Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com' | Hacker News Reader

Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

krebsonsecurity.com

1,624 pointsmmsc1,801 comments

All: if you're going to comment here, please make sure you're up on the guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, and don't post low-information / high-indignation comments that could just as easily appear in any related thread. Such generic comments make discussion less interesting and more activating. That's not what we're trying for here.

Rather, we want curious conversation. I know that's not so easy when a situation is intense, infuriating, frightening, distressing, and so on. But we need to protect this site for its specific mandate—which is fragile at the best of times—so please make the effort.

As some of you know, this article was posted a dozen times and immediately flagkilled by users. I turned the flags off on this one because there's interesting new information in the story. But now it's up to the commenters to prove that was a good decision by co-creating a discussion that is interesting, curious, and has to do with the specifics of the article.

If we end up with yet-another interchangeable flamewar about $BigTopic, that will only confirm that the flaggers were right, so those of you who want fewer of these threads to be flagged have a particular interest in sticking to the intended spirit of the site and proving that a substantively different discusson is possible.

Edit: if you want to reply to this, please uncollapse the child comment below and reply there. Your views are welcome! I just also want to conserve space at the top of the thread.

I spent all day responding to the replies here, and then detaching them in order to save space at the top of the thread. But I just had a better idea.

This is a stub comment so we have a single root to collapse the replies. This way (1) replies can stay close to their parent (the top comment) without flooding the screen with offtopicness; and (2) we can all re-experience the timeless truth of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorem_of_softwar....

If you want to reply, reply here. I've moved all the original replies back so everyone's on the same playing field.

> All: please don't post the sort of low-information / high-indignation comment that could just as easily appear in any semi-related thread. Such generic comments make the discussion less interesting and more activating. That's not what we're trying for here.

We'd love to have the sort of useful discussion you're aiming for, but all new discussions that reference Musk are being systematically flagged by apparent supporters of Musk.

We're being censored.

Not everyone is censoring you. Some of us want to learn about cool technology, not read politics irrelevant to daily life.

Fine, you're welcome to skip the political posts. I've felt the same frustration.

But when any new post that has Musk in the title is flagged within a minute or two entering the 'new' queue, then we have a problem.

We are indeed being censored by any meaningful definition of the term.

One one hand, I'm not flagging anything because I'm happy to let these discussions take place. If nothing else they are entertaining.

On the other hand, I see where the flaggers are coming from. If there isn't any gate keeping, other topics can be drowned out by a single highly contentious topic if enough people believe it is their civil duty to bring up that topic at every conceivable opportunity. This has happened on much of reddit, and on smaller scales in many social spheres across the country. Reddit demonstrates that almost any conversation could be steered into the direction of partisan politics if there are enough participants who think it's important to do that.

At what point does a story become big enough to disable the flagging mechanic? Maybe this post isn't the one to do it, but there has been an onslaught of stories about the damage Musk and DOGE is doing to the US government including lots of tech specific stories. This is an important ongoing story that is relevant to the community here and every post about it shoots up the front page of HN only to disappear minutes later because of mass flagging.

One solution might be to limit how many new discussions a user can flag within a certain period.

I suspect the curation mentioned above[0] is crowd-sourced to a relatively small handful of “power” users with an outsized amount of flags in general. Probably not much of a solution to limit that.

0: Slightly confused; I’m referring to dang’s comment, which I thought was the GP comment.

I don't think it's very high, like 1500 upvotes or something, there is a large population of people who can flag.

Another idea is to make flags fractional, so the more upvotes you have the more weight your flags have. So those newly empowered get say 0.1 of a flag while more highly rated users get progressively closer to 1 flag.

> At what point does a story become big enough to disable the flagging mechanic?

I'm not sure "big" is the right word because we're not optimizing HN for topic importance - that would make for a current affairs site, which HN is not [1, 2]. But maybe that's hair-splitting in this case.

The short answer to your question is that when there's a Major Ongoing Topic (MOT), moderators turn off flags on stories that contain Significant New Information (SNI) that is interesting in HN's sense of the word (i.e. gratifying intellectual curiosity) and there is a fair chance of the article supporting a substantively different discussion than the ones which have already recently appeared on the same topic.

If you want more information, I'd start with my other post in this subthread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42993092) and go on to the other links there. That should give a pretty complete explanation. If, after that, there's still a question I haven't answered, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

>moderators turn off flags on stories

I replied to your comment in that other chain, but just want to point something else out here specifically. There seems to be more than just flags that are dragging down this story. The top post on HN at the moment has 117 points and is 3 hours old. This post has 238 points and is 1 hour old and is currently number 8 on the front page. Number 7 is currently a post with 28 points posted 2 hours ago. There is clearly something else at work here besides flags and maybe disabling flags isn't enough to give these type of posts staying power on the front page of HN.

Dang should have manually downranked it because anti-Musk politics are off-topic on HN.

There's room for an interesting discussion here, as I tried to argue at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42992992.

It is a technology related article that is detailed and specific about things which appear to violate practices that have been part of the social contact for some time. Relevant regardless of optics.

This is in the FAQ: "Why is A ranked below B even though A has more points and is newer?" (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html).

I turned off the flags and rolled back the clock on this submission so that it would be on the front page and have a chance at a thorough discussion. I didn't do that so much that it would go straight to #1, though, because that would not be in the interests of the site. These things need to be controlled burns.

Yes, I understand that. But you are missing the point of my comment.

From the FAQ:

>The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted. Comments in threads are ranked the same way.

> Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which demotes overheated discussions, account or site weighting, and moderator action.

You are effectively just turning off one aspect of this, the flags, and declaring mission accomplished when obviously there are other things contributing to these stories falling off the front page faster than many people think they should. People care about the outcome, not the specific button you are pushing on the backend to accomplish that outcome.

This story now has more points than anything posted on the site in the last 24 hours and it is currently halfway down the front page. People clearly think this is an important topic worthy of the site and discussion in a way that isn't in line with the HN ranking algorithm. My original point was that if you agree that stories like this have a place on the front page of HN, turning off the flagging isn't always enough to counteract the other factors at play that drop these posts in the HN rankings.

Hmm we seem to be missing each other a bit here. My point is that I'm fine with this article being on the front page of HN today, and I'm not fine with it being at #1 or #2 on the front page. Both of those are moderation calls. Does that help clarify?

I view a "moderation call" as a binary allow or disallow. Once you get to the point of personally deciding that a post is good enough for the front page but not good enough for #1 or #2, you are making editorial decisions.

I tried to make it clear that I am talking about more than this individual post. That is why I used phrases like "these stories" and "stories like this". In an attempt to stop us from "missing each other", I'll be as direct as possible. The visibility of what is likely the most important ongoing story in the US at the moment should be up to more than just whether you personally are "fine with this article being on the front page of HN today".

Ok, that explains the misunderstanding. From my point of view it's not binary, and yes it's an editorial decision. Moderating and editoring (not a word) are more or less the same thing, no?

> The visibility of what is likely the most important ongoing story in the US at the moment should be up to more than just whether you personally are "fine with this article being on the front page of HN today".

I may have misled you with the phrases "I'm fine with" and "I'm not fine with", which were admittedly a little glib. I'm not applying my personal preferences here. (I'm not even sure what those are—the only strong preference I'm aware of is to try to minimize the pain of masses of people being upset.)

Rather, I'm taking in what the community and software inputs are producing, and then modulating that according to HN principles in an effort to optimize the site for its intended purpose. I wish it weren't necessary—it would so much less work, not to mention less painful—but unfortunately the community system (upvotes and flags) doesn't do this on its own, and there's only so much that software can do, so human intervention (i.e. moderation) is still needed to jig the system out of its failure modes.

>Ok, that explains the misunderstanding. From my point of view it's not binary, and yes it's an editorial decision. Moderating and editoring (not a word) are more or less the same thing, no?

IANAL and I don't know if it is something HN has had to deal with directly, so maybe you know a lot more than me, but isn't that what a lot of the Section 230 debate is about? Either way, I think both our positions on this are now clear and reasonable people can disagree on it either way.

>Rather, I'm taking in what the community and software inputs are producing, and then modulating that according to HN principles in an effort to optimize the site for its intended purpose.

I guess to summarize this conversation, I think the success of this post (now number 3 on https://news.ycombinator.com/best with 2 be another DOGE story from a week ago) is maybe an indication that "the community... inputs" are being ignored too much. Much of the community wants to talk about this ongoing story as evidenced by the upvotes and comments. We shouldn't let a small group of flaggers stop that. And perhaps you are making your own work more difficult by only manually greenlighting a very limited number of these stories. Sometimes you need a pressure release valve in the system. I'm not sure this specific post would have been received as enthusiastically if other similar stories were able to get through and you almost certainly wouldn't have to answer so many questions about your own role in moderating this site.

> Much of the community wants to talk about this ongoing story as evidenced by the upvotes and comments.

Indeed, which is why they are talking about it more than any other topic right now (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43003292 for a partial list). I realize that you and many others feel it's not enough, but this is always the case with every Major Ongoing Topic (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).

If HN didn't have user flags and moderators, these stories (not just the current topic but the current affairs of any moment) would dominate the site completely and HN would cease to be HN.

> Sometimes you need a pressure release valve in the system.

I agree! Perhaps we're only disagreeing about the diameter of the valve.

> I'm not sure this specific post would have been received as enthusiastically if other similar stories were able to get through

Yes in the sense that, with some exceptions, the selection of particular articles isn't the high-order bit. The high bit is discussion of the MOT that they're in the orbit of.

> you almost certainly wouldn't have to answer so many questions about your own role in moderating this site

That's definitely wrong. However many users are upset about flags on this MOT, thousands more would be clamoring if they felt like HN was being taken over by it (or politics in general). The bulk of the community here is pretty zealous about preserving HN for its intended purpose.

Basically what I do is try to minimize community pushback by opening "valves" enough to satisfy (well, never to satisfy but at least to reduce the pain) one constituency, but not so much that it causes greater pushback from a different consitutency. The hope is to find a saddle point where we can temporarily hang for a while.

It's hard for people with strong passions on any $Topic to relate to this because they are the most vocal and think they are the community. So they are—but others are too. Users have the luxury of seeing themselves and their viewmates (if I can put it that way) as the community, and others as NPCs or Neanderthals. I don't have that luxury because I've learned the hard way what happens when we neglect the bulk of the community in favor of any vocal contingent—a horrible experience I hope to never have again.

I hope that doesn't sound dismissive—I've enjoyed this conversation!

>Indeed, which is why they are talking about it more than any other topic right now (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43003292 for a partial list).

As I said upthread of that comment, I still think this is the wrong way to look at it. A story being on the site is very different from the story being on the front page. Maybe "time on front page" should be something you look into tracking if it isn't something already available to you on the backend. Because I would guess that the most common way to interact with HN is via the front page. I don't come to HN to specifically talk to people here about this story, but I care about it so I will engage when something on the subject happens to be one of the stories I see on HN.

In fact, having these posts primarily only visible through search leads to worse discussions because the comments are full of people who are already motivated enough (in both directions) to actively seek out the conversation with few "HN normies", for lack of a better term, to help moderate the conversation through their comments, votes, and flags. And if there is a desire to avoid caving to "any vocal contingent", there needs to be an acknowledgement of how easy it is for any motivated minority to keep something off the HN front page with diligent flagging of a topic.

>I hope that doesn't sound dismissive—I've enjoyed this conversation!

Nope, not too dismissive. Thanks, same here.

I don't need a response to these questions, as they are HN internal/sensitive, but I wanted them to be at least thought about:

Do you track people who frequently flag stories and/or comments?

Do you collate those results against particular subjects? i.e. Any musk related story always gets flagged by $group

Do those groups/people always flag within X minutes of each other?

Do those groups/people match the general location of a random sampling of HN users, or do they differ in a statistically significant way?

dang has commented about this before, and IIRC the gist is that he has access to a ton of data about user activity on the site, and that in the vast majority of cases where it feels like a story/comment/opinion is being brigaded or otherwise maliciously targeted en masse, the data hasn't backed that up. The community is a large and varied, so inevitably whatever opinion you or I holds, there are a ton of people who also exist here who disagree.

> We'd love to have the sort of useful discussion you're aiming for,

Alas, that is not true for all values of "we". Let's see how we do in the current thread. (Edit: so far it does seem to be a little better.)

> but all new discussions that reference Musk are being systematically flagged

Yes, and at the same time we've turned off the flags on quite a few of them—enough that this continues to be by far the most-discussed topic on HN right now. I realize that's not enough for those who want more, but this is always the case whenever there is a MOT (Major Ongoing Topic - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...)

> by apparent supporters of Musk

But also by users who just care about protecting HN for its intended purpose, which is vulnerable to getting consumed by political flames. The pattern we've observed over the years is that when a MOT keeps getting flagkilled, the flags are coming from a coalition of these two groups (i.e. users who oppose it politically and users who are trying to protect HN), neither of which would have enough oomph to do this on their own.

> We're being censored.

That word has so many different meanings nowadays that nearly all sentences including it are both true and false. In one sense, sure, any story getting removed from HN's front page could be called censorship—but it's maybe not the most helpful description on a site where frontpage space is the scarcest resource and some kind of curation/selection is essential.

In another sense, the fact that this MOT is the most discussed topic on HN of the past few weeks means that no, it is not being censored—there have been thousands of posts about it.

Using the word 'censored' ultimately just means you'd like to see more of this topic on HN. I certainly respect that, but there are also a lot of other users who would like to see less of it. Our job is to serve the community as a whole, which is not easy when the community is so divided. Ultimately, whatever solution we come up ends up feeling unsatisfactory to nearly everyone. That is probably my least favorite square on the Cycle of Life of HN, but it comes up once or twice in every go-round.

Here are links to some other comments I've posted in the last few days about this specific issue. If you (or anyone) are willing to read them, take in the explanations, and then have a question that I haven't answered, I'd be curious to know what it is* and happy to take a crack at it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978572

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978389

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42977160

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011

* (because as far as I know, all the important questions have already been answered, which is not to say everyone is happy!)

> But also by users who just care about protecting HN for its intended purpose, which is vulnerable to getting consumed by political flames.

I think there has been an element of backlash here. I believe there are people posting Musk articles repeatedly in response to the flagging, feeding the cycle.

Yes, that happens sometimes.

Why did you let the article that was posted about a16z and Daniel Penny get flag killed so many times?

It’s so lame and tiresome —- powerful tech people look like idiots, it gets killed on here.

I haven't seen that one yet; I was mostly offline yesterday. This happens sometimes.

Btw, stories about "powerful tech people look like idiots" get discussed on HN all the time. The tenor of HN comments about that kind of thing leans strongly towards the cynical, enough that it's actually a problem for the long-term quality of the site. I may be misinterpreting you, but if you feel like HN needs more of that, I have to disagree.

Edit: $Firm hires $PolarizingPerson is probably not a good topic for HN but I'm happy to take a look at specific articles.

>this continues to be by far the most-discussed topic on HN right now

I wonder if you are maybe too close to the problem to see it from a normal HN user's perspective. From my perspective, I don't get this impression because I don't see the full breath of conversations that happen on HN like you do. People clearly want to talk about this here and I have rarely seen these stories actually on the front page of HN because they are so quick to drop off the front page due to flagging, downvoting, the flame war detector, or whatever other behind the scenes mechanics exist that you are obviously more knowledgeable about than me. People continuing to have conversations on posts that no one sees unless they specifically search them out is the equivalent of shadowbanning those conversations. Yes, they are still happening, but the normal HN user isn't actually seeing them and that is why you are fielding so many complaints from normal users who want to see these posts.

I think you're right, but it's not clear to me what we could do differently about that. Ultimately it derives from the fundamentals of the site. Most people don't see most of what gets posted here. I don't either.

I think the situation has demonstrated a weakness. Elon Musk, unarguably the single most Hacker News person on the planet due to his control of Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter and others, and now tied up in US politics with DOGE, has completely disappeared from the front page of hacker news, except for the articles you personally have deflagged. And you can't do that 24x7, such as the weekend Treasury Payments got shutdown and apparently nothing newsworthy was done by DOGE or Musk. I was watching articles mentioning either DOGE or Musk in the headline begin flagged in minutes. The same article might stay up for several hours if the headline had been edited to remove the offending words (but that might just be a side effect of getting less traction). And you get stuck with making the call which articles to unflag, based on limited information as they don't hang around long enough to meaningfully get upvotes or beyond the first 15 minutes of irrational blathering in the comments.

I agree, it's a weakness. Are there specific stories that you think should have gotten major discussion but didn't? If so, I'd like to see links.

At this time, no, discussions have happened elsewhere and it is now old news. But that discussion did happen on articles such as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42933219 , leading to comments like https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=stubish#42942693 .

I'm sorry but I don't follow what discussions you're saying haven't happened. But in case you (or anyone) are feeling like the current MOT (Major Ongoing Topic) hasn't received much attention on HN, here's a partial list of recent threads:

Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42981756 - Feb 2025 (1544 comments) (<-- you are here)

Elon Musk's Demolition Crew - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42968430 - Feb 2025 (353 comments)

DOGE staffer resigns over racist posts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42966412 - Feb 2025 (107 comments)

DOGE employees ordered to stop using Slack - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42951458 - Feb 2025 (370 comments)

20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42950790 - Feb 2025 (547 comments)

Onlookers freak out as 25-year-old set loose on Treasury computer system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42936421 - Feb 2025 (133 comments)

Payments crisis of 2025: Not “read only” access anymore - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42933219 - Feb 2025 (654 comments)

The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42910910 - Feb 2025 (2977 comments)

Phyllis Fong, who was investigating Neuralink, "forcefully removed " - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42902355 - Feb 2025 (214 comments)

The government information crisis is bigger than you think it is - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42895331 - Feb 2025 (270 comments)

NSF starts vetting all grants to comply with executive orders - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42886661 - Jan 2025 (488 comments)

Archivists work to save disappearing data.gov datasets - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42881367 - Jan 2025 (238 comments)

Trump's Federal Funding Freeze and Mean-Field Game Theory - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42863339 - Jan 2025 (89 comments)

Deferred resignation email to federal employees - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42859552 - Jan 2025 (151 comments)

NIH hit with freezes on meetings, travel, communications, and hiring - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42798960 - Jan 2025 (440 comments)

United States Digital Service renamed to DOGE - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42775684 - Jan 2025 (98 comments)

First off, thanks for providing all of the moderation energy and you clearly maintain a level of civility on hacker news across a wide range of controversial topics.

However, I think placing this long list of stories all under the same MOT demonstrates that conversation is "happening", but at the same time it isn't really happening.

One of the key strategies used by Trump and Putin is to flood the zone (“Flood the zone with shit”: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/16/20991816/i...)

As an example, the parent story of this comment is no longer on the front page and instead of anything related to Musk at the fed there is now another distraction about him trying to buy OpenAI.

I haven't read all of the above articles, but from just a cursory glance it looks like many different important events are happening. If they happened one at a time over the course of a year no one would consider it MOT, but because its all happening in the same week it gets mashed together. Individual stories quickly fall off the front page.

From my perspective, all that is true, but it's not HN's job to be the zone that is flooded by it. HN's job is to be a place for intellectually curious stories and conversations. We have to hold fast to that mandate because if we don't, the site will quickly cease to exist for its intended purpose.

What this means in practice is that there's some space for discussing these topics, but only some, and not nearly enough to fully cover everything that's going on right now.

I understand that a lot of users want this to be otherwise. Quite rightly, they feel like current events are important and deserve a great deal more airtime. But our first responsibility is to preserve HN for its intended purpose, and HN is not an instrument that can accommodate much more of this. The threads that I listed above are, from HN's point of view, already a lot.

It's a pity, because to the extent that discussion here is marginally* more substantive than what's available elsewhere, it's natural to wish that it could be applied to much more important issues. Why care about the origins of Proto-Indo-European when the government is being burned down? and so on. We should turn our attention to the things that matter! But this argument just doesn't work in practice. The only thing that would happen if we "flooded the zone" on HN too is that the place would burn out.

* emphasis on "marginally". I'm not claiming it's particularly good—there is a great deal not to like.

From my perspective it seems like HN abandoned the mandate of intellectually curious stories and conversations and is instead a place where only non-controversial stories and conversations are encouraged. If people can only talk about things where no one can vociferously disagree then we aren't really being inquisitive and curious, merely eccentric.

Your comment of "discussion here is marginally* more substantive" footnoted that it's not particularly good also seems a bit condescending. Its dismissive to those attempting to engage with these stories in good faith even if a vocal minority are behaving in bad faith. When a dozen stories are popping up and disappearing in a few hours it feels a lot harder to participate in a thoughtful and substantial ways.

I can understand HN is in a rough spot. But on the other hand, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.

> a place where only non-controversial stories and conversations are encouraged

I've made a list of 23 threads (see the reply below), all from the last month. There are over 13k comments in those threads alone, and it's not a complete list.

It's interesting how claims like "only non-controversial stories" or "no discussion of this sort shall be allowed" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42976817) arise during periods when there's a sharp increase in such threads (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978572).

At first that seems counterintuitive (like Jevons' paradox, or Yogi Berra's "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded"). But it's not so paradoxical. These aren't factual propositions, they're expressions of a feeling—what people are really saying is not that there is no coverage of these topics, but that they would like more coverage. They often use words like "no", "zero", "never", and "nothing" to express how they feel, but what they mean by these words is "not enough". Which is fair enough. The community always splits between users who want more and users who feel like it's too much.

Also, it's easy to miss any particular thread or sequence of threads. Even among regular HN readers, there will be many who haven't seen even one of the 23 threads listed below, or who only saw 1 or 2, and therefore might naturally feel like none of this is being discussed. Among those, there will be some who feel strongly about it, and some of these will naturally express their feeling in the way I described above. Nonetheless, in reality there is a large amount of this discussion happening—it is by far the most-discussed topic of recent weeks, and will likely continue to be.

> also seems a bit condescending

Sorry for giving that impression! I often add a disclaimer like that because I don't want to sound like I'm making excessive claims about HN's discussion quality. The most I can say is that median discussion quality here is modestly better than elsewhere on the internet, but at its worst it's still pretty bad. I don't mean to put down HN commenters who are using the site thoughtfully. You have to remember that as moderators we see a lot of stuff like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43018472, to pick the most recent example. In fact we must see more of that than any other reader, simply because it's our job to.

Musk-led group makes $97B bid for control of OpenAI - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43004889 - Feb 2025 (937 comments)

Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42981756 - Feb 2025 (1768 comments)

Announcing the data.gov archive - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42970039 - Feb 2025 (127 comments)

Elon Musk's Demolition Crew - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42968430 - Feb 2025 (348 comments)

DOGE staffer resigns over racist posts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42966412 - Feb 2025 (105 comments)

DOGE employees ordered to stop using Slack - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42951458 - Feb 2025 (373 comments)

20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42950790 - Feb 2025 (547 comments)

What's happening inside the NIH and NSF - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42940257 - Feb 2025 (1519 comments)

Onlookers freak out as 25-year-old set loose on Treasury computer system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42936421 - Feb 2025 (133 comments)

Payments crisis of 2025: Not “read only” access anymore - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42933219 - Feb 2025 (654 comments)

Words flagged in search of current NSF awards - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42932760 - Feb 2025 (154 comments)

The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42910910 - Feb 2025 (2978 comments)

CDC: Unpublished manuscripts mentioning certain topics must be pulled or revised - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42905937 - Feb 2025 (719 comments)

Phyllis Fong, who was investigating Neuralink, "forcefully removed " - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42902355 - Feb 2025 (214 comments)

CDC data are disappearing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42897696 - Feb 2025 (589 comments)

The government information crisis is bigger than you think it is - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42895331 - Feb 2025 (270 comments)

NSF starts vetting all grants to comply with executive orders - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42886661 - Jan 2025 (488 comments)

Archivists work to save disappearing data.gov datasets - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42881367 - Jan 2025 (238 comments)

Trump's Federal Funding Freeze and Mean-Field Game Theory - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42863339 - Jan 2025 (89 comments)

Deferred resignation email to federal employees - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42859552 - Jan 2025 (151 comments)

'Never seen anything like this' – NIH meetings and travel halted abruptly - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42817910 - Jan 2025 (111 comments)

NIH hit with freezes on meetings, travel, communications, and hiring - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42798960 - Jan 2025 (440 comments)

United States Digital Service renamed to DOGE - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42775684 - Jan 2025 (98 comments)

> They often use words like "no", "zero", "never", and "nothing" to express how they feel, but what they mean by these words is "not enough".

Hyperbole is worse than that, IMHO. It inflames and serves almost no other purpose.

Imagine someone writes, "politician X is the most corrupt ever". What does that tell us? One bit of information (yes/no on this politician), and that the author has strong emotions about it (maybe 2-4 more bits - are they 4 of 4 angry? 16 of 16?); or very possibly they want to perform strong emotion because that energizes the interaction, draws attention, 'wins' the day, or is an aggressive negotiating position (reducing it to ~1-2 bits); and/or they could do those things reflexively and without a conscious plan, participating in a fun social dynamic that is muscle memory from years on the the Internet (reducing it to ~0-2 bits). Maybe it's just easier.

Whatever it is, what we don't learn - what the hyperbole wipes out - is knowledge and learning. We learn - acquire novel knowledge - little regarding X; what X does black, white, and mostly grey (what shades?); what is corrupt and not corrupt about X; what corruption is, the grey areas, and how that applies here, and of course much more. There are gigabits or maybe terabits to say here, dissertations and books, more than could be said in a lifetime. Another thing we could learn is the author as a person and their feelings, including their anger - how, why, when, what kind, etc. - giga-terabits more. On these vast landscapes of knowledge and emotion, we need each other's perspectives and insights to navigate and see what's valuable.

But all real information and nuance and complexity is washed away by the ultimate, by hyperbole. It's so ___, there is nothing to think about. Just a few bits is all you need.

The volume of threads alone does not tell the full story because the visibility of controversial content is just as important as its existence. Even if thousands of comments exist on topics, the way the platform functions means these stories quickly fall off the front page and limits their influence. HN guidelines also discourage political or activating content, making it less likely that stories about these urgent issues, such as Trump stealing $80 million in FEMA aid from New York, will even be posted.

The destruction of the federal government is a more critical issue than the origins of Proto-Indo-European people because it directly affects millions of lives in tangible ways. Yes historical curiosities are valuable, but they do not carry the same immediate, material consequences as a government being hollowed out from within.

That's a fair point and it's true that some of the threads I listed fell off the front page quickly, but others were on the front page for 7 hours, 9 hours, 22 hours, 26 hours, and so on.

> a more critical issue than the origins of Proto-Indo-European because it directly affects millions of lives

For sure. I've made the same point many times over the years. I dug up a sample:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42413334 (Dec 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36885572 (July 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27486354 (June 2021)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25766970 (Jan 2021)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23332076 (May 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902396 (April 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22644521 (March 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21152524 (Oct 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20453883 (July 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16968668 (May 2018)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16581518 (March 2018)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15948011 (Dec 2017)

The question isn't whether current events are more important than, say, "making my own basketball hoops" or "3rd century irrigation systems" or "Do spiders dream?" or any of the other obscure things that have spent time on HN's front page. Current events are far more important than these, and indeed almost anything on HN's front page.

But if you're arguing that HN should prioritize stories by importance, then you're arguing that HN should become a current affairs site. That's not the mandate of the site.

If you're not arguing that, then I think we agree in principle, and disagree only about the degree to which the valve for such stories should be open. I get that you think it should be opened further, and many users agree with you; but then, many users feel that it should be tightened further. We have to think about satisfying the whole community (as best we can), not just one constituency; and we have to think about preserving the site for its intended mandate, which could all too easily be washed away by a tsunami of legitimately more important stories.

I'd arguing that HN should take a stand against the unprecedented shift towards authoritarianism. At best be are in a new era of McCarthyism. At worst the entire federal government is going to crumble and be dissolved.

This is not hyperbole!

Trump and Elon have started the first round of firing federal workers. A friend's organization just laid off 1500 people because 80% of their funding comes from the federal government.

Yes, HN is a special place. But your silence allows countless other special places to be destroyed. By the end of Trump's term HN might not even survive anyway.

I hear you and I hear the other users expressing similar feelings, but what you guys need to understand is that the community is split on this, and the larger part does not want the frontpage to be taken over by this (or by anything else, presumably).

The more repetitive these threads get, the lower-quality they become. The most recent ones have been truly terrible, by the standards of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. That's another key indicator of which way to adjust the valve. The more people are unable to discuss this topic thoughtfully, the further it drifts from the intended spirit of the site.

I would like to see some discussion on the Dark Gothic Maga video (How Tech Billionaires Plan to Destroy America) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RpPTRcz1no

On one hand it comes across like a conspiracy video, but on the other hand she plays direct video clips of major tech figures talking about dismantling the government and dividing the world into small nation states. Trump and Musk have also both stated they want to eliminate large amounts of the federal government.

I would love to get some perspective from those who have personally interacted with those people over the last 10 years.

This video probably falls under what you consider "activating", but it seems like we need to have conversations around this type of issue rather than letting rational voices get drowned out by the sea of angry shouting.

It's thanks to this kind of guidance that HN survives as a focused technical hivemind.

At the same time, issues of this kind of revolutionary scope are important for users to process. We can learn a lot from each other.

Irrespective of politics, it's necessary to hedge systemic risk that's appearing due to destabilization of the US. That affects so many of us that it's hard to ignore.

Keeping some persistent outlet (front page post) for discussion of this major topic is important to give people a politically agnostic and technically proficient space to integrate what's happening.

Thank you for filtering the noise and fear with the posts.

> Keeping some persistent outlet (front page post) for discussion of this major topic is important to give people a politically agnostic and technically proficient space to integrate what's happening.

It doesn't really feel like a politically agnostic space. A large number of users (though probably a small proportion of total HN users) seem to care a lot and of those who care a lot it looks like at least 3/4rs have a "leftist" persuasion.

(Sadly, I'm not longer aware of any intelligent and politically agnostic space where politics can be discussed. All those I knew have gradually become dominated by one political direction or another)

> Using the word 'censored' ultimately just means you'd like to see more of this topic on HN. I certainly respect that, but there are also a lot of other users who would like to see less of it.

Woo love changing the meaning of words to fit what I imagine other people are using it for!!

Sorry, I'm not getting you here—perhaps if you made your point without snark, it would be easier to understand and respond to.

I would also say, that to me dang and team is doing a good job in general. I disagree with any sentiment that this is being censored, and I applaud the openness for discussing this.

On the whole, I appreciate and respect your approach to moderation. However, it’s hard to ignore the fact that many leaders in the YC sphere — possibly including Garry Tan — seem to be aligned with Thiel and Yarvin on the topic of government and democracy. (The “smart ones” should aggressively take over and restructure our republic in the image of a corporation.) If there is, in fact, an active and ongoing conspiracy against the government headed by SV technocrats, how can we trust moderation on this site to be unbiased? (This is my fear, not an accusation.)

I don't know that you can. Trust is a strong word, and I can't claim to be unbiased. What I can claim is that we (HN mods) work hard to be conscious of our biases and not be swayed by them when making moderation calls. Can that be done perfectly? No. One is still influenced, even if not swayed, and anyway unconscious bias is a thing. But can it be done better with practice? I'm sure it can, at least to a point, and we do at least have years of practice.

Let me see what else I can come up with for you...

Well, here are some things: (1) HN's moderation approach to this kind of stuff hasn't changed in years; (2) the principles of what we do are pretty clearly articulated (though we don't always apply those principles optimally); (3) we try to always answer the questions people have; (4) we're open to admitting and correcting mistakes when we find out about them; and (5) FWIW, I don't know of anyone working on HN (or at YC for that matter) who supports the immoderate agenda you're describing, though I also don't have (or want, or need) core dumps of anyone's politics.

Thank you for your openness!

its not censorship. There's several comments on here that have no relevance to the source article and are hand wringing which is unproductive and often is eager to descend into flaming. Lets talk about the article and its content and the potential cybersecurity risks to government data please.

> all new discussions that reference Musk are being systematically flagged by apparent supporters of Musk.

I'm not a Musk supporter at all, but I flag these discussions for several reasons.

1. To keep my sanity. These stories are pretty much everywhere and will be all over for the next 4 years at least. I don't want to engage in them and lose even more time and get even more anxious.

2. The comments aren't useful and don't bring new information. It's pretty clear what Elon and the oligarchs are trying to do. Those who don't see it won't change their mind at that point.

HN is one of the rare forum to avoid flame war, let's keep it that way.

But where this particular article is from Brian Krebs, a niche reporter on hacker news, and bringing SNI, significant new information to the table, why flag this one? The broader strokes of what's going on is obvious, but this particular article is a specific detail of a detail, from a source that is relevant to tits community, and not a generic breathless CNN or Fox News "something happened today"

I wouldn't exactly call Krebs "niche", he's quite well known on his own.

If your objection is that "I don't want to engage with it" and "I don't find them useful", it seems obvious to me that the solution is to simply not click on the thread and move on, rather than to attempt to stifle everyone else from engaging with it.

Well, as a member of this community, it's my right and duty to cast a vote for flagging. If I'm an outlier, it won't have any effect.

I believe this post is off-topic as it's political and doesn't satisfy my "hacker curiosity". There are other venues to discuss these topics.

> If I'm an outlier, it won't have any effect.

How many people does it take to flag a post to the point where it doesnt show up anymore?

It depends on how many upvotes there also are.

so then it follows that for a fresh story it only takes a couple of people flagging...

that means two or three people spawn-camping the new queue can control what stories will or will not get through

I would assume there are counter measures and detection. I strongly remember people discussing up-voting rings/puppet groups that pushed stories on slashdot and reddit, and the counter measures used to prevent that.

I don't recall if dang has ever openly discussed such security measures, through I do recall him saying that people can loose access to flag/voting if they are misused.

It's only censorship when the government does it, or so I've been told.

My issue with this content on HN isn't that the conversation is sometimes garbage, which it is, but that it's overwhelmingly people repeating the same falsehoods that might, at best, have a kernel of truth, but have been blown out of proportion to the point of just being not-true. There is very little interest in actually taking a step backwards, challenging beliefs and the propaganda fed to us by corporate news channels owned by billionaires, and trying to objectively evaluate information without "so and so is literally worse than hitler" knee-jerk reactions. If people could actually steel-man (I hate that phrase) actions and have nuanced views, that would be interesting, but it's basically only anti-whatever people butting heads with any opinion that challenges their narrative at all.

I agree in principle, but these are the dynamics of every intense polarized issue and I don't think there's much we can do about it other than nibble around the margins. For example, we try to downweight comments that are primarily name-calling or flaming, in the hope of giving more oxygen to posts that are reflective, find something new to say, and so on.

At bottom, it seems like this is just how mass psychology works—it's what you get when the inputs are (1) human nature, and (2) modern media. It stresses me out too, but I have to remind myself not to fight battles we can't win. That's a recipe for burnout and worse.

Also, when the nature of an intense polarized issue about things of great importance overlaps into the things Hacker News is about, that's when to try very hard to study what's happening. What's happening with modern media is Hacker News-adjacent. What's happening in how modern world wars are fought is Hacker News-adjacent.

When the mechanics of how these things are put into play, begin to affect not only Facebook, Twitter etc but also Hacker News itself, that's very much Hacker News-adjacent. It's a meta sense where control of the discourse becomes not only the ground but also the figure.

Hackers are eager to think they, like the internet, will route around any censorship. If their ways and belief systems are studied to the point that flagging and argument becomes able to unilaterally censor discourse against the wishes of the hackers, that's when your action of picking a thread and taking pains to unflag it and attempt discussion anyhow, becomes the right thing to do :)

If it is any consolation, I don't think there's anything more you can do as a moderator to solve the problem, as it will require the underlying human nature to change. In this context, the problem is with what is called 'peasant mentality'[^1], specifically defending a bureaucracy that is being dismantled by DOGE.

[^1]: https://x.com/sridca/status/1846935493100888262

On mastodon I noticed an interesting approach: to warn in a visible manner that a topic is "sensitive". Not sure if that triggers less aggressive behavior, maybe its even the opposite? But just as there are instinctive red dots that grab our attention there might be digital blue dots to calm us down.

https://www.audubon.org/news/why-do-gulls-have-red-spot-thei...

I get your reluctance to do things you can't take back, but it seems like the emotional response to thinking your comment's being down weighted but not being told that's happening, or not knowing why, might be helped by being told why. eg if I'm calling people names but don't know or don't realize that's not accepted behavior here, someone with a persecution complex is going to think you're personally out for them and not their behavior.

I hear you and I'm sure you have a point. But my experience is that adding information of this kind diminishes some misperceptions but fuels others. I don't know is what the tradeoffs are and I don't want to do things that make either HN, or the job of moderating HN, worse.

> “so and so is literally worse than hitler"

Can you give citations for where you’ve seen these sorts of statements?

However bad Musk is, I’ve yet to see anyone saying he is “literally worse than Hitler”

it's an example of the type of knee-jerk reactions, not a claim that people are literally saying that in every comment thread, however you're welcome to see for yourself how musk and hitler are discussed in the same comment constantly. it happens basically every day:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

There are genuine similarities between the current administrations actions and the actions taken by Hitler in 1933 in Germany that essentially ended their reign of democracy, and of course people are going to write about that and talk about that. Toss in Musk's loud and frequent support for far-right parties (including in Germany), and top it all off with a nazi salute on national television and you're bound to get a few comparisons.

>> it's overwhelmingly people repeating the same falsehoods that might, at best, have a kernel of truth, but have been blown out of proportion to the point of just being not-true.

That describes basically all posts about AI, so let's all join in and start flagging any HN post about AI.

If we end up with yet-another interchangeable flamewar about $BigTopic, that will only confirm that the flaggers were right'

No it won't. That would only be true if the flaggers were disinterested judges who never comment. You're projecting your desire for a good civil discussion onto them without considering the possibility that any of them could be flagging or commenting in bad faith, ie with a view to shaping the outcome of the discussion rather than optimizing the quality thereof.

Edit: oh wait, I think I understand you now. When I said "that will only confirm that the flaggers were right", I did not mean "that will only confirm that the flaggers all had the right motive". (Obviously not all of them do, as I've explained below.) Rather, I meant "that will only confirm that this submission wasn't a good one for HN, and therefore it was good that it got flagged (even though not every flag was rightly motivated)".

-- original comment --

> That would only be true if the flaggers were disinterested judges who never comment.

I don't follow this argument. Can you rephrase it?

Flagging flamewars is an appropriate use of flagging on HN. If this thread turns into the kind of flamewar we normally want to see flagged, that's evidence in favor of the users who made that call in the first place.

> the possibility that any of them could be flagging or commenting in bad faith

Yes. I've made this point many times, including in this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42993092): there's usually two kinds of flaggers: users who want to suppress a story because they don't like it (e.g. politically), and users who feel like the story isn't in keeping with the site guidelines and are worried about protecting HN. I assume by "bad faith" you mean the first kind.

My daily interface with Hacker News for the last decade has been https://hckrnews.com/, so I've seen every item that's made it to the front page.

The number of dead posts in recent weeks is unprecedented. Some have upwards of 100 votes. I never saw a dead post in 2017 or 2021 that struck me as suspiciously flagged. But multiple times this week I've written a comment on a post only to have the comment blocked on submission because the post was flagged while I was writing. (or in the case of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42994293, flagged, unflagged, and flagged again.)

There is clearly something unusual happening with flags. There is an obvious correlation between the post topic and likelihood of flags, even when the post's comments are reasonable.

I think this motivated flagging is preventing productive discussion on HN, and it's healthier in the long term for Hacker News to allow perhaps excessive discussions on these currently popular topics. Otherwise HN risks developing a reputation that it systematically suppresses discussions critical of the current administration. I think that reputation would linger for far longer than the temporary irritation some might feel about the currently popular topic.

> There is clearly something unusual happening with flags

I'd say what's unusual is the macro environment. This is the most politically intense moment in years. HN can't be immune from macro trends (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).

There have been periods like this in the past, such as 8 years ago when you-know-who first took power. I hear you that you don't remember it being this bad then; my memory is otherwise. Either way, the moment will subside. HN has gone through such swings before.

> I think this motivated flagging is preventing productive discussion on HN

I don't see how one can say that discussion is being prevented when the topic is is by far the most-discussed on HN (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42977160 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978572 for recent posts on that). The current thread has been on the front page for 9 hours and counting, and has over 1000 comments and counting.

I know some people would prefer more, but that is always the case about any topic. Moreover, everyone has at least one topic they feel that way about. These are perennial conditions that come from the fundamentals of the site, not recent trends.

> it's healthier in the long term for Hacker News to allow perhaps excessive discussions on these currently popular topics

I have to disagree—I think the health of Hacker News depends on not doing this. Times like this are moments to reinforce HN's differentiation from other forums by insisting on its particular focus (i.e. that it's a forum for intellectual curiosity, not a current affairs site).If we lose users who get frustrated because they can't use HN primarily for political battle, that makes me sad, but the solution is not to use HN primarily for political battle.

> Otherwise HN risks developing a reputation that it systematically suppresses discussions critical of the current administration.

It's not true that HN does this, so anyone who believes it is jumping to a false conclusion. It bothers me a lot when people do that, but you wouldn't believe how often it happens, and how many kinds of false generalization people come up with—I could give you hundreds of examples. I've learned that it's a bad idea to worry too much about the false conclusions about HN that people jump to for reasons of their own. Not that I've stopped worrying too much about it—I still do, I've just learned that it's a bad idea.

After pondering this for a day I've come around, and agree with you now.

My subconscious worry (now conscious) was that the "political flaggers" would discover the effectiveness of flagging, and expand its use to here-on-out sink any politically unfavorable news topic.

But I then realized that you (HN mod(s)) have been IMO faultless for a decade at unflagging or boosting posts on contentious topics that add at least a smidgen of new information. Sometimes it takes a couple hours for moderation to kick in but that's reasonable.

So I'll continue to trust in HN's moderation, and cease worrying that my favorite discussion forum is in jeopardy!

No, they are simply saying that someone who wanted these stories removed could both flag the story and engage in a flamewar. Then they wouldn't have predicted the situation, but created it.

Say some don't like stories about crypto currency, but tolerates them. So, stories about crypto currency appear and attract those interested in crypto currency. Say there are also stories about public projects, but those interested in crypto currency don't tolerate stories about public projects, so there are flamewars for those stories.

Your conclusion would then be that Hacker News is a good place for stories about crypto currency, but not for stories about public projects. Because stories about public projects creates flamewars and should therefor be removed.

When in reality those interested in public projects would be the ones wanting interesting discussions, while those interested in crypto currency would be acting against the spirit of the site.

As stories about public projects are removed eventually those interested in them would leave and stories about how public projects can't work would meet little resistance. Therefor not creating any flamewars and be good for HN. Yet, it would at best be the opposite of curiosity.

If you see threads that you think are examples of the dynamic you're describing, I'd appreciate specific links. Since I don't have specifics, I can only say that this doesn't match what we see in practice, or at least what I believe we see in practice.

For example, the comments that drive flamewars are mostly not produced by the accounts that have flagged the thread.

I don't know what specifics you are looking for as you made the statement in the first place and haven't explained what you base it on other than that what has already been addressed. None of my arguments needs specifics. So I also don't know why you need them, or why you can't address anything else without them.

Therefor I haven't really gotten anything out of this which both doesn't make me interested in (nor do I think I can be expected to be) these conditions for a further discussion. I'm happy to reconsider at any point (but can't guarantee a response) if you have any specific questions about my comment.

If you want to prove your theory that flamewars makes those flagging right and not what I said, it is up to you. Which is even more reasonable considering you have the responsibility to run this site, the tools required for it and are getting paid to do it.

While curious discussion is certainly a worthy aspiration for HN, it's inevitable that some some objects of curiosity will also be polarizing. The problem with the flagging mechanism and its lack of transparency is that a small group of people can stymie curious inquiry.

While I understand that you don't want to share flagging or voting preferences (though I don't consider this intimate data myself), it's hard for people have confidence in the flagging/vouching mechanism because there is no indicator of volume or frequency. One might argue that if there was it would be gamed, but the site is obviously being gamed as is. One indicator is the elevated volume of baity comments from throwaway accounts on some discussions.

I don't see how this kind of story is on-topic for HN. Yes, we all appreciate that HN is more than just a website for discussing garbage collection algorithms, graph algorithms, javascript frameworks, etc (i.e. computer science and programming) but isn't it meant to be about things that hackers would find interesting by virtue of being hackers?

My understanding of that broader topicality was that it was intended to capture things like science news ("Feynman's lectures have been published online for free" or "The Higgs Boson has been confirmed"), interesting posts and articles of other kinds (e.g. that series of posts of horror stories about dangerous chemical compounds - "why I will never work with supernitroglycerin" etc) and occasionally general news stories of such significance that ANYONE would want to discuss them (eg. Russian troops have invaded Ukraine).

That isn't what I am seeing here. There is now almost always general American political "news" on the front page. It isn't particularly newsworthy. It feels like the only reason it is here is that people here don't have anywhere else to discuss it because HN is one of the few decent forums left on the Web. But that doesn't make it on-topic, surely?

I often see you remove flags from posts. What's the point of having the flagging mechanism if you just remove them when people complain? You say there's interesting new information, but is everything that is interesting on-topic? Or is the test narrower: it should be interesting to hackers by virtue of their being hackers. I am sure this is interesting to many hackers that are also US political junkies (which I mean in a neutral way) but not because they are hackers.

Do you see what I mean?

I don’t know how many flags it takes to flag kill a whole article, but the threshold for comments is two or three flags. It doesn’t take a lot of people to kill an entire topic of discussion by flagging related articles, especially for users who only peruse the front page. Brigading on this site is almost trivial.

Dang’s anti-flagging mechanism is the human factor that balances that very blunt automated system. People don’t seem to vouch for articles as much as for comments.

I don't see how this isn't hacker news: "What is the technical education of the teenager with security clearance to the network of the org that is responsible for nukes"

That sounds *literallyf like the plot for any 80s hacker movie out there. You know, when hacking was political and hackers were people interested in undermining structures of authority and bending the rules.

That is the origin of hacking, and as such it is totally in order to discuss such topics here, IMO.

I'd rather read stuff like this than another CEOs musings that are entirely marketing and make believe (cue Sam Altman). Just because it affirms billionairs viewpoints of the status quo doesn't make it apolitical. If it feels apolitical to you that probably says something about your political biases.

I mean hacker in the proper sense not in the colloquial/black hat sense.

I agree that content marketing posts are not the best but they can be interesting despite the underlying motivation for the posts being marketing instead of curiosity. Sometimes the result is interesting regardless. Removing content marketing means having to try to guess the motivations of authors which is fraught. Yeah sometimes it is obvious but not always.

Oh, so the CCC aren't "proper" hackers now? Where can I see that memo?

https://media.ccc.de/

Lots of political stuff, in context most importantly https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-correctiv-recherche-geheimplan-g...

Whereas any old thing that "might be interesting" is fine when it comes from a rich person? Make a poll at the CCC, or Defcon, about the value of such posts, I'd be very curious.

> It isn't particularly newsworthy.

I disagree. Krebsonsecurity has regularly delivered HN salient and interesting frontpage material, and this is currently the most flagged submission they've ever had on HN. We've discussed security assessments very similar to this in the past, even political ones, with technical curiosity and good faith discussion. The constraining factor is now people who unconditionally idolize Elon Musk. It's easy to see who's in the wrong when flagging relevant, well-written and objective reports like this one.

My personal view is that HN shouldn't promote political content at all. It should just be moderated out or flagged with no opportunity for recourse, whether it's Syrian independence or the invasion of Ukraine. But I abide by the exceptions made in HN's guidelines and consider this a technically imperative article that most can tune out if they dislike. It's very easy to see the title and decide for yourself whether you're comfortable reading and discussing the article.

I think the fact that we keep hearing about DOGE grey-area accessing of computer systems run by the US government and not about whatever else the Trump administration is currently doing is pretty good evidence that HN maintains a bias towards stories of interest to hackers. Like it or not, I think most of the hackers here are also US citizens.

This site is called hacker news… the article is news about hackers

Ignoring the US politics angle, would this post have been flagged? It's Brian Krebs, back after being DDoSed yet again, reporting on hackers hacking. doxing and swatting people. hacking. That's not of interest on hacker news? If, then, the subject without the political angle, would have been of interest here, then why does adding, yes, a highly contentious topic on top of that, make it of less interest to the community?

The answer is repetition - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011 for a longer comment in that vein.

Basically, how interesting a story is varies with its position in the sequence of related stories.

This is a (very) well-explored issue on HN and the solution we arrived at has been stable for many years: most stories about politics are off topic, as the guidelines say (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), but some stories with political overlap are on topic (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...).

Here are a couple recent posts to look at if you (or anyone) want to understand the principles by which we decide which ones get to count as "on topic":

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978389

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011

If you read those and follow the links there, and still have a question I haven't answered, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.

> What's the point of having the flagging mechanism if you just remove them when people complain?

I made precisely the same point a few minutes ago! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42993906

The answer is that we don't "just remove them when people complain". We only remove them sometimes, when doing so seems in keeping with the principles by which we moderate HN.

a ton of replies to dang's adminsitraviata comment are highjacking his "sticky" to coattail all their comments to the top, and the comments are generally right on the edge of being what dang's comment is trying to warn against.

I'd flag them all but fear that would appear heavy handed

I am responding to the content of Daniel's comment, not hijacking his comment to coattail my views of the article itself. I think the replies to his comment are the most appropriate place to respond to it.

The effect you describe is an unfortunate side effect of any threaded forum where the ordering of sibling posts is determined by some measure of quality: all responses to the first top-level comment, no matter the quality, precede the second top-level comment, which is probably of higher quality (on average). This is one of many reasons that threaded comments are flawed. Flat comments (phpBB style) of course have their own flaws and chronological threaded comments (LWN for example) have their own too.

Normally we turn off replies on pinned comments to avoid this problem, but today I decided to leave it open, to give people a chance to air their objections/counterarguments/feelings and hopefully get responded to.

However, to avoid the thread ballooning at the top of the page, I'm also detaching these subthreads as I reply to them.

Thank you, dang. I think you've done the right thing here, and I'm sure you're also under a lot of stress right now. Thanks for having faith in the community to discuss this amicably.

Thank you!

I sometimes post snarky comments and a tiny version of dang that sits on my shoulder scolds me into editing it.

That's both strange and a testament to your work.

That is me also. Sometimes the bad side of yourself just want to start another war over the internet, but whenever I see Dang I just thought I should edit myself and not make his job any harder than what is already an insane job.

Thank you for your work.

Just wan to say Thank You again. I still dont know how you handle HN all the time. May be some day you could post about tips and tricks or lessons learned from moderating HN.

You should leave the flags, for the same reasons as last time:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42933391

I hear you but I think this sequence of stories has interest to HN readers on both sides of the political abyss, though not necessarily for the same reasons, and I think one can find the stories interesting without crossing into personal attack. (It's true that some of the articles do that more than others.)

We don't want too much of this, but a certain amount is ok, and that's how HN has operated for at least the last 15 years.

What is the preferred approach for those of us who want fewer Trump/Musk-related posts? Other than, you know, participating in a flamewar.

Don't click into the comments would probably be a good start.

While I understand the sentiment (and support it with a lot of political content on HN) the start of this administration has an undeniable tech angle. If you don’t want to read the stuff, don’t click. But it belongs here.

The preferred approach is (1) flag the stories you think are off-topic for Hacker News, and (2) make peace with the fact that the front page sometimes has stories that you feel don't belong there. This is true for everyone, including me. It's a consequence of the site being under conflicting constraints, and frontpage space being the scarcest resource (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).

Oh and (3) if you browse HN while logged in, you can always click 'hide' on a submission and the software will not show you that particular one anymore.

Yep, fair enough.

Something simple and direct you can do is don't buy Tesla. It may now genuinely be in America's national interest to not buy Tesla.

There's no point giving Musk more money, power, and influence. He's now calling for the impeachment of judges because he thinks they're in his way:

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5134725-elon-musk-impe...

He wants any opposition or limit or restraint to him gone. Here's an interview with Kara Swisher about Musk's mentality that's worth watching:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xXLycFv5Gc

Thank you for looking out for flagspamming.

> As some of you know, this article was posted a dozen times and immediately flagkilled by users

That's because HN appears to be disturbingly pro-trump and they seem to organize to flagkill anything "negative".

You really should look into organized flagkilling.

Why would it have to be organized flagkilling? A combination of a sizeable pro-Trump faction (even 20% of users would be more than enough) and a sizeable "just keep US politics off the front page" faction would be more than enough to account for what you're seeing.

You need only look at the threads that HN has hosted about this to see that "pro-Trump" is a strong overstatement. The community is divided, just like the society at large is divided (or societies, since many countries are represented here).

Given what we know about the demographics of HN—for example, users here are probably more likely to be college-educated, many come from outside the U.S., and so on—the community here is probably less pro-Trump than the general U.S. population is, but that still leaves a great many users on both sides of that issue.

Of course I understand that any level of pro-$X can be disturbing if $X itself is disturbing enough. But that's more of a qualitative experience than a quantitative one. I've called it the "shock experience" in the past and wrote about it here, if anyone is interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098.

You are not quite right and there are "organized groups" active on HN influencing sensitive topics. The equivalence you are making i.e. "society is divided, the HN community is a reflection of the society and therefore the community is divided" does not say anything about how specific groups may exploit the situation and push their agenda. They are not all rational actors nor is it a zero-sum game.

To understand what i mean take a look at;

1) Nassim Taleb's book Skin in the Game - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_in_the_Game_(book). Specifically his The Minority Rule which basically states that an intransigent minority can almost always prevail over a flexible majority. It is the asymmetry which is being used to game the system.

Nassim Taleb's article The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority - https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

Nassim Taleb & Naval Ravikant video on The Minority Rule - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwlW2aamDFc

2) Also see Game Theory(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory) and the books The Evolution of Cooperation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation), The Complexity of Cooperation(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complexity_of_Cooperation) by Robert Axelrod

Veritasium's video on Game Theory and Axelrod's tournaments - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mScpHTIi-kM

Influence decision models: From cooperative game theory to social network analysis - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S15740...

A Survey of Game Theory as Applied to Social Networks - https://www.sciopen.com/article/10.26599/TST.2020.9010005

it would be helpful to evidence your hypothesis with example threads here on HN, I guess. do you have examples at hand? And are you talking about "brigading", i.e. groups of HN users who organize outside HN to in dang's terms "activate" discussions inside HN? as in "hey brigade, please have a look at topic xyz: ..."? is this what you're talking about?

> yet-another interchangeable flamewar

You have earned my respect, dang, but this is hardly an "interchangeable flamewar".

What is happening is frankly beyond anything we have ever seen before in the history of the country.

I'm not talking about the events themselves or how significant they are—I'm only talking about HN comment threads.

Often, a sequence of related stories (S1, S2, ..., Sn) produces threads that are more or less the same as their predecessors, rather than focusing on the specific new information introduced by any Si. This particularly happens when the topic is a major and divisive one, like the current one.

What happens in this cases is that people tend to post their generic views about $Person or $Topic, often in vehement terms and without much curiosity about the specific details of what's happening. In this way we get threads that don't differ very much from one discussion to the next. That's what I mean by "interchangeable".

Any chance of implementing a backend "merge items" feature that redirects dupes to the canonical item?

Can you give a bit more technical detail of what you have in mind?

Lobste.rs has what they call "merged stories", where the moderator will merge into a single page the links for a few submissions, as well as the comments from all submissions. Here's a recent example: https://lobste.rs/s/djejmh/really_really_good_random_number

I guess it's similar to what you do here when you "move" comments from one submission to another. A downside is that it can be hard to know which comments come from which submission. Perhaps top-level comments need a small marker indicating which link they originally commented under?

(I'm the Lobsters admin.)

Comments from merged stories do have a label showing where the came from... but only before the merge; afterwards top-level comments are always attached to the primary story which is when things get especially confusing.

For this and other reasons, I'm in the middle of revamping UI for the feature and the database model: https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters/issues/1456

If anyone is real curious about the fine details, I've done almost all of this feature work on Lobsters office hours streams: https://push.cx/tags#story-merging I plan to continue that work in about four hours on today's stream so it's a great time to ask questions: https://push.cx/stream

As a (much) smaller community, story merging has been valuable for allowing us to build the critical mass of a good discussion. We also avoid rehashing the basics/easy misunderstandings. It's a pretty similar to dang's motivation about wanting to promote novel discussions. I have joked for a couple years that I'd love to see HN copy the feature so that HN can teach everyone how the feature works.

You may know this, but exact duplicate submissions do get redirected to a single canonical item.

But conceptually-linked ones of course don’t.

> exact duplicate submissions do get redirected to a single canonical item

Not always. There seems to be some issue with the exactness match. I haven't reported it because I presumed it was intentional. Well, that and there's no obvious bug submission process.

Consider adding a mandatory keyword search when submitting a link - like every human-averse helpdesk.

Maybe if submitters see something was already submitted 800 times, they'll get the message; though, I have my doubts.

There's already a feature so that when you try to post a link, and it's been posted recently, you're instead taken to that discussion and your submission instead counts as an upvote.

Doesn't solve the sameish story being posted from multiple sources, though.

You can’t have your cake and eat it too bud. You’re saying contradictory things. “Yes this is a shit show but please have civil discourse” just doesn’t work anymore.

We can be civil until the very end of the world, I guess. I’ll make sure to hold my knife and fork correctly while civilization falls apart.

I don't personally care how anyone holds their knife and fork - I prefer chopsticks anyway.

But yes, I do intend to be civil and thoughtful right up until my death, no matter what happens in the world.

That's how I want to live my life, and I'm glad to be part of this community which has clearly stated goals that align with mine, and a moderator team that does as good a job as I'd expect while maintaining a fairly light touch. There's almost nowhere else like this on the internet.

It's also important to state clearly that being civil and thoughtful does not equate to being passive. It does not equate to failing to take action to defend your ideals and way of life. You can be a highly active and passionate person taking strong actions everyday to guide the world (back) onto the path you believe in, and you can do so while striving to remain thoughtful and civil.

"“Yes this is a shit show but please have civil discourse” just doesn’t work anymore."

Why not? Do you think a violent discourse would work better?

(also I have not seen dang making any concrete statements about the topic)

If you've found contradictions in what I'm saying, I'd be interested, but you need to find them in things I've actually said. I certainly haven't said the thing you've put in quotation marks here.

I have previously brought you a plain and obvious example of a contradiction, and you denied that it was a valid example.

Now you want this poster to believe that if they were to just bring examples, you would be interested for reasons other than arguing against their validity.

I said I'd be interested, not that I would automatically agree! That would be a bit silly to commit to, no?

If you're going to mention a "plain and obvious" example, you should link to it so users can make up their own minds about how plain and obvious it is.

Re contradictions: there probably are contradictions in the principles I've been describing, because the problem we're trying to solve is complex enough to involve tradeoffs. Perhaps this is what whalesalad means by "You can’t have your cake and eat it too bud."

Alright man, here's your time to shine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43055471

That same statement applies to literally every moment the country has existed.

I tend to disagree, in terms of coordinated upheaval we saw something similar in Andrew Jackson's presidency. Nothing new under the sun, I'm afraid.

Please say more for those of us who are historically ignorant but interested!

I don't agree with our friend's equation of then and now, but here is some information about Andrew Jackson.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Jackson

I was hoping for something more specific.

I understand, but I was not the one who introduced Andrew Jackson as a comparator. I see that our friend has provided some of his arguments above. That's good.

