8 ms·
DOGE Has Started Gutting a Key US Technology Agency
- ch71r22 2y agohttps://archive.is/01PIy https://archive.is/01PIy
- lfmunoz4 2y agoIs this article written by AI? Seems poorly written, few real details and substance, short so that it is within its context window. More like trying to market instead of report.
- dmazin 2y agoWhat are you talking about? Wired, Verge, 404 suddenly find themselves covering life-or-death stuff for the US, and they're doing a great job.
- ripjaygn 2y agoNo, they don't even mention that TTS hired 150 new employees just in the past year. It's all one sided partisan biased clickbait and FUD, just like all their stories. It's not journalism meant to inform.
- largeLunchMeal 2y agoIt does say "This is a developing story, please check back for updates."
- caminante 2y agoIt's paywalled. Someone posted a snapshot [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43037571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43037571
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lordnacho 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_... Not every fence still has a use, but I hope they have a good think about what they're doing.
- justinator 2y agoThey didn't.
- SamBam 2y agoI think that they are having a good think about what they are doing, but I believe that, in cutting key agencies that protect consumers from corporations, their personal goals are simply not aligned with the goals that would be helping the country.
- jrussino 2y ago> their personal goals are simply not aligned with the goals that would be helping the country. When people express worry over superhuman-AI alignment on forums like this, I find myself wishing they'd shift focus to the fact that we actually already have a problem with the mis-alignment of super-human entities in the form of large corporations and the billionaires who control them. (And yes, governments too; the whole point of our democratic form of government is that it's supposed to keep that behemoth better aligned with the values and will of "the people".) To me it seems obvious that keeping a misaligned super-AGI from destroying humanity and keeping billionares and large multinational corporations from destroying humanity with climate change in the long-term or just degrading our quality of life (via pollution, wealth inequality, etc.) in the short term are really just differences of degree and not of kind. But we actually have the latter problem right now, and, as a bonus, if we can figure out better ways of aligning our carbon-based and economic-legal system "overlords" in the present maybe it helps point us toward a better way of aligning our potential silicon-based "overlords" in the future.
- idle_zealot 2y agoCongratulations, you've discovered class analysis. Unfortunately, that mode of thinking was successfully stigmatized during the Cold War's red scare, so good luck getting any group with power to take it seriously.
- josefritzishere 2y agoPresident Musk is clearing house. It kind of feels illegal though.
- isx726552 2y agoThey keep claiming to find “fraud” but to me it just looks like spending on things they don’t like.
- lowkey_ 2y ago[flagged]
- fncypants 2y agoSo let's tear everything down good and bad because in an organization at a scale of trillions of dollars, we found $50 million we don't like.
- lowkey_ 2y agoNo, I think you're misunderstanding. It looks like in a week, they uncovered over $100M, maybe $200M in fraud (I'm not keeping close track), if you count million-dollar "executive coaching" contracts as fraud (I do). It's most likely telling their friend outside the government "hey, I got some extra budget — you be my 'executive coach,' and we'll split the proceeds." They've found billions in things that we should not be spending our money on while our own people die of drug overdoses, homeless in the street. Things "we don't like" as you say.
- freejazz 2y agoBut those are insignificant portions of the federal budget and nothing indicates that the repercussions of the wanton tear-thru of federal agencies is going to be a net-gain for the US.
- 2y ago
- ck2 2y agoEvery time each one of these actions finally appears in front of a court, it is almost always stopped in whole or part. There's a growing list I don't have handy but easy to google I get part of the strategy is exhaustion and make sure no-one wants to ever work for federal government again but what exactly happens when they run out of agencies to destroy and refuse court orders to restore?
- fncypants 2y agoAnd what happens when they're successful even in part and we dump a lot of unemployed workers all at once into the job market in the private sector? Measured and calculated reform is one things. Smashing things without addressing what happens next is just kindergarten level stupidity. But then again, maybe crashing the job market with masses of unemployed, which will drive down wages and labor bargaining power, is exactly their strategy.
- 6stringmerc 2y agoVery good perspective and I’m genuinely curious how this - in time - may interact with the H1B / skilled worker Visa programs in the US. For all the discussions about re-training for workforce needs, I see a genuinely human conflict perhaps around the corner.
- justinator 2y ago> There's a growing list I don't have handy but easy to google If you wanna talk about it, please make this list. Unless your theory of compliance via exhaustion applies to you too. And in that case they won. And we're all going to lose.
- bodhi_mind 2y agohttps://www.justsecurity.org/107087/tracker-litigation-legal-challenges-trump-administration/ https://www.justsecurity.org/107087/tracker-litigation-legal...
- 2y ago
- ryaniscool 2y ago[flagged]
- dmazin 2y agoPrior to all this, I had never heard of the treasury payments system and the GSA. I bet most people have never heard of the CDC's morbidity and mortality report. Not sure "has some random dude heard of this?" is a good barometer of "is it important?".
