Trump scrambles as cybersecurity experts warn fed purge undermines US threat capabilities

The Trump administration is revising its hiring policies just a year after a massive purge of federal employees.

Prior job cuts have, in the words of some cybersecurity experts, "undermined" U.S. threat capabilities, according to a report in The Washington Post.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), responsible for defending domestic infrastructure against cyberattacks, was particularly gutted by the loss of 40 p ercent of its workforce in last year's government purges. That loss of personnel has created “operational blind spots,” the Post reports.

“With the loss of hundreds of experts, CISA’s ability to detect threats from the most significant adversary, China, as well as others like Russia and Iran, is severely diminished, and now is not the time for the U.S. to let down its guard,” said a former agency official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution.

CISA did not respond to a request for comment about the shortages.

“We probably have some skills that we now need to hire back, quite frankly,” Scott Kupor, the head of the Office of Personnel Management, said to the Washington Post. “There’s no question anytime you do restructurings … sometimes you over-restructure, sometimes you under-restructure.”

This new hiring push comes with newly created job classifications that make hiring and firing easier, the Post reports. The administration is now focused on becoming a “launchpad” for college graduates and early-career professionals in health care, program management and technology roles.

Supporters claim the moves will make government more responsive to elected leadership. The concept centralizes hiring decisions and expands political appointee input.

Critics claim that the civil service’s historic nonpartisanship is threatened, particularly as diversity initiatives are rolled back.

Despite the hiring push, those who were cut are not welcome to return, the Post reports, citing an internal memo it obtained. This is done “to avoid the risk of impaired objectivity — a conflict of interest that occurs when former personnel are tasked with auditing, closing, or settling actions they may have previously initiated or overseen.”

Senior White House officials have been personally involved in shaping the rebuild, the Post reports. Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has been active in hiring discussions, according to two people familiar. “The president has certain priorities in the administration, and when we decide to actually exercise and do those priorities, people may call that political,” Kupor said. “But to me, that’s the way the process was designed.”

The new hiring push will still leave government employment far below prior levels before Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative took an axe to staffing and eliminated entire agencies. To date, despite claims that the cuts would trim a bloated bureaucracy and reduce the national debt, “... the government spent more in 2025 than it had the previous year."

The Post reports that Trump’s administration fired, laid off or accepted buyouts from more than 387,000 employees since the president’s inauguration. That was countered by the hiring of roughly 123,000 workers, according to the Office of Personnel Management.

Kupor said there are more “opportunities to reshape” agencies this year, suggesting additional staff reductions could come in some departments, but declined specifics.

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