Luke Farritor Goes to Washington

He could have been an artist, or a builder or someone dedicated to seeing a great historical mystery through. Instead he wound up at the Department of Government Efficiency, slashing, dismantling, undoing. By Susan Berfield, Margi Murphy & Jason Leopold

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Oh, my goodness, Luke Farreder goes to Washington. He could
have been an artist, or a builder, or someone dedicated
to seeing a great historical mystery through. Instead, he wound
up at the Department of Government Efficiency Slashing, dismantling, undoing
by Susan Burfield, Margie Murphy, and Jason Leopold read aloud

(00:22):
by Mark Ledorf. Before he was called a patriot and
a traitor for following Elon Musk to Washington to join DOGE.
Before he was hired by the US government despite a
resume that would have been previously rejected. Before he was
granted extensive access to sensitive data and invited to brief
the country's Vice president. Before he met his Twitter heroes

(00:45):
in Silicon Valley. Before he became a Teal fellow, which
required him to become a college dropout. Before he was
celebrated internationally for using AI to help detect passages in
a scroll charred by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Before
all of that, Luke Ferreder now twenty three, was a
homeschooled kid in Lincoln, Nebraska who called himself Luke the

(01:08):
Coder sixty four. Back then, he responded to the prompt
you know you're a nerd when with you listen to
White and Nerdy by weird Al and think it's a
biography of you. The Martian was one of his favorite books.
He was a bell ringer at church. He played piano
and golf, chess and kerbal space program. During his high

(01:30):
school summers, he helped build an app that could link
those in need to local charities. It's still in use.
Back then, his father introduced him to an artist, Charlie Friedman,
who wanted to create a musical installation that people could
move through, hearing different notes at different times, an experience
individual and communal. I've always been interested in how humans

(01:52):
are easily manipulated by power by bright lights. Friedman says
he needed someone who could code and build and commit
to a project that was then a concept. Farader was
around fifteen when he began working with Freedman, and nineteen
when they first exhibited soundtracks for the Present Future, composed
of fifty nine hanging computer controlled guitars and mandolins, at

(02:14):
a contemporary art center in Omaha. Farader called it magical.
It was featured on public television in Nebraska and traveled
to museums around the country. Freedman always referred to Farader
as the exhibition engineer. Being around artists allowed Faratter to
see how they approached their careers, how they approached their lives.

(02:34):
He said in a university news story. It really rubbed
off on me. I think he considered becoming an artist.
He started to create what he called an exploding toaster.
He was devising some things that he thought were kind
of art pieces, Friedman says. But at twenty one, after
seven months as an intern at Musk's SpaceX starbase in Texas,

(02:55):
he told Friedman he thought of himself differently. I realized
what I loved to do is to solve other people's problems.
Farreder was an inquisitive, uncommonly talented, and sometimes obsessive young man.
He had opportunities. He had people who cared about him,
and those people had ideas of what he might achieve.
Their ideas had nothing to do with Washington. Maybe Farreder

(03:19):
didn't know that his decision to help the man he
so admired try to slash government spending would mean disappearing
from his own life, working secretively but appearing in court documents.
That it would mean disappointing and angering some thrilling others
that in trying to solve one problem, he would play
a part in creating chaos and distress and fear. Those

(03:40):
he knew would not always be spared. His community in
Lincoln would be cleaved. Maybe some in his hometown say
he didn't know there would be consequences. Luke Farreder is
the eldest of four children, raised in a modest house
with an American flag out front and a workshop in
the basement. The family posed there for a photo. It's

(04:02):
on his father's Facebook page. Farader's mother, Tracy Slocombe Farader,
is a physician who calls herself a patriot. She wanted
to create an animated show Rennie and Bow about America's history.
Michael Medved, the conservative radio host and author, was a
special consultant. I think America is the greatest nation on earth,

(04:22):
and I think it's okay to teach that, she said
in a Kickstarter video in twenty fifteen. That doesn't mean
we think any less of other people or other countries.
Her campaign fell short. Farader told friends she was the
best person he knew. Second was his father, Shane Farreder,
a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln,

(04:44):
who for much of his son's childhood was developing a
miniature surgical robot. With millions of dollars in federal funding.
It was launched on SpaceX's Falcon nine and tested on
the International Space Station last year. In a talk titled
Don't Measure Cut twy, he said everyone should make something.
Making is a better way of thinking. At the end,

(05:06):
he showed photos of his four kids doing just that.
Lincoln is a university town, the capital of the state,
center of the Silicon Prairie. Its open skies, affordable homes,
good schools, liberal leaning politics, refugee resettlement programs, some three
hundred thousand residents. It's about five hours by plane from

(05:28):
either coast, and for some this is an opportunity of geography,
a chance to distinguish themselves. Shane Ferredder is among them.
Jeff Rakes is two. He grew up in rural Nebraska,
left for Stanford University, Microsoft the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
He designed and later helped fund the Jeffrey S. Rakes

(05:49):
School of Computer Science and Management at the university, an
honors program with an honor code. The students, their number
hovers close to forty a year now are called the
best and Brightest. The university publishes their names. The Nebraska
business community takes notice. Posters of the Rakes schools six
core values hang in the building where the students live

(06:11):
and study. Graduates can still recite them. Among the principles,
follow through on your commitments. Understand the impact of your
words and actions. Never sacrifice quality or integrity. Commit to empathy.
The school maintains a robust diversity, equity and Inclusion statement.
Every alum lands a job or a place in a

(06:32):
graduate program soon after leaving Rakes. According to the school
for most, being selected for Cohort twenty twenty was an
achievement in and of itself. For Luke Farreder, it was
the path of least resistance, he would later tell a reporter.
It was also close to home. During his first year,
he invited friends to campfires there. Farader's family would sometimes

