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There was no way those millions of emails were getting analyzed by humans. Even AI, or any other algorithm, has no idea what those people are doing and what the

There was no way those millions of emails were getting analyzed by humans. Even AI, or any other algorithm, has no idea what those people are doing and what their actual roles entail, so what even is the point of this thing except being annoying and causing a scene? If the purpose of the stunt was to simply "check for the pulse" of public servants, why even analyze the replies? Something sketchy is behind this operation.

afpx 2y ago
It's primarily a test for obedience. Which leaders respond immediately? Keep them, and put them in positions where there are gaps after eliminating the disobedient. The secondary goal is to test for what the low hanging fruit are for automation. The end-goal is total automation, but you won't see that for a few years.
- poszlem 2y ago
  It's also something that sounds very appealing to Trump's base who have little understanding of the government's inner workings, but finally have something concrete that they understand they can point to, to show how "useless bureaucracy is". The Trumpian right is currently exhibiting the same kind of hubris that the previous ruling ideology showed and the same kind of contempt for their fellow countrymen.
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    Must’ve just missed the ideology tests and purity purges under the previous admin. Could you link to some evidence?
    - MyOutfitIsVague 2y ago
      Not the previous admin, but the previous "ruling ideology", i.e. illiberal leftist ideology (usually lumped under "woke", "progressive", or "cancel culture"), which was also authoritarian, intolerant, and involved purity tests that increasingly became impossible to pass. They just didn't have a lock-step candidate who won the executive branch. This whole millennium so far has been a tick-tock of popular illiberal authoritarianism, and this is what it looks like when it wins.
      - llamaimperative 2y ago
        Ah yes, the classic equivalent extremism of the blue hairs on Twitter (who hold approximately zero levers of state power) and the actual elected leader of the other party. One extremist group says insane shit on TikTok, the other runs the FBI. The latter is totally a sensible response to the former.
        MyOutfitIsVague 2y ago
        I don't think they are equivalent. Neither is sensible, and the current situation is worse by at least one order of magnitude. I'm just claiming that the popular ideology of only a few years ago was leftist and had a heavily authoritarian slant. Despite the current ridiculous fight against "woke ideology" and "cancel culture", it's not like it didn't actually exist. And it wasn't just extremist groups saying insane shit on TikTok. People were getting harassed through GitHub, issues were being brigaded, tons of big FOSS projects had some big CoC kerfuffle, then there were the master/slave, git master branch, whitelist/blacklist naming things, demanding renaming of projects, demanding people be fired, etc. Some of these things were reasonable, some were unreasonable, but it's incredibly disingenuous to pretend that it was just "One extremist group says insane shit on TikTok". It was a lot of people effecting a lot of real changes. Notably in FOSS, it was a lot of outsiders coming into a space and telling the people in that space how they were supposed to do their jobs, despite the outsiders not contributing anything other than judgement and not having any stake in it. I definitely see some parallels, even if they aren't equivalent.
        pjc50 2y ago
        > And it wasn't just extremist groups saying insane shit on TikTok. People were getting harassed through GitHub, issues were being brigaded, tons of big FOSS projects had some big CoC kerfuffle, then there were the master/slave, git master branch, whitelist/blacklist naming things, demanding renaming of projects, demanding people be fired, etc All of these things you've mentioned were done by private citizens, members of the general public, exercising their free speech, not elected representatives or anyone in the government. You've made an argument against Twitter.
  - dworkr 2y ago
    Exactly right. Revanchist politics lead to boom/bust debt cycles in government. One party spends way too much and hurts the citizens, the other party uses their mandate to fix the overspending as a pretext to subvert government controls and agencies, and slash and burn in a way that hurts citizens. And 95% of the population blindly, religiously even, suport this and yet don't feel at all responsible for the current state of affairs. "They did it!" seems like the new American ethos.
    - llamaimperative 2y ago
