Musk says he is working to shut down "beyond repair" USAID | Hacker News Reader

Musk says he is working to shut down "beyond repair" USAID

reuters.com

29 pointsTechTechTech22 comments

> On Sunday Reuters reported the Trump administration removed two top security officials at USAID during the weekend after they tried to stop representatives from Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from gaining access to restricted parts of the building, three sources said.

It will be interesting to see how this approach plays out when Musk gets around to the $800 billion dollar Department of Defense.

The extra $40 billion or so taken as tariffs from ordinary people will add to the DoD-MIC, NASA (for SpaceX), and DOGE budgets to transfer wealth via corporate welfare. And the "savings" from destroying essential services like the NIH and CDC will undoubtedly go that way too. It's a cash grab.

I wonder if any of the young men he sent to do this have HN accounts.

There's reporting suggesting these people might have been recruited as volunteers on Twitter and then sent into various government departments to commit what look a lot like crimes.

I'm not American so it's not even my money but it would make sense to me, when your country has so much debt to close on an agency that gives away billions of dollars.

If people want their money to be used to help others in need, they can already donate to association like red cross. Everyone is free to do or not, depending on belief and financial situation.

But with these agencies the government is taking money from every American, including those the poorest and give it away. This shouldn't be the government authority, there is absolutely no reason why an individual isn't already able to do it by himself.

USAID is an instrument of soft power, not a charitable cause. The power, influence and goodwill that the US obtains from USAID isn’t something that individual charitable donations can achieve. Bribing a country is generally a much better way to get its cooperation than a military threat because (i) it makes the country more friendly rather than pissing it off, and (ii) you don’t have to go to the trouble and expense of starting occasional wars to underline the credibility of your military threats.

Certainly that’s true for at the founding and during Carter. Totally incompatible now:

Aid during climate catastrophes connotes some US responsibility for them.

There’s no actual room where a formidable billionaire shapes the terms of aid. The bigly of which is: this aid depends on enforcing zero migrants by any means.

Sadly, the vaccination component of USAID will work against it, too. The US is dealing with vaccine conspiracy theorists, and the only effective response I’ve heard is: the influence campaign to sew doubt about vaccines is having great success weakening the US and will now move on to depopulating the third world.

How much money, specifically, do you think is “taken” from the “poorest” and “given away” by USAID?

This is a weird line of attack on basically anything in the federal government’s budget, as is the suggestion that it works similarly to your household budget.

There are things people can't do by themselves and instead must rely on government, police for instance.

There are things people can already do by themselves, give money to association that helps people in need is one of them.

Imo that's what differentiate gouvernement budgets, taxpayer money shouldn't be used on things they can already do themselves if so they decide.

Why didn’t you answer the question?

I would assume because you're just trying to change the topic.

I quoted the specific words GP used and the specific post GP made. I’m not clear how asking GP to elaborate on what was apparently a statement not made in good faith is “changing the topic”.

Aside from the fact that it apparently makes ideological allies sad about having to explain what they really meant. Maybe you can elaborate on that.

1%.

https://www.axios.com/2025/02/03/usaid-musk-trump-what-to-kn...

What is 1%? 1% of poor folk’s income? Or is it just 1% of the budget, making it a wildly silly place to start “cost savings” on behalf of “poor people”?

"The over $40 billion USAID managed in FY 2023 was still less than 1% of the federal budget."

It does a lot of good (value) for the cost. A lot of poor people will starve and die and America will lose standing and respect in the world as a consequence of destroying aid to save relative pennies.

It doesn't bring respect when 90% of the third world already despise Americans.

You're just giving away resources to people that hate you.

its not that people around the hate America because it is giving out the aid.

it is because America's military industrial complex and decades of forever wars caused unimaginable death and suffering to people around the world (+add ~15 Trillion in national debt borrowed on behalf of taxpayers and transferred to Lockheed and friends, with absolutely nothing to show for it).

USAID was a source of US influence in other countries.

I bet China will gladly replace them.

Then don't cut everything suddenly without warning.

And don't take down the Memorial Wall to employees of USAID killed in the line of duty on the first day.

This is just cruelty, from a deranged drughead who spews crazy conspiracy theories about USAID ("viper nest", "criminal organization"), not a "simple" cost-cutter.

> If people want their money to be used to help others in need,

That argument is nonsense. I bet many or most Americans disagree with how tax money is used. Many probably does not want to pay for the world's (by faaaaar) largest military or for Israel's wars, for example. Yet they have to pay.

That's one of the reason they elected trump, to cut back on government authority and bring back individual freedom.

Cause that is exactly what Trump did last time he was president, right?

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