Elon Musk’s secretive government IT takeover, explained
Billionaire Elon Musk and his band of young Silicon Valley engineers have gained access to IT systems controlling critical functions of the federal government, from the Treasury Department to the Small Business Administration.
The problem is no one outside of the Trump administration really knows what Musk and his team at the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are planning to do with that access.
In the name of uncovering fat to trim, they now have the personal information of millions of Americans stored in government databases at their fingertips and newfound influence over key parts of the federal bureaucracy long controlled by nonpartisan career officials. It’s clear Musk has exceptional access to government data, but it’s still not clear how much he can do with it. Most saliently, watchdogs and Democratic lawmakers suspect that Musk’s endgame is not just visibility into the payments the government is making, but also control over them.
This is all part of the cloud of confusion surrounding DOGE.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed Monday that Musk is operating in his capacity as a non-Senate-confirmed “special government employee,” a category of employee that is typically brought on for a period of less than a year, hired for their expertise, and subject to less stringent conflicts-of-interest rules than other federal officials. Leavitt offered no further details on what Musk working on, though she claimed he is “abiding by all applicable federal laws.”
That claim will be subject to legal scrutiny.
The litigation arm of Public Citizen, a left-leaning consumer rights advocacy group, sued the Trump administration Monday on behalf of workers whose personal information is stored in Treasury Department databases, alleging that officials broke privacy laws in giving DOGE access. Other groups have raised similar privacy concerns about databases at other federal agencies to which Musk’s team has sought access.
Adam Schwartz, privacy litigation director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group, said that reports of DOGE staff obtaining “extraordinary access” to government databases that contain sensitive personal information about millions of Americans marks a “huge departure from privacy and security norms.”
“Legal safeguards must be strictly enforced,” he said. “EFF is deeply concerned and learning all we can.”
Watchdog groups are also demanding more transparency into why DOGE is seeking access to these government IT systems in the first place, given their sensitivity and the host of potential conflicts of interest Musk brings given his stakes in Tesla and SpaceX. One fear is that DOGE could use its newfound access to the federal government’s payment system to slash the budget without Congress’s approval.
The Treasury Department wrote in a letter to Congress on Tuesday that Musk has “read-only” access to the payment system — at least for now. But if he were to gain operational control of it, Noah Bookbinder, executive director of the government oversight group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said he is skeptical that Musk will use that access just to “perform regular maintenance and do troubleshooting on tech problems.”
Musk and his team have rapidly sought to gain access to the IT systems of various government agencies and offices in recent days, including at least the Treasury, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and the Small Business Administration (SBA).
Last week, Treasury’s acting Deputy Secretary David Lebryk resigned after DOGE requested and was granted access to the Treasury’s payment systems, which handle sensitive payments including to Social Security and Medicare customers.
DOGE also reportedly locked career civil servants out of OPM’s computer systems, which contain the personal data of millions of federal employees and contractors. Federal employees sought a temporary restraining order Tuesday to shut down a private server that DOGE had connected to OPM’s network to scrape sensitive employee information.
SBA employees were also informed Monday that DOGE would be granted access to “all SBA systems,” including HR, contracts, and payments systems. The agency has supported over 100,000 financings to small businesses in the last year alone.
Musk and his team have yet to publicly announce what they intend to do with all of that data, however, and that makes ethics watchdogs extremely nervous.
“Just from an accountability perspective, there is so much we don’t know about what’s going on,” said Don Moynihan, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan and co-director of the Better Government Lab, which identifies technological solutions in government to improve social safety net access. “We’re relying on these leaked reports, rather than someone going in front of Congress and explaining in detail what it is that these people are actually doing and why it’s not a security risk.”
Musk and his team’s efforts to control IT systems across the government raise concerns about privacy and conflicts of interest. They may also give Musk, a partisan political appointee, the ability to interfere in the management of the federal budget set by Congress.
Current and former government employees sued the Trump administration on Monday claiming that it violated privacy laws in allowing their data to be disclosed to Musk and his team.
“Federal laws protect sensitive personal and financial information from improper disclosure and misuse, including by barring disclosure to individuals who lack a lawful and legitimate need for it,” the complaint states. “The scale of the intrusion into individuals’ privacy is massive and unprecedented.”
The same concerns may apply to other federal agencies’ IT systems that DOGE has sought to access. The SBA, for example, keeps records of business owners and the health of their businesses.