      National debt growth rates by President: * Clinton (D): +31% over 8 years * Bush (R): +105% over 8 years * Obama (D): +70% over 8 years * Trump (R): +40% over 4 years * Biden (D): +21% over 4 years Simply untrue to suggest "one party spends way too much" or that the other's "slash and burn" is at all related to strengthening our financial situation.
      - dworkr 2y ago
        But that's it. I don't think slash and burn is related to debt, least not directly. That was my whole point. It's revanchist escalatory politics on both sides. When more than a few democrats acknowledge the debt and talk about cutting, and when more than a few republicans talk about increasing taxes, we can make progress. Until then we'll get more partisanship and sctivism, which means more games with the budget and thus more volatility and inefficiency in Washington, to the detriment of all federal workers, but to citizens also. The parties and powers that be are the winners. Everyone else loses. Moderate politics and less change is better for most people on average, certainly better for institutional stability, which is the core issue with DOGE's chainsaw approach to belt tightening.
        llamaimperative 2y ago
        I don't disagree with most of this except the continued characterization of this as "belt tightening." It demonstrably has nothing to do with "belt tightening." If it did, the GOP wouldn't need a $4 trillion increase to the debt ceiling.
- benwad 2y ago
  I wonder which will come first - total government automation, AGI or full self-driving?
  - afpx 2y ago
    Heh. Yeah, self-driving has been the laggard which muddles the predictions, right? The way I see it (and probably mostly wrong), is that you can't fund AGI with capitalism. Progress under capitalism is driven by consumer demand. But, at this point, most consumers already have everything they need. So, you need to fund progress a different way. But, Gov spends trillions. All you have to do is direct some of that toward AI development and continuously show decreasing spending. And, as AI gets better, you save more, and you redirect more and more into AI. And, continue that cycle. I'm guessing self-driving is lagging because of social friction. People really like to be in control - enough so that they're willing to risk death (something like 1 in 90 chance of death from driving). Even though automated driving currently is probably safer (and an order of magnitude safer if all vehicles were self-driving).
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
xemdetia 2y ago
As far as I can see it is just strawmanning the federal workforce as a boogeyman. Every federal person I heard of or talked to spent most of the weekend and Monday trying to understand how to respond and what was permitted to disclose. The email looks like a phishing email because it's not from existing org structure. Most fed employees never have interacted with OPM before because that's not how any of this worked. It also doesn't help that the email before this was 'if you respond to this email you resign.'
- Almondsetat 2y ago
  It's uncanny how that email perfectly mirrors a phishing one - Request for sensitive information - Apparently trustworthy but unusual domain - Manufactured urgency (of the highest level too)
  - philipov 2y ago
    Almost as if it's intentional. As if its purpose is to create a thin excuse to fire people.
- mysterydip 2y ago
  Not only was the previous email "if you respond to this email you resign", but the last email was "if you don't respond to this email, you resign." (at least on ones my friends saw, apparently not all?)
  - archagon 2y ago
    Simon says...
    - drawkward 2y ago
      Squid Game
lawn 2y ago
Maybe they really believe that AI can magically solve this problem and they're actually as clueless they seem to be.
- 6510 2y ago
  Elon will have the self driving government on the road in no time.
EGG_CREAM 2y ago
The point is to make working for the federal government a traumatic experience. https://www.govexec.com/management/2024/10/inside-key-maga-leaders-plans-new-trump-agenda/400607/ https://www.govexec.com/management/2024/10/inside-key-maga-l...
- pmarreck 2y ago
  It’s interesting to me that an email from the new management asking people to justify their jobs that wouldn’t even make the news if it happened in corporate America is somehow newsworthy when it happens in a government bureaucracy, and people are now “shaking in their boots” Like, I get how this might be terrifying if you’ve been coasting for a while but (disclaimer) as a person who tends to work at startups, I have zero sympathy
  - TRyanMooney 2y ago
    “New management” is double speak.
