The lead engineer for a government text-messaging service resigned Tuesday over a U.S. DOGE Service ally’s request for access to sensitive data, including personal identifying information, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Steven Reilly, the engineering lead for notify.gov, left the Technology Transformation Services arm of the General Services Administration after the branch’s new director, Thomas Shedd, sought administrative access to all components of the notify.gov site, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel issues. Shedd worked at Tesla for eight years and now runs the part of the GSA that hosts technologists who are deployed to provide access to a wide variety of government services, a unit he has called “Swiss army knives.”
He sought access last week to more than 20 government systems, according to a screenshot obtained by The Washington Post.
Notify.gov, one such system, says that it aims to provide secure and personalized messaging to facilitate public outreach from government agencies and that all federal agencies and programs are eligible to use it.
Reilly had been in charge of that system until Tuesday. He said he objected to Shedd’s ability to view phone numbers “and variable data for members of the public,” Reilly wrote, information he “would be able to download and store … without anybody else receiving a notification.”
He could also grant the same access to others, Reilly wrote.
“We have not received a justification for this request, which makes it difficult to suggest alternative approaches that would accomplish Thomas’s goals while still being protective of [personally identifying information] for members of the public,” Reilly wrote in a parting message to colleagues. “We have made clear to Thomas that this level of permission would allow access to PII. While we have suggested alternatives, such as read-only access, Thomas has continued to request full admin/root access.”
“I don’t believe that I can operate a program and system without the ability to manage access to PII. As a result, I have submitted my resignation to GSA. Today will be my last day,” Reilly continued.
Later Tuesday, the GSA’s acting press secretary, Will Powell, said Shedd “has not been given access to the Notify.gov system at this time.”
“As TTS Director and FAS Deputy Commissioner Thomas Shedd has the responsibility to understand, manage and execute the multiple programs and products within the Technology Transformation Services (TTS),” Powell said in a statement. “Access ensures a detailed understanding of how the systems work so areas for optimization and efficiencies can be quickly identified. Mr. Shedd is working with all appropriate GSA officials to ensure all established GSA protocols and policies are followed before he is granted access to a TTS system.”
Reilly is the latest person in government to resign over an Elon Musk ally’s request for access to information considered sensitive, amid growing concern over how that data might be used. The highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department resigned in late January after clashing with DOGE over access to payment systems. The Social Security Administration’s acting commissioner departed her post this weekend after a clash with DOGE over an attempt to access sensitive data. DOGE officials are seeking access to information at the Internal Revenue Service, as well.
The systems that GSA’s Shedd has sought access to cover a wide range of services — from login.gov, which allows users to access multiple government websites from a single account, to search.gov, a government-built search engine available to federal agencies, to cloud.gov, which facilitates cloud computing services for the federal government.
Shedd also sought access to the Federal Audit Clearinghouse, a repository of federal grant audits, and USA.gov, which provides information on federal programs and services. His requests for access to cloud.gov and login.gov were labeled “(read-only).”
In a Monday morning meeting, Thomas Shedd, the recently appointed Technology Transformation Services director and Elon Musk ally, told General Services Administration workers that the agency’s new administrator is pursuing an “AI-first strategy,” sources tell WIRED.
Throughout the meeting, Shedd shared his vision for a GSA that operates like a “startup software company,” automating different internal tasks and centralizing data from across the federal government.
The Monday meeting, held in-person and on Google Meet, comes days after WIRED reported that many of Musk’s associates have migrated to jobs at the highest levels of the GSA and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Prior to joining TTS, which is housed within the GSA, Shedd was a software engineer at Tesla, one of Musk’s companies. The transition has caused mass confusion amongst GSA staffers who have been thrown into surprise one-on-one meetings, forced to present their code—often to young engineers who did not identify themselves—and left wondering what the future of the agency’s tech task force will look like.
Shedd attempted to answer these questions on Monday, providing details on a number of projects the agency will pursue over the coming weeks and months. His particular focus, sources say, was an increased role for AI not just at GSA, but at agencies government-wide.
In what he described as an “AI-first strategy,” sources say, Shedd provided a handful of examples of projects GSA acting administrator Stephen Ehikian is looking to prioritize, including the development of “AI coding agents” that would be made available for all agencies. Shedd made it clear that he believes much of the work at TTS and the broader government, particularly around finance tasks, could be automated.
"This does raise red flags,” a cybersecurity expert who was granted anonymity due to concerns of retaliation told WIRED on Monday, who noted that automating the government isn’t the same as automating other things, like self-driving cars. “People, especially people who aren’t experts in the subject domain, coming into projects often think ‘this is dumb’ and then find out how hard the thing really is.”
Shedd instructed employees to think of TTS as a software startup that had become financially unstable. He suggested that the federal government needs a centralized data repository, and that he was actively working with others on a strategy to create one, although it wasn’t clear where this repository would be based or if these projects would comply with privacy laws. Shedd referred to these concerns as a “roadblock” and said that the agency should still push forward to see what was possible.
