Aram Moghaddassi

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Aram Moghaddassi
BornFebruary 1999 (age 26)
Education University of California, Berkeley (BA)
OccupationEngineer
Employers

Aram Moghaddassi is an American engineer who worked in the United States Federal Government within the Department of Government Efficiency and as Chief Information Officer of the Social Security Administration. He previously worked at Neuralink, X Corp (formerly Twitter), and XAI (company).

Contents

Early life and education

Moghaddassi was raised in Syosset, New York and graduated from Syosset High School in 2017. During high school, he competed in the Lincoln–Douglas debate format and was the 2017 New York State varsity champion [1] .

In 2021, Moghaddassi graduated with a Bachelors Degree in Applied Mathematics from University of California, Berkeley. He was as an undergraduate researcher in Berkeley's Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Lab under Professor Anne Collins and was a summer research fellow at the Santa Fe Institute where he worked on the Hopfield Network [2] [3] .

Career

Elon Musk companies

In January 2021, Moghaddassi began working at Neuralink. He is listed as an inventor on a 2022 patent for "Neural Signal Compression for Brain-Machine Interface" filed by Neuralink [4] .

In December 2022, Moghaddassi joined Twitter following the Acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk [5] . During this period, Twitter underwent a major restructure, performing an 80% reduction in force, decommissioning one of three data centers, open sourcing "the algorithm", and changing major policy positions on content moderation [6] [7] [8] . In March 2025, it was reported he was in the xAI (company) org chart as an "xAI Partner" [9] .

Federal Government

In February 2025, it was reported that Moghaddassi was part of a four person team that the Department of Government Efficiency planned to install at the Treasury Department [10] . This team used payment systems at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service to block foreign aid payments issued by USAID, claiming these payments violated an executive order to pause all US foreign assistance despite push back from career officials [11] . During this period, DOGE broadly dismantled USAID: 83% of programs and nearly all employees were terminated with remaining functions moved into the Department of State [12] [13] .

In March 2025, Moghaddassi was interviewed by Bret Baier on Fox News alongside Elon Musk and six other DOGE staffers (including Steve Davis (executive), Joe Gebbia, and Tom Krause (business executive)). He spoke about modernizing IT systems, reducing fraud, and improving customer experience at the Social Security Administration [14] .

In April 2025, it was reported Moghaddassi was working at the Department of Homeland Security on the "DOGE Immigration Task Force" lead by Antonio Gracias [15] . Trump administration officials said the team worked on revoking parole and reengineering the asylum adjudication process. Moghaddassi had access to sensitive IT systems at United States Citizenship and Immigration Services where DOGE worked on the SAVE service for verifying benefit and voter eligibility [16] [17] . DOGE was credited in several criminal fraud investigations and indictments from the US Department of Justice [18] [19] . Moghaddassi was specifically linked to terminating the Social Security Numbers of ~6,300 parolees who either have criminal records or are on the FBI’s terrorist watchlist [20] [21] . During this period, SSA also paused issuing new SSNs through the Enumeration Beyond Entry system amid claims from Gracias that the system was being abused by large numbers of parolees and asylum seekers [22] [23] . This likely caused delays to SSN issuance and more traffic to field offices [24] .

Moghaddassi also held roles at the Department of Labor, Health and Human Services, and the Small Business Administration with access to sensitive IT systems for labor visas, unemployment insurance, Medicare/Medicaid, SBA loans, and grants/contracts management [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] . Moghaddassi and Antonio Gracias were named (along with eight other unnamed DOGE employees) in a lawsuit from labor unions (including AFL-CIO) regarding DOGE's access to IT systems at the Social Security Administration. In March 2025, the plaintiffs were granted a temporary restraining order blocking DOGE's access, but this decision was overturned in June by the Supreme Court of the United States and DOGE was granted full access to SSA systems [30] [31] [32] .

In June 2025, Moghaddassi was formally appointed to be Chief Information Officer at the Social Security Administration [33] [34] . Following his appointment, he was seen at SSA's headquarters with Edward Coristine, who had also taken a position with SSA [35] . In August 2025, Moghaddassi was included in a whistleblower complaint which alleges DOGE uploaded the Numident database to an insecure cloud server [36] . SSA commissioner Frank Bisignano denied these allegations in a public letter to the chair of Senate Finance Committee Mike Crapo [37] . In a separate letter sent to the whistleblower's lawyers, SSA's General Counsel also denied their allegations and further complained that unredacted exhibits from the whistleblower complaint were irresponsibly uploaded on the internet [38] .

