Friday Apr 18

The Imminent Neoreactionary Threat to the American Republic

Written by anonymous

Editor’s Note:  Social Policy found this in our in-box thanks to one of our subscribers via several of our faithful readers and contributors.  The piece is anonymous on purpose.  One of the authors is rumored to be Dave Troy an investigative reporter.  These days staying behind curtains, especially when looking into the darkness is just solid common sense, so whomever pulled all of these strains together, the only certainty was that it was important to bring this to our readers for their own preparation and actions in defense of whatever remnants of democracy can be saved against the assault. 

Overview

Events of the last three weeks constitute a greater and more immediate threat to the American Constitutional order than has yet been widely recognized. While America's attention is now trained on the chaos, illegality, and unprecedented aggression with which Elon Musk's team is inserting itself into the U.S. government, the threat is an order of magnitude beyond an executive power grab.

As documented below, Musk is tied to a broader group (including Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, other Silicon Valley tech elites, and thought leader Curtis Yarvin) called the Neoreactionaries (NRx), whose extremist ambitions - if realized - are an immediate, existential threat to the very existence of the American nation-state. The Neoreactionaries have openly stated their aims: to destroy the nation-state and the Constitutional order and replace them with a new privately owned corporate state, to be run by a CEO-dictator. Citizens become subjects owned by the state - "state slaves" - because "everything rots when it has no owner—human beings included" (Yarvin 12/28/24).

The path to such a dystopia is to take control of the "nervous system of the state" - data, information, and communication systems - and then use the leverage that infrastructure affords to grab power and silence resistance. Musk's team is well on its way to achieving this, and their takeover must be halted if we are to have elections and a legislature through which to settle our differences. The evidence for taking this threat seriously is laid out in an accompanying brief.

The most dramatic reversals of democratic breakdown (1977 India; 2022 Brazil; 2023 Poland) have been accomplished by radically large-tent, cross-ideological coalitions with little in common except a desire for the continuation of a Constitutional order. Evidence suggests that the present threat to American democracy is dire enough that such a broad-tent approach focused on Musk and his associates may be required.

I. The New Shape of Threats to the American Republic

The evidence in this brief shows that Elon Musk's attempt to "move fast and break things" in the federal government is not merely a shift in management style, but rather an actual attempt to destroy the U.S. government and our Constitutional order, with grave implications for American liberty, national security and the rule of law. It is harder to recognize these threats because in the digital age, they have taken on a new shape that is not yet familiar. Coups and national security breaches used to look like outside political actors storming statehouses, "insiders" sneaking classified information out, or "outsiders" breaking in. In the digital age, a de facto takeover can be less overt, less detectable, and less often an exchange between insiders and outsiders so much as a blurring of their identity in the first place.

While the shape of threats to the American republic has changed, their gravity remains the same. If non-governmental actors (by which we mean unelected, unratified, unvetted, untrained, unconstrained, and/or unaccountable actors) gain access to key digital infrastructure, they can seize control of critical functions of government in ways that will be difficult or impossible to reverse.

National Security

Safeguarding U.S. national security is fundamentally about protecting the Constitution and the Nation from all enemies, foreign and domestic, by preventing exposure of American assets, personnel, and infrastructure to foreign governments and non-state actors. Musk/DOGE espouse anti-Constitutional ideologies, are under the influence of America's principal foreign adversaries (China and Russia), and lack essential experience in cybersecurity. Their control of critical digital infrastructure and personnel therefore constitute a vital and immediate threat to US national security.

