Four-Alarm National Security Fire

This is not a drill

This is not a drill. I was going to do a newsletter today about how we fight back against Trump (and I promise, that column is coming soon) but something so dangerous is happening right now that it merits a stop-the-presses moment.

At some point today, Elon Musk will travel to the Pentagon, where he will be briefed on some of the nation’s deeply held secrets — specifically, on our war plans in the event of a military conflict with China.

Let that sink in for a moment. In December, the Wall Street Journal published an extensive story about how Musk’s own lawyers at Starlink recommended that he not seek to escalate his security clearance.

As SpaceX deepened its ties with the national-security agencies in recent years, the company’s lawyers advised senior executives not to seek a higher security clearance for Musk that would give him access to details about sensitive programs SpaceX is involved in, according to people familiar with the matter.

The reason, these people said, was that Musk would have had to answer questions from the government about his contacts with foreign nationals and drug use previously reported by The Wall Street Journal. In internal discussions, the lawyers and executives posited scenarios in which Musk might inadvertently disclose secrets to foreign officials with whom he regularly speaks, the people said. The Journal reported in October that Musk has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022.

To say that Musk is conflicted does not begin to cover it. China is Tesla’s largest market after the United States. Last month, Tesla opened an enormous $200 million battery plant in Shanghai. The new facility is located near its Gigafactory, which is Tesla’s biggest factory and produces half of its cars globally. It launched in 2019 with hundreds of millions of dollars in loans from Chinese banks. Premier Li Qiang, the second most powerful man in China, personally shepherded the Gigafactory to fruition.

China is crucial to Tesla’s survival. Last year, Tesla’s sales in the country grew by over 8%, despite falling globally. Whatever the implosion of Tesla stock implosion recently, the situation would be much more devastating if the automaker were suddenly cut off from the Chinese market.

More troubling is a report in the Financial Times that raises concerns about how much Chinese investors have plowed in Musk’s non-public companies, including Starlink, Neuralink and xAI. Because these companies are not publicly traded, we cannot know the exact amount but the FT estimates that it is at least $30 million, much of it through shady off-shore investment vehicles.

Put all this together and it is obvious that the richest man in the world (at least on paper; in reality, that honor goes to his phone buddy, Putin) is absolutely beholden to the Chinese Communist Party. If China were to pull its investments, shut down his factories or nationalize his assets, Musk would be in the deepest trouble.

And what about those regular phone calls with Putin? It looks like China is a topic of conversation there too. Here’s the Wall Street Journal:

At one point, Putin asked the billionaire to avoid activating his Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, said two people briefed on the request.

There are several things to unpack here but first things first:

This Wall Street Journal story about Musk’s conversations with Putin was reported out last fall, shortly before the presidential election. At the time, Musk had a security clearance, although not nearly at a level where he would have been allowed to receive briefings about war plans with a major geopolitical foe of the United States. “Knowledge of Musk’s Kremlin contacts appears to be a closely held secret in government. Several White House officials said they weren’t aware of them,” the paper wrote.

At the same time as this was happening, the Biden Administration awarded SpaceX classified spending through the National Reconnaissance Office, which, according to the Times, “hired the company to build it a new constellation of low-earth orbit satellites to spy on China, Russia and other threats.”

What the hell was the Biden Administration thinking? Musk, loaded up with government contracts, was routinely chatting with Putin and he still got to keep his security clearance and government business, including the ability to build satellites spying on Russia and China?

According to the reporting, Musk had the Biden Administration over a barrel.

One person aware of the conversations said the government faces a dilemma because it is so dependent on the billionaire’s technologies. SpaceX launches vital national security satellites into orbit and is the company NASA relies on to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

“They don’t love it,” the person said, referring to the Musk-Putin contacts. The person, however, said no alerts have been raised by the administration over possible security breaches by Musk.

The Biden Administration, which knew full-well of Musk’s proximity to both the Chinese Community Party and Putin, apparently planned for no contingencies in order to sideline someone with such obvious conflicts. How is it that the government of the United States, which used to transport its own astronauts to space and launch its own satellites into orbit, could sink so low that it had to outsource this vital work to a Ketamine-fueled national security risk?

Now, of course, it’s too late. Musk is gutting NASA, our air traffic systems and other government agencies to make his own competing products even more indispensable to our national security. A man who is financially beholden to China is about to get access to some of our most sensitive intelligence about China. And you can bet that those war plans he will see today include contingencies about Musk’s phone pal Putin joining the fray on behalf of his Chinese allies.

The ostensible reason the Times cited for the briefing is that the Pentagon has to justify its operations to Musk, so that DOGE does not accidentally cut off funding for programs and weapons systems that would be necessary in the event of a war with China. Consider the absurdity: a private citizen is being briefed on war plans against a country upon which he is financially dependent so that he does not inadvertently harm our military preparedness, which he has full authority to otherwise do.

Given the choice between his loyalty to this nation’s security and his financial self-interest, we are asked to believe that Musk will choose the patriotic option. Not even the most MAGA-positive American should be that naive.