The most valuable data in the world

If data is the new oil, Elon Musk is the new Persian Gulf. Read this with "The MechaHitler Reich."

The list below is part of the second installment of The MechaHitler Reich. In a better world, it would be a sidebar to that newsletter—something you could glance at while you were reading it. But alas, this is not the best of all possible worlds, and Substack doesn’t give me that option.

I got worried that if I put the list at the top of the article, no one would read the article. But I also worried that if I put it at the end of the article, no one would read the list. I spent too much time compiling this list for that prospect to be tolerable. So I’ve decided just to send it separately. Hang on to it, and when you receive Part II, keep it in an open tab just slightly to the left of your open newsletter, okay? As if it were a sidebar to an article.

This is the most complete account I can come up with of the agencies in which Grok has been deployed, and the databases it has probably mined. It isn’t final, and it isn’t exhaustive. It’s only what I was able to put together from reports in the news and court filings. Unless I’ve seen a credible report indicating that DOGE has access to a database, I haven’t listed it, even if it would be reasonable to surmise that it has.

I use the word “probably” because in many cases, the reporting isn’t clear. An article might say, for example, that DOGE was given access to a database, but it might not say explicitly that the data wound up in Grok. Or it says that the data was “analyzed using AI,” but doesn’t say that this AI was Grok.

I’m assuming that probably, every time DOGE gains access to a database, its contents are swiftly fed to Grok, as a matter of routine. We have a consistent portrait of DOGE’s modus operandi. In report after report, court filing after court filing, employees recount witnessing the following sequence of events:

1. The DOGE boys arrived.

2. They figured out where the data was.

3. They demanded the highest level of access to it.

4. They weren’t interested in hearing that this was illegal and a violation of every known security protocol.

5. They made it clear that they viewed the people who offered these objections as caviling Deep-State dinosaurs who should be replaced with AI as quickly as possible.

6. If anyone tried to stop them, they were fired.

7. Either these positions were left vacant or they were filled by someone pliant and DOGE-friendly.

8. DOGE hooked up the department’s most sensitive databases to God-knows-what kind of server and vacuumed up the data without regard to long-established data-protection protocols.

9. The chief security officer began vomiting or had an aneurysm.

10. He quit or sued.

11. DOGE used Grok, or “some kind of AI,” to analyze the data.

12. If the courts temporarily blocked their access to the data, DOGE looked for ways to skirt the court order.

13. DOGE’s attorneys told judges who had blocked their access that they would be very, very responsible with the data, or they promised to send only DOGE boys who’d received training in data handling.

14. In some cases, the judge (or the White House and the Treasury Department) said they could have the data, but only in read-only mode, or an anonymized version. Otherwise, the judges mostly decided that DOGE should have unimpeded access to the data.

15. If they hadn’t done so already, DOGE swiftly vacuumed up the data without any regard to long-established data protection protocols, then used Grok, or “some kind of AI,” to analyze it.

16. The data soon showed up on the open Internet (sometimes on Elon Musk’s X feed). Foreign adversaries (Russia especially), profiting from the security vulnerabilities created by DOGE’s behavior, launched attack after attack on these now-vulnerable databases. Security analysts were left shaking, gibbering wrecks.

So whenever we read of DOGE gaining access to a database, it’s reasonable to think the data has already been shoveled into Grok’s maw. But I’m not 100 percent sure, hence “probably.”

I assume, when I read that DOGE used AI to analyze the data, that the AI in question is Grok. I can’t imagine Musk’s employees would feed all this precious data to a rival AI, can you? But again, I’m not 100 percent sure.

Unless I’ve found reporting to the contrary, I’ve assumed that DOGE still has access to these databases. Despite the Trump-Musk feud, Musk-aligned cadre remain inside the executive branch, so I don’t know why they wouldn’t.

This list is probably very incomplete, because it doesn’t necessarily make the news when DOGE helps itself to another data set. But it will give you a sense of the scale of this undertaking.

Normally, sharing data from a federal agency requires the agency’s authorization and the oversight of a specialist who ensures adherence to relevant privacy and confidentiality laws and regulations. DOGE hasn’t bothered with any of that. What they’re doing is a thousand kinds of illegal. But the law doesn’t enforce itself, and if the executive doesn’t feel like enforcing the law, then for practical purposes, no law exists.

OFFICIALLY DEPLOYED

• Department of Defense: In mid‑July, the Defense Department signed a contract with xAI worth up to US$200 million to deploy “Grok for Government.” This includes “custom national security tools, AI-powered science and health applications, and cleared engineering support for classified environments.” DoD employees recently learned that algorithmic tools monitor their computer activity, but the specific monitoring system has not been identified.

• General Services Administration: Grok has been approved for integration into the GSAi app, which allows federal workers to access AI models. Every federal government department, agency, or office now has access to Grok via this app.

