He reportedly called senior OPM developers "idiots."
Screaming Fit
As 20-something operatives — at least one with only a high school degree — continue to plunder the federal government on behalf of billionaire Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), tempers are flying high.
As the Washington Post reports, in one particularly eyebrow-raising incident a young DOGE staffer reporedly threw an explosive screaming tantrum, calling senior Office of Personnel Management developers "idiots," as one official told the newspaper.
The outburst echoes Musk's infamously abrasive and often abusive management style, highlighting commonalities between the billionaire and his astonishingly unqualified minions, who range between the ages of 19 and 25, and include interns at his companies and a young man who goes by the moniker "Big Balls" (it's unclear which of these whippersnappers had the hissy fit reported by WaPo.)
Calling for Daddy
Experts have warned that the youths' activities — reportedly including installing backdoors and making unproven changes to government agencies' software systems — could make the US government vulnerable to hacking by foreign adversaries.
"It’s like you’re defending some medieval castle and someone comes in and starts firing all the archers who are positioned to defend it," a former US intelligence official told WaPo. "You let your defenses down. It’s a perfect time to strike."
Exactly how far DOGE has gotten in accessing extremely sensitive information — actions deemed by many as outright illegal — remains to be seen. Staffers have been extremely secretive about the department's operations.
Trump has also cleared their way, issuing an executive order that allows DOGE to ignore existing security clearance requirements.
Staffers working on Musk's behalf to slash the federal government's budget have infiltrated a growing list of government agencies, including the US Treasury, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Medicare and Medicaid, and USAID — not to mention the Office of Personnel Management, where the screaming tantrum took place.
Existing government employees have been shocked by the scope of the data the staffers have been able to access without much opposition.
"It’s highly likely they’re improperly accessing, transferring and storing highly sensitive data outside of the environments it was intended to be contained within," British cybersecurity expert and hacker Marcus Hutchins, who rose to fame for fighting off a WannaCry ransomware attack in 2017, told WaPo.
"If I were a nation like China, Russia or Iran, I’d be having a field day with a bunch of college kids running around with sensitive federal government data on unencrypted hard drives," he added.
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