Payments crisis of 2025: Not “read only” access anymore
428 comments
·February 4, 2025taylodl
tlb
It's shocking how many billions of spending are completely unaudited. Official gov't auditors have tried for years, but the target agencies stall and stall. You have to assume there is some malfeasance there.
Doing an audit starting with the treasury department seems like the right first step. Every outflow of money ultimately has to start there. It's the root node of the Sankey diagram. Then you follow the money outwards from there.
lowercased
Audits can be done 'read only'. Audits don't actually have to impact the behaviour and operation of an organization either. Stopping all activity because of an 'audit' is ... wrong.
kdmtctl
Write only is not an audit. This is a crisis management style.
mikeodds
1 billion sent to the fluffer
cdme
I wouldn’t trust a 19 year old to do my taxes let alone audit all of federal spending.
reustle
Those are a couple of people within a much larger team.
liontwist
[flagged]
archagon
Based on Musk’s tweets, the depth of this “audit” seems to be entirely surface level, e.g. “Lutheran in the name? DELETE.” (Not that they could do any better even if they wanted to given the blitzkrieg nature of the audit, size of the team, and complete lack of expertise.)
taylodl
Based on Musk's tweets we had a fully-functioning FSD years ago and CyberTruck sales have been a runaway success...
Naklin
[flagged]
tlb
Not if the company had up-to-date audited financials, no. You'd start with those.
The problem is agencies that haven't been audited in a decade. The agencies literally don't report how much money they get, their current balances, or where it goes.
Here's the DOD proudly announcing that they now have clean audits for 11 of their 28 departments: https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/39.... Surely nothing bad is happening in the other 17.
franktankbank
> You wouldn't start by looking at a giant list of wire transfers from/to the company's bank accounts
Might be the first data you secure though.
nessbot
and it's looking like a legit CONSTITUTIONAL crisis.
cdme
Elon and his inexperienced cronies are the last people who should be trusted with any government access. They don’t even have clearance.
queuebert
Clearance could be granted on a whim by POTUS, as far as I can tell, so that has no leg to stand on. The biggest threat would be that one of the DOGE employees is a foreign actor. Hope they did some vetting...
cdme
Does Elon qualify as a foreign actor? He’s certainly malign.
jandrewrogers
No one needs a standing clearance. Anyone can be read into any program by someone of sufficient authority on an ad hoc basis.
There seem to be a lot of misconceptions flying around about what "government access" entails.
Glyptodon
This was not the case when I worked in the Federal government. There were different levels and kinds of clearances and while it was true that you could work with less sensitive stuff while the background check process worked its way through, you couldn't go into and view anything elevated w/o the right clearance, or even be in the room pretty much.
paleotrope
I could see many people with this abstract concept of a system that governs itself with it's own rules and policies, not quite understanding that it's all customary.
It's like people thinking that the President can't declassify a document or make foreign policy decisions without the NSC's advice or consent.
bradarner
You misunderstand how clearance works. Any one can get "read-on" to anything with the proper authorities giving them access.
It is an administrative step. It might undergo review but access does not need to be prevent until the review happens. It is all about who is granting the access.
The commander in chief has considerable authority to provide access.
mathw
If they don't have clearance aren't they committing a number of offences under various acts of national security and computer misuse and thus liable for arrest?
malfist
Yes. But who is going to arrest them and charge them?
throw0101c
> […] and thus liable for arrest?
If these are federal statues they can be pardoned by the President (like the January 6 folks were).
cdme
Yes, but the GOP senate and house members are unwavering sycophants. The Supreme Court has also been stacked.
Glyptodon
While they are absolutely committing crimes, the complicit Trump administration justice department and Republican congress are happy to let it go, at least thus far.
ramesh31
>If they don't have clearance aren't they committing a number of offences under various acts of national security and computer misuse and thus liable for arrest?
Arrested by who? The executive branch who ordered his actions? Americans voted for this, and now we have to live with it.
voisin
Trump would just pardon them.
keepamovin
[flagged]
amluto
If there is some credible reason to believe this might be the case, then an audit should be done. Carefully, not recklessly. With oversight, especially if the auditor gets write access to anything. That oversight should include, at an absolute minimum, a system, not controlled by the auditor, that logs every interaction with the system being audited.
Volundr
Why do they need write access for this?
Here's the thing, I'm very happy with uncovering fraudulent spending. I strongly doubt that's actually happening. If it was we'd be seeing careful audits and lawsuits against those submitting fraudulent invoices, not this fly by night takeover of systems.
inverted_flag
I see your X post and raise you this one
https://x.com/Quaker_Opes/status/1886596488505053618
I invite you to think through the implications.
mandeepj
Angry? Why are you coming off so strongly? There's nothing wrong in questioning an unethical approach. If a kid is good in AI/ML to spot a pattern in an image, maybe they should work in healthcare and, not forcefully and illegally poke into someone's financial records. You are the one who needs some serious soul searching.
