>> Assuming that anyone in the government still cares.
Schneier hits the mark here.
Government only works at all if people care.
And if you tell someone that their job, and the organisation they work for - are of no value - then those people won't care any more.
I don't know what the outcome would be of large swathes of the government either being fired or not caring any more but we're going to find out and I don't think it will be good.
Or maybe not, maybe Trump and whathisname are right and government really is a complete waste of money. In which case there will be great money savings and the USA will be the better for it.
Any great money savings isn’t going to come from getting rid of personnel. Spending on government employees is only 6.8% of the budget. If they reach their goal of cutting 10%, that’s still less than 1% of the budget. They are going to have to cut Medicare, Social Security and military spending to make a dent.
If you believe Musk wont reach it you are dreaming. Just cutting all funding to all those NGO and those foreign news institutions will do it. In many countries a big chunk of governments workers are bs jobs and are just there to maintain an aging machine look like its working while helping reducing unemployment rate by financing useless jobs.
In the game Civilization, there are different ways to achieve victory, one of which is a Cultural Victory.
A lot of the foreign aid the US does is kind of like this, where we're attempting to shift other countries to our way of life through a mix of direct aid, loans, news, and other methods.
There's a real long term ROI on these things where it's inarguably to the US' benefit that other countries want to speak English, use USD, operate businesses similarly to how we do, etc.
There are a few interesting channels on YT of Africans singing Chinese folk and pop songs. Quite fascinating and a sign of how China has been able to spread influence in Africa through investment. (Of course none of it a free ride)
I totally agree with you. Except id pin it much less positively than you.
The goal is not to help “allies” but to make sure they don’t outcompete us. This is what the money was for. Just like any superpower did (you know the russian interference you all hated)
You can't cut $2T without cutting at least some "mandatory" spending or your interest payments, because the total of absolutely all your "discretionary" spending comes to a total of $1.7T.
Your "discretionary" spending includes your entire active military. Not the retired military, that's "mandatory" spending, but all your active military.
Your non-military "discretionary" spending is $0.9T, less than half of what people are talking about cutting.
You remove the workers not to save on salary but to save on budget you will allocate to a department. Its like any company. The smaller the dept the smaller the budget and influence.
Government is a huge ship where everything happens slowly. If you fire all sailors at once, you won't notice the difference immediately. The phantom ship continues to sail.
Then engines start to heat up and fail. And if there's an obstacle along the way, it's game over.
This is a dangerous game played by morons full of hubris.
On June 16 YC organizes an "AI Startup School"; the first speaker is Elon Musk:
> The good thing about these massive ships is that they take a loong time to sink.
Faster than people realise. The CIA was surprised by suddenness and swiftness of the collapse of the USSR — yes, there were other predictions that it would collapse imminently, but such are made of every country and organisation all the time, of those who should have known best (the Russian government on the inside, the CIA on the outside), it was a surprise.
> If my guesses are correct, it’ll work just long enough for another administration to take over to deal with the fallout.
Assuming things have not deteriorated too much by then that it can still be fixed.
Further, if it completely breaks down by then they may get the blame, even though it was not their fault.
This also assumes that an administration with a different philosophy gets in: if things are still "fine", another bunch of GOP deconstructionists could get in and continue things. In addition, DOGE is not about cost-cutting but about ideological purging, and so what's left of the civil service could act to sabotage any 'recovery efforts'.
> The massive ship named USSR sank in a matter of months
There was a decade of dysfunction and ossification before the USSR collapsed within a couple months
A decade of low oil prices (affecting exports), high defense spending (increasing deficit), societal unrest due to the resurgence of nationalism, and slowing productivity all happened quietly over the 1980s before catalyzing into collapse.
I guess it could be argued that it had been in the process of sinking for a longer time, but I don't know enough about the history of the USSR to assert that being the case
> Government is a huge ship where everything happens slowly. If you fire all sailors at once, you won't notice the difference immediately. The phantom ship continues to sail.
Happens to business too. People don’t realise how long these entities can circle the drain.
