DOGE's Efficiency Play Is Becoming a glorified College Internship

I've seen enough 'disruptive' plays in the web3 space to know when a project is pivoting from a serious mission to a resume-padding exercise. Now, we're seeing that same energy migrate to the federal government via the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

As Wired first reported, documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the nonprofit legal organization Democracy Forward reveal that Christopher Sweet, a DOGE affiliate, attempted to frame his government work as an independent study for college credit. Sweet, who was an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, was stationed at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) starting in the spring of 2025.

Sweet wasn't there to learn the ropes of bureaucracy; he was there to build 'SweetRex,' an AI tool designed to crawl through HUD's rules and regulations to flag them for contract cancellation or rescission. Wired reports that the intention was to roll this tool out across the entire federal government.

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**Nate's Take: Opinion**

There is something profoundly cynical about treating the dismantling of federal oversight as a three-credit elective. When the 'efficiency' play involves undergraduates using the government as a laboratory for their thesis, we aren't talking about optimization—we're talking about a playground. The idea that a student can automate the rescission of regulations affecting millions of citizens while simultaneously worrying about his GPA is the peak of the 'move fast and break things' delusion applied to public policy.

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The documents, shared in emails from another DOGE affiliate at HUD named Scott Langmack, show a framework to secure credits for four specific courses: 'Applied Data Science for Federal Regulatory Analysis,' 'Computer Programming for Scalable Al-Legal Systems,' 'Legislative & Regulatory Authority in AI-Driven Reform,' and 'Advanced AI Prompt Engineering for Legal Reasoning.' This academic track was intended to culminate in a thesis regarding the use of AI and data science to rationalize outdated federal regulations.

In a particularly telling detail reported by Wired, an August 27, 2025, email shows Langmack telling Sweet that he used ChatGPT to create the outline for the university's approval. While the documents claim the work was 'graduate-level, multi-disciplinary research' producing real-world outputs, the process behind the paperwork appears to have been as automated as the tool Sweet was building.

Langmack, who joined HUD with no prior federal government experience, previously worked at the property tech firm Kukun. His LinkedIn profile indicates that he currently holds the position of executive director of deregulation AI at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Daniel McGrath, special counsel for oversight at Democracy Forward, told Wired that the situation raises serious concerns regarding unqualified employees handling legal work and rewriting regulations. McGrath characterized the effort as part of the Trump-Vance administration's pursuit to cripple federal government operations.

Wired confirmed that Sweet graduated from the University of Chicago this June with an economics degree, though it remains unclear if the DOGE credits were officially granted. Both HUD and the University of Chicago declined to comment.