DOGE as a National Cyberattack

Even elected officials are not allowed to do stupid or insecure things! I seem to remember something about a quite famous incident involving a private email server.

Which boggles the mind when you compare it to what's going on right now.

> There is a difference between elected officials doing stupid or insecure things vs. unelected people being able to do this without any checks and balances.

Isn't the Treasury dept and most of the federal employees with access to this data unelected as well? They are appointed or hired as government officials and civil servants.

Yeah I think the articles make it sound like it's just inference.

However my theory is the goal is to actually train on what is essentially the output of all of these departments.

I honestly think what we are seeing in terms of the tech execution side basically boils down to BigBalls and co. asking an LLM what they should do next. If they ever get prosecuted I'd bet you good money that will be the defense...ROFL.

The premise of the article is that DOGE are "the attackers" and preventing them from accessing the data is something "career officials" in the government ought to be doing. That's obviously a partisan framing. The other party's position is that they've just been elected to audit and reduce government waste and direct access to data is necessary to prevent the principal-agent problem in which government officials shape their reports to protect their budgets and activities from undesired scrutiny and oversight.

The problem with framing it that way is that it's a request to get flagged by the opposing partisans even if there is some point to be made about maintaining change control etc.

That's a solid principle we are, or should be, using in our daily work - namely in refactoring.

>the software will have to be rewritten from scratch

Would you even be able to trust the hardware anymore? If it's already compromised then it's safer to assume it goes deep (firmware).

Has everyone forgotten the lessons of open-source cryptography all of a sudden? Just because the systems are public does not mean that they are vulnerable, and "security through obscurity" is no security at all.

We need separation of corporation and state enshrined in the Constitution, if it's not too late.

This is the correct answer. Trump won because of the current economy. Biden's margin over Trump in 2020 was double Trump's margin over Kamala. Democrats did better than expected in 2022 despite Republicans running with the same DEI garbage.

What's baffling is Trump seems to be fumbling the autocrat's handbook at first glance. There are existing autocrats still around that wrote the book on this. Purging the administrative state requires multi-term government domination. First, you're supposed get the economy or quality of life on track ASAP so you can cement your (or you successor's) seat at the top. Then you use the power the people voluntarily give you over multiple terms to dismantle any checks on your power while lining the pockets and minds of your base. After that, even if the economy tanks you've boiled the frog of resistance in such a way that no one can dethrone you. And then you start designing the opposition in such a way so that there's semblance of "political freedom" you can point to when people start whining about it.

Trump seems to be going about it in reverse. First feeding his base instead of focusing on the economy -- which is a higher risk strategy comparatively. But it hasn't even been a month yet so there is still time for him to start following the handbook properly.

First of all, I doubt it. Trump will likely blame economic damage on everyone else (namely, the Fed), and his sycophants will eat it up. Second, even if they are ejected, the damage will already be done.

Why would there be consequences? The majority of voting Americans wanted this to happen. Let's not pretend this wasn't the likely conclusion and voters were solely focused on the price of eggs.

By modifying core systems, the attackers have not only compromised current operations, but have also left behind vulnerabilities that could be exploited in future attacks—giving adversaries such as Russia and China an unprecedented opportunity. These countries have long targeted these systems. And they don’t just want to gather intelligence—they also want to understand how to disrupt these systems in a crisis.

It's really hard to imagine this whole coup isn't some type of Russian / Chinese attack on the western world at this stage. It's too unbelievably good for them to just be a coincidence.

I wonder how that would work out. It's a bit of an inverse-Ouroboros where the people that are the government keep saying they are 'doing something about the government' without realising that that's them. Maybe they see themselves as something that is not the government, but the whole race they took part in was the race to get elected for government work.

At some point, enough destruction will have happened where the tools for useful government functionality no longer exist in usable capacity.

There's a reason Musk brought in younglings to do the illegal stuff. To ignorant to know that in a few years they will be in jail.

Trump's admin already said that they will defy court rulings.

"I should add, this consequence should be legislative or legal in nature."

Should it be?

Republicans are their own best argument against big government.