(06:54):
join the parties. Friedman describes them as open minded, intelligent, sparkly,
the kind that a homeschooled kid might want to stay around.
Members of Cohort twenty twenty came to realize that unlike them,
Farader was at RAKES because his parents wanted him to
attend School was never a priority for Luke, and that
was well understood. One classmate says, unlike them, Farader challenged

(07:18):
professors about assignments and skipped classes to work on the
music project, to work on the scrolls. It's what kind
of set him apart, because he would just grind on
side projects and learn, says another classmate. He calls Farreder
cracked for coders, that's a compliment. Farader didn't always invest
himself in group projects. Some classmates say, Rakes is supposed

(07:42):
to be all about collaboration. The program culminates in a
project meant to solve a real problem for a company
or organization. In November of his senior year, Farreder told
his group that he would likely drop out before theirs
was complete. According to one of them, they did just
fine without him, winning second prize at whats known as
the Design Studio Showcase. It's held at the Nebraska Innovation Campus,

(08:05):
where Farader's father helped plan a maker space for the
university and the Lincoln community. Farreder, no surprise, set up
a workshop of his own in his dorm room. I
had a suspicion that if I needed a part for anything,
there was a ninety percent chance he would have it,
says a classmate who asked him for help with her
own side project. His room was full of little wires,

(08:26):
computer chip boards, many embedded system computers, things in boxes.
They mostly talked about coating. Luke would share ideas for
how I could learn on my own, she says. Some
other students had different recollections of Farreder, that he once
redid a female classmate's work on a project without consulting her.
That he questioned the need for an international conference for

(08:48):
women in tech that Rakes sent students to attend. When
he dropped out, A few women noted with some satisfaction
that his departure tilted the gender balance. At graduation, it
was nineteen men and eight eighteen women, as close to
equal as it had been since the school's founding in
two thousand and one. On politichat a group chat set
up by Rake's students, Farreder identified himself as hopelessly lib right.

(09:13):
That's lib for libertarian. He would be passionate about being contrary,
says one classmate. I don't know the extent that he
believed in some of the things. He just wanted to
push people that wasn't always welcome. Like a lot of
group chats, it became a pretty rough echo chamber, wrote
one classmate, who created a private chat Calm Polita Chat,

(09:34):
to allow dissenting opinions to be heard more openly. Farreder
was invited to join. He was there. He was on Twitter,
He was on YouTube and TikTok and Instagram and GitHub.
He was almost nineteen social post. I think college as
a whole is overrated. Peter tele had a good bit
about this. Luke Farred November sixteenth, twenty twenty, on Calm

(09:58):
politichat Charater's political discussion seemed to mirror his own Twitter feed.
Among its prominent figures were the Silicon Valley venture capitalist
Mark Andresen, who would go all in for Donald Trump
in twenty twenty four, Peter Teel, the libertarian who helped
fund Trump's first campaign, and Elon Musk. He thought that

(10:18):
Musk was the closest thing to Iron Man. He loved
that Musk was pushing the envelope in all these ways,
says one classmate. I remember at one point Musk was
going on a big series about how everyone needs to
have more children, says another Farredter started talking about that
in politicat I remember thinking, why is this something we're
talking about. What he talked about was based on the

(10:41):
whims of his algorithms. We were participating more in university life.
Farader's circle at Rake's telescoped over the years. I think
I could describe him as becoming more narrow. A classmate
wants close to him, says By the time he dropped out,
some from those campfires weren't talking with him regularly or

(11:01):
at all. Those who had remained in touch didn't respond
to our requests for interviews. One works for Virtual Incision,
the robotics company Farader's father co founded. A second recently left,
Shane Farreder, declined our interview requests. Farader's classmates who talked
with us asked not to be identified because the political
atmosphere is so charged. Farader didn't respond to several requests

(11:25):
for an interview or answer our written questions, but in
early twenty twenty four he did speak with Bloomberg BusinessWeek
for a cover story about the Vesuvius Challenge, a competition
to identify letters and words in the ancient scrolls, and
right up until the presidential inauguration, he was very much online.
We have glimpses of a young man's life refracted over time,

(11:47):
his confidence and ambitions appearing here and there, his desire
to be noticed, be weird, belong, be close to his heroes.
A video from January twenty twenty two, Faradder is a sophomore.
He and Friedman are installing soundtracks at the Everson Museum
of Art in Syracuse, New York, dozens of hanging guitars

(12:09):
and Mandolin's play Satyagraha, originally by Philip Glass. Farreder is lanky, masked,
hair flopped over his forehead, glasses, orange sneakers. He walks
through the room as if he's conducting social post. They
don't know that I'm learning about C plus plus seventeen

(12:29):
at Luke Farredder August eighth, twenty twenty two, in a
tweet with a photo of Farader hunched over his laptop
as friends hang out. As cohort twenty twenty began their
junior year, Farreder interviewed for a semester long internship at SpaceX.
They asked me all about the guitar project, he told
Friedman he had to solve an engineering problem in a

(12:50):
matter of days. He barely left his room. Someone visiting
Farader's sweep mate saw that Farreder had written all over
the mirrors calculating satellite angles or something. It could be
that the problem demanded that intensity, The classmate says, it's
also true that Luke would hyper fixate on a project. Later,

(13:11):
when asked on X about his process for projects, Farreder replied,
there is no process. I just think about them non stop.
When Farreder arrived at Starbase in Texas in January twenty
twenty three, everyone was preparing for the first test flight
of Starship, the world's largest rocket designed to one day
carry people to Mars. Farreder was assigned to the launch

(13:33):
pad software team. He later described his work to BusinessWeek
as chaotic in the best way possible. He said he'd
found a fuel leak on the pad a few weeks
before the April launch, which was a really big deal.
He was at the launch site hard hat on for
liftoff and could see a routine he'd programmed in action.
Oh my goodness, that was cool. When the rocket blasted

