Thread by @WIRED

A Letter from WIRED's Editor: Ever since Elon Musk dove headfirst into backing Donald Trump’s presidential bid last year—to the tune of $280 million in contributions—WIRED has been tracking the billionaire’s political exploits and growing sphere of influence within the GOP and the Trump administration more specifically. We’ve been sourcing up, talking to people within and around federal agencies, as well as experts in disciplines including cybersecurity, AI, medicine, and more, about Musk’s potential impact.

What would Musk do, we wanted to understand, once Trump took back the White House on January 20? How would our government—and our country —change with Trump at the steering wheel and Musk riding shotgun?

Now the world, and WIRED, are finding out. The entire WIRED newsroom, from editors and reporters to fact-checkers and photo editors, has been working relentlessly to unearth new information about what exactly Elon Musk and his allies are doing across federal agencies, and to what end. What is changing, how, and what are the consequences? Amid the findings of our reporting, one overarching fact has become extremely clear: Musk is now in the driver’s seat, and he is implementing sweeping, shocking, and largely unchecked changes across the entirety of our country’s federal apparatus.

So what do we know so far? WIRED has in recent days revealed that Elon Musk has taken over swaths of government infrastructure, from installing his lackeys in senior positions within governmental HR to leading the charge on a chaotic “deferred resignation program”—one that closely echoes a similar Musk initiative at Twitter—that could see millions of federal workers leave their posts. Musk has been instrumental in attempting to dismantle USAID, with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cutting off funding for lifesaving work before the State Department put the majority of USAID personnel on administrative leave. wired.com/story/elon-mus…

Every day, we’ve revealed new details on who, exactly, Musk has installed inside federal agencies —they include at least six young men, aged 19 to 24, with little or no government experience. We’ve also documented what those and other Musk acolytes are doing, from conducting “sneak attack” meetings to discuss civil servants’ code and projects to accessing the federal systems that handle Social Security payments and tax returns to announcing plans to transform a key federal tech agency into the AI-fueled equivalent of a “startup software company.” wired.com/story/elon-mus…

Of course, we’re also keeping close tabs on likely agency heads and members of Trump’s cabinet. His pick for FBI director, Kash Patel, repeatedly claimed at a Senate hearing that he’d never promoted QAnon’s theory. We tracked all the times he did. And though RFK Jr. said he’d support vaccines if he became Health and Human Services Secretary, we outlined his long history of anti-vax positions. wired.com/story/rfk-jr-s…

We’re not done. Our reporters are getting hundreds of new tips every day and are publishing their latest reporting at a breakneck pace. To say this moment is unpredictable would be an understatement, but trust us—we’ll continue to do our jobs with utmost vigor, and we’ll work to bring you the most authoritative, trustworthy coverage of tech’s all-out invasion of the US government. If you’re one of the tens of thousands of new subscribers who’ve joined us in the past few days, thank you. And if you’ve been with us for a while, thank you for your continued support. wired.com/v2/offers/wir_…