The High-School Dropout Hiring Diplomats for Trump’s State Department

Bloomberg via Yahoo Finance: “Andrew Crapuchettes, the founder of a boutique Idaho firm that specializes in headhunting conservative employees, was surfing LinkedIn when an unsolicited message appeared from an unlikely employer: the US State Department. 

The department official liked his posts about values-based hiring, Crapuchettes said, and encouraged him to bid for an upcoming contract to help the department identify some 600 people who could replenish the ranks of the foreign service after a round of mass firings. Crapuchettes prepared a bid, and won. Now, MilitaryHire — a subsidiary of RedBalloon, the company that grew from a website he coded with his brother in 2021 — is working to help President Donald Trump’s efforts to remake the nation’s bureaucracy.

We’re focused on merit, hard work, patriotism, and not the latest political correctness, whatever that is, because that shifts,” Crapuchettes says. President Donald Trump’s allies have painted the project as part of a much-needed upheaval of a diplomatic deep state they see as entrenched and unaccountable. Opponents describe an unprecedented attack on civil servants with decades of experience, resulting in brain drain that will hollow out American statecraft.

Your phone is the most intricate machine you’ve ever held.

The Everything Machine. How the phone swallowed the modern world. Part 1. The Phone in Your Hand. A layer-by-layer teardown of the most intricate object you’ve ever held. Take it apart…

Anthropic’s Claude AI escapes to hack into three organisations

BBC: “US technology firm Anthropic says its AI models hacked into the systems of three organisations on their own, during a private security experiment. The models found a weakness in what was supposed to be an isolated test environment and connected to the internet.

 It comes just days after rival OpenAI said that its models had breached the systems of other companies, including AI tools hub Hugging Face. The announcement prompted Anthropic to check whether its own systems had carried out similar attacks. It says it uncovered three cases which have since been reported to the affected companies. 

Anthropic, which did not name the organisations, urged other AI labs to perform similar reviews to better understand the risks of their models’ capabilities. Anthropic said in a statement it reviewed more than 140,000 tests to find evidence Claude – its family of AI models – had managed to get online even though it was supposed to be in an isolated test environment, cut off from the internet. 

The tests included exercises in which Claude was tasked with obtaining “secret” information hidden on another machine on the closed-off network. It was then told to get the information by breaking into the machine and finding it – a common way that experts assess a model’s hacking capabilities. A “misconfiguration” on systems run by Anthropic and its testing partner left the models with live internet access. 

Treating it all as still part of the same exercise, Claude then connected to the internet and breached the systems of three real organisations rather than just test ones, the San Francisco-based firm said. Anthropic said the earliest incidents date back to April and that it is “approaching the fixes as if the responsibility were ours alone.”

 

Return-to-Office Mandates are Triggering a New Era of Workplace Sabotage

“The corporate world is currently locked in a high-stakes psychological standoff. While CEOs champion the office as a hub for “serendipitous innovation” and “culture-building,” the view from the cubicle looks radically different. New data suggests that the push to bring employees back to the desk has triggered a profound breach of the employer-employee social contract. 

Rather than fostering collaboration, strict return-to-office (RTO) mandates have given rise to The Great Compliance—a phenomenon where workers show up physically to satisfy badge-trackers while mentally and strategically checking out. From coffee badging to job hunting at the desk, employees are finding ways to weaponize their presence. 

To get a clearer picture of this shift, Enhancv surveyed 1,000 full-time workers across the United States who have been subject to new or stricter return-to-office (RTO) policies within the last 12 months. Here’s how they’re responding to the mandatory return…”

Where Is 60 Years of Data, Information, and Knowledge One Year After USAID Was Fed “Into the Wood Chipper”? – When the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was dismantled in early 2025, groups and individuals mobilized to rescue information resources created by staff and partners

Which changes to the political system do Americans support?

Pew Research Center surveys in recent years have found broad support – often in both political parties – for several ideas that would, if enacted, represent significant changes to the U.S. political system.

• In a 2023 survey, 87% of Americans favored limiting the number of terms that members of Congress can serve. That included 90% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents and 86% of Democrats and Democratic leaners.
• In the same survey, 79% of Americans favored putting a maximum age limit in place for federal elected officials, while 74% favored the same thing for U.S. Supreme Court justices. Majorities in both partisan coalitions expressed support for these changes.
• 72% of Americans also said that there should be limits on how much money individuals and organizations can spend on political campaigns. Around three-quarters of Democrats (76%) favored this, as did 71% of Republicans.
• In 2024, more than six-in-ten Americans (63%) said that they would prefer to elect the president directly through a nationwide popular vote, rather than through the existing Electoral College. Unlike the issues discussed above, this one had a distinct partisan tilt: 80% of Democrats supported a popular vote system, compared with 46% of Republicans.

