Here's What We Know About DOGE 2.0

WIRED

11-07-2025

The U.S Capitol Building is seen at dusk on June 9, 2025, in Washington, DC. Photo-Illustration: WIRED Staff; Photograph:All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
After Elon Musk's departure from D.C, the future of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency seemed uncertain. But DOGE's work continues unabated—its influence spreading farther and deeper into federal government agencies. WIRED's Makena Kelly and Vittoria Elliott share with Leah Feiger what they found through their reporting.
Mentioned in this episode:
This Is DOGE 2.0 by Makena Kelly and Vittoria Elliott
WIRED Talked to a Fired DOGE Staffer About Who Was Really in Charge by Vittoria Elliott
You can follow Leah Feiger on Bluesky at @leahfeiger, Vittoria Elliott on Bluesky at @telliotter, and Makena Kelly on Bluesky at @makenakelly. Write to us at [e-mail]. How to Listen
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Leah Feiger: Hey, this is Leah. Before we start, I want to take the chance to remind you that we want to hear from you. Do you have a tech-related question that's been on your mind, or just a topic that you wished we talked about on the show? If so, you can write to us at [e-mail]. If you listen to and enjoy our episodes, please rate the show and leave a review on your podcast app of choice. It really helps other people find us. Welcome to WIRED's Uncanny Valley . I'm WIRED's Senior Politics Editor Leah Feiger, filling in for Zoë. Today on the show, DOGE 2.0. As you may recall, in late May, Elon Musk announced that he and other top leaders of the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, would be leaving. This was around the time that President Trump and Musk had a bit of a public spat.
[Archival audio]: Oh, man, the girls are fighting, aren't they?
Leah Feiger: While Musk has officially left DC, DOGE is continuing its whole-scale assault on federal agencies. I'm joined by my colleagues Senior Writers Makena Kelly Kelly and Vittoria Elliott here at WIRED. Welcome to Uncanny Valley .
Vittoria Elliott: Hi, Leah.
Makena Kelly: Hey, it's great to be here.
Leah Feiger: Let's get into it right from the gate so our listeners can get their bearings. Who exactly is Edward "Big Balls" Coristine?
Vittoria Elliott: Yeah. He is one of the young, inexperienced DOGE staffers, he is 19-years-old. The thing that makes Coristine so unique is that, like this handful of really young engineers, most of them under the age of 25 and the majority under the age of 30, he has been deployed across multiple government agencies. We've seen him show up at USAID, at the General Services Administration, Office of Personnel Management, at the Social Security Administration, all these different places. I cannot stress how highly uncommon it would be for someone to have access to sensitive data or systems, or even be working across that many agencies at once. When we're talking about people in high-level government roles who might be touching sensitive information like Social Security numbers, or immigration status, or might be asking information that you would need years, and years, and years of experience and a security clearance of some kind to get to, or at least some kind of background check. I think Edward Coristine was emblematic of way in which DOGE was this haphazard project, with young, inexperienced people doing some of the most consequential work in government with very little oversight.
Makena Kelly: Yeah. That's why, at the end of June, when we saw that his name had disappeared from one of our internal directories that we try and keep an eye on, it seemed like maybe the end of DOGE or maybe the end of Coristine was imminent. Then we go to the White House, the White House tells us that, "Oh, yeah, he's gone. He just resigned this week." Then a couple days later, we're hearing from sources at the Social Security Administration that, "No, no, no, he's here. He's at SSA." That got us into the direction of where the reporting led for DOGE 2.0. Where it's not necessarily as if we have this huge group of DOGE folks who are sleeping at the GSA offices anymore. They are becoming employees, full-time employees at the agencies that I guess have decided to keep them.
Leah Feiger: In Coristine's case, what exactly is he doing at the Social Security Administration? Do we know?
Makena Kelly: Yeah. At this point, we don't really have a clear picture of what it is that he's doing. From our reporting and the sources that we've been speaking to, the work that's going on at SSA is more focused on something called the Numident Database. That's one of the databases that is huge, has bunch of information about everyone in the country. The information that SSA has is incredibly important.
Leah Feiger: So much of this with Coristine is incredibly emblematic of what you guys have been reporting with DOGE 2.0. These inside details that DOGE is actually just quietly getting inserted into all of these agencies in a different way. Which, in so many cases, ends up being entirely chaotic, disruptive, and destructive.
Vittoria Elliott: Yeah. What we found is that, while they may not call it DOGE anymore, DOGE is still really DOGEing, but in this more sprawling way. And in this way where they have always been inserted across agencies. From what we understood, there wasn't a ton of coordination between them, but now it's even more so where it seems like the answer is that a lot of the people who are remaining as part of DOGE are really getting absorbed into agencies. I think Aram Moghaddassi, who is now at Social Security Administration, is a really great example where he came in as part of this DOGE strike force, now he's the CIO.
