Latest news with #governmentefficiency
The Guardian
10 hours ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Ex-Doge employee ‘Big Balls' gets new Trump administration position
Edward Coristine – the 19-year-old who quit Elon Musk's controversial, so-called 'department of government efficiency' (Doge) earlier this week, where he gained notoriety in part for having used the online moniker 'Big Balls' – has in fact been given a new government job, this time at the Social Security Administration (SSA). Coristine, whose lack of experience and super-loyalty to Musk saw him become a flashpoint for outrage at Doge's ruthless but haphazard efforts to slash government spending and fire thousands of workers, resigned from Doge earlier this week. However a spokesperson for SSA, Stephen McGraw, told Wired magazine that he was now working for that department. 'His work will be focused on improving the functionality of the Social Security website and advancing our mission of delivering more efficient service to the American people,' McGraw told Wired. Coristine may have previously worked for the SSA, but reporting on his employment history is conflicted. Doge caused chaos early on in the new Trump administration by muscling into dozens of departments and forcing access to computer systems, in a blaze of publicity and combative announcements. A high school graduate, Coristine's experience before Doge was largely limited to a few months working for Neuralink – which Musk owns – and as an intern for a cybersecurity company, which Bloomberg reported fired him for leaking company secrets. Reuters also reported that Coristine had provided tech support to a cybercrime gang that had bragged about trafficking in stolen data and harassing an FBI agent. At Doge, Coristine was dropped into several major government agencies as they went about slashing services and terminating thousands of workers. Last month, Reuters reported that Coristine was one of two Doge associates promoting the use of artificial intelligence AI across the federal bureaucracy. Musk also left Doge in May after months working by Donald Trump's side then falling out with him. Doge, however, continued to operate until Trump's budget chief, hard right nationalist Russell Vought, who says he wants government employees 'in trauma'. On Friday the Washington Post reported, citing anonymous sources, that Doge's latest target was the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), attempting to slash gun restrictions. Nick Robins-Early and Reuters contributed reporting
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
‘Big Balls' now working at Social Security Administration after departing DOGE: report
Edward Coristine, the 19-year-old nicknamed 'Big Balls' who was working in the Department of Government Efficiency, has landed a new role at the Social Security Administration. Coristine, who was hired by Elon Musk to join the DOGE team, recently left the White House but a Social Security Administration spokesperson confirmed he has since joined the agency as a special government employee. 'Edward Coristine joined the Social Security Administration this week as a special government employee,' spokesperson Stephen McGraw told WIRED. 'His work will be focused on improving the functionality of the Social Security website and advancing our mission of delivering more efficient service to the American people.' It was not immediately clear when Coristine started his new role. Sources told the outlet that Coristine 'looked nervous' and 'almost embarrassed' after being spotted at the agency's Woodlawn headquarters in Maryland this week. He was seen with DOGE engineer Aram Moghaddassi, another Musk hire who is working for X and Neuralink. 'Coristine looked nervous, almost embarrassed,' the source told WIRED. 'Aram was on the phone with someone … then said 'Yes I'm with him right now,' gesturing to Big Balls.'' Coristine's appointment at the agency follows a recent report that Musk and allies insisted on giving a 21-year-old former Silicon Valley intern sweeping access to personal data on hundreds of millions of Americans at the Social Security Administration. Musk ordered 21-year-old Akash Bobba, a former Palantir intern who'd been hired as a programmer for DOGE, be granted access to Social Security data without proper training so he could run his own analysis, The New York Times reported. When the acting commissioner, Michelle King, declined to do so, Musk had her fired and replaced with Leland Dudek. Dudek, brought back from a suspension on the DOGE team's recommendation, got Bobba the access. Coristine was first selected to work for the Tesla boss as a technologist, and received full-time staff status at the General Services Administration last month. Coristine became well known online and among Musk's immense fanbase publicly after he was paraded on Fox News alongside his boss. 'Who is Big Balls?' host Jesse Watters asked on his program, surrounded by DOGE members and supporters at a huge oval conference table. 'I am,' piped up 19-year-old DOGE staff member Edward Coristine. 'That should be obvious,' Musk quipped to laughter. Coristine claimed to have caught the eye of the world's richest man after simply changing his name on LinkedIn to 'Big Balls.' In addition to his brief stint as a government employee, the teenage high school graduate worked at Neuralink for several months and founded a company called LLC in 2021, according to WIRED. Speaking to Fox News, Coristine stated that while working in the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Technology, he used 'computer stuff' as he claimed to ferret out 'fraud and waste,' the old mantra of his former boss. With additional reporting from Mike Bedigan
The Independent
a day ago
- Business
- The Independent
‘Big Balls' now working at Social Security Administration after departing DOGE: report
