Elon Musk plans to fix US Government IT amid Chinese cyberattacks

As an entrepreneur famous for companies like SpaceX and Tesla Elon Musk has declared he aims to eliminate federal information technology (IT). He further said on X Musk wants to fly rockets around the earth but fixing government IT is even tougher.

Now Chinese government cyber-attack concerns within US government institutions are getting larger and inflated than ever before. On January 16, Politico reported that Chinese hackers had breached the US Treasury Department and stolen more than 3,000 documents from American officials. Though only non-confidential data was released, the 419 computers attacked were compromised.

The very next day, according to Bloomberg disclosed that Chinese government hackers had indeed penetrated our financial institutions: US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s computer_ in this case they gained access.m Even the files of her left – and right-hand men Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo and Acting Deputy Secretary Brad Smith were Their pitiful job parodied. The three of them only ended up losing confidence in the treasury secretaries.

In response to the incidents, the  US Treasury Department on January 17 imposed sanctions against individual Yin Kechen in Shanghai and Sichuan Juxinhe Network Technology, alleging that they had been involved in “Salt Typhoon” cyberattacks targeting US communication firms. American intelligence had long waited for evidence of widespread Chinese espionage against Americans both in a political and commercial context.

According to Reuters, the “Salt Typhoon” attacks were unexpected. Departing from the norm, they exposed extensive call records of American citizens – a thing that greatly agitated US intelligence circles. Juxinhe Network Technology, the department said in its statement, is a hacking firm with strong connections to China’s Ministry of State Security, Sichuan branch. It noted in reprimanding Yin Kechen that he has been a hacker for over a decade and that he is related to MSS, including being involved in a recent breach of the US Treasury.

In response to these challenges of cybersecurity, President-elect Donald Trump assigned Elon Musk and former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy a new assignment leading government efficiency Their purpose is to create a streamlined federal operation and infuse an efficiency ethos throughout government Musk and Ramaswamy plan to cut thousands of regulations and reduce the size of the Federal staff, concentrating particularly on chopping through red tape to make government more lithe.

What Musk is trying to accomplish by modernizing government IT fits perfectly into a far wider vision he has for problem-solving technologies. His participation in the DOGE underlines his commitment to bringing principles of entrepreneurship to govt.

These events also signal where the latest dimensions of cyber and governance, not to mention national security, are meeting up at one point: in practical government management infrastructure cannot be overlooked precisely when realities change.