department of government efficiency

Is DOGE doomed to fail? Some experts are ready to call it.

department of government efficiency, doge, Donald Trump, elon musk, Policy / Beth Washington / June 26, 2025

Trump wants $45M to continue DOGE’s work. Critics warn costs already too high.

Federal workers and protestors spoke out against US President Donald Trump and Elon Musk and their push to gut federal services and impose mass layoffs earlier this year. Credit: Pacific Press / Contributor | LightRocket

Critics are increasingly branding Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) as a failure, including lawmakers fiercely debating how much funding to allot next year to the controversial agency.

On Tuesday, Republicans and Democrats sparred over DOGE’s future at a DOGE subcommittee hearing, according to NextGov, a news site for federal IT workers. On one side, Republicans sought to “lock in” and codify the “DOGE process” for supposedly reducing waste and fraud in government, and on the other, Democrats argued that DOGE has “done the opposite” of its intended mission and harmed Americans in the process.

DOGE has “led to poor services, a brain drain on our federal government, and it’s going to cost taxpayers money long term,” Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.) argued.

For now, DOGE remains a temporary government agency that could sunset as soon as July 4, 2026. Under Musk’s leadership, it was supposed to save the US government a trillion dollars. But so far, DOGE only reports saving about $180 billion—and doubt has been cast on DOGE’s math ever since reports revealed that nearly 40 percent of the savings listed on the DOGE site were “bogus,” Elaine Kamarck, director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institute, wrote in a report detailing DOGE’s exposed failures.

The “DOGE process” that Republicans want to codify, Kamarck explained, typically begins with rushed mass layoffs. That’s soon followed by offers for buyouts or deferred resignations, before the government eventually realizes it’s lost critical expertise and starts scrambling to rehire workers or rescind buyout offers after “it becomes apparent” that a heavily gutted agency “is in danger of malfunctioning.”

Kamarck warned that DOGE appeared to be using the firings of federal workers to test the “unitary executive” theory, “popular among conservatives,” that argues that “the president has more power than Congress.” Consider how DOGE works to shut down agencies funded by Congress without seeking lawmakers’ approval by simply removing critical workers key to operations, Kamarck suggested, like DOGE did early on at the National Science Foundation.

Democrats’ witness at the DOGE hearing—Emily DiVito of the economic policy think tank Groundwork Collaborative—suggested that extensive customer service problems at the Social Security Administration was just one powerful example of DOGE’s negative impacts affecting Americans today.

Some experts expect the damage of DOGE’s first few months could ripple across Trump’s entire term. “The rapid rehirings are a warning sign” that the government “has lost more capacities and expertise that could prove critical—and difficult to replace—in the months and years ahead,” experts told CNN.

By codifying the DOGE process, as Republicans wish to do, the government would seemingly only perpetuate this pattern, which could continue to be disastrous for Americans relying on government programs.

“There are time bombs all over the place in the federal government because of this,” Kamarck told CNN. “They’ve wreaked havoc across nearly every agency.”

DOGE spikes costs for Americans, nonprofit warns

Citizens for Ethics, a nonpartisan nonprofit striving to end government secrecy, estimated this week that DOGE cuts at just a few agencies “could result in a loss of over $10 billion in US-based economic activity.”

The shuttering of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau alone—which Musk allegedly stands to personally benefit from—likely robbed American taxpayers of even more. The nonprofit noted that agency clawed back “over $26 billion in funds” from irresponsible businesses between 2011 and 2021 before its work was blocked.

Additionally, DOGE cuts at the Internal Revenue Service—which could “end or close audits of wealthy individuals and corporations” due to a lack of staffing—could cost the US an estimated $500 billion in dodged taxes, the nonprofit said. Partly due to conflicts like these, Kamarck suggested that when it finally comes time to assess DOGE’s success, the answer to both “did federal spending or the federal deficit shrink?” will “almost surely be no.”

As society attempts to predict the full extent of DOGE’s potential harms, The Wall Street Journal spoke to university students who suggested that regulatory clarity could possibly straighten out DOGE’s efforts now that Musk is no longer pushing for mass firings. At the DOGE hearing, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) suggested the only way to ensure DOGE hits its trillion-dollar goal is to “make sure these cuts aren’t just temporary” and pass laws “to streamline agencies, eliminate redundant programs and give the president the authority to fire bureaucrats who don’t do their jobs.”

