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Payments crisis of 2025: Not “read only” access anymore (crisesnotes.com)
562 points by shinryuu 8 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 654 comments





This isn't a payments crisis; this is an auditing crisis. There's no way to ensure proper accounting procedures are being followed. At this point, Congress' continued inaction is bordering on criminal.

It's shocking how many billions of spending are completely unaudited. Official gov't auditors have tried for years, but the target agencies stall and stall. You have to assume there is some malfeasance there.

Doing an audit starting with the treasury department seems like the right first step. Every outflow of money ultimately has to start there. It's the root node of the Sankey diagram. Then you follow the money outwards from there.


Audits can be done 'read only'. Audits don't actually have to impact the behaviour and operation of an organization either. Stopping all activity because of an 'audit' is ... wrong.

Write only is not an audit. This is a crisis management style.

You're shocked by how many billions go completely unaudited?

okay then...how many billions are completely unaudited?


Bigly huge numbers! No one knows how many billions except for me: and it’s many! That’s what people are saying!

So you're fine with USAID funding the development of Covid-19 through EcoHealthAlliance (it's been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt) and you're even finer with USAID then financing media (like the BBC and Politico but so many are very likely recipients of these funds) to do the coverup and pretend that it "couldn't have possibly been a lab-leak"?

If you're not fine with that, how do we suggest we even fix this?

The USAID literally financed the development of a virus that killed tens of millions of people worldwide. And then it greased many wheels to try to make people believe it couldn't possibly have been a lab-leak.

Trump just asked an audit of all the US donations that have been made to Ukraine: this looked like one of the biggest operation of money laundering in a long time.

Why are you even against trying to fix things?


Could I get a source of proof for the USAID-EcoHealthAlliance funding and development? I’m googling a lot of variations but I can’t find a good article. Just curious. Thanks.

I suspect the vast majority is in the DoD, which, strangely, isn't the target here.

Only strange if one believes this was about government waste and not an ideological "purification."

SpaceX gets a lot of their funding from the DoD, don't they?

Easy fix. You have until the end of the FY + 3mo to provide the audit report. If you do not provide it, your funding is cut to 0 for the next FY.

Ok, let's go hire someone..not...let random billionaires decide what to do

A random billionaire plus a bunch of high school kids with no demonstrable expertise in finance or accounting.

1 billion sent to the fluffer

Based on Musk’s tweets, the depth of this “audit” seems to be entirely surface level, e.g. “Lutheran in the name? DELETE.” (Not that they could do any better even if they wanted to given the blitzkrieg nature of the audit, size of the team, and complete lack of expertise.)

Based on Musk's tweets we had a fully-functioning FSD years ago and CyberTruck sales have been a runaway success...

Don't worry, the purely regulatory (according to Elon) barriers to FSD will soon be deleted by some SpaceX intern.

> Doing an audit starting with the treasury department seems like the right first step.

That's complete nonsense.

Imagine you're trying to track spending of departments at a massive company. You wouldn't start by looking at a giant list of wire transfers from/to the company's bank accounts and work your way backwards to find what each payment refers to would you?

That would make no sense. Not only would it be practically impossible to do but plenty of resources might be shared between departments and lumped into single payments to a single company for many services, some payments or reimbursements might span several transfers, some things might be paid upfront, other bills may be only due later etc...

That would be a ridiculously bad way to go about it. And then imagine someone starts canceling random wire transfers that they think "look suspicious" lol.


Not if the company had up-to-date audited financials, no. You'd start with those.

The problem is agencies that haven't been audited in a decade. The agencies literally don't report how much money they get, their current balances, or where it goes.

Here's the DOD proudly announcing that they now have clean audits for 11 of their 28 departments: https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/39.... Surely nothing bad is happening in the other 17.


I’m all for better accounting practices and better tracking of government spending as well as eliminating waste. Absolutely.

But pretending that Musk and co are doing an audit by accessing treasury records and payment systems or that it will help with government waste in any way is laughable.

Again, literally no one would be able to make any kind of credible department spending audit out of the bank records of a mid-sized company.

This is the US government’s treasury we’re talking about here! This is several orders of magnitude bigger and more complicated!

Not to mention an audit would not require any write access.


If only there were a part of the government whose job it was to proactively and continuously crawl the interiors of the bureaucracy to identify opportunities for improvement...

If only they had a standing list of more than 5000 such improvement opportunities...

Welcome to the Government Accountability Office!


> You wouldn't start by looking at a giant list of wire transfers from/to the company's bank accounts

Might be the first data you secure though.


In what way is this "securing" the data?

> a top DOGE employee, 25 year old former SpaceX employee Marko Elez, has not only read but write access to BFS servers

> One senior IT source can see Mark retrieving “close to a thousand rows of data” but they can’t see the content because the system is “top secret” even to them. No source I have has knowledge of what DOGE is doing with the data they are retrieving


Every report on this shows the data has been made much LESS secure now.

I was referring to how you'd conduct an audit. I don't mean adding extra security, I mean taking backups so they can't be tampered during the audit.

That’s the same thing though.

You think the treasury doesn’t have a metric ton of procedures, and laws, on data management, integrity, access, backup and retention?

Breaking these protocols by giving unfettered write access to this data to ridiculously inexperienced and ignorant goons exponentially increases the risk of data tampering and corruption…

It makes any kind of audit LESS likely to be accurate.

But they’re very obviously not doing any kind of credible audit. As mentioned, that’s literally impossible and nonsensical to do this way.


Untrained "auditors" will do an "audit" and blast the "results" all over X, Fox News, Newsmax, and OAN. Seems legit.

"The vibes were so off with these rows of data bro" - BigBalls (actual screenname of one of these newly blessed "auditors")

I wouldn’t trust a 19 year old to do my taxes let alone audit all of federal spending.

Those are a couple of people within a much larger team.

Much larger? How much larger? I thought it was a pretty small group.

I wouldn't trust my teenager with a "large" team of people in control of the federal payments system.

Ranging from 19-24.

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I dunno, maybe get an undergrad degree in a related field? I don’t think working as a bike repairman qualifies you.

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No, none of them are qualified. Elon isn’t either.

[flagged]


Please don't cross into personal attack and please stop perpetuating flamewars on HN.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.


It speaks to their experience, of which they have none. They and Musk lack the competence to be doing what they’re engaged in.

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As far as worrying about who has write access to these systems, I think the article makes it fairly clear that even if you're a COBOL programmer with years of experience, that doesn't mean you know these specific COBOL systems and their logic.

Age aside, I feel uncomfortable about anyone new (even experienced COBOL programmers) being able to make changes in these systems, especially given their approach has been portrayed as broadly antagonistic to existing engineers and staff.


I agree with that and write access is concerning but there is no evidence or information about doge employees modifying cobol code.

From the article, the closest thing they have to an evidence is a search query. Rest of it is pure speculation since none of the people who reached out to author has any kind of visibility into what is going on.


At the rate things are going: give it a day. Maybe two. DOGE hasn't even tried to honor it's "transparency" pledges and all the info we get are pretty much from people inside these systems... who speak out less because Musk is also firing anyone he can.

>Experience in what? Do you know their roles and responsibilities?

> How do you judge competence of someone whose job and responsibilities are not known?

It's actually very easy to judge, based on the fact that someone who has never done an audit before is now trusted to do one.

I mean, I wouldn't trust Einstein himself at age 24 to audit a small business, no way am I going to think that some rando, maybe brighter than average, will know what they are doing when performing an audit at age 24.

I also think that, if the story is true, the fact that they started at the wrong end of the financials is a dead giveaway that they do not know what they are doing.

IOW, if I saw someone tasked with designing a new car, and they started by opening up MS Paint and drawing tread patterns for the spare wheel, I'd certainly consider them unable to design a new car.

Even if we err on the side of benefit of doubt, even the smartest 24yo in the world is not going to be competent at doing even a basic audit when:

1. This is the first audit that they are doing, and 2. They have never before had any accounting background.

So, yeah, it's quite reasonable to consider them incompetent that the chosen task in the circumstances.


[flagged]


Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.


But we trust them with billions in military hardware and defending the nation.

No we don't. They get small arms. Fighter jets, aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines and the like are commanded by much older and experienced people. An M16 is not "billions in military hardware."

After super intensive training and supported by an ultra-regimented social and technological infrastructure?

I mean, not individually.

If you were panicked when a developer at GitLab accidentally deleted the production database, just wait until some coder merges a half-tested patch into the Treasury’s production environment. The Musk bros might lose the US ability to reassure the global bond market... Hopefully Spacex has policies with this Dutch Insurance company...:https://youtu.be/3r7mIDycJsE

and it's looking like a legit CONSTITUTIONAL crisis.

How so?

The executive branch can't decided what to spend, only congress can.

Its in the first article of the constitution.


It's not that simple. Congress can't specify every pen and pencil expense, so they allocate large buckets. The executive can decide how each bucket is spent. Like when your mom gives you $20 to go to the movies. She doesn't care what movie you see, but she'd be mad if you skipped the movies and spent it on weed.

And what they are doing now is "skipping the movies and spending it on weed." Shutting down USAID, even if eventually Rubio came in and rolled that back is what you just described. That was an office created by congress.

Remains to be seen.

For now, they are just pausing payments.

If they find serious issues they can likely go to congress and have them canceled outright. If not, they need to distribute the funds during the fiscal year.

I don’t understand the pearl clutching. The government shuts down often due to spending issues. Payments pause when this happens. Moreover, everybody has known for decades that nobody is reading these 50,000 page appropriations bills.

I’m willing to give musk and his guys some time to sort this out.

The president has asked them to do this. If they go against his wishes there is no reason they will not be thrown under the bus. If he pardons them for obvious malfeasance it will make big political waves and likely change the outcome of the midterm elections, where a congress could begin impeachment.


They are not just pausing payments. Huge portions of USAID is being fired. That's not something you can just boot back up over a weekend.

>If they find serious issues they can likely go to congress and have them canceled outright

uhh, no they can't. Those are also government elected representatives. Checks and balances. To "cancel congress", you need the courts to charge and convict them. You're going to find it very hard to do that from treasury records alone (AKA, how the executive branch spends the money allocated).

>I don’t understand the pearl clutching. The government shuts down often due to spending issues.

With that dismissal, you're not opening yourself up to understanding. Maybe there's wrongdoing; The answer isn't to charge into the treasury and hack it.

That's the stupid part: Musk doesn't need to. He's clearly not TSI/TS clearance level, so he just needs trump to go in and look. Or have trump hire someone with that clearance to look in on his orders. Remember, this is the executive branch; Trump has all access powers here (within reason).

>I’m willing to give musk and his guys some time to sort this out.

I'm not. I didn't vote for him. You didn't. He was not approved by Senate, as is executive apointee tradition. He does not have clearance. "Asking" isn't enough. Where's this willingness coming from? Even if you just like the guy, you really want the man who laid off 80% of his staff to handle your money?

>If they go against his wishes there is no reason they will not be thrown under the bus

I can think of 8 or 9 figures why he wouldn't.


> He's clearly not TSI/TS clearance level

He might be due to SpaceX government contracts.

Edit: someone linked below confirmation he does have top secret clearance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42942848


You are just wrong here. You misread my comment. The “them” in my 3rd paragraph refers to the paused payments. If it turns out that what congress appropriated funds for is actually fraud, congress will want to know, and can amend that spending retroactive to this fiscal year. How is this controversial to you?

Elon Musk was hand picked by the president to do this job. Clearly you do not like the president nor Elon but that is a personal view not held by a majority of voters in the last election.


No, what they're doing is skipping the movie, saving up money, hiring a lawyer, so mom loses the right to say "don't spend it on weed".

A better analogy might be that mom bought groceries for the starving family down the road with a check and you cancelled the check, stole the checkbook, and changed the bank account password.

But clearly: did not spend it. Did not misappropriate it. That is much different.

To me it’s more like mom gave me money to pay the rent but my landlord is likely violating laws so in the meantime I am putting the rent in escrow while we sort out the facts.


But that wasn’t your decision to make. Maybe your picture of the landlord is incomplete, and you act as the hot-headed, short-sighted teenager your are, instead of sitting down with mom to discuss the situation.

Disagree. You are allowed to have agency. Mom would be proud of you for not wasting her money. If there is no crime, the landlord will be made whole. Maybe with a little interest at the prevailing rate.

And that's where the analogy falls apart, because yes, maybe it's okay for a teenager to have an agency, but billionaire friends of the president are not, in fact, allowed to have an agency on government spending! People who waltz in and have no fucking clue of how things work generally are not allowed to have an agency!

Remember when Musk built the submarine to save the kids in the cave, was absolutely useless, even actively obstructed others from saving them, and finally resorted to denigrate the diver saving them as a pedophile? That's exactly the same thing he is doing right now.


He’s not a “billionaire friend” in this role. He was asked by the president to do a job and he’s doing it. You expect the president to do everything by himself? Trump likes businessmen. Steve Mnuchin was another “billionaire friend” and it’s hard find fault in his tenure running treasury.

>He’s not a “billionaire friend” in this role.

Yes he is.

> He was asked by the president to do a job and he’s doing it.

1. And he did it in an illegal way, yes. If you wanna go back to Mom, you can go to the grocery but you cannot throw a bank heist and lock all employees out of the store so you can grab some bread

2. He doesn't have access to the store. Mom sent him to Costo without her card. You can't just storm into Costco. Go back to mom and get her card, if possible.


Is it illegal? My understanding is that paused appropriations are tied to the fiscal year. That’s September 30th. Are you sure they are not? Or are you just being an ideologue?

Nobody stormed anything. They just filed a dispute with their credit card company. Costco will get the funds if they win the dispute. If there is malfeasance at Costco don’t you want to know? What exactly are you afraid of?


You can disagree all you want. Our laws have a say.

>but my landlord is likely violating laws

Which is stupid because you Uncle Orange has access to the spending records.


I don’t have an uncle orange. You must have me confused with somebody else.

Meanwhile the laywer refuses because the constitution says that you cannot "save up money" that "your mom" allocated. Let alone choose to spend it on a lawyer instead of groceries. You need to argue with Mom about lawyer Money next quarter.

Man, March is going to be bloody.


Congress mandated the creation of USAID in 1961. I don't hthink the executive branch has the legal authority to just abolish it by fiat or change its status from independent to a subordinate organ of the state department.

It doesn’t matter if Trump has the authority to do something if no one stops him. Laws are just words on paper.

America is no longer a nation of laws. Period. We are a nation ruled by Trump and Musk.


We are a nation of laws still. At least three judges have told Trump/Musk to stop what they are doing. The problem we are running into right now is who enforces the laws when the Executive branch decides they don't want to follow them?

This type of talk just does the work of the authoritarian for them.

Perhaps, but what's anyone going to do about it?

Eh that ship hasn’t sailed (yet) and this type of commentary isn’t productive toward preventing it from setting sail.

We are in fact a nation of laws and we ought to demand enforcement.


The supreme Court already said administrative decisions need to follow the laws so Congress is the only ones who can decide which pencils get bought.

Correct, the executive branch can always opt to not spend the money it was allocated.

It's just that as far as I can recall no one has ever really tried to spend less in the government.

EDIT: I was mistaken, please look up Impoundment of appropriated funds

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impoundment_of_appropriated_fu...



Oh, you learn something new every day. Gracias

Keep in mind, the current administration sees the Impoundment Control Act as unconstitutional so you might unlearn something another day.

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/02/nx-s1-5281438/understanding-t...


Indeed. This law was challenged many, many times in history. Even as recent as Clinton. Congress put it down everytime.

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OP did acknowledge and edit their comment to correct the misinfo. Sometimes we might want to more gently support that, as it is in itself rare.

The advice to confirm belief before commenting is valid, the tone is overly harsh.


How would you change the tone? I feel like that was a plain and matter-of-fact sentence. I get the term "misinformation" is feels loaded but it wasn't unfair to say.

edit and the fact that the poster did have the good sense to add an edit was part of the reason I decided to say something because telling someone who didn't would just be a waste of time


"Confirming your beliefs prior to posting would be useful here."

That edits the swipe of "spreading misinformation", which whilst accurate is charged and puts the reader on the defensive, as well as the more egregious "you know what you are talking about" which is nakedly aggressive. HN discussion is highly sensitive to nuances of tone, a point dang makes frequently:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7905762>, <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23047709> and <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17689715> especially.

