What Elon Musk has to say about censorship of government information: How the public and Congress can’t deal with the most sensitive data in government

Elon Musk’s takeover of federal government infrastructure is ongoing, and at the center of things is a coterie of engineers who are barely out of—and in at least one case, purportedly still in—college. Some of the people have connections to Musk and others have connections to someone else who is against democracy, like Peter Thiel, the co-chairman of the analytics firm and government contractor.

The engineers are Akash Bobba, Edward Coristsine, Gautier Cole Killian, Luke Farritor, and some others. There have been no responses to the requests for comment. Representatives from OPM, GSA, and DOGE did not respond to requests for comment.

The No classified material was accessed without proper security clearances was announced on X on Sunday by a DOGE official. On Monday she said she didn’t have information about Musk’s security clearance.

“What we’re seeing is unprecedented in that you have these actors who are not really public officials gaining access to the most sensitive data in government,” says Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. We don’t have any eyes on what’s happening. Congress has no power to intervene and monitor because public officials aren’t really accountable. So this feels like a hostile takeover of the machinery of governments by the richest man in the world.”

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Bobba has attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he was in the prestigious Management, Entrepreneurship, and Technology program. According to a copy of his now-deleted LinkedIn obtained by WIRED, he was an investment engineering intern at the Bridgewater Associates hedge fund as of last spring, and previously an intern at both Meta and Palantir. He talks about his experiences with Aman Manazir, who interviews engineers about how they get their dream jobs, on a now- deleted show he was featured on.

Coristine, as WIRED previously reported, appears to have recently graduated from high school and to have been enrolled at Northeastern University. According to a copy of his resume obtained by WIRED, he spent three months at Neuralink, Musk’s brain-computer interface company, last summer.

Even in a political moment when many things are described as unprecedented, the idea of a campaign from inside the government to upend agencies is stunning to former top White House officials.

Musk framed his vision of DOGE’s work in ideological terms, disparaging the “tyranny of the bureaucracy” as unaccountable to American voters. Later in the conversation, he called for the “wholesale removal of regulations.” Federal regulators who oversee Musk’s array of businesses have a long history of sparring with him.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that a shadow government is taking over the federal government.

Musk, the biggest donor in the 2024 election, has been using X to pounce on his critics, both Democrats and Republicans, who have questioned the reach of Musk’s authority and just how much oversight he is receiving from Trump and senior White House officials.

Eric Rubin is a retired ambassador who served in the foreign service for 40 years. hundreds of potential court cases are being created by Musk and the DOGE. “But who knows what kind of damage they can inflict before that happens.”

Federal ethics experts say since Musk is the chairman of six companies that are all in different industries, it’s difficult to avoid violating conflict of interest laws.

“He may not participate in any United States government matter that has a direct and predictable effect on his financial holdings,” said Richard Painter, who served as the White House’s top ethics lawyer under George W. Bush. “If he does, he commits a crime,” said Painter, pointing to federal laws governing special government employees.

Rubin, the retired foreign service officer, said the possibility of a government employee accessing SCIF material without the proper clearance is concerning, adding that “there are zero exceptions” to the restricted access, given these rooms contain sensitive material.

Gavin Kliger and the “hands off”: a Silicon Valley lawyer’s critic laments “I don’t have my kid’s data”

Some young engineers in Silicon Valley have joined Musk’s effort. That includes Gavin Kliger, whose LinkedIn page describes him as “special advisor to the director” at the federal Office of Personnel Management. Kliger attended the University of California, Berkeley until 2020. He is a senior software engineer at Databricks, where he was employed as a software engineer for three years.

A USAID.gov email address belonging to Kliger appeared on an email sent early on Monday morning to USAID staff informing them the agency’s Washington headquarters would be closed for the day. Kliger didn’t respond to NPR’s questions about his role at USAID or OPM.

Norm Eisen, who worked as an ethics lawyer in the White House under Barack Obama, said in an interview that they filed a lawsuit to say “hands off”. You can’t have my data. You can’t have my spouse’s data. You can’t have my kid’s data. That information is too precious,” said Eisen, who is representing the alliance and the unions. This is not right. It’s illegal.”