Operation DOGE: How Musk used an unofficial team to influence the White House

Musk is trying to run the White House the same way he runs X.

As we all know, after Trump’s election, Elon Musk is now the head of the famous Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) .

This powerful new identity allows Musk to access computer systems across various agencies, particularly those related to human resources for U.S. federal employees.

Image source: Getty Images

Only one month after the new leadership team took office, DOGE has turned the U.S. political and business circles upside down. Government departments have carried out large-scale layoffs and downsized the establishment, rectified the social security system... various unconventional operations have been carried out one after another.

Change? Disruption? What does DOGE do?

Trump and Musk have made no secret of DOGE's purpose: streamlining redundant agencies and cutting federal spending.

Only two weeks after Musk took office, DOGE, which once seemed mysterious, became the focus of global media, because its first move was to target the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which has a history of more than 60 years.

On a quiet Monday, about 600 USAID employees received an email instructing them not to enter the headquarters building in Washington, D.C.

In response to this, Musk calmly responded: USAID is rotten beyond repair!

In addition, DOGE also announced: Cancellation of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Contract.

This expenditure alone saved the government more than $1 billion. The business that DOGE is engaged in is undoubtedly an offensive job - it moves people's cheese and cuts off their financial resources.

As the most controversial department in the White House, DOGE has triggered multiple lawsuits since January 20. Because Democratic lawmakers and consumer rights advocates are worried that once DOGE gains access to the Treasury Department’s payment system, it will lead to disastrous consequences because the system stores the personal data of most Americans.

Although many government employees are resentful, the president is particularly satisfied. He praised Musk's DOGE department for doing a "great job" in reducing the size of the federal government and expressed his hope to "see him become more proactive."

All signs indicate that Musk is trying to govern the White House the same way he governs X.

On February 22, Musk posted on the social media platform X, "According to the President's instructions, all federal employees will soon receive an email asking them to report on their work last week. If they do not respond, it will be regarded as an automatic resignation. "

Subsequently, tens of thousands of federal employees received emails that day asking them to "reply to this email, list approximately 5 tasks completed last week, and copy your supervisor." The email was sent by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and the deadline for reply was midnight on the 24th.

Trump supports this approach. "What a smart idea to send this email. We are trying to make sure people are doing their job."

However, the method of asking federal employees to write weekly reports, which sounds efficient, did not receive a response from all departments. Several agencies under the Department of Defense, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National Security Agency (NSA), were notified to suspend their responses.

"He's a big businessman. He's a successful man. That's why we want him to do it," Trump said at a press conference on Tuesday, stressing that DOGE has "a lot of work, a lot of smart people involved in it."

Who are these “smart people”?

The department brings together a group of young tech elites who have demonstrated outstanding talents in their respective fields. Here is everything you need to know about the DOGE staff so far.

Inner Circle

▍Elon Musk​​

Role: DOGE leader, unpaid "special government employee"

Traits: solemn, obsessed, ambitious, adventurer

These adventurer traits are pointed out by Elon Musk's observers and followers.

This "Silicon Valley Iron Man" who founded SpaceX and Tesla and dreams of migrating to Mars has now become a right-hand man to the President of the United States.

The Trump administration said Musk is a White House employee and a senior adviser to the president, according to documents filed on February 17. According to the Trump administration's executive order, DOGE is a temporary government organization whose authority will expire in July 2026.

Steve Davis

Role: Musk's longtime confidant

Steve Davis is Musk's confidant for 20 years and is known for cost-cutting and fast execution. He is also the president of the tunnel-digging company Boring Company. According to the Los Angeles Times, after obtaining a master's degree in aerospace engineering from Stanford University, he has been working at SpaceX since 2003 and became one of the company's earliest employees.

In 2016, Musk tapped Davis to run his then-newest far-fetched idea: an underground transportation play called The Boring Company. Under his leadership, The Boring Company raised hundreds of millions of dollars and built several short so-called “Tesla Tunnels” in Las Vegas.

