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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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].
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.
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...
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
> 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+.
>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?
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.
I intentionally didn't weigh in because on one hand, its main functionality is still going strong, and it hasn't had major outages. On the other, its user base has changed, advertisers are avoiding it because of its users, and we don't know what real usage numbers look like.
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.
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.
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.
> Everything about DOGE and their mission has a fundamental deep misunderstanding of why governments with their own currency must have deficits
DOGE has nothing to do with deficits, they're not even bothering to count it properly [1]. DOGE will remake the federal government for Musk's benefit. That's why he's using cannon-fodder DOGE bros instead of his best and brightest. That's why the collateral damage isn't of principal concern, and why they're moving quickly: they need to finish their work before checks and balances start swinging.
> What does he think will happen after four years?
Musk will honestly probably be fine. These kids will get hammered, as they should, at the very least with a decade+ of litigation and possibly prosecution.
The only consequences that might last will hit Tesla in the form of tariffs and bans. But he seems to be fine raiding Tesla as a piggy bank to fund his ambitions on Mars and in politics.
This is news to me that “accounting 101” demands you spend more than you bring in. Any reasonable person would realize you can only do this for so long. Can you explain this in great detail?
It doesn't appear that DOGE is handling the problem with the appropriate amount of care or analysis, but the US does have a deficit problem. The issue is not simply that the US has a deficit, nor have I heard anyone argue this point, but that the deficit to GDP ratio is around twice as large as the historical average, and is projected to continue to increase.
No need to infatilize their behavior by pointing to a lack of education. If he can head up several corporations, he can read a balance sheet. This is smash and grab politics, the things that happen in places like post-USSR when there's a power vaccuum, everything is up for grabs, the courts are powerless and territories start getting carved up by a coterie of connected technocrats. How long was it before Yeltsin's uneasy alliance with oligarchs crumbled, paving the way for a ruler who wasn't going to make the same mistakes?
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 is a principal in democracy that there Should Not Be strong institutions that prevent a majority of the population from harming itself with its choices. We balance that against a Supreme Court in the US, but that court is almost uniquely powerful & active in forming policy relative to its place in the rest of the world, and right now, most of it has been appointed by fascists; Ultimately the population will have its say in the long term.
Do you want an extra-democratic body who is capable of telling the population "No"?
I think such a body (which exists in some system) would obviously be nice right now, but I am a lot less convinced that it would be a net positive in general.
If we want to find our way out of this, I suspect a lot of people are going to need to feel directly harmed by this administration, and are going to need to basically erect a strong protest culture out of whole cloth. Something like 5% of the population in the streets can topple an authoritarian regime in the right circumstances, but not the 0.5% we might expect for a "large" protest.
"Do you want an extra-democratic body who is capable of telling the population "No"?"
There's value in having speedbumps that keep 51%* of the population from shooting 100% (or 99%) of the population in the collective foot... or in this case, head. The institutions aren't anti-democratic - they were put together by democratic processes, and each speedbump is usually there for a reason. Sometimes a long-forgotten or no longer good reason, and it needs to be dismantled, also by the same type of processes that put it there. Yes, I want people who won't be easily and summarily dismissed for following the law and regulations even when they're not popular. I want regulations and guardrails that can't just be swept aside by an administration that rotates out every four to eight years. (I'm generalizing a lot here, of course...)
*Really much less than 51%, given that a large percentage of the population doesn't vote, another percentage of the population's vote is suppressed, and another significant percentage of the population is not yet old enough to vote...
>There's value in having speedbumps that keep 51%* of the population from shooting 100% (or 99%) of the population in the collective foot... or in this case, head.
That metaphor breaks down here and is not really applicable. If two people are chained to each other at the ankles, they can both plausibly argue that the only way to save their own life is to take that of the other person. Whining "but I'm the good guy, I deserve to cut off his foot and let him be the one to bleed to death" is asinine.
The solution here is, of course, to not be chained to the other person irreversibly. But any time that is suggested, we hear a bunch of "We're stronger together, that's crazy talk!" And here we are. 330 million people all chained together, and now people are upset that the other team has the hatchets and is menacingly staring at their ankles.
>and another significant percentage of the population is not yet old enough to vote
Not sensible enough to vote. Don't leave that part out.
This isn't 1861, sectionalism isn't strong enough. One part of what's going on here is cities at odds with the countryside, another part is the internet, smartphones, ubiquitous connectivity, filter bubbles. People are physically present in the same locations but they are not eating the same bread and drinking the same water, metaphorically speaking. I recommend looking at this Wikipedia article for a possible best-case scenario: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_exchange_between_Gr...
In the UK, the Prime Minister has a lot less discretionary power, but much more ability to get legislation changed.
So when a political question arises like "should we have net neutrality?" the elected politicians decide and pass legislation.
That's in contrast to the US, where someone decide the executive was granted discretionary power over net neutrality in 1934, several generations before the net was invented. Then the executive decides there will, then won't, then will, then won't, then will, then won't be net neutrality.
> Then the executive decides there will, then won't, then will, then won't, then will, then won't be net neutrality.
It should be noted that the backdrop here is legislative dysfunction: the congress could have resolved network neutrality at any point but that bogged down for ages. Many of the questions around statutory power look like someone trying to do something under existing rules because they see a problem which isn’t going away but legislative attempts have failed.
> There is a principal in democracy that there Should Not Be strong institutions that prevent a majority of the population from harming itself with its choices.
Wrong. Democracy means only majority rule. What you say is true of republics, which the USA is. However no republic can be perfect in this regard, because it's all just human beings. In this case the president is plenipotent within the executive branch, the Congress is in the hands of the same party, and the SCOTUS is largely on the same page, therefore all the institutions in question are not going to stop him unless he does things that are outrageous to the public, keeping in mind that the HN commentariat is a tiny portion of "the public".
I really wanted to believe that it would step up to the occasion, but twice now, it didn't.
I don't say such lightly. I genuinely believe that up until very recently, all portents of doom aside, none of the prior elected presidents truly threatened the Republic. Not Bush, not Obama, none of them.
Trump has been the exception. It the electoral college had been working as intended when it was envisioned by the Founders, it would have said "Yeah, I hear you want Trump, but, no." and voted in someone who might be better suited to implement his (rough) ideas.
I'm not completely onboard with the notion of abolishing said college just yet, as I believe that the electoral system prevents a candidate from say, simply winning all of the urban areas, or exploiting some similar demographic divide that would could exist in a pure popular vote system. We're a union of states, not a single monolithic country. And while I might place my bets on a popular vote providing me the results I'd like a majority of the time, I believe broad representation that at least aids towards unity is better than an outright majority. We strive to avoid "tyranny of the majority".
I don't have any easy or simple answers as to what might fix all of this. It may not even be something our "system" can fix, but rather just a lesson we as a country have to learn. Let's hope it's not as painful as prior instances.
> I believe that the electoral system prevents a candidate from say, simply winning all of the urban areas, or exploiting some similar demographic divide that would could exist in a pure popular vote system.
What about simply winning all of the rural areas? Cause that's literally what happened.
For those who tend to fall for right wing talking points:
“There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.”
Trump has explicitly said he is above the law: "He who saves the country cannot break the law" is what he posted.
He pardoned people who stormed the capital, threatened gov officials, and killed police officers. Pardoning DOGE employees is child's play -- but it would never get that far because the DOJ and FBI have been purged of those not fully subservient to Trump.
In that case, can't the next president just illegally imprison Elon or trump or whoever for their entire administration, ignore supreme court rulings or lawsuits or whatever, and then issue themselves a pardon at the end?
Yes, and restrict the 2nd amendment by fiat, etc...
But Democrats "play nice" and respect the law. Biden could have ordered Trump assassinated as soon as the Supreme Court invented the new interpretation that puts president on a piedestal, but he was never going to do it.
That's the problem with the argument that Republicans need to be careful about setting precedents that Democrats will then also abuse: no Republican believes that any Democratic president will actually do this. In fact, a lot of Republicans probably don't believe that there will ever be another Democratic president.
Based on last year's Supreme Court rulings and what Trump/DOGE have gotten away with thus far, it'd seem so. However, democrats insist on wearing kid gloves to a chainsaw massacre, so don't count on anything like that (or, more realistically, within a lesser order of magnitude) ever happening.
What I found significant here is that Trump (yesterday) and/or the Whitehouse stated that Elon Musk does not work for Doge and has no authority over it at all, that Elon Musk has no authority regarding anything and is solely an advisor to the president.
Of course, in practical terms "in the field" this is obviously not the case. But I wouldn't be surprised if it was Elon's ego that triggered this: that at the end of the day needing a pardon would be an insult and would bruise his ego so he wants to prevent any pathway for him to be charged with a crime. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know if the Doge "interns" would need one regardless.
Cynically, Trump and Musk are using each other. They both want huge swaths of the federal government dismantled—Trump found his whims stymied by laws and regulations and the bureaucrats who abide by them in his first administration, while federal regulations are constraining both Tesla (cars should work and be safe) and Space-X (starships blowing up shouldn’t pollute, Starlink shouldn’t clutter space, etc).
Musk is stealing the spotlight. At the appropriate time, Trump can fire him and blame him for overstepping his bounds—I have already seen this talking point privately from GOP operatives. They’ll both have gotten what they wanted, and we’ll all be stuck footing the bill.
And when you have an executive on one hand stating that only the president and the AG can interpret laws for the executive [0] and that you can't break laws if you're "saving the country" [1], that approach also just doesn't seem too promising.
Or, as JD Vance wrote, "Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power." (https://x.com/JDVance/status/1888607143030391287). You really have to read it twice to understand just how far out that phrase is. So now it's the executive itself deciding what's "legitimate" (=conforming to the law), not the courts, whose role it is to interpret and enforce laws?
Yeah, if we (even in other countries) weren't all personally affected by it, I couldn't stop laughing. The way things are, I'd rather go with Max Liebermann, who reportedly commented on the previous wave of fascism with the words "I couldn't eat as much as I would like to throw up" ("Ich kann gar nicht soviel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte" - https://www.aphorismen.de/zitat/93763).
Agencies all have their own lawyers, and it’s frequently useful to have them hash out agreements for the same reason that it’s useful for scientists to get peer review. Beyond the basic efficiency argument, it’s good to have multiple people validate your reasoning.
Perhaps why 'easy for me to say' was the first part.
Would be interesting to know if the poster would financially support a person in an UNSTABLE position, to, you know, Unite the States in opposition to what's an authoritarian and approaching a fascist dictatorship?
> Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States any classified information— […]
CIGIE has done similar stuff in the past, it was created under George W Bush
> continually identifies, reviews, and discusses areas of weakness and vulnerability in Federal programs and operations with respect to fraud, waste, and abuse;
> develops plans for coordinated, Government wide activities that address these problems and promote economy and efficiency in Federal programs and operations, including interagency and inter-entity audit, investigation, inspection, and evaluation programs and projects to deal efficiently and effectively with those problems concerning fraud and waste that exceed the capability or jurisdiction of an individual agency or entity;
Clearance does not allow indiscriminate access, it just means you are theoretically trustable. You still need a reason to access the data, usually negotiated with the data owners, who is legally responsible for protecting the data. DOGE has bypassed all of that to just hoover up whatever they can.
Not really, whoever allows access could be prosecuted for failing any of a number of laws and regs for just rolling over so it would come down to a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. The proper way to do it would be to work through both the organization's chain of command and send clearances through the security chain. Maybe that's being followed, but given the stories and timelines, I doubt it- Musk's war boys wouldn't even have time to obtain a clearance from scratch 3 weeks into the administration.
There is no "damned if you do, damned if you don't." The President and agency directory have authorized and ordered it. Career bureaucrats are not legally required to resist their bosses because they disagree with them.
Anyone who has a clearance has signed numerous statements acknowledging their personal responsibility to protect the information in their care. If you want access, follow the procedures, then that responsibility is fulfilled. And if DOGE posts whatever to some unsecured S3 bucket its on them, not the bureaucrat (well, let's be real, contractor) who let them in.
Statutes can't really constrain the president's authority to do this sort of thing (firing appointees, firing employees for cause, laying people off, auditing the executive agencies). Constitutionally the president is just plenipotent within the executive branch.
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.
It seems the only thing the supreme Court can do now days is rule if something is unconstitutional or if a last has been broken. But has no check on the executive according to the regimes arguments. The only check is for Congress to impeach and convict apparently. And there are too many demagogue followers in those changes for that to ever happen.
The real check here is for congress to write laws that are actually specific in their text. That is hard, though, so they instead write laws that empower parts of the executive branch to do some broadly-defined thing, including the power to make the relevant rules. When you get an executive who doesn't play your game, those poorly-written laws come back to bite you.
You're effectively says Congress should mandate every detail of every regulation. Even in areas where knowledge is changing (level of chemicals that are toxic, which medicines are useful and safe, etc).
The whole premise of our system is that the people within the system operate in good faith. And that's worked for most of 200+ years. I would posit that no amount of legislation will be able to stop bad-faith actors from screwing up the system, even more so when they convince ~50% of the voting popular that "burn it to the ground" is a reasonable take.
> You're effectively says Congress should mandate every detail of every regulation. Even in areas where knowledge is changing (level of chemicals that are toxic, which medicines are useful and safe, etc).
The scientific advisors who currently make rules at the EPA (to name one example) probably should have been giving advice to congress to make laws instead. Congress can pass an annual bill of "here's the new science." They already pass laws of unimaginable length and complexity, so I see no reason why Congress can't pass a huge omnibus "these chemicals are bad" bill every year, even if that bill is 5000-10000 pages.
By the way, speaking of the EPA, there's a lot of whiplash in that arm of government based on which party holds the presidency. If the EPA's rules were actual laws, they would need a much stronger mandate from the people to change. IMO this would be better for both environmental protection (since you don't have the party of "drill baby drill" arbitrarily changing things whenever they want) and for business because there is more certainty.
> The whole premise of our system is that the people within the system operate in good faith.
The whole premise of the American system of government is that power corrupts and a functioning government needs a series of working checks and balances. One arm of America's tripartite government has ceded most of its real power to another arm. This mostly works because the people who get into that other branch (presidents) want to play an iterated game, where burning things to the ground doesn't benefit them. We are seeing what happens when you have someone in power who is playing to win this round without regard for the iterated game.
The scientific advisors who currently make rules at the EPA (to name one example) probably should have been giving advice to congress to make laws instead. Congress can pass an annual bill of "here's the new science."
All that would do is transfer power from bureaucrats within the executive to bureaucrats within the legislature. No Congressperson is fully knowledgeable on all the areas on which they pass laws. Maybe it is a better approach than what we have today, but I'm unconvinced. At least with the system we have today, the bureaucrats are generally experts within their areas. Congressional staffers have no such experience and generally rely on lobbyists.
The transfer of where the bureaucrats work is exactly what I am proposing, and has very significant differences in terms of the mechanics of government. A law has much more binding power over the executive branch than a rule made by the executive branch, and if the last month hasn't convinced you of that, I don't know what will. Laws can also establish private causes of action that require no intervention from a bad-faith executive to enforce. Congress today already has no knowledge of the laws they pass, anyway.
Good points. My next concern would be the churn inherent in such a system.
Every two years, the entire House and 1/3 of the Senate is re-elected. That doesn't give much time for a bureaucrat to gain experience before needed to concentrate on the re-election of their benefactor (I use that word purposefully here, because the US did away with patronage for career bureaucrats in the executive in the late 19th century - no such rules exist in the legislative).
The executive branch churns every 4 years, and is forced to churn at least every 8 years. In practice, it's not a concern, and it wouldn't be under congress, either.
Think about this in good faith and try to make it work in your head, and you will see that this proposal is actually not that different from how the executive branch rule-makers work today from a day-to-day perspective, while carrying very different legal implications.
The executive branch churns every 4 years, and is forced to churn at least every 8 years.
That only applies to political appointees. The rank and file are permanent employees (or were until a few weeks ago).
Anyways, not saying your idea couldn't work, only that it's not easily implemented and needs a lot of consideration to do well. It's a wholesale change to how we've governed ourselves for ~150 years. But, the idea of a permanent set of legislative experts has some appeal.
We haven't governed ourselves with an executive-branch-led bureaucracy for 150 years. It's been about 70-80 years total. This model started with FDR and was really expanded in the 60's and 70's. The US existed for most of its lifetime without a permanent bureaucracy. The system you are talking about as the one that has worked forever is much younger and much less stable than you think.
> The whole premise of our system is that the people within the system operate in good faith.
It very much is not.
It is, however, that the people will not simultaneously elect sufficent majorities in both houses of Congress and a President who all fail to do so, such that the systems by which the political branches check eachother continue to function in a way which constrains those actors in either that do act in bad faith.
> I would posit that no amount of legislation will be able to stop bad-faith actors from screwing up the system,
Electoral reforms to the legislative branch that could be done through statute could go a long way to reducing the probability of a sufficient concentration of bad faith actors to overwhelm the system, and electoral and structural reforms to the executive branch to make it less unitary, which would take a Constitutional amendment, could increase the necessary concentration to achieve a total breakdown.
>And that's worked for most of 200+ years. I would posit that no amount of legislation will be able to stop bad-faith actors from screwing up the system,
This doesn't even require bad faith actors for it to become a clusterfuck. It's a scaling issue. Things that used to work at smaller scales accumulate cruft and other issues, until things ultimately fall apart. 200 years is of course a good run, but it wasn't going to last forever. Actually 200 years is such a long run, one doesn't have to bring "bad faith actors" into the equation at all to reach this conclusion, but I guess when things start to fall apart some people need someone to blame. Ask yourself this though... if the system was doing so great, how would it have allowed someone like Trump to ever win in the first place (let alone in the second place, as he did in 2024)? That's not a healthy system. Too many were disillusioned, and that's not their fault.
>~50% of the voting popular that "burn it to the ground" is a reasonable take.
They are disgusted with what they see, and have for a very long time felt powerless to change it. Not really just "felt", but were powerless to change it. Trump ran for office, they saw an opportunity. It's not exactly unreasonable, it's just inconvenient to a class of people who have grown comfortable because they're a little closer to the spigots of graft that pour forth. Being "reasonable" in the way you'd use that word hasn't really ever worked for those people, and they waited quite a long time for it to do the trick.
No, the real check is impeachment of executive officers when they flagrantly violate the law.
The tradgedy of Trump's first term was that the House of Representatives undermined the legitimacy of that check by using it in partisan, ambiguous and non-compelling circumstances, and failing as a result to obtain a conviction. Using the heavy machinery of impeachment ineffectively made it harder to use should the executive take the tremendous steps you're suggesting.
Anyway, Trump just mocked the leader of a foreign ally for refusing to hold elections. Viewed together, his comments sound like an extended troll of the political opposition.
Before 2016, we all thought impeachment was reserved for transgressions that can't be fixed any other way since it is congress overriding the will of the people. It's not a real check on small overreaches. The balance of powers between the branches is a real check (when it works).
>since it is congress overriding the will of the people.
Say what?!
It's Congress keeping the President in check. BTW, the President is not directly elected by the people and doesn't actually [directly] represent them. The President is elected by the state governments (legislatures) and is supposed to be chosen because the States belief the President will faithfully uphold the Constitution and the laws passed by Congress. It may happen the the States use a popular election to choose their electors that elect the President, at least for now, but the President isn't supposed to represent "the mob" (majority or the populace). It's also why the electoral college is used for electing the President rather than straight popular vote.
> 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.
It's this kind of contempt that got him elected. You have no empathy or interest in the will of the people. Maybe if you talked with some of them, you'd understand their grievances. But something tells me you'd sooner ironically prejudicially dismiss them all as racist bigots.
Laws come from norms with a few practices to make them seem "legit". It's too hard and expensive for the ruler to oppose the masses. It has a significant political cost. Successful rulers just ride the masses current trend. It's like a tamed down hysteria.
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.
Here's Bannon's quote verbatim -- "I said, all we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done, bang, bang, bang. These guys will never—will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity."
All illegal businesses that had enough capital to burn through lawsuits and keep operations going until they were too big to fail and whipped the snot out of city and state legal counsels.
Indeed, VC culture (esp. for the fabled "unicorn" wannabes) is DOGE culture.
It might rarely be admitted openly, but it sometimes is alluded to... e.g. Eric Schmidt's Stanford talk where he said:
"I want to say that if your product becomes popular, you can hire a bunch of lawyers to sort everything out. If no one uses your product, don’t worry -- no one will care that you stole someone else’s content."
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."
Thanks for the explanation. Like I said, sounds wild that yes, the American Constitution does establish the president as basically a king over the Executive branch.
Copying what I typed elsewhere, I guess it's a testament to American democratic cultural history that no coup has occurred in American history when the president has such an absolute authority over the executive branch. Let's hope for the sake of the whole world it remains like this.
Is it not the same pretty much in all systems with unitary heads of state? Prime ministers surely have similar powers, subject only to votes of no confidence by their parliaments. Kings, where they have power, are also like this.
> I guess it's a testament to American democratic cultural history that no coup has occurred in American history
The various assassinations of presidents were kinds of coups, don't you think? Soon we'll find out if the CIA did or did not kill JFK. Suppose the CIA killed JFK -for argument's sake-, surely that would have been a coup, no?
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.
'Audit' is not something where you turn in the keys to your locker unconditionally to some random stranger who just walks in making demands. Audits are based on pre-determined and documented criteria, with the participation and supervision of responsible in-house officials. They just check if everything is in order. Auditors are rarely given unsupervised access to any data - especially to sensitive information. Meanwhile, the auditors themselves have to be held to a high level of integrity - elimination of conflicts of interest being the most important. This is a sham audit if it can be considered to be one at all.
I will however gladly send all credentials to my work-related accounts to authorized individuals in my company (with appropriate verification of course).
You should never send your credentials. Granting access to someone who should have access is one thing, but not your credentials that individually identify you. Also, if it isn't coming through standard protocols and procedures you probably shouldn't do it.
You never give your individual credentials to anyone for any purpose - be it personal or official. In fact, leakage of credentials and unauthorized access to privileged information is a failure in many types of audits. That's a very poor data security practice - especially in government organizations handling any sort of private and personal information. In case the auditors absolutely need data, they arrange extra channels outside the normal employee access channels to officially review, authorize and convey the data - just like how bank employees can see your account information without requiring your bank password or pin.
I don't believe that anyone who has worked in any official capacity would make such claims. The distortion of such well-defined practices is an attempt to gloss over the illegality of unprecedented events in progress right now.
Waste is all things i do not understand? And i dont understand all things, because i fired the experts. Thus all is waste. Its running a state, how hard can it be- my cousin was major of a town once.
They are sincerely following Project 2025, decimating government, and very likely to fire A LOT more federal workers over the summer, then they will install Loyalists throughout.
Billionaire Musk .. aka "The Auditor" .. is "primarying" or threatening to fund opposition candidates for Senators who fight him on this.
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.
Yeah, that's my point. Not even the president should have unrestricted access to that data. He's not a king or the head of a corporation. And government workers aren't his subjects or employees. In most places, at least honest government workers can stand their ground because they're backed by a law governing this access.
Should have made it clear that I'm not American and I'm just finding it wild from afar.
I guess it's a testament to American democratic cultural history that no coup has occurred in American history when the president has such an absolute authority over the executive branch, as informed to me by the other comments. Let's hope for the sake of the whole world it remains like this.
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.
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.
Government debt is a result of government spending into the real economy. It is where we get the taxpayer dollars that we spend, some of which go back to the government itself. A government without debt is also an economy without money.
Governments with central banks can mismanage their currency, but they can't run out of it.
When? At what specific (magic) number does everything come crumbling down? We're at ~36 Trillion today, would 37 Trillion the number that will cause people to run out of faith? I mean that's only one more than we have today, surely people won't run out of faith for one more. So maybe it's 40 Trillion? But come on, we're at 36, people can't possibly give up on the US dollar just an 8% increase. How about 100 Trillion? 500 Trillion? I'm not sure you know how this game is played.
I'm not just talking about US citizens, by the way. Foreign alliances are forming to dethrone the dollar as we speak. It will not last forever. I didn't say it would come crumbling down overnight. It will be a gradually shift away from the dollar. To believe the dollar is invincible is incredibly naive.
Why wait to spend that (magic) money at all then? What is the point of setting an annual budget? Earmarking contracts out for all these organizations by little million increments every year seems illogical when you can literally just put a few trillion in their hands today.
Why not spend all 500 trillion today? What are we waiting for?
I am entirely certain you do not believe in your own position.
why not maintain proper accounting? the deficit and enormous debt is a symptom of spending more than we have here, so much more we have to get money from other countries. you can’t do this forever. so what, spend until when? this question has come up repeatedly in the past and i’ve never seen it answered. Where’s the line where those wanting more taxes and deficit switch? How much would taxes and the debt have to be for you to say “this is out of control”?
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?
Planning without any access to or knowledge of all these difference agencies and their systems and processes (you do know there are many processes in place to prevent fraud and corruption, and Inspector Generals responsible for auditing)? Almost impossible. Again, these are not software problems.
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.
I understand you're frustrated because of who and what. Do you have any direct evidence they are stealing data? I see a lot of these responses that are emotional but at a factual basis it doesn't appear that way. Just as raw un restricted read/write access is constantly alleged, but we have in turn found out that isn't the case.
I really think we're getting to a point where people are too hyper emotional and sensational about most topics which further limits real discussion and response.
As for the idea of nickle and dimming, everything adds up and they're no where near done yet. Sunlight is the best disinfectant and we need a lot of it. Nearly every person that has run for president in modern years has stated they would go after excess spending and fraud, yet none follow through. This time someone is. If years of doing nothing gets us further down the debt rabbit hole, what harm is being done?
He was mistakenly given write access by the treasury department employees in charge of managing DOGE permissions. He resigned a day later, likely before he even realized he had write access. In that short window, he accessed the system "exclusively under the supervision of Bureau database administrators", and the initial treasury department investigation did not find any misuse of said write permissions.
I don't see how this can be blamed on DOGE. If anything it shows that DOGE employees are closely monitored, and their access is minimized and audited.
let me ask you a question. Richard Nixon had a special team under his direct control, they're popularly known as the white house plumbers. He asked this team to engage in activities not directly authorized by congress including various wiretaps and break-ins. Eventually these activities were discovered, it became a scandal and ended his Presidency.
Do you think Nixon did something wrong by creating this team?
If not, then we have an answer for why most people see this whole thing differently from you — most people see the Nixon presidency as clear overreach and abuse of power.
If so, what is the significant difference between Nixon's plumbers and the DOGE team, in your view?
Were the "white house plumbers" operating in the clear? On a defined task that was campaigned on? Working with legal as well as existing employees within each organization (yes I get they were simply stealing info)?
This was campaigned on, The election was won. In this instance the outcome is what the majority elected. You don't have to like it, some may change their mind, but this was made clear as a goal from day 1.
I've also not been cagey in my support. I fully support what is going on. If you see overreach follow the processes in place and litigate. That's how the country works. There's two distinct issues people have here, the "WHO" and the "WHAT" no one questions the "WHY", because no one can stand here and say we don't need to have cuts across the board. Ignoring the "WHO", the "WHAT" so far has been pretty clear. It's things that socially are supported by one party and not the other. This is the outcome of an election and it's going to keep going until someone proves they are outside of their authorities and the courts agree.
It sucks to have a narrative perspective for years and then see everything supported under that narrative cut back. I get the emotions, but ultimately none of that matters if we can't afford to keep the proverbial lights on.
Nixon had a 25% approval after he left office. I think there's a baseline of about 20-30% of people who are pro-authoritarian, and they don't really want to admit it yet, but they're fine with their team doing whatever they want, as long as they get their way.
Interestingly I feel the same way about the left, where things like pronouns were forced onto people, taxpayers were forced to pay off others student loans, the first and second amendments regularly attacked and if you spoke out against any of this it could lead to you losing your job.
You can’t with a straight face call the party of small government pro authoritarian. Unless you’re purposely skewing reality.
Sure. They made a decision and stand by it as is their luxury. Yelling at the vacuum of the internet about it may score emotional points but it won't sole the core frustrations people have. The common argument is "yes we need to do it, but do it another way" to which I say, it hasn't been done another way and plenty have had time to do it. Pushing things off and procrastinating in general, combined with a President that is largely supported and on a 2nd term, with no need to pander means you get exactly what was voted for.
The left had their turn to "fix things" they didn't. The right are trying now, and maybe their methods are wrong, but they're trying. What you're seeing is a power struggle playing out, the people who've been king of the hill are being throw to the side and don't like it.
It’s been done another way. We literally have independent agencies within the government that perform this job openly, carefully, with actual transparency, and by teams of experienced personnel.
