Imagine if DOGE feeds all the data they get their hands on into an LLM and he sells a copy of that to a foreign nation, allowing any other government a text-based interface to ask any questions of any of the internal workings of the US administration, government, citizens or even some of its secrets.
That feels a little different to hiring people with cracking credentials for auditing jobs, giving them full access to extensive government records (and possibly the right to backdoor them) in a move fast break things environment on the understanding that they're probably above the law and they're less likely to be punished than anyone barring their way.
I doubt the success rate of converting teenage tearaways to scrupulous white hats in boring businesses is 100% either....
I don't think the argument they can act as an informer for things going on inside government agencies works. They've never been on the inside.
And I don't see what it has to do with IT security. What are they doing that's security related? Isn't what they're claiming to be doing pretty much data analysis?
The only overlapping skill I can see is a willingness to exfiltrate data, if they're doing that, without giving consideration to the rules or consequences.
> owning foreign property is unfriendly countries
I know of TS clearance holders who have significant ties to Iran, Syria, Russia, and Afghanistan, but have renounced those citizenships and are loyal to the US. The clearance process works to figure out what levers those countries could still pull on them - foreign property and close family still there are the big ones.
Is there something about you that you would do anything to keep covered up?
Are you susceptible to outside influence?
Can anyone, in any country, compel you to act counter to the interest of your employer?
Foreign property means you are, at the very least, going to take interest if/when the foreign government threatens it.
"Are you an untrustworthy person?" Are you likely to take a bribe? Will you get mad at your boss and try to burn the place down, literally or metaphorically? Will you be careless in a way that brings about the same, with no malice?
"Are you as trustworthy as anyone else, but subject to inhuman pressure?" Anyone would be vulnerable to having a relative threatened; you probably don't want to hire someone who would be apathetic to having their parents or child threatened. If that relative is already in unfriendly hands, that's a huge risk.
In some ways, a $100k house in a (hostile) foreign country is no different than a $100k bribe; it's just stuff. If you ignore a threat to your property in a scheme to extort you, you are $100k poorer than if you give in, just like if you turn down a bribe. But humans are prone to loss aversion. Having $1 taken from you is far worse than receiving $1 is good, even ignoring any sentimental value of the property in question. Some people will still be able to ignore the threat, not allow themselves to be compromised, but a lot of people will find it hard.
For a job where security is a concern and you have thousands or millions of perfectly cromulent candidates, it's not crazy to winnow the pool first by discarding everyone who's untrustworthy or has extra levers that can be used against them. You still have thousands or millions of great candidates left.
Only if you don't take 30 seconds to think about it.
Of course you can be compromised without owning foreign property. But foreign property is a vector by which you can be compromised.
Doesn't it make sense an intelligence agency would want to know all the possible vectors by which potential employees could be compromised? For each vector you'll have certain remediation steps, up to and including "don't hire this person."
Exactly. Or rather, they can threaten to take it from you unless you do something (probably illegal) for said foreign government.
overseas money and property, esp. in unfriendly countries, rapidly becomes a concern in that sense. go double agent, have a friend overseas give you some sweet improvements to your house on the cheap, then sell it later for 4x than it's worth, and repeat.
Blackmail is what sinks orgs because you have no idea who is going to be a mole.
Military had "don't ask don't tell" for a long time because legalisation and social acceptance are different (also seen in reverse order with cannabis). Even today, the percentage of people in the US who think society should not accept it, 21%, is higher than the percentage who are homosexual or bisexual: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/06/25/global-divide-...
For this reason, there's still plenty who want to stay closeted.
And there's a lot of stuff with 5% or more reporting interest, according to Aella's sexual taboo survey, that society still very much isn't OK with: https://aella.substack.com/p/fetish-tabooness-vs-popularity
If sexual liberation was driven from the top to reduce blackmail opportunity, I think there'd be a lot more desires whose taboo was lessened, not just homosexuality.
(Though perhaps I'm underestimating how much else has changed due to what hasn't; I'm sure "cheating on spouse" used to be a thing that killed political careers, clearly doesn't now).
It also feels like the social acceptability of trans people has moved backwards. (Just my perception, or has that actually shifted?)
That said, the logic you give is still sound, and I think the increasing ease of private surveilance means we must eliminate as many taboos as we can so that society can keep functioning.
