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Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

• ronbenton 2y ago
  This seems really bad. Did they intentionally pick the worst possible people?
  • ketlag 2y ago
    When your boss does a nazi salute, the kids can't be far behind.
    • dimaor 2y ago
      a bad joke is in no way as peculiar as this.
      • unsnap_biceps 2y ago
        Honestly, I'd give Musk the benefit of the doubt if he would even say that it was a joke or he didn't mean to make that particular motion. His refusal to say it wasn't intentional and it wasn't a nazi salute means, IMHO, that he ment it that way and it wasn't a joke, but a power play.
      • jodrellblank 2y ago
        Isn't it concerning to have someone in the highest offices of power who thinks that's a funny joke, someone who has the lack of taste to find it funny in that context, the lack of diplomacy to think it an acceptable thing to do in such an important situation, and the lack of fear of consequences because he's in an almost completely untouchable position, and the unwillingness to say anything to excuse or apologise for it? Only the President can really do anything to him, and it's quite likely that he funds the president such that that can't/won't happen. Trump has set a precedent of pardoning the January 6th insurrectionists - people who break the law doing what he wants get pardoned. The supreme court is majority Republican, and he's been dismissing senior department heads and replacing them with people who have been pre-vetted for their Trump loyalty. And he's possibly setting the precedent of ignoring court rulings he doesn't like; it's at least being accused by Republican nominated federal juste John Coughenour[1], JD Vance has spoken about ignoring supreme court rulings[2]. And The Whitehouse has announced that Elon Musk will police himself over his own conflicts of interest[3]. [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-judge-birthright-citizenship-order-b2693725.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic... [2] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/31/politics/john-roberts-year-end-report-supreme-court-rulings/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/31/politics/john-roberts-yea... [3] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/white-house-says-musk-will-police-his-own-conflicts-of-interest/ar-AA1yu6cx https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/white-house-says-mus...
      • drawkward 2y ago
        True, but that was a nazi salute wearing a thick layer of plausible deniability, not a "bad joke."
      • Capricorn2481 2y ago
        First it was excitement, autism, and now it's a bad joke. Whatever you call it, I will never forgive the people that normalized this in politics.
  • jslezak 2y ago
    [flagged]
• laidoffamazon 2y ago
  This is uh, a more than a little disturbing. Is JD Vance going to say that he deserves grace too? More context [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/764_(organization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/764_(organization)
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • shitter 2y ago
    For reference: JD Vance said that another DOGE staffer, who resigned after it was reported that he'd publicly come out in favor of racism, eugenics, and normalizing hate against Indian people on Twitter, should be rehired because it was just "stupid social media activity".
    • jlawson 2y ago
      No, you're lying by extracting context. Here's what he said. Here’s my view: I obviously disagree with some of Elez’s posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life. We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever. So I say bring him back. If he’s a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that. https://x.com/JDVance/status/1887900880143343633 https://x.com/JDVance/status/1887900880143343633 -- The part about the journalists is the operative part obviously.
      • 9283409232 2y ago
        We shouldn't treat people as if their words have no consequences either.
      • shitter 2y ago
        It's not a lie. "I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life" does two things: characterizes endorsements of racism and eugenics policies as "stupid social media activity", and asserts that exposure of such activity should not lead to someone losing their job. The part about not rewarding journalists who "destroy" people does not exist in a vacuum away from his downplaying of Elez's abhorrent racial views. If journalists had revealed Elez, for example, was a secret left-wing antifa supporter on Bluesky, I think we can reasonably doubt Vance's reaction would have been the same. Edit: Now that you've brought Vance's tweet into focus, it's also interesting that he does not think Elez is currently a "bad dude" when he's expressly stated a desire to normalize hatred against an entire ethnicity
• camillomiller 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • Aurornis 2y ago
    I’m amazed at the mental gymnastics I’m witnessing from people trying to defend 100% of what’s happening. When people were criticizing the age of the people on the team, the narrative was that they are young and energetic adults and that it’s offensive to bring their age into question. As soon as one of them (age 25!) was discovered to have written some blatantly racist remarks, the narrative flipped to pleas to forgive them because they’re just kids. Not to mention how quickly this all went from shining a light on the situation to insisting that we blindly trust claims of corruption with no evidence or even independent review. It’s all so absurd to watch. Regardless of where you fall on the political side, the intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy is so blatant that you can’t possibly ignore it unless you’re resigned to being so hyper-partisan that anything goes as long as it’s done by your team.
    • croes 2y ago
      The more amazing part is the total lack of qualification. What besides IT knowledge qualifies them including Musk to do what they claim to do? Sounds more like McKinsey on steroids.
      • sidibe 2y ago
        They have a competent skin tone and sex. All these questions about "competence" and "merit" come up if a woman or black person have a professional career but look at recent hires for DoD head, Andreessen Horowitz partner, or DOGE and you see what they really mean
    • jlawson 2y ago
      > As soon as one of them (age 25!) was discovered to have written some blatantly racist remarks, the narrative flipped to pleas to forgive them because they’re just kids. Yeah, you just made that up. The "narrative" about the 25-year-old's remarks was not based on his age. This is the narrative, from JD Vance the vice president himself: "Here’s my view: I obviously disagree with some of Elez’s posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life. We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever. So I say bring him back. If he’s a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that." [0] [0] https://x.com/JDVance/status/1887900880143343633 https://x.com/JDVance/status/1887900880143343633 Obviously the operative line is the central one about not rewarding journalists who try to destroy people, "Ever". That means regardless of who the target is or their age. >intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy is so blatant that you can’t possibly ignore it Hypocritical intellectual dishonesty indeed.
• _1tan 2y ago
  Just out of curiosity, has anyone here been able to find one of the sites where "the COM" convenes or am I too old to see?
  • lolrofl33 2y ago
    Mostly happens on Telegram and forums like OGUsers these days.
  • Everdred2dx 2y ago
    As another commenter said, Telegram. 404 media has ran multiple stories on them. Here is one: https://www.404media.co/inside-the-com-world-war-robberies-brickings-and-drama/ https://www.404media.co/inside-the-com-world-war-robberies-b...
• ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  Linked previously here (currently flagged and dead): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42979187 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42979187 Good thorough article on another wild development in this story. Deserves to be seen and read.
  • zfg 2y ago
    [flagged]
  • pityJuke 2y ago
    Have emailed dang to see if he'll unflag it. Agreed, previously I was amenable to the "they're young and smart" (but I'd counter with "not wise") take, but no, some of these people are just actually evil.
    • zfg 2y ago
      There was another submission of it here as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42981120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42981120 Also flagged dead.
    • JKCalhoun 2y ago
      [flagged]
• deleted 2y ago
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• relaxing 2y ago
  Good reporting here. Clarifies why the kid was fired for leaking documents - it was specifically for leaking internal corporate documents to a competitor. The details about cybercrime discords involved in SWATting and DDOS attacks are fascinating. The idea that anyone involved in this would be fast-tracked for a clearance is beyond the pale.
  • ketlag 2y ago
    He was in the com chat, which is a domestic tier one threat. There is no way any fast-tracking would solve this, unless monsieur big balls is an American spy, when in reality he's an overly caffeinated kid who has no idea how bad he's screwing up his, and while we're at it our country's, future.
  • derbOac 2y ago
    I personally think it says volumes about how those in the Trump-Musk group (Musk group?) see this. They see the task as infiltrating an adversary, requiring someone with the technical skills to do so but who is also disposable. This in their mind is not about improving anything in the government for citizens, or with regard to US interests, it's about gaining access to a hostile entity without regard to their interests or the long-term interests of the persons actually doing the activity. It doesn't matter if they compromise US security, because the US is a hostile adversary, and they don't want to deal with people who might hesitate because of families or a reputation to uphold. If this person gets in trouble for security breaches or racism or whatever, they just fire them and replace them with another 19 year old with nothing left to lose and/or plenty of time left to go another path later.
    • relaxing 2y ago
      That’s generally true of political operatives. The problem here is having such activities in his past makes him an exploitable by criminal organizations or foreign adversaries who would seek the sensitive information he now has access to.
      • ttyprintk 2y ago
• wobblyasp 2y ago
  Say what you will about the cuts, you can't have people with zero clearance being given access to all of this data.
  • HideousKojima 2y ago
    The president has absolute authority on who has access to classified data (with the exception of some nuclear secrets)
    • a12k 2y ago
      They probably meant “should,” not can’t.
    • dkjaudyeqooe 2y ago
      That's presidential fiat, not clearance.
    • esmevane 2y ago
      No, that isn't correct. Clearance is a process and it hasn't been obeyed, and the ultimate purpose of it is to both audit potential recipients and train them in security protocols. The president can't elude it, though he can pardon them for federal crimes, which they're committing a lot of.
      • FergusArgyll 2y ago
        No that isn't correct. The authority of classification rests solely with the executive branch and the policies are established by EO. A President can absolutely classify and declassify whatever he wants. This has been done a million times. "It is true that the President has broad authority to classify and declassify, derived from the President’s dual role “as head of the Executive Branch and as Commander in Chief” of the armed forces. The “authority to classify and control access to information bearing on national security... flows primarily from this constitutional investment of power in the President and exists quite apart from any explicit congressional grant" ... "Finally, as the district court recognized, the suggestion that courts can declassify information raises separation of powers concerns.... such determinations encroach upon the President’s undisputedly broad authority in the realm of national security." - The New York Times v. Central Intelligence Agency, No. 18-2112 (2d Cir. 2020) The only reason the material was not considered declassified in that case was because the possible declassification was "inadvertent" etc etc. Even that ruling does not go far enough, and I'd be willing to give 10:1 odds SCOTUS would give Pres. full and complete powers over classification
• wahnfrieden 2y ago
  Another DOGE member created a tool that generates ballot images to be used by counting machines to satisfy any statistical outcome requirements: https://bsky.app/profile/denisedwheeler.bsky.social/post/3lhowh3ijgs2f https://bsky.app/profile/denisedwheeler.bsky.social/post/3lh... He worked in contact with Musk and his sponsorship to create this tool Interesting cybercrime research credentials Yes there's not evidence available that this research was used for crime, just that the project is capable of what's described and that it was done under Musk's sponsorship and that he was hired after building this in contact with Musk
  • campbel 2y ago
    I'd encourage folks to go look at the source code for the referenced project https://github.com/DevrathIyer/ballotproof/tree/master https://github.com/DevrathIyer/ballotproof/tree/master. This does not strike me as nefarious in any way and there is a really valid reason for generating the ballot images -- testing, which is exactly how it is used in the project.
    • rcpt 2y ago
      [flagged]
      • deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      • beedeebeedee 2y ago
        How far of a step would it be to produce this type of manipulation? https://www.wcia.com/business/press-releases/ein-presswire/776992724/analysis-of-2024-election-results-in-clark-county-indicates-manipulation/ https://www.wcia.com/business/press-releases/ein-presswire/7...
