It's not all that rapid. At the very least, this has roots in the anti-terrorism mania of the early 2000s, which gave political cover to build the "total information awareness" surveillance state that exists today. So there's at least 20 years of broad bipartisan support for "common sense measures" to keep us safe.
The private-public-partnership bullshit that Elon is tilting against also took root around that same time. The NSA funded development of technology such as "deep packet inspection" to evesdrop on digital communications networks, and such capability was voluntarily installed by US telcos Whistleblowers such as Mark Klein told us this was being used for overly broad surveillance, but conservatives provided political cover under the umbrella of the war on terrorism.
And so here we are now. Honestly, if you'd told me that Bush or Obama or even Trump had formed a "Board of Disinformation" then I'd believe you, because it perfectly fits the American zeitgeist of the past two decades regardless of which party is in charge. Sorry, that sucks, but the simple fact remains that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have meaningfully rolled back any part of the apparatus that both parties agreed to build a full two decades ago.