Musk's confidant is well versed in negotiation and has strong execution capabilities. Musk once invited him to join Twitter to help complete the acquisition and subsequent operations. It is reported that Davis and his family slept in a temporary bedroom at the company's headquarters during this period. Now Davis is helping Musk cut government redundancies.

▍Nicole Hollander

Role: X Employee

The George Washington University graduate and former employee of real estate developer JGB Smith was part of Twitter's polarizing transition team that upended the company and cut staff, and she is also the wife of Musk's best ally, Steve Davis.

Holland's relationship with Davis and her current job at X keep her in Musk's inner circle. Her role at DOGE does not come with an official title, at least not a public one. However, Wired reported in late January that Holland has high-level access to federal agencies and an official government email address.

Senior management

▍Brian Bjelde

Role: Senior Advisor, Office of Personnel Management

Brian Bieder has worked at Musk's SpaceX for 21 years, was employee No. 14 at the company and still works there. Bieder started out as an avionics engineer but has spent the past decade running the company's human resources department.

Before joining SpaceX, Brian Bieder worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for a year after graduating from the University of Southern California with a master's degree in aerospace engineering.

▍Amanda Scales

Role: Director of the Human Resources Management Office

The Office of Personnel Management, abbreviated as OPM, is essentially the human resources department of the federal government. It has also become the core of a series of actions such as Musk's drastic cuts in redundant staff.

According to an OPM memo, Amanda Schuyler does not work directly for DOGE but currently serves as chief of staff for the Office of Personnel Management, the federal government's main human resources department.

According to her LinkedIn profile, Skiles worked in talent acquisition at Musk's company x.AI until January 2025. She also worked in human resources and talent at San Francisco venture capital firm Human Capital and at Uber. According to her LinkedIn information, Skiles graduated from the University of California, Davis in 2012 with a degree in psychology and economics.

▍Amy Gleason

Role: Acting DOGE Administrator

According to the White House, Amy Gleason is the acting administrator of DOGE, and although nominally the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, Gleason is actually the official head of the Department of Government Efficiency, and Musk basically calls the shots.

According to her LinkedIn profile, Amy Gleason worked at American Digital Services (now DOGE) from October 2018 to December 2021, and previously served as chief product officer at Russell Street Ventures from December 2021 to November 2024.

According to the executive order establishing DOGE, Amy Gleason reports to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.

▍Jehn Balajadia

Role: Musk's longtime assistant

According to Jayne Balajadiya's LinkedIn profile, she first joined Musk's business ecosystem in 2017, holding the title of operations coordinator at Musk's company The Boring Company. The company's main business is an American infrastructure, tunnel construction services and equipment company. It was spun off from SpaceX in 2018. In 2018, Balajadiya took over the position of executive assistant in the company's CEO's office, a position that includes managing all of Musk's activities, often including those of his family.

Today, Jain Balajdia plays an important role in DOGE. According to the New York Times, she is listed in the Ministry of Education employee directory.

The book Breaking Twitter claims that Balajadia told another Musk official that her job was to "look after" him, and she reportedly traveled with Musk frequently. When Musk took over Twitter, Balajadia was named chief of staff, and she was the one who sent termination letters to several Twitter executives.

Prior to joining Tesla, Balajadiya worked at Red Bull, NBC Universal, and Walt Disney.

▍Riccardo Biasini

Role: Senior Advisor to the Director, Office of Personnel Management

Riccardo Biasini entered Musk's circle in 2011 and joined Tesla as an engineer last year after earning a master's degree in automotive engineering from the University of Pisa in Italy.

During his five years at Tesla, Biasini has focused much of his attention on Autopilot, one of the company’s advanced driver assistance systems, according to a post he published on Medium. Prior to taking charge of the system, he led the development of Autopilot’s traffic-aware cruise control and other driver assistance features.

Biasini left Tesla to join Comma.ai in 2016, where he developed the automated lateral and longitudinal control systems for the startup’s first self-driving car system. He later became vice president of quality and was named CEO in 2018.

In 2019, Biasini returned to Musk as the director of electrical and software engineering at The Boring Company. Currently, Biasini is a senior advisor to the director of DOGE's Office of Personnel Management.