- pcj-github 2y agoI've subscribed to the CDC MMWR for years, such a tragedy. People don't seem to realize how much their lives are going to change living under authoritarianism. Make no mistake of what is happening.
- ryaniscool 2y agoA better approach being "The press says we should be upset and afraid, therefore we should be" ? Writing an alarmist piece on every little thing this administration does is the exact same thing that Fox did for the previous administration.
- fncypants 2y ago"Even though I don't know everything, and especially everything about how an organization like a federal government works, I personally haven't heard about these things, and therefore it must be unnecessary and stupid."
- hooverd 2y agoI think you could convince people that their municipal water treatment facility is waste and fraud. They're dumping the chemicals into the water! And for what reason? It already comes out of the tap just fine; why do I need to keep paying for those useless bureaucrats?
- nessbot 2y agoThis says more about what you know than the importance of said agency.
- kevin_thibedeau 2y ago> focusing on AI, automating different internal processes, and centralizing data from across the federal government. So billions are going to be wasted with nothing to show for it in the end.
- Rastonbury 2y agoxAI and all his friends are going to have fat pockets at least!
- pluc 2y agoNo billions will be wasted, Elon is gonna get a new lucrative contract.
- Kapura 2y agoI mean, it won't be nothing; there will be craters where the government used to be. People will be studying exactly what the hell happened here for decades to come.
- black_puppydog 2y agoIf only Elon knew that all he's building is the careers of generations of humanities researchers to come! (That is, assuming we can still afford luxuries like humanities studies once he's finished)
- i_love_retros 2y agoIt feels like america is being run by reddit memeing snickering schoolboys.
- AlgorithmicTime 2y ago[dead]
- krapp 2y agoBecause it is. The "government agency" which is the subject of this thread was named after a Reddit meme, and it's run by a redpilled cringelord shitposter who uses terms like "woke mind virus" and "shadow government," and some tech-bro incels who trade Nazi memes on Discord. There is nothing about the American government that is serious anymore. The US is not a serious country run by serious people, it's a clownshow and a kleptocracy.
- i_love_retros 2y agoI know. I kind of wish people would pronounce it dee oh gee ee instead of doge just to piss of musk and ruin his pathetic joke
- tflinton 2y agoI'd go as far as say 4-chan rather than reddit, but yeah, pretty much.
- SmirkingRevenge 2y agoAnd a dash of kiwi farms as well
- demosthanos 2y ago> It’s unclear how many people are being let go, but multiple sources tell WIRED that list could be upwards of 70 if not more. Prior, there were around 650 TTS employees. So the worst case scenario that anyone can imagine numbers for is that this department gets hit with 10% layoffs. That's not fun for anyone involved, but it's also not exactly crisis mode yet, and it seems like there are bigger things that this administration is doing to focus our pitchforks on? There's a very real risk of burning out people's ability to be indignant if we get up in arms about every obscure department that suffers moderate layoffs. Let's save our outrage for the really important things.
- Kapura 2y agoTo characterize this as a "department [getting] hit with 10% layoffs" is completely disingenuous. This isn't a department cutting staff; it's an unelected body going around and firing people out of the government for reasons spanning malice, cronyism, and corruption.
- demosthanos 2y agoThis executive branch department is cutting staff on the orders of the chief executive who is taking advice from a body he put together to find places to cut. They may have ulterior motives for giving that advice, but what is happening is technically perfectly legal because Trump is (unfortunately) the elected chief executive and is ultimately all of these people's boss. I don't like Trump any more than you do, but mischaracterizing what is happening isn't helping the situation. The people who are pro-Trump or in the middle see through it, and the people who are already anti-Trump already agree with you.
- scroot 2y ago> but what is happening is technically perfectly legal because Trump is (unfortunately) the elected chief executive and is ultimately all of these people's boss This is not correct. Normally civil servants need to be fired "with cause," as called for by statute. Larger scale Reductions in Force (RIFs) -- which EOs say are coming -- must be approved by Congress, again according to law. The President does not have supreme authority in these matters, at least not on paper. We are about to find out what that paper's worth.
- seltzered_ 2y agoSince not everyone remembers the Great American Recession or the origins of Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB), I link to a Nov. 2008 piece in Harper's magazine by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi "Protect Financial Consumers": http://archive.harpers.org/2008/11/pdf/HarpersMagazine-2008-11-0082252.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJXATU3VRJAAA66RA&Expires=1508294495&Signature=9RbvJEUvPa7SSnM8VszvS90PEKM%3D http://archive.harpers.org/2008/11/pdf/HarpersMagazine-2008-... "For most of the country’s history, state and lo- cal usury laws imposed modest consumer protec- tions by setting caps on interest rates and fees. But in 1978, a federal statute was used to bypass these laws. Creditors quickly rewrote the rules, issuing un- intelligible contracts that increased fees, penal- ties, and interest rates. The fragmented financial regulatory bodies that remain have operated as if their main goal were lender profitability." [...] "The ever-widening information imbalance between consumers and creditors has only made borrowers easier marks. In a Federal Trade Commission study conducted last year, for instance, nine in ten mort- gage customers examining relatively straightforward fixed-rate loan agreements could not figure out the up-front costs on the loan; half could not iden- tify the loan amount. Of all the borrowers who were sold subprime mortgages in the past five years, nearly 60 percent would have qualified for prime mortgages if brokers had offered them; the sub- prime mortgages carried so many rate escalators, prepayment penalties, and other traps that even would-be prime borrowers defaulted." Elizabeth Warren back in this era was also famous for talking about the twin-income trap, here's a 2004 talk about 'The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A&feature=youtu.be
- EcommerceFlow 2y agoI read the entire article and it doesn't mention what this "key" US tech agency even does.