  • Elon Musk poses a uniquely significant security risk. His foreign ties led his lawyers to advise that he not pursue a higher security clearance: his financial interests are dependent on China, his companies are financed by Russian oligarchs, and his extensive military contracts leave the US government sole-source dependent on his space and satellite companies. He is centralizing access under his own control: he has presidential authorization, and when career officials challenge the Musk team's access based on security concerns, they are immediately removed.
  • A small core group now controls key infrastructure (such as the Treasury payments system) and massive amounts of data. This group is known to be influenced by both foreign power adversaries and radical anti-Constitutional ideologies (see Appendices 2 and 3), unvetted by any aspect of the US government, and inexperienced at managing cybersecurity risks. (For example: demanding an unclassified email naming newly hired CIA personnel.)
  • Musk's team's broad, centralized access to US data systems creates risks that dwarf prior data breaches. Secure data systems are, by design, decentralized, internally compartmentalized, and managed with redundant layers of oversight. While this can make them inefficient, it also limits damage from unauthorized access (decentralized), protects from malicious but authorized access like insider threats (compartmented), and provides warning if something is amiss (oversight). The DOGE team's actions attempt to circumvent all three standard safeguards. By creating a single access point without time for threat modeling, security planning, and oversight the Musk team has created "efficiencies" that massively expand access risks, and are a tempting target for foreign governments and non-state actors.
  • The Musk team's use of private servers and infrastructures, as reported at OPM and elsewhere, allows exfiltration of data, either into a new internal system or to outside actors, without oversight or records. Private infrastructure also allows use of AI-assisted data processing to join multiple data sets, creating detailed information about targets, or to train AI models for surveillance, policy targeting and more. Once data is leaked, whether to companies, ideological groups, or foreign governments, it is impossible to recover.

In addition to the risks of data access, damage to state capacity leads to direct national security threats. Creating uncertainty and chaos around the stability of government payments undermines the ability of the US government to enter into foreign or domestic contracts, including for security and other critical needs. After the USAID funding freeze, prison guards at a facility holding ISIS affiliates in Syria walked off the job (returning only once their funding was extended for two weeks).

In a typical partisan changeover, the incoming administration would act with great care to preserve American power and state capacity. In contrast, the actions of the incoming Musk team have destabilized state capacity and created significant, as yet not fully known, risks to American national security.

Constitutional Republic

Historically, rapid breakdown in Constitutional government - coups d'etat - have taken a familiar form. Unelected rogue actors seize key government infrastructure (the state house, the presidential palace, the public television station) and use that infrastructure to consolidate power, fortifying themselves in government buildings, cutting off information, and arresting or killing government officials.

Musk and his associates are not recognizable as "outsiders" acting in overt opposition to the elected executive. They have been invited in by the legitimately elected President, who is not conducting an overt self-coup (i.e., declaring himself President-for-life, canceling elections, or openly nullifying the Constitution). Musk and his associates are not seizing buildings by force, arresting anyone, or committing violence.

However, a closer look shows that the substance of a coup -- the rapid seizure of state power and rule-making authority by unelected actors -- is indeed underway. In essence, a coup is a 1) rapid seizure of state power by unelected actors, who acquire that power by 2) seizing critical government infrastructure and 3) weaponizing it to neutralize legitimate government actors' efforts to stop them. The unelected actors then use this power to 4) remake the rules of the political game in a way that cannot easily be checked or undone through democratic processes.

All four of these steps are now unfolding in real time in the United States, but in the present case - led by Neoreactionary tech oligarchs in the digital age - these steps have taken a new (and thus difficult-to-recognize) form:

1) Seizure of state power by unelected actors: While Musk and his associates are working with the apparent approval of the President, they are nevertheless unelected, unvetted by Congress, and have been exempted from standard security screening practices designed to ensure alignment between civil servants and the interests of the American government. These actors are rapidly taking control of the central nervous system of the government - internal government communications systems, data structures, chains of command - and gaining access to critical and sensitive government data that can be used to wield - and potentially abuse - state power, including the social security numbers, bank accounts, and home addresses of government workers and payments data from the National Treasury.

2) Seizure of critical government infrastructure: In 2025, critical government infrastructure is largely digital. The basic functions of government - from law enforcement, national security, and natural disaster relief to taxation, contracts, and service provision - are mediated by information and communication systems, In the digital age, taking control of data and communication structures (e.g. the Treasury payments system, federal personnel records, and other sensitive digital resources) IS seizing key government infrastructure.

3) Weaponizing government infrastructure to neutralize opposition by legitimate actors: The data Musk's team is accessing can be powerfully weaponized against civil servants, politicians in other branches of government, and members of civil society and the general public. The data in Musk's team's control includes personnel data (including sensitive security clearance details) from anyone who has ever had federal employment as well as treasury and payments data about taxpayers, government contractors, Social Security recipients, and bondholders. Such data may be compromising if strategically leaked and could be used to facilitate targeting, blackmail, spurious lawsuits, and threats from internet mobs. Control of the Treasury payments system enables targeted defunding of potential opposition organizations, effectively disarming them.

