Deafening Silence from the Cybersecurity Industry
265 comments
·April 18, 2025few
EasyMark
From a regime that has a long history of lies, misdirection, and attempts to repress our basic freedoms as a nation and a people. This is why I write my Congress critters at least a month complaining. I know one letter only pushes the needle a tiny bit, but after a lot we'll eventually get them to realize that Congress is the real power and not the dime store dictator in the White House.
chairhairair
Please, some reasonable Trump voter explain how this is acceptable. How can the sitting president still be openly claiming that a previous election was fraudulent after all this time?
tastyface
I mean, this is very obviously retribution. But nobody's going to reply to you saying "yes, I want those who have wronged my beloved president to be annihilated." So I'm not sure what you're expecting here. There's no good faith explanation for these events save for whatever vague spin Fox News can come up with.
pas
> reasonable
...
sershe
Not a trump voter or supporter by any means, but you can reflect on what made this action possible from the pr perspective (even considering the above quoted unnecessary own goal - they could have done the same thing with even more plausible deniability)
There was indeed a campaign to fight "misinformation", with active cooperation between the previous administration and social media companies. There was an official effort to establish a disinformation fighting team within the government. Some of the stories like Hunter biden's laptop and COVID origin stuff blew up as what looks like potential partisan censorship cases. And frankly while I'd attribute the latter, and most of these efforts, to stupidity, the former looks like malice even to me. So now one sides idiotic authoritarian self own can be used by the other side to justify even more idiotic even more authoritarian "corrective" action.
wakawaka28
First of all, I don't especially like Trump. He has many faults. But I truly believe, after all this time, that he wants to be a good president. He is a self-made multi-billionaire who does not need to put up with all the shit he has taken just for some title. All of his problems would have went away, at any time, if he would have dropped out of politics. He was a very popular celebrity until he became a serious contender. Then many of his Hollywood friends and political allies (mostly Democrats) suddenly turned on him.
The margins were extremely thin in 2020, and there were many sketchy things going on around mail-in ballots and stuff. Sure, you can point to partisan experts who assert that there was nothing fishy going on, but they are just covering for their team. (Before you say "bipartisan" I want to remind you that many Republicans don't like Trump, and are essentially Democrats under a red banner.) There has been evidence of fraud. One could argue that there is always fraud. But ask yourself: "Which party supports actual election integrity more? The one that insists on US citizens voting in person with valid id (nothing special, just the id that we all need to get by in society), or the one that made a huge deal out of allowing votes with no id and in some cases no US citizenship, voting by mail, an open border, etc.?" I don't think any serious person can look at Democrats and say that what they have advocated for speaks to their competency and sincerity about having legitimate elections.
By the way, Hillary and her cronies never accepted the 2016 election. We actually had a farcical situation on many social media platforms where questioning the 2020 election was banned, and questioning the 2016 election or any other election never was banned or interfered with. If you don't see the media lies, cult mentality, and rank hypocrisy around the Trump pearl clutching, it is unlikely that anyone can convince you with a few HN comments.
tzs
> But ask yourself: "Which party supports actual election integrity more? The one that insists on US citizens voting in person with valid id (nothing special, just the id that we all need to get by in society),
You mean the ID that around 21 million US citizens who are eligible to vote do not have and don't have the time and/or money to get that ID? Here's a comment that contains links to a whole bunch of articles covering this, many of which contain extensive links to sources [1].
It is cute how some people can simultaneously believe that (1) you need the type of ID that Republican voter ID laws require for voting in order to get by in society (and so everyone already has the ID they need), and (2) there are tens of millions of illegal aliens who have been living in this country long term (and hence are obviously getting by).
This implies either that you don't actually need such ID to get by or that illegal aliens can easily obtain such ID (which makes the ID law ineffective at preventing fraud).
ripe
> The margins were extremely thin in 2020, and there were many sketchy things going on around mail-in ballots and stuff.
These allegations from Trump supporters have been disproved in court many times. What will iy take for you to admit that he's misusing his power to target people who disagree with his election lies?
grumio
> there were many sketchy things going on around mail-in ballots and stuff.
Just because Fox News repeats false claims over and over doesn't make them true. Do you have sources? 2000 mules was debunked. Fox News settled for their false claims against Dominion. Court awarded damages to that one victim who was accused of smuggling a flash drive of "fraudulent votes" or whatever. Don't fall for the firehose of bullshit. Please share what specifically convinced you of this.
>By the way, Hillary and her cronies never accepted the 2016 election.
She conceded. Trump did not concede when he lost the 2020 election. These are facts. Get real.
titaphraz
> He is a self-made multi-billionaire
HAHAHA! No he's not. He inherited his dad's empire. Tanked it and the Russians bailed him out.
He's a charlatan, fraudster and a con artist.
UmGuys
[flagged]
ndsipa_pomu
> This seems to be retribution, plain and simple.
It's hardly surprising as it's almost the defining feature of Trump - pettiness and revenge minded.
(though strangely, he hasn't publicly insulted his Pennsylvania would-be-assassin, but luckily his ear has healed remarkably well and so maybe he feels no need to do so)
mindslight
When someone demonstrates actual power, he backs down and cowers. It's why he always ends up doing awkward submissive gestures when interacting with foreign autocrats. No real confidence, all bluster.
bufferoverflow
[flagged]
evanjrowley
[flagged]
asmor
jasonlotito
So, I saw evanjrowley's post before it was flagged, and did my own research, following what his links said, to the sources they linked.