(That last isn't too significant for a well-down-thread comment such as yours, but still plays a strong role, especially in politically-tinged discussion, and especially in the present environment.)

(I make a point of confirming information I provide in comments, largely through inline links or footnotes. Of which I am ... inordinately ... fond: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...>. I've more than once changed my comment significantly on discovering my initial beliefs were false.)


Agree that there are ways to say it nicer, but I still contend that what I said was not aggressive. The poster started with "Correct!" and they didn't understand the thing they said was "correct." I think it's fair to point out that they inappropriately made statements about something they didn't know. They even admitted to learning it afterwards. Its fair criticism and if folks wanna be making claims online they should be able to handle it.

If you read dang's admonitions (as I have, for many years) you'll find that his viewpoint and official HN policy is that tone matters immensely, and is often read as diminished / positive by authors and amplified / negatively by recipients.

Searching for "personal attacks" and "swipes" will turn up many such examples:

"personal attacks": <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...>

"swipes": <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...>


I hear you. But like I said, I didn't make a personal attack or swipe. I pointed out that the person shouldn't confidently make claims for things they don't know lest they spread misinformation. It was a fair comment.

Again, my initial comment here (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42939581>), and go through some of dang's many comments for where he draws the line.

(I'm not dang, I'm not a mod, just something of a student of how HN (dys)functions over the years. Which is generally far above the online norm, not that the bar isn't low.)


Yeah, and again, I'm saying you're incorrectly saying my comment fits that mold and I disagree.

That is simply not true. They'd have to go to congress to have the apportioned spending rescinded.


> Correct, the executive branch can always opt to not spend the money it was allocated.

No, they cannot. Trump was impeached during his first term over this very issue. Congress had appropriated funding for the Ukraine, Trump didn't want to provide it without obtaining concessions from Zelenski. Just like Trump doesn't want to provide California any FEMA money for the LA fires without concessions. Trump has been through this before, he knows it's illegal, but he doesn't care. It's kinda funny that people expect a felon to care about the law.


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You got any source on the COVID coverup?

To the second line: cool, if that's what you want, then get your reps to write a law and have the rest of congress pass it and the president sign it.


Well, Biden tried to not spend money to build a wall on the border. And he essentially ran out the clock in that one, so I guess there has been recent success.

The false equivalence is so tiring. It’s okay to admit things are unprecedented.

When asked about the news on Oct. 5 that new border wall construction would indeed commence under his administration, Biden told reporters: “The border wall — the money was appropriated for the border wall. I tried to get to them to reappropriate it, to redirect that money. They didn’t. They wouldn’t. And in the meantime, there’s nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what it was appropriated. I can’t stop that.”

Trump intended to build the wall with no environmental assessments or permits and congress wrote in a waiver since the border was “an emergency” but Biden chose to rescind the emergency declaration and follow the long-established federal construction process instead of using the waivers which does indeed slow things down.

That’s nothing like what is happening with Musk “deleting” entire departments or unilaterally stopping funding because he doesn’t like the phrasing of the grants.


I wasn’t trying to claim any equivalence. I was replying to “It's just that as far as I can recall no one has ever really tried to spend less in the government.” Biden did, in fact, try to spend less than was appropriated.

Maybe you should read up a bit before you repeat false talking points:

https://www.factcheck.org/2023/10/bidens-border-wall-explain...

Biden tried to get congress to re-appropriate the funds. They wouldn't, so he spent it as he was obligated.


>And he essentially ran out the clock in that one

I'll just be in good faith and believe you wholesale. Yes, that is one way to fight the spending. Make the government argue until a deadline is hit and then they either shut down or compromise. Happens much too often.

But that's the point: the budget wasn't made yet. Trump wants to argue over funding that was already in place. If he wanted this chaos legally, he'd have been stalling out the March funding next quarter. But once it's finalized, it's finalized and many challenges over the centuries were shot down.


I get how the system works but I also don't understand how congress can force the executive branch to take out a loan but also sets a debt ceiling which could shut down the government unless it's raised by congress. So congress blames the president for taking out debt, which they force, and refuse to raise taxes to reduce the deficit. Something in that loop is broken. I don't think the president should have unilateral power but I also don't think congress should be able to set both the spending and the debt limit.

Then what you want is an amendment to the constitution. There's a process for that; this ain't it.

I agree. I just think we need to focus more on congress' role in this. The checks and balances only work if we force congress to act as a check and as long as congress keeps voting along party lines and doing the president's bidding, not much is going to change. It shouldn't be normal for the senate to confirm radically unqualified people to positions of power just because the president nominates them.

we can focus on the future when the present isn't tearing down before us.

Sad thing is no one is really talking about this in any branch, so it's just theory crafting until then.

if you want to change that you need a huge voter base that is anti-partisan. Given that we can barely mobilize within parties to protest properly: good luck.


That disconnect is why some people argue the debt limit is unconstitutional - Congress authorized the spending and if they didn’t authorize enough revenue the executive is still obligated to spend regardless.

To do otherwise the executive has to pick and choose what to fund.

The topic usually gets raised every time we get close to a debt limit. If we truly broached the limit it’s possible the Biden and Obama administrations would have just ignored the limit since the consequences of the full faith and credit of the US failing are so dire and there’s a solid argument it’s the least bad option Constitutionally.



Elon and his inexperienced cronies are the last people who should be trusted with any government access. They don’t even have clearance.

Clearance could be granted on a whim by POTUS, as far as I can tell, so that has no leg to stand on. The biggest threat would be that one of the DOGE employees is a foreign actor. Hope they did some vetting...

>Clearance could be granted on a whim by POTUS

He can' (but shouldn't). But there's no word that was granted to Musk. Since, he didn't name them. He probably doesn't though, because he should not have been stopped at USAID with the right credentials. Unless...

>Hope they did some vetting...

we both know he didn't. If he does have clearance, his interns definitely don't. Hence the kerfluffle at USAID.


Elon has produces technology that can be used for weapons of war. He and space x employees often have TS clearance.

Does Elon qualify as a foreign actor? He’s certainly malign.

He's an illegal immigrant from South Africa. I don't know the diplomatic status of the USA with South Africa, but the current party in power would certainly not agree to the idea that illegal immigrants should be given total control of the Treasury.

It remains a matter of import. It is both true that they don't have clearance and true that in a more functional environment that they would not have earned it.

You misunderstand how clearance works. Any one can get "read-on" to anything with the proper authorities giving them access.

It is an administrative step. It might undergo review but access does not need to be prevent until the review happens. It is all about who is granting the access.

The commander in chief has considerable authority to provide access.


No one needs a standing clearance. Anyone can be read into any program by someone of sufficient authority on an ad hoc basis.

There seem to be a lot of misconceptions flying around about what "government access" entails.


This was not the case when I worked in the Federal government. There were different levels and kinds of clearances and while it was true that you could work with less sensitive stuff while the background check process worked its way through, you couldn't go into and view anything elevated w/o the right clearance, or even be in the room pretty much.

This has always been the case, though you generally need to be a US citizen as a practical matter. Whether or not you are exposed to it likely depends on which part of the government and who you are. The common case is when they need the help of outside subject matter experts.

For the sake of timeliness and being able to move quickly, some people in government are authorized to make a judgment about the risk/benefit tradeoff when someone doesn't have an active clearance. It isn't a case of waiting for a background check process, you don't even need to apply. Some organizations will do an informal check of their own in the background if they don't already know who you are. Sure, they would prefer if you already had formal clearance, but it isn't strictly necessary.


Did you often encountered anyone on a POTUS ad hoc mission while being there? There will be background checks maybe, but the winner takes it all.

I could see many people with this abstract concept of a system that governs itself with it's own rules and policies, not quite understanding that it's all customary.

It's like people thinking that the President can't declassify a document or make foreign policy decisions without the NSC's advice or consent.


If they don't have clearance aren't they committing a number of offences under various acts of national security and computer misuse and thus liable for arrest?

Yes, but the GOP senate and house members are unwavering sycophants. The Supreme Court has also been stacked.

It’s a coup many years in the making and we all watched as it happened. The folks behind project 2025 have been plotting this for years and years.

> […] and thus liable for arrest?

If these are federal statues they can be pardoned by the President (like the January 6 folks were).


Yes. But who is going to arrest them and charge them?

>If they don't have clearance aren't they committing a number of offences under various acts of national security and computer misuse and thus liable for arrest?

Arrested by who? The executive branch who ordered his actions? Americans voted for this, and now we have to live with it.


No, the judicial branch which is supposed to enforce the law regardless of who was voted for…

Yknow… the branch that’s supposed to check the power of the executive branch…


The judicial branch can't prosecute, that's what the executive branch does, and it's the executive branch that's doing these things. The legislative branch has the power to keep the executive branch in check, but they're not exercising that power - which I'm saying is bordering on criminal. Obviously, the executive branch is unlikely to prosecute the legislative branch for not taking action against the executive branch. Our constitution has the implicit assumption that all three branches wouldn't be in cahoots with one another, and should they be, the electorate was expected to have enough sense to vote out the legislators and replace them with ones that would keep the executive in check. The million dollar question is how much pain and destruction will be endured until that happens?

4 years of it, if I remember correctly

Two years - Congress is replaced every two years. 1/3 of the Senate is replaced every two years. Given that they've only been in office for two weeks, two years seems like a long way off.

House not Congress. Elected not replaced. It is unlikely enough senators will be replaced in 2026.

Arrests don’t need prosecutors involved unless they need a warrant.

Arrests need warrants. And if you're thinking about the police, that's also part of the executive, mostly. Judges can't do anything unless some other branch of the government asks them to.

> Arrests need warrants.

Arrests need probable cause. They can either be done on a warrant or without a warrant (in the latter case, in the federal system, a complaint must be filed and the arrested person must be brought before a magistrate for a hearing on probable cause within 72 hours after arrest.)


Not even a little bit, do you think a judge gets involved before someone is arrested for a DUI? Or trespassing, simple assault, shoplifting, etc?

The Justice Department, including the FBI and federal prosecutors, are run by appointees of the president.

The president can replace them.


Those are just...guidelines.

I'm afraid you let that ship sail. You now have a king and a court with untrammeled power - good luck when a successor needs to be found.

Seems like we've jumped into the wayback machine and set a course to a year before 1215...

>No, the judicial branch which is supposed to enforce the law regardless of who was voted for…

The judiciary has zero enforcement power. They make the laws which the executive is meant to enforce. If the executive fails to enforce a law, congress can impeach. That's not happening.


The legislative branch makes the laws. The Judicial branch judges whether laws were broken. The executive branch has the power to enforce laws (or to not enforce them, as they see fit).

The current executive branch will not enforce laws against itself, and nobody else is legally allowed to enforce the laws, so all the courts & congress can do is write strongly worded letters.


You're almost right. The thing is that Congress absolutely has the power to impeach the president and strip them of all legal office. Of course, most of Congress is perfectly happy with what's going on, so this won't happen.

That’s not how it works.

The executive branch runs the country.

The legislative branch makes the laws.

The judicial branch enforces them…


No, we did not vote for this. Show me the campaign ad that said Trump was going to give Musk and his gang of losers complete control over the treasury.

It’s all spelled out in the project 2025 doc that was widely publicized as the game plan.

Also, trump was impeached last time because he tried to shut down funding approved by congress. So, if you’re surprised it’s happening again, I suppose you can’t be helped


Oh, the one that Trump heavily distanced himself from? Project 2025 was something skeptics pointed out as being the game plan, but Trump denied (or agreed, then denied).

So, can you eat crow now, or are you genuinely surprised Donald Trump lied? Again.

Do I really have to explain how much of his 100+ EO's come from Project 2025?


I think a quick view of my comment history would show that I am not a fan of Trump. In fact, I would go so far as to characterize him as "if a wet dog turd were a person". I had zero doubt that 2025 would be a blueprint, just another of his lies.

You’re saying that like I’m the gullible one but he’s following it to a t so . . ..

I'm over across the pond - it was pretty obvious to me that Elon was going to take a wrecking ball to the ship of government. if it wasn't clear to you, I'm afraid you can only blame yourself and possibly your diet of information.

Trump said Elon would get to run a new department called "department of government efficiency". if you know what he did at Twitter, you can easily join the dots.


>Show me the campaign ad that said Trump was going to give Musk and his gang of losers complete control over the treasury.

Let's see: Trump appointed it the day after he won:

https://www.npr.org/2024/11/12/g-s1-33972/trump-elon-musk-vi...

And Musk announced DOGE on September 2024:

https://news.bitcoin.com/elon-musk-agrees-to-head-donald-tru...

So yes, this was not some secret. If you (royal you) trusted that photo in the 2nd link to make america efficient, I have no words.


If you think that a politicians advertisements are the full picture of what they will do, I have a bridge you may be interested in buying.

That said, DOGE was well announced and widely publicized prior to the election, by Musk and the media. Musk was up on the stage with Trump quite a bit.

Those who did not know this was going to happen are either easily fooled or were paying no attention.


If we are going to discuss this, we should be clear about the details. "Americans voted for this" is a hot take. Some did. Many did not vote at all. Of those who voted, Trump barely won those votes. It was just enough to get the electoral college votes. Even those who did vote for him did not vote for his current Project 2025-based plan. On the contrary, his campaign denied he was going to do all this.

If you don't vote, you effectively vote for the winner.

When the 49ers lost the 2024 Super Bowl, the second and third string players didn't go around saying they didn't really lose because they never hit the field. No, they lost.


Excellent analogy!

> If you don't vote, you effectively vote for the winner.

Yes, if the Electoral College wasn't a thing.


If you didn't vote in a swing state, I don't even know what to say.

But you'd also be surprised how many non-swings could swing if they had enough non-voters vote.


> On the contrary, his campaign denied he was going to do all this.

People believed the wolf when he said he wasn't going to hurt the sheep.


> Many did not vote at all.

If they didn't vote they voted for the winner. America (including me, because voting wasn't enough) earned this 100%.


Trump has been the dominant figure in American politics for almost a decade now. It's quite obvious who he is and what he stands for. And he's more popular now than ever before. That's the reality. Accepting that and planning around it is the first step to countering it. Burying your head in the sand and saying "people don't actually want this!" is unactionable talk.

While they are absolutely committing crimes, the complicit Trump administration justice department and Republican congress are happy to let it go, at least thus far.

Trump would just pardon them.

And...it's flagged :-))


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If there is some credible reason to believe this might be the case, then an audit should be done. Carefully, not recklessly. With oversight, especially if the auditor gets write access to anything. That oversight should include, at an absolute minimum, a system, not controlled by the auditor, that logs every interaction with the system being audited.

There should be transparency. Maybe they do that

Why do they need write access for this?

Here's the thing, I'm very happy with uncovering fraudulent spending. I strongly doubt that's actually happening. If it was we'd be seeing careful audits and lawsuits against those submitting fraudulent invoices, not this fly by night takeover of systems.


It makes sense to stop the flow of money right?

I see your X post and raise you this one

https://x.com/Quaker_Opes/status/1886596488505053618

I invite you to think through the implications.


I don't get how that's related

Insane.

The nebulous use of fraudulent is doing some rather heavy lifting here.

Could be but seems there’s fraud when so much missing and uselessly spent. Classic fraud

Angry? Why are you coming off so strongly? There's nothing wrong in questioning an unethical approach. If a kid is good in AI/ML to spot a pattern in an image, maybe they should work in healthcare and, not forcefully and illegally poke into someone's financial records. You are the one who needs some serious soul searching.

Okay

I don't think you need clearance for this, so not sure how that is relevant.

I've read in multiple articles that people were placed on leave for trying to require proper clearances from him and his team as obligated to by law, and this article also references how clearances impact the fact that nobody knows what they're actually doing.

As someone who has had to clear an SF86 for a USDS hiring cycle (IRS and DHS systems), I would be shocked if you can get this access without a clearance.

Congress was elected by the people and in a representative democracy, the voters decide (through their elected representatives) what is a crime.

The voters don't directly decide what is a crime. At best, they elect congress that can change the laws and constitution that in turn rules out what is or isn't illegal. None of this was done, none of this is democratic. This is nothing else than a coup perpetrated by the richest man on Earth.

I’m sure the current Supreme Court (which was selected by elected Presidents and Senators) will have no trouble explaining how recent events have been "reasonable" and 100% followed constitutional procedures.

Nah, this kind of thing is fun for judges who know what decision they want to make. It’s like a logic puzzle.

