The Enablers in Depth

Only recently appointed to the head of the Social Security Administration (SSA), Frank Bisignano has admitted to some back-channel coordination the DOGE-affiliated CIO Mike Russo, but he denies that he secretly gave direction to the DOGE team before his nomination was confirmed.

Carl Coe has been the leader of the DOGE team embedded within the EPA, where he has kept a remarkably low profile, even as other DOGE staffers like Cole Killian and Kathryn Armstrong Loving showed up in media reports. At the EPA, his primary focus would be on reducing the effectiveness of the agency through eliminating staff and whittling down regulations.

Sam Corcos is the co-founder of lifestyle business Levels Health (with Casey Means, the nominee for Surgeon General) which sells metabolic tracking devices. It has received funding from Andreessen Horowitz, and that is probably the connection to DOGE. He has been embedded within the IRS since February as was named a CIO at the agency in March, giving him a large amount of power over how the agency allocates its IT resources.

Scott Coulter started his work for DOGE as a wrecker based in Social Security and detailed to NASA, but when Mike Russo was abruptly demoted as the CIO for Social Security, Scott stepped up into the role. Recently, however, the New York Times reported that Aram Mohgaddassi and Mike Russo were acting informally as co-CIOs within Social Security, leading to questions if Scott Coulter is still there or if he’s just occupying a figurehead role.

DOGE is only able to subvert agencies when it has the explicit cooperation and support of senior leadership there. Nobody better exemplifies than Leland Dudek, who was a relatively minor supervisor within Social Security before he was placed on leave for insubordination by giving DOGE access without authorization. Soon, he was rewarded for his defiance by being named Acting Commissioner for the agency after the Trump administration fired the existing commissioner. Once elevated into that spot, he used all his powers to prioritize access for DOGE staff until a federal judge finally ordered him to stop. With the appointment of Steve Bisignano to the role of Commissioner, Leland Dudek has stepped aside out of the limelight. Recent posts suggest he might be looking for opportunities outside of government.

Stephen Ehikian is an executive from Silicon Valley, like so many of the DOGE leaders. His specific background involves stints at Salesforce and an AI-related startup. Since starting at GSA, he has been a prime supporter of DOGE’s various efforts both within the agency (staffing up a team of wreckers, cancelling building leases) as well as ways in which GSA’s central role can affect the wider government (canceling purchase cards, controlling shared services). He also has been a vocal booster to roll out an AI-based tool named GSAi to the whole workforce, despite it demonstrating lackluster results in pilot tests.

Before the Trump inauguration, Charles Ezell’s title was Branch Chief for OPM’s Data & Analytics division located in Macon, GA. Through circumstances currently unknown, he was named the new Acting Director for the agency on January 20th. Since then, he has used his position to be the quintessential enabler, providing cover (and sometimes firepower) to ensure the DOGE is able to get its way within the agency. Ths included such work as immediately replacing the CIO with Greg Hogan or issuing directives asking for data on probationary workers or other data calls with ridiculously tight deadlines. At some times, even Ezell seemed like he was caught flat-footed by DOGE’s plans, including the confusing rollouts for the “Fork in the Road” or the “Five Things” emails. He also has wildly overstated the control that OPM has over federal hiring and firing.

He certainly has done the most work for DOGE of any acting administrator. Perhaps this is why he was still in the role months later, with nominee Scott Kupor not being confirmed by the Senate until July 9th.

A former director of IT Systems and Solutions at the USIP, he apparently joined up with DOGE after they took over and destroyed that agency. Since then, he has been named the new CIO of the Environmental Protection Agency, presumably providing access and support for DOGE teams within the agency.

Josh Gruenbaum is another DOGE member who comes from the world of private equity and mergers & acquisitions, having worked at KKR & Co and Moelis. At the GSA, he was appointed as commissioner over the Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) at GSA, giving him oversight over all the ways in which GSA procures stuff, whether it’s office supplies or custom software. He is the direct supervisor of Thomas Shedd and he himself reports to Stephen Ehikian who also is in DOGE.

As a Texas oil executive with myriad investments in the field, it’s clear why Tyler Hassen would want a senior role in the Department of the Interior even though his personal connection to Musk’s orbit is unknown. At DOI, Hassen has been promoted into increasingly senior roles and responsibilities while being shunted into positions that do not require Senate confirmation or for him to address his vast conflicts of interest.

It’s not surprising that there are reports that OPM has been training AI models with information on government personnel. Greg Hogan, the agency’s CIO, previously worked for an AI company that was backed Marc Andreesen’s firm Andreesen Horowitz.

Nicole Hollander is married to fellow DOGE operative and ad hoc leader Steve Davis, and she has worked with Elon Musk at Twitter. She had reportedly been involved with securing an enclave for DOGE to work from and live within GSA HQ (complete with laundry facilities). Her biggest effort has been the ongoing march to cancel GSA leases across the country. Her conenctions to other DOGE projects have not be publicly documented yet, and she left the agency (and working for the government) where her husband also resigned.

Tom Krause is the CEO of Cloud Software Group, which sells the Citrix tool used for remote desktops in enterprise environments. He has been involved with DOGE’s attempts to control all payments flowing through the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS) department in the US Treasury. Due to ethics concerns, he onboarded as a volunteer part-time consultant, but in mid-February he was converted to a Schedule C appointment on the GS-15 payscale, which could mean he is being paid up to $195,200 a year.

