DOGE Has the Keys to Sensitive Data That Could Help Elon Musk

When President Donald Trump issued an executive order on his first day in office to establish DOGE, which stands for Department of Government Efficiency, he called for federal officials to provide the new unit with “access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems.” He also ordered DOGE to adhere to “rigorous data protection standards.”

The Post reviewed court documents and interviewed dozens of current and former U.S. government officials to determine which records DOGE aides were able to examine while Musk led the unit. Reporters also spoke with experts and business competitors about how that information, if improperly shared with Musk’s companies, could give them a competitive advantage.

DOGE aides, for example, were given near-blanket access to records at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, court records show. The agency holds proprietary information about algorithms used by payment apps similar to ones that Musk has said he wants to incorporate into his social media platform, X.

“Musk could never have gotten ‘God tier’ access to this kind of information as a private citizen,” Meyer told The Post. “This kind of data access was unprecedented in government because there were protections in place, until now, to prevent it.”

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NASA employees told The Post that DOGE aides were able to review internal assessments of thousands of contracts, including those awarded to rivals of Musk’s SpaceX rocket company, which has already won billions of dollars of government work and is competing for more. (Among SpaceX’s competitors is Blue Origin, a company owned by Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post. Blue Origin and its executives did not respond to requests for comment.)

And Labor Department employees said in court filings that DOGE aides were allowed to examine any record at the agency, which holds files detailing dozens of sensitive workplace investigations into Tesla and other Musk companies as well as their competitors.

Musk has said that analyzing government datasets was an important part of DOGE’s core mission to find and root out wasteful spending. In an interview with Fox News in March [here], he said his team was “reconciling all of the government databases to eliminate the waste and fraud.” He added, “It’s frankly painful homework, but it has to be done and will greatly improve the efficiency of the government systems.”

Even Trump’s staunchest allies have raised concerns about giving DOGE broad access.
“I think we have to have a letter of certification that not one dataset or piece of data of the United States government or citizens of this country are held by anybody, or any copies held, except for the Trump administration and the U.S. government,” Stephen K. Bannon, a top White House adviser during Trump’s first administration, said at a conference in April.

The DOGE aides asked for passwords and full administrative control of the CFPB website and social media accounts, the person said. That night, Trump’s new pick to temporarily run the CFPB, Russell Vought, issued an order giving DOGE aides the authority to view all unclassified CFPB data, according to internal agency emails obtained by The Post.

Musk’s DOGE team at NASA, meanwhile, gained insight into all the agency’s contracts and grant data, according to interviews with more than a dozen employees and records obtained by The Post. The information compiled for DOGE’s review goes far beyond publicly accessible information about government contracts. It includes detailed descriptions of the services provided to NASA, as well as employees’ explanations for why each contract should be kept, cut or downsized — offering an intimate picture of which services NASA values and why.

By early March, three DOGE aides had been given user accounts within NASA’s internal systems, records show: Scott Coulter and two former employees of Tesla, Alexander Simonpour and Riley Sennott. The DOGE trio obtained “24/7” access to NASA’s administrative offices and the ability to review internal employee data, including employment and training history, records show.

DOGE is also authorized to examine nonpublic data about firms bidding for government work at the General Services Administration, according to two employees. DOGE was given access to two databases there holding records related to the award of contracts, permitting the team to see who submitted bids, for how much and what kinds of negotiations took place.