>the voters decide (through their elected representatives) what is a crime

In the long term yes, in the short term, no. That's the check and balance of the Judicial branch. In theory they should be insulated from the politics of the world and properly interpret laws based on various cases.

So you can't just, say, repeal the first amendment just because all your voters suddenly became anti-1A. They need to work to make a represenative base that can eventually vote in that new amendment. And that all takes time (in terms of culture and the bill proposal).


It’s a straight up coup.


From "They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45", an interview with a German about what it was like living during the rise of the Nazis:

Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk alone; you don’t want to “go out of your way to make trouble.” Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, “everyone” is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, “It’s not so bad” or “You’re seeing things” or “You’re an alarmist.”

And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.

But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.

But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds of thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions, would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the “German Firm” stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all of the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying “Jewish swine,” collapses it all at once, and you see that everything has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays.

But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early morning meetings of your department when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.

https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html


Hitler started by imprisoning those suspected of being in opposition. First concentration camps started right after he took power. The estimation is that they locked 50,000 of political opponents arresting 100,000. Purge of SA happened a year later.

In 1933, right after getting power, Jews were excluded from civil service, their numbers in schools were limited and a year later they could not be actors. The restrictions came in quick and were felt a lot by their targets.

So, this extract kind of underplays the beginning of it all. It was violent from the start.


"deportation" flights to Guantanamo Bay have begun.

https://apnews.com/article/deportation-flights-military-indi...


Oh, sure, but I'm not an immigrant. /s

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HN doesn't have callouts. If you want dang to see your comment, email hn@ycombinator.com.

what is?

I'm going to assume (foolishly) that this is an honest question. The answer would be: The DOGE situation as described in the article this comment chain is about.

Are they making new accounting records?

Of course not. They’re wreaking having based on Elon’s whims. Much like when he drove Twitter into the ground.

Twitter is very much alive.

Twitter/X -- the site -- is essentially fine.

Twitter -- the community -- is dead and rotting.


Twitter the business pretty much killed itself. The ads in my following feed right now: Temu, Temu, Whatnot, Temu, Temu.

Maybe that's influenced by me blocking a lot of garbage ads? IDK.


Shouldn't ublock origin be stopping you from getting any ads?

App on my phone.

TWTR -- the publicly traded company -- dipped so badly that Musk needed to make it private. It's effectively less of a public commons now than it is Musk's investment on manipulating information.

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>Before Musk takeover certain opinions just weren't present and/or were actively silenced.

Care to provide some examples of "certain opinions" that were "actively silenced?"


Afaik, open nazi were actually silenced on twitter prior Musk. But, you could talking in euphemisms and it would be mostly fine. Also, when you went really really far with harassment.

Yes, that was rather my point.

Opinions regarding masking mandates and criticizing COVID-19 response in general, for example.

>Opinions regarding masking mandates and criticizing COVID-19 response in general, for example.

So they were cracking down on people spreading dangerous disinformation in the middle of a public health emergency. Okay.

What are some others?


I would like to know what you had to mute to make Musk's Twitter tolerable.

Gender-related discourse (both pro/contra), Israel-related (both), Crypto-currency. US election topics.

Does your feed have anything left?

In the metaphor then Twitter is wiggling around on the ground.

Not truly dead but a shell of it's former self.


I guess I know why you're getting downvoted. Saying Twitter is at death's door is like saying that sanctions are going to crush Russia any day now. People really really want to believe it despite all the evidence. Twitter is very much alive, and it's doing exactly what Musk wants it to do.

I don't think those are comparable. Russia is running a war economy. Those run perfectly fine till they don't run at all.

Yahoo search is up there for you to use. I wouldn't call that alive...

Exactly. When he fired 90% of the employees everyone here and on Reddit said it would fall apart within days due to the complexity of the systems that Elon’s employees and the remaining traitor engineers had no hope of maintaining.

When it didn’t fall apart in days, the goalposts were moved to “technical issues won’t become obvious right away, give it a few months”.

It’s been over 2 years and on a technical level running better than ever. You can disagree with the content and users all you wish, but pretending it’s dying because you hate the bad orange and mars man is delusional.


>"It’s been over 2 years and on a technical level running better than ever"

Isn't it also simply doing less? Weren't some APIs shut off or reduced? My limited memory is having me think they reduced or shut down some functionality altogether, which would also help something run smoother. Fewer things running means fewer things can break.


No. Grok, spaces, community notes, long form videos, user payouts. It’s doing far more now than ever before.

Nitter etc are locked out as far as I know. That was likely a huge load on the site.

Nitters up: https://nitter.net/search?f=users&q=elonmusk

They just closed a single API which was also abused by botfarms. Closing the API immediately improved the site from a spam perspective and was welcome by most actual users, likely all users who understood the impact.

This is pure cope - the site is doing a TON more than it used to, and more stable than ever.

Also arguing that a site that is designed to scrape and re-represent a website without ads or other stuff 'was likely a huge load' is a very weird argument to try and claim the site is no longer being used.

I can say anecdotally I used to use nitter, and while it didn't work for a few days I switched to the regular site. Now I would never go back. The actual site works better now, I have no need. On old twitter 1.0, nitter worked better.

Thats a black eye on Dorsey twitter, not the new twitter (or X or whatever you prefer)


(and fewer users means lower load, as a bonus)

>It’s been over 2 years and on a technical level running better than ever.

Ask the worker's how they are doing, and then maybe I'll be convinced that it's "running better". When you grind 10x the users into the dirt, you can make up for cutting 90% of your staff. For a while. Especially in a crap economy like this where job hopping is harder.

I also agree that most of the cuts may have been managerial and logistics. It's probably a clown circus trying to do anything more than maintain.

I agree only on a surface level that it looks better. But old tech dies very hard. Digg is technically still up today. Myspace is technically still up today. hell, 4chan is still arguably bustling.


Well, did he fire 90% of engineering team? I don't think so. That's the critical piece of mass thinking you are missing.

I’m not missing anything, seeing as I wasn’t part of the crowd convinced the site would be non-functional as a result of Elon’s decisions.

“Move fast and break things” seems like a horrible approach when things like Social Security and Medicare payments are on the line. If a few thousand random tweets get lost in a refactor, nobody cares. If somebody stops receiving their checks because Whiz Kid #3 doesn’t know how to work with an enterprise database system, what does that person do? Who do they escalate to?

It takes a long time to build up a strong nation. It takes a few weeks to tear it down.

Ah yes, short form 4chan. It’s Elon’s blog — the remaining users are commenters.

Best description I have seen yet.

I think Elon Musk and his lackeys' action is literally criminal, but law enforcement work for the same team. And Congress is controlled by the same team.

>but law enforcement work for the same team. And Congress is controlled by the same team.

And I'll never understand why. There's a lot of partisan issues but I thought "not fucking around with our money" was as bipartisan as a plutocracy could get?


Because it's not about just power and money. People need to stop cynically thinking that all the social stuff is just noise so they can get power and money. They actually intend to upend the social order to establish a white, evangelical Christian state with utter disregard for the Constitution.

That is literally the power of the Executive, to choose which laws to enforce and which to not. Congress makes the laws, and the Courts adjudicate. That is the whole basis of the federal government.

The executive is formally required to execute all constitutional laws by the take care clause of article two. It's been politically expedient for most presidents to ignore a few policies they dislike, but it's very much not a central pillar of the American government to grant them that power.

I mean that's what they teach 8th graders but it's reductive. Congress makes plenty of laws that restrict how the executive performs its functions (including how they allow people within the executive to do so), and it's an open question over how much power the executive has to create departments and appoint people to run them.

At the moment though, what they're doing is very much illegal. They just have a bunch of collaborators in the DOJ who won't bring charges or arrest anyone, because they're co-conspirators.


The 8th-grader understanding is that each branch does what it's supposed to do with virtuous motives. The adult understanding is that they exercise as much power as they can until forced to stop.

I mean if that was true then the current situation wouldn't be happening. The story of the US Congress over the last two decades (probably longer) is they have ceded an enormous amount of power to the Executive via inaction, and continue to do so.

The problem with simplistic narratives where you give stuff names is it masks what's actually happening: the Executive is near enough to a dictatorship - power and authority is deliberate vested in one person. This makes it very different to Congress, which only wields power by the collective decision making of hundreds via majority or even super-majority vote.

So "Congress" doesn't really exist as an entity: because there is no guiding consciousness or collective in it which is deliberately trying to seize more power, and the story of its power is the exact opposite: it keeps giving it away (because the individual members of Congress can only retain that position and it's local benefits by staying in Congress, best accomplished by deliberately avoiding responsibility of any kind).

If you've ever tried to get 4 people to decide what to get for dinner, the guy who simply says "Let's get tacos" usually gets his way because everyone else keeps deferring.


While there is a lot of conspiracy, there are still some fringes forcing them to stop. Trump's budget freezes was already shot down.

I think he should open the data and methods minus any PII data and let the open community decide if his methods are sound.

At this point the US government would not pass a SOX audit.

The DoD has already been failing audits[1] for a while now.

[1] https://breakingdefense.com/2024/11/pentagon-fails-7th-audit...


SOX is for public corporations.

Yes, but that standard should probably be met and exceeded by the government of the largest economy in the world, don't you think?

It sounds like you think SOX auditing means “super secure and careful accounting”.

SOX is a specific law with the motivation of giving markets more confidence in public stocks (for example must hire external auditors, certain board member rules, how certain assets must be valued, etc).

The SOX audit is to make sure that law is followed.

One criticism of SOX is that encouraged many startups and other businesses to remain private.

So long story short, no. Our government does not resemble a public stock corporation and these things don’t have an analog.


I specifically meant the parts of SOX related to access controls, infrastructure, and codebase management to ensure a baseline level of security for processing payments and PII to ensure this does not represent a risk to the valuation of the enterprise.

These measures are universal to running any payment platform, not a public/private issue.

*No, I'm not thinking of PCI, but that is also a valid measure here. There are recent updates to SOX in the past few years covering these aspects of payment operations. Some old-school SOX experts may not be familiar and the strictness on these aspects of the audit varies by auditor in my experience. I recently helped a client navigate these developing and responding to a very strict audit process covering their entire IT landscape including process flows, deployment planning and user/role management.


Are you perhaps thinking of PCI or SOC2?

I don’t believe all of those are from SOX.

> I specifically meant

You didn’t leave the comment. Was that your alt account?


I'm the GP.

> One criticism of SOX is that it partially nationalizes control of the organization,

If that is a criticism of SOX for private companies, then it would mean that it should be a baseline for national accounting, no?


> it should be a baseline for national accounting

What does this mean? Let me repeat. SOX is not a method of accounting, its rules about roles and reporting for public corporations

> It sounds like you think SOX auditing means “super secure and careful accounting”.


Yes, rules and roles for reporting, ie accounting.

I don't know what you think you are implying with the "super secure and careful" comment, we are looking for the roles that ensure the accountability of SOX.

Your complaint is that SOX "nationalizes" companies because apparently it becomes so transparent, or something? If that's what you mean by "nationalize" shouldn't that be used for our nation's accounting?


I’m not sure 19 year olds using gmail addresses are concerned with SOX.

I’m not sure you know what SOX is.

To be fair, no 19 year old in the world concerns himself with audits or proper regulatory procedure, including law students. There is a reason proper structure exists

Same could be said about health & retirement benefits

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Not sure if you realize, but the federal budget is already public and anybody can FOIA additional details..

So why can’t they pass an audit?

FWIW, you're thinking about the DoD/the Pentagon, not the federal government as whole - and yeah, the Pentagon hasn't been able to pass an audit in ~6 years.

The defense budget is somewhat more opaque, though, for national security reasons. I don't know if they are good reasons or not, but that's the story at least.


I think you're specifically referring to the Pentagon. I'd like to see Elon attempt to force his way into that building next.

Are you kidding? Hegseth will roll out the red carpet.

Why would you trust the man who's been heavily subsidized by the government to do an audit? A significant chunk of Elon Musk's money came from government contracts his companies had with the US government.

Exactly — this isn’t good will. The only subsidies he cares about are his own. Though all involved don’t seem bright enough to realize that destabilizing the government, its finances and the perception of the dollar will have consequences for their own wealth.

They may be all in on various cryptocurrencies at this point.

“Pass” as in “conduct one”? Because that’s a huge massive expensive undertaking that has very little upside and a lot of downside.

It’s hard to pass an audit when unfettered access has been granted to a billionaire without access and cronies installing unauthorized software and strong arming everyone they encounter.

You know they had many years before to pass one…

How does this have anything to do with an erratic billionaire given free rein to illegally sabotage things?

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January 6th was an attempted failed coup. No doubt. Failed coup.

The events of the past few weeks are not even in the same hemisphere as a coup, by definition of the word.

Who is trolling whom, exactly?


Why do you think the spending of the government isn't already publicly available? Because it is.

The only thing thats public is highly abstracted and euphamistic descriptions of where the money is going. Any FOIAs seeking more granular information would be politely asked to stop asking. After all if this information is classified and relating to national security why would it be handed out?

Not in a practically accessible way for the majority of people.

Is this not practically accessible? https://www.usaspending.gov/

The budgets for all these agencies have congressional oversight. Additionally, there's an entire agency devoted to making sure there's a minimum of grift, the GAO. For example, here's a recent report they did on NASA's large projects:

https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-106767


> It would be stupendous if voters were aware of where all this to date untraceable money is going.

It would be stupendous if, for example, everyone knew when I receive an interest payment on a savings bond, and for how much? Or some schmuck gets his social security payment?


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Auditors don't need write access to the system. And audits absolutely do include a careful accounting of who has access and what is being accessed.

As far as I can tell Elon has had security clearance since 2019 because Space X was (and still is) contracted to do work for the DOD. However I don't know what kind of clearance it was at that time.

Please correct me If I'm wrong.


I thought he famously couldn't get the top level of clearance and has to sit out of certain spacex activity

Cozzyd is right:

> The Wall Street Journal reported citing people familiar with the matter that SpaceX lawyers recommended that the company's leadership not pursue a higher security clearance for Musk because he would have been asked about contacts with foreign officials as well as his prior drug use.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/why-elon-musk-doesnt-ha...

(Didn't link WSJ article due to paywall.)


Your link confirms GP is correct:

> Musk holds a "top secret" clearance that gives him access to some of SpaceX's sensitive programs.


Is anyone not concerned by this? Paying the bills due is not a political issue, making payroll is not a political issue.

Elected or unelected, politicians with an agenda should not be in charge here.


A lot of people are very concerned about it. but what am I supposed to do about it? I voted, canvassed, and donated as hard as I could already. and I lost.

Wherever you are, find friends, bring family, go to the closest government building, camp in front of it. Block the main street of your city, block highways, block ports, &c.

It really isn't rocket science, German hardcore ecologists put more efforts on a random Tuesday morning than Americans during a coup, it's mind boggling.

They gave you an online "public square" so that you can all scream in its void, get the fuck out and protect what's yours


Sounds like a great way to volunteer yourself and your family to assemble Herman Miller furniture for $1/hour.

What's the alternative at this rate? If you want to flee the country then you better get started now. It'll only get worse from here.

I'd rather stay and fight.


There are a hundred options to fight back against fascism that don't involve violence or being arrested. Don't get me wrong, sometimes people are pushed too far and they need to use violence to achieve liberty. It's how our nation was founded after all. But it's a last resort and more often than not backfires. Just a glimpse at French and Russian history will tell you all you need to know about that.

The biggest thing we can do is get people out to vote in the midterm election and take back the house and senate. Until then we need to volunteer and donate to organizations that are fighting back legally like the ACLU. Education is also a huge part of that.

Organizing peaceful protests is possible but fraught due to anti-protest countermeasures employed by fascists. Stuff like media blackouts, attempts to incite violence, astroturfed counter protests and false flag operations make it dangerous and hard to accomplish. A big thing we can do is to create our own media coverage of protests and spread it as much as possible on friendly platforms. Putting up signs, posting to Bluesky, posting to group chats, and educating friends and family. Utilize your own personal networks to wake people up to the problem.


This sounds oddly familiar to the last time Trump was president, with people claiming the world is over and so on.

Huge hint, the other party always thinks the world is over if they lose.

This is more of that overreaction that got him elected again.


I would say that there are concerning new developments to the Republican strategy that were not present in his original term.

Such as? He seems to have been very clear about his agenda during the run up.

Primarily, the strategy to ignore all prior laws, court rulings, and the constitution itself with the permission of a slim majority of congress.

