Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"No estimate is more in danger of erroneous calculation than those by which a man computes the force of his own genius"

– Samuel Johnson.

"Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception".

– George Orwell

“I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can’t say — I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”

– Harriet Tubman

1. Falsehoods Fuel the Right-Wing Crusade Against U.S.A.I.D.

2. 'Aiding chaos': USAID’s role in engineering regime change, social unrest worldwide

3. OVERRIDE: INSIDE THE REVOLUTION REWIRING AMERICAN POWER

4. DOGE’s First Round of Cuts Went to Trump Priorities, but Bigger Targets Await

5. Heart Attacks Rise During the Super Bowl. You Can Take Precautions.

6. Reimagining the American War Machine

7. ‘We’ve Already Won’: Podcasters and Influencers Gain New Standing in Trump’s White House

8. Trump’s Role in TikTok Talks: Dealmaker in Chief

9. Taiwan sends officials to US to discuss possible Trump tariffs

10. Fighting the war in Ukraine on the electromagnetic spectrum

11. How TikTok became a religious pulpit

12. Elon Musk is shredding America’s government as he did Twitter

13. 7 Chinese balloons detected around Taiwan within 24 hours

14. Visualizing the international reach of U.S. funding cut by Trump

15. Trump’s Loyalty Test Presses Jobseekers on Ties to Disfavored Republicans

16. U.S. intelligence, law enforcement candidates face Trump loyalty test

17. Booz Allen Removes Subcontractor Who Wrote Report on DOGE Access

18. Internships rescinded. Jobs lost. Foreign affairs students ask: What now?

19. Prebunking Elon Musk's Super Bowl Propaganda

20. 'Trump study sessions': How Japan PM's homework paid off

21. Trump Lets Japan Off the Hook on Trade — at Least for Now

22. Europe’s Trump Playbook: Offer Carrots but Warn That You Have a Big Stick

23. Opinion: Lavrov Compares Trump’s ‘America First’ to Nazi propaganda

1. Falsehoods Fuel the Right-Wing Crusade Against U.S.A.I.D.

From the NY Times. An interesting view on how social media can influence significant policy decisions.

Falsehoods Fuel the Right-Wing Crusade Against U.S.A.I.D.

As the Trump administration works to dismantle the aid agency, right-wing influencers have flooded the internet with falsehoods about its work.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/business/usaid-conspiracy-theories-disinformation.html?unlocked_article_code=1.vU4._F2s.9Kr13iCGK42e

Current and former employees of the United States Agency for International Development and supporters of foreign aid rallied against President Trump’s stop-work order on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.Credit...Valerie Plesch for The New York Times

By Steven Lee Myers and Stuart A. Thompson

Feb. 7, 2025

The video falsely claiming that the United States Agency for International Development paid Ben Stiller, Angelina Jolie and other actors millions of dollars to travel to Ukraine appeared to be a clip from E!News, though it never appeared on the entertainment channel.

In fact, the video first surfaced on X in a post from an account that researchers have said spreads Russian disinformation.

Within hours it drew the attention of Elon Musk, who reposted it. So did President Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr.

They amplified the false video as Mr. Musk pressed a crusade to shut down U.S.A.I.D., the agency that has distributed much of the government’s foreign aid since 1961. Working with Mr. Trump’s blessing as the head of a government efficiency campaign, Mr. Musk and others in the administration have taken over the agency’s headquarters, frozen grants and notified employees that nearly all of them will be laid off.

The dismantling of the agency has been accompanied by a torrent of anger online from right-wing influencers and accounts that are promoting false claims and conspiratorial thinking.

While some politicians and voters have long questioned the value of foreign aid, those attacking the agency have often distorted facts and, wittingly or unwittingly, embraced as true anything that could help justify targeting U.S.A.I.D.

That includes Mr. Musk himself, who has used the platform he took over in 2022 as a megaphone for the effort to slash the federal bureaucracy. On Sunday Mr. Musk called it “a criminal organization,” without explaining the basis for such an accusation.

“He’s exploiting ignorance about the way government works, and the lack of oversight over anything he’s doing,” said Mike Rothschild, a disinformation researcher and author of “Jewish Space Lasers,” a book about conspiracy theories. “All of it is incredibly dangerous, and happening right in front of us.”

The flurry of attacks also underscored once again how much Republican views have increasingly converged with propaganda emanating from the Kremlin or with narratives aligned with its international goals, especially on Mr. Musk’s platform. The false video about the celebrities appeared to be the work of an influence campaign that has produced dozens of similar fakes about Russia’s war in Ukraine, according to Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub.

“Russian anti-Ukraine propaganda has thoroughly infiltrated certain communities on X,” said Darren L. Linvill, a researcher there, who traced the spread of the faked clip from its origin on X through a network of accounts that has distributed Russian fakes before.

“Given how much time Musk spends on his platform,” Dr. Linvill said, “it was probably inevitable that some fabricated Russian message would resonate with him, and this one seemed almost designed to do just that.”

Neither Mr. Musk nor Donald Trump Jr. responded immediately to requests for comment.

X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the spread of misinformation about U.S.A.I.D. on the platform, though it has added a note to posts sharing the video about the actors, noting that it is not real.

Much of the frenzy online this week has centered on U.S.A.I.D.’s many grants, information about which has been publicly available for years.

One viral claim, for example, started after an account on X with more than half a million followers suggested that Politico, the Washington news website, had received more than $8 million from U.S.A.I.D.

That wasn’t true. The website had received about $44,000 from U.S.A.I.D. for subscriptions to its premium environmental and energy publication over two years, and more than $8 million in subscription revenue from a variety of agencies, including the Department of Energy.

Even so, the claim shot rapidly across social media, as influencers and politicians with even more followers amplified the idea.

That set off a round of other misleading claims about U.S.A.I.D. granting money to the BBC and The New York Times. (The agency has instead granted money to an independent charity that shares a name with the BBC. The most viral claim about The New York Times was based on an inaccurate search of government records that included grants to unrelated, but similar-sounding groups, like New York University. In a statement, The Times said that the payments it had received were for subscriptions; government data shows it has also received some advertising revenue from the government. In a memo to staff, Politico’s leaders said the publication had “never been a beneficiary of government programs or subsidies.”)

The facts failed to reach a significant audience online, but the misinformation was elevated by prominent podcasters, politicians and Trump allies within hours.

Posts on X About Politico and U.S.A.I.D.

Nearly 15,000 posts on X over two days mentioned U.S.A.I.D. and Politico, with many users falsely claiming that the humanitarian organization paid the news website millions of dollars.

Cumulative views

80 million

Viktor Orban

Prime minister

of Hungary

Nearly 10 hours after his first post,

the same independent journalist

clarifies that U.S.A.I.D. had paid

Politico only $24,000 for 2024.

Benny Johnson

Podcaster

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene

Republican of Georgia

Charlie Kirk

Podcaster

An independent journalist goes viral suggesting

that U.S.A.I.D. paid Politico more than $8 million.

1,000

3,000

5,000

7,000

9,000

11,000

13,000

Cumulative number of posts

Note: Data includes posts on X between Feb. 5 at 9 a.m. Eastern Time and Feb. 6 at 10 p.m. that mention both “Politico” and “USAID.”Source: Tweet Binder by AudienseBy The New York Times

Accounts devoted to sharing conspiracy theories said the claims were somehow evidence that the Democrats used U.S.A.I.D. to fund a “fake news empire.”

By Wednesday afternoon, Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister and authoritarian leader, echoed the claims swirling in the United States, writing on X that payments to Politico somehow financed “basically the entire left-wing media in Hungary” — a viral post that received more than 26 million views.

Soon the idea spread to the Oval Office, where Mr. Trump used his Truth Social account to criticize the government’s news subscriptions — payments that had occurred during his first presidency as well — as “payoffs” for “creating good stories about the Democrats.”

“This could be the biggest scandal of them all, perhaps the biggest in history!” he wrote in all-caps on Thursday morning as other users demanded criminal investigations.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House’s press secretary, announced that the administration would cancel all Politico subscriptions. On Thursday, the Agriculture Department said it had canceled its Politico subscriptions.

For Russia and China, the American conservative uproar over U.S.A.I.D. has been met with startled glee.

Both nations, echoing Mr. Orban’s complaint, have blamed the agency for supporting subversive programs in their countries.

Chen Weihua, a prominent bureau chief and columnist for the state news organization China Daily, cited reports about the agency’s funding as vindication for China’s previous claims. He suggested that the BBC’s reporters in China were “all bought” by the Central Intelligence Agency and the British secret service, MI6.

“If you have questions why BBC reporters in China keep smearing China all these years and talking BS, you might find answers now,” he wrote on X.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia banned U.S.A.I.D. grants in 2012 and expelled the agency’s workers, accusing the United States of funding opponents of his rule. (Officials from Republican and Democratic administrations have argued that the programs simply promoted civil society in Russia.)

Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ridiculed a series of grants that have been criticized in the United States, too, and claimed the agency’s underlying purpose was to promote political uprisings, citing protests in Egypt in 2011, Ukraine in 2014 and Georgia last year.

The false video that went viral this week claiming U.S.A.I.D. funded celebrity travel overseas fit Russia’s recurring narrative that the United States furtively supports Ukraine with resources that American voters would rather spend at home.

The video appeared to be the work of an influence campaign known to researchers as Operation Overload or Matryoshka, after the Russian nesting dolls, according to Clemson’s Media Forensics Hub. That work is led by a private company with links to the Kremlin.

Viral Disinformation About U.S.A.I.D.

A false video, claiming that celebrities were paid by U.S.A.I.D. for visiting Ukraine, went viral online and was reposted by Elon Musk, X’s owner and most-followed user. It appeared to be part of a Russian influence campaign, according to Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub.

By The New York Times

The footage showed photographs or clips of a number of well-known actors meeting with Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, while a narrator with a British accent claimed the actors had received large payments from U.S.A.I.D. for the appearance.

Ms. Jolie, the narrator says, received $20 million; Orlando Bloom, $8 million; Sean Penn, $5 million; and so on. “This was done to increase Zelensky’s popularity among foreign audiences, particularly in the United States,” the narrator claims. “The involvement of celebrities made it easy to coordinate funding programs for Ukraine during the conflict.”

After the video appeared on the X account, articles about its claims appeared on the sites of at least two Russian news organizations, Tsargrad and Pravda. The video was picked up by a number of accounts that have previously shared Russian disinformation, but soon expanded beyond that to Americans cheering the Trump administration on. By Thursday, users on TikTok and Mr. Trump’s Truth Social platform had shared the video as commenters expressed outrage and called for U.S.A.I.D. to be eliminated.

There is no evidence of the payments in any of the agency’s programs. A spokesman for E!News also said in a statement that “the video is not authentic and did not originate from E!News.”

The actor Ben Stiller, said to have been paid $4 million for a visit to Ukraine, took to social media to try to refute the claim. “These are lies coming from Russian media,” he wrote on X. “I completely self-funded my humanitarian trip to Ukraine. There was no funding from USAID and certainly no payment of any kind.”

More conspiratorially minded supporters of Mr. Musk continue to cheer the billionaire on anyway.

They include a food service worker and Army National Guard veteran who was blamed in 2022 for starting a conspiracy theory about American biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine. In attacking U.S.A.I.D., he wrote in posts on X and Telegram this week, Mr. Musk had exposed “an Orwellian dystopia” by detailing the agency’s supposed support for the media.

“We live on a foundation of lies,” he said.

Steven Lee Myers covers misinformation and disinformation from San Francisco. Since joining The Times in 1989, he has reported from around the world, including Moscow, Baghdad, Beijing and Seoul. More about Steven Lee Myers

Stuart A. Thompson writes about how false and misleading information spreads online and how it affects people around the world. He focuses on misinformation, disinformation and other misleading content. More about Stuart A. Thompson

See more on: Agency for International Development, U.S. Politics, X (Formerly Twitter), Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin

2. 'Aiding chaos': USAID’s role in engineering regime change, social unrest worldwide

A very sensational article from Iran but it is useful in understanding their view of USAID and foreign assistance funding in general - of course that foreign assistance is a threat to Iran and it calls USAID an "Arm of regime change."

As an aside this is why USAID personnel are at risk in areas that are influenced or controlled by totalitarian or hostile regimes. Note the work described in Syria below among other places such as Venezuela and Ukraine.

Consider this as an example of severe disinformation beyond that which the NY Times was describing (HERE). But based on social media there are some in the US who believe what is written below and of course there are many half truths within the propaganda. I am sure every member of the USAID (and the State Department as well) would say that they are not an "Arm of Regime Change" and definitely not a front for the CIA.

But compare this article with the actual missions and activities of USAID and other US government (military and civilian) and government funded organizations. It is not hard to speculate about connections and overlap (or see conspiracies). Of course the question I would have for the DOGE wiz kids (assuming these activities are still desired to support US national security by the current administration) would be how to synchronize and orchestrate these various activities to secure US national security objectives? We could return to pre-WWII when we had no intelligence capabilities, no development and aid capabilities, and no special operations capabilities where we only conducted diplomacy.

But the Iran propaganda below is an excellent spin on the activities described here.

1. Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (DRG) – USAID

Mission: Promotes democratic governance, human rights, and the rule of law through foreign assistance programs.
Activities: Supports electoral processes, civil society development, and anti-corruption initiatives in developing countries.
Contribution to National Security: Strengthens global stability by promoting democracy and reducing the likelihood of state failure, which can lead to conflict, terrorism, or mass migration.

2. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) – State Department

Mission: Promotes democracy, protects human rights, and advocates for labor rights worldwide.
Activities: Provides funding for human rights groups, monitors human rights violations, and engages in diplomatic efforts to advance freedom.
Contribution to National Security: Counters authoritarian influence, prevents human rights abuses that can lead to conflict, and fosters alliances with democratic states.

3. Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP) – State Department (Now part of the Global Public Affairs Bureau)

Mission: Conducts public diplomacy by engaging international audiences with U.S. values, policies, and perspectives.
Activities: Manages foreign language media, digital diplomacy, and cultural exchanges.
Contribution to National Security: Counters misinformation, builds foreign support for U.S. policies, and strengthens diplomatic ties through strategic communication.

4. Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), and Radio Free Asia (RFA)

Mission: Provide independent news and information to countries with restricted press freedom.
Activities: Broadcasts in multiple languages to inform audiences in authoritarian regimes and conflict zones.
Contribution to National Security: Counters disinformation from adversaries, supports democratic movements, and weakens authoritarian control over information.

5. National Endowment for Democracy (NED)

Mission: Promotes democracy worldwide through grants to civil society organizations.
Activities: Funds independent media, human rights groups, and political development programs.
Contribution to National Security: Helps prevent the rise of authoritarian regimes hostile to U.S. interests and promotes stability in key regions.

6. Army Special Forces (Green Berets) – USSOCOM

Mission: Conducts unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, and counterterrorism operations.
Activities: Trains allied forces, conducts direct action missions, and engages in counterinsurgency efforts.
Contribution to National Security: Enhances partner nations' military capabilities, weakens insurgent and terrorist organizations, and supports U.S. strategic objectives in contested regions.

7. Civil Affairs (CA) – USSOCOM

Mission: Engages with local populations in conflict and post-conflict environments to build stability and trust.
Activities: Supports governance, humanitarian aid, and infrastructure development in coordination with military and civilian agencies.
Contribution to National Security: Reduces local grievances that fuel insurgencies, enhances military-civilian cooperation, and strengthens governance in fragile states.

8. Psychological Operations (PSYOP) – USSOCOM

Mission: Influences foreign audiences’ perceptions and behaviors to support U.S. objectives.
Activities: Disseminates targeted messaging through media, leaflets, and digital campaigns.
Contribution to National Security: Undermines enemy morale, counters extremist propaganda, and supports U.S. influence operations in strategic regions.

9. Special Activities Division (SAD) – CIA

Mission: Conducts covert paramilitary and political operations in support of U.S. national security.
Activities: Includes clandestine operations, sabotage, and counterterrorism missions.
Contribution to National Security: Enables U.S. influence in areas where conventional forces cannot operate, disrupts adversaries’ plans, and protects American interests through covert means.

'Aiding chaos': USAID’s role in engineering regime change, social unrest worldwide

https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2025/02/08/742401/aiding-chaos-usaid-role-engineering-regime-change-social-unrest-worldwide

Saturday, 08 February 2025 5:03 PM [ Last Update: Saturday, 08 February 2025 5:03 PM ]

By Maryam Qarehgozlou

After President Donald Trump’s executive order suspending all US foreign aid programs, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has again come under intense scrutiny.

This renewed attention casts a spotlight on USAID’s history of fomenting unrest and orchestrating "regime change" worldwide since it was established in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy.

On January 21, on his first day back in office, Trump signed the order—among many others—to freeze funding for US foreign assistance for a 90-day review period to determine whether these programs align with his “America First” foreign policies.

On January 25, the US State Department ordered a sweeping freeze on new funding for almost all US foreign assistance, exempting emergency food programs and military aid to Israel and Egypt.

In fiscal year 2023, the US has disbursed $72 billion in assistance—approximately 1 percent of its budget—supporting programs in 204 countries and regions. These initiatives purportedly span various sectors, including disaster relief, health, and so-called pro-democracy endeavors.

USAID, the agency responsible for implementing much of the US foreign aid program, is significantly impacted by Trump’s order. The directive effectively halts the agency’s current $42.8 billion budget allocated for global operations.

Last week, reports revealed that many senior USAID officials were affected by furloughs, dismissals, and disciplinary leaves, amid an investigation into attempts to circumvent the executive order.

In addition, several hundred Washington-based contractors and others around the world were laid off. On Saturday, the USAID website went offline. The agency’s computer servers were carted away.

Trump administration has vowed to strip USAID of its independence as a government agency and place it under the State Department’s control, not to save taxpayer money but to spend it the way he deems fit, according to observers, including on the Tel Aviv regime and its lobbies.

Although it remains unclear whether the president possesses the legal authority to bypass Congress and order USAID’s merger into the State Department, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Monday that he has been named acting director of USAID.

On Monday, Trump stated that he doesn’t need Congress to scrap the agency. “Not when it comes to fraud. If there’s fraud, these people are lunatics,” Trump said.

Billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk, who was appointed as head of the Department of Government Efficiency last month, said on Monday that Trump agreed the USAID needs to be “shut down.”

“With regards to the USAID stuff, I went over it with (the president) in detail and he agreed that we should shut it down,” Musk said in an X Spaces conversation.

On the same day a group of Senate and House Democrats, who are opposed to Trump’s efforts to shut down the agency, were blocked from entering the headquarters of the USAID.

On Thursday, the Trump administration said it will keep 611 essential workers onboard at USAID out of a worldwide workforce that totals more than 10,000.

Following a lawsuit by unions representing the USAID, US District Judge Carl Nichols on Friday temporarily allowed roughly 2,700 USAID employees put on leave by Trump’s administration to go back to work, pausing aspects of the plan to dismantle the agency.

Protesters gather outside of USAID headquarters on February 3, 2025 in Washington, DC, to protest the Trump administration's move to dismantle America's aid agency. (Photo via AFP)

‘Arm of regime change’

According to observers, there is a dark side to US-provided foreign aid, particularly involving USAID.

Over the years, activists have frequently exposed the exploitation of USAID by successive US governments to push their nefarious agendas abroad. In numerous instances, the agency has served as a cover for US “regime change” plots in many countries, from Cuba to Syria to Venezuela.

Afshin Rattansi, British journalist and author, underscored that USAID functions as “an arm of regime change and subversion,” infiltrating societies in the Global South and inciting unrest against leaders who either refuse to comply with Washington’s economic or do not align with US foreign policy.

“Millions in the global south will celebrate the end of this organization which created fake neoliberal revolutions for hire, to destroy real revolutionary movements and governments,” Rattansi wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday.

Furthermore, some activists perceived the move to suspend USAID funding as a direct affront to the interests of the “Deep State” to influence policy and pursue its own agendas.

Independent journalist and documentary filmmaker James Li expressed this view on X.

“The Trump admin is moving to shut down USAID. And the deep state is furious. Why? Because USAID isn’t really a ‘humanitarian aid agency’ — it’s a covert intelligence arm funding coups, protests & regime change," he stated.

