16 ms·

DHS removes all members of cyber security advisory boards, halts investigations

300 points by BHSPitMonkey 2y ago

ggm 2y ago
Can somebody give me a rational take on why? It feels immensely reactive. Salt Typhoon would seem to represent an active threat. Didn't DHS act quite.. conservatively? A comment on the blusky thread went to "five eyes should stop sharing information" which I suspect won't happen, but I could see people thinking it should.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Can somebody give me a rational take on why? Investigations are annoying to people who were behind the President at his inauguration.
  - ggm 2y ago
    AWS and starlink have exposure of risk. You would think DHS work here went to net beneficial outcomes for both of them, and the wider telco sector. (Assuming you meant the tech sector)
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > AWS and starlink have exposure of risk What risk? There isn’t a consumer liability, and they can control the cybersecurity risk-reward balance they’re exposed to. From their perspective, oversight is the liability. A good rule of thumb, at least for the next couple of months, is that any rules and regulations that have been criticised by the billionaires, banks or oil & gas industry are likely to be shredded. (The “deep state” stuff is mostly whoever has the king’s ear sort of politics. It’s unclear that had any influence here.)
      - donavanm 2y ago
        I get what youre saying but Im not sure absolute liability is quite right. Im thinking of SBOM directives, or industry network security requirements for bgp announcements, for example. Amazon and, I assume, some of the other mega corps are AGES ahead of industry at large. Like huge multi year investments so that theyre plausibly close to complying with secure provenance, review, build tracking, and artifact integrity reporting from initial CR to request processing for everything that touches customer or business data. My impression is that the industry generally isnt any further than tracking some package names and version strings and calling it SBOM. If the new directives can preclude a large number of contract competitors that seems like a huge win. Or, maybe Im thinking more of advantageous requirements/regulations than oversight per se.
        JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        Amazon et al would much prefer to do that on their own terms than have to coördinate with government (or their competitors).
        donavanm 2y ago
        Arent they differentiating only _if_ they required to get federal and dod money? The coordination definitely seems to be more of amzn (and similar) employees providing technical expertise to congress and regulators. They certainly take deployments and internal security seriously, but it doesnt seem to be monetizable outside of the contract requirements. Or maybe im missing your point?
        alephnerd 2y ago
        What OP is saying is instead of having some sort of legal liability attached or outside directives being handed to them, they would rather implement on their own or push their own standards. A notable example is SEC mandates on breach disclosures, which will most likely be dead now. Those were a major forcing function to make companies realize security is important. Otherwise, paying a ransom and doing the bare minimum to not get cut by Chubbs or AXA is the norm. I agree with JumpCriscross on his read of this situation. It ain't great. At least I'm well off enough to weather the negative impacted by a lot of the chaos. Sucks for everyone else. > The coordination definitely seems to be more of amzn (and similar) employees providing technical expertise to congress and regulators It's bidirectional. CISA, FBI, and others often get intel or actively take down a botnet or offensive actor, and will percolate this information to security teams at larger organizations before percolating en masse. For example, when this one APM/data collection tool that almost every DevOps team ik was using was pwned early last year, CISA notified CISOs days before they officially announced it in the news.
  - matwood 2y ago
    People voted for this and now act surprised.
    - computerfriend 2y ago
      I'm not sure it's the same people.
      - khazhoux 2y ago
        It is, though. The word "people" here refers in aggregate to the citizens who voted in November. It would be equally accurate for me to say "This is what we voted for" even though it's not what I voted for.
        t-3 2y ago
        Not voting was the most popular choice among Americans eligible to vote in 2024, so "it's what we didn't vote for".
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        Not voting, practically, is empowering the status quo. Particularly in America, where almost every election features intense down-ballot competition. Someone who didn’t vote is more in concordance with the current government than someone who voted against it. Actions speak louder than words, and not voting is an action.
        surgical_fire 2y ago
        I don't have a dog in this race - I am not even from the US. But, by definition, not voting is an action rather than absence of one. What you are doing by not voting is giving out a tacit agreement that the people who went and vote get to decide who will be elected. Following that line of thought, by not voting, you actively chose the current government, no matter what the current government is.
- unsnap_biceps 2y ago
  When someone comes in to slash everything, they generally don't bother understanding what they are slashing. This is the same as when a company hires someone to come in and cut costs, generally everything, good or bad, gets cut. That's what's happening on the US federal level right now. Eventually some things will be picked back up when someone realizes that it wasn't a good idea to stop it, but most things are just going to be wasted effort.
  - beardyw 2y ago
    Chesterton's Fence "There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it"
    - tptacek 2y ago
      I don't think Chesterton has much to say about DHS, which is relatively new.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - Lutger 2y ago
        [flagged]
        JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        …who are you quoting or paraphrasing? Parables aren’t an argument on their own.
        2y ago
- sriram_malhar 2y ago
  Rational != principled.
  - ggm 2y ago
    Yes. I don't want to assume an adversarial posture on this, I'm mostly an outsider, observer. I probably can't understand nuances in US domestic politics (although i am opposed to this kind of semi random behaviour by institutions, I did not see this signalled in NOG lists and the like as coming down the pipe) So I'm wondering if this is as simple as cost/benefit? Did somebody do the sums and decide the delivery was sub par for spend? The alternatives are mostly very sad: they're fools. Replacing a process can be beneficial. There's usually overlap.
    - viraptor 2y ago
      > Did somebody do the sums and decide the delivery was sub par for spend? That would be a very interesting analysis and something to learn from. It would also help prevent similar mistakes in the future. It's really unlikely someone would go to such effort and just keep the results to themselves.
- __loam 2y ago
  Slash and burn policies from a reactionary administration that doesn't and in fact refuses to think about the second and third order consequences of their decisions. One of the reasons a lot of people are worried about this administration is the vibes based policy decisions they seem intent on making. Everything is haphazard, arbitrary and contradictory. Some of it comes down to personal grievance and some of it comes down to favors for people in the business sphere who chose to kowtow to this administration.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- Eduard 2y ago
