The greatest danger to U.S. government computer systems appeared to be that hostile foreign powers could hack into them and steal information only a few weeks ago. In late December, Treasury Department officials sent a letter to members of Congress reporting that a Chinese class had hacked their systems and stolen unidentified files. The office stated that it was collaborating to assess the damage with the FBI and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
However, a much more pressing threat has emerged recently, one that is domestic: Elon Musk, a billionaire tech entrepreneur, and his team of engineers from the ‘ Department of Government Efficiency ‘ have claimed unrestricted access to crucial systems that handle sensitive and confidential information at various government agencies. Maybe by design, the range and details of Musk’s activities are difficult to pin down. The ‘s lawyers argued in a hearing before a federal judge this week that Musk had not personally accessed sensitive Treasury Department data and that the” special government employees” employed by DOGE would have “read only” access to the information and wouldn’t share it with anyone else working for DOGE.
But there is another cause for concern: Musk’s actions are a national security dream, despite the legality of DOGE’s actions, some of which appear to be unlawful and unconstitutional on their faces, and the risk to Americans from sensitive data being breached. Consider what the intelligence agencies of U. S. allies and adversaries see when the American president grants sweeping access to the basic systems that make the U. S. government run to a team of young people who have no government experience, who may not have been put through regular personnel vetting processes, and who work for an unaccountable figure with broad personal financial interests in national security spending.
National adversaries undoubtedly see a coercion and espionage boom. Less obvious, but equally critically important is that American allies, who are accustomed to conducting business and sharing information with the on a daily basis, are likely to get a hard look at their normal routines. Will they be willing to continue operating as normal? There is now a very real chance that Musk might use the tools used by the major national security firms, and both domestic and international governments are undoubtedly paying close attention to this.
DOGE’s purported goal is to identify and reduce wasteful spending. To be sure, factors of the federal government may benefit from reform. No some contests that the executive branch is awash with money, scams, and abuse. And it is typical for the majority of the federal workers to remain unknowable to the general public who have traditionally had access to these methods. What is not normal is for such access to be granted to people who are unfamiliar to the security agencies that physician government employees, unskilled in government systems, and taking direction from a person such as Musk, who has no legal authority to make decisions relating to the federal budget and national personnel and has tremendous potential conflicts of interest.
Although the damage to security will already be done, and 13 state attorneys general have announced their intentions to sue over these issues, court cases will take some time to resolve, whereas unions representing federal workers have filed legal challenges to Musk’s decision-making authority and access to these systems. U.S. security requires institutional trust and clarity regarding who has access to sensitive information and authority. By undermining systems meant to safeguard the public, the Trump administration has not only dramatically reduced the chance for genuine reform but also put the country at risk. Trump and Musk’s actions amount to a grenade being thrown into the center of the national security apparatus, which will eventually go off and leave the United States without where to go for cover.
TRUST BOMB
Good foreign policy is —it is routine, boring, and full of everyday interactions that hardly anyone notices but that are essential for preventing bad outcomes and mitigating those that do occur. In times of crisis, the United States can turn to allies and partners for assistance because they share intelligence, consult, and plan. Trust serves as the foundation of this system. This trust is highest with the country’s friends and allies—whose willingness to work with the United States is already being undermined by Trump’s tariff threats and other types of bullying behavior. However, a certain degree of trust also runs deep in relationships with adversaries, who the United States frequently communicates via official and unofficial channels to prevent risky misinterpretations and miscommunications.
Two pillars of this foundation are the focus of Musk’s recent initiatives. The first is what the political scientists Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman have called the “plumbing” of the international system. The systems that Musk and his team have accessed, which contain highly sensitive information, including the personal data of any American who receives U.S. government benefits like Social Security, tax refunds, and veterans ‘ benefits, are a crucial part of that plumbing. One engineer who has worked for Musk had “many administrator-level privileges” and” the ability not just to read but write code,” according to a report from Wired. ( That engineer resigned on February 6, after The Wall Street Journal linked him to a now-deleted X account that contained racist posts, but the damage to secure systems—and the damage to confidence in them—may already have been done. )
The Treasury Department is a significant foreign policy player in its own right, taking on important roles in sanctions policy, for instance. The cybersecurity and privacy risks would be significant if Musk’s team had access to and was able to rewrite the code that governs U.S. government payments. Hostile intelligence services are likely already at work trying to assess which Musk team members might be sloppy with their digital devices or vulnerable to entrapment or coercion. Additionally, Treasury Department officials are likely concerned that untested code might cause the payments system to crash.
