From LeverNews.com — Lever Time is the flagship podcast from the investigative news outlet The Lever. Hosted by award-winning journalist, Oscar-nominated writer, and Bernie Sanders' 2020 speechwriter David Sirota, Lever Time features exclusive reporting from The Lever’s newsroom, high-profile guest interviews, and expert analysis from the sharpest minds in media and politics.
Arjun Singh 0:03
Arjun from the levers. Reader supported newsroom, this is lever time. I'm Arjun Singh Elon Musk wants to take over the government, and now the unelected billionaire seems closer to that goal than ever. For days, Musk and his allies have stormed through Washington, DC, demanding access to sensitive information and eliminating career civil servants who stand in his way. Now they have control of the government's multi trillion dollar payment system, and it seems like they won't stop until Musk has absolute control. It's a situation that many are calling a crisis, one that could have profound and dire consequences. One of those people is journalist Nathan tankus as one of the lead reporters covering Musk's takeover, tankus has spent the week talking with sources who have witnessed this hostile takeover firsthand. Today on lever time, I'll sit down with Nathan tankus To hear the extent of Musk's takeover and why tankus thinks this could soon evolve into one of the worst catastrophes in American history.
Arjun Singh 1:08
Just a quick note here, before we hear my conversation with Nathan after Nathan and I spoke on Thursday morning, a federal judge blocked Elon Musk for me given information from the Treasury Department's payment system, two of Musk's allies, Marco allez and Tom Kraus, however, are still allowed to access the information, but only in a read only format to get the latest news. Go to levernews.com and subscribe to our new newsletter. Okay, here's our conversation. So you know, we have a lot to talk about today. It's been just whirlwind week. But before we get into that, Nathan, I just want to ask you, how are you doing? I'm doing well now, when I first learned about it by reading Jeff Stein's reporting in the Washington Post, and about halfway through reading the article, I had a panic attack, wow. And I have, I'm not that's not something I usually have. And I managed to calm down a little bit and start making actions called about a half a dozen former Treasury officials that I'm familiar with, and then wrote my my piece that came out on Monday, in a 19 hour scramble with only a break for brunch, just to be a human for a bit. And during that time I was
Nathan Tankus 2:19
went through lots of periods of panic and fear and was just consistently terrified, but it was motivating me to write, but there is no awareness, and something's moving and Something's Afoot is, has, has kind of removed my fear, not that the situation is lending less serious, but like I now am locked into my mission and can and don't just have to roll around stewing on the you know, the implications of all this in my own head notes
Arjun Singh 2:49
on a crisis. Your publication has been where I've been going to try and make sense of this moment and to echo what you were saying, I have been talking to federal workers, scientists, people who aren't even associated with the federal government, and panic, that is the word that I'm hearing a lot, panic, genuine fear. Can you explain to us? I think we've all seen the headlines. Elon Musk is trying to take control of the government. He went into treasury. So what exactly did musk and his allies do? What is the system that they took over?
Nathan Tankus 3:22
Well, they are fighting a trench warfare to try to take over various government, government agencies. Obviously, the first one was the United States Digital Service, because they had no official existence for what had during the transition was Doge, the Department of government efficiency. But of course, it's just that name because of the meme, and the meme is the image. This is their official emblem on the website. That was the first step, and now they're trying to install Josh, which are just former Musk employees all around the government, and to take control of them. What I'm covering is the most dangerous of all of it, which is a 2025, year old, former SpaceX employee, Marco elez, is taking over, and seems to be preparing, and may have already written and implemented source code changes into the most sensitive, fundamental top secret mainframe system of the United States, payment system, which is housed in the Bureau of the Fiscal Service. Yeah, this is a payment this is a payment this is a payment system. The payment system he's working on process $4.7 trillion in 2024 and that's the vast majority of payments that the Bureau, the Fiscal Service, processes every year. So effectively, all of the Treasury's payments are running through. A complicated, modernized, but still legacy. It system in which 125 year old is leading the charge of changing its source code, downloading data from it, the most sensitive data in the world. We're talking literally, your social security numbers, anyone who's paid taxes, personal medical information. We're talking about business bank accounts linked to the circumstances under which the government got, you know, was was given bank account information. We're talking addresses. It's unimaginable. It's it is? It is all more than enough information to steal your identity. And as far as we can tell, there's no understanding of what's going on with it seems at this point, very likely that they are putting it on unsecure commercial technology that they are taking out of the Treasury and can basically be used at their disposal. But there's a million other implications. They can use this information to find the nonprofits, the businesses, the contractors that they