GuShiio.com The average age is 22 years old.
Source: Chinese Life Network
In just two weeks since Donald Trump was officially sworn in, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has risen from a mysterious institution to the focus of global media. What made it famous was a shocking move to shut down the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which had a history of more than 60 years.
As its name suggests, DOGE has “streamlining and efficiency” as its core philosophy, and its operating methods are also extremely disruptive. The entire department consists of six young people, aged between 19 and 25, three of whom are still in college. They were directly entrusted with important tasks, holding key engineering positions and shouldering the task of cutting government costs. For Musk, this young elite team is not only the core strength of DOGE, but also a testing ground for future changes in the government’s operating model.
According to WIRED magazine, 19-year-old Edward Coristine is the youngest of this group of “young faces” and is engaged in reforming American corporate and long-running government institutions. At present, his specific responsibilities are not yet clear, but he has been praised as an “expert” in his field.
In addition, 21-year-old Akash Bobba, 22-year-old Ethan Shaotran, and 23-year-old Luke Farritor are among the team. According to reports, they have received “A-suite level clearance,” which means they can work in the top-level offices of government agencies and have access to all physical spaces and IT systems.
The oldest of them is 25-year-old Berkeley graduate Gavin Kliger. Although he is not recognized as having the highest level of authority, he has proven to wield great power.
Finally, Gautier Cole Killian was appointed as a member of the Digital Government Experts Group (DOGE) and is said to be a “volunteer” at this stage.
Musk issued a statement on the appointments after widespread media criticism of the youth yesterday.
Musk wrote on X: “It must be admitted that media reports that DOGE has the best software engineers in the world are indeed true.”
Gavin Kliger, 25
According to the New York Times, 25-year-old Krieger is the account holder for a controversial internal email from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
The Berkeley graduate issued instructions to all USAID employees not to return to their Washington headquarters on Monday.
At the same time, as many as 600 staff members reported that they were locked out of their work computer systems and were unable to access office platforms normally. This situation is very similar to the large-scale account blockages and access restrictions that occurred during Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter (now X).
After the incident, Krieger posted a paid article on Substack titled “Why Choose DOGE? Why I gave up a seven-figure annual salary to save America.
23-year-old Luke Farritor
Luke Farito has a long history with Musk. Before getting a new job, he interned at SpaceX.
Luke dropped out of the University of Nebraska and started working for Nat Friedman, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur behind GitHub.
After the news that Friedman was later appointed Secretary of Energy and Environment was announced, he said Luke was a “national treasure.”
In 2024, the young man was praised for using artificial intelligence to help decipher an ancient scroll from Pompeii because the scroll had been damaged beyond recognition. Luke won part of the $700,000 prize money as scientists tried and failed to crack the document for centuries.
19-year-old Edward Kristan
The youngest member of Musk’s elite team is only 19 years old and a student at Northeastern University in Boston.
According to reports, last summer, Koristan interned at Musk’s Neuralink for three months after graduating from high school. Kristan’s role in DOGE is little known, but he is listed as an “expert.”
WIRED quoted sources as saying that Koristan had been on the phone with department employees to ask them to review the code they had written and defend their work.
The report said he appeared on a conference call with General Services Administration staff, but staff did not know who he was or why he was there.
Born into a business family, Kristan is the heir to his father’s popcorn brand, Lesser Evil. Kristan was a team member of the brand. Until recently, Koristan reportedly used an account called “@EdwardBigBaller” on social media.
21-year-old Akash Boba
Bob Ba is another “expert” in the department and is still studying at the University of California, Berkeley. According to his former LinkedIn account, which has been deleted, Bobba was an investment engineering intern at a hedge fund.
Previously, he also interned at Meta and Palantir (founded by 2016 MAGA donor Peter Thiel). Just six years ago, Boba was the organizer of the local Model United Nations on the Princeton junction, New Jersey. His father is a computer science scholar.
22-year-old Ethan Soutland
Southland founded Energize AI, a company that provides scheduling assistants to professionals. The startup received a $100,000 grant from OpenAI in 2023.
The 22-year-old said in September last year that he was a senior at Harvard University and was said to be working on self-driving cars in the school’s computing laboratory.
Musk is known for trying to develop self-driving cars at his Tesla headquarters.
Southland is also a member of the Harvard Mountaineering Club and served as a diving captain during his spare time in Hawaii.
He also has a unique connection with Musk and has participated in Musk’s xAI “hackathons.” He and his team used xAI’s Grok to create a plausible answer for X followers to a hypothetical question and ultimately finished runner-up.
24-year-old Gautier Cole Killian
Killian worked as an engineer at Jump Trading, a company specializing in high-frequency financial trading and algorithms. According to reports, he is now a “volunteer” in the Digital Government Office, but the exact position is unclear.
The 24-year-old graduated from McGill University.
Their rise marks an unprecedented experiment in transforming vast government institutions with extremely lean, highly technical teams. Whether this will become a revolution in administration, completely subverting the traditional bureaucracy, or whether it will be just a brief and controversial political farce will wait for time to tell.
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