USAID’s program in Cuba to foment rebellion

As early as October 2009, a project overseen by USAID involved sending young people from Venezuela, Costa Rica, and Peru to Cuba under the guise of health and civic programs, with the covert intention of inciting rebellion.

The travelers worked undercover, often posing as tourists, and traveled around the island scouting for people they could turn into political activists, an Associated Press investigation revealed in 2014.

In one instance, the workers organized an HIV-prevention workshop, which internal memos obtained by the AP described as “the perfect excuse” to further the program’s hidden political objectives.

USAID also created a fake Cuban Twitter platform, ZunZuneo, aiming to attract young users and gradually expose them to anti-government content to provoke protests.

Caption: Students gather behind a business looking for an internet signal for their smartphones in Havana. (Photo by AP)

However, the programs operated under USAID, which used its international aid work to cover its stealthy operations, didn’t appear to achieve their goals.

The traveler's program was launched when newly inaugurated President Barack Obama’s administration was talking about a “new beginning” with Cuba.

USAID’s regime changes against Chavez, Maduro

The USAID was known for funneling millions of dollars to opposition groups in efforts to overthrow Venezuelan presidents Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro from 2002 to the present.

In 2002, the US sponsored a failed coup attempt against democratically-elected president Chavez, who was making major investments in social programs for Venezuelans while defying US demands.

Although the George Bush administration attempted to distance itself from the coup, it promptly endorsed the government under businessman Pedro Carmona.

However, the coup was dramatically reversed after 48 hours when Chavez’s supporters flooded the streets, demanding his return.

President Hugo Chavez holds up a copy of the Venezuelan constitution at a rally with supporters in Caracas shortly after the 2002 coup attempt. (Photo by AP)

In 2013, WikiLeaks released a 2006 State Department cable outlining the Bush administration’s strategy to undermine Chavez by supporting so-called "pro-democracy" groups.

The cable, signed by then-Ambassador William Brownfield in August 2004, described a five-point strategy including “penetrating Chavez’s political base,” “dividing Chavismo,” “protecting vital US business” and “isolating Chavez internationally.”

Those goals were to be obtained by strengthening “democratic institutions,” according to the cable.

Brownfield wrote that USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives (USAID/OTI) played a crucial role in this effort, saying that strengthening democratic institutions “represents the majority of USAID/OTI work in Venezuela.”

“Organized civil society is an increasingly important pillar of democracy, one where President Chavez has not yet been able to assert full control.”

American lawyer, writer, and journalist Eva Golinger noted that after failing to oust Chávez, USAID/OTI reoriented its funding, increased its budget and began focusing on crafting an opposition “youth movement” using new technologies like Twitter, Facebook, and other internet media to build an international campaign against the Venezuelan president.

“From 2006 to 2010, more than 34 percent of USAID’s budget—which neared $15 million per year—was used to fund university programs, workshops, and other events to aid youth in building an anti-Chávez movement,” Golinger said.

By 2010, external funding for West-backed opposition groups in Venezuela reportedly exceeded $57 million, primarily from USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro flashes victory hand signs at supporters during a pro-government rally, in Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, Aug. 17, 2024. (Photo by AP)

On Wednesday, Diosdado Cabello, the first vice president of Venezuela’s United Socialist Party (PSUV) said that several opposition leaders were involved in corruption scandals linked to the USAID.

Cabello said that Juan Guaidó, Leopoldo López, and Carlos Vecchio, were involved in a scheme to misuse funds designated for humanitarian aid in an attempt to overthrow President Maduro.

Cabello said that these leaders received substantial sums of money from USAID, with Guaidó receiving over $300 million, Vecchio around $160 million, and López $700 million.

According to Cabello, these funds were used to finance a “regime change” operation instead of providing aid or assistance to the Venezuelan people.

USAID and the 2014 Ukraine coup

Former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was illegitimately removed from office in a Western-backed coup in February 2014 in a plot engineered under the USAID program, according to observers.

The coup was triggered by the Euromaidan or the Maidan Uprising, a wave of demonstrations and civil unrest in Ukraine, which began on November 21, 2013, with large protests in Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) in Kiev.

The protests were sparked by Yanukovych’s decision not to sign the European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement, instead choosing closer ties to Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union.

Documents suggest that before the Euromaidan, the USAID and NED provided significant funding to opposition groups and media in Ukraine.

These reports have been confirmed by several US public figures, including former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., filmmaker Oliver Stone, and defense expert from the Cato Institute, Ted Galen Carpenter.

In an interview with journalist Tucker Carlson, Kennedy Jr., who is now the Health Secretary, said the CIA, operating through USAID, spent $5 billion to instigate the 2014 color revolution in Ukraine.

“There are riots in Ukraine called Maidan, but we are not told that we are funding these riots. The newspapers never told us, our government never told us that USAID, which is a front for the CIA, has invested five billion dollars in funding these riots,” Kennedy Jr. said

He added that these actions were carried out under the pretense of defending freedom and democracy in the country that has been embroiled in a devastating war for more than two years.

Caption: Anti-government protests in Kiev, Ukraine in December 2013.

A leaked conversation between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt in February 2014 further indicated US involvement in aiding the Ukrainian opposition.

The audio clip exposed Nuland, weighing in on the makeup of the next Ukrainian government.

Nuland was heard telling US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt that she doesn’t think Vitaly Klitschko, the boxer-turned-politician who is a main opposition leader, should be in a new government.

The exchange validated suspicions of US involvement in shaping Ukraine’s political transition, intensifying debates about Western intervention in the country’s internal affairs.

Bolivia expels USAID

In 2013, Bolivian President Evo Morales kicked out the USAID for seeking to “conspire against” the Bolivian people and his government.

According to Morales, USAID programs had “political rather than social” ends and were “manipulating” and “using” union leaders.

Reports indicate that USAID was funding separatist movements in Bolivia’s richest provinces.

According to USAID’s Bolivia website, the agency operated there since 1964 claiming to carry out health, sustainable development, and environmental programs.

The agency stated that its 2011 budget for Bolivia amounted to $26.7

USAID’s overthrow of Haiti’s leader

USAID has also been implicated in the 1991 overthrow of Haiti’s democratically elected leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Evidence suggests that USAID backed opposition groups and death squads in the country, contributing to the destabilization of Aristide’s government and ultimately leading to his ouster.

This involvement came to light following the coup, as it was revealed that USAID funds and resources had been used to support anti-Aristide groups, providing them with the means to undermine the government and sow discord.

The 1991 coup led to the overthrow of Haiti’s democratically elected leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

These actions have been widely condemned as a blatant interference in Haiti’s internal affairs, disregarding the country’s democratic processes and sovereignty.

The aftermath of Aristide’s removal saw Haiti plunge into political turmoil and violence, as various factions vied for power.

This instability lasted for years, having long-lasting effects on the Haitian people and their prospects for a more prosperous future.

USAID a front for ‘counterinsurgency operations’ in Afghanistan

During the United States’ occupation of Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021, the USAID was reported to be “a front for counterinsurgency operations” while consolidating the occupation.

Aid workers mapped communities in the South Asian country, collected intelligence, and helped identify Taliban sympathizers for US drone strikes, reports said.

In the 2010 report “Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan,” authored by Major General Michael T. Flynn and others, the authors highlighted the need for improved intelligence operations in Afghanistan.

They emphasized the importance of understanding local socio-economic dynamics and suggested that information gathered by various entities, including aid groups, could be valuable for military operations.

The aftermath of a US drone strike in the Afghan capital, Kabul, in August 2021, which killed 10 people, including seven children.

Throughout the two decades of US military occupation in Afghanistan, thousands of civilians were killed in US drone strikes, and the perpetrators were never held accountable.

While the military has occasionally acknowledged responsibility for incidents involving airstrikes or ground raids that led to civilian casualties, no one was brought to justice.

US-backed coup in Chile

On September 11, 1973, Chile’s democratic process suffered a severe blow when Salvador Allende, South America’s first democratically elected president, was violently overthrown in a bloody coup led by General Augusto Pinochet.

The United States primarily backed this coup, as according to analysts, Allende was perceived as a threat to the capitalist interests Washington sought to preserve in the region.

La Moneda employees are forced to lay down on the sidewalk next to the building after being arrested by the military who took over the building on September 11, 1973. (Photo by AP)

In the lead-up to the CIA-backed coup, USAID served as a channel for the spy agency to funnel millions of dollars into media campaigns and opposition groups that targeted Allende.

This effort to undermine Allende’s presidency set the stage for the impending military takeover.

Shortly before the September 1973 coup, Chile encountered bread shortages and requested credit from the United States to purchase 300,000 tons of wheat. The Richard Nixon administration denied this request, exacerbating economic turmoil and providing a pretext for the coup.

Less than a month after the coup, on October 5, 1973, the Nixon administration extended $24.5 million in wheat credits to the Chilean Junta, which had seized power.

In September 1974, President Gerald Ford defended the US role in the coup, asserting that it was “in the best interest of the people in Chile and certainly in our own best interests.”

In 2011, the Chilean government acknowledged that more than 40,000 people had been murdered, disappeared, or tortured by the Pinochet dictatorship.

USAID caught engineering a coup in Slovakia

USAID, NED, and other NGOs have invested millions of dollars in Slovakia to manufacture protests, destabilize the government, and in favor of a pro-Western regime change.

They have been caught funding Slovakian NGOs under the pretense of promoting “civil society” and “democracy promotion.”

Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico has so far successfully countered attempts by foreign entities to destabilize his government. Fico maintains that the anti-government protests, which began last year, have been orchestrated by external forces.

On Friday, Fico identified the Georgian National Legion, a military group associated with Ukraine’s war against Russia, as coordinating with the plotters.

Reports suggest that up to one-third of the protesters are Ukrainian and other foreign nationals.

Ukrainian media outlets are openly supporting the protests, with Kiev-linked organizations actively coordinating unrest. Western embassies have also been openly collaborating with opposition groups, a tactic reminiscent of previous color revolutions.

On January 24, Slovakia’s General Health Insurance Company was hit by a cyberattack. Fico described the incident as a “textbook example” of pressure exerted on governments resisting Ukrainian and Western demands.

Slovakia’s Prime Minister bundled into car after being shot in May 2024.

As Fico moved to limit NGO influence and deport foreign agents last May, a pro-Western assassin with connections to foreign-funded groups attempted to assassinate him.

USAID funneled billions into Syria to topple Assad

The USAID-backed regime change operation in Syria is considered one of the most extensive operations of the 21st century, ultimately leading to the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad in 2024 by militant groups backed by the West and its regional allies.

For over a decade, USAID, NED, and Western-backed NGOs played a central role in the foreign-instigated Syrian war, by financing opposition groups, crafting propaganda, and conducting intelligence operations under the guise of “humanitarian aid,” as reported by DD Geopolitics.

USAID reportedly channeled more than $15 billion into the Arab country, covertly funding militant groups, mercenaries, opposition networks and various anti-government activities.

One key group funded by USAID was the White Helmets, which was later exposed for its collaboration with the al-Qaeda terrorist group and the fabrication of propaganda videos to justify US intervention.

Additionally, USAID provided logistical support to exiled opposition groups, assisting in the creation of a US-backed shadow government in the Arab country.

President Assad’s government consistently pushed back against these foreign-backed attempts at destabilization. In 2014, Syria expelled several USAID-backed NGOs owing to their financial ties to insurgents.

Two years later, the government exposed the collaboration between the USAID-funded White Helmets and various militant groups.

Despite these efforts to push back against external interference, the US and its allies relentlessly pursued their objective to oust Assad.

“NGOs are being used to destabilize Syria. They pretend to help, but in reality, they work for foreign intelligence services,” Assad said in 2018.

USAID spends $600 million on anti-Russian media

An X account with the handle @MyLordBobeo shared a passage, from a book or academic article, discussing US foreign policy concerning Russia and Venezuela and highlighting USAID’s role.

The text focuses on political interventions and funding related to opposition efforts against the Venezuelan and Russian governments.

The excerpt discussed the involvement of USAID in Venezuela, specifically highlighting its support for opposition leader Juan Guaidó in efforts to overthrow President Maduro.

It stated that in 2019, USAID signed an agreement with Guaidó, providing $98 million in assistance.

“In order to overthrow Venezuelan President Maduro and open up Venezuela and its oil reserves to US corporations, USAID signed an agreement with the US-backed opposition leader Guaidó in October 2019, according to which USAID will support Guaidó in his efforts to take power in Venezuela with 98 million dollars,” read the text, originally written in German.

Additionally, the text references USAID’s budget allocation for “free media” to counter Russian influence, amounting to $598 million for 2020.

“And because Russia does not want to hand over its oil to US corporations either, USAID has received a budget of 598 million dollars for 2020 alone to pay for “free media” that report anti-Russian and pro-Americans,” it added.

A text that appears to be from a book or an academic article discusses US foreign policy, particularly in relation to Russia and Venezuela and the role of USAID.

The citations to the Reuters and AP at the end suggest it might be part of a larger discussion on US influence in global politics, referencing specific news articles for support.

Leaked doctrine on the use of USAID in economic warfare

A leaked US Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF) doctrine exposed the extent to which the US USES economic instruments, including USAID programs, as part of its unconventional warfare (UW) strategies.

The document sheds light on the orchestrated interplay between various governmental entities, including the Army Special Operations Forces, the Department of State (DOS), the Intelligence Community (IC), the Department of Commerce (DOC), and USAID.

According to the document, ARSOF is authorized to employ “measured and focused economic incentives and disincentives” across multiple levels to influence the behavior of “adversaries, allies, and surrogates.”

Such economic maneuvers are executed under the guise of a carefully crafted and integrated unconventional warfare plan, it said.

It highlights the need for ARSOF to work closely with the Department of State and the intelligence community to identify vulnerable groups in a targeted area and predict the potential outcomes of applying economic pressure.

Leaked US Special Forces doctrine on use of USAID in economic warfare

USAID’s presence in foreign countries and its mission to engage with local populations provides an opportunity for the US to exert economic influence, it added.

Similarly, it said, the Department of Commerce can use its connections with American companies operating overseas to further strategic objectives.

The passage also underlines the significance of Information Operations (IO) in managing public perception of US unconventional warfare efforts. This includes anticipating and shaping the narrative around economic promises made (or unfulfilled) to maintain legitimacy.

The leaked document offers an unprecedented glimpse into the US government’s orchestration of various agencies and resources, particularly USAID, to engage in economic warfare as a means to advance strategic objectives.

This revelation raises critical questions about the covert use of humanitarian aid and development programs for ulterior political ends.

“As clearly illustrated, USAID pretends to be about ‘democracy’ and ‘helping’ the world,” wrote journalist James Li in a post on X.

“But in reality, it was always a covert tool of U.S. power — a front for CIA-backed regime change, election meddling, and civil destabilization disguised as ‘humanitarian aid,’” he added.

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has also said that cutting USAID funding would not only benefit the United States but also other countries around the world.

He added that while USAID is marketed as a supporter of development, democracy, and human rights, a significant portion of its funds are channeled into opposition groups, politically motivated NGOs, and destabilizing movements.

“Most governments don’t want USAID funds flowing into their countries because they understand where much of that money actually ends up,” Bukele wrote in a post on X on Sunday.

“At best, maybe 10% of the money reaches real projects that help people in need (there are such cases), but the rest is used to fuel dissent, finance protests, and undermine administrations that refuse to align with the globalist agenda,” he added.

3. OVERRIDE: INSIDE THE REVOLUTION REWIRING AMERICAN POWER

I cannot vouch the veracity of this article. Is truth stranger than fiction?

The comments on social media I have seen are extremely pro and extremely con. Some say this is disinformation in support of DOGE and others say it is proof of DOGE's nefarious activities. But most all say this is some sort of disinformation (deliberate falsehoods to influence target audiences). But there are a lot of half truths in this as well as information we have seen in other reports which likely make some believe this report.

But storytelling is the best way to influence target audiences. And this is quite a story.

It is a fascinating read- amazing and scary.

WIll their efforts turn out to be a force for good? Do DOGE wiz kids believe in the public good and the US Constitution?

As the recent saying goes, "he who controls the data controls the world or in this case the US government.: And all you have to do is "follow the money."

Is the foundation of governance now algorithmic decision making (ADM)?

OVERRIDE

INSIDE THE REVOLUTION REWIRING AMERICAN POWER

https://eko.substack.com/p/override

EKO

Feb 05, 2025

The clock struck 2 AM on Jan 21, 2025.

In Treasury's basement, fluorescent lights hummed above four young coders. Their screens cast blue light across government-issue desks, illuminating energy drink cans and agency badges. As their algorithms crawled through decades of payment data, one number kept growing: $17 billion in redundant programs. And counting.

"We're in," Akash Bobba messaged the team. "All of it."

Edward Coristine's code had already mapped three subsystems. Luke Farritor's algorithms were tracing payment flows across agencies. Ethan Shaotran's analysis revealed patterns that career officials didn't even know existed. By dawn, they would understand more about Treasury's operations than people who had worked there for decades.

This wasn't a hack. This wasn't a breach. This was authorized disruption.

While career bureaucrats prepared orientation packets and welcome memos, DOGE's team was already deep inside the payment systems. No committees. No approvals. No red tape. Just four coders with unprecedented access and algorithms ready to run.

"The beautiful thing about payment systems," noted a transition official watching their screens, "is that they don't lie. You can spin policy all day long, but money leaves a trail."

That trail led to staggering discoveries. Programs marked as independent revealed coordinated funding streams. Grants labeled as humanitarian aid showed curious detours through complex networks. Black budgets once shrouded in secrecy began to unravel under algorithmic scrutiny.

By 6 AM, Treasury's career officials began arriving for work. They found systems they thought impenetrable already mapped. Networks they believed hidden already exposed. Power structures built over decades revealed in hours.

Their traditional defenses—slow-walking decisions, leaking damaging stories, stonewalling requests—proved useless against an opponent moving faster than their systems could react. By the time they drafted their first memo objecting to this breach, three more systems had already been mapped.

"Pull this thread," a senior official warned, watching patterns emerge across DOGE's screens, "and the whole sweater unravels."

He wasn't wrong. But he misunderstood something crucial: That was exactly the point.

This wasn't just another transition. This wasn't just another reform effort. This was the start of something unprecedented: a revolution powered by preparation, presidential will, and technological precision.

The storm had arrived. And Treasury was just the beginning.

THE FOUNDATION

"Personnel is policy."

For decades, this principle, articulated by conservative strategist Troup Hemenway, remained more theory than practice. Previous administrations spent months, even years, trying to staff key positions. Trump's first term saw barely 100 political appointees confirmed by February 2017.

Every delay meant another victory for the permanent bureaucracy.

But this time was different.

While media focused on campaign rallies and political theater, a quiet army was being assembled. In offices across DC, veteran strategists mapped the administrative state's pressure points. Think tanks developed action plans for every agency. Policy institutes trained rapid deployment teams. Former appointees shared battlefield intelligence from previous administrations' failures.

By Inauguration Day, over 1,000 pre-vetted personnel stood ready—each armed with clear objectives, mapped legal authorities, and direct lines to support networks. This wasn't just staffing; it was a battle plan decades in the making.

"This is the new normal," Vice President JD Vance declared from his West Wing office, studying real-time data flows across agency systems. "He's having the time of his life," he added, referring to the President's relentless drive. "We've done more in two weeks than others did in years."

The secret wasn't just speed—it was precision. Instead of waiting for Senate confirmations, the transition team prioritized non-Senate-confirmed positions. While Democrats prepared for traditional confirmation battles over cabinet posts, an army of aligned personnel was already moving into place. Strategic positions were identified. Legal authorities were mapped. Support networks were established.

"We don't have a lot of time," the President reminded his team daily. "Four years is a lot of time in political life but it's not a long time in real life."

This urgency drove innovation. When DOGE's young coders breached Treasury's payment systems, pre-positioned legal teams neutralized resistance within hours. When career officials tried revoking system access, they discovered DOGE's authority came from levels they couldn't challenge. When leaks surfaced, rapid-response units fed counter-narratives to alternative media almost instantly.

