Editor's note: This story is posted with permission from the anonymous federal employee who shared it with us. Some edits were made for length and clarity.
There is an old saying in the military: "The beatings will continue until morale improves!" This usually was a tongue-in-cheek explanation of when there was something the military or the government did that does not make sense or seems unfair. Well, this seems to be going on across the government now and no one is safe from the beatings continuing and guess what, morale is not improving, people are just hunkering down and hoping it is over soon!
In case you have not been following the news, all federal employees must now submit 5 bullet points to some email address and that will likely become a weekly requirement. If a federal employee asks leadership why this is being done or why it’s necessary on top of existing one-on-ones and reporting, they get no answer.
What's happening with these submissions?
So, let's make some assumptions based on logic and reason. Supervisors are seeing it because they are being cc'd on the email and it is supplemental to the weekly reporting that goes on from employee to supervisor. So, is their reasoning that employees are not following supervisors reporting requirements? Likely not.
Is some individual sitting down and reading each and every one of these emails, considering this is coming from approximately 2 million federal workers? That is not likely.
The likely conclusion is these emails are going is to some type of AI system, likely xAI.
There’s no transparency for employees, supervisors, or U.S. citizens on where this data goes or how it’s used. Given Musk and DOGE’s history of indiscriminate firings, it's reasonable to assume AI is parsing this data, grouping workers into categories, and using it in some broader decision-making process.
Why would they do this?
Musk said the quiet part out loud when he defended hiring H-1B visa workers at his factories. He claimed the universities are not producing high-performing workers in the private sector so, he hires foreign workers. I assume the real reason is that he pays them much less than he pays US workers who have to take into account their debt from student loans when accepting a job.
From my experience, there are plenty of high-performing workers in government. This seems like Musk’s way of targeting them for firing—pushing the false narrative that federal workers are lazy—so they can be replaced with lower-paid labor. That couldn’t be further from the truth.
The other assumption we can make, remember 2 things can be true at the same time, is that they are trying to automate the reduction-in-force (RIF) process that took President Bill Clinton 7 years to complete, aiming to finish by July 4, 2025.
The problem with this approach is AI might recognize so-called redundancies but will get it wrong. Without agency experts doing the hard work AI cannot do, they will not understand how government functions, or how taking it apart piece-by-piece will make it fail. Under Musk and DOGE, no one is safe from the havoc they will wreak on the economy and everyday citizens who rely on government.
You may wonder why someone who thinks they are so brilliant, is getting things so horribly wrong. The truth is that Musk does not understand the federal government nor does he try to, he makes unfounded assumptions that feed his ideological hatred for federal workers because he has never worked in a position where he's focused on serving the public and not filling his bank account.
Understanding the value of a federal worker
Musk will never understand the value of a federal worker because he chooses not to and only thinks about the tax cuts he and his billionaire buddies will get and the additional government contracts his companies can obtain. He thinks he is so much smarter than others because he has money but federal workers don't go into the civil service for money. The pay is okay, but it will never rival the private sector and retirement benefits are constantly at risk, with Congress cutting them whenever budget reductions are on the table.
So, as you can see the saying that "the beatings will continue until morale improves" applies aptly to this situation. There actually is nothing efficient that is being done by DOGE, most of the cuts they claim and put on their website have been fact-checked and refuted by experts. In reality, DOGE is just another government contractor and corporate welfare recipient trying to wet his beak in the government trough.