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Onlookers freak out as 25-year-old set loose on Treasury computer system

113 points by brohee 2y ago

brohee 2y ago
I had to truncate the title a bit from: 'Go haywire': Onlookers freak out as 25-year-old set loose on Treasury computer system
throwaway984393 2y ago
[dead]
philk10 2y ago
If a 55 year old with no knowledge of the system was set loose I'd still be freaking out
- uLogMicheal 2y ago
  If it's in COBOL you can probably count on one hand how many people have knowledge of the nuts and bolts of those systems and usually the new people talk to the old people.
- readthenotes1 2y ago
  Hopefully by the time he got to be 55, the person with the access would be too cautious to do anything with it
cynicalsecurity 2y ago
People voted for this, didn't they?
- ActionHank 2y ago
  Hospitals still treat people who shoot themselves in the foot, some times people make mistakes, crazy how there is no mechanism to correct this though.
  - 9283409232 2y ago
    There is. It's Congress and impeachment. That won't happen but the mechanism is there.
    - ActionHank 2y ago
      He also doesn't fear impeachment, zero impact to him or his position.
      - 9283409232 2y ago
        I know. I'm just saying, that's the mechanism for this. You could argue there should be other routes and other mechanisms and I agree.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > People voted for this Quite literally, no. Elez (the 25-year old) reports to Musk. There is nobody elected above him. Bessent, hours before this broke, claimed he "signed off on a plan to give 'read-only' access to the payment system to a team led by Tom Krause" [1]. This kid allegedly had write access. And he doesn't report to Krause. He should be getting arrested on espionage charges. [1] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/03/bessent-musk-doge-treasury-payments-00202278 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/03/bessent-musk-doge-t...
  - nemo44x 2y ago
    I think the Executive has signed off on it. It's not like Trump would personally do these things. He has partnered with the best and brightest to implement the vision for America that the majority of voters asked for. Like it or not, it's how elections work.
    - zippothrowaway 2y ago
      That is not how elections work. Elections do not override existing law. Otherwise you could easily get a dictator who says "I am legitimately elected therefore there it is the will of the people that there are no more elections" But you said "best and brightest" so I'm assuming you're trolling.
      - nemo44x 2y ago
        Good chance a lot of the "laws" that prevent the executive from taking actions are probably unconstitutional anyways. The constitution is pretty clear on this and the current executive is within its boundaries, even if various congresses made illegal laws to prevent these types of actions after FDR used them.
  - normalaccess 2y ago
    lets not forget that Trump created a new department and put Elon in charge, the DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY. With that in mind Musk can hire anyone he wants yes? Trump gave Elon the clearances and powers needed to do this work. It's no different in my opinion than the CIA hiring confidential sources or the FBI hiring contractors. I mean Elon isn't going to personally do the work as department head...
- advisedwang 2y ago
  I don't recall seeing this mentioned in any campaigning, so no, people did not vote for it. And even if this were understood to have been what voting trump meant, that is only 77M out of 334M people in America.
  - alaxhn 2y ago
    DOGE did feature prominently in the campaigning and some of us did vote for the full package primarily holding our nose on other parts of the campaign that we were not happy with specifically because we wanted to see this happen. "that is only 77M out of 334M people in America" What's your point here? Our system is set up to give outsized power to whoever secures a majority of the electors. There may be a better alternative but are you complaining about the system being flawed or complaining that the numbers didn't go your way? The rest of us also had to put up with decisions under previous administrations that we didn't appreciate despite only a similar number of people actually voting for the administration.
    - DFHippie 2y ago
      > The rest of us also had to put up with decisions under previous administrations that we didn't appreciate despite only a similar number of people actually voting for the administration. That's actually a little rich in this case, considering how few Republicans accept the results of the 2020 election.
- rsynnott 2y ago