(13:56):
off concrete chunks of the launch pad flew in all directions.
Debris spread for miles, and shockwaves shattered at least one
window in a nearby town. Minutes later, starship spun out
of control and SpaceX had to blow it up. One
morning in March, while driving to Starbase farred Or heard
Nat Friedman, former chief executive officer of GitHub, described the

(14:18):
Vesuvius challenge on a podcast. The volcano that destroyed POMPEII
in seventy nine AD also preserved a vast library of
ancient scrolls, the Herculaneum Papyrie, but they were so brittle
that most have never been opened. A computer scientist at
the University of Kentucky, Brent Seals, had figured out how
to virtually unwrap three D scans of the charreted scrolls,

(14:40):
and with his graduate students train artificial intelligence algorithms to
detect the presence of inc. Now, they were making those
scans and data available and offering prizes to anyone who
could extract the first words and passages. I think there's
like a fifty percent chance that someone will encounter this
opportunity and get the data and get NERD sniped by it,

(15:01):
and we'll solve it this year, Friedman said, and Farreder
was like, Oh my goodness, that could be me. He
thought to himself. You can win money, you can meet
Nat Friedman, you can make an impact on history. Farader
began working with the scans during evenings and weekends, posting
his progress on the group's discord, GitHub and sometimes Twitter.

(15:23):
So did some fifteen hundred other people. BusinessWeek called them
a volunteer army of nerds. In mid October, Farader accepted
the first Letters prize and a forty thousand dollars check
at a press conference at the University of Kentucky. He'd
found the word porphyras or purple. It's a funny story,
he said. Late one August evening, he was at a

(15:46):
friend's birthday party, sitting in a corner. He got a
text alerting him to a new piece of scroll to
work with, and ran his detection algorithm on it. When
he checked his phone later, he could make out three letters.
His reaction, Oh my goodness, Holy cow, I just completely
freaked out. I almost fell over. I almost cried. He

(16:07):
sent a screenshot to JP Posma, who was managing the contest,
and to his family On stage. Farreder said the next
challenge to identify four passages by the end of the
year for the grand prize was absolutely doable. Before Farreder
left Kentucky, a filmmaker in Naples, Italy, interviewed him over
zoom for a documentary about Seals's years long effort, The

(16:29):
Library of Darkness. Pasma told him, you need to drop
out of school, kid, You've got better things to do.
Later that month, Farader traveled to Los Angeles to help
Charlie Friedman install soundtracks at Azusa Pacific University. Afterward, Farader
told Friedman he wasn't going back to Lincoln right away.
He was going to stay and meet some people like

(16:51):
Nat Friedman, people who are more in line with what
he clearly knows is his future. Farreter attended a Roman
dinner at Nat Friedman's home in the Bay Area. They
ate dishes seasoned with garam, a Venetian sauce Farreder had
only read about in history books. He met Tyler Cowen,
an economist favored in Silicon Valley. He's another person I've

(17:13):
looked up to, Farreder told BusinessWeek. He met Patrick Collison,
who co founded Stripe, and David Holes, who founded mid Journey.
What's Cool as I go there and all these people
care about me, he said. They asked about starbas and
the scrolls. He said he received a lot of exciting
job offers at a lot of great places. It was

(17:34):
a really really magical experience social post cool people on
Twitter are cool people irl at Luke Farreder October twenty fifth,
twenty twenty three on X. When Farreder speaks to Business
Week in January twenty twenty four, it's winter break at Rakes.
He's in his parents' basement, computers in the background, family

(17:57):
photos on the wall. He knows that, along with two
graduate students in Europe, he's won the Vesuvius Challenge Grand Prize.
They teamed up and will share the seven hundred thousand
dollars prize. The announcement will come early in February, and
with it more recognition, more invitations, job offers, and Farador
hopes a place in history. People are going to write

(18:20):
Wikipedia pages about this. He also knows he's won a
grant from Cowen's Emergent Ventures that he'll use to travel
to Europe. When they'd met in California, Farader said Cowen
was like, kid, You've got to see the world. One
of Farader's sisters will join him about to fly to Europe.
I hope they have diet coke, he posts on X,

(18:41):
and he knows that he's leaving school and moving to
Palo Alto, California. He can't share what he'll be doing,
only what he's not working for SpaceX. It's the only
big tech company I'd want to ever work for. It's
definitely the best company in the world in my opinion,
he says, But he doesn't want to be what he
calls another level two software engineer working on some very

(19:03):
specific subset of the locks. Good for those people, though
I know them and they're great, but I'm not sure
that's what I want to do. Social post. I don't
think I saw a single Stanford, Harvard or MIT student
work on the Scroll Prize. You think several dozen students
from those schools would want to work on this? Why
didn't that happen? What failed? Is the prize less cool

(19:26):
than I think it is? What are they doing instead?
At Luke Farreder, January thirtieth, twenty twenty four on X
Social Post behind Frenemy lines at Luke Farreder January thirtieth,
twenty twenty four on X at Blue Origin Social Post.
I did this while interning at Starbase. At Elon musk

(19:50):
At Luke Farreder February fifth, twenty twenty four on X
on the day of the grand prize announcement Social Post,
It's not every day that you're big as hero sends
two million dollars to support your archaeology passion project, but
today is not every day. Thanks at Elon musk at
Luke Farredder February sixteenth, twenty twenty four on X. Farreder

(20:14):
gave an exit interview to the University of Nebraska's student
paper in early March. By then he could disclose that
he would work for Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross at
their venture fund in FDG. He said it was a
once in a lifetime opportunity. A week later, Farader was
at the Getty Villa Museum in Los Angeles for the
Vesuvius Challenge Grand prize ceremony. The leader of his team,

(20:37):
Yusef Nader, hadn't been able to get a US visa
in time, but Julian Chiliger joined Farreder on stage as
Friedman presented their seven hundred thousand dollars check. The atmosphere
was electric, says Seals. It really felt like a kind
of miracle had occurred. Contest rules required that the winners
share their models and code. Work on the scrolls would continue.

