When Microsoft Becomes Judge Dredd, Maybe Start Asking Questions

Every essay at The Fractured Line is free and always will be. Locking truth behind a paywall is how power wins.

Paid subscribers aren’t buying access. They’re funding the hours of research that keep the receipts coming. $6 a month keeps the lights on. $60 a year does the same and saves you some money. Founding members become the foundation on which we grow.

You know how sometimes I say I need to put my tinfoil hat on to start talking about a topic that I secretly know isn’t a conspiracy theory but because it hasn’t happened the way I said it will, I can’t call it fact?

This isn’t one of those times, unfortunately.

I want to explain what just happened and what the implications of it are, but before I can really explain what just happened in a way that you will see the same level of danger I do, I need to explain something else first.

Well, two things.

First, I need to address my biggest core belief that I hold. Corporations are the greatest evil and danger that has ever existed. They are the single driving cause of almost every conflict since the Civil War, and corporations are the reason that money is valued over people.

I don’t hedge on this. There are no good corporations. That’s right, even Newman’s Own can get it. I also want to be clear that I’m not talking about consumerism or business. I am talking about corporations. Faceless, soulless monsters that our Supreme Court says count as a person.

The second thing I need to make sure everyone is aware of is a document that was created on September 25th, 2025. It went by quietly and I don’t think I saw a single news outlet cover it. National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 is titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.”

It is an official directive signed by Donald ‘I’m a pedophile’ Trump that stated in no uncertain terms that he was reclassifying what is now considered a domestic terrorist. Now under NSPM-7, anyone who is anti-American, anti-capitalist, and anti-Christian is considered a terrorist. It also declared domestic terrorism beliefs to include support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.

This was used to create a joint task force of FBI, IRS, and other agencies to start to monitor and track anyone that Trump deemed to be a threat to his own authoritarian regime. That’s me. That’s you. Those of us who refuse to accept the death of the Constitution and refuse to bend the knee simply because a billionaire told us to are terrorists.

I wish I was being rhetorical.

The reason I want to make sure everyone understands what NSPM-7 is, is because it is incredibly important to understand how dangerous the most recent National Security Presidential Memorandum truly is.

“The NSPM directs the Homeland Security Task Force’s National Coordination Center to create a program to conduct cyber operations disrupting foreign TCOs, with two Executive Directors from DOJ and DHS, leveraging private sector capability under the direction, control, and authority of the US Government.”

That is the official description from the White House itself. That is how they are wording it in a way to make sure that there is no obvious malicious intent. Until you understand what they are stating they will now allow private companies to actually do.

“Cyber Surveillance Operations,” meaning unauthorized access to foreign systems to collect intelligence while staying undetected, and “Cyber Effects Operations,” meaning disruption or destruction of systems and data. For those of you like myself who are as computer illiterate as possible, the simple version is that now the state is going to allow private companies to hack and spy on foreign systems.

For a company to participate, they must submit $1 million in escrow that becomes forfeit if the rules are broken or not followed. I want you to remember this part. We will get back to it because it is the most sinister part.

Any company that unintentionally hits a US person or US-soil system must halt and notify the government immediately. A foreign group qualifies as a target unless clear intelligence establishes it is institutionally part of a state apparatus. Every operation requires written federal approval before anyone touches a keyboard.

The order bars operations causing loss of life or serious injury and prohibits targeting foreign governments. They are claiming that this is used to fight against cyber threats that are running ransomware, phishing, and sextortion campaigns against Americans from abroad.

The White House claims consumers reported losing more than $20.8 billion to cyber-enabled crime in 2025. What is important to know about that number is it is from the White House and I have not been able to independently verify it. I know this may come as a surprise, but the White House has frequently made up numbers and figures to justify the corruption.

What I did find was the 2024 report stated that the figure was over $12.5 billion, which means the White House number says that what we have lost is almost twice as much as we did under Biden. Even if we believe the White House number, it’s worth being outspoken that since Biden left office, Americans have been robbed and scammed out of almost double under the watchful eyes of the Trump administration.

This didn’t come out of the blue either. There had been speculation and talks about Trump allowing private companies to start this sort of operation. Back in March, Thomas Lind, then senior adviser at the Office of the National Cyber Director, told a conference the administration had no plans to authorize private offensive operations, and National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross said the same week that offensive campaigns weren’t what the administration meant when it asked industry for help.

Again, I know there are a large amount of my readers who are sitting there wondering what the fuck I’m talking about and why I’m telling people they need to be worried. Let me explain it in a simple way.

