This is a Substack story from one of my favorite writers. The story is astonishing. And eye opening.
The Machine Fights Back
Inside Treasury's War Against Its Own Reformers
EKO
FEB 09, 2025
When DOGE found empty fields in Treasury's payment system, they uncovered more than missing data.
They found a mechanism.
Simple things were left blank:
The kind of fields any small business would require. The kind that let you track where money goes. The kind that stop a billion dollars of fraud. Every week.
Here's what Treasury didn't want exposed:
Over $100 billion flowing annually to accounts without Social Security numbers. No temporary ID numbers. No verification. Nothing.
When Musk asked Treasury officials how much was "unequivocal and obvious fraud," the answer revealed decades of corruption: HALF
Let that sink in.
$50 billion per YEAR.
A billion dollars every SINGLE week disappearing into accounts that shouldn't exist.
The kind of fraud that would shut down any bank in America.
The kind that would land any business owner in federal prison.
But Treasury had perfected its system:
- Process payments
- Ignore controls
- Keep the machine running
Yesterday, something shifted. A judge's order appeared, ex parte—meaning only one side could speak. No warning. No defense allowed. Just a wall erected between Treasury officials and their own department's data.
Look at the numbers. Really look at them.
Treasury bleeds 23.87% of its budget to waste, fraud, and abuse.
Almost a quarter, vanishing into what auditors politely call "mismanagement." More than Labor at 11%. More than Veterans Affairs at 10%. More than Agriculture at 9%.
More than Defense Department's 1.85%. More than Homeland Security's 0.89%.
A pattern emerges.
The deeper you go into Treasury's operations, the more the waste grows. The more controls vanish. The more fraud flourishes.
Until now.
"Everything at Treasury was geared towards complaint minimization," Musk revealedafter meeting with officials. Not accuracy. Not accountability. Not protecting taxpayer dollars. Just keeping the machine quiet.
This wasn't incompetence. This was design.
Previous management had built a perfect system:
Let the fraudsters complain. Let them threaten. Let them pressure.
Easier to process bad payments than face their wrath
Think about that calculation. A billion dollars of fraud every week was deemed lesscostly than dealing with complaints from people gaming the system.
That's how machines like this protect themselves.
Not through efficiency. Not through good management. But through the path of least resistance. Through empty fields. Missing controls. Payments without social security numbers. Through a quarter of their budget disappearing into the void.
Until someone starts asking where it goes.
The system's response was swift.
Coordinated.
Precise.
Nineteen Democratic state attorneys general filed suit. Not about the fraud. Not about the waste. Not about billions vanishing into accounts without SSNs. But about "protecting" the Treasury Department from its own Secretary.
A judge in New York responded with something unprecedented: an ex parte order blocking Treasury officials from accessing their own department's data. No warning. No chance to respond. No opportunity to present evidence. Just a wall between the people elected to fix the system and the system itself.
Think about what that means: The Secretary of the Treasury—effectively the CFO of the United States government—legally barred from seeing how money moves through his own department. The people's appointee blocked from viewing the people's accounts. Young coders mapping the missing controls ordered to stop looking.
The MACHINE (that’s what I’ll be calling the DS from now on) has judges. Has lawyers. Has media. Has entire states moving in coordination.
But here's what makes this time different: The DOGE clock keeps ticking.
$74 billion saved and counting.
Each number representing not just dollars, but holes in the machine.
Gaps in the armor.
Places where light gets in.
They can file motions.
Can issue orders.
Can build blockades.
But they can't make those empty fields disappear. Can't hide a quarter of Treasury's budget vanishing into the void. Can't stop what happens when people finally see truth.
This isn't about spreadsheets anymore. This isn't about waste or controls or management. This is about who controls the machine.
Because when you find something like empty fields in Treasury's payment system, you're not just finding missing data. You're finding purpose. When basic controls sit blank while billions vanish weekly, that's not incompetence. That's design.
The machine is fighting back.
But this time, it's fighting years and years and years of gathered light. Now activated.
And summer is coming.
