I am slated to appear tomorrow afternoon at a virtual panel hosted by the Center for American Progress entitled “Uniformed Disservice: How Trump’s Agenda Harms Veterans and Service Members“. Below is the outline of my prepared remarks. I encourage you to join me and the other panelists for an informative and challenging discussion.
You can see the timing and RSVP here.
Opening remarks
- It’s an honor to be here today. Thank you for inviting me.
- It’s important to be clear and unequivocal that “cutting down on waste, fraud, and abuse” is a lie.
- A mistake some people on the left keep making is to hear terrible people telling us exactly what their goal is and what they’re doing to achieve it and choosing to believe, instead, the transparent lies they tell as a cover story.
- Continuing to give the Trump administration the benefit of the doubt is extremely dangerous. We need to recognize what we’re up against to understand how important it is to fight back.
- We know “waste, fraud, and abuse” is a lie because they told us. Grover Norquist told us. Steve Bannon told us. Russell Vought told us. Steve Miller told us. Elon Musk told us. Donald Trump told us. For Pete’s sake, Newt Gingrich told us; the path we’re on starts that far back, if not farther.
- In fact, DOGE and the Trump administration have told us they’re trying to do three things:
- destroy effective governance;
- make themselves and people like them richer and more powerful; and
- hurt people who aren’t like them.
- There is endless evidence of all this, but our time is limited, so I’ll focus on my personal expertise, information security.
- DOGE has spent the last five months methodically demolishing the walls protecting sensitive data on individual Americans held by many agencies throughout the government, in clear violation of the Privacy Act and other federal laws and regulations.
- We can certainly envision a scenario where breaking down walls would help the government better serve the public. But why should we believe their lies when the truth is staring us in the face?
- What they are actually trying to do is make it easier to use government data to target their enemies and easier for that data to be used for other nefarious purposes both inside and outside government.
- This isn’t theoretical, we’ve already seen it start to play out.
- For example, the administration has taken the unprecedented and probably illegal step of marking thousands of non-citizens “dead” in the Social Security Administration’s death master file, with the explicit goal of destroying their ability to participate legally in the American economy, forcing them to self-deport.
- Also¸ the administration is openly using IRS data to target immigrants for arrest and deportation, in clear violation of federal regulations.
- Immigrants have been assured for 50 years, since the Privacy Act, that they can safely pay their taxes without concern that the data they submit to the IRS will be used against them; the administration is tossing that out the window with no regard for laws, regulations, or civil rights.
- The Trump administration isn’t going to stop at using data to go after immigrants. Many government agencies, including VA, have data which can be used to target trans people. Given the administration’s openly weaponized transphobia, it’s only a matter of time before they progress from forcing trans people out of public life to actively pursuing them.
- Immigrants and trans people aren’t the only ones at risk. Through his comments about treating blue states differently, Trump has made it clear that he will not hesitate to target anyone he considers an enemy. We’re all potential targets.
- Every authoritarian state uses massive surveillance and dossiers as essential tools of control. The Nazis had IBM, and the Trump administration has Palantir. The people may have changed, but the goal remains the same. As an information security professional who knows a thing or two about history, I’m not just worried; I’m terrified.
Closing remarks
- Every veteran took an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I took that same oath on my first day at the U.S. Digital Service.
- Our Constitution stands on the edge of a precipice.
- We can sit on the sidelines like so many have done throughout history, or we can stand up and fight for our democracy and our future.
- Every one of us needs to be thinking, right now, in very concrete terms, what our answer will be when future generations ask us what we did in this moment.
- I, for one, refuse to be a bystander.
