Fear-mongering by DOGE Opponents

When I was a junior auditor in the mid-1970's, I had access to thousands of client employees' personnel and payroll records. The payroll system generated major expenses, and line-by-line examination of gross pay, benefits, tax withholdings, and other deductions (e.g.,union dues, court-ordered child support) was required to prepare the financial statements.

Accounting departments for the most part were cooperative, but if we did encounter difficulties, we kicked the request to the CFO and CEO. For us to do our job efficiently we had to have complete access to personnel records, including the W-4 withholding form that disclosed the employee Social Security number.

Management is ultimately responsible for the financial statements, and independent CPA's opine as to their integrity. Every year thousands of auditors--not only from CPA firms but also from government agencies like the FDIC and state insurance regulators--descend upon businesses and inspect millions of employee records. Although there are thousands of potential leakers, I don't recall any politicians who have expressed concern about privacy issues in our system of financial reporting.

I mention all of the above in order to express my puzzlement at the criticism directed at President Trump's examination of the financial records of the Executive Branch, of which he is the "CEO." Is he not Constitutionally responsible for its operations? And doesn't he have the authority to hire whomever he wants (subject to them being qualified and passing a security check) to do the work? A non-disclosure agreement or similar document should allay privacy concerns.

As a 23-year-old I was a pretty good auditor, but my skills were not in the same league as the young men who are working 24/7 for the Department of Government Efficiency. They have been tasked with analyzing where trillions of dollars go every year:

Gavin Kliger, left, and Ethan Shaotran, right (Merc photo)

Six men aged 19 to 24 — most with strong Bay Area connections — have been identified as associates of the controversial, Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, aka DOGE, that has gained unprecedented access to several federal agencies, including the Department of the Treasury...

A Harvard University bio of [Ethan] Shaotran lists two papers he wrote — one on pursuit of human-surpassing AI, another on improvement of self-driving vehicles — and a 111-page book published on Amazon about using AI for stock predictions. The bio identified him as the founder of Energize.AI, a “scheduling assistant for professionals,” and said he has filed patents related to AI computer vision, and logistical systems. Affiliations with the Harvard Mountaineering Club and work as a scuba dive master in Hawaii are also cited in the bio.

Another of the young DOGE crew was reported to be Gavin Kliger, whose LinkedIn profile touts a position as a full-time “special advisor to the director” in the Office of Personnel Management. He earned a bachelor’s degree in 2020 from UC Berkeley in electrical engineering and computer science, the school said. Kliger worked at Twitter for less than a year in 2019 during college, according to the profile. Between graduating from UC Berkeley and this January, Kliger worked in software engineering for San Francisco tech company Databricks, according to his profile.

A former Eagle Scout with a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, Kliger enjoyed playing piano and clarinet, along with online speed chess, the profile said.

A Vox reporter on Monday posted on X a screenshot of an email, purportedly informing USAID workers that the agency’s Washington, D.C., headquarters were closed, and indicating replies should go to a USAID email address that appeared to belong to Kliger.

The second UC Berkeley student is Akash Bobba, who pursued a triple major in electrical engineering, computer science and business administration from 2021 until this January, but has not graduated, according to the school. According to Wired, Bobba interned at Menlo Park social-media giant Meta, and at Palantir, a Denver intelligence and military software company co-founded in Palo Alto by Thiel, an influential conservative Silicon Valley billionaire closely tied to Musk.

Also connected to Thiel is Luke Farritor, said by Wired to have a working email address in the federal General Services Administration, and to have interned at SpaceX. Farritor is a Thiel Fellow, receiving a two-year, $100,000 grant awarded to people under 22 “who want to build new things instead of sitting in a classroom,” according to the Thiel Foundation.

The fifth young worker identified as working for DOGE is Edward Coristine, who according to Wired “appears to have recently graduated from high school and to have been enrolled at Northeastern University.” The magazine said a copy of his resume shows he spent three months at Neuralink, a Musk-founded company developing brain-computer interface to treat paralysis.

It doesn't trouble me that these brilliant whiz-kids are doing the leg work for Elon Musk, who in turn reports to Donald Trump. These young men will make $millions in tech, if that's what they choose to do with their lives. The danger of any of them selling Social Security numbers, IMHO, is nil, and trumpeting that issue is an obvious attempt to kill or delay their work. Onward, guys, and thank you for your service.