Washington Post gift article: “A Washington Post review found that in at least seven major departments or agencies, DOGE secured the power to view records that experts say could benefit Musk’s businesses for years. For months, Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service plumbed the federal government’s information systems, scouring arcane internal records that the billionaire said were guiding his hunt for waste. Now that Musk has stepped away from his government role, some of that data could be valuable in another way — by giving the world’s richest man a competitive advantage over his rivals in the private sector. A Washington Post examination found that in at least seven major departments or agencies, DOGE secured the power to view records that contain competitors’ trade secrets, nonpublic details about government contracts, and sensitive regulatory actions or other information. The Post found no evidence that DOGE has viewed or misused government information to benefit Musk’s business empire, which spans industries including artificial intelligence, space exploration and medical devices. But some competitors are alarmed about the possible exposure of their proprietary information or other private data. “So much of the data that we submit to the government is competitively sensitive,” said one executive from a firm that competes with Musk’s aerospace company, SpaceX. “When we do that, we assume it’s protected. And now, it feels that we are vulnerable.” The company has held internal high-level meetings to discuss DOGE’s access to federal contracting data but has not made those concerns public for fear that its government contracts could be targeted for cancellation, said the executive, who like others interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. The Post examination sheds light on the scale of Musk’s overlapping interests during his more than four months leading DOGE. It also underscores Musk’s unprecedented view into the inner workings of a federal bureaucracy that has both aided his rise as a businessman and served as a check on his ambitions. The data that would be valuable to Musk’s firms – DOGE had the ability to access data systems in at least seven agencies that experts say could benefit Elon Musk’s companies…”