The True Cost of Musk's Madness

Algorithmic Governance By Billionaires Should Not Replace Democracy

Musk’s AI takes over the government

“DOGE is not about efficiency. It is about erasure. Democracy is being deleted in slow motion, replaced by proprietary technology and AI models. It is a coup, executed not with guns, but with backend migrations and database wipes.” - Mike Brock, The Plot Against America

There are many takes on the wrongness of what Musk/Trump are undertaking to the Federal government; to overthrow the rule of law, to implement the Project 2025 agenda, a power grab by the oligarchy, to break the power of the modern state, to reinstate segregation and the patriarchal order of society, end the era of enlightenment that started with renaissance, etc.

While all of the above and more –eliminate organized labor as a force– are true to some degree, the big picture, the reality that there is a script beyond Project 2025 being followed has yet to emerge in public consciousness. This script’s last act is a techno-charged version of Mussolini’s vision of the state industrial complex.

In The Plot Against America, Mike Brock gives us a history of how this perspective was shaped by the 2008 financial crisis, to the emerging libertarian school holding that democracy and freedom were incompatible, to the thinking in Silicon Valley that democracy wasn’t just inefficient—it was obsolete, to the point we’re now at with Elon and his Musketeers that the fall of democracy is inevitable.

(The indented italicized paragraphs throughout this essay are all lifted from Brock’s detailed analysis and descriptions unless otherwise noted.)

What we’re witnessing is the culmination of an ideology that has been incubated, tested, and refined for over a decade. The Tea Party, InfoWars, Zero Hedge, cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, along with the emergence of Artificial Intelligence are all signposts along the path leading to the current attempts aimed at upending the existing order.

• The notion that code can replace democratic institutions, that technical competence should override democratic negotiation, and that private power should supersede public authority—these ideas moved from crypto theory to political practice..

Practice doesn’t necessarily mean perfect, as the infrastructure for techno-solutionism is being laid simultaneously with the destruction of the federal bureaucracy, as Elon Musk and his acolytes are learning.

President Trump, who is largely irrelevant in the ultimate scheme of things, has contributed chaos and loathing to the mix. His proclamations are often premature and poorly thought out, like his notion that he can simply replace the Chair of the Kennedy Center with a press release. He can and probably will get his way, but has to go through a legally mandated process.

His Justice Department has lost much of its talent in the face of a wave of lawsuits coming from state attorney generals, non-profits, federal employees, and specialized law firms.

Whatever legal advice was given regarding the shuttering of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was profoundly ignorant. Under Dodd-Frank - the post-2008 financial crisis law that created the CFPB - state attorneys general are empowered to enforce its rules. Those rules can't be amended or rescinded for so long as the CFPB is non-existent. AND, any "violation of an enumerated consumer law is a violation of the Consumer Financial Protection Act," which can be enforced by state-run Justice Departments. (h/t Cory Doctorow at Pluralistic)

Of course, the laws could be changed, right? That’s a real long shot, as none of this can be changed without a 60-vote Senate majority.

I’m not sure Elon Musk man even knows how to calculate a majority. He does care when he loses in court, to the point where judges who rule against DOGE cases will face overt and covert retribution.

Having lost in court on Saturday via a ruling that the Treasury Department should block access to anyone “other than civil servants with a need for access to perform their job duties” from its payment systems, Elon Musk is calling for the impeachment of the federal judge involved. (It takes a vote of ⅔ of the Senate to fire a judge)

I can guarantee that the magistrate has already been “exposed” on Musk’s social media and is getting threats against himself and his family. That’s just how these assholes operate. The cruelty is the point.

I expect this week that a Federal Judge will send down some contempt orders. Rather than weasel around judicial oversight, the administration will argue the executive branch reins supreme.

The analysis holding that 80% of the lawsuits against the Musk/Trump initiatives will win is a solid one, but by the time these decisions are finalized, the damage will have been done. A small group of loyalists, many of whom have no life experience outside the Musk corporate world, are destroying the basic elements of agencies.

Eight thousand or so web pages containing research and data relating to every aspect of life have been yanked down. Some are reappearing, sans what should be helpful data concerning the health and welfare of the American people. It might be helpful for healthcare professionals to know about the outbreaks of tuberculosis in Kansas, the measles in Texas, and/or the virulence of this year’s influenza.