  I mean, I would assume that even many people who voted for ol' minihands are at least... somewhat surprised that _this_ is happening. Even as a committed minihands-sceptic, I'm a little surprised; he's really upping the absurdity factor quite a lot in term 2. Whoever's the next president of the US will presumably spend their whole term cleaning up the mess.
ActionHank 2y ago
I think it's less about "25-year-old" and more about unvetted stranger with no clearance given unfettered read-write access to the money of a country apparently not run by a dictator, but elected officials(none of which were involved).
- xster 2y ago
  Not commenting on this particular case, but on the general sentiment. Aristotle did say in Politics IV that appointing public office by lottery, drawing from the real public, is more democratic (power to the people) than elections, which is an oligarchic exercise.
  - ActionHank 2y ago
    Makes sense. I've always held the opinion that elected officials should have to use public health care, send their kids to public schools, and use public transport. This would ensure that they would have to maintain these institutions and be able to face their constituents on the daily.
    - psadauskas 2y ago
      > A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation. -- Gustavo Petro
      - gsf_emergency 2y ago
        Manhattan :)
  - 3hoss 2y ago
    how, exactly, is that relevant here?
    - ActionHank 2y ago
      Because the US democratically elected a would-be dictator who is now building out his oligarchy.
nikisweeting 2y ago
Why do people keep harping on the age. I don't care about how old they are, I know plenty of cracked teenagers. I care that they have no constitutional authority.
- crooked-v 2y ago
  The age emphasizes the absurdist, incompetent slapdash nature of the whole thing. It's not a grizzled expert aiding a coup, it's some kid fucking around.
  - nikisweeting 2y ago
    Why is it absurd for a 25 year old to write system-critical code? That's not even that young for the field. I'd been coding for 12 years at that age!
    - mjburgess 2y ago
      It's not the quality of code in question, but of judgement.
    - yummybear 2y ago
      Do you think you, or anyone, have the capacity to understand changes you are making to a system developed over decades, that manages trillions and affects real lives, with only a few days worth of experience with the system?
      - gre 2y ago
        You don't think they grabbed one or two of the existing coders that know the system? (I have no idea)
        Gud 2y ago
        No, I don't think so. I think it's the dumbest, high confidence kids(with big egos) in the room who agree to do shit like this.
emsign 2y ago
When Americans voted for crazy, did they expect anything less than crazy? I don't understand how you can be shocked.
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  Americans experienced 4 years of the crazy just being superficial. They expected more of the same, not 4 years of the crazy going everywhere. In term 1 Trump cabinet and staffers were Bush veterans whereas this term they are Trump loyalists. I tried convincing people that this time would be very different, but I got shouted down.
- kordlessagain 2y ago
  Interesting how you assume everyone with concerns must have voted for them. Maybe brush up on how voting percentages work - you'd be surprised how many Americans can be affected by election outcomes regardless of how they personally voted. Math is fun that way! Funny how quickly we jump to 'you must have voted for them' these days. Maybe the real problem isn't who voted for who, but how we've all gotten so used to seeing each other as enemies instead of neighbors who sometimes disagree. Just a thought.
  - nicholasjarnold 2y ago
    Exactly. The results of the US Presidential Election in 2024 show us that slightly more than 1 in 5 Americans cast a ballot in favor of Donald Trump. assumptions: The publicly-available vote count numbers are correct and the US has a total population of around 341 million people. The view that our Republican party got a "conservative mandate" and "won by a landslide" is an interesting one when considered with the above facts. They won by a margin of ~1.6% of the votes cast. The victory looks like a large one only when viewed through the distorted lenses of our Electoral College system. > Maybe the real problem isn't who voted for who, but how we've all gotten so used to seeing each other as enemies instead of neighbors who sometimes disagree. Just a thought. Exactly. Divide and conquer. Historically it's been pretty effective.
  - scelerat 2y ago
michaeljx 2y ago
Having a young optimistic uncynical person, untainted by years of painful lessons and bitterness, attempt to fix these systems with raw speed and brute urgency, might be the exact shock a system like the public sector needs. People complain about Facebook's move fast and break things philosophy whenever something bad happens, completely ignoring the fact that they are a trillion dollar corporation that 20 years ago did not exist. Sometime you just have to get rid of the guardrails and YOLO it
