The Department of Government Efficiency has built a “firewall” separating Elon Musk’s team from the 200 or so legacy workers employed by what was previously called the United States Digital Service (USDS), sources tell WIRED. Since Musk’s USDS takeover, sources claim, the original USDS staff has had very little contactContinue Reading
And savings. They want savings. Specifically they want to subject the federal government to zero-based budgeting, a popular financial planning method in Silicon Valley in which every expenditure needs to be justified from scratch. One way to do that is to offer legally dubious buyouts to almost all federal employees,Continue Reading
A young technologist known online as “Big Balls,” who works for Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has access to sensitive US government systems. But his professional and online history call into question whether he would pass the background check typically required to obtain security clearances, security expertsContinue Reading
For the past few weeks, Musk’s team has been working to swiftly cut costs across the US government, which has seen its annual deficit increase for the last three years. The Office of Personnel Management, which acts as the HR department for the government and is stacked with Musk loyalists,Continue Reading
US Treasury Department and White House officials have repeatedly denied that technologists associated with Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had the ability to rewrite the code of the payment system through which the vast majority of federal spending flows. WIRED reporting shows, however, that at the timeContinue Reading
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has gutted the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), taking a team of over 10,000 down to just under 300, according to an internal email viewed by WIRED and several current USAID employees. The move leaves only 12 people in the agency’sContinue Reading
Elon Musk has overtaken President Donald Trump as the hero of America’s far-right movement. A WIRED review of message boards, encrypted channels, social media platforms, online search trends, and public statements from influencers and lawmakers suggests that Musk and the actions of his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) organization haveContinue Reading
“Listen, when the process is going this fast, from extreme outsiders, the communication is bound to be a mess,” says Matthew Bartlett, a Republican operative and former State Department official under Trump in his first term. Bartlett says the rest of Washington is getting their first real taste of theContinue Reading
An engineer named Nikhil Rajpal is representing Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), according to multiple sources. Government records reviewed by WIRED show that Rajpal has working email addresses with both DOGE and the NOAA. The DOGE address,Continue Reading
“Our partners say that for some survivors they are in touch with inside the scam centers, even if they can somehow manage to get out, they then have no place to put them. Then, the survivors have no money for a flight home and no place to go, so theyContinue Reading