DEFINITELY OR PROBABLY DATA-MINED:

• Agriculture:

  • The National Finance Center, a sensitive system that provides human resources and payroll functions for the Justice Department, Homeland Security, and the FBI, among other agencies. The data includes the Social Security numbers, banking information, addresses, and dates of birth for federal employees, including members of the FBI and DOJ, as well as salary, banking, address, deductions, debt and other key employment information.

  • The National Payment Service, which controls tens of billions of dollars in government payments and loans to farmers and ranchers across the United States. This has data treating every farmer’s financial life, missed payments, and financial problems, as well as all personal and financial data required to apply for an FSA loan. It also has demographic information about farmers and ranchers who applied for financial assistance.

  • Sensitive data about US agriculture, food security and areas of vulnerability; data that could be used to consolidate agricultural businesses and land ownership. This can be used, among other things, to draw conclusions about US farmland, futures markets, and commodity prices—which would let you make a lot of money.

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

  • Payment systems

  • Contracting systems

• Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services:

  • Payment systems

  • Contracting systems

  • Grant-management systems

  • Health information, social security numbers, and military records.

• Citizenship and Immigration Services:

  • USCIS Data Business Intelligence Services:

    • Electronic Immigration System, including asylee and refugee data. This contains an immense amount of data about naturalization applicants and US citizens. When people apply to live in the United States, they have to supply a significant amount of information to USCIS, as do US citizens who are sponsoring their applications, including medical and financial data.

    • Data on legal immigration benefits, case management, green cards and petitions, details related to Temporary Protected Status and DACA applicants.

    • Central Index System: Information about people who use Alien Numbers, or A-Numbers, including people who don’t have legal authorization to be in the country or have interacted with ICE.

• Commerce: I’ve not yet found detailed reporting about DOGE’s activities here.

• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: (Musk killed the agency.) All unclassified CFPB data, including:

  • SmartPay (payment card database)

  • FPDS (contracting databases);

  • Financial companies’ trade secrets. In particular, proprietary information about the algorithms used in payment apps, like the kind Musk wants to add to X.

• Education:

  • All the data required to administer federal financial aid and student loan programs—including dates of birth, contact information, Social Security numbers, and bank account information—in these systems:

    • The National Student Loan Data System

    • FSA Partner Connect

    • The Financial Management System.

  • Personal data about the people who manage grants, and other sensitive internal financial data.

  • Records of every dollar the department disburses, from contracts and grants to work-trip expenses and DEI initiatives.

  • Records of departmental personnel and training. (They used this data to put 100 employees on leave because they’d once signed up for a diversity training session that they needed to fulfill a job requirement.)

• Energy: IT systems.

• FBI:

  • I’ve found no specific reporting, but DOGE used data from the FBI to build their migrant-tracking app, so obviously they have access to that.

• Federal Aviation Administration:

  • IT systems

• Federal Emergency Management Agency:

  • Data about disaster victims

• Food and Drug Administration: Unclear, but the employees reviewing Neuralink trials were fired immediately when DOGE arrived.

• General Services Agency: This is the choke point for all the other government agencies. DOGE requested, and as far as I know gained full access, to the following:

  • Federal real estate and IT infrastructure procurement data.

  • The SmartPay system, which is the world’s largest government commercial payment program.

  • The Federal Procurement Data System, which has the details of every contract with the government worth more than US$3,000. This and the SmartPay database contain massive amounts of sensitive and proprietary information shared with the government by businesses that have government contracts. DOGE now has all of the records related to the awarding of these contracts, including who submitted bids, how much they offered, and the nature of any negotiations.

  • Contracts for services provided to government agencies, including technology contracts, which the GSA administers. (The GSA manages, for example, multiple contracts with a Tesla subsidiary for solar power generation.)

  • All the components and sensitive information in the now-defunct notify.gov site, which was being built to give federal employees a secure personal messaging system.

  • All the components and sensitive information in login.gov, which lets users access multiple government websites from a single account.

  • All the components and sensitive information in search.gov, a government-built search engine for federal agencies.

  • All the components and sensitive information in cloud.gov, which provides cloud computing services for the federal government.

  • The Federal Audit Clearinghouse, a repository of federal grant audits.

  • USA.gov, which provides information on federal programs and services.

• Health and Human Services: HHS payment and contracting systems control hundreds of billions of dollars in annual payments to health care providers.

  • HIPAA‑regulated medical data, including the data in the Healthcare Integrated General Ledger Accounting System, which pays out federal grants and is used for accounting by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. It contains SSNs, names, dates of birth, financial account informations, taxpayer IDs, health insurance claims, employee ID numbers, and salaries.