- redcobra762 2y ago
  ...not when the consequences are "people die of starvation because their EBT didn't go through." Moving fast and breaking things only works when the things you're breaking are low stakes. Grandma not getting her daily pic dump of her grandson is not the same as grandma not getting her groceries.
  - uLogMicheal 2y ago
    People tend to forget that move fast and break things also includes move fast and fix things. No one will starve from this.
    - UncleMeat 2y ago
      How much are you willing to bet on this? Will you be willing to pay into a fund to mitigate suffering caused by this nonsense?
  - michaeljx 2y ago
    Well,it didn't say anywhere that they are stopping grandma's checks. And if the system is so fragile that grandma will die before getting some human person to resolve her case, then we've got bigger problems than a 25 year old having r/w on the system.
    - yummybear 2y ago
      That's a rather cynical take on what may amount to actual human suffering.
erulabs 2y ago
The "code that directs Social Security payments, tax returns and other payments owed to Americans" is "COBOL and ... it has been such a struggle to maintain it [because it was] developed for decades with very little documentation" But having a SpaceX engineer start a rewrite is... bad? I freak out when some minor component of my company becomes abandonware. When no one can or wants to read or work on the codebase, it's _time for it to die_. Either this good news, or you have no experience maintaining existing critical software infrastructure. As for the "unelected" argument... Did anyone ever elect any of the software engineers who worked on this codebase? It has always been federal employees appointed by federal agencies. Some acronyms changed.
- UncleMeat 2y ago
  You know that asshole that joins a team and says "wow this code is bad, we should scrap it all and rewrite?" And if he gets his way, how he fucks off somewhere else before the rewrite is completed and leaves everything in a total mess? You know that's consider a bad thing in serious software engineering teams, right?
  - erulabs 2y ago
    As with all engineering, it depends. If the code is bad, and they do complete the task, then good engineering. If the code isn't bad, and they don't... Armchair quarterbacking engineering decisions with little to no information is not something I'm in the habit of doing.
- yummybear 2y ago
  He may be "SpaceX" (if that is supposed to mean super talented), but having a maximum of 1 weeks worth of knowledge about a system before starting to rewrite it seems extremely unsecure. This isn't a disposable rocket, this is a system that millions of people rely on.
- ncr100 2y ago
  Q: Is that what's happening here? That SpaceX engineers are rewriting the Social Security payment system in some modern programming language?
cozzyd 2y ago
If it's the person with the obviously named GitHub account (age seems plausibly matching), someone should tell Trump he's working on (well, at least cloned) a DeepSeek-related project. (The picture, now taken down but still available in caches, also matches the picture shown in various media, though I can't verify that the media has the right picture, so I won't link to the account). Unsurprisingly, they have a YOLO badge. edit: ok, based on Wired reporting, https://github.com/markoelez https://github.com/markoelez must be him...
zingababba 2y ago
He should be using H1-Bs
Workaccount2 2y ago
Story and politics aside, we shouldn't allow partisan blogs that larp as news media to be posted here. These guys and their conservative counterparts are the lifeblood of the misinformation war dividing the country.
- cozzyd 2y ago
  Yes, it would be better to link to e.g. https://newrepublic.com/post/191117/elon-musk-25-year-old-aide-doge-treasury-department-code https://newrepublic.com/post/191117/elon-musk-25-year-old-ai...
  - astroid 2y ago
    I did the same manual analysis I did on the OP one, and could not find a first party source or non-anonymous claim. I asked CoPilot to analyze the sources and identify the individual claims, and their proximity to a 'first party source'. Once again, there is 0 evidence this is actually happening -- there are however a lot of news organizations ready to throw their reputations away over a few 'anonymous sources' that aren't even primary. Here is the analysis of your source, AND the linked sources in that article: Wired: Reports that Marko Elez, a 25-year-old engineer linked to Elon Musk, has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the U.S. government. The sources are unnamed, and they claim Elez has administrator-level privileges, including the ability to write code on the Payment Automation Manager and Secure Payment System1. Talking Points Memo: