Elon Musk, a centibillionaire, has garnered significant attention for his acquisition of the former US Digital Service, now rebranded as the United States DOGE Service, which has received endorsement through various executive orders from President Donald Trump. Recent reporting from WIRED reveals that Musk’s reach encompasses an even more critical governmental body.
Insiders in the federal government have informed WIRED that the upper echelons of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM)—which serves as the human resources department for the entire federal government—are currently dominated by individuals connected to Musk and the tech sector. Included in this group is someone whose online résumé indicates they were poised to begin college last fall.
Scott Kupor, a managing partner at the influential investment firm Andreessen Horowitz, has been appointed by Trump to lead the OPM. However, sources indicate that several individuals are already positioned to support Musk’s objectives of reducing workforce numbers and disrupting traditional government operations.
As previously reported, Amanda Scales has assumed the role of chief of staff at OPM. She previously held a talent position at xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence venture, as noted on her LinkedIn profile. Before that, she was part of the talent and operations team at Human Capital, a venture firm with interests in the defense technology enterprise Anduril and the political prediction marketplace Kalshi; prior to that, she spent several years with Uber. Experts believe her significant placement in this role signals a broader trend of transforming the traditionally nonpartisan OPM into a political instrument.
“It’s not excessive to suggest that there is a more elaborate strategy for monitoring and enforcing loyalty than during the first term,” states Don Moynihan, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan.
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According to sources, Riccardo Biasini, who was formerly an engineer at Tesla and most recently served as the director of operations for the Las Vegas Loop at Musk’s Boring Company, is now a senior adviser at OPM. Steve Davis, the CEO of the Boring Company, is reportedly advising Musk on potential cuts through DOGE and played a key role in Musk’s overhaul of Twitter, now known as X, following his acquisition of the platform in 2022.
Other individuals in prominent positions within the new OPM hierarchy reportedly include two others with software engineering backgrounds, whose identities WIRED has decided not to disclose due to their ages. One individual, a senior adviser to the director, is a 21-year-old who showcases experience working for Palantir, the government contracting and analytics firm co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel, who serves as its chair. (Thiel, a former PayPal CEO and a long-time associate of Musk, is also a Trump backer who financed the 2022 Senate campaign of his protégé, Vice President JD Vance.) The second individual, who reports directly to Scales, is listed as a recent high school graduate in 2024 according to an archived version of an online résumé and the student magazine of his high school; his work experience includes roles as a camp counselor and bicycle mechanic, in addition to a summer internship at Neuralink, Musk’s brain-computer interface company.
Among those elevated within the OPM is Noah Peters, an attorney whose LinkedIn profile boasts experience in litigation representing the National Rifle Association and has contributed to right-leaning publications such as the Daily Caller and the Federalist; he now serves as a senior adviser to the director. Metadata linked to a document on the OPM website suggests that Peters authored a memo on January 27, issued under acting OPM director Charles Ezell’s name, detailing how the agency would implement one of Trump’s executive orders, “Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce.” This pertains to what is sometimes referred to as Schedule F—a strategy to reclassify numerous civil service positions as political appointees, tethering them to the specific goals of an administration and undermining the status of career government personnel. This executive order will enable certain career civil servants to be replaced by Trump loyalists by designating them as political appointees, forming a key aspect of the Project 2025 initiative aimed at reshaping the government.
