Behind DOGE’s Standoff at USAID: Desk Searches and Elon Musk Calling
Young staffers from Musk’s government-efficiency initiative gained access to sensitive information to cap a weeklong effort that puts the aid agency’s fate in question.
With the headquarters of the US Agency for International Development nearly empty on Saturday, a small group of Elon Musk aides arrived at Washington’s Ronald Reagan Building and demanded access to the agency’s suite of offices, including a secure room designed to store classified and sensitive documents.
The team from the Department of Government Efficiency, an effort led by the world’s richest man to cut government spending, was comprised of at least four young men under 30 with backgrounds in tech – “the DOGE kids,” as they’d come to be known among some USAID staffers. They’d been seeking information from the more than 60-year-old foreign-aid agency’s officials for several days, and according to a message sent to senior USAID officials that recounted Saturday’s events, they weren’t taking no for an answer. Four people familiar with that message described it to Bloomberg News.