14 state attorney generals are now suing Trump, Musk, and the DOGE organization arguing DOGE was not formally enacted by Congress and Musk does not have the constitutional power to slash the Federal budget or layoff federal employees.
File under the category of Oops, there he goes (again)
A small agency in the Department of Energy was all but closed down last week. It was the National Nuclear Security Agency. Musk and company did not know what it did, so why not shut it down? No one would notice.
No one noticed until Friday morning.
Turns out this small, little agency guards the national nuclear stockpile. Yes, the nuclear weapons of the United States when they are not in the hands of the US military on bombers or on missiles.
Who would have thought a civilian agency would be in charge of the security of the nuclear stockpile? It is rather genius in that the military would have to go through a civilian agency to obtain the nuclear weapons.
But Musk and his DOGE boys (are there women in the group too?) are not too bright.
File under the category of Oops, there he goes (again)
A small agency in the Department of Energy was all but closed down last week. It was the National Nuclear Security Agency. Musk and company did not know what it did, so why not shut it down? No one would notice.
No one noticed until Friday morning.
Turns out this small, little agency guards the national nuclear stockpile. Yes, the nuclear weapons of the United States when they are not in the hands of the US military on bombers or on missiles.
Who would have thought a civilian agency would be in charge of the security of the nuclear stockpile? It is rather genius in that the military would have to go through a civilian agency to obtain the nuclear weapons.
But Musk and his DOGE boys (are there women in the group too?) are not too bright.
Who would have thought a civilian agency would be in charge of the security of the nuclear stockpile? It is rather genius in that the military would have to go through a civilian agency to obtain the nuclear weapons.
It's how the US nuclear arsenal has (almost) always been organised. In 1947 the entire US nuclear program - including all the laboratories and facilities from the Manhattan Project, research material and the (at that time) small number of bombs was passed into the control of the Atomic Energy Commission, by Act of Congress. When the Department of Energy was formed in the late 70s, the work of the AEC moved into that structure.
Not only did that put nuclear research, for both weapons development and power generation, into civilian hands but also the bombs themselves. Well into the 1950s everytime a US bomber was loaded with a nuclear bomb there was an AEC hand over, though as the Cold War got more heated that formal hand over of the bombs was less apparent with bombers constantly airborne and later missiles and submarines permanently armed. But, it still required a civilian agency to approve the arming of nuclear weapons, preventing any military officer from acting independently of Congressionally appointed civil oversight - all the way up to Commander in Chief. The NNSA, as successor to the AEC, still has that role of a civil agency acting on behalf of Congress as a check on military power to use nuclear weapons.
Incidentally, the USSR also had a system to check military power, with political officers who had to approve the use of nuclear weapons based on their own orders from political leaders in Moscow. The precise way that was organised was different, but the intent was still the same - to prevent rogue military commanders from initiating a nuclear attack without approval of the civilian government. That, to me, seems like an important control. And, if the weakening of the NNSA makes it easier for the Commander in Chief to by-pass civil checks on the use of nuclear weapons then that's something that's deeply disturbing.
And, if the weakening of the NNSA makes it easier for the Commander in Chief to by-pass civil checks on the use of nuclear weapons then that's something that's deeply disturbing.
Enough to make me hope that it was in fact a stupid error by the Musk team. Any element of deliberation in this would be frightening.
Incidentally, the USSR also had a system to check military power, with political officers who had to approve the use of nuclear weapons based on their own orders from political leaders in Moscow. The precise way that was organised was different, but the intent was still the same - to prevent rogue military commanders from initiating a nuclear attack without approval of the civilian government. That, to me, seems like an important control. And, if the weakening of the NNSA makes it easier for the Commander in Chief to by-pass civil checks on the use of nuclear weapons then that's something that's deeply disturbing.
It should be noted that this was a fairly radical break with most of military history. The assumption has usually been that a general (or admiral) at war had the implicit authority to use any of the weapons under his control at his own discretion. It is now recognized that nuclear weapons are different enough in scope and consequence that a higher level political authority should be the one authorizing use. We all grew up in a world where it was simply assumed that the president was the only one who could authorize the use of American nuclear weapons that it's almost axiomatic, rather than a fairly radical (though obviously necessary in hindsight) policy implemented by the Truman administration. Some historical details here.