I feel like businesses aren't actively trying to dismantle themselves, but rather the decay, due to neglect/hubris/greed/..., builds to a critical mass over time. This administration is actively trying to dismantle as much of the government as fast as possible. I think the fall could happen much faster than people expect.
States need Vendettas- to those who wipe them out- we will hunt you and your offspring to the end of the earth. Those who destroy complexity, for all the insane ideology reasons - be they Khemer Rouge, liberal galt grey or nazi brown- if the state recovers and rebuilds, it shall come after all of you, your descendants and your insane inspiration givers.
If Aynn Rands Great great grandniece has to fear for her life over this - so be it. To propagate this self-destructive retardation has to be a curse on all who give in to it. Just because the mine runneth dry and you want to fire up the carrying wood for warmth, does not make it a valid opinion.
>>I don't know what the outcome would be of large swathes of the government either being fired or not caring any more but we're going to find out and I don't think it will be good.
Job security is a big part of why somebody takes up a government job. And it even makes sense. People trade stability for some percentage of extra money they could earn. You are not likely to hire good talent for what government pays.
On the other hand, I can't think of a bigger disaster than running a continent spanning government like you would run a start up.
> Nuclear security is highly specialized, high-pressure work, but it's not particularly well paid, one employee told NPR. Given what's unfolded over the past 24 hours, "why would anybody want to take these jobs?" they asked.
The people who will be hired in those jobs in the future are the ones who can't find any other job, and don't care one way or another. It will be a catastrophe of epic proportions, but hard to notice at first because it happens so slowly. Which makes it all the more dangerous.
The EU doesn't have control of defense policy - that is the mandate of individual European states.
The only EU member with nuclear weapons is France, which has it's own domestic nuclear ecosystem.
More critically, public sector hiring is not the same as private sector. Working for a foreign government's NatSec apparatus would be a red flag for any sort of hiring - especially in the domestic nuclear industry in France.
> These are not normal times and I believe USA also hired foreign nationals to top secret programs during and after WWII
The 1950s is ancient history now.
All countries have drastically ramped up background checks in NatSec and NatSec adjacent industries, and hiring foreigners (even from aligned states) can be a potential threat, as they will continue to retain family ties with their country of origin.
This same incident literally happened last week in the French nuclear industry, where a senior exec was canned because they weren't able to pass background checks due to their familial ties in Russia and past work in the Russian defense space before naturalizing as a French national.
If the US is to be viewed as a threat by EU member states (like a lot of Redditors-turned-HNers argue or imply), then it suffices to say that these states need to view Americans working in NatSec industries as potentially compromised.
So the US is a threat because it refuses to pay disproportionate funds for the defense of Europe? I think everyone whining about it is losing their minds over nothing. We have been massively subsidizing these "friends" so that many of them can afford free healthcare. Fuck that noise.
> Maybe that will change. Germany certianly has capability to manufacture nuclear armements. The UK may rejoin if the situation gets dire enough.
Given the politics here, I don't see that happening. No nuclear reactors, even.
I won't be too surprised if Finland gets some, but I don't really know the full politics of the area, only that they have reactors and are concerned about Russia.
Poland might, but no earlier than 2030.
In Europe but not in the EU, Ukraine… entirely depends on if they think they have nothing left to lose. If it looks like Trump will sell them out and they don't think anyone else will pick up enough slack to keep them independent of Moscow, they may rush a development program.
I can easily believe that Ukraine would try to hire any of these workers. No reason to think any of these workers would be interested, but I can see Ukraine trying.
A nuclear shield is useless without second or third strike capabilities - which requires a nuclear triad - as both Russia and China have developed those capabilities due to their rivalry with the US.
Poland hypothetically building 10 nuclear devices does nothing if Russia can launch multiple strike after getting striked.
Furthermore, developing nuclear weapons is causus belli enough to justify a hot war for China or Russia, nor does it actually prevent war as can be seen with the Kargil War.
More critically, nuclear programs are expensive and that money is better used in further building out conventional military capabilities, as can be seen with the Russia-Ukraine War, where a country with an ossified MIC (Ukraine) is able to cause significant pain to a nuclear power.