It’s not their fucking luxury. It’s our fucking government being dismantled before our eyes by a handful of complete amateurs.
Mind you, my reply was to your statement that they “course corrected”. They didn’t course correct. They reaffirmed that that they’re happy for the insane and wildly destructive course they’re on to be piloted by open and avowed racists.
No, that’s not how this works. This isn’t a matter of fucking opinion. You can opt to be on the side of fantasy and belief or the side of fact.
The average American is surprised to learn that Obamacare and the ACA are the same piece of legislation. It says nothing that they’re equally surprised by the existence of a 60+-year old government agency, and that those same uninformed bozos are outraged by aid programs of which their entire understanding stems from a single maliciously-crafted Fox News headline.
You can do better to connect with the Americans that in fact don't share your sentiment. Your staunch response and attitude lead me to believe you have a superiority perspective, intentional or not. That's the exact attitude and response the country is pushing back against.
There are numerous projects that should not be funded. There is bloat, waste, and fraud through out the government. If you don't see that or know that, you've clearly never worked within it.
Your projection against fox news viewers could be turned back on you and argued you're doing the same thing. The difference is, that those fox news viewers for better or worse, voted for this and they get what they voted for. You can be mad, you can be sad, you can vote, and you can try and bring it up with the courts, but bottom line is it's happening.
If your best argument is that people who’ve been lied to and misled for decades voted to let the wolf into their henhouse, so just lie back and let it happen, that says volumes.
Sorry but this is very clearly moving the goalposts; you asked, got a very seriously problematic example, and then brushed it off with "yeah but..."
Come on man, are we really at the level of just letting that slide and pretending this is a legit operation? That Musk has only the best intentions, as his track record clearly shows right?
I can't believe what I'm seeing, the world has gone fully crazy.
Yep it's legitimate and I see no issues with it. The track record of the last admin was crazy were you saying the same things then? The left screamed trust the science in one breath over covid, then said science is fluid in the other when it came to biology. The left went to far and 15 or so years of being propped up and supported has gone by the wayside. I get it, people are upset, but at the end of the day we're here because of the "crazy" spending on "crazy" ideas.
Sunlight is publish the findings and take action after.
They're firing people's, seeing the repercussion and the publishing a list of program names. Not evaluations, not analysis. Nothing substantial, just gotcha out of context strings.
Do you think the entirety of USAID was "fraud" and waste? What about the US park service?
I am not American and the only time I saw my country do this kind of action in this manner was during its military government.
I have common sense. They put the least serious people possible in charge of it, so of course I'm not going to take it seriously.
> I really think we're getting to a point where people are too hyper emotional and sensational about most topics which further limits real discussion and response.
Maybe, but this has nothing to do with emotion. I'm not a moron. An actual audit would be great, but would take more than the 30 days that Trump has been in office. They are lying, so I am left to speculate as to what.
> This time someone is.
Do you have any direct evidence they are doing something about it? I see several people supporting these actions that are based on emotion, but at a factual basis, it appears you are just regurgitating party propaganda.
Who do you propose be put in charge? Why when the Democrats were in power weren't they put in charge before?
As for an actual audit, those have been done left and right. Audits only validate where the money is going not why.
Clearly they are doing something, budgeted spend is being cut and most notably if they weren't doing anything we wouldn't be having this discussion. We are also only a handful of weeks into the presidency. They're being very clear about what they are doing. Looking line by line at some of these cuts, I've yet to see anyone here actually debate the validity of all of the spend. Yes good programs will likely be impacted, things will be course corrected and brought back where appropriate.
It's a painful process no mater who is executing it. The only way to reduce the budgetary spend of the country is to do just that, cut spend. You start small and work your way up.
We’ll have to disagree. I believe the mindless waste of the past administration and their programs and narratives on things like biology were clear simple and wrong.
What I think is irrelevant, what is codified as the stance of the US Government is. They are acting on that assertion.
I'm sorry you feel threatened by it and pigeonholed into your beliefs. This is the exact status of definition for the HHS and USG.
Sex: A person’s immutable biological classification as either male or female.
Female: is a person of the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing eggs (ova).
Male: is a person of the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing sperm.
Woman: an adult human female.
Girl: a minor human female.
Man: an adult human male.
Boy: a minor human male.
Mother: a female parent.
Father: a male parent.
You can argue what you want, but they are enacting actions against what they have defined as truth. That's the by product of winning an election, you get to make the changes you ran on.
interesting to behold this inversion where the "conservative" side is taking dramatic and rapid action, changing things quickly, while the "progressive" side vociferously defends the status quo
It is, the right appears to be playing the same hand the left has for years and the people are supporting it. Naturally this makes someone that has strong left leaning convictions frustrated as they come the realization that they aren't the majority and the numbers of people that support one narrative on the internet aren't a reflection of society as a whole. The bigger picture is this isn't localized, that's how you know it's a larger problem. Countries around the world are having the same discourse and results. People are done with it. Identity politics is over. Spending excess money to support these groups is over.
I get it you’re upset, but that’s a you problem not a we problem. This is what was voted for. To bring it back to the main topic, the implied god mode access doesn’t exist.
Doesn't matter, when the previous admin was in did they take in the considerations of the losing party? Nope. To the victor go the spoils.. of implementing the plan you ran on.
That narrative is so boring and tired, and it's ultimately why Trumpism will be short lived and fade to the dustbin of history.
I'm not a leftist, and I mostly don't care about the groups, the right can have them. I care about things like medical research, nuclear energy and the food supply, which are all at risk because the regime's only tactic seems to be to unplug everything and see what breaks, and then decide if they even want it to work. They're not trying to run the country efficiently, they're trying to punish federal employees.
Most people are like me - they want real solutions for housing and health, not the impotence we get from the neoliberals or the kayfabe we get from Trumpism.
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.
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.
I am surprised people are comparing what Trump and Musk are doing now to Putin when in reality it's closer to Gorbachev (as you mentioned) and what the Chicago school did under Yeltsin. For those not aware, they cut government programs, reduced regulation, and privatized many government entities. The result was a catastrophic reduction in GDP and people's wealth. If what is about to come something as devastating, I really hope not. A recent example is what Milei is doing and he had similar results, resulting in a large increase of poverty.
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.
One of Trump's executive orders has shut down enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. This government is absolutely not trying to root out corruption.
>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.
While no doubt that brazen bribery occurs at all levels and in a large range of dollar amounts, I do not think this is such a serious problem that it requires the nuclear option he is employing. There is a bribery-adjacent phenomenon that is far worse. I don't know what to call it. Favor-trading? But there is no quid pro quo sufficient to prosecute in most cases, and any attempt to do so would look like (and probably actually become) a witch hunt.
If a civil servant is just being extra cozy to some private entity knowing (but without anything that would amount to evidence) that they'll be able to sail into some nice lobbyist gig in 3 years, where is the bribe? It was never promised. It's not guaranteed (circumstances could well change before that becomes possible). How much is that shit costing us? And while I'm sure that some would call that bribery too, it's juvenile to do so and counter-productive.
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.
>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
>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.
"Governmental fraud." This is like when people are being (made) upset about vanishingly small benefits fraud when wage theft and tax evasion are several magnitudes of order worse.
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.
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.
> 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
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.
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).
Public trust is not a security clearance; it is simply a more involved background check. A security clearance is only granted after a T3/T5 investigation and adjudication of the request. The SF312 NDA signed in order to receive your clearance does not expire.
I already know the answer to this, but if Obama had George Soros hire a bunch of anti-white people to oversee the Doge systems, would you still be supporting it? Or it's okay because you're white and the people are in charge are white.
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.
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.
> 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?
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.
Anyone who has ever had root on a database server has that access. There's no technology available that prevents the people responsible for correcting failing RAID volumes from reading blocks from /dev/sda. In theory, yes, there are DRM technologies that prevent you from getting a copy of a song Spotify stores in your cache. But those technologies are not used on multi-gigabyte databases.
The only thing that protects that data is professional ethics, and in extremely paranoid (i.e. airgapped) environments, metal detectors.
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.
They do, however, have the clearance for that level of access, and the delegated authority. In that sense this is much ado about nothing, or just a complaint about the politics, which, ok, sure, HN loves to do right now.
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.
Even if you were to argue AI systems would eventually have a place in government, which they almost certainly would have anyway long term, the sheer carelessness and lack of oversight of its implementation by a private citizen and group of individuals of proven, questionable ethics is enough reason in itself to have to burn the forest down.
Thinking of it objectively, almost nobody here can say they would stand for this at any company they worked at or ran. This is not an acceptable IT practice no matter which side of the fence you are currently sitting on - allowing an unvetted entity to modify your internal systems without audit or oversight is completely absurd.
> nobody here can say they would stand for this at any company they worked at or ran
This is what leaves me incredulous about so many people here defending this. I've been on this site daily for how many years I don't know but the one thing that has been consistent is the security idea that an outside entity gaining physical access to your server means that it is irreparably compromised, and that it should be treated as a liability and re-built from the ground up. But somehow it's fine if it's public data in a federal database?
Thank you for citing that because it is really the basis of my point. It is meant to be apolitical and to demonstrate that we are not OK with this otherwise so shouldn’t be now.
You are correct. And the nonchalant way in which the leaders who are supposed to oversee this thing are treating it is appalling. It will have consequences during mid-terms and beyond. It is clear that some people believe elected office to mean that they are then given authority and rights with which to increase in...being voyeurs rather than visionaries???
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.
Intent to drop in, make major changes, and pretend like they won't break anything is ill intent
We criticize engineers who drop into a code base and try to make changes without understanding. You can be forgiven for doing it a few times, but after that you're doing it intentionally. And if they hired engineers that didn't know this, that's incompetence at both levels.
Not only is this different code bases and IT products, it's across organizations and done very rapidly.
I am also not convinced that they don't simply have malicious intent most of the time.
Elon has been operating in bad faith since the Twitter Files (so, the very start). Announce X, publish receipts that show ~X, but nobody reads receipts so checkmate.
The "140 year old people in social security DB" post is just the latest example of bad-faith. Either there is actually >>$100B of social security fraud and that's the story or he wants to pretend like that's the case when he knows full well that presence in the DB does not indicate eligibility or payouts.
Agreed. Show the check numbers, mailing dates, bank transfers, etc. If there's actually really tens of billions flowing out to dead people monthly... demonstrate that. Should NOT be hard at all.
Should not be hard... if it exists. Which is why I'm 99% sure it doesn't. But the lie will go twice around the world before the truth gets its pants on, as always.
For sake of testing your position, let's assume the fraud is true and he does what you want and publishes the details like that.
What about the corner-case person who actually is legitimate and now has incredibly private information out there to make stealing their identity trivial? As a statistical anomaly who is often that corner case, I'm glad you're not the one making the policy. I wish Elon wasn't as well, and I'm sure there's going to be a giant mess at the end, but using government power (which Elon has, whether rightly or wrongly) to publish personal information about people (which they get by force giving their monopoly on government power) especially without trial or due diligence is very wrong IMHO.
This is what courts and process and testimony are for. Doing this reliably in the face of bad actors with minimal stepping-on-fingers is a solved problem.
Unless you don't actually care about the truth and want to send a convenient lie twice around the world before the truth gets its pants on. Then you should act like Elon is acting.
> What about the corner-case person who actually is legitimate and now has incredibly private information out there to make stealing their identity trivial?
Elon usually has doesn't have any compunction about throwing innocent people under the bus if he thinks he gains something even if indirectly.
But that aside, you can show evidence of massive fraud, without revealing private information to general public. Can certainly reveal it to relevant authorities.
You would have to quantify what properly vetted is a unelected bureaucrat is. I guarantee vetting for three positions are probably little more than validating you don’t have outstanding warrants.
I understand that these 140/150 year old recipients are actually the results of incomplete birthdate data.
To steelman the argument though, it seems reasonable to audit these recipients so that we can get their true birthdate entered. The number of recipients who lack a valid birthdate because they found a way to fraudulently claim benefits is likely non-zero, but probably low. But in any event, cleaning up the data can’t be a bad thing.
He was talking about the banking system. But he was also hinting at something bigger. There is a game theory problem often referred to as the meter maid problem. What is the optimal amount of meter maids in a city, where optimal can be defined in at least a few different ways, but roughly means the cost to revenue optimal. You end up with a couple of obvious extremes, no parking enforcement means no cost, but no revenue (plus parking may end up out of control if charging for parking is more than just revenue generating). The other extreme is thay you have enough people policing parking that no one ever fail to comply, this is the highest cost, but not the highest revenue, because you don’t get revenue from ticketing. So the answer is that the optimal number lies somewhere where the number of meter maids allows some percentage of people get away with failing to comply with parking rules (whether deliberate or accidental can further complicate the problem since both will happen).
So back to your steelman. Cleaning data is most certainly a desirable thing, but it is likely not the optimal thing, especially if the cost is high. And unauditable access to systems is a very high cost. Seems to me much of this auditing could be done in a much more acciuntable way.
On top of that, there's an assumption that there's no existing cleaning effort. I'm sure there is and it's just a difficult problem. The cases left must be either in progress, hard to track down, or not actually meaningfully active.
Or, as is really common with the federal government, the agency is actually underfunded and hasn't been able to modernize because the Republicans in congress have been trying to starve the administrative capacity the classic, slow way until now.
Like with the IRS. I've made mistakes in filing, and gotten a notice from the IRS about it, but sometimes years later (!). In the meantime, if you "audited" the IRS records, you'd see that my records are out of compliance and could claim "See, there's fraud!". In reality, the IRS just has slow antiquated systems, and is barred from giving taxpayers direct access to their records. Which is by design from the rich and anti-government.
If something costs more to fix than it costs to leave sitting around, fixing it is less efficient. In this case it's already been investigated prior to DOGE, and deemed not worth the effort to clean up [1].
You fix the system not because of the cost today but because the cost it will eventually cause.
Poor record keeping and bad policies about data validation tied to sending money to people if not today will eventually result in massive fraud.
Furthermore the notion you put forth is trash lazy thinking. Cost or no cost you do things the right way. But I don’t even buy you can calculate the cost of doing it wrong correctly to even have a sound conjecture that fixing it is more costly.
Your point is also covered in the audit report linked by the parent.
Cost was not the only factor. They seem to be trying to handle missing data the right way rather than use a kludge.
They did not want to add inaccurate death data to Numident records, for a variety of reasons, one being that it could cause release of information for living people when they're accidentally added to dead people records.
The SSA also thought adding annotations would legally require a new regulation and would have impacts on other consumers of the data (ie. states, etc).
How to handle missing death data in this case does not appear to have a clear and simple solution. But it also does not appear to be evidence of poor record keeping for modern records or a major cause of concern for "eventual massive fraud".
Missing data means == no payments until data is updated.
This creates a driver, somebody who is motivated to get it fixed. If the person does not exist they won’t be calling for their check, or if the entry fraudulent, fraudster will run the risk of exposing them self in the process of trying to get the checks flowing again.
I think the problem they should be considering more acutely is, eventually the number of people trained in that specialized knowledge will go to 0, and they will then be paying the cost to either train more (and the increased risks of less familiar people) or replace the whole thing with no backup plan.
Given the age of the COBOL programmers I know, that window is rapidly shrinking...
We acknowledge that almost none of the numberholders discussed in the
report currently receive SSA payments. However, SSA issued each of these
individuals a valid SSN and these SSNs could allow for a wide range of
potential abuse.
[...]
We also note we initiated our 2015 review upon the receipt of information
that a man opened several bank accounts using SSNs belonging to
numberholders born in the 1800s who had no death information on the
Numident. In addition to being used to obtain employment or open bank
accounts, identity thieves can potentially use these SSNs to create
synthetic identifies, obtain credit, government benefits, or private
insurance.
Also those identities can't collect checks, because if they tried it would set off alarm bells and reviews because they're over a standard "assume they're already dead" limit.
Imagine the brouhaha these same folks would be raising about "wasting your tax dollars hiring historians" if that other direction was in their self-interest.
This is also the same argument made against IRS audits on lower tax brackets. Basically, its not generally worth audits of low income citizens. Because the manpower required to perform the audit exceeds the revenues recovered.
Yet audits of individuals making < $25k per year is over 5.5 times higher than those in all other income brackets (1.27% vs 0.25%). So we chase down citizens when likely they probably don't even had a tax burden anyway. Maybe they misfiled some taxes and should be taxed a few hundred or even a thousand dollars more. But the manpower to chase down these little checks is a net negative on the department.
Sure, it is possible you find fraud in some of these low income cases. Someone claims to only make $25k but really they run a cash business and make $80k. But these are likely so limited thanks to other validations the IRS has access to, that the number of cases that reveal this is extremely tiny. So back to another argument on here, there an expectations that fraud is non-zero, and we accept that because getting fraud to zero is not worth the cost.
Show us the (public) Court Filings. The formal start of education to evaluate if there is truth, if there is a guilty party, and to legally render a verdict. The check numbers and other PII can be evaluated by the courts. We the People can know the numbers; the scale per case and in sum, of the 'fraud' identified.
Presence in the DB allows for downstream fraud, even by accident. If that DB is the source of truth for SS payouts elsewhere, clean up the data. There's no reason for it to be there.
Social Security receives payments as well as makes them. SSNs are keys for both.
The “super old person” SSN numbers are in the DB mostly because non-citizens are using them to pay into the system. If you delete those numbers, the next payroll run will inject them right back in.
And you would remove important accounting metadata for each payment. Metadata that is consumed by the systems that prevent fraudulent payments from going out.
The only way to stop the fake/bad SSNs is to go into the field and address each instance with employers. This is time-consuming and expensive, which is why no one has done it much.
The reason given that the SSA does not clean up the data is it would cost too much for little to no administrative benefit. They also don't want to add new inaccurate data to the system.
The no administrative benefit bit checks out with napkin math. Of the 18.9 million entries for people age 100 or older they are paying out benefits to 44,000. The total number of people in the US age 100 or older is around 90k to 100k, depending on time period for comparison.
There's an Inspector General audit report in a nearby comment for source.
> Presence in the DB allows for downstream fraud, even by accident.
That's like saying null columns in a particular database table must be filled in (or have the row entirely erased) because someone, somewhere, somehow, might infer the wrong thing about them, if they completely ignore all the other tables and business rules.
___
"Hello, I am Oldy McOldperson. Give me money."
"...Sorry sir, but that person would be almost 150 years old now, and that's well past our Impossibly Old threshold of 115 years. Furthermore, one our other databases says that person was reported as missing 90 years ago."
"But Oldy's--I mean, my precise confirmed date of death is still blank, therefore I'm alive, so give me money!"
"Sir, only a complete moron would believe that's how it works."
This is correct. Depending on the stakes, the right answer would be to err on the side of caution. Certainly repeated incompetence in a private setting would be grounds for suspension or termination.
There is certainly a level of incompetence that requires active ignorance to one's naivety. I'd certainly consider a stubborn person who arrogantly ignores concerns of experts malicious. The active nature certainly matters.
Yes. Consider the concept of negligence. It is malicious to take action without exercising reasonable care, and part of reasonable care is ensuring that you are the slightest bit qualified to perform the action.
I obviously agree, but for anyone reading along, this is also the legal definition: reasonable care. Reasonable is determined by peers, not the general population. So...
You mean misunderstanding the data, coming to the wrong conclusions, etc? Data science always has an issue with bullshit KPIs, shallow depth of statistics, and mostly mangling stuff keeping the manager happy. Still it's much better than not having any data analysis.
Whether it benefits from being in a single datalake idk. We really don't know how the operations are being done, we're mostly just reacting to news reports and outside guessing.
I'm assuming it will be basically how Palantir works in government health care and intelligence agencies where they aggregate multiple data sources from a bunch of old and new databases and have complex analytical tools on top.
This time you're not dealing with a data scientist, you're dealing with someone who willingly spews lies, those situations aren't comparable
Furthermore, another comment went in depth about how boosting the irs and following other agencies guidelines would have had a positive return, but none of this happened. On the contrary, we're seeing agencies such as the irs being infiltrated by this thing that resembles a metastasis
In the abundance of precaution, DOGE should indeed be quarantined and all its work reviewed. CAT should be operating alongside DOGE to review everything.
I thank you for highlighting that the intent isn’t actually the problem. I do feel the opposite to you but I’m happy you can see the practice itself is not acceptable / is a bad practice.
Perhaps you could read their statements? DOGE communications are filled with ill intent, and their publicly stated goal, and the goal for which their supports seem to support them, is the destruction of the bureaucracy. That's ill intent.
Irrelevant. Even if they did nothing, the amount of exposure to the foreign intelligence services will devastate whatever we don’t footgun for a generation.
Regulated?? The entire point of DOGE is to be unregulated. They are ignoring existing regulations (read: laws), and specifically targeting regulatory and oversight bodies for destruction. Wake up!
Different contexts. Regulated in my comment meaning observed, reviewed, audited in kind. They should not be operating on any site and in any system without someone watching over their shoulder, figuratively and literally too.
Whereas the regulation in your context pertains to regulations that are codified as laws or rules to follow.
Like many Elon fans, you quack “audit” and don’t know what the word means.
Audits measure compliance to an process or objective. They require that you have written down the process or objective, and retain sufficient information to measure whether you achieved it or not.
In this case, the DOGE boys do whatever Elon says. What is said isn’t recorded or written. People who attempt to do their duty who are seen as obstructive of the whim of the DOGE “agent” are fired.
Yeah, if only we had independent regulators in our government who could oversee and regulate it in order to prevent and reduce corruption. Oh wait, Trump fired them all like 3 weeks ago. On purpose. Because they are not operating in good faith, my dude.
If any of the income tax data they are touching at IRS is out in one of those AI tools that have been referenced, each disclosure is a federal felony punishable by up to 5 years in prison.
But remember, Elon doesn’t follow the rule of law, and has no doubt engineered things in such a way that his little minions are accountable.
Elon wants to build the X everything app and nuked the CFPB to do it and now has access to the fed system… I think he’s just biding his time.
Aaaaand now that he has every American’s info he can dox anyone on Twitter. Makes you think twice about telling Elonia to go fuck himself on X … which is why I do it on Mastodon and BlueSky ;-)
I have definitely contradicted Elon Musk on my X profile (@cyrsbel) quite a lot. I have never once lost my blue checkmark, though, so I believe he is well-intentioned and a good person who is trying to do the right thing. (I am also subscribed to him and having that sub and the blue checkmark means he has payment details already so I'm not worried about doxxing via CFPB data.) However, you raise a legitimate security risk and concern. It is not feasible to trust a single person with this much power and access. Furthermore, regardless of how much I or anyone else love Elon Musk...he has said things that didn't happen multiple times and too much is riding on his claims about what can or will happen.
So yeah, I don't trust him. Ever since he reneged on interns, I noticed that...he has a tendency to think about things as if they're entirely meat and to worship the false god Scarcity. He's been gargling Ron Paul's gold coins so much that he completely fails to comprehend basic nation state financing and why deficits are manageable and our debt is also manageable given our $160T+ net worth and climbing...
> I believe he is well-intentioned and a good person
You should read more about the things he says, does, and the way he treats people, especially from those who are close to him. The picture it paints is something I'd consider "cruel, bordering on inhuman" (and thats before the nazi salute.)
Alternatively, I have a lucrative investment opportunity I'd love to get you in on.
The complication here is that the ADL and Netanyahu and others at that level all said they do not believe it was a Nazi salute. I am relying on what they said.
They're siding with the Republicans because they don't want to be seen agreeing with the folks who hate what the Israeli government has been doing in Gaza; Netanyahu especially so. So the strongly pro-israel sources are too biased.
If I had to make a determination about it, I'd trust my eyes and quarantine DOGE's access until its accesses and changes can be audited by CAT. That is because the consequences of being wrong on this are too high, and there is plenty of time to be cautious about things and to ensure that everything is good. Zero legitimate reason has been provided for the level of rushing observed.
Bibi wants to curry favor with Trump. Of course he’s going to say it wasn’t a Nazi salute.
The ADL doesn’t want to get sued out of existence so… of course they going to say it wasn’t a Nazi salute.
This is the same chilling effect that Trump suing ABC and ABC settling so yeah nobody feels comfortable enough to speak truth to power because nobody has the money or the army to back it up
But those of us with ears to hear and eyes to see know what we saw. He might not want to exterminate Jews but he knows what MAGA likes and he like they loves the power a fascist dictator like Hitler wielded
But you did see the videos? You still trust a right wing politician, who stands to profit immensely from Trump and Musk in power, more than your own eyes? That's wild
Well when you have a white supremacist on the dodge team (confirmed by his comments on social media) working in this team, and you know white supremacists are very hateful... then I would assume there's obviously risk.
In this case, DOGE should be quarantined from making further changes until CAT can operate alongside DOGE for auditing purposes. Every change and access should be reviewed.
If this was the case at any point, or is still the case, DOGE should definitely be quarantined until CAT audits DOGE's accesses and changes. There should be two teams operating alongside each other on this. Not just DOGE. I do believe so far they were claimed to have received read-only access...but other reports were that they even had some admin access. Do we know for sure what access they had unmonitored?
My nature is to give the benefit of the doubt, but after seeing that they are rushing and it manifests in laying off even teams of highly skilled and critical nuclear safety staff...that means someone there doesn't know what they're doing or the chaos could be the point as well. I would hope it's not to that extent, but this is why I maintain that CAT should be auditing DOGE's changes.
And prior to this he was forced to do a 'nazi death camp PR tour' because he agreed with the nazi agenda on X. But sure, it's unfortunately old boy just keeps accidentally being a nazi. Last is he now tweets 14 flags.
So, the guy who held off a genocide to get trump elected and the people who are in direct cahoots say its ok, big "All my black friends I can say the N word so its ok" energy there.
And many, many reasons to think that in fact they do. See my favorites for flagged stories about the DOGE staff.
Even their stated reason - to fund trillions in tax cuts for the .1% [0] - is heinous. Inequality is already breaking the economy. 4.5 trillion dollars ($13k for each and every American) being transferred to the yacht class will inflict generational harm.
That isn't even what your link is saying. To begin with, it's citing a Treasury Department document requested by the Biden administration to do an analysis comparing the proposed tax cuts with a contrived alternative.
If you do generic across-the-board tax cuts, not targeting any particular income group, everyone's taxes are reduced in proportion to how much they were paying to begin with. Obviously then the people who make more money and pay more taxes have them reduced by the given percentage and that is a larger absolute number.
The same thing happens even if you target only the brackets for people who make less money. Suppose you lower the rates by 2% for every bracket below $400,000. That's not even enough to be in the 1% (for which you'd need to make ~$800,000), much less the 0.1%, but what happens in that case? Well, everyone's taxes go down by 2% of their income up to $400,000. If you make $40,000, they go down by $800. If you make $400,000, they go down by $8000. If you make $4,000,000, they also go down by $8000, from your first $400,000 in income. The absolute amount of the reduction is still highest for people who make more money, simply because it's a percentage of higher number.
The analysis the Biden administration requested was to do the tax cuts for people making less than $400,000 and then raise the tax rates on people above $400,000 to make sure they didn't get any net reduction, and their contrived example would have people making $400,000 paying a higher tax rate than people making $500,000+. Basically the purpose of the analysis was to generate a large number to put in a headline rather than compare it to a real proposal to lower taxes in general. This is also why they announced the cumulative total over a decade rather than listing the annual number as you would when comparing it against an ordinary government budget. Because "~3.5% of the budget" sure sounds a lot less than "trillions of dollars".
You can find any number of links talking about how unequal the tax cuts are. No one in the bottom 60% is going to be better off. The .1% are benefiting the most. That's an insane thing to do in an economy that's already breaking records for inequality.
> If you do generic across-the-board tax cuts
That's not what these are. The reaction of every billionaire to Trump's admin ought to tell you that on it's own.
> Because "~3.5% of the budget" sure sounds a lot less than "trillions of dollars".
Trillions of dollars are trillions of dollars.
A million seconds = ~11.5 days
A billion seconds = ~31.7 years
A trillion seconds - 31,710 years.
We're not talking about play money, or monopoly money. Musk bought the election for a fraction of a billion dollars, ffs.
And again, America is already on record inequality, about the same or more as right before the French Revolution.
Money IS a zero sum game, and when too much of it is going to the 0.1% it inflicts massive harm to millions of people. If you want to learn more about this, and what's about to happen to the US economy, you can listen to one of the world's best traders talk about it here [0].
What's interesting to me is how what constitutes a 'third rail' topic changes over time.
A quick search will show that it used to be fine to talk about Curtis Yarvin on here a decade ago but now that he's more relevant than ever it's suddenly taboo?
