@skiles@carhenge.club

John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Jul 25, 2026

I missed this when it happened 2 months ago, but https://www.ask.com/ ("Ask Jeeves") finally shut down.

My career started when I typed "how can I become a computer hacker" into it around 2000-2001.

We would be better off if there were still actual competition among search engines, as there was in those days.

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Jul 12, 2026

The only thing I'll remember about Lindsey Graham is his mistreatment of Dr Christine Blasey Ford. Acting apoplectic at nonsensical details because he knew the most powerful misogynist in the world was watching him. I've never seen a man debase and humiliate himself so much.

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Jun 06, 2026

Carhengers, expect downtime today for system maintenance. Enjoy your summer weekend!

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Mar 10, 2026

"a former U.S. DOGE Service employee claimed he had access to two highly sensitive agency databases and planned to share the information with his private employer — a claim that, if true, would constitute an unprecedented breach of security protocols at an agency that serves more than 70 million Americans."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/03/10/social-security-data-breach-doge/

"he expected to receive a presidential pardon if his actions were deemed to be illegal"

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Feb 24, 2026

Boosted by

Greg Bell @ferrix@mastodon.online

Replying to on carhenge.club

This guy's smiling photograph is appearing today, in normal news coverage of an elite gathering, as though he had done nothing wrong. He has killed 215,000 adults and 445,000 children with USAID cuts, as of the most recent estimates. 14 million deaths are expected by 2030.

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Feb 24, 2026

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

Others may forget, but I will never stop talking about who is responsible for the largest crime of my lifetime "DOGE employees demanded control over the USAID computer system, getting Musk on the phone. Once they had it, USAID was gutted. The world's richest man was live-tweeting the demolition."

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Feb 24, 2026

Boosted by

Greg Bell @ferrix@mastodon.online

"500 metric tons of high-energy food, intended for child refugees in Afghanistan and Pakistan under the age of five, were incinerated, as were ten million dollars of contraceptives" https://www.liberalcurrents.com/what-elon-has-done/

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Feb 01, 2026

@donaldball@triangletoot.party I'm not a lawyer but I certainly do wish Palantir's customers would start depriving them of revenue

triangletoot.party

Donald Ball (@donaldball@triangletoot.party) - Triangle Toot Party!

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Feb 01, 2026

Replying to @welshpixie@mastodon.art

@welshpixie@mastodon.art Thank you for pointing out the typo! Rephrased

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Jan 31, 2026

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

Neither part is complete, yet. Of the repression machine that I feared 10 months ago, the administration has implemented only a part. The more data they consolidate, the further we travel down this dangerous road.

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Jan 31, 2026

Replying to on carhenge.club

Takeaway: Any time the Trump administration says "AI" or anything about software or data, what you should hear is "repression as a service"

This has 2 parts:

AI as an excuse to consolidate data
AI to execute orders that humans would refuse

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Jan 31, 2026

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

But consider how far they've already come. DOGE bros used AI tools to list thousands of "woke" "DEI" government grants for cancellation per Musk's conspiracy theories. Legitimate civil servants would have refused to compile such a list, but not AI.

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Jan 31, 2026

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

I am not saying they will be able to build the fully automated repression tool of their dreams. Bureaucracy is largely made of humans who can't be wished away by men with a near-religious belief in AI and a delusionally negative view of government workers.

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Jan 31, 2026

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

In spite of their apparent enthusiasm for AI, the broligarchs within government seem to be giving up on boring, law-abiding internal AI tools like the one we built. They only want software that can dispatch goon squads.

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Jan 31, 2026

Replying to on carhenge.club

Fascists quickly tire of safeguards. Three days ago the head of CISA (🤯!!!) got busted circumventing these safety measures, throwing sensitive government documents into the growing pile of privatized data. https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/27/cisa-madhu-gottumukkala-chatgpt-00749361

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Jan 31, 2026

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

At GSA we built an AI tool with safeguards against data consolidation to avoid violations exactly like these. https://johnskinnerportfolio.com/blog/GSAi/ After firing the people who made it, DOGE rolled a version of it out all over government, including at DHS.

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Jan 31, 2026

Boosted by

Greg Bell @ferrix@mastodon.online

Replying to on carhenge.club

My fellow civil servants would object that the order "find the 'nexus' of Democratic voters under tax audit" is illegal. But software need not raise these objections. Hence broligarchs dream of software allowing them to order up repression without pesky civil servants in the loop.

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Jan 31, 2026

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

Something like this is already happening in Minneapolis where half-forgotten allegations of childcare funding fraud are the excuse for an occupation of the city. With enough data ICE could find similar justification anywhere. Simply ignore the "not for mass prioritization" warning label again.

