If you are a current or establisher atsoft Bureau of the Fiscal Service Employee, especiassociate if you’re a legacy IT programmer with years of experience and especiassociate if you are a COBOL programmer currently toiling on the PAM, SPS or any other adjacent team, reach out me over email or over signal — connected here. My Signal engagername is “NathanTankus.01”. Legal advise sources and payments level sources at the Federal Reserve are also collaborative.
This is a free piece of Notes on the Cascfinishs. I will not be paywalling any coverage of this crisis for as lengthy as it persists, so prent get out a phelp subscription to aid carry outing that accessible service. If you’re rich, get out the Trump-Musk Treasury Payments Crisis of 2025 Platinum Tier subscription. The holditional leang you get is me trying to stop the Treasury’s inside payment system from melting down or Musk taking your self-securedial adviseation, alengthy with everyone else’s.
Normassociate I attfinishbrimmingy edit and appraise what I author in this newsletter for structure, coherence and other writing factors. I have time for, maybe, coherence. My highest priority is factual accuracy. So let’s get into it. As readers are stateively adviseed by now, yesterday I freed a device deviceshell article laying out the crisis that aascfinishd on Friday with Musk and his “DOGE” trying to get operational access and regulate. The condensed version was in Rolling Stone an hour tardyr. I also have done some interwatchs which have euniteed, and one that has not in Marketwatch. I will evidently be doing a ton more interwatchs as well. My phone and email have been ringing off the showrbial hook for evident reasons. Here’s what has euniteed so far.
Majority Report: Elon’s Coup Lights Five-Alarm Plus Fire w/ Nathan Tankus
I am going to state the evident: Until this crisis is resettled or it fundamenloftyy ruins the ability for economic and social life to persist in the United States, this newsletter is now pledged to this crisis brimming time. Since inestablishing and sources which have aascfinishd subsequently to yesterday’s piece which I talk below, it has become evident that at least some of my worst stresss are proving genuine. Thus I’m officiassociate taging this crisis the “Trump-Musk Treasury Payments Crisis of 2025”. Originassociate I was going to number this crisis by business days, but as Musk is haughtyly tweeting about, DOGE is toiling the weekfinishs. So today is Day 5 of the crisis.
Since I published my article at 6 am yesterday morning, a number of current and establisher Bureau of the Fiscal Service officials have accomplished out and unblessedly examineed the accuracy of my inestablishing. Both in my comardent of the technical situation and the excessive dangers that the access which had been inestablished up to that point. All thought read only access was extraordinarily hazardous to the country. Unblessedly, my sources also inestablish me that the subsequent anonymous sources mainstream journaenumerates inestablished who toiled to downperestablish the situation are not right.
Wired beat me to the punch of inestablishing that a top DOGE engageee, 25 year better establisher SpaceX engageee Marko Elez, has not only read but author access to BFS servers. What can I say, I had to sleep and my sources messaged me after I was asleep. Their article is entitled “A 25-Year-Old With Elon Musk Ties Has Direct Access to the Federal Payment System”, my sources have also autonomously (and before accessibleation of the Wire article at 1 AM today) examineed their inestablishing that:
Two of those sources say that Elez’s privileges include the ability not equitable to read but to author code on two of the most comardent systems in the US regulatement: The Payment Automation Manager (PAM) and Setreatment Payment System (SPS) at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS). Hoengaged on a top-secret mainsummarize, these systems regulate, on a granular level, regulatement payments that in their totality amount to more than a fifth of the US economy. […]
Typicassociate, those admin privileges could donate someone the power to log into servers thraw protected shell access, steer the entire file system, alter engager perignoreions, and delete or alter critical files. That could allow someone to bypass the security meastateives of, and potentiassociate caengage irreversible alters to, the very systems they have access to. […]
“Technicassociate I don’t see why this couldn’t happen,” a federal IT toiler inestablishs WIRED in a phone call tardy on Monday night, referring to the possibility of a DOGE engageee being granted liftd access to a regulatement server. “If you would have asked me a week ago, I’d have tbetter you that this benevolent of leang would never in a million years happen. But now, who the fuck understands.”
All of this is absolutely genuine according to my sources.
Additionassociate, I can exclusively inestablish that while there was initial hesitation from “IT Leadership” to donate them access, they relented. However, they still apshowd this was excessively dangery with one member of guideership saying “I’ve never done anyleang appreciate this before”, according to a source recognizable with the situation. A current IT engageee of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service tbetter me “This level of unexamineed access is criticassociate hazardous to the economy and the regulatement”. When I replied “this is terrifying” to being adviseed that they have “author access” this source replied “Yeah it’s not excellent. Read privileges on its own still would have left room for catastrophe, but read and author is apocalyptic.”