I find it hard to compare the two men in question. They will have their similarities, being humans and politicians. But Andrew Jackson lived two hundred years ago. The modern era has seen the USA become a "superpower" with brokering influence (political, financial, military) all around the world.

The current administration appears intent (despite its slogans) on dismantling its own influence in the world... as well as Democracy. Nations and economic zones that considered themselves long-standing allies only a month ago now openly express distrust.

So I won't go into too much detail given the nature of the forum, but beyond the complete change in tone that Jackson brought to the presidency, something that Trump is also routinely criticized for, prior to Andrew Jackson we had an entirely different banking system.

He engaged in a conflict with the central bank overseeing national finances and banking and vetoed the bill renewing its charter, in part because he perceived the bank as supporting his political opponents. It still had four years to go, but the next year he unilaterally pulled all federal deposits from the bank, putting them in smaller state banks. This crippled the Second Bank of the United States with no Congressional approval or oversight. In fact, he was officially censured by the Senate for doing it.

Some other similarities in tone or type:

Jackson wasn't initially taken seriously as a presidential candidate - he was a political outsider and "a man of the people." He thought the federal government was corrupt and against him. This feeling was not helped by his winning the popular vote in the election of 1824 but it being taken away by the electoral college and ultimately decided by the House of Representatives in a "corrupt bargain."

He basically replaced his entire cabinet because of a conflict between the wives of his cabinet members and the wife of his chief of staff, who had married the widow of another cabinet member after a rumored affair and that member's subsequent suicide.

He had a "kitchen cabinet" of unofficial and unappointed advisors who had extremely significant power in the Federal government, such as Martin Van Buren (who would later become VP), John Overton, and Francis Blair (Editor of the Washington Globe), including some of the richest people in the country at the time - some of whom were bankers, by the way, and directly benefited from the destruction of the 2nd National Bank.

He criminally investigated his presidential predecessor's staff, alleging (and allegedly finding) corruption.

He was accused of being a dictator and a despot, and rattled his saber against Europe, almost going to war with France.

He nominated and successfully appointed completely unqualified judges.

We didn't have the current system of executive agencies until the latter half of the twentieth century, but if we did Jackson would probably have dismantled it.

A couple of books I liked about this era are: The Birth of Modern Politics - https://archive.org/details/birthofmodernpol00lynn

American Lion by Jon Meacham

Unprecedented things happen in every US presidency, they're just different things. (Hard to mention examples because the ones I am most familiar with are the last 6 terms, and each topic has flamebait potential)

Genuine question - What's the meaning of "activating" as an opposite to "interesting" in this context? I've never heard it used like this and couldn't get good results from searching.

In this context, "activating" is speech which elicits gut-reaction. Whereas "interesting" is speech which stimulates thoughtfulness.

I think there should be some balance. Passionless discussion never feels as satisfying. We're not all robots. Our reasoning should be clear, but our tone and the grounding of our opinions should also shine through.

I'd say it's a classic Spock vs. Jimbo take.

I totally agree with you that we shouldn't try to suppress emotion or passion. Those add depth and color and character to interesting conversation.

What I'm calling "activation" isn't the same thing as emotion or passion, and what I'm calling "curiosity" or "being interested" is definitely not the same thing as being passionless or robotic.

I understand, but it's a blurry line. I think just asking for good faith conversation backed by verifiable facts where appropriate is a good place to start.

Ah good question and sorry that wasn't clear—I use that word a lot. By "activation" I mean arousal of the nervous system, particularly the sympathetic nervous system, which regulates fight-or-flight responses, and the limbic system of the brain which assesses threats and seizes control when it feels that survival is threatened.

What happens in flamewars is that when people encounter material they strongly disagree with, these systems get activated and rapidly produce aggressive and defensive responses that have to do with self-protection, and nothing to do with thoughtful consideration of the material, things one might learn, points where one might be wrong, curiosity, playful interaction, and so on. When survival is at stake there is no time or space for the latter sorts of reactions. But it's the latter that we want on HN—they're what the site is for.

Of course we all know cognitively that our survival is not really at stake when someone disagrees with us on the internet—at least our frontal cortices know that—but our limbic systems and autonomic nervous systems definitely do not know that. They experience it as a threat and from then on it's kill-or-be-killed. The fact that survival is not really at stake has no effect; what matters is the feeling that it is so.

This is what underlies commenters being so angry, snarky, sarcastic, aggressive and so on, on the internet. It's also what underlies our inability to hear each other or respect each other.

I sometimes describe this is as 'reflexive' vs. 'reflective' responses (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). By 'reflexive' I mean when the rapid-response system I just described takes over and reacts from "cache", so to speak, to quickly counter a threat. By 'reflective' I mean the slower processes that happen when one is in a relaxed state and available for curiosity and play. In the jargon I'm using, 'activated' means being in 'reflexive' mode, and 'interested' or 'curious' means being in 'reflective' mode.

This has all kinds of interesting aspects. Here's one: you can't be in both of these states at the same time. It's literally one or the other. Think of the implications that has for a community like HN, where basically everything we want comes out of one of those two states and everything we don't want comes out of the other.

Someone is going to object that political developments can and do present real survival threats. That of course is true, and maybe to the extent that it is true, people have no choice but to function in kill-or-be-killed mode. But we feel this way and behave this way to a greater extent than we need to, and that's one factor preventing conflicts from being solved. That's a vicious circle which it's in all our interests to explore our way out of. We can't kill our way out of it.

In case it's not obvious, I'm using the word 'kill' metaphorically. What I mean by 'kill' is what we do when we try to eliminate threats (and the feeling of threat) by annihilating the other. That shows up as real killing in extreme situations like war, but the same (let's call it) psycho-physiological state shows up in other environments too, including trivial ones like internet forums. Here it shows up as people trying to annihilate the other by maximizing the aggressive potency of their language.

How do we end up getting so activated when we don't need to? and what can we do to become less activated in this way? I believe that if you tug on those threads and keep tugging, you arrive at the most important problem in the world. That's one main reason why I've kept working on HN for so long. Internet comments are trivial, but this environment is a laboratory for learning about this stuff—not just by observing others, but mainly by working with what they activate in oneself. In that sense it's a driver for growth and learning. This learning isn't primarily conceptual—it's more somatic.

p.s. Lots of people on HN know far more about the physiology here than I do. What I'm saying comes from my explorations of the therapy world, e.g. somatically-oriented trauma therapies and even-more-out-there stuff. That culture veers into metaphor more often than genuine specialists would be comfortable with. If I've done that in this comment I would certainly be interested in correction!

Ouch, you saw through me...

We're all the same I think.

Hello dang, out of curiosity: is this way of thinking directly connected to some specific religion or group of some kind? - you mentioned a jargon.

No. By jargon I just mean a specialized vocabulary. In this case the 'jargon' is terms that we've accumulated over the years to describe HN and how we moderate it.

Edit: but see what I wrote at the very end there about somatically-oriented trauma therapies. I wouldn't call that a "specific religion or group" but it's at least a subculture and that may be what you meant? In any case, I've spent a lot of time in that subculture and it has informed what I wrote there.

> Here's one: you can't be in both of these states at the same time. It's literally one or the other.

It is definitely the case that certain neuromodulators exert negative feedback on each other, but this may not be factual. Maybe the way I would make your point is that the external feedback we interact with can more or less quickly drive our brain into extremes on the brain state continuum.

Thank you! Could you say a bit more about that continuum? How do you understand the states on it?

> By 'reflexive' I mean when the rapid-response system I just described takes over and reacts from "cache", so to speak, to quickly counter a threat.

That's exactly what's happening when people flag articles like this.

So what's the plan to achieve reflective flagging?

My sense is that this is true with many but not all flags. See https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... for past explanations.

What's the plan? I guess the plan is continue to turn off flags on specific submissions that people bring to our attention and which seem to clear the bar according to the principles I've outlined in this and other threads.

Another word that is often used (you can look it up) is emotional reactivity. It’s when you “overreacting negatively to normal or even benign stimuli due to stress, depleted physiological resources, or emotional disorder.”

Thanks for this subthread!

In terms of wanting reflective and not reactive, one thought would be to gate it by time, and prevent replies to a comment until N number of minutes have passed. which I know exists as a flag that can be set on specific users, but it's a heavy hammer and extra work for moderators. If, on a post that the system has marked as a flamewar, hitting the reply page started a, say, 15 minute timer before allowing a reply, would that help lessen the reactivity of comments? personally if it's something contentious, sometimes I'll open up a reply page, write what I feel like writing, then give it 15 mins to sit, and then usually come back and delete and rewrite my entire response to be more in line with the guidelines. (though tbh, not 100% successfully)

technical fixes can't fix the underlying social ills, but sometimes you just need a simple lock to keep people honest.

It's a good idea and the HN software already does that in deeply nested threads (it hides the 'reply' link for several minutes). Maybe we could extend something like that to all threads, not just deeply nested ones. Thanks!

As I read it, when someone is "activated" they are provoked to responding; someone replying because they want to say something. I see "triggered" as somewhat of an analogy, but a much more loaded word.

This seems to stand opposed to people who reply because they have something interesting to say.

Actually yes, I think I originally used the word 'triggered' years ago, but it was too...activating, so I switched to 'activated'.

> This seems to stand opposed to people who reply because they have something interesting to say.

Or something interested to say. Interested people say interesting things.

I’m curious what the new and interesting information is. I read the article when it was originally posted a few days ago. I just scanned it again and it seems the same as before. Just curious. Thanks.

I guess 2 days isn't new by firehose standards, but this particular story didn't get discussed until today and there's still some interest in it. HN has a long tradition of hosting threads about the exploits of young hackers.

I agree it's interesting and was disappointed when I saw the previous submissions removed. I definitely approve it being allowed.

It is an important set of facts and you did the right thing. Thank you, dang!

Hey Dang!

First I want to thank you for the tireless job of moderating this form, it is really the thing that keeps it as a special place on the internet.

I genuinely wanted to ask if you feel out of depth on moderating the current and upcoming news on both the US and AI.

Both feel like we are heading towards things many of us have not experienced in our lives.

How do you find your previous moderation experience is leading you in the current environment?

I don't feel out of depth. To me it feels like variations on places we've been before.

But I hasten to qualify this:

(1) This is just my feeling! You asked how I feel, so I'm telling you, but I don't claim my feeling is anything more than that.

(2) I'm only talking about dynamics on HN. I'm not talking about what Trump might do or AI might do; it's not my job to comment on those and your guess is as good as mine anyhow.

Appreciate the response.

Makes sense to really focus your commitment to HN.

I can appreciate your emotional discipline in these times. I could work on that more myself

I'll just add my personal observations that I've found that the more the world turns into a circus tent, the more I actually respect, enjoy and desire the HN approach to the sensitive and polarizable discussion.

Not all the time, no. It's good to stay informed and maybe even stay "functionally outraged" a bit. But having HN with its high degree of remoteness and dispassionate analysis to come back to is great.

thank you.

I'm quite curious on your retrospective thoughts on this thread once this article goes off the front page! Also whether you'd do the same again.

Having looked around, probably around 80% of comments are mostly uninteresting/partisanship (though a fair few of those combine the mud slinging with an interesting fact or argument, which complicates categorization).

(Aside: One of the issues for me is that on high emotion topics like this I can't take people's word for things as much as in a usual thread, it just becomes visual noise)

My thought is that it's not great in absolute terms but reasonably ok in relative terms. Any thread on a topic this intense is going to have a lot of qualities that aren't good-for-HN.

We do some moderation things to try to nudge it in a more reflective/interesting direction, but there's a limit to how much that can help.

@dang Considering how many are ready to label one of the “other side” as evil, I think it’s very irresponsible of you to allow articles about US politics in the front page, specially an article like this that it’s really an smearing attempt

I’m curious what you consider to be a smear. Are the items about his background & history factual or not? If true, it seems calling it a smear attempt might be disingenuous.

What in the article do you consider as lacking a factual basis?

I see you're "ready to label one of the “other side” as evil" but the article seems well researched and referenced while your comment makes vague claims.

I see a lot of really specific and well thought out raising of issues in this thread, as it applies to technology, commerce and security, all very much on topic for HN.

Criticism of the current administration is an important part of democracy, we need to hold the government accountable, no matter who runs it.

> I see you're "ready to label one of the “other side” as evil" but the article seems well researched

I meant here, in this forum.

> Criticism of the current administration is an important part of democracy, we need to hold the government accountable, no matter who runs it.

Typical american imperialist mentality where USA is the only country that exists and/or matters:

- I'm not american

- I don't need to (or can) hold your government accountable

- I still believe allowing any politically-inclined post like this is toxic to this forum

> I think it’s very irresponsible of you to allow articles about US politics in the front page

There are a couple answers to that. One is that it's not possible not to. We tried once, as an experiment, and it had the counterintuitive effect of making the site more politicized.

The other answer is that a limited amount of political overlap is actually part of optimizing the site for intellectual curiosity. Lots of past explanations at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... if anyone wants more.

Thanks for your service dang

Dan, can we BAN all political threads unless we have fairness. There are a fair number of HN users that also want the USAID scandal covered with a post with 1500 comments. The time for HN to be left biased needs to come to an end.

Just as many people feel that HN is horribly right-biased as left-biased. I could give you hundreds of examples. Here are a couple:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42618465

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42066014

The way out of this logjam is to stop thinking in quantitative terms (how many 'left' posts vs. how many 'right' posts) and instead look for the highest-quality articles you can find. If there's a high-qualty article about USAID, meaning one which contains interesting information and isn't primarily hammering on partisan drums, I don't see why that wouldn't be on topic here.

Ever since the salute thread, I have a lot of respect for you trying to continue these conversations. Thanks

It has been a fairly common story, and part rumor, that intelligence agencies like to recruit young people active in the cyber criminal scene, and that the IT security industry also adapted this approach. They basically becomes part informer and part subject expert, especially since IT security expertise seems to be a difficult subject matter to teach in universities. When I studied IT security in university, about 10 years ago, I heard multiple version of this several times, with one student from my university getting employed because they managed to demonstrate a hack on a bank.

I always hope that such recruits had a bit tighter surveillance from their employee, but no one in the industry describes such recruits as "highly susceptible to extortion and coercion from current members of the same gang", and absolutely no one described them as members of violent street gang. It might have been a fair label but at most, such teens were describe as smart but mischievous. Might not be the best people to be responsible for national security, or peoples bank accounts, but it seemed to be the culture of that industry.

Has other people in the IT security industry had the similar experience of this culture?

while I agree there's typically a big event where the state has incredible leverage over the subject that is part of the flip. As far as we can see in this story; there is no leverage. So for all we know this guy is doing what he did in his last job and selling secrets gained working here to competitors.

Imagine if DOGE feeds all the data they get their hands on into an LLM and he sells a copy of that to a foreign nation, allowing any other government a text-based interface to ask any questions of any of the internal workings of the US administration, government, citizens or even some of its secrets.

Even without the leverage, I think that former teenage hackers turned pentesters or three-letter-agency adjuncts are hired for specific skills on the understanding they're being watched and they're probably not getting access to much more than a sandbox or adversary data and the money and freedom's all in scrupulously obeying the rules

That feels a little different to hiring people with cracking credentials for auditing jobs, giving them full access to extensive government records (and possibly the right to backdoor them) in a move fast break things environment on the understanding that they're probably above the law and they're less likely to be punished than anyone barring their way.

I doubt the success rate of converting teenage tearaways to scrupulous white hats in boring businesses is 100% either....

> They basically becomes part informer and part subject expert, especially since IT security expertise seems to be a difficult subject matter to teach in universities.

I don't think the argument they can act as an informer for things going on inside government agencies works. They've never been on the inside.

And I don't see what it has to do with IT security. What are they doing that's security related? Isn't what they're claiming to be doing pretty much data analysis?

The only overlapping skill I can see is a willingness to exfiltrate data, if they're doing that, without giving consideration to the rules or consequences.

People get clearances even if they've used hardcore drugs such as cocaine and various more serious crimes than computer crimes. The adjudication guides for clearances explain this in more detail. I have a friend who exploited RCE full-chain exploits on productions servers and used to DDoS. He got a TS/SCI clearance no problem and didn't even finish college. I interviewed too and admitted to that stuff. They cared more about me admitting to cheating in math at college lol.

TS/SCI clearance is a lot more about truthfulness. The adjudicators are looking for secrets that can be used as leverage. Publicly writing reviews for cannabis strains is not a risk. A Mormon secretly hiding alcoholic tendencies could be. I'm also told that owning foreign property is unfriendly countries, and debt are the other big reasons for clearance denial.

    > owning foreign property is unfriendly countries

This is pretty darn specific. It must be tiny fraction of applicants. Hell, most Americans never leave the United States in their lifetime. The security concern about heavy debts or debts to unfriendly counterparties makes sense to me. But what is the security concern with "owning foreign property is unfriendly countries"? They can take it from you?

The concern is always leverage and conflict of interest.

Is there something about you that you would do anything to keep covered up?

Are you susceptible to outside influence?

Can anyone, in any country, compel you to act counter to the interest of your employer?

Foreign property means you are, at the very least, going to take interest if/when the foreign government threatens it.

Or if a government funding bill threatens it.

People who don't own abroad property can be corrupted as well. The whole premise is weird.

That's not the only thing that makes you a risk, it's just one factor they take into consideration.

They're looking for two different sets of things.

"Are you an untrustworthy person?" Are you likely to take a bribe? Will you get mad at your boss and try to burn the place down, literally or metaphorically? Will you be careless in a way that brings about the same, with no malice?

"Are you as trustworthy as anyone else, but subject to inhuman pressure?" Anyone would be vulnerable to having a relative threatened; you probably don't want to hire someone who would be apathetic to having their parents or child threatened. If that relative is already in unfriendly hands, that's a huge risk.

In some ways, a $100k house in a (hostile) foreign country is no different than a $100k bribe; it's just stuff. If you ignore a threat to your property in a scheme to extort you, you are $100k poorer than if you give in, just like if you turn down a bribe. But humans are prone to loss aversion. Having $1 taken from you is far worse than receiving $1 is good, even ignoring any sentimental value of the property in question. Some people will still be able to ignore the threat, not allow themselves to be compromised, but a lot of people will find it hard.

For a job where security is a concern and you have thousands or millions of perfectly cromulent candidates, it's not crazy to winnow the pool first by discarding everyone who's untrustworthy or has extra levers that can be used against them. You still have thousands or millions of great candidates left.

sure, but it's way easier for the FBI to request the title and deed for things in the US and track their history than an apartment building in Panama, or a plantation in Indonesia.

> The whole premise is weird.

Only if you don't take 30 seconds to think about it.

Of course you can be compromised without owning foreign property. But foreign property is a vector by which you can be compromised.

Doesn't it make sense an intelligence agency would want to know all the possible vectors by which potential employees could be compromised? For each vector you'll have certain remediation steps, up to and including "don't hire this person."

Yes they can, which is why there are many many factors considered in granting and maintaining a clearance. None of them are simple black and white things. For foreign property, it is very different owning a small vacation house and owning a house where 3 generations of your spouse’s family live or owning a commercial property that provides a significant income to you. A foreign government putting each of those things at risk would have very different implications.

You have to remember that the DC area workforce has a lot of immigrants, people married to immigrants, and people who've done significant overseas stints. Plus there is a need for hiring linguists and cultural experts with fluency in unfriendly languages.

I know of TS clearance holders who have significant ties to Iran, Syria, Russia, and Afghanistan, but have renounced those citizenships and are loyal to the US. The clearance process works to figure out what levers those countries could still pull on them - foreign property and close family still there are the big ones.

> But what is the security concern with "owning foreign property is unfriendly countries"? They can take it from you?

Exactly. Or rather, they can threaten to take it from you unless you do something (probably illegal) for said foreign government.

they need to hire people who speak Arabic, or Chinese, or Hindi, and have ties they can utilize in those countries -- or at least understand well enough to build ties.

overseas money and property, esp. in unfriendly countries, rapidly becomes a concern in that sense. go double agent, have a friend overseas give you some sweet improvements to your house on the cheap, then sell it later for 4x than it's worth, and repeat.

I have a theory that the normalization of homosexuality in the united states was a move by the security agencies to lower their exposure risk. If everything is cool, nothing is blackmail.

Blackmail is what sinks orgs because you have no idea who is going to be a mole.

I have the impression that sexual harassment became the opposite. Something most successful man are blamed for, decades later when all possible proof have vanished. In terms of blackmail, the power seems much higher.

People who sexually harass are on supreme court and literally the president. For considerable amount of people, it is a positive sign that "the guy is like us".

I don't think anyone takes it as a positive. It's just not what voters vote on. If they support one candidate's policies more than another's, they won't flip because of that issue. The example of Bill Clinton demonstrates that this happens across the political spectrum, and his feminist supporters were the ones making this argument back then. They got criticized for being hypocritical, but in politics you have to prioritize.

I do actually think they see it as a positive. It is not just that they do not care. It is that it heightens his credit in their eyes and they get to see him as victim.

It makes him look more manly for some people.

At the least, it often makes them feel empowered to speak out in favor of forgetting all about the issue, and emboldening them to push for whatever the politician pushes that they agree with. At least in the US, you can hop on social media and take a look at your local newspaper or news channel's posts, and see some of the truly insane comments (and I use insane here as in bringing up politics to promote their voted politician, or smear the other side, when the issue is something at a local level or unaffected by politics in any way).

As much as I would like to believe this, I highly suspect that the normalisation of homosexuality killed the forbidden fun for those high power psychopaths.

There may be some truth to that.

There's this idea that sharing in illegal or socially shunned activities is an effective way to establish strong personal ties, and strong personal ties can in turn help advance careers.

Which is why there were a lot of successful secretely gay people in politics even in the 19th century.

As homosexuality became accepted, there was a shift to "harder stuff" playing this role. Not by literally the same people, mind you, but over time the composition of who's powerful shifts towards people who engage in shunned activities to form their strong personal ties. And as more activities become socially accepted, the activities that are shunned and give people a leg up become increasingly worse.

I don't like this conclusion, but it's the strongest potential argument against social liberalism that I know of.

Epstein. When child abuse becomes a political and financial status symbol - the ultimate exclusive consumer good for narcissists/psychopaths.

As well as a handy source of material for blackmail.

It was a move by the political parties to campaign on social wedge issues and ignore economic ones.

Pretty sure it was a move by gay people to stop getting arrested, left to die, and beaten up so they could just live their lives.

Things besides money also matter.

>Things besides money also matter.

To people, not politicians

I think you're both correct. For those that care about their fellow (hu)man, it is extremely important to improve people's lives, to live without fear and violence. Unfortunately for the politicians, it was often just an issue that could be spearheaded to avoid and "hide" other issues. Much like businesses that celebrate pride month, and then drop the issue and remain silent on it until the next year comes around, because people are too easily fooled by a perceived month of caring. I am not of the opinion that gay or LGBTQ+ rights were ever pushed in order to prevent blackmail, especially since in the US, it is often the side that fights against those rights that end up getting caught in controversy for the exact thing they fought against. Much like how you hear that homophobia and transphobia is often perpetrated by those that haven't accepted their sexuality.

I can see why that idea is tempting, but it doesn't seem to work.

Military had "don't ask don't tell" for a long time because legalisation and social acceptance are different (also seen in reverse order with cannabis). Even today, the percentage of people in the US who think society should not accept it, 21%, is higher than the percentage who are homosexual or bisexual: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/06/25/global-divide-...

For this reason, there's still plenty who want to stay closeted.

And there's a lot of stuff with 5% or more reporting interest, according to Aella's sexual taboo survey, that society still very much isn't OK with: https://aella.substack.com/p/fetish-tabooness-vs-popularity

If sexual liberation was driven from the top to reduce blackmail opportunity, I think there'd be a lot more desires whose taboo was lessened, not just homosexuality.

(Though perhaps I'm underestimating how much else has changed due to what hasn't; I'm sure "cheating on spouse" used to be a thing that killed political careers, clearly doesn't now).

It also feels like the social acceptability of trans people has moved backwards. (Just my perception, or has that actually shifted?)

That said, the logic you give is still sound, and I think the increasing ease of private surveilance means we must eliminate as many taboos as we can so that society can keep functioning.

Note, the second link, as expected, lists especially unpopular sexual taboos; think twice before clicking.

I assumed this would be obvious from context, but yes, this is true.

Screw especially unpopular, it has multiple downright illegal and unquestionably immoral ones.

But the gender ratio preference is fascinating. There are multiple ones I would have never guessed (e.g. cannibalism is much more interesting to women than it is to men, which is weird because of all the high profile cannibals that I can think of, none are female).

After hearing Armie Hammer discuss some of the texts and DMs he received on the YMH podcast this makes a lot more sense (but still very surprising)

> It also feels like the social acceptability of trans people has moved backwards. (Just my perception, or has that actually shifted?)

You're not wrong, it certainly has. I think this is more of it having become a cause célèbre than actual transpeople standing up for their rights. As is so often the case, if a movement doesn't have a strong leader to "stop" the movement once it achieves what it was after, then it goes ever onward - partly because there's a group of people who derive their life meaning from it (stupid), partly because there's a group of people financially dependent upon it (disgusting).

As Michael Malice said in one of his episodes of Your Welcome, "They way they fucked up was going after people's kids. The normies will fight back when you do that."

I think broader acceptance of trans people has increased as long as you view acceptance as "do whatever you want with your body."

The big wedge trans issue I've seen is with children and puberty blockers which is much more complicated and I don't think can be boiled down to "acceptability of trans people."

> I think broader acceptance of trans people has increased as long as you view acceptance as "do whatever you want with your body."

Between Trump's repeated executive orders and Facebook for some reason feeling the need to explicitly call out that you can now call trans people mentally ill (but not other groups!) on their platform, we're well beyond riling up people who don't know anything and aren't impacted into nevertheless buying into this moral panic. We've 100% moved backwards on the "acceptability of trans people."

The violent acts against trans people are up. They are the most hated group currently.

And it has zero to do with puberty blockers as a leader. They have issue with any kind of trans affirming care. It is simple. You demonize the thing that trans are using and then people fear it. It is basically impossible to believe it is driven by care for those kids. If they cared for trans kids, they would care about them when they are not on puberty blockers too.

But they dont, as far as they are concerned trans kids can all kill themselves and should be punished. It is just when they get trans affirming care that it becomes a problem for right.

> I have a theory that the normalization of homosexuality in the united states was a move by the security agencies to lower their exposure risk

the decades of civil rights expansions, first for women, then african-americans, then disabled, and eventually the gays -- that was all just the CIA trying to do recruiting 2% easier?

rather, homosexuality as a secondary non-lifestyle, non-professed interest, often in one-off scenarios, is WAY more common than culture would like to admit, and the intelligence agencies are in the perfect position to precisely observe that fact.

For the US: Women ~50% African Americans ~12% Disabled ~ 20% Homosexual ~7%

It’s a lot more than 2% for any one of those categories, let alone them all. You’ve comfortably described a group that forms the majority of the US population, even when allowing for the homosexual, African American, disabled woman, who is in all 4 ‘minorities’.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Americans

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disability_in_the_United_Sta...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBTQ_demographics_of_the_Un...

I'm not the parent comment, and I think I get the gist of what you're saying. To be fair to the parent comment though, it's not just making recruiting easier. It's reducing the risk of compromise within your organization. Just one compromised employee can present a tremendous risk, which is nothing to 2%.

Why recruiting? It’s not as if gay people universally stayed away from these jobs. Given the times plenty probably didn’t understand or accept this part of who they were until careers were in full swing. The issue would have been stopping a risk that was already known and actively exploited.

I don’t think this is at all why normalization occurred, that intelligence communities had anything to do with it, but if they had then it wouldn’t need to have been for recruitment.

taking cocaine is a more hardcore crime than computer crime?

It was just an example, but you can read the DCSA appeals page to find worse illegal stuff that has been adjudicated: https://doha.ogc.osd.mil/Industrial-Security-Program/Industr...

Maybe the US 3-letter agencies are a bit more forgiving, but when I worked in intelligence there were three deadly sins that would make you untouchable as a candidate:

- Drug use

- Financial crimes

- Close ties to hostile countries (China, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, North-Korea, etc.)

And at least in my country, it's not the intelligence agencies themselves that handle the security clearance, but rather a dedicated agency/authority that processes all the security clearances in the country.

Now, if you've never been arrested / charged / convicted on the two first points - who would know? I'm 100% some candidates would simply lie.

America has recently waved the security clearance process entirely for certain roles, so currently there isn't anything that is disqualifying right now.

Prior to that change, lying in the clearance process was the one thing that was absolutely disqualifying. As you noted candidates are incentivized to lie, and so "did you lie here, where it is likely to benefit you?" becomes an effective screening mechanism for people who are willing to compromise their ethics for personal gain.

US intelligence agencies really only care about your third point directly, everything else they care about only insofar as it can blackmail you or make you beholden to criminal interests.

They don't care if you're gay, but they care if you're closeted. They don't care if you do drugs, but they do care if it's such a problem you could become financially beholden to someone over it.

>They don't care if you do drugs

More accurately, they don’t necessarily care if you did drugs in the past. Current drug use, or very recent drug use is a risk, as addiction is a huge risk for both judgement and susceptibility to blackmail, and even controlled drug use is illegal. Also, being a previous drug addict extremely risky drug use can speak to your current judgement.

Yes you're absolutely right if anything in your past indicates poor judgment or otherwise increases risk you might run into issues.

People often lie yeah. The polygraph has been proven to be pseudoscience and the tactic of we know you're lying about x to get you to spill the beans is common knowledge now.

Heres the DCSA clearance appeals page showing people getting or keeping their clearance from drugs and other issues: https://doha.ogc.osd.mil/Industrial-Security-Program/Industr...

Making a judgement against someone based on where they randomly happened to be born is self-defeating as talented people who are security- and defense-oriented will just work for another place that you maybe don’t want them to work. Interestingly, most of the news I’ve come across of someone betraying national secrets has almost always concerned a white man, but maybe that’s just what I know.

It's a tricky situation.

If you have connections to a hostile country - family, friends, business, spouse, etc. they can (will) become targets of intel ops.

So your wife is from Russia? GRU or FSB will start to pressure family and friends of your spouse.

Anything that is worth anything to the enemies of your country, they will find a way. Which is why agencies that require top secret security clearance will rather just set the threshold extra high, and lose out on potentially good talent. Better to be safe than sorry.

That's a fair assessment. I will just point out that it's a bit simplistic to believe that ally or friendly countries don't have ideological opponents which could potentially do the same and target people based on ideology. Ideological grievances exist in any society regardless of similarities in country, race or religion. So I agree, that it's a tricky situation.

These guys worked for SpaceX anyway, so it's pretty much guaranteed that they were already cleared even before joining DOGE.

A lot of speculation and guessing on this topic, which is surprising from news outlets which pride themselves on "facts" and "truth"... I'm not even mentioning the fact that revealing the names, handles, identities of employees and clearing saying that they have admin rights on systems X and Y, is in itself a serious breach of cybersecurity...

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/memo...

Also, why is your history all Musk'd?

Interns aren't around long enough to get security clearances and interns in defense companies usually work on non-classified work. The only vetting is "are you a citizen or lawful permanent resident?", for export compliance.

If an intern had access to any classified materials, it is because a crime was committed.

Internships with clearances are common in the Intelligence Community.

Homeland Security

“The Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) Internship Program is for… an exciting career in homeland security and intelligence…all selected applicants must undergo and successfully complete a background investigation and be granted a Top Secret/SCI clearance” [1]

Department of State

“Students tentatively selected for the internship program must undergo a background investigation and receive either a Secret or Top Secret security clearance.” [2]

Office of Naval Intelligence

“All interns must receive security clearances at the interim or final top-secret level with access to sensitive compartmented information (TS/SCI).” [3]

Defense Intelligence Agency

“Summer Internship Program (SIP)… To be eligible, you must…Maintain a security clearance” [4]

[1] https://www.dhs.gov/homeland-security-careers/office-intelli...

[2] https://careers.state.gov/uploads/3f/b3/3fb3a5029621ca488d8c...

[3] https://www.oni.navy.mil/Careers/Intern-Programs/#:~:text=Al...

[4] https://www.intelligencecareers.gov/dia/students-and-interns...

Journalists' rights to publicize who works for the government is absolutely protected by the first amendment.

Republicans didn't have any problem with that when they used it to blow Valerie Plame's cover in political retaliation. Somehow now that it's Musk's army of channers stealing our data and breaking the government payment systems _some_ people have decided the first amendment is optional I guess.

Tangential, but the Plame thing was very much done by the political establishment types which tends to go beyond parties. For instance the person who outed her (Richard Armitage - Republican/Bush's Deputy Secretary of State) endorsed Clinton and was a never-Trumper. The motivation is that her husband's work (as well as her own) revealed that a lot of the pretext for the Iraq War was built on outright fabrications and lies. They apparently refused to play ball and were going public, so "they" destroyed her.

I think Democrat/Republican loses meaning in these sort of contexts. I've never once voted for a Republican in my life yet I also am extremely supportive of what's happening right now, mostly because of a strong anti-establishment inclining. I find that when powers grow too comfortable, they trend towards corruption and abuse, exactly of the Plame sort as but one tiny morsel of such. A bit of a shake-up now and then keeps everything far healthier for everybody (the country itself most of all), and it's far nicer doing it this way than by watering Jefferson's Tree of Liberty.

I assure you, as DOGE starts to look at the Pentagon, which has failed audits repeatedly, to 0 consequence, expect to hear all sorts of establishment Republican yelping.

Got you, so, it's super sensitive for everyone, except for journalists who can freely publicize that type of information.

The difficult thing, at 19, is that a person has had zero time to at all demonstrate that they have put drugs and/or other criminal activities behind them.

I see you are mixing up IT security jobs where you can hire „mischievous people” with IT admins.

I say 90% of security is admin work where one has access to various stuff.

Then you have red teams, pentesters, consultants- that don’t have ever privileged access to anything. They should find flaws and pass recommendations to IT admins. If they hack anything at all - it has to be outlined in scope and strictly monitored. For both sides protection as if „hacking person” doesn’t get blame for something he did not touch by him but at the same time someone pulled off something nasty.

I think you would be a bit surprised with both the university programs that teach it security, and also which companies that look to employ them.

IT security can be admins, it can be programmers that focus on exploit vunerbilities, it can be reverse engineers, it can be pentesters, it can be red teams, and it can be people with high domain knowledge in a very narrow field related to security. IT security is a very wide field.

IT security programs focuses a bit on everything, but as in my university, they gave the person responsible for the program a fairly free range to focus on what they thought was what the market wanted. Different universities will focus on different aspects.

The organizations that seek such employees are also quite wide. The military, the intelligence agency, large software companies, large companies with internet assets (like banks, but also game studios), government departments like the tax office, and then naturally we got all kind of IT security firms with red teams, pentesters, consultants and so on. A big hire of my class was also a network company developing network finger rules for deep packet inspections, which wanted people skilled with reverse engineering and decompiling (they may or may not have employed people who had experience cracking games).

Not saying IT security cannot be admins, sounds like you are bringing theoretical viewpoint. I already have some years of experience and certifications in the field - so it is hard to surprise me.

I am pointing out that in most places there is separation of duties so you don't give "red teamer" or "pentester" access to any databases when they are in offensive role.

Then most likely administrators (who can have formal education on paper called cybersecurity) who have loads of work so 90% is configuring and keeping all configuration proper will have requirements like background checks and you are not going to hire "mischevious people" for that role.

Security is a broad spectrum but still offensive testing is maybe 1-2% of the work that needs to be done, all those systems need people to configure them. Having good security 90% of work is waking up updating software and keeping configurations of systems documented and in proper state. If some company doesn't have their security posture basics fixed there is no point of doing "red team assessment" or a "pentest" with them, that would be waste of time.

Don't know about intellegence agencies but I got to know pentesters / red teamers at some large companiese, and they were cool but had a very unsavory side. Several times I found myself in conversations where they were admiting to serious crimes and unethical behavior. I suspect that you need to be passionate about wanting to do bad things if you want to be good at security.

Stories from their young years or recent? Bragging or back when it occurred a sign of skill? There's nuances to be found here.

> that intelligence agencies like to recruit young people active in the cyber criminal scene

Just linking this back to the story, am I mistaken in saying that DOGE is not an intelligence agency? (It certainly is a great position to exfiltrate information however.)

It's not even an agency.

Um it is. And it was started by Obama. He

The perfect place to exfiltrate information and absolutely no need for this level of security skills there unless they intended to break into government systems they were not given access to by e.g. the courts.

Their stated purpose is "to reduce wasteful and fraudulent federal spending". Organizations that have waste and fraudulent spending will not "give" access and will throw every obstruction in the way.

Justify it however you like, but there is no course in which hacking the system is legal

I'm not justifying anything. Every large organization gets audited and is required to allow outsiders in to review data. It's quite legal, necessary in fact. Nobody likes it. They don't call it "hacking".

If you read my original comment, it was about there not being a need for such security skills unless you have intentions to access the data regardless of what is put in your path. If you are denied access by the courts but you access it anyway, you are hacking. They also have no charter to audit, are not authorized by Congress, and are therefore already skirting the very knife edge of what is legal.

Skirting knife edges of legal is not illegal. Perhaps you are concerned about immoral, do you think it's immoral to review financial records?

I used an audit as an example. The agencies are acting as if their records cannot be reviewed unless they themselves vet they auditor which is suspicious given they are part of the executive branch.

By your logic, ex-cons are not employable because companies would not employ them unless they have intentions of using their skills.

Yes, if anyone hired a 19 year old ex-con into this role digging through the personal data of government employees... I would say it's pretty clear what their intention is. Furthermore there are established processes chartered by Congress for auditing and reviewing secure materials held by government agencies. Those require background checks, vetting, and proper processes. They don't involve random people hired a couple of weeks ago showing up and digging into whatever they feel like looking at.

They aren't "digging", they are looking for fraud and savings. They've have been vetted by elected officials, just not the ones that seem to have something to hide. I really don't think you know what their "intentions" are.

I don't think this conversation will go much further, please don't let me stand in the way of your outrage.

Ah yes, you don't like how things turned out and so you resort to characterizing me as outraged as though I'm somehow less capable of being logical than your are. Feel free to not engage with my comments in future. I'd much prefer that.

You don't know what they are doing other than what the said they are doing. Just because someone say's something about their motives, doesn't make it true. It sounds more like you have a position that you want to have promoted "auditing records for corruption reasons" (which is noble btw) and hoping the DOGE organization's behavior is lining up to that position. I'd be careful of this as it sounds more like cognitive bias.

This is true except for me wanting to promote anything. I have positions that I take and like to discuss with others, nothing more. I do hope it turns out to be an audit (and it certainly seems that way), but watch it cautiously for any deviation.

DOGE is a renamed Obama-era agency called the US Digital Service. This group basically tackles IT needs for different departments, which is how Elon is able to weasel his way into any department he decides to target.

First time I've seen this, and very interesting. I was aware of the USDS but not the DOGE connection. Presumably all the former employees were fired as the alien took over the host?

Yeah it was started after the Obamacare website debacle years ago. The intention was to have a group of IT professionals who could shuttle from various departments to help with different projects. Pretty innocuous, honestly. It was never intended to be used as a tool to dismantle the federal government.

I think the implication is that if the person concerned (dox-ed again by Krebs) would pass an intelligence agency review, they should be OK for fraud investigation.

Why? They aren’t the same thing, not even remotely close skill set.

Also why do people keep calling this doxxing. These are public employees.

>>why do people keep calling this doxxing.

Because they are getting death threats, and that is only reason their names were made public.

that doesn’t mean they are being doxxed. That just means their identities are known, just like any other public figure that receives death threats.

Wired looked up their details and made them public.

I’m replying to yet another poster with nothing technical in their comment history, just political crap.

When did HN become infested by brain rot. Post probably should have been flagged after all.

I'm pro Trump, you're anti. Neither of us want to see this rage bait.

Your entire submission history is nothing but political rage bait.

I swear people should be able to pass the “hello world” programming test before being able to post here. This site is going down the drain

My non-partisan hand across the political divide was rebuffed.

I can see you only find one side capable of rage-bait. Opposing opinions must be very troubling for you.

Yes, I've seen a number of people with criminal records hired. I don't really want to present my comment as an argument against every point Krebs made. I don't really have an opinion on whether the individual mentioned is a suitable hire.

But in infosec a lot of people probably got into it because 'hacking' is cool and glorified by the media. It's rebellious and appeals to a lot of teens I think. I don't think it's as serious as Krebs suggested that you could be extorted or compromised. It seems like it's just a bunch of inexperienced people in a discord channel. Soliciting a DDoS on there, to me, just seems like youthful nonsense. If you were actually in some kind of criminal hacking enterprise I bet you would know not to make mistakes like leaving a paper trail to your identity in a discord channel where you solicited a crime.

I haven't seen the people with criminal records for cyber crimes be less trustworthy in the industry. Some of them just made stupid mistakes when they were younger and sometimes dumb kids get way overcharged for cyber crimes. For the most part I think it's fine for kids to go through a phase where they think it's cool but they don't really know what they are doing. A lot of people have done that. A lot of 13 yr old kids on the internet have talked about hacking banks and things like that and they aren't all going to be in a gang. Another analogy is how a lot of people get into chemistry because they like blowing things up. Not all those people are terrorists.

> Some of them just made stupid mistakes when they were younger and sometimes dumb kids get way overcharged for cyber crimes. For the most part I think it's fine for kids to go through a phase where they think it's cool but they don't really know what they are doing.

I think a lot of the concern is that these kids aren't out of that phase yet.

Yeah. I'm all for kids hacking, and even hackers with criminal records getting a second chance at security firm. Hacking is done for a lot of reasons, it could be just an interest in solving puzzles, and they happened to get in trouble with the law.

The part I'm not digging, is they seem a bit young to be taking over the Treasury Dept, or any department. It seems like this would have been better done by an Accounting Audit Firm, not hackers.

Hackers are just trying to get in, get data. An accounting audit would be more about finding impropriety.

So, it seems on the surface like 'finding waste' is not the goal.

>> So, it seems on the surface like 'finding waste' is not the goal.

Finding waste is pretty easy. As we're seeing already, cutting the waste is harder than it looks:

- The Congressional Budget Office recently found that Congress provided $516 billion in appropriations this fiscal year to programs that had expired under federal law.

- Federal government agencies are using just 12% of the space in their headquarters buildings on average, according to the Public Buildings Reform Board, which is an independent federal agency focused on recommending the disposal of underutilized federal properties.

- The House Oversight Committee spent $3.3 billion on furniture over the past few years.

- The federal government made $247 billion worth of payment errors in fiscal year 2022 and $236 billion in 2023, according to the Government Accountability Office.

These errors, also known as improper payments, include overpayments or payments that should not have been made, such as to someone who died or someone no longer eligible for government programs.

Estimates show the federal government spent $2.7 trillion in payment errors since 2003.

https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/government-waste-inef...

Did any of those findings need teenage hackers to figure out?

Also, by the dates you supplied, it looks like Biden/Democrats were already successfully in-progress of cutting costs.

Every large organization needs reviews/audits to find waste. I think the problem with the 'right' is the idea that because there is waste, we should abolish government. But, every organization accumulates waste, and then needs to have a review process to make corrections. The whole burn it all down is pretty immature take on leadership.

SIM swapping is where you spoof a caller identity of a target in order to make a phone call impersonating that individual and then drain his retirement fund into a crypto mixer.

He was never charged for these activities, let alone overcharged.

Agreed. There was a lot of stuff I thought was cool when I was 20 which I shudder to think about now, 20 years on. It took me a long time to grow up past those phases of my life.

> Some of them just made stupid mistakes when they were younger

IMO intent matters, if they access a bank DB as a skill test (and disclose the hack to the bank) that's fine.

If they're taking a hospital offline for giggles they should get a record.

There are numerous examples of American intelligence officials being turncoat because they were extorted and compromised. Compromise and extortion are the main things that spy agencies look for in turning people. It's all too common. This kid should be nowhere near federal databases or sensitive information on American citizens. How much background has DOGE done on him? With their 'Move Fast and Break Things' moniker, my guess is very little. You're also giving these kids access to huge swaths of sensitive information. Sure, intelligence agencies can recruit young hackers with shady backgrounds, but they are given narrow scopes to work with. And usually there's been some agreement that those individuals don't want to be black hats anymore.

I’d also distinguish between the hacker to gets access to a forbidden system out of curiosity or for a challenge, from a person who pays a ddos service to attack someone they don’t like (one of the accused actions of this kid).

The latter displays no competency in hacking or cybersecurity, only the attempt to harm another.

My concern in their access to secure government systems is not their hacking competency (which has not been demonstrated), but their sociopathy which has.

Sociopathy is a very strong word, but they do show a pattern of criminal and anti-social behavior. This is not too uncommon in teens, and many young problem kids reform into good members of society either by being shown consequences for their negative behavior, or more or less naturally "mellowing out".

The issue here is that these kids seem to fail upwards, and as you say, get rewarded for anti-social behavior, which sets them on a terrible path for the future. In the Com chat log shared in the article, they made fun of Edward Coristine for his complete lack of programming skills, and the other "doxxed" members of the DOGE team have some smaller projects online as well. If that's the kind of code SpaceX and Tesla run on, I'd give all of their projects a very wide berth.

The guy who bought a DDOS and got fired from an anti-DDOS company for leaking secrets to a rival is an ex-Wall Street multimillionaire's son. He's never going to fail any way but up.

Equating script kiddies to some genius cyberhackers worth recruiting is laughable when we literally have PHDs and 6 figure salary professionals willing to be recruited legally with zero baggage. Why are the top digital safety institutions hiring the very bottom of the barrel?

Not to mention it's not even their job in this case. They're likely doing some data analysis.

> Why are the top digital safety institutions hiring the very bottom of the barrel?

I don't know anything about "The Com" or top digital safety institutions.

But I do know that historically, some parts of hacker culture have drawn heavily from political theories of anti-authoritarianism, anarchism, and libertarianism.

If the authorities and rules intend that I not have access to something, and I have a fascination with bypassing that and getting access anyway, am I not subverting power structures in the most literal sense?

If large corporations believe they alone should control the software that runs on my printer, so that they can ensure only authentic supplies are used and premium features are only available on premium devices, while I believe every user should be able to modify their printer's software and behaviour without limit, including to bypass such restrictions - is this not an anarchist stance, opposing coercion and mechanisms that perpetuate control?

If the exploit-discovering side of cybersecurity is inherently anti-authority, recruiting people who've never defied an authority in their life might not be the best move.

I think the difference is in the kind of positions the "second chance" people get hired to. They aren't put in positions where they could cause significant wide scale harm with no auditing or barriers.

The debate isn't whether he should go to jail. The debate is whether he should get a clearance for some of the most powerful access someone can possibly get. He's not suitable. Why can't Musk replace him? He's just a kid.

> Why can't Musk replace him?

Because, like Trump, he values loyalty above all else? That's the reason why he reinstated that other guy who resigned after his extreme-right social media posts were unearthed (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/07/musk-doge-st...). That's also the reason why Trump pardoned all January 6 rioters, even those convicted of violent crimes. If it's his people vs. some random cops, he will always favor his people.

I think that in the cases you mention, the extreme-right social media posts appealed to Musk and Trump actively wants people to do violent crimes on behalf of his coup.

Neither case was them valuing loyalty over something else. They rewarded people who did exactly what they wanted.

"Suitable" depends on what the aim is. If this were a good faith effort to find "waste and fraud" then clearly not. But if the goal is to destroy the capacity of the government to place any restraints on enterprise (and in particular Musk's enterprises), and an assault on the rule of law in general, and the instantiation of a racist ideology, then he's ideal. The fact that they let him go in the first place was the surprising part as what he said was no worse than what many Trump appointees have done.

Those kids make good "experts" in thier narrow fields, but that doesnt last long. They are generally not effective leaders, thier usefullness drying up as the state of the art moves on. Some grow up and learn how to operate as leaders in a corporate or government environment, but most burn out once they meet the next generation of golden childs.

That's actually ok in a military context. Most kids right out of highschool dont serve more than a handfull of years. Then they are the corporate world's problem.

They are not considered experts in their fields. They are not senior in their fields, so that criteria is already off the table, eg, how to deal with legacy, production, and high sensitivity systems in regulated environments. (There are COBOL servers there!) Data science and accounting are fields too, so not sure why that is ignored. So that leaves junior criteria. I taught in one of the depts of one of 'the better' ones, and his peers are publicly lauding him with laughable examples of 'excellence' -- nowhere close to examples we use for describing top students.

They sound like regular A/B-grade CS students: unproven new grads. Motivated and high-energy, yes, which is sensible for a junior low-trust role if they pass other basics like references and criminal checks. At our current company, we would not have hired several of them in our entry roles due to the obvious issues that our routine diligence would surface (in recent work history: associating with criminals & criminal orgs, repeat googleable public displays of racism, etc). And the rest, for likely not being at the level of top students applying to us, irrespective of evaluating on academics vs DIY. Their examples would need to be significantly more compelling to change the conversation.

young people hack because of curiosity and some sort of believing in justice (fight corporations, political activism). They are not regular gangsters.

hmmm

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42996313

That’s great.

What does the infosec industry have to do with DOGE?

Both involve coming to other people’s system and making sense of them as an outsider.

If these hires exist (and I'm doubtful they do, at least at any scale beyond "this one kid is an actual genius!"), are they then given the "keys to the kingdom"? Musk/Trump wanted this kid to have what amounts to superuser access to the government purse, which is unheard of for any new hire, let alone one with this kid's background.

I agree with you. When I was younger, I played a lot of Minecraft PVP servers, and for whatever reason these PVP servers cultivated a weird and toxic community of cyber criminals about them. For reference/star value, the recent headline of the kids stealing 200m in crypto via social engineering— I played with those very same people when I was younger. As in, the people who were sent to jail.

Their story repeats itself a dozen times over from my now-fragmented friend group from that time. Many young kids getting into ill-fated get rich quick schemes ranging from credit card fraud to refunding (mail fraud) all the way to sim swapping, blackmail, doxxing, and even real life violence and gang activity. A few of my earliest friends were just indicted for home invasions and armed robbery in some scheme to steal crypto. All of them from Minecraft, weirdly enough.

Anyways, those who didn’t end up in jail or “on the run” from participating in these stupid schemes, I tend to notice a common trend towards security related work. I know one guy who went from fraternizing with the same now-criminally-indicted people I hung around to working for the FBI’s cyber crimes unit (fitting, I guess). Another one now works with a defense contractor developing spyware, as far as I can tell. Many more work in different areas of cyber security and programming et al, including myself.

The cyber-crime adjacent to cyber security pipeline is very much so real.

Good reporting here. Clarifies why the kid was fired for leaking documents - it was specifically for leaking internal corporate documents to a competitor.

The details about cybercrime discords involved in SWATting and DDOS attacks are fascinating.

The idea that anyone involved in this would be fast-tracked for a clearance is beyond the pale.

He was in the com chat, which is a domestic tier one threat. There is no way any fast-tracking would solve this, unless monsieur big balls is an American spy, when in reality he's an overly caffeinated kid who has no idea how bad he's screwing up his, and while we're at it our country's, future.

I personally think it says volumes about how those in the Trump-Musk group (Musk group?) see this. They see the task as infiltrating an adversary, requiring someone with the technical skills to do so but who is also disposable. This in their mind is not about improving anything in the government for citizens, or with regard to US interests, it's about gaining access to a hostile entity without regard to their interests or the long-term interests of the persons actually doing the activity. It doesn't matter if they compromise US security, because the US is a hostile adversary, and they don't want to deal with people who might hesitate because of families or a reputation to uphold. If this person gets in trouble for security breaches or racism or whatever, they just fire them and replace them with another 19 year old with nothing left to lose and/or plenty of time left to go another path later.

That’s generally true of political operatives.

The problem here is having such activities in his past makes him an exploitable by criminal organizations or foreign adversaries who would seek the sensitive information he now has access to.

Second point is fair.

First point is not even true of the Watergate burglars. What makes crime indistinguishable from politics here is the recent ruling on presidential immunity.

I’ve lost track of the argument here.

I was actually thinking of Hunt and Liddy, who did nothing of worth after their infamy. I don’t think the actual burglars did either?

> They see the task as infiltrating an adversary, requiring someone with the technical skills to do so but who is also disposable.

People who have had access to that kind of data, and who have those kinds of skills, you'd better be careful about how you dispose of them. (Consider the term "blowback".)

come on, your average 1337 h4x0r does not have a criminal syndicate ready to exact revenge for their fallen comrade

Seems more likely that this can be completely subdued when the outcome of swatting is not a nuisance, but a conveniently extra-judicial raid by armed militia.

Or indeed that they are a hostile adversary to the US who have achieved some successes adversarial to the US.

I feel like from the perspective of the US, if we frame this conflict/battle for control of US services and computer systems, we needn't say 'the US is a hostile adversary'. It's fair to frame it as 'the US is the US, and the people seizing control of the systems against the interests of the US are hostile adversaries of the US'.

The specifics of who they're working for, how, why etc. can still be up for speculation or further discovery, but we needn't frame it as 'perhaps the US is actually the enemy and Musk's people are actually the liberators'.

> I personally think it says volumes about how those in the Trump-Musk group (Musk group?) see this.

It's more the Musk, Thiel, Vance Group. Trump is simply a tool.

He wields the sharpie. He's basically a notary public.

> I personally think it says volumes about how those in the Trump-Musk group (Musk group?) see this. They see the task as infiltrating an adversary..

This is what actual schizophrenia looks like.

Seriously yes. Having lived with someone who is schizoaffective, I recognize what is happening to America as an acute manic episode with psychosis and hallucinations.

This assumes that leaking is a compulsive behavior. The federal government has stronger incentives to offer for not leaking information. Getting fired is nothing.

On the other hand there might exist a deal where everyone involved is guaranteed a pardon as an incentive to sow as much chaos as possible.

The idea that the federal government is entity able to look after it's own interests has taken quite a hit in my mind with recent events.

It's so strange to see this become a Partisan Issue so quickly and easily, when just a few short years ago everyone on the Internet cheered on Ron Paul's cries to Audit The Fed. (Yes, I know, “the Fed” means the Federal Reserve, and not the federal government—but that's clearly in the cards, too.)

And it's not as though the pre-smartphone Internet was majority Republican, of course—quite the opposite, if anything!

An audit means transparency and accountability, neither of which we have here.

One must ask oneself if one's views on the matter would be the same if the exact same actions were done by one's preferred political party, and reported upon favorably instead of unfavorably.

Uh, I guess one mustn't ask oneself this, judging by downvotes!

> Ron Paul's cries to Audit The Fed

Its "End the Fed"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_the_Fed

Yes, that the title of a book he wrote, as well as his eventual end goal for sure.

But he and others (including his son Rand, and Bernie Sanders) have also used the phrase “Audit The Fed” repeatedly as well, for various “Federal Reserve Transparency Acts”[0] over the years, since 2009—including a bipartisan one with Senator Grassley just this past November.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Transparency_A...

This guy still thinks the employees of the fed gov(e.g. big balls) is working hard to protect his info

Eh, I think "stealing is bad" is a plenty sufficient rationale for the vast majority of people not to engage in this type of behavior regardless of what kind of threats people dangle over their head.

Obviously this kid would reasonably expect to get a pardon for any law he breaks anyway so long as he breaks it in service of the cult.

> the DOGE teen is a former denizen of ‘The Com,’ an archipelago of Discord and Telegram chat channels that function as a kind of distributed cybercriminal social network for facilitating instant collaboration

To be honest, this is my first time hearing about The Com. Does anyone have any more reading on this? You'd think they'd use something more secure than Discord (which has 0 encryption) and Telegram which doesn't have encryption by default and whose gov't backdoor is basically an open secret[0]

[0] https://words.filippo.io/dispatches/telegram-ecdh/

I recommend Marc-André Argentino's research on the Com; he's a conspiracy researcher who got his PhD on QAnon. He leans left, if that's a factor for you.

His general overview: https://www.maargentino.com/the-pillars-of-the-com-network/

That piece doesn't get specific at all about Com activities but be aware that some of the manifestos and other material he discusses is quite disturbing.

He cites same journalist Krebs that has no cybersecurity background. Even Marc-André Argentino himself is a master of arts in theology and not a real cybersecurity specialist.

Nah, he has a PhD from Concordia’s individualized program, supervised by professors from both Theological Studies and Information System Engineering. But it’s true that he’s not coming at this from a cybersecurity perspective, he’s an extremism researcher.

I wouldn’t rely on him to evaluate how good someone is at exploits and so on. I do respect his research skills and his ability to evaluate weird cult manifestos.

What degree does one need to earn first in order to be a "cyber security specialist"?

This coming from Gyudin, who cites no credentials and is not a real journalism specialist. See? Real easy to discredit someone by credentialism. Instead, you can read his article and take apart his points, since you're unsatisfied by his interpretation

Well, those are some highly disturbing social dynamics... (nothing new I guess, just superchaged by the latest technics ?)

Krebs has written other articles about it: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/09/the-dark-nexus-between-h...

Yes and he’s literally just a journalist with no real cybersecurity background

Well to be fair, a lot of people who fancy themselves as a part of the Com don't have any either. A lot of them are skiddies posers. Quite the cringe crowd tbh, or maybe I just found a particularly young group.

Most journalists don't have a background in X when they are reporting upon X. This is normal. That said, he is very open that he does not have a cybersecurity background (trained engineer), but he does rely heavily upon a network of experts. Again, a reporter working on a story about geopolitics is unlikely to have past experience as a high ranking gov't official in state dept/foreign ministry, but will rely heavily upon a network of experts. Do you have any specific concerns about this?

He learned Russian to infiltrate Russian hacker forums. That shows he's dedicated to learning.

[L]earned Russian: Woah, is this really true? Russian is a very difficult language to learn if you are not from former USSR, nor a Slavic language speaker. (I was told that the grammar is very complex.) I tried to Google about it, but I could not find anything. Can you share some sources? I am curious to learn more!

>Brian Krebs learned Russian so he could understand where it was coming from and why.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/12/02/brian-krebs-c...

>Mr. Krebs — a former reporter at The Washington Post who taught himself to read Russian while jogging on his treadmill

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/17/technology/reporting-from...

>Krebs, who tells in first person his inquiries about this rivalry, even learned Russian and traveled to the Russian Federation to interview them in person and, along the way, gives us a portrait of how the mafias that use the Internet for their purposes act and organize themselves.

https://www.securityartwork.es/2022/02/08/spam-nation-a-port...

Thank you for the follow-up -- very details. I misread your original comment. I thought you were talking about Edward Coristine.

read more about it from the people on the field: https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/law-...

Discord is very popular with skiddies and real criminal organizations alike. It's got pretty basic KYC controls in place, meaning essentially anyone with just an email can sign up. It can be accessed from behind VPNs without any issues, so effectively it doesn't matter that it's not e2e encrypted.

I feel that discord the company probably let's it slide because:

1. Moderation at scale is incredibly difficult. 2. They work with law enforcement agencies to execute warrants and subpoenas.

Are you sure about Discord? I've tried creating a Discord account from a VPN, and it always demands my phone number.

I've been mistakenly banned from Discord before and I know from experience that pretty much any low level mod has a complete and readibly accessible history of all of my posts across all servers complete with timestamps and IP addresses

I'm also pretty sure phone number are required for sign up

I think your second point is the more likely explanation. Any other platform that would've hosted this many communities dedicated to drugs, cybercrime, etc would definitely have faced serious legal challenges. It seems much more likely that feds find it a useful platform to keep around

A mobile phone number is required for certain Discord servers (a setting available to the admins) but not for sign-up (maybe if you are using an IP in a suspicious/VPN range they force it now?). Otherwise they only require a valid email.

