Three years ago, German historian and data scientist Sebastian Majstorovic began a stunning rescue mission. After Russia invaded Ukraine, he jointly established a 1,000-person nerd network (two-thirds of them) to save Ukraine’s digital record.
Majstorovic is a Bosnian heritage, inspired in part by Sarajevo citizens who bravely rescued books from gunfire when they were burned in 1992. “Records matter,” he told me. “They shouldn’t be destroyed.”
very good. Now, in the United States, he smashed the script for an unexpected new mission. Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, his administration has launched a startling attack on parts of the U.S. statistical basis by cutting budgets, negligence, cultural wars, and more.
Majstorovic has co-founded a data rescue project to work with other networks, such as the Research Data Access and Save Association, to save the information. "The United States (volunteers) have helped us in Ukraine before, so it's my responsibility to return to this favor," he explained.
This is an ironic historical twist. In the late 20th century, the U.S. government often praised the importance of having a credible, transparent statistical ecosystem in maintaining civic values (including democracy), preventing authoritarianism, and the underlying commerce and capital markets.
But during Trump's tenure, his team undermined the independence of the Census Bureau - frightening some administration officials. The attack is almost the same: In recent months, data on issues ranging from the census to 199 to climate trends have disappeared completely or temporarily or partially covered up.
Cutting money further undermined data collection on labor markets and inflation, which raised alarms from Wall Street economists and statisticians. Meanwhile, Trump’s “Big and Beautiful” bill has proposed budget cuts that could shatter (if not shut down) the Office of Financial Reporting, an institution created after the 2008 financial crisis to track stable risks. This, in turn, could accidentally undermine the so-called SOFR index, which replaces Libor as a loan benchmark.
Why? The problem is that it sparks heated debate and conspiracy theories. Trump officials told me they want to reform the data ecosystem to adapt to a rapidly changing world. It's not a crazy idea: American statistics have shortcomings, as it is illustrated in a powerful book, Bad situation in the United Statesfrom Gene Ludwig, a former senior financial regulator, Progress metrics From economist Diane Coyle.
But it seems that there is a lack of any reform strategy. The only unified function seems to be a symbol of Modor's hatred, such as climate change or diversity.
So, rightly or wrongly, many statisticians blame so-called weird sabotagers of government efficiency sectors on clumsy sabotage, and even some Trump advisers’ desire to smash civil society. Some are also concerned that private sector tech elites want data in their hands, although there is no definite evidence. But the latest reports on the White House’s increased use of government work, or the efforts of Elon Musk’s team to download treasury data have raised such concerns.
Either way, it is obvious that if data is compromised, it will destroy not only science and civic life, but also business. For example, destroying weather is a very bad idea when hurricane season approaches or as financial stability risks increase.
As a result, Majstorovic and hundreds of others are accepted by both inside and outside the United States. Their grassroots network of volunteers began spontaneously capturing threatened data this spring. Now, they are trying to coordinate efforts to create a “shadow” or “mirror” database of historical series to preserve them.
Their data rescue tracker shows that threatened series related to the Centers for Disease Control, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Hurricane Center, the Bureau of Geological Survey and the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection has become a publicly available "shadow" series. More work is underway.
This is not a magic wand against deliberate destruction: some data is missing and the network's resources are limited. Majstorovic is currently raising funds to rent enough cloud storage to download datasets from various institutions that have not been retained because of their huge scale.
But no matter how imperfect it is, this effort is important. One reason is that the United States needs good statistics, because I really hope that the Trump team will eventually recognize it. Indeed, there has been a slight policy shift recently: Some patent data that cut budgets earlier this year were temporarily rejected after the protests, said Cornell Professor Matt Marx.
Another reason it is important, though, is that it shows people fighting quietly inside and outside the United States to defend core civic values. "We're talking more than just wailing - choose something related to your skills," said one scientist. Hooray is a hero, (mostly) a hidden nerd.
gillian.tett@ft.com