I haven’t looked into this in detail, and I’m not actually sure how unique a situation this is.
It’s pretty gosh-darned unheard of in the modern era.
Before the civil service system was instituted, every time you got a new President, you’d get random wholesale replacements… but the government was a lot smaller then.
To have the President,
creating task forces of random people apparently selected mostly for personal loyalty, and
sending them into legislatively established agencies,
with the power to stop things from getting done or change how things are done, including things central to the missions of those agencies,
as an intentional way of getting around the chain of command,
explicitly because of systemic distrust in the civil service,
actively tasked to suddenly and radically disrupt the prevailing procedures,
without thinking about legislative mandates, let alone established regulations, that assume the normal chain of command in describing how things are to be done and who’s allowed to do them,
justified by an at-best-controversial view of what powers the President actually has?
Yeah, that’s beyond unusual. It’s not even slightly normal. And it is in fact very coup-like behavior if you look at coups in other countries.
On edit: Oh, and if you’re asking about the approach to computer security specifically? That part is absolutely insane and goes against the way everything is done in essentially every large organization.
creating task forces of random people apparently selected mostly for personal loyalty, and
Why do you believe that DOGE is mostly selected for personal loyalty? Elon Musk seems to say openly says whatever he wants even if that goes against what Trump said previously. Trump likely would have preferred not to have a public fight about H1B visas but Elon Musk took that fight. Publically tweeting against the 500 billion project was disloyalty to Trump.
Elon Musk has a history of not really having loyalty to anyone to the point that even his critics talk about how it’s likely that he would have a fallout with Trump. True signals of loyalty as signs that there won’t be a fallout.
Elon Musk is seen as highly skilled at running large organizations by many people. Trump picked Elon for DOGE because he believes that Elon is skilled at accomplishing the goals of DOGE.
When Elon hired for it he said he seeks:
“We don’t need more part-time idea generators. We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.”
The DOGE team brought their beds to the office to basically work nonstop. While we don’t have the exact IQ scores, the background of the people we do have makes it quite plausible that they all have >140 IQ.
If personal loyalty is your main criteria you don’t get a bunch of people who never leave the office and work non-stop with high IQs.
Why do you believe that DOGE is mostly selected for personal loyalty? Elon Musk seems to say openly says whatever he wants even if that goes against what Trump said previously.
You’re right. I shouldn’t have said that, at least not without elaboration.
I don’t think most of the people at the “talks to Trump” level are really picked for anything you could rightly call “personal loyalty” to Trump. They may be sold to Trump as loyal, but that’s probably not even what’s on his mind as long as he’s never seen you to make him look bad. I don’t think disagreeing with Trump on policy will make him see you as disloyal. He doesn’t really care about that.
I do think many of the people in the lower tiers are picked for loyalty. In the case of DOGE, that means either personal loyalty to Musk, or loyalty to whatever story he’s telling. I don’t know whether you count the latter as “personal loyalty”.
The DOGE team brought their beds to the office to basically work nonstop.
Well, I’m guessing Musk got them the beds as a “team building” thing, but yes.
If personal loyalty is your main criteria you don’t get a bunch of people who never leave the office and work non-stop
You do, though. Personal loyalty, or ideological loyalty, or both, are exactly how you get people to never leave the office.
with high IQs.
They’re not acting like they have high IQs. Or at least not high “G”.
Start with sleeping in the office. If every single thing they say about the facts and their reasons for being there were 100 percent true, it’d be dumb to burn yourself out trying to make such massive changes on that kind of work schedule.
It’s also dumb to ignore the collateral damage when you go around stopping Federal payments you may not understand.
And Marko Elez just had to resign because he wasn’t effective enough in scrubbing his past tweets. Wall Street Journal says he “advocated repealing the Civil Rights Act, backed a ‘eugenic immigration policy,’ and wrote, ‘You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity.’”. I actually would have thought they’d let him skate, but apparently you still can’t get quite that blatant at this point. Smart people don’t post stuff like that, for more than one reason.
They may be sold to Trump as loyal, but that’s probably not even what’s on his mind as long as he’s never seen you to make him look bad. I don’t think disagreeing with Trump on policy will make him see you as disloyal. He doesn’t really care about that.
Saying that the 500 hundred thousand in investment aren’t there after Trump holds an event to announce them is making Trump look back and not a disagreement on policy.
The phrase “ideological loyalty” seems a bit motte and bailey. In politics, you often get into situations where loyalty to other people and loyalty to ideological principles are opposed. When speaking about totalitarian states where people are picked based on loyalty you usually mean that the loyalty is not contingent on ideological principles.
If someone who’s in DOGE driven by the mission of DOGE, they are less likely to do something that helps Elon’s business interests but goes against the mission of DOGE. If they are chosen by what most people mean with loyalty they would help Elon with business interests even if it goes against the mission of DOGE.
If Elon would try to lead DOGE in a way that’s not focused on the mission of cutting waste and increasing efficiency he probably would get a problem with the DOGE team.
Start with sleeping in the office. If every single thing they say about the facts and their reasons for being there were 100 percent true, it’d be dumb to burn yourself out trying to make such massive changes on that kind of work schedule.
Whether something is dumb or not depends on the strategy you pursue. It seems like they chose that strategy because it allowed to make them move very fast and outmaneuver other players. If they would have moved slower, efforts to mobilize forces to inhibit them from accessing the data might have been more effective.
And Marko Elez just had to resign because he wasn’t effective enough in scrubbing his past tweets.
