U.S. intelligence intervened with DOJ to push HPE-Juniper merger
axios.com130 points by rascul a day ago
130 points by rascul a day ago
The much longer Bloomberg article is also worth reading for background,
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-29/top-doj-a... ("Top DOJ Antitrust Officials Removed Over HPE-Juniper Settlement" (July 29))
> "Senate Democrats alleged the removals were the result of improper political influence and lawmakers are pushing the federal judge overseeing HPE’s acquisition to hold a lengthy review of the antitrust settlement."
> "Roger Alford, the top deputy to the Justice Department’s antitrust chief Gail Slater, and William Rinner, who led the department’s merger enforcement, were dismissed Monday, according to people familiar with the situation."
Here is the archived Bloomberg article. If you want to edit this into your comment, no problem.
It sounds more like the US IC treats HP like one of its own departments, and it would very much like to do the same with Juniper.
The idea that even allies will be using US networking equipment in a couple decades seems implausible. Everyone is well-aware that any boxes coming out of the US are as likely to be tapped as ones coming out of china.
The Snowden leaks showed 20 years ago that cisco routers were being sent to NSA for "aftermarket" modifications before being sent to clients. It's not news.
The Snowden leaks demonstrated Cisco wasn't a knowing participant — the equipment was covertly diverted and then modified. That's quite different than knowing collaboration.
Is there any computer or internet company that the US IC doesn't treat as their own department? Maybe some very small and insignificant ones.
Just a reminder that Juniper was the firm that managed to (1) ship VPN appliances that used the Dual EC RNG, (2) get hacked, and (3) had the hackers substitute in their own Dual EC backdoor curve point, which shipped in their product for years.
I believe that (1) happened prior to the acquisition of netscreen by Juniper. (so, if your comment is meant to suggest something about the integrity of the management, etc. it may not be as significant as you're suggesting).
Juniper acquired Netscreen in 2004. The rest of the timeline is in the paper. So, no, I think.
There are so many dead companies and technologies inside of HPE.
I fail to see how this impeded Huawei.
Rule #1 of digital security: There is always some spy, somewhere, trying to work an angle to get into your traffic. Absolutely no exceptions.
Rule #1.a.: Some part of your network is already compromised. You just don't know which part. Design everything with this in mind.
Kinda rich for a company that was in bed with the Chinese govt (H3C) and has a track record of killing the things it acquires.
Maybe they really wanted to ensure that Juniper dies a slow death ?
It’s easy for me to get worked about about the things being done and allowed by this administration, but I have to wonder: will allowing these mega companies create more opportunities for scrappy upstarts to disrupt these giant, slow moving, clunky monoliths?
Probably not.
Look at Juniper specifically. In 2021, their revenue roughly broke down as 40% service provider, 35% enterprise campuses, 25% cloud. In 2025, that had shifted to 45% enterprise campuses, 30% service provider, and 25% cloud. That shift is mostly reflected by how much money they pumped into Mist, and how successful that was.
Scrappy little upstarts have a _really_ hard time selling networking equipment to service providers and enterprises, who require tons of arcane features that take a long time to build and validate. They also operate very much on reputation, and rely on training pipelines outside of their own organizations (i.e., certifications). On the SP side (and the more modern enterprise side) there's also the significant issue of integration with other IT systems. At that scale, people aren't just command line jockeys that log into a router to provision something - Comcast can't operate like that, they need well defined API integrations with their provisioning system.
It is interesting and noteworthy that HPE's interest in Juniper is mostly due to the success of Mist, which _was_ a scrappy little upstart that got purchased by Juniper in 2019 (???). Mist (as a product line) only got successful once it was backed by Juniper, a known player. They had a much, much harder time selling to big accounts before that.
However, it's not a random scrappy little upstart, it got started by very senior people from Cisco that couldn't get their vision executed at Cisco. Specifically, Bob Friday (who co-founded Airespace in 2001, which was purchased by Cisco and directly led to Cisco wireless controllers), and Sujay Hajela, who was an SVP responsible for enterprise and wireless at Cisco, having led the Meraki purchase. More than a decade later, Meraki - another upstart, I guess - still isn't aimed at much other than SMB.
