CBS report CISA are going to be DOGE'd again, and will send a second 'fork in the road' email and lay off or force out another 40% of their staff (a very significant number of people).

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cisa-cybersecurity-election-infrastructure-face-significant-cuts-sources-say/

I’ve been thinking about the news that the US plans to half the size of CISA and my question is.. why? Is the US financially bankrupt?

@GossiTheDog no, but it's.mprally.bankrupt since #AgentKrasnov was allowed to be installed in The White House for a second time!

@GossiTheDog Well, it is. It's more than $36 trillion in debt, which can never be paid back in full - it can only be defaulted on, or inflated away. It's like $300k per taxpayer, which exceeds the median annual income.

The government is hopelessly bloated and needs to be trimmed down - by a lot. So, what Trump is trying to do is a good idea in principle. But with him being stupid and incompetent, he's doing it badly, firing staff that actually does useful things, and causing more harm than good.

@GossiTheDog it is hallucinating...

If i would guess (but it is only a guess), if we extrapolate what he seems to do:

no need for "civil orgs/institutions" :
-when you go to war with the rest of the world, (except russia, hungary ,italy, north korea)

-when you want to suppress empathy (weakness of the western world according to musk)

-when you could build advanced weapons or use cloud shutdowns with your gafams/musk/luckey/thiel/karpp/... AI driven new friends to ensure efficient racket via tariffs that will pay for their research and dev....

-when you could research and build tech exempt of society limits or empathy, ethics, or any legal or human considerations (these are for the weak, only the strong big mouths /big balls/no brains, just execution guys prevail)...exactly like a well known mustache guy of ww2.

- they could even, if nothing stops them, in the end, in their new "no legal rule" town (or concentration camp), experiment AI/neuralink/AI engineered medicine on prisonners

... Who knows, the guy is so extreme, where could he stop his chaos ?

My opinion: he will use all the economic chaos he created to destroy the old order and impose his new order both inside US and outside US by sewing poverty and pushing no empathy, but real "big screen" cruelty everywhere.

He thinks he builds an empire based on AI and tech...

History repeats itself. Let's hope the other countries open their eyes now, unite and reacts strongly enough, something else than just doing what he wanted from the start: rearm, but stay submitted to US command in NATO...what a joke...you cannot have any kind of deal with that kind of guy...not possible, because he knowns only win-lose, not win-win. You cannot trust such a kind of commercial or defense partner. And deals are based on mutual trust.

@GossiTheDog not yet...

@bontchev @GossiTheDog Trump is just the wrong guy to make this sweeping change. He has zero patience, zero respect for process, and the 90% of the planet hates him and wants him to fail.

@AnimalSpirits @GossiTheDog Yep.

@GossiTheDog Excuse my EU ignorance, but what authority does DOGE have over random agencies HR decisions?

@buherator @GossiTheDog CISA is not an random agency, but part of Homeland Security. And therefore they have control over their budgets.

@sadarex @GossiTheDog Ummm OK, so a newly created dept can take away money from DHS bypassing congress/senate/president? And this is constitutional? o.O

@buherator @GossiTheDog That is the world we live in now.
*Straightens tinfoil hat*

@sadarex Well, coming from Eastern-Europe I can only say your politicians are real gentlemen! With such an "opportunity" our leaders would've claimed themselves as pharaohs by 1790.

@buherator I'm not from the us :D

@GossiTheDog @sadarex And managers at the receiving end are complicit because...?

@buherator @sadarex @GossiTheDog Depends. Did Congress allocate the money with specific intent or did Congress authorize the money to be given to an executive agency to be used at their discretion? The former = no, the latter is a big yes.

@buherator @GossiTheDog From the news I get the feeling that all managers that don't comply loose their jobs and are replaced with managers that do. (Just an assumption)

@bontchev @GossiTheDog state debt does not work that way, see also this wonderful article from @pluralistic

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/21/we-can-have-nice-things/

@sadarex @GossiTheDog Who is firing them? Is it DOGE? Can they do that?

@FreeinTX @GossiTheDog @sadarex So congress started to allocate DHS money to an agency that exists since Jan to go crazy with it?

@GossiTheDog @sadarex I get that, thanks. What is unclear to me is what *authority* DOGE specifically has in the process aside of writing e-mails.

@buherator @GossiTheDog @FreeinTX@poa.st I don't know where "DOGE" gets its money from, but DOGE is controlled by Musk, who works for Trump, who is a Republican and they in turn control the Congress, the Senate and have a majority vote in the Supreme Court. They can do whatever they want. Whether they are allowed to do so is of no interest to them at the moment.

@buherator @GossiTheDog According to the law -> No authority at all. In reality -> They just do what they want and if there is a "problem" Trump does something illegal and then they proceed.

@sadarex @GossiTheDog They can act like if they had authority it shouldn't matter. If I get an email from a stranger telling me I'm fired/I should fire people I ignore it. If thousands of people are laid off because a boogeyman the problem goes deeper than some small agency.