He did delete his account, but given that there are services that show you deleted tweets, there’s not really anything he could have done to scrub all evidence of his past tweets.
I actually would have thought they’d let him skate, but apparently you still can’t get quite that blatant at this point.
I doubt that his tweets were the only reason he resigned. It might be that DOGE communicated to Trump (or Susie Wiles / the head of the treasury) that his team wasn’t seeking write permissions and Marko Elez seeking the write permission was upsetting people.
I do have seen high IQ people (even someone who definitely passed Mensa entry) to post inflammatory right wing content on social media, so I would not say that rules out Marko Elez having a high IQ.
It’s pretty gosh-darned unheard of in the modern era.
Before the civil service system was instituted, every time you got a new President, you’d get random wholesale replacements… but the government was a lot smaller then.
To have the President,
creating task forces of random people apparently selected mostly for personal loyalty, and
sending them into legislatively established agencies,
with the power to stop things from getting done or change how things are done, including things central to the missions of those agencies,
as an intentional way of getting around the chain of command,
explicitly because of systemic distrust in the civil service,
actively tasked to suddenly and radically disrupt the prevailing procedures,
without thinking about legislative mandates, let alone established regulations, that assume the normal chain of command in describing how things are to be done and who’s allowed to do them,
justified by an at-best-controversial view of what powers the President actually has?
Yeah, that’s beyond unusual. It’s not even slightly normal. And it is in fact very coup-like behavior if you look at coups in other countries.
On edit: Oh, and if you’re asking about the approach to computer security specifically? That part is absolutely insane and goes against the way everything is done in essentially every large organization.
Why do you believe that DOGE is mostly selected for personal loyalty? Elon Musk seems to say openly says whatever he wants even if that goes against what Trump said previously. Trump likely would have preferred not to have a public fight about H1B visas but Elon Musk took that fight. Publically tweeting against the 500 billion project was disloyalty to Trump.
Elon Musk has a history of not really having loyalty to anyone to the point that even his critics talk about how it’s likely that he would have a fallout with Trump. True signals of loyalty as signs that there won’t be a fallout.
Elon Musk is seen as highly skilled at running large organizations by many people. Trump picked Elon for DOGE because he believes that Elon is skilled at accomplishing the goals of DOGE.
When Elon hired for it he said he seeks:
The DOGE team brought their beds to the office to basically work nonstop. While we don’t have the exact IQ scores, the background of the people we do have makes it quite plausible that they all have >140 IQ.
If personal loyalty is your main criteria you don’t get a bunch of people who never leave the office and work non-stop with high IQs.
You’re right. I shouldn’t have said that, at least not without elaboration.
I don’t think most of the people at the “talks to Trump” level are really picked for anything you could rightly call “personal loyalty” to Trump. They may be sold to Trump as loyal, but that’s probably not even what’s on his mind as long as he’s never seen you to make him look bad. I don’t think disagreeing with Trump on policy will make him see you as disloyal. He doesn’t really care about that.
I do think many of the people in the lower tiers are picked for loyalty. In the case of DOGE, that means either personal loyalty to Musk, or loyalty to whatever story he’s telling. I don’t know whether you count the latter as “personal loyalty”.
Well, I’m guessing Musk got them the beds as a “team building” thing, but yes.
You do, though. Personal loyalty, or ideological loyalty, or both, are exactly how you get people to never leave the office.
They’re not acting like they have high IQs. Or at least not high “G”.
Start with sleeping in the office. If every single thing they say about the facts and their reasons for being there were 100 percent true, it’d be dumb to burn yourself out trying to make such massive changes on that kind of work schedule.
It’s also dumb to ignore the collateral damage when you go around stopping Federal payments you may not understand.
And Marko Elez just had to resign because he wasn’t effective enough in scrubbing his past tweets. Wall Street Journal says he “advocated repealing the Civil Rights Act, backed a ‘eugenic immigration policy,’ and wrote, ‘You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity.’”. I actually would have thought they’d let him skate, but apparently you still can’t get quite that blatant at this point. Smart people don’t post stuff like that, for more than one reason.
Saying that the 500 hundred thousand in investment aren’t there after Trump holds an event to announce them is making Trump look back and not a disagreement on policy.
The phrase “ideological loyalty” seems a bit motte and bailey. In politics, you often get into situations where loyalty to other people and loyalty to ideological principles are opposed. When speaking about totalitarian states where people are picked based on loyalty you usually mean that the loyalty is not contingent on ideological principles.
If someone who’s in DOGE driven by the mission of DOGE, they are less likely to do something that helps Elon’s business interests but goes against the mission of DOGE. If they are chosen by what most people mean with loyalty they would help Elon with business interests even if it goes against the mission of DOGE.
If Elon would try to lead DOGE in a way that’s not focused on the mission of cutting waste and increasing efficiency he probably would get a problem with the DOGE team.
Whether something is dumb or not depends on the strategy you pursue. It seems like they chose that strategy because it allowed to make them move very fast and outmaneuver other players. If they would have moved slower, efforts to mobilize forces to inhibit them from accessing the data might have been more effective.
He did delete his account, but given that there are services that show you deleted tweets, there’s not really anything he could have done to scrub all evidence of his past tweets.
I doubt that his tweets were the only reason he resigned. It might be that DOGE communicated to Trump (or Susie Wiles / the head of the treasury) that his team wasn’t seeking write permissions and Marko Elez seeking the write permission was upsetting people.
I do have seen high IQ people (even someone who definitely passed Mensa entry) to post inflammatory right wing content on social media, so I would not say that rules out Marko Elez having a high IQ.