Pardon the paywall. I do not understand the financial world of the stupidly rich, but if I read this correctly...
Certain anti-Musk fantasies are never going to come true. Tesla’s stock is not going to crash to the point that the world’s biggest banks seize Musk’s collateral and sell it, sending the stock tumbling even more and knocking Tesla out of the electric vehicle market. At no point in Musk’s life or the lives of his descendants five generations down the line will his family not overflow with wealth. But another thing that won’t happen is Musk ever finding peace. He is richer than any person has ever been, but he has trapped himself on a golden hamster wheel. If he stops running, he won’t be the sort of rich that he so clearly loves being.
...an awful lot of his wealth is bound up in being himself and having companies associated with his name.
And that says a lot about the presumed "rationality" of free markets. It seems like he's getting rich by leveraging what he has to get loans and then riding a wave of speculation continuously forward. All of this meaning that to keep his life going the way he wants it to, he can't stop. He's trapped on a treadmill where he has to keep doing...whatever the fuck it is he does that persuades people that he's a sound investment...without stopping or the whole Rube Goldberg machine of his empire will shatter into a far less lucrative thing...that is still probably more lucrative than most American cities will see in a fiscal decade.
Not sure what all to make of that. This is a lifestyle that's thankfully way beyond my ken. But it's kind of an interesting character sketch. Perhaps he's a man riding a demon. That's no excuse.
I see now that Musk and DOGE are Trump's weapons for establishing direct personal control over all branches of the executive without legal oversight... I feel stupid not to have realised this before...
Now Musk and his teenage nitwits are claiming they have found 150 year old recipients in Social Security. They have really trumped up the fraud charges.
Except SS automatically stops payments when the recipient is 115. It just assumes people have died by that time.
What really happen is Social Security is using a very old computer programing system of COBOL. Under that system, if Social Security did not know the birthdate of the applicant it would enter the COBOL code of 1875 on the birthdate field.
The DOGE people did not understand the code!! They thought they found either some very old people or someone is still drawing checks for their great grandparents several times over.
Not the case, young whippersnappers. I think you need your nappies changed.
Except for the bit about Social Security being run from what's essentially legacy code that is desperately in need of an upgrade. There's no need at all to make that up. Unless people are surprised it was coded in something as modern as COBOL, rather than still being run through punched cards.
Except for the bit about Social Security being run from what's essentially legacy code that is desperately in need of an upgrade. There's no need at all to make that up. Unless people are surprised it was coded in something as modern as COBOL, rather than still being run through punched cards.
COBOL code is sometimes kept because there is no pressing need to upgrade something that has worked reliably for years rather than lack of resources. Or rather the resources required to test and verify a more modern system far outweigh the likely benefits. Batch payment systems like Social Security are, I understand, a use case where COBOL is still a pretty good tool.
Except for the bit about Social Security being run from what's essentially legacy code that is desperately in need of an upgrade. There's no need at all to make that up. Unless people are surprised it was coded in something as modern as COBOL, rather than still being run through punched cards.
COBOL code is sometimes kept because there is no pressing need to upgrade something that has worked reliably for years rather than lack of resources. Or rather the resources required to test and verify a more modern system far outweigh the likely benefits.
Especially once you take into account the number of corner cases it would have been modified to cater for over the years.
Incidentally, the USSR also had a system to check military power, with political officers who had to approve the use of nuclear weapons based on their own orders from political leaders in Moscow. The precise way that was organised was different, but the intent was still the same - to prevent rogue military commanders from initiating a nuclear attack without approval of the civilian government. That, to me, seems like an important control. And, if the weakening of the NNSA makes it easier for the Commander in Chief to by-pass civil checks on the use of nuclear weapons then that's something that's deeply disturbing.
