From a position of world-wide dominance and respect, it is being destroyed at a rate that is too quick for most to even start to comprehend what the outcome of these actions will be. I suspect the consequences of these actions will be carried for the rest of our lives, as they are not so easy to turn back.
Lots of other countries are standing by watching while the USA has seemingly found enough rope to hang itself.
the problem with people like you (I sincerely do not mean this in ANY derogatory way, just generalising people that make these arguments) is that you are using “American forefathers” as you see fit. American forefathers would be ROLLING IN THEIR GRAVES seeing and hearing what Trump and Elon are doing. They literally fought against people like the two of them.
If I have too choose between bloated federal government and having a President who thinks he is above the law and his Supreme Court cronies saying so in so many words and having a fucking african immigrant with god access to government computer systems I choose bloated government any day of the week and twice on sunday
Trump announced the rule of law is dead and there has been basically no pushback. I mean, sure, it may have just been bluster, but the Republicans used to put the idea of the Constitution on a pedestal. Now the president is saying, loudly and prominently, that laws don't apply to him (or anyone who is "saving" the country), and it's crickets.
There is no way the US comes back from this in my opinion. I'm not saying something like "collapse" is imminent, but I think the decline is irreversible once the rule of law has been declared null and void.
Also, while I obviously have my opinions, I honestly would be genuinely interested in someone who has a different take (i.e. who thinks Trump's statement isn't as catastrophic as I think it is) to explain their rationale.
Practically speaking, common law is the judicial branch using moonlogic upon moonlogic to create pseudo-laws (Roe v. Wade, Citizens United v. FEC) that may be good or bad but should be made by Congress. If the Constitution is unclear, it should be modified through a democratic process that can actually pass, not be continually reinterpreted in absurd ways by a 9-person court that can be corrupted and has no term limits. Congress is unable to fix itself; the unlimited filibuster in the Senate proves that, and the "pro-forma" session is simply embarrassing. Clear systemic change is excruciatingly difficult, so actions must be taken through fuzzy emergent messes without guardrails like executive orders.
"Is outrageous thing X from this EO illegal? Idk, let's wait months to check with the courts."
The popular comment I see is that institutions are people at the end of the day, so "strong institutions" is just a buzzword, and the current crisis comes from cowardice and inaction. But if the mechanisms aren't there to stop a bad actor in the executive, the best they can do is make some noise (which they should). If they truly bend the rules, the executive can always just write a more unhinged EO, so it all reduces to who has control over actual enforcement.
The problem is widespread; for example, the election system is simply dysfunctional, like Flint water tier. From the basics of gerrymandering, to the electoral college creating absurd things like "swing states" (if you want to give more power to some states, just weight the votes), no real universal national ID, voter suppression, voting by mail is a horrible idea that invites conspiracy theories and is a crutch for the lack of accessibility, voting machines are bad and a crutch (see the French). Not even the schizophrenic rules-set is actually followed; the 2000 election was decided by Supreme Court fuckery. Trump would've been stupid not to try to interfere in 2020; an election was successfully stopped 20 years ago and nothing happened. The most basic democratic institution failed and the priority wasn't "let's fix this immediately, oh my fucking god." So yeah, rule of law has constantly been chipped away for some time, good luck with the midterms.
To be fair to the average American, the idea that "gradually, then suddenly" also applies to the state is something people learn firsthand and hopefully teach their descendants. The history of outsiders only goes so far.
>...concerns that the U.S. will abandon Europe and align with President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
Nothing to worry about with Musk doing nazi salutes and Trump looking at hanging with the nearest we have to a modern reich.
And Vance explicitly said that Russia can't be expected to go back to the pre-war borders. In other words, Russia gets what they want (Donbas).
It already had very low respect (except by paid hacks and client states) and declining world-wide dominance for decades. And the churn rate for those very dissaponting results, reflected in public debt, was huge.
And that's assuming a nation having "world-wide dominance" is a good thing to begin with.
I wonder how much behavior like this stems from weak regulation in the US to begin with. It seems like it would reinforce the rise of agents that assume they can ask for forgiveness after acting wantonly.
There are no organization or institutions or anything else that matters: only people matter. If people don't bother to have integrity then "institutions" (or anything based around them) are irrelevant.
