Role: DOGE engineer with admin-level access at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the General Services Administration (GSA), the Department of Education, and the Social Security Administration (SSA) in 2025. UC Berkeley graduate; prior internships at Meta, Palantir, and Bridgewater Associates.

Basis for Inclusion

Subject classification: Voluntary Public Figure. Anchor: B / D.

Bobba is named in WIRED, NYT, NPR, NBC News, ProPublica, and Government Executive reporting; he is identified in internal federal personnel records as an “expert” at OPM; and he is the subject of multiple federal lawsuits over DOGE’s access to protected systems. Inclusion rests on documented official conduct in federal roles, not on protected speech.

Background and DOGE Role

Akash Bobba, 22 at the time of his DOGE appointment, is a recent UC Berkeley graduate with no prior government experience. Before joining DOGE he interned at Meta, Palantir, and Bridgewater Associates (American Bazaar, 2025; Revolving Door Project, 2025). He was one of six engineers aged 19–24 named by WIRED in early 2025 as core DOGE personnel embedded across federal agencies.

Bobba was listed in internal government records as an “expert” at OPM, reporting directly to DOGE chief of staff Amanda Scales. He held A-suite level security clearance at GSA, with an issued GSA email account, access to the agency’s top floor, and access to all physical spaces and IT systems (Revolving Door Project; WIRED, 2025).

Bobba was the first DOGE member to arrive at the Social Security Administration, where he was rapidly onboarded with what SSA leadership described as “unprecedented” urgency and without being told the purpose of the access (ProPublica; Government Executive, 2025).

Real-World Impacts

Federal Employees

• Held admin access at OPM and the Department of Education during workforce reductions affecting tens of thousands of federal staff at those agencies.
• Internal Education Department email system gave Bobba administrator-level status, allowing potential access to sensitive personnel and program communications (Zeteo; NBC News, 2025).

American Citizens (Public Services)

• Department of Education disruption affected federal student-aid processing and Office for Civil Rights enforcement of K–12 complaints.
• Bobba’s SSA access included the master data warehouse holding the Master Beneficiary Record, Supplemental Security Record, and Numident files — the core records used to administer retirement, disability, and survivor benefits for tens of millions of Americans (ProPublica, 2025).

Vulnerable Populations

• Student-loan borrowers and K–12 civil-rights complainants affected by Education Department disruption.
• Social Security beneficiaries — retirees, disabled workers, and survivors — were exposed when Bobba’s access to SSA’s most sensitive systems was extended without standard privacy training (NPR; ProPublica, 2025).

Privacy and Data Security

• Admin access at OPM included federal personnel records; GSA access included IT administration systems; Education access included student-aid data; SSA access included the agency’s most sensitive personal records.
• Bobba was one of fewer than 50 people across the federal government with the highest tier of access to SSA data (NPR, 2025).
• Multiple federal judges found that Bobba and other DOGE staff were given access to protected systems in violation of the Privacy Act and without the training required to handle personally identifiable information (NPR; Nextgov/FCW, 2025).

Other Documented Harms

• A data table Bobba produced — sorting SSA records by age and flagging more than 12 million entries listed as over 120 years old — was used by Elon Musk in a public claim that “vampires” were collecting Social Security checks. Reporting indicates Bobba knew the flagged entries were not receiving benefits and attempted, unsuccessfully, to correct Musk before the claim was amplified (ProPublica; Government Executive, 2025).
• Cited in congressional oversight letters and the Senate HSGAC DOGE report as illustrating DOGE’s pattern of granting admin access to unvetted, early-career personnel without standard background and training requirements.

Conflicts of Interest

• Palantir internship: Indirect ties to the Peter Thiel network. Palantir has been awarded close to $2.5 billion in federal contracts since 2009 (Revolving Door Project, 2025), creating a structural conflict when a former Palantir intern receives admin access to federal personnel, benefits, and procurement-adjacent systems.
• Bridgewater Associates internship: Prior exposure to a major asset manager whose holdings and federal-policy interests are sensitive to changes in benefits administration and federal workforce policy.
• Meta internship: Prior employment in a large platform company subject to federal regulatory action.

Sources

• WIRED, “The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Government Takeover,” 2025
• New York Times DOGE reporting, 2025
• Revolving Door Project, “DOGE Agent: Akash Bobba”
• American Bazaar Online, “Who is Akash Bobba playing a key role at DOGE?,” 2025-02-04
• NPR, “DOGE staffer who shared Treasury data now has more access to government systems,” 2025-03-31
• NPR, “DOGE says it needs to know the government’s most sensitive data, but can’t say why,” 2025-03-26
• NBC News, “Inside DOGE’s takeover of the Education Department,” 2025
• Zeteo, “DOGE Staffers Appear to Have Admin Accounts at Department of Education”
• ProPublica, “Inside DOGE’s Takeover of the Social Security Administration”
• Government Executive, “The untold saga of what happened when DOGE stormed Social Security,” 2025-09
• Nextgov/FCW, “Lawsuit outlines how DOGE pushed for access to Social Security systems and data,” 2025-03
• Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, DOGE oversight report
• Congressional oversight correspondence, 2025