Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem revealed Thursday that members of her own department secretly installed surveillance software on government-issued devices used by Trump administration political appointees, including her personal phone and laptop. The software, she said, allowed staffers to record meetings and monitor internal communications.

Noem said tech experts, including Elon Musk and members of his team, helped uncover the unauthorized surveillance software embedded on devices assigned to political appointees. Without that outside expertise, she said, the spying would still be happening today, the Daily Caller News reported.

Speaking on the PBD Podcast, Noem described a department riddled with secrets, hidden infrastructure, and a bureaucratic apparatus that appeared designed to operate beyond the reach of its own leadership.

A Secret Room Nobody Knew About

The spyware wasn't the only discovery. Noem said her team stumbled onto a hidden secure facility inside the DHS campus, one that housed classified files no one in her office had been told existed.

"I just found the other day a whole room on this campus that was a secret skiff secure facility that had files nobody knew existed. So we just happened to have an employee walk by a door and wonder what it was and started asking questions."

Inside, Noem said, individuals were working with secret files on "some of these most controversial topics." She said the materials have been turned over to attorneys for review.

"There was individuals working there that had secret files that nobody knew about on some of these most controversial topics like that, and now I've got that turned over to attorneys, and we're getting to the bottom of what exactly happened there."

An employee walking by a door. That's what it took. Not an audit, not a review, not the massive oversight architecture that taxpayers fund. Someone noticed a door and asked a question.

Wuhan, Travel Records, and What CBP Knew

Noem also pointed to information she's uncovered through Customs and Border Protection, the agency responsible for tracking every traveler and every good entering the country. Among the records: data on scientists connected to the Wuhan lab, including their travel patterns during the COVID era.

"They're scientists that participated with that Wuhan lab, how they were traveling back and forth between each other and working on those experiments."

Noem did not provide specific names or documentation, but the implication is clear: CBP had granular data on the movements of researchers tied to one of the most consequential questions in modern public health, and it sat there. Whether that information was deliberately buried or simply never surfaced to the right people is exactly the kind of question that demands answers.

The Deep State Isn't a Theory When You're Living In It

Noem's account paints a picture that would sound paranoid if it weren't coming from the person who runs the department. Staffers are bugging the boss's phone. A hidden SCIF with files kept from political leadership. A technology infrastructure so neglected that for her first four months in office, she couldn't even email a PowerPoint longer than six pages from DHS servers.

That last detail deserves attention. The department tasked with protecting the American homeland couldn't handle a basic file transfer. The people charged with cybersecurity, border enforcement, and counterterrorism were operating on systems that would embarrass a mid-size accounting firm.

Noem framed the dysfunction bluntly:

"So the backwards thinking of protecting our country was extremely detrimental to keeping us safe, and many times the deep state. What I tell people most of the time is I always believed when people talked about the deep state before, that it existed."

Then came the line that landed hardest:

"I never would have dreamed that it was as bad as it is."

This is a sitting Cabinet secretary describing her own department as a hostile environment. Not metaphorically. Operationally.

What Comes Next

Neither DHS nor the Department of Government Efficiency immediately responded to the Daily Caller News Foundation's request for comment. That silence leaves a vacuum that Noem's account fills.

Noem said she plans to continue partnering with outside technology experts to audit DHS systems, a necessity she described as urgent given how far behind the department had fallen. The fact that it took Elon Musk's team to find spyware on the Secretary's own phone tells you everything about the internal culture she inherited.

For years, the phrase "deep state" was treated by mainstream media as a conspiracy theory, a rhetorical device for populists who couldn't accept that bureaucracies simply move slowly. Noem's revelations suggest something far more deliberate than inertia. Hidden rooms. Secret files. Surveillance software on the boss's devices. That's not a slow bureaucracy. That's an institution that decided its real loyalty wasn't to the people Americans elected to lead it.

The door was always there. Someone finally thought to open it.