But the gender ratio preference is fascinating. There are multiple ones I would have never guessed (e.g. cannibalism is much more interesting to women than it is to men, which is weird because of all the high profile cannibals that I can think of, none are female).
You're not wrong, it certainly has. I think this is more of it having become a cause célèbre than actual transpeople standing up for their rights. As is so often the case, if a movement doesn't have a strong leader to "stop" the movement once it achieves what it was after, then it goes ever onward - partly because there's a group of people who derive their life meaning from it (stupid), partly because there's a group of people financially dependent upon it (disgusting).
As Michael Malice said in one of his episodes of Your Welcome, "They way they fucked up was going after people's kids. The normies will fight back when you do that."
The big wedge trans issue I've seen is with children and puberty blockers which is much more complicated and I don't think can be boiled down to "acceptability of trans people."
Between Trump's repeated executive orders and Facebook for some reason feeling the need to explicitly call out that you can now call trans people mentally ill (but not other groups!) on their platform, we're well beyond riling up people who don't know anything and aren't impacted into nevertheless buying into this moral panic. We've 100% moved backwards on the "acceptability of trans people."
And it has zero to do with puberty blockers as a leader. They have issue with any kind of trans affirming care. It is simple. You demonize the thing that trans are using and then people fear it. It is basically impossible to believe it is driven by care for those kids. If they cared for trans kids, they would care about them when they are not on puberty blockers too.
But they dont, as far as they are concerned trans kids can all kill themselves and should be punished. It is just when they get trans affirming care that it becomes a problem for right.
Things besides money also matter.
To people, not politicians
It makes him look more manly for some people.
There's this idea that sharing in illegal or socially shunned activities is an effective way to establish strong personal ties, and strong personal ties can in turn help advance careers.
Which is why there were a lot of successful secretely gay people in politics even in the 19th century.
As homosexuality became accepted, there was a shift to "harder stuff" playing this role. Not by literally the same people, mind you, but over time the composition of who's powerful shifts towards people who engage in shunned activities to form their strong personal ties. And as more activities become socially accepted, the activities that are shunned and give people a leg up become increasingly worse.
I don't like this conclusion, but it's the strongest potential argument against social liberalism that I know of.
As well as a handy source of material for blackmail.
the decades of civil rights expansions, first for women, then african-americans, then disabled, and eventually the gays -- that was all just the CIA trying to do recruiting 2% easier?
It’s a lot more than 2% for any one of those categories, let alone them all. You’ve comfortably described a group that forms the majority of the US population, even when allowing for the homosexual, African American, disabled woman, who is in all 4 ‘minorities’.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Americans
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disability_in_the_United_Sta...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBTQ_demographics_of_the_Un...
I don’t think this is at all why normalization occurred, that intelligence communities had anything to do with it, but if they had then it wouldn’t need to have been for recruitment.
- Drug use
- Financial crimes
- Close ties to hostile countries (China, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, North-Korea, etc.)
And at least in my country, it's not the intelligence agencies themselves that handle the security clearance, but rather a dedicated agency/authority that processes all the security clearances in the country.
Now, if you've never been arrested / charged / convicted on the two first points - who would know? I'm 100% some candidates would simply lie.
Prior to that change, lying in the clearance process was the one thing that was absolutely disqualifying. As you noted candidates are incentivized to lie, and so "did you lie here, where it is likely to benefit you?" becomes an effective screening mechanism for people who are willing to compromise their ethics for personal gain.
They don't care if you're gay, but they care if you're closeted. They don't care if you do drugs, but they do care if it's such a problem you could become financially beholden to someone over it.
More accurately, they don’t necessarily care if you did drugs in the past. Current drug use, or very recent drug use is a risk, as addiction is a huge risk for both judgement and susceptibility to blackmail, and even controlled drug use is illegal. Also, being a previous drug addict extremely risky drug use can speak to your current judgement.
Heres the DCSA clearance appeals page showing people getting or keeping their clearance from drugs and other issues: https://doha.ogc.osd.mil/Industrial-Security-Program/Industr...
If you have connections to a hostile country - family, friends, business, spouse, etc. they can (will) become targets of intel ops.
So your wife is from Russia? GRU or FSB will start to pressure family and friends of your spouse.
Anything that is worth anything to the enemies of your country, they will find a way. Which is why agencies that require top secret security clearance will rather just set the threshold extra high, and lose out on potentially good talent. Better to be safe than sorry.
