CNN reported on March 10, 2026, that cuts to programs and personnel made under Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency and the wider Trump administration “have hampered the US government's abilities to prepare for domestic emergencies; monitor terror threats; guard against cyber-attacks; broadcast US information into Iran; and quickly help US citizens stranded abroad,” according to current and former government officials. Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick said DOGE took a “sledgehammer” to agencies.
On cybersecurity, industry executives told CNN they had seen “a sharp drop in the level of engagement from government cyber officials” since DOGE-driven cuts at DHS's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Andy Jabbour, CEO of the cybersecurity firm Gate 15, told CNN that “our nation's at war ... and we don't have a DHS secretary or CISA director.” CISA was being run by an acting leader, Nick Andersen, who told reporters the agency was “not seeing a tremendous amount of impact associated with” Iranian cyber attackers at the time, Politico reported.
At the State Department, a recorded message on an emergency line told callers, “Please do not rely on the US government for assisted departure or evacuation at this time,” and the first chartered evacuation flight arrived five days after strikes began. Former officials blamed the loss of experienced staff; the department said, “There were no RIFs that affected our overseas operations that are working in the field to assist Americans.” A State Department counterterrorism office that worked on countering Iran-linked terrorism was eliminated in a reorganization. Politico reported that the administration had also slimmed down and redirected counterterrorism offices at the FBI, DHS and the National Counterterrorism Center.
Not all of the strain traces to DOGE. DHS was in a funding lapse at the time, and DHS said the strain “has nothing to do with DOGE and everything to do with the Democrats refusing to fund DHS,” adding that two-thirds of CISA's workforce was furloughed. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, a Republican appropriator, said the cuts eliminated only waste. CNN also described separate actions: Kari Lake's effort to dismantle Voice of America, which a VOA employee said left it “a shell of our former self,” and FBI Director Kash Patel's firing of agents from a counterintelligence unit that tracked Iranian threats.
The cost comparison drew notice on the right as well. The Daily Caller reported that U.S. military officials told Congress the first six days of the war cost about $11.3 billion, according to a source who spoke to The New York Times, more than the $9.4 billion in DOGE spending cuts that Congress codified in a July 2025 rescissions package.
Correction (October 2, 2026): This entry previously stated as fact that the U.S. had no DHS secretary and no CISA director and that CISA engagement dropped “at exactly the moment when Iranian cyber attacks posed the greatest threat.” The “no DHS secretary or CISA director” line is a quote from industry executive Andy Jabbour in CNN's report. CISA had an acting leader, who said the agency was not then seeing much impact from Iranian cyber attackers. The entry also attributed the broadcasting cuts to DOGE (CNN tied them to Kari Lake's overhaul of Voice of America) and omitted that DHS was in a funding lapse with much of CISA furloughed, which DHS blamed for the strain. The title and summary have been revised, and an unsourced conclusion that DOGE made the government less capable of executing the war was removed.