Tl;dr - Nuclear weapons alone are useless in a world where most Nuclear Powers (US, Russia, China, India, Israel) have a nuclear triad and multi-strike capabilities.
> Also South Korea and Japan may
The Indo-Pac theatre is different from the European theatre, as there is bipartisan support to prioritize Asian defense over European defense.
Furthermore, in a situation where American support is reduced, Asian countries can continue to retain conventional warfighting capabilities. This is because defense spending across Asia had always been high since the early-mid 2010 standoffs, so there hasn't been the same level of angst that much of Central Europe has.
Furthermore, Korean and Japanese military exports are extremely competitive, with Indonesia, Vietnam, and Philippines all closely aligning with SK and JP on defense posture.
Nuclear weapons are not meant to be used. They are meant to prevent invasion attempts.
For instance, between China and its own nuke North Korea is guaranteed not to be invaded by the US.
Likewise, Israel is guaranteed that Arab countries or Iran won't try to invade it.
In fact, that's why France developed its own nukes, in addition to making sure they'll keep a seat at the "adults table".
Poland might be/have been another good example. They would only need to guarantee that St Petersburg, Moscow, and Minsk would be vaporised in case of invasion to be safe on their Eastern border.
Russia is not the USSR. In practice, Russia is Moscow and St Petersburg. Pose a credible threat to those cities and be set. Because Poland and Russia are so close geographically, plausible second strike capability can be achieved many ways without having ICBMs and nuclear strike subs.
Sounds like the jobs probably already had people who can't find any other job and don't especially care, if you ask me. At least that makes as much sense as your argument about future hires.
Yup. Basically that and the president being the executor of laws and having a standing army that he is chief of … effectively makes him a king. Especially since Congress is bought and paid for and won’t impeach him.
No electoral mandate can make illegal actions legal, or abrogate the law. The refusal of the congressional majority to enforce their authority under article 1 is what is causing this constitutional crisis.
(Also, Trump did not run on these policies -- he's implementing policies he explicitly repudiated when he lied about not being affiliated with the Project 2025 manifesto.)
I don't want to let the voters off the hook, but continuous, ongoing responsibility for this unfolding economic and political disaster lies with the people who hold institutional authority, and are refusing to use it to comply with the law as it stands.
I agree that the actions are unconstitutional. A House acting constitutionally would impeach, and a Senate acting constitutionally would convict.
I also agree that Congress is self-serving and corrupt.
The part I disgreed with in my earlier comment was specifically the link between Congress's corruption and their inaction.
For 8+ years the left has been putting forward comments like "if only republican voters knew ..." This far in, I think the simpler explanation is that they do know, and approve of Trump doing it.
>Also, Trump did not run on these policies -- he's implementing policies he explicitly repudiated when he lied about not being affiliated with the Project 2025 manifesto.
Where do you think Project 2025 came from? Trump may not have run on the specific, enumerated list of items in the Project 2025 agenda, but everything in that agenda falls in line with Trumpist goals and right-wing Republican ideals, and it had deep connections with the Republican Party establishment and Trump's own network. It was published by the same group that selected Trump's Supreme Court nominees. It didn't simply emerge from the aether.
The narrative that "this isn't what Trump voters voted for" is being pushed hard right now for understandable reasons. That may be true in some cases, but it's also true that this is exactly what a lot of Trump voters voted for. At worst, they simply didn't expect the consequences of their actions to affect them, but they knew what they wanted to happen to everyone else.
To take Trump at his word that hes not affiliated with with the folks behind Project 2025 is to be willfully ignorant. Many of his team were involved in the drafting of those proposals.
Do we think for one second he has any grand vision about governing? Hahaha. Nope. That he outsourced to the heritage foundation. TikTok? He was originally saying it’s a Chinese spy app and it should be sold to US interests or banned. Then he gets tens of millions (hundreds?) in campaign contributions and thinks it’s benign.
He can be bought. And that’s bad. Because many of our enemies have deep pockets. And many of his voters are willfully ignorant to all his and his administration’s flaws.
Look, I'm aware that he's a liar and his track record from his first term should have made that pretty apparent to the voters at large. I'm just saying that the idea that "people voted for this" and therefore he has some kind of mandate for the current agenda is dumb when he explicitly said his policy was something else.