Did Curtis Yarvin and the ideas he espouses suddenly become less interesting or are a group of people working together to prevent critical discussion of his ideas?
> In this case Musk reckons he can save $2tn which some (better informed) analysts are saying is bollocks.
A lot of this depends on how you measure. For example, there are a lot of social assistance programs that provide in-kind benefits (e.g. you get subsidized housing) and those programs both require a bureaucracy to administer them and are less efficient than cash transfer payments, so they could be converted into refundable tax credits. Then the program costs somewhat less (you eliminate the administrative bureaucracy) and is more efficient and with better outcomes, but you can count the entire cost of the program as a reduction because it's now a tax credit (i.e. a tax cut) instead of a government budget item.
Do that with the entire social assistance system and you could get a sizable budget reduction before you even get into overpriced government contracts etc.
Even the theory that the executive can just not spend money it finds wasteful doesn't extend to the executive being able to unilaterally reconfigure an in-kind assistance program into a refundable tax credit. Admittedly, an even bigger grab of dictatorial power is not out of character for this administration, though.
Oh, they couldn't reconfigure those programs by executive order. But they could reasonably be doing this to find ways to reduce the budget and then pass new legislation through Congress.
>One positive though: if there is any alien tech, Musky will find it. You can bet that's high on his list, as improbable as it may be.
That tech has been handed over to the private sector as a precaution and also as a method of keeping the politicians' hands off it. Gives them cover to honestly say "I know nothing, I was briefed on nothing, we have nothing". Plausible deniability.
Elon Musk is also quite possibly the last person I'd ever want to touch world-changing technology. let alone be the sole arbiter of who gets to get near it.
If they did have ill intent, towards what is that ill intent targeted, and why should I care? These aren't organizations or missions I much care about. This isn't my government, except by an accident of geography. I have little say in how it's managed or what it does, but I have a high burden for it. It's unclear that this government protects me in any substantial way (or even in indirect, insubstantial ways). Meaningful reform is impossible at the sociological level, it requires too much buy-in too slowly, and that will always be hijacked by those with influence or watered down to meaninglessness.
Otherwise said, you want to destroy government, because you never cared about learning what various agencies do. And you want reform it, but without knowing what it does and without knowing what you want to improve other then "let it go away".
You don’t think they have ill intent? Really? They have made it abundantly clear how much joy they get out of slashing services for everyday citizens, cutting jobs, and outright harassing federal workers. They are full of malicious intent for the people they view as the enemy.
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.
It's common for stray passwords or authentication tokens to be found in data dumps of i.e. someone's email, dropbox, or whatnot. So getting read only access to all the data in a given agency means you probably have access to a trove of stray passwords and authentication tokens that can be used to pivot into write access there or somewhere else.
As a concrete example, if you have read-only access to someone's email inbox that's enough to steal most of their accounts on other services since you can request a password reset link and then click on it.
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.
It still has to be torn down though, don’t you see that? Even if a following government wanted to keep things of benefit, it was implemented in an untrustworthy way without oversight. It has to be rebuilt either way now because they didn't follow best practices for the implementation. They objectively fucked up.
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”
"DOGE currently has far deeper and far more extensive access to U.S. government computer systems — and is far deeper into the national security space — than is conceivably necessary for anything related to their notional brief and goals."
It's more important that the takes generate "curious" discussion, regardless of how naive and wrong they are. Especially during a "MOT", where things quickly get hidden.
Maybe naïve, but not wrong. They have access that any American citizen should have access to, and the only authority they really have is to flag items for review. The DOGE team is sensational, but i would bet an enormous sum that Trump has a much larger team that the sensationalized DOGE team at making decisions. It’s childish to believe the media’s talking points that there’s a bunch of children being allowed to run rampant controlling the government, especially in light of the recent “Biden is sharp as tack” media narrative.
From your link written by John Marshall, a “progressive liberal”: “It’s obvious that you’d want to be very cautious about centralizing this much power in anyone’s hands, especially people working outside all existing frameworks of oversight and accountability.” It’s called.. the President. The whole point of electing a president alongside of congress is to have a consolidated point of power.
The question isn't what's being accessed, it's who is accessing it.
There's at least some belief that the people looking at the data haven't been vetted or instructed as they should be when handling data of this nature.
It doesn't help that the guy who is running the show is basically doing it as a friend of the president and has some conflicts of interest.
First, if you’ve used HN at any point since the Snowden leaks there has never been a shortage of outrage here.
Second, while that was a major topic in international news for years, it did at least stay in the national security space where access is restricted. A lot of the concerns around DOGE are because they bulled through all of the normal rules for who gets access to sensitive data and how it’s handled. Say what you will about the NSA, and many here have, they didn’t just hand out credentials to inexperienced people with a history of leaking data or condone use of personal computers for government work.
This is especially of concern if the reports of write access being used to push code changes or deploy monitoring keyloggers are true: do you really want to bet that the guys who made a .gov site world-writable couldn’t be compromised by a foreign intelligence agency? There are legitimate concerns about the level of process overhead in government IT but that doesn’t make the reasons for it go away.
>> The question isn't what's being accessed, it's who is accessing it.
It certainty is a question of what is being accessed. I don't care if it is god damn Mr Rogers with the best intentions. The more sensitive the data, the stronger roadblocks need be in place. Often to the degree of impossible to access because it shouldn't be gathered in the first place.
There will always be good reasons to access data, and sensitive data. There is always good that can come out of this. But just because you can do something good with it doesn't mean you should. You can do a lot of good with a nuclear bomb, but I don't want any ever built because it takes only a small mistake (not an act of malice!) to have huge consequences. There is always a cost, you must always consider if the costs are worth the benefits.
Surely the response to the Snowden leaks should not be 'Well, Snowden showed that we have a lot of illegal snopping, so all snooping in the future is also ok'?
Telegram and Signal having hundreds of millions of "regular person" users since then says different. It doesn't seem apparent because in the past decade Big Tech has dropped any pretensions around caring about privacy other than for themselves. In the past 5 years, they've deepened their role in the natsec apparatus as well.
It is not dramatic at all. Because of the very fact it's contentious, a rebuild will be undertaken by the next government to not trust it. It's an absolute guarantee regardless of how any one side feels about it.
I and many people would argue to rebuild it based on the lack of transparency we have seen. There are enough people that feel that way that a rebuild is inevitable, regardless if you end up right. The position is that we really don't know, so the only way to be safe is a do-over. Or at the very least, a completely transparent audit, which is also insanely expensive and very hard to scope.
There are lessons that people learn over time and come up with best practices to avoid repeating the mistakes. If the intent is to really uncover waste and fraud then one way could have been
1. To ask for READ access to all the data with PII/sensitive scrubbed.
2. Any action to modify the content/data should ideally have followed the existing path/mechanism
Even if what you say is true (and as other posters point out, it isnt), DOGE and the Trump administration are staffed by confirmed Nazis and white supremacists who should be nowhere near the government. And Musk and VP Vance (both of whom interact with and support both Nazis and white supremacists regularly) supported and reinstated at least one, so this whole thing is rotten to the very top.
But this time we're dealing with a malicious actor on one's end. And I say malicious, because in all honesty I can't justify someone spewing lies continuously while holding a public charge without being malicious
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.
By your logic we should just do away with cybersecurity in general. Clearly, it's all already out there so it isn't a problem!
We've already had the occasional large leak and survived, why not just leak continuously! Also leave your doors unlocked, you wouldn't want robbers to break an expensive door to get into your house, and most of your stuff isn't worth anything anyway!
What company do you work for so I can tell them to fire you for negligence? Nobody hire this person.
How can you possibly disagree with this and call yourself good at your job or a technologist? What an embarrassing take. Seriously you might want to delete your post if you want to ever be employed again. Actually trying to help you here.
> I.e, in 2017 Equifax leaked data on 150 million people and no one cared (you get a free 6month credit check)
What are you even talking about? People (myself included) were fucking livid! The reason we got the 6mo credit check was because so many people tried to claim the monetary compensation (which the court had ruled they were owed!) that Equifax was unable (unwilling) to pay the resulting volume of money. The 6mo credit check was the weasel compromise that the Trump regulatory apparatus rubber stamped.
Okay so you care, do you think politicians who are now pretending to be concerned for privacy reasons care? Think the average american realizes that they have never cared about privacy and they look like clowns pretending like all the sudden they do.
The average american citizen doesn't care about privacy? Go outside and look through the window inside peoples homes. See how long you last until the cops are called on you.
I was trying to say that the average american does care, but the average politician does not care. But the point is that recently there has been a reason to pretend to care. i.e, to oppose dodge. They need a reason to oppose dodge and concerned for privacy has that "for the people" tone to it. So the insane part is how a cause like privacy suddenly is important when there is a political need for it to be important, i.e, to find a reason to oppose dodge. When the opposing party is trying to solve a problem you as a politician you need to oppose it. It doesn't matter if it is good or bad. You as the opposing party need to find the bad side of it. And the reason cannot be "I am in the opposing party" or "because I want to be the one to solve the problem". It has to be a possible real reason. So which came first actual concern for privacy or the need to be concerned for privacy. Clearly the need to be concerned for privacy. This kind of why two party system works, because you always have someone opposing what you are doing even if it is right, just to keep it in check.
Why does other peoples' sincerity or lack thereof dictate what I am allowed to be outraged by? "Whatabout whatabout whatabout"; what about you worry less whether other people meet your standards for legitimate outrage and worry more about an unelected billionaire giving the federal government the old private equity pump 'n dump?
I remember reading Glenn Greenwald in the 2000s when he was railing against the expansion of executive power under GWB.
> But the same individuals peddling this theory are simultaneously objecting quite vigorously to the notion that they are bestowing George Bush with the powers of a King. Bill Kristol and Gary Stevenson, for instance, called such claims "foolish and irresponsible" in the very same Washington Post Op-Ed where they argued that Bush need not "follow the strictures of" (i.e., obey) the law, and the President himself angrily denied that he is laying claim to a "dictatorial position" in the very same Press Conference where he proudly insisted on the right to eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant even though FISA makes it a crime to do so.
It’s very easy to reason about when someone says “I alone can fix this.” You have a single person to look at and listen to. Not a faceless sprawling beauracracy and slow wheels of legislative progress.
It’s the same reason the antagonist in nearly every film is a single bad guy who is eventually karate-chopped down to size. It’s the same reason WW2 is a ‘simpler’ and more palatable narrative (a couple main bad guys) than WW1 (complex political and social movements across many countries led to war). Even though the same complexity of politics and social changes were also at play
In a big society where end effects are far away, we look to the strong men to handle the big problems
It shouldn't be hard to understand why absolute power in the hands of yourself is the best political system. Since everyone can't be king, their next preference is going to be absolute power in the hands of someone who has their interests in mind. Unfortunately, we live in a world where people have varied interests and you can't really trust that anyone is fully aligned with you anyway.
Desperation, ignorance, and failure of the golden rule. They want their cult to win, and are fine with inconsistency and illegality when it benefits them. This is perhaps the ultimate vulnerability of representative government that cannot be remedied except through education and socially-enforced norms, or else democratic government must be abandoned but not for a malicious emperor.
Most people don't want a strong man in charge with absolute power. Dictators rule by fear and naked force, far more so than even the "monopoly on violence" claimed by modern states. A king is just another word for dictator, it's all the same. Although I would say Americans aren't really drawn to the model of a king so much as a "CEO in chief," but CEOs are essentially kings within their domain.
The people who do support it believe that they themselves will be granted noble status within the new regime, rather than being serfs.
Natural order. We structure all of nature into kingdoms. They flower out from a core archetype. And it also helps project an inheritable identity.
The problem above any American political and philosophical questions (moral questions notwithstanding), is mistaking Trump for anything resembling a worthy king. It will bring trouble.
In the ancient world the king was a symbol of the prosperity of the people and scapegoat for the sins and troubles of the people and was ritually killed and replaced when things weren’t working out. History whispers that one should be careful what one wishes for.
In my experience, your statement is opposite of true. Hence the term, 'die hard fan'. In fact, the more fans get abused, the deeper their love and loyalty grow.
That's because many current regimes have exploited anocracy with the appearance of individual choice while manufacturing consent. Previously, it was done by force which is what doesn't scale.
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.
Under U.S. constitutional law -meaning the Constitution itself and the binding judicial precedents and the impeachment precedents (mainly from the failed impeachment of Andrew Johnson)- the president is plenipotent within the executive to do things like:
- fire principal officers without
the Senate's advice and consent
- fire other appointed offices who
did not require the Senate's
advice and consent to confirm
- lay off federal employees in the
executive branch
- audit the executive branch's
agencies
- set policy for all executive
branch agencies
etc., as long as it's all within the executive branch.
The president can also abrogate treaties without the Senate's advice and consent.
Most of the above are not explicitly in the Constitution as such, but are understood to be constitutional law either due to SCOTUS decisions, longstanding and unchallenged practice, or the result of the failed impeachment of Andrew Johnson.
Not only that but also most if not all recent presidents going back decades have done some if not all of the above. That includes Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama, Trump, and Biden.
In other words: there is no innovation here, no judicial controversy. This is all standard fare for any new administration. The only difference is the extent of what Trump is doing in his second term compared to any other recent presidency. The sheer number of EOs, the auditing (which basically hasn't been done recently), and the layoffs (which are rare in DC). And yes, he's goring a lot of oxen -more than other presidents in recent memory-, but they all do that, just not eliciting so much outrage from the opposition.
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.
Yes, when you're not from this country (a foreigner), you need a citizenship card to reside and work here (or a visa). Thanks for verifying that for me.
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.
Trump renamed USDS to DOGE via executive order. It's true that it's not an agency, but it was created during the Obama administration.
I'm not sure it'd be better as an agency because there are strict rules and hierarchies around agencies. The way DOGE is operating right now, seemingly, is:
- Agency directors are directed by executive order to work with DOGE and give them access to what they need
- DOGE team members are actually hired as employees of the agencies in which they are operating
- DOGE makes recommendations to agency directors on what things to cut
- Agency directors review recommendations and make cuts
This means that all cuts are being recommended and made within the scope of each individual agency. It is not the case that one agency is telling another what to do, and all decisions are ultimately being made by each agency's director. It simplifies the hierarchy and authority.
It is only the job of the executive because Congress told them so via Acts of Congress. Looking at e.g. the firings of the inspector generals, Congress has put very clear language into its laws on why and when those inspector generals can be removed by their post, yet Trump and his cronies ignored this.
It should not be a formality because while it is true that the Republicans have a slight majority in Congress, the founding fathers never intended this most powerful of the three branches to be run by parties. The power in Congress is split up geographically for this very reason, but the party system, that secured its seats with gerrymandering, is highly toxic for a functioning legislative power in the US. It is disappointing to see Republicans in Congress not restricting the executive orders of the new self-proclaimed King.
The president can fire any executive branch officer at any time for any reason regardless of what any statute says about it.
There are two precedents for this to my knowledge, though there may be more:
- the failed impeachment of
Andrew Johnson established
that the president can fire
principal officers without
the Senate's advice and
consent
- Spicer vs. Biden, which
established that the president
can fire officers with fixed
terms
> self-proclaimed King
He was clearly trolling. Grammatically that tweet does not parse like himself calling himself a king. For all you know he loves the British king, or some other king, or maybe he was referring to Jesus. But he got what he wanted from that quip: it got reported, along with credit for ending congestion pricing in Manhattan. Why the media still falls for that, I don't know.
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.
The president has absolute authority to access to all secrets within the executive branch, and has absolute declassification authority, both statutorily and presumptively constitutionally as a result of a) being the president, b) being able to nominate his cabinet, c) being able to issue executive orders to his executive branch officers and acting officers.
The president therefore has the authority to access every last secret and every last system within the executive branch. No statute can limit this power. The president also has the authority to delegate (to some extent; only the president can issue EOs, but presumably his officers can recommend EOs to him) these powers to his or her officers.
The titular of the U.S. Digital Service (DOGE) is statutorily not subject to Senate confirmation, though considering how Trump's controversial nominees have sailed through Senate confirmation it's easy to suppose that Musk would also likely be confirmed to head the USDS were it an appointment subject to Senate confirmation. Since the president can appoint someone like Elon Musk to head the USDS, and since the president can delegate his clearance and declassification authority to someone like Elon Musk, his doing so does very much "pass [the] sniff test".
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.
That might sound incredibly foreign to you, but this is the norm in many Nordic countries, see Norway, Sweden and Finland, for a start. Tax returns for everyone are public, and so are addresses through a national registry.
Yep! In Sweden, this is part of the constitution. I think it beautifully demonstrates that the state works for the public, and that all information held by the state should by default also be accessible to members of the public, unless there is an important exception, such as personal medical privacy or national security.
It acts as a great tool for journalists, who are able to obtain meaningful insight into the actions of the state at all levels. While of course there are downsides, I think this is a very important principle.
Here you get SWATted for "fun" by kids, and targeted by Right-Wing extremists with death-threats for "political speech", and targeted by criminals based upon your vulnerability. USA is sooooo not Sweden.
Addresses are not public information, you can opt out from having your info public. They are not even a national registry (one exists, not public) but your telco will put you in "the phone book" if you don't opt out.
Taxes are public information but only to a degree. You can opt out from having them shared en masse (primarily to the media) but you can still inquire someone else's paid taxes from the tax office but it requires you to know their full given name, year of birth and home town.
Salary is not public information, only the total amount of paid income taxes. You can correlate them to some degree but you won't be able to know how many jobs a person has or where their capital gains are from.
Access to this information can also be limited in exceptional cases (politicians, harassment victims, identity theft etc).
As a foreigner who moved to Sweden, it was quite shocking first to see all this info displayed online for everyone to see but there are definitely some good sides and bad sides to it.
One of the good side is that, you can look at the people living in a given area and decided if this is the kind of neighborhood where you want to live. Lower (declared income) can have a correlation with crime so if you just want to have a quite life, you may want to select an era that has loads of working people with a higher than average income.
One bad side, some people have used it in the past to harass people, think ex-lovers and so on. There is a procedure in place where if you are afraid of being stalked you can ask for your information to be removed from these registries or at least be hidden from public view.
Salary negotiations are a very simple example, you can easily compare your salary to that of your peers and to similar positions in other companies. If your boss tells you they pay you the industry average or company average or whatnot, you wouldn't be able to check whether that's actually true otherwise. You can also have a rough ballpark of what a company pays before you apply for a job there. In general, information like this being public empowers people, whereas in most countries companies hold all the cards and use this information asymmetry to their advantage.
Which works, until you have mass immigration from MENA-countries that results in a huge rise in criminality which makes everyone afraid because any criminal can look you up from the license plate or simply by searching for your name and instantly know where you are.
I hate this system. It used to be a good system when most people was law abiding and there was no gang criminals. But today? Jeez, you are like a fish just hoping not to get struck by the sharks and there is no protection available due to the failing state.
> Employers almost always know the salary and location of their employees.
Employers do, individual stockholders of the employing firm do not, generally.
> Government workers are (in theory) employees of the citizens.
No, they are in theory employees of the government, in which the citizenry are stakeholders. They are not, even in theory, direct employees of the citizens.
A US Attorney is not, in theory, your attorney just because you are a US citizen.
Hard to say. I only know the salary data ends up at less scrupulous data brokers (e.g. ones that sell directly to advertisers, though perhaps TWN does this too, idk)
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.
A Chinese APT had unfettered access to the Treasury Department, discovered back in December. It's interesting that people are much more excited about new government employees accessing these systems as part of their duties than they are about this.
A foreign adversary hacking a governmental system isn't good, but it's also kinda expected that they'll try.
That "just an advisor (but not really)" Musk and his ragtag group of junior developers get god mode access to lots of governmental systems is less expected. There are legal ways for the president to direct these departments, so when he opts for the illegal path, it's definitely noteworthy.
So who is the head of Department of Government Efficiency? If it's Musk, like Musk and Donald has said lots of times, why is he not confirmed by congress?
Are you arguing that people are at risk because a comparison of Treasury and IRS records is going to reveal tax fraud or something? I don’t think that’s on the table. At any rate, Trump doesn’t need DOGE to do that, he can just order the IRS to do it like FDR did if that’s what he’s going to do.
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.
It would have been better for the government not to collect all this information in the first place. For decades libertarians have been warning about the scenario we seem to find ourselves in.
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.
I blame the people who were bought as much as the buyer, and the Citizens United decision for facilitating the buying.
I'm OK with democratic elections and executive appointments. I'm OK with the "read access" part of the control, the "write access" should only go as far as the laws passed by Congress permit.
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.
While I agree in principle, that's not an entirely intellectually honest evaluation. The government is prohibited from creating an electronic registry of guns, not because of the guns themselves, but ultimately because of the judicial understanding of the Second Amendment confirming (not granting) an inherent right of citizens to possess them. The restriction is in service to the gun owners by protecting them from government overreach. The guns are merely a layer of abstraction on that.
Having a slow and archaic birocratic system doesn't stop governments going totalitarian on their citizens.
Case in point In Germany the Polizei will SWAT and arrest you if you post a meme on social media that angers someone's dignity. That's not a joke that actually happens.
This typical German "our government is not slow and inefficient, it's just protection against totalitarianism" is pure cope.
> Case in point In Germany the Polizei will swat and arrest you if you post a meme on social media that angers someone's dignity. That's not a joke that actually happens.
Sounds like a system which could easily be abused. "politeness" and "decency" are ripe for all manner of interpretations.
In the US we see that the only things keeping authoritarianism at bay is larger the people following norms (like the peaceful transfer of power after losing an election), and the executive obeying orders from the judiciary. All it takes is for a group to not to that any more and boom.
Short road to where 'slander' means any criticism (however objectively true and justified) of people in power and you get a swat team at your door and steel boot on your neck.
>Sounds like a system which could easily be abused.
It is constantly abused, the issue is Germans have gaslit themselves into thinking that it's the right thing to do "because nazism was bad", so they have Nazi levels of speech censorship to fight imaginary Nazism, because once you label someone who disagrees with you as a Nazi you are free to censor them, which then in turn is causing the uprising of actual Nazism because people are tired of being censored for having opinions that oppose the mainstream narrative. Germans are really a difficult bunch to reason with logically.
>That's because slander isn't protected speech and is directly illegal.
In one case it wasn't slander. A person pointed out a politician's Nazi/Stati past on social media and he still sued abusing the "muh dignity" bullshit law.
Dunno about Germany but in Belgium there is Crossroads Bank for Social Security which effectively controls the flow of information between various social security and public health organizations: https://www.ksz-bcss.fgov.be/
In its current form, it's a set of SOAP or REST APIs that your organization gets access to after completing paperwork about your needs.
It was established by a 1990 law [1].
There is also a similar legal and technical setup for information on companies [2] where most information is public, and the register of residents [3] which is even more guarded.
Yes, that makes sense, we don’t allow people to connect to our databases directly either, and in any case the systems should be built so they are separated, it’s good architecture.
I was very much more intrigued about the statement that data can’t be easily/legally shared within the same agency
I worked for the equivalent of the IRS for two month in my country (student job basically). When people asked for a deferred payment, i could accept it if it was the first time, but when they asked for a deffered payment the second time, or for reduced taxes (recent job loss, loss of a house or big events like this), i had the mean to verify who the person asking for this was, but not the mean to approve it.
I verified the information and filled a form, then asked for approval. The person approving had no idea who the person asking was (he had no access to the tool i used to match the internal ID to an actual person), but had the form i filled, and approved of the deferred payment/reduced taxes without any knowledge of who asked. Also i did not know who that person was, and he did not know who i was.
All of that is not very effective, but it reduces the risk of corruption from civil servants: you either have limited information, or limited power (this isn't the case with mayor or other elected officials though).
> I was very much more intrigued about the statement that data can’t be easily/legally shared within the same agency
Consider it from this hypothetical perspective: My mom is an analyst in the health service and has database access to produce various reports. Her access is extensive, to allow reporting on things like whether the courses of antibiotics prescribed by doctors are of the recommended length.
Meanwhile, I'm a rebellious teenager. My doctor asks me how often I smoke, drink, take drugs and engage in promiscuous sex. If my doctor enters my answers into my electronic medical record - should my mom be able to look at my record?
The answer, of course, is that her right to access data depends on what she's doing.
This is also true, to some extent. You have to have valid reason to access PII (Personally Identifiable Information). All access is logged and the DPO (The Data Privacy Office, one of the good things GDPR formalized) monitors access on a regular basis.
And since the current understanding is that even the combination of an IP address and a timestamp is personally identifiable... many organizations are actively not collecting usage stats. Which leads to the abuse of public funds, but this is a different story.
But when culture fails you, it's nice to have guardrails. This is why we have a constitution, law, institutions etc. It's defense in depth, it can buy you time and that's important because the more time you have, the higher chances that the wind start blowing in another direction.
This is why the electoral college is a weak point in American democracy and no wonder it was the actual target of the Jan 6th coup attempt, the Capitol invasion being merely a distraction. Weak points like this must sealed over so that the overall system is more robust to attacks.
Well, in Italy the "IRS" (Agenzia delle Entrate) is not allowed to cross-check banking statements with its own data from Tax Returns.
Whenever anyone proposes to allow it, the members of the informal "Party for Tax Evasion" scream and denounce the descent towards "Taxation Fascism". It's so pathetically cheeky, that it feels a bit endearing (how dare them, what rascals!)
You call the first and one of the most successful democracies in the world a monarchy/dictatorship? The American Executive branch is given broad powers since the very beginning and considering the success there might be something to it.
In contrast the Europeans have descended into petty mass wars and dictatorial regimes multiple times, and each time America has come to save Europe through that very Executive branch.
America has never saved anyone unless they thought it was from a threat to America.
And no, the executive branch had much less power “in the beginning”. As many people have learned, what America’s constitution says has never really matched what America does. The increasing mindless worship of a dead text, called “originalism”, is part of what will destroy it.
> You call the first and one of the most successful democracies in the world
That's the level of delusion in your own greatness that led to Trump. USA was the first (representative!) democracy with written constitution at best. And that's if you overlook the fact that only some people were entitled to vote at all.
Europe has more or less managed to avoid descending into a mass war for almost a century now, if we assume the one brewing now is just a mirage, so basically they've got it all figured out and their smugness is totally justified.
This is what democracy looks like, Americans should learn from Germany's example:
> According to the court document, the public prosecutor stated “public interest” in pressing criminal charges as the retweet was “punishable as an insult against people of political life”. It potentially constituted “incitement of the people”.
> Publicly insulting a politician has been a criminal offence in Germany since 2021 when a set of laws “against hate and hate speech” were passed under then-chancellor Angela Merkel.
Not descending into a dictatorship requires democratic participation, a pluralistic mindset and a zeitgeist to uphold it. In a pivotal moment, just a single judge collapsed and enabled hitlers takeover.
The erosion of trust in institutions and elections, up to insurrections are way out of that picture. Infront of that background, boasting about a strong executive branch, being cleansed not by merit (opposed to trumps own standard) sounds so absurd to me as a german.
Your orwellian interpretation about limited free speech is rooted in your free speech absolutism. We distinguish between limited freedom speech and unlimited freedom of oppinion. We also have processes involving courts to ban new, factually incorrect statements, aka. non-oppinions, to make it illegal bullshit.
Insulting politicians isn't free speech and America is going to descend into fascism because they allow people to get away with shit like that. Germany is leading the way, showing the rest of the world how democracy is done.
> The Bavaria resident is also accused of posting Nazi-era imagery and language earlier in 2024. According to prosecutors, this post may have violated German laws against the incitement of ethnic or religious hatred.
> The man was arrested on Thursday as part of nationwide police operations against suspected antisemitic hate speech online.
> The public prosecutor's office in Bamberg has now announced: The search had already been requested before the Green politician himself filed a criminal complaint in the case.
> Habeck only filed a criminal complaint in the case more than a month after the search warrant had been requested.
> According to the public prosecutor's office, the suspect is also facing another charge: According to this, in spring 2024, he allegedly uploaded a picture on X with a reference to the Nazi dictatorship, which could potentially constitute the criminal offense of incitement to hatred. According to the investigators, it shows an SS or SA man with the poster and the words “Germans don't buy from Jews” and the additional text “True democrats! We've had it all before!”.
> Europe has more or less managed to avoid descending into a mass war for almost a century now, if we assume the one brewing now is just a mirage, so basically they've got it all figured out and their smugness is totally justified.
Europe hasn’t descended into total war since WWII because the US has military bases all over Europe, mostly in Germany.
Europe has been more or less militarily occupied and subjugated for that time. Conquered nations tend to be pretty docile on the international level and generally don't go around waging war independently.
