At my first gig, I had "god" level access to our production database.
All I learned is that nobody should have this level of access unless it is some sort of temporary break glass situation. It is extremely dangerous and even experienced engineers can cause irreparable data loss or some other bad outcome. In our case, some engineer accidentally sent around 10,000 invoices to customers that shouldn't have gotten them.
There are far better data access patterns. In the case of US gov data, I don't see why the DOGE team would need anything more than a read replica to query. It could even be obfuscated in some way to protect citizens' identities.
Ah, I remember a time 30 years ago when I logged accidentally into the PROD database (forgot to add the suffix "1" to the connection ID), thinking it was a Dev instance, and then issued a "truncate table CUSTOMERS"... the reaction came within 75 seconds - and restore from backing took several hours.
I've worked with older governmental systems, and chances are they are running a wide variety of systems, some of which, the oldest and most critical, are probably written in COBOL running on IBM mainframe hardware. In those environments, there is no real distinction between "database" and "application". COBOL systems are very file- and batch-oriented, and are "monolithic" in the extremist sense. The technology itself makes it impossible to give read only access to such systems.
> The technology itself makes it impossible to give read only access to such systems.
This isn't true. Mainframe COBOL systems commonly store data in VSAM files, or DB2, or IMS, or sometimes some more obscure non-IBM database (e.g. CA/Broadcom's Datacom/DB or IDMS, or Software AG's ADABAS). But whichever one they use, there are multiple ways of granting read-only access.
For example, if it is VSAM, you can configure RACF (or TopSecret or ACF2) to allow an account read (but not write) permission to those VSAM datasets. Or, you can stick DB2 in front of VSAM (on DB2 for z/OS, CREATE TABLE can refer to a pre-existing VSAM file, and make it look like a database table), and then you can have a readonly account in DB2 to give you access to that database schema. Or, there's a lot of other ways to "skin this cat", depending on exactly how the legacy app is designed, and exactly how it stores data. But, probably this is already implemented – most of these apps have read-only access for export into BI systems or whatever – and if it happens for whatever reason not to be, setting it up should only be a modest amount of work, not some multiyear megaproject.
>Or, there's a lot of other ways to "skin this cat", depending on exactly how the legacy app is designed, and exactly how it stores data. But, probably this is already implemented
Given that neither of us knows the actual systems in question, what is more likely, that it's a well-designed system or one that has organically accreted over time? It seems like you tend to believe the former, and I the latter. I suppose my view is based on the fact that, like in statmech, you enumerate all possible systems that can do a particular job, the vast majority of those solutions will not have any organizing principle and will not be amenable to surgical analysis or change.
I think the difference is that I know that getting data out of mainframe COBOL systems is a long-known and long-solved problem, and I can list lots of different ways to do it (I mentioned a few, there's several more I didn't mention). Without knowing the details of the exact system, I'm not sure which one would be the best one to use, but the odds that you'd have a system for which none of these existing solutions is suitable is rather low – and indeed, likely most of these systems are already using one or another – there are whole teams of sales people who have spent the last 20-30 years convincing government agencies (inter alia) to buy these solutions.
Whereas, you don't seem to know anything about that topic, and are speculating based on parallels with completely different disciplines (such as statistical mechanics).
We both are speculating due to lack of details about the specific systems under discussion, but wouldn't you expect the person whose speculations are based on greater relevant knowledge to be more likely to be correct?
I'm sorry, but just because I didn't pepper my post with shibolleths like z/OS or VSAM or the vagaries of ACCEPT and DISPLAY keywords, doesn't mean I don't know what I'm talking about. I worked specifically on connecting COBOL system to a DB/2 database, and one thing was for certain: understanding the data format was the hardest part of the problem. Those definitions, in our system, were tightly coupled to the user interface code, AND the batch processing code.
No, it's not my specialty and didn't work with this system for long, but my overall impression was that COBOL programmers get (understandably) low-level abstractions, and therefore had to build higher level abstractions themselves. This is not like modern software development where you have an embarrasment of riches from any level of abstraction you want, and a large system where every part of the stack is a custom solution is generally going to be more chaotic. To put some numbers on it, to add a column of data to the system I worked on required on average about 20k hours of coding work. No doubt some of this was sand-bagging, but I'd say 80% of it was legitimate.
> I worked specifically on connecting COBOL system to a DB/2 database, and one thing was for certain: understanding the data format was the hardest part of the problem.
But now you are shifting the goalposts: from getting readonly access to the data, to understanding what it actually means. Yes, I totally agree, a lot of legacy COBOL systems, it can be very hard to work out what the data actually means - even though you probably have a COBOL copybook telling you what the columns/fields are, they can be full of things like single letter codes where the documentation telling you what the codes mean is incorrect. And likewise, you are right that seemingly simple tasks like adding a field can be monumental work given the number of different transaction screens, reports, batch jobs, etc, that need to be updated, and the fact that many mainframe programmers don’t know what “DRY” stands for
But simply getting read-only access to data? Most mainframe COBOL systems would already support that. Could there be some really badly maintained ones in which it was never configured properly and they just give DOGE read-write access because DOGE refuses to wait for it to be done properly? I doubt that’s the norm but it might be a rare exception. Such a system would likely violate security standards for federal IT systems, but agencies can get exemptions.
> To put some numbers on it, to add a column of data to the system I worked on required on average about 20k hours of coding work.
20,000 hours is 10 years of full-time work for a single person. If you "didn't work with this system for long," it is quite simply statistically impossible that you could have witnessed enough projects to have anything resembling an accurate "average".
These old systems need to be upgraded but Congress never approves the financing or execution of it because they're too divided and won't increase taxes on anyone especially the rich and giant corporations to do it.
You know that annoying thing where someone joins a new team, looks around, declares all their friction points to be easily solvable, dives in & starts making changes, and turns out to make a big giant mess?
And the reason is they don't understand the specific domain & context well enough to know what the actual hard problems are. Instead they're just pattern matching to things they do know and extrapolating. And it usually doesn't go well.
Dealing with a system that's replicating 50 years of regulatory rules is going to be that times infinity.
I don't think that's annoying. If they make a mess, then by the time they're done cleaning it up, they'll be an expert, and you won't even have to train them. That is exactly what you need when the system is broken. The existing people should be encouraging, let them try, and lend their wisdom when they can. Disruption has always helped the tech economy thrive and government should welcome the opportunity to learn this aspect of our culture.
The agriculture industry is a skeleton crew for something that's largely been automated by tech: https://justine.lol/tmp/agriculture.jpg There's not much of a construction industry either, since the government doesn't let us build anything except sprawl.
The USG does in fact know how to build a website and it is intellectually lazy (so very lazy) to suggest otherwise. A high profile illustration of this is login.gov, which is SSO used across USG agencies. It's not possible to take a comment like this seriously, at all.
Elon Musk is also not an auditor. DOGE is not an auditing entity. You bring in accountants to audit. These are 20 y/o something programmers. How DOGE has been operating has been completely opaque and this lack of transparency just plays to the point that what someone says their goals are and what their actual goals are are not mutually exclusive, so no, Elon Musk shouldn't be allowed anywhere near these systems.
Are you familiar with healthcare.gov? It was a disaster. So the government let some people from the tech industry come in and help. Techies saved Obamacare and then founded an agency called USDS, who did other sites like login.gov. DOGE is basically doing what USDS pioneered, except now tech people have earned enough trust to fix the government itself, rather than just being the wiz kid who fixes their website.
Why haven't you responded to the substance of my point? Again:
> Elon Musk is also not an auditor. DOGE is not an auditing entity. You bring in accountants to audit. These are 20 y/o something programmers. How DOGE has been operating has been completely opaque and this lack of transparency just plays to the point that what someone says their goals are and what their actual goals are are not mutually exclusive, so no, Elon Musk shouldn't be allowed anywhere near these systems.
Your comments throughout this thread have a lot of baked-in assumptions (again in your reply with the bit about "tech people having earned enough trust" and reducing the whole tech industry to that of a "whiz kid who just doesn't fix websites anymore". Seriously? You really don't grasp how reductionist of a thought process this is?) and a closer examination on your behalf is warranted. Complex questions never have simple one-liner answers.
Even in this very thread there is stuff like this [0] being posted.
My baked-in assumption is that I'm assuming best intentions. I'm not claiming they'll be perfect. I'm just happy they're trying. I'm also grateful that the world's most successful man was willing to lead this cursed dangerous project. Because it must be done.
And then the person dropping this load of nonsense moves on without ever having to defend their point.
How do you combat this kind of bad-faith propagandizing? How do communities maintain some level of connection to reality and decency? It seems to infect every online space I visit.
Have you been to China? It's like a science fiction movie. Now consider how Mao destroyed the old world, killed the old guard, and led the few remaining through decades of poverty rebuilding the glorious smart city society they have today. Trump is basically Gandhi compared to Mao. So I don't understand the weeping and wailing. Those people have all the guns in this country. If they want to try to fix America's government rather than murder us, I say let them try.
You’re the one arguing in bad faith. This administration is the most protective of the core functions of government of any GOP administration in decades. Bush wanted to privatize social security. Trump took that off the table.
You’re acting like DOGE is about turning the U.S. into some libertarian paradise. But look at what they’re actually focused on. Foreign aid is completely optional, but PEPFAR (an effective foreign aid program) promptly got a waiver. What’s been targeted for cuts? Stuff that detracts from the core mission, such as meddling with elections in India. The federal government is full of this shit—and full of people who care about distractions rather than the core mission.
I’m no libertarian, just a citizen who lived in Baltimore and rode Amtrak and has been to functional countries like Germany and Japan. I like government. But our government sucks at governance. And I’m fine with someone taking an axe to all the distractions so government can refocus on maintaining order and providing fundamental services.
"maintaining order" by the same president that encouraged police riots last term? Just because you've written a lot of polished words does not mean you're arguing in good faith - the fascist version of "maintaining order" is precisely what everybody is worried about.
I'm a libertarian. I will be overjoyed to admit I was wrong if we somehow come out of this with an intact democratic government bound by the rule of law and keeping the corpos somewhat in check. But all signs point to our country being well and truly fucked.
DOGE literally took over the agency that competently modernized and integrated US gov technology (United States Digital Service), gutted it, and is now using that agency's pretense of needing access to data to now pilfer citizens' private information and grossly violate the constitutional separation of powers.
All I've seen about this DOGE stuff is negativity based on hypotheticals, this is the first optimistic hypothetical I've seen so far.
It's an interesting point. As a thought exercise, tech is absolutely the core of modern America, #1 export (I assume) and a key market. Private sector influence probably can give huge amounts of low hanging fruit.
I think peoples main concerns stem from not trusting Trump (which seems odd given he's a second term president, he is objectively wanted) and not trusting Musk (which is probably fair, he's publicly and openly an arsehole).
Speed probably concerns people too, however "move fast and break things" is a pretty fundamental American tech mantra, so entirely unsurprising and usually effective.
Trump winning the election wasn't necessarily because he was "objectively wanted". It could be because he was less disliked than Biden at the time. Plus I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people voted Trump but then his first couple of weeks made them go "hang on a sec...".
Trump is a populist. Populism is sort of like an advertiser being surprised when he discovers that sex sells even though no one ever talks about it. The ultimate trump card in modern politics is to pander to those sorts of predilections. One of the responsibilities of the ruling class is to temper many of the primal instincts that people have, which requires handing out bitter medicine. But that only works if everyone in the ruling class agrees. If one elite breaks the consensus and chooses betrayal in this prisoner's dilemma and survives, then he instantly wins the popularity game. That's why it's called populism.
> Trump winning the election wasn't necessarily because he was "objectively wanted".
Isn't that exactly what the popular vote is though? Maybe people weren't passionate about it, but my loose understanding of the US popular vote is it's quite direct unlike preferential voting, so the people who chose him actively chose _him_.
I'm not saying there aren't regrets, but it seems to me defintively that the majority of voters selected him as the president they wanted.
Well, you said it's "odd" if people don't trust Trump, since they voted him in. I'm saying that plenty of votes may have been because they trusted Biden even less. In a 2-party system it's difficult to distinguish between "I want A" and "I really don't want B".
That's fair. I know most Western countries are effectively 2 party, but the US does seem more so than others. Regardless, he is who was picked by a very large number of people in a fair, democratic election.
US, UK, Canada, and Australia, certainly. But almost all European countries are multi-party. I suppose there's an argument that some voting systems are "more democratic" than others, in the sense that they allow/incentivise individuals to express a more accurate picture of their desires via their vote.
> not trusting Trump (which seems odd given he's a second term president
You might recall that at the end of his first term, he tried to overturn the results of the election he lost, calling up the Georgia attorney general to demand the vote total be blatantly altered, and even siccing a mob against the Capitol to physically prevent the certification of the results.
> That's why all this stuff is backed up to an iron mountain.
When one of your threat vectors is a massive ball of nuclear fire right on top of the federal government in DC, your offsite backup policy is going to be absurd overkill by the standards of any other organization on this planet. That doesn't mean it's flawed.
> ...many of the people in charge don't even know how to use a website. Now for the first time, tech industry people have the opportunity to help run these computer systems, and you're afraid they're the ones who'll be incompetent and accidentally break everything?
Are you honestly suggesting that the people who built these systems, maintained them, and updated them to reflect often significant changes in rules and regulations over the course of decades somehow don't know how those systems work? If they were so damned clueless, those COBOL systems would have sputtered out and died decades ago. The fact that they've continued to run for all this time is practically prima facie evidence that the system works just fine by industry standards for that kind of legacy code.
No doubt there's plenty of stuff buried in the codebase that bugs the hell out of the developers working on it, but you get that with any complex legacy code. It's the nature of the beast. Do you think there's nothing in Google's monorepo that some of their engineers don't quite like but doesn't rise to a big enough issue to warrant refactoring right now? Any other FAANG company? Or large tech company in general?
You're writing as though a bunch of junior developers--and that describes pretty much all of the publicly known DOGE employees so far--are wizards who can just waltz right in and magic up a better solution just because they're from the "tech industry."
Setting aside the unlikely chances that those juniors--no matter how skilled or talented--have any experience with COBOL, mainframes, or even just decades-old legacy code, is anyone going to suggest that something like the federal government's payment system isn't defined by an immense amount of complex business logic so as to comply with legislative requirements? It's not something you just start playing around with.
I can't think of any tech company that would take a junior developer, toss them overboard in the middle of the freezing Atlantic, grant them sudo access, and tell them to do whatever the hell they want with critical systems before they drown and--somehow--take the ship with them. Worse yet, those juniors were chosen for ideology fervor and/or purity, so what happens when the normal review processes and experienced senior developers are pushed aside because they're in the way and part of the "deep state conspiracy" that doesn't want them to "[fix] the government" as you put it?
Not only is that a recipe for disaster for the company itself, it's a damned good way to take an otherwise talented junior developer and permanently ruin them. Instead of mentoring them so they can work well as part of a team, you're basically creating a toxic working environment that's going to turn them all feral. By the time they crawl out the other side and the public hears all about what they've been up to, what company is going to be stupid enough to a developer with "DOGE" on their resume? Beyond that, you're conflating a whole bunch of different issues here with federal software contracts and IT, while putting the tech industry on a really peculiar pedestal.
Besides, if the goal is to discover waste/fraud/abuse, the obvious answer is to hire a bunch of forensic accountants and let them dig into everything. Those are the people who actually find that kind of stuff, and they're incredibly skilled at their job. If it's there, given the time, they'll find it. But it's a slow-going process, so we instead see a bunch of engineers focusing on random transactions so they can ask themselves (1) "do I like that one?" and (2) "do I think it's legitimate?" because it's faster.
That's not exactly how you fix anything, least of all a country.
I'm not questioning the reliability of their systems but the content of their databases.
The DOGE workers are already legends in their own lifetime, having saved $55 billion, and they haven't even gotten started. That's like 20% of Google's yearly revenue, all in a few weeks, and without needing to write petabytes of code in a monorepo.
I don't think it's accurate to mentally model these payments as though they were counter intuitive algorithms in a deeply embedded software system. Waste fraud and abuse can be painfully obvious. So it's not the complexity of the problem that has prevented it from being solved. It's the political cost. Senior people have spent a lifetime accruing political capital. They're afraid to lose it. They're only going to spend political capital if they get something in return. They know and have cultivated relationships with the people who will be unhappy if particular instances of waste get solved.
So it makes sense that Elon is unleashing his crackerjack juniors.
> For decades the tech industry has been the beating heart of this country that's kept the American dream alive
By "tech industry" do you mean the consumer surveillance industry? Maybe your vision of the American dream involves inescapable corporate control, but mine certainly doesn't!
I'm talking about the tech industry that invented a self-driving bulletproof truck that looks like a DeLorean and is faster than a Lamborghini which anyone in the middle class can afford. If Elon can make science fiction real for the masses, then he should be able to balance one itsy bitsy tiny little federal budget.
There are a lot of baked in assertions to unpack there. But sure, one would think that the skill of inspiring a team to develop self driving might decently translate into leading a country to buy in to various government reforms. But that isn't what's being done, right? Instead he's just autocratic butchering and xitposting inflammatory half-baked "findings" - both completely anti-trustworthy to anybody not already sucking down his xitstream. And it doesn't take any skill to do that. Maybe he could have done the job before his tragic spiral of social media addiction, but that doesn't seem relevant to the current situation.
And as far as bringing science fiction to the masses, it seems like he's taken all the wrong lessons from the common theme of corporate dystopia.
Never mind the direct risks, if you have "god mode" to basically any government thing, you instantly become the target of foreign intel/military operations. You can bet good money that there are entire teams, if not divisions, working around the clock to exploit this situation.
I can imagine Chinese and Russian hackers laughing at the DOGE l33t hackers.
And if I was advising the Ukranians I'd tell them to try to exploit it too, hey, if you're fighting 2 superpowers with another 1 quietly backing the fight against you, you need all the help you can get.
> It is extremely dangerous and even experienced engineers can cause irreparable data loss or some other bad outcome
It is literally why we never log in as root.
HERE BE DRAGONS
I don't know an admin who hasn't, on multiple occasions, unintentionally caused irreparable damage. It is easy to do even with the best of intentions and with extreme levels of care. Any one trying to rush through a dragon's den is only going to get burned. Considering how many dragons' dens they are running into, I do not question "if" damage has been done, but "what".
I remember having some kind of C programming bug where output filenames got scrambled (string memory error probably). And output files in the same folder as the source code.
That seems innocuous, but remember then some of the output files might have the character "?" or even "*". So imagine trying to remove these files and going an asterisk too far. All gone!
I've had a company give me full admin access to their cloud account. Thankfully, I learned the lesson earlier in my career and immediately created myself of more mundane user. Break glass access is important, but definitely not as the usual level of access.
> I don't see why the DOGE team would need anything more than a read replica to query.
They shouldn't need more than limited read access. The fact that they have more access, very likely demanded and not accidentally given, is due to their intent to do more than simply query data.
I loathe working places where they just give you all the permissions because it's "easier".
One risk is if something does happen,
and they don't have exceptional tracing and logging,
(and let's be honest,
at an organization sloppy enough to hand out privileges like candy,
what's the chance of that?)
it's difficult or impossible to pin down the source to any individual.
As a result,
both responsibility and suspicion is diffuse.
The appropriate restrictions are relative to the size and momentum of the organization. It's easy to spend months setting up safeguards rather than working on product development that won't proportionally return.
Of course, this involves being honest with yourself about risk and reward, and we all have implicit incentives to disregard the risk until we get burned and learn to factor that in.
When they did decide to lock down the database, the DB admin only locked in down in the sql server client most people used. If you used some other client, you still had access. _sigh_
It's not just about the risk. It signifies that you're not dealing with an experienced database administration staff. (At a startup that might just mean one guy, but that's better than zero.
A second thought. It leads to lazy application development. Whenever you have production intervention that happens more than a few times, you should just make a feature that does it safely via application code.
I've definitely worked in places where "Move fast and break things" tended to focus on breaking things. There would be bugs that we didn't fix because "We can just fix the database when it happens." It would take 2hours to fix a bug that would cause of 10's of hours of weekly support request, but the focus would always be on building new features, of which 10% got any real usage.
I agree. Good access controls and being prevented from accessing things that I don't need access to protect me as an employee just as much as the data itself.
Why should they even have read access? They're not a legal government institution, and they're being led by a private citizen that's not been elected or appointed by Congress to access our data in agencies that were made by Congress under particular rules to keep these kinds of snoops out.
Ultimately someone has root permissions. Re: federal agencies, in the United States, that someone is clearly, constitutionally, the President. Article II of the constitution vests all power of the executive in the person of the President. The President has authority to appoint agents. That same article _does also_ say the President has to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed", but the "Care" there is highly debated. But the idea that the President doesn't have the right to appoint Musk to get root access to federal agencies seems legally incorrect.
I'm not make a value judgement on this, it's just how it is. At a startup, the founder ultimately has root access to the database, no matter what the technical controls.
Now, maybe it's stupid, and maybe it should be some other way, but to my mind the other way is that Congress gets together and writes a law saying "the executive cannot get root access to X, Y, Z". In absence of that law, the executive can do whatever they want.
Not to be THAT GUY, but "an append-only database which cannot be modified by anyone" is something HN has spent the past 10 years saying is completely useless...
And Trump can launch the nukes to blow up the world too... but building a system where he can just click a button to do so would be idiotic. Same idea with giving godmode to the guy who thinks carrying a sink and saying "Let that sink in" is hilariously clever.
IMHO it's a bit of a shame that the productivity and efficiency gains that computing and cybernetics can bring to complex systems -- including government -- are always tainted and currently championed by anti-social elites that use them to break apart these collective machines.
Bureaucracies are a common good, and it should be in everyone's interest to apply state-of-the-art system engineering to make them as valuable as currently possible.
Not always. Both the Digital Service and 18F appear to be (to have been...) good faith efforts to apply state of the art system engineering to the federal bureaucracy, and quite successfully.
This is just one administration co-opted by one anti social elite to do the opposite. Don't extrapolate it out. Place blame where blame is deserved.
I don't think it's just one, unfortunately. It's not even much of a co-opt; more just an inevitable progression of the ideology that was held by that administration since the beginning.
Trump tried to make DOGE, and was slapped down by congress, so he took an existing department, removed all the people, switched it to do a different job, moved it to a different state, and replaced its name.
It's not just a co-opt; it's a complete replacement. DOGE is in no sense USDC; it's just wearing its skin.
> Trump tried to make DOGE, and was slapped down by congress,
When was he “slapped down by congress”? He signed the executive order establishing DOGE on inauguration day - obviously his transition team’s lawyers had drafted it for him in the weeks prior. And his lawyers came up with an inventive way of hijacking existing Congressional authorities for DOGE. But it wasn’t like he asked Congress first and only resorted to this scheme when they said ‘no’ - he planned to bypass them all along.
Okay, some Republicans introduced some enabling legislation for DOGE early this year. But I don’t think either they or Trump were ever expecting it to get passed, and they weren’t seriously trying. Introducing the legislation was just a political stunt to get attention and demonstrate loyalty. “Bypass Congress” was the plan all along
>Okay, some Republicans introduced some enabling legislation for DOGE early this year. But I don’t think either they or Trump were ever expecting it to get passed, and they weren’t seriously trying. Introducing the legislation was just a political stunt to get attention and demonstrate loyalty. “Bypass Congress” was the plan all along
It was a fishing expedition for them to figure out who to threaten and/or actually primary in 2 years...
yeah from what I understand the original focus of the department was to make the software better serve its customers. its obvious that trump doesn't like congress, judicials, laws. heh cutting government waste is actually a good cause but you need skilled no nonsense auditors and well I think by inspecting trump's resume and reputation, I bet he REALLY doesn't like auditors haha
From the reporting I've seen, they're not firing "at random", they're firing more or less every single new hire they can, because new hires have less protections than more established employees.
You need to find more reporting then. It's both, and more, and worse. The folks fired at DOE's NNSA were not exclusively probationary employees. DOGE doesn't even know the function of the departments they're eliminating. It's not evident they even know _what_ they're eliminating. See the "find and fire" approach to the word transitional. Oops... turns out that one's used in more than the context of gender.
Even firing all probationary employees explicitly _for cause_ when there's no evidence of performance problems with most of them is worse than random, it opens them up to legitimate legal backlash. Have you ever worked anywhere where the last two years of hires were all just completely worthless as employees? Of course not, that's basically impossible. Eliminating these people would have been harsh but understandable if it were said to be done for simple budget reasons, because yes they indeed are in a vulnerable less protected situation, but to call them all poor performers at the same time is worse than random, it's an obvious and transparent lie.
Not just new hires.
They are firing people on "probationary" status,
and people in civil service go through a brief probationary period after being promoted or moved to a new position.[1]
This means some people being fired are long-time senior civil servants with expertise and knowledge.
The reason they are firing probationary people is because they are easier to let go,
by civil service rules.
I suspect the people in charge of the firings are under the same mistaken impression as you are,
that all the probationary people are new hires who aren't yet essential.
Witness the "oops, we fired the wrong people" rush to rehire.[2][3]
Not just new hires, but also anyone who took a promotion or lateral move, which also puts them into a probationary period. So they're firing all the new employees and all the employees exceptional enough to be promoted or recruited to another department.
You mean Peter Principled into another department...? Sorry, just joking. It's terrible and unfair to fire people like this. They are removing the low hanging fruits first.
Dude, what is wrong with you? Tens of thousands of real, human people trying to support tens of thousands of real, human families. That's what your joke is about.
The people they fired at the VA weren't probationary and one of the first changes they made to the VA was removing gender identity from the account information.
This isn't about efficiency, money, or employees. It's about power and the consolidation thereof. They will have ransacked the VA and the American people not only gave them the keys but they cheered them on.
It's not just new hires. Employees who move to a new position, even if they've been in that agency for a long time, also have less protections and are being fired.
But as others have noted, these are not the only ones being mass fired.
I personally support trimming bureaucratic fat, but the way the current administration is doing it is the worst way possible - with no due diligence - and will lose public support soon.
Yeah unlikely.
I don’t even care that Elon isn’t just being altruistic and is in on all this just to benefit himself. My support of what they’re doing thus far is pretty steadfast, and I just want to see more and more people fired, and more and more budget cut.
I don’t care what happens to Ukraine, just don’t want us to send another dime. Hoping it can just end soon, which is more likely now than it was with previous administration.
Tariffs are a terrible idea though, but would take them if we got rid of the income tax.
As of now DOGE and Trump are doing exactly what I hoped, and I’ll check back in a year and see if I’m worried.
This[0] doesn't seem random, and is just one example of many similar ones.
And that's not counting the firings at the DOJ and FBI which were explicitly retribution (though you could argue DOGE had nothing to do with those firings, which may be true, but I'm referring to Trump's mass firings in general).
Bureaucracies are just organizations of humans, who have the same motivations, biases, and incentives ans everyone else, everywhere else in society.
They're not a "common good", they're just people, and because they have de jure authority over certain domains, they need be subject to oversight and accountability if we're to trust them.
Bureaucracies often have perverse incentives, ulterior motives, and are themselves co-opted by the very "anti-social elites" you're complaining about (and such language indicates a conflict-based rather than an error-correction-based approach to dealing with these issues, which is itself an error). Increasing the efficiency and efficacy of such organizations without proper oversight can easily lead to more abuse and corruption.
In this situation, I think that neither the established federal bureaucracy nor DOGE and the current administration have interests and intentions that are necessarily aligned with the broadest interests of the public at large. At this point the best we can do is hope that the adversarial relation between them leads to a favorable equilibrium rather than an unfavorable one.
> Bureaucracies are just organizations of humans, who have the same motivations, biases, and incentives ans everyone else, everywhere else in society
No, the biases and incentives are different in government than in business. Yes, there are biases and incentives, but they are different.
The main attraction of government work is the ability to serve your country, and to be rewarded by taking actions which produce (what you believe is) long-term social good.
Your belief that an adversarial relation between forces of government leads to a favorable equilibrium is indeed the basis of the US constitution, and the very thing which DOGE/Trump are attacking with such force.
> No, the biases and incentives are different in government than in business
Not really, no. Certain cognitive biases and elements of self-interest are fundamental to all humans in all situations, and while different scenarios lead to those biases manifesting in different forms, they still share the same underlying substance.
> The main attraction of government work is the ability to serve your country, and to be rewarded by taking actions which produce (what you believe is) long-term social good.
No, the main attraction of government work is the ability to have a decently-paying career with a high degree of job security. Most people in such jobs simply dutifully do the tasks asked of them in exchange for a regular paycheck, and don't deeply consider the broader effects of their work on society (except to convince themselves of the importance of their work, as we all do).
A few outliers will prioritize theoretical ideals about doing "social good" over their own career goals, and a few outliers on the opposite end will prioritize having access to political power and opportunities for graft. (And some mistakenly think they are doing "social good" by forcefully advancing their own particular normative ideology.)
> Your belief that an adversarial relation between forces of government leads to a favorable equilibrium is indeed the basis of the US constitution, and the very thing which DOGE/Trump are attacking with such force.
No, I don't DOGE and Trump attacking the concept as much as participating in it here. None of the parties involved have good intentions, as far as I can evaluate, but, again, there's a chance that things will work out in the balance.
> apply state-of-the-art system engineering to make them as valuable as currently possible
Sure, and if DOGE was doing that, it would be a worthy mission. But we have seen no evidence of that, while we have seen a lot of evidence of ideology and retribution based purging.
There is already a government agency who has been working to overhaul and modernize the government's systems -- very much needed -- for years, and they all just got sidelined and/or fired. The DOGE team that took over that agency (USDS) isn't even talking to them.
The people at the FDA responsible for oversight of Neuralink's medical device approval just got fired. Don't tell me you believe that was to make the FDA's system more efficient.
That’s just a question of how you define “state-of-the-art”. The term doesn’t preclude secure or reliable - prior to the “move fast and break things” era where adtech dominated the tech industry, those used be considered a requirement.
Bureaucracies are a “common good” because of their human element: the ability to exercise discretion, recognize unique circumstances, and be held accountable to the public they serve.
The challenge is harnessing technology while strengthening these essential human capacities. Anything otherwise erodes public trust and sows division.
Of course some level of bureaucracy is essential for any human society but your generalization takes us nowhere because it's riven with assumptions about that 'human element'.
It’s HN, I can’t write a full abstract here. Of course, my view is full of assumptions, just as any general discussion of governance is. And dare I say, idealism too. Democracy itself is an ideal -- one that depends on human participation to exist at all.
Not at all. Bureaucracy isn’t a flaw: it’s how governments function. Civil servants work, usually beyond politics, to keep society running -- from veterans’ healthcare to highway construction. That you, and others, may not realize that points to a really painful reality that people don't see democracy as participatory, but a spectator sport. Elected officials steer, but we -- those in the system -- propel it forward. Or in my case, have.
When systems fail, people step in to fix them. Sometimes, the failure is a person, and their supervisor or colleague is the safeguard. Replacing that with AI/ML is political offloading -- shifting responsibility from elected officials to code that can’t dissent, negotiate, or care. You’re lucky if it can even explain itself.
I know I’m on HN, where this isn’t the prevailing mindset. But public systems aren’t startups. They don’t get to fail. The common good isn’t about efficiency; it’s about endurance. It’s about ensuring society functions for everyone -- not just those with money, power, or influence. Public systems safeguard the commons, whether it’s infrastructure, social services, or even the basic principles of justice. They exist to serve not just the people you identify with, but those you ignore, fear, or even condemn. Bureaucracies, with all their flaws, aren’t meant to be efficient, they’re built to endure.
I don't think unelected bureaucrats should have more power than the elected leaders of the Executive.
Try the "shoe on the other foot" principle: Imagine if Trump put lifetime leaders in those agencies and they fought against the next Progressive president.
> I don't think unelected bureaucrats should have more power than the elected leaders of the Executive.
It depends on which bureaucrats we're talking about. Most agencies are the creation of congress, and the executive should have minimal power over them. The president's job is to implement the laws of the legislature.
They don’t have more power. Whoever is telling you that has been lying to you, starting with the idea that these are lifetime jobs or lack accountability.
The American system of government is based on checks and balances between the branches. Congress passes laws which delegate some power and the Executive Branch implements them. In many cases, the high level positions are presidential nominees who are mutually agreed upon with the Congress and serve a set number of years or until recalled by one or both parties. Each agency has specific rules governing what they’re allowed to do and how they do it, as well as oversight and transparency for their actions.
What we’re seeing now is the conflict caused by Republicans deciding that following the law is too hard and creating conflicts with people who are following the law. When Musk was pushing people to grant access to restricted data, for example, it was proclaimed as disobedience but was simply that the people charged with protecting that data do not have person discretion in that matter: the operator of a SCIF knows they face heavy consequences if they allow unauthorized access. In all previous administrations, this hasn’t been a problem because people just waited a few weeks to get clearances.
Similarly, when Trump illegally tries to fire inspector generals it isn’t that there’s no way for him to do that, he just didn’t feel like giving Congress 30 days notice.
In all cases, the law is what matters: if there is a real disagreement about how one of the independent agencies operates, Congress can change it at any time and given the Republican majority it would not be hard for any reasonable change to be quickly enacted, at which point an agency head would be removed or even prosecuted if they fail to comply.
It's interesting you invoke the constitution and law here when law is being violated per the constitution - funds are being unilaterally revoked by unelected individuals, funds that were voted on by congress. Congress has the power of the purse. Weird you leave that little tidbit out of this whole screed, it's almost like you're being purposely dishonest.
It’s definitely a problem that money appropriated by Congress isn’t being spent as intended, but I’m not sure how you got the idea that I support the Trump administration’s decision to do so.
I don't think elected leaders in the executive branch should be allowed to supersede the role of the elected legislature in formulating public policy.
The whole problem can be sidestepped by pulling back on the excessive levels of discretion and rule-making that have been delegated to executive agencies in the first place.
The unelected bureaucrats should be responsible for upholding the Law and the mandates of their position, not to any individual or party. And the Law is set by Congress, not the Executive. The Law is enforced by the Judiciary, not the Executive. The whole point is to have an engine that can keep working and keep accumulating domain expertise regardless of which political party is in control, beholden to the Laws set by the Congress over time, representing all constituents over time, held responsible by the courts, and not the whims of any given administration (or, for that matter, any single Congress). The entire problem _is that_ we now have what may effectively be lifetime leaders being put into positions and _being told to ignore the law and their government issued mandates_.
And so much reeks of a Watergate like situation, except done publicly instead of in secret, with Congress and the Judiciary refusing or unable to hold any of these people to account. "We will now gather all information about our adversaries and fire anyone who doesn't give us the keys to the vaults, and if anybody doesn't like it, good luck, because the courts are going to be VERY busy, indefinitely, as we proceed to break every law the Legislature has issued, and is unlikely to have time to hear your case for a few decades."
But let's take at face value the idea that the Executive doesn't need to follow or even acknowledge the decisions of the Legislature, and that they can tell anyone to do anything whenever they feel like it. There's a pragmatic issue, not just a separation of powers issue: How can you possibly accumulate domain expertise, and what motivation would you have to accumulate that expertise anyway, when every agency is going to be dismantled every 2-4 years?
Besides, these bureaucrats are "elected" in a way similar to the Electoral College. We vote in the Legislature, and the Legislature votes on the appointments. If we don't want "lifers" then we should be voting on term-limits for these positions, not allowing the wholesale remodeling of our bureaucracy every election, where "just anybody" can come in and walk away with whatever they can loot each cycle.
It's not uncommon for some agency leaders to be replaced - particularly those dealing with policy-oriented matters, like say the FTC. But that doesn't apply to the rank-and-file because of various civil service reforms which are designed to provide continuity between administrations and avoid partisan flip-flopping of large numbers of employees. They were also designed to avoid corruption or the "selling" of government positions to those favored by the president, which was common back in the 1800s. Trump is taking us back towards greater corruption while disguising his acts in a cloak of "rooting out corruption".
that's why Democracy is not a "Tyranny of the majority" but it's subject to process that is both collectively agreed and consistent with constitutional principles.
Unelected bureaucrats don't have more power than the elected leaders of the Executive. The power to remove them arbitrarily is simply not a power that the leaders should have. Ideally, Trump's lifetime leaders in those agencies would have been installed by committee between both parties and so are apolitical whose sole focus is their job duties and serving the people, and can fight against the next Progressive president purely on that basis.
Every human knows that governments and bureaucracies are inefficient in some way. It's been mocked since the dawn of times. The issue is that you don't toy around with big legacy systems like you do with twitter. To satisfy their little immaturity and get political points on their fans they start ripping off everything without enough time. If they started real medium term efforts to analyze, organize and then migrate it would be different. Plus there are other factors due to human group and political time that will come back later and muddy things up again when someone feels like fixing elon's patch.
I disagree with that, if a system needs time to check, then it's not inefficient, it's right at the speed it needs to be to work. What I'm thinking of is absurd structure beyond the need for checks and balances.
Some examples of "stupid" ineffiency: delegating tech support outside government. Meaning no technician could fix a laptop on-site, their role was to notify a private company to come one day to take the device and come back later with a fix. The delays were bad, and compounded rapidly, the employees couldn't work, citizen wasted days off and had to reschedule a month later.. really bad. Plus technicians skills were unused/wasted, they hated their jobs, and communication with partners was mostly hostile/red-tape adding more friction. They didn't have enough money to change LCDs but didn't allow you to give some even though there were plenty of working ones for free. Same for printers.
This is the kind that needs to be pruned.
Also I believe there's another form of "perfect" government, that is not a mechanical human grinder like a dictatorship: harmonious. It might be a naive dream but .. maybe not.
Depends on how they weigh the cost of a false positive versus false negative decision. The former seems to often be the key focus of a bureaucracy, slowing down the rate of diffusion of new technologies even among willing adopters.
It's true if you're ignoring the no-true-scottman fallacy.
Bureaucracy doesn't have to be to the detriment of society. As a matter of fact, it can potentially put breaks on the worst exploitative behavior.
But over time... It has the potential to grow too much with bad legislation, effectively making the positive potential into a very real negative that stifles unnecessarily.
> Bureaucracy doesn't have to be to the detriment of society.
Bureaucracy is an organizational model that reflects human intentions and choices, just like every other organizational model in society.
Attributing specific moral inclinations to an organizational model is as absurd as attributing them to any other tool. Debating whether bureaucracies per se have good or bad intentions is as ridiculous as debating whether handwritten documents convey better or worse intentions than printed ones.
So far all of the bad things I've heard about our system, such as the economic unsustainability and now this, are effects that will happen in the perpetual future.
You have to think about who you’re listening too. The economic sustainability of the actions Trump has taken so far is a pittance:
* The beauracracy today is about the size it was in 1980 on a per capita basis. It’s not the largest per capita it’s ever been.
> The federal government’s workforce has remained largely unchanged in size for over 50 years, even as the U.S. population has grown by 68% and federal spending has quintupled, highlighting the critical role of technology and contractors in filling the gap.
> Compensation for federal employees cost $291 billion in 2019, or 6.6% of that year’s total spending
So firing everyone is a 6% improvement to the federal budget while a complete government collapse for a number of reasons including that the government won’t have anyone to collect revenue or prosecute crimes.
[1]
* The largest discretionary spending area is the military at 800 billion in 2023. Of that, personnel accounted for 173 billion, or 20%. Personnel is a tiny fraction of the government’s spend each year. Even [2] which is a right wing think tank supporting this effort, claims that the liabilities improvement is 600B over 10 years which makes it a <1% dent seeing as how we spend >6T each year and just hand-waves the pension improvement as “significant”. But cuts aren’t focusing on the biggest employer within the government like the military.
* The people Trump & Musk are firing now are people who haven’t been on the job long enough to have protections. This drastically reduces the numbers above as a best case since that assumes a uniform 10% reduction across all salary bands whereas the current 10% reduction is almost certainly across the lowest bands since the government pays based on seniority.
This is what Trump does - he often identifies a real problem and then does a sleight of hand trick to make you think the actions he’s taking, because they’re highly visible, are solving the problem when in fact he’s not actually making any meaningful dent. That’s why he made a big show about the deportation flights but not talking about how the places he’s sending them to aren’t the places the people are from - he’s bullied Costa Rica into accepting whoever he send [3].
Bureoucracies are invariably the most efficient way to concentrate corruption efforts. There is no better spot to corrupt and make elite unelected decisions. Revolutionaries love to infiltrate these because they can covertly use their profession to move promote designs and budget flows that exlusively forward their mission hidden in complexity.
Is a system and everyone here knows what Moore's Law is.
never saw it like that. to me bureaucracy represents inefficiency. today we have automation that can be quite advanced. as long as you have a structured, rules based system there is no need for bureaucrats. i do understand that there will always be edge cases, or moral issues with automation, but there should be a constant drive in society to dismantle as much bureaucracy as morally possible, as that implies adopting automation and as such efficiency.
in theory, laws and policies are crafted by elected officials or experts, and bureaucrats are just the executors. but in reality, bureaucracies interpret, refine, and sometimes even reshape these rules through policy implementation. this is where a lot of inefficiency, red tape, and unintended consequences creep in.
That hardly ever works or did ever work in reality. Almost no legislation (unless it solves and issue that is very straightforward) is written with such granularity that would makes this possible.
The people writing it are not necessarily subject experts in the area and even if they were or consulted such experts they can't foresee all eventualities. So those laws would need to be constantly updated all the time which is simply infeasibly (especially in the US where the legislative branch is stuck in a near permanent gridlock by design). IMHO that would make the system much, much more inefficient.
It's impossible to tell the difference between inefficiency and a timing hack unless you're deep in the guts of a system. Civic maintenance of snow plows can be a good real-world example.
Even if this was true, breaking things with reckless abandon has real human costs today and will until they’re fixed. That’s part of the reason government is ‘inefficient’ is the responsibility to serve everyone and get as close to zero downtime as possible.
yours is a stability-over-change argument: bureaucracy exists to prevent reckless, harmful disruptions.
you're assuming the alternative to bureaucracy is reckless destruction, but what about the harm bureaucracy already causes? slow government processes, redundant approvals, and outdated rules waste time, money, and even lives. how many people suffer due to delays in healthcare, housing permits, or business licenses?
you're framing efficiency as 'reckless abandon' but efficiency doesn't mean chaos, it means designing systems that work smoothly without unnecessary friction. if private companies can process global transactions in seconds, why does it take months to approve basic permits?
if bureaucracy ensures stability, why does it fail so often? government shutdowns, dmv backlogs, and welfare mismanagement don’t scream 'zero downtime'. in reality, bureaucracy is often fragile, not resilient.
other industries use automation and streamlined processes to reduce friction without 'breaking things recklessly'. why should government be any different?
I'm framing these specific DOGE initiatives where they're firing people at random as reckless. Because they are and there are real human costs that are just being glazed over.
I 1,000% agree that in general, we should reduce bureaucracy and minimize the steps people need to take / the approvals required and make things as streamlined as possible. But if those things are small fires, having the current Republican majority with DOGE in support is asking arsonists to put them out. Often you need substantial upfront investment to fix e.g. the social security infrastructure - but when one party is opposed to all government spending, the infra will never be improved and the proposed fixes are to fire a bunch of employees that are maintaining the current system to save costs.
