The biggest irony to me is that Musk wanted to reneg on the Twitter sale. It's interesting to consider the timeline where he was allowed to not buy it. Truly a "canon" event, that one.
I'm also not convinced this is a "security breach." They're being allowed to do it. It's more like an unforced error, if anything. Not that it changes anything material about the situation.
That said - a small majority of congress is currently complicit in this, but I expect that to reverse as many Republican states will have congresspeople whose constituents are affected. I'd expect by May of this year some of this will have been reversed.
Sadly that's too long and some damage will be done perhaps permanently...
> I'm also not convinced this is a "security breach." They're being allowed to do it. It's more like an unforced error, if anything. Not that it changes anything material about the situation.
From the perspective of the owners of this data, the US citizens and others that live in the country, this is very much a security breach; the data that was supposed to be secure is no longer secure.
That's what I'm saying though - DOGE claims it is secure and all of the data is still in the hands of those (in)directly appointed by Trump.
I do not disagree with your sentiment though, but a little pedantry is needed here. It's not necessary for this to be a security breach to be bad. Given how poorly this data is being handled even among those who are "supposed" to have it, it's likely there will be a legitimate security breach soon enough.
If DOGE is acting in an adversarial capacity to the US, there's no reason to put any stock in any claims they make regarding 'it is secure' or 'it is still in the hands of DOGE alone and definitely not being conveyed anywhere else, it has just been wrested from the grasp of the US Government'.
If they are adversarial enough to justify such wresting from the grasp of the US government, is that not already a problem, compounded by the fact that if they are already in an adversarial position there's no reason to assume they are acting alone in that position? Why believe any claim by them if they are already taking pains to take a position as an adversary?
It's taking their say-so that they are a domestic adversary rather than a foreign adversary, as if that made all the difference. I can't agree that it makes as much difference as they claim it makes.
Agreed, but part of the reason I think people are not aware of what’s going on is that we’re not calling things for what they are, in a weird and self-imposed Orwellian way. Like calling a rocket that blows up “unexpected rapid disassembly” or some other BS. The rocket blew up, the cars blow up, it’s a coup, they’re nazi sympathizers, etc…
> From the perspective of the owners of this data, the US citizens and others that live in the country
Did you say the cattle owns the ranch? Or you mean the cattle owns the feed?
No, the cattle owns nothing, you own nothing.
As for data being secure or not secure - how do you know any of this is true? Because journalists are good faith arbiters of truth without any conflicts of interest or personal bias?
I would argue that the same could be said that "from the perspective of the owners of this data, the US citizens and others that live in the country" it's evident that the government has been recklessly spending money. The reality is Americans voted this in, they wanted it. Both sides have made historical voting points for claiming to clean up corruption and cut the fat, none of them really did. This time it's being cut for everyone to see. They don't like it. People will fight it. Some good programs will be impacted. Once the dust settles we'll fix it, but for now I have yet to see any good arguments for some of the excess spending programs. I've seen little or no justification for billions going to foreign countries while Americans are in need of help.
I always assumed it was because he believed the price he was paying was now too high anfter the tech downturn, and he wanted to try lower it a few billion. It’s roughly worth a few million in lawyer fees to take a 10% chance to lower the purchase price by just over a billion.
would you mind looking like a fool for a chance to save a couple billion dollars?
there's no fair market value for Twitter because there's only one Twitter. If you're rich, money is just a means to an end. you see something, you take it. If you think you can save a couple (billion) bucks on your way out, why not give it a shot? it's already yours
I've become convinced that everything he publicly does is an advanced form of social gish gallop meant to overwhelm and distract everyone from what he is actually doing, which is robbing the United States of its wealth, information, and federal autonomy. For example, everyone knew that the hyperloop was a work of fiction and that the Vegas loop was an ineffective death trap, but during the same period that he was evangelizing about it, China had built 40,000 Km of high speed rail - the US built 0. It seems aufully convenient that someone whos wealth stems from car manufacturing might work to ensure that the most car-dependent nation in the world remains so. This of course doesn't even begin to touch on his forays into media, public infrastructure, digital technologies, communications, space travel, and I can only assume soon energy.
Most people are not very "in the loop", nor do they put much thought into long term consequences or even the concept of ulterior motives; performative (yet socially consequential) things like distracting everyone by paying a team of people to play PoE for him so he can lie about it and generate widespread and inconsequential outrage is an insignificant cost to him. He is poised to be a trillionaire within the term of this administration, and I fully believe he is going to become one by continuing this pattern of pointing at distractions while rifling through our pockets.
> things like distracting everyone by paying a team of people to play PoE for him so he can lie about it and generate widespread and inconsequential outrage is an insignificant cost to him
Yes, the salute was the same thing. Not to say he couldn't have white nationalist tendencies, but the outrage is what he wanted. He's been doing it on Twitter for years, retweeting clearly incendiary and offensive things with "Interesting" or "Huh". This has been the alt-right playbook for years.
He was trying to renege on Twitter so he could renegotiate the $52 price after the stock market came off its highs. To me the suspicious thing about the Twitter sale is why banks lent him the $13 billion to pull it off. The banks were then unable to move those loans off the books as Elon trashed Twitter's value.
At the time, Tesla's shares were so resilient that banks must've equated it to gold. And you can borrow any amount of money if you can provide the equivalent amount of gold as collateral.
I'm also not convinced this is a "security breach." They're being allowed to do it. It's more like an unforced error, if anything. Not that it changes anything material about the situation.
That said - a small majority of congress is currently complicit in this, but I expect that to reverse as many Republican states will have congresspeople whose constituents are affected. I'd expect by May of this year some of this will have been reversed.
Sadly that's too long and some damage will be done perhaps permanently...