At its core, it is a bad to bet on the US state being run in a sophisticated way. It depends more on its position to exert leverage than on the smartest and best stratagems. The people “at the top” being incompetent (but still cynical) has happened many times.

Though it is an interesting question of what is going on in the intelligence blob. Sure, they havs their own batch of true believers that do not understand their actual role and what they do, but I have no doubts that those who are generally aware run the show. Does it mean they are on board with a surface-level restructuring and are betting on a different approach? Does it mean they plan to rein this in and we just haven’t noticed? Are they too distracted by the loyalty purge stuff for now and will be responding later?

In any case I am very entertained to see so many imperialist propagandists out of work. Watch where they go next. That might indicate the extent to which this is a restructuring rather than defunding. Moves to academia, social media companies, and brand new NGOs are the ones to look out for, IMO.