Elon Musk and the OPM Food Chain: A Conversation with Scales at the CEO’s Office of Public Information and Technology (OPM)
Centibillionaire Elon Musk’s takeover of the former US Digital Service—now the United States DOGE Service—has been widely publicized and sanctioned by one of President Donald Trump’s many executive orders. But WIRED reporting shows that Musk’s influence extends even further, and into an even more consequential government agency.
According to the same sources, there are at least two people with a software engineering background at the top of the OPM food chain. A senior adviser to the director is a 21-year-old who has a online resume that shows he worked for a company founded by Peter Thiel. (The former CEO of PayPal and a longtime Musk associate, Thiel is a Trump supporter who helped bankroll the 2022 Senate campaign of his protégé, Vice President JD Vance.) The other, who reports directly to Scales, graduated from high school in 2024, according to a mirrored copy of an online résumé and his high school’s student magazine; he lists jobs as a camp counselor and a bicycle mechanic among his professional experiences, as well as a summer role at Neuralink, Musk’s brain-computer interface company.
Amanda Scales is, as has been reported, the new chief of staff at the OPM. She used to work for Musk at xAI, his artificial intelligence company. Before that, she was part of the talent and operations team at Human Capital, a venture firm with investments in the defense tech startup Anduril and the political betting platform Kalshi; before that, she worked for years at Uber. Experts believe that her placement in this key role seems to be part of a broader pattern of being converted to use as a political tool.
The Digital Strategy of the White House: Using the Digital Strike Team to Support the Obama Administration: Bringing a New Home for DOGE in the White Haus, What You Need to Know
“I don’t think it’s alarmist to say there’s a much more sophisticated plan to monitor and enforce loyalty than there was in the first term,” says Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan.
The latest USDS annual report touts, for example, an increase in customer satisfaction with the Social Security Administration website after working to simplify complicated language that led to longer wait times.
Hsiang explained thatUSDS has no special authorities or anything else that other parts of the government don’t have. “What we do have is a difference in strategic perspective on how to take on these challenges.”
The team recruiting private sector experts in design and technology has operated like a Digital Strike Team, working with federal agencies on projects that make public-facing parts of the government more efficient, modern and user-friendly.
The Obama adminstration launched theUSDS in order to boost the digital capabilities of the federal government after the debacle of Heath care.gov.
Pahlka said the office was founded “to meet the public’s expectations, or help the agencies meet these raised expectations of the public,” when it comes to digital presence.
There is a possibility that the behind-the-scenes office will be more in the spotlight, according to a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center.
The temporary organization that will be led by the administrator will be within the larger USDS office, and will focus on federal spending, workforce, and technology infrastructure from outside the government.
Trump hasn’t yet named an administrator for the retooled office, it’s not clear how Musk will operate in relation to the USDS and the new DOGE teams have not been put into place across federal agencies.
A proposed commission with a sweeping mandate to shrink federal bureaucracy and slash government spending now has a new home — and a more efficient mandate, as President Trump continues to turn campaign promises into actual policy.
Source: With a new home for DOGE in the White House, here’s what you need to know
Digital States: Doge United States Digital Service Trump White House Eop Obm with a New Home for DOGE in the White House
It also showed that the Internal Revenue Service is making it simpler for veterans to access their benefits by launching a pilot program that allows them to file taxes online for free.
Hsiang adds that focusing on spending cuts without addressing things like Congressional oversight and regulation of how agencies operate won’t lead to success.
One thing I need to know is how quickly they learn and challenge their assumptions? “Because everybody who goes into government thinks that it’s going to be easy to fix and everyone finds out that it is a lot harder than they thought because we have made government very, very complex.”
“They will find inevitably that the questions that they think are simple to answer are not, and the systems are the way they are, for reasons that are very hard to see from the outside,” Pahlka said.
Hsiang and Pahlka both said the continued success of the USDS under its new mandate can only happen if the conversation with federal agencies continues to be viewed as a two-way street, and if the new leadership takes the time to understand why the inefficiencies exist in the first place.
Her choice is to redeploy the people in higher value work or to lay them off. “The end result of both, though, is a kind of change that government has needed for a long time.”
There are some parts of the federal government in which computers and technology can be used to do tasks that civil servants do already, freeing up time and resources.
“DOGE is positioning itself as having far more power than ever before, and we’ll see if this really plays out,” she said.
Source: With a new home for DOGE in the White House, here’s what you need to know
Elon Musk Is Running the Twitter Playbook on the Federal Government: An Effort to Reduce the Number of Federal Employees that Resign
“There are digital transformation people in agencies now, and there always have been,” Pahlka noted. They tend to struggle, given how hard it is to change the culture to be more risk-averse in government.
Musk is still working for the Trump administration and the US federal government is already using the social media site as a tool to manage its spending. In order to ensure those who remain are loyal to the president, the Trump team wants to drastically reduce the number of government staffers.
Federal employees are to be told to send an email with the topic “Resign” in the subject line in 10 days. “Purging the federal government of dedicated career civil servants will have vast, unintended consequences that will cause chaos for the Americans who depend on a functioning federal government,” Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union of federal workers, said in a statement. The offer should not be seen as voluntary. There are a lot of executive orders and policies that show the goal of the Trump administration is to turn the federal government into a toxic place where workers can’t stay even if they want to.
The email was sent by the US Office of Personnel Management, which stated that employees should be loyal, trustworthy and strive for excellence in their daily work. “Employees will be subject to enhanced standards of suitability and conduct as we move forward.”
Source: Elon Musk Is Running the Twitter Playbook on the Federal Government
A Fork in the Road: Musk, Sacks, Twitter 2.0, and the Eviction of the Silicon Valley Micro-Publishing Company
Musk and his advisors, including Trump’s newly appointed AI and crypto czar David Sacks, used a remarkably similar strategy at Twitter. About a week after the acquisition was complete, Musk laid off half the workforce. He needed the help of Sacks to decide which teams and people to cut.
About two weeks later, remaining employees received an email with the subject line “A Fork in the Road.” Musk said that they would need to be “extremely hardcore” in order to realize his vision for Twitter 2.0. This meant “working long hours at high intensity.” He noted that “only exceptional performance” would receive “a passing grade.” Employees were asked to fill out a web form in order to have this vision. Musk said anyone who did not complete the task by the next day would be fired. Thousands of employees of the micro-publishing company sued, saying they were not paid their full entitlements. Musk was able to get the suit thrown out.
“We are all shaking our heads in disbelief at how familiar this all feels,” says Yao Yue, a former principal engineer at Twitter. “Except, the federal government and its employees have specific laws in terms of spending, hiring, and firing.”