Edward Coristine, the 19-year-old nicknamed 'Big Balls' who was working in the Department of Government Efficiency, has landed a new role at the Social Security Administration. Coristine, who was hired by Elon Musk to join the DOGE team, recently left the White House but a Social Security Administration spokesperson confirmed he has since joined the agency as a special government employee. 'Edward Coristine joined the Social Security Administration this week as a special government employee,' spokesperson Stephen McGraw told WIRED. 'His work will be focused on improving the functionality of the Social Security website and advancing our mission of delivering more efficient service to the American people.' It was not immediately clear when Coristine started his new role. Sources told the outlet that Coristine 'looked nervous' and 'almost embarrassed' after being spotted at the agency's Woodlawn headquarters in Maryland this week. He was seen with DOGE engineer Aram Moghaddassi, another Musk hire who is working for X and Neuralink. 'Coristine looked nervous, almost embarrassed,' the source told WIRED. 'Aram was on the phone with someone … then said 'Yes I'm with him right now,' gesturing to Big Balls.'' Coristine's appointment at the agency follows a recent report that Musk and allies insisted on giving a 21-year-old former Silicon Valley intern sweeping access to personal data on hundreds of millions of Americans at the Social Security Administration. Musk ordered 21-year-old Akash Bobba, a former Palantir intern who'd been hired as a programmer for DOGE, be granted access to Social Security data without proper training so he could run his own analysis, The New York Times reported. When the acting commissioner, Michelle King, declined to do so, Musk had her fired and replaced with Leland Dudek. Dudek, brought back from a suspension on the DOGE team's recommendation, got Bobba the access. Coristine was first selected to work for the Tesla boss as a technologist, and received full-time staff status at the General Services Administration last month. Coristine became well known online and among Musk's immense fanbase publicly after he was paraded on Fox News alongside his boss. 'Who is Big Balls?' host Jesse Watters asked on his program, surrounded by DOGE members and supporters at a huge oval conference table. 'I am,' piped up 19-year-old DOGE staff member Edward Coristine. 'That should be obvious,' Musk quipped to laughter. Coristine claimed to have caught the eye of the world's richest man after simply changing his name on LinkedIn to 'Big Balls.' In addition to his brief stint as a government employee, the teenage high school graduate worked at Neuralink for several months and founded a company called LLC in 2021, according to WIRED. Speaking to Fox News, Coristine stated that while working in the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Technology, he used 'computer stuff' as he claimed to ferret out 'fraud and waste,' the old mantra of his former boss.
Gizmodo
3 days ago
- Business
- Gizmodo
The Tyranny of ‘Big Balls' Has Come to an End
Edward Coristine, the 19-year-old given unprecedented access to some of the most private information on Americans, has reportedly quit his role at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency according to Wired. If you don't remember the name Coristine, you probably remember his nickname, the thing he reportedly told people to call him while he plundered the nation's data. He went by Big Balls. Coristine had been working as a so-called Special Government Employee, which allows workers to skip the more strict financial disclosures required for government employees but prohibits work to just 130 days in a year. That changed last month, according to Wired. Coristine had been hired in May as a full-time employee at the General Services Administration, right around the same time that Musk formally exited DOGE, more or less accusing President Donald Trump of being a pedophile in the process. Officially, Coristine was an employee of GSA but was working across multiple government agencies, according to Wired. Big Balls was reportedly rooting around in government systems for USAID, the Department of Education, and the Small Business Administration, among others. It's not clear how much data to which Coristine ultimately got access. Nor do we know what he, or anyone else affiliated with DOGE, has done with it. Coristine made an infamous appearance on Fox News where he tried to strengthen Musk's case that the federal government was riddled with waste, fraud, and abuse. But he wound up accidentally revealing that he simply had no idea how anything works. Coristine and Musk seemed to believe that because they didn't know how various things in the government worked, some kind of nefarious activity had been exposed. But it did nothing of the sort. 'So you look at a specific line item, like $20 million. You're like, OK, well, what is this money going to? And for the majority of payment systems, it's like, well, we don't really know,' Coristine said during his Fox News appearance in early May. Coristine had no work experience in forensic accounting and the DOGE dipshits were largely feeding massive quantities of data to AI systems in an effort to understand what they were looking at, according to multiple reports. But these guys seemed to truly believe that if they didn't understand something, it must be evidence of wrongdoing. Coristine had previously been fired from a cybersecurity company for allegedly leaking company secrets and went to work for Musk's company Neuralink before joining the DOGE team. Coristine's father, Charles Coristine, is the CEO of the snack food company LesserEvil, which was sued in 2023 for representing its snacks as 'healthier' than other junk food. The brand tried to distance itself from Big Balls back in February, writing, the company 'is in no way affiliated with any political figures, political policies or political groups.'
