Energy CIO replaced with SpaceX engineer as DOGE probes department’s systems; US AI Safety Institute taps Scale AI for model evaluation

The Department of Energy on Friday replaced its chief information officer with a network engineer from Elon Musk’s SpaceX, FedScoop has learned. Dawn Zimmer — who’d been serving as Energy CIO since Ann Dunkin resigned from the role as the Biden administration left office — has been removed from the role by the department’s leadership, two sources with direct knowledge of the move told FedScoop. Zimmer was hired as Energy’s principal deputy CIO in November, and she has returned to that role. With Zimmer removed as acting CIO, Energy leadership has appointed Ryan Riedel to the role, according to one of the sources, who also shared a screenshot of Riedel listed as CIO in the department’s email directory. Riedel lists his current employment as a lead network security engineer at SpaceX on his LinkedIn. He joined the company in 2020 after previously serving at U.S. Army Cyber Command and in the U.S. Navy as an IT specialist, his profile shows. The change comes amid reports that members of the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency have entered the Department of Energy and at least one is accessing its IT systems.

The U.S. AI Safety Institute has selected Scale AI as the first third-party evaluator authorized to assess AI models on its behalf, opening a new channel for testing. That agreement will allow a broader range of model builders to access voluntary evaluation, according to a Scale AI release shared with FedScoop ahead of the Monday announcement. Participating companies will be able to test their models once and, if they choose, share those results with AI safety institutes around the world. Criteria for those evaluations will be developed jointly by the AI data labeling company and the AISI. For Scale’s part, that work will be led by its research arm, the Safety, Evaluation, and Alignment Lab, or SEAL. Per the announcement, the evaluations will look at performance in areas such as math, reasoning, and AI coding.

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