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

How SNAP could crunch the midterms

Published

41 minutes ago

October 10, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Under the political radar, the country’s food stamps program is undergoing a slow-motion transformation. The ramifications could bubble up into the midterms.

Changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program from Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act are rolling out in phases, from tougher work requirements to restrictions on non-citizens. Food stamp rolls already shrank by more than 5 million people nationwide as of this summer, as the hardest-hit state, Arizona, saw an outright majority of its food stamp recipients lose benefits.

The latest alteration clicked into place Oct. 1, when the share of administrative costs states and counties have to pay rose to 75% from 50%. An even bigger financial shift looms in a year, when states with high payment error rates will have to assume some benefit costs for the first time, a scenario that’s already rippling through state and local budget planning.

It all adds up to a new era in federal-state relations — and in the size and nature of the welfare state.

In a year when affordability worries top voters’ priority lists and grocery prices strain their wallets, Democrats think the SNAP shift gives them an opening to make Republicans pay politically after the GOP used social safety net cuts to food aid and Medicaid to help pay for last year’s tax cuts.

“People are getting kicked off these programs at the very moment they’re going to the polls to vote,” House Agriculture ranking member Angie Craig (D-Minn.) said. “I sure wouldn’t want to be a Republican headed into the November ballot.”

But Republicans think they have a compelling story to tell voters, trying to right-size a program that spends millions of dollars on erroneous payments. The SNAP changes align with the Trump administration’s broader push to crack down on fraud and make the government smaller or more efficient. Implementing stricter work requirements for welfare often polls well, and trying to move people toward work gets at the root causes of poverty, they argue.

“The premise is simple: Let’s make sure that this program is preserved for those truly in need, and that we aren’t squandering taxpayer dollars,” a senior USDA official told Playbook in an interview. “And let’s make sure that if folks are able-bodied, they are work training or volunteering for 20 hours per week.”

That doesn’t mean Republicans in competitive races are putting SNAP and Medicaid cuts front and center on the campaign trail. When they tout last year’s megalaw, new tax breaks typically lead the messaging. And 10 frontline GOP House campaigns didn’t respond to requests for interviews about how they can win on SNAP.

At the state and county level, some governments are scrambling to prepare for a massive cost shift, hitting at the same time as significant Medicaid changes. The resulting bureaucratic jumble has contributed to some of the SNAP losses this year, as recipients struggled to get through overtaxed call centers, some states cut staff, and others tightened their processes.

“It really sets up a change in the federal responsibility, and I view it as a slippery slope,” warned Barbara Guinn, New York’s commissioner of the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance. Her state is staring down a possible $1 billion added burden next year, though they’re advocating for a repeal of the benefits change. “Once they implement any kind of cost shift, I think it will be easier for them to take similar actions in the future.”

Whether to delay next year’s cost shift has already generated tensions over the farm bill in the Senate, where Democrats are demanding a longer postponement than Republicans’ offer of one year. Some Minnesota counties are considering significant property tax increases to pay for the extra costs, Craig said: “We’re going to be pushing hard for a two-year delay — at the request of, frankly, many of my Republican county commissioners, not just Democrats.”

Conservatives see the new calculus as a long overdue change to improve efficiency and incentivize program integrity. Improper payment rates are high in many states (though they comprise both over-payments and under-payments, and error rates are different from fraud). Those that reduce errors enough won’t have to take on paying the benefits. And even opponents of the changes think lower error rates are a worthy goal. SNAP rolls often ebb and flow with the economy, and the recent drop could reflect the job market pulling people out of need — or the removal of people who shouldn’t have been getting food stamps in the first place.

“There needs to be some level of accountability,” the USDA official said. States with high error rates “need to start to have skin in the game.”

But at a time when many households are already squeezed by inflation, the SNAP changes have correlated with higher numbers of Americans turning to charities to ward off hunger. The surge in people losing food aid came more quickly than expected. The unemployment rate hasn’t meaningfully changed. And the vast majority of large food banks in a recent NBC survey said they were grappling with higher demand, in part due to food stamp changes. Another rule kicking in the day after the midterms could lead to many retailers being bumped out of SNAP as places where low-income people can use their benefits.

For state governments, a set of sweeping operational changes are now underway to conform to new policy demands, often requiring more money or staffing at already under-resourced offices. And the budgetary stakes to get error rates lower are sky-high.

“It’s a really complicated, nuanced and confusing time for states who are trying to administer SNAP,” said Lauren Kallins, a senior legislative director at the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures, which has advocated for a delay in the benefits costs shift.

Politics

David Plouffe warns Dems: Don’t take North Carolina for granted

Published

2 hours ago

October 10, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

National Democrats are increasingly shifting their attention away from North Carolina’s Senate race as polls show former Gov. Roy Cooper ahead, eyeing once long-shot races as possible pickups. But a veteran Democratic strategist who helped deliver the party’s last presidential victory in the state is urging donors not to take a win for granted.

David Plouffe, who managed behind Barack Obama’s narrow 2008 victory in North Carolina, urged Democratic donors and supporters not to grow complacent in the final weeks of Roy Cooper’s Senate campaign, according to audio obtained by Blue Light News.

“I think that this race … has I think been the best run race in the country,” Plouffe said on the call. “But that doesn’t mean that we can rest easy.”

He warned about North Carolina’s relatively fixed partisan makeup as a purple state, making it difficult for a candidate to dramatically expand their base of support.

“There’s certain states that elections happen within a bound, and this one will be that way as well,” he said.

In public polling, Cooper leads Republican Michael Whatley, who has struggled to boost his name recognition against the much better-known former governor. And as Democrats grow increasingly bullish on their candidate’s chances of flipping the seat — one of four pickups they need to take control of the Senate — national groups have begun shifting their money and attention to other contests, including most recently to Kansas.

But Plouffe said North Carolina needs to remain a priority.

“We have to win the ones we have to win,” he said on the call to Cooper’s finance committee.

Just days before Plouffe’s remarks, Senate Democrats’ top super PAC pulled back some of its spending in North Carolina, following a much bigger retreat by Republicans’ top super PAC in the state.

Plouffe cautioned that North Carolina has historically been a tough state for Democrats at the federal level, especially in recent years. The party hasn’t won a Senate race there since 2008, when Obama became the last Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state, winning by fewer than 15,000 votes. He lost the state in 2012.

“Even though we carried the electoral votes back then, we only did so by I think 14,000 votes. So it was our narrowest victory,” Plouffe said. “And in 2012, we tried to win North Carolina again with the help of so many people on this phone, and we just couldn’t get it done. And that tells you how difficult the state is.”

Plouffe also cast the stakes of Cooper’s race as extending beyond November, arguing that a Cooper victory could provide a blueprint for the party’s eventual 2028 presidential nominee.

“Democrats need to compete and win in North Carolina in 28,” he said. “And it’s one thing to look how a governor can win a state. The best route, the best scout that you receive, is how someone in a federal race won in a tough state, and that can show you the way.”