Federal workers raise the alarm on Trump’s administration: ‘Hegseth is compromised’

Federal employees have raised concerns about being replaced by artificial intelligence, following Elon Musk’s email request that they explain what they do at their jobs.

In case you missed it, Musk’s government efficiency task force, DOGE, last week sent out emails to scores of federal workers across multiple agencies demanding that employees list the accomplishments they achieved at work the week prior. At the time, the FBI and other agencies directed workers not to respond to the email, but a similar one has landed in employees’ inboxes this week — with the subject line: “What did you do last week? Part II.”

I am now directing each member of the department’s civilian federal workforce to provide 5 bullets of what they accomplished last week and comply with OPM’s email directive. https://t.co/BJOoEvVTza

— Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (@SecDef) March 2, 2025

According to Politico, this second round of emails was sent to many parts of the government, including staff within the State Department, the Energy Department, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the IRS, the National Institutes of Health, and the Veterans Administration. The email asks workers to reply with “approx. 5 bullets describing what you accomplished last week and cc your manager,” and suggests that, moving forward, such progress checks would become a weekly occurrence. 

While Musk’s first email effort was met with lackluster response, some department heads — including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth — are now enforcing a response from their workers for “Part II” of the DOGE request. In a video shared to the Department of Defense’s X account, Hegseth required all employees at the agency to respond to Musk’s email, saying a “review of Pentagon procedures” means he is “now directing” employees to complete the “simple task” of listing their work accomplishments. 

That’s where some federal workers have raised alarm bells, particularly around how the data collected from listed work accomplishments will be used by Musk. Taking to Reddit, one employee said Hegseth had “let the cat out of the bag” with his statement, claiming the Defense Secretary “explicitly state[d] that this is all data being consolidated” by Musk for the purposes of AI. The Redditor claimed the data gleaned from their email responses will feed into “AI learning,” and expressed fear that “we’re about to be fired by an AI.” 

Scores of fellow employees shared similar concerns, asking why “literally no one of consequence has sounded the alarm” as to Musk’s seeming goal of AI replacement. “So [Musk] can replace gov’t employees with AI, ‘saving’ money for his tax breaks and new contracts?” one user asked, with another agreeing that “the emails are going to be used for the exact purposes” mentioned in the post. More broadly, employees wondered whether the data farmed from email responses would expose sensitive information from certain departments, particularly ones that Musk shouldn’t be privy to. 

“Even seemingly mundane weekly accomplishments, if you aggregate and analyze at scale, can uncover sensitive patterns and info,” one user claimed. DOGE has yet to explain the reasoning behind Musk’s email beyond a “pulse check” and his efforts to improve efficiency, which have so far led to mass layoffs throughout the government. Musk has taken aim at the Department of Education, foreign aid agency USAID, the Department of Labor, and the Treasury, among multiple other agencies. 

It adds to what appears to be Musk’s broader political overreach, with the billionaire present at both a recent White House press briefing and a cabinet meeting.