Anish Chopra (11:42)

Mike, thanks for having me and real pleasure to join you. You've had great work.

Mike Pesca (11:46)

Tell me and tell the audience in as little detail as possible, just as much so we understand. Right. Trace the. Trace the fossil record from the job you held, the position you held to what Doge is. Because I know there are some zigzags.

Anish Chopra (12:02)

Yeah, well, let me, let me connect a few dots. When President Obama ran for office, he ran both on a vision for change that was going to be about political change and laws on the books, but also a commitment to making government work better and more broadly to ensure that technology, data and innovation would really advance the priorities. If you remember, Mike, when he ran for president, social media played an outsized role in helping the American people self organize and contribute to his electoral success. So there was a lot of excitement around the idea that we could upskill the way we deliver government services and engagement in more collaborative efforts between the public and the private sector. And so the role was really about advising him on those sets of issues. And I'm grateful that this is a bipartisan role. Now to fast forward a little bit. My successor in the Trump administration was a guy named Michael Kratzios, who actually got promoted. He was the Chief Technology Officer, which basically the role I held was both a direct advisor to the president and a part of the Office of Science and Technology Policy with a dear, dear friend of mine, Dr. John Holdren. And what Trump had done in the most recent term was to actually promote his former US CTO to be also the head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. So in many ways, the spirit of that role has actually been embraced and built upon in the Trump administration.

Mike Pesca (13:35)

So I was reading about you and you talking about your time in the White House, and he kind of headhunted you because you did similar job with Virginia, and Virginia was all cutting edge in terms of technology. But you made the point that in the first Trump administration, taking what, what Obama had created, your job, this office, he really embraced it. Right. It wasn't like the usual thing where if Obama did it, let's do the opposite. He or the first Trump administration was very much on board with at least the position that you held well.

Anish Chopra (14:10)

And to be very Clear. Mike, I'm going to walk through this on the Elon relationship. In many ways, the continuity between Obama and First Trump of the sort of digital perspective that actually was strengthened in the handoff. If you remember, his son in law, Jared Kushner, was given a role to run the Office of American Innovation. In addition to having a US cto, there was the Office of American Innovation, which in many ways built off of the same agenda. We wrote the strategy for American Innovation and they had an office dedicated to it and very similar philosophies, investing in the infrastructure, the enabling ingredients of innovation, setting rules of the road that promoted market competition, and then issuing sort of calls to action to make a difference in that case. Ivanka working on Skills for America and a lot of initiatives that you could borrow from a lot of the same objectives. Health care, an area we May cover. The U.S. digital Service was borne by my successor, Todd park. And the reason it was born was because in the debacle that was healthcare.gov launch, there was an acknowledgment that we had a gap in how the government itself could operate the technology. So my role was advising on policies that sort of encourage technology use, not just in the government, but also by the private sector and in regulated markets. But as it relates to government IT use, it was clear that we had a skills gap. And so we had a few startups we called it Entrepreneurs in Residence, where we recruited a few teams, what you'll call like the current DOGE team. We had teams that would help us in a few areas that we thought would be half external experts and half insider government experts. And the teams would work thoughtfully to kind of make progress in 90 day milestones. The USDS actually continues in the Trump administration that we're currently in. The interim administrator for that is a woman named Amy Gleason, who's a nurse, an incredibly talented person who I've been a big fan of from her time serving in the first Trump administration in healthcare.

Mike Pesca (16:22)

Yes, yes, I remember this. Just a couple of months ago she was appointed. Washington Post called you, you gave your endorsement. It was one of these unusual things where an Obama staffer says, this is a great hire by the Trump administration, 1,000%.

Anish Chopra (16:38)

And I want your audience to realize President Obama said very famously that Washington largely works within the 40 yard lines. So if you watch the news, you're thinking like, my God, we can't be on. We're like on different islands. But in the tech domain, we really live in that 40 yard line issue. And so remember Doge is two things. It's Elon Musk as an advisor, although he's winding down his time. And in that regard, let's call that a philosophy of Doge where they're placing individuals who are employees of the various agencies. So that philosophy of Doge is built on Elon's role in many ways as an advisor to the president. Right. That's not, I don't think he carries any role like a chief Technology officer. There are others who have that role in the Trump administration. So that, that work is sort of related but different from the work that Amy's team leads. That's. Let's call that the operations of the US Digital Service.