"There are no institutions, only people." — https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1231219728619835395 (possibly quoting Papandreou)
In the US context:
> Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks—no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.
* https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-11-02-010...
The wide masses yes - the 1% who is looking to profit immensely from the upcoming chaos not.
DOGE is not about trimming government costs, it is about allowing the large companies to rip off the masses without repercussions (e.g. the planned demise of CFPB or OSHA/DoL) and it is about preparing the transfer of what used to be government-provided services at cost or subsidised to privatised for profit enterprises where the 1% profit (e.g. the dismantling of public schools).
The end game is obvious, neofeudalism: everything that the 99% do shall generate profit for the 1%. We shall own nothing and rent/pay for everything. It begins with five to six figures medical bills at birth and ends with our funeral costs.
2014 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchfor...
I don't know about that, but certainly it has exposed a significant weakness in the US democratic structure: it is based on the supposition that everyone will follow the rules (i.e., accepting the results of an election, following the laws passed by congress, etc.) A president who defies both conventions and laws is hard to stop. The only mechanism is impeachment, and that as we have seen is _extremely difficult_ to do -- in many cases that has been used frivolously by both parties, but even in the case where it should have been a slam dunk -- Trump's attempted coup -- the most GOP senators were too afraid of their own re-election chances because of Trump's ability to "rile up the masses" (look at Liz Cheney). A climate of fear is an essential part of authoritarianism because it paralyzes those who might be able to take action to ensure that the democratic principles are upheld.
When you have an angry mob attack the capitol building and threaten to kill politicians, and they are pardoned by the person who incited them, that generates a lot of fear.
I wonder how much is this is "rational" due to Congress being broken as an institution. Hyper-partisanship and an unchecked filibuster means that Congress is stuck in permanent gridlock. The only way to get anything done is through executive power. But the system wasn't designed to work that way and so the checks on executive power can seem stifling to progress. It seems that many are willing to look the other way if they feel like its the only way to get what they want done. Concern only seems to come into play when its the other side wielding power. And this seems to be true across the aisle. Many on the left were frustrated with Biden's perceived timidity when it came to exercising executive power. And I feel like he was pressured into doing things that he wasn't fully comfortable doing unilaterally (especially regarding student loan forgiveness). Of course, the difference is that Biden spent 40 years in the Senate, understands the role of Congress in government, and had no intention of "ignoring the rules". Trump isn't limited by that type of thinking since he had no experience with, no great knowledge of, or respect for American government.
All the while pointificating about morals and values.
This isn't true at all.
The main way the President is stopped is through the courts, which is already underway, but Trump has actually prevailed in several decisions (e.g. right to cancel government contracts, right to fire probationary employees) while blocked other (e.g. birthright citizenship).
But it's not one court decision since it can be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court (which Trump intends to do on several issues).
Impeachment is a very high bar which is usually reserved for serious violations of the law or process. We aren't anywhere close to that.
The fact that the richest man in the world, acting with at least a visual approval of the next 10-100 richest people in the world has only managed some minor chaos is a testament to how insulated from economic power the US government was (in the grand scheme of things).
Real issues will emerge if such concentration of power is made perpetual.
I think a good part of the world still doesn't get it. Progress is mostly a outcome of stability, not change, even less rapid change.
This whole concept might sound counter intuitive. But think about it seriously. Exponential growth, when you factor in small losses in between comes when you stick to one process(that generates small gains) for long. Not by making rapid changes to a process(in hopes of making one big gain) for a long time.
It's exposing the intellectual bankruptcy of the Silicon Valley elite. Between the stupidity and kowtowing it has revealed a startling amount of groupthink and cowardice, even among people I once held as independent thinkers.
Yarvin's claim: "[In] F.D.R.’s first inaugural address,... he essentially says, Hey, Congress, give me absolute power, or I’ll take it anyway"
From FDR's speech: "I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis--broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency..."
Operative phrase: "I shall ask the Congress"
These people are, at best, dishonest and cowardly. Even more disappointing, it's increasingly clear the only indicator of actual intelligence is net worth. This is rather lossy signal, unfortunately.
Interview: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/magazine/curtis-yarvin-in...
