It sounds like something out of a dystopian film—or maybe a sequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark—but it’s real: the federal government is still processing retirements with paper forms, by hand, inside a limestone mine buried 220 feet underground in Pennsylvania. And yes, it’s 2025.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), helmed by Elon Musk under President Trump’s directive, uncovered the archaic operation shortly after the new administration took office. Musk, known for launching rockets and reinventing transportation, found himself facing an even more daunting task—bringing the federal bureaucracy out of the 20th century.

The revelation stunned Americans, even the most hardened government skeptics. As DOGE posted on X (formerly Twitter): “Federal employee retirements are processed using paper, by hand, in an old limestone mine in Pennsylvania. 700+ mine workers operate 230 feet underground to process ~10,000 applications per month… The retirement process takes multiple months.”

NBC News, rarely inclined to highlight inefficiencies in government under Democratic leadership, shockingly confirmed the story by visiting the site. What they found was a jaw-dropping testament to federal dysfunction: 400 million records, housed in 26,000 filing cabinets, spread throughout a climate-controlled cave system originally selected in 1960.

Video footage from inside the mine shows miles of paper records, manila folders bursting from cabinets and boxes stacked to the ceiling. Golf carts transport employees through the cavernous tunnels where natural stone walls provide a stable environment for aging documents—but not for a modern nation.

This is the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) primary system for handling retirement paperwork. Despite living in the digital age—with smartphones, streaming services, and artificial intelligence—America’s federal retirees still depend on ink, paper, and underground clerks shuffling files between stations.

DOGE, wasting no time, has moved to modernize the system. But as Bob Hoge writes at RedState, “Musk and DOGE are once again on target: This mess must be modernized and brought into the 21st century—yesterday. We need to take all that USAID money and put it toward things that actually benefit American taxpayers.”

The visual comparisons are unavoidable. The scene brings to mind the final moments of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where the Ark of the Covenant is wheeled into a massive warehouse, destined to be forgotten forever. It begs the question—what else is buried in these mines? Records? Entire teams? Wasted billions?

DOGE has already revealed staggering amounts of waste and corruption across agencies, including taxpayer dollars funneled through USAID to woke projects and groups with terrorist ties. But the sheer inefficiency of storing retirement data in a Cold War-era cave might be the most surreal example yet.

This isn’t just about aesthetics or outdated practices. The mine’s inefficiency costs time and money—and ultimately affects the lives of retirees waiting for their benefits. It’s another example of how federal agencies have ballooned into monstrous bureaucracies with no incentive to reform—until now.

Thanks to the Trump administration’s crackdown on government waste and Elon Musk’s scorched-earth approach to inefficiency, outdated relics like this are finally seeing the light of day. And if Musk has his way, this will be just the beginning of a much-needed digital revolution in government operations.

The takeaway is simple: if it takes 26,000 filing cabinets and 700 people underground just to process retirement forms, it’s no wonder Washington has failed the American people on everything from border security to veterans’ care. At least now, under Musk’s leadership, someone is finally digging through the mess—literally.