> As dumb as it is, Trump ran on these policies and is delivering.
90% of the voting public pays little attention to policy (not saying this is a good thing).
A good portion of people that voted for Trump voted for him because he promised to hurt Those People. And just like Trump 1.0, it's going to end up hurting them as well (per /r/LeopardsAteMyFace):
> “I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” she said of Mr. Trump. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”
In general, the Executive branch, the Intelligence Community, Congress, the Courts, the Populace are all responsible for keeping the President's Office accountable, both officially and extra-officially. Officially, via legal and direct means. Extra-officially, by means of protest, mounting cultural as well as mediatic pressure, etc.
In our, as Trump's actions have greatly affected the international community as well, situation what's most concerning is the initial, slow but eventually complete and absolute breakdown of public discourse.
Truth is irrelevant, poise is impractical, facts are an obstacle, outrage and drama are the new assertive communication. It's all about Me and My Emotions, us versus them.
This has been the case increasingly, for years, on both sides of the political aisle. Everyone compartmentalizes everyone into the sub-groups they are a part of, until everyone is so compartmentalized that they are completely alone because there are no similarities left for any common ground whatsoever. Such is the dystopic portrait of a society in complete disarray.
Under those circumstances, everything is legal, simply because there's noone to enforce the commonly agreed upon Rule of Law.
Only clears federal crimes, though. If the states can start pinning stuff on people then Trump only has pressure he can put on, like he's doing with Romania right now to try and help the Tate brothers escape (╯ఠ益ఠ)╯
In nuclear the saying "there's always enough time to do it right the first time" comes to mind. Preventing rework and reducing risk to the safety of the public.
When it comes to the doe there are likely departments that could be trimmed back and interpretations of some laws to the cfr made a little more clear, but since the doe is in charge of everything nuclear it might be good to do a more indepth look at each department instead of a quick and careless wipe.
Currently nuclear power is regulated in a way of "bring me a rock and I'll tell you if it's the right rock, but if it isn't the right rock it will be painful.
It doesn't really matter. After failed attempt at adopting "terrorism" as new enemy, USA firmly fixated its sights on China in hopes that a strong enemy will help US regain former prosperity.
What Trump currently is doing fits perfectly this goal. Russia is natural, local ally of USA against China, that's what Trump means when he voices hopes for future cooperation between "our great countries". It is further reinforced by plans to sell F35 to India, another natural ally, which means those planes will be copied by Russia as soon as possible.
In all this Europe is just abandoned. USA knows that in conflict against China, Europe is useless as it has no business in making enemy out of China.
What he might be not appreciating sufficiently (because he percieves Europe as weak and restricted by its morals) is that Europe can be motivated to align themselves with China against Russia. While Europe can't (and doesn't want to) threaten China in any way they can offer China a lot. For starters they could start delivering most advanced litography machines, which only they know how to make to China, instead of Taiwan. And they could also internationally recognize China taking into their zone of influnece eastern parts of Russia if China agrees to provide military assistance and suplemental nuclear deterrence in the war of Europe against Russia that's almost inevitably coming.
I think at some point sobering realization will come that evading your responsibility of global hegemon (even if at this point it's only nominal role) and leaving Europe hanging might have severe consequences for Trump's imperial project.
On the other, please don't over-estimate the competence of the people in charge of Europe (states or EU) — we're still just a bunch of independent sovereign states pootling along quietly doing our own thing with no real hard stressors to force us to select the best of the best as leaders, certainly not a unified cohesive whole.
When it gets to sink-or-swim time, I don't know which way we're going to go. I hope swim, but the US isn't the only one who can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory — that's something every civilisation in history has suffered from, one time or another.
Yeah. The fact that something makes sense doesn't mean it's significantly more likely to happen. But it could. And I'd say that both Russia and USA are now accidentally hellbent on providing sufficient stressors.
Great news for Iran, which might not need to assemble its own nuclear warheads and instead could buy them off some shady salesperson in Bulgaria once they've been pilfered from the US.