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Jan 31, 2026

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

To avoid obviously targeting voters, another layer of data can be used to provide deniability, however flimsy. For example, IRS data could be used to map key voters who also owe back taxes.

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Jan 31, 2026

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

Voter data unlocks the possibility of ICE targeting key polling precincts, swing districts, election officials or individual voters. ICE leadership could conceivably order voter repression up at any address, like an Uber.

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Jan 31, 2026

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

The theft isn't over. ICE thugs are now demanding state-level voter data at gunpoint. If they get that data, presumably, they will throw it into the mix with all the other stolen data available to repression as a service. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/26/pam-bondi-minnesota-voter-rolls-ice-surge

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Jan 31, 2026

Boosted by

Greg Bell @ferrix@mastodon.online

Replying to on carhenge.club

As sure as walking off with hard drives is illegal, what DOGE did with Palantir is illegal. The laws they violated have boring names like the Antideficiency Act, the Privacy Act, and Federal Acquisition Regulation. These are laws the government used to enforce *on themselves*. Not anymore.

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Jan 31, 2026

Replying to on carhenge.club

A few days later, Wired reported that DOGE was building exactly this: cross-government data connections with Palantir — the literal company with that name, not just the metaphor. https://www.wired.com/story/palantir-doge-irs-mega-api-data/

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Jan 31, 2026

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

At the time of the GSA DOGE presentation I feared that the goal of this AI strategy was to make a continuous pushbutton repression system patterned on the metaphor of Palantir from LotR. https://bsky.app/profile/skiles.blue/post/3llxflpllgk2r

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Jan 31, 2026

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

When we talk about DOGE stealing data, a lot of people picture a guy sneaking hard drives out under the cover of darkness. But that's not how you build a repression tool like ELITE. A hard drive is only a data snapshot; it will go out of date. Fascism needs a *continuous data connection*.

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Jan 31, 2026

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

This leaked video of a presentation by DOGE at GSA headquarters 10 months ago outlines the plan. Couched as a part of their "AI strategy," Musk's people said they needed to scoop up all government data so AI could use it. https://bsky.app/profile/skiles.blue/post/3llxdvbsjik2n

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Jan 31, 2026

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

To target a "criminal or immigration nexus" the software pulls Americans' personal data from across the government, including data from Health and Human Services and other agencies unrelated to law enforcement. How did ICE and Palantir get all this data together?

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Jan 31, 2026

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

Dispatching ICE agents to hit "groups of pre-defined aliens specifically targeted by Leadership for action," the software allows the administration to order up a goon squad wherever they want, at the touch of a button. Like Uber for authoritarians. Let's call it repression as a service.

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Jan 31, 2026

Replying to on carhenge.club

The app features gamified neighborhood maps, like Pokémon Go for hunting immigrants. Palantir warns the software is "not for mass prioritization of locations where lots of people it [ICE] might detain could be based." But this is what actually happens when you give ICE a map and a quota:

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Jan 31, 2026

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

This thread is also available as a post on my blog: https://johnskinnerportfolio.com/blog/ice_elite/

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Jan 31, 2026

A manual for ICE's immigrant-targeting computer system, Palantir ELITE, was leaked today.

Let's look at it, then step back to evaluate how far we've come along a dangerous road and where that road might take us. 🧵

https://www.404media.co/here-is-the-user-guide-for-elite-the-tool-palantir-made-for-ice/

404 Media

Here is the User Guide for ELITE, the Tool Palantir Made for ICE

404 Media is publishing a version of the user guide for ELITE, which lets ICE bring up dossiers on individual people and provides a “confidence score” of their address.

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Nov 25, 2025

Boosted by

Greg Bell @ferrix@mastodon.online

All of the formal entities that make up DOGE are still in place: • The executive order that created it is still in effect. • The "United States DOGE Service" still exists and is still posting stupid memes. • Amy Gleason, its figurehead, it still in office. • Many other DOGE employees remain.

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Nov 24, 2025

Boosted by

Greg Bell @ferrix@mastodon.online

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

But let's remember: those now-discarded DOGE kids stumbled so that Vought could run. Now he's working with proven systems for starving and wrecking government capacity, against a government with a weakened immune system. The damage is going to be generational.

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Nov 24, 2025

Boosted by

Greg Bell @ferrix@mastodon.online

And, I do feel a sense of pride in how thoroughly federal workers crushed the DOGE brand by accurately and loudly describing what DOGE was doing to government services. It's good to force a rebrand! Like, Philip Morris can become Altria but they can't get a whole new generation to smoke like the 1950s.

