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groundloop

(13,768 posts)
Fri Mar 13, 2026, 08:45 AM 9 hrs ago

DOGE bros exposed: Depositions from Elon Musk's team reveal ChatGPT process for gutting 'DEI' grants

Source: The Independent

Elon Musk’s disciples in his so-called Department of Government Efficiency were embedded across federal agencies with a mandate to fire thousands of public employees and radically cut federal spending.

When Musk deployed DOGE into the National Endowment for the Humanities, which provides vital financial support to research and arts programs, Musk’s staff abruptly choked off more than 1,400 grants, eliminating tens of millions of dollars in public funding within less than a month.

More than 10 hours of newly released video testimony from January uncovers how two DOGE operators relied on ChatGPT and their own largely uninformed judgments to make sweeping decisions about funding for a range of programs and projects — and the people who rely on them.

The depositions, stemming from a lawsuit from the Modern Language Association, the American Council of Learned Societies and the American Historical Association, included testimony from two young DOGE officials, Justin Fox and Nathan Cavanaugh, neither of whom had experience working in government, let alone grant administration.

Read more: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/doge-bros-deposition-musk-chatgpt-dei-grants-b2937603.html



The only grants they didn't touch were tRump related.

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DOGE bros exposed: Depositions from Elon Musk's team reveal ChatGPT process for gutting 'DEI' grants (Original Post) groundloop 9 hrs ago OP
The whole thing is depressing.nt jfz9580m 6 hrs ago #1
Kids in power, Bayard 4 hrs ago #2
The worst part is jfz9580m 4 hrs ago #3

Bayard

(29,428 posts)
2. Kids in power,
Fri Mar 13, 2026, 01:00 PM
4 hrs ago

Making decisions they had no business making, and no thought--or care--of consequences.

jfz9580m

(16,986 posts)
3. The worst part is
Fri Mar 13, 2026, 01:18 PM
4 hrs ago

These guys’ “hardcore” and tough and efficient right wing libertarian meritocratic rot is as full of shit as Robin D’Angelo’s “White fragility” or race2dinner or that Gita Gandbhir’s trauma porn documentary.

And none of that is federally funded. That is all corporate funded like these guys.

This is a failed version of woke and of conservatism and of everything.

Inside each human there are some conservative tendencies. I have some. I usually bend them on myself. And on hucksters (like Marc Andreessen, Zuckerberg, Pichai, Nadella..in short Ed Zitron’s business idiots). I have way more lefty tendencies which is about grace, case by case. Such as the humans languishing in Ice detention centres. But I don’t get some celebrity belting out canned messages.

This is all a bunch of bullshit of various people yelling and scrimmaging generally inelegantly where on the right, the hardcore meritocrats are no such thing. Adam Becker is “hardcore”. So is my oncologist or Clayton Dalton or Dr Fauci..and they are humble. That is normal in a large number of highly elite people male, female, white and nonwhite.

It is just that the vocal people are all these guys. It is good that Becker at least is in the fray. Someone should be who isn’t a mediocre scientist and a “rude little shrimp” (according to cleverbot..can’t argue with that assessment of my skill and talent level or personality) blatantly forced to drivel on outside their field in these icky waters.

I am as shrill as Atrios could wish now..

Many of the people these guys attack are people who do way more with their skimpy resources than these people do with copious resources.

The perception of woke that is so super annoying is all from the entertainment industry, athletics. Those are celebrities.

Though like Catherine Liu (she had an excellent piece in unherd or Lee Fang who pointed out that Paul Singer financed shady operatives & Justine Tunney is almost certainly a bad actor or insane), I do agree that there is some perversion of the left plus routine human stupidity we are all guilty of and below a threshold of malice (which fucking David Frum and the Cheneys and David Brooks do not clear! They are all players..we are people!) we should all be forgiving of each other and doing something about these tech creeps, billionaires, global warming and human overpopulation.

But take elon musk - if he was a genius his rockets wouldn’t explode. As for me I have seen Google’s concept of meritocracy and it consists of hobbling your antagonist every way possible. I am working on a paper of average difficulty overall, but the conditions imposed for some 14.5 years were hellish, but I will have completed it on my own resources so these fuckers’ sole contribution will have been constant harassment and forcing of unwanted trash and hijacking of anything useful.
Whatever their politics here in India, I am pressing charges and filing malpractice and serious misconduct and harassment allegations. And some psychiatric malpractice allegations though not misconduct nor harassment in the US. Potentially misconduct at the city/state level, but not federal or institutional, since I partially consented out of faith in my mentor and another scientist alone, but not those braindead Google people moonlighting as shady profs. The NIH and those greasy Si Valley creeps are distinct.

But this is a bullshit left versus right, woke & mentally well versus tough, hardcore meritocratic conversation between various fraudulent celebrities and sleazy business people who should all be avoided.
I think it is shitty that all these people got defunded when it is sleazy industry/platform driven “woke” that has misrepresented woke which is probably as silent irl as anything worthwhile is. The net perverts perceptions of reality.
My generation came of political age to Stewart and Colbert - they were relatively lefty and South Park was more right leaning and both tended to focus on human stupidity and folly, which are both pretty universal. I don’t see a conflict between woke, tolerably competent and non-stupidity.

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