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Three years ago, Sebastian Majstorovic, a German historian and scientific data, embarked on a striking rescue mission. After Russia has invaded Ukraine, he co -created a network of 1,000 colleagues from Nerds – two American thirds – to save the digital files of Ukraine.
Majstorovic, which is Bosnian heritage, was partly inspired by the way in which the citizens of Sarajevo courageously saved books, under gunshots, from their national library when it was burned in 1992. “The recordings count,” he told me. “They shouldn’t be destroyed.”
Quite. And now he has dusted this game book for a new unexpected mission – in the United States. Since the inauguration of President Donald Trump, his administration has sparked a surprising assault against certain parts of the American statistical base, by budget cuts, negligence, cultural wars and more.
Majstorovic co -founded the data rescue project to work with other networks such as the Research Data Access and Presenation Association in order to save this information. “American [volunteers] We have already helped us with Ukraine, so I feel the duty to return the same, ”he explains.
It is an ironic historical turn. At the end of the 20th century, the American government frequently praised the importance of having a credible and transparent statistical ecosystem to maintain civic values (including democracy), protect against authoritarianism and underlie trade and capital markets.
But during Trump’s first term, his team has undermined the independence of the census office – horribly certain representatives of the government. This time, the assault is much worse: in recent months, data on questions ranging from census to COVID-19 to climatic trends, have completely or temporarily disappeared or were partially obscured.
Funding reductions also undermine data collection on labor markets and inflation, which has made the alarm of economists and statisticians of Wall Street. Meanwhile, the “big and beautiful” Trump bill presents proposed budget cuts which could break – if not the shutter – the financial report office, an agency created after the financial crisis of 2008 to follow the risks of stability. This could in turn accidentally sabotage the so-called SFR index which replaced Libor as a loan reference.
And why? The question is to arouse a heated debate – and conspiracy theories. Trump officials tell me that they want to reform data ecosystem to adapt to a rapidly evolving world. It is not a crazy idea: America’s statistics have gaps, as in a powerful book to come, Poor transmission of Americaof Gene Ludwig, a former high -level financial regulator, and The measurement of progress of economist Diane Coyle.
But what is depressing is the apparent absence of any reform strategy; The only unifying characteristic seems to be a purge of symbols hated by Maga law, such as climate change or diversity.
Thus, rightly or wrongly, many statisticians blame clumsy vandalism by the so-called Ministry of Government efficiency, or even the desire of certain advisers from Trump to crush civic society. Some also fear that the technological elites of the private sector want data in their hands, although there is no tangible evidence of this. However, recent reports on the increased use of palantants by the White House for the government’s work, or the efforts of the Elon Musk team to download the data from the Treasury, fueled such fears.
Anyway, it is clear that if the data is altered, it would not only undermine science and civic life but also trade. It is an extraordinarily bad idea to undermine, say, the department following the weather as the hurricanes season approaches, or to undo the OFF as the risks of financial stability increase.
Hence the mission embraced by Majstorovic and hundreds of others, inside and outside America. Their volunteer population has started to spontaneously capture threatened data this spring. Now they are trying to coordinate their efforts to create “shadow” or “mirror” databases of historical series and preserve them.
Their data rescue tracker shows that endangered series linked to Centers for Disease Control, Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Hurricane Center, Geological Survey and Consumer Finance Protection Bureau have already been transformed into a “Shadow” series accessible to the public. The work is underway on many others.
It is not a magic wand against vandalism: some data is missing and network resources are limited. Majstorovic is currently collected in fundraising to rent enough cloud storage to download data sets from various agencies, which have not yet been kept due to their enormous size.
But, also imperfect, such efforts are important. One of the reasons is that the United States needs good statistics – as I hope that the Trump team will eventually recognize. Indeed, tiny policy changes have recently taken place: certain patent data threatened by budget cuts earlier this year have been temporarily represented as a result of demonstrations, Matt Marx, Professor Cornell.
The other reason for which it matters, however, is that it shows people who are quietly fighting to defend basic civic values, inside and outside America. “We say that don’t moan only – choose something to do with your skills,” said a scientist. Hourra for heroic Nerds, (especially) hidden.
gillian.tett@ft.com
