Exclusive: Musk's DOGE using AI to snoop on U.S. federal workers, sources say

According to sources, DOGE monitors communications for anti-Trump sentiment using AI. DOGE's use of Signal app raises data security and transparency concerns
Musk's DOGE team accused of bypassing vetting processes, operating in secrecy
According to two people with knowledge of the situation, Trump administration officials have informed some U.S. government employees that Elon Musk's DOGE team of technologists is using artificial intelligence to monitor the communications of at least one federal agency for hostility toward President Donald Trump and his agenda. The surveillance would be an extraordinary use of technology to identify expressions of perceived disloyalty in a workforce that has already been upended by widespread firings and severe cost cutting, despite the fact that much of Musk's Department of Government Efficiency remains hidden.
The DOGE team is also using the Signal app to communicate, according to one other person with direct knowledge of the matter, potentially violating federal record-keeping rules because messages can be set to disappear after a period of time. According to that individual, as part of their work to cut the federal government, they have also "heavily" deployed Musk's Grok AI chatbot, an aspiring rival to ChatGPT. Reuters could not establish exactly how Grok was being used.
DOGE, Musk, and the White House did not respond to requests for comment. Concerns among cybersecurity experts and government ethicists that DOGE is operating with limited transparency and that billionaire Musk or the Trump administration could use AI-collected information to advance their own interests or pursue political targets are bolstered by the use of AI and Signal. Expert in the field of government ethics at Washington University in St. Louis, said DOGE’s use of privacy-focused Signal adds to growing concerns over data security practices after top Trump administration officials came under fire last month for the mistaken inclusion of a journalist in a group chat about high-level planning for military operations in Yemen.
“If they’re using Signal and not backing up every message to federal files, then they are acting unlawfully,” she said.
Reuters’ interviews with nearly 20 people with knowledge of DOGE’s operations – and an examination of hundreds of pages of court documents from lawsuits challenging DOGE's access to data – highlight its unorthodox usage of AI and other technology in federal government operations.
According to two individuals, Trump appointees informed some EPA managers that Musk's team is rolling out AI to monitor workers, including looking for language in communications that is regarded as being hostile to either Musk or Trump. The EPA, which enforces laws such as the Clean Air Act and works to protect the environment, has come under intense scrutiny by the Trump administration. It has laid off nearly 600 workers since January and announced that it will cut 65 percent of its budget, which may necessitate further staffing cuts. Trump-appointed officials who had taken up EPA posts told managers that DOGE was using AI to monitor communication apps and software, including Microsoft Teams, which is widely used for virtual calls and chats, said the two sources familiar with these comments. “We have been told they are looking for anti-Trump or anti-Musk language,” a third source familiar with the EPA said. Reuters could not independently confirm if the AI was being implemented.
The Trump officials said DOGE would be looking for people whose work did not align with the administration's mission, the first two sources said. “Be careful what you say, what you type and what you do,” a manager said, according to one of the sources.
The EPA did not respond to a request for comment.
Musk has depicted DOGE as a tech-driven effort to make the U.S. federal government more efficient by targeting waste, fraud and abuse. He has said the goal was to trim $1 trillion in spending, or 15% of the U.S. annual budget.
Few dispute the U.S. government and its aging computer systems are due for modernization. Democrats, on the other hand, contend that Musk and Trump are replacing loyalists who would ignore corruption with non-partisan government employees. Many Republicans and independents are also critical of DOGE's actions.
Clark, the ethics specialist, said the prospective surveillance was worrisome. It “sounds like an abuse of government power to suppress or deter speech that the president of the United States doesn’t like,” she said.
Last year, before Trump was elected, Musk suggested AI could be used to replace government workers, according to a person with direct knowledge of his comments. “The concept was that through taking the government data that they could build the most dynamic AI system ever,” the person said, adding that AI could then “do the work.”
The complex endeavor would entail teaching AI systems to automate some of the work currently done by federal employees.
According to ethics regulations, Musk cannot participate in government activities that would benefit him or his businesses because he is a special government employee. TRANSPARENCY QUESTIONS
In addition to the use of Signal, some DOGE staffers are bypassing other vetting processes and chains of custody for official government documents by working simultaneously out of Google Docs instead of circulating single copies of drafts, a source briefed by a government official said.
“There's multiple people in one Google Doc editing things simultaneously,” the source said, referring to the online word processing software. The source went on to say that this was one reason why DOGE was moving so quickly. The Trump administration has argued that DOGE, as an arm of the Executive Office of the President, is not subject to laws that allow the public to seek access to records produced by government agencies.
Citing DOGE’s “unusual secrecy,” including its use of Signal, a federal judge on March 10 ordered the group to start handing records to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, an ethics watchdog that had sued to request DOGE documents under federal freedom of information laws. As of Monday, the watchdog said, no records had been turned over.
As Musk embeds his young DOGE team of engineers and aides deep inside the government’s digital infrastructure, accusations that DOGE is deliberately operating in secrecy have emerged in court cases challenging the authority of Musk, the world’s richest man, to remake the federal government.
According to interviews and court filings, DOGE employees have significantly tightened administrative controls at some agencies, keeping staff members in the dark while making significant operational changes. When Musk’s team took control of the government’s human resources agency, the Office of Personnel Management, in late January, they shut OPM employees out of a database containing sensitive personal information of tens of millions of current and former federal workers, according to court filings and Reuter.
OPM is at the center of the administration's plan to reduce the size of the government. It issues directives that are regarded as blueprints for reducing the size of the civil service across the entire government. Since late January, more than 100 tech staff at OPM have lost access to the cloud where key applications are stored, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Only two people still have access — one career staffer and Greg Hogan, a political appointee who worked at an AI startup and is now OPM’s chief information officer, the sources added. Hogan did not respond to a request for comment.
Ulmer and Dastin reported from San Francisco; Taylor and Alper reported from Washington. Additional reporting by Joseph Tanfani, Valerie Volcovici and Humeyra Pamuk. Editing by Jason Szep