So why have government employees and contractors been so lazy and incompetent as to not improve defenses by a similar margin?

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mikeyouse 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The vast majority of the competent people got DOGE’d. CISA lost like 40% of their staff including much of their red team specialty. 18F was completely eliminated (“Deleted” as Musk put it). If some specialist in the FBI who could have helped prevent the hack happened to have been assigned to work on the Classified Docs case, they were also fired because the most corrupt, incompetent group of morons is running things in DC for the next few years.

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esalman 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

One of the most spectacular pieces of self-own for the current administration. Restructuring/deleting the directorate for biodefense during the previous administration (of the same color) would be up there.

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jacquesm 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I can see quite a few not-so-good reasons why they wanted to weaken the cybersecurity capability of the federal government.

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qlte 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

...then the next predictable stage in the starve the beast cycle: "Why does CISA even need to exist? When was the last time you heard them do anything useful at all? Might as well shut them down and use a contractor in the private sector who knows how to get shit done and save taxpayer money on pensions."

($400 million no-bid contract goes to Oracle paying 5x as much per person, misses deadline for every key milestone, after one more $200 million extension claims government terms were impossible to meet and never delivers anything useful)

	▲	Muromec 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Corruption is just entropy too

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vkou 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's not a self-own if they aren't the ones why have to deal with the consequences.

Do you think Donnie loses a microsecond of sleep over this?

	▲	esalman 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Touche. People who voted owned themselves.

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DANmode 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> 18F was completely eliminated

18F -> https://ndstudio.gov

As seen credited on recent publications like real realfood.gov.

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mikeyouse 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, there’s some new design studio that’s replaced the design aspect of 18F. Doesn’t change the fact that 18F was eliminated - https://www.nextgov.com/people/2025/03/gsa-eliminates-18f/40...

(Ill note that this design studio is being led by newly proud white nationalist Joe gebbia who apparently blames illegal aliens and their ‘anchor babies’ for high housing costs apparently while unironically forgetting he cofounded airbnb: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!VCGY!,w_1272,c_limit... - I mean look at these posts back to back, I wonder why they’re unable to recruit anyone: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ArmA!,w_1272,c_limit...)

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DANmode 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Anything closer in spirit to 18F that hackers can aspire to work within?

	▲	mikeyouse 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Not under this administration.. probably the closest is contributing to open source alternatives to services that were killed (like the IRS free tax filing that 18F helped to build and which was subsequently DOGE’d).

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cowsandmilk 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

+1, in this case, the hackers exploited a CVE in PeopleSoft that had a published patch. The contractors just didn't apply the patch. https://www.reuters.com/technology/accenture-contractor-remo...

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derektank 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Government service pays far less than the private sector, particularly for software engineers. If you’re paying 2nd decile prices, you’re going to get 2nd decile performance.

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jacquesm 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If they're incompetent and lazy as you say then probably because they couldn't...