Elon Musk, Treasury Data, and the Mark of the Beast

Why are Christian Fundamentalists so interested in sector-specific AI?

One of the consequences of an evangelical background is that when Elon Musk invades the Treasury’s Bureau of Fiscal Service (the payment system that distributes tax refunds, Medicare and Social Security benefits, payments to federal workers, and the data related to all of it), you think about the Mark of the Beast.

If you have no idea what the Mark of the Beast is, consider yourself lucky.

End-time eschatology is circular, confusing, scary, vague, and threatening but also a highly successful control tactic. For decades, evangelical fundamentalists have scared followers into belief through “end times” teachings, warning of the rise of an anti-Christ and an apocalyptic “tribulation” period full of wars and climate disasters.

Through a series of films, books, and sermons, evangelical fundamentalists learn Jesus will return to “rapture” them away, and nonbelievers will be left behind. Signs this is about to happen include fires, earthquakes, wars, the United Nations, leaders who preach peace, Israel’s statehood, and global instability.

Fears over the rapture and being left by God are traumatic. It’s common for survivors of religious trauma to share stories of OCD-level scrupulosity, praying compulsively for an “assurance of salvation” to ensure they’ll be included in the rapture. The books and films were visceral. Some evangelical families run “rapture drills” to scare their children, further complicating the safety a child should feel with their parent.

But this is where they’re coming from. When evangelical fundamentalists claim a “Biblical worldview,” this is, in part, what they mean. They see the news through what they were taught about the Book of Revelation. Their leadership will highlight headlines as “evidence” supporting their view. Any believers on the verge of changing their minds or thinking critically will be scared back into unquestioning belief.

The Mark of the Beast is a numerical code that creates a fenced economy after the Biblical prophecy of the Rapture. It’s a symbolic mark representing allegiance to the evil Anti-Christ. Without it, people will be locked out of the economy and social services. Evangelicals teach nonbelievers will starve or be killed for their apostasy. Evangelical children grow up terrified they’ll be left here for the end times.

Revelation 13:17: “and he provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name.”

But do the headlines support their view? Or is something else going on?

Musk is a foreign billionaire and private citizen serving a role that has never existed in our government. He’d rather settle on Mars than protect Earth, and now, with the keys to Treasury data and payment processing, he can override Congress and the Executive Branch. He’s an unelected, unrestricted oversight committee of one.

The Executive Order establishing DOGE dates back to Day 1 of Trump’s second presidency. It states, “Agency Heads must provide the DOGE Administrator (Musk) with full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems.”

But before (or maybe simultaneously) demanding “the keys” to the Treasury, they first tried a freeze from the top.

On Monday night, January 28, Trump’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), headed by the virtually unknown Matthew Vaeth, holding a seat for Christian Fundamentalist and Project 2025 architect Russ Vought, announced a freeze on federal funding that would go into effect by 5 p.m. Wednesday, January 29. The stated purpose was to ensure spending aligned with the (legally flimsy) executive orders, even though Congress has (until now) decided how America spends money.

On Tuesday, District Judge AliKhan blocked the illegal freeze.

On Wednesday, Vaeth released a memo that the freeze order had been rescinded.

Unable to demand authority over federal funds, those artful DOGErs found the side door.

On Friday, David Lebryk, according to the NY Times, was “placed on administrative leave this week after resisting requests from Mr. Musk’s lieutenants.” He then announced his sudden retirement. (Imagine. A 35-year-old career veteran who believes in the integrity of our system was fired for resisting a 22-year-old hacker.)

Lebryk insisted: The Bureau’s role is to make the payments, not decide who gets them.

His move was dramatic and confusing in ways trauma survivors recognize: there’s more going on than what we see on the surface. When such sweeping actions occur, I take a breath and consider the source. Who devised this move?

Musk. Trump. Evangelical Fundamentalists. They are the triune MAGA god, the three-headed Cerberus sharing one set of legs. Which way will they go? Well, That depends. Why did they go outside of the law to take control of the nation’s payment processing and data?

They have their reasons.

Rigid fundamentalists couldn’t gain populist power.

A depraved populist couldn’t gain religious power.

Putridly rich tech bros couldn’t gain ruling power.

But combined, they are what we’re facing today: A theologarchy that will try to devour the power supply all three of them feed upon: we, the people. Evangelical fundamentalists want global dominion for God. Trump wants to be a god. Musk already acts like a god.