4) Remaking the rules of the political game so they cannot be easily undone through Constitutional processes: Novel technology tools like cryptocurrency and blockchain can be used to effectively change the rules of the political game even without overtly rewriting them. Without canceling elections, for example, cryptocurrency can be used to create informal but powerful new levers of political influence: politicians can sell personal coins to unknown buyers who "vote" on public policy on the basis of their shareholder power, shielded from public view. Moreover, changes in the formal rules become much easier to make once leaders obtain enough leverage from steps 1-3. Statements by these leaders indicate they are aiming for radical, antidemocratic changes in the formal rules.

The Neoreactionary (NRx) Movement's Agenda

These threats to democracy and national security are tied to a larger plan. Elon Musk is part of a Silicon Valley elite group (including Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, David Sacks, Balaji Srinivasan, and JD Vance) that has been funding, developing, and advancing an extremist ideology as leaders and supporters of the Neoreactionary movement (or “NRx,” or the “Dark Enlightenment”). The aim of the neoreactionary movement is to bring about the collapse of the nation-state, democratic institutions, and what they call "The Cathedral" -- establishment institutions including academia, the mainstream media, and the administrative state. They advocate replacing the existing Constitutional system with a privatized state structure akin to a corporation, with a monarch-like figure at the top modeled after a CEO. The CEO/monarch would control an oligarchy, much like a feudal system. There would be no accountability of the CEO/monarch to citizens, but rather to shareholders. Those who would be accorded political voice would be "the best" people, understood as those with the highest IQ.

The ideologues behind this movement (Curtis Yarvin and Nick Land) are so extreme that they have been dismissed as marginal crackpots in a weird corner of the Internet. But their ideas have been embraced by Musk, Thiel, and other billionaires with enormous influence inside the new administration and over the technologies that can be used as direct tools or political leverage to put these ideas into practice.

The Neoreactionary Movement's leader, Curtis Yarvin, outlined a strategic plan in an essay in 2022. Calling for a "full reboot of the USG [United States Government]," he said, "we can only do this by giving absolute sovereignty to a single organization" (i.e., the executive branch), of which Trump would be the "Board Chair" and an "experienced executive" would be CEO. "The CEO Trump picks will run the executive branch without any interference from the Congress or courts, probably also taking over state and local governments," Yarvin wrote. He later elaborated: America needs a "unitary executive'... so much 'more powerful' than the present office, [such] that the President considers both the judicial and legislative branches purely ceremonial and advisory."

Yarvin's seven-part "Butterfly Revolution" [see Pike column later in this issue] has been roughly summarized as follows:

1) Have Trump run for president on the platform of getting rid of an inefficient system

2) Once he wins, purge the bureaucracy ("RAGE" - Retire All Government Employees)

3) Ignore the courts, through declaring states of emergency

4) Co-opt Congress

5) Centralize the police (federalize the national guard, create a national police force that absorbs local ones)

6) Shut down the elites -- the media and universities who make up "The Cathedral"

7) Get the people "on the streets" whenever there is any obstruction by a government agency.

These steps have clear parallels to the actions of the Musk team: the plan is unfolding in real time. Congress would be wise to take immediate action to prevent these radical plans from being rapidly and irreversibly implementing.

II. Understanding Recent Events in the Context of Threats to the American Republic

Recent events suggest that Musk's team may be rapidly implementing elements of the Neoreactionary playbook, and that DOGE is the organizational and operational hub for these actions.

Treasury Department Infiltration and Financial System Risks

A1. Treasury | What Happened

The Treasury payments system is a major engine of the US economy, encompassing both realtime payment systems and the sensitive financial data of US citizens and businesses. Treasury payments amount to about a fifth of the US economy.

  • On Friday, January 31, the Musk team gained access to the U.S. Treasury Department’s payment system, which processes over $6 trillion annually in transactions including Social Security payments, military salaries, tax refunds, and federal grants. On the same day, the Treasury Department's top career official (David Lebryk) refused to grant DOGE "personnel" access to the system, and was then forced to resign.
  • On Tuesday, February 4, multiple outlets confirmed that DOGE employees have the capability not only to see the data in the payments system (read access) but write access, allowing them to alter the code base, change permissions, and alter transactions and records. Elez and other Musk staff have reportedly already deployed live, immediate changes to the programs that administer payments, aimed at making it easier to block payments and to hide records of payments blocked, made, or altered.
  • The Treasury payments system is built on a complex legacy code base. This type of system can be safely modified only by teams with extensive (years) of experience in the business logic joining legacy systems. This is experience the DOGE team does not have.
  • The Treasury payments system has a long-standing migration scheduled. This migration may interact unpredictably with changes made to the code base.
  • DOGE team members are giving Treasury engineers only their first names and refusing further identification. Moreover, it appears that the takeover occurred before Treasury Secretary Bessent's formal acknowledgement of DOGE control, leaving uncertainty as to who authorized or approved this action.