That Mist made it as an newcomer is the exception to the rule and entirely due to those very specific people and their very specific contacts. I wouldn't be surprised if at all if Mist had initially been fully intended to be a spin-out from Cisco with the express purpose of folding them back in a decade later if they were successful enough, and it just so happened that they got snagged up by Juniper first.
A nit here: leaving Cisco to do a product Cisco should do itself is literally part of the cultural DNA of Cisco; it's practically what you're supposed to do. In years of working with/around Cisco, I saw people literally do startups for things that were just planned features for existing Cisco products.
Completely agree, I expressed that poorly - that Mist didn't just get rolled back into Cisco seems like an aberration given Cisco's spin-out culture, and I'd be curious to find out some day what happened for them to get scooped up by Juniper instead.
"Normal" startups in this space that aren't just spin-outs designed to come back to the mothership if they're successful are incredibly rare.
Appreciate the insights; this segment of the industry is my forte so this was educational.
I realize it’s impossible to predict what comes next, but I’m curious about analogs to this merger and what one could reasonably expect to happen over the next many years.
My philosophy is showing in that I don’t see these deals as good for competition or the market in general, so I’m (perhaps hopelessly) looking for the silver lining here.
Sure, and then the clunky monoliths buy the scrappy little disruptors and take them apart.
(Source: worked for a scrappy little disruptor that was bought out and cannibalized)
One way to avoid “corporate raiders" and hostile takeovers is for companies to be owned by employees.
Maybe, but what’s to stop “scrappy upstart” from becoming the next HPE?
We need companies owned by the people that built the company. Not by the C-level executives that are appointed by a board of billionaire lackeys, bankers, trust fund kiddies who are hellbent on flipping a profit at all costs.
Also of course more regulation, and higher corporate tax. Get rid of the stock manipulation tactic known as stock buybacks that only encourage short term growth/pump in price of stock.
Hopefully after the merger Juniper will still be able to do things like lend equipment to events CCC.
Aruba has been pretty lackluster under HPE, so we’ll see where Juniper takes them. Or is taken.
Isn’t Ericsson (HQ in Texas) the best positioned to counter Hauwei in the telecom space? don’t see why HPE/Juniper tech merger would be a priority or advantage
Because it’s really about putting one’s thumb on the scale of market participation, not actually about China at all.
This is why Boeing can make as many bad planes as they want. They’re part of the US government and they will always “win” the game we pretend they play against other vendors.
Same goes for Lockheed, Raytheon, AT&T, Microsoft, HP, and Dell. Delta. Probably also Ford and GM.
AWS is trying to get on this list (see the whole JEDI thing that was gift-wrapped for them until Oracle got mad and noisy about the corruption) and almost certainly will eventually if they haven’t already.
Circumstances suggest that Apple (because iPhone use aiding in global surveillance due to iMessage), Google (because Gmail and search), and Meta (because WhatsApp) are similarly favored (although not totally integrated like Microsoft and Boeing and AT&T) over any competitors, due to their massive and often-overlooked strategic geopolitical importance, both domestic and abroad. There are unimaginably big perks to playing ball with the state, just ask Palantir.
Others I would assume get special treatment: Comcast, Level 3, Verizon. Probably also Visa.
Good luck trying to compete with any of them in the market on merit when the people who own and control the market don’t want their buddies or surveillance partners to lose.
It’s mostly about the transfer of MANY billions of dollars of public tax money to the friends and associates of those who direct that money. China is just a convenient excuse. We all know the US as a unit is totally incapable of catching up to Chinese technology output or development pace (save for isolated pockets like Apple and SpaceX who thrive despite being in the US, not because of it).
Most of the functions of the state are around allocation of ostensibly-public money, and little else, I find.
> Probably also Ford and GM.
Probably? GM was literally nationalized for a period not that long ago.
> Because it’s really about putting one’s thumb on the scale of market participation, not actually about China at all.
I wish this were true. It is not. Huawei has very famously (and publicly admitted) to stealing intellectual property from US tech companies, in many cases through conducting corporate espionage. Huawei has also had many of their products independently audited by various governments and found to contain intentional security flaws or backdoors.