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The Egocentric Eccentric Exploits of Elon
DOJ agrees to proposed order to limit DOGE's access to Treasury data
In a filing late Wednesday evening, lawyers with the Justice Department agreed to a proposed order that would largely prohibit the Treasury Department from sharing sensitive financial data with Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.
The agreement allows two individuals associated with Musk but employed by the Treasury Department – called special government employees – to have “read only” access to the sensitive data.
Once approved by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who is overseeing the case, the agreement will stay in place until Feb. 24 when both sides return to court to argue about a long-term preliminary injunction.
The two special government employees allowed to continue seeing Treasury Department data are Tom Krause and Marko Elez, according to the filing. Krause is the former chief executive of Cloud Software Group, a Silicon Valley tech company. Marko Elez is a 25-year-old engineer who used to work for Musk’s X and SpaceX.
Earlier, the judge had issued an ultimatum after hearing arguments over DOGE's access to sensitive Treasury Department records: Either the DOJ and the federal unions who brought suit agree to a temporary injunction blocking DOGE's access, or the judge would bring them back to court on Friday to decide whether to issue a temporary restraining order.
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San Antonio realtor fired for emulating Elon Musk's alleged Nazi salute
A San Antonio realtor unleashed a social media firestorm last weekend by allegedly repeating Elon Musk's controversial Inauguration Day salute in a promotional video.
"So for my buyers, my heart goes out to you," realtor Yessica Garza reportedly said via an Instagram post in an apparent nod to the billionaire Trump donor, who faced withering criticism last month for what many people interpreted as a Nazi salute.
Social media users shared Garza's video, accusing her of trying to cozy up to white supremacists.
On Monday, Garza's employer, RD Realty, announced via its own Instagram account that she'd been fired over the clip.
"We want to be absolutely clear: our brokerage has zero tolerance for hate speech, discriminatory behavior, or anything that goes against our values of inclusivity and respect," RD Realty's post read.
Following the social media backlash, Garza shut off comments on the post and made her Instagram account private.
After Musk made his controversial gesture at the inauguration of President Trump, online debate ensued about whether he was giving a Nazi salute or making some other kind of gesture.
Some Musk fans defended him by saying he has autism, while others argued the gesture was harmless or misconstrued.
However, many of the billionaire's critics responded by telling defenders that if they really thought the salute was harmless, they should record themselves doing it, show it to their bosses and see what happens.
Guess now we know.
A San Antonio realtor unleashed a social media firestorm last weekend by allegedly repeating Elon Musk's controversial Inauguration Day salute in a promotional video.
"So for my buyers, my heart goes out to you," realtor Yessica Garza reportedly said via an Instagram post in an apparent nod to the billionaire Trump donor, who faced withering criticism last month for what many people interpreted as a Nazi salute.
Social media users shared Garza's video, accusing her of trying to cozy up to white supremacists.
On Monday, Garza's employer, RD Realty, announced via its own Instagram account that she'd been fired over the clip.
"We want to be absolutely clear: our brokerage has zero tolerance for hate speech, discriminatory behavior, or anything that goes against our values of inclusivity and respect," RD Realty's post read.
Following the social media backlash, Garza shut off comments on the post and made her Instagram account private.
After Musk made his controversial gesture at the inauguration of President Trump, online debate ensued about whether he was giving a Nazi salute or making some other kind of gesture.
Some Musk fans defended him by saying he has autism, while others argued the gesture was harmless or misconstrued.
However, many of the billionaire's critics responded by telling defenders that if they really thought the salute was harmless, they should record themselves doing it, show it to their bosses and see what happens.
Guess now we know.
'Reboot' Revealed: Elon Musk's CEO-Dictator Playbook
The Point: In 2022, one of Peter Thiel's favorite thinkers envisioned a second Trump Administration in which the federal government would be run by a “CEO” who was not Trump and laid out a playbook for how it might work. Elon Musk is following it.
The Back Story: In 2012, Curtis Yarvin — Peter Thiel’s “house philosopher”—called for something he dubbed RAGE: Retire All Government Employees. The idea: Take over the United States government and gut the federal bureaucracy. Then, replace civil servants with political loyalists who would answer to a CEO-type leader Yarvin likened to a dictator.
“If Americans want to change their government, they’re going to have to get over their dictator phobia,” he said.
Yarvin, a software programmer, framed this as a “reboot” of government.
