A US Senior Legislator reports that Elon Musk representatives have received “full access” to a US government payable payment system used to scatter trillions of dollars to Americans each year and warned that Musk’s access to the system creates “national security risk ”.
Senator Ron Wyden, a Democratic Senator from Oregon and a member of the Senate Finance Committee, told the A post on bluesky on Saturday These sources reported to the Finance Minister of the Scott Bessent office gave Musk’s team, known as government efficiency or Doge, authorization to access Treasury’s extremely sensitive system on Friday. Authorization comes after a stop earlier in the week, in which the ministry’s senior career employee left the department Following requests from the Musk team to access the system.
“The benefits of social security and Medicare, grants, payments to government contractors, including those who compete directly with Musk companies. All this,” Wyden wrote in place, referring to Doge’s access.
The New York Times Also reported This Bessent granted access to Doge to the Treasury’s payment system on Friday. One of the representatives of the Doge granted access is said to be Tom Krause, his chief executive Cloud softwarewhich owns Citrix and several other companies. Krause did not return TechCrunch’s request for comments. A Treasury spokesman did not comment when he sent an email on Saturday.
This is the latest attempt by Musk and his associates to undertake the internal work of the US Federal Government after President Trump’s return to post on January 20th. After his inauguration, Trump immediately ordered Musk to start making extensive cuts in the spending of the federal government.
The system conducted by the Treasury Tax Office of the Ministry of Finance controls the disbursements of about $ 6 trillion in federal funds in US households, including Social Security and Medicare, Tax Returns and Payments to US Federations and Payments A letter written by Wyden and sent to Bessent a day earlier. Access to the payment system was historically limited to few staff because it contains personal information for millions of Americans receiving payments from the federal government, per season.
According to Wyden’s letter, the payment system “simply cannot fail, and any political incentives involved in them is at risk of serious damage to our country and the economy.”
In his letter, Wyden said he is worried about the fact that Musk’s extensive business activities in China “jeopardize cyber security” and create conflicts of interests that “make access to these systems as a risk of national security”.
Last year, Biden’s administration accused China of a series of invasions aimed at US critical infrastructure, theft of the telephone records of senior US officials during violations year. Wyden, also a member of the Senate Information Committee, said it was “unusual to access sensitive systems to a person with such important business interests in China”.
Several other federal departments are examined by Doge, including the Federal Government Human Resources, known as the Personnel Management Office.
Reuters Reported on Friday That Musk representatives locking civil servants from computer systems containing the personal data records and human resources of millions of federal employees. The OPM has been disturbed in 2015, which the US government was later attributed to China, resulting in the theft of staff records to more than 22 million US government officials, including security clearance staff.