  https://www.nextgov.com/people/2025/01/trumps-dhs-pick-says-cisa-way-mission-and-should-be-smaller/402308/ https://www.nextgov.com/people/2025/01/trumps-dhs-pick-says-... Current South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem wants CISA to be “refocused” on critical infrastructure and to no longer address mis- or disinformation efforts online. So less/no fact checking, including Trump claims.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    Noem has practically zero influence over anything right now. Her explanation, moreover, doesn’t make sense. The infrastructure advisory committees are also being disbanded.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  There is two ways for efficiency, either wipe everything clean or well setup a committee to evaluate which committees can be eliminate. And usual joke in bureaucracy is that later one will discover that even more committees are actually needed. So the knee jerk reaction of current administration is burning it to ground. Which could actually change something.
  - declan_roberts 2y ago
    Especially wrt things setup, created, mandated during thr prior admin.
  - derbOac 2y ago
    Seems like a false dichotomy, between authoritarianism and Kafkaesque bureaucracy. An effective administration would be thoughtful about things and reorganize rather than simply cut. So they're either being thoughtful and decided something like state sponsored infiltration isn't good to investigate or are being thoughtless.
  - insane_dreamer 2y ago
    Changing something is easy, any fool can do that. Changing something for the better is hard.
- lazide 2y ago
  If you stop assuming good intent, I think the answer is fairly obvious.
  - ARandomerDude 2y ago
    And that obvious answer is?
    - lazide 2y ago
      That it is not a good faith attempt to make better or more effective investigations, and rather to stop publicly ‘seeing’ high profile problems. If we don’t test or investigate, there are no problems and no crimes eh?
- D13Fd 2y ago
  They were elected on a mandate to burn it all down, in their view, and this is what that looks like.
  - tzs 2y ago
    I've never understood how 49.8% of the vote is a mandate.
    - mostlysimilar 2y ago
      It isn't, people who mindlessly repeat that this administration has a "mandate" are incapable of critical thinking.
- skywhopper 2y ago
  The "rational" explanation is that Trump's staff are trying to clear house of anyone they don't trust will give in to any demands they make, and put everyone else who works for the government directly or indirectly in a state of fear and confusion.
- philipov 2y ago
  I see you're making a joke about conservatism, but Trump isn't a conservative: he's a radical. His goal is to blow up the system, not conserve it. Getting rid of protections is part of that.
- resoluteteeth 2y ago
  It's probably as simple as Trump not wanting agencies to consult advisory boards consisting of outside experts since they might get in the way of his agenda. It's probably not a specific decision based on what the individual boards have been doing.
- some_random 2y ago
  It's because of the misinformation/disinformation mission that CISA took on during the Biden admin, it was a boondoggle that really pissed off Republicans.
- snakeyjake 2y ago
  >Can somebody give me a rational take on why? The current techbro CEO squad is a small group of people who got extraordinarily lucky and made a bunch of money. The techbro CEO squad takes their luck to be ability, and they think the fact that they have more money than other people means that they're smarter than everyone else. Some members of the techbro CEO squad think of themselves as prophets or messiahs. In addition to this, the techbro CEO squad is addicted to money and its accumulation. This isn't a "I need more money to live a more comfortable retirement" thing, it is a "my sole purpose for being is the accumulation of wealth" thing. They are more akin to machines whose purpose it is to grab onto as much money as possible than they are actual human beings. The techbro CEO squad's vast wealth has enabled them to surround themselves with an army of staff whose only job it is to make their dreams a reality and execute their orders. There is a vast, impenetrable field of personnel and money that insulates them from the reality of the world. So, they think that they're better than anyone else to the point of being god-like, they are sociopaths who only care about money, they are surrounded by an army of yes men, and they have lost (or never had) any connection to the average human being and his or her existence. They believe that any restriction on their ability to accumulate wealth is an assault on their freedom, an enemy to be defeated, an injustice to be made right by any means possible. Limits on their ability to pollute, protections for employees operating in the heat or cold or around hazardous materials, regulations designed to prevent market manipulation or money laundering, it is all evil and must be destroyed. They are willing to dismantle any system to get what they want. Because they think that they are better than everyone else, the techbro CEO squad does not value consensus or institutional knowledge that has led to regulation slowly building up over centuries in response to events and emergencies: if they don't like it, it must go. So, the slow infiltration of government by the Peter Theil, Andreessen and Horowitz, Musk, (but mainly their servants) and the rest started a couple of years ago and continues to this day. tl;dr: Billionaires will rape your grandmother's corpse for lower taxes, harvest and sell her organs for a laugh, then label you a woke communist and kick you off twitter for criticizing them.
- beefnugs 2y ago
  Shut up TREASONer! To bring efficiency we must burn everything to the ground and rehire whomever will work unpaid overtime and very low wage. They all happen to be of chinese, russian, and north korean descent, but that just means we are winning at the deal... ART .. OF ..THE .. DEAL /s Really though, competence would create the new "efficient" thing, hire best of the best and get it running before tearing down important security, this is business-leader level incompetence being attempted at global super power scale, we are going to need a new word for businessjerks breaking things they should have never been able to touch
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  I'm guessing this is part of VP Musk's "grand plan to cut government waste", with his Twitter-style "shoot first, ask questions later" approach.
  - throwaway290 2y ago
    It can be a convenient claim for Musk to make but don't forget, China is his biggest friend (Xi can single-handedly bankrupt Tesla and slash his net worth) and the people fired were in the middle of the Salt Typhoon investigation (which came guess where from!)
duke_sam 2y ago
Whatever problems or limitations the existing approach had dropping everything on the floor is one of the least helpful ways of trying to fix it (assuming good intent).
- dkjaudyeqooe 2y ago
  You have to assume competence too. You may have good intent but that doesn't help if you don't really know what you are doing or are blinded by ideology or some wayward belief.
  - stouset 2y ago
    Which of the advisory boards do you think were run by incompetents or blind adherents to generally unpopular opinions? Do you think it was half? More? Less?
    - dkjaudyeqooe 2y ago
      I'm talking about the administration that dropped the boards, as per the post I was replying to.
      - stouset 2y ago
        Got it, sorry that I misunderstood. I firmly agree.
- matwood 2y ago
  “They are never as dumb as I hoped they were, and I am never as smart as I thought I was.” Basically nearly every person who goes into a new situation thinking only they can fix it.
  - leptons 2y ago
    "The same level of awareness that created a problem, cannot be used to fix it"
polotics 2y ago
Is this explainable in any way by the cost of running these boards? By the sound of it the cost-benefit of thwarting Salt Typhoon is probably not optimal at zero investment.
- perlgeek 2y ago
  This seems entirely ideologically motivated to me.
  - defrost 2y ago
    with a dash of business motivation. Replacing government run and funded cyber security and threat assessment roles with privately owned contracters will be quite profitable for a few of the Brolliegarks.
- skywhopper 2y ago
  No. The cost of running these is so small as not to be worth top officials' time in worrying about them. If they are looking to save lots of money, there are far more efficient ways to do that. This is just clearing house, establishing a tone, and making it clear that expert opinion is not valued.
- sundbry 2y ago
  It seems that the Salt Typhoon investigation would be better handled by the NSA anyways..
  - sophacles 2y ago
    Yeah those guys are so good at security. You can tell because the tools and plans of theirs that keep leaking sound great!
tptacek 2y ago
This is running here as a story about cybersecurity, but it's apparently every advisory committee at DHS; there were a bunch of them, mostly not about technology; for instance, the National Commercial Fishing Safety Advisory Committee.
- ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  Maybe I've been burned lately and my faith in humanity is ebbing but I'm hoping the reference to that specific committee isn't about "government sounds stupid if you take it out of context, so it's good that we burn it all down" The Coast Guard having a plan for when large fishing vessels get into trouble, and indeed a plan to stop them getting into trouble, seems like a good thing to me even if it's grouped somewhat incongruously under Department of Homeland Security. edit: your other comment on this makes me think we are at the "letting commercial fisherman, and the coastguards trying to rescue them, drown to own the libs" stage, and my faith in humanity drops another notch.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - Grum9 2y ago
    The "U.S. Coast Guard was formed by a merger of the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service and the U.S. Life-Saving Service on 28 January 1915" (wiki). The US Department of Homeland Security "began operations on March 1, 2003, after being formed as a result of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, enacted in response to the September 11 attacks" (wiki). So are you saying that for 78 years of its existence, the USCG had no "plan for when large fishing vessels get into trouble, and indeed a plan to stop them getting into trouble" until the DHS assembled a (assuming this is a thing) "National Commercial Fishing Safety Advisory Committee"? You dont think theres any redundancy? That just maybe bureaucracy cant help but to expand forever every time someone with a title has a question that cant be answered immediately by someone standing in the room, they have to create a committee so they can have someone on speed dial? If the coast guard doesnt have plans for this, one wonders what the coast guard does all day.
arghandugh 2y ago
The already highly compromised ideologues who seized control of the federal government are dismantling it because they said they would. Every comment on this post is frighteningly uninformed about current events.
- formerly_proven 2y ago
  I'm inclined to write a Firefox addon that just replaces every headline out of the US with "Leopards Eating Faces official caught eating faces"
  - lazide 2y ago
    “Then makes weird noises, nothing bad happens, and continues eating faces”. If there are no consequences, it just reinforces their power.
    - SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
      I'd argue this government has not just experienced no consequences, they've experienced the opposite of no consequences. Somehow the American people saw everything they'd done and were saying they'd do and then the people emphatically voted for it. I'm still gobsmacked.
      - lazide 2y ago
        Just wait. Hitler was very popular too. Until he unequivocally lost, at least. By then, the country was destroyed along with most of it’s citizens, but boy howdy was it a ride eh?
        ZeroGravitas 2y ago
        Hitler apparently had solid 15-20% support even up to a decade after defeat and Nazism generally had 50% support (before and after, as a good idea executed badly) so both your high and low are off.
throwaway48476 2y ago
[flagged]
- defrost 2y ago
  Salt Typhoon isn't a misinformation campaign on X-itter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Typhoon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Typhoon This directive is shutting down a broad range of advisories under the DHS, perhaps you might like to read more in order to make a better informed comment.
  - palmfacehn 2y ago
    Ideally, the mass wiretap program would also be ceased. Salt Typhoon was tragic because it was the state's own overreach which was exploited. There are strong constitutional arguments against these domestic spy programs which are laundered through the presumed authority to spy on international communications.
- zo1 2y ago
  First-pass guess is that it got "captured" by individuals that wanted to "take an equity and inclusion lens" on cybersecurity... and something something 2020 election interference. Those are the usual suspects when it comes to this sort of institutional rot.
  - acdha 2y ago
    It’s “equity and inclusion” to be concerned about outside influence on elections? That goes back to antiquity in general but the modern U.S. intelligence agencies have been dealing with it since they were formed, having been a major concern during WWI and WWII, and that only went up during the Cold War.
    - evanjrowley 2y ago
      CISA's censorship campaign was majorly focused on keeping the mainstream Covid-19 narrative alive: https://reclaimthenet.org/cisa-covid-censorship-industrial-complex https://reclaimthenet.org/cisa-covid-censorship-industrial-c... It was highly controversial as many believed it to be unconstitutional breach of the first amendment: https://reclaimthenet.org/fifth-circuit-expands-injunction-against-government-online-censorship-to-include-cisa https://reclaimthenet.org/fifth-circuit-expands-injunction-a...
hbarka 2y ago
The swiftness here really cements the notion of a useful idiot. Makes you wonder who crafted the details then the execution.
- hobs 2y ago
  You would only need to wonder if you had been paying no attention to the clarion call about Project 2025 and what the incoming admin was directly planning to do wholesale. Literally, for months.
  - sebazzz 2y ago
    There was doubt by many if Project 2025 was actually going to be executed.
    - hobs 2y ago
      I have nothing polite to say about someone either so gullible or so obviously a liar.
      - TheNewsIsHere 2y ago
        At this point I believe those kinds of people are much like Joe Rogan. Hiding behind the old “just asking questions”-style guises. I’m not sure what they get from that, but they are either intentionally not paying attention at this point, or simply do not care about anything that doesn’t affect them directly and negatively. At this point we might as well print out Project 2025 bingo cards. Perhaps that will be the only way we “win” something in all this mess.
    - archagon 2y ago
      As OP said, “useful idiots.” (And/or malicious actors.)
fbfactchecker 2y ago
[flagged]
phtrivier 2y ago
The core tenet of Muskism, as described at length in Isaacson's bio is around those lines: * question all the rules * when in doubt, slash the rule, and see what happens * if it's really bad without it, bring back the rule * if you don't have to bring back 10% of the rules that you slashed, you haven't slashed enough yet USA is now entering the phase where everything is getting slashed - following the will of the majority of -Pennsylvania- the people. At the level of a company, this can bring great efficiencies, and make reusable self-driving cancer-free nuclear-fusion based rockets. Or crypto scams. Unfortunately, at the level of a Federal Government, it will bring lower taxes, but some of the 10% will end with coffins. And crypto scams. We'll watch from the other side of the Atlantic how the great libertarianism experiment goes for the USA. I expect both impressive improvements, and dramatic karmic irony.
- surgical_fire 2y ago
  > At the level of a company, this can bring great efficiencies, and make reusable self-driving cancer-free nuclear-fusion based rockets. Or crypto scams. This is questionable. There are many times when bureaucracy exists for bureaucracy sake. But many, many times they exist for a reason. Get any sufficiently large company and try to understand its complexity. Simply slashing it is a recipe for disaster. > Unfortunately, at the level of a Federal Government, it will bring lower taxes, but some of the 10% will end with coffins. And crypto scams. This is highly questionable, especially the "lower taxes" part. Governments are not very keen on reducing revenue, more likely they will only direct the surplus by cutting off services to other things - in the case of US, I wouldn't be surprised if they just increase spending in military, for example. Those sleasy and juicy defence contracts need funding, you know.
  - D13Fd 2y ago
    There is essentially no relation to taxes. Everything they are cutting falls into the “Other” category in this chart: https://www.crews.bank/charts/taxes-and-spending https://www.crews.bank/charts/taxes-and-spending Even if they cut 100% of government functions other than entitlements, healthcare, and defense, it would not solve the deficit.
weinzierl 2y ago
Seems the Cybersecurity Executive Orders that dealt with Memory Safe Languages and the ONCD Report (which mentioned Rust, if I remember correctly) are all gone from whitehouse.gov as well. The CISA report that dealt with memory safety is still on the CISA site. What do these recent developments mean for CISA? Is it an independent organization that will continue to exist without DHS support or is it essentially dead and its site and reports will vanish as well?
- throwaway290 2y ago
  I am mostly ignorant but from hearsay CISA is part of DHS (the chief of CISA is a DHS official). doubt Trump loves it because he literally fired Krebs directly for not supporting misinformation and overthrow attempt in 2020 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Krebs#2020_dismissal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Krebs#2020_dismissal)
  - evanjrowley 2y ago
    CISA has an important job to do, but their mission was put at risk when it's leadership under Krebs chose to repeatedly violate the first amendment. Elections and Covid-19 are topics they've been documented in influencing, but with the capability there, what other narratives was it influencing that we don't know about? The legal fight against CISA to stop their censorship was lost not on the basis of it being constitutional, but because the plaintiffs powerful enough to bring it to court couldn't show they had been directly harmed by it. A common stumbling block for many court cases for legitimate issues. CISA has publicly stated they will be changing their approach as a result of these controversies.
  - jonstewart 2y ago
    It is not hearsay that CISA is part of DHS. This is an easily verified fact.
- begueradj 2y ago
  > Seems the Cybersecurity Executive Orders that dealt with Memory Safe Languages and the ONCD Report (which mentioned Rust, if I remember correctly) are all gone from whitehouse.gov as well. Do you have any clues for the "why" ?
qgin 2y ago
You don’t need advisory panels if you don’t want advice
bigstrat2003 2y ago
Good. From day 1 DHS has been the most Orwellian department of the US government, which casually violates our freedom on a regular basis. The entire department should be abolished.
- _DeadFred_ 2y ago
  Which party created the DHS again?
  - hk1337 2y ago
    Pretty sure it was a solid bipartisan achievement.
- avgDev 2y ago
  Maybe you can share some of the examples of such infringements on our rights.
  - zer8k 2y ago
    https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/court-rules-warrantless-section-702-searches-violated-the-fourth-amendment https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/court-rules-warrantless-... https://epic.org/dhs-disregards-internal-policies-and-avoids-fourth-amendment-protections-to-track-your-location/ https://epic.org/dhs-disregards-internal-policies-and-avoids... https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/breaking-dhs-will-begin-collecting-social-media-information-on-immigrants-green-card-holders-naturalized-citizens-and-anyone-in-touch-with-them https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/breaking-dhs-will-begin-... https://www.theverge.com/c/23311333/tsa-history-airport-security-theater-homeland https://www.theverge.com/c/23311333/tsa-history-airport-secu... https://www.reuters.com/article/world/us/tsa-screeners-win-immunity-from-abuse-claims-appeals-court-idUSKBN1K125V/ https://www.reuters.com/article/world/us/tsa-screeners-win-i... The list goes on. There's 24 years of history you can comb through. The DHS' security theater exists solely to compromise the constitutional rights of American citizens. To this day there's no evidence they're even that successful at their job. The fact the impeachment of Mayorkas failed was quite mind-boggling but characteristic of a government that doesn't truly believe anyone, even citizens, have certain inalienable rights. The DHS was and still is bipartisan. It's America's Staatspolizei.
settsu 2y ago
It really is despairingly sad how many of these comments (assumedly by U.S. citizens) seem to not realize or believe these actions will have an effect on them. Are some of these things normal SOP for a regime change? Sure. But to normalize everything under that blanket assumption is just foolish. Unless you are an exceedingly (liquid) wealthy white male, you are entirely disposable to the incoming administration. You are less than nothing. If anything, you are an inconvenience buried deep in the calculations that needs to be factored out of the equation because your existence hinders the "progress" being sought. All these pragmatic or, worse, so-called "libertarian" views demonstrate a supremely naïve, if not outright harmful (to yourself and countless others), understanding of what is going to be aggressively pursued these next few years.
- SlightlyLeftPad 2y ago
  The efforts will inherently destabilize the US which, for some, will be a really massive gift and this administration will be praised both externally and internally. That will close the feedback loop since that’s primarily what motivates this administration.
honestSysAdmin 2y ago
CISA is the organization that declared that the 2020 election was the most secure election ever. So it is expected that CISA would get "liquidated" by this new administration.
- mikrotikker 2y ago
  Well to say that without doing investigations or audits is partisan to say the least
honestSysAdmin 2y ago
Fortunately, there are plenty of private sector companies investigating Salt Typhoon. I can speak for the firm I work for. Our clients are effectively invulnerable to Salt Typhoon. Yes, I know that sounds like a "big claim" but it's really not. We enable our customers to run endpoints that aren't based on Windows or macOS. So...
toasted-subs 2y ago
Probably because of Jewish people like me who had their computers hacked and told I wasn't welcome by security cameras near where I live. I live next to former president's and being efficetively made into a holocaust victim with no proper recourse by the people ment to protect the president's makes me feel like they never should have had the job in the first place.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
The problem with gutting these departments is that the repercussions aren't immediate. It's like firing your ATC training team and then, the following week, claiming, see! we just saved a bunch of money and no airplanes crashed -- we didn't need them after all. Until one day ... Then when some day a crisis situation occurs, there isn't an appropriate response because "oops, that dept no longer exists, or doesn't have the staff to respond". But who knows if Trump's lucky he might even be out of office by then and someone else has to deal with it. But in the mean time, VP Musk gets to claim "look at all the money we saved!" Maybe some of the positions are redundant, but gutting across the board on day 1 definitely comes off as unwise and not thought through.
- esbranson 2y ago
  No, it is not. Firing an "ATC training team" and replacing them with advisory commissions is not a good thing. Advisory commissions are not, and should not be, functional units of government. I know it's so easy to jump on the hate train, but you're confusing different aspects of government, and what has happened.
K0balt 2y ago
I think I understand the pullback from renewables now. With this, along with all of the other recent events we have had the privilege of witnessing, we should be able to tap into the resonant frequency from the “energetic whirring phenomenon” occurring at Arlington National Cemetery to provide all of the energy that the country needs for the next century at least.
mguido 2y ago
Hello.

