As President Donald Trump and his administration settle in, aides for tech mogul Elon Musk – a close Trump ally and co-lead of the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) – have reportedly locked civil servants out of computer systems.
According to the Saturday report from Reuters, these Musk aides have been tasked with running the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), a government-run human resources department. Two officials, “who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation,” with the outlet said some senior career employees at OPM have had their access revoked to some of the department’s data systems.
Those systems “contain the personal data of millions of federal employees,” including a database called Enterprise Human Resources Integration that contains Social Security numbers, home addresses and more, according to Reuters information from the anonymous sources. While officials impacted can still log in and access email, they can no longer see these datasets.
“We have no visibility into what they are doing with the computer and data systems,” one of the officials said. “That is creating great concern. There is no oversight. It creates real cybersecurity and hacking implications.”
Musk – a South- African-born naturalized U.S. citizen who recently underwent complex spinal surgery, per an Audacy report – became well known as the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. He also founded the Boring Company and purchased the social media platform Twitter, which he renamed X. He became close to Trump during the 2024 campaign season and Audacy even reported that he was staying over at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and helped the president select his cabinet members.
Reuters said that Musk and a team of his former and current employees took command of the OPM on Jan. 20, the day Trump was inaugurated. Musk has been “tasked by Trump to slash the size of the 2.2 million-strong civilian government workforce,” the outlet added. Trump has also asked Musk to retrieve two NASA astronauts who have been in space for months after concerns related to a Boeing spacecraft left them stranded at the International Space Station.
Once Trump took office Charles Ezell, the acting head of OPM, began sending memos to the entire government workforce offering federal employees the chance to quit with eight months pay, said its report. One of the anonymous officials that spoke to Reuters said that “no-one here knew that the memos were coming out.”
OPM’s memos “eschew the normal dry wording of government missives as it encourages civil servants to consider buyout offers to quit and take a vacation to a ‘dream destination,’” Reuters said.
If employees did choose to leave, they would be only one part of an exodus. Audacy reported in early January that all employees working in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) were told they were out of jobs in a single day.
Don Moynihan, a professor at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, said the actions inside the department have raised concerns. He explained that the moves make it hard for anyone outside of Musk’s inner circle to know what’s going on.
Reuters also said the moves underscore Musk’s influence on government in the new administration.
“Musk, OPM, representatives of the new team, and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment,” said Reuters. The agency’s chief management officer, Katie Malague, who was reportedly out of her office and to a new office on a different floor, also did not respond to a request for comment.
In addition to the memos and blocking access to data, the new regime at OPM reportedly moved sofa beds into the agency’s headquarters. These have been installed so personnel can work around the clock, one employee said.
“It feels like a hostile takeover,” they said.
Musk has discussed his own dedication to work in the past, telling Gayle King of CBS News in 2018 that he was sleeping on the floor of a Tesla factory. A Wired report from this week revealed that Musk told several people that he was sleeping at the DOGE headquarters in Washington D.C. and that he had been invited to stay over at the White House, in the Lincoln Bedroom.
“Very few in the bureaucracy actually work the weekend, so it’s like the opposing team just leaves the field for 2 days!” said Musk in a Saturday X post responding to reports of federal spending cuts. “Working the weekend is a superpower.”