Confirms Wired's reporting, adding that Elez has already made extensive changes to the code base for the payment systems. Again, the sources are unnamed1. The New Republic: Details that Elez has complete access to critical payment systems at the Department of the Treasury, despite being only 25 years old. The sources are unnamed, and the article mentions that senior government officials have been locked out of employee databases1. Raw Story: Reports that Elez has been given full control over the computer code that directs Social Security payments, tax returns, and other payments owed to Americans. The sources are unnamed, and the article mentions that federal IT workers are concerned about the potential for irreversible damage to the systems2. In summary, all the sources cited in the article are anonymous, and there are no first-party sources or direct evidence provided. This makes it difficult to verify the claims independently. The lack of named sources and concrete evidence raises questions about the credibility of the claims.
imglorp 2y ago
> the ability to change code for the purposes of rooting out fraudulent payments or analyzing disbursement flow Or making and hiding fraudulent payments.
- cozzyd 2y ago
  Someone has to reimburse SpaceX for all the free labor in the treasury department!
- steanne 2y ago
  we're gonna have a shiny new sovereign wealth fund to loot!
jdubz79 2y ago
[flagged]
- TimedToasts 2y ago
  [flagged]
- potato3732842 2y ago
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dang 2y ago
Recent and related: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42910910 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42910910 - Feb 2025 (2691 comments)
astroid 2y ago
I quite literally don't believe this. I fully believe he has 'read' access, but extraordinary claims require some evidence. I just read the article and they go to great pains to make it -seem- like they have first party confirmation and not hearsay, but it was breaking my brain trying to determine with certainty. I just asked copilot to review the article looking for 1st party witnesses, and it said there weren't any. Then I asked it to summarize each 'witness' from the article, whether they are first party, and if not what degree of sepearatoin they have. This is what it said: Sure, let's break down the key witnesses and their claims: David Lebryk: Former acting Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. He resigned after resisting granting DOGE access to the Treasury data1. His claim is based on his direct experience and position within the Treasury Department, making him a first party witness. Ron Wyden: The highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee. He expressed concerns about the potential misuse of the data by DOGE1. Wyden is a second party witness, as he is commenting on the situation based on his oversight role but not direct involvement. Anonymous AP Sources: Two people familiar with the situation spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. They claim that DOGE has gained access to sensitive Treasury data1. These sources are second party witnesses, as they have indirect knowledge of the situation. X User (@rayinsideout): Revealed names of alleged DOGE employees who accessed the Treasury payment system. Musk accused this user of committing a crime by sharing private information2. This user is a third party witness, as they are relaying information they claim to have obtained from other sources. Scott Bessent: Treasury Secretary who granted DOGE access to the data. His actions are central to the claims, but he hasn't made public statements about the specifics of the access3. Bessent is a first party witness due to his direct involvement in the decision. So it sounds like all of this is based of David Lebryk's claims, and the media contorting themselves to make this a 'thing'. I am willing to hear actual evidence, but this list doesn't sway me and this feels a lot like "things people want to believe" more than "things that happened". Time will tell I guess.
- astroid 2y ago
  Oh btw the "David Lebryk" is not even mentioned in the article, CoPilot added that as context. So the articles quite literally has 0 first party witnesses. Yet they are super-duper-certain that this person has 'read-write' and is rewriting COBOL on the fly. Give me a break, this is worst than "Weekly World News" -- it may as well say: "BatBoy Terrorizing Treasury Database! Picture on Page 5!"
Kelvin506 2y ago
The thing I find most worrisome is that Musk, as part of SpaceX, was denied security clearance because of his extensive foreign ties. Now he has effectively-unsupervised access to the entire federal system.
bublyboi 2y ago
Having RW permissions doesn’t mean this kid is different from the other engineers working on the project, or that he can circumvent check-in policies regarding code reviews and signoff.