For Telegram though there isn't really a way around it, a phone is required. There is/was a way to buy some TON crypto token instead to avoid this verification but it became prohibitively too expensive.

I still don't get how Discord can be secure - I suspect it can't. Just the fact that the forums are persistent, and controlled by a third party, and the client is closed source means people on there can be compromised at any point incredibly easily, VPN or not.

Just something as simple as using a cookie or local storage can leave permanent traces behind so all the access can be easily correllated.

I'm not even sure if serious infosec measures exist to stop this, and if they do, someone is bound to slip up and they need to do it just once, and expose the whole chatroom.

I'm not a hacker but this sounds like failing Opsec 101, and people getting by just with sheer luck.

> It can be accessed from behind VPNs without any issues, so effectively it doesn't matter that it's not e2e encrypted.

How do these two things correlate? I thought the benefit of E2E encryption is the fact that no one can decrypt your messages except for the participants in the conversation. There’s no keys anywhere on a server that an admin could use to decrypt the conversation. How would being behind a VPN negate that? The VPN still has to go through Discord servers where a key is presumably stored if the information is encrypted at all.

This info seems very outdated. Creating a discord account from even a residential IP without SMS KYC is from my experience basically impossible, they even block most (all?) sms VOIP services.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/09/09/soc..., https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/12/10/dis..., https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/20...

When I was a teen these types hung out on IRC and even AOL in chatrooms like "progs" to trade credit card numbers. Young people and operational security doesn't exist.

>Young people and operational security doesn't exist.

If I had PII in the systems they have access to I would be concerned. How long until someone gets spear phished or malware is installed on their presumably non-compliant systems? There's a reason why big corps spend significantly on security training for new grads.

pr island and pr warez

I miss 1IM punting so much and being able to use Gothic Nightmares and FiReTooLz

Yeah it was all fun and games until someone pulls an AOL staff account on ya, looks up your address and proto-swats your home address

It is all fun and games until you think about not only the victims but the possible harm done. Even a loss of a small amount of money can be life changing.

Swatting is just something the morally impaired can relate to better.

Of course, though I got swatted for defacing another group's page and not stealing credit cards.

And honestly I never even used my card stash anyway and I had thousands and thousands-- not because I'm a good person or whatever but because I was paranoid after that. The rush of building a duplicate of LOVE@AOL and then trawling my way through chatrooms and building my email list "Someone liked you, sign into your premium love@AOL account to see who" was too exhilirating to give up for 13-year-old me even if I was essentially tag-and-release phishing.

I remember using spizzam2k and spamming out millions of InstaKiss phishing emails.

We used to phish OH accounts and <M>< master accounts to get free internet or scroll from the OH accounts.

AOL was so awesome and where I met friends I still keep in contact with today. Also taught me how to program.

The Com is just a general term for crime communities on the Internet. Its not a specific group. The Com includes groups that commit crimes stretching from cybercrime to literally the worst crimes you can think of and the vast majority of this is done on Discord and Telegram.

You can go down a really dark rabbit hole if you really dig deep into some of these groups within The Com.

This is where the worst of the worst spend all their time.

To what degree is this common knowledge? After 20 years of being highly online I'm surprised to be so blindsided. Not that I work in security or anything.

Me to. I suspect its a combination of demographics and sub culture thing (I'm old, and out of the loop on a lot of pop culture and sub-variants). I have noticed a very high degree of nihilism and a sort of "morals are just a role you play in a game" kinda mentality with the younger crowd that looks and acts _very_ different to past generations though..

Plato allegedly said it better than you thoudands of years ago... and if you are "old", maybe he was talking about you? ;)

> What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?

All of this to say that generations judging each other are rarely objective and very prone to both confirmation bias and broad generalization.

But if are going to generalize, how about this, transgression is part of a healthy growth for most young people (we all test limits by crossing lines one time or an other, some more than others), and most old people (conveniently) forget that they were doing exactly the same with the tools they had at the time. Let's take a step back and appreciate that societies around the world tend to become less violent and less criminal... when these trends might reverse we can start talking again about the decadence of young people and it's consequences.

So, in the context of the US, yes, those trends are reversing, so it is apropos to examine it (see article content). I am fully aware of the tendency of grumpy old people decrying the amoral youth, my point is that the degree of nihilsim seems qualitatively different than 70's burn-out, 80's goth, or 90's grunge, or what have you. It appears more like a kind of defeatism than rebellion (the more normal youth passtime). Who knows, maybe during the great depression the younger generation was in a similar place, don't know, not THAT old ;-) But it seems less a case of "those old peoples values aren't MY values" and more of a "there are no values" differnce than previous generatonal divides.

Surprised that generation who named themselves slackers gave birth to kids that also don’t have any vision and take pride in not caring about anything?

Also the group is so varied you can’t generalize of what the age group is about. If I think of young person I think of mrbeast or the kids who sit on the road to block the traffic cause they care immensly. I always thought the youth of today just hustle and influence and try to build it themselves and totally lack the ability to chill out. Happy to know there lurks some nihilists somewhere.

I wouldn't say they take pride in not caring actually.

This quote is made up I think (e.g https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/respectfully-quoted/socrate...)

Even if it wasn't made up it, it would not be all that relevant IMO because it would not have to mean that "adults have always complained about youth but they always turn out fine", it could also mean "the quality of a society goes up and down over the centuries, in cycles, and both we and Plato/Socrates are/were on a downturn when things started going worse".

That’s an interesting step back, but stepping back further we can recognize that there is no single metrics to let us evaluate if some society is going up or down.

And also that "ceteris paribus sic stantibus" might be indispensable for growing scientific approaches, but irreconcilable gaps in world perception between generations is better taken as an anthropological constant across time than a minor insignificant detail.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceteris_paribus

I feel that stepping as far back as you do here will kill any meaningful discussion.

"There is no single metric" translates pretty much into "there is no objective meaning of life that can be proven".

In most discussions certain things are implied about shared values. E.g., fascism is bad and democracy good (plenty of people seem to disagree with this these days, but much written discussion, e.g. on HN, assume shared values anyway).

I heard a story yesterday from someone who's job involves dynamite. He had a vocational student tag along for a couple of weeks that would constantly stare at his phone and not pay any attention, causing some dangerous or at least inconvenient situations.

If you step enough back, who can say it is "bad" to get yourself blown up to pieces because you are too TikTok addicted to look around you? In everyday language we assume enough shared values to say this is "bad" though.

>"There is no single metric" translates pretty much into "there is no objective meaning of life that can be proven".

That seems a rather robust baseline, if "objective" means something like "absolute certainty on which we can practically leverage on to reach absolute understanding of everything we might have to deal with". That is, it’s one thing to admit there are some universal truths, it’s an other very different faith step to believe any human can ever be able to construct anything close to the latter.

>fascism is bad and democracy good (plenty of people seem to disagree with this these days, but much written discussion, e.g. on HN, assume shared values anyway).

I’m afraid that I observe the very same tendency in values evolution (I live in France for some context). Though contrary to what this threads focus on, I’m far more concerned with the extreme views that the oldest people in my acquaintances are moving to. No Tiktok on that side, but TV rolling news channel are not that much better. Probably my own HN addiction could be pointed at me just as well.

>In everyday language we assume enough shared values to say this is "bad" though.

Sure we agree here, but just because we assume something, it doesn’t make us correct and accurate.

You probably haven't heard of the com if you have a sex life.

Have you ever used the Tor browser or FreeNet?

The seedier parts of the internet (“dark web”) are surprisingly easy to access. It’s just about equivalent to knowing about torrents. (Not safe for life warning)

I suspect it's because it's a label put onto the workhorse of modern crime syndicates, not a vanity title like a gangs have. It's a web of disparate barely connected mercenary dots, so I imagine most people in "The Com" don't actually realise it's a phenomenon that has been named, and that they are a part of it.

I think I am wrong about this. I am seeing mixed opinions about how much and what kind of crime "The Com" covers, I'm probably too out of the loop to comment further to be honest.

I find it amusing that it popped up in this political context too. It feels very FUD-y.

Oh no, Musk hired someone from "The Com"!

Teenage gangs forming on the internet and thats what they call themselves now

It's resally common knowledge if you work as a Cyber crime responder or visit some of those forums (e.g. breachforums). Krebs of course has to have a few good contacts in those circles.

From Europol:

> Violent online groups are targeting and manipulating vulnerable children and young people across widely accessible online platforms. There are multiple groups, associations and evolving subgroups that make up the online network known as The Com – short for community. The Com is a virtual community of groups and individuals who conduct illicit activities that glorify serious violence, cruelty, and gore.

> Elements of The Com network are known to have extreme ideological views and victimise children, coercing them to commit violent acts. Predators groom their victims through different methods – one approach is establishing friendships based on trust or romantic relationships. Another technique involves the use of power or coercive tactics with one goal – taking control over the victims, while getting them to engage in serious violence, self-harm, or other gruesome. It’s a vicious cycle - the predators in this network influence children or young people into conducting acts that increasingly shame, incriminate, or isolate them, this in turn makes them more vulnerable to further exploitation.

https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/law-...

I feel like back in 2016 when a reporter asked Donald Trump if he would disavow the Proud Boys and most peoples response was “the what boys?” If you aren’t immersed in the culture you don’t know who the movers and shakers are.

Trump says a lot of things.

> “They’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do,” Trump said during an April 2022 (talking of The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025)

> “I have nothing to do with Project 2025,” Trump said in the opening moments of his September debate against Vice President Kamala Harris. “That’s out there. I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it, purposely. I’m not going to read it.”

It is not. You could literally spend 1 minute googling to check that the only mentions of it point to the same website.

So is "The Com" an actual distinct concept that exists outside of security blogs, or is it more or less the same as "the scene" is used in other communities—just a generic term for all the unaffiliated people who happen to participate in a particular (in this case nefarious) hobby?

The way Krebs uses this first makes it sound like The Com is the name of a specific gang, but when I dig into the details the definition gets really fuzzy and starts to read like it literally just means "English speaking cybercriminals".

If it's the latter, I'm not sure why we need a name for it.

"The Com" isn't a specific group of people despite what people say.

It's just what people who investigate call these crime communities because it easier to just have a general name for all of them then to name each and every one of them because their are literally hundreds of them and members move between them so a single member of "The Com" can be part of many communities within "Com"

They call themselves "the com"

It's distinct in that these groups aren't isolated from each other, there's member overlap and subgroups splintering from each other due to trying to avoid authorities.

It's also distinct in the type of crimes. Sextortion involving young kids/creation and sharing of CSAM merging with extreme political beliefs and encouraging those beliefs, with a specific focus to target young kids particularly those vulnerable enough to not have parents immediately notice. The criminals are often also on the younger side, like 19 year olds leading sex cults[1].

"The Com" goes by other names due to these groups being in a lot of different regions under different monikers and subgroups. 764 network, cvlt network, harm nation, etc. All the same general type of crime and target groups.

Here's some resources warning people about them:

https://rcmp.ca/en/news/2024/08/rcmp-reminds-canadians-about...

https://www.wired.com/story/764-com-child-predator-network/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/20...

[1] https://unicornriot.ninja/2024/sextortion-coms-inside-a-vile...

This is bullshit.

"The Com" is computer hacking like carding, Kerbs puts them as distinct "crime-focused chat communities" as others have posted - https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/09/the-dark-nexus-between-h...

Kerbs had to go to effort to find overlap between the harm groups and "The Com"

There are groups that attack children and there are groups that attack these groups in "The Com", if you define "The Com" at a higher level.

764 kinda stared in Minecraft, call it the Minecraft community to be safe?

Whatever it is no one from the cybercrime community is suggesting the "The Com" from the article has anything to do with the harm groups.

What point of “there is a lot of overlap” is difficult to understand? These people are often in many of the same channels because of how easy it is to stay involved through the likes of discord. Krebs didn’t have to go through much effort and neither did the links I posted.

764 also splintered from a nazi group 09V. Don’t downplay them.

Side note, you might want to reassess some of your views that have you pushing the same sort of propaganda that these groups do.

> What point of “there is a lot of overlap” is difficult to understand?

The part where it would matter.

The "race realist" i.e. racist right likes to point out that there is a lot of overlap between certain racial groups and the criminal underclass. Statistically this is sort of true. Trying to use it to reason about any individual is logically known as the fallacy of division or ecological fallacy and colloquially known as "Nazi stuff". You may want to reassess your views that have you employing the same sort of guilt by association tactics that these groups do.

I am not a DOGE fan particularly and I am certainly very interested in whether this guy was a sextortionist or carder, but I'm not very interested in whether he was in a general scene with them.

I had no idea this darkness existed. The unicorn riot piece is well researched; how awful - despicable all of it.

"The Com" is just zoomer-talk for "The Scene"

They call themselves "the com"

no it isn't. What a blind take. As someone who has ventured down these forums when I was younger. Its a mix of gamers/programmers/online hustlers. Some of it is grey area, some if it is renting out RDP's/VPNS for malicious users acting as middlemen for the criminals.

The mob mentality of rule following software engineers on here who are throwing out the accusation that these are all hardened criminals that want to burn down society here are a testament to the fact that hackernews is a cesspool of careerists. If you haven't ventured down these, I would even argue that you've no idea how the internet actually functions outside of your usual entertainment holes.

Even Urban Dictionary, hardly a site dominated by rule-following career software engineers, defines a Com as revolving around crime:

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Com

Maybe Urban Dictionary is also populated by people who misunderstand the community, or maybe you weren't as deep as you thought.

Anyone can submit entries to Urban Dictionary.

That's literally my point—someone submitted that definition, 150+ people agreed with it, and no one submitted an alternate of any sort.

I would tend to expect that if OP is right that there's more nuance to Coms and it's not primarily about crime, there would be at least one alternate definition, because, as you note, anyone can make a definition there, and it's emphatically not a site dominated by the HN bubble.

That there is no alternate says that the crime-centric understanding of Coms is the primary one on at least one other site that doesn't match OP's stereotype.

If the word is just a made up newthing, why would there be an alternate definition? You can find 150 people to agree with anything on the internet. It's the most trivial thing in the world to achieve.

Probably managing to have this post to be upvoted at least 150 times will be a more compelling argument.

You mean outside of the sites where the vast majority of the online traffic and economic activity happen?

Do you really think that anything would meaningfully change in the world if these little niche communities disappeared tomorrow? They’re a rounding error on the internet.

You say this as if it’s a good thing, that the internet has been cornered into a few very small but wildly popular corners. You arent wrong. I’m not sure what this has to do with my original point. I did some extremely interesting stuff in these groups.

I’m not praising the status quo, I’m taking issue with your “how the internet actually functions outside the big sites” thing. Of course hardly anyone knows how these tiny weird communities operate: they don’t matter.

Please clarify. Do you suggest that because a community is small it doesn't matter?

accounted for economic activity

If you think these are "forums" then you have no idea what you're talking about.

Forum schmorum, you know what I’m talking about. Telegram, WhatsApp. Forum : “place, meeting, or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged.”

Maybe we should investigate government employees for ties to child predator networks whether or not we're just a "cesspool of careerists," bro.

https://www.wired.com/story/764-com-child-predator-network/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/09/the-dark-nexus-between-h...

"some of it is grey area"

and some of it is some real depraved shit: https://www.maargentino.com/the-pillars-of-the-com-network/

You say that like "hustling" isn't a crime, like gamergate didn't happen, like "programmers" don't write code to do all sorts of things, legal and illegal.

Some of us are old enough to know that none of this is new.

No one is saying these are "hardened" criminals, but none of them care about the consequences of what they are participating in and that is just as disqualifying for public service.

but the question is why operate on such insecure, backdoored, government friendly platforms? if they're smart enough to commit cybercrimes, why make such a basic opsec blunder? or are the skiddie tiers of these networks all that's visible/accessible to reporters?

> if they're smart enough to commit cybercrimes, why make such a basic opsec blunder?

Why do you assume that they have to be smart to commit cyber crimes? As a general rule, most criminals are as dumb if not dumber than most regular people. Cyber crime is no different. Consider that cyber crime is not (just) hacking, it includes things like calling someone's grandma to convince her she needs to wire you $40k now or someone might go to prison for a car accident. Or at least texting this over WhatsApp.

Maybe by binding the idea of smartness with the ability to think beyond the given and possibly not blindly obey exogenous rules. Of course smartness is a relatively independent parameter from ethics. If the law requires contributing to some genocides, blindly obey is not the same ethical dilemma as if it forbids to practice torture and murder.

no government backdoor necessary when you join very large crime group chats and try to buy illegal services

“A man known as 4chan”

"The Com" is like "Anonymous" or "the scene", like talking about the "new york heavy metal scene".

it's not one coherent group but a mix of them, sometimes overlapping but often not. they hangout in the same spaces, sometimes, but also not.

That's how it was (is) on IRC 25+ years ago. The Com sounds like the equivalent of idling on #2600 general.

Read about it from Europol: https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/law-...

Also discussed in https://cyberscoop.com/the-com-764-cybercrime-violent-crime-...

> The child sextortion group 764 and the global collective of loosely associated groups known as “The Com” are using tools and techniques normally used for financially motivated cybercrime tactics — such as SIM swapping, IP grabbing and social engineering — to commit violent crimes, according to exclusive law enforcement and intelligence reports reviewed by CyberScoop.

> The reports offer insight into the underbelly of the global network, showing how they are using traditional cybercriminal tools to identify, target, groom, extort, and cause physical and psychological harm to victims as young as 10. They were shared with police nationwide and in some cases, with foreign-allied governments.

Another DOGE member created a tool that generates ballot images to be used by counting machines to satisfy any statistical outcome requirements: https://bsky.app/profile/denisedwheeler.bsky.social/post/3lh...

He worked in contact with Musk and his sponsorship to create this tool

Interesting cybercrime research credentials

Yes there's not evidence available that this research was used for crime, just that the project is capable of what's described and that it was done under Musk's sponsorship and that he was hired after building this in contact with Musk

I'd encourage folks to go look at the source code for the referenced project https://github.com/DevrathIyer/ballotproof/tree/master.

This does not strike me as nefarious in any way and there is a really valid reason for generating the ballot images -- testing, which is exactly how it is used in the project.

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How far of a step would it be to produce this type of manipulation? https://www.wcia.com/business/press-releases/ein-presswire/7...

I don't know because I don't have access to the missing binder

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/12/politics/missing-rus...

That thread seemed low on evidence. It seemed reasonable that that code could be part of a test suite.

Yeah— when I needed to test an integration with a cash recycler of the kind found in atms I asked if there were any fake or test bills I could use. It’s a reasonable thing to do in embedded systems, and frankly you’d be surprised at what tools are out there and how hard they would be to actually use the way you say. Physical controls are paramount in this case.

Another legitimate use would be research to demonstrate vulnerabilities in support of a return to paper ballots. Ed Felten and many others have been arguing this for years.

https://www.npr.org/2006/09/23/6129761/study-shows-vulnerabi...

Yup, there are election conspiracy theorists on the left too. I ran into a few on Bluesky, and after a conversation, they were realizing the evidence they wanted to believe in was quite thin and that they should hold off on such strong beliefs

The question no one asking is why Elon is sending a team of teenage programmers and not a team of financial auditors if he really wanted to cut government spending?

> why Elon is sending a team of teenage programmers and not a team of financial auditors if he really wanted to cut government spending?

History has one answer for the deployment of reams of young fiery-loyalist men to the front lines: cannon fodder.

IMO it's more reminiscent of Red Guards from Cultural Revolution era China.

And university students during the Iranian Revolution.

Old enough to do the job, too young to ask the right questions.

Reporting on this is terrible. There are also senior (in age and experience) people, but much of the focus is on the youngins for obvious reasons.

Musk also believes (either arrogance, or true belief) that much of this stuff can be figured out from first principals without much need of traditional experts.

What do mean by stuff?

> not a team of financial auditors if he really wanted to cut government spending?

I hope this is true. Can you name any senior people and/or financial auditors who are overseeing "the youngins"?

I know a number of them but they’re rightfully not looking to be especially public about it now on the internet — life is hard enough just doing the job they’re trying to do. Which is frankly a lot of banal accounting and auditing type work. They’re in their 30’s and 40’s with prolific backgrounds in PE, as entrepreneurs managing nine figure budgets and thousands of employees, etc.

Politics vs policy, or something like that?

I'm having trouble reconciling the backgrounds of the people that you're describing with the effects of the work they're doing. When they suddenly closed USAID, vulnerable people around the world instantly lost access to food and medicine with no recourse. There were people enrolled in clinical trials who had devices implanted in their bodies and then suddenly all support was cut off. Even if you believe that America shouldn't fund these things, how can you possibly justify shutting it down in such a way that food for hungry people rots in warehouses and clinicians have to decide if they're going to defy orders to vaccinate a pregnant mother? I can understand how a 23-year-old can get so enamored by all this sudden access to power that he completely loses sight of the effects of what he's doing. I don't understand how someone with decades of experience in positions of responsibility doesn't ask the most basic questions about the consequences of taking drastic action.

The policy people like Stephen Miller who are the brains here question the humanity of others.

The expression of power by inflicting suffering is seen as a flex. USAID and its mission are in opposition to their aims — you are to be cowed by power, not be look kindly upon the kindness and mercy of the US.

Full on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment

Google up "hostage puppy". I could give you a link, but I'm not trying to claim that any particular person who said it is an authority.

The idea is that your organization may be doing inefficient or horrible things, but it also has one cute puppy who depends on it. Any time someone wants to shut your organization down, you just point to the cute puppy and say "you wouldn't want this puppy to die, would you?".

Which is the hostage puppy? Half the HIV treatment in the developing world? The people clearing landmines? The malaria treatment? Or is it tuberculosis? Or security and economic aid to our allies, particularly allies that are fighting wars? Or funding the groups that are standing up to our authoritarian adversaries? Feeding people facing famines? Economic assistance to bolster employment in countries to reduce the demand for people to migrate to the US?

Yeah I can’t believe what I’m reading on this site. The intellectual dishonesty is staggering.

This is truly the post truth world. I wouldn’t be surprised if many here who are making counter arguments either hate the US and what it stands for or are outright malicious actors

My friends aren’t working on USAid they’re in departments doing work that has no political storytelling like cutting a bunch of redundant $2-10M contracts here and there every day. Remember that it’s been like 2-3 weeks — what has your established company done in these 2 weeks?

I worked for a company that had the mentality of "what can we ship today", "how can we get 80% of the output with 20% of the work", "how do we move as quickly as possible" and "how do we keep the team as lean as possible". What they lost sight of in all of that hustle, they were piling on risks that would eventually cause real harm to customers. I'm talking about an expensive hardware product with a very high failure rate and limited warranty, and absolutely terrible security and privacy practices. These led to real harms to people. Moving quickly is fine in certain contexts, particularly when you're at an early stage and your work is effecting few people or only people who are willing to accept risk. But what works for an early stage startup doesn't work in other situations! Sometimes there are real human costs. When you're moving that fast, you completely lose sight of the consequences of your actions.

And if you think USAID is the only place where there are horrible first, second, and third order effects to what DOGE is doing, you're being completely naive. There are huge numbers of people in the federal government who deal with life-or-death matters every day. Air traffic controllers. VA clinicians. What are the consequences of sending these people daily emails telling them they're unproductive and they should quit or get laid off? Telling them that you want them to be "traumatized"?

You should look very deeply into your soul.

A larger list of DOGE employees is on Wikipedia. While there are a variety of members, most of them don't have the experience you'd expect someone to have in the respective roles. The average age is definitely higher than 25 though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Government_Effic...

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I would love to know what Trump supporters think of all of this, but the usual places where Trump supporters hang out online (e.g., r/Conservative) don’t seem to talk about anything of the current administration’s controversies at all. I guess I was hoping they would at least talk about why they think they’re good or not that bad, but the mere mention of them seems to be suppressed. :sigh:

I'm sure they don't care. Means to an end.

This is the part quite a lot of people seem to not grasp. While there is certainly a portion of them that are regretful and feel misled, a lot of them actively wanted this. The cruelty is the point, the end is the cherry on top.

I don't even mean this as an insult, but these people are quite literally in a cult. MAGA has all the hallmarks of a cult, and accordingly, you will not find the contrition or self-doubt you're looking for penetrating deeply into the movement whatsoever.

They chose long ago to block out negative thoughts and information, today is no different.

No one talks about the price of eggs anymore. Remember 'back the blue'? That was before pardoning people who beat up police officers.

Excellent examples.

Similar to how we are shutting down the whole topic of what these programs were actually funding? The excessive spending? It's easy to project one side as bad but the same exact behaviors and attitude have been prevalent on the left.

Do you feel all of these programs should have been funded, or make sense when we are blowing through money and crushing people with inflation? Do you find the concept of auditing these organizations as bad, or is it bad because it's someone else doing it? If so can you explain why these actions weren't taken with the prior administration?

The point being, step out of a partisan hat, or an emotional state of X person is Y. Look at the federal governments spend, fraud, waste, and abuse is prevalent. Someone has to do the hard part and clearly leaving everyone to manage themselves doesn't work. More so when they can't pass their own audits.

> Do you feel all of these programs should have been funded, or make sense when we are blowing through money and crushing people with inflation? Do you find the concept of auditing these organizations as bad, or is it bad because it's someone else doing it? If so can you explain why these actions weren't taken with the prior administration?

I don't take issue with auditing. I take issue with the possible illegal firing of officials that are meant to provide oversight, skipping over security clearances to provide sensitive data access to unvetted indivduals, and attempting to illegally cut spending when only Congress has that authority.

> The point being, step out of a partisan hat, or an emotional state of X person is Y. Look at the federal governments spend, fraud, waste, and abuse is prevalent. Someone has to do the hard part and clearly leaving everyone to manage themselves doesn't work. More so when they can't pass their own audits.

Let's be clear here because I see a lot of MAGA repeating this incorrectly. You are referring to a few agencies like the Pentagon when you say they can't pass their own audits. Most federal agencies have no problem passing their audits and all of those audits are available through GAO. https://www.gao.gov/federal-financial-accountability. The majority of agencies pass GAO audits. In fact if Elon was only targeting agencies that failed GAO audits I would have much less of a problem.

I think you are the one that needs to take off the partisan hat.

Can you prove that the appropriate clearance hasn't been granted? It actually appears to be the opposite.

Passing an audit of " you spent x at y" isn't the same as "why are we spending X at y". He's doing the later, surely you can agree with that.

As for you partisan hat dig, i'm in fact not. I don't lean or vote how you're implying. In this particular instance, I've seen the excess of fraud, waste, and abuse through multiple agencies and organizations first hand. I've seen the pallets of USAID cash that were handed out without regard. I've also seen the increased prices, the national debt rising, and the general glut of how our government operates. So yes, while I may disagree with the process, the fact is no one else has taken a legitimate attempt at solving this problem. So in that manner I support the cleanse.

No one should have to prove a negative. In fact, Musk should be the one being completely transparent about clearances, etc... Instead he's fighting transparency every step of the way. If Musk was really looking to save tax payers money, USAID would have been at the bottom of the list. The cynic in me says he went after them because they were investigating him and he didn't want any conclusions to get out.

Finally, if you want to talk about the 'why' money is being spent, that's congress's domain. If we throw the laws out now then what use are laws. If you want to talk about rising debts, then look at the tax cuts Trump wants to renew that we can't pay for.

The left lost. If they didn't want this to happen they would have put forth a better candidate and addressed the American peoples concerns. This is what we get. It's crude and abrupt, but its what we get. I think we needed to purge a lot of the glut, so in this instance i'm indifferent to whom is doing it.

You completely sidestepped their comments on the legality of this all as just "eh, as long as it gets done." The legality and unconstitutionality of it all should be concerning no matter what side you are on.

You clearly have your perspective and the rest of the population has theirs. If he / they broke the law, I encourage you to engage your representatives and push for the appropriate actions. Take charge. Until then, it is what it is.

So whoever wins no longer has to follow the law?

Kamala Harris was not a leftist candidate nor is the DNC a leftist party. They are both center-right, with a center-left fringe that votes Democrat largely for historical reasons. In fact, it is specifically the fact that the DNC is not leftist that renders them incapable of addressing Americans' concerns. Because the center-right is the "everything's fine" wing of the DNC, which bet that they could make leftists blink and vote Harris, and lost.

> If Musk was really looking to save tax payers money, USAID would have been at the bottom of the list. The cynic in me says he went after them because they were investigating him and he didn't want any conclusions to get out.

Why would the USAID be investigating Musk? USAID primarily focuses on foreign aid, humanitarian assistance, and development programs rather than regulatory or investigative actions.

By the way, the reason the USAID is at the top of the list for DOGE to audit is because they were the most resistant and combative when the idea of them being audited came up. But they won’t be the only ones facing an audit - the administration said they are looking at all agencies. In fact, just today President Trump literally said in a pre-Super Bowl interview that they will be looking at the Department of Defense soon and expect to find billions or maybe even hundreds of billions in waste.

This seems like exactly the kind of broad audit the US government needs, not just at the national level but every level of government.

It's not an audit, it's bullshit. The resistance he has met from officials is due to them trying to follow the law.

Musk doesn't have the context or detail on what is wasteful or not. Those decisions are made in Congress. If you believe him you believe you can just look at who is being paid and a short description and identify waste. That notion is idiotic.

Musk and crew aren't informed or qualified enough to make decisions about any of this. They're just ignoring the law and made themselves judge jury and executioner.

Sadly, Musk will just create waste, not fix it.

> If you believe him you believe you can just look at who is being paid and a short description and identify waste. That notion is idiotic.

We have to be clear going into the future. Musk is not doing things this way because he's an idiot, he's doing it because he is waging an ideological war. If he says something is waste and fraud, it's waste and fraud by definition. They don't care about whether there is waste and fraud, they just care about implementing their vision, and "reducing waste/fraud" is apparently the magic phrase that everyone agrees allows them to seize unchecked powers.

https://www.newsweek.com/usaid-elon-musk-starlink-probe-ukra...

Can you prove the opposite has happened because every journalist says otherwise? The very article you are commenting on suggest the FBI did not do background checks because if so this particular person wouldn't have been approved. I'm all for having a committee that scrutinizes line items but the ends don't justify the means. Especially because there is no oversight here.

What evidence do the journalists have? Elon is cleared, many of his employees are by nature of the work they do. Many of the listed personnel for each of the DOGE teams in the orgs are comprised of Cleared lawyers and invdividuals from within the orgs as well. The burden isn't on proving they aren't, it's on the journalist to prove the sensationalist claims. There is clearly evidence of oversight, the president is authorizing actions. He was elected, we don't have to like it but it's how things are structured. Want change, back the candidates that will fix the issues you want, convince everyone else to agree.

One good example of sensationalism from journalists is the claim this is a "Data breach". That's neither true, nor helpful.

That is not how oversight works. Oversight is an unrelated non-partisan committee and transparency. Unfortunately Elon is jumping through hoops to avoid transparency like moving off any communication that would be subject to FOIA. What you describing is a crony doing his masters bidding not oversight and transparency.

Trust me my representatives are complicit in this coup.

Are you seriously suggesting that usaid spending is responsible for inflation? Can you show any correlation with inflation and usaid spending? The only correlation I see, is corporation profits and wealth of the upper 0.001% going up at the same time as inflation. But instead of a conversation about this, we put the biggest of them all (whom btw has profited significantly from government hand-outs) in charge of finding efficiency.

> skipping over security clearances

This is not accurate. Most jobs in the federal government, including at the treasury, do not require security clearances. You’re confusing background checks, which are very basic, with the different types of security clearances, which aren’t required for something like a financial audit.

You don’t find it at all concerning how quickly this is happening? How have they learned so much in such a little amount of time? It’s incredibly naive to just trust that they’re this efficient.

I mean at least make it look like this is what you’re accomplishing. They’re not even trying to convince anyone, we’re just supposed to trust.

I understand a perspective from someone on the outside that hasn't worked within these organazations. The reality is we're ripping a bandaid off and it will sting and we may need more treatment, but we have to see where the real wound is at.

It's also not a situation of where we are spending money, but why. I have yet to see any reporting that can defend the vast majority of spend in USAID let alone the other organizations. Further when you look at the disclosures of how much money is actually making it to the organizations vs overhead it's even worse.

This is painful and it will impact people, but as a country we have to fix the books. If it goes to far, come election time we elect the people we need to fix it. Ultimately this was something he campaigned on and it's something he's doing. Like it or not, it's been a pretty transparent process.

> Like it or not, it's been a pretty transparent process.

Not at all. Musk has cherry picked a few things to share. Other than that, we know nothing. And most of what he's cherry picked have been shown to be incorrectly understood. Transparency would be third party auditors who setup a process, executed the process, and documented as they went. We literally have no idea what's going on.

They've been at it for a couple weeks, Let's see what happens. If they don't provide it, we'll start to see the results of their failures. Then we can push back. There will be legit programs impacted, we can pivot and get them back. If America didn't want this, they shouldn't have voted the way they did, but that's where we're at. He was open in doing this, it was always the case.

I highly doubt the people who voted all voted for this and the ones that did didn't vote for seizing agencies and illegally barring personnel and senators from the building.

We can speculate all we want. He said what he would do, he's doing it. Here we are. I encourage you to reach out and get involved with your local and representative politicians if you want to be a voice for change.

> Let's see what happens. If they don't provide it, we'll start to see the results of their failures. Then we can push back. There will be legit programs impacted, we can pivot and get them back.

So what you're saying is they have no idea what they're doing. Just cut it and "see what happens" and if it's really bad, "we'll just bring it back." You realize that we won't see the true effects of lots of things for many months and possibly years? It's not binary.

If the debt and spending are so important, why focus on cutting random programs and throwing tens of thousands of people in chaos?

You really haven't seen reporting defending PEPFAR, for example, as a program of USAID? The same org that also track and help prevent Ebola outbreaks? That funded hospitals for innocent civilians in Gaza?

Why is the first priority of the GOP Congress to renew and expand the Trump tax cuts, which the government is estimating to cost at least $4 trillion dollars and will mostly accumulate to the top 0.1%? It's also estimated that it will explode the federal debt.

This is a government by and for oligarchs like Musk. He's attempting distraction while the plan is to grossly enrich themselves.

Well if you want change, convince the other side to vote for your candidates. This is what won. The people made their bed.

This pattern of argumentation is extremely lame.

You were having a discussion about the merits of specific behaviors and when someone pushes back on the merits, you just keep defaulting to "well they won the election."

You've done it multiple times now.

Everyone knows they won the election. Everyone knows the way to win power back is to win the election next time. People are having a discussion with you about the merits of what they're doing with that power currently.

the repeated refrain “they won the election” isn’t a lazy deflection—it’s a recognition of how our political system actually works. Power isn’t a magical property that comes from shouting insults or perpetuating endless conspiracy theories. Rather, it comes from a process that all of us have a stake in: an election that confers legitimacy on those chosen to govern. Yes, the people in power are taking legal actions to challenge inefficiency or waste, and if you disagree with the policies or the conduct of those in office, the established rules and courts are the means to bring about change.

Critics on both sides—whether anti‑Trump or anti‑Elon—tend to focus on slogans or sensational accusations rather than on what really matters: the proper channels of accountability. If you object to how power is being wielded or believe that policies are harming the nation, then the proper remedy isn’t to simply rail against the outcome. It is to participate in the democratic process. Challenge those actions in court, push for legislative reforms, and, importantly, vote for candidates who will implement the changes you want. That is the only non‑ad hoc, non‑refutable solution available.

It may sound repetitive to say “win the election” over and over again, but that is the point. Every time someone dismisses an objection with “they won the election,” they are implicitly saying: “If you don’t like how the current system is working, use the power that the system itself provides.” The legal processes and checks and balances aren’t just theoretical ideals—they’re the only way to address grievances without devolving into personal attacks or populist demagoguery.

So yes. If you don't like CURRENT thing.. you'll have to vote and better convince others your candidates the right one. The team that won is the team with power. Just as with Biden the team that won had their actions, people didn't like it, and here we are.

EDIT: I'd also ad that it's confrontational for you to directly assume people are in a cult because they don't follow your views.

> Yes, the people in power are taking legal actions to challenge inefficiency or waste, and if you disagree with the policies or the conduct of those in office, the established rules and courts are the means to bring about change.

They are likely not legal and have been told to stop by a judge. Vance has suggested ignoring the ruling and Elon is whining about impeaching judges now.

> the proper channels of accountability

Who is exactly is accountable to what is happening right now? Musk? Hahaha. There is zero accountability, transparency, or oversight in what is happening.

> people are in a cult

It's not an assumption. When people follow someone or a group to a religious extreme that is a cult. Everything Trump or now Musk does is somehow explained away in a very 'we were always at war with Eurasia' way. This list is really never-ending, but Trump was going to lower prices (the eggs!) and now he says they are going to go up. MAGA's are about backing the blue, unless Trump is pardoning people who beat police officers. What about Hilary's emails on a private server, but it's ok that Musk loading confidential government data to who knows where. Can you believe Hunter is on the board of a company and may be profiting off his families name? Forget about Trump coin, Kushner getting billions from the Saudis, the list goes on. And it highlights that MAGA doesn't really have any views other than 'our team good, their team bad'.

It's wild to me that people are that into someone like Trump or Musk. I'm not into anyone like that except maybe my family. When Trump said he could shoot someone in the street and people would still follow him, he was right. That also means it's a cult. What would they have to do for you to say throw them in jail?

You literally are personifying your own "our team good, their team bad" comment.

You're not providing any solution to the actual perceived problem. You're not providing any counters beyond your candidate that failed to get the support necessary to win. You don't have to like it, this is what it is, the left lost not only the election, but your "I know better than you" smarmy attitudes are resulting in those of use that are socially liberal, being pushed further right for a sense of sanity.

At this point the conversation isn't going anywhere and i'm satisfied that we are cleaning out all this graft, you (collectively) are not. We will not agree on this and i'm ok with that. I get it, it sucks losing control of narratives and funds, all I can say is what i've said before, if you don't like it vote for change.

USAID passed an independent audit literally 4 months ago. [1]

Please elucidate what graft 1) they missed, 2) you've found, and 3) justifies withdrawal of life-saving treatments for millions of people while inflicting enormous damage upon our country's international image?

[1] https://oig.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/0-000-25-0...

You were asked for YOUR OPINION about the defensibility of cuts to PEPFAR, USAID, and the extension of massive tax cuts for the wealthy.

Am I to interpret your “well go win the election!” to mean that you (personally) approve of said decisions and their relative priority?

It seems odd you can’t just state that, and instead deflect to a totally different topic of how people win power (which, of course, we all know).

Yes I have supported the cleanse of excess federal spending multiple times. I have clearly stated that in multiple comments.

Okay got it. Near the top of ganoushoreilly's priority list are:

1. Stopping life-saving treatments for 560,000 children

2. Stopping life-saving treatments for another 20 million people

Ganoushoreilly thinks this might be actually the right course of action, because s/he believes the funding is not audited and "there might be fraud." S/he appears ignorant of the easily discoverable fact that this funding was last audited a jawdropping, wildly irresponsible four months ago. By actual independent auditors.

Oh look, generic claims projected as fact. Where did I say anything close to this? Maybe re-frame your allegations here with actual links to specifics and I'll respond. If your emotionally charged response is in regard to stopping the medical transition of minors, yes I support that stance. It also has 0 to do with cuts as USAID and is more a larger complaint you have against the President vs the actual topic this whole post in based on. That's on you. Democrats lost, their views aren't the views in power. The american population has voted for the powers that be. It sucks losing and it can be an extremely emotional thing realizing that a large part of the population doesn't in fact toe the line with you on what you feel are the most critical issues in america. That's just how it is. You can be mad, you can sling mud, but like a broken record, there is only one way you can fix that and it's convincing people to vote like you.

This conversation has delved into hyper emotional responses, i've tried to keep it to the point of topic at hand. I've made it clear we have different opinions and it's not going to change. I'm not engaging further after this.

Uhhh... I was referring to the number of people currently -- and now, no longer -- receiving life-saving HIV treatments via USAID/PEPFAR. These people will die.

It's frankly mind-boggling that we can be in the middle of conversation about USAID/PEPFAR, you say "yes I agree with this prioritization," I reply back with what that prioritization actually is, and then you... jump to thinking that I'm talking about half a million children transitioning genders?

Yeah, totally not a cult. Lol.

https://www.state.gov/pepfar-latest-global-results-factsheet...

The US is supposed to be a country of laws. The president doesn't get to do whatever he wants, laws be damned, simply because he got 51% of the vote.

Then bring charges and challenge actions in court. That's how the law works.

You first justified the Trump administration's blatantly illegal actions by saying Americans voted for Trump. Now, you're saying it's all fine, because anyone can challenge Trump's illegal actions in court.

The fact that the president is taking one extreme, illegal action after the next in rapid succession is itself extremely alarming and unprecedented in American history. The fact that the Vice President has publicly declared that courts have no right to overrule the President's illegal actions is equally alarming.

He is the president, the population elected him. You have a process to rectify it if you feel so inclined. He won and now your views aren't the views of power and it must suck, I sympathize with that but progress is going to continue regardless if it's your vision. Plenty would say the same is true about the prior president and the excessive heavy handed actions taken towards DEI and other programs that have been found to be unconstitutional, you know, within the courts as the system requires. There is a process. If you don't want to play the game, using the process, any outcomes you don't like are on you for failing to change it. You as in the collective of opinion.

Go outside, take a walk, breath, it's going to be ok.

> He is the president, the population elected him.

That doesn't give him the right to shred the Constitution.

> You have a process to rectify it if you feel so inclined.

A process that the Vice President has said the President is free to ignore.

You're justifying an all-out assault on the Constitution of the US. The President isn't following "the process" - which seems not to concern you in the slightest.

Why not get mad at all the money appropriated to USAID to fund specific causes and find out most of that money went to pay for houses near Langley, VA and Politico accounts? That's a much larger scandal than this super transparent process happening.

The scandal is now super deep. They just caught FEMA funding another $60 M going to hotels in NYC! Prepare for this to get deeper. I hope they root out all corruption. My hat is off to them, I'm extremely overjoyed they're finally fixing our government. This is the best government the USA has ever had.

> Why not get mad at all the money appropriated to USAID to fund specific causes and find out most of that money went to pay for houses near Langley, VA and Politico accounts?

It didn't, and I'm disappointed to see that there are people on HN who fall for such absurd falsehoods.

https://thedispatch.com/article/fact-check-politico-usaid-fu...

See corrections at the bottom. It's confirmed that $8.2M from USAID and other us gov agencies went to politico!

Have you even read the article you linked to? It says that USAID only paid $44k to Politico, for subscriptions to a publication it runs.

$44k is nowhere near "most" of USAID's budget. It's less than 0.0001%. If you want USAID to stop subscribing to publications, that's a very minor change. You don't shut down an entire agency over that.

Comically they wrote an article, then fact checked themselves in the correction basically saying they the original reporting was correct.

> Also, the $8.2 million figure cited refers to payments in the 12 months leading up to February 2025, not dating back to 2016.

Talk about lying profusely. USAID is an ARM of the CIA, why would you want that?

You still haven't addressed the fact that USAID only paid $44k to Politico (over two years, for subscriptions), which is less than 0.0001% of USAID's budget.

You said USAID spends most of its budget on Politico and apartments near Langley. Are you going to admit that that was nonsense, before switching to your next argument?

> I have yet to see any reporting that can defend the vast majority of spend in USAID let alone the other organizations.

What is there to defend? Congress passed a law saying there must be an international aid agency. Congress appropriated money to that agency with general directives on how it should be spent, and exercises regular oversight over that spending. The grants given by the agency are transparent and publicly availabile.

You or I might not like every grant USAID gives, but that's for Congress to address. In fact, the USAID spending I have the biggest problem with - the arms funding to Ukraine - is specifically congressionally mandated. The largest program after that, I believe, is AIDS prevention and management in Africa, which is a great use of US tax dollars that only a truly evil person would object to.

If you don't like something that USAID is spending money on, the answer is for Congress to exercise its oversight, and possibly change the law to alter how USAID works. The president has no legal authority to shutter the agency. He's required to implement the foreign aid laws that Congress has passed, and those laws say that USAID must exist.

You didn't answer the question, which is all the answer I need. You just don't care until it hits you or a loved one.

How has it been transparent? They're not releasing any reports or giving any reasoning behind anything other than it's "corrupt". They're being the opposite of transparent, which is by design. And they're moving fast so there is no time to react to it all. It's very clear what's actually going on, you can choose to ignore it all you want, but it's going to hit you personally eventually.

Fraud?

I find the concept of ad hoc audits of the executive branch, by the executive branch, terrifying. Especially when used to terminate congressionally-mandated programs.

I agree that we should lean into audits and responsibility. The good faith way to do that would be laws passed by congress and executed by the executive.

There is no possible spin that legitimizes current events. I would say we have a constitutional crisis, but it seems like the blitzkreig was successful and the constitution became irrelevant.

I don't follow this logic, I would in fact expect the executive branch to be auditing the executive branch. What congressionally mandated program was terminated?

No spin is required, the people voted for this. Unfortunately one side wasn't able to convince the people that they didn't need this. That's where we are. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. You make adjustments and move on.

> I don't follow this logic, I would in fact expect the executive branch to be auditing the executive branch.

This is nonsense. It's like the police investigating themselves and finding no wrongdoing. You have a separate oversight organization do the audit because of conflict of interest and corruption.

It's nonsense in that is what was going on within the agencies. Our legal system is being leveraged. Don't like it, put forth a good claim and bring it to court. As it stands, it's all legal. That's on the voters if you don't like it.

Let’s be clear about the “auditors” who are “not trying to terminate congressionally mandated programs”.

> USAID was a viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1886098373251301427?mx=2

> Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act on September 4, 1961, which reorganized U.S. foreign assistance programs and mandated the creation of an agency to administer economic aid.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for_Int...

I wouldn’t be opposed to an executive branch that implemented audits and took the results to congress to advocate for policy changes and department refactoring.

I’m very opposed to an executive branch that audits programs they have political problems with, and use these no-oversight audits to kill agencies. That’s just authoritarianism.

I've seen MAGA supporters hyperventilating about "money laundering" and "fraud," but they almost never give any examples of said laundering and fraud. When they do give supposed examples, they're usually fake (e.g., birth control for Gaza, not that that would even be fraudulent in any way, if it had been true).

If you look at the federal budget, the vast majority of it is spent on a few big-ticket items (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the military). The programs Musk is attacking are a tiny part of the federal budget, and are already transparent, for the most part. You can go look up who is getting what grant from which agency. But it's all peanuts to start with.

> I've seen MAGA supporters hyperventilating about "money laundering" and "fraud," but they almost never give any examples of said laundering and fraud. When they do give supposed examples, they're usually fake (e.g., birth control for Gaza, not that that would even be fraudulent in any way, if it had been true).

This is the end stage of cable news like Fox and social media.

Wouldn't the otherside argue the same could be said for about the extreme viewpoints the left has held for the last decade+? Regardless of what anyone on this forum thinks, his approval ratings are only going up. If the people made a great mistake, that was their mistake to make.

You may find the left's ideas extreme, but they played by the rules of the game and respected the Constitution.

Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election, and now, he's operating as if the Constitution and the law simply didn't exist. Birthright citizenship, as guaranteed by the 14th Amendment? Executive order to eliminate it. Agencies established and funded by Congress? Eliminated by Elon Musk with no consultation. Musk hasn't even been confirmed by the Senate, as the Constitution requires. Trump just appointed him czar of everything, and now he goes around firing people and shutting down congressionally mandated agencies.

Why did he start with USAID. Also he's in all of those other organizations as well. Peanuts add up.

I'm sure he started with USAID because USAID helped end apartheid in South Africa, something he was a big fan of. Starting with USAID also helps reduce US's power overseas which certain countries would be very grateful for.

He started with USAID because they were investigating Starlink.

He can't touch things like national defense, because that means all his SpaceX and friends' Palantir contracts get exposed for what they are. Cash orders. Once all the smaller hurdles, see CFPB, are out of the way, then the rest of the a16z and Founders Fund clowns will come in with their solution-based ideas shelling their own stupid stocks on how to make America build, dynamic and great. USAID is the lowest-hanging fruit, with everything in plain sight, minimum effort was needed to create maximum distortion. All the peanuts are for him and his gang.

The peanuts don't add up, in this case. The discretionary federal budget is dominated by the military, and the nondiscretionary budget dominates the entire budget.

You’re totally missing the point about this, the agencies being gutted, combined, are less than 8% of federal spending:

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

Even if entire agencies were bullshit, and that’s incredibly unlikely and unrealistic, it’d do absolutely nothing meaningful to our spending compared to our biggest expenses. This is a problem for a lot of people without backgrounds in economics or who are used to very, very, large numbers. A few billion dollars sounds like a lot, but it’s literally not even a tenth of a percent of our budget.

If they cared about reducing the budget, and finding inefficiencies they would nationalize the healthcare system since we as a nation pay nearly double that of any other country and have worse outcomes. It’s empirical they do not care about efficiency, based on their targets, they care about power. USAID was investigating NeuralLink that’s why it was targeted. Thats it.

He's going after every single agency. Surely you're aware he's tarting health card and the Military already right? Do you know why the started with USAID?

Let's see where we are in 6 - 12 months, then if he hasn't touched anyone else I'll accept your point of him not targeting anything of value.

In 6-12 months there will be nearly irreparable harm done. And I said exactly why he started with USAID but I’m guessing you didn’t actually read that part.

I disagree, that's the beauty of it all.

Good idea: having someone audit wasteful government spending

Bad idea: having someone hire a bunch of H1-Bs[0] to take root access onto a bunch of Treasury Department servers and leak everything they get their hands on by asking an LLM to do the work for them

[0] My politics considers migration as a human right. However, since we don't live in that world yet, we have to consider that H1-Bs are hired not for their merit as programmers but for their willingness to wear golden handcuffs in exchange for potential future immigration opportunities.

Is an independent audit in November of 2024 recent enough? Nothing material found. A few recommendations on reviewing leases and tightening expense reports.

https://oig.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/0-000-25-0...

There's probably still a bunch of libertarian leaning Ron Paul supporters here.

I'm all for limited government and shutting down all foreign aid, but this is why I hate Trump and Maga. They ruin everything by playing checkers and not chess. How did Musk not see that sending unvetted kids into the US Treasury was going to blow up in his face.

Now Musk is saying he is going to get Ron Paul to audit the Fed, finally. Does he not see that sending a 90 year old to audit the fed is going to be even more of a clown show?

> Luke Farritor of DOGE was given access to computer systems of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the department responsible for the security and protection of American nuclear technologies and nuclear weapons, by United States Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Chris Wright, against guidance of the DOE's general counsel and chief information offices.

on the face of it, this sounded absolutely terrifying reading it on wikipedia. But, on closer inspection of the CNN article used as a source

> Farritor was granted access to basic IT including email and Microsoft 365, one of the people said. The chief information office only does a small amount of IT and cybersecurity work for the National Nuclear Security Administration, they said, including providing connectivity and running basic internet services for NNSA’s headquarters. It does not run IT systems for the nuclear agency’s labs controlling the nation’s nuclear stockpile.

Genuinely had me scared for a moment there.

This is how media has been hacked. When everyone is exaggerating that the sky is falling, we all tune it out, and then it's really hard to convey when the sky truly is falling... resulting in authorities that can get away with pretty much anything.

audible sigh. no, this is not evidence of how "media has been hacked".

the wikipedia summary of the information could be clearer, as it leaves room for me to make an inference on the statements provided -- but those inferences are based on my own biases and my own fuzzy stupid human brain thing filling in the blanks.

which is exactly why there are links to the underlying source material. so I can go and dive in deeper to see that, actually, my brain filled in the blanks wrong. it's my brain filling in the blanks. no-one else's brain is doing it for me. no-one is "hacking" my perspective. I screwed up by reading into something wrong and making assumptions out of fear. It is my personal responsibility to verify and challenge my own assumptions, especially those based on fears and worries.

basically, it's my own damn fault. please don't blame someone else for something that is my own damn fault.

there are plenty of badly poorly edited wikipedia articles out there -- i was reading one last night which literally had an entire paragraph that consisted of "The BBC released a timeline of events on their website". That was the whole paragraph. No reference for that statement either! This is part of the nature of community based, a.k.a. amateur, created notes. Oh look, an argument for professional fact checking and copy editing appears out of nowhere.

I don't mean "hacked" as in some malicious individual planned to mislead you. I mean we've screwed up our brain's information processing with the constant flow of urgency (for eyeballs). We're basically unable to pay attention to anything that isn't immediate. The bias you mention in compounded by others biases as the information is shared with each individual's bias. I also suspect that there can be bad actors in the chain, who intentionally mislead, often for pretty banal reasons (protecting their own perceptions).

I recently read about how Trump is "crashing" the stock market, and I was like oh crap, but when I checked it was only down a few points. Not only will I now ignore this source, but it's also probably nudged my overall distrust a little bit. Possibly the person writing the article figured it was important enough to warrant notice (it is) but realized no one would pay attention if it didn't sound urgent, so they gussied it up a lot... Imagine how much more dire it was after it got shared a few more times. If I got my news from Facebook then I might have thought democracy had collapsed and roving bands of gun toting anarchists had taken over.

> "Trump is "crashing" the stock market, and I was like oh crap, but when I checked it was only down a few points"

Forbes has a page "realtime billionaires list"[1] where they track the day to day wealth changes. Musk lost $12.5 billion today, Larry Ellison lost $2.8 billion today, Mark Zuckerberg gained $820M today.

When a few points means billions to the people who fund and own media outlets, who are also famously competitive and willing to do anything to make the numbers go up, it becomes more clear why we hear of the market "crashing" but it doesn't seem much different to us. (and that's outside the usual political complaining about everything the 'other' party does, whatever it is).

[1] https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/

You're very intelligently jumping through hoops to justify and defend the media and how the system as a whole operated here. On aggregate, this kind of "something" that happened, whether relying on readers filling in blanks, omissions, downright lying, even the choice of photo on a wiki page, etc, they all have a net-effect which steers the conversation and effort in a very specific direction.

Let's not pretend like this stuff doesn't have some sort of effect on the conversation, or our ability to have the conversation, or to debate it rationally and from first-principles. At the very least, we are here arguing pedantic minor points whilst the real issues are left un-debated. The purpose of the media should be to distill, enlighten, inform, and definitely not mislead with a very specific agenda which it very clearly does. You point me to any news article from any news outlet, including Reuters and I will show you how they twist literal facts into bias. At this point, I see them as no different than politicians.

Unfortunately for the left-wing intelligentsia, the media, and their allies - the average day to day people are waking up and the general opinion floating around more and more is having the effect of exposing the MO of how the media pushes an agenda (whether purposefully or not).

> The average age is definitely higher than 25 though.

The mean age is definitely higher than 25, due to a handful of very old (relatively speaking, compared to 25) people including Musk himself.

The median age does appear to be below 25.

That wikipedia "page" left me quite shocked. It reads more like CNN than an actual Wikipedia page.

I think that's generous. He is chopping entire departments after scooping up all their data. He doesn't seem to be doing any analysis at all. And a lot of his public statements have been patently false.

So an endgame is grok runs the government.

I’d be worried about real spies gaining access in person given the confusion of who is doge or not.

As a side note: that is very similar to how a consulting team would operate. Very young (inexperienced) team on the ground + senior people flying in from time to time.

"flying in from time to time"?

I'm sorry but what are these guys working on that's taking precedence over this?

It’s usually several projects they’re overseeing, so splitting time at different locations.

PS: I’m just guessing here. I have no clue how DOGE operates.

Running/managing the firm, doing pitches, sales, schmoozing, etc.

> I'm sorry but what are these guys working on that's taking precedence over this?

Their day-jobs at other various Musk enterprises.

Valuable experts are typically busy on long-term commitments.

Consulting is a sales job where senior partners need to hit numbers which affect their compensation, so they will sell anything and everything in terms of the projects that they leverage their (balkanised, aggressively dysfunctional internal politics) firm’s weight to achieve credibility to perform a massive turnaround or implementation or some other such project, and then sic a bunch of people ranging from fuck all experience to just learning to play the game onto delivery. The partner will appear at key points to ensure that the executives who approved the contract are happy and hopefully sell the next round of work.

If they shit the bed, which they do frequently, no worries, they’ve already sold the next deal elsewhere and now their firm may be out from that organisation for a year or two and one of the others will come in and screw up for a few years and then they’ll be back.

Incidentally and because this should be a basic competency of government, the Australian government, owing to a huge number of significant scandals including one in which PwC used the information in crafting taxation law and then sold it to international corporations to fucking obliterate any sense of Chinese walls (in which no one has gone to jail and most careers have emerged semi intact, if with a bunch of egg that any self respecting person would go and take a long hard look in the mirror at themselves for having been involved in) - the last 3 years has seen a modest relocation of these basic functions of government internally.

Which one of our political party leaders is now campaigning on removing, in order to bring back the gravy train to the incompetent consulting fucks. (Both our primary party leadership need to have a stern talking to because one side is actively trying to channel MAGA energy, and the other seems unwilling to do anything useful.

So turns out I had a bit to get off my chest, I hope no one found that too boring

Not going to defend the cult of the consulting MBA, but when I was running strategy work, my consultant-level kids had been recruited from a small number of MBA programs, undergone six-month intensives, and then spent 2-3 years as entry-level spreadsheet jockeys and task trackers before they were given any actual responsibilities, and we would have had a partner or up-for-partner management overseeing every identifiable tranche of work (plus federal work usually requires additional oversight layers and sometimes totally separate resource silos). Worlds different than parachuting in a handful of teenage or barely post-undergrad interns and letting them run riot through the most sensitive areas of the federal government without so much as an MSA or SOW, let alone security clearance investigations.

    > letting them run riot through the most sensitive areas of the federal government

This is an overstatement. These are not the most sensitive areas of gov't. Surely, that would be anything with national secrets: military planning, CIA, NSA, FBI, etc.

You could say it's the most sensitive area that affects the day-to-day life of everyday people. Especially medicaid and co. for the older voterbase (AKA the one that actually votes). Those Intelligence agency data wouldn't have made as big a public outcry in comparison.

dunno, I've seen some of the McKinsey, Deloitte, PwC, and Bane work... I'm skeptical anyone senior ever looks an anything. McKinsey specifically feels like the Jim Cramer of consulting with every blog post they write. Maybe your experience is different, but it feels like the consultants do the same as DOGE is doing.

Yes, you're right. It looks similar, but ofc all the processes in a large consulting company are optimized for such "missions".

These kids are doing it the first time with little/no oversight it seems. A bit like sending troops into a war with no training.

Except young people are utilized because they are cheap, not because they are quick or effective. This is not what is being touted (by Musk) here.

Source - spent more than half my career as a consultant.

most of the NASA engineers that took us to the moon were very young. Young people accomplished major feats of achievement, and continue to do so.

considering that knowledge decays (often rapidly) as a function of time since the last instruction, "experience" seems like it might be of far less value than temporal proximity to a previous college education.

> Young people accomplished major feats of achievement, and continue to do so.

Young people and major feats of achievement are not mutually exclusive things.

Well he has done pretty well with that belief so far. Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink…

All of those were full of traditional experts.

Curiously both Tesla and SpaceX benefit enormously from government spending[1] to the tune of almost $5Bn of taxpayer money. And then Tesla paid zero income tax last year[2] and none in 2021 either[3]. And now Musk is taking the position that the government spends too much taxpayer's money and needs to be torn down.