"When you look at the people surrounding the president," Vance noted, "we're trying to make it sort of easy for him to do what he wants to do in government. When you have the entire team firing on all cylinders you can get a lot done."

The permanent bureaucracy never saw it coming. They were prepared for resistance. They were ready for protests. They had plans for leaks and legal challenges. But they had no defense against an opponent who had spent years preparing for this moment.

This wasn't just about filling seats—it was about building a machine designed to transform American governance. Every position mattered. Every appointment carried weight. And behind it all stood a president counting down not years or months, but weeks and days, driving his team forward with relentless energy.

The foundation was set. And the revolution was just beginning.

THE SPREAD

USAID fell next. No midnight raids this time. No secret algorithms. Just a simple memo on agency letterhead: "Pursuant to Executive Authority..."

Career officials panicked—and for good reason. Created by Executive Order in 1961, USAID could be dissolved with a single presidential signature. No congressional approval needed. No court challenges possible. Just one pen stroke, and six decades of carefully constructed financial networks would face sunlight.

"Pull this thread," a senior official warned, watching DOGE's algorithms crawl through USAID's databases, "and a lot of sweaters start unraveling."

The resistance was immediate—and telling. Career officials who had barely blinked at Treasury's exposure now worked through weekends to block DOGE's access. Democratic senators who had ignored other moves suddenly demanded emergency hearings. Former USAID officials flooded media outlets with warnings about "institutional knowledge loss" and "diplomatic catastrophe."

But their traditional defenses crumbled against DOGE's new playbook. While bureaucrats drafted memos about "proper procedures," the young coders were already mapping payment flows. While senators scheduled hearings, pre-positioned personnel were implementing new transparency protocols. While media allies prepared hit pieces, DOGE's algorithms exposed decades of questionable transactions.

The scale was breathtaking:

EPA climate initiatives? Not just mapped—found unauthorized programs in 47 states. Education's DEI maze? Not just exposed—revealed coordination across 1,200 programs. Intelligence community black budgets? Not just traced—uncovered patterns hidden for 30 years.

"The administrative state runs on two things," a senior advisor explained, watching patterns emerge across DOGE's screens. "Control of information and money flows." His eyes tracked new connections forming in real-time. "We're not just exposing their networks—we're rewriting their DNA."

The cracks began showing in unexpected places. A career EPA director, tears streaming: "Everything we built..." A USAID veteran, hands shaking: "They're inside all of it..." A Treasury lifer, closing his office: "They move faster than we can think."

Across Washington, officials who had weathered every reform since Reagan began quietly updating LinkedIn profiles. A Deputy Director: "Open to opportunities." An Agency Chief: "Exploring new challenges." A Bureau Head: "Time for change."

DOGE's algorithms weren't just programs—they were archaeology tools, excavating decades of buried networks. Each data point connected to another. Each discovery revealed new targets. Each pattern exposed larger systems.

"It's beautiful," one of the coders whispered, watching connections form across his screen. "Like watching a galaxy map itself."

For the permanent bureaucracy, this wasn't just change. It was an extinction-level event. Their power came from controlling who got paid, when they got paid, and what they got paid for. Now those controls were evaporating like dawn burning away darkness.

The pattern was devastating in its simplicity:

Map the money flows
Deploy aligned personnel
Expose the networks
Restructure the systems

By the time bureaucrats drafted objections to one breach, three more had already occurred.

The revolution wasn't just spreading. It was accelerating.

THE IMPACT

The first bulldozer arrived in Springfield, Ohio at 6 AM on a Tuesday. By noon, three blocks of notorious potholes were filled. Local news crews arrived to find not just construction crews, but data analysts with laptops, mapping every dollar spent against real-time progress.

This wasn't just road repair. This was revolution in action.

A woman grabbed the analyst's arm, tears in her eyes. "Twelve years," she whispered. "Twelve years I've been calling about these potholes." He turned his laptop, showing real-time data flows. "Look," he said. "Your tax dollars. Actually working."

She stared at the screen. "My God," she whispered. "It's really happening."

Across America, funds once lost in administrative mazes suddenly found their way to actual problems needing solutions. In rural Tennessee, broadband expansion projects long buried under bureaucratic red tape broke ground overnight. In Michigan, water treatment plants received upgrades that bureaucrats had studied for decades but never approved.

The transformation was measurable. In just two weeks:

Tens of thousands of redundant programs identified
Billions in waste exposed
Hundreds of unauthorized initiatives halted
Countless local projects unleashed

But the real metric? Trust in government rising for the first time in 50 years.

The revolution spread with surgical precision:

Real-time tracking replaced quarterly reports
Algorithmic oversight replaced review boards
Local solutions replaced federal mandates
Results replaced process

"He's done more in two weeks than Biden did in four years and Obama did in eight," Vance noted from his West Wing office. "But this isn't just about speed. This isn't just about tech. This isn't just about personnel. It's all three, perfectly aligned."

For ordinary Americans, the impact was undeniable. Roads repaired. Schools revitalized. Water purified. But more importantly, something else was being restored: trust.

For the first time in generations, people saw their government not as an obstacle but as a tool for positive change.

The permanent bureaucracy had long operated on a simple assumption: presidents come and go, but they remain. That assumption now lay shattered, replaced by a new reality: when preparation meets presidential determination, nothing is permanent.

"They thought we'd slow down," Vance said, studying real-time data flows across agencies. "They thought we'd get bogged down in process. They thought we'd play by their rules."

He smiled. "Instead, we're just getting started."

THE NEW DAWN

The sun rises early in Washington. On this morning, its first rays caught the classical columns of the Treasury building, casting long shadows across streets still quiet. But inside, beneath the marble and granite, screens still glowed blue. DOGE's algorithms never sleep.

"The administrative state was built over decades," a senior advisor explained, watching new patterns emerge across the displays. "Built to resist change. Built to outlast presidents. Built to preserve power."

He paused, tracking a particularly interesting data flow. "But they never imagined this. They built walls against political attacks. Defenses against media exposure. Shields against congressional oversight."

"They never prepared for algorithms that could map everything. For personnel pre-positioned everywhere. For a president who counts every week like it's his last."

The numbers tell the story: In Treasury - networks mapped, waste exposed, systems rewired At USAID - decades of hidden flows revealed, power structures dismantled Across agencies - redundancies eliminated, authorities realigned, missions refocused

But numbers aren't the whole story.

Imagine, changes, coming to a community near you:

Springfield, Ohio, potholes that plagued residents for twelve years actually disappeared overnight. Rural Tennessee, where children can finally connect to high-speed internet their parents were promised decades ago. In Michigan, people truly drink clean water while bureaucrats' memos about "studying the problem" gather dust.

This isn't just reform. This isn't just change. This is American governance reimagined.

"The pace is going to be the same," Vice President Vance declared this week. "It's just the priorities that are going to change."

The permanent bureaucracy built their administrative state over decades, brick by bureaucratic brick. They thought it would last forever. They thought it was too big to map, too complex to understand, too entrenched to change.

They were wrong.

Four young coders with laptops proved that. One thousand pre-positioned personnel proved that. A president counting weeks proved that.

The sun continues rising over Washington. Classical columns still cast their shadows. But inside those buildings, everything has changed. The administrative state finally met its match: preparation plus presidential will plus technological precision.

This isn't the end of the story. This is just the beginning.

The revolution isn't just continuing. It's becoming the new normal.

And for those who thought the D E E P S T A T E would rule forever?

They're about to learn what happens when smart strategic minds meet determination. When preparation meets opportunity. When a new generation decides it's time for change.

The storm isn't just gathering. It's here to stay.

The sun continues rising over Washington. But now, for the first time in generations, it illuminates something new:

A government that works.

A bureaucracy that serves.

A system that delivers.

The revolution isn't just beginning.

It's already won.

4. DOGE’s First Round of Cuts Went to Trump Priorities, but Bigger Targets Await

Certainly the thing that DOGE is most efficient at is disruption. We are in for a wild ride.

Some company(ies) will make a lot of money when the US government divests excess property. There will be windfalls.

DOGE’s First Round of Cuts Went to Trump Priorities, but Bigger Targets Await

After defunding DEI and climate-change programs, Musk’s team mobilizes a giant review of government real estate

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/doge-maga-budget-cut-plans-f65f8357?mod=hp_lead_pos1

By Jack Gillum

Feb. 8, 2025 9:00 pm ET

A worker covers the U.S. Agency for International Development logo on the agency’s Washington headquarters. Photo: Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

WASHINGTON—The White House’s Department of Government Efficiency has drawn scrutiny for the rapid work of its technology team burrowing into multiple agencies, but it also says it has identified and cut more than $1 billion in spending in the first three weeks.

That is a mere fraction of the $2 trillion in spending cuts that Elon Musk, DOGE’s public face, has set as a goal, but it shows how the entity has begun going program-by-program across multiple federal agencies and paring back what it considers low-hanging fruit. The initial actions it has taken, identifying relatively small-dollar programs, could soon change markedly as DOGE team members are now embedding in some of the government’s largest programs, particularly those focused on healthcare.

Musk’s team is also working with the General Services Administration, which manages government buildings and commercial real estate, to identify which leases can be canceled or let lapse, looking for underused office space and ways to consolidate.

More than half of the cost savings that DOGE says it has found is related to diversity, equity and inclusion, totaling more than $1 billion, according to a review of the group’s posts on X, where it publishes its results. Since taking office, President Trump has ordered federal agencies to terminate diversity programs and contracts, which reflects his desire to put the culture wars at the center of his presidency.

DOGE said it also terminated about $30 million in contracts for digital modernization projects and at least $4 million in leases for little-used office space.

DOGE didn’t provide comment or details of how it arrived at the spending cuts when asked by The Wall Street Journal.

When Trump created DOGE by executive order, he tasked it with identifying ways to cut spending and regulation in a way that would make the government more efficient. “Elon is doing a great job. He’s finding tremendous fraud and corruption and waste,” Trump said Friday.

The federal government is projected to spend $7 trillion in the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Of that, Social Security payments account for roughly $1.6 trillion, Medicare—a government-run health program for seniors—is projected to cost $910 billion, and another $812 billion would go toward Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and healthcare marketplace subsidies.

Other massive parts of the budget include more than $850 billion for military spending, $950 billion in net interest payments on the debt and then a bucket that includes education, housing, transportation and other programs totaling close to $1 trillion.

Musk’s group, so far, appears to be targeting a subset of programs in those buckets, but he has signaled that he thinks there are much bigger savings elsewhere in the budget that his group is now shifting its attention to. For example, his group recently gained access to Medicare and Medicaid’s contracting and payments system, where they say they are looking for evidence of fraud. Trump on Friday said Musk will also look at the Education Department and “at military, too.”

DOGE was also involved in cutting National Institutes of Health grant money for overhead, according to a person familiar with the matter. Scientists quickly decried the cuts, saying they would devastate important medical research. The agency estimated the cuts, announced Friday night, would save $4 billion a year by capping at 15% the fees that universities and institutions get to pay for lab-support services, rather than individually negotiated rates that can exceed 60%. “Amazing Job by #NIH team,” DOGE posted on social media.

President Trump Photo: Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

The U.S. Government Accountability Office, an arm of Congress, has estimated that there was $100 billion in improper payments made in 2023 in Medicare and Medicaid. Whether Musk’s team can identify and eliminate that funding is unclear.

“If the priority had been to actually cut waste and fraud in federal spending, they’re not looking in the right places,” because the costs of the federal workforce are a fraction of the federal budget, said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, an independent government watchdog. The Trump administration has notified agencies of plans to shrink the federal workforce. Brian said DOGE should focus on excessive payments to government contractors and military spending.

Because some of the spending that DOGE has targeted is money appropriated by Congress and signed into law by former President Joe Biden, a number of lawmakers have alleged that attempting to claw back this money is illegal. Musk and Russell Vought, Trump’s new budget director, have challenged this precedent and are expected to fight it in court.

DOGE has been given a sweeping mandate by Trump to overhaul the executive branch. But less than a month into his presidency, the outfit faces a bevy of legal challenges and public criticism over its methods and powers. On Saturday, a federal judge temporarily shut down DOGE’s access to a sensitive Treasury Department payment system, and on Friday, a federal court paused efforts to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Musk had touted as being fed “into the wood chipper.”

Workers for DOGE have entered several government agencies with an eye toward paring spending and terminating contracts, including the Office of Personnel Management, the Treasury Department and the parent agency of the National Weather Service.

Federal watchdogs and good-government groups, for their part, have spent years tallying the billions of tax dollars they say are wasted. Last May, for instance, GAO identified billions in savings if lawmakers reauthorized a broadband network for first responders and if the Education Department helped verify the incomes of those repaying certain student loans.

Fixing those, the agency said, “could yield financial benefits of tens of billions of dollars and improved government services, among other benefits.”

Cost-cutting is a bipartisan political mantra in Washington that has long been popular with constituents and that pairs with Watergate-era reforms of agency accountability. Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.), a critic of government spending, publishes his yearly “Festivus” report that singled out $1 trillion last year. Democrats, for their part, also publicly champion plans to counter wasteful spending and duplication. And for years, taxpayers have been able to search online for the details of government contracts and spending.

DOGE—which, as currently designed, is an entity within the White House—is supposed to present its recommendations to taxpayers on July 4, 2026. Musk and the group are moving much more quickly, though, to try to cancel contracts and even direct changes in congressional approval.

Scott Patterson and Liz Essley Whyte contributed to this article.

Write to Jack Gillum at jack.gillum@wsj.com

5. Heart Attacks Rise During the Super Bowl. You Can Take Precautions.

Today's public service announcement.

I don't think I am vulnerable since my beloved NY Giants were far off the Super bowl track this year so I do not have a dog in the fight of today's game.

But to all Chiefs and Eagles fans, please take appropriate precautions.

Heart Attacks Rise During the Super Bowl. You Can Take Precautions.

Moving around and avoiding binge eating and drinking can protect your heart during the big game

https://www.wsj.com/health/wellness/heart-attacks-rise-during-the-super-bowl-you-can-take-precautions-66275eae?mod=latest_headlines

By Betsy McKay

Feb. 9, 2025 8:04 am ET

Eagles fans during a postseason game last month at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia. Photo: Mitchell Leff/Getty Images

Die-hard Chiefs and Eagles fans, here’s something to take to heart.

The Super Bowl means fun, friends, beer and nachos, but there are potential health risks, too. Heart attacks and other life-threatening cardiac events rise during and after the big game and other major sporting events, according to studies of places with winning and losing teams.

Stress kicked off by the intensity of nail-biting plays, going deep on wings and chips, or downing epic amounts of alcohol can tax the heart and blood vessels, cardiologists said. That can lead to a heart attack, an arrhythmia or a cardiac arrest, particularly for someone with known heart disease, they said.

“Nobody will be surprised to see people within 24 hours” of the game with cardiovascular emergencies, said Dr. James O’Keefe, director of preventive cardiology at St. Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Mo., home of the Kansas City Chiefs.

When you are emotionally invested in a game, your body prepares as if for battle, O’Keefe said. Stress hormones flow in a fight-or-flight response, raising blood pressure, making the heart beat faster and making blood more likely to clot.

Meanwhile, smoking, binge drinking and overeating greasy or ultraprocessed foods can contribute to inflammation and plaque rupture, which is what leads to a heart attack, said Dr. Neel Chokshi, medical director of the sports cardiology and fitness program at Penn Medicine in Philadelphia, a city known for its avid Eagles fans.

Dr. Neel Chokshi of Penn Medicine and family members at an Eagles game. Photo: Chokshi Family

A 2009 study in the American Journal of Cardiology found an increase in the rates of cardiovascular deaths and deaths from all causes in Los Angeles County when the Rams lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 1980 Super Bowl. The death rates were higher on the day of the Super Bowl and the following two weeks compared with other days. When the Los Angeles Raiders beat the team now known as the Washington Commanders in 1984, the rate of deaths from all causes was lower.

In a study of the 2006 FIFA World Cup, the incidence of cardiac emergencies in Bavaria was 2.66 times higher on days when the German team played, according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine. These events were highest in the quarterfinal, when Germany beat Argentina in a penalty shootout.

Most of the cardiac events occurred in the first two hours after the start of matches, though the numbers were higher for several hours before and after the contests. Some 47% of those who had heart attacks and other problems already had diagnosed coronary artery disease.

How worried should you be? “This is a pretty low risk for the general population,” Chokshi said. But research suggests that people who have heart disease or are smokers, don’t exercise regularly, or have other significant risk factors should pay attention, especially if they are highly stressed during a game, he said.

Cardiologists advise having a game plan for the Super Bowl. Don’t overdo it on the nachos, sideline some of the salty snacks, and punt on more than a couple of beers. “You’re entitled to live life,” said Dr. Brett Sealove, chief of cardiology at Hackensack Meridian Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune, N.J. “You just shouldn’t have a thousand wings, a bag of chips and go outside and smoke a pack of cigarettes.”

Dr. James O’Keefe of St. Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Mo., recommends that Super Bowl watchers move around during breaks in the game. Photo: St. Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute

Burn off stress hormones by moving around for five or 10 minutes during breaks in the game, said O’Keefe. “Shoot a few baskets, take the dog for a walk around the block,” he said.

Stan Goldstein was on his feet screaming, distraught that his beloved University of Maryland men’s basketball team had missed a chance to score during a game in 2022. Suddenly, he said, “Everything turned whitish gray,” and he collapsed.

Emergency medical technicians rushed across the court and found Goldstein in cardiac arrest. After reviving him twice with CPR, they took him to the hospital.

Goldstein, 78, had a heart arrhythmia. He feels lucky that he was at an arena with paramedics on-site. “My love of basketball saved my life,” he said.

Now, Goldstein has a pacemaker and defibrillator. His wife got certified in CPR. He tries to comport himself more like a halfhearted spectator than the passionate team donor that he is. “I try to keep an even keel,” he said. “I don’t yell at the refs too much.”

Write to Betsy McKay at betsy.mckay@wsj.com

6. Reimagining the American War Machine

Excerpts:

To stay ahead, the new administration must place new bets. It needs to diversify risk. This means developing a wide array of systems, made by many companies in smaller numbers, rather than putting all its resources into a few big-ticket platforms from a few major players. When such systems prove their worth, they can be rapidly scaled up and upgraded. Systems failing to make the grade — and the companies behind them — get left behind.

The diffusion of technology means U.S. military superiority must come not just from the weapons it has but also from how it uses them. This calls for close collaboration among operators, engineers and industry figures. Innovation thrives when ideas are tested and refined in the field, not just in labs.

The Pentagon’s current approach is rooted in a mind-set that worked for 20th-century industrial-era wars, including the Cold War. The Trump administration’s task is to bring the military into the 21st century. The future of warfare and deterrence requires diversity, flexibility and speed. The sooner the United States adapts, the better prepared it will be for the conflicts to come.

Reimagining the American War Machine

NY Times · by Kelly A. Grieco · February 7, 2025

By Maximilian K. Bremer and Kelly A. Grieco

Colonel Bremer is the director of the special programs division at Air Mobility Command in the U.S. Air Force. Dr. Grieco is a senior fellow with the Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center.

Guest Essay

Feb. 7, 2025

Credit...Debbie Tea

Listen to this article · 6:30 min Learn more

By Maximilian K. Bremer and

Not long after Elon Musk was tapped by Donald Trump to help lead a “Department of Government Efficiency,” he set his sights on a prime target: what the Pentagon spends its money on. In posts on his platform X in December, Mr. Musk, the chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, declared that “America needs a large quantity of long-range drones (air, surface water and submarine) and hypersonic missiles.” He warned, “Anything manned will die very fast in a drone war.”

In some ways, Mr. Musk’s call is not new. Experts have been warning for years that we have entered a new age of autonomous warfare, and the Pentagon needs to keep up. The Trump administration is unusually open to remaking the U.S. war machine: Weeks before his inauguration, Mr. Trump began preparing to stack his Pentagon with executives from start-ups and tech investors like Stephen Feinberg, his nominee for deputy secretary of defense.

