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Within just the last week or so, #ElonMusk’s #DOGE hit team of mostly young, almost exclusively male engineers & executives have done the following:

• Pushed a website live to track “savings” that showed no savings for several days, & made it trivially easy for random people on the internet to make changes to it.

• Published classified info on that same site.

• Got called out for accidentally inflating that savings amount by $7,992,000,000, & doubled down on their inaccuracy before they fixed it.

• Fired hundreds of people who work on #nuclear security, then scrambled to rehire them, except they had nuked all the work email addresses & personnel files so they didn’t know how to get in touch.

• Basically the same deal, except w/the US Dept of #Agriculture employees working to protect the country from a #BirdFlu crisis.

• Rehired a 25-year-old engineer with a stack of #racist tweets to his name.

• Spouted a bunch of nonsense #ConspiracyTheories about who’s getting #SocialSecurity benefits. (Okay, that one was all #Musk.)

[& that was all before Feb 20, 2025]

The software, called #AutoRIF, which stands for Automated Reduction in Force, was first developed by the Dept of #Defense more than 2 decades ago. Since then, it’s been updated several times & used by a variety of agencies to expedite reductions in workforce. Screenshots of internal databases reviewed by WIRED show that #DOGE operatives have accessed AutoRIF & appear to be editing its #code.

There is a repository in the Office of Personnel Management’s (#OPM) enterprise GitHub system titled “#autorif” in a space created specifically for the director’s office—where #Musk associates have taken charge—soon after #Trump took office. Changes were made as recently as this wknd.

So far, federal agency #firings have been conducted manually, w/HR ofcls combing through employee registries & lists provided by managers, sources tell WIRED.

Probationary employees—those who were recently hired, promoted, or otherwise changed roles—have been targeted first, as they lack certain #CivilService #protections that would make them harder to fire. Thousands of workers have been terminated over the last few weeks across multiple agencies. With the new software & the use of #AI, some government employees fear that large-scale terminations could roll out even more quickly.

While #DOGE could use #AutoRIF as the #DOD built it, multiple #OPM sources speculated that the #Musk-affiliated engineers could be building their own software on top of, or using #code from, AutoRIF. In screenshots viewed by WIRED, Riccardo Biasini, a fmr engineer at #Tesla & a dir at #TBC, has seemingly been tasked w/pruning AutoRIF on GitHub, w/his name attached to the repository. “Remove obsolete versions of autorif,” one file description authored by a user w/Biasini’s GitHub username says.

Biasini has also been listed as the main point of contact for the government-wide email system created by the #Trump admin from within #OPM to solicit resignation emails from #FederalWorkers.

…In order to conduct RIFs, govt HR ofcls are required to create lists ranking employees who may be subject to #firings. #AutoRIF does that automatically, a fmr govt HR ofcl tells WIRED.

“However, even w/the use of any automated system, the OPM guidance says all data has to be confirmed manually & that employees (or their representative) are allowed to examine the registers.” It’s not immediately clear if #AutoRIF’s capabilities have been altered either by the #Defense Dept or #DOGE.

The revelation that #DOGE is working on #AutoRIF comes as it seemingly prepares for its 2nd major round of #firings.

…On Monday, NBC News reported that this information [the requested five bullet points explaining #FederalWorkers’ top work achievements of the last week] would be fed into an unspecified Large Language Model (#LLM) that would assess whether an employee was necessary.

@Nonilex I hope Musk is made to pay these poor people.