Simply put, evanjrowley's links are lies. The Kreb's specific claims are lies. They link to sources that are carefully edited, and even then, it's clear that is being presented by evanjrowley's sites is not what is being said.
Simply put, evanjrowley is trying to spread disinformation.
asmor
My experience is that everyone who's not close to any of these impacts is apathetic or treating events like they're reality TV, and even light attempts at convincing that there's more going on and that we might be in a historic and bad situation is met with hostility as if you just told someone's small kid that Santa isn't real.
At best they care about the financial parts of the news.
i80and
People only caring about immediate financial impacts is so deeply disheartening
phkahler
I see that as a broad trend. Very very few people have guiding principles these days.
The "problem" with principles is that living by them sometimes means going against something we want right now. People don't want to concede anything, even for their own ideals.
ramesh31
>People don't want to concede anything, even for their own ideals.
People cannot concede anything anymore. We are all trapped in survival mode at this point.
DrillShopper
People want to be able to eat, not be homeless, and provide for their families.
The safety net in America is tattered and torn, with the current administration working to remove it.
bognition
Welcome to America where the only God is the greenback
iszomer
"..and I'll spend it as fast as I can." --Kingston Trio
ericmcer
It makes sense for our industry, a bad economy means vast layoffs and a terrible job market in tech.
A tech worker who graduated and entered the market in 2012 could easily retire in their 40s with millions. One who graduated in 2022 is going to struggle to stay afloat and employed, and you are surprised people care about that?
CalRobert
Some of us are scared shitless but have been called hysterical for years. Some of us emigrated.
throwaway984393
[flagged]
markbnj
Like using a throwaway account to accuse someone of cowardice.
myvoiceismypass
And Congress is full of cowards afraid to offend their god-king.
ndsipa_pomu
It might be wiser to emigrate if you cannot trust your fellow citizens and neighbours to care about your country becoming fascist. If you've got brown skin, then you'd be better off leaving on your own terms rather than being exported to a concentration camp in El Salvador.
roenxi
[flagged]
asmor
You mean the guy with the federal dismantlement and looting agency that sends credentials to federal IT systems to Russia, openly talks about a third term where people "wouldn't have to vote anymore", crashes the world economy based on some dubious theory about the US dollar being overvalued being the root of crumbling US power and is currently testing the waters to deport US citizens into an overseas prison nobody ever leaves after ignoring a supreme court order for doing the same to a legal resident (the most legal residents, since they targeted those going through the proper naturalization route) is business as usual?
Are you for real?
CalRobert
As bad as W was (and I started considering leaving after the 2000 election, but I was a minor) it didn’t seem likely that there would no longer be reasonably fair, even if flawed (with minorities disenfranchised), elections. I am no longer confident there will be a fair election, even in the midterms. And even W respected when the courts forced respect for habeas corpus for Guantanamo detainees.
josefritzishere
There is nothing routine about what is going on right now.
pjmlp
When events aren't taken seriously, eventually
"Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me"
There is still time to react, in a year from now it will be like something like McCarthy, only worse.
belorn
Politics and media has for the last two decades been operated on generating engagement through outrage, and it seems that we have arrived at the peak of what that model was able to do, with a very sharp decline into apathy. More outrage will not convince people to care. Even the financial parts had very limited impact towards political engagement.
ethbr1
A related change on the people's part has been decreased understanding of how to leverage their own political power.
Congress-critters are concerned about losing reelection. (And of being primaried even in safe districts)
Yet the minification of attention spans has confused the average American voter that they're impotent, when really they're just lazy, ignorant, and unwilling to muster real-world action.
When's the last time you saw someone pepper a House district with self-made signs?
There are things every single person can do, but just doesn't. And because of this, media has been able to turn political engagement into profitable passive consumption.
ryandrake
> When's the last time you saw someone pepper a House district with self-made signs?
Never, because it would be totally ineffective. Incumbents in Congress have about a 95% win rate[1]. For almost everywhere in the country, districts are what they are and no amount of hand drawn signs are going to change it.
1: https://ballotpedia.org/Election_results,_2024:_Incumbent_wi...
ANarrativeApe
"The Constitution explicitly forbids Congress from issuing bills of attainder—laws that single out individuals for punishment without trial. While that restriction technically applies to the Legislative branch, the spirit of it clearly applies here. A president cannot simply declare someone an enemy of the state for contradicting a political narrative. That’s not national security—it’s authoritarianism, dressed up in executive language."
So the Constitution does not forbid it. All executive orders, it could be argued, are authoritarian, not just the ones that you happen to dislike. The moral? Be damned careful to whom you give this authority.
aqme28
Well the way it should work is that executive orders are not laws and should not be treated as such. They’re supposed to be memos about how executive agencies should interpret the law. Somehow though, as congress has languished they’ve been accruing more and more power
pclmulqdq
Congress largely relinquished that power by creating bills that establish rule-making executive agencies rather than writing the rules themselves. That leaves congresspeople free to do things like trade stocks and raise money for their respective parties. They claim they would be too busy to read all the rules they would have to pass, but (1) that's the point and (2) they pass massive bills they don't read anyway. This version of America is fundamentally broken, but it seems to be the nash equilibrium of the system given greedy congrespeople and a greedy executive.
danaris
No, that's bullshit.
