Seems like generally it ended up being a surveillance play, in practice if not original intent. For example, Dog coin has been reported to be passing data taken from other agencies directly to ICE^[1] for law enforcement applications, and there was that other matter of logins apparently from Russia using accounts the Dog coin personnel demanded agencies create on their internal systems with (auditable) logging disabled^[2]. And probably more that I'm forgetting.

One does wonder whether this was all part of Musk's vision, or more thanks to the scum he hired to staff Dog coin and/or other lawless opportunists in the Trump administration.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/04/16/medica...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/technology/cybersecurity/whistleblow...

The idea that Musk's intent was to gut all of the agencies that were in a position to regulate any of his companies does seem to suggest that DOGE was an outstanding success.

Good point!

I see your refusal to acquiesce to Musk's appropriation of an innocent meme, and raise you a, "Keep calling it 'doge', but pronounce it phonetically to piss him off."

I can respect that but I honestly have no concept of how it's "supposed" to be pronounced. At least with Dog coin I know where I stand.

I'm assuming nothing of the sort. I assume what I always assume in these situations; that unqualified ignorant fuckwits convinced a bunch of other unqualified ignorant fuckwits to vote for them, so they could make their lack of understanding everyone else's problem. And likely get away with a huge sack of money Hanna Barbera style in the process.