It raises additional questions. Plenty of questions already unanswered. Seems likely it's been a shitshow.
More worrying is that the article points out at time of writing the key was still valid. Why such a high level key was used in an agent script, why it hasn't been rotated (can't be rotated?) and about a dozen other "whys" point to some rather damning practices.
I get that the idea was to avoid the obscene levels of red tape that can be common in government IT, but the pendulum has clearly swung far, far far too far the other way.
The government has some programmers, but the vast majority is done by contractors. That lets the executive branch claim to have reduced those dastardly government workers, and replaced them with upstanding, virtuous, competent, handsome private industry.
Even before the recent harrowing there weren't a lot of government programmers left. Government employees award and manage contracts.
Ones we should be ready to prosecute with official resources come ‘26 and ‘28.
In the meantime, I wouldn’t let him into my country. But the EU will be the EU.
If there were anything like proper processes in place, controls would have made that very difficult.
Then there are the weird issues about why obvious close ties to xAI here....