Elon Musk’s gang of young, inexperienced Muskovites continue their unbridled rampage of federal agencies. CNN is reporting that one of these Musk lackeys, 23-year-old college dropout Luke Farritor, has been given access to the Department of Energy’s IT systems — including systems for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Farritor’s qualification for accessing these systems seems to be that he was once an intern for Musk’s SpaceX company. His access to these systems is causing grave concern among many DOE officials.
(Energy Secretary Chris) Wright granted access to DOGE representative Luke Farritor — a 23-year-old former SpaceX intern — even over objections from members of the department’s general counsel and chief information offices, the people told CNN. The DOE chief information office is the department’s IT and cybersecurity office.
Members of the general counsel and chief information offices “said this is a bad idea” because Farritor hadn’t had a standard background investigation needed to access the department’s system, one of the people told CNN. “He’s not cleared to be in DOE, on our systems. None of those things have been done.”
While the department’s chief information office does not control IT systems for nuclear weapons labs, it does provide connectivity and internet services for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) headquarters. That in and of itself should be concerning to all of us.
Also troubling is that sources have revealed that there are plans to install a SpaceX network security engineer as the Energy Department’s new chief information officer. This move, if confirmed, would further solidify Musk’s influence in key government sectors, particularly in cybersecurity.
Giving Musk control over federal government cybersecurity efforts should freak out everyone.
According to WIRED magazine, Farritor dropped out of the University of Nebraska—Lincoln last year and was named a Thiel Fellow — a fellowship program run by wingnut Trump supporter Peter Thiel. The fellowships are for “brilliant young minds who are set to disrupt various industries.”
Mark my words. It’s only a matter of time before one of these unvetted, inexperienced Musk coup co-conspirators does something truly horrific as they mess around with our nation’s most sensitive data and systems. Let’s continue to shine a light on what they’re doing and demand that our elected officials provide transparency and accountability for DOGE’s activities — before it’s too late.
UPDATE
I want to add that while it’s troubling enough that Farritor has access to the EPA information that he does so far, he apparently does not have access to nuclear codes (thank goodness) — although he does apparently have access to sensitive information of the NNSA that many EPA officials find concerning. So I just want to be clear about that (HT to Diamondman on that).
As far ask I can tell, Farritor has access to all of the systems of the NNSA, which (per its website) “protects our nation by designing and delivering a safe, secure, reliable, and effective U.S. nuclear stockpile; forging solutions that enable global security and stability through nonproliferation, counterproliferation, and emergency response; providing nuclear propulsion to power a global U.S. Navy; and leveraging transformative technologies to address emerging challenges.” So this does not include nuclear codes or nuclear weapons designs, but it’s still pretty critical and sensitive stuff imho. Nuclear security is no joke.
