Notices by Dan Hon (danhon@dan.mastohon.com)

if I were writing stories about the gov "firing thousands of probationary workers" I would probably rewrite as "firing thousands of new hires or people new to their role because of promotion or transfer -- who are often on a status called "probation" --" because I think the general understanding of "probation" is "in trouble for something they did"

if I were uncharitable, I'd think the usage of "probation" without the qualifier first was the result of unexamined regurgitation of a press release

ftr puppygirl hacker polycule hacking the planet is good

wait so is hacking the planet good or bad now

I cannot emphasize enough the degree to which what's happening is the shittiest of all bond movie villain plots

Me on DOGE for the MIT Tech Review:

"So we should plan for the worst, even if the likelihood of the worst is low. We need to dust off those “in the event of an emergency” disaster response procedures dealing with the failure of federal government."

https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/07/1111283/elon-musk-doge-and-the-evil-housekeeper-problem-government-technology/

In case you're interested and missed it yesterday:
https://dan.mastohon.com/@danhon/113953369948152187

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.

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*

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*.

Does anyone want yet another take on what's happening with DOGE from someone like me?

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*

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.

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?

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.

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*

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)

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*.

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.

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"

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