President Trump initiated a series of executive actions last week that disrupted several governmental initiatives aimed at enhancing the country’s cybersecurity framework. The president dismissed all consultants from the Department of Homeland Security’s Cyber Safety Review Board, advocated for the establishment of a strategic cryptocurrency reserve, and annulled a Biden administration effort intended to mitigate the dangers that artificial intelligence presents to consumers, workers, and national security.

On his initial full day back at the White House, Trump terminated all 15 advisory committee members of the Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB), a nonpartisan governmental organization founded in February 2022 with the responsibility of examining the factors leading to significant cybersecurity incidents. So far, the CSRB has generated three comprehensive reports, one of which includes an assessment of the Log4Shell vulnerability crisis, incursions from the cybercriminal group LAPSUS$, and the 2023 Microsoft Exchange Online breach.

The CSRB was in the process of investigating cyber breaches recently discovered across a wide range of U.S. telecommunications firms, attributed to Chinese state-sponsored hackers. One of the CSRB’s most prominent figures is Chris Krebs (no relation), the previous director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Krebs was terminated by President Trump in November 2020 for stating that the presidential election was the most secure in U.S. history and for contradicting Trump’s unfounded allegations of election fraud.

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, recently confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the new head of the DHS, criticized CISA during her confirmation hearing, TheRecord reports.

Noem informed lawmakers that CISA needs to be “far more efficient, smaller, more agile, to truly accomplish their mission,” which she asserted should concentrate on fortifying federal IT systems and pursuing digital intruders. Noem claimed that the agency’s efforts against misinformation indicate it has “diverted significantly from its mission” and involved “utilizing its resources in manners that were never intended.”

“The misinformation and disinformation with which they have interfered should be redirected back to their actual responsibilities,” she remarked.

Moses Frost, a cybersecurity educator at the SANS Institute, likened the dismissal of the CSRB members to terminating all experts at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) while they are engaged in the examination of a series of airline tragedies.

“I don’t recall witnessing an ‘NTSB Board’ being dismissed during an aviation accident inquiry,” Frost mentioned in a recent SANS newsletter. “I can assert that the assailants targeting telephone companies will not cease because the review board has been dissolved. We must understand how these assaults occurred, and CISA did seem to be beneficial for the majority of the federal systems.”

As for transportation, The Record observes that Transportation Security Administration head David Pekoske was dismissed despite overseeing crucial cybersecurity advancements in pipeline, rail, and aviation sectors. Pekoske was appointed by Trump in 2017, and his 5-year tenure was extended in 2022 by former President Joe Biden.

AI & CRYPTOCURRENCY

Shortly after taking the oath for a second term, Trump annulled a Biden executive directive that aimed at promoting research and development in artificial intelligence. The earlier administration’s order on AI was designed to manage the safety and security challenges posed by the technology. However, a statement issued by the White House asserted that Biden’s strategy regarding AI had obstructed progress, and that the United States would back AI systems that are “uninfluenced by ideological biases or designed social agendas” to maintain dominance.

The Trump administration enacted its own executive directive on AI, which calls for an “AI Action Plan” to be spearheaded by the assistant to the president for science and technology, the White House “AI & crypto czar,” and the national security advisor. It also instructs the White House to revise and redistribute guidelines to federal entities regarding the government’s procurement and governance of AI “to guarantee that detrimental obstacles to America’s AI supremacy are eradicated.”

Trump’s AI & crypto czar is David Sacks, a businessman and Silicon Valley venture capitalist who contends that the Biden administration’s stance on AI and cryptocurrency has pushed innovation abroad. Sacks recently claimed that non-fungible cryptocurrency tokens and memecoins should not be classified as securities or commodities, but rather as “collectibles” comparable to baseball cards and stamps.

A legal definition of collectibles is already provided under U.S. tax law, applicable to items such as artwork or antiques, which may incur high capital gains taxes. However, Joe Hall, a capital markets lawyer and partner at Davis Polk, informed Fortune that there are no market regulations governing collectibles under U.S. securities law. Hall stated that Sacks’ remarks “indicate a perspective that it would not be suitable to regulate these items in the same manner we regulate securities.”

The new administration’s viewpoint is coherent given that the Trump family is significantly and personally engaged in various recent memecoin endeavors that have drawn billions from investors. President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump each introduced their own unique memecoins this month, titled $TRUMP and $MELANIA.

The Wall Street Journalreported Thursday that the market value of $TRUMP was around $7 billion, down from its high near $15 billion, while $MELANIA is floating around $460 million. Merely two months ahead of the 2024 election, Trump’s three sons introduced a cryptocurrency token known as World Liberty Financial.

Despite holding a significant personal interest in the regulation of cryptocurrency, Trump enacted an executive order on January 23 that called for a task force to be chaired by Sacks, which would construct “a federal regulatory structure governing digital assets, including stablecoins,” and consider the establishment of a “strategic national digital assets reserve.”

In other words: Utilizing taxpayer funds to support the speculative, erratic, and extremely dangerous cryptocurrency sector, which has been plagued by endless frauds, rug-pulls, eight-figure cyber thefts, widespread deceit, and unchecked innovations in money laundering.