You do realize one of the first users of private computers was the IRS. You miss the other side of the coin when it comes to efficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is a large bureaucracy. There is no possible way the IRS could do it's work today without computers. The rules are too complex, and computers made it possible to have such complex rules.
> who are pushing things in dumb directions because their careers and wealth are tied to what they do for work so they advocated for those things to be advanced to the point of absurdity and everyone on their coat tails cheers for it because they benefit too.
Could you give a concrete example of what you're describing there?
I work on software for government agencies. Some of the paperwork processes are absurd. There is a high number of people in leadership positions within government that push for processes and make software purchases that quite frankly have little to negative benefit. It is sad because I think government can be a force of good, but people are too busy spending effort on processes that don't matter. That leaves other work undone. An example is industry specific SAAS software that costs millions to pass documents around in the cloud, for a small group of users, which is no better than MS office solutions.
>Could you give a concrete example of what you're describing there?
Pick any pro-1984-esque smart city article that normal people would recoil in horror at the implications of yet HN generally endorses. The author is your example.
Now repeat for every industry and its own insane trends. Manufacturing people endorsing green regulation because they know it gives them a competitive advantage over their competition despite causing off shoring and making the world worse on the net. Lawyers, legislators and law people peddling inequality under the law but dressing it up as DEI. Lead people at regulatory agencies advocating for expansion of their own scope and mandate. Etc. etc. the list goes on.
It's like a stupid reverse gell-mann amnesia effect where people can spot stupidity outside their own industry but lack the ability to be a disciplined adult with self awareness and ability to see consequences when something benefits them.
But of course outsiders don't make decisions until things are so insane that the public weighs in so what happens is the tech industry peddles pervasive surveillance, manufacturing off-shores to countries that belch pollution, etc, etc, until it reaches a critical mass and a populist gets elected on promises to kill all of it no matter what it is.
If you want me to literally cite an example I'll do that but we all know that doesn't really matter because no example will satisfy everyone.
You're doing that common conservative thing of correctly identifying the principle, but then taking a turn into ridiculousness when enumerating examples. We are, in fact, in this mess because of the upper middle/professional class. It's not because of green regulations or DEI. It's because that class has a vested interest in enabling the aforementioned billionaire charlatans and their flights of fancy/fear, no matter wht those might be. Literally, if we're talking about their retirement accounts. Why are the best minds of our generation working on ads and addiction machines? Why can't we, as a country, solve problems that poorer countries solved decades ago? Because so very few with a salary and mortgage can think 5-10 years ahead, outside of their plan to scale the crab bucket walls (as rugged individuals). It won't end until a critical mass are ready to say, when presented yet another boondoggle meant to impoverish their neighbors economically and spiritually, "I don't care, I won't do it, fire me," and mean it. The robots aren't ready yet; the wealthy and deleterious elements of society still need poorer cosigners. Snap the pen in half.
Your ideology and desire to demonize the billionares and the rulers and whatnot is limiting you here. There's only a few of them. They literally don't have sufficient brain power to think up all the stupid crap that goes on on the micro level that adds up to the macro problem.
The upper middle/professional class is the problem (this is a theme, there's a reason that every time there a real good bloody revolution in history they do poorly). They have pushed ideas that are grounded in sound principles (diversity and inclusivity are good, the proliferation of high tech communication is good, sustainable environmental practice are good) to the point of absurdity and recoil from the general public. They take these causes of the moment and run with them to absurd levels because that is a reliable way to make a quick buck with the way we've structured our society.
It's like telling a rookie engineer the priority to lighten the part and he shaves so much mass that it will obviously, even to him too readily in real world conditions despite passing in the simulation. He justifies it in his own mind in various ways but at the end of the day the reality is he DGAF. He got his bonus for hitting the metric and moved on. The upper middle class is that rookie engineer. The upper middle class decision makers got that bonus for increasing DEI (in a bad way that makes people hate it), making the production greener (if you don't measure what's offshored) and so on and so on. And of course such behavior comes around to cast shade upon those goals even if the goals are noble. Eventually management says "stop lightening things" in the same way that the populist leaders say things like "no more DEI crap". Such moves aren't the right answer per-say, and even they know it. But they do stop the bleeding enough to not be a serious existential problem for a little while until a new fad comes around.
I don't know how you get a whole society of people to give a crap generally and give a crap about the big picture impact of what they're doing. If I did then surely enough other people would and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
>to the point of absurdity and recoil from the general public
This is incorrect. The actions of wealthy people speak for themselves; they don't need to be demonized, they are plainly wrong on their face. That said, we're in agreement that these people don't have power without the less-wealthy people who enable them.
> If you want me to literally cite an example I'll do that
That is what I asked for, yes.
Be clear about what you're saying. If you hesitate to to just say what you believe, that's probably a good indication that some introspection would be worthwhile.
My guess is that your original comment got downvoted because you characterized people with this kind of discretionary power as "upper middle" class (I would just call this upper class as it is realistically a very small portion of the overall population).
FWIW, I think I agree with you and I think it is possibly the biggest weakness of our system that it is vulnerable to these types of manipulations from various angles: campaign finance, regulatory capture, disproportionate power given to unelected members of the executive, etc. That being said, those same weaknesses really open the door for the power-tripping Musks and Bezoses to get in and do a lot of damage, which is what I believe we are witnessing in real time.
Perhaps the whole situation will finally convince the "I don't mind, I have nothing to hide" crowd about the need to scrutinize & limit as much as reasonably possible the personal data collection and retention by government and other entities. What good are rules, statutes, checks & balances, passwords and ACLs, if at some point someone you don't like or trust can just come in "as a root" and circumvent everything?
Do you have cause to believe "nothing to hide" is a partisan position? I'd expect that half of such people are on the left and are critical by default of the new administration. Seems to be supported by the second chart here: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2023/10/18/how-american...
I also find this a bit suspect- the more extreme you are, the more likely you are to have something to hide. The extreme left is well aware of the way communists and hippies were treated through the 20th century, while the extreme right has been subject to a lesser version in the 21st and are very skeptical of intelligence agencies. Moderates seem much more likely to trust institutions and accept the status quo.
I have no idea how to investigate this empirically, though.
I don't really think it correlates with political spectrum at all. Similar to how "hard on crime" has a pretty weak correlation woth partisanship. It really comes down to upbringing, influences, and education on how you perceive data privacy.
In real life, I hear people of all political stripes embracing positions between "nothing to hide" and "the govt can find out my personal info anyway, so why not email it directly to nameless scammers overseas?"
Online it works like most things. Everybody pretends it's a partisan food fight, even if they have to lie.
For some people, it literally changes based on the administration. We need to teach people to always be skeptical of government overreach, no matter who is in office.
"I have nothing to hide" really misses the point of what privacy is for. I don't close the door when I'm taking a crap because I have something to hide, I do it for privacy.
Also, blackmail isn't the only way to have personal or intimate information used against you. As the absolutely massive advertising industry can tell you, knowing more details about people makes them easier to influence and manipulate.
This is an interesting side effect indeed. The people I know irl who have espoused this view are, ironically, the people who never liked Elon Musk in the first place. It'll be interesting to see how their narrative evolves now, if at all, as they stare at a practical example which contradicts them!
It's a bit of a straw man. I might get labelled as part of that group. But in reality, I have nothing to hide given a search warrant of my digital data, issued by a court in accordance to tight privacy-respecting laws. And I am happy the bandwidth-limited court can issue these against me, and against everyone around me, as opposed to no data ever being available for anyone.
That's quite different to Musk's minions taking a DB dump onto a USB stick.
Another very negative long-term effect of all of this is how is the government going to recruit talent in the future? How many people, who have good prospects elsewhere, are going to work for a government agency -- usually a lower pay -- to put up with shit like this that doesn't even happen in industry? Would you? Sure there are sometimes mass layoffs that are handled pretty badly in industry, but not these Gestapo-like purge tactics that are clearly designed that way to instill fear and loyalty.
I think that is part of the point. "As hire As. Bs hire Cs." A-tier folks want to work with the best, B-tier folks want to work with lackeys that will do their bidding. It's pretty clear there's no A-tier folks in charge at the moment.
This is not and has never been true as a blanket statement. Contractors perform to expectations just like in every other sector of the economy, so variation is high, just like in every other sector of the economy.
I’ve seen both high and low-performing teams in .com, .edu, and .gov and there’s nothing magic about any sector: you get what senior management sets the incentives to get. The NSA gets really good hackers because they don’t leave that to chance, just like how NASA or MIT hire really good scientists and engineers, and the places which just trust the big consulting companies usually get taken to the cleaners.
When is FSD shipping again? Why is Tesla falling behind in the market they defined for a decade? When will Boring actually deliver on the hype? Why is X suing former customers trying to get the revenue they so desperately need to pay off debts best on wildly over-estimating the company’s worth?
He’s been able to buy some good companies but nobody has a magic trick for being good at everything and the man is stretched really thin between all of his CEO positions and spending hours per day on politics.
It is pretty well known Elon companies pay shit and churn through young engineers willing to work long hours for no overtime fueled by “passion”. It’s why he is pushing for more H1B1s. He wants desperate people worried about being deported if they lose their job.
Has anybody more competent than Elon (which isn't a very high bar) survived contact with him in one of his firms? It is well know he doesn't tolerate any pushback and that e.g. SpaceX has a whole team dedicated to babysitting him away from operations.
In government, yes, he's hiring Cs. I can speak to SpaceX--they're all As. But it's also the company he's most shielded from himself.
Elon qua SpaceX and possibly xAI and Neuralink is an A. Elon qua Boring Company, X and DOGE is very, very clearly a B player. (Idk what's going on with Tesla, he seems to be treating it more like a piggy bank to be raided to get to Mars (A) and indulge his impulses (B).)
That is the entire point. They want a government that nobody wants to work for so that regulations on cars, rocket launches, and securities will stop bothering their profits.
This is basic dictatorshipping, I think US folks need to refresh skills so common in rest of the world.
You want obedient lackeys as #1 rule, it means reasonably little threat and no resistance to molding from above. Competences are sometimes even frowned upon. Look at how potus literally demands that others lick his boots to keep it polite.
This is how russians run their dictatorships for example, including those they exported elsewhere under their iron hand / military bases. Talking from first hand experience.
Of course that part of the system is very ineffective. Regardless of what you think about government and its bureaucracy, that fascist manchild aint gonna end up with success story here, he lacks (any genuine) emotional intelligence to understand underlying reasons. This isnt technical problem to solve where he sometimes excells.
We've needed reforms to civil service and the general schedule pay scale specifically for a long time now. One can hope that a future Congress could write a bill that resets government hiring and compensation practices in the wake of this administration, but perhaps that's a fantasy at this point.
First, DOGE proposes to reduce the size of the federal workforce, so the need to recruit talent may not be that great, second they might recruit from the pool of talent that supports all of this -- it might be a small pool, but if the workforce is small enough...
>to put up with shit like this that doesn't even happen in industry?
The C-suite never bring in hatchetmen? What world do you work in?
> Sure there are sometimes mass layoffs that are handled pretty badly in industry, but not these Gestapo-like purge tactics that are clearly designed that way to instill fear and loyalty.
Isn't the difference here that in the private sector you have to do all that loyalty shit from day one, not just whenever the board restructures and you want to keep your job?
> How many people, who have good prospects elsewhere, are going to work for a government agency -- usually a lower pay -- to put up with shit like this that doesn't even happen in industry? Would you?
You could remove the "to put up with shit like this" part and the answer would still be "nobody". You have to remove the "who have good prospects elsewhere" part for it to make sense.
well, there are people with good prospects elsewhere who take gov positions out of civic duty and also because it is typically longer term and you're less likely to get laid off for no reason
I agree with everything you said, but it's also not impossible to be laid off by the govt for no reason so there may have been a false sense of security:
Yeah, interesting. Nearly 3/4 of that workforce reduction was at the DOD.
They somehow managed to do it without a bunch of firings, though it doesn't explain the mechanisms (I didn't have time to dig in further):
> A variety of mechanisms have been used to accomplish this, thereby keeping the use of involuntary terminations to a minimum. In fact, of the 239,286 person reduction, only 20,702 have been involuntarily separated.
To reduce the work force by 102,000 positions by the end of fiscal 1994, we offered about 70,000 buyouts. Several non-DOD agencies have offered deferred buyouts that will take place between now and March 1997. Defense will be using buyouts as it continues to downsize through 1999. Counting those, we expect to buy out another 84,000 workers through 1997 as we reduce the work force by a total of 272,900 positions.
edit: I realize now that the first link i sent upthread was too early as it only goes to Jan 1996. I've seen elsewhere that the total reduction got to 400,000+.
I find it wild that apparently there is no law onto which government workers can cling to refuse these requests. Is it all just based on conventions, goodwill and culture?
The enforcement of these laws should be a function of the executive. There are ways for the supreme court or congress to intervene when the executive isn't doing their job. Sadly that requires them to believe a series of checks and balances is necessary.
Given that it is down to the voters, and they thought a racist, rapist, conman should be president giving them the power of the executive - which has been growing increasingly powerful for my adult lifetime.
There is no constitutional way the president to not have access to any data in the executive branch. And since doge is reporting to him - it just send the data to the president and he will forward it to whomever he pleases.
Even the concept of independent executive agencies is probably more vulnerable constitutionally than more people think.
Democracy is held together by people willing to follow the rules.
In Trump's first administration they realized the trick is to just move so fast that you flood the system and can do whatever you want before anyone sees through all the noise or has a chance to stop you. Steve Bannon was interviewed on camera saying as much.
Why do you want them to refuse audit requests? There is no upside to hiding egregious government waste other than paying politicians via kickbacks more than what is legally mandated.
The Constitution vest all executive authority on the president. The president can delegate that authority. That's what all is happening here. Within the executive branch the president has practically total power, hardly if at all possible to constrain by statute, and that's by design in the Constitution.
The president needs the Senate's "advice and consent" to hire principal officers, and does not need the Senate's "advice and consent" for certain other officers as specified by statute. The US Digital Service ("DOGE") is an agency where he did not need the Senate's advice and consent.
The president does NOT need the Senate's advice and consent to fire anyone in the executive branch. For principal officers this was established by the failed impeachment of Andrew Johnson for firing a confirmed cabinet secretary nominated by Lincoln. For other officers this was established by judicial precedent fairly recently when Biden terminated two Trump appointees to minor offices and they sued (and lost).
Similarly the president needs the Senate's advice and consent to enter into treaties. The Constitution is silent as to terminating Senate-confirmed executive officers, officers whose appointments did not require Senate confirmation, or treaties (abrogation). It's essentially settled law that the president does not require the Senate's advice and consent for any of those kinds of terminations.
Therefore, under the Constitution and the political and binding judicial precedents, there can be no law "onto which government workers can cling to refuse these requests."
Laws are only a suggestion, they are not being enforced and there are no consequences.
The other thing is that in the US, people's lives depend on their jobs, with half of polled people indicating they live paycheck to paycheck. This makes them easy to manipulate into complying, putting their morals aside because standing up for morals or indeed the law will mean they lose their job.
I mean the US president declared yesterday that only he gets to decide on law and called himself king on his social media. There's heaps of 'legal' texts that indicate it means he can be deposed and yote into jail, but if there's nobody enforcing them they're useless.
Why would you want a law that says government workers have zero accountability over how they spend the money they extract by threat of violence from the citizenry?
We should all have "root access" to everything but the most national-security sensitive topics.
One side is understandably on edge but nothing DOGE has been doing is unexpected, except in the sense that it's actually happening or seems to be happening. It went through the whole political process's standard change control mechanism, in other words the current Administration literally campaigned on it and received a mandate via both the EC and popular vote.
What should happen, and nobody is talking about this, is the USA is severely downgraded in its overall credit rating due to an unhinged and ongoing "fire, aim, ready" self-audit.
The last credit downgrade of the US by a major ratings agency was by Fitch in 2023. They cited projections for the US deficit to continue to rise, due to projected weaker revenues and increased spending.
The deficit hawks don't understand how money works. Everything about DOGE and their mission has a fundamental deep misunderstanding of why governments with their own currency must have deficits. Literal accounting 101. Unfortunately Elon has an economics degree, which means he is completely uneducated in accounting.
I was thinking the same thing. If this even slightly jeopardizes America's ability to pay off its debt, the entire world will suffer. Something that occurred to me from talking to Americans online is that most of them don't realize just how much soft power they have across the world. I really feel that China becoming the global superpower might end up becoming the least bad option if America keeps destabilizing.
Setting politics aside for a moment, I find it fascinating that an audit of this scale is taking place within the government. Has there ever been a historical precedent where an external agency thoroughly reviewed all departments, published its findings for the public, and then based decisions on that analysis?
Is it really possible to root out governmental fraud using this approach? Fraud and theft exist at every level of government, but if not through a drastic measure like this, what else can be done?
Relying on the status quo, the courts, and current processes hasn’t yielded substantial results—if it had, corruption wouldn’t persist.
Still, I can appreciate the creativity here. Sometimes it takes an outsider to think differently.
That said, I’m not naive enough to assume this is done entirely in good faith. The prevailing opinion—both in this community and the media—seems largely negative; I’ve yet to see a single positive headline. Even so, I find it intriguing.
So here’s my question: if you were in charge of addressing this problem, how would you tackle it differently?
They are independent of the things they review, they find inefficiency, overspending, fraud, and embezzlement. They make their reports public and work with transparency. There are also other similar departments like CIGIE. There have been very substantial results.
What DOGE is doing is not finding inefficiency. They are doing two basic things. 1) Completely eliminating programs they don't think the US should be spending money on. And 2) Reducing headcount. Both of these actions may reduce costs, but may end up costing the US more money in the long term.
Lets assume for a minute that what's going on is a good faith comprehensive audit of these agencies. (It's not, but lets just say it is.)
1) How long do you think it takes to perform a comprehensive audit of an agency in order to accurately determine waste, corruption and fraud. If you've ever audited a large corporation, you know what that takes -- it is not something you whip up in a week or two.
2) Who do you think is qualified to audit government entities? Some "young Turk" DOGE engineers? We're not talking about determining whether computer systems are well architected or should be refactored (though that also takes time to do correctly). We're talking about financial transactions and whether they were legitimate and legal (because if not, that would be "corruption" or "fraud").
Which Fortune500 company would hire a team of (relatively inexperienced) software engineers to audit its books?
They aren’t auditing or thoroughly reviewing shit. They're stealing the data and then waving their hands about non-existent crimes and nickel and dime levels of misappropriated or weird spending.
DOGE is not necessarily about fraud. Their summary of cancelled projects for USAID for example is often vague. For example, "$14M for "social cohesion" in Mali." As a reader, I have no context for this program, its impact, or who ran it. I don't even have the ability to discern whether other things were lumped in. Can I guess this was aimed at preventing further in-roads of Al Qaeda? Who knows.
An actual cherry-picked example of DOGE's potential fraud finding is at the SSA where Musk showed his query of "DEAD" = "FALSE" (I am paraphrasing a bit) yielded a huge number of folks over ages 115. Context is what is scarce. Are they receiving payments, are there other reasons for why the query returned those results, what other context do I have to interpret these results? Again, I have no idea.
I think the safest way of couching what is going on, is a drastic curtailment of government programs and employees. Equivalents to this? Maybe Gorbachev. I am sure there are other historical parallels, but they are probably apples to peaches comparisons at a certain level.
And to your last question, I am not sure if anyone really knows the problem/s that are being addressed right now other than debt and the capability to pass a tax cut.
The Clinton administration conducted a thorough audit, eventually laying off 351k people [1]. But they did so using a six-month review of all agencies performed by experienced federal workers. They ensured there were no national security ramifications and provided severance.
Idk about the US, but the 'government' fraud that I know of, does not show up in the tax office records or in the foreign aid accounts. The common thing is that civil servants/officials are bribed. At usually on the cheap too, so it'll take a lot of digging to find it, and worse, prove it. But, this kind of corruption is probably even more widespread among companies. If you want to exact justice, that's the place to look.
Before even debating the effectiveness of this audit, we have to address the fundamental problem: Elon Musk has no legal authority to be conducting this in the first place. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is not a real government agency and Musk has not been confirmed by the Senate or given formal oversight. It's illegal and unconstitutional.
Beyond that, yes, large-scale government audits have been done before. In fact, we already have institutions designed to do exactly that. The GAO, the Office of the Inspector General, and even bipartisan commissions have uncovered fraud and inefficiencies without letting an extremely partisan private individual with massive conflicts of interest connected to his businesses arbitrarily rip apart government agencies.
Your claim that the continued existence of fraud means the system does not work is also specious, it's obviously not possible to eliminate all fraud, statements like that make me doubt that your comment is made in good faith.
This isn't an audit, it's a blindfolded hatchet job. They've already been caught either deliberately or accidentally misinterpreting data, to the tune of they called an 8 million dollar contract an 8 billion dollar contract, among many other glaring discrepancies.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/02/19/doge...
So if I was in charge, I would start by making sure I did the math right and didn't blindly trust my database scraping scripts as they appear to be doing (and that's the most generous interpretation). I would also make sure that before recommending that I fire any group, I at least have a high level understanding of what that groups works on. So I don't, say, fire the people who oversee the nuclear arsenal, or a group of researchers working on the current bird flu outbreak (both of these have been done). Rehiring takes money and time because upon firing their contact information is apparently deleted, and you aren't going to get a 100% return rate.
I also have some experience working with giant bloated blobs of legacy code managing critical systems, where many variables are arcane acronyms because they were written in a time where compilers had character limits. Moving fast and breaking things in that environment is just a good way to break a lot of things and not even understand how you did it. Which is fine if it's twitter, and a little more important when you're managing aircraft, nuclear weapons, disease outbreaks, entitlement payments that people depend on, etc.
conveniently sweeping aside the fact that those who depend the most on the 'inefficient' programs/agencies that are being 'optimized' are the poorest and weakest members of society. those who can afford private everything will be fine.
>Is it really possible to root out governmental fraud using this approach?
It's possible it will, but not without a lot of false positives and innocent bystanders.
At the scale of the federal government, there are plenty of things that appear to be fraud but actually have a reasonable justification.
In the Dunning-Kruger world we unfortunately seem to live in now, I don't think having every single yokel personally analyzing every line item on a budget as large as the federal government's, especially when those yokels don't really understand any of it, is the best way to go about this.
This admin isn't trustworthy either. They'll sit here an cry about 0.01% of the federal budget being "wasted" on a bunch of National Park probies, and meanwhile the self-appointed king is out golfing on the taxpayer dime.
>Has there ever been a historical precedent where an external agency thoroughly reviewed all departments, published its findings for the public, and then based decisions on that analysis?
They are 't reviewing and publishing shit, it yes there is historical moments when those types of things happened, usually after coup, dictatorship, or just any authoritarian government everyday dismantling everything, that's why everyone looking outside of USA with a bit of history knowledge see as a very bad precedent
> So here’s my question: if you were in charge of addressing this problem, how would you tackle it differently?
For one, with responsibility and care for the public. Not with reckless abandon. Not with malice. Not with a child-like perversion towards breaking things because it’s fun.
Politics aside, this has been an extremely unsettling disruption in the faith we have in our institutions. Trust and stability are the backbones to societal and economic growth. The unseen costs Trump/Musk/doge have wrought are massive, are spread equally among all people (globally, in US, minus the wealthy class), and is hard to see on a spreadsheet
Instead of firing all the auditors(Inspectors General) I'd bring them in and get their input on how to tackle something of this magnitude. Then see about getting them the resources necessary as I'm assuming they would need to staff up massively with experienced auditors(aka not DOGE) and other resources.
I think it's certain that there will be positive and negative consequences and both of those will be on a large scale. I too am curious about the positives.
I think the negatives could have been easily minimized to more-reasonable-level without affecting the positive ones, if it wasn't headed by hothead Elon.
Only because you didn't inform yourself properly. Did you know about the position of inspection general? Did you read any of their reports? Do you know Trump fired all of them? In a totally illegal move?
Is doge actually doing this in a meaningful way? What is the website? Thus far I'm only aware of them celebrating partisan victories like chopping funding for trans theater etc.
It's shocking to me how many people think that auditing government agencies is some new thing being implemented by Trump/Musk.
These agencies all have Inspector Generals, who are outside of the agency and responsible for auditing their particular agency. And they do, there are reports on this sort of thing.
Most of the IGs, if not all, were fired by Trump first thing.
> corruption wouldn’t persist
We still haven't seen any evidence of corruption, by the way. Yeah, I'm sure there's some gov employees here and there doing fraudulent stuff, skimming off the top or getting gov contracts to their buddies. But there has been zero evidence of any widespread or systemic corruption in a single agency. Nothing.
The agency that did get axed the most -- USAID -- was because of "woke ideology" that they were supposedly pushing (though there wasn't any evidence of that being widespread either), not corruption/fraud (breaking the law).
So how is this any different from all the random employees who might have access to this data as part of their jobs? I would understand if there was this sort of scrutiny over every federal employee but as it stands I never know who has access to my data and if they can be trusted.
Usually you don’t have access to “everything”. It might even be illegal to cross reference certain data, e.g., the same person or department might not even be allowed to have access to two databases.
I don’t know if the cross reference is true for the US, but it is for other countries.
This is generally quite restricted. I personally had to undego a "Public trust" civilian security clearance (which is binding for life unlike the 75 years of TS-SCI).
Except in exceptionally poorly run or small organisations, random employees do not have access to everything; generally they need a reason to look at stuff, and there’s a paper trail indicating that they looked at it.
> So how is this any different from all the random employees who might have access to this data as part of their jobs?
Are you asking why it's any different a non-American billionaire who has multipole government contracts having access to your data any different than Joe Bob who was hired and vetted by those same people unlike the other guy?
There are considerable processes to make sure that happens, including proper background checks, seniority at the job, etc. You don't just hand some rando newbie the keys to the kingdom -- any company that did that would be laughed at.
Yeah I more concerned “God Mode” is a thing that exists. One would hope that these systems are heavily locked down but my experience maintaining legacy systems makes me think “God mode” is a thing you get because you have to run a quarterly report and it is too much of a hassle setting up the correct permissions.
It is not, it's the same there are just different people viewing your private information, probably more corrupt who banks all that money to themselves now instead of it going to whoever it was going to previously.
There's an implication this is access to all government data - but the article doesn't explicitly state that but would lead you to believe that.
Given that I highly doubt all government data is in a single data store ... this is probably more like - GOGE has access to all GSA contracts (just one department) ... which is way less sensationalized (and appropriate for a government agency looking review contracts for efficiency)
They have full admin access to all USAID systems (which, let's be real, also includes some US intelligence service cover material, since USAID has long been used for that), and are actively seeking full admin access to the systems for every other federal department.
Because there are bigger fish to fry, I think people don’t appreciate the sheer cost of the system rebuild that will be required for security reasons later.
There’s absolutely no telling what additional software has been installed alongside existing, or which systems have been modified that would require audit. Purging this will be an absolute fucking nightmare to the American taxpayer.
This may turn into one of the most significant IT incidents in world history.
> The team could then feed this classified information into AI tools, either for training purposes or to mine the data for insights. (Members of DOGE already reportedly have put sensitive data from the Education Department into AI software.)
Perhaps it's cheaper to assume everything leaked or will leak soon.
Yes. Even if DOGE is operating without any ill intent, and I don't think they have ill intent, the possibility of errors alone is massive and they need to slow down.
What about security reasons now? The federal government includes the military. Giving DOGE “God mode” on the federal government is a national security risk right now.
Indeed, and its not just a problem for future democratic administrations (assuming they come to pass), it's doubtful that Trump's inevitable republican successors will be comfortable with Elon having a back door to their government.
This is a very dramatic take on something you (and many others) are making extremely broad presumptions upon. It’s clear that DOGE is reviewing payment data and has the same access to various components of the US Govt that Obama’s US Digital Services, created to rebuild the ACA website but also provisioned for a number of other digital services. DOGE has the same access to services that USDS had. USDS was praised for its “speed and cutting through red tape”
This kind of thinking is what leads to zero progress. Also I think most people will be surprised how unless a lot of the data is compared to private sector data. I.e, in 2017 Equifax leaked data on 150 million people and no one cared (you get a free 6month credit check). That data went to foreign governments and private databases and it is easy to access on darkweb so real actual scammers and criminals have it. Millions of people were targeted for scamming because of this. That is just ONE leak. Now imagine the amount of data Visa has on your for example, all your purchases. Apps that have collected your browsing history and actual GPS location. Don't think this data isn't sold and combined with other databases. There are companies that just collect data and buy data. And you are worried about 1 database with people given explicit access makes me think the real objection is something else.
> Breaking things will destroy lives if not literally kill people
It is already killing people. They fired people giving out food and medicine. They fired people on suicide hotlines. And of course, people have been killing themselves in response to being fired.
The President is the head of the executive branch. If _anyone_ in the executive branch has access to information, it feels like the presidents office should too.
He is not a monarch. The core principles of a well functioning democracy include that there are multiple, balanced powers and that none of the powers can overrule the other too much. It is cumbersome by design, because the other path leads to dictatorships.
If the CEO of my ecommerce company had easy, unmonitored access to all our data, we would fail industry audits and not be allowed to take credit card transactions. Sure, they have access if they really need it, but it's logged and monitored, and if you use it too much there will be questions.
It's a joke that any of you assholes are defending this. This does not pass any sniff test.
Because it isn't the case. For good reason. So it isn't acceptable. Spend some educating yourself about security standards like FedRAMP and build a mental model of things that are or have been true, and the reasons they were made so.
Most people in the US don't know that there are three branches of government, or if they do, they don't know WHY there are three, and even if they know that, they don't know what each branch's purpose is.
This is absolutely the job of the executive branch.
Perhaps DOGE should have been created by an act of congress, but in reality that's just a formality because the Republicans control Congress right now.
So are you saying that the President's office could not get this information, or any information it needed, from government agencies before? Of course it could. doge going in and getting unfettered access to computer systems is not at all the same thing.
USAID collaborates in fighting for worker rights when they are in exploitation or near-slavery.
They likely have records of the people inside organisations who provide data for them. These people usually want to remain anonymous because they fear retaliation. And in many cases, we’re not just talking about being fired or legal actions as retaliation.
Most of it already was, but normies don't go looking for public expenditure databases, so they assume it doesn't exist. Then DOGE comes along and pretends they're doing something new.
define "everyone" -- elected officials who are supposed to have oversight and insight into where our tax dollars are going? It's not like they're providing replicas over bittorrent.
European here, giving my two cents on how this looks from the other side of the Atlantic. Heh
In my country there are laws stopping agencies doing a simple SQL join between two databases, even within the same government agency. There is a separate agency that handles the requests when agencies want to join information.
I am not an expert in the matter. But my gut is telling me that our experiences with east Germany and Stasi left a scar.
It can quickly turn into a real nightmare, and there for there are check and balances to make it slow. It’s deliberate inefficiency.
Do you know why in Portugal they have 4 different ID numbers?
It is like that to prevent the state from persecuting people on the base that it is hard for a branch of the government to figure out who is someone based on a number from a different branch.
Do you know why they want to prevent the government from persecuting people?
Because it has already happened, and the portuguese don't want it to happen again.
When it comes to government spending though, shouldn’t the public have a right to know precisely, with dollar-level accuracy what they are being asked to pay?
As far as the experiences of the Stasi and previous German governments, it must not have too much of a scar: Germany still asks people to register their religion — ostensibly for tax purposes, but if I recall correctly, Germany had a problem in the past with having a list of all people in a specific religion.
> check and balances to make it slow. It’s deliberate inefficiency.
It’s an important thing about free countries that is seldom appreciated: aspects of their governments are designed to be tar pits, on purpose. It’s a way of restraining government.
I have a personal saying that touches on something adjacent. “I like my politicians boring. Interesting government was a major cause of death in the twentieth century.”
When I think of governments that are both interesting and streamlined I think of the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge, Stalin era USSR, Maoist purges, etc.
Inefficiency is a useful property of many systems [0,1]. Current
cultural obsessions around the word are a burden and mistake, and the
word "efficiency" now feels rather overload with right-wing
connotations.
European here. Governments in Europe, even ones that have GDPR on their books, literally act as oppressively as they want to act: U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users' encrypted accounts [1]
I think the advantages of this in a digital age are vastly overblown. If an extremist government comes to power they won't care and they can just do the SQL join. Let it go to court, the extremist government will decide anyway so the outcome is already predetermined.
Compare this to a physical storage of paper documents that need to be SQL joined, the effort required is several magnitudes more.
What it is good for is data breaches, it effectively limits the data that can be leaked at once.
What you're describing is very similar to what most large enterprise companies do: layers upon layers of red tape and convoluted regulations for the sake of "security."
This is a big reason they can’t get anything done or retain talent.
Government is no different.
European democracies have been dying from the same sclerosis their legacy multinationals have.
The US is going through actual change. The outrage over things not being done as they always have is nonsensical.
Government should have access to its own data. Justice and Congress should have the same access for oversight. The only problem I see is personal data about non-government people is being exposed to the entire planet.
They should have developed good security practices first and maybe spent more than a week reviewing a plan, and not having a double standard about their own activities.
The government already had access to its data, including oversight and regular auditing. This was solely about removing the safeguards so they didn’t have to follow good security practices or have a plan, and given how intensely politicized it has been it’s hard not to think that’s because the plan is not something they’d want to document where the public could see.
As an example, Musk mislead the public with claims about Social Security fraud. None of that was unknown, and in fact the independent inspector general had a much better quality report years ago where they confirmed that the old records did not show signs of fraud and recommended paths for improvement. DOGE made a lot of noise but added nothing but risk.
The thing is, Government already had access to its own data. It just was required to follow the law that was put in place by the voted in Legislature to prevent abusive situations that could arise from limitless unrestricted access without oversight. It was there, and even non-government citizens could get access to it by following the procedures; procedures put in place to prevent "selling the farm," voted on by elected officials, with the support of their constituents.
Government is doing a lot of work here. We’re talking about thousands of people, who, other than working for the government, also are humans with their own agenda.
Are you okay with just giving all of them access to your most personal data? Even if some of them live right next to you, have a personal grudge, and may be slightly psychotic? No? Well apparently, then, it’s not just as hand-wavy as you claim it to be.
The only reasonable thing is granting access to data on a need-to-know basis, with tight access control, audit logging, and anonymisation where not strictly impossible. That would be the reasonable thing if you’re handling data for hundreds of millions of people. It isn’t what’s happening.
Justice doesn't need the same access like Congress, it's enough if they can subpoena relevant data. Even personal data about government people shouldn't be exposed as this opens weakness the be exploited by social engineering.
> Government should have access to its own data. Justice and Congress should have the same access for oversight.
On its face, that’s a reasonable comment. But that’s not what’s happening here. This is not oversight. This is the world’s richest man arbitrarily seizing control of the government’s data. He’s able to do this because he bought the presidency for Trump.
The presidency is not a monarchy! The president might be commander-in-chief but it can’t just order random people killed just because he is “in charge” of the military. There are laws and layers of control saying who can do what. These laws are on the books and are being completely ignored!
Most of this power is vested in congress whom is abdicating their power.
I, on the other hand, would prefer the executive branch to have a modicum of process and transparency when trying to access private information, as opposed to learning of things a week after the fact from leaks.
Then you should likewise believe that the legislative branch should continue to determine how funds are allocated, and which agencies and departments are created and continue to function.
If you think this data won’t be used to disenfranchise and target democratic voters and give the GOP perpetual rule, I have a bridge to sell you.
“Oh no! Big mistake we cancelled hundreds of thousands of people from voting just before the election! It just happens to be 99.9% Democrats in swing states who all happen to be marked as dead in all government systems!”
It will be similar to Cambridge Analytica - with all the US Government’s data on one side, this is a massive advantage for targeting even without direct cheating.
illegal aliens, and the NGOs who have been bringing them in and supporting them,
that the democrats brought in as future voters so they would have complete control,
Well, no more funding for them!
At least, not from America!
It's no secret that these NGOs are now trying to attach themselves to Brussels to continue ops in the US, leeches will be leeches
Hear me out. Elon wants ultimate control over people’s lives and choices. Why he would want this is a psychological question about which we can only speculate. This is a change from (at least in appearance) his previous libertarian leanings. Whatever the case, this is the plan:
1) Acquire god mode access to government systems and citizens information (contacting, grants, spending, taxes, SSI benefits, you name it).
2) Add features to the Treasury Department’s software to allow him to, with extremely high granularity, control what payments go out. Friends can be rewarded, enemies punished. At first it will take the form of government entities he doesn’t like (USAID, for example). Next will be government opposition in our federal system, mostly blue cities and states with whom he disagrees. Next will be large private entities with whom he disagrees or are business competitors. Finally, individuals opposing him or the government will be personally targeted (for example, by not paying SSI benefits or paying out tax returns, perhaps extended to family members of the opposition, etc). These individual sanctions could extend to large geographic area he dislikes (all of coastal California, for example). He’s putting in place the tools to accomplish this right now as we speak.
3) Fire all bureaucratic opposition elements who might prevent this. Dress it up as a government efficiency measure if you like.
4) Eventually they will pressure large (and maybe small, too) private financial institutions to take part in this scheme (they may have already succeeded, see Citibank and NYC federal funding for migrants).
He’s putting in place the tools for total control by controlling access to money and resources. I don’t exactly know what he plans to do with them but I don’t want to find out given constant interaction with racists and neo nazis on his site.
It's pretty obvious isn't it? Trump stacked the Supreme Court the first time round which turned out to be the best thing he ever did.
Now they'll control payments to defund opponents as well as sacking anyone who doesn't support them to gain total loyalty. In fact, the way they're doing this is clever: Sack and then make former colleagues compete to be rehired. That way they'll feel extra grateful to have a job and will toe the line in future.
I expect they'll use this data for leverage against opponents in future. They probably haven't decided how yet, which is why they're in hoover mode. Loot the systems quick while they still can.
But it's ok. Half the US thinks there's nothing to worry about. Good luck getting fair elections ever again.
I think what is worse is people literally driven insane by the psyops that bad been running for last few years.
Documentation found of US agencies funding psyops to basically crush critical thinking skills and scream what their handlers want them to scream.
"Hate the smoke detector, not the fire!"
For this situation, that these agencies and their psyops have put you in, you have my greatest sympathy.
DMVs already sell your demographics and contact information to advertisers. Along with attempts at making this illegal being stopped by Washington (IE Washington considers it their free speech to call you with the bought information).
The reality is that just because something has been “known for decades” doesn’t mean it has been addressed—especially in government bureaucracies, where inefficiency, inertia, and misaligned incentives often prevent meaningful reform. The persistence of outdated Social Security records, massive waste, and fraud is a perfect example of systemic dysfunction.
The president, as the chief executive, has broad authority to ensure that executive agencies function efficiently and effectively. While there are statutory and congressional constraints, the executive branch is ultimately responsible for implementing policies and running departments. If existing bureaucrats and Treasury officials have had access to this data for years but failed to act, then it is not only within the president’s prerogative but arguably his duty to bring in outside expertise—whether that be Musk or anyone else—to tackle waste and inefficiency.
I hope they at least open the original documents to the American public, instead of posting on X. IMHO the public should have the rights to review and grill the officials about the spending.
An audit only needs read access, not God mode.
It should be conducted by a neutral third party, not someone on a witch hunt who has conflicts of interest.
The people on the ground should have auditing qualifications, clear background checks, and knowledge of specific systems or processes, not a random 19-year-old named "Big Balls" with a history of selling company secrets to a competitor.
Their findings should go through QA, and they should take the time to come up with an accurate report, rather than rushing through and blurting out whatever they think is happening.
> No good reason or case can be made for one person or entity to have this scope of access to this many government agencies containing this much sensitive information.
The president should obviously have this level of access.
Honestly when DOGE was first announced, I thought it will be a tiny department that does almost nothing and produces recommendations and PDFs that nobody reads. I didn't expect this.
My brain immediately latched on to how much control could be exerted through the guise of "efficiency", you could effetely run a whole government from there. But I was expecting more installing a bunch of so-called "efficiency officers" in every department to report back when they weren't being loyal... er efficient.
I was not expecting the complete takeover of computer networks and rapid firing of large numbers of employees.
There were signs but people thought it implausibly stupid:
> Vice-president JD Vance has cited Yarvin as an influence, saying in 2021, "So there's this guy Curtis Yarvin who has written about these things," which included "Retire All Government Employees," or RAGE, written in 2012. Vance said that if Trump became president again, "I think what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, and replace them with our people. And when the courts stop you, stand before the country and say, 'The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.'"[17][52]
Read the Bufferfly Revolution by Curtis Yarvin (April, 2022)
> We’ve got to risk a full power start—a full reboot of the USG. We can only do this by giving absolute sovereignty to a single organization—with roughly the powers that the Allied occupation authorities held in Japan and Germany in the fall of 1945.
> Trump himself will not be the brain of this butterfly. He will not be the CEO. He will be the chairman of the board—he will select the CEO (an experienced executive). This process, which obviously has to be televised, will be complete by his inauguration—at which the transition to the next regime will start immediately.
I used to know Thomas during my first internship at Tesla. He's incredibly talented and a very kind, thoughtful guy. Keep up the goodwork Thomas, and ignore all these haters!
My two cents.
God-mode privilege already existed before DOGE, someone else had (or still has) this privilege.
Priority - How to limit power of such privilege in future.
Often what you'll find is that the power was limited through separation of privileges. One person would not be able to do much beyond a limited boundary. Sounds like that's no longer true.
This further emphasizes a need that is only growing: addressing the disparity between our government's reliance on technology and its members' understanding of it. Government and technology are inexorably linked at a fundamental level. Take data for example. Data is inherently untrustworthy if sufficient measures are not taken to ensure its integrity while being recorded, its integrity while being maintained, the integrity of its interpretation, and the integrity of its further utilization.
We need political pressure to design these systems correctly to avoid "god mode" nonsense, and for that we need politicians who understand and embrace the technological need. If the system is designed correctly you don't need "god mode" access to conduct an audit or even to make lasting changes. Their changes should be non-destructive writes, with an audit trail.
Also, I'm going to need more information than "god mode". God mode over which specific databases? And what specific access levels? And which admin granted the permissions? If DOGE is serious about transparency they will communicate this sort of thing.
What’s beyond a man who would lie about being a gamer (for credz), be so lazy in his lie he is instantly caught, double-down on his lie despite the obviousness of his inability to even use basic mechanics of said games and then beef with Internet personalities while leaking their private convos? I would wager this man has absolutely no ethic and is purely concerned with his own short-sighted greed and vanity.
A huge problem with this is that from all accounts, these engineers going in don't seem to have any accountability. No one knows who is in charge and making the decisions (presumably Musk though official statements say he's not the DOGE administrator, but no one knows who is), they come into offices like an FBI raid demanding access but won't give reasons, say who is in charge, what they are doing, or even their names.[0] Its much worse than an FBI raid, and reminiscent of Gestapo tactics.