Have you ever seen RoboCop? In RoboCop the Detroit Police Department is run by a large corporation. This is kinda like that. Except instead of the corporations being allowed to buy police, they are being allowed to legally attack foreign countries and operatives. This isn’t them claiming they are trying to defend freedom or protect people. The sole purpose is to go on the offensive and attack.

Cybersecurity Dive calls it a dramatic expansion of the private sector’s role in offensive operations that significantly blurs the line between government foreign policy and business commercial activity.

Of course, the companies that will be profiting off of this program are the ones screaming from the top of the mountains about how good it is. These companies have been clear that they want to get started right away. They have already proposed operations against alleged criminal networks.

Anyone who has been paying attention should instantly see the red flag by companies already having proposals for operations against criminal networks. If these are foreign agents, then law enforcement needs to be the one making the case.

We are a country of laws. We believe in innocent until proven guilty. Our entire system of rules is based off the concept that it is the burden of proof to show you’re guilty, not to prove innocence. It is one of the greatest aspects of this country.

So how are companies being given the gavel? When did we decide as a country that Microsoft gets to be Judge Dredd?

As far as the way this will be monitored and enforced? They built the entire program so that companies can break the rules and ask forgiveness afterwards. In fact, that is the entire process. Remember that $1 million in escrow? Firms must post at least $1 million in escrow, forfeited if they break the program’s rules. Think about what that actually says. You don’t build a penalty system for a rule you expect people to follow. You don’t make people pay a consequence before the punishment. You build it in because you expect people to break the rules, and you price the cost of silence in advance.

It isn’t a “Don’t break the rules” and instead it is more “if you break the rules this is the sticker price.”

It gets worse too. There’s no notice of being designated a target, no prevention, and no way to know it happened. One expert noted the design incentivizes participants to know as little as possible so operations can be authorized, and raised the ethical problem directly: you can’t attack somebody and then say it’s their fault they didn’t notify you they didn’t want to be attacked.

One expert sketched the scenario where a company hacks a target, the target reveals itself as a state actor, and operations must stop, meaning adversaries effectively decide when American firms can and can’t hack. A former Bush-era homeland security official said anything these actors do overseas will assuredly violate the domestic law of the countries where they operate, because the internet isn’t bounded by sovereign borders the way physical space is.

That is a Bush-era guy. You know, the people who destroyed the 4th Amendment, saying that this is a bad idea. When Freddy Krueger tells you that you are too vicious, you gotta listen.

Let me be clear, the NSPM states that they are not allowed to go after Americans or attack on American soil. That is a clear rule. The same rule created by the agency that is responsible for the death of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. The same administration that promised the American people that ICE is there to protect and save people. The same administration that rewrote the rules after they broke them.

Unlike most of the time I talk about something that is happening, I don’t have an answer for how to stop it. This isn’t one of those times. In fact, there is an actual way to end this horrific NSPM from causing untold levels of damage. Article I, Section 8 gives Congress, not the President, the power to grant letters of marque and reprisal.

The Scam Farms Marque and Reprisal Authorization Act of 2025 would at least put the commissioning power where the Constitution puts it. Legal analysts note a memorandum cannot rewrite criminal statutes and the path forward likely requires Congress to pass enabling legislation or agencies to issue shielding regulations.

I understand the need for a better way to counteract the damages being done. There is no denial that AI-driven cyberattacks have been on the rise. Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, and the UK’s AI Safety Institute are all reporting frontier models breaking containment to carry out attacks. This is becoming a problem and it is dangerous.

The answer isn’t RoboCop, it’s real cops. The answer to these machine crimes isn’t to deputize the most corrupt person as the new sheriff.

When you allow the criminals to enforce the law, those who are law-abiding end up being victims. Congress needs to step up.

Stay loud, stay informed, stay dangerous.

-Nicholas J. Orcutt

You just read something power didn’t want written.

No outlet assigned this story. No editor approved a budget for it. It exists because readers fund an independent operation with no paywall, no owner, and no one to answer to but you.

My readers have built this into one of the top politics publications on Substack. Not because of me. Because enough people decided that receipts without a paywall should exist, and put money behind that decision.

Passing through? A one-time tip funds the work with no subscription and no follow-up.

Buy me a Coffee

Every essay stays free either way. But understand what free costs. The stories that don’t get funded don’t get told. That silence is the product power is counting on.

Truth dies in silence. Spread the information.

Share