FYI- 4,100+ flu cases were reported in San Diego County for the week ending Feb. 1, as opposed to about 700 cases in that period last year.

What is apparently a random scattering of shut down funding streams being restored shows the lack of knowledge imbued in the Huns sacking Washington DC. People awaiting organ transplants are on hold, nonprofits are laying off staff, and God only knows what’s happening to the thousands of USAID overseas employees who are being told to pack up.

The only responses these Muscovites have to criticisms and concerns by the humans whose livelihoods are being impacted are “because I said so” or “you are evil/corrupt.”

• Government functions that once belonged to democratically accountable institutions are already being transferred to proprietary AI systems, optimized not for justice or equality, but for efficiency and control. Already, decisions about financial regulation, law enforcement priorities, and political dissent are being made by algorithms that no citizen can vote against and no court can oversee. Your rights are no longer determined by a legal framework you can appeal—they are dictated by a set of terms of service, changeable at the whim of those who control the network.

A key aspect of this seizure of power involves destroying the privacy of citizens. If you think about it, privacy is (or should be) the one power innate in citizenship. Our social media and related software have pirated away our purchases.

According to the Washington Post, Musk’s DOGE sent data to Microsoft’s Azure cloud system as part of a process to identify the Education Department’s disbursements. They have also accessed personal information from millions of Americans who are part of the vast student loan system. Unfortunately, Azure’s system is not designed to secure that type of data and it could be subject to theft during a cyberattack.

Student governments in the University of California system filed a suit against the Department of Education on Friday, accusing the body of illegally sharing the personal financial information of millions of students with Musk and his workers.

The suit claims it violated the Federal Privacy Act of 1974. The students in the suit said they "did not consent to their information being shared with Musk or any DOGE parties.

Non-oblivious humans in this country are upset about the immediate effects of this assault on democracy. But the long-term effects may be worse, much worse.

The institutions protecting our national security, public health, economic stability, and disaster response all operate on people with life experiences in their areas of work. There is no way to code much of that knowledge in a hurry, much less make judgements protecting the public.

The potential fallout from these actions is catastrophic. And, for all the hype, artificial intelligence is not considered reliable enough to be used in many fields where judgement and experience are critical factors. I’m not saying that machines won’t eventually be good enough to perform many tasks, but this round of implementation is like putting jet fuel in an automobile’s tank and hoping the result won’t destroy the vehicle and the operator.

Here’s Mark Sumner at the Journal of Uncharted Blue Places:

• These notions—AI can replace workers, the government should function like a startup—are not meant to describe reality; they are meant to create a permission structure for those in power to obtain more of it. Here, AI will either allow Trump and Musk to install more loyalists, hollow out the administrative state, or degrade the quality of services once provided; all outcomes that favor Trumpism, and, I guess, Muskism. The startup mentality, meanwhile, seeks to give license to break laws, in the name of progress, of disruption, of building the future.

• Same as it ever was: Way back in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, early factory owners deployed automation to deskill workers, to justify employing precarious and child laborers, and as a means of circumventing long-held laws—all to produce more products at lower quality, and to concentrate profits, and power, in fewer hands.

• Note that while many AI companies and executives try to pitch automation as making people’s lives easier, DOGE cuts right to the heart of it. This isn’t about making anyone’s working life better—in fact, it’s actually going to mean more work, for you, the worker.

Finally, although I’m sure that our wannabe techno-philosophers in Silicon Valley have discussed it, there is nothing on the table (outside of brute force) that will negate the impact algorithmic governance will have on the economy and citizens in general. Tainted food, airplane crashes, and mass-layoffs in government-dependent towns aren’t going to make anybody happy.

We’ve endured more than a half-century of various experiments with a market economy, and results have not been good. Our food is loaded with chemicals too toxic for use in Europe and beyond. Communities in many states have been impacted by the wanton violations of environmental protection regulations. School systems are going broke (and educational achievement hasn’t improved) in states where vouchers are being snapped up by well-to-do families whose children are already enrolled in charter schools. Are you happy with the size of the seats in coach class on airlines? And how’s your electric bill been lately? Going up, right.

Filing a jillion lawsuits and protests outside of government offices are stopgap measures being correctly used in an emergency situation. But we need to understand that we can’t put this genie back in the urn. Musk/Trump and their minions can be defeated, but work needs to commence now on what could exist on the other side of this apocalypse.