113 points by brohee 2y ago

I had to truncate the title a bit from: 'Go haywire': Onlookers freak out as 25-year-old set loose on Treasury computer system

throwaway984393 2y ago

[dead]

philk10 2y ago

If a 55 year old with no knowledge of the system was set loose I'd still be freaking out

uLogMicheal 2y ago
If it's in COBOL you can probably count on one hand how many people have knowledge of the nuts and bolts of those systems and usually the new people talk to the old people.
readthenotes1 2y ago
Hopefully by the time he got to be 55, the person with the access would be too cautious to do anything with it

cynicalsecurity 2y ago

People voted for this, didn't they?

ActionHank 2y ago
Hospitals still treat people who shoot themselves in the foot, some times people make mistakes, crazy how there is no mechanism to correct this though.
- 9283409232 2y ago
  There is. It's Congress and impeachment. That won't happen but the mechanism is there.
  - ActionHank 2y ago
    He also doesn't fear impeachment, zero impact to him or his position.
    - 9283409232 2y ago
      I know. I'm just saying, that's the mechanism for this. You could argue there should be other routes and other mechanisms and I agree.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> People voted for this Quite literally, no. Elez (the 25-year old) reports to Musk. There is nobody elected above him. Bessent, hours before this broke, claimed he "signed off on a plan to give 'read-only' access to the payment system to a team led by Tom Krause" [1]. This kid allegedly had write access. And he doesn't report to Krause. He should be getting arrested on espionage charges. [1] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/03/bessent-musk-doge-treasury-payments-00202278 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/03/bessent-musk-doge-t...
- nemo44x 2y ago
  I think the Executive has signed off on it. It's not like Trump would personally do these things. He has partnered with the best and brightest to implement the vision for America that the majority of voters asked for. Like it or not, it's how elections work.
  - zippothrowaway 2y ago
    That is not how elections work. Elections do not override existing law. Otherwise you could easily get a dictator who says "I am legitimately elected therefore there it is the will of the people that there are no more elections" But you said "best and brightest" so I'm assuming you're trolling.
    - nemo44x 2y ago
      Good chance a lot of the "laws" that prevent the executive from taking actions are probably unconstitutional anyways. The constitution is pretty clear on this and the current executive is within its boundaries, even if various congresses made illegal laws to prevent these types of actions after FDR used them.
- normalaccess 2y ago
  lets not forget that Trump created a new department and put Elon in charge, the DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY. With that in mind Musk can hire anyone he wants yes? Trump gave Elon the clearances and powers needed to do this work. It's no different in my opinion than the CIA hiring confidential sources or the FBI hiring contractors. I mean Elon isn't going to personally do the work as department head...
advisedwang 2y ago
I don't recall seeing this mentioned in any campaigning, so no, people did not vote for it. And even if this were understood to have been what voting trump meant, that is only 77M out of 334M people in America.
- alaxhn 2y ago
  DOGE did feature prominently in the campaigning and some of us did vote for the full package primarily holding our nose on other parts of the campaign that we were not happy with specifically because we wanted to see this happen. "that is only 77M out of 334M people in America" What's your point here? Our system is set up to give outsized power to whoever secures a majority of the electors. There may be a better alternative but are you complaining about the system being flawed or complaining that the numbers didn't go your way? The rest of us also had to put up with decisions under previous administrations that we didn't appreciate despite only a similar number of people actually voting for the administration.
  - DFHippie 2y ago
    > The rest of us also had to put up with decisions under previous administrations that we didn't appreciate despite only a similar number of people actually voting for the administration. That's actually a little rich in this case, considering how few Republicans accept the results of the 2020 election.
rsynnott 2y ago
I mean, I would assume that even many people who voted for ol' minihands are at least... somewhat surprised that _this_ is happening. Even as a committed minihands-sceptic, I'm a little surprised; he's really upping the absurdity factor quite a lot in term 2. Whoever's the next president of the US will presumably spend their whole term cleaning up the mess.