Musk also did very well by plainly lying (which I would call market manipulation) about Tesla products; the Cybertruck video where Musk claimed it was faster than a Porsche while towing a Porsche was a lie[4]. A 2016 video demonstrating self-driving was faked[5]. Musk's statements about what the Tesla Semi can do were not just generous marketing, they are impossible[6], claiming 500 miles range and PepsiCo reports they can't even carry a load of Lay's potato chips for 500 miles and on heavier loads they can only travel 100 miles. Faked self parking videos, faked SolarCity videos, faked Optimus humanoid robot videos, faked CyberTruck towing an F150 video[7]. The Optimus robots at the October 2024 event were remote controled and remote-voiced by humans[8]. They walk like Honda Asimo robots walked 25 years ago but they're being spun like they are Boston Dynamics killers. Musk's talk of tentacle arms to recharge Teslas never turned into anything (though BYD in China has had public automated electric-car battery-swap stations for years now). Musk's talk of full self driving first promised, what, 2017? turned out to be misleading with cars not even having the hardware to do a good job of it. Musk's early plans for completely automated Model 3 factory faded very quickly with them reverting to humans in marquees.

Yes Musk has done pretty well with investors letting him get away with a lot of broken promises and taxpayers letting him get away with a lot of subsidies and customers letting him get away with a lot of shoddy products. Lucky for him the Tesla engineers were competent true believers(tm) and delivered decent Model 3 and Model Y but that should only give them a similar valuation to other car companies, shouldn't it?

[1] https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-201...

[2] https://itep.org/tesla-reported-zero-federal-income-tax-in-2...

[3] https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/10/investing/elon-musk-tesla...

[4] https://www.insidehook.com/autos/no-one-exposes-elon-musk-li...

[5] https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-faked-video-in-2016-pr...

[6] https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tesla-semi-gets-debunked-...

[7] https://dawnproject.com/teslas-history-of-faking-demonstrati...

[8] https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/13/24269131/tesla-optimus-r...

All of this, and yet the rockets land on the ground, the cars sell and drive themselves, and the world is fighting for Starlink terminals as soon as there is some event going on. I wish more would manage to consistently fail upwards in such a way.

Almost as if he didn’t actually cause that to happen. I can imagine a world where thousands of competent professionals, working in areas they were already passionate about did the work. They did it by working according to their training, not according to “first principles.”

Their jobs and approaches were protected by middle/upper management constructing stories for Musk about how it was revolutionary, and all he heard was agreement.

SpaceX makes money in four ways[0], billion dollar contracts with NASA for rocket design and manufacture, cargo and supply services for NASA, contracts with the US Department of Defense, and the US Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center. Most of its income is taxpayer money. And StarLink, though we might wonder if StarLink would be around without the taxpayer, and what SpaceX valuation would be if it was just Starlink.

Fidelity estimates X (Twitter) is worth 80% less than when Musk bought it[1].

The Boring Company has raised ~$795M of investment valuing it at $5.6Bn and in 7 years it has delivered a 2.4 mile tunnel under Las Vegas which cost $48M and $4.5M/year. It was going to use self driving Teslas but actually they pay drivers to drive the cars, to move 1-3 people at ~40 miles per hour, and The Boring Company subsidises it by another couple of million per year. This money could have bought a lot of buses which would move more people more cheaply. Bus Rapid Transit, but worse.

[0] https://seekingalpha.com/article/4487247-how-spacex-makes-mo...

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/02/business/elon-musk-twitte...

[2] https://fortune.com/2023/11/20/elon-musk-boring-company-las-...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boring_Company#Inactive_an...

kind of drive themselves.

The levels of downvotes on your reasonable comments really makes me weep for HN. Seems like it has turned into standard Reddit hivemind users.

I wrote three paragraphs with 8 links showing multiple lies, manipulation, differences between how Musk presents himself and what he says he supports (Randian superman), vs. what actually happened (taxpayer funding) and they post a one-line dismissive "who cares, he's rich, the ends justify the means".

That's not a good comment, especially in the light of dang's callout at the top of this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42992992 "don't post low-information / high-indignation comments that could just as easily appear in any related thread. Such generic comments make discussion less interesting and more activating.".

I can also now add to my list: and now an offshoot of X, xAI, released the most impressive thinking model people have seen in some time.

The issue is that one can write as many paragraphs as they want, if the goal of those paragraphs is to obscure some basic truths then they will gain:

- laudation from sycophants;

- mere rejection from "basic facts enjoyers".

Your dismissal of Musk's accomplishments and companies for political reasons is also a dismissal of all the people who have trusted him with their time and effort to build all those wonders. What they've accomplished is great, and it obviously would not have happened without him.

Touting “first principals” is a way of revealing “I’m too dumb to understand other people’s work.” Like if you can’t understand higher level concepts and have to start on your own from Euclid, it just means you aren’t very smart but think you can be another Maxwell just by thinkin’ real hard. It’s a joke.

Not necessarily. Other peoples' work can assume what "everyone knows"; starting from first principles can (sometimes) show up where that's the case. That doesn't mean you're not very smart; it means you're aware enough to know that some limitations that aren't real creep in to the body of knowledge of a field.

Or it can be just arrogance. (In fact, even when it's reasonable, it probably also contains some arrogance...)

I am in agreement with you. The OP is overstated. I have heard Musk interviewed a few times. When asked to explain more about his phase "first principles", he usually talks about (paraphrase) "delete as many things as possible". It is an interesting way to think about project planning. At a bare minimum, he has created several incredibly successful businesses in his lifetime, so he must be doing something right.

> At a bare minimum, he has created several incredibly successful businesses in his lifetime, so he must be doing something right.

No, this is a common fallacy.

The main reason to get crazy rich and successful is statistics: be lucky. I.e., accidentally do the successful things. And usually starting rich helps, so you have the opportunities.

Crazy success is not a measure for capability. There is no correlation. Yes, it is sad, so despite this, the fallacy is a great motivation for many.

Principles.

Its about assuming most people operate on dogma and heuristics. This is extremely true in my opinion.

By making this assumption, you dispel bad practices and behaviors that might have built up within an organization. Even more importantly you can reveal why certain chesterton’s fences exist.

Interestingly that is the exact opposite of the Chesterton's fence concept - it illustrates that it is much better to grasp the system as it exists before attempting to change it, as then you can learn why a Chesterton's fence exists without tearing it down.

Which works in fields removed from non-human reality or consequences. For example, when creating financial derivatives or other forms of social engineering, where the substrate changes and nothing seems fixed.

It falls to pieces when people with this mindset attempt to work up against the constraints of physics, or other unchanging limits. Those limits can be constructed on, and relied upon. Going back to first principles in these cases inevitably results in massive losses in the repetition of the uncountable quiet failure-corners of history.

We will find out which one we are dealing with.

The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it. Physics has to work, organisational processes don't - Maxwell himself wouldn't have been able to understand the travel expense rules at some organisations I've seen, and the right response isn't always to try to reverse engineer what people were thinking when they came up with this crap, sometimes you really are better off throwing it away and coming up with something reasonable from scratch.

>Maxwell himself wouldn't have been able to understand the travel expense rules at some organisations I've seen,

Or the tax code...

>sometimes you really are better off throwing it away and coming up with something reasonable from scratch.

Many people don't understand this and are totally, fully incapable of understanding this simple concept, hence all the opposition

Do you think it more likely that people are "incapable of understanding" or that people are intensely suspicious of what Musk's idea of a "reasonable tax code created from scratch" would be and how it would benefit Musk a lot more than everyone else?

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trum...

The former. My own personal view on taxes: (especially income and property tax) neither the rich nor the poor should ever pay them. So in my view it does not matter to whom it benefits the most - most likely it is going to benefit everybody musk included, I suspect though It will also mostly benefit the less well off people in society. Perhaps the most important question to ask is not who will gain - rather who stands to lose? My answer would be the career bureaucrats.

Without paying property tax, the rich can buy up lots of property (and land) and leave it idle, with the express purpose of squeezing everyone else into the remaining land, forcing the rent prices up, which they benefit from. Since there is a finite amount of land in a nation, that ends up being unfair. Assuming the ordinary people pay a tax of some kind, the government is taking that money under the idea that they will use it to benefit the taxpayers and the overall nation. Standing back and doing nothing while the rich exploit everyone else isn't living up to that side of the tax contract. Property taxes impose a cost to the ownership of a property which disincentivizes leaving it empty, which is better for almost everyone else except the property owner.

Do you have another solution to that, or do you not care about that in a dog-eat-dog way?

> "My answer would be the career bureaucrats"

Why is this used as a slur? There's such a thing as a career diplomat, and we'd hope they would learn more about the country they were diplomat-ing in over that career - who can make things happen in the government, how the consulate can get things done, build relationships with people in power. Similar with a career bureaucrat in principle, having a head full of details about which supply chains are reliable and resilient, which people are experts in border issues or international currency issues or state laws vs. federal laws, building relationships with them.

>the government is taking that money under the idea that they will use it to benefit the taxpayers and the overall nation

It's not how it pans out.

>Property taxes impose a cost to the ownership of a property which disincentivizes leaving it empty, which is better for almost everyone else except the property owner.

All that will disproportionately affect the poor not the rich who can actually afford the taxes.

>Do you have another solution to that, or do you not care about that in a dog-eat-dog way?

I do. Property in one thing that I think should be equally divided among individuals, with individuals being able to use/rent in whatever manner they please within certain confines (lots of assumptions here and lots of if and buts, but it's huge discussion).

>> "My answer would be the career bureaucrats"

>Why is this used as a slur?

It is intended to be a slur, infact the word bureaucrat itself is a slur. Being a bureaucrat is a negative skill or a parasite etc. unlike a lot of other specializations. Ofcourse exceptions may exist. Personal questions: have you done your taxes beyond simple salaried income tax? Have you bough/sold property? have you run a small/big business? have you run a payroll? Alternatively are you familiar with the amount of complexity introduced by the govt in the questions I asked you?

> "I do. Property in one thing that I think should be equally divided among individuals, with individuals being able to use/rent in whatever manner they please within certain confines (lots of assumptions here and lots of if and buts, but it's huge discussion)."

That's interesting, and rather goes up against the free markety ideas that the people with the most valuable use for land/property should be able to buy as much of it as they want from people with less valuable uses (who can sell it at market rates). I am interested and do wonder how that might work, and if it would work. Although I note that thing_you_like is allowed to be nuanced and complex, and thing_you_dislike must be bad because it's complex.

> All that will disproportionately affect the poor not the rich who can actually afford the taxes.

That happens when a speeding ticket is a fixed $100. Norway can give speeding fines up to 10% of the driver's annual salary. A bad property tax disproportionately hurts the poor, not all property taxes.

Your parent comment "Perhaps the most important question to ask is not who will gain - rather who stands to lose?" is the entire reason taxes get complicated - because every change is a change that someone gains and someone else loses. Any thing which is paid for by taxes has an argument over who should pay the tax, and how much of it; do parents pay tax for schools? Society benefits from more educated people, so does everyone pay? Is it an income tax because people who benefitted more from education can earn more? Is it part of property tax because family homes need schools built nearby? Solve for something all councillors/senators agree on - after they negotiate, for every thing and every slider.

> Personal questions: ...

They would be relevant if I had said the tax code was in any way optimal, good, efficient, should not be changed, or should not/could not be improved. My position is not that. It is if we give the greedy fat kid free reign to rewrite the rationing system the only expected result is all the food ends up on their plate and none on anybody else's.

We've seen Musk taking union busting actions, we've seen Musk's daughter accuse him of abuse, we've seen Tesla and SpaceX benefit from billions of taxpayer funding while Tesla arranged to pay no income tax on its billions of income, Musk has demonstrated lack of caring for the interests of other humans, the expected outcome of him rewriting the tax code is that he and his companies pay no tax and therefore others pay all of it. We've also seen years of Musk dashing off an unworkable ill-thought-out idea off the top of his head, so after "I pay no tax" the remainder is probably some pre-planned maximally self-interested tax code written by Peter Thiel et al, or some dashed-out-in-ten-minutes wildly unbalanced hopelessly unworkable napkin tweet.

I would like to see laws implemented with test conditions for how we will know if they are working, with a mandatory sunset period for reviewing them and if they aren't meeting the test conditions they automatically expire. I would like to see the tax code be mandatory computer-implementable with low tax filing complexity as a priority consideration.

> "It is intended to be a slur, infact the word bureaucrat itself is a slur. Being a bureaucrat is a negative skill or a parasite etc."

One person's bureacratic parasite is another person's necessary management. I enjoy Yes Minister[1] and am annoyed by the waste it parodies and mocks, but also acknowledge that a necessary and significantly sized part of any large system is the organization and management and implementation of the system itself; the UK's NHS is often criticised for having too many administrators, and at the same time for not having enough administrators to be able to do the work of organizing and making it more efficent on top of the work of keeping it running.

The second system effect[2], "scrap it and we'll start again and do it better", is a well known anti-pattern[3]; the cost of scrapping and rewriting the tax code, all the people through the Inland Revenue, all the accountants and lawyers who need updating, all the forms and paperwork and computer systems and reports and analysis which need refactoring, recreating, translating, documenting, explaining, staff training - staff hiring - the effort and cost is non-trivial, all on the unsupported dream "we will do it better next time".

Your original comment: ">sometimes you really are better off throwing it away and coming up with something reasonable from scratch." why not simply switch that around? First come up with a 'reasonable' tax code from scratch, put it into a bill, and because it's reasonable senators will all support it, then afterwards the old one can be thrown away? Obviously that hasn't happened, and surely the reason is that there is no reasonable alternative that everyone agrees on, and the only way to throw it away and come up with an alternative is to have a single authority force one through and expect it to be one which helps them and their friends and hurts others. Guarding against that is why we have Democracy not Dictatorship in the first place(!) even though Democracy is often inefficient and ineffective.

[1] https://archive.org/details/yes-minister-1980-1984 - a British satire / comedy from the 1980s set where a newly elected government minister finds he's been made head of the Department of Administrative Affairs, a department of 23,000 administrators. Example scene/situation is the new hospital with 500 'seriously overworked' administrative staff and no medical staff or patients: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAk448volww

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect

[3] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

>That's interesting, and rather goes up against the free markety ideas.

While the general impression of free market that is commonly touted does imply what you say, even in its current form people don't carry free market ideas to it's extreme: for example someone could argue that in a true free market you could kill your competitor to gain an edge.

>Although I note that thing_you_like is allowed to be nuanced and complex, and thing_you_dislike must be bad because it's complex.

There are areas where complexity may be needed and not avoidable. (for example a rocket ) . Something similar goes for the land division that I talked about. What I can assure you is that if a land division is not considered, the complexity ( and associated atrocities) are magnified in other areas like the tax code.

>I would like to see laws implemented with test conditions for how we will know if they are working, with a mandatory sunset period for reviewing them and if they aren't meeting the test conditions they automatically expire.

As much as I agree with you on this I don't think it'll happen in practice, simply because most humans are completely incapable of even conceiving those kind of ideas. If you are a developer like me, you are well about the average IQ - so what may seem trivial to you and me is not for the common man or the common elected representative that he elects.

> tax code was in any way optimal

The tax code especially for income tax and property tax, can never be optimal, or if it's optimal it's only for a short time. Because by it's very nature it's predatory. (it's another huge topic as to what can be taxed)

>One person's bureacratic parasite is another person's necessary management.

This mostly true of private companies, less so for a government that writes check to itself.

>I enjoy Yes Minister[1] and am annoyed by the waste it parodies and mocks,

While you did not answer my questions which were directed to you as a person( I assume that most of your answers would be 'no'). I'm glad that you're familiar with "Yes Minister". (I had seen it a few decades back.). Anyway I'm arguing for minimal government and for minimizing any scope creep of the powers that the government may have. Easier said than done. (the mostly legalized and easy to obtain gun ownership in US is one example, which if I interpret correctly was intended to keep the government in check)

I'm echo chambering on this and one other comment[1], and starting to wonder if those guys are actually neurodivergent, autistic, whatever implies combination of entry-superhuman intelligence and unfortunate psycho-emotional development, or it's complete opposite and they're faking intelligence with vastly superior EQ, put aside pointlessness of taking IQ/EQ seriously.

Because, I don't think Musk had ever shown issues understanding or even precisely manipulating people's sentiments with bare hands which some of us struggle even with tools, while also there being countless examples him showing lack of understanding of laws, order, code, all such brittle dehumanized systems in general.

All his successes owes to his mastery of orchestrating humans as animals, not machines or humans as intelligent constructs. Why are we nearly dead set that it's opposite of that?

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42993901

I think it's more to do with long eroded goodwill. I remember the early 10's when he was an internet darling and there was optimism on what he would deliver. Then some of that is simply artificially inflated hype by investors on Wall Street that need him to keep that persona so they can keep their money going up.

He's long turned about face with that, but that goodwill can die really, really hard (only took until now for Wall Street to very slowly start pulling out). As we see with Donald Trump somehow being relevant some 4 decades after his celebrity fame for a national election.

>Why are we nearly dead set that it's opposite of that?

My impression is that Musk knew to surround himself with good people. Be it coincidence, a Charisma check, or simply throwing cash at them, those people clearly did amazing things and he was the face of it all.

This is more or less the opposite, and his crude behavior navigating government IMO could not have gone worse. He had at least 2 years to sow the seeds and he's instead taking "Drill Baby, Drill" a bit too seriously. I could be very wrong and underestimating him. But he feels more like someone who demands the spotlight, not a mastermind with a precise vision. Those good people are not around him anymore; Trump sure as hell doesn't have a vision past tax cuts for billionaires.

Another way of looking at it might be that the crowd who liked Musk in the 2010s is a tough audience. I was among them too - I liked what Musk (appeared) to stand for. Expanding mankind's reach, unafraid to take a task that previously was deemed "impossible" and pretending that with enough determination it can be achieved. All the while maintaining a bit of childish cheek and humor about things. I really liked both the vibe and the approach. It was the quintessential "young and starry eyed rich genius who is prepared to throw lots of money at moonshot ideas - if only to see what happens".

But this audience is more diverse in it's views and is perhaps more willing to challenge it's idols and leaders. Keeping this audience on your side is a constant dialogue where you are constantly challenged and it's a symbiotic-adversarial relationship that results in a stronger whole. Only by getting challenged in a constructive discussion can truly great ideas be born.

But this is hard work and in some sense annoying. Inevitably he gets surrounded by sycophants and yes-men, because these people butter his ego, and comes to realize that there's an audience around who will unquestionably eat up anything their leader says irrespective of it's truthfulness. An audience who doesn't care whether their leaders are good, just that the leader is on their side.

And thus we find ourselves in the current situation, with an entire establishment in the US who will happily broadcast broad faced lies, but these lies are only for their own audience who believes them without question. Or they just don't care at all, because it's not about the truth, it's only about tribalism.

It seems to have worked well for him many times.

considering the massive amount of (still often true) information at our fingertips, appealing to authorities that have proved themselves unreliable many times in recent memories is not the benefit one might initially think it is.

"first principles" doesn't mean "go back to 2 + 2 and reinvent the rest of math".

>much of this stuff can be figured out from first principals without much need of traditional experts.

I agree with him. Corruption often get a pass when covered in layers of legalize.

Answer is obvious. Because teenagers tend to be impressionable and unscrupulous.

And typically cheaper to employ.

And gullible enough not to realize how disposable they are to prevent their leaders from getting in trouble.

When we think about what tasks bright young people can become good at, I think auditing flows of money is one of them. It's a technical task with objective results, and a tight feedback cycle. The places where you need age and experience are like resolving interpersonal conflict, balancing interests from many stakeholders, setting up objectives for others to follow, etc.

So to me this argument sounds the same as "how can young kids think they can program like experienced engineers".

Another answer is that financial auditors don't have ALL the technical skill for this scope of project. Light SQL skills tend to be the upper end of technical accounting (many workers on a project is good for corporate billing). Reports indicate Doge is employing graph analysis, LLMs, etc. Getting the data looks like a SW problem perfect for young people. I have no evidence that this how the organization functions, but I can imagine them as technical analysts, who simply pass information to higher ups who do have organizational experience.

> So to me this argument sounds the same as "how can young kids think they can program like experienced engineers".

Which leads me to my favorite quote from TFA: "must have killed all those test pigs with some bugs"

Moving fast and breaking things.

Though I note at SpaceX he seems to hire actual rocket scientists.

The answer to that question is that Elon Musk does not seem to believe that the government departments can answer data questions. Rather than wait for them to inevitably say it will take weeks to gather the data, he has his war boys extract it from the system.

One might as well ask "if you want to stop HIV/AIDS in Africa why pay a bunch of young kids with international relations degrees instead of AIDS researchers". Grunt work takes grunt effort.

<< Elon Musk does not seem to believe that the government departments can answer data questions.

To be fair, having been part of many an corp at this point ( you would think they would want to have accurate data ), that assumption is not flawed.

Auditors take time and are boring. Auditors measure performance against rules and goals — this is about discarding the rules and goals. The point of this is chaos and power.

Elon has contempt for rules and laws. Blame the fuckups on the deep state or whatever. He will run wild until the president cuts off his head.

The question no one is asking is why does the federal government have so much "sensitive data" on it's citizens in the first place?

When you build a machine like this you should ask, "would I be comfortable if my political opposites had control of this?" If the answer is no, then you DON'T BUILD IT.

Meanwhile someone goes in there to try to break up this 30 year pile of technical debt and it's all lawsuits and handwaving theatrics to try to stop it.

How could the US government do things like collect tax or regulate the medical industry without sensitive data?

Tax data is not particularly sensitive and several nations just publish it. Even in the US many forms of non-individual tax filings are public by default. The results of audits /are/ highly sensitive but there's no reason to hold those on computer systems for longer than 5 years after the audit.

I think the medical industry can easily be regulated without the government having access to my actual medical file. They regulate cars without having any idea how I drive mine. They regulate planes without sitting on the flight deck themselves.

It's like we know how to build good businesses, good databases, have solid user control practices, but then we give the government a pass because it's imagined to be "really hard." It's laughable.

> Tax data is not particularly sensitive and several nations just publish it.

Aren't we still waiting for Trump's tax returns?

https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/trumps-tax-returns-rele...

Can you point to a country that publicly releases everybody's tax returns, as a policy? I know some countries that release elected officials' returns, but not those of common people.

Finland for example: https://www.vero.fi/en/About-us/finnish-tax-administration/d...

> Individual income tax information for 2023 was released on 7 November 2024. Public information can be browsed on tax office workstations and requested by telephone: How to search the public information on income taxes and real estate taxes

> The following data is included in the public information on individual income taxes:

> name, year of birth, county earned income subject to state taxation

> capital income subject to state taxation, income subject to municipal taxation, income tax, municipal tax

> imposed taxes and charges in total, amount of back taxes or tax refunds

Thank you, not surprising it's the nordic countries. I can't imagine this in the US but I'm glad to learn some places pull it off.

A quick google search tells me Finland, Norway, Sweden, Pakistan

Norway allows you to see / search almost everyone's personal tax record (including name, birth year, postal code, net income and net wealth). You can do this online here: https://www.skatteetaten.no/en/forms/search-the-tax-lists/

Sweden - public records.

Sensitive data includes things like home addresses, personal income, personal debt, personal wealth, dates of birth, medical status, etc. I don't know if it's true that some nations publish that (I don't personally know of any) but whether that's the case or not doesn't make any difference to whether it's sensitive.

In Sweden that's public information except medical status.

So I can call the IRS - get the date of birth and tax declaration, i.e. income from work and income from capital of anybody (except those with protected identity).

Address and date of birth etc. you can just check any map-site lite hitta.se.

I'm not trying to be flip. You should try to look up your own data sometime. In many states, with just your plate number, I can request your info. The DMV will give it to me unless you've requested and presented a reason for them not to. Some will notify you and possibly give you a few days advance notice but with action on your part I will get your information. The cost here is less than $100 typically.

Or a PI. The cost there is less than $2000 typically.

I'd be happy if they dropped both taxes and regulations

Taxes could be consumption based with no need for anyone’s personal data at all.

Consumption taxes are highly regressive. Pure consumption taxes would plunge USA into an even higher degree of inequality. The most progressive way to tax a populous is taxing incomes and wealth progressively.

You could give everyone an exemption. That would require some minimal tracking of identity and whether or not the exemption had been paid, but no details on income, wealth, family status, etc.

I fundamentally disagree that earning money or saving it should be taxable in and of itself. We should encourage that as much as possible. But others differ.

They could be, but they aren't.

The NIH and CDC have incredibly detailed medical event data for infectious diseases, cancer diagnoses, and death certificates (which have a ton of data beyond "John Doe of New York City died of such and such on such and such date." It's how we have incredibly effective epidemiologists. Hospitals and non-profits use the data published by the government to make large decisions about equipment purchases, types of staff to hire, and community health programs to run.

All the government professionals I've met who work with that data are very careful with it. The guiding star is "Never let anyone use our data to find out something about any individual. Then, if you still can, publish someone useful."

>Meanwhile someone goes in there to try to break up this 30 year pile of technical debt and it's all lawsuits and handwaving theatrics to try to stop it.

They only had to get security clearances and follow the Constitution. Clearances are routine, so shouldn't be a problem (unless the person being cleared is a problem). The Republicans control all branches of government, and cost-cutting is very popular among all voters, so writing a better budget is possible. Things won't collapse if they work on it until before the midterm elections. It just seems like Trump is testing how far he can walk along the path to tyranny.

> team of teenage

Maybe it's a question of wording, but I would agree if the word were "inexperienced" instead of teenage (in reality, they are young adults).

I have no horse in this DOGE race and all the discussions, but I find this "reverse ageism" (for lack of a better term) quite sad, 'cause it does not sound condescending but infantilizes youth and hides one of the biggest elephants in the room in the modern world, which is the real lack of representation of youth in politics (and maybe in the public service?) [1][2].

I was a 19-year-old holding an assault weapon in my daily work in the military with the power to terminate the lives of almost 99.99% civilians, friends with 23 starting piloting USD 5 million machines, and it's just sad to see that we as a society do not see young adults as capable as their older counterparts.

I speculate that at least in Europe, due to this credibility bias in favor of older politicians, we are facing one of the biggest violations of the intergenerational pact, which is the fact that this same youth will end up without retirement [3].

[1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/congress-age-de...

[2] - https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/both-republicans-and-de...

[3] - https://www.dw.com/en/pension-fund-crisis-looms-in-germany-a...

You were not a 19 year old with access to the personal financial data of hundreds of millions of civilians.

Financial data that seems to be subject to those running massive fraud or allowing it through negligence, but somehow attempting to tackle that is more dangerous than a 19 year old holding an incredibly efficient weapon.

The foxes were already in the hen-house before DOGE turned up, either, as many seem to think here, there are now competing foxes in there, or a clean up is happening. I've yet to see any evidence of actual damage done by DOGE, so why is everyone ignoring the evidence of actual damage that they've found? Can we work that one out?

> actual damage done by DOGE

I’m guessing they don’t post that on Xitter, do they? Do they even post what exactly they did there?

The problem is that same admin who ran up second largest national debt increase is now doing some inconsequential fraud hunting before running up likely the largest debt ever.

> I’m guessing they don’t post that on Xitter, do they? Do they even post what exactly they did there?

I don't know about exactly but I found this tweet[0] informative, this is just a part:

> To be clear, what the @DOGE team and @USTreasury have jointly agreed makes sense is the following:

> - Require that all outgoing government payments have a payment categorization code, which is necessary in order to pass financial audits. This is frequently left blank, making audits almost impossible.

> - All payments must also include a rationale for the payment in the comment field, which is currently left blank. Importantly, we are not yet applying ANY judgment to this rationale, but simply requiring that SOME attempt be made to explain the payment more than NOTHING!

That does sound like sound financial management, and pretty basic, which does make me question the whole system.

> The problem is that same admin who ran up second largest national debt increase is now doing some inconsequential fraud hunting before running up likely the largest debt ever.

That is almost fair criticism, let down by the doom-mongering, and ignoring that a) they're actively cutting things, and b) no pandemic (yet).

[0] https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1888314848477376744

Ok, that’s what I saw elsewhere. The conflicting part is where some individual agencies pass their audits (https://oig.usaid.gov/node/7291) and yet this claim of lacking audit basics. What gives? Is this highlighting bits where say DoD is a known black hole and then crafting a narrative?

As for “doom-mongering”, you don’t have to take my word, just listen to what republicans are saying: $3T in tax breaks extension, possibly offset by $1T in cuts. Not even accounting idea of cutting income taxes. You do the math.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/house-gop-rushing-...

You’re not wrong, but there is also wisdom in age. I’m 37 now, and got in plenty of similar trouble when I was 16-22, simply because my brain literally was not fully developed yet. My impulse control was worse, my consideration of consequences was much less existent, and so on.

I think the reaction is more about wanting some older adults in the room as well, not about having no younger adults in the room.

Younger people always want to knock down Chesterton’s fences whenever they see them; I know, because I was recently young.

But asking the elders why those fences exist is always a good idea; then, knock them down if the issue is resolved. Humility and curiosity are required for that.

I do find that knocking them down to find out why they were necessary is often a lot more efficient. Even at 37 that hasn’t really changed. But that’s a lot easier to justify when the impact of that decision is a bunch of process interruption at worst.

And being that efficient is fine, if you're a startup or a technology company. If you're the government, sometimes people die waiting on their treatment to be funded because of your efficient bulldozing.

> I was a 19-year-old holding an assault weapon in my daily work in the military with the power to terminate the lives of almost 99.99% civilians, friends with 23 starting piloting USD 5 million machines, and it's just sad to see that we as a society do not see young adults as capable as their older counterparts.

Who would you trust more, a teenager with active military training and awareness on how to handle a gun or a teenager picking up a gun off the floor for the first time?

If these teens all had followed proper protocol, went through a full security clearance process and training on how to handle sensitive data there would be no issue. They did not. And they are definitely not old enough to have had experience dealing with highly sensitive systems. So you've got people that are not qualified to handle data, working on systems they are not experienced enough to work in, kicking over load-bearing pillars that they can't see.

I would trust 19 years old soldier with an assault weapon more then trusting him with what DOGE is supposed to do. Soldiers passed training literally designed to make them obey orders and not randomly shoot that gun. And there is whole hierarchy designed to keep their use of assault guns in check.

I would not trust a random 19 years old with assault gun, I would not trust that guy if we were alone in the room where his superiors do not see. But, I would be afraid of him raping me more then him using that gun without order.

you're probably being dowvoted because there are thousand of regulations and a multi year program exclusively made to educate young soldiers, besides giving them guns.

your argument starts well, but then compares the top well behaved military machine with a war lord arming children and throwing them on the front.

Yeah, there is a trend towards an absurd infantilization that would call 26 year olds children. It seems to me to have grown first out of a desire to acquit themselves of responsibilities combined with the junk pop-science about brain age fully forming and a desire to acquit themselves of poor decision making and their own bad outcomes, and then later used as they grew older use to dismiss others.

Everyone is asking that. It's the main thing people are asking.

Cause these can get access to things Elon wants access to and will do what Elon wants. Musk does not want audit, he wants someone who will find exactly what Musk wants him to find and wont worry about legality or rules.

Musk is not concerned with producing false accusation for example. Obviously he could find corrupt auditors and probably did, but those are slower. They take more time to produce what was asked from them.

> not a team of financial auditors

There is a claim that many federal payments do not have information necessary for traditional financial audits. Maybe a team of forensic auditors would be more apt?

Given how transparent government spending is and how frequently it’s audited, I think that’s begging the question of how scientific that claim is. The DoD is the only federal agency which hasn’t been able to have a clean audit[1] so it would be reasonable to question them – taking into consideration their unusual size and distribution, of course – but that doesn’t say anything about the rest of the government, or even distinguish between issues with payments vs. things like physical inventory when you have thousands of facilities around the world.

1. https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-24-106890.pdf

this just exposes the double standard and agism in tech industries. in tech, a lot of companies won't hire you in technical roles or as programmer because you're over 40.

a lot of doge/elon's team is from the various tech companies he owns, so of course, they're going to be teenagers and senior people are pretty much laid off.

think about the next tech layoff you hear in the news (facebook/meta, etc) and think about what portion of the layoff is younger than 20 and what portion are older than 40.

> The question no one asking is why Elon is sending a team of teenage programmers and not a team of financial auditors if he really wanted to cut government spending?

If it's working, why would it matter? The most curious thing in all these discussions is that the elephant in the room is never addressed: they already found on hundreds of billions of pure fraud and funding for extremely dubious endeavors.

But nobody talks about that: everybody attacks the messenger. Everywhere.

Are people not happy that the fraud team already uncovered the following:

    USAID fund diverted to the Clinton family, part of which funded a $3m for Chelsea Clinton's wedding and $10m for Chelsea Clinton's mansion.

    $41m to study transgender mice

    $3m to BBC (seriously, what? BBC in the UK? With US taxpayers dollars? Why? To push what kind of narrative?)

    $8m to the supposedly independent "Politico"

    $40m+ to EcoHealthAlliance to fund gain-of-function on modified bat viruses (moreover now official report to Congress says the most likely source for the Covid-19 outbreak is a lab-leak: so we have USAID partially responsible for the *death of tens of millions of people*

    $20m for a "Sesame Street" show in Iraq

    $110m to find water in Afghanistan

    funding of a movie in Portugal glorifying incest

    countless NGOs worldwide who got funded by USAID and who constantly pushed for tens of millions of illegal migrants to make their way both to the US and the EU (now you may believe it's a good thing that countless NGOs do actively work towards migrating tens of millions of people to the US and the EU but *why* is this done with US taxpayers' money?)

The examples are endless and yet everybody shoots the messenger. If out of hundreds of dubious endeavour (money to publish trans book for children in Guatemala: I mean, come on guys), if one happens to be justified spending or a wrongly attributed spending, then people will focus on that to attack DOGE.

But the elephant in the room is constantly dodged: why? The elephant in the room is there. And it's a gigantic elephant.

Why is it that to some, like me, it looks like USAID (and certainly more with more revelations to come) is basically a gigantic money laundering operation combined with the push of a worldwide leftist agenda?

And the curious thing: people keep crying "attack on democracy" although DOGE keeps exposing, day after day, actual attacks on democracy, where US taxpayers dollar were used to fund a leftist agenda.

To me DOGE is doing something right. Instead of shooting the messenger, discuss the actual findings they already did.

Explain to me how you defend $40m+ going to fund gain-of-function bat viruses and how you defend Biden pardoning Fauci who lied about it in Congress? Because that's what DOGE is exposing.

> DOGE keeps exposing, day after day, actual attacks on democracy, where US taxpayers dollar were used to fund a leftist agenda

That’s… normal? Just because you don’t like a leftist agenda doesn’t mean it’s an attack on democracy. You might be surprised to hear that those leftist presidents were actually democratically elected. Much like, as much as it pains me to say it, Trump.

You're just regurgitating conspiracy theories and political nonsense from the right.

For example: '$8m to the supposedly independent "Politico"' is for subscriptions. So what? The rest is the same sort of nonsense: innuendo, smears and outright lies.

That’s just USAID.

It was 30-40 million for all depts to poltico.

You can not be “independent journalists” when your largest single client is the US Gov.

Politico running the Russia hoax, Hunter’s laptop, and dismissing the wuhan lab leak are three examples of them being on the Biden admin’s side.

Can you point to a single time Poltico backed up a theme or narrative that benefited Trump but turned out to be wrong?

$8M is across the entire executive branch: https://www.usaspending.gov/search/?hash=9820ddd102202d0a46b...

USAID only spent 24,000: https://www.usaspending.gov/search/?hash=7d6ee070efa2439992b...

Please stop repeating misinformation. For your own sake, and for the sake of those around you, please also consider where you're getting information from.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2025/feb/07/social-med...

Seems like your first point is "fake news" as they say?

So it seems like its not working, what info we do get is false or slanted to support a narrative. Social media posts are making people hysterical. It's not clear why your other 7 bullet points are things to be concerned about. As you pointed out a few times, we don't have context into these deals. Your jumping to conclusions assuming the worst for some reason.

You appear to believe those things are true, but consider what evidence you actually have beyond social media claims. For example, the very first one has been circulating in right-wing social media but we don’t have any evidence that it’s actually true:

https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-chelsea-clinton-foundati...

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/clinton-foundation-paid-fo...

The second similarly wasn’t a DOGE find and is vaguely sourced because it was from Nancy Mace’s political fundraising and there’s a direct financial incentive to misrepresent what was actually funded. If you read the actual grants, they’re studying things like gender-based differences in how wounds heal or whether transgender people have different responses to things like HIV vaccination or other medical treatments - and unless your position is that transgender people shouldn’t exist, it’s hard to argue that a tiny fraction of a percent of government spending going to medical research is fraud.

Similarly, there is still no evidence that COVID was caused by gain of function research even if it would be really useful politically.

Finally, not understanding why the United States invests money building influence internationally is not fraud. We spent trillions invading Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s profoundly unsurprising that we spent money trying to improve our reputation in those countries.

Your list of "already uncovered" fraud seems more like a list of RW hot-buttons: Clintons - check. Transgender - check. Various lame-stream media - check. Covid bats - check. Muslims - check. Incest movies - check. I'm just surprised they haven't turned up the payments for the NASA movie studio where they faked the moon landings.

But not a single administrator skimming off their department's budgets, which I would imagine is 90% of government fraud.

Also no-one is shooting the messenger. Mainly they are complaining that completely unauthorised people are rooting through all government data with no oversight. No matter what your politics, the president should have got these people vetted and followed the carefully designed processes to keep this data safe. If you're not seriously concerned that one day your tax info is going to turn up in an unsecured AWS bucket, then I can offer you a unique video of out-takes of Neil Armstrong falling off the LEM ladder for just $5,000.

Googling the firs claim leads to a website absolutely teeming with ads, one of many being this gem:

> TRENDING! Trump’s Power Brew: The Coffee That Fuels His Peak Energy and Keeps Him Unstoppable! If You Want to Lose Weight and Have Maximum Energy 24/7, You Need to Try This Coffee!

The second result is the comment above. I cannot find any more information on this otherwise.

> To me DOGE is doing something right. Instead of shooting the messenger, discuss the actual findings they already did.

> $110m to find water in Afghanistan

I assume that's the same as the whitehouse.gov [1] talking point:

> Hundreds of millions of dollars to fund “irrigation canals, farming equipment, and even fertilizer used to support the unprecedented poppy cultivation and heroin production in Afghanistan,” benefiting the Taliban

The source they link for that is a Breitbart article [2] from 2018 and it talks about 20 year old project that ran for 3 years.

> Between 2005 and 2008, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) devoted at least $330 million in funding to failed ADP projects intended to deter farmers and traffickers from cultivating and trafficking opium.

During the $2+ trillion war in Afghanistan, the US government tried to spend $330 million to damage the Taliban's primary source of revenue. It didn't work and the funding stopped in 2008.

The DOGE "proof" of waste is a 7 year old news article talking about a 20 year old program that only ran for 3 years while George W Bush was the president.

That's the only big number in their official statement regarding the waste. They're going 20 years into the past and once you throw out the dubious claim above, the "waste" they're saying exists is a few million dollars. They didn't even put the $8 million Politico thing on whitehouse.gov because it's been debunked too.

A couple million dollars in waste for an organization that distributes about $44 billion [3] in foreign aid every year is a giant nothing burger and American's are eating it up like it's kobe beef.

> everybody attacks the messenger

He's not the messenger. He's the source of the misinformation.

1. https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/02/at-usaid-wast...

2. https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2018/06/21/feds-...

3. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/06/what-the-...

Yeah the opium one is a particularly interesting example of "waste." Most of the complaints are about "woke shit" and usual reactionary talking points or whatever but this one is just a generally widely agreed to be a good idea that didn't work. If "we tried something and it didn't work" is sufficient to justify destroying an entire organization, then oh boy does the entirety of silicon valley need to be shut down. "No project may ever fail" is the polar opposite of "move fast and break things" or Musk's "eliminate all process, re-establish the necessary ones once things break."

Have the people telling you these things put any effort into making them independently verifiable? That would be an important early step in any kind of transparency effort.

People are not shooting the messenger. The messenger has no credibility, and no demonstrated interest in earning it as long as they can hold power otherwise.

It isn't limited to left-wing causes. An NGO affiliated with Bill Kristol was similarly cut.

The media is portraying it as a left-right issue. This is presumably because it is easier to incite the opposition party.

This is an opening salvo on what has been termed "the deep state", "permanent Washington" or "the swamp".

Data scientists are generally better than financial auditors at handling large quantities of data.

I don't quite understand how they are gaining the access credentials required? Where I work, it takes days to onboard people, through standard processes. Whats happening in this case.

Given the highly volatile, and legally gray, situation; I'd expect the front line people who usually grant access are at least flagging these requests to their boss, who flags to their boss etc. Is everyone up the chain just giving a shrug and saying "seems legit, give them the access".

Of course people don't want to loose their jobs, but I would have expected someone in a senior leadership position to take a stand in preventing this (unless their all on board?)

When you're the president, they let you do it. You can do anything.

Especially if you're sending someone in to shut down entire departments and freeze communications.

Upvoted for the apt part of the quote that everyone leaves out.

They let you do it.

The president appoints new bosses at all the executive branch agencies, and those bosses approve the access.

Several recent news stories have described situations where the agency head resisted and was removed.

Easy: this is political retribution.

USAID: 0.6% of the budget CFPB: 0.011% of the budget

It has nothing to do with saving money and is well beyond the executive order than instantiated the agency.

If all they do is disrupt things enough for some crypto dorks and Russians to make a play it was all worth it.

USAID was the most resistant to an audit which is why they’re getting scrutinized early. Trump literally said today on an interview aired before the superbowl that a department of defense audit is coming up and he expects it to turn up billions to hundreds of billions in waste.

What does “resistant” mean here?

It appears that they passed audit just a few months ago:

> Opinion: Williams Adley concluded that USADF’s financial statements as of September 30, 2024, and September 30, 2023, are presented fairly, in all material respects, and in conformity with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles.

> The audit firm also found no reportable noncompliance with provisions of applicable laws, regulations, contracts, and grant agreements.

> The audit firm found no material weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting but found deficiencies in the internal controls over the Funds Held Outside of Treasury process. We collectively identified these deficiencies as a reportable significant deficiency.

https://oig.usaid.gov/node/7291

It sure looks like retaliation hit job.

There's no way that USAID was more resistant to an audit than DOD.

Why would the DoD be resistant to an audit? They've had un-auditable black budgets for decades and every time someone questions them they pull a new stealth aircraft out of their back pocket

Trump is a liar, he lies about everything. Starting a sentence with “trump said” implies that any concurrence with reality is purely coincidental.

it all mirrors the Twitter takeover (fetishizing "hardcore coders", micromanagement, randomly breaking or cancelling things), so this might just be how Elon Musk approaches things.

He did cut Twitter's workforce by 80% and things seem fine absent his deranged heel turn.

I have no idea what proportion of Twitter's jobs were necessary or not, but it is DEFINITELY not fine.

From images routinely failing to load, to the current mess of logins that is the dualistic nature of x.com vs twitter.com (where which accts appear logged in fluctuates constantly), to my favorite bug, where it's always stuck in dark mode in mobile browsers...

And that's just technologically. Firing moderators, letting neonazis run rampant, and driving away advertisers and non-nazis...

Honestly, they might as well have brought back the Fail Whale.

My X-feed is better now than before . I don't use the website but the app so i haven't encountered the bugs you mention.

But as always you need to curate the ones you follow to get a "for you" that's interesting.

> But as always you need to curate the ones you follow to get a "for you" that's interesting.

Sure, but letting neo-nazis run rampant is not just a problem of my personal curation, but a society-wide issue.

I’ve not really noticed any significant increase in problems with the mobile app, and there are some new features like the view counter.

Overall though I’d expect much worse problems to occur from firing the majority of a workforce. If that had happened at my workplace there’d be lots of data loss, downtime and show stopping bugs. Because the work people do is essential to the product and although we have some level of redundancy to reduce key man risk, that wouldn’t work if 80% of people left.

x.com and app haven't been buggy for me. I also haven't seen an increase in neo-nazi content. Maybe this is true for the people you follow?

twitter doesn't have near the income it used to have. or audience. it does have the same profit. 0%

People mentioned Elon's DOGE team is about 200 people including lawyers and accountants. I am guessing the focus on the 6 youngsters is mainly because here's a bunch of former Deloitte lawyers/accountants is not a newsworthy thing to focus on especially if your angle is to discredit the effort.

Just look in this thread for how many posters here are 100% certain that irreparable damage is being done - because they want to feel mad.

There is no proof of anything bad. Regardless how many people want that to be false, oddly.

So I guess tough to not think that the worldwide media that has been receiving government money would be mad and willing to focus on ”a handful of 20 year olds” as a means to discredit.

What I find strange is that it’s working so well. So many people here KNOW so much that hasn’t been reported or happened.

If there is even a 1% chance irreparable damage is being done to 350 million Americans, chances should not be taken

This is the same as saying nothing should ever be done.

So, you don’t care about the waste fraud and abuse that has been happening - but are concerned about something that maybe could happen.

You’re being manipulated by the people who are mad their paychecks are being cut.

The alleged fraud ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42994862 ) which disappears when people try to verify the claims ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42995667 , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42995978 , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42996385 )?

Google SolarWinds

I would agree with you were it not for the fact that Musk, Trump, Vance, and several of the DOGE boy squad have links to Curtis Yarvin and believe that his idea of Dark Enlightenment is the way forward. He was even invited to the Coronation Ball for Trump's inauguration. If you aren't familiar, you should read up. It's truly demented and twisted. The minds of people who would follow such a philosophy have been utterly compromised and corrupted beyond help. These people are not to be trusted.

Well I remember a certain freakout from the other side about Hilarys email server... This seems like a far greater security violation

In what sense is it a security violation a person authorized by the Treasury secretary accessed data in Treasury department. The granting of security clearances is in the authority of the President which President can exercise directly or by delegating.

And I'm sure Hilarys email server was cleared and authorized by those with authority. That did not stop the right from making it a huge issue

It was not but regardless how is this a bigger security violation? Also is the claim here that Secretary of Treasury lacks authority to grant access to treasury data or that President lacks authority to grant security clearances? Keep in mind Scott Bessent was confirmed by a huge margin. This was a rare bipartisan vote as he is an extremely qualified individual for the role (unlike many other Trump nominees).

Hiring someone who was part of the Com and who was already terminated once for leaking secrets seems like a pretty big security violation, whether or not it was signed off by someone.

I advise you never look in into backgrounds of most top cyber sec people cause prob about half used to be on the black hat side in their youth days some even served time.

You're telling me 200 ALLEGED adult professionals are involved in a scheme where some 19 year old cybercriminal has access to classified nuclear weapons systems as if that's any indication of a better situation than critics allege and you think you've got sober and thoughtful take to offer on this situation, do you?

I didn't know FED data that was accessed at the Treasury department contained data on classified nuclear weapons systems. I've also never seen this level of freakout over real breaches like say SolarWind done by APT-29(Cozy Bear) actual Russian foreign intelligence group. That breach included Treasury, DoD, DoJ, State Department, DHS, Energy Department and so on.

From CNN[0]:

As to this part of your comment:

> and you think you've got sober and thoughtful take to offer on this situation, do you?

Please take note of Dang's comment at the top of the page, hyperbole and hysteria are not interesting.

[0] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/06/climate/doge-energy-depar...

Roughly half of the commenters on relevant HN forums are asking exactly that.

Because the media machine is spinning it all about the "teenagers", rather than doing actual investigative journalism and asking the right questions and assuming good-faith. So now instead of going to a DOGE rep and asking sane questions that illuminate the conversation and bring more info to light, they ask spin and hype-inducing ones like "There have been some criticisms from government senators about your alleged hiring of young individuals without security clearance, care to comment on that? What do you say to the concerns 'many' are having over granting such privileged access to un-accountable and non-departmental employees?"

Younger people are more willing to take bigger risks. No one with a stable life and family would touch this "assignment" with a 49.5 inch pole.

Is it the same Edward Big Baller that tweeted that Elon stole the election and is setting up more computers within the government to be hacked?

https://bsky.app/profile/cartwright776.bsky.social/post/3lhr...

Why is there no one explaining this?

Probably because it's implausible, trivial to fake, and there's no way to conclusively prove it's real without the original tweet still being up.

That’s not the same guy clearly

https://x.com/natedog155/status/1886180417549545674?s=19

I think it is the same guy.

No, this is clearly not the same guy.

This is just someone who took Coristine's previous handle [0]. That post was made 1 day after the WIRED article revealing his handle. Lots of conspiracies around election stealing going round (and sadly, quite prevalent in some corners of Bluesky), don't fall for it!

[0]: https://www.wired.com/story/edward-coristine-tesla-sexy-path... - "He also *previously* used an account on X with the username @edwardbigballer"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9gCyRkpPe8

Elon Musk knows 'those vote counting computers' -Trump

The Olympics comment seemed more damning. He literally said twice they rigged the election.

> They all came in on the Olympics. And then I saw [Gulati] and we got the World Cup too. And you know, it's only because they rigged the election that I'll be your president representing you there. You know, I got both of them. I got the Olympics and I got the World Cup. And I said, you know, it's too bad. One was in 2026 or the other was in 2028. I said, I won't be there. I won't be your president.(...) But then they rigged the election and now we won. So I'm going to be your president for the Olympics and for the World Cup.(...) So [Gulati], thank you for the World Cup and everybody. Thank you for the Olympics.

https://youtu.be/TTHonqrM7Vc

Somehow I wasn't even aware of that one. Absolutely shocking.

This is a really bad faith interpretation of what he's saying. I think a more reasonable interpretation is that he's claiming the 2020 election was rigged (a claim he's made many times already), which in turn means he was able to run again for 2024.

That does actually seem like a fair interpretation. Thank you.

This does not make any sense. Is the person speaking drunk or mentally impaired in some way?

It's pretty clear, and has been for years, that Trump is mentally impaired. He rambles, is incoherent, loses his thought all the time, and generally his sentences don't make much sense. It's more or less normal for someone of his age and lifestyle.

Example of a thing he said back in 2016:

> "Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you're a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it's true! — but when you're a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that's why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we're a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it's not as important as these lives are — nuclear is so powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right, who would have thought? — but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it's four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven't figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it's gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us, this is horrible."

There's just no semblance of coherence there. And he does that all the freaking time. It's obvious he has dementia or something of the like, and belongs in a specialised care facility. Yet people hear/watch/read this, and think to themselves this is the kind of person they want with absolute and total power over everything in the US (remember, his loyal supreme court said he has total immunity, and all checks and balances have been thrown out the window by the people supposed to be doing them refusing to do their duty), from budgets to nuclear weapons. I genuinely would not be surprised if the world ends up in a nuclear war because of him getting angry at something he misunderstood while on the can.

It's honestly kind of a tragicomedy to watch from afar. If this were a book or a movie, nobody would buy it, yet here we are. Reality really is stranger than fiction.

That kind of word salad is emblematic of the extremely stupid but confident grifter.

If you have ever interacted with delusional idiots who insist they know more than anyone else about anything even though you know they were failing biology and snorting mints in the back of class, you have experienced this talking style.

For some reason, the especially gullible fall for it in droves. This talking style is essential to MLM profitability.

I ended up digging a bit more as to /why/ this is a false claim: https://internettalk.xyz/blog/edward-coristine-election-frau...

Can anyone recommend a journalist who is reporting the facts of what’s happening on this subject?

From what I can tell, it’s widely been reported that

- Elon Musk was allowed into the Department of Education

- “Big Balls” accessed Treasury computers

- etc…

But I have not been able to find any first person testimony that confirms those statements.

From what I can tell Tom Krause is actually the one who was given access by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. And Tom Krause is an employee of the Treasury and has security clearance.

I see a lot of people claiming there was some sort of illegal access, but I would love to read a source that explains exactly who accessed exactly what system improperly.

Can anyone point me at that source?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjw4g2q62xqo

Ordering them to delete everything they got copies of, and the subsequent frustration from Musk.

Why cares who personally violated federal law? However he managed to, Musk got unlawful access to restricted data.

> Why cares who personally violated federal law? However he managed to, Musk got unlawful access to restricted data.

Can you articulate what federal law you think that order says was violated?

[flagged]

Security clearances being marked on documents as worthless because the government has told employees to "just pick" a specific cleatance from the dropdown, even for things like "lunch meeting Tomorrow". The clearance people were told to use is "never to be cleared" - meaning it's intractable.

It was abused, so I don't buy the legal argument.

Put another way, if everything is top secret, nothing is.

There’s nothing concrete in that article, just hand waving from people trying to keep their jobs. Who needed what clearance and didn’t have it?

In the BBC article?

I don't know or care as I'm not a party in this situation.

It is evident from the BBC article that restricted data was shared unlawfully with Musk and that they are asked to delete the data.

What will you do with the name of the person? Prosecute them?

You're welcome to look online yourself for answers for your questions - or chat with a competent lawyer, they'll be happy to help you sort it out

> It is evident from the BBC article

It is claimed from the BBC article. Even the shopped judge doesn't know if it is or isn't until the hearing next week.

rayiner is a lawyer, I believe with experience in and around DC and government agencies. I always appreciate his takes because they're often counter to call it the HN zeitgeist.

Why's he asking me then?

They're asking you to clarify your argument, obviously. You say some federal law has been broken, they're asking you to specify which federal law you claim has been broken. It isn't rocket science.

Alright, I'll break it down.

A lawyer would charge you a lot to explain this to you you know?

What he asked is not currently public. It will be made public during the hearing.

A US federal judge (Not some random guy) is acting in accordance with being aware of a federal crime. (It's actually many more than one judge and one crime but let's keep it simple)

I'm comfortable with trusting a US judges read on the situation a priori. You could argue that it will be overturned and thus nothing illegal happened, which would techbically be correct. All talk about this is hypothetical, especially here in the deep comment section of some website.

As I said, what are you going to do with this information?

So - this is a "gotcha" question, not asking for genuine clarification. As if random citizens should have an encyclopedic recall to all laws.

For more, ask a laywer

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/02/04/elon-musk...

Those are speculative, and seem to be based on factual misunderstandings as to what’s actually happening. For example, there’s just one non-treasury employee with “over the shoulder” access to the system supervised by treasury employees: https://x.com/kyledcheney/status/1888904650906099774

People are going to make fools out of themselves again indulging every wild rumor and speculation (pee tape, etc.) without having the facts.

And you suppose the Trump administration can be trusted to supply those facts? Because that's the source you're citing, if I understand Kyle Cheney's tweet correctly (I may not!).

You asked specifically for a reference to what laws the team might be breaking, implying pretty clearly that you didn't believe any such reference could be produced; when it was, you moved the goalposts.

Okay "law bro", get real. He's a finance CEO gutting the CFPB as we speak: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-02-10/doge-back...

America wrote and upheld several antitrust acts with the express intention of stopping this. It's not enough to say "there isn't a precedent so it's fine", your credentials as an attorney do not obviate the illegal conflict of interests at play. You're being obstinate to defend moral absurdity to the highest degree.

Businesses will sue, they will cite damages and they will have a rudimentary path to proving it. Unless America thinks free market capitalism is a sham, the only way Musk can get away with this is fleeing the country in 4 years. I would love to hear your assessment of how a fair court under American law would rule in Musk's favor.

Nothing in that link speaks of deletion. Wrong article?

Second paragraph of the article:

> US District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer issued a preliminary injunction on Saturday to prohibit access, ordering Musk and his team to immediately destroy any copies of records.

I don't think you're going to find any on-he-record first person testimony. It's going to be unnamed government officials, or front-line government employees who are talking to reporters and providing information without direct attribution

The two confirmed people are Krause and Elez. Elez briefly resigned after his extremely racist tweets surfaced but is back at DOGE now. Krause has only been a treasury employee for 7 business hours as of now but has been on the task for much longer than that.

That many in DOGE had access and that two would continue to have it is not in question: https://thehill.com/business/5130107-treasury-department-lim...

The legality is also clearly in question: https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/08/politics/elon-musk-doge-treas...

https://www.crisesnotes.com/

I realized I’m treading in extremely hostile waters here, but the stories I hear from folks working in DOGE are closer to “I spend 8am to 2am with the leaders of department X going through all contracts and outflows and identifying what is important versus wasteful given a target of saving $X million per day, and there are some great people in this department who really know what’s been going on and it’s been great to make a difference”

Versus whatever the media is reporting

Where are you getting these stories from? Are you claiming to know people and to have received firsthand accounts, or is this stuff written down somewhere where the rest of us can see it and read it?

These are people I personally know working “at DOGE” (appointed in departments, but under DOGE umbrella)

This sounds a lot like the old "my uncle works at Nintendo" rope-a-dope.

Sounds like the classic Joe Rogan "I know a guy." rumor peddling.

Sounds like "My Canadian girlfriend"

>appointed in departments, but under DOGE umbrella

What does that mean?

Trump/Elon is asking for embedded doge teams in every agency / department composed of various doge specialists and agency personnel.

From what I’ve heard.

> Versus whatever the media is reporting

Where? The lack of transparency from DOGE has been a pain point even for advocates. I haven’t seen anything more than generic “we’re doing good work, trust us” PR

The media is reporting the history of some of these people and their actual actions. Of course these people aren’t going to discuss their past membership in script kiddie DDoS groups or their highly racist Twitter rants.

Honestly it seems to me like a shock and awe PR campaign combien md with a daily grind. It’s been like 15 days, what thoughtful work do you think it’s being announced that happens that fast from a cold start (including hiring!)

We are discussing the government of the wealthiest nation the planet has ever known, not some garage startup. They require different approaches.

Wait.

"It hasn't been enough time to produce thoughtful communication" cannot possible coexist with "it has been enough time to justify shuttering entire organizations, firing shitloads of workers, calling people back from overseas, and telling the entire government to take voluntary layoffs."

I'd say that writing up some clear communication is considerably easier than distinguishing useful and efficient government organizations from overstaffed organizations or organizations that are operating outside of their mission.

You JUST SAID two comments up that you had personal knowledge of thoughtful work going on.

I assume you're hearing this online. Can you link to some accounts or articles?

Gullibility is a thing, which is why we demand people go through channels of accountability, including security clearances.

For what it’s worth two of my friends did have to get appointed positions including these clearances

Getting a security clearance, particularly a high-level clearance takes a long time. They send investigators to interview people you've worked with, check records, etc. It can take over a year for a normal person. The only way I see these people getting clearances this quickly is if they just skipped the background investigation, on orders from senior people in the Trump administration.

And there's just no way they would have given Big Balls a clearance through the regular process.

What the media is reporting isn't relevant. We have Elons own word where he is saying he shut downtown various departments, intends to or canceling payments, having people arrested. Others are trying to cause a scene on social media by sharing cut out spreadsheets.

If you are mad at your AWS bill, do you slide to your 10th line item? That is effectively what going after USAID is.

To give you an idea of how poorly this has been handled, my wife's friend is an attorney working in non-profit immigration.

She got told on Monday that her company is going to lay off 50% of their staff because they have no more money from USAID. Her boss found her a job at another firm a week later thankfully. Then Friday she got called by the CEO to come back since it turns out they were not going to get cut. Obviously, she declined.

They are messing with real peoples lives and destroying businesses that help people.

Is the goal to save money? Balance the budget? If so, fixing tax loop holes and going after waste in the military will yield more than 10x what cutting USAID does.

FWIW I'm all for fixing government spending, but treating it like a CI/CD pipeline where you will just "rollback" is idiotic.

