by | Mar 1, 2025 | News | 0 comments
Cole Killian via social media
In his year at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, Cole Killian was known for starting Aspine, a cleaner and more user-friendly version of Aspen, the online student information system. Now he is known for being a member of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, along with several other 19- to 25-year-old engineers empowered by president Donald Trump to slash its way through federal agencies.
At least two others have ties to the Boston area: Edward Coristine, a Northeastern student, and Ethan Shaotran, a senior at Harvard University. The team has been reported on by Wired and others.
The small, unelected body pressuring government employees to resign was created by Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, and Vivek Ramaswamy, a business entrepreneur, politician and longtime Trump supporter reputed to be nearly a billionaire. Its stated goal is to eliminate wasteful spending and modernize government infrastructure; so far, it has been most effective in shutting down the work of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which provides international humanitarian aid, and many Democrats are concerned that the Department of Education and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are next.
While most Americans agree government could be more efficient, many have taken issue with the strategies being applied by Musk’s group.
Linda Bilmes, a senior lecturer in public policy for the Harvard Kennedy School, said she had hoped Musk would bring the innovation and risk-taking of the tech industry to the government.
Instead, “Musk is bringing the worst of the tech culture, the ’Let’s blow it all up and start over.’ That just doesn’t work in government without a huge number of people getting hurt.” Bilmes described the effort as “cutting off an arm to lose weight.”
Another senior lecturer at HKS, John Donahue, compared Musk’s group to “doing brain surgery with a sledgehammer.”
Since Trump’s inauguration in January, Musk’s group has been given unprecedented access to private financial records of U.S. residents. Wired reported Feb. 4 that members of the team had direct access to the Treasury Department systems responsible for all payments made by the federal government, including veterans payments and Social Services.
Trump has condoned the actions of Musk and his group, despite protests that they are unconstitutional and compromise Americans’ privacy.
The group and its young members lack sufficient experience or expertise in government, many say. They have fired teams guarding U.S. nuclear weapons and coping with a growing outbreak of avian flu, and they have forced out air traffic controllers and park rangers. They have caused scrambles each time to get employees back after realizing they were needed.
“I don’t deny their talent,” Donahue said of a team that includes recruits from Musk technology businesses such as Tesla, SpaceX and Neuralink. “I don’t even deny their good intentions. But they do not know what they’re doing.”
Killian moved to Cambridge in 2019, from Bethesda, Maryland, for his senior year in high school. He joined the Robotics Club and took place in the year’s talent show, singing and playing guitar in a band called The Tie Guys covering The Eagles’ “Hotel California.”
Still, CRLS teachers from the time said either that they didn’t remember him well enough to comment or were uncomfortable giving their opinions.
Questions were also sent to Max Katz-Christy, who co-founded Aspine with Killian. An email was sent Friday , but there was no response.
After graduating, Killian went to McGill University. A now-deleted online resume listed him as becoming an engineer at a firm called Jump Trading, which specializes in high-frequency investment strategies. Killian is listed in the staff directory for the Environmental Protection Agency, Wired magazine reported.
The environmental agency is another that Musk’s group has vowed to downsize, in line with the Trump administration’s opposition to deregulation of industries such as cryptocurrencies and hostility to clean energy and electric vehicles. The EPA was created by a Republican president, Richard Nixon.
Rachel Williams-Giordano, a CRLS history teacher, said Cantabrigians should not be surprised to have local connections to individuals such as Trump and Musk.
“We assume that everyone has the same political ideology, when in reality, some of the most ambitious and competitive people I’ve ever met are students, residents of this particular community,” Williams-Giordano said. “And many of those kinds of people see Trump as a winner.”
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