Musk and DOGE Might Soon Have Access to the Most Lucrative Defense-Contract Database of All

Ex-officials warn Zeteo that the USXports database is a means for Musk to undercut competitors to SpaceX in the defense sector

Edited by Sam Thielman and Zeteo 

FINALLY: BACK TO REPORTING. 

I'm a bad fit as a columnist. [This is not true.—Sam] I don't really want to carry an argument through most of the time. I want to dig into something concealed, reveal it and contextualize it. Unearthed facts placed in proper context carry more value for people than the day's disposable take. 

These days, as a matter of necessity, my reporting energies are mostly thrown into THE TORTURE AND DELIVERANCE OF MAJID KHAN, the book that I'm writing and which, I sure hope, you will soon be able to preorder. I am determined to make this book special, and that means I have to pass on reporting projects that I'd otherwise want to devote myself to. That's also a way of explaining that next week, FOREVER WARS will only publish a single edition, the subscriber-only behind-the-scenes edition about IRON MAN #5, since the issue comes out on Wednesday, because I will be very far from home on a reporting trip for the book. 

But what am I supposed to do when sources come to me with information about an obscure defense-export database that, in DOGE's hands, could provide a transformative corruption opportunity with implications for defense markets worldwide? That I feel is something I have to report, and that's what today's edition is. I wrote this up for ZETEO and subscribers will get to read it here in its entirety. If you'd like that to be you, because this kind of reporting on deep defense-industry corruption potential is valuable to you while people in that industry capture state functions, then please, subscribe to FOREVER WARS.

Before we give you my column, I want to highlight some pieces from friends of mine. 

At the time of this writing, Eric Adams' mayoralty is on a death watch. Philomena Cunk-like Governor Kathy Hochul, who has been deeply hesitant to oust Adams lest she help her enemy Andrew Cuomo win the next mayor's race, conveyed that in a series of meetings on Tuesday with "key leaders" about getting him out. (HellGate handicaps a post-Adams special election and concludes that getting Adams out before next month will indeed benefit Cuomo, the most recognizable name in the race.) Comptroller Brad Lander, who's also running for mayor, gave Adams until Friday to quit or Lander will convene an "inability committee" that will begin a City Council-centric process of removing him. Looking at Gothamist's account of its appeals process timetable, the committee is primed to be able to oust Adams, presuming they have two-thirds of the City Council, in about a month—probably around March 26, the date past which there can be no Cuomo-benefiting special election. Hmm! 

Meanwhile, we're waiting to hear if federal judge Dale Ho will reinstate the charges against Adams that Trump dismissed, owing to the obvious corrupt bargain at the center of the dismissal—and perhaps put more about that obvious corrupt bargain into the public record. Adams' attorneys are attempting to argue that all of us are misunderstanding or misrepresenting the voided charges, that Adams didn't really make the corrupt bargain—dismissal in exchange for a sanctuary city mayor's cooperation with mass deportation, exactly the thing Tom Homan publicly humiliated Adams about—that we can all see in front of our eyes. But Noah Shachtman, the only person I've worked for twice, has found the letters where the corrupt bargain appears explicitly. Noah is being too generous to Adams by writing that this buffoonish criminal "has a record to run on, if an uneven one," but we're going to let that slide, because his reporting is too good. 

Plus Noah captures the vibe of Adams calling everyone else "liars" because we can plainly see that he is selling our neighbors to Trump for his freedom. Just the most contemptible person—with some competition from my state assemblywoman, Brooklyn Democratic machinesmith Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn. She represents a deeply panicked Haitian population, many of whom are on a TPS that expires in August, while backing Adams to the point of claiming that ousting this Trump-compromised mayor is racist. 

After you're done with Noah's piece, no correspondent is going to better describe the impending U.S.-Russia carve-up of Ukraine better than my old Guardian friend Julian Borger. The one stress I would put on Julian's piece is that if great-power carve-ups over the heads of clients "were familiar from the Cold War," did we really escape that era, distant only 35 years? But let's not let that get in the way of Julian's eye and his pen, both honed from decades of clear-eyed reporting through the opacity of diplomacy. 

OK, now the paywall, and after that, my Zeteo piece.