So even if DOGE is benign (and I don't think they are, but lets assume for a moment), if something goes wrong, who is to blame? Where is the transparency they are expecting of government agencies?
Would you trust an outside team like that, say some brash McKinsley team of "experts", to come in and do whatever they want with your systems? What company would allow that?
Also turns out that they're making up shit. $8 billion "saved" was actually $8 million because they didn't do their homework.
Your employer is being audited. An unaccompanied stranger wearing a visitor pass comes up to your desk. He says "Hello I'm the password security auditor, tell me your password so I can make sure it's secure"
Will your company fail the audit if don't hand over the information?
Or will your company fail the audit if if you do hand it over?
You've clearly never been audited by the federal government.
In the case of the IRS, generally, you must hand over the data they request or you go to jail.
Whether or not it's behind a password protected internal system is irrelevant. Everything is potentially material to any conspiracy to commit tax fraud.
I see no reason why the Federal government itself, which works for us, should not be subject to reciprocal treatment.
Your position is any citizen should be able to access the private information of any other citizen? Because that is in essence what "wiretapping the Federal government" would lead to.
Personal privacy aside, how are secrets imperative to national security protected if you allow full audits by any American citizen?
Musk is roughly as democratically elected as the average IRS bureaucrat (arguably more so, since the guy auditing you most certainly never appeared on the campaign trail), so I view it as a wash.
I agree as long as all of that flows through the courts, since by law that’s what’s required of the federal government. The FOIA mechanism is the mechanism we have today to audit and wiretap the government although it’s generally quite weak. That’s NOT what’s happening here.
I’d prefer it if random citizens don’t have access to my personal information, that happens to be stored in federal government systems. Especially without any guarantees or regulations around the access.
Usually, you do not hand out “root access” to auditors. Auditors are there to gather information (e.g to audit) and report.
In general, you don’t give out broadly permissive access to sensitive systems because people (yes even incredibly competent people) are prone to getting confused or mistyping and you really don’t want anyone deleting the entire database at the drop of a hat because they didn’t have enough coffee that morning and were logged into the wrong system.
Is it an actual government agency? From what I've (casually) read, it's an ad-hoc thing that isn't actually genuinely legitimate, from that standpoint?
Yes. In 2014, after the disastrous rollout of the Healthcare.gov site, President Obama created the "United States Digital Service" (USDS). Its stated mission was to modernize technology and improve efficiency across all US departments and agencies.
President Trump renamed the USDS to the "United States DOGE Service" (USDS) and created a temporary "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE) organization within the USDS that will operate until July 4, 2026.
Every US government agency is required to establish a DOGE team within that agency to work with the USDS to "improve the quality and efficiency of government-wide software, network infrastructure, and information technology (IT) systems".
> Well, it is a government agency tasked with audits. Why shouldn't it have root access?
Why should it? I've participated in a number of audits. None of them involved giving the auditors root access. They get read-only access to exactly what they need and nothing more, if they get access at all. Oftentimes it's the people with access pulling data based on what they request.
This is an idea you just made up to defend this BS.
Like, audit's require root access? What? Is this real life? Are people just making things up and saying whatever to defend someone who has no allegiance to this country getting the keys to the kingdom while also coincidentally making a fortune off of taxpayers through federal subsidies? Are you slow?
i hope they try to use cjis data bc it's taken me 6 months to build a system that is technically compliant and it still doesn't fully pass. they definitely will fail the data security policy requirements.
This isnt a dig at you but something i have noticed over the last few weeks. People keep saying X/Y wont be able to do something because of rules, laws, requirements and i have to keep reminding people rules/laws are only as good as those willing to enforce them
Having access to the data scares me less than the utter ineptitude demonstrated in presenting “findings”. Findings in quotes because if I used that level of analytical rigour I’d be instantly fired, probably out of a cannon into the sun.
Putting aside the whole idea that Elon "bought" his way into this position, it's crazy this is the path that Trump is taking. He has a house and a senate that would likely happily cut all these programs, and it could be done legally and without all this mess. Why let Elon run roughshod over the government?
It's in the Project 2025 playbook. They're trying to overwhelm everyone so you can't possible keep track of all they're doing. Store security could handle one shoplifter at a time; but when you have a riot and mass looting - you have fewer options and often just step aside and let them loot. Then deal with the mess later.
Also - he's a narcissist and he wants all the credit.
Also - he's a wannabe dictator, and on his way to making it a reality, so he's demonstrating that he does not need permission or help.
Trump is either in charge and actively supporting its goals, or he is not really in charge and is being duped into supporting its goals. “Some overlap” is an understatement, especially only this far into his presidency. They’re doing exactly what they said they would.
> they have countless times said they aren't associated with that project
Right, but they are visibly are. Russ Vought (project 2025) is the Office of Management and Budget director. He drafted the executive orders months ago that would lead to exactly this. Part of Project 2025
Other members in Trumps cabinet from Project 2025:
- Tom Homan (Border Czar)
- Brendan Carr (FCC)
- John Ratcliffe (CIA Director)
> The rest of your post is just hysteria so I won't comment on that.
Maybe don't accuse others of hysteria while you spout that Democrats are the ones coordinating every independent attorney and judge to come after Trump.
> In every instance, he has said he is not affiliated with it and doesn't support it
You sound like you were born yesterday. If you can't imagine why a politician would say one thing and do the other, I really can't help you. You're maliciously ignorant.
There's plenty of people in the cabinet and other positions with many political views and proposals, including ex-democrats.
That doesn't mean all of their views will be implemented. Just a subset that Trump agrees with, or even some they disagree with that Trump tells them to.
> Of the DOGE list's initial claim of $16 billion in savings, half came from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) listing that was entered into the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) in 2022 with a whopping $8 billion maximum possible value.
> According to a DOGE post on X, that number was a typo that was corrected in the contract database to $8 million on Jan. 22 of this year before being terminated a week later, and DOGE "has always used the correct $8M in its calculations."
Why is this a bad thing if their job is to audit budget and spending?
The article also does not go into technical details on what this supposed god mode actually is.
That's the issue right? No one knows what access they have, so you should assume the worst. They've already been claiming that they are making writes, so full write privilege isn't off the table.
It's not even the access that's the issue though, it's the lack of oversight. If I login to a Prod database, my commands are logged which allow the team to go back and figure out what happened if something didn't go as expected. We have backups and response processes to deal with "oops" situations. I strongly doubt the DOGE team has any fallback plan, and it would be irresponsible to simply assume they've thought fallback through.
This is more troubling with the systems being tricky legacy systems. You might have the best intentions, but it is really easy to make mistakes in brittle systems even if you are careful. We've already seen evidence that the team may have no idea how to interpret the data they're seeing. It'd be reckless to start making edits while only having a partial understanding of the system.
The story from DOGE is "look at all this fraud we've found, we're going to fix it now". It's not "here's a bunch of things we want to investigate further". It's not "here's how we're going to test whether this is actually fraud". It's not "here's what we're going to try and how we're going to revert if we are wrong".
They aren't auditing anything. Programmers/engineers don't audit budget and spending. If they were doing an audit, they would have accountants on their team, which they don't. If you bring coders/engineers into a system, it's for accessing/manipulating data/code/infrastructure. This is an enormous and unprecedented overreach.
The DOGE is mainly staffed by former employees of Elon Musk's companies, many of them being in their early twenties and one being 19 years old [1]. The presence of so many Musk associates is a conflict of interest: supposing "god mode" means that DOGE has unfiltered access to the private data of US citizens, there's not much stopping Elon Musk from exploiting that data for personal gain. And besides, would you want your private data to be in the hands of so many very young people who have little prior experience in anything?
If you want accountability someone needs to have root access. If you don't want accountability, you are a politician getting kickbacks through obfuscation.
That someone needs accountability themselves. Musk is not elected, his role isn’t defined. Really, he’s a patsy, he can do what he does, fortify his corporations, maybe trim some waste, have a falling out with Trump (it’s inevitable) and then trump blames him for the damage.
That's an empty argument. I think people hate musk, if they do, for the things he does and has done. It's not the other way around. Judging people for their actions is a fair way to look at it.
Luckily the right has never had radicalized violence, so let's give anyone with an "I love Trump" bumper sticker unfettered and non-transparent access to any resource they want.
Trump fired the person investigating him, now Musk got to do the same. It's a Republican right of passage.
I mostly liked Musk until he decided that a vindictive, incompetent moron was the best person to run the country, and poured vast resources into ensuring that happened.
You might say this just shows it’s because I hate Trump. To which I’d ask, do you really think my description of the guy is inaccurate?
What is the point of all of this? Reducing federal income taxes? It seems to me that these people are pushing a rope if that's the goal.
For example, USAID is 1% of federal spending, but buys the US a disproportionate amount of soft power and good will for that investment.
Also, why 20-year olds? You'd think a person as resourced as Musk would have access to more capable people. When I was 20 years old I didn't know a thing about the Federal government or all the ways it benefits Americans.
I don't see DOGE solving an actual problem, and even if it did, this is a horribly incompetent way to go about it.
Why not just say they have root access? 'god mode' is a ridiculous expression and just obscures the truth.
I get that some people need information dumbed down but this is pathetic.
The difference between DOGE and previous overreaches of power like the Department of Homeland Security is the attack on the truth.
What do I mean by that? Well, during the previous political era (loosely 9/11 through the COVID-19 pandemic), when intellectuals spoke truth to power, power listened.
So people like us could voice our opinions on constitutionality, historical precedent, etc, and eventually our points made their way up through the news cycle and someone in a position of power would validate our concerns.
Whereas today, people like Elon Musk belittle academic arguments as nonconstructive because they haven't made us money and we aren't rich. So obviously we're wrong.
This wasn't always the case. Some billionaires could be very stubborn, but at their core, they still held themselves to a higher standard, a geek ethos. It mattered what academics thought.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I side with Bill Gates on this.
Trump/Musk are using "corruption/fraud" as a lie to remake the government in their image (or Project2025's image), in the same way that Bush used WMDs as a lie to invade Iraq.
Where's the evidence of widespread corruption? If there really was corruption and fraud, then we'd be hearing of people being investigated and/or charged with breaking the law, not randomly fired or fired for ideological/loyalty/retribution reasons.
This reminds me of that scene in Don't Look Up where the planet puts all of their hopes in an eclectic oligarch's dumb plan to blow up the asteroid about to obliterate the planet, and it fails miserably. There is no chance any of this bodes well for many people not directly standing to profit directly from this pillaging of the federal government, and I'm not sure there is a way to recover from whatever is being done here. GG, I guess.
Here is my prediction...I know nobody asked for it :-) But they are only fun if you make them before the events...A massive, unpriced risk looms over financial markets... Its scale defies prediction.
The current administration’s safeguards are faltering, running like a government still in FSD beta. With U.S. debt dismissed as “just debt,” inflationary tariffs in play, and an emergency Fed rate hike imminent, shockwaves are inevitable.
Deficit panic may soon lead to manipulated figures and a narrative bent to suit unstable agendas. The bond market’s credibility will collapse, making the Liz Truss debacle seem trivial compared to the turmoil expected over the next two years.
Even the most sophisticated hedge funds and quants can’t quantify an administration gone off the rails... But just look at the current price of gold...
A lot of Government contracts that are on the surface multi-million, even billion dollars, aren't payed out immediately in full. Thus, at first glance it may look like they've spent more than has left their pockets
People did not vote to give Elon Musk absolute, unaccountable access to the most sensitive machineries of government.
They've fired and hobbled all of the inspectors general and parties that are supposed to monitor and hold them accountable. This is nothing short of a security nightmare and insider threat of the highest degree.
I disagree. He'll wait until things start breaking, use that as more reason that government isn't effective, and start selling the parts to new, different contractors.
I legitimately believe his reasoning is money and ego pumping. But mostly money.
This is basic disaster economics, but with a self-made disaster instead of a natural disaster.
I think over half of this article is wildly speculative hyperbole. "Here is a list of things we can imagine that DOGE might do with this data:
1. Invent super solider zombies.
2. Blackmail you (you specifically are at risk here)
3. Sell all the data to China who will work with Israel and Mexico to conquer America
You should be extremely worried! Run in Fear of what might come to pass!"
because some guy filled out a request to have admin access to some government data stores. Ridiculous. Between United, BCBS, and existing Chinese infiltrations into OPM and telcos your data is already compromised by real / confirmed bad actors. This is disappointing click bait from the Atlantic and their editors should be ashamed of its publication.
The last time this topic came up, I manually and then with AI analyzed 13 articles talking about 'read/write' access - and all of it was 2nd or 3rd party info from anonymous sources.
Reading this article it appears on the surface to be a little more conclusive... but once you peel back ther layers, we are back to square one.
There are many red flags still that make me question the reliability of this:
the senior USAID source said. “What do you do with this information? I had to ask myself, Do I file my taxes this year or not? I had to sit and debate that.”
Ok this is kind of silly - assuming they are being fully honest and forthright, then their account information would already be 'compromised' unless they change banks yearly which seems.. unlikely.
So why wasn't their question "Should I close the account I used for tax refunds in the past? Should I try to create an insulated account instead" -- rather instead, they subtly implant the idea that maybe they should do something illegal in response to this supposed breach. (not file taxes, like them or not - not interested in sovereign citizen arguments btw).
So this right out of the gate feels like FUD by virtue of that alone... and if you are cynical enough you could probably argue this is propaganda meant to cause well-meaning citizens to break the law out of fear, which is deplorable.
"Over the past few days, we’ve talked with civil servants working for numerous agencies, all of whom requested anonymity because they fear what will happen if they lose their job—not just to themselves, but to the functioning of the federal government."
Ok so it's all anonymous sources again - everyone is up in arms and there isn't even clarity in this article if the anonymous sources are first party, second party, third party, or what. Previous FUD campaigns at least made that clear, but I'll try to pick this one apart as well. Additionaly, they are implying that somehow not being anonymous may jeopardize the entire functioning of the federal govt... excuse me, what??
I did the same AI analysis using CoPilot as I did on previous articles, and this is what it came up with breaking down the 'sources':
Anonymous Source:
Type: Anonymous
Details: The article cites an anonymous source described as a “civil servants” who provides insights into the Doge God Mode Access incident.
NOTE (from me not CoPilot): This is entirely irrelevant, they are presenting a 'nightmare' situation a security researcher and asking their opinion of it. This does not mean the scenario is happening, and does not support the thesis.
Hypothetical Scenarios:
Type: Hypothetical
Details: The article includes hypothetical scenarios, such as the one about NASA’s thermal-protection or encryption technologies, to illustrate potential risks and vulnerabilities.
NOTE (from me not CoPilot): I think we can all agree hypotheticals are pointless if you haven't reliably established baseline 'facts' the support the hypothetical - so far there is a running trend, as it's all based on hypothetical fear mongering
That's it - that's the meat of this article.
The articles is also riddles with other clues that this is a slanted report like:
"One experienced government information-security contractor offered a blunt response to the God-mode situation at USAID: “That sounds like our worst fears come true.”" -- ok but he clearly has no knowledge, so describing a worst fear and then going 'omg that soudds bad' is pointless..
People really need to step up their media literacy skills if they want to get through the next four years without having an aneurhysim -- and this to me just says that the work DOGE is doing is probably threatening the pocket books of many 'important people'.
Hey speaking of important people, who funds The Atlantic anyway...
"The Atlantic is a left-of-center literary, political, and ideas magazine that publishes ten issues per year. It was founded as The Atlantic Monthly in 1857 by several prominent American literary figures such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 1 In 2017 the Emerson Collective, a left-of-center private grantmaking enterprise funded by Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow and heir of Apple Computer executive Steve Jobs, purchased majority ownership. 2 Jeffrey Goldberg, previously a prominent writer for the magazine, was named editor-in-chief in October 2016. 3
In contrast to most of its editorial history, after 2016 political criticism became a much larger priority for The Atlantic. From its founding in 1857 to 2016, the publication had endorsed only two presidential candidates, but then did so for two elections in a row in 2016 and 2020, declaring in 2020 that President Donald Trump “poses a threat to our collective existence.” After Trump’s 2016 election, the magazine sharply increased the attention it dedicated to politicians and the presidency. From 2016 through 2019 (covering the 2016 election and first three years of the Trump administration), President Donald Trump was the subject of eight cover stories–all negative. This contrasts with President Barack Obama, who—following a cover story for his January 2009 inauguration—was not the subject of another cover story for the next two years. Similarly, from 2000 through 2003 (i.e.: the 2000 Presidential election and first three years of the George W. Bush administration) President George W. Bush was directly referenced in just one cover feature."
I bet these guys are super duper impartial and we should all just trust that this journalists 'anonymous sources' who never are quoted in any manner which implies the god mode claims are true must be true. I couldn't conceive of a situation where they may lie about something this egregious through carefully worded articles which state nothing of the nature of the access, are all off record anonymous sources, and which clearly has an axe to grind with Trump in particular.
"Jeffrey Goldberg was named editor in chief of The Atlantic in October 2016 and held the position as of November 2020. Prior to being elevated to the top editorial spot, Goldberg had been a correspondent for the magazine since 2007 and had written numerous essays covering foreign policy in general and the Middle East in particular. 3
Just days prior to Goldberg’s promotion, the magazine endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton for president, The Atlantic’s first presidential endorsement since 1964 and only the third in its history. In October 2020, the Goldberg-led publication made its fourth presidential endorsement for Democratic nominee (and eventual winner) Joe Biden. The essays were respectively titled “Against Donald Trump” (2016) and “The Case Against Donald Trump” (2020). The 2020 endorsement asserted Trump “poses a threat to our collective existence” and that “the choice voters face is spectacularly obvious.
In July 2017, David G. Bradley, then the owner of The Atlantic, announced he was selling a majority stake in the magazine to the Emerson Collective, a left-of-center private grantmaking enterprise funded by Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple Computer executive Steve Jobs. The announcement stated the Emerson Collective would likely assume “full ownership” of the publication within five years, or by summer of 2022. The reported purchase price for Jobs’ initial 70 percent stake was $100 million. ”
....
“It felt like the place was becoming a hot-take factory,” said one recently departed writer. “That can be profitable, of course, because hot takes don’t cost much.”
Now if you got this far and are still thinking "yeah but I trust the Atlantic, they are the pinnacle of news and they don't need to show their work!" I would urge you to read the full 'Controversies' section @ https://www.influencewatch.org/for-profit/the-atlantic/
Here are a few choice items though that just -might- impact their impartiality and should maybe cause you to second guess if 'anonymous, unquoted sources' are a great journalistic bar for 'the truth':
"A September 2020 report authored by Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, cited “multiple sources” claiming President Donald Trump had disparaged the historical sacrifices made by American military personnel. The headline read “Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’” with a sub-headline sentence stating “The president has repeatedly disparaged the intelligence of service members, and asked that wounded veterans be kept out of military parades, multiple sources tell The Atlantic.” 15
Both the content and context of the allegation was disputed in whole or in part by the president, his staff, and even some of his critics, including left-wing journalists.
The two opening paragraphs set the context and provided the sourcing for the allegation:
When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true.
Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed. 15
John Bolton, the President’s former National Security Advisor turned Trump critic, was on the 2018 trip and involved in the discussion regarding the motive for the helicopter grounding and cancelling of the motorcade alternative. Despite having become a severe Trump critic who had by September 2020 stated that President Trump was not fit for office, Bolton gave the New York Times an eyewitness account of the incident that differed sharply from that presented by The Atlantic
Mr. Bolton said he was in the room at the ambassador’s residence when Mr. Trump arrived and Mr. [White House Chief of Staff John] Kelly told him that the helicopter trip had to be canceled. A two-hour motorcade would have put him too far away from Air Force One and the most capable communications array a president needs in case of an emergency, per usual protocol, Mr. Bolton said. “It was a straight weather call,” he said."
....
"Former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders stated: “I was actually there and one of the people part of the discussion — this never happened.” And Jordan Karem, the former personal assistant to the president during period in question, replied to the story with a Twitter statement: “This is not even close to being factually accurate. Plain and simple, it just never happened.”"
So they literally have just 'made up' stuff about Trumpt to make him look vein and stupid, and people who basically hate him even called them on this charade. And I know for sure I remember this making the rounds -- so their lies get around due tot their perceived authority.
This was the rationale:
Goldberg replied: “They don’t want to be inundated with angry tweets and all the rest … In this case I decided that I felt I knew this information well enough, from high enough sources, and multiple sources, that I thought we should put it out.”
I'll stop here - but if you go on to read the rest, Glenn Greenwald (an actually good investigative journalist with integrity) rips The Atlantic to shreds, they have multiple other controversies, they have dubious financial ties... and so on
If you believe this 'God Mode' article it is strictly an act of faith in the party you have pronounced your allegiance to.
If they have the ability to change data, then absolutely none of their claims can be trusted. Neither Musk nor his A-team of hackers have demonstrated any integrity through their career - contrary to HN guidelines, the default position is to assume the worst from them.
Think about it once they begin putting the opposition on show trials.
> The single biggest ticket item is a DHS contract listed as saving $8 billion. Wow, that's a huge contract! Actually no, it's $8 million. They must have tried to automate scraping the FPDS form and failed.
They occasionally make minor mistakes! If only voters had known that occasionally minor mistakes (in reporting of all places) might be made, they'd have insisted we stick with the bureaucracy they know and love!
But hey, I guess it at least did happen. It's better than the grasping-at-straws "they'll probably leak your SS number" talking point. And the "he'll redirect treasury payments to himself" talking point.
How is it not? If you report a saving of 100% of a contract that is 80% already executed, you either don't understand what you're doing or you are intentionally lying.
Or you're working, despite opposition, against the largest bureaucracy the world has ever known, on a very tight timeframe with limited resources, and staffed by humans that are not perfect.
This is inaccurate.
In September 2022, the agency contracting officer mistakenly wrote $8B instead of $8M when logging in the FPDS database. DOGE discovered this error in January 2025, and the agency updated FPDS accordingly.
The DOGE website initially included a screenshot from the federal contracting database showing that the contract’s value was $8 million, even as the DOGE site listed $8 billion in savings. On Tuesday night, around the time this article was published, DOGE removed the screenshot that showed the mismatch, but continued to claim $8 billion in savings. It added a link to the original, outdated version of the contract worth $8 billion.
Trustworthy and transparent. I guess fixing a typo is worth $8B?
"By examining past versions of the contract listed on the Federal Procurement Data System, The Upshot determined that the federal award, approved in September 2022, had initially listed a total value of $8 billion. But on Jan. 22 this year, that figure was updated to $8 million...
It's possible that DOGE or someone else in the Trump administration can claim credit for fixing the error in the contracting database, given that the value was downgraded to $8 million two days after President Trump took office. "
-NYT TFA
So Bureaucracy incompetence, mistake is around for >2 years, DOGE fixes it.
Screenshot and FPDS DB were out of sync, "PDS posting of the final termination notices can have up to a 1-month lag."
It was a typo. No one was paid that amount and wouldn't have been paid that amount. If fixing a typo in a reporting system is a huge win for you I guess...ok.
No, the DOGE website scrapes from the FPDS DB. The DB wasn't updated immediately. Like I quoted in an adjacent comment "PDS posting of the final termination notices can have up to a 1-month lag."
Your bias is blinding you to what is the obvious explanation that I'm sure you'd recognize if you saw it on a non-political website.
I just want to point out one more thing:
DOGE didn't advertise this 8M savings anywhere, there wasn't a speech about it etc. This was found on https://doge.gov/savings
Your comment is vague so it's not clear if you are accusing voters in general of uncrtitically accepting obvious propaganda or if you yourself have believed obvious propaganda generated by DOGE.
Now that they can edit data, nothing can be proven, as they broke the chain of trust and accountability.
A criminal case can be thrown out if policemen didn't follow procedure, the same applies here. Those rules are put in place to protect all of us, and can't be handwaved because "that guy got elected" (with 49.8% of popular votes BTW).
The distinction between whether or not someone is formally registered as dead and whether or if they receive money are two completely different things and should not be confused. If you conflate the two issues then you can only be being disingenuous.
I've worked at a company which had people who have been dead longer than America exists in their database and some of them do not have a recorded date of death. That does not mean they are not dead, just that the death was not confirmed. And no they weren't being paid.
However if you get some junior developer in with no real knowledge of what they are doing on the job, stuff like this will appear and you can use it for political collateral because no one cares enough to understand the problem and ask questions. Like yourself.
There is a 'okayisch' way to stop everything (its the USA choice if the most powerful and richest country is no longer able or motivated to help around the globe despite the damage a country like the USA does around the globe, think co2, resources etc.) and there is the Musk/Trump way and no this is not okay at all. Its a breach of social contract, respect etc.
Related to a comment on a now-flagged subthread: can anyone who believes that DOGE is uncovering fraud please post a reliable reference that gives a specific example of fraud uncovered by DOGE? To be clear, this should be a third-party analysis of some credibility, not DOGE's or Musk's twitter feed or "receipts" website which shows cancelled contracts with no clear link to fraudulent activity.
The claims of fraud are a pretext for going into the agencies and making the partisan changes they wanted to make anyway. There's no point asking for a detailed discussion because the whole plan is to use the discussion of fraud as cover for the thing they're actually doing.
"This is incompetence born of self-confidence. It’s a familiar Silicon Valley mindset, the reason startups are forever reinventing a bus, or a bodega, or mail. It’s the implacable certainty that if you’re smart at one thing you must be smart at all of the things."
"And if you don’t believe in the public good? You sprint through the ruination. You metastasize from agency to agency, leveling the maximum allowable destruction under the law. DOGE’s costly, embarrassing mistakes are a byproduct of reckless nihilism; if artificial intelligence can sell you a pizza, of course it can future-proof the General Services Administration.
The top-line summaries are definitely consistent with “waste.” Probably some of them have more nuance when you dig deeper, but does anyone disagree that there is not waste in the government?
Fraud and abuse are less clear. But it’s also difficult to ascertain the legitimacy of payments when they’re leaving treasury on checks with no memo or reference, and they’re compared to “do not pay” lists that lack frequent updates.
Here are some of my opinions, as someone who is mostly supportive of the effort but also realistic about its outcomes and risks:
1. The people voted for smaller government, and if the executive doesn’t have the power to reduce the size of its own bureaucracy, then there is no check on ever-expanding government. The executive must have full authority to examine all data produced by itself.
2. Federal spending on salary, agencies and operations is a drop in the bucket compared to entitlements and defense budget. Slashing jobs and even deleting entire agencies will not make a significant dent in the deficit. But if DOGE can really cut $1 trillion by end of year, it will have positive knock-on effects in the bond market.
3. Entitlements shouldn’t be treated with same bull-in-a-china shop approach as the current one towards agencies.
4. Social security probably has some fraud but I doubt it’s significant and is better resolved by identifying and punishing retroactively. Most of the “150 year old people” problems are exaggerated or outright wrong. However, it’s worrying that a system of age-based payouts has such uncertainty in its data.
5. It’s widely known there is significant fraud in Medicaid and Medicare. The true volume of this fraud is unknown and any effort to quantify it would be welcomed. But while fraudulent claims may be an issue, the real problem is unaccountable pricing of the healthcare system that allows for “legitimate” claims to cost more than any sane person would pay out of pocket.
6. In general, “if nothing breaks, you’re not cutting enough” is obviously true. But it does not follow that “things breaking” is an acceptable cost to pay. The approach needs to come with a well-defined rubric for evaluating not only “what to cut,” but also “which cuts to rollback.”
> However, it’s worrying that a system of age-based payouts has such uncertainty in its data.
The data itself may have to be interpreted, which I would classify as 'suboptimal', but seemingly 'normal' for most projects I work with. I often have to join together various tables, remembering to include or exclude specific data via conditional logic. The conditional logic may be context-dependent, and documenting those cases is really key. Why include/exclude specific subsets of data to answer questions XYZ? Have those criteria changed over the years (and if so, why?)
Looking at raw data tables it's often quite easy to come up with ways to show the data to support whatever case you're trying to make.
> 1. The people voted for smaller government, and if the executive doesn’t have the power to reduce the size of its own bureaucracy, then there is no check on ever-expanding government.
Congress specifies the size of most government bodies through its Article 1 power of Appropriation. The Executive's job is to administer what the People's delegates have decided to do. Deciding how much to spend is not the President job, and never has been.
The Republican Congress that was also presumably just elected to reduce government can at any time send legislation to the Republican President that will reduce the size of government; in fact, they are working on a budget bill right now. They are free to restructure government as much as they want, because Congress has been explicitly vested with that power.
A lot of people don't like this, but the Constitution is very clear on this point. It's also quite readable; you can read it yourself and verify that I am not making this up!
Their is a huge conflict of ingerest of giving this power to a major economical actor that vastly depends on public investment and under public scrutinity.
Executive should have the audit right and in some measure probably it should be widespread to all citizens up to sensitive data not being leaked. But what good is there to give this power solely to one of the richest and more powerful man in the world? This is crazy.
The people voted for President and the people voted for Congress. If Congress, who under the US Constitution controls the purse, votes for a level of "X" spending why does the President get to decide to spend <X?
> 6. In general, “if nothing breaks, you’re not cutting enough” is obviously true.
It is not obviously true. Because what you're cutting may be resiliency.
To use a tech analogy: if I have two firewalls in an HA configuration, then decommissioning one to save on support costs will not break things… until the first one goes belly-up and there's no failover.
There's a reasonable argument to be made that more government capacity is actually needed (at least in certain sectors):
The IRS for example would probably do better with more resources:
> That’s one reason that five former commissioners of IRS, Republican and Democrat, have argued eloquently that additional IRS resources would create a fairer tax system. The logic is simple. Fewer resources for the IRS mean reduced enforcement of tax laws. Though the tax code has become more complex, prior to the IRA real resources of the IRS had been cut by about 23 percent from 2010 to 2021.
> Congress asked the IRS to report on why it audits the poor more than the affluent. Its response is that it doesn’t have enough money and people to audit the wealthy properly. So it’s not going to.
I presume the idea of $1 trillion less bonds being issues would decrease supply and decrease the price we need to charge. (More demand for the same supply decreases bond prices). This would have the impact of reducing the interest payments in the federal budget, which is becoming burdensome.
I personally am just as worried that reducing US gov spending will worsen a potential 2025 or 2026 recession (which might lower rates...)
> The top-line summaries are definitely consistent with “waste.”
Can you give a reference for an analysis of some cancelled contract or program that illustrates your point that it was wasteful spending? I'm looking for something that explains what the contract or program did beyond the 10-word title of the appropriations document saying something like "DEIA Training". (I work for a big private corporation and we also have such training, and I don't think from the corporate perspective its waste; I strongly suspect they attempt to balance the spend on that training to the cost reduction on lawsuit payouts. And especially from the government perspective, harm reduction should also be accounted separately from pure cost considerations.)
With regards to (4), it's been well known for a while that since Social Security doesn't check the payments being made into the program with any sort of scrutiny illegal immigrants can often get away with giving the social security numbers of dead people to their employers. Here's an article from 2024 that mentions the problem.
From a policy perspective making it harder for illegal immigrants to be employed might make it worth cracking down on this. But doing so would cost the government money both by preventing these payments into Social Security that don't have to be paid out and also the cost of the crackdown itself.
It’d be cool if we still had the independent IGs in place to make sure everything’s on the up-and-up. That would definitely make me feel better about this.
But one of the first things Trump did was fire a bunch of them. Blatantly illegally, because of course that’s how he’d do it.
Every large organization needs reviews/audits to find waste. I think the problem with the 'right' is the idea that because there is waste, then government is evil and we should abolish it.
But, every organization accumulates waste, and then needs to have a review process to make corrections. The whole burn it all down is pretty immature take on leadership.
Every corporation has waste, and bloated salaries, entitlements (the bosses son doesn't do much but has fat salary). Should DOGE go in and cut them also?
>1. The people voted for smaller government, and if the executive doesn’t have the power to reduce the size of its own bureaucracy, then there is no check on ever-expanding government. The executive must have full authority to examine all data produced by itself.
The people should educate themselves then. The way to reduce the budget is to elect different congresspeople. We did this in the 90s. It sure is funny how insistent all these people are that we can't just do what we've done before. Are they children who didn't live through the deficit hawk era?
2. "Their claim is impossible, but if they did it, that would be great"
4. "However, it’s worrying that a system of age-based payouts has such uncertainty in its data."
SS payouts ARE NOT based on age, but "eligibility", which age is an input to. The government purposely keeps very gentle records on it's citizens because once we saw a country keep really good records on it's people and then Bad Things happened, and also stuff about the mark of the beast. More importantly, the government takes a light touch to data integrity because the data doesn't matter. If you say you are eligible for benefits, the data says no, you can verify your eligibility a lot of ways and the data does not get updated, because we aren't supposed to be a surveillance state like that. If you want to update your records with the government, you can contact the Social Security admin and do it that way. One of the things Social Security pays out for is Ex Spouses, and that includes Abusive Ex Spouses. Your Abusive Ex I'm sure would love if the SS admin had accurate records about where they can find you. This is a legitimate concern that people working in government have had to address regularly.
5. Define significant. "Everyone thinks X" is a stupid heuristic when ONLY 47% of the country can even name the three branches of government. I don't care what Tim or Sasha think of medicare fraud, I care what GAO or an AG say about medicare fraud.
6. “if nothing breaks, you’re not cutting enough” is obviously true. Nope. Sometimes you just cannot recognize the breaks right away. The stricken vessel can keep going for quite some time before fully sinking. Cutting until shit breaks means you have to figure out what else is broken but not obviously so
And all this nonsense is shattered anyway when the basic premise of "Reducing the debt" is horseshit, which you can see from the tax plan being pushed.
So it was not uncovered by doge? and it is also not simply fraud? „Every year, agency reports posted online document billions in improper payments, which include fraud but also underpayments, duplicate payments, payments to ineligible recipients or for ineligible goods or services.“ (from the article you linked)
There is widespread fraud in the government. It needs to be addressed. There is widespread inefficiency too.
I think the people in DOGE have the skills and access to address it.
I have no evidence that they are doing so, and some evidence of widespread loyalty tests which, while not identical, remind me of how Stalin came to power.
However, absence if evidence is not evidence of absence, and some evidence is not the same as proof.
I have dozens of explanations which fit the facts, and I don't have any way to determine which, if any, is correct.
> There is widespread fraud in the government.... There is widespread inefficiency too... I think the people in DOGE have the skills and access to address it.
Given that just getting the names of the people involved in this process incurred Musk's wrath and accusations of criminal behaviour... how can you have any justified belief in people having 'skills' to address 'fraud' and 'inefficiency'?
We'd need some common definition of 'fraud' in the first place. Many of the things that have been labelled 'corruption' seem to just be 'things Musk doesn't like'; I suspect 'fraud' would be similar.
"Inefficiencies" - we have the Chesterton's Fence idea to illustrate that what might be 'inefficient' is intentional with an overall positive purpose. Again, define 'inefficiency'. The rate at which firings have been happening may certainly be 'efficient' from an operational standpoint, but having to scramble to rehire key people who shouldn't have been fired in the first place is 'inefficient' at best.
> I have dozens of explanations which fit the facts, and I don't have any way to determine which, if any, is correct.
I'm not sure we have enough verifiable 'facts' that can support many conclusions at all, and I think that 'fact' itself is evidence of intentionality in keeping the public in the dark about what's going on and why.
LLMs tend to be very naive in their outputs when you start asking for anything below surface level. If you ask it how to audit something, it'll probably give you a solid high level answer - look at a, b, c and try to build a narrative about how they relate and then look for deviance (I'm not an auditor and I didn't use an LLM for this). Once you start trying to look at the mechanics of how to actually do that, that's when it will start "hallucinating" or just generally swirl. It's the side effect of having a ton of training data on what something is but not much data on how to do it in practice.
This may change at some point in the future, but I would hardly say that using an LLM is "close to having someone with that experience and knowledge," or maybe it is "close" but it isn't a substitute for "having" when dealing with serious topics.
I've found that when cross checked against my own expertise, LLMs have dubious "knowledge" at best. Trusting the output with anything you already don't know would just be Gell-Mann amnesia.
There's a lot of just plain simple fraud too. I've seen embassies issue visas only with bribes, or employees simply collect salaries without doing their jobs. As in you're hired to review documents by some legally mandated criteria, and they simply toss them into piles without even glancing at them and go home early.
This is sort of the group that interests me the most, there is some notion of the government as sort of an employer of last resort in some areas which is a progressive/liberal idea, though id imagine with the areas most impacted by offshoring these jobs are disproportionately in red / Trump supporting states.
And even if you’re ok with getting rid of these jobs, the biggest impact might not even be the loss of these jobs but the loss of the consumers who had these jobs spending money in their local communities.
In addition to the money that's spent, these people had great health insurance. This helped to subsidize rural hospitals. Between this and cuts to medicaid, more rural hospitals will close.
If it is too early for them to have uncovered a meaningful understanding about what the contracts/programs/employees are doing, why is it also not too early for the contracts to be cancelled/programs ended/employees fired?
If they were actually trying to eliminate waste, they’d be working in tandem with these departments instead of just trashing them.
More broadly: People who care about improving things move carefully and deliberately and involve all stakeholders. They are open and transparent and they listen. Trump and Musk are exhibiting horrible leadership skills because they do not care about improving things. Trump wants to hurt his perceived enemies and feel like he’s a big smart boss man. Musk wants to be the first trillionaire. That’s the start and end of it.
Does anyone else see the eery comparison between the name DOGE (department of government efficiency) and the things Orwell warned about in 1984? It seems very prescient, but I know this isn't the first time in history that regimes have played this game.
It did cross my mind ( like ministry of truth in 1984). But I suspect it's just a coincidence. Overall I think, in my judgement DM/EM have been transparent, at least significantly more than their detractors.
sure - the extreme left voices have definitely become louder, because this kind of emotive argumentation is wildly successful.
But they are following the path blazed elsewhere. The primary source of griping and emotion have been owned by right wing media. It’s their whole shtick.
The statement itself, is because tons of research comes for universities, which the conservative news and opinion machine are dedicated to denigrate and demolish.
So you see reality have a left wing bias, because conservative information providers have to reduce support and credibility of science.
See creationism for an example of how far this has been taken.
I know. I have some modest claim to expertise on these matters. I am well aware it feels the exact opposite to conservatives. I’d guess that many feel that leftist extremism has been shoved in their face for as long as they remember.
Sure. But right now what do care more about - the nitty gritty details of
1) The way software and projects at DOGE are going
2) “leftist claims that men can become women and vice-versa.”
This is a fundamentally a distracting question. It may give you mental relief (Yahh the other team is dumb, Reality is dumb)
Great! Take the breather.
But then talk about 1.
I get that things are polarized. I get that there is an INTENT behind it. But you’ve got all 3 branches of government. You have the ability to actually make this work.
Why THIS approach. What are the accountability checks and balances?
Are they just creating a new talking point to bounce down the years???
Did people get the required clearances? If not, why were the clearances there? IF yes, How are they making sure this is not going to be FUBARED.
How is responsibility going to be allocated? Are we going to have this over our heads for all generations to come? A new political ball to punt blame?
How do we get accountability for what - even to you - must look like the wrong way to do things.
I was just responding to a dubious assertion with a clear counter-example.
As for DOGE, I live in a different country and not really care to be frank, as an external observer the US is a testbed. We will see what kinds of results going all guns blazing to reduce fraud in government, instead of asking nicely, will produce in due time. As your leftist friend said, you need to break some eggs to make an omelette.
What's Elon's beef with USAID? I would think he would go after something like food stamps first owing to his libertarian ethos. Maybe he sees USAID as a completely benevolent handout and a waste of money? I cannot begin to understand why.
> U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID): The USAID Inspector General initiated a probe
into Starlink satellite terminals provided to the Government of Ukraine
From a House Committee report matching Elon’s actions to agencies he has personal issues with:
Eliminating foreign aid seems to be a common cause of neo-conservative movements.
Boris Johnson shut down the British equivalent(Department for International Development) and scrapped the commitment to spend 0.7% of GDP on aid.
It's simplistic, drastic and brings no specific domestic effect which could be a rallying point for unrest.
It's also very easy to come up with rage bait stories of corruption and waste as justification, because in any organisation spending billions of dollars around the world you will always be to find something ridiculous that got funding, even though the proportion of the budget it represents is insignificant.
Lol you clearly have no idea what a 'neo-conservative' is or their history.
Neo-Conservatives were a branch of Democrat wark-hawks who wanted to police the world, that were upset about the pacifist attitude of the Democrats at the time - they emerged in the 60's and managed to largely take control of the Republican party moving forward, peaking under George W Bush.
Their founding principal was "Peace Through Strength" and have a strong belief in worldwide interventionism.
If you think the 'MAGA' / 'Trump' party is neo-conservative you literally just are ignoring the entire history, the power struggle (which Trump won) to retake the party from the Neo-Cons, and the fact that the trump admin is largely isolationist and opposed to being the world police.
Don't get me wrong there are still some neo-cons in office and with roles in his admin, but the republican infighting can be summarized as neocon vs MAGA.
Words mean things. The MAGE/America First party is focused on non-interventionism, advocate against regime change abroad, with a focus on America and it's interest rather than the endless wars.
You can debate the success or merit of that approach I guess, but the Neo-Cons are very happy to provide foreign aid as it is core to their ideology. They tend to do it via NED while the left uses USAID more (although both use both, but they each have lean in one direction).
Just for fun, I just tried this little experiment you can try to:
"
CoPilot:
Can you rationally describe Trump as a neocon?
CoPilot:
No, it would not be accurate to rationally state that Donald Trump is a neoconservative (neocon). Here are some key differences:
Foreign Policy:
Neocons: Advocate for interventionist foreign policies, promoting democracy and regime change abroad.
Trump: Emphasizes “America First” policies, focusing on non-interventionism, reducing military engagements abroad, and prioritizing domestic issues.
Military Engagement:
Neocons: Support maintaining strong international alliances and a significant military presence globally.
Trump: Criticized NATO, praised authoritarian leaders like Vladimir Putin, and negotiated troop withdrawals from conflict zones like Afghanistan.
Economic Policies:
Neocons: Generally support free trade and globalization.
Trump: Advocates for economic nationalism, including tariffs and renegotiating trade deals to favor American interests.
These differences highlight that Trump’s policies and ideology do not align with neoconservative principles. If you have any more questions or need further details, feel free to ask!
"
USAID was funding the StarLink deployment in Ukraine and was reexamining the deal[1], likely to try to negotiate a cheaper plan or to reduce the funding. My opinion is that it likely hit his ego a bit and it was a really sweet deal for StarLink, so losing out on it would suck.
This raises a potential conflict of interest, as Musk's company was under investigation by USAID shortly before he began calling for the shutdown. Starlink's activity in Eastern Europe has been criticized, with many Russian operatives claiming to have access to Starlink despite Musk's assurances that only Ukraine was using the service.
Additionally, in September last year, Ukrainian forces downed a Russian drone that had a Starlink terminal integrated with its systems, raising questions as to how secure Starlink's operations during the Ukraine war are.
