The revelation that Equifax hired a ‘music major’ as their “chief security officer,” keeps blowing up, having now made the news everywhere:

This story originally was broken by Reddit a week ago (as I reported), but has since been picked up by major media publications such as The Guardian, Chicago Tribune, and Market Watch. But most importantly, all these links mention the fact that Susan Mauldin, who was Equifax’s chief security officer, had major in music and thus may have been unqualified for such an important job:

The credit data company said that Susan Mauldin, who had been the top security officer, and David Webb, the chief information officer, were retiring from Equifax. Mauldin, a college music major, had come under media scrutiny for her qualifications in security.

It’s worth noting that a week ago after the story broke, there was no mention of Susan Mauldin. It was only due to the detective work of smart people on social media such as Reddit and 4chan did this new information come to light, in agreement with the ‘meme propagation process’ as discussed here. This ‘army‘ of high-IQ fact fact-checkers on Reddit and 4chan are filling the gaps of the ideologically biased mainstream media’s reporting. We deserve to know the truth.

Furthermore, recent investigation has also revealed that the passwords chosen for some of the foreign Equifax accounts databases were very weak and hence vulnerable to ‘brute forcing’, suggesting substantial managerial oversight. It would not be a surprise if the login credentials for the US account database were also weak.

So what does this have to do with memo/Google-gate? The fact that this story, specifically the part about about Susan Mauldin only having a music degree but being entrusted to protect the confidentiality of millions of records, is getting so much coverage, is evidence of two things: a sort of ‘payback’ for Damore’s wrongful termination; and second and more importantly, a major shift in narrative. If women want to be treated as the equals of men, then they need to be held to the same accountability as men. People are realizing, thanks in no small part to the memo, that favoritism and affirmative action are antithetical to meritocracies, and as the hack shows, can have grave consequences that can affect everyone. The era of the media treating women in STEM with ‘kid gloves’, above criticism, may be coming to an end, and now qualifications and competence are being viewed as more important than race or gender. Regarding the memo and its aftermath, this is evidence of the power of individuals to change narratives.