But for the Trump administration to bring meaningful reform, it will need to do more than buy drones and change the type of weapons the Pentagon buys. It will also need to change how our weapons are built and the speed at which they are acquired and introduced into U.S. forces.

The biggest challenge for any peacetime military is preparing for the next war. What weapons, capabilities and strategies will it need to fight and win a conflict that may be a few years to a decade or more away? This is a gamble of immense consequence.

Like any organization, militaries prefer certainty, but since they cannot eliminate uncertainty, they seek to manage it. The Pentagon’s traditional approach is to incrementally improve existing weapons, bring the latest technology to battle-tested platforms and build a better version of the same U.S. military. This, however, is a winning strategy only if old ways of fighting can still win.

Today, America faces a different challenge. Breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, material sciences and microelectronics are upending the status quo of weaponry and tactics. China is racing to secure a military advantage in this new era, acquiring new weapons five times faster than the United States and building lethal A.I. and autonomous systems on which this country imposes limits. Simply adding new technology to the same kind of platforms — such as manned aircraft or larger warships — could leave the U.S. military outmatched by China’s.

Technological transformation is happening faster than ever and speeding up change across the battlefield. Incremental improvements of current systems and development cycles of over 10 years for new ones aren’t just part of an outdated approach — they’re dangerous. In an era when rapid change is no longer an advantage but merely the price of keeping up, the U.S. military needs to be prepared to adapt on the fly.

In Ukraine, drones of all types — from cheap quadcopters and radio-controlled boats to long-range attack drones — have radically altered battle in the war with Russia. The main air threat comes not from fighter jets and bombers but thousands of small, off-the-shelf drones, denying either side air superiority and relentlessly attacking ground forces. The story is similar at sea, where Ukraine, a country without a traditional navy, has shocked Russia by using explosive-laden sea drones to damage or sink dozens of its ships and force Moscow to withdraw its fleet farther to the east. And drones are only growing more intelligent: Ukraine’s A.I.-enabled drones can now identify and, after human approval, attack targets autonomously.

These innovations would be disruptive enough. But the speed of change is dizzying. The Ukrainian military reportedly introduces drones with new capabilities every few weeks. As the Russians adapt, the Ukrainians respond in turn.

That lightning-quick innovation is possible for two reasons: First, Ukraine has a large and diverse domestic drone industry of over 200 companies — along with hundreds of smaller firms and volunteers — that turn out hundreds of thousands of small, cheap drones a month. Second, Ukraine’s military prizes agility over certainty in adopting and adapting new technologies, including faster approvals, rapid prototyping and testing and direct collaboration between engineers and soldiers on the front lines.

This war is both a lesson and a warning to the United States: Adapt now or be left behind.

In 2016, the Marine Corps commandant, Gen. Robert Neller, announced a “quads for squads” program, promising to equip every Marine squad with its own quadcopter drones by the “end of next year.” Eight years later, the Marines are still trying to make that happen. So, what’s the problem? The U.S. drone industry lags behind China’s, manufacturing only 5,000 to 6,000 small drones per month, compared to China’s more than 100,000 per month, according to some analysts, and they are no match for China’s in capability or cost.

To stay ahead, the new administration must place new bets. It needs to diversify risk. This means developing a wide array of systems, made by many companies in smaller numbers, rather than putting all its resources into a few big-ticket platforms from a few major players. When such systems prove their worth, they can be rapidly scaled up and upgraded. Systems failing to make the grade — and the companies behind them — get left behind.

The diffusion of technology means U.S. military superiority must come not just from the weapons it has but also from how it uses them. This calls for close collaboration among operators, engineers and industry figures. Innovation thrives when ideas are tested and refined in the field, not just in labs.

The Pentagon’s current approach is rooted in a mind-set that worked for 20th-century industrial-era wars, including the Cold War. The Trump administration’s task is to bring the military into the 21st century. The future of warfare and deterrence requires diversity, flexibility and speed. The sooner the United States adapts, the better prepared it will be for the conflicts to come.

Maximilian K. Bremer is the director of the special programs division at Air Mobility Command of the Air Force. Kelly A. Grieco is a senior fellow with the Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center and a nonresident fellow at the Brute Krulak Center of the Marine Corps University.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, X and Threads.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section SR, Page 5 of the New York edition with the headline: Reimagining the American War Machine

146

NY Times · by Kelly A. Grieco · February 7, 2025

7. ‘We’ve Already Won’: Podcasters and Influencers Gain New Standing in Trump’s White House

The Fourth Estate has been disrupted.

‘We’ve Already Won’: Podcasters and Influencers Gain New Standing in Trump’s White House

The administration has received over 11,000 applications for a ‘new media’ seat

https://www.wsj.com/business/media/trump-new-media-applications-briefing-room-cef40306?mod=latest_headlines

By Isabella Simonetti

Follow and Natalie Andrews

Updated Feb. 9, 2025 12:08 am ET

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt Photo: Evan Vucci/Associated Press

John Ashbrook, a co-host of the conservative podcast “Ruthless,” was granted a question during a White House briefing last month. He asked if the media was “out of touch” in its coverage of immigrant deportations. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said yes.

Ashbook didn’t feel the need to ask a follow-up question, after Leavitt’s reply included a statistic on recent deportations.

“I looked around the room and I thought to myself, ‘Know what? We’ve already won,’ ” he said on a recent episode of “Ruthless.”

Podcasts, particularly those with young, male and conservative audiences, helped President Trump win the election. Now, the new administration is giving their hosts—along with TikTok and YouTube influencers—a shot at the spotlight in the White House briefing room.

Leavitt has scrapped tradition by opening the doors of the briefing room to nontraditional outlets, including social-media stars and podcasters. During her first press briefing, she announced the creation of a “new media” seat.

By Thursday, the White House had received 11,500 applications. “We might have to make this room a little bit bigger,” she said in her second briefing, referencing the volume of interest.

Forty-nine people currently have assigned seats in the White House briefing room, while others crowd the aisles. Photo: Francis Chung/Press Pool

Trump doesn’t play by the old media rules. He speaks freely at impromptu news conferences, but also dictates tariff policy and names cabinet nominees directly on his social-media platform, Truth Social, and rails against what he refers to as the “fake news.” Meanwhile, in his role as federal cost-cutter, Elon Musk has called to end federal funding of NPR. And the National Transportation Safety Board opted to scrap emails to reporters in favor of posts on Musk-owned X for updates on a recent plane crash.

Any credentialed journalist can attend a briefing in the White House briefing room, which sits atop an old swimming pool. Forty-nine people currently get assigned seats. Others crowd into the aisles, jostling with photographers.

These new entrants delight in drawing a contrast between their breezy “for the people” tone and what they describe as stodgier legacy media that is more interested in provoking outrage than telling the public what they want to know.

“Legacy control of information sharing is corrosive for a free society,” said Ashbrook. “It’s clear this White House is doing everything they can to ensure new media is on equal footing with major corporations when it comes to access.”

“Ruthless” describes itself as bringing “next generation conservative talk to the next level,” featuring conversations with Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.).

To get the new media seat, “Ruthless” filled out a questionnaire with details like an email contact, primary social-media account, phone number, ZIP Code and news outlet “if applicable.”

For now, priority is going to people able to get to Washington quickly. Arrangements are in the works to accommodate people who must book travel, a member of the White House press team said.

Aaron Parnas, who describes his politics as center left, is an independent reporter and lawyer with 2.9 million TikTok followers. He posted a selfie-style video letting followers know that he put in an application.

Leavitt has opened the doors of the briefing room to nontraditional outlets, including social-media stars and podcasters. Photo: Evan Vucci/Associated Press

“The voice of social-media journalists in the press briefing room has been lacking for far too long and it’s time that changes,” Parnas said.

Parnas said he isn’t optimistic about his chances for getting a seat, since he is “not the typical conservative fire brand news influencer that Twitter likes to enable.”

Harry Sisson, a 22-year-old student at New York University, is another influencer angling for a seat. He shares his takes on current events to 1.7 million TikTok followers.

“Independent media should have a seat at the table,” Sisson said in a TikTok video about applying for press credentials. He expressed skepticism about how the new media seat will work, asking, “Are they reserving this seat for their MAGA lackeys?” A member of the White House press team said they aren’t specifically looking for Trump supporters.

Natalie Winters, co-host of “Steve Bannon’s War Room,” recently added “White House correspondent” to her title. Bannon, a former White House chief strategist, spent four months in prison on charges related to contempt of Congress.

“Now you have a new wave of reporters, myself included, invading the press briefing room,” she said. “It’s an epic troll, but there’s a lot of substance to it as well.”

Meanwhile, the Department of Defense recently announced an even bigger reshuffling, removing dedicated Pentagon office space for the New York Times, NBC News, NPR and Politico. They will be replaced by the New York Post, One America News Network, Breitbart News Network and HuffPost News, as part of an annual rotation.

On Friday, the Defense Department swapped out another four—CNN, the Washington Post, the Hill and the War Zone—and invited in the Washington Examiner, Newsmax, the Daily Caller and the Free Press.

HuffPost didn’t request a workspace in the Pentagon and doesn’t have a dedicated Pentagon reporter, though its politics team does cover it.

“If the Trump administration and Secretary Hegseth are interested in more hard-hitting coverage of their stewardship of the Defense Department from HuffPost, we are ready to deliver,” Lizzie Grams, a spokeswoman for the outlet, said in a statement.

A New York Times spokesman called the decision concerning, adding that “steps designed to impede access are clearly not in the public interest.”

The aim, the Pentagon said, is to “broaden access” to the space in the Pentagon. Media who are rotated out will still be members of the Pentagon press corps.

Write to Isabella Simonetti at isabella.simonetti@wsj.com and Natalie Andrews at natalie.andrews@wsj.com

8. Trump’s Role in TikTok Talks: Dealmaker in Chief

But will the "new" TikTok have the proprietary algorithm that "makes TikTok great?"

And I do not think many of us boomers and beyond can grasp the importance of controlling this information and news service and the influence effect (and even greater potential) it has on young people.

But one way to ensure its future is destined for the dustbin of history is to have the US government's fingerprints on it. If the younger generations feel that the US government has any control over it they will turn away in search of something new. The sad irony is that these same people had no problem with TikTok being under Chinese government control. The only thing the young generation trusts less than the Chinese government is the US government.

Trump’s Role in TikTok Talks: Dealmaker in Chief

Vance tapped to help oversee negotiations, with companies including Oracle and Amazon signaling interest while TikTok officials hope to avoid a sale

https://www.wsj.com/tech/trump-vance-tiktok-deal-0e3b8bc1?mod=latest_headlines

By Jessica Toonkel

Follow, Dana Mattioli

Follow, Alex Leary

Follow and Josh Dawsey

Updated Feb. 8, 2025 3:54 pm ET

President Trump’s role and his recent enthusiasm for the app have fueled optimism in TikTok’s camp. Photo: Alex Brandon/Associated Press

President Trump has been a real-estate tycoon and reality-TV star. Now he’s playing a new role as he oversees TikTok’s fate: investment banker.

In public and behind the scenes, Trump has discussed possible deals to Americanize control of the Chinese-controlled app he once tried to ban, promoting it as a prize asset for tech titans to bid over, a potential target for a planned American sovereign-wealth fund, and a valuable chip in trade negotiations with Beijing.

“GREAT INTEREST IN TIKTOK! Would be wonderful for China, and all concerned,” he posted recently on Truth Social.

Several companies have privately expressed interest in participating in a deal for TikTok or its American operations, including Oracle, Amazon and Microsoft, according to people familiar with the matter. TikTok and its backers, meanwhile, are pushing for solutions that might forego a sale in favor of reviving a plan the company says would wall off American users’ data.

Last week, TikTok Chief Executive Shou Chew met with senior White House officials and offered a proposal that envisioned a joint venture with U.S. investors. That new venture would be headquartered in the U.S. and oversee data security, according to a person familiar with the proposal. Management would be U.S.-based and a board of directors would be a majority U.S. members.

TikTok Chief Executive Shou Chew, as seen attending Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, met with White House officials in recent days. Photo: Shawn Thew/AFP/Getty Images

Whether the investors include the U.S. government itself is an open question. Trump on Monday ordered the creation of a sovereign-wealth fund and suggested it could be used to acquire TikTok—something many observers see as far-fetched.

Trump, meantime, has tasked Vice President JD Vance with overseeing negotiations, with the hope Vance’s background in venture capital and Silicon Valley ties can facilitate a deal.

“There is now a process to be followed that will ensure a resolution to any concerns, while maintaining the operability of the TikTok platform,” a TikTok spokesman said in a statement Saturday, adding that TikTok is committed to that effort.

Hope and confusion

Trump’s role and his recent enthusiasm for the app have fueled optimism in TikTok’s camp that it will get a solution to stay in the U.S. long term. It faces an April 5 deadline, although Trump could extend that.

But his maneuvers also have ignited confusion over what any such deal would look like and who would be involved.

“The president has made it clear he wants TikTok to continue. He has determined as dealmaker-in-chief that he will find a path forward,” said a person close to the company. But the person added that talk of a sovereign fund had muddied the conversation. “We don’t even have a sovereign-wealth fund yet…We don’t have time to wait.”

Trump’s executive order on Inauguration Day set a 75-day delay in enforcement of a bipartisan law passed last year requiring TikTok to shed its Chinese ownership or close in the U.S. The law’s proponents argue that China’s government could pressure its Chinese parent, ByteDance, to use TikTok to surveil or propagandize Americans—a claim TikTok has disputed.

Trump has indicated a range of potential outcomes, at times suggesting a U.S. company or even the U.S. itself should own TikTok and at other times indicating U.S. investors could just increase their stakes in its parent company.

ByteDance has said that it is already roughly 60% owned by global institutional investors, many of which are big U.S. financial firms—including BlackRock, General Atlantic and Susquehanna International Group, co-founded by Republican megadonor Jeff Yass.

The TikTok spokesman on Saturday said: “As we have previously stated, TikTok US cannot be acquired for the simple reason that it would cease to exist.”

TikTok has argued in court that the divestiture required by last year’s law wasn’t feasible. China’s government has indicated it would oppose a forced sale of TikTok, whose core algorithm is governed by Chinese law.

Chinese officials have told ByteDance that they were interested in reaching a deal with the U.S. to resolve the dispute. Photo: Andrea Verdelli/Bloomberg

After trying to ban TikTok in 2020, Trump embraced it during the latest presidential campaign, in part because he came to view it as a powerful political tool. He was partially persuaded by Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser in his first term who has worked on behalf of TikTok allies to advocate for it. She told him he had more supporters on the platform than Kamala Harris or Joe Biden—and that many young people made videos in his favor. She also conducted polling that showed Americans didn’t see banning TikTok as the best way to counter China.

In a December meeting with TikTok’s CEO at the president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Trump phoned his son, Barron, and bragged about his statistics on the platform and told Barron that the company’s CEO had flown in to see him. “I’m going to save TikTok,” he told an adviser after that meeting.

A deal for TikTok is now expected to be part of broader talks on trade and tariffs that play out over the coming month. Trump had been expected to speak this week with Chinese leader Xi Jinping but that hadn’t happened as of late Friday. White House staff have been engaging with Chinese counterparts, according to people briefed on those discussions, as they look to define parameters for talks. The two discussed TikTok, among other issues, in a Jan. 17 call.

In Beijing, Chinese officials have told ByteDance that they were interested in reaching a deal with the U.S. to resolve the dispute and were open to the option of a U.S. sovereign-wealth fund investing in TikTok for a significant stake, people familiar with the matter said. They said they hoped that a deal could help Beijing with negotiations for tariffs and other issues.

Talking up a bidding war

Trump has encouraged potential suitors in an apparent effort to stoke maximum interest. “I like bidding wars because you make your best deal. So if there’s a bidding war, that’s a good thing,” he told reporters while traveling on Air Force One late last month.

On his second day in office, he told a room of reporters he would support Elon Musk buying the app. Then he added that he would also welcome Larry Ellison, Oracle’s chairman, buying it. Asked on the Air Force One trip whether Microsoft could play a role, Trump said: “I would say yes. A lot of interest in TikTok.”

The president has said he would welcome it if Larry Ellison, chairman of Oracle, bought TikTok. Photo: Chris Kleponis/Bloomberg

A few days later he floated the idea that the U.S. could buy half of TikTok, before this week saying he wants to establish the U.S. sovereign-wealth fund.

Trump has said that his power to decide TikTok’s fate should entitle the U.S. government to a sizable stake in whatever entity emerges. “If I sign, then somebody’s gonna buy it, pay a lot of money, have a lot of jobs, keep a platform open and have it be very secure. If I don’t sign, then it closes,” he said.

His role has so far left actual investment banks on the sidelines of what could be one of the biggest deals in recent history, boxing out the bankers who typically provide more clarity to potential bidders.

“It is unprecedented for a president to introduce himself into a sale of a private asset,” said Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who specializes in technology. “Typically presidents trust the market to do those things.”

Trump tried something similar in his first term. After initiating an effort to ban TikTok, he blessed a tentative deal to save it in which Oracle and Walmart would have taken stakes in a U.S.-based TikTok. The agreement never materialized.

Investor consortia are cropping up with vastly different ideas on how a deal could be structured. One led by billionaire Frank McCourt—which counts as a partner Kevin O’Leary, a star on “Shark Tank” known as Mr. Wonderful—proposes a bid worth more than $20 billion.

Another investor group pitched the idea of investing in a special purpose vehicle that would buy TikTok and invest in Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI, with the idea that it would run TikTok’s algorithm, according to someone familiar with the group.

ByteDance and its investors aim to convince Trump that an earlier plan by the company to transfer U.S. user data to Oracle’s cloud satisfies security concerns, people close to the company said.

TikTok started crafting that initiative, dubbed Project Texas, during Trump’s previous administration in an effort to convince the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. that the company could satisfy American national security concerns without separating from its Chinese parent company.

TikTok executives believed Trump would have approved Project Texas as the solution to lawmakers’ concerns had he won re-election in 2020. Instead, negotiations with Washington about the initiative fell apart under President Biden.

Miriam Gottfried, Georgia Wells and Raffaele Huang contributed to this article.

Write to Jessica Toonkel at jessica.toonkel@wsj.com, Dana Mattioli at dana.mattioli@wsj.com, Alex Leary at alex.leary@wsj.com and Josh Dawsey at Joshua.Dawsey@WSJ.com

9. Taiwan sends officials to US to discuss possible Trump tariffs

Say what you want about us, we are equal opportunity tariff imposers. We will impose them on friends, frenemies, and enemies. It is the dominant tool of national security and foreign and economic policy.

Taiwan sends officials to US to discuss possible Trump tariffs

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/east-asia/taiwan-us-trump-trade-tariff-chip-war-4925801

A chip is pictured at the Taiwan Semiconductor Research Institute at Hsinchu Science Park in Hsinchu, Taiwan. (File Photo: REUTERS)

08 Feb 2025 04:39PM

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TAIPEI: Taiwan has sent officials to Washington to discuss possible United States tariffs by President Donald Trump, and has made preparations should they be imposed, Economy Minister Kuo Jyh-huei said on Saturday (Feb 8).

Tech firms in Taiwan, home to the world's largest contract chipmaker TSMC, face the possibility Trump will follow through on threats to put tariffs on imported chips after he accusing Taiwan during last year's campaign of having stolen American semiconductor business.

Trump said on Friday he plans to announce reciprocal tariffs on many economies by Monday or Tuesday, a major escalation of his offensive to reshape global trade relationships in ways he considers to be in America's favour.

Speaking to reporters in Taipei, Kuo said the ministry has made preparations for any US tariffs, declining to give details.

Asked about chip tariffs, Kuo said he had dispatched a deputy minister and a deputy section chief to Washington. He did not identify them or offer further details.

They will "as much as possible give some rather good explanations to Trump's people" about Taiwan's chip industry, he added, without elaborating.

"Taiwan is the United States' best partner."

Taiwan has repeatedly said its chip sector and US companies have "win-win" cooperation.

But Taiwan runs a large trade surplus with the US, which surged 83 per cent last year, with the island's exports to the US hitting a record US$111.4 billion, driven by demand for high-tech products such as semiconductors.

