Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

All: if you&#x27;re going to comment here, please make sure you&#x27;re up on the guidelines at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html</a>, and don&#x27;t post low-information &#x2F; high-indignation comments that could just as easily appear in any related thread. Such generic comments make discussion less interesting and more activating. That&#x27;s not what we&#x27;re trying for here.<p>Rather, we want <i>curious</i> conversation. I know that&#x27;s not so easy when a situation is intense, infuriating, frightening, distressing, and so on. But we need to protect this site for its specific mandate—which is fragile at the best of times—so please make the effort.<p>As some of you know, this article was posted a dozen times and immediately flagkilled by users. I turned the flags off on this one because there&#x27;s interesting new information in the story. But now it&#x27;s up to the commenters to prove that was a good decision by co-creating a discussion that is interesting, curious, and has to do with the specifics of the article.<p>If we end up with yet-another interchangeable flamewar about $BigTopic, that will only confirm that the flaggers were right, so those of you who want fewer of these threads to be flagged have a particular interest in sticking to the intended spirit of the site and proving that a substantively different discusson is possible.<p>Edit: if you want to reply to this, please uncollapse the child comment below and reply there. Your views are welcome! I just also want to conserve space at the top of the thread.

It has been a fairly common story, and part rumor, that intelligence agencies like to recruit young people active in the cyber criminal scene, and that the IT security industry also adapted this approach. They basically becomes part informer and part subject expert, especially since IT security expertise seems to be a difficult subject matter to teach in universities. When I studied IT security in university, about 10 years ago, I heard multiple version of this several times, with one student from my university getting employed because they managed to demonstrate a hack on a bank.<p>I always hope that such recruits had a bit tighter surveillance from their employee, but no one in the industry describes such recruits as &quot;highly susceptible to extortion and coercion from current members of the same gang&quot;, and absolutely no one described them as members of violent street gang. It might have been a fair label but at most, such teens were describe as smart but mischievous. Might not be the best people to be responsible for national security, or peoples bank accounts, but it seemed to be the culture of that industry.<p>Has other people in the IT security industry had the similar experience of this culture?

Good reporting here. Clarifies why the kid was fired for leaking documents - it was specifically for leaking internal corporate documents to a competitor.<p>The details about cybercrime discords involved in SWATting and DDOS attacks are fascinating.<p>The idea that anyone involved in this would be fast-tracked for a clearance is beyond the pale.

&gt; the DOGE teen is a former denizen of ‘The Com,’ an archipelago of Discord and Telegram chat channels that function as a kind of distributed cybercriminal social network for facilitating instant collaboration<p>To be honest, this is my first time hearing about The Com. Does anyone have any more reading on this? You&#x27;d think they&#x27;d use something more secure than Discord (which has 0 encryption) and Telegram which doesn&#x27;t have encryption by default and whose gov&#x27;t backdoor is basically an open secret[0]<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;words.filippo.io&#x2F;dispatches&#x2F;telegram-ecdh&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;words.filippo.io&#x2F;dispatches&#x2F;telegram-ecdh&#x2F;</a>

Another DOGE member created a tool that generates ballot images to be used by counting machines to satisfy any statistical outcome requirements: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bsky.app&#x2F;profile&#x2F;denisedwheeler.bsky.social&#x2F;post&#x2F;3lhowh3ijgs2f" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bsky.app&#x2F;profile&#x2F;denisedwheeler.bsky.social&#x2F;post&#x2F;3lh...</a><p>He worked in contact with Musk and his sponsorship to create this tool<p>Interesting cybercrime research credentials<p>Yes there&#x27;s not evidence available that this research was used for crime, just that the project is capable of what&#x27;s described and that it was done under Musk&#x27;s sponsorship and that he was hired after building this in contact with Musk

The question no one asking is why Elon is sending a team of teenage programmers and not a team of financial auditors if he really wanted to cut government spending?

