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The pervasive fear and anger that have been rippling through federal agencies over Elon Musk’s slashing approach to shrinking government deepened even further on Friday over the billionaire tech mogul’s threat to root out and punish anyone who is leaking to the media.
They’ve already taken every precaution they can for fear of retaliation: setting Signal messages to automatically disappear, taking photos of documents they share instead of screenshotting, using non-government devices to communicate. But disclosing the chaos caused by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, for many, outweighs the risks that come with leaking.
Following Thursday’s New York Times report that Musk was set to receive a Pentagon briefing about a confidential contingency plan for a war with China, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO posted on his social media platform X that leakers “will be found” and, he intimated, punished.
“I look forward to the prosecutions of those at the Pentagon who are leaking maliciously false information to NYT,” Musk wrote in his post.
But Musk’s post is not having the chilling effect on leakers he’d intended, according to conversations with more than half a dozen government employees who had previously spoken to POLITICO. If anything, it might be the other way around.
“We are public servants, not Elon’s servants,” said one Food and Drug Administration employee who, like all people interviewed for this story, was granted anonymity to speak candidly about internal dynamics. “The public deserves to know how dysfunctional, destructive, and deceptive all of this has been and continues to be.”
“Leakers are patriots,” said one Agriculture Department employee. Helping the media report on problems or concerns inside agencies, the USDA employee added, is motivated by a desire for greater transparency — the same goal Musk has said undergirds his own work through DOGE.
“If the Biden administration or Obama had acted like this, no one would have tolerated it,” the staffer said. “The Trump administration doesn’t get a pass.”
Musk’s comments may not have caused a major shift in how federal workers view sharing information with reporters, one federal employee at a health agency said, citing group chats with other employees.
But even before Musk’s comments this week, the prevailing atmosphere inside many federal agencies — from constant threats of firing and being labeled enemies of the public to ousting them for following orders from previous administrations — have left employees feeling vulnerable, increasingly incensed and concerned about their physical safety.
Those safety concerns include law enforcement going after leakers to far-right extremists attacking people who make up the federal workforce.
Many federal government employees who have spoken with POLITICO over the past eight weeks said they have never previously been in contact with journalists. And if not for Musk’s “move fast and break things” approach to reducing staff and accessing sensitive government data, that would likely still be the case for nearly all of them.
“He IS A LEAKER,” one senior Federal Aviation Administration official said of Musk in a Signal message. “When you put hard drives on data systems at government agencies you are creating the biggest security breaches we have seen in years and years. Possibly ever.”
At the same time, even federal workers who haven’t spoken to media outlets are terrified of being suspected or accused of leaking information to journalists.
By now, staffers across federal agencies are also worried that they’re being surreptitiously watched — either through software installed on company devices or cameras in offices. It’s unclear whether these claims are legitimate, but they have caused deep anxiety among employees even before the latest threat from Musk.
“We’re taking more conversations in-person, out of the office completely. Putting phones on airplane mode or going to the basement,” said a staffer at the National Institutes of Health. “I don’t take my phone when I’m talking to coworkers anymore. I assume there are cameras and listening devices everywhere.”
And many will only talk with reporters using Signal or similar messaging apps that offer end-to-end encryption to prevent third parties from tapping into conversations. “If someone refuses to get on an app like Signal and also doesn’t talk [in person], I immediately don’t trust them,” the NIH staffer said.
Adding to the unease is knowing how Musk has previously encoded internal messages at his electric car company Tesla with distinct information like “one or two spaces between sentences” to identify leakers. He could, some fear, go even further and seed parts of their agency with easily traceable falsehoods.
“I’m much more heavily vetting the things I hear before talking to the media,” the NIH staffer said. “Everything Musk is saying is saber-rattling trying to silence government employees from talking to the media. And unfortunately, it’s working.”
Musk is not the first senior member of the Trump administration to threaten to clamp down on leaks to the press.
In a post on X last week, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard pledged to “aggressively” pursue what she said were unauthorized disclosures to the media from officials working in the nation’s spy agencies.
“Politically motivated leaks undermine our national security and the trust of the American people, and will not be tolerated,” said Gabbard, who as a member of Congress expressed sympathy for former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who shared reams of classified information with the press.
Gabbard listed several examples of what she claimed were unauthorized leaks to the media, citing a number of outlets by name including the Washington Post and NBC.
In a press release last week, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence stated that Gabbard had established a whistleblower hotline directly to her office for intelligence officials looking to report concerns about potentially unauthorized activity by their colleagues.
One staffer at a Department of Homeland Security agency said that most employees speaking to the media agree about the importance of not disclosing information that could compromise national security, even as they exercise their First Amendment right to disclose less sensitive information they think is important for the public to know.
“Ensuring freedom of speech and freedom of the press are vital to maintaining transparency and accountability in the current climate of instability being fostered by this administration,” the DHS agency official said. “Expressing concerns is part of OUR right to speak openly. It’s vital that any administration creates an environment where employees feel heard, respected and empowered to contribute constructively, rather than be silenced and ridiculed.”
Lauren Gardner, Marcia Brown and Maggie Miller contributed to this report.
