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Elon’s big task is . . . interoperability?

I must say, there are Easter eggs scattered all through Donald Trump's blizzard of executive orders. I imagine we'll be uncovering them for a long time.

For example: you remember Elon Musk's promise to use DOGE to cut $2 trillion from federal spending? It's true that no one ever seriously thought he could do that. On the other hand, we all figured he'd do something to pare down government. But apparently not. According to the EO implementing it, DOGE has precisely one function:

Sec. 4. Modernizing Federal Technology and Software to Maximize Efficiency and Productivity. (a) The USDS Administrator shall commence a Software Modernization Initiative to improve the quality and efficiency of government-wide software, network infrastructure, and information technology (IT) systems. Among other things, the USDS Administrator shall work with Agency Heads to promote inter-operability between agency networks and systems, ensure data integrity, and facilitate responsible data collection and synchronization.

So that's it? Software modernization? Interoperability? The federal government has been grinding away on interoperability for more than 20 years. Just to give you an example, here's a 2004 paper just for the Department of Defense that lists 35 interoperability initiatives, 3 standards, 4 strategies, and 4 testbeds. And it comes with a vintage Word 6.0 graphic to explain everything. This is what Musk has gotten himself into.

I don't know. Maybe Musk has a clever plan to leverage this into some kind of all-powerful Rasputinish hold over the Oval Office. But it sounds more like stepping into a pool of quicksand to me. And it definitely sounds like it's light years from cutting $2 trillion in spending and turning the federal government into a lean, mean fighting machine.

50 thoughts on “Elon’s big task is . . . interoperability?

  1. ProgressOne

    Perhaps Musk is really just in it for the adulation. He's sees how Trump feeds his voracious narcissism, and Musk has learned how good it feels to feed his own narcissism. Thousands and thousands shouting about how amazing and heroic you are. Ordinary narcissists can only dream of this.

    From Trump 1.0, we learned you really don't have to accomplish much to sustain this adulation from millions among the masses. It's mostly all a show. And the script depends on lots of lies, extreme exaggerations, personal attacks, name-calling, threats, corruption, and loads of petty bullshit. What a show it is!

    1. iamr4man

      I think Musk’s main interest is the government funding his Mars rocket program and ending regulations that keep him from doing as he pleases.

      1. Art Eclectic

        Yes, the billionaire rocket boys are all in on space tourism. Hotels for rich people who've run out of things to buy.

        1. DButch

          Go to Youtube and search for "Love, Death + Robots" and check out the journey of 3 robots across the planet, visiting the remains of the extinct human civilization.

          At a huge launch base dotted with lots of SpaceX rockets, they discover a video showing that one rocket managed to launch. The viewpoint shifts to Mars, with habitat domes. A space-suited figure is sitting on a veranda inside one of the domes. It picks up a slushy in a cocktail glass, pops the helmet shield, and a cat leans out to lap it up. The cat looks out and says: "Who were you expecting - Elon Musk?"

  2. gVOR08

    I thought it likely Trump was giving Musk a big title with no power, but possible DOGE was a way to get MAGA agents into the agencies to spy and lean on them Looks like the former, thankfully. This has a lot of comic possibilities.

    1. QuakerInBasement

      My money's on the latter. "Interoperability" is just a fancy name for letting Musk and Trump snoop through your files.

    2. unsunder

      I think you were right the first time. But also, there is a lot of money to be stolen from the federal government. That money doesn’t just steal itself.

  3. D_Ohrk_E1

    I'd suspected, given his actions at Birdsite, that his goal was to reduce staff and modernize, and that in his naive brain, he thought there was a ton of waste he could eliminate by doing this. The issues he probably haven't thought through is the need of backward compatibility, training, and a requirement for systems to always be up and operating.

    1. DButch

      I was working for EMC Corporation (big data storage array maker) and wound up being able to observe Colin Powell's attempts to modernize the Department of State's IT Systems after 9/11.

      That was when he found out that IT translated to "piles of ancient crap held together with baling wire" with occasional additions of not nearly enough new stuff to replace the ancient crap because Congress wasn't interested in stuff in a back room that wasn't flashy. So a lot of time was spent trying to connect obsolete crap to slightly less obsolete crap with more bailing wire.

      In some cases, it was faster and more reliable to send snail mail or a diplomatic pouch than to use email.

      He didn't get the money for modernization back then - which is probably why he advised Hilary Clinton to NOT depend on email.

        1. Jimm

          Sounds like conspiracy to defraud the United States, and very stupid considering AOL security and overall IT at that time (and still now to be fair), did he really say that?

    2. cmayo

      Not to mention that the actual biggest problem is simply that federal agencies have (by and large) been starved of resources and staff after decades of Republican sabotage. They're underfunded and understaffed, not the reverse.

  4. Murc

    I think it's a mistake to look for official ambits here.

    There's actually fairly robust law on how the Executive Branch can create and use special commissions of private citizens to advise the government. It goes back a very long and basically every President since Reagan has used them. But those laws require record-keeping and transparency.

