CATO engaged in an interesting project: faced with all the uncertainty about what DOGE is up to, it attempted to lay out six possible models to explain what DOGE is doing.
Social science models simplify reality, spotlighting key variables that may shape DOGE’s actions in a way that can be tested. The models discussed above clearly simplify the complex endeavor of reforming the largest human organization ever by expenditures—the U.S. federal government. They help explain past decisions and anticipate future moves. The models above try to make sense of DOGE’s actions so far. They are not mutually exclusive, yet several can be informative together or alone, while some may only make sense temporarily. Other models not set out here might offer fresh insights, but scholars should try to develop them. Without doing so, one of the biggest policy initiatives of President Trump’s second term risks being under-analyzed or misunderstood.
It offered these six possible models:
DOGE is seeking to purge progressive influence within the federal government.
DOGE is a scaled-up public version of Musk’s style of corporate restructuring applied to the federal government.
DOGE is the first step of a public relations campaign to build popular support for spending cuts.
DOGE is an essential component of a Trump administration legal challenge to expand the president’s power of impoundment.
DOGE provides political cover for Congress to be even more fiscally irresponsible.
DOGE is about self-interest and cronyism.
Some of these — like the attempt to purge progressivism and cronyism — are partially convincing. Others, such as the claim that DOGE helps either the PR campaign or the legal one, are soundly rebutted by public facts. DOGE’s epic failures have increased pushback and provided legal bases to challenge cutbacks that wouldn’t exist if done more competently.
Even when it considers the possibility that Elon is self-dealing, CATO’s exercise is wildly credulous about DOGE’s own — Elon’s own — deceit. This piece, which they link, is far less so:
Elon Musk has many great strengths, but he is not a reliable narrator.
[snip]
As has been well covered in mainstream outlets, DOGE has been extremelysloppy about cutting contracts and reporting the numbers. Most of the biggest ticket savings have been the result of DOGE misreading federal contracting data, or killing contracts that were already dead. From the New York Times:
What’s more concerning than the sloppiness itself is that it does not appear to be getting resolved over time. The same kinds of data parsing errors and confusion about how federal contracts are awarded and then paid out have persisted over two months. Some of this comes back to the information environment: DOGE has instituted few if any ground-up mechanisms within the federal government to surface real savings opportunities.
Both pieces seem to treat the evolving explanation about what DOGE is (which CATO lays out in more depth and I’ve laid out here) as an evolving goal; neither considers whether it is an evolving cover story, necessitated, in part, by the inaptness of the USDS mission to what DOGE wants to do, exposed via various lawsuits.
Importantly, both ignore the most troubling aspect of DOGE: Its repeated rush to access the live data from these agencies. That has happened over and over — at OPM, at the Social Security Agency, at HHS. As Tiffany Flick wrote in a widely reported declaration, these boys are being granted access for which they have no obvious need to know, and they’re accessing that data in insecure ways, to use in rooms remotely with other DOGE boys.
You don’t need to access the Personally Identifiable Information of all Americans to cut costs. You don’t need to access the PII of all Americans to harmonize benefit programs across agencies, in the process making it easier to identify fraud. You don’t need to access the PII of all Americans to cash in (unless using it for extortion). Doing so doesn’t help your PR case or your impoundment case.
It certainly could be part of a totalitarian bid for power, a way to identify undocumented immigrants who were advised to pay their taxes, same sex married couples, or trans people who have changed their gender on official documents.
And that application might explain one of several troubling new details from recent weeks: the court filing that revealed that, before he left Treasury, Marko Elez emailed two unnamed people at GSA the name or names of people with transaction details.
12. The forensic analysis also revealed that Elez sent an email with a spreadsheet containing PII to two United States General Services Administration officials. The PII detailed a name (a person or an entity), a transaction type, and an amount of money. The names in the spreadsheet are considered low risk PII because the names are not accompanied by more specific identifiers, such as social security numbers or birth dates. Elez’s distribution of this spreadsheet was contrary to BFS policies, in that it was not sent encrypted, and he did not obtain prior approval of the transmission via a “Form 7005,” describing what will be sent and what safeguards the sender will implement to protect the information.
Over a month after the investigation into what Elez was up to, Treasury reveals that he was alerting others to specific details about entities, with no explanation of why. That has nothing to do with the optimization he was supposed to be doing!
So sure, that could arise from an effort to target specific adversaries of Elon or Trump.
But that doesn’t explain another alarming revelation about DOGE: That Elon set up Starlink for the White House and GSA (not coincidentally, where most of his DOGE boys are working with the PII of Americans).
Starlink, the satellite internet service operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is now accessible across the White House campus. It is the latest installation of the Wi-Fi network across the government since Mr. Musk joined the Trump administration as an unpaid adviser.
[snip]
White House officials said the installation was an effort to increase internet availability at the complex. They said that some areas of the property could not get cell service and that the existing Wi-Fi infrastructure was overtaxed.
[snip]
In recent weeks, Starlink was also set up at the General Services Administration, which has served as a hub for Mr. Musk’s government-shrinking efforts, according to documents and people familiar with the service.
[snip]
It was also unclear if Starlink communications were encrypted. At a minimum, the system allows for a network separate from existing White House servers that people on the grounds are able to use, keeping that data separate.
“It’s super rare” to install Starlink or another internet provider as a replacement for existing government infrastructure that has been vetted and secured, said Jake Williams, a vice president for research and development at Hunter Strategy, a cybersecurity consultancy. “I can’t think of a time that I have heard of that.”
“It introduces another attack point,” Mr. Williams said. “But why introduce that risk?”
It’s certainly true that these two details could just be consistent with Elon’s plan to adopt totalitarianism himself, using his own personal satellite network.
But taken in tandem with other priorities of DOGE, such as dismantling almost the entirety of USAID, starting with the programs that Russia and Hungary most loathe, but also including those Republicans cherish, you need to at least consider whether this is an intelligence operation. Elon, his sidekick installed at the White House, David Sacks, and the VP they foisted on Trump, JD Vance, all parrot Russian propaganda. Dangles for Elon — cooperation on Mars! — have been included in Russia’s efforts to cultivate Trump.
And Musk was cemented as part of the this team at the same time as two other people whose inclusion in the Administration only helps America’s adversaries, Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr.
DOGE has not been cost-cutting, though that has confused the good government types and libertarians for months. Rather, DOGE has been capacity-cutting, even while it conducts the most intrusive data dive into Americans this side of consumer profiling.
I’m not saying a Russian intelligence operation is the only explanation for DOGE’s actions (again, I think a totalitarian plan is another missed possibility, though question why an aspiring totalitarian would want to destroy so much capability in advance of solidifying power).
I’m saying that experts like those from CATO look at it and cannot tell what it is doing, even while ignoring evidence that its claimed goal — cost-cutting — is false. But no one has ruled out something far more sinister is hiding behind a cognitive (if evolving) model designed to look familiar.
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70replies
Peterr says:
Eliminating US soft power under DOGE has been something else. Dismantling USAID was the start, along with declaring our intention to withdraw from the World Health Organization. Suddenly throwing up new tariffs, especially among our alllies, followed. Now we have DOGE shutting down the Voice of America. For much of the world under authoritarian regimes, especially in smaller states in Africa, Asia, and South America, American has gone silent. The news they get from their authoritarian leaders now goes unchallenged.
