Hard as it is to believe, it would seem that DOGE has made a very major mistake. Of course, as I have previously written, every single element of Elon Musk’s mission to bring about new efficiencies in the operation of the federal government feels “cheap,” perhaps owing to its “special” nature. Musk is not a real government appointee, nor a real employee, this isn’t a real position, it isn’t a real task, no – it’s all “special.” He is a special employee, a special appointee, to a special job and that special nature has led to especially troubling issues like using a .gov web address with a Cloudfare-based site instead of government servers. The DOGE staff (Also special, unpaid, unsigned) left their actual database open on the website such that it could be accessed and manipulated by outside citizens, mistakes that wouldn’t normally get made by anyone, least of all people as capable and competent as Musk or the United States government in a normal, non-special, setting. Thus it is – to a degree, news that the DOGE operation mistakenly published classified information, some of the most secret intelligence in our government’s hands, should almost be expected. But that doesn’t mean any of this was inevitable, nor does it mean that this isn’t a big deal or alight. Almost inevitably, this will likely turn out to be a much bigger deal than we know now, in the moment.
Some of the weirdest things are considered some of the toughest secrets to keep, some of the most-prized information the U.S. government holds. Indeed, whether a division within an agency has “10 employees” or “ten-thousand employees” says a great deal about that division and thus actual numbers of people working in and around certain agencies are classified, so that no one can gauge where the most critical work is being done based solely on numbers. To that end, somehow, DOGE managed to publish classified intelligence on the number of people working for the National Reconnaissance Office (Bonus points for you who have read me enough to know that long ago I wrote that this was the most important government agency you’d never heard of – it’s extremely powerful… As we’re now having confirmed). Were that not enough, there is another consideration that needs to be addressed with respect to the possible criminal implications of this release. From The New Republic:
The young whiz kids at DOGE appear to have forgotten that part and included information about the National Reconnaissance Office, which is tasked with creating and maintaining satellites for U.S. intelligence. Much of the agency’s activities, including its budget and head count, are classified and aren’t supposed to be available to the public. Plus, how did Musk’s team get access to that information, anyway? Does it have something to do with Musk’s company SpaceX having a $1.8 billion contract to build satellites for the NRO?
Yes, this better damn well get discussed. Exactly how did DOGE get a hold of the information to even put out? This, of course, comes back around to the “special” thing. Musk’s companies Space X and Starlink almost necessitate near unfettered access to the NRO and how it operates. So if Musk’s people at either of those companies did have personal access to such classified intelligence, that isn’t necessarily surprising, nor bad – Musk himself surely has a personal security clearance. Problems arise when possible issues lingering from conflicts (?) between Space X (Or Starlink) and the NRO come up, especially if Musk’s employee is wearing his “DOGE” hat at the moment and wants to fire the NRO employee who called him out last year over some “paperwork issues.” Time for some payback, sir! Now the conflict gets more real and one can see how it is that inside knowledge, the type known only to people working with the NRO, becomes problematic. It is hard enough to be a government regulator, now welcome to a situation where your client is also your new boss.
The conflict arising out of the overlap is not only possible, it is probable to the point that one should likely presume that they’re happening and review all decisions made to this point. No Musk employee at Starlink or Space X, two companies intimately involved in U.S. military defense, should also be working for DOGE – that person has enough to do. If one of Musk’s “X” employees wants to help DOGE – that’s one thing. When a critical engineer at Space X needs to communicate with a contact at the NRO – it should be done without the fear that the engineer also represents DOGE.
Members of the intelligence community would like to know the answer to these questions. One Defense Intelligence Agency employee told HuffPost anonymously that “DOGE just posted secret [Not Releasable to Foreign Nationals] info on their website about [intelligence community] headcount, so currently people are scrambling to check if their info has been accessed.”
The good thing is that given the specificity of the issue and the day-time that the information was posted, it sure shouldn’t be that difficult to figure out who put the information out there, then walk back whether that person should ever have known in the first place. Ideally, this will be the only time this happens:
While the NRO is the only intelligence agency that DOGE appears to have exposed, this incident doesn’t speak well of the pseudo-agency’s security procedures. The website has already been hacked by Thursday evening thanks to coding vulnerabilities. And since DOGE has gotten into all kinds of sensitive data, every American could be at risk.
It is pretty striking that the DOGE “kids” went after the NRO – which, even we knew involved satellite infrastructure, an agency with no real ties to anyone or anything except stuff in orbit which… Guess which companies Musk controls, most involved with the government? Right – orbital stuff. Tell me again that there wasn’t a personal agenda involved in this breach…
One can certainly envision situations or settings in which the nation would be very smart to have Elon Musk oversee the operation of electrifying all DoD vehicles, or something equally big and stunning. But on this, the “DOGE” special thing? No, this wasn’t the way to go about it. If Trump really wanted to access Musk’s real gifts, he should have asked Musk to really sacrifice for the country and to take on a real job for a “real” term, salary and all. The formalities built into “real” jobs of that type often include the necessary predicates to avoiding even the possible mishandling of information below. Certain procedures and structure might already be set up to handle just such situations.
It should be done. This should be it. This should be Elon Musk’s one chance. Someone needs to go to him and say, “Well, this just proves how dangerous it can be, and given that we need you to stay with Space X and Starlink, it is time to back out of the government thing, or we can send it to you at the address. Either that or you take a real government job, with a real title, for a real period, and we do a real leave of absence at the companies, such that both entities can work together through Musk. There is no other way.
Oh, there is actually one “other” way. Under no circumstances, no matter where Elon may be or what he may be doing, at no point from here forward, should anyone working for Space X or Starlink, ever ever ever have any assignment or expectation coming from DOGE or any government office. No one at Space X or Starlink should ever have any sort of leverage over their American colleague from the government agency (NRO). This should be a blanket standing rule, so obvious as to not require re-reading at any point. Violating this rule should be a bigger crime than even mishandling some of the information coming from NRO. It should start now, given…
Great kickoff with @DeptofDefense.
Looking forward to working together to safely save taxpayer dollars and eliminate waste, fraud and abuse.
— Department of Government Efficiency (@DOGE) February 15, 2025
Speaking of which, it is likely that it would be hard to prosecute mishandling of the NRO information. There is also surely no political will to blast Musk for his “volunteer” work (See?). It is a non-issue. But again, that doesn’t mean that the information that got loose wasn’t critical and that the loss isn’t devastating. It may be, it may not be. We don’t know. We only know that the NRO was and remains a critical agency, the most important that you’ve now heard of a few times.
Regardless, enough of all this “special” stuff. Regularlze things immediately and watch how all these mistakes seem to not get made once people fall into expected rolls with straightforward expectations. Surprises fall away, expectations get met, mistakes are few, problems are contained. Only when something won’t “fit” inside patterns, only when something is so “special” as to have no previous category, do wildcards start getting played and mistakes happen. Bring it back, it’s not that hard.
God Bless: I can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter/X at @JasonMiciak and now follow on Bluesky
In any other administration he’d be facing charges.