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1. Embed this notice
   Dan Hon (danhon@dan.mastohon.com)'s status on Thursday, 06-Feb-2025 06:42:58 JST Dan Hon

   11/ Across government, most of the people who enforce & make these rules are unqualified and inexperienced.

   In a safe environment, they will admit that. Most of our knowledge has been hollowed out to the private sector. On purpose.

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     Dan Hon (danhon@dan.mastohon.com)'s status on Thursday, 06-Feb-2025 06:56:48 JST Dan Hon

     in reply to

     13/ Here's a reason why there are rules that make it hard to make changes to government technology:

     A system in California deals with submitting federal Medicaid reimbursement. When I worked with that system, it dealt with so much that if it broke for one day, *California would be insolvent*

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     Dan Hon (danhon@dan.mastohon.com)'s status on Thursday, 06-Feb-2025 06:56:54 JST Dan Hon

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     12/ One reason why rules make it so difficult to change government technology is because it's brittle.

     It *is* reliable, but until the technology is capable of rolling back a change, making changes absolutely comes with risk.

     Adrianna Tan repeated this.
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     Dan Hon (danhon@dan.mastohon.com)'s status on Thursday, 06-Feb-2025 07:00:25 JST Dan Hon

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     19/ In computer security, there's a class of problem called The Evil Housekeeper Problem*. Basically: once someone has physical access to a system, you are effectively screwed.

     * Used to be The Evil Maid Problem, but we're making DEI progress

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     Dan Hon (danhon@dan.mastohon.com)'s status on Thursday, 06-Feb-2025 07:00:26 JST Dan Hon

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     18/ "But Dan, what about security measures like, I don't know, some sort of 2FA or a PIV card, or multiple signoffs before deploying?"

     1) "You're fired unless you give me that 2FA code"
     2) "You're fired unless you give me your PIV"
     3) "You're fired unless you approve this deployment"

     Matthew Lyon and mark repeated this.
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     Dan Hon (danhon@dan.mastohon.com)'s status on Thursday, 06-Feb-2025 07:00:27 JST Dan Hon

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     17/ What's happening *is just like* a corny Bond supervillain plot. Get control of the computer and information systems and you can do *a lot*.

     You *can* stop payments. You *can* just turn things off. You *can* just break them, which practically can be the same as turning things off.

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     Dan Hon (danhon@dan.mastohon.com)'s status on Thursday, 06-Feb-2025 07:00:29 JST Dan Hon

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     16/ The DOGE team are absolutely behaving in a way that suggests they don't give a shit about ATOs.

     What's terrifying is that there is nobody stopping them.

     Which is why I said this comes down to *people making decisions* and *whether those people care about consequences*.

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     Dan Hon (danhon@dan.mastohon.com)'s status on Thursday, 06-Feb-2025 07:00:30 JST Dan Hon

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     15/ There is a thing in federal government called an ATO, an Authority to Operate: digital.gov/resources/an...

     You are not supposed to, uh, operate a software system without obtaining an ATO. Normally this is really hard! (In many cases it shouldn't be)

     Bill repeated this.
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     Dan Hon (danhon@dan.mastohon.com)'s status on Thursday, 06-Feb-2025 07:00:31 JST Dan Hon

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     14/ But the only effective, practical thing stopping changes is because there is a rule and you would get in trouble for breaking the rule.

     The person running DOGE and this administration don't care about getting in trouble for breaking those rules.

     *There is nothing to stop them*

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Thursday, 06-Feb-2025 07:18:24 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     @danhon so, I am not sure if trying to stop them is the same as stopping them, but it seems like some officials have tried:

     https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/02/usaid-officials-put-on-leave-musk-doge

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Thursday, 06-Feb-2025 07:20:23 JST Evan Prodromou

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     @danhon that sucks. That is a shit position to be put in.

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     Dan Hon (danhon@dan.mastohon.com)'s status on Thursday, 06-Feb-2025 07:20:32 JST Dan Hon

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     26/ I *cannot imagine* what it is like for the people in 18F and the US Digital Service right now and I don't hold them in judgment at all.

     Like, I'm sure I know the person who was instructed to and made the commits on websites to scrub anything to do with DEI, likely under threat.

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     Dan Hon (danhon@dan.mastohon.com)'s status on Thursday, 06-Feb-2025 07:20:42 JST Dan Hon

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     25/ So now you're a government contractor with a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and a whole bunch of people on staff working on it. Do you just... keep going? Knowing you won't get paid? Do you tell your staff to stop working? What if they've been told to stop already anyway?

     RMcNeely repeated this.
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     Dan Hon (danhon@dan.mastohon.com)'s status on Thursday, 06-Feb-2025 07:20:52 JST Dan Hon

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     24/ If you're, say, a major government contractor like Deloitte, or a consultancy that runs the system for tracking migrant unaccompanied minors for DHHS and the DHHS secretary or Musk says "we will not pay for this" and instructs the bureaucracy to do so, then that contractor won't get paid.

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     Dan Hon (danhon@dan.mastohon.com)'s status on Thursday, 06-Feb-2025 07:21:02 JST Dan Hon

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     23/ Like, "Musk doesn't pay for things" isn't up for debate. There's ample evidence. "Trump doesn't pay for things" isn't up for debate either. These are both facts.

     *They do whatever they want*

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     Dan Hon (danhon@dan.mastohon.com)'s status on Thursday, 06-Feb-2025 07:21:13 JST Dan Hon

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     22/ So I want you to understand how easy it is to break things or turn things off.

     i) government technology is brittle
     ii) coercion is easy ("you're fired", "we will stop paying you", "we will tear up the contract")

     Musk *just stops paying for things he doesn't want to pay for*.

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     Dan Hon (danhon@dan.mastohon.com)'s status on Thursday, 06-Feb-2025 07:21:20 JST Dan Hon

     in reply to

     21/ All the rules and measures I talk about above are put in place because you don't want something to break.

     Musk, Trump and the rest of the administration *want* to break things. Accelerationists are in the executive branch. Leadership like Secretaries and Directors *want to break things*

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     Dan Hon (danhon@dan.mastohon.com)'s status on Thursday, 06-Feb-2025 07:21:27 JST Dan Hon

     in reply to

     20/ The Evil Housekeeper Problem is why the physical presence of DOGE is terrifying. Yes, "the cloud", but there's still on-premises technology.

     And it's easier to coerce people when you are standing next to them, threatening them.