How to describe the breakdown of the institutional order now underway in the US? For American historian Timothy Snyder (Yale University), we must admit the obvious: it is a coup d'état, without quotation marks, that is underway on the other side of the Atlantic. In fact, he said, it's the first of its kind to be carried out by taking control of a state's information systems.
"A couple dozen young men go from government office to government office, dressed in civilian clothes and armed only with zip drives," wrote Snyder in a February 12 op-ed. "Using technical jargon and vague references to orders from on high [from DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency], they gain access to the basic computer systems of the federal government. Having done so, they proceed to grant their Supreme Leader access to information and the power to start and stop all government payments."
Thanks to artificial intelligence, access to the vast masses of data on federal servers makes it possible to identify civil servants for dismissal, interrupt programs to promote diversity or protect the environment, and target entire sections of the federal government's network of agencies. Some may even be wiped out altogether, as happened with USAID, the US development aid agency. All this is underway, and there are serious doubts about the ability of the justice system and governments to stand in the way of the steamroller currently at work.
This digital coup also, and above all, enables a tight control of power over the conduct of science and the production of knowledge, which is nothing like what the first Trump administration (2017-2021) had implemented. A survey conducted by Romany Webb (Sabin Center for Climate Change Law) and Lauren Kurtz (Climate Science Legal Defense Fund), published in 2022, indicated that the "war on science" waged between 2017 and 2021 consisted, for researchers in federal institutions and agencies, of a series of ad hoc censures, deletions of certain data or even pressures leading to self-censorship.
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