Is it the same Edward Big Baller that tweeted that Elon stole the election and is setting up more computers within the government to be hacked?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bsky.app&#x2F;profile&#x2F;cartwright776.bsky.social&#x2F;post&#x2F;3lhr4zni7ts2z" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bsky.app&#x2F;profile&#x2F;cartwright776.bsky.social&#x2F;post&#x2F;3lhr...</a>

Can anyone recommend a journalist who is reporting the facts of what’s happening on this subject?<p>From what I can tell, it’s widely been reported that<p>- Elon Musk was allowed into the Department of Education<p>- “Big Balls” accessed Treasury computers<p>- etc…<p>But I have not been able to find any first person testimony that confirms those statements.<p>From what I can tell Tom Krause is actually the one who was given access by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. And Tom Krause is an employee of the Treasury and has security clearance.<p>I see a lot of people claiming there was some sort of illegal access, but I would love to read a source that explains exactly who accessed exactly what system improperly.<p>Can anyone point me at that source?

I realized I’m treading in extremely hostile waters here, but the stories I hear from folks working in DOGE are closer to “I spend 8am to 2am with the leaders of department X going through all contracts and outflows and identifying what is important versus wasteful given a target of saving $X million per day, and there are some great people in this department who really know what’s been going on and it’s been great to make a difference”<p>Versus whatever the media is reporting

The reason security clearances are so important, and why people are so upset about randos going through so much sensitive government information, is that things like this can be used by adversaries to lean on these employees in the future.<p>One of these kids might have worse skeletons in their closet. Given how well-known their names are, adversaries of the USA are likely combing through their own intelligence archives, etc and might decide to extract their own pound of flesh from the government.<p>Or, even more horrible, they might have family that adversaries can lean on.<p>Subverting the process to meme faster and blitz the other side puts the entire American system in pretty serious danger. If it&#x27;s more important to destroy the system than make serious change, I suppose that&#x27;s how you&#x27;d do it.

The more advanced AI gets and the more power that is at stake, the more these tech CEOs are going to drop their nice-guy acts and reveal their true intentions. The drama is going to get much worse over the coming years.

Ignoring the horrifying political parts, I think one aspect here about data access that is inherently worrying is that it seems like all usual controls were bypassed and the DOGE people had very low level access to systems. So there are probably copies of sensitive data now in their possession, and nobody knows exactly what was copied and where it is stored.<p>This kind of access would be dangerous even in the hands of principled and well-meaning people. Giving it to people with glaring red flags like here is just entirely irresponsible.

Many former hackers have been hired by the government with TS clearances and it&#x27;s ridiculous to compare teenage hacker groups to violent street gangs. I told an agency of previous hacking stuff and they were more concerned with me admitting to cheating on a math test at college lol.

Of all the ways for China, Russia, Iran, Israel, etc. to get access to sensitive data like this, these events feel like they’re by a wide margin the most likely way for them to do so.<p>These people are going to cut corners and be sloppy and stuff is just going to end up on USB keys and whatnot.

I think the only relevant issue is that someone with prior associations with The Com may be vulnerable to extortion, but simply having been associated with the group doesn’t mean much by itself. Law enforcement hires people from “the other side” all the time as they have relevant domain knowledge, and navigational skills of such spaces. Saying that the federal government, or its contractors, should never hire such people is arbitrarily making ethical judgments in places that don’t call for them.

Why isn&#x27;t all government budgetary information public to begin with?

Just out of curiosity, has anyone here been able to find one of the sites where &quot;the COM&quot; convenes or am I too old to see?

I don’t see the comparison to leaving a violent street gang—most grow out of these communities and with good opsec you keep identities and profiles completely separated; the best people I work with had a mischievous past but realized the most sustainable way to do cool things is on the good side, and those who pass background checks without hiding their past stand out as the good ones—though actions like swatting, extortion, or threats of violence go far beyond mischievous.

I thought it was &#x27;The Corn&#x27; until I typed it out. I need new glasses.

While curious, intelligent young people are still self-assembling in small groups, I&#x27;d hope they&#x27;d be more shmoo group, l0pht&#x2F;cDc, or w00w00 than 4chan. Maybe they are and we&#x27;re just hearing about this one because they&#x27;re thrown into the political frying pan.

