Sources tell WIRED that the ability of DOGE’s Marko Elez to alter code controlling trillions in federal spending was rescinded days after US Treasury and White House officials said it didn’t exist.

The US Treasury Department’s payment servers hold the tax returns, social security data and bank account numbers of every adult citizen of the United States. They are, one would assume, among the most highly secured servers on earth and yet it seems that all the employees of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) needed to do to access these systems after January 20 was to walk into Treasury Department offices and demand access to the servers’ credentials.