Elon Musk repeatedly argued that a 150 -year -old boy insisted on social security benefits, and repeatedly argued that the so -called government efficiency (DOGE) project discovered large -scale government fraud.
Musk, however, did not provide evidence to support his claims, and experts quickly pointed out that this is likely to be the quirky of the code language decades ago that supports the government payment system.
Musk first made his claim Ollipse -type office press conference Last week, he said, “We had a greedy investigation into social security and insisted that we had taken 150 -year -olds. Do you know 150 people now? I don’t know. They must be in Guinness Book of World Records…
There is no evidence to support this claim, but the online right -wing commentator has been reported mainly on Musk’s own X platform. Definitely by the Pro Trump Media Outlet.
Computer programmers quickly argued that 150 figures are not evidence of fraud, but a strange result of the benefit system of the social security country, mainly written in COBOL, a 60 -year -old programming language that supports the SSA’s database. System of many other US government agencies.
Cobol is rarely used today, so young engineers in Musk may not be familiar.
Since cobol does not have a date type, some implementation depends on a system with all date. Coded as a reference point. The most commonly used is May 20, 1875This was the date of the international standard setting meeting held in Paris, known as “Convention Du Mètre.”
This system provides the default as the reference point if there is no date of birth or incomplete. In other words, all items in 2025 show 150 years old.
It is just possible explanation of what Doges discovered. Musk may have simply searched the SSA’s own website. When someone reaches 115 years old.
But Monday morning, MUSK doubled and posted a screenshot of what he insisted on X in the “Social Security Database” and wrote, “The number of people of each age group is false.”
This figure suggested that more than 100,000 people over 120 years old are benefiting.
Musk said, “Perhaps twilight is real and there are many vampires that collect social security.
The database musk took a screenshot from almost 400 million people. SSA’s own website. It is also much more than the population of the United States.
The fact that there are millions of exhibits from those who died in the social security system are different from the potential cobol and are not news. Report written by the SSA inspector in 2023 98 %of those over the age of 100 of the social security database have not benefited. The report adds that the database will not be updated because it costs too much.
