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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'

#611

Post by cratermoon »

Terr_ wrote: post #606
I_am_tiberius wrote: post #510

I find it shockingly absurd how the All-In podcast hosts blindly support everything one of their own does. It’s obvious they treat Musk like a god. In the latest episode, they even made fun of concerns about privacy, claiming that all people care about is the state not wasting money. - completely dismissing worries about data exposure.

> all people care about is the state not wasting money. - completely dismissing worries about data exposure A tangent here, but: Gas taxes paying for roads. There is a relationship between inefficiency and privacy. I often encounter some libertarian-types complaining about this, that they should only be taxed for the construction and maintenance of infrastructure they personally drive upon. Indirect benefits aside, I…

I'm curious, what do libertarian types think of the per-mile car insurance deals that require the driver to install a surveillance device on their own vehicles?

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

#612

Post by b8 »

burkaman wrote: post #486
b8 wrote: post #461

Many former hackers have been hired by the government with TS clearances and it's ridiculous to compare teenage hacker groups to violent street gangs. I told an agency of previous hacking stuff and they were more concerned with me admitting to cheating on a math test at college lol.

In order to get those TS clearances they have to go through extremely thorough background checks.

I went thru the TS/SCI w/FSP for a 3 letter top tier agency and it was a joke. They interviewed my mom, sister, old coworkers/bosses and old teachers. Then just asked me normal questions. They asked my mom and boses normal questions too. It's nothing like in the movies/TV shows and plenty of bad apples get thru lol.

The former head of the DCSA and FBI NYC field office both got caught doing bad stuff. The process is broken and honestly isn't that good . It gets people who aren't committed out, but also makes tons of good candidates go with other jobs, because it takes at least 4 months to do. Mine was 9 months long + 3 months to get an offer initially.

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

#613

Post by jahsome »

heresie-dabord wrote: post #538
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…

> yet-another interchangeable flamewar You have earned my respect, dang, but this is hardly an "interchangeable flamewar". What is happening is frankly beyond anything we have ever seen before in the history of the country.

That same statement applies to literally every moment the country has existed.

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

#614

Post by tshaddox »

Terr_ wrote: post #606
I_am_tiberius wrote: post #510

I find it shockingly absurd how the All-In podcast hosts blindly support everything one of their own does. It’s obvious they treat Musk like a god. In the latest episode, they even made fun of concerns about privacy, claiming that all people care about is the state not wasting money. - completely dismissing worries about data exposure.

> all people care about is the state not wasting money. - completely dismissing worries about data exposure A tangent here, but: Gas taxes paying for roads. There is a relationship between inefficiency and privacy. I often encounter some libertarian-types complaining about this, that they should only be taxed for the construction and maintenance of infrastructure they personally drive upon. Indirect benefits aside, I…

I’m pretty sure highways already have enough actual surveillance cameras that the marginal threat of surveillance from toll-collecting hardware is tiny.

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

#615

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

reaperman wrote: post #587
I_am_tiberius wrote: post #510

I find it shockingly absurd how the All-In podcast hosts blindly support everything one of their own does. It’s obvious they treat Musk like a god. In the latest episode, they even made fun of concerns about privacy, claiming that all people care about is the state not wasting money. - completely dismissing worries about data exposure.

I don't understand what relevance the All-In podcast has to this article written by Brian Krebs. Did I miss a reference to it in the article, or is there a non-obvious connection that someone could point out?

I looked and as far as I can tell, this podcast discussed DOGE but I don’t think they focused on the security aspects of DOGE. It’s more that the All In hosts, like most experienced business people, support aggressive cost cutting and recognize the dangers of not reducing spending - so they really want it to happen. They see the progress so far as unexpectedly fast and encouraging, and think the overall effort will be positive in the obvious ways like reducing the deficit and debt but also because it sets expectations around how the government should operate. I didn’t listen to the whole thing, but judging by the comments here, it seems a lot of HN is not interested in cutting spending or the idea of a team auditing every agency, so they probably view anyone who supports those ideas negatively too.

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

#616

Post by DannyBee »

n1b0m wrote: post #352
fujinghg wrote: post #218

I used to hang around with the late 90s's versions of these guys. I grew up, had a family, have had a successful career. They went to prison. I expect the same will happen to this lot.