(21:00):
All three were offered positions with the project. Farreder declined,
then he left for Silicon Valley. Farreder was named one
of twenty Teal Fellows in March twenty twenty four, nineteen
men and one woman. Among their qualifications, they had to
give up on college, and, as one fellow put it,

(21:20):
be great, they got one hundred thousand dollars and access
to a Silicon Valley network. Teel, who started PayPal with
Musk and others, and as a major shareholder in Palanteer Technologies,
began the fellowship in twenty eleven almost as a lark.
Even Farreder had troubled describing to a friend exactly what
he'd be doing. During that spring. Farreder spent many of

(21:42):
his days at the NFDG office in Palo Alto researching
potential emerging technologies in the space industry. He traveled I
will be in Boston this week. Reach out if you're
in the area, he posted on x. He attended his
first Berkshire Hathaway Annual meeting in Omaha to see Warren Buffett.
I've never been to one and should go to one
while he's still around. He made other trips home. The

(22:05):
sand Hills of Nebraska is one of my favorite places
in Earth. Can anybody help me get a tea time.
During a visit to Lincoln over Easter, he stopped by
the Rake's school. One classmate recalls him saying how much
he enjoyed being in Silicon Valley, where he was around
people with similar attitudes. Silicon Valley seemed to return the welcome.

(22:26):
Farader was praised popular noticed as one of Nat Friedman's crew,
a Teal fellow, a Grand Prize winner. Faroder posted about
Renee Girard, a French philosopher who taught at Stanford and
influenced Teal and apparently J. D. Vance too. Online. Girard
is a potent name, sometimes a meme. Farader wondered if

(22:46):
Girard should be made a saint. He cited Jordan Peterson,
the Canadian psychologist and critic of modern liberal culture. There
are cathedrals everywhere for those with the eyes to see.
He recommended books about the discovery of Pluto, the Wright Brothers, Nanosystems,
and anything by Cowan. He favored deregulation. He wrote that

(23:08):
it would be faster and cheaper to build a high
speed passenger railway on the Moon than in San Jose.
He expressed antipathy towards Stanford and NASA. He asked a
lot of questions. He tested his ideas. He was a
twenty two year old in Silicon Valley. Social post new idea,
if the regulations are thick enough to stop a bullet,

(23:28):
they are automatically nullified. At Luke Ferreder June fifth, twenty
twenty four on X, he wanted to discover the hypothetical
planet nine. He started an unofficial discord channel for a
Neuralink compression challenge. Musk co founded Neuralink. He continued to
work with the Scrolls. The Vesuvius challenge is ongoing with

(23:49):
more prizes in the offing, once posting that he'd be
live streaming his efforts while delayed at an airport. Social
post let's do a Diablo and Scrolls collab stream at
elon n at Luke Farreder June ninth, twenty twenty four
on X Social post based and scroll pilled unbelievably bull

(24:09):
signal at Luke Farreder is going to win mattress, RGB monitor,
IKEA trainset ten seventy GPU to solve scrolls is all
you need at Will Depew, July twelfth, twenty twenty four
on X with a photo of Farader's room that summer.
In fall, Farreder got involved with the AI grant program

(24:30):
created by Friedman and Gross. They awarded startup founders not money,
but mentorship and cloud computing credits. During what they called
founder Days, Farreder sat to the side, taking notes as
entrepreneurs practiced their pitches. One former classmate says Farreder would
rather have been coding. I think he enjoyed the networking
part of it, though, and he met a ton of

(24:51):
people Social post. The world is so shockingly inefficient, so
much low hanging fruit at Luke Farredder, Timber ninth, twenty
twenty four on X Social Post. Many in my graduating
CS class couldn't write JavaScript or Python at Luke Farreder,
September twelfth, twenty twenty four on X Social Post. You

(25:14):
can judge a man's character by which three letter or
heat abolish if given the choice at Luke Farreder October
twenty third, twenty twenty four X repost, as Musk threw
money and energy into Trump's run for president, as other
smart coders tried to win the next Vesuvius Challenge prize.
As his former Rakes classmates started their first jobs. It's

(25:35):
possible that Farader wanted more. Those classmates say his skills
were mostly unused, his promise seemingly untapped. His father had
said make things, nat Friedman said do things, and soon
it seemed something came along. Social Post working overtime to
ensure your tax dollars will be spent wisely. At DOGE

(25:58):
November thirteenth, twenty twenty five four on X Social Post
we need super high IQ small government revolutionaries willing to
work eighty plus hours per week on unglamorous cost cutting.
Elon and Vivek will review the top one percent of
applicants at DOGE, November fourteenth, twenty twenty four on X.

