The most valuable data in the world

If data is the new oil, Elon Musk is the new Persian Gulf

Claire Berlinski

Jul 31, 2025

 

The list below is part of the second installment of The MechaHitler Reich. In a better world, it would be a sidebar to that newsletter—something you could glance at while you were reading it. But alas, this is not the best of all possible worlds, and Substack doesn’t give me that option.

I got worried that if I put the list at the top of the article, no one would read the article. But I also worried that if I put it at the end of the article, no one would read the list. I spent too much time compiling this list for that prospect to be tolerable. So I’ve decided just to send it separately. Hang on to it, and when you receive Part II, keep it in an open tab just slightly to the left of your open newsletter, okay? As if it were a sidebar to an article.

This is the most complete account I can come up with of the agencies in which Grok has been deployed, and the databases it has probably mined. It isn’t final, and it isn’t exhaustive. It’s only what I was able to put together from reports in the news and court filings. Unless I’ve seen a credible report indicating that DOGE has access to a database, I haven’t listed it, even if it would be reasonable to surmise that it has.

I use the word “probably” because in many cases, the reporting isn’t clear. An article might say, for example, that DOGE was given access to a database, but it might not say explicitly that the data wound up in Grok. Or it says that the data was “analyzed using AI,” but doesn’t say that this AI was Grok.

I’m assuming that probably, every time DOGE gains access to a database, its contents are swiftly fed to Grok, as a matter of routine. We have a consistent portrait of DOGE’s modus operandi. In report after report, court filing after court filing, employees recount witnessing the following sequence of events:

1.    The DOGE boys arrived.

2.    They figured out where the data was.

3.    They demanded the highest level of access to it.

4.    They weren’t interested in hearing that this was illegal and a violation of every known security protocol.

5.    They made it clear that they viewed the people who offered these objections as caviling Deep-State dinosaurs who should be replaced with AI as quickly as possible.

6.    If anyone tried to stop them, they were fired.

7.    Either these positions were left vacant or they were filled by someone pliant and DOGE-friendly.

8.    DOGE hooked up the department’s most sensitive databases to God-knows-what kind of server and vacuumed up the data without regard to long-established data-protection protocols.

9.    The chief security officer began vomiting or had an aneurysm.

10.                       He quit or sued.

11.                       DOGE used Grok, or “some kind of AI,” to analyze the data.

12.                       If the courts temporarily blocked their access to the data, DOGE looked for ways to skirt the court order.

13.                       DOGE’s attorneys told judges who had blocked their access that they would be very, very responsible with the data, or they promised to send only DOGE boys who’d received training in data handling.

14.                       In some cases, the judge (or the White House and the Treasury Department) said they could have the data, but only in read-only mode, or an anonymized version. Otherwise, the judges mostly decided that DOGE should have unimpeded access to the data.

15.                       If they hadn’t done so already, DOGE swiftly vacuumed up the data without any regard to long-established data protection protocols, then used Grok, or “some kind of AI,” to analyze it.

16.                       The data soon showed up on the open Internet (sometimes on Elon Musk’s X feed). Foreign adversaries (Russia especially), profiting from the security vulnerabilities created by DOGE’s behavior, launched attack after attack on these now-vulnerable databases. Security analysts were left shaking, gibbering wrecks.

So whenever we read of DOGE gaining access to a database, it’s reasonable to think the data has already been shoveled into Grok’s maw. But I’m not 100 percent sure, hence “probably.”

I assume, when I read that DOGE used AI to analyze the data, that the AI in question is Grok. I can’t imagine Musk’s employees would feed all this precious data to a rival AI, can you? But again, I’m not 100 percent sure.

Unless I’ve found reporting to the contrary, I’ve assumed that DOGE still has access to these databases. Despite the Trump-Musk feud, Musk-aligned cadre remain inside the executive branch, so I don’t know why they wouldn’t.

