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Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

krebsonsecurity.com

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Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#161

Post by alexashka »

fnimick wrote: post #131
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Coristine wrote impressive, profitable tech. He should have a future as a productive member of society, perhaps even one of its titans. When did "profitable" become the sole metric by which we judge someone's work? Does what is morally correct factor into it at all, or should the impressiveness someone's accomplishments make them a "titan" regardless of intent or outcome?

> When did "profitable" become the sole metric by which we judge someone's work?

When humans learned to domesticate other humans.

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#162

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ineptech wrote: post #152
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

What was the impressive and profitable part? The article makes him sound like a script kiddie who dicked around with some DDoS networks and formed a couple LLCs but didn't end up accomplishing much (either entrepreneurially or illegally). Not saying that makes him a terrible person, but in generation ago terms, he sounds less like a founding l0pht member and more like a Rusty n Edie's subscriber.

> article makes him sound like a script kiddie who dicked around with some DDoS networks and formed a couple LLCs but didn't end up accomplishing much

I’d say that’s impressive for a high schooler. Initiative, follow through and results.

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#163

Post by wrs »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #8
camillomiller wrote: post #5

[flagged]

> and yet the absolute frustration is that there is nothing that anyone but the judiciary system can do. Why would there be? The people hired Trump to be the CEO, the CEO hired Musk (personally, I think it is mostly to serve as a distraction while real personal/political goals are handled elsewhere), but regardless, any government only works when most leaders (and voters) have mostly good intentions. It is not feasib…

The United States isn’t supposed to have a “CEO” in the sense that a corporation does. For countries, that job description is called a “monarch”, and the Constitution is specifically designed to make sure we don’t have one.

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#164

Post by grandempire »

fabian2k wrote: post #47

Ignoring the horrifying political parts, I think one aspect here about data access that is inherently worrying is that it seems like all usual controls were bypassed and the DOGE people had very low level access to systems. So there are probably copies of sensitive data now in their possession, and nobody knows exactly what was copied and where it is stored. This kind of access would be dangerous even in the hands of…

(EDIT: Moved to comment I intended to reply to)

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#166

Post by jdross »

default-kramer wrote: post #157
amazingamazing wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reporting on this is terrible. There are also senior (in age and experience) people, but much of the focus is on the youngins for obvious reasons. Musk also believes (either arrogance, or true belief) that much of this stuff can be figured out from first principals without much need of traditional experts.

I hope this is true. Can you name any senior people and/or financial auditors who are overseeing "the youngins"?

I know a number of them but they’re rightfully not looking to be especially public about it now on the internet — life is hard enough just doing the job they’re trying to do. Which is frankly a lot of banal accounting and auditing type work. They’re in their 30’s and 40’s with prolific backgrounds in PE, as entrepreneurs managing nine figure budgets and thousands of employees, etc.

Politics vs policy, or something like that?

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#167

Post by n2d4 »

default-kramer wrote: post #157
amazingamazing wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reporting on this is terrible. There are also senior (in age and experience) people, but much of the focus is on the youngins for obvious reasons. Musk also believes (either arrogance, or true belief) that much of this stuff can be figured out from first principals without much need of traditional experts.

I hope this is true. Can you name any senior people and/or financial auditors who are overseeing "the youngins"?

A larger list of DOGE employees is on Wikipedia. While there are a variety of members, most of them don't have the experience you'd expect someone to have in the respective roles. The average age is definitely higher than 25 though.

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

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#168

Post by varjag »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #116
9283409232 wrote: post #106

The question no one asking is why Elon is sending a team of teenage programmers and not a team of financial auditors if he really wanted to cut government spending?

> why Elon is sending a team of teenage programmers and not a team of financial auditors if he really wanted to cut government spending? History has one answer for the deployment of reams of young fiery-loyalist men to the front lines: cannon fodder.

IMO it's more reminiscent of Red Guards from Cultural Revolution era China.

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#169

Post by jdross »

threeseed wrote: post #93
9283409232 wrote: post #79

Why are high level figures in these departments just letting them walk in and have access? Tell them to kick rocks until they have proper clearances.

Because Elon has the authority of the President who can override clearances. US government was simply never designed for scenarios like this.

Arguably it was designed explicitly for the chief executive having control of the executive branch we just haven’t had executives with this level of interest in making major changes in 40+ years. Was somewhat common to shake up the scope of the federal gov’t when the bureaucracy was much smaller in the 1800’s and early 1900’s

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#170

Post by picafrost »

I recall an aphorism that government is self-governed 90% by norms and 10% by law. I don’t know if American law is being violated but certainly it is alarming to observe from the outside when the norms are totally disregarded.

The US looks unstable and untrustworthy.

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