USDA admits DOGE layoffs have made federal AI human oversight "unsustainable"

USDA senior IT official Rudolf Rojas said at the FedInsider Innovation Summit that years of DOGE-led budget and staffing cuts have left the agency unable to maintain meaningful human sign-off on AI outputs, just one month after the compliance deadline (September 22, 2026) of OMB M-25-21 for implementing risk management requirements such as human oversight for high-impact AI. As of April 2026, 56 federal agencies had reported a total of 445 high-impact AI use cases; a May 2026 inspection by the USDA Inspector General found that the agency had almost no AI use cases that had obtained authorization to operate, and also lacked a generative AI policy. Rojas advocated replacing human review with zero-trust principles and least-privilege AI agents; the report's analysis points out that zero trust only governs identity and access and cannot determine whether AI outputs are correct and lawful, and cites a 2026 analysis stating that 1000 AI agents generate about 7.4 million authentication events per day, 148 times that of equivalent human labor.