[strangeloops85]

If you're having a team going into every bit of government data, you might want to vet them. Beyond eugenicists and racists, if they're getting anywhere close to SCIFs, make sure they fill out that SF-86 accurately. And maybe even if they're not, have them go through regular clearance procedures.

Yes, it takes time. But right now, DOGE seems like a huge security risk for the USG what with it setting up backdoors everywhere, and with unvetted staff working for it.

[ethagnawl]

That these concerns are being dismissed as partisan shows how far through the looking glass we truly are. Either _the party of law and order_ doesn't understand how risky this activity is, doesn't care or both -- any of which are _extremely_ troubling. We should also all be sure to keep this in mind next time they're crying crocodile tears about TikTok or DeepSeek.

I just emailed my representative (Mike Lawler) and I suggest everyone who's concerned about this activity and capable of offering compelling insights into why this activity (active data breach) is so concerning do the same. Perhaps they're somehow blissfully unaware of the security implications of these folks accessing data (it's only read-only access, though, so don't worry! /s), copying it to ... wherever?, running it through ChatGPT or tinkering in production on critical Cobol systems is and we can enlighten them.

[mullingitover]

> Either _the party of law and order_ doesn't understand how risky this activity is, doesn't care or both

If they hadn't already obviously ceded that title before 2025, they certainly did when over a thousand duly convicted violent partisan offenders were pardoned.

These weren't just random people, they were accomplices of the person who pardoned them.

We're in an autocratic United States now, where no crime, no matter how violent, committed by members of the regime will be prosecuted.

[travismark]

a president cannot pardon or commute state crimes. most states have crimes against violence

[ipython]

The crime in question occurred in a non-state, so that isn’t much help here.

[brewdad]

The majority of governors are all in on this new Republicanism. They can pardon any crime that Trump can't. Blue state governors can be leaned on extremely hard and most will have to give in if their Federal dollars are on the line. This isn't 2006 anymore.

[mullingitover]

> Blue state governors can be leaned on extremely hard and most will have to give in if their Federal dollars are on the line.

This is especially true if the courts roll over and reverse the Impoundment Act, which is exactly what the Project 2025 author and OMB nominee is pushing for. The president would be able to bankrupt any State, any entity that relies on federal funding, regardless of the wishes of Congress.

And arguably they could just do it: ignore any court judgment, and watch Congress do nothing. We know he won't ever be impeached and removed, so it's sort of a foregone conclusion that impoundment power can be seized at any time.

[scarface_74]

It doesn’t matter if you write or call your representative. He knows that if he goes against President Musk, Musk will throw his unlimited funds at someone so he gets primaried and even before that Musk will use his bully pulpit - Twitter - to berate him.

He is in a D+3 district that usually votes Democratic. That would usually moderate him. But see above about he would have to first survive a primary.

[hypothesis]

Threats of violence is what drives all those inexplicable last minute vote changes in congress, simple as that.

[kccoder]

And why the senate didn't convict trump in the second impeachment about the insurrection he fomented. There is reporting of Mitt Romney that several republican senators indicated they didn't vote to convict because they were afraid what his minions would do to them and their families. They also mentioned they didn't have the funds to pay for private security the way that Romney had been doing for some time.

There's a word for achieving political ends via violence or the threat of violence. We should've been using that word heavily then, and we should be using it heavily now.

[scarface_74]

The Musk+Trump duopoly seems insurmountable. Trump has an a cult like hold on the Republican Party and Musk has enough money + Twitter to control the narrative/scare politicians in line to convince enough independents to keep them in power.

Our only hope is that the Cheeseburgers and high cholesterol gets the best of Trump.

And that Democrats grow a spine.

[computerthings]

What you're not mentioning the personal and intellectual flaws of these idols and their followers, and the tens, if not hundreds of millions of people in the US, and billions all over the world. How the chances "seem" right now is rather moot and very likely to be wrong one way or another; historians can say that later on. It is what it is now. It's not like you're suggesting to invest energy into A rather than B, so instead of idly musing about chances of success, try to focus on what increases them.

[DonHopkins]

The next Luigis could be the Hamburglar and Mayor McCheese, who aim directly for his heart and don't miss.

[mullingitover]

This isn't Musk+Trump, it's Musk+Thiel+Yarvin+Heritage+Vance, with Trump as a hood ornament. His job is simply to sign whatever they put in front of him and play golf.

Cholesterol getting the best of Trump isn't going to derail this, since Vance is more than happy to continue the amassing of unchecked executive power.

"You won't have to vote again."

[scarface_74]

The difference is that it is never about policy with MAGA voters. It’s about Trump.

You see how quickly MAGA voters went from “America first. No foreign entanglements” to “let’s send troops to the Middle East to clear out Gaza” as soon as Trump said we should do so?