Ask any general or admiral, and they will tell you how much soft power matters. Soft power creates and sustains relationships with other nations, far more cheaply than invading and setting up bases and garrisons. In less than three months, DOGE has gutted damn near every institution of soft power employed by the US government.
I’m not saying this is the work of a foreign intelligence service to undermine the United States, but this certainly looks like what a foreign intelligence service would want do if they tried to undermine the United States.
emptywheel says:
I’m not sure whether DOGE gets credit for VOA. It was a separate EO.
But then much else that Trump is doing helps Russia, even ignoring preparing to give Crimea.
Peterr says:
It certainly fits with DOGE, though. From their POV, broadcasting is done better and more cheaply by the private sector. When you add in the disdain for journalists who adhere to facts, it’s a no-brainer.
When Trump named Kari “the Big Lie Lives” Lake to head them up, I knew their days were numbered. Which brings us back to Russia.
emptywheel says:
And also, it’s not just gutting of soft power. It’s doing so in a way that is bound to elicit real backlash from the affected communities. Like just dropping Agent Orange mitigation in Vietnam, where we’re supposed to be competing with China for power.
Peterr says:
Yes. The manner in which they dismantled our soft power was designed to twist the knife, doing as much damage as possible as they shut stuff down.
Rugger_9 says:
I agree with you, and I wouldn’t rule out yet another RF troll farm operation either, because many of the trails followed by DOGE commissars seem to have their genesis in the alt-right internet cesspool. The demands for unrelated information back this up IMHO since those details can be turned into blackmail opportunities.
Bugboy321 says:
“…even while ignoring evidence that its claimed goal — cost-cutting — is false.”
This is similar to Musk’s Mars obsession: He doesn’t really want to go to Mars. He just says things that sound like he wants to go to Mars.
What he really wants is for everyone not named Musk (or his spawn) to go to Mars, and for the rest of us to throw VC and Federal money at him in the effort to send everyone not named Musk (or his spawn) to Mars. And “He”, I guess which is the “Royal He” that he and Trump are so enamored of, personally is not responsible for any of what is going on, in or around our government, including the regulation of exploding rockets and crashing/burning cars. He just works there, you see.
By the same token “cost cutting” is cutting HIS (and his rich pals) taxes, through illegal means by which he insinuates himself and his businesses upon the American taxpayer to direct what already is a massive revenue stream into an even bigger revenue stream. Yes, this is the sophisticated thinking of our Masters of the Universe, including the Cato Institute. You would think those guys would know what “impoundment” is.
Wild Bill 99 says:
In my take, Elon does want to go to Mars. He is a sci-fi fanboy with delusions of grandeur: saving the human race in order to go on to rule the galaxy and then the universe. To this end he will use any means available to further his ambitions. He actually does not care for people, nations or ideologies, only his fever dream of the “future”. Bringing down the Government is removing an obstacle in his path.
starling says:
The possibility that DOGE is systematically collecting intel to feed into structures of domination is a dangerous possibility I hadn’t considered. But more broadly, I don’t understand why critics are struggling to provide a framing for what the Trump regime is doing, when it is clearly an autocratic soft coup aka administrative coup. Silicon valley tech bros developed and advertised a plan to overthrow democracy and replace it with a technocracy featuring a symbolic president and a CEO-dictator, which is what we are getting now. The plan: (1) install a CEO-dictator, (2) purge the bureaucracy, (3) build a loyalist army, (4) dismantle democratic institutions, (5) Seize control of academia, journalism, social media and (6) consolidate law enforcement and blur the distinction with military
In general, autocratic or totalitarian movements seize the reigns of power, and then they change the rules of the game to prevent anyone else from exercising power. The regime needs to control any institution that it cannot dismantle. This is why they are blackmailing and bullying the press, law firms, and academia.
Discontinued Barbie says:
I read about this last year as well. Also watched a couple interviews with these people. It sounded so crazy that I didn’t put much thought into people believing in the concepts, but now…now, I think there might some people in power that actually think this is the way forward.
Old Rapier says:
Russia, alone in all the world of developed nations, is not capitalist. It does not have a banking and credit market per say. Where the market and banks, allocate credit. No credit in Russia is allocated in back rooms. Russians alone among people seem averse to credit.
China has built thousands of cities, modern transportation systems and vast productive capacity by means of incredible credit expansion. Russia without that credit, capitalist expansion, is a backwater.
The upshot is Trump + Musk equals ending market capitalism. Russia actually won. After 250 years Russia won. Who would have believed it? Well seemingly on the road to winning. There are other ways to describe the end of market Capitalism but no room here. Crony capitalism is a pretty good approximation of the result. The banks evidently have no clue they are going to be replaced.
Peter Ben Fido says:
The overlapping nature of these various malfeasances makes me want to say ‘Why not both?’, but this is clearly not a dichotomous situation. Think of the logical organization of a Venn diagram. There are multiple discrete sets that may partially overlap with other sets. The more sets that overlap, the more numerous the intersections and the greater the theoretical potential for mutual reinforcement. The difficult to enumerate EOs and actions taken by DOGE do not exist in a vacuum and should not be considered individually. There is enough flexibility within these schemes to adapt and take advantage of multiple situations as time passes and more or less promising approaches to further multiple actions against America’s interests.
Nessnessess says:
“It certainly could be part of a totalitarian bid for power, a way to identify undocumented immigrants who were advised to pay their taxes, same sex married couples, or trans people who have changed their gender on official documents.”
This is surely one of the things they will do with the data, because they can. My records with the federal government go back decades, including my SS#, which has been consistent across both a name change and a gender change. As a trans woman, I fully expect my entire legal existence to be challenged and denied. Any day now. They can compile a list of suspected individuals based on collating the data they already have. I expect them to issue orders declaring all such individuals frauds, and use that as the basis to cancel passports, deny health insurance under the ACA, deny Social Security benefits, and to require all trans people to register as sex offenders, with all the social and legal restrictions that come with that. I will be looking into transferring all assets I currently share with my spouse to her exclusively, before all of this comes down.
Trans people are likely to be economically coerced to legally detransition. Then they will introduce new “drag” laws as a way of eliminating all perceived cross-gender expression. Presumably cis, presumably straight people will be caught in the net. Then they’ll go after “the gays,” who through their same sex attractions and actions are, to MAGAts and christian nationalists, every bit as “gender nonconforming” as actual trans people (who of course don’t actually exist.) Gender nonconformity — which will be rebranded as sexual conformity, because the term “gender” will be disappeared — does not require being trans, just as something being an expression of “DEI” does not require that it be a formal program for inclusion: Anything that in any way advocates for or is intended to advance the circumstances of women and non-white racial categories is easily painted as DEI, e.g., VAWA, all remaining civil rights legislation, all of it — gender and racial discrimination are nothing but “radical left” propaganda.
I know this sounds like catastrophizing. I’m ok with that. I have no illusions about where we are. I’m happy to be proven wrong, assuming I’m around that long.
pH unbalanced says:
I don’t think they’re going to do all of that, and what they can do is going to differ depending on state (though Gavin Newsom sure doesn’t engender a lot of confidence in the reliability of state officials), but there’s nothing on your list that looks impossible.
My wife and I are both trans, and the years we spent just trying to get her employer-provided healthcare to cover me were surreal and enfuriating, and only ended because Obergefell sidestepped all their arguments. The laws and structures that support trans rights are few and fragile.
I am preparing by making local friends. My wife is preparing by indulging in her prepper proclivities. Worrying times.
