Wired: The Young Men Who Are Helping Musk Evaluate Federal Programs and Personnel

22 Comments Post your own

1. Catherine King says:

   February 5, 2025 at 12:54 pm

   O, goodie . . . just what we always wanted–techno-teenagers having everyone’s personal data on their thumb drive. (Is there anything in “game theory” that covers that?) CBK

   LikeLike

   Reply
   • dianeravitch says:

     February 5, 2025 at 1:27 pm

     Imagine being told that you were evaluated and fired by a 19-year-old college dropout

     LikeLike

     Reply
     • Catherine King says:

       February 5, 2025 at 1:32 pm

       Diane: Do you remember “Mad Magazine”? l CBK

       LikeLike

     • dianeravitch says:

       February 5, 2025 at 3:22 pm

       Yes. I remember MAD.

       LikeLike

     • Catherine King says:

       February 5, 2025 at 1:37 pm

       Diane: I don’t have much of a bank account (though that doesn’t really matter), but I can imagine how people who are better financially established than I must be a bit hair-on-fire put off. To use a cliche, I think Musk has probably waked a sleeping bear . . . no, correct that to read “monster.” CBK

       LikeLike

2. H.A.Hurley says:

   February 5, 2025 at 1:49 pm

   ‘REVENGE OF THE NERDS’ – the title of a feature issue of an old Newsweek Magazine, possibly over 20 years ago. It was unreal and unbelievable to read the warnings. Yes, here we are! I tried to find that issue to read that long feature article again, without success. They are stealing all our most confidential and top secret data as we read this article. These barely out-of-high-school peach fuzzed teens have no conscience, no fear of the law, following their top criminals and sucking every data point out of our archives. STOP THE MADNESS! The Media is reporting it 24/7 and we’re watching 4 years of insanity in slow motion. Where is the law? Who will stop them? Trump & MAGAs put everything in place, covering every loop hole, to bring the US to its knees. Meanwhile, Trump is shopping for beachfront properties in Gaza, Greenland, Panama, remember N. Korea’s beaches……..anywhere he throws a dart on a world map. STOP HIM!

   LikeLike

   Reply
3. quikwrit says:

   February 5, 2025 at 2:43 pm

   THE GRUMPY OLD DEMOCRATS in Congress have been blown away by the impact of the high-tech mantra “Move fast and break things.”

   Just as the stodgy generals of the Allies at the start of WWII were blown away by the Nazi Blitzkrieg that broke all the conventional rules of war, the Democrats were run over by Musk’s high-tech rule-breaking minions.

   While Democratic Party “leaders” are still asking their grandkids how to download apps, the whiz kids of the Musk army ran right over them.

   It’s loooong past time for new DNC and congressional leaders who actually know what they are up against in today’s high-tech world…their grandkids can’t teach the current clueless “leaders” in time.

   LikeLike

   Reply
   • Lloyd Lofthouse says:

     February 5, 2025 at 5:26 pm

     It’s not over until it’s over — and even then, it’s not over.

     What happened in Vietnam for almost 20 years with US troops fighting phantoms who were farmers by day and fighter at night, WILL happen here. And before the U.S., it was the French.

     That’s why the U.S. also could never win in Afghanistan.

     And if dictator FELON47, the January 6, 2021, TRAITOR succeeds taking over the U.S. and invades Mexico, Panama, Canada and Greenland, the same thing will happen in those countries.

     History teaches us that.

     China invaded Vietnam a couple of thousand years ago and occupied that country for 1,000 years.

     Still, the armed resistance in Vietnam NEVER gave up, which is what caused the Chinese to leave a thousand years later.

     LikeLike

     Reply
4. Lloyd Lofthouse says:

   February 5, 2025 at 5:18 pm

   Biden warned the country about these oligarchs during his goodbye speech.

   LikeLike

   Reply
5. Yvonne says:

   February 5, 2025 at 7:20 pm

   So SICK!

   LikeLike

   Reply
6. Ralph P. Snitzel says:

   February 5, 2025 at 10:18 pm

   You need top notch data scientists like these guys to shift through the all of the information and make sense of it. You can no longer be productive analyzing one variable at a time (OVAT). The world belongs to those that can decode millions, if not billions of pieces of information at once.

   Why direct such animosity towards such talented individuals? It seems quite petty and vindicative. I thought this level of pettiness was below someone of your stature.

   LikeLike

   Reply
   • Catherine King says:

     February 5, 2025 at 10:21 pm

     Hello Ralph P. Snitzel: If I may, whose post is your note directed to? CBK

     LikeLike

     Reply
   • dianeravitch says:

     February 5, 2025 at 11:52 pm

     Ralph, you think a 19-year-old has the maturity, wisdom and experience to redesign our government in about an hour’s time? How can anyone decode billions of pieces of information at once and decide in an instant to eliminate the jobs of hundreds of thousands of people? You are spouting nonsense.