In a parliamentary system, if the Prime Minister wants to merge/abolish/restructure government agencies, it normally just happens - because, most of the time, the Prime Minister can be confident the legislature will vote for any necessary legislation, since the PM’s party/coalition will control the legislature. So, the whole argument that Trump is illegally shutting down government agencies, why would a PM shut something down illegally when they can do it legally? The only exception might be in a minority government scenario, when the PM might not have the votes to get the necessary legislation passed - but, in such a scenario, if they decide to bypass the legislature and shut it down anyway, the legislature likely wouldn’t let them
Similarly, this whole “impoundment” thing - in most parliamentary systems, the executive is under no obligation to spend appropriated funds, and if they decide not to, the legislative majority will not have any problem with it - because, the executive and the legislative majority are basically the same thing. It is only because in the US (and maybe other countries with presidential systems, such as much of Latin America), the legislature gets upset by the executive deciding not to spend appropriated funds, and tries to make it illegal for them to do so. (Although we’ll see what the Supreme Court has to say-don’t be surprised if the current conservative SCOTUS majority decides that the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 is at least partially unconstitutional, or else renders it judicially unenforceable, e.g. using the political question doctrine.)
Many political scientists argue that the presidential system is inferior to the parliamentary, and produces political instability, gridlock, strongman (caudillo) rule. For a long time, while much of Latin America suffered from many of those problems, the US escaped them - whether due to wealth, cultural protective factors, or just plain good luck. However, with the return of caudillo Trump (arguably in his second term acting even more like a caudillo than in his first) and now the “DOGE scenario”, maybe the US’s luck has finally run out, and its politics are at last turning Latin American.
So, it's really hard to point out that we want to revert to the status quo because the winner of the last election was apathy in first place.
It's hard to take these apocalyptic premonitions about federal government reduction seriously.
See for instance: https://www.investopedia.com/gilded-age-7692919
You're also forgetting the tremendous amount of social unrest during that time because of that inequality (and as a result, the workers rights we enjoy today which largely arose from that period, and the Great Depression, though there have been great efforts to erode them).
I mean, there was technological and medical improvements, sure, and continued urbanization.
But that’s… those are some of our nations most shameful, inequal, racist years in its entire history. The federal government as it exists now was just getting started after we realized we needed it thanks to the civil war, and many local democratic systems were completely broken. More relevantly, we didn’t have cancer researchers, epidemiologists, the NSF, or, most relevantly, nuclear weapons.
Finally, a HUGE majority of the costs of the federal government are social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and defense spending. I doubt even the biggest libertarian on here could advocate cutting any those with a straight face, unless they’re young and don’t know anyone older than them, and/or advocates isolationism.
Regardless, this exact story makes it clear that the goal isn’t cutting the size of the government at all — it’s politicizing the civil service, and bringing it under the exclusive control of a supreme executive. They’re not exactly ashamed of it!
If even half of NPR's report is true, the way in which it was conducted was grossly cruel and with complete ignorance.
DOGE and it's supporters are quiet literally playing like a child with the levers that decide if you wake up tomorrow.
And yup, it's about as disrespectful a dismissal as you'd expect from a Musk "plan". I'm not surprised they are having trouble
>"Please work with your supervisors to send this information (once you get it) to people's personal contact emails," the memo added.
Wait, they don't keep personal emails on record? I have to fill that out for every single job I apply to. Pretty sure USAJobs and my State job board required it to.
I guess they either aren't answering or these were more senior personell than I thought.
>Despite having the words "National" and "Security" in its title, it was not getting an exemption for national security
This just gave me a chuckle and I had to share.
And probation is just the first status.
This is a plan designed to progressively cull employees by status - there'll be another round after this.
And that’s even before we consider that the current administration has shown a tremendous affinity for enemies and dictators while putting the hammer down on allies and friends.
And I nearly forgot the appointment of individuals to the highest positions in charge of state secrets and intelligence, who are either already compromised or highly sympathetic to those enemy regimes.
> “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” Mr. Trump wrote, first on his social media platform Truth Social, and then on the website X.
> By late afternoon, Mr. Trump had pinned the statement to the top of his Truth Social feed, making it clear it was not a passing thought but one he wanted people to absorb. The official White House account on X posted his message in the evening.