Peterr says:
To borrow an old phrase, “It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you.”
Stay safe, and keep friends close. You are not in this alone.
Ginevra diBenci says:
It’s not paranoia at all.
What I would add to Peterr’s comment: stay HERE. You have friends here. Some of us are passionately and very personally committed to defending the rights you deserve and fought so long to claim–and to snatching them back from the opportunistic bigots using human beings for the purpose of self-aggrandizement and scapegoating.
Wild Bill 99 says:
I thought the phrase was “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you”.
Savage Librarian says:
Yes, that’s exactly what one of my attorneys told me.
ApacheTrout says:
The Starlink install is truly troubling. Deadzones or overtaxed systems can be solved by expanding existing network capabilities. This is the White House, not Joe the Plumber’s house in the woods.
My bet is on this: “At a minimum, the system allows for a network separate from existing White House servers that people on the grounds are able to use, keeping that data separate.”
In other words, a private off-the-record communication system. It would not surprise me at all if there’s been a sudden drop off of communication through the existing network systems.
xyxyxyxy says:
If there’s a different administration in the future, what is it going to have access to and use for communication?
Not only communication, a whole new secure government is going to have to be rebuilt; how long can that take?
Bugboy321 says:
Years ago I was involved in purchasing spray equipment that had a wireless download component, which I expected to be stand-alone and not connecting to any secure networks. On delivery, the ISS folks seriously had kittens, because NOTHING using wireless access points (particularly the private ones), can be definitively secure, even if physically disconnected. Lesson learned.
That is a lesson yet to be learned by DOGE, and it’s not going to be a pretty one when they learn it.
P J Evans says:
This is part of why I don’t have a wireless connection on my computer, I don’t often use my cell phone, and I even less often give its number to others. (And I use a shielded cable for the connection to the physical interface.)
Yogarhythms says:
AT,
Excellent observation. Federal Records Act legally requires all written, digital, work product, be determined to be a record or not. If it is a record then it must be maintained as a record. To amplify your point Starlink communications in the Whitehouse is a clever way to end run around NARA records laws. Similar to Trump 1.0 family using whats app and self erasing records to conduct gov’t business.
Peterr says:
I wonder how deep the cuts will be at NARA, given Trump’s desire for vengeance. He removed the chief archivist in a personal snit, but I haven’t heard yet of any wider “cut 30% of your workforce” stuff.
But he’s got 3.75 years to go, and I’m sure he’ll get around to it.
Stephen Calhoun says:
That Trump visited NARA and ‘took back his boxes’ is, to me, the most under-reported story of the year so far.
earlofhuntingdon says:
It’s a dead cert that Elmo the Dick didn’t have that Starlink installed so he could play video games.
BryaninWNC says:
All of those buildings and agencies are served via fiber at 10Gbps or above. What they have between the agencies and the public that may be giving DOGE trouble is the Einstein firewall and security system provided by DHS. For classified information there are NSA provided and approved encrypted networks running on fiber. There is *no* legitimate reason to set up a Starlink terminal.
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Wild Bill 99 says:
Where’s Hilary’s server?
BRUCE F COLE says:
Thank you Marcy. CATO’s blind-spot isn’t surprising, but it is indicative.
When in doubt about a Trump motive or action, I always assume gaslighting and/or projection are operative. In this case, I have to assume it’s both: the “Russia Hoax” accusation Trump used against Hillary (and which persists even to today) was just a small part of a long-game, wide-reaching, actual Russian-organized series of hoaxes that resulted in Trump’s win last year and which is the most likely explanation for DOGE’s structural dismantling of our democratic institutions, which are being replaced by a Putin-inspired functional kleptocracy/oligarchy.
Hell, the transatlantic NATO alliance is in shreds and Ukraine is about to be broken up and (hopefully only) partly absorbed into the Russian Federation, with a few EU state leaders even actually looking longingly in that direction. If all this isn’t the result of broadly-administered Russian perfidy, then it’s a run of luck for Putin — even as he was teetering back on his heels — that defies even moderate credulity.
P-villain says:
I assumed the Starlink connection, run on separate servers, was to provide a means of “off-the-record” communications to further their grifting, but I suppose a cloak-and-dagger operation is also possible.
Rayne says:
Remember the back channel to Russia that Team Trump tried to establish after the 2016 election but before inauguration day? That.
Remember Obama’s last sanctions on Russia, ordered December 29? They included evicting two diplomatic compounds — one in Long Island, another in Maryland (back to this Maryland compound in a moment). What’s the chances these evictions were not only punitive but as a deterrent to their use for backchannel communications?
And now “normal diplomatic relations” are evidently back on the table.
And, thinking of this reminds me that FLYNN [and BANNON’s daughter] have been among those placed on the West Point Board of [can’t remember what it’s called].
xyxyxyxy says:
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney will be in Iqaluit today in a bid to reassert Canada’s sovereignty in the Arctic.
Carney is expected to make an announcement on strengthening security…
He is also set to meet with Nunavut Premier P.J. Akeeagok and members of the Canadian Rangers who patrol the Arctic….
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P J Evans says:
His actions when he bought Twitter were the same thing he’s doing from his DC office, including expecting people to be available 24/7/365.
ToldainDarkwater says:
I’ve felt that one reason for DOGE was extortion. As in, “We can turn off your payments at any moment if you don’t play ball. It doesn’t matter that you have a grant from an Act of Congress, we can turn it off. Sure you can sue to get it back. How long will that take, how much will that cost? It’s better to play ball with us.”
drhester says:
Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up
G.K. Chesterton
Flatulus says:
I thought Musk’s GROK required as much data to function as can be obtained and to do so before anyone else. Musk and DOGE acquired that the first week of Trumps regime. So, the horse is out of the barn.
neetanddave says:
i actually had the thought that someone could easily bug Elon’s snotty prat that keeps running around like his daddy runs the place… put a wire on the kid and see what they pick up…
Tburgler says:
Who on the democratic side has the capacity to be our Jim Jordan and loudly say, every day, “Everything trump is doing diminishes American power in favor of China and Russia. Who is he loyal to?”
As Jordan proved, you don’t need all the facts to be politically effective.
Ginevra diBenci says:
Democrats ARE doing that–AOC, Jasmine Crockett, and especially (with his bigger platform) Chris Murphy.
They have a tree-falling-in-the-forest problem though. When media fixates on Trump–and it does–we all blame the Democrats for doing nothing, just because we never heard them when they screamed their lungs out. The message is the media, and the media kiss Trump’s ass…now no longer just for the ratings ‘n’ clicks, but also out of craven fear of his retribution, especially in the form of lawsuits.
THIS is how democracy dies: not in darkness, but in the silence of self-imposed censorship.
earlofhuntingdon says:
Bad example, One thing the Democrats don’t need is another shirtless Gym Jordan.
RitaRita says:
Jordan is jacket -less , which is bad enough. Shirtless is would be a whole other world of creepy.
RJames0723 says:
The one angle I don’t see often mentioned is AI modeling. Musk’s team could be trying to create an AI model to replace current government systems. Say they created an AI model to replace the current payment system. Musk could then lease back the system or services to the government. If Trump literally scraped the current hardware, Musk would have a secure income flow in perpetuity. All his team has to do is siphon off enough data from the current systems to create training and testing datasets and they are good to go. No need to read a line of COBOL.
