▲BiscuitBadger2 hours ago
[-] There have to be GovCloud only LLMs just for this case.
I swear this government is headed by appointed nephews of appointed nephews.
I keep thinking back about that Chernobyl miniseries; head of the science department used to run a shoe factory. No one needs to be competent at their job anymore
The article says
> [ChatGPT] is blocked for other Department of Homeland Security staff. Gottumukkala “was granted permission to use ChatGPT with DHS controls in place,” adding that the use was “short-term and limited.”
He had a special exemption to use it as head of Cyber and still got flagged by cybersecurity checks. So obviously they don't think it's safe to use broadly.
They already have a deal with OpenAI to build a government focused one https://openai.com/global-affairs/introducing-chatgpt-gov/
> So obviously they don't think it's safe to use broadly.
More likely, everything gets added to the list because there shouldn't be false positives, it's worth investigating to make sure there isn't an adjacent gap in the security systems.
nostrademons1 hour ago
[-] Somehow I think that the weak link in our government security is at the top - the President, his cabinet, and various heads of agencies. Because nobody questions what they're allowed to do, and so they're exempt from various common-sense security protocols. We already saw some pretty egregious security breaches from Pete Hegseth.
reply▲That's also the case in businesses. No one denies the CEO a security exemption.
reply▲I have never worked in a company where an obviously incorrect CEO-demanded security exemption (like this one) would have been allowed to pass. Professionalism, boards (with a mandatory employee member/representative, after some size) and ethics exist.
30 years in about 8 software companies, Northern Europe. Often startups. Between 4 to 600 people. When they grow large the work often turns boring, so it's time to find something smaller again.
Ah, Northern Europe is probably the difference. This passes all the time in the US. It's probably more common in non-tech companies, as well.
reply▲AnimalMuppet1 hour ago
[-] Been there. The CEO of an internet security company was the one who clicked on the wrong email attachment and turned a virus loose.
I mean, I don't know if he had a security exemption, or if anyone who clicked on it would have infected us. But he was the weak link, at least in that instance.
b00ty4breakfast52 minutes ago
[-] whether he is personally and directly responsible for this specific incident, his leadership absolutely sets the tone for the rest of the federal government.
reply▲Cool story, but totally irrelevant to the article at hand. It's also pure speculation with no substantiation.
reply▲It goes back long before the current regime. People may remember a certain cabinet secretary who ran her own exchange server in the basement.
reply▲It’s always fascinating how massive corruption is “whatabout”’d because someone years ago did something stupid.
reply▲Do you mean now, or then?
Bad is still bad, no matter what the party doing it.
You mean like the whataboutism that the parent is responding to which is even less on topic than Hillary's email server?
reply▲Not sure if this is applicable to DHS, but USG natsec only LLMs exist:
> We’re introducing a custom set of Claude Gov models built exclusively for U.S. national security customers. The models are already deployed by agencies at the highest level of U.S. national security, and access to these models is limited to those who operate in such classified environments.
https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-gov-models-for-u-s-nat...
Isn't using azure openai enough? I read their docs and they have self hosted instances for corporate data compliance.
reply▲The failsons of the king of the failsons
reply▲They say that most fascist governments fall apart because they actively despise competence, which it turns out you need if you are trying to run a country.
reply▲That’s because eventually reality catches up to you.
If the reality of a thing is in opposition to the regime’s wishes, you can’t just wish that away.
However, the regime will favor those who say “yes” over those who accept reality.
Competence gives way to ideology.
I once read an interesting book on the economy of Nazi Germany. There were a lot of smart CEOs and high ranking civil servants who perfectly predicted US industrial might.
stronglikedan1 hour ago
[-] > There have to be GovCloud only LLMs just for this case.
