Elon Musk’s DOGE foot soldiers had laid out a plan to scrap telephone services—which would have forced elderly benefit recipients to seek help with their claims online.

Dudek’s comments, delivered to a group of senior staff and Social Security advocates attending both in person and virtually, offer an extraordinary window into the thinking of a top agency official in the volatile early days of the second Trump administration.

The DOGE edgelord has views on popular entitlement programs that no politician could embrace without fear of extinction.