> it was so well known to have been a slush fund for Democrats
So well known by whom, and how? I never heard a peep about this until a few weeks ago, and all such claims seem to be coming from the same group of people with obvious ulterior motives.
Calling a guy a pedophile repeatedly because you made yourself look stupid getting excited about your cool submarine and how awesome everyone will think you are when you save some kids wasn't really worth much money either. I don't think Musk has the self-control to think like that, honestly.
I'm not refuting Musk probably hate them like all other regulators or might take advantage of getting into like FAA's operation. It's been obvious on both sides of the aisle. Is USAID corrupt? I think so, foreign money is the most difficult to track. Is FAA technology and management sucks? I believe that, too. Many things can be true at the same time. Since no body can fix it before Musk got his butt in started farting, why are people not benefiting from the kickbacks or inefficiencies complaining is beyond me.
You should have lived long enough to know a person can be a good father to his kids and still murder innocent people. Both things can be true. If a person doing these good things while made $30 million in 3 years on $200k salary, I can reasonably assume some serious corruption is going on.
Keep believing those baseless conspiracy theories. [0]
>"U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, ..."
>"Nichols noted that despite Trump’s claim of massive “corruption and fraud” in the agency, government lawyers had no support for that argument in court."
Meanwhile, the reality of the situation is simply tragic. [1]
"USAid money is spent supporting independent journalism" is an oxymoron. When a state sponsors something journalistic, it's called propaganda... not independent. Not saying they are not heroic doing this work, this money shouldn't come from US. If they can't keep the effort alive organically, they should get help from donations. These US congressmen for God sake need to keep their hands in their own wallets, not taxpayers.
Not sure what's your point on the Politico article. It is tragic that disrupt a lot of people's lives. Like I said, it doesn't mean there's no corruption, only good is happening. Both things can be true at the same time. This thing can be tragic, Congress might get their shit together - hopefully.
They'll work their way up to anti-constitutional attacks on everything else if they get a chance, USAID is their starting point because it's a softer target in a few ways:
1. The people who'll suffer or die from their mal-management will generally be faraway foreigners, as opposed to people voters know.
2. More of the victims have a much more difficult time launching any kind of lawsuit in US courts.
3. It has a small veneer of Presidential-involvement-ness due to its proximity to diplomacy and foreign relations.
4. Like tariffs, being able to withhold aid allows Trump to commit extortion against other countries, much like how he was impeached for extorting Ukraine in his first term.
Ironically USAID might help Americans more than foreign folks, and disproportionately Trump’s own supporters - if the money is being spent to buy American products, particularly food, that is then shipped overseas.
Scenario: You give someone $40B to feed people, and $1B actually feeds them while $39B vanishes into overhead and ideological reprogramming. Then they tell you they need more. If this is success, what does failure look like?
It looks like USAID had 4B of the 40B budget actually reach endpoint users, which would make the overhead closer to 90% [1], not 97.5% like I originally estimated.
I have my own experience. As a non-American, I know a lot of hungry people. And I have never heard of any help for them from USAID. And who do you think received help from USAID out of all those I have encountered and ever heard about? Only left-leaning democrat's shield "independent" journalists, whose job mostly consist of ideological reprogramming and who now scream all over twitter how Trump destroys their lives. ONLY.
So yes, I don't have any numbers, but I'm used to trusting my own eyes. And what I see (on this particular issue) is way more consistent with what Musk says than with what his opponents say.
> And I have never heard of any help for them from USAID
Personal anecdotes are never a good proof of anything.
> So yes, I don't have any numbers, but I'm used to trusting my own eyes.
So you don't believe in viruses bacteria to name just a few things you can't see with your own eyes?
USAID had many programs, only a number which where about helping the poor, and it's possible those didn't specifically target your country.
E.g. between the poor and hungry people in Moldova (my own native country) and in Sudan USAID would probably chose those in Sudan (what with war and genocide and...). And they might chose to support businesses in Moldova instead (and they did).
I'm not saying it's a perfect program devoid of any corruption. What I'm saying I can come up with as many bogus numbers, and with as many personal anecdotes as the next guy.
And Elon sure as hell resists any attempts to shed light on his activities and claims.
> Only left-leaning democrat's shield "independent" journalists, whose job mostly consist of ideological reprogramming and who now scream all over twitter how Trump destroys their lives. ONLY.
Do you think they do that because they lost funding, or because, say, China or Russia stepped into the void with literally the same support programs?
>Personal anecdotes are never a good proof of anything.
Obviously. But when such anecdotes are consistent with the position of the democratically elected president of USA... What specific reasons do I have to not trust to MY eyes?
>So you don't believe in viruses bacteria to name just a few things you can't see with your own eyes?
No, where did you get that from?
>USAID had many programs, only a number which where about helping the poor, and it's possible those didn't specifically target your country.
Got it. My leftist country were targeted by programs, that promote democrat's left-leaning agenda. Helping poor and hungry - it is for others countries. It’s even surprising, why anyone would hinder such an amazing organization.
>Do you think they do that because they lost funding, or because, say, China or Russia stepped into the void with literally the same support programs?
How are you imagine this? I mean if China or Russia is ready to pay to promote the idea that Trump is the greatest evil on the planet, then maybe.
‘Libertarian ethos’. The guy who’s hoovering up personal data on behalf of a guy who just claimed to be king, that one? Like, how are we defining ‘libertarian’ here?
I didn't mean it too seriously. Just with regard to how one point in the ideology is about governments being small and how DOGE is at least in rhetoric trying to fire federal employees en masse.
My understanding is USAID was one of those organizations thet refused to pause spending when Trump lawfully asked all agencies to stop spending (it was a 90 day hold, not a outright denial, only congress can do that). Agencies that should adhere to trumps orders went to the top.
what's with people not having beef with USAID? It's done so many crazy and bad things, for example:
USAID funded the hepatitis vaccination drive that the CIA used as a cover for espionage against the bin laden family, leading to polio outbreak in pakistan.
Distaste for USAID in any other time would be bipartisan; the Clinton Administration floated shuttering it too. If you go to DC a lot of insiders will say, 'yeah, USAID's got to go'.
This seems like a criticism of the CIA, not USAID, no?
> The decision to enlist Afridi was probably made by the CIA station chief in Islamabad and was passed on to the Counterterrorism Center back in Langley.
What makes you think so, exactly? It's not like CIA would let everyone within the organisation know they are doing it. Do you think USAID could just say no to CIA?
IF YOU ARE INVOLVED WITH LYING TO PEOPLE AND NOT ADMINISTERING VACCINES AND DOING DNA TESTS, THEN IT IS YOUR INDVIDUAL DUTY TO STOP YOUR ORG FROM CONTINUING.
Again, do you think the head of USAID could have just told the head of CIA "no we're not doing this"?
What makes you think they were informed at all? That's kind of the entire MO of CIA - they don't inform other agencies what they are doing when it concerns national security, they just go and do it.
If you're a midlevel program manager (or whatever role label they have) at USAID you should be noticing that vaccines are not being given out. If USAID doesn't have the capability to monitor its programs to the point where that level of accountability exists, then it shouldn't exist.
Look, we can both play this game - let me spell this out for you the 3rd time
"do you think the head of USAID could have just told the head of CIA "no we're not doing this"?"
>>If USAID doesn't have the capability to monitor its programs to the point where that level of accountability exists
If you think CIA hasn't thought about this and addressed it some other way, then I guess the assumption we're working with is that CIA is literally incompetent at their actual job.
You're barking at the wrong tree. Be angry at CIA for doing this shit, not at USAID for running a program that got hijacked by them.
I postulate a slow, multi-generational decline in critical thinking skills (maybe this is driven, at least partially, by the over abundance of unchallenging media/entertainment) coupled with grievance politics and the bucket-of-crabs mentality that sets in when people start to sense the “pie getting smaller” or at least having reached its peak size.
I didn't bring this up because it would be controversial on this website. I think USAID is a tool for advancing US geopolitical interests aims first and foremost and I would like it to be abolished as well. But someone like Musk wanting it to be shuttered doesn't make sense because these organisation in one way or another advance the interests of US businesses and he would benefit from that as well.
I think USAID could certainly be classified as “soft power.” I think throwing it all out makes little sense in light of the provably good things it did.
Funny thing is that kind of government foreign aid is the kind of soft-power over smaller countries thing that right-wingers politicians love, or at least used to. Similar to the BS that China pulls with the belt and road initiative (but probably not as bad in most instances).
Basically give/loan money, get international political support back. Use political support to bully international institutions (UN, WTO, WHO, etc) to do what you want.
I guess soft-power is not enough anymore, they want all the power.
Marco Rubio has been very vocal on his support for USAID for years if you want to see what the traditional right wing take on this has been. "Critical to our security" etc. And he is of course in charge of the smoking remains of it now.
Conservatism before Trump was George W Bush, and while they're very different, it definitely wasn't all sunshine and roses. I don't remember a time in my lifetime when conservatism represented anything good.
I'm a boomer, so I at least remember a time when it was at least more consistently about some sort of values. The Republican party has been through so many changes since then.
However, my entire life Republicans have been the party the KKK is happy to vote for. For a long time that was dismissed as not a problem because they were seen as a fringe, but people pointed out that if your party platform is attractive to the KKK, that is a problem -- you have to kick those people out or they invite their friends and their friends bring worse and worse people.
Lo and behold, the KKK contingent took over the entire party, to the point Liz Cheney (of all people) got kicked out. And the KKK, neo-Nazis, neo-feudalists, Christian nationalists fringes banded together in common cause.
So yes, the Republican party doesn't look like it did 40 years ago, but at the same time it looks exactly like it did 40 years ago.
International aid is such a cheap way to get soft-power while also being able to, you know, help people. Even if a lot of it is misused or inefficiently used the soft-power is there.
A lot of that soft-power has been spent on getting other countries to be more democratic, which is a good thing. Although I don't doubt it has been used for bad reasons as well.
The funny thing is just how inverted the situation is, for years leftists were saying that this kind of foreign aid is often used to hold small countries hostage. While the right wanted to keep the soft-power the aid gives and claiming this kind of aid is used to keep countries democratic.
Now the right is "screw soft-power" and the left is "think of the children". And in the middle people suffering like always.
The worse part is that a lot/most of that aid is probably of very benign influence, but it is definitely also used for nefarious reasons.
When Trump attacks USAID (or the CIA or the FBI) from the nationalist authoritarian right, it in no way counterbalances people criticizing it from the left.
In particular, the left criticism of USAID were always "think of the children" because they wanted it to do that more and better. They have remained consistent in that.
It's more likely it came from Trump instead of Elon. Trump is an isolationist and has long complained about money being spent abroad rather than at home.
> I'm worried that one of Musk friends might be a Chinese or Russian spy.
Given Musk's ties to China and his overt friendship with Putin, I don't think there's a need for one of his friends to be a spy when he's right there with a glowing neon finger over his head.
“Now at least I get to watch horrible people get a dose of their own medicine”
Doge is not being this careful, in fact I’d argue that Doge will disproportionately impact people not on your target list.
All the “horrible” people you don’t like are going to be “punished” with lucrative contracts in the private sector while line workers, most of whom may agree with you suffer
Could you please stop posting flamewar and ideological battle comments? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Could you please stop posting flamewar and ideological battle comments? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
call me Naive and paint me a fool, but I do think this is going to go down as Musk's lifetime achievement. Think about it, he has money, he has arguably built great companies, and now, for his masterpiece, he can, and I honestly believe he will.....CURE DEMOCRACY. I want him to succeed, because the next logical giant is CAPITALISM, and that one, in the collective interest of humanity, and planetary survival, needs FIXING!! Almost every system created by man, eventually turns corrupt, because for some reason we interfere, we want to tip the balance, instead of give free will and life to the things we create. The ecology of a system should be self-regulating, that's how NATURE operates.
cure democracy? they just broke it. did you vote for musk? did anyone? are you thinking right? A fascist dictator just ruined america for good and this can't be fixed. Just the reputation of america alone is ruined for generations to come, and I bet you are not even thinking of what "reputation" means, it isn't "like me please" type of a reputation but "let's avoid wars and trade with each other" reputation. I honestly think people like you deserve the america these evil people are creating, too bad the rest of us are stuck with you. You just lost our country and you have no idea what a precious and wonderful thing we've lost. You put your trust in a greedy evil billionaire, foolishness for the history books.
It doesn't sound like you are in an emotional state to have this discussion, which is ok, but the findings are undeniable. I don't see anyone arguing, "they're making up the fraud". So from an objective point of view, an audit of this magnitude has been dreamt of by both parties for decades, heck probably going back a century. No one has been able to do it, lacking either collective will, or, more famously, bureaucratic pushback. My argument is, and you can ask any senior or experienced executive this(tho I think it's actually an accounting principle), anyways...when a top level professional arrives at a new job/department/unit/etc, the first order of business is "finding your salary", this is essentially your brain finding your salary among the waste or leaks in the space you were asked to manage. This is what DOGE is tasked with, no matter the cost, stopping the waste will pay for the cost, even if it cost trillions(which I highly doubt), you can amortize that and still get USA's bottom line in the black.
I agree.
It's nice to hear someone grounded discuss it.
A lot of people (particularly on Reddit) have been driven insane by psyops, they can't critically think outside what they are told to think anymore.
It's amazing to watch, and also quite sad/scary
I tell you man, this DOGE animal is going to make politicians run scared all over the world. This is the best thing since Science won the climate change fake debate. DOGE is actually draining the swamp, you know how many politicians have promised and even ran full campaigns on reform, or financial austerity, or fighting corruption/big spending/etc. Mark my words, other countries are going to start formulating their own version of DOGE. This is like the upstart BUKELE and his curving of gang violence in record timing (3 years). There are so many nations trying to replicate that because Citizens are asking for their own BUKELE at home.
I didn’t. It’s just a giant security scam to let doge access systems. Didn’t you read the article? The USAID people said they don’t trust the doge people so we shouldn’t either.
The comments here seem mostly against DOGE, but I have seen the waste in these organizations firsthand, and we all pay for it. Musk hopes to cut spending by 10%, but that is only because he is limited in what he can do. A Twitter-style cleanup would at least reduce it by 50%, but it is not feasible. Know that those 10% or 50% directly map to a percentage of your income and lifestyle directly (higher taxes) or indirectly (higher inflation).
I worked for years helping procure government grants and saw how it was used. People who have lived in just one place (aka. California) and have nothing to compare don't realize the amount of waste happening here. The cities that collect the highest taxes have the infrastructure and facilities of a poor town. The prop monies go down the drain or are grossly misspent all the time. DOGE is necessary and needs this level of access and authority to make this scale of change in such a short time.
A thin majority in an election with a poor (and/or constrained) turnout in a lop-sided nonsense of an electoral system with disproportionate weightings voted for parts of this.
Trump won 77,284,118 votes, or 49.8 percent of the votes cast for president.
Voter turnout nationally in 2024 was 63.9 percent (below the 66.6 percent voter turnout recorded in 2020).
So 31.8 percent of the eligible voters in the USofA voted for Trump in the 2024 elections, most eligible voters didn't vote for Trump.
Eligible Voters aside, an even greater percentage of people in the USofA didn't vote for Trump being too young or otherwise disenfranchised.
Of those that did vote for Trump it's a leap to say that all of them voted to fire the chief government records keeper, to empower DOGE to gut departments, etc; like Brexit, many of those who voted for it had no real idea what they had voted for.
In the campaign Trump ran to avoid jail he repeatedly stated he wasn't aware of the Project 2025 playbook, that he would be all things to all people. People who voted for Trump voted for what they heard, what they thought he promised.
Most of the citizens in the USofA did not vote Trump, not all of those voted to gut the government, the sciences, foreign aid, etc.
Did you mean to respond to another comment? I was responding specifically to the claim that election turnout was low. As I said, it’s the 2nd highest since 1968 - 2020 was indeed the higher year.
Like Brexit, people who don’t like what’s happening come up with all sorts of convoluted explanations for why democracy doesn’t apply when their position loses. It seems to regularly boil down to “people who don’t vote the way I would like are too foolish and were tricked or brainwashed and if only they were enlightened they would vote my way.” I don’t think this is a winning message but we seem to be doubling down.
It's straighforward in all democracies to point out that people claiming that bad policy enactment "is what most people wanted" are making a false statement.
It is very rarely what the minority that voted directly for a specific party of candidate wanted. That's just a dull bald fact, not at all convoluted.
Even completely ignoring the dubious ethics invoked - a lot of non Americans will get worse outcomes than the US because of this. Given the work that has been cancelled so far, some of those non Americans are likely already dead.
That’s a bold statement. US is a young country. Empires that lasted longer by 5x have been consigned to the dust bin of history with nary but an oral tradition to remember them. If looking at americas military capability is any indication it is already in steep decline especially with regards to its seeming inability to not crash or destroy million/billon dollar hardware purely based on incompetence and short staffing. Its inability to prosecute an illegal war in the ME (occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan) is also a great example of the lack of exceptionalism exhibited by americas armed forces and their inept leadership.
Reference please! To my knowledge DOGE has not uncovered any obvious cases of financial fraud. Every example of their cost-cutting that I've looked at (and I've dug!) has been lawfully congressionally appropriated funds being spent according to guidelines from the previous administration making reasonable interpretations of the congressionally passed budget. The new administration forbids spending on initiatives related to increasing diversity, equity, or inclusiveness or decreasing climate change, as well as disapproves of most kinds of foreign aid. None of this is fraud.
The only issue I have with that claim (ignoring the obvious blurring between whether it's fraud or waste), is that it's all being reported by a single party with no validation or accountability.
Because the other party is perceptively playing political games rather than being bipartisan? Or maybe the massive misinformation being played out is drowning out legitimate voices..
They claimed to discover .. yes, but they're essentially too young, dumb, and inexperienced to understand the oddities in the data .. the 100+ year old peole are a result of COBOL NULL entries for people with no birth record dates (which is a real thing in 300+ million people), etc.
Also:
DOGE Claimed It Saved $8 Billion in One Contract. It Was Actually $8 Million
The biggest single line item on the website of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team appears to include an error.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
You're brainwashed. They're robbing you of essential services and you're still going "yeah, go on!!".
Notice how they only go after things the common man might benefit from? Surprisingly DOGE uncovers no waste whatsoever in the many billion dollars military contracts.
What do you think will happen to your country when the ban on medicaid takes effect? Will the millions that rely on it simply die? Do you even care or are you totally void of empathy?
It's not the government's job to take money from Paul to give to Peter. I fundamentally object to this. I take the view of Austrian economics. IMO, all the corporate monopolies we have today are caused by excessive government money printing, weaponizing the people's money against the people. How about having empathy for the worker, the value creator, who has been robbed of money and, worse, opportunities as a result of government-backed corporate monopolies and regulatory moats?
You can't imagine how bad things have been for some of us.
You are gravely mistaken. How is the extensive union-busting, deregulation, wage theft and general disregard for worker protections going to help you?
Musk and Trump's class interests are diametrically opposed to ours, the real value-creating workers. They want you to work more for less pay. Watch you and your loved ones' situations dégrade over the next few years, and reconsider your position.
This is great news for anyone paying taxes in the US. People really underestimate how incompetent the federal work force really is. Not everyone of course. But I contracted with the DOD for six years and you legit could have fired half the federal employees. They didnt do shit all day and it sounds like it's gotten way worse since COVID allowed these people to work from home.
I seriously want a real, non-politically based argument on why we shouldnt be trying to 1. find fraud 2. fire 10-20% of these people immediately
Imagine what we can do in 2025 by applying LLM search to all of the federal paperwork!
The moment they had physical access to the system, it was necessary to assume this. It's called an 'evil maid' attack, and of all communities this one should have been blowing the whistle. Loudly, repeatedly, and in open defiance of people who argue that this is a storm in a teacup, a non issue, just another MOT, etc.
Especially when you look at the background of the Doge team - 'ex' hackers, 'security specialists', full-on racists...
Perhaps surprisingly, the CEO of YC and Paul Graham have been publicly supportive of the DOGE team, despite all the racism and existential threat. I don't know if that's from fear, or greed, but there are strong arguments for both.
Some of the stories about this topic which have been flagged here can be seen in my favorites. I'd be interested in collecting more examples, if you know of any missing.
> In the coming weeks, the team is expected to enter IT systems at the CDC and Federal Aviation Administration, and it already has done so at NASA, according to sources we’ve spoken with at each of those agencies. At least one DOGE ally appears to be working to open back doors into systems used throughout the federal government.
If discussing this openly and often this isn't possible due to very simple flag abuse, then what is this community actually even worth.
> Perhaps surprisingly, the CEO of YC and Paul Graham have been publicly supportive of the DOGE team, despite all the racism and existential threat. I don't know if that's from fear, or greed, but there are strong arguments for both.
> …
> If discussing this openly and often this isn't possible due to very simple flag abuse, then what is this community actually even worth.
Just want to add to this topic that HN advertises YC AI Startup school: https://events.ycombinator.com/ai-sus - where Musk is listed as a first speaker.
Though it doesn’t surprise me - YC is in the same circle of radical technocrats (a16z, Altman, Musk, etc.) and hosted Balaji talking about dystopian plans about techno-authoritarian city states 10 or 15 years ago.
I just checked his blog. Latest post “The Origins of Wokeness”.
Protesting against police brutality of suffocating apprehended person is apparently “peak woke”.
Musk apparently “succeded in neutralizing” twitter - “without censoring either” (left or right). He argues in the notes that Musk prioritized paid users and paid users are more right wing and hence left wing users self censored themselves, but left “could tilt it back if they wanted to”.
EDIT: also again proving my original comment - PG is thanking Sam Altman for proof reading the post…
It’s not surprising the CEO of YC supports this, he also supports the idea of the network state. This community is now primarily exists to launder Curtis Yarvins galaxy brain ideas.
I didn’t get something until it was pointed out very recently.
The issue isn’t what we think. The issue is what we think OTHERS think.
This is what social media truly fucks up. We can’t see the people nodding in disagreement. We can only see their silence, and we must respond to the person who IS talking and holding our attention.
Practically - I care about privacy, and I expect that damn near most people here care about it.
People can have their “well actually” arguments, but when push comes to shove, techies on HN should vocalize their annoyance with the way this is being done. Even if you support their politics, this ISNT how you execute secure projects.
Wrong from the start. The Emperor isn’t wearing any clothes territory. We dont have to agree on other things.
I'm starting to wonder if HN has also been taken over by bots and astroturfers.
Audits require transparency and people who know wtf they are doing. Musk and his team have shown none of either. They have repeatedly talked about what they think they found that was later shown to be false. Instead of correcting course they double down (see the recent story of 8B vs 8M or Musk saying 10s of millions of dead people getting social security, there are many more that come out daily). They have also fought against efforts to increase transparency into what they are doing through a number of ways, either taking down datasets that could be cross checked or moving DOGE under the records act to avoid FOIA until 2032.
They’re trolling and what they want to do is poison the conversation we’re all having. Elon Musk is a troll too, why do you think they’d be any different? These people don’t read books (aside from a few scriptures they follow), they read memes instead. This is horrifying and but could also be their undoing.
1. Politicians are watching their favorite pork barreling disappear day by day
2. Since Trump was elected President the waste identified is going to be what Trump thinks is waste
3. The job of the Democrats is to get elected, and you don’t get elected by sitting by as your opponent keeps doing things many voters are supporting, you try and stop it
Because government waste is high on the list of priorities of many voters and DOGE seems to have only improved Trump’s approval rating, the Democrats can’t come out and say “stop cutting government waste”!
So instead they try to politically attack DOGE by saying many of them are young (so are the soldiers we send overseas to fight wars), they are unelected (so are all government workers), they aren’t allowed to do this (to be determined by courts) and they are cutting the wrong things (the voters will decide this in the end).
So if you like what DOGE is doing, sit back and buckle up because it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
I can understand feeling wary because someone may be watching your work, but conceivably this was always the case? I know it’s uncomfortable having this agency with no oversight gaining access to systems within the government, but it’s got to be huge right? I’m sure Elon’s tapped some smart fellas to be bulls in this china shop, but there’s no way they can put an eye on every single piece of information that flies through all of the systems of the federal government. You’d need a huge staff, tools to be built, never mind trying to solidify all those interfaces.
It seems more likely that they’ll gain access to all these systems, be completely overwhelmed about what to do, and then do small things that wouldn’t actually have an impact but would gain headlines, and then call it a day.
"Smart fellas"? The guy is a billionaire, and all he can find are a few 20-years old edgelords with names like "Big Balls" who make racist comments in online forums?
https://web.archive.org/web/20250220063358/https://www.theat...
https://archive.ph/Oa42l
At my first gig, I had "god" level access to our production database.
All I learned is that nobody should have this level of access unless it is some sort of temporary break glass situation. It is extremely dangerous and even experienced engineers can cause irreparable data loss or some other bad outcome. In our case, some engineer accidentally sent around 10,000 invoices to customers that shouldn't have gotten them.
There are far better data access patterns. In the case of US gov data, I don't see why the DOGE team would need anything more than a read replica to query. It could even be obfuscated in some way to protect citizens' identities.
Ah, I remember a time 30 years ago when I logged accidentally into the PROD database (forgot to add the suffix "1" to the connection ID), thinking it was a Dev instance, and then issued a "truncate table CUSTOMERS"... the reaction came within 75 seconds - and restore from backing took several hours.
That's not bad. I wonder how many companies would not be able to recover from such an event in days / weeks / ever.
That's when you pray that the engineering team didn't fix the replication lag.
I've worked with older governmental systems, and chances are they are running a wide variety of systems, some of which, the oldest and most critical, are probably written in COBOL running on IBM mainframe hardware. In those environments, there is no real distinction between "database" and "application". COBOL systems are very file- and batch-oriented, and are "monolithic" in the extremist sense. The technology itself makes it impossible to give read only access to such systems.
> The technology itself makes it impossible to give read only access to such systems.
This isn't true. Mainframe COBOL systems commonly store data in VSAM files, or DB2, or IMS, or sometimes some more obscure non-IBM database (e.g. CA/Broadcom's Datacom/DB or IDMS, or Software AG's ADABAS). But whichever one they use, there are multiple ways of granting read-only access.
For example, if it is VSAM, you can configure RACF (or TopSecret or ACF2) to allow an account read (but not write) permission to those VSAM datasets. Or, you can stick DB2 in front of VSAM (on DB2 for z/OS, CREATE TABLE can refer to a pre-existing VSAM file, and make it look like a database table), and then you can have a readonly account in DB2 to give you access to that database schema. Or, there's a lot of other ways to "skin this cat", depending on exactly how the legacy app is designed, and exactly how it stores data. But, probably this is already implemented – most of these apps have read-only access for export into BI systems or whatever – and if it happens for whatever reason not to be, setting it up should only be a modest amount of work, not some multiyear megaproject.
>Or, there's a lot of other ways to "skin this cat", depending on exactly how the legacy app is designed, and exactly how it stores data. But, probably this is already implemented
Given that neither of us knows the actual systems in question, what is more likely, that it's a well-designed system or one that has organically accreted over time? It seems like you tend to believe the former, and I the latter. I suppose my view is based on the fact that, like in statmech, you enumerate all possible systems that can do a particular job, the vast majority of those solutions will not have any organizing principle and will not be amenable to surgical analysis or change.
I think the difference is that I know that getting data out of mainframe COBOL systems is a long-known and long-solved problem, and I can list lots of different ways to do it (I mentioned a few, there's several more I didn't mention). Without knowing the details of the exact system, I'm not sure which one would be the best one to use, but the odds that you'd have a system for which none of these existing solutions is suitable is rather low – and indeed, likely most of these systems are already using one or another – there are whole teams of sales people who have spent the last 20-30 years convincing government agencies (inter alia) to buy these solutions.
Whereas, you don't seem to know anything about that topic, and are speculating based on parallels with completely different disciplines (such as statistical mechanics).
We both are speculating due to lack of details about the specific systems under discussion, but wouldn't you expect the person whose speculations are based on greater relevant knowledge to be more likely to be correct?
I'm sorry, but just because I didn't pepper my post with shibolleths like z/OS or VSAM or the vagaries of ACCEPT and DISPLAY keywords, doesn't mean I don't know what I'm talking about. I worked specifically on connecting COBOL system to a DB/2 database, and one thing was for certain: understanding the data format was the hardest part of the problem. Those definitions, in our system, were tightly coupled to the user interface code, AND the batch processing code.
No, it's not my specialty and didn't work with this system for long, but my overall impression was that COBOL programmers get (understandably) low-level abstractions, and therefore had to build higher level abstractions themselves. This is not like modern software development where you have an embarrasment of riches from any level of abstraction you want, and a large system where every part of the stack is a custom solution is generally going to be more chaotic. To put some numbers on it, to add a column of data to the system I worked on required on average about 20k hours of coding work. No doubt some of this was sand-bagging, but I'd say 80% of it was legitimate.
> I worked specifically on connecting COBOL system to a DB/2 database, and one thing was for certain: understanding the data format was the hardest part of the problem.
But now you are shifting the goalposts: from getting readonly access to the data, to understanding what it actually means. Yes, I totally agree, a lot of legacy COBOL systems, it can be very hard to work out what the data actually means - even though you probably have a COBOL copybook telling you what the columns/fields are, they can be full of things like single letter codes where the documentation telling you what the codes mean is incorrect. And likewise, you are right that seemingly simple tasks like adding a field can be monumental work given the number of different transaction screens, reports, batch jobs, etc, that need to be updated, and the fact that many mainframe programmers don’t know what “DRY” stands for
But simply getting read-only access to data? Most mainframe COBOL systems would already support that. Could there be some really badly maintained ones in which it was never configured properly and they just give DOGE read-write access because DOGE refuses to wait for it to be done properly? I doubt that’s the norm but it might be a rare exception. Such a system would likely violate security standards for federal IT systems, but agencies can get exemptions.
> To put some numbers on it, to add a column of data to the system I worked on required on average about 20k hours of coding work.
20,000 hours is 10 years of full-time work for a single person. If you "didn't work with this system for long," it is quite simply statistically impossible that you could have witnessed enough projects to have anything resembling an accurate "average".
>20,000 hours is 10 years of full-time work for a single person.
Or, while we're mythical man-monthing it, 6 months of work for 20 people? Or merely a single sprint for 240 people!
This implies good faith actor, which is not the case.
You can absolutely give read only access in COBOL systems. That's just lazy administration and IT security on a shoestring budget.
These old systems need to be upgraded but Congress never approves the financing or execution of it because they're too divided and won't increase taxes on anyone especially the rich and giant corporations to do it.
[flagged]
You know that annoying thing where someone joins a new team, looks around, declares all their friction points to be easily solvable, dives in & starts making changes, and turns out to make a big giant mess?
And the reason is they don't understand the specific domain & context well enough to know what the actual hard problems are. Instead they're just pattern matching to things they do know and extrapolating. And it usually doesn't go well.
Dealing with a system that's replicating 50 years of regulatory rules is going to be that times infinity.
I don't think that's annoying. If they make a mess, then by the time they're done cleaning it up, they'll be an expert, and you won't even have to train them. That is exactly what you need when the system is broken. The existing people should be encouraging, let them try, and lend their wisdom when they can. Disruption has always helped the tech economy thrive and government should welcome the opportunity to learn this aspect of our culture.
>They don't even know how to build a website that works.
What percentage of people who know how to make a "website" do you think could make an automated tax system?
>the tech industry has been the beating heart of this country
Agriculture? Construction? The heart means something without which you can't function. How did people in the 1950s survive?
The agriculture industry is a skeleton crew for something that's largely been automated by tech: https://justine.lol/tmp/agriculture.jpg There's not much of a construction industry either, since the government doesn't let us build anything except sprawl.
The USG does in fact know how to build a website and it is intellectually lazy (so very lazy) to suggest otherwise. A high profile illustration of this is login.gov, which is SSO used across USG agencies. It's not possible to take a comment like this seriously, at all.
Elon Musk is also not an auditor. DOGE is not an auditing entity. You bring in accountants to audit. These are 20 y/o something programmers. How DOGE has been operating has been completely opaque and this lack of transparency just plays to the point that what someone says their goals are and what their actual goals are are not mutually exclusive, so no, Elon Musk shouldn't be allowed anywhere near these systems.
Are you familiar with healthcare.gov? It was a disaster. So the government let some people from the tech industry come in and help. Techies saved Obamacare and then founded an agency called USDS, who did other sites like login.gov. DOGE is basically doing what USDS pioneered, except now tech people have earned enough trust to fix the government itself, rather than just being the wiz kid who fixes their website.
Why haven't you responded to the substance of my point? Again:
> Elon Musk is also not an auditor. DOGE is not an auditing entity. You bring in accountants to audit. These are 20 y/o something programmers. How DOGE has been operating has been completely opaque and this lack of transparency just plays to the point that what someone says their goals are and what their actual goals are are not mutually exclusive, so no, Elon Musk shouldn't be allowed anywhere near these systems.
Your comments throughout this thread have a lot of baked-in assumptions (again in your reply with the bit about "tech people having earned enough trust" and reducing the whole tech industry to that of a "whiz kid who just doesn't fix websites anymore". Seriously? You really don't grasp how reductionist of a thought process this is?) and a closer examination on your behalf is warranted. Complex questions never have simple one-liner answers.
Even in this very thread there is stuff like this [0] being posted.
[0] https://apnews.com/article/nuclear-doge-firings-trump-federa...
My baked-in assumption is that I'm assuming best intentions. I'm not claiming they'll be perfect. I'm just happy they're trying. I'm also grateful that the world's most successful man was willing to lead this cursed dangerous project. Because it must be done.
Please feel free to return when you are ready to participate in a discussion as a grown adult.
"fixing the government" in this case seems to mean "destroy the government" for somewhat hidden purposes.
hidden? I think tearing down government is a pretty damned good fix, and so does many others
Why do you think this? Have you ever been to a country with a non-functioning government?
Somalia comes to mind, plenty of guns too, yet the Randians never last more than 10 minutes when they go
And then the person dropping this load of nonsense moves on without ever having to defend their point.
How do you combat this kind of bad-faith propagandizing? How do communities maintain some level of connection to reality and decency? It seems to infect every online space I visit.
Are you talking about me? Click parent a few times. I've brought back fresh nonsense just for you.
Have you been to China? It's like a science fiction movie. Now consider how Mao destroyed the old world, killed the old guard, and led the few remaining through decades of poverty rebuilding the glorious smart city society they have today. Trump is basically Gandhi compared to Mao. So I don't understand the weeping and wailing. Those people have all the guns in this country. If they want to try to fix America's government rather than murder us, I say let them try.
Not sure you and me are thinking about the same type of science fiction movie when talking about China.
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You’re the one arguing in bad faith. This administration is the most protective of the core functions of government of any GOP administration in decades. Bush wanted to privatize social security. Trump took that off the table.
You’re acting like DOGE is about turning the U.S. into some libertarian paradise. But look at what they’re actually focused on. Foreign aid is completely optional, but PEPFAR (an effective foreign aid program) promptly got a waiver. What’s been targeted for cuts? Stuff that detracts from the core mission, such as meddling with elections in India. The federal government is full of this shit—and full of people who care about distractions rather than the core mission.
I’m no libertarian, just a citizen who lived in Baltimore and rode Amtrak and has been to functional countries like Germany and Japan. I like government. But our government sucks at governance. And I’m fine with someone taking an axe to all the distractions so government can refocus on maintaining order and providing fundamental services.
"maintaining order" by the same president that encouraged police riots last term? Just because you've written a lot of polished words does not mean you're arguing in good faith - the fascist version of "maintaining order" is precisely what everybody is worried about.
I'm a libertarian. I will be overjoyed to admit I was wrong if we somehow come out of this with an intact democratic government bound by the rule of law and keeping the corpos somewhat in check. But all signs point to our country being well and truly fucked.
... and then what?
DOGE literally took over the agency that competently modernized and integrated US gov technology (United States Digital Service), gutted it, and is now using that agency's pretense of needing access to data to now pilfer citizens' private information and grossly violate the constitutional separation of powers.
This is the mechanism by which this administrative coup (declared here in https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/ensu...) is being enacted. None of this is legal or constitutional in any way.
The rule of law is not a partisan issue nor a matter of "government efficiency". Those who aid this coup should be considered traitors.
If it ain’t broke.. move fast and break things?
All I've seen about this DOGE stuff is negativity based on hypotheticals, this is the first optimistic hypothetical I've seen so far.
It's an interesting point. As a thought exercise, tech is absolutely the core of modern America, #1 export (I assume) and a key market. Private sector influence probably can give huge amounts of low hanging fruit.
I think peoples main concerns stem from not trusting Trump (which seems odd given he's a second term president, he is objectively wanted) and not trusting Musk (which is probably fair, he's publicly and openly an arsehole).
Speed probably concerns people too, however "move fast and break things" is a pretty fundamental American tech mantra, so entirely unsurprising and usually effective.
Trump winning the election wasn't necessarily because he was "objectively wanted". It could be because he was less disliked than Biden at the time. Plus I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people voted Trump but then his first couple of weeks made them go "hang on a sec...".
Trump is a populist. Populism is sort of like an advertiser being surprised when he discovers that sex sells even though no one ever talks about it. The ultimate trump card in modern politics is to pander to those sorts of predilections. One of the responsibilities of the ruling class is to temper many of the primal instincts that people have, which requires handing out bitter medicine. But that only works if everyone in the ruling class agrees. If one elite breaks the consensus and chooses betrayal in this prisoner's dilemma and survives, then he instantly wins the popularity game. That's why it's called populism.
> Trump winning the election wasn't necessarily because he was "objectively wanted".
Isn't that exactly what the popular vote is though? Maybe people weren't passionate about it, but my loose understanding of the US popular vote is it's quite direct unlike preferential voting, so the people who chose him actively chose _him_.
I'm not saying there aren't regrets, but it seems to me defintively that the majority of voters selected him as the president they wanted.
Well, you said it's "odd" if people don't trust Trump, since they voted him in. I'm saying that plenty of votes may have been because they trusted Biden even less. In a 2-party system it's difficult to distinguish between "I want A" and "I really don't want B".
That's fair. I know most Western countries are effectively 2 party, but the US does seem more so than others. Regardless, he is who was picked by a very large number of people in a fair, democratic election.
US, UK, Canada, and Australia, certainly. But almost all European countries are multi-party. I suppose there's an argument that some voting systems are "more democratic" than others, in the sense that they allow/incentivise individuals to express a more accurate picture of their desires via their vote.
> not trusting Trump (which seems odd given he's a second term president
You might recall that at the end of his first term, he tried to overturn the results of the election he lost, calling up the Georgia attorney general to demand the vote total be blatantly altered, and even siccing a mob against the Capitol to physically prevent the certification of the results.
That's why many people don't trust him.
> That's why all this stuff is backed up to an iron mountain.
When one of your threat vectors is a massive ball of nuclear fire right on top of the federal government in DC, your offsite backup policy is going to be absurd overkill by the standards of any other organization on this planet. That doesn't mean it's flawed.
> ...many of the people in charge don't even know how to use a website. Now for the first time, tech industry people have the opportunity to help run these computer systems, and you're afraid they're the ones who'll be incompetent and accidentally break everything?
Are you honestly suggesting that the people who built these systems, maintained them, and updated them to reflect often significant changes in rules and regulations over the course of decades somehow don't know how those systems work? If they were so damned clueless, those COBOL systems would have sputtered out and died decades ago. The fact that they've continued to run for all this time is practically prima facie evidence that the system works just fine by industry standards for that kind of legacy code.
No doubt there's plenty of stuff buried in the codebase that bugs the hell out of the developers working on it, but you get that with any complex legacy code. It's the nature of the beast. Do you think there's nothing in Google's monorepo that some of their engineers don't quite like but doesn't rise to a big enough issue to warrant refactoring right now? Any other FAANG company? Or large tech company in general?
You're writing as though a bunch of junior developers--and that describes pretty much all of the publicly known DOGE employees so far--are wizards who can just waltz right in and magic up a better solution just because they're from the "tech industry."
Setting aside the unlikely chances that those juniors--no matter how skilled or talented--have any experience with COBOL, mainframes, or even just decades-old legacy code, is anyone going to suggest that something like the federal government's payment system isn't defined by an immense amount of complex business logic so as to comply with legislative requirements? It's not something you just start playing around with.
I can't think of any tech company that would take a junior developer, toss them overboard in the middle of the freezing Atlantic, grant them sudo access, and tell them to do whatever the hell they want with critical systems before they drown and--somehow--take the ship with them. Worse yet, those juniors were chosen for ideology fervor and/or purity, so what happens when the normal review processes and experienced senior developers are pushed aside because they're in the way and part of the "deep state conspiracy" that doesn't want them to "[fix] the government" as you put it?
Not only is that a recipe for disaster for the company itself, it's a damned good way to take an otherwise talented junior developer and permanently ruin them. Instead of mentoring them so they can work well as part of a team, you're basically creating a toxic working environment that's going to turn them all feral. By the time they crawl out the other side and the public hears all about what they've been up to, what company is going to be stupid enough to a developer with "DOGE" on their resume? Beyond that, you're conflating a whole bunch of different issues here with federal software contracts and IT, while putting the tech industry on a really peculiar pedestal.
Besides, if the goal is to discover waste/fraud/abuse, the obvious answer is to hire a bunch of forensic accountants and let them dig into everything. Those are the people who actually find that kind of stuff, and they're incredibly skilled at their job. If it's there, given the time, they'll find it. But it's a slow-going process, so we instead see a bunch of engineers focusing on random transactions so they can ask themselves (1) "do I like that one?" and (2) "do I think it's legitimate?" because it's faster.
That's not exactly how you fix anything, least of all a country.
I'm not questioning the reliability of their systems but the content of their databases.
The DOGE workers are already legends in their own lifetime, having saved $55 billion, and they haven't even gotten started. That's like 20% of Google's yearly revenue, all in a few weeks, and without needing to write petabytes of code in a monorepo.
I don't think it's accurate to mentally model these payments as though they were counter intuitive algorithms in a deeply embedded software system. Waste fraud and abuse can be painfully obvious. So it's not the complexity of the problem that has prevented it from being solved. It's the political cost. Senior people have spent a lifetime accruing political capital. They're afraid to lose it. They're only going to spend political capital if they get something in return. They know and have cultivated relationships with the people who will be unhappy if particular instances of waste get solved.
So it makes sense that Elon is unleashing his crackerjack juniors.
They're perfect for the job.
> What's with you people
Right?
> For decades the tech industry has been the beating heart of this country that's kept the American dream alive
By "tech industry" do you mean the consumer surveillance industry? Maybe your vision of the American dream involves inescapable corporate control, but mine certainly doesn't!
I'm talking about the tech industry that invented a self-driving bulletproof truck that looks like a DeLorean and is faster than a Lamborghini which anyone in the middle class can afford. If Elon can make science fiction real for the masses, then he should be able to balance one itsy bitsy tiny little federal budget.
