The DOGE Machine

How Elon Musk’s fledgling Department of Government Efficiency conscripts barely‑adult labor while maneuvering for sweeping access to Americans’ Social Security data

Elon Musk’s companies and his new role atop the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have created a pipeline that funnels barely‑adult labor into some of the most dangerous production floors in the country while simultaneously positioning him to tap one of the federal government’s richest stores of personal data. At SpaceX’s Starbase complex in Brownsville, Texas, the injury rate hit 5.9 per hundred workers in 2023—more than seven times the space‑industry average—and the company has tallied at least 600 serious injuries since 2014, including crushed limbs, skull fractures, and one death. OSHA’s fines for those cases have been less than the sticker price of a used Tesla, a gap that critics say rewards risk‑shifting onto the youngest and cheapest segment of the workforce.