The DOGE is not dead. Here’s what its operators are doing now
to a member From Elon Musk’s so-called Ministry of Government Efficiency, the last few months have been “crazy”. In a slideshow of photos and videos posted on Instagram last month, Yat Choi — who joined DOGE this spring — posted clips of Trump administration officials dancing on the White House lawn to the YMCA. People loading what appears to be a private plane. and house parties decorated with American flags and attendees wearing red, white and blue hats and holding red solo cups and cans of High Noon.
Choi continues to work on Instagram, announcing that he is returning to an underground mine in Pennsylvania where he processes federal pension applications. “Like Jiga [Jay-Z] writes Choi, who previously worked as an engineer at AirBnb and has referred to Canada as home in other Instagram posts. Choi did not respond to a request for comment.
It’s not just Choi. Many of the young, inexperienced DOGE technicians first identified by WIRED appear to still be involved with federal agencies. Edward “Big Ball” Coristin, Gavin Kliger, Marco Ells, Akash Baba and Ethan Shaotran all still claim to be affiliated with DOGE or the US government. So are other tech employees from Silicon Valley and Musk companies like xAI and SpaceX. Coristin, Kliger, Else, Bubba and Shaotran did not respond to requests for comment.
The DOGE ethos—characterized by cutting government contracts and employees, consolidating data into agencies, and importing private sector practices—remains fully in place. While several media reports suggest that DOGE is all but gone, DOGE affiliates are scattered throughout the federal government, working in powerful roles as developers, designers, and even lead agencies.
“It’s completely false,” a USDA source said of the DOGE liquidation report. “They actually sink into agencies like ticks.”
DOGE “has just evolved,” one IRS employee tells WIRED.
While DOGE is no longer moving around the government breaking things fast, DOGE affiliates seem to be digging in for the long haul — and Silicon Valley-shaped fingerprints are left all over the way the agencies continue to run.
Over the past few weeks, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has been rolling out coding tests to hundreds of its technical employees, asking them about their “technical proficiency.” The decision to run the tests was made by Sam Korkus, a DOGE operative and Treasury’s chief intelligence officer, according to a source familiar with the matter. Corcos is looking to overhaul the IRS’s 8,500-person IT department, the source said. It is part of a larger “modernization” process at the US Treasury.