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
Elon Musk's protege with vulgar nickname resigns from federal government
A teenage tech operative once dubbed a rising star in Elon Musk 's controversial federal overhaul effort has abruptly resigned - just weeks after his infamous boss's own exit. Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old former Neuralink employee who styled himself online as 'Big Balls,' is no longer working for the US government, the White House confirmed on Tuesday. His name vanished from internal contact lists, and his government email account was deactivated, signaling the end of one of the most bizarre and incendiary appointments in recent federal history. Coristine's resignation comes just weeks after the departure of Elon Musk and his top lieutenant Steve Davis from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Musk-led initiative launched by Donald Trump earlier this year to radically streamline, digitize, and disrupt the federal bureaucracy. Coristine was one of the first hires and quickly became a symbol of DOGE's tech-bro bravado and brazen disregard for Washington norms. Coristine, a high school graduate with a resume that includes Neuralink and a short stint at a hacker-linked company, was given remarkable access across government. According to Wired, he bounced between agencies including the GSA, Department of Education, USAID, Small Business Administration, and even Office of Personnel Management, helping implement Musk's sweeping vision to centralize data and digitize operations - sometimes through back channels and with little oversight. He also attended high-level meetings at the Commerce, Treasury, and Defense Departments, records show, discussing DOGE integration and controversial programs such as Trump's 'golden visa' plan. But Coristine's tenure was riddled with controversy. He allegedly appeared in hacker chatrooms, was once fired over a suspected data leak, and according to Reuters, was tied to a cybercrime group that trafficked stolen data and bragged about harassing an FBI agent. In March, he was reportedly offering tech support to a cybercrime gang that had bragged about trafficking in stolen data and harassing an FBI agent. His online persona, 'Big Balls,' became a meme within both tech and political circles - a crude moniker that came to represent DOGE's irreverent, combative style. Despite that, Coristine maintained full-time federal status as recently as late May, and was reportedly granted multiple government-issued laptops, according to former DOGE operative Sahil Lavingia. Coristine's exit follows a wave of resignations that began with Musk's own departure from DOGE in April. His abrupt retreat from the federal stage threw the department into disarray and triggered a domino effect, as key loyalists were either pushed out or walked away. Steve Davis, president of The Boring Company, left shortly after Musk. Although the White House insists DOGE will continue, the once high-flying program now appears rudderless. Insiders say the vacuum left by Musk and Davis has led to internal paralysis, with once-dominant DOGE operatives quietly reassigned or purged from federal systems. Coristine's past has long shadowed his federal tenure. In addition to his Neuralink stint, he once founded a company called LLC, which registered Russian-based domains and developed an AI Discord bot. According to Wired, he briefly worked for a company founded by reformed blackhat hackers, and his Telegram handle was reportedly involved in questionable online solicitations. Coristine, who was raised in a wealthy town in Westchester County outside New York City as the son of a popcorn baron, also spoke about how he got his X-rated nickname. He was a junior at a $50,000-per-year Rye Country Day School, where his bored math classmates were passing a note around. When it got to him, Coristine 'drew a phallic object and wrote BIG BALLS on it,' a current student who heard the story told New York Magazine. 'Then a math teacher took it out of his hands and read it out loud to the class. Then I guess he embraced it because he changed his LinkedIn name to that.' Coristine said he 'just set it as my LinkedIn username. 'People on LinkedIn take themselves like super seriously and are pretty averse to risk, and I was like "I want to be neither of those things."' 'Honestly, I didn't think anyone would know,' he said. Despite the baggage, he was trusted with sensitive digital infrastructure and participated in federal meetings involving payment systems and surveillance integration - raising serious questions about DOGE's vetting standards and the oversight of its hires. Federal agencies have remained tight-lipped on what exactly led to his exit.
