One is a 23-year-old software engineer from Nebraska who helped decipher an ancient scroll buried for centuries. Another was the runner-up in a “hackathon” contest last year as a Harvard senior. A third is the CEO of a multibillion-dollar startup.
These are among the operatives linked to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), whose work to slash public spending and reshape the federal bureaucracy have sent shockwaves through government agencies.
For the past couple of weeks, DOGE staffers have appeared without warning throughout the nation’s bureaucracy, seeking access to sensitive files, databases and computer systems, and frightening the federal workforce.
Some of the most pointed concerns were summed up in a letter this week from Democratic senators to the White House: “No information has been provided to Congress or the public as to who has been formally hired under DOGE, under what authority or regulations DOGE is operating, or how DOGE is vetting and monitoring its staff and representatives before providing them seemingly unfettered access to classified materials and Americans’ personal information.”
Although the slate of software engineers in their early 20s working under DOGE appear to lack government experience, their resumes detail impressive accomplishments in the tech field.
At the heart of much of the controversy was the unique, short-lived pairing of Tom Krause, a long-time software CEO, and Marko Elez, a 25-year-old recent employee at Musk’s company SpaceX.
The two men — designated as “special government employees” by the executive branch — obtained access to the computer system that’s used by the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service to cut more than $5 trillion in checks for the federal government each year, according to lawyers for the Justice Department at a court hearing on Wednesday that arose out of privacy concerns over their access.
Elez, according to the Wall Street Journal, has since resigned from his role at DOGE following the newspaper’s reporting that linked him to a social media account with posts supporting racism and eugenics.
Read more here about the team driving Trump’s government overhaul.