You could easily make the argument that clearly US companies are just as bad, after all most US tech companies got funding to start from the CIA and clearly the intelligence community is really involved w/ Juniper and HPE (Dual EC anyone?). Both sides doing something doesn't absolve anyone who has to make a decision from understanding the implications of it, though.
This is more than just putting the thumb on the scale, it's a battle between a world of Pax Americana and a world where China runs things.
> We all know the US as a unit is totally incapable of catching up to Chinese technology output or development pace (save for isolated pockets like Apple and SpaceX who thrive despite being in the US, not because of it).
You mean the same US tech industry that has invented basically every modern computer technology, including the most cutting edge technologies available now? Are you kidding me? Nobody can possibly take this statement seriously. China has leg irons on because of US sanctions, but nonetheless the historical record is pretty clear that China excels at copying and scaling, but not so much invention. Creativity requires freedom of thought, something in horribly short supply within China.
I wonder if the "US intelligence community" is really Kash Patel.
He has been known to work/consult/lobby on behalf of Chinese (and other foreign country) companies to push or backchannel in DC for favorable outcomes in US. [1]
[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/patels-roster-of-forei...
I was surprised to learn that he also wrote a children's book
https://www.amazon.com/Plot-Against-King-Kash-Patel/dp/19555...
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I'll tell you what's crazy, is the fact that anybody is surprised by this. These stories can come out all day every day (and often do), but the corruption is so deep that there will be no consequence. Just business as usual.
This. They are the problem. Because whatever side they're on they lend political capitol to the stupidity when it's their team doing it. You'll never have enough people to care enough to change things so long as half the people who could care at any one time are actively making excuses or running cover when it's their guy.
People need to have some goddamn principals. Corruption and backroom dealing is bad no matter who's doing it. Even if you like who's doing it you should still not like it because at the very least it de-legitimizes your cause.
It's not crazy, it's typical (sadly).
Anytime either side is pushing something the other side disagrees with, they claim the opposition is being partisan. Then there are the flip flops, like claiming the debt ceiling is a big deal, then ignoring the issue once you're the one in power. Complain about heavy handed tactics when dealing with protests or "legal" pot, but not about guns. Have the IRS audit groups you don't like. Etcetera
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Political topics can obviously be far more important than anything else on HN's frontpage, but that doesn't make the flamewar style of discussion ok on this site. It's repetitive and indignant, and those are the two qualities which most destroy what we're trying for, i.e. gratifying curiosity and facilitating curious exchange.
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It's what happens when a morally bankrupt party has nothing to offer except flimsy or made up grievances.
Thank you. I feel this frustration about the 'both sides'ing of every political argument. There is a huge difference in the quality and quantity of the basic political/social norms (and laws) being broken under this administration compared with previous administrations. Bush, Clinton, Obama and Biden had faults, but none were so blatant about power, control, retribution and self-enrichment, and none had surrounding supporters so eager to push a self-serving agenda. It's not even a close comparison.
People got riled up when Biden was 'violating the Constitution' with multiple attempts at loan forgiveness. Some of the same people who hated Biden for this 'unconstitutional' behaviour voted for Trump because he promised to get rid of the Department of Education, in the misguided hope that their own student loans would be eliminated with the department. I don't quite know how we got to this level of stupid in the US - it may have always been there, just easier to see via social media?
> There is a huge difference in the quality and quantity of the basic political/social norms (and laws) being broken under this administration compared with previous administrations.
Indeed, but it's not just the administration that has issues whenever Republicans control it.
I distinctly 'member McConnell filibustering his own bill, the Republicans sabotaging ACA (aided, of course, by Democrats trying to achieve bipartisan ownership even though they had a majority at the time [1]), or worst of all the Republicans refusing the appointment of Merrick Garland (citing that Obama was a lame-duck outgoing President) [3], only to do just the same thing with Barrett at the end of 2020, right before the elections [4].
Republicans, when in power, demand that Democrats cooperate with them (and Democrats are spineless enough to always play ball) - and when Democrats are in power, even if they have majorities, they obstruct in all ways possible. It's madness.
