There’s no doubting Elon Musk’s geopolitical sway. From Starlink in the Russia-Ukraine war to apparently being granted carte blanche by the Trump administration to clear out government agencies and remake them in his own image, Musk has the power to alter the course of history.
That, of course, makes him a potential national security risk. Fears over his ties to Russia and China abound (for instance, he met with China’s Vice President Han Zheng last month). His lack of caution raises eyebrows, not to mention his reported drug use. Then there's his various business interests: Tesla, SpaceX, X, XAI, the Boring Company, and whatever other entities he's quietly created. How much can he really balance alongside government work with the Department for Government Efficiency (DOGE), and without manifold conflicts of interest?
Some believe he's already putting American secrets in danger of exposure. Alarm bells have gone into overdrive after his attempted takeovers of USAID, where DOGE was reportedly seeking access to classified material and which has previously signed contracts with SpaceX; the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which holds personal information on every federal worker; and of the Treasury payment system that pays out trillions for Social Security and Medicare benefits, and a whole lot more. Raising concerns about the level of care being applied to that data, according to Wired, a 25-year-old coder who’d been employed at two of Musk’s businesses, is one of those who has been granted access and even the power to rewrite the codebase of the systems responsible for sending payments from federal agencies.
As one federal government worker wrote on Slate, the OPM and Treasury systems are akin to the valet sheds of federal government, holding the keys to a wealth of personal information.“Now, there’s a ham-fisted goon in an ill-fitting valet attendant’s coat rummaging in broad daylight through all of the keys—all of that private information, previously given in trust, handled with care, and regulated by law,” the worker wrote.
Senator Ron Wyden fretted, “These payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically-motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy.” In a letter to Treasury secretary Scott Bessent, Wyden wrote, “I am concerned that Musk’s enormous business operation in China — a country whose intelligence agencies have stolen vast amounts of sensitive data about Americans, including U.S. government employee data by hacking U.S. government systems — endangers U.S. cybersecurity and creates conflicts of interest that make his access to these systems a national security risk.”
Famed tech reporter Kara Swisher has been even starker in her warnings on BlueSky: “The unlawful seizure of data, payments, hiring and even real estate control by an unelected & unfettered digital narcissist at the behest of a power grabbing chief executive is the only story right now… this is a hostile takeover and our nation’s lawmakers are sleeping through it.
DOGE’s work is already inviting legal challenges. Senator Senator Ed Markey, D-Mass., has introduced a bill to prevent any individual from gaining unauthorized access to the Treasury’s central payment systems. The American Federation of Government Employees and other unions have also sued the Treasury Department in an attempt to block DOGE’s access.
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