Marco Rubio said that USAID wasn’t listening to orders. They were a rogue agency. From other things I’ve read it has been an issue for multiple administrations.

Watch here: https://x.com/defiantls/status/1888533363117449619?s=46

You need to understand when he says "irrespective of whether its in national interests" he means helping immigrants and asylum seekers, who are here legally even.

They listen to orders from many parts of the government, some of those are even conflicting orders. It's not like they are just doing whatever they want 90% of the time. Their money comes from who again?

For all the talk of legacy media, I assume anything posted on X is misinformation. And Rubio only cares about possibly being POTUS one day. Please post an article of any other administration that has ever complained about USAID being 'rogue'?

Orders can be given that are unconstitutional or unlawful. Congress appropriates and designates funds, it is illegal for the executive to impound funds Congress appropriate. Unfortunately the GOP is happy to hand over their power in Congress and walk right into a dictatorship.

Rubio was a vocal supporter of USAID until he had to bend the knee to Trump and by extension Elon.

https://x.com/SenMarcoRubio/status/1298330380232200198

https://x.com/SenMarcoRubio/status/1109221983907184641

https://x.com/SenMarcoRubio/status/1179134071374598145

https://x.com/SenMarcoRubio/status/1011667756209573888

https://x.com/SenMarcoRubio/status/1331037375179452416

https://x.com/SenMarcoRubio/status/1557806801491578886

https://x.com/SenMarcoRubio/status/1222876152131457025

https://x.com/SenMarcoRubio/status/1173664868408483840

https://x.com/SenMarcoRubio/status/1097238672909451269

Absolutely spineless. Thank you for showing this.

USAID funding is controlled by Congress. Trump cannot just order them to redirect funds on a whim.

Foreign policy is under the control of the executive branch. The President can order a pause on foreign aid to allow the new administration to review all foreign aid.

Once those orders were ignored, the administration had to take more drastic steps (as SOS Rubio pointed out).

No, the President cannot just unilaterally ignore Congressional spending requirements just because "the executive controls foreign policy". That's what got him impeached the first time.

They're also not "pausing" shit, they're cancelling contracts effective immediately & locking up the buildings. Elon tweeted a picture of the sign being removed from the front of the building. You're being dishonest about what is going on.

> non-profit immigration

Very vague. Wonder what they were really doing?

I worked for a USAID funded company once. On the surface they were doing satellite imagery analysis for agriculture. Want to know what they were really doing? Identifying prime agricultural land in Kenya to help the Kenyan government seize it from poor farmers.

This is an astonishing allegation. Can you substantiate any part of it?

And you went through the correct channels to notify USAID that their funds were being misused, providing sufficient evidence, right?

This was the intended use for those funds.

So USAID was aiding foreign states in strategically stealing land from its citizens? That was the goal of the program?

They didn't call it stealing, but yes. Google "Kenyan land seizure" for plenty of articles about it. The Kenyan government was particularly interested in Ogiek land, but it wasn't limited to them. It isn't much of a secret at this point. Kenya is by no means unique, USAID funds many such programs around the world. Or at least did.

This is an astonishing allegation. Can you substantiate any of it?

<< They are messing with real peoples lives and destroying businesses that help people.

I am not sure if NGOs are businesses. Aren't they typically some form of charity?

They're often registered non-profits, but not charities in the everyday sense of the word.

Correct they are a non-profit corporation. They recieve money from many sources, but they do employ people full time.

Regardless of what the media is reporting, the head of DOGE is gleefully gloating about all the departments he’s “deleting” on Twitter. No hint of collaboration, just attack after attack. And he keeps framing federal workers as the enemy.

If that were the case, why lock out democratic law makers from the building(s)?

This would be great if true.

Unfortunately, from what we know of the people they've hired, they have little to no experience in doing that. They're not being transparent, we have no idea what metrics they're using, etc.

If the team was meant to actually do what you claim, it would look very different in terms of its hiring, and there's no reason it would have to be operating so secretively.

I’m just telling you what I know from personal friends doing individual work in specific departments. The mandate is “find $X million per day” and they do, and it’s a lot of work, and it doesn’t happen overnight like big PR things

Again, I'd love to believe you.

But what you're saying is totally incompatible with closing USAID and the indiscriminate buyout package offered to employees that are of critical importance.

You're not providing any actual evidence, meanwhile the actions we know are actually taking place are totally contrary to the kind of careful thoughtfulness you're describing.

This doesn't even line up with what Elon is saying publicly. Mike Flynn searches a public database for grants to organizations with the word "Lutheran" in them and then Elon tweets that they're all illegal and will be canceled. How is that a thoughtful process for identifying wasteful spending?

Or Elon saying he's "deleting" the IRS free file group. How is that wasteful? It's providing a service that actually solves a real problem for people - people have complained for years about having to pay TurboTax to file their taxes. What metric is being used to decide if it's wasteful? It seems entirely like government by whim.

And if they really think there are great people in these departments, why are they terrorizing them? Right now federal workers are facing daily emails telling them to quit, their bosses calling them unproductive, chaos and upheaval at work, and many of them are going to have to make these huge life changes to suddenly return to the office (long commutes, disruption to childcare and other schedules, maybe having to move on short notice). To my knowledge, all of the companies that did RTO gave much more notice.

I don't see how this is remotely incompatible with the parent. What percentage of the 8am-2am grind, do you think said Elon-tweets take? 1%? Less? What the team is doing during the unpublicized 99% is of more interest to me.

The parent is presenting this as a thoughtful exercise by serious, experienced people. It is absolutely not that.

The sudden closure of USAID is probably the best example. You have an organization of thousands of people that operates worldwide. It does a lot of things that save lives - deliver food to starving people, provide HIV medications, etc. If all of a sudden you tell all the grantees that you're shutting everything down, they won't get any more money or support, they need to stop the work they're doing, maybe they can get an exception but nobody is going to be answering the phone when they call to ask how because the staff are all on administrative leave - that has huge consequences. For instance, it meant stopping clinical trials in the middle. So there were women with devices implanted in their bodies with no ability to get support.

There are all sorts of other effects. We provide aid to allies all over the world. All of a sudden, we pull out the rug from under them with no notice. What are the short term and long term consequences of doing that? What would be the consequences to the stability of Jordan of pulling aid - the King has been our ally but it's a tenuous situation. What about Lebanon? Now that Israel has beaten up Hezbollah, we want to use the opportunity to strengthen the Lebanese state. What happens when we suddenly pull funding? There are dozens of different countries that are affected and each of them is a very complicated situation. It's not something that people with no domain expertise are going to figure out in a few days.

The way these guys are acting - it's complete madness.

it appears to be an abandonment of Kissinger's Realpolitik strategy.

Uh... no. It's an abandonment of any kind of strategy at all. You can be completely opposed to realpolitik and still believe in what USAID is doing (or the other things the Trump administration is getting rid of, like funding the WHO or other international efforts). For instance, an idealist would support USAID work to promote democratic institutions and conflict resolution.

It's not like they're saying "in the past we've played chess using only king's pawn openings and now we're going to switch to using queen's pawns openings", it's "we don't like this game so we're going to kick over the table and stomp off".

Yes, it is certainly an abandonment of all strategy, including realpolitik!

So why is their boss tweeting out outrageous lies about what they've found?

Don't they feel any moral compunction to say publicly, actually that is a complete misrepresentation of what we've found?

the entire situation, on all sides, is misrepresenting and has been for decades.

Maybe you could point some of the media to these primary sources you're citing.

The people working in DOGE are the absolutely last people on earth I would trust to tell me what was going on. Just assume they have copies of all sensitive data they've encountered and that data has already been spread via them getting hacked, bribed, just posting it to brag...

There are some real problems with this way of doing this.

First, if you go to any department and find N different leaders/managers/etc. and ask them to pick what projects to cut...you'll get a whole range of different answers. There's a lot of bias involved, and a lot of internal politics going on. There's always internal fights for the resources.

Second, if these kids are actually executing orders - meaning that they'll have the authority to do recommendations (based on their interviews with the people mentioned above), how would they even know if the recommendations are sound? It can take years for managers to become knowledgeable enough with the ongoing project and products.

If you were DOGE, and wanted to "game" this process, you could really just: Identify the most critical voices in some organization, preferably those on the way out, and ignore the rest. Then you give these 18-year olds the mandate to recommend cuts based on those talks. And tell them that the ones that can cut most "fat" wins.

“These kids” I’m talking about are in their 30’s and 40’s and making recommendations to department heads which almost all seem to be approved

Suppose they are indeed working 18 hour days. So they've done six weeks of work in two weeks.

Do we believe that six weeks of ordinary work is sufficient to make the claims that Musk is making and take the actions that Musk is taking? "We are working really hard" doesn't give me any more confidence in the speed that things are happening.

Heck, being absolutely exhausted sounds like a great way of making mistakes. If I heard that the team designing and building a bridge I use to commute was work 18 hour days in order to move fast I'd be quite a bit more concerned about that bridge.

>the stories I hear from folks working in DOGE

I see. And you know these people? Where are you hearing these "stories"?

I have a few questions regarding your story versus what the public understands. I see you have been positively harangued for your comment, please view my questions as honest dialectic.

1. What is the metric these folks are using to identify fraud, waste, and abuse?

2. Given that we have had independent OIGs for ages, why was fraud, waste, and abuse not previously reported?

3. Given that Congress folks are running every 2-6 years and shine like a shiny button (and get a lot of political cred) when championing substantive removal of fraud, waste, and abuse, why have no Congress people similarly exercised their Constitutional role of oversight for any of these agencies for decades?

4. Why do the agencies targeted tend to have overlap with investigations into or run-ins with Elon Musk's companies?

5. Why do forensic accountants take a long time to flag and identify fraud, waste, and abuse, even when working with compliant insiders, versus Musk's DOGE taking minutes to hours to identify fraud, waste, and abuse?

6. How is labeling groups with different ideas, such as Lutheran Family Services in the service of immigrants and refugees as terrorists, conducive to the identification of fraud, waste, and abuse? Which law enforcement office led the review of this group in particular to make this designation, which Mr. Musk and others decided to (potentially libelously) use to inflame public opinion against them?

I have no doubt that DOGE folks probably feel pretty proud of the work they are doing. That doesn't mean they are actually having the outcomes they are commissioned for -- improving efficiency. Having worked some within government support, process bottlenecks are regulatory or otherwise required by statute. People spend time really considering the decisions and improving them incrementally.

Let's hear more then. Name some names, departments.

I'm sorry, but why should we believe you? Do you have any evidence of your claim at all?

Without evidence, yoh are normalizing what has been a shocking and unconstitutional approach to auditing that has very little resemblance to how actual auditing is done.

Perhaps the hostility comes from the combination of unconstitutionality, unaccountability, unelected nature of Mr. Musk, and your "trust me, i know a guy" claims.

The reason security clearances are so important, and why people are so upset about randos going through so much sensitive government information, is that things like this can be used by adversaries to lean on these employees in the future.

One of these kids might have worse skeletons in their closet. Given how well-known their names are, adversaries of the USA are likely combing through their own intelligence archives, etc and might decide to extract their own pound of flesh from the government.

Or, even more horrible, they might have family that adversaries can lean on.

Subverting the process to meme faster and blitz the other side puts the entire American system in pretty serious danger. If it's more important to destroy the system than make serious change, I suppose that's how you'd do it.

I am genuinely more concerned by Elon Musk himself having access then one of these with skeletons in the closet. USA adversaries are no more dangerous then USA is to itself.

> Or, even more horrible, they might have family that adversaries can lean on.

Isn't that the case for any government employee?

Security clearance will include family members, and it's entirely possible someone will be denied clearance because of something they've done that makes them susceptible to coercion. The candidate would need to disclose things like this.

Reddit is full of examples where someone's family impacted their clearance (either denying it or requiring disclosure):

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/4d4xd8/possib...

https://www.reddit.com/r/LawSchool/comments/11pkjew/will_a_f...

etc

> It's entirely possible someone will be denied clearance because of something they've done that makes them susceptible to coercion.

And that doesn't have to be something incriminating, either, just something that means they could be used as a lever against the individual seeking clearance. An example might be something like having a family member who lives in Russia - this would make the subject susceptible to coercion by the Russian government threatening to harm their family.

Also a lot of consequences of musks actions will appear only decades later and they will claim they have nothing to do with it.

To be clear, the security clearances you’re talking about, that look at “skeletons in their closet” or family members or whatever is not applied to MOST federal positions. This is only for a subset that are more sensitive. The type of activity people involved in DOGE are taking on does not require security clearances, just a background check. Also keep in mind, the people involved in DOGE are working alongside senior people, alongside people from agencies, and not just off on their own the way the media has been painting. Treasury secretary Bessent discussed this recently in public.

Privileged IT access usually requires public trust, which will definitely include a PI talking to friends and former colleagues along with a variety of database analysis. It’s not just checking to see if you have DUIs or unpaid child support.

Well, I mean China already pwned opm.gov and got SF-86 on all fed employees a few years ago. The FBI gives people who have clearances on how adversaries will attempt to get information and what to do. Mainly it's just alerting the employers security office, and former feds get an email to reach out to for questions/concerns post employment. The security clearance process is broken and mostly BS. The head of DCSA and the FBI NYC office got caught doing illegal stuff which the process is suppose to detect.

Also, it's better to go to jail or quit for blackmail then to comply with blackmail, because it caries worst sentences and doesn't have a statue of limitations. Many people with clearances have bad backgrounds and just being honest is all they're looking for in the process. My friend and I even admitted to a bunch of CFAA felonies and was never charged. My friend got a TS/SCI with hacking within the past year of his BI.

> The reason security clearances are so important...puts the entire American system in pretty serious danger.

Remember when Michael Flynn was National Security Advisor? The guy had secret meetings with Russian spies and gave a talk at GRU headquarters. In the first administration there were obvious spies from our adversaries working in top government positions, and the same seems to be true of this administration.

Also remember when Trump gave away nuclear secrets? Or when Russian sources "disappeared" after Trump outed them? Or when the CIA reported dozens of spies being killed, arrested, or compromised?

These randos getting access to so much data aren't a separate threat. They're part of the same threat presented by the administration as a whole.

wait, you actually believe all this dis-info?

The CIA doesn't control Trump. They have been passively and actively subverting him since 2015. It's sad to see someone fall for their psy-ops.

What here is disinformation?

> The guy had secret meetings with Russian spies

> when Trump gave away nuclear secrets

> there were obvious spies from our adversaries working in top government positions

> Russian sources "disappeared" after Trump outed them

Almost all of the gp post was already disproven disinformation.

I've heard folks argue about these claims for a long time, and I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt as I've heard most of these as accurate. So, I wanted to see what some AI assistance could come up with. You may or may not like the results, depending on whether you think AI could never assist on something like, and if you agree it could, whether the results are meaningful to overcome the backfire effect.[0]

Results are here [1], and I'll post below: https://chatgpt.com/share/67aa734b-6b0c-8001-8237-f4458c6dee...

1. The guy had secret meetings with Russian spies

Partially True - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/us/politics/trump-russia-... - Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser, was approached by Russian spies in 2013 who attempted to recruit him. While Page met with Russian officials, it's not confirmed that these were clandestine meetings with spies during his tenure with the Trump campaign.

2. When Trump gave away nuclear secrets

True - https://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-allegedly-classifi... - In a 49-page indictment unsealed in 2023, prosecutors allege that Trump had in his possession documents concerning the "nuclear programs" of the United States.

3. There were obvious spies from our adversaries working in top government positions

Misinformation - No credible sources available - There is no verified evidence to support the claim that individuals identified as spies from adversarial nations held top positions within the U.S. government during Trump's administration.

4. Russian sources "disappeared" after Trump outed them

True - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/17/russian-sour... - After Trump declassified evidence provided by a former British spy regarding his alleged links to Russia, certain Russian sources reportedly vanished.

[0] https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe_clean

[1] https://chatgpt.com/share/67aa734b-6b0c-8001-8237-f4458c6dee...

Thank you for the thoughtful reply. Note that all the citations are USAID funded media orgs and have deep ties to the CIA or the IC.

Also note that their sources are all basically IC sources + DOJ allegations. This supports my original statement that this is all a large scale disinformation campaign aimed at the American people. The CIA has conducted these operations for decades, and now they are doing it to us. As Chuck Schumer so eloquently put it "They have six ways to Sunday at getting back at you"

https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/do-us-politician...

For logic, coherency, and rationality, your positive claim requires quite a bit more proof. Apply Hitchen's razor.

The more advanced AI gets and the more power that is at stake, the more these tech CEOs are going to drop their nice-guy acts and reveal their true intentions. The drama is going to get much worse over the coming years.

Uhh they've been openly talking about dismantling democracy and creating nation-states rules by corporations for literally almost a decade. JD Vance is their man in DC when trump is gone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RpPTRcz1no

As of September, Vance has indeed publicly cited Yarvin:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/09/13/jd-vance-n...

> Vance said that if Trump became president again, "I think what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, and replace them with our people. And when the courts stop you, stand before the country and say, 'The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.'"[14][49]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin

well, that's certainly something.

AI's great, but so often when I hear people in power speak about it I feel like what they're really saying is: "I wish I could have the expertise to do whatever I wanted with impunity without having the hassle of all of these people who know what they're doing sitting around telling me why my ideas are terrible." And if they feel they can drop the artifice of having to pretend to play fair and be good citizen (because oftentimes you have to do that in order to get people who know what they're doing to help you), they will.

And that attitude's going to cause a lot of horrible things to happen.

Ignoring the horrifying political parts, I think one aspect here about data access that is inherently worrying is that it seems like all usual controls were bypassed and the DOGE people had very low level access to systems. So there are probably copies of sensitive data now in their possession, and nobody knows exactly what was copied and where it is stored.

This kind of access would be dangerous even in the hands of principled and well-meaning people. Giving it to people with glaring red flags like here is just entirely irresponsible.

At the very least, it’s a field day for foreign intelligence in DC. Offering these guys some money, women, status, or drink would pay massive dividends.

Have they even done the training that says "watch out for women trying to get into your pants"? Or did they just show up?

I think we both know the answer. Most of these DOGE people wouldn’t have been allowed in the building, much less the system root a couple of months ago because they’d never pass a clearance check.

technically, a clearance and background check have never been done on political appointees. the fbi openly says so. at least this is not new... the new thing is the low level of petty criminals being apointed.

Political appointees don’t get root, and they still had to get clearance for sensitive materials (as it’s legally required for the people securing a SCIF not to allow anyone who doesn’t have clearance in the door). Part of why the new administration is trying to bull through the process is that his first term had many delays due to appointees failing those checks.

How do you know who has a clearance? Is there a database they check? Or is it word of mouth from their boss?

Yes, there’s a database and people who audit access, ensure that permissions are periodically reviewed (i.e. just because you needed access 5 years ago doesn’t mean your current duties still require the same access), and other events can trigger reviews (e.g. a large amount of personal debt could make someone a greater risk).

Which department/agency maintains the database of who-has-which-clearance?

The Office of Personnel Management runs a lot of the standardized stuff, including the system which people use to submit the standard forms, but agencies have their own offices and variations:

https://ourpublicservice.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/back...

they get root if the job requires.

appointees are interviewed, not vetted by the fbi like federal employs. the dowvote brigade could read the article since im rentioning a literal quote from there.

Political appointees typically work on policy, they’re not shelling into servers and moving data around. This is especially true of the “special government employee” category Musk is using where it’s short-term (not more than 130 days in a 365 day period) and intended for consulting type expert advice rather than bypassing the normal hiring rules.

> the dowvote brigade could read the article since im rentioning a literal quote from there.

Alternately, consider that they’re recognizing that the scope of this situation is different both in terms of the level of access and nature of the work and unwillingness to follow policies. For example, when they tried to barge into the SCIF at USAID the staff who tried to stop them were under a legal obligation to do so - they’re charged with requiring everyone who enters to have a clearance. Historically, people got those and so it was never codified into law that they had to. Similarly, if people were requesting the access needed to perform their official task and using agency accounts and equipment to do so, you didn’t need an “auditor” to get approved at the level needed to be a system administrator. This is turning into a big scandal not just because it’s so highly politicized but also because bulling through so many process protections dramatically increases the potential risk.

As a simple example, reports have these guys getting admin access and using personal email accounts and equipment. Consider what happens if someone emails them a PDF saying it has evidence of fraud and it has a nasty payload. If they have unnecessary levels of access or have demanded that restrictions be removed, the fallout for that will be much worse than it would be if they were following the rules. Every federal agency has people employed specifically to prevent all of those layers of failure from happening.

Background checks have always been done on political appointees. They aren't a requirement for getting the position but historically they've been done prior to appointment so that leadership knows if they are a security risk.

And for appointees that require congressional confirmation the checks have been giving to congress prior to hearings for the same reason.

They weren't required but they very much have been done for political appointees in every admin in recent history except this one.

exept they haven't

https://www.vox.com/trump-administration/388627/fbi-backgrou...

That article you linked says exactly what I said. They aren't required but they are customary.

> technically, a clearance and background check have never been done on political appointees. the fbi openly says so.

"Trump team agrees to DoJ background checks for nominees"

* https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/03/trump-team-b...

"FBI background checks of presidential nominees, explained":

* https://www.npr.org/2025/01/15/nx-s1-5260953/fbi-background-...

This has been the case since Eisenhower in 1953:

* https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/execu...

    > much less the system root

This comments section is getting wild. Do you have any proof that DOGE team members have been granted "system root" (whatever that means)? When I Google, it is unclear how many DOGE team members have security clearance and at what level.

> When I Google, it is unclear how many DOGE team members have security clearance and at what level.

They are flooding the zone. That's by design. At one point they had "read-only access" to records. Then later people say they had full access and have backups.

The only definitive proof we have publicly Is that a federal judge made two orders; One to restrict access to the treasury for all of DOGE except for the 2 people allegedly already working in treasury. And One to order deletion of any records they have backed up. All other reports come from first or second hand sources. AFAIK, no one truly knows DOGE did in the Treasury, and we won't know until a court proceeding later this month.

There's a rumor that the doge team went and did their metadata dump at treasury on midnight on the 21st or whatever. But what I think would be more interesting is if musk hasn't done anything, and all this crying and screaming is just at the threat of peeking at the books.

Because that seems more both their style.

They could just hack their devices remotely, or physically break into his residence. I suspect a serial leaker will lack neither the discipline to not copy data onto personal devices, nor the opsec to withstand a motivated nation-state, since a lot of the work seems rushed, and is off playbook.

Perhaps giving an inexperienced script kiddie full access was part of a broader plan to allow someone else to covertly “steal” the data without directly implicating those in charge.

I believe the term is 'patsy' or, more generally, a scapegoat.

This person was fired from a trivial teenage script kid job after two months because he couldn’t resist sharing their internal information.

Only a few years later, he was thrust into the core information systems of the United States right next to people with security clearance.

Targets like this are a dream come true for foreign adversaries looking for someone to corrupt.

Who knows how much compromising content his old peers already have on him. The chat logs revealed they’re already thinking about how much access he has to valuable secrets.

SF-86 Section 13A Employment Activities

>For this employment have any of the following happened to you in the last seven (7) years?

>Fired, quit after being told you would be fired, left by mutual agreement following charges or allegations of misconduct, left by mutual agreement following notice of unsatisfactory performance.

>Provide the reason for being fired.

https://www.opm.gov/Forms/pdf_fill/sf86.pdf

I don't believe the POTUS is bound by the government's assessment of an employee's security risk.

Whether or not ignoring such things is a good idea is something voters must judge.

You have a point - there are probably no defined rules about whether security risk rules apply when POTUS is employing someone to do something illegal or unconstitutional.

If anyone gets to judge, however, it will be SCOTUS, not voters. It's hard to guess, right now, whether that's a plus for security.

Security clearances are granted by the president, or someone delegated by him. The president has absolute authority to bypass, modify, or shut down the clearance credentialing system. There is no law or Constitutional requirement dictating security requirements or how they are applied.

As the sibling comment pointed out, this is not to say that doing so is a good idea. But it's very probably legal.

Nope, it's not illegal at all. This where one of the "traditions" should have come in and congress/the people should have burned Trump at stake for doing so, though. All those concerns about Hilary Emails 9 years ago, but we let Trump fast track his circus in no problems.

Agreed. The political motivations need not even be a factor. Data privacy and access policies were bypassed by unauthorized actors.

Also apparently huge scores of data was just dumped into a Microsoft hosted LLM [1].

So that data is (a) publicly available if you don't secure your VPC properly and (b) available to anyone without RBAC or request logging. This is an extraordinary degradation of the level of private and security controls.

[1] https://www.firstpost.com/tech/elon-musks-team-at-doge-feedi...

The primary source for this is from The Washington Post - https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/02/06/elon-musk-d...

What's more worrying is whether the access can realistically be revoked. As a general rule, when a security even rises to the level of root access to internal systems, you don't even try to remove them - you just rebuild the affected VMs from scratch because it's the only way to be sure the attacker didn't leave anything behind. For the systems we're talking about, payment processing stuff at Treasury and Social Security and so forth, one wonders if they can even be rebuilt on a reasonable timeframe?

The bigger question is whether there is currently any personnel physically even allowed to do such thing.

How does someone even clean up this mess? One of the DOGE kids may have just cloned every repo and then connect the machine to public internet because they need to fed it to an AI to figure out how things work. We can only assume the worst and that foreign adversaries may already be combing the code line by line.

What will happen when PIIs of every individual with dealings with the Treasury gets leaked?

Then there is going to be thousands of hours of meetings to review various processes...

> One of the DOGE kids may have just cloned every repo and then connect the machine to public internet because they need to fed it to an AI to figure out how things work.

May...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/02/06/elon-musk-d...

This is _exactly_ what overpriced management consultants would have done … the only question is which AI tools are they feeding the data to?

I like how you are 100% convinced that this “a mess” and “we can only assume the worst” and that PII is compromised, etc.

What actual facts do you have for anything?

I understand why the media is mad, why NGOs, and why liberal politicians are mad, I get why foreign countries are mad.

I’m interested in fraud and abuse, regardless of who does it. So if Musk’s team finds it, great, if they get caught committing it and have to deal with that, also great.

But right now we know there is something broken. Instead of being mad about that, you are angry about hypotheticals that have not happened.

Why is that?

How does Musk find "fraud and abuse" if he doesn't have access to the whole stack of decision making?

It's not up to him to make those decisions, it's up to congress. Musk is just making up bullshit (I'm surprised he didn't say he was rooting out pedophiles) to justify his jihad against the public service.

Lol congress that just had to have the Judiciary tell them they actually have to do their jobs and not let the agencies run roughshod?

OK!

If you read the article, you might get some insight into the comments.

> might...

So you haven't found any insights regarding this?

So, say in a few weeks, a massive fraud gets caught. Musk announces it, releases the documents. Who's to say these crooks didn't manipulate it? Same goes for achives of *.gov but those are public. So we can compare hashes independently from each other. With these private repos, we can't. Originals are getting burned. Hopefully there's solid offsite backups untouched.

Never thought of that. Any investigation from this group or this data is tainted now. Goodness.

Of course it’s tainted. The whole thing will be ‘trust us.’ The only source of most of what has been claimed to be ‘found’ so far is Musk’s Twitter account. Journalists cross referenced his first claims and found they were BS, so Musk will just get rid of the place people can cross reference. How this is ok with anyone, regardless of how they voted, is beyond me.

For a list of concerns about events of late, please see:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43003791

Lots of really good, and as of yet, unanswered questions which shed some light on why/how Musk's claims of "waste" and his method of supposed resolution don't hold up to scrutiny.

> "What will happen when PIIs of every individual with dealings with the Treasury gets leaked?"

We see what happens when big companies leak personal data - almost nothing. Maybe they give you 3 months of 'credit monitoring' or 'identity theft monitoring' service, maybe they write an apology press release. We've seen how Trump presents things, he quite realistically could say either "it was Democrats weak security, we're fixing it" or "hackers must have got it, we'll clean it up" or even "fake news" and then ... do nothing, we never hear about it again and the affected people deal with it as best they can. Why would you expect more than that to happen - a newspaper writes a damning article, lawsuits are filed, the news moves on in 24 hours.

We saw how he reacted to COVID, it wasn't a world class good reaction.

Boy I sure would love to hear how you'd deal with a novel virus in a country as large as the US with as many people in it. How'd China do, since they're an authoritarian regime?

When you reply, don't use the word "bleach" or "UV"

I don't want to engage in your bad-faith trolling. Make a substantial comment. Compare Trump's response with other world leaders, other countries, and medical advisors' recommendations, and what you'd hope an ideal leader would do, leave me out of it, I'm not a part of a government's COVID response.

there's only a couple of coutries that have the area/population demographics of the US. it isn't bad faith. what you're doing is conflating "The US" as just "any other country" when it isn't. we're the third or 4th largest area nation in the world.

is it because you wanted to say bleach and UV?

edit: "look what UK and denmark did!" is so completely irrelevant that it's ... not "good" faith to suggest it.

https://doggett.house.gov/media/blog-post/timeline-trumps-co...

Click the link and imagine me asking "Was that because the US is so big? Or because the US has such a large population?" about every point. Including, but not limited to, these:

> May 2018 - The Trump Administration disbands the White House pandemic response team.

> July 2019 The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) epidemiologist embedded in China’s disease control agency left the post, and the Trump Administration eliminated the role.

> June 30-July 6, 2020 The U.S. has just 4% of the global population, ... and the second-highest death rate per capita.

> May 29, 2020 “We will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization”

And these, imagine me asking why Trump is more concerned about the stock market, his image, finding people to blame:

> Feb. 24, 2020 “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA… the Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”

> March 20, 2020 [Response to reporter’s question: "What do you say to Americans who are watching you right now who are scared?"] “I say that you're a terrible reporter, that's what I say. I think it's a very nasty question"

> July 28, 2020 "He [Fauci]'s got this high approval rating. So why don't I have a high approval rating with respect -- and the administration -- with respect to the virus?"

> Aug 19, 2020 "We’ve got all the damn cases...I want to do what Mexico does. They don’t give you a test till you get to the emergency room and you’re vomiting,”

> Sept. 10, 2020 "This is nobody's fault but China.”

and:

> May 6, 2020 The Brookings Institution reports that children were “experiencing food insecurity to an extent unprecedented in modern times” and “40.9 percent of mothers with children ages 12 and under reported household food insecurity since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.” Republicans block proposals to expand food stamps.

Thanks Obama.

Remember when New York's morgues were overloaded[1] with 800 people dying there every day[1] and they were burying people in mass graves on Hart Island[2]? That was April 2020 when medical advisors were saying people should wear masks and Trump was announcing to the world that he was feeling good and "I think wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens, I don’t know, somehow I don’t see it for myself. I just don’t." and then Trump's fanbase picked them up as "face-panties" for "wimps"? How many lives could he have saved if he just encouraged people to take it seriously and calmly and modelled that behaviour himself?

So let's start with an immediately better response: after being warned it is serious and spreads easily, stop telling the public to ignore it because it will miraculously go away over and over and over again. Tell people to distance, ventilate rooms, as the evidence becomes available

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/30/nyregion/coronavirus-nyc-...

[2] https://time.com/5913151/hart-island-covid/

> edit: "look what UK and denmark did!" is so completely irrelevant that it's ... not "good" faith to suggest it.

I didn't suggest it; the UK's handling of it was not good: https://www.ft.com/content/bea342f8-9289-41cb-83ae-1e97c47e3...

I understand you're coming from a place of passion, here. so i'll tread lightly.

> Remember when New York's morgues were overloaded[1] with 800 people dying there every day[1]

I do remember when the public health policy in this country was to intubate people with enfeebled lungs after pumping them full of opiates. I do understand that this is homicide, at least the way i define it.

Will there ever be a reckoning? i don't know. I do know a lot of outright falsehoods were told for 2 years straight. If you'd like a detailed list i'd be glad, but I'm the kind of person that is still mad that Obama joked about killing two kids with predator drones. That Clinton bombed a [medicine factory?] That Bush... both...

If everything is a shambles because of one (or 2) people then the constitution is not worth the paper it's printed on. I bet you could fetch a nice price for that paper. I'd repeat that, but it's easy to just scan back to the beginning and read it again.

I'm not worried. These people are hype-based. I get that people are suffering but people are always suffering and i got no control over that. Me yelling at people or agreeing with people like you doesn't do anything. I guarantee if i wrote an agreement this long, no-one would read it.

HT ID;

> you just rebuild the affected VMs from scratch

These people have administrative access, and at least in some cases network and physical access.

Once you determine they are untrustworthy and potentially malicious, you can't just rebuild the VMs, since you can no longer trust the hypervisor or even the hardware.

If they were Chinese or Mossad agents, you'd start from scratch in a different DC on supply chain audited new compute, storage, and networking hardware. And you'd compile everything from audited source. And I have NFI how you'd deal with potential malicious changes to your data and backups.

> And I have NFI how you'd deal with potential malicious changes to your data and backups.

The backups should be stored on WORM tape. They can't be altered (easily or at all?). Of course they're probably wiping their asses with the backups like they are the constitution.

WORM prevents after-the-fact modification, but it isn't very helpful in the case of persistent threats.

The concern is that the tampering has already been committed to the backups. When was the "Break Glass" password last rotated? Is it protected by one or more Yubikeys that were manufactured before they fixed that nasty exploit? What other attack vectors are baked in through malfeasance or human error?

My comment was not in reply to passwords, "yubikeys" or anything else you mentioned, so your techsplaining about those things was a bit misplaced. MY point was that if the backups are on WORM tapes, and we still have those backups, then there's nothing to fear being compromised from those backups. Everything other than WORM tapes you wrote about is outside the scope of my comment.

This is going to be like coming home from a vacation and discovering that squatters have been living in your house for a month, going through your stuff. You'll probably end up bulldozing the place and starting over.

I will admit I did not think of that aspect of it. I think the reason I didn't is because, supposedly - as it was presented to me at the time, those systems run on some ancient hardware/software. In other words, even if something was left behind, it shouldn't be that hard to locate.

If anyone with real experience in that area could chime in. Until now I was under impression COBOL ran it all:P

Worked in IT a long time ago for a branch. There was some Java, a lot of Perl and SVN. We got releases from DC to run on local servers. Folks with experience with SDLC were prevalent and that was a prerequisite for doing anything meaningful. Never saw Cobol, doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.

You don’t just rebuild the VMs. You burn the DC and start again from scratch. That’s exactly what Cloudflare had to do: https://blog.cloudflare.com/thanksgiving-2023-security-incid...

The double entendre of DC is amusing here

The VMs? You're imagining that the Federal payment systems run in VMs? This is not some web stack thing. It's not some Linux system shenanigans.

The amount of commercially and politically valuable information there is in these systems is incredible.

If these people are scooping up this information you can imagine they might be tempted to monetize or weaponize it at some point, or use the threat of such for their own gain.

This is absolutely chilling when you think about it.

The best part is that even if courts force them to destroy all the pillaged data right now, it won’t stop them from making stuff up and weaponizing it anyway.

I wonder what this is going to do to the value of the dollar in the next couple years...

On the other hand, we may all experience privacy at levels uncomfortable for a lot of people, which MIGHT trigger some desire to actually make things more privacy conscious.

(EDIT: Moved to comment I intended to reply to)

[flagged]

Yes. I don't know many accountants who are familiar with polynomials let alone what a DAG is, etc. I am sure there are graph concepts they use by other names.

> Light SQL skills tend to be the upper end of technical accounting

This would be the main point that would need correction if I am wrong.

Accounting isn’t auditing.

Please don't cross into personal attack, regardless of how wrong another commenter is or you feel they are.

If you know more than someone else, two good options are (1) to share some of what you know, so we all can learn; or (2) not post. Snarky putdowns are not a good option.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

> So to me this argument sounds the same as "how can young kids think they can program like experienced engineers".

This is about a specific person who has a history of bad behavior, not a generic discussion on the abilities of young people.

Apologies. I responded to the wrong comment.

"it seems like all usual controls were bypassed". Apparently it isn't known. Let's answer this question and be impartial about it. A story about China having access to Treasury Department workstations landed a few months ago. There may be a LOT of bad practices in place. We should be pushing to improve them if so.

Did everybody already forget only a month ago it was revealed Chinese hackers had access to US Treasury computers including US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's own?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-16/chinese-h... (https://archive.ph/xeEaO) (January 16, 2025)

That's a bit different than complete access to the complete payments database isn't it?

OPM has had major leaks. I think it’s safe to assume most federal IT leaks like a sieve.

So why should we care if the administration busts up the dam with a sledgehammer!

If outsiders with the CCP's interests at heart are able to use this data, why can't outsiders with the U.S.'s interests at heart be able to use this data?

I always feel like there's a Monty Hall aspect to these discussions where people forget that the past has occurred and it has a bearing on the present. The choice isn't between "observe data protections" and "don't observe data protections." Something was behind door #3.

Your personal data is already public due to commercial breaches. Does that mean that your current bank, etc. shouldn’t be expected to obey privacy laws?

No, but I'd expect an auditor to be able to do their job, third party, first party, or whatever. Especially if my bank was lying about my money.

First, the idea that the bank is lying is unfounded speculation, not a given. Second, if you were auditing a bank you would be scrupulous about how you get access and keeping it limited because you be would want it to hold up in court and avoid any questions about tampering or planting evidence. You’d use qualified auditors with clean records, not someone who couldn’t pass a background check.

Now, of course, if your goal was to create propaganda or to install extra-legal modifications to block payments without having to follow normal processes, you might do this because you’re getting you’ll never have to defend your actions in court. That would be consistent with what we’ve seen of the “fraud” being talked up despite being quickly debunked because most of the people sharing stories don’t care whether it’s true as long as it feels right.

> Second, if you were auditing a bank you would be scrupulous about how you get access and keeping it limited because you be would want it to hold up in court and avoid any questions about tampering or planting evidence.

er, not if my role was as a consultant of the parent bank and my assignment was to close branches that were "losing money".

note: i even specified "first party" because in my mind i was envisioning a first party audit, of which i have done many as a consultant.

You can't tell the difference between:

1) a random citizen murders someone and 2) a cop murders someone on duty?

Yes, ideally the country would be safe enough that no one was killed, and you can even argue that it don't matter because the end result is the same (hell, some people would even argue whoever the police kills had it coming). But most people understand that when those entrusted with special powers for the public good abuse that trust and engage in criminal behavior, it’s a far more serious issue.

If you disagree with me, explain why. Egregious personal attacks are against site guidelines. Knock it off.

I find it strange that neither activists nor politicians nor journalists cared about that enough to make it a continuous news cycle. There was also no outrage about various security breaches that exposed personal information for 100 million Americans, like the Change Healthcare breach. The reaction to alleged violation of privacy here seems inconsistent and disproportionate, and I wonder why?

The story did get memoryholed very fast. At the time, I was not sure what to ascribe it to ( well, still don't ), but I did find it interesting that it was pointed out how limited in scope it was.

>> Did everybody already forget only a month ago it was revealed Chinese hackers had access to US Treasury computers including US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's own?

> I find it strange that neither activists nor politicians nor journalists cared about that enough to make it a continuous news cycle.

Because (a) that was a month ago and that's a long time given recent events. And (b), it's implicit that someone 'inappropriate' having access is a bad thing, but with Trump/Musk/DOGE it's being done on purpose.

It's the purposeful part that's at issue now.

There are people who have reportedly just graduated high school that have root-level access to things:

* https://futurism.com/elon-kids-gutting-opm-doge

Beside being party loyalists, do they have any kind of qualifications?

Are you saying, a potus appointed commission for auditing government system is worse than a chinese backdoor in treasury department, who's level of access was unknown?

"if the president does it, it's not illegal" ok Nixon.

Cosigned by the Supreme Court of The United States, in 2024.

No one invited the Chinese through the front door.

If you can’t understand that difference, you’re missing something very critical.

One is serious because a foreign adversary is compromising us; the other is serious because we are apparently designing the compromise ourselves via the whims of a demagogue.

Yes. Someone without clearance nor congress approval running around with a sledgehammer is a lot more an immediate issue than a long term saboteur. We can deal with both, but let's make priorities.

> Are you saying, a potus appointed commission for auditing government system […]

You don't need read-write access for auditing. You don't need root/admin-level privileges.

Do they really have write access though?

So far the only evidence of that is a wired article [1] with anonymous sources, even those source were not 100% sure about it.

Since then wired has posted another article [2] claiming the access have been revoked after announcements from senior officials, which again is from anonymous sources.

I'm really skeptical of these anonymous sources tbh.

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-associate-bfs-federal-...

[2] https://www.wired.com/story/treasury-department-doge-marko-e...

I mean, Luke Farritor used some variety of AI to translate ancient scrolls and won an award for it:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-21-year-old-u...

> I mean, Luke Farritor used some variety of AI to translate ancient scrolls and won an award for it:

Did the ancient scrolls involved accounting ledgers? Because some kind of auditing experience would be useful to figure out how where Treasury or USAid payments went.

Ageist and just parroting what the media says.

I'm surprised you didn't throw in jabs like "racist misogynistic eugenicist" like some reports...

>I find it strange that neither activists nor politicians nor journalists cared about that enough to make it a continuous news cycle

No not strange, because Elon etc. will cause more damage to their corrupt careers than other security breaches.

Because those were done by state or criminal actors and this one is allegedly being done with the consent of our elected government? It’s really not that difficult to figure out.

Why don’t you just state your opinion instead of being vague?

What was the impact of the "exposed personal information" from Change Healthcare? One thing that makes me suspicious when I see those leaked personal details headlines: I am sure that my own personal info has been leaked many, many times. And, yet, never once have I been hacked (PC/laptop/phone) or had financial crimes against me (steal credit card, unauth'd charges, etc.). And, I write this as a total normie, who basically depends upon Google Accounts/Passwords to "do it all for me" (and my commercial banks where I have bank + credit cards). I don't do anything particularly special.

To be clear: I am not here to defend companies with weak cybersecurity, but the impact of these leaks is virtually nil. "One hundred million" sounds like a huge number, but it provides little insight on the realised impacts.

Only unclassified data was accessed. Which is still bad but I suspect those types of hacks happen nearly daily.

It's pretty obvious that people opposing the goals of DOGE are pushing this story, same way they were pushing the earlier "doxxing" of the young engineers working for DOGE or the Elon nazi zieg idiocy.

Say what you will, but Musk has a track record of executing well at preposterous speed, so for legacy players/media this sorta of PR campaign is about the most they can muster.

At the end of the day thought, we'll all have to compare real word results versus those PR narratives and I am positive i know which way that will swing. You just can't PR bullshit you way out something like a 250ton piece of stainless sticking a landing.

>Say what you will, but Musk has a track record of executing well at preposterous speed

I highly disagree, and these stories makes his incompetence more obvious. As well as proving various anecdoctes years ago from SpaceX/Tesla that Musk was someone you needed to work around, not with.

> Musk has a track record of executing well at preposterous speed

He has been promising Tesla full auto-pilot every year for about 9 years. Just around the corner he said. I even shelled out $10K for it on top of the price of my car, 6 years ago. He said the car would pick up the owner from the airport. That was about 5 years ago.

Musk says a lot and promises a lot. A lot of it never materializes. And he seems be going insane at a rapid pace as of late. I have been wondering if the ketamine that he says he has been taking is really turning his brain into mush.

Did you get the $10k back? Surely they haven't delivered?

>The reaction to alleged violation of privacy here seems inconsistent and disproportionate, and I wonder why?

because they made a public show of it. That's the big difference. Meanwhile, Healhcare is already under more scutiny than ever and want to bury a lede of hacking.

> all usual controls were bypassed and the DOGE people had very low level access to systems

Before DOGE, somebody obviously had to have this access as well, and similarly could have copied and stored. Why be concerned with DOGE but not their predecessors? Honest question.

Because before the people that had access to this data got that access after passing background checks, had years in the treasury, supervision from higher-ups, and other processes in place. Now it's being accessed by cyber-criminal Nazis in their 20s who describe themselves as wanting to "Normalize Indian hate", " want a eugenic immigration policy", and who "were racist before it was cool" https://www.npr.org/2025/02/06/nx-s1-5289337/elon-musk-doge-....

Hmm. I am hesitant to engage this post, but it may be well worth to point out, that some of issues with status quo are precisely the result of "people that had access to this data got that access after passing background checks, had years in the treasury, supervision from higher-ups, and other processes in place". Until now it was old boys club that did not dare to shake things up a little.

My point is that there is plenty to dislike here, but if your argument against him is: he is a nazi, you have already lost, because you do not understand the sentiment out there.

> Hmm. I am hesitant to engage this post, but it may be well worth to point out, that some of issues with status quo […]

Is one of the issues that an audit log of actions was created? Because it seems to me some of the levels of access given to the DOGE folks mean that auditing and traceability has now gone out the window like a Russian oligarch.

I'm a sysadmin who 'just' runs a bunch of HPC stuff—nothing 'important' like HIPAA or SOX—and even my systems have some level of auditing and logging.

See? This is already a much better argument than what parent posted. If you tone down Russian hysteria angle ( not wrong, just pointing out how it is coming across ) the other side may be able to hear you.

This is basically my point and that point is the same point I make for Zuck, Thiel and others. There is already plenty of real things to complain about.

How about we focus on those?

I think what the posts above you are trying to say, and not doing a great job because of the emphasis on rhetoric, is the actions being taken are hypocritical.

The argument from the DOGE side is that entrenched interests are operating opaque systems and gating access to the information needed to identify inefficiencies. It's not a bad argument because it's no secret that you end up with waste in big companies or government programs and everyone should want to improve efficiency.

However, it's a bad faith argument because the public's being told they're being disenfranchised by a lack of transparency at the same time they're being told to accept a solution that has no transparency or oversight.

When you have tech billionaires with a lifelong goal of controlling payments since starting PayPal in the 90s, is it unreasonable to be skeptical of their motivations when they've managed to gain access to the government's payment system? Aren't these the same people sucking up our private information and telling us if we've got nothing to hide we've got nothing to fear? Why do they need to operate in the shadows?

I have zero issue with the arguments you presented, because I know you are being factually accurate ( to the best of my knowledge anyway; I wonder if there is a person out there that has a full unrestricted view of everything ).

<< is it unreasonable to be skeptical of their motivations when they've managed to gain access to the government's payment system? Aren't these the same people sucking up our private information and telling us if we've got nothing to hide we've got nothing to fear? Why do they need to operate in the shadows?

I don't want to argue for DOGE, because their fanbase is doing it on various fora already ( including this one ).

But to answer your question, it is not unreasonable at all. Those questions should be asked and, ideally, answered.

It is vital that the government officials are watched, their performance evaluated and our political will enforced by means we deem necessary. From where I sit, what is good for goose, is good for gander.

If I hesitate, it is around the level of emotion this generates. Some of it is warranted ( I would lie if I said I am not concerned ), but it does not help with making an appropriate response. In fact, that level of emotion actively inhibits making good choices.

You have to give it to him. It does look like Trump actually had a plan this time around.

I don't think the constant news cycles covering each and every dime that USAID misused is indicative of a lack of transparency. I think given just a little more time, DOGE could uncover (and reveal to the American people) a lot more than 50 billion of waste and corruption.

As for the oversight requirement, it is fully and completely satisfied by: 1.) A guy who has the technical acumen, drive, and attention to detail to catch a rocket out of mid air with chopsticks. 2.) A man who won a presidential election twice (and could possibly have been 3 times if the Hunter Biden laptop story wasn't corruptly and improperly squashed).

The largest proportion of the complaints from media outlets come from defunded operations. Its in everyone's fiscal best interest for these audits to continue, and for them to be completed by people completely outside of the government's patronage (grant and funding) networks.

> I don't think the constant news cycles covering each and every dime that USAID misused is indicative of a lack of transparency.

Every dime that the USAID spent was allocated via Congress through the budgeting process.

And many (11/12) of the published stories about supposed wasteful spending were not true:

* https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/02/07/usaid-tru...

More importantly, even if sending money to USAid is wasteful, that is Congress's prerogative. The President's job is to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed": if Congress wants to spend money on Foo then that's what he is supposed to do.

> Every dime that the USAID spent was allocated via Congress through the budgeting process.

A thread on the general process:

> Every year, the White House (via OMB) puts together a federal budget proposal to Congress. Every federal agency (incl USAID) sends OMB their budget wishlist.

[…]

> So to be clear: every dollar that USAID requests from Congress goes through White House review.

[…]

> Once USAID gets its budget from Congress, it must go straight back to Congress again with a further level of detail on how it will satisfy the various budget directives - via "Congressional Notifications."

* https://twitter.com/JeremyKonyndyk/status/188866737886876071...

Many of those fact checks make a huge deal about minor distinctions that in no way redeem the amount of money that was spent on their """""intended""""" purposes. Example:

" “$32,000 for a ‘transgender comic book’ in Peru”

This is wrong. USAID did not fund this, and it was not specifically transgender. Instead, the grant says the State Department provided $32,000, under the guise of public diplomacy, to Peru’s Education Department “to cover expenses to produce a tailored-made comic, featured an LGBTQ+ hero to address social and mental health issues.” "

So the comic existed, but it was funded by another equally corrupt department? This doesn't make USAID look any better at all, it just means Trump and Elon's team need to do MORE of what they have been doing, and expand their scope further.

I don't really care that a 2500 page omnibus spending bill that no one could read in full (minus an AI) specifically said that some pork goes to some unethical and corrupt action. Its evil and it needs to stop. If the government's normal checks and balances cant fix it, the answer is not to give up and let corrupt liberals desecrate the union. The answer is to fulfill the promise of the 2nd Amendment and to break the system of government in whatever way is necessary until it is no longer tyrannical. Remember that a 2% tax on tea without sufficient and effective representation is an acceptable threshold for such actions.

Process for security clearance might have caught this kids background, and then decision makers would have at least had a conversation about it. This kid is more a symptom of a wider lack of controls though, who knows whether any of Musk's script kiddies has a criminal background. Important to note that previous Trump administration has already followed out/bypassed security clearance process, so this is really just the next evolution of the disregard for criminal elements or foreign interests.

You say there's security clearance which was a prerequisite for the predecessors but was bypassed by the DOGE team. Understood.

Here’s how that sounds to anyone with security experience: “Before the bank president gave his nephew the vault keys, somebody must have had access as well.”

Federal IT has tons of policies designed to prevent unauthorized access and mistakes. People go through background checks, they only work on secured networks using official devices, everything is logged and audited, and circumventing it is a crime with penalties potentially leading to jail time. Some of those policies have strong legal requirements for oversight: even if you’re not doing anything other than your job, the agency needs to be able to show how work is done to auditors, Congress, FOIA requests, etc. Anything with national security implications should be designed to avoid a single compromised person from being able to avoid detection, too, especially for people trusted with administrative access to IT systems.

These guys are widely reported to be using personal emails and devices (violating the record and transparency laws) and even if they’re acting entirely in good faith they are bypassing policies designed to contain the damage due to mistakes. For example, what happens if one of them gets an email with an attachment claiming to have evidence of politically incorrect activities and runs the payload on a device/network which has had safeguards removed by executive fiat?

Sadly governments won't learn from this incident. The British one for example will keep on insisting backdooring everything.

What I don’t understand is how this thing happened on the first place. Someone just shouldn’t be able to be appointed by a single dictator, and suddenly have access to a wealth of data that would have made the (here we go) nazi’s green with envy.

Wrestling

Because everyone turned their back with the appointment instead of throwing protests 3 months ago.

We know there's a limit of tolerance for this because Matt Gaetz didn't make it through. But "modern day Tony Stark" was fine.

It's almost as if the plan is to destabilize, gut and privatize the federal government, and the US itself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rn52wL1b334

Many former hackers have been hired by the government with TS clearances and it's ridiculous to compare teenage hacker groups to violent street gangs. I told an agency of previous hacking stuff and they were more concerned with me admitting to cheating on a math test at college lol.

In order to get those TS clearances they have to go through extremely thorough background checks.

I went thru the TS/SCI w/FSP for a 3 letter top tier agency and it was a joke. They interviewed my mom, sister, old coworkers/bosses and old teachers. Then just asked me normal questions. They asked my mom and boses normal questions too. It's nothing like in the movies/TV shows and plenty of bad apples get thru lol.

The former head of the DCSA and FBI NYC field office both got caught doing bad stuff. The process is broken and honestly isn't that good . It gets people who aren't committed out, but also makes tons of good candidates go with other jobs, because it takes at least 4 months to do. Mine was 9 months long + 3 months to get an offer initially.

yeah they're vetted, get clearance, and are on a short leash... none of that seems to apply here

Citation? They're not monitored or anything closer than normal cleared people.

Of all the ways for China, Russia, Iran, Israel, etc. to get access to sensitive data like this, these events feel like they’re by a wide margin the most likely way for them to do so.

These people are going to cut corners and be sloppy and stuff is just going to end up on USB keys and whatnot.

but isn't this three more stages past that, already? Isn't it that Equifax and US Security Clearance System and the private secure Phone System for Senators and a long list of other things already cracked wide open? Because loyal DC bureaucrats with zero coding IT skills, sub-sub-sub contracted the real work then swapped contractors ump-teen times already, with the resulting systems all "super extra secret" black box except the right checks come out without fail?

On the extreme other hand, motivated World's Richest Man gets the inner keys in two weeks to all DC payment process flows ?

Make no mistake, this is disaster in the making, and lets get some details in the sunlight IMHO. but it seems laughable to claim that "China might get more info" when China (and a few others) already have been shown to run circles around core DC IT.

I think the only relevant issue is that someone with prior associations with The Com may be vulnerable to extortion, but simply having been associated with the group doesn’t mean much by itself. Law enforcement hires people from “the other side” all the time as they have relevant domain knowledge, and navigational skills of such spaces. Saying that the federal government, or its contractors, should never hire such people is arbitrarily making ethical judgments in places that don’t call for them.

Isn't the issue that there hasn't been any clearance issued? News reports are the vetting.

Yes. We don't know who has this data, where it's stored, who has access to it, and who pays their bills.

This whole thing is built on heresay of unscrupulous people who claim to know better.

Yes, not only was there no formal vetting, the access granted was extremely wide.

When the federal government does it, they approach an individual who is usually in federal custody. Then they offer a reduced penalty for whatever crime they've committed in exchange for cooperation, or acceptance of a job proposal, or something.

The individual is therefore incentivized against the organization they started at. They were just purchased away from that life. For a price that was probably reasonable. The expectation then is that the individual will cut ties with his old way of doing things and take steps to mitigate any threats from that former life.

The individual then goes through literally 250mb of PDF employment forms where they have to read and agree to a variety of legal punishments for failing the federal government in a variety of ways. They accept personal liability for the job, meaning they have some reason to follow the rules.

Not Musks team. They don't have any of that personal liability, and they get full access to data that causes these agencies to violate their own security and privacy policies. Then they go away with that data, without following any SOPs or chain of custody requirements, without any oversight, and they do whatever they want with it. They use it on personal devices that could be compromised and the government would never know because the data was taken out of scope of their IDS.

Lets say they don't get directly blackmailed, but because this person used to be in a hacker gang they have backdoors on their personal systems from the gang that they are unaware of. We just don't know, and there's no way to make sure the data is being kept safe, no way to monitor what devices it gets put on, no way to ensure anything.

It's just bad security posture all around to be doing this. But I guess that's only true if the goal is an authentic audit. That isn't the goal. Gutting federal agencies and funneling money and information to fascists is the obvious goal here.

Nobody, I think, is suggesting that nobody should hire those people, but when law enforcement hires those people, they put them through extensive screening and are careful about what they give them access to.

Also "the other side" here is the NIH

Why isn't all government budgetary information public to begin with?

The majority of it is. The parts that aren't tend to be personal information, which is where most of the concern comes from about this crew bypassing data controls.

This work could have been done without this slash-and-burn approach. It could have been done, in fact, without involving the government at all. The people involved did not actually care before, or they would have known this.

I totally agree. Sunshine is the best disinfectant.

It seems our Continuing Resolution method of funding the government is a failure.

Sorta like cost plus last year.

Where do you see sunshine? Are the "audits" public at all? It's indistinguishable from just having Musk kill every agency he dislikes with no further proof, while siphoning data to some unspecified server. The timeline also hints at no serious audit taking place.

Much of it is! Journalists are already using it to debunk some of Elon’s claims like the one they only 10% of USAID reached intended targets (which appears to be based on his complete misreading of a breakdown)

The real question now is where is DOGE’s evidence of all of this corruption? There are massive claims of rampant corruption, such as calling the USAID corrupt to their core, but literally zero evidenced has been revealed to anyone. The interviews I’ve caught have been Elon giving definitive statements and refusing to elaborate on anything, as if we’re supposed to trust his private judgment and ask no questions.

Yup, ask no questions. That's it. That's their entire game plan. That no one will dare question their intellect. What's the point after seeing what happened with the USAID spending and news subscriptions? As the kids say, "we're cooked."

> where is DOGE’s evidence of all of this corruption?

Presumably this was published by DOGE: https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/02/at-usaid-wast...

I encourage everyone to follow the links and determine the accuracy of the claims being made.

The linked Breitbart article had this:

“Between 2005 and 2008, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) devoted at least $330 million in funding to failed ADP projects intended to deter farmers and traffickers from cultivating and trafficking opium.”

The article actually said the money was intended to STOP opium production. But the Whitehouse Fact sheet (last bullet point) twisted the facts to say the complete opposite.

I’m not too sure if that quote you used is even an accurate depiction of what happened. The following paragraph:

“the chief at SIGAR, learned that the agricultural development programs — namely those used to rehabilitate canals that have rendered an area more than three times the size of Washington, DC, fertile— have “inadvertently” fueled the cultivation of the poppy crop.”

Was it to deter farmers and poppy production, or was it doing what was intended - developing agriculture - with the unfortunate downside of being used for poppy production.

The truth is of course more nuanced but that doesn't make good sound bites.

Was it to deter farmers and poppy production? The answer lies in the word "deter" in the quote I copied. Deter means slow/stop. The USAID OIG report I quote below also says the same thing. "The purpose of the program is to counteract...".

"was it doing what was intended - developing agriculture"? This is where the reader needs context and Breitbart provided none of that. The Taliban were removed from power in Afghanistan in 2002. It wasn't until 2020, the US withdrew all troops. The period of "corruption" mentioned was in the early 2000s. To address your question, I refer to the IG report https://oig.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/2018-06/5-306-10-0.... If you read the quote below, it was intended to do both. The IG report actually blasted the execution of the plan, and it said it was half-assed. I would argue the whole US adventure in Afghanistan and Iraq was half-assed, ad hoc, and hurt US prestige. Not to mention the deaths and tragedies inflicted on all sides. Trump is right in that Afghanistan is a shameful episode in US history. Was USAID's intention to stop opium production? The answer is yes.

OIG report on page 7, "Summary. The purpose of the program is to counteract illicit poppy cultivation by providing alternative livelihood programs, improved economic opportunities, and diverse regional economic growth in selected provinces. Furthermore, a key pillar of the U.S. Government’s counterinsurgency strategy involves economic development of areas secured by the U.S. military. Although gains have been made in some targeted southern and western provinces to reduce poppy cultivation, these gains may not be sustainable because (1) no follow-on alternative development activity has been approved beyond March 2011; (2) a critical southern province is not included in the current program; (3) access to markets for cereal crops (such as wheat) is not guaranteed, nor is stability of commodity prices; (4) success of programs outside the mission’s control may affect poppy cultivation and harvest; and (5) the availability of water is uncertain. The impact of not having a follow-on program can be measured in terms of (1) loss of program investment in long-term projects totaling $7 million, (2) loss of economic gains for Afghans including jobs, (3) potential increase in poppy cultivation, and (4) a negative effect on the U.S. Government’s counterinsurgency policy."