[1] https://theweek.com/articles/469675/mitch-mcconnells-amazing...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrick_Garland_Supreme_Court_...
Yep the reason why Democrats got their shit kicked in is because they kept to their principles.
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Please don't perpetuate political flamewars on HN, regardless of what politics you favor or disfavor.
Political topics can obviously be far more important than anything else on HN's frontpage, but that doesn't make the flamewar style of discussion ok on this site. It's repetitive and indignant, and those are the two qualities which most destroy what we're trying for, i.e. gratifying curiosity and facilitating curious exchange.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Hey Dan,
I am familiar with the site. My approach was intended to be from a non-partisan intellectual standpoint showing how examples from one party can have similar examples in the other party. I can see how looking at my comment alone, it could appear that it was partisan, but I had hoped that the context and the last section would have controlled for that. Thanks for moderating these!
> Didn't the documentary show possible ties President Clinton?
The documents do. However Clinton did not invite Epstein to his wedding, or buy Epsteins jet after his suicide because he liked flying it in so much.
More importantly, Clinton was asked about the release of the files last year, in court. He did not object then and he has recently stated that he does not now. Meanwhile, republicans actually dismissed Congress early, stopping the business of governing, to prevent it.
> redistricting in response to TX
It is "in response". They're trying to STOP the gerrymandering, not make it worse. Gerrymandering should be illegal in all cases. It's not, but I think we can all agree that it does not serve democracy and should be.
> Who set the precedent?
Are you seriously defending concentration camps because someone else has done it in the past? Take a look at yourself in the mirror and really think about this one.
It seems like the only way to settle the issue is the release the files. That information does seem to show a difference between how each side is treating it. I'm not familiar with the whole history, so I'm not sure why previous admins didn't release it if they supported it.
"It is "in response". They're trying to STOP the gerrymandering, not make it worse."
You would legitimately spread its harms if you enacted it in additional places. This is the sort of win at all cost mindset that's driving this in the first place. Neither side is proposing a real solution. If you want it to away, you need to use pre-established boundaries (counties/cities) and assign a proportional number of electoral votes by population for whatever the election is for. Don't allow redrawing counties. Then there will be no more gaming the boundaries. Neither party actually wants this because they know there is power in controlling the districting, even if one group abuses it more than the other.
"Are you seriously defending concentration camps because someone else has done it in the past? Take a look at yourself in the mirror and really think about this one."
What a red herring. Did I say I supported them? I'm saying this isn't new, and it's not even as bad as it was for the Japanese Americans. Do you not think the Obama admin built similar ICE detention facilities with "cages"? The point is, each side points fingers at the other and conveniently forgets their own parties contributions to how we arrived at where we are at today.
==This is the sort of win at all cost mindset that's driving this in the first place. Neither side is proposing a real solution.==
Except that Democrats introduced bills in 2021 and 2024 to stop partisan gerrymandering [0][1]. They also introduced a joint resolution for a Constitutional Amendment to stop the spread of money into politics [2].
Guess which party didn't support the bills. The Democrats would be fools to unilaterally stop things like raising money and gerrymandering without legislation that would also stop Republicans. Based on those actions, we can assume one party does want it and has introduced the "real solutions" you are searching.
Were you aware of these actions?
[0] 2021: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/267...
[1] 2024: https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/u-s-senate-democ...
[2] https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-joint-re...
Neither party is perfect or even close to it. But there is an enormous difference between the conduct of this administration and all of those before it.
To accept that the conduct of the Biden administration was in any way equivalent to that of Trump is to avoid any critical thinking or consideration of the facts in my opinion.
Biden was a very mediocre president who had troubling tendencies of his own. There is no question about that.
But he did not run a crypto pump and dump scheme. He did not degrade US institutions to the extent that trump has. He did not perform the same level of partisan, punitive pettiness that trump has.
It's very clear, in my opinion.
Yeah, I wasnt comparing a single admin to another for scope. My main point was that thinking only one party does these things isn't representative of the situation. A big problem is that virtually every prior administration did one or more things similar which set a precedent. And it was usually done in an low key way. Now this administration is doing them all at the same time and loudly. So I do believe the scale now is larger than in most prior admins, and that they aren't trying to hid what they are doing too.
