‘Muskovites’: The baby-faced squad dismantling foreign aid

Washington: America’s foreign aid agency is being dismantled by a band of university-aged tech proteges hand-picked by Elon Musk.

Six men, aged between 19 and 24 and with minimal government experience – one is still at university – are helping Musk to scrap the agency as part of a wider effort to slash government spending.

The engineers given plum roles in the newly formed department of government efficiency (DOGE) are said to have connections to the Tesla billionaire and Peter Thiel, his long-term associate and the founder of the Palantir defence firm.

Software engineers enlisted to work for DOGE and Elon Musk’s cost-cutting effort, left to right: Ethan Shaotran, 22, Luke Farritor, 23, Gavin Kliger, 25, Edward Coristine, 19, Akash Bobba, 21, Gautier Cole Killian, 24.

The speed with which DOGE has moved to crack down on government spending and personnel has triggered alarm among federal workers, who have nicknamed the newcomers “Muskovites” because of their allegedly coercive tactics, according to The Washington Post.

The tech magazine Wired named Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger and Ethan Shaotran as the tech proteges involved.

Four of them are said to have been given email and A-suite clearance to the General Services Administration, which manages government buildings, giving them access to all physical spaces and IT systems.

Coristine – a 19-year-old who until recently went by the name @‌edwardbigballer on X – is said to have recently graduated from high school and interned at Neuralink, Musk’s brain chip company, last northern summer.

Demonstrators outside the US Agency for International Development (USAID) headquarters in Washington.Credit: Bloomberg

Farritor, 23, is a former SpaceX intern and a current recipient of a $US100,000 ($161,000) Thiel Fellowship for young entrepreneurs, according to his LinkedIn profile.

He came to attention by deciphering a 2000-year-old scroll, previously believed charred beyond repair, using AI.

A substack page thought to belong to Kliger, a former Berkeley student who is said to be a special adviser to the office of personnel management, is titled “Why DOGE... Why I gave up a seven-figure salary to save America” and features articles endorsing Trump’s cabinet nominees Matt Gaetz – who dropped out of the race – and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth.

A USAID contract worker outside the agency’s office in Washington.Credit: AP

On Sunday, Trump told reporters that USAID had “been run by a bunch of radical lunatics”, adding: “We’re getting them out, and then we’ll make a decision.”

A company email sent from an account that appeared to belong to Kliger instructed employees at the agency to stay away from its Washington headquarters on Monday, while 600 staff reported being locked out of their work computer systems.

Tensions had come to a head on Saturday after two USAID security officials, John Voorhees and Brian McGill, his deputy, were placed on leave for refusing to turn over classified material in restricted areas to Musk’s government inspection teams, according to US officials.

Refugees prepare food including maize porridge donated by USAID and known locally as posho, during the visit of UN officials. in Adjumani, Uganda.Credit: AP/File

Members of Musk’s department eventually gained access to the aid agency’s classified information, which includes intelligence reports, a former government official said.

Steven Cheung, the White House spokesman, dismissed reports of DOGE workers seeking access to secure spaces at USAID as “fake news”.

Following the incident, Matt Hopson, who had recently been appointed as the USAID chief of staff by the Trump administration, resigned, according to multiple outlets. The security officials and Hopson join nearly 400 USAID workers laid off last week for trying to block Trump’s freeze on the agency’s foreign aid programs.

The agency, which spends about $US70 billion a year in foreign aid on projects ranging from women’s health in conflict zones to HIV/Aids treatments, employs about 10,000 staff who now face the prospect of losing their jobs.

Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, wrote on social media: “We must do everything in our power to push back and protect people from harm.”

The Telegraph, London