An engineer named Nikhil Rajpal is currently serving as a representative for Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), according to several sources.
Records obtained by WIRED indicate that Rajpal holds active email accounts associated with both DOGE and the NOAA. The DOGE email is formatted similarly to others from the agency, linking it to the Executive Office of the President. Furthermore, Rajpal appears in the NOAA’s public employee directory.
Sources report that on Wednesday, NOAA staff were instructed to grant Rajpal editor privileges to all NOAA Google sites as directed by the acting commerce secretary, Jeremy Pelter, by the end of the business day.
An NOAA employee with over four decades of experience, who led the agency’s initiatives on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, was reportedly placed on administrative leave on Tuesday, just three weeks prior to their planned retirement. This individual did not respond to a request for comment.
Axios stated on Tuesday that DOGE personnel entered NOAA facilities in Maryland on the same day seeking “access to IT systems.” A source conversed with by WIRED confirmed this information.
While Rajpal’s online footprint seems to have been recently minimized, WIRED successfully acquired copies of résumés and other biographical information through public databases. They reveal that, referring to himself as Nik, he is around 30 years old and studied computer science and history at UC Berkeley. Prior to joining NOAA, he worked at Twitter before Elon Musk’s acquisition and was involved in redesigning a Tesla console.
During his undergraduate years, Rajpal led a libertarian-aligned student organization advocating for “minimal government, free markets, sound money, non-intervention, and maximum individual liberty.” In 2014, he delivered a 10-minute presentation on bitcoin to Viget, the company where he was interning. An Instapaper account linked from his personal website under the heading “Read the articles I read” features articles from Richard Hanania, Quillette, and Zero Hedge, along with publications like the Financial Times and Bloomberg.
His background does not appear to contain any specific expertise pertinent to his new position. The NOAA is a nonpartisan scientific agency tasked with monitoring and modeling the oceans and atmosphere to forecast changes in climate and weather; its research and technological advancements underpin various activities ranging from weather forecasting to hurricane modeling, fisheries management, and detailed projections of long-term climate impact.
Historically, the agency has attracted criticism from conservative factions; the Project 2025 policy document advocates for its dismantling and reduction, alongside calls for significant privatization of the National Weather Service, which operates within NOAA.
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Rajpal did not respond promptly to a request for comment. NOAA referred media inquiries to the Department of Commerce, its governing body. Commerce did not provide an immediate response, nor did the White House.
According to sources cited by WIRED and various reports, DOGE personnel have effectively taken control of significant government agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the General Services Administration (GSA). They have also been instrumental in obstructing HIV and AIDS assistance that the administration exempted from cuts to foreign aid due to Musk and President Donald Trump’s overhaul of the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
An executive order signed by Trump grants DOGE access to all unclassified systems, providing its representatives with remarkable authority over sensitive government infrastructures that contain personal information of tens of millions of citizens as well as business data. One DOGE staff member, as previously reported by WIRED, possesses complete access to the code of a Treasury Department system that administers the majority of the trillions in payments made by the federal government annually.
