On Monday, June 23, Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, one of the first young, inexperienced technologists to join Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), disappeared from the internal directory of the General Services Administration (GSA). Less than a month before, centibillionaire Elon Musk and other DOGE leaders had announced their departure from government. After months of slashing through the federal government, it seemed like the end for DOGE was in sight.

But later that week, Coristine was back. This time he was at the Social Security Administration (SSA), working alongside another known DOGE member, Aram Moghaddassi. Coristine, an SSA spokesperson told WIRED, would focus “on improving the functionality of the Social Security website and advancing our mission of delivering more efficient service to the American people.”

Coristine’s disappearance from government—and sudden reappearance in it—is emblematic of DOGE 2.0, a new iteration of the organization that, post-Musk’s formal participation, is still very much present and continuing its wholesale assault on federal agencies. But without flashy leadership, DOGE technologists are now quietly cycling into federal agencies, spending days or weeks building products and cutting contracts before cycling out once again. This is all done with little oversight from the White House or the United States DOGE Service (USDS), which these technologists purportedly represent.

The White House and Musk did not respond to requests for comment.

Legacy federal workers in agencies across the government have been told that the DOGE affiliates are their coworkers, operating as agency employees, not part of a separate organization.

“We used to say things like ‘DOGE wants to review X, Y, Z.’ But now our boss says not to call them DOGE anymore,” one US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) employee says. At the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), another federal employee told WIRED that DOGE is now bein...