I don't think there are any "nuclear codes". I think they might have been a thing at some point in history since the idea is so pervasive, but in a crisis you'd not want someone to have to figure out some non-trivial password before MAD doctrine can be applied.
Maybe I'm wrong, I know more about field tactics and guerilla warfare than grand strategy.
I remember reading somewhere (atlas obscura, maybe?) that the US military was much more scared of a rogue general launching a nuclear strike than of the USSR starting the war.
So I'm going to assume that there is _some_ kind of code.
This should be fixed to match the article title, but if these jobs are important it seems easy to justify not firing them with 200 characters? "Avoid nuclear war" is only 17, and changing "war" to "meltdowns" only adds another 6.
I think it is increasingly clear that Europe, Canada, the UK, and other Western liberal democracies are laying the groundwork for a new strategic direction, one where the United States is no longer viewed as a dependable superpower or a guaranteed partner.
This does not mean the US will be written off entirely, at least not in the foreseeable future. However, the era in which the US could dictate the global agenda, particularly in Europe, appears to be coming to an end. A recent example is the US Vice President’s speech in Germany, followed by meetings with the AfD rather than the German Chancellor - an unmistakable signal that Washington no longer prioritizes its European allies in the same way.
A similar shift may be seen in the area of technology. Reliance on American tech companies and investments is likely to decrease, with governments and businesses seeking alternatives. Even China could play a role in this transition, despite the security risks it presents. Economic growth depends on global trade, and many nations may be unwilling to let US protectionism dictate their technological and economic choices.
It is an unexpected turn, but in hindsight, one we could have seen coming. The transformation of the US Republican Party, coupled with growing public support for politicians who embrace extreme rhetoric, reject objective facts, and show little respect for science or democratic principles, has reshaped the country’s global standing. Many of these figures claim to uphold democracy but, from an outside perspective, promote an increasingly authoritarian vision through their policies and rhetoric.
Ultimately, it is up to the American people to choose their government and shape their society. However, the US has become increasingly unstable and polarized, straying from both common sense and the ideals of a liberal democracy. As this internal turmoil continues, it is no surprise that its traditional allies are beginning to seek a future less dependent on American leadership.
It really does feel like this is the end of the US as the dominating super power and world police.
Who wants to buy weapons from the US when you won't get permission to use them to defend themselves?
Who wants to make deals with the US when they will just get torn up and the US will even threaten their allies with economic sanctions and even invasion?
Who in their right mind will lean on the US to protect them, when they're showing how incompetent and unreliable they are?
> Will this term be the end of the craziness or is this the end of the US as a super power?
No Democrat could ever say we need to spend more money on foreign aid, rebuild the CFPB, or do anything that is seen to be spending taxpayer money to help poor people either domestic or abroad.
The Republican Party seems like it will be populist at least for a generation. No traditional Republican could ever win a primary today. Reagan himself would be called a RINO today.
France has spent half a century being like “Look at me, I can offer nuclear umbrella, and also sell modern weapons, who need the crazy US when you can have me”, and is finally hoping to score !
The most obvious one was mostly build to get rid of visa and mastercard (and for a part of the immigrated population, Alipay and other "services" to transfer money externally), it's called the EPI and it has been in the works for a while, but i assure you that if Musk threaten a big enough european company, that shit will be ready in a month at worst.
There are many in the US who have a particular strand of thinking. It goes a bit like this:
The US is meddling too much in other country's affairs.
Only a handful of countries actually have agency - US, Russia, China mostly.
All the wars out there are actually proxy wars, because the US is up to no good and interfering with one of the other countries with agency.
It follows that all that is required for global peace is to withdraw US support for foreign adventuring.
America looks after America, Russia looks after (extended) Russia. The more isolationist a country is, the better it is. Hungary is a better friend than the UK because it opposes American adventuring, just like us.
There are other elements of the logic. America interferes abroad for cynical reasons. In Afghanistan, it was the poppies. In Iraq, it was the oil.
They scratched their head a little over Ukraine, but then decided it was for rare earth minerals.
