Billionaire Elon Musk and his band of young Silicon Valley engineers have gained access to IT systems controlling critical functions of the federal government, from the Treasury Department to the Small Business Administration.
The problem is no one outside of the Trump administration really knows what Musk and his team at the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are planning to do with that access.
In the name of uncovering fat to trim, they now have the personal information of millions of Americans stored in government databases at their fingertips and newfound influence over key parts of the federal bureaucracy long controlled by nonpartisan career officials. It’s clear Musk has exceptional access to government data, but it’s still not clear how much he can do with it. Most saliently, watchdogs and Democratic lawmakers suspect that Musk’s endgame is not just visibility into the payments the government is making, but also control over them.
This is all part of the cloud of confusion surrounding DOGE.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed Monday that Musk is operating in his capacity as a non-Senate-confirmed “special government employee,” a category of employee that is typically brought on for a period of less than a year, hired for their expertise, and subject to less stringent conflicts-of-interest rules than other federal officials. Leavitt offered no further details on what Musk working on, though she claimed he is “abiding by all applicable federal laws.”
That claim will be subject to legal scrutiny.
The litigation arm of Public Citizen, a left-leaning consumer rights advocacy group, sued the Trump administration Monday on behalf of workers whose personal information is stored in Treasury Department databases, alleging that officials broke privacy laws in giving DOGE access. Other groups have raised similar privacy concerns about databases at other federal agencies to which Musk’s team has sought access.
Adam Schwartz, privacy litigation director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group, said that reports of DOGE staff obtaining “extraordinary access” to government databases that contain sensitive personal information about millions of Americans marks a “huge departure from privacy and security norms.”
“Legal safeguards must be strictly enforced,” he said. “EFF is deeply concerned and learning all we can.”
Watchdog groups are also demanding more transparency into why DOGE is seeking access to these government IT systems in the first place, given their sensitivity and the host of potential conflicts of interest Musk brings given his stakes in Tesla and SpaceX. One fear is that DOGE could use its newfound access to the federal government’s payment system to slash the budget without Congress’s approval.
The Treasury Department wrote in a letter to Congress on Tuesday that Musk has “read-only” access to the payment system — at least for now. But if he were to gain operational control of it, Noah Bookbinder, executive director of the government oversight group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said he is skeptical that Musk will use that access just to “perform regular maintenance and do troubleshooting on tech problems.”
What we know and don’t know about Musk’s access
Musk and his team have rapidly sought to gain access to the IT systems of various government agencies and offices in recent days, including at least the Treasury, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and the Small Business Administration (SBA).
Last week, Treasury’s acting Deputy Secretary David Lebryk resigned after DOGE requested and was granted access to the Treasury’s payment systems, which handle sensitive payments including to Social Security and Medicare customers.
DOGE also reportedly locked career civil servants out of OPM’s computer systems, which contain the personal data of millions of federal employees and contractors. Federal employees sought a temporary restraining order Tuesday to shut down a private server that DOGE had connected to OPM’s network to scrape sensitive employee information.
SBA employees were also informed Monday that DOGE would be granted access to “all SBA systems,” including HR, contracts, and payments systems. The agency has supported over 100,000 financings to small businesses in the last year alone.
Musk and his team have yet to publicly announce what they intend to do with all of that data, however, and that makes ethics watchdogs extremely nervous.
“Just from an accountability perspective, there is so much we don’t know about what’s going on,” said Don Moynihan, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan and co-director of the Better Government Lab, which identifies technological solutions in government to improve social safety net access. “We’re relying on these leaked reports, rather than someone going in front of Congress and explaining in detail what it is that these people are actually doing and why it’s not a security risk.”
Why Musk’s attempts to penetrate government IT are so concerning
Musk and his team’s efforts to control IT systems across the government raise concerns about privacy and conflicts of interest. They may also give Musk, a partisan political appointee, the ability to interfere in the management of the federal budget set by Congress.
Current and former government employees sued the Trump administration on Monday claiming that it violated privacy laws in allowing their data to be disclosed to Musk and his team.
“Federal laws protect sensitive personal and financial information from improper disclosure and misuse, including by barring disclosure to individuals who lack a lawful and legitimate need for it,” the complaint states. “The scale of the intrusion into individuals’ privacy is massive and unprecedented.”
The same concerns may apply to other federal agencies’ IT systems that DOGE has sought to access. The SBA, for example, keeps records of business owners and the health of their businesses.
Musk, as a business owner, also has the potential to privately profit from that kind of information: “It is really concerning to have someone with this scope of business interest, between Tesla SpaceX and X — all of these things would benefit from the information he’s gleaning,” said Lindsay Owens, executive director of Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive advocacy group focused on economic policy.
Perhaps most concerningly, however, Musk’s access to Treasury payment systems could give him undue influence over the federal budget at a time when there is a looming debt-ceiling crisis.
The now-departed Lebryk and his team of nonpartisan career Treasury officials typically determine when the government is at risk of default by carefully tracking the payment system. Any disruption to that system could put the “country at greater risk of defaulting on our debt, which could trigger a global financial crisis,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) warned Tuesday in a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Bessent tried to quell lawmakers’ concerns in a private meeting with the GOP conference on Monday, before later assuring Congress publicly that Musk has only “read-only” access to the payment system.
But if Musk were to gain operational access, that may give him the tools to cancel payments unilaterally — essentially, circumventing Congress and its power to set the federal budget. Especially after courts have ruled against President Donald Trump’s attempts to freeze congressionally approved federal grants, using the Treasury payments system might be an attractive, if legally questionable workaround to control the flow of federal funds.
Trump has tried to tamp down fears about how Musk could abuse his powers at DOGE: “Elon can’t do and won’t do anything without our approval,” he told reporters Monday. “If there was something that didn’t have my okay, I’d let you know about it really fast.”
But that offers little assurance to watchdog groups, who say that Congress should ask Musk and his team to testify in an open forum about what they’re doing and why. Sens. Warren and Ron Wyden (D-OR) have asked the Government Accountability Office to open an inquiry into the decision to give Musk’s team access to the Treasury payment systems.
“You have this unelected, very powerful, very wealthy person potentially exerting great control over the government,” Bookbinder, from the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said. “People should know what’s happening, how it’s happening, why, and have real transparency.”