Whistleblower Reportedly Stalked by Drone Following DOGE Complaint

None of this should be surprising, but to belabor the point: DOGE has everything. It is well past time to stop nickel-and-diming the story.

There is a new lengthy investigation out from NPR today detailing how Elon Musk’s waste and government efficiency initiative has barreled into the National Labor Relations Department and exfiltrated mass amounts of sensitive data, taking great lengths to cover its tracks, and even threatening employees who speak out. Experts in cybersecurity likened the actions taken to those of a state-sponsored hacking group, questioning why a mandate to save money in government would require such cloak-and-dagger behavior—DOGE staffers demanded activity logging be disabled, and wiped anonymous user accounts on the way out.

The most salacious detail in the story regards Daniel Berulis, an IT employee who pieced together breadcrumbs left behind by DOGE and triggered a formal investigation of what appeared to be a serious, ongoing breach or potentially illegal removal of sensitive data:

In the days after Berulis and his colleagues prepared a request for CISA’s help investigating the breach, Berulis found a printed letter in an envelope taped to his door, which included threatening language, sensitive personal information and overhead pictures of him walking his dog, according to the cover letter attached to his official disclosure. It’s unclear who sent it, but the letter made specific reference to his decision to report the breach. Law enforcement is investigating the letter.

After DOGE left the building, Berulis began looking around to piece together what they had done and found very little. Upwards of 10 gigabytes of data was taken out. That data could include information on unions and ongoing legal cases, a particular concern since Musk’s empire of companies has repeatedly been the subject of labor lawsuits that he has deemed unconstitutional. But “logs that were used to monitor outbound traffic from the system were absent” and “some actions taken on the network, including data exfiltration, had no attribution — except to a ‘deleted account’.”

It was discovered during the investigation that one of DOGE’s engineers, Jordan Wick, had a repository on his GitHub called “NxGenBdoorExtract,” whose name suggests it could be a backdoor system to extract files from NxGen, the NLRB’s internal case management system. 

What is more, unknown users had granted themselves high-level access keys to access storage, and there was no way to access what they did with the permission. PowerShell downloads were visible on the systems, which allow engineers to run automated commands, and several code libraries “appeared to be designed to automate and mask data exfiltration.” There was even a tool to generate endless numbers of IP addresses, another way to mask where data was going. Controls were disabled that would prevent unauthorized devices, like smartphones, from logging onto the system without permission, and two-factor authentication was also turned off.

Where is all the data going? Who has access to it? Nobody knows.

It has been speculated that Musk may have an interest in learning about investigations into Tesla or X—or using data to train models for xAI.

But again, that is a more innocuous possibility. The more concerning potential is for Musk, who has for years been hell-bent on dismantling unions, could exploit newfound access to information on testimony, union leaders, and legal strategies. Maybe he will not use it, but the point is that there is no good reason for DOGE to be covertly exfiltrating data from the department with little to no accountability.

This new reporting should not be surprising, earlier this month, the IRS reportedly held a hackathon to build a “mega API” that would give DOGE easier access to taxpayer data, potentially through a partnership with Palantir. And Musk famously rifled through Twitter’s internal communications following his purchase of the company, firing anyone who spoke negatively about him. It is not unheard of that he might be tempted to snuff out Tesla or SpaceX whistleblowers and fire them under false pretenses.

Recent surveys have found that Americans overwhelmingly support unions, whose members on average make 10-20% more than nonunion workers. But that is precious money that Musk could be spending on his Mars mission. People get fired all the time for the lawful act of trying to form a union, and the public should understand that many NLRB protections are fairly toothless against big-pocketed. DOGE gaining access to sensitive information alone may be the point: Go to the authorities with your concerns and we will find you.

In unrelated news, Katy Perry and Jeff Bezos’ financé Lauren Sanchez went up to space on a Blue Origin rocket this week—a stunt that was looked at with some disdain as the rest of the world back down on Earth crumbles. At least some people understand that what happens here really is more pressing.