  • CMS Integrated Data Repository Cloud, a high-volume data warehouse for integrating Medicare claims with data from patients and healthcare providers. It contains SSNs, names, dates of birth, email addresses, phone numbers, mailing addresses, medical records number, medical notes, health insurance claim numbers, unique physician identification numbers, race, sex, diagnosis, codes, procedure codes, and user credentials.

  • Business Intelligence Information System-Cloud, which contains HHS payroll, time and attendance, personnel, and recruiting data. It contains SSNs, mother’s maiden names, user credentials, email addresses, dates of birth, mailing addresses, names, phone numbers, military status, employment status, financial account information.

  • HRSA Electronic Handbooks, a platform that lets officials sign documents that create binding government contracts, and contains names, email addresses, phone numbers, taxpayer IDs, mailing addresses, user credentials, and more.

  • Unified Financial Management System, HHS’s integrated department-wide financial management system, containing SSNs, taxpayer IDs, email addresses, mailing addresses, names, phone numbers, financial account information, and more.

  • NIH Workforce Analytics Workbench, which lets users examine current and historical NIH workforce data, including headcount and retirement information.

  • Financial Business Intelligence Systems, which retrieves, combines, consolidates, and reports data from the core financial system. Data includes SSNs, taxpayer IDs, email addresses, mailing addresses, names, phone numbers, financial account information, and more.

  • Grants.gov., a federal website that serves as a clearinghouse for more than US$500 billion in grants. It’s used by thousands of outside organizations. The Defense, State and Interior Departments, especially, post their grant opportunities here. Nonprofits, universities, and local governments respond with applications to receive federal funding. DOGE has seized control of the site and all of the data that flows through it. It has deleted other federal officials’ access to it. It houses SSNs, taxpayer IDs, user credentials, email addresses, education records, mailing addresses, names, phone numbers, financial account info, provider license numbers, and more.

  • The Unaccompanied Alien Children portal, which contains extremely detailed information about minors who enter the United States alone, including mental health and therapy records, as well as immigration records, photos, and addresses of their family members, medical notes, educational information, sponsorship information, dates of birth, biometrics, country of birth, education information, progress reports, financial account information, employment status, income information, legal documents, marital status, gender, country of residency, fax numbers, and more.

  • Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Acquisition Lifecycle, which manages the contract acquisition process, including writing contracts, tracking milestones, and performing contract audits. It contains vendor names, addresses, phone numbers, taxpayer ID numbers, and employer ID numbers.

  • NIH ES Electronic Research Administration, the NIH’s system for processing research grant applications. Contains SSN, names, dates of birth, email addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers, education, records, disability records, persistent digital identifiers, disadvantage background, user credentials, current positions, affiliated organizations, sex, demographic information, professional history, performance history, provincial history, service, payback obligations, financial data, and employment data.

  • NIH ES NIH Business System, including the general ledger, finance, budget, procurement, supply, travel, and property management systems. This includes SSNs, names, email addresses, phone numbers, financial accountant information, employment status, taxpayer IDs, employee ID numbers.

  • OS ASA OHR Enterprise Human Capital Management Investment, used by HHS to process its internal personnel actions and administer benefits to its employees. It holds SSNs, names, email addresses, phone numbers, certificates, education records, military status records, dates of birth, photographic identifiers, mailing addresses, financial account information, employment status, and user credentials.

  • OS ASA PSC Payment Management System, a shared service provider and a leader in processing grant payments for the federal government. It includes SSNs, names, email addresses, phone numbers, taxpayer IDs, mailing addresses, financial account information, and user credentials.

  • OS ASFR Grant Solutions, a grants management services provider. This contains taxpayer IDs, user credentials, email addresses, mailing addresses, names, phone numbers, and employer ID numbers.

  • OS ASFR HHS Consolidated Acquisition Solution, which manages purchase requests and business transactions across HHS, with the exception of CDC. It contains SSNs, names, email addresses, phone numbers, education records, taxpayer IDs, mailing addresses, financial account information, legal documents, and user credentials.

  • Integrated Contracts Expert system at CDC, HHS’s CDC-specific accounting system. This includes SSNs, names, email addresses, and employer ID numbers.

  • Acquisition, Performance and Execution system at CDC, a platform for the CDC to procure private sector contracts and work, with SSNs, names, email addresses, employment status, and employer ID number.

  • ACF Expanded Federal Parent Locator Service, which houses four systems critical to child support. Overseen by the Administration for Children and Families, it contains massive amounts of personal income data linked to nearly all US workers, as well as data like SSNs, dates of birth, names, mailing addresses, military status, and employment status.

    • National Directory of New Hires, a database of employment data;

    • Federal Case Registry of Child Support Orders, a database of child, support cases and orders

    • Debtor File which helps states collect delinquent child support

    • Parent Child Support Portal, which provides a secure gateway for FPLS web applications and houses information about children placed into foster care so that the relatives of these children can be notified.