SteveBev says:
“Say they created an AI model to replace the current payment system”
As the ephors and COBOL programmers might say: “If”
RJames0723 says:
I think it would be the type of moon/mars shot that would excite Musk. It would be the greatest expression of AI so far and a grand feather in his cap. He’d try just for the bragging rights.
PS
I wrote my first COBOL program over fifty years ago now.
HorsewomaninPA says:
I’d put my money on the AI modeling goal with a little twist. Both Trump and Musk are opportunists, so they see this as a “I scratch your back if you scratch mine” arrangement. Trump, the compulsive exploiter, probably asked if Musk’s Grok could provide a way to retrieve cash from anyone in the country and bypass the impoundment process and Musk said, “sure, if you let me into government databases and let Grok learn everything that is in there.” Yes, and disguise the effort as “government efficiency”. The really bad part of these two being intertwined is that their mental disorders see no risks – anywhere. Every idea is viewed as “cool” with only positives (for them, screw all of us and the country) and they are completely blind to second, third, fourth order consequences. I think an important thing to consider is the speed with which DOGE is moving – that is significant. They want to accomplish their objectives in a short timeframe. That is why the errors made are not errors to them – they don’t care if they get the estimates right. Those so-called savings are just the window dressing.
Rugger_9 says:
I like the AI modeling idea above, but one still has to define the programming input and evaluations for revising itself. The merry band of commissars keep proving their ineptitude for key details.
It could also be yet another outrage to make everyone forget Pam Bondi promised to release the Epstein files that were sitting on her desk two weeks ago.
Max404Droid says:
This option not mentioned by Cato: do what Orban says to do. Killing USAID as a “cover” for killing VOA (and pesky investigations into Starlink contracts) could be at work here.
From DW (Deutsche Welle) a few days ago:
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told a crowd of his supporters in Budapest on Saturday that he planned to crack down on politicians and journalists who receive funding from abroad.
Speaking at an event marking Hungary’s national day, he said it was time to eliminate what he called a “shadow army” of NGOs, journalists, judges and politicians who he said were serving the interests of the EU and a “liberal American empire.”
“After today’s celebrations, comes the big Easter cleaning up as the bugs have survived the winter,” Orban said. “We will eliminate the whole shadow army … who have supported the empire for money, against their own country.”
The right-wing populist, an ally of Donald Trump, has taken a tougher stance against foreign-funded media and NGOs since the US president’s inauguration in January.
He has also welcomed recent steps taken by Washington to dismantle USAID, claiming the development agency was being used to fund liberal causes in Hungary and undermine his government.
Focusing on DOGE is the wrong approach, I think. DOGE is swinging machetes around the room to inflame as many Americans as possible, eventually offering Trump a pretext to send in the military. They’re merely the cat’s paw.
Focus first on the threads of Trump’s coalition to understand what’s going on, then see whose objectives they’re working toward.
Focus first on the threads of Trump’s coalition to understand what’s going on, then see whose objectives they’re working toward.
1. Trump cares about saving his ass, vengeance, fluffing his ego, and making more money. He doesn’t really care about anything else, except making Putin as happy as possible.
2. Putin has most certainly threatened him or his family personally. I’d guess Ivanka. This is probably the same threat that even cowed people like Romney (who has the money to protect the whole brood against normal wackos but not Putin, who would blow up his entire compound without a second thought). As a result, Trump will do anything Putin wants, which is to destroy the US and Europe and Make the USSR Great Again. This is the real threat here: that Trump is essentially an agent for Putin. If the US gets a crypto reserve, and DOGE is able to hack the payments system, they could cause havoc with the bond market and seriously damage our credibility. Or imagine dollars being created and exported via crypto and handed over to Russia. They’ve already blinded us to other cyber-attacks.
Ony Trump and Puttin matter to Trump. Everyone from here on down in the coalition can succeed or fall as far as he’s concerned.
3. Musk has obvious agenda items he wants checked off but he doesn’t really seem very ideological.
4. Thiel is there for ideology (Yarvin’s network state) and money (Palantir).
5. RW Xtians want what they’ve always wanted but more.
6. The militias get to become Trump’s Sturmabteilung
7. Random business types hope to catch some hunks as they are cut from the carcass of our shared prosperity. Trump will enjoy dispensing them to the trained seal who begs the loudest.
8. The C- and D-level players who he attracted into government hope to capitalize on their sycophancy.
9. The rest of the haters in his coalition.
RitaRita says:
The fact that CATO is questioning whether the stated objectives of Musk and DOGE are the true objectives is in itself chilling. We have a group, whose trustworthiness and competence are suspect, mucking around in sensitive government databases and we aren’t sure why.
Matt Foley says:
With Trump and Musk hijacking the EPA I would be very suspicious of EPA test data of Teslas, e.g., efficiency.
“I need you to knock off a few more Watt-hours per mile. Give me a break.”
P J Evans says:
Tesla was already in trouble for overstating how many miles it can go per charge.
earthworm says:
Bruce Olsen (above) pretty much nails my hunches, but I’d add in the apartheid ideologies of Musk, Thiel, & Co dovetail well with those for whom MAGA is code for a return to pre-Civil War US society.
(This was also the Pinochet plan (privatization of assets), which eventually failed Chile and led to a quasi-return to normalcy. AFTER 18 years of immiseration of the nation!)
Bruce Olsen says:
I’m wondering how, ummm, deeply held Musk’s rightwingification has been. That Musk and Thiel have feelings for Apartheid isn’t surprising. It’s interesting how The Network State (Thiel) is a dark reflection of the far darker Bantustans.
re: The Network State. the page linked here and the page following are worth reading. You’ll get the rest. Crazy shit but dangerous.
Since Charles Koch was a co-founder of Cato, it may be interesting to note that his father, Fred C. Koch, got a big break when he went to work in the Soviet Union during the Stalin regime, where his patent infringement case in the US wasn’t a problem. Fred also did work in Germany during the Third Reich. Also, after considerable cajoling, Koch Industries said they would close their glass plants in Russia in 2022. But, if we can believe written accounts, the Kochs were/are opposed to fascism and communism. Allegedly business is their primary interest.
It was during the Reagan administration that I was tasked to work on a contract to privatize my job. It happened just before Perestroika began. That’s also during the time Thatcher was making a big push for privatization. The Nazis did the same during the 30’s.
FWIW, Susie Wiles worked in the Reagan campaign, as did her ex. They both may have also done some work for that administration. Somewhere along the line they met Stone and Manafort. So, I’m thinking it is conceivable that Musk and the DOGE crew could have initially appealed to the Trump administration with a pitch for privatization, but from an acceleration angle. So, this would fit with #1 and #6 on the list: “the attempt to purge progressivism and cronyism”
Some credit Perestroika for causing the collapse of the Soviet Union. So, I imagine Putin would delight in the irony if Musk and Trump facilitated the same here, through a pitch for privatization which actually effectuates autocracy and kleptocracy. Whether or not they planned it together is yet to be determined.
And, as you can see from the article cited below, Cato suggests Air Traffic Control should be privatized. The Project 2025 privatization playbook recommends the following be privatized:
US Postal Service
Medicare
National Weather Service
Public Schools
AI
Veterans Affairs
TSA
Air Traffic Control
Fannie and Freddie
“Donald Trump’s playbook for privatizing America’s government” – 2/4/25, Peter Green
P J Evans says:
Because privatizing government works so well everywhere else that’s done it. /s
Ginevra diBenci says:
Those of us who oppose it need to work on our own rhetoric. The term “privatize” sounds at worst neutral, and with a nudge (from a Fox business host, say) kind of smart and appealing.
