This Needs Fixin'

It took 2 weeks for Musk to consolidate direct control over the core functions of the U.S. government and start deploying them for his own purposes.

That was quick.

So, Musk and His Minions (TM) now directly control the functions of GSA, OPM and Treasury. To analogize to the bizness world, that’s IT/Facilities, HR and Finance. There’s very little you can’t make happen from that power base; there’s not a lot you couldn’t make happen controlling only two of those.

(I should pause for a moment to emphasize that Musk is neither elected nor appointed and has no official role in the U.S. government at all. If any reporters are reading this: the technical term for this is ‘coup‘.)

There are Two Kinds of Power

Indirect power is the ability to get other people to do things.

Direct power is the ability to do things yourself.

As a general principle, the U.S. government is built to give elected officials indirect power and to spread direct power out among unelected bureaucrats (ideally to the point that none of them alone have any real power at all).

This is the difference between “in charge” and “in control”.

I’ve seen several posts to the effect that Trump is in charge and Musk is in control. This is a misunderstanding of the situation.

Musk is in charge, and his minions are in control.

(There’s no reason to think that Musk comprehends any more about the functions of the government than he does about cars, rockets or satellites. He is definitely not in control.)

Trump, on the other hand, is the public figurehead; at this point, he is neither in charge nor in control to any meaningful degree.

If there is still any United States of America functional enough to be worth the name, Musk & His Minions will be arrested shortly.

(Or perhaps Trump will notice that he’s become superfluous and get the DoJ off their butts before Musk gets his lackeys through the doors; it could happen.)

Though the fading remnant of the U.S.A. that still existed two weeks ago does seem to have largely abandoned the idea of arresting people for coups, so maybe they won’t. I guess that will come down to whether Trump is aware enough. There’s a really comforting thought.

But even if they are, it will probably be impossible to actually remove them from control completely without doing significant damage to the country.

If anyone has unconstrained admin access to those systems for a weekend, with a team of even moderately competent sysadmins, it will be necessary to erase the computers and re-install everything from backups to be sure they can’t get back in.

Seriously. A full wipe is necessary just for a compromised web server; this is the core data and financial systems of a country of over 300 million people.

(I have no idea if the kids that appear to be the main body of Minions are competent, but SpaceX and Starlink, not to mention his online gaming profiles, do demonstrate that Musk has a history of managing to pay competent people to do stuff for him.)

Even in the best case this is going to be a huge mess.

So: remember to plant a big garden this spring; you may need it.

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