An elderly American lawmaker says Elon Musk’s representatives were given “full access” to a US Treasury payment system used to distribute trillions of dollars to Americans each year, and warned that Musk’s access to the system represents a “national security risk”.
Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democratic senator from Oregon and a member of the Senate Finance Committee, said in a post in Bluesky on Saturday that sources told his Treasury Secretary of the Scott Bessent office gave to Musk’s team, known as the department of government efficiency, or Doge, authorization to enter the very sensitive treasury system on Friday. Authorization comes after an earlier blockage during the week, in which the top treasure official left the department after the musk team for access to the system.
“The benefits of social and medical security, grants, payment to government contractors, including those that directly compete with their Musk companies. All this, ”Wyden wrote in the post, referring to Doge’s approach.
The New York Times also reported that Bessent gave DOGE access to the Treasury payment system on Friday. One of the Access Doge representatives is said to be Tom Krause, chief executive of the Cloud Software Group, who owns Citrix and several other companies. Krause did not return Techcrunch’s request for comment. A Treasure spokesman did not comment when by email on Saturday.
This is the last attempt by Musk and his associates to take over the internal work of the US Federal Government after President Trump’s return to office on January 20th. After his inauguration, Trump immediately ordered Musk to begin making wide cuts for the expenses of the federal government.
The System of Treasury Fiscal Service Bureau controls the disbursements of about 6 trillion dollars in federal funds for US families, including the benefits of social and medical insurance, tax refunds and payments for US federal employees and contractors, according to a letter written by Wyden and sent Bessent the day before. Access to the payment system was historically limited to some staff because it contains personal information for millions of Americans receiving payments from the federal government by time.
According to Wyden’s letter, the payment system “simply cannot fail, and any politically motivated interference in them risks serious damage to our country and the economy.”
In his letter, Wyden said he was concerned that extensive musk business operations in China “endanger US Internet security” and creates conflicts that “make his approach to these systems a national security risk” .
Last year, the Biden administration blamed China for a series of interventions aimed at US critical infrastructure, theft of old US officials’ phone registers during violations of some telephone and internet giants in the US, and a violation of treasury systems in end of last year. Wyden, also a member of the long service committee of the Senate, said it was “unusual to access sensitive systems for an individual of such important business interest in China”.
Some other federal departments are under control by DOGE, including the Federal Government Department of Human Resources, known as the Personnel Management Office.
Reuters reported on Friday that Musk’s representatives blocked civil servants in their computer systems, which contain personal data and human resources files of millions of federal employees. The OPM was hacked in 2015, which the US government later attributed to China, resulting in the theft of personnel registers in more than 22 million US government employees, including staff with security permits.
