Elon Musk’s six baby-faced DOGE engineers dismantling US government

Elon Musk’s DOGE has brought in a team of six baby-faced engineers, aged from 19 to 25, tasked with dismantling US government agencies.

Elon Musk’s DOGE has brought in a team of six baby-faced engineers, aged from 19 to 25, to assist in his controversial mission dismantling US government agencies.

The billionaire’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), tasked by President Donald Trump with slashing spending and gutting federal bureaucracies, has begun swinging a wrecking ball through the US government in recent days, sparking outrage from Democrats.

Over the weekend, Wired publicly named the six young men now playing a critical role at DOGE, raising concerns about their young ages, lack of government experience and access to mountains of sensitive information as they take control key of chokepoints including the Treasury Department’s payments system, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and General Services Administration (GSA).

“Not many Spartans are needed to win battles,” Mr Musk wrote on X earlier this week.

Luke Farritor, 23. Picture: YouTube

Six baby-faced engineers

The six DOGE team members have been identified as Akash Bobba, 21, Edward Coristine, 19, Luke Farritor, 23, Gautier Cole Killian, 24, Gavin Kliger, 25 and Ethan Shaotran, 22.

The most high-profile of the six, Mr Farritor, made headlines last year as part of a team that won a $US700,000 prize for using artificial intelligence to decipher passages on 2000-year-old papyrus scrolls carbonised by the Mount Vesuvius eruption in 79AD.

Mr Farritor, a former computer science student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, had earlier also won the competition’s $US40,000 “first letters” prize, after he discovered the scroll’s first legible word, “porphyras”, which means “purple” in Ancient Greek.

Akash Bobba, 21. Picture: X

“It was really cool,” he said in a video discussing the win. “It was like, ‘Oh my goodness. We actually detected new writing in the scrolls using AI. That was the moment I realised that this was actually going to work.”

Mr Farritor was in the 2024 Thiel Fellows program, set up by Palantir co-founder and Republican donor Peter Thiel, and has interned at Mr Musk’s SpaceX. He dropped out of university to work for Nat Friedman, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur behind the Vesuvius Challenge.

“Luke Farritor is a national treasure,” Mr Friedman wrote on X after his role at DOGE was made public.

Gavin Kliger, 25. Picture: Substack

Mr Bobba attended UC Berkeley where he was in the prestigious Management, Entrepreneurship and Technology program. He previously interned at hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, as well as Meta and Palantir.

Grata AI chief executive Charis Zhang shared an anecdote about Mr Bobba on X.

“During a project at Berkeley, I accidentally deleted our entire codebase two days before the deadline,” he wrote.

“I panicked. Akash just stared at the screen, shrugged, and rewrote everything from scratch in one night — better than before. We submitted early and got first in the class. Many such stories. I trust him with everything I own.”

Edward Coristine, 19. Picture: Reddit

Mr Kliger, the oldest of the group, is also a Berkeley graduate. He most recently worked for AI company Databricks, and publishes a Substack blog called The Weekly Byte, with recent posts titled “The Curious Case of Matt Gaetz: How the Deep State Destroys Its Enemies” and “Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense: The Warrior Washington Fears”.

According to The New York Times, Mr Kliger was behind a controversial company-wide email sent to employees at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) instructing them not to return to work on Monday.

The youngest, Mr Coristine, only recently graduated high school and was enrolled at Northeastern University in Boston where he studied mechanical engineering and physics. He spent three months last year at Neuralink, Mr Musk’s brain-computer interface company, according to a copy of his resume obtained by Wired.

Ethan Shaotran, 22. Picture: X

According to Wired, employees at GSA said Mr Coristine appeared on calls where they were made to go over code they had written and justify their jobs.

Mr Shaotran founded of Energize AI, a scheduling assistant for professionals, after receiving a $US100,000 grant from OpenAI in 2023.

He told Business Insider in September he was a senior at Harvard University studying computer science, and was reportedly working on autonomous vehicles in the school’s computing lab.

Mr Shaotran also took part in Mr Musk’s xAI “hackathon”, where he and his team were runners-up.

Mr Killian, a former student of Canada’s McGill University, previously worked at Jump Trading, which specialises in algorithmic and high-frequency financial trades.

He is reportedly listed on internal records as a “volunteer” at DOGE.

Gautier Cole Killian, 24. Picture: McGill University

‘They’re very smart people’

According to Wired, Mr Bobba, Mr Coristine, Mr Farritor and Mr Shaotran all have working GSA emails along with A-suite level clearance, which allows them to work out of the agency’s top floor and access all physical spaces and IT systems.

“What we’re seeing is unprecedented in that you have these actors who are not really public officials gaining access to the most sensitive data in government,” Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, told the publication.

“We really have very little eyes on what’s going on. Congress has no ability to really intervene and monitor what’s happening because these aren’t really accountable public officials. So this feels like a hostile takeover of the machinery of governments by the richest man in the world.”

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Mr Trump praised the young hires.

“That’s good,” he told Fox News’ Peter Doocy. “They’re very smart, though, Peter. They’re like you. They’re very smart people.”

The President said he hadn’t met them yet. “No, I haven’t seen them,” he said.

“They work, actually, out of the White House as smart people, unlike what they do in the control towers. We need smart people. We should use some of them in the control towers, where we were putting people that were actually intellectually deficient.”

Writing on X this week, Mr Musk said, “Time to confess: media reports saying that @DOGE has some of world’s best software engineers are in fact true.”