A lot of speculation and guessing on this topic, which is surprising from news outlets which pride themselves on "facts" and "truth"... I'm not even mentioning the fact that revealing the names, handles, identities of employees and clearing saying that they have admin rights on systems X and Y, is in itself a serious breach of cybersecurity...
Also, why is your history all Musk'd?
If an intern had access to any classified materials, it is because a crime was committed.
Homeland Security
“The Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) Internship Program is for… an exciting career in homeland security and intelligence…all selected applicants must undergo and successfully complete a background investigation and be granted a Top Secret/SCI clearance” [1]
Department of State
“Students tentatively selected for the internship program must undergo a background investigation and receive either a Secret or Top Secret security clearance.” [2]
Office of Naval Intelligence
“All interns must receive security clearances at the interim or final top-secret level with access to sensitive compartmented information (TS/SCI).” [3]
Defense Intelligence Agency
“Summer Internship Program (SIP)… To be eligible, you must…Maintain a security clearance” [4]
[1] https://www.dhs.gov/homeland-security-careers/office-intelli...
[2] https://careers.state.gov/uploads/3f/b3/3fb3a5029621ca488d8c...
[3] https://www.oni.navy.mil/Careers/Intern-Programs/#:~:text=Al...
[4] https://www.intelligencecareers.gov/dia/students-and-interns...
Republicans didn't have any problem with that when they used it to blow Valerie Plame's cover in political retaliation. Somehow now that it's Musk's army of channers stealing our data and breaking the government payment systems _some_ people have decided the first amendment is optional I guess.
I think Democrat/Republican loses meaning in these sort of contexts. I've never once voted for a Republican in my life yet I also am extremely supportive of what's happening right now, mostly because of a strong anti-establishment inclining. I find that when powers grow too comfortable, they trend towards corruption and abuse, exactly of the Plame sort as but one tiny morsel of such. A bit of a shake-up now and then keeps everything far healthier for everybody (the country itself most of all), and it's far nicer doing it this way than by watering Jefferson's Tree of Liberty.
I assure you, as DOGE starts to look at the Pentagon, which has failed audits repeatedly, to 0 consequence, expect to hear all sorts of establishment Republican yelping.
I say 90% of security is admin work where one has access to various stuff.
Then you have red teams, pentesters, consultants- that don’t have ever privileged access to anything. They should find flaws and pass recommendations to IT admins. If they hack anything at all - it has to be outlined in scope and strictly monitored. For both sides protection as if „hacking person” doesn’t get blame for something he did not touch by him but at the same time someone pulled off something nasty.
IT security can be admins, it can be programmers that focus on exploit vunerbilities, it can be reverse engineers, it can be pentesters, it can be red teams, and it can be people with high domain knowledge in a very narrow field related to security. IT security is a very wide field.
IT security programs focuses a bit on everything, but as in my university, they gave the person responsible for the program a fairly free range to focus on what they thought was what the market wanted. Different universities will focus on different aspects.
The organizations that seek such employees are also quite wide. The military, the intelligence agency, large software companies, large companies with internet assets (like banks, but also game studios), government departments like the tax office, and then naturally we got all kind of IT security firms with red teams, pentesters, consultants and so on. A big hire of my class was also a network company developing network finger rules for deep packet inspections, which wanted people skilled with reverse engineering and decompiling (they may or may not have employed people who had experience cracking games).
I am pointing out that in most places there is separation of duties so you don't give "red teamer" or "pentester" access to any databases when they are in offensive role.
Then most likely administrators (who can have formal education on paper called cybersecurity) who have loads of work so 90% is configuring and keeping all configuration proper will have requirements like background checks and you are not going to hire "mischevious people" for that role.
Security is a broad spectrum but still offensive testing is maybe 1-2% of the work that needs to be done, all those systems need people to configure them. Having good security 90% of work is waking up updating software and keeping configurations of systems documented and in proper state. If some company doesn't have their security posture basics fixed there is no point of doing "red team assessment" or a "pentest" with them, that would be waste of time.
Just linking this back to the story, am I mistaken in saying that DOGE is not an intelligence agency? (It certainly is a great position to exfiltrate information however.)
I used an audit as an example. The agencies are acting as if their records cannot be reviewed unless they themselves vet they auditor which is suspicious given they are part of the executive branch.
