As Tesla boss Elon Musk leads federal cost-cutting efforts, his auto company has drawn the ire of frustrated Americans who have taken things out on his cars, buildings, electric vehicle chargers and everything else that carries a Tesla logo.
President Donald Trump has gone to lengths to protect Musk as the Department of Government Efficiency works to reshape the federal workforce to Trump’s specifications.
This week, the nation’s top prosecutor put vandals and others on notice. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said the Justice Department will investigate the spate of recent attacks on Tesla property. She called the attacks on Tesla “domestic terrorism.”
“The swarm of violent attacks on Tesla property is nothing short of domestic terrorism,” she said. “The Department of Justice has already charged several perpetrators with that in mind, including in cases that involve charges with five-year mandatory minimum sentences.”
Bondi also hinted at organizers behind the attacks.
“We will continue investigations that impose severe consequences on those involved in these attacks, including those operating behind the scenes to coordinate and fund these crimes,” she said.
Since Musk took up the top cost-cutting position in Trump’s government, his Tesla electric vehicles have become a target for vandals of all stripes. Some have graffitied their feelings about Musk on Tesla vehicle chargers. Other have gone after the cars with keys or other forms of vandalism. The same goes for dealerships, car lots and showrooms. No injuries have been reported during the attacks.
Trump is keenly aware of the problem. He recently invited a parade of Tesla vehicles to the White House for some personal car shopping. The president even invited reporters along for the spectacle.
The violence and vandalism come as Trump looks to reduce the footprint of the federal government. Trump, with help from Musk and his team, has virtually shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development. Trump has also taken steps to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education and other agencies that don’t align with his spending plans.
DOGE, with help from Trump’s cabinet, has directed cuts at agencies across the federal government.
Trump has promised to cut “hundreds of billions” in federal spending in 2025 through the reconciliation process. Musk initially suggested DOGE could cut $2 trillion in spending. Musk more recently said the group will aim for $2 trillion, but likely come up with half that amount.
Congress has run a deficit every year since 2001. In the past 50 years, the federal government has ended with a fiscal year-end budget surplus four times, most recently in 2001.
Todayville is a digital media and technology company. We profile unique stories and events in our community. Register and promote your community event for free.
With 30 nations enrolled, the UN and Gates Foundation’s digital ID campaign signals accelerating efforts to create a global digital infrastructure that centralizes identity and data.
The 50-in-5 campaign to accelerate digital ID, fast payment systems, and data exchanges in 50 countries by 2028 reaches a 30 country milestone.
DPI is a civic technology stack consisting of three major components: digital ID, fast payment systems, and massive data sharing between public and private entities.
30 countries have now joined the UN/Gates 50-in-5 DPI campaign to rollout Digital ID, Fast Payment Systems & Massive Data Exchanges between public & private entities https://t.co/dOYCfQHObtpic.twitter.com/yP6V7zxnUD
50-in-5 started with 11 first-mover countries, and with the count now at 30 the participating countries include:
Bangladesh, Brazil, Cambodia, Dominican Republic, Estonia, Ethiopia, France, Guatemala, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Lesotho, Malawi, Mexico, Moldova, Nigeria, Norway, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Sri Lanka, South Africa, South Sudan, Somalia, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, Ukraine, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, and Zambia.
The 50-in-5 campaign celebrated its 30-country milestone during a sideline event at the U.N. General Assembly in New York on September 22.
There, government officials, like Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, praised the work of 50-in-5 while the ministers of digital economy from Nigeria and Togo called for an interoperable digital identity system for the entire African continent.
Nigeria’s Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy Bosun Tijani said that each country could build their own digital identity scheme, but that they should all be interoperable with one another – demonstrating both the digital ID and data sharing as good potential use cases for DPI.
“Nations want to maintain their own ID databases, but I think we have a unique opportunity to apply strong data exchange system interoperability,” said Tijani.
“I think a digital identity system that can go with you wherever you are going on the African continent would be a fantastic example,” he added.