Elon Musk’s DOGE is just a rebranded version of RAGE. He demands mass resignations, locks career employees out of their offices, threatens to delete entire departments, and seizes total control of sensitive government systems and programs. DOGE = RAGE, masked in the bland language of “efficiency.”
But Musk’s reliance on Yarvin’s playbook runs deeper.
In an essay dated April 2022, Yarvin updated RAGE to something he described as a “butterfly revolution.” In an essay on his paywalled Substack, he imagined a second Trump presidency in which Trump would enable a radical government transformation. The proposal will sound familiar to anyone who has watched Musk wreak havoc on the United States Government (USG) over the past three weeks.
Wrote Yarvin:
Yarvin wrote that in a second term, Trump could appoint a different person to act as the nation’s “CEO.” This CEO would be enabled to run roughshod over the federal government, with Trump in the background as “chairman of the board.” The metaphors clarify the core idea: Run the government as a rogue corporation rather than a public institution beholden to the rules of democracy.
The Point: In 2022, one of Peter Thiel's favorite thinkers envisioned a second Trump Administration in which the federal government would be run by a “CEO” who was not Trump and laid out a playbook for how it might work. Elon Musk is following it.
The Back Story: In 2012, Curtis Yarvin — Peter Thiel’s “house philosopher”—called for something he dubbed RAGE: Retire All Government Employees. The idea: Take over the United States government and gut the federal bureaucracy. Then, replace civil servants with political loyalists who would answer to a CEO-type leader Yarvin likened to a dictator.
“If Americans want to change their government, they’re going to have to get over their dictator phobia,” he said.
Yarvin, a software programmer, framed this as a “reboot” of government.
Elon Musk’s DOGE is just a rebranded version of RAGE. He demands mass resignations, locks career employees out of their offices, threatens to delete entire departments, and seizes total control of sensitive government systems and programs. DOGE = RAGE, masked in the bland language of “efficiency.”
But Musk’s reliance on Yarvin’s playbook runs deeper.
In an essay dated April 2022, Yarvin updated RAGE to something he described as a “butterfly revolution.” In an essay on his paywalled Substack, he imagined a second Trump presidency in which Trump would enable a radical government transformation. The proposal will sound familiar to anyone who has watched Musk wreak havoc on the United States Government (USG) over the past three weeks.
Wrote Yarvin:
(The metaphor of “full power start” comes from Star Trek and entails a risky process of restarting a fictional spaceship in a way that might cause “implosion.” The World War II metaphor casts the federal government as a conquered enemy now controlled by an outside force.)We’ve got to risk a full power start—a full reboot of the USG. We can only do this by giving absolute sovereignty to a single organization—with roughly the powers that the Allied occupation authorities held in Japan and Germany in the fall of 1945. This level of centralized emergency power worked to refound a nation then, for them. So it should work now, for us.”
Yarvin wrote that in a second term, Trump could appoint a different person to act as the nation’s “CEO.” This CEO would be enabled to run roughshod over the federal government, with Trump in the background as “chairman of the board.” The metaphors clarify the core idea: Run the government as a rogue corporation rather than a public institution beholden to the rules of democracy.
Click on the link for moreTrump himself will not be the brain …He will not be the CEO. He will be the chairman of the board—he will select the CEO (an experienced executive). This process, which obviously has to be televised, will be complete by his inauguration—at which the transition to the next regime will start immediately.
Only the best people:China wrote: Thu Feb 06, 2025 2:46 pmDOJ agrees to proposed order to limit DOGE's access to Treasury data
In a filing late Wednesday evening, lawyers with the Justice Department agreed to a proposed order that would largely prohibit the Treasury Department from sharing sensitive financial data with Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.
The agreement allows two individuals associated with Musk but employed by the Treasury Department – called special government employees – to have “read only” access to the sensitive data.
The two special government employees allowed to continue seeing Treasury Department data are Tom Krause and Marko Elez, according to the filing. Krause is the former chief executive of Cloud Software Group, a Silicon Valley tech company. Marko Elez is a 25-year-old engineer who used to work for Musk’s X and SpaceX.
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DOGE Staffer Resigns Over Racist Posts
A key DOGE staff member who gained access to the Treasury Department’s central-payments system resigned Thursday after he was linked to a deleted social-media account that advocated racism and eugenics.
Marko Elez, a 25-year-old who is part of a cadre of Elon Musk lieutenants deployed by the Department of Government Efficiency to scrutinize federal spending, resigned after The Wall Street Journal asked the White House about his connection to the account.