• Housing and Urban Development:

  • All the data reported by people who are applying for housing.

  • HUD Enforcement Management System, which contains medical records, financial files, documents that may list Social Security numbers and other private information.

• Homeland Security: DOGE has ordered officials to use Grok even though it hasn’t been approved by the department. The DOGE boys are reportedly building a “master database” consolidating SSA, IRS, immigration and voting data.

  • Biometric identity systems.

  • Disaster‑aid recipients’ personal data.

  • Highly sensitive information about border security, immigration enforcement, and cybersecurity.

  • Employee emails, which Grok monitors for signs of disloyalty to Trump.

• ICE:

  • DOGE helped to build the Alien Tracker app, a mapping app for tracking down illegal migrants. Information about more than 700,000 people is recorded on the app. The tracker draws on data from the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the US Marshals Service, and the Social Security Administration.

• Internal Revenue Service: DOGE’s demands led to a massive fight that resulted in the firing of the top IRS attorney and 18,141 other employees.( Tax officials predict that this will so hamper tax collection this year that we’ll lose more than US$500 billion in federal revenue—about ten percent of our annual collection.) In the end, the White House and Treasury Department decided that DOGE wouldn’t be allowed to see personal taxpayer data, but could have access to the anonymized data. These are the databases DOGE wanted; whether they now have access to them, to anonymized versions, or neither isn’t clear from the reporting:

  • The Integrated Data Retrieval System, which enables access to IRS accounts (including personal identification numbers and bank information).

  • Property records

  • Integrated Data Retrieval System, data anonymized. Detailed records (bank accounts, payment balances, SSNs and other personal identification numbers, medical information) for virtually every individual, business, and nonprofit in the country.

  • The addresses and taxpayer records of of 700,000 illegal aliens, including bank accounts, payment balances, Social Security numbers, other personal identification numbers, and medical information for almost every man, woman, child, business, and nonprofit in the United States.

  • Working with Palantir, DOGE engineers built an API that allowed them to see previously compartmentalized data from across the IRS in one place.

• Interior: I’ve not yet found reporting about the data to which it has access.

• Justice:

  • Executive Office for Immigration Review’s Courts and Appeals System, which keeps records on immigrants who have interacted with the US immigration system including their names, addresses, previous immigration-court testimony, and history of engagement with law enforcement.

• Labor: DOGE has access to every record at the agency. This includes data sets on:

  • Unemployment claims

  • Health insurance plans

  • Disability insurance

  • Workplace health and safety investigations

  • Wage theft

  • Child labor

  • Medical information about federal workers

  • The identities of government whistleblowers (DOGE now has access to every bit of confidential information about federal investigations into Musk’s companies, as well as their competitors)

  • Detailed information about safety inspections at private companies

  • Privileged information about the economy capable of moving financial markets

  • Personal information of migrant farm workers, including applicants for temporary work visas

• National Labor Relations Board: Reams of potentially sensitive data, from confidential information about employees who want to form unions to proprietary business information. Employees grew concerned that the data could be exposed after they started detecting suspicious log-in attempts from an IP address in Russia. Eventually, the IT department launched a formal review of what it deemed a serious, ongoing security breach or potentially illegal removal of personally identifiable information. A whistleblower in the IT department reported someone “physically taping a threatening note” to his door that included overhead photos, shot by drone, of him walking his dog. An enormous amount of data—10 gigabytes—was found to have been clandestinely exfiltrated while DOGE’s was there.

  • NxGen case management system, which hosts proprietary data from corporate competitors, personal information about union members or employees voting to join a union, and witness testimony in ongoing cases.

• NASA:

  • Internal evaluations of thousands of contracts awarded to SpaceX’s rivals, such as Blue Origin, with detailed descriptions of the services provided to NASA and notes explaining why each contract should be kept, cut or downsized.

  • Administrative and internal employee data, including employment and training histories.

• National Institutes of Health:

  • Finance, procurement, and grants systems.

  • NOFOs, or Notice of Funding Opportunities—grant announcements. It also has the power to approve these grants.

• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:

  • IT databases, including employee resource groups with membership, internal newsletters, training documents, and personnel management information.

• National Reconnaissance Office:

  • Budget and staffing. (We know because this is classified, but they posted data from it on their website.)

• Occupational Safety and Health Administration: Labor unions filed a frantic lawsuit to prevent DOGE from getting its hands on this data. DOGE told the court that their employees were required to fill out all the proper paperwork before accessing it; the judge said, “Good enough,” and signed off.

  • More than 50 data systems with private information about US citizens, including one with the names of everyone who has helped OSHA with their investigations, in confidence. (I’m sure Musk is keenly interested in this, since OSHA has investigated and penalized SpaceX and Tesla many times. OSHA also investigates Musk’s rivals in the car and aerospace sectors.)

