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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'

#191

Post by Applejinx »

derbOac wrote: post #18
relaxing wrote: post #16

Good reporting here. Clarifies why the kid was fired for leaking documents - it was specifically for leaking internal corporate documents to a competitor. The details about cybercrime discords involved in SWATting and DDOS attacks are fascinating. The idea that anyone involved in this would be fast-tracked for a clearance is beyond the pale.

I personally think it says volumes about how those in the Trump-Musk group (Musk group?) see this. They see the task as infiltrating an adversary, requiring someone with the technical skills to do so but who is also disposable. This in their mind is not about improving anything in the government for citizens, or with regard to US interests, it's about gaining access to a hostile entity without regard to their interes…

Or indeed that they are a hostile adversary to the US who have achieved some successes adversarial to the US.

I feel like from the perspective of the US, if we frame this conflict/battle for control of US services and computer systems, we needn't say 'the US is a hostile adversary'. It's fair to frame it as 'the US is the US, and the people seizing control of the systems against the interests of the US are hostile adversaries of the US'.

The specifics of who they're working for, how, why etc. can still be up for speculation or further discovery, but we needn't frame it as 'perhaps the US is actually the enemy and Musk's people are actually the liberators'.

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

#192

Post by dang »

93po wrote: post #177
dang wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent all day responding to the replies here, and then detaching them in order to save space at the top of the thread. But I just had a better idea. This is a stub comment so we have a single root to collapse the replies. This way (1) replies can stay close to their parent (the top comment) without flooding the screen with offtopicness; and (2) we can all re-experience the timeless truth of https://en.wikipedia.org…

My issue with this content on HN isn't that the conversation is sometimes garbage, which it is, but that it's overwhelmingly people repeating the same falsehoods that might, at best, have a kernel of truth, but have been blown out of proportion to the point of just being not-true. There is very little interest in actually taking a step backwards, challenging beliefs and the propaganda fed to us by corporate news chan…

I agree in principle, but these are the dynamics of every intense polarized issue and I don't think there's much we can do about it other than nibble around the margins. For example, we try to downweight comments that are primarily name-calling or flaming, in the hope of giving more oxygen to posts that are reflective, find something new to say, and so on.

At bottom, it seems like this is just how mass psychology works—it's what you get when the inputs are (1) human nature, and (2) modern media. It stresses me out too, but I have to remind myself not to fight battles we can't win. That's a recipe for burnout and worse.

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

#193

Post by phony-account »

93po wrote: post #177
dang wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent all day responding to the replies here, and then detaching them in order to save space at the top of the thread. But I just had a better idea. This is a stub comment so we have a single root to collapse the replies. This way (1) replies can stay close to their parent (the top comment) without flooding the screen with offtopicness; and (2) we can all re-experience the timeless truth of https://en.wikipedia.org…

My issue with this content on HN isn't that the conversation is sometimes garbage, which it is, but that it's overwhelmingly people repeating the same falsehoods that might, at best, have a kernel of truth, but have been blown out of proportion to the point of just being not-true. There is very little interest in actually taking a step backwards, challenging beliefs and the propaganda fed to us by corporate news chan…

> “so and so is literally worse than hitler"

Can you give citations for where you’ve seen these sorts of statements?

However bad Musk is, I’ve yet to see anyone saying he is “literally worse than Hitler”

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

#195

Post by grandempire »

Aurornis wrote: post #188
grandempire wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> So to me this argument sounds the same as "how can young kids think they can program like experienced engineers". This is about a specific person who has a history of bad behavior, not a generic discussion on the abilities of young people.

Apologies. I responded to the wrong comment.

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

#196

Post by jan3024-2r »

93po wrote: post #177
dang wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent all day responding to the replies here, and then detaching them in order to save space at the top of the thread. But I just had a better idea. This is a stub comment so we have a single root to collapse the replies. This way (1) replies can stay close to their parent (the top comment) without flooding the screen with offtopicness; and (2) we can all re-experience the timeless truth of https://en.wikipedia.org…

My issue with this content on HN isn't that the conversation is sometimes garbage, which it is, but that it's overwhelmingly people repeating the same falsehoods that might, at best, have a kernel of truth, but have been blown out of proportion to the point of just being not-true. There is very little interest in actually taking a step backwards, challenging beliefs and the propaganda fed to us by corporate news chan…

[flagged]

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

#197

Post by grandempire »

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?

When we think about what tasks bright young people can become good at, I think auditing flows of money is one of them. It's a technical task with objective results, and a tight feedback cycle. The places where you need age and experience are like resolving interpersonal conflict, balancing interests from many stakeholders, setting up objectives for others to follow, etc.

So to me this argument sounds the same as "how can young kids think they can program like experienced engineers".

Another answer is that financial auditors don't have ALL the technical skill for this scope of project. Light SQL skills tend to be the upper end of technical accounting (many workers on a project is good for corporate billing). Reports indicate Doge is employing graph analysis, LLMs, etc. Getting the data looks like a SW problem perfect for young people. I have no evidence that this how the organization functions, but I can imagine them as technical analysts, who simply pass information to higher ups who do have organizational experience.

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

#198

Post by demosthanos »

jdross wrote: post #185

I realized I’m treading in extremely hostile waters here, but the stories I hear from folks working in DOGE are closer to “I spend 8am to 2am with the leaders of department X going through all contracts and outflows and identifying what is important versus wasteful given a target of saving $X million per day, and there are some great people in this department who really know what’s been going on and it’s been great t…

Where are you getting these stories from? Are you claiming to know people and to have received firsthand accounts, or is this stuff written down somewhere where the rest of us can see it and read it?

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

#199

Post by Aurornis »

jdross wrote: post #185

I realized I’m treading in extremely hostile waters here, but the stories I hear from folks working in DOGE are closer to “I spend 8am to 2am with the leaders of department X going through all contracts and outflows and identifying what is important versus wasteful given a target of saving $X million per day, and there are some great people in this department who really know what’s been going on and it’s been great t…

> Versus whatever the media is reporting

Where? The lack of transparency from DOGE has been a pain point even for advocates. I haven’t seen anything more than generic “we’re doing good work, trust us” PR

The media is reporting the history of some of these people and their actual actions. Of course these people aren’t going to discuss their past membership in script kiddie DDoS groups or their highly racist Twitter rants.

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

#200

Post by 93po »

pjc50 wrote: post #174
cjbgkagh wrote: post #140

I don't like Musk and have not for many years, but the left has been venerating some very flawed people for a very long time. It’s hard to be outraged now when we’ve been selectively told to ignore the past of others. Let’s not forget that Trump is the pied piper candidate promoted by the left to make it easier to win elections. I remember when Ron Desantis was successfully undermined by the news media casting him as…

> When our leaders are picked by their enemies This bears no relationship to reality; he won the primaries in the normal fashion. He's the candidate of the right, who love him, go to his rallies, and buy his crypto.

The parent comment's claim is that he won the primaries because corporate news deliberately and tirelessly covered his campaign to give him tremendous visibility, which led to his winning campaign. I disagree and think they covered his campaign because it generated clicks and therefore money, which is most of what they care about, and accidentally got him elected in the process. I think they guessed incorrectly at how successful he would be, probably because they're massively out of touch due to both being in a echo chamber while also extremely privileged.
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