Here’s my hot take. DOGE is actually about collecting information under the guise of ‘saving money’. This information will then be used to train AI networks for products that e.g. Musk sells to the US and world-wide goverments to make decisions.
This is why I think Musk is trying to curry favour with other politicians around the world to collect even more information to train for products for them. e.g. in the UK, Nigel Farage who has been paid by Musk, is now singing Musk’s tune stating that each local council “needs a DOGE” (for no apparent reason) and shouldn’t be doing things like making local decisions to help climate change. Removing power from local councils would create a more powerful goverment… a fascist state perhaps…?
There was a lot of talk about using AI to power goverments at the start of Trump’s term which is now very quiet.
Thoughts?
There’s a few reasons to get that data.
To weaponize it against us himself, or sell it to our enemies.
To create a “master list” that the authoritarians can use to disburse and destroy those they disagree with or find impure.
This isn’t just about some shitty AI. It’s about destroying and controlling us.
He’s currying favor with world leaders because he saw how easy it has been for such vast wealth to undermine and topple American democracy and he wants to do this everywhere.
With that Administration’s track record of keeping secret things secret, China and Russia will get access to this master list before it’s even finished.
Even without that track record, that was always going to happen. There is a reason why most privacy advocates consider the mere creation of centralized lists of aggregated data like that a very bad idea.