        • rcpt 2y ago
          I don't know because I don't have access to the missing binder https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/12/politics/missing-russia-intelligence-trump-dg/ https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/12/politics/missing-rus...
• SamBam 2y ago
  Is it the same Edward Big Baller that tweeted that Elon stole the election and is setting up more computers within the government to be hacked? https://bsky.app/profile/cartwright776.bsky.social/post/3lhr4zni7ts2z https://bsky.app/profile/cartwright776.bsky.social/post/3lhr...
  • brcmthrowaway 2y ago
    Why is there no one explaining this?
    • 0xcde4c3db 2y ago
      Probably because it's implausible, trivial to fake, and there's no way to conclusively prove it's real without the original tweet still being up.
  • laidoffamazon 2y ago
    That’s not the same guy clearly
    • rcpt 2y ago
      https://x.com/natedog155/status/1886180417549545674?s=19 https://x.com/natedog155/status/1886180417549545674?s=19 I think it is the same guy.
  • pityJuke 2y ago
    No, this is clearly not the same guy. This is just someone who took Coristine's previous handle [0]. That post was made 1 day after the WIRED article revealing his handle. Lots of conspiracies around election stealing going round (and sadly, quite prevalent in some corners of Bluesky), don't fall for it! [0]: https://www.wired.com/story/edward-coristine-tesla-sexy-path-networks-doge/ https://www.wired.com/story/edward-coristine-tesla-sexy-path... - "He also *previously* used an account on X with the username @edwardbigballer"
    • jillyboel 2y ago
• BenFranklin100 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • slg 2y ago
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• bloopernova 2y ago
  And now musk is calling for the impeachment of Judge Paul Engelmayer who blocked his department from accessing government payment/financial systems. https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5134725-elon-musk-impeachment-demand/ https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5134725-elon-musk-impe... This should be mandatory reading for everyone who argues this is just fine: https://www.amazon.com/They-Thought-Were-Free-Germans/dp/022652583X/ https://www.amazon.com/They-Thought-Were-Free-Germans/dp/022...
  • koolba 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • bloopernova 2y ago
      If it were you or I, we'd petition our representative. Musk can ask the speaker of the house directly, he can speak to the president directly. You or I do not have the access that musk has, nor do we have the amplified speech that he has. Please don't whatabout. That does nothing for any kind of conversation.
    • intended 2y ago
      >"I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price," Schumer, who was then minority leader, said at the time. "You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions." This was during the overturning of Roe v Wade. I can pull out statements from Greene suggesting execution as a quicker way to remove Nancy Pelosi. But Greene perhaps is just too easy. Trump has had some choice words too, eg after the inaugural prayer service, he called the reverend a "Radical Left hard line Trump hater" And lest people forget, the right - globally - plays offense. We would all love a truce for sure, I'd love to see it happen. Edit: I’ve seen this happen in a few threads. Examples of uncivil things being said by democrats. Except the examples are shorn of context, and typically it’s under a situation of immense duress. The Dem base today would want their representatives to say more forceful things - if only to reach PR parity. Elon is hoping to impeach a judge, who is enforcing the law, and what remains of the balance of powers. Saying this politely doesn’t pardon the act, nor does it delegitimize genuine outrage from an outrageous event. Losing reproductive rights, creating a global security crisis, are disastrous things.
• jrflowers 2y ago
  [flagged]
• dang 2y ago
  All: if you're going to comment here, please make sure you're up on the guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, and don't post low-information / high-indignation comments that could just as easily appear in any related thread. Such generic comments make discussion less interesting and more activating. That's not what we're trying for here. Rather, we want curious conversation. I know that's not so easy when a situation is intense, infuriating, frightening, distressing, and so on. But we need to protect this site for its specific mandate—which is fragile at the best of times—so please make the effort. As some of you know, this article was posted a dozen times and immediately flagkilled by users. I turned the flags off on this one because there's interesting new information in the story. But now it's up to the commenters to prove that was a good decision by co-creating a discussion that is interesting, curious, and has to do with the specifics of the article. If we end up with yet-another interchangeable flamewar about $BigTopic, that will only confirm that the flaggers were right, so those of you who want fewer of these threads to be flagged have a particular interest in sticking to the intended spirit of the site and proving that a substantively different discusson is possible. Edit: if you want to reply to this, please uncollapse the child comment below and reply there. Your views are welcome! I just also want to conserve space at the top of the thread.
  • dang 2y ago
    I spent all day responding to the replies here, and then detaching them in order to save space at the top of the thread. But I just had a better idea. This is a stub comment so we have a single root to collapse the replies. This way (1) replies can stay close to their parent (the top comment) without flooding the screen with offtopicness; and (2) we can all re-experience the timeless truth of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorem_of_software_engineering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorem_of_softwar.... If you want to reply, reply here. I've moved all the original replies back so everyone's on the same playing field.
    • dkjaudyeqooe 2y ago
      > All: please don't post the sort of low-information / high-indignation comment that could just as easily appear in any semi-related thread. Such generic comments make the discussion less interesting and more activating. That's not what we're trying for here. We'd love to have the sort of useful discussion you're aiming for, but all new discussions that reference Musk are being systematically flagged by apparent supporters of Musk. We're being censored.
• ty6853 2y ago
  A career fed guy in his 50s being forced to beg for his job in a 15 minute teleconference to an arrogant zoomer in shorts and an unbuttoned suit is peak representation of democracy.
  • libertarian1 2y ago
    this '50 yo fed guy' is a parasite if he cannot justify his work for the nation. 'arrogant zoomer' lmao
    • frogperson 2y ago
      20 year old are dumb as shit, you couldn't explain anything to me when I was 20 because I already knew everything. A subject matter expert in some obscure government office might not be able to dumb it down well enough in 15 minutes especially if they have no idea who their audience is ahead of time. Have some empathy.
      • ty6853 2y ago
        I have some empathy, mostly because it may be challenging for them to retrain and they have been institutionalized. I hope they are given some runway or options to prepare for the private sector. But viscerally it is deeply, exquisitely satisfying to observe feds have shit canned their parasitic positions predicated on collection by armed tax collectors.
  • fn-mote 2y ago
    This would be a lot more powerful with a citation. I did read the article but didn’t find this story you are referring to.
    • ty6853 2y ago
      “My colleagues are getting 15-minute one-on-one check-ins with 19, 20, 21-year-old college graduates asking to justify their existence,” one speaker at a recent town hall in northern Virginia said without identifying himself or his agency due to fear of retaliation. https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/07/politics/musk-doge-staffers-federal-government-downsizing-invs/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/07/politics/musk-doge-staffers-f...
• newsclues 2y ago
  [flagged]
• fabian2k 2y ago
  Ignoring the horrifying political parts, I think one aspect here about data access that is inherently worrying is that it seems like all usual controls were bypassed and the DOGE people had very low level access to systems. So there are probably copies of sensitive data now in their possession, and nobody knows exactly what was copied and where it is stored. This kind of access would be dangerous even in the hands of principled and well-meaning people. Giving it to people with glaring red flags like here is just entirely irresponsible.
  • the_snooze 2y ago
    At the very least, it’s a field day for foreign intelligence in DC. Offering these guys some money, women, status, or drink would pay massive dividends.
    • jfengel 2y ago
      Have they even done the training that says "watch out for women trying to get into your pants"? Or did they just show up?
      • moshun 2y ago
        I think we both know the answer. Most of these DOGE people wouldn’t have been allowed in the building, much less the system root a couple of months ago because they’d never pass a clearance check.
        • 1oooqooq 2y ago
          technically, a clearance and background check have never been done on political appointees. the fbi openly says so. at least this is not new... the new thing is the low level of petty criminals being apointed.
          • acdha 2y ago
            Political appointees don’t get root, and they still had to get clearance for sensitive materials (as it’s legally required for the people securing a SCIF not to allow anyone who doesn’t have clearance in the door). Part of why the new administration is trying to bull through the process is that his first term had many delays due to appointees failing those checks.
• amazingamazing 2y ago
  The biggest irony to me is that Musk wanted to reneg on the Twitter sale. It's interesting to consider the timeline where he was allowed to not buy it. Truly a "canon" event, that one. I'm also not convinced this is a "security breach." They're being allowed to do it. It's more like an unforced error, if anything. Not that it changes anything material about the situation. That said - a small majority of congress is currently complicit in this, but I expect that to reverse as many Republican states will have congresspeople whose constituents are affected. I'd expect by May of this year some of this will have been reversed. Sadly that's too long and some damage will be done perhaps permanently...
  • wnevets 2y ago
    > The biggest irony to me is that Musk wanted to reneg on the Twitter sale With everything he has lied about why assume he wasn't also lying about that? He has been caught lying about being good at videos games.
    • amazingamazing 2y ago
      He went through great lengths to try to get out of it. I suppose it's possible that was a charade, as well, though.
      • verdverm 2y ago
        I think he was likely after a lower price than the impulsive one he offered
      • mattnewton 2y ago
        I always assumed it was because he believed the price he was paying was now too high anfter the tech downturn, and he wanted to try lower it a few billion. It’s roughly worth a few million in lawyer fees to take a 10% chance to lower the purchase price by just over a billion.
      • fragmede 2y ago
        would you mind looking like a fool for a chance to save a couple billion dollars? there's no fair market value for Twitter because there's only one Twitter. If you're rich, money is just a means to an end. you see something, you take it. If you think you can save a couple (billion) bucks on your way out, why not give it a shot? it's already yours
• outside1234 2y ago
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  • talldayo 2y ago
    [flagged]
• thrance 2y ago
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• wnevets 2y ago
  I wouldn't trust these criminals with access to a staging database let alone access to data on every single America. > Musk’s DOGE teen was fired by cybersecurity firm for leaking company secrets https://fortune.com/2025/02/07/musks-doge-teen-edward-coristine-fired-cybersecurity-internship-leaking-company-secrets/ https://fortune.com/2025/02/07/musks-doge-teen-edward-corist...
• VagabundoP 2y ago
  Is anyone really surprised here? This is Elon who is neck deep in the cesspool parts of the internet and attracts the same kinds of people. They will continue to break every rule they can and ignore the legal push back as much as possible. They know that there is little they could do here that will result in any criminal prosecution. Batten down the hatches and expect worse to come, the safeties are off.
• retskrad 2y ago
  When Elon stripped the Twitter organisation down to its fundamental parts, saved tons of money and the service is still ran like usual, people said the he’s a moron and the service couldn’t possibly run without a bloated and inefficient workforce. They were wrong. Now that Elon is applying the same philosophy to all of his companies and now the federal government, people are once again saying he doesn’t know what he’s doing. At a certain point, you have to ask yourself if these people who complain like headless chickens are actually serious people …
  • amazingamazing 2y ago
    Is it really impressive to reduce expenses drastically if you also reduce revenue drastically? Secondly it's doubly unimpressive because I believe Musk could have actually maintained very similar revenue levels, but the haphazard and immediate way of laying everyone off was incredibly counterproductive.