Nigeria's minister of Communications, Innovation & Digital Economy Bosun Tijani calls for Digital ID to be interoperable across all Africa: "A digital identity system that can go with you wherever you go on the African continent will be fantastic." 50-in-5 https://t.co/dOYCfQHObtpic.twitter.com/KB380uQrmd
In March 2025, the Nigerian government published a framework to develop national Digital Public Infrastructure that would leverage digital ID to track and trace “key life events” of every citizen from the cradle to the grave.
“Throughout a citizen’s life, from birth to old age, there are marked moments of significant life events requiring support or service from the government,” the paper begins.
“Some of these services include registration of births, antenatal healthcare, vaccines, school enrollment, scholarships, health insurance for business registrations, filing of taxes, etc.”
These “life events” require every citizen to have a digital ID:
The Federal Government of Nigeria is on a mission to appropriately deploy digital technology to support Nigerians through these significant and profound moments so they can integrate into the state and enjoy the benefits of citizenhood from cradle to old age.
Back at the 50-in-5 milestone event, Togo’s Minister of Digital Economy and Transformation Cina Lawson called for a free, cross-border, interoperable digital ID powered by the Modular Open Source Identity Platform (MOSIP).
MOSIP is a Gates-funded platform that “helps govts & other user organizations implement a digital, foundational identity system.”
Said Lawson, “We’ve initiated conversations with our neighbors, namely Benin, to have interoperability of our ID systems, but also Burkina Faso and other countries such as Senegal, because we’re using MOSIP platform, so what we do is that we host meetings of countries that are interested the platform, so that we could see how we [are] operating it and so on.”
“Our ID system, using the MOSIP platform, is really the ID that the majority of the Togolese will have because first of all it’s free, it doesn’t require to show proof of citizenship, and so on, so that is the ID card of the poorest of the Togolese,” she added.
Togo’s Minister of Digital Economy & Transformation Cina Lawson calls for free, cross-border, interoperable Digital ID using Gates-funded MOSIP platform. UN/Gates 50-in-5 event https://t.co/dOYCfQHObtpic.twitter.com/wPC4vpms9l
Lawson also spoke at the 50-in-5 launch event in November 2023, where she explained that Togo’s DPI journey began with the arrival of COVID-19.
First, the government set up a digital payments system within 10 days.
“We deployed it, and we were able to pay out 25 percent of all Togolese adults, and we distributed $34 million that the most vulnerable Togolese received directly through their mobile phones,” said Lawson.
Then, came vaccine passports.
“We created a digital COVID certificate. All of a sudden, the fight against the pandemic became really about using digital tools to be more effective,” she added at the time.
Today, Togo became the first sub-Saharan African country whose digital COVID-19 vaccination certificate is recognized by the @eu_commission. Travelers with a Togolese certificate will be able to validly present it in the EU & vice versa. @AmbUETogo@KoenDoenspic.twitter.com/Uy9mRF8bkU
To get an idea where DPI is heading, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Myhailo Fedorov gave a pre-recorded speech for the 50-in-5 milestone event, saying that his country was successful in building “the state in a smartphone” via the DIIA app, which had reached 23 million users.
“For every citizen, government should be simple, convenient, nearly invisible, and accessible in just a few clicks,” said Fedorov.
“Today, 23 million people use the DIIA app […] Since the launch of DIIA in 2020, Ukrainians and the state have saved about $4.5 billion to date.”
“This is the combined anti-corruption and economic effect of digitalizing services.”
“For us, it’s powerful proof of DIIA’s efficiency and the real impact of building a digital state,” he added.
Ukraine Deputy PM Mykhailo Fedorov praises DIIA Digital ID app, with 23M users, for being a "STATE IN A SMARTPHONE" & "BUILDING AN (INVISIBLE) DIGITAL STATE." An "ANTI-CORRUPTION/ECONOMIC EFFECT OF DIGITALIZING SERVICES." Includes "ONLINE MARRIAGE" 50-in-5 https://t.co/dOYCfQHObtpic.twitter.com/MUFwbW4Yyy
Speaking at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Technology Governance Summit on April 7, 2021, Fedorov told the panelists of the “Scaling Up Digital Identity Systems” session, that it was Ukraine’s goal to “enable all life situations with this digital ID.”
“The pandemic has accelerated our progress […] People have no choice but to trust technology,” Fedorov said at the time.