(26:20):
In the days before Thanksgiving, Farreder returned to Lincoln to
accept an award from the Heartland Robotics Cluster for his
exceptional contributions to AI and the Nebraska tech community. On
stage at the Innovation Campus conference center. Surrounded by his family,
Farreder talked about his work with the scrolls. He hasn't
spoken publicly in his hometown since. That evening, Farader joined

(26:44):
friends for the Thanksgiving Throwdown, a combat sports event outside Omaha.
On the drive back, he told them about being at
the same house parties as Musk. He hinted that he
was working on something new. Social post Happy Thanksgiving to all,
even the haters and losers at Luke Farreder November twenty eighth,
twenty twenty four on x reposting at will Depew. In

(27:08):
early December, Farreder joined that same group on a discord call.
One of them says Farreder told the group, guys, you
can't talk about this, but I'm actually going to be
a part of DOGE. This might actually be a thing
I can do. The reaction was muted. Some weren't sure
if this Department of Government Efficiency was a serious effort,

(27:29):
but they understood the draw For Farreder, I don't think
Luke was specifically excited about cutting government waste. He was
excited about working with Elon. A person on the call
says he asked if Farader would get to meet Musk
and recalls Farader, saying that's the dream. Social post at
DOGE doesn't fear the storm, It is the storm at

(27:52):
elon Musk December seventh, twenty twenty four on X one,
DOGE member Sahil Leavingia, founder of gum, said the hiring
process included vibe checks over calls on signal Did you
vote for Kamala Harris? Are you comfortable working for Donald Trump?
Lavingia heard that many other coders had been rejected they

(28:13):
had the wrong vibes. Once Farreder had been vetted by DOGE,
he had to be officially hired into the US Digital Service.
The group, part of the Executive Office of the President,
had been bringing in tech experts to help modernize the
government since twenty fourteen. It was the gateway for those
joining DOGE. In November, Farader sent his resume with a

(28:34):
one line note, super passionate about serving my country in
the USDs. Luke's resume didn't pass muster, says a former
senior government official who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation
for discussing the hiring of Farader and other DOGE members.
It's not to say he isn't smart, but the USDs
required applicants to have a college degree and at least

(28:56):
five years of industry experience. You have to bring some experience.
It's not just like, oh, I wrote a Python AI thing. Yeah,
that's not going to cut it. The official says that
many of the younger software engineers who'd been approved by
DOGE would have been rejected by USDs. They actually don't
have the wisdom from having burned your fingers a number

(29:17):
of times, and the official says they hadn't developed an
essential skill. It is as important to be able to
influence people in power as it is to write code.
The official also knew that none of that mattered. The
USDs wasn't supposed to conduct its usual screening for Farreder
or the others. We had to make sure we didn't

(29:37):
throw out people we shouldn't. We reached out to the
White House about doge's hiring practices. In an email, Harrison
Field's deputy Press secretary wrote, DOGE rigorously evaluated its technical
and engineering talent by administering an industry standard coding exercise
which validated every member of the DOGE team's capabilities and
skill set. Additionally, the the recruiting team conducted reference and

(30:01):
background checks to confirm each employee's qualifications. We are proud
of the selfless contributions to the country and the American
taxpayer from those committed to the President's mission of ending waste,
fraud and abuse. On January second, at ten forty nine pm,
Farader sent a message to the Teal Fellow's WhatsApp chat,
hiall Doge is urgently looking for operations and software engineers

(30:25):
to help cut two trillion from the national spend. Please
reach out if interested. Thirteen of the nineteen other fellows
responded with heart and dogface emojis. In the weeks ahead
of Trump's inauguration, Farreader went dark. He disappeared from GitHub, TikTok, Instagram,
and YouTube on LinkedIn. His location is Antarctica. He played

(30:48):
online chess as Luke Boy on January seventh, his last
game for months. On January eleventh, he reposted a comment
from Musk and competence in the limit is indistinguishable from Sabata.
He hasn't posted on x since. We'll be right back
with oh my Goodness. Luke Farreder goes to Washington. Welcome

(31:13):
back to oh my Goodness, Luke Farreder goes to Washington
on the first Sunday in February, Wired magazine identified six
of those who had responded to Musk's call. Luke Farreder
was among them. They were easy to mock, maybe to fear.
They were young and inexperienced, all male, part of another

(31:34):
volunteer army of nerds. One called himself Big Balls, and
Bloomberg News revealed had been fired from an internship for
sharing information with the competitor. The Wall Street Journal reported
that another had posted racist comments. None were as tech
famous as Farader. The White House's executive order creating DOGE

(31:54):
said it would modernize technology and maximize productivity. It took
a couple of weeks to realize that, despite the state admission,
their main focus would be destruction, says a current government employee, who,
like others we interviewed, requested anonymity because they're not authorized
to speak with the media. That it was less about
evolving and improving than tearing down to the floorboards. I

(32:17):
think part of what confused everybody was that you had
these foot soldiers you were seeing, and you assumed that
they were there just to support the generals, but they
weren't The generals had delegated everything to the foot soldiers.
On Friday, January thirty first, Farrader was invited to an
urgent meeting about the US Agency for International Development over

(32:38):
the weekend. Musk called the agency, which provides humanitarian assistance
to millions of the world's poorest people, a criminal organization
and a viper's nest full of radical left Marxists who
hate America. After midnight on that Sunday, he wrote on
X we spent the weekend feeding usaid into the wood chipper.
Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead? The

(33:02):
New York Times reported that Farreder had sent an e
mail to DOGE colleagues in the days before, he'd conducted
a review of U. S a i D payments made
after Trump had ordered the agency to pause development spending.
I could be wrong, Farreder wrote, my numbers could be off.
The great undoing with its firings, humiliation, lacerating, and gloating.

(33:23):
Received a lot of gleeful encouragement on X. But in
the days to come, some one posted traitor under Farreder's
tik tok videos. Some one on discord warned him that
the Internet hates fascists. Another that he would end up
in prison in Lincoln. Some came out in support of Doge,
and Farreder appreciated what they called his sacrifice looked forward

(33:45):
to what they hoped would be a smaller government with
fewer regulations. That Sunday night, Scott Henderson, who mentors young
entrepreneurs and knows the Farreders, wrote an e mail to
Farreder's father. He says he asked something like, is this true?
As a father of a son the same age, you
can do something about this. If this is true, what

(34:05):
are you going to do about this? He didn't get
a response. Charlie Friedman checked in and didn't hear back either.
Fascist appeared in the comments to a LinkedIn post by
Shane Farreder that had nothing to do with his son,
a talk he was supposed to give at the Nebraska
Innovation Studio a few days later. Lab to Launch was
canceled after online threats to disrupt it. A fight broke

(34:29):
out in the Great Farader Family Facebook group, a forum
with nine hundred members including Luke and Shane. On the page,
the name is spelled f e r R I t
e R. It notes that Farader is variously spelled as
f E r r I t E r f A
r r I t O r f E r r
E t E R or f e I r t

(34:50):
e A r or even other spellings. One view of
DOGE it's a department within the current US administration that
a young family member was a pointed to because of
his brilliance and achievements. Another it's a collection of unqualified
cyber criminals led by a South African immigrant who is
illegally accessing private information. None of the Lincoln Farraders got involved.

