kaaskop

The amount of unneccessary, self-imposed damage being done to the US right now is absolutely staggering.

It's a power grab by an unelected oligarch. If this happened literally anywhere else, American media would be calling it a coup.

The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that it's deliberate sabotage of a Chinese model.

It would be unconscionable to buy US weapons at this point - after literal threats of invasion, we're still considering buying weapons with a built-in killswitch from the potential aggressor?

EU politicians need to face reality, transatlanticism is dead. We need to be able to stand on our own.

How does threatening your closest allies with invasion fit in with "things like that"? How does unelected oligarchs gaining control over Treasury systems with no oversight or legal basis?

To be fair, the same thing happens when you ask ChatGPT or Gemini why Musk gave the Nazi salute.

More importantly - Doge has given Elon Musk, an unelected oligarch, the keys to the kingdom: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/01/us/politics/elon-musk-dog...

The richest guy in the world now controls the US Treasury's payment system, no checks, no balances. It's insane.

Some key quotes:

> "What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it."

> "But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

As an Austrian, let me tell you: This is a Machtergreifung happening right now.

I implore my American friends to do something before they lose their democracy. It happens much faster than you think, believe me.

How do we as tech workers deal with the fact that the leaders of our industry have become the enemy of western democracy?

How does one act ethically in such a scenario?

Small nitpick from an Austrian - Austrian German is Hochdeutsch, it's a pluricentric language with three distinct centers - Austrian, Swiss and German German are equally valid versions of Hochdeutsch.

That being said, German also has hundreds of distinct dialects - from Viennese to Platt.

That's completely besides the point. Mr Oligarch Guy still has access to a system he has absolutely no justified business having access to, nor is there any legal basis for this power grab.

This is a hostile takeover of US government - by an unelected oligarch.

Why has this been flagged?

If you're an anti-government extremist ("libertarian") like Musk, all government spending is unnecessary.

The US is so screwed, it's sad.

In light of the antidemocratic, capitalist extremist stance of our industry leaders - what can we as tech workers do? How can we act ethically, what can we do to not become accomplices to a hostile takeover of government?

I'm not just talking about tariffs - though the way they've been weaponized is extortive. I'm talking about the threats of invasion towards Greenland.

The lack of sane leadership isn't on the Canadian side.

As somebody not from the US, it's already made me avoid buying anything from there. The US has shown itself to be an unreliable partner that will try to extort its own allies.

The problem with watching Veep these days is that reality itself has become satire.

Yeah their naming scheme is super confusing, I honestly confuse them all the time.

Curious to see how folks see the parts designed to encourage more domestic tech and a bigger startup scene - will it be enough?