Watching Elon Musk and his band of young acolytes slash their way through the federal government, many observers have struggled to understand how such a small group could do so much damage in so little time.

The mistake is trying to situate Musk solely in the context of politics. He isn’t approaching this challenge like a budget-minded official. He’s approaching it like an engineer, exploiting vulnerabilities that are built into the nation’s technological systems, operating as what cybersecurity experts call an insider threat. We were warned about these vulnerabilities but no one listened, and the consequences — for the United States and the world — will be vast.

Insider threats have been around for a long time: the C.I.A. mole toiling quietly in the Soviet government office, the Boeing engineer who secretly ferried information about the space shuttle program to the Chinese government. Modern digital systems supercharge that threat by consolidating more and more information from many distinct realms.

That approach has delivered obvious benefits in terms of convenience, access, integration and speed. When the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission described how segmentation of information among agencies had stymied intelligence efforts, the solution was to create integrated systems for collecting and sharing huge troves of data.

Running integrated digital systems, however, requires endowing a few individuals with sweeping privileges. They’re the sysadmins, the systems administrators who manage the entire network, including its security. They have root privileges, the jargon for highest level of access. They get access to the God View, the name Uber gave its internal tool that allowed an outrageously large number of employees to see anyone’s Uber rides.

That’s why when Edward Snowden was at the N.S.A. he was able to take so much information, including extensive databases that had little to do with the particular operations he wanted to expose as a whistle-blower. He was a sysadmin, the guy standing watch against users who abuse their access, but who has broad leeway to exercise his own.