https://web.archive.org/web/20250220063358/https://www.theat...

https://archive.ph/Oa42l

At my first gig, I had "god" level access to our production database.

All I learned is that nobody should have this level of access unless it is some sort of temporary break glass situation. It is extremely dangerous and even experienced engineers can cause irreparable data loss or some other bad outcome. In our case, some engineer accidentally sent around 10,000 invoices to customers that shouldn't have gotten them.

There are far better data access patterns. In the case of US gov data, I don't see why the DOGE team would need anything more than a read replica to query. It could even be obfuscated in some way to protect citizens' identities.

The reality is that just because something has been “known for decades” doesn’t mean it has been addressed—especially in government bureaucracies, where inefficiency, inertia, and misaligned incentives often prevent meaningful reform. The persistence of outdated Social Security records, massive waste, and fraud is a perfect example of systemic dysfunction.

The president, as the chief executive, has broad authority to ensure that executive agencies function efficiently and effectively. While there are statutory and congressional constraints, the executive branch is ultimately responsible for implementing policies and running departments. If existing bureaucrats and Treasury officials have had access to this data for years but failed to act, then it is not only within the president’s prerogative but arguably his duty to bring in outside expertise—whether that be Musk or anyone else—to tackle waste and inefficiency.

I used to know Thomas during my first internship at Tesla. He's incredibly talented and a very kind, thoughtful guy. Keep up the goodwork Thomas, and ignore all these haters!

IMHO it's a bit of a shame that the productivity and efficiency gains that computing and cybernetics can bring to complex systems -- including government -- are always tainted and currently championed by anti-social elites that use them to break apart these collective machines.

Bureaucracies are a common good, and it should be in everyone's interest to apply state-of-the-art system engineering to make them as valuable as currently possible.

Perhaps the whole situation will finally convince the "I don't mind, I have nothing to hide" crowd about the need to scrutinize & limit as much as reasonably possible the personal data collection and retention by government and other entities. What good are rules, statutes, checks & balances, passwords and ACLs, if at some point someone you don't like or trust can just come in "as a root" and circumvent everything?

Another very negative long-term effect of all of this is how is the government going to recruit talent in the future? How many people, who have good prospects elsewhere, are going to work for a government agency -- usually a lower pay -- to put up with shit like this that doesn't even happen in industry? Would you? Sure there are sometimes mass layoffs that are handled pretty badly in industry, but not these Gestapo-like purge tactics that are clearly designed that way to instill fear and loyalty.

What should happen, and nobody is talking about this, is the USA is severely downgraded in its overall credit rating due to an unhinged and ongoing "fire, aim, ready" self-audit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_governme...

I find it wild that apparently there is no law onto which government workers can cling to refuse these requests. Is it all just based on conventions, goodwill and culture?

Setting politics aside for a moment, I find it fascinating that an audit of this scale is taking place within the government. Has there ever been a historical precedent where an external agency thoroughly reviewed all departments, published its findings for the public, and then based decisions on that analysis?

Is it really possible to root out governmental fraud using this approach? Fraud and theft exist at every level of government, but if not through a drastic measure like this, what else can be done? Relying on the status quo, the courts, and current processes hasn’t yielded substantial results—if it had, corruption wouldn’t persist.

Still, I can appreciate the creativity here. Sometimes it takes an outsider to think differently.

That said, I’m not naive enough to assume this is done entirely in good faith. The prevailing opinion—both in this community and the media—seems largely negative; I’ve yet to see a single positive headline. Even so, I find it intriguing.

So here’s my question: if you were in charge of addressing this problem, how would you tackle it differently?

So how is this any different from all the random employees who might have access to this data as part of their jobs? I would understand if there was this sort of scrutiny over every federal employee but as it stands I never know who has access to my data and if they can be trusted.

> ‘GOD MODE’ ACCESS TO GOVERNMENT DATA

Isn't this title clickbait?