What it really denotes in practice is open-season predation on service agencies whose management has evolved (and mostly improved) within the government, but which will degrade and likely collapse under a profit-driven model.
The bottom line: applying capitalist theory to government services has never worked. Government supplies those needs that the “free” market can’t. (Certainly not in a period of drastic inequality.) I would call it cannibalism, not privatization.
xyxyxyxy says:
You may have answered this in previous questions of mine, but what was the reason they wanted to privatize your job?
Savage Librarian says:
Allegedly for cost savings, just like DOGE is claiming. But, it actually cost more and provided less service because of reduced hours of operation. So, subsequently, that library was eventually closed (so obviously savings there but bad for morale.) It did, however, provide a foot in the door for an airplane refueling business.
xyxyxyxy says:
Now I’m really into this.
An airplane refueling business in a building that was a library before?
P J Evans says:
xyxyxyxy says:
March 20, 2025 at 11:04 am
“Now I’m really into this.
An airplane refueling business in a building that was a library before?”
Offices. I used one branch library where half of it had been a fire station – that was the adult section; the kids’ stuff was in the part that had been library before. (It’s been rebuilt since. Twice. The first time because of a fire that started in the attic.)
xyxyxyxy says:
re- P J Evans March 20, 2025 11:51 am
But a fire house and library are government services.
An airplane refueling business is not.
Spencer Dawkins says:
What worries me most about this article and the subsequent discussion in the comments is how few of these possibilities are mutually exclusive. I don’t want to echo Sarah Palin (“why, all of them, Katie”), but we may be looking at multiple problematic models that are all active at once, albeit not all active in all DOGE activities across all target agencies, or all active at the same time.
Bruce E. Woych says:
“DOGE” the word comes from Latin; The dark joke is on us and at our expense. Musk &The techno-libertarians in Silicon Valley have made fools out of the entire intelligent middle class of the country. The Doge was the name given to the leaders of the Venetian Republic and was used for more than 1,000 years, from the 8th to the 18th century.
Role: The Doge acted as both the head of state and head of the Venetian oligarchy.
Doge of Venice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_of_Venice
The Greek chronicler George Akropolites used the term despotes to translate dominus, ‘lord’, which has led to some confusion with the Byzantine court title of despot.
“Crowned Republics”: Such states, led by doges, were referred to as “crowned republics”. The term “doge” comes from the Latin word dux, which translates to “leader.”
The Dark Enlightenment, also called the neo-reactionary movement (sometimes abbreviated to NRx), is an anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian,[1] and reactionary philosophical and political movement
see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment
See: The strange political philosophy motivating Musk https://www.ft.com/content/02217acf-ac64-49c2-acd5-ef4f107f014c
Inside the rise of the Dark Enlightenment’s ‘neo-reactionary movement’
Rayne says:
No. Don’t fabricate a different history for Elon Musk’s operation which hollowed out the USDS government agency and occupied it under the acronym DOGE.
Musk and his Muskrats and their sponsors inside Team Trump do NOT need your help retconning their name or the reason they are gnawing on the guts of our government.
Ciel babe says:
DOGE [sic].
No need to feed the stupid name power. I prefer to take the power away.
Thanks to this blog for the [sic].
mospeckx says:
Marcy, this is a totally politically inappropriate comment and apologize for the swearing and the off color.
putin is responsible for a million dead — mainly young men. These guys are twenty years old and full up with testosterone and you see these pics of them kissing their GFs the long goodbye in the train stations after they’ve fucked a couple of times and made no kids.
[Moderator’s note: this an off-topic comment better published under the weekly open thread beneath the Sandler ‘Fridays with Emptywheel‘ podcast post. Please pay more attention to staying on topic. /~Rayne]
David B Pittard says:
Congress should declare war on Russia, with assurance that it is not a declaration that we would violate international law nor intend any military action by this declaration. But as our named enemy, acts by President Trump t aid and abet Russia might decline. Radical, sure. But radical problems may require radical solutions. Impeachment would be far more sensible were it possible.
Eliminating US soft power under DOGE has been something else. Dismantling USAID was the start, along with declaring our intention to withdraw from the World Health Organization. Suddenly throwing up new tariffs, especially among our alllies, followed. Now we have DOGE shutting down the Voice of America. For much of the world under authoritarian regimes, especially in smaller states in Africa, Asia, and South America, American has gone silent. The news they get from their authoritarian leaders now goes unchallenged.
Ask any general or admiral, and they will tell you how much soft power matters. Soft power creates and sustains relationships with other nations, far more cheaply than invading and setting up bases and garrisons. In less than three months, DOGE has gutted damn near every institution of soft power employed by the US government.
I’m not saying this is the work of a foreign intelligence service to undermine the United States, but this certainly looks like what a foreign intelligence service would want do if they tried to undermine the United States.
I’m not sure whether DOGE gets credit for VOA. It was a separate EO.
But then much else that Trump is doing helps Russia, even ignoring preparing to give Crimea.
It certainly fits with DOGE, though. From their POV, broadcasting is done better and more cheaply by the private sector. When you add in the disdain for journalists who adhere to facts, it’s a no-brainer.
When Trump named Kari “the Big Lie Lives” Lake to head them up, I knew their days were numbered. Which brings us back to Russia.
And also, it’s not just gutting of soft power. It’s doing so in a way that is bound to elicit real backlash from the affected communities. Like just dropping Agent Orange mitigation in Vietnam, where we’re supposed to be competing with China for power.
Yes. The manner in which they dismantled our soft power was designed to twist the knife, doing as much damage as possible as they shut stuff down.
I agree with you, and I wouldn’t rule out yet another RF troll farm operation either, because many of the trails followed by DOGE commissars seem to have their genesis in the alt-right internet cesspool. The demands for unrelated information back this up IMHO since those details can be turned into blackmail opportunities.
“…even while ignoring evidence that its claimed goal — cost-cutting — is false.”
This is similar to Musk’s Mars obsession: He doesn’t really want to go to Mars. He just says things that sound like he wants to go to Mars.
What he really wants is for everyone not named Musk (or his spawn) to go to Mars, and for the rest of us to throw VC and Federal money at him in the effort to send everyone not named Musk (or his spawn) to Mars. And “He”, I guess which is the “Royal He” that he and Trump are so enamored of, personally is not responsible for any of what is going on, in or around our government, including the regulation of exploding rockets and crashing/burning cars. He just works there, you see.
By the same token “cost cutting” is cutting HIS (and his rich pals) taxes, through illegal means by which he insinuates himself and his businesses upon the American taxpayer to direct what already is a massive revenue stream into an even bigger revenue stream. Yes, this is the sophisticated thinking of our Masters of the Universe, including the Cato Institute. You would think those guys would know what “impoundment” is.
In my take, Elon does want to go to Mars. He is a sci-fi fanboy with delusions of grandeur: saving the human race in order to go on to rule the galaxy and then the universe. To this end he will use any means available to further his ambitions. He actually does not care for people, nations or ideologies, only his fever dream of the “future”. Bringing down the Government is removing an obstacle in his path.
