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This is coming out the same day two DOJ cases led by a US attorney with no previous prosecutorial experience were unceremoniously tossed out. DOGE sent in a bun

This is coming out the same day two DOJ cases led by a US attorney with no previous prosecutorial experience were unceremoniously tossed out. DOGE sent in a bunch of 20 somethings to "fix" the technology while cutting entire groups of experienced technologists like 18F. To say nothing of the CDC, whose communications are starting to look like a bad, late-night infomercials. I understand having a problem with a authority that manifests as a distrust of experts, but the combination of ignorance and arrogance is breathtaking. Hopefully 2026 can be a year of restoring some adults to positions of responsibility.

spwa4 11mo ago
> DOGE sent in a bunch of 20 somethings to "fix" the technology ... Elon Musk claims that the vast majority of decisions were made by AI modeling.
- water-data-dude 11mo ago
  The transformer architecture was introduced in 2017, so they send in a bunch of 8 year olds to "fix" the technology ;)
- jorts 11mo ago
  It was all incredibly reckless.
- CrossVR 11mo ago
  I'd trust the 20 somethings more than the AI model.
  - spwa4 11mo ago
    I think we can all agree that the whole thing was an incredibly bad idea.
    - Incipient 11mo ago
      Like a lot of things, the IDEA is good, the execution is trash. Absolutely everyone can get behind a more efficient government with less corruption (the idea of a business man cutting corruption is nuts). The execution however, as is often the case, was awful (leave it up to the individual to decide if that was deliberate or not).
      - jackstraw42 11mo ago
        It's worse than "the idea is better than the execution." You are offering a lot of leniency in the meaning of your words there, and that should bother you more than it seems to but here we are. The "idea" that was executed on here was a non-starter to begin with. You don't get anywhere by lighting everything that seems like waste on fire and burning it to the ground, learning its effects later. A modern government is not something that is riddled with waste so much that it does nothing. Their first target, USAID, as far as I could tell had no idea what was coming. They didn't even seem to bother to look into what they did, just the cashflows. Which of course will seem wasteful if you don't have a human heart with feelings, it's called U-S-A-I-D. Saying the idea was good here is like giving them the benefit of the doubt that sure maybe they can't read or understand anything, but let them axe these things without a second thought? Come on, you shouldn't let Elon off that easy.
      - palmotea 11mo ago
        > Like a lot of things, the IDEA is good, the execution is trash. The idea was trash, too. The idea wasn't actually make "a more efficient government with less corruption," it was "let Elon Musk and a bunch lackeys literally just move fast and break things."
      - blitzar 11mo ago
        The "idea" was an ideological purge dressed up as something everyone can get behind. Given the outstanding success in bamboozling idiots, I expect to see a lot more of it in the future.
        ModernMech 11mo ago
  - red-iron-pine 11mo ago
    AI told me 7 of 9 CVEs were exploited in the wild. Copilot gave me a different 7 than ChatGPT. Both were wrong about at least one. My intern, a goofy 20 year old EE student, got different results too, but he at least was able to tell me "i'm not sure" and give me real links to where he looked.
- ben_w 11mo ago
  Synthetic 20-somethings that cost a few bucks per megatoken may technically be different from flesh 20-somethings working for free for the exposure or whatever it was, but it's not an important distinction. Much as I find LLMs useful, even today I'd only rate their competence in any given domain like a 21 or 22 year old in that domain. The Penguin Island* tariffs comes to mind as an example of probably-AI; I can think of a few mistakes of this level before the days of AI, the only one I'd like to mention is having had to explain to a real human that someone saying they're in "London" doesn't automatically mean they're in the UK. And that's if I'm being generous and assuming Musk's statements on this topic were based in reality — given Musk also asserted that savings of 1-2 trillion dollars were possible when this was not only beyond the powers of the executive, but obviously so with minimal research, I don't trust his word. * Heard and McDonald Islands, IIRC
vasco 11mo ago
Nothing wrong with being 20 somethings in itself regardless of the rest. Average age for the Manhattan project was 25-27. We can focus on the merits or mistakes no need to focus on age.
- kbos87 11mo ago
  I’m ok with age being used as a partial proxy for experience when we’re talking about highly specialized roles with massive implications like the ones that DOGE staffers were dropped into.
  - qcnguy 11mo ago
    It's not a highly specialized role. Look at the contracts they were cutting. A lot of it could be done by an LLM. > $191k USAGM broadcasting contract for “broadcast operations and maintenance in Ethiopia, Africa” > $1.3M State Dept. education contract for “Botswana MI curriculum” etc
    - ben_w 11mo ago
      > $191k USAGM broadcasting contract for “broadcast operations and maintenance in Ethiopia, Africa” USAGM's mission is to promote the USA's diplomatic interests in parts of the world with little or no press freedom. Whole thing was cut by executive order of Trump to the maximum extent possible. Because of that order, it's not even a "not specialised" role, it's not a role. If USAGM should be cut or not, should have been the choice of congress rather than the executive, but that's a different question entirely. > Botswana MI curriculum What's "MI"? Mission-Influenced? That sounds like a plausible amount to spend on a curriculum about Botswana for the benefit of the State Department, let alone in Botswana on anything. And if it is in Botswana, you have to then actually ask "what is this mission, and is this in the interests of the USA taxpayer?", which needs specialists.
      - qcnguy 11mo ago
        > And if it is in Botswana, you have to then actually ask "what is this mission, and is this in the interests of the USA taxpayer?", which needs specialists. Specialists in what? Asking whether something is in the interests of the taxpayer? Data analysis? If so, then such specialists would have to be found in an independent organization without conflicts of interest for any specific mission, aligned with the interests of the taxpayer, and they would need to be recruited from the part of the political spectrum that cares about waste in government. In other words, you'd need a group that looks like DOGE.