By your logic, ex-cons are not employable because companies would not employ them unless they have intentions of using their skills.
I don't think this conversation will go much further, please don't let me stand in the way of your outrage.
Also why do people keep calling this doxxing. These are public employees.
Because they are getting death threats, and that is only reason their names were made public.
When did HN become infested by brain rot. Post probably should have been flagged after all.
I swear people should be able to pass the “hello world” programming test before being able to post here. This site is going down the drain
I can see you only find one side capable of rage-bait. Opposing opinions must be very troubling for you.
But in infosec a lot of people probably got into it because 'hacking' is cool and glorified by the media. It's rebellious and appeals to a lot of teens I think. I don't think it's as serious as Krebs suggested that you could be extorted or compromised. It seems like it's just a bunch of inexperienced people in a discord channel. Soliciting a DDoS on there, to me, just seems like youthful nonsense. If you were actually in some kind of criminal hacking enterprise I bet you would know not to make mistakes like leaving a paper trail to your identity in a discord channel where you solicited a crime.
I haven't seen the people with criminal records for cyber crimes be less trustworthy in the industry. Some of them just made stupid mistakes when they were younger and sometimes dumb kids get way overcharged for cyber crimes. For the most part I think it's fine for kids to go through a phase where they think it's cool but they don't really know what they are doing. A lot of people have done that. A lot of 13 yr old kids on the internet have talked about hacking banks and things like that and they aren't all going to be in a gang. Another analogy is how a lot of people get into chemistry because they like blowing things up. Not all those people are terrorists.
I think a lot of the concern is that these kids aren't out of that phase yet.
The part I'm not digging, is they seem a bit young to be taking over the Treasury Dept, or any department. It seems like this would have been better done by an Accounting Audit Firm, not hackers.
Hackers are just trying to get in, get data. An accounting audit would be more about finding impropriety.
So, it seems on the surface like 'finding waste' is not the goal.
Finding waste is pretty easy. As we're seeing already, cutting the waste is harder than it looks:
- The Congressional Budget Office recently found that Congress provided $516 billion in appropriations this fiscal year to programs that had expired under federal law.
- Federal government agencies are using just 12% of the space in their headquarters buildings on average, according to the Public Buildings Reform Board, which is an independent federal agency focused on recommending the disposal of underutilized federal properties.
- The House Oversight Committee spent $3.3 billion on furniture over the past few years.
- The federal government made $247 billion worth of payment errors in fiscal year 2022 and $236 billion in 2023, according to the Government Accountability Office.
These errors, also known as improper payments, include overpayments or payments that should not have been made, such as to someone who died or someone no longer eligible for government programs.
Estimates show the federal government spent $2.7 trillion in payment errors since 2003.
https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/government-waste-inef...
Also, by the dates you supplied, it looks like Biden/Democrats were already successfully in-progress of cutting costs.
Every large organization needs reviews/audits to find waste. I think the problem with the 'right' is the idea that because there is waste, we should abolish government. But, every organization accumulates waste, and then needs to have a review process to make corrections. The whole burn it all down is pretty immature take on leadership.
He was never charged for these activities, let alone overcharged.
What you say is often true and was even more often true in the past. If it was your experience, I'm sorry to hear it.
A friend of mine, one of the more brilliant people I've met, told me that her parents built her brother a workshop because "a boy needs a workshop". When she said she needed a workshop too, she was told she didn't. My sister had similar experiences. At the time, this was taken to be obvious.
Things have changed since then, but not completely, and not at the same rate everywhere.
And yes, I'm sure there are exceptions. Nothing wrong with that. And nothing wrong with men and women having different interests.
I'm sorry for what happened to your sister and friend. That was unfair.
I was personally told that plane kids club is boys only. And like, it took courage to ask in the first place, because I did felt I will stick out. And I have seen boys being pushed into technical clubs whether they want it or not. None of that has anything to do with expectations on responsibility or how mistakes are treated.
This is a tangent and maybe a long shot, but if you don't know Beryl Markham's "West With the Night", you might be in for a treat.
In reply to yours, boys doing stupid things are called out for being stupid. They aren't praised for doing things that could blow their hands off or burn the house down. The only ones impressed are their peers.
They just do it anyway, and try to conceal it.