Anytime that Trump hasn’t been on the ballot since 2018, Trump voters stayed home.

Presidents have always been about personality and not policy. Biden and Bush I being the exception in my lifetime - or at least since Reagan.

[hapticmonkey]

"Law and order" has long been code words for using the power of the state to enforce hierarchies that benefits those shouting "law and order".

[exceptione]

I see your point, but talking about risks after a de-facto heist could easily lead to misunderstandings. This intelligence operation is a done deal.

If concerned people debate future risks instead, the other team has scored an A+.

If you want to mitigate what had happened, you need to bring your own extremely resourced criminals. I really feel sorry for all affected.

[kenjackson]

What makes you think they weren't vetted and this isn't what they wanted?

[JohnTHaller]

Also worth noting that he made these posts before Musk hired him. And that they didn't fire him.

[belter]

"Vance tells Musk that DOGE staffer who resigned after posting racist tweets should be rehired" - https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/07/elon-musk-doge-racist-treasu...

[ilaksh]

My take is that we actually need more efficiency in government, and from a technology standpoint, they might have some good ideas.

I have a very pro-technology worldview. I'm independent leaning left but I thought that Democrats have been extreme, wasteful and untrustworthy in their own ways.

It's very unfortunate that this stuff like efficiency and technology integration is now associated so closely with neo-Nazis. Maybe I just didn't want to believe it. But when Musk did those Hitler salutes, I had to accept a new reality.

I don't think cutting programs or screwing up code is our main worry. The Secretary of Defense is literally an alcoholic neo-Nazi Crusader who talks about almost nothing besides getting rid of affirmative action and how evil Muslims are.

I am scared that they will actually try to deport millions of people, there could be massive detainment camps that become concentration camps. You only need a lack of food and one or two really serious neo-Nazis for that to become a death camp.

I am also afraid that they might trigger WWIII, fully fueled by racial hatred and dehumanization of Chinese people.

I am almost scared to write posts like this because who knows if they will start hunting down people from the internet.

[MattPalmer1086]

This meme that government is just hugely more inefficient than business is not correct in my experience.

I've worked for both. I have seen massive waste in business, millions spent for no gain, staff employed to build a manager's empire, not to do anything that was actually needed and other terrible outcomes. Obviously that also happens in government too, although the bigger problem there was a whole bunch of lazy staff who were hard to fire.

But... A business can largely choose its market and optimise for that. A government cannot - it has to work for pretty much everyone. Business can choose to skirt the law or even break it. Government departments must comply with all law to the best of their ability.

Not saying there are no ways to improve government efficiency. But the people who think you just need a business approach (unless you just want to break it all) are deluded.

[ivewonyoung]

The big difference is that taxpayers are on the hook for government inefficiency and for most services there is no competition, the classic example being the DMV. Having one hour queues frequently is rare in private businesses.

Whereas with businesses they could go out of business if they overspend on inefficient processes and there can be competition on both quality and price.

One of the root causes is that it's very difficult to fire government employees for bad performance so that's why government services suck and cost a lot in almost every level of the government and in pretty much every country with some exceptions, like say the NTSB in the US.

It's not even that low performers should all be fired, but the fact that knowing you it's hard to get fired leads to many people underperforming given natural psychology. The other problem being lack of incentives tied to performance.

[ModernMech]

When the public government services are privatized, it's not going to look like a bunch of scrappy companies engaging in free market dynamics to deliver services better than the government could; it's going to look like darling contracts granted to crony insiders who leech tax dollars into offshore accounts while delivering the worst possible service they can get away with.

[MattPalmer1086]

The majority of people I worked with in government were actually very motivated. Sometimes it was public service, sometimes they were ambitious for their career, sometimes they just liked what they were working on.

I have not really seen more motivated people in business due to performance incentives. Even in the financial sector, other than maybe traders and quants, I can tell you most people don't work harder because of the annual bonus.

It was certainly a bit dispiriting working with the minority of people who appeared to do absolutely nothing and just hung around for years. We all knew we had to work harder because of them. Some of them would definitely have been fired in a business.

[rbanffy]

> we actually need more efficiency in government

Government services should be efficient, but that should never happen at the cost of being independent from the people in office, transparent, auditable, secure, and accountable.

[whateveracct]

Exactly. There are a lot of things above efficiency on the priority list.

[exceptione]

> It's very unfortunate that this stuff like efficiency and technology integration is now associated so closely with neo-Nazis

Do not mistake the Nazi's too. They were very efficient and highly organized. IBM played a great role in delivering the tech the Nazi's needed.

[rapnie]

Undoubtedly the IBM's of today are primed and ready to get the train rolling again. It is hard to be pro-technology realizing that the ownership of all that tech is ultimately the brainworm billionaire class. Who we already know are fascists.. as per daily news.

