Hey everybody, welcome back to the Elon Musk Podcast.
This is a show where we discuss. The Critical.
Crossroads, the Shape, SpaceX, Tesla X, The Boring Company and
Neurolink. I'm your host, Will Walden.
A former Trump campaign aide A former Trump campaign aide is at
the center of a federal data breach that leaks Social
Security numbers of over 200,000 Americans, raising urgent
questions about how a meme, a cryptocurrency project, gained
access to sensitive government systems.
Now the breach involves Doge Labs, a little known crypto
startup run by Tommy Rensing, who previously worked for Donald
Trump's 2020 campaign in digital strategy.
Doge Labs had a contract with the US government to run a bot
detection system under the pretense of helping federal
agencies track misuse of public benefits.
Instead, the company allegedly mishandled the personal data
with Social Security recipients, exposing it in a breach that
took place over several months. Federal investigators found that
Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and benefit
payment details or accessible through an unsecured interface
connected to Doge Labs back end system.
The briefs didn't stem from a malicious attack at all, but
from severe misconfigurations and how the system handled and
stored sensitive data. Americans sensitive personal
data. You should be mad about this.
Your Social Security number, your birthday, your address and
benefit payment details could have been leaked by these
unprofessional people. There are rules for a purpose.
Doge Labs reportedly left a staging server online without
basic access controls. Anyone with the URL could scrape
the data in bulk. I've set up staging servers
before for clients. Could be an AWS server, it could
be any other cloud service. We're not sure where it was at
this point, but we're going to dig into this and we're going to
let you know exactly what happened.
But Doge Labs secured the contract through a pilot program
designed to bring innovative tech startups into federal
service procurement pipelines. The program fast tracked vendors
who could demonstrate AI and machine learning capabilities
and renting pitch. Doge Labs is a tool that can
detect fraudulent behavior in benefit claims using blockchain
based identity scoring. The government bought the idea
without fully vetting the system's infrastructure or
compliance with data protection protocols, and the exposure
affected data from at least three federal agencies, Social
Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, and
the Department of Veterans Affairs. 3 absolutely important
agencies. All three used DOGE Lab software
as a part of an experimental fraud prevention initiative
launched in 2023. Internal emails reviewed by
investigators show the concerns about Doge Labs data handling
practices were raised as early as May, but federal tech
officers dismissed the warnings as over cautious.
Tommy Rensing has denied wrongdoing.
It claims that no actual data was stolen.
He described the system as safe and secure and said any exposure
was due to a minor miscommunication between
subcontractors that contradicts federal findings that the data
was not only accessible but also downloaded by outside parties
over a period of five weeks before the server was taken
offline. No details about these outside
parties who has downloaded it, but they did it over 5 weeks.
They have all of your data now. If you think that's not
important or you're just going to miss push that to the side,
that's on you. But your Social Security number,
your benefits, VA, etcetera were all exposed due to this DOGE
subcontractor. The government has not publicly
confirmed how many people were affected, but an internal audit
found 212,415 Social Security records had been exposed.
212,000 people at Social Security numbers have been
exposed and downloaded for five weeks straight.
Most of the individuals are recipients of Medicare,
disability or VA benefits. The breach impacted elderly and
low income Americans more so than anybody else.
Several civil rights groups were preparing lawsuits, as they
should, and demanding answers about why a crypto startup but
no public track record was entrusted with such sensitive
federal systems. Now, mind you, I'm a reporter.
I'm neither here nor there. I'm right down the middle and I
call it like it is. If these people messed with your
Social Security numbers or messed with your VA benefits,
they did something absolutely wrong.
Absolutely. And they should feel the wrath
of all these lawsuits because you know what?
It's not about left or right. It's not about your stupid
politics at this point, any politics.
This is about people stealing trustworthy Americans data
because they were they were unsecure in their ways of doing
business. Doge Labs.
How dare you. How dare you.
A staging server, Really A public date staging server where
anybody with the URL could scrape your data.
It takes about 10 minutes to create a scraping bot if you
have the URL to a a website and also if you have a URL to a
website where all the data is out there in the open.