Requiring Congress to get involved every time a regulatory agency needs to adapt to new circumstances or new technology would leave us at the mercy of unscrupulous corporations who can and will "move fast and break things."
No; Congress relinquished their power when Congressional Republicans chose to become "the party of No" and just prevent anything from happening under Obama. That's when executive orders started to become much more common.
SkyBelow
When a law is passed that says "Do what the executive agency says.", then it makes executive orders that control that executive agency on the level of laws. Even with some limits in the original law, the executive order becomes like a law at least within those limits. But it isn't a law, meaning that some protections based on laws aren't offered. So now we run into an issue where we have things that aren't laws that effectively work as a law as far as the common man cares. The only simple fix I see for this is to require that all laws must clearly define what is and isn't illegal without any regard to another system's interpretation of the matter (but as with any simple fix, it is never that simple).
EasyMark
We need to pass a law that makes it obvious that ANY executive order that clashes with a law that has been passed disagree, that the law wins. I know that's already the case, but it looks like it needs to be made a law so that it can go in front of SCOTUS. If a president has an issue with a law, he can always use his influence to see that a new law is passed or that it gets challenged in court; he can't simply issue an Executive order to override it.
I've also been imploring my friends to go vote, make sure their ID is in order because the current regime is going to do everything in their power to make sure than anyone under 65 has a tough time voting
intended
All executive orders, it can be shown - expected a functioning set of co-equal branches of government.
Congress is broken - intentionally.
caseysoftware
Congress abdicated their role quite a while ago.
They don't even pass a budget anymore.. which they're explicitly required to do. They learned there are political consequences to their action so they handed their job to agencies in the Executive Branch to write their own rules which acted like laws.
When SCOTUS struck down Chevron Doctrine last year, it boiled down to "No, Congress writes the laws."
The fix is Congress doing their job.
null
pjc50
It's not broken, it's complicit. As I understand it Congress has a R majority, which is why all this is happening.
yubblegum
The time window you indicate here is too narrow for the topic under discussion, and thinking in partisan terms about the dysfunction of this republic an error, in my opinion. At the foundational (practical not ideological) level, the complicity has been between the economic, political, and informational power centers in US. It is possible they did not foresee the black swan of Trumpism and now a faction of the ruling elite is being excised through mechanisms of their own making. But that would not absolve them of the responsibility for where we are today.
sidewndr46
The executive branch has the authority execute citizens that pose a threat, unilaterally. Deeming someone as a public enemy clearly shows a measure of restraint from that power. Thus it must be legal. Otherwise the executive branch would find themselves in a position where they cannot point out when something has been done to harm the US, but could in fact just kill that person without comment.
https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/obama-administration-cla...
dspillett
Under the current administration, what the constitution does and doesn't say may be entirely immaterial. They are perfectly happy running ripshod over the due process provisions of the fifth amendment so may choose to ignore, or at least try to ignore, any other part too.
It could be writen on single-ply toilet paper, and the paper hold more value.
Of course a lot of this is up in the air and could be resolved before the end of this term, as there are numerous legal challenges on-going, but perhaps not and with people openly taking about a 3rd term by various tricks (not blatantly declaring that it is happening, but I'd not put it past them!) such as him running as vice to someone else's election campaign then the president elect stepping down, this sort of ignorance of current law could continue for two terms or more.
jonahbenton
The silence from cybersec, with a couple of exceptions, about DOGE is stunning to me. Not this story but what I thought the headline referred to.
specialp
You see this in other areas too like academia being afraid they will get the ire of the administration and lose money. For a lot of firms they don't want to suddenly get their government contracts dropped by speaking out. This is how things slowly become more authoritarian, and freedom of speech dies. This is also why the gradual expansion of executive power was not good.
If the threat of financial loss stops people from criticizing actions, imagine what it would be like if you would be investigated and jailed on sham charges like in some other countries.
jnsie
> imagine what it would be like if you would be investigated and jailed on sham charges like in some other countries
Some other countries? The US is renditioning people without due (any!) process ostensibly based on their tattoos. I'm not saying this to be pithy but to sound (or at least amplify) the alarm.
trw_speech
[flagged]
specialp
Did I infer that I did not see a problem with that as well? This is the token whataboutism that plagues us. People with this mindset do not have any ideals like free speech or democracy, they just use transgressions that "the other side" did to justify the gradually worse things they do ad-infinitum. If you are for freedom of speech, you would see a problem with both, not just what was done in the past, and portray what is being done now as "payback" That is just pure tribalism.
arunabha
I can understand your position intellectually. Certainly, examples of right wing views being met with hostility can be found. But I hope you realise that whataboutism simply perpetuates the very behaviour that your are opposed to.
If you are opposed to conservative voices being suppressed, the surely you see the problem with the opposite kind of speech being specifically targeted by the president of the United States?
If, instead you would like to see right wing speech being free, but are ok with liberal voices being suppressed, then isn't your position hypocritical?
shadowgovt
When did the Obama or Biden administrations cut university funding due to their speech policies?
ragazzina
>what I thought the headline referred to.
