IT experts: MAGA risking 'fatal compromise' and 'largest data breach' in US history

07 February

In their quest to purge the United States' federal government of employees they consider part of "the deep state," MAGA Republicans and allies of the Trump Administration are demanding access to sensitive data — including data systems at the U.S. Treasury Department, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and other agencies.

Charlie Warzel and Ian Bogost, both reporters for The Atlantic, discuss this access with several IT experts in an article published on February 7. And some of them warned that giving the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed by Tesla/SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, access to these data systems poses a national security threat.

"This week," Warzel and Bogost explain, "we spoke with four federal-government IT professionals — all experienced contractors and civil servants who have built, modified, or maintained the kind of technological infrastructure that Musk's inexperienced employees at his newly created Department of Government Efficiency are attempting to access. In our conversations, each expert was unequivocal: They are terrified and struggling to articulate the scale of the crisis."

According to Warzel and Bogost, the IT experts interviewed by The Atlantic fear a "dangerous breach of the complex systems that keep America running."

A contractor who has worked on "classified information-security systems at numerous government agencies," Warzel and Bogost report, told The Atlantic, "This is the largest data breach and the largest IT security breach in our country's history — at least that's publicly known. You can't un-ring this bell. Once these DOGE guys have access to these data systems, they can ostensibly do with it what they want."

Most of the IT professionals The Atlantic interviewed requested anonymity, including a federal agency administrator who warned, "I don’t think the public quite understands the level of danger."

Scott Cory, former chief information officer for the Administration for Community Living with the HHS, told The Atlantic, "The longer this goes on, the greater the risk of potential fatal compromise increases."

Read The Atlantic's full report at this link (subscription required).

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