One of the more pernicious features of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is that, in choosing to name it after that stupid shiba inu, Elon Musk accidentally created something so blindingly lame that it’s difficult to stare at it long enough to clock all the harm it continues to do. But make no mistake, beneath its TheChive.com humor surface, DOGE is and has been one of the most malevolent government-led forces in modern history.
From day one, the DOGE team acted as a self-described sledgehammer to any and all facets of the federal government the administration took issue with. Pitched as a way to combat waste, fraud, and abuse, DOGE instead was used as Trump’s personal cudgel. They fired tens of thousands of federal employees. They cut humanitarian aid around the globe, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths so far, with many more to come. DOGE also mishandled Americans’ private data, resulting in multiple congressional investigations into the department—investigations other federal agencies in the administration refuse to cooperate with.
In 2025, when an employee at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) discovered DOGE appeared to have compromised and begun downloading his agency’s data—as well as login attempts coming from a Russian address—he immediately grew concerned. The NLRB hadn’t authorized DOGE’s access to that data. DOGE hadn’t even requested it. The concerned IT worker, Dan Berulis, made the difficult decision to risk his career and prepared to file a Congressional whistleblower complaint. What he couldn’t have known at the time was that calling out DOGE would put so much more than his job on the line.
The day after his complaint was filed, Berulis brought his concerns to the public with an exclusive NPR article that revealed his identity. In the interview, Berulis shared that, in the days leading up to his blowing the whistle, a threatening note was taped to his door along with what appeared to be drone camera pictures of him walking his dog. As reported in WIRED, these new allegations have emerged as part of a defamation suit Berulis filed against Elon Musk in April of this year that recently became public record.
Just two days after the NPR article, on the evening of April 19, 2025, Musk reshared a post on X that claimed Berulis had filed a “deliberately false whistleblower claim.” Berulis’ case alleges that this untrue allegation by the richest person on Earth with over a quarter-billion followers on the social media platform he owns, put a target on his back, citing a chilling incident that occurred mere hours after Musk’s reshare on X.
The next day, when Berulis began a drive to see a family member, he quickly realized something was wrong. While approaching a stop sign at an intersection, he found he was unable to slow his vehicle and veered off the road and into the sign to avoid a multi-car collision. When Berulis inspected the vehicle, he was horrified to learn his brake lines had been cut.
It took some time for Berulis to learn about Musk’s repost and connect that to his mysterious accident and the threatening note. Upon that realization, he no longer felt safe in his home and fled to a hotel before canceling his lease outright soon after.
As Berulis told WIRED, the brake lines were likely tampered with “while the car was parked in the driveway of my house. The note arrived at the house… I didn’t feel safe there at all. I never stayed at that address again.”
Berulis’ defamation case is still ongoing and he acknowledges that filing it is akin to “kicking the hornet’s nest” and might put him back in the crosshairs of Musk’s most rabid fans. Despite the potential threats and what he sees as an unlikely victory in court due to the “asymmetry,” Berulis hopes something positive comes from the proceedings, even if that’s just bringing further attention to the harm DOGE has done and Musk’s role in the carnage.
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