SpaceX maintains proprietary knowledge of rocket engines even the government doesn’t know. Stuff that Russia and China would love to get their hands on. You can bet that if Obama knows something, so do the Muslims, and so do the Chinese.
Being given the brush off, more or less, by the existing aerospace companies, who thought the money Musk offered for the kind of performance he demanded was laughable, really has paid off. When Zero got in and the NASA budget was really chainsaw massacred, those same companies went back to Musk, now needing work, and were told, we don’t need you, we did it ourselves.