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.
Some insights or decisions cannot or should not be placed on the public, thats why you elect representatives in the firt place. Insight can be granular, like an oversight commitee publishing a redacted report, but i agree on full transparency about anything regarding our representatives.
> 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?
Doing that does not require anywhere remotely near the level of data access DOGE has been given.
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]
It's a classic Motte and Bailey. "Europe acts in this way, so much better than America. [...] No no, not THAT Europe, I of course was only talking about this other part of Europe!"
How is the most populous state in the EU doing?
> The German parliament amended two laws on June 10th granting enhanced surveillance powers to segments of the federal police and intelligence services. They allow the use of spyware to hack into phones and computers circumventing encryption used by messaging applications such as WhatsApp and Signal, raising concerns about the right to privacy.
> The new federal police law allows interception of communications of “persons against whom no suspicion of a crime has yet been established and therefore no criminal procedure measure can yet be ordered”. This fails to ensure the necessary protection against unjustified and arbitrary interference in people’s privacy, required under international law. Human Rights Watch and the United Nations have pointed out the importance of encryption and anonymity for data protection and the right to privacy.
> The government argues that new legislation is needed to keep up with technological developments and claims the new powers are to help federal police stifle human trafficking and undocumented migration.
I don’t know much about many of those countries, and I have no reason to spend hours googling them.
but I know my home country Sweden, which used to have solid freedoms, have deteriorated quickly in the last few years.
Which is why I have moved to Switzerland, where the citizenry respect each other privacy(no country is perfect, but I do believe their decentralised direct democracy
will keep protecting their liberties).
A recent law has enabled the Swedish police to open mail to private individuals if they suspect there might be drugs in them. This is just one change of many that has reduced the liberties of the citizens.
Don’t get me wrong, the Swedes want it this way. They are no longer a freedom loving people, sadly.
> I don’t know much about many of those countries, and I have no reason to spend hours googling them.
A good reason might be to back up the serious accusation a few comments above.
> A recent law has enabled the Swedish police to open mail to private individuals if they suspect there might be drugs in them. This is just one change of many that has reduced the liberties of the citizens.
While this isn't ideal in a vacuum, I don't see the alternative. If physical mail is given inviolable privacy, you're pretty much handing bad actors the perfect delivery system on a silver platter. I'm sure there's other examples of decisions that increased Swedish authorities' surveillance capabilities, but to call a country a surveillance state requires a little more than "They can check your mail if they suspect you're using it for drug delivery".
> 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.
It's worth noting all those regimes were really only streamlined at getting people killed one way or the other. Their internal history is always a story of wild incompetence and corner-cutting. The Nazis in particular got a lot of undue credit for effectiveness.
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.
I have strong feeling that in the past 50 or so years, we often have traded resiliency for efficiency. I think we might have gone too far.
That doesn't mean that being deliberately inefficient will improve resiliency.
Also, some of the deliberate inefficiency (i.e. looking at weird thing us healthcae/health-insurance system has going on) is more ... extractive? That sounds like the word I am looking for.
> $50,000 to Sri Lanka for “climate change” isn’t a “popular program.”
Is that $50,000 annual? Because if so that's less than a rounding error for the budget of almost any country, much less the US. The costs associated with ending this program (organizational, employee time) may even be higher than just continuing to pay it.
> Paying dead people social security isn’t popular.
Is there any public statistical data on this? As far as I know US social security does periodically verify if recipients are still alive. Of course some cases will slip through the cracks, but unless DOGE plans to individually track down every recipient and see them in person I don't see how they can solve this problem. This inevitably happens with pretty much any social security system, anywhere.
> Sending money to the Taliban isn’t popular.
Is there a source for this?
> When you say Trump doesn’t care about waste, that isn’t supported by the facts. The deficit isn’t about waste, fraud or abuse, it’s about overspending. They aren’t the same thing.
He could start by reducing overspending on the US' titanic corporate subsidies, but something tells me he won't.
They obviously didn't mean the laws prevent sql joins directly. Those prevent data aggregation, which in practice prevent various technical implementations of that.
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.
Regardless of the actual implementation, do you agree that it's likely much easier to match data when you have it in an organized digital form than an organized physical form?
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.
It's not euro democracies that look like they are dying, comparing government to companies, yeah, iro ic that is USA that forgot the meaning of the word democracy
Apart from government being very different from private business indeed; I wouldn't want to eat food, drive a vehicle, or use software made by a company made with that mindset. "Safety first" is also a hard rule in all sorts of sports where people move faster than non-expert spectators can fully comprehend. If you need to cut corners to "gain efficiency" it just means you're bad.
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.
The president should not be able to declare war without an act of Congress.
The constitution grants the power to make law to congress, but then congress has enacted many laws which create agencies under the executive branch, which in turns empowers the executive branch.
So I agree that Congress should make/repeal laws that reduce the size of the executive branch so that only necessary powers are entrusted to the executive branch.
However, until that day comes, the separation of powers is the Legislative, Judicial, and Executive. Within the executive, inward looking (not external like killing people), yeah, the president and his appointed cabinet should have control. Without that control, you are defining an unaccountable form of government.
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.
I don't think these two things necessarily go hand in hand. If the head of the executive branch should have absolute control over the branch, as the above user suggested, then if congress wants to control government agencies that are currently in the executive branch, those agencies should be placed outside of the executive into a different category that is either under the legislative branch or shared with the executive. In the status quo, all of the large government agencies being cut by DOGE are technically under the executive.
The Constitution does not provide for agencies in the legislative branch with power over the executive branch. Congress itself does have power over the executive, but mainly in that only it can pass laws, only it can raise revenue, only it can appropriate funds for expenditure, and, of course, only it can impeach executive officers and the president. Congress does not have the power to limit the president's executive orders to the executive branch agencies, for example.
I'm not sure what you think you're adding here. That the legislative branch doesn't have power over the executive is the point of the above comment referred to here and my comment referring to it.
The U.S. Digital Service (which is what DOGE actually is) does have a budget allocated by Congress.
DOGE is finding monies are being spent without Congressional authorization, and is stopping that, exactly as you asked for. The president is also stopping expenditures that are allocated by Congress -- many presidents have done this.
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).
To be clear, Security Clearances is just an EO thing.
The actual laws just speak about things being critical to national security and don't use the words like "Top Secret" and etc.
The whole actually labeling things "Top Secret" and etc started off with Clinton [1] but then Bush [2] and Obama [3] modified the rules around classification.
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
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.
Whenever I see "follow the law", my first reaction is always: Is the law fair and just? I'm merely posing the question. If you find the law to be fair and just, then for sure everyone should and probably will follow the law.
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.
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.
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.
The plans were laid down with "Red Map" in 2010, and reinforced in 2020: this is control of the GOP "at the base" via gerrymandering and primary control. It means that the individual representatives no longer control their own districts since a central authority (Trump) can easily out primary the individual representatives if they don't toe-the-line. One of the non-obvious impacts of the 2010 gerrymander we learned was that the populace actually votes roughly in line at the state-level as they do at the district level; this means you can use the district-level gerrymander to control Senate-level seats. This has bought the GOP a ~+3-+8 bias in the Senate.
> this means you can use the district-level gerrymander to control Senate-level seats. This has bought the GOP a ~+3-+8 bias in the Senate.
What?? No, you cannot gerrymander States (and therefore Senate seats). You can only gerrymander districts smaller than States. States with one House seat can't gerrymander that House seat either. State legislature seats can be gerrymandered. U.S. House seats in States with more than one House seat can also be gerrymandered. (EDIT: Well, I suppose if Oregon counties are allowed to move into Idaho then that would be a gerrymandering of States, but this is a very very rare event.)
The GOP might have a bias in the Senate, but that would be due to small-population States having more oomph in the Senate than large-population States. Though in 2024 the Electoral College was neutral in terms of partisan bias, which implies at most a small bias in the Senate for one or the other party.
As for gerrymandering of U.S. House districts, that has been going on since the very beginning, and even since before, since Colonial legislatures did it, and the English parliament did it before that. In fact, part of the reason for the Democrats' 62 year dominance of the U.S. House from 1933 to 1995 was gerrymandering.
But as Justice Sandra Day O'Connor explained in one of her decisions, gerrymandering is self-limiting because the party in power (in the legislature) can only optimize for seat safety (thus reducing their majority in their House delegation) or for number of seats (thus rendering some if not many of those seats not-very-safe). Since that decision we've had numerous wave elections in the House, including numerous changes in party in control of the House: 1994, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2018. Arguably in today's day and age gerrymandering doesn't count for all that much compared to the heyday of the Democratic party between 1933 and 1995.
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.
“Often” false. I’d bet 60-70% of the Fortune 500 doesn’t fully adhere to these “best practices” maybe only the government when handling classified information comes close.
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.
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.
Musk has basically discovered that you can ignore existing laws, since by the time lawyers sue and courts order injunctions, it'll be too late and too expensive. Especially when lawyers can argue against basic facts like "Musk doesn't head DOGE". It's the same playbook as the twitter layoffs - when you are so rich, you don't need to care about laws.
And move fast enough to get dirt on your prosecutors so you can, at first, kindly ask them to leave you alone. If that fails, release the dirt and cause chaos, confusion, and doubt...
Trump's biggest mistake was not firing all the Obama holdovers on the first term, like Obama did for GWB's. He isn't making that mistake this time around apparently.
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]
What happens to the country is beside the point, from his perspective. Which is why he's more than happy to let Musk and the Heritage Foundation call the shots. He has no interest in actually running things, that's too much work.
Vance doesn’t have Trump’s sway with the ‘base’, or mob. Vance can have all the dictatorial aspirations in the world, but he doesn’t have the popular support or influence, like Trump does, to act on them.
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.
But also when you make cuts, you go hard, fast, and recover from there. Any effort of small trimming over a long period achieves no saving while producing the same negative publicity. I doubt such cutting effort will happen for another 30y.
There is a french say I like. If you need to cut a dog’s tail, don’t cut an inch every day, chop the whole thing quick
In the French saying is cutting the tail off a dog seen as a cruel and unnecessary action, that you shouldn't prolong any longer than necessary, or a valid task that needs done?
I see the legal status of tail docking is slightly laxer in France but in North America the US and Canadian Vetinary Associations disavow the practice as bad for the dog.
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?
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."
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
> 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.
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?
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.
They have read-only access, as the latest court documents (Google "Zeitner DOGE") show, and contrary to the fakenews that were peddled in the early days of that stuff. Big Balls can only use this read access from a provided Treasury laptop, on premises, and he's operating under review of other Treasury employees.
Yes. Democracy's intent is not efficiency. It is to provide a rule of law that is fair enough for most citizens. All other forms of rule are worse. As soon as you have 'efficient government', you no longer have democracy. But something worse.
You'll be on your knees begging for bureaucracy after all your info is sold to the highest bidder and you spend the next 20 years fighting identity theft.
I don't know AND THAT'S THE POINT. No one knows. There is ZERO oversight except for a guy who just coincidentally made his billions on US government subsidies.
"New court documents shed light on what a 25-year-old DOGE employee named Marko Elez did inside Treasury Department payment systems. They also provide extensive new details about which systems Elez accessed, the security precautions Treasury IT staff took to limit his access and activity, and what changes he made to the systems. The documents indicate that the situation at Treasury is more nuanced than previously reported."
(...)
"Additionally, he could only connect using a government-issued laptop that had "cybersecurity tools" installed on it to prevent him from accessing web sites or cloud-based storage services with the laptop or connecting a USB or other external storage device to it to copy large amounts of data from Treasury systems. "
It's so funny you think quoting a newspaper that says some random staffer doesn't CURRENTLY have access is some sort of gotcha. Do you know how time works?
THE staffer? I don't remember singling anyone out so I have no clue what you're talking.
You're argument is "This document said this one dude isn't currently accessing the system" as if that somehow means they aren't going to in the future and or that other team members don't have access. What are you even talking about? No one is saying "It's all this guy"
Would you buy shares in a company if the sole auditor of their financials was the CEO's best friend, who had no experience or qualifications in auditing, and he was not accountable to anyone if he was wrong? "Trust me bro" does not cut it. These structures and processes can be onerous but they exist for good reason. BTW our government is not so strapped for cash that they can't afford to do this properly.
In a publicly traded company you get to chose whether to buy or sell the shares of a company based on how the CEO is running the company (including who he appoints to audit it)
In US Govt, we don't get to chose whether to "invest" in the govt or not, our taxes our collected by force.
So instead we have the power to vote for people in congress (who decide home much taxes are collected on how they are spend), and the president (who can execute on the spending directed by congress, but also has the power granted by constitution to audit and spend effiecntly)
The US Govt Shareholders (Voters) have SPOKEN, and SPOKEN LOUDLY! (Electoral College victory, and Popular Vote victory). They elected republican majority congress, and President Trump. Thus the voters voted for a deep gov't audit headed by Musk (Trump publicly campaigned on auditing and cleaning up spending, and publicly stated who will be in charge of the audit).
The point I was trying to make is that DOGE is not doing a proper audit, and this should concern everyone including those who voted for him.
Many of the findings Musk has published have been proven to be mischaracterized or erroneous (numbers off by 1000x etc), which gives us grounds to question the rest. Except their process and data is opaque. Trump is firing entire departments based on this bad information. This could ironically _increase_ govt expenditure when they realizes we need to hire new people, possibly at higher salaries (after paying the old people a severance).
Fair point. But i don't think a few mistaken reports, justifies calling it as an invalid audit.
They are auditing a Multi-Trillion bureaucratical behemoth (with terrible record keeping on top of it). Even a "certified auditor" can make a few mistakes.
Instead of focusing on onef misreported 8 billion line item, you should focus on the fact that they discovered 3 TRILLION in payments with no budgetary codes (literally TRILLIONS in blank untraceable checks)
I would rather have an businessman experienced making billion dollar companies efficient doing the audit, and doing it FAST, but making some mistakes.
Than having a typical beurocratic "certified auditor" audit, that does it slowly and won't even make a dent in a budget in a single year.
The US Govt is paying TRILLIONS in just INTEREST on the debt every year, and not even paying down the principal right now. And they have to borrow MORE MONEY, just to be able to cover the INTEREST payment next year. The US Gov't is in dire financial straights. We don't have time for a typical "bureaucratic auditors" auditing a trillion dollar bureaucracy.
We need an experienced businessman to come in and start cutting, and cutting FAST.
Don't downplay it as just a few mistaken reports or one wrong line item. The majority of the dollar value they claimed to have saved was wrong.
Now they _allege_ to have found 3 trillion in mystery payments, but we can't take them seriously because of their lack of proper audit techniques. They have no idea what they are doing.
I believe the entire country is watching in real time as a teenager tries to navigate his first legacy system and he just hasn't found the rest of the business logic. Just like how they implied that millions of dead 150 year olds were still receiving social security payments. It was a known issue that dead people are still in the database, but they are not in fact receiving payments. A real auditor would have known what to ask and where to look.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
USAID is the facilitator for Starlink in Ukraine. Based on the garbage coming out of Trump about Zelensky in the last couple of days and Russia’s positive comments regarding the “USAID meddling machine” I suspect they got orders from the boss.
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?
‘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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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...
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 ?
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.
> 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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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...
> 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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 gets repeated a lot but in reality hiring is a skillset that good programmers sorely lack.
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
Yes, Elon hires Cs.
eyeroll
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.
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.
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?
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...
> 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+.
>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?
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.
> put up with shit like this that doesn't even happen in industry
Musk did a trial run with it on Twitter.
And look how badly that worked out
I intentionally didn't weigh in because on one hand, its main functionality is still going strong, and it hasn't had major outages. On the other, its user base has changed, advertisers are avoiding it because of its users, and we don't know what real usage numbers look like.
He ended up in control and the woke employees are gone. Isn’t that a win to his perspective?
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...
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.
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.
> Everything about DOGE and their mission has a fundamental deep misunderstanding of why governments with their own currency must have deficits
DOGE has nothing to do with deficits, they're not even bothering to count it properly [1]. DOGE will remake the federal government for Musk's benefit. That's why he's using cannon-fodder DOGE bros instead of his best and brightest. That's why the collateral damage isn't of principal concern, and why they're moving quickly: they need to finish their work before checks and balances start swinging.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/upshot/doge-contracts-mus...
What does he think will happen after four years? Trump is old and can escape accountability by dying but most of these toadies are middle-aged.
> What does he think will happen after four years?
Musk will honestly probably be fine. These kids will get hammered, as they should, at the very least with a decade+ of litigation and possibly prosecution.
The only consequences that might last will hit Tesla in the form of tariffs and bans. But he seems to be fine raiding Tesla as a piggy bank to fund his ambitions on Mars and in politics.
This is news to me that “accounting 101” demands you spend more than you bring in. Any reasonable person would realize you can only do this for so long. Can you explain this in great detail?
It doesn't appear that DOGE is handling the problem with the appropriate amount of care or analysis, but the US does have a deficit problem. The issue is not simply that the US has a deficit, nor have I heard anyone argue this point, but that the deficit to GDP ratio is around twice as large as the historical average, and is projected to continue to increase.
>why governments with their own currency must have deficits
I'm not sure I understand this myself. Can you elaborate?
No need to infatilize their behavior by pointing to a lack of education. If he can head up several corporations, he can read a balance sheet. This is smash and grab politics, the things that happen in places like post-USSR when there's a power vaccuum, everything is up for grabs, the courts are powerless and territories start getting carved up by a coterie of connected technocrats. How long was it before Yeltsin's uneasy alliance with oligarchs crumbled, paving the way for a ruler who wasn't going to make the same mistakes?
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...
Is it true to say that in practise there are no laws here? If anyone in DOGE breaks the law, can't the President just issue a blanket pardon?
If the President himself breaks the law, he argues that it was in the course of his official duties [1].
[1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf
There is a principal in democracy that there Should Not Be strong institutions that prevent a majority of the population from harming itself with its choices. We balance that against a Supreme Court in the US, but that court is almost uniquely powerful & active in forming policy relative to its place in the rest of the world, and right now, most of it has been appointed by fascists; Ultimately the population will have its say in the long term.
Do you want an extra-democratic body who is capable of telling the population "No"?
I think such a body (which exists in some system) would obviously be nice right now, but I am a lot less convinced that it would be a net positive in general.
If we want to find our way out of this, I suspect a lot of people are going to need to feel directly harmed by this administration, and are going to need to basically erect a strong protest culture out of whole cloth. Something like 5% of the population in the streets can topple an authoritarian regime in the right circumstances, but not the 0.5% we might expect for a "large" protest.
"Do you want an extra-democratic body who is capable of telling the population "No"?"
There's value in having speedbumps that keep 51%* of the population from shooting 100% (or 99%) of the population in the collective foot... or in this case, head. The institutions aren't anti-democratic - they were put together by democratic processes, and each speedbump is usually there for a reason. Sometimes a long-forgotten or no longer good reason, and it needs to be dismantled, also by the same type of processes that put it there. Yes, I want people who won't be easily and summarily dismissed for following the law and regulations even when they're not popular. I want regulations and guardrails that can't just be swept aside by an administration that rotates out every four to eight years. (I'm generalizing a lot here, of course...)
*Really much less than 51%, given that a large percentage of the population doesn't vote, another percentage of the population's vote is suppressed, and another significant percentage of the population is not yet old enough to vote...
>There's value in having speedbumps that keep 51%* of the population from shooting 100% (or 99%) of the population in the collective foot... or in this case, head.
That metaphor breaks down here and is not really applicable. If two people are chained to each other at the ankles, they can both plausibly argue that the only way to save their own life is to take that of the other person. Whining "but I'm the good guy, I deserve to cut off his foot and let him be the one to bleed to death" is asinine.
The solution here is, of course, to not be chained to the other person irreversibly. But any time that is suggested, we hear a bunch of "We're stronger together, that's crazy talk!" And here we are. 330 million people all chained together, and now people are upset that the other team has the hatchets and is menacingly staring at their ankles.
>and another significant percentage of the population is not yet old enough to vote
Not sensible enough to vote. Don't leave that part out.
This isn't 1861, sectionalism isn't strong enough. One part of what's going on here is cities at odds with the countryside, another part is the internet, smartphones, ubiquitous connectivity, filter bubbles. People are physically present in the same locations but they are not eating the same bread and drinking the same water, metaphorically speaking. I recommend looking at this Wikipedia article for a possible best-case scenario: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_exchange_between_Gr...
In the UK, the Prime Minister has a lot less discretionary power, but much more ability to get legislation changed.
So when a political question arises like "should we have net neutrality?" the elected politicians decide and pass legislation.
That's in contrast to the US, where someone decide the executive was granted discretionary power over net neutrality in 1934, several generations before the net was invented. Then the executive decides there will, then won't, then will, then won't, then will, then won't be net neutrality.
> Then the executive decides there will, then won't, then will, then won't, then will, then won't be net neutrality.
It should be noted that the backdrop here is legislative dysfunction: the congress could have resolved network neutrality at any point but that bogged down for ages. Many of the questions around statutory power look like someone trying to do something under existing rules because they see a problem which isn’t going away but legislative attempts have failed.
> There is a principal in democracy that there Should Not Be strong institutions that prevent a majority of the population from harming itself with its choices.
Wrong. Democracy means only majority rule. What you say is true of republics, which the USA is. However no republic can be perfect in this regard, because it's all just human beings. In this case the president is plenipotent within the executive branch, the Congress is in the hands of the same party, and the SCOTUS is largely on the same page, therefore all the institutions in question are not going to stop him unless he does things that are outrageous to the public, keeping in mind that the HN commentariat is a tiny portion of "the public".
There is one, it is called a Constitution, and any rules where changes are only accepted by a qualified majority not of 50% but of 66% aka 2/3rds.
The electoral college was intended to serve this purpose.
I really wanted to believe that it would step up to the occasion, but twice now, it didn't.
I don't say such lightly. I genuinely believe that up until very recently, all portents of doom aside, none of the prior elected presidents truly threatened the Republic. Not Bush, not Obama, none of them.
Trump has been the exception. It the electoral college had been working as intended when it was envisioned by the Founders, it would have said "Yeah, I hear you want Trump, but, no." and voted in someone who might be better suited to implement his (rough) ideas.
I'm not completely onboard with the notion of abolishing said college just yet, as I believe that the electoral system prevents a candidate from say, simply winning all of the urban areas, or exploiting some similar demographic divide that would could exist in a pure popular vote system. We're a union of states, not a single monolithic country. And while I might place my bets on a popular vote providing me the results I'd like a majority of the time, I believe broad representation that at least aids towards unity is better than an outright majority. We strive to avoid "tyranny of the majority".
I don't have any easy or simple answers as to what might fix all of this. It may not even be something our "system" can fix, but rather just a lesson we as a country have to learn. Let's hope it's not as painful as prior instances.
> I believe that the electoral system prevents a candidate from say, simply winning all of the urban areas, or exploiting some similar demographic divide that would could exist in a pure popular vote system.
What about simply winning all of the rural areas? Cause that's literally what happened.
The purpose of the electoral college was to protect slavery.
For those who tend to fall for right wing talking points:
“There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.”
James Madison
> Is it true to say that in practise there are no laws here? If anyone in DOGE breaks the law, can't the President just issue a blanket pardon?
For federal laws, yes.
If you can find a state-level law that's been violated then he has no jurisdiction to pardeon.
Trump himself was charged at the state level twice (and already convicted once):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecution_of_Donald_Trump_in...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_election_racketeering_...
See also the civil case against him for rape:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Jean_Carroll_v._Donald_J._T...
Trump has explicitly said he is above the law: "He who saves the country cannot break the law" is what he posted.
He pardoned people who stormed the capital, threatened gov officials, and killed police officers. Pardoning DOGE employees is child's play -- but it would never get that far because the DOJ and FBI have been purged of those not fully subservient to Trump.
> He pardoned people who stormed the capital
you mean "He pardoned people who were guided in by the security staff working the capital building"?
I hope that's sarcasm, but if not please watch this[0] and explain how this looks like a guided tour
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z3YBtzwmHk
Yes, that is always true. It usually doesn't happen. Mainly because DoJ usually doesn't look. Congress can perform oversight and impeach if need be.
I'm assuming this is what they're betting on.
In that case, can't the next president just illegally imprison Elon or trump or whoever for their entire administration, ignore supreme court rulings or lawsuits or whatever, and then issue themselves a pardon at the end?
Yes, and restrict the 2nd amendment by fiat, etc...
But Democrats "play nice" and respect the law. Biden could have ordered Trump assassinated as soon as the Supreme Court invented the new interpretation that puts president on a piedestal, but he was never going to do it.
But Democrats "play nice" and respect the law.
That's the problem with the argument that Republicans need to be careful about setting precedents that Democrats will then also abuse: no Republican believes that any Democratic president will actually do this. In fact, a lot of Republicans probably don't believe that there will ever be another Democratic president.
Based on last year's Supreme Court rulings and what Trump/DOGE have gotten away with thus far, it'd seem so. However, democrats insist on wearing kid gloves to a chainsaw massacre, so don't count on anything like that (or, more realistically, within a lesser order of magnitude) ever happening.
Don't know, but I read somewhere that the president can't pardon breaks of federal law.
It's the other way around; the presidential pardoning power is limited to federal offenses.
Perhaps why yesterday he was saying he should take over the running of DC..
DC is already controlled federally.
Ah, thanks!
What I found significant here is that Trump (yesterday) and/or the Whitehouse stated that Elon Musk does not work for Doge and has no authority over it at all, that Elon Musk has no authority regarding anything and is solely an advisor to the president.
Of course, in practical terms "in the field" this is obviously not the case. But I wouldn't be surprised if it was Elon's ego that triggered this: that at the end of the day needing a pardon would be an insult and would bruise his ego so he wants to prevent any pathway for him to be charged with a crime. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know if the Doge "interns" would need one regardless.
Not just that, but DoJ lawyers are simultaneously (in different court cases) arguing DOGE both is and is not a federal agency.
Cynically, Trump and Musk are using each other. They both want huge swaths of the federal government dismantled—Trump found his whims stymied by laws and regulations and the bureaucrats who abide by them in his first administration, while federal regulations are constraining both Tesla (cars should work and be safe) and Space-X (starships blowing up shouldn’t pollute, Starlink shouldn’t clutter space, etc).
Musk is stealing the spotlight. At the appropriate time, Trump can fire him and blame him for overstepping his bounds—I have already seen this talking point privately from GOP operatives. They’ll both have gotten what they wanted, and we’ll all be stuck footing the bill.
IMO, this sounds totally like what happened in China.
Trump will get his unchallenged power like Xi or Mao did.
And when you have an executive on one hand stating that only the president and the AG can interpret laws for the executive [0] and that you can't break laws if you're "saving the country" [1], that approach also just doesn't seem too promising.
[0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/ensu... Sec. 7
[1] https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1140091792251...
Or, as JD Vance wrote, "Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power." (https://x.com/JDVance/status/1888607143030391287). You really have to read it twice to understand just how far out that phrase is. So now it's the executive itself deciding what's "legitimate" (=conforming to the law), not the courts, whose role it is to interpret and enforce laws?
Or Trump fucking referring to himself as king yesterday .. signs are clear.
This will end badly and it will not be fun at all in the end, but it is fascinating to watch how this new wave of fascism unfolds.
A good read: https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-purge-of-the-deep-sta...
Yeah, if we (even in other countries) weren't all personally affected by it, I couldn't stop laughing. The way things are, I'd rather go with Max Liebermann, who reportedly commented on the previous wave of fascism with the words "I couldn't eat as much as I would like to throw up" ("Ich kann gar nicht soviel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte" - https://www.aphorismen.de/zitat/93763).
Honest question: who else, internal to the executive branch, and besides the president, should be able to interpret the laws for the executive branch?
By my reading, this is a clarification that if an agency makes a significant policy change or regulation, they ought to run it by the president first.
It doesn't preclude other branches of government from checking this power.
Agencies all have their own lawyers, and it’s frequently useful to have them hash out agreements for the same reason that it’s useful for scientists to get peer review. Beyond the basic efficiency argument, it’s good to have multiple people validate your reasoning.
Easy for me to say, but I would like to think I would say, "Fire me, assholes." And have a good story for the grand children.
obviously your young family would already be grown then.. and the house paid off?
You'd like to think that there are at least some people for whom doing the Right Thing is more important.
Perhaps why 'easy for me to say' was the first part.
Would be interesting to know if the poster would financially support a person in an UNSTABLE position, to, you know, Unite the States in opposition to what's an authoritarian and approaching a fascist dictatorship?
Which laws? The article describes security clearance.