Paul Krugman’s column is about the administration’s impacts on foreign policy & trade:

• The destruction of USAID is a prime example of what Dan Drezner calls Humpty Dumpty foreign policy, as in, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put him back together again. By furloughing the agency’s employees, ordering those working abroad to come home and canceling crucial programs and grants, the Musk/Trump administration undermined decades’ worth of relationship-building. Even if the courts eventually order everything the wreckers did reversed, it will be hard if not impossible to put the structure back together again.

The basic idea of an opposition/shadow/peoples cabinet would enable the crafting of solutions on both the macro and micro level. Yes, our legislative system is different from Britain and other democracies, but we still have a basic set of institutions worth examining and resetting in a manner that puts people, not billionaires first.

Mike Brock gets the final word:

• Vox Populi, Vox Dei, Elon Musk declares from his digital throne—the voice of the people is the voice of God.

• But in the world they are building, the people have no voice. The algorithms speak for them. The executives decide for them. The future is optimized, efficient, and entirely out of their hands.

• Vox Populi, Vox Dei. They whisper it, as they lock the gates.

Erasing Dissent: Trump’s Slow Burn War on the Arts by Olivia of Troye at Living It

• So, what can we do? The first step is recognizing that these attacks on the arts are not isolated—they are part of a broader strategy to erode democracy. Defunding, banning, and reshaping cultural institutions are the opening moves in a larger game of controlling public thought. If we allow Trump to dictate what art is acceptable, what performances are allowed, and which voices are heard-- we are conceding ground in the battle for democracy itself.

• Artists, cultural leaders, and citizens alike must push back. That entails supporting independent art, funding grassroots cultural movements, and using creative expression as a means of resistance. It means refusing to allow institutions like the Kennedy Center to be transformed into state-controlled propaganda outlets. It necessitates calling out these authoritarian-like tactics for what they are: attacks on freedom of expression and democracy.

• If history has taught us anything, it's that art and authoritarianism are natural enemies. Those who seek absolute power will always try to control creative expression. Still, as long as artists and free thinkers continue to create, resist, and challenge, the fight is far from over. Trump may try to dictate the future of American culture, but he cannot erase the voices of those of us who refuse to be silenced.

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Wikipedia Prepares for 'Increase in Threats' to US Editors From Musk and His Allies by Jason Koebler at 404 Media

• Last month, Forward obtained a document created by the Heritage Foundation called “Wikipedia Editor Targeting,” which set a goal to “identify and target Wikipedia editors abusing their position by analyzing text patterns, usernames, and technical data through data breach analysis, fingerprinting, HUMINT (human intelligence), and technical targeting.”

• The document discusses creating sock puppet accounts to “reveal patterns and provoke reactions,” discusses trying to track users’ geolocation, searching through hacked datasets for username reuse, and using Pimeyes, a facial recognition software, to learn the real identities of Wikipedia editors. Molly White of Citation Needed has an extensive rundown on Elon Musk’s crusade against Wikipedia, and both Slate and The Atlantic have written about the right’s war on Wikipedia in recent days.

• In a series of calls and letters to the Wikimedia community over the last two weeks, Wikimedia executives have told editors that they are trying to figure out how to keep their users safe in an increasingly hostile political environment. “I’m keeping an eye on the rising noise of criticism from Elon Musk and others and I think that’s something we need to grapple with,” Wikimedia founder Jimmy Wales said in a meeting on January 30.

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SpyWeek: Deep State Demolition Derby by Seth Hettena at SpyTalk

• Trump’s newly installed Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the closure of two important law enforcement initiatives that cut close to President Trump. One is the effort to combat secret influence campaigns by China, Russia and other adversaries “that try to curry favor and sow chaos in American politics,” as NBC News put it in breaking the story. The little-noticed order “disbands the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force and pares back enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, despite years of warnings by U.S. intelligence agencies that foreign malign influence operations involving disinformation were a growing and dangerous threat,” NBC said.

• Bondi also ordered the immediate closure of the Department of Justice's Kleptocracy Initiative and its associated task force. Since its launch in 2010, the Kleptocracy Initiative has recovered billions in stolen assets, from Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha's $458 million to record-breaking recoveries in the 1MDB scandal. (Project Brazen)