Call your senator. Republican or Democrat or Independent or whatever. Call them, tell them you expect them to cease all routine business in the senate until accountability is restored. They do listen, it does matter.

My Senator is Susan Collins. She does not give a single shit.

My friend worked for her as a page one time. If congress isn't voting on something to do with potatoes or blueberries, she doesn't even show up. She's been emphatically on-board with this for a decade now.


Call anyway. If they don't answer the phone, go to the closest field office in person and knock. The stakes are too high, you need to ask yourself every step of the way: is THIS the roadblock that's going to stop me?

Maybe your senator doesn't care, maybe the courts are bought and the criminals are immune, maybe maybe maybe. Fighting means you keep powering through the maybes, the roadblocks, the hopelessness. There are sophisticated campaigns at work designed to make you feel hopeless and powerless. DO NOT give in to these without a fight!


As somebody who has never done this before, how do I go about this (past Googling their phone number)?

I remember a while back with SOAP and PIPA there were templates you could read, do those exist for this case?


https://5calls.org

I know using the phone can be uncomfortable if you don't do it often and that's okay. It gets easier the more you do it, and you don't need to word everything perfectly. The important thing is that you get your point across. "My name is x, I live in county y, and I'm calling to say I expect a yes/no vote on issue z."


I just did this for the first time, I found all three of mine had websites with a form to fill in which I used to leave my message. I hope filling in the form counts as much as a phone call? I left one a phone message too, but do kind of hate calling people...

Email is NOT as good! Phone calls are the most effective means by far. I know it's uncomfortable, it is for me too, but you need to power through that feeling. It gets easier the more you do it.

I called and kept calling until I got through. There were busy signals for 30 minutes before I got in. Be persistent. Keep trying!


To add, as someone who’s called offices to share opinions over the last several years:

You may get either voicemail or someone will pick up. A staffer will be who gets these messages, so be polite. Simply being polite means you’d be doing better than a lot of other callers.

I state my name, that I am a constituent, my city+ZIP, a brief message stating that I urge the congressperson to support/oppose an action and why.

If you’re talking to a human, give them a moment to jot it down and you’re done.

Also, you don’t have to call their DC office. If that line is busy, try a field office.


> what am I supposed to do about it?

Watching from Europe, I think you are getting close to the point where 75 million people need to hit the streets (preferably in DC).

It appears they are trying to beat the 53 days record.


Immigration protests are picking up in Los Angeles and, for maybe the first time ever, the cops are not busting them up.

The womans march was one of the largest protests in DC history and I think it was only about 470k. 75 million, man a quarter of that would shut the country down.

If those people hit the streets they'll be hit by chemical weapons (i.e. tear gas) that are illegal for our government to use in war but perfectly legal to use on peaceful protesters. Just something to keep in mind in case anyone is wondering why Americans don't really protest.

There is a reason why people, especially those outside the US, are treating the series of events of past few days as if it were a regime change, and the reason is it satisfies most criteria for it. From [1]:

  “Regulations, basically, should be default gone,” Musk said. “Not default there, default gone. And if it turns out that we missed the mark on a regulation, we can always add it back in.”

  “These regulations are added willy-nilly all the time. So we’ve just got to do a wholesale, spring cleaning of regulation and get the government off the backs of everyday Americans so people can get things done,” Musk said, adding later: “If the government has millions of regulations holding everyone back, well, it’s not freedom. We’ve got to restore freedom.”
1: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elon-musk-regulations-default...

Tear gas is illegal to use in war because of a fear of escalation/retaliatory strikes due to an enemy thinking you're using other more dangerous chemical/biological weapons (chlorine, sarin, mustard, phosgene, etc).

It's not banned in war because it's as dangerous as chemical weapons, it's banned in war so people don't think you're using chemical weapons.


I’d also add that in basic training you’re hit with tear gas so you know what it’s like and learn to trust your equipment. They don’t do that unless there’s a chance you may encounter it.

I keep reading this as if it was not the case for most major protests and riots around the world.

French police use tear gas on protestors, and in 1980, the South Korean government fired on and killed protestors. I don't think it's just the tear gas; I think it has more to do with the fact that we're way more distributed (it's very practical for most French people to descend on Paris than it is for US residents to descend on DC) and culturally not in the habit.

It takes a critical mass to be unmanageable by any amount of tear gas. Even if they use various types of anti-protest weapons, so what? Do you want to cry at home or on the streets?

A general strike is a worthwhile outlet. Electoralism is notthe only form of political activity.

And lost with a popular vote.

We can't convince the other half that wants this...


Not sure everyone is still happy about their vote.

Also DT had a minority of the popular vote after you account for 3rd party.


I'd wager a solid 20%-30% of the people who voted for Trump were poorly informed, or deliberately misinformed, and simply wanted "change" because they weren't pleased with the current state of their life / country. Unfortunately they didn't take the time to appropriately attribute the cause of their ills and made the grave mistake of thinking Trump and his administration would do anything at all to help them and their kind, not recognizing the narcissistic sociopath in front of them, and realizing that such people are wholly incapable of caring about any other person, under any circumstance. They were conned by a lifetime expert conman. Sad!

What is the percentage of poorly informed people who voted non-trump in your opinion?

Or maybe you’re just upset because your candidate lost and now you’re looking for a narcissistic way to justify your own beliefs to avoid your world view from crashing?

I am moving my money out of the US stock market. Maybe most people don't care, but I want to live and invest in a functional democracy.

If enough people do it, maybe MAGA 401ks going down will make people care.


If a majority of people voted for this, and you are attempting to override their will, what does that make you?

Protest.

Or how do you think your ancestors got democracy and kept it in the first place?


Probably this at this point:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/

Organize into a political party. Spread pro worker information and convince the working class to join. Democratic Party is not it, in my opinion.


We wait for the order for the general strike, and then we do our part.

You do not wait for an order, because there is no central authority for a general strike. That's what gives it legitimacy.. You canvass, wheatpaste, recruit or whatever sort of political organizing/agitating you find appropriate. You have to meme it into existence.

I'm not being facetious but genuinely curious: who would issue such an order with enough authority for you to follow it?

Not OP, but someone with a significant national platform and an explicit call (dates, details, support from other prominent folks), not a generic "we should do something!" hint.

I'd find calls from, say, AOC or Taylor Swift more interesting than rando red rose LARPers.


If you wait for someone else to do the hard work nothing will happen, look at the French yellow vests, it started from nothing, and the causes were laughable compared to what the US is going through now

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_vests_protests


It could get blown out like occupy wallstreet, or, if a natural leader arises to keep momentum focused, they could end up like MLK...

Swift? i don't think we should be looking to entertainers for political leadership, that's just following in the footsteps of how we got Trump.

You're not gonna get a general strike without people with significant national influence pushing for it, and it's not gonna be Chuck Schumer.

They're not gonna push for it without grassroots organization, which means doing things at the local and online level to get the idea in wide circulation. It's not a startup.

Absent this, people will get more and more frustrated which will eventually manifest as riots as it did in 2020. So if you prefer a more peaceable outcome, I think it's better to talk up the idea of a general strike rather than talk it down.


The people who can do anything about it aren't concerned.

The SP500 is normal today, institutional money is fine with this.


Yeah, what's up with that?

Does this treasury department payment system not also cover the payments made to bondholders?

Every time Congress delays raising the debt ceiling until the last minute, people get anxious and worry about a default and the full faith and credit of the US, etc. Are we now saying that the US could default even when funds are available if an un-elected guy and some junior programmers decide that would be a good idea or just mess up when dealing with a complex and arcane legacy system, and that's not scary to markets?

I would think every financial model that references a "risk-free rate" now has to be revisited while people consider whether any information visible to the Treasury Department might link their account to someone who has said something disparaging about Musk on twitter.


You are over-estimating the financial sector. They don't model these things. Models are rather simple (US 0% risk, this country x% risk because a handful of institutions said, etc...). There is really not much science, research or sophistication there. Take the stock market, pretty much everyone is following everyone else.

Maybe market sentiment is an expression of faith in the US legal system? He said hopefully?

Or maybe the market expects certain people to get richer shortly? He said cynically.


Yeah, because Microsoft is not affected the slightest if someone arbitrarily loses their research funding or stops receiving social security checks.

That's not the important risk here.

The important risk is a runaway executive that feels completely unconstrained by law, with the blessing of both other branches of government. Today, it's blocking members of the legislature from entering government buildings and is unilaterally shutting down an agency that exists on a directive of Congress.

Tomorrow, will it carry out any legislature that congress passes?

In a year, will it comply with an impeachment?


You'd be surprised how much AWS, Azure, GCP, etc take in indirectly from research science.

I am so excited about this... He's hiring some of the top people in the world to work for the GOVERNMENT!!! how amazing is that? We've lost the will as Americans to send our best people to serve the interest of the people because private industry was more profitable.

Elon has about 30 years of experience leading software teams at the cutting edge of development. He's conducting wide spread audits to the government, and ensuring the funds being appropriated by congress are being used effectively.

I think this whole thing boils down to whether you like elon or not.


From all that we know so far these are very far from "the top people in the world"

Elon Musk, David Sac, Vivek ramswamy, Tom Krause, Kimberly Brandt, John Brooks....? Even the youngest person working at Doge solved the vesuvius challenge... not to mention top engineers from Jump Capital, Vinay Hiremath, founder of Loom working as recruiting... the list goes on...?

This is exciting, and awesome, and i can't believe trump has been able to convince such a powerhouse team to work for the benefit of the US. By auditing the government, we ensure our debt surety payments don't slowly bleed us to death. For the first time in my entire life have i felt a sense of hope.


> I think this whole thing boils down to whether you like elon or not.

I think this whole thing boils down to you being an anti-abortion zealot who is so anti-abortion (you've expressed opposition to abortion on Hacker News, a tech forum, not just once, but multiple times![1]) that you see no issue with Trump cutting government spending in certain areas while he is simultaneously expressing support for the US occupying Gaza, funding a goddamn Christian task force[2], etc.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?type=comment&query=abortion+author:T...

[2] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/erad...


And I agree with it all ;) fortunately, turns out the majority of the US seems to agree with me.

My worry is it could become a political issue. Agency you don’t like? Employee you don’t like? US state you don’t like? Just don’t pay them any more. And who would be able to do anything about it?

The blatant ignoring of laws shows that Trump thinks it's fine to be lawless as long as it serves his chaotic agenda to sew discord and distrust in the government so he and his Elon goon squad can install more autocracy into the system.

[flagged]


Why in the world would you trust Elon and his cadre to do that investigation? The man has no self-control, has the temperament of a spoiled teenager, and by all accounts is a drug addict. He also has a shocking number of conflicts of interest.

I wouldn't trust Elon to water my plants!


> This is the first time the veil of undocumented or secret government payments has been pierced and it's going to shed a lot of light into the corruption behind government spending.

... is there somewhere that DOGE people with access are publishing the stuff they see? If this were about transparency, that could be good, but that purpose could be served with read only access.

I'm not saying there isn't serious corruption in government spending, but this administration and Musk aren't in a credible position to fight it, especially not this way. The Treasury Department should refer stuff to Justice who should convene a grand jury, present some evidence, and prosecute corrupt contractors etc. We're supposed to be a country of laws.


I disagree. They are very credible. I trust them much more than I trust a bunch of government bureaucrat fat cats.

I’ve worked in government and I know first hand how useless they are so seeing them being exposed is a long time coming. The idea that these bureaucrats are unsung heros is hilarious. It’s exactly the same how taxi companies were somehow the heroes against Uber when taxi companies are the most exploitive companies ever, especially to minorities.

I’m anxious to see what the results of all this effort is. But I don’t think anything nefarious is going on.


Musk isn't a policitican.

Ideally, trying to reform the government & its activities shouldn't require a team to burrow all the way down to the literal payments system & call individual balls and strikes.

But I assume that is indicative of how unresponsive the bureaucracy has become to political direction from the president & secretaries.


Try this assumption on for size: this team just wants to break the government and make it serve the party, not the country.

> unresponsive the bureaucracy has become to political direction from the president & secretaries

You call it unresponsive, the founding fathers called it "checks and balances"


Look I get where you're coming from, but those "checks and balances" can't be the thing you defend because they've largely done neither and in fact allowed this insanity in the first place.

A desire for an “independent bureaucracy” is quite the creative interpretation of the idea of checks and balances…

Bureaucracy is there to protect us from people like Trump and Elon. Congress can pass laws and the president can issue orders. This action threatens the US financial system, which threatens the economic stability of most of the world. In terms of human suffering this could have massive impact. We now have a psychopath (well, at least one) with his fingers around our throats. We're all waiting to see what comes next, but it won't be good.

Defending bureaucracy. What next? Lobbying is good?

Sunlight is the best disinfectant

If you think you're gonna get sunlight form Musk you're a rube. There isn't any transparency going on here.

There's been a lot so far. More than we've had in a while.

No there hasn't. When someone named the 6 DOGE guys kicking in doors at OPM and TReasury Musk spluttered on his social media platform that the person was committing a crime by naming them and then deleted the person's account.

What have you actually learned? And consider that there's no way for anyone to argue that information was already available to the public, because the main activity of DOGE so far ahs been taking government web pages or entire domains offline. With no organized archival process, how do you equate significantly less availability of information with 'transparency'?


> What have you actually learned?

I mean, I've been watching my feed scroll by with the various monetary alotments they've discovered. Finally, someone's taking a critical glance at the $$ dedicated to increasing atheism in Tibet (no, I'm not kidding).


Wow, your feed tells you you're better informed now? Compared to what? As I pointed out, you have no way to check how much of this information was previously published, a point you chose to ignore.

I'm curious about whether you ever attempted to find details of USAID spending, pulled budget docs from their site or filed a FOIA request or anything like that. If you had done so and run into a brick wall, I would understand your saying that there had been a lack of prior transparency. But your posts reads as if someone just drew your attention to something you weren't aware of before, and you've mistaken that for transparency when in fact it's just a talking point designed to grab your attention.


Alright, I’ll bite. Any congress critter went onto the floor and started reading “transparency” files? Or is it the usual partisans with Xitter files?

Everyone from Elon to Luigi want to just "burn it down". They see no benefit in following democratic processes to achieve the desired ends.

I used to respect Elon for risking a lot of his own capital on new ventures. But now he's turned into a socially conservative internet troll.


Elon says he's trying to return power to the people rather than bureaucrats.

How can one do that without transparency? Elon seems almost proud of the boorishness of his "wood chipper" and the lack of transparency.

He declares entire programs to be fraud and declares them cancelled, seemingly taking only minutes to unilaterally make that declaration.

If he respected the people and the democratic process he'd create transparency and (if he's right) have massive public support behind his efforts.

But he's offered ZERO transparency, only name calling.


Yeah, it's a bit worrying.

There's a good article in the NYT saying it's a bit like when the US tried to remake the Iraq government after invading and sent in a handful of young people to rearrange everything who did't know what they were doing

"The Familiar Arrogance of Musk’s Young Apparatchiks" https://archive.ph/jnTG3

It seems much closer to what's happening than calling it a coup.

It was odd as a Brit seeing him going on about the grooming scandal in the UK. I mean it was a bad thing but he was getting a lot of his facts wrong and wanting to fire the wrong people etc. I'm not quite sure what's up with him.


> It was odd as a Brit seeing him going on about the grooming scandal in the UK.

I have two theories.

A) At his core he's a cultural supremacist. Perhaps it began in a benign way when he was a boy trying to believe his ancestors deserved their place in South Africa's economic hierarchy and he deserved to ride to school in a limousine. Over time he gained power as a rich nerd, yet he began to sense limits to that power and longed for the kind of power held by leaders of tribes. Cultural trends led to more tribalism in politics which captured Elon's imagination, and because of his early conditioning the political messages rooted in cultural supremacy felt like powerful truths that he felt called to help promote. In Trump he sees a tribal chieftain fighting what is ultimately a noble battle and unencumbered by ideas that weaken or water down the ancestral spirit he is fighting for.

B) It's all purely opportunistic. Tactics upon tactics all based on some analysis that it's the only way he will personally save humanity by getting humans to Mars in time.


My guess is he was getting most of his information on it from people on twitter/x who were mostly right wing, anti islam, anti woke and non brits. A lot of them seem to tweet to own the libs etc. rather than worrying too much about the factual accuracy.

