Sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas last year, Luke Farritor had big news to share.

His friends were playing chess late one night when Farritor joined their online chat. During a lull in the conversation, Farritor told them he might get a job with Elon Musk.

President Donald Trump, recently elected, and Musk, the tech maverick, world’s richest man and Trump’s biggest campaign donor, had promised to slash federal waste. Farritor, a college dropout from Lincoln, told his Nebraska buddies he might help.

Farritor had worked on rockets at SpaceX, a company owned by Musk who Farritor reveres, former classmates said. The now 23-year-old received international renown for using artificial intelligence to decipher ancient scrolls. And he had dropped out of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to accept a fellowship with Peter Thiel, another Silicon Valley giant and Musk ally.

Still, it seemed far-fetched, one former friend and classmate thought.

It wasn’t. 

On Feb. 2, Farritor was named as one of several young computer engineers working for Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, as he and his allies wrest control of federal spending through what some believe to be illegal and unconstitutional means.

According to news reports, Farritor’s been busy.

He helped dismantle an agency that oversaw $40 billion in foreign aid, ProPublica reported. He’s looking at another that controls millions of poor and elderly Americans’ health care, The New York Times wrote. He has access to the Energy Department’s IT system, including email and Microsoft accounts, CNN published. DOGE employees are working 120-hour weeks and have accessed 15 agencies as Musk adapts his corporate strategy to the federal government, according to the Washington Post.

“Not many Spartans are needed to win battles,” Musk wrote on X in response to the WIRED article that named Farritor.

‘The right decisions’

Musk’s use of young workers doesn’t surprise Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a senior associate dean at the Yale University School of Management who has advised CEOs and presidents while studying social responsibility in business.

“He is completely dispensable. He is interchangeable,” Sonnenfeld said of Farritor. “There's an endless array of Peter Pan’s lost little boys out there to attract. A lot of them are math and computer science whizzes. So what? They lack wisdom and responsible values.”

Others trust his judgement.

Pat Farritor, his uncle, remembers his nephew designing apps in third or fourth grade. Early in college he coded a room full of suspended guitars to create music.

Politics probably has nothing to do with his nephew’s work, his uncle said. Even though “the blowback has been pretty intense” for his family, his uncle thinks Farritor has a bright future ahead of him.

“Obviously he’s a lot smarter than you and I,” his uncle said, “and I know he’s going to make the right decisions.”

As a result of the Musk-led budget slashing, the Trump administration has proposed laying off nearly the entire staff of the U.S. Agency for International Development and halting global work like providing medication and food to children.

Locally it paused a $19 million UNL-led farming project in Africa and Central America. The University of Nebraska system could lose around $27 million in research funding. Many others — other universities, nonprofits, health care providers — are seeing impacts from DOGE or DOGE-adjacent funding freezes or cuts.

On Feb. 2, Musk said, without offering evidence, that DOGE was working to shut down illegal activity at Lutheran Family Services. Lutheran Family Services of Nebraska, the Omaha-based nonprofit known for aiding veterans with post-traumatic stress and helping children who have been sexually abused, disputed the allegations, saying it is highly audited, accredited and serious about vetting clients like the refugees it’s resettled since the tail-end of the Vietnam War. 

State senators, eight Democrats and one registered nonpartisan, have called on Nebraska’s federal delegates, all Republicans, to oppose Trump and Musk. 

The federal government needs to trim spending and Musk’s team is helping, said Rep. Mike Flood, who represents Nebraska’s 1st Congressional District. He’s hopeful work at UNL and Lutheran Family Services will pass DOGE’s examination. 

Flood said he’s not worried about Musk’s team overstepping their authority. As for Farritor, Flood said he can’t understand how anyone could vilify him.

“When did we turn into that kind of a people?” Flood asked. “I mean, this young man goes to Washington because he's exceptionally bright. We should be celebrating the fact that one of our own is at the table working to return fiscal sanity to the United States of America.”

‘Chaos is created’

There is no American precedent for what Musk, Farritor and others are doing, said William Resh, an associate professor in the University of Southern California’s Sol Price School of Public Policy. The U.S. Constitution and various laws are being violated, he said, by a hidden group with little if any accountability. 

“The plan comes straight from, in many respects, the Project 2025 playbook,” Resh said, referencing a political initiative written by The Heritage Foundation. “Overwhelm institutions with aggressive, prolific dictates right out of the gate and then see the relative reaction. And in the meantime that means that chaos is created.”

Back home, Farritor’s new job surprised many.

“It was a dagger to the heart,” said Scott Henderson who funds and mentors Nebraska startups through NMotion. “One of our best and brightest is now involved in something like that.”

Farritor gushed about debugging code for rockets at his SpaceX internship to Henderson when they first met. 

Henderson also knows Farritor’s dad Shane, a UNL engineering professor who’s received millions in federal funding for his work in robotics. In late January the federal government briefly halted potentially trillions of dollars in grants and loans to universities, nonprofits and many other institutions. In some cases, that money has started flowing again. In others, it’s still frozen.

The younger Farritor, a bespectacled kid with a mop of blond hair, is a good Nebraskan, Henderson thinks. But he’s also young.

“Who’s Luke?” Henderson asked. “Luke is the people he associates with. And right now he’s associating with people who are using extra legal means to do things that will have an impact on hundreds of millions of people.”

Farritor did not respond to emails sent to government and personal addresses requesting comment. Farritor’s father, other members of his family and several former bosses also did not respond to requests for comment. 

A UNL spokesperson declined to answer questions about Farritor. Faculty in UNL’s Raikes School also declined to comment.

