Elon Musk’s latest outrageous DOGE finding raises more questions than it answers

Deep underground lurks something so bizarre it sounds like a plot for a lame spy movie. And Elon Musk is fuming.

In yet another finding from his deep dive into government inefficiency, Elon Musk has unearthed what he calls “a time warp” inside the US federal bureaucracy — one that quite literally operates out of a limestone mine.

Musk, tasked with running the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under President Donald Trump, detailed some of his findings on Wednesday, exposing a system so outdated that it physically limits the number of federal employees who can retire each month.

“We were told, ‘No, the most number of people that could retire possibly in a month is 10,000,’” Musk said in front of a trove of reporters in the Oval Office. “We’re like, ‘Well, why? Why is that?’”

Retirement paperwork for federal employees isn’t digitised — it’s written down, manually processed, and stored in boxes in a mineshaft dubbed the Iron Mountain.

“You look at a picture of this mine — we’ll post some pictures afterwards — and this mine looks like something out of the ’50s because it was started in 1955. So it looks like it’s a time warp,” Musk said.

But it gets worse. The speed at which retirees can exit the system is determined by how fast the mine shaft elevator can move.

In a world inundated with cloud computing and high-speed data transfers, the issue of a broken mine cart stalling the processing of documents in the US government is a joke so bad it would have been cut from The Big Bang Theory.

In yet another finding from his deep dive into government inefficiency, Elon Musk has unearthed what he calls “a time warp” inside the US federal bureaucracy. (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP)

What is the Iron Mountain?

Iron Mountain is a massive underground storage facility located in Boyers, Pennsylvania, about 100km north of Pittsburgh.

It is one of the most secure and secretive archival storage sites in the United States, used by government agencies, financial institutions, corporations, and media organisations to store critical data, historical records, and valuable assets.

The facility is housed inside a former limestone mine, which provides natural protection against disasters, temperature control, and high-security measures.

Iron Mountain is a massive underground storage facility located in Boyers, Pennsylvania, about 100km north of Pittsburgh. Source: X

It is one of the most secure and secretive archival storage sites in the United States. Source: X

But it appears a lot of its operations are still done by hand. Source: X

The site was originally a working limestone mine that produced materials for construction and industrial purposes.

As fears of nuclear war grew during the Cold War, the underground space was converted into a secure storage facility, offering protection from potential nuclear attacks and other large-scale disasters.

Over time, Iron Mountain grew into one of the most trusted and high-security storage providers in the world. It expanded its clientele to include financial institutions, Fortune 500 companies, and media giants.

As digital data storage became critical, Iron Mountain evolved to provide cloud backup services, cybersecurity solutions, and AI-driven data protection for global corporations.

But it appears a lot of its operations are still done by hand.

Mystery around ‘150-year-old’ social security recipients

Beyond the mineshaft, Musk flagged another major red flag inside the Social Security system. The polarising tech mogul pointed to the fact some recipients are officially listed as being over 150 years old.

“Do you know anyone who’s 150? I don’t. They should be in the Guinness Book of World Records. They’re missing out,” Musk said. “That’s a case where, like, I think they’re probably dead. It’s my guess. Or they should be very famous — one of the two.

“There are a whole bunch of Social Security payments where there’s no identifiable information. Why is there no identifying information?”

Musk said it was important for the government to ensure eligible citizens get their Social Security payments “quickly and accurately,” but suggested the sheer scale of unverified recipients and archaic record-keeping raises serious questions about where taxpayer dollars are going.

Sitting beside him, President Trump estimated that Musk’s investigation into bureaucratic waste could uncover as much as $1 trillion in inefficiencies across federal agencies.

Sitting beside him, President Trump estimated that Musk’s investigation into bureaucratic waste could uncover as much as $1 trillion in inefficiencies across federal agencies. (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP)

Musk says the issue isn’t just about slashing spending — it’s about shifting resources to where they actually improve people’s lives. Whether his cage-rattling will do anything of the sort is anyone’s guess, however.

“If we can take those people and say, ‘You know what? Instead of working in a mineshaft, carrying manila envelopes to boxes in a mine, you could do practically anything else, and you would add to the goods and services of the United States in a more useful way,’” he said.

His broader argument is that inefficiencies like these drag down productivity and ultimately hurt economic growth.

“How do we increase prosperity?” Musk asked.

“We get people to shift from roles that are low to negative productivity to high productivity roles. And so you increase the total output of goods and services, which means that there is a higher standard of living available for everyone. That’s the actual goal.”