Donald Trump’s Information Warfare Against America – Federal data used to be economic jet fuel. Now much of it is either gone or weaponized – The Bulwark
(Composite / Photos: Shutterstock / Public Domain)
Donald Trump’s Information Warfare Against America
Federal data used to be economic jet fuel. Now much of it is either gone or weaponized. By Jill Lawrence, May 06, 2025
I AM SUCH A GEEK that I remember when Barack Obama made a splash by liberating reams of government data so Americans could use it to do things like compare colleges and start businesses.
It was 2013 and talk of a catchy “abundance agenda” was not even a glimmer in anyone’s eye. Instead, Obama signed an executive order called “Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information.” Way to go viral, guys.
It was, of course, much more interesting than its title. The Obama administration viewed government information as “a valuable national asset” that in the hands of creative Americans would become even more valuable. “We’re making it easier for people to find the data and use it, so that entrepreneurs can build products and services we haven’t even imagined yet,” Obama said.
His announcement noted that the U.S. economy was already benefiting tremendously from industries and products using government weather data and formerly military-only GPS technology. The new initiative made previously inaccessible or unmanageable data available “in open, machine-readable formats, while appropriately safeguarding privacy, confidentiality, and security.”
This was a relatively obscure moment. I probably wouldn’t remember it at all, except for the contrast with Donald Trump’s first term, when government data became unreliable and sometimes disappeared completely. Now, in his second presidency, it’s a major obsession for me and many others. Huge collections of scientific and statistical data are already gone, while enormous caches of personal data—your finances, health, income, and more—are in the hands of unknown, inexperienced people who have no business getting access to it, based on either laws or common sense.