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Elon Musk slams 40-hour work week, internet fires back: ‘This clown plays video games half the day’
X users criticize Elon Musk's claim of 120-hour work weeks, arguing it harms family time and wellbeing.
There are currently two camps on social media - one of business leaders who support longer working hours and the other of those who are against it. Elon Musk is clearly a part of the former.
Musk recently joined the likes of Infosys founder Narayana Murthy and Larsen & Toubro chairman SN Subrahmanyan in calling on professionals to work longer hours. In a post shared on his social media platform X, the CEO of Tesla said that DOGE, or the Department of Government Efficiency, which he leads, has people who work 120 hours a week.
To put that into perspective, Musk is claiming that people at the US government department work 17 hours every day, without any weekends to relax. Or they work 24 hours a day for five days straight, taking no time to sleep.
“DOGE is working 120 hour a week. Our bureaucratic opponents optimistically work 40 hours a week. That is why they are losing so fast,” Musk wrote, responding to a post targeting Democrats.
Take a look at his post below:
The remark was met with massive backlash on X (formerly Twitter) as Musk’s followers pointed out the physical and psychological fallout of working such long hours.
“While working for fed gov, I learned that it's illegal to work unauthorized overtime. Doing so obligates the government to pay, because slavery is illegal. So how are federal staff in DOGE legally putting in these hours? Multiple shifts?” asked one X user.
“The worst aspect of the tech industry is overworking people, while paying them low wages, then firing them in droves. The only people who benefit are the bosses,” another person commented.
Several users said that people working more than 40 to 45 hours a week are not able to spend time with their families.
“How does a 120 hour week sit with their families? No time for the kids, partners and love making... I thought you lot were ardent supporters of the family unit?” a user wondered.
“I don't think that's sustainable, even for a digital currency 4-day workweeks have done wonders for hell's productivity and morale,” another added.
Some took jibes at Musk’s own work ethic. “This clown plays video games half the day while the other half he spends tweeting. Surely no one on earth believes that this man is working 120 hours a week. At best he's probably putting in 2 full hours of actual work a day,” an X user wrote.
X users criticize Elon Musk's claim of 120-hour work weeks, arguing it harms family time and wellbeing.
There are currently two camps on social media - one of business leaders who support longer working hours and the other of those who are against it. Elon Musk is clearly a part of the former.
Musk recently joined the likes of Infosys founder Narayana Murthy and Larsen & Toubro chairman SN Subrahmanyan in calling on professionals to work longer hours. In a post shared on his social media platform X, the CEO of Tesla said that DOGE, or the Department of Government Efficiency, which he leads, has people who work 120 hours a week.
To put that into perspective, Musk is claiming that people at the US government department work 17 hours every day, without any weekends to relax. Or they work 24 hours a day for five days straight, taking no time to sleep.
“DOGE is working 120 hour a week. Our bureaucratic opponents optimistically work 40 hours a week. That is why they are losing so fast,” Musk wrote, responding to a post targeting Democrats.
Take a look at his post below:
The remark was met with massive backlash on X (formerly Twitter) as Musk’s followers pointed out the physical and psychological fallout of working such long hours.
“While working for fed gov, I learned that it's illegal to work unauthorized overtime. Doing so obligates the government to pay, because slavery is illegal. So how are federal staff in DOGE legally putting in these hours? Multiple shifts?” asked one X user.
“The worst aspect of the tech industry is overworking people, while paying them low wages, then firing them in droves. The only people who benefit are the bosses,” another person commented.
Several users said that people working more than 40 to 45 hours a week are not able to spend time with their families.
“How does a 120 hour week sit with their families? No time for the kids, partners and love making... I thought you lot were ardent supporters of the family unit?” a user wondered.
“I don't think that's sustainable, even for a digital currency 4-day workweeks have done wonders for hell's productivity and morale,” another added.
Some took jibes at Musk’s own work ethic. “This clown plays video games half the day while the other half he spends tweeting. Surely no one on earth believes that this man is working 120 hours a week. At best he's probably putting in 2 full hours of actual work a day,” an X user wrote.
Elon Musk almost needed SFPD wellness check after ‘breakdown,’ getting booed at Dave Chappelle show
Elon Musk reportedly suffered a mental breakdown after facing angry boos at Dave Chappelle’s San Francisco show in December 2022, which added to the billionaire’s fears that his reputation as a tech visionary had been damaged by his seemingly chaotic moves in buying and running Twitter, the once iconic social media platform he rebranded as X.