> $6 million to fund tourism in Egypt [link explains it is to fund economic development in North Sinai]

This sounds like an absolutely expected program for USAID, given that it is a soft power aid agency. Egypt is a regional partner to the US and this province has been a source of Islamist violence. It also borders the Gaza Strip.

From the link:

> Through this agreement, USAID will build on previous investments in North Sinai including the provision of potable water to 300,000 residents and wastewater services to 100,000 residents. New activities under this amendment will provide access to transportation for rural communities and economic livelihood programming for families.

How is that funding tourism? Also a lot of other links are simply pointing to "news" organisations (in quotation marks, because I'm not sure if I'd call daily mail news), who report on cuts done by DOGE, that's some circular referencing.

This is beyond belief. It's a Whitehouse website with a list of claims of wasted money on the part of USAID. But instead of evidence unearthed by DOGE the first three claims link to a Daily Mail page. The Daily Mail is a junk newspaper in the UK!

And Breitbart lol. Might as well be citing 4chan

I wonder if 4chan is more reliable :?

Wow, this really belies belief. Extremely sad to see people actually falling for obvious half-truths being put out by rags like that.

on the "$70,000 for DEI musical in Ireland"

"The woke extravaganza in question was actually something called Dignity, a live-streamed set of performances from the US ambassador’s residence in the Phoenix Park in September 2022 that featured, among others, the American folk musician Rhiannon Giddens, the Italian instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi, the singer-songwriter Mick Flannery and the fiddler Martin Hayes.

Having examined the evidence on YouTube, I regret to inform you that there is nothing about white fragility, queer theory or any of the other progressive shibboleths that have attained the same status in this White House that the dictatorship of the proletariat had for the un-American activities committee of the US House of Representatives in the late 1940s.

It is certainly true that the accompanying promotional bumf for the gig (which was sponsored by the well-known radical agitators Coca-Cola and PwC, among others) was full of the sort of platitudes that were so in vogue in the faraway days of the early 2020s.

“The Biden administration is committed to principles of diversity, equity, inclusion, and access,” we were informed. “With this event we aim to highlight and celebrate the work that the embassy, the Irish Government and our partners are doing to advance DEI throughout Irish society. These ideals have long underpinned the strong relationship between both countries.”

Not any more."

https://www.paywallskip.com/article?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ir...

How does this forward US interests?

How is this relevant? The discussion is about misrepresentation and lies.

Because it’s my money.

If it confidently does not further US interests then Musk and friends can describe it honestly and recommend to Congress and USAID leadership that this sort of funding be made out of scope of USAID's mission.

It's based on this outmoded idea called 'diplomacy', where you build positive relations with allies rather than trying to buy them, or threaten to invade them or crash their economies.

Are you being serious. All this stuff has been going on for decades, and the data has been public for years. If you think this is corruption, not an argument I'm trying to have (a lot of it is fwiw,) then wait till you see what these guys have planned haha.

The white house is citing... Breitbart and the daily mail?

The real kicker is the daily mail "articles" don't have a single solitary source of their own that they link to or even mention.

Truly incredible times we live in.

This is basically a blog post that lists 12 bullet points that all cite Daily Mail, Breitbart, and Washington Examiner and then says

> The list literally goes on and on — and it has all been happening for decades.

People who get all of their information from twitter have taken over the highest offices in government...

This should be the real submission here

Who...who wrote that? I've seen local facebook crackpots with more rigorous use of citations / references.

This might be the worst I've ever seen, from officials. This is one step away from "trust me bro"

> $6 million to fund tourism in Egypt

deal was reported: Monday, December 16, 2019

Just like a programmer complaining about some atrociously bad code only to learn she has committed it herself.

USAID helped terror organizations[1]. So this information is public and US is now a sponsor of terrorism? I don't think so or atleast not publicly. So their assertion stands its corrupt to their core.

[1] https://m.economictimes.com/news/international/world-news/ho...

Public information can't be made more public when it is already public. Congress passes the federal budget, which is public. Contracts are public. Bid processes are public. The only exceptions are things that are considered PII and things that are classified.

USAspending.gov contains public spending data thanks to the bipartisan bill Obama, Coburn, McCain, and Carper passed two decades ago. It's one of many places to start.

When was the last budget passed?

It is already. And you can access anything not readibly accessible with a Freedom of Information Act request

Just out of curiosity, has anyone here been able to find one of the sites where "the COM" convenes or am I too old to see?

Mostly happens on Telegram and forums like OGUsers these days.

As another commenter said, Telegram.

404 media has ran multiple stories on them. Here is one:

https://www.404media.co/inside-the-com-world-war-robberies-b...

I don’t see the comparison to leaving a violent street gang—most grow out of these communities and with good opsec you keep identities and profiles completely separated; the best people I work with had a mischievous past but realized the most sustainable way to do cool things is on the good side, and those who pass background checks without hiding their past stand out as the good ones—though actions like swatting, extortion, or threats of violence go far beyond mischievous.

I thought it was 'The Corn' until I typed it out. I need new glasses.

For me it evoked Stephen Kings horror movie "Children of The Corn" where the kiddies are indoctrinated into a cult to murder.

While curious, intelligent young people are still self-assembling in small groups, I'd hope they'd be more shmoo group, l0pht/cDc, or w00w00 than 4chan. Maybe they are and we're just hearing about this one because they're thrown into the political frying pan.

I am wondering what will happen at the end of all of this? I see a few possibilities here:

1. Either this project will be a tremendous success for the American people, saving millions and uncovering massive fraud and waste in the government thanks to the audits

2. It will ab a complete failure, nothing of value will get discovered, published and time and money will be wasted for everyone involved (giving the DNC a huge attack vector for the next election)

3. Alternatively, some efforts may yield some positive net results but others will fail to bring anything of value in fruition, this to me, seems to most realistic outcome, but who knows?

This is going to be an interesting experiment for the rest of the world to watch.

You left out this possibility:

A critical subversion of cybersecurity in the United States that leads to decades of compromised computer systems throughout our society -- from infrastructure to military to banking. I heard someone refer to this as a speedrun of the fall of the roman empire, and given the lack of ethics at the top levels of this administration I wouldn't be surprised.

"giving the DNC a huge attack vector..." -- I think you're mistaking an attack vector for a realization that this regime is incompetent and against the safety and security of the United States population.

I'm thinking 2/3, but the part you're missing is that the process will destroy US influence around the world. Which may be the real point of all this. It's hard to know where Musk's allegiances really lie.

With that said, the US has been in the dominant world position for so long, it's like they forget what it takes to be there. Soft power, by giving people food and support - like USAID does, is part of what helps keep the US in that dominant position.

I hear this argument a lot and I have two thoughts about it:

1. USA is a rich country, and that's why it can afford helping other countries. But what if you overspend? Now your economy is weak, you lag behind, and sooner or later competitors help more than you (if it's really the best thing to do to rule the world). So maybe optimizing spending is in order? And I think one strategy to optimize an overgrown system is to just burn the old, and start from scratch.

2. Does the "soft power" work if people get used to your help? Maybe it's useful to suspend the help every now and then for all the beneficiaries to realize the magnitude of the help? I wonder how much of the negative effects are read as "evil USA stopped giving us money" and how much "oh so it was USA that was helping us all this time!" Finally, if the help resumes after a new president is elected, won't people forgive USA for suspending it, as that was done by Trump, and now there's this new president that we need to be grateful to?

Just some thoughts of a layman.

Watch what happens with countries new alliegances to China over the next few years.

Hell even in Canada were now exploring direct trade deals with China to avoid the US.

That is a very big deal for an economy like the US that is so global.

> And I think one strategy to optimize an overgrown system is to just burn the old, and start from scratch.

To avoid overspending and crashing the economy (I don't think the govt spending tax money crashes the economy but I'm no economist either), allowing competitors to help more and gaining more influence, "one strategy" is to simply destroy US influence around the world? To "start from scratch"?

No, I don't think that is a viable, even credible strategy. Like "saving human consciousness" by going to Mars: if we are under threat to destroy ourselves (and that is the real imminent threat, not asteroids), then whatever we need to learn to avoid that we can learn much better on Earth, than on a colony that.... depends on Earth. It's not even a serious proposal when it comes to benefiting humanity, maybe the idea is to live on Mars for a few decades as humanity is withers.

And in the same way, firing countless US government workers nilly-willy, even out of some vendetta (FBI agents that just did their job? hello?), immediately creates a LOT of pressure on the economy (if you don't just view it as a big number that a handful of dudes own most of, and care about the people in it). Whatever you want to "start from scratch" (all of it you could also have done without burning everything down first), you now have less resources to do that, because, well, everything is on fire. The saved money is supposed to go to tax cuts for the rich after all, right? At any rate I'm confident it's not going to be spend on more efficient social programs, but simply less or none. And people who can do these jobs well will not be keen to be re-hired by the same government that fired them, either.

If someone wants to talk you into knocking down your house so you save rent and can build a new one quicker, and has something to gain from it, at best they're insane, at worst they're playing dumber than they are, since they stand to gain from it.

> Does the "soft power" work if people get used to your help?

I'd say the longer you interact and cooperate with others the better the relationship usually gets, all else being equal.

> I wonder how much of the negative effects are read as "evil USA stopped giving us money" and how much "oh so it was USA that was helping us all this time!"

You are so very vastly underestimating the impacts these knee-jerk, unilateral activities have.

https://bsky.app/profile/fidgetorama.bsky.social/post/3lhkdv...

> This is horrific. Freezing clinical trials means that people with experimental medicine - participating in studies that benefit us all - may be left without access to healthcare, we won’t know their outcomes, they may even have experimental medical devices left inside of their body.

1. If you want to get the budget under control then we have to raise taxes in addition to spending cuts. The Trump tax cuts expire this year and they have said they want to get them extended.

2. No, if the US makes such drastic changes in policy every four years then it's much harder to forge any long term relationships. The vacuum also lets other countries like China step in. Wasn't everyone just losing their mind about a Chinese company working with the Panama Canal?

I don't really understand how this is an audit? Shutting down departments, getting root access to systems, read/write access to codebases these are hardly the actions of auditors doing a audit. Does a audit really require this level of access?

This is an audit that is actually meant to get results

There are way more possibilities. And the main one is that any negative effect would only be visible in a long time (let's say 10 years) and by that time it may take 10-20 years again to change course.

For instance say you lower standards for building bridges, how do you assess the success? First you may notice nothing, because all bridges under construction stay with their design, so consequence 0. After a few years, construction costs may go down because the new standard allow to cut some corners. Great! Success! Now 30 years in the future maybe suddenly the bridge has a failure that costs 20x the savings at the time of construction. Well suddenly not great. But changing the standard at that point would not fix all the bridges built over those 30 years.

Evaluating public policies is often very hard and it's sometimes only possible a long time after. I would also say that weather or not a policy is good or has positive impact has little impact on winning or losing elections. Lots of terrible policies can win you voters. Just like building the best product is not the easiest way to make money. For both goods and elections, playing on emotions works a lot better.

The timeline for some things is way longer than 10-20 years and, in cases like data collection, we simply lose out forever.

What we're seeing right now, and it's not just the US, are policies that risk depriving future generations of data that may be critical to solving problems 50 or 100 years from now. If you say that collecting water quality data is a waste of money because we don't have problems with water quality, that's a permanent decision that can't be reversed and will adversely affect future researchers. It's incredibly frustrating.

In the bridge example above, even with bridges failing after 30 years, the average person won't be able to assess whether or not it was a success or a failure. You'd have to know the cost of initial construction, lifetime maintenance costs, replacement cost, the value gained from short term savings, etc.. Coming up with a calculation to categorize it as a success or failure could be difficult if everyone is acting in good faith. Throw in politics, partisan interests, propaganda, etc. and it seems almost impossible.

No matter what side people fall on politically, everyone should consider unbiased, non-partisan data collection a vital government service. If you disagree on how the data should be collected, do it both ways and debate the merits as long as you want. Just make sure the data stays available.

We have examples of this kind of thing happening[1]; in the 1970s Eli Ron invented a new way of making concrete ceilings called Pal-Kal; it was easier, faster and cheaper. Also prone to be weak if done without care and sometimes extremely dangerous. Used a lot around Israel there were some non-fatal failures and a committee setup to investigate it banned it in 1996[2]. In 2001 the Versailles Hall in Jerusalem collapsed killing 23 people. Eli Ron was given four years in prison for manslaughter. There were no good records of every building built with Pal-Kal in Jerusalem to go and check them; now any that are known to use it can be structurally checked every year, and demolished if found unsafe because there isn't a good cheap way to strengthen them, but there may be more of them unknowingly using it.

Another is the Morandi Bridge collapse in Italy in 2018[3], it had been designed as a steel cable suspension bridge with the cables encased in concrete meaning there was no good way to check if they were rusting. The engineer who designed it (click his name in Wikipedia) was calling attention to risks and problems in his design since the 1970s without the responsible companies/government departments taking it seriously enough.

Also see how big Wikipedia's "List of bridge failures" is[4]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pal-Kal

[2] https://www.newcivilengineer.com/archive/jerusalem-collapse-...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponte_Morandi_collapse

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridge_failures

You seem pretty optimistic. A plausible alternative is that it really ends up hurting the US.

In some way, it has started hurting the US. Ask anyone in the world who is not a US citizen if they think the US is stable. I think the answer has changed a lot in, say, the last 10 years.

It changed for me Jan 20 this year. I had suspicions before that.

In all of those scenarios you still have to deal with the impact of shutting down agencies like USAID.

Elon says things like USAID is a ball of worms, it needs to be scrapped, and if they cut too much they'll roll it back. How? The people getting fired aren't going to stick around waiting for a roll back and, if they're wrong about it being 100% waste, the people that die because they're reliant on those outreach programs can't be brought back to life. It's not software. You can't roll back mistakes that have an immediate human impact.

The risk and fallout of being wrong are so significant that they way they're going about it is reckless. There's also a risk they'll simply claim they were 100% right and no one has any way of verifying it. It's like Bush standing in front of the Mission Accomplished banner. What was the mission and how was it determined to be a success?

And that's the main issue. There's no objective measure for success. That makes debunking false claims of success extremely difficult and time consuming. It takes 5 minutes for Musk to do an interview saying they cut $4 billion of waste by shutting down USAID and an extraordinary amount of work for anyone trying to prove the worth of what they're doing.

That's even more true for anything that's subjective like the value of good will or for anything that seems so obviously beneficial that you never thought you'd need to justify, so didn't keep data proving the value. It's like being accused of being a criminal and having the burden of proof fall on you to prove you've never committed a crime. How do you account for your entire life?

I could be swayed by the argument that security clearances and controlled access to information could be abused to prevent scrutiny, so there's probably some merit in trying to short circuit that stuff, but the way it's done matters. For example, issue an executive order to expedite security clearances for the outsiders you want on the team or create a new class of security clearance where those people get blanket access but have to adhere to controls that prevent data exfiltration.

We have the technology to make sure data isn't tampered with. The DOGE team could be working on-site, creating and digitally signing reports on waste they want to see cut, sending those reports to congress, and auditing to make sure congress sees every report they've signed.

I can see the value in outsider access to data with the intent of bypassing entrenched interests, but unilaterally shutting things down without any oversight or debate is a step too far. At a minimum, those shutdowns should be accompanied by transparent reports detailing the waste, especially when the determination that something is wasteful is subjective.

>saving millions

If you mean that literally they might have success with that but overall American government spending is a pretty boring affair[1], with about 9 out of 10 dollars going to defense, healthcare, interest, social security and the likes. Trying to chase down "woke" fifth columns in the department of education (2% of the budget) is not going to save you a lot of dough. I'd be willing to make a bet they're not going to touch the categories that matter.

[1]https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

It's troubling to see people from assumably technical backgrounds on HN seem to struggle with the very basic math you put forward.

It's going to be used to amass more power. "The President" makes baseless claims that everything is fraud now. "So much fraud, fraud, fraud". Everything he says is a projection.

The confuddling thing to me is how did we have years of decay and no ability to head it off.

If we are at a point where the FBI is being dismantled, where was the FBI this whole time during the build up?

Even if you believed the FBI was some evil deep state entity - it turns out it was completely benign one because it couldn't even defend itself from an approaching enemy thousands of yards away.

All I can think of when I hear about DOGE is Robert McNamara's Department of Defense, where the "Whiz Kids" from industry and academia were supposed to magically fix all sorts of problems with the military's bureaucracy. After all, they went to the right schools, and really, how hard could war-making be?

We lost in Vietnam and there are people being born there with birth defects from Operation Ranch Hand to this day partially due to their work, but at least they got to pad out their resumes and were set for life as consultants.

> After all, they went to the right school

The selection process here appears to have been the opposite of traditional credentialism

It's a new spin on an old idea. Software whiz kids are what a part of society now see as the cream of the crop.

Actually, is it known by which criteria Musk picked these people? Or do we just have speculation? I haven’t read any detailed reporting about that.

It’s not the same, but seeing how many of them have prior personal experience working for him or Thiel it looks like a form of old boys network rather than a fair hiring process. Government is supposed to be fair about these things because the stakes are higher due to various legal requirements: for example, suppose that Boeing sued claiming that a Musk appointee helped SpaceX get a contract – even if everything was done in good faith and SpaceX was the better vendor, it could cost a lot and delay projects for years trying to prove that in court.

The concerns about things like Treasury data come up in the same context. If someone sues claiming that their data was used incorrectly, if the access was on an official system it will have logs and policies which could be used to show that the same appointee never accessed that data and wouldn’t have been able to send it outside. If the stories about things like personal devices or outside cloud services are true, that may no longer be easy or even possible and a lawsuit might be successful even if they didn’t actually share data with their old boss.

The "rationalization" tendency in politics at least goes back beyond McNamara to early progressives, like Robert Moses who reformed Tammany Hall with a technocratic approach that only won him scorn from progressives of the more modern variety.

Can check out the current HN thread on healthcare if you want to see some who suffer from this diagnosis.

> scorn from progressives of the more modern variety.

Assume you’re talking about 99% invisible?

https://99percentinvisible.org/club/

Wow, first time I heard of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbicidal_warfare / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ranch_Hand

Strangely, there's a dearth of links between that and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiz_Kids_(Department_of_Defen... / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McNamara

You never heard of Agent Orange?

If you want to sound old, say aloud “you’ve never heard of Muhammad Ali?”

And that's the scary thing: people aren't aware of the lessons of the past. Not the "past", even; Ali's draft refusal and Operation Ranch Hand were well within a human lifetime of now.

Can't say for sure I haven't heard the term before (can't claim I'm too young to know, more like old enough to start forgetting), but I did not know they had as a goal to remove whole forests, causing countless deaths by herbicide. The details are always more horrifying than I imagined.

That's interesting. Agent Orange and Napalm are two things I immediately associate with the Vietnam War. The countless severe birth defects caused by Agent Orange have been a big topic. (Well, at least outside the US...) In fact, they still happen today! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange#Health_effects

I still can't believe Musk came up with a name that shortens to DOGE. This is next level political trolling. Then again people got what they voted for.

i dont want a government that does next level trolling

I just want to highlight one thing about this whole government takeover debacle. The reason you have the separation of power (legislative, judiciary, executive) is not to be efficient, it is to prevent generational abuse.

Even a well intentioned benign autocrat if given power would not part ways with said power voluntarily. So even if the current administration is "good" there is no reason why this kind of power couldn't be abused by subsequent administrations. Even the most die-hard republican should be thinking "if the democrats take over 1-3 elections from now, what would they do with this power?".

It is really the same reasoning with dictatorships, even if the dictator is good, competent and capable his successor most likely won't. Democracy is the best form of government because there are clean, regulated ways to transfer power. Not a scramble for dominance that once settled is meant to last in perpetuity.

This!!! What makes democracy powerful isn't that it guarantees good governance. It is powerful because because it prevents power transfer problems and all the associated struggles.

The number 1 responsibility of any system of government is how well it handles power transfers, not whether it produces good governments.

I remember an American History teacher explaining that the most amazing thing about the new American government was that when we went from Washington to Adams nothing changed for the American citizen. Certainly that has not always held true but certainly I agree with you - thinking about the government is one of the last things I want on my mind.

Washington is often compared to Cincinnatus because he had the opportunity to hold onto power, but chose not to. Supposedly (Legend? History?) some men from his army told him to become a king or offered to make him one, and he refused.

I would say proper transitions of power is part of good government. Your phrasing makes it sound like governance doesn't need to be good as long as it transitions properly.

Improper transitions of power cause bad governance.

I guess that in that context, if we reduce the role of government in as many ways as possible then whether a Good or Bad governance would have less impact to us? And in doing so a proper transitions of power is more important?

A bad transition of power usually (almost always?) results in an increase of the role of government. Bad transitions of power requires the new government to assert its power in order to legitimize itself. In the worst scenarios that means jailing/disappearing the opposition/journalists/activists/etc.

Thanks. Make sense.

That works right until you have a government that does absolutely nothing and the public vote in someone who promises to smash up the system. Someone like... Donald Trump.

Right, unfortunately the trend has been increasing power of the state for some time.

But I think the point also argues against having an extremely powerful administrative / regulatory state.

For instance, suppose you want to create a department to "fight misinformation" and it will have wide ranging power to push for censorship. But depending who is running it, it might censor vastly different kinds of speech.

If you believe such an entity should exist you should be indifferent to the kind of person running it. As an example, consider garbage removal. I'm relatively happy with my city's garbage removal. I wouldn't really be concerned if it was run by Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. Maybe there would be some graft in one way or another, but it's pretty obvious what the organizations' goals are.

So I think that there's a difference between "government takeover to shrink the size of the state" is different from "government takeover to add another layer of unelected bureaucracy to run our lives"

> So I think that there's a difference between "government takeover to shrink the size of the state" is different from "government takeover to add another layer of unelected bureaucracy to run our lives"

Maybe in the short term, but in the long term they are no different because the power separation is eroded in either case. If you want to reduce the size of the state you need to get congress on board with your plans.

Why do I need to get congress? Congress isn't some magical body that is somehow more responsive or well run than the executive. They have more special interests. Why would I want a delegate from some state have a say that the government should have less of a reach into my life? That just means id have to essentially bribe this person with some special carve out for his state which is how we got into this whole mess. Lot simpler to just have more or less a national referendum for delete power

Completely agree. Being slow and not able to be flipped upside down on the whim of someone (or some party, or some group, etc) is a feature not a bug

In my opinion incremental change with a common passage toward a better future is the best way to have long term functioning democracies

> incremental change

I think this is key for other reasons as well. A country, especially a global superpower like the US, has an incredibly slow turning radius. Even more so when you need to stop and consider ripple effects, as politicians should be. For some reason, politicians like to sell that they'll be able to fix everything in a short term, and people continue to buy it. When really, anybody at a podium saying they can "fix the economy" in timescales measured in anything but decades should be a red flag.

I mean, I get it. If your adversary is promising to fix everything in months, you're going to look like a fool for saying it'll take you decades. I just find it interesting how the populace continues to buy into the fantasy.

> It is really the same reasoning with dictatorships, even if the dictator is good, competent and capable his successor most likely won't. Democracy is the best form of government because there are clean, regulated ways to transfer power. Not a scramble for dominance that once settled is meant to last in perpetuity.

You're assuming that there will be a successor, in a democratic sense.

I see no reason why it wouldn't, they don't seem to be trying to dismantle the voting system. I am not super familiar with the US system but my impression is that a most of it is handled at the state level, not the federal level.

I'd want to wait until an election is coming up to be sure no changes to those systems are made, really. It's only the first month.

There’s plentiful talk from the right about allowing state legislatures to ignore the presidential vote in their state and appoint the electors they want instead, about only allowing heads of households to vote, and how it was a mistake to allow women to vote. We already saw multiple attempts to overturn the previous election, with lies about vote totals, fake electors, and finally outright violence.

There will certainly be elections. It’s pretty much required for basic legitimacy these days. Even North Korea has elections. Whether they’ll be free and fair, however, is a whole different question.

I don’t understand giving liars the benefit of the doubt. I mean, there are tens of thousands of documented lies and your like “I trust him”. Your mind is broken.

If you mean Trump I don't "trust him", I am just highlighting that they don't seem to be in the position or want to interfere with the voting process.

Now that they are in power interfering with the election process seems to cause them more harm than good, after all if they try it makes their regime seem less legitimate.

Of course with Trump you never know, but I don't think he will be capable of doing more than shouting at governors of each state. If any voting changes go through it will probably be stuff that has bipartisan support.

>If you mean Trump I don't "trust him", I am just highlighting that they don't seem to be in the position or want to interfere with the voting process.

I'm really unsure what to say about people who are this willfully ignorant. He literally tried everything he could to subvert the voting process in 2020. Like most of his followers, I'm assuming you buried your head on this one and decided not to read it because it's so damning:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_fake_electors_plot

I know, it didn't work and (in my opinion) did more harm than good to his reputation.

I don't know how long you've been here but one of the best things about this forum is the general focus on facts and not on attacking or namecalling the people who believe things. Your comment is much more convincing and legitimate without "your mind is broken". That's a very 'reddit' thing to say. Let's be adults here

No, it's just the truth. Trump, Elon and the people they surround themselves with have gone out of their way to paint democracy as a broken system that keeps power out of the hands of "strong" leaders. Whether it's praising dictators for imprisoning their opponents, boosting "Dark Enlightenment" posts, or casting doubt on our election because a drunk Rudy Guliani whispered it to them, these are not people that give a fuck about democracy.

That there are still people that think these are jokes or "not what they really mean" speaks to a fundamental cognitive dissonance that can't be repaired. Their intention is right in front of you. It's just a question of who will enable their vision.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_fake_electors_plot

As a side note, your post is no better than the one you replied to. "That's a reddit thing to say" is just as reductive. Maybe being an adult means realizing not everyone has to tip toe around reality.

Hasn't Trump promised his electors they will not have to vote again during his campaign? If that is not a promise to create a dictatorship, I don't know what is.

“I love you. You got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not going to have to vote.”

He was talking about the economy.

How? What does fixing the economy have to do with not needing to vote?

He was talking to potential voters who are struggling, telling them they only have to bother this one time and he'll fix their problems so they can go back to not paying attention to politics.

Last time when he had to give up power, he claimed the elections were stolen, and then his followers stormed the capital.

Today, he still claims the elections were stolen, and freed the stormers of the capital. In one of his speeches for this election, he said “in four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.”.

Let's wait and see, but a clean democratic transition of power would certainly surprise me.

He was talking about fixing the economy, not election fraud.

how would "not having to vote" fix the economy?

they don't seem to be trying to dismantle the voting system

They are, via gerrymandering, voter id laws, limiting voter registration, voter intimidation, constantly questioning results, etc.

Here's a high level view: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_efforts_to_restrict...

Perhaps the planners are smart and are subverting the election systems quietly while we are all focused on DOGE.

> You're assuming that there will be a successor, in a democratic sense.

It follows, since he's talking about democracies.

This is always in my mind. Whatever we choose to let the ruler du jour do, what would, let us say, the $hitler be able to do when they come to power through the mischoices of our fellow citizens? After all, history tells us that such people will both exist and come to power.

So it behooves us to be a little jealous of our own rights, and to push officials to limit other officials.

There's an interesting fork here where you can argue for a very libertarian view, _or_ you can argue for a "government whose interest is in restraining government (the metagame of 'checks and balances')".

That's one issue with a two party system: it incentivizes collusion between branches that are supposed to be holding each other in check.

This only works even remotely if the politicians agree to work together on some level. Modern US politics went all in on Newt Gingrich’s blockade method to ensure the big bad democrats can’t look like they ever do anything.

And here we are with only slightly less broken healthcare with the ACA, a plan originally from GOP, which is constantly hounded on for being terrible. All while drug and medical prices fleece every dollar from every pocket.

So this is what it comes back to when congress can’t do their job of helping the American people or balancing the budget. A populist comes in and smashes the norms.

Everyone reading this should research the end of life healthcare situation in the US. In the current system you will be destitute, your assets will be sucked dry until you have nothing, only then will you qualify for Medicaid. Only the wealthy can die with assets to pass on. We are currently experiencing this with our parents. The system is set up so social security pays just enough to not qualify for Medicaid and Medicare doesn’t cover what they need (assisted living or home healthcare).

It's funny how that works out. Welp, let's have a look at how that stock market is doing....oh look, more GDP growth, everything is hunky dory.

> A populist comes in and smashes the norms.

And who favors the rich. You have to give Republicans credit, they are skilled at getting the poor to comprehensively screw themselves.

I've come to the conclusion that some people must see success as holding someone else down as opposed to raising yourself up. The poor people you're talking about don't see it as screwing themselves as long as they can recognize that some other group is more screwed.

Reminds me of: "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

John Steinbeck

I think there is a lot of people who just look up to rich people, no matter what. There is a strong cult of personality around Trump and Musk.

One of the interesting things is watching my upvote count change in this discussion. It reliably goes up during EU time and then goes back down during US time. It's amazing.

I think it's very enlightening when you recognize that every single place the US has been involved with setting up a new government we NEVER try to give them anything like our own system because it's so broken. Between the non representative Senate where one senator can block 59 others with no action (bring back the days when they had to actually filibuster a filibuster! Make it at least cost something to do.). And the mismatch between Congress and the Executive meaning barely anything gets done in the last couple decades for fear of actually giving you opponents a win at the cost of complete stagnation... It's a poorly designed system hacked together centuries ago to wrangle 13 barely united colonies.

We’ve been hearing for decades now that congress is hamstrung because “one side” refuses to cooperate. And yet, apparently when it comes to things like banning tik-tok, or renewing the various PATRIOT ACT provisions, they can get it done with barely a quibble.

Almost all of congress’ problems are of their own making. At what point do we stop accepting the excuse from half of congress that their hands are completely tied and start holding them accountable for fixing it.

cleric here, so excuse me for getting theological: but there should be (and at times truly has been, even if flawed) a shared understanding of the dignity and worth of every person. if we have that, then when one party or another is in power, they know that they are expected to care for minorities and for the stranger, and for the 'other side'.

we should be willing to vote for that.

that seems to be breaking down, throughout the western world.

we should never denigrate or infringe upon the personhood of anyone. we should take the higher road. and I'm not arguing that the oppressed should accept their oppression: I'm arguing that the oppressors should listen to the oppressed, and change.

I live in Australia – our constitution is a strange mashup of the UK model (which is certainly the primary influence), and things gleaned from the US. Something I observe is that we're more willing to admit the possibility of non-partisan spaces. For example, rather than electoral commissions being bipartisan, they're non-partisan, with partisan input. It is a serious matter if an official of such an organisation is found to have publicly stated political views. We have some people who make it their profession to be boring, and to simply uphold the precepts of society: including the rights of minorities. That's a serious sacrifice, made routinely by judges and senior public servants.

I find myself quite terrified that this is being eroded. I don't know how we turn it around: but I certainly speak up for the dignity of all through my ministry. We all ought to speak up.

My impression is that a focus on dignity and worth of every person has lead to a complete fixation on rights and wants of minorities and underprivileged groups.

What is missing from this point of view are individual responsibility and willingness to contribute. From what I see online some people a fed up with this approach and this has caused the current backlash.

Perhaps dignity needs to be complemented by responsibility and we all ought to keep both in mind?

Mx Goat added a note about their real-world qualifications for pitching in on this sort of question, presumably because their user name didn't really make it obvious why we might wish to listen to their thoughts on how a society should function for the benefit of all.

hah – yes, it's an old username, it's not possible to change username on here or I would :)

You can email hn@ycombinator.com the request and they may grant it, there are plenty of precedents.

oh, thanks :)

"has lead to a complete fixation on rights and wants of minorities and underprivileged groups."

While this may be a feeling based on what some choose to read or listen to, numbers don't back this up as reality. There are many fact-based cases I could make, but I'm going to just focus on top CEOs - https://www.researchgate.net/figure/White-male-CEOs-and-New-... indicates 85.8% of Fortune 500 CEO are white males, even though they are only ~38% of the population.

Adding back in white females, Fortune 500 CEOs are 92.6% white, even though they are 75.3% of the population (https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045224)

Flipping it for effect, only 5% of top CEOs are non-white even though those groups are 25% of the country.

One frustration that may of us disagree with the point you've articulated is that this perception is innacurate and largely a result of people self-selecting into "red-pill" type media ecosystems that are manipulative and spend greatly disproportionate amounts of time generating outrage and the perception of a crisis.

I disagree with this thought. I think it's really easy for people to react to things being done for other people (who may have it better or worse off than you) with a sense of abandonment. The reality of the situation is that some people do need more help than others, and a lack of empathy prevents us from seeing that. The idea that receiving help means that person has "given up" their responsibility to society is harmful to society itself in my opinion.

What is missing from this point of view are individual responsibility and willingness to contribute.

This sentiment you're speaking of is basically a racket created by conservative politicians and the media, designed to, as dang would say, "activate" the parts of the voter base. Since Reagan and probably before, they have hammered home catch phrases about "welfare queens" or whatever the buzzword of the day is with no substance behind it. It works for the base because they don't really know or make an attempt to know anyone being "othered" by the media or the politicians in this way.

In reality, it's people like Musk who get tons of tax payer money, privatize all of their gains and then contribute nothing back. They will then have the temerity to cry foul whenever someone tries to make them pay income tax, and they get their way, too, not because they work hard, but because they already have the capital.

Maybe a decade or so ago I saw some right wing news posts on Facebook that were talking about welfare recipients in Maine and how much it was costing the state. All the photos used in the article were of black people. This is in a state where 94% of the population is white and was right at the beginning of the influx of African asylum seekers, so the population of black people was still something like only 1.5%.

Clearly the article had a racist agenda and the comments were filled with people that had never heard of empathy. It didn't occur to anyone that a huge percentage of people in Maine receiving these benefits looked exactly like them. That was the day I deleted Facebook.

By government takeover do you mean the republicans controlling the senate, house, and presidency (and the supreme court generally being conservative)?

The American people voted them into office.

Power was transferred peacefully.

When the repubs are voted out we'll go through this "takeover" process again to whatever extent the dems can control the government.

These powers that are being utilized were in place with Biden, Obama, etc.

Trump hasn't taken anything new.

Honestly, people who don't like Trump will claim he's a dictator but it's mostly they don't like him and not that he's doing anything vastly different.

The theory goes that checks and balances have broken down because Congress can't stop Trump, but actually I think they simply don't want to.

It is because Trump is doing most of these things through executive orders and presidential appointments it is up to the judiciary to strike them down, not the congress.

To make this stuff permanent they would need to go through congress, then it is much harder for a future administration to repeal these changes.

Same deal, the judiciary could smack him down, and is to an extent, but the extent to which they aren't is down to them not wanting to. The checks and balances are intact, merely choosing not to check and balance as the democratic party wishes they would.

Congress could do all sorts of things to assert its power: it could call hearings, issue subpoenas, revoke or change appropriations, pass laws, file suit, threaten impeachment, actually impeach. The courts could get involved if the administration resisted or defied some of those actions too, of course.

They have no interest in doing any of that, though. Generally those in power in Congress support what Trump is doing and are happy to have it happen without them needing to lift a finger (or take the blame if there are problems). To the extent that they don't, they're also happy to rely on the courts and again not take the blame or blowback from their voters.

As the administration plows forward and gets a taste for operating outside the law, I do think you have a growing risk that even a Congress that wanted to resist would find itself unable. You see administration figures favorably citing arguments that they should ignore court orders even now, and some evidence that they're defying orders already.

Trump has attempted to rewrite the constitution with an executive order. He tried to explain that for over a century since the 14th amendment was passed that every single lawyer, judge, politician and citizen was unable to read the clear language of the law, and that only trump himself can truly divine the meaning of the words. That is what is vastly different. Here is a judge overseeing one of 14th amendment cases.

"It has become ever more apparent that to our president, the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals. The rule of law is, according to him, something to navigate around or simply ignore, whether that be for political or personal gain. Nevertheless, in this courtroom and under my watch, the rule of law is a bright beacon which I intend to follow. I said this two weeks ago, and I’ll say it again today. There are moments in the world’s history when people look back and ask, where were the lawyers? Where were the judges? In these moments, the rule of law becomes especially vulnerable. I refuse to let that beacon go dark today. As a judge, my job is not only to uphold the law, but to protect the rule of law itself. Birthright citizenship is a fundamental constitutional right. The 14th Amendment secures the blessings of liberty to our posterity by bestowing on all those born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction the rights of citizenship. We are all citizens, subject to the rule of law. No amount of policy, policy debate can change that. And the fact that the government has cloaked what is effectively a constitutional amendment under the guise of an executive order is equally unconstitutional. The Constitution is not something with which the government may play policy games. If the government wants to change the exceptional American grant of birthright citizenship, it needs to amend the Constitution. Its that’s how our Constitution works, and that’s how the rule of law works. Because the president’s order attempts to circumscribe this process, it is clearly unconstitutional. The preliminary injunction is granted on a nationwide basis." - Judge Coughenour, Thursday announcing his decision to enjoin the Birthright Citizenship Executive Order.

The judge could not be more clear about how what is happening now is vastly different from previous presidents. This is not just a 'policy difference'. this is a callous disregard for the rule of law.

Here is the judge's bio if you are inclined to think he is politically biased, https://www.wawd.uscourts.gov/judges/coughenour-bio

Isn't the various departments under the executive?

No. That would give the president the power of a king, something the founding fathers tried hard not to do.

Yes, and that's precisely the root of the problem here.

If you want government that's responsive to the will of the people, then it has to be either directly elected by the people, or accountable to someone elected by the people.

The way this is supposed to work constitutionally is that Congress sets policy by law, and the executive "take[s] Care that the Laws be faithfully executed". The executive branch does not set domestic policy at all; it just implements the policy Congress set.

But what happens when the scope of government grows so much to the point where Congress cannot possibly set all policy itself? What did happen is that Congress started creating agencies and granting them broad powers over certain aspects of domestic policy. It then, as the constitution provides, became the executive's job to implement those agencies. And as any software dev knows, there's a lot of wiggle room in implementation details.

So now we end up in a situation where the executive has a huge amount of control over these agencies which in turn have a huge amount of control over us.

> this kind of power couldn't be abused by subsequent administrations

I'm old enough to remember nearly identical rhetoric during Bill Clinton's presidency. I suspect that somebody older than me would remember the same even further back. Claiming that the president is abusing his power in irreversible ways just seems to me to be an American tradition.

The USA need to weaken the power of the executive. Remove the executive order power. Remove the pardon power.

And I'd even recommend that the individual president position be replaced by a group of people each of which gets voted in on different years. The monarch-like persona does not belong in a democracy.

I wouldn't trust these criminals with access to a staging database let alone access to data on every single America.

> Musk’s DOGE teen was fired by cybersecurity firm for leaking company secrets

https://fortune.com/2025/02/07/musks-doge-teen-edward-corist...

FYI: This guy already has a Wiki page. You can find it deep in the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Coristine

Why this unvetted person(s) has been allowed to even touch or access critical systems speaks volumes about the state of US government.

We are at the neoliberal endgame. Billionaires and multibillion dollar corporations received massive tax cuts during the first term, and this will likely continue under the second term. He’s going all out for this billionaire donors, buddies, and of course himself. We have a kleptocracy at the federal level with the intent to dismantle it as much as possible.

End game here is federal/people control end, and “network states” (balaji) model with corporations acting as governance over land, regions, and law.

Thiel and the rest of the billionaire class are the parasites that need to be purged. Whether we will recover after 4 years remains to be seen.

Wait until you find out about the grift that the billionaires you don't hear so much about have been pulling. I agree with your concerns around turbulence, but the audits of these shady government agencies needs to be done.

As usual, excellent reporting from Krebs.

D&D Alignment aside, one has to admit this kid has impressive skills and impressive energy. Sidestepping any argument whether criminals should be hired or have access to sensitive data, I do think he's too immature (demonstrably) to be allowed access to all this information.

Can't they add some fake data as canaries/watermarks to identify the perpetrator if the data gets leaked?

Thinkst does this

I used to hang around with the late 90s's versions of these guys. I grew up, had a family, have had a successful career. They went to prison. I expect the same will happen to this lot.

Almost all the top tier infosec professionals had a grey-hat history. The successful ones are not likely cringe posting on LinkedIn so you wouldn’t have any idea of the successes, only the failures.

Of course we all want to say : see, obedience and hard work pays off. I’m glad I didn’t do anything reckless. The truth is that the real successful people keep it to themselves.

Well here these kids are broadcating their black hats to the world. Seems like a good sign if this trend continues.

I hung around with some guys like this too. I wouldn't trust them with even a trivial amount of money. They threw some fun parties though.

I feel like the people I knew could be trusted with money, but were straight up dangerous to be around. Most of them were smart enough to make and keep friends, but still had a psychopathic streak.

Except in this case they’ll probably get sweeping presidential pardons

Won't save them from state prosecution, and it seems there is plenty to dig into here. For the types of crime Krebs is talking about, it's really easy to get charged in lots of states with lots of things, and the statute of limitations are fairly long depending on the crime.

Often the feds charge you first, but clearly not gonna happen here.

They seem too young and stupid to realize ahead of time how far people will dig into them.

The current president is pushing constitutional boundaries everywhere. I expect that we will see a big test of federal versus state authority soon.

DC is not a state.

You state this as if you think it contributes something, but i'm not sure what. I guess you think we are talking about crimes in DC, which you correctly state would not be chargeable in DC. But we aren't talking about that, we are talking about the crimes in the article, not about whatever is going on now. Those crimes can be charged anywhere there is a victim, or the person doing it was located, or ...

This lot has amassed a very large amount of political power and is part of the same group that's currently deconstructing the very mechanisms that were used to capture and imprison YOUR lot

Yes. But will they dismantle enough to beat the courts? Musk might, but I feel these kids will be thrown under the bus in the long term.

There is nothing to beat. Nothing illegal has been done. But sure as hell a lot of people seem to not understand how the government works are beating the drums of what is happening being illegal.

Musk has tried multiple times to alter the spending. Trump couldn't even do that. There is definitely illegal activity.

But no need to argue this. IANAL, and Musks', like, 8 lawsuits (I've lost count on how many people sued him this month alone) will get to the bottom of that.

You don't have to be a lawyer to listen to one

> “So many of these things are so wildly illegal that I think they’re playing a quantity game and assuming the system can’t react to all this illegality at once,” David Super, an administrative law professor at Georgetown Law School, said of Musk’s machinations

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/02/04/elon-musk...

So it's a DoS attack?

DOGE has put large numbers of civil servants on administrative leave in violation of congressionally mandated civil service protections.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/03/us/politics/musk-federal-...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/02/04/elon-musk...

Not all of them did. Beto O'Rourke is doing okay for himself.

I feel like the late 90's hacker ethos was completely different than what the kids coming up now a days are bent to. Sure there was always the element of illegality, digital trespass, pirating, etc., but now the focus seems to be much more squarely on things like swatting, DDOSing, and scamming.

Here's my attempt at contributing something meaningful to this discussion, since I'm tired of seeing the same kinds of responses to these threads over and over again. Feel free to disagree, the idea is to try to move the conversation past knee-jerk reactions.

This is an FAQ of sorts.

Q1: What's wrong with making the government more efficient? My tax dollars are being wasted by Agency X, spending billions of dollars a year on who knows what.

A1: There's nothing wrong with making the government more efficient, but (1) there are good and bad ways of cutting spending (and DOGE, IMO, is really bad), (2) the federal budget is massive [1], 1B or even 10B USD is practically peanuts, so a real cost-benefit analysis is critical while knee-jerk "that's too much money" reactions are usually short-sighted, and (3) the Trump administration is planning to spend FAR MORE on massive tax cuts - a government that's serious about reducing the deficit would not spend 5-10 trillion USD on tax cuts.

Q2: What's wrong with how DOGE is trying to cut spending? Government is filled with red tape, and they're taking a hacker approach to circumvent the things that prevented past governments from fixing things.

A2: Any time a large group of people need to agree on something, it takes time. Small-d democratic governance doesn't prioritize getting things done quickly in normal times, it prioritizes reaching consensus and respecting individual liberties. Occasionally war-time governments will temporarily suspend normal procedures (and rights), but there's good reason why things (mostly) go back to normal after the war ends. And whatever you may be seeing in your news feeds, America is NOT AT WAR.

A2 (pt. 2): The HN community usually (and rightly, IMO) gets very upset and concerned when companies or the government infringe on our privacy. The situation this article brings to light seems analogous to a big tech company bringing in consultants who are later found to have cybercriminal connections, without any safeguards or auditing around access of employee or user data. If that happened, there would be a huge uproar.

A2 (pt. 3): Except, it's worse, because the government is not the same as any old company. The US government was designed with checks and balances precisely to avoid concentrating too much power in the hands of any individual, including the president. Remember, America was establishing a democracy in a time when most countries were monarchies - a monarchical president was something the framers desperately wanted to avoid. There's too much to get into here, but this ongoing story is not just about privacy/security, but also about breaking legal and constitutional safeguards.

Q3: You admit that the federal budget is massive, so it's obvious that it's spending too much money. Sometimes it's hard to fix an old system with lots of parts - we need a ground-up rewrite! Cut first, then add spending back later - what's wrong with that?

A3: What's wrong with that is that people will get hurt. Ordinary people (no, not "woke leftists" - they're real people) will lose their jobs. People who were getting HIV treatment will stop getting treatment. Poor children will lose school lunches. And on it goes. To play along with the analogy, even if you think the only option is a ground-up rewrite, you don't run around the data center unplugging machines that you don't like. But that's also buying into a false premise. The federal budget as a percentage of GDP really hasn't grown all that much [2], and a huge part of that spending is on things that are really hard to cut (because most people don't want to cut it): social security, Medicare, defense.

Q4: Well, tax cuts aren't spending, it's just giving money back to the people! It's too bad you want the US government to spend so much, but that's my tax dollars you're talking about.

A4: Well, unfortunately, we live in a society, one that has historically agreed through democratic processes to care for its elderly, (sometimes) its sick or disabled, and (occasionally) its poor, because our ancestors wisely realized that those are elements of a stable societ where its people can flourish. Feel free to disagree.

Q5: Why report on the identities of these young people? And what's wrong with being young - many startup founders are college dropouts, right?

A5: Founding a startup isn't the same as running a mature company, and even running a mature company isn't necessarily the best preparation for civil service IMO. Youth has its advantages - fearlessness, energy - but wisdom comes with age. On the other hand, youth are impressionable, and can be easily led (or rather, misled) into doing illegal and/or immoral things. That's a pattern we've seen throughout history, and I see no reason to believe that the folks at DOGE are any different. As for making their names and identities public, they were the ones who made the decision to participate in actions that affect millions of people. Anonymity is for Internet commentators, not for supposed public servants cutting off funding to aid workers or scientists (you know, the actual public servants).

Q6: Why is this on Hacker News?

A6: See A2, pt. 2. There's no surprise that a news about hackers in on Hacker News. Also, should Elon Musk only be on Hacker News when it's about Tesla or SpaceX, and not when he's off trying to shut off funding to half the government? If you agree with him, fine - let's have a discussion. Don't flag kill everything that's reporting on what might be one of the most consequential events of this century. (Thanks for giving this a chance, dang.)

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FGEXPND [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S

I enjoyed reading that. i don't have anything to add, but i wanted to ensure you at least got a thank you for putting in the time to write all that in the way you did.

You've basically put together an FAQ that summarizes the talking points from one party. I'm sure it's quite helpful if people are looking to understand the views of that party, but I'd hardly call it an authoritative FAQ on the issue at hand.

> A1: There's nothing wrong with making the government more efficient, but (1) there are good and bad ways of cutting spending (and DOGE, IMO, is really bad), (2) the federal budget is massive [1], 1B or even 10B USD is practically peanuts, so a real cost-benefit analysis is critical while knee-jerk "that's too much money" reactions are usually short-sighted, and (3) the Trump administration is planning to spend FAR MORE on massive tax cuts - a government that's serious about reducing the deficit would not spend 5-10 trillion USD on tax cuts.

You don't actually provide much rationale or provide a broad perspective on the issues at hand.

"DOGE is bad" because we should have a small d "democracy" approach. This completely ignores the Constitution and division of powers with the President in control of the Executive and all the agencies that report to it. Yes, Congress controls spending, and the Supreme Court will likely need to rule on exactly where the line divides between Executive/Legislative powers, but it's not accurate to say that spending cuts should be a small d democracy exercise.

Then you mention how 1B or 10B is practically peanuts (this is a talking point directly from one of the political parties) which isn't a great argument at all because DOGE isn't cutting 1B or 10B and stopping, the intent is to cut hundreds examples of 1B or 10B in spending, which is certainly not peanuts.

Then you mention how "tax cuts are bad and you wouldn't do that if you were serious about the deficit", but that's not true at all. Removing wasteful spending is 100% a goal in and of itself. We have no idea how much wasteful spending will be cut, and if we reduce it by $2T, and Trump decides to cut taxes by $1T, we're still reducing the deficit. That is also a "policy choice", not some universal rule that you can never cut taxes and be financially responsible.

As I said in the beginning, "feel free to disagree", so thanks for taking me up on that. As for coming across as one-sided, I didn't feel the need to represent both sides - I don't think I can fairly represent your point of view, and that's the value in having a discussion after all. However, I disagree with your implication that my viewpoint is partisan. Truth is neither Democratic nor Republican. If the facts line up on one side, then perhaps one side is right on a particular issue (while they could still be wrong on another issue). Again, feel free to disagree about what the facts are, but let's not make this about partisanship.

As to your response, I'll try to describe your points and then reply. Let me know if I mischaracterized anything you said.

1. Spending cuts shouldn't necessarily be a small-d democratic exercise.

Yes, they should. I am well aware that the President is the chief of the executive branch and its agencies. On the other hand, these agencies are also established by laws passed by Congress (e.g., the Department of Education was established by a 1979 law [1]). Sure, judges can rule on the division of powers; judges can also issue injunctions to halt what the administration is trying to do, until it has had time to consider its rulings. In the meantime, DOGE is still in government servers, and it's not even clear to me if DOGE will always follow court orders.

And for the purposes of discussion, instead of solely appealing to the future authority of the courts, we can also reason about what happens if all of this is deemed constitutional. If Congress can establish agencies, through laws signed by the Nth president, but the N+1-th president can simply ignore Congress and tell the agency to cease and desist... what exactly is the role of Congress?

And pray tell, why can't spending cuts be a democratic exercise? Trump is a democratically elected president with a House and Senate controlled by his own party. He can absolutely pass spending cuts that are agreed to by Congress, especially given that no congress member in the Republican party seems to have any backbone to stand up against President Trump. Here's my answer: it will be long, drawn out, and politically damaging, because too many people will have a chance to realize what these spending cuts are really taking away. Trump, Musk, and the crew are trying to pull a fast one on the American people, and this kind of anti-democratic maneuver is exactly what the framers were worried about when they wrote the Constitution in the first place.

2. DOGE wants to cut 1B or 10B times 100.

Umm, okay, good luck. Here's a breakdown of YTD US federal spending according to treasury.gov [2]: - Social security (21%) - National defense (15%) - Health (14%) - Net interest (13%) - Medicare (13%) - Income security, i.e., various financial assistance programs for the poor (9%) - Veteran benefits and services (6%) - Everything else (9%)

Cut "everything else", and that's ~600B off the budget. Great. See A1 in my original post: that's not going to pay for the tax cut Trump wants. And what do you give up? All science funding? All "education, training, employment, and social services"? (All while AI might start to displace more and more jobs?)

Or should we cut one of the other items? Sure, let's hear some proposals. My original point was, there's a cost-benefit analysis to be made, and DOGE is circumventing that cost-benefit discussion completely undemocratically. Spending 10B or even 100B isn't "too much" or "too little" unless we know what we're buying.

3. You can cut taxes and still trim the deficit.

Sure, please do the math and show me how this is going to happen. Where are $2T in spending cuts going to come from? I can reduce power usage in a datacenter by 50% by randomly unplugging half the machines, but I'm pretty sure that will get me fired. Show me what you think should be cut, and we can have a discussion. And again, why can't this go through a Republican- (and in reality, Trump-) controlled Congress?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Education_Organi... [2] https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

> I disagree with your implication that my viewpoint is partisan. Truth is neither Democratic nor Republican. If the facts line up on one side, then perhaps one side is right on a particular issue (while they could still be wrong on another issue). Again, feel free to disagree about what the facts are, but let's not make this about partisanship.

"Facts line up on one side"? I didn't see much facts, I just saw what one party is repeating again and again when interviewed. Saying cutting small amounts is nothing while factual, is an attempt at arguing any small cuts are worthless, which isn't true. Saying money is "spent" on tax cuts is not factual it's an opinion, since you're presupposing taking less money from someone is "spending" on them when it's their money in the first place.

But I agree, let's not make this about partisanship.

> And for the purposes of discussion, instead of solely appealing to the future authority of the courts, we can also reason about what happens if all of this is deemed constitutional.

I find it funny to say "appeal to the authority of courts", when in fact the court are the authority. If they decide the President has the powers to impound wasteful spending, then that's what the Constitution says. That's how things are done until the Constitution is changed (or the court rule differently).

> Here's my answer: it will be long, drawn out, and politically damaging, because too many people will have a chance to realize what these spending cuts are really taking away. Trump, Musk, and the crew are trying to pull a fast one on the American people, and this kind of anti-democratic maneuver is exactly what the framers were worried about when they wrote the Constitution in the first place.

Every change the government tries to do is a long, drawn out and politically damaging (look at ACA!). I think the American people have looked at Congress and the President "try" for decades and decades to rein in government spending and any approach the relies on Congress agreeing to substantial cuts has resulted in trimming around the edges and usually more spending added at the same time.

It's one of the reasons why Trump was elected. He's willing to try something different. I see lots of people on HN recoil at the stories of the DOD failing audit after audit. You're not going to fix an almost 1T budget that can't pass audit with a few nips and tucks here and there, it's going to require radical action to fix.

And I don't agree that DOGE is undemocratic (the courts will make the decision in the end) and I would argue the framers would spin in their graves if they saw what the government had become and abdication of powers by the various branches.

> Umm, okay, good luck. Here's a breakdown of YTD US federal spending according to treasury.gov [2]: - Social security (21%) - National defense (15%) - Health (14%) - Net interest (13%) - Medicare (13%) - Income security, i.e., various financial assistance programs for the poor (9%) - Veteran benefits and services (6%) - Everything else (9%)

DOGE has already said it's going to take DOD and CMS (healthcare), so that's another 29% that can be cut. And presumably once we move to budget surpluses, that 13% were't spending on interest won't be quite so large any more. Suddenly we are talking real change to government spending.

> Sure, please do the math and show me how this is going to happen. Where are $2T in spending cuts going to come from?

Where does the $2T come from? I'm reading $3T over 10 years, or $300B per year, or a 6% reduction in federal revenues in 2024.

Thanks for the discussion, and for agreeing to not let partisanship get in the way. This will be my last reply in this thread, but I'll still check back and read your reply if you'd like to get in the last word.

> I find it funny to say "appeal to the authority of courts", when in fact the court are the authority.

You're taking my words out of context and omitting a critical "future". My point is threefold:

(1) Courts are already issuing injunctions (e.g., [1]) and in at least one case having to double down because the administration is failing to comply with an earlier injunction [2], which indicates which way they are leaning.

(2) Because the courts haven't made any sort of final ruling yet, there's no way to appeal to their present authority (apart from 1), and trying to appeal to their future authority is rather silly.

(3) The courts are indeed the authority, but relying on being able to say "the courts said so" is still a fallacious appeal to authority [3]. We should respect the courts and what judges have to say, but we can also analyze their thought processes critically. We also know that even the Supreme Court has been egregiously wrong in the past (e.g., [4]), never mind lower courts. (Yes, I know this applies to my first point, which is why there are the second and third points. :))

All this to say, you're dodging my question of how DOGE defunding these agencies could possibly be constitutional.

> Every change the government tries to do is a long, drawn out and politically damaging...

I'm not sure what point you were trying to make here. So let me tell you where I think we agree. I agree that Congress has been shamefully dysfunctional for the past, oh, 15 years. I agree there's waste in the government - certainly in the DoD. I agree Trump was elected because the people wants something different. And I agree, the framers would be horrified at the current state of Congress.

Where we disagree is that I see the current administration making the worst assault on the American democratic system since perhaps 1861, with DOGE being the tip of the spear. I too want a more effective, less wasteful, less deadlocked government. But not an autocratic one. The great danger is that autocracy is appealing precisely because it can appear at first to be more efficient, more decisive, cutting through all that democratic nonsense. Never ends well, though.

Sure, we can hope the courts settle these debates. Curious, though, why Vice President Vance and Elon Musk feel the need to already start laying the groundwork for ignoring court orders. [5][6]

> And presumably once we move to budget surpluses...

Thanks for giving me a laugh (not really, I'm still feeling quite grim). Last year's deficit was $1.8T. Tack on some tax cuts and we're looking at $2T or more this year before spending cuts.

> Where does the $2T come from?

That's what Musk was promising, wasn't it? It's also the size of the current deficit. Apologies if I was being confusing there - I was referring to the promised spending cuts, not the size of the anticipated tax cut. I hope you'll agree that if Trump cuts taxes by $300B and cuts spending by, say, $500B, that's not a meaningful dent in the deficit.

Anyway, time for closing arguments - I'd like to think these as fact-based arguments, but you'll probably accuse me of only offering opinions regardless. :)

- Shutting off funding to agencies established by Congress, where the money has already been appropriated by Congress, is unlawful. There have been multiple injunctions against Trump and DOGE, and they are already floating the idea of defying court orders. It remains to be seen how judges rule in the end, but the law and the constitution are there for all to read; I've made my arguments, but I've yet to hear yours (besides "I don't agree").

- US federal spending has hovered around 20% of GDP since ~1975 (see my original post). Running a persistent and growing deficit is not great (just my opinion - some economists think it's fine) but it's not a five-alarm fire that justifies unconstitutional actions.

- Letting unvetted members of Musk's circle get access to sensitive code and data carries a lot of risks that are neither justified by their goals (see previous point) nor by their current results.

- Based on the top-level breakdown of the federal budget, it's hard to see how this administration can turn a budget surplus without raising taxes, never mind if they go through with cutting taxes. Defense, health, and "everything else" as I mentioned adds up to 38%, or about $2.6T. If you think we can dial defense spending down to $0...

At the end of the day, honestly, I hope I'm wrong, and history proves you right. But I'm not going to hold my breath.

[1] https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/court-filings/state-of...

[2] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.rid.589...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford

[5] https://x.com/JDVance/status/1888607143030391287

[6] https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1888403715767337282

Very well written, and more or less aligns with my own thinking.

This should be the top comment, thank you. I think the key message is that running a government is very different from working in tech or running a startup, and that’s because a government has to (at least try to) act democratically whereas a company does not.

I guess as hackers we instinctively distrust authority, so it is difficult for us to defer to experts in the government and accept that they might know a lot that we don’t.

I don’t understand why the article is flagged as per Dang’s posts. Is it because a lot of HN folks think DOGE is good? I’ve seen some supporting tweets from senior YC people. Or is it just because people are worried posts like this will cause flame wars and be unproductive?

Aside: Some of the DOGE supporting posts from YC have made me sad. Would appreciate it if anyone can provide a perspective that reconciles those posts with a positive view of YC.

tesla.sexy contains the following text, which is slightly concerning:

  love your fate
  
  become your own ubermensch
  
  you are the master of your soul
  
  be kind
  
  there is so much to love, so much to live for
  
  follow your heart, ok?