There's an implication this is access to all government data - but the article doesn't explicitly state that but would lead you to believe that.

Given that I highly doubt all government data is in a single data store ... this is probably more like - GOGE has access to all GSA contracts (just one department) ... which is way less sensationalized (and appropriate for a government agency looking review contracts for efficiency)

Note: I'm not taking a political stance on this.

Because there are bigger fish to fry, I think people don’t appreciate the sheer cost of the system rebuild that will be required for security reasons later.

There’s absolutely no telling what additional software has been installed alongside existing, or which systems have been modified that would require audit. Purging this will be an absolute fucking nightmare to the American taxpayer.

This may turn into one of the most significant IT incidents in world history.

They will have had to impose this too.

The systems were built as separate systems to avoid (in a systems designers most fevered nightmares) a scenario like this.

The President is the head of the executive branch. If _anyone_ in the executive branch has access to information, it feels like the presidents office should too.

Why is this hard to accept?

"In the coming weeks, the team is expected to enter IT systems at the CDC and Federal Aviation Administration, and it already has done so at NASA"

If this isn't a glaring conflict of interest and corruption, I don't know what is.

Is there any reason this data shouldn't be public for everyone to read?

European here, giving my two cents on how this looks from the other side of the Atlantic. Heh

In my country there are laws stopping agencies doing a simple SQL join between two databases, even within the same government agency. There is a separate agency that handles the requests when agencies want to join information.

I am not an expert in the matter. But my gut is telling me that our experiences with east Germany and Stasi left a scar.

It can quickly turn into a real nightmare, and there for there are check and balances to make it slow. It’s deliberate inefficiency.

Government should have access to its own data. Justice and Congress should have the same access for oversight. The only problem I see is personal data about non-government people is being exposed to the entire planet.

They should have developed good security practices first and maybe spent more than a week reviewing a plan, and not having a double standard about their own activities.

I actually believe the executive branch should actually control the executive branch.

Is this the sort of data that could be useful in training LLMs or in terms of demographic data that would be valuable to advertisers?

Don’t they need security clearances to do this?

Move fast and break things meets root kernel access to government.

What could go wrong?

If you think this data won’t be used to disenfranchise and target democratic voters and give the GOP perpetual rule, I have a bridge to sell you.

“Oh no! Big mistake we cancelled hundreds of thousands of people from voting just before the election! It just happens to be 99.9% Democrats in swing states who all happen to be marked as dead in all government systems!”

It will be similar to Cambridge Analytica - with all the US Government’s data on one side, this is a massive advantage for targeting even without direct cheating.

Are they really just going to use this to train AI models, to build the 'GrokGovAI' models?

I hope they at least open the original documents to the American public, instead of posting on X. IMHO the public should have the rights to review and grill the officials about the spending.

Hear me out. Elon wants ultimate control over people’s lives and choices. Why he would want this is a psychological question about which we can only speculate. This is a change from (at least in appearance) his previous libertarian leanings. Whatever the case, this is the plan:

1) Acquire god mode access to government systems and citizens information (contacting, grants, spending, taxes, SSI benefits, you name it).

2) Add features to the Treasury Department’s software to allow him to, with extremely high granularity, control what payments go out. Friends can be rewarded, enemies punished. At first it will take the form of government entities he doesn’t like (USAID, for example). Next will be government opposition in our federal system, mostly blue cities and states with whom he disagrees. Next will be large private entities with whom he disagrees or are business competitors. Finally, individuals opposing him or the government will be personally targeted (for example, by not paying SSI benefits or paying out tax returns, perhaps extended to family members of the opposition, etc). These individual sanctions could extend to large geographic area he dislikes (all of coastal California, for example). He’s putting in place the tools to accomplish this right now as we speak.

3) Fire all bureaucratic opposition elements who might prevent this. Dress it up as a government efficiency measure if you like.