    • jlawson 2y ago
      Revenue went down a lot less than expenses. So yes, profits went up a ton and are now positioned to go up even more as revenue recovers and the tech keeps functioning. The revenue reduction was also more related to political positioning/image than technical capacity of the platform.
      • amazingamazing 2y ago
        You base this off what? X isn't a public company.
        • jlawson 2y ago
          Let's look it up together. Musk has approximately doubled X's profits from 0.68B to 1.25B. [0] article quote: "During the last full year prior to Musk’s takeover, Twitter reported adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) of about $682 million and about $5 billion in revenue. In 2024, X had an EBITDA of about $1.25 billion and annual revenue of $2.7 billion. While X’s revenue is about half of what it used to be, the company’s costs are just about a quarter of what they were before. As per the WSJ, investors noted that these were better figures than they had anticipated." Even this [1] hilariously biased article is forced to admit in the middle that yes, X's profits have gone up since Musk took over. "Now X also, of course, has reduced its overheads significantly, by culling around 80% of staff, so X’s profit margins are now much better as a result." [0] https://www.teslarati.com/elon-musk-x-doubled-ebitda-since-2022-takeover-report/ https://www.teslarati.com/elon-musk-x-doubled-ebitda-since-2... [1] https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/x-is-still-far-from-profitability/722602/ https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/x-is-still-far-from-pr...
• 9283409232 2y ago
  Why are high level figures in these departments just letting them walk in and have access? Tell them to kick rocks until they have proper clearances.
  • tristan957 2y ago
    USAID employees did and were fired for it.
    • 9283409232 2y ago
      Refuse to leave then. It is the entire point of civil disobedience. Make a spectacle of being dragged out.
      • tristan957 2y ago
        I don't mean this negatively toward you in any way, but it is easy to say when you aren't in that situation.
        • 9283409232 2y ago
          You're right but I also didn't swear an oath to protecting the country.
  • threeseed 2y ago
    Because Elon has the authority of the President who can override clearances. US government was simply never designed for scenarios like this.
    • jdross 2y ago
      Arguably it was designed explicitly for the chief executive having control of the executive branch we just haven’t had executives with this level of interest in making major changes in 40+ years. Was somewhat common to shake up the scope of the federal gov’t when the bureaucracy was much smaller in the 1800’s and early 1900’s
• 9283409232 2y ago
  The question no one asking is why Elon is sending a team of teenage programmers and not a team of financial auditors if he really wanted to cut government spending?
  • JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > why Elon is sending a team of teenage programmers and not a team of financial auditors if he really wanted to cut government spending? History has one answer for the deployment of reams of young fiery-loyalist men to the front lines: cannon fodder.
    • varjag 2y ago
      IMO it's more reminiscent of Red Guards from Cultural Revolution era China.
      • thephyber 2y ago
        And university students during the Iranian Revolution.
      • watwut 2y ago
        [flagged]
    • fujinghg 2y ago
      Old enough to do the job, too young to ask the right questions.
  • amazingamazing 2y ago
    Reporting on this is terrible. There are also senior (in age and experience) people, but much of the focus is on the youngins for obvious reasons. Musk also believes (either arrogance, or true belief) that much of this stuff can be figured out from first principals without much need of traditional experts.
    • 2y ago
• engineer_22 2y ago
  The stakes are high for these kids. They're obviously very talented individuals, but they're in deep. The reality probably isn't lost on them. I hope they stay safe, they're doing important work.
  • totallymike 2y ago
    Wait, what important work are they doing?
    • engineer_22 2y ago
      Reportedly, seeking out fraud and mismanagement in federal government.
  • trickyager 2y ago
    Are they, though? I'm not trying to be flippant. Rather, it's entirely unclear to me any positive outcome for these individuals or American citizen in general as a result of this effort. Can you provide vetted sources that accurately communciate actual benefits as a result of this effory for anyone other than Elon Musk and Donald Trump as individuals?
    • try_the_bass 2y ago
      > Can you provide vetted sources that accurately communciate actual benefits as a result of this effory for anyone other than Elon Musk and Donald Trump as individuals? Can you provide such sources that communicate the benefits of this effort for only Elon Musk and Donald Trump? I have seen a lot of speculation on the matter, with much of it plausible, but nothing concrete and nothing that really stands up to intense scrutiny. At this point we're all working on a near-total information vacuum. To claim you know anything with certainty is presumptive, at best. To claim, with anything short of first-hand knowledge, that you both know exactly what is happening and exactly why it is happening is unbelievable. Or at least it should be, but as discussion around this topic indicates, it's actually quite believable. Which is really a shame.
    • engineer_22 2y ago
• belorn 2y ago
  It has been a fairly common story, and part rumor, that intelligence agencies like to recruit young people active in the cyber criminal scene, and that the IT security industry also adapted this approach. They basically becomes part informer and part subject expert, especially since IT security expertise seems to be a difficult subject matter to teach in universities. When I studied IT security in university, about 10 years ago, I heard multiple version of this several times, with one student from my university getting employed because they managed to demonstrate a hack on a bank. I always hope that such recruits had a bit tighter surveillance from their employee, but no one in the industry describes such recruits as "highly susceptible to extortion and coercion from current members of the same gang", and absolutely no one described them as members of violent street gang. It might have been a fair label but at most, such teens were describe as smart but mischievous. Might not be the best people to be responsible for national security, or peoples bank accounts, but it seemed to be the culture of that industry. Has other people in the IT security industry had the similar experience of this culture?
  • Quarrelsome 2y ago
    while I agree there's typically a big event where the state has incredible leverage over the subject that is part of the flip. As far as we can see in this story; there is no leverage. So for all we know this guy is doing what he did in his last job and selling secrets gained working here to competitors. Imagine if DOGE feeds all the data they get their hands on into an LLM and he sells a copy of that to a foreign nation, allowing any other government a text-based interface to ask any questions of any of the internal workings of the US administration, government, citizens or even some of its secrets.
    • notahacker 2y ago
      Even without the leverage, I think that former teenage hackers turned pentesters or three-letter-agency adjuncts are hired for specific skills on the understanding they're being watched and they're probably not getting access to much more than a sandbox or adversary data and the money and freedom's all in scrupulously obeying the rules That feels a little different to hiring people with cracking credentials for auditing jobs, giving them full access to extensive government records (and possibly the right to backdoor them) in a move fast break things environment on the understanding that they're probably above the law and they're less likely to be punished than anyone barring their way. I doubt the success rate of converting teenage tearaways to scrupulous white hats in boring businesses is 100% either....
• nisten 2y ago
  Doesn't all this make the kid a lot more practically skilled at the job than most regular overpaid security engineers at most regular corps?
  • Volundr 2y ago
    For security work maybe but ostensibly this is accounting work. We are still claiming this is all an audit right? I'm not aware of anyone questioning his skillset beyond basic questions of experience. Rather what's being questioned is this person's access to highly sensitive data given his shady recent history. Like sure, maybe I'll hire an ex bank robber to help improve my security, but do I give him the code to the vault and write access to the inventory a year after he broke in?
• cjbgkagh 2y ago
  I don't like Musk and have not for many years, but the left has been venerating some very flawed people for a very long time. It’s hard to be outraged now when we’ve been selectively told to ignore the past of others. Let’s not forget that Trump is the pied piper candidate promoted by the left to make it easier to win elections. I remember when Ron Desantis was successfully undermined by the news media casting him as weird if he was even covered at all. The left celebrated at the time because they assumed Trump would be easier to beat. When our leaders are picked by their enemies it’s understandable that they’re extremely flawed. I see it as an emergent behavior where it’s easier to damage than it is to build, it’s easier to undermine an opposition than it is to build up your own side. I would suggest that political parties stop trying the pied piper strategy but if we are to learn one thing from history it should be that no-one learns anything from history. > https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/1120 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/1120
  • CamperBob2 2y ago
    I don't blame HRC's team for trying the pied-piper strategy in 2016. It would have seemed rational enough at the time. It didn't come into play in 2020 at all, though -- do you have any insight to the contrary?
    • cjbgkagh 2y ago
      It is an emergent behavior and the negative consequences, that HRC was insentiviesed to use the strategy is why it’s an emergent behavior. I don’t expect parties to learn from this mistake and not use the strategy - but for the sake of the country I really wish they didn’t. 2020 was an incumbency, I doubt the democrats felt they could realistically replace Trump with someone less likely to win.
      • gamblor956 2y ago
        HRC was insentiviesed to use the strategy is why it’s an emergent behavior. That's not what emergent behavior is... Emergent behavior is unexpected behavior that occurs as result of the addition of new rules or variables into a system arising from unexpected local maxima created by the confluence of those new rules/variables. Parties trying to get a disliked opponent to win the opposing primaries has been a strategy since the very beginning of the U.S. party system in the late 1700s. They do it because it can be very effective. Case in point: the GOP and Fox News urged Biden to run for re-election in 2024 because he was so unpopular his campaign virtually guaranteed that whoever the GOP candidate was would win. Similarly, the GOP has spent extensive resources supporting Jill Steinman and Bernie Sanders in the last 3 presidential elections, and in 2 of those elections the margin of votes those candidates got in battleground states was enough to give them the win.(Contrapositive: Obama was the pied piper candidate in 2008; Fox News promoted him with the expectation that the GOP candidate would have an easy time winning and if McCain hadn't completely bungled his campaign that likely would have been true. )
• Dowwie 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • maximilianburke 2y ago
    DOGE is the kleptocracy.
    • honroastco 2y ago
      [flagged]
    • selimthegrim 2y ago
      The DOGE makes the poison I guess.
  • acdha 2y ago
    This is just flame bait without an explanation. The spending data is already public and regularly audited, and if you want to argue kleptocracy you need to start by defining what you mean by that term, who specifically you’re referring to, and what evidence you’re basing that belief on.
    • culi 2y ago
      A corporate CEO is attempting to move the power of the purse, constitutionally delegated to the congressional branch, away from elected representatives to himself. He has broken several laws in the process including: putting civil servants on leave in violation of congressionally mandated civil service protections and shuttering a government body codified by Congress in 1998 called the USAID. This man has not been elected to any office nor appointed by the president to any cabinet positions. His only qualifications are that he is Trump's top donor. This is a kleptocratic power grab spelled out.
      • acdha 2y ago
        Are you sure the OP was talking about DOGE being the kleptocracy and not uncovering it? I wrote my comment in part because it’s vague enough that I could argue either way, and on a thread like this nothing useful will come of a low-substance observation like that.
