A key operative in Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency resigned on Tuesday, Wired reported.
Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old who joined DOGE after graduating from high school, became an internet meme because of his nickname, "Big Balls." He was part of the DOGE inner circle, according to Wired, and was given multiple federal laptops to conduct his work. He made brief appearances at the General Services Administration, Office of Personnel Management, the US Agency for International Development, the Department of Education, and the Small Business Administration.
Coristine was one of the youngest members of DOGE and reportedly had no government or political experience before joining the department. He explained to the New York Post in May that his work primarily involved looking at "payment computer stuff" within the federal government.
“One of our initiatives is to root out fraud and waste, and to do that, we started looking at the payment computers, and as mentioned earlier, there’s no accounting of what payments actually go to in the payment computer," Coristine told the news outlet.
Coristine also reportedly used his position to force government employees to justify their employment. For instance, GSA staff told Wired that Coristine forced them to "go over code they had written and justify their jobs" while on calls.
He also discussed replacing GSA employees with AI and training chatbots on how to do their work, Bloomberg reported.
It's been reported that Coristine considers Musk a "personal hero" and worked for him as an intern at Neuralink.