A2. Treasury | Legal, National Security, and Economic Implications

The takeover of Treasury data by an inexperienced, unvetted team with a single unaccountable individual at the top raises clear financial, security, ethical, and conflict-of-interest questions.

  • Threats to the US treasury are threats to the operations of the global financial markets, US federal, state, and local governments, and the real economy, which the Treasury underpins by distributing federal entitlements, contract payments, debt service, and more. Control of the Treasury by partisan actors or unvetted personnel offers unprecedented power and opportunity for abuse of the system for political, personal, or foreign interests. A full description of the economic consequences of misuse (or even suspected misuse) of Treasury payment systems is outside the scope of this memo.
  • The takeover likely violates multiple federal laws. Like OPM data security, Treasury payment infrastructure is strictly regulated under the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). More generally, unauthorized modifications to existing Congressional appropriations raise both legal and Constitutional questions.
  • Rapid changes to the code base threaten the basic functioning of the entire Treasury payments system. Modifying the code base may sound innocuous, but modernizing legacy code systems are complex and sensitive; it can pose significant risks to the ability of the system to correctly make its $6 trillion in payments.
  • Payment stoppages, via error or intentional freezes, risk damaging trust in the US government to reliably meet its obligations to creditors and contractors.
  • Access to payments data allows the Musk team to engage in numerous activities that constitute economic and security risks: spy on competitors to Musk's companies; identify and block payments to politically or personally disfavored individuals or companies; and intentionally or accidentally share data with foreign governments or nonstate actors who could use it to bribe, blackmail, or surveil critical US personnel and companies.
  • Data access is especially concerning because the Musk team is inexperienced and unvetted. Musk's strong ties to Russia and China are well known (and documented in the Appendix), but the government simply lacks information about foreign influence, blackmail risk, and other security concerns for the DOGE team.
  • Unilaterally blocking and erasing payments damages willingness to collaborate with the United States. Contractors and partners will be reluctant to work with the US government if they fear that their payments could be cut off at any time, regardless of contract provisions. Larger contractors have expressed their willingness to pursue contract provisions via the courts.

A3. Treasury | And the Neoreactionary Playbook

Curtis Yarvin’s philosophy calls for deconstructing state control over financial and regulatory mechanisms, enabling private actors to assume control over core government functions, with an unaccountable monarch/CEO at the top. By infiltrating Treasury systems, Musk’s network has taken a major step toward undermining federal fiscal autonomy and privatizing government decision-making. This Treasury infiltration follows Yarvin’s model:

  • Damaging trust in the US dollar and dollar-denominated Treasury securities creates a rationale for moving major aspects of US government finance to cryptocurrency, a long time goal of many Neoreactionaries.
  • Eliminating institutional resistance by removing career professionals like David Lebryk.
  • Granting unchecked access to government financial systems to ideological loyalists outside traditional oversight.
  • Centralizing control over government payment systems under a single unaccountable individual, facilitating disruption of payments to individuals or groups disfavored by Musk’s allies or political factions and positioning a single individual as .
  • Positioning private actors as the new arbiters of public finance, setting a dangerous precedent for the privatization of federal payment mechanisms.

B: Noncompliance with Congressional Appropriations

B1: Appropriations | What Happened

The Musk team has taken direct aim at Congress's "power of the purse" in the weeks since inauguration.