• ein0p 2y ago
  I'd much rather Krebs actually looked into the theft of taxpayer funds by USAID, with all its "shrimp treadmills", "Iraqi Sesame Street", "transgender mice" and regime changes. I want to get to the leaves of that tree and see who really got my money. Everything else is immaterial and should be ignored as targeted attacks on their mission.
  • wrs 2y ago
    Replacing the entire security clearance and access control system of the government with the say-so of one guy is immaterial?
    • ein0p 2y ago
      You don't have evidence for what you just alleged, aside from vague, unsubstantiated allegations by Krebs.
      • wrs 2y ago
        I know how long it takes to get a security clearance.
        • ta8645 2y ago
          Elon Musk already held "top secret" security clearance. Because of Space X.
          • wrs 2y ago
            Great, and how is that relevant to all the people on this team who aren't Elon Musk?
            • ein0p 2y ago
              The president of the United States can grant, deny or withdraw clearance to anyone he wishes. He can also classify and declassify anything he wishes.
• whatshisface 2y ago
  Why isn't all government budgetary information public to begin with?
  • stonogo 2y ago
    The majority of it is. The parts that aren't tend to be personal information, which is where most of the concern comes from about this crew bypassing data controls. This work could have been done without this slash-and-burn approach. It could have been done, in fact, without involving the government at all. The people involved did not actually care before, or they would have known this.
  • frankharv 2y ago
    I totally agree. Sunshine is the best disinfectant. It seems our Continuing Resolution method of funding the government is a failure. Sorta like cost plus last year.
    • c-cube 2y ago
      Where do you see sunshine? Are the "audits" public at all? It's indistinguishable from just having Musk kill every agency he dislikes with no further proof, while siphoning data to some unspecified server. The timeline also hints at no serious audit taking place.
  • Aurornis 2y ago
    Much of it is! Journalists are already using it to debunk some of Elon’s claims like the one they only 10% of USAID reached intended targets (which appears to be based on his complete misreading of a breakdown) The real question now is where is DOGE’s evidence of all of this corruption? There are massive claims of rampant corruption, such as calling the USAID corrupt to their core, but literally zero evidenced has been revealed to anyone. The interviews I’ve caught have been Elon giving definitive statements and refusing to elaborate on anything, as if we’re supposed to trust his private judgment and ask no questions.
    • ketlag 2y ago
• picafrost 2y ago
  I recall an aphorism that government is self-governed 90% by norms and 10% by law. I don’t know if American law is being violated but certainly it is alarming to observe from the outside when the norms are totally disregarded. The US looks unstable and untrustworthy.
  • honroastco 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • mersenne 2y ago
      [flagged]
    • standardUser 2y ago
      What audit? They are mostly just stealing data.
  • KronisLV 2y ago
    Any law is only worth as much as its enforcement. Otherwise, maybe it just serves as a historical record of some intent, nothing more.
  • Slava_Propanei 2y ago
    [dead]
  • bamboozled 2y ago
    What makes me sick is how the word "fraud" is being abused now too. Like those in power in the US are redefining it to mean "things I don't like". It's very dangerous. It's incredibly Orwellian.
    • macintux 2y ago
      “Fake news” was deftly repurposed from “whatever crock of lies Trump spouted today” to “unflattering news about Trump”. Whatever his other flaws, the president is a master at demagoguery.
• cm2187 2y ago
  As all the intelligence agencies see DOGE coming their way to look into how they spend money, I think we will see many of those stories in the coming weeks.
  • chasd00 2y ago
    True, I would have tried to hit multiple agencies at the same time. Now everyone has time to get their PR in order before doge starts poking around. For the record I’m all for doge. I know if it were democrats doing this as part of Kamala’s administration it would be applauded as a bold move to hold feet to fire or some other nonsense.
    • talldayo 2y ago
      Democrats would not hand-pick a CEO with 10+ billion dollars of volatile stock wealth to direct this process.
• jdross 2y ago
  I realized I’m treading in extremely hostile waters here, but the stories I hear from folks working in DOGE are closer to “I spend 8am to 2am with the leaders of department X going through all contracts and outflows and identifying what is important versus wasteful given a target of saving $X million per day, and there are some great people in this department who really know what’s been going on and it’s been great to make a difference” Versus whatever the media is reporting
  • demosthanos 2y ago
    Where are you getting these stories from? Are you claiming to know people and to have received firsthand accounts, or is this stuff written down somewhere where the rest of us can see it and read it?
    • jdross 2y ago
      These are people I personally know working “at DOGE” (appointed in departments, but under DOGE umbrella)
      • drawkward 2y ago
        This sounds a lot like the old "my uncle works at Nintendo" rope-a-dope.
        • sinker 2y ago
          Sounds like the classic Joe Rogan "I know a guy." rumor peddling.
          • drawkward 2y ago
            Sounds like "My Canadian girlfriend"
      • IAmGraydon 2y ago
        >appointed in departments, but under DOGE umbrella What does that mean?
• j_timberlake 2y ago
  The more advanced AI gets and the more power that is at stake, the more these tech CEOs are going to drop their nice-guy acts and reveal their true intentions. The drama is going to get much worse over the coming years.
  • zapataband2 2y ago
    Uhh they've been openly talking about dismantling democracy and creating nation-states rules by corporations for literally almost a decade. JD Vance is their man in DC when trump is gone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RpPTRcz1no https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RpPTRcz1no
    • ttyprintk 2y ago
      As of September, Vance has indeed publicly cited Yarvin: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/09/13/jd-vance-new-right-political-movement-00177203 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/09/13/jd-vance-n...
      • lazystar 2y ago
        > Vance said that if Trump became president again, "I think what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, and replace them with our people. And when the courts stop you, stand before the country and say, 'The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.'"[14][49] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin well, that's certainly something.
  • chasing 2y ago
    AI's great, but so often when I hear people in power speak about it I feel like what they're really saying is: "I wish I could have the expertise to do whatever I wanted with impunity without having the hassle of all of these people who know what they're doing sitting around telling me why my ideas are terrible." And if they feel they can drop the artifice of having to pretend to play fair and be good citizen (because oftentimes you have to do that in order to get people who know what they're doing to help you), they will. And that attitude's going to cause a lot of horrible things to happen.
• 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
  Worth noting that some of the most well-known cybersecurity experts today are former cyber criminals. It may be worth investigating his past, but a person's past is often used to attack their character when there is no other argument to make. If we were all judged solely on our past, we'd all be perpetually guilty.
  • tonymet 2y ago
    That’s true. And in most other posts, the HN community is predominantly supportive of cyber criminals redeeming themselves as security experts. It’s informative that this case receives the opposite reception.
    • lolc 2y ago
      A security expert does not need access. They serve in advisory roles.
    • pityJuke 2y ago
      My mental comparison is someone like Marcus Hutchins [0]. He committed some relatively low-level cybercrime, redeemed himself, and served a punishment for it. That's someone I'm absolutely OK with rejoining the real world. But the critical thing is the community Coristine was a part of. It is legitimately classified as a child exploitation ring, and as a terror ring. That requires a lot more eyebrows before one even begins consider him rehabilitated. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Hutchins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Hutchins
  • miltonlost 2y ago
    Worth noting that this kid did this black hat shit like 3 years ago, not 30. This isn’t the kid’s past; this is his very big present. We should be judging someone’s recent behavior and possible skeletons when it comes to a security clearance. Otherwise, that’s how someone is able to be compromised.
• fujinghg 2y ago
  I used to hang around with the late 90s's versions of these guys. I grew up, had a family, have had a successful career. They went to prison. I expect the same will happen to this lot.
  • IncreasePosts 2y ago
    Not all of them did. Beto O'Rourke is doing okay for himself.
  • tonymet 2y ago
    Almost all the top tier infosec professionals had a grey-hat history. The successful ones are not likely cringe posting on LinkedIn so you wouldn’t have any idea of the successes, only the failures. Of course we all want to say : see, obedience and hard work pays off. I’m glad I didn’t do anything reckless. The truth is that the real successful people keep it to themselves.
    • johnnyanmac 2y ago
      Well here these kids are broadcating their black hats to the world. Seems like a good sign if this trend continues.
  • apical_dendrite 2y ago
    I hung around with some guys like this too. I wouldn't trust them with even a trivial amount of money. They threw some fun parties though.
    • zeroCalories 2y ago
      I feel like the people I knew could be trusted with money, but were straight up dangerous to be around. Most of them were smart enough to make and keep friends, but still had a psychopathic streak.
  • n1b0m 2y ago
    Except in this case they’ll probably get sweeping presidential pardons
• AlexCoventry 2y ago
  How do I access this "Com"? I'm curious.
  • Quarrelsome 2y ago
    I might suggest that if you have to ask then you shouldn't be going there.
  • layer8 2y ago
    Probably by doing something that gets you an invite.
• mmastrac 2y ago
  The reason security clearances are so important, and why people are so upset about randos going through so much sensitive government information, is that things like this can be used by adversaries to lean on these employees in the future. One of these kids might have worse skeletons in their closet. Given how well-known their names are, adversaries of the USA are likely combing through their own intelligence archives, etc and might decide to extract their own pound of flesh from the government. Or, even more horrible, they might have family that adversaries can lean on. Subverting the process to meme faster and blitz the other side puts the entire American system in pretty serious danger. If it's more important to destroy the system than make serious change, I suppose that's how you'd do it.
  • stainablesteel 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • mmastrac 2y ago
      Is there a real source to this? I'll humour you and try to find one. The rabbit hole leads down sketchy sites to sketchy tweets, to someone who eventually sources it as "vBulletin, Biden basement" and links to a Musk tweet with no further info. [0] Smells a lot like "flooding the zone with shit", but I don't think anyone is pro-corruption. Assuming this is true, and it seems like misinfo, I hope that the right has a plan to remove all the corruption they are current in the process of installing -- obviously starting at the top with a leader that launched a memecoin to fleece true believers (also quoted as saying "I love the undereducated"). [0] https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1888581827285148067 https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1888581827285148067 EDIT: it's even sketchier. Following the source leads to this very likely biased [1] page that estimates her net worth as approx 10M-30M based on... what? It doesn't even match the sums of the document below. She clearly made 1M-5M as an advisor for Chamath's Social Capital, and has some decent savings before that (on the order of a few million) but this estimation of net worth and faux-outrage is laughably transparent. [1] https://www.insidebidensbasement.org/appointees/samantha-power https://www.insidebidensbasement.org/appointees/samantha-pow...
• Waterluvian 2y ago
  Of all the ways for China, Russia, Iran, Israel, etc. to get access to sensitive data like this, these events feel like they’re by a wide margin the most likely way for them to do so. These people are going to cut corners and be sloppy and stuff is just going to end up on USB keys and whatnot.
