“Doge activities in VA expose the life of veterans,” says representative of Gerald Connolly, a member of the House supervisory committee. Veterans, he adds, risk “devoid of needed care and deserve it because [President Donald] Trump and Elon gave Va to Lajkeys, who do not know the first thing about what it means to serve your country. “
VA employees expressed concern about the changes that Doge employees have already started introducing in the agency. “These people have a zero clue what they are working on,” says Va Wired employee.
Va did not answer immediately at the request for comment. Neither Volpert, Roussos, Fulcher, Rehling or Koval.
However, it seems that Lavining’s previous work informed his current view on VA, especially when it comes to AI. In the blog post on her personal website from October 2024, Laveingia discussed how Gumroad, which released most of its employees in 2015, achieved financial stability: “Replacing every manual automated process, by crossing all marginal costs to the client and having almost lack of employees.”
“Today, people are necessary for star service, crisis management, compliance with regulations and negotiations, real estate inspections and more,” he wrote. “But it won’t last long until AI is able to do all the above.”
Two sources knowing the work of Lavining in VA notes that it seems that he is trying to introduce an AI tool called Openhands to write a code for the agency. At GitHub Laveingia, he asked to add an open -out programs to the repertoire of programs, which could be the employ of VA Tech employees, and and noticed that it was a “priority for [chief of staff] and secretary. “(Openhands is available to anyone who can download to github.)
“They asked us to consider the use of artificial intelligence for all development agreements and justified us why he could not do it,” says VA employee. “I think they are considering how to fill the gaps [of canceled contracts] with AI. “
“We don’t really have permission to use artificial intelligence, because in some reposit Github is confidential information,” says the second VA technology employee, who, like other sources, asked for anonymity because they are not authorized to talk to the media. “Theoretically, he can script something and extract a few data.” A significant part of this data, according to the source, is stored and available via several application programming interfaces. This includes information such as the number of veterans and their members of their members and information of banks, as well as medical and disabled history.
Up-to-date tools also mean fresh safety threats. “All programming tools or applications you use in federal systems must meet several security classifications,” says the source. They are afraid that the proposed employ of OpenHands has not been properly checked for government purposes for security gaps that VA systems and data can leave.
“They do not follow any normal procedures, and this exposes people to risk,” they say, noting that the system failure may hinder the ability of veterans to obtain their benefits. “These are people who gave themselves pieces to their country and deserve greater respect.”