Summary
DOGE staffers Tyler Hassen and Bryton Shang tried pressuring the Bureau of Reclamation to open a California water pump to aid Los Angeles during January’s wildfires, though the system couldn’t reach the city.
When denied, they flew there to do it themselves but failed due to maintenance and access restrictions.
Critics called DOGE a “slapstick operation of 20-somethings they’re seeing as whiz kids but have zero knowledge.”
Trump later ordered dam releases, flooding farmland. Critics called DOGE’s actions reckless and uninformed.
There needs to be more articles like this that calls them out by name. It’s easy to name Trump and Musk, but call out the cronies too!
Too much credit is given to Trump, which means that if Trump leaves office people will think everything is fixed despite all the other people who steer Trump towards his worst impulses will still be around wreaking havoc.
Trump is 90% a figurehead for the shitty conservatives who wrote Project 2025. He didn’t come up with most of this stuff, he is just going along with it. The 10% of the time things are his idea are fucking terrible too, but he definitely doesn’t deserve most of the credit.
F*cking idiots.
Most of us, raised by Hollywood, imagine critical infrastructure has guards and ID checks. Keys. Guys with machine guns. The last 10 years, it’s pretty clear the major controls are just that no one tries. “I’m from DOGE” is going to be the penetration tester’s go-to social engineering hack for the next four years. Just walk in, press the Big Red Button, and leave.
This instance shows that it is, in fact, how that works, at least in part:
Shang wasn’t an official federal employee yet, meaning he couldn’t access the pump.
No credentials, no access. Most infrastructure like this has physical security like fencing, padlocks, steel doors, and so on. I don’t know if there’s a break-in alarm, but even if not, they’d still have to figure out how to access the pumps and turn them on. They’re probably computer-controlled, so you’d have to get access to the computer system. I’m sure you could override it on the PLC, or just plain hotwire it, but that takes a whole new set of skills.
I would not be the least surprised if the sum total of the “l33t h4x0r skills” of these teenagers boils down to knowing the least bit about whatever the latest Javascript frontend framework is, combined with some LLM to help them with it…this is what happens when a whole lot of idiots think that being young == being tech-savvy.
People hand the tech decisions over to complete morons with no understanding and so much Dunning-Kruger that they not only don’t know shit about something like PLCs, and may not have even heard of them, they’ll be too fucking arrogant to ask people that DO know, because, gosh, they might be OLD (i.e., > 30 years old) or something.
“Move Fast and Break Things” for government translates to…
Move fast to give billionaires gigantic tax cuts and break Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Move (money to cronies and debtors) fast, break things (people).
I’ve got some bad news for you…
If it is locked, the key is usually nearby, and it’s usually the cheapest, least secure, possible lock to buy.
While probably true, morons like these two would be unlikely to get past even those measures.
So to protect critical infrastructure, when someone says “I’m from DOGE,” the correct reply is “Off you fuck.”
“And I’m from SchruteBuckCoin, we are currently outperforming you in multiple metrics.”
Ya know when you’re a teenager and you have these delusions of grandure, and think the world would work just fine if you were allowed to run it, because these “Stupid Adults don’t know ANYTHING!”
That’s DOGE
“Stupid Adults don’t know ANYTHING!”
I mean… these are adults.
Only if you look at their chronological age and not their behavior.
All I’m saying is is that I could have absolutely have done a better job as a teenager then these fuckwits.
It’s fortunate that they’re so incompetent that they couldn’t do any damage.
Imagine Bryton and Tyler showing up at your workplace in the middle of a crisis to take selfies and tweet about how they fixed your problems.
They should have been arrested.
They should have
been arrestedhad the absolute shit beat out of them.
The fucking idiots were not just wasting water, they were depleting the reservoirs. That water will be sorely missed in the dry season.
This was all by design. It’s meant to fuck over this year’s harvest and drive food prices up.
Fucking morons.
Bout sums it up.
it’s not about the water, it’s about OBEYING them. If Trump, his oligarchs or their puppets tell you to jump you jump or ask ‘how high’ but don’t question them and surely don’t disobey them
And that’s the problem. If everyone replied “fuck you, no” when ordered to jump, MAGA would be powerless. It’s obedience that empowers them. Resist at every step, force them to expend all their effort on small victories. There are more of us than them and we can grind them down. They’re soft.
agree completely. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why this simple defiance is so difficult for some people. I figure it’s because they fear social consequences (what will people think of me as a rule breaker?!) or they fear economic consequences (I could lose my job and ability to support my family!).
what’s interesting is that the solution to both reasons/excuses is having a strong social support network and solidarity with others who would help you when you stumble. modern individualism and desperation has made people so isolated and fearful of being mis-perceived and has made us less powerful to stand up for what we (collectively) know is the right thing to do.
if someone in my circle gets fired or shamed because they said “No” to a fascist, theyre going to get a lot of help if they need it. and i make sure to tell them that.
It is extremely important for people to stand up to Trump. Everyone from European nations to US federal workers to media outlets to members of congress should be opposing Trump’s bullying to the maximum extent.
A full department staffed by people who haven’t heard of unknown unknowns.
The problem is the effects of their actions are absolutely known, and quite predictable, as long as you can think more than 1 layer deep.
Too much fire? Easy, release all the water now!.. Except we were clearly holding that water for a reason, otherwise the fucking dam wouldn’t be there in the first place…
When you’re young a lot of the world is unknown unknowns. It’s just a consequence of not having experience in the world.
Summer is coming… Too much fire? Thanks DODGE, Elon, Trump, Republicans… Just murdering Americans away to make way for beautiful resorts and perfect republican white people.
They don’t care. They’re just out to wreck things.
Yelling at various department managers and threatening to call Musk might work for the agencies they’ve gutted, but yeah fucking with any fire department during an active wildfire…I don’t care who you are, you’re gonna have a bad time. Possibly shovel related.
They weren’t fucking with the fire department. They were trying to open massive water pumps (incapable of delivering water anywhere near the fires mind you) that have the capacity to flood entire towns. If you or I did that we’d be facing terrorism charges.
Got it, thank you for bringing context. The image of a shit shovel to the face was just too satisfying to ignore.
I wish I had the confidence of a DOGE tech bro even for a week.
I wish someone would put me in a room with these losers
No shit. Little boys would be crying for their mamas.
failed PR attempt
If DOGE was a movie, it would be Sausage Party.