4) Eventually they will pressure large (and maybe small, too) private financial institutions to take part in this scheme (they may have already succeeded, see Citibank and NYC federal funding for migrants).

He’s putting in place the tools for total control by controlling access to money and resources. I don’t exactly know what he plans to do with them but I don’t want to find out given constant interaction with racists and neo nazis on his site.

"Do I file my taxes this year or not? I had to sit and debate that."

good question

> “We’re operating believing our systems are completely bugged,” one person told us.

Doesn't everyone at work, any $WORK, do this? I do! I even type my thoughts "aloud" so to speak in order to help anyone viewing my sessions on replay.

My two cents. God-mode privilege already existed before DOGE, someone else had (or still has) this privilege. Priority - How to limit power of such privilege in future.

Honestly when DOGE was first announced, I thought it will be a tiny department that does almost nothing and produces recommendations and PDFs that nobody reads. I didn't expect this.

A huge problem with this is that from all accounts, these engineers going in don't seem to have any accountability. No one knows who is in charge and making the decisions (presumably Musk though official statements say he's not the DOGE administrator, but no one knows who is), they come into offices like an FBI raid demanding access but won't give reasons, say who is in charge, what they are doing, or even their names.[0] Its much worse than an FBI raid, and reminiscent of Gestapo tactics.

So even if DOGE is benign (and I don't think they are, but lets assume for a moment), if something goes wrong, who is to blame? Where is the transparency they are expecting of government agencies?

Would you trust an outside team like that, say some brash McKinsley team of "experts", to come in and do whatever they want with your systems? What company would allow that?

Also turns out that they're making up shit. $8 billion "saved" was actually $8 million because they didn't do their homework.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/02/doge-mu...

DOGE is a joke

Well, it is a government agency tasked with audits. Why shouldn't it have root access?

Imagine: if you dunk on Elon on Twitter now he could get mad and post your tax return in the replies

Putting aside the whole idea that Elon "bought" his way into this position, it's crazy this is the path that Trump is taking. He has a house and a senate that would likely happily cut all these programs, and it could be done legally and without all this mess. Why let Elon run roughshod over the government?

The goal is to reduce government spending by $2 Trillion in 4 years. If you want to see how this is going: https://polymarket.com/doge

i hope they try to use cjis data bc it's taken me 6 months to build a system that is technically compliant and it still doesn't fully pass. they definitely will fail the data security policy requirements.

Federal level government is not a startup

Breaking things will destroy lives if not literally kill people

If it was this "easy" someone would have made a proposal years ago even if it was turned down

And Congress, not ANY President controls spending

We do not elect Kings in this country, there was an entire very brutal war to make it that way

This data is going to leak if it's not copied already into insecure sources and every foreign adversary is going to have it

Cannot be undone

And there should be investigations and prosecutions for this to prevent it ever happening again by ANY President

Isn't this the idea of an audit ?...

Why is this a bad thing if their job is to audit budget and spending? The article also does not go into technical details on what this supposed god mode actually is.

The difference between DOGE and previous overreaches of power like the Department of Homeland Security is the attack on the truth.

What do I mean by that? Well, during the previous political era (loosely 9/11 through the COVID-19 pandemic), when intellectuals spoke truth to power, power listened.

So people like us could voice our opinions on constitutionality, historical precedent, etc, and eventually our points made their way up through the news cycle and someone in a position of power would validate our concerns.

Whereas today, people like Elon Musk belittle academic arguments as nonconstructive because they haven't made us money and we aren't rich. So obviously we're wrong.

This wasn't always the case. Some billionaires could be very stubborn, but at their core, they still held themselves to a higher standard, a geek ethos. It mattered what academics thought.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I side with Bill Gates on this.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/27/bill-gates-e...

Which cloud provider is DOGE using?

Trump/Musk are using "corruption/fraud" as a lie to remake the government in their image (or Project2025's image), in the same way that Bush used WMDs as a lie to invade Iraq.