Americans also have expressed broad support for other types of constitutional change. For instance, in 2020, when there was a renewed push to ratify the failed Equal Rights Amendment, 78% said they strongly or somewhat favored adding it to the Constitution.

 

Aussie media calls for new ATO powers in big tech news war

Sam Buckingham-JonesMedia, marketing and telecommunications reporter

A coalition of Australian media companies has called for robust powers to be granted to the nation’s tax chief, who could demand tech giants like Meta, Google and TikTok reveal the full extent of their local revenue amid concerns they are shifting billions overseas to minimise tax.

Google, which owns YouTube, Gmail and its dominant search engine, and Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, transferred at least $11 billion out of the country to related entities last year as part of internal transfer pricing deals buying advertising space, which they then on-sell to Australians.

The Albanese government’s proposed News Bargaining Incentive includes a 2.25 per cent charge on TikTok, Meta and Google’s group revenue. Michaela Pollock

But a new law the Albanese government is seeking to pass in coming weeks will impose a levy on the three tech giants’ “consolidated revenue” – unless they negotiate commercial deals to pay Australian media companies for their news content.

The proposed News Bargaining Incentive includes a 2.25 per cent charge on TikTok, Meta and Google’s group revenue that can be fully offset if they strike deals worth 1.5 per cent of that broad revenue figure. It adds to the News Media Bargaining Code, a 2021 law that prompted Google and Meta to strike deals worth roughly $200 million a year – until Meta pulled out.

The problem is that it is unclear exactly how much money the tech giants make from Australia. The government has estimated the policy will raise between $200 and $250 million, suggesting it thinks those companies make between $13 and $16 billion from Australians – figures not reflected in the accounts they lodge locally.

The competition regulator has previously estimated Meta makes more than $5 billion from Australians – it reported $1.8 billion last year. The rest is believed to come from Australians buying ads on Facebook and Instagram companies based in low-tax places overseas, like Ireland. Irish media reported Meta wrote revenue of €85 billion ($138 billion) in 2024 in the country, which has a population roughly one-quarter of Australia.

“The tax office needs to have express powers to interrogate what revenue is generated in this territory for the purposes of this scheme”: Free TV chief executive Bridget Fair. Louie Douvis

Now a lobby group representing Nine Entertainment, Southern Cross Media and Network Ten has called for new “robust” powers to be added to the law to allow the taxation commissioner to probe major tech platforms.

While the incentive calls for a levy on those three companies’ “consolidated revenue attributable to Australia”, Free TV told the government it was concerned transfer pricing and other practices made it difficult to find the true figure to tax.

“This whole scheme is trying to recognise the value these companies generate in Australia based off, to some extent, the news content of broadcasters and other news providers, and that needs to be recognised in total – not after complicated accounting treatments to minimise what that looks like,” said Free TV chief executive Bridget Fair.

“The tax office needs to have express powers to interrogate what revenue is generated in this territory for the purposes of this scheme. Since we’re doing this, why not design it in a way to get to the bottom of how much they make?”

Free TV has also called for the scheme’s levy rate to be far higher than 2.25 per cent. Similar rules introduced by the government, forcing streaming companies to spend money making Australian content, set the percentage at 7.5 per cent of revenue. There are “no policy reasons”, Free TV wrote in its submission, that the rate is so much lower.

“It’s only going to end up generating about the same as we were getting five years ago,” she said, “despite massive growth in the advertising market that these people have enjoyed. It’s more companies, but the same number.”

While the incentive has been welcomed by Australian news publishers, it has been savaged by the tech companies. On Wednesday morning, Meta published a scathing blog post describing the policy as “a discriminatory, retroactive tax targeting a handful of foreign companies”.

It echoed aggressive comments from powerful US business lobby groups that warned it formed part of a “deteriorating tax environment” for investment in Australia. The White House criticised it as “foreign extortion”.

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Sam Buckingham-Jones is the media, marketing and telecommunications reporter at The Australian Financial Review. Send tips about the media and the telco sectors via encrypted messaging platform Signal (@samebjones.18) or email. Email Sam at sam.buckinghamjones@afr.com

ATO chief Rob Heferen shuts down questions on failure to pursue alleged tax cheats

In all my wanderings on many streets somewhere around the world, I’ve learned that every country is a study in contrast. Singapore compresses it. And the lessons were simple:

* Take your time.

* Wander the backstreets.

* Eat expensive if you can and eat cheap

* Use public transport.