Security clearances are based on laws, such as the ones compiled in Title 50 U.S. Code §3341.
So if DOGE have security clearances (unclear if the have) then their audit is legal?
> So if DOGE have security clearances (unclear if the have) then their audit is legal?
They're also responsible liable for keeping the data safe, which has already been broken at least once:
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43052432
Possibly violating:
> Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States any classified information— […]
* https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/798
As long as they keep the data safe the audit is legal?
CIGIE has done similar stuff in the past, it was created under George W Bush
> continually identifies, reviews, and discusses areas of weakness and vulnerability in Federal programs and operations with respect to fraud, waste, and abuse;
> develops plans for coordinated, Government wide activities that address these problems and promote economy and efficiency in Federal programs and operations, including interagency and inter-entity audit, investigation, inspection, and evaluation programs and projects to deal efficiently and effectively with those problems concerning fraud and waste that exceed the capability or jurisdiction of an individual agency or entity;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_the_Inspectors_Gene...
It is possible to do legal audits of secret data. DOGE is not doing an audit.
No
Clearance does not allow indiscriminate access, it just means you are theoretically trustable. You still need a reason to access the data, usually negotiated with the data owners, who is legally responsible for protecting the data. DOGE has bypassed all of that to just hoover up whatever they can.
They were hired to, and authorized explicitly by the President to access that data. In writing.
That's as valid of a reason as you can get in the executive branch.
Not really, whoever allows access could be prosecuted for failing any of a number of laws and regs for just rolling over so it would come down to a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. The proper way to do it would be to work through both the organization's chain of command and send clearances through the security chain. Maybe that's being followed, but given the stories and timelines, I doubt it- Musk's war boys wouldn't even have time to obtain a clearance from scratch 3 weeks into the administration.
The clearances have already been granted [1].
There is no "damned if you do, damned if you don't." The President and agency directory have authorized and ordered it. Career bureaucrats are not legally required to resist their bosses because they disagree with them.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/memo...
Anyone who has a clearance has signed numerous statements acknowledging their personal responsibility to protect the information in their care. If you want access, follow the procedures, then that responsibility is fulfilled. And if DOGE posts whatever to some unsecured S3 bucket its on them, not the bureaucrat (well, let's be real, contractor) who let them in.
IANAL, but there are other laws governing what DOGE is doing that they are violating, such as transparency laws.
Statutes can't really constrain the president's authority to do this sort of thing (firing appointees, firing employees for cause, laying people off, auditing the executive agencies). Constitutionally the president is just plenipotent within the executive branch.
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.
It seems the only thing the supreme Court can do now days is rule if something is unconstitutional or if a last has been broken. But has no check on the executive according to the regimes arguments. The only check is for Congress to impeach and convict apparently. And there are too many demagogue followers in those changes for that to ever happen.
The real check here is for congress to write laws that are actually specific in their text. That is hard, though, so they instead write laws that empower parts of the executive branch to do some broadly-defined thing, including the power to make the relevant rules. When you get an executive who doesn't play your game, those poorly-written laws come back to bite you.
That's an overly simplistic view of governance.
You're effectively says Congress should mandate every detail of every regulation. Even in areas where knowledge is changing (level of chemicals that are toxic, which medicines are useful and safe, etc).
The whole premise of our system is that the people within the system operate in good faith. And that's worked for most of 200+ years. I would posit that no amount of legislation will be able to stop bad-faith actors from screwing up the system, even more so when they convince ~50% of the voting popular that "burn it to the ground" is a reasonable take.
> You're effectively says Congress should mandate every detail of every regulation. Even in areas where knowledge is changing (level of chemicals that are toxic, which medicines are useful and safe, etc).
The scientific advisors who currently make rules at the EPA (to name one example) probably should have been giving advice to congress to make laws instead. Congress can pass an annual bill of "here's the new science." They already pass laws of unimaginable length and complexity, so I see no reason why Congress can't pass a huge omnibus "these chemicals are bad" bill every year, even if that bill is 5000-10000 pages.
By the way, speaking of the EPA, there's a lot of whiplash in that arm of government based on which party holds the presidency. If the EPA's rules were actual laws, they would need a much stronger mandate from the people to change. IMO this would be better for both environmental protection (since you don't have the party of "drill baby drill" arbitrarily changing things whenever they want) and for business because there is more certainty.
> The whole premise of our system is that the people within the system operate in good faith.
The whole premise of the American system of government is that power corrupts and a functioning government needs a series of working checks and balances. One arm of America's tripartite government has ceded most of its real power to another arm. This mostly works because the people who get into that other branch (presidents) want to play an iterated game, where burning things to the ground doesn't benefit them. We are seeing what happens when you have someone in power who is playing to win this round without regard for the iterated game.
The scientific advisors who currently make rules at the EPA (to name one example) probably should have been giving advice to congress to make laws instead. Congress can pass an annual bill of "here's the new science."
All that would do is transfer power from bureaucrats within the executive to bureaucrats within the legislature. No Congressperson is fully knowledgeable on all the areas on which they pass laws. Maybe it is a better approach than what we have today, but I'm unconvinced. At least with the system we have today, the bureaucrats are generally experts within their areas. Congressional staffers have no such experience and generally rely on lobbyists.
The transfer of where the bureaucrats work is exactly what I am proposing, and has very significant differences in terms of the mechanics of government. A law has much more binding power over the executive branch than a rule made by the executive branch, and if the last month hasn't convinced you of that, I don't know what will. Laws can also establish private causes of action that require no intervention from a bad-faith executive to enforce. Congress today already has no knowledge of the laws they pass, anyway.
Good points. My next concern would be the churn inherent in such a system. Every two years, the entire House and 1/3 of the Senate is re-elected. That doesn't give much time for a bureaucrat to gain experience before needed to concentrate on the re-election of their benefactor (I use that word purposefully here, because the US did away with patronage for career bureaucrats in the executive in the late 19th century - no such rules exist in the legislative).
The executive branch churns every 4 years, and is forced to churn at least every 8 years. In practice, it's not a concern, and it wouldn't be under congress, either.
Think about this in good faith and try to make it work in your head, and you will see that this proposal is actually not that different from how the executive branch rule-makers work today from a day-to-day perspective, while carrying very different legal implications.
The executive branch churns every 4 years, and is forced to churn at least every 8 years.
That only applies to political appointees. The rank and file are permanent employees (or were until a few weeks ago).
Anyways, not saying your idea couldn't work, only that it's not easily implemented and needs a lot of consideration to do well. It's a wholesale change to how we've governed ourselves for ~150 years. But, the idea of a permanent set of legislative experts has some appeal.
We haven't governed ourselves with an executive-branch-led bureaucracy for 150 years. It's been about 70-80 years total. This model started with FDR and was really expanded in the 60's and 70's. The US existed for most of its lifetime without a permanent bureaucracy. The system you are talking about as the one that has worked forever is much younger and much less stable than you think.
> The whole premise of our system is that the people within the system operate in good faith.
It very much is not.
It is, however, that the people will not simultaneously elect sufficent majorities in both houses of Congress and a President who all fail to do so, such that the systems by which the political branches check eachother continue to function in a way which constrains those actors in either that do act in bad faith.
> I would posit that no amount of legislation will be able to stop bad-faith actors from screwing up the system,
Electoral reforms to the legislative branch that could be done through statute could go a long way to reducing the probability of a sufficient concentration of bad faith actors to overwhelm the system, and electoral and structural reforms to the executive branch to make it less unitary, which would take a Constitutional amendment, could increase the necessary concentration to achieve a total breakdown.
>And that's worked for most of 200+ years. I would posit that no amount of legislation will be able to stop bad-faith actors from screwing up the system,
This doesn't even require bad faith actors for it to become a clusterfuck. It's a scaling issue. Things that used to work at smaller scales accumulate cruft and other issues, until things ultimately fall apart. 200 years is of course a good run, but it wasn't going to last forever. Actually 200 years is such a long run, one doesn't have to bring "bad faith actors" into the equation at all to reach this conclusion, but I guess when things start to fall apart some people need someone to blame. Ask yourself this though... if the system was doing so great, how would it have allowed someone like Trump to ever win in the first place (let alone in the second place, as he did in 2024)? That's not a healthy system. Too many were disillusioned, and that's not their fault.
>~50% of the voting popular that "burn it to the ground" is a reasonable take.
They are disgusted with what they see, and have for a very long time felt powerless to change it. Not really just "felt", but were powerless to change it. Trump ran for office, they saw an opportunity. It's not exactly unreasonable, it's just inconvenient to a class of people who have grown comfortable because they're a little closer to the spigots of graft that pour forth. Being "reasonable" in the way you'd use that word hasn't really ever worked for those people, and they waited quite a long time for it to do the trick.
No, the real check is impeachment of executive officers when they flagrantly violate the law.
The tradgedy of Trump's first term was that the House of Representatives undermined the legitimacy of that check by using it in partisan, ambiguous and non-compelling circumstances, and failing as a result to obtain a conviction. Using the heavy machinery of impeachment ineffectively made it harder to use should the executive take the tremendous steps you're suggesting.
Anyway, Trump just mocked the leader of a foreign ally for refusing to hold elections. Viewed together, his comments sound like an extended troll of the political opposition.
Before 2016, we all thought impeachment was reserved for transgressions that can't be fixed any other way since it is congress overriding the will of the people. It's not a real check on small overreaches. The balance of powers between the branches is a real check (when it works).
>since it is congress overriding the will of the people.
Say what?!
It's Congress keeping the President in check. BTW, the President is not directly elected by the people and doesn't actually [directly] represent them. The President is elected by the state governments (legislatures) and is supposed to be chosen because the States belief the President will faithfully uphold the Constitution and the laws passed by Congress. It may happen the the States use a popular election to choose their electors that elect the President, at least for now, but the President isn't supposed to represent "the mob" (majority or the populace). It's also why the electoral college is used for electing the President rather than straight popular vote.
It is congress overturning the result of an election. Ergo it is congress overriding the will of the people.
> [voters want STRONG MAN] which has been growing increasingly powerful for my adult lifetime.
Political scientist Robert D Putnam suggests that this is in part due to the culture fragmenting and isolating.
Watch 10m video https://youtu.be/5cVSR8MSJvw?si=5NxRUnYENhfzTbXe easy interview with him from recently on that. Interesting.
> Given that it is down to the voters, and they thought a racist, rapist, conman should be president
And multiply-bankrupt, and (on the second term) multiply-convicted felon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_and_business_legal_af...
Vox populi, vox Dei, but unfortunately the Deus in question is Κοάλεμος
Musk Crassus and Donald Caesar comprise a de facto duumvirate.
> 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.
It's this kind of contempt that got him elected. You have no empathy or interest in the will of the people. Maybe if you talked with some of them, you'd understand their grievances. But something tells me you'd sooner ironically prejudicially dismiss them all as racist bigots.
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”.
Laws come from norms with a few practices to make them seem "legit". It's too hard and expensive for the ruler to oppose the masses. It has a significant political cost. Successful rulers just ride the masses current trend. It's like a tamed down hysteria.
The past three years? Why that time period? (I thought trumps first term was when it all became obvious).
Crap. Typo; I learnt about it in November, while hearing a magistrate and lawyer discuss something.
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.
Here's Bannon's quote verbatim -- "I said, all we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done, bang, bang, bang. These guys will never—will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity."
Smells like traitor meat.
This is also the MO of startups.
Look at AirBnB, Uber, Lyft.
All illegal businesses that had enough capital to burn through lawsuits and keep operations going until they were too big to fail and whipped the snot out of city and state legal counsels.
Indeed, VC culture (esp. for the fabled "unicorn" wannabes) is DOGE culture.
It might rarely be admitted openly, but it sometimes is alluded to... e.g. Eric Schmidt's Stanford talk where he said:
"I want to say that if your product becomes popular, you can hire a bunch of lawyers to sort everything out. If no one uses your product, don’t worry -- no one will care that you stole someone else’s content."
That is the definition of an unelected bureaucrat
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."
Thanks for the explanation. Like I said, sounds wild that yes, the American Constitution does establish the president as basically a king over the Executive branch.
Copying what I typed elsewhere, I guess it's a testament to American democratic cultural history that no coup has occurred in American history when the president has such an absolute authority over the executive branch. Let's hope for the sake of the whole world it remains like this.
Is it not the same pretty much in all systems with unitary heads of state? Prime ministers surely have similar powers, subject only to votes of no confidence by their parliaments. Kings, where they have power, are also like this.
> I guess it's a testament to American democratic cultural history that no coup has occurred in American history
The various assassinations of presidents were kinds of coups, don't you think? Soon we'll find out if the CIA did or did not kill JFK. Suppose the CIA killed JFK -for argument's sake-, surely that would have been a coup, no?
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.
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.
'Audit' is not something where you turn in the keys to your locker unconditionally to some random stranger who just walks in making demands. Audits are based on pre-determined and documented criteria, with the participation and supervision of responsible in-house officials. They just check if everything is in order. Auditors are rarely given unsupervised access to any data - especially to sensitive information. Meanwhile, the auditors themselves have to be held to a high level of integrity - elimination of conflicts of interest being the most important. This is a sham audit if it can be considered to be one at all.
Same reason you won’t send me the credentials to your bank accounts.
I will however gladly send all credentials to my work-related accounts to authorized individuals in my company (with appropriate verification of course).
You should never send your credentials. Granting access to someone who should have access is one thing, but not your credentials that individually identify you. Also, if it isn't coming through standard protocols and procedures you probably shouldn't do it.
You never give your individual credentials to anyone for any purpose - be it personal or official. In fact, leakage of credentials and unauthorized access to privileged information is a failure in many types of audits. That's a very poor data security practice - especially in government organizations handling any sort of private and personal information. In case the auditors absolutely need data, they arrange extra channels outside the normal employee access channels to officially review, authorize and convey the data - just like how bank employees can see your account information without requiring your bank password or pin.
I don't believe that anyone who has worked in any official capacity would make such claims. The distortion of such well-defined practices is an attempt to gloss over the illegality of unprecedented events in progress right now.
Waste is all things i do not understand? And i dont understand all things, because i fired the experts. Thus all is waste. Its running a state, how hard can it be- my cousin was major of a town once.
That's misinformation. They are not "audits".
They are sincerely following Project 2025, decimating government, and very likely to fire A LOT more federal workers over the summer, then they will install Loyalists throughout.
Billionaire Musk .. aka "The Auditor" .. is "primarying" or threatening to fund opposition candidates for Senators who fight him on this.
It's an autogolpe.
For auditing, you keep the data intact. you keep the people around in case if anything you don't understand or can't find
Change the data, Firing everybody , leave no way to contact them, this is not auditing.
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
Do civil servants have trade unions in the US? This seems like a place they could step up to offer advice.
Yes, and they have sued over several events so far. I don’t know what advice they could give in the moment.
If I were in their shoes I would take some small comfort from a constitutional lawyer even saying "officially we don't know".
It's not often you're asked to do something that could break the law, with the whistle-blowing chain being potentially broken at the top.
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.
All the court cases being brought is going to end up in the SCOTUS over https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory . There is a pretty good chance that this will be confirmed.
Yeah, that's my point. Not even the president should have unrestricted access to that data. He's not a king or the head of a corporation. And government workers aren't his subjects or employees. In most places, at least honest government workers can stand their ground because they're backed by a law governing this access.
Change the constitution then.
Should have made it clear that I'm not American and I'm just finding it wild from afar.
I guess it's a testament to American democratic cultural history that no coup has occurred in American history when the president has such an absolute authority over the executive branch, as informed to me by the other comments. Let's hope for the sake of the whole world it remains like this.
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.
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.
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.
We are 35 trillion dollars in debt - we are broke. We have go cut costs if we want to avoid catastrophe in the medium term.
Government debt is a result of government spending into the real economy. It is where we get the taxpayer dollars that we spend, some of which go back to the government itself. A government without debt is also an economy without money.
Governments with central banks can mismanage their currency, but they can't run out of it.
They won't run out of currency, but the people that use it will run out of faith.
When? At what specific (magic) number does everything come crumbling down? We're at ~36 Trillion today, would 37 Trillion the number that will cause people to run out of faith? I mean that's only one more than we have today, surely people won't run out of faith for one more. So maybe it's 40 Trillion? But come on, we're at 36, people can't possibly give up on the US dollar just an 8% increase. How about 100 Trillion? 500 Trillion? I'm not sure you know how this game is played.
I'm not just talking about US citizens, by the way. Foreign alliances are forming to dethrone the dollar as we speak. It will not last forever. I didn't say it would come crumbling down overnight. It will be a gradually shift away from the dollar. To believe the dollar is invincible is incredibly naive.
Why wait to spend that (magic) money at all then? What is the point of setting an annual budget? Earmarking contracts out for all these organizations by little million increments every year seems illogical when you can literally just put a few trillion in their hands today.
Why not spend all 500 trillion today? What are we waiting for?
I am entirely certain you do not believe in your own position.
why not maintain proper accounting? the deficit and enormous debt is a symptom of spending more than we have here, so much more we have to get money from other countries. you can’t do this forever. so what, spend until when? this question has come up repeatedly in the past and i’ve never seen it answered. Where’s the line where those wanting more taxes and deficit switch? How much would taxes and the debt have to be for you to say “this is out of control”?
There's a body of government explicitly built to do exactly that and given exactly that power in the constitution. It's called Congress.
The Executive can also do this.
If we are broke then why do people buy our debt? It's obviously more complex than you make it sound.
because for now there’s a reasonable chance it will get paid off. what happens when the house of cards comes down?
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?
Presumably Elon and hist staff were planning this and -maybe?- training for this for months, perhaps since before the election.
Planning without any access to or knowledge of all these difference agencies and their systems and processes (you do know there are many processes in place to prevent fraud and corruption, and Inspector Generals responsible for auditing)? Almost impossible. Again, these are not software problems.
Haha buddy they were still interviewing people in January.
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.
I understand you're frustrated because of who and what. Do you have any direct evidence they are stealing data? I see a lot of these responses that are emotional but at a factual basis it doesn't appear that way. Just as raw un restricted read/write access is constantly alleged, but we have in turn found out that isn't the case.
I really think we're getting to a point where people are too hyper emotional and sensational about most topics which further limits real discussion and response.
As for the idea of nickle and dimming, everything adds up and they're no where near done yet. Sunlight is the best disinfectant and we need a lot of it. Nearly every person that has run for president in modern years has stated they would go after excess spending and fraud, yet none follow through. This time someone is. If years of doing nothing gets us further down the debt rabbit hole, what harm is being done?
> Just as raw un restricted read/write access is constantly alleged, but we have in turn found out that isn't the case.
Marko "normalize Indian hate" Elez did have read/write access, as DOGE lawyers admitted in court after first claiming that he did not[0].
[0] https://thehill.com/business/5141149-former-doge-employee-ed...
He was mistakenly given write access by the treasury department employees in charge of managing DOGE permissions. He resigned a day later, likely before he even realized he had write access. In that short window, he accessed the system "exclusively under the supervision of Bureau database administrators", and the initial treasury department investigation did not find any misuse of said write permissions.
I don't see how this can be blamed on DOGE. If anything it shows that DOGE employees are closely monitored, and their access is minimized and audited.
https://www.zetter-zeroday.com/court-documents-shed-new-ligh...
and they immediately course corrected as they should
let me ask you a question. Richard Nixon had a special team under his direct control, they're popularly known as the white house plumbers. He asked this team to engage in activities not directly authorized by congress including various wiretaps and break-ins. Eventually these activities were discovered, it became a scandal and ended his Presidency.
Do you think Nixon did something wrong by creating this team?
If not, then we have an answer for why most people see this whole thing differently from you — most people see the Nixon presidency as clear overreach and abuse of power.
If so, what is the significant difference between Nixon's plumbers and the DOGE team, in your view?
Were the "white house plumbers" operating in the clear? On a defined task that was campaigned on? Working with legal as well as existing employees within each organization (yes I get they were simply stealing info)?
This was campaigned on, The election was won. In this instance the outcome is what the majority elected. You don't have to like it, some may change their mind, but this was made clear as a goal from day 1.
I've also not been cagey in my support. I fully support what is going on. If you see overreach follow the processes in place and litigate. That's how the country works. There's two distinct issues people have here, the "WHO" and the "WHAT" no one questions the "WHY", because no one can stand here and say we don't need to have cuts across the board. Ignoring the "WHO", the "WHAT" so far has been pretty clear. It's things that socially are supported by one party and not the other. This is the outcome of an election and it's going to keep going until someone proves they are outside of their authorities and the courts agree.
It sucks to have a narrative perspective for years and then see everything supported under that narrative cut back. I get the emotions, but ultimately none of that matters if we can't afford to keep the proverbial lights on.
Nixon had a 25% approval after he left office. I think there's a baseline of about 20-30% of people who are pro-authoritarian, and they don't really want to admit it yet, but they're fine with their team doing whatever they want, as long as they get their way.
Interestingly I feel the same way about the left, where things like pronouns were forced onto people, taxpayers were forced to pay off others student loans, the first and second amendments regularly attacked and if you spoke out against any of this it could lead to you losing your job.
You can’t with a straight face call the party of small government pro authoritarian. Unless you’re purposely skewing reality.
Trump is not directing "wiretaps" or "break-ins" into entities outside the executive branch of the federal government.
By re-hiring him?
Sure. They made a decision and stand by it as is their luxury. Yelling at the vacuum of the internet about it may score emotional points but it won't sole the core frustrations people have. The common argument is "yes we need to do it, but do it another way" to which I say, it hasn't been done another way and plenty have had time to do it. Pushing things off and procrastinating in general, combined with a President that is largely supported and on a 2nd term, with no need to pander means you get exactly what was voted for.
The left had their turn to "fix things" they didn't. The right are trying now, and maybe their methods are wrong, but they're trying. What you're seeing is a power struggle playing out, the people who've been king of the hill are being throw to the side and don't like it.
It’s been done another way. We literally have independent agencies within the government that perform this job openly, carefully, with actual transparency, and by teams of experienced personnel.
It’s not their fucking luxury. It’s our fucking government being dismantled before our eyes by a handful of complete amateurs.
Mind you, my reply was to your statement that they “course corrected”. They didn’t course correct. They reaffirmed that that they’re happy for the insane and wildly destructive course they’re on to be piloted by open and avowed racists.
No they aren’t, hence why so many Americans are surprised about USAID and their crazy projects. We’ll have to agree do disagree.
No, that’s not how this works. This isn’t a matter of fucking opinion. You can opt to be on the side of fantasy and belief or the side of fact.
The average American is surprised to learn that Obamacare and the ACA are the same piece of legislation. It says nothing that they’re equally surprised by the existence of a 60+-year old government agency, and that those same uninformed bozos are outraged by aid programs of which their entire understanding stems from a single maliciously-crafted Fox News headline.
Do better.
You can do better to connect with the Americans that in fact don't share your sentiment. Your staunch response and attitude lead me to believe you have a superiority perspective, intentional or not. That's the exact attitude and response the country is pushing back against.
There are numerous projects that should not be funded. There is bloat, waste, and fraud through out the government. If you don't see that or know that, you've clearly never worked within it.
Your projection against fox news viewers could be turned back on you and argued you're doing the same thing. The difference is, that those fox news viewers for better or worse, voted for this and they get what they voted for. You can be mad, you can be sad, you can vote, and you can try and bring it up with the courts, but bottom line is it's happening.
If your best argument is that people who’ve been lied to and misled for decades voted to let the wolf into their henhouse, so just lie back and let it happen, that says volumes.
Do. Fucking. Better.
Sorry but this is very clearly moving the goalposts; you asked, got a very seriously problematic example, and then brushed it off with "yeah but..."
Come on man, are we really at the level of just letting that slide and pretending this is a legit operation? That Musk has only the best intentions, as his track record clearly shows right?
I can't believe what I'm seeing, the world has gone fully crazy.
Yep it's legitimate and I see no issues with it. The track record of the last admin was crazy were you saying the same things then? The left screamed trust the science in one breath over covid, then said science is fluid in the other when it came to biology. The left went to far and 15 or so years of being propped up and supported has gone by the wayside. I get it, people are upset, but at the end of the day we're here because of the "crazy" spending on "crazy" ideas.
Sunlight is publish the findings and take action after.
They're firing people's, seeing the repercussion and the publishing a list of program names. Not evaluations, not analysis. Nothing substantial, just gotcha out of context strings.
Do you think the entirety of USAID was "fraud" and waste? What about the US park service?
I am not American and the only time I saw my country do this kind of action in this manner was during its military government.
I have common sense. They put the least serious people possible in charge of it, so of course I'm not going to take it seriously.
> I really think we're getting to a point where people are too hyper emotional and sensational about most topics which further limits real discussion and response.
Maybe, but this has nothing to do with emotion. I'm not a moron. An actual audit would be great, but would take more than the 30 days that Trump has been in office. They are lying, so I am left to speculate as to what.
> This time someone is.
Do you have any direct evidence they are doing something about it? I see several people supporting these actions that are based on emotion, but at a factual basis, it appears you are just regurgitating party propaganda.
Who do you propose be put in charge? Why when the Democrats were in power weren't they put in charge before?
As for an actual audit, those have been done left and right. Audits only validate where the money is going not why.
Clearly they are doing something, budgeted spend is being cut and most notably if they weren't doing anything we wouldn't be having this discussion. We are also only a handful of weeks into the presidency. They're being very clear about what they are doing. Looking line by line at some of these cuts, I've yet to see anyone here actually debate the validity of all of the spend. Yes good programs will likely be impacted, things will be course corrected and brought back where appropriate.
It's a painful process no mater who is executing it. The only way to reduce the budgetary spend of the country is to do just that, cut spend. You start small and work your way up.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
You are embracing those clear, simple answers. You are going to pay dearly for it.
We’ll have to disagree. I believe the mindless waste of the past administration and their programs and narratives on things like biology were clear simple and wrong.
"There are only two sexes and genre doesn't exist" is simple and wrong. "Genre is a social construct and is a spectrum" isn't.
Sorry you feel threatened by people not wanting to be pigeonholed into your tiny tidy restrictive categories.
What I think is irrelevant, what is codified as the stance of the US Government is. They are acting on that assertion. I'm sorry you feel threatened by it and pigeonholed into your beliefs. This is the exact status of definition for the HHS and USG.
https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2025/02/19/hhs-takes-action-p...You can argue what you want, but they are enacting actions against what they have defined as truth. That's the by product of winning an election, you get to make the changes you ran on.
interesting to behold this inversion where the "conservative" side is taking dramatic and rapid action, changing things quickly, while the "progressive" side vociferously defends the status quo
The conservative side is not taking action, it is regressing things to pre-1968 norms.
Progressives weren't defending the status quo, they were trying to improve the lives of people who were at the bottom of social order for centuries.
it is hard for me to think of a more status quo candidate than Harris
Funny you say that when she was cast again and again as a "crazy" "radical" "socialist" "lunatic".
Which one is it?
It is, the right appears to be playing the same hand the left has for years and the people are supporting it. Naturally this makes someone that has strong left leaning convictions frustrated as they come the realization that they aren't the majority and the numbers of people that support one narrative on the internet aren't a reflection of society as a whole. The bigger picture is this isn't localized, that's how you know it's a larger problem. Countries around the world are having the same discourse and results. People are done with it. Identity politics is over. Spending excess money to support these groups is over.
"Identity politics is over" says the guy supporting hyper-identity focused mysoginists.
I get it you’re upset, but that’s a you problem not a we problem. This is what was voted for. To bring it back to the main topic, the implied god mode access doesn’t exist.
Wasn't the previous administration voted for too?
Remind me how many people voted for someone else than the current president?
Doesn't matter, when the previous admin was in did they take in the considerations of the losing party? Nope. To the victor go the spoils.. of implementing the plan you ran on.
>when the previous admin was in did they take in the considerations of the losing party?
Yes. Many big bipartisan bills, immigration crackdown that Trump can't even match now.
That narrative is so boring and tired, and it's ultimately why Trumpism will be short lived and fade to the dustbin of history.
I'm not a leftist, and I mostly don't care about the groups, the right can have them. I care about things like medical research, nuclear energy and the food supply, which are all at risk because the regime's only tactic seems to be to unplug everything and see what breaks, and then decide if they even want it to work. They're not trying to run the country efficiently, they're trying to punish federal employees.
Most people are like me - they want real solutions for housing and health, not the impotence we get from the neoliberals or the kayfabe we get from Trumpism.
That’s the beauty of it all, we’re all along for the ride and will see. We should all hope for the best.
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-...
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.
