March 1 news roundup

Here’s a bunch of news coverage from the past few days that I’ve been too busy to collect before now.

Let’s lead off with the most important items:

1. Late Friday night, GSA fired everyone at 18F and shut down the entire agency. This is a huge loss to the federal government. Please read why from the people who were fired in their own words. Share this out to your networks!
2. More Perfect Union released a superb video interview with me about the impact of my firing on VA and the impact of DOGE on the government in general. They’ve published it on BlueSky, TikTok, Youtube, Twitter¹, Instagram, and Facebook.² Please watch and share this interview! ([archive copy])
3. The AP released a video prepared from their interview with me about my firing at the same time as their print article. Newsweek released the interview on Instagram (if you’ve seen this video released anywhere else, let me know!). Watch and share! ([archive copy])
4. NextGov/FCW ran an article about a major VA.gov migration project ([archive link]) which is going to face significant turbulence and delays because I was fired and the other USDSer I was leading the project with resigned as part of the group resignation from USDS.
5. An interview with one of my USDS colleagues about the group resignation of 21 USDSers was broadcast on All Things Considered ([archive link]) and then shared on the Consider This podcast ([archive link]).

I want to reiterate why I’m doing all these interviews and media appearances. It’s not to make a name for myself, that’s for sure; I would really rather be living a quiet life, mostly in the shadows, the way I always have. But someone needs to speak out, because it’s important for people to know things:

• American Veterans need to know that the privacy of their data at VA, and therefore their own safety, is at risk because the current administration doesn’t care about information security and is firing the people who do.
• More broadly, everyone living in the United States needs to know that:
  • DOGE’s data spelunking across the federal government puts everyone, not just veterans, at great risk of harm, because it is increasing the likelihood that people’s personal data will be stolen and virtually guaranteeing that it will be abused by the Trump administration to harm people; and
  • the mass firings across many agencies are endangering critical services that Americans rely upon, as well as getting rid of the very people who are making the improvements to government that DOGE claimed was their mission.
• Simply put, the firings and illicit access to data are going to bring severe harm to millions of people in the United States and all over the world.

Let’s keep our eye on the ball, folks: the firings and the messing with data need to stop, and the only way that’s going to happen is if all Americans, but especially federal workers being tasked with carrying out DOGE’s illegal and harmful orders, fight back.

OK, stepping off the soapbox now, let’s get on with the rest of the media roundup.

• The New York Post ran an article ([archive link]) about the group resignation of 21 USDSers and mentioned my earlier firing briefly in the second-to-last paragraph.
• A number of web sites picked up the AP News story about my firing. These include:
  • HealthLeaders ran a short blurb ([archive link]) which pointed at the full article.
  • Newslooks published a rewrite of the AP article ([archive link]) and barely gave it credit. I suspect GenAI was involved in the rewrite.
  • The Manila Times published via MSN ran the article ([archive link]) unmodified (I think).
  • The Canadian Press published via MSN also ran the article ([archive link]) unmodified.
  • TIME magazine also appears to have run the article ([archive link]) unmodified.
• AlterNet ran an article ([archive link]) based on my CNN interview.
• The “Alt USDS” social media presence shared my CNN interview on Bluesky, Twitter, and Instagram (archive links: [Bluesky], [Twitter], [Instagram]).
• Several outlets ran the AP article about the group resignation, in which I am mentioned briefly:
  • San Diego Union-Tribune ([archive link])
  • CBC News ([archive link])
  • LA Times ([archive link])
• Not the world’s biggest outlet 😉, but the Daily Record in Ellensburg, WA printed an AP tech brief ([archive link]) which summarized both the AP article about my firing and the one about the group resignation.
• Newsmax ran an article ([archive link]) about VA Secretary Doug Collins pushing back on my claim that VA data is at risk because of my firing. His justification for why the data are safe is specious because the question is issued isn’t how many cybersecurity people are employed by VA overall, it’s how many cybersecurity people are employed to protect VA.gov, which was my job. I was the only one, and they haven’t replaced me, and they’re probably not going to.

Notes:

¹They can’t make me call it X.

²I wish we didn’t have to post content on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook to get the word out, but the reality is that we’re trying to change the system from within it, and to do that, we need to go where the people are.