I thought the same.
shlip
Is this discussed on HN ? Edit: Yep, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43691142
EasyMark
plenty are, it's just major outlets won't do anything to stir the pot. the "both sides are the same" execs at big news outlets won't let them.
jeroenhd
My feeds have been screaming about DOGE for months, until at some point it just turned into depressing cynicism. Nobody cared about the warnings from experts, and nobody cares now that their predictions are coming true. What's the point of speaking out now? Nobody will listen, anyway.
I suppose it makes sense: for most of the Americans who voted, this is what they voted for.
awnird
Have you considered that almost every worker in tech, indeed almost every American, supports what's happening?
const_cast
If people genuinely support what is happening then the only two possible conclusions are that they have no idea what is happening or they are extraordinarily stupid.
Because I am generous, I always assume it's the first. And, I can't fault them. They are under constant bombardment of propaganda and lies around what DOGE is doing. I mean, DOGE can't be honest to save their lives. So, of course constituents are misled.
jonahbenton
The idea of DOGE, of course! But over and over anecdotal conversations about the huge difference between mental model of what one thinks DOGE would be doing vs all of the reporting about what is actually happening- Elon Musk's "approval" is bottoming out for a reason, the town halls are angry and nearing violence for a reason. Nobody wants what is actually happening.
kayo_20211030
The second line of the EO.
> Yet in recent years, elitist leaders in Government have unlawfully censored speech and weaponized their undeserved influence to silence perceived political opponents and advance their preferred, and often erroneous, narrative about significant matters of public debate
Isn't the executive a branch of government? Physician, heal thyself.
mikeyouse
It seems to be a feature of this type of brain dead odious politics to revel in the hypocrisy. Reminded also of the Harvard EO that simultaneously decried their DEI efforts and hiring/admissions not based on merit and then demanding that every department install a bunch of conservatives..
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/15/agencies-demand...
mindslight
Please stop calling them "conservatives". The term is a dishonest cover that they shouldn't have been able to continue hiding behind after they openly put themselves at odds with our society's institutions during the first Trump term. As a libertarian who didn't particularly love the status quo, I held my nose and voted actually conservative in 2024 - that was Harris/Walz. The new radical Republican party is free to come up with a new label that accurately describes the goals of their movement. Until then I propose we just use maggots, fascists, or destructionists, which capture the only consistent values I've been able to discern.
sylens
Silence from companies in terms of press releases and official statements, maybe. But almost everyone I know in the industry is somewhere between concerned and outraged over this.
Another shining example in the first few months of this administration of how we should not defer leadership to private industry, because they will always be motivated by preserving their bottom line.
QuietWatchtower
I've had the same experience about people in the industry being concerned. But private company heads are well aware of what's happening to the folks that have crossed Trump before or recently. Such as Harvard, state of Maine, the law firms strong armed to doing pro-bono.
Anyone surprised that the greedy executives at the top don't care if anything were to happen to Chris Krebs, Brian Krebs, Bruce Schneier, etc. under this admin is naive to this new dynamic. Nonetheless, it's disgusting to see.
derriz
It seems that the idea that someone could be motivated simply by having integrity, valuing honesty and pride in simply "doing their job" correctly is so alien to the current US administration that they see political motives everywhere and in everyone's actions.
The fact that people with such a cynical and amoral worldview wield so much power not only in US but globally and are willing to wield that power in capricious and petty ways is deeply upsetting.
But what is more horrifying for me is that apparently this administration remains representative of a large section of the US population - with seemingly unshakeable approval by between 40% and 50% of the US adult population according to polls.
I love the US, have friends and family there, have a first cousin in the marines, grandfather born there, etc., and have visited many many times and just find it difficult to reconcile my positive experiences with the place and people with the idea that more than 4 out of 10 US adults could approve of the cruel and vindictive actions of this administration. I'm not being over dramatic by stating that it has genuinely shaken my world-view and belief in the innate goodness of humanity.
thinkingtoilet
A lot of people in the US, especially the Christian Trump supporters are nice but not kind. They will say hi, they will smile, they ask if you need anything, then they will happily defend the deportation of innocent people to secret prisons in foreign countries without any sort of due process. They will offer to bring you soup while your sick but will fight tooth and nail to make sure you don't have affordable health care. The list goes on and on...
spicyusername
I think they are just nice and ignorant, honestly.
So many I interact with are just simply unaware and vote based on their discomfort with urban liberal culture. That's it. The blue hair and the pronouns made them feel weird, so they voted the other way.
UncleMeat
Some, sure.
My aunt is a conservative lobbyist and a drunk. She drinks a bunch of vodka and then texts me and my family about all of the violence that is going to be done to people she hates (including some groups that people in my family belong to). This isn't "blue hair makes me feel weird." This is "I want college professors to be shot." Those are the texts I receive.
gitremote
On top of that, they lack the streets smarts that people living in high population density areas (that is, cities) develop for seeing through scammers and conmen. City people can tell that other city people are untrustworthy when they are hypocrites or caught in a lie. Rural folk seem to just distrust city folk vibes, and get tricked by lying, hypocritical politicians who use classic door-to-door salesman tactics like wearing a suit, appearing rich, and speaking confidently.
