Politics

How Elon Musk searches for leaks: Lawsuits, mole hunts and secret codes

Published

2 years ago

March 21, 2025

Elon Musk has again publicly threatened people who leaked information on his sweeping power across the Trump administration. How he’s handled leaks at his companies could be a sign of what’s next for the federal government.

“I look forward to the prosecutions of those at the Pentagon who are leaking maliciously false information to NYT,” Musk wrote hours after The New York Times reported that Pentagon officials were expected to brief the top adviser to President Donald Trump on U.S.-China tensions, including potential war planning. “They will be found.” (POLITICO has reported that the Pentagon briefing will focus on the threats China poses, but won’t include any classified war plans. It was not clear if that was the initial plan.)

Musk’s statement, posted on his social media site X, echos his playbook of berating and pursuing recourse against leakers to snuff out internal sabotage at the tech billionaire’s companies, like the electric vehicle company Tesla, space exploration and defense contractor SpaceX, and X.

These moments indicate how he may move forward with leakers in the federal government.

Here’s how he’s cracked down on leaks.

Musk’s mole hunts

Leaks aren’t always so easy to handle when you can’t identify the leaker.

After Musk bought the company, Twitter’s source code was leaked online and posted on GitHub, a website where software developers can share project codes. It was unclear then who leaked the code.

So in March 2023, the social media site issued a copyright infringement notice against GitHub, which removed the information.

At the time, though, Twitter could not identify the person who leaked the code and sought to subpoena information both on the poster and “for the users who posted, uploaded, downloaded or modified the data” related to the source code leak.

Months later, Twitter leadership, including its CEO Linda Yaccarino, announced she wanted to stamp out leaks — and asked employees to help find any leakers in their midst.

“If you suspect any employee is not protecting Twitter’s confidential information, please report it by submitting a ticket,” read an internal email shared publicly by a then-executive. “If you need guidance or want to schedule training for your team, please email insiderthreat@twitter.com.”

Secret codes

When Musk wants to find a leaker, he might set a canary trap.

In 2022, Musk revealed on X how he ensnared a Tesla worker who had leaked the company’s private information to the press over a decade ago: The company sent “what appeared to be identical emails to all, but each was actually coded with either one or two spaces between sentences.”

The emails, which he contended were his brainchild, effectively created a fingerprint for every recipient that could be traced if the messages were sent to or published by the press.

Using metadata or unique markers to identify leakers is not unusual. The federal government in 2017 said it relied, in part, on noting that documents obtained by The Intercept were “folded and/or creased” to determine which employee leaked it, and printed documents can have unique identifiers on them.

People have since found ways around these traps to leak information to the press securely. Some have taken photos of internal communications on other devices. Or they’ve turned to encrypted messaging platforms like Signal to chat with reporters.

In the courts

When a former Tesla worker allegedly stole confidential information, merged it with falsehoods and leaked it to the media, the company swiftly filed a lawsuit against them in 2018. The lawsuit claimed Tesla employees had already identified the hacker by the time the complaint was filed through an internal investigation in which the man confessed he wrote software that transferred heaps of data externally.

But Musk has realized the mere threat of a lawsuit is an equally powerful tool to silence many testy employees.

Musk’s Tesla warned staffers in 2019 that if they leaked information, they could be sued by the company, which had filed a couple lawsuits against employees who allegedly took company information to competitors, CNBC reported at the time.

And in December 2022, months after the Twitter source code leak, the company said in an internal email that “if you clearly and deliberately violate the NDA that you signed when you joined, you accept liability to the full extent of the law & Twitter will immediately seek damages,” according to an email tech journalist Zoe Schiffer obtained.

Staff at Musk’s companies have largely been tight-lipped in recent years, particularly after he hired people loyal to the companies’ missions and himself. Now, it is possible the same blueprint could come into play in the federal government, months after the Trump administration seeded some federal agencies with the tech billionaire’s acolytes.

Politics

Byron Donalds says he is not a ‘yes man’ to Trump

Published

9 hours ago

October 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Byron Donalds says he is not a ‘yes man’ to Trump

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Politics

Justice Democrats announce new executive director

Published

1 day ago

October 8, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The progressive political action committee Justice Democrats has appointed Rev. Hodari Williams as its new executive director. The change sets the organization up to hone a civil rights message ahead of the 2028 election cycle, Williams told Blue Light News.

His appointment, shared first with Blue Light News, comes at a time when self-proclaimed progressives (and socialists) are flooding the scene. The PAC has had its most successful election cycle ever, helping seven candidates — including Donavan McKinney in Michigan, Melat Kiros in Colorado and Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York — defeat incumbents in the primaries. While those candidates are heavily favored to win on Election Day, the fates of three other Justice Democrats candidates, including Tennessee’s state Rep. Justin Pearson, remain less certain going into November.

At one point, the group tried to get Williams to run for office. Though he declined, Williams said now is the right time to force change.

