New bombshell reports that Elon Musk and his associates have changed the Treasury Department’s computer code came under a heavy microscope by a law professor skeptical of the tech billionaire’s true intentions.
“This is a backdoor,” University of Kansas law professor Corey Rayburn Yung warned his Bluesky followers Tuesday in a social media post.
Yung, a research professor and author, built the case against Musk after reports emerged that he and a 25-year-old engineer tied to the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, chair have reportedly gained full control over the payment system code that directs Social Security payments, tax returns and other payments owed to Americans.
He was particularly alarmed by Talking Points Memo publisher Josh Marshall reporting Tuesday that “the changes that have been made all seem to relate to creating new paths to block payments and possibly leave less visibility into what has been blocked.”
“Elon's coders are creating a backdoor into the US Treasury,” Yung concluded Tuesday. “This is incredibly dangerous both because of its intended use (by Elon and Trump) and the risk of other actors exploiting a major security vulnerability to cause a massive disruption to the US government.”
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The law professor continued to dissect Musk’s sudden takeover of the federal payment system from a technical standpoint.
“Pushing live production code cooked up by some young coders over a week of sleepless nights in place of a legacy system that is fundamental to the operation of the US government is against every programming best practice,” Yung told his Bluesky followers.
“There's clearly no QA process, live testing with mocks, technical support for bugs, etc,” he added. “This is insane. It's the coding equivalent of hammering a complex, fragile machine until it does what you want.”