Where's the evidence of widespread corruption? If there really was corruption and fraud, then we'd be hearing of people being investigated and/or charged with breaking the law, not randomly fired or fired for ideological/loyalty/retribution reasons.

If you want accountability someone needs to have root access. If you don't want accountability, you are a politician getting kickbacks through obfuscation.

  Why not just say they have root access?  'god mode' is a ridiculous expression and just obscures the truth.

  I get that some people need information dumbed down but this is pathetic.

This reminds me of that scene in Don't Look Up where the planet puts all of their hopes in an eclectic oligarch's dumb plan to blow up the asteroid about to obliterate the planet, and it fails miserably. There is no chance any of this bodes well for many people not directly standing to profit directly from this pillaging of the federal government, and I'm not sure there is a way to recover from whatever is being done here. GG, I guess.

People did not vote to give Elon Musk absolute, unaccountable access to the most sensitive machineries of government.

They've fired and hobbled all of the inspectors general and parties that are supposed to monitor and hold them accountable. This is nothing short of a security nightmare and insider threat of the highest degree.

Surely it's 'dog mode'

I think over half of this article is wildly speculative hyperbole. "Here is a list of things we can imagine that DOGE might do with this data: 1. Invent super solider zombies. 2. Blackmail you (you specifically are at risk here) 3. Sell all the data to China who will work with Israel and Mexico to conquer America

You should be extremely worried! Run in Fear of what might come to pass!" because some guy filled out a request to have admin access to some government data stores. Ridiculous. Between United, BCBS, and existing Chinese infiltrations into OPM and telcos your data is already compromised by real / confirmed bad actors. This is disappointing click bait from the Atlantic and their editors should be ashamed of its publication.

> No good reason or case can be made for one person or entity to have this scope of access to this many government agencies containing this much sensitive information.

The president should obviously have this level of access.

They're only listed source is an employee of USAID.

I have no reason to believe anything in this article.

It will all land in Moscow. Or Beijing. Have fun.

this is not good

I honestly have not a single idea why there wasn't this type of department before monitoring and auditing everything.

I think I have a hunch what Trump is going to do next.

He's going to fill these fired probationary workers with new loyal probationary workers hand picked by him.

He will then make these new probationary workers in charge of the agency.

If they don't do what he wants, they can be fired at will.

giving DOGE sudo is a whole article?

DOGE = EGOD = EGO/GOD

Musk would have liked to be the US president but can’t because he’s South African.

So he conned the stupidest but most powerful man alive into letting him be acting president.

Just imagine one second if Poutine really have a file on Trump and this is the ultimate holdup to give Russia access to all US systems...

Having access to the data scares me less than the utter ineptitude demonstrated in presenting “findings”. Findings in quotes because if I used that level of analytical rigour I’d be instantly fired, probably out of a cannon into the sun.

The last time this topic came up, I manually and then with AI analyzed 13 articles talking about 'read/write' access - and all of it was 2nd or 3rd party info from anonymous sources.

Reading this article it appears on the surface to be a little more conclusive... but once you peel back ther layers, we are back to square one. There are many red flags still that make me question the reliability of this:

the senior USAID source said. “What do you do with this information? I had to ask myself, Do I file my taxes this year or not? I had to sit and debate that.”

Ok this is kind of silly - assuming they are being fully honest and forthright, then their account information would already be 'compromised' unless they change banks yearly which seems.. unlikely.

So why wasn't their question "Should I close the account I used for tax refunds in the past? Should I try to create an insulated account instead" -- rather instead, they subtly implant the idea that maybe they should do something illegal in response to this supposed breach. (not file taxes, like them or not - not interested in sovereign citizen arguments btw).

So this right out of the gate feels like FUD by virtue of that alone... and if you are cynical enough you could probably argue this is propaganda meant to cause well-meaning citizens to break the law out of fear, which is deplorable.

