Kash Patel defies Elon Musk

[essentialsaltes]

Government agencies have no idea what to do about Musk’s email​

An email sent to 2.3 million workers asking them to outline their work last week is leading to confusion and differing instructions across the government.

The email ... titled “What did you do last week?” ... commanded federal employees to “reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager,” according to a copy obtained by The Washington Post. It gave employees a deadline of 11:59 p.m. Eastern time Monday.

Experts said the email may be asking some recipients to violate federal laws, noting that employees at some agencies cannot disclose information about their work to third parties without explicit authorization. The request proved especially concerning for those who work in intelligence roles.

An email Saturday from FBI Director Kash Patel, for instance, said, “the FBI, through the Office of the Director, is in charge of all of our review processes and will conduct reviews in accordance with FBI procedures,” according to a message obtained by The Post.

The National Security Agency told workers that “NSA and CYBERCOM are awaiting further guidance” from the Defense Department. The agency advised employees not to respond until receiving further information.

Further adding to the chaos, Musk doubled down on the directive. Writing later on Saturday night in a post on X, the social media platform he owns, he baselessly stated that the email is necessary to ferret out government employees who are “doing so little work that they are not checking their email.” He claimed there were “non-existent people or the identities of dead people” pretending to be government workers.

Article gives other examples of agencies saying "comply", "don't comply", "write the email but don't send until you hear back from us", etc.

 

[Laodicean60]

Kash Patel defies Elon Muskefies​

These guys have had a thing for a little while now. I had to use a different source and I don't see Patel mentioned but still, the President is in charge of the Federal workforce. The law will decide the rest.

Elon Musk issued another controversial ultimatum to federal workers Saturday afternoon, instructing them to report their work accomplishments via email or resign.

I don't see anything wrong with this and it sounds like a rehire process. As a federal contractor, I understand regime change.

Elon Musk says federal employees must report 'what they got done last week' or lose jobs

In an X post and email shared Saturday afternoon, Elon Musk told federal employees to list what they had accomplished the prior week or resign.

www.usatoday.com

 

[JustaPewFiller]

I thought of that last night.

Some in the federal government cannot disclose what they worked on last week (or any week) without proper authorization, security clearance, etc. Possibly at the risk of being imprisoned if they break these rules.

Elon's directive caused lots of churn and churn burns $. He knows this.

He could have avoided all of this by simply adding to his note something like the following, "This only applies to those with security clearance xxxxx and below. Those with security clearance xxxx and above report through your normal chain."

You'd think someone with an IQ that high would have thought of that...

 

[RocksInMyHead]

I don't see anything wrong with this and it sounds like a rehire process. As a federal contractor, I understand regime change.

Really? You don't see a problem with every federal employee having to detail their work for the past week to an outside agency?

1. Who is going to be responsible for reviewing 2.3 million emails and assessing whether or not the work detailed is reasonable? What criteria will be used to judge them?

2. How will this work for employees whose jobs deal with classified information or intelligence sources?

3. I imagine that some government employees might be on vacation now with their email set to "do not disturb," while others may not currently have email access for other reasons (i.e. undercover assignments, in the field, etc). Are they just out of luck?

 

[Laodicean60]

Really? You don't see a problem with every federal employee having to detail their work for the past week to an outside agency?

No!

1. Who is going to be responsible for reviewing 2.3 million emails and assessing whether or not the work detailed is reasonable? What criteria will be used to judge them?

Maybe we'll use a system corporations use to scan resumes and AI.

2. How will this work for employees whose jobs deal with classified information or intelligence sources?

Declassification.

3. I imagine that some government employees might be on vacation now with their email set to "do not disturb," while others may not currently have email access for other reasons (i.e. undercover assignments, in the field, etc). Are they just out of luck?

They can send their resume by cell phone. I'm sure they got an email.

 

[RocksInMyHead]

Maybe we'll use a system corporations use to scan resumes and AI.

AIs require input for training by someone who already knows how to do the job. It might make sense to do this if it was going to be an ongoing task, but for a one-time review, it would take longer to train the AI to do to job than it would be for humans to do it (which would still take a long time). And the resume-scanning bots are notoriously terrible at picking qualified applicants. They look for keywords - if you put those keywords in, you pass; if you don't, you get tossed. They're efficient at weeding down a large pool of applicants to something more manageable, but that's not the result we're looking for here.

Declassification.

We're going to declassify everything that the US government did in the past week? Do you realize how stupid that would be?