The possibility that DOGE is systematically collecting intel to feed into structures of domination is a dangerous possibility I hadn’t considered. But more broadly, I don’t understand why critics are struggling to provide a framing for what the Trump regime is doing, when it is clearly an autocratic soft coup aka administrative coup. Silicon valley tech bros developed and advertised a plan to overthrow democracy and replace it with a technocracy featuring a symbolic president and a CEO-dictator, which is what we are getting now. The plan: (1) install a CEO-dictator, (2) purge the bureaucracy, (3) build a loyalist army, (4) dismantle democratic institutions, (5) Seize control of academia, journalism, social media and (6) consolidate law enforcement and blur the distinction with military
Multiple sources wrote about this in 2024 (see https://www.thenerdreich.com/reboot-elon-musk-ceo-dictator-doge/)
In general, autocratic or totalitarian movements seize the reigns of power, and then they change the rules of the game to prevent anyone else from exercising power. The regime needs to control any institution that it cannot dismantle. This is why they are blackmailing and bullying the press, law firms, and academia.
I read about this last year as well. Also watched a couple interviews with these people. It sounded so crazy that I didn’t put much thought into people believing in the concepts, but now…now, I think there might some people in power that actually think this is the way forward.
Russia, alone in all the world of developed nations, is not capitalist. It does not have a banking and credit market per say. Where the market and banks, allocate credit. No credit in Russia is allocated in back rooms. Russians alone among people seem averse to credit.
China has built thousands of cities, modern transportation systems and vast productive capacity by means of incredible credit expansion. Russia without that credit, capitalist expansion, is a backwater.
The upshot is Trump + Musk equals ending market capitalism. Russia actually won. After 250 years Russia won. Who would have believed it? Well seemingly on the road to winning. There are other ways to describe the end of market Capitalism but no room here. Crony capitalism is a pretty good approximation of the result. The banks evidently have no clue they are going to be replaced.
The overlapping nature of these various malfeasances makes me want to say ‘Why not both?’, but this is clearly not a dichotomous situation. Think of the logical organization of a Venn diagram. There are multiple discrete sets that may partially overlap with other sets. The more sets that overlap, the more numerous the intersections and the greater the theoretical potential for mutual reinforcement. The difficult to enumerate EOs and actions taken by DOGE do not exist in a vacuum and should not be considered individually. There is enough flexibility within these schemes to adapt and take advantage of multiple situations as time passes and more or less promising approaches to further multiple actions against America’s interests.
“It certainly could be part of a totalitarian bid for power, a way to identify undocumented immigrants who were advised to pay their taxes, same sex married couples, or trans people who have changed their gender on official documents.”
This is surely one of the things they will do with the data, because they can. My records with the federal government go back decades, including my SS#, which has been consistent across both a name change and a gender change. As a trans woman, I fully expect my entire legal existence to be challenged and denied. Any day now. They can compile a list of suspected individuals based on collating the data they already have. I expect them to issue orders declaring all such individuals frauds, and use that as the basis to cancel passports, deny health insurance under the ACA, deny Social Security benefits, and to require all trans people to register as sex offenders, with all the social and legal restrictions that come with that. I will be looking into transferring all assets I currently share with my spouse to her exclusively, before all of this comes down.
Trans people are likely to be economically coerced to legally detransition. Then they will introduce new “drag” laws as a way of eliminating all perceived cross-gender expression. Presumably cis, presumably straight people will be caught in the net. Then they’ll go after “the gays,” who through their same sex attractions and actions are, to MAGAts and christian nationalists, every bit as “gender nonconforming” as actual trans people (who of course don’t actually exist.) Gender nonconformity — which will be rebranded as sexual conformity, because the term “gender” will be disappeared — does not require being trans, just as something being an expression of “DEI” does not require that it be a formal program for inclusion: Anything that in any way advocates for or is intended to advance the circumstances of women and non-white racial categories is easily painted as DEI, e.g., VAWA, all remaining civil rights legislation, all of it — gender and racial discrimination are nothing but “radical left” propaganda.
I know this sounds like catastrophizing. I’m ok with that. I have no illusions about where we are. I’m happy to be proven wrong, assuming I’m around that long.
I don’t think they’re going to do all of that, and what they can do is going to differ depending on state (though Gavin Newsom sure doesn’t engender a lot of confidence in the reliability of state officials), but there’s nothing on your list that looks impossible.
My wife and I are both trans, and the years we spent just trying to get her employer-provided healthcare to cover me were surreal and enfuriating, and only ended because Obergefell sidestepped all their arguments. The laws and structures that support trans rights are few and fragile.
I am preparing by making local friends. My wife is preparing by indulging in her prepper proclivities. Worrying times.
To borrow an old phrase, “It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you.”
Stay safe, and keep friends close. You are not in this alone.
It’s not paranoia at all.
What I would add to Peterr’s comment: stay HERE. You have friends here. Some of us are passionately and very personally committed to defending the rights you deserve and fought so long to claim–and to snatching them back from the opportunistic bigots using human beings for the purpose of self-aggrandizement and scapegoating.
I thought the phrase was “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you”.
Yes, that’s exactly what one of my attorneys told me.
The Starlink install is truly troubling. Deadzones or overtaxed systems can be solved by expanding existing network capabilities. This is the White House, not Joe the Plumber’s house in the woods.
My bet is on this: “At a minimum, the system allows for a network separate from existing White House servers that people on the grounds are able to use, keeping that data separate.”
In other words, a private off-the-record communication system. It would not surprise me at all if there’s been a sudden drop off of communication through the existing network systems.
If there’s a different administration in the future, what is it going to have access to and use for communication?
Not only communication, a whole new secure government is going to have to be rebuilt; how long can that take?
Years ago I was involved in purchasing spray equipment that had a wireless download component, which I expected to be stand-alone and not connecting to any secure networks. On delivery, the ISS folks seriously had kittens, because NOTHING using wireless access points (particularly the private ones), can be definitively secure, even if physically disconnected. Lesson learned.
That is a lesson yet to be learned by DOGE, and it’s not going to be a pretty one when they learn it.
This is part of why I don’t have a wireless connection on my computer, I don’t often use my cell phone, and I even less often give its number to others. (And I use a shielded cable for the connection to the physical interface.)
AT,
Excellent observation. Federal Records Act legally requires all written, digital, work product, be determined to be a record or not. If it is a record then it must be maintained as a record. To amplify your point Starlink communications in the Whitehouse is a clever way to end run around NARA records laws. Similar to Trump 1.0 family using whats app and self erasing records to conduct gov’t business.
I wonder how deep the cuts will be at NARA, given Trump’s desire for vengeance. He removed the chief archivist in a personal snit, but I haven’t heard yet of any wider “cut 30% of your workforce” stuff.
But he’s got 3.75 years to go, and I’m sure he’ll get around to it.
That Trump visited NARA and ‘took back his boxes’ is, to me, the most under-reported story of the year so far.
It’s a dead cert that Elmo the Dick didn’t have that Starlink installed so he could play video games.
All of those buildings and agencies are served via fiber at 10Gbps or above. What they have between the agencies and the public that may be giving DOGE trouble is the Einstein firewall and security system provided by DHS. For classified information there are NSA provided and approved encrypted networks running on fiber. There is *no* legitimate reason to set up a Starlink terminal.
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Where’s Hilary’s server?
Thank you Marcy. CATO’s blind-spot isn’t surprising, but it is indicative.