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    Do you have any examples of this happening in corporate America outside of the Twitter takeover? I have never heard of this approach. I’ve heard of new management coming in with a strong opinion and firing people, or new management spending some time understanding the situation up close. Also: Corporations don’t have a mandate to serve the public writ large. A corporation imploding itself through dramatic reinvention every 4 years is perfectly fine. A government doing this type of purge every 4 years is obviously fucking insane, though I assume you’re operating under the assumption that the other side can’t/won’t/shouldn’t conduct ideological purges when they get into power? Most administrations know there are people with varying levels of ideological commitment to their causes and they accept this friction because relative operational stability is a feature of a democratic government, not a bug.
  - acdha 2y ago
    That’s because you know the people you work with and trust them (hopefully well placed) to have the same incentives you do. If you had more experience in large organizations with political dynamics other than the success of your as-of-yet unproven business (things change when people aren’t worried about going out of business if they play hardball with some other part of the organization - most startup people know they can’t afford to shoot holes in the boat), you’d understand the traction: for example, if you worked at a Fortune 500 and some McKinsey consultant sent out an email demanding you explain what you work on, most people would correctly interpret that as “senior management wants to fire as many of you as possible”.
tfigueroa 2y ago
Now imagine how the administration might deport 20 million “illegal aliens”, as they’ve promised.
- pjc50 2y ago
  "not replying to this email automatically renounces your citizenship and you must leave the United States within 48 hours"
  - 6510 2y ago
    Do not pass go.
  - dworkr 2y ago
    But we'd need a way to email them all. Maybe we could give them all cell phones first.
    - _DeadFred_ 2y ago
      Necessitating a government contract for Starlink's new sat to phone connectivity you say? Welcome to DOGE!
      - dworkr 2y ago
        I chuckled, then cried. Ymmv
jccalhoun 2y ago
> Something sketchy is behind this operation. That has been true of everything Trump and Musk have ever done so why would this be any different?
howmayiannoyyou 2y ago
Ghost payrolls. If you don't understand ghost payrolling then you don't understand government. This happens at almost all levels from city to federal to varying degrees. I've seen flagrant more subtle abuses over the years. Try to understand the USGOV is the largest employer in America and unlike the private sector, it's unable to rely on its "board" (Congress) for effective oversight or reform. You're witnessing an attempt at a "turnaround" with all ugliness that comes with it. Trump, like or hate him, is determined to put a dent in the fiscal nightmare this dysfunction has created for America. Hopefully everyone understands the problem isn't going to be fixed, but if he can achieve a substantive reduction in expense it will either give the next administration momentum to continue rationalizing government, or it could just as well provide cover that "enough/too-much was done" and its time to expand and spend again, into oblivion.
- amarcheschi 2y ago
  I do not get why the turnaround is not done by implementing policies already suggested by existing departments or by funding more agencies that have a net positive return (i guess similar to the irs or the other i can't remember the name). Furthermore, I would expect statistics to be done before "if you do not answer this you're fired", this just feels like a lazy attempt to say "we're reducing budget expenses" when in reality it's making life and work impossible or very hard for a part of the government workforce. And this attitude is something you don't want because you'll have less motivated workers, less efficient gov agencies, and will have to spend more to obtain the same result as before I also couldn't find data on ghost payrolls in public sector in us, i'm not american but the only result i get are about discussing the posting of ghost jobs on the side of private companies
- maguirre 2y ago
  I cannot fathom this is an effective way to turn things around. I was thinking about how somone with a bit of self respect and decent skill set will just find another employer where they can be valued more (the bar is really low now) . This, to me, seems like an effective way to get rid of effective talent.
- ForHackernews 2y ago
dfxm12 2y ago
causing a scene This is the point. Musk is stealing headlines away from all the ways he and Trump are giving handouts to the private sector and buddying up to other fascist governments around the world.
- throwpoaster 2y ago
  Oh no! I missed this. Got links?
  - MyOutfitIsVague 2y ago
    https://apnews.com/article/house-republicans-budget-blueprint-trump-tax-cuts-ff2bddf31f4e7cb0928139072392a091 https://apnews.com/article/house-republicans-budget-blueprin... https://www.npr.org/2025/02/24/nx-s1-5304271/trump-russia-putin-history https://www.npr.org/2025/02/24/nx-s1-5304271/trump-russia-pu...

