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Illustration by Paul Spella / The Atlantic. Source: Getty.TechnologyDOGE Has God Mode Access to Government DataThe presidents special commission now has an unprecedented ability to view and manipulate information at many federal agencies.By Charlie Warzel, Ian Bogost, and Matteo WongFebruary 19, 2025, 3:59 PM ET If you have tips about the remaking of the federal government, you can contact Charlie, Ian, and Matteo on Signal at @cwarzel.92, @ibogost.47, and @matteowong.52.DOGE has achieved God mode. Thats according to an employee in senior leadership at USAID, who told us that Elon Musks Department of Government Efficiency now has full, unrestricted access to the agencys digital infrastructureincluding total control over systems that Americans working in conflict zones rely on, the ability to see and manipulate financial systems that have historically awarded tens of billions of dollars, and perhaps much more.The employees account, along with the accounts of several others across federal agencies, offers the clearest portrait yet of just how deep DOGE has burrowed into the systems of the federal governmentand the sensitive information of countless Americans.In the coming weeks, the team is expected to enter IT systems at the CDC and Federal Aviation Administration, and it already has done so at NASA, according to sources weve spoken with at each of those agencies. At least one DOGE ally appears to be working to open back doors into systems used throughout the federal government. Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla engineer who was recently appointed director of the Technology Transformation Services, requested privileged access to 19 different IT systems administered by teams within TTS, according to two federal workers we spoke with who are familiar with his request. With this level of control, Shedd would be able to not only view and modify federal data, but also grant and revoke access to other people. (In a written statement, Will Powell, the acting press secretary for the General Services Administration, of which TTS is a part, said Shedd needs this level of access to rapidly identify areas for optimization and efficiencies and insisted that he is working with appropriate GSA officials to follow established protocols.)Read: The governments computing experts say they are terrifiedOver the past few days, weve talked with civil servants working for numerous agencies, all of whom requested anonymity because they fear what will happen if they lose their jobnot just to themselves, but to the functioning of the federal government. Their observations reveal the abnormal degree of power that DOGE has already achieved. Federal agencies are subject to various forms of administrative and legal oversight, but they operate separately from one another for good reasons: to support a specialized purpose and to insulate them from undue outside influence. Now they effectively roll up to Elon Musk. (Neither the White House nor DOGE responded to requests for comment for this story. Earlier this week, a White House official claimed that Musk is not the head of DOGE. He is clearly the groups functional leader.)Among the federal agencies we reported on, USAID is the only one where we could confirm that DOGE has acquired God-mode access across the entire digital system. (The Trump administration has sought to effectively shut down USAID since the inauguration.) But as Musk and his acolytes enter a growing number of federal databases and IT systems, their unfettered access at USAID offers a sense of what they might be able to do elsewhere. At NASA, for example, it could mean access to knowledge about sensitive government technologies used for defense. At the CDC, such ability could expose millions of Americans health data and allow DOGE to access labs that store deadly pathogens. At Treasury, such access would allow Musks employees to view Americans names, Social Security numbers, and financial information. It is not ridiculous to think theyd have bank-account and routing numbers for every single person in the United States, the senior USAID source said. What do you do with this information? I had to ask myself, Do I file my taxes this year or not? I had to sit and debate that.The federal government does not typically grant such wide-ranging access to a single entity, let alone one that is effectively under the control of an unelected, erratic, and politically extreme actor such as Musk. The group is working on behalf of Donald Trump, but sources we spoke with emphasized that the level of access DOGE possesses means that the organization may already be able to siphon data that Musk or his agents could hold on to forever, long after his time as a government liaison, or even after a potential falling-out with the president.One experienced government information-security contractor offered a blunt response to the God-mode situation at USAID: That sounds like our worst fears come true. The purpose of DOGEs incursions remains unclear to employees at these agencies. Musk was supposed to help improve the workings of the governmentthat is DOGEs stated purpose. But in the offices where the team is reaching internal IT