> there is not yet proven public evidence for the most explosive version of the claim.

Again, there doesn't need to be evidence. The point is that a claim like this is clearly plausible and worth investigating because of political decisions this administration made. They took a non-political issue (access to social security data) and explicitly made it political. You don't get to later use those same politics as a protective shield for criticism.

> it maps perfectly onto an existing fear people were already primed for.

People were primed because of the repeated warning that experts were giving about the security of this data and carelessness in allowing access. You are helping to prove my point that the administration encouraged this by their own actions.

To clarify, "steelman" is just another term for making up a fictional scenario that doesn't bore out in reality, like "strawman"?

Anyone whose looking at this administration as anything but corrupt thieves that need to be immediately jailed is a patsy, a fool, or a thief themselves.