▍Christopher Stanley

Role: Unspecified role in the White House

Christopher Stanley started working for Musk in October 2022 and became a member of Twitter's "core transition team" after Musk took over Twitter.

Stanley has since taken on an unspecified role in the White House, according to The New York Times. Stanley himself has hinted at working for the Trump administration through his X account.

Stanley is also the head of security engineering at X and the chief security engineer at SpaceX. Stanley said on LinkedIn that he is also the chief information security officer of X Payments, a payment service Musk hopes to launch as part of his aspirations for X's "everything app."

Before entering Musk's circle, Stanley owned his own cybersecurity company, called Stanley Cyber, and worked as a contractor in Kentucky. He also worked for Baptist Health, a Kentucky medical organization that includes hospitals and other facilities.

An xAI-powered chatbot named “Government Efficiency AI Assistant” was found on a DOGE-related website subdomain on the “Stanley Network,” and the bot says it is “designed to help government officials like you identify and eliminate waste, improve efficiency, and streamline processes using a first principles approach.”

Grassroots (Worker Bees) ——

▍Akash Bobba

The role: Personnel Management Office Specialist

According to Wired, 21-year-old Akash Boba is an engineer at DOGE, involved in the optimization and development of government systems. Compared with other people in DOGE, Boba does not have much intersection with Musk. But he has had some interactions with the technology community. He has interned at technology companies such as Meta (formerly Facebook) and accumulated rich technical experience. According to a now-deleted podcast by software engineer Aman Manazir, Boba said he had interned at Meta and Palantir, and he also worked at Bridgewater Fund.

According to Wired, Boba was listed as an "expert" in internal OPM correspondence and reported directly to OPM Chief of Staff Amanda Schuyler.

▍Edward Coristine​

Role: Special Government Employee

Edward Christian is only 19 years old. He just graduated from high school in 2024 and was admitted to Northeastern University in Boston, USA, planning to study mechanical engineering and physics. He is one of the core members of the DOGE team, Musk's youngest assistant, listed as an expert of DOGE, and participates in government technology projects.

Nicknamed “Big Balls,” he had broccoli-curled hair. By the end of his first month, he had served in the State and Homeland Security departments, the Small Business Administration, FEMA and the top cybersecurity agency. He was the youngest of six male engineers working for Musk and ate pizza and Red Bull.

Since arriving in Washington, D.C., Christian has been actively involved in accessing federal systems across multiple government agencies. Prior to joining DOGE, he ran several companies under his own name from his home in New York, including network service companies DiamondCDN and Packetware, both of which provide DDoS protection. (DDoS refers to malicious behavior that disrupts the normal traffic of a target server, service, or network by overwhelming the target server or its surrounding infrastructure with large-scale Internet traffic).

Around May 2024, Christian began working for Musk's company Neuralink.

▍Marko Elez

Role: Special Government Employee, U.S. Treasury Department

Since joining DOGE, 25-year-old Marco Elez has become a central figure in a legal battle over DOGE's access to some of the federal government's most sensitive systems. As a senior Treasury employee, Marco Elez has access to the U.S. Treasury's payment system, which is responsible for disbursing about $6 trillion in federal funds to Americans, such as Social Security checks and federal tax refunds. According to a legal document filed over DOGE's access rights, Elez is the only DOGE employee with access to the payment system.

Before entering government, Marco Elez worked at SpaceX, focusing on vehicle telemetry, Starship and satellite software. Elez later worked on search artificial intelligence at Musk's social media company X, according to an archived copy of Musk's website.

On February 6, Elez briefly resigned from DOGE after the Wall Street Journal exposed racist posts on his social media accounts. Elez may return to the government after Musk posted a poll on X asking if he should be rehired. A Washington Post reporter broke the news on February 18 that he had resumed his position at DOGE.

▍Luke Farritor

Role : DOGE Senior Advisor

Luke Farito, 23, is listed as a senior adviser in several U.S. government employee directories, including the State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development and the Department of Energy.

