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 interests or the long-term interests of the persons actually doing the activity. It doesn't matter if they compromise US security, because the US is a hostile adversary, and they don't want to deal with people who might hesitate because of families or a reputation to uphold. If this person gets in trouble for security breaches or racism or whatever, they just fire them and replace them with another 19 year old with nothing left to lose and/or plenty of time left to go another path later.
The problem here is having such activities in his past makes him an exploitable by criminal organizations or foreign adversaries who would seek the sensitive information he now has access to.
First point is not even true of the Watergate burglars. What makes crime indistinguishable from politics here is the recent ruling on presidential immunity.
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'.
> They see the task as infiltrating an adversary, requiring someone with the technical skills to do so but who is also disposable.
People who have had access to that kind of data, and who have those kinds of skills, you'd better be careful about how you dispose of them. (Consider the term "blowback".)
Seems more likely that this can be completely subdued when the outcome of swatting is not a nuisance, but a conveniently extra-judicial raid by armed militia.
Seriously yes. Having lived with someone who is schizoaffective, I recognize what is happening to America as an acute manic episode with psychosis and hallucinations.
To the absolute contrary. They do it because of the contempt they have for the average US citizen. These people now in power believe their interests come first because, in their minds, they are inherently superior to most people by birthright.
I have a very close friend who works for VA. Her patients are veterans, many far poorer and with no higher-education. She cares about them deeply. She has a husband, kids, and two parents that depend on her paycheck, and her first thought post-election when rumors of furlough and mass layoffs started circulating were about how she can make sure her patients are taken care of if they lose access to her care.
There are good people in every org. I'm sure there are people with similar values on the DOGE team. I responded to a generalisation with a generalisation.
What good does any comment here do? The person I was responding to argued their side, I argued mine, hopefully readers can synthesise something that comes closer to the truth than if no-one was saying anything.
If you think people shouldn't make that kind of generalisation, why didn't you call out the person I replied to? What good does calling me out do that calling them out wouldn't do?
>the PMC bureaucrats who worked for federal agencies absolutely did think they were wiser and better educated and had better judgement and were simply better people than the people their agencies were meant to serve
Do you have any evidence for this at all, or are you just projecting your own beliefs?
DOGE is the deep state: unelected, unaccountable, unconstitutional. President Trusk does not care at all about anything but enriching and empowering himself.
> DOGE is the deep state: unelected, unaccountable, unconstitutional
They're carrying out the platform the president was elected on, and he'll very much be accountable for the results. The very fact that they're in the news and being talked about is the opposite of the deep state.
> No, whether misguided or not they're doing this out of patriotism. They care about US citizens and US interests, and believe the deep state is hostile to both.
This type of religious fervor following these two people is what concerns me the most. Trump and Musk are the deep state if such a thing even exists. The only thing they care about are themselves. When Musk details and cuts all government funding to his companies and Trump stops openly taking bribes, then maybe we can have a conversation about whose interests they care about.
> Trump and Musk are the deep state if such a thing even exists.
What are you trying to say? Trump was elected as close to directly as it gets, and is doing what he said he would. The people can - and did! - vote him out.
lol idk if you're brainwashed or dumb as rocks but billionaires and broke famous guys lusting for power(djt) don't give a rat's ass about you or your family. On the contrary they would wipe you all of the map with the stroke of a pen if it made them .0000001% richer, and they oft do just that.
Oh yeah, the Deep State totally exists, any day now the Deep State is going to stop Elon Musk and Trump, the only reason the Deep State hasn't stopped them yet is because the Deep State (which is definitely a real thing and would not include Trump and Musk, they given a seat at the council of Epstein but were refused the rank of Pedofile) is playing 5D chess and waiting for the right time to stop them. Any day now, Musk will be eating a ham sandwich or firing employees with DEI colored skin and WAM! The Deep State will return power away from poor working class freedom fighters like Musk/Trump and return it to the billionaire oligarchs AOC Luigi and Obama.
The "Deep State" as I got to learn about it in the earlier phase of online conspiratorial forums and sites referred to two pretty distinct things:
1) The CIA et al, official parts of the government that work secretely and control the world through illegal and shadowy actions. They assassinate people going against them (eg. JFK), faked the moon landing and poison the water supply to keep the population weak willed aso.
2) Neo-feudalistic elites, a mix of billionaires, politicians and the previously mentioned security services. They meet at Bilderberg to perform satanic rituals, work together in the trilateral commission, and might all be lizard people.
