The AI Was an Excuse, a Gate, and an Alibi

More than 352,000 people left the federal government in eighteen months and none were hired back — the smallest workforce since 1966, with departures up 80.8% and new hires down 55.6% in a single year ^[1]. Asked what could fill a hole that size, the government's chief information officer, Gregory Barbaccia, gave the answer the administration had settled on everywhere.

AI is the number one thing that is going to help people mitigate the staffing shortages — Gregory Barbaccia

Nobody planned to refill the hole. During the October 2025 shutdown the president said the cuts were meant to stick ^[2]:

We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like. — Donald Trump

So the AI story had to do three jobs, none of them replacing the people who left. First, it narrated success. In January, Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano told the agency's advisory board the place had been:

The American people are experiencing a Social Security Administration that has been transformed through digital innovation and strategic process engineering to deliver best-in-class service. — Frank Bisignano

His numbers were 65% more calls answered and a 33% reduction in the disability backlog from its June 2024 peak ^[3]. The agency he was describing had just shed roughly 7,000 employees, about 12% of its staff, and callers sat through two-and-a-half-hour waits with six million cases stacked in the processing backlog ^[4]. Second, the software became the rails pushing citizens into the machines. DOGE barred Social Security beneficiaries from changing their direct-deposit information by phone — the setting that sends a person's money where it goes — leaving the online system as the only path, on top of those same waits and backlogs ^[4]. Across the government the logic ran as standing policy: the General Services Administration told agencies to eliminate, optimize, and automate their workflows, and the White House launched America.gov, an AI-powered gateway for dealing with the government ^[5]. Third, when a decision got challenged, the machine was the alibi. DOGE staffers fed DEI keywords into ChatGPT to flag more than 1,400 humanities grants for termination, without reviewing the scholarly substance of the applications ^[6]. When the National Endowment for the Humanities was sued, the government's defense came down to the computer having done the cutting. Judge Colleen McMahon rejected that answer:

The government cannot escape liability for DOGE’s work by scapegoating ChatGPT. — Judge Colleen McMahon

The software was always the smaller story. What eighteen months actually installed was the removal of the points where a human could still say no. From a January 2025 executive order, OPM made applicants for civil service jobs write essays on how they would advance the president's policies, on more than 70,000 postings ^[7]. In November 2025, the 150-year-old rule of three fell — the requirement that managers hire from the top exam scorers ^[8]. In May, OPM proposed a government-wide nondisclosure agreement, nominally voluntary, with removal from federal service held out for those who would not sign ^[9]. In June, 8,000 senior employees were reclassified as at-will, with up to 50,000 possible, and OPM's director put the requirement in his own words ^[10]:

In order to affect the policy priorities of the administration, we need to have people who are in these senior policy making decisions willing to and capable of obviously carrying out those directives. — Scott Kupor

Then the same logic turned outward: Elon Musk's xAI and allied legal activists, with the administration's support, are challenging the constitutionality of citizen suits, arguing that enforcement belongs only to the president and his agencies ^[11]. Earthjustice called it:

This administration has determined that the company should be allowed to continue to pollute and that therefore, they should have the unilateral and unreviewable authority to veto our citizen suit. — Earthjustice

Everything in this program that has been stopped was stopped by a judge. In September, Judge George O'Toole blocked the loyalty essays, holding there is no legitimate governmental interest in asking applicants about their politics ^[7]. Judge McMahon barred the grant terminations outright ^[6]. Nothing was stopped by anyone inside the government, because the internal checks were gone by executive action before the software ever arrived. Whether the last check holds is now a question sitting at the Supreme Court, not the software ^[10].