Leah Feiger: Right. Makena, you also found that people were actually being told to not call DOGE operatives DOGE anymore, right? Talk about being secretly integrated.
Makena Kelly: Yeah. I feel like this was something that was bubbling up for the last couple months, but really hit recently with Elon Musk of course formally leaving government. At the Department of Veteran Affairs, for example, a lot of people who worked there were being told that these DOGE people are just employees of the agency and they should be considered their own colleagues. They're not this outside force any longer. Then at the USDA, the Department of Agriculture, specifically some of these tech workers were told that members of what was previously the Department of Government Efficiency, they should now call them the USDA Digital Service. Which is really funny when you remember that DOGE took over what was previously called the US Digital Services.
Leah Feiger: It's just so wild to me. That's not really a different department, or is it a rebranding of DOGE as we've known it?
Makena Kelly: At this point, it's very unclear. Every agency, from what I've gathered, is handling things a little bit differently. But I think the trend is that you should treat these people as our colleagues, they're not this foreign strike force any longer, and you shouldn't be freaked out if they start asking you to do things or trying to work alongside you.
Leah Feiger: Right. You guys also reported, and we've talked about a couple of them, Moghaddassi amongst them, but of DOGE folks who've really been integrated into new agencies recently?
Vittoria Elliott: Yeah. There was a man named John Solly, who has been at SSA for quite a while and is still getting more and more embedded in the agency's internal org chart. Luke Farritor, one of the original young engineers, has now appeared at the Department of Labor. We've seen a bunch of people who have connections to either Musk or Palantir, the company founded by Peter Thiel which is a major government and defense contractor that's been trying to vacuum up a bunch of contracts in the new Trump administration, are now chief information officers at different agencies. The projects that they introduced, even if some people have cycled out, many of those projects are continuing.
Leah Feiger: Unreal. Yeah, that's the thing is that these projects, they have not cut. Musk walked out of DC and things did not end.
Vittoria Elliott: Yeah. If anything, experts that we spoke to said that DOGE was actually a really great cover for some of the most unpopular goals of the Trump administration. Cutting federal workers, really reducing the federal workforce, really ramping up use of AI, that's all stuff that people like Russ Vought have wanted to do for a while. The fact that DOGE was the entity that came in and broke the seal while really taking a lot of the heat off of Trump himself was kind of a gift.
Leah Feiger: That makes sense to me. Who is leading DOGE right now? Do we know?
Makena Kelly: It's, to me, very unclear. From my reporting, it seems like Amy Gleason, who was supposed to be the acting administrator of the US DOGE Service now, isn't as involved. Her leadership is still very much focused on these legacy USDS folks and the projects that they were working on for several years now. There has been talk about Gebbia, who is a co-founder of Airbnb, taking on the role as leader of DOGE, but that sounds like something he doesn't even want to be a part of. If he does, he wants it to be a larger group, an advisory council. Not just one person who can take all of the blame if DOGE ends up screwing up again. But one of the more important parts of the reporting that we did this week was that Steve Davis, a lieutenant to Elon Musk, did a ton of work for him, helped set up the Twitter acquisition in 2022, all of this work, he is still communicating with people. On Signal, in other ways, who are currently with DOGE or are currently working on DOGE projects across government.
Leah Feiger: Wow. I can't believe that he's still around.
Vittoria Elliott: Well, that's at least what we're hearing. Keep in mind that most of communication that, at least from what we understand from my conversations with Sahil Lavingia, a former DOGE member, is that pretty much all of the organization's work happened over Signal. We have a pretty clear understanding that this entity really runs off this encrypted messaging app where you can auto-delete messages. It's not that difficult to imagine that it would be very easy for someone like Davis to maintain contact with all these people in the same way they were doing when he was functionally in government. Both Sahil and some people that Makena spoke to have indicated that Davis remains in contact with certain people who are working on DOGE projects.
Makena Kelly: Not even just Davis, but Musk himself. Even though he's exited government, he runs one of the most powerful social media platforms where he can just say whatever he wants. People at DOGE, we know as part of our reporting of uncovering them, that they have Twitter accounts or actively use the app, if not worked for it. Elon can just post whatever he wants and maybe these folks in government get a clue about how to continue to be on Elon's good side if they were to exit government at some point in time and want to return to one of his businesses.
