I did a brief press appearance on CNN this afternoon to talk about my firing from the VA and what that means for VA.gov cybersecurity. Here’s the video, with a transcript below it.
Transcript
Jessica Dean: A warning from a fired cybersecurity official for the department of veterans affairs. He sounded the alarm, saying sensitive information on millions of veterans is now at risk. Joining us now is Jonathan Kamens. He was the cybersecurity lead for va.com [sic]. That’s the online portal for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Thanks so much for being here with us. I know you oversaw the cybersecurity efforts for the VA’s benefit portal. You say you’re now worried that this information is at risk. Why are you worried and what are you concerned is going to happen?
Jonathan Kamens: Well, Jessica, thanks very much for having me on. I appreciate the opportunity. The reason I’m worried is because in the time that I was at VA, what I saw was a bunch of dedicated employees trying to do their best to maintain VA.gov and keep it online and secure. But they were overworked. There just weren’t enough people to do all the work. And now with me being gone and other people being gone because DOGE has fired them or fired them by proxy through VA, there’s even fewer people to do the work, and it’s inevitable when you don’t have enough people to maintain the cybersecurity of VA.gov or any other website, it’s going to deteriorate and eventually there’s going to be an incident.
Dean: And what? Just to give people an example, what kind of information are we talking about and what what is like a an incident that you would be concerned could happen.
Kamens: Well, we’re talking about people’s private medical records. We’re talking about their therapy notes. We’re talking about the conditions that they’re being treated for. We’re talking about the prescriptions they’re taking. We’re talking about diagnoses like addiction or PTSD. We’re also talking about financial records, their bank account information, their social security numbers, their names, addresses, phone numbers, relatives, the most private information you can imagine about a person is collected by VA for the purpose of providing veterans with the benefits that they’re entitled to. And if that information is not kept secure, then the veterans who belong to that information belongs to are put at risk.
Dean: And you were hired over a year ago by the U.S. Digital Service, where duties have now been integrated into DOGE. What was what is that experience like now as opposed to when when you started.
Kamens: Well, so let me say that I actually don’t think that the U.S. Digital service folks have successfully been integrated into doge. It’s my impression that there are still two groups of people in that organization. There’s the USDS classic people that were there before the inauguration. And then there are the DOGE people that were kind of grafted onto the side of the organization. It wasn’t really a good working relationship between the two. They didn’t really integrate at all. They didn’t really collaborate at all. And that’s frankly, because I think the DOGE people and the USDS people are working at cross-purposes. The USDS people are trying to make services better for the American people, and trying to make them more secure and more successful and more scalable. And the DOGE people, it seems to me, are trying to tear stuff down, fire people, eliminate services, get rid of things, and those are not the same. And there really isn’t a lot of overlap or room for common ground there.
Dean: And listen, there are Americans out there who voted for Donald Trump to shrink the government. He was very clear about what he and Elon Musk wanted to do. And they they think the government is too bloated. What would you say to them.
Kamens: I would say that if the government has some waste that needs to be trimmed, which I don’t dispute, this is definitely not the way to go about doing it. I mean, I can tell you that there is no way in a matter of days or even weeks, that Elon Musk can go waltzing into VA or any other government agency and know with any degree of certainty or confidence where the waste and the fraud and the inefficiency and the bloat is. That’s just simply impossible. I’m not saying there isn’t room for improvement. I’m saying that the way DOGE is going about improving is not actually improving. It’s actually making things less inefficient [sic]. It’s actually taking away service that the American people rely on. I know that a lot of people voted for trump, and a lot of those people are going to be hurt by what doge is doing.
Dean: And you’re concerned that even if the VA wanted to replace you, that maybe they wouldn’t be able to.
Kamens: Yeah. I mean, I have a couple of thoughts behind that. First of all, trump signed an executive order saying whenever any agency wants to hire one new person, they have to fire four people first. And as I said, the people that I work with were very dedicated, competent people, but they were overworked there. There was too much work to go around. So I don’t think they can afford to fire four people just to hire someone to replace me. That’s just not feasible. And furthermore, I came into government from the private sector in order to be a public servant. Because that’s how U.S. Digital Service does things. They hire people from the private sector. They ask them to give some number of years of their life to helping make government better. They ask them, frankly, to take a pay cut to do that. And people do that because they want to serve the public. But, I mean, I don’t know about you, but looking at what’s going on in government right now, it seems very unlikely to me that anyone in the private sector is going to jump at the opportunity to go try to work for the U.S. Digital Service or any other public agency. It’s too chaotic right now. It’s too unstable right now. They don’t know whether their job will last a week after they take it. So I just don’t see there being the capacity for anyone to come on board to replace me.
Dean: All right. Jonathan Kamens, thank you for your perspective, for sharing your thoughts with us. We appreciate it.
Kamens: Thank you.
