‘They’ve done their homework': The unexpected power of Musk’s digital assault on Washington

Elon Musk’s campaign to cut Washington’s bureaucracy is aiming at a very specific, very sensitive digital power center: the federal IT infrastructure. Musk and his allies have gained access to the Treasury Department’s payments systems, and they’ve commandeered enough control at the Office of Personnel Management to send a mass email offering federal employees early buyouts. Unnamed federal officials told The Washington Post that they’re now concerned about DOGE access to student loan data. The overall effect has been to turn once banal-seeming federal IT systems into an ideologically driven bulldozer for removing programs deemed—by, apparently, Musk—as either unnecessary or excessively “woke.”