Leah Feiger: We're going to take a quick break, but next up we're going to dive into DOGE's current hiring spree and controversial government contracts. Makena, Tori, you have been giving us the lay of the land on DOGE 2.0, this fun man-spreading across the federal government. DOGE, as in this so-called agency, they're also still expanding and hiring, right?
Vittoria Elliott: Yeah. Here's the thing. The executive order that established DOGE as we have really reported on it and thought about it, which is the strike force of people from the tech industry coming into the government, doing these cuts, starting these projects, that's one part of it. But it also repurposed what was known as the US Digital Service, which was an existing entity to bring in people with tech backgrounds to modernize the government, it transformed that into the US DOGE Service. That entity, which is as Makena mentioned, headed by Amy Gleason, is still hiring, desperately looking for people because they lost a lot of people at the beginning of the administration.
Makena Kelly: Recently, I was speaking to some sources and it was somewhere between 150 and 200 folks who were a part of USDS prior to DOGE, and now they're around about 30 people.
Leah Feiger: Wow!
Makena Kelly: They are struggling to maintain headcount.
Leah Feiger: Oh, that's wild. And you guys reported they're hiring tech workers in development, operations, software, product, and they're being promised these really lucrative contracts, right?
Vittoria Elliott: Well, lucrative for government. A lot of people in the tech industry would probably say that what USDS or a government job pays is not as much as they would hope to make for their skillset at a startup for instance. But yeah, for government work, it's at the highest end of the pay scale. Someone with a lot of experience could make close to $200,000.
Leah Feiger: Wow. Tell me about some of the new DOGE names that our listeners should know about.
Makena Kelly: Yeah. I think specifically at the Office of Personnel Management, OPM, that was basically the first agency that DOGE took over, there's a handful of new folks. The one that really stands out though is this man Yat Choi. He is formerly an engineer at Airbnb. We don't know specifically if there's any close relationship between him and Gebbia, who is the co-founder of the app. But, man, is Choi a character. His name on Instagram is Yatshitcray.
Leah Feiger: Awesome, awesome. Love to have this person in charge of our government functionalities.
Makena Kelly: He's a SoundCloud musician and he makes some TikTok videos. One in which he is covered in a blanket, and seemingly saying that he loves what DOGE is doing with USAID in cutting all of its contracts and funding. Even before joining DOGE, it seemed like he was really interested in the mission and you can see that across his social media.
Leah Feiger: Interesting. He's also Canadian, right?
Makena Kelly: Yes. He is first and foremost, a character, but also appears to be a non-US citizen.
Vittoria Elliott: To clarify, it's pretty uncommon for people who are not US citizens to be able to work in government. There often are only certain special exceptions. Baris Akis, who is one of Musk's closest advisors and who Sahil Lavingia told us was a recruiter for DOGE, was, as The Atlantic reported, prevented from joining the actual official DOGE effort in government because he is a Turkish citizen. That does not appear to have kept him from informally or somewhat covertly participating in the project. I think it's really important to note that it is pretty uncommon for non-US citizens to hold civil service type of jobs and it's only in special cases.
Leah Feiger: Talk us through some of these controversial initiatives that are full steam ahead at the moment.
Vittoria Elliott: Yeah. One is a project that started at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The project seeks to use AI to flag certain regulations or sub-regulations to be rolled back. What that means is that the AI is crawling through thousands and thousands of pages of documentation and flagging things for HUD workers to review as either in compliance with this executive order to roll back regulation or make justifications about why they want to keep or why they feel they need to keep that regulation. As one HUD worker told me, the AI is pretty shitty and it's really time-consuming. But this is a project that was headed by a DOGE operative Chris Sweet at HUD, who appears to still be taking meetings there to push this project forward. It's seemingly not limited to HUD. We received memos from the VA that show that they're also being asked to turn over and compile all their regulatory and sub-regulatory documents in preparation for an AI to crawl through that as well.
Makena Kelly: Another one of the major projects that is still ongoing is taking place at the IRS, where a bunch of engineers are working on what has been called a "mega API layer." Essentially, trying to connect all of the database systems within IRS into one space that can be easily searchable and possibly shared across different agencies. Sam Corcos, he is a former health tech founder, he is a DOGE affiliate, and now he's become the chief information officer of the Treasury. Now he's in a really major leadership role at an agency that now is hoping to connect all of this data together. They brought on Palantir to help create this entire system.
Leah Feiger: It's wild to me because obviously, on one hand, you have Musk and DOGE or former DOGE staffers in these government positions, and on the other are these government contracts that also link back to some of Musk's interests. Palantir's co-founder Peter Thiel and Musk are longtime allies. It's wild to see this all coalesce into a very similar thing.