afpx 2y ago

It's primarily a test for obedience. Which leaders respond immediately? Keep them, and put them in positions where there are gaps after eliminating the disobedient. The secondary goal is to test for what the low hanging fruit are for automation. The end-goal is total automation, but you won't see that for a few years.

poszlem 2y ago
It's also something that sounds very appealing to Trump's base who have little understanding of the government's inner workings, but finally have something concrete that they understand they can point to, to show how "useless bureaucracy is". The Trumpian right is currently exhibiting the same kind of hubris that the previous ruling ideology showed and the same kind of contempt for their fellow countrymen.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  Must’ve just missed the ideology tests and purity purges under the previous admin. Could you link to some evidence?
  - MyOutfitIsVague 2y ago
    Not the previous admin, but the previous "ruling ideology", i.e. illiberal leftist ideology (usually lumped under "woke", "progressive", or "cancel culture"), which was also authoritarian, intolerant, and involved purity tests that increasingly became impossible to pass. They just didn't have a lock-step candidate who won the executive branch. This whole millennium so far has been a tick-tock of popular illiberal authoritarianism, and this is what it looks like when it wins.
    - llamaimperative 2y ago
      Ah yes, the classic equivalent extremism of the blue hairs on Twitter (who hold approximately zero levers of state power) and the actual elected leader of the other party. One extremist group says insane shit on TikTok, the other runs the FBI. The latter is totally a sensible response to the former.
      - MyOutfitIsVague 2y ago
        I don't think they are equivalent. Neither is sensible, and the current situation is worse by at least one order of magnitude. I'm just claiming that the popular ideology of only a few years ago was leftist and had a heavily authoritarian slant. Despite the current ridiculous fight against "woke ideology" and "cancel culture", it's not like it didn't actually exist. And it wasn't just extremist groups saying insane shit on TikTok. People were getting harassed through GitHub, issues were being brigaded, tons of big FOSS projects had some big CoC kerfuffle, then there were the master/slave, git master branch, whitelist/blacklist naming things, demanding renaming of projects, demanding people be fired, etc. Some of these things were reasonable, some were unreasonable, but it's incredibly disingenuous to pretend that it was just "One extremist group says insane shit on TikTok". It was a lot of people effecting a lot of real changes. Notably in FOSS, it was a lot of outsiders coming into a space and telling the people in that space how they were supposed to do their jobs, despite the outsiders not contributing anything other than judgement and not having any stake in it. I definitely see some parallels, even if they aren't equivalent.
        pjc50 2y ago
        > And it wasn't just extremist groups saying insane shit on TikTok. People were getting harassed through GitHub, issues were being brigaded, tons of big FOSS projects had some big CoC kerfuffle, then there were the master/slave, git master branch, whitelist/blacklist naming things, demanding renaming of projects, demanding people be fired, etc All of these things you've mentioned were done by private citizens, members of the general public, exercising their free speech, not elected representatives or anyone in the government. You've made an argument against Twitter.
- dworkr 2y ago
  Exactly right. Revanchist politics lead to boom/bust debt cycles in government. One party spends way too much and hurts the citizens, the other party uses their mandate to fix the overspending as a pretext to subvert government controls and agencies, and slash and burn in a way that hurts citizens. And 95% of the population blindly, religiously even, suport this and yet don't feel at all responsible for the current state of affairs. "They did it!" seems like the new American ethos.
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    National debt growth rates by President: * Clinton (D): +31% over 8 years * Bush (R): +105% over 8 years * Obama (D): +70% over 8 years * Trump (R): +40% over 4 years * Biden (D): +21% over 4 years Simply untrue to suggest "one party spends way too much" or that the other's "slash and burn" is at all related to strengthening our financial situation.
    - dworkr 2y ago
      But that's it. I don't think slash and burn is related to debt, least not directly. That was my whole point. It's revanchist escalatory politics on both sides. When more than a few democrats acknowledge the debt and talk about cutting, and when more than a few republicans talk about increasing taxes, we can make progress. Until then we'll get more partisanship and sctivism, which means more games with the budget and thus more volatility and inefficiency in Washington, to the detriment of all federal workers, but to citizens also. The parties and powers that be are the winners. Everyone else loses. Moderate politics and less change is better for most people on average, certainly better for institutional stability, which is the core issue with DOGE's chainsaw approach to belt tightening.
      - llamaimperative 2y ago
        I don't disagree with most of this except the continued characterization of this as "belt tightening." It demonstrably has nothing to do with "belt tightening." If it did, the GOP wouldn't need a $4 trillion increase to the debt ceiling.
benwad 2y ago
I wonder which will come first - total government automation, AGI or full self-driving?
- afpx 2y ago
  Heh. Yeah, self-driving has been the laggard which muddles the predictions, right? The way I see it (and probably mostly wrong), is that you can't fund AGI with capitalism. Progress under capitalism is driven by consumer demand. But, at this point, most consumers already have everything they need. So, you need to fund progress a different way. But, Gov spends trillions. All you have to do is direct some of that toward AI development and continuously show decreasing spending. And, as AI gets better, you save more, and you redirect more and more into AI. And, continue that cycle. I'm guessing self-driving is lagging because of social friction. People really like to be in control - enough so that they're willing to risk death (something like 1 in 90 chance of death from driving). Even though automated driving currently is probably safer (and an order of magnitude safer if all vehicles were self-driving).

