Monday Open Thread

11 thoughts on “Monday Open Thread”

1. Going out on a limb here, but I don't think doge should have been breaking into anything they didn't have the authority to enter. From TechCrunch:

   The chief executive of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) says Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency left the nonprofit’s Washington, D.C., headquarters in disarray, full of water damage, rats, and roaches…The statement from the executive, George Moose, comes just a few days after a federal judge ruled that DOGE’s takeover of the nonprofit was illegal.

   Moose said at the time that DOGE staff had “broken into” the USIP headquarters in Washington, despite the fact that the nonprofit is not part of the executive branch and isn’t subject to the White House’s whims.

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   1. A Government of the criminal, by the criminal, for the criminal.

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   2. Musk's overreach into politics has caused him to pull back a stump.

      Unfortunately, this is where Musk’s ever-expanding universe of creativity bumped up against his outer wall of dark energy. He did not have a plan for the budget, nor did he even seem to understand it. He did not have in mind any wild innovations that would make navigating government services feel more like using CarPlay.

      No, Musk seemed motivated to do only one thing with DOGE: terrorize the federal workforce. Maybe he was just blinded by rage at the federal regulators who oversaw his industries, and he could see Washington only as a Final Boss whose lair needed to be infiltrated and destroyed by a bunch of gamers drinking Red Bull and crashing on foldout couches.

      Whatever the reason, Musk’s only Big Idea for his brigade of former interns was to fire as many people as he could, in as humiliating a way as possible. As a reform strategy, it struck me as shockingly lightweight. I mean, really, Elon? You’re supposed to be this great, visionary, hyperloopy guy, and this is all you’ve got? A re-org plan? The Cat in the Hat arrived with more sophisticated tricks.

      To say that Musk didn’t make anything better during his five-month stint, however, is to understate the damage he inflicted. In fact, DOGE has earned the distinction of being the first in a long line of reform initiatives to actually make the problem worse. And not just because its cuts, by one estimate, actually cost the government $135 billion.

      Now that he's gone, and the "Big, Beautiful Bill" has been exposed as a budget-busting debt bomb, maybe, just maybe, saner voices will keep us from jumping off the cliff.

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      1. Between Musty-boy's rage at the way the regulatory agencies are poking into his business, and Yammie-pie's grudge against the HHS branches undercutting his attempt to downplay COVID, it's going to take years to rebuild the government. I do not envy the next President the task.

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2. What a Drone War in Ukraine Means for American Power

   TL:DR; 50 of the Ukrainian suicide drones can take the U.S. Grid down. For years.

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   1. What is "distributed resilience" for $100?

      A lot of modern infrastructure is vulnerable in multiple ways. You could war-game out the chokepoints and create a large map of most consequential vs lowest cost attacks. I'm sure it's been done by the CIA for many of our adversaries (or ex-adversaries).

      Is Russia's electric grid less vulnerable than the US one?

      It is interesting that Ukraine's power grid continues to function, despite multiple attacks from Russia. And it's interesting that Ukraine has been only partially effective at disrupting Russia's rail system.

      And we are seeing "gig terrorists" planting bombs in European mail, and fires in Polish shopping malls, not to mention Russian dark-freighters ripping up undersea cables.

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      1. My big worry is the large transformers. They're all custom made and have a 3 – 5 year backlog. Everything else we could repair quickly. Not that. For most every system a lot of it is resiliant and a small part is critical and easy to take down.

         It's like the internet. Most of it is incredibly resiliant. But take out the name servers and then you can't use it.

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      2. Rail systems are hard to "disrupt" for substantial amounts of time.  Consider: "on August 3, 1985, two freight trains collided head-on directly under the bridge" of the Boulder-Denver Turnpike." Within days, crews built a temporary road around the scene of the accident, erecting a stoplight at the tracks.  The railroad was running again within weeks. 

         WWII bombing campaigns tried hard to go after German rail yards and other infrastructure targets.  Assessment of the years-long campaign found "Strategic bombing failed to reduce German war production. There is insufficient information to ascertain how much additional potential industrial growth the bombing campaign may have curtailed. However, attacks on the infrastructure were taking place. The attacks on Germany's canals and railroads made transportation of materiel difficult." Not stopped … merely difficult. 

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         1. Yeah the problem with bombing rail tracks, transmission lines, etc. is you take out a small segment and it's fast & cheap to rebuild it. The WWII bombing campaign did impact production but where it really took off was when it focused on gas & ball bearings. In the Battle of the Bulge the initial drive was to allied supply dumps because the tanks only had fuel to get that far.

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   2. Takeaway #1:  Given current U.S. vulnerabilities, we probably ought not even consider invading Ukraine — at least for several years. (Pay attention, Hegseth.)

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3. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) has started a new PAC for the express purpose of opposing The Screaming Yam.

   “Murphy on Monday said in a post on X that his group, American Mobilization, will support “citizen-led protest” throughout the country”. 

   https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5328626-chris-murphy-trump-american-mobilization-pac/

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