An online fan of Elon Musk named “Big Balls” who is 19 years old has started working as a senior adviser at the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security. This has caused some diplomats and others to worry about his possible access to sensitive information and the growing influence of his tech billionaire boss in the American diplomatic system, according to U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.
Edward Coristine recently started working at the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Technology, which is a key hub for both sensitive and non-sensitive data. He used to work for Musk’s brain chip start-up Neuralink for a short time. Coristine works for the U.S. DOGE Service and the Office of Personnel Management. His edgy online persona and the fact that he doesn’t have much experience in his new federal jobs have gotten him a lot of attention in Washington.
But his new job and similar ones at DHS and other government departments could let him see a lot more than just tech.
Not everyone in the U.S. was happy about Coristine’s new job at the bureau, which is the IT department for Washington’s diplomatic machinery. During a makeover before President Trump took office, all of the department’s IT and data management tasks were moved to the bureau. This made it a great trove of information.
One of the U.S. officials said, “This is dangerous.” They brought up Coristine’s age and the fact that Bloomberg News said he was fired for giving information about a data security company to a competitor.
A person from the State Department said that Coristine’s job would likely not be limited to the Bureau of Diplomatic Technology.
The odd appointment shows how Musk’s DOGE has sent some of its employees to work for more than one agency at the same time. This has given young, inexperienced, and mostly unscreened people a unique look into how the government works. Musk put hiring software engineers at the top of his list for the project, which works out of the office of the former U.S. Digital Service and has been renamed the U.S. DOGE Service (the letters stand for Department of Government Efficiency). The goal of the project is to cut $1 trillion in government spending.
The group’s actions have been most obvious at the Treasury Department, where 25-year-old DOGE employee Marko Elez worked before he quit last week after the Wall Street Journal reported on racist emails he had sent. Musk promised to bring Elez back, and Trump and Vice President JD Vance backed him up. Elez and Silicon Valley executive Tom Krause were in a fight when they first got to the agency as DOGE representatives over whether DOGE should be able to access a sensitive Treasury payments system. Krause now officially controls that system as an assistant treasury secretary.
In other places, DOGE employees have been sent to work for the Office of Personnel Management and the General Services Administration. Both of these agencies are working on projects related to Musk’s main goals, which are to reduce the size of the federal government workforce, lower the cost of government property, and update old technology.
In federal directories, DOGE employees are sometimes mentioned at more than one agency, which makes it hard to tell what their exact jobs are within the government.
Coristine also has a job at the U.S. Agency for International Development, which is the biggest provider of food aid in the world. Musk has said that he will destroy it, and the Trump government wants to cut it from 10,000 employees to about 600. In the Bureau for Management, in the office of the chief information officer, Coristine’s job at USAID is mentioned.
Many ambassadors were scared as they saw USAID shrinking. They hoped that the State Department, which was created in 1789 and is the first executive department of the federal government, would not have to go through the same thing. But the fact that DOGE agents have been seen in Foggy Bottom has made people even more afraid.
Screenshots of an online DHS directory that The Washington Post got show that Coristine is also a senior assistant at both the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and FEMA, which is part of DHS. The pictures show that he has email addresses for both of them.
A DHS official said that DOGE’s apparent moves into the agency “may have significant national security implications.” This is because DHS is in charge of many things, including border security, disaster response, and fighting terrorism.
“They’re basically breaking things without knowing what they are,” the official said, asking to remain anonymous because the subject was sensitive.
It’s still not clear what Coristine’s job is at the State Department, but officials said that his job in the technology bureau could give him a way to get to classified information and leak information about other countries and actions going on in other countries.
Luke Farritor, a 23-year-old coworker of Coristine’s who used to be an intern at SpaceX, is also named in the State Department’s directory as working at the Bureau of Diplomatic Technology.
The Post has found six engineers younger than 25 years old who work for DOGE. Coristine and Farritor are two of them.
A spokeswoman for DOGE named Katie Miller did not reply right away to a request for comment. Neither did the State Department, Coristine, nor Farritor.
There is also a person who knows one of the DOGE engineers well and spoke on the condition of silence to protect that relationship. This person said that the engineers’ technical skills are not in question, but the DOGE team’s rapid growth concerns them.
The person said, “It’s not like they have a history of having well-informed political views.” “All they want to do is solve hard problems. It’s like, ‘Oh, that’s a big challenge, that’s a big puzzle.'” I’m sure he grew up doing puzzles and tough problems. This is just another one, and he gets to hang out with the president and billionaires, which is a bonus.
Also Read: Elon Musk Will Co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency, Trump Says
Someone who wasn’t the expert said, “That is such a narrow view of the world.” “I don’t think it’s right for something with such a big effect,” she said.
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