The White House’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), overseen by billionaire Elon Musk, has reportedly fed sensitive data from the Education Department into artificial intelligence software – leading numerous Democratic lawmakers to raise the warning flag if those reports turn out to be true.
According to reporting by the Washington Post, the DOGE team is using AI software accessed through Microsoft’s cloud computing service Azure to analyze the department’s finances. DOGE’s AI usage allegedly includes data with personally identifiable information for people who manage grants, as well as sensitive internal financial data.
The use of AI within Federal agencies is not new. However, feeding sensitive data into AI software – especially commercial AI software – increases the chances that it will be leaked or fall victim to a cyberattack.
Several Democratic lawmakers raised concerns over the past week regarding DOGE’s access to this sensitive data, as well as the use of AI to sort through the data.
“Since Trump handed Musk the keys to our government, Musk and his Lost Boys have reportedly set up private servers to download sensitive government data, exposed government employees’ emails to phishing and hacking scams, rifled through Americans’ social security and Medicare information, and fed Americans’ data to unsanctioned AI software,” Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., ranking member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, told MeriTalk in a statement.
“For someone who likes to present himself as a tech genius, Elon Musk is making Americans less safe, and these unthinkable mistakes have the potential to create the biggest cybersecurity disaster in human history,” Rep. Connolly added.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and 13 of their colleagues sent a letter on Feb. 6 to Acting Education Secretary Denise Carter to launch a probe into recent reports that DOGE staffers have access to Federal student loan data.
The letter was also signed by Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J., Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Jack Reed, D-R.I., Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., Alex Padilla, D-Calif., Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, Tina Smith, D-Minn., Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore.
“This deeply troubling report raises questions about potential exposures of Americans’ private data, the abuse of this data by the Trump Administration, and whether officials who have access to the data may have violated the law or the Federal government’s procedures for handling sensitive information,” the senators wrote.
Nevertheless, Madi Biedermann, a spokesperson for the Education Department, told MeriTalk that “there is nothing inappropriate or nefarious going on.”
“The DOGE employees are Federal employees. They have been sworn in, have the necessary background checks and clearances, and are focused on making the Department more cost-efficient, effective, and accountable to the taxpayers,” Biedermann said in a statement.
According to the Washington Post article, the DOGE team plans to use AI to sift through information about spending on employees and programs across many departments and agencies.