Why is this concerning? Note, it seems to me like their reference to "ubermensch" is to the Nietzschean definition [0] and not the Nazi remix.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Übermensch

There are quite a few too many accidental Nazi references these days imo ...

Its happening alongside the (yet unsubstantiated) rumor that Tesla engineers as a group would face a picture of Maye Musk each morning.

None of us live in an ideal vacuum and this word has been tainted by its use in nazi ideology. Whomever wrote that has a responsibility to know what the words they use mean.

The combination of symbols is not random either. For example: taken individually, I'm willing to believe we're talking about Kantian Weltanschauung, Nietzschean Übermenschen, Nordic runes, medieval wolfsangel, Roman salute, or east-Asian swastika. But if I notice several at once, I will become quite suspicious.

These kids seem to have been indoctrinated into a cult of Curtis Yarvin. They love talking about Nietzschean and Yarvinist ideas like this one and cathedrals. This same creep had a quote on his Twitter bio that reads "there are cathedrals everywhere for those with eyes to see". If you don't get the reference, do some research on Yarvin. I think these people legitimately have dangerous intents.

I really hate reading Yarvin, who I feel is an extremist niche weirdo, but fellow geeks keep referring me to him. Got a tldr? What's wrong with seeing cathedrals everywhere?

> Why is this concerning?

If I saw this on my dinner table one morning I'd assume someone committed suicide.

I don't particularly know where I stand at the moment, haven't had enough time to read through it all, but at the moment I agree that the minimum of some sort of security clearance seems prudent. Doesn't seem that inhibiting either way.

How do I access this "Com"? I'm curious.

I might suggest that if you have to ask then you shouldn't be going there.

Probably by doing something that gets you an invite.

and if you want to be a good network/security/intelligence person, isn't this basically a requirement?

this is the kind of ground that people SHOULD be covering if they want to pursue a career of this nature

it doesn't make him a bad person, or even a criminal the internet is just the wild west and hacking is prevalent, long live the people who do this because it's needed

So from what I can understand, the new regime doesn't trust the outgoing one and wants to use its own independent people to look for signs that they have been unfairly treated by the govt and/or its institutions? Would this be a reasonable observation? I can make a few guesses about how they would react if they could compile such a list of grievances. Congrats to krebs for this article.

Scroll to the bottom of this page guys, the best comments are greyed out or flagged.

> Musk’s DOGE team has gained access to a truly staggering amount of personal and sensitive data on American citizens, moving quickly to seize control over databases at the U.S. Treasury, the Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Education, and the Department of Health and Human Resources, among others.

As an European, how is this not considered a coup d'etat? From my mindset, right or wrong, that is absolutely unthinkable to happen within a normal functional European country.

This is not an illegal unseating of our government's leadership. Our leadership is the one facilitating it.

The more appropriate parallel would be a massive data leak. Although so far we don't have any confirmed cases of protected data being leaked to anyone who was not given access. But it might just be a matter of time.

I know it's like screaming into the void when there's a 1000+ comments but...

You remember the end of Gatsby where Nick turns up at the mansion and some sinister characters have the run of the place and you-know-who is floating in the pool out back...

This is what the US looks like right now. Party's over, no guests ever again. Crims have moved in instead.

It looks like the crims are being kicked out at the moment.

That’s because you’ve been lied to.

Orrrr maybe you’ve been lied to. Which you have been based on all the data that’s come out over the years.

I think this makes the picture quite clear. The only criteria for their selection was their ability and willingness to exfil data as fast as possible. In order to facilitate the trump blitz, as much technical action as possible needed to happen in a timeframe constrained by court procedural mechanisms.

This is why it is pretty frustrating. If they actually wanted to audit things, they'd bring in forensic accountants. Instead, they brought in "script kiddies". You aren't finding evidence of crimes after 2 days with SQL access.

I must disagree, as our team recently encountered a critical system failure potentially stemming from internal misconduct. While our personnel are typically required to possess advanced qualifications and extensive experience, the urgency of the situation necessitated immediate action despite my relative lack of formal credentials compared to my esteemed colleagues.

Given the time-sensitive nature of the incident, I took the initiative to secure comprehensive system logs, including bash histories, without prior authorization. I was able to identify the root cause: a correctly formatted command executed in an inappropriate context. This proactive approach, while unconventional, was instrumental in mitigating further disruption and expediting resolution.

The root cause was identified, and an effective remediation plan was developed within minutes.

No body cares that your coworker fat fingered some bash or SQL command. We care that kids with questionable morals have access to systems that usually require months of investigations to access.

DOGE and their laptops are probably secured by whoever picked them up from Best Buy for Elon.

This comment is almost certainly chatgpt.

Rewritten, yes.

Whenever I see AI-generated word salads like this, my mind automatically discredits it and skims over it.

In my opinion, thinking that AI does a good job of expressing your intent and opinions for you is as flawed as thinking script kiddies with a history of leaking information from their employer deserve a role in breaking and fixing sensitive mission-critical federal systems.

Is this a long way of saying you found someone with root access on the server accidentally typed `rm -rf` ?

they don't care about forensics, they care about exfil'ing it to Russia and China, who will do the heavy lifting.

It's a given that any 20-something tech bro is going to have a nickname 'big balls', just goes with the territory. I fail to see what the outrage is about. He's just following orders of Daddy Musk.

Ignoring the age of the people involved, the idea that what is happening is in the name of "efficiency" is laughable.

Maybe these departments are all wasteful but there are better ways achieve "efficiency" than just shutting down departments without having plans about what is going to happen afterwards.

What is efficient about shutting down departments without notice or without looking at the impact or having alternatives besides just not providing those services. How about seeing if there are better ways to do the same things before just shutting down departments? Or looking at the areas of the government that have more significant budgets? Or considering that there is more to efficiency than money?

I think it’s because leadership at large organisations doesn’t actually understand how things work on the ground, and also knows they’ll never be able to.

A blanket ban on newspaper subscriptions is a pretty easy way to save a few million dollars with minimal effort and relatively low risk.

Actually evaluating whether each employee who gets one needs one along with potential subscription renegotiations could be theoretically better, but requires a great deal of managerial time and talent in the context of a large organisation.

Why are high level figures in these departments just letting them walk in and have access? Tell them to kick rocks until they have proper clearances.

USAID employees did and were fired for it.

Refuse to leave then. It is the entire point of civil disobedience. Make a spectacle of being dragged out.

I don't mean this negatively toward you in any way, but it is easy to say when you aren't in that situation.

You're right but I also didn't swear an oath to protecting the country.

Because Elon has the authority of the President who can override clearances.

US government was simply never designed for scenarios like this.

Arguably it was designed explicitly for the chief executive having control of the executive branch we just haven’t had executives with this level of interest in making major changes in 40+ years. Was somewhat common to shake up the scope of the federal gov’t when the bureaucracy was much smaller in the 1800’s and early 1900’s

You’re right that previous governments did not just recklessly disband entire agencies based on the wishes of an unelected billionaire and a bunch of teenagers.

I wonder why.

Correct. It’s hard for people to imagine but the country functioned very differently before FDR and before him Lincoln. We’ve lived in FDRs government for 75 years and it’s served well for a good deal of that time. But nothing lasts for ever and even wine doesn’t continue to get better forever.

You could argue there have been 4 Republics - articles of confederation, Washington, Lincoln, FDR marking the turning point. The world has changed a lot. It feels like the time is right to rethink the federal governments scope and function and how it relates to her people and the world.

I'd rather a bunch of corrupt oligarchs not be the ones behind the change turning the US into a different "network-states"

You are talking about a time before social programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

People have higher expectations of what their government should be able to do.

It’s not about going back. It’s about advancing and changing the current state to better work for the people.

We have a system designed for this. It's called Congress.

DOGE is usurping Congress' role.

The last thing we need is a "new republic" designed by someone like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel.

So.... The US government was designed to -deny- the executive branch oversight and answers from the departments and agencies that the exutive branch runs?

Or it was designed such that the exutive branch may not appoint or use independent organisations or consultants to perform audits?

I dont think that is accurate.

Not sure what you are talking about. Audits happen all the time in government.

What is extraordinary is doing so with (a) no thought to privacy or security, (b) using teenagers with no security clearances, (c) by a billionaire who seems to just be going after his enemies e.g. USAID was investigating SpaceX.

> with no security clearances

Everyone has the necessary clearance. People need to stop treating clearances like a magic totem, the executive can grant access like candy if they wish, and often does when expedient.

DC is organized around minimizing the need for a formal clearance/access process because it is slow. Between the executive carte blanche and various title authorities with their well-understood loopholes, you can often just do things.

> Everyone has the necessary clearance

Then why did a Federal Judge just restrain DOGE from their work because of a violation of the Privacy Act: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-and-18-states-sue-trum...

> the executive can grant access like candy if they wish

That doesn't mean doing so it can't be a problem when they do. This article is exactly why doing so is problematic and justifies the existence of the clearance process.

If they hadn't circumvented the process, the FBI would have found this information instead of Wired, and it could have been handled properly instead of in the public by the media. Going around this process opens people up to being blackmailed or extorted -- what if foreign intelligence found leverage over one of these people before our media and used it to extract government secrets? We don't even know if these people have been trained to handle classified and sensitive information. Do they even know their own rights and responsibilities?

It was designed for this. The safeguard is supposed to be Congress protecting their own powers out of self interest. They aren't. That's the where the "framers" screwed up.

I think the problem goes deeper than that, for two reasons.

The first is the obvious one. Congress is captured by a bunch of ineffectual assholes that either don't care enough to stop this or actively support ceding power to the executive.

But the second is that Congress has no actual enforcement mechanism. There are a few Congress members that are trying to stop this, but the executive can just play games with the court and lock out Congress members from any sort of oversight. If the executive refuses to abide by the laws of the country, who has control to stop it?

> If the executive refuses to abide by the laws of the country, who has control to stop it?

Three years ago J.D. Vance and others were already thinking about this and anticipating court cases:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right...

To quote the article: “I think Trump is going to run again in 2024,” [Vance] said. “I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.” “And when the courts stop you,” he went on, “stand before the country, and say—” he quoted Andrew Jackson, giving a challenge to the entire constitutional order—“the chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.”

They've been preparing themselves to ignore judicial rulings and they may well do that.

And he's staying true to form:

https://www.newsweek.com/jd-vance-comment-questioning-court-...

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gx3j5k63xo

John Arnold, Meta board, asked this question: https://bsky.app/profile/vermontgmg.bsky.social/post/3lhs632...

---

My two cents. Congress has a singular enforcement mechanism: impeachment.

If the Congress refuses? A constitution doesn't envision the government ceasing. What happens next requires a lot of imagination because it's not written in any text.

There's an example of Principate from when the Roman republic ceased and the empire began. It had the veneer of a republic, and maybe it fooled some people, I don't really know. But today it's considered an empire, not a republic, for the > 250 year period of the Principate. It was an autocracy, with an emperor. The senators were decoration.

> Why are high level figures in these departments just letting them walk in

The better question is what are all the Congressmen doing cozily on Capitol Hill. Like, not one has walked over to these departments to try and physically stop these kids from gaining the keys to the kingdom?

(EDIT: Whoops, they have.)

https://www.newsweek.com/democrats-blocked-education-departm...

Thank you—missed this. I’d still say there is an escalation step missing in trying to stop the DOGE bros from entering the premises, up to and including getting arrested.

Look at Seoul. The balls on those lawmakers saved their democracy. I’m not seeing that strength or resolve in the Congress anywhere.

Resistance in democracy needs to be well-timed. Too early, and you don't have a critical mass of force to oppose the ruling regime and appear unreasonable. Too late, and it's too late to do anything.

The right moment is only obvious in retrospect.

This, plus you must consider the risks of taking bold action that can be framed as insurrectionary. I don't see a lot of haste to immediately and unequivocally declare the elected President, a usurper. Some would say the trouble is, the man got large numbers of legitimate votes under false pretenses, in a system where such an act is expected to lead to buyers' remorse and midterm losses through the political system.

Instead, we have whatever this is. Doesn't look like it's complying with the normal process of the political system, which is designed to punish an electoral bait-and-switch. Looks more like Russian elections and populace-management.

Hungary's PM Viktor Orban gave speeches to Republicans to teach them how to destroy democracy so it is more like Hungary than Russia

The democratic leadership has allegedly advised the members on congress to not get arrested, as they are already in the minority. Given too many arrests, the republican majority will be able to easily pass nearly anything through congress.

Now it's my understanding that members of congress can't be truly arrested during session; so the above argument doesn't entirely stick for me.

I don't know, keeping people in prison definitely sounds like an official act for which POTUS is now immune.

> Given too many arrests, the republican majority will be able to easily pass nearly anything through congress

Source? The House isn’t close enough to a supermajority, and the Senate goes by actual votes.

They did and they were not allowed into the building.

Regarding USAID: That is under Rubio now, who was confirmed unanimously. So I suspect it will be resurrected in some form and continue at least regime change operations.

MAGA outlet Tucker Carlson had Mike Benz on this week. Mike Benz had been vocally opposed to all CIA or foreign interference programs during the election campaigns. This week he recanted, talked without his usual eloquence and said that USAID is not all that bad! So MAGA is being reprogrammed.

If nothing really changes, the Democrats (who were avid neocons in the past four years) won't mind. Which could explain the meek protests of Schumer etc.

The treasury story is way more difficult, we have to wait for more information.

> Regarding USAID: That is under Rubio now

Almost certainly not. The President can’t reorganise e.g. the CIA and Federal Reserve under HHS, for example.

Where I agree with you is in USAID not being politically worth the fight. And after the last 8 years (and Biden’s twilight) it’s hard for Democrats to argue for the rule of law per se.

Almost certainly not. The President can’t reorganise e.g. the CIA and Federal Reserve under HHS, for example.

Any sentence that begins with "The President can't" can safely be disregarded. The executive branch has all the lawyers, all the guns, virtually all the media, and (now) all the money.

Everything we were taught was an ironclad law of American constitutional governance has turned out to be a "guideline," a "custom," a "tradition," a "gentlemens' agreement," or "nothing that my pet judges can't fix."

> Any sentence that begins with "The President can't" can safely be disregarded. The executive branch has all the lawyers, all the guns, virtually all the media, and (now) all the money.

Not to mention the blanket ruling from the supreme court that says "if the president does it, it's legal."

Poor Nixon, just 60 years too early

> The executive branch has all the lawyers,

Judges do exist, and they matter more than any lawyer.

> virtually all the media

How does the executive branch control the media?

If you weren't paying attention when people like Patrick Soon-Shiong and Jeff Bezos were elbowing each other out of the way to pay tribute to Trump (1) -- or when CBS 'settled' a lawsuit that was widely seen as a certain win for them (2) in exchange for a $15M donation to the Trump Presidential Library, matching an earlier contribution in the form of an unnecessary 'settlement' from ABC, you probably aren't going to pay any attention to this comment, either. But for the record:

1: https://www.npr.org/2025/01/04/nx-s1-5248299/cartoonist-quit...

2: https://www.npr.org/2025/02/06/nx-s1-5288181/why-cbs-stands-...

Also, bear in mind the history of America's most popular cable news network. Fox News is the propaganda arm of the Republican Party, and that was always the idea. After Watergate took down Nixon, the GOP swore the same oath that the Holocaust victims did: Never again. Never again would something like Watergate be allowed to play out in an unbiased, uncontrolled media environment. Ailes and Murdoch answered the call (https://theweek.com/articles/880107/why-fox-news-created) and the rest is history.

From Wikipedia:

>Statute law also places USAID under "the direct authority and policy guidance of the Secretary of State".[4]

> Statute law also places USAID under "the direct authority and policy guidance of the Secretary of State".[4]

Source?

Why do we care so much about classified information? Why is there a reverence for our government hiding information from its people? Why shouldn't the government operate out in the open in all ways?

Something something terrorism, but i don't buy it. terrorism is the scapegoat for which we have massively eroded privacy and rights, in the same way that CSAM is the scapegoat for trying to ban encryption every 5 years.

They don't just have classified information. There is a lot of sensitive personal information on you and me in these databases. Information that can be used for blackmail and other nefarious purposes.

Maybe the government shouldn’t keep this information on its citizens without probable cause?

They didn’t publish it all for everyone to use, did they? Not much transparency here, since all they did was steal it and use selectively for their purposes.

They remove the people who resist, like this: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/31/us/politics/david-lebryk-...

Because the DOGE people have the proper clearances and authority. There seems to be a lot of confusion on this point. The executive branch can immediately grant clearance and access to random people at their discretion, and they routinely do in every administration. You don't even need to apply for a security clearance, never mind hold one. If the DNI wants to read in a Starbucks barista on the secret space alien bunker program, they can do that.

Voting for the President is in part voting for this. They don't need to ask permission from the bureaucracy nor can they be impeded by process because it is a Constitutional authority.

Americans really do seem to know nothing about how the Federal government works. This kind of drama happens every four years, they've just never paid attention before. Every administration change brings in a coterie of poorly vetted people like this and gives them the keys to the kingdom. Dialing up the outrage media this particularly time is manipulative. I've been close enough to this action across several administration changes to be pretty blasé about what has occurred so far.

Nothing to see here folks. All very normal. Remember aliens? Aren’t they cool. Don’t y’all remember when O’biden gave all those illegals access to the Jade Helm. What a blasé coterie of manipulative lamestream media.

Say what you will about the cuts, you can't have people with zero clearance being given access to all of this data.

The president has absolute authority on who has access to classified data (with the exception of some nuclear secrets)

They probably meant “should,” not can’t.

That's presidential fiat, not clearance.

No, that isn't correct.

Clearance is a process and it hasn't been obeyed, and the ultimate purpose of it is to both audit potential recipients and train them in security protocols. The president can't elude it, though he can pardon them for federal crimes, which they're committing a lot of.

No that isn't correct.

The authority of classification rests solely with the executive branch and the policies are established by EO.

A President can absolutely classify and declassify whatever he wants. This has been done a million times.

"It is true that the President has broad authority to classify and declassify, derived from the President’s dual role “as head of the Executive Branch and as Commander in Chief” of the armed forces. The “authority to classify and control access to information bearing on national security... flows primarily from this constitutional investment of power in the President and exists quite apart from any explicit congressional grant" ...

"Finally, as the district court recognized, the suggestion that courts can declassify information raises separation of powers concerns.... such determinations encroach upon the President’s undisputedly broad authority in the realm of national security."

- The New York Times v. Central Intelligence Agency, No. 18-2112 (2d Cir. 2020)

The only reason the material was not considered declassified in that case was because the possible declassification was "inadvertent" etc etc.

Even that ruling does not go far enough, and I'd be willing to give 10:1 odds SCOTUS would give Pres. full and complete powers over classification

You are technically correct.

What you are overlooking is the underhanded plays executed by a certain political party to allow one president during one 4-year term to appoint 3 supreme court lackeys in order to ensure no matter what bs went before them, they'd rule in his favor.

The idea of the "unitary executive", a concept that has long been a wet dream of the Federalist Society and other conservative think tanks, is the most decidedly un-American thing I can imagine.

Our country was founded on the idea of 3 co-equal branches of government, who each have the duty and authority to exercise checks and balances against the other 2 branches (trust but verify).

Further, the citizens are supposed to have representatives in the house & senate who act as their voice on issues and execute their will and represent their interests.

Nowhere in this entire framework was there a President with the authority to rule by executive fiat, who has absolute immunity from every law of the land, and who is given free reign to do as he pleases like a bull in a china shop. The President of the United States is not a Monarch and he is not a King. There is no divine bloodline in the US of A. The President should always be answerable and accountable to the citizens of the United States and the other 2 branches of government, and they should be held to account for his/her actions.

The current legal framework is a travesty and a result of a gradual erosion of many foundational principles of our republic that have been ground down since FDR dared to empower the working man 80 years ago. In short, it's an abomination.

And don't give me this "but Biden had that same authority" bs. Anybody who knows anything about politics know Dems are spineless. If a Dem tried to pull one tenth of the shit the Republicans do, Rs would be all over AM radio, Fox News, Breitbart, X, Rogan, screaming at the top of their lungs about socialism or some kind of "takeover" or telling people their country is being stolen from them, or some other boneheaded idiotic conspiracy theory. They know there's always someone to fall for their shit. Remember the guys showing up at the DC pizza place looking for the child sex dungeon in the non-existent basement? Yeah, these geniuses.

It's always the same old shit- rich & powerful people don't like being told "no" by the government. Oh, and they also hate paying the government (we all do, but to them it's an actual insult). This is a tantrum of epic proportions, and all this crap is political theater for people who don't know any better.

As an aside, not a one of them has any problem holding out their hand to get old Uncle Sam's money, nor do they have a problem suckling at the government teet their entire career. Ironic, no?

If half these people knew they were carrying water because some spoiled brat of a man didn't want to pay his taxes or got pissed because they can no longer light a river on fire, they'd tell these gold-brickers to pound sand.

But that can't happen anymore. Everybody is plugged-in. The algorithms that drive engagement drive the feedback loop. People can't even argue anymore, because no one knows what the hell is really going on.

This is what our ancestors fought and died for: Twitter and Donald "I can't even make money running a casino" Trump.

The worst part? These people truly don't care. "Gee whiz, why are all these billionaires building bunkers thousands of miles away from the continental US?" Because they're planning to light the USA on fire and bounce. They don't care if you are a republican or a democrat. They don't care about anything. They got theirs. They raped the system, rigged the system, and that's it. Why? Because, paraphrasing George Carlin, "You ain't in their club, you ain't ever going to be in their club. They don't give a shit about you."

And one half the country is helping burn it all down, while blaming the other half of the country for "making them do it ha ha, see what you get you stupid <insert insult here>", meanwhile, the greatest grifters of all time will be sneaking out the back door with the loot to live out their days sipping mai tais, sailing around on aircraft carrier sized yachts, talking on satellite provided cellphones, and jacking off all day, while we continue to argue with each other about whose fault it is that all the money's gone.

Pathetic.

That's a lot of politics I won't be answering about but I think you misunderstand the unitary executive idea.

It's not that the president is the sole power in government! it's that he's the sole power in the executive branch

This means the checks and balances are Congress vs Court vs President. Just like the clerks for SCOTUS don't have any power and neither do the staffers or clerks of Congress, so too do all the members of the executive branch have no power, except for whenever the Pres decides to delegate his power to them.

Even those who argue with this idea (few do) the only other ppl who have power in executive branch are the officials who get confirmed by the senate bec. they are mentioned in the constitution. No one thinks that unelected bureaucrat have any standing whatsoever outside of what's been delegated to them by the President

This does not in any way pertain to ruling by EO! Many things should in fact be done by Congress, but those that can/should be done by the executive branch are under the Presidents full control.

When the executive is also vested with the power of enforcement, then, by construction, it usurps the power of the other 2 branches to check its authority.

Which I think is obvious- a power hungry executive who disputes an attempted check of its authority by one of the other branches can simply decline to enforce.

Ipso facto, unchecked executive power.

Edit: you seem informed, so you should know that issues like these are not new; Andrew Jackson famously ignored the Supreme Court and told them to get bent way back in 1832 after their decision in Worcester v Georgia.

To use a programming analogy, our government's type system has a soundness problem. That means we, as a civilized society, have to follow a few unwritten rules to make sure the system remains functional and doesn't crash. One of those is for the executive to exercise restraint on the technical power they have in the interest of not encountering UB.

The entire bulk of what you're saying is _also_ a process, and _also_ hasn't been obeyed. Obedience to the law is obeisance to the process.

No, the greyed-out parent comment is correct. It's an unintuitive and weird legal truth, but it *is* the truth.

- "While the president has the legal authority to grant a clearance, in most cases, the White House’s personnel security office makes a determination about whether to grant one after the F.B.I. has conducted a background check. If there is a dispute in the personnel security office about how to move forward — a rare occurrence — the White House counsel makes the decision. In highly unusual cases, the president weighs in and grants one himself."

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/us/politics/jared-kushner... ("Trump Ordered Officials to Give Jared Kushner a Security Clearance" (2019))

Why would you need “clearance”? Only positions like with military sensitive things have clearance requirements.

That's not true. Many government positions and rules require different levels/types of clearance. E.g. the DoD and DHS have entirely different clearances managed by different organizations.

The DoD funds so much scientific research. There are entire budgets that are classified to hide how much we spend on - say - split satellites. Having access to the books of all of these orgs likely would require tons of different background checks and clearances from different organizations under normal circumstances

at the same time, far, far too much stuff is classified not to protect national interest, but to protect the spooks and deep military industrial state neocons from scrutiny.

Like what?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

Its safer for the people in charge of determining classification to overclassify and be wrong than underclassify and be wrong

Why shouldn’t all public transactions be public? IRS and personal taxes may be legitimate since it’s, well, personal, but we are all “shareholders” with equal stake in all other payments. This is the perfect use case for public ledger. We should all have access to all of this data. All outflows should note which bill authorized that expenditure, every bureaucrat that’s involved with spending it. If I’m getting $600 in income tracked as a free citizen, I want the even more accountability for anyone spending that amount on behalf of the government.

There’s almost certainly no clearance requirement for what they’ve looked at already. Maybe HIPAA. I’m not sure why one executive branch org has any more or less right to access this data than any other.

They had access to both financial and personal data. This included for example social security numbers and bank accounts. Sure, more financial data being public would be nice, but the current dataset as it is can't be made public safely and definitely needs clearance.

Is that not how audits work?

By assigning random people with no experience and criminal work history to an internal system with no data restriction on personal information scope? No, that's not how they work. What are you even asking?

You’re confusing the point. The data accessed so far is not classified. Where does a clearance requirement come from?

https://archive.md/y7LWE it's already been confirmed that they access classified information in usaid and social security / Medicare elsewhere.

Vetting might be a better word, and a more general term, than clearance.

Nearly all the jobs I’ve had working with data have required vetting - including a criminal background check. This is not the same thing as obtaining a security clearance.

After all the database leaks I've seen in the news, we should probably assume all SSNs have been leaked by now.

This is philosophizing, and it isn't even on topic.

The laws are broken, so regardless of what you think "should" be legal, it isn't. They are being selectively enforced, though, and that's both the problem and probably the thing more worth your philosophical energy. Is that okay, when a criminal operation is too wealthy and influential to be held accountable?

OP was philosophizing. Why would anyone need any kind of clearance to access non-classified data. If they’ve been given permission by the head of the executive branch, what more authority do they need?

> The laws are broken, so regardless of what you think "should" be legal, it isn't. They are being selectively enforced, though, and that's both the problem and probably the thing more worth your philosophical energy. Is that okay, when a criminal operation is too wealthy and influential to be held accountable?

All the laws have been being selectively enforced for decades. The people who were previously running these departments may have written the right incantations and negotiated a consensus with the departments that are supposed to watch the watchmen, but they had no more accountability to the average citizen/voter than the people who are moving in now.

The voting public no longer cares about "legal" versus "illegal", because they recognise that those categories have no bearing on anything relevant. This has been brewing for years, but the establishment benefited too much from subverting the rule of law to fix it. At this point they've made their bed.

The laws have been selectively enforced and it has led us here, yes, and it does mean that broad support of the bureaucracy has justifiably waned.

Was it okay then, when it was a bureaucratic governing class encamping in the public coffers? Is it okay now, when it's a single vulture capitalist harvesting the public coffers?

What's "okay"? My position is that the current state of affairs is far from ideal, but also not significantly worse than what came before, and so I'm suspicious of the motivations of anyone who's selectively concerned about public accountability now.

To to drain the swamp you probably have to dive into the swamp, or at least get your feet muddy. Every successful reform/anticorruption programme I can think of has involved giving a few trusted people some fairly extraordinary powers - special prosecutors, special judges, special task forces and the like. Sometimes the end result is no better, or is even worse, sure. But I'll take trying something that might work over letting the prior status quo continue indefinitely. And I don't think the system would ever have been capable of reforming itself while staying within its bounds.

While I am in favour of radically open records for government and private sector alike, consider what hostile governments' intelligence agencies can do with a detailed budget when deciding where to draw the line.

Everything about this should worry patriotic Americans*, because this does look like a fantastic opportunity for everyone else on the planet to spy on your government at the top level.

* also anyone in a country that has a military or economic relationship with the USA: we're still impacted even though we don't have a say in it

Regarding military and security, you are right. Unfortunately that means all superfluous spending becomes military and security.

Go ahead, put some legislation in place. I'd love to see transparency as the Swedes have where you can see how much tax your neighbour has paid. Or at least how much subsidies which company received. I'm sure rich people will LOVE to know the competition got half what they got... Btw, did Trump's tax returns get published yet?

All this data?

We really don’t know what data is being accessed. We have a lot of people saying lots of things about the access. Such as he will block payments or tarter people based on how they vote. You have not claimed those so I won’t rebuttal then here. But “all this data” I will.

The systems bending accessed are the ones which handle money approved by congress to be spent in a specific way.

As a tax payer I am appalled that this data is not already public and broadcasted live. Even more so that the specific legislation that granted the money was already public.

Now let’s say there are social security numbers and maybe even social security numbers tied to addresses or even names. This is still not a reason to not allow an audit.

You might say. Okay let’s audit. But people need to be verified. And at this point your argument is watered down to “I don’t like who is doing this”, which is the same bullshit politics we deal with in any tech company and the same bs that only delays results.

If people were actually worried they would not be trying to stop musk. What they would actually be doing is asking for somebody who they politically align with to also have access to the data and perform their own audit, on top of making much if not all of the data public so those with real trust issues can draw their own conclusions.

> As a tax payer I am appalled that this data is not already public and broadcasted live.

As a taxpayer, I'm offended that more of my money isn't spent protecting it. Clearly it wasn't enough to stop a rudimentary attack. I can give you three good reasons this is offensive to American liberty in an apolitical context:

1. The personal information of federal employees should remain private in respects to the Civil Rights act and the impartiality of hiring all candidates. This is what protects both Democrats and Republicans from having punitive action held against them by political opposition.

2. America's actual itemized expenditure is a matter of national security. Publishing a precise budget lets an adversary (of which America has many) estimate our weaknesses and, if specific enough, predict our intent before we strike. The current system of budgeting rather than begging is safe and can still be audited by both parties.

3. Elon Musk has stated business interests in opposing Apple and Google, both of which have secret testimonies he could access for illegal leverage against them in negotiations. Allowing him unfettered access to government records and defunding regulators is an expressly unfair business advantage that should not be tolerated in any free market.

> which have secret testimonies

Tell me what this has to do with am having access to USAAID and the Treasury?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-02-10/doge-back...

> We really don’t know what data is being accessed.

Thank you. I think there is a lot of assumption by everyone about that very thing.

"I want to know what the government is hiding" and "I'm okay with the government hiding what they know" is a very hard circle to square.

> and "I'm okay with the government hiding what they know"

Which part of the above comment are you attributing this to?

Seems like a strawman.

I don't believe people who say they demand transparency from the government. If they're not genuinely outraged at Musk's lack of accountability then I don't believe they're genuinely outraged at the Pentagon or Treasury either.

Musk is working for the government and sets an example with his own behavior. If he can't commit to his own standard of transparency then I (and no rational person) would trust him to hold the rest of the government accountable either.

> If they're not genuinely outraged at Musk's lack of accountability then I don't believe they're genuinely outraged at the Pentagon or Treasury either.

I'm skeptical of people who do this, too. I also bet that a lot of people want transparency until they find a flaw that serves them and further transparency would attract attention.

However, this skepticism is mis-placed and off-topic. Re-read the posted comment above. The comment wants more transparency and isn't debating weaponizing the data, which they acknowledge and park as a separate issue.

> We really don’t know what data is being accessed.

> As a tax payer I am appalled that this data is not already public and broadcasted live.

How are you mad it's not public if you don't know what it is? Sure there is data in computers of the Treasury department that should not be public - individuals' social security numbers, personal financial information, etc.

Stop being so pedantic, we have an idea what it is. When I say “we don’t know what it is” is a nice way of saying the things you say it is you have no proof of it being.

How about you give me an argument of why we should not have this sort of audit?

I am also willing to bet there is no situation where it could be done “right” and have the stated outcome Trump and Musk have outlined be okay. Which makes most of your arguments bad faith ones. Given the things already exposed should have all Americans upset.

We should know where our tax money is going. As far as I can tell, the alleged fraud that Musk has been tweeting about was already public info. The viral tweets about Politico, etc, were showing screenshots of public dashboards.

The one place that has famously failed audits year after year is the defense department. We shall see if Musk brings his chopping-block to DoD.

Anyone operating in good faith knows to curb spending, everything Musk has been saying won't make a dent until you get to DoD, Social Security, or health care. And of course, any savings are going to be totally swamped by big tax cuts for the billionaire class.

> Anyone operating in good faith knows to curb spending, everything Musk has been saying won't make a dent until you get to DoD, Social Security, or health care

This isn't accurate. Anyone who's managed a large and complex budget knows death by a thousand cuts is a very real thing. Yes, there may be bigger opportunities in the larger pots of money, but to suggest saving a billion here or few million there isn't worth the time is simply wrong.

Simply having the finances be looked at will have an impact on behavior. I see it in my own personal spending. If I'm not watching it, I spend way more. Now what happens if its not even my bank account the spending takes money out of and no one is paying attention? And then it goes on like this for decades?

> And of course, any savings are going to be totally swamped by big tax cuts for the billionaire class.

Aside from 2020, collected tax revenues did not drop under Trump in his first term, even after 2017 tax cuts. The one exception was for 2020 when the economy ground to a halt due to covid and gdp shrunk by a few %.

The point is, the problem is not that the government needs more money. The government needs pressure to be more effecient with the money it has. Thats the root of the issue that needs solved. Until that is solved, increasing tax revenue (which may not even be needed) won't make any difference whatsoever.

> We really don’t know what data is being accessed. We have a lot of people saying lots of things about the access. Such as he will block payments or tarter people based on how they vote. You have not claimed those so I won’t rebuttal then here. But “all this data” I will.

We do know that they got admin rights to several IT systems. Are you saying that giving admin rights to government IT systems to people with dubious backgrounds is fine, because the guys at the top have been voted in?

> As a tax payer I am appalled that this data is not already public and broadcasted live. Even more so that the specific legislation that granted the money was already public.

As appalled as by the fact that the people who are supposedly doing the auditing are completely intransparent, trying to obscure who is doing the auditing and threatening people who are trying to name people involved? Or is that ok for you?

> We really don’t know what data is being accessed.

And you don’t think that’s a problem?

You think that requiring people to have proper vetting to access information that might include personally identifiable information is “political bullshit”?

No. No I don’t. Before all this nobody knew anything. Then Trump and Elon came along and now everybody on the internet is an expert, and has all sorts opinions based off fear.

We have a system. If it is not legal it will be flushed out. The only people who seem to have an issue seem to be ones who simply don’t like the who.

The only enforcement arm is in the executive branch, and we've already got the VP and Republican senators complaining that judges are ruling against Elon's team and suggesting that he just do what he wants to do anyway. Pam Bondi won't stand in his way and neither will whoever eventually becomes head of the FBI.

I think you mean "if we don't like it, it will be lied about and demonized".

DJT & Friends don't exactly have a stunning track record of being truthful.

In fact, I don't think the man ever tells the truth. And I wish that were hyperbole. He literally just makes shit up as he goes along, and his legions of brainwashed followers just repeat what he says and twist facts to try to fit the narrative after the fact.

Biden was a geriatric moron, and I'm sure he looked the other way while people he knew profited from his actions, but this MAGA shit is a grift on a whole other level. This is like stealing the Holy Grail and getting away with it.

This is uh, a more than a little disturbing. Is JD Vance going to say that he deserves grace too?

More context [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/764_(organization)

For reference: JD Vance said that another DOGE staffer, who resigned after it was reported that he'd publicly come out in favor of racism, eugenics, and normalizing hate against Indian people on Twitter, should be rehired because it was just "stupid social media activity".

No, you're lying by extracting context. Here's what he said.

Here’s my view:

I obviously disagree with some of Elez’s posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life.

We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever.

So I say bring him back.

If he’s a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that.

https://x.com/JDVance/status/1887900880143343633 --

The part about the journalists is the operative part obviously.

We shouldn't treat people as if their words have no consequences either.

It's not a lie. "I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life" does two things: characterizes endorsements of racism and eugenics policies as "stupid social media activity", and asserts that exposure of such activity should not lead to someone losing their job. The part about not rewarding journalists who "destroy" people does not exist in a vacuum away from his downplaying of Elez's abhorrent racial views. If journalists had revealed Elez, for example, was a secret left-wing antifa supporter on Bluesky, I think we can reasonably doubt Vance's reaction would have been the same.

Edit: Now that you've brought Vance's tweet into focus, it's also interesting that he does not think Elez is currently a "bad dude" when he's expressly stated a desire to normalize hatred against an entire ethnicity

Also (mis)characterizes a grown ass man as a kid

I'd like to see a a press conference:

"Question for JD Vance - can you look at your Indian wife and children and then say a guy posting 'Normalize Indian hate' is not a 'bad dude'"?

Follow-up: "How is Elez both a child who shouldn't be held responsible for his actions from as recently as 2 months ago, but also the right person to be trusted with extensive access to government systems?"

Also fun how Trump has no problem saying that pro-palestine protestors should be deported (a vastly more harmful outcome than losing a job).

"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

The doge boys are in-group, so they are protected, and the law will not be brought to bear against them. Simple as that.

Who are you quoting?

Frank Wilhoit, but not necessarily the Frank Wilhoit you might think when told it's Frank Wilhoit.

https://slate.com/business/2022/06/wilhoits-law-conservative...

Trump didn’t say that though.

He said pro-Palestinian protesters that are here on visa and who were arrested, committing crimes should be sent back.

Big difference from what you wrote. Perhaps you only read the headline.

“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you. I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before,” Trump said.

Funny, I don't see those extra qualifiers in there.

Nice selective quote paraphrasing, but this was in the context they were already arrested.

No journalist is going to ask him this because they’re afraid of retribution and a loss of access. If they do he’s going to deflect - nobody will press him on a genuinely galling statement of values.

That would require someone to do journalism.

"I don't think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid's life" is incredibly dishonest and Vance should be held to account for this incredibly dishonest statement.

The phrasing is intended to create the impression that the posts were made years ago, by some angry teenager, and it's not relevant to the person they are today. It's a way of downplaying the acts, creating distance between the person today and the acts at some unspecified point in the past.

But we know these timeline details. Elez is not a "kid" now, he's 25. These posts were not made when he was 13, they were made last year when he was, I suppose, 24 going on 25.

There are two conflicting perspectives being promoted by Musk, Vance, etc which IMO are in direct logical conflict:

1) This person's actions last year (going up to December 2024! Just 2 months ago!) are the actions of an irresponsible child and we shouldn't hold them accountable for those actions because they're not responsible enough to be held accountable for them.

2) This person is responsible enough right now to be operating at the highest levels of government.

He can't be both. So which is he, really?

wat?

We shouldn't reward journalists for finding and exposing morally repugnant people getting near the levers of state power?

That is 100% exactly on-the-money the absolute ideal usecase for journalism.

> but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life.

He’s 25 or 26, given his birth year. The comments were posted months ago.

This isn’t a “kid”! Calling him a kid is a propaganda tactic that got rolled out to try to confuse people about the true story.

He’s an adult. He made the comments as an adult.

> We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever.

It’s extraordinarily irrational to think that we should ignore important information simply to spite journalists.

There is nothing logical in that argument. It’s pure emotion and spite driven.

> For reference: JD Vance said that another DOGE staffer, who resigned after it was reported that he'd publicly come out in favor of racism, eugenics, and normalizing hate against Indian people on Twitter, should be rehired because it was just "stupid social media activity".

To add to this, JD Vance's wife is Indian.

I think the details of what The Com is beyond scamming and SIM swapping are downplayed in coverage and discussion. It's a violent terrorist network...

And anyone that gets busted will just get pardoned. Trump and Musk broke the system.

Communists are suspicious about people and disregard them because of their parents, leather shoes, german sounding surname or actions as a kid. Kids are doing many things being kids, it's their privilege to do so. Solar Designer came from cracking group.

I recall an aphorism that government is self-governed 90% by norms and 10% by law. I don’t know if American law is being violated but certainly it is alarming to observe from the outside when the norms are totally disregarded.

The US looks unstable and untrustworthy.

Any law is only worth as much as its enforcement. Otherwise, maybe it just serves as a historical record of some intent, nothing more.

What makes me sick is how the word "fraud" is being abused now too. Like those in power in the US are redefining it to mean "things I don't like". It's very dangerous.

It's incredibly Orwellian.

“Fake news” was deftly repurposed from “whatever crock of lies Trump spouted today” to “unflattering news about Trump”. Whatever his other flaws, the president is a master at demagoguery.

He is one of the greatest cult leaders man has known. It’s amazing how people don’t like the VP because “he lies” but the other guy…it doesn’t matter if he lies, it’s fine. That’s crazy.

No other cult leader in history had the entire power of right media and the support of the country’s most powerful profiteers behind him. Trump himself doesn’t look all that smart, it’s just that everything he says or does goes through their filter and then reeks of roses for his followers.

While I generally agree that he doesn't look all that smart in the traditional sense, during the early part of his first election I don't think he had the full power of right wing media behind him. He is _excellent_ at something, and I think demagoguery might be a reasonable term for it. He seems to me to be very good at saying things that make people feel "activated" (to quote dang above). It is almost like the way he speaks is the human manifestation of the engagement algorithm that it took Facebook years and years to develop. It is really quite something.

It's simple: he's famous. He isn't even the first public personality the US voted.

The (sadly) most important thing for a campaign is charisma, and people from decades prior (AKA the ones that actually vote) see Trump and think of the times with The Apprentice, or any variety of commercials he's been in, or some talk show he was on. That mixed with an increasing distrust of the establshment and you get Trump 45.

Trump 47, similar vibes + the "I was richer under Trump" mentality. These are short-sighted, but common sentiments.

That very well may be all this is, I wasn't alive for the last famous president. I suppose folks feelings about him do feel similar to the other types of celebrity infatuation. I've never really understood the way people relate to famous people, I wonder if it is escapism, an inhuman place to project the idealized good or evil they imagine exists but that they never find in people who they actually know.

Preaching to the choir here. I'm that nerd who could go off on all the themes, dyanmics, and philosophies of The Matrix, and then 15 years later hear "Keaneu Reeves as John Wick" and have a blank face. I've never been particularly good at naming celebrities.

But I'd be unsurprised if I was ever diagnosed as neurodivergent, and apparently people find other people's lives engaging or even "relatable". Not that I never had my share of famous people I liked hearing about. It's just that I more resonate with their actions and works than their day-to-day lives.

Why does it have to be only his skill and not a quality of the people he entrances?

Elon Musk's DOGE team is raising eyebrows with their seemingly reckless behavior.

Their actions are causing concern for several reasons:

* A 19-year-old with a questionable past has been given access to sensitive US government systems. * The team is reportedly using this access to dig through student loan data. * This could potentially put millions of Americans at risk of identity theft or other forms of financial exploitation.

Seems safe to assume that the DOGE kids probably scored copies of the data they had access to even if that access was or will be revoked, especially considering that some of them have a history of data theft as mentioned in the article.

If true, it should surface soon enough.

almost without a doubt, you'd have to be unwaveringly upright to enter a vault of treasure and not cram some gold into your pockets

That seems so incredibly stupid and risky. You're in with Elon and get to help shape the future of the country. Why jeopardize that? Trump will only pardon so much.

I mean he's already demonstrated that beating a cop with a flagpole falls in the category of things he'll pardon, so I'm not really sure what is and isn't in scope now.

Beyond speculation, how do you even know this? Everything I've seen so far related to this jumps to wild conclusions about the data these employees can allegedly access with absolutely no proof of anything.

It's almost the same as the conclusion that the Dominion voting machines were illegally changing votes based on insecure security practices around the networks at the polling locations. There was no proof that this happened and there's no proof that these employees are copying all of our data or writing to it.

It's all fearmongering and trying to distract from the main point: The government has been wasting hundreds of millions of our tax dollars and a good portion of it are going into the pockets of politicians and their supporters.

There was literally no way to track the money or oversight.

Someone should be going to jail over this.

> how do you even know this?

It's speculation based on the facts that Elon Musk is actively ignoring and even antagonizing the courts. At which point we have dozes of public reports on, including himself tweeting it out.

Even if he was ordered to delete the data, do you really think a person like that will comply? That's why people speculate that; Musk is not a credible actor.

>The government has been wasting hundreds of millions of our tax dollars and a good portion of it are going into the pockets of politicians and their supporters.

>There was literally no way to track the money or oversight.

Beyond speculation, how do you even know this?

Even if true, the answer to corruption isn't more corruption and kicking people out of their workplaces. Nor hacking into every citizen's private info. We have a process for a reason.

I find it shockingly absurd how the All-In podcast hosts blindly support everything one of their own does. It’s obvious they treat Musk like a god. In the latest episode, they even made fun of concerns about privacy, claiming that all people care about is the state not wasting money. - completely dismissing worries about data exposure.

They were good in the opposition to Biden, now they have lost all credibility. They were sympathetic to the Greenland and other annexation plans. Chamath appeared on Tucker Carlson, garnered sympathy with various sob stories but then gently pushed his agenda to the MAGA crowd.

No wonder Musk wants to deregulate everything. Regulation interferes with the telemedicine, gut bacteria powders and various other nonsense that these gentlemen invest in.

The (deliberate?) chaos that Trump/Musk create provides great opportunities for those in the know.

I'm amazed that the "Spac King" is not part of the administration.

I watched Chamath call in live to a spac scammers live stream. This scammer drove a beater and would pump various spac warrants on his way home from the warehouse job on twitch.

I was like wtf is a former FB executive doing showing up on this scammer live stream.

That’s insane lol. Is there a clip of that? Can you provide more context?

I don't have a clip but it was in the height of the spac pump and dump craze taking place on reddit during the pandemic. The scam was buy up a bunch of warrants then release info that you had knowledge of an upcoming deal.

This particular scammer got lucky on one of his spacs when it actually made a deal and from that he made quite the following.

Chamath used this guy to pump his spacs because if the spac was pumping before there was even a deal it was easier for him to make the deal.

I think all of Chamaths spacs are penny stocks now with multiple reverse splits to stay above $1.

Edit: Except for SOFI the one good deal he made.

Could not agree more. The All In guys stopped engaging in thought provoking and critical conversations a long time ago. And holy hell, Jason Calacanis is the biggest weasel on the podcast. At least the other turds own who they are, while Jason will be whatever gets him access to the “in crowd”.

I don't like David or Chamath, but it is quite mind-blowing how little Jason C seems to have accomplished vs. the other two, his entire claim to fame appears to be trolling online and being close enough to the rest of the PayPal mafia to be be able to feed on their scraps.

Jason is my least favorite of the four.

Last year he was suggesting the democrats run Jeff Bezos as a candidate saying the party would rally behind him.

The dude realized he was completely out of step with the democrats, so despite constantly trolling Republicans, as you suggested he finally decided to just throw in with them despite still feeling superior to all them (which you can tell by his little "wisecracks" and subtle fuck-yous to the average Repub voter).

Jason Calacanis has been a first rate loser from the start.

I've seen so many personalities "shift" over this decade. I guess big platforms monetized outrage better, so what better way to generate outrage than pick up conservative talking points.

I've seen so many personalities "shift" over this decade.

True. Not just the All In Guys, but also Tulsi and RFK, even Trump used to be a democrat.

Elon Musk is the #1 richest man in the world, out of >7 billion. Everyone knows who he is.

Celebrities to him are almost what commoners are to rich people. Joe Rogan, the biggest podcaster, has <0.1% net worth. Most have far less: they actually need to make money from podcasting and can't afford certain things, whereas 0.001% of Musk's net worth is enough to live an entire life well-off. And it's not just money; I'm sure far, far more people learned about Rogan when he interviewed Musk than vice versa.

Wealth, attention, and power influence people. If you had more of them, or a solid chance at more, you'd be influenced too.

Integrity means not being moved by the appearance, demands, or actions of others from a course of ethical/moral behavior. It isn't as common as it used to be, and was especially prevalent amongst the Greatest Generation.

Many people decide to maintain their morals and integrity instead of gambling them, maybe even the majority. You just don't hear about those people.

Totally. One of the two generations (along with the Silent Generation) who got their pensions and cheap houses and pulled that ladder up after them because it would inconvenience them for the companies they invested in to pay for pensions for the next generation. Also, the vast majority of them were rabid racists. That was bigtime integrity.

Rogan isn’t really about money. He has a value beyond dollars… in the end, he likely has a lot more staying power than Elon, whose fall will probably be faster than the rise.

He’s like a cross of Rush Limbaugh in his early prime, Howard Stern and Art Bell. Exceptional broadcast talent with a safe space to deliver a message.

As a long time listener, lately to me he has become more of a republican mouthpiece. He can’t help but to consistently bring up republican talking points and whatever the democrats did that was crazy this week, while still trying to say “But I’m not democrat or republican”. It’s cringy when he has a good guest on (rare now) who doesn’t want to talk politics but he doesn’t stop. I quit listening after many years, and I tried for last few months to give it a chance.

Lets not forget how in his “comedy” special, he literally says he is like Elon’s puppy following him around believing whatever he says because he’s a “genius”. He changed.

Agreed.

Honestly, he reminds me alot of Rush. Early Rush was very conservative, but also very irreverent. At some point it flipped and turned into the angry guy issuing the talking points of the day.

This whole thing puzzles me.

These dingos are wealthy because they've got money in banks and stocks in brokerages.

If the US dollar is managed like the 1980s iraqi dinar, and the stock market is regulated as strictly as the 1980s baghdad stock exchange, what happens to their wealth?

Apologies to the lackeys of Saddam Hussein, some of whom I'm sure were quite professional.

Less than what happens to other people’s wealth. That leaves others needing to sell things that the wealthy might want. Look for example at wealth recovery post 2008

Whatever was broken in 2008 (and a lot was broken in 2008) regarding how people win or lose in the markets, it's nothing compared to if the markets are simply no longer actually following accounting rules.

https://www.newsbreak.com/raw-story-2096750/3790568619352-go...

What is money if there's someone out there just "number go up" people's accounts?

You have to be willing to go deeper to see what can be done.

Say they start fudging numbers at DoL, so only them would know real truth and everyone else is just blundering in the dark.

Combined with ownership of power structures, there is no need for money per se, you can acquire all of the critical infrastructure by applying blunt force. Check your nearest dictatorship for an example, we have plenty to choose from in recent history.

The problem you have here is differing perspectives on, for instance, current government financial responsibility.

The government is currently $36 trillion in debt with that debt growing at an exponential rate. Our annual expenditure of interest on the debt has exceeded $1 trillion per year and will soon exceed the entire discretionary budget of the US.

And this is happening as growth starts to slow and other countries continue to reduce both their reserves and dependency upon the dollar.

Many don't see this as sustainable, or really even remotely sustainable. And so working to create more sound governance and spending today is motivated precisely by an effort to prevent a catastrophic crash.

Like think about to back before the housing crash. There were numerous shows on TV about people getting a house (often with near 0 deposit), adding granite counter tops, and then reselling it within weeks for a $20k+ profit.

Anybody could see that that sort of economic system could not possibly be stable, but most people have this instinct that a status quo must inherently be stable, but that's just not true. That unstable things have not crashed today is hardly an argument against them crashing tomorrow.

The trouble is that the statements and their actions don't line up at all. USAID, CFPB, and other government regulatory agencies make up a tiny, tiny portion of our current deficit. Even if these agencies were completely eliminated, it wouldn't do _anything_ to affect our financial troubles. Even completely eliminating every single government worker wouldn't solve the deficit.

That's not even considering that these agencies can have positive, not negative, financial impact. A well-regulated economy can avoid disastrous recessions and thereby pay for itself manyfold. Hell, the CFPB was put in place to prevent the exact housing crash situation you just mentioned, but now one private citizen is getting rid of it because... he doesn't like it?

Outside of Biden and Obama (first term only interestingly) deficits were far less. As recently as 2015, it was "only" $442 billion, and generally less than a trillion.

USAID's budget was upwards of $50 billion, so cutting that single organization brings us 5-10% of the way there.

And its primary purpose was propaganda of the sort that, when effective, just ends up driving us into conflicts half way around the world and making it very difficult to ever truly improve relations with 'foreign adversaries.' I'm tired of being at war with Eastasia.

And Musk has zero power. He can only make recommendations. The 'President Musk' stuff is a transparent effort to try to foment antagonism between Trump and Musk by exploiting Trump's insecurities.

Why do you omit Trump who pushed the government debt higher than Biden (and actually significantly higher than Obama in his second term, thus excluding the GFC)?

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/030515/which-united...

As a side note Usaid portion of the budget hasn't increased over the last >30 years (despite the large peak due to Ukraine support).

https://usafacts.org/explainers/what-does-the-us-government-...

You can see a table of the deficits per year here [1], which should answer your question.

[1] - https://www.thebalancemoney.com/us-deficit-by-year-3306306

Wouldn't debt as a percentage of GDP be a much better metric than debt alone?

I think that's another interesting metric. It's also a rather terrifying graph. [1]

[1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S

That starts at 1966, go back to 1941 and it's not unprecedented.

We're only 3.8% above our 1945 peak.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-debt-t...

The 1940's and 1950's reduced it through raising taxes, not cutting social services. There was actually a large expansion of social services and infrastructure projects at the time.

Slash and burn economics/austerity are not the only option.

The reason you saw high spending starting around December 7th 1941, is because that's the day we entered WW2 and started working as the industrial/commercial vessel behind the most expansive war humanity has ever seen.

It plummeted afterwards because of dramatic spending cuts after the war ended in 1945. The budget in 1946 cut discretionary spending (which is what funds the military) by 43% (38.5 billion), and then it was cut another 41% in 1947. Inflation adjusted the spending cut in 1946 was $619 billion.

The 'great expansion' of social services began in the 60s which led (in part, Vietnam and other issues obviously played a huge role) to the US defaulting on its economic obligations under Bretton Woods in 1971, which is when our current economic era of unconstrained completely fiat spending began.

| is because that's the day we entered WW2

I'm fully aware (as everyone is).

The 1950's expanded social services considerably, including major infrastructure projects like housing and highways. The cost of the GI bill alone after WW2 was $140 billion in today's dollars.

Cutting military spending is an option but doesn't seem to be on the table.

DOGE's next target is the Pentagon which has repeatedly failed audits, on a massive scale, with 0 consequences. Previously.

Good luck to them. I'll believe it when I see it.

It remains words for now but Trump is now calling for a mutual 50% defense spending cuts amongst Russia, China, and the US - as well as a return to nuclear nonproliferation arguing quite reasonably that we all have enough nukes to destroy the world multiple times over, so what's the point? [1]

It's likely to preempt media attacks claiming Trump is undermining US defense and security by cutting military spending, especially if DOGE manages to find some large areas to cut (one can only imagine the headlines...). It's unclear if they would agree (especially when there's going to be immense distrust), but this sort of rhetoric is the most rational and logical that I've seen in decades.

Having a leader with messianic delusions is not necessarily a bad thing it might seem, at least for now.

[1] - https://apnews.com/article/trump-china-russia-nuclear-bbc1c7...

Money is only trusted if everyone agrees that "a number in a ledger" is money.

Ultimately, wealth, beyond what you physically control, is only real if everyone else agrees that it's real. Otherwise you're just tapping a rock on another rock and walking out of the store with eggs.

And that 36 trillion in debt was created with a complex dance out in the open; I've got some paper who wants some paper I'll give you number go up in a year if you give me number now! And we can all look at the ledger and there are people in robes in a locked room who protect the ledger when we're not looking.

If instead we've got a ledger, left floating around the house and garage, and all the people in robes have been fired, and all of a sudden we don't need that tedious "pass laws" stuff to "balance the budget" and the ledger's full of sharpie scribblings, what are the numbers in that ledger? The fewer people who believe that number or ledger, the fewer eggs you'll be able to buy by tapping your rock on someone else's rock.

The same goes for other ledgers -- stocks -- the US stock market is trusted only because people trust the numbers that are reported. If you've fired all the regulators, auditors, and enforcers, your stock market will lose trust, and again, the numbers will be the same but worth less because nobody will believe anything.

Money has a perception of value because of scarcity + demand. The government could, in theory, 'print' enough money to make every single American a trillionaire tomorrow.

Of course all that would do is make the dollar worthless and completely destroy the US economy. I think you would obviously agree.

That also means that we must agree that 'money printing' taken to an extreme can have catastrophic effects. So where we disagree is where we are on the line between the points of inherently valuable and stable currency, and lol funny money.

When the interest on the debt is starting to exceed our total discretionary budget, let alone at a major inflection point in global economics/relations, I tend to think we're prettty far down that line.

I'm going to agree with you actually that we should reduce spending and pay down the debt because it's gotten too big especially with respect to the debt/gdp ratio.

So we can start on a solid foundation where we both agree. The thing I have trouble with is I don't think the people in government right now talking about reducing the debt by cutting waste and fraud agree with you and me.

The reason I think this is because last time they were in full control of the government they also had talked a good game about reducing the debt, but instead they cut taxes for the richest Americans and added to the debt, substantially. They told us it would pay for itself -- that didn't happen.

They also did it the time before that, during the Bush Administration. They ran up trillions in debt on a war that we didn't need to go into and we ended up losing, erasing an inherited budget surplus.

Now they are talking about ethnic cleansing Gaza, and giving themselves yet another tax break. On the other side of it, they're slashing and burning programs that they oppose on ideological grounds, which as a percentage of the budget won't even move the debt needle a smidge. And they can't show these programs were actually fraudulent or wasteful.

So my question is: why do you trust these people to cut the debt and deficit if they haven't been able to do so at any point in the past 20 years, a period during which they had majority control of the government multiple times, and they're proposing the same failed playbook?

Obviously you're right about what politician's promising being irrelevant. Things are different this time because of actions. To weigh impact you need to consider discretionary vs mandatory spending.

Mandatory is made up of things like social security, pensions, medicare, and so on. That's all automatically funded with no role played by Congress. The money that's left over after is what Congress actually decides how to spend in those thousands of pages long budget bills that nobody reads - that's discretionary spending.

In 2024 the discretionary budget was $1.7 trillion. Exclude the military (which is also discretionary) and you're down to $900 billion for all the projects people typically associate with government - transportation, education, infrastructure, and so on. USAID took up ~$50 billion of that. That's a major reduction!

This discretionary:mandatory divide is also why DOGE is going after the Pentagon next. Slashing mandatory spending is hard, though you might be able to cut e.g. administrative costs. But discretionary spending is just chock full of pork and corruption with negligible accountability.

I agree they're cutting ideological programs - I don't agree this is intrinsically ideological. They're cutting e.g. DEI and atheism propaganda, but not just replacing it with e.g. color-blind society and respect for religion propaganda. They're just dropping the propaganda funding altogether. I'd like to see this carried out everywhere, even in cases where the propaganda might align more closely with my own biases.

Money at this point has value because we all agree it has value.

You walk into a store, pick up a box of eggs, bonk your rock on another rock, the other rock makes a happy beep or turns green, and you walk out.

There's no scarcity or demand or anything going on besides "everyone with the rocks trusts the rocks"

We're all going to pretend to trust the rocks as long as we can, because the alternative is violent chaos.

There's no trust or belief - you're just trading one scarce in demand resource due another scarce in demand resource - nothing more and nothing less.

