This is an adapted excerpt from the Feb. 5 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
Anger is rising as the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, continues to hollow out the United States government. The unelected billionaire and his “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, have already reportedly seized control of payment and personnel systems and attempted to shut down an agency created by Congress. Americans across the country — in protests, demonstrations and teach-ins — are focusing their outrage on him with calls to “Fire Musk” (even though it is not entirely clear whom he is working for — other than himself).
The man Republicans are letting dismantle swaths of the federal government reportedly has a direct personal and financial interest in that dismantling.
But Musk is still pushing on. On Wednesday, DOGE staffers reportedly entered the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Maryland, as well as the building of its parent agency, the Department of Commerce, in Washington, D.C., according to CBS News, citing former NOAA officials who spoke directly with current staffers.
“They apparently just sort of walked past security and said: ‘Get out of my way,’ and they’re looking for access for the IT systems, as they have in other agencies,” Andrew Rosenberg, another former NOAA official with knowledge of the incident, alleged to Mother Jones.
“They will have access to the entire computer system, a lot of which is confidential information,” Rosenberg added.
It should be noted that Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint for Donald Trump’s second term, called for NOAA to be “broken up and downsized” because its role in promoting climate science was “harmful to U.S. prosperity.”
Musk staffers have also reportedly gained access to payment and contracting systems at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the sources of health insurance for more than 150 million older and poorer Americans, five people with knowledge of the matter told The Washington Post. What Musk is doing with that access is unclear. But he did post on the social media platform he owns that “this is where the big money fraud is happening.” According to The Wall Street Journal, DOGE’s access is “read-only.”
This all comes on the heels of Musk’s other moves, including his sudden attempt to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID — a move that is already wreaking havoc on public health and lifesaving aid around the world — and his reported takeover of the Treasury Department’s payment systems. Trump officials continue to insist Musk’s access to those systems is also read-only.
However, some insiders allege otherwise. Three sources tell Wired that a “25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, who previously worked for two Elon Musk companies, has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the US government.”
“Two of those sources say that Elez’s privileges include the ability not just to read but to write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government,” Wired goes on to report. “These systems control, on a granular level, government payments that in their totality amount to more than a fifth of the US economy.”
Both Elez and Musk did not immediately respond to Wired’s requests for comment.
This is just a small fraction of what the world’s richest man — a guy that no one voted for — has done in an attempt to take over the U.S. government. In response, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee actually tried to do some oversight and subpoena Musk to force him to testify to the committee. But the committee’s Republican members refused to allow debate on the motion.
One of the main reasons why this is so important is because Musk, the man Republicans are letting dismantle swaths of the federal government, reportedly has a direct personal and financial interest in dismantling much of the government.
In other words, Musk is a walking conflict of interest.
For example, Musk bragged that he spent last weekend “feeding USAID into the wood chipper.” That came a day after he posted, “USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.” What Musk failed to mention is that these comments come months after the agency announced a probe of his company Starlink’s terminals, according to pages that still remain on the agency’s website, as reported on by The Lever.
That investigation was launched with a public announcement last year. Its status is now unknown, but you can take a guess whether it will continue now. Those Starlink consoles were just a fraction of the business that Musk’s companies do with the federal government. Over the past decade, just two of his companies, Tesla and SpaceX, have won more than $15 billion in government contracts, according to The New York Times. Most of that comes from his space business, which the Times says “effectively dictates NASA’s rocket launch schedule.” But last September, the Federal Aviation Administration announced plans to fine SpaceX for skirting launch safety rules, including using an “unapproved launch control room.” Tesla and SpaceX have won more than $15 billion in government contracts, according to The New York Times. That same day, Musk lashed out on X, saying that “humanity will forever be confined to Earth unless there is radical reform at the FAA!” A week after that, Musk called for the resignation of the FAA’s chief. Then, last month, in the final days of the Biden administration, a SpaceX starship exploded shortly after takeoff, spreading debris beyond protected areas. There were reports of debris and damage on the Turks and Caicos Islands. Air traffic in the area had to be diverted briefly. SpaceX announced the rocket had undergone a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.” The FAA immediately grounded SpaceX, barring future launches until an investigation could be conducted. But three days later, Trump became president and the FAA administrator, whom Musk wanted out, announced his resignation. Given all of that and given Musk’s penchant for exploding rockets (or what he likes to call “rapid unscheduled disassembly”), you would think he is the last guy the FAA would want weighing in on issues of public transportation safety. But you would think wrong. On Wednesday, the former reality TV star and newly minted Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy posted on Musk’s platform, “Big News — Talked to the DOGE team. They are going to plug in to help upgrade our aviation system.” We’re witnessing the world’s richest man, who has been empowered to get into the back-end of virtually every facet of the U.S. government, continue to do simply whatever he wants — all while he has billions and billions at stake. Allison Detzel contributed.
Chris Hayes hosts “All In with Chris Hayes” at 8 p.m. ET Tuesday through Friday on MS NOW. He is the editor-at-large at The Nation. A former fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Hayes was a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation. His latest book is “The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource” (Penguin Press).
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