Some of their reasoning seems to be - bad/woke stuff happens in the UK - who's the leftie to blame - ah Starmer's running the left party - tweet it's all Starmer's fault, he should go. But the government in charge from 2010 to 2024 when most of that happened was Cameron and the Tories. Starmer is actually quite middle of the road, small c conservative and the first person to prosecute and imprison the bad guys in the grooming thing. It's all a bit mindless / ill informed.

I hope rearranging the US government is a bit better thought out! At least the people involved seem to be American and so presumably have some basic knowledge of the American government.


His definition of "people" implicitly excludes the slave classes/races.

Elon explicitly has a leadership style that advocated to "remove everything, add back if needed" that completely ignores history. He does not give two shits about regulations being written in blood.

Elon is in this purely to remove all regulations, which he views as a hinder to his businesses. He also wants a private takeover of core gov. functions, which then he (or allies) can provide.


The US gets its own MBS!

Those democratic processes stopped working decades ago. They're marginally more effective than the "close door" button on an elevator, but not by much. Everyone in Congress is either too bought or too old to listen to you. The Presidency is a glorified popularity contest that the Democratic Party[0] has figured out how to consistently lose with razor-thin margins. And the judicial branch was never democratically accountable to begin with.

Elon was never going to follow democratic processes, that's not how moneybag men think. Do you think he ran X.com, PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, or Twitter as democracies? Hell no. Musk fires or buys-out people who disagree with him. Same with the healthcare CEO Luigi assassinated. There is no process in the current version of America that would allow the people to counter the power of billionaires. The people have been routed.

The difference between the two is that Luigi targeted a thing that actively hurts people and, in any democratic world, would have been illegal. Elon is burning down the things that stop him from hurting people.

[0] Which isn't democratic; nor is the Republican Party republican. Canada and Australia's Liberal Parties aren't liberal, either. Hell, Japan has a two-fer: a Liberal Democratic Party that's neither liberal nor democratic.


"Conservatives" are, in theory, interested in stability and status quo.

The correct term, IMO, is regressive.


I think reactionary would be more likely to catch on. Some of them embrace it.

Reactionary?

Unless its your party-tribe is lighting the fires

> following democratic processes to achieve the desired ends

That has been failing for a while now. Congressional approval is in the 20% range, much lower than even Trump's. An odd fact never mentioned in the media. The U.S. is toast if it can't reverse Citizen's United.


Political pundits for major outlets (538, New York Times, Washington Post) reference this constantly. It's mentioned all the time in media to the point where when people talk about congressional approval I turn my brain off because I know they'll say some version of "congressional approval is low but people generally approve of their congressman".

>Congressional approval is in the 20% range

You should actually look into this. Approval of congress as a whole is low, but most actual senators and house reps have high approval ratings and get re-elected.

Democracy is working just fine, it's congress who isn't. If you want to understand why, just ask Republicans what their platform and policy towards cooperation has been for decades.

Go watch CSPAN from the 80s and 90s. Republicans and Democrats used to build coalitions to get things done. You would have "pro" and "anti" sides that crossed state borders, political parties, ideologies, generations.

If there is a problem with the legislature it's pretty much directly attributable to Republican voters continuing to elect Republican congresspeople who take it as a rule to never ever ever compromise for anything.

Multiple times, Republican senators have voted down a bill that they provided support for explicitly because "doing something" to fix the relevant problem would make the Democrat admin look good and functional.

Mitch McConnel voted against a bill he sponsored to prevent it passing and making the democrats look good.


... are you both sidesing elon and luigi?

Sadly I think both are dealing with mental breakdown of some kind.

There's a logical fallacy in believing simply because Elon has had some success in business, he can have success here.

Exactly. Also the are different kinds of success. He might be rich but everyone who isn't sucking up to him thinks he is a neo nazi.

He does not have success with public opinion.


The way you word it makes it seem like him being considered a neo nazi is a failure of marketing on his part, rather than a very intentional public display.

It's not a failure of marketing, it's a failure of being a decent person.

I'd hardly call that a logical fallacy. I'm fairly sure there's some correlation between success in business and success in other domains.

The problem is that a company has nothing to do with a country, the goal isn't to have a positive balance at the end of the excel spreadsheet

I agree.

Still, it's not a logical fallacy to think "someone very successful at X is more likely to be successful at Y", in many cases. Do you think that there is literally zero correlation between massive business success and success at whatever-it-is Musk is trying to do now?

(I agree it's a fallacy if you think is' assured he will succeed, as opposed to this just being a correlation in your mind. I just bumped on the use of "logical fallacy" to describe something that is not a fallacy at all!)


I think you may have captured the point best in the way you phrased this: "whatever-it-is Musk is trying to do now"

That it's not entirely clear makes it impossible to know if it might be something he could have success in.


The way I see it: It often takes him 6+ years to eventually be successful in an endeavor, and he learns by making a whole bunch of mistakes a long the way. That may be ok in a company, but probably not a good way to handle a 4-year federal government term.

Those other domains might be seriously limited in scope and number though!

He's had more failures then successes

Fired from PayPal, Twitter, neurolink, the tunnel thing

He bought his way into Tesla, and SpaceX, though suppsedly he's not actually the one running it (believable I think there's not enough time)


Look, if you're trying to argue that Musk isn't a successful person in many ways, my only question is "then who is?". You're talking about literally the richest person in the world, and one that has had several successful companies.

And having failures is not that uncommon, especially for serial entrepreneurs. You've gotta accept some failures to get to successes.

As for the whole "he bought his way into Tesla" thing, this is just making the idea of a "founder" some kind of sacrosanct thing. By most histories I've read, he is the reason the company is the success it is today.


> "then who is?"

The local Bodega down the street has been profitable for 40 years. They seem to be doing just fine and as a bonus they haven't burned billions in subsidies or hijacked public transportation initiatives.


There are plenty of successful people. How do you want to define success? Elon got rich by turning TSLA into a meme stock. Do you think he would be rich or as rich right now if twitter never existed? He got rich on paper once, with TSLA stock, every other attempt at making a business has been a failure. He doesnt have a track record, and the financials for tsla are not inline with how the company is actually doing. Sales now are slipping.

> And having failures is not that uncommon, especially for serial entrepreneurs.

IDK how you can call this anything else but luck. He got forced out of paypal with a ton of money and was able to keep taking risks because of the safety nets he had that most do not.

He also threw a fit and left openai, that was a poor business decision.


Quantitatively, he's had more success than anyone ever

Most money? Sure. Most success? That depends on what you're quantifying.

Also would be a fallacy to believe that his business's alleged successes are because of him and not despite of him.

merely "believing" is always a logical fallacy, even when people are highly qualified

That's what got Trump elected in the first place.

People still believe that he's been some sort of business genius.

One could actually argue that the biggest business wins for Trump, have been those AFTER he became president. Through nothing but grift, he's managed to build up a fortune that surpassed the one he tried to make and maintain in his semi-legit days.


So I just found this a few pages down at rank 129, where its ended up in only 3 hours, despite garnering 250 points in that time. That's abnormal for such a popular post. What gives?

I nearly always use the algolia thing for top stories of the last 24 hours. It isn't affected by flagging, mods and the like https://hn.algolia.com/?q=&query=&sort=byPopularity&prefix&p...

Probably marked as "political" and demoted

I don't think HN wants to be the place for these sorts of stories, however important they might ultimately feel.

Frankly because a lot of people here on HN buy the new regime's claims fully, and refuse to take a skeptical look at what is happening. They don't want political news on here because they have chosen to get political news only from a few select/deified "truth" channels and anything else is a lie. They don't want their carefully curated filter bubble to be threatened.

I was here when HN tried "no politics" and clearly demonstrated how stupid and foolish that is even as a concept. You don't get to play "I just want to talk tech and be apolitical" when those titans of "tech" are swearing fealty to the regime and choosing to lose slam dunk cases as a means of bribing the president.


People flagged it. Seems like it got moderated and is now unflagged.

It's probably because absolutely no one is using real sources in these articles.

I won't muddy the comments repeating myself - but I have been fascinated by how quickly people latched on to this, have been absolutely incapable of finding any first party sourcing, and asked CoPilot to analyze each of these stories (13 so far!) and every single one is 'trust me bro, I heard it in a convo'.

I really really hope this isn't true for all the same reasons as people are freaking out... but at this point it has as much merit as saying "the sky is always green, I heard a guy say it the other week who I won't name but it's true"

Ctrl-F 'astroid' or click my last post in this thread for the complete breakdown of every source referenced, and ask yourself if there is enough info to warrant entertaining this fantasy.

Honestly I am shocked at how little critical thinking is being applied here. I know this website hates these guys, but there is usually a facade of critical thinking at the least.


It is annoying that the more inflammatory and 'breaking news(?)' articles are what remain. All of the articles from reputable news sources citing their sources this last weekend got flagged in minutes. I think only the Wired article that outed the people involved in the federal payments system takeover managed to get unflagged (again, inflammatory).

Honestly the wired one should have gotten flagged too - it's as unsourced as the other 12:

"Wired: Reports that Marko Elez, a 25-year-old engineer linked to Elon Musk, has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the U.S. government. The sources are unnamed, and they claim Elez has administrator-level privileges, including the ability to write code on the Payment Automation Manager and Secure Payment System."

It's an endless circle. No one is willing to stand behind the reporting, no one is willing to go on record. I almost regret wasting as much time trying to get to the bottom of the story because I feel stupid for trying to peel back on these layers and finding nothing -- like they were trying to take people on a ride and I fell for it.

I guess it could be worse though - I could have just taken them all at face value. Even the 'anonymous sources' appear to be second or third party on TOP of being anonymous.

EDIT: To clarify, if you were referring to https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-associate-bfs-federal-... that is the one with no real sources. If you meant another source about the audit in general I shouldn't have assumed -- it's just in the list of the 13 I have reviewed with no substance.


Yes, and I've generally not considered Wired a reputable news source in any case. If you are interested in names, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/02/elon-musk... is one article (flagged several times here) citing "Ron Wyden, a Democratic senator from Oregon and the ranking member of the Senate finance committee", and contains links to several other posts from alternative news organizations that may also be helpful.

(Politics? Interesting that The Guardian files this under Technology)


The fact that no one will go on the record can mean two things: that there is no story or that people are afraid bad things will happen to them if they do. "Bad things" being rather unbounded if this is effectively a coup.

So it's either lots of news outlets (journos but also fact checkers) being fooled, or that people are only willing to speak of the record because they fear for their career/freedom/life. All feds fear at the minimum for their career right now...


Rather than rely on upvotes to organically populate the front pages with content users are interested in, there are a number of users censoring the site by flagging content they personally don't want to see. Lots of political stuff gets censored in minutes, and absolutely everything critical of Elon Musk. Nothing about Musk in particular lasted on the front page from this last weekend, despite the high profile actions. Lots of 'don't make me tap the sign' comments pointing to the guidelines, but flagging is just going to be weaponized like this unless its use is better defined and enforced somehow. Even the discussion on the bot-like flaggings got flagged. And it is all counter productive, because if users want to discuss a topic they are going to end up doing it in inappropriate places when the appropriate places have been taken down. Like we are here.

So to me this seems like an issue, set aside the constitutional/legal issues.

It sounds like, from the reporting, one person is modifying a large complex system that handles trillions of dollars and pushing directly to production.

Also he is not familiar with the system, having first encountered it a week ago.

Also the people who do normally have access to this system do not know what he is exactly doing, because normally, it is illegal for them to even access the system in the same way.


It seems read-only access has been given to audit expenses. So there is no modification. In fact it's the read-only access that will allow to become familiar with the system and make informed decisions.

FTA

> Wired beat me to the punch of reporting that a top DOGE employee, 25 year old former SpaceX employee Marko Elez, has not only read but write access to BFS servers.


Clearly if someone grant them write privilegies it means someone else had admin privilegies as well to that system. How many people have normally access to it? Why is it particularly weird that someone working in the government have access to a system about payments? It seems to me that generic fear is being mentioned rather than very tangible and clear dangers. It makes me feel like the people wanting to create panic have a hidden agenda and they just want to avoid someone from the opposition to audit the budgets. How can DOGE find out if there are expenses that should be cut if it doesn't even have access to what is actually being paid? I think everyone is generically afraid that their department is gonna get the cut and just doesn't want the audit to happen.

This a list of the data these SpaceX bros might now have on their drives, for every single US citizen:

- Tax Return Info: Name, SSN, address, income, deductions, payments/refunds.

- Enforcement Records: Audit trails, payment plans, liens/levies.

- Federal payments (e.g., tax refunds, Social Security), direct deposit info, delinquent debt details.

- Accounts for U.S. Treasury securities (personal data, account activity).

- Sanctions Enforcement: Basic identifiers (name, address), transaction details for compliance checks.

- Financial Crime Data: Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs), Currency Transaction Reports (CTRs), limited personal/transaction info tied to money laundering or terrorist financing investigations.

- Investigative files related to Treasury programs (potentially includes personal data).


The takeaway should be that every government administration has access to all of this, so maybe we shouldn't be doing the mass surveillance that causes it all to exist in a central database.

> Tax Return Info: Name, SSN, address, income, deductions, payments/refunds

Can you please provide a source for the claim of release of IRS taxpayer confidential data?


the data these SpaceX bros might now have on their drives

Thanks for the summary! The article is clearly written by someone who knows all of this, but didn't bother to spell it out like this.

He seems to be an economist who writes a lot about central banks etc, so likely suffering from XKCD 2501: https://xkcd.com/2501/

Weird that the first instinct of his is to eliminate all aid local and international. No mention of looking at the military spending. I guess cutting elsewhere will help funnel that into spacex and whatever ai insanity musk comes up with to "serve the government"

Trump is talking up a new missile Defence thing that is space based. No doubt will require many rockets.

So no military spending will not be cut


Ha of course.. they never cut the cash cows. Make shit up and create new means of warfare even though there is no need. Just a cash grab and cash funnel. There has to be space involved now because elon.

This coming from the same people who shut OPM employees out of an HR database, citing (legitimate) security and oversight concerns, because they had broad un-auditable access.

How can this department turn around and do this and still maintain they're doing the right thing? By their own admission they know this a bad idea


Oh, can't wait for the article on Medium on how they rewrote that old COBOL thing in React Native and NodeJS in 3 days and saved bilions (by not delivering them).

Just asking for a friend. Are CIA and NSA salaries being paid by the systems that are being fraudited right now? Does this extend to payments to intermediaries inclusive of foreign intermediaries / banks?

I think the nasty parts of the TLAs will be fine with just the money they make off drugs, human trafficking and so on. I assume there are a significant number of "straight" employees that would be fucked by the whole system blowing up, but maybe they'd just pay them with cash too. AFAIK it's still legal to pay people that way as long as they get a proper pay slip with the cash envelope. Alternatively they might move them to contractor positions in regime-friendly firms.

But not realistically it seems like the goal is to be more targeted: pay your shooters, cut off your enemies'.


Maybe hasty de-dollarization is the plan of this organization literally named after a cryptocurrency?

I worry/wonder how strong the public hunger for blood in the streets would become if they accidentally delay or otherwise modify more than a handful of Social Security payments. This is as close to juggling chainsaws as anyone can get.

Elon doesn't have a strong track record of getting things right the first time.


I don't think it would take multiple payments. A delayed SSDI payment means going without food and meds for many.

Where were you when the empire fell? I was at my computer, trying not to cry...

The empire comes after the republic.

Or, if one happens to be France, after, before, after, and before (they had two 'empires', interleaved between republics and a monarchy or two).

Eh -- IMO "empire" is used to highlight an expansionary, hierarchical regime, not just the literal old-school meaning of a single sovereign. Thus "anti-imperial" as it's used today, frequently targeting both post-monarchy Britain and the always-republican USA.

In other words, empires in the day of monarchy were expansive monarchies, and empires in the day of republicanism are expansive republics.

I love how I'm still freaking out but will jump at the chance to argue about pedantics online. It's nice to feel normal, I guess!


I was in my bed, reading Worm fanfiction

Not a lawyer, but it would seem that Elon and Doge employees are exposing themselves up to significant legal liability here. Maybe Trump pardons Elon (if they don't fall out before then), but is he going to pardon everyone who has a hand in this? And it seems likely that state crimes are being committed as well. The president may have broad immunity, but Elon does not.

Great comment in 2021 but today we know laws are not enforced against powerful people and their lackeys.