Musk’s mental breakdown is being reported by Ben Mezrich, the author of a new book, “Breaking Twitter,” which covers the billionaire’s haphazard acquisition of X, Insider reported.
“He got to a point where he locked himself in his office, was so upset that the Twitter employees were considering calling a wellness check by the San Francisco police because they thought he was going to self-harm himself,” Mezrich said in an interview Tuesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box, Insider said.
“I think he truly cares about his reputation, and he was shocked,” Mezrich said.
Mezrich cited several incidents that led to Musk’s downward “spiral.” The first was the Chappelle show, which took place about two months after Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion.
Chappelle brought the Tesla and SpaceX mogul onstage as his surprise guest at the end of a set at San Francisco’s Chase Center. The crowd initially erupted into a mixture of cheers and boos at the sight of Twitter’s polarizing new CEO. But as the shock of Musk’s appearance wore off, the boos began to win out and grew increasingly angry, according to footage of the set and some people in the audience.
The footage showed the booing getting louder as Musk wandered around onstage with a microphone in hand. Musk tried to wave and paced some more, evidently unsure about how to respond. Chappelle tried to salvage the moment by cracking some jokes: “It sounds like some of the people you fired are in the audience.”
People on social media estimated that the vast majority of people in the 18,000-capacity stadium booed during Musk’s appearance, according to a report.
Mezrich said on CNBC that Musk was “shocked” by the audience’s reaction, noting, “This never happened to Elon before, and this spiral started.”
Another destabilizing event, Mezrich said, was an incident that also took place in December 2022. This involved a confrontation between a member of Musk’s security team, who was driving his 2-year-old son in Los Angeles, and a “crazy stalker,” Musk said. A man wearing a black hood and mask allegedly tailed a car carrying Musk’s son, X Æ A-Xii. and “climbed” atop the vehicle in Los Angeles.
Police responded to the incident but made no arrests and found no way to verify Musk’s claims that the confrontation was tied to a Twitter account that tracked his private jet, the Washington Post reported. The incident nonetheless triggered a major rewrite of X’s rules and the suspensions of a half dozen journalists’ accounts, which were condemned by free-speech advocates, the Washington Post. It also underscored how Musk’s personal concerns can influence his operations of a platform used by hundreds of millions of people around the world, the Washington Post also said.
Musk has historically been concerned with his popularity, especially on the platform he owns, Insider reported. Back in February, the billionaire reportedly asked engineers to investigate why his tweets were getting fewer views. He reportedly fired the engineer who showed him that his popularity was declining.
The Wall Street Journal reported in June that Musk allegedly microdoses ketamine to treat depression, Page Six said. In 2017, Musk — who has Asperger’s syndrome — opened up about his mental health, saying that he may also suffer from bipolar disorder.
“The reality is great highs, terrible lows and unrelenting stress. Don’t think people want to hear about the last two,” he said at the time, Page Six reported.
Click on the link for the full article
Elon Musk reportedly suffered a mental breakdown after facing angry boos at Dave Chappelle’s San Francisco show in December 2022, which added to the billionaire’s fears that his reputation as a tech visionary had been damaged by his seemingly chaotic moves in buying and running Twitter, the once iconic social media platform he rebranded as X.
Musk’s mental breakdown is being reported by Ben Mezrich, the author of a new book, “Breaking Twitter,” which covers the billionaire’s haphazard acquisition of X, Insider reported.
“He got to a point where he locked himself in his office, was so upset that the Twitter employees were considering calling a wellness check by the San Francisco police because they thought he was going to self-harm himself,” Mezrich said in an interview Tuesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box, Insider said.
“I think he truly cares about his reputation, and he was shocked,” Mezrich said.
Mezrich cited several incidents that led to Musk’s downward “spiral.” The first was the Chappelle show, which took place about two months after Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion.
Chappelle brought the Tesla and SpaceX mogul onstage as his surprise guest at the end of a set at San Francisco’s Chase Center. The crowd initially erupted into a mixture of cheers and boos at the sight of Twitter’s polarizing new CEO. But as the shock of Musk’s appearance wore off, the boos began to win out and grew increasingly angry, according to footage of the set and some people in the audience.
The footage showed the booing getting louder as Musk wandered around onstage with a microphone in hand. Musk tried to wave and paced some more, evidently unsure about how to respond. Chappelle tried to salvage the moment by cracking some jokes: “It sounds like some of the people you fired are in the audience.”
