Free Republic

The Obama administration created the United States Digital Service to be a uniquely nimble organization. Elon Musk is exploiting that feature to test the limits of U.S. law. When Barack Obama created the United States Digital Service in 2014, it was meant to disrupt the arcane tech processes that had led to catastrophes like the original HealthCare.gov rollout. A team of young, private sector workers had been able to come in and fix the site — why couldn’t they be deployed throughout the government to modernize an arcane tech infrastructure? The launch of USDS was met with deep skepticism from...

Staffers with Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) reportedly entered the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) in Silver Spring, Maryland, and the Department of Commerce in Washington DC today, inciting concerns of downsizing at the agency. “They apparently just sort of walked past security and said: ‘Get out of my way,’ and they’re looking for access for the IT systems, as they have in other agencies,” said Andrew Rosenberg, a former Noaa official who is now a fellow at the University of New Hampshire. “They will have access to the entire computer system, a lot...