  • mistrial9 2y ago
    but isn't this three more stages past that, already? Isn't it that Equifax and US Security Clearance System and the private secure Phone System for Senators and a long list of other things already cracked wide open? Because loyal DC bureaucrats with zero coding IT skills, sub-sub-sub contracted the real work then swapped contractors ump-teen times already, with the resulting systems all "super extra secret" black box except the right checks come out without fail? On the extreme other hand, motivated World's Richest Man gets the inner keys in two weeks to all DC payment process flows ? Make no mistake, this is disaster in the making, and lets get some details in the sunlight IMHO. but it seems laughable to claim that "China might get more info" when China (and a few others) already have been shown to run circles around core DC IT.
• malkia 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • purplethinking 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • malkia 2y ago
      How would you know what I've been screaming for the last 15 years? I said in the "digital world" - equating what a dumbass does with his goons thinking he knows everything. Most of us here are software engineers, we all know that sudden change causes issues, even if it's for the good. He does this without any transparency, and just spits out like a cowboy programmer - "Here I saved it! I'm the hero! I've changed the whole `codebase` on Friday afternoon - so enjoy!" No it doesn't work like this... Sorry
      • righthand 2y ago
        The country is indeed learning about tech-debt.
    • dashundchen 2y ago
      If there is waste, then the proper channel to address is through Congress which controls the budget. The executive is not a dictator and cannot impound or dissolve congressionally appropriated funds. The GOP controls both houses and could easily do this if they were so convinced. Instead they're laser focused on cutting taxes on billionaires to the tune of $4 trillion dollars
      • 0xcde4c3db 2y ago
        And even supposing that an administration doesn't fully trust Congress (or its ability to execute through parliamentary gridlock), there are a bunch of people in the executive branch whose whole-ass job it is to investigate this stuff, and could legitimately be directed to shift their priorities without Congressional approval. Oops, scratch that; there were a bunch of people with that job. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_dismissals_of_inspectors_general https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_dismissals_of_inspectors_...
• lenerdenator 2y ago
  All I can think of when I hear about DOGE is Robert McNamara's Department of Defense, where the "Whiz Kids" from industry and academia were supposed to magically fix all sorts of problems with the military's bureaucracy. After all, they went to the right schools, and really, how hard could war-making be? We lost in Vietnam and there are people being born there with birth defects from Operation Ranch Hand to this day partially due to their work, but at least they got to pad out their resumes and were set for life as consultants.
  • Kinrany 2y ago
    > After all, they went to the right school The selection process here appears to have been the opposite of traditional credentialism
    • jenny91 2y ago
      It's a new spin on an old idea. Software whiz kids are what a part of society now see as the cream of the crop.
    • StackRanker3000 2y ago
      Actually, is it known by which criteria Musk picked these people? Or do we just have speculation? I haven’t read any detailed reporting about that.
    • acdha 2y ago
      It’s not the same, but seeing how many of them have prior personal experience working for him or Thiel it looks like a form of old boys network rather than a fair hiring process. Government is supposed to be fair about these things because the stakes are higher due to various legal requirements: for example, suppose that Boeing sued claiming that a Musk appointee helped SpaceX get a contract – even if everything was done in good faith and SpaceX was the better vendor, it could cost a lot and delay projects for years trying to prove that in court. The concerns about things like Treasury data come up in the same context. If someone sues claiming that their data was used incorrectly, if the access was on an official system it will have logs and policies which could be used to show that the same appointee never accessed that data and wouldn’t have been able to send it outside. If the stories about things like personal devices or outside cloud services are true, that may no longer be easy or even possible and a lawsuit might be successful even if they didn’t actually share data with their old boss.
• chmorgan_ 2y ago
  Why the security concerns now and not with the thousands of employees with potentially similar access? NOW it's a concern because the idea occurred to people that who might have access to data is important? Imo the faux outrage is so far beyond rational that it turns people away. Let's have a reasonable discussion about data access and controls, and whether they are being followed, rather than some reflexive response based on political points of view.
  • Spooky23 2y ago
    Because controls ensures that people stay honest. I worked on a treasury system for a significant (not federal) organization. By design, I couldn’t even see aspects of the system directly. When you give people unfettered access to sensitive information, your risk is exponentially greater. Those people can be compromised, tricked, engage in fraud, be victims or frauds, etc. Worse, because access is unfettered and controls bypassed, you may never know.
  • conception 2y ago
    Uhh the other employees did go through the proper reviews? That’s why they are employees. That’s why there isn’t outrage at people who were hired and vetted for their jobs.
  • RIMR 2y ago
    > Why the security concerns now and not with the thousands of employees with potentially similar access? Because there aren't "thousands of employees" with this kind of access, and few people who have had it were thoroughly vetted. > Let's have a reasonable discussion about data access and controls, and whether they are being followed, rather than some reflexive response based on political points of view. We are well beyond partisan "points of view" here. This isn't really about policy, this is about the law and whether or not anyone has any interest in enforcing it.
    • themgt 2y ago
      Because there aren't "thousands of employees" with this kind of access, and few people who have had it were thoroughly vetted. I mean, we've had multiple classified info leaks by low-level employees, most recently a 20 year old Massachusetts Air National Guard member who leaked hundreds of top secret Pentagon docs on the Ukraine War to his bros on the "Thug Shaker Central" Discord channel. Some hundreds of thousands of people had access to this stuff. If there are specific subsets of documents with very limited need-to-know access, you need to be clear about which documents and how many people have access. We are well beyond partisan "points of view" here. This isn't really about policy, this is about the law and whether or not anyone has any interest in enforcing it. Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution: "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America." The law is the president has ultimate authority over the executive branch and e.g. all classified information and can disclose it to anyone he wants. Obviously there are certain asterisks and exceptions to this authority, so if you want to be specific about which laws being violated please go ahead, but painting with a broad brush that individuals who have been delegated authority by the president are breaking the law by accessing executive branch information is unserious. The claim that no one in America is enforcing the law anymore is extremely grave and should not be made lightly by a civic minded person. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Teixeira#Publication_of_leaked_material https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Teixeira#Publication_of_l...
• xyst 2y ago
  Why this unvetted person(s) has been allowed to even touch or access critical systems speaks volumes about the state of US government. We are at the neoliberal endgame. Billionaires and multibillion dollar corporations received massive tax cuts during the first term, and this will likely continue under the second term. He’s going all out for this billionaire donors, buddies, and of course himself. We have a kleptocracy at the federal level with the intent to dismantle it as much as possible. End game here is federal/people control end, and “network states” (balaji) model with corporations acting as governance over land, regions, and law. Thiel and the rest of the billionaire class are the parasites that need to be purged. Whether we will recover after 4 years remains to be seen.
  • austinwade 2y ago
    Wait until you find out about the grift that the billionaires you don't hear so much about have been pulling. I agree with your concerns around turbulence, but the audits of these shady government agencies needs to be done.
• varsketiz 2y ago
  An angle I didn't notice discussed here on HN is that while this confusion about DOGE among the general US public continues, it's a great time for China to advance it's agenda and to weaken the US.
  • cmrdporcupine 2y ago
    I can almost guarantee that channels of communication have opened between the EU, Canada, and other allies and the Chinese gov't on ways to de-escalate existing tariffs and restrictions (that were often enacted in concert with the US) now that the US has turned on them. Here in Canada we put 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs the same time as the US did, as part of an attempt to defend the local autosector, which lives on both side of the border. But if Trump is set to demolish that anyways, and make it infeasible for the Big3 to work effectively across North America, how long before China comes knocking?
• davesque 2y ago
  Seems safe to assume that the DOGE kids probably scored copies of the data they had access to even if that access was or will be revoked, especially considering that some of them have a history of data theft as mentioned in the article.
  • A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y ago
    If true, it should surface soon enough.
  • micromacrofoot 2y ago
    almost without a doubt, you'd have to be unwaveringly upright to enter a vault of treasure and not cram some gold into your pockets
  • zeroCalories 2y ago
    That seems so incredibly stupid and risky. You're in with Elon and get to help shape the future of the country. Why jeopardize that? Trump will only pardon so much.
    • Volundr 2y ago
      I mean he's already demonstrated that beating a cop with a flagpole falls in the category of things he'll pardon, so I'm not really sure what is and isn't in scope now.
  • billy99k 2y ago
    Beyond speculation, how do you even know this? Everything I've seen so far related to this jumps to wild conclusions about the data these employees can allegedly access with absolutely no proof of anything. It's almost the same as the conclusion that the Dominion voting machines were illegally changing votes based on insecure security practices around the networks at the polling locations. There was no proof that this happened and there's no proof that these employees are copying all of our data or writing to it. It's all fearmongering and trying to distract from the main point: The government has been wasting hundreds of millions of our tax dollars and a good portion of it are going into the pockets of politicians and their supporters. There was literally no way to track the money or oversight. Someone should be going to jail over this.
• swat535 2y ago
  I am wondering what will happen at the end of all of this? I see a few possibilities here: 1. Either this project will be a tremendous success for the American people, saving millions and uncovering massive fraud and waste in the government thanks to the audits 2. It will ab a complete failure, nothing of value will get discovered, published and time and money will be wasted for everyone involved (giving the DNC a huge attack vector for the next election) 3. Alternatively, some efforts may yield some positive net results but others will fail to bring anything of value in fruition, this to me, seems to most realistic outcome, but who knows? This is going to be an interesting experiment for the rest of the world to watch.
  • daveguy 2y ago
    You left out this possibility: A critical subversion of cybersecurity in the United States that leads to decades of compromised computer systems throughout our society -- from infrastructure to military to banking. I heard someone refer to this as a speedrun of the fall of the roman empire, and given the lack of ethics at the top levels of this administration I wouldn't be surprised. "giving the DNC a huge attack vector..." -- I think you're mistaking an attack vector for a realization that this regime is incompetent and against the safety and security of the United States population.
  • matwood 2y ago
    I'm thinking 2/3, but the part you're missing is that the process will destroy US influence around the world. Which may be the real point of all this. It's hard to know where Musk's allegiances really lie. With that said, the US has been in the dominant world position for so long, it's like they forget what it takes to be there. Soft power, by giving people food and support - like USAID does, is part of what helps keep the US in that dominant position.
    • Etherlord87 2y ago
      I hear this argument a lot and I have two thoughts about it: 1. USA is a rich country, and that's why it can afford helping other countries. But what if you overspend? Now your economy is weak, you lag behind, and sooner or later competitors help more than you (if it's really the best thing to do to rule the world). So maybe optimizing spending is in order? And I think one strategy to optimize an overgrown system is to just burn the old, and start from scratch. 2. Does the "soft power" work if people get used to your help? Maybe it's useful to suspend the help every now and then for all the beneficiaries to realize the magnitude of the help? I wonder how much of the negative effects are read as "evil USA stopped giving us money" and how much "oh so it was USA that was helping us all this time!" Finally, if the help resumes after a new president is elected, won't people forgive USA for suspending it, as that was done by Trump, and now there's this new president that we need to be grateful to? Just some thoughts of a layman.
