DOGE 2.0
Uncanny Valley | WIRED
WIRED
4.1 • 570 Ratings
🗓️ 11 July 2025
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After Elon Musk’s departure from D.C, the future of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency seemed uncertain. But DOGE’s work continues unabated — its influence spreading farther and deeper into federal government agencies. WIRED’s Makena Kelly and Vittoria Elliott share with Leah Feiger what they found through their reporting.
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, this is Leah. |
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| 0:22.9 | It really helps other people find us. |
| 0:33.1 | Welcome to Wired's Uncanny Valley. I'm Wired's senior politics editor, Leah Figer, filling in for Zoe. |
| 0:37.7 | Today on the show, Doge 2.0. As you may recall in late May, Elon Musk announced that he and other top leaders of the Department of Government Efficiency, Doge, would be leaving. |
| 0:45.9 | This is around the time that President Trump and Musk had a bit of a public spell. |
| 0:50.5 | Oh, man, the girls are fighting, aren't they? |
| 0:53.1 | While Musk has officially left D.C., Doge is continuing its whole-scale assault on federal agencies. |
| 0:59.3 | I'm joined by my colleagues, senior writers, McKenna Kelly, and Victoria Elliott here at Wired. |
| 1:04.5 | Welcome to Uncanny Valley. |
| 1:06.1 | Hi, Leah. |
| 1:07.2 | Hey, it's great to be here. |
| 1:14.3 | So, Hey, it's great to be here. So let's get into it right from the gate so our listeners can get their bearings. |
| 1:19.8 | Who exactly is Edward Big Balls Horristeen? |
| 1:24.0 | Yeah, so he is one of the young, inexperienced Doge staffers. He is 19 years old. And the thing that makes Koresstein so unique is that like this handful of really young engineers, most of them under the age of 25 and the majority under the age of 30, he has been deployed across multiple government agencies. We've seen him show up at |
| 1:45.4 | USAID, at the General Services Administration, Office of Personnel Management, at the Social |
| 1:50.9 | Security Administration, all these different places. And I cannot stress how highly uncommon it would be |
| 1:57.5 | for someone to have access to sensitive data or systems or even be working across |
| 2:03.4 | that many agencies at once. And when we're talking about people in high-level government |
... |
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