Employees of Elon Musk have made their way inside the highest echelons of several influential government agencies. And in new audio allegedly obtained from a recent meeting, one Musk associate is heard calling on colleagues to forge ahead with a plan one employee described as "illegal."
404 Media reported Tuesday that Musk's employees — who have seized control of operations within the U.S. Treasury, the Office of Personnel Management (which houses the federal government's human resources functions) and the General Services Administration (GSA), which is the agency responsible for the construction, oversight and maintenance of all federal buildings — are now planning to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) throughout federal agencies.
Tesla engineer Thomas Shedd, who now leads the GSA's Technology Transformation Services (TTS), said during a recent meeting that he hoped to transform the login.gov website federal employees use for work to more easily incorporate with the Social Security Administration "to further identify individuals and detect and prevent fraud." He specifically mentioned wanting to train AI on government contracts.
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“We want to start implementing more AI at the agency level and be an example for how other agencies can start leveraging AI ... that’s one example of something that we’re looking for people to work on,” Shedd said during the meeting, according to 404. “Things like making AI coding agents available for all agencies. One that we've been looking at and trying to work on immediately within GSA, but also more broadly, is a centralized place to put contracts so we can run analysis on those contracts.”
Musk employees training AI on analyzing contracts would be a significant conflict of interest for Musk, as his companies currently make billions of dollars from contracts with the federal government. The Los Angeles Times reported in November that since SpaceX was founded in 2002, it has received approximately $21 billion in federal contracts.
According to audio of the meeting obtained by 404 Media, one employee during that meeting said that aggregating data with login.gov would be an "illegal task," as the Privacy Act "forbids agencies [from] sharing personal information without consent." But Shedd reportedly shrugged off those concerns and said workers with 18F (a TTS team that writes software for federal agencies) should carry on with the original plan unless they hit a "roadblock."
"The idea would be that folks would give consent to help with the login flow,” Shedd said. “But again, that's an example of something that we have a vision, that needs worked on, and needs clarified. And if we hit a roadblock, then we hit a roadblock. But we still should push forward and see what we can do.”
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One of 404's sources told the outlet that "the reaction of the team, the whole group of 18F and TTS is pretty unanimously negative" in response to Shedd's remarks. They also expressed fear that 18F would be gutted and replaced by a team of software engineers who would report to Musk, rather than the GSA.
"The administration views TTS and 18F as a pool of talent that it will draw from, that it will poach from," the source said. "And it will take the people from TTS that it wants, and then most of the organization will wither away."
An FAQ posted to login.gov suggests that attempts to aggregate Social Security data is fluid. The site warns users to "not send Login.gov sensitive data about yourself or identifying numbers."
Click here to read 404's full report.
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