She doesn’t slam a door or call a press conference. She simply returns her badge, sends a single-sentence email, and carries a cardboard box past security as if it were any other Tuesday. The agency she leaves behind is hollower: civil rights attorneys reassigned or retired, privacy specialists replaced by “liaisons,” and a quiet new directive that treating financial data as sacred is now “out of scope.” The people who once pushed back have either signed, compromised, or disappeared.

In the vacuum, a different architecture of power settles in. Tech teams funded by billionaires map the flow of “magic money” through opaque networks, while elected officials nod along to briefings they barely understand. The law still says one thing; the systems now do another. For those still inside, loyalty becomes indistinguishable from complicity. For those who walk out, the only protest left is the empty chair with their nameplate gone.