Surviving Trump's DOGE

Why is Trump allowing Elon Musk and his merry band of incels to tear through our government? No one knows with any certainty, if we are honest. There is no unified theory of Trump and MAGA for what is being done. The ultimate answer will be a chunky vomit of greed, fascism and kool-aid. However, as we study the bureaucratic wreckage, perhaps a productive question is—what has Trump not done? What has he not blown up?

In World War Two, the Army wanted more bombers coming back from missions. The “common sense” solution said look at the damage on returning planes and strengthen the armor where they were hit, because this is where planes are obviously being hit.

But Abraham Wald from the Statistical Research Group at Columbia University laid out the real problem—survivorship bias. Returning planes were actually those not hit in critical areas and therefore not direct representations of the problem. Planes needed stronger armor around the cockpit and engines because bombers were not coming back with damage in those areas. (A more detailed telling of this story is here,) Wald used the damage point data to statistically invert the picture to understand what is really going on.

So, for conjecture, how much has DOGE interfered with the government’s capacity to manage contracts with outside vendors to cover tasks done by displaced workers? Muskrats might spike this or that contract, and want to freeze government spending here and there, but are they dismantling the ability for the government to contract out work formerly done by fired civil servants? Are they gathering competitive intelligence to shape future contracting opportunities as they poke around the data? Holes in a bomber were evidence that someone tried to bring it down and not for the best places to reinforce armor. Trump may be throwing flak into the federal workforce to catch what falls from the bureaucracy for future outsourcing. And there will be a plethora of expert jobless former civil servants available to cover the work.

If this conjecture is correct, I would look for an odd spike in federal contractor registrations of new and mysterious LLCs, many listing Florida and Wyoming addresses, as “firms” poised to enter with advantages into the privatization fray. But, as a conjecture, I rely on others with more time and resources to suss out its usefulness or error. Perhaps Trump, instead, is simply trying to ratchet up enough pressure in the country so somebody riots somewhere, giving him grounds to invoke the Insurrection Act. But, that is another conjecture for another day.