‘Binary terms’

Farritor was quiet — friendly when he wasn’t lost in his own curiosity, classmates said. He was hardworking. He didn’t brag. 

He listed a very Nebraska aspiration — joining Sand Hills Golf Club, the state’s top-rated private course — as a lifelong goal on his website.

In fall 2020 Farritor was one of 41 computer science students accepted to UNL’s Raikes School. The cohort spent the next four years living, learning and working together in a red-brick building near the center of UNL’s city campus. The school’s core values, classmates said, are repeated often: curiosity, humility, gratitude, excellence, accountability and resilience.  

“The Raikes School, and just the University of Nebraska as a whole, has provided a great educational background where I can take these skills that I’ve learned and apply them to problems like this,” Farritor said in a UNL-made video about his work decoding Greek scrolls.

In August 2023 he parsed the first word — “purple” — in a massive library charred by Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D. His team later deciphered passages, netting them $700,000 in the Vesuvius Challenge, a competition founded by tech entrepreneurs and investors.

Farritor dreamed of leading companies, starting a family and pursuing “worthy side quests,” he wrote on his website as recently as Dec. 24, 2024.

While still in high school, Farritor helped build an app called MyLink that connects Nebraskans with vital services, according to his website. He was homeschooled but enrolled at Lincoln Southeast High School so he could play on its golf team.

After his freshman year at UNL, Farritor interned for John Deere, according to his website and LinkedIn. The next summer he interned for Starlink, SpaceX’s constellation of satellites orbiting Earth. From January to July 2023 he worked on Starship, SpaceX’s team overseeing a reusable rocket ship.

He was drawn to the company by its founder, classmates said.

Farritor idolized Musk, they said, even as the tech entrepreneur aligned himself with the far right. One classmate described Farritor, who’s registered as a Republican in Lancaster County according to state records, as a libertarian who talked passionately about dismantling government regulations.

Henderson, the Lincoln startup mentor, said people like Musk resonate with many young adults looking for simple answers to complex problems.

“It’s so easy and alluring on the technical side of things to think in binary terms,” he said.

While some felt Farritor might be in over his head — that federal budgets are much different from ancient scrolls or rocket ships — others disagreed. 

Farritor won the Vesuvius Challenge not because his code was extraordinary, one classmate said. He worked hard and linked patterns others hadn’t discovered. Maybe someone, or a talented team, with those skills could make things run better, she said.

‘Groupthink’

Musk is infamous for harsh business practices. When he took over Twitter, now called X, in 2022, Musk got rid of about 80% of its staff and demanded the remaining employees work longer hours. In late January, a similar letter went out to federal employees offering them a buyout.

He wants loyal employees willing to work long hours, said Kate Conger, a reporter at The New York Times who co-authored a book about his Twitter takeover and is covering his work with DOGE.

“He often sets up endurance tests for his employees,” she said, “giving them near-impossible deadlines or demanding they work long hours and sleep in the office, to demonstrate their commitment.”

A Musk ally has called the young engineers working with DOGE “Swiss army knives,” according to the Washington Post.

They include a 19-year-old who’s gone by the name “Big Balls” online and is now a senior adviser to the State Department, according to the Washington Post. Another DOGE worker resigned over racist social media posts he made, though Vice President J.D. Vance successfully lobbied for his reinstatement.

Farritor, by contrast, didn’t seem like a typical “tech bro,” classmates said. His Apple Macbook, with its beat up case and worn keyboard liner, was probably one of the oldest of the students’ personal laptops.

He told UNL’s alumni magazine he used his Vesuvius Chalenge winnings to buy ballet shoes for his sister, a poster for his brother and meals at a Mediterranean restaurant near campus for himself. He also bought and rented some more powerful computers.

DOGE and its workers are essentially advisers, said Resh, the USC political scientist. They do not have legal authority to make changes on their own, but because many top posts are being filled with Musk allies, their recommendations read like directives, he said.

DOGE’s work could bring benefits to Musk’s businesses, Resh said. It could compromise security systems installed to protect data. A judge paused some of DOGE’s work over similar concerns. A culling of the federal workforce could force out good employees, he said.

“The likelihood is that they're not going to speak candidly,” Resh said of the workers left behind. “They're not going to speak truth to power. They will say the things that person (in charge) wants to hear. That's not good policy. That's not good decision making structure. That is groupthink.”

‘Frankenstein’s monster’

Winning the Vesuvius Challenge catapulted Farritor’s career forward. In spring 2024, he dropped out of UNL, according to the university. He accepted a fellowship with venture capitalist and conservative activist Peter Thiel and moved to California, classmates said.

There he helped a large venture capital fund as well as an artificial intelligence grant program, according to his website. He was also planning his first startup, he wrote, while “leading an effort to find a new planet beyond Pluto.” Farritor wiped his site sometime before Jan. 19 according to the Wayback Machine, an archive of digital snapshots of the internet.

Democrats are failing to provide any kind of check on Musk’s power, said Sonnenfeld, the Yale professor who’s advised CEOs and presidents while researching social responsibility. The president can’t seem to steer Musk and DOGE either, he said.

“Trump has now created a Frankenstein’s monster with these kiddie crusaders that he can't control,” Sonnenfeld said.

There’s a class in the Raikes program meant to help students weigh big questions that come up with the use of computer technology. Business Law and Ethics dives into ideas like privacy, the risks of complex systems as well as the responsibility and consequences the students' future work can carry, according to the university’s course description.

Farritor’s cohort took the class in the spring of their junior years. But Farritor missed it, his classmates said.

He was away from UNL at SpaceX. Working for Musk.

The Flatwater Free Press is Nebraska’s first independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on investigations and feature stories that matter.