DOGE access to US intelligence secrets poses a national security threat, Democrats say

WASHINGTON (news agencies) — Democratic lawmakers demanded answers from billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency on Thursday as concerns about who has access to America’s most sensitive information continue to dog Trump administration efforts to reshape the federal government.

The systems accessed by Musk’s DOGE staffers include billions of data points about citizens and businesses, as well as potentially sensitive information about government payments and programs that, if assembled correctly, could reveal secrets about national security and intelligence operations to Russia, China or another adversary.

Musk and the White House so far have not convinced their critics and have offered few details about their cybersecurity measures as their tech-centered approach to shrinking government roils Washington.

In a letter sent to Musk and the White House, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., demanded to know the details about security precautions and whether lapses in security may have exposed sensitive information. The letter asserts that reckless actions by DOGE present a “grave” threat to national security by exposing secrets about America’s defense and intelligence agencies.

“DOGE employees do not appear to fully understand much of the information to which they have been given unfettered access and given the cavalier and incompetent ways that they have handled this data, these individuals represent a clear threat to national security and the nation’s economy,” wrote Warren and Connolly, who were joined on the letter by several other Democratic lawmakers.

Musk and President Donald Trump have defended DOGE’s work, saying it’s led to billions of dollars in savings. In response to the concerns raised in Thursday’s letter, a spokesman for the administration said it’s vital that DOGE workers have access to federal databases.

“It takes direct access to the system to identify and fix it,” Harrison Fields, principal deputy White House press secretary, said in an email Thursday. “DOGE will continue to shine a light on the fraud they uncover as the American people deserve to know what their government has been spending their hard earned tax dollars on.”

If that information is mishandled, or security precautions fail, the information could be exposed to foreign intelligence services or common hackers, prompting significant worry among some national security and cyber experts.