systems, some are beginning to worry that he might prefer to destroy it, to take it over, or just to loot its vaults for himself.Once theyre in, theyre in, the USAID employee told us. And this is a big part of the problem in a nutshell: Access is everything, and in many cases, DOGE has it.At USAID and other agencies whose employees we spoke with, leaders explained that Musks team could copy and remove information from government servers without anybody knowing. The team could then feed this classified information into AI tools, either for training purposes or to mine the data for insights. (Members of DOGE already reportedly have put sensitive data from the Education Department into AI software.) Within USAID, DOGE has full access to human-resources informationSocial Security numbers, addresses, reputational data such as performance reviews, plus classified information and disciplinary information. The USAID source noted that DOGE can also control USAID systems that help with disbursement of funds, building-access tools, and payroll: If they wanted to change how much a person is making, they could modify that, given their access in the system. According to the employee, DOGE is also inside of an internal system for managing contracts and grants, which functions like a high-security online marketplace where USAID plans and approves billions in government spending.Inside NASA, according to one agency employee we spoke with, DOGE workers already have access to contracts, partnerships, performance reviews, classified national-security information, and satellite data, among other materials. The NASA worker told us that such knowledge could erase generations of advantage in aerospace and defense capabilities if it falls into the wrong hands. Agency technologies such as propulsion systems, novel materials, and satellites overlap with Department of Defense projects. Someone with information about NASAs thermal-protection or encryption technologies could take advantage of vulnerabilities in aerospace vehicles, for example.Derek Thompson: DOGEs reign of ineptitude USAID employees have felt more acute effects of DOGEs operations. Employees there say they have been rattled by the demands of DOGE engineers: They have walked in and said to senior staff, You have 15 minutes to do this or youre fired, the USAID senior leader told us. Now USAID staff are operating in a zero-trust environment. With its God-mode IT control at the agency, DOGE can read emails and chats, plus see whos attending which meetings. The source described employees in a recent meeting growing alarmed when transcription services seemed to turn on without warning. An employee at NASA reported similar concerns, after unfamiliar messages appeared on workstations. Were operating believing our systems are completely bugged, one person told us.The senior USAID official fears that DOGE could terminate somebody working in a conflict zone like Ukraine, Sudan, or Ethiopia from an agency system. If they lose access to their USAID laptop, phone, and accounts, for a lot of them thats their only means of communication. We are putting their lives on the line, one said.For those who have watched DOGE storm into their workplace, what is perhaps most terrifying is its attempts to scale. If DOGE were to acquire God-mode administrative access across many systems, several sources told us, that level of control could affect every citizen at home, and many American interests abroad: personal financial data, defense secrets, and more, all in the palm of Musks hand.Theres reason to believe that health information may be next. The Trump administration fired roughly 700 people at the CDC last weekend. As in other agencies, the firings will hollow out expertise but also remove obstacles to further changes. A CDC employee told us that the agencys Office of the Chief Information Officer is expecting DOGE, but no one has seen anyone yet.The individual, who has knowledge of how CDC information systems work, fears that DOGE could gain access to an abundant store of sensitive information about health and disease. This year, the CDC is supposed to roll out a central data platform for public-health surveillance and emergency response to better address new threats such as H5N1 bird flu and old ones such as measles. The new system, called the One CDC Data Platform, promises to aggregate all of the CDCs public-health data, including hundreds of thousands of daily anonymized lab tests, data from emergency-room visits, and measurements from wastewater disease-reporting sites.The design and rollout of this system were already controversial inside the agency, our source said, even before Trump and Musk came on the scene. Putting everybodys health data in one place carries risks. Although the health data the CDC houses are usually de-identified or aggregated, people with very stigmatizing illnesses could be identified by certain characteristics if the data are exposed or misused, the CDC worker said. Whats more, plenty of health data contain information that, when correlated with other data outside the system, could pinpoint specific individuals. Given all of the data that DOGE appears to be capable of siphoning from all over the government, such