• Office of Personnel Management: DOGE shut out the senior staff and replaced them with its own operatives.

  • Internal email and contact lists.

  • The Enterprise Human Resources Integration and Electronic Official Personnel Folder, which hold data about the employees of most federal agencies, including their addresses, demographic profiles, salary details and disciplinary histories.

  • Detailed security clearance forms for everyone with a clearance.

  • Data about everyone who has ever applied for a federal job through USAJob. (There were 24.5 million applicants last year.)

• Small Business Administration:

  • Core financial and loan systems

  • Capital Access Financial System, the SBA’s main portal for submitting and servicing loans. This contains several CAFS subsystems with granular data on loans and loan applications: street addresses, tax IDs, additional notes from SBA investigations, holds, citizenship status or alien registration number, street address of the business, and the race and gender of the person listed as principal.

• Social Security Administration: Musk’s team was especially determined to get this data, and waged war on senior officials—and repeatedly tried to circumvent a judge’s orders—to get it. Finally, the senior officials were fired and replaced with DOGE-friendly ones, and DOGE got its data.

  • Databases containing the SSNS, earnings, pay history, medical history, residences, identities, and citizenship of more than 70 million Americans who receive Social Security benefits.

  • The world’s largest repository of medical data.

  • Years of data about every American’s social security payments, benefits, and employment histories.

• State:

  • DOGE has access to all of USAID’s systems, including classified data. This includes the names of foreigners we worked with, some already at risk of arrest and worse in their home countries.

• Transportation: I’ve not yet seen reporting on DOGE’s activities.

• Treasury: (Some of these systems are designated “high security,” meaning that unauthorized disclosures, modifications, or disruptions to access of the

  systems could have “severe or catastrophic adverse effect[s] on organizational operations, organizational assets, or individuals.”)

  • Bureau of the Fiscal Service, which controls the federal payment system that distributes nearly 90 percent of all federal payments, including Social

    Security benefits, tax refunds, and vendor payments. Twelve BFS payment systems process more than US$6 trillion in annual payments and are responsible for more than a billion payments annually amounting to trillions of dollars in US government payments. The top Treasury official resigned rather accede to the demand; he was replaced by a DOGE staffer. A federal judge then issued an emergency order prohibiting DOGE employees from accessing the data on the grounds it could do “irreparable harm;” the same federal judge subsequently decided that DOGE could have access to anything they wanted, so long as they had a bit of training first. So DOGE now has access all the data—SSNs, home addresses, bank account information—of everyone whose financial information is stored in that payment file. Access to these data sets gives DOGE a comprehensive map of US expenditures, including spending on highly classified programs. Within a day of DOGS gaining access to these systems, information exfiltrated from the BFS payment systems was broadcast on X.

    • Integrated Document Management System contains personally identifying information for 10,000,000–99,999,999 people, including Social Security Numbers, personal taxpayer identification numbers, personal financial information, taxpayer information/return information, dates of birth, addresses, zip codes, phone numbers, email addresses, marital statuses, spouse information, information on children, mother’s maiden names, military service information, employee identification numbers, health plan beneficiary numbers, patient ID numbers, file/case ID numbers, medical/health information, mental health information, worker’s compensation information, disability information, and emergency contact information.

    • Disbursement And Debt Management Analytics Platform

    • Do Not Pay

    • Electronic Check Processing System’

    • Electronic Federal Tax Payments System

    • FedDebt

    • Fiscal Data Hub

    • Invoice Processing Platform

    • Payment Information Repository,

    • Payment Information & View of Transactions

    • Secure Payment System

    • Treasury Check Information System

    • Treasury Direct

• Veterans Affairs:

  • All of the VA’s 76,000 contracts

  • Health information, social security numbers, and military records

That’s a lot of data.

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Grok for Government

xAI recently announced the rollout of Grok for Government, “a suite of frontier AI products available first to United States Government customers.”

Under the umbrella of Grok For Government, we will be bringing all of our world-class AI tools to federal, local, state, and national security customers. These customers will be able to use the Grok family of products to accelerate America – from making everyday government services faster and more efficient to using AI to address unsolved problems in fundamental science and technology.

This includes frontier AI like Grok 4, our latest and most advanced model so far, which brings strong reasoning capabilities with extensive pretraining models. Our government partnerships will also bring to bear tools like Deep Search, Tool Use, and more integrations – all of which are industry-leading commercial products.

We’ve been engaging closely with innovators and leaders in the government to make sure that our offerings are able to deliver the capabilities we need. In addition to our commercial offerings, we will be making some unique capabilities available to our government customers, including:

• Custom models for national security and critical science applications available to specific customers.

