Pentagon’s “SWAT Team Of Nerds” is done with DOGE
“They’re not really using AI, they’re not really driving efficiency. What they’re doing is smashing everything,” a former Pentagon official said of Elon Musk’s DOGE team. If not stealing government information.
Nearly every staffer at the Defense Digital Service (DDS) is resigning over the coming month, according to the program’s director Jennifer Hay and three other current members of the office—effectively shutting down the program.
“The best way to put it, I think, is either we die quickly or we die slowly,” Hay said, according to Politico. She plans to leave by May 1.
Dubbed the Pentagon’s “SWAT team of nerds,” the DDS was created in 2015 with the aim to modernize defense operations with fast tech fixes and digital tools for the military.
The DOGEes are instead firing swaths of employees or pressuring them to quit.
If you haven’t read NPR’s long report on DOGE’s suspicious handling of data at the NLRB, do so. Rachel Maddow spoke with an NLRB whistleblower last night. It makes us wonder if DOGE is stealing government info (including from the Pentagon) for Musk’s AI development and/or is sharing it with foreign adversaries. To be continued, I guess.
* * * * *
Have you fought dictatorship today?
National Day of Action, Saturday, April 19 (Details coming; scroll for local events)
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense