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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.. conserva

• 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!)