It's just the beginning. There's a good breakdown of what it would take to reduce the government by Musk's "at least 2 trillion" and it doesn't look very good (for US citizens). I mean he what, is going to cut SpaceX contracts? Please...
Blame it on Musk, replace the humans with computers. It could be an chronological digitalisation step and since the US is leading in the AI field they just start replacing the government with artificial intelligence.
> people outside of the government tasked with reducing the government
My point is we have seen zero evidence of this influence in Trump’s executive actions thus far. DOGE is analogous to the Federalist Society or NRA. Influential. But not policy prescriptive.
2 trillion is not prescriptive, but is there any unambiguous number published officially? Otherwise 2 tril is the only figure publicly advertised and I guess TFA is a sign they are starting to chip at this campaign promise
What has the federal government done for me lately?
Not a casual dismissal; I’m deadly serious. What is so bad about dismantling large chunks of the most useless, violent, criminal, and wasteful organization in the country?
It's absolutely impossible to answer you because the very premise of your question is made in bad faith. You wouldn't even need to think, by yourself, very long to get a long list of examples; the fact that you somehow can't means you don't want to and don't intend to.
The grandparent comment is abrasive and excessive but to some extent that opinion is shared by many. The federal government was never intended to be what it is today; the technocrats just keep growing it in wasteful directions and the general public feels a disconnect. A smaller and leaner government with a balanced budget is not a shocking thing to ask for.
That world is long gone. And impossible to define objectively. What's the smallest leanest monopoly of violence that keeps the peace so that the most ambitious peoples' journies help deliver the greatest standard of living increases for the most amount of people while also preventing human rights violations and atrocities?
If the govt wasn't meant to do that, then we still have those problems and I don't see any interest in any individual to solve it.
If I understand the polls correctly, the federal government was intended to be what it is, in the sense that the parts were intentional. Medicare was intended, and so on. Each of the parts that have large numbers of employees or large budgets was intended.
The only thing that wasn't intended was that the sum of the large numbers should be large.
Yes, alright, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what has the federal government ever done for us?
My local government runs all those, federal just provides the funding. Redistribution of tax proceeds is enough of a job to excuse everything else for you?
Your local government runs all your roads, canals, railroads and public order? Even the largest cities in America parcel that out to the federal government.
Well, we don't really have much in the way of canals or railroads, but they do the actual maintenance and construction of roads in the first place. They also enforce the traffic laws (which they also set for the most part), maintain and install the signage, etc. The local and state police are obviously run by local government. Federal police are obviously not.
Roads. There's a large port nearby, but it doesn't depend on canals. The electrical grid is also maintained by the state along with the other states on the same regional grid, again, the federal contribution is largely limited to funding.
GPS, OK, that's useful and it's existence depend(-s/-ed?) on the federal government/military I guess.
Who makes it viable by protecting international shipping, guarding the coast and regulating port infrastructure? (If you’re on a Great Lake, it absolutely depends on canals. That and Canada.)
> electrical grid is also maintained by the state along with the other states on the same regional grid
Not how North American grids work, outside Alaska, Texas, Florida and maybe the SPP. States have influence on NERC through the utilities. Grids don’t line up neatly with state lines, and the whole mess requires regular federal coordination.
It's also something that could be handled by an excel spreadsheet as long as the budget was set. Providing a forum for the states to argue about issues is an actually useful and non-redundant thing that the federal government does - setting the budget wouldn't work without it. The facilitation of interstate commerce through a federated union is a great thing. A coordinated foreign policy and unified military is more effective and probably more efficient. The federal government isn't useless or lacking any impact at all on my life, but the state and local governments are far, far more involved in "getting the things I depend on done", and many of the things federal government does could probably be done without a federal government or with much less of one.
I didn’t die of being trampled by unicorns either, but the topic is the cost-benefit ratio of the federal government.
Do you really believe that without central government that we will as a society wholly disregard the last thousand years of technological progress? How do the billion people in Europe do it?
Your argument reduces to the now-infamous “but who will build the roads?” We don’t need the military-industrial complex to put down ashphalt or produce safe food.
> I didn’t die of being trampled by unicorns either
I think this comment is incredibly telling. Many people tend to treat problems that do not currently affect them because of the momentous, coordinated efforts of many individuals and institutions the same as problems that do not affect them because they are naturally nonexistent.
There is a huge difference between these two categories of problems. The first will become very visible when the constant behind-the-scenes work is no longer maintained. The second will not. Confusing these two seems to be one of the causes of the mess we currently find ourselves in.
> How do the billion people in Europe do it?