This is the reason your money becomes worth less when we print more. A vendor selling whatever will want even more because his product is just as scarce as it was before, but what you're trading for it has become less scarce, and so has less value.

And taken to extremes this value can approach 0 quite rapidly. Trust, belief and all these things don't matter if you're trying to trade me something I see as less valuable than what you want in exchange for it.

I think that’s why they are licking their chops looking at Canada, Greenland, and Mexico.

Growth at all costs. Just like a startup. Just like Rome.

> Wealth, attention, and power influence people

I think in this case, it attracts the avaricious rather than changes their beliefs. Joe Rogan can be influenced by poor lunatics as much as rich ones. As much as I can tell of peoples' opinions of the All In pod (never listened), it sounds like they were always sell-outs (or their beliefs have not strayed)

It's true that some people won't sacrifice their beliefs no matter how much they're tempted. And I think most people who've unexpectedly got rich and famous actually became nicer and saner. You don't hear about people who quietly maintain their integrity and rich people who quietly live their lives, you hear about those who aren't quiet and especially those who generate negativity.

At the same time, I don't think anyone can truly understand what power does to the human brain in general and their brain specifically. It doesn't mean everyone with power is corrupt and certainly doesn't excuse those who are, but IMO it does mean one can't underestimate power's influence and assume they're one of the incorruptible "good ones"*.

* There are ways to mitigate being corruptible, such as planning ahead, delegating power to others, and finding other sources of truth besides your unreliable judgement. They're the same techniques to avoid impulsiveness, dumb crush behavior, and other mental distortions.

> I don't think anyone can truly understand what power does to the human brain in general and their brain specifically

But you purport to? :)

Power is such a nebulous term and can mean a lot of things. Of course, persuasive power, such as by reputation or actual charisma (not the case here), is a thing. But I think also in this case, at least as much as I can glean from others, Musk already had them at hello.

One of the most frustrating parts of that podcast is that they often just read the headlines of news events and react, making it clear that they haven't bothered to read any level of detail about the event.

I'll also give honorable mentions to some of their most outrageous takes:

1. Friedberg predicting that NYT and CNN would be replaced by blockchain based news reporting.

2. Chamath predicting the Ukraine/Russia tensions were just blustering prior to a deal being signed.

3. Sacks promoting the story that claimed Biden ordered the Navy to blow up the Nordstream pipeline.

Even more worrying is the fact that some people think they have credibility.

I don't understand what relevance the All-In podcast has to this article written by Brian Krebs. Did I miss a reference to it in the article, or is there a non-obvious connection that someone could point out?

I looked and as far as I can tell, this podcast discussed DOGE but I don’t think they focused on the security aspects of DOGE. It’s more that the All In hosts, like most experienced business people, support aggressive cost cutting and recognize the dangers of not reducing spending - so they really want it to happen. They see the progress so far as unexpectedly fast and encouraging, and think the overall effort will be positive in the obvious ways like reducing the deficit and debt but also because it sets expectations around how the government should operate. I didn’t listen to the whole thing, but judging by the comments here, it seems a lot of HN is not interested in cutting spending or the idea of a team auditing every agency, so they probably view anyone who supports those ideas negatively too.

I think people here are more for a planned with intention and intelligence cost cutting not shop from the hip blow everything up, tear it all down, and clean up the mess after destruction of government cost cutting. We're more 'government isn't business, if a government isn't stable there goes business investments, soft power, and the dollar being a reserve currency' combined with 'lots of these rules are written in blood (EPA, various consumer protections agencies, various civil support agencies), throwing them out until there's more blood is sadistic'.

>judging by the comments here, it seems a lot of HN is not interested in cutting spending or the idea of a team auditing every agency

That's a bit of a bad faith observation. I support feeding people. I don't support theft. When I see people stealing food I am not dismissing the former.

I wouldn't mind a proper auditing process, but you can also do that without breaking multiple laws. And yes, I also do not think DOGE is acting in good faith. They are spouting about a bunch of non-sense tech solutions to the treasury like buzzwords on an earnings call. They completely failed on their suppoesd transparency claims when formed and are now outright keeping others from working with private guards (that's not how you do a proper audit). They've given me every reason not to trust them.

-------

As a not so hot take, if you want to cut costs, encourage efficiency. The way a lot of government budgeting works is in a "use it or lose it" capacity. Your reward for efficiency is a smaller budget "because you didn't need it last year". Individuals can save surplus income for rainy days, I don't see why governmental organizations can't.

To be fair, musk is a pretty outrageously successful and interesting person. I’ve seen very little criticism of him that isn’t thinly veiled jealousy

I think your jealousy detector might need calibration.

Even if someone admires Musk’s accomplishments, blindly excusing his faults is irrational. Constructive criticism is important—his fanbase treating him like an infallible genius discourages accountability. No great business leader is above scrutiny, and people who dismiss all criticism as “jealousy” are refusing to engage with reality.

Would you be interested in hearing some? Closed minds don't help.

If nothing else, listen to his Tesla earnings call and take note of how much he talks about the actual current business vs. his fantasy of consumer reboots in 2027.

> all people care about is the state not wasting money. - completely dismissing worries about data exposure

A tangent here, but: Gas taxes paying for roads. There is a relationship between inefficiency and privacy.

I often encounter some libertarian-types complaining about this, that they should only be taxed for the construction and maintenance of infrastructure they personally drive upon. Indirect benefits aside, I try to point out that the billing-system they're asking for requires a creepy surveillance panopticon, something far more ripe for abuse than any gas tax.

I'm curious, what do libertarian types think of the per-mile car insurance deals that require the driver to install a surveillance device on their own vehicles?

Or grocery store checkout, where there is an individual dollar amount associated with every single item in your cart and calculating the total amount due requires knowing the entire contents of the cart.

Yeah, but it is very easy to disconnect your identity from that grocery receipt.

Summing the amount doesn't require knowing anything but the cost.

I haven't talked much in those same circles after the forum was destroyed by a ban-happy Republican-lite takeover, but possible things that come to mind are:

1. It's philosophically acceptable since it's not the government doing it, even if I don't like the deal.

2. I shouldn't be forced to have insurance in the first place.

3. That wouldn't happen since I could buy insurance from another competitor that doesn't require it.

I’m pretty sure highways already have enough actual surveillance cameras that the marginal threat of surveillance from toll-collecting hardware is tiny.

In every state I’ve looked up, a majority of roadbuilding and maintenance funds don’t come from gas taxes. Not even close.

It can be hard to tease out since, contrary to belief, gas taxes end up mixed with the general fund in most cases. If you look at total road expenditures against gas tax revenues, drivers don’t come close to paying for the road infrastructure they use.

Note: This isn’t a comment on whether drivers should fully fund roads, or if it is perfectly fine given the external benefits of a robust road network. It is simply a comment about real numbers vs perception.

True, gas taxes don't pay for it all, but it's easier than saying: "Whatever mix of stuff the place you're living in does/will use that may include gas taxes plus other taxes but their commonality is that they are largely unrelated to your particular choice of where to drive."

Either way, the point is that there's a conflict between the demands of "never charge me an extra cent" versus "don't poke your nose into my business."

> True, gas taxes don't pay for it all.

My point is that gas taxes don’t even cover a majority of it. US roads are paid for out general funds, and pretending that they are paid for out of gas taxes exclusively, or even in a majority is dishonest.

Any argument that argues that gas taxes are a use tax for the road is dead in the water.

That wasn't his argument though. It's just an example you're nitpicking on a tangent.

So just introducing a distraction to their argument to muddy the comments instead of commenting on their point.

“Elon believes he should be emperor of the world, and this is his way of showing people what he’s capable of as emperor,” — a close associate of Musk’s

Unattributed hearsay is not useful in any rational debate. It is effectively just veiled ad hominem.

I'm not sure it matters if it's attributed or not. Very few people are capable of setting their biases aside, so even intimate hearsay is mostly just going to be driven by subjective opinions about the person in question.

I mean I think we've most all seen literally the exact same thing at any reasonably large institution.

If people are scared to speak out anonymous reporting is all you'll get

The podcast has been elucidating to me in how it exposes the way in which individuals can become corrupted. Our politicians appear good on camera, they smile to our faces and kiss the foreheads of our babies—but we have decades of anecdotes about how they are bribed by special interests, making deals behind our backs. At least I personally had no first hand experience of what that actually looked of felt like until I started listening to the show. The hosts are ostensibly all smart (with the glaring exception of Jason), but so obviously biased which is advertised by the complicated verbal arithmetic they have to do to make sure they don't say anything bad about their friends which leaves empty logistical holes in each topic they discuss.

Seriously, have you ever heard them say anything bad about Elon, Trump, or the Republican agenda even one time in the last year? We know that none of those entities are perfect, they know that none of these entities are perfect, and yet they dare not say it. This is same as having politicians that are bought, and it’s maddeningly frustrating how two faced the whole ordeal is. The hosts will look at you directly in your eyes and tell you they’re being honest, and they just want to know the truth like you do. But the lie is hiding in plain sight, and everyone sees it.

What’s the point of it all? They're so narcisstically working and using the show to further their own interests. Especially sacks for whom it paid off handsomely. And they do this at the direct expense to their audience who (many of whom may not know better), doing their part to build a more morally confused and bankrupt nation in the process.

I still tune in every week, to happily outrage myself the convolution and lies and insane double standards that they get find themselves in in each conversation. I don't know why I do, I guess there's no other show that I find discusses politics and tech otherwise in a way that's satisfying. I wish a moderate panel (or even a liberal) one existed to counterbalance all of their BS but I haven't found that.

Try Pivot or Prof. G. podcasts.

Pivot has been a real gem for me lately. Both hosts bring real insight and interest to the topics they discuss.

Yep these are the only ones I’ve found essentially! I don’t find Kara swisher to be very intellectually interesting but Scott certainly is. What he needs, for his platform to really blow up IMO, is to host a show with a panel that argues like All-In, but again, on a more moderate or left-ish political al axis.

>In the latest episode, they even made fun of concerns about privacy, claiming that all people care about is the state not wasting money.

I mean, there are outcries. But nowhere near the outcry proportional to how dire this is. So maybe the host is right?

All-In declined quickly after the pandemic when they realized the value of their platform. They use it now to only milk their investments or push political agendas to milk their investments.

I have been thinking the same thing. The only other thing they do is take positions they think will increase their popularity with their audience.

Absolutely, the decay of that podcast was palpable throughout 2020. I gave it an honest shot hoping it would come back around, but it became insufferable.

I particularly disliked listening to them openly talk about the clout they were developing and, I don’t know, bragging and boasting about their popularity. Ego is repulsive when it’s laid on so blatantly.

Unfortunately, it seems that everyone does it. Can you point to anyone who doesn't?

I find it shocking and absurd too, but in moments of self-honesty I notice myself doing it too. My sense is that the only contribution one can make to changing this pattern is to notice it in oneself and then shift a bit. That's the only place one has a chance to modify anything.

Getting mad at other people for doing it doesn't change anything, and nobody can be persuaded to change.

Surely that was supposed to be a reply to something else?

"It’s obvious they treat Musk like a god."

"Unfortunately, it seems that everyone does it. Can you point to anyone who doesn't?"

Ambiguous referent, sorry. This is the part I think everyone does:

> "blindly support everything one of their own does".

And of course the same in the opposite direction, blindly opposing everything the other tribe does.

Speak for yourself please dang

Of course nobody is 100% above it, it happens, to be blindly partisan for someone or something and not quite honest to oneself.

As Orwell described it https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

But doing it all the time? No. It's something to overcome. None of us may be perfectly non-partisan and intellectually honest all the time, of course, but there are still two general directions: giving in to that, and wading out of it.

To be super mean about it, because that's how I feel about it in my heart of hearts: insofar people were just an extension with a tribe they identify with, they could be replaced by another member of that tribe. And if every member in that tribe had no content and only a reference to the tribe, the whole thing could get garbage collected.

There's a real mechanism where we don't even feel the need to examine, much less justify, things we claim or support just because we feel we're with the in-group. As in, I don't know what I'm talking about or what it means, I just need to know that it's approved by those with the biggest stick, or that "history will judge me correct" or anything like that. But IF I can argue the point on my own, what do I care that others agree? And if I can't, what does it help me?

Calling that out isn't necessarily "getting mad at it" tho, it's just calling it out. Anyone who makes a podcast or gets behind any other type of podium, even this comment, is up for scrutiny. But I'd agree that we shouldn't get self-righteous about it. As in, I criticize this for being partisan because being partisan is thoughtless, but not because I never do it, and also because I want "my own" to criticize me in the same way, where applicable.

And yes, it's much easier to see how crude it is, how gross to cloak something in supposed wisdom, nuance or other good things when it's really just partisan hackery (when the rationalization came after the decision to be loyal no matter what), when others do it with something we disagree with. We overlook it constantly when people do it in service of what we think is good, and the blind spots when we ourselves do it are giant. But that just means more work cut out for us :P

Yes, Orwell is one of the few who seemed to have a kind of immunity to this! At least in part.

This love and reverence to "privacy" is not at all a majority opinion or, at the very least, not at all held by everyone. That is where I think a lot of the HN cohort goes wrong, as a lot of us see no problem with violating privacy (if that is even happening) in this way for this purpose of solving problems and reducing waste. The rest is just media hype.

I was fascinated by electricity, chemistry, firecrackers, rockets and hotrods as a boy. It is a miracle I survived. My dad told me that God looks out for little boys, as otherwise they would not make it to adulthood.

When a girl does that, she is seen as irresponsible and stupid.

(This comment was unfairly flagged and I turned off the flags on it.)

What you say is often true and was even more often true in the past. If it was your experience, I'm sorry to hear it.

A friend of mine, one of the more brilliant people I've met, told me that her parents built her brother a workshop because "a boy needs a workshop". When she said she needed a workshop too, she was told she didn't. My sister had similar experiences. At the time, this was taken to be obvious.

Things have changed since then, but not completely, and not at the same rate everywhere.

Dare I say it, and I'm sure there are exceptions, but I've never in my life had a women show any interest in my various hotrods over the years. They sure attracted the attention of boys and men, though. They'd want to see the engine, want to know what modifications were done, etc. The women, would just turn away. I don't know any women who took a car apart to see how it worked. None who build electronic circuits for fun. None who filled trash bags with hydrogen gas. None who hung out in the machine shop and begged the shop foreman to show them how to use those machines. None with gas powered model airplanes. And so on.

And yes, I'm sure there are exceptions. Nothing wrong with that. And nothing wrong with men and women having different interests.

I'm sorry for what happened to your sister and friend. That was unfair.

Note that my original comment was about difference in how doing something irresponsible is treated - in one situation it is a cool thing and in another proof of stupidity. And dang comment was literally about someone interested who was told no. I have never seen "she is cool because of risking blowup story" with a girl protagonist. It was always she is dumb.

I was personally told that plane kids club is boys only. And like, it took courage to ask in the first place, because I did felt I will stick out. And I have seen boys being pushed into technical clubs whether they want it or not. None of that has anything to do with expectations on responsibility or how mistakes are treated.

I was replying mainly to dang's comment.

In reply to yours, boys doing stupid things are called out for being stupid. They aren't praised for doing things that could blow their hands off or burn the house down. The only ones impressed are their peers.

They just do it anyway, and try to conceal it.

> In reply to yours, boys doing stupid things are called out for being stupid. They aren't praised for doing things that could blow their hands off or burn the house down. The only ones impressed are their peers.

I mean, this is not true and I have seen that both online and in reality. It is literally in peoples comments. Even in the comment I responded to you dont see them go "this was stupid" and moving to cut the occasion out. If whatever op did was not approved, he simply would not had access to materials. You can prevent a kid from doing dangerous things with "electricity, chemistry, firecrackers and rockets" easily - you just refuse to buy firecrackers if they refuse to deal with them responsibly. And parents frequently do - including boys parents.

The fathers comment was affirming, the irresponsible act is not a proof you would be dumb, it is proof you are right kind of a boy.

My evidence is when boys know they do bad things, they try to hide it. Also, I was punished when caught doing these things.

I've never heard of a parent encouraging their boy to play with fire or explosives. My dad went to great lengths to try to stop me from that. I even built a flamethrower once (he didn't know about that!). Weirdly, my interest in such things evaporated when I was 16 or so, and have had no interest in it since. Maybe it was because I got my hands on a Mustang!!

I once acquired several vacuum tube TVs from a repair shop. I had a lot of fun tinkering with them until my mom got rid of them, as she was sure I would be electrocuted. I shocked myself a few times which is funny in retrospect but not at the time.

My dad taught me how to use tools, but only under close supervision until he was sure I wasn't going to stab myself in the eye.

I concealed a lot from my parents and the authorities. I didn't have any illusions I'd be celebrated for that stuff.

People may celebrate it in comments when the danger is long past, sure. But that's something different.

> You can prevent a kid from doing dangerous things with "electricity, chemistry, firecrackers and rockets" easily - you just refuse to buy firecrackers if they refuse to deal with them responsibly.

HAhahahaha, you have nooo idea!

> it is proof you are right kind of a boy.

My dad's great disappointment in me was I hated baseball in all its forms.

My obsessive interest in electricity, chemistry, firecrackers, and rockets was what led me to study engineering at Caltech. My fellow students there were the same type of boy as me. If I was beginning my career today, I'd be sleeping on the doorstep of SpaceX until they hired me.

> I was personally told that plane kids club is boys only.

This is a tangent and maybe a long shot, but if you don't know Beryl Markham's "West With the Night", you might be in for a treat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_with_the_Night

What's the point of your comment?

I've never met a single man who took a car apart just to see how it worked, not even my father who worked as a generator mechanic and later a car mechanic.

Nor one younger than said father (mid-50s) who built circuits for fun -- and he's the only one!

Nor one who filled trash bags with hydrogen gas.

Nor one who even used model airplanes in any format. Nor one who flew drones, either.

And so on, and so on.

I'm sure there are rare exceptions, like you, who've done everything you've personally done. I'd honestly love to see a video or photo of some cars you've fully disassembled; I do maintenance on my volkswagen, and even just changing out the timing belt was quite time consuming!

But seriously, what's the point of your comment? Even separate from if there is some implicit and totally comprehensive difference of interests, I can't discern its relevance to the posts you replied to, especially not in context of stories that sum up to something like "yeah, i did try, and I got socially rejected at multiple stages of early development."

Honest question, whats the value to this topic in discussing generalizations of gender expectations and gender roles?

For one woman in my family tree, her father explicitly give his daughter workshop skills because he viewed it as important skills to have, something she was very happy to receive and has continued to use through her 60 and ongoing life.

A other woman in this tree decided early in life that her primary goal in life was to find a husband and raise children. She did it, and later when the children became more independent, the husband requested that she went and got a job, which resulted in her getting a depression since she absolutely did not want to do that.

Two other anecdotes, in what would be equivalent to US middle/high school, my school let the students choose between woodwork and needlework. The result was ~30 girls + exactly 1 guy in needlework, and ~30 guys + exactly 1 girl in woodwork. Similar events happened at my next school when choosing between psychology and film study, with every student being of the same gender except for one (me personally being that odd one in that case).

I do not see this changing with time, but rather seems to get worse. As the gender equality paradox illustrate, the tendency for stereotypical gender roles and cultural pressure to enforce gender roles tend to get stronger with more gender equality. More recent studies also points towards higher class status as being in a positive correlation in upholding stereotypical gender roles.

It's true that the subthread was a generic tangent and in that sense off-topic, but that arguably started with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42997899, not the reply. It's also true that the subthread got a bit testier and flamier as it went along, which was disappointing. I've detached it from the original root now (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43017762).

If someone wants to talk about boys, it's fair for others to talk about girls. The reply (to me at least) seemed motivated by personal feeling and personal experience rather than ideological battle, so I thought the flags were unfair. People should be free to exchange their personal feelings and experiences here, as long as they don't attack others.

Free to exchange their personal feelings and experiences is good. I fully agree with that.

What is fair or not fair thankfully not up to me. I am fairly colored by my personal experience, especially with one family member that seemingly blended their view of gender roles with their self identity, and an other who seemingly feels the whole deal to be very restrictive and was greatly helped by a parent who choose to go outside the normal expectations in that regard. To me that makes the ideological battle feel like both sides are quite wrong. People generally also describe it as old people that enforces gender roles while young people are trying to escape it, which is also completely opposite in my personal experience.

If I could wish for something in this kind of discussion, it would be the minimization of generalizations. Comments like all girls get treated like X, or all boys get treated like Y, only seem to be simplifications that aim to put a lid on anyone with a different personal experience.

I agree, and often (if not usually) the generalized formulation is simply a wrapper around personal experience.

At the same time, to share personal experience directly can make one vulnerable, so adding a layer of indirection is understandable.

Lots of them don't make it to adulthood. I know 2 that didn't.

Dad needs to look up survivorship bias.

Thats a great line "My dad told me that God looks out for little boys" - I wish it were true but it sounds good.

One time my Cub Scout den mother showed us how to make an electric motor with large nails, copper wire, tin cut from a tin can, wood, and fasteners. Hooking it up to a dry cell caused it to spin merrily.

I then wondered what would happen if I plugged it into the wall socket.

It buzzed violently for a few seconds and then burst into flames. I learned what AC current was that day.

I think I was 8 at the time.

Yes, I have been shocked by 110VAC many times. (It's the basis of my superpowers.)

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42997093.

The sad part is that a lot of people here are complicit, too. I'm sorry, but that's the truth. So many were either brainwashed or put to believe that Kamala is bad ... as bad as Trump. So many in the US showed inaction. You couldn't vote for the "lesser evil" and were happy to let the real evil in the house instead. And now it seems too late. It might be too late. I would bet money that the US won't be able to get rid of these new parasites in the White House for many years. And even after that, it will take generations for the US to gain the trust of its partners and the world. Because trust that's once lost is very difficult to regain.

It seems that at this point, it might be better to "simply" accept the new imperator(s) and learn to live with them and their new rules. And remember, they are NOT breaking the law, they are bending "rules" for the good of humanity... (yeah... nah). They have never tried and will never try to enrich themselves for the sake of their egos.

Please don't spread doomspeak (aka Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt: FUD).

An angle I didn't notice discussed here on HN is that while this confusion about DOGE among the general US public continues, it's a great time for China to advance it's agenda and to weaken the US.

I can almost guarantee that channels of communication have opened between the EU, Canada, and other allies and the Chinese gov't on ways to de-escalate existing tariffs and restrictions (that were often enacted in concert with the US) now that the US has turned on them.

Here in Canada we put 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs the same time as the US did, as part of an attempt to defend the local autosector, which lives on both side of the border.

But if Trump is set to demolish that anyways, and make it infeasible for the Big3 to work effectively across North America, how long before China comes knocking?

Linked previously here (currently flagged and dead):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42979187

Good thorough article on another wild development in this story. Deserves to be seen and read.

Have emailed dang to see if he'll unflag it.

Agreed, previously I was amenable to the "they're young and smart" (but I'd counter with "not wise") take, but no, some of these people are just actually evil.

There was another submission of it here as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42981120

Also flagged dead.

And now musk is calling for the impeachment of Judge Paul Engelmayer who blocked his department from accessing government payment/financial systems.

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5134725-elon-musk-impe...

This should be mandatory reading for everyone who argues this is just fine: https://www.amazon.com/They-Thought-Were-Free-Germans/dp/022...

They are ignoring the basic precepts of the constitution, have rendered Congress' authority to set budgets as moot, are threatening the judiciary and the press. I can't believe how sanguine this thread is. This is an absolute crisis.

We'll never know the true nature of the commenters on HN. However I do wonder how many are useful idiots, propagandists, disinformation spreaders, or trolls.

It is a crisis. Discarding any political leanings, just the economic fallout from this is going to be felt for years. Do none of these supporters have a 401k or savings?

We have too many regulations. I support what DOGE is doing. Thank you dang for letting the world see this topic. I think pg would agree. /s

>I support what DOGE is doing.

I rather suspect your support will last until the leopards eat your face.

A career fed guy in his 50s being forced to beg for his job in a 15 minute teleconference to an arrogant zoomer in shorts and an unbuttoned suit is peak representation of democracy.

this '50 yo fed guy' is a parasite if he cannot justify his work for the nation. 'arrogant zoomer' lmao

20 year old are dumb as shit, you couldn't explain anything to me when I was 20 because I already knew everything.

A subject matter expert in some obscure government office might not be able to dumb it down well enough in 15 minutes especially if they have no idea who their audience is ahead of time.

Have some empathy.

I have some empathy, mostly because it may be challenging for them to retrain and they have been institutionalized.

I hope they are given some runway or options to prepare for the private sector. But viscerally it is deeply, exquisitely satisfying to observe feds have shit canned their parasitic positions predicated on collection by armed tax collectors.

This would be a lot more powerful with a citation. I did read the article but didn’t find this story you are referring to.

“My colleagues are getting 15-minute one-on-one check-ins with 19, 20, 21-year-old college graduates asking to justify their existence,” one speaker at a recent town hall in northern Virginia said without identifying himself or his agency due to fear of retaliation.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/07/politics/musk-doge-staffers-f...

[deleted]

Hard to hold a discussion when everyone is arguing in bad faith.

What? It was a first-hand complaint from someone at a town hall, and it seems to corroborate with the intention of Musk’s campaign to ‘cut waste’ and other statements about how this is playing out from a federal employee’s perspective.

‘That report’ is based on a reporter hearing this statement at the town-hall, not innuendos and rumors. Your very statement that it was based on innuendo and rumors is poisoning the well.

What metric are you using for the comparison of x vs bluesky ?

I mean use any service like Semrush. Blue sky has real traffic, X has fake traffic. It’s an objectively true statement.

The person i was replying to was claiming that bluesky opinions were somehow worse than x, i was wondering what metric they were using.

They've ve deleted it now, I'm assuming because they didn't have a position they felt they could defend.

> Unfortunately if there is no way to confirm what he said, that report is based on rumours and innuendo.

I mean yeah, that's part of the problem -- there's no oversight here, by design.

> guy in his 50s being forced to beg for his job in a 15 minute teleconference to an arrogant zoomer

So, like every private sector job nowadays?

Everyone is acting like this is the first time in history someone's been called into a meeting with a ponytailed 25 year old to have the "What is it ya do here?" discussion.

Memorialized in a movie so old now that most zoomers haven't even heard of it, let alone seen it. Only the Bobs have now been replaced with 'Skylar'.

My experience with private sector is instead of zoomers it's more men in their 40s and they all have the same haircut

There were no 25 year olds taking over in that movie.

As a southern European, I’m really envious.

Have you watched the final moments of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu?

This seems really bad. Did they intentionally pick the worst possible people?

When your boss does a nazi salute, the kids can't be far behind.

a bad joke is in no way as peculiar as this.

Honestly, I'd give Musk the benefit of the doubt if he would even say that it was a joke or he didn't mean to make that particular motion. His refusal to say it wasn't intentional and it wasn't a nazi salute means, IMHO, that he ment it that way and it wasn't a joke, but a power play.

Isn't it concerning to have someone in the highest offices of power who thinks that's a funny joke, someone who has the lack of taste to find it funny in that context, the lack of diplomacy to think it an acceptable thing to do in such an important situation, and the lack of fear of consequences because he's in an almost completely untouchable position, and the unwillingness to say anything to excuse or apologise for it? Only the President can really do anything to him, and it's quite likely that he funds the president such that that can't/won't happen.

Trump has set a precedent of pardoning the January 6th insurrectionists - people who break the law doing what he wants get pardoned.

The supreme court is majority Republican, and he's been dismissing senior department heads and replacing them with people who have been pre-vetted for their Trump loyalty.

And he's possibly setting the precedent of ignoring court rulings he doesn't like; it's at least being accused by Republican nominated federal juste John Coughenour[1], JD Vance has spoken about ignoring supreme court rulings[2].

And The Whitehouse has announced that Elon Musk will police himself over his own conflicts of interest[3].

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

[2] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/31/politics/john-roberts-yea...

[3] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/white-house-says-mus...

True, but that was a nazi salute wearing a thick layer of plausible deniability, not a "bad joke."

First it was excitement, autism, and now it's a bad joke. Whatever you call it, I will never forgive the people that normalized this in politics.

Is anyone really surprised here?

This is Elon who is neck deep in the cesspool parts of the internet and attracts the same kinds of people.

They will continue to break every rule they can and ignore the legal push back as much as possible. They know that there is little they could do here that will result in any criminal prosecution.

Batten down the hatches and expect worse to come, the safeties are off.

Worth noting that some of the most well-known cybersecurity experts today are former cyber criminals. It may be worth investigating his past, but a person's past is often used to attack their character when there is no other argument to make. If we were all judged solely on our past, we'd all be perpetually guilty.

That’s true. And in most other posts, the HN community is predominantly supportive of cyber criminals redeeming themselves as security experts. It’s informative that this case receives the opposite reception.

A security expert does not need access. They serve in advisory roles.

My mental comparison is someone like Marcus Hutchins [0]. He committed some relatively low-level cybercrime, redeemed himself, and served a punishment for it.

That's someone I'm absolutely OK with rejoining the real world.

But the critical thing is the community Coristine was a part of. It is legitimately classified as a child exploitation ring, and as a terror ring. That requires a lot more eyebrows before one even begins consider him rehabilitated.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Hutchins

Worth noting that this kid did this black hat shit like 3 years ago, not 30. This isn’t the kid’s past; this is his very big present.

We should be judging someone’s recent behavior and possible skeletons when it comes to a security clearance. Otherwise, that’s how someone is able to be compromised.

Krebs lost all of its credibility serving political agendas and not understanding teenagers nowadays! They should be ashamed of their ballless attempt at a character assassination!

I don't like Musk and have not for many years, but the left has been venerating some very flawed people for a very long time. It’s hard to be outraged now when we’ve been selectively told to ignore the past of others.

Let’s not forget that Trump is the pied piper candidate promoted by the left to make it easier to win elections. I remember when Ron Desantis was successfully undermined by the news media casting him as weird if he was even covered at all. The left celebrated at the time because they assumed Trump would be easier to beat. When our leaders are picked by their enemies it’s understandable that they’re extremely flawed.

I see it as an emergent behavior where it’s easier to damage than it is to build, it’s easier to undermine an opposition than it is to build up your own side.

I would suggest that political parties stop trying the pied piper strategy but if we are to learn one thing from history it should be that no-one learns anything from history.

> https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/1120

I don't blame HRC's team for trying the pied-piper strategy in 2016. It would have seemed rational enough at the time. It didn't come into play in 2020 at all, though -- do you have any insight to the contrary?

It is an emergent behavior and the negative consequences, that HRC was insentiviesed to use the strategy is why it’s an emergent behavior. I don’t expect parties to learn from this mistake and not use the strategy - but for the sake of the country I really wish they didn’t.

2020 was an incumbency, I doubt the democrats felt they could realistically replace Trump with someone less likely to win.

HRC was insentiviesed to use the strategy is why it’s an emergent behavior.

That's not what emergent behavior is... Emergent behavior is unexpected behavior that occurs as result of the addition of new rules or variables into a system arising from unexpected local maxima created by the confluence of those new rules/variables.

Parties trying to get a disliked opponent to win the opposing primaries has been a strategy since the very beginning of the U.S. party system in the late 1700s. They do it because it can be very effective. Case in point: the GOP and Fox News urged Biden to run for re-election in 2024 because he was so unpopular his campaign virtually guaranteed that whoever the GOP candidate was would win. Similarly, the GOP has spent extensive resources supporting Jill Steinman and Bernie Sanders in the last 3 presidential elections, and in 2 of those elections the margin of votes those candidates got in battleground states was enough to give them the win.(Contrapositive: Obama was the pied piper candidate in 2008; Fox News promoted him with the expectation that the GOP candidate would have an easy time winning and if McCain hadn't completely bungled his campaign that likely would have been true. )

> When our leaders are picked by their enemies

This bears no relationship to reality; he won the primaries in the normal fashion. He's the candidate of the right, who love him, go to his rallies, and buy his crypto.

The parent comment's claim is that he won the primaries because corporate news deliberately and tirelessly covered his campaign to give him tremendous visibility, which led to his winning campaign. I disagree and think they covered his campaign because it generated clicks and therefore money, which is most of what they care about, and accidentally got him elected in the process. I think they guessed incorrectly at how successful he would be, probably because they're massively out of touch due to both being in a echo chamber while also extremely privileged.

This seems like a very cogent take.

> I don't like Musk and have not for many years, but the left has been venerating some very flawed people for a very long time. It’s hard to be outraged now when we’ve been selectively told to ignore the past of others.

Such as? I'll be seriously impressed if you can come up with anywhere near the volume and severity of flaws of the people in Trump's orbit.

I don't understand what your comment means in context of doge? I'm not american so something may be lost on me.

It's American for "I voted for Trump but you can't blame me for whats happening because I didn't want to vote for the other team".

> It’s hard to be outraged now when we’ve been selectively told to ignore the past of others.

A key tactic of the current administration is to pretend that all politicians are massively corrupt. This cynicism is easy to digest, but it normalizes bad behavior. Then when this team does it, they can pretend they’re behaving normally.

Anyone paying attention can recognize the difference, but to casual observers who like cynical takes it’s easy to take the “both sides bad” bait and become numb to it.

Regardless, the logic doesn’t even make sense. It’s literally the “two wrongs don’t make a right” fallacy to try to defend this by saying that you didn’t like something the other side did in the past. In the process, you admit this is actually bad too.

the left has been venerating some very flawed people for a very long time. It’s hard to be outraged now when we’ve been selectively told to ignore the past of others.

Name one.

Let’s not forget that Trump is the pied piper candidate promoted by the left to make it easier to win elections....The left celebrated at the time because they assumed Trump would be easier to beat.

This was not true in 2016 or in 2024. Dems preferred Cruz as an opponent in 2016 because he was the one candidate even more disliked than Hilary. In 2024, DeSantis was undermined by Fox News and News Nation...at Trump's urging). Trump was already ahead of Biden in the polls dating back to summer 2023; Democratic leadership would have preferred DeSantis as an opponent because he was extremely disliked even by Republicans outside of Florida (one can't claim the mantle of "family friendly" and "business friendly" when they go to war with Disney, the largest employer in their state) and they would have at least had a shot to retain the presidency.

It would be better to be more precise about who the left is according to you. If you think Hillary Clinton is the left, the media that is owned by billionaires or the democratic party leadership is left I feel like there is a wide range of political theory for you to learn about.

One way you might learn what the left is is by looking at some history.

The Pied Piper strategy was to draw media attention to Trump, Cruz, and Carson in order to force the mainstream candidates like Bush and Walker to comment on issues they'd prefer not to. It was not to get Trump nominated, which you can tell from the plain text of the email. In any case, the strategy was almost immediately obsolete, because Trump was the frontrunner from the moment he went down that escalator.

You seem to be suggesting that the media undermined DeSantis in 2023-2024 in order to assist "the left" in winning the election. The problem with this is twofold: first, media outlets that nobody would accuse of sympathy with the left (Fox News, the New York Post, etc.) were no friendlier to DeSantis; second, mainstream media outlets continued to treat Trump favorably after he won the nomination (for instance, uncritically accepting his false claims that he had nothing to do with Project 2025).

The biggest irony to me is that Musk wanted to reneg on the Twitter sale. It's interesting to consider the timeline where he was allowed to not buy it. Truly a "canon" event, that one.

I'm also not convinced this is a "security breach." They're being allowed to do it. It's more like an unforced error, if anything. Not that it changes anything material about the situation.

That said - a small majority of congress is currently complicit in this, but I expect that to reverse as many Republican states will have congresspeople whose constituents are affected. I'd expect by May of this year some of this will have been reversed.

Sadly that's too long and some damage will be done perhaps permanently...

> The biggest irony to me is that Musk wanted to reneg on the Twitter sale

With everything he has lied about why assume he wasn't also lying about that? He has been caught lying about being good at videos games.

He went through great lengths to try to get out of it. I suppose it's possible that was a charade, as well, though.

I think he was likely after a lower price than the impulsive one he offered

I always assumed it was because he believed the price he was paying was now too high anfter the tech downturn, and he wanted to try lower it a few billion. It’s roughly worth a few million in lawyer fees to take a 10% chance to lower the purchase price by just over a billion.

would you mind looking like a fool for a chance to save a couple billion dollars?

there's no fair market value for Twitter because there's only one Twitter. If you're rich, money is just a means to an end. you see something, you take it. If you think you can save a couple (billion) bucks on your way out, why not give it a shot? it's already yours

I've become convinced that everything he publicly does is an advanced form of social gish gallop meant to overwhelm and distract everyone from what he is actually doing, which is robbing the United States of its wealth, information, and federal autonomy. For example, everyone knew that the hyperloop was a work of fiction and that the Vegas loop was an ineffective death trap, but during the same period that he was evangelizing about it, China had built 40,000 Km of high speed rail - the US built 0. It seems aufully convenient that someone whos wealth stems from car manufacturing might work to ensure that the most car-dependent nation in the world remains so. This of course doesn't even begin to touch on his forays into media, public infrastructure, digital technologies, communications, space travel, and I can only assume soon energy.

Most people are not very "in the loop", nor do they put much thought into long term consequences or even the concept of ulterior motives; performative (yet socially consequential) things like distracting everyone by paying a team of people to play PoE for him so he can lie about it and generate widespread and inconsequential outrage is an insignificant cost to him. He is poised to be a trillionaire within the term of this administration, and I fully believe he is going to become one by continuing this pattern of pointing at distractions while rifling through our pockets.

> things like distracting everyone by paying a team of people to play PoE for him so he can lie about it and generate widespread and inconsequential outrage is an insignificant cost to him

Yes, the salute was the same thing. Not to say he couldn't have white nationalist tendencies, but the outrage is what he wanted. He's been doing it on Twitter for years, retweeting clearly incendiary and offensive things with "Interesting" or "Huh". This has been the alt-right playbook for years.

That's a very odd definition of "security breach"

> I'm also not convinced this is a "security breach." They're being allowed to do it. It's more like an unforced error, if anything. Not that it changes anything material about the situation.

From the perspective of the owners of this data, the US citizens and others that live in the country, this is very much a security breach; the data that was supposed to be secure is no longer secure.

That's what I'm saying though - DOGE claims it is secure and all of the data is still in the hands of those (in)directly appointed by Trump.

I do not disagree with your sentiment though, but a little pedantry is needed here. It's not necessary for this to be a security breach to be bad. Given how poorly this data is being handled even among those who are "supposed" to have it, it's likely there will be a legitimate security breach soon enough.

Agreed, but part of the reason I think people are not aware of what’s going on is that we’re not calling things for what they are, in a weird and self-imposed Orwellian way. Like calling a rocket that blows up “unexpected rapid disassembly” or some other BS. The rocket blew up, the cars blow up, it’s a coup, they’re nazi sympathizers, etc…

That's why they dumped it all into an LLM online?

If DOGE is acting in an adversarial capacity to the US, there's no reason to put any stock in any claims they make regarding 'it is secure' or 'it is still in the hands of DOGE alone and definitely not being conveyed anywhere else, it has just been wrested from the grasp of the US Government'.

If they are adversarial enough to justify such wresting from the grasp of the US government, is that not already a problem, compounded by the fact that if they are already in an adversarial position there's no reason to assume they are acting alone in that position? Why believe any claim by them if they are already taking pains to take a position as an adversary?

It's taking their say-so that they are a domestic adversary rather than a foreign adversary, as if that made all the difference. I can't agree that it makes as much difference as they claim it makes.

> From the perspective of the owners of this data, the US citizens and others that live in the country

Did you say the cattle owns the ranch? Or you mean the cattle owns the feed?

No, the cattle owns nothing, you own nothing.

As for data being secure or not secure - how do you know any of this is true? Because journalists are good faith arbiters of truth without any conflicts of interest or personal bias?

I would argue that the same could be said that "from the perspective of the owners of this data, the US citizens and others that live in the country" it's evident that the government has been recklessly spending money. The reality is Americans voted this in, they wanted it. Both sides have made historical voting points for claiming to clean up corruption and cut the fat, none of them really did. This time it's being cut for everyone to see. They don't like it. People will fight it. Some good programs will be impacted. Once the dust settles we'll fix it, but for now I have yet to see any good arguments for some of the excess spending programs. I've seen little or no justification for billions going to foreign countries while Americans are in need of help.

He was trying to renege on Twitter so he could renegotiate the $52 price after the stock market came off its highs. To me the suspicious thing about the Twitter sale is why banks lent him the $13 billion to pull it off. The banks were then unable to move those loans off the books as Elon trashed Twitter's value.

At the time, Tesla's shares were so resilient that banks must've equated it to gold. And you can borrow any amount of money if you can provide the equivalent amount of gold as collateral.

He never planned on reneging. It’s a negotiation tactic. It didn’t work but it was worth trying. Turns out it was a bargain all along.

As all the intelligence agencies see DOGE coming their way to look into how they spend money, I think we will see many of those stories in the coming weeks.

True, I would have tried to hit multiple agencies at the same time. Now everyone has time to get their PR in order before doge starts poking around. For the record I’m all for doge. I know if it were democrats doing this as part of Kamala’s administration it would be applauded as a bold move to hold feet to fire or some other nonsense.

Democrats would not hand-pick a CEO with 10+ billion dollars of volatile stock wealth to direct this process.

Apparently 18 years old is old enough to be handed a rifle and sent into war but not access a database.

That 18 year old recruit goes through training and has to pass tests before they’re allowed to use that rifle. Ask a vet how much time they spent training on following orders, using force only when and how authorized, etc. and the difference will obvious. Nobody is saying that the administration can’t hire people, the objection is to bypassing all of the rules which previous administrations have followed.

What rules did big balls need to pass in order to run an SQL read query?

Anyone getting access to a federal system is going to need some kind of background check; training on and agreement to follow the rules about not misusing that data, copying it to unauthorized systems, trying to circumvent a security control, etc. If the reports about having administrator access are true, that would likely involve stronger policies since administrators not only have greater access but also fewer constraints which could prevent misuse of that access (e.g. the normal user interface might not let you download PII in bulk but a SQL query wouldn’t have that restriction unless carefully built in).

Again, none of this is remotely normal and it hasn’t previously been a contentious point that sensitive data has safeguards. The difference here is that they’re impatient and acting like it’s a hostile takeover.

I just hope they post everything they found. I don't care about their credentials and neither do I care about security -- those damned companies already had them 10 times anyway.

But it's very interesting if they can release all information. I mean it's a democracy, right?

I've already seen people in my Facebook feed saying they don't trust the data DOGE has released. They want "proof." What will they take for proof--the raw data files and databases? Will they have the skill to analyze those datasets the same way DOGE is?

I'd love to see the data publicly released and hopefully it will be--in a court of law. There are almost certainly numerous crimes committed over the past several decades laundering taxpayer money through these federal agencies; trials would hopefully lead to evidence being made public.

The HN response to all this has actually been very strange to me. From my perspective, this presidency, and especially Musk working on DOGE, should be one of the most exciting, positive things discussed on here!

I would've thought this crowd would've loved lower taxes (more money to build things!), less regulation (less restrictions to build things!), and an unfamiliar friendliness towards the tech industry (more people to build things with!)... I'm really looking forward to building big things in this country in the next few years!

> The HN response to all this has actually been very strange to me.

Are you surprised that folks are generally dismayed that disruption-for-its-own-sake, particularly for governmental institutions that were never intended to either (a) run a profit, and (b) were generally intended for the public good, is seen more as chaos-mongering rather than a "good thing"?

Real lives are being impacted drastically, and overwhelmingly negatively, by this cult of optimization.

So, no, not surprising that, when the rubber meets the pavement, and real people lose their jobs, their education, their savings, their future... that perhaps, maybe the cult-of-optimization isn't all it's cracked up to be?

No?

I guess I just need more kool-aid, bottoms up.

Whose lives are being impacted drastically? How do you know?

Direct testimonial from people who had research grants disrupted. It's not difficult to infer that now unemployed government employees are negatively impacted. There are more, not hard to find on social media.

> (more money to build things!),

Just avoid imported steel, aluminium, or ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Trump_tariffs

Speaking as a European entrepreneur, the current administration’s dismantling of the government has made things extremely unstable and made certain I do not choose the US for where to do business in the coming months/years.

A Delaware c corp was on the table for our latest incorporation. Instead, it’ll be in Paris.

You’ve given free rein to some people to do wildly unstable shit and remove basically all accountability.

What’s happening right now is a bit like giving a young cto/ceo full root access to all of Google and he starts fucking around everywhere, promising to shut down all the unprofitable parts, he starts refactoring everything solo and rushing everything into production while removing all protections from everything else.

Sure, it’ll run leaner. It’ll make things cheaper as well. I’m also gonna not store my data on Google anymore and I’ll migrate out.

This is basically what happened to Twitter and now everybody’s left except the nazis. What exactly do you think that same strategy will do to the US?

I have to be honest— keeping your startup in Europe is, more often than not, a recipe for failure. The regulatory burden, risk aversion, and fragmented markets make scaling nearly impossible.

Even China fosters more innovation these days. Europe feels dead in the water when it comes to innovation, aside from mandating attached water bottle caps...

Europe lacks good frameworks for startups to succeed especially for first time founders. But nobody’s distracting our founders asking them to focus on bottle caps.

The climate is changing. US pulling away has forced Europe to accept that there’s other priorities than pure regulation. The draghi report had provided lawmakers, politicians and lobbyists with a useful tool to reprioritise.

And the US becoming a toxic swamp means it’s not a good bet for the future. So while what you say is true for the past, it no longer is.

Europe is capable of regulating it's businesses and maintaining fair competition. America fights against sensible legislation like GDPR, DMA and DSA while letting billionaires pay for preferential treatment in the cases of Elon Musk and Tim Cook.

Having worked at a number of (now failed) American startups, I don't see how Trump's administration will increase competition by reducing monopoly regulation. It's going to exacerbate current dysfunction in the software industry, reduce the number of educated professionals in America and raise the barrier to selling software and designing new, economically competitive hardware.

America's lack of serious competition is one of the reasons I don't start my own business. It's probably the reason half this industry works at a Fortune 500 company instead of being a freelancer or entrepreneur.

Really? All people on X are advocating for the extermination of the Jews?

Here’s an exercise for you: put the comment you’re responding to in ChatGPT and ask if this response is a fair interpretation of it. Then, think about whether certain humans are more intelligent than AI.

Why the security concerns now and not with the thousands of employees with potentially similar access? NOW it's a concern because the idea occurred to people that who might have access to data is important? Imo the faux outrage is so far beyond rational that it turns people away. Let's have a reasonable discussion about data access and controls, and whether they are being followed, rather than some reflexive response based on political points of view.

Because controls ensures that people stay honest. I worked on a treasury system for a significant (not federal) organization. By design, I couldn’t even see aspects of the system directly.

When you give people unfettered access to sensitive information, your risk is exponentially greater. Those people can be compromised, tricked, engage in fraud, be victims or frauds, etc.

Worse, because access is unfettered and controls bypassed, you may never know.

Uhh the other employees did go through the proper reviews? That’s why they are employees. That’s why there isn’t outrage at people who were hired and vetted for their jobs.

> Why the security concerns now and not with the thousands of employees with potentially similar access?

Because there aren't "thousands of employees" with this kind of access, and few people who have had it were thoroughly vetted.

> Let's have a reasonable discussion about data access and controls, and whether they are being followed, rather than some reflexive response based on political points of view.

We are well beyond partisan "points of view" here. This isn't really about policy, this is about the law and whether or not anyone has any interest in enforcing it.

Because there aren't "thousands of employees" with this kind of access, and few people who have had it were thoroughly vetted.

I mean, we've had multiple classified info leaks by low-level employees, most recently a 20 year old Massachusetts Air National Guard member who leaked hundreds of top secret Pentagon docs on the Ukraine War to his bros on the "Thug Shaker Central" Discord channel. Some hundreds of thousands of people had access to this stuff. If there are specific subsets of documents with very limited need-to-know access, you need to be clear about which documents and how many people have access.

We are well beyond partisan "points of view" here. This isn't really about policy, this is about the law and whether or not anyone has any interest in enforcing it.

Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution: "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America." The law is the president has ultimate authority over the executive branch and e.g. all classified information and can disclose it to anyone he wants. Obviously there are certain asterisks and exceptions to this authority, so if you want to be specific about which laws being violated please go ahead, but painting with a broad brush that individuals who have been delegated authority by the president are breaking the law by accessing executive branch information is unserious.

The claim that no one in America is enforcing the law anymore is extremely grave and should not be made lightly by a civic minded person.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Teixeira#Publication_of_l...

> thoroughly vetted

And that process is?

Data access controls couldn't have been followed in this case, given the short timelines, right?

The security concerns are addressed in the article. The answer to your question is in there, and your comment is easily interpreted as the same reflexive outrage you think others are guilty of.

Doesn't all this make the kid a lot more practically skilled at the job than most regular overpaid security engineers at most regular corps?

For security work maybe but ostensibly this is accounting work. We are still claiming this is all an audit right?

I'm not aware of anyone questioning his skillset beyond basic questions of experience. Rather what's being questioned is this person's access to highly sensitive data given his shady recent history.

Like sure, maybe I'll hire an ex bank robber to help improve my security, but do I give him the code to the vault and write access to the inventory a year after he broke in?

The stakes are high for these kids. They're obviously very talented individuals, but they're in deep. The reality probably isn't lost on them.

I hope they stay safe, they're doing important work.

Wait, what important work are they doing?

Reportedly, seeking out fraud and mismanagement in federal government.

Are they, though? I'm not trying to be flippant. Rather, it's entirely unclear to me any positive outcome for these individuals or American citizen in general as a result of this effort. Can you provide vetted sources that accurately communciate actual benefits as a result of this effory for anyone other than Elon Musk and Donald Trump as individuals?

> Can you provide vetted sources that accurately communciate actual benefits as a result of this effory for anyone other than Elon Musk and Donald Trump as individuals?

Can you provide such sources that communicate the benefits of this effort for only Elon Musk and Donald Trump? I have seen a lot of speculation on the matter, with much of it plausible, but nothing concrete and nothing that really stands up to intense scrutiny.

At this point we're all working on a near-total information vacuum. To claim you know anything with certainty is presumptive, at best. To claim, with anything short of first-hand knowledge, that you both know exactly what is happening and exactly why it is happening is unbelievable.

Or at least it should be, but as discussion around this topic indicates, it's actually quite believable. Which is really a shame.

If they are actually reducing fraud and waste in government, then it's a benefit for American citizens.

Some discussion centered on DOGE being a fraud, but no evidence of that, only speculation and hyperventilation.

I'd much rather Krebs actually looked into the theft of taxpayer funds by USAID, with all its "shrimp treadmills", "Iraqi Sesame Street", "transgender mice" and regime changes. I want to get to the leaves of that tree and see who really got my money. Everything else is immaterial and should be ignored as targeted attacks on their mission.

Replacing the entire security clearance and access control system of the government with the say-so of one guy is immaterial?

You don't have evidence for what you just alleged, aside from vague, unsubstantiated allegations by Krebs.

I know how long it takes to get a security clearance.

Elon Musk already held "top secret" security clearance. Because of Space X.

Great, and how is that relevant to all the people on this team who aren't Elon Musk?

The president of the United States can grant, deny or withdraw clearance to anyone he wishes. He can also classify and declassify anything he wishes.

You are restating my original comment. Unless you think the normal security clearance system is “just ask the President what he thinks”.

Actually, speaking of that one guy, there are very, very few convicted felons with documented mishandling of classified information who get a security clearance under normal circumstances.

You're confused. The president of the United States is not just "some guy". He is elected by the citizens of the United States to head the executive branch. Besides, you're assuming two more things:

1. That there has been no vetting (100% false - FBI vetting began in early December)

2. That they have or need access to any information requiring clearance

I'd rather my tax dollars go to Iraqi Seasame Streeet than to Musk's private companies.

For what it's worth, and in case anybody's interested, the "shrimp treadmill" was funded by NSF, not USAID, and was exactly the kind of basic science research that the NSF is supposed to fund. Here's an article from 2011 that gives a lot of useful backstory about that story: https://www.npr.org/2011/08/23/139852035/shrimp-on-a-treadmi...

When Elon stripped the Twitter organisation down to its fundamental parts, saved tons of money and the service is still ran like usual, people said the he’s a moron and the service couldn’t possibly run without a bloated and inefficient workforce.

They were wrong. Now that Elon is applying the same philosophy to all of his companies and now the federal government, people are once again saying he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

At a certain point, you have to ask yourself if these people who complain like headless chickens are actually serious people …

Is it really impressive to reduce expenses drastically if you also reduce revenue drastically?

Secondly it's doubly unimpressive because I believe Musk could have actually maintained very similar revenue levels, but the haphazard and immediate way of laying everyone off was incredibly counterproductive.

Revenue went down a lot less than expenses. So yes, profits went up a ton and are now positioned to go up even more as revenue recovers and the tech keeps functioning.

The revenue reduction was also more related to political positioning/image than technical capacity of the platform.

You base this off what? X isn't a public company.

Let's look it up together. Musk has approximately doubled X's profits from 0.68B to 1.25B.

[0] article quote:

"During the last full year prior to Musk’s takeover, Twitter reported adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) of about $682 million and about $5 billion in revenue.

In 2024, X had an EBITDA of about $1.25 billion and annual revenue of $2.7 billion.

While X’s revenue is about half of what it used to be, the company’s costs are just about a quarter of what they were before.

As per the WSJ, investors noted that these were better figures than they had anticipated."

Even this [1] hilariously biased article is forced to admit in the middle that yes, X's profits have gone up since Musk took over.

"Now X also, of course, has reduced its overheads significantly, by culling around 80% of staff, so X’s profit margins are now much better as a result."

[0] https://www.teslarati.com/elon-musk-x-doubled-ebitda-since-2...

[1] https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/x-is-still-far-from-pr...

The word “adjusted” before EBITDA for 2021 is an important one: it references a one-time legal settlement that Twitter paid that year. If you don’t take that into account, the EBITDA was $1.47 billion.

Xai or whatever it's called was pumped with $6 billion, by, wait for it, fidelity. And, they still value X at 1/3rd of its original price. So, yes, the numbers will look good to people like you doing basic ebitda and revenue back of the envelope math. There's also no denying that the product sucks and users are leaving, which in turn will make your cute ebitda numbers look even bigger a few years down the line when there's only naz1s left!

EBITDA is not profit (note the "before" in the acronym).

Net profit is profit.

I strongly doubt the current Twitter programmers could recreate Twitter from scratch. They are living of of the work a much larger number of programmers and building up a lot of technical debt.

Twitter as it stands post Musk is a disaster, though. Revenue has dropped off significantly. How is that a success?

Not to mention the absurdity of comparing something like Twitter to the federal government. It shows the staggering arrogance and ignorance of people in tech who think that.

The companies EBITDA is nearly double from when he purchased it so although revenue is down the company is making more money than before due to efficiencies. It’s probably worth about what he paid for it today. If advertisers come back, which I can see occurring with the huge cultural shift, it will certainly be worth well more than what he paid.

So why did the bankers that finance the loan write it down by nearly 80%? They have access to all the financial data and yet decided to take a major loss on their loan due to?

From what it appears, Late 2024, Fidelity wrote down their loans by 79% [1] and then sold it early 2025 for 97 cents on the dollar (of the reduced value) [2].

I really struggle to believe that the banks are just taking this massive loss by mistake and that the value is actually still there.

[1] - https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/29/fidelity-has-cut-xs-value-... [2] - https://nypost.com/2025/02/05/business/banks-sell-5-5b-of-x-...

I believe you are misreading the news.

Fidelity was not part of the banks that sold their loans. Also it was a partial sale. The banks that sold their loans at just under their original valuation and profited, apparently. Original source reuters: https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/banks-sell-down-55-...

> At 97 cents, it is likely they sold at a profit, he added.

I would guess that the 3 cents loss on the loan value still results in profit due to payments which amounted to more than 3 cents + loan expenses.

Fidelity did write down their loan tremendously, but in October they increased it a bit. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fidelity-boosts-valuations-st...

I don't agree with parent that xitter is worth what he paid for it, far from it. EBIDTA isn't the whole story. But things do look better than a few months ago. So far I haven't seen a viable contender for a xitter replacement. I can't believe I'm saying this but I'm actually rooting for Threads.

Ahh, thanks for the correction.

Twitter is down 80% in valuation since Elon took over: https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/29/fidelity-has-cut-xs-value-...

> service is still ran like usual

a) Trust and Safety teams were disbanded which led to the EU now investigating the company for breaching DSA Risk Management provisions. If X is banned from EU this decision will be a major part.

b) Content Moderators were fired which has led to an increase in the amount of bots, spam etc which has directly attributed to a major loss in revenue as advertisers require a trusted platform.

c) Fidelity, an X investor, has valued the company at 20% of when it purchased. That is indicative of widespread wealth destruction.

Just want to point out that Twitter is not running anything like it used to. It’s handling orders of magnitude less load because they have broken all publicly embedded tweets, blocked public searching of tweets, blocked public browsing of tweets, and cut off all API access except for a very few who are paying.

Brand safety is also essentially turned off. This was a staff-intensive feature because brands can’t delete other users’ tweets the way they can hide or delete or turn off comments in Meta platforms and Youtube. They had to have help from Twitter staff, and now they don’t.

Finally, Twitter’s ad targeting is horribly broken and there is little recourse. Again, that customer service was staff-intensive and therefore a target of cuts.

Elon dramatically shrank Twitter into a much smaller service and company. And that’s a fine approach for a private company, because customers can just go elsewhere (Threads, Mastodon, Bluesky, Truth Social, etc) if they don’t like it.

It will not work as a way to improve the federal government. If you take away highway funding and healthcare and national defense, there is not an alternative federal government that American citizens can switch to.

It’s a dramatic demonstration of how poorly many business leaders understand what government does. Tech leaders can move fast and break things because they operate inside the protected, optimized space created by what government does. Break the government and you also break all the assumptions that give license to innovation.

This was a very insightful comment. Cheers!

Also after Musk took over my DMs were full of bots (never had a bot DM me before that). And the platform is drenched in outright naked racism and antisemitism in a way it wasn't before because they just decided you don't really need to do anything with that (except if someone says "cisgender", of course).

Ok, but how do you balance that with the fact that Twitter did $1.3B in profit in 2024, double the highest adjusted EBITDA of Twitter which was $682 million in 2021? You're talking about a bunch of metrics that are not the one metric that matters in business.

For Elon and all the neo Nazis who were banned from Twitter, Elon's takeover of the platform worked out great. For others, like trans people who were just living their online lives in a community they formed over years, Elon unleashed a barrage of hate and toxicity that forced them off the platform entirely.

The same will be true in our country. What Elon's doing now will work out great for him and neo Nazis, not so great for people that Elon and neo Nazis hates.

If I read this post 2 years ago it’d sound really relevant and current. But today it sounds fossilized. Like it came from a world that hasn’t existed for a long time. It’s amazing how much has changed in the last year. Like the Berlin Wall fell.

> When Elon stripped the Twitter organisation down to its fundamental parts, saved tons of money and the service is still ran like usual, people said the he’s a moron and the service couldn’t possibly run without a bloated and inefficient workforce.

- The bot problem is much worse than before the acquisition

- Search is completely broken, borderline unusable

- Financial data is hidden, so no way to compare

There's this thing autistic people do where they try to reduce everything down to very simple systems that they can wrap their heads around. Sometimes this can be very powerful, but it oftentimes is an incorrect model of reality. Looking at the United States like a company is exactly this, and it's deeply misguided.

I'm interested to hear more about this. I think I have a tendency to want to do this myself. Any additional reading on this concept?

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