How can anyone be so careless with the nation’s security?
That is the question everyone is asking after reports surfaced last week that President Trump’s national security leaders discussed imminent attack plans over a chat app known to be intercepted by foreign intelligence services.
But then we have the counterintelligence nightmare known as “DOGE.”
Whatever else the Department of Government Efficiency might be, it is a gift to America’s adversaries. Here, in one place, is a doorway into the inner workings of the U.S. government, the vast troves of personal data entrusted by Americans to federal agencies, the cyber infrastructures that underlie everything the government does and the algorithms that will shape the future of how things get done. It is all being prodded and pulled apart by a raft of mostly young men with energy and creativity and zero government experience.
What foreign spy agency could resist going after that plum?
If DOGE had been built with careful forethought, all employees would have undergone background investigations to make sure they were not vulnerable to coercion or manipulation. Experienced “red teams” would have tested for vulnerabilities in DOGE operations and designed rigorous security regimes to protect them. Or perhaps the risk in creating something like DOGE at all would have been deemed too great.
But here we are, two months too late and counting.
Having served as head of U.S. counterintelligence, I have no doubt that hostile intelligence services have been working overtime to take advantage of this golden opportunity.
Where DOGE may be auditing government IT systems to identify “waste, fraud, and abuse,” the Russians, Chinese and others will endeavor to use that same access to acquire valuable private data about our citizenry, to make inroads into federal procurement, contracting and financial transactions, and create roadmaps to government personnel working on sensitive matters or deployed in harm’s way.
Their “First Departments” will seek to recruit DOGE insiders to share information and promote outcomes that serve their interests. (“Hey, why not close down the Voice of America? Who needs it?”)
The DOGE whirlwind may also provide an opening for foreign deception operations — what Jim Angleton called “the games.” Agents already in place supplying U.S. secrets to their foreign handlers may be more secure if suspicion can be turned elsewhere. All it takes is a few foreign sources earnestly but falsely pointing the U.S. counterespionage machine at an unsuspecting DOGE insider with conveniently matched travel profile, personal associations and financial circumstances to make them suitable investigative suspects for the hundreds of surveillants, analysts, translators, techies and investigators it will take to resolve the leads.
And long after DOGE may have closed its doors, government cybersecurity officials will be left with more questions than answers about IT system integrity and undetected compromises.
Who is checking their work? ...