As a European, I can help with the conundrum: we DO have central governments, and they tend to take more responsibility for taking care of people than the U.S. federal government has ever been allowed to. Governments don't have to be continent-wide to exist.
You've overestated by more than a factor of two how many people are in the EU and willfully ignored the fact there IS a central goverment of sorts here too.
We’ve really gone full circle when the argument for less government is pointing to Europe, and the argument against the military-industrial complex is the guy directly arguing for more military spending.
Depending on how you slice things, and what you count as ‘military’.
Based on the GOA, approx. $500 billion/yr (including veterans benefits) goes into actually running the military [https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59475]. Much of that appears
to be VA benefits, and it’s increasing.
So the remainder (minus war bonds!) feels like the Military Industrial Complex, which seems to add up to around $500bln/yr.
Google annual revenue appears to be up to approx. $282 billion/year now.
So unlikely any MIC component is close, but overall the MIC still seems quite a bit larger.
Alphabet's revenue last year were about $340 billiion.
550 billion is just for compensation. You also need to pay for the upkeep of bases, fuel etc.
MI complex probably still has larger revenues as Google, but difference is much smaller than you think and that is comparing the whole industry to just one tech giant. There are others with revenues as big or bigger.
> We don’t need the military-industrial complex to put down ashphalt or produce safe food.
Obviously blatant waste and fraud should not be tolerated, but ignoring the huge value of the military is very short sighted. When you hear the phrase, 'backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government', what do you think that means? The US has been in a privileged position for so long they don't even realize why they are there. People flock to the USD because of stability, rule of law, and the ability to park a carrier strike force off any coast in the world and project that 'full faith and credit' the US speaks of. The military is not solely responsible for the US's success, but it is a large part.
This is a meaningless phrase, much like “died for our sins”. Endless reptitions don’t make it into a meaningful logical statement.
The only inherent value of the USD is that you can pay US taxes in it. The “full faith and credit” bit meant something when you had to trust the USG to redeem it for physical gold or silver, but as you know that hasn’t been the case for a long time.
Now it’s about the same situation as the Tether fraud. Bitfinex doesnt need a carrier strike group for me to be able to trade USDT for cheeseburgers or gold coins.
People talking about the rule of law in the USA this week are especially comical. The graft and corruption are on full display for the entire world stage. They’re not even pretending any longer. It is now demonstrably clear that the value of the USD is not dependent on the rule of law in the US.
> whose going to check that the food being produced is safe?
Honestly, we could do with less of this. It isn’t hard to tell if fresh food is safe. It’s impossible with hyper-processed nonsense. Increasing liability for producing unsafe processed food might be what we need to tip our food balance in a healthier direction.
This sort of kneejerk culture war regurgitation mischaracterizes your argument, as well the people you are talking to, and undermines your own credibility. Separately, it adds positively nothing to the discussion except noise.
The world isn’t as black and white as you seem to be convinced it is. Not everyone is neatly categorized into reasonable friend and nonsensical insane foe, unfortunately.
Do you enjoy meaningless culture brawling in the comments? Does it provide you with some sort of emotional supply? It certainly isn’t accomplishing anything else (other than breaking the social contract here). I’m truly confused, on a purely intellectual level. (I don’t expect you to change or do anything differently, I am simply thoroughly baffled.)
Claiming there is no central government for 'billion people' 'in Europe' and then lashing out when someone engages you on the same level is a very positive addition to the discussion.
Put differently:
“What has COBOL done for me lately? Can’t we just cut out all COBOL code, and replace it today to save money on paying COBOL cowboys?”
It put fraudulent get-rich-quick pyramid scheme scammers and Bitcoin Ponzi scheme shills like SBF in jail where they belong. Why, are you afraid of that happening to you too?
Perhaps someone came in and realized that this advisory board had 0 benefit and just a waste of tax payer money? If so, I’m all for getting rid of wasteful spending
This is running here as a story about cybersecurity, but it's apparently every advisory committee at DHS; there were a bunch of them, mostly not about technology; for instance, the National Commercial Fishing Safety Advisory Committee.
Maybe I've been burned lately and my faith in humanity is ebbing but I'm hoping the reference to that specific committee isn't about "government sounds stupid if you take it out of context, so it's good that we burn it all down"
The Coast Guard having a plan for when large fishing vessels get into trouble, and indeed a plan to stop them getting into trouble, seems like a good thing to me even if it's grouped somewhat incongruously under Department of Homeland Security.
edit: your other comment on this makes me think we are at the "letting commercial fisherman, and the coastguards trying to rescue them, drown to own the libs" stage, and my faith in humanity drops another notch.