• Forward Deployed Engineering and Implementation Support, with USG cleared engineers

• Custom AI-powered applications to accelerate use cases in healthcare, fundamental science, and national security, to name a few examples

• Models soon available in classified and other restricted environments

  • Partnerships with xAI to build custom versions for specific mission sets

Given xAI’s new insight into federal procurement processes—and its competitors—I think we can assume that sales will be brisk and lucrative.

Keep reading to find out what Elon Musk intends to do with this data:

The MechaHitler Reich

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Here are the sources from which I compiled that list. Feel very free to let me know if I’ve missed something. If you work at one of these agencies and know of other databases DOGE has fed to Grok, please let me know. (And please let me know if any of this is incorrect, too.)

• EPIC, Democracy Forward, and a federal worker v. DOGE

• Understanding DOGE and your data.

• Ranking Member Connolly demands answers after reports DOGS is feeding Americans’ private data into unapproved AI systems, using AI to slash programs.

• DOGE is just getting warmed up. DOGE has tapped into some of the most sensitive and valuable data in the world. Now it’s starting to put it to work.

• Elon Musk’s Grok AI is quietly being deployed across US government agencies. Experts warn it could breach privacy laws and create serious conflicts of interest.

• Musk’s DOGE expanding his Grok AI in US government, raising conflict concerns.

• DOGE keeps gaining access to sensitive data. Now, it can cut off billions to farmers.

• A whistleblower's disclosure details how DOGE may have taken sensitive labor data.

• The government already knows a lot about you. DOGE is trying to access all of it.

• Musk’s DOGE using AI to snoop on US federal workers, sources say

  DOGE broadens sweep of federal agencies, gains access to health payment systems.

• When it’s not just a coup but a CFAA violation too.

• This obscure office is at the center of Elon Musk’s efforts to harness federal data.

• Elon Musk’s friends have infiltrated another government agency. Musk’s former employees are trying to use White House credentials to access General Services Administration tech, giving them the potential to remote into laptops, read emails, and more, sources say.

• Elon Musk lackeys have taken over the Office of Personnel Management.

  Sources tell WIRED that the OPM’s top layers of management now include individuals linked to xAI, Neuralink, the Boring Company, and Palantir. One expert found the takeover reminiscent of Stalin.

• Coalition of US states to file lawsuit after Musk’s DOGE gains access to Americans’ personal data

• Former Palantir and Elon Musk associates are taking over key government IT roles. The chief information officers of at least three major government agencies have been replaced by Silicon Valley executives, including from Palantir and Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

• Ex-Social Security official describes “significant” risk of sensitive data going to wrong hands under DOGE.

• Struggle over Americans’ personal data plays out across the government. Employees from Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency are gaining access to vast amounts of information held by federal agencies, even as lawsuits try to stop them.

• DOGE efforts to access private data spark sharp pushback.

• Top IRS lawyer pushed aside as DOGE seeks records and 20 percent staff cuts. Elon Musk’s team has provoked concern among career staff over requests for tax records of undocumented immigrants.

• DOGE is putting the country’s data and computing infrastructure at risk, HKS expert argues. Cyber security expert Bruce Schneier worries that DOGE’s access to highly sensitive information is giving bad actors a chance to take advantage.

• Senator warns of national security risks after Elon Musk’s DOGE granted “full access” to sensitive Treasury systems

• Trump preps order to dismantle Education Department as DOGE probes data. Closing the agency would require congressional approval, so the new administration hopes to diminish it in the meantime.

• Trump energy secretary allowed 23-year-old DOGE rep to access IT systems over objections from general counsel.

• DOGE data release criticized by intel community; Trump admin says it’s public data.

• Elon Musk, DOGE use access to Social Security data to elevate claims against migrants.

• How DOGE may have improperly used Social Security data to push voter fraud narratives.

• DOGE gains access to confidential records on housing discrimination,

  medical details—even domestic violence.

• DOGE says it needs to know the government’s most sensitive data, but can't say why.

• Judge orders Musk and DOGE to delete personal data taken from Social Security. Restraining order blocks DOGE’s “unlimited access” to Social Security records.

• Tax revenue could drop by 10 percent amid turmoil at IRS. Staff cuts and disruptions related to the US DOGE Service have officials bracing for a sharp loss of revenue.

• Treasury agrees to block DOGE’s access to personal taxpayer data at IRS. US DOGE Service reps will see anonymized tax data, not individual returns.

• Federal judge blocks Musk’s DOGE from access to Treasury Department material. The judge also ordered Musk and his team to “immediately destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from Treasury Department’s records and systems, if any.”

• Here’s all the Health and Human Services data DOGE has access to.

  Elon Musk’s DOGE has access to 19 sensitive systems at HHS. In at least one instance, it appears that access was granted without the proper security training.

• DOGE employees may access sensitive Treasury data, judge rules. A federal judge ruled the department’s DOGE team could access sensitive financial information on millions of Americans, but must be vetted and trained first.

