Kansas Crimson

So the quote last week that 50m was given to Hamas for condoms is now 100m?

"Their eating the cats...their eating the dogs!!"

Overlander wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2025 3:38 pm So the quote last week that 50m was given to Hamas for condoms is now 100m?

"Their eating the cats...their eating the dogs!!"

The truth will inevitably be that it is less than that amount of money and it is actually paying for humanitarian efforts to provide medical care for people in Gaza injured by American made and provided bombs delivered by Israel.

Little horn has spoken

So now we know who Elon has recruited to help him break things. A cadre of college drop outs who follow him like puppies. Will they ever get jobs in the world outside of Eloon and Thiel?

Elon Musk’s takeover of federal government infrastructure is ongoing, and at the center of things is a coterie of engineers who are barely out of—and in at least one case, purportedly still in—college. Most have connections to Musk, and at least two have connections to Musk’s longtime associate Peter Thiel, a cofounder and chair of the analytics firm and government contractor Palantir who has long expressed opposition to democracy.

WIRED has identified six young men—all apparently between the ages of 19 and 24, according to public databases, their online presences, and other records—who have little to no government experience and are now playing critical roles in Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, tasked by executive order with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” The engineers all hold nebulous job titles within DOGE, and at least one appears to be working as a volunteer.

I have to take exception to their being called "engineers", they are engineers in the same way that the guy who keeps the boiler running in your office is a "building engineer".

The engineers are Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran. None have responded to requests for comment from WIRED. Representatives from OPM, GSA, and DOGE did not respond to requests for comment.

The six men are one part of the broader project of Musk allies assuming key government positions. Already, Musk’s lackeys—including more senior staff from xAI, Tesla, and the Boring Company—have taken control of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and General Services Administration (GSA), and have gained access to the Treasury Department’s payment system, potentially allowing him access to a vast range of sensitive information about tens of millions of citizens, businesses, and more. On Sunday, CNN reported that DOGE personnel attempted to improperly access classified information and security systems at the US Agency for International Development and that top USAID security officials who thwarted the attempt were subsequently put on leave. The Associated Press reported that DOGE personnel had indeed accessed classified material.

“What we're seeing is unprecedented in that you have these actors who are not really public officials gaining access to the most sensitive data in government,” says Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. “We really have very little eyes on what's going on. Congress has no ability to really intervene and monitor what's happening because these aren't really accountable public officials. So this feels like a hostile takeover of the machinery of governments by the richest man in the world.”

Bobba has attended UC Berkeley, where he was in the prestigious Management, Entrepreneurship, and Technology program. According to a copy of his now-deleted LinkedIn obtained by WIRED, Bobba was an investment engineering intern at the Bridgewater Associates hedge fund as of last spring and was previously an intern at both Meta and Palantir. He was a featured guest on a since-deleted podcast with Aman Manazir, an engineer who interviews engineers about how they landed their dream jobs, where he talked about those experiences last June.

Coristine, as WIRED previously reported, appears to have recently graduated from high school and to have been enrolled at Northeastern University. According to a copy of his résumé obtained by WIRED, he spent three months at Neuralink, Musk’s brain-computer interface company, last summer.

Both Bobba and Coristine are listed in internal OPM records reviewed by WIRED as “experts” at OPM, reporting directly to Amanda Scales, its new chief of staff. Scales previously worked on talent for xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company, and as part of Uber’s talent acquisition team, per LinkedIn. Employees at GSA tell WIRED that Coristine has appeared on calls where workers were made to go over code they had written and justify their jobs. WIRED previously reported that Coristine was added to a call with GSA staff members using a nongovernment Gmail address. Employees were not given an explanation as to who he was or why he was on the calls.

Farritor, who per sources has a working GSA email address, is a former intern at SpaceX, Musk’s space company, and currently a Thiel Fellow after, according to his LinkedIn, dropping out of the University of Nebraska—Lincoln. While in school, he was part of an award-winning team that deciphered portions of an ancient Greek scroll.

