Elon Musk wants the power to cut off programs that pay for your grandma’s nursing home stay.

The billionaire is creating major upheaval as his team sweeps through agencies, in what has been an extraordinary flexing of power by a private individual.

In Elon Musk’s first two weeks in government, his lieutenants gained access to closely held financial and data systems, casting aside career officials who warned that they were defying protocols. They moved swiftly to shutter specific programs — and even an entire agency that had come into Mr. Musk’s cross hairs. They bombarded federal employees with messages suggesting they were lazy and encouraging them to leave their jobs.

Empowered by President Trump, Mr. Musk is waging a largely unchecked war against the federal bureaucracy — one that has already had far-reaching consequences.

Mr. Musk’s aggressive incursions into at least half a dozen government agencies have challenged congressional authority and potentially breached civil service protections.

Top officials at the Treasury Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development who objected to the actions of his representatives were swiftly pushed aside. And Mr. Musk’s efforts to shut down U.S.A.I.D., a key source of foreign assistance, have reverberated around the globe.

Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man, is sweeping through the federal government as a singular force, creating major upheaval as he looks to put an ideological stamp on the bureaucracy and rid the system of those who he and the president deride as “the deep state.”

The rapid moves by Mr. Musk, who has a multitude of financial interests before the government, have represented an extraordinary flexing of power by a private individual.