    That's bad. These guys don't want that and they don't want lawsuits; Trump's control of the courts only goes so far. So the plan is to not give them formal power. They can let Congress look at all the reports about software interoperability they want, while trying to keep when these guys are actually doing secret. It may or may not work.

    1. kenalovell

      This ISN'T a special commission of private citizens. It's an existing regular department called the United States Digital Service, which Trump has re-branded the "United States DOGE Service".

      1. aldoushickman

        Musk isn't reporting to an office or sitting in on meetings or drafting memos. He--just like all the other other hangers-on, weirdos, grifters, and nazis in Trump's orbit--will just be seen around Trump a lot, and will be advising him on what to do.

        Musk is like that pillow guy, or various rich folks who Trump liked being flattered by when he'd cruise through the dining hall at his swamp castle: none of this is official, and none of them are undertaking any actual, legit roles (and responsibilities) in government.

        Like how oligarchs in Russia do it.

  5. akapneogy

    Paul Krugman believes this is all about the emptiness that the "pathetic billionaires" are trying to fill. "My best guess is that a billionaire, having climbed to incredible heights, realizes that he’s still an ordinary human being who puts his pants on one leg at a time, and asks, “Is this all there is?”"

    1. marknc

      I think you might be right. I saw Warren Buffet talking about all the wonderful things his mountain of money let him do. Well - not quite. He basically said that anybody making $100k/year (this was maybe 15 years ago) could do almost anything he does. Food doesn't taste better, beds are only so comfortable, a bigger TV doesn't make the game better, etc.

      1. Ogemaniac

        I earn about $100k adjusted for 15 years of inflation, and I would seriously dispute his claim is true for anyone with children. We constantly have to make hard choices about what to buy, bargain shop (most of my clothes are from thrift stores), drive janky cars, and fix almost everything ourselves, because hiring out is expensive and only rational if we can’t figure it ourselves.

        1. cephalopod

          The cost of daycare and college makes it tough to live the good life on $150,000 just about anywhere.

          If you have the kind of "cadillac" health care plan Buffet probably has, then living in Omaha on that kind of income probably is pretty decent. The median home price is only $275,000, so you could afford a nice place. I own some really nice 2nd-hand clothes, the store brands taste pretty much the same as anything else, and cars with a salvage title drive just fine. A bigger house just gets filled with more stuff you don't need, and there is a sense of satisfaction in fixing things yourself.

          What Buffet is talking about is a middle-class lifestyle from his middle years, and that is a pretty nice way to live. It also puts you into a social group that includes lots of decent people - certainly better than the money-obsessed narcissists that inhabit the world of billionaires.

          1. bethby30

            Buffet was making a point about a lot of wealth — multimillion— not being needed to have a decent life. He is right. The best explanation I have seen for these guys who can never have enough money is that is the only way they have to prove which of them is the best.

      2. unsunder

        Agreed. The money is a status thing for Trump and for Musk. It’s about lording over others and looking like a great success.

  6. Dave_MB32

    I read that and immediately thought of billions to Elon for creating a company promising interoperability software through the genius of his 'AI' ... whether it actually uses AI or not, and whether it actually provides any benefits or not.

    Think of Ross Perot, but for Elon it's just another revenue stream.

  7. cmayo

    This sounds under-the-radar insidious. There's the potential for a lot of damage here - to the security of government operations.

    That sounds exactly like the kind of thing 2-bit Bond villain Muskrat would get excited about.

  8. Jimm

    To be honest, I'm the experienced and relevant kind of person you would bring on to do this, not Elon, and usually not big data, social media, or rocket company engineers either, who will recoil and not know how to deal with some of the Microsoft insanity they will encounter, and how far back some of the tech debt goes.

    Elon has enough relevant experience and know-how to help lead the effort though, I guess (not sure this the best use of his time), but Vivek still a head-scratcher, even in this more limited scope.

    1. ProgressOne

      "Elon has enough relevant experience and know-how to help lead the effort though"

      Really? He’s good at hardware-oriented systems (Space X, Tesla, etc.), but with Twitter, things have gone badly. He seems out of his depth. The company's value has declined since Musk bought it in October 2022, and its revenue has been declining since 2021.

  9. rick_jones

    Elon’s big task is . . . interoperability?

    I suspect that Musk could indeed use a number of interoperability improvements...

  10. kenalovell

    It's impossible to read the tea leaves in Trump's blizzard of paper, but on the face of it this is a gigantic "piss off" to Musk. He served his purpose in the campaign but now he's just a pain in the butt. So instead of a seat at the top table helping to run the country, he's been told to go advise a small government department on how to improve the government's IT. The executive order doesn't even seem to create a role for him at all, so he'll basically have no official status whatsoever.

    I'm starting to think Ramaswamy wasn't pushed out after all. He quit because he realised the Trump campaign had been taking him and Musk for a ride.

    1. rick_jones

      Perhaps not quite to the same degree, but wouldn't that be like pissing-off Rupert Murdoch? Xitter isn't what it was, but it is still a rather large megaphone at Musk's beck and call.

      1. Pittsburgh Mike

        But Trump definitely has more power -- he could impose tariffs on good Elon needs to build his cars or rockets. He could start anti-trust proceedings.

