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'Who Is DOGE?' Has Become a Metaphysical Question - Wired
On March 20, Stephen Ehikian, acting administrator of the General Services Administration, was asked a seemingly simple question during an all-hands meeting with staff: Who from the GSA worked for Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency? To Ehikian, the answer was far from straightforward. “D-O-G-E?” he asked, according to a video obtained by WIRED and sources with firsthand knowledge of the meeting. “You’re talking about DOGE?” Then he clarified: “There is no DOGE team inside of GSA.
“I’ve never seen a leader lose credibility in real time before,” says a current GSA employee. “It was like the ‘plummeting’ sound in a cartoon. We all see the team there. There’s an entire section of the building blocked off where they work.”
The GSA, which manages federal office buildings and IT, was an early DOGE target, with Musk-linked individuals swiftly infiltrating the agency after Trump took office. As the team began working out of the GSA headquarters in Washington, DC, the agency ramped up its physical security. A section of the sixth floor, which had previously stood open, was blocked by a guard and a door, which now requires a key card to enter. That is where Ehikian and the DOGE team work, according to current staff members.
In fact, at least a half dozen DOGE affiliates, including Musk’s top lieutenant Steve Davis and former Palantir intern Akash Bobba, are currently listed in the GSA employee directory and have GSA email addresses. All are tied directly to the administrator’s office, at the highest level of the GSA org chart. Two additional names with ties to Musk-owned companies recently appeared in the directory as well: Dave Malcher, who previously worked at SpaceX, and Raj Jegannathan, VP of information security and internal apps at Tesla. These names, and their association with the GSA, have not been previously reported.
“I’ve never seen a leader lose credibility in real time before,” says a current GSA employee. “It was like the ‘plummeting’ sound in a cartoon. We all see the team there. There’s an entire section of the building blocked off where they work.”
The GSA, which manages federal office buildings and IT, was an early DOGE target, with Musk-linked individuals swiftly infiltrating the agency after Trump took office. As the team began working out of the GSA headquarters in Washington, DC, the agency ramped up its physical security. A section of the sixth floor, which had previously stood open, was blocked by a guard and a door, which now requires a key card to enter. That is where Ehikian and the DOGE team work, according to current staff members.
In fact, at least a half dozen DOGE affiliates, including Musk’s top lieutenant Steve Davis and former Palantir intern Akash Bobba, are currently listed in the GSA employee directory and have GSA email addresses. All are tied directly to the administrator’s office, at the highest level of the GSA org chart. Two additional names with ties to Musk-owned companies recently appeared in the directory as well: Dave Malcher, who previously worked at SpaceX, and Raj Jegannathan, VP of information security and internal apps at Tesla. These names, and their association with the GSA, have not been previously reported.
https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-doge-mystery-general-services-administration/
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