ActionHank 2y ago

I think it's less about "25-year-old" and more about unvetted stranger with no clearance given unfettered read-write access to the money of a country apparently not run by a dictator, but elected officials(none of which were involved).

xster 2y ago
Not commenting on this particular case, but on the general sentiment. Aristotle did say in Politics IV that appointing public office by lottery, drawing from the real public, is more democratic (power to the people) than elections, which is an oligarchic exercise.
- ActionHank 2y ago
  Makes sense. I've always held the opinion that elected officials should have to use public health care, send their kids to public schools, and use public transport. This would ensure that they would have to maintain these institutions and be able to face their constituents on the daily.
  - psadauskas 2y ago
    > A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation. -- Gustavo Petro
    - gsf_emergency 2y ago
      Manhattan :)
- 3hoss 2y ago
  how, exactly, is that relevant here?
  - ActionHank 2y ago
    Because the US democratically elected a would-be dictator who is now building out his oligarchy.

nikisweeting 2y ago

Why do people keep harping on the age. I don't care about how old they are, I know plenty of cracked teenagers. I care that they have no constitutional authority.

crooked-v 2y ago
The age emphasizes the absurdist, incompetent slapdash nature of the whole thing. It's not a grizzled expert aiding a coup, it's some kid fucking around.
- nikisweeting 2y ago
  Why is it absurd for a 25 year old to write system-critical code? That's not even that young for the field. I'd been coding for 12 years at that age!
  - mjburgess 2y ago
    It's not the quality of code in question, but of judgement.
  - yummybear 2y ago
    Do you think you, or anyone, have the capacity to understand changes you are making to a system developed over decades, that manages trillions and affects real lives, with only a few days worth of experience with the system?
    - gre 2y ago
      You don't think they grabbed one or two of the existing coders that know the system? (I have no idea)
      - Gud 2y ago
        No, I don't think so. I think it's the dumbest, high confidence kids(with big egos) in the room who agree to do shit like this.

emsign 2y ago

When Americans voted for crazy, did they expect anything less than crazy? I don't understand how you can be shocked.

bryanlarsen 2y ago
Americans experienced 4 years of the crazy just being superficial. They expected more of the same, not 4 years of the crazy going everywhere. In term 1 Trump cabinet and staffers were Bush veterans whereas this term they are Trump loyalists. I tried convincing people that this time would be very different, but I got shouted down.
kordlessagain 2y ago
Interesting how you assume everyone with concerns must have voted for them. Maybe brush up on how voting percentages work - you'd be surprised how many Americans can be affected by election outcomes regardless of how they personally voted. Math is fun that way! Funny how quickly we jump to 'you must have voted for them' these days. Maybe the real problem isn't who voted for who, but how we've all gotten so used to seeing each other as enemies instead of neighbors who sometimes disagree. Just a thought.
- nicholasjarnold 2y ago
  Exactly. The results of the US Presidential Election in 2024 show us that slightly more than 1 in 5 Americans cast a ballot in favor of Donald Trump. assumptions: The publicly-available vote count numbers are correct and the US has a total population of around 341 million people. The view that our Republican party got a "conservative mandate" and "won by a landslide" is an interesting one when considered with the above facts. They won by a margin of ~1.6% of the votes cast. The victory looks like a large one only when viewed through the distorted lenses of our Electoral College system. > Maybe the real problem isn't who voted for who, but how we've all gotten so used to seeing each other as enemies instead of neighbors who sometimes disagree. Just a thought. Exactly. Divide and conquer. Historically it's been pretty effective.
- scelerat 2y ago

michaeljx 2y ago

Having a young optimistic uncynical person, untainted by years of painful lessons and bitterness, attempt to fix these systems with raw speed and brute urgency, might be the exact shock a system like the public sector needs. People complain about Facebook's move fast and break things philosophy whenever something bad happens, completely ignoring the fact that they are a trillion dollar corporation that 20 years ago did not exist. Sometime you just have to get rid of the guardrails and YOLO it