Kliger, whose LinkedIn lists him as a special adviser to the director of OPM and who is listed in internal records reviewed by WIRED as a special adviser to the director for information technology, attended UC Berkeley until 2020; most recently, according to his LinkedIn, he worked for the AI company Databricks. His Substack includes a post titled “The Curious Case of Matt Gaetz: How the Deep State Destroys Its Enemies,” as well as another titled “Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense: The Warrior Washington Fears.”

Killian, also known as Cole Killian, has a working email associated with DOGE, where he is currently listed as a volunteer, according to internal records reviewed by WIRED. According to a copy of his now-deleted résumé obtained by WIRED, he attended McGill University through at least 2021 and graduated high school in 2019. An archived copy of his now-deleted personal website indicates that he worked as an engineer at Jump Trading, which specializes in algorithmic and high-frequency financial trades.

Shaotran told Business Insider in September that he was a senior at Harvard studying computer science and also the founder of an OpenAI-backed startup, Energize AI. Shaotran was the runner-up in a hackathon held by xAI, Musk’s AI company. In the Business Insider article, Shaotran says he received a $100,000 grant from OpenAI to build his scheduling assistant, Spark.

“To the extent these individuals are exercising what would otherwise be relatively significant managerial control over two very large agencies that deal with very complex topics,” says Nick Bednar, a professor at University of Minnesota’s school of law, “it is very unlikely they have the expertise to understand either the law or the administrative needs that surround these agencies.”

Sources tell WIRED that Bobba, Coristine, Farritor, and Shaotran all currently have working GSA emails and A-suite level clearance at the GSA, which means that they work out of the agency’s top floor and have access to all physical spaces and IT systems, according a source with knowledge of the GSA’s clearance protocols. The source, who spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity because they fear retaliation, says they worry that the new teams could bypass the regular security clearance protocols to access the agency’s sensitive compartmented information facility, as the Trump administration has already granted temporary security clearances to unvetted people.

This is in addition to Coristine and Bobba being listed as “experts” working at OPM. Bednar says that while staff can be loaned out between agencies for special projects or to work on issues that might cross agency lines, it’s not exactly common practice.

“This is consistent with the pattern of a lot of tech executives who have taken certain roles of the administration,” says Bednar. “This raises concerns about regulatory capture and whether these individuals may have preferences that don’t serve the American public or the federal government.”

This will look great on their resumes someday, but in the meantime Eloon wanted their identities to be unknown. Maybe he was worried that we would see their resumes. Let's not call them "engineers" they are toadies.

They will be lucky to be alive when the shit hits the fan. Eloon is a much hated asshole now.

japhy wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2025 8:28 pm So now we know who Elon has recruited to help him break things. A cadre of college drop outs who follow him like puppies. Will they ever get jobs in the world outside of Eloon and Thiel?

Elon Musk’s takeover of federal government infrastructure is ongoing, and at the center of things is a coterie of engineers who are barely out of—and in at least one case, purportedly still in—college. Most have connections to Musk, and at least two have connections to Musk’s longtime associate Peter Thiel, a cofounder and chair of the analytics firm and government contractor Palantir who has long expressed opposition to democracy.

WIRED has identified six young men—all apparently between the ages of 19 and 24, according to public databases, their online presences, and other records—who have little to no government experience and are now playing critical roles in Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, tasked by executive order with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” The engineers all hold nebulous job titles within DOGE, and at least one appears to be working as a volunteer.

I have to take exception to their being called "engineers", they are engineers in the same way that the guy who keeps the boiler running in your office is a "building engineer".

The engineers are Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran. None have responded to requests for comment from WIRED. Representatives from OPM, GSA, and DOGE did not respond to requests for comment.