don't like put them on Do Not Pay list, potentially, if they can also get control of this other of these other apparatuses, put just capriciously, put people on terrorism watch lists, delete bank accounts. Just say you don't financially exist anymore. Essentially, they they have the ability to do anything, essentially with this information. But as important as that is, yeah, it is not the most catastrophic scenarios. The most catastrophic scenarios are that in attempting to gain control of the system, a system that they do not understand, they write and introduce code, or they have other people write or introduce code, but under extreme circumstances which it's not properly tested and vetted, that breaks these systems in the process of trying to get a control of them, and if they break these systems, that literally means you're not getting your Social Security check that month. We're that we are talking about things that serious, and not only that, payments to universities, state and local governments, tribal organizations, just anything that you can imagine that we is on the table, and the state of play is so fluid that by the time I'm done doing this interview, I might find out, I might check my phone and find out things have radically changed and changed for the
Arjun Singh 7:35
worse. Man, that's what Elon Musk and his allies are doing right now. So how is that system normally managed? Who nominally was in charge of that? And are those people? Where are they now? Yes.
Nathan Tankus 7:48
So this system is very kind. It's a snooze fest. It's specialized. It requires a lot of domain knowledge, but it's also the most important system. So that combination, very reasonably, has led to people of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service. Move up the ranks. Move up the ranks career civil servants, and one of them becomes the highest ranking someone added specifically out of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service becomes the highest ranking civil service employee in the treasury. Everyone above them is political appointees, and this is the fiscal assistant secretary. And up until last week, David lybrick was the fiscal assistant secretary. He had been fiscal Assistant Secretary Since 2014 so he had this job for more than 10 years. He had been an employee in the treasury since 1989 before I was born. There's no one on earth who understands these systems better than David liebrick. Yeah,
Arjun Singh 8:50
we actually have a clip of him from 2014 talking about his job. Here's Dave Lee brick as the
Dave Lebryk 8:56
Commissioner of the Bureau. My major responsibility is set strategic direction for the organization, and at the same time, I think any good leader and organization needs to be very much focused on the operational ongoings of the organization and the people of the organization. So for me, I probably spend a fair amount of my time on the strategic settings, direction for the organization, establishing their priorities, but also making sure that we're delivering on these very important functions that we do on a daily basis. You know, I mentioned the number of payments that we make. And every month we make payments around roughly 80 million people, and these are people who are relying on their social security payments so their veterans
Nathan Tankus 9:34
pay. December, he started getting very concerning requests for quote, unquote, source code information about these extremely sensitive code with and had not been asked for briefing of how these systems work, or to learn anything from them about them. So he, for obvious reasons, blocked and resisted giving this kind of information. This. Operated constant consternation in Trump and musk world. And when they got in there they went again. Went immediately, wanting the code. They they wanted the code immediately. And he resisted, and he wanted to get a meeting with the Chief of Staff and Secretary bass. It's important to note also that while in the first days of the Trump administration, while Trump was waiting for his nominee to go through the confirmation process, Trump, technically speaking, put lybric as acting treasury secretary of the United States. So up until not that many days ago, this person was the acting treasury secretary of the United States, and of course, passant went through the confirmation process with a number of Democrats voting for him, and they almost immediately wanted to get access to those systems for various obvious reasons. He was again, extremely alarmed, asked for the meeting, and at that meeting, we don't know exactly what happened, but basically he left that meeting going on paid administrative leave and then announcing a very sudden, quote, unquote retirement. Essentially, he was pushed out. And I have two sources that inform me, and this is this is extremely explosive information that when Secretary Besant was being advised about what Donald Trump was looking in it for in a Treasury Secretary, he was told many things, but what I am reporting is that among those things, he was told that he that Donald Trump expected dissent to work with, quote, whoever they sent over, whoever they sent over so whoever was sent over the Treasury that he had to work with and to help him go after to help Donald Trump go after his enemies. That he wanted a loyalist. He wanted loyalty above all other considerations. Yeah, he wanted someone like Trump's first secretary, Mnuchin. But he wanted loyalty above all, above all else, which is not something that he perceived from Mnuchin. So he wanted the credibility with Wall Street, but with the absolute loyalty, and that seems to be what he got. And everything that comes out of my reporting. It's so alarming that, you know, it seems just obvious confirmation of what my two anonymous sources have informed me of.
