While it's certainly possible that there was some sort of sinister plot here, it is also possible to read it as "overconfident outsider, who's actually kinda th

While it's certainly possible that there was some sort of sinister plot here, it is also possible to read it as "overconfident outsider, who's actually kinda thick, tries to do government cost cutting without really understanding what the government is or does". And this happens _a lot_, though they're not usually given so much rope to hang themselves with. Like, this is fairly easy to read as incompetence, in a field where even people who actually know what they're doing really struggle. There's a decent example in Yes Minister (episode 3: Economy Drive).