In 2025, Nate Cavanaugh—a 27-year-old college dropout and tech entrepreneur—was handed control of the U.S. Institute of Peace and told to cut it apart. He had no government experience, no expertise in diplomacy or foreign affairs, and by his own account in a now-viral deposition, nothing informed his judgment except his judgment. Within days, a man named Mohammad Halimi lost his job, his name was amplified to 222 million Twitter followers as a Taliban sympathizer, and his family in Afghanistan was abducted and beaten by Taliban security for...
In 2025, Nate Cavanaugh—a 27-year-old college dropout and tech entrepreneur—was handed control of the U.S. Institute of Peace and told to cut it apart. He had no government experience, no expertise in diplomacy or foreign affairs, and by his own account in a now-viral deposition, nothing informed his judgment except his judgment. Within days, a man named Mohammad Halimi lost his job, his name was amplified to 222 million Twitter followers as a Taliban sympathizer, and his family in Afghanistan was abducted and beaten by Taliban security forces.
In this first episode of Omnishambles, based on a recent post by Cy on her Substack, Cy and Virginia ask how this could possibly happen. They trace how institutions produce “desk killers,” drawing on Hannah Arendt, scholar Gitta Sereny’s interviews with Nazi perpetrators, and Dan Gretton’s research on organizational killing. Then they turn to what Silicon Valley has added: not just the conditions for desk killers, but an explicit ideology that celebrates them.
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Sources:
* “The Desk Killer Gets DOGEd,” Cy Canterel, Abstract Machines
* Cavanaugh’s Jan 23, 2026 deposition from the MLA, LHA, and ACLS lawsuit
* “How DOGE Left Mohammed Halimi’s Life in Tatters”, ProPublica, Aug 22, 2025
* Hannah Arendt, “Eichmann in Jerusalem”
* Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind
* Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness
* Gitta Sereny, Web of Stories interview, pub. 2017
* Dan Gretton, I You We Them, 2019
* “Marc Andreessen: The World is More Malleable Than You Think”, David Senra interview, March 15, 2026
* “Meet the 24-Year-Old Trying To Disrupt the Intellectual Property Industry”, dot.LA, Jul 6, 2020
* “Body cam video shows takeover of US Institute of Peace”, NBC4 Washington, Mar 6, 2026
* The Third Man, dir. Carol Reed, 1949, scene
* Lancet study overview, and “Evaluating the impact of two decades of USAID interventions and projecting the effects of defunding on mortality up to 2030: a retrospective impact evaluation and forecasting analysis”, The Lancet, Jul 19, 2025
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