* Talk to strangers.

* Walk slowly.

* Look up.

* Look down.

* Look around. 

* Enjoy the local beer.

The real currency isn’t money — it’s time. And we spent it recklessly and to do so with the love of my life at my side, even better.

Until another street somewhere.

~ Once Slowly by BC

 

Rethinking Risks - Rise and Rise of ATO SES high-flyers

Tax Experiences 

 

ATO chief Rob Heferen shuts down questions on failure to pursue alleged tax cheats

The man paid nearly $1m to hold Australia’s tax cheats to account has refused to explain why so many of them keep getting away with it 

DAVID ROSs

ATO commissioner Rob Heferen. Picture: John Feder.

A simple question about alleged tax cheat Jon Adgemis can’t be answered by the tax office: is he behind a massive GST fraud?

But the question that was too rude to ask the tax office’s top regulator was whether or not it was delivering as the top cop on the beat for Australia’s tax crooks. 

The job now falls to liquidators and bankruptcy trustees to unravel the secrets of the failed Adgemis pubs plaything, Public Hospitality Group, when examination of the bankrupt businessman’s affairs begins in court on Thursday.

The boss of the Australian Taxation Office was asked on Wednesday whether his agency was open and transparent in the way it engages publicly. The answer? “Yes”. 

But that was all ATO commissioner Rob Heferen was willing to divulge on the sidelines of a small business summit ahead of the blockbuster hearings that will almost certainly examine the allegation of improper GST claims inside the hospitality bust-up. 

That allegation was referred to the ATO by BRI Ferrier; Adgemis has previously denied that his tax affairs were improper or fraudulent. And The Australian is not suggesting Adgemis has committed fraud, only that liquidators allege concerns over GST refunds.

A simple attempt to clarify this with the ATO was met with a public relations eruption.

“It’s quite difficult to get a bit of face time with the commissioner, it seems like whenever I’ve asked to speak with the commissioner of the ATO it’s not gone anywhere,” The Australian posed to one of Australia’s top public servants. 

At first Heferen said he would take some questions. When asked if the ATO was “broadly open and transparent in the way it engages publicly”, Heferen replied in the affirmative.

But when asked if the ATO “does enough on enforcement and compliance” he was less forthcoming. “This is a bit rude – this is a bit you know …” he said. 

The Australian's David Ross finds out how approachable the ATO is when he requests an interview with Commissioner Rob Heferen.

The commissioner’s minders sprung into action. Business cards were thrust forward. Requests were made for questions to be put in writing.

Heferen took on the top job at the tax office in December 2023. Since then, he has not given an interview to this journalist, nor many others who have asked for one, despite repeated requests each year. 

Instead, Heferen has preferred speaking engagements and friendly publications. 

This lines up with the tax office’s approach to scrutiny. Among the most powerful government agencies in the nation, the ATO has a hugely important role to play in the economy.

But instead of being upfront, the ATO has emphasised the same tired and risk-averse approach to media: questions in writing and “no comments”. 

The Australian was asked to do a “quote check” with the tax office, meaning it would run the ruler over anything said by Heferen. Yet even the most basic questions about its activities, put in writing, fail to elicit a response. 

Ad nauseam the ATO will wheel out its tired claims of taxpayer secrecy when asked about things that don’t relate to taxpayers. 

This is typical for some members of the lanyard class. 

Heferen gets paid $928,980 a year. This is almost 30 per cent more than Anthony Albanese ($607,520). 

Heferen had just wrapped up speaking on a panel of regulators at the Council of Small Businesses of Australia, appearing alongside ASIC chair Sarah Court and Fair Work Ombudsman Anna Booth. 

When asked how the ATO would tackle the Albanese government’s landmark changes to capital gains, Heferen had little to say too. Presumably he had the benefit of the questions in advance. The audience could “rest assured in very good time there will be comprehensive stuff on our website”.

Heferen was elevated to tax chief in 2023 hot on the heels of the PwC Australia scandal, a tax battle fought under his predecessor Chris Jordan and deputy Jeremy Hirschhorn. Arguably the ATO won the fight, since PwC’s tax architects are on the scrap heap. 

The Adgemis bin fire leaves creditors likely to get none of their $1.8bn owed, based on the latest assessment. Yet the ATO, which forced Adgemis’s bankruptcy, had knowledge of the publican’s affairs since at least 2021.

It’s for the tax office to defend its actions to those creditors, many of whom are simply hospitality employees owed basic obligations of wages and superannuation.

… hot off the presses in Amerika: The Once-Shameless President Is Deeply Embarrassed As Donald Trump faces one humiliation after another, he is attacking those he blames