But one finance student, Troy Monte, suggested to WSJ that DOGE has already cost the Trump administration “stability, expertise, and public trust,” opining, “the cost of DOGE won’t be measured in dollars, but in damage.”

Max Stier, CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, told CNN that when DOGE borrowed the tech industry tactic of moving fast and breaking things, then scrambling to fix what breaks, it exposed “the mosaic of incompetence and a failure on the part of this administration to understand the critical value that the breadth of government expertise provides.”

“This is not about a single incident,” Stier said. “It’s about a pattern that has implications for our government’s ability to meet not just the challenges of today but the critical challenges of tomorrow.”

DOGE’s future appears less certain without Musk

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) had hoped to subpoena Musk at the DOGE hearing to testify on DOGE’s agenda, but Republicans blocked her efforts, NextGov reported.

At the hearing, she alleged that “all of this talk about lowering costs and reducing waste is absolute BS. Their agenda is about one thing: making the federal government so weak that they can exploit it for their personal gain.”

Just yesterday, The Washington Post editorial board published an op-ed already declaring DOGE a failure. Former DOGE staffer Sahil Lavingia told NPR that he expects DOGE will “fizzle out” purely because DOGE failed to uncover as much fraud as Musk and Trump had alleged was spiking government costs.

Beyond obvious criticism (loudly voiced at myriad DOGE protests), it’s easy to understand why this pessimistic view is catching on, since even from a cursory glance at DOGE’s website, the agency’s momentum appears to be slowing since Musk’s abrupt departure in late May. The DOGE site’s estimated savings are supposed to be updated weekly—and one day aspire to be updated in real-time—but the numbers apparently haven’t changed a cent since a few days after Musk shed his “special government employee” label. The site notes the last update was on June 3.

In addition to Musk, several notable Musk appointees have also left DOGE. Most recently, Wired reported that one of Musk’s first appointees—19-year-old Edward “Big Balls” Coristine—is gone, quitting just weeks after receiving full-time employee status granted around the same time that Musk left. Lavingia told Wired that he’d heard “a lot” of people Musk hired have been terminated since his exit.

Rather than rely on a specific engineer spearheading DOGE initiatives across government, like Coristine appeared positioned to become in Musk’s absence, Trump cabinet members or individual agency heads may have more say over DOGE cuts in the future, Kamarck and Politico’s E&E News reported.

“The result so far is that post-Musk, DOGE is morphing into an agency-by-agency effort—no longer run by a central executive branch office, but by DOGE recruits who have been embedded in the agencies and by political appointees, such as cabinet secretaries, who are committed to the same objectives,” Kamarck wrote.

Whether Trump’s appointees can manage DOGE without Musk’s help or his appointees remains to be seen, as DOGE continues to seek new hires. While Musk’s appointed DOGE staff was heavily criticized from day one, Kamarck noted that at least Musk’s appointees appeared “to have a great deal of IT talent, something the federal government has been lacking since the beginning of the information age.”

Trump can extend the timeline for when DOGE sunsets, NextGov noted, and DOGE still has $22 million left over from this year to keep pursuing its goals, as lawmakers debate whether $45 million in funding is warranted.

Despite Trump and Musk’s very public recent fallout, White House spokesperson Kush Desai has said that Trump remains committed to fulfilling DOGE’s mission, but NPR noted his statement curiously didn’t mention DOGE by name.

“President Trump pledged to make our bloated government more efficient by slashing waste, fraud, and abuse. The administration is committed to delivering on this mandate while rectifying any oversights to minimize disruptions to critical government services,” Desai said.

Currently, there are several court-ordered reviews looking into exactly which government systems DOGE accessed, which could reveal more than what’s currently known about how much success—or failure—DOGE has had. Those reviews could expose how much training DOGE workers had before they were granted security clearances to access sensitive information, potentially spawning more backlash as DOGE’s work lurches forward.

Kamarck suggested that DOGE was “doomed to face early failures” because its “efforts were enacted on dubious legal grounds”—a fact that still seems to threaten the agency’s “permanence.” But if the next incoming president conducts an evaluation in 2029 and finds that DOGE’s efforts have not meaningfully reduced the size or spending of government, DOGE could possibly disappear. Former staffers hope that even more rehiring may resume if it does, E&E reported.