It should be noted that this was a fairly radical break with most of military history. The assumption has usually been that a general (or admiral) at war had the implicit authority to use any of the weapons under his control at his own discretion. It is now recognized that nuclear weapons are different enough in scope and consequence that a higher level political authority should be the one authorizing use. We all grew up in a world where it was simply assumed that the president was the only one who could authorize the use of American nuclear weapons that it's almost axiomatic, rather than a fairly radical (though obviously necessary in hindsight) policy implemented by the Truman administration. Some historical details here.
As a build on this, in the UK Tomahawk (non nuclear) cruise missiles are treated the same way, largely because we can’t afford hundreds of them, so for the UK they are strategic rather than tactical, and need govt approval for launch.
And, in fairness, COBOL is a superb language. I mean, not hugely flexible and so not suited for modern web systems, but as a back end language, it is incredibly good and reliable.
So I have no question about it still being used. I have lots of questions about the people who clearly have no idea about computer systems.
Could be because the Tesla Cybertruck is proving to be the vehicle from hell. It can't go off-road, it rusts, can't cope with snow, leaks, and is generally a *crock*.
Three minor points on the COBOL diversion.
1. The choice of a default value for a date is independent of the programming language, and is quite possibly still necessary in systems designed with the latest (and greatest?) programming methods.
2. COBOL code can be communicated to a computer via punched cards, but more modern methods are a lot easier to edit and check.
3. @Schroedingers Cat is quite right, it is rather good for certain backend tasks. The last database system I worked on before I left the Australian public service, had a library of COBOL routines for doing date arithmetic, as they had already been extensively tested in its predecessor systems, and ran faster than date calculations in the database’s native language.
Again, I'm now pretty sure that DOGE is not about making savings but rather about exercising arbitrary control over every branch of government.
It's that and an explicitly ideological purge. They're literally running keyword searches for things like "transition" or "green" and cancelling things based on that.
Yeah, but it's being sold to the public as a savings enterprise, so if it's not actually saving money, that's something that should be pointed out.
Problem is, everyone with a brain already knows that, and Trump voters won't believe you.*
Had an interaction with someone who used to attend our church the other day. She and her family left the Episcopal Church on one of the occasions where we affirmed same-sex relationships: I can't remember which particular action drove her away, but she moved to the local "Bible Church". She's a wealthy educated white woman, and a Trump supporter out of the standard "conservative Christian" mould. She is completely convinced that the Federal government is full of people that do no work, that firing a bunch of people is obviously sad for the people that get fired, but is necessary to eliminate waste, and that all the important work will still get done more efficiently. She is also under the impression that the economy has been getting gradually better since the Trump administration took over. It's magical thinking that is independent of evidence.
She won't hear facts - it's like arguing that natural selection exists with people who "don't believe in evolution". I can show you all the evidence that natural selection is a thing that happens. I can show you natural selection happening in real time in the lab. And then what I get back is "but I don't believe in Evolution".
That's not an argument - that's just a description of your particular vacuity. I'm not even asking you to accept evolution as the origin of the human species - just tell you about how over-use of antibiotics breeds antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria.
*there are a number of actual Trump voters who are coming out and saying things like "I wanted Trump to cut other stuff, but not my stuff. My stuff is important." The temptation to respond "so the leopard ate your face, huh?" is almost irresistible.
Yeah, but it's being sold to the public as a savings enterprise, so if it's not actually saving money, that's something that should be pointed out.
Problem is, everyone with a brain already knows that, and Trump voters won't believe you.*
Had an interaction with someone who used to attend our church the other day. She and her family left the Episcopal Church on one of the occasions where we affirmed same-sex relationships: I can't remember which particular action drove her away, but she moved to the local "Bible Church". She's a wealthy educated white woman, and a Trump supporter out of the standard "conservative Christian" mould. She is completely convinced that the Federal government is full of people that do no work, that firing a bunch of people is obviously sad for the people that get fired, but is necessary to eliminate waste, and that all the important work will still get done more efficiently.