I mean, this is not true and I have seen that both online and in reality. It is literally in peoples comments. Even in the comment I responded to you dont see them go "this was stupid" and moving to cut the occasion out. If whatever op did was not approved, he simply would not had access to materials. You can prevent a kid from doing dangerous things with "electricity, chemistry, firecrackers and rockets" easily - you just refuse to buy firecrackers if they refuse to deal with them responsibly. And parents frequently do - including boys parents.
The fathers comment was affirming, the irresponsible act is not a proof you would be dumb, it is proof you are right kind of a boy.
I've never heard of a parent encouraging their boy to play with fire or explosives. My dad went to great lengths to try to stop me from that. I even built a flamethrower once (he didn't know about that!). Weirdly, my interest in such things evaporated when I was 16 or so, and have had no interest in it since. Maybe it was because I got my hands on a Mustang!!
I once acquired several vacuum tube TVs from a repair shop. I had a lot of fun tinkering with them until my mom got rid of them, as she was sure I would be electrocuted. I shocked myself a few times which is funny in retrospect but not at the time.
My dad taught me how to use tools, but only under close supervision until he was sure I wasn't going to stab myself in the eye.
I concealed a lot from my parents and the authorities. I didn't have any illusions I'd be celebrated for that stuff.
People may celebrate it in comments when the danger is long past, sure. But that's something different.
HAhahahaha, you have nooo idea!
My dad's great disappointment in me was I hated baseball in all its forms.
My obsessive interest in electricity, chemistry, firecrackers, and rockets was what led me to study engineering at Caltech. My fellow students there were the same type of boy as me. If I was beginning my career today, I'd be sleeping on the doorstep of SpaceX until they hired me.
I've never met a single man who took a car apart just to see how it worked, not even my father who worked as a generator mechanic and later a car mechanic.
Nor one younger than said father (mid-50s) who built circuits for fun -- and he's the only one!
Nor one who filled trash bags with hydrogen gas.
Nor one who even used model airplanes in any format. Nor one who flew drones, either.
And so on, and so on.
I'm sure there are rare exceptions, like you, who've done everything you've personally done. I'd honestly love to see a video or photo of some cars you've fully disassembled; I do maintenance on my volkswagen, and even just changing out the timing belt was quite time consuming!
But seriously, what's the point of your comment? Even separate from if there is some implicit and totally comprehensive difference of interests, I can't discern its relevance to the posts you replied to, especially not in context of stories that sum up to something like "yeah, i did try, and I got socially rejected at multiple stages of early development."
For one woman in my family tree, her father explicitly give his daughter workshop skills because he viewed it as important skills to have, something she was very happy to receive and has continued to use through her 60 and ongoing life.
A other woman in this tree decided early in life that her primary goal in life was to find a husband and raise children. She did it, and later when the children became independent, the husband requested that she went and got a job, which resulted in her getting a depression since she absolutely did not want to do that.
Two other anecdotes, in what would be equivalent to US middle/high school, my school let the students choose between woodwork and needlework. The result was ~30 girls + exactly 1 guy in needlework, and ~30 guys + exactly 1 girl in woodwork. Similar events happened at my next school when choosing between physiology and film study, with every student being of the same gender except for one (me personally being that odd one in that case).
I do not see this changing. As the gender equality paradox illustrate, the tendency for stereotypical gender roles and cultural enforcement of gender roles tend to get stronger with more gender equality. At best we might have had a reduction in negative reinforcement.
If someone wants to talk about boys, it's fair for others to talk about girls. The reply (to me at least) seemed motivated by personal feeling and personal experience rather than ideological battle, so I thought the flags were unfair. People should be free to exchange their personal feelings and experiences here, as long as they don't attack others.
What is fair or not fair thankfully not up to me. I am fairly colored by my personal experience, especially with one family member that seemingly blended their view of gender roles with their self identity, and an other who seemingly feels the whole deal to be very restrictive and was greatly helped by a parent who choose to go outside the normal expectations in that regard. To me that makes the ideological battle feel like both sides are quite wrong. People generally also describe it as old people that enforces gender roles while young people are trying to escape it, which is also completely opposite in my personal experience.
If I could wish for something in this kind of discussion, it would be the minimization of generalizations. Comments like all girls get treated like X, or all boys get treated like Y, only seem to be simplifications that aim to put a lid on anyone with a different personal experience.
At the same time, to share personal experience directly can make one vulnerable, so adding a layer of indirection is understandable.