In the meantime, Americans relying on government programs must contend with the risk that they could lose assistance in the moments they need it most as long as the Musk-created “DOGE process” continues to be followed.

“Which one of these malfunctions will blow up first is anyone’s guess, but FEMA’s lack of preparedness for hurricane season is a good candidate,” Kamarck said.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Is DOGE doomed to fail? Some experts are ready to call it. Read More »

New federal employees must praise Trump EOs, submit to continuous vetting

dei, department of government efficiency, diversity, doge, Donald Trump, executive order, Policy / Beth Washington / June 2, 2025

The administration says the plan will “drastically” speed up hiring while cutting costs. The plan said that efficiencies would be created by cutting down resumes to a maximum of two pages (cutting review time) while creating a pool of resumes that can be returned to so that new jobs won’t even need to be announced. Even hiring for jobs requiring top secret clearances will be expedited, the plan said.

Critics highlight pain points of hiring plan

A federal HR official speaking anonymously told GovExec that “this plan will make life harder for hiring managers and applicants alike.” That official noted that Trump’s plan to pivot away from using self-assessments—where applicants can explain their relevant skills—removes a shortcut for HR workers who will now need to devote time to independently assess every candidate.

Using various Trump-approved technical and alternative assessments would require candidates to participate in live exercises, evaluate work-related scenarios, submit a work sample, solve problems related to skill competencies, or submit additional writing samples that would need to be reviewed. The amount of manual labor involved in the new policies, the HR official warned, is “insane.”

“Everything in it will make it more difficult to hire, not less,” the HR official said. “How the f— do you define if someone is patriotic?”

Jenny Mattingley, a vice president of government affairs at the Partnership for Public Service, told Politico that she agreed that requiring a loyalty test would make federal recruiting harder.

“Many federal employees are air traffic controllers, national park rangers, food safety inspectors, and firefighters who carry out the missions of agencies that are authorized by Congress,” Mattingley said. “These public servants, who deliver services directly to the public, should not be forced to answer politicized questions that fail to evaluate the skills they need to do their jobs effectively.”

New federal employees must praise Trump EOs, submit to continuous vetting Read More »

Musk’s DOGE used Meta’s Llama 2—not Grok—for gov’t slashing, report says

AI, azure ai, department of government efficiency, doge, elon musk, grok, Llama 2, Meta, microsoft, Policy, xAI / Mike M. / May 24, 2025

Why didn’t DOGE use Grok?

It seems that Grok, Musk’s AI model, wasn’t available for DOGE’s task because it was only available as a proprietary model in January. Moving forward, DOGE may rely more frequently on Grok, Wired reported, as Microsoft announced it would start hosting xAI’s Grok 3 models in its Azure AI Foundry this week, The Verge reported, which opens the models up for more uses.

In their letter, lawmakers urged Vought to investigate Musk’s conflicts of interest, while warning of potential data breaches and declaring that AI, as DOGE had used it, was not ready for government.

“Without proper protections, feeding sensitive data into an AI system puts it into the possession of a system’s operator—a massive breach of public and employee trust and an increase in cybersecurity risks surrounding that data,” lawmakers argued. “Generative AI models also frequently make errors and show significant biases—the technology simply is not ready for use in high-risk decision-making without proper vetting, transparency, oversight, and guardrails in place.”

Although Wired’s report seems to confirm that DOGE did not send sensitive data from the “Fork in the Road” emails to an external source, lawmakers want much more vetting of AI systems to deter “the risk of sharing personally identifiable or otherwise sensitive information with the AI model deployers.”

A seeming fear is that Musk may start using his own models more, benefiting from government data his competitors cannot access, while potentially putting that data at risk of a breach. They’re hoping that DOGE will be forced to unplug all its AI systems, but Vought seems more aligned with DOGE, writing in his AI guidance for federal use that “agencies must remove barriers to innovation and provide the best value for the taxpayer.”

“While we support the federal government integrating new, approved AI technologies that can improve efficiency or efficacy, we cannot sacrifice security, privacy, and appropriate use standards when interacting with federal data,” their letter said. “We also cannot condone use of AI systems, often known for hallucinations and bias, in decisions regarding termination of federal employment or federal funding without sufficient transparency and oversight of those models—the risk of losing talent and critical research because of flawed technology or flawed uses of such technology is simply too high.”