Seems the Cybersecurity Executive Orders that dealt with Memory Safe Languages and the ONCD Report (which mentioned Rust, if I remember correctly) are all gone from whitehouse.gov as well.
The CISA report that dealt with memory safety is still on the CISA site. What do these recent developments mean for CISA? Is it an independent organization that will continue to exist without DHS support or is it essentially dead and its site and reports will vanish as well?
I am mostly ignorant but from hearsay CISA is part of DHS (the chief of CISA is a DHS official). doubt Trump loves it because he literally fired Krebs directly for not supporting misinformation and overthrow attempt in 2020 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Krebs#2020_dismissal)
Can somebody give me a rational take on why? It feels immensely reactive. Salt Typhoon would seem to represent an active threat. Didn't DHS act quite.. conservatively?
A comment on the blusky thread went to "five eyes should stop sharing information" which I suspect won't happen, but I could see people thinking it should.
When someone comes in to slash everything, they generally don't bother understanding what they are slashing. This is the same as when a company hires someone to come in and cut costs, generally everything, good or bad, gets cut. That's what's happening on the US federal level right now. Eventually some things will be picked back up when someone realizes that it wasn't a good idea to stop it, but most things are just going to be wasted effort.
"There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it"
However, DHS was almost entirely formed from existing departments and agencies that were merely rehoused under a new structure, so Chesterton's Fence definitely applies to all of those. Even CISA, which is one of the newest elements, is now almost a decade old with a lot of accumulated expertise and experience.
I’ll say this as someone who’s moderately wealthy: this administration is a massive wealth transfer to those with either capital or connections to it. Taking apart these committees means less-regulated telecoms, infrastructure and financial services. If you’re in those spaces, this is great for you.
The size of each of those industries entirely dwarfs the military-industrial bogeyman, which is largely just being transferred from one set of owners (Boeing, Lockheed, et cetera) to another (Musk, Bezos, Lucky, et cetera)
Sure, but DHS long predates this admin. The list of giants suckling at the public teat is huge (Rapiscan, anyone?) and spans many different administrations.
One possible upside of the current situation is that the very obvious corporate ownership of the federal government is dropping the “emperor has clothes” pretense. We are ever closer to simply paying taxes to Buy-N-Large.
If people don’t like it, at least now they can have a practical conversation about it (Luigi notwithstanding). It’s sort of like when Snowden showed us how fucked we were/are.
"There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a Department of Homeland Security. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this department; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it"
This is the original text written by Chesterton that describes the concept people refer to as "Chesterton's Fence" but with the word fence replaced with "department of homeland security".
It is, though. The word "people" here refers in aggregate to the citizens who voted in November. It would be equally accurate for me to say "This is what we voted for" even though it's not what I voted for.
I don't have a dog in this race - I am not even from the US.
But, by definition, not voting is an action rather than absence of one. What you are doing by not voting is giving out a tacit agreement that the people who went and vote get to decide who will be elected.
Following that line of thought, by not voting, you actively chose the current government, no matter what the current government is.
I agree, but there are many who say that not voting is the only way to show contempt for a system rigged against them. Voting would be a tacit endorsement and recognition of the legitimacy of that system.
Those that don't care to vote are doomed to be ruled by those who care.
You still have to pay taxes, and perhaps see a government you truly despise making all sorts of decisions that will get the system even more rigged against you.
Not voting out of spite is similar to stabbing your own head to show contempt for your brain when you have a migraine.
Not voting, practically, is empowering the status quo. Particularly in America, where almost every election features intense down-ballot competition.
Someone who didn’t vote is more in concordance with the current government than someone who voted against it. Actions speak louder than words, and not voting is an action.
AWS and starlink have exposure of risk. You would think DHS work here went to net beneficial outcomes for both of them, and the wider telco sector. (Assuming you meant the tech sector)
What risk? There isn’t a consumer liability, and they can control the cybersecurity risk-reward balance they’re exposed to. From their perspective, oversight is the liability.
A good rule of thumb, at least for the next couple of months, is that any rules and regulations that have been criticised by the billionaires, banks or oil & gas industry are likely to be shredded. (The “deep state” stuff is mostly whoever has the king’s ear sort of politics. It’s unclear that had any influence here.)
I get what youre saying but Im not sure absolute liability is quite right. Im thinking of SBOM directives, or industry network security requirements for bgp announcements, for example. Amazon and, I assume, some of the other mega corps are AGES ahead of industry at large. Like huge multi year investments so that theyre plausibly close to complying with secure provenance, review, build tracking, and artifact integrity reporting from initial CR to request processing for everything that touches customer or business data. My impression is that the industry generally isnt any further than tracking some package names and version strings and calling it SBOM. If the new directives can preclude a large number of contract competitors that seems like a huge win.