If you have a link, literally all you need to do for some
instances is control all control a control copy, put it into a
spreadsheet, control paste and run it through chat TBT, see if
you can get any great data out of it.
And if you can, that's good for the hackers that did this, that
hacked into the system. You know what hackers will hack
and these people should have been absolutely secure with your
data. This is your data, Americans.
These people at Doge Labs did you dirty.
I want you to know that sometimes I get up in arms about
some stuff. Stealing people's data, stealing
people's sensitive veteran data. If you're a true American, if
you're a patriot, you have to support the veterans.
Everybody should support veterans anyway.
They've done some crazy stuff in their life.
They've, they've sacrificed a lot so we can stay free.
So these people mess with veterans.
They should get messed with too. In of court, of course, court
and legal battles. But this isn't the only
controversy surrounding Doge Labs right now.
According to documents viewed by The Telegraph, the company used
the same infrastructure to promote a meme coin campaign
that launched just weeks before the breach was discovered.
OK, so the DOE, the Dogecoin derivative token which is DOGE
dot Fed, was hyped on social media as a pro Trump financial
movement, with rensing using his campaign connections to attract
far right influencers and fringe candidates.
Several of those promotions included footage filmed at
federal offices, which may violate ethics laws around
commercial activity on government property.
Come on man, this Rensink. Come on man you are a clown.
Why do you OK now? The timing has raised questions
about whether Rensink used his government access for personal
or political gain. Looks like a little bit of both.
You registered, dodged out feds smart contract.
Just 10 days before he began the government pilot, he directed
internal staff to use government funded servers for performance
testing of the crypto token. Government funded servers for
his own personal crypto token. This guy needs to get audited.
Need to mess with him in court. I got to get him.
Those servers were later identified as the source of this
data exposure too. So anybody with access to these
crypto coins and to test them, anybody should be questioned and
they should be held accountable if they did anything wrong.
Now, federal, federal fallout from the breach is already
hitting Capitol Hill. Congressional aides confirm that
Senate Democrats are preparing hearings into how the contract
was awarded and what safeguards have failed.
Some Republicans have also expressed concerns over the lack
of oversight and tech contracting, though Trump allies
have attempted to distance the former president and current
president from rensing, calling him a volunteer with limited
responsibilities. OK, so we all know that's not
true. Limited responsibilities.
Don't think that's true if you have access to Social Security
numbers. That's not a limited security
and lot limited authority, not limited responsibilities.
You are absolutely not a volunteer if you have access to
Social Security numbers. Now.
The scandal also comes as Trump intensifies calls to gut the
federal workforce. Now, at a rally this weekend, he
praised Rensing's push for private innovation and said
federal agencies should move fast and break things when
dealing with fraud. Just like Silicon Valley, man,
he's taking a play, a play out of, you know, a Meta.
And all the Silicon Valley elites that I used to work for
back in the day don't like him anymore.
By the way, I like code. I like creating things.
But Silicon Valley, it was a long time ago.
Trump also proposed eliminating entire agencies like the
Department of Education and the EPA to fund a new AI and crypto
task force that would partner directly with private firms.
Now, that approach echoes the kind of low accountability
contracting that allowed Doge Labs to slip through our
fingers. Now the offense of Management
and Budget issued an immediate suspension of all contracts
issued under the same tech pilot that approved Doge Labs.
The White House also ordered a full review of every agency that
uses third party AI for fraud prevention or citizen data
handling. That review will likely result
in stricter federal tech procurement standards and data
access audits for existing contractors.
Now Those Labs has deleted its website.
It disabled all public phasing services, right?
Singh is reportedly preparing a launch of a legal defense fund,
arguing that the breach is being politicized ahead of 2026
midterms. Meanwhile, affected users have
begun receiving breach notifications, with some
reported fraudulent activity on their credit reports within
weeks of the leak. Wow, this is a horrible
situation. How dare they do this to
veterans and other people, people that don't have much.
What? OK, I'm going to say it.
What a scumbag. What a loser.
Let me know what you think in your podcast comments because
this is a this is a dirty one. This is a dirty one.
Let me know what you think. All right.
Take care, everybody. Hey, thank you so much for
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