Elon Musk admits email to government workers was a ruse | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk admits email to government workers was a ruse

independent.co.uk

36 pointstaimurkazmi19 comments

I've been reading the air traffic controller subreddit (r/atc) and it really shows how unbelievably stupid and uninformed Elon is.

The air traffic controllers don't have government laptops. They don't use workstations with email. So in order to respond to this email, if they weren't working today, they had to come into the office and get paid overtime to respond. If they were working today, they had to find time and a laptop to respond (and not do their job controlling air traffic). And the whole management chain must have spent the whole day trying to figure out how to deal with all of this since it was not thought out at all.

So the Department of Government Efficiency wasted a ton of time and money getting air traffic controllers to email what they're working on, which is utterly pointless since everything air traffic controllers do is already recorded.

It's not an exaggeration to say that the one e-mail has cost the government millions of dollars just in the man-hours of randomized employees trying to figure out whether to reply and WTF needs being said.

I guess the standard reply to the mail must've been "Eat shit". In case of ATC this could be handled by management. They not even need to send multiple emails. They just compresse the info while keeping a human readable form.

It strikes me that there are so many random requests coming from all over the place that this would be a great opportunity for a large scale phishing attack posing as Elon/DOGE.

Definitely not a ruse.

I worked for a startup run by a wannabe Jobs/Musk type about a decade ago and when the budget started getting tight they pulled the same playbook: demanding unreasonable hours, putting hard working people on the spot about what they do, summarily firing all contractors etc.. it was a bad time and the C Suite eventually got fired.

What sort of startup has C suite?

The kind run by a wannabe Jobs/Musk type.

Downplaying it as a ruse is like describing a mugging as a property dispute.

Musk (1) impersonated a manager to (2) declare a fraudulent employment policy in order to (3) threaten employees and create a hostile working environment with the goal of (4) constructive dismissal.

P.S. Item #1 may not apply depending on on some other court cases, where the Trump administration is refusing to say exactly WTF Musk's role actually is, probably because no matter which mutually-exclusive thing they pick they've still broken the law.

> P.S. Item #1 may not apply depending on on some other court cases, where the Trump administration is refusing to say exactly WTF Musk's role actually is

No, they've said in court that he is a White House advisor with no decision-making role (not even at the recently-renamed US DOGE Service, which—despite the public portrayal of him as (originally co-)head of DOGE, he is not formally involved in).

As usual, Trump can't keep the story straight.

"I signed an order creating the Department of Government Efficiency and put a man named Elon Musk in charge," Trump told an audience of investors and company executives in Miami. [0]

So is Trump lying? Confused? Senile?

And the pushback to Musk by most of his administration didn't take the form of "this guy is just an advisor". They acted as if Musk were in charge, no matter what Trump tells a judge.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-appears-contradict-wh...

I believe that technically email was sent out by OPM, so not sure your #1 is correct. Your other points stand though.

Edit: However the "failure to respond is a resignation" part was Elon and so yeah, maybe your #1 point stands as well.

This seems more like “lol I was just joking”….

At this point I want to fight fire with fire:

"You know, there are a lot of countries, very nice countries, where someone tried to become a dictator, and then they caught and executed him in a horrible horrible way. The family also, imprisoned from being terrible people. Do you think we'd do that in America someday? Just joking, just joking, nobody would do that, it's fun to think about, isn't it? It really triggers those snowflakes. Let's all talk about exactly what would happen in visceral detail, you know, as a joke."

We can all point out that the 2nd amendment is cherished.

Bingo. Trump and the MAGA movement more broadly have made extensive use of this strategy: do something ridiculous to test the waters, and then claim you were just joking if the response is too harsh.

He is calling it a ruse because other Trump appointees told their employees that Elon can go pound sand, and he couldnt bear to face the fact that he got told no.

God what a fucking man-child. The most insecure human I have even witnessed. It is embarrassing.

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