There are a lot of baked in assertions to unpack there. But sure, one would think that the skill of inspiring a team to develop self driving might decently translate into leading a country to buy in to various government reforms. But that isn't what's being done, right? Instead he's just autocratic butchering and xitposting inflammatory half-baked "findings" - both completely anti-trustworthy to anybody not already sucking down his xitstream. And it doesn't take any skill to do that. Maybe he could have done the job before his tragic spiral of social media addiction, but that doesn't seem relevant to the current situation.
And as far as bringing science fiction to the masses, it seems like he's taken all the wrong lessons from the common theme of corporate dystopia.
Never mind the direct risks, if you have "god mode" to basically any government thing, you instantly become the target of foreign intel/military operations. You can bet good money that there are entire teams, if not divisions, working around the clock to exploit this situation.
I can imagine Chinese and Russian hackers laughing at the DOGE l33t hackers.
And if I was advising the Ukranians I'd tell them to try to exploit it too, hey, if you're fighting 2 superpowers with another 1 quietly backing the fight against you, you need all the help you can get.
I remember having some kind of C programming bug where output filenames got scrambled (string memory error probably). And output files in the same folder as the source code.
That seems innocuous, but remember then some of the output files might have the character "?" or even "*". So imagine trying to remove these files and going an asterisk too far. All gone!
I've had a company give me full admin access to their cloud account. Thankfully, I learned the lesson earlier in my career and immediately created myself of more mundane user. Break glass access is important, but definitely not as the usual level of access.
> I don't see why the DOGE team would need anything more than a read replica to query.
They shouldn't need more than limited read access. The fact that they have more access, very likely demanded and not accidentally given, is due to their intent to do more than simply query data.
I loathe working places where they just give you all the permissions because it's "easier". One risk is if something does happen, and they don't have exceptional tracing and logging, (and let's be honest, at an organization sloppy enough to hand out privileges like candy, what's the chance of that?) it's difficult or impossible to pin down the source to any individual. As a result, both responsibility and suspicion is diffuse.
The appropriate restrictions are relative to the size and momentum of the organization. It's easy to spend months setting up safeguards rather than working on product development that won't proportionally return.
Of course, this involves being honest with yourself about risk and reward, and we all have implicit incentives to disregard the risk until we get burned and learn to factor that in.
I have so many horror stories from there.
When they did decide to lock down the database, the DB admin only locked in down in the sql server client most people used. If you used some other client, you still had access. _sigh_
What DB system operates that way, that's nuts.
My favorite security anti-pattern! Locking the main doors while leaving all the windows wide open.
It's not just about the risk. It signifies that you're not dealing with an experienced database administration staff. (At a startup that might just mean one guy, but that's better than zero.
A second thought. It leads to lazy application development. Whenever you have production intervention that happens more than a few times, you should just make a feature that does it safely via application code.
I've definitely worked in places where "Move fast and break things" tended to focus on breaking things. There would be bugs that we didn't fix because "We can just fix the database when it happens." It would take 2hours to fix a bug that would cause of 10's of hours of weekly support request, but the focus would always be on building new features, of which 10% got any real usage.
I agree. Good access controls and being prevented from accessing things that I don't need access to protect me as an employee just as much as the data itself.
Meta completely restricted graph data access to requiring a specific business purpose and managerial approval tied an articulable, concrete task need.
Why should they even have read access? They're not a legal government institution, and they're being led by a private citizen that's not been elected or appointed by Congress to access our data in agencies that were made by Congress under particular rules to keep these kinds of snoops out.
Ultimately someone has root permissions. Re: federal agencies, in the United States, that someone is clearly, constitutionally, the President. Article II of the constitution vests all power of the executive in the person of the President. The President has authority to appoint agents. That same article _does also_ say the President has to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed", but the "Care" there is highly debated. But the idea that the President doesn't have the right to appoint Musk to get root access to federal agencies seems legally incorrect.
I'm not make a value judgement on this, it's just how it is. At a startup, the founder ultimately has root access to the database, no matter what the technical controls.
Now, maybe it's stupid, and maybe it should be some other way, but to my mind the other way is that Congress gets together and writes a law saying "the executive cannot get root access to X, Y, Z". In absence of that law, the executive can do whatever they want.
Not to be THAT GUY, but "an append-only database which cannot be modified by anyone" is something HN has spent the past 10 years saying is completely useless...
The power rests with the office. There is an important but nuanced distinction there.
And Trump can launch the nukes to blow up the world too... but building a system where he can just click a button to do so would be idiotic. Same idea with giving godmode to the guy who thinks carrying a sink and saying "Let that sink in" is hilariously clever.
There's a good balance between preventing accidents and reducing friction.
One person having "god-mode" access isn't usually that terrible.
IMHO it's a bit of a shame that the productivity and efficiency gains that computing and cybernetics can bring to complex systems -- including government -- are always tainted and currently championed by anti-social elites that use them to break apart these collective machines.
Bureaucracies are a common good, and it should be in everyone's interest to apply state-of-the-art system engineering to make them as valuable as currently possible.
Not always. Both the Digital Service and 18F appear to be (to have been...) good faith efforts to apply state of the art system engineering to the federal bureaucracy, and quite successfully.
This is just one administration co-opted by one anti social elite to do the opposite. Don't extrapolate it out. Place blame where blame is deserved.
I don't think it's just one, unfortunately. It's not even much of a co-opt; more just an inevitable progression of the ideology that was held by that administration since the beginning.
Trump tried to make DOGE, and was slapped down by congress, so he took an existing department, removed all the people, switched it to do a different job, moved it to a different state, and replaced its name.
It's not just a co-opt; it's a complete replacement. DOGE is in no sense USDC; it's just wearing its skin.
> Trump tried to make DOGE, and was slapped down by congress,
When was he “slapped down by congress”? He signed the executive order establishing DOGE on inauguration day - obviously his transition team’s lawyers had drafted it for him in the weeks prior. And his lawyers came up with an inventive way of hijacking existing Congressional authorities for DOGE. But it wasn’t like he asked Congress first and only resorted to this scheme when they said ‘no’ - he planned to bypass them all along.
Okay, some Republicans introduced some enabling legislation for DOGE early this year. But I don’t think either they or Trump were ever expecting it to get passed, and they weren’t seriously trying. Introducing the legislation was just a political stunt to get attention and demonstrate loyalty. “Bypass Congress” was the plan all along
>Okay, some Republicans introduced some enabling legislation for DOGE early this year. But I don’t think either they or Trump were ever expecting it to get passed, and they weren’t seriously trying. Introducing the legislation was just a political stunt to get attention and demonstrate loyalty. “Bypass Congress” was the plan all along
It was a fishing expedition for them to figure out who to threaten and/or actually primary in 2 years...
yeah from what I understand the original focus of the department was to make the software better serve its customers. its obvious that trump doesn't like congress, judicials, laws. heh cutting government waste is actually a good cause but you need skilled no nonsense auditors and well I think by inspecting trump's resume and reputation, I bet he REALLY doesn't like auditors haha
> IMHO it's a bit of a shame that the productivity and efficiency gains that computing and cybernetics can bring to complex systems
They're just firing people at random, they haven't discovered any innovative new way to make systems more efficient.
("at random" is a bit generous and ignores the retaliation against political adversaries)
From the reporting I've seen, they're not firing "at random", they're firing more or less every single new hire they can, because new hires have less protections than more established employees.
You need to find more reporting then. It's both, and more, and worse. The folks fired at DOE's NNSA were not exclusively probationary employees. DOGE doesn't even know the function of the departments they're eliminating. It's not evident they even know _what_ they're eliminating. See the "find and fire" approach to the word transitional. Oops... turns out that one's used in more than the context of gender.
Even firing all probationary employees explicitly _for cause_ when there's no evidence of performance problems with most of them is worse than random, it opens them up to legitimate legal backlash. Have you ever worked anywhere where the last two years of hires were all just completely worthless as employees? Of course not, that's basically impossible. Eliminating these people would have been harsh but understandable if it were said to be done for simple budget reasons, because yes they indeed are in a vulnerable less protected situation, but to call them all poor performers at the same time is worse than random, it's an obvious and transparent lie.
Not just new hires. They are firing people on "probationary" status, and people in civil service go through a brief probationary period after being promoted or moved to a new position.[1] This means some people being fired are long-time senior civil servants with expertise and knowledge. The reason they are firing probationary people is because they are easier to let go, by civil service rules.
I suspect the people in charge of the firings are under the same mistaken impression as you are, that all the probationary people are new hires who aren't yet essential. Witness the "oops, we fired the wrong people" rush to rehire.[2][3]
1 https://www.npr.org/2025/02/15/nx-s1-5298182/trumps-probatio...
2 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g3nrx1dq5o
3 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/usda-accidentally-fire...
Not just new hires, but also anyone who took a promotion or lateral move, which also puts them into a probationary period. So they're firing all the new employees and all the employees exceptional enough to be promoted or recruited to another department.
You mean Peter Principled into another department...? Sorry, just joking. It's terrible and unfair to fire people like this. They are removing the low hanging fruits first.
Dude, what is wrong with you? Tens of thousands of real, human people trying to support tens of thousands of real, human families. That's what your joke is about.
I take back my apology. lol
The people they fired at the VA weren't probationary and one of the first changes they made to the VA was removing gender identity from the account information.
This isn't about efficiency, money, or employees. It's about power and the consolidation thereof. They will have ransacked the VA and the American people not only gave them the keys but they cheered them on.
It's not just new hires. Employees who move to a new position, even if they've been in that agency for a long time, also have less protections and are being fired.
But as others have noted, these are not the only ones being mass fired.
It's not "at random". Every shuttered department had been investigating one of Elmo's properties...
> It's not "at random". Every shuttered department had been investigating one of Elmo's properties...
¿Porque no los dos? Firing the folks that maintain nuclear weapons:
* https://apnews.com/article/nuclear-doge-firings-trump-federa...
Firing the folks dealing with bird flu:
* https://apnews.com/article/usda-firings-doge-bird-flu-trump-...
Also firing a whole bunch of folks at the FAA (including maintenance mechanics) even though it's already short staffed:
* https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly9y1e1kpjo
Random and spiteful (?).
To add to hrow0101c's list
USAID was investigating Starlink
Consumer Protection Bureau has numerous investigations open vs Musky companies
Treasury is involved in regulating Muskys X for Finance thing
pseudo random then ?
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I personally support trimming bureaucratic fat, but the way the current administration is doing it is the worst way possible - with no due diligence - and will lose public support soon.
I really wish I could still believe that last part.
Yeah unlikely. I don’t even care that Elon isn’t just being altruistic and is in on all this just to benefit himself. My support of what they’re doing thus far is pretty steadfast, and I just want to see more and more people fired, and more and more budget cut.
I don’t care what happens to Ukraine, just don’t want us to send another dime. Hoping it can just end soon, which is more likely now than it was with previous administration.
Tariffs are a terrible idea though, but would take them if we got rid of the income tax.
As of now DOGE and Trump are doing exactly what I hoped, and I’ll check back in a year and see if I’m worried.
> Tariffs are a terrible idea though, but would take them if we got rid of the income tax.
$4,700,000,000,000 income taxes
$...100,000,000,000 tariffs
> lose public support soon
Sooner than you think.
My tax refund is quite late.
No kidding. Been waiting 15 days for what should be a routine return.
I told my family that if they expect a refund and haven't already filed their taxes to do so ASAP.
I have to wait until March to get all my documents from brokerages, so I guess I am personally screwed by DOGE if returns are delayed.
He's going to fill the empty slots with loyal cronies he can fire at will.
This is, I think, just "stage 1"
Changing the rules so gov employees can be fired "at will" is an explicit goal of Project 2025
Right. Even random would be more principled.
This[0] doesn't seem random, and is just one example of many similar ones.
And that's not counting the firings at the DOJ and FBI which were explicitly retribution (though you could argue DOGE had nothing to do with those firings, which may be true, but I'm referring to Trump's mass firings in general).
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-18/fda-offic...
> Bureaucracies are a common good
Bureaucracies are just organizations of humans, who have the same motivations, biases, and incentives ans everyone else, everywhere else in society.
They're not a "common good", they're just people, and because they have de jure authority over certain domains, they need be subject to oversight and accountability if we're to trust them.
Bureaucracies often have perverse incentives, ulterior motives, and are themselves co-opted by the very "anti-social elites" you're complaining about (and such language indicates a conflict-based rather than an error-correction-based approach to dealing with these issues, which is itself an error). Increasing the efficiency and efficacy of such organizations without proper oversight can easily lead to more abuse and corruption.
In this situation, I think that neither the established federal bureaucracy nor DOGE and the current administration have interests and intentions that are necessarily aligned with the broadest interests of the public at large. At this point the best we can do is hope that the adversarial relation between them leads to a favorable equilibrium rather than an unfavorable one.
> Bureaucracies are just organizations of humans, who have the same motivations, biases, and incentives ans everyone else, everywhere else in society
No, the biases and incentives are different in government than in business. Yes, there are biases and incentives, but they are different.
The main attraction of government work is the ability to serve your country, and to be rewarded by taking actions which produce (what you believe is) long-term social good.
Your belief that an adversarial relation between forces of government leads to a favorable equilibrium is indeed the basis of the US constitution, and the very thing which DOGE/Trump are attacking with such force.
> No, the biases and incentives are different in government than in business
Not really, no. Certain cognitive biases and elements of self-interest are fundamental to all humans in all situations, and while different scenarios lead to those biases manifesting in different forms, they still share the same underlying substance.
> The main attraction of government work is the ability to serve your country, and to be rewarded by taking actions which produce (what you believe is) long-term social good.
No, the main attraction of government work is the ability to have a decently-paying career with a high degree of job security. Most people in such jobs simply dutifully do the tasks asked of them in exchange for a regular paycheck, and don't deeply consider the broader effects of their work on society (except to convince themselves of the importance of their work, as we all do).
A few outliers will prioritize theoretical ideals about doing "social good" over their own career goals, and a few outliers on the opposite end will prioritize having access to political power and opportunities for graft. (And some mistakenly think they are doing "social good" by forcefully advancing their own particular normative ideology.)
> Your belief that an adversarial relation between forces of government leads to a favorable equilibrium is indeed the basis of the US constitution, and the very thing which DOGE/Trump are attacking with such force.
No, I don't DOGE and Trump attacking the concept as much as participating in it here. None of the parties involved have good intentions, as far as I can evaluate, but, again, there's a chance that things will work out in the balance.
> apply state-of-the-art system engineering to make them as valuable as currently possible
Sure, and if DOGE was doing that, it would be a worthy mission. But we have seen no evidence of that, while we have seen a lot of evidence of ideology and retribution based purging.
There is already a government agency who has been working to overhaul and modernize the government's systems -- very much needed -- for years, and they all just got sidelined and/or fired. The DOGE team that took over that agency (USDS) isn't even talking to them.
The people at the FDA responsible for oversight of Neuralink's medical device approval just got fired. Don't tell me you believe that was to make the FDA's system more efficient.
The government's system should mainly be secure, relibale and durable.
State-of-the-art is seldom all three of them.
That’s just a question of how you define “state-of-the-art”. The term doesn’t preclude secure or reliable - prior to the “move fast and break things” era where adtech dominated the tech industry, those used be considered a requirement.
> all three of them
or even one
Bureaucracies are a “common good” because of their human element: the ability to exercise discretion, recognize unique circumstances, and be held accountable to the public they serve.
The challenge is harnessing technology while strengthening these essential human capacities. Anything otherwise erodes public trust and sows division.
Of course some level of bureaucracy is essential for any human society but your generalization takes us nowhere because it's riven with assumptions about that 'human element'.
It’s HN, I can’t write a full abstract here. Of course, my view is full of assumptions, just as any general discussion of governance is. And dare I say, idealism too. Democracy itself is an ideal -- one that depends on human participation to exist at all.
> Bureaucracies are a “common good” because of their human element
This is a joke --right?
Not at all. Bureaucracy isn’t a flaw: it’s how governments function. Civil servants work, usually beyond politics, to keep society running -- from veterans’ healthcare to highway construction. That you, and others, may not realize that points to a really painful reality that people don't see democracy as participatory, but a spectator sport. Elected officials steer, but we -- those in the system -- propel it forward. Or in my case, have.
When systems fail, people step in to fix them. Sometimes, the failure is a person, and their supervisor or colleague is the safeguard. Replacing that with AI/ML is political offloading -- shifting responsibility from elected officials to code that can’t dissent, negotiate, or care. You’re lucky if it can even explain itself.
I know I’m on HN, where this isn’t the prevailing mindset. But public systems aren’t startups. They don’t get to fail. The common good isn’t about efficiency; it’s about endurance. It’s about ensuring society functions for everyone -- not just those with money, power, or influence. Public systems safeguard the commons, whether it’s infrastructure, social services, or even the basic principles of justice. They exist to serve not just the people you identify with, but those you ignore, fear, or even condemn. Bureaucracies, with all their flaws, aren’t meant to be efficient, they’re built to endure.
I don't think unelected bureaucrats should have more power than the elected leaders of the Executive. Try the "shoe on the other foot" principle: Imagine if Trump put lifetime leaders in those agencies and they fought against the next Progressive president.
> I don't think unelected bureaucrats should have more power than the elected leaders of the Executive.
It depends on which bureaucrats we're talking about. Most agencies are the creation of congress, and the executive should have minimal power over them. The president's job is to implement the laws of the legislature.
They don’t have more power. Whoever is telling you that has been lying to you, starting with the idea that these are lifetime jobs or lack accountability.
The American system of government is based on checks and balances between the branches. Congress passes laws which delegate some power and the Executive Branch implements them. In many cases, the high level positions are presidential nominees who are mutually agreed upon with the Congress and serve a set number of years or until recalled by one or both parties. Each agency has specific rules governing what they’re allowed to do and how they do it, as well as oversight and transparency for their actions.
What we’re seeing now is the conflict caused by Republicans deciding that following the law is too hard and creating conflicts with people who are following the law. When Musk was pushing people to grant access to restricted data, for example, it was proclaimed as disobedience but was simply that the people charged with protecting that data do not have person discretion in that matter: the operator of a SCIF knows they face heavy consequences if they allow unauthorized access. In all previous administrations, this hasn’t been a problem because people just waited a few weeks to get clearances.
Similarly, when Trump illegally tries to fire inspector generals it isn’t that there’s no way for him to do that, he just didn’t feel like giving Congress 30 days notice.
In all cases, the law is what matters: if there is a real disagreement about how one of the independent agencies operates, Congress can change it at any time and given the Republican majority it would not be hard for any reasonable change to be quickly enacted, at which point an agency head would be removed or even prosecuted if they fail to comply.
It's interesting you invoke the constitution and law here when law is being violated per the constitution - funds are being unilaterally revoked by unelected individuals, funds that were voted on by congress. Congress has the power of the purse. Weird you leave that little tidbit out of this whole screed, it's almost like you're being purposely dishonest.
It’s definitely a problem that money appropriated by Congress isn’t being spent as intended, but I’m not sure how you got the idea that I support the Trump administration’s decision to do so.
I don't think elected leaders in the executive branch should be allowed to supersede the role of the elected legislature in formulating public policy.
The whole problem can be sidestepped by pulling back on the excessive levels of discretion and rule-making that have been delegated to executive agencies in the first place.
The unelected bureaucrats should be responsible for upholding the Law and the mandates of their position, not to any individual or party. And the Law is set by Congress, not the Executive. The Law is enforced by the Judiciary, not the Executive. The whole point is to have an engine that can keep working and keep accumulating domain expertise regardless of which political party is in control, beholden to the Laws set by the Congress over time, representing all constituents over time, held responsible by the courts, and not the whims of any given administration (or, for that matter, any single Congress). The entire problem _is that_ we now have what may effectively be lifetime leaders being put into positions and _being told to ignore the law and their government issued mandates_.
And so much reeks of a Watergate like situation, except done publicly instead of in secret, with Congress and the Judiciary refusing or unable to hold any of these people to account. "We will now gather all information about our adversaries and fire anyone who doesn't give us the keys to the vaults, and if anybody doesn't like it, good luck, because the courts are going to be VERY busy, indefinitely, as we proceed to break every law the Legislature has issued, and is unlikely to have time to hear your case for a few decades."
But let's take at face value the idea that the Executive doesn't need to follow or even acknowledge the decisions of the Legislature, and that they can tell anyone to do anything whenever they feel like it. There's a pragmatic issue, not just a separation of powers issue: How can you possibly accumulate domain expertise, and what motivation would you have to accumulate that expertise anyway, when every agency is going to be dismantled every 2-4 years?
Besides, these bureaucrats are "elected" in a way similar to the Electoral College. We vote in the Legislature, and the Legislature votes on the appointments. If we don't want "lifers" then we should be voting on term-limits for these positions, not allowing the wholesale remodeling of our bureaucracy every election, where "just anybody" can come in and walk away with whatever they can loot each cycle.
It's not uncommon for some agency leaders to be replaced - particularly those dealing with policy-oriented matters, like say the FTC. But that doesn't apply to the rank-and-file because of various civil service reforms which are designed to provide continuity between administrations and avoid partisan flip-flopping of large numbers of employees. They were also designed to avoid corruption or the "selling" of government positions to those favored by the president, which was common back in the 1800s. Trump is taking us back towards greater corruption while disguising his acts in a cloak of "rooting out corruption".
that's why Democracy is not a "Tyranny of the majority" but it's subject to process that is both collectively agreed and consistent with constitutional principles.
Elon Musk is an unelected bureaucrat, as is all of the DOGE team.
Unelected bureaucrats don't have more power than the elected leaders of the Executive. The power to remove them arbitrarily is simply not a power that the leaders should have. Ideally, Trump's lifetime leaders in those agencies would have been installed by committee between both parties and so are apolitical whose sole focus is their job duties and serving the people, and can fight against the next Progressive president purely on that basis.
Bureaucracy is always risk averse. Without outside intervention, they will always try to operate as before.
Every human knows that governments and bureaucracies are inefficient in some way. It's been mocked since the dawn of times. The issue is that you don't toy around with big legacy systems like you do with twitter. To satisfy their little immaturity and get political points on their fans they start ripping off everything without enough time. If they started real medium term efforts to analyze, organize and then migrate it would be different. Plus there are other factors due to human group and political time that will come back later and muddy things up again when someone feels like fixing elon's patch.
> governments and bureaucracies are inefficient in some way
Also, what's important to understand is that inefficiency in a corporation is a bug, but inefficiency in government is a feature.
Government needs to have checks and balances at every stage, which by definition is inefficient. Which in the case of government is a wonderful thing.
There is a word for a perfectly efficient government: dictatorship
I disagree with that, if a system needs time to check, then it's not inefficient, it's right at the speed it needs to be to work. What I'm thinking of is absurd structure beyond the need for checks and balances.
Some examples of "stupid" ineffiency: delegating tech support outside government. Meaning no technician could fix a laptop on-site, their role was to notify a private company to come one day to take the device and come back later with a fix. The delays were bad, and compounded rapidly, the employees couldn't work, citizen wasted days off and had to reschedule a month later.. really bad. Plus technicians skills were unused/wasted, they hated their jobs, and communication with partners was mostly hostile/red-tape adding more friction. They didn't have enough money to change LCDs but didn't allow you to give some even though there were plenty of working ones for free. Same for printers.
This is the kind that needs to be pruned.
Also I believe there's another form of "perfect" government, that is not a mechanical human grinder like a dictatorship: harmonious. It might be a naive dream but .. maybe not.
But is that a problem? Or is that functioning as intended?
Generally speaking, I want my government to be stable, predictable, and consistent over fairly long time horizons.
Depends on how they weigh the cost of a false positive versus false negative decision. The former seems to often be the key focus of a bureaucracy, slowing down the rate of diffusion of new technologies even among willing adopters.
This is the point: A well functioning bureaucracy allows for repeatable predictable outcomes
> Bureaucracy is always risk averse. Without outside intervention, they will always try to operate as before.
Same with your body, by the way.
Didn't know Max Weber was lurking on HN.
It's true if you're ignoring the no-true-scottman fallacy.
Bureaucracy doesn't have to be to the detriment of society. As a matter of fact, it can potentially put breaks on the worst exploitative behavior.
But over time... It has the potential to grow too much with bad legislation, effectively making the positive potential into a very real negative that stifles unnecessarily.
> Bureaucracy doesn't have to be to the detriment of society.
Bureaucracy is an organizational model that reflects human intentions and choices, just like every other organizational model in society.
Attributing specific moral inclinations to an organizational model is as absurd as attributing them to any other tool. Debating whether bureaucracies per se have good or bad intentions is as ridiculous as debating whether handwritten documents convey better or worse intentions than printed ones.
So far all of the bad things I've heard about our system, such as the economic unsustainability and now this, are effects that will happen in the perpetual future.
You have to think about who you’re listening too. The economic sustainability of the actions Trump has taken so far is a pittance:
* The beauracracy today is about the size it was in 1980 on a per capita basis. It’s not the largest per capita it’s ever been.
> The federal government’s workforce has remained largely unchanged in size for over 50 years, even as the U.S. population has grown by 68% and federal spending has quintupled, highlighting the critical role of technology and contractors in filling the gap.
> Compensation for federal employees cost $291 billion in 2019, or 6.6% of that year’s total spending
So firing everyone is a 6% improvement to the federal budget while a complete government collapse for a number of reasons including that the government won’t have anyone to collect revenue or prosecute crimes.
[1]
* The largest discretionary spending area is the military at 800 billion in 2023. Of that, personnel accounted for 173 billion, or 20%. Personnel is a tiny fraction of the government’s spend each year. Even [2] which is a right wing think tank supporting this effort, claims that the liabilities improvement is 600B over 10 years which makes it a <1% dent seeing as how we spend >6T each year and just hand-waves the pension improvement as “significant”. But cuts aren’t focusing on the biggest employer within the government like the military.
* The people Trump & Musk are firing now are people who haven’t been on the job long enough to have protections. This drastically reduces the numbers above as a best case since that assumes a uniform 10% reduction across all salary bands whereas the current 10% reduction is almost certainly across the lowest bands since the government pays based on seniority.
This is what Trump does - he often identifies a real problem and then does a sleight of hand trick to make you think the actions he’s taking, because they’re highly visible, are solving the problem when in fact he’s not actually making any meaningful dent. That’s why he made a big show about the deportation flights but not talking about how the places he’s sending them to aren’t the places the people are from - he’s bullied Costa Rica into accepting whoever he send [3].
[1] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-government-too-big-ref...
[2] https://epicforamerica.org/education-workforce-retirement/fi...
[3] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/us-deportation-fl...
Bureoucracies are invariably the most efficient way to concentrate corruption efforts. There is no better spot to corrupt and make elite unelected decisions. Revolutionaries love to infiltrate these because they can covertly use their profession to move promote designs and budget flows that exlusively forward their mission hidden in complexity.
Is a system and everyone here knows what Moore's Law is.
Yes, I meant Murphy's Law.
> Bureaucracies are a common good
never saw it like that. to me bureaucracy represents inefficiency. today we have automation that can be quite advanced. as long as you have a structured, rules based system there is no need for bureaucrats. i do understand that there will always be edge cases, or moral issues with automation, but there should be a constant drive in society to dismantle as much bureaucracy as morally possible, as that implies adopting automation and as such efficiency.
> as long as you have a structured, rules based system there is no need for bureaucrats.
Bureaucrats consider, implement, and modify the structured, rules based systems our society comes up with.
what you write is true, but very concerning.
in theory, laws and policies are crafted by elected officials or experts, and bureaucrats are just the executors. but in reality, bureaucracies interpret, refine, and sometimes even reshape these rules through policy implementation. this is where a lot of inefficiency, red tape, and unintended consequences creep in.
That hardly ever works or did ever work in reality. Almost no legislation (unless it solves and issue that is very straightforward) is written with such granularity that would makes this possible.
The people writing it are not necessarily subject experts in the area and even if they were or consulted such experts they can't foresee all eventualities. So those laws would need to be constantly updated all the time which is simply infeasibly (especially in the US where the legislative branch is stuck in a near permanent gridlock by design). IMHO that would make the system much, much more inefficient.
It's impossible to tell the difference between inefficiency and a timing hack unless you're deep in the guts of a system. Civic maintenance of snow plows can be a good real-world example.
Even if this was true, breaking things with reckless abandon has real human costs today and will until they’re fixed. That’s part of the reason government is ‘inefficient’ is the responsibility to serve everyone and get as close to zero downtime as possible.
yours is a stability-over-change argument: bureaucracy exists to prevent reckless, harmful disruptions.
you're assuming the alternative to bureaucracy is reckless destruction, but what about the harm bureaucracy already causes? slow government processes, redundant approvals, and outdated rules waste time, money, and even lives. how many people suffer due to delays in healthcare, housing permits, or business licenses?
you're framing efficiency as 'reckless abandon' but efficiency doesn't mean chaos, it means designing systems that work smoothly without unnecessary friction. if private companies can process global transactions in seconds, why does it take months to approve basic permits?
if bureaucracy ensures stability, why does it fail so often? government shutdowns, dmv backlogs, and welfare mismanagement don’t scream 'zero downtime'. in reality, bureaucracy is often fragile, not resilient.
other industries use automation and streamlined processes to reduce friction without 'breaking things recklessly'. why should government be any different?
I'm framing these specific DOGE initiatives where they're firing people at random as reckless. Because they are and there are real human costs that are just being glazed over.
I 1,000% agree that in general, we should reduce bureaucracy and minimize the steps people need to take / the approvals required and make things as streamlined as possible. But if those things are small fires, having the current Republican majority with DOGE in support is asking arsonists to put them out. Often you need substantial upfront investment to fix e.g. the social security infrastructure - but when one party is opposed to all government spending, the infra will never be improved and the proposed fixes are to fire a bunch of employees that are maintaining the current system to save costs.
You do realize one of the first users of private computers was the IRS. You miss the other side of the coin when it comes to efficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is a large bureaucracy. There is no possible way the IRS could do it's work today without computers. The rules are too complex, and computers made it possible to have such complex rules.
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> who are pushing things in dumb directions because their careers and wealth are tied to what they do for work so they advocated for those things to be advanced to the point of absurdity and everyone on their coat tails cheers for it because they benefit too.
Could you give a concrete example of what you're describing there?
I work on software for government agencies. Some of the paperwork processes are absurd. There is a high number of people in leadership positions within government that push for processes and make software purchases that quite frankly have little to negative benefit. It is sad because I think government can be a force of good, but people are too busy spending effort on processes that don't matter. That leaves other work undone. An example is industry specific SAAS software that costs millions to pass documents around in the cloud, for a small group of users, which is no better than MS office solutions.
I don't disagree but I don't think that's what the person I was replying to meant (and their further comments support that idea).
I can't see their original comment anymore though, so, who knows.
How about the AMA?
>Could you give a concrete example of what you're describing there?
Pick any pro-1984-esque smart city article that normal people would recoil in horror at the implications of yet HN generally endorses. The author is your example.
Now repeat for every industry and its own insane trends. Manufacturing people endorsing green regulation because they know it gives them a competitive advantage over their competition despite causing off shoring and making the world worse on the net. Lawyers, legislators and law people peddling inequality under the law but dressing it up as DEI. Lead people at regulatory agencies advocating for expansion of their own scope and mandate. Etc. etc. the list goes on.
It's like a stupid reverse gell-mann amnesia effect where people can spot stupidity outside their own industry but lack the ability to be a disciplined adult with self awareness and ability to see consequences when something benefits them.
But of course outsiders don't make decisions until things are so insane that the public weighs in so what happens is the tech industry peddles pervasive surveillance, manufacturing off-shores to countries that belch pollution, etc, etc, until it reaches a critical mass and a populist gets elected on promises to kill all of it no matter what it is.
If you want me to literally cite an example I'll do that but we all know that doesn't really matter because no example will satisfy everyone.
You're doing that common conservative thing of correctly identifying the principle, but then taking a turn into ridiculousness when enumerating examples. We are, in fact, in this mess because of the upper middle/professional class. It's not because of green regulations or DEI. It's because that class has a vested interest in enabling the aforementioned billionaire charlatans and their flights of fancy/fear, no matter wht those might be. Literally, if we're talking about their retirement accounts. Why are the best minds of our generation working on ads and addiction machines? Why can't we, as a country, solve problems that poorer countries solved decades ago? Because so very few with a salary and mortgage can think 5-10 years ahead, outside of their plan to scale the crab bucket walls (as rugged individuals). It won't end until a critical mass are ready to say, when presented yet another boondoggle meant to impoverish their neighbors economically and spiritually, "I don't care, I won't do it, fire me," and mean it. The robots aren't ready yet; the wealthy and deleterious elements of society still need poorer cosigners. Snap the pen in half.
Your ideology and desire to demonize the billionares and the rulers and whatnot is limiting you here. There's only a few of them. They literally don't have sufficient brain power to think up all the stupid crap that goes on on the micro level that adds up to the macro problem.
The upper middle/professional class is the problem (this is a theme, there's a reason that every time there a real good bloody revolution in history they do poorly). They have pushed ideas that are grounded in sound principles (diversity and inclusivity are good, the proliferation of high tech communication is good, sustainable environmental practice are good) to the point of absurdity and recoil from the general public. They take these causes of the moment and run with them to absurd levels because that is a reliable way to make a quick buck with the way we've structured our society.
It's like telling a rookie engineer the priority to lighten the part and he shaves so much mass that it will obviously, even to him too readily in real world conditions despite passing in the simulation. He justifies it in his own mind in various ways but at the end of the day the reality is he DGAF. He got his bonus for hitting the metric and moved on. The upper middle class is that rookie engineer. The upper middle class decision makers got that bonus for increasing DEI (in a bad way that makes people hate it), making the production greener (if you don't measure what's offshored) and so on and so on. And of course such behavior comes around to cast shade upon those goals even if the goals are noble. Eventually management says "stop lightening things" in the same way that the populist leaders say things like "no more DEI crap". Such moves aren't the right answer per-say, and even they know it. But they do stop the bleeding enough to not be a serious existential problem for a little while until a new fad comes around.
I don't know how you get a whole society of people to give a crap generally and give a crap about the big picture impact of what they're doing. If I did then surely enough other people would and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
>to the point of absurdity and recoil from the general public
This is incorrect. The actions of wealthy people speak for themselves; they don't need to be demonized, they are plainly wrong on their face. That said, we're in agreement that these people don't have power without the less-wealthy people who enable them.
> If you want me to literally cite an example I'll do that
That is what I asked for, yes.
Be clear about what you're saying. If you hesitate to to just say what you believe, that's probably a good indication that some introspection would be worthwhile.
My guess is that your original comment got downvoted because you characterized people with this kind of discretionary power as "upper middle" class (I would just call this upper class as it is realistically a very small portion of the overall population).
FWIW, I think I agree with you and I think it is possibly the biggest weakness of our system that it is vulnerable to these types of manipulations from various angles: campaign finance, regulatory capture, disproportionate power given to unelected members of the executive, etc. That being said, those same weaknesses really open the door for the power-tripping Musks and Bezoses to get in and do a lot of damage, which is what I believe we are witnessing in real time.
> They're positioned to make money hand over fist no matter how things go.
This is why they tend to move toward other things, like ... dismantling the US government.
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Efficiency efforts are common.
It's just that the abusers are the only ones who make an effort to talk about it, because talking about it provides them cover.
Otherwise it's a regular part of the daily job.
Perhaps the whole situation will finally convince the "I don't mind, I have nothing to hide" crowd about the need to scrutinize & limit as much as reasonably possible the personal data collection and retention by government and other entities. What good are rules, statutes, checks & balances, passwords and ACLs, if at some point someone you don't like or trust can just come in "as a root" and circumvent everything?
The "I don't have anything to hide" argument usually misses that you can't know today what you should be hiding from the government tomorrow.
You have everything to hide by default and the onus is on every actor to prove why they need information and how it's isolated from other information.
Such as your genetic ancestry
Or if you are a trump follower or not.
The "I don't mind, I have nothing to hide" people are cheering this on. They don't know or care about any of the things you just said.
Do you have cause to believe "nothing to hide" is a partisan position? I'd expect that half of such people are on the left and are critical by default of the new administration. Seems to be supported by the second chart here: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2023/10/18/how-american...
It’s a position held by extremists on both sides and the natural ally of extermists, the lazy.
I also find this a bit suspect- the more extreme you are, the more likely you are to have something to hide. The extreme left is well aware of the way communists and hippies were treated through the 20th century, while the extreme right has been subject to a lesser version in the 21st and are very skeptical of intelligence agencies. Moderates seem much more likely to trust institutions and accept the status quo.
I have no idea how to investigate this empirically, though.
I don't really think it correlates with political spectrum at all. Similar to how "hard on crime" has a pretty weak correlation woth partisanship. It really comes down to upbringing, influences, and education on how you perceive data privacy.
In real life, I hear people of all political stripes embracing positions between "nothing to hide" and "the govt can find out my personal info anyway, so why not email it directly to nameless scammers overseas?"
Online it works like most things. Everybody pretends it's a partisan food fight, even if they have to lie.
They will care when they personally get badly screwed.
They will not know that theyre screwed because media will tell them theyre doing great
Best angle with that crowd is that insurance companies are going to screw them over with all the data.
I'm not so sure there is complete overlap, there were plenty of pro national security democrats.
You can be pro national security and pro privacy.
I don't have anything to hide but I still close the door when I take a dump.
Good reminder of why people should be wary of governments collecting data because this a stark reminder that the government can change at any time.
For some people, it literally changes based on the administration. We need to teach people to always be skeptical of government overreach, no matter who is in office.
"I have nothing to hide" really misses the point of what privacy is for. I don't close the door when I'm taking a crap because I have something to hide, I do it for privacy.
Also, blackmail isn't the only way to have personal or intimate information used against you. As the absolutely massive advertising industry can tell you, knowing more details about people makes them easier to influence and manipulate.
1. I don't want the federal government to know much about me.
2. I think the federal government executive branch should be able to control itself and inspect itself.
The "I have nothing to hide" perspective on privacy is immediately revealed as disingenuous when you ask them to place a web cam in their shower.
Privacy clearly is valuable for it's own sake.
i like to ask those people “fine, but do have shades on your windows? i mean if you have nothing to hide…”
I fear that only very bitter experience will convince those folks.
I actually thought the government had all this control already over all this.
This is an interesting side effect indeed. The people I know irl who have espoused this view are, ironically, the people who never liked Elon Musk in the first place. It'll be interesting to see how their narrative evolves now, if at all, as they stare at a practical example which contradicts them!
It's a bit of a straw man. I might get labelled as part of that group. But in reality, I have nothing to hide given a search warrant of my digital data, issued by a court in accordance to tight privacy-respecting laws. And I am happy the bandwidth-limited court can issue these against me, and against everyone around me, as opposed to no data ever being available for anyone.
That's quite different to Musk's minions taking a DB dump onto a USB stick.
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Another very negative long-term effect of all of this is how is the government going to recruit talent in the future? How many people, who have good prospects elsewhere, are going to work for a government agency -- usually a lower pay -- to put up with shit like this that doesn't even happen in industry? Would you? Sure there are sometimes mass layoffs that are handled pretty badly in industry, but not these Gestapo-like purge tactics that are clearly designed that way to instill fear and loyalty.
I think that is part of the point. "As hire As. Bs hire Cs." A-tier folks want to work with the best, B-tier folks want to work with lackeys that will do their bidding. It's pretty clear there's no A-tier folks in charge at the moment.
If you've ever worked on a government contract, you would know there are not and have never been A's on the government side.
This is not and has never been true as a blanket statement. Contractors perform to expectations just like in every other sector of the economy, so variation is high, just like in every other sector of the economy.
I’ve seen both high and low-performing teams in .com, .edu, and .gov and there’s nothing magic about any sector: you get what senior management sets the incentives to get. The NSA gets really good hackers because they don’t leave that to chance, just like how NASA or MIT hire really good scientists and engineers, and the places which just trust the big consulting companies usually get taken to the cleaners.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43094283
This gets repeated a lot but in reality hiring is a skillset that good programmers sorely lack.
Yes, Elon hires Cs.
eyeroll
When is FSD shipping again? Why is Tesla falling behind in the market they defined for a decade? When will Boring actually deliver on the hype? Why is X suing former customers trying to get the revenue they so desperately need to pay off debts best on wildly over-estimating the company’s worth?
He’s been able to buy some good companies but nobody has a magic trick for being good at everything and the man is stretched really thin between all of his CEO positions and spending hours per day on politics.
It is pretty well known Elon companies pay shit and churn through young engineers willing to work long hours for no overtime fueled by “passion”. It’s why he is pushing for more H1B1s. He wants desperate people worried about being deported if they lose their job.
Has anybody more competent than Elon (which isn't a very high bar) survived contact with him in one of his firms? It is well know he doesn't tolerate any pushback and that e.g. SpaceX has a whole team dedicated to babysitting him away from operations.
> Has anybody more competent than Elon (which isn't a very high bar) survived contact with him in one of his firms?
Gwynne Shotwell.
Competent enough not only technically, but also to "handle" Musk to keep him away from her.
https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskSpam/comments/z2ofwk/i_wa...
I wonder if he ever asked her to bear his child.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/elon-musk-reportedly-a...
In government, yes, he's hiring Cs. I can speak to SpaceX--they're all As. But it's also the company he's most shielded from himself.
Elon qua SpaceX and possibly xAI and Neuralink is an A. Elon qua Boring Company, X and DOGE is very, very clearly a B player. (Idk what's going on with Tesla, he seems to be treating it more like a piggy bank to be raided to get to Mars (A) and indulge his impulses (B).)
That is the entire point. They want a government that nobody wants to work for so that regulations on cars, rocket launches, and securities will stop bothering their profits.
If not intentional, then a happy side effect.
The goal is to destroy the state apparatus from the inside, to be replaced by private industry.
Why have a functional government if instead you and your buddies can you benefit from contracting out?
This is basic dictatorshipping, I think US folks need to refresh skills so common in rest of the world.
You want obedient lackeys as #1 rule, it means reasonably little threat and no resistance to molding from above. Competences are sometimes even frowned upon. Look at how potus literally demands that others lick his boots to keep it polite.
This is how russians run their dictatorships for example, including those they exported elsewhere under their iron hand / military bases. Talking from first hand experience.
Of course that part of the system is very ineffective. Regardless of what you think about government and its bureaucracy, that fascist manchild aint gonna end up with success story here, he lacks (any genuine) emotional intelligence to understand underlying reasons. This isnt technical problem to solve where he sometimes excells.
This comment said nothing.
We've needed reforms to civil service and the general schedule pay scale specifically for a long time now. One can hope that a future Congress could write a bill that resets government hiring and compensation practices in the wake of this administration, but perhaps that's a fantasy at this point.
it's cute you think congress is in control right now.
Cheap snarky comments like this have no place on HN.
First, DOGE proposes to reduce the size of the federal workforce, so the need to recruit talent may not be that great, second they might recruit from the pool of talent that supports all of this -- it might be a small pool, but if the workforce is small enough...
>to put up with shit like this that doesn't even happen in industry?
The C-suite never bring in hatchetmen? What world do you work in?