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"Based on your response, you are plenty sure."
I legitimately wasn't sure at first. I had to look up many of the recent examples to assume who they were talking about.
"The key phrase here is "in response to TX" which proves it is not literally the same thing. Just like if someone hits you in the face and you respond by hitting back, it is called self-defense and is treated differently than assault or battery."
What you are overlooking is proportionality and continuing threat. Calling on additional states to do this is like telling someone to keep hitting someone after a single punch, which would be an escalation and result in charges in many cases. Frankly, it's a dumb comparison because doing something illegal just because someone else did it doesn't absolve you of any illegality and doesnt directly negate any harms from the first occurrence, only leading to the creation of additional harms in other states.
"Threatening to do something is different than doing it and demanding payments."
True. There can be other examples of both parties pulling funding for programs and organizations they don't like.
"Going back 80 years to find your "counter argument" kind of proves my point."
Or proves your cognitive bias.
"It's in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation has spoken about it plenty."
Wasn't your prior argument that threats and actually doing it are two different things? Wouldn't that make this a moot point until it occurs? Sounds like this plan is basically just withholding federal funds if the states or cities don't comply with conditions. The feds do this with highways funds, schools funds, etc. Again, not really news if you've been paying attention.
"This explains how Hegseth signed the deal with Qatar that allows him to keep a $400 million free plane even after his Presidency."
It's going to the presidential library foundation. He might be able to use it, but he can't personally own it. Guess where ethe other gifts go? That's right, to the presidential libraries through the national archives. You might want to look into his other politicians use their charities, such as the Clintons.
You're trying really hard to play a game of 'gotcha', but you just aren't looking at all the facts or examining your own biases.
==I had to look up many of the recent examples to assume who they were talking about.==
Seems you are only paying attention to one side if you had to look up the examples, as they are all quite recent. It doesn't seem like we are going to see eye-to-eye on things, as you completely dismiss facts, like the Democrats introducing actual legislation (multiple times) to stop gerrymandering, in order to lecture me about my own biases.
==You might want to look into his other politicians use their charities, such as the Clintons.==
Trump doesn't have a charity anymore because he was found guilty of stealing money from kids. This is your party, accept it. Enjoy your day.
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There were plenty of explanations from the White House why Tesla wasn't invited: because it was an UAW event. Tesla is notoriously anti-union and its employees are not represented by the UAW.
But it wasn't a UAW event. It was the Electric Vehicle Summit.
Sure, that's why Biden was introduced by an UAW member at a press conference that day, in which he first thanked the UAW, then the CEOs employing them, and then signed an executive order which offered additional tax credits on union-made EVs.
Not that it matters anymore as Trump undid all of that, so there's no longer a pledge to switch to EVs, nor is there any sort of federal tax credit for purchasing EVs (technically there still is, but only until September).
I'm sure this is a much better deal for Musk overall than not being invited to an event.
I mean, when the press secretary was asked why tesla wasnt invited, he said they invited the 3 largest employers of UAW. it sounds like a UAW event called 'Electric Vehicle Summit'?
What led you to belive it wasnt about the UAW? just the name of the event?
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I can't reply to the previous post now, but the 'bailout' to Central States Pension Fund. $36b to deal with a pension fund serving 350k people. Yes, seems high. Yes, was an 'unusual' move, done during 2021 - height of covid. Why did CSPF need assistance? It never quite recovered from 2008 financial crisis - banks and other companies got 'bailouts' but not CSPF. Massive economic turmoil during 2020/2021 because of covid impacted the fund further.
Might have been other or better ways of trying to address this (and many other covid issues). But we got what we got.
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I mean yeah one party is way, way worse but Democrats have funded all of the above, confirmed the appointments that are doing this, and pushed the conflation of policy protest with antisemitism. It’s really bleak at the national level!
Please don't perpetuate political flamewars on HN, regardless of what politics you favor or disfavor.