Mike Pesca (17:41)

Now, Doge, and I don't know if we've said it in this interview, but Doge is a rebrand, literally. They renamed the U.S. digital Service. So everything. While you tell me if this is wrong, but from what I understand, yeah, everything Doge is doing is within this shell, or was once just called uds, but didn't have what Elon thought was the cool slash funny Doge brand right.

Anish Chopra (18:08)

With one friendly amendment.

Mike Pesca (18:09)

Yes, yes.

Anish Chopra (18:10)

A lot of the folks that went on Fox News, for example, yeah. That represent the kind of the Doge team, as we're interviewed on with case studies, those were individuals hired at the individual departments. That's slightly different from the idea of what the US Digital Services teams were, where they're brought into a central vehicle and then they're assigned to projects. And those projects are often staffed between agency staff plus the digital services staff. So you put those two together, they're kind of in the family of Doge, but I want you to understand they're slightly different. So the part that's very similar to the Obama world was the US Digital Service. Now, Doge, where they do projects and those agencies are, they're doing great work. And I think they're going to continue to build on what we've been doing for the last eight years, including the Biden administration.

Mike Pesca (19:01)

Give me an example, tangible example of that.

Anish Chopra (19:03)

So the listeners, well, I'm a healthcare guy. So in the healthcare space, they've already announced that they're going to initiate this work to create a national directory for healthcare. So one of the biggest frustrations for consumers is that their insurance directories are inaccurate. They think they can see a doctor, the numbers are wrong, the address is wrong, they're not taking new patients. It's like 50% error rates. So you think you bought a health plan and then you can't really use it the way you Wish because the doctors you care about aren't engaged in that plan. That's frustrating. So this national directory is going to make it a lot cleaner. So people know exactly how and in what way they can interact with the healthcare system.

Mike Pesca (19:41)

And are they literally building on what the Biden administration was doing? There is the same people. Literally.

Anish Chopra (19:48)

I think they're bringing more people in. They recently hired some folks that were actually heroes of mine during my Obama tenure that are like experts in open data and provider data. So the theory behind the US Digital Services, experts can do tours of duty. So a guy I love, Fred Trotter, is going to. He recently announced that he's going to come help drive the effort around this U.S. digital service. Fred was our first Open Government Data Award winner in the Obama administration. So for Health Datapalooza. So, Mike, take this as a positive statement. I'm not here to suggest that there's, like, no daylight between these two administrations. Obviously, there is some daylight, but there's more alignment than daylight.

Mike Pesca (20:31)

Okay, so I take it that a lot of what the uds, what I guess what DOGE is doing, correct me if I'm wrong, is just literally the part of DOGE to make things more efficient. If there's a website, the website should work. If there's information, the information should be accurate. That's not controversial. Might be hard, but it's not controversial. I want you to get to. I want to get to the more controversial things. But let's go back during the. The big branding with DOGE is we're going to find inefficiencies, we're going to cut programs. Was that part of your remit with the uds?

Anish Chopra (21:07)

So now. Yes and no. So let me make sure you understand. President Obama, in addition to naming a Chief Technology officer, named a CIO who kind of was overseeing our $80 billion government IT budget, but also the nation's first Chief Performance Officer. So Jeff Zients, who became President Biden's Chief of staff. Jeff and I have been old friends. He was actually my first boss when I graduated from the Kennedy School. Jeff led what you'll call effective and efficient government, including proposals to consolidate various agencies. Now, to be very specific, we view those things as the domain of the executive branch of the Congressional offices. So we would recommend that they give us the authority to kind of close gaps and connect dots and simplify and consolidate because Congress appropriates and you can kind of structure the government in the way that Congress wants. So we were kind of waiting on their help and gave them Recommendations along the way. But Jeff in between also asked for how technology could be used to kind of identify waste, fraud and abuse. Obviously, waste, fraud and abuse is a huge problem, and I'm grateful that everybody understands it. And so the only question is, what do you do to go about rooting it out? In our case, my colleague, the cio, Vivek Kundra, he would do these stat reviews where he would bring the agencies in to pitch the projects they were on. And they were like doozies. Billion dollar projects to create weird Frankenstein looking mobile devices for the census that never returned on. And a lot of gaps in what the private sector could do almost off the shelf. And so that's not so much as making a website work. That's really about like core operations.