I then wondered what would happen if I plugged it into the wall socket.
It buzzed violently for a few seconds and then burst into flames. I learned what AC current was that day.
I think I was 8 at the time.
Yes, I have been shocked by 110VAC many times. (It's the basis of my superpowers.)
IMO intent matters, if they access a bank DB as a skill test (and disclose the hack to the bank) that's fine.
If they're taking a hospital offline for giggles they should get a record.
The latter displays no competency in hacking or cybersecurity, only the attempt to harm another.
My concern in their access to secure government systems is not their hacking competency (which has not been demonstrated), but their sociopathy which has.
The issue here is that these kids seem to fail upwards, and as you say, get rewarded for anti-social behavior, which sets them on a terrible path for the future. In the Com chat log shared in the article, they made fun of Edward Coristine for his complete lack of programming skills, and the other "doxxed" members of the DOGE team have some smaller projects online as well. If that's the kind of code SpaceX and Tesla run on, I'd give all of their projects a very wide berth.
I don't know anything about "The Com" or top digital safety institutions.
But I do know that historically, some parts of hacker culture have drawn heavily from political theories of anti-authoritarianism, anarchism, and libertarianism.
If the authorities and rules intend that I not have access to something, and I have a fascination with bypassing that and getting access anyway, am I not subverting power structures in the most literal sense?
If large corporations believe they alone should control the software that runs on my printer, so that they can ensure only authentic supplies are used and premium features are only available on premium devices, while I believe every user should be able to modify their printer's software and behaviour without limit, including to bypass such restrictions - is this not an anarchist stance, opposing coercion and mechanisms that perpetuate control?
If the exploit-discovering side of cybersecurity is inherently anti-authority, recruiting people who've never defied an authority in their life might not be the best move.
The debate isn't whether he should go to jail. The debate is whether he should get a clearance for some of the most powerful access someone can possibly get. He's not suitable. Why can't Musk replace him? He's just a kid.
Because, like Trump, he values loyalty above all else? That's the reason why he reinstated that other guy who resigned after his extreme-right social media posts were unearthed (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/07/musk-doge-st...). That's also the reason why Trump pardoned all January 6 rioters, even those convicted of violent crimes. If it's his people vs. some random cops, he will always favor his people.
Neither case was them valuing loyalty over something else. They rewarded people who did exactly what they wanted.
That's actually ok in a military context. Most kids right out of highschool dont serve more than a handfull of years. Then they are the corporate world's problem.
They sound like regular A/B-grade CS students: unproven new grads. Motivated and high-energy, yes, which is sensible for a junior low-trust role if they pass other basics like references and criminal checks. At our current company, we would not have hired several of them in our entry roles due to the obvious issues that our routine diligence would surface (in recent work history: associating with criminals & criminal orgs, repeat googleable public displays of racism, etc). And the rest, for likely not being at the level of top students applying to us, irrespective of evaluating on academics vs DIY. Their examples would need to be significantly more compelling to change the conversation.
What does the infosec industry have to do with DOGE?
Their story repeats itself a dozen times over from my now-fragmented friend group from that time. Many young kids getting into ill-fated get rich quick schemes ranging from credit card fraud to refunding (mail fraud) all the way to sim swapping, blackmail, doxxing, and even real life violence and gang activity. A few of my earliest friends were just indicted for home invasions and armed robbery in some scheme to steal crypto. All of them from Minecraft, weirdly enough.
Anyways, those who didn’t end up in jail or “on the run” from participating in these stupid schemes, I tend to notice a common trend towards security related work. I know one guy who went from fraternizing with the same now-criminally-indicted people I hung around to working for the FBI’s cyber crimes unit (fitting, I guess). Another one now works with a defense contractor developing spyware, as far as I can tell. Many more work in different areas of cyber security and programming et al, including myself.
The cyber-crime adjacent to cyber security pipeline is very much so real.
I always hope that such recruits had a bit tighter surveillance from their employee, but no one in the industry describes such recruits as "highly susceptible to extortion and coercion from current members of the same gang", and absolutely no one described them as members of violent street gang. It might have been a fair label but at most, such teens were describe as smart but mischievous. Might not be the best people to be responsible for national security, or peoples bank accounts, but it seemed to be the culture of that industry.
Has other people in the IT security industry had the similar experience of this culture?