When in doubt about a Trump motive or action, I always assume gaslighting and/or projection are operative. In this case, I have to assume it’s both: the “Russia Hoax” accusation Trump used against Hillary (and which persists even to today) was just a small part of a long-game, wide-reaching, actual Russian-organized series of hoaxes that resulted in Trump’s win last year and which is the most likely explanation for DOGE’s structural dismantling of our democratic institutions, which are being replaced by a Putin-inspired functional kleptocracy/oligarchy.
Hell, the transatlantic NATO alliance is in shreds and Ukraine is about to be broken up and (hopefully only) partly absorbed into the Russian Federation, with a few EU state leaders even actually looking longingly in that direction. If all this isn’t the result of broadly-administered Russian perfidy, then it’s a run of luck for Putin — even as he was teetering back on his heels — that defies even moderate credulity.
I assumed the Starlink connection, run on separate servers, was to provide a means of “off-the-record” communications to further their grifting, but I suppose a cloak-and-dagger operation is also possible.
Remember the back channel to Russia that Team Trump tried to establish after the 2016 election but before inauguration day? That.
I remember you writing about this:
https://www.emptywheel.net/2017/05/26/from-long-island-and-maryland-with-love/
And now “normal diplomatic relations” are evidently back on the table.
And, thinking of this reminds me that FLYNN [and BANNON’s daughter] have been among those placed on the West Point Board of [can’t remember what it’s called].
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/politics/2025/03/18/carney-defence-minister-and-military-chief-in-iqaluit-for-sovereignty-announcement/
I’m on a Rivian discussion board and got reminded of Elmo’s chaotic firings inside the Tesla supercharging division. in hindsight they strike me as the dry run to how his DOGEbags are rearranging internal organs of federal government. to Marcy’s broader point of the post, they might be harvesting the organs and selling them on. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/inside-story-elon-musks-mass-firings-tesla-supercharger-staff-2024-05-15/
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His actions when he bought Twitter were the same thing he’s doing from his DC office, including expecting people to be available 24/7/365.
I’ve felt that one reason for DOGE was extortion. As in, “We can turn off your payments at any moment if you don’t play ball. It doesn’t matter that you have a grant from an Act of Congress, we can turn it off. Sure you can sue to get it back. How long will that take, how much will that cost? It’s better to play ball with us.”
G.K. Chesterton
I thought Musk’s GROK required as much data to function as can be obtained and to do so before anyone else. Musk and DOGE acquired that the first week of Trumps regime. So, the horse is out of the barn.
i actually had the thought that someone could easily bug Elon’s snotty prat that keeps running around like his daddy runs the place… put a wire on the kid and see what they pick up…
Who on the democratic side has the capacity to be our Jim Jordan and loudly say, every day, “Everything trump is doing diminishes American power in favor of China and Russia. Who is he loyal to?”
As Jordan proved, you don’t need all the facts to be politically effective.
Democrats ARE doing that–AOC, Jasmine Crockett, and especially (with his bigger platform) Chris Murphy.
They have a tree-falling-in-the-forest problem though. When media fixates on Trump–and it does–we all blame the Democrats for doing nothing, just because we never heard them when they screamed their lungs out. The message is the media, and the media kiss Trump’s ass…now no longer just for the ratings ‘n’ clicks, but also out of craven fear of his retribution, especially in the form of lawsuits.
THIS is how democracy dies: not in darkness, but in the silence of self-imposed censorship.
Bad example, One thing the Democrats don’t need is another shirtless Gym Jordan.
Jordan is jacket -less , which is bad enough. Shirtless is would be a whole other world of creepy.
The one angle I don’t see often mentioned is AI modeling. Musk’s team could be trying to create an AI model to replace current government systems. Say they created an AI model to replace the current payment system. Musk could then lease back the system or services to the government. If Trump literally scraped the current hardware, Musk would have a secure income flow in perpetuity. All his team has to do is siphon off enough data from the current systems to create training and testing datasets and they are good to go. No need to read a line of COBOL.
“Say they created an AI model to replace the current payment system”
As the ephors and COBOL programmers might say: “If”
I think it would be the type of moon/mars shot that would excite Musk. It would be the greatest expression of AI so far and a grand feather in his cap. He’d try just for the bragging rights.
PS
I wrote my first COBOL program over fifty years ago now.
I’d put my money on the AI modeling goal with a little twist. Both Trump and Musk are opportunists, so they see this as a “I scratch your back if you scratch mine” arrangement. Trump, the compulsive exploiter, probably asked if Musk’s Grok could provide a way to retrieve cash from anyone in the country and bypass the impoundment process and Musk said, “sure, if you let me into government databases and let Grok learn everything that is in there.” Yes, and disguise the effort as “government efficiency”. The really bad part of these two being intertwined is that their mental disorders see no risks – anywhere. Every idea is viewed as “cool” with only positives (for them, screw all of us and the country) and they are completely blind to second, third, fourth order consequences. I think an important thing to consider is the speed with which DOGE is moving – that is significant. They want to accomplish their objectives in a short timeframe. That is why the errors made are not errors to them – they don’t care if they get the estimates right. Those so-called savings are just the window dressing.
I like the AI modeling idea above, but one still has to define the programming input and evaluations for revising itself. The merry band of commissars keep proving their ineptitude for key details.
It could also be yet another outrage to make everyone forget Pam Bondi promised to release the Epstein files that were sitting on her desk two weeks ago.
This option not mentioned by Cato: do what Orban says to do. Killing USAID as a “cover” for killing VOA (and pesky investigations into Starlink contracts) could be at work here.
From DW (Deutsche Welle) a few days ago:
https://www.dw.com/en/hungarys-orban-vows-crackdown-on-media-ngos/a-71932327
It is known that the Project 2025 folks and Orban’s Budapest Think Tank the Danube Institute are in cahoots. See the New Republic: https://newrepublic.com/article/179776/heritage-foundation-viktor-orban-trump
Focusing on DOGE is the wrong approach, I think. DOGE is swinging machetes around the room to inflame as many Americans as possible, eventually offering Trump a pretext to send in the military. They’re merely the cat’s paw.
Focus first on the threads of Trump’s coalition to understand what’s going on, then see whose objectives they’re working toward.
Focus first on the threads of Trump’s coalition to understand what’s going on, then see whose objectives they’re working toward.
1. Trump cares about saving his ass, vengeance, fluffing his ego, and making more money. He doesn’t really care about anything else, except making Putin as happy as possible.
2. Putin has most certainly threatened him or his family personally. I’d guess Ivanka. This is probably the same threat that even cowed people like Romney (who has the money to protect the whole brood against normal wackos but not Putin, who would blow up his entire compound without a second thought). As a result, Trump will do anything Putin wants, which is to destroy the US and Europe and Make the USSR Great Again. This is the real threat here: that Trump is essentially an agent for Putin. If the US gets a crypto reserve, and DOGE is able to hack the payments system, they could cause havoc with the bond market and seriously damage our credibility. Or imagine dollars being created and exported via crypto and handed over to Russia. They’ve already blinded us to other cyber-attacks.
Ony Trump and Puttin matter to Trump. Everyone from here on down in the coalition can succeed or fall as far as he’s concerned.
3. Musk has obvious agenda items he wants checked off but he doesn’t really seem very ideological.
4. Thiel is there for ideology (Yarvin’s network state) and money (Palantir).
5. RW Xtians want what they’ve always wanted but more.
6. The militias get to become Trump’s Sturmabteilung
7. Random business types hope to catch some hunks as they are cut from the carcass of our shared prosperity. Trump will enjoy dispensing them to the trained seal who begs the loudest.