300 points by BHSPitMonkey 2y ago

ggm 2y ago

Can somebody give me a rational take on why? It feels immensely reactive. Salt Typhoon would seem to represent an active threat. Didn't DHS act quite.. conservatively? A comment on the blusky thread went to "five eyes should stop sharing information" which I suspect won't happen, but I could see people thinking it should.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> Can somebody give me a rational take on why? Investigations are annoying to people who were behind the President at his inauguration.
- ggm 2y ago
  AWS and starlink have exposure of risk. You would think DHS work here went to net beneficial outcomes for both of them, and the wider telco sector. (Assuming you meant the tech sector)
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > AWS and starlink have exposure of risk What risk? There isn’t a consumer liability, and they can control the cybersecurity risk-reward balance they’re exposed to. From their perspective, oversight is the liability. A good rule of thumb, at least for the next couple of months, is that any rules and regulations that have been criticised by the billionaires, banks or oil & gas industry are likely to be shredded. (The “deep state” stuff is mostly whoever has the king’s ear sort of politics. It’s unclear that had any influence here.)
    - donavanm 2y ago
      I get what youre saying but Im not sure absolute liability is quite right. Im thinking of SBOM directives, or industry network security requirements for bgp announcements, for example. Amazon and, I assume, some of the other mega corps are AGES ahead of industry at large. Like huge multi year investments so that theyre plausibly close to complying with secure provenance, review, build tracking, and artifact integrity reporting from initial CR to request processing for everything that touches customer or business data. My impression is that the industry generally isnt any further than tracking some package names and version strings and calling it SBOM. If the new directives can preclude a large number of contract competitors that seems like a huge win. Or, maybe Im thinking more of advantageous requirements/regulations than oversight per se.
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        Amazon et al would much prefer to do that on their own terms than have to coördinate with government (or their competitors).
        donavanm 2y ago
        Arent they differentiating only _if_ they required to get federal and dod money? The coordination definitely seems to be more of amzn (and similar) employees providing technical expertise to congress and regulators. They certainly take deployments and internal security seriously, but it doesnt seem to be monetizable outside of the contract requirements. Or maybe im missing your point?
        alephnerd 2y ago
        What OP is saying is instead of having some sort of legal liability attached or outside directives being handed to them, they would rather implement on their own or push their own standards. A notable example is SEC mandates on breach disclosures, which will most likely be dead now. Those were a major forcing function to make companies realize security is important. Otherwise, paying a ransom and doing the bare minimum to not get cut by Chubbs or AXA is the norm. I agree with JumpCriscross on his read of this situation. It ain't great. At least I'm well off enough to weather the negative impacted by a lot of the chaos. Sucks for everyone else. > The coordination definitely seems to be more of amzn (and similar) employees providing technical expertise to congress and regulators It's bidirectional. CISA, FBI, and others often get intel or actively take down a botnet or offensive actor, and will percolate this information to security teams at larger organizations before percolating en masse. For example, when this one APM/data collection tool that almost every DevOps team ik was using was pwned early last year, CISA notified CISOs days before they officially announced it in the news.
- matwood 2y ago
  People voted for this and now act surprised.
  - computerfriend 2y ago
    I'm not sure it's the same people.
    - khazhoux 2y ago
      It is, though. The word "people" here refers in aggregate to the citizens who voted in November. It would be equally accurate for me to say "This is what we voted for" even though it's not what I voted for.
      - t-3 2y ago
        Not voting was the most popular choice among Americans eligible to vote in 2024, so "it's what we didn't vote for".
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        Not voting, practically, is empowering the status quo. Particularly in America, where almost every election features intense down-ballot competition. Someone who didn’t vote is more in concordance with the current government than someone who voted against it. Actions speak louder than words, and not voting is an action.
        surgical_fire 2y ago
        I don't have a dog in this race - I am not even from the US. But, by definition, not voting is an action rather than absence of one. What you are doing by not voting is giving out a tacit agreement that the people who went and vote get to decide who will be elected. Following that line of thought, by not voting, you actively chose the current government, no matter what the current government is.
unsnap_biceps 2y ago
When someone comes in to slash everything, they generally don't bother understanding what they are slashing. This is the same as when a company hires someone to come in and cut costs, generally everything, good or bad, gets cut. That's what's happening on the US federal level right now. Eventually some things will be picked back up when someone realizes that it wasn't a good idea to stop it, but most things are just going to be wasted effort.
- beardyw 2y ago
  Chesterton's Fence "There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it"
  - tptacek 2y ago
    I don't think Chesterton has much to say about DHS, which is relatively new.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - Lutger 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        …who are you quoting or paraphrasing? Parables aren’t an argument on their own.
        2y ago
sriram_malhar 2y ago
Rational != principled.
- ggm 2y ago
  Yes. I don't want to assume an adversarial posture on this, I'm mostly an outsider, observer. I probably can't understand nuances in US domestic politics (although i am opposed to this kind of semi random behaviour by institutions, I did not see this signalled in NOG lists and the like as coming down the pipe) So I'm wondering if this is as simple as cost/benefit? Did somebody do the sums and decide the delivery was sub par for spend? The alternatives are mostly very sad: they're fools. Replacing a process can be beneficial. There's usually overlap.
  - viraptor 2y ago
    > Did somebody do the sums and decide the delivery was sub par for spend? That would be a very interesting analysis and something to learn from. It would also help prevent similar mistakes in the future. It's really unlikely someone would go to such effort and just keep the results to themselves.
__loam 2y ago
Slash and burn policies from a reactionary administration that doesn't and in fact refuses to think about the second and third order consequences of their decisions. One of the reasons a lot of people are worried about this administration is the vibes based policy decisions they seem intent on making. Everything is haphazard, arbitrary and contradictory. Some of it comes down to personal grievance and some of it comes down to favors for people in the business sphere who chose to kowtow to this administration.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
Eduard 2y ago
https://www.nextgov.com/people/2025/01/trumps-dhs-pick-says-cisa-way-mission-and-should-be-smaller/402308/ https://www.nextgov.com/people/2025/01/trumps-dhs-pick-says-... Current South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem wants CISA to be “refocused” on critical infrastructure and to no longer address mis- or disinformation efforts online. So less/no fact checking, including Trump claims.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  Noem has practically zero influence over anything right now. Her explanation, moreover, doesn’t make sense. The infrastructure advisory committees are also being disbanded.
Ekaros 2y ago
There is two ways for efficiency, either wipe everything clean or well setup a committee to evaluate which committees can be eliminate. And usual joke in bureaucracy is that later one will discover that even more committees are actually needed. So the knee jerk reaction of current administration is burning it to ground. Which could actually change something.
- declan_roberts 2y ago
  Especially wrt things setup, created, mandated during thr prior admin.
- derbOac 2y ago
  Seems like a false dichotomy, between authoritarianism and Kafkaesque bureaucracy. An effective administration would be thoughtful about things and reorganize rather than simply cut. So they're either being thoughtful and decided something like state sponsored infiltration isn't good to investigate or are being thoughtless.
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  Changing something is easy, any fool can do that. Changing something for the better is hard.
lazide 2y ago
If you stop assuming good intent, I think the answer is fairly obvious.
- ARandomerDude 2y ago
  And that obvious answer is?
  - lazide 2y ago
    That it is not a good faith attempt to make better or more effective investigations, and rather to stop publicly ‘seeing’ high profile problems. If we don’t test or investigate, there are no problems and no crimes eh?
D13Fd 2y ago
They were elected on a mandate to burn it all down, in their view, and this is what that looks like.
- tzs 2y ago
  I've never understood how 49.8% of the vote is a mandate.
  - mostlysimilar 2y ago
    It isn't, people who mindlessly repeat that this administration has a "mandate" are incapable of critical thinking.
skywhopper 2y ago
The "rational" explanation is that Trump's staff are trying to clear house of anyone they don't trust will give in to any demands they make, and put everyone else who works for the government directly or indirectly in a state of fear and confusion.
philipov 2y ago
I see you're making a joke about conservatism, but Trump isn't a conservative: he's a radical. His goal is to blow up the system, not conserve it. Getting rid of protections is part of that.
resoluteteeth 2y ago
It's probably as simple as Trump not wanting agencies to consult advisory boards consisting of outside experts since they might get in the way of his agenda. It's probably not a specific decision based on what the individual boards have been doing.
some_random 2y ago
It's because of the misinformation/disinformation mission that CISA took on during the Biden admin, it was a boondoggle that really pissed off Republicans.
snakeyjake 2y ago
>Can somebody give me a rational take on why? The current techbro CEO squad is a small group of people who got extraordinarily lucky and made a bunch of money. The techbro CEO squad takes their luck to be ability, and they think the fact that they have more money than other people means that they're smarter than everyone else. Some members of the techbro CEO squad think of themselves as prophets or messiahs. In addition to this, the techbro CEO squad is addicted to money and its accumulation. This isn't a "I need more money to live a more comfortable retirement" thing, it is a "my sole purpose for being is the accumulation of wealth" thing. They are more akin to machines whose purpose it is to grab onto as much money as possible than they are actual human beings. The techbro CEO squad's vast wealth has enabled them to surround themselves with an army of staff whose only job it is to make their dreams a reality and execute their orders. There is a vast, impenetrable field of personnel and money that insulates them from the reality of the world. So, they think that they're better than anyone else to the point of being god-like, they are sociopaths who only care about money, they are surrounded by an army of yes men, and they have lost (or never had) any connection to the average human being and his or her existence. They believe that any restriction on their ability to accumulate wealth is an assault on their freedom, an enemy to be defeated, an injustice to be made right by any means possible. Limits on their ability to pollute, protections for employees operating in the heat or cold or around hazardous materials, regulations designed to prevent market manipulation or money laundering, it is all evil and must be destroyed. They are willing to dismantle any system to get what they want. Because they think that they are better than everyone else, the techbro CEO squad does not value consensus or institutional knowledge that has led to regulation slowly building up over centuries in response to events and emergencies: if they don't like it, it must go. So, the slow infiltration of government by the Peter Theil, Andreessen and Horowitz, Musk, (but mainly their servants) and the rest started a couple of years ago and continues to this day. tl;dr: Billionaires will rape your grandmother's corpse for lower taxes, harvest and sell her organs for a laugh, then label you a woke communist and kick you off twitter for criticizing them.
beefnugs 2y ago
Shut up TREASONer! To bring efficiency we must burn everything to the ground and rehire whomever will work unpaid overtime and very low wage. They all happen to be of chinese, russian, and north korean descent, but that just means we are winning at the deal... ART .. OF ..THE .. DEAL /s Really though, competence would create the new "efficient" thing, hire best of the best and get it running before tearing down important security, this is business-leader level incompetence being attempted at global super power scale, we are going to need a new word for businessjerks breaking things they should have never been able to touch
insane_dreamer 2y ago
I'm guessing this is part of VP Musk's "grand plan to cut government waste", with his Twitter-style "shoot first, ask questions later" approach.
- throwaway290 2y ago
  It can be a convenient claim for Musk to make but don't forget, China is his biggest friend (Xi can single-handedly bankrupt Tesla and slash his net worth) and the people fired were in the middle of the Salt Typhoon investigation (which came guess where from!)