RGamma
The nebulous use of fraudulent is doing some rather heavy lifting here.
fastball
I don't think you need clearance for this, so not sure how that is relevant.
Glyptodon
I've read in multiple articles that people were placed on leave for trying to require proper clearances from him and his team as obligated to by law, and this article also references how clearances impact the fact that nobody knows what they're actually doing.
toomuchtodo
As someone who has had to clear an SF86 for a USDS hiring cycle (IRS and DHS systems), I would be shocked if you can get this access without a clearance.
normalaccess
As far as I can tell Elon has had security clearance since 2019 because Space X was (and still is) contracted to do work for the DOD. However I don't know what kind of clearance it was at that time.
Please correct me If I'm wrong.
tmaly
I think he should open the data and methods minus any PII data and let the open community decide if his methods are sound.
basementcat
Congress was elected by the people and in a representative democracy, the voters decide (through their elected representatives) what is a crime.
thrance
The voters don't directly decide what is a crime. At best, they elect congress that can change the laws and constitution that in turn rules out what is or isn't illegal. None of this was done, none of this is democratic. This is nothing else than a coup perpetrated by the richest man on Earth.
basementcat
I’m sure the current Supreme Court (which was selected by elected Presidents and Senators) will have no trouble explaining how recent events have been "reasonable" and 100% followed constitutional procedures.
HumblyTossed
There's a logical fallacy in believing simply because Elon has had some success in business, he can have success here.
hoppp
Exactly. Also the are different kinds of success. He might be rich but everyone who isn't sucking up to him thinks he is a neo nazi.
He does not have success with public opinion.
edanm
I'd hardly call that a logical fallacy. I'm fairly sure there's some correlation between success in business and success in other domains.
tayo42
He's had more failures then successes
Fired from PayPal, Twitter, neurolink, the tunnel thing
He bought his way into Tesla, and SpaceX, though suppsedly he's not actually the one running it (believable I think there's not enough time)
lm28469
The problem is that a company has nothing to do with a country, the goal isn't to have a positive balance at the end of the excel spreadsheet
edanm
I agree.
Still, it's not a logical fallacy to think "someone very successful at X is more likely to be successful at Y", in many cases. Do you think that there is literally zero correlation between massive business success and success at whatever-it-is Musk is trying to do now?
(I agree it's a fallacy if you think is' assured he will succeed, as opposed to this just being a correlation in your mind. I just bumped on the use of "logical fallacy" to describe something that is not a fallacy at all!)
malfist
Is anyone not concerned by this? Paying the bills due is not a political issue, making payroll is not a political issue.
Elected or unelected, politicians with an agenda should not be in charge here.
affinepplan
A lot of people are very concerned about it. but what am I supposed to do about it? I voted, canvassed, and donated as hard as I could already. and I lost.
lm28469
Wherever you are, find friends, bring family, go to the closest government building, camp in front of it. Block the main street of your city, block highways, block ports, &c.
It really isn't rocket science, German hardcore ecologists put more efforts on a random Tuesday morning than Americans during a coup, it's mind boggling.
They gave you an online "public square" so that you can all scream in its void, get the fuck out and protect what's yours
eCa
> what am I supposed to do about it?
Watching from Europe, I think you are getting close to the point where 75 million people need to hit the streets (preferably in DC).
It appears they are trying to beat the 53 days record.
pastureofplenty
If those people hit the streets they'll be hit by chemical weapons (i.e. tear gas) that are illegal for our government to use in war but perfectly legal to use on peaceful protesters. Just something to keep in mind in case anyone is wondering why Americans don't really protest.
anigbrowl
A general strike is a worthwhile outlet. Electoralism is notthe only form of political activity.
mostlysimilar
Call your senator. Republican or Democrat or Independent or whatever. Call them, tell them you expect them to cease all routine business in the senate until accountability is restored. They do listen, it does matter.
residentraspber
As somebody who has never done this before, how do I go about this (past Googling their phone number)?
I remember a while back with SOAP and PIPA there were templates you could read, do those exist for this case?
null
atoav
Protest.
Or how do you think your ancestors got democracy and kept it in the first place?
kjkjadksj
We wait for the order for the general strike, and then we do our part.
anigbrowl
You do not wait for an order, because there is no central authority for a general strike. That's what gives it legitimacy.. You canvass, wheatpaste, recruit or whatever sort of political organizing/agitating you find appropriate. You have to meme it into existence.
EForEndeavour
I'm not being facetious but genuinely curious: who would issue such an order with enough authority for you to follow it?
neutrinobro
[flagged]
Hayvok
Ideally, trying to reform the government & its activities shouldn't require a team to burrow all the way down to the literal payments system & call individual balls and strikes.