I am wondering what will happen at the end of all of this? I see a few possibilities here:<p>1. Either this project will be a tremendous success for the American people, saving millions and uncovering massive fraud and waste in the government thanks to the audits<p>2. It will ab a complete failure, nothing of value will get discovered, published and time and money will be wasted for everyone involved (giving the DNC a huge attack vector for the next election)<p>3. Alternatively, some efforts may yield some positive net results but others will fail to bring anything of value in fruition, this to me, seems to most realistic outcome, but who knows?<p>This is going to be an interesting experiment for the rest of the world to watch.

The confuddling thing to me is how did we have years of decay and no ability to head it off.<p>If we are at a point where the FBI is being dismantled, where was the FBI this whole time during the build up?<p>Even if you believed the FBI was some evil deep state entity - it turns out it was completely benign one because it couldn&#x27;t even defend itself from an approaching enemy thousands of yards away.

All I can think of when I hear about DOGE is Robert McNamara&#x27;s Department of Defense, where the &quot;Whiz Kids&quot; from industry and academia were supposed to magically fix all sorts of problems with the military&#x27;s bureaucracy. After all, they went to the right schools, and really, how hard could war-making be?<p>We lost in Vietnam and there are people being born there with birth defects from Operation Ranch Hand to this day partially due to their work, but at least they got to pad out their resumes and were set for life as consultants.

I still can&#x27;t believe Musk came up with a name that shortens to DOGE. This is next level political trolling. Then again people got what they voted for.

I just want to highlight one thing about this whole government takeover debacle. The reason you have the separation of power (legislative, judiciary, executive) is not to be efficient, it is to prevent generational abuse.<p>Even a well intentioned benign autocrat if given power would not part ways with said power voluntarily. So even if the current administration is &quot;good&quot; there is no reason why this kind of power couldn&#x27;t be abused by subsequent administrations. Even the most die-hard republican should be thinking &quot;if the democrats take over 1-3 elections from now, what would they do with this power?&quot;.<p>It is really the same reasoning with dictatorships, even if the dictator is good, competent and capable his successor most likely won&#x27;t. Democracy is the best form of government because there are clean, regulated ways to transfer power. Not a scramble for dominance that once settled is meant to last in perpetuity.

I wouldn&#x27;t trust these criminals with access to a staging database let alone access to data on every single America.<p>&gt; Musk’s DOGE teen was fired by cybersecurity firm for leaking company secrets<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fortune.com&#x2F;2025&#x2F;02&#x2F;07&#x2F;musks-doge-teen-edward-coristine-fired-cybersecurity-internship-leaking-company-secrets&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fortune.com&#x2F;2025&#x2F;02&#x2F;07&#x2F;musks-doge-teen-edward-corist...</a>

FYI: This guy already has a Wiki page. You can find it deep in the article: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Edward_Coristine" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Edward_Coristine</a>

Why this unvetted person(s) has been allowed to even touch or access critical systems speaks volumes about the state of US government.<p>We are at the neoliberal endgame. Billionaires and multibillion dollar corporations received massive tax cuts during the first term, and this will likely continue under the second term. He’s going all out for this billionaire donors, buddies, and of course himself. We have a kleptocracy at the federal level with the intent to dismantle it as much as possible.<p>End game here is federal&#x2F;people control end, and “network states” (balaji) model with corporations acting as governance over land, regions, and law.<p>Thiel and the rest of the billionaire class are the parasites that need to be purged. Whether we will recover after 4 years remains to be seen.

As usual, excellent reporting from Krebs.<p>D&amp;D Alignment aside, one has to admit this kid has impressive skills and impressive energy. Sidestepping any argument whether criminals should be hired or have access to sensitive data, I do think he&#x27;s too immature (demonstrably) to be allowed access to all this information.

Can&#x27;t they add some fake data as canaries&#x2F;watermarks to identify the perpetrator if the data gets leaked?<p>Thinkst does this

I used to hang around with the late 90s&#x27;s versions of these guys. I grew up, had a family, have had a successful career. They went to prison. I expect the same will happen to this lot.

