Doge Claimed It Saved $8B in One Contract. It Was $8M | Hacker News Reader

Doge Claimed It Saved $8B in One Contract. It Was $8M

nytimes.com

215 pointsxnx124 comments

Also worth highlighting that The Upshot found this error on the first item they reviewed. If already the first one you check is wrong, then the Bayesian in me has a hard time having much confidence in the rest of it.

There are more oddities for sure. For example, when they cancel a multi-year contract they are considering the entire value of the contract as savings even if a significant chunk of the money has already been distributed.

On "Wall of Receipts" on the DOGE website there's a switch with "total contract value" and "savings" options. I guess that the purpose of the second option is to exclude money that has already been paid for that contract. It should be the default option, but of course they want to show a bigger number. But I see some strange cases where total contract value is lower than savings, but that's in real estate, I don't know how that works and what they're doing with that.

https://www.doge.gov/savings

Now update your priors about who runs it :-)

"Contradictory statements about Musk make it unclear who runs DOGE" - https://abcnews.go.com/US/white-house-claims-elon-musk-doesn...

I'm not really sure how that's relevant? I'm not even American, I don't care who runs it. This seems like pointless flame bait.

I think the ubiquity of general disarray and confusion surrounding this agency is relevant to the discussion of whether or not we can trust their intentions and claims. So, further evidence of the extent of this general disarray and confusion is worth considering and not "pointless flame bait".

You don't need to be the titular head of an agency/department/service/whatever to be the defacto head.

I found and posted that here Monday before the NYT:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43084891

Apparently DOGE are the ones that did it first. DOGE were the ones to update the value to the $8M from $8B that was incorrectly in the system.

So they reported they saved $8 billion after discovering it was really $8 million?

I'm not sure that's better.

No, they were the ones who found that someone entered $8B in the system, asked them to change it to $8M. They never reported saving $8B in their own savings for this program. The numbers they used are tied into the systems so it only updates with the system.

DOGE did claim $8B in savings on their own system on Monday. That's the whole article is about. There's even a screenshot.

The $8B -> $8M change was made in Federal Procurement System on January 22nd.

So if DOGE is who found the issue in the procurement system originally, that means they lied about saving $8B weeks after they discovered it was only for $8M.

It's unsurprising given this RAGE/DOGE is mass distraction and/or government obliteration with all of the care of a grizzly bear eating a salmon.

I'm beginning to think these young inexperienced guys aren't quite ready for a big important job.

what happens when you prioritize loyalty over all else.

This hiring and promotion pattern is also why autocracies tend to be mismanaged nightmares

And here I thought these guys were all about "merit"

Loyalty can be a merit.

In an autocratic state or organised crime syndicate (these are rather similar), the only one which really matters, in the end.

But Musk successfully build a new type of fast travel car tunnel?

And he optimized twitters value to 10 Billion?!

Oh those young inexperienced guys are quite ready for their big important job, namely, being cannon fodders for destroying the government via fear, uncertainty, and doubt. (And if Trump ever feels they've outlived their usefulness, he can dispose of them freely.)

It's just that it's not the job they thought they were signing up for.

A case study in the need for teaching of and leading for engineering ethics.

They are 100% ready for this job. It's just that the job is not what they officially say it is...

According to DOGE, DOGE were actually the ones who found the error in January that someone in the government had entered $8B in the records and DOGE had it updated to $8M.

But that wouldn’t count as savings.

It wasn’t $8M either since some of the contracted amount has already been spent. They should have used $5.5M in the headline.

Even better, it was already public. Like basically everything on DOGE's fake savings site listing the things they've 'found'. Literally already published on a US government site: https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_IDV_70CMSD22A00000008...

Can we do anything about a government agency making such a gross lie?

Call your Senators and House representatives at (202) 224-3121.

Which agency?

https://archive.ph/btyqh

What's a few orders of magnitude among friends, eh?

I draw the line at 5 personally. 4 if I'm being picky.

A mere 1,000x difference? This is just pedantry

Cut your friendly neighborhood billionaire some slack. How else will you expect him to expand companies to serve you better, airplanes that don't crash for example.

But it's so competitive to become the world's first trillionaire. So all is fair: monkey wrenches, caltrops, and oil slicks to elbow out the upstarts.

According to DOGE:

In September 2022, the agency contracting officer mistakenly wrote $8B instead of $8M when logging in the FPDS database. DOGE discovered this error in January 2025, and the agency updated FPDS accordingly. DOGE has always used the correct $8M in its calculations.

Except on this website on Monday.

They can't code and they cant count. This DOGE endeavor is an embarassment.

What happened to trust but verify?

trust is earned.

How long do keep trusting when your verifications keep failing?

Trust but verify just means "Don't trust, verify".

Or more precisely: "be polite, but verify"

Trust me bro, no need to verify.

This just seems like a case of attacking the messenger

This is an attack on the message and its author, not the messenger.

It looks like doge just taking credit for the switch from 8 billion to 8 million that happened two days after Trump took office

The contract, with a company called D&G Support Services, was to provide “program and technical support services” for the Office of Diversity and Civil Rights at ICE.

... the federal award, approved in September 2022, had initially listed a total value of $8 billion. But on Jan. 22 this year, that figure was updated to $8 million.

DOGE involvement aside, that right there is not exactly the exculpatory evidence NY Times thinks it is.

Humans make mistakes. The good ones fix them, and update the number. The bad ones update the link the hide their error and keep the old number.

“Our government has typos that get fixed!” is not the zing you think it is either.

I think this was an honest mistake. But it demonstrates exactly why it’s so dangerous for Elon Musk and our president to make sweeping accusations before understanding the situation.

Lives are being ruined right now - federal employees, citizens who rely on the programs being cut, and people around the world who benefited from US generosity.

The sad part about all of this is that clearly in a system as large as the federal government, there is waste. Elon has the opportunity to make a real impact, but he’s demonstrated that he just cares about optics and will not put in the effort required.

They have not updated the site with the correct total and have removed the documentation of the correct value and replaced it with a link to the incorrect value. In those circumstances it takes an extreme stretching on the imagination to consider it an honest mistake.

My personal expectations of someone optimizing the spending of the biggest military power on the planet apparently seem to be higher than yours.

I would have a proper research and validation team in place making sure there are only correct information being shared

> Elon has the opportunity to make a real impact, but he’s demonstrated that he just cares about optics and will not put in the effort required.

Musk is using his opportunity to do real impact and is achieving real impact. Exactly the impact he wanted and want. He has exactly optics he wants and exactly material changes he wants.

The impact is not positive to most people affected by it, but Elon Musk demonstrated again and again and again and again that he does not care about that.

I would have called it an honest mistake at the beginning of the month. I more or less lost the BOTD when he forced his way into USAID

>Elon has the opportunity to make a real impact, but he’s demonstrated that he just cares about optics and will not put in the effort required.

That was clear at least 7 years ago. Never too late to realize this but I sure wish more people researched back in 2024.

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