The Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) data collection practices, while framed as a
technocratic tool for streamlining bureaucracy, represent a seismic shift toward centralized, unaccountable governance that mirrors-and in some ways accelerates-the logic of surveillance systems
in authoritarian regimes like China. At its core, DOGE’s approach weaponizes the veneer of efficiency to justify bypassing democratic safeguards, collapsing the distinction between public service
and political control. By aggregating biometric, financial, and personal data across agencies under the guise of “modernization,” DOGE replicates the architecture of China’s Social Credit System,
where data integration enables preemptive social control. Both systems thrive on opacity: DOGE’s teams operate with minimal transparency, disabling internal monitoring tools and sidelining
privacy impact assessments, much like China’s fusion of corporate and state surveillance under the rhetoric of “social stability.” The chilling effect is palpable-federal employees report
self-censoring communications, fearing AI-driven scrutiny of their emails or ideological alignment, paralleling the self-policing behaviors observed in Chinese citizens navigating algorithmic
scoring.
Yet critical differences persist. In the U.S., legal challenges and whistleblower protections
temporarily curb DOGE’s excesses, unlike China’s seamless enforcement of its surveillance apparatus. However, DOGE’s collaboration with private entities like Elon Musk’s ventures introduces a
uniquely American flavor of authoritarianism: a public-private nexus where corporate access to state data risks commodifying citizenship itself. This blurring of boundaries echoes China’s
coercive partnerships with tech giants but lacks even the CCP’s nominal commitment to collective welfare, instead prioritizing deregulatory agendas. The result is a dual erosion: of individual
privacy through mass data extraction, and of institutional trust as DOGE’s mandates override congressional oversight and judicial review.
Democracy relies on distributed power and adversarial accountability, both of which DOGE’s model
undermines. By centralizing data-and thus decision-making-within the executive, it enables rapid, unilateral policy shifts, such as purging civil servants or defunding programs deemed
ideologically inconvenient. This mirrors China’s top-down governance but exploits the U.S.’s weaker legal protections for civil servants, who lack the CCP’s institutionalized (if illusory) job
security. Meanwhile, the aggregation of sensitive datasets creates vulnerabilities ripe for exploitation, whether through political targeting, corporate profiteering, or foreign hacking-a risk
amplified by DOGE’s reported security negligence.
The broader democratic crisis lies in normalization. Just as China’s Social Credit System launders
repression through narratives of “trustworthiness,” DOGE frames surveillance as apolitical efficiency, masking its capacity for coercion. Yet history shows that once such systems are entrenched,
their abuse becomes inevitable. The U.S. still has tools to resist-courts, press, civil society-but DOGE’s existence tests whether these checks can outpace the inertia of bureaucratic
acquiescence. Without urgent reforms to reassert transparency, due process, and data sovereignty, the U.S. risks converging with China’s model, not through ideology but through the slow
suffocation of democratic accountability by algorithmic governance.
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