Mike Pesca (22:56)

Right.

Anish Chopra (22:57)

Being wasteful.

Mike Pesca (22:58)

Right.

Anish Chopra (22:58)

And not knowing technology opportunities allow them to do progress projects that are much more cost effective.

Mike Pesca (23:05)

Did you guys find a lot of these doozies and just not get the PR for them that Elon is getting?

Anish Chopra (23:14)

No. So let me. Let me make sure you understand a little bit. Like I think in threes. Okay. So the crazy cave that they refer.

Mike Pesca (23:23)

To the opm, this is a literal. A literal storage facility in Pennsylvania where everyone who's ever worked for. Is it the Social Security Administration. They have all their. All their records there. It really exists. There's a real huge elevator. Used to be a mine.

Anish Chopra (23:39)

Yeah, it's actually government employees. It's Office of Personnel Management. So it's not the private sector. It's not like us as Social Security. Oh, no, yes, Consumers. It was employees, so we knew it existed. I didn't reference it in the context of us putting in a proposal to kind of automate it. It was more of a metaphor for. I used to reference it in speeches about the metaphorical mind and we want to modernize government. So that philosophy. I was sort of. I found it quite humorous. I did not participate in a particular project around. No, no. Why does that exist in the first place? That could be a US Digital Services project if OPM wanted to make that a priority. We just didn't work together on that particular topic. So that's. One third would be what I would call shared understanding. But different projects made it on the priority list. Okay, then there is a. Let's call it a more modernized data analytics project where DOGE is connecting all these databases and mining them for whatever anomalies. Maybe that's a function of having better technology today than we did for data and analytics. Let's take that as a positive. Mike. Others might Think of that as a little bit of a sensitive issue, like do they have the legal authority to connect some of those databases? I certainly was very sensitive to the fact that various databases in government, while they could conceivably uncover inefficiencies if put together the way they were congressionally authorized, did not allow those to be done. So maybe we were a little bit more gun shy on connecting databases to look for that sort of example of challenges. And I don't know, maybe they felt a bit more comfortable pursuing a little bit more of an aggressive view. So let's call that like a slightly different opinion about what to do with better tech than what we had a decade ago. And then there's a third category, which I think is where you're going a little bit with some of the how people were reacting to the layoffs. You know, I would say we were much more focused on outcomes measures. So productivity would be, hey, we're trying to expand access to broadband and we want to think about how a project might help fund the lowest cost, highest throughput to get people connected if they don't currently have access. And so if you focus on an outcome objective, you could be ruthless in saying, hey, we're funding the wrong things and let's make better decisions. That is an area where maybe if you're just cutting and you're not applying an outcomes goal to what you're cutting and why you're cutting it, I think their outcomes goal might have been like this concept of DEI as an outcomes goal. And so maybe that's just a different, obviously political opinion about what we want the government to do. So we did not really pursue much of those types of activities. We didn't have, you know, large scale layoffs or massive cuts. So obviously that's a big difference.

Mike Pesca (26:44)

Right, but you're, your point is you could wave around, hey, look at this thing. We cut, but if it turns out you have to spend twice as much to replace it, you haven't really achieved an outcome. In fact, you've set yourself back now in everyone's defense.

Anish Chopra (26:59)

Mike, the government stopped measuring productivity in the 2000s. So part of what I've been calling for, we called for it even in the Obama administration. Time, but it takes time to get these things done. If we could do a better outcomes productivity measure, then we can start saying, well, we have government to do what to make it easier for people to afford healthy foods or to get access to low cost health insurance with high quality, or to think about a quality school system. We could kind of go through that road. And that might allow us to be thoughtful to say, hey, let's go line by line in the budget to say what maps to this goal and what doesn't. So I don't want to say like, oh, you know, the Elon team was wrong for pursuing X, Y or Z. I don't want to be blustery about it. I think if you just sort of say, look, let's be candid. Could there be a version of that type of Doge activity that's laser focused on outcomes and maniacal about going line by line? You know, Mike, that could be a different Doge. That could be a different. We'd be having a different conversation relative to where, you know, maybe the country is today.

