Akash Bobba
Wrecker
, coder, age 21
Tech Industry Links: Palantir
Identified early in media reports as one of six engineers picked on Elon Musk’s team, Akash Bobba was a prolific wrecker from the start, including an unusual detailing document where we as assigned to OPM, Education and Social Security simultaneously. Initially, he served as a volunteer, but he been on the payroll at the Social Security Administration since early February, where has been a trusted lieutenant of Mike Russo.
Positions
Position | Dates | Notes |
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1/20
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[as OPM-03] appointed Expert, Office of the Director (NTE 2025-07-18, ED-00, excepted, volunteer) | |
2/03
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[as ED-01] detail (NTE 2026-02-12) | |
2/03
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[as OPM-03] detail | |
2/09
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[as SSA-01] appointed Expert, Office of the Chief Information Officer (NTE 2026-02-08, ED-00, $90,025) | |
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likely detailed as Senior Advisor «identified by agency FOIA as having been at the agency, guessing detailed» American Oversight |
Systems
System | Dates | Notes |
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website
1/20
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1/20 | Agency Website
This is a stand-in for whatever website platform an agency is using (OPM) unknown access «listed as grant for “Web Admin” on 1/20. Not revoked as of 2/12» court doc |
USA Performance
1/20
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1/20 | USA Performance
System tracking job performance of federal employees (OPM) unknown access «system name is listed as “USA Performance - U.S. Office of Personnel Management”» |
website
1/28
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1/28 | Agency Website
This is a stand-in for whatever website platform an agency is using (OPM) unknown access «listed as grant for “Web Admin” on 1/20. Not revoked as of 2/12» court doc |
NUMIDENT
2/10
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2/10 | Numerical Identification System
NUMIDENT files that have been extracted from SSA systems, these contain SSNs for everybody (SSA) read access granted by CIO Mike Russo court doc |
Events
Agency | Date | Event |
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1/20
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1/20
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Access:
IT staff at OPM are pulled into a “911-esque call” requesting that “a political team” of 6 individuals must be given access to OPM systems. These include Charles Ezell, Greg Hogan, and Amanda Scales, as well as unidentified employees OPM-03 (Akash Bobba), OPM-05 (Gavin Kliger) and OPM-07 (Brian Bjelde). These DOGE staffers are granted administrative access to USAJOBS, USA Staffing, and USA Performance systems.
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1/28
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2/03
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Onboard:
Unidentified employee SSA-01 (Akash Bobba) starts working at the SSA with the title of Expert and an annual salary of $90,025.
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2/03
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Onboard:
Mike Russo officially joins the agency as its new CIO. He then immediately requests that Akash Bobba should be rapidly onboarded into the agency (but there are issues with Bobba’s background check)
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2/08
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Access:
NBC News reports that Akash Bobba and Ethan Shaotran have admin access to email at the Department of Education and had also accessed the backend admin for the agency website.
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2/10
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Report:
Mike Russo summons his new ally Leland Dudek to his office and asks him to explain data discrepancies identified by Elon Musk. Leland convenes a team of dozens of SSA engineers who review the data from the Treasury department and document fallacies of DOGE’s reasoning in a memo. Mike Russo rejects the memo’s conclusions by declaring that DOGE would not trust career civil servants and demanding that Akash Bobba must do his own analysis.
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2/10
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Disruption:
Mike Russo and the DOGE chief of staff Steve Davis both demand that Akash Bobba be onboarded at Social Security Administration before midnight, bypassing the usual background security checks.
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2/12
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Directory:
In a FOIA request, Democracy Forward names DOGE staff known to be at OPM at that time.
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2/15
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Disruption:
Frustrated with the questions and concerns raised by Akash Bobba about technical issues with the sandbox NUMIDENT data, Mike Russo complains directly to the Chief CIO in the office of the OMB.
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2/15
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Access:
SSA IT staff express concern to Acting Commissioner Michelle King that Akash Bobba is accessing highly sensitive data provided by SSA remotely from an insecure location (the DOGE enclave within OPM). This is in violation of the terms of his signed access agreement.
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3/12
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Directory:
In a sworn declaration, Florence Felix-Lawson notes “the SSA DOGE Team currently consists of ten SSA employees: four SSA special government employees (Employees 1, 4, 6, and 9) and six detailees to SSA from other government agencies and offices (Employees 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, and 10)”
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3/13
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Directory:
Wired reports that 10 DOGE staffers are currently visible in the Microsoft Teams directory of all employees at SSA
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3/27
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Access:
In a sworn declaration, Leland Dudek justifies access to PII in SSA records for SSA-01 (Akash Bobba), SSA-05 (Cole Killian), SSA-08 (Nikhil Rajpal) and SSA-09 (Payton Rehling) on the DOGE team. This access is granted through the SSA’s Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) system. He asserts that DOGE staff are being granted only the minimum levels of schema access required.
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4/08
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5/16
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Directory:
In a response to a FOIA request made by American Oversight, SBA provides a list of all people who have been identified as communication on agency head Kelly Loefler’s behalf. It includes a number of people known to be DOGE and others with the title Senior Advisor who might also be doge.gov
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