I am surprised people are comparing what Trump and Musk are doing now to Putin when in reality it's closer to Gorbachev (as you mentioned) and what the Chicago school did under Yeltsin. For those not aware, they cut government programs, reduced regulation, and privatized many government entities. The result was a catastrophic reduction in GDP and people's wealth. If what is about to come something as devastating, I really hope not. A recent example is what Milei is doing and he had similar results, resulting in a large increase of poverty.
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.
One of Trump's executive orders has shut down enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. This government is absolutely not trying to root out corruption.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act
In private companies people probably consider the issue to be 'less wrong'.
It's up to the owners and their management how they run it, right? So it's more about discrimination than government-style corruption.
>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.
While no doubt that brazen bribery occurs at all levels and in a large range of dollar amounts, I do not think this is such a serious problem that it requires the nuclear option he is employing. There is a bribery-adjacent phenomenon that is far worse. I don't know what to call it. Favor-trading? But there is no quid pro quo sufficient to prosecute in most cases, and any attempt to do so would look like (and probably actually become) a witch hunt.
If a civil servant is just being extra cozy to some private entity knowing (but without anything that would amount to evidence) that they'll be able to sail into some nice lobbyist gig in 3 years, where is the bribe? It was never promised. It's not guaranteed (circumstances could well change before that becomes possible). How much is that shit costing us? And while I'm sure that some would call that bribery too, it's juvenile to do so and counter-productive.
> 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.
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.
DOGE is actually the USDS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Digital_Service
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.
> This isn't an audit, it's a blindfolded hatchet job
It's actually *worse* than blindfolded. It's extremely partisan [1]
[1] https://bsky.app/profile/adambonica.bsky.social/post/3lil7yl...
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.
>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
>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.
"Governmental fraud." This is like when people are being (made) upset about vanishingly small benefits fraud when wage theft and tax evasion are several magnitudes of order worse.
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.
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...
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...
>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.
> 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
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.
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).
Public trust is not a security clearance; it is simply a more involved background check. A security clearance is only granted after a T3/T5 investigation and adjudication of the request. The SF312 NDA signed in order to receive your clearance does not expire.
And do we know the DOGE employees don’t undergo this?
Given the little background we know of the employees includes a guy who was fired for leaking secrets, I think it’s safe to say they didn’t
It's surreal arguing with people like this. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c93q625y04wo
lol
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c93q625y04wo
I already know the answer to this, but if Obama had George Soros hire a bunch of anti-white people to oversee the Doge systems, would you still be supporting it? Or it's okay because you're white and the people are in charge are white.
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.
Oh sweet summer child
The fact that it crosses departmental boundaries. The fact that the employee has multiple businesses that could benefit from such data.
accountabilty and role-based permissions based on least-privilege.
None of that matters with what DOGE is doing. That should worry you.
I strongly suspect no single employee had access to all that data.
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.
> 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?
> a non-American billionaire
This is false.
Elon Musk has South African, Canadian, and US citizenship. Let's not play the xenophobia card.
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.
Anyone who has ever had root on a database server has that access. There's no technology available that prevents the people responsible for correcting failing RAID volumes from reading blocks from /dev/sda. In theory, yes, there are DRM technologies that prevent you from getting a copy of a song Spotify stores in your cache. But those technologies are not used on multi-gigabyte databases.
The only thing that protects that data is professional ethics, and in extremely paranoid (i.e. airgapped) environments, metal detectors.
Sincerely, God Mode on x DBs, where x > 1.
Wow you know a lot about computers
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.
They do, however, have the clearance for that level of access, and the delegated authority. In that sense this is much ado about nothing, or just a complaint about the politics, which, ok, sure, HN loves to do right now.
Access != Modification
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.
Even if you were to argue AI systems would eventually have a place in government, which they almost certainly would have anyway long term, the sheer carelessness and lack of oversight of its implementation by a private citizen and group of individuals of proven, questionable ethics is enough reason in itself to have to burn the forest down.
Thinking of it objectively, almost nobody here can say they would stand for this at any company they worked at or ran. This is not an acceptable IT practice no matter which side of the fence you are currently sitting on - allowing an unvetted entity to modify your internal systems without audit or oversight is completely absurd.
> nobody here can say they would stand for this at any company they worked at or ran
This is what leaves me incredulous about so many people here defending this. I've been on this site daily for how many years I don't know but the one thing that has been consistent is the security idea that an outside entity gaining physical access to your server means that it is irreparably compromised, and that it should be treated as a liability and re-built from the ground up. But somehow it's fine if it's public data in a federal database?
Thank you for citing that because it is really the basis of my point. It is meant to be apolitical and to demonstrate that we are not OK with this otherwise so shouldn’t be now.
You are correct. And the nonchalant way in which the leaders who are supposed to oversee this thing are treating it is appalling. It will have consequences during mid-terms and beyond. It is clear that some people believe elected office to mean that they are then given authority and rights with which to increase in...being voyeurs rather than visionaries???
i love when we pretend the NSA is dumb makes my day :)
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...
Intent to drop in, make major changes, and pretend like they won't break anything is ill intent
We criticize engineers who drop into a code base and try to make changes without understanding. You can be forgiven for doing it a few times, but after that you're doing it intentionally. And if they hired engineers that didn't know this, that's incompetence at both levels.
Not only is this different code bases and IT products, it's across organizations and done very rapidly.
I am also not convinced that they don't simply have malicious intent most of the time.
Elon has been operating in bad faith since the Twitter Files (so, the very start). Announce X, publish receipts that show ~X, but nobody reads receipts so checkmate.
The "140 year old people in social security DB" post is just the latest example of bad-faith. Either there is actually >>$100B of social security fraud and that's the story or he wants to pretend like that's the case when he knows full well that presence in the DB does not indicate eligibility or payouts.
Agreed. Show the check numbers, mailing dates, bank transfers, etc. If there's actually really tens of billions flowing out to dead people monthly... demonstrate that. Should NOT be hard at all.
Should not be hard... if it exists. Which is why I'm 99% sure it doesn't. But the lie will go twice around the world before the truth gets its pants on, as always.
For sake of testing your position, let's assume the fraud is true and he does what you want and publishes the details like that.
What about the corner-case person who actually is legitimate and now has incredibly private information out there to make stealing their identity trivial? As a statistical anomaly who is often that corner case, I'm glad you're not the one making the policy. I wish Elon wasn't as well, and I'm sure there's going to be a giant mess at the end, but using government power (which Elon has, whether rightly or wrongly) to publish personal information about people (which they get by force giving their monopoly on government power) especially without trial or due diligence is very wrong IMHO.
This is what courts and process and testimony are for. Doing this reliably in the face of bad actors with minimal stepping-on-fingers is a solved problem.
Unless you don't actually care about the truth and want to send a convenient lie twice around the world before the truth gets its pants on. Then you should act like Elon is acting.
> What about the corner-case person who actually is legitimate and now has incredibly private information out there to make stealing their identity trivial?
Elon usually has doesn't have any compunction about throwing innocent people under the bus if he thinks he gains something even if indirectly.
But that aside, you can show evidence of massive fraud, without revealing private information to general public. Can certainly reveal it to relevant authorities.
To relevant authorities who are properly vetted? Feels like ouroboros…
You would have to quantify what properly vetted is a unelected bureaucrat is. I guarantee vetting for three positions are probably little more than validating you don’t have outstanding warrants.
I understand that these 140/150 year old recipients are actually the results of incomplete birthdate data.
To steelman the argument though, it seems reasonable to audit these recipients so that we can get their true birthdate entered. The number of recipients who lack a valid birthdate because they found a way to fraudulently claim benefits is likely non-zero, but probably low. But in any event, cleaning up the data can’t be a bad thing.
To quote patio11,
“The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero
He was talking about the banking system. But he was also hinting at something bigger. There is a game theory problem often referred to as the meter maid problem. What is the optimal amount of meter maids in a city, where optimal can be defined in at least a few different ways, but roughly means the cost to revenue optimal. You end up with a couple of obvious extremes, no parking enforcement means no cost, but no revenue (plus parking may end up out of control if charging for parking is more than just revenue generating). The other extreme is thay you have enough people policing parking that no one ever fail to comply, this is the highest cost, but not the highest revenue, because you don’t get revenue from ticketing. So the answer is that the optimal number lies somewhere where the number of meter maids allows some percentage of people get away with failing to comply with parking rules (whether deliberate or accidental can further complicate the problem since both will happen).
So back to your steelman. Cleaning data is most certainly a desirable thing, but it is likely not the optimal thing, especially if the cost is high. And unauditable access to systems is a very high cost. Seems to me much of this auditing could be done in a much more acciuntable way.
On top of that, there's an assumption that there's no existing cleaning effort. I'm sure there is and it's just a difficult problem. The cases left must be either in progress, hard to track down, or not actually meaningfully active.
Or, as is really common with the federal government, the agency is actually underfunded and hasn't been able to modernize because the Republicans in congress have been trying to starve the administrative capacity the classic, slow way until now.
Like with the IRS. I've made mistakes in filing, and gotten a notice from the IRS about it, but sometimes years later (!). In the meantime, if you "audited" the IRS records, you'd see that my records are out of compliance and could claim "See, there's fraud!". In reality, the IRS just has slow antiquated systems, and is barred from giving taxpayers direct access to their records. Which is by design from the rich and anti-government.
If something costs more to fix than it costs to leave sitting around, fixing it is less efficient. In this case it's already been investigated prior to DOGE, and deemed not worth the effort to clean up [1].
[1] https://oig.ssa.gov/assets/uploads/a-06-21-51022.pdf
You fix the system not because of the cost today but because the cost it will eventually cause.
Poor record keeping and bad policies about data validation tied to sending money to people if not today will eventually result in massive fraud.
Furthermore the notion you put forth is trash lazy thinking. Cost or no cost you do things the right way. But I don’t even buy you can calculate the cost of doing it wrong correctly to even have a sound conjecture that fixing it is more costly.
Your point is also covered in the audit report linked by the parent.
Cost was not the only factor. They seem to be trying to handle missing data the right way rather than use a kludge.
They did not want to add inaccurate death data to Numident records, for a variety of reasons, one being that it could cause release of information for living people when they're accidentally added to dead people records. The SSA also thought adding annotations would legally require a new regulation and would have impacts on other consumers of the data (ie. states, etc).
How to handle missing death data in this case does not appear to have a clear and simple solution. But it also does not appear to be evidence of poor record keeping for modern records or a major cause of concern for "eventual massive fraud".
Missing data means == no payments until data is updated.
This creates a driver, somebody who is motivated to get it fixed. If the person does not exist they won’t be calling for their check, or if the entry fraudulent, fraudster will run the risk of exposing them self in the process of trying to get the checks flowing again.
But what if the right way is judging the pros and cons of perfection and doing what makes the most sense?
I think the problem they should be considering more acutely is, eventually the number of people trained in that specialized knowledge will go to 0, and they will then be paying the cost to either train more (and the increased risks of less familiar people) or replace the whole thing with no backup plan.
Given the age of the COBOL programmers I know, that window is rapidly shrinking...
OIG Response:
Why spend money chasing people who aren't collecting checks? That sounds like waste to me.
Also those identities can't collect checks, because if they tried it would set off alarm bells and reviews because they're over a standard "assume they're already dead" limit.
Imagine the brouhaha these same folks would be raising about "wasting your tax dollars hiring historians" if that other direction was in their self-interest.
This is also the same argument made against IRS audits on lower tax brackets. Basically, its not generally worth audits of low income citizens. Because the manpower required to perform the audit exceeds the revenues recovered.
Yet audits of individuals making < $25k per year is over 5.5 times higher than those in all other income brackets (1.27% vs 0.25%). So we chase down citizens when likely they probably don't even had a tax burden anyway. Maybe they misfiled some taxes and should be taxed a few hundred or even a thousand dollars more. But the manpower to chase down these little checks is a net negative on the department.
Sure, it is possible you find fraud in some of these low income cases. Someone claims to only make $25k but really they run a cash business and make $80k. But these are likely so limited thanks to other validations the IRS has access to, that the number of cases that reveal this is extremely tiny. So back to another argument on here, there an expectations that fraud is non-zero, and we accept that because getting fraud to zero is not worth the cost.
> these 140/150 year old recipients
What is the evidence these exist?
Show us the (public) Court Filings. The formal start of education to evaluate if there is truth, if there is a guilty party, and to legally render a verdict. The check numbers and other PII can be evaluated by the courts. We the People can know the numbers; the scale per case and in sum, of the 'fraud' identified.
Presence in the DB allows for downstream fraud, even by accident. If that DB is the source of truth for SS payouts elsewhere, clean up the data. There's no reason for it to be there.
Social Security receives payments as well as makes them. SSNs are keys for both.
The “super old person” SSN numbers are in the DB mostly because non-citizens are using them to pay into the system. If you delete those numbers, the next payroll run will inject them right back in.
And you would remove important accounting metadata for each payment. Metadata that is consumed by the systems that prevent fraudulent payments from going out.
The only way to stop the fake/bad SSNs is to go into the field and address each instance with employers. This is time-consuming and expensive, which is why no one has done it much.
The reason given that the SSA does not clean up the data is it would cost too much for little to no administrative benefit. They also don't want to add new inaccurate data to the system.
The no administrative benefit bit checks out with napkin math. Of the 18.9 million entries for people age 100 or older they are paying out benefits to 44,000. The total number of people in the US age 100 or older is around 90k to 100k, depending on time period for comparison.
There's an Inspector General audit report in a nearby comment for source.
> Presence in the DB allows for downstream fraud, even by accident.
That's like saying null columns in a particular database table must be filled in (or have the row entirely erased) because someone, somewhere, somehow, might infer the wrong thing about them, if they completely ignore all the other tables and business rules.
___
"Hello, I am Oldy McOldperson. Give me money."
"...Sorry sir, but that person would be almost 150 years old now, and that's well past our Impossibly Old threshold of 115 years. Furthermore, one our other databases says that person was reported as missing 90 years ago."
"But Oldy's--I mean, my precise confirmed date of death is still blank, therefore I'm alive, so give me money!"
"Sir, only a complete moron would believe that's how it works."
Elon has been operating in bad faith since he called that hero diver a pedo
Elon has been operating in bad faith since he came to the US on a student visa and then illegally worked for a startup.
And then faked his degrees
Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice
This is correct. Depending on the stakes, the right answer would be to err on the side of caution. Certainly repeated incompetence in a private setting would be grounds for suspension or termination.
At what point does incompetence /become/ malice?
There is certainly a level of incompetence that requires active ignorance to one's naivety. I'd certainly consider a stubborn person who arrogantly ignores concerns of experts malicious. The active nature certainly matters.
Yes. Consider the concept of negligence. It is malicious to take action without exercising reasonable care, and part of reasonable care is ensuring that you are the slightest bit qualified to perform the action.
I obviously agree, but for anyone reading along, this is also the legal definition: reasonable care. Reasonable is determined by peers, not the general population. So...
Yes and: fraud and errors are often indistinguishable.
People with malice like Elon Musk have noticed the widespread use of this aphorism and repeatedly leverage it to their advantage.
You mean misunderstanding the data, coming to the wrong conclusions, etc? Data science always has an issue with bullshit KPIs, shallow depth of statistics, and mostly mangling stuff keeping the manager happy. Still it's much better than not having any data analysis.
Whether it benefits from being in a single datalake idk. We really don't know how the operations are being done, we're mostly just reacting to news reports and outside guessing.
I'm assuming it will be basically how Palantir works in government health care and intelligence agencies where they aggregate multiple data sources from a bunch of old and new databases and have complex analytical tools on top.
This time you're not dealing with a data scientist, you're dealing with someone who willingly spews lies, those situations aren't comparable
Furthermore, another comment went in depth about how boosting the irs and following other agencies guidelines would have had a positive return, but none of this happened. On the contrary, we're seeing agencies such as the irs being infiltrated by this thing that resembles a metastasis
In the abundance of precaution, DOGE should indeed be quarantined and all its work reviewed. CAT should be operating alongside DOGE to review everything.
I thank you for highlighting that the intent isn’t actually the problem. I do feel the opposite to you but I’m happy you can see the practice itself is not acceptable / is a bad practice.
> I don't think they have ill intent
Perhaps you could read their statements? DOGE communications are filled with ill intent, and their publicly stated goal, and the goal for which their supports seem to support them, is the destruction of the bureaucracy. That's ill intent.
That's before we look at their actions.
Irrelevant. Even if they did nothing, the amount of exposure to the foreign intelligence services will devastate whatever we don’t footgun for a generation.
They should absolutely be regulated as to not expose data to foreign intel.
Regulated?? The entire point of DOGE is to be unregulated. They are ignoring existing regulations (read: laws), and specifically targeting regulatory and oversight bodies for destruction. Wake up!
Different contexts. Regulated in my comment meaning observed, reviewed, audited in kind. They should not be operating on any site and in any system without someone watching over their shoulder, figuratively and literally too.
Whereas the regulation in your context pertains to regulations that are codified as laws or rules to follow.
Like many Elon fans, you quack “audit” and don’t know what the word means.
Audits measure compliance to an process or objective. They require that you have written down the process or objective, and retain sufficient information to measure whether you achieved it or not.
In this case, the DOGE boys do whatever Elon says. What is said isn’t recorded or written. People who attempt to do their duty who are seen as obstructive of the whim of the DOGE “agent” are fired.
Yeah, if only we had independent regulators in our government who could oversee and regulate it in order to prevent and reduce corruption. Oh wait, Trump fired them all like 3 weeks ago. On purpose. Because they are not operating in good faith, my dude.
If any of the income tax data they are touching at IRS is out in one of those AI tools that have been referenced, each disclosure is a federal felony punishable by up to 5 years in prison.
But remember, Elon doesn’t follow the rule of law, and has no doubt engineered things in such a way that his little minions are accountable.
The intent is completely ill. DOGE is RAGE. Move fast and break everything before the courts can step in.
I think they have nothing but ill intent. Everything they've said and done so far just screams it.
He is being criminally reckless
Elon wants to build the X everything app and nuked the CFPB to do it and now has access to the fed system… I think he’s just biding his time. Aaaaand now that he has every American’s info he can dox anyone on Twitter. Makes you think twice about telling Elonia to go fuck himself on X … which is why I do it on Mastodon and BlueSky ;-)
Yes, exactly this. The chilling effect caused by this is real and terrifying.
I have definitely contradicted Elon Musk on my X profile (@cyrsbel) quite a lot. I have never once lost my blue checkmark, though, so I believe he is well-intentioned and a good person who is trying to do the right thing. (I am also subscribed to him and having that sub and the blue checkmark means he has payment details already so I'm not worried about doxxing via CFPB data.) However, you raise a legitimate security risk and concern. It is not feasible to trust a single person with this much power and access. Furthermore, regardless of how much I or anyone else love Elon Musk...he has said things that didn't happen multiple times and too much is riding on his claims about what can or will happen.
So yeah, I don't trust him. Ever since he reneged on interns, I noticed that...he has a tendency to think about things as if they're entirely meat and to worship the false god Scarcity. He's been gargling Ron Paul's gold coins so much that he completely fails to comprehend basic nation state financing and why deficits are manageable and our debt is also manageable given our $160T+ net worth and climbing...
> I believe he is well-intentioned and a good person
You should read more about the things he says, does, and the way he treats people, especially from those who are close to him. The picture it paints is something I'd consider "cruel, bordering on inhuman" (and thats before the nazi salute.)
Alternatively, I have a lucrative investment opportunity I'd love to get you in on.
Are you talking about the man who does Nazi salutes from the bottom of his heart? A good person?
The complication here is that the ADL and Netanyahu and others at that level all said they do not believe it was a Nazi salute. I am relying on what they said.
https://x.com/netanyahu/status/1882392668497756279?lang=en
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5097676-elon-mus...
They're siding with the Republicans because they don't want to be seen agreeing with the folks who hate what the Israeli government has been doing in Gaza; Netanyahu especially so. So the strongly pro-israel sources are too biased.
So you trust a war criminal and Israels propaganda arm more than your eyes?
Who do you trust, the Party, or your lying eyes?
If I had to make a determination about it, I'd trust my eyes and quarantine DOGE's access until its accesses and changes can be audited by CAT. That is because the consequences of being wrong on this are too high, and there is plenty of time to be cautious about things and to ensure that everything is good. Zero legitimate reason has been provided for the level of rushing observed.
I would agree! Let us both continue to trust our eyes.
It was a nazi salute.
Bibi wants to curry favor with Trump. Of course he’s going to say it wasn’t a Nazi salute.
The ADL doesn’t want to get sued out of existence so… of course they going to say it wasn’t a Nazi salute.
This is the same chilling effect that Trump suing ABC and ABC settling so yeah nobody feels comfortable enough to speak truth to power because nobody has the money or the army to back it up
But those of us with ears to hear and eyes to see know what we saw. He might not want to exterminate Jews but he knows what MAGA likes and he like they loves the power a fascist dictator like Hitler wielded
But you did see the videos? You still trust a right wing politician, who stands to profit immensely from Trump and Musk in power, more than your own eyes? That's wild
Seriously??
Netanyahu a fascist war criminal and ADL a back pocketed political party paid by elite right-wing evangelists.
Of course they'll claim not.
Well when you have a white supremacist on the dodge team (confirmed by his comments on social media) working in this team, and you know white supremacists are very hateful... then I would assume there's obviously risk.
There is no reason to think they don't have ill intent.
Your default assumption should be ill intent when it comes to information security, my friend.
In this case, DOGE should be quarantined from making further changes until CAT can operate alongside DOGE for auditing purposes. Every change and access should be reviewed.
Yes. But it's not. That's the issue. They have unlocked access to systems to which they can control how they desire, unmonitored.
If this was the case at any point, or is still the case, DOGE should definitely be quarantined until CAT audits DOGE's accesses and changes. There should be two teams operating alongside each other on this. Not just DOGE. I do believe so far they were claimed to have received read-only access...but other reports were that they even had some admin access. Do we know for sure what access they had unmonitored?
My nature is to give the benefit of the doubt, but after seeing that they are rushing and it manifests in laying off even teams of highly skilled and critical nuclear safety staff...that means someone there doesn't know what they're doing or the chaos could be the point as well. I would hope it's not to that extent, but this is why I maintain that CAT should be auditing DOGE's changes.
I generally try to assume that people are well intentioned. But when they start doing Nazi salutes...
I was shocked by the appearance of that aspect too but then a day or two later, the ADL and Netanyahu supported him on that.
https://x.com/netanyahu/status/1882392668497756279
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5097676-elon-mus...
Definitely good to keep a watch, though.
And prior to this he was forced to do a 'nazi death camp PR tour' because he agreed with the nazi agenda on X. But sure, it's unfortunately old boy just keeps accidentally being a nazi. Last is he now tweets 14 flags.
Who do you trust, the Party, or your lying eyes?
And then he went to speak at an AFD rally so I guess we are back at the Nazi interpretation
If you believe right-wing-specific sources about Musk's intentions, then I've got a bridge to sell you.
So, the guy who held off a genocide to get trump elected and the people who are in direct cahoots say its ok, big "All my black friends I can say the N word so its ok" energy there.
And many, many reasons to think that in fact they do. See my favorites for flagged stories about the DOGE staff.
Even their stated reason - to fund trillions in tax cuts for the .1% [0] - is heinous. Inequality is already breaking the economy. 4.5 trillion dollars ($13k for each and every American) being transferred to the yacht class will inflict generational harm.
0 - https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2025-01-10/trump-tax...
> to fund trillions in tax cuts for the .1%
That isn't even what your link is saying. To begin with, it's citing a Treasury Department document requested by the Biden administration to do an analysis comparing the proposed tax cuts with a contrived alternative.
If you do generic across-the-board tax cuts, not targeting any particular income group, everyone's taxes are reduced in proportion to how much they were paying to begin with. Obviously then the people who make more money and pay more taxes have them reduced by the given percentage and that is a larger absolute number.
The same thing happens even if you target only the brackets for people who make less money. Suppose you lower the rates by 2% for every bracket below $400,000. That's not even enough to be in the 1% (for which you'd need to make ~$800,000), much less the 0.1%, but what happens in that case? Well, everyone's taxes go down by 2% of their income up to $400,000. If you make $40,000, they go down by $800. If you make $400,000, they go down by $8000. If you make $4,000,000, they also go down by $8000, from your first $400,000 in income. The absolute amount of the reduction is still highest for people who make more money, simply because it's a percentage of higher number.
The analysis the Biden administration requested was to do the tax cuts for people making less than $400,000 and then raise the tax rates on people above $400,000 to make sure they didn't get any net reduction, and their contrived example would have people making $400,000 paying a higher tax rate than people making $500,000+. Basically the purpose of the analysis was to generate a large number to put in a headline rather than compare it to a real proposal to lower taxes in general. This is also why they announced the cumulative total over a decade rather than listing the annual number as you would when comparing it against an ordinary government budget. Because "~3.5% of the budget" sure sounds a lot less than "trillions of dollars".
> that isn't even what your link is saying.
You can find any number of links talking about how unequal the tax cuts are. No one in the bottom 60% is going to be better off. The .1% are benefiting the most. That's an insane thing to do in an economy that's already breaking records for inequality.
> If you do generic across-the-board tax cuts
That's not what these are. The reaction of every billionaire to Trump's admin ought to tell you that on it's own.
> Because "~3.5% of the budget" sure sounds a lot less than "trillions of dollars".
Trillions of dollars are trillions of dollars.
A million seconds = ~11.5 days A billion seconds = ~31.7 years A trillion seconds - 31,710 years.
We're not talking about play money, or monopoly money. Musk bought the election for a fraction of a billion dollars, ffs.
And again, America is already on record inequality, about the same or more as right before the French Revolution.
Money IS a zero sum game, and when too much of it is going to the 0.1% it inflicts massive harm to millions of people. If you want to learn more about this, and what's about to happen to the US economy, you can listen to one of the world's best traders talk about it here [0].
0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCnImxVWbvc
Man it's pretty crazy seeing all those reasonable looking stories flagged and made dead.
Also what's with the blue non-link links? Never seen that before on HN.
> it's pretty crazy seeing all those reasonable looking stories flagged and made dead.
It really is. There have always been 'third rail' topics that get rapidly flagged despite community interest, but I've never seen so many.
> what's with the blue non-link links? Never seen that before on HN.
No idea; all the links seem to work for me anyway.
What's interesting to me is how what constitutes a 'third rail' topic changes over time.
A quick search will show that it used to be fine to talk about Curtis Yarvin on here a decade ago but now that he's more relevant than ever it's suddenly taboo?
Did Curtis Yarvin and the ideas he espouses suddenly become less interesting or are a group of people working together to prevent critical discussion of his ideas?
The Mump playbook relies on wild exaggeration.
In this case Musk reckons he can save $2tn which some (better informed) analysts are saying is bollocks.
In fact, it's cover to let him destroy/neuter agencies they don't like and get endless material to pressurise any opponents.
One positive though: if there is any alien tech, Musky will find it. You can bet that's high on his list, as improbable as it may be.
> In this case Musk reckons he can save $2tn which some (better informed) analysts are saying is bollocks.
A lot of this depends on how you measure. For example, there are a lot of social assistance programs that provide in-kind benefits (e.g. you get subsidized housing) and those programs both require a bureaucracy to administer them and are less efficient than cash transfer payments, so they could be converted into refundable tax credits. Then the program costs somewhat less (you eliminate the administrative bureaucracy) and is more efficient and with better outcomes, but you can count the entire cost of the program as a reduction because it's now a tax credit (i.e. a tax cut) instead of a government budget item.
Do that with the entire social assistance system and you could get a sizable budget reduction before you even get into overpriced government contracts etc.
Even the theory that the executive can just not spend money it finds wasteful doesn't extend to the executive being able to unilaterally reconfigure an in-kind assistance program into a refundable tax credit. Admittedly, an even bigger grab of dictatorial power is not out of character for this administration, though.
Oh, they couldn't reconfigure those programs by executive order. But they could reasonably be doing this to find ways to reduce the budget and then pass new legislation through Congress.
>One positive though: if there is any alien tech, Musky will find it. You can bet that's high on his list, as improbable as it may be.
That tech has been handed over to the private sector as a precaution and also as a method of keeping the politicians' hands off it. Gives them cover to honestly say "I know nothing, I was briefed on nothing, we have nothing". Plausible deniability.
Elon Musk is also quite possibly the last person I'd ever want to touch world-changing technology. let alone be the sole arbiter of who gets to get near it.
