The Clock’s Ticking On Both Elon Musk and Social Security

We live in the strangest of times. Just this morning I was having an email exchange with two friends on the subject of Social Security. My query to them both was: should I go into the brokerage account, where what little money I have in this world is kept (for the high interest rates) and get money to pay the rent, in the event that my Social Security check isn’t deposited? Needless to say, the first thing out of everybody’s mouth was, “Do you believe we’re even having this conversation?” But expect it to get much worse, because we’re living in Trump world.

Social Security is Elon Musk’s target and he has a sound reason for going in right now and screwing with it. Musk is on the clock. He went to work in February for Trump as an unpaid government employee and in that capacity he has about 60 – 120 days in which to file financial statements with the government to prove that he has no conflicts of interest. It is now almost April and nobody has seen a financial statement — even though Musk, out of all government employees, ever, is likely to have severe conflicts.

But for the moments those conflicts are being held in abeyance, if not swept under the rug. And Elon is pursuing his mad plan: which is to eradicate Social Security’s old COBOL system which has been in use since the 1950’s. The plan is to migrate all SSA systems off COBOL, one of the first common business-oriented programming languages, and onto a more modern replacement like Java within a scheduled tight timeframe of a few months.

The problem? Experts say the migration, to be done properly, would take five years. Therein lies the rub. And if you replace one portion of the system and destabilize other portions, that could lead to a cascading series of system failures, which mean the yous and mes don’t get our Social Security checks, i.e., our own money, that we worked for our entire lives.

Under any circumstances, a migration of this size and scale would be a massive undertaking, experts tell WIRED, but the expedited deadline runs the risk of obstructing payments to the more than 65 million people in the US currently receiving Social Security benefits.

“Of course, one of the big risks is not underpayment or overpayment per se; [it’s also] not paying someone at all and not knowing about it. The invisible errors and omissions,” an SSA technologist tells WIRED.

The Social Security Administration did not immediately reply to WIRED’s request for comment.

SSA has been under increasing scrutiny from president Donald Trump’s administration. In February, Musk took aim at SSA, falsely claiming that the agency was rife with fraud. Specifically, Musk pointed to data he allegedly pulled from the system that showed 150-year-olds in the US were receiving benefits, something that isn’t actually happening. Over the last few weeks, following significant cuts to the agency by DOGE, SSA has suffered frequent website crashes and long wait times over the phone, The Washington Post reported this week.

This proposed migration isn’t the first time SSA has tried to move away from COBOL: In 2017, SSA announced a plan to receive hundreds of millions in funding to replace its core systems. The agency predicted that it would take around five years to modernize these systems. Because of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, the agency pivoted away from this work to focus on more public-facing projects. […]

SSA’s core “logic” is also written largely in COBOL. This is the code that issues social security numbers, manages payments, and even calculates the total amount beneficiaries should receive for different services, a former senior SSA technologist who worked in the office of the chief information officer says. Even minor changes could result in cascading failures across programs.

“If you weren’t worried about a whole bunch of people not getting benefits or getting the wrong benefits, or getting the wrong entitlements, or having to wait ages, then sure go ahead,” says Dan Hon, principal of Very Little Gravitas, a technology strategy consultancy that helps government modernize services, about completing such a migration in a short timeframe.

And Elon wants to get it done and done now because his days are numbered. Under the law he has to provide financial statements. He may have some wiggle room or delay but not all that much. And he’s definitely got conflicts. Trump may pooh pooh these conflicts by saying, “Elon can’t do and won’t do anything without our approval. And we’ll give him the approval where appropriate. Where not appropriate, we won’t.” Right. We believe that.

Musk’s business success has been partly fueled by federal money, and SpaceX has received billions of dollars in direct government contracts.

As a special government employee, Musk is covered by a federal conflicts-of-interest statute that prohibits government employees from participating in matters that would affect their financial interests. That law can be enforced criminally or in the civil context, but it can only be enforced by the Justice Department.

“We are relying on the Justice Department for enforcement of the financial conflict-of-interest standards against Elon Musk and everyone else, and there is a reason to doubt that the Trump Justice Department will enforce any statutes, including criminal statutes, against a Trump ally,” said Kathleen Clark, a Washington University law professor who specializes in government ethics.

If we’re relying upon the Justice Department to compel Elon to follow the law, then we are truly screwed. Be that as it may, it does stand to reason that governmental ethics considerations may slow him down. And certainly the longer he’s in his position as government advisor, the more the pressure will be dialed up for him to abide by the law. And Pam Bondi may be an Elon fluffer, but she’s not omnipotent. She could be up for problems of her own if she disregards the law in his favor.

Ergo, Elon is hell bent to make his mark and take over what he can take over until he’s impeded in doing so. We are in a dangerous position. And Howard Lutnick telling the story of his rich old lady 94-year-old mother in law, “She wouldn’t worry if her check was late, she’d just figure there was a confusion,” did not reassure me. I don’t know about you.

Forewarned is forearmed but God forbid that it should come to this. What I also told my friends today, “Thank God this wasn’t happening in 2017 when Trump first took office. I had no money. I was living Social Security check to Social Security check. If I had had to worry about a late check then, I would literally have been wondering where my next meal was coming from.”

That’s gospel truth. I remember those days well. To those of you who are new readers here and don’t know my story, I was malpracticed by a quack (who is still licensed but his license is restricted due to his malfeasance with many other people besides me) and I was disabled when if I had just gotten to two specialists in time, I would have been fine. This information was not discovered for a number of years. So all I had was a small disability check (and a belief that I wasn’t going to live for too many more years.)

I was living in rented rooms and just getting by. I got $15 a month in food stamp assistance, if you can believe that. There were months when I would run out of food and get through the last three days or so of the month with canned soup and a bag of potatoes, that kind of thing. I was signed up for Meals On Wheels at one point and I don’t want to tell you how horrible that was, ultra processed, no nutrition dreck.

So I know what it is to be old and poor. I was able to rise out of that, thank God, but a lot of people cannot. Point being, in 2017 if I had had to worry about my Social Security check, I would have been terrified. At this point I’m anxious and wary but I’m not worried about whether I can buy groceries or pay the phone bill. Yet.

And this is not total paranoia. This is based on fact. The first three months of this year my money was deposited before the first of the month. I thought maybe Biden had arranged for that. But April is Q2, Biden’s out of power, and there is no deposit in my account today like there was previously. So I have cause to have my antennae up.

Trump and Musk are playing with fire. And unfortunately 72 million of us, or some portion of us, may get burned. All my sympathy and compassion goes out to the people who are lawfully entitled to apply for their Social Security benefits this year and are being hamstrung from doing so. That is beyond appalling.

But then we live in Trumpmerica, where foreign students lawfully in the country are kidnapped off the street, where the Secretary of Homeland Security does photo ops that look like a scene out of Auschwitz, with pajama-clad, shaved headed prisoners stacked on shelves behind her (while she sports a $50K Rolex and tight sexy clothes.) This is the scheisseshau of this century and any other.

I don’t know which modern society will get more decadent than this, but right now Trump is giving ancient Rome a run for the money.

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