• cytocync 2y ago
  Elon Musk's DOGE team is raising eyebrows with their seemingly reckless behavior. Their actions are causing concern for several reasons: * A 19-year-old with a questionable past has been given access to sensitive US government systems. * The team is reportedly using this access to dig through student loan data. * This could potentially put millions of Americans at risk of identity theft or other forms of financial exploitation.
• stanislavb 2y ago
  The sad part is that a lot of people here are complicit, too. I'm sorry, but that's the truth. So many were either brainwashed or put to believe that Kamala is bad ... as bad as Trump. So many in the US showed inaction. You couldn't vote for the "lesser evil" and were happy to let the real evil in the house instead. And now it seems too late. It might be too late. I would bet money that the US won't be able to get rid of these new parasites in the White House for many years. And even after that, it will take generations for the US to gain the trust of its partners and the world. Because trust that's once lost is very difficult to regain. It seems that at this point, it might be better to "simply" accept the new imperator(s) and learn to live with them and their new rules. And remember, they are NOT breaking the law, they are bending "rules" for the good of humanity... (yeah... nah). They have never tried and will never try to enrich themselves for the sake of their egos.
  • righthand 2y ago
    Please don't spread doomspeak (aka Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt: FUD).
• jimmar 2y ago
  Apparently 18 years old is old enough to be handed a rifle and sent into war but not access a database.
  • acdha 2y ago
    That 18 year old recruit goes through training and has to pass tests before they’re allowed to use that rifle. Ask a vet how much time they spent training on following orders, using force only when and how authorized, etc. and the difference will obvious. Nobody is saying that the administration can’t hire people, the objection is to bypassing all of the rules which previous administrations have followed.
    • md5crypto 2y ago
      What rules did big balls need to pass in order to run an SQL read query?
      • acdha 2y ago
        Anyone getting access to a federal system is going to need some kind of background check; training on and agreement to follow the rules about not misusing that data, copying it to unauthorized systems, trying to circumvent a security control, etc. If the reports about having administrator access are true, that would likely involve stronger policies since administrators not only have greater access but also fewer constraints which could prevent misuse of that access (e.g. the normal user interface might not let you download PII in bulk but a SQL query wouldn’t have that restriction unless carefully built in). Again, none of this is remotely normal and it hasn’t previously been a contentious point that sensitive data has safeguards. The difference here is that they’re impatient and acting like it’s a hostile takeover.
• sxyuan 2y ago
  Here's my attempt at contributing something meaningful to this discussion, since I'm tired of seeing the same kinds of responses to these threads over and over again. Feel free to disagree, the idea is to try to move the conversation past knee-jerk reactions. This is an FAQ of sorts. Q1: What's wrong with making the government more efficient? My tax dollars are being wasted by Agency X, spending billions of dollars a year on who knows what. A1: There's nothing wrong with making the government more efficient, but (1) there are good and bad ways of cutting spending (and DOGE, IMO, is really bad), (2) the federal budget is massive [1], 1B or even 10B USD is practically peanuts, so a real cost-benefit analysis is critical while knee-jerk "that's too much money" reactions are usually short-sighted, and (3) the Trump administration is planning to spend FAR MORE on massive tax cuts - a government that's serious about reducing the deficit would not spend 5-10 trillion USD on tax cuts. Q2: What's wrong with how DOGE is trying to cut spending? Government is filled with red tape, and they're taking a hacker approach to circumvent the things that prevented past governments from fixing things. A2: Any time a large group of people need to agree on something, it takes time. Small-d democratic governance doesn't prioritize getting things done quickly in normal times, it prioritizes reaching consensus and respecting individual liberties. Occasionally war-time governments will temporarily suspend normal procedures (and rights), but there's good reason why things (mostly) go back to normal after the war ends. And whatever you may be seeing in your news feeds, America is NOT AT WAR. A2 (pt. 2): The HN community usually (and rightly, IMO) gets very upset and concerned when companies or the government infringe on our privacy. The situation this article brings to light seems analogous to a big tech company bringing in consultants who are later found to have cybercriminal connections, without any safeguards or auditing around access of employee or user data. If that happened, there would be a huge uproar. A2 (pt. 3): Except, it's worse, because the government is not the same as any old company. The US government was designed with checks and balances precisely to avoid concentrating too much power in the hands of any individual, including the president. Remember, America was establishing a democracy in a time when most countries were monarchies - a monarchical president was something the framers desperately wanted to avoid. There's too much to get into here, but this ongoing story is not just about privacy/security, but also about breaking legal and constitutional safeguards. Q3: You admit that the federal budget is massive, so it's obvious that it's spending too much money. Sometimes it's hard to fix an old system with lots of parts - we need a ground-up rewrite! Cut first, then add spending back later - what's wrong with that? A3: What's wrong with that is that people will get hurt. Ordinary people (no, not "woke leftists" - they're real people) will lose their jobs. People who were getting HIV treatment will stop getting treatment. Poor children will lose school lunches. And on it goes. To play along with the analogy, even if you think the only option is a ground-up rewrite, you don't run around the data center unplugging machines that you don't like. But that's also buying into a false premise. The federal budget as a percentage of GDP really hasn't grown all that much [2], and a huge part of that spending is on things that are really hard to cut (because most people don't want to cut it): social security, Medicare, defense. Q4: Well, tax cuts aren't spending, it's just giving money back to the people! It's too bad you want the US government to spend so much, but that's my tax dollars you're talking about. A4: Well, unfortunately, we live in a society, one that has historically agreed through democratic processes to care for its elderly, (sometimes) its sick or disabled, and (occasionally) its poor, because our ancestors wisely realized that those are elements of a stable societ where its people can flourish. Feel free to disagree. Q5: Why report on the identities of these young people? And what's wrong with being young - many startup founders are college dropouts, right? A5: Founding a startup isn't the same as running a mature company, and even running a mature company isn't necessarily the best preparation for civil service IMO. Youth has its advantages - fearlessness, energy - but wisdom comes with age. On the other hand, youth are impressionable, and can be easily led (or rather, misled) into doing illegal and/or immoral things. That's a pattern we've seen throughout history, and I see no reason to believe that the folks at DOGE are any different. As for making their names and identities public, they were the ones who made the decision to participate in actions that affect millions of people. Anonymity is for Internet commentators, not for supposed public servants cutting off funding to aid workers or scientists (you know, the actual public servants). Q6: Why is this on Hacker News? A6: See A2, pt. 2. There's no surprise that a news about hackers in on Hacker News. Also, should Elon Musk only be on Hacker News when it's about Tesla or SpaceX, and not when he's off trying to shut off funding to half the government? If you agree with him, fine - let's have a discussion. Don't flag kill everything that's reporting on what might be one of the most consequential events of this century. (Thanks for giving this a chance, dang.) [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FGEXPND https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FGEXPND [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S
• slimebot80 2y ago
  The confuddling thing to me is how did we have years of decay and no ability to head it off. If we are at a point where the FBI is being dismantled, where was the FBI this whole time during the build up? Even if you believed the FBI was some evil deep state entity - it turns out it was completely benign one because it couldn't even defend itself from an approaching enemy thousands of yards away.
  • SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • GeneralMayhem 2y ago
      We knew this was going to happen. That doesn't make it acceptable. The correct response in this situation is not to say "well, they were mean to him, therefore he gets to hit them back". It's to notice that he committed crimes, too many to count, and came very close to actually facing the bare minimum of consequences for them - and now he's throwing a fit and turning himself into a dictator so that that can never happen again. There is no tit-for-tat, both-sides-do-it in this situation. It's a criminal continuing his criminal enterprise, but now even more blatantly. > Russia Hoax There was no Russia "hoax". There are a few basic facts that no serious person disagrees with: 1. Russia very clearly interfered in the 2016 presidential election, in a number of ways, including internet disinformation and an actual hacking campaign to steal and then selectively leak DNC internal documents. 2. Said interference was blatantly in favor of Trump. 3. At least some members of the Trump campaign were aware of and encouraged, if not actively participated in, those attacks. Several high-ranking campaign officials, including Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, and George Papadopoulos either pled guilty or were convicted at trial for related felonies. 4. According to Robert Mueller, a lifetime Republican and respected investigator, as detailed in the entirety of volume II of his report, Donald Trump personally obstructed justice - that is, perpetrated a cover-up - in an attempt to prevent American law enforcement from determining the truth or extent of Russia's involvement in his election victory. Had Trump not been president, he would have been indicted at the time. Had Republicans in Congress not been either spineless or implicated in the same corruption, he would have been impeached and removed from office. Had he not spent four years stacking the justice system with unqualified political hacks, or had Merrick Garland had a proper grasp on the severity of the situation, he would have been indicted and convicted immediately upon leaving office. You can find people on the left making statements that are not in evidence, like "Trump and Putin conspired together to..." or "Trump didn't really win in 2016 because Russia hacked the voting machines", etc., etc. Many of those things go too far. But the idea that there was Russian interference in the election, and that the Trump campaigns were not just beneficiaries but willing participants in it, is not in any way a "hoax". It's as close to a proven fact as it is possible to get. > raided Trump’s properties With a duly granted warrant, after a lengthy period of requesting that he return stolen national security documents peacefully. > refused to release any details about his assassination attempts I don't know what this is possibly referring to. The FBI gave statements when they learned things - see e.g. https://www.fbi.gov/news/speeches/fbi-pittsburgh-special-agent-in-charge-s-remarks-to-media-on-updates-to-the-butler-pennsyvlania-assassination-attempt-investigation https://www.fbi.gov/news/speeches/fbi-pittsburgh-special-age.... There just wasn't that much to know. > I just think it’s hilarious that no one thought of Trump won that he wouldn’t go after them. Well yeah, but again, that's not because he's justified, it's because he's both a criminal and a petty, vindictive egomaniac. It's unprecedented for the FBI to spend so much time attacking a president, but that's because it's unprecedented for a president to spend his entire campaign and time in office doing nothing but constantly commit crimes. If we lived in a society governed by functioning rule of law, there would be no way for Trump to "go after" FBI agents. The mere idea of firing someone for having investigated you fairly in the past should itself be disqualifying from any position of power. Of course, Trump is now going to instruct the FBI and the rest of the DOJ to actually go perform witch hunts, so the next Democratic administration (presuming there is such a thing) will have to fire his appointees and unwind all of those investigations... and the media will dutifully report on it as just a thing that happens now between political parties, and the neutrality of the justice department will be a thing of the past.
• culi 2y ago
  > the DOGE teen is a former denizen of ‘The Com,’ an archipelago of Discord and Telegram chat channels that function as a kind of distributed cybercriminal social network for facilitating instant collaboration To be honest, this is my first time hearing about The Com. Does anyone have any more reading on this? You'd think they'd use something more secure than Discord (which has 0 encryption) and Telegram which doesn't have encryption by default and whose gov't backdoor is basically an open secret[0] [0] https://words.filippo.io/dispatches/telegram-ecdh/ https://words.filippo.io/dispatches/telegram-ecdh/
  • p3rls 2y ago
    When I was a teen these types hung out on IRC and even AOL in chatrooms like "progs" to trade credit card numbers. Young people and operational security doesn't exist.