duke_sam 2y ago

Whatever problems or limitations the existing approach had dropping everything on the floor is one of the least helpful ways of trying to fix it (assuming good intent).

dkjaudyeqooe 2y ago
You have to assume competence too. You may have good intent but that doesn't help if you don't really know what you are doing or are blinded by ideology or some wayward belief.
- stouset 2y ago
  Which of the advisory boards do you think were run by incompetents or blind adherents to generally unpopular opinions? Do you think it was half? More? Less?
  - dkjaudyeqooe 2y ago
    I'm talking about the administration that dropped the boards, as per the post I was replying to.
    - stouset 2y ago
      Got it, sorry that I misunderstood. I firmly agree.
matwood 2y ago
“They are never as dumb as I hoped they were, and I am never as smart as I thought I was.” Basically nearly every person who goes into a new situation thinking only they can fix it.
- leptons 2y ago
  "The same level of awareness that created a problem, cannot be used to fix it"

polotics 2y ago

Is this explainable in any way by the cost of running these boards? By the sound of it the cost-benefit of thwarting Salt Typhoon is probably not optimal at zero investment.

perlgeek 2y ago
This seems entirely ideologically motivated to me.
- defrost 2y ago
  with a dash of business motivation. Replacing government run and funded cyber security and threat assessment roles with privately owned contracters will be quite profitable for a few of the Brolliegarks.
skywhopper 2y ago
No. The cost of running these is so small as not to be worth top officials' time in worrying about them. If they are looking to save lots of money, there are far more efficient ways to do that. This is just clearing house, establishing a tone, and making it clear that expert opinion is not valued.
sundbry 2y ago
It seems that the Salt Typhoon investigation would be better handled by the NSA anyways..
- sophacles 2y ago
  Yeah those guys are so good at security. You can tell because the tools and plans of theirs that keep leaking sound great!

tptacek 2y ago

This is running here as a story about cybersecurity, but it's apparently every advisory committee at DHS; there were a bunch of them, mostly not about technology; for instance, the National Commercial Fishing Safety Advisory Committee.

