Workers are inside a special room at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The room is used to test new conventional explosives used to explode advanced conceptions of nuclear weapons, and the data produced from these experiences is considered to be limited.
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Two members of the Elon Musk government Ministry of Elon Musk have received accounts on classified networks which contain highly kept details on US nuclear weapons, say two independent sources at NPR.
Luke Farritor, a former 23-year-old SpaceX trainee and Adam Ramada, a venture capital based in Miami, has had accounts on computer systems for at least two weeks, according to sources that also have access to networks. Before their work at Doge, neither Farritor nor Ramada seem to have experience with nuclear weapons or the management of classified information.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Energy categorically denied that Farritor and Ramada had access to the networks.
“This report is false. No DOGE staff have accessed these NNSA systems. The two people Doge in question worked within the agency for several days and left the DOE in February,” the spokesman said in an email press release.
The two sources contacted by NPR refused to be identified publicly because they were not allowed to talk about the question to the press. They were able to see the names of Ramada and Farritor directly in networks’ directories. Network directories are visible by thousands of employees involved in nuclear weapons in United States facilities and laboratories, but the networks themselves are only accessible on specific terminals in secure rooms designated for the processing of classified information.
The presence of DOGE employees on the network would not be enough for them to have access to this secret information, because the data, even in networks, is carefully controlled on a basis of need to know, according to several experts affected by NPR.
In February, CNN reported that Doge employees, including Farritor, sought access to secret computer systems. At the time, the energy secretary Chris Wright denied that they would be authorized on the networks.
“I heard these rumors:” They are like seeing our nuclear secrets. “None of this is true;
Nuclear networks
The sources indicate that the networks in question are used by the National Nuclear Security Administration, the agency of the Ministry of Energy which oversees the vast nuclear stock of the country and the Ministry of Defense.
The first network, known as the NNSA Enterprise Secure Network, is used to transmit detailed “limited data” on American nuclear weapons and the special nuclear materials used in weapons, among others. The network is used to transfer this extremely sensitive technical information between the NNSA, the country’s nuclear weapons laboratories and the production facilities that store, maintain and improve the country’s nuclear arsenal.
The second network, known as Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNET), is used by the Ministry of Defense to communicate with the Ministry of Energy on Nuclear Weapons. Siprnet is also used more widely to share information classified at the secret level, information that “could potentially harm national security if it were to be released,” said a former career official of the Ministry of Defense who asked for anonymity to discuss classified systems.
Access to the two networks would normally require “Q” authorization, the highest level of security authorization at the Ministry of Energy. Obtaining an q authorization is a long process, but can be accelerated in some cases.
Although sources have confirmed the presence of accounts, it is not difficult to know to what extent the classified data of the two members of the DOGE staff really have. Another familiar source with the question, which spoke at NPR provided of anonymity, due to sensitivities around the systems of the Ministry of Energy which have classified information, said that the presence of DOGE managers on classified DOE systems would not represent an escalation in all Doge privileges on these systems.
They described access as a “toe” that would allow DOGE staff to request information classified at the secret level. “They become a little further, that’s something to note,” they concluded. “It could lead to something bigger.”
DOGE employees may need access to classified information in order to discuss the details of the program and future budgetary priorities, explains Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project of the Federation of American Scientists, which follows the American nuclear program.
Although the main parts of the nuclear weapons budget are ultimately unanswered, many classified details are likely to be defined in the definition of these figures. “I don’t think nothing is open,” he said.
The NNSA has already felt the effects of the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce the government. In February, hundreds of workers were dismissed from the nuclear agency towards Doge. However, the decision was quickly reversed and, finally, less than 50 employees were dismissed, according to the agency.
The new accounts intervenes in the midst of increasing concern concerning the management of data by DOGE elsewhere within the government.
Earlier this month, NPR reported a denunciator to the National Council for Labor Relations who had evidence that Doge employees had high-level access and may have copied and deleted sensitive data from the internal systems of their agency. The DOGE team asked that their activities are not connected to the system, then seemed to try to cover their traces by turning off the monitoring tools and deleting the records of their access. NLRB employees were worried, in particular after detecting attempts to connection suspected of an IP address in Russia using the newly created DOGE references.
This also occurs during a controversy on the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, the signal of the encrypted messaging application accessible to the public to send sensitive details of a military strike on the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Hegseth’s use of the application has become public after the editor -in -chief of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, was accidentally included on a conversation. Last week, the New York Times reported a second conversation which included the wife, brother and personal lawyer of Hegseth.
NPR Disclosure: Katherine Maher, CEO of NPR, chairs the board of directors of the Signal Foundation.
