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DOGE member explains putting it all on the line for freedom

May 2, 2025 | | Print Article

Ethan Shaotran, a 22-year-old Harvard student and AI researcher, willingly lent his services to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is led by Elon Musk, and he appeared on Fox News’ “Jesse Watters Primetime” to detail what he endures for putting it all on the line for freedom.

“I dropped out of Harvard and came here to serve my country, and it’s been unfortunate to see, you know — lost friendships, most of campus hates me now,” he told host Jesse Watters.

“But I, I think fundamentally, I hope people realize through conversations like this that reform is genuinely needed,” he continued. “And if there’s one, I think this is important to say, if there’s one group of people who really have a shot of success, it’s the people here, you know, they’re up until 2 a.m. Monday through Sunday. DOGE does not recognize weekends.”

DOGE members are often targeted by the media, with many of them doxxed for little more than assisting Musk in identifying waste and fraud within the federal government. Disinformation campaigns traffic in fear, misleading the American public into believing that these patriots have access to their personal information and even claim that they are going to disrupt federal benefits like Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare.

Shaotran was included in a WIRED hit piece published in February — here’s a sampling of the anti-DOGE sentiment put forth:

Elon Musk’s takeover of federal government infrastructure is ongoing, and at the center of things is a coterie of engineers who are barely out of—and in at least one case, purportedly still in—college. Most have connections to Musk, and at least two have connections to Musk’s longtime associate Peter Thiel, a cofounder and chair of the analytics firm and government contractor Palantir who has long expressed opposition to democracy.

WIRED has identified six young men—all apparently between the ages of 19 and 24, according to public databases, their online presences, and other records—who have little to no government experience and are now playing critical roles in Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, tasked by executive order with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” The engineers all hold nebulous job titles within DOGE, and at least one appears to be working as a volunteer.

 

The outlet rolled out a reliable ally, Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, to ramp up the fearmongering.

“What we’re seeing is unprecedented in that you have these actors who are not really public officials gaining access to the most sensitive data in government,” Moynihan proclaimed. “We really have very little eyes on what’s going on. Congress has no ability to really intervene and monitor what’s happening because these aren’t really accountable public officials. So this feels like a hostile takeover of the machinery of governments by the richest man in the world.”

Then again, the left is still smarting over the shutdown of USAID, which was essentially a money spigot funding to the tune of billions of dollars much of their political activism, including the invasion of our southern border.

And while the media may hate those working for DOGE, the American people have a very different take — here’s a quick sampling of responses to the story, as seen on X:

Tom Tillison
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