Except in this case they’ll probably get sweeping presidential pardons

Won't save them from state prosecution, and it seems there is plenty to dig into here. For the types of crime Krebs is talking about, it's really easy to get charged in lots of states with lots of things, and the statute of limitations are fairly long depending on the crime.

Often the feds charge you first, but clearly not gonna happen here.

They seem too young and stupid to realize ahead of time how far people will dig into them.

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

#617

Post by [deleted] »

dang wrote: post #684
dang wrote: post #37

All: if you're going to comment here, please make sure you're up on the guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html , and don't post low-information / high-indignation comments that could just as easily appear in any related thread. Such generic comments make discussion less interesting and more activating. That's not what we're trying for here. Rather, we want curious conversation. I know that's n…

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…

[deleted]

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

#618

Post by donmcronald »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #385
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?

> 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? If it's working, why would it matter? The most curious thing in all these discussions is that the elephant in the room is never addressed: they already found on hundreds of billions of pure fraud and funding for extremely dubious endeavors. But nobody t…

> To me DOGE is doing something right. Instead of shooting the messenger, discuss the actual findings they already did.

> $110m to find water in Afghanistan

I assume that's the same as the whitehouse.gov [1] talking point:

> Hundreds of millions of dollars to fund “irrigation canals, farming equipment, and even fertilizer used to support the unprecedented poppy cultivation and heroin production in Afghanistan,” benefiting the Taliban

The source they link for that is a Breitbart article [2] from 2018 and it talks about 20 year old project that ran for 3 years.

> Between 2005 and 2008, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) devoted at least $330 million in funding to failed ADP projects intended to deter farmers and traffickers from cultivating and trafficking opium.

During the $2+ trillion war in Afghanistan, the US government tried to spend $330 million to damage the Taliban's primary source of revenue. It didn't work and the funding stopped in 2008.

The DOGE "proof" of waste is a 7 year old news article talking about a 20 year old program that only ran for 3 years while George W Bush was the president.

That's the only big number in their official statement regarding the waste. They're going 20 years into the past and once you throw out the dubious claim above, the "waste" they're saying exists is a few million dollars. They didn't even put the $8 million Politico thing on whitehouse.gov because it's been debunked too.

A couple million dollars in waste for an organization that distributes about $44 billion [3] in foreign aid every year is a giant nothing burger and American's are eating it up like it's kobe beef.

> everybody attacks the messenger

He's not the messenger. He's the source of the misinformation.

1. https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/02/at-usaid-wast...

2. https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2018/06/21/feds-...

3. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/06/what-the-...

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

#619

Post by yubblegum »

dang wrote: post #684
dang wrote: post #37

All: if you're going to comment here, please make sure you're up on the guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html , and don't post low-information / high-indignation comments that could just as easily appear in any related thread. Such generic comments make discussion less interesting and more activating. That's not what we're trying for here. Rather, we want curious conversation. I know that's n…

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…

It is an important set of facts and you did the right thing. Thank you, dang!

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

#620

Post by dghlsakjg »

Terr_ wrote: post #606
I_am_tiberius wrote: post #510

I find it shockingly absurd how the All-In podcast hosts blindly support everything one of their own does. It’s obvious they treat Musk like a god. In the latest episode, they even made fun of concerns about privacy, claiming that all people care about is the state not wasting money. - completely dismissing worries about data exposure.

> all people care about is the state not wasting money. - completely dismissing worries about data exposure A tangent here, but: Gas taxes paying for roads. There is a relationship between inefficiency and privacy. I often encounter some libertarian-types complaining about this, that they should only be taxed for the construction and maintenance of infrastructure they personally drive upon. Indirect benefits aside, I…

In every state I’ve looked up, a majority of roadbuilding and maintenance funds don’t come from gas taxes. Not even close.

It can be hard to tease out since, contrary to belief, gas taxes end up mixed with the general fund in most cases. If you look at total road expenditures against gas tax revenues, drivers don’t come close to paying for the road infrastructure they use.

Note: This isn’t a comment on whether drivers should fully fund roads, or if it is perfectly fine given the external benefits of a robust road network. It is simply a comment about real numbers vs perception.

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