Or, maybe Im thinking more of advantageous requirements/regulations than oversight per se.
Arent they differentiating only _if_ they required to get federal and dod money? The coordination definitely seems to be more of amzn (and similar) employees providing technical expertise to congress and regulators. They certainly take deployments and internal security seriously, but it doesnt seem to be monetizable outside of the contract requirements. Or maybe im missing your point?
There is two ways for efficiency, either wipe everything clean or well setup a committee to evaluate which committees can be eliminate. And usual joke in bureaucracy is that later one will discover that even more committees are actually needed.
So the knee jerk reaction of current administration is burning it to ground. Which could actually change something.
Slash and burn policies from a reactionary administration that doesn't and in fact refuses to think about the second and third order consequences of their decisions.
One of the reasons a lot of people are worried about this administration is the vibes based policy decisions they seem intent on making. Everything is haphazard, arbitrary and contradictory. Some of it comes down to personal grievance and some of it comes down to favors for people in the business sphere who chose to kowtow to this administration.
Yes. I don't want to assume an adversarial posture on this, I'm mostly an outsider, observer. I probably can't understand nuances in US domestic politics (although i am opposed to this kind of semi random behaviour by institutions, I did not see this signalled in NOG lists and the like as coming down the pipe)
So I'm wondering if this is as simple as cost/benefit? Did somebody do the sums and decide the delivery was sub par for spend?
The alternatives are mostly very sad: they're fools. Replacing a process can be beneficial. There's usually overlap.
Current South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem wants CISA to be “refocused” on critical infrastructure and to no longer address mis- or disinformation efforts online.
Whatever problems or limitations the existing approach had dropping everything on the floor is one of the least helpful ways of trying to fix it (assuming good intent).
You have to assume competence too. You may have good intent but that doesn't help if you don't really know what you are doing or are blinded by ideology or some wayward belief.
Burning everything to the ground is a way of demolishing something though.
And if your intent is to just destroy it, it’s a far more effective one than bringing in experts to slowly try to disassemble the giant jenga tower without it falling over.
Is this explainable in any way by the cost of running these boards? By the sound of it the cost-benefit of thwarting Salt Typhoon is probably not optimal at zero investment.
Replacing government run and funded cyber security and threat assessment roles with privately owned contracters will be quite profitable for a few of the Brolliegarks.
The core tenet of Muskism, as described at length in Isaacson's bio is around those lines:
* question all the rules
* when in doubt, slash the rule, and see what happens
* if it's really bad without it, bring back the rule
* if you don't have to bring back 10% of the rules that you slashed, you haven't slashed enough yet
USA is now entering the phase where everything is getting slashed - following the will of the majority of -Pennsylvania- the people.
At the level of a company, this can bring great efficiencies, and make reusable self-driving cancer-free nuclear-fusion based rockets. Or crypto scams.
Unfortunately, at the level of a Federal Government, it will bring lower taxes, but some of the 10% will end with coffins. And crypto scams.
We'll watch from the other side of the Atlantic how the great libertarianism experiment goes for the USA.
I expect both impressive improvements, and dramatic karmic irony.
> At the level of a company, this can bring great efficiencies, and make reusable self-driving cancer-free nuclear-fusion based rockets. Or crypto scams.
This is questionable. There are many times when bureaucracy exists for bureaucracy sake. But many, many times they exist for a reason.
Get any sufficiently large company and try to understand its complexity. Simply slashing it is a recipe for disaster.
> Unfortunately, at the level of a Federal Government, it will bring lower taxes, but some of the 10% will end with coffins. And crypto scams.
This is highly questionable, especially the "lower taxes" part. Governments are not very keen on reducing revenue, more likely they will only direct the surplus by cutting off services to other things - in the case of US, I wouldn't be surprised if they just increase spending in military, for example. Those sleasy and juicy defence contracts need funding, you know.
0day and spear phishing are about extracting/obtaining information. Misinformation and manipulation campaigns have the objective to ingest/manipulate information.
"Information security is the practice of protecting information by mitigating information risks." [1]
This directive is shutting down a broad range of advisories under the DHS, perhaps you might like to read more in order to make a better informed comment.
First-pass guess is that it got "captured" by individuals that wanted to "take an equity and inclusion lens" on cybersecurity... and something something 2020 election interference. Those are the usual suspects when it comes to this sort of institutional rot.
Every comment on this post is frighteningly uninformed about current events.
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