See also

References

  1. "Syosset Forensics Society ranked 49th in the nation". Syosset Advance. January 8, 2018.
  2. "Albert Kao SFI CV" (PDF).
  3. "CCN Lab People". CCN Lab.
  4. "Aram Moghaddassi resume". Nuna.
  5. Alba, Davey; Wagner, Kurt (January 7, 2023). "Twitter Cuts More Staff Overseeing Global Content Moderation". Bloomberg.com. Retrieved October 3, 2025.
  6. "Twitter Layoffs: How Many Employees Were Fired and Where They Went Next". blog.getaura.ai. Retrieved October 3, 2025.
  7. Isaacson, Walter (September 11, 2023). "Elon Musk moving servers himself shows his 'maniacal sense of urgency' at X, formerly Twitter". CNBC. Retrieved October 3, 2025.
  8. "Inside xAI's organizational chart: Who's in charge at Elon Musk's company". Business Insider.
  9. "Treasury Sought to Freeze Foreign Aid Payments, Emails Show". New York Times. February 6, 2025.
  10. House, The White (January 21, 2025). "Reevaluating And Realigning United States Foreign Aid". The White House. Retrieved October 3, 2025.
  11. "https://x.com/marcorubio/status/1899021361797816325". X (formerly Twitter). Archived from the original on September 22, 2025. Retrieved October 3, 2025.{{cite web}}: External link in |title= (help)
  12. Tanis, Fatma (March 28, 2025). "USAID terminates nearly all its remaining employees". NPR. Retrieved October 3, 2025.
  13. "ICYMI: DOGE's Mission to Make Government Work Again". The White House.
  14. "Inside the DOGE immigration task force". POLITICO. April 11, 2025. Retrieved October 2, 2025.
  15. Kelly, Makena. "DOGE Is Building a Master Database to Surveil and Track Immigrants". Wired. ISSN   1059-1028 . Retrieved October 3, 2025.
  16. "DHS, USCIS and DOGE Announce Comprehensive Optimization of SAVE Service | USCIS". www.uscis.gov. April 29, 2025. Retrieved October 3, 2025.
  17. "Northern District of New York | Iraqi Man Charged with Illegal Voting by an Alien | United States Department of Justice". www.justice.gov. April 28, 2025. Retrieved October 3, 2025.
  18. "Secretary Kristi Noem (@Sec_Noem) on X". X (formerly Twitter). Archived from the original on May 13, 2025. Retrieved October 3, 2025.
  19. "Social Security Lists Thousands of Migrants as Dead to Prompt Them to 'Self-Deport'". April 10, 2025. Archived from the original on September 26, 2025. Retrieved October 2, 2025.
  20. "Social Security classifies thousands of immigrants as dead, as part of Trump crackdown". The Washington Post. April 10, 2025. Archived from the original on May 9, 2025. Retrieved October 2, 2025.
  21. Ombok, Amy L. Peck, Otieno B. (June 11, 2025). "SSA Pauses Automatic Issuance of SSNs for Certain Immigration Applicants". Immigration Blog. Retrieved October 3, 2025.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  22. Uribe, Maria Ramirez. "Musk chart misleads about noncitizen Social Security numbers". @politifact. Retrieved October 3, 2025.
  23. "Pryor Cashman". www.pryorcashman.com. Retrieved October 3, 2025.
  24. Feiger, Leah. "DOGE Has Access to Sensitive Labor Department Data on Immigrants and Farm Workers". Wired. ISSN   1059-1028 . Retrieved October 2, 2025.
  25. Giles, Matt. "Here's All the Health and Human Services Data DOGE Has Access To". Wired. ISSN   1059-1028 . Retrieved October 2, 2025.
  26. Giles, Matt. "Here's All the Health and Human Services Data DOGE Has Access To". Wired. ISSN   1059-1028 . Retrieved October 2, 2025.
  27. Oversight, American (August 22, 2025). "As DOGE Cuts Harm Millions, Americans Are Denied Basic Information About the Agency". American Oversight. Retrieved October 3, 2025.
  28. Newsham, Juliana Kaplan, Jack. "A new DOGE staffer at the Department of Labor has helped run a fertility clinic and has pronatalist ties". Business Insider. Retrieved October 2, 2025.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  29. Totenberg, Nina (June 6, 2025). "Supreme Court grants DOGE access to confidential Social Security records". NPR. Retrieved October 3, 2025.
  30. "APPLICATION FOR A STAY OF THE INJUNCTION ISSUED BY THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MARYLAND AND REQUEST FOR AN ADMINISTRATIVE STAY" (PDF). Solicitor General of the United States of America.
  31. "ON APPLICATION FOR STAY" (PDF). Supreme Court of the United States of America.
  32. Gickling, Steve (July 8, 2025). "SSA appoints Aram Moghaddassi as CIO". DevX.
  33. "Social Security Announces Executive Leadership Team". Social Security. September 3, 2025. Archived from the original on September 17, 2025. Retrieved October 2, 2025.
  34. "'Big Balls' Is Now at the Social Security Administration". Wired.
  35. "Whistleblower says Trump officials copied millions of Social Security numbers". opb. Retrieved October 2, 2025.
  36. mnazzaro (September 17, 2025). "SSA chief's response to whistleblower complaint: database was not accessed in 'any unauthorized fashion'". FedScoop. Retrieved October 2, 2025.
  37. "EXCLUSIVE: SSA Rejects Whistleblower Claims, Slams Alleged Release Of Sensitive Data As 'Highly Irresponsible'". dailycaller.com. Retrieved October 2, 2025.