Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has been unleashed on federal agencies. ProPublica is attempting to document who is working with him and what they are doing.
On President Donald Trump’s authority alone, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has been unleashed on federal agencies. Employees from Musk’s companies and those of his allies, as well as young staffers he’s recruited, are wresting authority from career workers and commandeering computer systems.
While some have been public about their involvement, others have attempted to keep their roles secret, scrubbing LinkedIn pages and other sources of data. With little information from the White House, ProPublica is attempting to document who is involved and what they are doing.
Musk’s team, known as the Department of Government Efficiency, has already thrown entire swaths of the federal government and its programs into disarray — programs that serve millions of Americans.
Musk himself has made no secret of his intentions, saying that DOGE is a “wood chipper for bureaucracy” and that he is “deleting” agencies.
A White House spokesperson wrote, “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 advisors or entities.” None of the people identified responded to requests for comment.
Others Named in Musk’s Orbit
Beyond the figures ProPublica has confirmed, other media have reported on a few additional people close to Musk who work for DOGE or other federal agencies. ProPublica is working to confirm them as well:
Baris Akis, Nicole Hollander, Ethan Shaotran
Lead image: Photo illustration by Alex Bandoni/ProPublica. Source images: Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg, Boris Zhitkov, Rudy Sulgan, Sergio Flores, and Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images.
Bio images: Farritor via video screenshot from the University of Nebraska, Killian via McGill Artificial Intelligence Society, Kliger via his personal website, Riley via LinkedIn profile, Elez via Github profile, Russo via LinkedIn profile, Stanley via Linkedin profile, Bjelde via LinkedIn profile (SpaceX logo can be seen on his shirt), Coristine via Instagram profile, Davis via Adam S. Davis/Shutterstock, Cavanaugh via LinkedIn profile, Monroe via Linkedin profile, Scales via previous employer Human Capitol, Miller via Paul Morigi/Stringer/Getty Images, Krause via Linkedin profile
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Comments
By Quarrelsome 2025-02-073:314 reply Elez, the guy who pushed the changes the devs were not allowed to review to the production payment system, is the guy that has just resigned because of hyper racist comments he made in the past that have come to light.
If in doubt, I recommend checking them out because they're incredibly awful, to the extent that it makes you wonder if the payment system he pushed to had ethnic information attached to it.
By hn_throwaway_99 2025-02-074:581 reply > that has just resigned because of hyper racist comments he made in the past that have come to light.
Just to add clarity, "the past" in this case wasn't even that long ago, as these racist tweets that were uncovered were from June to December of 2024.
That, and the standard for rejecting racists shouldn't be set at "hyper racist." Especially since we are seeing supposedly well educated young men in an environment that has normalized anything less than "hyper."
It seems as good a time as any to point out that the environment in which people like this are making decisions is the one in which equal opportunity/affirmative action/DEI become tenable, if not necessary.
For those of you whinging about how unfair scope-broadening to force decision makers to at least consider marginalized people for opportunities is, the problem is not these initiatives, it's these people, who make it impossible to determine if someone is being rejected for merit or for some other reason.
In general, we have to get away from the idea that the highest score along a narrow measure is the be-all-end-all of merit, anyway. Set a reasonable floor of competence, and then either run a lottery or begin looking at other qualities.
By Quarrelsome 2025-02-0717:05 I just wanted to distinguish that he wasn't simply clumsy with his language or casually racist but rather entirely identified with it.
By metadat 2025-02-0718:53 Some of the comments are detailed here:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/jd-vance/bring-back-vance-s...
And they're indefensibly off-color and disgusting, and it's even more insane the VP of the USA is defending Elez.
https://x.com/JDVance/status/1887900880143343633
> We shouldn't reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever.
Step 1. Discredit the media and stop the flow of information.
Step 2. Divert public funds to only your friends and allies.
Pretty straightforward.
By insane_dreamer 2025-02-0721:461 reply He's been reinstated. Racism totally OK now! Woohoo!
By Quarrelsome 2025-02-0722:38 and Musk now calls for the firing of the journalist that reported on those social media posts. Is this a dream?
Expect a lot more fake stories about fraud and other nefarious doings from these guys to justify their crimes. The exact something happened with twitter.
Yeah, it's probably a fishing expedition to uncover some "scandal": https://www.techdirt.com/2025/02/03/the-twitter-files-playbo...
By ZeroGravitas 2025-02-087:53 It's Twitter Files but for the US Government.
Total nothing burgers but you still have people foaming at the mouth about whatever slanted headline they managed to cook up and do performative outrage over.
And to be clear, they all knew that going in. They're intentionally using false stories to attack and threaten people and organisations and have turned it into an industry.
By ZeroGravitas 2025-02-078:281 reply They're more likely to claim the agency knowingly gave $100 million worth of paperclips to the Taliban as part of a Marxist plot.*
If you're going to make stuff up, why not go big and viral.
* And yes, if you're not keeping up with the news cycle this is a thing that really happened, just with condoms not paperclips.
You have to wonder given the Gaza mix up - they saw money going to "gaza" and assumed it was the usual one rather than Gaza, Mozambique - whether they are going to do anything competently.
I mean a techy seeing one word on a spreadsheet that looks iffy and putting hundreds of skilled people out of their jobs as a result is not a great way to run things.
By purplezooey 2025-02-075:112 reply "Demolition Crew"? That's a very kind euphemism for a collection of sycophant clowns that have no experience in government. Indeed I could not find a single one that had any experience.
You need experience to preserve and improve a service.
If you want to destroy and sabotage a service, you place incompetent people at the helm.
Even the CIA lists this as a strategy in its sabotage manual.
> Who is incompetent in this list?
The definition of competence is "having the necessary ability, knowledge, or skill to do something successfully."
You're posting in a forum mainly followed by engineers. Your average experience engineer knows well what a kid straight out of college brings in in terms of ability, knowledge, or skill to do something successfully. We know, because some of us are tasked with onboarding said kids to come straight from college. Some of us had the privilege of onboarding elite recruits from college, and even they need guidance to be effective at their job.
And you just assume these randos don't? They parachute into organizations, systems, and services they are completely oblivious about, they antagonize and are outright hostile to the existing staff and procedures, they even try to push code without knowing a thing about anything, and this doesn't raise any red flags with you?
> I think they can figure out a government ledger.
Do you really know, though? I don't think so.
By tim333 2025-02-079:47 No competence in government programs.
By insane_dreamer 2025-02-0721:471 reply Destroying is easy.
Building is hard.
By notfed 2025-02-0723:36 We're going through a "rewrite the gov as microservices" phase.
