
This brings back memories
When Trump started his first term in 2017 I remember a mad scramble to save gigantic sets of climate data by copying it outside US territory because the new administration wanted to destroy evidence of climate change.
That Trump 2 has been so much quicker off the mark when it comes to removing data suggest that they have learned from that first attempt. One would hope that the people who maintain this and other important data have also learned from that previous attempt and have safeguarded the information before he took office. This time it appears the regime is not just after data, though, but also after the people that work in a whole range of science and research. The level of attacks on entire institutions is more severe than I had anticipated.
Over at TechDirt they are calling Musk's grab (copying instead of deleting) of government data a Cyberattack. I hadn't thought of it that way but they have a point.