A managing partner at Andreesen Horowitz, Scott Kupor was advanced by a Senate committee as the nomination for the permanent head of the OPM to replace Charles Ezell. Now that he has finally been confirmed to the role in July, many expect him to be the new driver of the administration’s efforts to decimate the federal workforce.

A veteran of the first Trump administration, he was reportedly placed on administrative leave in 2020 for establishing a pattern in a division of USAID that he ran where he would unilaterally freeze or revoke grants that he felt didn’t reflect administration priorities. When employees spoke up about it, he would then accuse them of insubordination and attempt to get them suspended or fired. He sounds like a really nice guy, so it’s probably not surprising that placing him in charge of USAID this year led to the rapid destruction of the agency. And it’s also possibly why he himself was reportedly ousted from the State Department after the damage was complete. It would be comically ironic, if it didn’t mean the loss of hundreds of valuable people in USAID and hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide.

A former Marine with a background in intelligence, McCord was named as the CIO for DHS the same week as the DOGE delegation started there. He has been a frequent enabler of their access to various systems and is reportedly also very excited about the application of AI at the agency.

Another alumn of SpaceX, Paul McInery left the company in 2020 to be the VP of Engineering at a lawncare-oriented startup named Lawn Love. Despite no experience at being either in government, he was tapped to be the new CIO of the Department of the Interior, after the previous one was forced out of the position for not granting Stephanie Holmes admin access to the FPDS system that manages payroll for half of the federal government.

A former head of cloud strategy at Palantir, Clark Minor was named the CIO for Health and Human Services in February. in that position, he is able to grant access for DOGE staff to many systems.

Technically not a member of DOGE, Trent Morse has often coordinated with them on their operations against smaller independent agencies. In several examples, when the Trump Administration has moved to fire board members and executives of independent agencies, that email has always come from Trent Morse.

Before being named to the role of Chief Information Officer at the Department of Energy, Ryan Riedel was a lead network security engineer at SpaceX. After initially granting elevated access to Adam Ramada and Luke Farritor, he lasted for about a month in the role before resigning and presumably leaving government service.

In late March, Chris Roussos was identified as one of the members of a larger DOGE contingent within the VA. He is an Army veteran himself, and he also has been a CEO of several health and fitness services. Given his experience and background, it’s likely he might be the leader of the DOGE team within the VA, where he has been working with Cary Volpert to review and eliminate a large number of VA contracts.

Reportedly a favorite of incoming SSA commissioner Frank Bisignano, Mike Russo was named the CIO of Social Security in early February and immediately advocated for the expedited onboarding of Akash Bobba. The DOGE contingent eventually swelled to 11 engineers under his watch. In late March, he was removed from the CIO position and demoted to a Senior Advisor, reportedly because the Trump administration was displeased that he cooperated with a judge’s order to revoke DOGE access to SSA systems. However, recent reports by the New York Times claim that he is effectively acting as a co-CIO with Aram Mohgaddassi under Frank Bisignano’s leadership, so perhaps he has returned to good graces. Prior to government service, he was a senior executive at Shift4 Payments, which is an investor in SpaceX and a payment processor for Starlink.

Before DOGE, Bryton was the founder of a startup to help fish farmers improve their yields. While his background check was still being processed, he accompanied Tyler Hassen on a failed publicity stunt to order the DOI Bureau of Reclamation to release more water from reservoirs in Northern California as a publicity stunt about the wildfires much further south in LA. Since April, he has been serving as a senior advisor at the NOAA, where he likely has been reviewing contracts and programs for termination. This role would also give him involvement in regulations and oversight over America’s fisheries.

When he was named the Deputy Administrator of FAS (under Josh Gruenbaum) and the head of GSA’s innovative Technology Transformation Service (which includes 18F and login.gov), the press releases touted his most recent experience, 8 years of being a software developer at Tesla. It turns out that was his only experience, and he hasn’t ever been a senior executive or worked within government before. Instead, his main skills seem to be a loyalty to Musk and a willingness to destroy the parts of the agency in his care if asked. To this end, he has eliminated 18F and tried to gain admin access to services like Notify.gov or Login.gov, that would give him unprecedented control over government services. He also has been a big booster of replacing staff with AI. Since March, he has also been serving as the CIO at the Department of Labor, an arrangement that largely seems to exist so he can grant access for sensitive systems to DOGE staff.

Another of the cadre of conservative lawyers within DOGE, Sonderling had been the commisioner of the EEOC in the previous Trump administration. He was tapped to be Deputy Secretary by Trump for DOL, but he has also served as support for Nate Cavanaugh’s wrecking crew. Exploiting a rule in the Vacancies Act that lets the administraion named appointed officials as acting leaders of other agencies, DOGE has named Sonderling as the acting leaders in the IMLS and MBDA so he could order their destruction.

A veteran of the first Trump Administration, James Sullivan might not have been considered DOGE before by any media organizations. But he was hired with the Senior Advisor title and on 3/28, he took over as the Chief of Staff at OPM from Amanda Scales. He also is one of the redacted identies in court filings from the OPM. So, I think he counts?