Elon Musk's DOGE is trying to migrate the Social Security Administration's system, which contains 60 million lines of COBOL code, to code generation AI in just a few months, raising concerns about its risk.
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WIRED , an international news media outlet, has reported that Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is planning to migrate the Social Security Administration's (SSA) computer systems from COBOL to Java and other programming languages in just a few months. On the social news site Hacker News, some have raised concerns about the dangers of this migration plan.
Doge Plans to Rebuild SSA Codebase in Months | Hacker News
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43505659
The SSA announced a multi-billion dollar plan to replace its core systems in 2017, with the modernization planned to take about five years, but the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 put that effort on hold.
In March 2025, the bill 'Software Asset Management and Oversight Enhancement Act (SAMOSA)' was submitted to Congress. This bill requires each government agency to audit software assets and consolidate duplicate licenses, and gives government agencies an 18-month evaluation period and a one-year modernization plan period. The SAMOSA bill was originally submitted in July 2023 during the previous Biden administration, and although it passed the House of Representatives in December 2023, it was not debated in the Senate by the end of the session and was not enacted, so the bill has now been submitted to Congress again.
With the SAMOSA proposal in the background, the plan, led by Steve Davis, a close associate of Musk, aims to rewrite the entire massive SSA system, including more than 60 million lines of COBOL code, into modern languages such as Java. In order to accomplish a massive transition that would normally take 10 years in a matter of months, DOGE is expected to use generative AI to convert the code.
by WEC3390
The SSA's system handles core functions like issuing Social Security numbers, managing payments and calculating benefits. Experts have warned that plans to complete such a massive transition in just a few months are unsuccessful and could jeopardize payments for more than 65 million Americans who currently receive Social Security benefits.
A former senior SSA engineer warned that 'SSA's system is held together by wire and duct tape, and if one part is carelessly removed, the whole thing could collapse.' DOGE plans to use generative AI to replace all of the COBOL code in a few months, but the former SSA engineer argues that 'it is impossible to test for countless cases in such a short period of time.'
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On the social news site Hacker News, just like WIRED, there have been many comments that view DOGE’s policies as dangerous.
'While projects to rewrite huge legacy systems from scratch often look good on paper, in practice the cost of developer time far outweighs the cost of paying for hard-to-find COBOL engineers,' says afavour . 'Replacing the whole thing in a few months? Catastrophic. Absolutely catastrophic.'
'This is a common mistake made by new engineers - they think that rewriting a system they don't like will solve all the supposed problems. The young guys at DOGE under Musk have never experienced a complete rewrite of something that's been running for decades , so it will be interesting to watch them inevitably fail. But unfortunately, a messed up SSA system will cause real harm to a lot of people's lives,' he said.
Jareds , who used to work for a mainframe software vendor, added, 'I'm tired of COBOL being seen as 'legacy and bad.' I didn't do much COBOL programming myself, but IBM is still releasing new compilers and new versions of z/OS for the mainframe. Just because a language is old doesn't mean it's useless and worth rewriting. Instead of demonizing COBOL, they should explain the real problems. Is it because of a lack of budget that SSA's systems are stuck on old versions of COBOL, or is it because of poor long-term maintenance plans, or are there technical issues that prevent them from migrating to newer versions?'
By Eric Peacock
It is unclear when this transition plan will begin, but DOGE is already working on a project called the Are You Alive Project to find cases of possible fraudulent claims. In February 2025, Musk claimed that the SSA was full of fraudulent claims, but WIRED pointed out that the problem of '150-year-old recipients' that Musk claimed was due to the characteristics of COBOL's date processing, and that there are no actual recipients who are 150 years old.
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