DOGE deputies land at State Department tech bureau with USAID emails
A pair of Elon Musk’s staffers in the Department of Government Efficiency have landed at the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Technology and have been given emails affiliated with the U.S. Agency for International Development, according to people familiar with the matter.
Both 19-year-old Edward Coristine and 23-year-old Luke Farritor are listed as senior advisors, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to Nextgov/FCW because they were not authorized to publicly communicate their positions. It’s not clear when Coristine and Farritor were assigned to those roles.
The Washington Post first reported news of their arrival at the international affairs agency. Both are among several identified in other media reports as working for DOGE, a cost-cutting entity overseen by Musk that has made its way into various government agencies — like the Office of Personnel Management, Department of Treasury and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — seeking to eliminate instances of spending “waste” throughout the government.
Coristine and Farritor are listed in internal directories with state.gov email addresses, along with usaid.gov addresses, two of the people said, adding that both are also registered with an M-CIO label — a designation that has been associated with the USAID Office of the Chief Information Officer, per a 2018 agency handbook — in the agency’s directory.
Farritor, a former intern for Musk’s SpaceX, has been given high- level access to USAID systems, according to reports from last week. The Trump administration and DOGE have targeted USAID with significant workforce cuts and a pause on all U.S. foreign assistance. A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Friday issued a temporary restraining order blocking USAID from placing thousands of employees on leave and evacuating workers stationed overseas.
Media reports link Coristine to a cybercrime syndicate known as The Com. He was also a former intern at brain implant startup Neuralink, another Musk-owned company.
A State Department spokesperson and a DOGE spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.
State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Technology is described as an office designed to “create an interconnected, secure, and informed Department through the prioritized, secure, and innovative application of IT resources” and that its vision is “to drive necessary and effective operations and collaboration across the Department, its partners, and foreign audiences.”
The office is overseen by State Chief Information Officer Kelly Fletcher. State has recently undergone a major IT modernization effort, including the launch of an internal AI chatbot.
