Social Security Chief Quits as Musk Infiltrates Sensitive Data Systems
A veteran Social Security Administration official resigned after a dispute with Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) attempts to access the personal data of Social Security recipients.
Acting Social Security Commissioner Michelle King stepped down from her post this weekend after refusing to provide representatives from DOGE access to systems containing sensitive recipient data. King’s departure is the latest in a string of high-profile disputes between Musk’s team and long-term civil servants over the DOGE’s access to critical government financial systems.
Following King’s departure, President Donald Trump appointed Leland Dudek of the Social Security anti-fraud office to serve as interim commissioner as Trump’s nominee to lead the agency, Frank Bisignano, remains in the throws of his Senate confirmation process. Dudek was selected as King’s replacement after posting positively about DOGE’s work on social media, and despite dozens of other executives outranking him, per The Washington Post.
Musk and the White House began targeting the Social Security Administration last week, alleging that millions of dead people were receiving fraudulent payments from the government. During a White House press conference, Musk claimed that DOGE’s “cursory” review of Social Security data found “people in there that are 150 years old.”
“Now, do you know anyone who’s 150?” Musk asked. “I don’t, OK. They should be in the Guinness Book of World Records. I think they’re probably dead, is my guess, or they should be very famous, one of the two.”
On Sunday, Musk wrote on X that “maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security.”
Experts have clarified in the past that the Social Security database follows a standardized international coding system that defaults the value of a missing birthday to 1875 — or 150 years in the past. The system allows officials to verify the Social Security information of a person who may not know their date of birth without muddling statistical information by creating a random date of birth within the known human lifespan. In other words, these people are not actually dead.
Regardless, the White House backed Musk. On Monday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that DOGE has “not dug into the books but they suspect there are tens of millions of deceased people who are receiving fraudulent Social Security payments.”
A 2024 Inspector General report found that the total amount of improper payments by the Social Security Administration amounted to less than 1 percent of payments between fiscal years 2015-2022.
The level of access Musk is seeking to sensitive government systems containing the financial, medical, or otherwise personal data of Americans has already been a point of contention in several of DOGE’s initiatives. Last month, Senior Treasury Department official David Lebryk resigned from his post after Musk and his minions demanded access to closely regulated Treasury payment systems. DOGE has also embarked on a systemic purge of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, while firing thousands upon thousands of other government employees everywhere from Veterans Affairs to the Forest Service to the Federal Aviation Administration.
Meanwhile, Musk’s companies SpaceX and Tesla have already netted more than $230 million in federal contracts this year alone The Trump administration has said Musk will police his own conflicts of interest.
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