One of the interesting statistics I've come across recently is that the federal civilian workforce has maintained a more or less* constant size since the Eisenhower administration, which is pretty amazing considering the U.S. has about twice the population and more than six times the GDP (in inflation adjusted dollars) as it did when Ike was president. The federal workforce is an exemplar of efficiency, but I guess you can't convince people of that.
Still, it's pretty indicative that the real goal in the recent layoffs isn't cost savings.
*There's a bump up every ten years for the census, after which workforce size returns to its previous level.
Yeah, but it's being sold to the public as a savings enterprise, so if it's not actually saving money, that's something that should be pointed out.
Problem is, everyone with a brain already knows that, and Trump voters won't believe you.*
Had an interaction with someone who used to attend our church the other day. She and her family left the Episcopal Church on one of the occasions where we affirmed same-sex relationships: I can't remember which particular action drove her away, but she moved to the local "Bible Church". She's a wealthy educated white woman, and a Trump supporter out of the standard "conservative Christian" mould. She is completely convinced that the Federal government is full of people that do no work, that firing a bunch of people is obviously sad for the people that get fired, but is necessary to eliminate waste, and that all the important work will still get done more efficiently. She is also under the impression that the economy has been getting gradually better since the Trump administration took over. It's magical thinking that is independent of evidence.
She won't hear facts - it's like arguing that natural selection exists with people who "don't believe in evolution". I can show you all the evidence that natural selection is a thing that happens. I can show you natural selection happening in real time in the lab. And then what I get back is "but I don't believe in Evolution".
That's not an argument - that's just a description of your particular vacuity. I'm not even asking you to accept evolution as the origin of the human species - just tell you about how over-use of antibiotics breeds antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria.
*there are a number of actual Trump voters who are coming out and saying things like "I wanted Trump to cut other stuff, but not my stuff. My stuff is important." The temptation to respond "so the leopard ate your face, huh?" is almost irresistible.
Federal employees told to justify jobs in email or Musk says they face dismissal
Who is going to read all the replies?
This is just posturing and bullying.
Based on another tweet that Musk sent out, in which he said that all you had to do was string a few words together coherently, it seems the likely purpose of this is to find "ghost employees", eg. dead people still getting paid, fake names being used to scam the payroll etc. The respondents were also asked to "cc" their managers, which seems logical.
What's more interesting is that both the FBI and the State Department, which are now run by Trump appointees, have asked their employees NOT to comply with Musk's request.
What is happening in the US at resent seems reminiscent of Hitler's Germany - numerous overlapping fiefdoms, set up to generate conflict, which can only be resolved by Der Fuhrer.
What is happening in the US at resent seems reminiscent of Hitler's Germany - numerous overlapping fiefdoms, set up to generate conflict, which can only be resolved by Der Fuhrer.
Yes, it does look as though the Muskrat is answerable (if that) only to his Orange Overlord.
Comments
More here
He has no immunity from jail time the way the President has. If he is found guilty could he go to prison?
It's not clear to me if this is a civil case or a criminal one.
The word "sued" implies civil.
That's what I thought, but I wasn't sure.
So, if that's the case, I would assume there's no prison time.
Unless Musk is so arrogant that he lies under oath and gets done for perjury, or pisses of a judge and gets locked up for contempt.
A small agency in the Department of Energy was all but closed down last week. It was the National Nuclear Security Agency. Musk and company did not know what it did, so why not shut it down? No one would notice.
No one noticed until Friday morning.
Turns out this small, little agency guards the national nuclear stockpile. Yes, the nuclear weapons of the United States when they are not in the hands of the US military on bombers or on missiles.
Who would have thought a civilian agency would be in charge of the security of the nuclear stockpile? It is rather genius in that the military would have to go through a civilian agency to obtain the nuclear weapons.
But Musk and his DOGE boys (are there women in the group too?) are not too bright.
Story here
Thank God, someone caught the mistake.
Only federal crimes can be pardoned by the president. He can't (legally) set aside civil judgements nor pardon state crimes.
They’re going to get us all killed, aren’t they?
