HN can stay out of politics just fine for the most part. If a political topic comes into tech we can talk about it then, and stay out of other crap that insufferable people drag in because "there's no such thing as being neutral" or whatever.
Open source means "you can see the code for what you run". Except... how do you know that your executables were actually built from that code? You either trust your distro, or you build it yourself, which can be a hassle.
Now that the build is reproducible, you don't need to trust your distro alone. It's always exactly the same binary, which means it'll have one correct sha256sum. You can have 10 other trusted entities build the same binary with the same code and publish a signature of that sha256sum, confirming they got the same thing. You can check all ten of those. The likelihood that 10 different entities are colluding to lie to you is a lot lower than just your distro lying to you.
Based on your first sentence I thought you were going to talk about the government shutting down church services, which was a talking point on the other side. I think in either case, the first amendment would allow for the government to impose safety restrictions. (Could you, for example, use the first amendment to stop your church from getting shut down due to building code violations?)
It's kind of funny, when execs talk about employees feeling entitled to working remotely, I think that's a fair thing to criticize. We all earn our salaries and our perks, the market determines how much companies will put up with remote work (and how many employees even want it).
But since 2020, the market has swayed a lot in favor of remote work compared to before (though it seems to sway back and forth since then). And the way some of these execs talk about it, they say we're all spoiled and we need to put back into the offices where we belong. They're the ones with the self entitled attitude, not respecting the market.
I think if your argument is that they're making hasty decisions, you've provided good evidence for that. But the remainder of the sentence you quoted was:
> but an intentional plan to visit each government department and giving it a stab wound to let it bleed out and die over the course of the next year or two.
If your argument is that they're trying to make agencies die, and you're using the above as evidence for this, then you'd have to convince me that they want the government to lose control of nuclear bombs or bird flu.
> If your argument is that they're trying to make agencies die, and you're using the above as evidence for this, then you'd have to convince me that they want the government to lose control of nuclear bombs or bird flu.
I don't necessarily disagree, but unless they're literally ready to jump to anarcho-capitalism in the next four years I don't think they're trying to let the nuclear bombs go unattended. I think the specific examples you gave aren't your best examples to this point. If anything it's a counter-argument.
There are US citizens, former employees of USAID, who have been abandoned after trying to stop a cholera outbreak in the middle of a civil war in South Sudan.
With their families.
Their security detail: fired.
Their logistics team: fired.
No water, no power, no fuel.
Look: sufficiently advanced incompetence and/or carelessness is equivalent to malice.
I don’t care if you WANT to attend to the nuclear weapons, if you are so unserious, or understaffed, or incompetent, or distracted, or whatever to fail to actually do the thing.
I think I did a poor job of articulating my point. My point is that they've spoken their intent to smash the bureaucratic state. Their intent is not to dismantle 100% of the government, including the military and the nuclear bombs. So I don't think the nuclear bombs incident is a great example of them enacting their intent. Unless you actually think they want to do that, but then that's a much different claim you're backing up.
And again, I'm responding to another post (two, actually) about intent. If you have an issue with it, take it up with them. I acknowledge your point as fair, but a separate point.
Do not worry about world-ending neglect towards the staff responsible for the maintenance and security of our nuclear arsenal, their intent was only for a smaller government!
I don't know what's going on with HN right now, there usually is a lot more reading comprehension and level headed conversation, even on controversial topics.
It's not me minimizing a series of catastrophic events because in my great wisdom I have perfectly ascertained the intentions of an unpredictable administration, it's reading comprehension.
Sufficient active disregard for consequences is equivalent to actively seeking said consequences.
If someone consistently drives extremely recklessly, refuses to service their brakes, allows their tires to become completely tread worn, removes their mirrors, etc. etc.
What could one reasonably infer about their desire to get into a car crash?
Would loud and repeated claims of a desire to drive safely convince you? Moreover, would you consider such claims to be in good faith, especially if said reckless behavior continues?
Besides, the GOP has said time and time again: let’s make the government so small we can drown it in the bathtub.
What private sector entity would find it profitable, or even be able to, control the bird flu or manage the nuclear arsenal.
Much less, do you want there to be a profit motive in those places?