People on social media estimated that the vast majority of people in the 18,000-capacity stadium booed during Musk’s appearance, according to a report.
Mezrich said on CNBC that Musk was “shocked” by the audience’s reaction, noting, “This never happened to Elon before, and this spiral started.”
Another destabilizing event, Mezrich said, was an incident that also took place in December 2022. This involved a confrontation between a member of Musk’s security team, who was driving his 2-year-old son in Los Angeles, and a “crazy stalker,” Musk said. A man wearing a black hood and mask allegedly tailed a car carrying Musk’s son, X Æ A-Xii. and “climbed” atop the vehicle in Los Angeles.
Police responded to the incident but made no arrests and found no way to verify Musk’s claims that the confrontation was tied to a Twitter account that tracked his private jet, the Washington Post reported. The incident nonetheless triggered a major rewrite of X’s rules and the suspensions of a half dozen journalists’ accounts, which were condemned by free-speech advocates, the Washington Post. It also underscored how Musk’s personal concerns can influence his operations of a platform used by hundreds of millions of people around the world, the Washington Post also said.
Musk has historically been concerned with his popularity, especially on the platform he owns, Insider reported. Back in February, the billionaire reportedly asked engineers to investigate why his tweets were getting fewer views. He reportedly fired the engineer who showed him that his popularity was declining.
The Wall Street Journal reported in June that Musk allegedly microdoses ketamine to treat depression, Page Six said. In 2017, Musk — who has Asperger’s syndrome — opened up about his mental health, saying that he may also suffer from bipolar disorder.
“The reality is great highs, terrible lows and unrelenting stress. Don’t think people want to hear about the last two,” he said at the time, Page Six reported.
Click on the link for the full article
The Government’s Computing Experts Say They Are Terrified
Elon Musk’s unceasing attempts to access the data and information systems of the federal government range so widely, and are so unprecedented and unpredictable, that government computing experts believe the effort has spun out of control. This week, we spoke with four federal-government IT professionals—all experienced contractors and civil servants who have built, modified, or maintained the kind of technological infrastructure that Musk’s inexperienced employees at his newly created Department of Government Efficiency are attempting to access. In our conversations, each expert was unequivocal: They are terrified and struggling to articulate the scale of the crisis.
Even if the president of the United States, the head of the executive branch, supports (and, importantly, understands) these efforts by DOGE, these experts told us, they would still consider Musk’s campaign to be a reckless and dangerous breach of the complex systems that keep America running. Federal IT systems facilitate operations as varied as sending payments from the Treasury Department and making sure that airplanes stay in the air, the sources told us.
Based on what has been reported, DOGE representatives have obtained or requested access to certain systems at the U.S. Treasury, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of Personnel Management, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with eyes toward others, including the Federal Aviation Administration. “This is the largest data breach and the largest IT security breach in our country’s history—at least that’s publicly known,” one contractor who has worked on classified information-security systems at numerous government agencies told us this week. “You can’t un-ring this bell. Once these DOGE guys have access to these data systems, they can ostensibly do with it what they want.”
Click on the link for the full article
Elon Musk’s unceasing attempts to access the data and information systems of the federal government range so widely, and are so unprecedented and unpredictable, that government computing experts believe the effort has spun out of control. This week, we spoke with four federal-government IT professionals—all experienced contractors and civil servants who have built, modified, or maintained the kind of technological infrastructure that Musk’s inexperienced employees at his newly created Department of Government Efficiency are attempting to access. In our conversations, each expert was unequivocal: They are terrified and struggling to articulate the scale of the crisis.
Even if the president of the United States, the head of the executive branch, supports (and, importantly, understands) these efforts by DOGE, these experts told us, they would still consider Musk’s campaign to be a reckless and dangerous breach of the complex systems that keep America running. Federal IT systems facilitate operations as varied as sending payments from the Treasury Department and making sure that airplanes stay in the air, the sources told us.
Based on what has been reported, DOGE representatives have obtained or requested access to certain systems at the U.S. Treasury, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of Personnel Management, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with eyes toward others, including the Federal Aviation Administration. “This is the largest data breach and the largest IT security breach in our country’s history—at least that’s publicly known,” one contractor who has worked on classified information-security systems at numerous government agencies told us this week. “You can’t un-ring this bell. Once these DOGE guys have access to these data systems, they can ostensibly do with it what they want.”
Click on the link for the full article