(35:15):
Luke's uncle, Pat Farreder, did speak with the Flatwater Free
Press in February. Obviously he's a lot smarter than you
and I, he said of his nephew. And I know
he's going to make the right decisions. When we called recently,
he declined to comment. The moderators of a discord server
for Rake's alumni in Students Band Farader, Luke has gone

(35:37):
from simply disagreeing with many of us to actively fighting
to hurt us in a position of governmental power. Former
classmates were surprised he had joined DOGE. Some were disturbed,
some angry, some proud. Luke doesn't represent Rakes and he
isn't a product of it, says one. It felt cool
for someone from the Rake school to be in the limelight,

(35:58):
says another, then very quickly turned to a little bit
of concern. A third texted Farreder something like, hey, man,
saw the news and am rooting for you. Farreder replied
something like, thank you. Hope you and your family are
doing well. Even some who believed he was doing harm
were still concerned enough to inquire about him. Thanks, I'm okay.

(36:19):
But when a former friend posted an article critical of
Farreder and Doge on Instagram, Farreder replied with a meme
of a crying baby and the caption when the corrupt
elites can't access usaid anymore. Farader was blocked by that
account too. The day after the Wired story came out,
Nat Friedman posted on x Luke Farredder is a national treasure.

(36:42):
Musk replied, the quality of the at DOGE team is epic.
When we reached out to Friedman, he didn't respond. Another
investor who runs AI Grant asked the recipients not to
speak with us either. According to a message we saw,
none of the teelfellows would comment about Farreder. Posma and
Cowan declined to talk with US. Casey Handmer, a Silicon

(37:04):
Valley entrepreneur who contributed to Ferrider's work on the Vesuvius
challenge and says they remain in contact, e mailed a statement.
It says, in part his salt of the Earth American
patriotism has driven him to Washington to work on a
problem that poses an existential risk to the survival of
the United States, at considerable risk to himself and his family.

(37:25):
They were called the Doge Kids, the Doge Bros, Muscovites,
and Muskrats. They sometimes walked the halls of Washington with Musk,
who moved around with his own security guards. They bragged
about how hard they were working. At first, they slept
on the sixth floor of the General Services Administration Building.
One Silicon Valley supporter sent bio tracking covers for their mattresses.

(37:48):
Some moved into an airbnb known as Doge Town, dined
out together. They come as a group, says the former
senior government official. That's the whole Doge thing. It's all
doughage all the time, like they're literally not given the
mental space to go have an independent life experience and
perhaps reflect on what they're doing. They expected loyalty from

(38:10):
government employees. What do you think of Musk? What do
you think of his companies? Musk promised transparency, but they
operated in secrecy. For the first month. No one would
confirm who was overseeing their efforts. Media reports named Steve Davis,
who'd helped Musk cut costs at X and SpaceX, as
being effectively in charge. DOGE members didn't identify themselves when

(38:34):
they came into an agency. Government employees told us and
demanded access to sensitive data, but wouldn't explain why. They
communicated on signal where they could make their messages disappear.
They shielded their work from public records review. No one
from DOGE, including Musk and Davis, replied to our emailed
questions about their work or Farador. They were busy, and

(38:57):
Farader may have been among the busiest. Good God, you'd
see him and think that he must be harmless, says
a current government employee. And I guess he would be
if other people weren't giving him an obscene amount of
power and access and telling him to move fast and
break things. Farreader helped assess, slash, or dismantle at least
nine departments and agencies after USAID, the Offices of Personnel

(39:20):
Management and of Management and Budget, the Departments of Education, Energy, Labor,
and Health and Human Services, the National Science Foundation, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
According to interviews with dozens of current and former government employees,
and lawsuits and records seen by BusinessWeek, on Friday, February seventh,

(39:42):
Farader and four other young men from DOGE walked onto
the fourth floor executive suite of the CFPB. Eerie Meyer,
who just resigned as the chief technologist and was packing
up her office, could identify only one Farreder. I recognized
him because I have been a follower of artificial intelligence
since the nineties, and he worked on decoding the scroll,

(40:03):
and he just looks extremely distinctive, she says. Meyer noticed
Farreder and others jiggling the handles of locked office doors
trying to get in. There may be workplaces where that
would be acceptable, but it's taboo. In a law enforcement agency,
she says. We lock our office doors because there may
be extremely sensitive materials about ongoing investigations against publicly traded

(40:26):
firms and victims, and all sorts of things like on
our desks. She approached the five Can I help you?
They said they were looking for some sort of document,
but didn't elaborate. I think they were surprised to have
been confronted. Farreder kept quiet. Meyer wanted to think the
best of him. I love historical mysteries. I was kind

(40:47):
of like, maybe this person cares about learning from our
past mistakes, or learning from the past to inform our future.
She says. I was naively hopeful. A little while later,
in her car, waiting to exit the garage, her phone
lit up with notifications Musk had just posted on x
cfpb rip. Some of Arader's classmates wondered about the power

(41:10):
he seemed to have been given. Like, the entirety of
DOGE is scary. It's very much like going into government
and dismantling the core foundations. It's scary from that perspective,
and it's scary that it's twenty two and twenty three
year olds doing it. And I'm saying this as a
twenty three year old. One classmate says, Normally, I think