"Yes, your honour, I did shoot him point blank in the chest. But you can't use that fact as evidence that I wanted to kill him, that's just evidence of how he died."
Murder, manslaughter, intent, accident, purpose, neglect. We have many words that try to put a degree of malice on the act of taking a life, but the life is still gone.
At some point, you need to draw a line in the sand and say "They're going where I can't follow.". Right now, it seems like you're drawing the line right after they come out and tell the world that they specifically intend to burn America to the ground and auction off the remains for their personal profit. Where you draw your line is your own personal choice, but it's worth thinking about ahead of time.
What is your model of this group of people behind DOGE? If it's a group of radical right wingers with libertarian leaning who want to smash the bureaucratic state, that's probably accurate and most people (even supporters) can get behind that characterization. Do you think this group of people, ushered in by Donald John Trump, want to dismantle the military? If not, then why would they purposely try to lose control of the nukes? There probably exist some radical libertarians (or even left-wing anarchists) who would actually advocate for let's say decommissioning the nukes, but I think it's pretty clear that that's not who's in office.
What I see is a ham-fisted approach to slashing the Department of Energy. That's the actual goal. Plenty of anti-Trump outlets report it that way. The idea that they actually want the nuclear weapons to lapse is a pretty bold implication, assuming I'm not misunderstanding the argument.
I don't think there is one unified plan to destroy the federal government; however, many influential people in the current administration are motivated to destroy particular parts of the federal government and will not get in each other's way. I believe the result of this is that the current administration will attempt to destroy the union (inclusive OR) of all the agencies that influential individuals within the administration want to destroy.
Here's a quote from the conservative political operative and self-described Christian Nationalist Russ Vought, who is both the current and former head of the Office of Management and Budget under Trump:
“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can't do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so. We want to put them in trauma.” [1]
This is a visceral and radical statement which has gotten some airtime on the news recently. However, it's interesting to note that Project 2025, which Vought helped lead and authored key sections of, does not advocate for the dismantling of USAID, rather recommending that its mission be narrowly aligned to national security goals[2]. In 2025, however, Elon Musk wanted USAID shuttered, and Vought was happy to oblige in his position as "the nerve center of the federal budget."
However, Project 2025 advocates for eliminating or defunding the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Education, EPA, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and other government agencies. It's likely that these will also come under fire.
Finally (and this is my opinion), I believe it is impossible to understand this current administration's policy agenda without at least a surface level understanding of the writing of Curtis Yarvin, a software developer and reactionary political blogger. One this topic, Yarvin says the following:
“What is government? A government is just a corporation which owns a country. Nothing more, nothing less. It so happens that our sovereign corporation is very poorly managed and there’s a very simple way to replace that, which is what we do to all corporations that have failed. We simply delete them.”
Could you imagine any Project 2025 type wanting the government to disband the military? I imagine not. So why would they want to lose control of the nukes? I think in the case of the nukes it was just a ham-fisted attempt to downsize the Department of Energy. To that point, last I heard they were scrambling to re-hire those people.
Curtis Yarvin isn't a libertarian (anymore), he's a monarchist. I also don't think he would advocate for the government to lose control of the nukes.
I think the DoE thing was a mistake. Kind of frightening that nobody in the chain of execution for that decision knew what the DoE actually does, but I don't think that was intentional.
Okay cool. Well maybe I misinterpreted, but it sounded like the person I was responding to in my initial post was implying that it was on purpose. Or at very least, they would have to imply that it was on purpose for their argument to make sense. That was my point. Perhaps I haven't been clear.
I think the person I responded to did insinuate that, and I think that the evidence they provided doesn't support their premise.
I am making the argument that the current administration is trying to make government agencies die, but that it isn't one centrally orchestrated conspiracy. I am using different evidence than the parent comment to make that argument.
More importantly, the purpose of my original comment is to inform readers of the thread on highly influential second-tier actors (Russ Vought is well-known, but he's not Elon Musk) and help foster a more nuanced discussion of the current administration, its motivations, and its actions.
Yeah. Remember when Mitt Romney planned a speech promising to abolish the DoE, forgot which agency when giving the speech, and then got put in charge of the DoE? I imagine this is the sequel.
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