Centibillionaire Elon Musk’s takeover of the previous US Digital Service—now the USA DOGE Service—has been broadly publicized and sanctioned by one among President Donald Trump’s many government orders. However WIRED reporting exhibits that Musk’s affect extends even additional, and into an much more consequential authorities company.
Sources throughout the federal authorities inform WIRED that the best ranks of the Workplace of Personnel Administration (OPM)—basically the human assets perform for the complete federal authorities—at the moment are managed by individuals with connections to Musk and to the tech trade. Amongst them is an individual who, in line with a web-based résumé, was set to start out faculty final fall.
Scott Kupor, a managing associate on the highly effective funding agency Andreessen Horowitz, stands as Trump’s nominee to run the OPM. However already in place, in line with sources, are a wide range of individuals who appear prepared to hold out Musk’s mission of slicing employees and disrupting the federal government.
Amanda Scales is, as has been reported, the brand new chief of employees on the OPM. She previously labored in expertise for xAI, Musk’s synthetic intelligence firm, in line with her LinkedIn. Earlier than that, she was a part of the expertise and operations group at Human Capital, a enterprise agency with investments within the protection tech startup Anduril and the political betting platform Kalshi; earlier than that, she labored for years at Uber. Her placement on this key position, specialists imagine, appears a part of a broader sample of the historically apolitical OPM being transformed to make use of as a political device.
“I do not assume it is alarmist to say there’s a way more subtle plan to observe and implement loyalty than there was within the first time period,” says Don Moynihan, a professor of public coverage on the College of Michigan.
Acquired a Tip?
Are you a present or former worker with the Workplace of Personnel Administration or one other authorities company impacted by Elon Musk? We’d like to listen to from you. Utilizing a nonwork cellphone or pc, contact Vittoria Elliott at vittoria_elliott@wired.com or securely at velliott88.18 on Sign.
Sources say that Riccardo Biasini, previously an engineer at Tesla and most just lately director of operations for the Las Vegas Loop on the Boring Firm, Musk’s tunnel-building operation, can be on the OPM as a senior adviser to the director. (Steve Davis, the CEO of the Boring Firm, is rumored to be advising Musk on cuts to be made by way of DOGE and was integral in Musk’s gutting of Twitter, now X, after his takeover of the corporate in 2022.)
In keeping with the identical sources, different individuals on the high of the brand new OPM meals chain embody two individuals with obvious software program engineering backgrounds, whom WIRED isn’t naming due to their ages. One, a senior adviser to the director, is a 21-year-old whose on-line résumé touts his work for Palantir, the federal government contractor and analytics agency cofounded by billionaire Peter Thiel, who’s its chair. (The previous CEO of PayPal and a longtime Musk affiliate, Thiel is a Trump supporter who helped bankroll the 2022 Senate marketing campaign of his protégé, Vice President JD Vance.) The opposite, who studies on to Scales, graduated from highschool in 2024, in line with a mirrored copy of a web-based résumé and his highschool’s pupil journal; he lists jobs as a camp counselor and a bicycle mechanic amongst his skilled experiences, in addition to a summer season position at Neuralink, Musk’s brain-computer interface firm.
Among the many new highers-up on the OPM is Noah Peters, an lawyer whose LinkedIn boasts of his work in litigation representing the Nationwide Rifle Affiliation and who has written for right-wing shops just like the Day by day Caller and the Federalist; he’s additionally now a senior adviser to the director. In keeping with metadata related to a file on the OPM web site, Peters authored a January 27 memo that went out beneath performing OPM director Charles Ezell’s title describing how the division can be implementing one among Trump’s government orders, “Restoring Accountability to Coverage-Influencing Positions Throughout the Federal Workforce.” This has to do with what’s generally generally known as Schedule F—a plan to recategorize many civil service jobs as political appointees, that means they’d be tied to the precise agenda of an administration slightly than seen as profession authorities staff. The order would basically enable for sure profession civil servants to be eliminated in favor of Trump loyalists by classifying them as political appointees, a key a part of the Challenge 2025 plan for remaking the federal government.