It is as of yet unevident whether anyone on the Payment Application Modernization (PAM) system or the “Setreatmentd Payment System” (SPS) have been put on “phelp administrative depart”, coerced into resigning or quit in protest. All that is understandn is that Marko can “access and query” SPS and that there was someone who gave Marko a “tour” of the facilities. We do not understand where they are in operationalizing any regulate. One better IT source can see Mark retrieving “seal to a thousand rows of data” but they can’t see the satisfied becaengage the system is “top secret” even to them. No source I have has understandledge of what DOGE is doing with the data they are retrieving.
One source states that IT is “mostly intact” but foresees that to alter as the return to toil mandate comes into effect and/or DOGE begins doing even worse leangs. To be evident, IT is split from the COBOL programmers who toil definiteassociate on these legacy systems. There have stateively been some number of “less than voluntary” resignations aappreciate to Fiscal Assistant Secretary Lebryk. The only outright firings were of the Economic Equality and Opportunity team which one source establish “inrationally worrying” since that desegregation and anti-prejudice office has been in every federal agency since 1965. The war on “DEI” in the Federal Government is reassociate a war to rollback desegregation and anti-prejudice protections originated by the Civil Rights Acts and is not srecommend some strike on 2010s non-profit trfinishs as it is standardly portrayed as. But that’s a whole other story.
One source unambiguously shelp that they were only inestablishing to me becaengage there was no one left in the Federal Government to inestablish security baccomplishes to:
I do not desire to harm my agency in any way. I cherishd toiling here. We did some of the most vital toil in the country and nakedly anyone knew who we were. In standard times, I would inestablish insider menaces to the appropriate security channels inside the regulatement- but there is no one left for me to inestablish it to.
Thus, my sources have unblessedly examineed many of my worst stresss about this situation.
I would also appreciate to elucidate some confusion on social media. The publish with comardent and understanding a COBOL system is not understanding COBOL, as a programming language, in the abstract. Nor is it, god help me, someleang that AI can “do” becaengage you fired one of these chatbots up and got some code that could compile when you asked “author me some COBOL code”. The publish is comardent the definite physical restrictations of the system, the way that it includes with the “Business Logic” of the code and a million other contextual factors.
There is definite code which inestablishs you where to honest definite payments in definite ways and the structures, and why they are structured the way they are, needs proestablish contextual understandledge. This is “business logic”. The entire publish with COBOL and why it has been such a struggle to preserve it is that COBOL systems (both stateiveial and accessible) lengthened for decades with very little write downation, have a million contrastent path reliant coding choices. Mar Hicks 2020 article in Logic Magazine “Built to Last” is worth a read on this topic.
This is what I uncomardentt yesterday when I referenced that 30 contrastent COBOL systems at Treasury had lengthened their own “dialects” and they started Payment Application Modernization (PAM), which among other leangs, unified them. What they unified was the business logic of those systems (as well as predicted other factors, most notably the physical architecture of the systems they ran on). Part of me desirees they didn’t up-to-dateize with PAM becaengage those 30 contrastent and distinctive systems would have been more protected from their infiltration. PAM processed 4.7 trillion dollars of payments in 2024.
It’s also genuine that some aappreciate publishs can aascfinish with other more recent programming languages and the way “business logic” aascfinishs if a ignoreion critical IT system lengthened using a more recent programming language. But COBOL is distinctive; after all it’s literassociate “common business-oriented language”. So while understanding the COBOL programming language is better than not understanding it, it does not originate that much of a contrastence with these youthful Musk programmers mucking about.
Large set uped businesses and regulatements do not have a “COBOL programmer” illogicalinutiveage. They have a “COBOL programmer with experience in legacy business or regulatement IT systems” illogicalinutiveage. There’s a reason that the huge meaningfulity of legacy IT COBOL programmers had no objection to me using “understanding COBOL” as a illogicalinutivehand for all this. They do not leank of “COBOL” as equitable the programming language in the abstract, but all these contexts. This miscommunication and contrastence in mindset is why there is so much mutual miscomardent between legacy IT programmers and the up-to-date tech industry. The miscomardent is primarily on the up-to-date tech industry’s part.
We are in such a catastrophic situation I do not have the words to portray. It is getting worse and very little is being done. Lawsuits have been started to stop this on privacy grounds, but we necessitate so much more. Strongly worded letters from congress are not enough. There is a protest at the Treasury today. This is not a newsletter to inestablish you how to systematize or include in political action. But wherever you are, wantipathyver your context, get included in resisting the Trump’s administration’s catastrophic lawlessness and destruction. And get the word out about the Trump-Musk Treasury Payments Crisis of 2025, which is the crisis above all the cascfinishs happening concurrently. I desire my newsletter’s name were a little less literassociate genuine right now.