> Sure there are sometimes mass layoffs that are handled pretty badly in industry, but not these Gestapo-like purge tactics that are clearly designed that way to instill fear and loyalty.
Isn't the difference here that in the private sector you have to do all that loyalty shit from day one, not just whenever the board restructures and you want to keep your job?
> How many people, who have good prospects elsewhere, are going to work for a government agency -- usually a lower pay -- to put up with shit like this that doesn't even happen in industry? Would you?
You could remove the "to put up with shit like this" part and the answer would still be "nobody". You have to remove the "who have good prospects elsewhere" part for it to make sense.
well, there are people with good prospects elsewhere who take gov positions out of civic duty and also because it is typically longer term and you're less likely to get laid off for no reason
I agree with everything you said, but it's also not impossible to be laid off by the govt for no reason so there may have been a false sense of security:
https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/npr/library/nprrpt/annrpt/vp...
Yeah, interesting. Nearly 3/4 of that workforce reduction was at the DOD.
They somehow managed to do it without a bunch of firings, though it doesn't explain the mechanisms (I didn't have time to dig in further):
> A variety of mechanisms have been used to accomplish this, thereby keeping the use of involuntary terminations to a minimum. In fact, of the 239,286 person reduction, only 20,702 have been involuntarily separated.
I don't know all of the ins and outs but I think a big mechanism was offering $25k buyouts:
from https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/statement-the-buyo...:
To reduce the work force by 102,000 positions by the end of fiscal 1994, we offered about 70,000 buyouts. Several non-DOD agencies have offered deferred buyouts that will take place between now and March 1997. Defense will be using buyouts as it continues to downsize through 1999. Counting those, we expect to buy out another 84,000 workers through 1997 as we reduce the work force by a total of 272,900 positions.
edit: I realize now that the first link i sent upthread was too early as it only goes to Jan 1996. I've seen elsewhere that the total reduction got to 400,000+.
> put up with shit like this that doesn't even happen in industry
Musk did a trial run with it on Twitter.
I find it wild that apparently there is no law onto which government workers can cling to refuse these requests. Is it all just based on conventions, goodwill and culture?
There are laws, but you will get fired if you try to follow them, and lawsuits to remedy that take time.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/usaid-sec...
The enforcement of these laws should be a function of the executive. There are ways for the supreme court or congress to intervene when the executive isn't doing their job. Sadly that requires them to believe a series of checks and balances is necessary.
Given that it is down to the voters, and they thought a racist, rapist, conman should be president giving them the power of the executive - which has been growing increasingly powerful for my adult lifetime.
The most distressing thing I learned in the past 3 ~~Years~~ edit: months,, was how MUCH laws are about norms.
Norms, are basically the way laws work in the real world.
I despaired, because this is natural to lawyers, and alien entirely to the layperson.
No one is going to think Justice, and then accept “Oh, our norms are how laws work”.
There is no constitutional way the president to not have access to any data in the executive branch. And since doge is reporting to him - it just send the data to the president and he will forward it to whomever he pleases.
Even the concept of independent executive agencies is probably more vulnerable constitutionally than more people think.
Democracy is held together by people willing to follow the rules.
In Trump's first administration they realized the trick is to just move so fast that you flood the system and can do whatever you want before anyone sees through all the noise or has a chance to stop you. Steve Bannon was interviewed on camera saying as much.
That is the definition of an unelected bureaucrat
Why do you want them to refuse audit requests? There is no upside to hiding egregious government waste other than paying politicians via kickbacks more than what is legally mandated.
The Constitution vest all executive authority on the president. The president can delegate that authority. That's what all is happening here. Within the executive branch the president has practically total power, hardly if at all possible to constrain by statute, and that's by design in the Constitution.
The president needs the Senate's "advice and consent" to hire principal officers, and does not need the Senate's "advice and consent" for certain other officers as specified by statute. The US Digital Service ("DOGE") is an agency where he did not need the Senate's advice and consent.
The president does NOT need the Senate's advice and consent to fire anyone in the executive branch. For principal officers this was established by the failed impeachment of Andrew Johnson for firing a confirmed cabinet secretary nominated by Lincoln. For other officers this was established by judicial precedent fairly recently when Biden terminated two Trump appointees to minor offices and they sued (and lost).
Similarly the president needs the Senate's advice and consent to enter into treaties. The Constitution is silent as to terminating Senate-confirmed executive officers, officers whose appointments did not require Senate confirmation, or treaties (abrogation). It's essentially settled law that the president does not require the Senate's advice and consent for any of those kinds of terminations.
Therefore, under the Constitution and the political and binding judicial precedents, there can be no law "onto which government workers can cling to refuse these requests."
The value of laws (in general) is being challenged in the US right now. At least, so it appears from afar. Enjoy going through a power grab.
who even knows the law in the moment? the seal of the president is p convincing. heck just look at all the social engineering/phishing that works
Laws are only a suggestion, they are not being enforced and there are no consequences.
The other thing is that in the US, people's lives depend on their jobs, with half of polled people indicating they live paycheck to paycheck. This makes them easy to manipulate into complying, putting their morals aside because standing up for morals or indeed the law will mean they lose their job.
I mean the US president declared yesterday that only he gets to decide on law and called himself king on his social media. There's heaps of 'legal' texts that indicate it means he can be deposed and yote into jail, but if there's nobody enforcing them they're useless.
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no it's based on elections
Why would you want a law that says government workers have zero accountability over how they spend the money they extract by threat of violence from the citizenry?
We should all have "root access" to everything but the most national-security sensitive topics.
One side is understandably on edge but nothing DOGE has been doing is unexpected, except in the sense that it's actually happening or seems to be happening. It went through the whole political process's standard change control mechanism, in other words the current Administration literally campaigned on it and received a mandate via both the EC and popular vote.
What should happen, and nobody is talking about this, is the USA is severely downgraded in its overall credit rating due to an unhinged and ongoing "fire, aim, ready" self-audit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_governme...
The last credit downgrade of the US by a major ratings agency was by Fitch in 2023. They cited projections for the US deficit to continue to rise, due to projected weaker revenues and increased spending.
https://www.fitchratings.com/research/sovereigns/united-stat...
The deficit hawks don't understand how money works. Everything about DOGE and their mission has a fundamental deep misunderstanding of why governments with their own currency must have deficits. Literal accounting 101. Unfortunately Elon has an economics degree, which means he is completely uneducated in accounting.
I was thinking the same thing. If this even slightly jeopardizes America's ability to pay off its debt, the entire world will suffer. Something that occurred to me from talking to Americans online is that most of them don't realize just how much soft power they have across the world. I really feel that China becoming the global superpower might end up becoming the least bad option if America keeps destabilizing.
Nice username. I thought HN was broken for a second.
Setting politics aside for a moment, I find it fascinating that an audit of this scale is taking place within the government. Has there ever been a historical precedent where an external agency thoroughly reviewed all departments, published its findings for the public, and then based decisions on that analysis?
Is it really possible to root out governmental fraud using this approach? Fraud and theft exist at every level of government, but if not through a drastic measure like this, what else can be done? Relying on the status quo, the courts, and current processes hasn’t yielded substantial results—if it had, corruption wouldn’t persist.
Still, I can appreciate the creativity here. Sometimes it takes an outsider to think differently.
That said, I’m not naive enough to assume this is done entirely in good faith. The prevailing opinion—both in this community and the media—seems largely negative; I’ve yet to see a single positive headline. Even so, I find it intriguing.
So here’s my question: if you were in charge of addressing this problem, how would you tackle it differently?
It's already been a thing for quite some time:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Inspector_General_(U...
They are independent of the things they review, they find inefficiency, overspending, fraud, and embezzlement. They make their reports public and work with transparency. There are also other similar departments like CIGIE. There have been very substantial results.
What DOGE is doing is not finding inefficiency. They are doing two basic things. 1) Completely eliminating programs they don't think the US should be spending money on. And 2) Reducing headcount. Both of these actions may reduce costs, but may end up costing the US more money in the long term.
Lets assume for a minute that what's going on is a good faith comprehensive audit of these agencies. (It's not, but lets just say it is.)
1) How long do you think it takes to perform a comprehensive audit of an agency in order to accurately determine waste, corruption and fraud. If you've ever audited a large corporation, you know what that takes -- it is not something you whip up in a week or two.
2) Who do you think is qualified to audit government entities? Some "young Turk" DOGE engineers? We're not talking about determining whether computer systems are well architected or should be refactored (though that also takes time to do correctly). We're talking about financial transactions and whether they were legitimate and legal (because if not, that would be "corruption" or "fraud").
Which Fortune500 company would hire a team of (relatively inexperienced) software engineers to audit its books?
They aren’t auditing or thoroughly reviewing shit. They're stealing the data and then waving their hands about non-existent crimes and nickel and dime levels of misappropriated or weird spending.
DOGE is not necessarily about fraud. Their summary of cancelled projects for USAID for example is often vague. For example, "$14M for "social cohesion" in Mali." As a reader, I have no context for this program, its impact, or who ran it. I don't even have the ability to discern whether other things were lumped in. Can I guess this was aimed at preventing further in-roads of Al Qaeda? Who knows.
An actual cherry-picked example of DOGE's potential fraud finding is at the SSA where Musk showed his query of "DEAD" = "FALSE" (I am paraphrasing a bit) yielded a huge number of folks over ages 115. Context is what is scarce. Are they receiving payments, are there other reasons for why the query returned those results, what other context do I have to interpret these results? Again, I have no idea.
I think the safest way of couching what is going on, is a drastic curtailment of government programs and employees. Equivalents to this? Maybe Gorbachev. I am sure there are other historical parallels, but they are probably apples to peaches comparisons at a certain level.
And to your last question, I am not sure if anyone really knows the problem/s that are being addressed right now other than debt and the capability to pass a tax cut.
The Clinton administration conducted a thorough audit, eventually laying off 351k people [1]. But they did so using a six-month review of all agencies performed by experienced federal workers. They ensured there were no national security ramifications and provided severance.
Reagan also had the Grace Commission [2].
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/06/politics/doge-musk-gore-rego-...
[2] https://www.history.com/news/ronald-reagan-grace-commission-...
Idk about the US, but the 'government' fraud that I know of, does not show up in the tax office records or in the foreign aid accounts. The common thing is that civil servants/officials are bribed. At usually on the cheap too, so it'll take a lot of digging to find it, and worse, prove it. But, this kind of corruption is probably even more widespread among companies. If you want to exact justice, that's the place to look.
Before even debating the effectiveness of this audit, we have to address the fundamental problem: Elon Musk has no legal authority to be conducting this in the first place. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is not a real government agency and Musk has not been confirmed by the Senate or given formal oversight. It's illegal and unconstitutional.
Beyond that, yes, large-scale government audits have been done before. In fact, we already have institutions designed to do exactly that. The GAO, the Office of the Inspector General, and even bipartisan commissions have uncovered fraud and inefficiencies without letting an extremely partisan private individual with massive conflicts of interest connected to his businesses arbitrarily rip apart government agencies.
Your claim that the continued existence of fraud means the system does not work is also specious, it's obviously not possible to eliminate all fraud, statements like that make me doubt that your comment is made in good faith.
> if you were in charge of addressing this problem, how would you tackle it differently?
I would start by not firing people doing jobs I don't understand. They do that a lot, even for very, very important jobs.
This isn't an audit, it's a blindfolded hatchet job. They've already been caught either deliberately or accidentally misinterpreting data, to the tune of they called an 8 million dollar contract an 8 billion dollar contract, among many other glaring discrepancies. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/02/19/doge...
So if I was in charge, I would start by making sure I did the math right and didn't blindly trust my database scraping scripts as they appear to be doing (and that's the most generous interpretation). I would also make sure that before recommending that I fire any group, I at least have a high level understanding of what that groups works on. So I don't, say, fire the people who oversee the nuclear arsenal, or a group of researchers working on the current bird flu outbreak (both of these have been done). Rehiring takes money and time because upon firing their contact information is apparently deleted, and you aren't going to get a 100% return rate.
I also have some experience working with giant bloated blobs of legacy code managing critical systems, where many variables are arcane acronyms because they were written in a time where compilers had character limits. Moving fast and breaking things in that environment is just a good way to break a lot of things and not even understand how you did it. Which is fine if it's twitter, and a little more important when you're managing aircraft, nuclear weapons, disease outbreaks, entitlement payments that people depend on, etc.
I would not fire staff responsible for safeguarding nuclear material, and I wouldn't be trying to avoid transparency.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-02-14/elon-m...
conveniently sweeping aside the fact that those who depend the most on the 'inefficient' programs/agencies that are being 'optimized' are the poorest and weakest members of society. those who can afford private everything will be fine.
>Is it really possible to root out governmental fraud using this approach?
It's possible it will, but not without a lot of false positives and innocent bystanders.
At the scale of the federal government, there are plenty of things that appear to be fraud but actually have a reasonable justification.
In the Dunning-Kruger world we unfortunately seem to live in now, I don't think having every single yokel personally analyzing every line item on a budget as large as the federal government's, especially when those yokels don't really understand any of it, is the best way to go about this.
This admin isn't trustworthy either. They'll sit here an cry about 0.01% of the federal budget being "wasted" on a bunch of National Park probies, and meanwhile the self-appointed king is out golfing on the taxpayer dime.
>Has there ever been a historical precedent where an external agency thoroughly reviewed all departments, published its findings for the public, and then based decisions on that analysis?
They are 't reviewing and publishing shit, it yes there is historical moments when those types of things happened, usually after coup, dictatorship, or just any authoritarian government everyday dismantling everything, that's why everyone looking outside of USA with a bit of history knowledge see as a very bad precedent
The US has actual independent auditors at various agencies. They're called inspectors general. Trump is trying to fire all of them: https://apnews.com/article/trump-inspectors-general-fired-co...
> So here’s my question: if you were in charge of addressing this problem, how would you tackle it differently?
For one, with responsibility and care for the public. Not with reckless abandon. Not with malice. Not with a child-like perversion towards breaking things because it’s fun.
Politics aside, this has been an extremely unsettling disruption in the faith we have in our institutions. Trust and stability are the backbones to societal and economic growth. The unseen costs Trump/Musk/doge have wrought are massive, are spread equally among all people (globally, in US, minus the wealthy class), and is hard to see on a spreadsheet
Instead of firing all the auditors(Inspectors General) I'd bring them in and get their input on how to tackle something of this magnitude. Then see about getting them the resources necessary as I'm assuming they would need to staff up massively with experienced auditors(aka not DOGE) and other resources.
I think it's certain that there will be positive and negative consequences and both of those will be on a large scale. I too am curious about the positives.
I think the negatives could have been easily minimized to more-reasonable-level without affecting the positive ones, if it wasn't headed by hothead Elon.
Only because you didn't inform yourself properly. Did you know about the position of inspection general? Did you read any of their reports? Do you know Trump fired all of them? In a totally illegal move?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43116844
https://www.axios.com/2025/01/25/trump-fires-inspectors-gene...
>So here’s my question: if you were in charge of addressing this problem, how would you tackle it differently?
I would not do it differently. Well, probably it's going to be worse (but most measures). DM and EM are being too nice in my opinion.
>published its findings for the public
Is doge actually doing this in a meaningful way? What is the website? Thus far I'm only aware of them celebrating partisan victories like chopping funding for trans theater etc.
Considering how atrociously bad they have been at estimated money saved, I don't think they have any positive results at all.
https://www.npr.org/2025/02/19/nx-s1-5302705/doge-overstates...
Twitter guy is going to do so much damage to America.
It's shocking to me how many people think that auditing government agencies is some new thing being implemented by Trump/Musk.
These agencies all have Inspector Generals, who are outside of the agency and responsible for auditing their particular agency. And they do, there are reports on this sort of thing.
Most of the IGs, if not all, were fired by Trump first thing.
> corruption wouldn’t persist
We still haven't seen any evidence of corruption, by the way. Yeah, I'm sure there's some gov employees here and there doing fraudulent stuff, skimming off the top or getting gov contracts to their buddies. But there has been zero evidence of any widespread or systemic corruption in a single agency. Nothing.
The agency that did get axed the most -- USAID -- was because of "woke ideology" that they were supposedly pushing (though there wasn't any evidence of that being widespread either), not corruption/fraud (breaking the law).
It's like the WMD excuse to invade Iraq.
So how is this any different from all the random employees who might have access to this data as part of their jobs? I would understand if there was this sort of scrutiny over every federal employee but as it stands I never know who has access to my data and if they can be trusted.
Usually you don’t have access to “everything”. It might even be illegal to cross reference certain data, e.g., the same person or department might not even be allowed to have access to two databases.
I don’t know if the cross reference is true for the US, but it is for other countries.
This is generally quite restricted. I personally had to undego a "Public trust" civilian security clearance (which is binding for life unlike the 75 years of TS-SCI).
Except in exceptionally poorly run or small organisations, random employees do not have access to everything; generally they need a reason to look at stuff, and there’s a paper trail indicating that they looked at it.
The fact that it crosses departmental boundaries. The fact that the employee has multiple businesses that could benefit from such data.
I strongly suspect no single employee had access to all that data.
> So how is this any different from all the random employees who might have access to this data as part of their jobs?
Are you asking why it's any different a non-American billionaire who has multipole government contracts having access to your data any different than Joe Bob who was hired and vetted by those same people unlike the other guy?
accountabilty and role-based permissions based on least-privilege.
None of that matters with what DOGE is doing. That should worry you.
There are considerable processes to make sure that happens, including proper background checks, seniority at the job, etc. You don't just hand some rando newbie the keys to the kingdom -- any company that did that would be laughed at.
Yeah I more concerned “God Mode” is a thing that exists. One would hope that these systems are heavily locked down but my experience maintaining legacy systems makes me think “God mode” is a thing you get because you have to run a quarterly report and it is too much of a hassle setting up the correct permissions.
It is not, it's the same there are just different people viewing your private information, probably more corrupt who banks all that money to themselves now instead of it going to whoever it was going to previously.
> ‘GOD MODE’ ACCESS TO GOVERNMENT DATA
Isn't this title clickbait?
There's an implication this is access to all government data - but the article doesn't explicitly state that but would lead you to believe that.
Given that I highly doubt all government data is in a single data store ... this is probably more like - GOGE has access to all GSA contracts (just one department) ... which is way less sensationalized (and appropriate for a government agency looking review contracts for efficiency)
Note: I'm not taking a political stance on this.
They have full admin access to all USAID systems (which, let's be real, also includes some US intelligence service cover material, since USAID has long been used for that), and are actively seeking full admin access to the systems for every other federal department.
Because there are bigger fish to fry, I think people don’t appreciate the sheer cost of the system rebuild that will be required for security reasons later.
There’s absolutely no telling what additional software has been installed alongside existing, or which systems have been modified that would require audit. Purging this will be an absolute fucking nightmare to the American taxpayer.
This may turn into one of the most significant IT incidents in world history.
> The team could then feed this classified information into AI tools, either for training purposes or to mine the data for insights. (Members of DOGE already reportedly have put sensitive data from the Education Department into AI software.)
Perhaps it's cheaper to assume everything leaked or will leak soon.
Yes. Even if DOGE is operating without any ill intent, and I don't think they have ill intent, the possibility of errors alone is massive and they need to slow down.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/02/17/trum...
> security reasons later
What about security reasons now? The federal government includes the military. Giving DOGE “God mode” on the federal government is a national security risk right now.
You make the very weird assumption that this will go "back to normal" at some point.
The system was almost certainly already so-accessible.
Assuming they have a read only copy to the data, how would having access to just data require rebuilding the systems?
And there's no telling how many backups they compromised (let's be generous and assume backups exist).
Indeed, and its not just a problem for future democratic administrations (assuming they come to pass), it's doubtful that Trump's inevitable republican successors will be comfortable with Elon having a back door to their government.
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Or maybe it'll accelerate the much needed improvements.
This is a very dramatic take on something you (and many others) are making extremely broad presumptions upon. It’s clear that DOGE is reviewing payment data and has the same access to various components of the US Govt that Obama’s US Digital Services, created to rebuild the ACA website but also provisioned for a number of other digital services. DOGE has the same access to services that USDS had. USDS was praised for its “speed and cutting through red tape”
This kind of thinking is what leads to zero progress. Also I think most people will be surprised how unless a lot of the data is compared to private sector data. I.e, in 2017 Equifax leaked data on 150 million people and no one cared (you get a free 6month credit check). That data went to foreign governments and private databases and it is easy to access on darkweb so real actual scammers and criminals have it. Millions of people were targeted for scamming because of this. That is just ONE leak. Now imagine the amount of data Visa has on your for example, all your purchases. Apps that have collected your browsing history and actual GPS location. Don't think this data isn't sold and combined with other databases. There are companies that just collect data and buy data. And you are worried about 1 database with people given explicit access makes me think the real objection is something else.
They will have had to impose this too.
The systems were built as separate systems to avoid (in a systems designers most fevered nightmares) a scenario like this.
The executive branch was intended to be separate from the judicial and the legislative branch, not separate from itself.
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Federal level government is not a startup
Breaking things will destroy lives if not literally kill people
If it was this "easy" someone would have made a proposal years ago even if it was turned down
And Congress, not ANY President controls spending
We do not elect Kings in this country, there was an entire very brutal war to make it that way
This data is going to leak if it's not copied already into insecure sources and every foreign adversary is going to have it
Cannot be undone
And there should be investigations and prosecutions for this to prevent it ever happening again by ANY President
> Breaking things will destroy lives if not literally kill people
It is already killing people. They fired people giving out food and medicine. They fired people on suicide hotlines. And of course, people have been killing themselves in response to being fired.
Well put and straight to the point.
The President is the head of the executive branch. If _anyone_ in the executive branch has access to information, it feels like the presidents office should too.
Why is this hard to accept?
He is not a monarch. The core principles of a well functioning democracy include that there are multiple, balanced powers and that none of the powers can overrule the other too much. It is cumbersome by design, because the other path leads to dictatorships.
That was the whole basis of your constitution.
If the CEO of my ecommerce company had easy, unmonitored access to all our data, we would fail industry audits and not be allowed to take credit card transactions. Sure, they have access if they really need it, but it's logged and monitored, and if you use it too much there will be questions.
It's a joke that any of you assholes are defending this. This does not pass any sniff test.
Stop making excuses.
Because it isn't the case. For good reason. So it isn't acceptable. Spend some educating yourself about security standards like FedRAMP and build a mental model of things that are or have been true, and the reasons they were made so.
> If _anyone_ in the executive branch has access to information, it feels like the presidents office should too.
Are you an idiot? Can you point to the last time some foreigner was given access to American's personal data without any oversight?
Because it's Musk following his own agenda and he apparently isn't the president
> Why is this hard to accept?
Because a lot of people on the other side of the aisle from the current executive said it is bad.
And then they used ad hominem attacks and random slanders to try to shout down anyone who says otherwise.
It's unfortunate.
Most people in the US don't know that there are three branches of government, or if they do, they don't know WHY there are three, and even if they know that, they don't know what each branch's purpose is.
This is absolutely the job of the executive branch.
Perhaps DOGE should have been created by an act of congress, but in reality that's just a formality because the Republicans control Congress right now.
So are you saying that the President's office could not get this information, or any information it needed, from government agencies before? Of course it could. doge going in and getting unfettered access to computer systems is not at all the same thing.
Ultimately it's about trust.
And why would you trust Trump or Musk?
Somehow Musk has surpassed Trump as a target. Cynically: I think it's because polls show Trump's approval rating at record highs, but Musk's isn't.
As a result, opponents are hyper-focused on Musk's involvement instead of Trump's.
You're right. Though the replies you get will sound like the end of the world.
You'll have to deal with people replying who have been driven literally insane by propaganda.
Money was sent to media agencies (e.g. 9mil Reuters) , to run this massive psyop.
You can't put a band aid on what has been done to them, and they can't critically think their way out of it.
Is there any reason this data shouldn't be public for everyone to read?
USAID collaborates in fighting for worker rights when they are in exploitation or near-slavery.
They likely have records of the people inside organisations who provide data for them. These people usually want to remain anonymous because they fear retaliation. And in many cases, we’re not just talking about being fired or legal actions as retaliation.
You personally are cool with me personally knowing your salary and where you live? Please just post that here right now.
Would you want a prospective employer to have access to your past tax returns when negociating salary?
The article also mentions information about employees operating in conflict zones.
Most of it already was, but normies don't go looking for public expenditure databases, so they assume it doesn't exist. Then DOGE comes along and pretends they're doing something new.
define "everyone" -- elected officials who are supposed to have oversight and insight into where our tax dollars are going? It's not like they're providing replicas over bittorrent.
I would love it if tax returns were public (as they are in other countries), but that's not what's happening here.
Many. It's private for basic reasons, as are PII in your workplace.
Because you have a right to privacy.
Lets start with Trump and Musk.
"In the coming weeks, the team is expected to enter IT systems at the CDC and Federal Aviation Administration, and it already has done so at NASA"
If this isn't a glaring conflict of interest and corruption, I don't know what is.
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European here, giving my two cents on how this looks from the other side of the Atlantic. Heh
In my country there are laws stopping agencies doing a simple SQL join between two databases, even within the same government agency. There is a separate agency that handles the requests when agencies want to join information.
I am not an expert in the matter. But my gut is telling me that our experiences with east Germany and Stasi left a scar.
It can quickly turn into a real nightmare, and there for there are check and balances to make it slow. It’s deliberate inefficiency.
Do you know why in Portugal they have 4 different ID numbers?
It is like that to prevent the state from persecuting people on the base that it is hard for a branch of the government to figure out who is someone based on a number from a different branch.
Do you know why they want to prevent the government from persecuting people?
Because it has already happened, and the portuguese don't want it to happen again.
This sort of thing already exists in America for cases where Americans actually care about privacy: the gun tracing system is forced to be on paper.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/s-just-insanity-atf-now-needs-2...
Guns are constitutionally protected in a way that humans aren't.
That's putting it mildly. What it really looks like is a fast descent into madness.
Which law are referring to? I work in such an agency and I’ve never heard of such a thing
It's not inefficiency. You don't drive 200km/h on city streets, although you can. Limits exist for the safety of others and you.
When it comes to government spending though, shouldn’t the public have a right to know precisely, with dollar-level accuracy what they are being asked to pay?
As far as the experiences of the Stasi and previous German governments, it must not have too much of a scar: Germany still asks people to register their religion — ostensibly for tax purposes, but if I recall correctly, Germany had a problem in the past with having a list of all people in a specific religion.
> check and balances to make it slow. It’s deliberate inefficiency.
It’s an important thing about free countries that is seldom appreciated: aspects of their governments are designed to be tar pits, on purpose. It’s a way of restraining government.
I have a personal saying that touches on something adjacent. “I like my politicians boring. Interesting government was a major cause of death in the twentieth century.”
When I think of governments that are both interesting and streamlined I think of the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge, Stalin era USSR, Maoist purges, etc.
Very few countries have as strong executive branch as the USA.
> It’s deliberate inefficiency.
Inefficiency is a useful property of many systems [0,1]. Current cultural obsessions around the word are a burden and mistake, and the word "efficiency" now feels rather overload with right-wing connotations.
[0] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/efficiency/
[1] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/cash2/
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European here. Governments in Europe, even ones that have GDPR on their books, literally act as oppressively as they want to act: U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users' encrypted accounts [1]
[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/02/07/apple-e...
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still, Germany arrests citizens for calling a politician an idiot.
Which country and what law are you referring to?
Laws rarely include technical language like SQL joins.
I think the advantages of this in a digital age are vastly overblown. If an extremist government comes to power they won't care and they can just do the SQL join. Let it go to court, the extremist government will decide anyway so the outcome is already predetermined.
Compare this to a physical storage of paper documents that need to be SQL joined, the effort required is several magnitudes more.
What it is good for is data breaches, it effectively limits the data that can be leaked at once.
What you're describing is very similar to what most large enterprise companies do: layers upon layers of red tape and convoluted regulations for the sake of "security."
This is a big reason they can’t get anything done or retain talent.
Government is no different.
European democracies have been dying from the same sclerosis their legacy multinationals have.
The US is going through actual change. The outrage over things not being done as they always have is nonsensical.
Government should have access to its own data. Justice and Congress should have the same access for oversight. The only problem I see is personal data about non-government people is being exposed to the entire planet.
They should have developed good security practices first and maybe spent more than a week reviewing a plan, and not having a double standard about their own activities.
The government already had access to its data, including oversight and regular auditing. This was solely about removing the safeguards so they didn’t have to follow good security practices or have a plan, and given how intensely politicized it has been it’s hard not to think that’s because the plan is not something they’d want to document where the public could see.
As an example, Musk mislead the public with claims about Social Security fraud. None of that was unknown, and in fact the independent inspector general had a much better quality report years ago where they confirmed that the old records did not show signs of fraud and recommended paths for improvement. DOGE made a lot of noise but added nothing but risk.
https://oig.ssa.gov/assets/uploads/a-06-21-51022.pdf
The thing is, Government already had access to its own data. It just was required to follow the law that was put in place by the voted in Legislature to prevent abusive situations that could arise from limitless unrestricted access without oversight. It was there, and even non-government citizens could get access to it by following the procedures; procedures put in place to prevent "selling the farm," voted on by elected officials, with the support of their constituents.
Government is doing a lot of work here. We’re talking about thousands of people, who, other than working for the government, also are humans with their own agenda. Are you okay with just giving all of them access to your most personal data? Even if some of them live right next to you, have a personal grudge, and may be slightly psychotic? No? Well apparently, then, it’s not just as hand-wavy as you claim it to be. The only reasonable thing is granting access to data on a need-to-know basis, with tight access control, audit logging, and anonymisation where not strictly impossible. That would be the reasonable thing if you’re handling data for hundreds of millions of people. It isn’t what’s happening.
Justice doesn't need the same access like Congress, it's enough if they can subpoena relevant data. Even personal data about government people shouldn't be exposed as this opens weakness the be exploited by social engineering.
> Government should have access to its own data.
You think it didn't already have access to its own data? Please explain how it did not.
> Government should have access to its own data. Justice and Congress should have the same access for oversight.
On its face, that’s a reasonable comment. But that’s not what’s happening here. This is not oversight. This is the world’s richest man arbitrarily seizing control of the government’s data. He’s able to do this because he bought the presidency for Trump.
Are you ok with that?
I actually believe the executive branch should actually control the executive branch.
The presidency is not a monarchy! The president might be commander-in-chief but it can’t just order random people killed just because he is “in charge” of the military. There are laws and layers of control saying who can do what. These laws are on the books and are being completely ignored!
Most of this power is vested in congress whom is abdicating their power.
I, on the other hand, would prefer the executive branch to have a modicum of process and transparency when trying to access private information, as opposed to learning of things a week after the fact from leaks.
Then you should likewise believe that the legislative branch should continue to determine how funds are allocated, and which agencies and departments are created and continue to function.
Let's not be disingenuous.
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If you think this data won’t be used to disenfranchise and target democratic voters and give the GOP perpetual rule, I have a bridge to sell you.
“Oh no! Big mistake we cancelled hundreds of thousands of people from voting just before the election! It just happens to be 99.9% Democrats in swing states who all happen to be marked as dead in all government systems!”
It will be similar to Cambridge Analytica - with all the US Government’s data on one side, this is a massive advantage for targeting even without direct cheating.
The States operate their voter registration rolls, not the president.
illegal aliens, and the NGOs who have been bringing them in and supporting them, that the democrats brought in as future voters so they would have complete control, Well, no more funding for them!
At least, not from America! It's no secret that these NGOs are now trying to attach themselves to Brussels to continue ops in the US, leeches will be leeches
Hear me out. Elon wants ultimate control over people’s lives and choices. Why he would want this is a psychological question about which we can only speculate. This is a change from (at least in appearance) his previous libertarian leanings. Whatever the case, this is the plan:
1) Acquire god mode access to government systems and citizens information (contacting, grants, spending, taxes, SSI benefits, you name it).
2) Add features to the Treasury Department’s software to allow him to, with extremely high granularity, control what payments go out. Friends can be rewarded, enemies punished. At first it will take the form of government entities he doesn’t like (USAID, for example). Next will be government opposition in our federal system, mostly blue cities and states with whom he disagrees. Next will be large private entities with whom he disagrees or are business competitors. Finally, individuals opposing him or the government will be personally targeted (for example, by not paying SSI benefits or paying out tax returns, perhaps extended to family members of the opposition, etc). These individual sanctions could extend to large geographic area he dislikes (all of coastal California, for example). He’s putting in place the tools to accomplish this right now as we speak.
3) Fire all bureaucratic opposition elements who might prevent this. Dress it up as a government efficiency measure if you like.
4) Eventually they will pressure large (and maybe small, too) private financial institutions to take part in this scheme (they may have already succeeded, see Citibank and NYC federal funding for migrants).
He’s putting in place the tools for total control by controlling access to money and resources. I don’t exactly know what he plans to do with them but I don’t want to find out given constant interaction with racists and neo nazis on his site.
It's pretty obvious isn't it? Trump stacked the Supreme Court the first time round which turned out to be the best thing he ever did.
Now they'll control payments to defund opponents as well as sacking anyone who doesn't support them to gain total loyalty. In fact, the way they're doing this is clever: Sack and then make former colleagues compete to be rehired. That way they'll feel extra grateful to have a job and will toe the line in future.
I expect they'll use this data for leverage against opponents in future. They probably haven't decided how yet, which is why they're in hoover mode. Loot the systems quick while they still can.
But it's ok. Half the US thinks there's nothing to worry about. Good luck getting fair elections ever again.
You are not alone in this supposition.
I believe it's called an autogolpe as Trump is supporting him in this.
I think what is worse is people literally driven insane by the psyops that bad been running for last few years.
Documentation found of US agencies funding psyops to basically crush critical thinking skills and scream what their handlers want them to scream. "Hate the smoke detector, not the fire!"
For this situation, that these agencies and their psyops have put you in, you have my greatest sympathy.
Is this the sort of data that could be useful in training LLMs or in terms of demographic data that would be valuable to advertisers?
DMVs already sell your demographics and contact information to advertisers. Along with attempts at making this illegal being stopped by Washington (IE Washington considers it their free speech to call you with the bought information).
I'm certain it's both.
The reality is that just because something has been “known for decades” doesn’t mean it has been addressed—especially in government bureaucracies, where inefficiency, inertia, and misaligned incentives often prevent meaningful reform. The persistence of outdated Social Security records, massive waste, and fraud is a perfect example of systemic dysfunction.
The president, as the chief executive, has broad authority to ensure that executive agencies function efficiently and effectively. While there are statutory and congressional constraints, the executive branch is ultimately responsible for implementing policies and running departments. If existing bureaucrats and Treasury officials have had access to this data for years but failed to act, then it is not only within the president’s prerogative but arguably his duty to bring in outside expertise—whether that be Musk or anyone else—to tackle waste and inefficiency.
Don’t they need security clearances to do this?
Legally, probably. But in the US, "legally" is enforced by the executive, and that's who's telling them to comply.
Who says they don't have them? Elon Musk certainly does.
King Trump says they dont.
They do. Elon already had top secret due to NASA/military work. The rest were authorised/given clearance for the work.
Move fast and break things meets root kernel access to government.
What could go wrong?
Are they really just going to use this to train AI models, to build the 'GrokGovAI' models?
"Do I file my taxes this year or not? I had to sit and debate that."
good question
I hope they at least open the original documents to the American public, instead of posting on X. IMHO the public should have the rights to review and grill the officials about the spending.
I hope they stop what they are doing. I hope they follow the law.
Isn't this the idea of an audit ?...
An audit only needs read access, not God mode. It should be conducted by a neutral third party, not someone on a witch hunt who has conflicts of interest. The people on the ground should have auditing qualifications, clear background checks, and knowledge of specific systems or processes, not a random 19-year-old named "Big Balls" with a history of selling company secrets to a competitor. Their findings should go through QA, and they should take the time to come up with an accurate report, rather than rushing through and blurting out whatever they think is happening.
Wouldn’t you expect some sort of forensic accountant leading an audit of a multi trillion dollar organization?
Yeah exactly.
The article is hyperbola and ultimately trying to push the "Auditing and finding corruption is bad"
Surely it's 'dog mode'
> “We’re operating believing our systems are completely bugged,” one person told us.
Doesn't everyone at work, any $WORK, do this? I do! I even type my thoughts "aloud" so to speak in order to help anyone viewing my sessions on replay.
> No good reason or case can be made for one person or entity to have this scope of access to this many government agencies containing this much sensitive information.
The president should obviously have this level of access.
Honestly when DOGE was first announced, I thought it will be a tiny department that does almost nothing and produces recommendations and PDFs that nobody reads. I didn't expect this.
My brain immediately latched on to how much control could be exerted through the guise of "efficiency", you could effetely run a whole government from there. But I was expecting more installing a bunch of so-called "efficiency officers" in every department to report back when they weren't being loyal... er efficient.
I was not expecting the complete takeover of computer networks and rapid firing of large numbers of employees.
There were signs but people thought it implausibly stupid:
> Vice-president JD Vance has cited Yarvin as an influence, saying in 2021, "So there's this guy Curtis Yarvin who has written about these things," which included "Retire All Government Employees," or RAGE, written in 2012. Vance said that if Trump became president again, "I think what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, and replace them with our people. And when the courts stop you, stand before the country and say, 'The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.'"[17][52]
Read the Bufferfly Revolution by Curtis Yarvin (April, 2022)
> We’ve got to risk a full power start—a full reboot of the USG. We can only do this by giving absolute sovereignty to a single organization—with roughly the powers that the Allied occupation authorities held in Japan and Germany in the fall of 1945.
> Trump himself will not be the brain of this butterfly. He will not be the CEO. He will be the chairman of the board—he will select the CEO (an experienced executive). This process, which obviously has to be televised, will be complete by his inauguration—at which the transition to the next regime will start immediately.
https://graymirror.substack.com/p/the-butterfly-revolution
That was the Vivek plan. He got sidelined.
Why?
Nobody expects the DOGEish inquistion! Yeah I kinda thought that too.
Musk isn't a do-things-by-half kind of guy.
I used to know Thomas during my first internship at Tesla. He's incredibly talented and a very kind, thoughtful guy. Keep up the goodwork Thomas, and ignore all these haters!
My two cents. God-mode privilege already existed before DOGE, someone else had (or still has) this privilege. Priority - How to limit power of such privilege in future.
Often what you'll find is that the power was limited through separation of privileges. One person would not be able to do much beyond a limited boundary. Sounds like that's no longer true.
This further emphasizes a need that is only growing: addressing the disparity between our government's reliance on technology and its members' understanding of it. Government and technology are inexorably linked at a fundamental level. Take data for example. Data is inherently untrustworthy if sufficient measures are not taken to ensure its integrity while being recorded, its integrity while being maintained, the integrity of its interpretation, and the integrity of its further utilization.
We need political pressure to design these systems correctly to avoid "god mode" nonsense, and for that we need politicians who understand and embrace the technological need. If the system is designed correctly you don't need "god mode" access to conduct an audit or even to make lasting changes. Their changes should be non-destructive writes, with an audit trail.
Also, I'm going to need more information than "god mode". God mode over which specific databases? And what specific access levels? And which admin granted the permissions? If DOGE is serious about transparency they will communicate this sort of thing.
Yes, and the chances of that person being technically smarter than the DOGE is close to zero.
I honestly have not a single idea why there wasn't this type of department before monitoring and auditing everything.
>> I honestly have not a single idea why there wasn't this type of department before monitoring and auditing everything.
You mean like the Government Accountability Office? [1] Or the dozens of Inspector Generals at most agencies? [2]
[1] https://www.gao.gov/
[2] https://www.oversight.gov/where-report-fraud-waste-abuse-or-...
The US federal government has lots of laws, agencies, and procedures to address, investigate, and remediate fraud, waste, and abuse.
Because then they would have found the fraud, and some very powerful people would be out of money....
Imagine: if you dunk on Elon on Twitter now he could get mad and post your tax return in the replies
What’s beyond a man who would lie about being a gamer (for credz), be so lazy in his lie he is instantly caught, double-down on his lie despite the obviousness of his inability to even use basic mechanics of said games and then beef with Internet personalities while leaking their private convos? I would wager this man has absolutely no ethic and is purely concerned with his own short-sighted greed and vanity.
DOGE is a joke
With ‘dog mode’ access to government IT systems
With god mode, it isn't a joke.
People being convinced it's a bad idea, By the same politicians and beaurocrats who have wasting, laundering and getting kickbacks, They are the joke.
"Blame the smoke detector, not the fire" people are demoralised people driven insane
A huge problem with this is that from all accounts, these engineers going in don't seem to have any accountability. No one knows who is in charge and making the decisions (presumably Musk though official statements say he's not the DOGE administrator, but no one knows who is), they come into offices like an FBI raid demanding access but won't give reasons, say who is in charge, what they are doing, or even their names.[0] Its much worse than an FBI raid, and reminiscent of Gestapo tactics.
So even if DOGE is benign (and I don't think they are, but lets assume for a moment), if something goes wrong, who is to blame? Where is the transparency they are expecting of government agencies?
Would you trust an outside team like that, say some brash McKinsley team of "experts", to come in and do whatever they want with your systems? What company would allow that?
Also turns out that they're making up shit. $8 billion "saved" was actually $8 million because they didn't do their homework.
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/02/doge-mu...
> official statements say he's (Musk) not the DOGE administrator, but no one knows who is
That's because they believe in maximum transparency.
s/max/min/g
Which cloud provider is DOGE using?
They're only listed source is an employee of USAID.
I have no reason to believe anything in this article.
Well, it is a government agency tasked with audits. Why shouldn't it have root access?
Your employer is being audited. An unaccompanied stranger wearing a visitor pass comes up to your desk. He says "Hello I'm the password security auditor, tell me your password so I can make sure it's secure"
Will your company fail the audit if don't hand over the information?
Or will your company fail the audit if if you do hand it over?
You've clearly never been audited by the federal government.
In the case of the IRS, generally, you must hand over the data they request or you go to jail.
Whether or not it's behind a password protected internal system is irrelevant. Everything is potentially material to any conspiracy to commit tax fraud.
I see no reason why the Federal government itself, which works for us, should not be subject to reciprocal treatment.
Big difference between the IRS and random friends of the President. Congressional Acts is one
Federal government can audit and wiretap citizens, citizens should be able to audit and wiretap the Federal government.
Your position is any citizen should be able to access the private information of any other citizen? Because that is in essence what "wiretapping the Federal government" would lead to.
Personal privacy aside, how are secrets imperative to national security protected if you allow full audits by any American citizen?
That's not what I said.
Musk is roughly as democratically elected as the average IRS bureaucrat (arguably more so, since the guy auditing you most certainly never appeared on the campaign trail), so I view it as a wash.
Which is a good reason we don't have average IRS bureaucrats behind the resolute desk, right?
I agree as long as all of that flows through the courts, since by law that’s what’s required of the federal government. The FOIA mechanism is the mechanism we have today to audit and wiretap the government although it’s generally quite weak. That’s NOT what’s happening here.