If they did have ill intent, towards what is that ill intent targeted, and why should I care? These aren't organizations or missions I much care about. This isn't my government, except by an accident of geography. I have little say in how it's managed or what it does, but I have a high burden for it. It's unclear that this government protects me in any substantial way (or even in indirect, insubstantial ways). Meaningful reform is impossible at the sociological level, it requires too much buy-in too slowly, and that will always be hijacked by those with influence or watered down to meaninglessness.
Otherwise said, you want to destroy government, because you never cared about learning what various agencies do. And you want reform it, but without knowing what it does and without knowing what you want to improve other then "let it go away".
If on DOGE, that is ill intent.
You don’t think they have ill intent? Really? They have made it abundantly clear how much joy they get out of slashing services for everyday citizens, cutting jobs, and outright harassing federal workers. They are full of malicious intent for the people they view as the enemy.
> Even if DOGE is operating without any ill intent, and I don't think they have ill intent
Eh, they are going in like a bunch of bloodhounds smelling blood.
Musk killed USAID because he had a personal axe to grind.
The intent is to dismantle the federal government.
Their intentions are irrelevant. They are actively attacking the United States. They are enemy combatants and should be treated as such.
"and I don't think they have ill intent"
Elon Musk absolutely has ill intent or else DOGE wouldn't have all this access that they absolutely DO NOT NEED!
> I don't think they have ill intent
...
Most of government agencies are errors themselves
> 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.
“later” as in as soon as we can get the infestation removed, which would be the bigger fish needing frying.
Not to mention the open question of whether we will ever arrive at later.
Now is definitely relevant, however the ones steering the ship don't care about now. Someone will care later, that's all I personally know for sure.
You make the very weird assumption that this will go "back to normal" at some point.
The system was almost certainly already so-accessible.
All systems are accessible when you claim the right to arbitrarily fire people tasked with protecting access to it.
Assuming they have a read only copy to the data, how would having access to just data require rebuilding the systems?
It's common for stray passwords or authentication tokens to be found in data dumps of i.e. someone's email, dropbox, or whatnot. So getting read only access to all the data in a given agency means you probably have access to a trove of stray passwords and authentication tokens that can be used to pivot into write access there or somewhere else.
As a concrete example, if you have read-only access to someone's email inbox that's enough to steal most of their accounts on other services since you can request a password reset link and then click on it.
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.
Or maybe it'll accelerate the much needed improvements.
It still has to be torn down though, don’t you see that? Even if a following government wanted to keep things of benefit, it was implemented in an untrustworthy way without oversight. It has to be rebuilt either way now because they didn't follow best practices for the implementation. They objectively fucked up.
Yeah, all of every American's banking information being permanently exposed is a totally OK cost for "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 is wrong and naive.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/doge-dives-into-core-na...
"DOGE currently has far deeper and far more extensive access to U.S. government computer systems — and is far deeper into the national security space — than is conceivably necessary for anything related to their notional brief and goals."
> This is wrong and naive.
I am honestly shocked at the amount of wrong or naive takes being posted on HN as of late.
Considering how crazy the general population is (and other online spaces) it's a small miracle that HN still has this (sub?)culture.
Also things are happening at a breakneck pace and, uhm, the media is tragicomically incompetent.
It's more important that the takes generate "curious" discussion, regardless of how naive and wrong they are. Especially during a "MOT", where things quickly get hidden.
Maybe naïve, but not wrong. They have access that any American citizen should have access to, and the only authority they really have is to flag items for review. The DOGE team is sensational, but i would bet an enormous sum that Trump has a much larger team that the sensationalized DOGE team at making decisions. It’s childish to believe the media’s talking points that there’s a bunch of children being allowed to run rampant controlling the government, especially in light of the recent “Biden is sharp as tack” media narrative.
From your link written by John Marshall, a “progressive liberal”: “It’s obvious that you’d want to be very cautious about centralizing this much power in anyone’s hands, especially people working outside all existing frameworks of oversight and accountability.” It’s called.. the President. The whole point of electing a president alongside of congress is to have a consolidated point of power.
The question isn't what's being accessed, it's who is accessing it.
There's at least some belief that the people looking at the data haven't been vetted or instructed as they should be when handling data of this nature.
It doesn't help that the guy who is running the show is basically doing it as a friend of the president and has some conflicts of interest.
Government employees already have access to every text, call, and email you have ever sent. Where was your outrage since the Snowden leaks?
First, if you’ve used HN at any point since the Snowden leaks there has never been a shortage of outrage here.
Second, while that was a major topic in international news for years, it did at least stay in the national security space where access is restricted. A lot of the concerns around DOGE are because they bulled through all of the normal rules for who gets access to sensitive data and how it’s handled. Say what you will about the NSA, and many here have, they didn’t just hand out credentials to inexperienced people with a history of leaking data or condone use of personal computers for government work.
This is especially of concern if the reports of write access being used to push code changes or deploy monitoring keyloggers are true: do you really want to bet that the guys who made a .gov site world-writable couldn’t be compromised by a foreign intelligence agency? There are legitimate concerns about the level of process overhead in government IT but that doesn’t make the reasons for it go away.
Which is why I personally disagree with
It certainty is a question of what is being accessed. I don't care if it is god damn Mr Rogers with the best intentions. The more sensitive the data, the stronger roadblocks need be in place. Often to the degree of impossible to access because it shouldn't be gathered in the first place.There will always be good reasons to access data, and sensitive data. There is always good that can come out of this. But just because you can do something good with it doesn't mean you should. You can do a lot of good with a nuclear bomb, but I don't want any ever built because it takes only a small mistake (not an act of malice!) to have huge consequences. There is always a cost, you must always consider if the costs are worth the benefits.
I think a lot of people on hacker news were equally if not more outraged about Snowden leaks. Not sure what you’re trying to say.
Surely the response to the Snowden leaks should not be 'Well, Snowden showed that we have a lot of illegal snopping, so all snooping in the future is also ok'?
Not a totally unfair point, but to be fair, some people are still outraged after the Snowden leaks.
> Where was your outrage since the Snowden leaks?
Did you also miss the global protests against the 2003 invasion of Iraq?
>"Where was your outrage since the Snowden leaks?"
It's been there, and growing, ever since.
Doesn't feel like it's growing to be honest.
Telegram and Signal having hundreds of millions of "regular person" users since then says different. It doesn't seem apparent because in the past decade Big Tech has dropped any pretensions around caring about privacy other than for themselves. In the past 5 years, they've deepened their role in the natsec apparatus as well.
It’s another side of the same problem. We REALLY need data privacy laws in this country.
Classic deflection and whataboutism.
There was a huge amount of outrage since the Snowden leaks. What are you talking about?
It is not dramatic at all. Because of the very fact it's contentious, a rebuild will be undertaken by the next government to not trust it. It's an absolute guarantee regardless of how any one side feels about it.
I and many people would argue to rebuild it based on the lack of transparency we have seen. There are enough people that feel that way that a rebuild is inevitable, regardless if you end up right. The position is that we really don't know, so the only way to be safe is a do-over. Or at the very least, a completely transparent audit, which is also insanely expensive and very hard to scope.
i appreciate the optimism that there will be something left to actually have this 'do-over'...
Do you actually trust Elon Musk?
If it wasn't obvious, no. I have a position but I'm really trying to make a neutral point here.
There are lessons that people learn over time and come up with best practices to avoid repeating the mistakes. If the intent is to really uncover waste and fraud then one way could have been
1. To ask for READ access to all the data with PII/sensitive scrubbed.
2. Any action to modify the content/data should ideally have followed the existing path/mechanism
>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
How is that clear? What proof do you have of this other than Musk's word?
> the same access to various components of the US Govt that Obama’s US Digital Services
…but also much more. It is intellectually dishonest to equate these two.
Cutting through red tape can technically be done by nuking the red tape, but why cause all this harm when you can use scissors?
I don't think intellectually honest people can support the current takeover.
Sadism! That’s why.
Even if what you say is true (and as other posters point out, it isnt), DOGE and the Trump administration are staffed by confirmed Nazis and white supremacists who should be nowhere near the government. And Musk and VP Vance (both of whom interact with and support both Nazis and white supremacists regularly) supported and reinstated at least one, so this whole thing is rotten to the very top.
https://www.texasobserver.org/ice-prosecutor-dallas-white-su... https://gizmodo.com/doge-engineer-resigns-over-extremely-rac... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/07/musk-doge-st...
But this time we're dealing with a malicious actor on one's end. And I say malicious, because in all honesty I can't justify someone spewing lies continuously while holding a public charge without being malicious
I have no reason to trust Elon Musk and many many reasons not to.
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.
By your logic we should just do away with cybersecurity in general. Clearly, it's all already out there so it isn't a problem!
We've already had the occasional large leak and survived, why not just leak continuously! Also leave your doors unlocked, you wouldn't want robbers to break an expensive door to get into your house, and most of your stuff isn't worth anything anyway!
What company do you work for so I can tell them to fire you for negligence? Nobody hire this person.
How can you possibly disagree with this and call yourself good at your job or a technologist? What an embarrassing take. Seriously you might want to delete your post if you want to ever be employed again. Actually trying to help you here.
He works for 127.0.0.1 you should look them up!
> I.e, in 2017 Equifax leaked data on 150 million people and no one cared (you get a free 6month credit check)
What are you even talking about? People (myself included) were fucking livid! The reason we got the 6mo credit check was because so many people tried to claim the monetary compensation (which the court had ruled they were owed!) that Equifax was unable (unwilling) to pay the resulting volume of money. The 6mo credit check was the weasel compromise that the Trump regulatory apparatus rubber stamped.
Okay so you care, do you think politicians who are now pretending to be concerned for privacy reasons care? Think the average american realizes that they have never cared about privacy and they look like clowns pretending like all the sudden they do.
The average american citizen doesn't care about privacy? Go outside and look through the window inside peoples homes. See how long you last until the cops are called on you.
I was trying to say that the average american does care, but the average politician does not care. But the point is that recently there has been a reason to pretend to care. i.e, to oppose dodge. They need a reason to oppose dodge and concerned for privacy has that "for the people" tone to it. So the insane part is how a cause like privacy suddenly is important when there is a political need for it to be important, i.e, to find a reason to oppose dodge. When the opposing party is trying to solve a problem you as a politician you need to oppose it. It doesn't matter if it is good or bad. You as the opposing party need to find the bad side of it. And the reason cannot be "I am in the opposing party" or "because I want to be the one to solve the problem". It has to be a possible real reason. So which came first actual concern for privacy or the need to be concerned for privacy. Clearly the need to be concerned for privacy. This kind of why two party system works, because you always have someone opposing what you are doing even if it is right, just to keep it in check.
Why does other peoples' sincerity or lack thereof dictate what I am allowed to be outraged by? "Whatabout whatabout whatabout"; what about you worry less whether other people meet your standards for legitimate outrage and worry more about an unelected billionaire giving the federal government the old private equity pump 'n dump?
Liar.
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.
And this is why the executive branch was never meant to have as much power as it has today.
We've spent the better part of 80 years moving power from legislative to execute and granting executive a whole host of new powers.
We made this bed, now it sure seems like Trump is making us sleep in it.
I remember reading Glenn Greenwald in the 2000s when he was railing against the expansion of executive power under GWB.
> But the same individuals peddling this theory are simultaneously objecting quite vigorously to the notion that they are bestowing George Bush with the powers of a King. Bill Kristol and Gary Stevenson, for instance, called such claims "foolish and irresponsible" in the very same Washington Post Op-Ed where they argued that Bush need not "follow the strictures of" (i.e., obey) the law, and the President himself angrily denied that he is laying claim to a "dictatorial position" in the very same Press Conference where he proudly insisted on the right to eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant even though FISA makes it a crime to do so.
https://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2005/12/do-bush-defender...
And he was equally critical of Obama admin not only keeping those powers but further expanding them.
Americans stopped caring around the Patriot Act and executive power has only grown under every administration since
Glenn greenwald has been supportive of unitary executive theory the past few years, now. What a sad turn around.
Do you have a link where he talks about that?
Why do people seem drawn to having a king? What is it in human nature that makes us want a strong man in charge with absolute power?
It’s very easy to reason about when someone says “I alone can fix this.” You have a single person to look at and listen to. Not a faceless sprawling beauracracy and slow wheels of legislative progress.
It’s the same reason the antagonist in nearly every film is a single bad guy who is eventually karate-chopped down to size. It’s the same reason WW2 is a ‘simpler’ and more palatable narrative (a couple main bad guys) than WW1 (complex political and social movements across many countries led to war). Even though the same complexity of politics and social changes were also at play
In a big society where end effects are far away, we look to the strong men to handle the big problems
It shouldn't be hard to understand why absolute power in the hands of yourself is the best political system. Since everyone can't be king, their next preference is going to be absolute power in the hands of someone who has their interests in mind. Unfortunately, we live in a world where people have varied interests and you can't really trust that anyone is fully aligned with you anyway.
Desperation, ignorance, and failure of the golden rule. They want their cult to win, and are fine with inconsistency and illegality when it benefits them. This is perhaps the ultimate vulnerability of representative government that cannot be remedied except through education and socially-enforced norms, or else democratic government must be abandoned but not for a malicious emperor.
Fear. In my opinion these decisions and problems always come back to fear.
Laziness. Convenience is the most powerful force in humanity and it's driving us to self destruction. Obesity, car oriented everything, etc.
Most people don't want a strong man in charge with absolute power. Dictators rule by fear and naked force, far more so than even the "monopoly on violence" claimed by modern states. A king is just another word for dictator, it's all the same. Although I would say Americans aren't really drawn to the model of a king so much as a "CEO in chief," but CEOs are essentially kings within their domain.
The people who do support it believe that they themselves will be granted noble status within the new regime, rather than being serfs.
Natural order. We structure all of nature into kingdoms. They flower out from a core archetype. And it also helps project an inheritable identity.
The problem above any American political and philosophical questions (moral questions notwithstanding), is mistaking Trump for anything resembling a worthy king. It will bring trouble.
In the ancient world the king was a symbol of the prosperity of the people and scapegoat for the sins and troubles of the people and was ritually killed and replaced when things weren’t working out. History whispers that one should be careful what one wishes for.
Social Darwinistic systems are inherently unstable. People eventually get tired of corruption and being abused.
In my experience, your statement is opposite of true. Hence the term, 'die hard fan'. In fact, the more fans get abused, the deeper their love and loyalty grow.
That's because many current regimes have exploited anocracy with the appearance of individual choice while manufacturing consent. Previously, it was done by force which is what doesn't scale.
Give the people what they want.
If they want to be abused, then lean all the way in.
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.
Under U.S. constitutional law -meaning the Constitution itself and the binding judicial precedents and the impeachment precedents (mainly from the failed impeachment of Andrew Johnson)- the president is plenipotent within the executive to do things like:
etc., as long as it's all within the executive branch.The president can also abrogate treaties without the Senate's advice and consent.
Most of the above are not explicitly in the Constitution as such, but are understood to be constitutional law either due to SCOTUS decisions, longstanding and unchallenged practice, or the result of the failed impeachment of Andrew Johnson.
Not only that but also most if not all recent presidents going back decades have done some if not all of the above. That includes Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama, Trump, and Biden.
In other words: there is no innovation here, no judicial controversy. This is all standard fare for any new administration. The only difference is the extent of what Trump is doing in his second term compared to any other recent presidency. The sheer number of EOs, the auditing (which basically hasn't been done recently), and the layoffs (which are rare in DC). And yes, he's goring a lot of oxen -more than other presidents in recent memory-, but they all do that, just not eliciting so much outrage from the opposition.
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?
Elon Musk has Canadian, US, and South-African citizenship
So it’s okay because he’s rich?
Yes, when you're not from this country (a foreigner), you need a citizenship card to reside and work here (or a visa). Thanks for verifying that for me.
You may be thinking of a green card. Once someone is granted citizenship in the US, they're no longer considered a foreign national.
Because it's Musk following his own agenda and he apparently isn't the president
Musk is acting with full president support.
Doesn't mean either are acting within the law
> 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.
Trump renamed USDS to DOGE via executive order. It's true that it's not an agency, but it was created during the Obama administration.
I'm not sure it'd be better as an agency because there are strict rules and hierarchies around agencies. The way DOGE is operating right now, seemingly, is:
- Agency directors are directed by executive order to work with DOGE and give them access to what they need
- DOGE team members are actually hired as employees of the agencies in which they are operating
- DOGE makes recommendations to agency directors on what things to cut
- Agency directors review recommendations and make cuts
This means that all cuts are being recommended and made within the scope of each individual agency. It is not the case that one agency is telling another what to do, and all decisions are ultimately being made by each agency's director. It simplifies the hierarchy and authority.
Correct. It also sidesteps all questions of legality.
DOGE was created by an act of Congress after Obama first created it by an executive order. Its formal name is United States Digital Service.
It is only the job of the executive because Congress told them so via Acts of Congress. Looking at e.g. the firings of the inspector generals, Congress has put very clear language into its laws on why and when those inspector generals can be removed by their post, yet Trump and his cronies ignored this.
It should not be a formality because while it is true that the Republicans have a slight majority in Congress, the founding fathers never intended this most powerful of the three branches to be run by parties. The power in Congress is split up geographically for this very reason, but the party system, that secured its seats with gerrymandering, is highly toxic for a functioning legislative power in the US. It is disappointing to see Republicans in Congress not restricting the executive orders of the new self-proclaimed King.
The president can fire any executive branch officer at any time for any reason regardless of what any statute says about it.
There are two precedents for this to my knowledge, though there may be more:
> self-proclaimed KingHe was clearly trolling. Grammatically that tweet does not parse like himself calling himself a king. For all you know he loves the British king, or some other king, or maybe he was referring to Jesus. But he got what he wanted from that quip: it got reported, along with credit for ending congestion pricing in Manhattan. Why the media still falls for that, I don't know.
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.
The president has absolute authority to access to all secrets within the executive branch, and has absolute declassification authority, both statutorily and presumptively constitutionally as a result of a) being the president, b) being able to nominate his cabinet, c) being able to issue executive orders to his executive branch officers and acting officers.
The president therefore has the authority to access every last secret and every last system within the executive branch. No statute can limit this power. The president also has the authority to delegate (to some extent; only the president can issue EOs, but presumably his officers can recommend EOs to him) these powers to his or her officers.
The titular of the U.S. Digital Service (DOGE) is statutorily not subject to Senate confirmation, though considering how Trump's controversial nominees have sailed through Senate confirmation it's easy to suppose that Musk would also likely be confirmed to head the USDS were it an appointment subject to Senate confirmation. Since the president can appoint someone like Elon Musk to head the USDS, and since the president can delegate his clearance and declassification authority to someone like Elon Musk, his doing so does very much "pass [the] sniff test".
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?
It's about whether the president can legally do this.
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.
"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.
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.
That might sound incredibly foreign to you, but this is the norm in many Nordic countries, see Norway, Sweden and Finland, for a start. Tax returns for everyone are public, and so are addresses through a national registry.
Yep! In Sweden, this is part of the constitution. I think it beautifully demonstrates that the state works for the public, and that all information held by the state should by default also be accessible to members of the public, unless there is an important exception, such as personal medical privacy or national security.
It acts as a great tool for journalists, who are able to obtain meaningful insight into the actions of the state at all levels. While of course there are downsides, I think this is a very important principle.
Here you get SWATted for "fun" by kids, and targeted by Right-Wing extremists with death-threats for "political speech", and targeted by criminals based upon your vulnerability. USA is sooooo not Sweden.
Neither is really true at least for Finland.
Addresses are not public information, you can opt out from having your info public. They are not even a national registry (one exists, not public) but your telco will put you in "the phone book" if you don't opt out.
Taxes are public information but only to a degree. You can opt out from having them shared en masse (primarily to the media) but you can still inquire someone else's paid taxes from the tax office but it requires you to know their full given name, year of birth and home town.
Salary is not public information, only the total amount of paid income taxes. You can correlate them to some degree but you won't be able to know how many jobs a person has or where their capital gains are from.
Access to this information can also be limited in exceptional cases (politicians, harassment victims, identity theft etc).
While true, this is currently being debated if the access of public data should be reduced [0].
[0] https://lexing.network/swedens-latest-inquiry-into-protectin...
Not just that, so are the tax returns of private businesses. You can look up any company and see exactly how it's doing.
In Finland they publish everyones salaries over a certain threshold in the newspaper every year.
In New Zealand public servants salaries were published in the “Public Service List” from 1866 through to 1988.
https://teara.govt.nz/en/zoomify/33070/page-from-the-public-...
Anecdotally they were mainly used to evaluate potential dates.
Tom Scott video about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bO8zEaSuWg
Agreed.
As a foreigner who moved to Sweden, it was quite shocking first to see all this info displayed online for everyone to see but there are definitely some good sides and bad sides to it.
One of the good side is that, you can look at the people living in a given area and decided if this is the kind of neighborhood where you want to live. Lower (declared income) can have a correlation with crime so if you just want to have a quite life, you may want to select an era that has loads of working people with a higher than average income.
One bad side, some people have used it in the past to harass people, think ex-lovers and so on. There is a procedure in place where if you are afraid of being stalked you can ask for your information to be removed from these registries or at least be hidden from public view.
Why do they need it? Besides dumb envy, why would I need someone's tax return? What's in it for me?
Salary negotiations are a very simple example, you can easily compare your salary to that of your peers and to similar positions in other companies. If your boss tells you they pay you the industry average or company average or whatnot, you wouldn't be able to check whether that's actually true otherwise. You can also have a rough ballpark of what a company pays before you apply for a job there. In general, information like this being public empowers people, whereas in most countries companies hold all the cards and use this information asymmetry to their advantage.
OK, you see that your peer earns 2x more than you, then what? You automatically assume that you need to be paid the same?
Fairness and efficiency. If someone is making significantly more money than you, they are either:
a) creating more productive value than you or doing something more in demand by society [strong signal you should join them!]
or
b) manipulating their situation for better outcomes unfairly or fraudulently
In both cases it's in the interest of the greater good to have these things out in the open.
c) just better than you at what you're both doing.
Which works, until you have mass immigration from MENA-countries that results in a huge rise in criminality which makes everyone afraid because any criminal can look you up from the license plate or simply by searching for your name and instantly know where you are.
I hate this system. It used to be a good system when most people was law abiding and there was no gang criminals. But today? Jeez, you are like a fish just hoping not to get struck by the sharks and there is no protection available due to the failing state.
Employers almost always know the salary and location of their employees. Government workers are (in theory) employees of the citizens.
> Employers almost always know the salary and location of their employees.
Employers do, individual stockholders of the employing firm do not, generally.
> Government workers are (in theory) employees of the citizens.
No, they are in theory employees of the government, in which the citizenry are stakeholders. They are not, even in theory, direct employees of the citizens.
A US Attorney is not, in theory, your attorney just because you are a US citizen.
> Government workers are (in theory) employees of the citizens.
Not in theory nor in practice, for the same reason a teacher isn’t the employee of a student’s parents.
What is it called when people cry free speech, democracy, and transparency while actively assaulting these ideals?
Acting in bad faith, exploiting flaws and asymmetries in a system?
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.
Salary information is already easy to get thanks to The Work Number
A lot of jobs don't use TWN. None of the ones I've had did so.
Does TWN provide income data for background checks? I’d imagine that the data depends on your permissible purpose.
Hard to say. I only know the salary data ends up at less scrupulous data brokers (e.g. ones that sell directly to advertisers, though perhaps TWN does this too, idk)
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.
Give it time. Centralised access managed by junior engineers pretty much guarantees the data gets stolen.
Perhaps the first foreign adversary nation state getting there will patch the security flaws after stealing the data?
A Chinese APT had unfettered access to the Treasury Department, discovered back in December. It's interesting that people are much more excited about new government employees accessing these systems as part of their duties than they are about this.
A foreign adversary hacking a governmental system isn't good, but it's also kinda expected that they'll try.
That "just an advisor (but not really)" Musk and his ragtag group of junior developers get god mode access to lots of governmental systems is less expected. There are legal ways for the president to direct these departments, so when he opts for the illegal path, it's definitely noteworthy.
It isn’t illegal.
So who is the head of Department of Government Efficiency? If it's Musk, like Musk and Donald has said lots of times, why is he not confirmed by congress?
True, but the Chinese also can't order malicious tax audits against political opponents like Trump can.
Are you arguing that people are at risk because a comparison of Treasury and IRS records is going to reveal tax fraud or something? I don’t think that’s on the table. At any rate, Trump doesn’t need DOGE to do that, he can just order the IRS to do it like FDR did if that’s what he’s going to do.
Many. It's private for basic reasons, as are PII in your workplace.
I would love it if tax returns were public (as they are in other countries), but that's not what's happening here.
Because you have a right to privacy.
Lets start with Trump and Musk.
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.
It would have been better for the government not to collect all this information in the first place. For decades libertarians have been warning about the scenario we seem to find ourselves in.
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 blame the people who were bought as much as the buyer, and the Citizens United decision for facilitating the buying.
I'm OK with democratic elections and executive appointments. I'm OK with the "read access" part of the control, the "write access" should only go as far as the laws passed by Congress permit.
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.
Dictatorship from 1926 to 1976, and yet a strangely obscure one, probably due to neutrality during world war two.
Same here in Germany, only recently we got the tax ID number as a global primary key to the objections of many privacy activists.
Ex-Yugoslavian countries have had a global ID forever - the JMBG or, in Croatia, OIB [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unique_Master_Citizen_Number
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.
While I agree in principle, that's not an entirely intellectually honest evaluation. The government is prohibited from creating an electronic registry of guns, not because of the guns themselves, but ultimately because of the judicial understanding of the Second Amendment confirming (not granting) an inherent right of citizens to possess them. The restriction is in service to the gun owners by protecting them from government overreach. The guns are merely a layer of abstraction on that.
That's putting it mildly. What it really looks like is a fast descent into madness.
It is to avoid totalitarianism.
Having a slow and archaic birocratic system doesn't stop governments going totalitarian on their citizens.
Case in point In Germany the Polizei will SWAT and arrest you if you post a meme on social media that angers someone's dignity. That's not a joke that actually happens.
This typical German "our government is not slow and inefficient, it's just protection against totalitarianism" is pure cope.
Edit: @helloplanets Source: https://youtu.be/-bMzFDpfDwc?si=eIUkEuDBx3iX_TEx
> Case in point In Germany the Polizei will swat and arrest you if you post a meme on social media that angers someone's dignity. That's not a joke that actually happens.
Source?
That's because slander isn't protected speech and is directly illegal. It's not totalitarianism, just encoded politeness.
You can still say anything, with a modicum of decency.
Sounds like a system which could easily be abused. "politeness" and "decency" are ripe for all manner of interpretations.
In the US we see that the only things keeping authoritarianism at bay is larger the people following norms (like the peaceful transfer of power after losing an election), and the executive obeying orders from the judiciary. All it takes is for a group to not to that any more and boom.
Short road to where 'slander' means any criticism (however objectively true and justified) of people in power and you get a swat team at your door and steel boot on your neck.
The US is in no position to tell anyone about how to avoid authoritarianism.
On the other hand, we are providing on object lesson in how not to avoid authoritarianism, so there’s that...
>The US is in no position to tell anyone about how to avoid authoritarianism.
You're deflecting valid criticism about Germany's speech censorship with "Americans should shut up". Unbelievable.
>Sounds like a system which could easily be abused.
It is constantly abused, the issue is Germans have gaslit themselves into thinking that it's the right thing to do "because nazism was bad", so they have Nazi levels of speech censorship to fight imaginary Nazism, because once you label someone who disagrees with you as a Nazi you are free to censor them, which then in turn is causing the uprising of actual Nazism because people are tired of being censored for having opinions that oppose the mainstream narrative. Germans are really a difficult bunch to reason with logically.
What do you know about the deliberations and discussions went into these laws.
> because once you label someone who disagrees with you as a Nazi you are free to censor them,
Show examples of it.
>That's because slander isn't protected speech and is directly illegal.
In one case it wasn't slander. A person pointed out a politician's Nazi/Stati past on social media and he still sued abusing the "muh dignity" bullshit law.
Maybe, but if there's proof he'll lose.
How do you fee like living in a supposed democracy where politicians can censor and harass you for telling the truth?
Which law are referring to? I work in such an agency and I’ve never heard of such a thing
Dunno about Germany but in Belgium there is Crossroads Bank for Social Security which effectively controls the flow of information between various social security and public health organizations: https://www.ksz-bcss.fgov.be/
In its current form, it's a set of SOAP or REST APIs that your organization gets access to after completing paperwork about your needs.
It was established by a 1990 law [1].
There is also a similar legal and technical setup for information on companies [2] where most information is public, and the register of residents [3] which is even more guarded.