The six men are one part of the broader project of Musk allies assuming key government positions. Already, Musk’s lackeys—including more senior staff from xAI, Tesla, and the Boring Company—have taken control of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and General Services Administration (GSA), and have gained access to the Treasury Department’s payment system, potentially allowing him access to a vast range of sensitive information about tens of millions of citizens, businesses, and more. On Sunday, CNN reported that DOGE personnel attempted to improperly access classified information and security systems at the US Agency for International Development and that top USAID security officials who thwarted the attempt were subsequently put on leave. The Associated Press reported that DOGE personnel had indeed accessed classified material.

“What we're seeing is unprecedented in that you have these actors who are not really public officials gaining access to the most sensitive data in government,” says Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. “We really have very little eyes on what's going on. Congress has no ability to really intervene and monitor what's happening because these aren't really accountable public officials. So this feels like a hostile takeover of the machinery of governments by the richest man in the world.”

Bobba has attended UC Berkeley, where he was in the prestigious Management, Entrepreneurship, and Technology program. According to a copy of his now-deleted LinkedIn obtained by WIRED, Bobba was an investment engineering intern at the Bridgewater Associates hedge fund as of last spring and was previously an intern at both Meta and Palantir. He was a featured guest on a since-deleted podcast with Aman Manazir, an engineer who interviews engineers about how they landed their dream jobs, where he talked about those experiences last June.

Coristine, as WIRED previously reported, appears to have recently graduated from high school and to have been enrolled at Northeastern University. According to a copy of his résumé obtained by WIRED, he spent three months at Neuralink, Musk’s brain-computer interface company, last summer.

Both Bobba and Coristine are listed in internal OPM records reviewed by WIRED as “experts” at OPM, reporting directly to Amanda Scales, its new chief of staff. Scales previously worked on talent for xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company, and as part of Uber’s talent acquisition team, per LinkedIn. Employees at GSA tell WIRED that Coristine has appeared on calls where workers were made to go over code they had written and justify their jobs. WIRED previously reported that Coristine was added to a call with GSA staff members using a nongovernment Gmail address. Employees were not given an explanation as to who he was or why he was on the calls.

Farritor, who per sources has a working GSA email address, is a former intern at SpaceX, Musk’s space company, and currently a Thiel Fellow after, according to his LinkedIn, dropping out of the University of Nebraska—Lincoln. While in school, he was part of an award-winning team that deciphered portions of an ancient Greek scroll.

Kliger, whose LinkedIn lists him as a special adviser to the director of OPM and who is listed in internal records reviewed by WIRED as a special adviser to the director for information technology, attended UC Berkeley until 2020; most recently, according to his LinkedIn, he worked for the AI company Databricks. His Substack includes a post titled “The Curious Case of Matt Gaetz: How the Deep State Destroys Its Enemies,” as well as another titled “Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense: The Warrior Washington Fears.”

Killian, also known as Cole Killian, has a working email associated with DOGE, where he is currently listed as a volunteer, according to internal records reviewed by WIRED. According to a copy of his now-deleted résumé obtained by WIRED, he attended McGill University through at least 2021 and graduated high school in 2019. An archived copy of his now-deleted personal website indicates that he worked as an engineer at Jump Trading, which specializes in algorithmic and high-frequency financial trades.

Shaotran told Business Insider in September that he was a senior at Harvard studying computer science and also the founder of an OpenAI-backed startup, Energize AI. Shaotran was the runner-up in a hackathon held by xAI, Musk’s AI company. In the Business Insider article, Shaotran says he received a $100,000 grant from OpenAI to build his scheduling assistant, Spark.

“To the extent these individuals are exercising what would otherwise be relatively significant managerial control over two very large agencies that deal with very complex topics,” says Nick Bednar, a professor at University of Minnesota’s school of law, “it is very unlikely they have the expertise to understand either the law or the administrative needs that surround these agencies.”

