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.
Are the US ok? It's 2026 not 1926
Don’t give RFK Jr ideas.
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.
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.
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.
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.
He 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.
It's good to know the Americans aren't the only ones who never look at maps outside their own country
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.
> 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.
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
> [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/
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.
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.
(30 years in software companies, Northern Europe.)
I was in New Delhi during Trump’s Greenland tirade. The hot take in the governing circles was analogising to the Sino-Soviet split.
I’m now wondering if Imperial Russia, the one the Japanese beat and which fizzled apart against the Kaiser, is also an apt analogy.
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.
> 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...
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.
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.
Don't forget the Large Adult Sons!
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-land-...
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/27/cisa-madhu-gottumuk...
I feel for my American friends, and hope they never again optimise their government for comedy value.
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.
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.
You're assuming the planted lackey has any knowledge of these tools.
Damn. I forgot to read the article.
01284a7e•1h ago