     LikeLike

     Reply
     • Catherine King says:

       February 6, 2025 at 12:54 am

       Diane: I’d like to add what is too obvious for most to even need to say: that when a person does not already understand the massive personal breach of the privacy of each and every American person, including oneself, by those who have no business in other people’s business–the utter arrogance and childlike stupidity of it–my suggestion would be for that person to take another good look at one’s personal developmental situation.

       If you don’t give a hoot about your own breach of trust and the integrity inherent in privacy, at least open yourself, Mr. Snitzel, to a carefulness of insult to others who are deeply offended by the whole mess–and especially that everyone’s privacy has been treated so blithely by people who are young enough to be my grandchildren.

       My head won’t stop shaking back and forth as I bite my lip enough to draw blood. If you don’t care about that, then look up the meaning of sociopath. CBK

       LikeLike

     • dianeravitch says:

       February 6, 2025 at 6:42 am

       CBK,

       I thought the trolls would go away once the election was over. But they are back, flaunting their ignorance. I looked at Twitter before I logged and saw that they were harassing AOC. They claimed that she had gotten $30 million in payoffs from USAID, which is the reason she is defending its existence. It couldn’t possibly be because AID feeds millions of starving people with American grain. It couldn’t be because AID provides life-saving medicines. Last night I saw farmers in Kansas speaking up for AID because it’s a major purchaser of their wheat.

       I support AID because I believe in its mission.

       LikeLike

     • Catherine King says:

       February 6, 2025 at 9:34 am

       Diane: My guess is that there probably IS some fraud–when is there not?

       But USAID is overwhelmingly a good thing. Monitor it better, Mr. Musk, but don’t just put it in the wood chipper.

       Musk’s infantile mind is in full display–and to use a Trumpian method of argument–he knows it about himself at some level. It’s so easy for children to make judgments–so much harder to fill them in with qualified understanding, before we make them. Once someone has made a judgment, one need not think anymore. How easy is that?

       Two things: First, Trump did is normal thing about taking over GAZA, saying that his victims are all on board already. Whereas I believe it was the Saudis who RIGHT AWAY wrote and published a letter denying what Trump said. They’re onto him in a way that many Americans seem not to be able to grasp–that TRUMP LIES about everything, and even speaks for his victims first, as if they all just love him and cannot wait to be taken over.

       Kudos to the Saudis for catching Trump right away in that rhetorical trap he always uses. He sets the idea early on so that all one can do is deny it and then it’s often too late. (The slimy bastard.)

       Secondly, I tuned in Fox “news” yesterday and I could not believe what I was hearing–all about the TERRIBLE FRAUD at USAID and that we were being taken to the cleaners–not a word about the good that they do. Well, it’s MAGA whose been taken to the cleaners. Laura Ingram, poor woman, is as far away from being a qualified journalist as anyone can get. CBK

       LikeLike

     • dianeravitch says:

       February 6, 2025 at 10:25 am

       I can’t watch FOX.

       Too many lies.

       LikeLike

     • Catherine King says:

       February 6, 2025 at 10:34 am

       Diane: I just tune into Fox just to see how bad it is–it’s puke-shit bad (and watching it draws out the most terrible language, analogies, and comparisons that I have ever heard or thought of). CBK

       LikeLike

     • dianeravitch says:

       February 6, 2025 at 11:29 am

       Fox already paid a fine of nearly $800 million for lying about Dominion Voting Machines

       They never change

       LikeLike

     • Catherine King says:

       February 6, 2025 at 11:55 am

       Diane: In a democracy, all politicians are supposed to be open to questioning and to criticism (though it should be responsible and is often not).

       Regardless, however, there is no room in a democracy for thin-skinned politicians.

       But then, that’s the problem: if Trump and Musk are so thin-skinned that they cannot stand to be criticized or worse, told: “NO” . . . then they take the ball home, aka: get rid of democracy instead of getting some spine or GOD FORBID, playing fair and doing some serious self-reflective work, or just taking it on the chin. How about this: GROW UP. CBK

       LikeLike

     • dianeravitch says:

       February 6, 2025 at 1:57 pm

       Trump and Musk are smug because they own the ball, the stadium, and the umpires.

       LikeLike

     • Catherine King says:

       February 6, 2025 at 3:14 pm

       Diane: And if you include half of Congress, the players not to mention MAGA. CBK

       LikeLike