DOGE’s ‘Nerd Army’ Is Breaking the Government by Threatening to Snitch to Elon
Every regime’s enforcement mechanisms rely on threats and politicized intimidation. In the case of Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s ongoing power grab, it’s involved young staffers with Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) barging into different federal agencies, departments, and institutes, demanding that security officials and other senior staff give them access to whatever they want.
When security officials, for instance, at several departments and agencies have responded that they need to check to ensure these young Musk allies have proper clearance to view sensitive databases, DOGE staff have routinely erupted in fury. Some have told these security officials that if they don’t give them what they want immediately, they’ll call Musk’s cellphone and give him the officials’ names — and have the richest man in the world call and yell at them, or get them reprimanded or fired.
“Do I need to call Elon?” one DOGE member barked at a federal security official while demanding access to sensitive information at one agency this month, a source familiar with the exchange tells Rolling Stone.
This has happened repeatedly since the dawn of the second Trump administration — at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Treasury Department, at the Office of Personnel Management, and elsewhere. It has become a cruel punchline within the federal bureaucracy, four sources familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone, that “some child” from the DOGE team “will threaten to call Elon Musk, if you don’t do what the child wants,” as one federal career official describes it.
So far, it’s working: The DOGE teens — no matter how ridiculous their backstories or racist their posts — have swiftly been granted sweeping access to sensitive data and systems, including the Treasury systems that handle trillions of dollars in payments, longstanding federal laws be damned.
A DOGE spokesperson did not respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment.
USAID, America’s foreign aid bureau, is being shuttered and folded into the State Department, and the vast majority of the agency’s workers have been axed. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s work has been paused, and many of its employees were terminated via form letter. There have also been mass firings at the Department of Education, the Small Business Administration, and the General Services Administration.
The Trump administration managed to seize $80 million in congressionally appropriated funds — right out of New York City bank accounts — that were meant to help the city house asylum-seekers, after Musk falsely claimed that DOGE had “discovered” that disaster relief funds were “being spent on high-end hotels for illegals.”
Such a move, known as “impoundment,” is one of several ways that DOGE’s efforts have effectively upended the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution does not empower the president to impound, freeze, or refuse to spend funds appropriated by Congress, though Trump actively campaigned on doing so. It appears that the Trump administration has also failed to comply with a judicial decision regarding its effort to freeze funds, with Trump instead threatening to “look at” judges ruling against him.
Trump has publicly backed Musk and DOGE’s efforts both rhetorically and with executive orders, depicting their work as necessary to root out fraud, waste, and abuse, despite them uncovering nothing of the sort. So far, DOGE has primarily highlighted publicly available information about contracts, grants, and spending that Trump and Musk disagree with on an ideological basis. (Somehow, even amid Trump’s war on electric vehicles, DOGE didn’t bother flag the $400 million the State Department planned to spend on “armored Teslas” from Musk’s EV company; that was only put “on hold” after it became a national news story.)
Of course, identifying wasteful spending isn’t the point: DOGE appears to be working mostly toward reducing essential government services, eliminating regulators and consumer protections, and slashing the federal workforce until it’s deeply MAGA, so that the government exclusively serves the interests of the wealthy and Trump.
On that front, the DOGE blitz has been a success. None of it would be possible without direct access to the most sensitive inner workings of agencies across the federal government.
Even at the Pentagon, according to two sources with knowledge of the situation, there have been times recently when career Department of Defense staff have received probing questions — including about foreign and domestic defense systems, or certain defense contracts — from DOGE representatives, leading Pentagon staffers to wonder to one another: How does DOGE even know that?
How DOGE knows anything, at all, is based on an explicit threat system: Comply immediately, or the so-called “DOGE kids” will pick up the phone to call their unelected billionaire boss — not President Trump, not a member of the Cabinet or a senior White House official — and snitch.
“It was so fucking stupid,” says another federal official, who was on the receiving end of the “Karen”-style DOGE threats about calling the cops — in this case, Elon Musk. “I can’t believe this is how they’re blowing up the Constitution, with this little nerd army … God help us. What else can I say?”
More from Rolling Stone
Best of Rolling Stone
Sign up for RollingStone's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.