As I told the Washington Post, Musk is distorting and then weaponizing open spending data using social media, which Trump is then picking up and validating as “corruption.” This is what the Sunlight Foundation warned about in 2017, but on steroids. Authoritarian governments on the far-left (communism) and far-right (fascism) use weaponized transparency to intimidate civil society organizations and the press, create fear, uncertainty, and doubt, and cloud public understanding of public facts and policy outcomes. We defined weaponized transparency in 2017 as the use of data disclosure as a tool for division and public intimidation, rather than a means for achieving transparency and accountability. That holds up.In 2017, we observed that “the disclosures ordered by the Trump White House support a political and racial narrative advanced by an administration that has repeatedly dissembled about violence, fabricated narratives about vulnerable populations, and explicitly vowed to ban Muslims from entering the United States of America. Modern history has repeatedly demonstrated that vilifying vulnerable populations, racial minorities or minority religions has led to the worst chapters of our shared history.”This remains true.