The Trump administration is replacing some of the nation’s top tech officials with Silicon Valley talent tied to Elon Musk and companies associated with Peter Thiel. This could make it easier for Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) engineers to gain access to sensitive government systems, sources and experts say.
Over the past few weeks, several Musk-aligned tech leaders have been installed as chief information officers, or CIOs, at the Office of Management and Budget, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Department of Energy. CIOs manage an agency’s information technology and oversee access to sensitive databases and systems, including classified ones.
“Federal agency CIOs have authority over all agency asset management, which includes software used to monitor civil servant laptops and phones,” a former Biden official with firsthand knowledge of a CIO’s capabilities tells WIRED. “CIO shops manage and control IT access to all agency databases and systems, and have oversight over all the IT contracts per FITARA [the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act]. They have lots of IT budget and head count that Musk might want to take over. In agencies, CIOs are functionally as powerful as OIGs [the Office of Inspectors General].”
So far, these new CIOs have all been appointed. At most agencies, however, the position is filled by career civil servants. Last week, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued a new memo that would reclassify those nonpartisan roles, essentially allowing the Trump administration to replace CIOs at will in order to better carry out its agenda. The appointments made so far may serve as an indicator of who will take over IT departments throughout the government once the order goes into effect.
Late last month, Gregory Barbaccia was hired as the federal chief information officer, a position within the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which oversees the performance of all federal agencies and administers the budget. Barbaccia’s LinkedIn shows that he’s spent most of his career in tech, including a 10-year stint at Palantir. When Barbaccia left Palantir in 2020, his role was head of intelligence and investigations. Palantir CEO Alex Karp recently referenced the “disruption” of DOGE’s cost-cutting initiatives and said, “Whatever is good for America will be good for Americans and very good for Palantir.” The company has made billions in government contracts. Palantir shares hit an all-time high last week after a better-than-expected quarterly earnings report. Last week, Palantir announced plans to integrate Musk’s large language model Grok with Palantir’s AI platform.
Ryan Riedel was installed as chief information officer of the Department of Energy (DOE) last week, according to reports from E&E News. At the DOE specifically, the CIO oversees all technology operations as well as cybersecurity initiatives, in addition to elements of the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the US’s nuclear weapons stockpiles. Riedel reportedly worked as a “lead network security engineer” at Musk’s rocket company SpaceX.
While not every new CIO has direct ties to Musk or Palantir, they do all have deep Silicon Valley connections. Greg Hogan is now the CIO of OPM, which is essentially the US government’s HR department. Hogan has been alleged to be a special government employee and not a full-time OPM employee, according to a recent lawsuit. Hogan previously worked at Comma.AI, a company that builds automated driving software. Musk allegedly floated a job offer to Comma.AI’s former CEO George Hotz in 2015 to work on self-driving tech, but the deal reportedly soured after Hotz claimed his self-driving tech was superior to Tesla’s.
OPM confirmed that Hogan now serves as CIO. OMB and DOE did not immediately respond to requests for comment from WIRED.
The reclassification of the CIO role doesn’t affect current CIOs, but their job security is uncertain. In January, Trump signed an executive order that could remove civil servant protections, turning potentially thousands of employees into “at will” workers. By doing so, the Trump administration would make it easier to fire career civil servants in what it calls “policy-influencing” roles. In a memo last week, Charles Ezell, acting OPM director, says that the CIO reclassification is due to the office’s increased influence on policy across agencies.
“No longer the station of impartial and apolitical technocrats, the modern agency CIO role demands policy-making and policy-determining capabilities across a range of controversial political topics,” Ezell wrote.
Last week, federal workers’ unions sued the White House, arguing that the order oversteps Trump’s presidential authority.
Already, Musk associates have infiltrated a number of government agencies. WIRED has extensively reported on the DOGE staffers, many of them young, with links to Musk’s various companies and little to no government experience, gaining access to sensitive systems at a number of agencies, including the Treasury Department. DOGE is being led by a variety of Musk associates, including Steve Davis and Nicole Hollander, who helped the billionaire acquire Twitter in 2022. Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla engineer, now heads Technology Transformation Services, which is housed within the General Services Administration.
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