Danger Signs Flash as the Trump - Musk "Cultural Revolution" Hits Escape Velocity
I hate to keep doing this to anyone who signed on here assuming I’ll be focusing on climate change and other long-term threats to environmental and human thriving. But since 2008, I’ve explained that climate change is not the “story of our time” but a subset of the bigger story of a young whip-smart species trying to come of age on a finite planet even as it outraces its own capacities for reflection and self control.
I’ve been thinking about this while tracking how President Trump and Elon Musk, one of the titans of leading-edge tech, continue to thrash about like a pair of baby Godzillas, disemboweling what they claim is a broken “deep state” with scant regard for the consequences for taxpaying American citizens.
Today, while in Austin to talk about climate policy and the polluted media environment, I found myself fixated - the kind of fixation you get witnessing a terrible crasah - on brightening warning signs. While Trump has been quick to declare national emergenices (energy, border, etc.) to bully through his policies, he’s becoming one in a hurry.
In a new post,
, one of the leading journalists on aviation safety, lays out a clear leading toward disaster from the mass agency firings and the dissolution of key aviation advisory panels. More on that below. But first, Fallows opens his piece with a nod to a wider-view essay by Orville Schell, who wrote:[T]here is a precedent for Trump’s political blitzkrieg: Mao Zedong. While Mao, who launched China’s violent Cultural Revolution, and Trump share little in the way of geography, ideology, or hairstyle, they can both be described as agents of insurrection….
Palantir CEO Alex Karp, whose co-founder Peter Thiel is also a Trump acolyte, recently described the new president’s overhaul of the United States government as a “revolution” in which “some people will get their heads cut off.” And this revolution’s executioner-in-chief would appear to be the world’s richest person, Elon Musk.
Despite obvious differences, Musk is more than a little reminiscent of Kuai Dafu, who was deputized by Mao himself to lead Tsinghua University’s Red Guard movement.
I made this graphic to illustrate this.
Now back to Fallows, whose column dropped just hours after a near collision at Chicago’s Midway Airport made his point.
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Please read his full article here: “The zealots of Doge and Project 2025 are out to ‘cut waste.’ They will certainly cost lives: An example from aviation.”
Here’s an excerpt:
One of the many federal bodies targeted for elimination by Project 2025 and the Musk boys was a federal group called the Aviation Security Advisory Committee. This had been set up after the bombing of Pan Am flight 103, over Lockerbie, Scotland, and had been empowered by Congress to connect everyone with a stake in anti-terrorism measures. It advised the TSA, the FAA, the airlines, law enforcement agencies, and other crucial participants. Trump dissolved it on his second day in command.
After the [recent Washington] DCA crash, that Aviation Security executive order made some news. But what probably mattered more were all the other coordinating and advisory committees Trump has abolished or suspended at around the same time.
[M]ost of the important innovations that have improved travel in recent decades can be traced back to one or more of these collaborative groups…. The committees have done this because they have institutionalized the kind of complex public-private, academic-practitioner, regulator-operator, military-civilian coordination that has made it so safe to fly.
And they are being dissolved. Elon Musk didn’t tweet that he had sent them to the “woodchipper,” as he claimed about USAID. But that’s what he and his henchmen have done.
Recently I talked with an aerospace veteran who has been on several such groups and who combines many aviation perspectives in one career. This person has been a commercial pilot, a government official, a tech visionary, a business executive, and some other roles. In the current climate this person would prefer not to be named. I’ll use the term “he.”
“The reason we have such an amazing safety record in aviation is that we have created a culture of respect, collaboration, curiosity, and ultimately investment that lead to improvements in safety before things get as bad as they can get,” he said. “This dynamic is absolutely key to keeping America’s airspace system as safe as it has been.”
And, according to this lifetime aviator, that is now what is being torn apart.
Keep in mind Fallows’ example is just from aviation. The threat from mass agency firings and the shift from career federal employees to political appointees with scane experience and mixed motives is wide and deep.
