PERSONAL DATA
The pace and intensity of Musk’s operation, which is using employees brought from his own companies, has caught opponents off guard.
In one especially tense episode, Musk’s team insisted on gaining access to the Treasury’s highly sensitive payment system, which is used for dispatching trillions of dollars a year and contains Americans’ personal data.
The assault on USAID comes in the context of long-running narratives on the hard-line conservative and libertarian wings of the Republican Party that the US wastes money on foreigners while ignoring Americans.
The agency describes itself as working “to end extreme poverty and promote resilient, democratic societies while advancing our security and prosperity”.
Its budget of more than US$40 billion is a small drop in overall US government annual spending of nearly US$7 trillion.
Among other criticisms, which Musk has not substantiated, he claims USAID does “rogue CIA work” and even “funded bioweapon research, including COVID-19, that killed millions of people”.
One person welcoming the apparent death knell for the aid agency was former Russian president – and ally to current ruler Vladimir Putin – Dmitry Medvedev.
