One of my and our central points of interest is the identity of these ‘Musk operatives’ who are actually doing these things we’re hearing about throughout the federal and especially the top administrative, federal agencies (OPM, OMB, GAO, etc.). Notably some of the best reporting on this is being done at Wired. That’s not surprising. It plays to key strengths: first is simply that it’s a top flight publication, heavily plugged into the tech and tech/Silicon Valley worlds where these guys come from and they do the kind of granular reporting that just isn’t what the big national/DC publications generally do. This article is a key read. Who are these guys? They’re generally between 19 and 24 years of age, often college drop outs who left to go into tech, various kinds of algorithmic financial trading, in most cases interns at Thiel’s or Musk’s companies, at least one “Thiel fellow”.
In other words, hard right, techo-red pilled bros, who now have access to things like your social security checks (whether you get them or not), your financial and in some cases likely medical records and at least the ability to shut down whole sections of the federal government at will by simply turning off their funding spigots. (Not good!) It sounds crazy and absurd to think that individual people could have that kind of power absent anything the law recognizes. But this is what it means when you’re this far up (or down, choose your metaphor) in the brain stem of the national government. This is what it means when you have access to the central Treasury Department payment network. You can simply turn off a spigot of funding. (I’ve now had it described to me precisely how you do it.) If you have that access whether it’s legal or not isn’t relevant. The best analogy I can provide is that there’s some person at your bank who could just change a setting and suddenly all your checks and payments would be rejected and your funds would be frozen. Now imagine if “you” is NIH or USAID or … well, Social Security.