Political topics can obviously be far more important than anything else on HN's frontpage, but that doesn't make the flamewar style of discussion ok on this site. It's repetitive and indignant, and those are the two qualities which most destroy what we're trying for, i.e. gratifying curiosity and facilitating curious exchange.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
The Big Beautiful Bill passed without any Democrats voting for it. Democrats are not great (or good) by any measure, but they did not confirm all the appointments that are doing this.
==Six nominees received no supporting votes from any Democratic senators or independent senators who caucus with Democrats: Hegseth, Russell Vought for director of the Office of Management and Budget, Gabbard, Kennedy, Howard Lutnick for secretary of commerce, and Linda McMahon for secretary of education. ==
https://ballotpedia.org/How_senators_voted_on_Trump_Cabinet_...
An annoying part is that this is a bit causative. They were so indoctrinated in the fear of how much this was happening before, that they convinced themselves it was normal and required.
That is, allowing it to become a normative conversation with no pushback that "government is bad" is a large part of how we got here.
Bad people think others are also bad.
And otherwise good people can be convinced that bad things are necessary.
Yes, every now and then an ridiculously shameless person will emerge. No, that isn't everyone.
Accuse others of what you are doing or planning to do. It's standard politics. Both sides do it. It even applies internationally/geopolitically.
This is precisely what I expected from this administration, it kicked off with not one, but two crypto pump-n-dump/bribe vehicles from the President and First Lady.
Anyone expecting less than nakedly open corruption and self-dealing is not paying attention.
A US president visiting his own golf course on a state visit!
I think it's just too painful for people to admit how fast their country is going down the drain. I like to imagine how decent Germans must have felt in 1938. How did they keep themselves sane?
> A US president visiting his own golf course on a state visit!
Meh, I don't have too much of a problem with this one. A number of US Presidents, both modern and long-since dead, have been known to indulge in golfing [1].
There's so many truly bad things Trump has done, him visiting a golf course is hardly extraordinary in comparison.
[1] https://www.scga.org/blog/13174/every-presidential-golfer-ra...
They didn't pay themselves to golf or charge the government millions to house the secret service. It's among the most blatant bits of corruption.
> It's crazy seeing the people who cried "Political partisanship" and "Weaponization of government" are doing it all now, in a higher magnitude than anything they complained about.
Every accusation is an admission.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusation_in_a_mirror
* https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/every_accusation_is_a_confess...
The concept of “projection” is really crazy once you get a good feel for it. I see it happening in so many places now.
Shitty people seem to believe that everyone is like themselves; they assume that others would do the same shitty things they would do in a similar situation. They assign the emotional reactions and responses that they would have in a given set of circumstances to others, even if there is no evidence to support it.
I suspect this is also where nuclear brinksmanship comes from. “We would conduct a sneak attack first strike on them, if we could, so they must be planning on doing it to us.”
I think this is also why most cops don’t see anything wrong with breaking the law to carry out what they believe their duty to be. They see the world through the lens of criminal behavior.
Corrupt politicians know that they would be availing themselves of every possible option to personally enrich themselves and push their agenda; they assume that every politician in power must also be doing this and are just getting away with it.
"The government is secretly controlled by an unaccountable, undemocratic Deep State", says the government secretly puppeteering civil finance regulators with CIA agents.
every accusation is a confession
Man if that's true then what really freaks me out is all the accusations about vote rigging that happened in the last two elections.
And the only logical conclusion is, no problem is solvable. Kind of the best thing the parasites could wish for, right? And only because people cant distinguish sincere politics anymore.
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Trump was never free trade, he campaigned on tariffs both times and loves welding the government over private industry. People always call out the lack of conservative laissez-faire values in their admin as a contradiction, because other GOP pushed those values particularly in the past. But this admin has been pretty honest about their agenda as a populist authoritarian right wing movement.
People are probably just surprised to find out what that means in practice.
The point is that the entire party did a complete 180 on one of their strongest bedrock principles. These people still call themselves conservatives while supporting an administration that holds almost zero "conservative" stances.
They believe in power, period.
Well that's my point. Those are libertarian/small government conservative values which are no longer in vogue. Nothing stops you from being conservative and supporting authoritarianism or believing a strong executive branch over other branches (including the courts).
