One of the things that gives me hope is that all these federal systems operate on creaky ancient tech. When I worked on a DOJ project, our software ran on a Wang system. Even back in 1993, that thing was ridiculously old. There were not many programmers who could understand the code, which we called “spaghetti code.” Our COBOL programmers had job security for life, and I don’t think there was any plan for what would happen if one of those guys retired or died. For years, we wanted to upgrade the system to something that didn’t fit into an entire room (yes, the main system filled an entire room), but it was federally mandated that we have all the records going back 50 years, and we weren’t sure we could transfer all the old files into a new system.
I think they finally did have to upgrade to a more modern tech because Wang stopped making and supporting the systems.
So, good luck 19 year olds! Have fun cracking these Federal systems.
I’ve long thought that one of the best (and largely unintentional) security measures for our nuclear launch systems is that they operate using obsolete, non-network based computers which use an uncommon type of 8" floppy disks to program them. Every time that politicians or pundits talk about how we’re long overdue for modernizing the systems I was to shout “YOU FOOLS! HAVEN’T YOU SEEN BATTLESTAR GALACTICA?”
Of course they didn’t understand cobol… they probably use AI to write their code.
One of the replies feels way too likely now.
fucking 
Saw the headline before the source and thought it was real.
Looks like some associates have lost confidence in the con.
“Hey Grok, tell your boss to jump down an open sewer.”
Just saw this article. Even some people who operate Tesla news websites have ditched their personal Teslas.
Any takers on a bet that some operatives are just going to quietly disappear into the mist before they can be assassinated?
He’s gonna need to sell more than 2500 armored swastitrucks to the state department.
($100K base model, at least $50K armor)
Oh, they’ll be huge cost overruns built into the contract.
And 17 times more dangerous at that.
On the most basic level, a system that works much of the time, but occasionally fails catastrophically without warning and requires drivers to instantly take control is known to be unavoidably dangerous because it’s demonstrably impossible for operators to retain the necessary focus to actually do so. It’s pure malfeasance to put these systems on the streets, much less as consumer products.
Given how they’ve been operating thus far, I fear they won’t even try to understand them - instead they’ll decide that since they can’t understand them, they must not be important and just shut everything down.