Edit: Street smarts isn't just about dealing with people on the streets. It's also recognizing which of your office coworkers in a competitive work environment are lying or misleading others to personally benefit via performance reviews and promotions. You contrast this with meeting other city people with tattoos, piercings, dark skin, or bending gender, and you figure out that red flags have nothing to do with superficial appearance.
const_cast
The uncomfortable reality I've had to face is that a lot of these people really, genuinely, enjoy other people suffering.
I think it comes from a place of the American vision of work. This idea that things that are good don't come easy, and that it requires sacrifice. That if some people aren't getting hurt, then it's not working.
So they view these people getting hurt as a good thing. They use terms like "bleed" to describe the executive agencies getting gutted. They have a medieval view of it, like blood letting is a legitimate solution to problems. That, because there are tears and suffering, something of substance must be getting accomplished.
But sometimes bad things are just bad. And sometimes good things don't require suffering. They don't understand that.
trinsic2
That's been my experience as well. There is a large population of uneducated people (At least in terms of critical thinking) in the US that are not able to understand the impact of what is happening regarding what this administration is doing. And I think this is by design as the attacks on educational systems are increasing.
tremon
I don't buy that. They have allowed their ignorance to be weaponised against the entire country, and if they refuse to acknowledge that, they are complicit in its destruction.
nwsm
You're completing brushing over the rampant racism and xenophobia in white conservative America.
jrgd
Discomfort? Omg :) Yet it’s not taking anything to anyone, it’s not costing them anything and if they don’t feel the need to state pronouns nobody is going to force them to do so… so why refuse a little acceptance to the Other. A while back, some got crucified for having different ideas… Happy Easter to those who celebrate and a happy weekend to all others :)
ndsipa_pomu
If they have that kind of attitude, then they are not "Christian" as Jesus very explicitly welcomed strangers and notably made a point of healing people without asking for payment.
krapp
A system is what it does, not what the spec says it should do, and "Christianity" is what Christians do.
American Evangelicals and Trump supporters are no less Christian than Catholics during the Crusades and Inquisition. That is the system.
seydor
It's too early to see visible results of what has happened in less than 100 days. I am confident the approval will rise and fall as swiftly as the price of new iphones.
josefresco
Approval ratings might fall, but they've installed a system of nearly unchecked power, and have shown a blatant disregard for law. It's probably too late for even the base to affect change without bloodshed.
wizzwizz4
The flipside of the "states' rights" movement is that the Federal Government is much weaker: so while it's easier to strip away rights and dismantle federal institutions, it's also easier for individuals to oppose the concrete harm that'd cause by working the levers of their local government. https://plush.city/@scarlet/114355949314782873 gives a few concrete things that individuals (not even groups) can do, which might make an outsized difference.
spicyusername
I know things feel dire, and things are certainly very bad for sure, but they have been bad before and things turned around. The Gilded Age comes to mind. Hell, even Nazi Germany didn't last forever.
Don't despair. Do what you can to make the world you want to see, accept the things outside your control, turn off social media, and stay positive!
jjtheblunt
> But what is more horrifying for me is that apparently this administration remains representative of a large section of the US population - with seemingly unshakeable approval by between 40% and 50% of the US adult population according to polls.
It’s possible that percentage counts dissatisfaction with the previous administration more than approval for the current one. That is, it might just count people wanting any change.
basejumping
You should then be dissatisfied with both at the same time. When people wish 'any change' they actually wish a change into better, otherwise it's plain stupid.
belorn
It is difficult for people to be unhappy with two choices unless given a third that they can be happy with. When you are either with us or against us, there aren't much people who will be dissatisfied with both at the same time, since that isn't an option given to them.
jjtheblunt
I agree: it’s strange and misleading statistics seemingly.
K0balt
It is disheartening to me to observe that the thing that broke the once proud USA, the final straw, the thing that disenfranchised hundreds of millions of people and made them rabid and reactionary (on both sides of the rage algorithm) was a black man in the white house and women on the presidential ballot. The retrograde prejudices so deeply ingrained in the country’s memome that we are still in the throes of an anaphylactic reaction to an acute melatonin allergy.
It doesn’t help that many of us (yes , I mean us, the technorati, the readers and contributors of this vaunted forum) actively and even knowingly participated in making poisonous systems, pocket prohistamines, amplifiers of fears and antagonists of rational thought.
We decry the world we have wrested from decency with our own tender, uncalloused hands, our minds sharpened to create beautiful weapons of mass confusion, elegant and brutal in their viral carapaces, eager to dissolve into the psyche of any unfortunate enough to fall into their dopamine sweetened viciousness.
We created this. Not the politicians, there have always been irrational, brutish, would be populists and morons in suits. That is not new. People with money willing to pay people to build or do malignant things, that is also an ancient malady that society has evolved to bear. We. We made the mind-killers. We, with our cleverness and desire for perfect symmetry manufactured social PCP, and now we are witnessing the fruits of our careless, avaricious labors, shocked and in denial of the damage we have done.
In our defense, we didn’t know. No one had built anything on our idea machines that hooked into the flesh of the human psyche like that before, and at first we didn’t even understand what we were building. But later in the fall, we knew better.
