Elon Musk, the Technicolor Era, and the Phenomenology of Higher-Order Institutions: How a Dozen Executives are Trying to Take Control of Government Infrastructure

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. Most have connections to Musk and at least two have connections to Musk’s longtime associate Peter Thiel, a cofounder and chairman of the analytics firm and government contractor Palantir who has long expressed opposition to democracy.

There are seven engineers, Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Gautier Cole KILLIC, as well as others. None has responded to questions from WIRED. OPM, GSA, and DOGE representatives didn’t respond to questions.

Already, Musk’s lackeys have taken control of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and General Services Administration (GSA), and have gained access to the Treasury Department’s payment system, potentially allowing him access to a vast range of sensitive information about tens of millions of citizens, businesses, and more. On Sunday CNN reported that DOGE personnel tried to access classified information at the US Agency for International Development, and then top security officials who prevented them were put on leave. The AP reported that DOGE personnel had indeed accessed classified material.

Don Moynihan, a professor at the University of Michigan says that there are actors who don’t know much about government that are gaining access to the most sensitive data. “We really have very little eyes on what’s going on. Congress has no ability to really intervene and monitor what’s happening because these aren’t really accountable public officials. So this feels like a hostile takeover of the machinery of governments by the richest man in the world.”

Elon Musk’s “Hostoessive Takeover of the Federal Government”: a Brief History from Los Angeles, California, during the June 2016 Presidential Reheaval

Bobba attended the prestigious Management, Entrepreneurship and Technology program at the University of California, Berkeley. At one point, he was an investment engineering intern at the hedge fund and also at Meta and Palantir, according to a copy of his now deleted Linkedin obtained by WIRED. He was a featured guest on a since-deleted podcast with Aman Manazir, an engineer who interviews engineers about how they landed their dream jobs, where he talked about those experiences last June.

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.

Elon Musk has launched a campaign from inside the federal government to radically upend agencies, exercising a level of control so sweeping that it is stunning former top White House officials, even in a political moment when many things are described as unprecedented.

Musk derided the tyranny of the bureaucracy as unaccountable to american voters, in framing his vision of DOGE’s work. He called for the “wholesale removal” of regulations during the conversation. Musk has a long history of clashing with federal regulators who oversee his businesses.

“Before our very eyes, an unelected shadow government is conducting a hostile takeover of the federal government,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Monday.

Democrats and Republicans have questioned the reach of Musk’s authority due to his largesse in the election and how much he is being watched by the White House.

“In terms of rule of law, we are losing it rapidly,” said Eric Rubin, a retired ambassador who spent nearly 40 years in the foreign service. “Musk and DOGE are intentionally creating hundreds of potential court cases that could take months or years to resolve,” he said. “But who knows what kind of damage they can inflict before that happens.”

Federal ethics experts say that it’s hard for Musk to avoid being in violation of conflict-of-interest laws since he operates six companies that cross multiple industries.

“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. Painter said that if he did, he would commit a crime.

Gavin Kliger, a Silicon Valley engineer at Silicon Valley, told NPR on Monday morning: “Elon Musk is barreling into government with DOGE”

Multiple reports indicated that DOGE representatives sought access to a “secure compartmented information facility,” orSCIF, which is a room with sensitive documents that only high-level security clearances can enter.

Some young engineers from Silicon Valley 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. He attended the University of California, Berkeley. He worked as a software engineer at Twitter in 2019 and, most recently, as a senior software engineer at Databricks, a data analytics company, according to his LinkedIn profile.

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.

Source: Elon Musk is barreling into government with DOGE, raising unusual legal questions

Norm Eisen: “Don’t have me and my children’s data” — A former U.S. attorney who worked under Barack Obama

Norm Eisen is a former White House ethics lawyer who worked under President Barack Obama. “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 wrong. It’s illegal.