Mike Pesca (28:00)

Well, I have to say that's very reasonable, that's very productive, and entirely not in keeping with the spirit of the day. So if you, I do want to go back to just the one example you said, the Frankenstein monster and what are we doing with the census? And the private sector could do this a lot better if you had wave that around. If you had made a big deal about that and also granted that maybe the outcome wouldn't be as clear as the input of cutting this thing. Do you think you could have gotten credit, you could have gotten some press releases? People maybe would have seen the Obama White House as engaging in this big, efficient project a little bit like, like Elon's fans see him doing with Doge.

Anish Chopra (28:43)

Well, let me, let me take a step back, Mike, because you're asking a really important question, which is Washington lives by communications. Like, what's the message of the day and how do you prioritize it? It is unquestionable that the Trump administration placed doge, if not at the top, but near the top of the priority list, which meant the communications people were doing everything to kind of promote that agenda almost on a repetitive daily basis. Right now, we were in the middle of an economic crisis in the Obama administration. We had much bigger problems to solve. So while this was an important part of the agenda, I would never have asked that this be the dominant part of the agenda under any circumstances. As an advisor, I would say I would not be doing my job supporting the president and promoting it, but we did. If you remember, the president held a big summit with CEOs from all across the country to bring in their best practices and to reveal our strategy for modernization of government. We talked about how to improve customer service, you know, based on best practices, how to modernize through cloud computing and tech investments. So we kind of did some high profile things that did get attention.

Mike Pesca (29:52)

Right.

Anish Chopra (29:52)

But it was like on a one off basis. It was a day in December 2020 10. 2010.

Mike Pesca (29:57)

And it was also of the no drama Obama type attention. Whereas this guy is a chainsaw and a hat.

Anish Chopra (30:03)

Yeah. Again, I don't want to.

Mike Pesca (30:05)

I mean, if you had a chainsaw and hat.

Anish Chopra (30:06)

Yeah.

Mike Pesca (30:07)

If, if the chainsaw and a hat aesthetic were what the communications experts back then.

Anish Chopra (30:13)

Yeah.

Mike Pesca (30:14)

Decided. Do you think you could have had some splashy things that struck America in a similar way as the Doge cuts?

Anish Chopra (30:22)

I don't think I'd be doing a good job as an adviser to the President to recommend that sort of imagery that wasn't. Yeah, that's not him and that's not us serving him and serving the American people. But your point is well taken. There's probably more we could have done or should have done to communicate the good government side of the agenda because the president did a lot to advance it. And so it got more attention after the healthcare.gov crisis to celebrate that. Now there's a whole new philosophy. The creation of the US Digital service in part was a big PR effort to recruit the best and the brightest to come in. So I think that part of it did work on a very aspirational message come in to help the government. Maybe a different angle than maybe, you know, a discussion around slashing certain pieces and parts.

Mike Pesca (31:11)

Anish Chopra was the first Chief Technology Officer of the United States. He's author of the book the Innovative State How New Technologies Can Transform Government. Thank you so much. And if you'd hang on the line for a brief exit survey and our offshoring procedure which should last a half a day. Thank you so much.

Anish Chopra (31:28)

Thanks for having me, Mike.

Mike Pesca (31:29)

And what a conversation. I shall give you more if you are a Pesca plus subscriber for an ad free podcast for bonus episodes for all sorts of fun Doodads, go to subscribe.mike pesca.com True Classics an amazing brand I and if you see me on the videos we put forward, most of the time I'm wearing a great, nicely fitted True Classic T shirts. I don't like to wear a white T shirt out fonzieing it up. But with True Classic it's heavy enough, the fit is fantastic. And that's the white T shirt. When I wear the black T shirt shirt, let me tell you, I'm really stepping out. And I wear True Classic jeans. They fit great. I've got a dark pair, I've got a Light pair. I got a polo shirt. I'm in danger of being a True Classic man through and through. The gear fits right. It feels amazing. And the price, the price is, the price is very nice. Compare the price to. Sometimes a really well fit fitted T shirt is stupidly expensive. But with True Classic it's smartly affordable. You can feel the difference the moment you throw it on. They're tailored where you want it, they're relaxed where you need it. You don't tug on it. It's not all bunched up. It's clean, it's effortless. It really works. Forget overpriced designer brands. Ditch the disposable fast fashion. It's going to ditch you eventually. True Classic is built for comfort. It's built to last and it's built to give back. You can grab them at I'll name some retailers. Target, Costco, or how about this? Go to trueclassic.com the gist that helps us the most and it'll help you because you'll look truly classic trueclassic.com the gist and get hooked up today. And now the spiel. The attacks in Colorado are not new. Not new in terms of terrorism. Anti Semitic terrorism. Anti Semitic terrorism by an Islamist who is in the US illegally. The first World Trade center bombers in that category, the lax shooter. But there is a concept that I'm wondering if we're going to see apply to him, a newish concept. It's never been applied to such a terrorist. It is a phrase that is almost exclusively the province of the left. Here is the left wing radio host Tom Hartman apparently discovering it for himself around the year 2019.

