'Another ethics conflict': Musk directs candidates to apply to DOGE via X

Billionaire Elon Musk is directing candidates interested in working in his new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to submit their résumés through his social media platform X, apparently granting himself and X access to what he describes as “super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.”

Government regulations ordinarily require official communications to be conducted and saved on government servers (remember Hillary Clinton’s private email server). It’s unclear how that would happen under this scenario or why Musk’s and Vivek Ramaswamy’s new department wouldn’t have a government email address and website.

Musk also states that the positions are unpaid.

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"Indeed, this will be tedious work, make lots of enemies & compensation is zero. What a great deal!"

As some have pointed out, for users to contact Musk’s DOGE account via direct message, as his post directs, and to send their résumés, they must have a “verified” account—which costs money.

"As usual, its another ethics conflict for Elon Musk because you can only DM and apply for the position if you become verified on X. You can only become verified by paying X. Quite efficient use of ethics and scams, isn't it? No other avenue to apply," observed Dr. David Weber, whose bio says he "teaches forensic accounting and fraud examination each semester at the Perdue School of Business."

The MeidasTouch Network adds that the DOGE "account has been given a grey checkmark, verifying it as an official government account. It also only accepts resumes be DM's, which are solely open to verified X users who pay Elon Musk. This level of corruption is staggering."

At Slate, Nitish Pahwa also points out that it appears the Department of Government Efficiency is not an actual federal government agency, which ordinarily would require congressional approval and funding.

Pahwa writes, "there’s little clarity on just what this federal 'partnership' will formally resemble, how the DOGE entity itself will operate (nonprofit? Obnoxious account on X? Private corporation? Federal advisory committee? Dogecoin-branded merch table? Mirror of an already extant OMB office? Blockchain ledger?), and how the powers Musk and Ramaswamy think they’ll have square with what they’ll actually have."

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This situation has led some to question why, if DOGE is not a government agency, X has granted it a gray checkmark. X says gray checkmarks are for “government or multilateral” organizations.

The high tech and startup news site TechCrunch last month reported X had "updated its Privacy Policy to indicate that it would allow third-party 'collaborators' to train their AI models on X data, unless users opt out. While X owner Elon Musk trained xAI’s Grok AI chatbot on X user data, leading to an investigation by the EU’s lead privacy regulator, the company hadn’t yet amended its policy to indicate its data may also be used by third parties."

"The addition to the policy implies that X, like Reddit and variousmedia organizations, is looking into licensing data to AI companies as a potential new revenue stream."

The Washington Post's Catherine Rampell remarked, "New resume audit study just dropped."

Responding to Musk's post Professor of Law Richard Painter, the well-known former Bush White House chief ethics lawyer asked, "Does DOGE need an ethics lawyer?"

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