    • tjpnz 2y ago
      >Young people and operational security doesn't exist. If I had PII in the systems they have access to I would be concerned. How long until someone gets spear phished or malware is installed on their presumably non-compliant systems? There's a reason why big corps spend significantly on security training for new grads.
    • edm0nd 2y ago
      pr island and pr warez I miss 1IM punting so much and being able to use Gothic Nightmares and FiReTooLz
      • p3rls 2y ago
        Yeah it was all fun and games until someone pulls an AOL staff account on ya, looks up your address and proto-swats your home address
        • throwawayqqq11 2y ago
          It is all fun and games until you think about not only the victims but the possible harm done. Even a loss of a small amount of money can be life changing. Swatting is just something the morally impaired can relate to better.
• deleted 2y ago
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• b8 2y ago
  Many former hackers have been hired by the government with TS clearances and it's ridiculous to compare teenage hacker groups to violent street gangs. I told an agency of previous hacking stuff and they were more concerned with me admitting to cheating on a math test at college lol.
  • burkaman 2y ago
    In order to get those TS clearances they have to go through extremely thorough background checks.
    • b8 2y ago
      I went thru the TS/SCI w/FSP for a 3 letter top tier agency and it was a joke. They interviewed my mom, sister, old coworkers/bosses and old teachers. Then just asked me normal questions. They asked my mom and boses normal questions too. It's nothing like in the movies/TV shows and plenty of bad apples get thru lol. The former head of the DCSA and FBI NYC field office both got caught doing bad stuff. The process is broken and honestly isn't that good . It gets people who aren't committed out, but also makes tons of good candidates go with other jobs, because it takes at least 4 months to do. Mine was 9 months long + 3 months to get an offer initially.
  • micromacrofoot 2y ago
    yeah they're vetted, get clearance, and are on a short leash... none of that seems to apply here
    • b8 2y ago
      Citation? They're not monitored or anything closer than normal cleared people.
• markus_zhang 2y ago
  I just hope they post everything they found. I don't care about their credentials and neither do I care about security -- those damned companies already had them 10 times anyway. But it's very interesting if they can release all information. I mean it's a democracy, right?
  • nathanaldensr 2y ago
    I've already seen people in my Facebook feed saying they don't trust the data DOGE has released. They want "proof." What will they take for proof--the raw data files and databases? Will they have the skill to analyze those datasets the same way DOGE is? I'd love to see the data publicly released and hopefully it will be--in a court of law. There are almost certainly numerous crimes committed over the past several decades laundering taxpayer money through these federal agencies; trials would hopefully lead to evidence being made public.
• erikpukinskis 2y ago
  Can anyone recommend a journalist who is reporting the facts of what’s happening on this subject? From what I can tell, it’s widely been reported that - Elon Musk was allowed into the Department of Education - “Big Balls” accessed Treasury computers - etc… But I have not been able to find any first person testimony that confirms those statements. From what I can tell Tom Krause is actually the one who was given access by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. And Tom Krause is an employee of the Treasury and has security clearance. I see a lot of people claiming there was some sort of illegal access, but I would love to read a source that explains exactly who accessed exactly what system improperly. Can anyone point me at that source?
  • dmbche 2y ago
    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjw4g2q62xqo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjw4g2q62xqo Ordering them to delete everything they got copies of, and the subsequent frustration from Musk. Why cares who personally violated federal law? However he managed to, Musk got unlawful access to restricted data.
    • rayiner 2y ago
      > Why cares who personally violated federal law? However he managed to, Musk got unlawful access to restricted data. Can you articulate what federal law you think that order says was violated?
      • dmbche 2y ago
        [flagged]
        • genewitch 2y ago
          Security clearances being marked on documents as worthless because the government has told employees to "just pick" a specific cleatance from the dropdown, even for things like "lunch meeting Tomorrow". The clearance people were told to use is "never to be cleared" - meaning it's intractable. It was abused, so I don't buy the legal argument. Put another way, if everything is top secret, nothing is.
• jBBQ_dev 2y ago
  I don't particularly know where I stand at the moment, haven't had enough time to read through it all, but at the moment I agree that the minimum of some sort of security clearance seems prudent. Doesn't seem that inhibiting either way.
• stainablesteel 2y ago
  and if you want to be a good network/security/intelligence person, isn't this basically a requirement? this is the kind of ground that people SHOULD be covering if they want to pursue a career of this nature it doesn't make him a bad person, or even a criminal the internet is just the wild west and hacking is prevalent, long live the people who do this because it's needed
• I_am_tiberius 2y ago
  I find it shockingly absurd how the All-In podcast hosts blindly support everything one of their own does. It’s obvious they treat Musk like a god. In the latest episode, they even made fun of concerns about privacy, claiming that all people care about is the state not wasting money. - completely dismissing worries about data exposure.
  • jarsin 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • jawiggins 2y ago
      I recall listening to the episode of the podcast where they were discussing the pending twitter takeover. I felt very mislead about the situation when these emails came out and showed they may have been involved parties. Now I have a lot more appreciation for traditional journalistic institutions each time they disclose that they are reporting on a sponsor or otherwise affiliated institution. For as much as the All-In crowd love to rag against the MSM - they seem far less interested in disclosing their financial interest in the stories they cover.
      • jarsin 2y ago
        In the early days of the pod I felt like they tried to follow the rule of not talking their book. Now Jason straight up pumps his Wellness app on every episode.
        • creato 2y ago
          The shilling is especially cringe considering how wealthy the hosts supposedly are already.
  • throwxy1123 2y ago
    They were good in the opposition to Biden, now they have lost all credibility. They were sympathetic to the Greenland and other annexation plans. Chamath appeared on Tucker Carlson, garnered sympathy with various sob stories but then gently pushed his agenda to the MAGA crowd. No wonder Musk wants to deregulate everything. Regulation interferes with the telemedicine, gut bacteria powders and various other nonsense that these gentlemen invest in. The (deliberate?) chaos that Trump/Musk create provides great opportunities for those in the know.
• fassssst 2y ago
  And anyone that gets busted will just get pardoned. Trump and Musk broke the system.
• Slava_Propanei 2y ago
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• alsoforgotmypwd 2y ago
  While curious, intelligent young people are still self-assembling in small groups, I'd hope they'd be more shmoo group, l0pht/cDc, or w00w00 than 4chan. Maybe they are and we're just hearing about this one because they're thrown into the political frying pan.
• globalnode 2y ago
  So from what I can understand, the new regime doesn't trust the outgoing one and wants to use its own independent people to look for signs that they have been unfairly treated by the govt and/or its institutions? Would this be a reasonable observation? I can make a few guesses about how they would react if they could compile such a list of grievances. Congrats to krebs for this article.
• throwaway2037 2y ago
  FYI: This guy already has a Wiki page. You can find it deep in the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Coristine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Coristine
• nikolay 2y ago
  Krebs lost all of its credibility serving political agendas and not understanding teenagers nowadays! They should be ashamed of their ballless attempt at a character assassination!
• ClownsAbound 2y ago
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• throwopi 2y ago
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• shipscode 2y ago
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• rukuu001 2y ago
  I know it's like screaming into the void when there's a 1000+ comments but... You remember the end of Gatsby where Nick turns up at the mansion and some sinister characters have the run of the place and you-know-who is floating in the pool out back... This is what the US looks like right now. Party's over, no guests ever again. Crims have moved in instead.
  • wordofx 2y ago
    It looks like the crims are being kicked out at the moment.
    • walls 2y ago
      That’s because you’ve been lied to.
      • wordofx 2y ago
        Orrrr maybe you’ve been lied to. Which you have been based on all the data that’s come out over the years.
• deleted 2y ago
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• curtisszmania 2y ago
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• TaurenHunter 2y ago
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• anoncow 2y ago
  We have too many regulations. I support what DOGE is doing. Thank you dang for letting the world see this topic. I think pg would agree. /s
  • Ylpertnodi 2y ago
    >I support what DOGE is doing. I rather suspect your support will last until the leopards eat your face.
• TZubiri 2y ago
  Can't they add some fake data as canaries/watermarks to identify the perpetrator if the data gets leaked? Thinkst does this
• bigmattystyles 2y ago
  I thought it was 'The Corn' until I typed it out. I need new glasses.
  • thinkingemote 2y ago
    For me it evoked Stephen Kings horror movie "Children of The Corn" where the kiddies are indoctrinated into a cult to murder.
• deleted 2y ago
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• deleted 2y ago
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• jiveturkey 2y ago
  As usual, excellent reporting from Krebs. D&D Alignment aside, one has to admit this kid has impressive skills and impressive energy. Sidestepping any argument whether criminals should be hired or have access to sensitive data, I do think he's too immature (demonstrably) to be allowed access to all this information.
• romeovs 2y ago
  tesla.sexy contains the following text, which is slightly concerning: love your fate become your own ubermensch you are the master of your soul be kind there is so much to love, so much to live for follow your heart, ok?
  • skrebbel 2y ago
    Why is this concerning? Note, it seems to me like their reference to "ubermensch" is to the Nietzschean definition [0] and not the Nazi remix. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Übermensch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Übermensch
    • lifeinthevoid 2y ago
      There are quite a few too many accidental Nazi references these days imo ...
    • ttyprintk 2y ago
      Its happening alongside the (yet unsubstantiated) rumor that Tesla engineers as a group would face a picture of Maye Musk each morning.
    • regentbowerbird 2y ago
      None of us live in an ideal vacuum and this word has been tainted by its use in nazi ideology. Whomever wrote that has a responsibility to know what the words they use mean. The combination of symbols is not random either. For example: taken individually, I'm willing to believe we're talking about Kantian Weltanschauung, Nietzschean Übermenschen, Nordic runes, medieval wolfsangel, Roman salute, or east-Asian swastika. But if I notice several at once, I will become quite suspicious.
    • IAmGraydon 2y ago
      These kids seem to have been indoctrinated into a cult of Curtis Yarvin. They love talking about Nietzschean and Yarvinist ideas like this one and cathedrals. This same creep had a quote on his Twitter bio that reads "there are cathedrals everywhere for those with eyes to see". If you don't get the reference, do some research on Yarvin. I think these people legitimately have dangerous intents.
• WalterBright 2y ago
  I was fascinated by electricity, chemistry, firecrackers, rockets and hotrods as a boy. It is a miracle I survived. My dad told me that God looks out for little boys, as otherwise they would not make it to adulthood.
  • watwut 2y ago
    When a girl does that, she is seen as irresponsible and stupid.
