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Its broad mandate across government, seemingly nonexistent oversight, and the apparent lack of operational competence of its employees have demonstrated that DOGE could create conditions that are ideal for cybersecurity or data privacy incidents that affect the entire nation.

These include systems that process all federal payments, including Social Security, Medicare and the congressionally appropriated funds that run the government and its contracting operations.

In the Jan. 29 fatal crash between a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter and American Airlines passenger jet, which is still under investigation, one controller was handing both commercial airline and helicopter traffic at the busy airport.

The employees were fired “without cause nor based on performance or conduct,” Spero said, and the emails were “from an ‘exec order’ Microsoft email address” — not a government email address. A copy of the termination email that was provided to the AP shows the sending address “ASK_AHR_EXEC_Orders@usfaa.mail.outlook.com.”

He added, “When DOGE fired me, they turned off my computer and wiped all of my files without warning.”

Among the most significant changes include dissolving the Foreign Malign Influence Center, National Counterproliferation and Biosecurity Center, and Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center with their functions folded into ODNI's Mission Integration directorate and the National Intelligence Council.

The National Counterterrorism Center, under newly confirmed director Joe Kent,

laid-off employees also include staffers who worked for CISA’s Cyber Incident Response Team (CIRT), which is responsible for penetration testing and vulnerability management of networks belonging to U.S. federal government departments and agencies

This is by our count the third known round of job cuts to affect CISA employees since January 20. More than 130 CISA employees were cut by DOGE earlier in February,

OGE’s unprecedented access to the most sensitive information about tens of millions of people across the country has resulted in at least 16 lawsuits that allege violations of six privacy protections — the most common being the Privacy Act of 1974 — across eight federal agencies.

DOGE has given conflicting information about what data it has accessed, who has that access, and most importantly — why.

In one order last week blocking DOGE's access to Social Security data, U.S. District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander of Maryland said the government "never identified or articulated even a single reason for which the DOGE Team needs unlimited access to SSA's entire record systems, thereby exposing personal, confidential, sensitive, and private information that millions of Americans entrusted to their government."

On Monday, a federal judge in Maryland temporarily halted DOGE from accessing data of millions of union members in a lawsuit against the Office of Personnel Management, the Treasury Department and Education Department after finding the agencies shared private information with DOGE affiliates "who had no need to know the vast amount of sensitive personal information to which they were granted access."

In the Social Security Administration lawsuit, Hollander found several DOGE staffers "were granted access to SSA systems before their background checks were completed or their inter-agency detail agreements were finalized." One of those is Bobba, who was given access to the master data warehouse at SSA that includes the Master Beneficiary Record, Supplemental Security Record and Numident files containing "extensive information about anyone with a social security number," according to filings in the case.

Not even lawyers for the government can account for when and how DOGE staffers received access to sensitive databases. In a Labor Department lawsuit, Judge John D. Bates notes that "defendants themselves acknowledge inconsistencies across their evidence" regarding DOGE

sent an email with a spreadsheet containing PII to two United States General Services Administration officials," according to an audit of his email account submitted in one court filing.

"a real possibility exists that sensitive information has already been shared outside of the Treasury Department, in potential violation of federal law."

Officials were given hours to fire hundreds of employees, and workers were shut out of email as termination notices arrived. The terminations were part of a broader group of dismissals at the Department of Energy, where reportedly more than a thousand federal workers were terminated.

civilian agency that conducts a wide variety of nuclear security missions, including servicing the nation's nuclear weapons when they're not on missiles and bombers, and making extensive safety and security upgrades of the warheads.

Some workers were responsible for making sure emergency response plans were in place at sites like a giant facility in Texas, where thousands of dismantled warheads are stored. Others worked to prevent terrorists and rogue nations from acquiring weapons-grade plutonium or uranium. Many had "Q" clearances, the highest level security clearance at the Department of Energy.

In the final days leading up to the firings, managers drew up lists of essential workers and pleaded to keep them.

Multiple current and former employees at the agency told NPR that scores of people were notified verbally they were fired. Many had to clear out their desks on the spot. "It broke my heart," says one employee who was among those who left the agency's Washington, D.C., headquarters.

The NNSA termination letter did not appear to make any specific reference to the highly-classified nuclear mission conducted by the agency.

But others at the agency who were told they were terminated never received written notification.

Nuclear security is highly specialized, high-pressure work, but it's not particularly well paid, one employee told NPR. Given what's unfolded over the past 24 hours, "why would anybody want to take these jobs?" they asked.

Despite having the words "National" and "Security" in its title, it was not getting an exemption for national security, managers at the agency were told last Friday, according to an employee at NNSA

Just days before, officials in leadership had scrambled to write descriptions for the roughly 300 probationary employees at the agency who had joined the federal workforce less than two years ago.

Managers were given just 200 characters to explain why the jobs these workers did mattered.

"Per OPM [Office of Personnel Management] instructions, DOE finds that your further employment would not be in the public interest,"

two independent sources tell NPR

Luke Farritor, a 23-year-old former SpaceX intern, and Adam Ramada, a Miami-based venture capitalist, have had accounts on the computer systems for at least two weeks

these NNSA systems.

departed DOE in February

They were able to directly see Ramada and Farritor's names in the directories of the networks. The network directories are visible to thousands of employees involved in nuclear weapons work at facilities and laboratories throughout the U.S., but the networks themselves can only be accessed on specific terminals in secure rooms designated for the handling of classified information.

In February, CNN reported that DOGE employees, including Farritor, were seeking access to the secretive computer systems. At the time, Energy Secretary Chris Wright denied that they would be allowed on the networks.

first network, known as the NNSA Enterprise Secure Network, is used to transmit detailed "restricted data" about America's nuclear weapons designs and the special nuclear materials used in the weapons, among other things. The network is used to transfer this extremely sensitive technical information between the NNSA, the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories and the production facilities that store, maintain and upgrade the nation's nuclear arsenal.

Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet), is used by the Department of Defense to communicate with the Department of Energy about nuclear weapons. SIPRNet is also used more broadly for sharing information classified at the secret level, information that "could potentially damage or harm national security if it were to get out," explained a former career civil servant at the Department of Defense

remains unclear just how much access to classified data the two DOGE staffers actually have.

DOGE officials on DOE's classified systems would represent an escalation in DOGE's recent privileges inside the agency, but those accounts would not give them carte blanche access to all files hosted on those systems.

Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, which tracks America's nuclear program.

In a second statement later Monday evening, the spokesperson clarified that the accounts had been created but said they were never used by the DOGE staffers. "DOE is able to confirm that these accounts in question were never activated and have never been accessed," the email statement read.

Although large portions of the nuclear weapons budget are ultimately unclassified, a lot of classified details likely go into setting those numbers. "I don't think any of that would be open," he says.

information will go into an LLM (Large Language Model), an advanced AI system that looks at huge amounts of text data to understand, generate, and process human language, the sources said. The AI system will determine whether someone’s work is mission-critical or not

reason the email requested no links or attachments was because of the plan to send the information to the AI system, the sources said.

Washington Post reported in February that DOGE was using artificial intelligence to analyze spending at the Education Department, citing two people familiar with the project.