Musk’s DOGE used Meta’s Llama 2—not Grok—for gov’t slashing, report says Read More »

DOGE software engineer’s computer infected by info-stealing malware

Biz & IT, CISA, credentials, cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency, department of government efficiency, kyle schutt, passwords, Policy, Security / DJ Henderson / May 10, 2025

Login credentials belonging to an employee at both the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Department of Government Efficiency have appeared in multiple public leaks from info-stealer malware, a strong indication that devices belonging to him have been hacked in recent years.

Kyle Schutt is a 30-something-year-old software engineer who, according to Dropsite News, gained access in February to a “core financial management system” belonging to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. As an employee of DOGE, Schutt accessed FEMA’s proprietary software for managing both disaster and non-disaster funding grants. Under his role at CISA, he likely is privy to sensitive information regarding the security of civilian federal government networks and critical infrastructure throughout the US.

A steady stream of published credentials

According to journalist Micah Lee, user names and passwords for logging in to various accounts belonging to Schutt have been published at least four times since 2023 in logs from stealer malware. Stealer malware typically infects devices through trojanized apps, phishing, or software exploits. Besides pilfering login credentials, stealers can also log all keystrokes and capture or record screen output. The data is then sent to the attacker and, occasionally after that, can make its way into public credential dumps.

“I have no way of knowing exactly when Schutt’s computer was hacked, or how many times,” Lee wrote. “I don’t know nearly enough about the origins of these stealer log datasets. He might have gotten hacked years ago and the stealer log datasets were just published recently. But he also might have gotten hacked within the last few months.”

Lee went on to say that credentials belonging to a Gmail account known to belong to Schutt have appeared in 51 data breaches and five pastes tracked by breach notification service Have I Been Pwned. Among the breaches that supplied the credentials is one from 2013 that pilfered password data for 3 million Adobe account holders, one in a 2016 breach that stole credentials for 164 million LinkedIn users, a 2020 breach affecting 167 million users of Gravatar, and a breach last year of the conservative news site The Post Millennial.

DOGE software engineer’s computer infected by info-stealing malware Read More »

Report: DOGE supercharges mass-layoff software, renames it to sound less dystopian

department of government efficiency, doge, elon musk, layoffs, Policy, trump administration / Beth Washington / May 8, 2025

“It is not clear how AutoRIF has been modified or whether AI is involved in the RIF mandate (through AutoRIF or independently),” Kunkler wrote. “However, fears of AI-driven mass-firings of federal workers are not unfounded. Elon Musk and the Trump Administration have made no secret of their affection for the dodgy technology and their intentions to use it to make budget cuts. And, in fact, they have already tried adding AI to workforce decisions.”

Automating layoffs can perpetuate bias, increase worker surveillance, and erode transparency to the point where workers don’t know why they were let go, Kunkler said. For government employees, such imperfect systems risk triggering confusion over worker rights or obscuring illegal firings.

“There is often no insight into how the tool works, what data it is being fed, or how it is weighing different data in its analysis,” Kunkler said. “The logic behind a given decision is not accessible to the worker and, in the government context, it is near impossible to know how or whether the tool is adhering to the statutory and regulatory requirements a federal employment tool would need to follow.”

The situation gets even starker when you imagine mistakes on a mass scale. Don Moynihan, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan, told Reuters that “if you automate bad assumptions into a process, then the scale of the error becomes far greater than an individual could undertake.”

“It won’t necessarily help them to make better decisions, and it won’t make those decisions more popular,” Moynihan said.

The only way to shield workers from potentially illegal firings, Kunkler suggested, is to support unions defending worker rights while pushing lawmakers to intervene. Calling on Congress to ban the use of shadowy tools relying on unknown data points to gut federal agencies “without requiring rigorous external testing and auditing, robust notices and disclosure, and human decision review,” Kunkler said rolling out DOGE’s new tool without more transparency should be widely condemned as unacceptable.

“We must protect federal workers from these harmful tools,” Kunkler said, adding, “If the government cannot or will not effectively mitigate the risks of using automated decision-making technology, it should not use it at all.”

Report: DOGE supercharges mass-layoff software, renames it to sound less dystopian Read More »

China aims to recruit top US scientists as Trump tries to kill the CHIPS Act

Chips Act, department of government efficiency, doge, Donald Trump, intel, Micron, NSF, NVIDIA, Policy, samsung, semiconductors, TSMC / Kelly Newman / March 6, 2025

Tech innovation in US likely to stall if Trump ends the CHIPS Act.