  • On Monday, January 20, an executive order froze all foreign assistance administered through the Department of State and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), with extremely limited exceptions for aid to Israel and Egypt. This led to a global stop work order on all development assistance.
  • On Monday, January 27, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a memo freezing all domestic grants, which led to panic as Medicaid and other state-level websites went dark. On January 29, OMB issued guidance limiting the scope of the freeze, and then rescinding the memo; on the same day a judge issued an injunction against the order.
  • Despite the injunction, the White House press secretary has insisted that the freeze remains in force, and Musk has claimed that his team is halting payments to specific contractors and grantees, such as Lutheran Social Services.
  • Over the weekend of February 1, Musk took credit for "feeding USAID to the wood chipper." USAID employees were instructed not to appear for work on the morning of February 3, many civil servants and USAID foreign service officers reported being locked out of computer systems, and contractors were ordered to stop work. The USAID website currently diverts to the Department of State, and wide swathes of the Agency's programs appear to be missing.
  • On Monday, February 3, Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that he would be the new acting Administrator of USAID, and would assign day-to-day operations to Pete Marocco, the department’s director of foreign assistance and a January 6 rioter.
  • On Tuesday, February 4, the administration announced that all overseas USAID missions would be shut down by Friday, February 7. Staff were instructed that if the State department is unable to get all staff out of their countries within two days, they would be evacuated by the US military.
  • Later that same day, all USAID employees were placed on administrative leave, except for a handful deemed essential (to be notified later); these instructions told staff they would need to return to the US within 30 days.

B2: Appropriations | Legal, Democratic Accountability, and National Security Implications

In addition to the impoundment of funds already appropriated by Congress, there are extensive legal, democracy-based, and national security implications of Musk's noncompliance:

  • The international aid freeze, the OMB memo, and the continued reports of frozen funds constitute unilateral action to "impound" tens of billions of dollars in already appropriated funds. This directly contravenes the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (ICA), which clearly states that the executive cannot temporarily or permanently withhold enacted funding, and establishes clear procedures that presidents must follow to propose delaying or rescinding funding. While the president may defer spending appropriated funds, he must submit a request to Congress. No such request has been issued or received. Additionally, it is unclear if funds frozen include those "required" or "mandated" to be spent, which cannot be frozen even via the ICA process (this category includes several US treaty and multi-lateral obligations). The ICA provisions regarding delayed or rescinded funding do not apply to funds that are "required" or "mandated" to be spent, which includes several US treaty and multi-lateral obligations.
  • Damaging trust in the US's willingness to fulfill its contractual obligations, from contractors to Treasury payments to tariff/trade obligations.
  • The freeze has not ended: Grantees and beneficiaries who have received "waivers" from the freeze have reported that funds have not been transferred, and reports from inside government agencies suggest that DOGE functionaries have seized the financial controls and are refusing to transfer funds, in violation of court orders.
  • Enormous risk of corruption and elite capture by foreign interests: Musk and his unvetted group of young programmers with dubious ties to foreign governments, corporations, and non-state actors have been given the power to bypass Congress and decide how the US government spends its budget, both foreign and domestic.
  • The tactics used against USAID may be used on other agencies to bypass Congressional authority to make budgets and charter agencies. For example:
    • Ignoring Congressional statutes: Legal scholars agree that it would take an act of Congress to eliminate USAID, which was first created by an executive order in 1961 and established by statute as its own agency by Congress in 1998, or to consolidate it into the Department of State. Capitulation on this issue will ease the way for elimination of other agencies, including the Department of Education (established by Congress in 1979) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (established through the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010).
    • Removing funding for Congressionally mandated policy priorities: USAID’s funding and actions have been a critical element of the US strategy for competing with China and Russia for political and economic influence in the developing world. Moreover, anti-corruption and judicial reform initiatives have been key to combating transnational crime, corruption, human trafficking and terrorism. Congress has the responsibility to participate in choices about curtailing these programs, which help to safeguard America's security.
    • Delegating crucial policy decisions to centralized, unaccountable members of the DOGE team: they demanded access to sensitive materials (placing Agency senior leadership on leave when challenged), laid off thousands of contractors who were conducting the day-to-day work of the Agency, and recalled all USAID Foreign Service Officers to DC within the week.
    • Threatening to use military resources as a way to deter civilian objections.

B3: Appropriations | And the Neoreactionary Agenda

Neoreactionary philosophy calls for centralizing all power under a single individual, known variously as a monarch or CEO.

  • Curtis Yarvin advocates for a "'unitary executive'... so much 'more powerful' than the present office that the President considers both the judicial and legislative branches purely ceremonial and advisory."
  • Noncompliance with Congressional appropriations reduces Congress to a "ceremonial and advisory" role, while ignoring court orders to halt impoundment does the same for the courts.

