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Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

breakingdefense.com

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Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#191

Post by nradov »

DougBTX wrote: post #155
nradov wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hard part of accounting systems is doing the requirements analysis (including interviewing humans who give inaccurate or incomplete answers) and writing detailed functional specifications which account for every possible edge case. No LLM can do that. Once you have the detailed specifications the coding is relatively easy. Some of that can be partially automated using AI CASE tools, but that only gives a marginal…

> The hard part of accounting systems is doing the requirements analysis (including interviewing humans who give inaccurate or incomplete answers) and writing detailed functional specifications which account for every possible edge case. So lots of tedious repetitive manipulation of language to extract facts and transform them into a systematic format? My prediction: LLMs are going to eat that for breakfast. (Honestl…

None of those customers have actual data sets to train against when it comes to ERP and accounting software requirements analysis. The data that exists at all is scattered across random Word documents, wiki pages, paper notebooks, and legacy requirements management systems. Most of it is summarized. It's not recordings of past interviews with SMEs that business analysts and product owners conducted to extract functional requirements. In order to train an LLM to conduct such interviews you would have to obtain actual transcripts of such interviews. Not impossible, but unlikely to happen anytime soon.

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#194

Post by wolverine876 »

Matticus_Rex wrote: post #185
wolverine876 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Pentagon is on track, for the most part, on their auditing project. But what makes you say it doesn't impact their budget?

Six (out of six) years of failed audits, and no repercussions in sight?

Again, they are on track.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38307749

It's like an airplane under development. It's not expected to fly yet.

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#196

Post by wolverine876 »

count wrote: post #170
psunavy03 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone with 20 years active and reserve time, the only thing I'd really tweak here is that the budget is somewhat centralized; it's just the execution that's decentralized. DOD is an Executive Branch department that operates on money programmed by Congress. Agencies choose, within limits of Title 10 US Code, how to spend that money, but the "pots" or "flavors" of money they have to spend are allocated in the Cong…

Heh, most of the DoD is. But DoD also has non Title10/PPBE-programmed funding (foreign military sales, contingency and humanitarian operations funds, MWR funds and incomes, support-to-other-agency (e.g. the US Navy NAVWAR organization provides SUBSTANTIAL IT and cyber expertise to non-DoD entities and other federal agencies such as the FBI and DHS). The DoD is like the End Game Boss on legal and financial edge cases.

As someone who seems to know a bit about it, do you take the job? :)

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#197

Post by HideousKojima »

airstrike wrote: post #113
HideousKojima wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the cost of some portion of your future revenue

and if that future revenue is N times greater than you would otherwise get without debt, then it's still better to take on debt. Would you rather have 90% of $1M or 100% of $800k?

>if

That single word is doing all of the heavy lifting for you. "If" the housing market will never crash, then it's a surefire safe investment! Better buy tons of houses to flip on credit. There's no guarantee that your debt/investment will succeed, which is why banks try (and often enough, fail) to price in risk with things like varying interest rates, collateral, etc.

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#198

Post by Arrath »

nradov wrote: post #189
marricks wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eisenhower warned this would be a thing and here we are, it's a thing. The best we will ever get is the illusion of spending being under control. It's wild, but whenever a big change occurs there's always smart folks who knew what was going to happen and exactly called it out. Usually as a "ok guys be careful cause X could happen" and X inevitably does.

Eisenhower might have warned about it but he apparently never asked Congress to appropriate funds for modernizing the Department of Defense accounting systems. Had he done so they wouldn't be such a mess today.

I mean, the COBOL accounting systems being discussed were developed and put in place after his term, no? So they are, in fact, more modern than they would have been during Eisenhower's time.

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#199

Post by HideousKojima »

scatters wrote: post #174
HideousKojima wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could also grow by saving and reinvesting surpluses/profits

No, they couldn't. One person's savings is another person's debt. If everyone tries to save then no one can; this is the paradox of thrift.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_thrift#Criticisms

Just because someone gives it a formal name doesn't mean it's true.

>One person's savings is another person's debt.

Only if you treat fiat currency (or bank deposits in general, the paradox you mention was formulated long before we got off the gold standard) as the only possible form of savings.

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#200

Post by HideousKojima »

scatters wrote: post #173
HideousKojima wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most explanations I've seen boil down to to "The US (or any other sovereign nation with control over their own currency) can print their way out of debt, it's literally impossible for the US to default." This ignores the devastating economic effects that printing such a huge amount of currency would cause (likely comparable to the effects of simply defaulting) and ignores the fact that sovereign nations with control…

The Russian rouble was not free floating prior to the crisis. They tried to defy the iron triangle and paid for it. This is not a problem for the USA, since other currencies are denominated in terms of the dollar. The reason it would be impossible for the US to default is that the US is not significantly in debt. Most of the federal debt is held domestically, meaning by the US. You can't be in debt to yourself.

>Most of the federal debt is held domestically, meaning by the US. You can't be in debt to yourself.

Sure, we can just inflate away the Social Security fund, but do you think the effects of this would be better or worse than simply defaulting? And nevermind the political optics of "We still paid what we owed to China but magic wanded away the debt to Grandma!"

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