"The Most Consequential Security Breach in U.S. History"

Get ready to kiss democracy goodbye. The tech takeover of America is almost complete.

The biggest story of the second Trump term has been talked about less than Hillary's emails, or Hunter Biden's laptop, or even Pete Hegseth's group chats.

It's the story covered in February 2025 by Foreign Policy, in an article titled "DOGE Is Hacking America."

In that article, written by Bruce Schneier, a security technologist and lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, and Davi Ottenheimer of the data infrastructure company Inrupt, the authors spelled out three major Security Implications of the Musk-led cyberattack on America:

First, system manipulation: External operators can now modify operations while also altering audit trails that would track their changes. Second, data exposure: Beyond accessing personal information and transaction records, these operators can copy entire system architectures and security configurations—in one case, the technical blueprint of the country’s federal payment infrastructure. Third, and most critically, is the issue of system control: These operators can alter core systems and authentication mechanisms while disabling the very tools designed to detect such changes. This is more than modifying operations; it is modifying the infrastructure that those operations use.

Fast forward to this week.

On April 30, The New York Times published an op-ed by Julia Angwin (free link) headlined: ‘This Is What We Were Always Scared of’: DOGE Is Building a Surveillance State.

According to Angwin, almost everything that Schneier and Ottenheimer warned about has already been achieved:

DOGE is assembling a sprawling domestic surveillance system for the Trump administration — the likes of which we have never seen in the United States.

President Trump could soon have the tools to satisfy his many grievances by swiftly locating compromising information about his political opponents or anyone who simply annoys him. The administration has already declared that it plans to comb through tax records to find the addresses of immigrants it is investigating — a plan so morally and legally challenged, it prompted several top I.R.S. officials to quit in protest. Some federal workers have been told that DOGE is using artificial intelligence to sift through their communications to identify people who harbor anti-Musk or -Trump sentiment (and presumably punish or fire them).

What this amounts to is a stunningly fast reversal of our long history of siloing government data to prevent its misuse. In their first 100 days, Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump have knocked down the barriers that were intended to prevent them from creating dossiers on every U.S. resident. Now they seem to be building a defining feature of many authoritarian regimes: comprehensive files on everyone so they can punish those who protest.

And it's not just theoretical.

Over the past 100 days, DOGE teams have grabbed personal data about U.S. residents from dozens of federal databases and are reportedly merging it all into a master database at the Department of Homeland Security.

And, according to at least one whistleblower, what happens inside DOGE doesn't stay inside DOGE:

DOGE workers are filling backpacks with multiple laptops, each one loaded with purloined agency data.

As many (including me) have warned, Musk's real goal was never cost savings. It was entirely personal. He wanted to seize the moment and take control of the tech takeover of America.

As he steps back from DOGE, Elon may exude sad vibes and be dogged by articles labeling him a failure. After all, the savings he has delivered are trivial. Year-over-year government spending actually increased by $200 billion in Trump's first 100 days.

But the truth is, Elon has already won.

His DOGE hackers have walked out of numerous government offices with "purloined agency data" that Musk can now use to help his various businesses and train his future AI models.

Beyond that, Reuters reports, Musk has used the distractions of DOGE to "heavily" deploy his own racist, Saudi-backed Grok AI across multiple government departments. (Even as his friend Peter Thiel's Palantir was landing new Marjorie Taylor Greene-enriching contracts with ICE.)

As WIRED reported this week:

DOGE is using AI as an imperfect means to destructive ends. It’s prompting its way toward a hollowed-out US government, essential functions of which will almost inevitably have to be assumed by—surprise!—connected Silicon Valley contractors.

So while Musk's Tesla brand may be tarnished by his government work, his xAI brand is thriving, possibly because of that work.

xAI raised $6 billion in May 2024 and another $6 billion in December 2024.

And because the Trump-friendly company is embedded inside the US government and in possession of untold amounts of priceless government data, it now offers so much more potential value to the Saudis and other foreign investors, that Elon is going back to the well.

After merging X with xAI, he's seeking $20 billion in fresh funding which, as Techcrunch notes, both showcases "AI’s continued investor appeal" and reflects "Musk’s surprising emergence as a political power player inside President Trump’s White House."

Meanwhile, Musk and his arch-rival Sam Altman of OpenAI are rushing to build competing "everything apps." These identity-based, privacy-destroying services will be sold (like social media platforms once were) as offering incredible benefits — including frictionless crypto payments! — in exchange for simply letting the platform know everything about you.

The model is China's WeChat which, as the BBC wrote in 2019:

Is a site for social interaction, a form of currency, a dating app, a tool for sporting teams and deliverer of news: Twitter, Facebook, Googlemaps, Tinder and Apple Pay all rolled into one. But it is also an ever more powerful weapon of social control for the Chinese government.

Combine an "everything app" with the other tools of the surveillance state — tools that allow the Chinese government to maintain "one person, one file" on individual citizens — and you have what critics call "digital totalitarianism."

To America's democracy-averse broligarchs, "digital totalitarianism" is the technology innovation they need to keep the cash rolling in while making sure everyone stays on their "best behavior" as our democracy gets dismantled and our rights extinguished.

And the plan is taking shape fast.

We've just lived through — and barely noticed — "the most consequential security breach in U.S. history."

Elon has already installed his AI tools across the government.

Foreign investors are now lining up to fund Elon's vision of creating a single AI-powered super‑app that will be sold as a way to let Americans conduct all their daily business and communications in one place.

At the same time, the app can also function as a turnkey surveillance instrument — for the US and other governments — delivering convenience in exchange for compliance.

Those who resist may get a knock on the door or simply a life-altering change to the data in their government file.

As Julia Angwin concluded in The New York Times this week:

None of us are safe from having our information — no matter how innocuous — used against us.

Today's tech fascists won't just use technology to manipulate the masses. They will also use it to punish their enemies. Sometimes subtly. Sometimes mercilessly. And they'll be able to hide their tracks as they do it.

Let that sink in.

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