C. DOGE

C1. DOGE | What Happened

  • In August 2024, Elon Musk proposed a government efficiency commission while interviewing Trump live on X, then posted an AI-generated image of himself on X labeled DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency).
  • On January 20, 2025, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was created via executive order. Initially described as an external advisory body, DOGE has now been integrated into the federal government, giving it access to government-wide data systems, hiring processes, and policy implementation authority. The order mandates that each federal agency establishes a "DOGE Team" of at least four employees, handpicked by agency heads in consultation with the USDS Administrator. These teams, along with DOGE’s own appointees, have been tasked with implementing broad, loosely defined software modernization and efficiency reforms across all federal agencies.
  • DOGE teams immediately gained access to critical government control center.
  • While DOGE is officially part of the federal government, significant transparency and oversight concerns remain. The executive order does not clarify the extent of DOGE’s authority, and the administration has suggested that DOGE’s records may not be subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) due to its placement under the White House Chief of Staff. Additionally, unlike standard agencies governed by strict hiring and ethics requirements, DOGE operates with a special temporary status, allowing it to bypass certain federal employment laws, including security requirements.
  • Elon Musk remains DOGE’s lead official, but his exact role is intentionally ambiguous. The White House has designated him a special government employee (SGE), which subjects him to some federal ethics and conflict-of-interest laws but permits him to retain control of his private businesses, including SpaceX, Tesla, xAI, and Starlink—all of which have federal contracts or regulatory interests. This arrangement presents serious conflicts of interest, particularly given the Federal Acquisition Regulation’s (FAR) restrictions on SGEs influencing federal contracts when they or their affiliated businesses stand to benefit.

C2. DOGE | Potential legal and national security implications

DOGE, as constituted via the January 20 Executive Order and implemented by Elon Musk, is the operational center of an attempt to remake vital state functions. It has, at minimum, tested the boundaries of laws designed to ensure transparency and accountability in the executive branch. Some of the key questions include:

  • High-level access to sensitive data by unvetted Musk loyalists carries significant national security risks. The executive order directs all agencies to provide DOGE teams "full and prompt access" to federal records, software, and IT systems. This potentially grants individuals without security clearances access to classified intelligence, financial data, and personnel files across multiple federal departments, creating risks of blackmail, surveillance, bribery, and coercion of US officials and assets. Moreover, many of the DOGE employees accessing these data have known ties to NRx's radical ideology (see Appendix 2).
  • DOGE's uncertain legal status raises Constitutional questions. If DOGE is an advisory committee, as multiple lawsuits contend, its operations may violate the Federal Advisory Committee Act. If, instead, the bulk of DOGE's operations occur inside the U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization, it is then subject to the legal requirements for temporary organizations laid out in 5 USC 3161, and is subject to transparency statutes such as the Freedom of Information Act.
  • Criminal conflict of interest: It appears that DOGE employees were hired privately by Musk, and most had been employed by Musk prior to joining DOGE. It is unclear how or by whom they are currently paid in their powerful new roles. However, to the extent that they are operating as federal employees, they are subject to criminal conflict of interest statutes.
  • Privacy and data security laws: Reports indicate that DOGE employees have A-suite level clearance at the General Services Administration (GSA), which allows them access to agency spaces and IT systems. It is unclear whether they have been appropriately vetted for that access. Nevertheless, they have gained control over highly sensitive data at the Office of Personnel Management, the Treasury Department, and the US Agency for International Development. The Privacy Act of 1974 and its follow-on statutes, such as the E-Government Act of 2002, tightly control how executive branch agencies may handle sensitive data, particularly personally identifiable data.

C3. DOGE | And the Neoreactionary Playbook

DOGE's structure and operations match the Curtis Yarvin's "RAGE" (Retire All Government Employees) strategy. Yarvin’s writings contend that the “deep state” must be dismantled from within, clearing the way for quick executive decision-making and action. In particular, RAGE envisions:

  • Inserting ideological loyalists into key government functions by side-stepping hiring and vetting processes meant to protect citizens, and the country, from political retribution, conflicts of interest, and interference by foreign powers.
  • Centralizing decision-making among a closed circle of elite actors—ideally, executives with vested interests. DOGE's secretive nature, its ideological extremism, its considerable financial conflicts of interest, and its employees' fealty to Musk individually all closely resemble Yarvin's vision of an autocratic "CEO."
  • Recruiting young, technically skilled individuals for ideological projects is a hallmark of the neoreactionary movement. Musk, Thiel, and their networks have long championed youth-led companies and experiments, where teenagers and early-twenties recruits are given disproportionate power in government, technology, and finance.

