Elon Musk has repeatedly claimed that his so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE) challenge had uncovered large authorities fraud when it alleged that 150-year-olds had been claiming Social Safety advantages.
However Musk has offered no proof to again up his claims, and specialists shortly identified that that is very probably only a quirk of the decades-old coding language that underpins the federal government fee programs.
Musk first made the claims throughout his Oval Workplace press convention final week, when he claimed {that a} “cursory examination of Social Safety, and we obtained individuals in there which might be 150 years outdated. Now, are you aware anybody that is 150? I do not know. They need to be within the Guinness E-book of World Data … In order that’s a case the place I believe they’re in all probability lifeless.”
Whereas no proof was produced to again up this declare, it was picked up by the right-wing commentators on-line, totally on Musk’s personal X platform, in addition to being reported credibly by pro-Trump media retailers.
Pc programmers shortly claimed that the 150 determine was not proof of fraud, however reasonably the results of a bizarre quirk of the Social Safety Administration’s advantages system, which was largely written in COBOL, a 60-year-old programming language that undergirds SSA’s databases in addition to programs from many different US authorities businesses.
COBOL isn’t used in the present day, and as such, Musk’s cadre of younger engineers could be unfamiliar with it.
As a result of COBOL doesn’t have a date sort, some implementations rely as an alternative on a system whereby all dates are coded to a reference level. Essentially the most generally used is Might 20, 1875, as this was the date of a world standards-setting convention held in Paris, often known as the “Conference du Mètre.”
These programs default to the reference level when a start date is lacking or incomplete, that means all of these entries in 2025 would present an age of 150.
That’s only one attainable rationalization for what DOGE allegedly discovered. Musk might even have merely appeared up the SSA’s personal web site, which explains that since September 2015 the company has routinely stopped profit funds when anybody reaches the age of 115.
Nonetheless, on Monday morning Musk doubled down, posting a screenshot of what he claims had been figures from “the Social Safety database” to X, writing that “the numbers of individuals in every age bucket with the loss of life subject set to FALSE!”
The figures urged that over 10 tens of millions individuals aged over 120 had been gathering advantages.
“Possibly Twilight is actual and there are lots of vampires gathering Social Safety,” Musk wrote.
The database Musk took the screenshot from listed virtually 400 million individuals, which is greater than 5 occasions the variety of individuals receiving advantages in 2024, in response to the SSA’s personal web site. It’s additionally considerably greater than your complete US inhabitants.
The truth that the Social Safety system incorporates tens of millions of entries from people who find themselves lifeless is probably going distinct from a possible COBOL-caused error, and likewise not information. A report written by the SSA’s inspector basic in 2023 discovered that 98 p.c of these aged 100 or older within the Social Safety databases will not be in receipt of any advantages. The report added that the database wouldn’t be up to date as a result of it will value an excessive amount of cash to take action.