• Musk associates given unfettered access to private data of government employees.

• DOGE claims it has saved billions. See where. A WSJ analysis of government data found that many claims of savings were overstated and “woke” cuts were only a tiny fraction of the total

• DOGE aides search Medicare agency payment systems for fraud. Elon Musk’s allies have been on site at Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services offices this week.

• Conflict of interest? Musk’s DOGE Team deploys Grok AI across federal agencies.

• Pentagon to start using Grok as part of a US$200 million contract with Elon Musk’s xAI

• Elon Musk’s DOGE is now using AI to spy on federal workers. Be careful what you say if you’re a federal employee.

• Top IRS lawyer pushed aside as DOGE seeks records and 20 percent staff cuts. Elon Musk’s team has provoked concern among career staff over requests for tax records of undocumented immigrants.

• DOGE aims to pool federal data, putting personal information at risk. The goal—a centralized system with unprecedented access to data about Social Security, taxes, medical diagnoses and other private information—would create a multitude of vulnerabilities, experts say

• DOGE has the keys to sensitive data that could help Elon Musk. A Washington Post review found that in at least seven major departments or agencies, DOGE secured the power to view records that experts say could benefit Musk’s businesses for years

• Musk’s DOGE agents access sensitive personnel data, alarming security officials. The highly restricted data includes personally identifiable information for millions of federal employees maintained by the Office of Personnel Management.

• DOGE takes over federal grants website, wresting control of billions. A DOGE engineer removed users’ access to grants.gov, threatening to further slow the process of awarding thousands of federal grants per year.

• DOGE broadens sweep of federal agencies, gains access to health payment systems. Associates of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have spread out across the federal government in recent days, alarming many career employees.

• After his Trump blowup, Musk may be out. But DOGE is just getting Started. With members embedded in multiple agencies, the team’s approach to transforming government is becoming “institutionalized,” as one official put it.

• DOGE’s grab of personal data stokes privacy and security fears. Twenty-one staffers of the US DOGE Service announced their resignations Tuesday citing, among other worries, “mishandling sensitive data.”

• GSA engineering lead resigns over DOGE ally’s request for access. Steven Reilly announced he was departing after Thomas Shedd sought access to government data.

• Some DOGE agents removed from sensitive personnel systems after security fears. The changes come after a Post article detailing the sweeping controls granted to deputies of billionaire Elon Musk.

• DOGE searches for DEI information at US climate, oceans agency.

• Elon Musk’s DOGE is feeding sensitive federal data into AI to target cuts.

  At the Education Department, the tech billionaire’s team has turned to artificial intelligence to hunt for potential spending cuts—part of a broader plan to deploy the technology across the federal government.

• Education Department agrees to block DOGE from accessing student data. The Trump administration will temporarily stop its DOGE staff from accessing sensitive student data such as Social Security numbers and bank account numbers. “They have a playbook, which is to get access to the data. And once they’re in, it’s already over.”

• Judge orders ban on DOGE from access to sensitive Treasury data. The federal judge in New York says there is public interest in protecting the security of personal details and banking information.

• Court bars DOGE officials from altering Treasury payment records.

• HHS grants DOGE access to child support database, overriding objections. An HHS official said the associates of Elon Musk’s group had sought “read-only” access.

• Judge lets DOGE access sensitive records at Labor Department. Despite voicing skepticism about granting the access, a judge denied unions’ request for a restraining order blocking the Musk-led group.

• DOGE’s grab of personal data stokes privacy and security fears.

  Twenty-one staffers of the US DOGE Service announced their resignations Tuesday citing, among other worries, “mishandling sensitive data.”

• How an ex-State Department official fueled Elon Musk’s attack on USAID. Mike Benz appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast in late December to discuss USAID, spurring Musk’s first mention of the agency

• Court decision allows DOGE to continue accessing student data. A federal district judge has refused to issue a temporary restraining order to stop the US DOGE Service from accessing student data at the Education Department.

• Justice Department agrees to let DOGE access sensitive immigration case data. About a half-dozen DOGE “advisors” won approval from the the Justice Department to access the ECAS system, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post.

• Inside DOGE’s push to defy a court order and access Social Security data. Musk’s cost-cutting team repeatedly sought to get around a judge’s order to gain access to private details about millions of beneficiaries.

• DOGE is collecting federal data to remove immigrants from housing, jobs. Officials working with the US DOGE Service are pushing agencies to turn over information on where people work, study and live.

• Supreme Court lets DOGE access Social Security data of millions of Americans. The orders were another example of the Supreme Court granting a Trump administration’s emergency request to lift or scale back lower court rulings blocking his initiatives.

• Elon Musk’s ethical minefield, mapped.