Our algorithms, nanowire sharp in their efficiency, honed to amplify fear and rage while suppressing rational thought, no, those were not made in ignorance, neither in malice, but more in a playful curiosity. The same playful curiosity that made the atom bomb, but at least the physicists could foresee and conceptualize the demon they would create. In contrast, we the technorati are still reeling with surprise and denial, not able to understand the beast that we have conjured from the depths of the human psyche.
We know there is a problem, we know that social media is not helping… so what do we do? We make lame attempts to make new social media platforms, lower in poison, filtered cigarettes. Precision strategic weapons of mass destruction. Low-fat butter.
We need to look in the mirror and get to work figuring how to fix what we broke. The future of humanity is at stake, and we are directly responsible for, knowingly or not, the situation our children are facing.
jjtheblunt
> a black man in the white house and women on the presidential ballot. The retrograde prejudices so deeply ingrained in the country’s memome that we are still in the throes of an anaphylactic reaction to an acute melatonin allergy.
This is the most obscenely wrong take I can imagine, and I'll gladly explain why I say that.
Your AI-generated response plainly ignores a country in love with Michael Jordan and Whitney Houston for decades, for example, and are choosing skin deep characteristics to fit _your_ narrative, while ignoring the things voters repeatedly emphasized as damning, all of which were color blind: a complete lack of policy by the "woman on the ticket", condescension from Hillary that people not following her directives "need to get over themselves", Obama chastising black men that they must vote as he says. It's a playbook on the alienation of voters.
pclmulqdq
I think it's clear that the approval ratings Trump gets are more about disapproval of the rest of politics. When you have every politician getting rich somehow while your life gets worse and worse, a lot of people will want all politicians punished. Trump is that punishment, and many people are excited to see the political and professional classes suffer. That is the approval rating.
notahacker
The irony being that Trump enriches himself and rewards politicians [mainstream or otherwise] for corruption to a greater extent than any previous politician, and doesn't even try to hide it. The people that are happy their savings and/or chances of making rent next week are being eroded to enrich Trump insiders because at least random mid level professionals and Hispanic people with autism awareness tattoos are suffering more deserve everything they get.
pm90
To a certain extent this is a result of living in a media ecosystem where most of the population doesn’t actually see an unbiased reporting of facts but whatever is shown to them by certain right wing news networks. But I do agree at some point people need to take responsibility for their information diet.
Fwiw media manipulation of American opinion isn’t new, its been a huge part of how America works since at least the Spanish American war of 1896.
intended
Bias is what exists on the left.
Monopoly and capture is what happened to the right. Theres a reason republicans march and Dems debate.
The republican strategists build this advantage over decades, it’s not the work of a single term. It’s a captured market of ideas, tariffs if you will. No competition from actual debates.
That’s why you can sell contradictory ideas within hours of each other, and never be called out for it. It’s why you can sell debates on Tan suits or prop up bogeymen, and never deal with debate.
This is news media. Eventually Fox wasn’t the sole juggernaut, and the techniques got adopted for online debates.
It’s been so wildly successful in building a reliable political voting bloc, that every political party in the world took notes.
LastTrain
There is no such thing as unbiased reporting of facts. People not understanding that, and the fact that there is nothing inherently wrong with bias, is a big part of the problem.
pyrale
You can be biased but adopt a systematic methodology and a deontology system, both of which help journalists mitigate their bias and produce quality reporting.
The big issue with the current news ecosystem and social media is their complete disregard for this methodology. By discarding the journalistic methodology, they make themselves propagandists, not journalists.
sheepdestroyer
Objective reality, it exists.
Telling your audience obviously false / anti-factual lies, without any regard for fact checking, is not just "biased reporting". And it is inherently wrong, malevolent, evil.
Anyway, I'm amazed each time I hear right wingers who did not get the joke seemingly complaining about how Reality has a left leaning political bias...
ANarrativeApe
Is that a fact?
SkyBelow
What if there is something inherently wrong with bias, but there is also no possibility to solve it. I see people operating under the idea that if there is something inherently wrong, then there must exist some solution to that inherent wrongness. What if the underlying issue is that there are flaws in humans that cannot be fixed and any attempt to manage is going to still leave some victims of the issue unprotected?
AlexandrB
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smallmancontrov
Fox and MSNBC are relentlessly partisan, but CNN aims for the center and misses. There's a big difference, and it's wild that Republicans got away with pretending that CNN was in the Fox/MSNBC tier just by repeating it as dogma until in their own minds it became true.
r721
What about trying to be in the middle/upper part of this chart?
https://adfontesmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Media-B...
QuadmasterXLII
The adults are talking, shh.
xocnad
Where did you see any reference to any source or lean in what you replied to? You are projecting your viewpoint on which is good or bad.
Applejinx
Bear in mind that a lot of people took pains to not look at their candidate too closely, to the point where a (slim) voting majority wasn't showing up to rallies etc. during the campaign. One might see this as signs of their being fake, but it could also be suggestive that they didn't want to come out and see where their guy was really at. They voted for the IDEA of him and what they figured he represented, and were indulged in those beliefs as hard as possible.
So this 'approval' is sort of phantom approval. It's approval of a fantasy man who doesn't track too closely with the reality of what's actually happening.