redcobra762 2y ago
...not when the consequences are "people die of starvation because their EBT didn't go through." Moving fast and breaking things only works when the things you're breaking are low stakes. Grandma not getting her daily pic dump of her grandson is not the same as grandma not getting her groceries.
- uLogMicheal 2y ago
  People tend to forget that move fast and break things also includes move fast and fix things. No one will starve from this.
  - UncleMeat 2y ago
    How much are you willing to bet on this? Will you be willing to pay into a fund to mitigate suffering caused by this nonsense?
- michaeljx 2y ago
  Well,it didn't say anywhere that they are stopping grandma's checks. And if the system is so fragile that grandma will die before getting some human person to resolve her case, then we've got bigger problems than a 25 year old having r/w on the system.
  - yummybear 2y ago
    That's a rather cynical take on what may amount to actual human suffering.

erulabs 2y ago

The "code that directs Social Security payments, tax returns and other payments owed to Americans" is "COBOL and ... it has been such a struggle to maintain it [because it was] developed for decades with very little documentation" But having a SpaceX engineer start a rewrite is... bad? I freak out when some minor component of my company becomes abandonware. When no one can or wants to read or work on the codebase, it's _time for it to die_. Either this good news, or you have no experience maintaining existing critical software infrastructure. As for the "unelected" argument... Did anyone ever elect any of the software engineers who worked on this codebase? It has always been federal employees appointed by federal agencies. Some acronyms changed.

UncleMeat 2y ago
You know that asshole that joins a team and says "wow this code is bad, we should scrap it all and rewrite?" And if he gets his way, how he fucks off somewhere else before the rewrite is completed and leaves everything in a total mess? You know that's consider a bad thing in serious software engineering teams, right?
- erulabs 2y ago
  As with all engineering, it depends. If the code is bad, and they do complete the task, then good engineering. If the code isn't bad, and they don't... Armchair quarterbacking engineering decisions with little to no information is not something I'm in the habit of doing.
yummybear 2y ago
He may be "SpaceX" (if that is supposed to mean super talented), but having a maximum of 1 weeks worth of knowledge about a system before starting to rewrite it seems extremely unsecure. This isn't a disposable rocket, this is a system that millions of people rely on.
ncr100 2y ago
Q: Is that what's happening here? That SpaceX engineers are rewriting the Social Security payment system in some modern programming language?

cozzyd 2y ago

If it's the person with the obviously named GitHub account (age seems plausibly matching), someone should tell Trump he's working on (well, at least cloned) a DeepSeek-related project. (The picture, now taken down but still available in caches, also matches the picture shown in various media, though I can't verify that the media has the right picture, so I won't link to the account). Unsurprisingly, they have a YOLO badge. edit: ok, based on Wired reporting, https://github.com/markoelez https://github.com/markoelez must be him...

zingababba 2y ago

He should be using H1-Bs

Workaccount2 2y ago

Story and politics aside, we shouldn't allow partisan blogs that larp as news media to be posted here. These guys and their conservative counterparts are the lifeblood of the misinformation war dividing the country.