Elon Musk’s DOGE is taking a wrecking ball to the US government. Picture: Chip Somodevilla/AFP

‘DOGE kids’

His young team of so-called “DOGE Kids”, drawn from his own companies, dramatically seized control of the US Treasury Department’s payments system and took key government positions.

They have helped push a drive to get federal employees to take severance payments and quit, with an email that closely resembles a message sent to Twitter employees when Mr Musk took over and later renamed the social network X.

Mr Musk personally announced that the massive USAID humanitarian agency would be “shutting down” — during a live chat on X — and branded it a “criminal organisation”. Their no-holds barred style has raised eyebrows.

A dramatic stand-off reportedly ensued when Mr Musk’s aides demanded access to a secure room at USAID where classified information was held.

There was a similar situation when a career Treasury official was reportedly put on administrative leave after refusing such access to aides.

On Sunday, Mr Musk bragged that DOGE — which operates out of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, around the corner from the White House — was “working 120 hour[s] a week”. “Our bureaucratic opponents optimistically work 40 hours a week,” he added. “That is why they are losing so fast.”

A Statement from U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Edward R. Martin Jr. pic.twitter.com/XlEmzSlbBq

— U.S. Attorney DC (@USAO_DC) February 3, 2025

Warning over ‘threats’

After the identities of the young engineers began to circulate, a federal prosecutor appointed by Mr Trump said on Monday the FBI was investigating the “targeting” of DOGE staff.

“Our initial review of the evidence presented to us indicates that certain individuals and/or groups have committed acts that appear to violate the law in targeting DOGE employees,” Edward Martin, the acting US attorney in Washington DC, said in a statement.

Mr Martin said the FBI and other law enforcement agencies were preparing to “proceed rapidly”. “We also have our prosecutors preparing,” he added.

It came after Mr Martin shared a letter he wrote to Mr Musk urging him to “utilise me and my staff to assist in protecting the DOGE work and the DOGE workers”.

“We will not tolerate threats against DOGE workers or law-breaking by the disgruntled,” Mr Martin wrote on X.

Protesters outside the Michigan Capitol in Lansing. Picture: Jeff Kowalsky/AFP

How DOGE was made

DOGE, initially floated as an advisory body that would sit outside of government, was created by Mr Trump via executive order stating its goal was “modernising federal technology and software to maximise governmental efficiency and productivity”.

DOGE is not a new federal agency, but rather a renamed and repurposed United States Digital Service (USDS), an Obama-era office. DOGE’s official name is the United States DOGE Service (USDS).

“Not only did repurposing an appropriate existing department allow Trump to ensure there was funding for DOGE without having to fight with Congress — he also ensured its legality,” lawyer Tom Renz wrote on X.

“USDS was already there and funded for the specific purpose. It is generally about developing tech for the government. This means that focusing on efficiency and evaluating the entire government through the lens of the IT that runs it is not really substantially altering the agency — just its focus.”

DOGE’s actions have sparked growing protests. Picture: Drew Angerer/AFP

‘Takeover’ sounds alarm bells

The scale and speed of DOGE’s assault on US government agencies has left Democrats shell-shocked and raised concerns over the unprecedented power that Mr Trump has handed to the world’s richest man.

The South African born billionaire has taken control over the US Treasury’s payments system that manages trillions of dollars. He single-handedly announced the demise of USAID. He has helped drive out top officials.

Mr Trump sought to play down the issue on Monday when asked about it in the Oval Office, saying “Elon can’t do and won’t do anything without our approval. We’ll give him the approval where appropriate, where not appropriate we won’t. But he reports in. It’s something that he feels very strongly about and I’m impressed.”

Mr Musk’s powers have seemed almost unbounded, leading to accusations by Democrats of an unconstitutional power grab.

So far Mr Musk has been registered as neither a federal employee nor a government official — although US media reported on Monday that he had now been registered as a “special government employee”.

Critics point to the fact that Mr Musk was the biggest donor to Mr Trump’s victorious election campaign, to the tune of a quarter of a billion US dollars.

Then there is the fact that his companies also have huge US government contracts.

Mr Musk has been accused of a ‘hostile takeover’ of government. Picture: Leonardo Munoz/AFP

‘Tiger in the petting zoo’

Mr Trump insisted on Monday that “if there’s a conflict we won’t let him get near it” — but that did not calm critics.

Democrats, who have been largely silent during Mr Trump’s first shock-and-awe two weeks in power, began to mobilise against the latest Musk moves.

“No one elected Elon Musk,” Senator Elizabeth Warren said.

Democrats on the US House Ways and Means Committee were holding an emergency call partly devoted to the issue.

They have bitterly criticised DOGE as an unconstitutional attempt to exert presidential power over funds approved by Congress.

“It’s like letting a tiger into the petting zoo and hoping for the best,” Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Monday.

Speaking at a protest by USAID workers, Senator Chris Van Hollen said “this Elon Musk attempted takeover … will not stand”.

“DOGE is fulfilling President Trump’s commitment to making government more accountable, efficient and, most importantly, restoring proper stewardship of the American taxpayer’s hard-earned dollars,” a White House spokesperson told Fox News.

“Those leading this mission with Elon Musk are doing so in full compliance with federal law, appropriate security clearances and as employees of the relevant agencies, not as outside advisers or entities. The ongoing operations of DOGE may be seen as disruptive by those entrenched in the federal bureaucracy, who resist change. While change can be uncomfortable, it is necessary and aligns with the mandate supported by more than 77 million American voters.”

— with AFP

Originally published as Elon Musk’s six baby-faced DOGE engineers dismantling US government