Well, we were wrong about Trump only using Elon Musk’s money to get himself elected and then sitting that Space Karen down in a corner with some crayons. Seems the plan is to have Musk infiltrate the government, delete whatever the fuck he feels like, and have some sad virgins replace government systems’ code with some kind of AI, HOLY SHIT.
Reportedly a 25-year-old named Marko Elez now has full administrative access to The Payment Automation Manager and Secure Payment System at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, and Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall reports that the changes are not being tested before going live, which as anybody who’s ever written code knows, is a very easy way to catastrophically break stuff. And not just any code, but the code that controls Social Security payments, tax returns, and a fifth of the entire US economy, JESUS FARTKNOCKING CHRIST. Elez’s resume is still up on RocketReach.
Also the NYT reports that Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla engineer who’s been appointed to head technology efforts at the General Services Administration, told some staffers that AI would be a key part of their cost-reduction work. AI?! Elon’s AI company only just launched in March of 2023 and its model Grok came out five months later. And like all AI it is is error-prone, scoring 50.6 percent on the AI MATH benchmark and and a 90 percent score on the GSM8K benchmark in March of last year, which is NOT GOOD ENOUGH if you want to be sure to pay the government’s bills on time. And where’s the accountability, what happens if “the AI” puts money in the wrong account? You can’t put the AI in prison! Who is paying for this AI, upon whose servers is this data processing happening? It all sounds like potentially another Elon extortion scheme a la the one he pulled with Starlink in Ukraine: Give technology away for free because he’s “helping,” then threaten to take it away unless the government pays for it. And did anybody back up the existing government data in case these kids wreck everything to oblivion? Again, who knows!
Six engineers linked to Musk companies — Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran, who are all between the ages of 19 and 24 — have also taken control of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and General Services Administration (GSA) and have accessed classified material. The Daily Beast has bios on all of them.
Elon is pissed that everybody knows who they are now!
FearNoneInc’s Twitter account has been suspended.
The mainstream media has been weirdly quiet about this, though the Wall Street Journal blandly notes that there are “Many Legal Questions Surrounding Musk’s DOGE Efforts.” YA DON’T SAY.
Musk has no security clearance and likely couldn’t get one, seeing as how he’s a ketamine-taking probable illegal alien, and neither do his minions. He has no legal authority to be mucking around in systems, much less ones with classified information and people’s Social Security numbers, tax information, student loan details and so on.
Trump spokesblonde Karoline Leavitt clarified that Musk is “special government employee,” which is not reassuring; it means that he doesn’t have to file a public financial disclosure report, and is exempt from the criminal conflict-of interest-statute. And what about Elon’s minions, who is paying them? Again, who knows? One thing is for sure, this tech-junta-autocoup is sounding worse every day.
Sooo … anybody going to stop them? A lawsuit was filed Monday in DC by the Alliance for Retired Americans, the American Federation of Government Employees, and the Service Employees International Union against Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent for letting Musk and his dodgy DOGE associates get access to the personal information of millions of people “without making any public announcement, providing any legal justification or explanation for his decision, or undertaking the process required by law for altering the agency’s disclosure policies.” A pair of federal employees also sued the Office of Personnel Management in a class-action last week for failing to do a privacy impact assessment before setting up an on-premise server, and Democracy Forward, Public Citizen, and the public-interest firm National Security Counselors have all filed lawsuits against DOGE for violating the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 (FACA) and employees’ privacy.
Let’s hope a court steps in before irreversible damage is done.
And again, holy shit!
[TPM/ Wired “A 25-Year-Old With Elon Musk Ties Has Direct Access to the Federal Payment System”/ Wired “Elon Musk Lackeys Have Taken Over the Office of Personnel Management” / x.ai/ Wired “Elon Musk’s Friends Have Infiltrated Another Government Agency”/ WSJ gift link/ Washington Post gift link/ NY Times gift link]
Interestingly enough, it was five years ago today that Susan Collins told the world Donald had learned an important lesson from his impeachment and that he was for sure going to be a good boy from there on out.
My theory is that Musk is exploiting not only Trump’s insecurity and willful stupidity, but also Trump’s increasing dementia, perhaps keeping the official president drugged.