I hear Los Alamos labs has an LLM that makes ChatGPT look like a toy. And then there's Sentinel, which may be the same thing I'm not sure.
gosub10034 minutes ago
[-] Check the engineering salaries between each organization and reconsider your claim.
reply▲heliumtera50 minutes ago
[-] And we all heard they reverse engineered alien anti gravity technology in the 80s.
reply▲This administration's op-sec has been consistently "barney fife" levels of incompetence.
reply▲Leave Fife out of it. His heart was in the right place, at least. Also, his boss made sure he was unarmed.
reply▲this administrations competence on anything and everything has been a kid eating glue
reply▲One of them has bragged about how difficult it is to identify a giraffe, but that he's done it three times
reply▲jermaustin12 hours ago
[-] If it wasn't meant to be eaten, it shouldn't have tasted so good!
reply▲We should get their heads checked for crayons.
reply▲Pretty sure that's a feature, not a bug
reply▲Personally I believe this but it gets into conspiracy theory real quick. There are far simpler explanations.
reply▲Same, I want to believe that this is all a ruse and that the are smart and just really good at playing dumb, but there are just too MANY of them.
It's sycophancy plain and simple. Surround yourself with only yes-men, it ends up becoming less and less competent as the ones who stand up and say no are replaced.
Even if they know better, they can't do better because they know there is no loyalty to nay-sayers.
kevin_thibedeau59 minutes ago
[-] The simpler explanation is that all the competent people saw what happened the first go around and want nothing to do with it. That leaves a detritus of sociopathic wannabes to select from for staff, all vying to mirror the behavioral profile of dear leader.
reply▲Incompetence and conspiracies go hand-in-hand.
reply▲Not really. It is far easier to explain incompetence in powerful positions than to explain competence on purpose in powerful positions - the latter is definitely a conspiracy, the former is not.
reply▲This administration’s incompetence allows their opponents to conspire much more effectively.
reply▲Quite often it is both.
It's not uncommon for incompetent people to be put in positions of power. Because they are incompetent, competent but malicious people take advantage of this and commit actual crimes.
This is where actual conspiracies show up. And that is the incompetent powerful people cover up said crime to avoid looking incompetent.
It is an extremely common pattern.
toomuchtodo2 hours ago
[-] The trick is how to weaponize the incompetence against them.
reply▲There at least one country that weaponised it against the US.
reply▲And when the CCP compromised the law enforcement portal for every American ISP, stealing info on 80% of Americans, including both the Kamala and Trump campaigns, under the previous admin it was rock solid op-sec, presumably.
Or when the previous admin leaked classified Iran attack plans from the Pentagon, so bad that they didn't even know whether they were hacked or not.
You can at least pretend to make a technical argument over a political one.
> CCP compromised the law enforcement portal for every American ISP
Isn’t that the fault of the ISPs, not the admin?
Daishiman6 minutes ago
[-] You're the one making a political argument by doing a whataboutism that attempts to negate the failings of this administration. Which you're not even doing correctly because by every measure the previous administration was drastically more competent by looking at the qualifications of the people who filled their posts.
reply▲stronglikedan1 hour ago
[-] It's been the same with every administration, unfortunately. It's just a side effect of such an unnecessarily big goverment.
reply▲JohnMakin52 minutes ago
[-] Are you sure? This guy didn't pass a counterintelligence polygraph. Like, the one that asks "are you sure you're not a spy?"
reply▲You have to actively maintain a state of ignorance to say this isn’t different. Go look at all of the public reporting starting in January about the way appointees in the Pentagon, DOGE, etc. blew through the normal policies and procedures controlling access, clearing people, or restricting sharing.
For example, this wasn’t just “oops, I used the wrong number” but Hegseth getting a custom line run into a secure facility so he could use a personal computer of unknown provenance and security:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/24/us/politics/hegseth-signa...
That’s one of the reasons why one of the first moves they made was to fire CISOs and the inspectors general who would normally be investigating serious policy violations.
This isn’t “big government”, it’s the attitude that the law is a tool used to hurt their opponents and help themselves but never the reverse.
Inviting a reporter from the Atlantic to your signal chat where you coordinate military plans has nothing to do with government being too big
reply▲You really think that every other administration has had this level of incompetence? The current bumbling and corruption is absolutely unparalleled.
reply▲It's bizarre that someone would choose to use the public, 4o bot over the ChatGPT Pro level bot available in the properly siloed and compliant Azure hosted ChatGPT already available to them at that time. The government can use segregated secure systems set up specifically for government use and sensitive documents.