“America and its present-day politicians, from my experience, have a high blood pressure of promises and anemia of political courage,” Williams said in an interview, using a common Kenyan political expression. “Right now, JD is producing candidates who have the political courage to deal with the crises that are existing in marginalized and disenfranchised communities, and I want to be a part of that.”

Rev. Hodari Williams is the new executive director of the progressive PAC Justice Democrats.

Williams, 46, was born and raised in Lakewood, New Jersey. His parents were activists and community organizers who raised him on the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement. After graduating from Francis Marion University in Florence, South Carolina, with his bachelor’s degree, he joined the NAACP as a field organizer for voter rights and empowerment while pursuing his Master’s of Divinity at the Interdenominational Theological Center. In his time with the NAACP, Williams traveled across the Black Belt, where he said he witnessed poverty and inequity up close.

“Civil rights traditionally has been something that people have tried to separate from progressivism … but these movements are inseparable,” said Williams. “What I witnessed in the South as a worker in voter rights and voter empowerment and education, and as a regional representative for the NAACP, was that the conditions that created inequity still existed and needed to be confronted and challenged.”

His work took him to Kenya, where he served as a program coordinator with the Presbyterian Church USA. In Nairobi, he supported the Green Belt Movement’s work against deforestation and its mission to highlight environmental justice as a tool for economic empowerment and self-determination.

Now, as some Black and brown voters express concerns of being tokenized by traditional Democratic candidates, Williams plans to bring his experience working in racial justice circles to his new role.

“I have worked in communities that have borne the brunt of failed promises from the current Democratic leadership,” Williams said. “I have opened the doors of my congregations to politicians and have experienced the absence of those politicians after the elections.”

He continued: “Black communities have become destinations for environmental hazards and data centers. Unemployment has risen. Black federal employees have been targeted. The list goes on. I’ve pastored these people. I’ve prayed with them. I’ve listened to them as they’ve shed tears. Now I’ve decided I want to move from triage work to really transformational work.”

Some of that work will require challenging other Black leaders.

“Unfortunately, many of our Black politicians have become victims of corporate capture, and their voices have been taken by entities like AIPAC,” said Williams, referring to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “They have not really been able to stand for the issues that are affecting the communities that that many of us are fighting for, and JD candidates are free from that, and they’re free to take bold and significant action to move forward legislation.”

But with the 2026 election cycle nearly over, the PAC is already brainstorming how to establish a strong progressive coalition for the 2028 presidential election. That will mean convincing the mainstream Democratic party that Justice Democrats have built a lasting coalition of the party’s base, said Williams.

“We hope that the Democratic Party would see that we’re developing a blueprint to show them how the base is being energized around the issues that are kitchen table issues that people want us to deal with,” said Williams.

“It’s not enough for us just to have a call to defeat a fascist president. We don’t want a fascist president. We want him out, but we also want a vision of what America could look like when affordability, healthcare, civil rights, housing, and livable wages — all of those things are at the top of the political agenda,” he added.

Williams succeeds current executive director and co-founder Alexandra Rojas, who will become president of Justice Democrats’ board and will support Williams as a senior adviser.

Politics

Iowa’s Ashley Hinson slams the savings habits of millennials

Published

1 day ago

October 8, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Iowa Rep. Ashley Hinson took a swipe at the savings habits of millennials as she fielded a question Wednesday about Social Security during a Senate campaign debate.

Hinson, the Republican candidate facing off against Democrat state Rep. Josh Turek, was asked about ensuring the solvency of Social Security when she raised the broader prospect of savings by millennials, the demographic consisting of people born from 1981-1996.

She said the country needed to have a “serious conversation” about “how young people are saving money,” as part of the discussion about the future of Social Security.

“We also need to be talking about millennials saving money,” she later added. “Millennials are the worst group of savers in the country right now and have the least amount of savings. So those are ways where I think we can help have a bigger conversation around saving in general, planning for retirement, and making sure we’re all able to experience a robust retirement.”

Hinson faces a tough race in Iowa against Turek amid a difficult political environment for Republicans. Voters are overwhelmingly pessimistic about the state of the economy and their own personal finances, and they support Social Security while being concerned about the program’s future.

Hinson said she would not support cutting benefits and suggested creating a bipartisan commission to present suggestions to Congress to save the program. When pushed on her statement that “all options should be on the table,” she turned her attention to young people.

“I think my dad and I had this discussion when I was in sixth grade, looking at a ledger book and trying to figure out, hey, how are we going to make sure you’re set up for your life?” she said. “So we need to be having a conversation simultaneously to all solutions on the table, to make sure that it can stay solvent, while we’re also talking about, how do we get more young people to save?”

Hinson’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for clarification.

Turek, when asked about Social Security, said he supports removing the payroll tax cap.

“The best way we can keep this solvent is by taking off the cap,” Turek said. “Let’s make sure that billionaires and large corporations are paying their fair share. That will move the needle in a very serious way to keep Social Security solvent.”

Hinson disagreed. “The only thing I’m hearing from him is that the only solution to everything is to raise taxes,” she said.