• The person ruling on Elon Musk’s DOGE conflicts of interest is … Elon Musk

• Supreme Court grants DOGE access to confidential Social Security records.

• Former Social Security official describes hostile takeover by Musk team. DOGE officials also put millions of taxpayers’ private data at risk and refused to say why they needed access to it, the official says.

• The truth about DOGE’s AI plans: The tech can’t do that. Identify “mission-critical” jobs? Spot dead people on Social Security rolls? Government needs AI — but what DOGE appears to be doing doesn’t add up.

• DOGE presses to check federal benefits payments against IRS tax records. Officials with Elon Musk’s group say they want to search for fraud. Privacy law bars the IRS from disclosing tax information to other parts of the government.

• Elon Musk is reportedly taking control of the inner workings of US government agencies.

• Senate Intelligence members sound the alarm about DOGE risk to national security and American privacy

• The biggest breach of US government data is under way. Elon Musk’s DOGE has taken control of large swathes of Americans’ private information held by the US government.

• DOGE’s push for Americans’ data meets mixed response from judges.

  Here’s where the Elon Musk effort has run into court restrictions—and where it hasn’t.

• Cybersecurity experts are sounding the alarm on DOGE.

• Federal workers sue to disconnect DOGE server. Two federal workers, citing reports that Elon Musk’s associates are operating an illegally connected email server at OPM, seek a restraining order.

• Musk says DOGE is in almost every federal agency and plans to double staff.

• US government officials privately warn Musk’s blitz appears illegal. The billionaire’s DOGE team has launched an all-out assault on federal agencies, triggering numerous legal objections.

• Musk’s DOGE seeks access to personal taxpayer data, raising alarm at IRS. The unusual request could put sensitive data about millions of American taxpayers in the hands of Trump political appointees.

• In chaotic Washington blitz, Elon Musk’s ultimate goal becomes clear. Shrink government, control data and—according to one official closely watching the billionaire’s DOGE—replace “the human workforce with machines.”

• Federal judge blocks Musk’s DOGE from access to Treasury Department material. The judge also ordered Musk and his team to “immediately destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from Treasury Department’s records and systems, if any.”

• Judge temporarily blocks DOGE access to sensitive information at two agencies. A federal judge sided with labor unions and stopped DOGE from accessing sensitive data for millions of Americans without their consent for at least 14 days.

• How Edward ‘Big Balls’ Coristine and DOGE got access to a federal payroll system that serves the FBI. Hundreds of pages of records reviewed by WIRED show just how quickly DOGE gained access to systems at the Small Business Administration—and through it, a USDA system that handles payroll for federal law enforcement.

• DOGE gained access to sensitive data of migrant children, including reports of abuse. Former officials question the reason for a Doge engineer’s access to the Unaccompanied Alien Children portal.

• Move fast, break things, rebuild: Elon Musk’s strategy for US government. The disruption Musk is bringing to federal agencies is central to a management style that has won admiration in Silicon Valley.

• How Elon Musk’s deputies took over the government’s most basic functions

  The Trump administration views a once-obscure federal IT unit as the “Swiss army knives” in its effort to overhaul the federal bureaucracy.

• The government wants AI to fight wars and review your taxes. The Trump administration is pushing federal agencies to rapidly adopt artificial intelligence tools. Are the efficiency gains worth the risks?

• Inside the AI prompts DOGE used to “munch” contracts related to veterans’ health.

• Musk fights back as some Trump aides resist intensifying DOGE push.

  The White House says federal agencies have discretion over key policy, as records show Elon Musk’s team pushing for still more enormous changes.

• How Elon Musk’s deputies took over the government’s most basic functions.

  The Trump administration views a once-obscure federal IT unit as the “Swiss army knives” in its effort to overhaul the federal bureaucracy.

• Musk aides gain access to sensitive Treasury Department payment system.

  The access—granted by Scott Bessent, Trump’s newly confirmed treasury secretary—comes after the ousting of the agency’s top career official.

• Judge blocks DOGE access to Social Security systems, calls for deletion of data. Under the order, all DOGE team members associated with the organization's work at SSA must disgorge and delete all non-anonymized personal information they obtained from SSA systems.

• How Trump is reshaping reality by hiding data. Curating reality is an old political game, but Trump’s sweeping statistical purges are part of a broader attempt to reinvent “truth.”

• DOGE Is building a master database to surveil and track immigrants. DOGE is knitting together data from the Department of Homeland Security, Social Security Administration, and IRS that could create a surveillance tool of unprecedented scope.

• DOGE has “God mode” access to government data. The president’s special commission now has an unprecedented ability to view and manipulate information at many federal agencies.

• DOGE staffer violated security policies at Treasury Department, court filing shows. The filing was part of a case brought by state attorneys general seeking to block DOGE access to sensitive information.

• How Elon Musk executed his takeover of the federal bureaucracy.