Pentagon’s ‘SWAT team of nerds’ resigns en masse

Source: Politico

By Mohar ChatterjeeApril 15, 2025

Under pressure from the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, nearly all the staff of the Defense Digital Service — the Pentagon’s fast-track tech development arm — are resigning over the coming month, according to the director and three other current members of the office granted anonymity to discuss their job status freely, as well as internal emails.

The resignations will effectively shut down the decade-old program after the end of April.

The Defense Digital Service was created in 2015 to help the Pentagon adopt fast tech fixes during national security crises and push Silicon Valley-style innovation inside the Pentagon. It built rapid response tools for the military during the Afghanistan withdrawal, databases to transfer Ukrainian military and humanitarian aid, drone detection technologies and more.

Without the program, some key efforts to streamline the DOD’s tech talent pipeline and counter adversarial drones will be sunset, one soon-to-be former employee said.

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