Browsed by
Category: Technology

Federal workers in the firing line as DOGE tries to create a ‘government without people’

Federal workers in the firing line as DOGE tries to create a ‘government without people’

Brian Merchant writes: Over the last few weeks, as Elon Musk and DOGE have infiltrated government agency after government agency, proclaiming their intent to slash budgets, cut jobs, and embrace AI, we’ve watched a brazen, extralegal effort to hollow out the state unfold in real time. Now up to 200,000 workers are being targeted in mass layoffs. Much of the collective horror has stemmed from the broader implications this campaign—orchestrated by an unelected tech billionaire who has enriched himself with…

Read More Read More

The Bay Area Zizian ‘death cult,’ links techies to terrorism

The Bay Area Zizian ‘death cult,’ links techies to terrorism

SF Gate reports: A sprawling web of violence across America, which has left at least six dead, has been linked to a fringe group of radical Berkeley pseudo-intellectuals known as the Zizians. Investigators across the country are piecing together connections between the double homicide of a wealthy married couple in Pennsylvania, a deadly shootout in Vermont and two brutal knife attacks on a landlord in Vallejo. Four people who are allegedly Zizian cult members are in custody facing homicide charges,…

Read More Read More

Trump firings cause chaos at agency responsible for safeguarding America’s nuclear weapons

Trump firings cause chaos at agency responsible for safeguarding America’s nuclear weapons

NPR reports: Scenes of confusion and chaos unfolded over the last two days at the civilian agency that oversees the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile, as the Trump administration’s mass firings were carried out before being “paused” on Friday. This account of firings at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is based on interviews with several current and former NNSA employees who asked to remain anonymous, fearing retribution from the Trump administration. Officials were given hours to fire hundreds of employees,…

Read More Read More

Muskrats threaten to call Elon whenever federal workers resist their demands

Muskrats threaten to call Elon whenever federal workers resist their demands

Rolling Stone reports: Every regime’s enforcement mechanisms rely on threats and politicized intimidation. In the case of Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s ongoing power grab, it’s involved young staffers with Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) barging into different federal agencies, departments, and institutes, demanding that security officials and other senior staff give them access to whatever they want. When security officials, for instance, at several departments and agencies have responded that they need to check to ensure these…

Read More Read More

Musk’s uncontainable toxicity could spell disaster for Tesla

Musk’s uncontainable toxicity could spell disaster for Tesla

Wired reports: Elon Musk’s toxicity among many Europeans is such that even owners of Tesla news websites have ditched Muskmobiles for other EV brands. Jon Gibbs of Birmingham, England, runs what he calls the “world’s biggest Tesla inventory site.” Tesla-info, Gibbs says, stores the “largest database of new and used Tesla motors in the world.” He used to own one himself—but he now drives a BMW iX electric SUV. Likewise, Tim Kraaijvanger of the Netherlands, founder of Tesla360.nl, a Dutch…

Read More Read More

Already exposed as an online gaming fraud, Musk’s whole genius persona is facing rapid unintentional disassembly

Already exposed as an online gaming fraud, Musk’s whole genius persona is facing rapid unintentional disassembly

Kareem Shaheen and Alec D’Angelo write: Musk’s ability to reach the worldwide top 20 leaderboards in the run-up to Trump’s inauguration raised eyebrows, since he essentially would have needed to play the game [Path of Exile] nonstop for two weeks to achieve the rank. Then he began streaming the game, and it was abundantly clear that he wasn’t familiar with its interface or his own equipment — or even with the game’s basic mechanics. The kicker was that, at one…

Read More Read More

‘Tesla Takeover’: Protests planned at Tesla stores globally this weekend

‘Tesla Takeover’: Protests planned at Tesla stores globally this weekend

Electrek reports: Tesla is being targeted by protests organized at its stores around the globe. The demonstrations planned for this Saturday appear to be a grassroots movement without a clear goal or leadership. The protestors are calling it the “Tesla Takeover”. The movement appears to have started on Bluesky, a social media platform that spun off of Twitter before Elon Musk bought it and turned it into X. Several bigger accounts on Bluesky, including Anonymous, the infamous hacker group, have…

Read More Read More

The staffers helping Musk dismantle and downsize the U.S. government, one agency at a time

The staffers helping Musk dismantle and downsize the U.S. government, one agency at a time

By Christopher Bing and Annie Waldman This story was originally published by ProPublica The Trump administration is not even a month old, but billionaire Elon Musk has already brought in dozens of staffers to help him change the face of the U.S. government. ProPublica has learned the names of nine additional employees connected to Musk’s government overhaul, adding to a tracker the news organization published last week. The additional names help reveal Musk’s sudden and far-reaching influence across government, as…