I’d prefer it if random citizens don’t have access to my personal information, that happens to be stored in federal government systems. Especially without any guarantees or regulations around the access.
Bad news, there's a spreadsheet of every Americans SSN, Residential Address, and more widely available with a bit of googling.
It's currently being passed around Lagos on zip drives as we speak, and has been for years.
Good old security by full data disclosure. Are you available for CISO positions by any chance? Your methods are revolutionary
That is unfortunate. The point was refuted so you attack the messenger.
> Good old security by full data disclosure
Therein lies the problem: it's not a government agency, at least not without Congressional approval.
Usually, you do not hand out “root access” to auditors. Auditors are there to gather information (e.g to audit) and report.
In general, you don’t give out broadly permissive access to sensitive systems because people (yes even incredibly competent people) are prone to getting confused or mistyping and you really don’t want anyone deleting the entire database at the drop of a hat because they didn’t have enough coffee that morning and were logged into the wrong system.
Is it an actual government agency? From what I've (casually) read, it's an ad-hoc thing that isn't actually genuinely legitimate, from that standpoint?
Technically DOGE is part of the United States Digital Service (USDS)
>Is it an actual government agency?
Yes. With full support from the recently democratically elected president of the united states.
>> Is it an actual government agency?
Yes. In 2014, after the disastrous rollout of the Healthcare.gov site, President Obama created the "United States Digital Service" (USDS). Its stated mission was to modernize technology and improve efficiency across all US departments and agencies.
President Trump renamed the USDS to the "United States DOGE Service" (USDS) and created a temporary "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE) organization within the USDS that will operate until July 4, 2026.
Every US government agency is required to establish a DOGE team within that agency to work with the USDS to "improve the quality and efficiency of government-wide software, network infrastructure, and information technology (IT) systems".
It's not. But pseudo-intellects and idiots are still under Elon's spell.
No, it is not a government agency.
No, it is not tasked with audits. It is not performing any audit before its actions, nor is it producing anything resembling an audit.
No, audits do not require root access. And in fact root access (the ability to change data) contradicts audit best practices.
> Well, it is a government agency tasked with audits. Why shouldn't it have root access?
Why should it? I've participated in a number of audits. None of them involved giving the auditors root access. They get read-only access to exactly what they need and nothing more, if they get access at all. Oftentimes it's the people with access pulling data based on what they request.
Just curious: have you ever been a part of any audit? May be at your workplace or a tax audit?
This is an idea you just made up to defend this BS.
Like, audit's require root access? What? Is this real life? Are people just making things up and saying whatever to defend someone who has no allegiance to this country getting the keys to the kingdom while also coincidentally making a fortune off of taxpayers through federal subsidies? Are you slow?
Not a government agency.
i hope they try to use cjis data bc it's taken me 6 months to build a system that is technically compliant and it still doesn't fully pass. they definitely will fail the data security policy requirements.
This isnt a dig at you but something i have noticed over the last few weeks. People keep saying X/Y wont be able to do something because of rules, laws, requirements and i have to keep reminding people rules/laws are only as good as those willing to enforce them
fair point! i guess it does sound like an inept democrat lol.
though you don't wanna fuck with the fbi https://le.fbi.gov/cjis-division/cjis-security-policy-resour...
The FBI reports to the president. They aren't going to stop anything.
well, at least they are trying: https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/fbi-...
Having access to the data scares me less than the utter ineptitude demonstrated in presenting “findings”. Findings in quotes because if I used that level of analytical rigour I’d be instantly fired, probably out of a cannon into the sun.
It's as if that's not what it's about at all.
Putting aside the whole idea that Elon "bought" his way into this position, it's crazy this is the path that Trump is taking. He has a house and a senate that would likely happily cut all these programs, and it could be done legally and without all this mess. Why let Elon run roughshod over the government?
It's in the Project 2025 playbook. They're trying to overwhelm everyone so you can't possible keep track of all they're doing. Store security could handle one shoplifter at a time; but when you have a riot and mass looting - you have fewer options and often just step aside and let them loot. Then deal with the mess later.
Also - he's a narcissist and he wants all the credit.
Also - he's a wannabe dictator, and on his way to making it a reality, so he's demonstrating that he does not need permission or help.
Not related to Project 2025, and they have countless times said they aren't associated with that project.
But yes, "Flood the Zone" is the strategy to combat Democrat's media and court strategies.
It was started by Steve Bannon in 2018, but expanded massively under Stephen Miller.
The rest of your post is just hysteria so I won't comment on that.
No. The current GOP administration, starting from before this election:
- supported funding Project 2025's development by GOP members
- talked about Project 2025 favorably
- saw Project 2025 demonized by the media
- THEN denied they support Project 2025
- got elected using Project 2025 tactics
- hired Project 2025 author INTO this new administration
- are currently implementing Project 2025 policies.
SO "THEY ARE ASSOCIATED WITH PROJECT 2025" seems closer to "true" and "fact" than unlikely.
Please find me a clip where Trump supported Project 2025, I'll wait.
In every instance, he has said he is not affiliated with it and doesn't support it as a whole.
Now there are some agendas in Project 2025 that are fine, some that are pretty out there. So yeah there will be overlap in policies.
Just wanted to point out you were wrong about their strategy. There's a name for it it's called "Flood the zone" and it's older than Project 2025.
https://www.project2025.observer/
Trump is either in charge and actively supporting its goals, or he is not really in charge and is being duped into supporting its goals. “Some overlap” is an understatement, especially only this far into his presidency. They’re doing exactly what they said they would.
> Please find me a clip where Trump supported Project 2025, I'll wait.
Trump said parts of Project 2025 are "very good" in Dec 2024. Can't link a clip right now as I'm at lunch at work, but it should be easy to find
Yes, and some parts are very good. He also said some parts are not very good in the same statement.
That does not translate to supporting the entire agenda.
> That does not translate to supporting the entire agenda.
I don't think anyone in this thread has claimed that he supports the entire agenda.
Okay. We're all good then.
>> Please find me a clip where Trump supported Project 2025, I'll wait
> That does not translate to supporting the entire agenda.
You're moving the goalposts.
The original post in this thread was about their breakneck speed.
Project 2025 was misattributed to this, it's called "Flood the Zone".
Everything after that is just noise.
> Please find me a clip where Trump supported Project 2025, I'll wait.
So someone can only be accused of supporting something if it is caught on video?
Supporting evidence certainly helps when accusing someone.
I'm trying to sort out if there is a particular political bent to the HN crowd.
> they have countless times said they aren't associated with that project
Right, but they are visibly are. Russ Vought (project 2025) is the Office of Management and Budget director. He drafted the executive orders months ago that would lead to exactly this. Part of Project 2025
Other members in Trumps cabinet from Project 2025:
- Tom Homan (Border Czar)
- Brendan Carr (FCC)
- John Ratcliffe (CIA Director)
> The rest of your post is just hysteria so I won't comment on that.
Maybe don't accuse others of hysteria while you spout that Democrats are the ones coordinating every independent attorney and judge to come after Trump.
> In every instance, he has said he is not affiliated with it and doesn't support it
You sound like you were born yesterday. If you can't imagine why a politician would say one thing and do the other, I really can't help you. You're maliciously ignorant.
Having someone in your cabinet doesn't mean their views override yours.
It's good to have a cabinet of diverse thought. You can pool all perspectives to make a final informed decision.
That's why he has ex-democrats like RFK and Tulsi. Doesn't mean he will implement all of RFKs views though.
And I didn't say they coordinated every judge/attorney, you put those words there. I simply said court strategies.
It's a well known strategy to shop around for judges to bring a court case. Republicans do it too. Though Democrats excel at it.
> Not related to Project 2025, and they have countless times said they aren't associated with that project.
lmao the chief author is the head of the OMB my guy[1]
[1]https://apnews.com/article/trump-russell-vought-confirmation...
There's plenty of people in the cabinet and other positions with many political views and proposals, including ex-democrats.
That doesn't mean all of their views will be implemented. Just a subset that Trump agrees with, or even some they disagree with that Trump tells them to.
The goal is to reduce government spending by $2 Trillion in 4 years. If you want to see how this is going: https://polymarket.com/doge
That's not the goal at all. And that's not how its going.
https://www.npr.org/2025/02/19/nx-s1-5302705/doge-overstates...
> Of the DOGE list's initial claim of $16 billion in savings, half came from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) listing that was entered into the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) in 2022 with a whopping $8 billion maximum possible value.
> According to a DOGE post on X, that number was a typo that was corrected in the contract database to $8 million on Jan. 22 of this year before being terminated a week later, and DOGE "has always used the correct $8M in its calculations."
Jeez, that's pretty damning.
This linked website has an incentive to portray this "savings" as larger than it actually is.
Why is this a bad thing if their job is to audit budget and spending? The article also does not go into technical details on what this supposed god mode actually is.
That's the issue right? No one knows what access they have, so you should assume the worst. They've already been claiming that they are making writes, so full write privilege isn't off the table.
It's not even the access that's the issue though, it's the lack of oversight. If I login to a Prod database, my commands are logged which allow the team to go back and figure out what happened if something didn't go as expected. We have backups and response processes to deal with "oops" situations. I strongly doubt the DOGE team has any fallback plan, and it would be irresponsible to simply assume they've thought fallback through.
This is more troubling with the systems being tricky legacy systems. You might have the best intentions, but it is really easy to make mistakes in brittle systems even if you are careful. We've already seen evidence that the team may have no idea how to interpret the data they're seeing. It'd be reckless to start making edits while only having a partial understanding of the system.
The story from DOGE is "look at all this fraud we've found, we're going to fix it now". It's not "here's a bunch of things we want to investigate further". It's not "here's how we're going to test whether this is actually fraud". It's not "here's what we're going to try and how we're going to revert if we are wrong".
They aren't auditing anything. Programmers/engineers don't audit budget and spending. If they were doing an audit, they would have accountants on their team, which they don't. If you bring coders/engineers into a system, it's for accessing/manipulating data/code/infrastructure. This is an enormous and unprecedented overreach.
They're data scientists amongst other things, you need to tie different data tables and sources together to get hotspot reports.
This isn't an audit.
The DOGE is mainly staffed by former employees of Elon Musk's companies, many of them being in their early twenties and one being 19 years old [1]. The presence of so many Musk associates is a conflict of interest: supposing "god mode" means that DOGE has unfiltered access to the private data of US citizens, there's not much stopping Elon Musk from exploiting that data for personal gain. And besides, would you want your private data to be in the hands of so many very young people who have little prior experience in anything?
[1] - https://www.newsweek.com/doge-list-staff-revealed-2029965
If you want accountability someone needs to have root access. If you don't want accountability, you are a politician getting kickbacks through obfuscation.
That someone needs accountability themselves. Musk is not elected, his role isn’t defined. Really, he’s a patsy, he can do what he does, fortify his corporations, maybe trim some waste, have a falling out with Trump (it’s inevitable) and then trump blames him for the damage.
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That's an empty argument. I think people hate musk, if they do, for the things he does and has done. It's not the other way around. Judging people for their actions is a fair way to look at it.
> I think people hate musk, if they do, for the things he does and has done.
No, they hate Musk for the things he says and has said (And things he allows other people to say on his platform).
Some people treat actions more seriously than words. Others choose to treat words more seriously than actions.
I can’t speak for others, but for me it’s all about his actions.
First it was destroying Twitter, which was something I rather enjoyed using.
Then, far worse, it was pouring vast resources into getting a terrible person elected.
Some people have read history, and know that words turn into actions over time. Especially those that feed (and feed on) fear and hatred.
Yes, it happens. Somebody just shot up a Tesla dealership (that had recently also suffered an arson attempt), probably radicalised by online rhetoric.
But on the other hand, regimes that crack down aggressively on speech don't tend to end up on the 'right side of history' either.
It might be a good reflection for you to consider why you still somehow feel like a victim in this precise moment.
Luckily the right has never had radicalized violence, so let's give anyone with an "I love Trump" bumper sticker unfettered and non-transparent access to any resource they want.
Trump fired the person investigating him, now Musk got to do the same. It's a Republican right of passage.
I mostly liked Musk until he decided that a vindictive, incompetent moron was the best person to run the country, and poured vast resources into ensuring that happened.
You might say this just shows it’s because I hate Trump. To which I’d ask, do you really think my description of the guy is inaccurate?
What is the point of all of this? Reducing federal income taxes? It seems to me that these people are pushing a rope if that's the goal.
For example, USAID is 1% of federal spending, but buys the US a disproportionate amount of soft power and good will for that investment.
Also, why 20-year olds? You'd think a person as resourced as Musk would have access to more capable people. When I was 20 years old I didn't know a thing about the Federal government or all the ways it benefits Americans.
I don't see DOGE solving an actual problem, and even if it did, this is a horribly incompetent way to go about it.
We are adding 1 trillion dollars to the deficit every 100 days.
> What is the point of all of this?
Just my opinion, but the most obvious motives seem to be:
* Breaking the back of the institutional opposition Trump experienced in his previous term
* Flexing strength and creating a narrative of unitary executive power
The list of the frode and abuse
The difference between DOGE and previous overreaches of power like the Department of Homeland Security is the attack on the truth.
What do I mean by that? Well, during the previous political era (loosely 9/11 through the COVID-19 pandemic), when intellectuals spoke truth to power, power listened.
So people like us could voice our opinions on constitutionality, historical precedent, etc, and eventually our points made their way up through the news cycle and someone in a position of power would validate our concerns.
Whereas today, people like Elon Musk belittle academic arguments as nonconstructive because they haven't made us money and we aren't rich. So obviously we're wrong.
This wasn't always the case. Some billionaires could be very stubborn, but at their core, they still held themselves to a higher standard, a geek ethos. It mattered what academics thought.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I side with Bill Gates on this.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/27/bill-gates-e...
Trump/Musk are using "corruption/fraud" as a lie to remake the government in their image (or Project2025's image), in the same way that Bush used WMDs as a lie to invade Iraq.
Where's the evidence of widespread corruption? If there really was corruption and fraud, then we'd be hearing of people being investigated and/or charged with breaking the law, not randomly fired or fired for ideological/loyalty/retribution reasons.
This reminds me of that scene in Don't Look Up where the planet puts all of their hopes in an eclectic oligarch's dumb plan to blow up the asteroid about to obliterate the planet, and it fails miserably. There is no chance any of this bodes well for many people not directly standing to profit directly from this pillaging of the federal government, and I'm not sure there is a way to recover from whatever is being done here. GG, I guess.
Here is my prediction...I know nobody asked for it :-) But they are only fun if you make them before the events...A massive, unpriced risk looms over financial markets... Its scale defies prediction.
The current administration’s safeguards are faltering, running like a government still in FSD beta. With U.S. debt dismissed as “just debt,” inflationary tariffs in play, and an emergency Fed rate hike imminent, shockwaves are inevitable.
Deficit panic may soon lead to manipulated figures and a narrative bent to suit unstable agendas. The bond market’s credibility will collapse, making the Liz Truss debacle seem trivial compared to the turmoil expected over the next two years.
Even the most sophisticated hedge funds and quants can’t quantify an administration gone off the rails... But just look at the current price of gold...
The narrative already started: "Trump says US may have less debt than thought because of fraud - Trump says some Treasury payments might 'not count'" - https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/trump-says-us-might-have-...
"The World’s Most Important Market Sends a Warning" - https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-02-18/the-wo...
> Trump says US may have less debt than thought because of fraud - Trump says some Treasury payments might 'not count'
Ugh, is that different words for "we ain't paying this because we say it's fraud"?
A lot of Government contracts that are on the surface multi-million, even billion dollars, aren't payed out immediately in full. Thus, at first glance it may look like they've spent more than has left their pockets
Yes, the real check on Trump isn't congress or the courts any more, it is the bond markets. It they get scared, he is in big trouble.
You bet: https://www.aei.org/op-eds/donald-trump-needs-to-fear-the-bo...
HN clearly not :-))
People did not vote to give Elon Musk absolute, unaccountable access to the most sensitive machineries of government.
They've fired and hobbled all of the inspectors general and parties that are supposed to monitor and hold them accountable. This is nothing short of a security nightmare and insider threat of the highest degree.
I think I have a hunch what Trump is going to do next.
He's going to fill these fired probationary workers with new loyal probationary workers hand picked by him.
He will then make these new probationary workers in charge of the agency.
If they don't do what he wants, they can be fired at will.
I disagree. He'll wait until things start breaking, use that as more reason that government isn't effective, and start selling the parts to new, different contractors.
I legitimately believe his reasoning is money and ego pumping. But mostly money.
This is basic disaster economics, but with a self-made disaster instead of a natural disaster.
I don't disagree, I think some disasters will be or are being made.
However, he needs these groups to some extent to roll back regulations. He can't be assured existing people will play ball.
So with hand picked cronies with no job security pushed to run the show over the ones with some job security he can push for deregulation.
If disasters happen along the way he can blame Brandon er Biden, etc and sell a heroic fix for profits.
Yes, good.
I think over half of this article is wildly speculative hyperbole. "Here is a list of things we can imagine that DOGE might do with this data: 1. Invent super solider zombies. 2. Blackmail you (you specifically are at risk here) 3. Sell all the data to China who will work with Israel and Mexico to conquer America
You should be extremely worried! Run in Fear of what might come to pass!" because some guy filled out a request to have admin access to some government data stores. Ridiculous. Between United, BCBS, and existing Chinese infiltrations into OPM and telcos your data is already compromised by real / confirmed bad actors. This is disappointing click bait from the Atlantic and their editors should be ashamed of its publication.
Just imagine one second if Poutine really have a file on Trump and this is the ultimate holdup to give Russia access to all US systems...
It will all land in Moscow. Or Beijing. Have fun.
China already had full access (and extracted) all treasury information in a recent cyber attack. Look it up
I’m not interested. I don’t care, I’m on a different continent and we will soon have other problems.
DOGE = EGOD = EGO/GOD
len("EGO") == len("GOD") == 3
Half Life 3 confirmed.
this is not good
giving DOGE sudo is a whole article?
Musk would have liked to be the US president but can’t because he’s South African.
So he conned the stupidest but most powerful man alive into letting him be acting president.
You have to stop being your information from CNN and Reddit. It destroys your critical thinking skills and ultimately drives some people insane
The last time this topic came up, I manually and then with AI analyzed 13 articles talking about 'read/write' access - and all of it was 2nd or 3rd party info from anonymous sources.
Reading this article it appears on the surface to be a little more conclusive... but once you peel back ther layers, we are back to square one. There are many red flags still that make me question the reliability of this:
the senior USAID source said. “What do you do with this information? I had to ask myself, Do I file my taxes this year or not? I had to sit and debate that.”
Ok this is kind of silly - assuming they are being fully honest and forthright, then their account information would already be 'compromised' unless they change banks yearly which seems.. unlikely.
So why wasn't their question "Should I close the account I used for tax refunds in the past? Should I try to create an insulated account instead" -- rather instead, they subtly implant the idea that maybe they should do something illegal in response to this supposed breach. (not file taxes, like them or not - not interested in sovereign citizen arguments btw).
So this right out of the gate feels like FUD by virtue of that alone... and if you are cynical enough you could probably argue this is propaganda meant to cause well-meaning citizens to break the law out of fear, which is deplorable.
"Over the past few days, we’ve talked with civil servants working for numerous agencies, all of whom requested anonymity because they fear what will happen if they lose their job—not just to themselves, but to the functioning of the federal government."
Ok so it's all anonymous sources again - everyone is up in arms and there isn't even clarity in this article if the anonymous sources are first party, second party, third party, or what. Previous FUD campaigns at least made that clear, but I'll try to pick this one apart as well. Additionaly, they are implying that somehow not being anonymous may jeopardize the entire functioning of the federal govt... excuse me, what??
I did the same AI analysis using CoPilot as I did on previous articles, and this is what it came up with breaking down the 'sources':
Anonymous Source: Type: Anonymous Details: The article cites an anonymous source described as a “civil servants” who provides insights into the Doge God Mode Access incident.
NOTE (from me not CoPilot): This is entirely irrelevant, they are presenting a 'nightmare' situation a security researcher and asking their opinion of it. This does not mean the scenario is happening, and does not support the thesis.
Hypothetical Scenarios: Type: Hypothetical Details: The article includes hypothetical scenarios, such as the one about NASA’s thermal-protection or encryption technologies, to illustrate potential risks and vulnerabilities.
NOTE (from me not CoPilot): I think we can all agree hypotheticals are pointless if you haven't reliably established baseline 'facts' the support the hypothetical - so far there is a running trend, as it's all based on hypothetical fear mongering
That's it - that's the meat of this article.
The articles is also riddles with other clues that this is a slanted report like: "One experienced government information-security contractor offered a blunt response to the God-mode situation at USAID: “That sounds like our worst fears come true.”" -- ok but he clearly has no knowledge, so describing a worst fear and then going 'omg that soudds bad' is pointless..
People really need to step up their media literacy skills if they want to get through the next four years without having an aneurhysim -- and this to me just says that the work DOGE is doing is probably threatening the pocket books of many 'important people'.
Hey speaking of important people, who funds The Atlantic anyway...
Doing the hard work for HN readers. Thank you.
The Atlantic: https://www.influencewatch.org/for-profit/the-atlantic/
"The Atlantic is a left-of-center literary, political, and ideas magazine that publishes ten issues per year. It was founded as The Atlantic Monthly in 1857 by several prominent American literary figures such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 1 In 2017 the Emerson Collective, a left-of-center private grantmaking enterprise funded by Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow and heir of Apple Computer executive Steve Jobs, purchased majority ownership. 2 Jeffrey Goldberg, previously a prominent writer for the magazine, was named editor-in-chief in October 2016. 3
In contrast to most of its editorial history, after 2016 political criticism became a much larger priority for The Atlantic. From its founding in 1857 to 2016, the publication had endorsed only two presidential candidates, but then did so for two elections in a row in 2016 and 2020, declaring in 2020 that President Donald Trump “poses a threat to our collective existence.” After Trump’s 2016 election, the magazine sharply increased the attention it dedicated to politicians and the presidency. From 2016 through 2019 (covering the 2016 election and first three years of the Trump administration), President Donald Trump was the subject of eight cover stories–all negative. This contrasts with President Barack Obama, who—following a cover story for his January 2009 inauguration—was not the subject of another cover story for the next two years. Similarly, from 2000 through 2003 (i.e.: the 2000 Presidential election and first three years of the George W. Bush administration) President George W. Bush was directly referenced in just one cover feature."
I bet these guys are super duper impartial and we should all just trust that this journalists 'anonymous sources' who never are quoted in any manner which implies the god mode claims are true must be true. I couldn't conceive of a situation where they may lie about something this egregious through carefully worded articles which state nothing of the nature of the access, are all off record anonymous sources, and which clearly has an axe to grind with Trump in particular.
"Jeffrey Goldberg was named editor in chief of The Atlantic in October 2016 and held the position as of November 2020. Prior to being elevated to the top editorial spot, Goldberg had been a correspondent for the magazine since 2007 and had written numerous essays covering foreign policy in general and the Middle East in particular. 3
Just days prior to Goldberg’s promotion, the magazine endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton for president, The Atlantic’s first presidential endorsement since 1964 and only the third in its history. In October 2020, the Goldberg-led publication made its fourth presidential endorsement for Democratic nominee (and eventual winner) Joe Biden. The essays were respectively titled “Against Donald Trump” (2016) and “The Case Against Donald Trump” (2020). The 2020 endorsement asserted Trump “poses a threat to our collective existence” and that “the choice voters face is spectacularly obvious.
In July 2017, David G. Bradley, then the owner of The Atlantic, announced he was selling a majority stake in the magazine to the Emerson Collective, a left-of-center private grantmaking enterprise funded by Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple Computer executive Steve Jobs. The announcement stated the Emerson Collective would likely assume “full ownership” of the publication within five years, or by summer of 2022. The reported purchase price for Jobs’ initial 70 percent stake was $100 million. ”
....
“It felt like the place was becoming a hot-take factory,” said one recently departed writer. “That can be profitable, of course, because hot takes don’t cost much.”
Now if you got this far and are still thinking "yeah but I trust the Atlantic, they are the pinnacle of news and they don't need to show their work!" I would urge you to read the full 'Controversies' section @ https://www.influencewatch.org/for-profit/the-atlantic/
Here are a few choice items though that just -might- impact their impartiality and should maybe cause you to second guess if 'anonymous, unquoted sources' are a great journalistic bar for 'the truth':
"A September 2020 report authored by Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, cited “multiple sources” claiming President Donald Trump had disparaged the historical sacrifices made by American military personnel. The headline read “Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’” with a sub-headline sentence stating “The president has repeatedly disparaged the intelligence of service members, and asked that wounded veterans be kept out of military parades, multiple sources tell The Atlantic.” 15
Both the content and context of the allegation was disputed in whole or in part by the president, his staff, and even some of his critics, including left-wing journalists.
The two opening paragraphs set the context and provided the sourcing for the allegation:
When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true.
Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed. 15
John Bolton, the President’s former National Security Advisor turned Trump critic, was on the 2018 trip and involved in the discussion regarding the motive for the helicopter grounding and cancelling of the motorcade alternative. Despite having become a severe Trump critic who had by September 2020 stated that President Trump was not fit for office, Bolton gave the New York Times an eyewitness account of the incident that differed sharply from that presented by The Atlantic
Mr. Bolton said he was in the room at the ambassador’s residence when Mr. Trump arrived and Mr. [White House Chief of Staff John] Kelly told him that the helicopter trip had to be canceled. A two-hour motorcade would have put him too far away from Air Force One and the most capable communications array a president needs in case of an emergency, per usual protocol, Mr. Bolton said. “It was a straight weather call,” he said." .... "Former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders stated: “I was actually there and one of the people part of the discussion — this never happened.” And Jordan Karem, the former personal assistant to the president during period in question, replied to the story with a Twitter statement: “This is not even close to being factually accurate. Plain and simple, it just never happened.”"
So they literally have just 'made up' stuff about Trumpt to make him look vein and stupid, and people who basically hate him even called them on this charade. And I know for sure I remember this making the rounds -- so their lies get around due tot their perceived authority.
This was the rationale:
Goldberg replied: “They don’t want to be inundated with angry tweets and all the rest … In this case I decided that I felt I knew this information well enough, from high enough sources, and multiple sources, that I thought we should put it out.”
I'll stop here - but if you go on to read the rest, Glenn Greenwald (an actually good investigative journalist with integrity) rips The Atlantic to shreds, they have multiple other controversies, they have dubious financial ties... and so on
If you believe this 'God Mode' article it is strictly an act of faith in the party you have pronounced your allegiance to.
If they have the ability to change data, then absolutely none of their claims can be trusted. Neither Musk nor his A-team of hackers have demonstrated any integrity through their career - contrary to HN guidelines, the default position is to assume the worst from them.
Think about it once they begin putting the opposition on show trials.
their claims can't be trusted because they fail at basic accounting and reading. Something something malice incompetence.
https://twitter.com/electricfutures/status/18918983362081056...
> The single biggest ticket item is a DHS contract listed as saving $8 billion. Wow, that's a huge contract! Actually no, it's $8 million. They must have tried to automate scraping the FPDS form and failed.
It is even worse, this $8M contract is alread partially executed, so only $5.5 millions are left.
And it does not say anything about what is being cut by cancelling the contract and whether it is useful or not.
This talking point keeps blowing my mind.
They occasionally make minor mistakes! If only voters had known that occasionally minor mistakes (in reporting of all places) might be made, they'd have insisted we stick with the bureaucracy they know and love!
But hey, I guess it at least did happen. It's better than the grasping-at-straws "they'll probably leak your SS number" talking point. And the "he'll redirect treasury payments to himself" talking point.
I think you're missing the point, which is not "they make mistakes" but "they have no idea what they're doing".
That's the case being made, yes. It's not supported by the mistakes reported, at least yet.
How is it not? If you report a saving of 100% of a contract that is 80% already executed, you either don't understand what you're doing or you are intentionally lying.
Or you're working, despite opposition, against the largest bureaucracy the world has ever known, on a very tight timeframe with limited resources, and staffed by humans that are not perfect.
This is inaccurate. In September 2022, the agency contracting officer mistakenly wrote $8B instead of $8M when logging in the FPDS database. DOGE discovered this error in January 2025, and the agency updated FPDS accordingly.
Except DOGE (at the time of this article) kept their claim of saving $8B and pointed at the old contract to make their stats look better.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/upshot/doge-contracts-mus...
The DOGE website initially included a screenshot from the federal contracting database showing that the contract’s value was $8 million, even as the DOGE site listed $8 billion in savings. On Tuesday night, around the time this article was published, DOGE removed the screenshot that showed the mismatch, but continued to claim $8 billion in savings. It added a link to the original, outdated version of the contract worth $8 billion.
Trustworthy and transparent. I guess fixing a typo is worth $8B?
"By examining past versions of the contract listed on the Federal Procurement Data System, The Upshot determined that the federal award, approved in September 2022, had initially listed a total value of $8 billion. But on Jan. 22 this year, that figure was updated to $8 million...
It's possible that DOGE or someone else in the Trump administration can claim credit for fixing the error in the contracting database, given that the value was downgraded to $8 million two days after President Trump took office. "
-NYT TFA
So Bureaucracy incompetence, mistake is around for >2 years, DOGE fixes it.
Screenshot and FPDS DB were out of sync, "PDS posting of the final termination notices can have up to a 1-month lag."
It was a typo. No one was paid that amount and wouldn't have been paid that amount. If fixing a typo in a reporting system is a huge win for you I guess...ok.
Oh, so you mean they weren’t incompetent, they knew the correct figure but deliberately lied about it?
No, the DOGE website scrapes from the FPDS DB. The DB wasn't updated immediately. Like I quoted in an adjacent comment "PDS posting of the final termination notices can have up to a 1-month lag."
Your bias is blinding you to what is the obvious explanation that I'm sure you'd recognize if you saw it on a non-political website.
I just want to point out one more thing: DOGE didn't advertise this 8M savings anywhere, there wasn't a speech about it etc. This was found on https://doge.gov/savings
Just incompetent, then.
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Your comment is vague so it's not clear if you are accusing voters in general of uncrtitically accepting obvious propaganda or if you yourself have believed obvious propaganda generated by DOGE.
Now that they can edit data, nothing can be proven, as they broke the chain of trust and accountability.
A criminal case can be thrown out if policemen didn't follow procedure, the same applies here. Those rules are put in place to protect all of us, and can't be handwaved because "that guy got elected" (with 49.8% of popular votes BTW).
The distinction between whether or not someone is formally registered as dead and whether or if they receive money are two completely different things and should not be confused. If you conflate the two issues then you can only be being disingenuous.
I've worked at a company which had people who have been dead longer than America exists in their database and some of them do not have a recorded date of death. That does not mean they are not dead, just that the death was not confirmed. And no they weren't being paid.
However if you get some junior developer in with no real knowledge of what they are doing on the job, stuff like this will appear and you can use it for political collateral because no one cares enough to understand the problem and ask questions. Like yourself.
No 300 year old pensionier got a paycheck. There was an audit just a few years back which didn't find big/relevant issues.
The USA Gov is not completly brain dead.
And no 'people didn't vote for this'. 1. only about 60-70% of people voted and from them around 50% voted for Trump.
The question is still valid if this should allow the current gov to overhaul the whole system that agressivly.
A gov and the people depending on it, are not tech bros who can afford to get fired.
Musk/Trump is already responsible for real death alone through the way they cut USAID: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people...
There is a 'okayisch' way to stop everything (its the USA choice if the most powerful and richest country is no longer able or motivated to help around the globe despite the damage a country like the USA does around the globe, think co2, resources etc.) and there is the Musk/Trump way and no this is not okay at all. Its a breach of social contract, respect etc.
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Related to a comment on a now-flagged subthread: can anyone who believes that DOGE is uncovering fraud please post a reliable reference that gives a specific example of fraud uncovered by DOGE? To be clear, this should be a third-party analysis of some credibility, not DOGE's or Musk's twitter feed or "receipts" website which shows cancelled contracts with no clear link to fraudulent activity.
The claims of fraud are a pretext for going into the agencies and making the partisan changes they wanted to make anyway. There's no point asking for a detailed discussion because the whole plan is to use the discussion of fraud as cover for the thing they're actually doing.
I think wired nailed it:
"This is incompetence born of self-confidence. It’s a familiar Silicon Valley mindset, the reason startups are forever reinventing a bus, or a bodega, or mail. It’s the implacable certainty that if you’re smart at one thing you must be smart at all of the things."
"And if you don’t believe in the public good? You sprint through the ruination. You metastasize from agency to agency, leveling the maximum allowable destruction under the law. DOGE’s costly, embarrassing mistakes are a byproduct of reckless nihilism; if artificial intelligence can sell you a pizza, of course it can future-proof the General Services Administration.
https://www.wired.com/story/doge-incompetence-mistakes-featu...
It’s marketed as “fraud, waste and abuse.”
The top-line summaries are definitely consistent with “waste.” Probably some of them have more nuance when you dig deeper, but does anyone disagree that there is not waste in the government?
Fraud and abuse are less clear. But it’s also difficult to ascertain the legitimacy of payments when they’re leaving treasury on checks with no memo or reference, and they’re compared to “do not pay” lists that lack frequent updates.
Here are some of my opinions, as someone who is mostly supportive of the effort but also realistic about its outcomes and risks:
1. The people voted for smaller government, and if the executive doesn’t have the power to reduce the size of its own bureaucracy, then there is no check on ever-expanding government. The executive must have full authority to examine all data produced by itself.
2. Federal spending on salary, agencies and operations is a drop in the bucket compared to entitlements and defense budget. Slashing jobs and even deleting entire agencies will not make a significant dent in the deficit. But if DOGE can really cut $1 trillion by end of year, it will have positive knock-on effects in the bond market.
3. Entitlements shouldn’t be treated with same bull-in-a-china shop approach as the current one towards agencies.
4. Social security probably has some fraud but I doubt it’s significant and is better resolved by identifying and punishing retroactively. Most of the “150 year old people” problems are exaggerated or outright wrong. However, it’s worrying that a system of age-based payouts has such uncertainty in its data.
5. It’s widely known there is significant fraud in Medicaid and Medicare. The true volume of this fraud is unknown and any effort to quantify it would be welcomed. But while fraudulent claims may be an issue, the real problem is unaccountable pricing of the healthcare system that allows for “legitimate” claims to cost more than any sane person would pay out of pocket.
6. In general, “if nothing breaks, you’re not cutting enough” is obviously true. But it does not follow that “things breaking” is an acceptable cost to pay. The approach needs to come with a well-defined rubric for evaluating not only “what to cut,” but also “which cuts to rollback.”
> However, it’s worrying that a system of age-based payouts has such uncertainty in its data.
The data itself may have to be interpreted, which I would classify as 'suboptimal', but seemingly 'normal' for most projects I work with. I often have to join together various tables, remembering to include or exclude specific data via conditional logic. The conditional logic may be context-dependent, and documenting those cases is really key. Why include/exclude specific subsets of data to answer questions XYZ? Have those criteria changed over the years (and if so, why?)
Looking at raw data tables it's often quite easy to come up with ways to show the data to support whatever case you're trying to make.
> 1. The people voted for smaller government, and if the executive doesn’t have the power to reduce the size of its own bureaucracy, then there is no check on ever-expanding government.
Congress specifies the size of most government bodies through its Article 1 power of Appropriation. The Executive's job is to administer what the People's delegates have decided to do. Deciding how much to spend is not the President job, and never has been.
The Republican Congress that was also presumably just elected to reduce government can at any time send legislation to the Republican President that will reduce the size of government; in fact, they are working on a budget bill right now. They are free to restructure government as much as they want, because Congress has been explicitly vested with that power.
A lot of people don't like this, but the Constitution is very clear on this point. It's also quite readable; you can read it yourself and verify that I am not making this up!
If I may:
Their is a huge conflict of ingerest of giving this power to a major economical actor that vastly depends on public investment and under public scrutinity.
Executive should have the audit right and in some measure probably it should be widespread to all citizens up to sensitive data not being leaked. But what good is there to give this power solely to one of the richest and more powerful man in the world? This is crazy.
> 1. The people voted for smaller government […]
The people voted for President and the people voted for Congress. If Congress, who under the US Constitution controls the purse, votes for a level of "X" spending why does the President get to decide to spend <X?
> 6. In general, “if nothing breaks, you’re not cutting enough” is obviously true.
It is not obviously true. Because what you're cutting may be resiliency.
To use a tech analogy: if I have two firewalls in an HA configuration, then decommissioning one to save on support costs will not break things… until the first one goes belly-up and there's no failover.
There's a reasonable argument to be made that more government capacity is actually needed (at least in certain sectors):
* https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/america-needs-a-bigger-better-...
The IRS for example would probably do better with more resources:
> That’s one reason that five former commissioners of IRS, Republican and Democrat, have argued eloquently that additional IRS resources would create a fairer tax system. The logic is simple. Fewer resources for the IRS mean reduced enforcement of tax laws. Though the tax code has become more complex, prior to the IRA real resources of the IRS had been cut by about 23 percent from 2010 to 2021.
* https://taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/cutting-irs-resources-and...
> Congress asked the IRS to report on why it audits the poor more than the affluent. Its response is that it doesn’t have enough money and people to audit the wealthy properly. So it’s not going to.
* https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-sorry-but-its-just-ea...
> But if DOGE can really cut $1 trillion by end of year, it will have positive knock-on effects in the bond market.
It will certainly be interesting to see how the US economy will be affected by $1 trillion less money circulating.
How and why would this produce positive knock-on effects in the bond market?
I presume the idea of $1 trillion less bonds being issues would decrease supply and decrease the price we need to charge. (More demand for the same supply decreases bond prices). This would have the impact of reducing the interest payments in the federal budget, which is becoming burdensome.
I personally am just as worried that reducing US gov spending will worsen a potential 2025 or 2026 recession (which might lower rates...)
> The top-line summaries are definitely consistent with “waste.”
Can you give a reference for an analysis of some cancelled contract or program that illustrates your point that it was wasteful spending? I'm looking for something that explains what the contract or program did beyond the 10-word title of the appropriations document saying something like "DEIA Training". (I work for a big private corporation and we also have such training, and I don't think from the corporate perspective its waste; I strongly suspect they attempt to balance the spend on that training to the cost reduction on lawsuit payouts. And especially from the government perspective, harm reduction should also be accounted separately from pure cost considerations.)
With regards to (4), it's been well known for a while that since Social Security doesn't check the payments being made into the program with any sort of scrutiny illegal immigrants can often get away with giving the social security numbers of dead people to their employers. Here's an article from 2024 that mentions the problem.
https://bipartisanpolicy.org/explainer/immigration-social-se...
From a policy perspective making it harder for illegal immigrants to be employed might make it worth cracking down on this. But doing so would cost the government money both by preventing these payments into Social Security that don't have to be paid out and also the cost of the crackdown itself.
So, no third party source.
So, you would like another independent non-government entity with full access so they can evaluate DOGE? Like a DO(DOGE)E?
That shouldn’t be necessary. Just literally any independent source corroborating the claims. I would also be immensely interested in that.
Yes. Exactly. It's checks and balances.
The 'right' are all about being open. If something is being cut, or fired, then publish those finding openly. Make the data public, for open review.
Funny how all of a sudden "we need to keep what we are doing secrete" is a fine argument.
Otherwise you are just putting in place a new 'Deep State'. Guess that is fine and dandy now.
It’d be cool if we still had the independent IGs in place to make sure everything’s on the up-and-up. That would definitely make me feel better about this.
But one of the first things Trump did was fire a bunch of them. Blatantly illegally, because of course that’s how he’d do it.
Every large organization needs reviews/audits to find waste. I think the problem with the 'right' is the idea that because there is waste, then government is evil and we should abolish it.
But, every organization accumulates waste, and then needs to have a review process to make corrections. The whole burn it all down is pretty immature take on leadership.
Every corporation has waste, and bloated salaries, entitlements (the bosses son doesn't do much but has fat salary). Should DOGE go in and cut them also?
>1. The people voted for smaller government, and if the executive doesn’t have the power to reduce the size of its own bureaucracy, then there is no check on ever-expanding government. The executive must have full authority to examine all data produced by itself.
The people should educate themselves then. The way to reduce the budget is to elect different congresspeople. We did this in the 90s. It sure is funny how insistent all these people are that we can't just do what we've done before. Are they children who didn't live through the deficit hawk era?
2. "Their claim is impossible, but if they did it, that would be great"
4. "However, it’s worrying that a system of age-based payouts has such uncertainty in its data."
SS payouts ARE NOT based on age, but "eligibility", which age is an input to. The government purposely keeps very gentle records on it's citizens because once we saw a country keep really good records on it's people and then Bad Things happened, and also stuff about the mark of the beast. More importantly, the government takes a light touch to data integrity because the data doesn't matter. If you say you are eligible for benefits, the data says no, you can verify your eligibility a lot of ways and the data does not get updated, because we aren't supposed to be a surveillance state like that. If you want to update your records with the government, you can contact the Social Security admin and do it that way. One of the things Social Security pays out for is Ex Spouses, and that includes Abusive Ex Spouses. Your Abusive Ex I'm sure would love if the SS admin had accurate records about where they can find you. This is a legitimate concern that people working in government have had to address regularly.
5. Define significant. "Everyone thinks X" is a stupid heuristic when ONLY 47% of the country can even name the three branches of government. I don't care what Tim or Sasha think of medicare fraud, I care what GAO or an AG say about medicare fraud.
6. “if nothing breaks, you’re not cutting enough” is obviously true. Nope. Sometimes you just cannot recognize the breaks right away. The stricken vessel can keep going for quite some time before fully sinking. Cutting until shit breaks means you have to figure out what else is broken but not obviously so
And all this nonsense is shattered anyway when the basic premise of "Reducing the debt" is horseshit, which you can see from the tax plan being pushed.
I am shocked, and overjoyed, that this post has not been downvoted; well said.
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The government itself self-reports $149B in "improper payments"
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/doge-musk-government-was...
So it was not uncovered by doge? and it is also not simply fraud? „Every year, agency reports posted online document billions in improper payments, which include fraud but also underpayments, duplicate payments, payments to ineligible recipients or for ineligible goods or services.“ (from the article you linked)
They will twist the narrative and not provide any evidence. I appreciate your request but please don’t be naive. Have you heard of trolling?
I’m happy with a description of a higher standard than, say, a Reddit discussion.
There is widespread fraud in the government. It needs to be addressed. There is widespread inefficiency too.
I think the people in DOGE have the skills and access to address it.
I have no evidence that they are doing so, and some evidence of widespread loyalty tests which, while not identical, remind me of how Stalin came to power.
However, absence if evidence is not evidence of absence, and some evidence is not the same as proof.
I have dozens of explanations which fit the facts, and I don't have any way to determine which, if any, is correct.
> There is widespread fraud in the government.... There is widespread inefficiency too... I think the people in DOGE have the skills and access to address it.
Given that just getting the names of the people involved in this process incurred Musk's wrath and accusations of criminal behaviour... how can you have any justified belief in people having 'skills' to address 'fraud' and 'inefficiency'?