identification could become much easier. The CDC collects electronic health-record details from all over the country, meaning that this could affect just about everyoneincluding us, and you too.CDC systems control more than mere information about disease. At the agencys facility in Atlanta, the CDC stores the microbes that cause disease and can hold secrets to treatment. Some are relatively benign, such as strains of E. coli. Others are intrinsically dangerous, including the Ebola and Marburg viruses, and bacterium that causes tuberculosis. These materials are housed in labs with associated biosafety levels. The highest level, BSL-4, applies to only a small number of labs around the world containing dangerous and exotic microbes, as the CDC describes them, that pose a high risk of spread.Access to such labs is managed by computers, and management of those computers is local to the CDC. If DOGE got the same kind of access to CDC IT systems as it has elsewhere, would that give the group direct access to CDC facilities? Yes, those are all out of CDC level, our source at the agency told us. Does that mean that DOGE could gain direct access to BSL-4 labs? we asked. Its definitely possible, the employee said.Read: If DOGE goes nuclearOur source hoped that such a prospect would be averted. (To repeat, DOGE hasnt taken control of CDC IT systems yet, at least as far as our source knew.) But the employee also explained that the recent layoffs will reduce the agencys ability to defend against IT or security errors, on top of diminishing morale. The CDC did not respond to requests for comment about whether someone with full, local IT control could indeed grant entry to, or control over, BSL-4 labs and their contents.The risk of harm, abuse, or political revenge is clear. But simple, brazen corruption is also a concern among the federal workers we spoke with. The CDC staffer wondered if DOGEs unelected and seemingly unaccountable leadership, including Musk, might simply want to sell the public-health data the CDC collects. Democratic leaders have also expressed the worry that Musks interest in SpaceX, which has received billions of dollars in contracts from NASA over the years, creates an untenable conflict of interest. The NASA employee worried that Musk would end up reaping all of the profits of the investment that the American public put into NASAs research, which was being shared with the country. NASA holds technical specs and research data for SpaceX competitors, and insiders fear that such information will soon be compromised, too. They also worry that classified NASA R&D in areas such as quantum, biotech, and astrobiology could be stolen for private gain.A number of lawsuits have been filed seeking to limit DOGEs access, with mixed results. Meanwhile, Trump and Musk have both attacked judges who have ruled against their interests; Musk has said they should be impeached. Trump has also indicated that he might just ignore the courtsan act that would be challenging to counter, providing plenty of opportunity for the administration to get its way. Across agencies, leaders have started to step aside voluntarily. Jim Jones, head of the Food and Drug Administrations food division, resigned this week. Michelle King, who ran the Social Security Administration, stepped down too rather than carry out DOGEs wishes. The resignations may be principled, but they open the door for more compliant replacements.The request from Shedd, the former Tesla engineer, in particular, illustrates the variety of avenues and back doors that DOGE and Musks allies may have available to enter the governments systems. According to the two federal workers we spoke with about Shedds efforts, such access typically is not granted to TTS leadership and requires a specific reason and the permission of each systems owner. Shedd initially issued a blanket request, the sources told us, and is now attempting to bypass the individual system owners by seeking permission from other officials, circumventing standard security procedures. He also had not completed a background check, which is usually required for such access, at least as of when he first made the request, according to our sources. How much access Shedd has been granted remains uncertain.This is the DOGE playbook: There are no norms to be respected, and everything is up for grabs. Once the damage is done, it will be difficult to remedy, especially if DOGE staffers can themselves grant or remove access to others at their discretion.Musk and DOGEs first month has been so chaotic, their incursions so haphazard, that assessing what has even happened is difficult. DOGE claims to be improving the government, but the agency workers we spoke with feel that they are being hacked instead. So it is worth stepping back to note the most basic fact: No good reason or case can be made for one person or entity to have this scope of access to this many government agencies containing this much sensitive information. Even in one government office, full administrative access to all systems is the rarest privilege. In the aggregate, across the whole of the government, it would be unfathomable.Explore More Topics
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