> The quote is a variation of one sometimes attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, although its origin is unclear.
The hallmark of authoritarianism is to be above the law. (Which is why the SCOTUS ruling was so damaging and directly contributing to this.). If you’re not familiar with China, the way things work there is “rule by law” rather than “rule of law”. The difference being that “rule by law” means that those in power can do whatever they want since they make up the laws as they go (like a monarch ruling by decree). Trump’s statement is exactly that. And make no mistake this is not a one-off quip like buying Greenland. His actions so far have made it clear he believes that there should be no restraints on the power of the executive branch. In other words , authoritarianism.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/15/us/politics/trump-saves-c...
Be careful, America, what you wished for.
* I am the country. I am the law.
* When the president does it, that means it's not illegal.
* Anyone who opposes me is an enemy of the state.
* People loyal to me, prepare for violence.
Instead, via Bondi and Bove, they have ordered career prosecutors to dismiss the case, and nearly a dozen of those attorney's have resigned instead of following orders. Many of these people clerked with Republican federal judges.
One is Noah Schactman, 38-years old, US attorney, SDNY, three combat tours in Iraq, two bronze stars, Harvard graduate, clerked with Roberts and Kavanaugh. This is his letter resigning and explaining why the order from DOJ superiors was inappropriate and not considered.
https://bsky.app/profile/noahshachtman.bsky.social/post/3li5...
Hundreds of thousands of people in civil service and armed forces have taken an oath to the Constitution of the United States. 5 USC 3331. This isn't an oath to a country, political party, president, or a superior. It's an oath to a contract.
Aside from the obvious distinction, Musk has no experience running existing corporations with lots on the line to lose, he comes from move fast break things, great for a social media app, who gives a shit, great for literal moonshots, go big or go home.
However when you manage something big, any upside from improving is weighed against its risk of degradation.
What I find confusing is that this is not typical of conservatism, it's like a progressive right of political outsiders whose express goal is to destroy the government, I don't think that's a controversial statement. And I truly believe that's what (at least half of) the people voted.
My best estimation is that they are conservatives in that they want to conserve power that they hold, and they see the government not as a foundation for their corps, but as an enemy, not state as a literal creator of money, but as its dilluter or robber (through taxes), not the state as the basis for the fiction that is a corporation, but as a taxer of them. And their emnity is mostly due to the redistributive role of their state.
And I believe that people vote out of aspirational belonging to a rich class, they think they are rich, or they want to aspire to become rich, or they buy into the establishes morals that entitles the rich to power.
So that's how I wrap my heads around the conservative right overthrowing and destroying the government, they see it as a threat to their established power, or their chances to rise to power.
But I'm just some idiot on hn who hopefully will come back to delete this later
The president is a con man who larps as the richest person on the planet and his biggest accomplishment last term was a giant tax cut for the rich. The "actual" president is the richest man on earth and has a vested interest in destroying anything that can tax him or hold him / his businessess accountable in any way.
Awfully convenient that the richest people in the world think that the proper way to balance the budget isn't by raising taxes, but by burning the whole government to the ground. They have the resources to live in a walled garden for the rest of their lives and they don't care who else gets hurt.
Please let’s not popularize the label “progressive right,” our political labels are already a mess in the US but that is just too much.
I think it'd be fair to call them populist right? I think they couldn't be further from classical conservatism. Chesterton's Fence is a concept that seems foreign to them.
Right, these people aren't classical conservatives in any sense of the word. I would think of most of these people more as libertarians: small government, little regulation or oversight, let the market sort it out.
The striking thing is that the actual conservatives in Congress are sitting on their thumbs, letting this all happen. But I think that's because actual conservativism in US politics is mostly dead, and has been so for a while. Republicans would rather play at culture wars, and cry about spending (that they themselves never rein in, even when they have the power to do so) and taxes (for the rich and corporations of course, that need to be cut).
It is pathetic that it seems like the only prominent Republican that has a problem with all this now is Mitch McConnell, when he's the one who enabled Trump in the first place during his first term, and failed to shut him down when he actually had the power to do so. Be careful what you wish for, Mitch.