Read More Read More

One agency tried to regulate SpaceX. Now its fate could be in Elon Musk’s hands

One agency tried to regulate SpaceX. Now its fate could be in Elon Musk’s hands

By Heather Vogell This story was originally published by ProPublica When SpaceX’s Starship exploded in January, raining debris over the Caribbean, the Federal Aviation Administration temporarily grounded the rocket program and ordered an investigation. The move was the latest in a series of actions taken by the agency against the world’s leading commercial space company. “Safety drives everything we do at the FAA,” the agency’s chief counsel said in September, after proposing $633,000 in fines for alleged violations related to…

Read More Read More

Efficiency − or empire? How Elon Musk’s hostile takeover could end government as we know it

Efficiency − or empire? How Elon Musk’s hostile takeover could end government as we know it

Elon Musk, right, has moved to take the reins of key pieces of the U.S. government. Brandon Bell/Getty Images By Allison Stanger, Middlebury Elon Musk’s role as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE, is on the surface a dramatic effort to overhaul the inefficiencies of federal bureaucracy. But beneath the rhetoric of cost-cutting and regulatory streamlining lies a troubling scenario. Musk has been appointed what is called a “special government employee” in charge of…

Read More Read More

Musk operatives granted access to confidential info about X’s competitors

Musk operatives granted access to confidential info about X’s competitors

Caleb Ecarma and Judd Legum write: With Elon Musk’s social media platform X poised to launch a digital wallet and peer-to-peer payment services, Musk’s associates have been granted access to confidential information about X’s competitors, an official at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) told Musk Watch. Staffers at the United States Department of Government Efficiency Service, or DOGE, a White House body led by Musk, embedded themselves at the CFPB late last week. Politico reported on Saturday that Office…

Read More Read More

Silicon Valley has been moving toward ‘technofascism’ for decades

Silicon Valley has been moving toward ‘technofascism’ for decades

Becca Lewis writes: An influential Silicon Valley publication runs a cover story lamenting the “pussification” of tech. A major tech CEO lambasts a Black civil rights leader’s calls for diversifying the tech workforce. Technologists rage against the “PC police”. No, this isn’t Silicon Valley in the age of Maga. It’s the tech industry of the 1990s, when observers first raised concerns about the rightwing bend of Silicon Valley and the potential for “technofascism”. Despite the industry’s (often undeserved) reputation for…

Read More Read More

Musk is treating the U.S. like a startup where he’s the CEO

Musk is treating the U.S. like a startup where he’s the CEO

Brian Barrett writes: It feels like no one should have to say this, and yet we are in a situation where it needs to be said, very loudly and clearly, before it’s too late to do anything about it: The United States is not a startup. If you run it like one, it will break. The onslaught of news about Elon Musk’s takeover of the federal government’s core institutions is altogether too much—in volume, in magnitude, in the sheer chaotic…

Read More Read More

The recruitment effort behind Elon Musk’s DOGE wrecking crew

The recruitment effort behind Elon Musk’s DOGE wrecking crew

Wired reports: The establishment of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) relied on a recruitment campaign carried out, in part, by young software engineers fanning out across online chat groups and Discord servers, according to three sources and chat logs reviewed by WIRED. Some of the engineers are associated with data analytics firm Palantir or its cofounder and board of directors chair—and Musk ally—Peter Thiel. As DOGE staffers—many of them young and with little or no government experience—continue…

Read More Read More

Former OpenAI safety researcher brands pace of AI development ‘terrifying’

Former OpenAI safety researcher brands pace of AI development ‘terrifying’

The Guardian reports: A former safety researcher at OpenAI says he is “pretty terrified” about the pace of development in artificial intelligence, warning the industry is taking a “very risky gamble” on the technology. Steven Adler expressed concerns about companies seeking to rapidly develop artificial general intelligence (AGI), a theoretical term referring to systems that match or exceed humans at any intellectual task. Adler, who left OpenAI in November, said in a series of posts on X that he’d had…

Read More Read More

Ultimate goal of Musk’s blitzkrieg on govt: machines replace humans; technocrats replace bureaucrats

Ultimate goal of Musk’s blitzkrieg on govt: machines replace humans; technocrats replace bureaucrats

The Washington Post reports: Billionaire Elon Musk’s blitzkrieg on Washington has brought into focus his vision for a dramatically smaller and weaker government, as he and a coterie of aides move to control, automate — and substantially diminish — hundreds if not thousands of public functions. In less than three weeks, Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service has followed the same playbook at one federal agency after another: Install loyalists in leadership. Hoover up internal data, including the sensitive and the classified….

Read More Read More