Tom Hartman (34:08)

What we are looking at here is. Well, he didn't use this phrase. You know, I would say it's schochastic terrorism. This what we're looking at. There's a type of terrorism. It's called stochastic. S T O C H A S T I C Stochastic. And what it means is, well actually there's, there's a, there's a definition of this. What Hans Nichols said. Here's what, here's what he said. He said you have conservative lawmakers. See you got, we have now bombs at Hillary Clinton's house, bombs at Barack Obama's house and bombs at cnn.

Mike Pesca (34:41)

Right?

Tom Hartman (34:41)

Or things that look like bombs. He said, quote, you have conservative law. Oh, and a bomb at George Soros house.

Mike Pesca (34:48)

Hartman stumbled onto the word and he might be new to the concept, but the left wasn't new to the concept. It got mentioned on MSNBC a lot. And even more than that, on left leaning websites, Rolling Stone, New York Magazine, often on npr. It was definitely in the ether before Trump. Here is left leaning talk show host David Pakman talking about stochastic terrorism about 14 years ago.

David Pakman (35:14)

I'm not sure exactly where it originated. Some say it was was with a post on the Daily coast forums. And the idea is stochastic terrorism is the use of mass communications to stir up random lone wolves, which we've heard a lot about, to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable in the aggregate, but individually unpredictable. And you see where I'm going with this, Louis? I think it's a great way to actually sum up what can we deduce about the violent rhetoric in the media. Glenn Beck with guns and Sarah Palin's crosshairs and calls to arms and so on and so forth. But this term is kind of, kind.

Mike Pesca (35:56)

Of says that no one person is responsible.

David Pakman (35:59)

Well, that's right. It is in essence a shield from those who are inciting or using the rhetoric.

Mike Pesca (36:06)

Ah, but a careful listener might discern that even though Louis says, oh, so no one is responsible, what Pacman is saying when he answers yes is meaning no, no, someone is responsible. By using the concept stochastic terrorism, we actually do get to lame the blame. That's why it's an attractive concept because we don't get to lay the blame on the person that the law comes to blame. We don't get to lay the blame on the person that Immanuel Kant in his philosophy would blame. Now the ultimate source of ill in the world, the one who we spend all of our time blaming, that's who we get to lay the blame on. That is why stochastic terrorism is convenient. It is very good for ratings. I will also say that it might be right. I'll give the theory of stochastic terrorism that when Donald Trump rants and raves all day long about immigrants, it's not hard to see that, you know, someone very well might be set on fire by a Trump loving anti immigrant type person. It seems kind of obvious, right? But now other than, hey, if you say these things, it could lead to danger in the world. Now we get to use this academic sounding word for it and call that guy with those words an actual terrorist. The less sophisticated way of saying stochastic terrorism is saying it's all Donald Trump's fault. And that is kind of what the people who say stochastic terrorism want to say. Here's David Pakman years later Saying that.

David Pakman (37:38)

You never could have predicted that that particular person was going to take action. But statistically speaking, when millions of people are have a seed planted about something violent that they could do or that maybe Donald Trump wants them to do, then you are in a sense influencing someone to do it if you can't predict who. And I think the answer is yes. I think there is no question whatsoever that Donald Trump's rhetoric has been stochastic terror.