59% of Republicans in Congress are newly elected since Trump began his first term (which saw the highest attrition among members of the president's part in modern history). Those who remain are the most aligned with Trump, or at least willing to appear so in order to retain their office.
I think they're overshooting here and will need to correct, but I get the impression as an outsider that the American people who voted Trump in are sick and tired of a social structure that isn't benefiting them and seems to give them no "out" or way forward. They will take the wild and crazy antics/experiments because hey, it wasn't exactly working before anyway, was it?
> I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.
Trump or Musk are very much American right as it always was, except without pretension of respectability.
It's all a matter of who gets to define the "over" in "overreach".
Laws which enforce racial segregation are overreach, for those in the American left who support equality.
Federal laws which override state segregation are overreach, for those in the American right who support structural racism.
Marijuana prohibition laws - overreach, or not?
Anti-mask laws - overreach, or not?
Required prayer in school - overreach, or not?
Anti-pollution laws - overreach, or not?
Apparently the boss of the team was told to make layoffs, she did some but not enough to please Musk, so Musk in a face to face meeting demanded she make more. She said they couldn't without affecting delivery.
Musk fired her. Then fired the team. Then hired the team back because she was correct.
But not before lots of ongoing projects got stalled because contacts just disappeared and stopped answering phones.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/inside...
> The meeting could not have gone worse. Musk, the employees said, was not pleased with Tinucci’s presentation and wanted more layoffs. When she balked, saying deeper cuts would undermine charging-business fundamentals, he responded by firing her and her entire 500-member team.
and
> The contractor said he had expected Supercharger projects to provide about 20% of his 2024 revenue but now plans to diversify to avoid relying on Tesla.
As others have already pointed out, the real damage is silent, has already been done, and will be suffered by generations to come while being able to blame others.
What is he thinking how this will turn out?
I think in federal government the risks are much higher, and Musk is being an idiot by exposing the America public to those risks, but the feedback loop for him on these previous experiments has been positive, not negative.
A strategy that seems to be hot in the US, but is an utter ethical abomination and shameful.
This doesn't make sense to me. The federal government isn't a company making Widget X, where you can gut, tweak, and repair it until you minimize the cost per widget and maximize the number of widgets sold. The government does a lot of things, often in the hopes of results in one or more decades, and there's rarely an easy and immediate way to measure success.
For example, the Surgeon General announced tobacco's link with cancer in 1964. It wasn't until the 1990s that smoking rates really started to fall in any significant way. The federal and state governments have spent decades and billions of dollars to reduce smoking rates, and they've been wildly successful. The tax revenue generated by any person-years alive which were won through that effort will never make up for the billions spent. But those people will contribute more to the economic and social life of the US, and the tobacco settlement deterred other companies from causing so much harm.
Sounds like the kind of thing that could end up increasing costs rather than reducing them.
I mean can you even claim to make the assumption that the actual key staff were rehired? Can you make the assumption that they are working safely with the resources they need? Can you make an assumption that they have covered the entire scope of the organisation?
Probably not.
Chess is played one piece at a time, not smashing all the pieces off the board.
It's also still weird because a lot of the firings focused on probationary workers.Very few would prove themselves in a year, so they did have to defer to key personell in he end to figure out "hey, he needed those people". Except he may not get those worers back.
> but the feedback loop for him on these previous experiments has been positive, not negative.
Sure, positve for his ego. He didn't care about recovering the supercharger conractors, he didn't care about repairing his adverts' relationships on Twitter and even threatened to sue as if they are obligated to advertise on his plaform. Call me treachorous but I don't think he really cares about making an efficient government. He's just funding his tax cuts.
Degrade the service of a website, and maybe it loads a little funny; degrade the services of a government and people die.
Going in crazy like they are doing now, may serve the administration if they start having department do their own layoffs in a hurry, because they know otherwise it will be done for then.
Because good governance is not the goal.
This is basically 0 based budgeting, where you get rid of everything and then only add back what you deem to be absolutely necessary. I expect good results.
more guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I agree. Federal credential management and safekeeping is not particularly well crafted.
It's not about achieving results primarily, it's a public perception game. Trump and Musk are going for the perception of "they do what they say from day 1" - it doesn't matter if what they plan succeeds at all (and if it's struck down by judges, it's just additional fodder for "un-American judges!!!" propaganda), or if what they do actually has the outcome they promised.
