On the heels of Musk’s inane email to all federal workers over the weekend, telling them to respond with 5 bullet points justifying their work week or get fired, there’s this. It should make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.
More than 20 civil service employees resigned Tuesday from billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, saying they were refusing to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services.”
“We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” the 21 staffers wrote in a joint resignation letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”
The employees also warned that many of those enlisted by Musk to help him slash the size of the federal government under President Donald Trump’s administration were political ideologues who did not have the necessary skills or experience for the task ahead of them.
[…]
All had previously held senior roles at such tech companies as Google and Amazon and wrote in their resignation letter that they joined the government out of a sense of duty to public service.
This is just creepy:
The day after Trump’s inauguration, the staffers wrote, they were called into a series of interviews that foreshadowed the secretive and disruptive work of Musk’s’ Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
According to the staffers, people wearing White House visitors’ badges, some of whom would not give their names, grilled the nonpartisan employees about their qualifications and politics. Some made statements that indicated they had a limited technical understanding. Many were young and seemed guided by ideology and fandom of Musk — not improving government technology.
“Several of these interviewers refused to identify themselves, asked questions about political loyalty, attempted to pit colleagues against each other, and demonstrated limited technical ability,” the staffers wrote in their letter. “This process created significant security risks.”
Earlier this month, about 40 staffers in the office were laid off. The firings dealt a devastating blow to the government’s ability to administer and safeguard its own technological footprint, they wrote.
“These highly skilled civil servants were working to modernize Social Security, veterans’ services, tax filing, health care, disaster relief, student aid, and other critical services,” the resignation letter states. “Their removal endangers millions of Americans who rely on these services every day. The sudden loss of their technology expertise makes critical systems and American’s data less safe.” Those who remained, about 65 staffers, were integrated into DOGE’s government-slashing effort. About a third of them quit Tuesday.
“We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans’ sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services,” they wrote. “We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize DOGE’s actions.”
What’s up with those who are left, I wonder? Are they dedicated to being “guardrails” or are they on board with the dumpster fire? I guess it doesn’t really matter. The fact is that we are very vulnerable right now to a catastrophic failure at the hands of Musk and his little DOGE bros. Look at them in the picture above. Those are the people handling the private data of every American.
Trust ’em?
These people clearly don’t and I suspect they know what they’re talking about. Musk thinks he’s running one of his own companies.
Just FYI: Tesla has about 125,000 employees worldwide, X has about 2800 and Space X has about 13,000. (By contrast, Amazon employs about 1.6 million, Walmart employs over 2.1 million.) Does running those companies give Musk any special insight into how to run the most complex institution in the world– the U.S. Government?
No. The man is a rich megalomaniac and the moron who has empowered him thinks that he is a genius because his uncle taught at MIT. People like that are the reason why legal roadblocks have been constructed to keep this much power out of the hands of such individuals. Sadly, nobody ever contemplated that a president would be so criminally reckless that he would simply ignore the law and put the whole country at risk.