The why (ICE) is pretty clear. I was really more interested in where - how widespread is this?

Because honestly, the silence is chilling. It feels like the day is being smothered in this blanket of lukewarm fear.

Dunno… doodles are too clean. Napkin is suspiciously clean as well = no coffee stains, no wrinkles, no bad poetry. Looks like AI to me, or at least Photoshop.

I work with a ten year old Access database I’m trying to migrate to SQL. Should be easy, right?

Except it’s got over 170 macro driven subquery chains accessing multiple legacy ERP systems, is the only source of their KPIs (these legacy systems can’t generate them on their own), and is the only system that can publish the KPIs to the multiple Sharepoint lists that the entire company relies upon.

Despite the fact I have over 20 years experience migrating legacy systems, it’s taken me close to a year to track down all of the dependencies, and this system is built in an easy language (SQL vs COBOL), is a tiny fraction of the size of the SSI databases, and is 30 years younger than the systems running social security (at least).

There is absolutely no way they have any chance of modernizing the social security system in under five years. It would take at least a decade to do it properly.

DOGE won’t just break the system. They will fuck it up beyond all belief, to the point where it will never work properly again.

If you’re on Social Security, be ready for payments to just stop. Expect it. It’s their end goal.

And pray the last administration took backups.