The GQP voter base no longer cares about anything but the appearance of "winning", and it's aided by completely off-the-rockers media and influencers.
> [Step 2] Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn't delete enough.
He thinks this is a feature, not a bug. Is he wrong? I don't think so.
This has nothing to do with trimming waste and everything to do with replacing the government with loyalists from top to bottom. What comes after that isn't going to be pretty.
Twitter lost 84% of its revenue.
Do you want the USA GDP to shrink that much over the next few years?
And then we can stop and check - if he is still fine after it, then maybe we didn't trim enough.
It's easy to trim other people when you are completely insulated from the consequences.
Didn't facebook end up changing that?
There's some things you can't undo once they break.
their failure to see wider context, their failures to understand that massive chaotic fractal tier contexts interplay will forever be these people’s downfalls.
sisyphean masochists.
He's assuming everyone will grovel back to him and that this can be undone. That's the wrong part.
Layoffs will often cost you your best employees. Either because you laid them off, because they saw the signs and jumped before the layoffs, or because you end up overworking the post layoffs and they leave over the bad balance. You're never paying 10xer 10x the salary, so the attritiion is usually a matter of when, not if.
people aren't machines. They have their own interests and very few want to feel like they are one step away from being let go.
Doesn’t work in with people though. You will be deemed as unreliable.
Alliances will form without you as no one needs a partner that can leave you standing at any moment.
Running the company is the very opposite of running a country.
The feedback loop is weeks vs years/decades.
However this is people's livelihoods, mortgages, kids etc. being on the receiving end of it through no fault of your own must be awful.
Or maybe not.
When it comes to government, yes.
"Move fast and break things." /s
Then try to move fast to fix the things you just broke.
(Perhaps government tend to moves slowly for a reason: when a company breaks things customers can go to a competitor, when government breaks where can you go?)
I'm also not a fan of the fire and rehire method, either.
It does feel like more time should have been spent, from an outside agency, watching and deciding.
What they're doing now is an old trick, and I'm surprised more people don't tell them to screw off.
Which is why Congress employs an army of auditors, who audit and report their findings to them.
The difference is, they are largely non-partisan appointments, who are expected to actually do their job, instead of rubber-stamping propaganda pieces. Their work can be verified, and there are consequences to them engaging in fraud, and there's a chain of custody for the evidence they find.
Which is more than can be said for giving a bunch of politically-appointed teenagers read/write access to every single system in the government... Paired with a blanket immunity from prosecution.
It’s the same story again, except with even less competence and knowledge.
It’s incredible that half the voters in this country thought this guy was a good choice for our leader.
One could hope that at least some of the current cabinet will rise to the occasion.
With our supreme leader, many in 2016 thought he would rise to the occasion; perhaps behave like a statesman in foreign affairs, and to respect the office of the presidency. It did not happen then and will not happen now.
The worst part: the people who voted for him will never connect the dots with their own actions.
https://natural-resources.canada.ca/climate-change/medical-i...
As for nuclear missile programs in this case, I'm pretty positive that field will still have similar desirable high points. Reliability, understanding procedures, actually understanding procedures to know when/how/why scripts are broken in some cases, and having such socially toxic work environment that even an Amazon job feels like fresh air.
200 of the world's most experienced nuclear personnel are now unemployed. Yes, these people are the kind that get actively recruited by nation states.
I'll speak to my own experiences here though as the spouse.
The NNSA is, like, bonkers important. I'll just copy-paste wikipedia here:
"The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is ... responsible for safeguarding national security through the military application of nuclear science. NNSA maintains and enhances the safety, security, and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile; works to reduce the global danger from weapons of mass destruction; provides the United States Navy with safe and effective nuclear propulsion; and responds to nuclear and radiological emergencies in the United States and abroad."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Nuclear_Security_Admi...
The reason it took until 2000 to make them is tied up with the silver tsunami and congress. But suffice to say, we really really need them. A lot of their stuff is very classified, but the presentation that I was allowed to attend were quite eye opening. Most of the presentations are on things like blast resistance in microsceonds of a door or some z-pinch magnetic experiment. But there were are lot on the national security picture at the time too. The main concern is that the nukes are aging. Stuffing 1950's breadboards next to that much radiation for 50 years wasn't the plan, we were thinking of using them a bit more quickly than that. But now we have them and can't be sure if they'll work. There are a lot of other issues too, big ones, but I'll let the interested people here discover more on their own.
