When this story first broke, my initial thought was that Elon was using this unprecedented and probably illegal access to access case data to benefit his compan

When this story first broke, my initial thought was that Elon was using this unprecedented and probably illegal access to access case data to benefit his companies and possibly others [1], most specifically for Tesla where unionization remains a threat to profits [2]. I don't know what the Russia connection is. Blue MAGA types like to contend that Trump is a Russian asset. There are definitely some weird connections going back to Trump purchasing TVs for a hotel in the 1980s [3] and some weird timings of the movements of Viktor Orban between Putin and Trump [4] but I just don't buy the Russian asset narrative. I consider it way more likely that individual DOGE people have been compromised by foreign actors and possibly without their knowedge (eg compromised email or computers). We're only 3 months into this. The amount of damage that is going to be done over the next 4 years is hard to comprehend. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43701222 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43701222 [2]: https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-pay-vs-ford-gm-uaw-union-factory-workers-2024-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-pay-vs-ford-gm-uaw-uni... [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1FHtBu5H8w&t=36s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1FHtBu5H8w&t=36s [4]: https://www.axios.com/2024/07/12/trump-orban-meeting-mar-a-lago https://www.axios.com/2024/07/12/trump-orban-meeting-mar-a-l...