A god complex is part of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Narcissists have an inflated sense of their own importance. They often require excessive admiration from others and lack empathy for the feelings of others. They are essentially excessively preoccupied with themselves and their own needs. Narcissists elevate leadership with narcissistic tendencies—both covert and overt. Some are boastful, and some work hard to appear modest.

Narcissists accuse others of what they’re guilty of doing. By projecting, they attribute their behaviors to others. When they know they’re doing something wrong, they will accuse someone else of committing the action to deflect accountability. When the evidence points back to them, they’ll remind others of how it feels to be falsely accused and rapidly move on to the next accusation.

When evangelical fundamentalists accuse others, especially if the accusation is scary or scandalous, look closely at the evidence. When the evidence shows they’re guilty of what they’re accusing someone else of, they’re projecting.

Easy-grab examples include

• “the left indoctrinate children”--as evangelical fundamentalists push for religious public schools,

• “teaching kids about gay families sexualizes children” -- as evangelical fundamentalists teach babies modesty, purity, and gender.

Dealing with a narcissist can feel crazy-making because their logic is circular and deliberately confusing, and it’s difficult to know what to trust and believe. Their accusations are often coupled with fear and a threatening undercurrent. But we can know what they’re up to by flipping their accusations.

Turn their accusatory statement around into an “I” statement. Then, see if the evidence matches what they are (now) telling you they are doing. And, remember ACTIONS ARE LOUDER THAN WORDS.

Elon’s actions are loud. He assumed control of our Treasury, payment processing, and related data. Why would he do that? The bulk of the speculation centers on the money—trillions annually. But there are other actions to consider from the other two heads of the dog, and I think they offer provocative context for what’s coming next.

Another of Trump’s Executive Orders:

Another relevant Executive Order: Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence. This order removes Biden's regulatory position on AI. It replaces it with a new policy to be written by a team that includes Vought, Musk, Crypto/AI specialist David Sacks (formerly of Paypal), and Michael Kratsios, Trump’s choice for the new director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

The task is to “sustain and enhance its global AI dominance to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security."

This is the cause that brought Silicon Valley to Trump, offering a surge of money for a campaign that was falling flat with just the evangelical fundamentalists and the popular felon.

The tech bros are risk-flying entrepreneurs, hyper-masculine, known for being entitled misogynists, without respect for women or the climate, and they’re burned over Crypto regulations.

As Venture Capitalist Marc Andreesson, a once-Democrat turned Trumpian, told Ross Douthat at the New York Times: “…the precondition we got with crypto was to just flat out try to kill it. …they just debanked an entire generation of founders.” Andreeson says that’s when tech knew they had to get involved with politics and that the Democrats would harm their interests—AI dominance.

Andreeson goes on. “So we saw this exercise of raw authoritarian administrative power levied against crypto. Basically, we saw the beginnings of what we thought was going to be applied to AI. So, AI needs to be very carefully controlled by the government or by adjuncts of the government to make sure that there’s no hate speech or misinformation, which is to say it has to be completely politically controlled….We basically relayed our concerns about A.I., and their response to us was, ‘Yes, the national agenda on A.I. We will implement it in the Biden administration and in the second term. We are going to make sure that A.I. is going to be a function of two or three large companies. We will directly regulate and control those companies. There will be no start-ups. This whole thing where you guys think you can just start companies and write code and release code on the internet — those days are over. That’s not happening.’”

The AI and crypto guys were mad and agreed they had to “go Trump” to avoid regulation from the Democrats. To them, this is business. Money-making, tech dominance, innovation and progress.

Andreeson called Musk, “the smartest entrepreneur of our entire generation, who’s, like, the conceptual genius of our time across multiple domains, who has put all of his intellect into this.”

He says of Trump, “We have a leader of the coalition, and his name is Donald Trump, and he is extremely good at navigating this aspect of it. And he’s extremely good at bringing together all the threads and then having it come out into the positions that he advocates to support.”

Trump makes the Tech Bros feel safe. Their misogyny aligns with the Christian Fundamentalists well enough—these factions share an interest in keeping the Trad wives at home—and with the populist, authoritarian bluster of Trump. He’ll break the law, remove it, or blow right past as if it never existed. He won’t tell them no.

Authoritarianism is always “more efficient.”