Yeah, but having decided they needed to un-fire the workers, they've found out they don't have their contact information:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-administration-wants-un-fire-nuclear-safety-workers-cant-figure-rcna192345
Not only did that put nuclear research, for both weapons development and power generation, into civilian hands but also the bombs themselves. Well into the 1950s everytime a US bomber was loaded with a nuclear bomb there was an AEC hand over, though as the Cold War got more heated that formal hand over of the bombs was less apparent with bombers constantly airborne and later missiles and submarines permanently armed. But, it still required a civilian agency to approve the arming of nuclear weapons, preventing any military officer from acting independently of Congressionally appointed civil oversight - all the way up to Commander in Chief. The NNSA, as successor to the AEC, still has that role of a civil agency acting on behalf of Congress as a check on military power to use nuclear weapons.
Incidentally, the USSR also had a system to check military power, with political officers who had to approve the use of nuclear weapons based on their own orders from political leaders in Moscow. The precise way that was organised was different, but the intent was still the same - to prevent rogue military commanders from initiating a nuclear attack without approval of the civilian government. That, to me, seems like an important control. And, if the weakening of the NNSA makes it easier for the Commander in Chief to by-pass civil checks on the use of nuclear weapons then that's something that's deeply disturbing.
Enough to make me hope that it was in fact a stupid error by the Musk team. Any element of deliberation in this would be frightening.
https://fortune.com/2025/02/13/plans-buy-armored-teslas-vanish-state-department-procurement-list/
It should be noted that this was a fairly radical break with most of military history. The assumption has usually been that a general (or admiral) at war had the implicit authority to use any of the weapons under his control at his own discretion. It is now recognized that nuclear weapons are different enough in scope and consequence that a higher level political authority should be the one authorizing use. We all grew up in a world where it was simply assumed that the president was the only one who could authorize the use of American nuclear weapons that it's almost axiomatic, rather than a fairly radical (though obviously necessary in hindsight) policy implemented by the Truman administration. Some historical details here.
And that says a lot about the presumed "rationality" of free markets. It seems like he's getting rich by leveraging what he has to get loans and then riding a wave of speculation continuously forward. All of this meaning that to keep his life going the way he wants it to, he can't stop. He's trapped on a treadmill where he has to keep doing...whatever the fuck it is he does that persuades people that he's a sound investment...without stopping or the whole Rube Goldberg machine of his empire will shatter into a far less lucrative thing...that is still probably more lucrative than most American cities will see in a fiscal decade.
Not sure what all to make of that. This is a lifestyle that's thankfully way beyond my ken. But it's kind of an interesting character sketch. Perhaps he's a man riding a demon. That's no excuse.
Except SS automatically stops payments when the recipient is 115. It just assumes people have died by that time.
What really happen is Social Security is using a very old computer programing system of COBOL. Under that system, if Social Security did not know the birthdate of the applicant it would enter the COBOL code of 1875 on the birthdate field.
The DOGE people did not understand the code!! They thought they found either some very old people or someone is still drawing checks for their great grandparents several times over.
Not the case, young whippersnappers. I think you need your nappies changed.
https://kottke.org/25/02/150-year-olds-arent-collecting-social-security
COBOL code is sometimes kept because there is no pressing need to upgrade something that has worked reliably for years rather than lack of resources. Or rather the resources required to test and verify a more modern system far outweigh the likely benefits. Batch payment systems like Social Security are, I understand, a use case where COBOL is still a pretty good tool.
Especially once you take into account the number of corner cases it would have been modified to cater for over the years.
As a build on this, in the UK Tomahawk (non nuclear) cruise missiles are treated the same way, largely because we can’t afford hundreds of them, so for the UK they are strategic rather than tactical, and need govt approval for launch.
So I have no question about it still being used. I have lots of questions about the people who clearly have no idea about computer systems.
(If only I could remember how ….)
But seriously, Schroedinger’s Cat is right. An excellent high level language.
Could be because the Tesla Cybertruck is proving to be the vehicle from hell. It can't go off-road, it rusts, can't cope with snow, leaks, and is generally a *crock*.
