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Comment by DrNosferatu | Hacker News Reader

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What a weird thing to say. They are slashing and burning government and routing the permanent bureaucracy of democrats that run the country no matter who wins the election. That’s simply what the GOP has been promising to do for decades, but has been too feckless to do until now.

So undermining national security by leaking oddly specific and contemporary critical infrastructure data is just "draining the swamp"?

Interesting how "routing the permanent bureaucracy" conveniently includes actions that benefit foreign adversaries.

Funny how Conservative principles now include strategic incompetence at the exact points that serve Russian interests.

What was leaked? It was all publicly available datasets?

I guess the leakers didn’t know that! :D

What can you do? Those DOGE staffers are young and inexperienced.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Sounds like you didn't know that either.

What I do know, is that Russia seems to be remarkably fond of other people’s undersea links:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Baltic_Sea_submarine_ca...

Guess what:

A US Senate Committee has just directly asked,

“is Trump a Russian asset”?

https://youtu.be/ibfVfAETlmA?t=16s

[via Forbes]

> the permanent bureaucracy of democrats

That’s ridiculous on the face of it, unless you think GOP appointed heads of agencies have been in on it, and that there has been a massive conspiracy for years with no real evidence leaking.

The GOP appointed heads had no power. The are reports in the prior administration of political appointees having to follow legal cases on PACER because career bureaucrats weren’t accurately keeping them abreast of developments. Likewise they slow rolled rulemakings and other proceedings.

But the democrat appointed heads had all the power?

The problem with a persistent bureaucracy is that it selects for bureaucrats in favor of perpetuating and expanding the bureaucracy.

So a political appointee who wants to expand government finds willing allies.

An appointee who wants to reduce government finds opposition.

The association of individual political parties with those positions is more variable.

The American federal government has more or less the same number of employees as it did in the 1970s.

Yes, if you only count "federal government employees" https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES9091000001

But this neglects the millions of contractors and other positions that are also funded by government spending, which is harder to measure, and does change more over time.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-true-size-of-governme... (2020, but the article doesn't clarify if the 5m includes short-term census workers)

It’s a lot harder to argue that those contractors form the bulk of the “democrat installed permanent bureaucracy that ACTUALLY run the government.”

Genuinely curious here. How does this relate to Putin being captured by Russia/Putin? This, to me, looks like textbook ineptitude not foreign interference.

I want to be clear. I'm not casting doubt on observations that Trump does currently echo Russian talking points. I'm also not trying to argue that he's not captured by Russian interests. I'm merely wondering how this specific piece of information points to that conclusion.

I understand your question's fairness, but consider what's actually being exposed here: geospatial data on undersea cables, ports, and "critical minerals" - precisely the vulnerable infrastructure points that would interest foreign intelligence services, particularly Russia.

This isn't mere incompetence - it's a clear alarming pattern. The Trump administration has consistently mishandled classified information while simultaneously adopting positions that align perfectly with Russian strategic interests regarding NATO, Ukraine, and European security.

When a DOGE staffer carelessly exposes sensitive infrastructure data that maps America's strategic vulnerabilities, and does so while the administration pushes policies beneficial to Russia, the connection becomes impossible to ignore.

This incident isn't separate from Russian influence - it's another manifestation of how this administration's OpSec is compromised at the most fundamental level, creating opportunities for exploitation by the very foreign powers they seem reluctant to oppose.

That's the good thing about conspiracy theories. Hard to falsify.

Mic drop:

https://youtu.be/ibfVfAETlmA?t=16s

Quite a few of those conspiracy theories are starting to look preeetty attractive these days.

Last time I checked, I hadn't gotten any more schizophrenic than I haven't been all my life, but - you never know.

Always watch out for misinformation, folks. If in doubt - Russia invaded Ukraine. I mean, unless they didn't. (But they did.)

Whose line was it again, anyway?

When patterns become too obvious, just label them "conspiracy theories." Much easier than explaining why critical infrastructure leaks consistently benefit the same interests.

Funny how skepticism disappears when billionaires dismantle democracy—that's just "innovation," right?

Careful, your tinfoil hat is a bit creased.

All you have to do is look at how Trump is treating Zelenskyy and praising Putin to know that he's in Putin's hip pocket, either out of stupidity or is an actual asset that they have компромат on

> how Trump is treating Zelenskyy and praising Putin to know that he's in Putin's hip pocket

Ukraine has been my pet war for the last few years. I have to disagree.

Trump doesn’t particularly care what happens to Ukraine. He needs the dollars we’re sending to Europe to finance his tax cut and trade war. I’m less convinced Trump is acting at Putin’s direction than that he’s looking for the nearest guy to offload the problem onto.

I would be more willing to believe that if not for the first-order result of the current administration's aims being a 6% GDP loss from kicking out illegal immigrants and another 6% loss from what Musk says he's aiming for with DOGE, plus another 1% GDP loss from the tariffs.

That said, I am willing to believe Trump wants to use Musk to cut whatever he can actually cut, and then throw him under a bus for the political fallout of those cuts. That plus Musk's habit of making maximal promises and delivering "merely" impressive results, means I think DOGE will actually cut a lot less than $2T — I don't see how even "just" $200bn would be anything less than a major geopolitical shift felt well outside the US, that breaks something so hard that Trump will want a fall-guy. Same for the illegal immigrants: kicking them out may be a vote winner, but they're too important, so I expect perhaps 10% of them to actually be removed.

But that still produces a 2.2% GDP contraction. Ukraine aid won't come close to covering that.

> I am willing to believe Trump wants to use Musk to cut whatever he can actually cut, and then throw him under a bus for the political fallout of those cuts

Yes. But Musk is also a useful distraction. Cabinet confirmed and deficit blown out while the DOGE bros take the cannon fire. Round two will be drawing out their inevitable days in court.

I would agree something has to be going on that we're not aware of. He went to Russia in 1987 on business, met with some shady characters, came back and immediately placed a $100,000 ad in the NY Times that points fingers at other countries "taking advantage" of the US to promote the idea of US isolationism. He was not political before that trip, and since then it's been his life mission to separate us from our alliances. Now he's parroting lies directly from Putin's mouth gaslighting the world about who invaded who. He's certainly done a good job of keeping whatever it is secret, but it's pretty easy to see what's going on from his actions. Either he's been directly compromised or Russia's running a very effective influence campaign to basically brainwash certain people of influence without their direct knowledge.

BTW the ad is in this article for anyone who's interested:

https://archive.is/ATuqH

Noticing patterns is "tinfoil hat" territory while ignoring oddly specific and contemporary strategic infrastructure leaks is just "rational thinking."

I'll try to be more reasonable and assume it's pure coincidence that incompetence consistently aligns with foreign interests. Much more plausible.

Really?

US Senate Committee:

“is Trump is a Russian asset”?

https://youtu.be/ibfVfAETlmA?t=16s

[via Forbes]

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