On Feb. 7, DOGE aides set up shop at CFPB headquarters and reportedly accessed sensitive financial and personnel information housed in agency systems. Later that day, Musk posted “CFPB RIP” on his X account.
Seth Frotman, the CFPB’s top legal official during the Biden administration and a senior advisor to former Director Rohit Chopra, told lawmakers on the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions that providing that access to DOGE goes beyond just exposing the personal information of Americans.
“I think [Musk is] not only getting information about consumers, he’s getting information about his competitors,” Frotman said. “Part of the job of the CFPB, as tasked by Congress, is to make sure we understand markets and where there’s risk, and there’s a ton of risk when it comes to nonbank payments.”
Musk has long set his sights on making the social media site formerly known as Twitter into an “everything app.” Launching X Money would put the platform in direct competition with Venmo, CashApp and other nonbank payment services.
Those platforms, Frotman noted in response to questioning from Rep. Sean Casten, D-Ill., have never been given the “god-tier” data privileges to the CFPB system that a former agency chief technologist told Recorded Future were granted to Musk’s DOGE team.
“Then let’s assume that he has all that data,” Casten said. “It sounds to me like we have a nonbank that is going to compete the hell out of all of the banks and all the systems that we have right now in a way that is deeply anticompetitive. Please tell me I’m wrong.”
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