Staffers and allies of Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service have fanned out across Washington in recent days, seeking access to sensitive data and disrupting operations in at least 14 government agencies in pursuit of a dramatically smaller federal government.
DOGE, which stands for the Department of Government Efficiency, has not disclosed the names of its staff. But The Washington Post has identified more than 30 people working for or closely with it by examining the internal directories of multiple agencies and interviewing numerous federal workers, virtually all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
About half of those identified have ties to Musk or his companies. Among them are Luke Farritor, 23, a recent intern at Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, and Steve Davis, president of Musk’s tunneling company, Boring Co. Davis, one of Musk’s most trusted deputies, oversaw cost-cutting at the social media platform Twitter, which Musk bought in 2022 and renamed X.
Musk loyalists in other positions include Amanda Scales, the new chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management, who worked at xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company; three of her direct reports previously worked for SpaceX. And Thomas Shedd, who was recently named director of a critical tech unit within the General Services Administration, worked for years at Tesla, Musk’s electric car company.
Musk’s allies have established their strongest footholds in three agencies: OPM, which oversees the federal workforce; GSA, which controls real estate and logistics; and the Department of the Treasury, which manages the nation’s finances. Each office aligns with a key Musk goal: to reduce the number of government workers, to diminish the government’s overall footprint and to slow the flow of government cash to recipients deemed unworthy.
DOGE posted on its X account Friday night that “coordination across 35 agencies over the last two days” had resulted in cuts of $250 million through the termination of 199 contracts. It did not name the agencies or the contracts; DOGE staffers have indicated their intention to eliminate every contract not essential to operations or required by law.
While DOGE’s reach is broad, its numbers appear to be relatively small. Some DOGE associates have received official government credentials, including official email addresses, at multiple agencies, according to documents and interviews. For example, some of the 19 DOGE workers added to the Department of Education’s internal address book, according to a list obtsined by The Post, also have GSA or OPM email addresses, according to documents and interviews.
[Treasury Department was warned DOGE access to payments marked an ‘insider threat’]
Not all DOGE staffers and allies identified by The Post have clear ties to Musk. For example, Noah Peters, 39, is an attorney who worked at the Federal Labor Relations Authority; he stated on his LinkedIn profile that he has worked since January as a senior adviser at OPM. Peters was one of a few point people placing career officials on administrative leave at the U.S. Agency for International Development, according to a USAID official who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. As an attorney in the private sector, Peters once represented the National Rifle Association. He did not respond to a LinkedIn message requesting comment.
At least 10 DOGE staffers identified by The Post are engineers. Among them is Alexandra Beynon, 36, according to Education Department records seen by The Post and an official with knowledge of the matter. Beynon previously was head of engineering at Mindbloom, a company started by her husband, Dylan Beynon, that “offers guided at-home ketamine therapy to transform your mental health.”
At least six DOGE engineers are 25 or younger, including Farritor, a Nebraskan who last year was a cowinner of a $700,000 prize for decoding a Roman scroll. Two others in this youthful group came under scrutiny this week.
On Thursday, Marko Elez, 25, resigned from public service after the Wall Street Journal tied him to a since-deleted social media account that featured racist posts, including the boast that he was “racist before it was cool.” On Friday, Musk, President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance all called for Elez to be reinstated. Elez was one of two people affiliated with DOGE who accessed a Treasury Department payments system responsible for disbursing more than $5 trillion annually.
And on Friday, Bloomberg reported that Edward Coristine, 19, was fired from an internship at a cybersecurity company for leaking internal information to a competitor. Coristine, who has gone by the online moniker “Big Balls,” worked briefly last year at the Musk brain chip company Neuralink, according to Wired.
Coristine is now listed as an “expert” at OPM.
Reporting by Rachel Lerman, Yeganeh Torbati, Faiz Siddiqui, Todd C. Frankel, Azi Paybarah and Dylan Wells.
Additional reporting and research by Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, Hannah Natanson, Aaron Schaffer, Jeff Stein, Cat Zakrzewski, John Hudson, Emily Davies, Maxine Joselow, Evan Halper, Scott Dance, Chris Dehghanpoor, Carol Leonnig, Jeremy Merrill and Razzan Nakhlawi.