    • dang 2y ago
      (This comment was unfairly flagged and I turned off the flags on it.) What you say is often true and was even more often true in the past. If it was your experience, I'm sorry to hear it. A friend of mine, one of the more brilliant people I've met, told me that her parents built her brother a workshop because "a boy needs a workshop". When she said she needed a workshop too, she was told she didn't. My sister had similar experiences. At the time, this was taken to be obvious. Things have changed since then, but not completely, and not at the same rate everywhere.
      • WalterBright 2y ago
        Dare I say it, and I'm sure there are exceptions, but I've never in my life had a women show any interest in my various hotrods over the years. They sure attracted the attention of boys and men, though. They'd want to see the engine, want to know what modifications were done, etc. The women, would just turn away. I don't know any women who took a car apart to see how it worked. None who build electronic circuits for fun. None who filled trash bags with hydrogen gas. None who hung out in the machine shop and begged the shop foreman to show them how to use those machines. None with gas powered model airplanes. And so on. And yes, I'm sure there are exceptions. Nothing wrong with that. And nothing wrong with men and women having different interests. I'm sorry for what happened to your sister and friend. That was unfair.
        • watwut 2y ago
• palmfacehn 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • namuol 2y ago
    > If not for the political implications, I doubt that anyone would be interested in the teenage antics of a script kiddie. You said it. There are political implications of granting major federal security clearances to someone who the evidence suggests has been fired for leaking internal documents to competitors and soliciting DDoS services less than a year ago.
  • lazide 2y ago
    But there are not only political implications, but political implications which align with exactly the recurring concerns that keep coming up with the administration which employs him. The administration which just fired pretty much the entire national security council as first order of business. What Olympic leaps are actually required here to be concerned?
• amitrip 2y ago
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• ghxst 2y ago
  I don’t see the comparison to leaving a violent street gang—most grow out of these communities and with good opsec you keep identities and profiles completely separated; the best people I work with had a mischievous past but realized the most sustainable way to do cool things is on the good side, and those who pass background checks without hiding their past stand out as the good ones—though actions like swatting, extortion, or threats of violence go far beyond mischievous.
• black_13 2y ago
  [dead]
• deleted 2y ago
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• jvidalv 2y ago
  > Musk’s DOGE team has gained access to a truly staggering amount of personal and sensitive data on American citizens, moving quickly to seize control over databases at the U.S. Treasury, the Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Education, and the Department of Health and Human Resources, among others. As an European, how is this not considered a coup d'etat? From my mindset, right or wrong, that is absolutely unthinkable to happen within a normal functional European country.
  • CivBase 2y ago
    This is not an illegal unseating of our government's leadership. Our leadership is the one facilitating it. The more appropriate parallel would be a massive data leak. Although so far we don't have any confirmed cases of protected data being leaked to anyone who was not given access. But it might just be a matter of time.
• elif 2y ago
  I think this makes the picture quite clear. The only criteria for their selection was their ability and willingness to exfil data as fast as possible. In order to facilitate the trump blitz, as much technical action as possible needed to happen in a timeframe constrained by court procedural mechanisms.
  • tomrod 2y ago
    This is why it is pretty frustrating. If they actually wanted to audit things, they'd bring in forensic accountants. Instead, they brought in "script kiddies". You aren't finding evidence of crimes after 2 days with SQL access.
    • pizzafeelsright 2y ago
      I must disagree, as our team recently encountered a critical system failure potentially stemming from internal misconduct. While our personnel are typically required to possess advanced qualifications and extensive experience, the urgency of the situation necessitated immediate action despite my relative lack of formal credentials compared to my esteemed colleagues. Given the time-sensitive nature of the incident, I took the initiative to secure comprehensive system logs, including bash histories, without prior authorization. I was able to identify the root cause: a correctly formatted command executed in an inappropriate context. This proactive approach, while unconventional, was instrumental in mitigating further disruption and expediting resolution. The root cause was identified, and an effective remediation plan was developed within minutes.
      • wil421 2y ago
        No body cares that your coworker fat fingered some bash or SQL command. We care that kids with questionable morals have access to systems that usually require months of investigations to access. DOGE and their laptops are probably secured by whoever picked them up from Best Buy for Elon.
      • lee-rhapsody 2y ago
        This comment is almost certainly chatgpt.
• DanielHB 2y ago
  I just want to highlight one thing about this whole government takeover debacle. The reason you have the separation of power (legislative, judiciary, executive) is not to be efficient, it is to prevent generational abuse. Even a well intentioned benign autocrat if given power would not part ways with said power voluntarily. So even if the current administration is "good" there is no reason why this kind of power couldn't be abused by subsequent administrations. Even the most die-hard republican should be thinking "if the democrats take over 1-3 elections from now, what would they do with this power?". It is really the same reasoning with dictatorships, even if the dictator is good, competent and capable his successor most likely won't. Democracy is the best form of government because there are clean, regulated ways to transfer power. Not a scramble for dominance that once settled is meant to last in perpetuity.
  • naijaboiler 2y ago
    This!!! What makes democracy powerful isn't that it guarantees good governance. It is powerful because because it prevents power transfer problems and all the associated struggles. The number 1 responsibility of any system of government is how well it handles power transfers, not whether it produces good governments.
    • threetonesun 2y ago
      I remember an American History teacher explaining that the most amazing thing about the new American government was that when we went from Washington to Adams nothing changed for the American citizen. Certainly that has not always held true but certainly I agree with you - thinking about the government is one of the last things I want on my mind.
      • lupusreal 2y ago
        Washington is often compared to Cincinnatus because he had the opportunity to hold onto power, but chose not to. Supposedly (Legend? History?) some men from his army told him to become a king or offered to make him one, and he refused.
    • 2y ago
• skirge 2y ago
  Communists are suspicious about people and disregard them because of their parents, leather shoes, german sounding surname or actions as a kid. Kids are doing many things being kids, it's their privilege to do so. Solar Designer came from cracking group.
• crnkofe 2y ago
  I still can't believe Musk came up with a name that shortens to DOGE. This is next level political trolling. Then again people got what they voted for.
  • code_for_monkey 2y ago
    i dont want a government that does next level trolling
• jccalhoun 2y ago
  Ignoring the age of the people involved, the idea that what is happening is in the name of "efficiency" is laughable. Maybe these departments are all wasteful but there are better ways achieve "efficiency" than just shutting down departments without having plans about what is going to happen afterwards. What is efficient about shutting down departments without notice or without looking at the impact or having alternatives besides just not providing those services. How about seeing if there are better ways to do the same things before just shutting down departments? Or looking at the areas of the government that have more significant budgets? Or considering that there is more to efficiency than money?
  • spacebanana7 2y ago
    I think it’s because leadership at large organisations doesn’t actually understand how things work on the ground, and also knows they’ll never be able to. A blanket ban on newspaper subscriptions is a pretty easy way to save a few million dollars with minimal effort and relatively low risk. Actually evaluating whether each employee who gets one needs one along with potential subscription renegotiations could be theoretically better, but requires a great deal of managerial time and talent in the context of a large organisation.
• dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
  Scroll to the bottom of this page guys, the best comments are greyed out or flagged.
• nis0s 2y ago
  I think the only relevant issue is that someone with prior associations with The Com may be vulnerable to extortion, but simply having been associated with the group doesn’t mean much by itself. Law enforcement hires people from “the other side” all the time as they have relevant domain knowledge, and navigational skills of such spaces. Saying that the federal government, or its contractors, should never hire such people is arbitrarily making ethical judgments in places that don’t call for them.
  • unethical_ban 2y ago
    Isn't the issue that there hasn't been any clearance issued? News reports are the vetting.
    • zelon88 2y ago
      Yes. We don't know who has this data, where it's stored, who has access to it, and who pays their bills. This whole thing is built on heresay of unscrupulous people who claim to know better.
    • alistairSH 2y ago
      Yes, not only was there no formal vetting, the access granted was extremely wide.
  • zelon88 2y ago
    When the federal government does it, they approach an individual who is usually in federal custody. Then they offer a reduced penalty for whatever crime they've committed in exchange for cooperation, or acceptance of a job proposal, or something. The individual is therefore incentivized against the organization they started at. They were just purchased away from that life. For a price that was probably reasonable. The expectation then is that the individual will cut ties with his old way of doing things and take steps to mitigate any threats from that former life. The individual then goes through literally 250mb of PDF employment forms where they have to read and agree to a variety of legal punishments for failing the federal government in a variety of ways. They accept personal liability for the job, meaning they have some reason to follow the rules. Not Musks team. They don't have any of that personal liability, and they get full access to data that causes these agencies to violate their own security and privacy policies. Then they go away with that data, without following any SOPs or chain of custody requirements, without any oversight, and they do whatever they want with it. They use it on personal devices that could be compromised and the government would never know because the data was taken out of scope of their IDS. Lets say they don't get directly blackmailed, but because this person used to be in a hacker gang they have backdoors on their personal systems from the gang that they are unaware of. We just don't know, and there's no way to make sure the data is being kept safe, no way to monitor what devices it gets put on, no way to ensure anything. It's just bad security posture all around to be doing this. But I guess that's only true if the goal is an authentic audit. That isn't the goal. Gutting federal agencies and funneling money and information to fascists is the obvious goal here.
• md5crypto 2y ago
  It's a given that any 20-something tech bro is going to have a nickname 'big balls', just goes with the territory. I fail to see what the outrage is about. He's just following orders of Daddy Musk.
• cooper_ganglia 2y ago
  The HN response to all this has actually been very strange to me. From my perspective, this presidency, and especially Musk working on DOGE, should be one of the most exciting, positive things discussed on here! I would've thought this crowd would've loved lower taxes (more money to build things!), less regulation (less restrictions to build things!), and an unfamiliar friendliness towards the tech industry (more people to build things with!)... I'm really looking forward to building big things in this country in the next few years!
  • unsui 2y ago
    > The HN response to all this has actually been very strange to me. Are you surprised that folks are generally dismayed that disruption-for-its-own-sake, particularly for governmental institutions that were never intended to either (a) run a profit, and (b) were generally intended for the public good, is seen more as chaos-mongering rather than a "good thing"? Real lives are being impacted drastically, and overwhelmingly negatively, by this cult of optimization. So, no, not surprising that, when the rubber meets the pavement, and real people lose their jobs, their education, their savings, their future... that perhaps, maybe the cult-of-optimization isn't all it's cracked up to be? No? I guess I just need more kool-aid, bottoms up.
    • Extropy_ 2y ago
      Whose lives are being impacted drastically? How do you know?
      • bagels 2y ago
        Direct testimonial from people who had research grants disrupted. It's not difficult to infer that now unemployed government employees are negatively impacted. There are more, not hard to find on social media.
  • someothherguyy 2y ago
    > (more money to build things!), Just avoid imported steel, aluminium, or ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Trump_tariffs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Trump_tariffs