Sources tell WIRED that Bobba, Coristine, Farritor, and Shaotran all currently have working GSA emails and A-suite level clearance at the GSA, which means that they work out of the agency’s top floor and have access to all physical spaces and IT systems, according a source with knowledge of the GSA’s clearance protocols. The source, who spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity because they fear retaliation, says they worry that the new teams could bypass the regular security clearance protocols to access the agency’s sensitive compartmented information facility, as the Trump administration has already granted temporary security clearances to unvetted people.

This is in addition to Coristine and Bobba being listed as “experts” working at OPM. Bednar says that while staff can be loaned out between agencies for special projects or to work on issues that might cross agency lines, it’s not exactly common practice.

“This is consistent with the pattern of a lot of tech executives who have taken certain roles of the administration,” says Bednar. “This raises concerns about regulatory capture and whether these individuals may have preferences that don’t serve the American public or the federal government.”

This will look great on their resumes someday, but in the meantime Eloon wanted their identities to be unknown. Maybe he was worried that we would see their resumes. Let's not call them "engineers" they are toadies.

I will bet anything those boys are the ones who grind out the hours on Musk's video game characters for him.

Man, I'm not doubting that those dudes are smart, they probably are in their field at this stage in their lives, but handing that kind of power to someone who is far less likely to experience failure/grief at a high level ( because, again, only 20 years on this planet and likely shielded for most of it ) and hasn't been practicing their profession for more than what, 4 years, seems just so * math.abs(INF) stupid to do.

Trump got Mexico to send the same 10,000 troops to the border that Biden already got them to commit.

Trump got Canada to agree to the same measures to fight fentanyl that Biden already got them to agree to six weeks ago.

A true master of negotiation.

pdub wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 7:43 am Man, I'm not doubting that those dudes are smart, they probably are in their field at this stage in their lives, but handing that kind of power to someone who is far less likely to experience failure/grief at a high level ( because, again, only 20 years on this planet and likely shielded for most of it ) and hasn't been practicing their profession for more than what, 4 years, seems just so * math.abs(INF) stupid to do.

And with no oversight or accountability. None whatsoever.

At a very minimum, it would seem likely that they’re building something to scrape data in perpetuity.

And with this level of access (and this little transparency), certainly the nightmare scenarios are on the table.

twocoach wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 7:46 am Trump got Mexico to send the same 10,000 troops to the border that Biden already got them to commit.

Trump got Canada to agree to the same measures to fight fentanyl that Biden already got them to agree to six weeks ago.

A true master of negotiation.

At this point, at least for the next 2 years, if something makes him feel like winning, and WE don't loose, it's a win in my book.

jfish26 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 7:50 am

pdub wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 7:43 am Man, I'm not doubting that those dudes are smart, they probably are in their field at this stage in their lives, but handing that kind of power to someone who is far less likely to experience failure/grief at a high level ( because, again, only 20 years on this planet and likely shielded for most of it ) and hasn't been practicing their profession for more than what, 4 years, seems just so * math.abs(INF) stupid to do.

And with no oversight or accountability. None whatsoever.

At a very minimum, it would seem likely that they’re building something to scrape data in perpetuity.

And with this level of access (and this little transparency), certainly the nightmare scenarios are on the table.

At least this is being pointed out by the Democrats and the media.
I have called and written the reps in Maine about this every day for the last week concerning the Musk takeover.

pdub wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 7:58 am

jfish26 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 7:50 am

pdub wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 7:43 am Man, I'm not doubting that those dudes are smart, they probably are in their field at this stage in their lives, but handing that kind of power to someone who is far less likely to experience failure/grief at a high level ( because, again, only 20 years on this planet and likely shielded for most of it ) and hasn't been practicing their profession for more than what, 4 years, seems just so * math.abs(INF) stupid to do.

And with no oversight or accountability. None whatsoever.

At a very minimum, it would seem likely that they’re building something to scrape data in perpetuity.

And with this level of access (and this little transparency), certainly the nightmare scenarios are on the table.