@buherator @GossiTheDog Yes

@buherator @GossiTheDog In other news https://infosec.exchange/@kevinmirsky/114302291552944321

@buherator @GossiTheDog @sadarex here's what happened to the US Institute of Peace when they fought against an illegal DOGE takeover (spoiler: they got booted out of the building by police and are now suing) https://www.npr.org/2025/03/20/nx-s1-5332193/why-d-c-police-sided-with-doge-institute-of-peace-standoff

@GossiTheDog I mean we’re gonna be when the ransomware ransom everything

@bontchev @GossiTheDog just tax your oligarchs proper and your debt is no longer an issue. But sure keep blaming the government spending money on cybersecurity or healthcare :)

@frelsisbaratta @GossiTheDog Perhaps you should learn some basic math?

Taxing billionaires? Meh. How about confiscating ALL of their wealth (100% "tax")? Let's see how this pans out...

Well, the 400 richest Americans have a total net worth of $5.4 trillion dollars:

https://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/

Of course, that's value of assets - not cash, so if you try to convert it into money, it will crash the market and will be worth much less. But let's ignore this.

The US government debt is nearly $36.7 trillion dollars:

https://www.usdebtclock.org/

So, not only "taxing the oligarchs" isn't going to pay the debt - confiscating ALL of their wealth won't cover even 15% of it.

Fucking illiterate leftists, ignorant of basic things but always trying to steal other people's money...

@bontchev @GossiTheDog lol irony wasnt in your drinks these days :) Nobody claimed its solved the next day or that it only applies to personal tax. But sure keep giving Bezos 4k child tax credit and watch MAGA crashing your country and blame leftists :)

@hacks4pancakes @GossiTheDog
An elegant way to fund friends in Russia and North Korea without raising taxes and/or having to argue in Congress...?

@buherator @GossiTheDog @sadarex Can you restate that question?

If Congress gives an agency money, the president and the head of that agency can absolutely go crazy with it, within the confines of the agency. Not spending money is hardly "going crazy," tho.

@bontchev @GossiTheDog this argument falls apart when the debtor is also both a currency issuer and a taxing authority. The "creditors" only exist because they were being incentivized to park their dollars out of circulation; obligations to them can be satisfied by issuing currency - and any inflationary pressure relieved by taxing an equivalent amount out of existence
Every scheme is a redistribution and everyone wants to be the winner, even when they already won

@paneerakbari @GossiTheDog ALL debts are eventually paid - if not by the borrowers, then by the lenders.

Yes, the US economy still exists only because lots of parties are buying its debt. But guess what will happen when they decide that this is a bad investment - either because the interest rate doesn't match inflation, or because the country is using its currency as a weapon. (Why do you think Russia got rid of all US bonds before invading Ukraine?)

@hacks4pancakes
@GossiTheDog
What happens when we don't pay and ransomware ransoms other ransomware?

@GossiTheDog

not yet but they seem to be actively working on it...

@GossiTheDog They love their beloved combination child entertainer and crypto scammers so much they want the scammers to continue.

It would be really nice for there to be actual law about this rather than the Executive needing to get courts to squint at laws from the 1930s to guess if they apply to crypto scams, even if they totally should.

@GossiTheDog @buherator @sadarex This is an evergreen toot, and I wish more people would realise these simple facts.

@FreeinTX @GossiTheDog @sadarex My question is if DOGE in particular in charge of any budget that is supposed to finance CISA?

@bontchev @GossiTheDog the part you're evading is that "US debt" == "circulating US currency" - they're 1:1
Every dollar in a bank account, wallet, or sofa cushion is a liability on a Treasury balance sheet.
The only reason anyone would "stop buying US debt" is because they no longer expect to transact with the US government. Those of us who live here have non-discretionary obligations (taxes) that can *only* be settled in USD
My employer literally pays me in US debt notes

@paneerakbari @GossiTheDog By "anyone" I meant "anyone external". Sure, you could try flooding the country with $36T and pay each other with stuff that's worth nothing but the US economy would then rival Argentina's (before Milei) and Venezuela's and it won't be the world's problem any more.

Not realistic to happen any time soon, but it can happen (e.g., it already happened with Russia), especially if the US keeps proving to the world that its government and currency cannot be trusted.

@rickoooooo @GossiTheDog @sadarex Thanks, this is a great resource: I think the main point here is that it was the Secretary of Defense, and two USIP board members who "fired" Moose (see the linked letter on X). Whether they had the authority to do that is disputed, but nobody even claims DOGE has any authority in this case, they just showed up like flies around a carcass.

Amazingly, DOGE seems to be a meme: their power is that people assume they have power (note that the top article doesn't even mention DOGE).

@buherator @GossiTheDog @FreeinTX@poa.st No. In theory they should just suggest changes and others can implement them or not. In reality...well

@buherator @GossiTheDog @sadarex Not sure about "in charge of" but they are making cuts to CISA, apparently.

+

@GossiTheDog ::angry hissing possum noises::

The DHS has sent CISA staff an email encouraging them to leave. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/us-cyber-defenders-shaken-trumps-attack-former-boss-rcna200597

@bontchev @GossiTheDog while i agree there are parts of the USG that are significantly bloated and should be cut down (pentagon etc) in addition to much needed reforms needed in the benefits areas, it's simply not true that the debt must be "inflated or defaulted on"., the US is carrying a similar debt to GDP ratio today as it did at the end of WWII. that situation required neither default nor particularly high inflation to resolved itself.

(whether the US is capable of electing the kind of leadership that could pull off that same stunt is an open question, but default and high inflation are definitely not the *only* options)

@GossiTheDog As I start compliance audits for 2025 I ask what is the fucking point