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

xemdetia 2y ago

As far as I can see it is just strawmanning the federal workforce as a boogeyman. Every federal person I heard of or talked to spent most of the weekend and Monday trying to understand how to respond and what was permitted to disclose. The email looks like a phishing email because it's not from existing org structure. Most fed employees never have interacted with OPM before because that's not how any of this worked. It also doesn't help that the email before this was 'if you respond to this email you resign.'

Almondsetat 2y ago
It's uncanny how that email perfectly mirrors a phishing one - Request for sensitive information - Apparently trustworthy but unusual domain - Manufactured urgency (of the highest level too)
- philipov 2y ago
  Almost as if it's intentional. As if its purpose is to create a thin excuse to fire people.
mysterydip 2y ago
Not only was the previous email "if you respond to this email you resign", but the last email was "if you don't respond to this email, you resign." (at least on ones my friends saw, apparently not all?)
- archagon 2y ago
  Simon says...
  - drawkward 2y ago
    Squid Game

lawn 2y ago

Maybe they really believe that AI can magically solve this problem and they're actually as clueless they seem to be.

6510 2y ago
Elon will have the self driving government on the road in no time.

EGG_CREAM 2y ago

The point is to make working for the federal government a traumatic experience. https://www.govexec.com/management/2024/10/inside-key-maga-leaders-plans-new-trump-agenda/400607/ https://www.govexec.com/management/2024/10/inside-key-maga-l...

