[BluSyn]

The split of opinion on this in tech circles is quite surprising.

No agency would voluntarily modernize systems, which would inevitably reduce head count and put half of them out of jobs. This has been a on-going fight for 30 years. Every politician who previously tried to modernize agencies failed due to intense internal resistance.

Everyone in tech clearly fell on the modernization side. This is what many of us wanted since the 90s. Finally happening. In real time. Headed by one of the greatest tech disrupters since probably Edison. Now they act like the sky is falling?

I can’t find any steel-man argument against DOGE. No modernization plan proposed the traditional way through committees, consultants, contractors, has worked or will EVER work. You have to rip off the bandaid the hard way.

Only explanation I have for those opposing this is some combination of personality derangement spread by nefarious interests, financial incentive, or some crazy model of the world that glorifies bureaucratic power as some fundamental right enshrined in constitution.

Imagine being on the side of the Empire and trying to stop the rebels as they infiltrate the Death Star.

[cowfriend]

I respect that you have been a HN member since 2016, making it unlikely that this is a troll account.

However, your views read like propaganda.

The "internal resistance" you refer to is simply people trying to follow the law, while being constantly whipsawed by changing political winds. We see similar stories here on HN about work in large corporations. What do you think it is like in an org with 2.2 MILLION employees, where their actions have the power of government behind them often including access to extremely sensitive information?

HN talked about leaking any Youtuber's contact information for 10K, with suggestions that Google should better protect people's data.

HN frequently talks about the dangers of non-accountability for police. Would you like that same non-accountabilty spread to all aspects of the Federal government? (if so, merry christmas because now you have it)

If you cannot find any steel-man arguments against DOGE, may I suggest that you read the remainder of this HN article?

[claar]

Why would you even suspect this is a troll account? These are clearly genuinely held opinions, stated plainly and without the normal wild rhetoric I typically hear in comments in such threads, yet you read it as propaganda.

This is why I flag all articles on DOGE/etc, because genuine conversation is assumed to be in bad faith.

Expecting someone to read an article having an obvious propaganda hit-piece title like "DOGE as a National Cyberattack" is silly.

Would you read an article titled "technology is the mark of the beast" and take your time to debate its merits?

I personally hold the belief that DOGE and president Trump are acting in good-faith to keep his campaign promises as best as they're able, in a messy and tumultuous environment.

At the same time, I have a lot of empathy for the great number of people that are afraid and hurting right now for a multitude of reasons. People are facing food/job/business insecurity, genuine threats to various core ideological beliefs, an environment of fear and uncertainty for many affected people, threats to the desired direction of our laws and societal moral compass, etc. I hurt for those affected, and I do what I can within my spheres of influence to help.

I don't see why we can't have an honest conversation with each other without assuming that the other is operating in bad-faith. I think BOTH sides should stop using propaganda, and start LISTENING to each other, that eventually we might determine paths forward together without cancelling each other.

[yoyonamite]

Why is it silly? Is it reasonable to hold the opinion that DOGE should not have been given access to these systems (note: this doesn't mean that the opposite view isn't also reasonable)? If it's a reasonable position to hold, then getting access to these systems can be reasonably construed as an attack, can it not?

I don't really think this argument merits a comparison to "technology is the mark of the beast" or that the only people that can be opposed to DOGE suffers from "personality derangement" or "glorifies bureaucratic power"

[Izkata]

> Is it reasonable to hold the opinion that DOGE should not have been given access to these systems

"We audited ourselves" typically doesn't fly, so no, I'd say not a reasonable position. Someone external has to do it, and DOGE is the one tasked by the president to do so.

[acdha]

Audit are already conducted by outsiders, but the objection to DOGE is less the concept of auditing but how they’re doing it by bypassing all kinds of policies. Normally auditors would be qualified, have passed background checks, and agree to follow the same security and privacy policies.

The outrage is because they’re taking a lot of risk and clearly treating it as a political exercise when it shouldn’t be.

[johnnyanmac]

>I don't see why we can't have an honest conversation with each other without assuming that the other is operating in bad-faith.

>I think BOTH sides should stop using propaganda

Well you proved it right here. You're "both sides"-ing this when the responsibiliry and power at the moment is horribly disproprtionate. It isn't at all. We can throw all the links we want, but I've yet to see any "liberal propaganda" posted in response to suggest that Democrats are "playing dirty".

If we can't even talk about objective facts like "Musk retaliated on Judges who gave him court order", then we can't talk much. We're not in the same reality and facts like that aren't even denied by Musk. You're defending someone who is outright saying "I want to take down the courts". He isn't even defending himself.

