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Comment by binary_slinger | Hacker News Reader

> The guys featured in this gross and irresponsible hit piece by Wired, by all accounts, are brilliant engineers. Top 1%.

Wheres the evidence of their brilliance? A few projects in GitHub isn’t impressive.

Seriously if they’re brilliant this is the perfect PR opportunity to highlight the highly talented people making a difference. But instead we have secrecy.

I suspect the real reason for these choices is they needed people who are young and naive, will not ask too many questions, easy to manipulate, and coerced to work long for little pay.

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One of them transcribed an ancient Greek text from Vesuvius. So idiots buy into the idea this qualifies them to become unelected arbiters of THEIR OWN opinion of justice and decide who the Treasury pays or does not.

Considering the projects that USAID pays for, what they are doing is just and correct. The US executive bureaucracy is bloated beyond belief and needs to have major cuts. We are spending almost 2 trillion dollars more than we are bringing into the government. So many things need to stop being paid for.

And 2/3rds (and growing) of the Federal Budget is mandatory entitlement spending (Medicare, SS, etc), which Trump explicitly stated he won’t touch.

And don’t forget interest payments on the debt (~$800 bil?), which will keep increasing year over year as well.

It’s certainly not correct: the FY24 deficit is $1.9T, and the remainder of the ~$6T budget that isn’t DoD, Medicare/Medicaid, SSA, or interest payments is around ~$2.3T. To make a meaningful dent in that deficit, the cuts would have to be of the size that a modicum of checks, balances, and oversight is needed.

Or, instead, we could stop tinkering around the edges as a nation and think about the structural reasons why current spending on pensions and the healthcare safety net in the US isn’t sustainable, despite providing less to citizens than other comparable countries.

this "small" agency woefully mis spent its $47B budget. it should be completely razed and nothing put forth to replace it. It's employee's owe their full and total political allegiance to the democratic party, as shown by 97% of their political donations going there. It harms the world by existing and it is fully democrat. It needs to go. Its funding of the democratic party needs to end.

Your other suggestions are good! we should raze those things to the ground as well. They are bankrupting this country, and the second order fiscal and demographic effects far outweigh their first order beneficial effects. We, as a country, need to realize the limitations of government, and our current policies place us well beyond what we should be doing. We need to harden our hearts to the demands of those who chose not to build a life for themselves and live on the public purse instead. We need Seniors to voluntarily decrease the amount of money they receive so that young people can afford to buy houses and start families. Cutting social security etc would also increase pressure to sell housing to cover the costs of being elderly, which directly benefits the housing market, lowering costs. But it will anger the voting population.

I know you want to believe this is principled, but...

- the Social Security Administration, in the first MONTH of 2025, has outlaid $395 billion of spending. - the Department of Defense, in the first MONTH of 2025, has outlaid $250 billion of spending. - USAID's annual budget is $38 billion annually, so we could realistically estimate that, if they've outlaid $3 billion this year thus far, they've spent 0.4% of what those other two departments have.

Let's call this like it is: USAID is a bogeyman to Trump and Musk and is a threat to the administration's efforts toward becoming a "hard power" country. If they really cared about spending, they would have gone elsewhere first.

Source: https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

Thankfully it took less than a month to save its 38 or 47 billion dollar budget, whichever is the case. I am 100% certain that more extreme measures will be taken after this small, quick victory to address the deficit.

Their priority is well placed: This org sent a lot of money to shell corps, chosen political operators, and other intelligence operations that was a clear and net negative to the tax payers. It establishes bona fides that DOGE is serious and capable. It gives them experience cutting through the bureaucratic morass on a small target. It's supporters are outed as being in on the take. You are correct that they should move to bigger targets at some point, but those outlays you mentioned are far more favored in the public eye and should be approached much more cautiously and with planning. In the meantime, the intelligence operatus of the American Empire has been off its leash for some time, so cutting its funding will hamper its ability to harm the American people further.

Please have an excellent day.

"This org sent a lot of money to shell corps, chosen political operators, and other intelligence operations that was a clear and net negative to the tax payers."

As someone whose organization has benefitted from USAID grant funding, I should make it explicit that not everything is as you see or hear through Elon's Twitter feed.

It is deeply unwise to eliminate an organization entirely without exploring its net effects.

Oh? Was your org in charge of overthrowing small governments or was it charged with spreading feminism, atheism, or other American propaganda to people who do not want it? USAID was as close to objectively evil as it is possible to be. Show me otherwise if you'd like but there doesn't seem to be much to hold up as positive from that org.

This notion alone does not grant you the powers of the Congress which apportioned the money to the groups. Moreover you and I do not possess the national intelligence to make the assessment of “corruption.” If you have a complain there are mechanisms for Congressional investigations. What you are conspiring to is the overthrow of the democratic processes that ensure that no one group claims to act in the public good, while acting on their selfish behalf behind the scenes.

You have to realize that’s not how it works right? First of all “idiots” aka voters don’t need to be convinced because these people are hired not elected. You mention them being “unelected arbiters” already. However while unelected they are not arbiters. They report to the president who is the arbiter and was elected. Lastly, the president can decide how to implement lanes until his control. If the govt was buying a hammer for $100,000 instead of Home Depot for $10 then yes it can buy the hammer at Home Depot instead.

The post you're replying to has a link to a video in which one of the guys talks about how he decoded the Vesuvius scrolls. It's literally a PR video highlighting a highly talented young person.

Wheres the evidence of them not being brilliant? Just because they have fewer github projects, they are not talented?

Also please point to the last federal employee in IT sector who were highlighted for their "Talent and Brilliance".

Asking for people to prove the negative? I swear these posts are now being flooded by X types who only comment on these kinds of posts - and what a surprise, looking at this user's profile shows 0 comments on tech stuff, solely on politics - this level of reasoning used to be absent from here regardless of political inclination.

Burden of proof lies on GP for his claims

> looking at this user's profile shows 0 comments on tech stuff

As opposed to yours, which is even more politically charged with clear bias and scarce technical posts? You must be an ideal HN user with "no bias" and "high reasoning" I assume...

Never mentioned "no bias" or "reasoning", great job making things up there. It's not about bias, it's about being a real, actual HN user instead of coming here with a particular goal. HackerNews, a tech/startup community. I have and continue to comment plenty on tech/startup stuff that interests me, as well as other random things that aren'tUS politics. The last few weeks in particular there's been a flood of US political posts so I've commented on those as well. Your history shows being here for a different reason, only engaging with that single topic.

If you have some evidence of their brilliance you can post it now.

You are the one who made the claim. Burden of proof lies on you. Provide evidence for their "lack of brilliance".

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