On Tuesday, Donald Trump finally made it clear to Congress that he wants to kill the CHIPS and Science Act—a $280 billion bipartisan law Joe Biden signed in 2022 to bring more semiconductor manufacturing into the US and put the country at the forefront of research and innovation.

Trump has long expressed frustration with the high cost of the CHIPS Act, telling Congress on Tuesday that it’s a “horrible, horrible thing” to “give hundreds of billions of dollars” in subsidies to companies that he claimed “take our money” and “don’t spend it,” Reuters reported.

“You should get rid of the CHIPS Act, and whatever is left over, Mr. Speaker, you should use it to reduce debt,” Trump said.

Instead, Trump potentially plans to shift the US from incentivizing chips manufacturing to punishing firms dependent on imports, threatening a 25 percent tariff on all semiconductor imports that could kick in as soon as April 2, CNBC reported.

The CHIPS Act was supposed to be Biden’s legacy, and because he made it a priority, much of the $52.7 billion in subsidies that Trump is criticizing has already been finalized. In 2022, Biden approved $39 billion in subsidies for semiconductor firms, and in his last weeks in office, he finalized more than $33 billion in awards, Reuters noted.

Among the awardees are leading semiconductor firms, including the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), Micron, Intel, Nvidia, and Samsung Electronics. Although Trump claims the CHIPS Act is one-sided and only serves to benefit firms, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association, the law sparked $450 billion in private investments increasing semiconductor production across 28 states by mid-2024.

With the CHIPS Act officially in Trump’s crosshairs, innovation appears likely to stall the longer that lawmakers remain unsettled on whether the law stays or goes. Some officials worried that Trump might interfere with Biden’s binding agreements with leading firms already holding up their end of the bargain, Reuters reported. For example, Micron plans to invest $100 billion in New York, and TSMC just committed to spending the same over the next four years to expand construction of US chips fabs, which is already well underway.

So far, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has only indicated that he will review the finalized awards, noting that the US wouldn’t be giving TSMC any new awards, Reuters reported.

But the CHIPS Act does much more than provide subsidies to lure leading semiconductor companies into the US. For the first time in decades, the law created a new arm of the National Science Foundation (NSF)—the Directorate of Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP)—which functions unlike any other part of NSF and now appears existentially threatened.

Designed to take the country’s boldest ideas from basic research to real-world applications as fast as possible to make the US as competitive as possible, TIP helps advance all NSF research and was supposed to ensure US leadership in breakthrough technologies, including AI, 6G communications, biotech, quantum computing, and advanced manufacturing.

Biden allocated $20 billion to launch TIP through the CHIPS Act to accelerate technology development not just at top firms but also in small research settings across the US. But as soon as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) started making cuts at NSF this year, TIP got hit the hardest. Seemingly TIP was targeted not because DOGE deemed it the least consequential but simply because it was the youngest directorate at NSF with the most workers in transition when Trump took office and DOGE abruptly announced it was terminating all “probationary” federal workers.

It took years to get TIP ready to flip the switch to accelerate tech innovation in the US. Without it, Trump risks setting the US back at a time when competitors like China are racing ahead and wooing US scientists who suddenly may not know if or when their funding is coming, NSF workers and industry groups told Ars.

Without TIP, NSF slows down

Last month, DOGE absolutely scrambled the NSF by forcing arbitrary cuts of so-called probationary employees—mostly young scientists, some of whom were in transition due to promotions. All those cuts were deemed illegal and finally reversed Monday by court order after weeks of internal chaos reportedly stalling or threatening to delay some of the highest-priority research in the US.

“The Office of Personnel Management does not have any authority whatsoever under any statute in the history of the universe to hire and fire employees at another agency,” US District Judge William Alsup said, calling probationary employees the “life blood” of government agencies.

Ars granted NSF workers anonymity to discuss how cuts were impacting research. At TIP, a federal worker told Ars that one of the probationary cuts in particular threatened to do the most damage.

Because TIP is so new, only one worker was trained to code automated tracking forms that helped decision-makers balance budgets and approve funding for projects across NSF in real time. Ars’ source likened it to holding the only key to the vault of NSF funding. And because TIP is so different from other NSF branches—hiring experts never pulled into NSF before and requiring customized resources to coordinate projects across all NSF fields of research—the insider suggested another government worker couldn’t easily be substituted. It could take possibly two years to hire and train a replacement on TIP’s unique tracking system, the source said, while TIP’s (and possibly all of NSF’s) efficiency is likely strained.

