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Comment by mmastrac | Hacker News Reader

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.

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Also a lot of consequences of musks actions will appear only decades later and they will claim they have nothing to do with it.

> 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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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