- karaterobot 2y agoI think they probably should have given it a sentence or two. Apparently the GSA does operational things like leasing office space for other agencies, purchasing supplies, buying vehicles, etc.
- tim333 2y agoIt kind suggests that maybe some of what they do isn't that necessary and a 10% staff cut not so bad? I looked on their website and it says they do digital.gov, and on that site there is stuff like >An introduction to digital governance. Understand how and why to implement digital governance >Case study At the General Services Administration (GSA), we operate a Digital Experience Executive Board, supported by an agency-wide Digital Council. The Board is composed of senior executives who provide high-level direction, and Council members coordinate implementation of digital initiatives within their business line. We also have an Enterprise Digital Experience team to coordinate enterprise improvements to our agency’s digital experience. Read more about digital governance at GSA. >We also defined the work of a website manager and identified one website manager for each digital property at GSA. Then, we updated their position descriptions... https://digital.gov/resources/an-introduction-to-digital-governance/ https://digital.gov/resources/an-introduction-to-digital-gov... It doesn't sound that lean and mean.
- freejazz 2y ago[flagged]
- krapp 2y agoThey'll get around to it, they always do.
- alephnerd 2y agoIMO, I'd ignore the AI part. The really scary thing is FedRAMP is part of the TTS (the affected agency). FedRAMP is the program used to procure Cloud and Cybersecurity services for federal agencies. With TTS in flux, that means FedRAMP is in flux as well - which means tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in Cloud and Cybersecurity spend is on the line. I have significant qualms about FedRAMP, but it was at least better than nothing. FedRAMP was also one of the last tethers for the Cloud and Cybersecurity industry to remain in the US. Otherwise, the entire center of gravity is in Israel, India, and Eastern Europe (as I have mentioned multiple times).
- Swoerd 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- disqard 2y ago> But no. Trump, ever the "stable genius," prefers cozying up to dictators. Part of me is convinced Putin has enough dirt to sink even this "Teflon Don", which necessitates him acquiescing to whatever the puppet-master demands. What looks like "cozying up" might very well be "time to pay your dues". At the same time, his IDGAF attitude is one of his key strengths, so maybe there really is nothing anyone could possibly divulge that would "hurt" him.
- kecupochren 2y agoI wonder what kind of dirt that could be, if he's already a known child rapist.
- cadamsdotcom 2y agoTo anyone sad about this: The alternative offered was Kamala Harris. Thanks DNC. First-past-the-post voting practically guarantees a two party system emerges over time: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo The US gov has been worn way at for decades by unscrupulous people seeking power and made so unpleasant to work in that few young people want to go into political leadership - and those that do don’t get far enough to have impact (eg. Buttigieg).. hence, old ass presidents. Truly impactful movers and shakers have easy access to capital in the US, can keep their companies and lives private, and achieve a very comfortable life. Why would anyone choose politics over that? Finally, the US gov system of checks and balances was designed assuming it could be perfected incrementally, but long-lived systems also need cycles of renewal - think of a forest. That design flaw is showing up now as key systems are getting cracked open by opportunists.
- LastTrain 2y agoWhat was wrong with Kamala Harris?
- krapp 2y agoOther than the very obvious fact that she wasn't an incumbent President with an established political record and bully pulpit, and thus was starting from a position of weakness late in the game, running against someone who managed to maintain a position as frontrunner despite having not been in public view for four years? She did very little to separate herself from Biden and alienated her base trying too hard to appeal to the right. She wouldn't even take a stance against genocide. One of the biggest dysfunctions (possibly intentional) in America's two party system is that the "left" isn't really leftist. Both parties are pro police, pro military, pro American imperialism, pro oligarchy and anti labor, and the politics of both drift to the right. The red team just happens to be far more right than the blue team. And Kamala Harris didn't prove an exception to the rule. Voters didn't want to vote for the status quo, no one really liked Biden, he was just the only option besides Trump. But that's all she represented. Just "not Trump."
- 2y ago
- ashoeafoot 2y agoWait till dodge guts darpa
- egberts1 2y agoNow shuttered CFPB its primary mission which was then to protect consumers’ money from fraud, waste, and abuse … by the US government.