TIP has never been fully functional, the TIP insider confirmed, and could be choked off right as it starts helping to move the needle on US innovation. “Imagine where we are in two years and where China is in two years in quantum computing, semiconductors, or AI,” the TIP insider warned, pointing to China’s surprisingly advanced AI model, DeepSeek, as an indicator of how quickly tech leadership in global markets can change.

On Monday, NSF emailed all workers to confirm that all probationary workers would be reinstated “right away.” But the damage may already be done as it’s unclear how many workers plan to return. When TIP lost the coder—who was seemingly fired for a technicality while transitioning to a different payscale—NSF workers rushed to recommend the coder on LinkedIn, hoping to help the coder quickly secure another opportunity in industry or academia.

Ars could not reach the coder to confirm whether a return to TIP is in the cards. But Ars’ source at TIP and another NSF worker granted anonymity said that probationary workers may be hesitant to return because they are likely to be hit in any official reductions in force (RIFs) in the future.

“RIFs done the legal way are likely coming down the pipe, so these staff are not coming back to a place of security,” the NSF worker said. “The trust is broken. Even for those that choose to return, they’d be wise to be seeking other opportunities.”

And even losing the TIP coder for a couple of weeks likely slows NSF down at a time when the US seemingly can’t afford to lose a single day.

“We’re going to get murdered” if China sets the standard on 6G or AI, the TIP worker fears.

Rivals and allies wooing top US scientists

On Monday, six research and scientific associations, which described themselves as “leading organizations representing more than 305,000 people in computing, information technology, and technical innovation across US industry, academia, and government,” wrote to Congress demanding protections for the US research enterprise.

The groups warned that funding freezes and worker cuts at NSF—and other agencies, including the Department of Energy, the National Institute of Standards & Technology, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Institutes of Health—”have caused disruption and uncertainty” and threaten “long-lasting negative consequences for our competitiveness, national security, and economic prosperity.”

Deeming America’s technology leadership at risk, the groups pointed out that “in computing alone, a federal investment in research of just over $10 billion annually across 24 agencies and offices underpins a technology sector that contributes more than $2 trillion to the US GDP each year.” Cutting US investment “would be a costly mistake, far outweighing any short-term savings,” the groups warned.

In a separate statement, the Computing Research Association (CRA) called NSF cuts, in particular, a “deeply troubling, self-inflicted setback to US leadership in computing research” that appeared “penny-wise and pound-foolish.”

“NSF is one of the most efficient federal agencies, operating with less than 9 percent overhead costs,” CRA said. “These arbitrary terminations are not justified by performance metrics or efficiency concerns; rather, they represent a drastic and unnecessary weakening of the US research enterprise.”

Many NSF workers are afraid to speak up, the TIP worker told Ars, and industry seems similarly tight-lipped as confusion remains. Only one of the organizations urging Congress to intervene agreed to talk to Ars about the NSF cuts and the significance of TIP. Kathryn Kelley, the executive director of the Coalition for Academic Scientific Computation, confirmed that while members are more aligned with NSF’s Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering and the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure, her group agrees that all NSF cuts are “deeply” concerning.

“We agree that the uncertainty and erosion of trust within the NSF workforce could have long-lasting effects on the agency’s ability to attract and retain top talent, particularly in such specialized areas,” Kelley told Ars. “This situation underscores the need for continued investment in a stable, well-supported workforce to maintain the US’s leadership in science and innovation.”

Other industry sources unwilling to go on the record told Ars that arbitrary cuts largely affecting the youngest scientists at NSF threatened to disrupt a generation of researchers who envisioned long careers advancing US tech. There’s now a danger that those researchers may be lured to other countries heavily investing in science and currently advertising to attract displaced US researchers, including not just rivals like China but also allies like Denmark.

Those sources questioned the wisdom of using the Elon Musk-like approach of breaking the NSF to rebuild it when it’s already one of the leanest organizations in government.

Ars confirmed that some PhD programs have been cancelled, as many academic researchers are already widely concerned about delayed or cancelled grants and generally freaked out about where to get dependable funding outside the NSF. And in industry, some CHIPS Act projects have already been delayed, as companies like Intel try to manage timelines without knowing what’s happening with CHIPS funding, AP News reported.

