I think this makes the picture quite clear. The only criteria for their selection was their ability and willingness to exfil data as fast as possible. In order to facilitate the trump blitz, as much technical action as possible needed to happen in a timeframe constrained by court procedural mechanisms.
Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
811–820 of 1001 posts
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#812Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, I've seen a number of people with criminal records hired. I don't really want to present my comment as an argument against every point Krebs made. I don't really have an opinion on whether the individual mentioned is a suitable hire. But in infosec a lot of people probably got into it because 'hacking' is cool and glorified by the media. It's rebellious and appeals to a lot of teens I think. I don't think it's a…
> Some of them just made stupid mistakes when they were younger and sometimes dumb kids get way overcharged for cyber crimes. For the most part I think it's fine for kids to go through a phase where they think it's cool but they don't really know what they are doing. I think a lot of the concern is that these kids aren't out of that phase yet.
SIM swapping is where you spoof a caller identity of a target in order to make a phone call impersonating that individual and then drain his retirement fund into a crypto mixer.
He was never charged for these activities, let alone overcharged.
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#813It has been a fairly common story, and part rumor, that intelligence agencies like to recruit young people active in the cyber criminal scene, and that the IT security industry also adapted this approach. They basically becomes part informer and part subject expert, especially since IT security expertise seems to be a difficult subject matter to teach in universities. When I studied IT security in university, about 1…
People get clearances even if they've used hardcore drugs such as cocaine and various more serious crimes than computer crimes. The adjudication guides for clearances explain this in more detail. I have a friend who exploited RCE full-chain exploits on productions servers and used to DDoS. He got a TS/SCI clearance no problem and didn't even finish college. I interviewed too and admitted to that stuff. They cared mor…
These guys worked for SpaceX anyway, so it's pretty much guaranteed that they were already cleared even before joining DOGE.
A lot of speculation and guessing on this topic, which is surprising from news outlets which pride themselves on "facts" and "truth"... I'm not even mentioning the fact that revealing the names, handles, identities of employees and clearing saying that they have admin rights on systems X and Y, is in itself a serious breach of cybersecurity...
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#814Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 ra…
Honestly it seems to me like a shock and awe PR campaign combien md with a daily grind. It’s been like 15 days, what thoughtful work do you think it’s being announced that happens that fast from a cold start (including hiring!)
We are discussing the government of the wealthiest nation the planet has ever known, not some garage startup. They require different approaches.
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#815I just want to highlight one thing about this whole government takeover debacle. The reason you have the separation of power (legislative, judiciary, executive) is not to be efficient, it is to prevent generational abuse.
Even a well intentioned benign autocrat if given power would not part ways with said power voluntarily. So even if the current administration is "good" there is no reason why this kind of power couldn't be abused by subsequent administrations. Even the most die-hard republican should be thinking "if the democrats take over 1-3 elections from now, what would they do with this power?".
It is really the same reasoning with dictatorships, even if the dictator is good, competent and capable his successor most likely won't. Democracy is the best form of government because there are clean, regulated ways to transfer power. Not a scramble for dominance that once settled is meant to last in perpetuity.
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#816tesla.sexy contains the following text, which is slightly concerning: love your fate become your own ubermensch you are the master of your soul be kind there is so much to love, so much to live for follow your heart, ok?
Why is this concerning? Note, it seems to me like their reference to "ubermensch" is to the Nietzschean definition [0] and not the Nazi remix. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Übermensch
Its happening alongside the (yet unsubstantiated) rumor that Tesla engineers as a group would face a picture of Maye Musk each morning.
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#817Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
These are people I personally know working “at DOGE” (appointed in departments, but under DOGE umbrella)
This sounds a lot like the old "my uncle works at Nintendo" rope-a-dope.
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#818Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow, first time I heard of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbicidal_warfare / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ranch_Hand Strangely, there's a dearth of links between that and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiz_Kids_(Department_of_Defen... / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McNamara
You never heard of Agent Orange?
If you want to sound old, say aloud “you’ve never heard of Muhammad Ali?”
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#819Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are mad at your AWS bill, do you slide to your 10th line item? That is effectively what going after USAID is. To give you an idea of how poorly this has been handled, my wife's friend is an attorney working in non-profit immigration. She got told on Monday that her company is going to lay off 50% of their staff because they have no more money from USAID. Her boss found her a job at another firm a week later th…
> non-profit immigration Very vague. Wonder what they were really doing? I worked for a USAID funded company once. On the surface they were doing satellite imagery analysis for agriculture. Want to know what they were really doing? Identifying prime agricultural land in Kenya to help the Kenyan government seize it from poor farmers.
This is an astonishing allegation. Can you substantiate any part of it?
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#820All I can think of when I hear about DOGE is Robert McNamara's Department of Defense, where the "Whiz Kids" from industry and academia were supposed to magically fix all sorts of problems with the military's bureaucracy. After all, they went to the right schools, and really, how hard could war-making be? We lost in Vietnam and there are people being born there with birth defects from Operation Ranch Hand to this day…
The "rationalization" tendency in politics at least goes back beyond McNamara to early progressives, like Robert Moses who reformed Tammany Hall with a technocratic approach that only won him scorn from progressives of the more modern variety. Can check out the current HN thread on healthcare if you want to see some who suffer from this diagnosis.
> scorn from progressives of the more modern variety.
Assume you’re talking about 99% invisible?