Before joining the government, Farito was a student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, famous for deciphering text on an ancient Roman scroll, for which he won a $700,000 prize. Later, Farito was selected for the 2024 Thiel Fellowship, an annual award given by billionaire Peter Thiel. An archived copy of Luke Farito's website says he worked for investors Nat Friedman, who was once the CEO of GitHub, and Daniel Gross, who once led Apple's AI project and served as a partner at YC. Luke Farito helped them "invest in a large multi-stage venture capital fund and help operate the accelerator AI Grant."

Luke Farito interned at Musk's satellite internet company Starlink in mid-2022 and worked at SpaceX from May 2022 to July 2023.

▍Gautier Cole Killian

Role: DOGE "Volunteer", Federal Detailer

Gautier Cole-Killian, described as a DOGE “volunteer,” was designated a “federal detailer” for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in early February. A federal detailer is a federal employee who is usually seconded from another government agency. They primarily assist the team in obtaining secure access to the Treasury Department in order to access government payment networks.

Killian was a student at McGill University in Canada, where he studied mathematics and computer science and served as a member of McGill's Artificial Intelligence team from 2021 to 2022.

▍Gavin Kliger

Role: Special Advisor to the Director of the Office of Personnel Management

22-year-old Gavin Krieger is an alumnus of the University of California, Berkeley, graduated with a degree in electrical and computer engineering, with a CPA of 3.95. He joined the DOGE team in early 2025.

A former software engineer at Twitter and California startup Databrinks, he also uses his Substack platform to publish controversial pieces — such as “The Curious Case of Matt Gaetz,” in which he criticized the so-called “deep state” for its role in the impeachment of political opponents.

Gavin Krieger has clear political positions: He poses for photos wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat and supports figures like Pete Hegseth, whom he describes as "the warrior that Washington is afraid of."

On Monday, The New York Times named Krieger as sending an all-staff email to USAID staff, ordering them to work from home as the agency came under scrutiny from DOGE and the Trump administration.

▍Tom Krause

Role: Special Government Employee, U.S. Treasury Department; CEO, Cloud Software Group

Tom Krause is a special government employee and DOGE executive at the U.S. Treasury Department. He also serves as CEO of Cloud Software Group, a private company that owns several tech companies, including remote access giant Citrix (a once public company that was taken private through a series of transactions).

Kraus eliminated a number of positions at Citrix that employees said were critical to the security of the company's products, according to multiple anonymous and unnamed employees, Bloomberg reported.

Krause, 47, was a senior executive at Broadcom before becoming CEO of Cloud Software; before that he ran a consulting firm. Since taking on the role of one of Musk’s frontline employees for DOGE at the Treasury Department, Krause has worked closely with another senior Treasury employee, Marko Elez.

▍Jeremy Lewin

Role: DOGE Staff

According to Bloomberg, Jeremy Levin is a DOGE staffer at the General Services Administration, which oversees the federal government’s massive procurement and logistics operations.

Jeremy Levin is a 27-year-old Harvard Law School graduate who recently worked at the same law firm as Usha Vance, the second lady of the United States. He is also a lawyer who co-authored an article with Harvard Law School professor Laurence H. Tribe titled "$100 billion: How the United States should use Russia's wealth to fight Putin" published in the New York Times on April 15, 2022.

▍Nikhil Rajpal

Role : DOGE Staff

Nikhil Rajpal, 27, studies computer science and history at the University of California, Berkeley, and serves as president of the libertarian-leaning student political group Students for Freedom.

According to archived snapshots of its website, Rajpal worked at Twitter from 2016 until some time before it was acquired by Musk. He may have reportedly first entered Musk's orbit before then, working on a redesign of Tesla's console.

Nikhil Rajpal works for NOAA on behalf of DOGE and has a DOGE email address.

▍Kyle Schutt

Role : DOGE Technical Expert

Kyle Schuette, 24, a technologist with longtime ties to Republican politics and more recently to Elon Musk’s political operation, reportedly had access to FEMA’s systems.

Kyle Schutte's since-deleted GitHub profile, seen by TechCrunch, shows that he worked for a company called Outburst Data, which, according to security researchers, hosted part of the DOGE website as well as several other Musk-related sites, including his PAC political fundraiser.