"Over the past few days, we’ve talked with civil servants working for numerous agencies, all of whom requested anonymity because they fear what will happen if they lose their job—not just to themselves, but to the functioning of the federal government."

Ok so it's all anonymous sources again - everyone is up in arms and there isn't even clarity in this article if the anonymous sources are first party, second party, third party, or what. Previous FUD campaigns at least made that clear, but I'll try to pick this one apart as well. Additionaly, they are implying that somehow not being anonymous may jeopardize the entire functioning of the federal govt... excuse me, what??

I did the same AI analysis using CoPilot as I did on previous articles, and this is what it came up with breaking down the 'sources':

Anonymous Source: Type: Anonymous Details: The article cites an anonymous source described as a “civil servants” who provides insights into the Doge God Mode Access incident.

NOTE (from me not CoPilot): This is entirely irrelevant, they are presenting a 'nightmare' situation a security researcher and asking their opinion of it. This does not mean the scenario is happening, and does not support the thesis.

Hypothetical Scenarios: Type: Hypothetical Details: The article includes hypothetical scenarios, such as the one about NASA’s thermal-protection or encryption technologies, to illustrate potential risks and vulnerabilities.

NOTE (from me not CoPilot): I think we can all agree hypotheticals are pointless if you haven't reliably established baseline 'facts' the support the hypothetical - so far there is a running trend, as it's all based on hypothetical fear mongering

That's it - that's the meat of this article.

The articles is also riddles with other clues that this is a slanted report like: "One experienced government information-security contractor offered a blunt response to the God-mode situation at USAID: “That sounds like our worst fears come true.”" -- ok but he clearly has no knowledge, so describing a worst fear and then going 'omg that soudds bad' is pointless..

People really need to step up their media literacy skills if they want to get through the next four years without having an aneurhysim -- and this to me just says that the work DOGE is doing is probably threatening the pocket books of many 'important people'.

Hey speaking of important people, who funds The Atlantic anyway...

If they have the ability to change data, then absolutely none of their claims can be trusted. Neither Musk nor his A-team of hackers have demonstrated any integrity through their career - contrary to HN guidelines, the default position is to assume the worst from them.

Think about it once they begin putting the opposition on show trials.

What is the point of all of this? Reducing federal income taxes? It seems to me that these people are pushing a rope if that's the goal.

For example, USAID is 1% of federal spending, but buys the US a disproportionate amount of soft power and good will for that investment.

Also, why 20-year olds? You'd think a person as resourced as Musk would have access to more capable people. When I was 20 years old I didn't know a thing about the Federal government or all the ways it benefits Americans.

I don't see DOGE solving an actual problem, and even if it did, this is a horribly incompetent way to go about it.

Here is my prediction...I know nobody asked for it :-) But they are only fun if you make them before the events...A massive, unpriced risk looms over financial markets... Its scale defies prediction.

The current administration’s safeguards are faltering, running like a government still in FSD beta. With U.S. debt dismissed as “just debt,” inflationary tariffs in play, and an emergency Fed rate hike imminent, shockwaves are inevitable.

Deficit panic may soon lead to manipulated figures and a narrative bent to suit unstable agendas. The bond market’s credibility will collapse, making the Liz Truss debacle seem trivial compared to the turmoil expected over the next two years.

Even the most sophisticated hedge funds and quants can’t quantify an administration gone off the rails... But just look at the current price of gold...

The narrative already started: "Trump says US may have less debt than thought because of fraud - Trump says some Treasury payments might 'not count'" - https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/trump-says-us-might-have-...

"The World’s Most Important Market Sends a Warning" - https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-02-18/the-wo...

Related to a comment on a now-flagged subthread: can anyone who believes that DOGE is uncovering fraud please post a reliable reference that gives a specific example of fraud uncovered by DOGE? To be clear, this should be a third-party analysis of some credibility, not DOGE's or Musk's twitter feed or "receipts" website which shows cancelled contracts with no clear link to fraudulent activity.