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Sources say that during the call Shedd tightly connected TTS and the United States Digital Services—rebranded as the United States DOGE Service, or DOGE, under Trump—as “pillars” of a new technological strategy. Later in the meeting, he said that there was no plan to merge the two groups and that projects would flow through them both depending on available staff and expertise, but continued emphasizing the upcoming collaboration between TTS and DOGE.
Employees, sources say, also asked questions about the young engineers, who had previously not been identifying themselves in meetings. Shedd said that one of them felt comfortable enough to introduce himself in meetings on Monday, sources say, though Shedd added that he was nervous about their names being publicly revealed and their lives upended.
Shedd was unable to answer many staff questions about the deferred resignations, the return to office mandate, or if the agency’s staff would face substantial cuts, according to sources. At one point, Shedd indicated that workforce cuts were likely for TTS, but declined to give more details. (Similar questions were also asked of Department of Government Efficiency leadership in a Friday meeting first reported by WIRED.)
Towards the end of the call, sources say, a TTS worker asked if they would be expected to work more than 40 hours per week, to deal with all of the upcoming work and potentially laid-off workers. Shedd responded that it was “unclear.”
Elon Musk’s takeover of federal government infrastructure is ongoing, and at the center of things is a coterie of engineers who are barely out of—and in at least one case, purportedly still in—college. Most have connections to Musk, and at least two have connections to Musk’s longtime associate Peter Thiel, a cofounder and chair of the analytics firm and government contractor Palantir who has long expressed opposition to democracy.
WIRED has identified six young men—all apparently between the ages of 19 and 24, according to public databases, their online presences, and other records—who have little to no government experience and are now playing critical roles in Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, tasked by executive order with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” The engineers all hold nebulous job titles within DOGE, and at least one appears to be working as a volunteer.
The engineers are Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran. None have responded to requests for comment from WIRED. Representatives from OPM, GSA, and DOGE did not respond to requests for comment.
The six men are one part of the broader project of Musk allies assuming key government positions. Already, Musk’s lackeys—including more senior staff from xAI, Tesla, and the Boring Company—have taken control of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and General Services Administration (GSA), and have gained access to the Treasury Department’s payment system, potentially allowing him access to a vast range of sensitive information about tens of millions of citizens, businesses, and more. On Sunday, CNN reported that DOGE personnel attempted to improperly access classified information and security systems at the US Agency for International Development and that top USAID security officials who thwarted the attempt were subsequently put on leave. The Associated Press reported that DOGE personnel had indeed accessed classified material.
“What we're seeing is unprecedented in that you have these actors who are not really public officials gaining access to the most sensitive data in government,” says Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. “We really have very little eyes on what's going on. Congress has no ability to really intervene and monitor what's happening because these aren't really accountable public officials. So this feels like a hostile takeover of the machinery of governments by the richest man in the world.”
Bobba has attended UC Berkeley, where he was in the prestigious Management, Entrepreneurship, and Technology program. According to a copy of his now-deleted LinkedIn obtained by WIRED, Bobba was an investment engineering intern at the Bridgewater Associates hedge fund as of last spring and was previously an intern at both Meta and Palantir. He was a featured guest on a since-deleted podcast with Aman Manazir, an engineer who interviews engineers about how they landed their dream jobs, where he talked about those experiences last June.
Coristine, as WIRED previously reported, appears to have recently graduated from high school and to have been enrolled at Northeastern University. According to a copy of his résumé obtained by WIRED, he spent three months at Neuralink, Musk’s brain-computer interface company, last summer.
Both Bobba and Coristine are listed in internal OPM records reviewed by WIRED as “experts” at OPM, reporting directly to Amanda Scales, its new chief of staff. Scales previously worked on talent for xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company, and as part of Uber’s talent acquisition team, per LinkedIn. Employees at GSA tell WIRED that Coristine has appeared on calls where workers were made to go over code they had written and justify their jobs. WIRED previously reported that Coristine was added to a call with GSA staff members using a nongovernment Gmail address. Employees were not given an explanation as to who he was or why he was on the calls.
Farritor, who per sources has a working GSA email address, is a former intern at SpaceX, Musk’s space company, and currently a Thiel Fellow after, according to his LinkedIn, dropping out of the University of Nebraska—Lincoln. While in school, he was part of an award-winning team that deciphered portions of an ancient Greek scroll.
Kliger, whose LinkedIn lists him as a special adviser to the director of OPM and who is listed in internal records reviewed by WIRED as a special adviser to the director for information technology, attended UC Berkeley until 2020; most recently, according to his LinkedIn, he worked for the AI company Databricks. His Substack includes a post titled “The Curious Case of Matt Gaetz: How the Deep State Destroys Its Enemies,” as well as another titled “Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense: The Warrior Washington Fears.”
Killian, also known as Cole Killian, has a working email associated with DOGE, where he is currently listed as a volunteer, according to internal records reviewed by WIRED. According to a copy of his now-deleted résumé obtained by WIRED, he attended McGill University through at least 2021 and graduated high school in 2019. An archived copy of his now-deleted personal website indicates that he worked as an engineer at Jump Trading, which specializes in algorithmic and high-frequency financial trades.