ZeroGravitas 2y ago
Maybe I've been burned lately and my faith in humanity is ebbing but I'm hoping the reference to that specific committee isn't about "government sounds stupid if you take it out of context, so it's good that we burn it all down" The Coast Guard having a plan for when large fishing vessels get into trouble, and indeed a plan to stop them getting into trouble, seems like a good thing to me even if it's grouped somewhat incongruously under Department of Homeland Security. edit: your other comment on this makes me think we are at the "letting commercial fisherman, and the coastguards trying to rescue them, drown to own the libs" stage, and my faith in humanity drops another notch.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Grum9 2y ago
  The "U.S. Coast Guard was formed by a merger of the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service and the U.S. Life-Saving Service on 28 January 1915" (wiki). The US Department of Homeland Security "began operations on March 1, 2003, after being formed as a result of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, enacted in response to the September 11 attacks" (wiki). So are you saying that for 78 years of its existence, the USCG had no "plan for when large fishing vessels get into trouble, and indeed a plan to stop them getting into trouble" until the DHS assembled a (assuming this is a thing) "National Commercial Fishing Safety Advisory Committee"? You dont think theres any redundancy? That just maybe bureaucracy cant help but to expand forever every time someone with a title has a question that cant be answered immediately by someone standing in the room, they have to create a committee so they can have someone on speed dial? If the coast guard doesnt have plans for this, one wonders what the coast guard does all day.

arghandugh 2y ago

The already highly compromised ideologues who seized control of the federal government are dismantling it because they said they would. Every comment on this post is frighteningly uninformed about current events.

formerly_proven 2y ago
I'm inclined to write a Firefox addon that just replaces every headline out of the US with "Leopards Eating Faces official caught eating faces"
- lazide 2y ago
  “Then makes weird noises, nothing bad happens, and continues eating faces”. If there are no consequences, it just reinforces their power.
  - SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
    I'd argue this government has not just experienced no consequences, they've experienced the opposite of no consequences. Somehow the American people saw everything they'd done and were saying they'd do and then the people emphatically voted for it. I'm still gobsmacked.
    - lazide 2y ago
      Just wait. Hitler was very popular too. Until he unequivocally lost, at least. By then, the country was destroyed along with most of it’s citizens, but boy howdy was it a ride eh?
      - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
        Hitler apparently had solid 15-20% support even up to a decade after defeat and Nazism generally had 50% support (before and after, as a good idea executed badly) so both your high and low are off.

throwaway48476 2y ago

[flagged]

defrost 2y ago
Salt Typhoon isn't a misinformation campaign on X-itter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Typhoon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Typhoon This directive is shutting down a broad range of advisories under the DHS, perhaps you might like to read more in order to make a better informed comment.
- palmfacehn 2y ago
  Ideally, the mass wiretap program would also be ceased. Salt Typhoon was tragic because it was the state's own overreach which was exploited. There are strong constitutional arguments against these domestic spy programs which are laundered through the presumed authority to spy on international communications.
zo1 2y ago
First-pass guess is that it got "captured" by individuals that wanted to "take an equity and inclusion lens" on cybersecurity... and something something 2020 election interference. Those are the usual suspects when it comes to this sort of institutional rot.
- acdha 2y ago
  It’s “equity and inclusion” to be concerned about outside influence on elections? That goes back to antiquity in general but the modern U.S. intelligence agencies have been dealing with it since they were formed, having been a major concern during WWI and WWII, and that only went up during the Cold War.
  - evanjrowley 2y ago
    CISA's censorship campaign was majorly focused on keeping the mainstream Covid-19 narrative alive: https://reclaimthenet.org/cisa-covid-censorship-industrial-complex https://reclaimthenet.org/cisa-covid-censorship-industrial-c... It was highly controversial as many believed it to be unconstitutional breach of the first amendment: https://reclaimthenet.org/fifth-circuit-expands-injunction-against-government-online-censorship-to-include-cisa https://reclaimthenet.org/fifth-circuit-expands-injunction-a...

hbarka 2y ago

The swiftness here really cements the notion of a useful idiot. Makes you wonder who crafted the details then the execution.

hobs 2y ago
You would only need to wonder if you had been paying no attention to the clarion call about Project 2025 and what the incoming admin was directly planning to do wholesale. Literally, for months.
- sebazzz 2y ago
  There was doubt by many if Project 2025 was actually going to be executed.
  - hobs 2y ago
    I have nothing polite to say about someone either so gullible or so obviously a liar.
    - TheNewsIsHere 2y ago
      At this point I believe those kinds of people are much like Joe Rogan. Hiding behind the old “just asking questions”-style guises. I’m not sure what they get from that, but they are either intentionally not paying attention at this point, or simply do not care about anything that doesn’t affect them directly and negatively. At this point we might as well print out Project 2025 bingo cards. Perhaps that will be the only way we “win” something in all this mess.
  - archagon 2y ago
    As OP said, “useful idiots.” (And/or malicious actors.)

fbfactchecker 2y ago

[flagged]

phtrivier 2y ago

The core tenet of Muskism, as described at length in Isaacson's bio is around those lines: * question all the rules * when in doubt, slash the rule, and see what happens * if it's really bad without it, bring back the rule * if you don't have to bring back 10% of the rules that you slashed, you haven't slashed enough yet USA is now entering the phase where everything is getting slashed - following the will of the majority of -Pennsylvania- the people. At the level of a company, this can bring great efficiencies, and make reusable self-driving cancer-free nuclear-fusion based rockets. Or crypto scams. Unfortunately, at the level of a Federal Government, it will bring lower taxes, but some of the 10% will end with coffins. And crypto scams. We'll watch from the other side of the Atlantic how the great libertarianism experiment goes for the USA. I expect both impressive improvements, and dramatic karmic irony.

surgical_fire 2y ago
> At the level of a company, this can bring great efficiencies, and make reusable self-driving cancer-free nuclear-fusion based rockets. Or crypto scams. This is questionable. There are many times when bureaucracy exists for bureaucracy sake. But many, many times they exist for a reason. Get any sufficiently large company and try to understand its complexity. Simply slashing it is a recipe for disaster. > Unfortunately, at the level of a Federal Government, it will bring lower taxes, but some of the 10% will end with coffins. And crypto scams. This is highly questionable, especially the "lower taxes" part. Governments are not very keen on reducing revenue, more likely they will only direct the surplus by cutting off services to other things - in the case of US, I wouldn't be surprised if they just increase spending in military, for example. Those sleasy and juicy defence contracts need funding, you know.
- D13Fd 2y ago
  There is essentially no relation to taxes. Everything they are cutting falls into the “Other” category in this chart: https://www.crews.bank/charts/taxes-and-spending https://www.crews.bank/charts/taxes-and-spending Even if they cut 100% of government functions other than entitlements, healthcare, and defense, it would not solve the deficit.