Schutt also served as chief technology officer for Revv, a widely used online fundraising platform for the Republican Party, and as co-founder of KAMM, a Virginia-based software company.

▍Ethan Shaotran

Role: DOGE Staff

Ethan Shortland, 22, a California native, DOGE staffer and Harvard 2025 student focusing on autonomous driving research, first publicly connected with Musk in September 2024, when he placed second in a hackathon held by the billionaire’s artificial intelligence company xAI.

Shortland was the founder of Energize.ai, whose website no longer loads, and the creator of several iPhone apps, including a Donald Trump-themed running game called "Donald Dash."

Shortland reportedly had a valid GSA email address and requested access to 10 years of GSA data. Shortland also had access to the Department of Education's email system and the department's back-end website.

▍Jordan Wick

Role: DOGE Staff

Jordan Wicker , 28, a former Waymo software engineer, is part of a team that has access to the CFPB system. Wicker graduated from MIT with a master's degree in engineering.

Jordan Wick is also the co-founder of YC startup Intercept , according to the YC website.

▍Christopher Young

Role: DOGE Staff

According to Bloomberg, Christopher Young is a DOGE staff member who has a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau email address. The address was reportedly copied in an email regarding the need for four other DOGE staff members to be onboarded and given access to the CFPB building.

According to The New York Times, Yang is a "top Republican field operative." In 2024, Elon Musk hired him to help build a grassroots political organization focused on increasing voter turnout. He currently serves as a senior adviser at DOGE and has an email address from the President's Executive Office. According to Yang's LinkedIn profile, he has been working in Republican politics since at least 2007.

Assistance

Marc Andreessen

Role: DOGE unofficial advisor

According to The Washington Post, Marc Andreesen, co-founder of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz, does not officially work for DOGE, but serves as a "key network person for talent recruitment" at the agency. Andreesen also jokingly called himself an "unpaid intern" for DOGE.

▍George Cooper

Role: DOGE Recruiter

According to Wired, Cooper is a Palantir engineer who was involved in DOGE's recruitment in late 2024. According to his LinkedIn profile, he graduated from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania in 2019 with a bachelor's degree in computer science and business.

Cooper wrote in a message seen by WIRED that he worked hard to recruit other Palantians to join DOGE because they are "the most brilliant people I know."

▍Vinay Hiremath

Role: DOGE Recruiter

Vinay Hiremas, 32, co-founder of video recording startup Loom, which sold to Atlassian for $975 million in 2023, worked on DOGE for about a month in late 2024, making hundreds of recruiting calls, according to a blog post on Hiremas' website titled "I'm Rich, But I Don't Know What to Do." He wrote that he was added to a DOGE-related signal group and "hit the ground running."

While Hiremas praised DOGE’s work as “extremely important,” he said he resigned because he needed to focus on himself and canceled plans to move to Washington, D.C., and head to Hawaii.

▍Anthony Jancso

Role: DOGE Recruiter

Anthony Jancso , a former Palantir software engineer, also participated in DOGE's recruitment efforts in late 2024. In 2023, Jancso co-founded Accelerate SF, an initiative that uses engineers to solve urban problems using artificial intelligence.

Yanczo’s exact age is not publicly available, but his LinkedIn profile seen by TechCrunch shows that he graduated from University College London in 2021 with a bachelor’s degree in economics. Yanczo was recruited to DOGE by Boring Company President Steve Davis.

▍Michael Kratsios

Role: DOGE Recruiter

According to Bloomberg, Kratsios helped lead DOGE's recruiting efforts in late 2024, interviewing future employees. Kratsios previously served as managing director of Scale AI and as the U.S. chief technology officer during President Trump's first term. He also headed Thiel Capital, the venture capital firm founded by Peter Thiel, from 2014 to 2017, according to his LinkedIn information.

▍Katie Miller

Role: DOGE Advisor and Spokesperson

Miller is a Trump-appointed DOGE advisor and serves as its spokesperson. Miller served in Trump's first administration and is the spouse of Trump's deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. Miller also serves on the President's advisory committee related to intelligence matters.