Arjun Singh 12:49
After the break, I'll continue my conversation with Nathan tankus. We'll be right back.
Arjun Singh 12:59
So the idea of Elon Musk coming in and trying to bring in these engineers one thing, and this is a very technical kind of question, but these engineers are coming from places like Tesla and SpaceX, I assume Silicon Valley. I remember during COVID, there was an issue with the unemployment system in that it was built using a programming language called COBOL, which is a very old I actually think archaic is a fair word to use, and a lot of engineers don't know COBOL, so bringing in engineers who nominally are working with modern coding languages. To your point, Nathan, that any small thing could really upend the system. Can you talk a little bit about the sort of collision of these engineers using this modern language and the IT infrastructure that's there right now? I mean, is this a match that makes sense, or is there going to be a potential, a likely potential, that something can go wrong? Because this is not something these guys actually understand.
Nathan Tankus 14:02
Yeah. So I want to be clear here, there is a big kind of cultural disconnect between people who run mission critical legacy, IT systems and Silicon Valley and modern programmers. Modern programmers think of programming as basically, like the syntax of a syntax of a language, right? It's just the abstract language to legacy mission critical. It programmers who overwhelmingly the languages they know is what they've worked on, and they know the kind of like mission critical systems that they've worked on. They don't think of programming as just the abstract logic of the language. They think of it as the physical mainframe context, the system architecture of the systems that they're using. But most crucially, they think about it in terms of business logic. And what business logic is, is the. Specific connection between variables that are specific to the system that you're working on. So for example, just the most basic idea, like social security payment, connected to social security number, connected to address, these kinds of things there and specific abbreviations and such are not part of COBOL in general. They are part of specific business logics that have been built into the system. And especially where the age comes in is that these systems develop for decades without modern documentation processes where you fully document exactly what you're doing, and as a result of that, it requires a lot of contextual knowledge to understand what's going on in a system. So for example, during y 2k which was a real thing, a big part of how that was solved was paying big money, hiring legacy. It mission critical. It programmers from other companies by paying a bunch more. And so that created a big boom at that time of kind of bidding up for those workers. So it's not about like, even you know, let's say they learn COBOL well, and it goes quickly. They launch, you know, they launch deep seek, which is on Marcos public GitHub that last time I checked, is still public, even with the, you know, knowing the language. It's about the business logic, the system architecture, he needs, the employees. And from what am i Reporting? Is that it seems like legacy IT programmers are half cooperating with him because they're so terrified of what he might break that as bad as whatever he's doing is their approach is okay. Will you help him, just to make sure he doesn't completely, catastrophically break thing? But I don't have specific sources on those teams. That is the one blind spot in my reporting that I'm really trying to fill in right now. Yeah. I
Arjun Singh 17:06
mean, just thinking about someone like Dave Lee brick, this career civil servant. I mean, it's, it's, it seems like it's almost a miracle that the payment system actually is able to work and has continued through debt ceiling negotiations and COVID I mean, I feel, in a way, that there actually isn't an in depth understanding, but also maybe an appreciation from these outside actors of how complicated but also how impressive it is that this system has been able to run. I mean, what do you think of that? Nathan, absolutely,
Nathan Tankus 17:36
there is in like IBM Business in government interview that lybric did not that long ago, I think I can't remember the exact date now, but not that long ago, where he talked about the enormous efforts they made during COVID. They got economic impact, payments to people on time. It is very reasonable to think that if it were not for David lybrick's leadership, that that would have gotten gone a lot worse. Yeah, he's also been widely accredited with being the reason that the debt ceiling negotiations can go on as long as they can. They've been able to, and the tap dancing worked because he is been was such a masterful balancer of those circumstances, moving right up to the precipice, but without actually having a technical default or breaching the debt ceiling. And it's very reasonable to think that without him, future debt ceiling fights and assumptions about what this system can do based on past experience will not be validated, and that is just with not having him there, let alone what Marco allez is doing every single day to the system, I believe, at this moment, as we are speaking, the greatest barrier to Musk's Doge doing whatever it wants and doing whatever it wants to whoever it wants. Banking, banking, account wise, you know, targeting wise, whatever identity theft, you name it is the technical capabilities of doing so, and how much they can get cooperation from the cobalt programs on the ground to do it. That is what I think this, this situation is, I think the complexity and technical issues with this system are the primary barriers to them taking control, and that in itself, is an indictment of every institution in America. Are