[ilaksh]

Maybe it's not that new then.. after all, I guess the Nazis did a lot of great work on rockets.. but very unfortunate. That association clouds people's views of technology in general. Technology itself is not biased or ignorant or evil. It's a lever. It should be able to help everyone.

[craigmcnamara]

DOGE is just a dipshit rebrand of the US Digital Service, which was created under the Obama administration, and did bring real improvements and efficiency to the Federal Government. They're behind the IRS free to file program that I heard was just killed off. They also did login.gov. There is a huge number of lower profile improvements across the government that they're responsible for.

DOGE is a farce and I hate that I have to type the name of a joke from 2009 because Elon is a child and Trump is a crook.

[thomassmith65]

DOGE (as in the sh**coin) is price manipulation. Elon may own a third of all DOGE in existence. So he pumped it when he appeared on SNL, pumped it on Twitter, and now pumps it via his reach as a newly minted oligarch.

[dragonwriter]

> It's very unfortunate that this stuff like efficiency and technology integration is now associated so closely with neo-Nazis.

I don't think “efficiency and technology integration” is. I think DOGE is because its being done by neo-Nazis and in support of a blatantly fascist administration and doing things that look a lot more like ideological censorship and corrupt self-dealing than efficiency and technical integration, including specifically targeting things in government that actually did efficiency and technical integration.

[loanedempathy]

Blue team is hesitant to use its power in a lot of ways, and due to insisting on consensus most of the time they are handicapped. Red team actually seems to know what power is and how to use it--unfortunately for us, they lack discrimination and strategic planning in its application.

Blue team also required a bunch of thought-killing exercises and public signalling of things that are clearly inefficient and intellectually bankrupt and dishonest--this drove away a lot of smart people that actually wanted to get shit done, and made it easy for red team to point over and say "see, they're lying/delusional/woke?" as covering fire when red team pushed for their own odious agendas.

Blue team also not only failed to address issues but deliberately lied about them: the immigration crisis was pilloried when Trump wanted to build a wall, but once Biden took power a few weeks later suddenly _then_ the immigration crisis was a real policy concern. When people were complaining about the cost of food and goods, that was silly--but now that Trump's in power, suddenly we are told to care again. The attempted manufacturing of consent by the media on the left (and to be clear, red team does the same thing) is now too obvious not to be used against them.

Given all of this:

* Things aren't as bad as they're being made out to be, though they are serious.

* There is an entire industry relying on your fear and anxiety to exist, so practice good information hygiene.

* Maybe look beyond the obvious labels (woke, Nazi, marxist, fascist) to understand what's actually going on--don't be intellectually lazy.

* Revisit the things you think you know and why they're Good or not--and consider what others would think of them (for example, we can't both talk about how it's only a matter of years that "white" will be a minority in the US and that that's a good thing _and also_ claim that reactionary concerns about replacement are wholly unfounded).

Good luck to you.

[ilaksh]

I would like to believe that those are just intellectually lazy labels. Are you sure it's not 100% accurate to say that Musk and Hegseth are neo-Nazis? Or that we are headed straight for new American Holocaust against Hispanics and a race-fueled third world war? I want that to be hysterical paranoia or "intellectually lazy labels". But look at the historical parallels.

[DonHopkins]

"Goatfucker" is a fair and accurate and intellectually rigorous label.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Popehat%27s%...

Popehat's Law of Goats

He who fucks goats, either as part of a performance or to troll those he deems has overly delicate sensibilities is simply, a goatfucker.

"He claimed he was just pretending to be racist to trigger the social justice warriors, but even if he is telling the truth, Popehat's Law of Goats still applies."

[loanedempathy]

If you're referring to me, you'll have to do better than namecalling.

If you're referring to Musk or the current administration, calling them names doesn't really seem to have worked for what, at least nine years now?

[DonHopkins]

Confessing to fucking goats isn't quite the power move you make it out to be, but if you want to take one for the team, and claim that what you're doing is merely performance art intended to troll, while "things aren't as bad as they're being made out to be" and "concerns about replacement" are actually well founded, then be my guest. The fact that a racist doesn't mind being called a racist doesn't make them not a racist.

[jhp123]

so when Elon Musk stands at a podium and performs the Nazi salute, it is "intellectually lazy" to use labels like "Nazi" or "fascist"?

[budududuroiu]

> dehumanisation of Chinese people

What?

[ilaksh]

Hasn't started yet. Give it a few months or a year for the Taiwan situation to start to really boil and for them to have had their fill of rounding up Hispanics.

[budududuroiu]

I don’t doubt there’s a racist element there, but people are blind as to just how deep United Front cells are stuck in the US. From running illegal weed grows, pushing power and doing transnational repression, it’s a way bigger threat that people don’t realise

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/09/nyregion/chan-china-nyc-i...

[gorbachev]

Why do you think they didn't?