Makena Kelly: Yeah. It's difficult to know if there was some kind of master plan in all of this. But I think one thing is for certain, though. That all of the chaos that DOGE has wrought has created a ton of opportunity for Elon Musk and his close associates.
Vittoria Elliott: In the words of Peter Baelish, "Chaos is a ladder."
Leah Feiger: No, those are really good points. I also want to note that, as you guys were reporting this story, the White House, the VA, Elon Musk, John Solly, Rohan Chen, Yat Choi, Steve Davis, no one responded to our requests for comment. We talked about DOGE 1.0, the Musk version. We've been talking about DOGE 2.0 and we're only seven months into this, into DOGE generally. Should be be expecting a DOGE 3.0 this year? What is the next upgrade like?
Vittoria Elliott: We don't really know. But what we can see here is a pattern of outsourcing to tech companies that are advantageous to the tech industry. For instance, as Makena mentioned, Palantir has been brought on to help with this big mega API project at the IRS. When you cut a bunch of contracts at an agency, that work still needs to get done, Palantir is there and ready. Similarly, we see other startups like Anduril, the defense startup that has been back by Andreessen Horowitz, that is looking for more and more defense contracts. In the instance of the Treasury, for instance we saw a young engineer hired named Rohan Chen. He had previously worked at a company called Ramp, which was also backed by Peter Thiel. It's a payment system and the General Services Administration is considering using Ramp to manage its internal payment system. I think what we're really seeing in maybe a third iteration of DOGE is that we're going to see more and more of this fusion between these companies that are in the tech space that have backing from people who were either involved with or supported the DOGE effort, and seeing those companies as being the preferred vendors for the Trump administration, and seeing much more fusion between the tech industry and government through these outsourcing contracts.
Leah Feiger: When we come back, we'll share our recommendations for what to check out on WIRED.com this week. Welcome back to Uncanny Valley . Before we take off, Makena, Tori, tell our listeners what they absolutely should read on WIRED.com today. Tori, what do you have for us?
Vittoria Elliott: Our colleague Kate Knibbs wrote about the looming malnutrition crisis in the wake of USAID cuts. I think this is really important because if you've ever worked abroad, Leah and I have both worked in some capacity in international development or around those circles, you know exactly how important US food aid is. A, it's really helpful for farmers to have the US government buy their excess crops and ship them overseas, it provides a really important market for US farmers. But in humanitarian crises like we're seeing all over the world right now, US food is a real lifeline for people in dire situations. What Kate's reporting found is that because USAID was so severely cut by the Trump administration and DOGE, this food is sitting in warehouses, going to waste, and in places like South Sudan, children are going hungry. I think it's a really great example of the way in which these systems that are not super-visible to the average, every day person in the US are so critical to other people around the world, and frankly really help the US' diplomatic position as a powerful and supportive entity to a lot of people.
Leah Feiger: Good recommendation. Highly, highly agree. Makena, how about you?
Makena Kelly: Yeah. This week has been quite the week for Grok.
Leah Feiger: Ugh.
Makena Kelly: Elon Musk's chatbot, it went complete Hitler-mode this week and said some very just horrifying, anti-Semitic posts online. But I think I would recommend everyone read after all of this is Paresh Dave's reporting on Grok 4, the brand new version of this chatbot that is being released after this absolute chaos of a week for Elon and his company.
Vittoria Elliott: Leah, what is your pick for this week?
Leah Feiger: Okay. It is incredibly different than both of yours, which I think is a good thing, and a slightly lighter note to end us out on. Elana Klein wrote an article about Zillow and how people are looking up how much their friends' houses cost, and this entire culture around it. It's in the culture section, it is such a good read. Everyone is very gossipy, and fun, and obsessed with finding information about their friends' net worth. Highly recommend.
Makena Kelly: I will say I'm guilty of this!
Leah Feiger: Yeah, of course you are. We all are.
Vittoria Elliott: I will say that, after going to a particular party once in the past year, my partner, after we left was like, "You know, I'm beginning to believe that this person might have family money," as I looked up their Zillow thing.
Leah Feiger: All of these articles that we recommended are really WIRED at its finest as well. It's like, "Oh, AI is Hitler now, USAID, DOGE, all of these crumbles. And also, Zillow, what's happening there? How can we use tech to spy on our friends and family?" That's our show for today. We'll link to all the stories we spoke about in the show notes. Make sure to check out Thursday's episode of Uncanny Valley , where we dive into the mailbag and answer listeners' questions, your questions. Adriana Tapia produced this episode. Amar Lal at Macro Sound mixed this episode. Kate Osborne is our executive producer. Conde Nast's head of global audio is Chris Bannon. Katie Drummond is WIRED's global editorial director.