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Sep 21, 2025

Replying to @augieray@mastodon.social

@augieray@mastodon.social "Calfturd" sounds legit

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Jun 07, 2025

Replying to @avdempsey@mastodon.archive.org

@avdempsey@mastodon.archive.org Hello! I applied to this role today. I know it's hard to find real candidates among the flood of LLMs, so, I'm just reaching out here to say: I am real. I have experience scaling systems up by 10s of thousands of users, and I have diverse management experience!

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Mar 22, 2025

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

I believe the firings and the AI have the same purpose: to get humans out of the loop of evaluating contracts. To automate the process of spending government money. To rig up a computer that sends taxpayer dollars directly to the broligarchy. And to make sure democracy can't switch that computer off.

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Mar 22, 2025

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

The AI's "plan" to simplify the FAR was generic and unusable, of course. But it is a subject that Ehikian and DOGE keep returning to: Contracting. Acquisition. The money. They want to file the corners off of the process that regulates government spending. They want to consolidate all government contracts in one place. And put AI in charge.

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Mar 22, 2025

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

On stage, Ehikian asked GSAi to "write me a plan to rewrite the FAR" The FAR, Federal Acquisition Regulations, are laws that control how the gov't buys stuff. They are legendary in their complexity for a good reason: to prevent corruption. To protect taxpayer money from theft by beltway bandits.

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Mar 22, 2025

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

Honestly: From the 2013 failure of healthcare.gov to today, the government *almost* learned how to build software. We were close. Then a bunch of white men in suits swooped in to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Maybe they are just incompetent. But I think it's worse than that.

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Mar 22, 2025

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

Listen: maybe I'm wrong and this is just the worst software deployment of my career, not actually a conspiracy against democracy. Maybe these guys just don't see they are frittering away all product and service design knowledge in the agency. And don't even know that they lack this knowledge.

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Mar 22, 2025

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

Together, these two faiths crave the end of American liberal democracy and government. You can smell it at GSA. They won't replace us with AI because 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝒅𝒐𝒏'𝒕 𝒘𝒂𝒏𝒕 𝒕𝒐 𝒓𝒆𝒑𝒍𝒂𝒄𝒆 𝒖𝒔 𝒂𝒕 𝒂𝒍𝒍. They want our work to end. DOGE is firing us as fast as possible, and that is the whole plan.

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Mar 22, 2025

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

There is a quasi-religion in Silicon Valley that views AI as godlike. This faith has always been parallel to Evangelical Christianity: it has salvation (transhumanism), the rapture (the technological singularity), and demons (Roko's Basilisk) Lately the AI faith has fully fused with Christian Nationalism.

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Mar 22, 2025

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

One viewer said "if this is the tool meant to replace us, thank God" Everyone is afraid for their jobs, their projects, and their democracy. There is a widespread impression that AI is supposed to replace the people who are fired. I actually don't think that's the plan. Let me explain:

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Mar 22, 2025

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

While saying "this is incredible" over and over, Musk's GSA head Stephen Ehikian asked GSAi to "write me a website." The output was not compliant with federal law. It said "Welcome to Our Company" on it and did not resemble a federal website at all. 😟 This garbage demo had a terrified audience

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Mar 22, 2025

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

As a fed, I am accustomed to knowledgeable and diverse coworkers who don't get snookered by the latest buzzwords. But yesterday at GSA headquarters, 6 white guys in suits (one without a tie!) took the stage. They demo'd GSAi like it was pure magic to them. https://www.wired.com/story/gsa-staff-all-hands-meeting-ai/

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Mar 22, 2025

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

As my coworker explains in this demo, we knew AI's capability is limited "The principle is to show you *not* that AI is great for everything, not to try to encourage you to stick AI into every product.... You can get yourself into trouble thinking that it can do things that it can't."

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Mar 22, 2025

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

No one from the new admin wrote a single line of code for it. But GSAi has become their proud "AI-first strategy." (Previously at my job, rather than AI or any tech we put *people* first. See 18F's work on "human-centered design.")

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Mar 22, 2025

Replying to @skiles@carhenge.club

From Nov 2023 to Jan 2024 I worked on a tool we called the AI sandbox. Our goal: let federal software devs test out AI tools in a safe way, to discover if they have any use. Renamed GSAi, the tool has been claimed by DOGE. It is being rolled out on an alarming accelerated schedule.

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles@carhenge.club · Mar 22, 2025

I helped build a government AI system. DOGE fired me, rolled the AI out to the whole agency, and implied the AI can do my job and the jobs of the others they've fired.

It can't. But, what DOGE accidentally revealed about themselves in the process is fascinating. 🧵

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John Skiles Skinner

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Here is the User Guide for ELITE, the Tool Palantir Made for ICE

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