Look, sure it’s not ideal that decisions that the federal government is being gutted agency by agency, stripped of purpose, funding, and staffing by Elon Musk and a team of 20-something-year-old edgelords who were sourced from a network of tech bro crypto-fascists and boost the messaging of white nationalists in their free time, but at least none of them are directly related to anyone deeply involved in the intelligence apparatus of a foreign adversary. Now, let me take a big sip of water and check out journalist Jacob Silverman’s latest report…
So, you know that DOGE staffer who goes by “Big Balls,” otherwise known as 19-year-old Edward Coristine—an alleged former member of online cybercriminal organization The Com and a cybersecurity worker who reportedly got fired from his job for leaking company secrets? Well, turns out there’s another layer to his dubious background. According to independent journalist Jacob Silverman, Coristine is the grandson of Valery Martynov, a former KGB spy.
Per Silverman’s research, Martynov was an officer in the technical espionage division of the Russian intelligence agency back in 1980, when he was sent to the United States to serve as an undercover agent at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C. About two years into his stay, Martynov got flipped by the FBI and started to feed the US government Soviet secrets.
Martynov was eventually identified as compromised by KGB counterintelligence officer Victor Cherkashin, who had himself successfully developed sources within the US intelligence agencies. In order to get Martynov back to Russia without him suspecting that he was found out, Cherkashin was asked to escort another Soviet spy back home (it’s a long story that Silverman explains in detail). As soon as the plane touched down, Martynov was arrested and ultimately executed.
His widow eventually moved to the United States permanently, where she and her children would settle, marry, and have kids—including Edward.
Edward started at DOGE working on the General Services Administration, where he reportedly would call employees to make them explain code they had written and justify their jobs, according to Wired. Earlier this month, he was named a “senior adviser” in the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Technology, where a significant amount of sensitive data related to American diplomatic operations is stored. The Washington Post reported that his role could give him the ability to obtain “unauthorized access to classified material and to compromising information on other countries and foreign activities.”
So anyway, a former KGB agent’s grandkid who seemingly did not have to undergo a background check has unprecedented access to sensitive State Department data. That’s just a thing that is happening now. Is it a big deal? I have no idea. It’s just one of those details that you hear and you’re like, “Yeah that sounds like a likely thing to happen with these guys.”