Kuo suggested Taiwan could follow Japan's example and import more US energy.

"In reference to Japan, he has great determination when it comes to energy," he said, referring to Trump. "We hope we can satisfy US demands when it comes to this."

Japan will soon begin importing a record amount of US liquefied natural gas, Trump said on Friday after talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.

Australia and Qatar are currently Taiwan's main suppliers of LNG.

10. Fighting the war in Ukraine on the electromagnetic spectrum

Excerpt:

For now, most drones are still jammable. And Ukraine still has the edge in EW. “They’re certainly quicker than the Russians,” says Mr Withington. The war has also made them quicker than many Western competitors. Mr Filimonov visited 15 military exhibitions around the world last year. The EW technology he saw was not only pricier—American and European amplifiers are two to three times more expensive than the Chinese ones commonly found in Ukrainian kit—but also obsolete. “These technologies are somewhere in 2021,” he says, witheringly. “Everything they are producing is, for the moment, useless on the front line.”

Science & technology | Fighting flight

Fighting the war in Ukraine on the electromagnetic spectrum

Drone operators and jammers are in a high-tech arms race

Photograph: Sean Sutton/Panos Pictures

Feb 5th 2025|Kyiv

Listen to this story.

OR SOLDIERS at the front, electromagnetic defences are as vital as air: invisible when present, and disastrous when not. In July Ukrainian troops in southern Donbas found this out the hard way. Abruptly, Russian drones switched frequencies, from standard 700-1,000 megahertz to 400-500 megahertz, blinding Ukraine’s electronic-warfare (ew) systems. The drones flew deep behind the lines, cutting off units and making supply routes impassable. Tens of Ukrainian military vehicles were destroyed daily in what Serhii Beskrestnov, a Ukrainian EW specialist, calls a “Russian safari”. Only when Ukraine understood what was happening, and secured new EW systems working at 500 megahertz, weeks later, were they able to stabilise the situation.

The war of waves has been pivotal to the wider conflict. A continuous and intense contest between munitions and jammers is driving rapid change, as each side scrambles to find, monitor, occupy and attack increasingly rare gaps in the spectrum where signals can get through. “What you’re seeing in Ukraine is electromagnetic manoeuvre warfare in action,” says Thomas Withington, a fellow at the RUSI think-tank. “Much as land forces are always moving to find that high ground or key crossing, so too are electronic ones.” As jammers become more numerous and more sophisticated, the quest for jam-proof drones becomes ever more urgent.

Russia began its all-out invasion with colossal advantages. It was the world’s EW superpower—if measured by the quantity, might and variety of its systems. It dominated the initial exchanges, jamming much of Ukraine’s military communication. Elon Musk’s Starlink, a secure satellite-communication network, gave a lifeline to Ukraine. Then, in 2023, came the drone revolution. Ukraine pioneered the use of first-person-view (FPV) drones to search, chase and destroy enemy targets with pinpoint accuracy. “Without the proper drone and electronic warfare support, an infantry unit will survive only a few hours on the battlefield,” says Major Dmytro Tolstoluzhsky, an officer in a specialised technology unit of Ukraine’s defence ministry. The task of EW turned to neutralising the drones, loitering munitions and glide bombs that now dominate the skies.

The new war exposed vulnerabilities in Russia’s extremely powerful but bulky EW systems, which became liabilities lying within FPV drone range. They were forced to retreat a full 10-15km away from the front line, diluting their effect. Meanwhile, Ukraine began to make progress expanding its own EW capacity, with local producers scaling up production of trench-level EW systems. Yaroslav Filimonov, the chief executive officer of Kvertus, a Ukrainian company that specialises in EW, says monthly production jumped from 100 devices at the start of 2022 to 1,000 by 2023, and is now up to 5,000. At least 200 companies now work on EW, says Mr Withington.

The basic science of a front-line jammer is not complicated: a cheap metal box with aerials generates electromagnetic noise to block piloting signals or video feeds. Both sides rely heavily on commercially available Chinese components. But beyond this is a constantly evolving, high-stakes technological arms race. Every eight to 12 weeks sees a major change in either EW or drone practice, says Major Tolstoluzhsky. Both sides switch within a wide frequency spectrum from 200 megahertz to 1,000 megahertz, and above. But the “main race” last year, says Andrey Liscovich of the Ukraine Defence Fund, a non-profit which sources non-lethal aid, was a shift in frequencies down from standard GSM bands—those used by mobile phones—to 300 megahertz, making it trickier to find off-the-shelf components.

The result of these proliferating frequencies is vehicles that resemble steampunk porcupines, bristling with half a dozen antennae to protect against different drones, each drawing significant power.

Defenders also have to know where and when to focus their attention. Using a device which spits out a lot of radio waves not only risks electronic fratricide, but also makes the user a potential target. Knowing when to turn it on, and on which frequency, depends on passive sensors which can triangulate radio emissions from the other side to work out their source. The sensors used early in the war, to spot cheaper Chinese-made drones, are no longer as useful. Some of today’s sensors are in space: Ukraine is using data from satellites built by HawkEye 360, an American firm.

More common is a spectrum analyser, a small $7,000 box, which picks out the different frequencies broadcasting at any time. That information can then direct your jamming. In theory, spectrum analysers could be strung together to create a giant electronic picket to detect emissions all along the front line. That would cost around $10,000 per kilometre of front, estimates Mr Liscovich, perhaps $10m for the entire stretch—a modest amount. The problem, as with so much else in the war, is supply chains. Only three companies in America and Germany build the devices; turnaround times are eight months.

Both sides are also experimenting with cleverer methods. Mr Filimonov describes Azimuth and Mirage, a pair of products: the first picks up signals within 25km and feeds it to the second, which uses software to generate waveforms on the right frequency. In theory, that frees up the need to carry around several different jammers. But both sides can make disruptive changes. “This is a field of science where everything can be upended in the shortest of time,” says Lieutenant Colonel Oleksandr Korobka, who heads an EW unit in Ukraine’s 54th brigade.

The top-end Russian drones, for example, have already evolved to include backup piloting systems. They may switch from standard GPS to satellite-led or inertial-navigation systems, which use gyroscopes and accelerometers to work out a drone’s real position. They may also use artificial intelligence (AI) or communication with beacons on the ground to move drones to a target or back to base. “In such a case full EW defence is practically impossible,” says Colonel Korobka.

The newest challenges are last-mile automation and fibre-optic drones. Last-mile automation avoids most tactical EW shields, which have a range of about 50m, by guiding drones to near a target, and then using AI to visually lock on and strike. Fibre-optic drones, first seen on the battlefield in the spring of 2024, unwind spools of tiny cable as they fly, making them more difficult to manoeuvre but impervious to EW interference. Fibre-optic drones often spearhead attacks, targeting and destroying EW systems first so other radio-piloted drones can follow. Both sides are in the process of ramping up the technology. Russia, the first-adopter, has a lead. Mr Filimonov says that methods such as stroboscopes—flashing lights to dazzle the drone’s cameras—are also being tested.

For now, most drones are still jammable. And Ukraine still has the edge in EW. “They’re certainly quicker than the Russians,” says Mr Withington. The war has also made them quicker than many Western competitors. Mr Filimonov visited 15 military exhibitions around the world last year. The EW technology he saw was not only pricier—American and European amplifiers are two to three times more expensive than the Chinese ones commonly found in Ukrainian kit—but also obsolete. “These technologies are somewhere in 2021,” he says, witheringly. “Everything they are producing is, for the moment, useless on the front line.” ■

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Science & technology

Ukraine at war

Technology

This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “The invisible war”

11. How TikTok became a religious pulpit

I did not expect to read this about TikToK and its use and power.

I am reminded of this from my AI friend:

"The media is the message" means that the form of communication used to deliver information, or the medium itself, has a significant impact on how the message is perceived, often even more so than the content of the message itself; it's a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan, highlighting that the way we access information (like through TV, radio, or the internet) shapes our understanding of the message regardless of its specific details.

Key points about this quote:

Originator: Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian communication theorist.
Meaning: The medium through which a message is delivered (like television, radio, or social media) influences how the message is interpreted, almost as if the medium itself is the most important part of the message.
Example: A political debate might be perceived differently depending on whether people watch it on TV (where visuals are important) or listen to it on radio (where the focus is on spoken words

Excerpts:

The vitality of unorthodox beliefs undermines dominant authorities. Influencers’ ministries are often “non-denominational”, espousing views separate from any established sect. On the outer fringes of FaithTok people are defecting to “new age” spirituality. #Wicca (paganism) and #Witchcraft each have billions of views on the platform, as youngsters extol crystals, potions and spells.

FaithTok is awash in religious disinformation, from AI-generated hate speeches to deepfakes of prominent religious leaders. Spiritually minded conspiracy theories (dubbed “conspirituality”) spread rapidly on TikTok and beyond. For example, “QAnon” conspiracies are prevalent, infused with religious imagery and positioned as spiritual quests. Faith is a mobilising force, because believers think they are being summoned for a higher purpose, says Joan Donovan, a disinformation scholar at Boston University.

Some may find it ironic that religious content is flourishing on an app with strong ties to the Chinese Communist Party, which officially promotes “state atheism” and has persecuted religious and ethnic minorities, including mostly Muslim Uyghurs. But those who have closely studied TikTok are not really surprised. Divisive content, including about politics, tends to be amplified on the platform, in order to sow social instability, some believe. Religious disinformation can be as divisive as the political sort, Ms Donovan says. Online, many of the lambs of God turn into lions.

How TikTok became a religious pulpit

Social media are changing people’s faith in unexpected ways

https://www.economist.com/culture/2025/02/06/how-tiktok-became-a-religious-pulpit

Illustration: Eric Thompson

Feb 6th 2025

Listen to this story.

HEY SAID it was divine intervention. TikTok was resurrected on January 19th, just hours after the short-video app shut down in America. Users gushed that their prayers had been answered. “God said let TikTok rise up!” one exclaimed. In fact, Donald Trump issued an executive order on his first day back in office, granting an extension before the Chinese-owned app would be divested or shut down due to American concerns over national security.

Sacred sentiments are not out of place on TikTok, where religious content is booming among the app’s 1.9bn global users (none of whom are in China, where it is not available). Videos with the top five holy hashtags, including #Jesus and #Islam, have been viewed more than 1.2trn times.

“FaithTok”, as some call the platform’s congregation, is eclectic. Videos show Catholics sprinkling holy water, Mormons annotating scripture and Muslims reciting the Koran. Nuns provide glimpses of convent life; imams proffer guidance; and congregants try to launch their own congregations. TikTok offers a cacophony of liturgy, which sometimes baffles as much as it enlightens. But it is worth more attention, because the app is changing faith and culture in notable ways.

This is not the first time technology has influenced religion, of course. The printing press was famously disruptive, disseminating new teachings and spurring on the Protestant Reformation in 1517. Television helped evangelism flourish in America in the 20th century, though it was also linked to lower church attendance. After the internet boom in the 1990s, people in the West started shedding their formal religious affiliations. Since then the share of Americans who say they have “no religion” has almost tripled, to 28%, surpassing every other denomination (though most still say they believe in a “higher power”).

Online there are “so many religious truth claims floating around that it undercuts your certainty”, explains Paul McClure, a sociologist at the University of Lynchburg in Virginia. As people spend more time on the internet, they are less likely to pray, attend services or belong to a religious tradition. That does not mean social media have been all bad for religion: online platforms have sometimes helped build religious communities through forums and chat rooms, including during covid. And inundated with multiple belief systems, pushed through algorithms, research has found that young adults on social media have become more accepting of different religions.

TikTok is the loudest pulpit yet. The app is “social media on steroids”, according to Nathan Mladin of Theos, a Christian think-tank. Its supercharged algorithms reduce complex ideas to 30-second clips and erode the “habits and virtues” of traditional “faith journeys” faster than ever before, he says.

TikTok is changing faith in three ways. First, conversions are occurring differently, especially among young people, who are not always attracted to established religious figures. Instead, they gravitate to FaithTokers, who sometimes peddle products that are “in line with scripture”, such as halal snacks and sportswear emblazoned with Bible verses. Their videos offer new rituals (“holy girl habits”), slogans (“God is so cool!”) and counsel in verse (“When in doubt, worship it out”). Influencers who tout “the Jesus glow” have seen great success on a platform where personal beauty advice flourishes.

Gen Z, TikTok’s biggest flock of users, is more likely than any other generation to think faith has a place in the modern world, according to a study by Theos. Young proselytes are often attracted not to established churches but to online ministries. “Short-form content was…a gift from God,” says Taylan Michael Seaman, a Louisianan influencer who runs a digital ministry and helps other Christians form their own. (“Kingdom University”, his training programme for would-be ministers, costs $8,000.) Mr Seaman claims to have started a “viral revival”, training a thousand preachers and inspiring some 750,000 “salvations”, or conversions.

A second way TikTok is changing faith is by making it less formal. Gen Z does not want “smoke and mirrors”, argues Gabe Poirot, an influencer who claims to have converted some 40,000 people to Christianity. Young people prefer unedited clips to polished productions. Some are leaving church pews, he thinks, to develop a more “intimate relationship with Jesus” online. Pared-back sermons and the parasocial relationships many netizens forge with online influencers offer some semblance of closeness to God.

TikTok’s casual style also means that anyone with a phone and internet connection can start preaching, says Denis Bekkering, an expert on online evangelism. Influencers are lauded for their charisma rather than their credentials; those with large followings have little training. On top of that, creators are incentivised to provoke or pander to their audience for views. That leads to clickbait titles such as “Are YOU going to HEAVEN or HELL?” and inflammatory interpretations of scripture.

This points to one of TikTok’s biggest effects on faith: it is sowing division. As ever more voices proclaim authority, people’s belief systems have splintered. Much as worshippers abandoned the Catholic church during the Reformation, today they are leaving traditional institutions to follow new religions.

The vitality of unorthodox beliefs undermines dominant authorities. Influencers’ ministries are often “non-denominational”, espousing views separate from any established sect. On the outer fringes of FaithTok people are defecting to “new age” spirituality. #Wicca (paganism) and #Witchcraft each have billions of views on the platform, as youngsters extol crystals, potions and spells.

FaithTok is awash in religious disinformation, from AI-generated hate speeches to deepfakes of prominent religious leaders. Spiritually minded conspiracy theories (dubbed “conspirituality”) spread rapidly on TikTok and beyond. For example, “QAnon” conspiracies are prevalent, infused with religious imagery and positioned as spiritual quests. Faith is a mobilising force, because believers think they are being summoned for a higher purpose, says Joan Donovan, a disinformation scholar at Boston University.

Some may find it ironic that religious content is flourishing on an app with strong ties to the Chinese Communist Party, which officially promotes “state atheism” and has persecuted religious and ethnic minorities, including mostly Muslim Uyghurs. But those who have closely studied TikTok are not really surprised. Divisive content, including about politics, tends to be amplified on the platform, in order to sow social instability, some believe. Religious disinformation can be as divisive as the political sort, Ms Donovan says. Online, many of the lambs of God turn into lions. ■

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Culture

This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “What the flock?”

12. Elon Musk is shredding America’s government as he did Twitter

Although I still use twitter I find that it is now more often than not simply Mr. Musk's megaphone. I seem to get more tweets from him and his compatriots than anyone else (though the algorithm still lets me see tweets from those whom I follow). I still find twitter useful as a news queuing service since I follow a lot of news organizations and journalists whose tweets often direct me to emerging news that is useful.

And it is twitter as Mr. Musk's megaphone that could be a kind of modern Sword of Damocles for anyone in the US government who might oppose him. Controlling the algorithm could control the thoughts and views of many people.

Mr. Musk's power could be unmatched in the modern era as with his DOGE work he may be able to control the data, the money, and with Twitter (and maybe even TikTok), the information with that no one could challenge and depose him. But I am not a conspiracy theorist.

Elon Musk is shredding America’s government as he did Twitter

Some of his operatives are barely out of their teens

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/02/03/elon-musk-is-shredding-americas-government-as-he-did-twitter

Photograph: AP

Feb 3rd 2025|CHICAGO AND WASHINGTON, DC

Listen to this story.

UST PAST midnight on February 3rd Elon Musk appeared on X to explain what he is doing to the federal government. He had to speak over the patter of his four-year-old son, also called X. The bureaucracy, Mr Musk argued, constitutes an illegitimate “fourth branch of government”. He then came to the US Agency for International Development (USAID ), which he denounced as little more than a device to funnel taxpayers’ money to Marxists and criminals. He had, he claimed, the full support of Donald Trump and is “shutting it down”, notwithstanding that the agency’s existence is mandated by Congress. Later he posted that he had spent the weekend “feeding USAID into the woodchipper”.

Even as Mr Musk was speaking, workers at USAID’s headquarters in Washington were being told not to come in the next day. Later on February 3rd Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, announced he had been made acting head of the agency while it faces “reorganisation”. But there is already little of the agency left for him to head. By February 4th the usaid website had been replaced with a single statement, announcing that by the end of the week, all of its permanent workers would be placed on administrative leave. Overseas staff will return to America within a month.

The takedown of USAID is the most dramatic example of what seems to be Mr Musk’s plan for the whole of government. It is drawn from his playbook as a corporate boss. Just over two years ago Mr Musk took over Twitter in a messy $44bn deal. Within a few months, much of which he spent at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco, he had reduced the company’s headcount by around four-fifths. A third of the staff accepted buyouts; many of the rest were fired. They included senior executives who were sacked instantly to stop their stock options vesting. Every decision, such as those about which Twitter accounts to ban, was put directly into Mr Musk’s hands.

Now he is trying to do the same thing with over 2m federal employees, in an attempt to cut $1trn—more than half of all discretionary spending—out of the federal budget. It is, says Donald Kettl, of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, like nothing that has ever happened before. “On a scale of one to ten, this is about 145. It’s so far off the charts,” he says. Richard Nixon was the most recent American president to govern as if the laws of the land did not apply to him, but “this is far beyond anything that Nixon even attempted”.

The first hints of Mr Musk’s seriousness came on January 28th, when most federal employees were sent an email by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the closest thing the government has to a human-resources department. The message offered “deferred resignation”. It had the subject line “fork in the road”, the same as in the email sent to Twitter employees when Mr Musk took over there. Lots of federal employees have been sent several more emails affirming the offer since. One went out to air-traffic controllers less than a day after a plane crash in Washington, DC, which has raised questions about short-staffing at Reagan airport.

DOGE is technically embedded in the US Digital Service, an organisation created by Barack Obama to spread the use of new technology across government. But DOGE is an entirely new thing. Its employees seem to be junior workers pulled in very recently from Mr Musk’s many private firms. Wired, a magazine, has identified six engineers now working with DOGE. The one who sent the email shutting down USAID, Gavin Kliger, graduated from high school in 2017. The youngest of the six, Edward Coristine, is 19; his relevant work experience consists of a few months interning at Neuralink, Mr Musk’s brain-implant firm. On his now-deleted LinkedIn profile, he took the moniker “bigballs”.

These engineers—and it is unclear how many more there may be—now are able to enter just about any government building they like. They have apparently installed sofa beds in the office of the OPM. Under an executive order that Mr Trump signed on his first day in office, they are promised “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems”. The fact that they are handling classified data implies some DOGE workers have also been issued with the “interim Top Secret” clearances created by another of Mr Trump’s executive orders.

Government employees report that staffers from DOGE are turning up at their offices, demanding data and running “code reviews”. Civil servants tell The Economist what the doge people are most keen on is access to personnel records. In some agencies they are also conducting interviews. According to one civil servant the questions include, “Which of your colleagues are most expendable?”

Delete, delete

Here, too, Mr Musk seems to be applying lessons from his takeover of Twitter, where a small group of trusted acolytes combed through records like the company’s Slack channels and email accounts to decide whom to fire. Defenders of the old order were quickly removed. Yet the federal government is a much larger beast than Twitter, which at its peak had just 7,500 workers. And Mr Musk has been touching some extremely sensitive parts of it. On January 31st it emerged that David Lebryk, a senior career Treasury official, is retiring after clashing with officials from DOGE. They may have obtained access to the government payments system, which pays the government’s bills and makes almost 90% of its bank transfers.