But I assume that is indicative of how unresponsive the bureaucracy has become to political direction from the president & secretaries.
kuschku
> unresponsive the bureaucracy has become to political direction from the president & secretaries
You call it unresponsive, the founding fathers called it "checks and balances"
drawkward
Try this assumption on for size: this team just wants to break the government and make it serve the party, not the country.
jenkstom
Bureaucracy is there to protect us from people like Trump and Elon. Congress can pass laws and the president can issue orders. This action threatens the US financial system, which threatens the economic stability of most of the world. In terms of human suffering this could have massive impact. We now have a psychopath (well, at least one) with his fingers around our throats. We're all waiting to see what comes next, but it won't be good.
vkou
The people who can do anything about it aren't concerned.
The SP500 is normal today, institutional money is fine with this.
archagon
Yeah, because Microsoft is not affected the slightest if someone arbitrarily loses their research funding or stops receiving social security checks.
jghn
You'd be surprised how much AWS, Azure, GCP, etc take in indirectly from research science.
vkou
That's not the important risk here.
The important risk is a runaway executive that feels completely unconstrained by law, with the blessing of both other branches of government. Today, it's blocking members of the legislature from entering government buildings and is unilaterally shutting down an agency that exists on a directive of Congress.
Tomorrow, will it carry out any legislature that congress passes?
In a year, will it comply with an impeachment?
EasyMark
The blatant ignoring of laws shows that Trump thinks it's fine to be lawless as long as it serves his chaotic agenda to sew discord and distrust in the government so he and his Elon goon squad can install more autocracy into the system.
brtkdotse
Musk isn't a policitican.
yalogin
Weird that the first instinct of his is to eliminate all aid local and international. No mention of looking at the military spending. I guess cutting elsewhere will help funnel that into spacex and whatever ai insanity musk comes up with to "serve the government"
erentz
So I just found this a few pages down at rank 129, where its ended up in only 3 hours, despite garnering 250 points in that time. That's abnormal for such a popular post. What gives?
resters
Everyone from Elon to Luigi want to just "burn it down". They see no benefit in following democratic processes to achieve the desired ends.
I used to respect Elon for risking a lot of his own capital on new ventures. But now he's turned into a socially conservative internet troll.
Bloating
Unless its your party-tribe is lighting the fires
ceejayoz
"Conservatives" are, in theory, interested in stability and status quo.
The correct term, IMO, is regressive.
pseudalopex
I think reactionary would be more likely to catch on. Some of them embrace it.
orwin
Reactionary?
code_for_monkey
... are you both sidesing elon and luigi?
resters
Sadly I think both are dealing with mental breakdown of some kind.
queuebert
> following democratic processes to achieve the desired ends
That has been failing for a while now. Congressional approval is in the 20% range, much lower than even Trump's. An odd fact never mentioned in the media. The U.S. is toast if it can't reverse Citizen's United.
tdb7893
Political pundits for major outlets (538, New York Times, Washington Post) reference this constantly. It's mentioned all the time in media to the point where when people talk about congressional approval I turn my brain off because I know they'll say some version of "congressional approval is low but people generally approve of their congressman".
unyttigfjelltol
So let me get this straight-- there is a box in a Treasury building that, if the janitor accidentally unplugs it-- immediate financial apocalypse and a fifth of the US economy "stops."
Why isn't the very existence of this box the problem?
thesuperbigfrog
>> So let me get this straight-- there is a box in a Treasury building that, if the janitor accidentally unplugs it-- immediate financial apocalypse and a fifth of the US economy "stops."
It is mission-critical finance system. Guaranteed it's multiple redundant boxes in an highly access-controlled data center. No one should have access without serious vetting.
>> Why isn't the very existence of this box the problem?
The money doesn't move around on magic and rainbows. What were you expecting?
lm28469
I mean if you simplify things to that extent Trump has a suit case with a red button that can end the world. Real life is a bit more complicated
macawfish
Maybe hasty de-dollarization is the plan of this organization literally named after a cryptocurrency?
flaminHotSpeedo
This coming from the same people who shut OPM employees out of an HR database, citing (legitimate) security and oversight concerns, because they had broad un-auditable access.
How can this department turn around and do this and still maintain they're doing the right thing? By their own admission they know this a bad idea
polotics
Just asking for a friend. Are CIA and NSA salaries being paid by the systems that are being fraudited right now? Does this extend to payments to intermediaries inclusive of foreign intermediaries / banks?
paulsutter
Full on panic from start to finish, but not one actual problem described
This isn't a payments crisis; this is an auditing crisis. There's no way to ensure proper accounting procedures are being followed. At this point, Congress' continued inaction is bordering on criminal.