Comment by ben_w | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ben_w | Hacker News Reader

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> Here is just one headline from today, The Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on Monday revealed its finding that $4.7 trillion in disbursements by the US Treasury are "almost impossible" to trace, thanks to a rampant disregard for the basic accounting practice of using of tracking codes when dishing out money.

And you believe them?

This is a department that fired multiple different nuclear weapons inspector and maintenance teams without knowing what their job was.

Had to re-hire them. They weren't redundant teams. DOGE just didn't understand what they (or the teams) were doing.

Now, I'm very happy for the US nuclear stockpile to shrink. I sure think you have too many of them. But then, I'm foreign and a hippy, so I would. But (1) do you?, and (2) do you want it to shrink by some of them accidentally exploding? Or being relocated by a hostile power taking advantage of the inspectors all being on early retirement?

I am not jumping to conclusions and will reserve the judgement for later. They provided no proof so far, but hopefully it will be forthcoming, and I would not dismiss their claim outright.

Relocated where and by whom? Just curious.

> Relocated where and by whom? Just curious.

As I'm asking you if you want this done, take your pick.

Loss of oversight made a bunch of USSR suitcase nukes, ~100 or so, go walkabout when they collapsed. Russia denies this, of course. They might be fine, or not, nobody (in public) really knows. Probably not a huge risk without maintenance, if you nick it but don't know what it is you might scrap it for parts and mistake the core for tungsten or lead, but… not great, unless it was existing nuclear powers who took them.

And even then, not great for Russia.

They deny that, but of course you know for sure that they are lying, that the nukes went missing, and you have the proof. Just like I know for a fact that there are alien craft hidden in Area 51.

It was a statement made by General Aleksandr Lebed, former Secretary of the Russian National Security Council, in a meeting with an American congressional delegation.

Here's the first US government report I found on it with all of the entirely negligible effort I am willing to entertain: https://commdocs.house.gov/committees/security/has078010.000...

Perhaps he was drunk, or lying, or just plain unable to find the people who knew which cupboard the devices were safely locked in. But he did make those claims. And you are missing the wood for the trees.

This "wood" (and the US report) consists of exactly one person who made this claim, and a member of corrupt Yeltsin's entourage to boot. I'd say if these nukes were real, they would have exploded somewhere by now. Try harder.

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