It looks like he requested and got permission to work with "For Unofficial Use Only" documents on ChatGPT 4o - the bureaucracy allowed it - and nobody bothered to intervene. The incompetence and ignorance both are ridiculous.
Fortunately, nothing important was involved - it was "classified because everything gets classified" bureaucratic type classification, but if you're CISA leadership, you've gotta be on the ball, you can't do newbie bullshit like this.
> It's bizarre that someone would choose to use the public, 4o bot over the ChatGPT Pro level bot available in the properly siloed
You're assuming the planted lackey has any knowledge of these tools.
Or any reason to give a shit and use the less convenient tool.
reply▲How is such a critical position filled with a foreign national?
reply▲It’s absolutely necessary to have ChatGPT.com blocked from ITAR/EAR regulated organizations, such as aerospace, defense, etc. I’m really shocked this wasn’t already the case.
reply▲I agree....but ITAR and EAR can be super vauge especially in higher education.
reply▲"The report says Gottumukkala requested a special exemption to access ChatGPT, which is blocked for other Department of Homeland Security staff."
reply▲That they got this is shocking in itself.
reply▲Surely that must have been approved by the Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, his former boss back in SD.
reply▲Every cause that led to this event is, in itself, quite shocking.
I feel for my American friends, and hope they never again optimise their government for comedy value.
People were already careless with social media which was openly public. I imagine it’ll be worse with these LLMs for the average person.
reply▲I really enjoyed unchecking all those cookie controls. Of the 1668 partner companies who are so interested in me, a good third have a "legitimate interest". With each wanting to drop several cookies, it seems odd that Privacy Badger only thinks there are 19 cookies to block. Could some of them be fakes - flooding the zone?
Damn. I forgot to read the article.
Sounds about on par with what I would expect competence wise.
reply▲Hand-picked by Noem, so yeah.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhu_Gottumukkala
> In April 2025, secretary of homeland security Kristi Noem named Gottumukkala as the deputy director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; he began serving in the position on May 16. That month, Gottumukkala told personnel at the agency that much of its leadership was resigning and that he would serve as its acting director beginning on May 30.
> Gottumukkala had requested to see access to a controlled access program—an act that would require taking a polygraph
Are the US ok? It's 2026 not 1926
The polygraph is still used for security vetting, today. No word on whether they still read a lamb's entrails for portents or consult the dead with a Ouija board.
reply▲> No word on whether they still read a lamb's entrails for portents or consult the dead with a Ouija board.
Don’t give RFK Jr ideas.
It's actually a few minutes to 1929, so that checks out.
reply▲The Feds love polygraphs. Still very much in active use.
reply▲This is what you get when you prize personal loyalty over competence.
This issue is the one thing that gives me some hope that they can be ousted -- they are collectively too stupid and motivated only by their self interests to hold their power indefinitely.
Does anyone in this administration actually trusts each other’s personal loyalties? I wouldn’t.
reply▲the current united states government is staffed mostly with unserious people, or people who are serious about doing crimes against humanity. there's very little in between.
reply▲kube-system34 minutes ago
[-] The vast majority of government staff are career professionals who know what they are doing, not political appointees who showed up in the past year.
reply▲I’m a little surprised by the takes in the comments. Obviously, heads of departments or agencies, CEOs, or similar personnel are generally not in the same league as normal employees when it comes to compliance.
Productivity and efficiency are key for their work. I am sure there are lots of Sysadmins here, that had to disable security controls for a manager or had to configure something in a way to circumvent security controls from actually working. I have been in many situations where I have been asked by IT colleagues if doing something like that was fine, because an executive had to read a PowerPoint file NOW.
hackyhacky12 minutes ago
[-] Sysadmins are afforded special leniency because of their demonstrated competence. Their leeway is earned. In this case, the "cyber security chief" has no proven skill other than absolute loyalty to his boss, which justified his skipping the usual vetting procedure.
reply▲superb_dev30 minutes ago
[-] Obviously those kinds of stories are common, but you can’t seriously be suggesting that it is a good or acceptable thing?