Arjun Singh 19:58
there people? Still in place, who can push back against this, who can maybe be a guardrail, or when it comes to take that Treasury system, for example, has it been a complete takeover by musk and Doge? It's,
Nathan Tankus 20:12
far as I can tell, it's a complete takeover. I mean, yeah, I think you know congress is, you know, Democratic senators and congressmen are sounding the alarm, but frankly, they are not anywhere near alarmed enough. And if you really took the situation seriously, you would be mobilizing the population a lot more. We're far, far beyond strongly worded letters. There's lawsuits, but who's going to enforce those injunctions if the people inside those systems are, you know, just like no, who's going to enforce, like any injunction to violating the Constitution and not spending what Congress has appropriated, these fundamental constitutional violations, if they are just in the guts of the payment system, who's going to enforce that? You know, how many divisions does the judicial system have, in a way that they can trump, just Trump's guards the full forces of the federal government? So I think we are in an extraordinarily dangerous position. I mean, we need 10,000 people minimum around the Treasury at all times.
Arjun Singh 21:23
Yeah, well, and to what you were saying about Congress's role, I mean, we saw basically, it seems like Trump is trying to just bypass Congress altogether, which, you know, is interesting, because it's ostensibly a Republican controlled Congress, but we've got this issue that's happening at the Treasury. Trump, with that memo, tried to bypass Congress's power. It seems like there's a little bit of a knife fight that could go on. Nathan, tell me a little bit about why this is kind of a dangerous economic policy. I mean, is this related to issues like the debt ceiling? Is the doomsday scenario that we default on a payment now? Like, it seems like, you know, there's so many different things to kind of address right now. But you know this is, yeah, I haven't heard
Nathan Tankus 22:04
the term economic policy in like five days. And just even the concept, uh, is just making me laugh. We we're so far beyond that economic policy. Think we are just in things are happening. That's why, like, things are happening literally on fast and break things. Yeah, we're so we're so far beyond move fast and break things. It is every second as we speak, as I feel my heart beating at any moment, this system could just go down because they make the wrong source code changes, and they create a production issue, and that that that is just on it like even just a day to Fix, is catastrophic, and the possibility that they could make a change, that no payments go out of the system for a month, for two months, for three months, and those are the optimistic scenarios. The Treasurer default, no social security checks, no Medicare, no Medicaid. All of this is on the table because this is a black box every single moment. Is the possibility the system breaks. You
Arjun Singh 23:29
know, I think in this answer you you are getting at this, but you had said earlier that our congress people are not taking the situation seemingly serious enough, they're not raising the alarm. What do you think the public people listening to this right now? What is the message you would say to them about, not necessarily, why they should care, but what are the stakes of why they should care? This
Nathan Tankus 23:51
is a system that is so sensitive and so important that if it goes down in an extended way, this country just may not exist. I know how that sounds, but this is really that serious, yeah. I mean, just, how is if the payments don't go out for three months? How does this country operate, right? How does the how does this country operate? I mean, just it's, it's, it's, it's, it's unimaginable. What is going on just in my corner, and I could only been able to peripherally follow the developments in a dozen other areas that normally would be incredibly catastrophic. Would be the thing that I was covering, because it's the most important thing, you know, gave us, I gave a quote to a one of the largest Norwegian newspapers about this, about the extent that the United States collapse would impact the world, to global crisis. Well, Nathan,
Arjun Singh 24:54
thank you for taking the time out of what has been just a absolute insane, bonkers. Week, and I know for you, and thank you for taking the time to talk to us on the show. It was a pleasure. Thank
Nathan Tankus 25:04
you very much for having me.
Arjun Singh 25:10
Thanks for listening to another episode of lever time. This episode was produced by Ariella Markowitz, with editing support from Joel Warner and Lucy Dean Stockton. Our theme music was composed by Nick Campbell. We'll be back later this week with another episode of lever. Time you.