How Elon Musk’s Department of Energy access could pose a nuclear threat

What was once ridiculous is now possible. Elon Musk, the richest person in the history of the world, has become President Donald Trump’s attack dog. Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have unprecedented access to the government’s data and computer system. Earlier this week, that came to include systems in the Department of Energy (DOE), which oversees America’s nuclear weapons. The news raised enough concern that Secretary of Energy Chris Wright went on the air to deny Musk and DOGE have access to atomic secrets.

It’s alarming to be at a point where someone has to make this kind of statement, especially because the Trump administration has reportedly lied about DOGE’s access levels before. DOGE’s placement at the DOE even raises a truly bizarre-sounding possibility: that a pseudo-department named after a shiba inu could get actual access to nuclear weapons. Fortunately, despite Musk’s ever-expanding power over government systems, it would take far more than barging into the right office to do this. But at a moment where all kinds of governmental norms are in flux, it’s worth looking at what exactly separates someone like Musk from perhaps the greatest destructive force on the planet — and what other kinds of risks his access could pose.

The US has one of the most powerful nuclear arsenals on the planet. It’s enough firepower to end all life on Earth several times over. The President has the sole authority to launch those weapons, but DOGE is inching ever closer to their systems. During a press conference on Friday, Trump said he had directed Musk and DOGE to tackle spending at the Pentagon; getting access to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) might not be out of the question either.

There’s good news, however: accessing any piece of nuclear command and control from a random laptop hooked into a DOE network is virtually impossible. A State Department employee with knowledge of the issue, who spoke to The Verge on the condition we protect their anonymity, threw cold water on the idea.

“I can’t see what [Musk] would possibly do,” the employee said. “I would say it’s zero. I can’t fathom how that would happen. Famous last words. I also firmly believe that if you make something idiot proof, the world will build a better idiot.” Launching a nuke requires physical access to the weapon itself. Missileers have to turn keys. A submarine crew must prep and fire a missile. A bomber crew must pull levers and hone in on targets. Short of Musk or his employees entering a silo, climbing onto a stealth bomber, or getting into a submarine, it’s not going to happen.

The command and control systems that run America’s nuclear weapons aren’t connected to the internet and are run on a closed network that exists only for nuclear forces. They’re also ancient. Some of the equipment in use has been around since the 1960s and ‘70s. The Pentagon is modernizing the systems, but it’s slow going. The Air Force only stopped using 1970s-era eight-inch floppy discs for some of its nuclear computers in 2019. “A lot of these computer systems are pretty much legacy systems,” the employee said. “I’m much more worried about these systems being decrepit and not functioning in a crisis.”

There’s a misconception rooted in popular culture that America’s nuclear weapons will fire if the U.S. is ever fired upon. If China, Russia, or North Korea were to fire a nuke at the U.S., America’s nukes would not automatically fire. The President would need to decide to retaliate and multiple military officials would have to decide to follow the order. “Those systems are not really automated in the way that people worry about,” the State Department employee said.

Alex Wellerstein, an associate professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology and an expert in nukes and nuclear secrecy, agreed. “I don’t think the current command and control systems are ‘hackable,’” he told The Verge. “They are frankly not modern enough for that.”

Wallerstein points out, however, that Musk has another — arguably more feasible — path to nuclear weapons: Trump. “If Musk was trying to do a true ‘hostile takeover’ of that sort it would be best accomplished by just fooling Trump into believing nuclear war was imminent, which would probably be a trivial endeavor for someone of Musk’s wealth and Trump’s gullibility,” he said.

For this to happen, Trump would need to open up his Football: a leather-coated Zero Halliburton aluminum attache case that follows the president everywhere. Inside is communications equipment that puts him in touch with the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon. To make the call, Trump would need a laminated sheet of paper called the Biscuit, containing a long string of alpha-numeric code. He’s supposed to have this with him at all times too. Reading out a line in this code, which the National Security Agency updates every day, confirms the President’s identity when he calls in a nuclear strike. “The President doesn’t have launch codes. The President has a code that authenticates his voice,” the State Department Employee said.