Execs are just as stupid as your average person and bypassing security controls for them puts an organization at an even greater risk due to the kinds of information they have access to. They just get away with it because they’re in charge.
jorblumesea13 minutes ago
[-] It touched a nerve because no one in the trump admin is qualified to do their job. There's a lot of corruption and a lot of people getting access to things they shouldn't due to their relationship and loyalty, not merit. There's a big difference from a sys admin having super user access and some random politically connected hack abusing their privilege.
DOGE/Musk, noem, Kash, hegseth, etc.
Well they’re about to solve that by intentionally cramming it into grok instead
reply▲DOGE already extracted their data of interest, but no doubt they're hungry for more.
reply▲There’s always a buyer for this kind of data. I’m sure there is a lot of activity in those markets.
reply▲edferoci15 minutes ago
[-] I wonder how they could discern the upload of sensitive documents from non-sensitive ones
reply▲Quarrelsome2 hours ago
[-] I adore that this guy had security clearance and I doubt I'd clear that bar. Last time I looked at the interview there was a question:
> have you ever misused drugs?
and I doubt I'd be able to resist the response:
> of course not, I only use drugs properly.
also I wouldn't lie, because that's would undermine the purpose. Still sad I can't apply for SC jobs because I'm extremely patriotic and improving my nation is something that appeals.
FWIW I have held a security clearance during my career, and telling them I smoked weed was not a dealbreaker. What they are ultimately looking for is reasons why you could be coerced into divulging classified information. If you owe money due to drugs/gambling, etc, that's where it becomes a dealbreaker.
reply▲The general rule is not to lie to them, because they will interview all your friends and someone somewhere will rat you out. It’s pointless to try to hide anything during these interviews, and, if you do it, then it’s a dealbreaker.
reply▲wait, so I can apply and be honest? Sick! I just poorly misassumed they had classicly archaic interpretations of drugs.
reply▲codezero58 minutes ago
[-] I don’t have a clearance so someone can correct me, I believe you still have to have not used drugs in the prior year.
reply▲stackghost45 minutes ago
[-] >I don’t have a clearance so someone can correct me
Why would you give an answer when by your own statement, you're not knowledgeable? What a strange mindset.
>I believe you still have to have not used drugs in the prior year.
My own experience does not agree with this speculation.
I wonder how far removed the interim director of the CISA is from any real world security. I bet they have not seen or solved any real security problems and merely are an executive looking over cybersec. This probably is another example of why you need rank and file security peeps into security leadership roles rather than some random exec.
reply▲It looke like he's unfit for the position, and was using ChatGPT to burnish his reports etc.
reply▲Hey dude. That's a thought. Get your AI to expand it into a full report and send it to my AI to summarize!
reply▲It’s happening all across corporate too
reply▲If I did this with a banal internal documentation at work I would be written up and maybe fired over breaking known policy. This administration is so ridiculously incompetent, and interim head of cyber security.. leaks. The onion wouldn't write this.
reply▲Can't be surprised when clowns clown.
reply▲BTW, what's the current status on LLMs and confidential documents ? Which license from which suppliers are fine and which aren't ?
reply▲Leaked is not the correct word here. Generally as it's used, it implies some intent to disclose, the information for it's own purposes. You would call a disclosure to the war thunder forums a leak, because the intent was to use that information to win an argument. You wouldn't call Leaving boxes of classified information in a wearhouse where you'd normally read them a leak. (At least not as a verb). Likewise you wouldn't call it a leak if you mistakenly abandoned them in a park.
That said, IIRC For Official Use Only is the lowest level of classification (note not classified) it's not even NOFORN. It's even multiple levels below Sensitive But Unclassified.
So, who cares?
Much more significant is he failed the SCI/full poly... that means you lied about something. Yes I know polys don't work, but the point of the poly is to try to ensure you've disclosed everything that could be used against you, which ideally means no one could flip you or manipulate you. The functional part is to determine if you have anxiety about things you might try to hide, because that fear can be used against you. No fear/anxiety, or nothing you're trying to hide means you're harder to manipulate.