Here&#x27;s my attempt at contributing something meaningful to this discussion, since I&#x27;m tired of seeing the same kinds of responses to these threads over and over again. Feel free to disagree, the idea is to try to move the conversation past knee-jerk reactions.<p>This is an FAQ of sorts.<p>Q1: What&#x27;s wrong with making the government more efficient? My tax dollars are being wasted by Agency X, spending billions of dollars a year on who knows what.<p>A1: There&#x27;s nothing wrong with making the government more efficient, but (1) there are good and bad ways of cutting spending (and DOGE, IMO, is <i>really</i> bad), (2) the federal budget is massive [1], 1B or even 10B USD is practically peanuts, so a real cost-benefit analysis is critical while knee-jerk &quot;that&#x27;s too much money&quot; reactions are usually short-sighted, and (3) the Trump administration is planning to spend FAR MORE on massive tax cuts - a government that&#x27;s serious about reducing the deficit would not spend 5-10 <i>trillion</i> USD on tax cuts.<p>Q2: What&#x27;s wrong with how DOGE is trying to cut spending? Government is filled with red tape, and they&#x27;re taking a hacker approach to circumvent the things that prevented past governments from fixing things.<p>A2: Any time a large group of people need to agree on something, it takes time. Small-d democratic governance doesn&#x27;t prioritize getting things done quickly in normal times, it prioritizes reaching consensus and respecting individual liberties. Occasionally war-time governments will temporarily suspend normal procedures (and rights), but there&#x27;s good reason why things (mostly) go back to normal after the war ends. And whatever you may be seeing in your news feeds, America is NOT AT WAR.<p>A2 (pt. 2): The HN community usually (and rightly, IMO) gets very upset and concerned when companies or the government infringe on our privacy. The situation this article brings to light seems analogous to a big tech company bringing in consultants who are later found to have cybercriminal connections, without any safeguards or auditing around access of employee or user data. If that happened, there would be a huge uproar.<p>A2 (pt. 3): Except, it&#x27;s worse, because the government is not the same as any old company. The US government was designed with checks and balances precisely to avoid concentrating too much power in the hands of any individual, including the president. Remember, America was establishing a democracy in a time when most countries were monarchies - a monarchical president was something the framers desperately wanted to avoid. There&#x27;s too much to get into here, but this ongoing story is not just about privacy&#x2F;security, but also about breaking legal and constitutional safeguards.<p>Q3: You admit that the federal budget is massive, so it&#x27;s obvious that it&#x27;s spending too much money. Sometimes it&#x27;s hard to fix an old system with lots of parts - we need a ground-up rewrite! Cut first, then add spending back later - what&#x27;s wrong with that?<p>A3: What&#x27;s wrong with that is that people will get hurt. Ordinary people (no, not &quot;woke leftists&quot; - they&#x27;re real people) will lose their jobs. People who were getting HIV treatment will stop getting treatment. Poor children will lose school lunches. And on it goes. To play along with the analogy, even if you think the only option is a ground-up rewrite, you don&#x27;t run around the data center unplugging machines that you don&#x27;t like. But that&#x27;s also buying into a false premise. The federal budget as a percentage of GDP really hasn&#x27;t grown all that much [2], and a huge part of that spending is on things that are really hard to cut (because most people don&#x27;t want to cut it): social security, Medicare, defense.<p>Q4: Well, tax cuts aren&#x27;t spending, it&#x27;s just giving money back to the people! It&#x27;s too bad you want the US government to spend so much, but that&#x27;s my tax dollars you&#x27;re talking about.<p>A4: Well, unfortunately, we live in a society, one that has historically agreed through democratic processes to care for its elderly, (sometimes) its sick or disabled, and (occasionally) its poor, because our ancestors wisely realized that those are elements of a stable societ where its people can flourish. Feel free to disagree.<p>Q5: Why report on the identities of these young people? And what&#x27;s wrong with being young - many startup founders are college dropouts, right?<p>A5: Founding a startup isn&#x27;t the same as running a mature company, and even running a mature company isn&#x27;t necessarily the best preparation for civil service IMO. Youth has its advantages - fearlessness, energy - but wisdom comes with age. On the other hand, youth are impressionable, and can be easily led (or rather, misled) into doing illegal and&#x2F;or immoral things. That&#x27;s a pattern we&#x27;ve seen throughout history, and I see no reason to believe that the folks at DOGE are any different. As for making their names and identities public, they were the ones who made the decision to participate in actions that affect millions of people. Anonymity is for Internet commentators, not for supposed public servants cutting off funding to aid workers or scientists (you know, the actual public servants).<p>Q6: Why is this on Hacker News?<p>A6: See A2, pt. 2. There&#x27;s no surprise that a news about hackers in on Hacker News. Also, should Elon Musk only be on Hacker News when it&#x27;s about Tesla or SpaceX, and not when he&#x27;s off trying to shut off funding to half the government? If you agree with him, fine - let&#x27;s have a discussion. Don&#x27;t flag kill everything that&#x27;s reporting on what might be one of the most consequential events of this century. (Thanks for giving this a chance, dang.)<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fred.stlouisfed.org&#x2F;series&#x2F;FGEXPND" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fred.stlouisfed.org&#x2F;series&#x2F;FGEXPND</a> [2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fred.stlouisfed.org&#x2F;series&#x2F;FYONGDA188S" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fred.stlouisfed.org&#x2F;series&#x2F;FYONGDA188S</a>