He does if the President says he does! That’s the beauty of a pardon. There’s not a limit, as many people can be pardoned as Mr. Trump wants.

And you can’t arrest the president because he’s immune from prosecution for official acts: pardoning is an enumerated constitutional power!

So what’s left is impeachment for the president and congress does not want to do this.

And none of that will fall on Musk or DOGE. The government has made itself unable to prevent this.


> That’s the beauty of a pardon. There’s not a limit, as many people can be pardoned as Mr. Trump wants.

It's really quite an odd power; very few developed democracies have a _personal_ pardon power today (some kind of vaguely pretend to; in the UK pardons are done by the monarch _at the direction of the government_, say). I think the US just stuck it on the presidency because at the time of independence the president was kind of a stand-in for the monarch, and the British monarchy had it at the time. The US then failed to get rid of it when everyone else did, instead relying on norms and basically on everyone behaving themselves to regulate it.


So is there a legal way to stop what is happening?

If the current legal framework were software, I would say that this is an exploit chain that gives root access to the government / country.

If there is not legal way to stop it, what is the alternative?


Ideally, not electing a person who would abuse those powers. Secondarily, the “immune from prosecution” was a supreme court decision as a result of the events of January 6th, so the 2024 election was a pretty important one.

The current legal method available now is an impeachment process, iterated until we have a president who values societal norms and stable government. (Depending on how you feel about JD Vance not also pulling this shit.)

Currently 28 of the 51 republicans in the Senate are up for re-election in November of 2026; this is a possibility for a makeup change, but a remote one.

It appears a large enough percentage of americans want this that there’s no real possibility of changing course at this point; even the assassination attempts have failed. Understand that over 40% of americans do want what is happening now, as backed up by current polling. Never comply in advance, do not follow illegal orders, and make good friends with your neighbours.


I think one aspect not covered in your comment is whether or not all voters are getting an accurate representation of what's happening. If what they read/see just confirms their favoured view, it might be hard to say with confidence that any portion of the population do want what is actually happening at any given point.

Or separately, whether they feel very strongly about some things that are happening, enough to overlook other things that they'd likely disagree with but don't understand or care about as much.


The legal way to stop it is impeachment. Full stop. Nothing else can do with a president that’s gone this far rogue; the courts can at best slow him down, but at worst nothing stops Trump from ignoring them.

You missed state-level action. The president cannot intervene in such matters (at least not in any legal, direct sense).

I expect Trump to ignore Biden's presidential pardons in the near future.

Same. The rationale for doing so doesn't have to stand up, it just needs to be a soundbite that is easy for MAGA supporters to remember and repeat.

Also, pardons are for criminal liability. They do not absolve you of civil liability (i.e., they can still be sued).

So here's what we've seen:

- Acting Trump lackeys will simply ignore any court orders that block the EOs that Trump has issued.

- Congress isn't doing anything.

- In all likelihood, DOJ isn't going to enforce anything, so long they're aligned with Trump.

- Should some lowly law-enforcement officer decide to play hero, and arrest anyone that any federal judge issues an arrest on, I'd fully expect them to be removed, or meet resistance from any bodyguards/protection that the DOGE boys will receive.

- Even if anyone decides to pursue, Trump can issue pre-emptive pardons for all past federal crimes.

It is sort of a crisis, because the few checks and balances that were put in place, simply aren't functioning.


I mean, with the extreme politicization of DOJ and FBI already under way by Trump and his cronies, and the dismantling of safeguards like inspector generals there's literally no chance that these people get indicted or even investigated under this administration.

> is he going to pardon everyone who has a hand in this?

How can anyone have any doubts after the jan 6 pardons?


Clearly it's not happening tomorrow, but eventually Democrats (and maybe even Republicans who want to uphold the constitution!) will be in the majority.

That makes the big assumption that we’ll ever have free and fair elections here again.

Demographic changes also make it much harder for the Democrats to win in the future (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/democrats-future-crisi...).

We need to shut down immigration so we don't create an emerging Republican majority, or something. Didn't someone write a book about this

The Culture Transplant by Garett Jones

Yep. For all of these sensational headlines we're seeing recently, we need to keep in mind that we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg of what's happening, and that we are seeing exactly nothing of what's happening behind closed doors. In fact, the fiascoes may be specifically intended to keep the public's eye off the ball.

I would be very surprised to learn that there are not teams working in every state to weaken the integrity of the electoral process.


If that were the case then no dictatorship anywhere would ever get embedded. Contrary to the widespread cultural belief in the US, people everywhere like freedom and integrity in public life; they're just not as individualistic about it, because most countries were settled many centuries earlier, and there is not an ethos of pioneering based on the idea of infinite free land and resources.

The problem with dictatorship is that of first-mover advantage; once a dictatorship becomes embedded it's hard to dislodge. There's de facto control of the legal, electoral, and cultural infrastructure which the regime can use to (ostensibly) re-legitimize itself every few years, while in the meantime suppressing dissent through violence and fear. That would be very much in line with the stated goals and actions of the administration so far. And I don't mean this hyperbolically; Trump stated that he would be a dictator on day one, and while his supporters brushed this off as a joke his autocratic behavior since entering office is wholly consistent with that.

Barring abrupt reversals in the next month or two, I think this is going to become a long-term situation, and there is simply no way the US can go back to two party pendulum politics after this. It would be like getting out of hospital after a stroke or a heart attack and heading straight back to an all-you-can-eat steakhouse.


The main problem is the Democratic Party has proven itself to be absolutely useless at preventing this sort of perversion of our systems. They are too happy to rely on process, decorum and the status quo to build defenses into our systems. Democrats still pretend like it’s the late 90’s / early 00’s political climate where boring neoliberals can beat boring conservatives reliably and that’s the only defense our nation needs. During my lifetime the only persistent democratic plan is to just not lose elections ever and things will be fine. It’s frankly amazing how much awful shit conservatives are able to inflict on the country while being in the minority and how little liberals are willing do with a majority. It all feels very performative from democrats which I guess makes sense since they have mostly the same donors to appease as the conservatives do.

Blue no matter who. 2024, 2026, 2028. This was preventable

Blue no matter who is exactly how we got here. DNC needs to start now coming up with a platform and a viable candidate. They need to retire the geriatrics and start cultivating new young blood.

A blue geriatric would do far less damage than this.

Also, don't wait for an election, start protesting now. There may never be a free election again


Blue geriatrics are the ones doing the damage... this is all made up, using circular references to anonymous third party sources.

This is an active propaganda campaign with no basis in reality, and you are eating it up because you want it to be true to justify your emotions.

13 articles analyzed so far. All regurgitating the same anonymous sources. It would appear Project Mockinbird is alive and well, and doing a number on folks.

This is BlueAnon tier reporting.


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More like: How incompetent of a party can you be that you actually lose against a fascist?

Historically notable fascists and dictators have been in at least part elected, going back to Roman times and with several significant 20th century examples, most especially the obvious ones. Populist extremists are, by definition, popular.

Historically, democratic processes have not been sufficient to remove them, in general.


Maybe at least attempt to understand other people's position before screeching "fascist" at everyone you consider to be an opponent.

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Exactly. Everyone has conveniently forgotten that he said in 2020 he would only serve one term.

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Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.


>But you have to reckon with the fact that every Republican is evil.

This is left-wing groupthink and ideology testing, and that mandatory groupthink is a huge part of the reason I refuse to blindly support the Democrats. You are just as blindly an ideologue as the people you claim to criticize.


Comments like this give me hope that we can pull through.

I used to be in Teach For America. It taught me a few things:

-The vast majority of humans all want the same things, basically Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

-We are more similar than different.

-Try to understand people's motivations before you criticize their politics.

I've been approached by TFA-adjacent orgs on several occasions to try to get me to run for statewide office. I'd do it, except for the fact that it would mean an 80% pay cut. If I did not have a spouse and kids, it would be something to consider.


The flags on that comment take away a bit of my hope.

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The Constitution puts a minimum age on the Presidency.

We have mandatory retirement ages for military, airline pilots, etc. We should consider it for Presidents, Senators, SCOTUS judges, etc. Not term limits, but abolishing the gerontocracy would probably help quite a bit.


I'm not from the US, so I don't really have a direct horse in this race. Don't you think that polarization like this is exactly what led to the current situation? Culture begets counter culture and demonizing the other side turns into a rallying call in turn.

There's also a lot more nuance here and I definitely wouldn't say demonization of Democrats as a party is what lead to the current situation, that's seems a very oversimplified take. I would say more demonization of LGBT people, immigrants, scientists, government workers, media, etc. and demonization of those people is very different than demonizing the partisan apparatuses. I'm honestly on board with hating the Democrat political apparatus.

You should be allowed to hate on a political party, it's weird to think that's inherently an issue (especially in the current climate). I think a big part of the problem is in the US we're only allowed 2 parties so if one doesn't stuff you find unacceptable you sorta just need to support the other. Gotta love the "land of the free".


That's all fair, but you do understand that a large part of your point boils down to saying the problem isn't us demonizing them, the problem is them demonizing us, right?

I'm saying demonizing political organizations isn't a problem, demonizing broad classes of people is.

For example: there's a difference between saying immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country" (direct Trump quote) and "I would never vote for a Republican". The latter is generally fine and expected in any democracy. People have party preferences.

Edit: there's also context and matters of degree that matter here but this is an HN comment and I'm not gonna write an essay.


Since OP didn't find it appropriate to include the context, I'll do it for them:

https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/10/04/trump-poison-blood-qu... -- not even Snopes agrees with this take, and it is wildly out of context.

This out of context take was started by Hasan Piker, a billionaire (or maybe multimillionaire I forget) zoomer streamer self professed 'socialist' lol:

"I was up in New Hampshire the other day. The biggest complaint they have—it’s with all of the problems going on in the world, many of the problems caused by Hillary Clinton and by Barack Obama. All of the problems—the single biggest problem is heroin that pours across our southern border. It’s just pouring and destroying their youth. It’s poisoning the blood of their youth and plenty of other people. We have to have strong borders. We have to keep the drugs out of our country. We are—right now, we’re getting the drugs, they’re getting the cash. We need strong borders. We need absolute—we cannot give amnesty."

I don't really like the phrase because it is definitely easy to use out of context - but heroin and fentanyl are in fact poisoing the blood of this country, and eliminating that is an admirable goal.

There is another quote where he uses the phrase and you can see the full video/context, but the bottom line is not even snopes can get on board with this interpretation and they definitely would if they could manage.

They once claimed a convicted terrorist wasn't a terrorist because there was no universally accepted definition of terrorism, since 'The Weather Underground' were a democrat-aligned group and they will bow down to anything left.

And yet, they still don't agree with what is being claimed here....

The other quote was also in reference to drugs:

"TRUMP: No, nobody has ever seen anything like this. And I think we could say worldwide. I think you could go to the... you could go to a banana republic and pick the worst one, and you're not going to see what we're witnessing now. No control whatsoever. Nobody has any idea where these people are coming from, and we know they come from prisons. We know they come from mental institutions [and] insane asylums. We know they're terrorists. Nobody has ever seen anything like we're witnessing right now. It is a very sad thing for our country. It's poisoning the blood of our country. It's so bad, and people are coming in with disease. People are coming in with every possible thing that you could have. And I got to know a lot of the heads of these countries. They're very cunning people. Very street-smart people. If they're not street-smart, they're not going to be there very long. And when they send up those caravans, and I had it ended, we had the safest border in the history of our country, meaning the history, over the last 80 years. Before that, I assume it was probably not so bad. There was nobody around. But, we had the safest in recorded history by far. The least amount of drugs in many, many decades.*"

Can you make a fake argument that this is implying race mixing is bad? I guess, but you'd be a liar. It is very clear he was using what is in my opinion a terribly worded phrase due to the ease of taking it out of context.... but you would be a liar if you said whattdb7893 said.


He's used this language many times and the snopes article doesn't capture all of the times he's used it since he has used it since then. Some of the times he was clear in referring to drugs but some other times it seemed clear to me he was referring to illegal aliens doing it. It's not really worth it to me litigating how he thinks they are poisoning our blood since saying that a whole group of people is poisoning our blood is a good example of what I was talking about about regardless.

Here's an NBC article that mentions some other times he's said it after that article you linked. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-doubles-...

Edit: also you mention some Streamer named Hasan but your Snopes article references some news host with it looks like a last name of Hasan and I don't think they are the same person


Sorry glossing the story I misstated Hasan Piker -- my brain filled in the blanks bcause I saw him going on an unhinged rant about it on mulitple occassions and I try to avoid him as much as possible, so I think I mentally saw 'Hasan', remmbered his rants, and tried to move on.

Thats a legit oversight on my part, even though he did raise a big stink it's not relevant here and dtracts from the real point that these quotes are clearly out of context and used to justify casting Trump as some kind of KKK member despite all of his attempts to help minorities through things like the "Platinum Plan"


Mehdi Hasan and Hasan Piker are two different people.

My bad there - I have seen Hasan Piker going on unhinged rants about it and I really am not a fan, so I think I saw Hasan and just starting skimming past to the meat of the story.

That was a legitimate oversight on my part and unfortunate since it detracts from the core message, which is that the quotes are wildly out of context and clearly about drug not 'race mixing' like is being claimed here.



I'm not sure if you replied to me by mistake or not, but this thread was about the out of context quote that even Snopes did not agree with the presentation of, that was from Trump about drugs rather than 'race-mixing' as was implied here by the poster who deliberately left out the context under the guise of being too lazy.

This appears to be a 'source' claiming one of the DOGE people that Musk hired made a comment perceived as racist in the past. I'm not sure what that source is supposed to add to a conversation that has nothing to do with anybody in it, so I have to assume you meant to reply to someone else.

I think you are lost, but hope you find your way!

EDIT: Just so no one else has to jump through the paywall hoops, here is the 'source' in a readable format: https://archive.is/k1FGs

tl;dr - A DOGE staffer made a racist comment and is no longer with the staff as a result. Not sure what that is supposed to do with taking Trumps quotes out of context deliberately, but I'll save you a few clicks ;)


Look. The general vibe of your comment was "this one cherry picked example was out of context in my opinion so therefore nothing is true", a disingenuous trolling strategy we are all familiar with by now, and you did that in the middle of a larger discussion about the current goings-on with DOGE, to try and cast doubt on the reporting.

I do not think op has duty to enable. It is not even polarization to say you wont vote for a party.

Yes; but in my view, one of the political parties in the country has gone completely off the rails. I was raised right and actually have some core values, so how can I respect someone who enthusiastically voted for president “grab ‘em by the pussy”? There is nothing left to demonize: his sins and crimes are completely out in the open and his followers love 'em. An impeached felon and rapist who tried to blatantly steal the last election is our head of state, and I feel like I have nothing in common with half the country anymore.

In truth, though, I don't think much of this is organic. Right-wing TV and radio (Gingrich, Limbaugh, Carlson, etc.) have been rotting brains around the country for decades. Our current situation is the result of a concerted propaganda campaign by the powerful and wealthy going all the way back to the Nixon impeachment, not some day-to-day disagreements about taxes or culture war issues.


And it’s strong and consistent propaganda. It’s amazing to watch one right wing troll on Twitter state explicitly that he’s going to target the phrase CRT for demonization and within a week all conservative influences, news stations and politicians are talking about how awful CRT in our schools is. All of them sending the same message over and over again completely fabricating a drama out of nothing. And it works. Over and over again from migrant caravans to sharia law to immigrants eating your cats and dogs. Just blatant lies repeated enough completely warps peoples brains. Just look at how many conservatives believe Kamala wants free gender surgery for illegal immigrants and post birth abortions. There are literally tens of millions of people in this country with zero grasp on reality.

I lost my own father to this pipeline. He is basically the “How I lost my father to Fox News” case except it was AM radio over decades as a long haul truck driver. He went from being an intellectually curious atheist to a Bible thumping trumper who constantly rants about Muslims coming to kill us all. The man has never met a Muslim in his life. I don’t recognize him anymore.

I lost my mom to this too. She was turned anti-vax during covid and ended up dying to it in 2022. She successfully beat lung cancer after smoking all her life and then wouldn’t take the most basic precautions she had provided to her kids when we were growing up without any controversy and Covid won.


Your "local" news is regularly contractually obligrated to run segments written by a right wing company:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fHfgU8oMSo

"This is dangerous to democracy"


This is true across the board - your 'local news' isn't local at all, and you'll notice that highlighted outlets include CBS, NBC, Fox, etc.

