Musk associates given unfettered access to private data of government employees

The Musk-connected political hires include two recent high school graduates

The United States Office of Personnel Management in Washington, D.C.(Sarah Silbiger for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Several of Elon Musk’s associates installed at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) have received unprecedented access to federal human resources databases containing sensitive personal information for millions of federal employees. According to two members of OPM staff with direct knowledge, the Musk team running OPM has the ability to extract information from databases that store medical histories, personally identifiable information, workplace evaluations, and other private data. The staffers spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly and feared professional retaliation. Musk Watch also reviewed internal OPM correspondence confirming that expansive access to the database was provided to Musk associates.

The arrangement presents acute privacy and security risks, one of the OPM staffers said.

Among the government outsiders granted entry to the OPM databases is University of California Berkeley student Akash Bobba, a software engineer who graduated high school less than three years ago. He previously interned at Meta and Palantir, a technology firm chaired by Musk-ally and fellow billionaire Peter Thiel. Edward Coristine, another 2022 high school graduate and former software engineering intern at Musk’s Neuralink, has also been given access to the databases.

Other Musk underlings embedded at OPM following President Donald Trump’s inauguration include the agency’s new chief of staff, Amanda Scales, who until January was a human resources staffer at xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence firm, and Brian Bjelde, who has spent the past 21 years at Musk's SpaceX, including the last 10 leading the human resources department. They are joined by Gavin Kliger, a former Twitter software engineer serving as a special advisor to the director of OPM, and Riccardo Biasini, a former software engineer at Musk’s tunneling venture, the Boring Company.

OPM did not respond to a request for comment.

Shortly after Trump took office, OPM installed Greg Hogan to serve as its new chief information officer (CIO). Hogan was tapped to replace OPM CIO Melvin Brown, who had accepted the job less than a month ago.

The civil servants who oversee the OPM’s information technology services were then instructed to provide access to Musk's associates, according to the OPM staffers who spoke to Musk Watch. One of the OPM staffers received an email from the agency’s new leadership instructing them to give Musk’s team “access [to] the system as an admin user" and "code read and write permissions."

“They have access to the code itself, which means they can make updates to anything that they want,” the staffer explained.

USAJOBS, the federal government’s official hiring site, was one of the systems that Musk's associates were given access to. The database stores personal information — Social Security numbers, home addresses, employment records — provided by private individuals who have applied for federal jobs, regardless of whether the applicants went on to work for the government.

Musk’s aides were also given access to the OPM’s Enterprise Human Resources Integration (EHRI) system. Contained within the EHRI are the Social Security numbers, dates of birth, salaries, home addresses, and job descriptions of all civil government workers, along with any disciplinary actions they have faced. “They’re looking through all the position descriptions… to remove folks,” one of the OPM staffers said of Musk’s team. “This is how they found all these DEI offices and had them removed — [by] reviewing position description level data.”

Other databases Musk’s team has access to include USA Staffing, an onboarding system; USA Performance, a job performance review site; and HI, which the government uses to manage employee health care. “The health insurance one scares me because it's HIPAA [protected] information, but they have access to all this stuff,” the OPM staffer noted.

A former OPM director, who spoke to Musk Watch on the condition that they not be mentioned by name, agreed with the staffer’s concerns. “What [Musk is] doing will put so many government employees at risk. It’s not at all what the office is intended for,” said the former OPM director. “I just can’t believe what I’m seeing.”

There are also potential security risks. “China and Russia are literally trying to hack us every day and we just gave all this data over to somebody that's not been properly vetted,” one of the OPM staffers said. “It's not just Amanda Scales, it's all the [political appointees] in that office right now. So it's multiple vulnerability points.” Outside actors have already gained access to some of the massive email lists that OPM created as part of Musk's effort to convince federal employees to resign.

A new server being used to control these databases has been placed in a conference room that Musk’s team is using as their command center, according to an OPM staffer. The staffer described the server as a piece of commercial hardware they believed was not obtained through the proper federal procurement process.

There is a legal requirement that the installation of a new server undergo a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA), a formal process to ensure the change would not create any security vulnerabilities. But in this instance, the staff believes there was no PIA. “So this application and corresponding hardware are illegally operating,” they added.

On Friday, Reuters reported that some senior civil servants have been blocked from accessing the EHRI and other OPM systems, making it difficult for career OPM employees to know what Musk’s team has been examining or modifying. In the same report, the outlet revealed the team had moved sofa beds into the agency's headquarters to continue their work around the clock.

Upon gaining access to the OPM databases last week, Musk used the agency to email all federal civil employees simultaneously. The email announced a “deferred resignation” program, claiming that any federal employee who wished to resign effective September 30, 2025, would receive pay and benefits until that date and would not have to show up for work except in rare cases. Musk and the White House falsely described the offer as a "buyout" or "severance." The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, has condemned the program, saying it “will cause chaos for the Americans who depend on a functioning federal government.”

Musk, who spent a quarter of a billion dollars bankrolling Trump’s election campaign, is not a federal employee or a congressionally confirmed member of the Trump administration. His vast and growing powers in Washington stem from Trump choosing him to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, itself a successor to the U.S. Digital Service. In the past, the Digital Service had a relatively narrow mandate, serving primarily to maintain websites and technology systems used by the federal government.

Musk’s influence now extends to the U,S. Treasury Department, where he and his team took over the federal government’s enormous payment system despite the protests of a top career official who has since been forced out. Over the weekend, Musk said he would use his access to cancel hundreds of millions of dollars worth of federal grants.