tesla.sexy contains the following text, which is slightly concerning:<p><pre><code> love your fate become your own ubermensch you are the master of your soul be kind there is so much to love, so much to live for follow your heart, ok?</code></pre>

I don&#x27;t particularly know where I stand at the moment, haven&#x27;t had enough time to read through it all, but at the moment I agree that the minimum of some sort of security clearance seems prudent. Doesn&#x27;t seem that inhibiting either way.

How do I access this &quot;Com&quot;? I&#x27;m curious.

and if you want to be a good network&#x2F;security&#x2F;intelligence person, isn&#x27;t this basically a requirement?<p>this is the kind of ground that people SHOULD be covering if they want to pursue a career of this nature<p>it doesn&#x27;t make him a bad person, or even a criminal the internet is just the wild west and hacking is prevalent, long live the people who do this because it&#x27;s needed

So from what I can understand, the new regime doesn&#x27;t trust the outgoing one and wants to use its own independent people to look for signs that they have been unfairly treated by the govt and&#x2F;or its institutions? Would this be a reasonable observation? I can make a few guesses about how they would react if they could compile such a list of grievances. Congrats to krebs for this article.

Scroll to the bottom of this page guys, the best comments are greyed out or flagged.

&gt; Musk’s DOGE team has gained access to a truly staggering amount of personal and sensitive data on American citizens, moving quickly to seize control over databases at the U.S. Treasury, the Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Education, and the Department of Health and Human Resources, among others.<p>As an European, how is this not considered a coup d&#x27;etat? From my mindset, right or wrong, that is absolutely unthinkable to happen within a normal functional European country.

I know it&#x27;s like screaming into the void when there&#x27;s a 1000+ comments but...<p>You remember the end of Gatsby where Nick turns up at the mansion and some sinister characters have the run of the place and you-know-who is floating in the pool out back...<p>This is what the US looks like right now. Party&#x27;s over, no guests ever again. Crims have moved in instead.

I think this makes the picture quite clear. The only criteria for their selection was their ability and willingness to exfil data as fast as possible. In order to facilitate the trump blitz, as much technical action as possible needed to happen in a timeframe constrained by court procedural mechanisms.

It&#x27;s a given that any 20-something tech bro is going to have a nickname &#x27;big balls&#x27;, just goes with the territory. I fail to see what the outrage is about. He&#x27;s just following orders of Daddy Musk.

Ignoring the age of the people involved, the idea that what is happening is in the name of &quot;efficiency&quot; is laughable.<p>Maybe these departments are all wasteful but there are better ways achieve &quot;efficiency&quot; than just shutting down departments without having plans about what is going to happen afterwards.<p>What is efficient about shutting down departments without notice or without looking at the impact or having alternatives besides just not providing those services. How about seeing if there are better ways to do the same things before just shutting down departments? Or looking at the areas of the government that have more significant budgets? Or considering that there is more to efficiency than money?

Why are high level figures in these departments just letting them walk in and have access? Tell them to kick rocks until they have proper clearances.

Say what you will about the cuts, you can&#x27;t have people with zero clearance being given access to all of this data.

This is uh, a more than a little disturbing. Is JD Vance going to say that he deserves grace too?<p>More context [0]<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;764_(organization)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;764_(organization)</a>

And anyone that gets busted will just get pardoned. Trump and Musk broke the system.