The point where people pay heavily for their erroneous beliefs, for instance by losing their retirements and savings, is a point where people re-evaluate.
intended
Sure. There’s many reasons to vote for Trump.
Now, someone has to act to deal with reality. This is pretty much the job of every adult in america.
I suspect this is why Vance has been so over the top as well. I think he expects Trump to get impeached, and take over the party faithful. This is an idle musings though.
scarface_74
Everyone who voted for Trump knew exactly what they were getting or should have known. He was in office for four years. 40% of the people know what he is doing and approve of it.
shadowgovt
Something interesting to watch about the current executive is he never talks about the future concretely.
Keep an eye on his rhetoric. He'll talk in broad strokes, bright-shining-future abstracts... But he never talks about anything specific. Never about how any specific policy will create a specific good outcome. No concrete ideation.
An idea that has been floated on this topic is that he's not actually capable of imagining such a future because he won't be in it (one way or the other; dude's 78).
It makes him dangerous. He can accidentally destroy something he can't even conceive of existing.
layer8
He'll likely live another 15 years or so. I'm pretty sure he's imagining a future for himself. He's talking about a third term, which means at least eight years of "future". He also has children whose continued success he probably cares about. That said, I agree that he doesn't seem interested in building anything but his personal kingdom (including walls to protect it).
shadowgovt
> He also has children whose continued success he probably cares about.
Does he ever talk about them using anything other than abstract platitudes like "great?"
tpmoney
> But what is more horrifying for me is that apparently this administration remains representative of a large section of the US population - with seemingly unshakeable approval by between 40% and 50% of the US adult population according to polls
I feel this is largely a consequence of decades of overwrought hyperventilating about all things politics and a lot of crying wolf. Every republican candidate has been the next Hitler, every democratic candidate has been the next anti-christ. Every 4 years we go through this song and dance predicting the end of the world and untold human suffering and every 4 years life went on with barely a change. Why would people expect this time to actually be different? Why would they expect that this time the stories of corruption and abuse of power are actually true and being reported without ridiculous embellishment? Why would anyone who voted for Trump in the first place think that reports of abuse of power from the side of American politics that coined “chimpler” as a nickname for W. Bush would be sincere about Trump?
I agree with you that I think more people should be more concerned than they are. I just don’t think it’s all that surprising either. The lesson of the “Boy Who Cried Wolf” is that when the wolf finally comes, no one will believe you. Of course the other lesson is that eventually the wolf does come. It didn’t work out so well for the village, and it might not work out so well for us either.
alabastervlog
The thing is, there has been a wolf. It's now eating us, and the time to stop it is gone. But sure, it's the fault of the people who correctly told you there was a wolf, and that it's been coming closer and looking hungrier and hungrier since the '70s.
tpmoney
You seem to have missed the point. For one, I’m not telling you this is a good thing or that this is how it ought to be. For two, even in the fable the wolf was real in the end. The problem is, the wolf wasn’t real the last time, or the time before that. Or the time before that. Or the time before that. You can quibble over whether prior politicians were heralds of the wolf or not, but that wasn’t the message. The message was that the wolf was at the gates. And when no wolf materialized, people grew resistant to the idea of the cries ever having meaning. So now we have a wolf, and the problem we are facing is that the people who we need to convince that the wolf is real have no reason at all to believe us until their sheep are being eaten by a wolf in front of them. So how do you convince someone that has no incentive to believe you that this time you’re telling the truth? That’s the problem to be solved. Everything else is just a side show.
afitnerd
It looks like the original article has been taken down. https://web.archive.org/web/20250418112529/https://www.forbe...
ripe
The administration needs to be sued in court. What else can be done? This is awful.
Griffinsauce
The supreme court is stacked, they're blackmailing lawyers. They're generally ignoring judges already. The law is irrelevant to them unless convenient.
iszomer
I think it was mentioned that state district courts cannot order the executive branch of the government to do a thing and that scotus ruled in favor of that? Will need to read more into this after work.
iudaihd
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rbanffy
Would that still work? It seems the administration can safely ignore court orders.
bambax
> What else can be done?
Civil war. It will probably have to come to this, some day or other.
intended
Or you know - find everyone congressperson who is not doing their job, figure out if they are breaking state, federal law, or even party law. Get special elections going and get a working congress.
This paralysis amongst Americans is very un American.
You have a decent poltical set up. Use it. You don’t need a magic wand like a civil war.
You need to do the boring dull work of reading, analyzing and then making executable plans and getting to it.
I’m not that old, and I remember people learning how to make satellites as undergrads in the states. For elective classes. And actually having the damn things go up into space.
It’s your life and your country.
edit: I was wrong in suggesting finding ways to get to special elections. There are very few ways for a congressperson to be removed.
For other ideas - just ask them to resign. Seriously - I doubt many republicans wanted to be part of THIS congress, and have already stated they are afraid of retribution.
Ask them to resign, and have people who can take the heat take their seats.
Either way, congress needs to work, and for this people need to find their spines, or make way for someone who has a spine.
Civil war is NOT a solution, its a failure state, and a failure of imagination and effort on the part of what I remember America to be about.
hiatus
> Get special elections going and get a working congress.
There are no recall elections for Congressional seats.
shadowgovt
> Get special elections going and get a working congress
That's not actually legal in many (most?) states. Recall is not a universal feature.
