Elon Musk’s teenage high school grad staffer known as ‘Big Balls’ now State Department adviser: Report
A controversial staffer involved with Elon Musk’s effort to seize control of U.S. government computer systems has been granted access to the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as an “adviser,” according to reports.
Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old high school grad and DOGE member known online as “Big Balls,” is now listed as a “senior adviser” at the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Technology, The Washington Post reported on Monday.
Coristine was fired from an intern job last year for allegedly leaking insider information to a rival company.
The office the teen is now working with operates the U.S. diplomatic service’s centralized I.T. department, raising concerns about Musk’s – and the previously accused leaker’s – access to highly sensitive information about American agents across the world.
The Post also reported that Coristine is now a “senior adviser” at DHS, which handles border security and counterterrorism, as well as the disaster response agency FEMA.
The news raises fresh fears from U.S. diplomats about the extent of Musk’s penetration into the back-end of the federal government, which has alarmed experts and provoked a flurry of legal challenges. It’s unknown if Musk or any of his workers have undergone any background checks. Musk’s team reportedly simply recruited DOGE workers from Discord and other online chat groups, Wired reported.
“This is dangerous,” one U.S. official told the Post.
Since Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, Musk’s “Department Of Government Efficiency” – known as DOGE – has rapidly burrowed deep into federal agencies and computer systems, despite a lack of clarity if its work is legal. f
The White House has insisted that all DOGE staffers are federal employees, that they have the appropriate security clearances, and that their work adheres to federal law.
Coristine, who dropped out from Northeastern University to work in Silicon Valley and who once interned at Musk’s brain implant company Neuralink, is one of six relatively inexperienced young men identified by Wired as part of Musk’s incursion into the federal government with reported access to millions of Americans’ personal financial and medical information.
His father, Charles Coristine, is reportedly a businessman who bought the failing snack company Lesser Evil and turned it around – but was later accused of false advertising for describing its snacks as healthier than alternatives.
Bloomberg News reported Coristine was previously fired from a cybersecurity internship after being accused of leaking company secrets to a competitor, though he claimed to have “never exploited it.”
Wired also reported that Coristine appeared to have frequented a network of Telegram and Discord communities focused on cybercrime, where he allegedly solicited recommendations for a third-party service that could perform cyberattacks.
The Independent has asked the State Department and DHS for comment.
