quote:

While career bureaucrats prepared orientation packets and welcome memos, DOGE's team was already deep inside the payment systems. No committees. No approvals. No red tape. Just four coders with unprecedented access and algorithms ready to run.

"The beautiful thing about payment systems," noted a transition official watching their screens, "is that they don't lie. You can spin policy all day long, but money leaves a trail."

That trail led to staggering discoveries. Programs marked as independent revealed coordinated funding streams. Grants labeled as humanitarian aid showed curious detours through complex networks. Black budgets once shrouded in secrecy began to unravel under algorithmic scrutiny.

By 6 AM, Treasury's career officials began arriving for work. They found systems they thought impenetrable already mapped. Networks they believed hidden already exposed. Power structures built over decades revealed in hours.

Their traditional defenses—slow-walking decisions, leaking damaging stories, stonewalling requests—proved useless against an opponent moving faster than their systems could react. By the time they drafted their first memo objecting to this breach, three more systems had already been mapped...

...DOGE's algorithms weren't just programs—they were archaeology tools, excavating decades of buried networks. Each data point connected to another. Each discovery revealed new targets. Each pattern exposed larger systems.

"It's beautiful," one of the coders whispered, watching connections form across his screen. "Like watching a galaxy map itself."