Why would self-righteous Christian Fundamentalists swallow the crass lawlessness of Trump and the recklessness of ketamine junkies writing code? Why are they ok with an unelected foreign renegade seizing our Treasury’s money, software, hardware, and data?

Because AI needs data. All three heads of the Republican Cerberus are interested in removing barriers to AI, and Musk’s move did just that.

From Heather Cox Richardson on February 2, 2025:

After Musk’s team breached the USAID computers, cybersecurity specialist Matthew Garrett posted: “Random computers being plugged into federal networks is obviously terrifying in terms of what data they're deliberately accessing, but it's also terrifying because it implies controls are being disabled—unmanaged systems should never have access to this data. Who else has access to those systems?”

The Fundamentalists are interested in Sector-Specific AI:

A conservative think tank in Texas, funded by “the Daddy Warbucks of the conservative movement in Texas”) has been shaping policy not only around the usual suspects (education, taxes, energy regulation, healthcare for women, criminal justice reform, and border security) but also on the development of AI.

This discovery came as a surprise. In my experience, Christian Fundamentalists favor antiquated lifestyles. They go back in time, not forward. They don’t want progress, and they don’t support innovation. They like book bans and internet restrictions. But moral imagination envisions the full range of possibilities for examining ethics, and I will use it here.

Why would a Christian Nationalist think tank be interested in “sector-specific AI?”

Let’s start with Project 2025, a political initiative to reshape the United States federal government and remove checks and barriers to Christian Fundamentalist priorities. Dominionist leaders believe in the Seven Mountains Mandate, putting Christians in control of

• Religion

• Family

• Education

• Media

• Arts and Entertainment

• Government and

• Business

Two-thirds of Trump’s early actions mirror Project 2025, and while he likes to deny supporting it, over 200 Project 2025 partners are current or former Trump officials. His OMB pick, Russ Vought, was the architect, and his press secretary was involved with the training videos. Project 2025 might as well be Cerberus’s collar.

Sector-specific artificial intelligence is designed to solve issues specific to a particular industry. For example, sector-specific AI in:

• Education— can remove content from the curriculum or shape content around a particular worldview.

• Healthcare—can permit or deny access to a hospital by identity.

• Criminal Justice—can be set to prefer a punitive system rather than a rehabilitative one.

• Transportation—can prioritize funding to areas with higher birth rates

The Texas Public Policy Foundation has already invested in shaping AI policy. Its goal is to influence AI applications in education, healthcare, and media to ensure they conform to conservative Christian values. This could result in AI technologies that reinforce traditional family structures, oppose LGBTQ+ rights, or promote pro-life stances. It’s not a stretch to see how easy it would be to marginalize diversity, limit access to scientific information, censor educational content, deny medical services, assess the lifestyle of applicants for social services, or screen job candidates according to documented belief.

Applying sector-specific AI, programmed in accordance with Christian Fundamentalist priorities, sidesteps democratic choice, congressional law, federal regulation, and due process, much like the workaround that allowed Musk to simply take what he wanted.

It creates a fenced economy based on identification data.

Can you imagine being denied a secular job because priority was given to registered Republicans? Or church members? Of course, this is constitutionally illegal. But suppose it’s programmed into the AI itself. How would anyone resist it at the screening level when we can’t even seem to resist an unelected foreign billionaire breaking into our Treasury?

Christian government and Christian business will include Christian doctrine. This includes apocalyptic eschatology. You can’t have the Mark of the Beast that prevents buying, selling, trading, and access to society without the number of his name, which is already our social security number. It’s reasonable to think that fundamentalists who believe in a Biblical mandate to dominate would want to control the technology that helps them do so.

Flipping the script on a narcissist reveals who they are, what they’re up to, and how they try to control you while they deflect accountability from themselves.

“We are following an Anti-Christ who doesn’t behave like Jesus.”

“We are increasing worldwide famine by withdrawing aid.”

“We are increasing plagues by withdrawing medication, forbidding research, and suppressing health information.”

“We’re creating a walled economy for insiders. Outsiders and Nonbelievers cannot access food, gas, services, or safety based on their identity.”

When dealing with a three-headed beast, I think it’s helpful to keep all three of them in mind. Sometimes, they’ll pull in the same direction, and sometimes, they’ll pull each other apart. But knowledge helps us maintain an emotional distance, hold boundaries, and see past their manipulation. As the saying goes, “Knowledge is power.”

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