        He probably won't, but there's a reason all those CEOs and billionaires were up there on the dais on 1/20, and its not like they were interested in Donnie's thoughts.

  11. Joseph Harbin

    I don't know what this is all about, but don't assume anything Musk touches is benign. "He knows those computers," says Trump.

    From Heather Cox Richardson:

    At a rally Sunday night at the Capital One Arena in Washington, Trump highlighted the performance side of his public persona. He teased the next day’s events and let his audience in on a secret that echoed the “neokayfabe” of professional wrestling by leaving people wondering if it was true or a lie. After praising Elon Musk, he told the crowd “He was very effective. He knows those computers better than anybody. Those vote counting computers. And we ended up winning Pennsylvania like in a landslide. So it was pretty good…. Thank you to Elon.”

    Huh?

  12. spatrick

    Yglesias believes Musk s going to use his government position to get access to classified info to share with China. China is his hole card. So long as he maintains close ties with the CCP, his relationship with Trump or if the Democrats come back to power in four years, he can always flee to their welcoming arms

    1. aldoushickman

      "China is his hole card. . . . he can always flee to their welcoming arms"

      That's . . . stupid. The richest person on Earth doesn't have to flee to anybody's arms. And nobody wants to flee to China.

  13. Pittsburgh Mike

    20 years? Lookup the Ada programming language, or the Office Document Architecture. Both obsolete, BTW.

    My guess is that you're talking about 40+ years of attempted standardization, with very limited success. That's because the area simply changes too fast for a standard to even be relevant for more than a decade or so.

    1. golack

      Many years ago, I backed up my PC to tape. Then the tape drive failed. I was finally able to find a new tape drive that took worked with that physical format--but the new software could not read what was written.

      With government that problem is a lot larger, and there are many files that have never been digitized. Early on, there was a move to have all IT people work in the same programming language--that way any IT person could work anywhere in government. But that failed--effectively locking people into legacy systems.
      Off loading work to outside contractors typically meant different systems could not talk to each other. There were, maybe still are, major problems getting need data from the armed forces to the VA--and veterans were losing out on needed benefits and services.
      Note, there are big problems in the private sector too. If you're getting medical work done, you can find you need to bring copies of your data from office to office. That seems to have improved a bit recently--maybe.

      1. DButch

        I had that type of experience at DEC in the 80s. I had some text files on an 8 inch floppy, went to update a resume, and there were no 8 inch floppy drives around. Fortunately I knew a lab that stockpiled old stuff that might be needed someday - and managed to copy the data to a 5 1/2 inch floppy.

        One other tale of ancient tech - when I retired from Dell-EMC Technologies in 2018, I went to the Social Security office in Bellevue, WA to apply for benefits, I spotted the reflection of the screen the agent was using - it was a running a screen package that I recognized from DOS 6!

        I wonder how much it cost SS to keep that running!

  14. JohnH

    "It sounds more like stepping into a pool of quicksand to me." Nope, it sounds like a load of bull to me, and it surely sounds like whatever Trump or he wants it to mean to them. Need an excuse to line their own pockets (or a flatterer's)? It'll be interoperable. Need an excuse to cut funds for investment, education, health care, enforcement, and "those people"? They weren't interoperable.

    This has the obvious advantage too that Trump and Musk don't have to know what it means, no more than pretty much anything else. It's just something someone flattering around them said, and it means what they say it means.

  15. Anonymous At Work

    What methods, if any, would Musk have to avoid the usual channels for creating, announcing, obtaining, selecting, and then deploying vendor bids for the software he wants to use? The scope/scale of the systems and the backwards compatibility, the lengthy bidding process, and the future training requirements are what defeats attempts to have a Windows 11 software system in government.

  16. unsunder

    I’m just here to talk about Elon Musk giving a Nazi salute twice in front of a supportive crowd.

    But, if we’re going to talk about his work for Trump, then I think we can simply look at Twitter, where he fired a bunch of people and told the remaining ones to work harder. So, initially I think it will look like that - Musk ripping through personnel sheets saying we don’t need this department or that.

  17. SwamiRedux

    And it definitely sounds like it's light years from cutting $2 trillion in spending and turning the federal government into a lean, mean fighting machine.

    Come on, Kevin. Didn't you used to be in tech marketing? With the proper tech he can drive down spending to zero!

  18. Uncle Jess

    Unless Musk has a clever way to go around the budget and procurement federal processes, he is already too late. If he gets money in the current budget formulation, with luck he can start to spend money on the project the following year. That step will probably be design phase. But first he has to know what he is doing well enough to procure these design services. The Request for Proposal will be sent to vendors who get to ask questions which must be answered and shared with other vendors, then they get time to put together a massive proposal, months, maybe years. Then the government uses a scoring method to find the best combination of low cost and technical merit. They then award a contract which will almost certainly be protested by the losing vendors. Once the protests are resolved they can soon start spending money on the project. Note that we are probably in year three or four by now and "there is nothing to show for the money." With Trump being a lame duck, the new administration will kill the project on day one. This is why federal systems are wildly inefficient and outdated. I doubt that DOGE will be able to change much.

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