A friend who used to work in the Digital.gov part of government a decade ago has been tracking the unfolding demolition closely and sent me a link on the website of the Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCO) Council leading a document listing thousands of career “senior executive service” jobs being replaced with political appointees.
Sift around and tell me which ones make you queasy. Here’s a pretty random batch that caught my eye:
Nuclear Regulatory Commission - DEPUTY DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF REACTOR SAFETY
Defense Threat Reduction Agency - DIRECTOR, CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL TECHNOLOGIES DEPARTMENT
Social Security Administration - EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR FOR PRIVACY AND DISCLOSURE
Navy - DIRECTOR, INTEGRATED NUCLEAR WEAPONS SAFETY AND SECURITY
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - CHIEF, NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE SYSTEM
EPA - DIRECTOR, CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION DIVISION
NASA - MANAGER, WHITE SANDS TEST FACILITY
The document lays out the Trump administration view, which is not without some merit, that career positions now include many that should be politically appointed:
OPM believes that many of the current career reserved positions across the federal government are not the sort of technical positions appropriate for career reserved status. For example, over 200 of these career-reserved positions include the term “policy” within their title. A number are at the deputy assistant secretary level in an office with no general SES position at the deputy assistant secretary level. And there are even career reserved positions at the assistant secretary level whose peers in similar functions elsewhere in government are presidentially appointed with Senate confirmation. In these situations, major policies of the President or agency head are filtered through appointees with reduced democratic accountability.
But, boy, there’s scant evidence of a review based on where the need for expertise dominates. To step back and get an unvarnished look at the tug of war between where career civil service ends and political appointments begin, read this fascinating interview with Berkeley political science associate professor ist Guo Xu:
Is the U.S. Civil Service really broken? What the research says about bureaucratic efficiency and reform
Here’s an excerpt:
Based on your research, what are the potential implications of reclassifying certain civil service roles—reducing job protections and increasing political appointments?
The first-order implication is that civil service positions will be less secure. Without civil service protections, government workers can be more easily fired. The selection of these workers will also be more discretionary. My historical research on the first-time introduction of civil service protections suggests that bureaucratic turnover is likely to increase hand-in-glove with presidential turnover. It is likely that this increased turnover will be disruptive for the continuity of policies and government programs, whose project horizon often extends beyond a single presidency. Unstable jobs are also less attractive to the best and brightest, potentially resulting in a brain drain….
How could the proposed changes affect public trust in government institutions and their ability to respond effectively to public needs?
The situation is evolving quickly, and it is hard to say how the proposed policy changes will play out. What is clear, however, is that the current efforts to reform the federal workforce have been accompanied by attempts to slander civil servants as lazy, unaccountable, rogue elements within the government. This is likely to erode public trust in government institutions across the political spectrum. Those who are receptive to the negative messaging will distrust the state even more. Those who traditionally viewed government workers as mission-driven, impartial civil servants will worry about the emergence of a partisan bureaucracy.
One of the Trump administration’s stated goals is to dismantle the “deep state,” generally understood to mean a clandestine network of unelected government officials that has its own agenda outside of the elected administration. Have you found any evidence that such an organization exists?
I have certainly found no evidence for a conspiratorial “deep state” like you describe. What we did find is the presence of political misalignment frictions: civil servants who might not agree with their superior tend to do a worse job. That alone does not mean that there is an outright conspiracy, or that we should fire every individual who disagrees. Civil servants tend to be experienced experts in their subject matter, and it is very possible that the benefit of their expertise by far outweighs the cost of political misalignment….
So how might the recent firings of federal workers and proposed changes affect the overall efficiency and morale within federal agencies? And how might this affect public services?
The immediate impacts of the recent measures to downsize the civil service are clearly negative. Civil servants are currently facing heightened uncertainty and disruption. The downsizing is not only demoralizing but has already adversely impacted the delivery of public services, as we have seen in numerous news reports. The longer-term impact of any change to civil service protections is difficult to assess. Removing civil service protection can give politicians the carrots and sticks to motivate government workers, but it also opens the door for undue political interference and, frankly, cronyism.
So, rising danger in the skies, spreading cronyism in the halls.
More to come.