Communists are suspicious about people and disregard them because of their parents, leather shoes, german sounding surname or actions as a kid. Kids are doing many things being kids, it&#x27;s their privilege to do so. Solar Designer came from cracking group.

I recall an aphorism that government is self-governed 90% by norms and 10% by law. I don’t know if American law is being violated but certainly it is alarming to observe from the outside when the norms are totally disregarded.<p>The US looks unstable and untrustworthy.

Elon Musk&#x27;s DOGE team is raising eyebrows with their seemingly reckless behavior.<p>Their actions are causing concern for several reasons:<p>* A 19-year-old with a questionable past has been given access to sensitive US government systems. * The team is reportedly using this access to dig through student loan data. * This could potentially put millions of Americans at risk of identity theft or other forms of financial exploitation.

Seems safe to assume that the DOGE kids probably scored copies of the data they had access to even if that access was or will be revoked, especially considering that some of them have a history of data theft as mentioned in the article.

I find it shockingly absurd how the All-In podcast hosts blindly support everything one of their own does. It’s obvious they treat Musk like a god. In the latest episode, they even made fun of concerns about privacy, claiming that all people care about is the state not wasting money. - completely dismissing worries about data exposure.

I was fascinated by electricity, chemistry, firecrackers, rockets and hotrods as a boy. It is a miracle I survived. My dad told me that God looks out for little boys, as otherwise they would not make it to adulthood.

The sad part is that a lot of people here are complicit, too. I&#x27;m sorry, but that&#x27;s the truth. So many were either brainwashed or put to believe that Kamala is bad ... as bad as Trump. So many in the US showed inaction. You couldn&#x27;t vote for the &quot;lesser evil&quot; and were happy to let the real evil in the house instead. And now it seems too late. It might be too late. I would bet money that the US won&#x27;t be able to get rid of these new parasites in the White House for many years. And even after that, it will take generations for the US to gain the trust of its partners and the world. Because trust that&#x27;s once lost is very difficult to regain.<p>It seems that at this point, it might be better to &quot;simply&quot; accept the new imperator(s) and learn to live with them and their new rules. And remember, they are NOT breaking the law, they are bending &quot;rules&quot; for the good of humanity... (yeah... nah). They have never tried and will never try to enrich themselves for the sake of their egos.

An angle I didn&#x27;t notice discussed here on HN is that while this confusion about DOGE among the general US public continues, it&#x27;s a great time for China to advance it&#x27;s agenda and to weaken the US.

Linked previously here (currently flagged and dead):<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=42979187">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=42979187</a><p>Good thorough article on another wild development in this story. Deserves to be seen and read.

And now musk is calling for the impeachment of Judge Paul Engelmayer who blocked his department from accessing government payment&#x2F;financial systems.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thehill.com&#x2F;policy&#x2F;technology&#x2F;5134725-elon-musk-impeachment-demand&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thehill.com&#x2F;policy&#x2F;technology&#x2F;5134725-elon-musk-impe...</a><p>This should be mandatory reading for everyone who argues this is just fine: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;They-Thought-Were-Free-Germans&#x2F;dp&#x2F;022652583X&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;They-Thought-Were-Free-Germans&#x2F;dp&#x2F;022...</a>

We have too many regulations. I support what DOGE is doing. Thank you dang for letting the world see this topic. I think pg would agree. &#x2F;s

A career fed guy in his 50s being forced to beg for his job in a 15 minute teleconference to an arrogant zoomer in shorts and an unbuttoned suit is peak representation of democracy.

This seems really bad. Did they intentionally pick the worst possible people?

Is anyone really surprised here?<p>This is Elon who is neck deep in the cesspool parts of the internet and attracts the same kinds of people.<p>They will continue to break every rule they can and ignore the legal push back as much as possible. They know that there is little they could do here that will result in any criminal prosecution.<p>Batten down the hatches and expect worse to come, the safeties are off.

Worth noting that some of the most well-known cybersecurity experts today are former cyber criminals. It may be worth investigating his past, but a person&#x27;s past is often used to attack their character when there is no other argument to make. If we were all judged solely on our past, we&#x27;d all be perpetually guilty.

