“Virginia’s actions in Virginia put the lives of veterans at risk,” said Gerald Connolly, a representative of the House Oversight Committee hierarchy. He added that veterans’ risks “are taken away from the care they need and deserve because [President Donald] Trump and Elon handed over VA to scammers who don’t know what it means to serve your country. ”
VA employees expressed concern about changes that Doge employees have already begun to make to the agency. VA employees told Wired, “These people have zero clues.”
VA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. None of Volpert, Roussos, Fulcher, Rehling or Koval.
However, Lavingia’s past work seems to have informed him of his current view on VA, especially in terms of AI. In an October 2024 blog post from his personal website, Lavingia discussed how Gumroad, which most employees abandoned, achieved financial stability in 2015: “By pushing all marginal costs to customers and having few employees, replacing each manual process with an automated one.”
“Today, humans are necessary for excellent customer service, crisis management, regulatory compliance and negotiation, property inspections, etc.,” he wrote. “But only AI can do all of the above, it won’t be long.”
Virginia is familiar with Lavingia’s work on VA, and he appears to be trying to introduce an AI tool called OpenHands to write an agent. On Github, Lavingia requires the addition of open style to the tracks of programs that can be used by VA tech workers, and noted in Slack that this is ” [chief of staff] and secretary. ” (Open people can download anyone on Github.)
“They asked us to consider using AI for all development contracts and let us demonstrate why we can’t do that,” VA employees said. “I think they’re thinking about how to fill the gaps,” he said. [of canceled contracts] With AI. ”
“We really didn’t approve the use of AI because there is sensitive information in some GitHub repositories,” said the second VA technician, who, like other sources, asked to remain anonymous because they don’t have the right to talk to the media. “It can script and take out a lot of data in theory.” According to the source, most of the data is stored and accessed through several application programming interfaces. This includes information such as social security numbers for veterans and their families and bank information, as well as medical and disability history.
New tools also mean new security risks. “Any programming tool or application you use in a federal system must meet a bunch of security classifications,” the source said. They fear that the proposed open users have not properly reviewed government purposes to address security gaps that could make VA’s systems and data vulnerable.
“They didn’t follow any normal procedures, which puts people at risk,” they said, noting that system failures could hinder veterans’ ability to obtain benefits. “These people have dedicated themselves to their country and they deserve more respect than that.”