I'm well aware of that clip, and it disgusted me when it first began circulating nearly a decade ago.

I am opposed to govt influence in media and journalism, period. It doesn't matter which side you pick. Yes, Sinclair Broadcast Group has a right-leaning bias, and the way they have monopolized local news is sickening.

Sinclair is a blight on 'local news' for a variety of reasons, but having a right-bias really is the least of them when you consider how many of the 'big media' companies have a 'liberal bias'. To me the concern here is really the death of local reporting which is being outsourced to a monolithic entity with no stake in the local community.

Here is a general breakdown of the national / international players and their bias:

Comcast - Liberal Bias (https://freebeacon.com/politics/comcasts-agenda/)

Disney - Liberal Bias (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Walt_Disney_C...)

Warner Bros Discovery - Mixed Bias (Although they own CNN, which is viewed largely as liberal bias: https://www.newsminimalist.com/articles/cnn-faces-financial-...)

Paramount - Liberal Bias (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Paramount_Global)

Sony - Mixed Bias

AT&T (which largely owns the Time Warner conglomerate now): Mixed Bias (https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/at-t-inc/summary?id=D000000...)

News Corp - Conservative Bias (https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart) National Amusements (which owns Paramount, MTV, BET, CBS, Viacom which is a conglomerate in and of itself and many more) - Liberal Bias (https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/national-amusements-inc/sum... + https://www.allsides.com/news/2024-07-02-1716/banking-and-fi...)

Viacom - Liberal Bias

Sinclair Broadcast Group - Conservative Bias

These companies compromise the vast majority of media available, particularly in the US. They are all so large with so many subsidiaries it would be impossible to break them all down in a HN comment, but just counting the 'heads of the snake' we have:

Liberal bias: 5 out of this list

Conservative bias: 2 out of this list (and 2 of the smaller of the bunch)

Mixed bias: 3 out of this list

It's great you see the 'local' news for what it is, but that's just a tiny slice of the issue.

So while I certainly agree that the Sinclair situation where they gobbled up any local news stations is a problem, if your trying to imply that the media as a whole is more a conservative bias than liberal that is preposterous. The overall landscape is indisputably 'left leaning' when it comes to Bias.

As I am sure you are aware, similarly there was recently controversy about George Soros buying a major stake in 227 radio stations in the US, which reach 165 million Americans in the 45 markets they cover -- so roughly half the country in that single investment, and if you limited it to adults it's closer to 82%. That's a pretty large chunk of people to have influence over, and could potentially dwarf the Sinclair issue you highlighted but it is at least in the same realm. (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/george-soros-fund-buys-400-16...)

TL;DR - I know you think you did something here, but if you zoom out your point is basically moot even if the buyout of local journalism and news broadcasting is abhorrent.


"Polarization" is an awful, borderline evil way to understand the world today. I hate that is mainstream.

Every single time an extreme right-wing populist runs against any opponent who is _not_ extreme right-wing, the media portrays the election as a "sad reminder of our polarized world". That is absolute bullshit.

Anywhere in the world, the histrionics, the deranged conspiracy theories, the chtonic racialism always come from one side alone, while the other side - which is more often than not garden variety right-wing, mind you - mumbles "let's not do that". But somehow mainstream media successfully portrays this dynamic as "polarization" and "a fight between two extremes".


I am actively balking at this. The Democrats did this to the country by having zero likable or relatable candidates and alienating the actual left of this country. Tim Walz was likable and relatable to middle America but he wasn’t running for president.

The DNC has acted so undemocratic it is flabbergasting.

We need a different party comprised of working class Americans who want to take care of the working class and not corporate interests. Reject culture war nonsense and frame this for what it is, a class war. If the response to Luigi wasn’t telling enough, I don’t know. The sentiment is there. Just need to fan the flames.


Sounds great, how do you propose we do this? I'd like to hear your thoughts as the Sanders people have probably already tried it in the last eight years. You haven't seen the Democratic party perform at their best until you have seen them block and destroy an outsider that threatens them. Ask Sanders, ask anyone in the Squad. Hell there is even an excellent documentary on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCSo2hZRcXk

No. I demand better of the Democrats than what has been offered.

I'll go farther. To a degree, Democrats caused this by offering such terrible options.

(I mean, no, they are not the Single Root Cause - clearly not. They're a part of the causal chain, though. If they had run a solid candidate in any of the last three elections, we wouldn't be here.)


"The democratic candidate isn't perfect, so I'll let the fascists win, and it's the democrats fault"

The democrats have the responsibility for picking electable candidates. Thats the party's main job.

Democratic party supporters need to move away from this dumb groupthink. It is embarrassing, as they like to think they are the better alternative. A better alternative doesn't tell people how to vote; a better alternative earns the vote with vote-worthy candidates.


And if they don’t give someone better, in your opinion, then what next? Inaction?

vote for a different party that aligns with your views?

The USA is the opposite of pluralistic. No third party has managed to build any serious political infrastructure at the local level and expand it regionally or nationally. That's why there are so many frivolous third party candidates for president; they're desperate to get a percentage of votes that will generate some federal funding to sustain organizational growth, and running for President is one of the few ways to get sufficient attention for that nationally.

with the voting system present in the US, it is essentially impossible for a 3rd party to come into existence that has any hope of significant federal or even state level power.

Yes that is normal thing to do in pluralist democracies. Unfortunately not an option in two-party system.

The third party in the US is an amalgamation of the leftover scraps of losers that couldn't make it in the other parties. Because that's exactly what the Greens and to a lesser extent Libertarians are. To be fair it is wonderful that Howie Hawkins has managed to get the Greens on the ballot in 36 or so states. Its crazy that you can't even vote for this party in all states.

But the vote count is horrendous. The best this country has ever done in recent memory was Ralph Nader and he was a someone famous that could move the needle....he still only got 2.74% of the vote.


Certainly not vote for someone I think is unfit to be president!

That didn’t really answer my question. Let me make it more clear: let’s say two things are true: 1. Your vote for president does matter, so you’re not in a state where it’s almost certainly decided before the vote happens; and, 2. You agree that there are really two parties you can vote for. If you think Party A is really bad or dangerous, would you vote for Party B even if they don’t give a decent candidate, or would you just not vote?

I would vote for a third party. I am not going to vote for a person who is not a decent candidate. That's how you continue to get shit shoved down your throat.

Every election in the US is a choice. One of the two choices will run the country no matter what happens on November 5th.

Show up and express literally any opinion about which direction you want your country to develop in, or everyone else will make your choice for you.

Or don't do anything, and stand back smug as people are shipped off to Gitmo for being brown. That's cool too I guess.


Do you think Trump is better? Because that is what you're getting from a policy of holding out for a good enough opponent

You're free to be a Trump supporter of course, but if you're not and you're still enabling Trump to win because you don't like the Democrats "enough", your actions aren't aligning with your best interests


My best interests are a party that represents my best interests, which the Democrats are not, and the Republicans are even less.

Enabling trump to win, got it

No, it was the party who failed to put up a candidate whos is worth of supporting thay enabled Trump to win. I am not required to vote for shit candidates, and if you believe otherwise, then you dont believe in democracy.

Of course you're not required to. It's just what you would have done if you'd been rational and would have liked trump to not be in charge.

Sitting it out and letting Trump win (or directly voting for Trump) was your right. You opted to pick "let Trump win". Congrats, he did.


The lesser of 2 evils argument will always get you to the point you're in now where you're like "I can't believe you let bad guy win, you should voted slightly less bad guy".

If you want to break the cycle, you vote your interests and not fall for this crap.

And no, Trump is not the end of the world. It wasn't last time around the US Democrat leaning desperately pretended it was, nor is it now.

For people who see through the partisan bullshit, change is usually good and it's always interesting to separate those people who have consistent views no matter who is in power and those who change to fit the new partisan narrative, no matter their past positions.

In essence, world and murrica... take a fucking chill pill. The TDS wore off the second time around and bipartisan war machine is red and blue, no matter who.


You're either not paying attention or actively a supporter

If you keep demeaning people who dont vote the way you decided they should vote, not only are you a bad person, you are a bad person who will continue to lose elections.

1. I am paying far more attention throughout than you and have always been instead of just when it's politically convenient.

2. Oh no! Pray god I'm not an active supporter! Imagine if there was someone with "republican/commie/<insert political blacklist> leanings". The horror!

I don't think you guys are getting it.

All you can do is accuse people of "being the enemy" and you just lost a democratic election and keep doubling down.

How about some reflection? How about internal analysis around consistency of political views instead of pure partisanship?


> Imagine if there was someone with "republican/commie/<insert political blacklist> leanings". The horror!

oh, active supporter it is I guess


Feel free to also call me Russian/terrorist/conspiracy theorist/commie/fascist and whatever other ad hom you're told because you have absolutely no arguments to make.

I dont agree with your conclusion, but I do agree that lesser of two evils is just a race to the bottom.

The democrats offered him the chair. I still think Jill and Joe may have actually voted for Trump.

the dems could have won easily if they ran a half way competent campaign

Yeah, I think everyone knows this was preventable.

The idea that "people failed the Dems" causes me a lot of anger at this point, because the folks who had the power to prevent this preferred to slip ever rightward in their platform instead of recognizing any number of highly popular non-conservative positions.

People often say "elections have consequences" but they are rarely saying "the democrats need to take this as an objective lesson about how badly they failed to represent their constituencies".

Instead Democratic party apologists go into fantasies about Bernie Bros and Russian Interference, while they materially fail to do literally anything useful about the very real current issues.

The Democrats need to understand that the election was so close that they could have won if they hadn't worked against themselves at the party level at every turn- if they had a primary of any kind they might have won.

I absolutely don't agree that "voting blue" would have fixed this- I think this is the consequence of "voting blue" in 2020 and giving the DNC the idea that they can literally run a piece of toast and win against trump.


I tend to agree. I think the early energy of the Harris campaign was in part because the highly paid centrist consultants hadn't gotten their hooks in yet; there was a notable shift in tone as "these people are fucking weird" disappeared and "we've got Cheney endorsing us!" replaced it.

I get, to some extent, why they're gun shy on this; centrism feels like it should be compelling with a crazy person on the other end... but I think the party needs to run an AOC style firebrand soon. Time to at least attempt being a bit leftist for once.


The next person to suggest the Dems need to swing right needs to be thrown in a volcano, or at least outed as an obvious fifth columnist. Harris ran so far to the right she was campaigning with Liz Cheney on being tough on immigration, and she lost the election to a geriatric felon autocrat with no coherent plans because Democratic turnout was down. There’s no credible argument for that style of campaign anymore, and anyone suggesting otherwise is either dangerously incompetent or dangerously disingenuous.

"Centrism" is doing a lot of work. I call it "slow fascism", in contrast with the "fast fascism" of Trump. Believe me, while centrists pretend to like rules and procedures, those procedures can rapidly melt away when it's in their interest to. There's a lot of people in the Democratic Party who were personally responsible for, say, selling out the working & middle classes[0]. Hell, Ronald Reagan was a Democrat that jumped ship because the Republican Party is easier to infiltrate.

In the middle of the Harris campaign, there was a concerted effort by cryptocurrency whales to primary electorally successful Democrats, purely to send a message: "we will absolutely fuck with you if you don't get in line with us". It was up in the air whether or not Harris would even keep Lina Khan on. The Harris campaign blinked so hard their eyes were stuck shut for the rest of the election.

We need an actually progressive party, not just a handful of progressive politicians acting as veneer over the centrist turd that is the DNC. We had that once before with Obama, who was very good at virtue-signalling progress while letting his own party tell him "no" at every juncture. We need to purge the DNC of people who think only about narrowly winning the electoral game so that their machine can perpetuate itself.

To be clear, this doesn't mean purity tests. It means doing shit so obviously good and beneficial for everyone that it makes your opponent's rainbow coalition of fascists second-guess why they're brown-nosing a good candidate for the biblical Antichrist just to get one thing out of him. I happen to be in a family full of Trump bootlickers, and every single one of them wants trust-busting back on the menu. They want right to repair. They want click to cancel. That's shit the Democrats should have been howling from the rooftops. But they didn't, because the Democratic Party does not want it.

Until the DNC can be proud of what they do for the country, instead of ashamed that they didn't loot it hard enough, they will continue to lose to a coalition of the weirdest weirdos America has to offer.

[0] To be clear, in America, "middle class" just means "working class and lying to themselves about it.


I mean if you're going to be for "leftism" it might need to be redefined because the reason your side lost (the side I used to be on) is that it went fucking nuts.

No, people who caused this are the ones who picked Trump for candidate and then voted for him. Conservatives did not had to pick Trump and his fellow travelers, they did. It should not be responsibility of democrats to become moderate republicans. It should be responsibility of moderate republicans to moderate their party. If you are moderate republican who voted Trump because you cant stomach the democrat establishment allows transexuals to transition or whatever, then you are someone who knowingly voted someone who you knew will do exactly what is going on now. There is nothing new or shocking about Trump or conservatives being anti-democratic or breaking the law.

It is absurd that all the bad stuff conservatives do ends up being blamed on left and center. But somehow, when left do something bad, conservatives are never blamed.

> the democrats need to take this as an objective lesson about how badly they failed to represent their constituencies

The elections were quite close. They failed to represent moderate republicans who prefer fascists anyway. They lost in elections. But the constituency voting for Trump was not theirs.

It would be cool if anti-Trump right would stop blaming everyone but themeselves. Especially when those anti-Trump people voted for Trump second time.


"It would be cool if anti-Trump right would stop blaming everyone but themeselves."

I agree, but from where I stand to the left, the Democrats -are- the anti-Trump right.

"It should not be responsibility of democrats to become moderate republicans."

I also agree with this, and I think that they would have won if they had not tried to be come GOP-Lite.

"It would be cool if anti-Trump right would stop blaming everyone but themselves. Especially when those anti-Trump people voted for Trump second time."

It'd be cool, from my far-left anti-war, pro-LGBTQ+, anti-capitalist position, if the Democrats would "stop blaming everyone but themselves." Especially when they keep losing because they don't run moderate right-wing candidates who don't represent their constituencies- that's explicitly the reason why they lost, not because a lot of folks voted for DT, but because a big chunk of folks realized that they weren't served by voting for Harris.

The Dems didn't have to run Harris. Or they could have setup a platform to appeal to the folks who ultimately didn't trust her.

But they didn't do those things and they lost an election they could have won.


[flagged]


I, too, was a teenager once.

Why was this flagged?

Most stories about Musk are flagged regardless of the topic. He might be using bots, he's certainly petty enough to do so.

Because enough users flag it.

I usually flag anything related to the US political circus.


Purely political posts are against the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Musk stuff tends to be; his horde of weird sycophants is alive and well.

[flagged]


WTF. Do they usually give a reason for flagging?

Flagging is mostly done by users (who have enough karma). It is just toggle (no reason entry form), and I believe it is the same for the moderator version.

The reasoning generally should be non-adherence to https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html but that's not particularly enforceable. This is balanced by the vouching system, as well as moderator unflagging.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#flag


It's spelled "federal", not "fedaral".

Fixed :)

>include the ability not just to read but to write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government.

...

>All that is known is that Marko can “access and query” SPS and that there was someone who gave Marko a “tour” of the facilities. We do not know where they are in operationalizing any control. One senior IT source can see Mark retrieving “close to a thousand rows of data” but they can’t see the content because the system is “top secret” even to them. No source I have has knowledge of what DOGE is doing with the data they are retrieving.

So the (d)evil remains hidden in every one of their details! What does 'write code' actually mean? A DB query? What exactly are these 'most sensitive' systems in the US government? A COBOL DB??

Compare the backups.

You DO have them off-site?


The most likely explanation is that the system either doesn't have the capacity to provide full read access without write access, or they were ordered to be provided "full access" and then the part of the bureaucracy implementing that directive interpreted it as including write access.

This is obviously not ideal, but the real question is, are they actually modifying anything (and if so , what?), or it is just a permissions level they're not actually using for anything?

We also can't rule out media hysteria yet, e.g. "write code" could plausibly be something like "write SQL queries" which doesn't inherently imply any modification to the database tables.


This should scare everyone in the US.

