Illustration: Dani Choi
Musk DOGE Pick Led Cybersecurity Cuts at Citrix. Hacks Followed
Tech CEO Tom Krause dismissed engineers and slashed expenses after the remote-work company’s leveraged buyout. His company says defenses improved. Now he’s consulting at the US Treasury.
Billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has a key ally in the US Department of the Treasury: Tom Krause, a veteran technology executive who’s now a special government employee, or consultant, at the agency. Until a federal judge temporarily blocked DOGE’s access on Saturday, Krause had “read-only” access to Treasury’s payments system, which handles more than 1.2 billion transactions a year. The government calls it “America’s checkbook,” an essential window into the federal spending that President Donald Trump is looking to slash by $1 trillion or more.
Krause, 47, who’s serving as fiscal assistant secretary at Treasury, will keep his day job: chief executive officer of Cloud Software Group, which owns a company called Citrix Systems. His deep cost-cutting there shows why he may have appealed to Trump and Musk, the president’s adviser and Tesla Inc.’s CEO—and also why some people familiar with Krause’s record are unsettled about his new government role.
Log on to your corporate laptop from home, and chances are, Citrix Systems software is running behind the scenes. In a world of far-flung operations, its products—such as Citrix Workspace—are essential for remote work. They connect a company’s internal computer systems and employees’ home PCs and phones, creating virtual “twins” of office workstations.