Additionally, Musk’s DOGE employees pressed for access to secret systems without their knowledge. According to Bloomberg News, members of the DOGE team showed up on January 27 at the U. S. Agency for International Development, which the Trump administration seems intent on dismantling as an independent government agency, without consulting Congress. DOGE employees requested access to USAID’s sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF), a type of secure room used by the executive branch to store classified information, on February 1. One of the DOGE employees called Musk after being stopped by a security official, who informed them that he would contact the agency’s security personnel if his team weren’t given access to even the most sensitive information. According to The Guardian, the security official was shortly after “placed on administrative leave and the DOGE staffers entered the SCIF”.
The activities of Musk are a nightmare for national security.
For the United States and its closest allies, sharing and protecting secrets is a crucial component of international cooperation. They must rely on each other to ensure that sensitive information is treated as such. As the political scientists Allison Carnegie and Austin Carson have demonstrated, “effective confidentiality systems” are crucial to international cooperation because countries fear that their intelligence collection, including sources and methods, will fall into the wrong hands, making it harder to gather intelligence in the future.
Why Musk wanted access to the SCIF at USAID is unclear. However, the government has a purpose for separating classified information: to keep the risk of unintended or malicious disclosure to the lowest and to keep the number of people who can see it to those who actually need it. Even if Musk’s team goes no further, the threat that DOGE might try anything that would undermine the government’s secrecy systems will erode the confidence of U. S. allies that they can share sensitive intelligence information with the United States.
The people who work in the agencies are the foundation of the second pillar of trust. To be sure, in typical circumstances, many Treasury Department employees whose names the general public is unaware of have access to the payment system and all the sensitive personal information that Musk is currently able to see. But those are career, apolitical bureaucrats who serve presidents of both parties and whose job is to execute payments, not make decisions about who gets what. They are checked, asked to declare and resolve any potential conflicts of interest, and are trained in the systems once granted the necessary clearances ( if necessary ).
How thoroughly, if at all, did the DOGE team go through those procedures, it is not clear. On his first day in office, Trump issued an order enabling individuals to receive temporary high-level clearances and to be “immediately granted access to the facilities and technology necessary to perform the duties of the office to which they have been hired”. According to two people with knowledge of the situation,” Musk’s allies who were given access to the payment system were made Treasury employees, passed government background checks, and obtained the necessary security clearances,” according to The New York Times on February 3. However, it is still unclear how thoroughly members of Musk’s team have been vetted because background checks for those kinds of clearances typically take many months, if not longer. According to The Wall Street Journal, SpaceX lawyers “began analyzing the risks of seeking a higher security clearance for Musk after the Journal reported in June]2023] about Musk’s use of ketamine”, and they” concluded that if SpaceX sought a higher security clearance]for Musk], it would risk Musk being turned down, or worse, losing the top-secret clearance he already has”.
Additionally, there is the possibility of corruption and conflict of interest that threaten national security. Giving direct control of the federal funding spigot to the president and his agents is incredibly undemocratic, according to sociologist Elizabeth Popp Berman, because it allows them to deprive funds that have been authorized by law by Congress to those who support political parties while distributing funds to reward political allies—all without congressional oversight or approval. This risk of corruption applies to Musk, as well, who can now view and potentially stop government payments to business competitors and could try to engineer U. S. government systems in ways that benefit his own private financial interests.
INSIDER THREAT
American allies and partners cooperate with the United States because they believe that the actors and people responsible for its have been thoroughly checked and act for the United States rather than a private organization. Adversaries may not like the United States, but until now they have known how to reach Washington when necessary, how to conduct business with the U. S. government, and how far they can push U. S. systems and people.
These foundational elements of American foreign policy are included in the invisible bedrock of trust. If allies are concerned that those with no prior experience with the government and who haven’t been vetted through standard security procedures will be able to access that intelligence, they will be reluctant to share sensitive intelligence. Musk and his team have found their way to the most closely guarded private federal data, and they will make the United States an object of mistrust to those who interact with the invisible machinery of U. S. national security.