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Employees with the Pentagon's digital technology unit, dubbed the "SWAT team of nerds," have decided to resign together rather than deal with changes being brought about by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, according to new reporting from Politico.
The report states that the Defense Digital Services unit was once considered the Pentagon's "fast-track tech development arm" and "one of the department’s earliest efforts to inject Silicon Valley ethos into its massive bureaucracy."
Created in 2015, DDS helped the Pentagon "adopt fast tech fixes during national security crises" and pushed "Silicon Valley-style innovation inside the Pentagon," according to reporter Mohar Chatterjee. "It built rapid response tools for the military during the Afghanistan withdrawal, databases to transfer Ukrainian military and humanitarian aid," and "drone detection technologies," among other projects.
With the ascendance of DOGE, however, DDS will effectively shut down by the end of this month.
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"Without the program, some key efforts to streamline the DOD’s tech talent pipeline and counter adversarial drones will be sunsetted," Chatterjee wrote.
Jennifer Hay, director of the 14-person office, said her staff "initially expected to be part of Musk’s efforts to automate the Pentagon’s operations and adopt AI."
“The reason we stuck it out as long as we have is that we thought we were going to be called in,” Hay said.
Hay said she planned to leave by May 1, while 11 other employees were expected to take President Trump’s deferred resignation package. The two remaining staffers were also planning to leave, Chatterjee wrote, adding, that "every employee interviewed said they wouldn’t have left if it wasn’t for DOGE."
A former senior Pentagon official told Chatterjee that Musk's team was "not really using AI" or "driving efficiency."
"What they’re doing is smashing everything," the person said.
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