The strategy here is:

1) Trump issues some unconstitutional EO to abolish a federal department

2) Musk and DOGE go to work

3) Some federal judge blocks the EO

4) Some acting lackey of Trump ignores the court order. DOGE continues to dismantle the department from within

5) Even if the judge orders an arrests, no-one will enforce it

6) Congress does nothing

By the time anyone actually gets held accountable, the departments will have been pillaged and dismantled. DOJ and the AG will not go after anyone involved, Trump orders pre-emptive pardons for all involved in federal crimes.


Musk already gained access to everyone's private Twitter data. He also gathers data from Tesla sensors. Now he has access to private citizen's federal data. Very dangerous for any private, unaccountable individual to have this level of access and especially someone as malicious as Musk.

[flagged]


Completely different, at least for DeepSeek. Most people know what data they put there and do that willingly. They also know the risks.

I would be very concerned about any of the first three having government data access as well!

all deponds on if you use Android or a FruitPhone

Many reasonable and civil comments I and others made earlier today are being flagged. Whats going on?

Others disagree that you were reasonable and civil.

One of my flagged comments is “At what age would you support them?”

It appears to be a question asked in bad faith. Then you crossed into personal attack.

Interesting. If that’s the interpretation I think i need to contribute elsewhere.

I can’t trust that I’m not seeing other important perspectives here.


I sure hope none of the systems the DOGE boys are recklessly accessing end up having some dangerous malware like StuxNet on them that ends up disabling or destroying the DOGE systems.

total financial control by 5 20 years who've never written anything but Python, this should be great

who tf downvoted this show yourself groyper


For those not up on the lingo:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groypers>


they won't, because "groyper" and "coward" are synonyms

just find it hard to believe you could be on hacker news and be like "this is good" unless you yourself was a 20 internet troll you know?

40-yr-old internet troll here. This is fantastic.

20 year old internet troll here. This is good.

turns out, a lot of tech took a hard right turn in the last decade or two.

I think it is explained by the idea that, when tech overtook finance as the best shot at accumulating supra-human wealth and power, the young sociopaths started going into tech instead of finance.


This here rings true to me.

So let me get this straight-- there is a box in a Treasury building that, if the janitor accidentally unplugs it-- immediate financial apocalypse and a fifth of the US economy "stops."

Why isn't the very existence of this box the problem?


>> So let me get this straight-- there is a box in a Treasury building that, if the janitor accidentally unplugs it-- immediate financial apocalypse and a fifth of the US economy "stops."

It is mission-critical finance system. Guaranteed it's multiple redundant boxes in an highly access-controlled data center. No one should have access without serious vetting.

>> Why isn't the very existence of this box the problem?

The money doesn't move around on magic and rainbows. What were you expecting?


That’s the nature of centralized finance, no?

I mean if you simplify things to that extent Trump has a suit case with a red button that can end the world. Real life is a bit more complicated

If Trump's suitcase were broken, the result would not be Armageddon.

Also, apparently there are redundant "red buttons" mirroring the succession plan.[1]

So a more appropriate analogy would be a dead-man trigger in a bureaucrat's hand, programmed in obsolete technology, that if handled other than by expert hands at all times would result in immediate "Armageddon."

[1] https://apnews.com/article/nuclear-football-presidential-sat...


Okay this is the third article I have seen posted on HN about this - and once again, it is just a circular mish-mash of anonymous second hand sources.

These articles are all so circular I have resorted to asking CoPilot to analyze them and tell me what each source is, if they are 1st 2nd or 3rd party, and whether or not they are anonymous.

In this article, the analysis came out with:

Let's break down the claims and sources in this article:

Crises Notes: Reports that the Trump-Musk Treasury payments crisis of 2025 involves the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) gaining access to the Treasury Department's payment system. The article mentions concerns about the potential for irreversible damage to the systems and the exposure of sensitive personal and financial information1. The sources are unnamed, and there is no direct evidence provided.

CBS News: Reports that DOGE has access to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, which disburses trillions in payments each year, including Social Security checks and federal salaries. The article mentions concerns from consumer advocates and Democratic lawmakers about the potential risks of this access2. The sources are unnamed, and there is no direct evidence provided.

Truthout: Reports that labor unions and an advocacy group have sued the U.S. Treasury Department to halt DOGE's access to the critical government payment system. The article mentions concerns about the scale of the intrusion into individuals' privacy and the potential for unauthorized access to sensitive information3. The sources are unnamed, and there is no direct evidence provided.

In summary, all the sources cited in the article are anonymous, and there are no first-party sources or direct evidence provided. This makes it difficult to verify the claims independently. The lack of named sources and concrete evidence raises questions about the credibility of the claims.

Also, I will go ahead and paste my previous output from the other articles below (I'm going to post them as child comments so this isn't just a huge wall of text):


The below is in reference to this article (also posted in HN) https://newrepublic.com/post/191117/elon-musk-25-year-old-ai...

I did the same manual analysis I did on the OP one, and could not find a first party source or non-anonymous claim. I asked CoPilot to analyze the sources and identify the individual claims, and their proximity to a 'first party source'.

Once again, there is 0 evidence this is actually happening -- there are however a lot of news organizations ready to throw their reputations away over a few 'anonymous sources' that aren't even primary.

Here is the analysis of your source, AND the linked sources in that article:

Wired: Reports that Marko Elez, a 25-year-old engineer linked to Elon Musk, has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the U.S. government. The sources are unnamed, and they claim Elez has administrator-level privileges, including the ability to write code on the Payment Automation Manager and Secure Payment System1.

Talking Points Memo: Confirms Wired's reporting, adding that Elez has already made extensive changes to the code base for the payment systems. Again, the sources are unnamed1.

The New Republic: Details that Elez has complete access to critical payment systems at the Department of the Treasury, despite being only 25 years old. The sources are unnamed, and the article mentions that senior government officials have been locked out of employee databases1.

Raw Story: Reports that Elez has been given full control over the computer code that directs Social Security payments, tax returns, and other payments owed to Americans. The sources are unnamed, and the article mentions that federal IT workers are concerned about the potential for irreversible damage to the systems2.

In summary, all the sources cited in the article are anonymous, and there are no first-party sources or direct evidence provided. This makes it difficult to verify the claims independently. The lack of named sources and concrete evidence raises questions about the credibility of the claims.


And in reference to: https://www.rawstory.com/musk-treasury-doge/

Sure, let's break down the key witnesses and their claims:

David Lebryk: Former acting Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. He resigned after resisting granting DOGE access to the Treasury data1. His claim is based on his direct experience and position within the Treasury Department, making him a first party witness.

Ron Wyden: The highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee. He expressed concerns about the potential misuse of the data by DOGE1. Wyden is a second party witness, as he is commenting on the situation based on his oversight role but not direct involvement.

Anonymous AP Sources: Two people familiar with the situation spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. They claim that DOGE has gained access to sensitive Treasury data1. These sources are second party witnesses, as they have indirect knowledge of the situation.

X User (@rayinsideout): Revealed names of alleged DOGE employees who accessed the Treasury payment system. Musk accused this user of committing a crime by sharing private information2. This user is a third party witness, as they are relaying information they claim to have obtained from other sources.

NOTE: The rawstory article DID NOT mention Scott Bessent, but CoPilot 'thoughtfully' added this for context:

Scott Bessent: Treasury Secretary who granted DOGE access to the data. His actions are central to the claims, but he hasn't made public statements about the specifics of the access3. Bessent is a first party witness due to his direct involvement in the decision.


So altogether that is 13 sources -- and NONE of them have actually used any first party sources.

AI (CoPilot) had to infer a first party source, who has NOT made this claim.

You are all getting spun up over what is almost certainly fake news, and since it fits your confirmation bias it does not matter.

If this story was about anyone else, there is absolutely no way all of these 'news' sources would be willing to publish these claims with such flimsy evidence.

Frankly, this is pathetic. I -really- hope this isn't true because of how egregious a breach it would be. The audaciousness / outrageousness of the base claim combined with the circular references really SHOULD be raising red flags for everyone taking the bait though... but for some reason this site full of highly technical people is suddenly fine with "well I overheard it in a conversation over the weekend" as gospel truth.

Get real.


I also decided to ask CoPilot for a probability this is true, and to explain it's reasoning. I think it's being generous... but it's a lot less than a coinflip:

" given everything you have ingested on this topic assisting me so far, if you had to assign a probability % to this being a true story what would you assign it? Answer only witha number from 0-100 35

Can you explain your reasoning? Of course! Here’s the breakdown of my reasoning:

Lack of Named Sources: All the articles referenced rely heavily on unnamed and anonymous sources. Without concrete evidence or named individuals to corroborate the claims, it’s difficult to ascertain the accuracy of the information.

Extraordinary Claims: The claims being made are quite extraordinary, involving a 25-year-old with no prior experience having access to critical government systems and rewriting COBOL code on the fly. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, which seems to be lacking in this case.

Consistency Across Sources: While multiple sources report on the story, they all seem to echo similar details without providing additional or unique evidence. This repetition might indicate a reliance on the same set of unverified sources, rather than independent verification.

Skepticism from Lack of First-Party Evidence: The articles fail to provide first-party evidence or verifiable documentation to support the claims. This raises doubts about the overall credibility of the story.

Putting these factors together, I estimated a 35% probability that the story is true. While there is a possibility that elements of the story are accurate, the lack of solid evidence and reliance on anonymous sources make it difficult to fully trust the claims. Does that make sense? "

Come on guys...


> Overnight Wired reported that contrary to published reports that DOGE operatives at the Treasury Department are limited to ‘read only’ access to department payment systems, this is not true. A 25 year old DOGE operative named Marko Elez in fact has admin privileges on these critical systems which directly control and pay out roughly 95% of payments made by the US government including Social Security checks, tax refunds and virtually all contract payments. I can independently confirm these details based on going back to the weekend. I can further report that Elez not only has full access to these systems and has already made extensive changes to the code base for this critical payment system.

> Josh, are you a little crestfallen they beat you to it? Well, sure but this is a business is an ocean of ‘arrgghhs’ and honestly the information being out is the big thing. Here are the additional details.

> I’m told that Elez and possibly other DOGE operatives received full admin level access on Friday January 31st. The claim of ‘read only’ access was either false from the start or later fell through. The DOGE team, which appears to be mainly or only Elez for the purposes of this project, has already made extensive changes to the code base for the payment system. They have not locked out the existing programmer/engineering staff but have rather leaned on them for assistance which they appear to have painedly provided hoping to prevent as much damage as possible – ‘damage’ in the sense not of preventing the intended changes but avoiding crashes or a system-wide breakdown caused by rapidly pushing new code into production with a limited knowledge of the system and its dependencies across the federal government.

> Phrases like “freaking out” are, not surprisingly, used to describe the reaction of the engineers who were responsible for maintaining the code base until a week ago. The changes that have been made all seem to relate to creating new paths to block payments and possibly leave less visibility into what has been blocked. I want to emphasize that the described changed are not being tested in a dev environment (i.e., not live) but have already been pushed into production. This is code that appears to be mainly the work of Elez who was first introduced to the system probably roughly a week ago and certainly not before the second Trump inauguration. The most recent information I have is that no payments have as yet been blocked and that the incumbent engineering team was able to convince Marko to push the code live to impact only a subset of the universe of payments the system controls. I have also heard no specific information about this access being used to drill down into the private financial or proprietary information of payment recipients, though it appears that the incumbent staff has only limited visibility into what Elez is doing with the access. They have however looked into extensively into the categories and identity of payees to see how certain payments can be blocked.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219987126


Musk got himself into this hole, so if a democrat president comes in 2029, there's a high chance now, he'd be deported. Can happen sooner as well, depending on midterms.

You don’t deport citizens though…

If they could prove he was in the country illegally and breaking laws maybe they could revoke his citizenship?

[1]: https://youtu.be/CgV2KzyWKx0?t=794

He often talks about the most ironic outcome being the most likely so this could fit lol.


He's worth billions, so that's not going to happen. We're stuck with him unless an assassin gets lucky.

Yeah thats a good point. You never know, the pendulum might swing far to the left and his billions might not save him. I do concede thats its really unlikely.

In order for him to be prosecuted, several highly unlikely things have to occur.

Trump doesn't pardon him. I can't really see this happening. If they have a falling out, then Elon will just pay him off. It's not like Trump will turn down a bribe.

A democrat is elected president in 2028. After that, demographics substantially reduce their chances of being elected (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/democrats-future-crisi...). They would have to either abandon progressive views and move right or offer an incredibly compelling candidate. Both of these seem unlikely to me. After that, people in red states will determine the future of this country.


Well that might be changing soon:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0jn5291p52o


What if he's planning to replace the current systems with something that has a blockchain to more easily track payments?

...DogeCoin??


Serious question: is there anything other than their own scruples keeping these guys from siphoning off a few billion dollars for themselves?

Criminal prosecution?

Why would they be prosecuted? The FBI has been gutted and they'd just be pardoned

Seems like a good wake-up call that all of these responsibilities shouldn't be the unilateral purview of the executive branch then.

Wake-up call? It’s a little late to close the barn doors.

Who else would they be?

The government has to appoint somebody to actually carry out law. There must always be an executive branch to execute the law.

The people running these agencies are all appointed by congress. If congress didn't want DOGE to have access to these systems then they wouldn't've confirmed the appointment of people who would give them access. Or conversely, they would impeach the appointees if the didn't like it.

This is the strength and weakness of a single-party system (grant US has multiple parties but one party is actually in control currently). The party does what the party wants and if it's not what you want then it's tough.


The US Constitution at its heart is based on a system of checks and balances, both between branches of government and the Federal government and States:

"Checks and Balances in the Constitution"

<https://www.usconstitution.net/checks-and-balances-in-the-co...>

That balance has been largely eviscerated presently.


> The US Constitution at its heart is based on a system of checks and balances, both between branches of government and the Federal government and States:

First, this is all a non-sequitur to my argument. When the 3 branches are all in agreement on something then there is no reason for any of them to attempt to stop another branch. This is the case when a party has control over all 3 branches. It's not like China, North Korea, or Russia don't have legislatures and judges; it's just they're in agreement with their president.

But to your point, the constitution is not a document of checks and balances. It's just the agreed upon manor that the government will execute and Congress really has no checks on it's power. Congress can impeach/remove the president and judges; it's supposed to be the supreme branch.

Control-f check [1] => 0 hits

Control-f balance [1] => 0 hits

Some of these things that people call "checks and balances" are just straight up not in the constitution. "Judicial review" is not in the constitution.

[1]: https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcri...


I believe most people will understand that there is an extraordinarily long and vast tradition and literature on US Constitutional checks and balances, as my earlier link should have amply demonstrated. Google Scholar presently turns up another 359,000 results should that not have proven sufficiently persuasive:

<https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=constitution%20checks%2...>

At the time the US Constitution was written, political parties did not exist, nor were they anticipated, though they did in fact develop rather quickly as the US political system evolved. As such, the idea that a party might control one or more branches of government was not anticipated, and might be considered variously a misfeature of politics-as-instituted, or a grievous oversight of the framers. Probably some of A, some of B.

Rather, states and branches were anticipated to have their own interests and act on their accordance. To some extent that's emerged, but the overwhelming power has resided with parties since the late 18th century.

As with other doctrines (e.g., judicial review, a concept fiercely wielded by so-called "originalists"), much if not most US legal and common law theory has evolved over time, occasionally through amendments but far more often through case law and simple convention.


Further: "checks and balances" is a concept originating with Montesque in his book The Spirit of the Law (1748), itself building on John Locke's Second Treatise of Government, and is explicitly referenced in the Federalist Papers, written by several of the framers of the US Constitution, most notably Federalist 51 (by Alexander Hamilton or James Madison), February 8, 1788, titled "The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments", and beginning:

TO WHAT expedient, then, shall we finally resort, for maintaining in practice the necessary partition of power among the several departments, as laid down in the Constitution? The only answer that can be given is, that as all these exterior provisions are found to be inadequate, the defect must be supplied, by so contriving the interior structure of the government as that its several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places. Without presuming to undertake a full development of this important idea, I will hazard a few general observations, which may perhaps place it in a clearer light, and enable us to form a more correct judgment of the principles and structure of the government planned by the convention...

Spirit of the Law <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_of_Law>

Federalist 51: <https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-51-60>

Again, the concept is foundational and was well-established in the context in which the Constitution was drafted.


We do require a different constitutional order, but I wouldn't hold my breath on it being established any time soon.

They aren't unilateral. Trump is violating the law.

The problem is that the law doesn't spring off the page to enforce itself. Prior presidents haven't chosen to just ignore it to this degree.