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Your guide for what American choices 2024 means for Washington and the world
Surprisingly as it seems, there are good news from America – the courts work. At the end of last week, the federal judge gave a temporary order limiting Elon Musk and his band Techno-Libertarian, the so-called Government Efficiency Department (Doge), from access to the US cashier’s water supply, saying that there was a risk of damages.
The lawsuit was initiated by 19 general lawyers and will now be a longer legal battle. But the fact that the court quickly approved the command is important. Among all the worrying things Trump’s administration tries to do – from freezing foreign help and domestic scholarships, to the removal of USAIDs (which is almost certainly illegally) to the end of citizenship in the true birth and discharge of federal employees who disagree with them – taking over Doge Treasury is one of the most terrible.
Compared to this, even Trump’s tariff threats are a lateral line. In his first week on duty, the Scott Catott Minister of Scott Beasent handed over the keys to the internal action of the American financial system of the Musk after placing the highest ranked Treasury Officer in David Lebryk’s career on leave. He refused to provide individuals associated with Doge full access to the department data and the computer systems that place them.
This means that Musk has received access to the most sensitive personal information for each US taxpayer. As another case of approximately the same question, which the Alliance brought for retired Americans, AFL-LIK and Sei (two major unions) says: “The extent of the income into the privacy of individuals is massive and unprecedented.” Names, social insurance numbers, tax data, bank account data, credit and debit card numbers and more adhere to the treasury records to allow safe transfers between the public and the Government.
A lot of things could be done with this information, from the nasty (sending of the internal income service to revise people you do not like), to opportunistic (the ability to change financial transactions or directing payment or freezing), to defense (the possibility of deciding which will be subject to subjects pay or not in the event of a situation such as a lack of budget or crisis on a debt ceiling).
Then there are ways in which approaches to treasury data could allow a muscle of dishonest business advantages. A privileged approach to such data would allow him either to people in his companies and circulate in the main vault transactions or receive insider information about state spending in key industries such as defense, energy, health care and technology.
Changing existing software systems (which could include the implementation of artificial intelligence) is clearly representing huge national security and geopolitical risks, especially given the Musk close business ties with China.
But I imagine that political adversaries, business rivals or groups who Doga believes that at home he believes it would be fruit with low hanging fruit. After all, Musk himself has already said on the X that “@Doge team quickly excludes” payments to groups, including Lutheran family services and associated organizations, which Trump’s administration does not like.
Unauthorized access to non -governmental officials is illegal to such information and can even be criminal. Most of the lawyers I have talked to over the last two weeks working against administration and dogs say that violation of the law is so extreme that one of the biggest challenges is to classify the hierarchy of illegal.
But the most important question here is that this type of treasury control – which is processing more than $ 6 to $ 6 a year in transactions, including social security payments, tax refund, federal support and military salary – is something that only monarchs and autocrats had historically. As Alex KarpExecutive director Palanti, who recorded an increase in shares’ prices on the promise of lucrative government contracts, said last week: “This is a revolution. . . Some will cut off their heads. “
Quick download of federal infrastructure and many Musk comments have creepy resemblances to the ambitions of the Neo-Reactive Movement or NRX, creepy philosophy developed by a software engineer named Curtis Yarvin, accepted by members of Silicia Valley Elite (including Peter Thiel, Balaji Srinivan and Marc Andreessen). Philosophy is also known – wait – as “Dark Enlightenment.”
These people, who seem to have read too much Ayn Rand, believe that freedom and democracy are incompatible, and what America really needs is the executive director. They do not want to make a government more effective as they want to privatize.
This should be a matter of science fiction. But not.
What to do? Continue to get these restrained commands. As the Ambassador of Norm Eisen, one of the many lawyers who have filed more cases against the administration, told me: “We meet the autocratic shock of Donald Trump and awe with democratic shock and awe.” Here’s the hope that the latter will win.