Krebs lost all of its credibility serving political agendas and not understanding teenagers nowadays! They should be ashamed of their ballless attempt at a character assassination!

I don&#x27;t like Musk and have not for many years, but the left has been venerating some very flawed people for a very long time. It’s hard to be outraged now when we’ve been selectively told to ignore the past of others.<p>Let’s not forget that Trump is the pied piper candidate promoted by the left to make it easier to win elections. I remember when Ron Desantis was successfully undermined by the news media casting him as weird if he was even covered at all. The left celebrated at the time because they assumed Trump would be easier to beat. When our leaders are picked by their enemies it’s understandable that they’re extremely flawed.<p>I see it as an emergent behavior where it’s easier to damage than it is to build, it’s easier to undermine an opposition than it is to build up your own side.<p>I would suggest that political parties stop trying the pied piper strategy but if we are to learn one thing from history it should be that no-one learns anything from history.<p>&gt; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wikileaks.org&#x2F;podesta-emails&#x2F;emailid&#x2F;1120" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wikileaks.org&#x2F;podesta-emails&#x2F;emailid&#x2F;1120</a>

The biggest irony to me is that Musk wanted to reneg on the Twitter sale. It&#x27;s interesting to consider the timeline where he was allowed to not buy it. Truly a &quot;canon&quot; event, that one.<p>I&#x27;m also not convinced this is a &quot;security breach.&quot; They&#x27;re being allowed to do it. It&#x27;s more like an unforced error, if anything. Not that it changes anything material about the situation.<p>That said - a small majority of congress is currently complicit in this, but I expect that to reverse as many Republican states will have congresspeople whose constituents are affected. I&#x27;d expect by May of this year some of this will have been reversed.<p>Sadly that&#x27;s too long and some damage will be done perhaps permanently...

As all the intelligence agencies see DOGE coming their way to look into how they spend money, I think we will see many of those stories in the coming weeks.

Apparently 18 years old is old enough to be handed a rifle and sent into war but not access a database.

I just hope they post everything they found. I don&#x27;t care about their credentials and neither do I care about security -- those damned companies already had them 10 times anyway.<p>But it&#x27;s very interesting if they can release all information. I mean it&#x27;s a democracy, right?

The HN response to all this has actually been very strange to me. From my perspective, this presidency, and especially Musk working on DOGE, should be one of the most exciting, positive things discussed on here!<p>I would&#x27;ve thought this crowd would&#x27;ve loved lower taxes (more money to build things!), less regulation (less restrictions to build things!), and an unfamiliar friendliness towards the tech industry (more people to build things with!)... I&#x27;m really looking forward to building big things in this country in the next few years!

Why the security concerns now and not with the thousands of employees with potentially similar access? NOW it&#x27;s a concern because the idea occurred to people that who might have access to data is important? Imo the faux outrage is so far beyond rational that it turns people away. Let&#x27;s have a reasonable discussion about data access and controls, and whether they are being followed, rather than some reflexive response based on political points of view.

Doesn&#x27;t all this make the kid a lot more practically skilled at the job than most regular overpaid security engineers at most regular corps?

The stakes are high for these kids. They&#x27;re obviously very talented individuals, but they&#x27;re in deep. The reality probably isn&#x27;t lost on them.<p>I hope they stay safe, they&#x27;re doing important work.

I&#x27;d much rather Krebs actually looked into the theft of taxpayer funds by USAID, with all its &quot;shrimp treadmills&quot;, &quot;Iraqi Sesame Street&quot;, &quot;transgender mice&quot; and regime changes. I want to get to the leaves of that tree and see who really got my money. Everything else is immaterial and should be ignored as targeted attacks on their mission.

When Elon stripped the Twitter organisation down to its fundamental parts, saved tons of money and the service is still ran like usual, people said the he’s a moron and the service couldn’t possibly run without a bloated and inefficient workforce.<p>They were wrong. Now that Elon is applying the same philosophy to all of his companies and now the federal government, people are once again saying he doesn’t know what he’s doing.<p>At a certain point, you have to ask yourself if these people who complain like headless chickens are actually serious people …