pmarreck 2y ago
It’s interesting to me that an email from the new management asking people to justify their jobs that wouldn’t even make the news if it happened in corporate America is somehow newsworthy when it happens in a government bureaucracy, and people are now “shaking in their boots” Like, I get how this might be terrifying if you’ve been coasting for a while but (disclaimer) as a person who tends to work at startups, I have zero sympathy
- TRyanMooney 2y ago
  “New management” is double speak.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  Do you have any examples of this happening in corporate America outside of the Twitter takeover? I have never heard of this approach. I’ve heard of new management coming in with a strong opinion and firing people, or new management spending some time understanding the situation up close. Also: Corporations don’t have a mandate to serve the public writ large. A corporation imploding itself through dramatic reinvention every 4 years is perfectly fine. A government doing this type of purge every 4 years is obviously fucking insane, though I assume you’re operating under the assumption that the other side can’t/won’t/shouldn’t conduct ideological purges when they get into power? Most administrations know there are people with varying levels of ideological commitment to their causes and they accept this friction because relative operational stability is a feature of a democratic government, not a bug.
- acdha 2y ago
  That’s because you know the people you work with and trust them (hopefully well placed) to have the same incentives you do. If you had more experience in large organizations with political dynamics other than the success of your as-of-yet unproven business (things change when people aren’t worried about going out of business if they play hardball with some other part of the organization - most startup people know they can’t afford to shoot holes in the boat), you’d understand the traction: for example, if you worked at a Fortune 500 and some McKinsey consultant sent out an email demanding you explain what you work on, most people would correctly interpret that as “senior management wants to fire as many of you as possible”.

tfigueroa 2y ago

Now imagine how the administration might deport 20 million “illegal aliens”, as they’ve promised.

pjc50 2y ago
"not replying to this email automatically renounces your citizenship and you must leave the United States within 48 hours"
- 6510 2y ago
  Do not pass go.
- dworkr 2y ago
  But we'd need a way to email them all. Maybe we could give them all cell phones first.
  - _DeadFred_ 2y ago
    Necessitating a government contract for Starlink's new sat to phone connectivity you say? Welcome to DOGE!
    - dworkr 2y ago
      I chuckled, then cried. Ymmv

jccalhoun 2y ago

> Something sketchy is behind this operation. That has been true of everything Trump and Musk have ever done so why would this be any different?

howmayiannoyyou 2y ago

Ghost payrolls. If you don't understand ghost payrolling then you don't understand government. This happens at almost all levels from city to federal to varying degrees. I've seen flagrant more subtle abuses over the years. Try to understand the USGOV is the largest employer in America and unlike the private sector, it's unable to rely on its "board" (Congress) for effective oversight or reform. You're witnessing an attempt at a "turnaround" with all ugliness that comes with it. Trump, like or hate him, is determined to put a dent in the fiscal nightmare this dysfunction has created for America. Hopefully everyone understands the problem isn't going to be fixed, but if he can achieve a substantive reduction in expense it will either give the next administration momentum to continue rationalizing government, or it could just as well provide cover that "enough/too-much was done" and its time to expand and spend again, into oblivion.

amarcheschi 2y ago
I do not get why the turnaround is not done by implementing policies already suggested by existing departments or by funding more agencies that have a net positive return (i guess similar to the irs or the other i can't remember the name). Furthermore, I would expect statistics to be done before "if you do not answer this you're fired", this just feels like a lazy attempt to say "we're reducing budget expenses" when in reality it's making life and work impossible or very hard for a part of the government workforce. And this attitude is something you don't want because you'll have less motivated workers, less efficient gov agencies, and will have to spend more to obtain the same result as before I also couldn't find data on ghost payrolls in public sector in us, i'm not american but the only result i get are about discussing the posting of ghost jobs on the side of private companies
maguirre 2y ago
I cannot fathom this is an effective way to turn things around. I was thinking about how somone with a bit of self respect and decent skill set will just find another employer where they can be valued more (the bar is really low now) . This, to me, seems like an effective way to get rid of effective talent.
ForHackernews 2y ago

dfxm12 2y ago

causing a scene This is the point. Musk is stealing headlines away from all the ways he and Trump are giving handouts to the private sector and buddying up to other fascist governments around the world.

throwpoaster 2y ago
Oh no! I missed this. Got links?
- MyOutfitIsVague 2y ago
  https://apnews.com/article/house-republicans-budget-blueprint-trump-tax-cuts-ff2bddf31f4e7cb0928139072392a091 https://apnews.com/article/house-republicans-budget-blueprin... https://www.npr.org/2025/02/24/nx-s1-5304271/trump-russia-putin-history https://www.npr.org/2025/02/24/nx-s1-5304271/trump-russia-pu...