[1] https://www.ksz-bcss.fgov.be/fr/page/loi-du-15-janvier-1990-...
[2] https://economie.fgov.be/en/themes/enterprises/crossroads-ba...
[3] https://www.ibz.rrn.fgov.be/fr/registre-national/
Yes, that makes sense, we don’t allow people to connect to our databases directly either, and in any case the systems should be built so they are separated, it’s good architecture.
I was very much more intrigued about the statement that data can’t be easily/legally shared within the same agency
It's to avoid corruption.
I worked for the equivalent of the IRS for two month in my country (student job basically). When people asked for a deferred payment, i could accept it if it was the first time, but when they asked for a deffered payment the second time, or for reduced taxes (recent job loss, loss of a house or big events like this), i had the mean to verify who the person asking for this was, but not the mean to approve it.
I verified the information and filled a form, then asked for approval. The person approving had no idea who the person asking was (he had no access to the tool i used to match the internal ID to an actual person), but had the form i filled, and approved of the deferred payment/reduced taxes without any knowledge of who asked. Also i did not know who that person was, and he did not know who i was.
All of that is not very effective, but it reduces the risk of corruption from civil servants: you either have limited information, or limited power (this isn't the case with mayor or other elected officials though).
> I was very much more intrigued about the statement that data can’t be easily/legally shared within the same agency
Consider it from this hypothetical perspective: My mom is an analyst in the health service and has database access to produce various reports. Her access is extensive, to allow reporting on things like whether the courses of antibiotics prescribed by doctors are of the recommended length.
Meanwhile, I'm a rebellious teenager. My doctor asks me how often I smoke, drink, take drugs and engage in promiscuous sex. If my doctor enters my answers into my electronic medical record - should my mom be able to look at my record?
The answer, of course, is that her right to access data depends on what she's doing.
This is also true, to some extent. You have to have valid reason to access PII (Personally Identifiable Information). All access is logged and the DPO (The Data Privacy Office, one of the good things GDPR formalized) monitors access on a regular basis.
And since the current understanding is that even the combination of an IP address and a timestamp is personally identifiable... many organizations are actively not collecting usage stats. Which leads to the abuse of public funds, but this is a different story.
Culture is more important on whether or not a country can slide into a dictatorship.
Americans are ultimately conditioned to accept leadership. Belgians have never and never will agree on anything.
But when culture fails you, it's nice to have guardrails. This is why we have a constitution, law, institutions etc. It's defense in depth, it can buy you time and that's important because the more time you have, the higher chances that the wind start blowing in another direction.
This is why the electoral college is a weak point in American democracy and no wonder it was the actual target of the Jan 6th coup attempt, the Capitol invasion being merely a distraction. Weak points like this must sealed over so that the overall system is more robust to attacks.
Belgium has 3 official languages for 10 million people. It's a bit more complex :)
Well, in Italy the "IRS" (Agenzia delle Entrate) is not allowed to cross-check banking statements with its own data from Tax Returns.
Whenever anyone proposes to allow it, the members of the informal "Party for Tax Evasion" scream and denounce the descent towards "Taxation Fascism". It's so pathetically cheeky, that it feels a bit endearing (how dare them, what rascals!)
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.
Very few countries have as strong executive branch as the USA.
We call those ones “monarchies” or “dictatorships”.
You call the first and one of the most successful democracies in the world a monarchy/dictatorship? The American Executive branch is given broad powers since the very beginning and considering the success there might be something to it.
In contrast the Europeans have descended into petty mass wars and dictatorial regimes multiple times, and each time America has come to save Europe through that very Executive branch.
A bit thankless don't you think?
America has never saved anyone unless they thought it was from a threat to America.
And no, the executive branch had much less power “in the beginning”. As many people have learned, what America’s constitution says has never really matched what America does. The increasing mindless worship of a dead text, called “originalism”, is part of what will destroy it.
> You call the first and one of the most successful democracies in the world
That's the level of delusion in your own greatness that led to Trump. USA was the first (representative!) democracy with written constitution at best. And that's if you overlook the fact that only some people were entitled to vote at all.
Europe has more or less managed to avoid descending into a mass war for almost a century now, if we assume the one brewing now is just a mirage, so basically they've got it all figured out and their smugness is totally justified.
This is what democracy looks like, Americans should learn from Germany's example:
> According to the court document, the public prosecutor stated “public interest” in pressing criminal charges as the retweet was “punishable as an insult against people of political life”. It potentially constituted “incitement of the people”.
> Publicly insulting a politician has been a criminal offence in Germany since 2021 when a set of laws “against hate and hate speech” were passed under then-chancellor Angela Merkel.
https://brusselssignal.eu/2024/11/german-police-raid-mans-ho...
I can't tell if you're being ironic or not, because those examples are basically definitionally Orwellian.
Also how about never descending into dictatorships and authoritarian regimes?
Not descending into a dictatorship requires democratic participation, a pluralistic mindset and a zeitgeist to uphold it. In a pivotal moment, just a single judge collapsed and enabled hitlers takeover.
The erosion of trust in institutions and elections, up to insurrections are way out of that picture. Infront of that background, boasting about a strong executive branch, being cleansed not by merit (opposed to trumps own standard) sounds so absurd to me as a german.
Your orwellian interpretation about limited free speech is rooted in your free speech absolutism. We distinguish between limited freedom speech and unlimited freedom of oppinion. We also have processes involving courts to ban new, factually incorrect statements, aka. non-oppinions, to make it illegal bullshit.
Insulting politicians isn't free speech and America is going to descend into fascism because they allow people to get away with shit like that. Germany is leading the way, showing the rest of the world how democracy is done.
Elsewhere we can read:
> The Bavaria resident is also accused of posting Nazi-era imagery and language earlier in 2024. According to prosecutors, this post may have violated German laws against the incitement of ethnic or religious hatred.
> The man was arrested on Thursday as part of nationwide police operations against suspected antisemitic hate speech online.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-greens-habeck-presses-charges-...
This article is more informative:
Translated (with DeepL.com):
> The public prosecutor's office in Bamberg has now announced: The search had already been requested before the Green politician himself filed a criminal complaint in the case.
> Habeck only filed a criminal complaint in the case more than a month after the search warrant had been requested.
> According to the public prosecutor's office, the suspect is also facing another charge: According to this, in spring 2024, he allegedly uploaded a picture on X with a reference to the Nazi dictatorship, which could potentially constitute the criminal offense of incitement to hatred. According to the investigators, it shows an SS or SA man with the poster and the words “Germans don't buy from Jews” and the additional text “True democrats! We've had it all before!”.
https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/schwachkopf-belei...
> Europe has more or less managed to avoid descending into a mass war for almost a century now, if we assume the one brewing now is just a mirage, so basically they've got it all figured out and their smugness is totally justified.
Europe hasn’t descended into total war since WWII because the US has military bases all over Europe, mostly in Germany.
The common sentiment is that it's because of deepening cooperation because of ECSC, which was one of its explicit purposes. Not US military bases.
Europe has been more or less militarily occupied and subjugated for that time. Conquered nations tend to be pretty docile on the international level and generally don't go around waging war independently.
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.
Some insights or decisions cannot or should not be placed on the public, thats why you elect representatives in the firt place. Insight can be granular, like an oversight commitee publishing a redacted report, but i agree on full transparency about anything regarding our representatives.
> 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?
Doing that does not require anywhere remotely near the level of data access DOGE has been given.
a lot of countries already have this, and without handing e.g. Elon Musk the keys to the kingdom. America for example has this: https://www.foia.gov/
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...
European here.
There are vast differences between how the different governments operate.
It's a classic Motte and Bailey. "Europe acts in this way, so much better than America. [...] No no, not THAT Europe, I of course was only talking about this other part of Europe!"
How is the most populous state in the EU doing?
> The German parliament amended two laws on June 10th granting enhanced surveillance powers to segments of the federal police and intelligence services. They allow the use of spyware to hack into phones and computers circumventing encryption used by messaging applications such as WhatsApp and Signal, raising concerns about the right to privacy.
> The new federal police law allows interception of communications of “persons against whom no suspicion of a crime has yet been established and therefore no criminal procedure measure can yet be ordered”. This fails to ensure the necessary protection against unjustified and arbitrary interference in people’s privacy, required under international law. Human Rights Watch and the United Nations have pointed out the importance of encryption and anonymity for data protection and the right to privacy.
> The government argues that new legislation is needed to keep up with technological developments and claims the new powers are to help federal police stifle human trafficking and undocumented migration.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/06/24/germanys-new-surveillanc...
...oh
Isn't this something the US has had on steroids for many years? I.e. Patriot act, PRISM, FISA, national security letters?
Exactly. Most European countries have turned into surveillance states. I think only Switzerland is holding their banner high.
Please provide examples of how the following countries are surveillance states:
Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechia, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France
I don’t know much about many of those countries, and I have no reason to spend hours googling them.
but I know my home country Sweden, which used to have solid freedoms, have deteriorated quickly in the last few years.
Which is why I have moved to Switzerland, where the citizenry respect each other privacy(no country is perfect, but I do believe their decentralised direct democracy will keep protecting their liberties).
A recent law has enabled the Swedish police to open mail to private individuals if they suspect there might be drugs in them. This is just one change of many that has reduced the liberties of the citizens.
Don’t get me wrong, the Swedes want it this way. They are no longer a freedom loving people, sadly.
https://www.sverigesradio.se/artikel/police-to-contact-thous...
> I don’t know much about many of those countries, and I have no reason to spend hours googling them.
A good reason might be to back up the serious accusation a few comments above.
> A recent law has enabled the Swedish police to open mail to private individuals if they suspect there might be drugs in them. This is just one change of many that has reduced the liberties of the citizens.
While this isn't ideal in a vacuum, I don't see the alternative. If physical mail is given inviolable privacy, you're pretty much handing bad actors the perfect delivery system on a silver platter. I'm sure there's other examples of decisions that increased Swedish authorities' surveillance capabilities, but to call a country a surveillance state requires a little more than "They can check your mail if they suspect you're using it for drug delivery".
who said mail should be given 'inviolable privacy'?
Now there is enough reason to open private mail if the mail is a little squishy and it was sent from the wrong address.
That's orthogonal to what op is saying.
You're saying agencies can be directed to opress people and organisations.
Op is saying agencies don't get to willy nilly look into the db of other agencies.
> 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.
It's worth noting all those regimes were really only streamlined at getting people killed one way or the other. Their internal history is always a story of wild incompetence and corner-cutting. The Nazis in particular got a lot of undue credit for effectiveness.
> 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/
I have strong feeling that in the past 50 or so years, we often have traded resiliency for efficiency. I think we might have gone too far.
That doesn't mean that being deliberately inefficient will improve resiliency. Also, some of the deliberate inefficiency (i.e. looking at weird thing us healthcae/health-insurance system has going on) is more ... extractive? That sounds like the word I am looking for.
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> $50,000 to Sri Lanka for “climate change” isn’t a “popular program.”
Is that $50,000 annual? Because if so that's less than a rounding error for the budget of almost any country, much less the US. The costs associated with ending this program (organizational, employee time) may even be higher than just continuing to pay it.
> Paying dead people social security isn’t popular.
Is there any public statistical data on this? As far as I know US social security does periodically verify if recipients are still alive. Of course some cases will slip through the cracks, but unless DOGE plans to individually track down every recipient and see them in person I don't see how they can solve this problem. This inevitably happens with pretty much any social security system, anywhere.
> Sending money to the Taliban isn’t popular.
Is there a source for this?
> When you say Trump doesn’t care about waste, that isn’t supported by the facts. The deficit isn’t about waste, fraud or abuse, it’s about overspending. They aren’t the same thing.
He could start by reducing overspending on the US' titanic corporate subsidies, but something tells me he won't.
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.
They obviously didn't mean the laws prevent sql joins directly. Those prevent data aggregation, which in practice prevent various technical implementations of that.
It was not that obvious to me.
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.
I would not count on those separate databases using a common key. Joining could be quite a pain.
Regardless of the actual implementation, do you agree that it's likely much easier to match data when you have it in an organized digital form than an organized physical form?
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.
It's not euro democracies that look like they are dying, comparing government to companies, yeah, iro ic that is USA that forgot the meaning of the word democracy
Have you heard about Chesterton's fence?
Apart from government being very different from private business indeed; I wouldn't want to eat food, drive a vehicle, or use software made by a company made with that mindset. "Safety first" is also a hard rule in all sorts of sports where people move faster than non-expert spectators can fully comprehend. If you need to cut corners to "gain efficiency" it just means you're bad.
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.
In a sense, I agree.
The president should not be able to declare war without an act of Congress. The constitution grants the power to make law to congress, but then congress has enacted many laws which create agencies under the executive branch, which in turns empowers the executive branch.
So I agree that Congress should make/repeal laws that reduce the size of the executive branch so that only necessary powers are entrusted to the executive branch.
However, until that day comes, the separation of powers is the Legislative, Judicial, and Executive. Within the executive, inward looking (not external like killing people), yeah, the president and his appointed cabinet should have control. Without that control, you are defining an unaccountable form of government.
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.
Is that your preference or what the constitution says?
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.
I don't think these two things necessarily go hand in hand. If the head of the executive branch should have absolute control over the branch, as the above user suggested, then if congress wants to control government agencies that are currently in the executive branch, those agencies should be placed outside of the executive into a different category that is either under the legislative branch or shared with the executive. In the status quo, all of the large government agencies being cut by DOGE are technically under the executive.
The Constitution does not provide for agencies in the legislative branch with power over the executive branch. Congress itself does have power over the executive, but mainly in that only it can pass laws, only it can raise revenue, only it can appropriate funds for expenditure, and, of course, only it can impeach executive officers and the president. Congress does not have the power to limit the president's executive orders to the executive branch agencies, for example.
I'm not sure what you think you're adding here. That the legislative branch doesn't have power over the executive is the point of the above comment referred to here and my comment referring to it.
The U.S. Digital Service (which is what DOGE actually is) does have a budget allocated by Congress.
DOGE is finding monies are being spent without Congressional authorization, and is stopping that, exactly as you asked for. The president is also stopping expenditures that are allocated by Congress -- many presidents have done this.
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.
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.
To be clear, Security Clearances is just an EO thing.
The actual laws just speak about things being critical to national security and don't use the words like "Top Secret" and etc.
The whole actually labeling things "Top Secret" and etc started off with Clinton [1] but then Bush [2] and Obama [3] modified the rules around classification.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_12958
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13292
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13526
"Top Secret" goes back a long ways, to before WWII I believe.
They do. Elon already had top secret due to NASA/military work. The rest were authorised/given clearance for the work.
Who says they don't have them? Elon Musk certainly does.
King Trump says they dont.
Move fast and break things meets root kernel access to government.
What could go wrong?
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.
This doesn’t prevent every single person in the US (almost anyway) from being profiled and having ads and propaganda targeted against them.
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
Are they really just going to use this to train AI models, to build the 'GrokGovAI' models?
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.
Whenever I see "follow the law", my first reaction is always: Is the law fair and just? I'm merely posing the question. If you find the law to be fair and just, then for sure everyone should and probably will follow the law.
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.
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.
What the actual fuck are you talking about. Gonna need some proof that isn’t a 4chan sewer please.
You are not alone in this supposition.
I believe it's called an autogolpe as Trump is supporting him in this.
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.
The plans were laid down with "Red Map" in 2010, and reinforced in 2020: this is control of the GOP "at the base" via gerrymandering and primary control. It means that the individual representatives no longer control their own districts since a central authority (Trump) can easily out primary the individual representatives if they don't toe-the-line. One of the non-obvious impacts of the 2010 gerrymander we learned was that the populace actually votes roughly in line at the state-level as they do at the district level; this means you can use the district-level gerrymander to control Senate-level seats. This has bought the GOP a ~+3-+8 bias in the Senate.
> gerrymandering
> this means you can use the district-level gerrymander to control Senate-level seats. This has bought the GOP a ~+3-+8 bias in the Senate.
What?? No, you cannot gerrymander States (and therefore Senate seats). You can only gerrymander districts smaller than States. States with one House seat can't gerrymander that House seat either. State legislature seats can be gerrymandered. U.S. House seats in States with more than one House seat can also be gerrymandered. (EDIT: Well, I suppose if Oregon counties are allowed to move into Idaho then that would be a gerrymandering of States, but this is a very very rare event.)
The GOP might have a bias in the Senate, but that would be due to small-population States having more oomph in the Senate than large-population States. Though in 2024 the Electoral College was neutral in terms of partisan bias, which implies at most a small bias in the Senate for one or the other party.
As for gerrymandering of U.S. House districts, that has been going on since the very beginning, and even since before, since Colonial legislatures did it, and the English parliament did it before that. In fact, part of the reason for the Democrats' 62 year dominance of the U.S. House from 1933 to 1995 was gerrymandering.
But as Justice Sandra Day O'Connor explained in one of her decisions, gerrymandering is self-limiting because the party in power (in the legislature) can only optimize for seat safety (thus reducing their majority in their House delegation) or for number of seats (thus rendering some if not many of those seats not-very-safe). Since that decision we've had numerous wave elections in the House, including numerous changes in party in control of the House: 1994, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2018. Arguably in today's day and age gerrymandering doesn't count for all that much compared to the heyday of the Democratic party between 1933 and 1995.
"Do I file my taxes this year or not? I had to sit and debate that."
good question
> “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.
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.
“Often” false. I’d bet 60-70% of the Fortune 500 doesn’t fully adhere to these “best practices” maybe only the government when handling classified information comes close.
They're not talking about Fortune 500 companies, they're talking about the literal government and the rules for sharing information between agencies.
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.
Well, yes, because 1 is pretty close to zero, on a scale of 0 to infinity. However, if you look at their actual technical skilz:
The incompetence at DOGE is staggering. Absolutely no security on their .gov webiste: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43045835
can't even get mail merges to work, see some of their emails terminating people. Telling people to sign the doc and then not attaching the doc.
The search for 'probationary' employees failing 3 times because they didn't check the definition of the term.
No, technical competence really isn't DOGE's strong point.
right ...
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.
Musk has basically discovered that you can ignore existing laws, since by the time lawyers sue and courts order injunctions, it'll be too late and too expensive. Especially when lawyers can argue against basic facts like "Musk doesn't head DOGE". It's the same playbook as the twitter layoffs - when you are so rich, you don't need to care about laws.
Move fast, break things.
Easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission.
YOLO.
And move fast enough to get dirt on your prosecutors so you can, at first, kindly ask them to leave you alone. If that fails, release the dirt and cause chaos, confusion, and doubt...
Trump's biggest mistake was not firing all the Obama holdovers on the first term, like Obama did for GWB's. He isn't making that mistake this time around apparently.
I am actually really inspired by the Big Tech efficiency brought into gov't bureaucracy. I hope the next Democrat admin does the same.
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]
hm, maybe it's better if Trump stays president for 4 years (instead of Vance coming up). The devil you know...
Vance is just a figurehead for Theil, Musk, Sacks etc.
It's obvious from recent video of Musk and Trump that Trump is also a figurehead at this point.
Trump primarily cares about two things:
1) Staying out of prison
2) Being adored
What happens to the country is beside the point, from his perspective. Which is why he's more than happy to let Musk and the Heritage Foundation call the shots. He has no interest in actually running things, that's too much work.
3) Golfing
Vance doesn’t have Trump’s sway with the ‘base’, or mob. Vance can have all the dictatorial aspirations in the world, but he doesn’t have the popular support or influence, like Trump does, to act on them.
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
For context, this is Moldbug, the leading voice in the "Dark Enlightenment" movement. Basically he convinced the tech bros this was a good idea
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.
But also when you make cuts, you go hard, fast, and recover from there. Any effort of small trimming over a long period achieves no saving while producing the same negative publicity. I doubt such cutting effort will happen for another 30y.
There is a french say I like. If you need to cut a dog’s tail, don’t cut an inch every day, chop the whole thing quick
This isn't just cuts though, this is dismantling checks and balances, international relationships, and many people will die from this.
Several employees have already been put at risk: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/foreign-servic...
Dismantling USAID overnight will do a lot of damage.
> There is a french say I like. If you need to cut a dog’s tail, don’t cut an inch every day, chop the whole thing quick
Well there’s cutting off the dogs tail, and then there’s accidentally cutting off your own fingers in your haste to get the dogs tail.
There is another saying:
Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
Act quickly when needed but not so quickly that you don’t have time to assess. You should know what you’re cutting before you cut.
In the French saying is cutting the tail off a dog seen as a cruel and unnecessary action, that you shouldn't prolong any longer than necessary, or a valid task that needs done?
I see the legal status of tail docking is slightly laxer in France but in North America the US and Canadian Vetinary Associations disavow the practice as bad for the dog.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docking_(dog)
The French, famous for their budget cuts and government efficiency.
Same thing for butchery. Cut the carcass and sell the parts.
Or is this slicing the dog in half?
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
DOGE is a joke
With ‘dog mode’ access to government IT systems
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
With god mode, it isn't a joke.
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.
> 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?
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.
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.
Imagine: if you dunk on Elon on Twitter now he could get mad and post your tax return in the replies
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.
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-...
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
Well put and straight to the point.
> 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.
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.
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
This isn't an audit.
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.
They have read-only access, as the latest court documents (Google "Zeitner DOGE") show, and contrary to the fakenews that were peddled in the early days of that stuff. Big Balls can only use this read access from a provided Treasury laptop, on premises, and he's operating under review of other Treasury employees.
Ah, so more bureaucracy, bureaucracy, bureaucracy.
Yes. Democracy's intent is not efficiency. It is to provide a rule of law that is fair enough for most citizens. All other forms of rule are worse. As soon as you have 'efficient government', you no longer have democracy. But something worse.
This response is so funny to me.
You'll be on your knees begging for bureaucracy after all your info is sold to the highest bidder and you spend the next 20 years fighting identity theft.
Is DOGE releasing private info?
I don't know AND THAT'S THE POINT. No one knows. There is ZERO oversight except for a guy who just coincidentally made his billions on US government subsidies.
Neither was there before.
hWUT?
WTF are you talking about? What govt agency does haven't oversight the way DOGE does? Stop lying.
congress didn't create DOGE. no one is overseeing that goon running it. you're a child if you believe the words coming out of his mouth
Yes.
They're using public LLMs to analyze it. Every single LLM provider collects the data you put into it.
There's also the NRO incident recently where they publicly released the classified org chart.
DOGE should not be even near private data without a clearance.
I think that ship has sailed.
His first term, he handed out security clearances to anyone who would ask. There is even less stopping him from just giving them out this term too.
https://www.zetter-zeroday.com/court-documents-shed-new-ligh...
"New court documents shed light on what a 25-year-old DOGE employee named Marko Elez did inside Treasury Department payment systems. They also provide extensive new details about which systems Elez accessed, the security precautions Treasury IT staff took to limit his access and activity, and what changes he made to the systems. The documents indicate that the situation at Treasury is more nuanced than previously reported."
(...)
"Additionally, he could only connect using a government-issued laptop that had "cybersecurity tools" installed on it to prevent him from accessing web sites or cloud-based storage services with the laptop or connecting a USB or other external storage device to it to copy large amounts of data from Treasury systems. "
It's so funny you think quoting a newspaper that says some random staffer doesn't CURRENTLY have access is some sort of gotcha. Do you know how time works?
Correction: - not quoting a newspaper, but court documents. - not a random staffer, but THE staffer you are so concerned about.
No, you are quoting a newspaper "zetter-zeroday" which is talking about court documents. You are not quoting court documents.
Also, not all court documents are the same. You can make whatever claims you want in some of them.
THE staffer? I don't remember singling anyone out so I have no clue what you're talking.
You're argument is "This document said this one dude isn't currently accessing the system" as if that somehow means they aren't going to in the future and or that other team members don't have access. What are you even talking about? No one is saying "It's all this guy"
Would you buy shares in a company if the sole auditor of their financials was the CEO's best friend, who had no experience or qualifications in auditing, and he was not accountable to anyone if he was wrong? "Trust me bro" does not cut it. These structures and processes can be onerous but they exist for good reason. BTW our government is not so strapped for cash that they can't afford to do this properly.
Your analogy is absurd.
In a publicly traded company you get to chose whether to buy or sell the shares of a company based on how the CEO is running the company (including who he appoints to audit it)
In US Govt, we don't get to chose whether to "invest" in the govt or not, our taxes our collected by force.
So instead we have the power to vote for people in congress (who decide home much taxes are collected on how they are spend), and the president (who can execute on the spending directed by congress, but also has the power granted by constitution to audit and spend effiecntly)
The US Govt Shareholders (Voters) have SPOKEN, and SPOKEN LOUDLY! (Electoral College victory, and Popular Vote victory). They elected republican majority congress, and President Trump. Thus the voters voted for a deep gov't audit headed by Musk (Trump publicly campaigned on auditing and cleaning up spending, and publicly stated who will be in charge of the audit).
The point I was trying to make is that DOGE is not doing a proper audit, and this should concern everyone including those who voted for him.
Many of the findings Musk has published have been proven to be mischaracterized or erroneous (numbers off by 1000x etc), which gives us grounds to question the rest. Except their process and data is opaque. Trump is firing entire departments based on this bad information. This could ironically _increase_ govt expenditure when they realizes we need to hire new people, possibly at higher salaries (after paying the old people a severance).
Fair point. But i don't think a few mistaken reports, justifies calling it as an invalid audit.
They are auditing a Multi-Trillion bureaucratical behemoth (with terrible record keeping on top of it). Even a "certified auditor" can make a few mistakes.
Instead of focusing on onef misreported 8 billion line item, you should focus on the fact that they discovered 3 TRILLION in payments with no budgetary codes (literally TRILLIONS in blank untraceable checks)
I would rather have an businessman experienced making billion dollar companies efficient doing the audit, and doing it FAST, but making some mistakes.
Than having a typical beurocratic "certified auditor" audit, that does it slowly and won't even make a dent in a budget in a single year.
The US Govt is paying TRILLIONS in just INTEREST on the debt every year, and not even paying down the principal right now. And they have to borrow MORE MONEY, just to be able to cover the INTEREST payment next year. The US Gov't is in dire financial straights. We don't have time for a typical "bureaucratic auditors" auditing a trillion dollar bureaucracy.
We need an experienced businessman to come in and start cutting, and cutting FAST.
Don't downplay it as just a few mistaken reports or one wrong line item. The majority of the dollar value they claimed to have saved was wrong.
Now they _allege_ to have found 3 trillion in mystery payments, but we can't take them seriously because of their lack of proper audit techniques. They have no idea what they are doing.
I believe the entire country is watching in real time as a teenager tries to navigate his first legacy system and he just hasn't found the rest of the business logic. Just like how they implied that millions of dead 150 year olds were still receiving social security payments. It was a known issue that dead people are still in the database, but they are not in fact receiving payments. A real auditor would have known what to ask and where to look.
its a fucking audit
Wouldn’t you expect some sort of forensic accountant leading an audit of a multi trillion dollar organization?
No
Why not?
Yeah exactly.
The article is hyperbola and ultimately trying to push the "Auditing and finding corruption is bad"
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.
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...
Which cloud provider is DOGE using?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Surely it's 'dog mode'
> 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.
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.
They're only listed source is an employee of USAID.
I have no reason to believe anything in this article.
this is not good
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 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.
It's like people think every agency just got infinite money until Musk came in.
And they have been doing a bang up job. Bottom line is that this sort of transparency was needed in the last administration.
Chump
Because then they would have found the fraud, and some very powerful people would be out of money....
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.
giving DOGE sudo is a whole article?
DOGE = EGOD = EGO/GOD
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
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...
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: 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.
Doing the hard work for HN readers. Thank you.
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.
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
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 :-))
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?
I am shocked, and overjoyed, that this post has not been downvoted; well said.
>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.
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 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.
> 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.
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?
Fraud means anything that they don't like.
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.
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...
>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.
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.
USAID is the facilitator for Starlink in Ukraine. Based on the garbage coming out of Trump about Zelensky in the last couple of days and Russia’s positive comments regarding the “USAID meddling machine” I suspect they got orders from the boss.
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?
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
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
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 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 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.
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.
He actually wants black Africans to die from AIDS.
The only thing "libertarian" about Musk is his extreme interest in his own freedom - everyone else's be damned.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
Doooooooooooooooooooooooom
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.
Nice :)
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.
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.
Agree. Shameful.
Please, someone, give me somewhere else to go other than here.
DOGE administrator is ... Grok.
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
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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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.
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).
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.
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.
Not gonna lie, sitting here in a collapsing and feckless Europe, I'm supper jelly.
Same, the UK government definitely needs a similar audit.
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