Elon Musk’s melding with public sector infrastructure continues unimpeded, and at its core is a group of barely post-adolescent engineers, some of whom are reportedly still in academic institutions. Many of these young professionals have ties to Musk, and at least two have links to Peter Thiel, a renowned critic of democratic systems and a cofounder and leader of Palantir, a government contracting firm specializing in analytics. Their ages range from 19 to 24, based on public records and their digital footprints.
According to WIRED, six individuals with scant experience in public service have emerged as key players in Musk’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ (DOGE), a project aimed at overhauling the technology and software of the federal government to enhance its efficiency and productivity. The participants all occupy ambiguous roles within DOGE, with at least one seemingly functioning without pay.
The young engineers identified are Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran. Already, this group has successfully infiltrated the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and General Services Administration (GSA), thereby gaining access to a gold mine of sensitive information concerning tens of millions of American citizens and businesses.
Furthermore, they have also managed to access the Treasury Department’s payment system. In a recent development, a CNN report revealed DOGE personnel’s failed attempt to illegally gain access to classified data and security systems at the US Agency for International Development. But shockingly, top USAID security officials who blocked the attempt were later put on administrative leave.
Associated Press confirms that DOGE personnel did indeed access classified material. Don Moynihan, a public policy expert at the University of Michigan, voiced his concerns saying, ‘Everything we are witnessing is unprecedented; non-official actors gaining access to the most sensitive government data. We hardly have any insight into the process. Congress is powerless to intervene as these individuals aren’t held accountable like public officials. It feels like the richest man in the world is staging a subtle hostile takeover of the government machinery.’
Akash Bobba, part of the team, was an attendee of UC Berkeley’s prestigious Management, Entrepreneurship, and Technology program. His LinkedIn profile, now deleted, listed his credentials, including experiences at Meta and Palantir and an investment engineering internship at Bridgewater Associates hedge fund.
Another team member, Edward Coristine, appears to be a recent high school graduate and a possible enrollee in Northeastern University. It’s noticeable that he spent a few months in a stint at Neuralink, Musk’s brain-computer interface endeavor.
Both Bobba and Coristine are designated ‘experts’ at OPM in OPM’s internal records, reporting directly to the new chief of staff Amanda Scales. Scales earlier worked on talent acquisition at xAI, Musk’s AI venture, and Uber’s talent acquisition team. GSA employees have reported encounters with Coristine in meetings where they were obliged to revise their code and defend their job positions.
Luke Farritor is another member of the Musk-led team. A previous SpaceX intern and now a Thiel Fellow, his academic journey at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln, ended prematurely. Interestingly, he was part of a team that successfully decoded segments of an ancient Greek document.
Gavin Kliger, a special advisor for IT to the director of OPM as per internal records, attended UC Berkeley and last worked for AI firm Databricks. His Substack includes provocative posts themed on deep state conspiracies and Washington’s fear for warrior types.
Gautier Cole Killian, also known as Cole Killian, has an active DOGE-associated email. He is currently a volunteer according to internal documents. His resume reveals he attended McGill University up to 2021 and completed high school in 2019.
Ethan Shaotran shared with Business Insider that he’s a senior at Harvard studying computer science and helms an OpenAI-backed startup, Energize AI. His notable achievement includes being a runner-up at a hackathon by xAI, another of Musk’s AI ventures.
Insiders confirm that these young engineers all have active GSA email accounts and hold top-level A-suite clearance at GSA, enabling their access to all critical areas and IT systems. Their roles as ‘experts’ at OPM are additional responsibilities. But this managership of pivotal agencies by inexperienced individuals is a concern for law professor Nick Bednar from the University of Minnesota.
Bednar raises questions about ‘regulatory capture’ and whether the innate interests of these youthful tech experts serve the federal government or the American people. His suspicion is that many tech executives have assumed certain administrative roles, leaving unsettling concerns about the motives propelling their actions within the administration.