Now both of those obviously contain a kernel of truth, both the unaccountability of intelligence agencies, on more than one occasion used even against the american population, as well as these neo-feudal, elitist structures are anti-democratic. But that's a whole other topic, the interesting bit. is that over the last 10 years or so, also with the rise of QAnon, the idea of the "deep state" has been reframed to basically mean "professional bureaucracy".
What was once the topic of cynical comedy in "Yes minister", is now phrased as an existential threat to democracy - ironically and cynically by people who openly admit to wanting to create a fully neo-feudal society.
>Now both of those obviously contain a kernel of truth
It is not obvious to this observer that either of your claims contain any truth whatsoever, let alone a mere "kernel." In fact, to this observe, both of these claims seem quite ludicrous
I should have phrased the two points less hyperbolical when including that next sentence.
Regarding intelligence services: There's a very long history of CIA misconduct, including spying, abusing and murdering Americans.[0] As well as an abundance of human rights abuses, which aren't, but should be a big issue in American discourse. NSA up in everyone's business is basically the same. [1] We like to claim China is a totalitarian state, but their surveillance is less sophisticated than ours.
Regarding the second point, I don't believe in satanic rituals or lizard people, but it is crazy that democratically elected officials go party with billionaires, european aristocrats and IC people in extremely secretive venues. The networking organizations consistently place them in important positions afterwards regardless of merit or preferences of the electorate. This leads to a neo-feudal class of elites and their sycophants, which is deeply anti-democratic.
Due to my background, I know quite a few of these people, and they are frankly disgusting. The amount of slime, butt-lickery and unearned pathos you have to endure at an "elite" party is just making my skin crawl.
>it is crazy that democratically elected officials go party with billionaires, european aristocrats and IC people in extremely secretive venues. The networking organizations consistently place them in important positions afterwards regardless of merit or preferences of the electorate. This leads to a neo-feudal class of elites and their sycophants, which is deeply anti-democratic.
Trump was never really accepted in high society. The mafioso-type real estate moguls don't mix well with blue blood elites. Truthfully, I only have an extremely patchy view of how these elites work. Looking at history, and how things work in smaller environments, I'd argue that there are different power bases competing with each other. The people around the Paypal mafia; extremist libertarian tech billionaires, including Musk, Zuckerberg and Thiel are relatively new players on the bloc. JD Vance is their man. The Koch brothers have been highly involved in American politics, but aren't involved with power structures usually targetted by conspiracy theorists like Bilderberg, CFR or the Trilateral Commission. Instead they funded a lot of the tea party, right wing media, and work through evangelical organizations, the NRA and think tanks.
They are on some level fighting the deep state, but only to replace some minority interests with their own - and completely subvert democracy to create a neo-feudal plutocracy. People who voted for them as a solution to anti-democratic, elitist corruption are complete fools.
> democratically elected officials go party with billionaires, european aristocrats and IC people in extremely secretive venues
Trump is a democratically elected offical; Musk is a billionaire. They are literally part of that class. It is astonishing that you are trying to claim the opposite of things that are obviously true, and frankly, part of the very problem with Trump's administrations ("alternative facts") and Elon Musk (Nazi salute followed by an attempt to gaslight the planet).
> Trump is a democratically elected offical; Musk is a billionaire. They are literally part of that class.
Trump is an extremely atypical democratically elected official, Musk is an extremely atypical billionaire, they are not part of that social class.
Maybe try to make an effort to understand what people are telling you rather than leaping to accusations and attempts at shaming. (That's assuming you actually want to understand, of course)
You do not know with any degree of certainty what their motivations are. In fact, the utter disdain they demonstrate for certain US citizens dismantles your entire claim.
Edit: I took a second look at your other recent comments and they didn't seem quite as bad as this, so I've restored your account. If you want to keep posting to HN, please take more care to stay on the right side of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
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Edit: I took a second look at your other recent comments and they didn't seem quite as bad as this, so I've restored your account. If you want to keep posting to HN, please take more care to stay on the right side of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. What you posted here was particularly bad, and has been a problem before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29868531).
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Isn’t that part of mandatory spending (that DOGE can’t touch)? Anyways, the social security administration (even under Biden) has made clear that they have to cut the payments in the future. We simply have too much spending overall to fund and sustain it. But by cutting elsewhere maybe it can be saved.