Mr Musk has suggested in a tweet that he has direct control, claiming that his team are “rapidly shutting down” government payments to contractors. Jonathan Blum, a political appointee at the Treasury, denied this in a letter to Congress, saying doge’s access is “read only”. But insiders doubt this, and despite two court rulings compelling the government to make payments, a growing number of non-profits contracted to provide federal services report not being paid.

Is any of this legal? Agencies established by Congress cannot simply be shut down by fiat, and Mr Rubio’s appointment is not much of a figleaf. doge workers can enter buildings, but laws about the handling of government data remain in force. Few legal experts think that the offer of “deferred resignation” is lawful. Nick Bednar, of the University of Minnesota’s law school, notes that various laws exist to stop the government from offering no-work jobs. Workers who accept the offer—which had a deadline of February 6th—“could very much be left high and dry”, he says.

Lawsuits are being filed, and protest is growing. A few Democrats have threatened to shut down Mr Trump’s appointments in the Senate over the usaid shutdown. On February 3rd, at the aid agency’s headquarters, Kristina Drye, a USAID speechwriter, says that she “signed a contract to serve the American people” and, despite getting the email, decided to go into the office anyway. A security guard escorted her as she retrieved some books, as well as a pair of beloved high heels. She says she does not expect to ever go back in. What Mr Musk is doing is “sheer, blatant disregard” for important work, she says. But doge is already moving into new agencies. Nobody is stopping him. ■

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Elon Musk

United States

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “The woodchipper”

13. 7 Chinese balloons detected around Taiwan within 24 hours

Graphic at the link:

https://taiwannews.com.tw/news/6032869

7 Chinese balloons detected around Taiwan within 24 hours

One balloon flew across central Taiwan before disappearing near Hualien

Feb. 8, 2025 12:44

Map shows trajectories of 6 Chinese balloons on Thursday. (MND image)

Keoni Everington

Taiwan News, Staff Writer

2486

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Seven Chinese balloons have been detected within 24 hours around Taiwan.

The Ministry of National Defense said six Chinese balloons were tracked over waters off Taiwan’s western and northern coasts from 8:35 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday. They were first detected in the north and west sectors of the air defense identification zone, or ADIZ, at altitudes ranging from 4,876 meters to 6,096 meters.

Three of the balloons flew northeast from the median line in the northern sector of the ADIZ. One balloon flew northwest from the median line and disappeared over Taiwan's northwest territorial waters.

Six Chinese balloons detected on Thursday. (MND image)

One balloon flew northeast from the median line and disappeared northwest of Taichung. Another was detected heading east in Taiwan's west contiguous zone and flew across the country's center before disappearing near Hualien.

In addition, at 7:20 a.m. on Friday, a seventh Chinese balloon was detected at an altitude of 6,096 meters moving east from the median line and entering Taiwan's west contiguous zone. At 7:50 a.m., it disappeared at the western boundary of Taiwan's territorial waters 231 km southwest of Keelung City.

Chou Yu-ping (周宇平), a retired Air Force officer, told PTS News the reconnaissance benefits the PLA in deploying future weapons, conducting electronic frequency reconnaissance, and targeting critical civilian infrastructure.

14. Visualizing the international reach of U.S. funding cut by Trump

View the useful graphics and data at the link: https://wapo.st/4jRuZLW

Note: Sources: ForeignAssistance.gov, Congressional Budget Office, Tax Foundation

A couple of good things that can come of DOGE's work here: The American people may finally have an understanding of the US commitment to foreign aid and development which can make them more informed voters.

And when the American people want these functions in the future to support US national security and American values, a new system may result in a more efficient and transparent structure. But there will be a lot of pain and suffering in between now and then.

Foreign aid budget

$68 billion

Congressional budget

$6.16 trillion

Visualizing the international reach of U.S. funding cut by Trump

Using graphics to illustrate the scope of U.S. foreign aid spending and analyzing how the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts could play out across the world.

Today at 2:00 a.m. EST

8 min

By Cate Brown, Dan Keating and Dylan Moriarty

In a matter of weeks, President Donald Trump has moved to dismantle a vast international aid system built up by Republican and Democratic administrations over decades.

More than $60 billion in foreign assistance has been frozen for 90 days, pending a government review. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said the U.S. Agency for International Development may be abolished. On Friday, a federal judge blocked the administration from placing about 2,7000 staffers on paid leave and recalling nearly all of those posted abroad.

Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI.

In a letter to lawmakers last week, Rubio cited “conflicting, overlapping, and duplicative” activities by USAID resulting in “discord in the foreign policy and foreign relations of the United States.”

“CLOSE IT DOWN,” Trump posted Friday on social media.

Without U.S. support, humanitarian experts warn that already precarious global aid efforts could collapse, putting millions of lives at risk. Some former government officials said the sudden changes would undercut U.S. foreign policy and national security.

“We are not only less safe, but we have abandoned people all over the world,” said Brittany Brown, a former USAID official.

On Wednesday, Trump’s former USAID counselor Chris Mulligan condemned the funding pause. “Every minute that assistance is frozen weakens America, makes us less secure and costs us jobs,” he said.

Here’s a breakdown of U.S. foreign assistance and a look at how the new administration’s sweeping cuts could play out across the world.

Foreign aid by country, 2023 FY

25B

10B

Ukraine

$17.2B

100M

Israel

$3.3B

Foreign aid spending by region

Europe and

Eurasia

$20.2B

Sub-Saharan

Africa

15.7B

Worldwide

programs

15.7B

Middle East and

North Africa

10.6B

South and

Central Asia

3.9B

Western

Hemisphere

3.8B

East Asia

and Oceania

2.1B

The U.S. government is the world’s single largest humanitarian donor, according to the United Nations, though foreign assistance represented less than 1 percent of the congressional budget in fiscal 2023. That adds up to about $210 a year for the average taxpayer, compared with more than $2,800 per year for defense.

President Harry S. Truman introduced the country’s first major foreign aid package in the aftermath of World War II, arguing that strategic assistance could insulate states against the spread of communism. A decade later, President John F. Kennedy signed the Foreign Assistance Act into law and created USAID by executive order.

Key allies, such as Ukraine, Israel and Egypt, rely on U.S. funding to secure their borders and protect shared interests. Other top recipients, including Jordan, Iraq and countries across sub-Saharan Africa, rely on American aid to combat the debilitating effects of war, drought and disease.

Experts warn that the 90-day funding pause could be particularly devastating for countries on the brink of famine, such as Sudan. The World Food Program there relies on the United States for more than 60 cents of every dollar spent on aid.

“The United States is the financial foundation of the entire humanitarian system,” said Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health. “How will the house stand if you rip down the foundation?”

Global health and food aid

Emergency food assistance

$5.3B

Material relief assistance

and services

5.2B

Health

$23.7 billion

STD control including HIV/AIDS

5.1B

Relief co-ordination; protection

and support services

3.7B

Other 4.4B

Countries with largest spending of health funds

Ethiopia

Nigeria

Congo (Kinshasa)

880M

802M

$1.2B

Afghanistan

Syria

728M

769M

Ukraine

1.1B

Yemen

Kenya

South Sudan

699M

679M

617M

Somalia

881M

A third of the U.S. foreign aid budget in 2023 was spent on emergency food and global health.

In Ethiopia, the largest recipient of U.S. food assistance, WFP estimates that over 15 million people rely on emergency aid, following a years-long drought that wrecked crops and an armed conflict in Tigray that left communities on the brink of famine.

The majority of people receive direct food aid, rather than cash, which means that working supply chains are vital to staving off hunger.

Although Rubio issued a waiver to exempt emergency food programs from the 90-day aid pause, WFP administrators said the entire production line in Ethiopia has ground to a halt.

Warehouses in Djibouti are stocked with next month’s food supply, but truck drivers and program officers have been fired, furloughed or ordered to stop work. Without transportation or staff, palettes of taxpayer-funded flour, lentils and iodized salt may go to waste.

Aid workers say they have been given no guidance from administrators on whether essential workers can return.

“They got rid of all the senior lawyers,” said a senior USAID civil servant, now placed on administrative leave, speaking like others in this story on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “The people who would be working to clarify these things aren’t around.”

An internal WFP memo viewed by The Washington Post warned of an “imminent” break in Ethiopia’s emergency assistance pipeline. Officials fear the disruption could set off a chain reaction of violence, starvation and migration.

The impact on global health could be just as swift and far-reaching. Multimillion-dollar programs to combat malaria, Ebola and tuberculosis have been put on hold. Some U.S.-funded clinics were ordered to close.

And medical providers that receive U.S. support said that they have started to ration supplies or halt nonessential services in anticipation of funding gaps.

“We’re reading that an agency is closing down, but it’s not an agency: It’s someone for people to see when they go into labor or their child gets sick with malaria,” said Colin Puzo Smith, director of global policy at the nonpartisan advocacy group Results.

Over the past decade, there’s been a bipartisan effort to give local communities more control over health programs — often placing USAID in a supporting role.

“USAID is not footing the bill for the majority of health needs worldwide, but they often support a key part of the system,” said Puzo Smith. “When you turn that off overnight, it throws the whole system into disarray.”

Under a waiver granted by Rubio to the United States’ flagship HIV prevention program, PEPFAR, doctors are free to administer “lifesaving HIV care and treatment services,” but some say they are afraid to proceed because U.S.-funded systems to track pharmaceutical supplies are disabled and access to USAID’s global payment system has not been restored.

Global security

Stabilization operations

and security sector reform

$9.1B

Global security

$9.9 billion budget

Conflict mitigation and reconciliation

$349M

Combating weapons of mass destruction

$278M

Peace and security - general

$157M

$10M

Other

Countries with largest spending of security funds

Egypt

1.2B

Ukraine

Jordan

654M

429M

Israel

$3.3B

Iraq

Lebanon

Somalia

318M

215M

181M

Ecuador

Taiwan

Colombia

162M

135M

113M

The United States spends nearly $10 billion on programs designed to reduce global conflict.

One third of “stabilization” funding was given directly to Israel in 2023, followed by large contributions to Ukraine and Egypt. U.S. support to Israel increased dramatically after the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, and the war in Gaza. Trump issued a waiver for Israel and Egypt that allows U.S. funding to continue throughout the pause.

The United States also leads efforts to combat violent extremism in Syria, Iraq and across North Africa.

At Al Hol, a desert camp in northeast Syria that houses thousands of former Islamic State fighters and their families, a collection of U.S. contractors provide food, water and fuel to residents, and train the camp’s security forces.

Although some programs have resumed following a State Department waiver, the future of key contractors may be in jeopardy because USAID has not issued payments for other regional programs in December and January, according to Proximity International. The U.S.-based contractor says it is owed more than $2 million.

“We will fail because USAID does not have a working mechanism to pay us back for money we have already spent on allowable expenses,” said Courtney Brown, Proximity International’s CEO.

In Iraq, the future of a flagship effort to resettle the families of former Islamic State fighters is also in doubt.

The U.S.-backed program “facilitated security clearances, cross-border transit and rehabilitation support for the new arrivals,” said a former USAID senior staff member. “Now all of that is on pause.”

The former staffer fears that the breakdown in U.S. programming will undercut years of local trust-building and strengthen the hand of Tehran.

“A more stable Iraq was a more sovereign Iraq that could stand up to Iranian pressure,” he said.

Governance

Macroeconomic

foundation

for growth

$14.6B

Governance funds

$17.8 billion

Rule of law and

human rights 933M

Good governance 749M

Civil society 749M

Other 937M

Countries with largest spending of governance funds

Moldova

151M

Colombia

92M

Mexico

73M

Ukraine

West Bank

and Gaza

14.7B

66M

Honduras

58M

El Salvador

54M

Tunisia

52M

Somalia

49M

Bangladesh

49M

U.S. investments in global governance range from anti-corruption initiatives to programs that help safeguard elections.

The Biden administration committed more than $14 billion to Ukraine to soften the political and economic damage from Russia’s war with the nation. It also poured funding into Eastern European countries, such as Moldova, to counteract Russian influence.

Colombia, a key South American ally, is home to one of the most robust governance programs. The country has recently seen an upsurge in fighting between rival rebel groups and is hosting more than 3 million Venezuelan migrants. USAID was leading efforts to integrate new arrivals and reduce the flow of migrants to the north — a Trump administration priority.

“We used all the tools of national security: defense, diplomacy and development,” said Susan Reichle, a retired USAID mission director. “You need all three to help a country, particularly after conflict.”

Reichle fears the sudden U.S. departure will create a power vacuum.

“We are breaking our partners’ trust,” she said. “And this is going to force them into the arms of China and Russia.”

Sources: ForeignAssistance.gov, Congressional Budget Office, Tax Foundation

435

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By Cate Brown

Cate Brown is a researcher for The Post's International Investigations team.follow on X@catebrown12

By Dan Keating

Dan Keating analyzes data for projects, stories, graphics and interactive online presentations for the national Health and Science team.follow on X@dtkeating

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Dylan Moriarty is a graphics reporter and cartographer at The Washington Post.follow on XDylanMoriarty

15. Trump’s Loyalty Test Presses Jobseekers on Ties to Disfavored Republicans

A president has the authority and responsibility to ensure his political appointees support his agenda. That really should be a no-brainer. He should not appoint anyone who does not support his agenda (unless he is Abraham Lincoln).

But should these loyalty tests apply to the professional civil service who serve regardless of who is elected President who must execute policies in an apolitical manner without allowing their personal political belief to interfere with the nation's business. As long as the policies are within the law they must be executed. And if they are found to be disrupting or hindering the execution of any legal policy because of political beliefs they should be fired. And if a civil servant believes a policy to be immoral or unethical the only option is to resign. But the only loyalty test for all government employees, uniformed and civilians in the professional civil service, must be to take the oath to support and defend the Constitution. That is the "loyalty standard" against which all US government officials should be judged.

Trump’s Loyalty Test Presses Jobseekers on Ties to Disfavored Republicans

Vetting team has rejected hundreds of applicants deemed to hold dissenting views

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-loyalty-test-administration-applications-ba3674b1?st=LR2Ver&utm

By Brian Schwartz

Follow and Josh Dawsey

Updated Feb. 8, 2025 3:22 pm ET

The hiring scrutiny of President Trump’s team has gone beyond anything put into place during his first term. Photo: Shawn Thew/Press Pool

WASHINGTON—Donald Trump and his advisers have taken steps to quell dissent and disloyalty across his administration by weeding out potential hires who have previously criticized the president, worked for his critics or held dissenting views on Ukraine, NATO and tariffs.

The effort to scrutinize political appointees across the government is more comprehensive than anything Trump’s team put in place during his first term and unlike vetting under other presidents. It reflects the president’s longstanding frustration that the people he surrounded himself with eight years ago worked to undermine his agenda, according to interviews with roughly a dozen candidates for government jobs, lobbyists in Washington and administration officials.

Trump has repeatedly told donors that his hiring was the biggest mistake of his first presidency—even though he personally made many of the hiring decisions himself.

Since Trump’s victory in November, Trump’s team has rejected hundreds of applicants that it felt won’t be loyal enough to Trump, according to people familiar with the matter. The hiring scrutiny has applied to a range of jobs across agencies and seniority levels: more than in Trump’s first term, a White House signoff has been required on lower-level cabinet appointees, people with knowledge of the interviews said. And unlike the 2017 White House, a team on the transition vetted thousands of employees before Trump took office.

Applicants were asked if they ever made comments critical of Trump, worked for a politician who disliked Trump or supported causes or politicians not aligned with the president, according to a person with direct involvement in the vetting operation. Some questions aim to gauge an applicant’s support for the president by asking how long the applicant has backed Trump, the person said, and determine whether the candidate had given to any politicians or supported any causes that aren’t aligned with Trump.

Of particular interest to the vetting team is whether hires made any comments criticizing Trump over the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol and his false claims that the election was stolen, the person said.

Potential hires have also been pressed about their policy views, sometimes on subjects that are unrelated to the jobs for which they are applying, some of the people said. They have been asked questions about their views on tariffs, whether Ukraine deserves more or less U.S. aid and whether the U.S. should be a member of NATO. The questions are intended to measure whether a job candidate’s worldviews match up with Trump’s, the people said.

“President Trump, like any president or employer, is entitled to a team that supports the mission, puts personal agendas aside, and is ready to execute the president’s agenda in line with the will of the voters,” White House spokesman Harrison Fields said. “There is an overwhelming interest in joining the Trump administration, and those hired align with the America First mission.”

Former administration officials say the administration is also filled with people who have less government experience and are less willing to push back against Trump’s decisions, particularly on tariffs and foreign policy. In the first term, many of Trump’s top advisers said privately their main job was to curb his instincts.

Sergio Gor, the director of the Presidential Personnel Office. Photo: Andrew Kelly/Reuters

“They were much better prepared this time, and they know what they want in terms of personnel, and it’s yes men, and yes women,” said John Bolton, his former national security adviser turned critic. “But if you don’t have people who are willing to speak up, you are going to get ill-considered decisions.”

Sergio Gor, the director of the Presidential Personnel Office, has been chief among the White House officials leading the effort to shape an administration loyal to Trump. Gor, a former aide to Rand Paul and Michele Bachmann, has become a powerful figure in Trump’s orbit. U.S. senators and others have regularly lobbied Gor, 38, for administration appointments.

Gor moved to Palm Beach, Fla., after Trump left office, joining the president’s Mar-a-Lago club. He became part of the Florida social scene and worked with Trump friends such as billionaire businessman Ike Perlmutter on a super political-action committee backing Trump. He was regularly spotted dining with Trump on the patio, sometimes multiple times a week, club members said, and became even more of a favorite after making Trump millions by creating a company to publish his photo books.

The vetting goes further in assessing candidates’ fealty to the president and scrutinizing their political views than under prior administrations.

“There’s no question there is an intensive emphasis on personal loyalty. It’s prominent in a way that I haven’t seen in any other administration,” said Max Stier, who leads the Partnership for Public Service, a Washington-based nonprofit group that supports federal employees.

The formation of a very different administration—stacked largely with loyalists and people who Trump knows personally—is in contrast to his first term, which Trump’s former chief of staff, Reince Priebus, once privately likened to a zoo with all kinds of animals with different stripes.

One potential hire who worked in the Trump White House in the first term, but also previously worked for former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), was held up because of his affiliation with Ryan, who at times distanced himself from Trump, one person said. One candidate was rejected for a job for praising former Vice President Mike Pence’s actions after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, according to people familiar with the matter. One person was blocked for having Rep. Liz Cheney on his résumé in 2017, long before she became a Trump critic.

“President Trump understands he made personnel mistakes in his first term, and he’s not making those mistakes again,” said Mike Davis, a Republican ally of Trump.

The vetting questions have slowed hiring at some agencies, including the Commerce Department, according to people with knowledge of applications.

Trump aides said they were willing to lose some employees to have a more loyal workforce. The loyalty of staff has helped prevent the types of leaks that infuriated the president during his first term, aides added. The cast of aides who argued against Trump’s decisions in the first term are no longer present.

Trump relied heavily on his 2024 campaign to staff his White House, with the top five staff jobs going to campaign employees. He has populated the top jobs of the Justice Department with his campaign lawyers. There are few new faces inside the West Wing these days—most everyone has a lengthy connection to Trump, which is different from many past White House operations, including Trump’s first one.

White House staffers watch Marine One lift off, with President Trump and first lady Melania Trump aboard, as they depart the White House last month. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Zuma Press

Write to Brian Schwartz at brian.schwartz@wsj.com and Josh Dawsey at Joshua.Dawsey@WSJ.com

16. U.S. intelligence, law enforcement candidates face Trump loyalty test

Sigh... Again, what do we not understand about supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States? Are these just old quaint words that are no longer relevant in the modern era? I finally realized that I guess I am a member of a "cult" because I blindly support those words without reservation - the "cult" of America – and those words trump everything else.

U.S. intelligence, law enforcement candidates face Trump loyalty test

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/08/trump-administration-job-candidates-loyalty-screening/

Candidates for top intelligence and law enforcement jobs were asked to give “yes” or “no” responses to questions such as: Was Jan. 6 “an inside job?”

