A Year On: The DOGE Disaster | Hacker News Reader

A Year On: The DOGE Disaster

donmoynihan.substack.com

43 pointsjamesgill24 comments

I wonder if and how many backdoors were planted in government computers.

It wasn't a disaster. Musk got all the information he wanted. Mission accomplished.

What would have been amazing is if Musk and the DOGE kids he hired were denied access, blocked from entering any government building, and accomplished nothing. It would have been a rare moment in recent years where humanity had something to be proud of.

This is why he should be immediately arrested upon a Democrat president. All Musk's assets should be seized and he should be put in prison until his innocence can be proven. There is a lot of levelling that needs to be done. All the DOGE brats should be rounded up too and their assets frozen.

I don't like what he did with doge at all but the principle of innocent until proven guilty is either for all or for none...

> It wasn't a disaster

it was for the country

Of course it was a disaster for the country. But the purpose wasn't to help the country. It was to steal data and assert power over the civil servants. If you look at it that way then it was a complete success.

The disaster was that our checks and balances failed, the right people didn't stand up to stop it, and our elected officials didn't do their jobs. Hitler's standard playbook adopted by this administration.

When Hitler became chancellor on January 30, 1933, he relied initially on a coalition, emergency presidential powers, existing conservative officials, and the established bureaucracy. Enabling Act, March 23, 1933: allowed Hitler's cabinet to enact laws without parliamentary approval. Many conservative officials remained in office and the takeover occurred through a combination of legal changes, intimidation, selective purges, loyalty requirements, and control from above.

When someone, hypothetically, invades your country and you fail to defend, it's still fair to call the event, as a citizen of the country, a disaster. The pedantry is silly and unnecessary. The intended readers aren't so stupid as to need this repeated every single time this topic comes up.

I don't know if I'd call the pedantry silly and unnecessary. This forum is one of the few left where brilliant minds are able to discuss openly, with both accuracy and precision, about topics both narrow and wide. Being able to correctly state truths and falsehoods about any subject without fear of needing to subject to social guidelines on communication is a strength of this forum.

> It is hard to fathom anyone on the planet less qualified than Elon Musk to opine on the value of public service experience when lives are at stake.

This is the opening line of this piece. With a hyperbolic, charged statement like that, be mindful to avoid getting into a flurry of emotions. I’m not a fan of that kind of writing I would prefer to read something a bit more level headed. I don’t care who or what it’s about - I can make up my own mind if it really matters, just give me the information to work with.

Rest of the article isn’t much better.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com