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? Certainly not the inspectors general, most of whom were summarily fired. Baseline inquiries about DOGE security precautions from the Senate Intelligence Committee have gone unanswered. It’s not at all enough to say, “Don’t worry, they’re being careful” — an open question while all FOIA requests for their records are being held up in court.
The cardinal rule of sane security is simple: trust but verify. Except, it would seem, for DOGE. It seems to have no supervision, no transparency, no security checks on their personnel or their operations, and no oversight.
Central to the DOGE agenda is what has been called “algorithmic governance.” “Follow the data” plus “assess and eliminate wasteful expenditures” equals increased efficiency. That may be accurate, but at what cost to our nation’s security?
In DOGE’s wake, we’ve seen alarms raised about mass firings inviting foreign recruitment of terminated federal employees with security clearances and an axe to grind. About sensitive national security information spilling into the open and potentially putting vital secrets and lives at risk. About overseas humanitarian aid programs abruptly cut off, leaving suffering and ill will toward America in their wake.
As such unsettling moves get thrown into the public square, they serve a longstanding foreign influence objective: to stoke the flames of division and distrust. The more anger and resentment in our society, the better for those who wish us ill. Make Americans doubt and distrust their own democratic institutions and watch what happens. After all, what democracy can function if citizens suspect their government of the people, by the people and for the people is really against the people?
The red carpet rolled out by DOGE to our adversaries would be a difficult CI challenge under the best of circumstances, but today our counterintelligence enterprise is crumbling at the seams. U.S. counterintelligence has resources to cover fully less than 10 percent of the highest priority foreign intelligence personnel residing in or transiting the United States. In just the last two months, we’ve seen:
- senior leaders including the chiefs of national security, cyber investigations, intelligence, and Science & Technology at FBI headquarters, and the heads of the FBI’s New York, Miami and DC field offices, forced into early retirement;
- the apolitical leadership of the Justice Department’s National Security Branch reassigned;
- a new FBI director pledging to reshape the bureau to “let cops be cops” — code for moving an already stretched-thin workforce away from their singular national security responsibilities;
- the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force disbanded and enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act curtailed;
- dozens of Homeland Security personnel working to counter foreign malign influence moved to other duties, and its election security work put on hold; and
- U.S. allies increasingly reluctant to share vital intelligence, as they begin to question whether the new administration can be trusted.
If Trump and Elon Musk were serious about giving their novel experiment in “government efficiency” a chance to be done right, they would stand down DOGE operations until sound security guardrails can be put in place. What has already been compromised may be unrecoverable, but it may yet be possible to stem some of the damage and protect against future unintended loss.
Unless — as critics have charged — it is loss and destruction that have been the real goals all along.
Until then, it’s party time in Moscow and Beijing. And it is future generations of Americans who will bear the cost.
Michelle Van Cleave, a principal with the Jack Kemp Foundation, was head of U.S. counterintelligence under former President George W. Bush, and director of Senate Security from 2020-2021.