February 8, 2025 at 7:26 p.m. ESTYesterday at 7:26 p.m. EST

7 min

President Donald Trump motions to the crowd during a campaign event on Oct. 28, 2020, in Goodyear, Arizona. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

By Ellen Nakashima and Warren P. Strobel

Candidates for top national security positions in the Trump administration have faced questions that appear designed to determine whether they have embraced the president’s false claims about the outcome of the 2020 election and its aftermath, according to people familiar with cases of such screening.

The questions asked of several current and former officials up for top intelligence and law enforcement posts revolved around two events that have become President Donald Trump’s litmus test to distinguish friend from foe: the result of the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, according to the people, who, like other interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

These people said that two individuals, both former officials who were being considered for positions within the intelligence community, were asked to give “yes” or “no” responses to the questions: Was Jan. 6 “an inside job?” And was the 2020 presidential election “stolen?”

These individuals, who did not give the desired straight “yes” answer, were not selected. It is not clear whether there were other factors that contributed to the decision.

The questions were posed in direct interviews conducted by personnel hiring for the new administration.

Political fealty has been a prerequisite for positions at all levels of the new administration, including for current civil servants seeking new assignments. But former national security and other officials said it is especially important for the nation’s security that intelligence professionals be able to give the president accurate information even if it does not align with his policy or political preferences.

“It’s normal for a new administration to ask potential political appointees about their political views to assure that they align with the new administration,” said John Bellinger III, who served as the senior counsel for the White House National Security Council in the George W. Bush administration. “And it’s appropriate for a new administration to ask career officials if they are comfortable carrying out the new administration’s policies. But it’s not appropriate to condition jobs, especially in the intelligence and law enforcement community, on partisan political stances. We want career officials to interpret intelligence and enforce the laws in a neutral way without any partisan preference.”

Separately, at least two individuals in FBI field offices outside Washington, who were being interviewed for senior positions, were asked similar questions, said one U.S. official familiar with the incidents.

The questions included: Who were the “real patriots” on January 6? Who won the 2020 election? Who is your “real boss?”

These agents have yet to hear the outcome of their interviews, according to the official.

“It is entirely appropriate that candidates for national security positions in the Trump administration align with President Trump’s agenda to put America First, ” deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said in a statement to The Washington Post.

Trump has repeatedly falsely claimed that he won the 2020 election and asserted that thousands of his supporters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were patriots. Some right-wing voices have suggested the insurrection was an “inside job” organized by the FBI.

Trump supporters scaled the walls on the Senate side of the U.S. Capitol before gaining access to the building on Jan. 6, 2021. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)

The loyalty questions come amid an already tense atmosphere at the bureau and in the intelligence community. In recent days, interim Justice Department leaders appointed by Trump ordered the FBI to hand over a list of the thousands of personnel across the country who worked on Jan. 6. cases, forced out senior FBI leaders and transferred several senior Justice Department officials, and fired prosecutors involved in a special counsel investigation of Trump.

There have been no such actions at the CIA, National Security Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, though their civilian workforces have been offered buyouts. But personnel there are warily watching the actions of CIA Director John Ratcliffe and the statements of director of national intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard. Both are political allies of Trump, and Gabbard has at times suggested intelligence officials are part of a disloyal deep state.

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Ratcliffe and Gabbard pledged during their confirmation hearings not to politicize their agencies. “As the President’s principal intelligence adviser, I will begin with leading by example, checking my own views at the door, and committing to delivering intelligence that is collected, analyzed, and reported without bias, prejudice, or political influence,” Gabbard told the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats asked Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee for FBI director, at his confirmation hearing last week about plans for agents who had worked on Jan. 6 cases and he pledged no retribution, even as the removals of senior FBI officials was already underway.

Asked to comment on the loyalty questions, an FBI spokeswoman declined to comment on the matter. An FBI official said: “We have no knowledge of that.”

One former senior intelligence official said that attesting to something you know to be untrue — as in the assertion that President Joe Biden stole the 2020 election — would violate the ethos of an intelligence officer. “I don’t understand how somebody could [answer untruthfully] and do their job,” said the former official.

By design, spy agencies have relatively few political appointees, and veteran intelligence officials say their role is to provide policymakers, no matter from which party, intelligence untainted by political considerations.

There have been loyalty investigations of federal employees over the years, such as during the Communist “witch hunts” of the McCarthy era, noted Yale University historian Beverly Gage. Those were problematic in their own right, said Gage, “but at least they were not about whether or not you’re loyal to a particular politician, but whether you’re loyal to the country.”

The only time the country came close to being led by a president who insisted on personal and partisan loyalty within the intelligence agencies was during the presidency of Richard M. Nixon, said Gage, author of a major biography of the first FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover.

Nixon “wanted to take all of these big government agencies and make them responsive to the White House, make them loyal to him in part, because he, like Trump, had this sense that the media and all the Democrats and the bureaucracy were arrayed against him,” she said.

Recent polls indicate that perceptions of the intelligence community, and particularly the FBI, are highly polarized, following years of attacks by Trump and his allies.

“There’s been a historical reversal,” said Jeffrey Rogg, an intelligence historian at the University of South Florida. “Whereas Democrats historically were suspicious of the FBI and intelligence organizations, now it’s Republicans who are. And it’s not accidental that it’s due to political events in the United States and the perception that intelligence organizations have taken sides.”

The politically-tinged loyalty questions are just one aspect of a broader screening campaign that includes reviewing candidates’ and current officials’ social media posts for any divergence from Trump’s views, and checking on past campaign donations and political activity.

The application form for jobs in the Trump administration asks if applicants supported Trump in the 2024 election, and “What part of President Trump’s campaign message is most appealing to you and why?” according to the Associated Press.

Some longtime intelligence professionals say that Trump and his billionaire ally Elon Musk’s drive to downsize and remake the government is not without merit. There are organizations within the intelligence community that need streamlining and mission priorities that should be reset, they said.

The Trump administration and Senate Republicans have signaled they want the CIA to be more aggressive with human intelligence gathering, and to downsize the ODNI, which was formed in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to better coordinate spy agencies. It now has more than 2,000 employees.

Isaac Stanley-Becker, Cleve R. Wootson Jr. and Jeremy Roebuck contributed to this report.

Comments

By Ellen Nakashima

Ellen Nakashima is an intelligence and national security reporter at The Washington Post. She's been a member of three Pulitzer prizewinning teams, for probing the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, Russian interference in the 2016 election, and the hidden scope of government surveillance. Send her secure tips on Signal at Ellen.626 follow on X @nakashimae

By Warren P. Strobel

Warren P. Strobel is a reporter at The Washington Post covering U.S. intelligence. He has written about U.S. security policies under seven presidents. He received numerous awards, and was portrayed in the movie "Shock and Awe," for his skeptical reporting on the decision to invade Iraq. Send him secure tips on Signal at 202 744 1312follow on X @wstrobel

17. Booz Allen Removes Subcontractor Who Wrote Report on DOGE Access

But was the report accurate without the alleged personal opinions?

Excerpts:

“The draft report was prepared by a subcontractor to Booz Allen and contained unauthorized personal opinions that are not factual or consistent with our standards,” the company said in a statement hours after news organizations published accounts of the draft report. “The subcontractor has been removed from his position and we are seeking to have the report amended or retracted.”

The draft report containing the warning had been delivered to the Treasury Department in a weekly intelligence bulletin by Booz Allen, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The alarm expressed about the Treasury’s payments system — essentially the federal government’s checking account — echoed concerns voiced by current and former federal officials as well as several Democratic lawmakers in recent days, who have argued that DOGE access could compromise the integrity of the portal.

Booz Allen Removes Subcontractor Who Wrote Report on DOGE Access

Jake Bleiberg and Viktoria Dendrinou

Fri, February 7, 2025 at 10:18 PM EST2 min read

Yahoo

(Bloomberg) -- The government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton on Friday night said it had dismissed a subcontractor who prepared a draft report saying that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency access to the Treasury’s payment system poses an “unprecedented insider threat risk” and should be suspended immediately.

“The draft report was prepared by a subcontractor to Booz Allen and contained unauthorized personal opinions that are not factual or consistent with our standards,” the company said in a statement hours after news organizations published accounts of the draft report. “The subcontractor has been removed from his position and we are seeking to have the report amended or retracted.”

The draft report containing the warning had been delivered to the Treasury Department in a weekly intelligence bulletin by Booz Allen, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The alarm expressed about the Treasury’s payments system — essentially the federal government’s checking account — echoed concerns voiced by current and former federal officials as well as several Democratic lawmakers in recent days, who have argued that DOGE access could compromise the integrity of the portal.

The Treasury Department did not immediately respond to requests to comment.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has defended giving two DOGE staffers access, saying they were there to conduct a broader review of spending and that there has been no “tinkering” with the data. In an interview with Bloomberg News, he said he had personally vetted a senior Treasury employee who is part of the DOGE effort, reiterating that the person has “read-only” access to federal payment data.

Earlier: Bessent Says Musk’s DOGE Isn’t Altering Treasury Data

Yet even “read-only” access could pose risks, former Treasury officials have warned, a threat the Booz Allen Hamilton risk assessment also identified as major threat. The Washington Post first reported the warnings from Booz Allen.

“Continued access to any payments systems, even ‘read-only’ likely poses the single greatest insider threat risk the Bureau of Fiscal Services has ever faced,” the contractor said in the report. The Bureau of Fiscal Services is the Treasury unit that manages all federal payments.

“If DOGE members have any access to payments systems, we recommend suspending that access immediately and conducting a comprehensive review of all actions they may have taken on these systems,” Booz Allen added.

The Treasury’s most senior career official retired abruptly following tensions with DOGE team members over granting them access to the sensitive system that oversees trillions of dollars in federal government payments.

The official, who held the role of fiscal assistant secretary, has since been replaced by Tom Krause, one of the representatives of Musk’s team, even through the role has traditionally always been held by a career Treasury official, and not a political appointee.

Yahoo

18. Internships rescinded. Jobs lost. Foreign affairs students ask: What now?

Two points. These internships have been a source of low cost and even free labor for the US government (which is ethically questionable to have interns working for free but I do think that has been reduced if not eliminated within the government - but interns are low cost solutions to labor requirements).

Interns usually have a strong work ethic because they have a desire to break into the space for future employment. And from the government perspective internships serve as a useful way to prepare, train, and identify students for future service (emphasis on service) and employment in the US government.

Internships rescinded. Jobs lost. Foreign affairs students ask: What now?

As the Trump administration and Elon Musk seek to cut agencies such as USAID, college students worry the field they long dreamed of joining could dry up.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2025/02/09/dc-international-affairs-students-usaid/?utm

February 9, 2025 at 6:00 a.m. ESTToday at 6:00 a.m. EST

Yasmine Mirhaji had planned out her last three years at American University’s School of International Service meticulously, taking classes on diplomacy and power. Inspired by her parents’ experience fleeing Iran to the United States decades ago, she dreamed about joining the State Department, which deals in foreign policy, and had applied for an internship at the agency.

But moves by the Trump administration, in its first days in power, to slash funding and jobs across federal agencies has upended civil service prospects for scores of local college students, many of whom chose D.C. universities for their pipeline to federal and international careers.

First, Mirhaji, a 20-year-old junior, learned she’d have to reapply or start her internship search all over again. Then she wondered whether her degree was becoming obsolete. Now she is leaning toward law or graduate school, rather than trying to work in the federal government.

“All my plans are scrapped,” said Mirhaji, who was raised in Westchester County, New York. “So many of the jobs our professors have proposed to us as potential opportunities don’t exist anymore.”

Rihanna Doherty, left, and Yasmine Mirhaji, students at American University’s School of International Service, are rethinking their career paths. (Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff/The Washington Post)

Mirhaji and the thousands of undergraduate and graduate students like her, who are spending tens of thousands of dollars to study international relations in D.C., have watched their career plans seemingly dissolve in recent weeks as the Trump administration takes steps at reducing the size of the federal government.

Some have been furloughed from federal agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) or had internships pulled from the Treasury Department. Other students, like Mirhaji, are considering pivoting to new sectors or, for others, new fields altogether. And their colleges, some of which were established to prepare students to work in federal and international agencies such as USAID, are scrambling to find new opportunities for them.

Following D.C. region

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Still, some college administrators in the D.C. region say their programs are not going anywhere, that educating mission-driven workers who want to help the needy or shape foreign policy and international relations will continue regardless of which agencies are cut or dismantled under Trump.

“Is it an existential threat to SIS or to the work we do collectively?” said Shannon Hader, dean of American’s School of International Service. “Absolutely not. But the level of chaos and trauma is higher than I’d predicted.”

D.C. is home to a number of top-ranked international affairs programs in the country and is a hub for current or hopeful government workers to pursue careers in development, Foreign Service and more. For many schools, the master’s programs are also important revenue generators, with some running upward of $100,000.

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Across the region and country, international affairs administrators have fielded calls from concerned graduates in recent weeks, while organizing last-minute career panels for students who had Foreign Service tests canceled. They’re also considering retooling curriculum to focus more on private sector opportunities and extending admissions deadlines for those recently out of work.

“The whole higher-ed system is in shock,” said Michelle Hewlett, executive director of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs, which has 67 member schools globally.

In just the last week, Steven Radelet, director of Georgetown University’s Global Human Development program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, said he’s received some 30 calls and dozens of emails from graduates. After speaking on a quickly scheduled panel earlier last week for students about finding jobs in the private sector or the World Bank, he later organized a similar Zoom for alumni.

“This is personal,” Radelet said. “They are personally attacking our alumni, our people, who have been public servants their whole lives.”

The program he runs is 10 years old and has 300 graduates, Radelet said, 25 percent of whom have lost their jobs or expect that they will. Some have student debt from their master’s; others have families and a mortgage. Radelet, a former chief economist for USAID, asked alumni who have switched careers to join a call on Friday to explain to other graduates how to transition into private companies or local and state governments.

Radelet wondered if the targeting of USAID could lead to fewer people enrolling in his program. He is already pondering curriculum changes to focus some classes on the work that international organizations, local governments and private foundations do to serve the poor and hungry — and away from federal agencies such as USAID.

At American’s School of International Service, Hader thinks the actions by Trump and Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service could lead to a bump in applications from newly unemployed people or others who want no part of the current federal government but still want to pursue peace or humanitarian development through other means.

The school has extended the deadline for priority admissions, and will hold additional information sessions and is waiving its application fees for people displaced by their jobs in federal government.

“We’re not going to sit in a corner,” she said. “We’re going to lean in. The world has fundamentally shifted.”

Hader also urged her students, a number of whom have lost internships or jobs, not to lose hope. Roughly one-third of the school’s students go into government, she said, but the rest go into nonprofits or the private sector.

Last week, administrators organized a community forum on “dramatic changes and threats to USAID” and urged their 25,000 alumni worldwide to respond to LinkedIn messages from current students and alert staff to new openings.

More on higher education in the D.C. region

Maryland’s public universities could cut 400 jobs under Moore’s budget plan

Ibram X. Kendi to join Howard University faculty, launch research institute

How Trump’s DEI orders may bring extra scrutiny to D.C.-area colleges

Johns Hopkins to offer training after probe over antisemitic, anti-Arab com...

George Mason opens $254M hub as Virginia aims to draw in more tech

Campus ban for two pro-Palestinian activists sparks outcry at George Mason

How D.C.’s only public university wants to reimagine itself

In emotional event, D.C. jail inmates debate JMU students in courtroom

Longtime Georgetown president DeGioia steps down months after stroke

Amid budget cuts, American University may restructure School of Education

Howard University likely to earn highest research status, only HBCU to do s...

Howard students planned to celebrate in the streets. Then the votes came in...

On Wednesday, the school posted a guide on Instagram to navigating the “stark challenges” the community was facing. That included emailing career counselors their job status, applying for emergency funds and information for daily drop-in career advising.

But many students are struggling to figure out their next steps. Some graduate students, including those who have lined up jobs at agencies such as the State Department, declined to speak with a reporter because they worried doing so could put them at risk of losing those jobs.

One American University master’s student who had been furloughed from USAID said that despite the current turmoil, he believes in the mission and value of the School of International Service.

“It’s still worth it,” said the student, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional retribution. If he doesn’t work for the federal government, he said he’d pursue peace-building with nonprofits.

For Mirhaji, each day brings new anxieties.

She said she hopes to continue pursuing advanced degrees because she feels she could face higher scrutiny as a woman of color. She’s worried for her future and what her parents will think of the career path she chose that was supposed to be stable, but now seems precarious.

“We’re scared not because we’re entitled to anything,” Mirhaji said, “but because a lot of us have been sold an idea where the future is stable and America has a positive role in the world. We just want to be able to help make that happen.”

35Comments

Prebunking Elon Musk's Super Bowl Propaganda

https://asharangappa.substack.com/p/prebunking-elon-musks-super-bowl?utm

Perception is reality.

Asha Rangappa

Feb 09, 2025

I normally don’t write on Sundays, but I have seen some alarming rumors that Elon Musk has purchased a $40 million Super Bowl ad in which he will expose the “fraud” and “corruption” at USAID. (See here and here.) If this is true, it is not great news: Musk’s “ad” will almost certainly be filled with mis- and disinformation, considering that he has promoted conspiracy theories regarding USAID on his own social media platform. The difference is that a Super Bowl ad will reach 120 million viewers, many of whom who might not be in social media, further expanding the reach of this propaganda and potentially shaping public opinion in support of his destructive efforts in our government.

Those who have been enrolled in my Substack course, Democracy in the (Dis)Information Age, will know that mis- and disinformation has a first-mover advantage. It can be very difficult to dislodge beliefs once an individual adopts them, even with actual facts.

Subscribed

However, one tactic which I wrote about in one of the my earliest Substack posts (no paywall) was about the effectiveness of “prebunking” — getting out in front of false narratives and preparing audiences for what they might hear and why it is not credible. The Biden administration used prebunking to very effectively neutralize Putin’s false justifications in advance of his invasion of Ukraine, preventing them from gaining traction or providing a red herring for his aggression.

The prebunking tactic may really be the only way to counter Musk’s Super Bowl propaganda, given that it is doubtful that anyone else has or would be able to purchase a “counter ad” during this programming. To that end, the video at the top of this post provides a good visual counter narrative to the conspiracy theories about USAID. I hope you will share widely in your networks and on platforms, making sure to emphasize the following:

You may see a Super Bowl ad sponsored by Elon Musk that includes misinformation and conspiracy theories about USAID.
In addition to providing humanitarian aid to the world’s poorest people, USAID is a major source of American soft power which has enabled us to counter global influence efforts of our adversaries — the Soviet Union during the Cold War and Russia and China today. (Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), has suggested that Musk’s dismantling of USAID is an effort to curry favor with China, so that he can market his self-driving cars there)
Musk himself worked with USAID to bring his Starlink services to Ukraine. In fact, his beef with USAID may stem partly from USAID’s inspector general investigation into how those terminals were used to Russia’s benefit (that investigation is presumably not going on). And not for nothing, but Ivanka Trump used USAID as the vehicle for her women’s economic empowerment initiative!
In addition to the millions of people around the world who are already suffering from the halting of aid, the funding cutoff also impacts billions of dollars that go to U.S. businesses and farmers, which supply the food and humanitarian goods that go to these locations, impacting American jobs and our economy

Thanks for reading The Freedom Academy with Asha Rangappa! This post is public so feel free to share it.

We are entering a new era where an unelected billionaire controls a major communications platform and has enough money to utilize our other telecommunications channels to amplify mis- and dis-information that is against the interests of our country. The only way to even make a dent in countering this is for everyone to do their part, in their own social circle, to push back on this propaganda.

20. 'Trump study sessions': How Japan PM's homework paid off

Excerpts:

The man himself has not elicited much confidence in how he would fare opposite a notorious Trump.

"For weeks local media played up the idea that he would not succeed diplomatically - that he was clumsy, not a sociable person and that Trump would eat his lunch, if he made it to Washington," said Mr Hall.

But Ishiba is walking away with what looks a lot like success.