[drekipus]

Hurt people hurt people. That's all this is.

Same with ICE raids. People are upset because they built their house on sand and have to start again. Businesses are upset because they can't get around labour laws

I find it funny that you're getting downvoted though. Maybe in a few years it'll all blow over

[craftsman]

> No agency would voluntarily modernize systems

This is speculative based on an idea that you have about what must be true. It can be shown to be untrue by one example: NASA, NOAA, and other agencies now host applications and data in a cloud environment. Before this, they were hosted at various NASA data centers. You can now search for, download, and operate on data in the cloud. In contrast, twenty-five years ago someone was required to order a physical magnetic tape. They could have kept those systems running, but they didn't.

[BluSyn]

Did these digital modernization efforts result in lower agency head count, or did they instead use it as excuse to ask for higher budgets?

[craftsman]

Much better user experience--and in these examples the users could be high school students or teachers, college students, grad students, PIs, public policymakers, etc--users can do complex searching, filtering, previewing data images & plots, and selecting data over a wide variety of spatial and temporal bounds. They can also either directly download the data in a self-describing format (with metadata), or they can describe various kinds of post-processing that is done efficiently and quickly.

[lores]

You're moving the goalposts to leave your internal narrative unchanged. Look, I've worked for huge corps and for the government. There's no particular difference in efficiency between the two; efficiency goes down with scale and legacy rather than with public/privateness. The only non-ideological choices that matter are how much you de/centralise decisions and recording (trading decision efficiency for implementation efficiency) and whether you make those decisions and records at all (moot, someone will anyway, that's valuable data).

[lores]

"To save the village, we had to destroy it" comes to mind. Except the nuking irradiated the whole country, too.

[BluSyn]

This feels like hyperbole. Nobody is arguing to destroy the village, the federal government is not going to disappear due to 20% spending reduction. Reducing spending from ~$6T/year to ~$4T/year is not the end of government, which is the explicitly stated goal of DOGE.

[johnnyanmac]

>Nobody is arguing to destroy the village,

it's already happening. Does it have to literally already be on fire to see it?

>he federal government is not going to disappear due to 20% spending reduction

Yes, that's more than enough to throw the country into chaos, 20% of 2024 spending is 1.3 TRILLION dollars.

I don't think you understand how much money "20%" is in this scale.

>Reducing spending from ~$6T/year to ~$4T/year is not the end of government, which is the explicitly stated goal of DOGE.

1. depends on where we make the cuts. 20% from the military? Maybe we'll be fine. 20% from Social security? There will be blood in the streets. Even the most diehard trump supporter won't like their income being reduced out of nowhere.

2. where do you think that 2 trillion dollars is going? Hint: we're not getting it. They are reducing spending by not taxing billionaires as much. So no, we're not paying off a defecit, Corporate America isn't paying its share.It will still increase and nothing was accomplished. Just the rich getting richer.

Why does no one see this coming?

[intended]

Schneier has provided an argument that functions close enough to a steel man, and its not even overwrought, or over hyped.

Its pretty clear and calm, from an expert on the subject.

[BluSyn]

Calling it a cyberattack is hyperbole. Lost objectivity points from the outset.

[intended]

If he is calling it a cyber attack, then it’s not.

Read the article at the least. He had earned that much of our trust - and yours, if I am not mistaken.

We don’t have to like what he says. He just has to be right.

[craftsman]

> Only explanation I have for those opposing this is some combination of personality derangement spread by nefarious interests, financial incentive, or some crazy model of the world that glorifies bureaucratic power as some fundamental right enshrined in constitution.

If you're interested, I could give you some reasons, and other commenters here already have done so.

[craftsman]

> No modernization plan proposed the traditional way through committees, consultants, contractors, has worked or will EVER work. You have to rip off the bandaid the hard way.

This, by way of the same example in my sibling comment, is also not true.

[acdha]

> No agency would voluntarily modernize systems, which would inevitably reduce head count and put half of them out of jobs.

What facts are you basing this on? Have you worked at one of those agencies? Do you have reason the believe that the many agencies whose senior leadership have asked Congress to fund modernization programs were being disingenuous?

If not, consider that the people who told you this were not acting in good faith and had motives other than government efficiency.