So Musk would have to get the Biscuit, access the Football, and call in a code in Trump’s voice. Or convince Trump to do it. “Short of something like that, I don’t think there’s a chance,” the State Department employee said.

But there’s one final, worrying wrinkle: the Football and the Biscuit only exist because people in the past decided it’s the best way for the President to order a nuclear launch. Trump could change this process at any time for any reason.

“There are also many quite detailed regulations pertaining to who can have access to the systems involving the use of nuclear weapons, with specific requirements for clearances and reliability and so on,” Wellerstein said. “These are all essentially executive regulations, and the President is capable of delegating nuclear use powers, and past Presidents have certainly done that, essentially ‘pre-authorizing’ the use of nuclear weapons by the military under specific circumstances.”

President Eisenhower empowered commanders in the Pacific to order the launch of nuclear weapons under very specific circumstances, for instance, and Kennedy and Johnson kept up the tradition.

Wellerstein pointed out that DOGE employees without clearances appear to have access to classified systems that “would normally be considered quite sensitive.” Other things that were once forbidden might also be on the table.

“If President Trump decides that Elon Musk should have access to nukes, and tells the military to override their normal requirements, and the military takes that as a legal and actionable order, then why not?” Wellerstein said. “It’s an absurd and patently idiotic and self-destructive idea, but that does not differentiate it strongly from other things presently going on. It is suicidal in nature, but so are other actions currently being undertaken under Trump’s authority.”

The Football and Biscuit are not sacrosanct.

But in even this worst-case of worst-case scenarios, there’s no big red button Trump or Musk can push to open up a silo and unleash nuclear Armageddon. “What the president has is authority,” the State Department employee said. “That authority is legal in nature. The president can’t launch nuclear weapons. Doesn’t have the ability.” The ability is distributed across dozens of people, including the submarine crew and Missileers mentioned above — any of whom could break the chain.

“All of these scenarios rely on the military obeying orders,” Wellerstein said. “I would prefer to believe that they would refuse to do so. But that would also be a difficult and extraordinary thing in and of itself. It is not a situation I would want them to be in.”

Trump and Musk are courting far more likely nuclear disasters than launching an intercontinental-ballistic missile. Musk’s DOGE crew isn’t filled with the kind of people you want inside the Pentagon or DoE; employee Edward Coristine has connections to cybercriminals and operated websites in Russia. He and others would likely have never gotten security clearances if Washington were functioning normally.

Yet they’re barreling along anyway. And every DOGE employee is a point of failure in a delicate system involving information related to the most powerful weapons on the planet. “There’s probably a ton of personnel data that would be of interest to a foreign adversary,” the State Department employee said. China and Russia would love to get information about people with security clearances. Background checks turn up information about debts, family relations, and other information that would be useful in blackmailing a government official.

Nuclear weapons also produce nuclear waste. The U.S. still hasn’t cleaned up waste left behind by the Manhattan Project. People are sick and dying, right now, in America because of nuclear material left behind from America’s various nuclear weapons projects. Under Biden, the Department of Energy planned to spend $8.2 billion cleaning up that Cold War-era nuclear waste. But the employee worried that DOGE and Musk would see routine environmental maintenance around nuclear weapons projects as “woke.”

A large portion of the NNSA’s budget is dedicated to environmental cleanup. “I could see them thinking of this as misguided environmentalism,” the employee said. “I can see them just deciding to shut all that stuff down.”

Nuclear modernization began during the Obama administration and will play out over the next 25 years.The U.S. is currently set to spend almost $2 trillion on the project. It’s going to dig new missile silos across the country, deploy updated nuclear weapons, revamp computer systems, and construct new nuclear submarines. It’s a large undertaking with an enormous potential for waste, fraud, and abuse. Under any administration it needs to be scrutinized and audited. Right now, the people doing those audits are Musk and DOGE.

Musk and DOGE have proven they don’t care about systems put in place to keep Americans safe and protect sensitive data. Theirs is a “move fast and break things” philosophy. There are laws and regulations in place to keep people like them out of the halls of power and away from sensitive nuclear secrets.

“Regulations only work if people take them seriously. Laws only work if they are enforced,” Wellerstein said. “We are in no-man’s land right now.”