An angle I didn't notice discussed here on HN is that while this confusion about DOGE among the general US public continues, it's a great time for China to advance it's agenda and to weaken the US.
Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
301–310 of 1001 posts
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#302The 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?
> team of teenage Maybe it's a question of wording, but I would agree if the word were "inexperienced" instead of teenage (in reality, they are young adults). I have no horse in this DOGE race and all the discussions, but I find this "reverse ageism" (for lack of a better term) quite sad, 'cause it does not sound condescending but infantilizes youth and hides one of the biggest elephants in the room in the modern wor…
You were not a 19 year old with access to the personal financial data of hundreds of millions of civilians.
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
The question no one is asking is why does the federal government have so much "sensitive data" on it's citizens in the first place? When you build a machine like this you should ask, "would I be comfortable if my political opposites had control of this?" If the answer is no, then you DON'T BUILD IT. Meanwhile someone goes in there to try to break up this 30 year pile of technical debt and it's all lawsuits and handwa…
How could the US government do things like collect tax or regulate the medical industry without sensitive data?
Tax data is not particularly sensitive and several nations just publish it. Even in the US many forms of non-individual tax filings are public by default. The results of audits /are/ highly sensitive but there's no reason to hold those on computer systems for longer than 5 years after the audit.
I think the medical industry can easily be regulated without the government having access to my actual medical file. They regulate cars without having any idea how I drive mine. They regulate planes without sitting on the flight deck themselves.
It's like we know how to build good businesses, good databases, have solid user control practices, but then we give the government a pass because it's imagined to be "really hard." It's laughable.
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#304Why the security concerns now and not with the thousands of employees with potentially similar access? NOW it's a concern because the idea occurred to people that who might have access to data is important? Imo the faux outrage is so far beyond rational that it turns people away. Let's have a reasonable discussion about data access and controls, and whether they are being followed, rather than some reflexive response…
> Why the security concerns now and not with the thousands of employees with potentially similar access?
Because there aren't "thousands of employees" with this kind of access, and few people who have had it were thoroughly vetted.
> Let's have a reasonable discussion about data access and controls, and whether they are being followed, rather than some reflexive response based on political points of view.
We are well beyond partisan "points of view" here. This isn't really about policy, this is about the law and whether or not anyone has any interest in enforcing it.
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#305Why the security concerns now and not with the thousands of employees with potentially similar access? NOW it's a concern because the idea occurred to people that who might have access to data is important? Imo the faux outrage is so far beyond rational that it turns people away. Let's have a reasonable discussion about data access and controls, and whether they are being followed, rather than some reflexive response…
Data access controls couldn't have been followed in this case, given the short timelines, right?
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#306Ignoring 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…
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> Instead, he’s going to spend his years in some combination of hearings, court rooms and jails.
It is super possible none of those are in his future. Trumps administration wont pursue him and whatever remains after them will likely ignore this kid. I mean, it would be fair and great if these all got some kind of punishment, but it is unlikely to ever happen.
> DOGE, at a smaller scale in every respect, reminds one of the arrogance of Europe’s WWI leaders.
What exactly you mean there? This does not strikes me as similar to WWI.
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#307Say what you will about the cuts, you can't have people with zero clearance being given access to all of this data.
All this data? We really don’t know what data is being accessed. We have a lot of people saying lots of things about the access. Such as he will block payments or tarter people based on how they vote. You have not claimed those so I won’t rebuttal then here. But “all this data” I will. The systems bending accessed are the ones which handle money approved by congress to be spent in a specific way. As a tax payer I am…
> We really don’t know what data is being accessed.
And you don’t think that’s a problem?
You think that requiring people to have proper vetting to access information that might include personally identifiable information is “political bullshit”?
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#308Why the security concerns now and not with the thousands of employees with potentially similar access? NOW it's a concern because the idea occurred to people that who might have access to data is important? Imo the faux outrage is so far beyond rational that it turns people away. Let's have a reasonable discussion about data access and controls, and whether they are being followed, rather than some reflexive response…
The security concerns are addressed in the article. The answer to your question is in there, and your comment is easily interpreted as the same reflexive outrage you think others are guilty of.
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#309The 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?
> team of teenage Maybe it's a question of wording, but I would agree if the word were "inexperienced" instead of teenage (in reality, they are young adults). I have no horse in this DOGE race and all the discussions, but I find this "reverse ageism" (for lack of a better term) quite sad, 'cause it does not sound condescending but infantilizes youth and hides one of the biggest elephants in the room in the modern wor…
You’re not wrong, but there is also wisdom in age. I’m 37 now, and got in plenty of similar trouble when I was 16-22, simply because my brain literally was not fully developed yet. My impulse control was worse, my consideration of consequences was much less existent, and so on.
I think the reaction is more about wanting some older adults in the room as well, not about having no younger adults in the room.
Younger people always want to knock down Chesterton’s fences whenever they see them; I know, because I was recently young.
But asking the elders why those fences exist is always a good idea; then, knock them down if the issue is resolved. Humility and curiosity are required for that.
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#310The biggest irony to me is that Musk wanted to reneg on the Twitter sale. It's interesting to consider the timeline where he was allowed to not buy it. Truly a "canon" event, that one. I'm also not convinced this is a "security breach." They're being allowed to do it. It's more like an unforced error, if anything. Not that it changes anything material about the situation. That said - a small majority of congress is c…
> The biggest irony to me is that Musk wanted to reneg on the Twitter sale With everything he has lied about why assume he wasn't also lying about that? He has been caught lying about being good at videos games.
I've become convinced that everything he publicly does is an advanced form of social gish gallop meant to overwhelm and distract everyone from what he is actually doing, which is robbing the United States of its wealth, information, and federal autonomy. For example, everyone knew that the hyperloop was a work of fiction and that the Vegas loop was an ineffective death trap, but during the same period that he was evangelizing about it, China had built 40,000 Km of high speed rail - the US built 0. It seems aufully convenient that someone whos wealth stems from car manufacturing might work to ensure that the most car-dependent nation in the world remains so. This of course doesn't even begin to touch on his forays into media, public infrastructure, digital technologies, communications, space travel, and I can only assume soon energy.
Most people are not very "in the loop", nor do they put much thought into long term consequences or even the concept of ulterior motives; performative (yet socially consequential) things like distracting everyone by paying a team of people to play PoE for him so he can lie about it and generate widespread and inconsequential outrage is an insignificant cost to him. He is poised to be a trillionaire within the term of this administration, and I fully believe he is going to become one by continuing this pattern of pointing at distractions while rifling through our pockets.