The former Japanese defence minister is a veteran politician known for dense speeches in parliament. Observers have said such speeches manage to confuse some of his opponents and bore others.

But in a "Trump strategy meeting" with his staff, the biggest piece of advice he reportedly got was: "Conclusion first. Keep it simple."

"Ishiba followed a play book to flatter Trump personally and offer him economic investments in the US instead of confronting him", said Mr Hall.

'Trump study sessions': How Japan PM's homework paid off

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Shaimaa Khalil

Tokyo correspondent

Reporting fromTokyo

0:46

Watch: Trump and Japanese PM meet at the White House

If Japan needed reassurances it was indeed still the US's top ally and friend in the increasingly unstable Asia-Pacific, it got that and then some.

But what was striking about the Trump-Ishiba meeting at the White House was what didn't happen.

Unlike most of the Trump domestic and global dynamics so far, this was neither controversial nor confrontational.

"On television, he is very frightening," Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba told reporters after Friday's meeting.

"But when I met him, he was very sincere, very powerful and strong willed," he added.

There's a lot that ties Washington and Tokyo. Japan has been the top foreign investor in the US for five consecutive years, creating thousands of jobs. And there are 54,000 US military personnel stationed in Japan.

But President Donald Trump has given his friends and foes a lot to worry about: from tariff wars against China, Canada and Mexico to his US "ownership" of Gaza proposal and his sanctions against the International Criminal Court.

What are tariffs and why is Trump threatening to use them?

How Japan sparked Trump's 40-year love affair with tariffs

"Trump has made some erratic decisions towards countries that believed themselves to be America's friends," said Jeffrey Hall, lecturer at Japan's Kanda University of International Studies.

"There was a fear in Tokyo that the same might happen: that Trump might slap huge tariffs on Japan or start some dispute. But that didn't happen," he added.

Trump 'study sessions'

While Trump didn't rule out tariffs against Tokyo, it wasn't the main feature of this meeting.

Ishiba went to Washington prepared. He'd studied. Literally. He held "study sessions" with staff and sought advice from his predecessor, Fumio Kishida.

He also had some help from the widow of the late former PM Shinzo Abe, who had a close relationship with Trump during his first presidency, forged on the golf course.

Ishiba's homework paid off.

Apart from when Trump mistakenly referred to Nippon Steel as "Nissan", there weren't many eye-raising moments like the many other announcements by the US president.

In fact - as far as Japan is concerned - this meeting was reassuring.

Getty Images

Japan has been the top foreign investor in the US for five years running

Both leaders seemed to have met eye-to-eye on their countries' plans to boost trade and defence ushering in a "golden-era" of Japan-US relations.

Ishiba announced his country's plans to increase investment in the US to $1tn (£806bn), as the two economic powers rebalance trade relations.

Ishiba said Japanese car makers would boost investment, while Tokyo would expand imports of US liquified natural gas (LNG).

This would have been music to Trump's ears and a boost to his "drill, baby, drill" announcement from his inauguration speech.

The two men also managed to find common ground on the controversial issue of Nippon Steel.

Trump said Nippon would "invest heavily" in the Pennsylvania-based US Steel without taking a majority stake.

The Japanese firm's attempted takeover of US Steel had been previously blocked by President Joe Biden on national security grounds.

Keeping talks simple

There were enough boxes ticked for Japan to breathe easy - but the main purpose of Ishiba's visit was personal.

The Japanese PM has been in a fraught political position at home - with his minority government keeping a weak grip on power after it was humiliated in October's general elections when they lost their ruling majority.

Ishiba was desperate for a win.

The man himself has not elicited much confidence in how he would fare opposite a notorious Trump.

"For weeks local media played up the idea that he would not succeed diplomatically - that he was clumsy, not a sociable person and that Trump would eat his lunch, if he made it to Washington," said Mr Hall.

But Ishiba is walking away with what looks a lot like success.

The former Japanese defence minister is a veteran politician known for dense speeches in parliament. Observers have said such speeches manage to confuse some of his opponents and bore others.

But in a "Trump strategy meeting" with his staff, the biggest piece of advice he reportedly got was: "Conclusion first. Keep it simple."

"Ishiba followed a play book to flatter Trump personally and offer him economic investments in the US instead of confronting him", said Mr Hall.

Avoiding confrontation

There are several issues that Japan and the US could disagree on. Not least Trump's proposal of a US takeover of the Gaza Strip, which sparked fierce criticism around the world.

Japan reiterated its long-standing position of supporting a two-state solution.

"We won't change our stance," said Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya last week.

Tokyo is also watching Trump's trade war with China nervously.

But Hall said Japan would not be drawn into the US-China trade war if it could help it.

When it comes to China, Japan needs to strike a fine balance.

Beijing is Tokyo's largest trading partner. China is one of the largest investment destinations for Japanese companies.

On the defence and diplomatic front both the US and Japan are challenged by China's rising influence and assertiveness in the region and globally.

Not least with Chinese military's now frequent and provocative moves in waters near Taiwan which Beijing sees as a renegade province.

In 2022, Japan, a pacifist nation, announced it would double its military spending by 2027, citing threats posed by China and North Korea, and saying it would acquire the ability to strike enemy bases.

The changes marked the most dramatic overhaul to Japan's security strategy since it adopted a pacifist constitution after World War Two.

With North Korea continuing its nuclear program, South Korea in political meltdown, and the ongoing US-China rivalry, Japan has yet again presented itself as America's least challenging and only unproblematic friend in the region.

"Japan will avoid any confrontation with Trump when possible. It will most likely become a 'yes' friend," said Hall.

21. Trump Lets Japan Off the Hook on Trade — at Least for Now

Trump Lets Japan Off the Hook on Trade — at Least for Now

DONALD KIRK

Published: Feb. 8, 2025 08:50 AM ETUpdated: Feb. 9, 2025 04:28 AM ET

nysun.com

President Trump is letting Japan off the hook — for now. After threatening tariff increases on some of America’s biggest trading partners, Mr. Trump, it seems, places a high enough priority on the American-Japanese alliance to go easy on warning the same tough treatment for Japan.

That is becoming clear from Mr. Trump’s session with Japan’s prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba – the first foreign leader Mr. Trump chose to receive at the White House after welcoming Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Far from dwelling in excruciating detail on Japan’s huge trade surplus with America, the two leaders agreed they were looking forward to “a new golden age that upholds a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

Those words, in the first sentence of their joint statement issued at the meeting, are not only a tribute to Japan’s importance as a bulwark against Chinese aggression but also recognition that security takes priority over trade.

Although tariffs were definitely on the agenda, Mr. Ishiba was more interested in making sure that Mr. Trump would not reverse the gains in military cooperation made over the four years of the Biden presidency. Questions, if not anxiety, on that issue had ranked high among Japanese concerns as he and his emissaries pressed to see Mr. Trump as soon as possible after his inauguration.

Their joint statement listed a series of deals and understandings made with President Biden — without, of course, mentioning his name. Continuity, not disruption, was of paramount importance.

Messrs. Trump and Ishiba “intend to advance multilayered and aligned cooperation among like-minded countries,” said the statement, citing “the Quad” of Japan, Australia, India and America, as well as South Korea and the Philippines.

Specifically, it said, the leaders “reiterated their strong opposition to any attempts by the People’s Republic of China to change the status quo by force or coercion in the East China Sea” – a reference to China’s claims to Taiwan – and to China’s “threatening and provocative activities in the South China Sea.”

Not that they skipped the tendentious topic of Japan’s trade surplus with America — $68.5 billion last year — far behind America’s stupendous deficit of $295.4 billion in trade with China but among the highest along with Taiwan and South Korea.

“Yes,” was the president’s response when asked afterward if Japan, like other countries, faced tariff increases if its trade surplus did not go down. He would impose “reciprocal tariffs,” he said, without singling out Japan. “That’s the only fair way to do it.” Mr. Ishiba, anxious to stress the special relationship between Washington and Tokyo, smiling, said “I think we’ll be able to do that pretty easily.”

nysun.com

22. Europe’s Trump Playbook: Offer Carrots but Warn That You Have a Big Stick

Europe’s Trump Playbook: Offer Carrots but Warn That You Have a Big Stick

The European Union’s so-called Trump task force spent 2024 preparing for a possible trade dispute. Specifics are secret, but guiding principles are becoming clear.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/world/europe/eu-tariffs-trump.html?referringSource=articleShare&smid=nytcore-ios-share&utm

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New German cars at a logistic center in Essen, Germany, in November. President Trump would like Europeans to buy more American cars.Credit...Martin Meissner/Associated Press

By Jeanna Smialek

Jeanna Smialek reported from Brussels, London and Washington.

Feb. 7, 2025

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The European Union spent last year drawing up secret plans for what the bloc would do if President Trump made good on his threats of imposing higher tariffs on European goods and services.

Now, as those threats go from hypothetical to potentially imminent, its plans are coming into broad focus.

Hit specific, politically sensitive sectors — like products made in Republican states — with targeted tariffs meant to inflict maximum pain. Don’t escalate into a tit-for-tat competition if it’s avoidable. Do move quickly and decisively, potentially using new tactics that could hit service providers like big Silicon Valley technology firms.

It’s a rough playbook — described broadly by three diplomats who requested anonymity because the plans were still being discussed — that Europe would prefer not to use. The first goal is to avoid a trade war by offering to negotiate and dangling carrots, including more European purchases of American gas, which Mr. Trump has been pushing for. E.U. officials have warned that a trade war between the bloc and the United States would be a self-defeating disaster that would cost both sides and benefit geopolitical rivals like China and Russia.

But Mr. Trump has kept the continent in his cross hairs, saying this week that the bloc would “definitely” face tariffs and “pretty soon.” If appeasement fails, Europe is broadcasting that it is ready to hit back.

“We are prepared,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said during a news conference this week in Brussels, when asked whether she was ready to fend off tariff increases from the new U.S. administration.

Image

Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, at a news conference in Brussels, this week. “We are prepared,” she said, for any new U.S. tariffs.Credit...John Thys/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The commission, the bloc’s executive arm, has remained tight-lipped about what products it might hit with higher tariffs even when it meets with ambassadors and other diplomats from E.U. countries, said the three diplomats, who were briefed on the broad ideas developed by the so-called Trump task force. The bloc has 27 member countries, and plans that are shared too widely are likely to leak, eliminating their strategic advantage.

But several guiding principles are increasingly clear, said two of the diplomats, the result both of work by the commission’s task force and of experience gleaned from Mr. Trump’s first term. The diplomats requested anonymity to discuss politically sensitive matters.

The first idea is that tariffs would most likely be targeted, whether that means placed on certain industries or geography-tied products. In 2018, for instance, Europe reacted to steel and aluminum tariffs by hitting American whiskey with a large tariff, which hurt Kentucky’s bourbon industry and, thus, a constituency critical to Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican who was then the Senate majority leader.

A second idea is to stagger the response, kicking in or ratcheting up retaliation only if certain triggers are met or dates passed, two of the diplomats said. Moving deliberately provides more leverage, one diplomat said, and avoids an immediate and painful trade effect.

The third is that responses would not necessarily be tit-for-tat, according to all three diplomats. If Mr. Trump orders a 20 percent across-the-board tariff on Europe, that does not mean that Europe must respond with a 20 percent across-the-board tariff on the United States. The E.U. still wants to abide by global trade rules upheld by the World Trade Organization, which could suggest a more surgical approach.

One option on the table is the use of an “anti-coercion instrument,” a relatively new legal framework that would allow the bloc to rapidly target large American service providers — like big technology companies — with tariffs.

In force since 2023, the tool allows the E.U. to use “a wide range of possible countermeasures” like higher customs duties or import limits when another country harms European industry in an attempt to put pressure on the government and bring about political or policy change. The idea is to allow the bloc to respond to manipulative political pressure swiftly and sternly.

The Financial Times initially reported that the commission could use the tool to hit service providers, including large Silicon Valley technology companies, in response to American tariffs. Two of the diplomats confirmed that using the tool was being discussed, though far from a sure plan.

They said that moving forward with the tool might be too drastic of an option because Europe’s ultimate goal is not to inflame an all-out trade war.

For now, it is impossible for Europe to solidify a reaction plan. The simple reason: Nobody knows what Mr. Trump is going to do.

“They want to do a deal — I think they’re very uncertain still about what the true objectives are,” said Jörn Fleck, senior director with the Europe Center at the research group The Atlantic Council.

Also, E.U. leaders have at times struggled to get Washington on the phone. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, has been invited to meet with foreign ministers but has not done so, though he has had a call with the bloc’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas. Ms. von der Leyen has not met with Mr. Trump since the inauguration in January.

Image

Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top diplomat, has had a call with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.Credit...Virginia Mayo/Associated Press

Even though Mr. Trump has not said what tariffs on Europe would look like, he has repeatedly said he wants Europe to buy more American cars and farm products, in addition to gas.

That has left Europe offering incentives in an effort to fend off the trade war before it begins. Officials have been clear that they are willing — even poised — to buy more American fuel. Officials are already trying to find a way to diversity their energy sources as the continent weans itself off Russian gas.

“We still get a lot of LNG from Russia, and why not replace it by American LNG,” Ms. von der Leyen said in the days after Mr. Trump was elected, referring to liquefied natural gas.

European officials have also said they are likely to buy more American defense products as they ramp up bloc-wide military spending. Higher military expenditures are, in part, a response to Mr. Trump, who has insisted that European nations spend more on NATO.

And when it comes to Greenland — an autonomous territory of Denmark, an E.U. member, that Mr. Trump wants to annex for its strategic importance — Europeans have emphasized that they are open to investing more in the island.

“I totally agree with the Americans that the High North, that the Arctic region, is becoming more and more important when we’re talking about defense and security and deterrence,” Mette Frederiksen, the prime minister of Denmark, said in Brussels this week. “And it is possible to find a way to ensure stronger footprints in Greenland.”

Image

Ilulisaat, Greenland, in January. Mr. Trump has coveted the territory for its strategic importance.Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

Above all, European leaders have been trying to remind America of how important the relationship between the E.U. and the United States is, both economically and for global peace.

Not only is the E.U., when treated as a bloc, America’s most important trading partner. It is also a major importer of American services, and, as officials have repeatedly emphasized in recent days, European companies employ millions of Americans.

“A lot is at stake for both sides,” Ms. von der Leyen said this week.

But she added that “we will always protect our own interests — however and whenever that is needed.”

Ana Swanson contributed reporting.

Jeanna Smialek is the Brussels bureau chief for The Times. More about Jeanna Smialek

A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 8, 2025, Section A, Page 5 of the New York edition with the headline: In Secret, the E.U. Prepared A Playbook to Counter Tariffs. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

23. Opinion: Lavrov Compares Trump’s ‘America First’ to Nazi propaganda

American First must be good and a threat to Russia if Lavrov is attacking it and making such a foolish comparison. Of course he is using this propaganda to try to divide the American people and feed opposition to President Trump in the US. Not one should mistake what Lavrov is doing and even those who oppose President Trump should not be influenced by this propaganda. The counter to this comes from President Trump's 2017 National Security Strategy.

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

Access NSS HERE

Opinion: Lavrov Compares Trump’s ‘America First’ to Nazi propaganda

kyivpost.com · by Peter Dickinson · February 8, 2025

Moscow, unsure of how Trump will turn out, are showing signs of unease by dispensing with diplomacy and lashing out.

By Peter Dickinson

February 8, 2025, 3:00 pm

In a move likely to cause considerable offense in the White House, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has compared US President Donald Trump’s “America First” concept to Nazi propaganda. This provocative statement from Russia’s top diplomat offers an indication of the mood in Moscow as the United States and Russia engage in preliminary talks over a possible deal to end the invasion of Ukraine.

In an article published on Feb. 4 by the Russia in Global Affairs journal, Lavrov accused the US of undermining the international order with “cowboy attacks,” and claimed that the rhetoric of the Trump administration was reminiscent of Nazi Germany. “The ‘America First’ concept has disturbing similarities to the ‘Germany Above All’ slogan of the Hitler period,” he wrote.

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Such attacks are nothing new, of course. The Kremlin has a long history of branding critics and adversaries as Nazis that can be traced all the way back to the height of the Cold War. When the Hungarians rebelled against Soviet occupation in 1956, Moscow condemned the uprising as a “fascist rebellion” before sending in the tanks. It was a similar story during the Soviet suppression of the Prague Spring of 1968. Communist officials even referred to the Berlin Wall itself as “the Anti-Fascist Protective Wall.”

This trend survived the Soviet collapse and has been enthusiastically embraced by the Putin regime. Labeling opponents as Nazis is regarded as a particularly effective tactic in modern Russia as it strikes an emotive chord among audiences raised to revere the staggering Soviet sacrifices in the fight against Hitler’s Germany.

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Throughout Putin’s reign, domestic political opponents including Alexei Navalny have been routinely demonized as Nazis. The same strategy is frequently employed in the international arena. When Estonia sought to remove a Soviet World War II monument from Tallinn city center in 2007, the Kremlin media went into a frenzy about “Fascist Estonia,” sparking riots among Estonia’s sizable ethnic Russian population. A long list of other international critics and adversaries have faced the same Nazi slurs.

The most notorious Russian accusations of Nazism have been leveled at Ukraine. Ever since Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution, Russian state propaganda has sought to portray Ukrainian national identity as a modern form of fascism that is virtually indistinguishable from Nazism. This propaganda campaign is rooted in Soviet era attempts to discredit Ukraine’s independence movement via association with World War II collaboration. It reached new lows in 2014 as Putin attempted to legitimize the occupation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and Donbas region.

Moscow’s efforts to portray Ukraine as a Nazi state escalated further following the onset of the full-scale invasion three years ago, with a massive spike in references to “Nazi Ukraine” throughout the Kremlin-controlled Russian media. In this increasingly unhinged environment, few were surprised when Putin announced that one of his two principal war aims was the “denazification” of Ukraine.

It has since become abundantly clear that Putin’s frequent talk of “denazification” is actually Kremlin code for “deukrainianization.” In other words, the ultimate goal of Russia’s current invasion is to create a Ukraine without Ukrainians, with false accusations of Nazism serving as a convenient excuse to justify the destruction of the Ukrainian state and nation.

It has since become abundantly clear that Putin’s frequent talk of “denazification” is actually Kremlin code for “deukrainianization.”

The history of nationalist politics in independent Ukraine is far removed from the Kremlin’s fascist fantasies. In reality, Ukrainian far-right parties have never come close to holding political power and typically receive far fewer votes than nationalist candidates in most other European countries.

When Ukraine’s frustrated and marginalized nationalists banded together into a single bloc for the country’s last prewar parliamentary election in 2019, they managed to secure a meager 2.16 percent of the vote. Meanwhile, Russian-speaking Jewish comedian Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s landslide victory in Ukraine’s presidential election of the same year served to further highlight the absurdity of Russia’s entire “Nazi Ukraine” narrative.

Ever since Zelenskyy’s election, Russian officials have been tying themselves in knots attempting to explain how a supposedly Nazi state could elect a Jewish leader. In one particularly infamous incident during a spring 2022 interview with Italian TV show Zona Bianca, foreign minister Lavrov responded to questioning about Zelenskyy’s Jewish heritage by claiming that Adolf Hitler “also had Jewish blood.”

Lavrov’s latest comments do not signal a significant shift in the Kremlin position toward the United States and should not be blown out of proportion. Nevertheless, it is always worth paying attention when Russia plays the Nazi card. In this instance, the decision to target Trump personally with Nazi slurs by comparing one of his core political messages to Hitler’s propaganda suggests a degree of unease in Moscow over what the Kremlin can expect from the new US administration.

If Trump follows through on his threats to pressure Putin into peace talks, this unease may soon give way to outright hostility. At that point, we can expect to see yet more lurid Russian accusations of Nazism, this time aimed at the United States. That, after all, is how the Kremlin propaganda machine works. Putin claims to venerate the memory of World War II, but he has done more than anyone to distort the legacy of the conflict for his own political gain.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

This article is reprinted from the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlet with the author’s permission. See the original here.

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Peter Dickinson

kyivpost.com · by Peter Dickinson · February 8, 2025

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

Access NSS HERE

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