D. Events Inside the Office of Personnel Management (OPM)

D1. OPM | What Happened

OPM manages the federal workforce, serving as a central hub for federal employment policy and as a central repository for employee records.

  • In November 2024, Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed, stating their key goal: massive cuts to the federal workforce.
  • Musk appointed loyalists to top positions at the OPM. In particular, OPM Chief of Staff Amanda Scales was an employee of xAI. These individuals quickly moved to centralize control of federal employees in the OPM.
  • With Scales's blessing, DOGE employees gained unprecedented access to OPM systems and data. These include personally identifying data, such as Social Security numbers, pay grades, and security clearances, as well as detailed personnel files. DOGE employees installed new email servers, reportedly unsecured, to communicate to all federal employees.
  • With these new communication tools, Musk's appointees have acted quickly to assert centralized authority over the federal workforce.
    • On January 21, 2025, OPM Acting Director Charles Ezell released a memo outlining steps to implement anti-"DEIA" executive orders, beginning with a prewritten email directing employees to report "DEIA" activities to the OPM—not agency leaders: "...please report all facts and circumstances to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. within 10 days...failure to report this information within 10 days may result in adverse consequences." The adverse consequences remain unspecified.
    • On January 27, 2025, Ezell released a second memo (authored by another new appointee, Noah Peters) describing the implementation of the "Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce" Executive Order. Again, OPM directed agency heads to would reclassify many civil service jobs as "Schedule F," excluding them from collective bargaining agreements.
    • On January 28, 2025, "This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it." sent each and every federal employee an email headed "Fork in the Road." These messages outlined what was ostensibly a "deferred resignation" or "buyout" offer and laid out a January 6 deadline to accept.
    • On February 4, 2025, Musk-appointed OPM officials made a similar offer to all Central Intelligence Agency employees.
  • Currently: Existing OPM employees remain largely locked out of these processes; some reported that they experienced professional retaliation, such as being reassigned or placed on leave, after objecting to DOGE employees' actions.

D2. OPM | Potential Legal, Economic, and National Security Implications

Like the structure and operation of DOGE itself, the insertion of Musk loyalists into OPM, DOGE employees' control over sensitive data, and OPM communications since January 20, 2025 raise serious legal, economic, and national security questions.

  • OPM data can be used to blackmail, surveil, bribe, or coerce federal employees. In addition to access to ordinary payroll/etc data, control of OPM gives DOGE (or foreign powers and non-state actors collaborating with or targeting DOGE) access to the entire background check files for all personnel with security clearances. This data amounts to powerful leverage over federal employees who might otherwise refuse to cooperate with unconstitutional orders.
  • DOGE access to OPM records likely violates federal privacy law: Government personnel data are highly sensitive; they include not only personally identifiable information that could be used as Privacy Act of 1974 and its follow-on statutes tightly control how executive branch agencies may handle sensitive data, particularly personally identifiable data. The E-Government Act of 2002 requires a Privacy Impact Assessment before any significant changes to an agency's handling or storage of personally identifiable information.
  • OPM operations are opaque to Congressional and public oversight. Like DOGE, OPM is bound by the Freedom of Information Act. More generally—particularly because existing OPM public servants have been excluded from both data access and decision-making since the installation of Musk-aligned leadership—OPM currently operates outside Congressional or public oversight, raising basic questions about checks and balances.
  • Musk-appointed OPM officials may bring serious financial conflicts of interest. Former Musk employees inside OPM, including its Chief of Staff, are subject to criminal conflict of interest statutes, as well as government ethics rules. To the extent that these individuals retain financial or personal ties to Musk organizations or Musk himself, they create the potential for significant conflicts of interest. None of the Musk appointees has so far produced a financial disclosure regarding their continuing ties to Musk organizations.
  • OPM had no legal authority to advertise a deferred resignation program. The purported terms of the Musk appointees' January 28 "Fork in the Road" email likely violate the Administrate Leave Act and statutes governing voluntary separation payments. In addition—and as discussed above—agencies may not independently offer funds not appropriated by Congress. Appropriations is a key power granted to Congress by the Constitution. Arrogation of the power of the purse should be read as a threat to our system of checks and balances.