This list is probably very incomplete, because it doesn’t necessarily make the news when DOGE helps itself to another data set. But it will give you a sense of the scale of this undertaking.

Normally, sharing data from a federal agency requires the agency’s authorization and the oversight of a specialist who ensures adherence to relevant privacy and confidentiality laws and regulations. DOGE hasn’t bothered with any of that. What they’re doing is a thousand kinds of illegal. But the law doesn’t enforce itself, and if the executive doesn’t feel like enforcing the law, then for practical purposes, no law exists.

OFFICIALLY DEPLOYED

DEFINITELY OR PROBABLY DATA-MINED:

systems could have “severe or catastrophic adverse effect[s] on organizational operations, organizational assets, or individuals.”)

Security benefits, tax refunds, and vendor payments. Twelve BFS payment systems process more than US$6 trillion in annual payments and are responsible for more than a billion payments annually amounting to trillions of dollars in US government payments. The top Treasury official resigned rather accede to the demand; he was replaced by a DOGE staffer. A federal judge then issued an emergency order prohibiting DOGE employees from accessing the data on the grounds it could do “irreparable harm;” the same federal judge subsequently decided that DOGE could have access to anything they wanted, so long as they had a bit of training first. So DOGE now has access all the data—SSNs, home addresses, bank account information—of everyone whose financial information is stored in that payment file. Access to these data sets gives DOGE a comprehensive map of US expenditures, including spending on highly classified programs. Within a day of DOGS gaining access to these systems, information exfiltrated from the BFS payment systems was broadcast on X.

That’s a lot of data.

Grok for Government

xAI recently announced the rollout of Grok for Government, “a suite of frontier AI products available first to United States Government customers.”

Under the umbrella of Grok For Government, we will be bringing all of our world-class AI tools to federal, local, state, and national security customers. These customers will be able to use the Grok family of products to accelerate America – from making everyday government services faster and more efficient to using AI to address unsolved problems in fundamental science and technology.

This includes frontier AI like Grok 4, our latest and most advanced model so far, which brings strong reasoning capabilities with extensive pretraining models. Our government partnerships will also bring to bear tools like Deep Search, Tool Use, and more integrations – all of which are industry-leading commercial products.

We’ve been engaging closely with innovators and leaders in the government to make sure that our offerings are able to deliver the capabilities we need. In addition to our commercial offerings, we will be making some unique capabilities available to our government customers, including:

Given xAI’s new insight into federal procurement processes—and its competitors—I think we can assume that sales will be brisk and lucrative.

Here are the sources from which I compiled that list. Feel very free to let me know if I’ve missed something. If you work at one of these agencies and know of other databases DOGE has fed to Grok, please let me know. (And please let me know if any of this is incorrect, too.)

DOGE broadens sweep of federal agencies, gains access to health payment systems.

Sources tell WIRED that the OPM’s top layers of management now include individuals linked to xAI, Neuralink, the Boring Company, and Palantir. One expert found the takeover reminiscent of Stalin.

medical details—even domestic violence.

Elon Musk’s DOGE has access to 19 sensitive systems at HHS. In at least one instance, it appears that access was granted without the proper security training.

At the Education Department, the tech billionaire’s team has turned to artificial intelligence to hunt for potential spending cuts—part of a broader plan to deploy the technology across the federal government.

Twenty-one staffers of the US DOGE Service announced their resignations Tuesday citing, among other worries, “mishandling sensitive data.”

Here’s where the Elon Musk effort has run into court restrictions—and where it hasn’t.

The Trump administration views a once-obscure federal IT unit as the “Swiss army knives” in its effort to overhaul the federal bureaucracy.

The White House says federal agencies have discretion over key policy, as records show Elon Musk’s team pushing for still more enormous changes.

The Trump administration views a once-obscure federal IT unit as the “Swiss army knives” in its effort to overhaul the federal bureaucracy.

The access—granted by Scott Bessent, Trump’s newly confirmed treasury secretary—comes after the ousting of the agency’s top career official.

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