Does anyone else see the eery comparison between the name DOGE (department of government efficiency) and the things Orwell warned about in 1984? It seems very prescient, but I know this isn't the first time in history that regimes have played this game.

What's Elon's beef with USAID? I would think he would go after something like food stamps first owing to his libertarian ethos. Maybe he sees USAID as a completely benevolent handout and a waste of money? I cannot begin to understand why.

[flagged]

Doooooooooooooooooooooooom

Slanted political article. Flagged.

Nice :)

This should be very illegal. It’s a huge security risk to let Federal government employees access Federal government systems.

This is great news for anyone paying taxes in the US. People really underestimate how incompetent the federal work force really is. Not everyone of course. But I contracted with the DOD for six years and you legit could have fired half the federal employees. They didnt do shit all day and it sounds like it's gotten way worse since COVID allowed these people to work from home.

I seriously want a real, non-politically based argument on why we shouldnt be trying to 1. find fraud 2. fire 10-20% of these people immediately

Imagine what we can do in 2025 by applying LLM search to all of the federal paperwork!

The moment they had physical access to the system, it was necessary to assume this. It's called an 'evil maid' attack, and of all communities this one should have been blowing the whistle. Loudly, repeatedly, and in open defiance of people who argue that this is a storm in a teacup, a non issue, just another MOT, etc.

Especially when you look at the background of the Doge team - 'ex' hackers, 'security specialists', full-on racists...

Perhaps surprisingly, the CEO of YC and Paul Graham have been publicly supportive of the DOGE team, despite all the racism and existential threat. I don't know if that's from fear, or greed, but there are strong arguments for both.

Some of the stories about this topic which have been flagged here can be seen in my favorites. I'd be interested in collecting more examples, if you know of any missing.

> In the coming weeks, the team is expected to enter IT systems at the CDC and Federal Aviation Administration, and it already has done so at NASA, according to sources we’ve spoken with at each of those agencies. At least one DOGE ally appears to be working to open back doors into systems used throughout the federal government.

If discussing this openly and often this isn't possible due to very simple flag abuse, then what is this community actually even worth.

DOGE administrator is ... Grok.

call me Naive and paint me a fool, but I do think this is going to go down as Musk's lifetime achievement. Think about it, he has money, he has arguably built great companies, and now, for his masterpiece, he can, and I honestly believe he will.....CURE DEMOCRACY. I want him to succeed, because the next logical giant is CAPITALISM, and that one, in the collective interest of humanity, and planetary survival, needs FIXING!! Almost every system created by man, eventually turns corrupt, because for some reason we interfere, we want to tip the balance, instead of give free will and life to the things we create. The ecology of a system should be self-regulating, that's how NATURE operates.

Is this more access than 19-year-old summer interns in the various agencies get (to their given agency)?

Because it's not a foregone conclusion that it is.

At least not based on "according to an employee in senior leadership at USAID".

The comments here seem mostly against DOGE, but I have seen the waste in these organizations firsthand, and we all pay for it. Musk hopes to cut spending by 10%, but that is only because he is limited in what he can do. A Twitter-style cleanup would at least reduce it by 50%, but it is not feasible. Know that those 10% or 50% directly map to a percentage of your income and lifestyle directly (higher taxes) or indirectly (higher inflation).

[flagged]

I can understand feeling wary because someone may be watching your work, but conceivably this was always the case? I know it’s uncomfortable having this agency with no oversight gaining access to systems within the government, but it’s got to be huge right? I’m sure Elon’s tapped some smart fellas to be bulls in this china shop, but there’s no way they can put an eye on every single piece of information that flies through all of the systems of the federal government. You’d need a huge staff, tools to be built, never mind trying to solidify all those interfaces.

It seems more likely that they’ll gain access to all these systems, be completely overwhelmed about what to do, and then do small things that wouldn’t actually have an impact but would gain headlines, and then call it a day.