D3. OPM | And the Neoreactionary Playbook

The changes observed inside OPM, like the organization and operation of DOGE, align closely with neoreactionary talking points and strategies, including RAGE. DOGE employees are the agents of Musk's centralization efforts; OPM provides the infrastructures necessary to enact it.

  • Yarvin and others have championed the "hollowing out" of the government's administrative workforce, via a two-pronged strategy: leaders should encourage mass voluntary resignations and they should make the workplace unpleasant and unproductive for those who remain. OPM messages and memoranda to federal employees since January 20, retaliatory firings of career officials, and many other actions have created a climate of fear and uncertainty—not only inside OPM but across all federal agencies.
  • Changes inside the OPM closely resemble Yarvin's vision of a small, elite, ideologically aligned executive branch, serving the interests of the autocrat/CEO. As at USDS and other agencies, career employees bound by law to eschew partisan political activity have been sidelined in favor of loyalists drawn directly from Musk's organizations.
  • Centralized control of information infrastructures is a key operational element of Yarvin's plan. The OPM takeover occurred as soon as DOGE was formally instantiated, allowing Musk loyalists access to both sensitive personnel data and instant communication with federal government workers. These actions radically altered OPM's status. What had been a recordkeeping, policy-elaborating agency was now inserting itself directly into the daily lives, and lines of control, of millions of workers. Vice President Vance has previously articulated this blueprint and his willingness to escalate a constitutional crisis: “So there’s this guy Curtis Yarvin, who has written about some of these things…I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people….And when the courts stop you…stand before the country, and say…the chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.”

The capture of OPM is not just an administrative shake-up—it represents an existential threat to independent, law-abiding government operations.

E. Actions and Rhetoric to Watch

Neoreactionary ideology provides a coherent frame for several seemingly disparate Musk projects.

  • Government contracts: Musk organizations hold at least $15 billion [Editor’s note: many estimates are more than twice this figure.] in governmentcontracts, primarily with NASA but also reaching into defense communications. The US Army relies heavily on Starlink infrastructure. It also appears that Starlink plays, or will soon play, a major role in intelligence communications. Viewed as part of the neoreactionary project, controlling these critical infrastructures is a key step toward controlling military operations. Musk has used his communications network to override military decision-making before, halting Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian forces at a critical moment.
  • Greenland and Mars: A core tenet of neoreactionary ideology is the replacement of nation-states with "network states." But states require territory. Technocracy Inc., a predecessor to the Neoreactionary movement, whose one-time director was Elon Musk's grandfather, proposed a North American Technate where the entire continent of North America would be united under one Technocratic Super State. There is currently a Peter Thiel-backed "network state" project called Praxis in Greenland. Musk's public statements about colonizing Mars also can be read as part of a territorial project.
    • Musk: “Girl, you’re not the governor of Canada anymore, so it doesn't matter what you say,” Musk said in response to Justin Trudeau’s post, when he said there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States,” January 7, 2025
    • Musk: "If the people of Greenland want to be part of America, which I hope they do, they would be most welcome!,” on January 7, 2025 on X.
  • Crypto: Musk's cryptocurrency boosterism is well established, and lines up with much of Neoreactionary thought. The anonymity of cryptocurrency exchanges facilitates new "accountability" mechanisms for Neoreactionary leaders. Buying $TRUMP is functionally equivalent to proof of deposit in a Swiss bank account owned by Trump, but anyone can buy it: Musk, the Communist Party of China, Alphabet, Palantir. In the Neoreactionary playbook, cryptocurrency will ultimately allow network state CEO monarchs to reach decisions by, in effect, "shareholder vote." Along the way, $TRUMP may serve as a mechanism of financial control, removing Presidential accountability from Congress, the judiciary, and American citizens, and handing it to unknown, anonymous parties.

This brief was iteratively and collectively compiled by a broad, bipartisan, and decentralized network of experts who wish to remain anonymous due to concerns about being targeted. The aim was to provide a central and comprehensive resource documenting and explaining the nature of the current political crisis to journalists who are attempting to inform the public.  Appendices [available on Social Policy website)

  1. Neoreactionary Thought Leaders in Their Own Words
  2. Known DOGE Employees and Backgrounds
  3. National Security Threats: Foreign Ties and Single-Source Military Risks
  4. Attacks on the information environment