I would argue it makes them less of a traditional American conservative party though, as values like separation of powers are rooted in the US founding documents of the country. And a core part of being conservative is respecting your established institutions (cultural, legal, etc).
On paper Trump is a centrist in many ways because he doesn't seem to have strong values either way.
== On paper Trump is a centrist in many ways because he doesn't seem to have strong values either way.==
He has enacted much of the Project 2025 agenda, which is a right-wing, authoritarian playbook.
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"If you commit to institutional neutrality, the result is a one-way ratchet"
Can you explain why this is the result? And why is it allegedly democrats that the ratchet pushed towards?
There are well-known differences in political alignment both among more-educated workers (the federal government probably does not employ many people without at least a college degree of some sort?) and being employed in a public-services government job (e.g. what kinds of workers are more likely to want to work for the EPA? People who want to protect the environment or people who want to exploit it more? Remember, one party tried to sell off a large number of public forests and lands and is gutting the national parks).
These seem like they would explain the majority of the effect you mention without any mention of some kind of ratchet mechanism.
The one-way ratchet results from the very factors you mention. To your EPA example: the nation’s environmental laws all reflect compromises between protecting the environment and minimizing impact on businesses. They wouldn’t have gotten through Congress otherwise. If you have an EPA full of employees who, to use your words, think of one side of those compromises as “exploit[ing]” the environment, they are naturally going to push to effectively undo those compromises, in a direction that generally aligns with the party that federal workers overwhelmingly vote for. That’s the one-way ratchet. It’s a typical principal-agent problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble....
But that’s not how the system is supposed to work in a democracy. Ideally, executive branch policies would track the pattern of presidential elections, without any detectable aggregate influence from the political preferences of federal workers.
> That’s the only rational action when 80-90% of federal civil servants belong to one party.
That's an obvious result of the Republicans making an outright political point of being for a "small state". Like, why should anyone who is a Republican even apply for a job that their own party actively campaigns for to go away?
> That’s how we ended up with a federal government that got so extremely out of sync with public opinion on issues like immigration: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/electi...
Unfortunately paywalled so hard that archive(.)today can't index it. Anyway, just blaming a "Democrat-leaning federal civil service" is ignoring the elephant in the room: decades worth of anti-immigration propaganda being shilled by Fox "News" and other TV/radio stations, Murdoch's rags and, last but not least, Russian bot farms on social media.
> Like, why should anyone who is a Republican even apply for a job that their own party actively campaigns for to go away?
Why is that relevant? In a democracy, the voting public has a right to have the federal government reflect what people voted for, regardless of whether any of them choose to work in government or not. Federal workers should be like “dumb pipes” to use an analogy.
> In a democracy, the voting public has a right to have the federal government reflect what people voted for
In Germany, we have a career civil service. Works pretty well, there are almost no complaints about partisanship or corruption. There are complaints that everything takes ages, I'll admit that, but that is mostly due to decades worth of underfunding and sub-competitive wages.
I get the impression that there is less ideological and religious polarization between civil servants and the public in Germany than in the U.S.
Also, keep in mind that U.S. civil servants have far more discretion than in Germany. In Germany, the parliament actively legislates, and the civil service is tasked with carrying out the law. In that system, it’s hard for the civil service to get too far out of step with what the governing coalition in the legislature—who are ultimately elected—wants to happen.
In the U.S., by contrast, Congress hardly legislates. So the civil service not only carries out the law, but in practice uses decades-old laws and applies them to new circumstances they were never intended to cover. Because the elected Congress doesn’t legislate, it has much less control over what the civil service does.
I’m not sure what happened with their link, but I googled the portion as written and am reasonably sure that this is it:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/electi... | https://archive.is/1514o
It's like the bullshit "hunter Biden laptop" story which, after years of investigations, found that he filled out a gun form incorrectly. That's called a political witch hunt. Not only that, but cries of censorship by Twitter were also bullshit seeing as Republicans (Trump specifically) submitted the same requests to take things down all the time.
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The DOJ and the Courts have all been owned by the business class for a long time. It is basically whoever has the most money or political connections. Nothing else really matters.