Brian Merchant writes:

Over the last few weeks, as Elon Musk and DOGE have infiltrated government agency after government agency, proclaiming their intent to slash budgets, cut jobs, and embrace AI, we’ve watched a brazen, extralegal effort to hollow out the state unfold in real time. Now up to 200,000 workers are being targeted in mass layoffs. Much of the collective horror has stemmed from the broader implications this campaign—orchestrated by an unelected tech billionaire who has enriched himself with government contracts—has for our democracy. It has after all been carried out with no congressional oversight and often in stark defiance of judicial orders. It’s been called a coup, or an autogolpe, a coup from inside, or American authoritarianism.

But it’s also happening to real people, who are experiencing it all in excruciating, real-time dread. For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been talking with federal tech workers about what’s happening, how they’re processing it, and how they’re pushing back. I’ve spoken to workers representing the full spectrum: From 10-year veterans to first-year tech workers in their probationary periods—and thus more vulnerable to termination—and from different departments across the government.

I wanted to share some of their stories, with their permission, because they help illuminate what’s going on at the personal level—even while we’re justifiably preoccupied with the ramifications for democracy writ large and the assault on our institutions. (I am, for the obvious reasons, keeping them all anonymous here, but have individually confirmed each of the sources.)

“I think maybe the thing that’s not coming across in all the narrative so far is that federal workers are not just federal workers,” one veteran federal tech worker told me. “We are citizens and voters too, and we are targeted in many ways beyond just our work lives.”

The cuts and the intrusions are affecting federal workers of every stripe, but tech workers have often been on the front lines, the first to be approached by DOGE agents as the caretakers of our federal digital infrastructure and the operators of our information systems.

“Right now it feels like we’re being hacked from the inside,” one federal tech worker told me. “Like the ‘HR’ emails we get that have to be manually marked as not spam by IT. And they insist on immediate action, which is also a warning sign of a phishing email. Then people wanting privileged access to systems they don’t have rights to, without proper (or indeed any) credentials.”

I ask another how he’s doing—an admittedly dumb question, but what do you say?

“Oh you know, watching an autogolpe from the inside,” he replies. “Feeling ten years of painstaking work to build up culture and credibility around digital transformation in the government get burned to the ground in less than three weeks.” [Continue reading…]