Here's a list of conferences that can get you going on where to find more: https://nssc.berkeley.edu/events-and-programs/nssc-conferenc...
Youtube also has a lot of them online too: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nnsa+conference
The general side I saw was in my spouse trying to be recruited by the NNSA to work for them after graduation. The silver tsunami is a big deal in DoD government. And the issue for us at the time was the very much lowered pay. One of the main sites was the square mile that is Livermore National Labs. But with a PhD in the right fields and the NNSA fellowship, my spouse could easily just go across the Dumbarton bridge for about 4x the pay and mostly just as good benefits (the retirement plans aren't quite as stellar, but only a little). So, this is where HN/tech and the NNSA merge: employee competition.
Now, I'm not surprised that they're reporting that a lot of the fired employees are not coming back. The big thing that they had going for them, personally, was 'the mission' and the quiet respect and admiration that the government and therefore the people of the US had for them and their sacrifices (classified work has a lot of sacrifice that is not seen, especially in nuclear work, much more so than beyond just pay).
That they were fired, likely by some random 20 something from DOGE (read: not a flag rank military officer (Admiral+) or an elected official of national office (Senator+)), without notice, last Thursday. Man, that hurt the ego a lot, and fundamentally altered the bargain that they had with the government and the US people in general (from what very little I knew of those people).
It is going to be very hard to get them all back to begin with, let alone for that same payscale and benefits schedule. That gap for 'fired with cause' is going to mess up the retirement in a way that is currently hard to fix (AFAIK). Many of the NNSA are just going to go get a better job, really.
And the US is going to be left behind in the nuclear arms race that is still very much going on.
Summary: Pardon my french, but, this is a big fuck up.
Offering 2x is like going to Thanksgiving dinner lovingly prepared by a relative and asking at the end how much they want paid. You know, to just square up. It couldn't have been more than $20 a head. The social contract has already been altered, and there will be a non-zero number of government employees looking to the private sector. The capable ones will likely leave on their own in the coming years.
2x is also likely less than the private sector is willing to pay. Try like 4x. It is this way for cyber jobs where we will see massive brain drain. The only way cyber compensation starts to get even is through contracting work, but even then it's less than private sector. Which shows the level of stupid this policy was.
People in these roles are not fungible. That is a big logical error. People who can pass a background check with a PhD in Nuclear engineering aren't being pumped out every few months. They can't go to a web developer boot camp. There is a multi-year lead time and scholarships designed to attract them to the public sector. Same for capable cybersecurity talent (my field).
This is also a warning shot to all those in the government that their jobs, no matter what they are covering, are not safe from the stupidity. And if the BS factor gets too high they will leave.
He cuts, removes and simplifies until it starts to hurt, and then slightly dials it back. He does this with rocket engines and staff.
Now he's doing it with government services and the US as a whole is doing it with its allies.
The problem with the latter is that you can't dial it back. Countries don't really like it when you threaten to annex them, disrupt their economies on a whim and negotiate about them behinds their backs.
Not only is the US no longer an ally of said countries, it's a hostile nation. 80 years of cooperation and trillions of dollars were wiped out in a single speech.
There’s a segment in one of his many Starship interviews with Tim Dodd the Everyday Astronaut, where he talks about simplifying the machine. He says you’ve got to cut and cut and cut some more until it’s radically simple. His rule of thumb is that if you’re not adding back 10% of the stuff you got rid of, you didn’t get rid of enough in the first place.
This might be fine for greenfield engineering projects, where there are no “Chesterton’s fences”, where there are not yet any other people or things depending on success, but it’s wholly inadequate for people problems or brownfield systems and processes. The fact Musk doesn’t understand this just suggests ignorance, and suggests that it’s not an idea he really understands at its core. To understand an idea truly, means to understand when it applies and when it doesn’t, and why.
Mao moved farm labor into factories using this logic, and then a apocalyptic famine followed. He tried to add back the people from factory back to the farms, and then discovered labor wasn't as elastic as he had thought.