What you're advocating for is civil war. In many states, the only way to get Congresspeople to leave would be "voluntarily" (i.e. "We threaten to burn down every piece of property you have if you don't give up your seat"). Which, actually, has worked deep in America's past; the post-Revolutionary era had a lot more "We don't like the governor, so we're going to take his house apart and throw it into the river" stories.
You're not wrong exactly, but I think you've underestimated how fundamentally anti-democratic American democracy is. It was a 1.0-template and had baked pretty deeply into it fear of mob rule (hence the President not being chosen by direct vote, for example).
deadbabe
If you’re not willing to pick up arms and fight, chances are no one else is, so it will never happen. Most likely nothing can be done and people will just live under a totalitarian fascist regime for the duration of their lives. Keep talking about civil war, you’ll be imprisoned and silenced. You should delete your post.
jasonjayr
They should NOT delete their post.
Do not comply in advance.
shadowgovt
Civil war has a tendency to exponentiate. It doesn't take more than a few people to initiate it (assuming the rhetorical and attitude circumstances are favorable). The 1861 war started with one militia and one fort (really, depending on what historian you're talking to, it started with one religious fundamentalist family and a single raid on Harper's Ferry).
In 1861, people picnicked on a hillside to watch the first army-to-army fight of the war. By the end of the war, cities had been burned down.
mschoch
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nonrandomstring
Information not inflamation. Please.
computerthings
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FrustratedMonky
He's already ignoring Supreme Court rulings. What can the court do to enforce the laws if the military and police also ignore them.
myvoiceismypass
And who is going to enforce any court outcome?
everdrive
My impression is that the first Trump presidency left everyone at a loss. If you react with outrage, you're labeled in some negative way. This is really an extension of online trolling, where any emotional reaction proves that you "lost." Everyone has a chance to speak up now, but this actually diminishes the power of everyone's voice. You're one drop in a few billion or a few hundred million now. And to the extent that you do speak up, it's fully partisan; the complaints of "the other side" are never heard nor granted legitimacy.
I imagine there are people who would call this cynical and defeatist, but I think often people speaking up is purely counter-productive these days. So many attempts to speak up are just yet another partisan volley which can be written off on partisan grounds alone. Worse, given the way that social media works, the worst and most extreme voices from your faction will be the ones which get the most attention. They will paint your entire faction, and from a public opinion perspective, people will view your side as being far more extreme than it might actually be.
I think people have a model in their head of the civil rights movement, and they think that protest alone will be successful just like it once was. It's not clear to me that protest, in and of itself, actually does much these days. Trump seems to enjoy seeing his ideological opponents outraged, and his supporters are either cowed towards him, if not far more vindictive than the man himself. Maybe it's just because I keep seeing the mindless noise from the internet, but real push-back here requires a centralized and most importantly, a focused movement. One that doesn't just incorporate the most extreme policy positions from its wings, and understands how to build a broad coalition. It's something people have forgotten how to do. It might be trite to blame social media, but no one seems to understand how to build a broad coalition in the way that Dr. King did during the civil rights movement. Movements these days tend to exclude, rather than include, and tend to be led by radicals and extremists, which defeat the cause they claim to fight for.
palmotea
> I imagine there are people who would call this cynical and defeatist, but I think often people speaking up is purely counter-productive these days. So many attempts to speak up are just yet another partisan volley which can be written off on partisan grounds alone. Worse, given the way that social media works, the worst and most extreme voices from your faction will be the ones which get the most attention. They will paint your entire faction, and from a public opinion perspective, people will view your side as being far more extreme than it might actually be.
I think there's a way around this: pair attempts to speak up with base-broadening stuff that controversial within your faction and will alienate the "most extreme voices from your faction."
Basically: DEI is a goner (for instance), stop defending it and throw it in the fire, too. Advocate for literally building the wall. Support tariffs, but say you'll do them more competently and actually bring the jobs back. The focus and energy should be on protecting the basic constitutional order, everything else is a distraction. The people toward the extremes need to be the ones holding their noses to vote, not the guys on the fence.
teddyh
For protests and movements to actually succeed, they will eventually need candidates in the polls. But the U.S. is a two-party system, and the other party has, with their many years in power, shown what they will do, i.e. not much.
lordgrenville
Great comment, articulates something I've been feeling lately but didn't quite have the words for. (Not American, but similar situation in my country.)
Where do we go from here? What kind of action would be effective?
phirschybar
this sums up the situation eloquently and perfectly
cyrnel
I think this article describes the issue well:
https://crankysec.com/blog/community/
> All the cybersecurity companies saying "We don't have anything to say about this situation." is just them being true to their main in-group: for-profit companies that don't want to upset a big current or potential buyer. They are, first and foremost, part of that "community", and they happen to be involved in cybersecurity. Solidarity is happening there, just not to the people in cybersecurity.
This sucks and we should change it for sure. So many other industries have successfully become professionalized, unionized, and kicked the grifters to the curb. But it feels more and more like the cybersecurity grifters are the ones holding the reins.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/addr...
https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-pr...
>Krebs ... falsely and baselessly denied that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen
This quote coming from "whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets" is pretty wild. This seems to be retribution, plain and simple.