Musk and Associates Reportedly Now Control Massive Federal Database
AP Photo/Matt Rourke
Associates of billionaire Elon Musk have installed a server at the Office of Personal Management in Washington, D.C. allowing them to control a massive database of federal employees.
Journalists Judd Legum and Caleb Ecarma of Musk Watch reported the development on Monday, citing two staffers at OPM with direct knowledge of the matter. The sources said Musk’s team “has the ability to extract information from databases that store medical histories, personally identifiable information, workplace evaluations, and other private data.”
The revelation underscores the influence Musk has in the federal government under President Donald Trump, who returned to the White House thanks in part to the hundreds of millions of dollars Musk spent on Trump’s behalf during the presidential campaign.
Musk Watch echoed earlier reporting from Wired, which identified six men between the ages of 19 and 24 who are playing key roles in the “Department of Government Efficiency,” which Trump tapped Musk to lead. Legum and Ecarma stated:
Among the government outsiders granted entry to the OPM databases is University of California Berkeley student Akash Bobba, a software engineer who graduated high school less than three years ago. He previously interned at Meta and Palantir, a technology firm chaired by Musk-ally and fellow billionaire Peter Thiel. Edward Coristine, another 2022 high school graduate and former software engineering intern at Musk’s Neuralink, has also been given access to the databases.
Other Musk underlings embedded at OPM following President Donald Trump’s inauguration include the agency’s new chief of staff, Amanda Scales, who until January was a human resources staffer at xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence firm, and Brian Bjelde, who has spent the past 21 years at Musk’s SpaceX, including the last 10 leading the human resources department. They are joined by Gavin Kliger, a former Twitter software engineer serving as a special advisor to the director of OPM, and Riccardo Biasini, a former software engineer at Musk’s tunneling venture, the Boring Company.
An OPM staffer told Musk Watch, “They have access to the code itself, which means they can make updates to anything they want.”
These aides also have access to an OPM human resources system that contains highly personal information, including Social Security numbers, dates of birth, home addresses, and records of disciplinary actions employees may have faced.
Musk Watch also reported on the installation of a new server that likely did not undergo the necessary security protocols:
There is a legal requirement that the installation of a new server undergo a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA), a formal process to ensure the change would not create any security vulnerabilities. But in this instance, the staff believes there was no PIA. “So this application and corresponding hardware are illegally operating,” they added.
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