“Obviously chip manufacturing companies will slow spending on programs they previously thought they were getting CHIPS Act funding for if not cancel those projects outright,” the Semiconductor Advisors, an industry group, forecasted in a statement last month.

The TIP insider told Ars that the CHIPS Act subsidies for large companies that Trump despises mostly fuel manufacturing in the US, while funding for smaller research facilities is what actually advances technology. Reducing efficiency at TIP would likely disrupt those researchers the most, the TIP worker suggested, proclaiming that’s why TIP must be saved at all costs.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

China aims to recruit top US scientists as Trump tries to kill the CHIPS Act Read More »

DOGE’s .gov site lampooned as coders quickly realize it can be edited by anyone

department of government efficiency, doge, Donald Trump, elon musk, Policy / Kelly Newman / February 16, 2025

“An official website of the United States government,” reads small text atop the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) website that Elon Musk’s team started populating this week with information on agency cuts.

But you apparently don’t have to work in government to push updates to the site. A couple of prankster web developers told 404 Media that they separately discovered how “insecure” the DOGE site was, seemingly pulling from a “database that can be edited by anyone.”

One coder couldn’t resist and pushed two updates that, as of this writing, remained on the DOGE site. “This is a joke of a .gov site,” one read. “THESE ‘EXPERTS’ LEFT THEIR DATABASE OPEN,” read another.

404 Media spoke to two other developers who suggested that the DOGE site is not running on government servers. Instead, it seems to be running on a Cloudflare Pages site and is relying on a database that “can be and has been written to by third parties and will show up on the live website,” the developers told 404 Media.

Archived versions of the DOGE site show that it was basically blank before Tuesday. That’s when Musk held a DOGE press conference in the Oval Office, promising that DOGE is “actually trying to be as transparent as possible.” At that time, Musk claimed that DOGE was being “maximally transparent” by posting about “all” actions to X (Musk’s social media platform) and to the DOGE website. (Wired deemed the DOGE site “one big X ad” because it primarily seems to exist to point to Musk’s social media platform.)

According to 404 Media, after Musk made that statement, his team rushed to build out the DOGE website, mirroring X posts from the DOGE account and compiling stats on the federal workforce.

But in rushing, DOGE appears to have skipped security steps that are expected of government websites. That pattern is troubling some federal workers, as DOGE has already been dinged by workers concerned by Musk’s team seizing access to sensitive government information and sharing it in ways deemed less secure. For example, last week, Department of Education officials raised alarms about DOGE employees using personal emails viewed as less secure than government email addresses, seemingly in violation of security protocols. These personal emails also seemed to shroud the true identities of DOGE staffers, whereas other government employees must use their full names in official communications.

DOGE’s .gov site lampooned as coders quickly realize it can be edited by anyone Read More »

DOJ agrees to temporarily block DOGE from Treasury records

department of government efficiency, department of justice, doge, elon musk, Policy, Treasury Department / Beth Washington / February 6, 2025

Elez reports to Tom Krause, another Treasury Department special government employee, but Krause doesn’t have direct access to the payment system, Humphreys told the judge. Krause is the CEO of Cloud Software Group and is also viewed as a Musk ally.

But when the judge pressed Humphreys on Musk’s alleged access, the DOJ lawyer only said that as far as the defense team was aware, Musk did not have access.

Further, Humphreys explained that DOGE—which functions as part of the executive office—does not have access, to the DOJ’s knowledge. As he explained it, DOGE sets the high-level priorities that these special government employees carry out, seemingly trusting the employees to identify waste and protect taxpayer dollars without ever providing any detailed reporting on the records that supposedly are evidence of mismanagement.

To Kollar-Kotelly, the facts on the record seem to suggest that no one outside the Treasury is currently accessing sensitive data. But when she pressed Humphreys on whether DOGE had future plans to access the data, Humphreys declined to comment, calling it irrelevant to the complaint.

Humphreys suggested that the government’s defense in this case would focus on the complaint that outsiders are currently accessing Treasury data, seemingly dismissing any need to discuss DOGE’s future plans. But the judge pushed back, telling Humphreys she was not trying to “nail” him “to the wall,” but there’s too little information on the relationship between DOGE and the Treasury Department as it stands. How these entities work together makes a difference, the judge suggested, in terms of safeguarding sensitive Treasury data.

