Nothing wrong with being 20 somethings in itself regardless of the rest. Average age for the Manhattan project was 25-27. We can focus on the merits or mistakes no need to focus on age.
Did the DOGE 20-somethings also have the benefits of supervision from PhDs in various specialties? It's not the age alone, but the age in combination with other factors that make it concerning.
> $191k USAGM broadcasting contract for “broadcast operations and maintenance in Ethiopia, Africa”
> $1.3M State Dept. education contract for “Botswana MI curriculum”
etc
USAGM's mission is to promote the USA's diplomatic interests in parts of the world with little or no press freedom. Whole thing was cut by executive order of Trump to the maximum extent possible.
Because of that order, it's not even a "not specialised" role, it's not a role.
If USAGM should be cut or not, should have been the choice of congress rather than the executive, but that's a different question entirely.
> Botswana MI curriculum
What's "MI"? Mission-Influenced? That sounds like a plausible amount to spend on a curriculum about Botswana for the benefit of the State Department, let alone in Botswana on anything.
And if it is in Botswana, you have to then actually ask "what is this mission, and is this in the interests of the USA taxpayer?", which needs specialists.
Specialists in what? Asking whether something is in the interests of the taxpayer? Data analysis? If so, then such specialists would have to be found in an independent organization without conflicts of interest for any specific mission, aligned with the interests of the taxpayer, and they would need to be recruited from the part of the political spectrum that cares about waste in government. In other words, you'd need a group that looks like DOGE.
Yes.
Because they need to:
(1) understand the answer, and not mistake terms of art for things they sound like to normal people. For example, to use Musk's ideology, this would be things like mistaking a study in "transgenic rats" or "trans fatty acids" to be anything about gender.
In the case of `$1.3M State Dept. education contract for “Botswana MI curriculum”`, you've still not said if you recon this is in or about Botswana, and you've still not said what "MI" is, you've taken something that you think "obviously" sounds bad (or why else would you have quoted it?) without having thought too hard. I tried searching, the sidebar was an AI summary of (and linking to) this thread that made claims not supported by anything anyone here has actually said, and only one of the four(!) real links even got me a page with the string "Botswana MI curriculum" on them, which linked to X.com which also didn't explain what that was.
What you've done here is treat it as an applause light, not considered anything about taxpayer interests. Applause lights can be done by an AI, taxpayer interests cannot.
(2) for all items including those that sound good when you do know what they mean, be able to tell if they actually did what they said they did rather than pocket the money.
(3) even when they did the thing, determine if they're any good at doing the thing or if they're a bunch of well-meaning idiots.
For (2) and (3), I'm mainly thinking of the UK with this, with PPE bought for the pandemic that wasn't fit for purpose.
(4) have security clearance to know about clandestine missions, so that you don't cut the expenses which are deliberately faked by the government on purpose with a bland an/or politically correct title so nobody complains about the clandestine mission, despite the money being spend on absolutely nothing at all like whatever the line-item says it was, once what is and isn't "politically correct" gets inverted.
> In other words, you'd need a group that looks like DOGE.
No, you'd get something a lot more competent. And boring.
At least bother to come up with some reason they should be cut. But you can't even seem to put that into words.
Apparently "not a serious person" is the new insult of choice with you guys, huh. What a ridiculous reply.
Of course they should be cut. The slogan of the winning party for the last decade was America First. They ran on that platform. Broadcasting and teaching on a different continent isn't putting America First. There's your reason.
The insistence on not understanding obvious stuff is such a tiresome attribute.
You think advertising doesn't work?
$191k/year to promote American interests in Ethiopia may or may not be value for money to the American taxpayer (I honestly don't care because I'm not one), but to think it can't be value for money is to claim that the primary business model of half the American tech giants — and also the business model of X.com, which isn't a giant but is the property of DOGE's most famous figure-head — is fake.
It sells (advertises) the USA's preferences to Ethiopia. Preferences such as "do not interfere with shipping things up the Red Sea or we'll do to you what we did to the Houthis in Yemen". Or preferences like "open your markets to what our businesses want to sell to you". Or, historically, "human rights are in everyone's best interest, you should do more of that because it will make you rich and then you can afford more of our stuff".
Stuff like that.
But to repeat: As I neither know nor care about the national interests of the USA in Ethiopia, I do not say this should or should not be funded — all I say is that this kind of thing *must be considered when deciding if it is or isn't good value, you cannot possibly know a priori just from the title alone*.
I’m only arguing that there are complex reasons why some of these programs exist and it requires experience and perspective to uncover that and make informed decisions.
All that said there is another side of the coin. That is that there were under-the-radar payment systems and not quite audited channels of money in those systems. Built with care, you bet. Essentially diagramming the tech stacks, documenting admin systems, getting and using root and root equivalent at all times possible.. those were the scalps taken, and the targets were actually rotten in some ways in some places. /rant
An ability to execute well requires a focus on task and purpose, and an organization given set up & leeway to iterate and improve.
DOGE just seemed completely uninterested in doing real work. They fired whomever was possible to fire wherever they could (and especially in places with more expertise / Blueness), while calling it reducing "Waste Fraud and Abuse" (without presenting any evidence).
Some of these folks are now embedded in agencies, some even doing actual work to try to improve these systems in some way. There's very little clarity or transparency to it all though: part of the Trump/DoGE takeover has always been being accountable to no one, presenting no real evidence, but lots and lots of sound and thunder.