After gutting the government, DOGE alumni return with their hands out

Happy Tuesday! Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, some of the past week’s top stories from the intersection of technology and politics.

DOGE bros seek government funds

The Washington Post found that many former staffers at the now-defunct Department of Government Efficiency, the money-wasting pseudo agency that Elon Musk used to effectively destroy federal agencies, have leveraged that experience in the private sector — with some becoming executives at companies that have sought and received massive government contracts.

In other words, many of the pawns used to gut the federal government have landed elsewhere … and now have their hands out as they seek American tax dollars.

ICE’s ‘Agitator Log’

USA Today obtained access to a document titled “Agitator Log” that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been using to track its critics. The report allows you to search the database.

Execution livestream faces pushback

President Donald Trump has started to face fierce pushback after he said he approved a macabre plan, announced by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, to livestream the Fort Hood shooter’s execution in December. A daughter of one of the shooting victims is among the plan’s outspoken opponents.

Trump’s SpaceX ties

Trump’s new financial disclosure forms for the month of August show he purchased millions of dollars in Meta stock and invested at least $1 million in Musk’s SpaceX, and I wrote about how the transactions raise all sorts of red flags.

Sanders renews call for AI pause

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., renewed his call for a pause on advanced artificial intelligence development after Axios reported that top executives at OpenAI, Anthropic and other tech companies have been “gaming out” scenarios to deal with public revolt if a “catastrophic” AI incident were to occur.

Anthropic opposes bot-bullying

Anthropic seems to be making the argument for AI personhood with new rules that prohibit users of its Claude chatbot from engaging in “sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior” toward its AI models. Seems weird.

Mix-up in Maine campaign

A Republican super PAC spent thousands of dollars promoting digital ads against Maine’s Democratic Senate nominee, Troy Jackson … in the wrong Portland.

Putting the squeeze on Lemon

A new report from Wired spotlights the controversial surveillance technologies the Trump administration has used to wage its illiberal crackdown on journalists — including Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, who covered an anti-ICE demonstration at a Minnesota church last year. Wired described how fake cellphone towers, called cell-site simulators, were used to find and arrest Lemon’s producer, a 21-year-old college student.

GOP targets Talarico with misinformation

Republicans are getting desperate as polling shows that some of their midterm candidates in traditionally conservative states are in dogfights with liberal opponents. That’s the context for a report in The New York Times explaining how conservative influencers have spread baseless — and thoroughly debunked — rumors over the past week about James Talarico, the Democratic nominee in Texas’ Senate race.

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From MS Now.