I'm pro-automation for all jobs, and IRS workers are no exception. If you can automate these jobs, that's great. But whoever is in charge of this is either unintelligent or inexperienced.
In the past when a customer and I automated a job, we did things in a special order that I think would surprise the hell out of Bessent. My big trade secret (should I be leaking this?!) is this:
First, you think about how to do the job. Then you think about what the code should do. Then you write the code, test it, and then have a little trial in production, and see how it goes. Eventually you gain confidence and then finally .. how about that, my customer just removed those positions.
Notice how the word "think" appeared a lot at the beginning of the above schedule, and getting rid of the humans who made sure the job was getting done, came at the very end? My proprietary ordering of these operations is how I got a big advantage. (Yeah, I probably shouldn't be leaking this.)
It turns out that aiming after you fire instead of before, results in a much lower percentage of your shots hitting the target. I wonder if Bissent is traveling backwards in time. That would explain how they got rid of the workers first and now they're nebulously speculating on how they might, some day about a decade from now, create automation to replace the workers they got rid of way back in 2025.