They can send their resume by cell phone. I'm sure they got an email.

When I'm on vacation, I don't touch my work email. There's nothing that I do that can't be done by someone else while I'm out; that's true of most non-management employees. And someone undercover isn't going to carry anything linking them to work (like a device connected to their government email).

 

[DaisyDay]

I'm sure that Grok can handle all our intelligence needs.

 

[DaisyDay]

They can send their resume by cell phone. I'm sure they got an email.

They may have prohibitions against using private email accounts for work. Not everyone has access to their work emails when not at work

 

[ozso]

One can write five bullets of what they did without going into detail.

 

[iluvatar5150]

One can write five bullets of what they did without going into detail.

Not if they've got the day off, a concept which seems to have escaped Musk:

 

[rjs330]

Not if they've got the day off, a concept which seems to have escaped Musk:

View attachment 361661

Your opinion on Musk.is noted. He's an idiot without concept of days off. Got it.

Musk still isn't wrong about people doing so little work. He's also looking for dead people or non-existent employees who are earning paychecks. Sounds like a good thing to me.

 

[iluvatar5150]

Your opinion on Musk.is noted. He's an idiot without concept of days off. Got it.

Musk still isn't wrong about people doing so little work. He's also looking for dead people or non-existent employees who are earning paychecks. Sounds like a good thing to me.

If he's actually looking for "dead people or non-existent employees" than he's an even bigger idiot than any of us imagined. The 'E' in "DOGE" supposedly stands for "efficiency", but one would have to be a raging moron to think this is an efficient way of figuring out payroll issues like what you've described. It only takes a few seconds to come up with loads of circumstances that would trigger false-positives and punish legitimate, hard-working employees. It's already illegal to work a no-show jobs like that for the federal government, so, while it happens, it's fairly rare because people who do that get prosecuted instead of merely fired like they would in the private sector. Even working a second job while on the clock is illegal.

If you want to find people who are errantly on payroll, why not start by running an IT audit and looking for people who haven't logged into their machines in, say, the last 30-60 days? You'll still wind up with false positives, but nowhere near as many what Musk's plan of culling people who don't respond within 24 hours. In a couple of sentences, I improved on Musk's "efficiency" by a couple orders of magnitude. And I'm not a megabillionaire "tech genius."

ETA: For the record, I don’t think Musk is an idiot. I think it’s more likely that he’s some kind of narcissistic megalomaniac who does whatever feeds his ego without regard to the impact it has on others.

 

[rjs330]

, I don’t think Musk is an idiot.

Your entire post puts this to bed. Everything you've described and the way you described it, shows your true feelings that he's an idiot.

 

[Bradskii]

Others are also defying Musk:Key Federal Agencies Refuse to Comply With Musk's Latest Demand in his Cost-Cutting Crusade

Key U.S. agencies, including the FBI, State Department and the Pentagon, have instructed their employees not to comply with cost-cutting chief Elon Musk's latest demand that federal workers explain what they accomplished last week — or risk losing their job.

 

[SimplyMe]

I'm sure that Grok can handle all our intelligence needs.

Apparently if you asked Grok who most deserved the death penalty, it came up with Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

Another needless distraction and drama. We need to get used to them.

 

[NxNW]

One can write five bullets of what they did without going into detail.

Bullets, or bullet points?

 

[NxNW]

Musk still isn't wrong about people doing so little work.

link?

He's also looking for dead people or non-existent employees who are earning paychecks. Sounds like a good thing to me.

Any evidence that they exist?

 

[Yttrium]

Federal employees, in order to keep your job, you're going to need to:
- demonstrate that your position is essential
- prove that you haven't been tainted by DEI
- haha just kidding, you're fired anyway

I'd love to check out the news Tuesday morning and see "Trump fires the FBI". I'll probably be disappointed, but I'd expect Musk to at least try to put some bite into his threat.

 

[iluvatar5150]

Federal employees, in order to keep your job, you're going to need to:
- demonstrate that your position is essential
- prove that you haven't been tainted by DEI
- haha just kidding, you're fired anyway

I'd love to check out the news Tuesday morning and see "Trump fires the FBI". I'll probably be disappointed, but I'd expect Musk to at least try to put some bite into his threat.

haven't you heard?

Trump names MAGA podcaster Dan Bongino as FBI deputy director

President Donald Trump said Dan Bongino, the conservative radio talk show host, will be deputy director of the FBI.

www.usatoday.com