From COBOL to chaos: Elon Musk, DOGE, and the Evil Housekeeper Problem

Good article.

We need a version of the UK government’s National Risk Register, covering everything from the collapse of financial markets to “an attack on government” (but, unsurprisingly, that risk is described in terms of external threats). The register mostly predicts long-term consequences, with recovery taking months. That may end up being the case here.

I assume they mean on a state government level? I doubt this will happen, unless it's already started. Plus, as they point out, such plans typically focus on external threats to the government. A huge internal threat like this is a long-standing blind spot. Hopefully in the future that prospect becomes a more prominent concern.

We need to dust off those “in the event of an emergency” disaster response procedures dealing with the failure of federal government—at individual organizations that may soon hit cash-flow problems and huge budget deficits without federal funding, at statehouses that will need to keep social programs running, and in groups doing the hard work of archiving and preserving data and knowledge.

This is a great point. DRPs (Disaster Recovery Plans) have been a pretty big focus on organizations I've worked at. However, the focus here is almost always on natural disasters that can cripple an organization's IT and daily operations. So I don't know how much those will help in this situation either.

We're talking about short term credit lines potentially being crippled and regulatory organizations essentially shutting down. Hopefully it doesn't come to that.