1. The choice of a default value for a date is independent of the programming language, and is quite possibly still necessary in systems designed with the latest (and greatest?) programming methods.
2. COBOL code can be communicated to a computer via punched cards, but more modern methods are a lot easier to edit and check.
3. @Schroedingers Cat is quite right, it is rather good for certain backend tasks. The last database system I worked on before I left the Australian public service, had a library of COBOL routines for doing date arithmetic, as they had already been extensively tested in its predecessor systems, and ran faster than date calculations in the database’s native language.
Again, I'm now pretty sure that DOGE is not about making savings but rather about exercising arbitrary control over every branch of government.
It's that and an explicitly ideological purge. They're literally running keyword searches for things like "transition" or "green" and cancelling things based on that.
Yeah, but it's being sold to the public as a savings enterprise, so if it's not actually saving money, that's something that should be pointed out.
Problem is, everyone with a brain already knows that, and Trump voters won't believe you.*
Had an interaction with someone who used to attend our church the other day. She and her family left the Episcopal Church on one of the occasions where we affirmed same-sex relationships: I can't remember which particular action drove her away, but she moved to the local "Bible Church". She's a wealthy educated white woman, and a Trump supporter out of the standard "conservative Christian" mould. She is completely convinced that the Federal government is full of people that do no work, that firing a bunch of people is obviously sad for the people that get fired, but is necessary to eliminate waste, and that all the important work will still get done more efficiently. She is also under the impression that the economy has been getting gradually better since the Trump administration took over. It's magical thinking that is independent of evidence.
She won't hear facts - it's like arguing that natural selection exists with people who "don't believe in evolution". I can show you all the evidence that natural selection is a thing that happens. I can show you natural selection happening in real time in the lab. And then what I get back is "but I don't believe in Evolution".
That's not an argument - that's just a description of your particular vacuity. I'm not even asking you to accept evolution as the origin of the human species - just tell you about how over-use of antibiotics breeds antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria.
*there are a number of actual Trump voters who are coming out and saying things like "I wanted Trump to cut other stuff, but not my stuff. My stuff is important." The temptation to respond "so the leopard ate your face, huh?" is almost irresistible.
It received a big update in 1989 and has had minor updates as recent as 2023 so you may find things have moved on.
One of the interesting statistics I've come across recently is that the federal civilian workforce has maintained a more or less* constant size since the Eisenhower administration, which is pretty amazing considering the U.S. has about twice the population and more than six times the GDP (in inflation adjusted dollars) as it did when Ike was president. The federal workforce is an exemplar of efficiency, but I guess you can't convince people of that.
Still, it's pretty indicative that the real goal in the recent layoffs isn't cost savings.
*There's a bump up every ten years for the census, after which workforce size returns to its previous level.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/22/politics/elon-musk-employees-emails/index.html?utm_source=cnn_Breaking+News&utm_medium=email&bt_ee=B3UccXUXSaQYh17yItjj5Oy/ZZUGljcpmSzs5Yj7Px6gWOQ0Eudj+7NHPpLY2WvE&bt_ts=1740265788400
funny, that
Who is going to read all the replies?
This is just posturing and bullying.
Rewarding salespeople and bullshitters over the quietly competent but inarticulate? On brand.
Based on another tweet that Musk sent out, in which he said that all you had to do was string a few words together coherently, it seems the likely purpose of this is to find "ghost employees", eg. dead people still getting paid, fake names being used to scam the payroll etc. The respondents were also asked to "cc" their managers, which seems logical.
What's more interesting is that both the FBI and the State Department, which are now run by Trump appointees, have asked their employees NOT to comply with Musk's request.
I think that's the major bone of contention in all this.
Yes, it does look as though the Muskrat is answerable (if that) only to his Orange Overlord.
I'm assuming it'll be fed into some 'AI' based system by his team of racist interns.
Personnel review should stay within the agencies, IMHO.
Called it
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/federal-workers-agencies-push-back-elon-musks-email-ultimatum-rcna193439