Newly appointed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently authorized Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to access a highly sensitive computer system—described as a “chequebook for the entire federal government”—responsible for distributing trillions of dollars annually. Musk, accompanied by a group of young engineers with no prior government experience, is actively working on critical federal systems, likely without the necessary security clearance.
Unsurprisingly, Musk and his team of youthful tech enthusiasts have set off major alarm bells across Washington.“So many of these things are so wildly illegal that I think they’re playing a quantity game and assuming the system can’t react to all this illegality at once,” said Georgetown Law professor David Super in response to Musk’s blitz on the federal government
.On Tuesday, Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden urged the Government Accountability Office to launch an investigation into Bessent’s decision to grant DOGE access to the Treasury payment system.
In a separate letter to Bessent last week, Wyden wrote: “I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems.”
But Wyden’s concern also highlighted another major conflict of interest that makes Musk’s powers worrying: his ties to China.
“I am concerned Musk’s enormous business operations in China—a country whose intelligence agencies have stolen vast amounts of sensitive data about Americans, including U.S. government employee data by hacking U.S. government systems—endangers U.S. cybersecurity and creates conflicts of interest that make his access to these systems a national security risk,” he wrote. Wyden cited a recent Chinese breach of the Treasury Department’s systems in which hackers accessed former Secretary Janet Yellen’s emails.
