Aram Moghaddassi

Moghaddassi graduated from Syosset High School in 2017 as the New York State varsity Lincoln-Douglas debate champion and earned a Bachelor of Science in Applied Mathematics from UC Berkeley in 2021. ⁴ He joined Neuralink as a senior engineer approximately in 2021 and held that role through late 2022, during which he co-invented neural signal compression technology that would later be granted as US patent US12369863B2 in July 2025. ¹ In December 2022 he joined the Twitter acquisition team and subsequently served as a senior engineer at X Corp through early 2025. ¹ By March 2025, the xAI org chart lists him as an xAI Partner. ¹ All three companies — Neuralink, X Corp, and xAI — are controlled by Elon Musk, who is described in the whistleblower disclosure and NBC News reporting as Moghaddassi's longtime ally. ⁸

Moghaddassi entered the federal government on February 18, 2025 as a GS-11 Policy Advisor at the Department of Labor. Within four days he was detailed to the Social Security Administration, and by March 5 he held an Executive Engineer position at the Department of Health and Human Services — a three-agency footprint inside two weeks. ³ His deployment pattern across Treasury, HHS, Labor, DHS, and SSA is documented by the ProPublica DOGE tracker, which identifies him as one of the most widely deployed Musk-company personnel across sensitive federal systems. ² He was the fourth CIO installed at SSA since January 20, 2025, following the brief tenure of Michael Russo, another DOGE-aligned CIO. ⁴

Between February and July 2025, Moghaddassi acquired access credentials at multiple federal systems in rapid succession. He was hired at DOL on February 18, detailed to SSA on February 22, and added to HHS as Executive Engineer on March 5. ³ On March 14 he received read-write access to the SSA PSSNAP system — a production payroll and benefit disbursement database. Three days later, on March 17, he requested access to USCIS immigration verification systems, stating in documentation that it was "absolutely critical to get detailed immigration status for non-citizen SSNs." ⁴ He also granted fellow DOGE personnel including Edward Coristine access to USCIS and INS data. ⁸

On April 8, Moghaddassi transmitted a list of 6,300 names to SSA Acting Commissioner Leland Dudek for addition to the Death Master File, characterizing the individuals as immigrants with terrorist or FBI criminal-records flags. The Death Master File list included 7 minors. ³ Dudek signed the memoranda authorizing the DMF additions; DHS Secretary Kristi Noem signed parallel memoranda, and the Washington Post reported on April 12, 2025 that the DMF additions were coordinated between the SSA DOGE team and DHS. Connection #3270, Connection #3269

On June 10, Moghaddassi was involved in the request for a cloud environment for the NUMIDENT production database. ⁶ The SSA CISO issued a risk assessment on June 16 characterizing the environment as carrying a 35–65% probability of catastrophic breach. On July 25 — five weeks after that warning — Moghaddassi issued a Provisional Authorization to Operate, with documentation explicitly stating that "business need is higher than security risk." ⁶ The authorization covered a cloud environment operated by John Solly, a DOGE-aligned SSA staffer who had been authorized by predecessor CIO Michael Russo to upload NUMIDENT production data to a test environment on June 25. Connection #3244

On August 26, 2025, SSA Chief Data Officer Charles Borges filed a formal protected whistleblower disclosure alleging that Moghaddassi had uploaded the NUMIDENT database to an insecure cloud server in what Borges characterized as circumvention of multiple federal statutes governing data security and oversight. ⁵ The NUMIDENT is the SSA master file linking Social Security numbers to birth records and personal identifiers for over 300 million Americans. Borges resigned from SSA on August 29, 2025. Connection #3239 The Senate Finance Committee subsequently demanded answers after an SSA court filing disclosed that the agency itself did not know the full extent of data accessed and shared by DOGE personnel. ⁸

The DOJ filed a Notice of Corrections with the court on January 16, 2026 acknowledging that DOGE had mishandled SSA data. ⁸ Separately, NPR reported on January 23, 2026 that a DOGE adviser — Elon Musk associate Steve Davis — was copied on an encrypted file transmitted from an SSA DOGE member to DHS on March 3, 2025. Connection #3249 Antonio Gracias, who led the DOGE Immigration Task Force at DHS in April 2025 before resigning from DOGE on July 4, 2025, is documented as a co-participant in the SSA DOGE operational environment during the period when these data transfers occurred. Connection #3241

In March 2025, while holding a DHS email account as part of his multi-agency DOGE deployment, Moghaddassi contacted a deputy chief of staff to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to request state voter registration data for cross-referencing against federal databases. ⁷ The outreach was documented through American Oversight public records requests. In December 2025, Moghaddassi was identified as one of two DOGE staffers referred for Hatch Act violations in connection with what reporting described as a voter data agreement. ⁷

The timing of the Florida outreach — March 2025 — overlaps with the period during which Moghaddassi separately requested USCIS SAVE database access to obtain immigration status for non-citizen Social Security numbers. ⁴ It also overlaps with activity documented by Popular.info and Democracy Docket showing that True the Vote, the election-integrity organization associated with Gregg Phillips and Catherine Engelbrecht, was soliciting a DOGE partnership that would combine SSA data with commercial voter-roll databases. The connection between Moghaddassi and that solicitation is circumstantial — no direct coordination has been confirmed in available records. Connection #3261, Connection #3263, Connection #3274

Elon Musk: Moghaddassi worked at three Musk-controlled companies — Neuralink, X Corp, and xAI — before his federal placement. The Borges whistleblower disclosure and NBC News describe him as a "longtime ally" of Musk. His placement across five federal agencies followed the pattern of other Musk-company personnel who entered government through the DOGE structure in January and February 2025. ⁹ Connection #3242

Antonio Gracias: Gracias led the DOGE Immigration Task Force at DHS, the same agency whose email infrastructure Moghaddassi used to contact Florida officials. Both operated within the SSA DOGE context during early 2025. Gracias resigned from DOGE on July 4, 2025 following AFL-CIO pressure over fiduciary conflicts related to his management of public pension funds at Valor Equity Partners. Connection #3241

Edward Coristine: Coristine was among the DOGE personnel to whom Moghaddassi granted access to USCIS immigration verification systems while serving as SSA CIO. Both were assigned to SSA during overlapping periods. ⁸ Connection #3257

Kristi Noem: As DHS Secretary, Noem signed memoranda authorizing the April 2025 Death Master File additions that Moghaddassi had assembled and transmitted through Leland Dudek. The coordination between the SSA DOGE team and DHS on the DMF additions was reported by the Washington Post. Connection #3269

Charles Borges: SSA Chief Data Officer who filed the August 26, 2025 whistleblower disclosure against Moghaddassi's NUMIDENT cloud authorization and resigned three days later. The disclosure is publicly available through whistleblower.org. ⁵ Connection #3239