I don't know if it's the end of the US as superpower, but what Musk is doing is destroying US state capacity from within, and what Trump's representatives are doing are destroying US influence abroad. If the goal is ending the US as a superpower, the actions are certainly shaped in a way that look like they're trying to end it.
Yet Canada should be the 51st state, Panama canal should be owned by the US, Greenland should be turned over to the US, Ukraine should just sign over 500B of rare earth mineral rights to US for nothing in return. Its not the end of US meddling, its the start of becoming an outright and corrupt bully without the thin veneer of democratic good guys they've tried to project before.
I actually have been speculating since Trump 1 on whether Europe would eventually join the Chinese block.
On the one side, we (now) have Trump both threatening Europe with the potential of an invasion of Groenland, and explicitly telling Russia that it won't intervene if Putin bombs Europe, so if I were a European leader, I'd be looking for allies.
On the other side, we have China and Europe being the two powers who actually pay a little bit more than lip service to long-term thinking, in particular the future of the planet, while Trump is explicitly saying f*ck to the environment.
Yes, there are countless divergences between China and Europe, in addition to competiton. But we've seen stranger bedfellows.
It's crazy how Trump is making China look like a good partner. At least they would be reliable and predictable to large extent.
The human rights violations and ambitions to grab Taiwan are obviously worrying. Europe may need to give up on the ideal of promoting human rights, democracy and peace, and just be happy to be able to preserve them at home.
> Has the rest of the democratic world been making plans to reduce reliance on the US since the first Trump administration?
Plans were already being drafted before Trump won the election, given his strong polling, but bureaucracy makes things move a little slow. I think it has united EU countries who understand that this over-reliance on the US can be problematic given how quickly policies can shift, and will lead to a stronger EU.
The NATO framework is there and all countries part of it can keep following it to work together even without the US, and regardless of the memes, EU countries have a very advanced arsenal and lots of trained military personnel - with Russia struggling against one country, it's hard to believe they can ever make a move against 27 EU states, especially due to historical bad blood between many of them and Russia, which only serve to amplify the desire to stand up against them.
> Will this term be the end of the craziness or is this the end of the US as a super power?
I think it's a correction we've been due for a while, especially with the rise in extremist parties in recent years all across the world. Whether things will reseat themselves smoothly or whether we'll be in for a rough ride, it's hard to say.
If the current trend keeps going in the next few years with the US becoming more isolationist, I think it will be almost impossible for them to comeback to being a superpower even with a future president that wants to do a 180, as it takes more than nukes to be a superpower.
My fear is not that Russia and allies will fight a giant land war with all of Europe. It is that Putin will continue moving his lukachenko and viktor orban pieces and acquire new ones through out Europe that will effectively make Europe reliant on russia and in some ways controlled by Russia. They don’t need to own everything to control everything.
This push has been ongoing for year and the success has definitely been less than expected, with Finland and Sweden joining NATO. I think with the Americans stepping back, this will only strengthen ties between EU countries, though there still are issues which have to be solved on the energy sector to reduce reliance on Russia.
People only look at the state of Ukraine and think that because Russia didn't steam roll them things aren't working. I feel like it is quite successful. The previous status quo has been disrupted. America has gone crazy and retreated from Europe. This followed Brexit. And Russia has been successful at stealing Ukrainian resources, for example, Bellingcat was able to track approximately 3 billion dollars in stolen grain sales that Russia sold to places like Egypt. Is that how we want the world to work? You can take what you want by force and then sell it to the highest bidder? And now America pushes for Ukraine to give up lands? Do we believe it's okay to attack your neighbors to steal their stuff? Why is any of this acceptable? It is not a negotiation to say, "what is yours is now mine but I will give back some of it if you stop trying to fight to keep all of it."
Imagine if crypto proponents were tasked like this with remaking the monetary systems, without having a real clue why it currently is how it is. It could be interesting and even work, but more likely than not it will just repeat the errors of the past and would be tweaked again and again until it resembles something similar to what it is now, with massive fallout in the meantime.
The irony the eurodollar system already works like decentralized crypto. There is a ledger of assets and liabilities and the international banks keep tabs on each other.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/02/doge-as-a-nat...
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/02/ai-and-civil-...