DOGE associates have been feeding vast troves of government records and databases into artificial intelligence tools, looking for unwanted federal programs and trying to determine which human work can be replaced by AI, machine-learning tools or even robots.
That push has been especially fierce at GSA, where DOGE staffers are telling managers that they plan to automate a majority of jobs, according to a person familiar with the situation.
“The end goal is replacing the human workforce with machines,” said a U.S. official closely watching DOGE activity. “Everything that can be machine-automated will be. And the technocrats will replace the bureaucrats.”
In the weeks after the election, Trump said Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” would be a nongovernmental entity providing nonbinding advice to the administration. Some Trump advisers described it as a place to sideline the overzealous billionaires who wanted to help Trump but knew nothing about how Washington worked.
But within hours of taking office, Trump signed an executive order placing DOGE squarely inside the White House, in an office responsible for information technology, the U.S. Digital Service.
The DOGE playbook has been the same everywhere, according to more than two dozen federal workers with direct knowledge of DOGE activities, as well as records obtained by The Post. The workers — employed at OPM, GSA, FEMA, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Education Department — spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
DOGE comes in fast, going around lower-level IT staffers, who typically raise privacy concerns but are overruled by senior leaders who fold to DOGE’s demands. DOGE team members are then given superpowered user accounts enabling them to access and edit reams of government data with little to no oversight, the people said. That allows them to make changes at lightning speed, bypassing typical security protocols and alarming government employees tasked with keeping sensitive data secure.
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