Shaotran told Business Insider in September that he was a senior at Harvard studying computer science and also the founder of an OpenAI-backed startup, Energize AI. Shaotran was the runner-up in a hackathon held by xAI, Musk’s AI company. In the Business Insider article, Shaotran says he received a $100,000 grant from OpenAI to build his scheduling assistant, Spark.
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“To the extent these individuals are exercising what would otherwise be relatively significant managerial control over two very large agencies that deal with very complex topics,” says Nick Bednar, a professor at University of Minnesota’s school of law, “it is very unlikely they have the expertise to understand either the law or the administrative needs that surround these agencies.”
Sources tell WIRED that Bobba, Coristine, Farritor, and Shaotran all currently have working GSA emails and A-suite level clearance at the GSA, which means that they work out of the agency’s top floor and have access to all physical spaces and IT systems, according a source with knowledge of the GSA’s clearance protocols. The source, who spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity because they fear retaliation, says they worry that the new teams could bypass the regular security clearance protocols to access the agency’s sensitive compartmented information facility, as the Trump administration has already granted temporary security clearances to unvetted people.
This is in addition to Coristine and Bobba being listed as “experts” working at OPM. Bednar says that while staff can be loaned out between agencies for special projects or to work on issues that might cross agency lines, it’s not exactly common practice.
“This is consistent with the pattern of a lot of tech executives who have taken certain roles of the administration,” says Bednar. “This raises concerns about regulatory capture and whether these individuals may have preferences that don’t serve the American public or the federal government.”
Additional reporting by Zoë Schiffer and Tim Marchman.
Engineers for Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, are working on new software that could assist mass firings of federal workers across government, sources tell WIRED.
The software, called AutoRIF, which stands for Automated Reduction in Force, was first developed by the Department of Defense more than two decades ago. Since then, it’s been updated several times and used by a variety of agencies to expedite reductions in workforce. Screenshots of internal databases reviewed by WIRED show that DOGE operatives have accessed AutoRIF and appear to be editing its code. There is a repository in the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) enterprise GitHub system titled “autorif” in a space created specifically for the director’s office—where Musk associates have taken charge—soon after Trump took office. Changes were made as recently as this weekend.
So far, federal agency firings have been conducted manually, with HR officials combing through employee registries and lists provided by managers, sources tell WIRED. Probationary employees—those who were recently hired, promoted, or otherwise changed roles—have been targeted first, as they lack certain civil service protections that would make them harder to fire. Thousands of workers have been terminated over the last few weeks across multiple agencies. With new software and the use of AI, some government employees fear that large-scale terminations could roll out even more quickly.
While DOGE could use AutoRIF as the DOD built it, multiple OPM sources speculated that the Musk-affiliated engineers could be building their own software on top of, or using code from, AutoRIF. In screenshots viewed by WIRED, Riccardo Biasini, a former engineer at Tesla and a director at The Boring Company, has seemingly been tasked with pruning AutoRIF on GitHub, with his name attached to the repository. “Remove obsolete versions of autorif,” one file description authored by a user with Biasini’s username on GitHub says.
Biasini has also been listed as the main point of contact for the government-wide email system created by the Trump administration from within OPM to solicit resignation emails from federal workers.
OPM did not immediately respond to requests for comment from WIRED.
Got a Tip? Are you a current or former government employee who wants to talk about what's happening? We'd like to hear from you. Using a nonwork phone or computer, contact the reporter securely on Signal at makenakelly.32. In order to conduct RIFs, government HR officials are required to create lists ranking employees who may be subject to firings. AutoRIF does that automatically, a former government HR official tells WIRED. “However, even with the use of any automated system, the OPM guidance says all data has to be confirmed manually and that employees (or their representative) are allowed to examine the registers.” It’s not immediately clear if AutoRIF’s capabilities have been altered either by the Defense Department or DOGE.
The revelation that DOGE is working on AutoRIF comes as it seemingly prepares for its second major round of firings. On Saturday evening, government workers received yet another email purportedly from OPM demanding that they reply detailing what they accomplished in the last week. Some agencies, like the FBI, asked that employees not respond to the message. In a meeting with HR officials on Monday, OPM told agencies they could ignore the email.
In these emails, government workers were asked to lay out five bullet points explaining their top work achievements of the last week. On Monday, NBC News reported that this information would be fed into an unspecified large language model that would assess whether an employee was necessary.
Before the first round of probationary firings, Centers for Disease Control managers were tasked with marking workers they deemed as “mission critical” and then sending a list of them up the chain of command ahead of firings, a CDC source tells WIRED.
“CDC went through a very, very deliberate effort to characterize our probationary employees as mission critical or not, and that way we could keep those that would have real impacts to the mission should they get terminated,” they say. “None of that was taken into account. They just sent us a list and said, ‘Terminate these employees effective immediately.’”