(41:31):
experience shouldn't matter all that much, but for the government,
I would like people to have experience. Farador had at
least eight email addresses. He worked in agency conference rooms
behind closed doors. He worked on Defend the Spend, a
section of the DOGE website where agencies had to provide
the rationale for every expense approval. He was regularly invited

(41:53):
to connect, sink and catch up at online meetings with
agency officials. He was also invited to a dept Position
prep meeting. He's been referenced in at least twenty three lawsuits.
He was invited to join seventeen others in the Vice
President's Ceremonial Office to update vance on doja's efforts. Interview
the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy. They're exploiting

(42:17):
a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response.
And I think empathy is good, but you need to
think it through and not just be programmed like a robot.
Elon Musk, February twenty eighth, twenty twenty five, on Joe
Rogan's podcast. DOGE with Farador on Board has curtailed the
HIV AIDS prevention program that experts say saved millions of lives,

(42:42):
withdrawn research, public health and cultural grants because they included
words like gender, trans diversity, race, women, justice, equality, and
climate gained access to sensitive data, fired thousands of civil servants.
He's a young ung he's early in his career, and

(43:02):
he wanted to impress certain people, says Levingia, who's one
of the few at DOGE who didn't go along with
it all. He was fired after telling a journalist that
he was impressed by the efficiency of the Department of
Veterans Affairs. He briefly encountered Farader. There, You're not going
to get asked by Steve Davis to do this and
then in the room be like, I'm not going to

(43:22):
do that. You're going to be like, oh, I can
totally pull that off in fifteen minutes with some software
that gets all these files from their computers so we
can see what they're doing. In a lawsuit filed in February,
one former government employee calls the breadth of Farader's access
to data at Health and Human Services without precedent. Another,

(43:43):
Jeffrey Grant, who'd overseen consumer and insurance information at Medicare
and Medicaid, calls it alarming. Farador could get into systems
used for payment management, grants, healthcare accounting, acquisitions, and human resources.
He could get into the National Institutes of Health grant
management and contract systems, as well as the Medicare and

(44:03):
Medicaid acquisition system and its integrated data repository, which includes
information on claims, beneficiaries, and providers. According to the lawsuits records,
he could access grants dot gov and two contracting systems
for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On signal chats,
employees shared sightings of Farader and his colleagues walking around
Food and Drug Administration and NIH buildings, observing workers and

(44:27):
asking what they did. Some employees told us they feared
seeing his name on a video call or pop up
in their inbox. Fear changed to loathing. The DOGE team
wasn't what I expected, says a current government employee who's
interacted with Farader and other core members of DOGE. Marketed
as tech geniuses, yet they could barely keep up with

(44:48):
basic tasks. In reality, they were over confident, drunk on power,
and utterly clueless. They giggled and asked me how my
day was going, right as they hit the keys to
obliterate nearly a deca gate of my work. There wasn't
even a flicker of understanding or care. It wasn't just
the loss that gutted me, it was the audacity of
their casual cruelty. Late April, at the University of Nebraska

(45:12):
in Lincoln, trees in bloom the bathtub Dog's a cappella
group singing near the Jackie Gawn Multicultural Center, Students playing cornhole.
The door to Shane Farreder's office is closed. No one
answers a knock. Farreder isn't available at Virtual Incision either.
The lobby displays the many patency holds and a version

(45:33):
of the mini robot launched into space. The surgical robot's
early development at the university was funded by four point
two million dollars in grants from the US Army, about
four hundred thousand dollars from NIH and one hundred thousand
dollars from NASA to prepare for that test mission aboard
the International Space Station during the pandemic, Virtual Incision secured

(45:54):
a loan of about two hundred and sixty two thousand
dollars from the Small Business Administration to pay staff salaries,
and Farader himself received a loan for close to twenty
one thousand dollars. He, along with engineers at the company
helped design and manufacture face shields for Nebraska's hospitals at
the maker's space. Virtual Incision has raised more than one

(46:14):
hundred million dollars in venture capital funding by that measure,
making it one of Lincoln's most successful companies. Already, it's
won approval by the FDA to begin marketing its robots
for use in colon surgery. The company declined to comment
for this story. Farader does answer a knock on the
front door of his home around dinner time. He steps out,

(46:36):
locks the door behind him. He's stern in jeans, a
red unl sweatshirt, and baseball cap. He walks to his
pickup truck in the driveway as he says it's too
dangerous for his family to talk about his son or
Doge or the threats they've received. Then he heads off
that evening, the astrophysicist Neil de Gras Tyson gives a
talk the Cosmic Perspective at a performing art center in

(46:58):
Lincoln to mark Earth Day. It seats more than two
thousand people and is sold out early. In his presentation,
Tyson illustrates the power of exponential growth with a picture
of musk and an estimate of his wealth three hundred
and thirty billion dollars. The audience booze. At the conclusion
of his talk, Tyson remains on stage to share a

(47:19):
few thoughts about the government's stance against NASA against science.
We'll go backward and the rest of the world will
move forward, he says. We're supposed to make the next
generation proud of us. Shane Farreder, he's doctor Farreder on campus,
briefly appears at the Rake's Design Studio showcase later that week.
It's a big celebration, drawing professors and alumni families, local

(47:42):
business owners and executives, the Rakes board members, and Jeff
Rakes himself. The school's executive director, Steve Cooper, had been
welcoming earlier, but said he couldn't talk about Farreder university rules.
Rakes isn't exactly eager to comment, but does say Luke
is a great talent. I wish he was still here.
At that time, DOGE had cut at least twenty eight