weinzierl 2y ago

Seems the Cybersecurity Executive Orders that dealt with Memory Safe Languages and the ONCD Report (which mentioned Rust, if I remember correctly) are all gone from whitehouse.gov as well. The CISA report that dealt with memory safety is still on the CISA site. What do these recent developments mean for CISA? Is it an independent organization that will continue to exist without DHS support or is it essentially dead and its site and reports will vanish as well?

throwaway290 2y ago
I am mostly ignorant but from hearsay CISA is part of DHS (the chief of CISA is a DHS official). doubt Trump loves it because he literally fired Krebs directly for not supporting misinformation and overthrow attempt in 2020 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Krebs#2020_dismissal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Krebs#2020_dismissal)
- evanjrowley 2y ago
  CISA has an important job to do, but their mission was put at risk when it's leadership under Krebs chose to repeatedly violate the first amendment. Elections and Covid-19 are topics they've been documented in influencing, but with the capability there, what other narratives was it influencing that we don't know about? The legal fight against CISA to stop their censorship was lost not on the basis of it being constitutional, but because the plaintiffs powerful enough to bring it to court couldn't show they had been directly harmed by it. A common stumbling block for many court cases for legitimate issues. CISA has publicly stated they will be changing their approach as a result of these controversies.
- jonstewart 2y ago
  It is not hearsay that CISA is part of DHS. This is an easily verified fact.
begueradj 2y ago
> Seems the Cybersecurity Executive Orders that dealt with Memory Safe Languages and the ONCD Report (which mentioned Rust, if I remember correctly) are all gone from whitehouse.gov as well. Do you have any clues for the "why" ?

qgin 2y ago

You don’t need advisory panels if you don’t want advice

bigstrat2003 2y ago

Good. From day 1 DHS has been the most Orwellian department of the US government, which casually violates our freedom on a regular basis. The entire department should be abolished.

_DeadFred_ 2y ago
Which party created the DHS again?
- hk1337 2y ago
  Pretty sure it was a solid bipartisan achievement.
avgDev 2y ago
Maybe you can share some of the examples of such infringements on our rights.
- zer8k 2y ago
  https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/court-rules-warrantless-section-702-searches-violated-the-fourth-amendment https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/court-rules-warrantless-... https://epic.org/dhs-disregards-internal-policies-and-avoids-fourth-amendment-protections-to-track-your-location/ https://epic.org/dhs-disregards-internal-policies-and-avoids... https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/breaking-dhs-will-begin-collecting-social-media-information-on-immigrants-green-card-holders-naturalized-citizens-and-anyone-in-touch-with-them https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/breaking-dhs-will-begin-... https://www.theverge.com/c/23311333/tsa-history-airport-security-theater-homeland https://www.theverge.com/c/23311333/tsa-history-airport-secu... https://www.reuters.com/article/world/us/tsa-screeners-win-immunity-from-abuse-claims-appeals-court-idUSKBN1K125V/ https://www.reuters.com/article/world/us/tsa-screeners-win-i... The list goes on. There's 24 years of history you can comb through. The DHS' security theater exists solely to compromise the constitutional rights of American citizens. To this day there's no evidence they're even that successful at their job. The fact the impeachment of Mayorkas failed was quite mind-boggling but characteristic of a government that doesn't truly believe anyone, even citizens, have certain inalienable rights. The DHS was and still is bipartisan. It's America's Staatspolizei.

settsu 2y ago

It really is despairingly sad how many of these comments (assumedly by U.S. citizens) seem to not realize or believe these actions will have an effect on them. Are some of these things normal SOP for a regime change? Sure. But to normalize everything under that blanket assumption is just foolish. Unless you are an exceedingly (liquid) wealthy white male, you are entirely disposable to the incoming administration. You are less than nothing. If anything, you are an inconvenience buried deep in the calculations that needs to be factored out of the equation because your existence hinders the "progress" being sought. All these pragmatic or, worse, so-called "libertarian" views demonstrate a supremely naïve, if not outright harmful (to yourself and countless others), understanding of what is going to be aggressively pursued these next few years.

SlightlyLeftPad 2y ago
The efforts will inherently destabilize the US which, for some, will be a really massive gift and this administration will be praised both externally and internally. That will close the feedback loop since that’s primarily what motivates this administration.

honestSysAdmin 2y ago

CISA is the organization that declared that the 2020 election was the most secure election ever. So it is expected that CISA would get "liquidated" by this new administration.

mikrotikker 2y ago
Well to say that without doing investigations or audits is partisan to say the least

honestSysAdmin 2y ago

Fortunately, there are plenty of private sector companies investigating Salt Typhoon. I can speak for the firm I work for. Our clients are effectively invulnerable to Salt Typhoon. Yes, I know that sounds like a "big claim" but it's really not. We enable our customers to run endpoints that aren't based on Windows or macOS. So...

toasted-subs 2y ago

Probably because of Jewish people like me who had their computers hacked and told I wasn't welcome by security cameras near where I live. I live next to former president's and being efficetively made into a holocaust victim with no proper recourse by the people ment to protect the president's makes me feel like they never should have had the job in the first place.

insane_dreamer 2y ago

The problem with gutting these departments is that the repercussions aren't immediate. It's like firing your ATC training team and then, the following week, claiming, see! we just saved a bunch of money and no airplanes crashed -- we didn't need them after all. Until one day ... Then when some day a crisis situation occurs, there isn't an appropriate response because "oops, that dept no longer exists, or doesn't have the staff to respond". But who knows if Trump's lucky he might even be out of office by then and someone else has to deal with it. But in the mean time, VP Musk gets to claim "look at all the money we saved!" Maybe some of the positions are redundant, but gutting across the board on day 1 definitely comes off as unwise and not thought through.

esbranson 2y ago
No, it is not. Firing an "ATC training team" and replacing them with advisory commissions is not a good thing. Advisory commissions are not, and should not be, functional units of government. I know it's so easy to jump on the hate train, but you're confusing different aspects of government, and what has happened.

K0balt 2y ago

I think I understand the pullback from renewables now. With this, along with all of the other recent events we have had the privilege of witnessing, we should be able to tap into the resonant frequency from the “energetic whirring phenomenon” occurring at Arlington National Cemetery to provide all of the energy that the country needs for the next century at least.

mguido 2y ago

Hello.