government and startups are often siloed, but what if they worked together?

What if startups embedded inside state and city governments instead of working around them? What if governments themselves became launchpads for problem-solving instead of bureaucratic dead zones? What if there were a system where governments—and cities—could actually move at the speed of a startup?

That’s the play: Mini DOGEs—startup delta forces inside state and city agencies, that serve as the conduit for startups into government. Identifying big problems in the public interest, then sourcing, procuring, and implementing solutions at breakneck pace.

This is not about government stepping back or firing waves of public employees. This is about leveraging America’s greatest strength—its builders, founders, and risk-takers—to make our cities competitive again.

Government is designed for stability, but cities that want to lead must also embrace smart, calculated risk-taking. The places that move first will win the next century.

The Problem: America Can’t Afford to Fall Behind

Other countries are actively designing full-scale cities around efficiency, talent attraction, and cutting-edge infrastructure. The U.S.? Still stuck in a cycle of reports, task forces, and endless delays.

Governments have a lot on their plates—public safety, first responders, homelessness, infrastructure, education, housing, and more. These are real priorities. BUT if cities want to sustain and improve these services over the long run, they need to start prioritizing growth.

Growth isn’t a luxury—it’s the foundation for everything else. A growing city creates a flywheel of more tax revenue, more high-paying jobs, and more economic opportunities that fuel better healthcare systems, better schools, and better public safety.

Yet, in government, “what works gets ignored; what fails gets attention.” Bureaucracies often react to crises instead of proactively building solutions. The status quo is rewarded, and bold thinking gets buried. Cities that wait until they’re in decline to take risks are already too late.

The best cities in the world weren’t built just by good governance. They leaned into their natural advantages and let compounding effects take over.

• New York had its ports. Trade fueled finance, finance fueled media and commerce, and over time, it became the economic capital of the world.
• Houston had oil. Energy infrastructure, engineering talent, and corporate investment reinforced each other, turning the city into a global energy capital.
• Detroit had the auto industry. Ford, GM, and Chrysler built supply chains, a deep engineering workforce, and a culture of industrial innovation that made Detroit the Motor City.

Each of these cities built an unstoppable flywheel around what they already had. They didn’t try to be everything to everyone—they doubled down on their strengths and let compounding growth do the rest.

Some cities have geography. Some have industry clusters. Some have deep talent pools in specific sectors.

DC has POWER and INFLUENCE. It has the federal government, agencies, embassies, policy experts, and the world’s most powerful institutions and people. No other city has this.

Cities that understand their advantages and actively create network effects will own the future.

Mini DOGEs (or DOGs...see below) should plug into each city’s existing strengths and accelerate their flywheels—whether it’s logistics, energy, manufacturing, or technology. The first city (or state) to do this won’t just improve, it will dominate.

The Play: Startups Embedded in Every Department

Cities shouldn’t just partner with startups—they should actively integrate entrepreneurial thinking into their own operations.

Instead of buying overpriced, slow-moving solutions from legacy vendors and consultants, cities should bring in fast-moving, risk-taking, high-impact entrepreneurs to build INSIDE government.

• Energy → Microgrids, decentralized power, and AI-optimized consumption
• Transportation → Dynamic transit, autonomous last-mile delivery
• Education → AI tutors, adaptive and personalized, real-time student progress tracking
• Public Safety → Predictive analytics, automated dispatch, drone-enabled security
• Water & Waste → Smart leak detection, AI-driven maintenance, real-time waste tracking
• Healthcare → AI diagnostics, decentralized testing, proactive epidemic tracking

That's why I propose states and cities create a Department of Growth (DOG).

An elite team that moves fast, identifies problems, sources the best startups, and helps them deploy solutions at startup speed.

It's like a Mini DOGE in that it cuts through red tape (and inevitably costs) and fast-tracks procurement to help get high-impact solutions live in months, not years.

This is not privatization. It’s not about handing everything over to corporations. It’s about public-startup partnerships. Treating cities as platforms to accelerate the growth flywheel.

When startups scale, they create net new jobs. They go from 3 founders in a garage to 3,000 employees and a new office park. That’s the kind of growth we should be optimizing for.

States and cities that invest in innovation today will have stronger economies, better jobs, and more resources for core public services in the future.

The Bull Case: The Best Cities Will Become Startup Magnets

The moment one city proves this model works, every ambitious founder will want in.

Why fight for scraps in overbuilt markets when you could build high-growth companies solving real problems for ENTIRE metro areas with the full support of local government?

Here’s how it plays out:

1. A city embraces a DOG and embeds startups inside government agencies. Startups solve real problems --> faster permitting, cheaper energy, smarter transit --> things that directly improve life for residents and businesses.

2. Early wins build momentum. As problems get solved, political and institutional resistance fades. Appetite for risk increases. Governments that once defaulted to caution start making bets on ambitious solutions.

3. Founders follow the signal. Smart entrepreneurs recognize when a city is open for business in a real way. Instead of navigating a broken system, they see a city actively looking for builders and giving them room to experiment. More startups take note, more founders relocate, more ideas get tested.

4. Venture capital pours in. Investors chase the highest-leverage opportunities. That capital fuels more growth, more hiring, and more breakthrough solutions.

5. Network effects kick in. A city that embraces innovation creates a compounding loop of growth --> where each improvement attracts more people, talent, and capital, making future improvements even easier and faster.

• The city modernizes infrastructure, schools, and public services --> Quality of life improves, efficiency improves, costs drop --> Becomes more attractive to founders and ambitious workers
• More entrepreneurs relocate to build in a city that actively supports innovation --> More high-growth startups launch --> More real-world problems get solved
• Top-tier workers move in --> More startups receive funding --> Venture capital follows them --> More high-paying jobs are created
• A deeper innovation ecosystem forms --> Successful projects scale into billion-dollar companies --> Liquidity events drive re-investment into the ecosystem
• More businesses relocate --> More talent flocks to opportunities --> More investment pours in --> The city accelerates into a global leader in economic growth and competitiveness

Once this flywheel is in motion, it becomes nearly impossible to stop.

The first city to fully embrace Mini DOGEs or DOGs creates an innovation engine that no other city can easily replicate. The cities that embrace innovation will attract top talent, investment, and businesses—those that don’t will struggle to keep up.

The Bear Case: Bureaucracy Kills the Experiment

The skeptics will say it can’t work. Startups will get stuck in procurement hell, buried in red tape, and drained by slow decision-making.

That could all be true. But here’s the counter: The cities that don’t try something like this are setting themselves up to lose.

The competition isn’t between cities that try Mini DOGEs or DOGs and those that don’t. It’s between cities that innovate and those that get crushed by their own inertia.

It might take governments to hire an “Elon” type character to make this happen—someone with an outsider’s perspective, someone who has worked in or with startups before, someone who understands how to move fast and increase the pace of everything. Every major company has a chief innovation officer. Why don’t governments?

My Take: Some City Will Try This. And Win.

The cities that act like startups—running experiments, attracting talent, moving fast, playing to their strengths—will dominate. The ones that don’t will drift further into dysfunction.

And this isn’t just about one city. It’s about American competitiveness.

The U.S. became an economic superpower by out-building, out-innovating, and out-competing the rest of the world. Cities and states need to step up.

The cities that figure out how to use their natural resources, optimize for growth, and accelerate network effects will become unstoppable. The best cities will act now, embrace the risk, and optimize for growth.

Those are the ones that will own the next century.

Some city or state will make this work.

My only question is: Who has the guts to go first?

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