'There’s going to be an incident': Fired federal worker warns DOGE is risking security

26 February

Elon Musk attends the first cabinet meeting hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump, in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 26, 2025.

One of the federal workers who lost his job as a result of South African centibillionaire Elon Musk's slashing of agency budgets at the behest of President Donald Trump is warning that many Americans' most private information is at risk of being mishandled.

During a Wednesday interview on CNN, Jonathan Kamens – who oversaw cybersecurity efforts in the benefit portal for the Department of Veterans' Affairs (VA) – spoke out about what he viewed as an "inevitable" security breach. He said Musk's "Department of Government Efficiency," or DOGE (which is not an official federal agency authorized by Congress) was putting Americans in jeopardy by including critical government workers in its mass firings.

"In the time that i was at VA, what I saw was a bunch of dedicated employees trying to do their best to maintain VA.gov and keep it online and secure. But they were overworked. There just weren't enough people to do all the work," Kamens said. "And now with me being gone and other people being gone because DOGE has fired them or fired them by proxy through VA, there's even fewer people to do the work. And it's inevitable when you don't have enough people to maintain the cybersecurity of VA.gov or any other website, it's going to deteriorate and eventually there's going to be an incident."

Kamens was hired roughly a year ago by the U.S. Digital Service (which the Trump administration has since rebranded as the "U.S. DOGE Service") in order to help improve online services for agencies like the VA. He said that information that is now at risk includes "the most private information you can imagine about a person," which the VA had collected to provide veterans with all the benefits they're entitled to.

"We're talking about people's private medical records. We're talking about their therapy notes. We're talking about the conditions that they're being treated for. We're talking about the prescriptions they're taking. We're talking about diagnoses like addiction or PTSD," he said. "We're also talking about financial records, their bank account information, their Social Security numbers, their names, addresses, phone numbers, relatives ... if that information is not kept secure, then the veterans who belong to that information belongs to are put at risk."

Little is currently known about the inner workings of DOGE. While Musk initially announced he would be leading the initiative, the Trump administration has insisted both to the media and in court filings that Musk is not the administrator. On Tuesday, U.S. Digital Services senior advisor Amy Gleason was named acting DOGE administrator, though the New York Times reported that she was on vacation in Mexico at the time of the announcement and was not aware that she would be given the role. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that Musk was still "overseeing" DOGE despite not being at the top of its org chart.

Watch Kamens' segment below, or by clicking this link.

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