My guess is that the IT and computer security concerns are somewhat exaggerated and probably not actually that big of a deal, nor are they likely to cause any significant or lasting damage on their own. At the very least, I wouldn’t put much stock in what a random anonymous IT person says, especially when those words are filtered through and cherry-picked by a journalist.
These are almost certainly sprawling legacy systems, not a modern enterprise cloud where you can simply have a duly authorized superadmin grant a time-limited ReadOnly IAM permission to * or whatever, along with centralized audit logging and sophisticated change management. There are probably more old-school / manual processes in place, which require going through layers of humans who aren’t inclined to be cooperative or speedy, especially at this particular moment. I think Elon (and Trump) have some justified skepticism of those processes and the people who implemented them.
Still, there’s going to be some kind of audit logging + technical change management controls, and I kind of doubt that any of Elon’s people are going to deliberately sidestep or hide from those, even if they don’t follow all the on-paper procedures and slash some red tape.
And ultimately, even sophisticated technical controls are not a substitute for actual legal authority, which they (apparently / perhaps questionably) have. I’ll be much more concerned if they start violating court orders, even temporarily. e.g. I think it would be very bad (and more plausible than IT malfeasance or negligence) if they are ordered to stop doing whatever by a lower court, but they don’t actually stop, or slow-walk on reversing everything, because they expect to win on appeal to the Supreme Court (even if they’re correct about their appeal prospects). IDK about Elon’s people specifically, but I think ignoring court orders (especially lower courts and temporary injunctions) is a more dangerous form of institutional decay that Trump is likely to usher in, especially since the legislature seems unlikely to offer any real push-back / rebuke.
My guess is that the IT and computer security concerns are somewhat exaggerated and probably not actually that big of a deal, nor are they likely to cause any significant or lasting damage on their own. At the very least, I wouldn’t put much stock in what a random anonymous IT person says, especially when those words are filtered through and cherry-picked by a journalist.
These are almost certainly sprawling legacy systems, not a modern enterprise cloud where you can simply have a duly authorized superadmin grant a time-limited ReadOnly IAM permission to
*or whatever, along with centralized audit logging and sophisticated change management. There are probably more old-school / manual processes in place, which require going through layers of humans who aren’t inclined to be cooperative or speedy, especially at this particular moment. I think Elon (and Trump) have some justified skepticism of those processes and the people who implemented them.Still, there’s going to be some kind of audit logging + technical change management controls, and I kind of doubt that any of Elon’s people are going to deliberately sidestep or hide from those, even if they don’t follow all the on-paper procedures and slash some red tape.
And ultimately, even sophisticated technical controls are not a substitute for actual legal authority, which they (apparently / perhaps questionably) have. I’ll be much more concerned if they start violating court orders, even temporarily. e.g. I think it would be very bad (and more plausible than IT malfeasance or negligence) if they are ordered to stop doing whatever by a lower court, but they don’t actually stop, or slow-walk on reversing everything, because they expect to win on appeal to the Supreme Court (even if they’re correct about their appeal prospects). IDK about Elon’s people specifically, but I think ignoring court orders (especially lower courts and temporary injunctions) is a more dangerous form of institutional decay that Trump is likely to usher in, especially since the legislature seems unlikely to offer any real push-back / rebuke.