8. The C- and D-level players who he attracted into government hope to capitalize on their sycophancy.
9. The rest of the haters in his coalition.
The fact that CATO is questioning whether the stated objectives of Musk and DOGE are the true objectives is in itself chilling. We have a group, whose trustworthiness and competence are suspect, mucking around in sensitive government databases and we aren’t sure why.
With Trump and Musk hijacking the EPA I would be very suspicious of EPA test data of Teslas, e.g., efficiency.
“I need you to knock off a few more Watt-hours per mile. Give me a break.”
Tesla was already in trouble for overstating how many miles it can go per charge.
Bruce Olsen (above) pretty much nails my hunches, but I’d add in the apartheid ideologies of Musk, Thiel, & Co dovetail well with those for whom MAGA is code for a return to pre-Civil War US society.
(This was also the Pinochet plan (privatization of assets), which eventually failed Chile and led to a quasi-return to normalcy. AFTER 18 years of immiseration of the nation!)
I’m wondering how, ummm, deeply held Musk’s rightwingification has been. That Musk and Thiel have feelings for Apartheid isn’t surprising. It’s interesting how The Network State (Thiel) is a dark reflection of the far darker Bantustans.
re: The Network State. the page linked here and the page following are worth reading. You’ll get the rest. Crazy shit but dangerous.
https //thenetworkstate.com/the-network-state-in-one-sentence
Since Charles Koch was a co-founder of Cato, it may be interesting to note that his father, Fred C. Koch, got a big break when he went to work in the Soviet Union during the Stalin regime, where his patent infringement case in the US wasn’t a problem. Fred also did work in Germany during the Third Reich. Also, after considerable cajoling, Koch Industries said they would close their glass plants in Russia in 2022. But, if we can believe written accounts, the Kochs were/are opposed to fascism and communism. Allegedly business is their primary interest.
It was during the Reagan administration that I was tasked to work on a contract to privatize my job. It happened just before Perestroika began. That’s also during the time Thatcher was making a big push for privatization. The Nazis did the same during the 30’s.
FWIW, Susie Wiles worked in the Reagan campaign, as did her ex. They both may have also done some work for that administration. Somewhere along the line they met Stone and Manafort. So, I’m thinking it is conceivable that Musk and the DOGE crew could have initially appealed to the Trump administration with a pitch for privatization, but from an acceleration angle. So, this would fit with #1 and #6 on the list: “the attempt to purge progressivism and cronyism”
Some credit Perestroika for causing the collapse of the Soviet Union. So, I imagine Putin would delight in the irony if Musk and Trump facilitated the same here, through a pitch for privatization which actually effectuates autocracy and kleptocracy. Whether or not they planned it together is yet to be determined.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_C._Koch
And, as you can see from the article cited below, Cato suggests Air Traffic Control should be privatized. The Project 2025 privatization playbook recommends the following be privatized:
US Postal Service
Medicare
National Weather Service
Public Schools
AI
Veterans Affairs
TSA
Air Traffic Control
Fannie and Freddie
https://qz.com/donald-trump-privatize-us-government-project-2025-1851752671
“Donald Trump’s playbook for privatizing America’s government” – 2/4/25, Peter Green
Because privatizing government works so well everywhere else that’s done it. /s
Those of us who oppose it need to work on our own rhetoric. The term “privatize” sounds at worst neutral, and with a nudge (from a Fox business host, say) kind of smart and appealing.
What it really denotes in practice is open-season predation on service agencies whose management has evolved (and mostly improved) within the government, but which will degrade and likely collapse under a profit-driven model.
The bottom line: applying capitalist theory to government services has never worked. Government supplies those needs that the “free” market can’t. (Certainly not in a period of drastic inequality.) I would call it cannibalism, not privatization.
You may have answered this in previous questions of mine, but what was the reason they wanted to privatize your job?
Allegedly for cost savings, just like DOGE is claiming. But, it actually cost more and provided less service because of reduced hours of operation. So, subsequently, that library was eventually closed (so obviously savings there but bad for morale.) It did, however, provide a foot in the door for an airplane refueling business.
Now I’m really into this.
An airplane refueling business in a building that was a library before?
xyxyxyxy says:
March 20, 2025 at 11:04 am
“Now I’m really into this.
An airplane refueling business in a building that was a library before?”
Offices. I used one branch library where half of it had been a fire station – that was the adult section; the kids’ stuff was in the part that had been library before. (It’s been rebuilt since. Twice. The first time because of a fire that started in the attic.)
re- P J Evans March 20, 2025 11:51 am
But a fire house and library are government services.
An airplane refueling business is not.
What worries me most about this article and the subsequent discussion in the comments is how few of these possibilities are mutually exclusive. I don’t want to echo Sarah Palin (“why, all of them, Katie”), but we may be looking at multiple problematic models that are all active at once, albeit not all active in all DOGE activities across all target agencies, or all active at the same time.
“DOGE” the word comes from Latin; The dark joke is on us and at our expense. Musk &The techno-libertarians in Silicon Valley have made fools out of the entire intelligent middle class of the country. The Doge was the name given to the leaders of the Venetian Republic and was used for more than 1,000 years, from the 8th to the 18th century.
Role: The Doge acted as both the head of state and head of the Venetian oligarchy.
Doge of Venice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_of_Venice
The Greek chronicler George Akropolites used the term despotes to translate dominus, ‘lord’, which has led to some confusion with the Byzantine court title of despot.
“Crowned Republics”: Such states, led by doges, were referred to as “crowned republics”. The term “doge” comes from the Latin word dux, which translates to “leader.”
The Dark Enlightenment, also called the neo-reactionary movement (sometimes abbreviated to NRx), is an anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian,[1] and reactionary philosophical and political movement
see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment
See: The strange political philosophy motivating Musk
https://www.ft.com/content/02217acf-ac64-49c2-acd5-ef4f107f014c
Inside the rise of the Dark Enlightenment’s ‘neo-reactionary movement’
No. Don’t fabricate a different history for Elon Musk’s operation which hollowed out the USDS government agency and occupied it under the acronym DOGE.
This is the source of the name of Musk’s DOGE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogecoin#Elon_Musk_and_Dogecoin
And Dogecoin took its name from a meme: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_(meme)
Musk and his Muskrats and their sponsors inside Team Trump do NOT need your help retconning their name or the reason they are gnawing on the guts of our government.
DOGE [sic].
No need to feed the stupid name power. I prefer to take the power away.
Thanks to this blog for the [sic].
Marcy, this is a totally politically inappropriate comment and apologize for the swearing and the off color.
Making a deal with the devil is not ok.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjevg23enggo
putin is responsible for a million dead — mainly young men. These guys are twenty years old and full up with testosterone and you see these pics of them kissing their GFs the long goodbye in the train stations after they’ve fucked a couple of times and made no kids.
[Moderator’s note: this an off-topic comment better published under the weekly open thread beneath the Sandler ‘Fridays with Emptywheel‘ podcast post. Please pay more attention to staying on topic. /~Rayne]
Congress should declare war on Russia, with assurance that it is not a declaration that we would violate international law nor intend any military action by this declaration. But as our named enemy, acts by President Trump t aid and abet Russia might decline. Radical, sure. But radical problems may require radical solutions. Impeachment would be far more sensible were it possible.