Be careful before making big scary changes, especially before taking down carefully erected fences. You don't know why they were put up at the first place.
He knows what he's doing and has a plan. He's a very smart person.
So now, the question is which country will benefit from this the most. Russia or Saudi Arabia? Maybe Iran?
Many (most?) Americans don't seem to have ever learned how to think critically or question what authority figures tell them to believe.
On top of that, COVID was rough for lots and lots of people. Even though it started under Trump, he somehow managed to avoid blame for the government's missteps early on. Biden did what he could, but even an absolute perfect response would have caused a lot of strife for a lot of people, and his administration's response was definitely not perfect. In a way I think it's impressive how well Harris did; even had Biden decided not to run at all for a second term, it would have been an uphill battle for the incumbent party to stay in power after COVID.
Through the repetition of statements like: "illegals commit more crime," "illegals are eating your dogs," "Trump - Low prices, Kamala - High prices | 2024."
Those things are not true, but having no proof does not matter any more. You just need to "flood the zone."
They don't even attempt to hide this technique at all. This philosophy was openly confirmed by multiple people in the current administration, including the Vice President.
They literally do not have contact information after they deleted the .gov email addresses
Edit: and they cant "name their price" because unlike the private sector there is legally mandated pay scale. Which is just another reason why firing g-men to save money makes no sense
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/20/business/elon-musk-wealth...
Where will the money he purportedly saves in the bureaucracies go? Will houses be built for the Appalachian voters that were oh so important before the election?
Will it be use to subsidize another telemedicine scam for all-in podcast members, who are also on Megyn Kelly's show now?
All democracies need to switch to policy based voting and hide political parties behind them until after election results, humans are too tribal for anything else.
I really dont think America will recover from this and while the world will suffer as a result, I think in the long term, things will work out. There will be some major suffering but thats the way the world works. WW2 happened, a lot of suffering then peace. We had peace for too long, people forgot about suffering and now look at the world. Thanks America, you played yourself and are now bringing the rest of the world down with you. Rather than focusing on the right things, you are being played to argue with each other.
Homer jay simpson
742 Evergreen terrace, Springfield.
The only problem is I don’t know the state.
That would be rich in irony.
But who knows?
Why would they cite anonymous "media outlets" and not at least find some modicum of an official source to reference?
has anyone noticed the irony of firing a large number of agents at the IRS, whose literal job it is to find fraud (by auding tax returns) while claiming that some DOGE engineers need access to all of our tax data in order to "root out fraud".
(Not) coincidentally, Trump has repeatedly criticized the IRS for being too aggressive with its tax audits and is trying to overturn recent efforts to make the IRS more effective ;)
600 people were fired at the BPA, which handles power transmission for the Pacific Northwest, and 20% total are expected to lose their jobs.[0]
Keeping a grid running 24/7 is no small feat, there is no way that you're telling me that some DOGE engineers did a deep dive investigation in the past 2 weeks and decided that you can cut 20% of the staff responsible for power transmission / power lines without degrading either the service or safety.
But here's the kicker: the firings __won't reduce Federal spending__. Why? Because it's paid for by PNW users (in their energy bills).
So if no money is saved, why the firings? Are BPA workers siphoning off power or money for their own uses (corruption, fraud)? Maybe they're a bunch of "unqualified DEI hires"? Or taken over by "Marxists" who are doing what--making sure the power that comes to my home has a "leftist" frequency?
Obviously none of the above. So why? stupidity? Maybe. But I don't think it's stupidity. It's a calculated move to make it look like Trump/Elon are "doing something", appealing to their "burn it down" MAGA base, and also their own egos "we cut K employees! Look how great we are!" Elon thinks he's some sort of Alexander the Great cutting the Gordion Knot -- except in this case, the knot is actually holding up important stuff.
[0] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/mass-layoffs-at-bonneville... (more detailed info at oregonlive.com but paywalled)
Oh well. Enjoy your extra neutrons.
“US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago”
Did they just hand them a note saying "your fired" and escort them out of the building?
That's not a source. This is how the media just makes things up.
After admitting that 8% of the BBC media action budget came from US taxpayers which has now been cencelled, I wonder if they might have an ax to grid.