We'd need some common definition of 'fraud' in the first place. Many of the things that have been labelled 'corruption' seem to just be 'things Musk doesn't like'; I suspect 'fraud' would be similar.
"Inefficiencies" - we have the Chesterton's Fence idea to illustrate that what might be 'inefficient' is intentional with an overall positive purpose. Again, define 'inefficiency'. The rate at which firings have been happening may certainly be 'efficient' from an operational standpoint, but having to scramble to rehire key people who shouldn't have been fired in the first place is 'inefficient' at best.
> I have dozens of explanations which fit the facts, and I don't have any way to determine which, if any, is correct.
I'm not sure we have enough verifiable 'facts' that can support many conclusions at all, and I think that 'fact' itself is evidence of intentionality in keeping the public in the dark about what's going on and why.
> I think the people in DOGE have the skills
Do we know any of them? How many are accountants, auditors, etc, people with decades of experience with government affairs?
Even trying to determine who the workers were brought down threats of criminal prosecution and investigations.
With LLMs, it's close to having someone with that experience and knowledge right there with you.
LLMs tend to be very naive in their outputs when you start asking for anything below surface level. If you ask it how to audit something, it'll probably give you a solid high level answer - look at a, b, c and try to build a narrative about how they relate and then look for deviance (I'm not an auditor and I didn't use an LLM for this). Once you start trying to look at the mechanics of how to actually do that, that's when it will start "hallucinating" or just generally swirl. It's the side effect of having a ton of training data on what something is but not much data on how to do it in practice.
This may change at some point in the future, but I would hardly say that using an LLM is "close to having someone with that experience and knowledge," or maybe it is "close" but it isn't a substitute for "having" when dealing with serious topics.
This is an incredibly naive approach to topics that might leave thousands unemployed, uninsured or even dead.
LLMs are basically a C+/B- student, I wouldn't trust my life to any of them.
Knowledge of what exactly?
The entire Internet and whatever context you provide to it. E.g. COBOL, standard auditing practices, step-by-step guidance on what to do next.
I've found that when cross checked against my own expertise, LLMs have dubious "knowledge" at best. Trusting the output with anything you already don't know would just be Gell-Mann amnesia.
I'm sure the 5 people investigating Musk's companies for wasteful spending were all fired because they were fraudulent.
I bet much of this fraud benefits big donors of both parties.
I doubt they will fix that
There's a lot of just plain simple fraud too. I've seen embassies issue visas only with bribes, or employees simply collect salaries without doing their jobs. As in you're hired to review documents by some legally mandated criteria, and they simply toss them into piles without even glancing at them and go home early.
That benefits no one, except for the employee.
I'm certain that happens, but that can't possibly be the trillion dollars they think they are going to save.
Sure, but about what amount are we talking?
Millions vs billions.
Some government jobs were basically UBI. They provided incomes in rural America.
This is sort of the group that interests me the most, there is some notion of the government as sort of an employer of last resort in some areas which is a progressive/liberal idea, though id imagine with the areas most impacted by offshoring these jobs are disproportionately in red / Trump supporting states.
And even if you’re ok with getting rid of these jobs, the biggest impact might not even be the loss of these jobs but the loss of the consumers who had these jobs spending money in their local communities.
In addition to the money that's spent, these people had great health insurance. This helped to subsidize rural hospitals. Between this and cuts to medicaid, more rural hospitals will close.
Fraud means anything that they don't like.
WSJ reports today that the gao Itself reported 140 billion in improper payments. https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/doge-musk-government-was...
This is based on their statistics so I imagine the next step is to find the actual waste and fraud and stop it or get the money back.
One month (2 weeks?) is too early to tell if something will be uncovered, so there are no examples yet.
If it is too early for them to have uncovered a meaningful understanding about what the contracts/programs/employees are doing, why is it also not too early for the contracts to be cancelled/programs ended/employees fired?
If they were actually trying to eliminate waste, they’d be working in tandem with these departments instead of just trashing them.
More broadly: People who care about improving things move carefully and deliberately and involve all stakeholders. They are open and transparent and they listen. Trump and Musk are exhibiting horrible leadership skills because they do not care about improving things. Trump wants to hurt his perceived enemies and feel like he’s a big smart boss man. Musk wants to be the first trillionaire. That’s the start and end of it.
CAT should audit DOGE.
Does anyone else see the eery comparison between the name DOGE (department of government efficiency) and the things Orwell warned about in 1984? It seems very prescient, but I know this isn't the first time in history that regimes have played this game.
It did cross my mind ( like ministry of truth in 1984). But I suspect it's just a coincidence. Overall I think, in my judgement DM/EM have been transparent, at least significantly more than their detractors.
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Ok, that's pretty damn funny. Thanks for bringing light in a sea of whatever the hell this thread is.
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> Reality has a famously left wing bias.
Personally I would say that extreme left supporters are in my experience much louder and more emotive with their arguments.
sure - the extreme left voices have definitely become louder, because this kind of emotive argumentation is wildly successful.
But they are following the path blazed elsewhere. The primary source of griping and emotion have been owned by right wing media. It’s their whole shtick.
The statement itself, is because tons of research comes for universities, which the conservative news and opinion machine are dedicated to denigrate and demolish.
So you see reality have a left wing bias, because conservative information providers have to reduce support and credibility of science.
See creationism for an example of how far this has been taken.
Sorry, I completely disagree with everything you are saying here.
So much so that there is no point debating it further, because there is no common ground and it just becomes as argument.
I know. I have some modest claim to expertise on these matters. I am well aware it feels the exact opposite to conservatives. I’d guess that many feel that leftist extremism has been shoved in their face for as long as they remember.
This is by design.
> I am well aware it feels the exact opposite to conservatives.
Personally I have voted liberal all my life and dont have a conservative bone in my body, so maybe you are not quite so clever as you think.
Also your spelling mistakes and poor sentence structure make it really difficult to figure out what your point actually is.
> Reality has a famously left wing bias.
That's a bit ironic given leftist claims that men can become women and vice-versa.
Sure. But right now what do care more about - the nitty gritty details of
1) The way software and projects at DOGE are going
2) “leftist claims that men can become women and vice-versa.”
This is a fundamentally a distracting question. It may give you mental relief (Yahh the other team is dumb, Reality is dumb)
Great! Take the breather.
But then talk about 1.
I get that things are polarized. I get that there is an INTENT behind it. But you’ve got all 3 branches of government. You have the ability to actually make this work.
Why THIS approach. What are the accountability checks and balances?
Are they just creating a new talking point to bounce down the years???
Did people get the required clearances? If not, why were the clearances there? IF yes, How are they making sure this is not going to be FUBARED.
How is responsibility going to be allocated? Are we going to have this over our heads for all generations to come? A new political ball to punt blame?
How do we get accountability for what - even to you - must look like the wrong way to do things.
I was just responding to a dubious assertion with a clear counter-example.
As for DOGE, I live in a different country and not really care to be frank, as an external observer the US is a testbed. We will see what kinds of results going all guns blazing to reduce fraud in government, instead of asking nicely, will produce in due time. As your leftist friend said, you need to break some eggs to make an omelette.
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What's Elon's beef with USAID? I would think he would go after something like food stamps first owing to his libertarian ethos. Maybe he sees USAID as a completely benevolent handout and a waste of money? I cannot begin to understand why.
> U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID): The USAID Inspector General initiated a probe into Starlink satellite terminals provided to the Government of Ukraine
From a House Committee report matching Elon’s actions to agencies he has personal issues with:
https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/2025.02....
Eliminating foreign aid seems to be a common cause of neo-conservative movements.
Boris Johnson shut down the British equivalent(Department for International Development) and scrapped the commitment to spend 0.7% of GDP on aid.
It's simplistic, drastic and brings no specific domestic effect which could be a rallying point for unrest.
It's also very easy to come up with rage bait stories of corruption and waste as justification, because in any organisation spending billions of dollars around the world you will always be to find something ridiculous that got funding, even though the proportion of the budget it represents is insignificant.
Lol you clearly have no idea what a 'neo-conservative' is or their history.
Neo-Conservatives were a branch of Democrat wark-hawks who wanted to police the world, that were upset about the pacifist attitude of the Democrats at the time - they emerged in the 60's and managed to largely take control of the Republican party moving forward, peaking under George W Bush.
Their founding principal was "Peace Through Strength" and have a strong belief in worldwide interventionism.
If you think the 'MAGA' / 'Trump' party is neo-conservative you literally just are ignoring the entire history, the power struggle (which Trump won) to retake the party from the Neo-Cons, and the fact that the trump admin is largely isolationist and opposed to being the world police.
Don't get me wrong there are still some neo-cons in office and with roles in his admin, but the republican infighting can be summarized as neocon vs MAGA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism https://www.britannica.com/topic/neoconservatism
Words mean things. The MAGE/America First party is focused on non-interventionism, advocate against regime change abroad, with a focus on America and it's interest rather than the endless wars.
You can debate the success or merit of that approach I guess, but the Neo-Cons are very happy to provide foreign aid as it is core to their ideology. They tend to do it via NED while the left uses USAID more (although both use both, but they each have lean in one direction).
Just for fun, I just tried this little experiment you can try to: " CoPilot: Can you rationally describe Trump as a neocon?
CoPilot: No, it would not be accurate to rationally state that Donald Trump is a neoconservative (neocon). Here are some key differences:
Foreign Policy: Neocons: Advocate for interventionist foreign policies, promoting democracy and regime change abroad. Trump: Emphasizes “America First” policies, focusing on non-interventionism, reducing military engagements abroad, and prioritizing domestic issues.
Military Engagement: Neocons: Support maintaining strong international alliances and a significant military presence globally.
Trump: Criticized NATO, praised authoritarian leaders like Vladimir Putin, and negotiated troop withdrawals from conflict zones like Afghanistan.
Economic Policies: Neocons: Generally support free trade and globalization.
Trump: Advocates for economic nationalism, including tariffs and renegotiating trade deals to favor American interests.
These differences highlight that Trump’s policies and ideology do not align with neoconservative principles. If you have any more questions or need further details, feel free to ask! "
Yes, indeed, I haven't the slightest clue what neo-conservatism is. Thankyou for your informative comment.
USAID was funding the StarLink deployment in Ukraine and was reexamining the deal[1], likely to try to negotiate a cheaper plan or to reduce the funding. My opinion is that it likely hit his ego a bit and it was a really sweet deal for StarLink, so losing out on it would suck.
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/usaid-elon-musk-starlink-probe-ukra...
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It had little to do with the contract size. Starlink was being investigated to determine how the Russians were getting/using them.
https://www.newsweek.com/usaid-elon-musk-starlink-probe-ukra...
This raises a potential conflict of interest, as Musk's company was under investigation by USAID shortly before he began calling for the shutdown. Starlink's activity in Eastern Europe has been criticized, with many Russian operatives claiming to have access to Starlink despite Musk's assurances that only Ukraine was using the service.
Additionally, in September last year, Ukrainian forces downed a Russian drone that had a Starlink terminal integrated with its systems, raising questions as to how secure Starlink's operations during the Ukraine war are.
USAID has no ability to investigate or enforce sanctions, so that doesn’t make sense.
> it was so well known to have been a slush fund for Democrats
So well known by whom, and how? I never heard a peep about this until a few weeks ago, and all such claims seem to be coming from the same group of people with obvious ulterior motives.
Calling a guy a pedophile repeatedly because you made yourself look stupid getting excited about your cool submarine and how awesome everyone will think you are when you save some kids wasn't really worth much money either. I don't think Musk has the self-control to think like that, honestly.
It may not be the monetary amount but the message it sends.
Mess with me and Ill shut you down.
Unlikely. No one really cares about temporary low-value ad-hoc arrangements like the one between Starlink and USAID. It's too small to matter.
The FAA and EPA have been much much bigger headaches for Musk.
USAID was just a juicy target, since it was essentially a slush fund.
Musk is petty, though. Remember "pedo guy?"
Given that, your retort inadvertently supports the GP.
>What's Elon's beef with USAID?
They were investigating Starlink:
https://oig.usaid.gov/node/6814
By the look of it, they were investigating how Ukraine use of Starlink provided to them. You make a great journalist. lol.
Thanks. Admittedly "Probably something to do with Starlink" would've been more accurate.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250101100055/https://www.usaid...
That's now removed from the live website.
Point being, it's a little strange USAID was immediately targeted for destruction with extreme prejudice by the same man providing the terminals.
Especially given their contentious history:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66752264
I'm not refuting Musk probably hate them like all other regulators or might take advantage of getting into like FAA's operation. It's been obvious on both sides of the aisle. Is USAID corrupt? I think so, foreign money is the most difficult to track. Is FAA technology and management sucks? I believe that, too. Many things can be true at the same time. Since no body can fix it before Musk got his butt in started farting, why are people not benefiting from the kickbacks or inefficiencies complaining is beyond me.
>Is USAID corrupt? I think so, ...
Yeah wow, so corrupt. /s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for_Inter...
https://abcnews.go.com/US/former-usaid-official-calls-closur...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2q13113wwo
You should have lived long enough to know a person can be a good father to his kids and still murder innocent people. Both things can be true. If a person doing these good things while made $30 million in 3 years on $200k salary, I can reasonably assume some serious corruption is going on.
Keep believing those baseless conspiracy theories. [0]
>"U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, ..."
>"Nichols noted that despite Trump’s claim of massive “corruption and fraud” in the agency, government lawyers had no support for that argument in court."
Meanwhile, the reality of the situation is simply tragic. [1]
[0] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/07/judge-blocks-trump-...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/24/donald-trump-u...
"USAid money is spent supporting independent journalism" is an oxymoron. When a state sponsors something journalistic, it's called propaganda... not independent. Not saying they are not heroic doing this work, this money shouldn't come from US. If they can't keep the effort alive organically, they should get help from donations. These US congressmen for God sake need to keep their hands in their own wallets, not taxpayers.
Not sure what's your point on the Politico article. It is tragic that disrupt a lot of people's lives. Like I said, it doesn't mean there's no corruption, only good is happening. Both things can be true at the same time. This thing can be tragic, Congress might get their shit together - hopefully.
>If they can't keep the effort alive organically, they should get help from donations.
Harsh words for people documenting genocide.
>Not sure what's your point on the Politico article.
It was a supporting citation for the federal judge pointing out that no evidence was presented of the supposed corruption.
An easy win with his rabid xenophobic fan base? A soft target to hurt his opponents and distract from other terrible things they're doing?
Perhaps he wants the budget reallocated to something he has more financial interest in and control over? Or something like that for Thiel or others?
They'll work their way up to anti-constitutional attacks on everything else if they get a chance, USAID is their starting point because it's a softer target in a few ways:
1. The people who'll suffer or die from their mal-management will generally be faraway foreigners, as opposed to people voters know.
2. More of the victims have a much more difficult time launching any kind of lawsuit in US courts.
3. It has a small veneer of Presidential-involvement-ness due to its proximity to diplomacy and foreign relations.
4. Like tariffs, being able to withhold aid allows Trump to commit extortion against other countries, much like how he was impeached for extorting Ukraine in his first term.
Ironically USAID might help Americans more than foreign folks, and disproportionately Trump’s own supporters - if the money is being spent to buy American products, particularly food, that is then shipped overseas.
Scenario: You give someone $40B to feed people, and $1B actually feeds them while $39B vanishes into overhead and ideological reprogramming. Then they tell you they need more. If this is success, what does failure look like?
> overhead and ideological reprogramming
I despair at the thought process that crams these two things together.
2.5% overhead would be really good. Most charities don’t come close.
“Ideological reprogramming,” whatever that actually means, would be completely different.
It looks like USAID had 4B of the 40B budget actually reach endpoint users, which would make the overhead closer to 90% [1], not 97.5% like I originally estimated.
[1] https://chatgpt.com/share/67b7a0c4-bf48-8011-9997-41b350dd0b...
Reading this gpt answer: > In fiscal year 2022, nearly 90% of USAID's expenditures were allocated to international contracting partners
How are you figuring that none of that is reaching endpoint users? E.g. I imagine the International Red Cross could be such a partner.
Seriously? Not even your own linked conversation supports this assertion, even though you tried to lead it there.
It's called the US Agency for International Development. Everyone seems to think "AID" is a word here. It is not, it is an acronym.
OK, I'm aware, not sure what that has to do with anything here.
And you have the proof for these numbers, or are they pulled out of Elon's behind?
I have my own experience. As a non-American, I know a lot of hungry people. And I have never heard of any help for them from USAID. And who do you think received help from USAID out of all those I have encountered and ever heard about? Only left-leaning democrat's shield "independent" journalists, whose job mostly consist of ideological reprogramming and who now scream all over twitter how Trump destroys their lives. ONLY.
So yes, I don't have any numbers, but I'm used to trusting my own eyes. And what I see (on this particular issue) is way more consistent with what Musk says than with what his opponents say.
> And I have never heard of any help for them from USAID
Personal anecdotes are never a good proof of anything.
> So yes, I don't have any numbers, but I'm used to trusting my own eyes.
So you don't believe in viruses bacteria to name just a few things you can't see with your own eyes?
USAID had many programs, only a number which where about helping the poor, and it's possible those didn't specifically target your country.
E.g. between the poor and hungry people in Moldova (my own native country) and in Sudan USAID would probably chose those in Sudan (what with war and genocide and...). And they might chose to support businesses in Moldova instead (and they did).
I'm not saying it's a perfect program devoid of any corruption. What I'm saying I can come up with as many bogus numbers, and with as many personal anecdotes as the next guy.
And Elon sure as hell resists any attempts to shed light on his activities and claims.
> Only left-leaning democrat's shield "independent" journalists, whose job mostly consist of ideological reprogramming and who now scream all over twitter how Trump destroys their lives. ONLY.
Do you think they do that because they lost funding, or because, say, China or Russia stepped into the void with literally the same support programs?
>Personal anecdotes are never a good proof of anything.
Obviously. But when such anecdotes are consistent with the position of the democratically elected president of USA... What specific reasons do I have to not trust to MY eyes?
>So you don't believe in viruses bacteria to name just a few things you can't see with your own eyes?
No, where did you get that from?
>USAID had many programs, only a number which where about helping the poor, and it's possible those didn't specifically target your country.
Got it. My leftist country were targeted by programs, that promote democrat's left-leaning agenda. Helping poor and hungry - it is for others countries. It’s even surprising, why anyone would hinder such an amazing organization.
>Do you think they do that because they lost funding, or because, say, China or Russia stepped into the void with literally the same support programs?
How are you imagine this? I mean if China or Russia is ready to pay to promote the idea that Trump is the greatest evil on the planet, then maybe.
He actually wants black Africans to die from AIDS.
Collateral damage.
‘Libertarian ethos’. The guy who’s hoovering up personal data on behalf of a guy who just claimed to be king, that one? Like, how are we defining ‘libertarian’ here?
I didn't mean it too seriously. Just with regard to how one point in the ideology is about governments being small and how DOGE is at least in rhetoric trying to fire federal employees en masse.
libertarian
/ ˌlɪbəˈtɛərɪən /
noun
The only thing "libertarian" about Musk is his extreme interest in his own freedom - everyone else's be damned.
My understanding is USAID was one of those organizations thet refused to pause spending when Trump lawfully asked all agencies to stop spending (it was a 90 day hold, not a outright denial, only congress can do that). Agencies that should adhere to trumps orders went to the top.
> refused to pause spending when Trump lawfully asked all agencies to stop spending
How do you imagine any agency to "stop spending"? Are salaries not to be paid? Are contracts not to be fulfilled? Are rents not to be paid?
what's with people not having beef with USAID? It's done so many crazy and bad things, for example:
USAID funded the hepatitis vaccination drive that the CIA used as a cover for espionage against the bin laden family, leading to polio outbreak in pakistan.
https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/he-led-cia-bin-laden-and-...
Distaste for USAID in any other time would be bipartisan; the Clinton Administration floated shuttering it too. If you go to DC a lot of insiders will say, 'yeah, USAID's got to go'.
This seems like a criticism of the CIA, not USAID, no?
> The decision to enlist Afridi was probably made by the CIA station chief in Islamabad and was passed on to the Counterterrorism Center back in Langley.
don't fool yourself. USAID had the power to stop this.
What makes you think so, exactly? It's not like CIA would let everyone within the organisation know they are doing it. Do you think USAID could just say no to CIA?
IF YOU ARE INVOLVED WITH LYING TO PEOPLE AND NOT ADMINISTERING VACCINES AND DOING DNA TESTS, THEN IT IS YOUR INDVIDUAL DUTY TO STOP YOUR ORG FROM CONTINUING.
....what happened with your capslock?
Again, do you think the head of USAID could have just told the head of CIA "no we're not doing this"?
What makes you think they were informed at all? That's kind of the entire MO of CIA - they don't inform other agencies what they are doing when it concerns national security, they just go and do it.
let me spell it out for you:
If you're a midlevel program manager (or whatever role label they have) at USAID you should be noticing that vaccines are not being given out. If USAID doesn't have the capability to monitor its programs to the point where that level of accountability exists, then it shouldn't exist.
Look, we can both play this game - let me spell this out for you the 3rd time
"do you think the head of USAID could have just told the head of CIA "no we're not doing this"?"
>>If USAID doesn't have the capability to monitor its programs to the point where that level of accountability exists
If you think CIA hasn't thought about this and addressed it some other way, then I guess the assumption we're working with is that CIA is literally incompetent at their actual job.
You're barking at the wrong tree. Be angry at CIA for doing this shit, not at USAID for running a program that got hijacked by them.
Yes absolutely they could... as evidenced by the fact that WE FOUND OUT and the CIA got in trouble for it?
What in the world is going on with this country? How did we let ourselves be ruled by people who think such nonsense?
I postulate a slow, multi-generational decline in critical thinking skills (maybe this is driven, at least partially, by the over abundance of unchallenging media/entertainment) coupled with grievance politics and the bucket-of-crabs mentality that sets in when people start to sense the “pie getting smaller” or at least having reached its peak size.
I didn't bring this up because it would be controversial on this website. I think USAID is a tool for advancing US geopolitical interests aims first and foremost and I would like it to be abolished as well. But someone like Musk wanting it to be shuttered doesn't make sense because these organisation in one way or another advance the interests of US businesses and he would benefit from that as well.
I think USAID could certainly be classified as “soft power.” I think throwing it all out makes little sense in light of the provably good things it did.
I think that any sufficiently big organization has done bad things, this alone shouldn't be enough to close an agency.
However, I'm sure Cia has done, does, and will do much worse things than usaid
Vaccination campaigns are “crazy and bad” because they might be hijacked by the CIA?
I think you’ve identified the wrong culprit there buddy.
not might. Were. A USAID that isn't problematic would have stopped it. It failed to; just one symptom of the problems at USAID.
USAID is a bogeyman agency in far-right conspiracy circles.
Musk gets his world view from far-right conspiracists.
Funny thing is that kind of government foreign aid is the kind of soft-power over smaller countries thing that right-wingers politicians love, or at least used to. Similar to the BS that China pulls with the belt and road initiative (but probably not as bad in most instances).
Basically give/loan money, get international political support back. Use political support to bully international institutions (UN, WTO, WHO, etc) to do what you want.
I guess soft-power is not enough anymore, they want all the power.
Marco Rubio has been very vocal on his support for USAID for years if you want to see what the traditional right wing take on this has been. "Critical to our security" etc. And he is of course in charge of the smoking remains of it now.
The "traditional right wing" has been vocal about many things over the years. Nearly every single one has bent their knee.
Conservatism is pretty much dead in the US. It's all about cults of personality and grievance now.
Oh, and of course, graft.
Conservatism before Trump was George W Bush, and while they're very different, it definitely wasn't all sunshine and roses. I don't remember a time in my lifetime when conservatism represented anything good.
I'm a boomer, so I at least remember a time when it was at least more consistently about some sort of values. The Republican party has been through so many changes since then.
However, my entire life Republicans have been the party the KKK is happy to vote for. For a long time that was dismissed as not a problem because they were seen as a fringe, but people pointed out that if your party platform is attractive to the KKK, that is a problem -- you have to kick those people out or they invite their friends and their friends bring worse and worse people.
Lo and behold, the KKK contingent took over the entire party, to the point Liz Cheney (of all people) got kicked out. And the KKK, neo-Nazis, neo-feudalists, Christian nationalists fringes banded together in common cause.
So yes, the Republican party doesn't look like it did 40 years ago, but at the same time it looks exactly like it did 40 years ago.
International aid is such a cheap way to get soft-power while also being able to, you know, help people. Even if a lot of it is misused or inefficiently used the soft-power is there.
A lot of that soft-power has been spent on getting other countries to be more democratic, which is a good thing. Although I don't doubt it has been used for bad reasons as well.
The funny thing is just how inverted the situation is, for years leftists were saying that this kind of foreign aid is often used to hold small countries hostage. While the right wanted to keep the soft-power the aid gives and claiming this kind of aid is used to keep countries democratic.
Now the right is "screw soft-power" and the left is "think of the children". And in the middle people suffering like always.
The worse part is that a lot/most of that aid is probably of very benign influence, but it is definitely also used for nefarious reasons.
This is dangerous sanewashing.
When Trump attacks USAID (or the CIA or the FBI) from the nationalist authoritarian right, it in no way counterbalances people criticizing it from the left.
In particular, the left criticism of USAID were always "think of the children" because they wanted it to do that more and better. They have remained consistent in that.
It's more likely it came from Trump instead of Elon. Trump is an isolationist and has long complained about money being spent abroad rather than at home.
Less than 10% went to the needy. Most of the rest was either wasteful, political or a chain of NGOs performing kickbacks.
They were funding censorship campaigns on American citizens etc
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Is that something they did, or is it something you imagine they did because you’re too credulous of right-wing propaganda?
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I'm worried that one of Musk friends might be a Chinese or Russian spy.
> I'm worried that one of Musk friends might be a Chinese or Russian spy.
Given Musk's ties to China and his overt friendship with Putin, I don't think there's a need for one of his friends to be a spy when he's right there with a glowing neon finger over his head.
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“Now at least I get to watch horrible people get a dose of their own medicine”
Doge is not being this careful, in fact I’d argue that Doge will disproportionately impact people not on your target list.
All the “horrible” people you don’t like are going to be “punished” with lucrative contracts in the private sector while line workers, most of whom may agree with you suffer
If Tim Cook had that same perceived power, I imagine the narrative would be playing out differently.
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Could you please stop posting flamewar and ideological battle comments? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Also: please don't use 'edit' to do deletions that deprive replies of context. That's unfair to readers.
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Could you please stop posting flamewar and ideological battle comments? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
As much as I want that last paragraph to be true… the results speak for themselves.
Nice :)
Doooooooooooooooooooooooom
DOGE administrator is ... Grok.
Slanted political article. Flagged.
Yeah, they really aren't happy the corruption is being unearthed, this is above and beyond anything they were planning.
Hell, there should have been massive riots by the left now, though the funding has now disappeared for the professional organisers and rent a crowd.
Democrats are 20 mil in debt from the election, and now their money funnels have been closed down. They simply weren't expecting this.
call me Naive and paint me a fool, but I do think this is going to go down as Musk's lifetime achievement. Think about it, he has money, he has arguably built great companies, and now, for his masterpiece, he can, and I honestly believe he will.....CURE DEMOCRACY. I want him to succeed, because the next logical giant is CAPITALISM, and that one, in the collective interest of humanity, and planetary survival, needs FIXING!! Almost every system created by man, eventually turns corrupt, because for some reason we interfere, we want to tip the balance, instead of give free will and life to the things we create. The ecology of a system should be self-regulating, that's how NATURE operates.
cure democracy? they just broke it. did you vote for musk? did anyone? are you thinking right? A fascist dictator just ruined america for good and this can't be fixed. Just the reputation of america alone is ruined for generations to come, and I bet you are not even thinking of what "reputation" means, it isn't "like me please" type of a reputation but "let's avoid wars and trade with each other" reputation. I honestly think people like you deserve the america these evil people are creating, too bad the rest of us are stuck with you. You just lost our country and you have no idea what a precious and wonderful thing we've lost. You put your trust in a greedy evil billionaire, foolishness for the history books.
It doesn't sound like you are in an emotional state to have this discussion, which is ok, but the findings are undeniable. I don't see anyone arguing, "they're making up the fraud". So from an objective point of view, an audit of this magnitude has been dreamt of by both parties for decades, heck probably going back a century. No one has been able to do it, lacking either collective will, or, more famously, bureaucratic pushback. My argument is, and you can ask any senior or experienced executive this(tho I think it's actually an accounting principle), anyways...when a top level professional arrives at a new job/department/unit/etc, the first order of business is "finding your salary", this is essentially your brain finding your salary among the waste or leaks in the space you were asked to manage. This is what DOGE is tasked with, no matter the cost, stopping the waste will pay for the cost, even if it cost trillions(which I highly doubt), you can amortize that and still get USA's bottom line in the black.
There are a litany of articles taking about the exact lying you say they are not doing:
https://www.businessinsider.com/doge-savings-estimate-websit...
https://www.axios.com/2025/02/19/doge-musk-audit-mistake-sav...
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/doge-wall-of-receipts-shows...
So yeah they are lying; whether intentionally or unintentionally. At this point I’m not sure what is worse.
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I agree. It's nice to hear someone grounded discuss it.
A lot of people (particularly on Reddit) have been driven insane by psyops, they can't critically think outside what they are told to think anymore. It's amazing to watch, and also quite sad/scary
I tell you man, this DOGE animal is going to make politicians run scared all over the world. This is the best thing since Science won the climate change fake debate. DOGE is actually draining the swamp, you know how many politicians have promised and even ran full campaigns on reform, or financial austerity, or fighting corruption/big spending/etc. Mark my words, other countries are going to start formulating their own version of DOGE. This is like the upstart BUKELE and his curving of gang violence in record timing (3 years). There are so many nations trying to replicate that because Citizens are asking for their own BUKELE at home.
The man engaged in massive human rights abuses…
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/06/el-salvador-p...
This should be very illegal. It’s a huge security risk to let Federal government employees access Federal government systems.
You forgot to add "without proper security controls/clearances and data governance".
I didn’t. It’s just a giant security scam to let doge access systems. Didn’t you read the article? The USAID people said they don’t trust the doge people so we shouldn’t either.
Is this more access than 19-year-old summer interns in the various agencies get (to their given agency)?
Because it's not a foregone conclusion that it is.
At least not based on "according to an employee in senior leadership at USAID".
The comments here seem mostly against DOGE, but I have seen the waste in these organizations firsthand, and we all pay for it. Musk hopes to cut spending by 10%, but that is only because he is limited in what he can do. A Twitter-style cleanup would at least reduce it by 50%, but it is not feasible. Know that those 10% or 50% directly map to a percentage of your income and lifestyle directly (higher taxes) or indirectly (higher inflation).
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I worked for years helping procure government grants and saw how it was used. People who have lived in just one place (aka. California) and have nothing to compare don't realize the amount of waste happening here. The cities that collect the highest taxes have the infrastructure and facilities of a poor town. The prop monies go down the drain or are grossly misspent all the time. DOGE is necessary and needs this level of access and authority to make this scale of change in such a short time.
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Nationalistic flamewar isn't ok here, regardless of which nation you have a problem with or how right you are or you feel you are.
Please don't post flamewar comments to HN generally. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
(Fortunately your earlier comment history seems fine, so this should be easy to fix.)
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> You Americans voted for this
A thin majority in an election with a poor (and/or constrained) turnout in a lop-sided nonsense of an electoral system with disproportionate weightings voted for parts of this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States...
The 2024 election had historically high turnout. The 2nd highest turnout since 1968, the 7th highest since 1932.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States...
Trump won 77,284,118 votes, or 49.8 percent of the votes cast for president.
Voter turnout nationally in 2024 was 63.9 percent (below the 66.6 percent voter turnout recorded in 2020).
So 31.8 percent of the eligible voters in the USofA voted for Trump in the 2024 elections, most eligible voters didn't vote for Trump.
Eligible Voters aside, an even greater percentage of people in the USofA didn't vote for Trump being too young or otherwise disenfranchised.
Of those that did vote for Trump it's a leap to say that all of them voted to fire the chief government records keeper, to empower DOGE to gut departments, etc; like Brexit, many of those who voted for it had no real idea what they had voted for.
In the campaign Trump ran to avoid jail he repeatedly stated he wasn't aware of the Project 2025 playbook, that he would be all things to all people. People who voted for Trump voted for what they heard, what they thought he promised.
Most of the citizens in the USofA did not vote Trump, not all of those voted to gut the government, the sciences, foreign aid, etc.
Did you mean to respond to another comment? I was responding specifically to the claim that election turnout was low. As I said, it’s the 2nd highest since 1968 - 2020 was indeed the higher year.
Like Brexit, people who don’t like what’s happening come up with all sorts of convoluted explanations for why democracy doesn’t apply when their position loses. It seems to regularly boil down to “people who don’t vote the way I would like are too foolish and were tricked or brainwashed and if only they were enlightened they would vote my way.” I don’t think this is a winning message but we seem to be doubling down.
It's straighforward in all democracies to point out that people claiming that bad policy enactment "is what most people wanted" are making a false statement.
It is very rarely what the minority that voted directly for a specific party of candidate wanted. That's just a dull bald fact, not at all convoluted.
It actually wasn't even a majority of the popular vote.
Not quite a majority, but a narrow plurality:
49.8% Trump, 48.3% Harris
Though you could include the .49% that voted for RFK (you'd maybe need to decide which side to add Jill Stein Green and Libertarian candidate too).
Most people probably wanted "change" and there was no alternative option. If your democracy offers only two options, then polarization is the outcome.
Even completely ignoring the dubious ethics invoked - a lot of non Americans will get worse outcomes than the US because of this. Given the work that has been cancelled so far, some of those non Americans are likely already dead.
Why do they deserve the worst outcome?
America is and will be fine.
That’s a bold statement. US is a young country. Empires that lasted longer by 5x have been consigned to the dust bin of history with nary but an oral tradition to remember them. If looking at americas military capability is any indication it is already in steep decline especially with regards to its seeming inability to not crash or destroy million/billon dollar hardware purely based on incompetence and short staffing. Its inability to prosecute an illegal war in the ME (occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan) is also a great example of the lack of exceptionalism exhibited by americas armed forces and their inept leadership.
What point are you trying to make?
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Reference please! To my knowledge DOGE has not uncovered any obvious cases of financial fraud. Every example of their cost-cutting that I've looked at (and I've dug!) has been lawfully congressionally appropriated funds being spent according to guidelines from the previous administration making reasonable interpretations of the congressionally passed budget. The new administration forbids spending on initiatives related to increasing diversity, equity, or inclusiveness or decreasing climate change, as well as disapproves of most kinds of foreign aid. None of this is fraud.
The only issue I have with that claim (ignoring the obvious blurring between whether it's fraud or waste), is that it's all being reported by a single party with no validation or accountability.
Because the other party is perceptively playing political games rather than being bipartisan? Or maybe the massive misinformation being played out is drowning out legitimate voices..
By "party" I was using the term to indicate an individual, not a political party.
They claimed to discover .. yes, but they're essentially too young, dumb, and inexperienced to understand the oddities in the data .. the 100+ year old peole are a result of COBOL NULL entries for people with no birth record dates (which is a real thing in 300+ million people), etc.
Also:
DOGE Claimed It Saved $8 Billion in One Contract. It Was Actually $8 Million
The biggest single line item on the website of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team appears to include an error.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/upshot/doge-contracts-mus...
DOGE is not a trustworthy reporter, they are incentivised to make big, bold, bullshit claims.
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Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
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Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Fair point, I don't often get drawn in to respond to such obviously bad faith commenting .. it happens to us all now and again.
You're brainwashed. They're robbing you of essential services and you're still going "yeah, go on!!".
Notice how they only go after things the common man might benefit from? Surprisingly DOGE uncovers no waste whatsoever in the many billion dollars military contracts.
What do you think will happen to your country when the ban on medicaid takes effect? Will the millions that rely on it simply die? Do you even care or are you totally void of empathy?
It's not the government's job to take money from Paul to give to Peter. I fundamentally object to this. I take the view of Austrian economics. IMO, all the corporate monopolies we have today are caused by excessive government money printing, weaponizing the people's money against the people. How about having empathy for the worker, the value creator, who has been robbed of money and, worse, opportunities as a result of government-backed corporate monopolies and regulatory moats?
You can't imagine how bad things have been for some of us.
You are gravely mistaken. How is the extensive union-busting, deregulation, wage theft and general disregard for worker protections going to help you?
Musk and Trump's class interests are diametrically opposed to ours, the real value-creating workers. They want you to work more for less pay. Watch you and your loved ones' situations dégrade over the next few years, and reconsider your position.
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Not gonna lie, sitting here in a collapsing and feckless Europe, I'm supper jelly.
Same, the UK government definitely needs a similar audit.
This is great news for anyone paying taxes in the US. People really underestimate how incompetent the federal work force really is. Not everyone of course. But I contracted with the DOD for six years and you legit could have fired half the federal employees. They didnt do shit all day and it sounds like it's gotten way worse since COVID allowed these people to work from home.
I seriously want a real, non-politically based argument on why we shouldnt be trying to 1. find fraud 2. fire 10-20% of these people immediately
Imagine what we can do in 2025 by applying LLM search to all of the federal paperwork!
The moment they had physical access to the system, it was necessary to assume this. It's called an 'evil maid' attack, and of all communities this one should have been blowing the whistle. Loudly, repeatedly, and in open defiance of people who argue that this is a storm in a teacup, a non issue, just another MOT, etc.
Especially when you look at the background of the Doge team - 'ex' hackers, 'security specialists', full-on racists...
Perhaps surprisingly, the CEO of YC and Paul Graham have been publicly supportive of the DOGE team, despite all the racism and existential threat. I don't know if that's from fear, or greed, but there are strong arguments for both.
Some of the stories about this topic which have been flagged here can be seen in my favorites. I'd be interested in collecting more examples, if you know of any missing.
> In the coming weeks, the team is expected to enter IT systems at the CDC and Federal Aviation Administration, and it already has done so at NASA, according to sources we’ve spoken with at each of those agencies. At least one DOGE ally appears to be working to open back doors into systems used throughout the federal government.
If discussing this openly and often this isn't possible due to very simple flag abuse, then what is this community actually even worth.
> Perhaps surprisingly, the CEO of YC and Paul Graham have been publicly supportive of the DOGE team, despite all the racism and existential threat. I don't know if that's from fear, or greed, but there are strong arguments for both.
> …
> If discussing this openly and often this isn't possible due to very simple flag abuse, then what is this community actually even worth.
Just want to add to this topic that HN advertises YC AI Startup school: https://events.ycombinator.com/ai-sus - where Musk is listed as a first speaker.
Though it doesn’t surprise me - YC is in the same circle of radical technocrats (a16z, Altman, Musk, etc.) and hosted Balaji talking about dystopian plans about techno-authoritarian city states 10 or 15 years ago.
It would be fun if someone did the funni at him there
Paul graham has his head so far up his on ass it's unreal.
Listening to him talk about Elon taking over Twitter and that leading to more free speech was embarrassing. Like, actual adults believe this shit.
I just checked his blog. Latest post “The Origins of Wokeness”.
Protesting against police brutality of suffocating apprehended person is apparently “peak woke”.
Musk apparently “succeded in neutralizing” twitter - “without censoring either” (left or right). He argues in the notes that Musk prioritized paid users and paid users are more right wing and hence left wing users self censored themselves, but left “could tilt it back if they wanted to”.
EDIT: also again proving my original comment - PG is thanking Sam Altman for proof reading the post…
Christ they are truly dumb people who just got good with computers.
It’s not surprising the CEO of YC supports this, he also supports the idea of the network state. This community is now primarily exists to launder Curtis Yarvins galaxy brain ideas.
The most surprising thing about the fascist takeover is that it’s so incredibly stupid.
I think this community stopped caring about actual hacking some time ago. Remember when we cared about privacy?
I didn’t get something until it was pointed out very recently.
The issue isn’t what we think. The issue is what we think OTHERS think.
This is what social media truly fucks up. We can’t see the people nodding in disagreement. We can only see their silence, and we must respond to the person who IS talking and holding our attention.
Practically - I care about privacy, and I expect that damn near most people here care about it.
People can have their “well actually” arguments, but when push comes to shove, techies on HN should vocalize their annoyance with the way this is being done. Even if you support their politics, this ISNT how you execute secure projects.
Wrong from the start. The Emperor isn’t wearing any clothes territory. We dont have to agree on other things.
Please, someone, give me somewhere else to go other than here.
Agree. Shameful.
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> Can someone explain to me where the issue lies?
I'm starting to wonder if HN has also been taken over by bots and astroturfers.
Audits require transparency and people who know wtf they are doing. Musk and his team have shown none of either. They have repeatedly talked about what they think they found that was later shown to be false. Instead of correcting course they double down (see the recent story of 8B vs 8M or Musk saying 10s of millions of dead people getting social security, there are many more that come out daily). They have also fought against efforts to increase transparency into what they are doing through a number of ways, either taking down datasets that could be cross checked or moving DOGE under the records act to avoid FOIA until 2032.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/upshot/doge-contracts-mus...
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/musk-misreads-social-securit...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/us/politics/trump-musk-do...
They’re trolling and what they want to do is poison the conversation we’re all having. Elon Musk is a troll too, why do you think they’d be any different? These people don’t read books (aside from a few scriptures they follow), they read memes instead. This is horrifying and but could also be their undoing.
The issue lies in a number of areas:
1. Politicians are watching their favorite pork barreling disappear day by day
2. Since Trump was elected President the waste identified is going to be what Trump thinks is waste
3. The job of the Democrats is to get elected, and you don’t get elected by sitting by as your opponent keeps doing things many voters are supporting, you try and stop it
Because government waste is high on the list of priorities of many voters and DOGE seems to have only improved Trump’s approval rating, the Democrats can’t come out and say “stop cutting government waste”!
So instead they try to politically attack DOGE by saying many of them are young (so are the soldiers we send overseas to fight wars), they are unelected (so are all government workers), they aren’t allowed to do this (to be determined by courts) and they are cutting the wrong things (the voters will decide this in the end).
So if you like what DOGE is doing, sit back and buckle up because it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
I can understand feeling wary because someone may be watching your work, but conceivably this was always the case? I know it’s uncomfortable having this agency with no oversight gaining access to systems within the government, but it’s got to be huge right? I’m sure Elon’s tapped some smart fellas to be bulls in this china shop, but there’s no way they can put an eye on every single piece of information that flies through all of the systems of the federal government. You’d need a huge staff, tools to be built, never mind trying to solidify all those interfaces.
It seems more likely that they’ll gain access to all these systems, be completely overwhelmed about what to do, and then do small things that wouldn’t actually have an impact but would gain headlines, and then call it a day.
"Smart fellas"? The guy is a billionaire, and all he can find are a few 20-years old edgelords with names like "Big Balls" who make racist comments in online forums?
Sorry, that was intended to be facetious