According to Kollar-Kotelly, granting a temporary restraining order in part would allow DOGE to “preserve the status quo” of its current work in the Treasury Department while ensuring no new outsiders get access to Americans’ sensitive information. Such an order would give both sides time to better understand the current government workflows to best argue their cases, the judge suggested.

If the order is approved, it would remain in effect until the judge rules on plantiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction. At the hearing today, Kollar-Kotelly suggested that matter would likely be settled at a hearing on February 24.

DOJ agrees to temporarily block DOGE from Treasury records Read More »

Treasury official retires after clash with DOGE over access to payment system

department of government efficiency, elon musk, Policy / Shannon Garcia / February 1, 2025

“This is a mechanical job—they pay Social Security benefits, they pay vendors, whatever. It’s not one where there’s a role for nonmechanical things, at least from the career standpoint. Your whole job is to pay the bills as they’re due,” Mazur was quoted as saying. “It’s never been used in a way to execute a partisan agenda… You have to really put bad intentions in place for that to be the case.”

The Trump administration previously issued an order to freeze funding for a wide range of government programs, but rescinded the order after two days of protest and a judge’s ruling that temporarily blocked the funding freeze.

Trump ordered cooperation with DOGE

The Trump executive order establishing DOGE took the existing United States Digital Service and renamed it the United States DOGE Service. It’s part of the Executive Office of the President and is tasked with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”

Trump’s order said that federal agencies will have to collaborate with DOGE. “Among other things, the USDS Administrator shall work with Agency Heads to promote inter-operability between agency networks and systems, ensure data integrity, and facilitate responsible data collection and synchronization,” the order said. “Agency Heads shall take all necessary steps, in coordination with the USDS Administrator and to the maximum extent consistent with law, to ensure USDS has full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems. USDS shall adhere to rigorous data protection standards.”

The Post writes that “Musk has sought to exert sweeping control over the inner workings of the US government, installing longtime surrogates at several agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management, which essentially handles federal human resources, and the General Services Administration.”

On Thursday, Musk visited the General Services Administration headquarters in Washington, DC, The New York Times reported. The Department of Government Efficiency’s account on X stated earlier this week that the GSA had “terminated three leases of mostly empty office space” for a savings of $1.6 million and that more cuts are planned. In another post, DOGE claimed it “is saving the Federal Government approx. $1 billion/day, mostly from stopping the hiring of people into unnecessary positions, deletion of DEI and stopping improper payments to foreign organizations, all consistent with the President’s Executive Orders.”

“Mr. Musk’s visit to the General Services Administration could presage more cost-cutting efforts focused on federal real estate,” the Times wrote. “The agency also plays a role in federal contracting and in providing technology services across the federal government.”

Treasury official retires after clash with DOGE over access to payment system Read More »

Trump says Elon Musk will lead “DOGE,” a new Department of Government Efficiency

department of government efficiency, doge, Donald Trump, elon musk, Policy / Kelly Newman / November 13, 2024

Trump’s “perfect gift to America”

Trump’s statement said the department, whose name is a reference to the Doge meme, “will drive out the massive waste and fraud which exists throughout our annual $6.5 Trillion Dollars of Government Spending.” Trump said DOGE will “liberate our Economy” and that its “work will conclude no later than July 4, 2026” because “a smaller Government, with more efficiency and less bureaucracy, will be the perfect gift to America on the 250th Anniversary of The Declaration of Independence.”

“I look forward to Elon and Vivek making changes to the Federal Bureaucracy with an eye on efficiency and, at the same time, making life better for all Americans,” Trump said. Today, Musk wrote that the “world is suffering slow strangulation by overregulation,” and that “we finally have a mandate to delete the mountain of choking regulations that do not serve the greater good.”

Musk has been expected to have influence in Trump’s second term after campaigning for him. Trump previously vowed to have Musk head a government efficiency commission. “That would essentially give the world’s richest man and a major government contractor the power to regulate the regulators who hold sway over his companies, amounting to a potentially enormous conflict of interest,” said a New York Times article last month.

The Wall Street Journal wrote today that “Musk isn’t expected to become an official government employee, meaning he likely wouldn’t be required to divest from his business empire.”

Trump says Elon Musk will lead “DOGE,” a new Department of Government Efficiency Read More »