Why Elon Musk installed his top lieutenants at a federal agency you probably haven't heard of

WASHINGTON — On the rooftop patio of the General Services Administration headquarters, an agency staffer recently discovered something strange: a rectangular device attached to a wire that snaked across the roof, over the ledge and into the administrator's window one floor below.

It didn't take long for the employee — an IT specialist — to figure out the device was a transceiver that communicates with Elon Musk's vast and private Starlink satellite network. Concerned that the equipment violated federal laws designed to protect public data, staffers reported the discovery to superiors and the agency's internal watchdog.

The Starlink equipment raises a host of questions about what Musk and his efficiency czars are doing at GSA, an obscure agency that is playing an outsized role in the Trump administration's quest to slash costs and bring the federal government to heel.

Among other clues that GSA is a critical cog in Musk's stated efforts to slash billions of dollars in federal spending: people with ties to the entrepreneur or his companies hold key jobs at the agency. Its acting administrator is a Silicon Valley tech executive who has expertise in rolling out artificial intelligence tools and whose wife once worked for Musk at his social media company, X.

An engineer at Tesla, the billionaire's electric car company, runs the GSA's technology division. And one of Musk's trusted lieutenants is helping to spearhead the work of downsizing the government's real estate footprint.

GSA oversees many of Uncle Sam's real estate transactions, collecting and paying rent on behalf of almost every federal agency. It helps manage billions in federal contracts. And it assists other agencies in building better websites and digital tools for citizens.

It is so important because it is ''a choke point for all agencies,'' said Steven Schooner, a George Washington University law school professor who specializes in government contracting. ''They can, in effect, stop all civilian agencies from purchasing, period. That's everything.''

In a statement in early March, GSA said it planned to get rid of ''non-core assets'' and welcomed ''creative solutions, including sale-lease backs, ground leases and other forms of public/private partnerships.''

The search for those cuts has engulfed the entire 12,000-person agency. At the helm of that push is the GSA's acting administrator, Stephen Ehikian, the tech executive whose wife worked for X.

''GSA was built for this moment,'' Ehikian told employees last month in a meeting, a video of which was viewed by The Associated Press.

''This agency is the backbone of federal government operations,'' said Ehikian, who is seeking to expand automation — through the use of artificial intelligence — of many GSA functions. ''We literally have an impact on the administration's mandate right now, which is around efficiency.''

Unloading real estate

Another close Musk adviser — Nicole Hollander — is driving the initiative to unload the government's real estate. Her husband, Steve Davis, is acting as the de facto leader of the Musk-inspired Department of Government Efficiency.

Hollander, who studied business and real estate at George Washington University, is a licensed property manager in Washington, according to LinkedIn. Her profile also lists her as an employee of X since 2023.

In early March, the GSA real estate division released a list of hundreds of government-owned or leased properties it sought to sell in a frenzied rush.

The list drew sharp criticism from Democrats and civil society groups because it proposed the sale of the Justice Department headquarters and included at least one undisclosed Central Intelligence Agency facility. GSA quickly withdrew the list.

That did not stall DOGE's fire sale. In the presentation viewed by the AP, Ehikian said the agency has canceled more than 680 leases, listed or sold at least 32 properties worth $185 million and cut more than $50 billion in contracts.

Hollander has mostly operated behind the scenes. She rarely appears in Zoom meetings, according to employees. Documents obtained by the AP show spreadsheets she creates are stripped of her name and replaced with a more generic ''GSA leadership.''

The AP also obtained copies of some event invitations on Hollander's calendar. They showed Hollander had several meetings with commercial real estate and services firms, including a brokerage firm and a real estate consulting company that helps companies economize their space. She also took meetings with a consortium of Washington technology companies.

Hollander did not respond to a request for comment sent over LinkedIn or through a GSA spokesperson.

It's not the first time that Hollander has led a cost-cutting campaign for Musk. A lawsuit brought by fired Twitter employees in 2023 alleged that Hollander and Davis were part of a ''cadre of sycophants'' who were particularly zealous in implementing Musk's mandate overhaul of the social media company.