[BluSyn]

Real modernization of systems would result in efficiencies that allow for reduction in staff. Tech exists to be a lever on productivity. This almost never happens; historically bureaucratic modernization efforts only proceed if absolutely necessary for core functions, and strangely seem to result in higher head counts. IRS is a great example of this. Their headcount has doubled while they supposedly "modernized". Digital systems should increase productivity of the average IRS employee, instead they just invent more busy work.

[acdha]

Do you have any experience with this or are you just basing it on vibes? For example, I know people who’ve worked on modernization projects and they’ve never had opposition on the grounds you’re claiming: the problems are usually funding (Congress has to allocate money for it) and the significant cost and risk due to contracting the work out rather than hiring technical staff (also Congress).

The IRS is notable because they’ve been requesting funding for modernization since the 90s.

[johnnyanmac]

>No agency would voluntarily modernize systems

1. yes, we do. DOGE was renamed from Obama Appointed DSA, which inevitably reduced other agencies as we centralized IT. How about you be specific and suggest what agencies are past their usefulness?

1.5 but no. The government doesn't just lay off people. They tend to move people around for their work when their old resposibilities decline. The government is not a tech company trying to maximize profit.

2. that's why we have actual audit agencies. Each agency audits itself and then the GOA is the government's general auditor.

>Everyone in tech clearly fell on the modernization side

Not necessarily, because again: the government isn't a tech company. And that's a good thing. You can't move fast and break the treasury. That's how you cause the next stock market crash.

>Headed by one of the greatest tech disrupters since probably Edison. Now they act like the sky is falling?

Yes, because you just equated a businessman in tech who's never touched anything in the domain to one of the most important innovators in history.

Read up on your history and Tell me Musk is some tech visionar. You may not have noticed, but this isn't 2017 anymore and Musk's persona has long faded. He's not exactly hailed here as a tech genius anymore

>I can’t find any steel-man argument against DOGE.

You're not looking then. How about this: they are breaking the law. A lot. And then antagonizing judges who reel them in.

Ignore everything else; how can you excuse this? What's the steelman argument around "well it's okay to break the law?" this isn't civil disobediance (quite the contrary), lives were not in danger at the OPM, USAID, and Treasury. What is your justification? How far does this need to go before you'd admit that they are breaking too many laws.

>Only explanation I have for those opposing this is some combination of personality derangement

You say this and wonder why we cannot have a civil conversation? A conversation is two way. Statements like this is inflammatory and preaching.

> or some crazy model of the world that glorifies bureaucratic power as some fundamental right enshrined in constitution.

If you even care, my viewpoint is this: your solutions change as your problem scales. inevitably, larger problem spaces need more time and nuance to resolve.

exmaple 1: is it okay for me to go back to my toy renderer and rewrite it from scratch? Yes. No one's using it, I know the scope of the code, and sometimes when you visit old code like that, it's best for me to just start over. I got my value out of that code (and my first job!)

example 2: I'm contracted to work on some existing project. They put abou a year into it. You want to rewrite from scratch. Is that okay? It can really go either way. Maybe the code is truly horrible and you're experienced enough to handle this rewrite. it works out. Maybe the work needed is minor and you're basically working against their best interests. They may resist without a good reason, not hire you on, reduce your pay for the contract, etc. You won't simply get your way without some sort of credentials or reasoning. But it may be the right call.

Example 3: I'm working at a multibillion dollar company and am touching a 15 year old codebase with 10m+ lines of code. You dont like a certain system and offer to optimize it (let's say you worked here a year). Will you get approved? Absolutely not. You need to at best go through a huge procedure to even get access to that part of the repo, propose a very smart plan, and then implement it slowly. Then you'll talk with various stakeholders for each commit. It maybe would take you a month if you went in yourself. It ends up taking a year of discussions and iteration.

So, the government is example 3. Is the right call to ignore your lead, product managers, release managers, and build engineers and put in your code, break the version contol, and jam in your barely tested code into Prod? I fail to see how any result short of multiple miracles keeping you from not only being fired, but blacklisted locally from any other software firm in that area. If you broke it enough, you may even be retaliated against for damages to the business. No programmer would sympathize with that.

-----

So, back to reality; why am I seeing people celebrate not only all of the above, but then threaning your boss's life for doing their job and keeping you from destroying the business? Why am I being called "deranged" for being aware of my data and not appreciating it being accessed without my consent, for no good reason (what is my social security going to do to fix the government? Request as little data as you need for your function)?

Using your odd comparison, Why would I sit by while someone destroys the death star? I'm in the Death Star (I don't know why, but I'm rolling with it)! I don' have a Pod Racer to get off like the rebels do. They are trying to kill me! Why is self-preservation derangement now?