WEAPONIZATION & DISINFORMATION

Leading up to the election, President Trump consistently pledged to utilize a second term to seek revenge against his perceived foes. Part of that commitment materialized in an executive order Trump issued last week entitled “Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government,” which condemned “an unparalleled, third-world exploitation of prosecutorial authority to disrupt the democratic process,” regarding the prosecution of over 1,500 individuals who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

On January 21, Trump commuted the sentences of several heads of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who were found guilty of seditious conspiracy. Additionally, he granted “a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of crimes related to incidents that took place at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021,” including those who attacked law enforcement officials.

The New York Times reports that “the phrasing of the document implies — but does not outright state — that the Trump administration review will scrutinize the actions of local district attorneys or state officials, such as the district attorneys in Manhattan or Fulton County, Ga., or the New York attorney general, all of whom initiated cases against President Trump.”

Another Trump order titled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship” claims:

“Throughout the last four years, the prior administration violated free speech rights by censoring Americans’ discourse on digital platforms, frequently by applying significant coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media firms, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress discourse that the Federal Government did not endorse,” the Trump administration asserted. “Under the pretense of countering ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation,’ the Federal Government encroached upon the constitutionally safeguarded speech rights of American citizens across the nation in a manner that propagated the Government’s favored narrative regarding critical issues of public discourse.”

Both of these executive orders hold potential implications for security, privacy, and civil liberties advocates who have sought to monitor conspiracy theories and raise awareness about disinformation campaigns on social media emanating from U.S. adversaries.

Following the 2020 election, Republicans established the House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. Chaired by GOP Rep. Jim Jordan from Ohio, the committee aimed to investigate alleged collusion between the Biden administration and technology companies to unlawfully suppress political expression.

The GOP committee directed much of its criticism at members of the brief Disinformation Governance Board, an advisory panel to DHS formed in 2022 (the “combating misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation” phrase from Trump’s executive order references the board’s declared mission). Conservative factions capitalized on social media comments made by the board’s director, who resigned after receiving death threats. The board was quickly disbanded by DHS thereafter.

During his initial term, President Trump established a special prosecutor to investigate the origins of the FBI’s probe into potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian agents attempting to influence the 2016 election. Part of that investigation delved into evidence acquired by some of the world’s foremost cybersecurity experts who discovered frequent and unexplained interactions between an email server utilized by the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, one of Russia’s most prominent financial institutions.

Trump’s Special Prosecutor John Durham subsequently subpoenaed and/or deposed various security specialists who had gathered, reviewed, or merely commented on the data. Similar intimidation and deposition requests came from lawyers representing Alfa Bank. Ultimately, Durham indicted Michael Sussman, the former federal cybercrime prosecutor who alerted the FBI about the anomaly. Sussman was acquitted in May 2022. Recently, Trump appointed Durham to direct the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn, NY.

Quinta Jurecic at Lawfare observes that while the executive measures are foreboding, they are also ambiguous, and could possibly lead to either a campaign of retribution, or result in nothing at all.

“The two orders indicate that investigations will take place but remain unclear on the nature of these investigations, what will be scrutinized, how long the process will be, and what consequences may arise,” Jurecic articulated. “Drawing definitive conclusions about what to anticipate is quite challenging. Whether this uncertainty is deliberate or a byproduct of carelessness or internal discord within Trump’s team, it has at least one immediate benefit for the president: instilling fear among the vast array of potential subjects of these inquiries.”

On Friday, Trump initiated the dismissal of at least 17 inspectors general, government overseers who conduct audits and inquiries of executive branch actions, who often reveal instances of government mismanagement, fraud, and abuse. Lawfare’s Jack Goldsmith contends that the removals are likely legal even though Trump ignored a 2022 statute that mandated congressional notification of the dismissals, which he did not provide.

“Trump likely acted within the law, I think, as the notice requirement is probably unconstitutional,” Goldsmith expressed. “The real implications of the 2022 statute, however, lie in the constraints it imposes on Trump’s authority to replace the dismissed IGs—limitations I believe to be constitutional. This facet of the legislation will make it challenging, but not impossible, for Trump to appoint loyal supporters to the numerous vacant IG positions across the executive branch. The ultimate status of IG autonomy during Trump 2.0, however, depends less on legal safeguards and more on whether Congress, which typically defends IGs, will champion them now. Don’t hold your breath.”

Among the numerous executive orders from the Biden administration that President Trump overturned last week was a directive from December 2021 that established the United States Council on Transnational Organized Crime, which is tasked with advising the White House on a range of criminal activities such as drug and weapon trafficking, migrant smuggling, human trafficking, cybercrime, intellectual property infringement, money laundering, wildlife and timber smuggling, illegal fishing, and unlawful mining.

Up until now, the White House does not seem to have rescinded an executive order that former President Biden issued less than a week prior to President Trump taking office. On January 16, 2025, Biden unveiled a directive focused on enhancing the security of federal entities and contractors, and granting the government greater authority to sanction hackers who target critical infrastructure.