Elon Musk’s DOGE team has uncovered a startling irregularity in the U.S. Social Security database, revealing an implausible number of centenarians—over 25 million Americans reportedly aged 100 or older, with some listed as being older than the U.S. Constitution itself.
Late Sunday night, Musk shared his discovery on X, posting a table of ages and jokingly suggesting that the Social Security Administration (SSA) might be paying benefits to “vampires.”
“According to the Social Security database, these are the numbers of people in each age bucket with the ‘death’ field set to FALSE. Maybe Twilight is real, and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security,” Musk quipped.
The table Musk provided listed staggering figures, including nearly 4.7 million individuals supposedly between the ages of 100 and 109. More shockingly, it reported over 3.9 million people aged 130-139 and even a single person listed in the 360-369 age range.
The numbers quickly sparked widespread skepticism and concerns about government inefficiencies, particularly within entitlement programs.
As of 2024, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that roughly 101,000 Americans were aged 100 or older, accounting for just 0.03% of the total population. Pew Research Center projects this number to quadruple to around 422,000 by 2054.
Even more exclusive is the category of supercentenarians—individuals aged 110 and older. According to the Gerontology Research Group, as of February 2025, only 136 Americans fit this description.
The current oldest living American is Naomi Whitehead, born in Georgia in 1910, now 114 years old. The longest-lived American in history, Sarah Knauss, reached 119 before passing away in 1999.
For years, conservatives have pointed to government waste, fraud, and abuse, particularly within entitlement programs like Social Security. This latest discovery seems to reinforce their concerns, as it suggests the SSA might still be issuing payments to individuals who, by all logic, should not be alive.
Many argue that these errors reflect deep inefficiencies within the SSA, which continues to pay out taxpayer-funded benefits while hardworking Americans struggle with economic uncertainty and delayed retirement. The revelation has renewed calls for greater oversight and accountability in managing public funds.