HOW to describe the rupture of the current institutional order in the United States? For the American historian Timothy Snyder (University of Yale), we must admit the evidence: it is a coup d’etat, without quotes, which is during the other side of the Atlantic. In fact, he said, it is the first of its kind to be carried out by taking control of the information systems of a state.
“A dozen young men go from a government office to the government’s office, dressed in civilian clothes and armed only with zip records,” wrote Snyder A glowing of February 12 For Santa Barbara independent. “Using a technical jargon and waves of the High (Doge, the Ministry of Effectiveness of the Government), they have access to the basic IT systems of the federal government. After having done, they proceed to their supreme chief access to information and power to start and stop all government payments.”
Thanks to artificial intelligence, access to the vast masses of federal servers makes it possible to identify dismissal civil servants, to interrupt programs to promote diversity or protect the environment and target entire sections of the network of federal government agencies. Some may even be completely erased, as has happened with USAID, the American Development Aid Agency. All of this is underway, and there are serious doubts about the capacity of the judicial system and governments to hinder the steam roller currently at work.
This digital coup also, and above all, allows close control of power on the conduct of science and knowledge production, which has nothing like the implementation of the first Trump administration (2017-2021). A survey by Romany Webb (Sabin Center for Climate Change Law) and Lauren Kurtz (Climate Science Legal Defense Fund), Posted in 2022said that the “war against science” waged between 2017 and 2021 consisted, for researchers in federal institutions and agencies, of a series of ad hoc censorship, deletions of certain data or even pressures leading to self -censorship.
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