Democrats alarmed as Musk's team gets unlimited access to NASA
Photo: billionaire Elon Musk (Getty Images)
Employees of Elon Musk's DOGE department have 24/7 access to NASA facilities and data systems, including information about employees nationwide, Bloomberg reports.
Three Democratic members of the US House of Representatives addressed an open letter to acting NASA Administrator Janet Petro regarding this issue.
"We have learned that all three members of the DOGE team possess unrestricted physical access, 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, to NASA facilities, including the NASA Administrator's suite on the 9th floor of NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.," wrote Congresswomen Zoe Lofgren, Valerie Foushee, and Emilia Sykes.
According to them, the types of systems to which DOGE has full access include confidential information about personnel composition and continuity planning.
The letter names three members of Musk’s department: Alexander Simonpour, Scott Coulter, and Riley Sennott. The letter also raises concerns about their qualifications and potential conflicts of interest at NASA.
Sennott and Simonpour previously worked at Tesla, Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company.
However, the Democrats focused particular attention on Coulter, calling him a former hedge fund manager with a confidence level comparable to that of an intern. According to the lawmakers, he was granted an annual exemption from NASA's cybersecurity training requirements. This, in turn, gives him "full access to NASA's data and information systems without any education or training in cybersecurity protocols."
"The agency has allowed unvetted and untrained individuals to obtain unprecedented access, seemingly in defiance of standard agency protocols and simple common sense. If the agency has vetted these DOGE-associated persons for their questionable professional histories or apparent conflicts-of-interest, we are not aware of it," the lawmakers wrote.
Earlier, House Democrats had sent two letters to Petro regarding DOGE's role at NASA but claimed they had received no responses about the agency’s vetting of DOGE employees or their access to classified information.
NASA has also not addressed concerns about DOGE employees having access to information about SpaceX's competitors, which is "one of the most egregious conflict-of-interest risks," the Democrats wrote.
