National Security & Power
NewsOnScale Staff
October 26, 2026
On October 25, 2026 the Pentagon announced FORTRESS America — an initiative requiring every major US military base to operate independently for 90 days without civilian electricity, water, fuel, or communications.
The official explanation is preparation for a major war that could cripple the power grid and disrupt global supply chains.
The official explanation deserves scrutiny.
What FORTRESS actually prepares for
A 90-day military self-sufficiency requirement is not hurricane preparedness. It is not climate resilience planning. It is preparation for a scenario in which civilian infrastructure across the continental United States fails simultaneously for three months — and the military needs to remain operational while it does.
The scenarios that produce simultaneous 90-day failures of power, water, fuel, and communications across the continental United States are limited. A nuclear exchange. A coordinated attack on critical infrastructure by a peer adversary. Or a domestic infrastructure failure of sufficient scale that the civilian population loses access to the systems it depends on to function.
The Pentagon is preparing for one of these. Likely more than one.
What has received less attention is what happens to the 330 million Americans outside those military bases during those 90 days. The bases will have power, water, fuel, and communications. The civilian population will not. The people with guns and resources will be operational. The people without them will be dependent.
Dependent on whoever controls the infrastructure that comes back online.
The data that was already collected
Before any infrastructure failure happens, before any grid goes down, before any crisis requires a rebuild — the data needed to run the replacement systems was already collected.
DOGE accessed Treasury Department payment systems, Social Security Administration records, IRS tax data, Veterans Affairs databases, Department of Education systems, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Office of Personnel Management — which holds security clearance files and personnel records for every person who has ever held a federal job.
DOGE staffers simultaneously employed at Elon Musk's companies copied federal data to private servers. A DOGE staffer ran federal data through Musk's own xAI Grok-2 AI model on his personal website. SpaceX employees had government email addresses at the FAA.
DOGE dissolved on July 4, 2026. The data did not dissolve with it.
The Government Accountability Office tried to determine where the data went. Six agencies withheld records. Two challenged the investigation's authority. The full accounting has never been completed.
The replacement infrastructure already being built
When civilian infrastructure fails and needs to be rebuilt, the new systems require data to function. Payment systems need to know who to pay and how much. Identity verification systems need to know who people are. Benefits distribution needs records. Communications infrastructure needs network architecture.
All of it requires the data that was in the federal databases DOGE accessed.
Consider who controls the infrastructure components of a rebuilt system:
Starlink — Elon Musk's satellite internet constellation — is the only communications infrastructure that functions when terrestrial internet and cellular networks go down. It is already deployed globally. It already has government contracts. When the civilian communications grid fails Starlink is the backup.
xAI — Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company — has been fed federal data through DOGE operations. An AI trained on Social Security records, IRS tax data, Treasury payment systems, and OPM security clearance files would have an understanding of American financial behavior, demographic patterns, and personal histories at a scale no private company has ever achieved. That AI becomes the processing layer for any rebuilt federal data system.
Oracle — Larry Ellison's company — holds the government data contracts for federal agencies. Ellison has publicly called for AI cameras to record every American citizen at all times and stated that citizens will be on their best behavior because they are constantly being watched. Oracle already has the government relationships to become the infrastructure backbone of a rebuilt system.
Palantir — Peter Thiel's company, built with CIA seed money, with the CIA as its only customer for three years — holds a $10 billion Army contract and provides the surveillance and data analytics infrastructure for military and law enforcement operations. In a post-crisis environment requiring rapid identification and tracking of the population Palantir's systems are already deployed and ready.
One man — Elon Musk — controls Starlink for communications, xAI for data processing, SpaceX for logistics and infrastructure, and X for information distribution. He directed the operation that collected the federal data. His companies employed the staffers who accessed and copied it. He holds billions in government defense contracts. He has a formal government role.
The scenario that doesn't require a foreign enemy
The most convenient infrastructure failure is one that has no clear author. Not a Chinese missile. Not a Russian cyberattack that can be definitively attributed. A failure that can be blamed on AI systems, on aging infrastructure, on a Silicon Valley security collapse, on climate events — anything that produces the crisis without producing a foreign enemy to hold accountable.
A crisis with no foreign enemy to unite against produces something more useful than a war: emergency powers.
Emergency powers suspend normal democratic processes. Emergency powers allow the executive branch to act without congressional authorization. Emergency powers allow the deployment of military assets on domestic soil. Emergency powers allow the suspension of elections — not permanently, just temporarily, just until the crisis is resolved, just until the new infrastructure is operational.
The new infrastructure that happens to run on the data DOGE collected and the systems one man controls.
What Larry Ellison said out loud
At Oracle's financial analyst meeting in 2024 Ellison described his vision: "Citizens will be on their best behavior because we're constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on. The cars have cameras on them. We're using AI to monitor the video. It's all done autonomously with AI."
He was not describing a foreign country. He was describing America.
He was not describing a distant future. He was describing infrastructure Oracle is actively building and selling to government agencies today.
The man who owns 98% of a Hawaiian island where 3,000 Americans live in total economic dependence on one person is describing a national version of that island. One where the infrastructure — communications, payments, identity, surveillance — is controlled by a small group of interconnected people who share boards, share investors, share government contracts, and share a common interest in the conditions that keep them at the top.
The Chinese model, applied domestically
China does not control its citizens with tanks. It controls the infrastructure they depend on. WeChat for communications. Alibaba for commerce. Baidu for information. The social credit system for behavioral compliance. The party controls all of them.
You do not need a Communist Party when you have Starlink for communications, xAI for data processing, Oracle for government systems, Palantir for surveillance, and X for information distribution. You do not need to seize power through revolution when you can acquire it gradually — database by database, contract by contract, infrastructure component by infrastructure component — until the replacement system is ready and the old one can be allowed to fail.
DOGE collected the data. FORTRESS prepares the military to survive the transition. The replacement infrastructure is already being built by the people who directed the data collection.
What the founders designed to prevent this
The founders of this republic designed a Constitution specifically to prevent the concentration of infrastructure control in the hands of a small group of private individuals. Separation of powers. Checks and balances. Antitrust law. A free press. Equal protection.
All of it has been systematically dismantled — acquisition by acquisition, contract by contract, revolving door appointment by revolving door appointment — while the public was told it was efficiency, innovation, and progress.
The FORTRESS initiative is not preparation for a foreign war.
It is preparation for the 90 days when the old infrastructure fails and the new one comes online.
The question is who controls the new one.
The answer is already visible to anyone willing to look.
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