Mike Pesca (38:04)

Arguing about stochastic terrorism in the abstract is a loser for rhetoricians everywhere. Well, maybe this and well, you have to consider that. And what are the implications of the third? I mean, there was a time it seemed like there were dozens of examples of right wingers saying dangerous things and then left wingers getting shot at. And you know, at the time, I don't know if it was accurate. In fact, I know it wasn't. To say that Sarah Palin used a target graphic and that put Gabby Giffords literally in the crosshairs of an insane person's gun. But what's the rebuttal to that? And then over time, what happened was there came to be many, many more acts of left wing inspired violence or would be violence. I listed some up top during the show. The Brett Kavanaugh would be assassin. Both Trump, well, one Trump shooter and one would be Trump shooter. The Republican softball game that left Steve Scalise horribly injured. The Josh Shapiro attacker. New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin was attacked and almost stabbed on the campaign trail. According to statistics from the Capitol. Here are the threats per year on members of Congress. 2017. 3939 threats. 2021. 9625 threats. 2023, latest year for which there are stats. 8008 threat assessment cases. So I guess it's going down. But who gets threatened? 74% of Democrats say they've been threatened and 77% of Republicans say they've been threatened. Still, stochastic terrorism is only ever from what I hear brought up on the left or the left leaning, except in one instance, which is when right wingers bring it up to mock the very idea. An example from the left or a left type news outlet, MSNBC's In House, former FBI agent Frank Fuglisi describing it would be assassin whose target was to have been Joe Biden.

Frank Fuglisi (40:09)

And look, the bigger picture here, Andrew, is this is something called stochastic terrorism. We've seen it before. People incited to violence by someone else's ideology. We saw it in droves on January6, right. We saw it at FBI Cincinnati when a man tried to breach the reception room there and died. So it keeps happening, and I'm sorry to say we may continue to see this happening.

Mike Pesca (40:31)

I searched and did not see either of Trump's assassination attempts referred to on MSNBC as an example of stochastic terrorism. Why not? Does the term simply not apply? Has no one used violent rhetoric towards Trump? This is all the Republicans were saying after Trump got shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, that it was the fault of Democratic rhetoric that put Trump in the crosshairs. It's just that Republicans communicate differently, one would argue better by not using highfalutin words like stochastic terrorism. I think it's time to retire the term. Maybe in academic circles, if it was ever used in academic circles. I think it got popular by seeming academic, but it wasn't studied that much by real experts anyway. Stochastic terrorism, it's just ceased to be descriptive. It's really only abusive. Its application is more than uneven. It is flat out distortive or not. If you want to keep it, you're going to have to apply it to the example of Free Palestine and Intifada revolution. Oh, believe me, many defenders of Israel very much want to use it in this context. They want to say that the Tentifada, all those kids on campus, they're the ones who put Josh Shapiro and those poor Coloradans and the two Israeli embassy workers in the positions they were put in. I do not believe that. I believe there are deep passions on all sides and horrible, sometimes mentally ill people will agree with these passions, take these passions too far, or just be Americans who mostly have access to guns and definitely resort to violence. I mean, how do you intellectually make the case that lock her up will no doubt inspire someone to violence, but Intifada revolution, that doesn't do that at all. You can't make the case intellectually consistently, as if intellectual consistency were the point. So I say let us give this one up. Passionate ideas lead to passionate acts, and my passion might be your horrible violence, and vice versa. Many, many passionate acts and America of 2025 fall outside the realm of the acceptable, the legal, sometimes even the conscionable. Passionate people expressing themselves at full passion with little concern for how the worst people will hear their words, but rather orienting towards how most people will hear it, and especially how most of their people will hear it and respond. That is what's going on. That exactly describes Donald Trump's rhetoric, and it also describes Intifada revolution. And neither Donald Trump nor dozens of Columbia undergraduates are literally terrorists, if you want to use the word accurately, which apparently no one does. I know I alone cannot change the terminology, but maybe, like a stochastic linguist, I will spread the seed that makes someone out there say, yeah, let's give this particular one a rest. And that's it for today's show. Corey Wara produces the Gist. Astrid Green is in charge of our socials. Kathleen Sykes is the editor of the Gist List. Michelle Pesk is cbso. Ashley Khan's our co. Cbso, Leo Baum still out there floating in the ether like Leo Baum does. Thanks for listening.