Listen for a sec, the situation is a lot worse that you think.
Elon Musk has complete control of the Treasury. I hacked his way into the system, locked out all government employees. Migrating the data to private servers and deleting all government backups
All of the money is in his control with no way for anyone in the government to get back control over it
And even if they were to arrest Musk and seize his private servers. The damage might be so extensive it will be impossible to rebuild the agencies he destroyed.
He doesn’t give a fuck about the title. He is in defacto control of the US government. He can literally control what the US military can and cannot purchase, who gets payroll and who gets fired. From the highest ranking general to the janitors in the Smithsonian.
Do you see where we are at?
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 1 day ago
Well, I certainly hope they do double-entry bookkeeping, off-site backups, versioning and keep old records... Plus any sane agency and companies have procedures in place so not even the boss can't mess up everything permanently with one mouse click. It'll pop up somewhere as part of the procedure. And there will be ways to reverse things. Yes, it's massively concerning that he wields that amount of power from within the government. But I think this is an extremely unlikely scenario. And Musk isn't even the type to do it this way. Plus even if... The treasury is the entity who invents the money. If Musk takes their money hostage, it'd mess up things for a while. But ultimately they could just lock him away and print new money.
I don't want to play it down. I think there will be some very bad consequences because of this. But I really don't think Musk is the main concern. He's not malicious in the same way as other politicians. He's also a memelord, likes attention, he likes to be popular and liked by the people. I think that's amongst his motivations. And the latter makes it a bit unlikely to attack the whole population so bluntly.
And I don't think the same thing applies to other people in power. Some of them are plain evil and don't give a f... about being liked. That makes them free to comit any malicious act. And for example the president can write executive orders and mess up anything he likes. Immediately. He can bring nuclear doom upon us with a push of a button. The vice president also has quite some power. And while he seems like a complete toolbag to me, he's a very dangerous mixture of stupid and malicious. And we have some more unfortunate people in high positions.
I think I'm far more concerned with that, than with specifically Musk. But yeah, all of this is super dangerous and we can just hope for the best. Up until now a few uncomfortable things have happened. But some fears didn't manifest. I don't think it's doomsday yet.
MataVatnik@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The people with the institutional knowledge to rebuild these agencies are quickly being decimated. I hope to hell and back that I’m overreacting.
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 1 hour ago
Okay, maybe I've changed my mind after reading this: https://ponder.cat/post/1533712
It's probably worse than I thought if some random new programmers are poking at that infrastructure as well and pushing arbitrary changes. I don't want to be in the position to clean up the mess after it fell apart. Or audit the system and rebuild it, now that it's practically compromised. Let's just hope they shoot themselves in the foot.
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 1 day ago
I don't really know what to say. Try not to allow them to get to you. Because that's part of the game. To spread fear, uncertainty and doubt. Maybe break people's spirit and make them panick. And it's also harmful if people feel overwhelmed and that there's nothing they can do. Because that's an instant win for the dark side once they have manipulated the regular people enough so everyone thinks it's futile and won't even try to fight back. But yeah, I have no clue, so don't take advice from me. But I think an overreaction is warranted.