(48:05):
million dollars in federal grants for the university. This came
after U and L itself had to cut five million
dollars from its budget because of diminished state funding and
the university system was preparing to cut as much as
twenty million dollars more. What was lost or disrupted this spring.
A study of agricultural methods to help the poorest farmers
around the world. A project to help indigenous communities adopt

(48:28):
traditional and sustainable farming to mitigate food and security. A
project to cultivate a diverse engineering work force. The dean
of Farrader's department, who was overseeing that effort, didn't respond
to requests for comment. A new program to recruit, pay for,
and otherwise support students from rural areas to return as teachers.
It's a profound undermining of our future when we don't

(48:51):
invest in our young That's what our program is designed
to do, says one of its leaders, Amanda Morales. What
was lost beyond the university opportunity, says one of Shane
Ferredder's childhood friends, Kirk Zeller. He runs two medical device
companies and helps others get going. Those kinds of early
stage companies rely on funding from NIH and the Department

(49:13):
of Defense. Companies won't make it when otherwise they might have,
he says. All I do is raise money now, and
it is brutal. He like many in Nebraska believes the
government should be more efficient and accountable. But I think
we're all a little surprised by the execution, he says
of Doge. They could come out of this as villains
or heroes. It's a great concept and could be beneficial

(49:36):
to every taxpayer. And if they get it on a
good course, Luke could have a lot of opportunities afterward.
If it continues in the way it is now, it's
going to be hard for him. That, says Zeller, would
be a shame. In February, Scott Henderson wrote that email
to Farredder's father, please talk to your son. In April,
he says, we are a small community. We have to

(49:59):
work together. Some people are cutting each other out. Whatever comes,
there must be people ready to pick up the pieces, repair,
build for the future. In April, the Library of Darkness,
the film about Brent Seals's quest to unwrap the Scrolls
and the Vesuvius Challenge, lost the last fifty thousand dollars
of a five hundred thousand dollars grant from the National

(50:20):
Endowment for the Humanities. Work had to halt. Even though
most of the grant was restored, the money came too late.
The film's premiere in London this fall, hosted by the
Herculaneum Society, had to be canceled. I don't even have
the words to describe how backward this is, says Laura Azevedo,
executive director of the filmmaker's Collaborative, which supports the documentary.

(50:43):
My project is redemptive. It's fixing something that is broken,
says Seals of the Herculaneum Scrolls. I would love to
believe the people working on our government are taking the
same approach, that they know what's there is valuable and important,
and rather than destroy it, they redeem it. We're called
to be fixers in this world. That's what we're called

(51:04):
to do. In May, as DOGE entered its fifth month
of operation, Fox News aired a meeting that Musk had
led at ten pm the night before in the Eisenhower
Executive Office building next to the White House. Twenty men
sat around the conference table, most in suits. The DOGE
members were nervous, ernest cocky. One who dropped out of

(51:25):
Harvard University to join DOGE, said, most of campus hates
me now. The host, Jesse Waters, asked, who is big balls.
Musk replied that should be obvious. There was laughter around
the table. Some noted that they'd encountered government workers who
had great ideas and who wanted to make changes. One
described how they're modernizing the antiquated retirement process. We'd like

(51:49):
to give a big thank you to all the government
employees who were helping reduce the waste and fraud, Musk said,
we really couldn't do it without you. On Musk's right
was Waters. On his left Steve Davis, Sam Corcas, soon
to be Chief Information Officer at the Department of the Treasury,
and Luke Farreder. That's the dream. Farreder wore a tie,

(52:10):
sat up straight, didn't say anything that made it on air.
We got a glimpse at Farader's work calendar for May.
May first, an OMB connect on the National Science Foundation.
May ninth, a Microsoft team's meeting to discuss grants to
the Department of Labor with Thomas shed a former Tesla engineer,
and Wesley Everett, a department official. May nineteenth, a quick

(52:34):
sink about the Department of Labor with Everett and a
DOGE liaison. May twenty seventh, a Microsoft teams meeting with
one person at the Justice Department and another at the FBI.
On May thirtieth, Musk joined the President in the Oval
Office to formally announce he was leaving Doge. He'd promised
to save the government two trillion dollars, revised that to

(52:55):
one trillion dollars, and departed as DOGE claimed to have
cut one hundred and fifty billion dollars in federal spending
by its own unverified accounting. He said Doge was like Buddhism,
it didn't need the Buddha. The next day, as senior
staff like Davis followed Musk out of Washington, Farrider became
a permanent government employee. He's a senior adviser at the

(53:17):
General Services Administration, designated a g S fifteen, earning from
one hundred and sixty seven thousand to one hundred and
ninety five thousand dollars, the highest salary rank for civilians.
He was living in a historic neighborhood in the District
of Columbia, being driven around in a black suv. Then
Musk blew up. The insults and threats that spewed between

(53:39):
the world's richest man and its most powerful brought schadenfreude,
foreboding and for those depending on Musk's status in Washington anxiety.
Then Musk apologized, Then he promised to start a new
political party. Will the young Coder's Musk brought to Washington
remain if they leave? What are their prospects? Yan english Luke,

(54:01):
an anthropologist who has been studying Silicon Valley engineer since
the nineteen nineties, says Farreder and others made a wager
that will be intellectually and emotionally celebrated no matter doge's
success or. Failure to gamble like that shows you understand
the theater of Silicon Valley. On July twenty third, Trump
spoke at an AI summit in Washington. Afterward, there was

(54:23):
a private party at a new member's only club. Farreder
was among those invited. Back at the g S, a
building where Farreder is working, the sixth floor is no
longer closed to all but DOGE members. Government officials told
us the mattresses have been stacked, the ping pong tables,
folded up. Signs declaring authorized access only have been removed

(54:45):
from the elevators. The security checkpoint on the floor is gone,
so is the armed guard. Here. Doge's ambitions are being curtailed.
Its leader no longer welcome with Ellen Hewitt