The suit claimed the pair, following their boss' orders, circumvented San Francisco building and safety codes, ignored their obligation to pay vendors and landlords and downsized without regard to the turmoil it caused employees or customers.

The couple, the lawsuit alleged, also lived at Twitter headquarters with their month-old child, mirroring Musk, who has a reputation for living at his company offices. That pattern appears to be repeating at GSA: Hollander has installed cots on the agency's sixth floor, according to employees.

Attorneys for Musk and X have moved to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the Delaware federal court lacks jurisdiction and the lawsuit is legally groundless.

‘Move Fast and Make Changes'

Another employee installed by the Trump administration at GSA worked for Musk at Tesla.

Shortly after taking over GSA's technology unit, Thomas Shedd told his workforce the goal was to ''move fast and make changes,'' according to a transcript of the February meeting obtained by the AP. That's a variation on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's motto of moving fast and breaking things.

Shedd soon began demanding access to sensitive systems that enable the public to communicate or interact with government services, according to staffers who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they feared reprisal.

Shedd's request prompted pushback from existing GSA staff. One employee resigned rather than give Shedd access, according to 404 Media.

He also told staff he wanted to consolidate all the government contracts in a centralized database to more easily figure out which ones to eliminate, according to a transcript of the meeting. It's not clear if he accomplished that goal. Shedd did not reply to emails seeking comment.

He and other GSA officials have also sought to rely more heavily on artificial intelligence. In March, employees were given a demo of a new internal AI chatbot that is designed to more speedily identify contracts and real estate that can be jettisoned. Government agencies like GSA have been hesitant to deploy AI in such ways due to data-security and privacy concerns, according to current and former officials.

Starlink mystery

It's not known what role — if any — Starlink is playing in GSA's technological evolution.

On the GSA roof, employees found at least two transceivers, including the one with a wire running to the administrator's office. It is not clear why the agency is using Starlink. The network provides internet service but is not generally approved for use in most government computer systems.

IT staffers, who reported the discovery to superiors, were concerned that the devices were not authorized to be used at GSA and DOGE might be utilizing them to siphon off agency data, according to internal emails obtained by the AP and a GSA employee who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal.

GSA's IT staff opened an investigation to see if the terminals were a security threat, and an employee filed a complaint with the GSA's inspector general, the emails show. The status of those probes could not be determined.

The AP obtained photos — taken by a GSA employee — of the transceivers. And an AP staffer, using a telephoto lens, confirmed that a wire runs from the roof to a window to the administrator's office. NBC reported that several DOGE staffers working out of GSA had begun using Starlink terminals in February. It's unclear if they're the same terminals referred for investigation by IT staff in March.

A GSA spokesman confirmed the presence of Starlink transceivers but said they were not connected ''to GSA's internal network, nor was there a security breach.''

To many veterans of the agency, the irony of DOGE's slash-and-burn approach to GSA is that it is jeopardizing one of the agency's longstanding missions: improving government efficiency.

The agency, for example, had an in-house consulting shop that during the first Trump administration focused on improving government services, especially those relying on technology. Among its initiatives, the team helped create systems to allow Americans to file taxes online and was working to improve online passport renewal.

In the early weeks of the second Trump administration, DOGE officials gutted the team. Shedd defended that move, telling employees in a meeting that the team was eliminated because its work was not cost-effective, according to a transcript of his remarks.

Any reduction in headcount could also jeopardize the government's ability to police contracts once they are issued to keep costs down.

Such decisions have baffled those who have tracked GSA's work.

Amira Boland, a behavioral scientist at GSA during the first Trump administration, said that trimming government was a good idea but described some of DOGE's cuts as ''reckless.''

''There is certainly bureaucracy that needs to be eliminated,'' Boland said, ''but you have to know the stakes you're playing with.''

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Goodman reported from Miami and Burke from San Francisco.

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Contact AP's global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/