That feels bad even ignoring the whole hostile spys kinda thing.
"Information wants to be free". Government stooges help information with what it wants.
reply▲Where does this "cybersecurity monitoring" take place? On OpenAIs side? Or some kind of monitoring tools on the devices themself?
reply▲seanhunter33 minutes ago
[-] In any enterprise, normal would be to have monitoring on all ingress and egress points from the network and on devices themselves. You can't only have monitoring on managed devices because someone might BYOD and plug in an unmanaged device/connect it to internal wifi etc.
You bring in vendors and they need guest wifi to give you a demo, you need to be able to give them something to connect to but you don't want that pipe to be unmonitored.
I_am_tiberius1 hour ago
[-] My assumption is that it goes the other direction on a permanent basis.
reply▲1970-01-0140 minutes ago
[-] Once again, if you or I did this, it's federal crime and federal time.
But when the chief does it, it's an oopsie poopsie "special exemption".
This is a "Cybersecurity chief" causing an intern-level IT incident.
In many industries, this would be a rapid incident at the company-level and also an immediate fireable offense and in some governments this would be a complete massive scandal + press conference broadcasted across the country.
Then again the CTO of Crowdstrike that had their anti-malware code update cause huge problems, is the same guy that was CTO of McAfee when their AV code update, caused huge problems.
reply▲The CTO created the update? Otherwise it's not the same situation
reply▲No but they could have easily created the culture that massively increased the probability of such mishaps... we have all seen how not OK work environment negatively affects deliveries right, or read about boeing fiasco(s).
Not an insider just to be clear here so maybe just really bad luck. But no benefit of doubt for the third strike.
I think he is real deal. I mean in reality he learned or knows very little about technical matters. No fraud needed.
reply▲Well, at least there's gonna be a swift and appropriate punishment. LOL
reply▲booleandilemma2 hours ago
[-] From wikipedia:
He graduated from Andhra University with a bachelor of engineering in electronics and communication engineering, the University of Texas at Arlington with a master's degree in computer science engineering, the University of Dallas with a Master of Business Administration in engineering and technology management, and Dakota State University with a doctorate in information systems.
And he still manages to make a rookie mistake. Time to investigate Mr. Gottumukkala's credentials. I wouldn't be surprised if he's a fraud.
The meritocracy strikes again.
reply▲https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhu_GottumukkalaHe was the 'CTO' of South Dakota and later the CIO/Commissioner of the South Dakota Bureau of Information and Telecommunications under governor Kristi Noem.
Edit: (From a European perspective) it seems like the southern states really took over the US establishment. I hadn't really grasped the level of it, before.
reply▲> Edit: (From a European perspective) it seems like the southern states really took over the US establishment. I hadn't really grasped the level of it, before.
It's good to know the Americans aren't the only ones who never look at maps outside their own country
South Dakota has a population of less than 1 million people and the complexity of a CTO job of a state like South Dakota would be quite low. It is < 0.3% of the US Population and likely has de minimis benefit programs.
reply▲South Dakota is in the northern portion. But to your statement, historically speaking the southern states after the civil war kept trucking along in terms of power and influence.
reply▲The Dakotas weren't really north/south in the Civil War context; only about 4k people lived there in 1860. It was largely empty land, and not a state until 1889.
reply▲That is one of the best comments I've seen on HN to date!
It seriously got me laughing. Thanks.
and which MTV reality show was this "cybersecurity chief" plucked from ?
reply▲Do they have Middle Age Grandpas on MTV nowadays?
reply▲I guess you kids have no idea who the Secretary of Transportation is
reply▲Do kids know what MTV is?
reply▲hareykrishna2 hours ago
[-] At least he is not on H1-b!
reply▲Sounds like he came on a student visa from India and got citizenship.
reply▲Citizenship can be revoked in cases that involve serious offences.
reply▲It usually requires fraud in receiving the citizenship for it to be revoked. Once naturalized, if you commit a serious offense unrelated to the citizenship process itself, you'll keep your US citizenship.
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