cozzyd 2y ago
Yes, it would be better to link to e.g. https://newrepublic.com/post/191117/elon-musk-25-year-old-aide-doge-treasury-department-code https://newrepublic.com/post/191117/elon-musk-25-year-old-ai...
- astroid 2y ago
  I did the same manual analysis I did on the OP one, and could not find a first party source or non-anonymous claim. I asked CoPilot to analyze the sources and identify the individual claims, and their proximity to a 'first party source'. Once again, there is 0 evidence this is actually happening -- there are however a lot of news organizations ready to throw their reputations away over a few 'anonymous sources' that aren't even primary. Here is the analysis of your source, AND the linked sources in that article: Wired: Reports that Marko Elez, a 25-year-old engineer linked to Elon Musk, has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the U.S. government. The sources are unnamed, and they claim Elez has administrator-level privileges, including the ability to write code on the Payment Automation Manager and Secure Payment System1. Talking Points Memo: Confirms Wired's reporting, adding that Elez has already made extensive changes to the code base for the payment systems. Again, the sources are unnamed1. The New Republic: Details that Elez has complete access to critical payment systems at the Department of the Treasury, despite being only 25 years old. The sources are unnamed, and the article mentions that senior government officials have been locked out of employee databases1. Raw Story: Reports that Elez has been given full control over the computer code that directs Social Security payments, tax returns, and other payments owed to Americans. The sources are unnamed, and the article mentions that federal IT workers are concerned about the potential for irreversible damage to the systems2. In summary, all the sources cited in the article are anonymous, and there are no first-party sources or direct evidence provided. This makes it difficult to verify the claims independently. The lack of named sources and concrete evidence raises questions about the credibility of the claims.

imglorp 2y ago

> the ability to change code for the purposes of rooting out fraudulent payments or analyzing disbursement flow Or making and hiding fraudulent payments.

cozzyd 2y ago
Someone has to reimburse SpaceX for all the free labor in the treasury department!
steanne 2y ago
we're gonna have a shiny new sovereign wealth fund to loot!

jdubz79 2y ago

[flagged]

TimedToasts 2y ago
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potato3732842 2y ago
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dang 2y ago

Recent and related: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42910910 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42910910 - Feb 2025 (2691 comments)

astroid 2y ago

I quite literally don't believe this. I fully believe he has 'read' access, but extraordinary claims require some evidence. I just read the article and they go to great pains to make it -seem- like they have first party confirmation and not hearsay, but it was breaking my brain trying to determine with certainty. I just asked copilot to review the article looking for 1st party witnesses, and it said there weren't any. Then I asked it to summarize each 'witness' from the article, whether they are first party, and if not what degree of sepearatoin they have. This is what it said: Sure, let's break down the key witnesses and their claims: David Lebryk: Former acting Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. He resigned after resisting granting DOGE access to the Treasury data1. His claim is based on his direct experience and position within the Treasury Department, making him a first party witness. Ron Wyden: The highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee. He expressed concerns about the potential misuse of the data by DOGE1. Wyden is a second party witness, as he is commenting on the situation based on his oversight role but not direct involvement. Anonymous AP Sources: Two people familiar with the situation spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. They claim that DOGE has gained access to sensitive Treasury data1. These sources are second party witnesses, as they have indirect knowledge of the situation. X User (@rayinsideout): Revealed names of alleged DOGE employees who accessed the Treasury payment system. Musk accused this user of committing a crime by sharing private information2. This user is a third party witness, as they are relaying information they claim to have obtained from other sources. Scott Bessent: Treasury Secretary who granted DOGE access to the data. His actions are central to the claims, but he hasn't made public statements about the specifics of the access3. Bessent is a first party witness due to his direct involvement in the decision. So it sounds like all of this is based of David Lebryk's claims, and the media contorting themselves to make this a 'thing'. I am willing to hear actual evidence, but this list doesn't sway me and this feels a lot like "things people want to believe" more than "things that happened". Time will tell I guess.

astroid 2y ago
Oh btw the "David Lebryk" is not even mentioned in the article, CoPilot added that as context. So the articles quite literally has 0 first party witnesses. Yet they are super-duper-certain that this person has 'read-write' and is rewriting COBOL on the fly. Give me a break, this is worst than "Weekly World News" -- it may as well say: "BatBoy Terrorizing Treasury Database! Picture on Page 5!"

Kelvin506 2y ago

The thing I find most worrisome is that Musk, as part of SpaceX, was denied security clearance because of his extensive foreign ties. Now he has effectively-unsupervised access to the entire federal system.

bublyboi 2y ago

Having RW permissions doesn’t mean this kid is different from the other engineers working on the project, or that he can circumvent check-in policies regarding code reviews and signoff.