spwa4 11mo ago

> DOGE sent in a bunch of 20 somethings to "fix" the technology ... Elon Musk claims that the vast majority of decisions were made by AI modeling.

water-data-dude 11mo ago
The transformer architecture was introduced in 2017, so they send in a bunch of 8 year olds to "fix" the technology ;)
jorts 11mo ago
It was all incredibly reckless.
CrossVR 11mo ago
I'd trust the 20 somethings more than the AI model.
- spwa4 11mo ago
  I think we can all agree that the whole thing was an incredibly bad idea.
  - Incipient 11mo ago
    Like a lot of things, the IDEA is good, the execution is trash. Absolutely everyone can get behind a more efficient government with less corruption (the idea of a business man cutting corruption is nuts). The execution however, as is often the case, was awful (leave it up to the individual to decide if that was deliberate or not).
    - jackstraw42 11mo ago
      It's worse than "the idea is better than the execution." You are offering a lot of leniency in the meaning of your words there, and that should bother you more than it seems to but here we are. The "idea" that was executed on here was a non-starter to begin with. You don't get anywhere by lighting everything that seems like waste on fire and burning it to the ground, learning its effects later. A modern government is not something that is riddled with waste so much that it does nothing. Their first target, USAID, as far as I could tell had no idea what was coming. They didn't even seem to bother to look into what they did, just the cashflows. Which of course will seem wasteful if you don't have a human heart with feelings, it's called U-S-A-I-D. Saying the idea was good here is like giving them the benefit of the doubt that sure maybe they can't read or understand anything, but let them axe these things without a second thought? Come on, you shouldn't let Elon off that easy.
    - palmotea 11mo ago
      > Like a lot of things, the IDEA is good, the execution is trash. The idea was trash, too. The idea wasn't actually make "a more efficient government with less corruption," it was "let Elon Musk and a bunch lackeys literally just move fast and break things."
    - blitzar 11mo ago
      The "idea" was an ideological purge dressed up as something everyone can get behind. Given the outstanding success in bamboozling idiots, I expect to see a lot more of it in the future.
      - ModernMech 11mo ago
- red-iron-pine 11mo ago
  AI told me 7 of 9 CVEs were exploited in the wild. Copilot gave me a different 7 than ChatGPT. Both were wrong about at least one. My intern, a goofy 20 year old EE student, got different results too, but he at least was able to tell me "i'm not sure" and give me real links to where he looked.
ben_w 11mo ago
Synthetic 20-somethings that cost a few bucks per megatoken may technically be different from flesh 20-somethings working for free for the exposure or whatever it was, but it's not an important distinction. Much as I find LLMs useful, even today I'd only rate their competence in any given domain like a 21 or 22 year old in that domain. The Penguin Island* tariffs comes to mind as an example of probably-AI; I can think of a few mistakes of this level before the days of AI, the only one I'd like to mention is having had to explain to a real human that someone saying they're in "London" doesn't automatically mean they're in the UK. And that's if I'm being generous and assuming Musk's statements on this topic were based in reality — given Musk also asserted that savings of 1-2 trillion dollars were possible when this was not only beyond the powers of the executive, but obviously so with minimal research, I don't trust his word. * Heard and McDonald Islands, IIRC

vasco 11mo ago

Nothing wrong with being 20 somethings in itself regardless of the rest. Average age for the Manhattan project was 25-27. We can focus on the merits or mistakes no need to focus on age.

kbos87 11mo ago
I’m ok with age being used as a partial proxy for experience when we’re talking about highly specialized roles with massive implications like the ones that DOGE staffers were dropped into.
- qcnguy 11mo ago
  It's not a highly specialized role. Look at the contracts they were cutting. A lot of it could be done by an LLM. > $191k USAGM broadcasting contract for “broadcast operations and maintenance in Ethiopia, Africa” > $1.3M State Dept. education contract for “Botswana MI curriculum” etc
  - ben_w 11mo ago
    > $191k USAGM broadcasting contract for “broadcast operations and maintenance in Ethiopia, Africa” USAGM's mission is to promote the USA's diplomatic interests in parts of the world with little or no press freedom. Whole thing was cut by executive order of Trump to the maximum extent possible. Because of that order, it's not even a "not specialised" role, it's not a role. If USAGM should be cut or not, should have been the choice of congress rather than the executive, but that's a different question entirely. > Botswana MI curriculum What's "MI"? Mission-Influenced? That sounds like a plausible amount to spend on a curriculum about Botswana for the benefit of the State Department, let alone in Botswana on anything. And if it is in Botswana, you have to then actually ask "what is this mission, and is this in the interests of the USA taxpayer?", which needs specialists.
    - qcnguy 11mo ago
      > And if it is in Botswana, you have to then actually ask "what is this mission, and is this in the interests of the USA taxpayer?", which needs specialists. Specialists in what? Asking whether something is in the interests of the taxpayer? Data analysis? If so, then such specialists would have to be found in an independent organization without conflicts of interest for any specific mission, aligned with the interests of the taxpayer, and they would need to be recruited from the part of the political spectrum that cares about waste in government. In other words, you'd need a group that looks like DOGE.