The Department of Health and Human Services sent an email to agency on Monday afternoon by warning them that any response to Elon Musk’s request to share their achievements of last week could “be read by malignant foreign actors” .
Four HHS employees shared email with NBC News.
“On Saturday he received an email from [the U.S. Office of Personnel Management] Entitled ‘What did you do last week? “The directive declared that employees would present five bullets detailed their achievements last week. In conversations with OPM officials yesterday and today, OPM has now terminated that mandatory requirement. “
“There is no expectation of the HHS that HHS employees respond to OPM and there is no impact on their job with the agency if you choose not to respond,” the email continued. “That said, if you choose to answer, these are the guidelines you must follow.”
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The email said that employees who wish to respond must maintain “a high level of generality and describe their work in a way to protect confidential data.”
“Assume that what he writes will be read by foreign malignant actors and will adapt your answer accordingly,” reads email.
An HHS spokesman did not respond immediately to a comment request on Monday.
The email occurs after days of confusion after an email that was eliminated throughout the federal government on Saturday by the United States personnel management office. A Tweet Musk followed that he said: “All federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting what they did last week. Not responding will be taken as a resignation.”
In the hours after the OPM email, several department leaders landed, including FBI director Kash Patel, they said employees must “stop any response to email.” The employees of the State Department, the National Health Institutes, the Department of Defense, the National Security Agency and the Office of the National Intelligence Director were also told not to respond to the email.
At the same time, the employees of the Department of Transportation were instructed to respond to the OPM email with a viaada list of their work since last week, according to an email obtained by NBC News.
Talking with journalists at the Oval office on Monday, Trump said “he thought it was great” when asked about the email of the entire government.
“We have people who do not appear to work and nobody knows if they work for the government, so making the question ‘tell us what you did this week,’ what you are doing is to say ‘Are you really working?” Trump said.
“There was a lot of genius to send it,” Trump added. “If people do not respond, it is very possible that there is no such person or that they are not working.”
It was not clear immediately who was referring to HHS when he cited “malignant foreign actors” in his email to agency’s employees.
On Monday, NBC News reported that the answers to the email are expected to be feed in an artificial intelligence system to determine whether these works are necessary or not, according to three sources with knowledge of the system.
For years, the United States has struggled to ensure its internal systems of computer pirates who seek to spy on their actions. Computer pirates linked to China have proven particularly experts to break into confidential systems, after having accessed the email account of the United States ambassador to China, while Russian computer pirates in 2021 violated email accounts belonging to the Head of the National Security Department and other officials in the first Trump administration.
Last year, the Congress Library said that computer pirates broke into their communications systems and could read their emails.
In December, US officials urged all Americans to use encrypted applications after it was discovered that computer pirates connected to China had violated US telecommunications infrastructure.