At least this is being pointed out by the Democrats and the media.
I have called and written the reps in Maine about this every day for the last week concerning the Musk takeover.

www.5calls.org is handy.

I've seen that.
I think it's just better to say something different because if it's a script, and someone is actually listening, they may just instant skip the script ones.

pdub wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 8:31 am I've seen that.
I think it's just better to say something different because if it's a script, and someone is actually listening, they may just instant skip the script ones.

Yep. Wasn’t intended as direction to you - you’re already calling! Just a reduced barrier to entry for others who may not have figured it out.

pdub wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 8:31 am I've seen that.
I think it's just better to say something different because if it's a script, and someone is actually listening, they may just instant skip the script ones.

It doesn't matter if it is scripted. They expect it. They just take enough info to make sure you are a constituent and then want to know your complaint/request. They take a daily tally and report it to their boss. I have a feeling the folks who answer the phone at Eric Schmitt and Sam Graves' office and I will be on a first name basis by summer. No one answers the phone at Josh Hawley's office, every call goes to voicemail.

pdub wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 7:56 am

twocoach wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 7:46 am Trump got Mexico to send the same 10,000 troops to the border that Biden already got them to commit.

Trump got Canada to agree to the same measures to fight fentanyl that Biden already got them to agree to six weeks ago.

A true master of negotiation.

At this point, at least for the next 2 years, if something makes him feel like winning, and WE don't loose, it's a win in my book.

Same. He just looks dumb claiming a win that everyone know wasn't a win which is fine. Hopefully Congress can get their ass to work and get Musk's lackey boys out of our important databases.

pdub wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 7:43 am Man, I'm not doubting that those dudes are smart, they probably are in their field at this stage in their lives, but handing that kind of power to someone who is far less likely to experience failure/grief at a high level ( because, again, only 20 years on this planet and likely shielded for most of it ) and hasn't been practicing their profession for more than what, 4 years, seems just so * math.abs(INF) stupid to do.

I have a lot of very smart engineers working for me. Smart is good. But if they are a couple of years out of school they have little practical experience. One of my partners called some of them, "calculation machine guns". You give them a task and some software and they start generating numbers like nobodies business. If you don't check in with them on occasion they may be way off on a tangent, but they have lots of numbers to show for it. Without the experience to know what is real and what is just numbers these people can be dangerous. And they don't always understand the importance of backing things up before you change parameters/code.

"Oh shit, I just deleted the whole project".

"Oh shit, the server went down for a second and I haven't backed up my work for the whole day".

They have never worked on anything with this kind of impact on millions of people. And we have no clue what they are doing, and Eloon may not either.

But it gives plausible deniability to Congress. They didn't vote for this, their constituents can't blame anyone specifically for this interruption of services they need. But in the meantime Eloon does their dirty work and will have immunity for whatever he fucks up.

But this is what the majority of voters asked for. This is what the 20 million who sat out the election didn't think would make any difference for them. This is what wasn't as important as performative votes about Gaza. This is the next four years.

twocoach wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 9:50 am

pdub wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 7:56 am

twocoach wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 7:46 am Trump got Mexico to send the same 10,000 troops to the border that Biden already got them to commit.

Trump got Canada to agree to the same measures to fight fentanyl that Biden already got them to agree to six weeks ago.

A true master of negotiation.

At this point, at least for the next 2 years, if something makes him feel like winning, and WE don't loose, it's a win in my book.

Same. He just looks dumb claiming a win that everyone know wasn't a win which is fine. Hopefully Congress can get their ass to work and get Musk's lackey boys out of our important databases.

I don't agree with the harmlessness of giving Trump fake wins.

His cult doesn't think they're fake. The media doesn't treat them as fake. The Republicans in Congress don't treat them as fake.

They're real.

Even though they're fake.

Absolutely Fish. Need to tear down the disinformation sphere. Keeping the enablers off this platform was a nice gesture.

i agree. i am a firm believer in silencing the differing opinions.