“We have to make a product that is so convenient that a person will be able to disrupt their stereotypes, to break through from their fears, and start using a government-made application,” he added.
The 50-in-5 campaign is a collaboration between the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Nations Development Program, the Digital Public Goods Alliance, the Center for Digital Public Infrastructure, and Co-Develop; with support from GovStack, the Inter-American Development Bank, and UNICEF.
The Digital Public Goods Alliance lists both the Gates and Rockefeller foundations in its roadmap showcasing “activities that advance digital public goods,” along with other organizations and several governments.
In a statement issued late Sunday, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said it had taken the “highly exceptional” decision to invoke the Goods Availability Act on September 30. The move followed “recent and acute signals” of such “significant scale and urgency” involving “serious governance shortcomings and actions within Nexperia” that Minister Vincent Karremans was compelled to intervene.
“The decision aims to prevent a situation in which the goods produced by Nexperia would become unavailable in an emergency,” the ministry said.
“These signals posed a threat to the continuity and safeguarding on Dutch and European soil of crucial technological knowledge and capabilities. Losing these capabilities could pose a risk to Dutch and European economic security.”
It is not known what specific information Dutch authorities gathered on Nexperia executive Zhang Xuezheng, who has been suspended from all management and board positions, but the move, approved by the Amsterdam Court of Appeal, has the hallmarks of a national security alert deemed severe by Dutch lawmakers.
Nexperia, headquartered in Nijmegen, produces semiconductors used widely in the European automotive industry and consumer electronics and is a key link in the continent’s industrial supply chain. The government said normal production will continue, but Karremans now has powers to block or reverse company decisions that could harm national or European interests.
The ministry’s order bars Nexperia and all its global subsidiaries, branches, and offices from making any adjustments to their assets, intellectual property, business operations, or personnel for one year.
Nexperia’s Chinese parent company, Wingtech Technology Co., a Shanghai-listed conglomerate placed on the U.S. Commerce Department’s Entity List in 2023, denounced the Dutch move, saying it “constitutes an act of excessive interference driven by geopolitical bias, not by fact-based risk assessment.” Wingtech said the measure “gravely contravenes the European Union’s long-standing advocacy for market-economy principles, fair competition, and international trade norms,” and “strongly” protested “discriminatory treatment toward a Chinese-owned enterprise.”
Wingtech disclosed to the Shanghai Stock Exchange that it had been notified of the Dutch order on September 30, but the government did not make the intervention public until October 12.
The Dutch government’s action marks the first time the Netherlands has used its emergency powers to seize control of Chinese-state linked company — an escalation that mirrors Washington’s strategic-industrial posture and signals Europe’s entry into a new era of techno-sovereignty.
In Britain, Nexperia’s ownership structure had already triggered alarm. In 2021, the company’s acquisition of Newport Wafer Fab, the UK’s largest semiconductor plant, was blocked by the Conservative government over national-security fears. The UK later ordered Nexperia to divest most of its stake under the National Security and Investment Act in 2022.
The controversy resurfaced this year amid the collapse of a high-profile espionage prosecution under Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government. The Mail on Sunday reported, citing an unidentified source, that Christopher Berry—one of two men previously charged with spying for China—“sent details of the row within government on the Newport Wafer Fab semiconductor factory, which was initially sold to Nexperia but later blocked by the Conservative government over national-security fears.”
The Netherlands’ intervention follows escalating moves by allied governments to tighten control over critical-tech supply chains. Just days earlier, Beijing imposed sweeping export restrictions on rare-earth minerals, essential for cars, wind turbines, and electronics, citing “national security” grounds — mirroring Western justifications for semiconductor controls. The action drew a strong counter-threat from U.S. President Donald Trump, who warned that Washington could impose 100 percent additional tariffs on all Chinese goods if Beijing “weaponizes its mineral dominance.”
A semi-detente appeared to emerge after Trump’s weekend remarks suggesting a pause in escalation. But the Dutch government’s unilateral action underscores a global race to secure access to critical industrial components amid fears of spreading conflict in Europe and rising tensions in Asia.
The Bureau is a reader-supported publication.
To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
