Elon Musk visited CIA headquarters on Monday for talks on government efficiency, Liz Lyons, the spy agency’s director of public relations, told Axios.
Musk was hosted by CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Deputy Director Michael Ellis, she said. A group of senior CIA officials also attended the meeting.
During the meeting, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Musk briefed Ratcliffe and other CIA officials on key findings from DOGE’s work so far at other departments and agencies and “how those lessons can be thoughtfully applied at the CIA,” Lyons said.
A source familiar with the meeting said the CIA has an internal DOGE team that was formed after Trump’s executive order. The team, which includes CIA employees, has been in place for several weeks.
The CIA staff did not give Musk an intelligence briefing, but discussed with him “what makes the CIA unique” compared to other government agencies, the source said.
The source said Ratcliffe and his team discussed with Musk how the CIA could adapt steps taken at other government agencies and be more effective without compromising national security.
The source said another issue discussed at the meeting was technology.
Unlike other government agencies, DOGE is not going to get unrestricted access to the CIA’s databases or internal systems because most of them are top secret, a source familiar with the issue said.
President Donald Trump said on 31 March that” at some point ” Ilon Musk will end his job at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
“He has to run a big company, and so at some point he’s going to come back,” Trump said of the Tesla and SpaceX CEO.
Ilon Musk has special government employee status, which means he can only serve 130 days in his position. Trump was asked if he wanted Musk to stay longer.