A few weeks into Donald Trump’s second term, the president announced he was deploying Elon Musk, his top campaign donor, to conduct an audit of the Pentagon, which quickly became controversial for reasons the Republican didn’t appear to understand.
Musk, among other things, is a defense contractor who does business with governments around the world. Common sense and a basic understanding of ethics would suggest just about anyone else would be better suited to oversee an audit of the Department of Defense’s finances.
A month later, the billionaire megadonor is preparing to visit the Pentagon, where Musk will apparently receive a notable briefing. NBC News reported:
Tech billionaire and Trump adviser Elon Musk is scheduled to visit the Pentagon on Friday for a briefing that will include a discussion on China, according to three defense officials. The officials said the briefing will be unclassified, two of the officials said.
At this point, it’s worth pausing to note the variety of reports on this from several prominent news organizations, many of which included provocative details that haven’t been confirmed by MSNBC or NBC News.
The Washington Post, for example, reported that the Pentagon will provide Musk with an unclassified briefing focused in part “on the threat posed by China,” adding that China will be “the main focus of the discussion.” The Associated Press, meanwhile, reported on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth acknowledging that he’d meet with Musk, but the discussion, according to the far-right former Fox News host, would emphasize “innovation” and “efficiencies.”
Other outlets, however, pointed in an even more alarming direction. The Wall Street Journal, for example, reported that Musk is poised to receive information on “the U.S. military’s top-secret war plans for China,” including “maritime tactics and targeting plans.” The Journal’s report, citing two unnamed U.S. officials, noted that the briefing — which is being held at the billionaire’s request — could give Musk “access to sensitive military secrets unavailable to business competitors.”
Finally, there’s The New York Times’ report, which included details that dovetail with the Journal’s reporting, noting that the briefing would include information on “the U.S. military’s plan for any war that might break out with China.”
The Times added that this briefing, if it proceeds, “would also bring into sharp relief the questions about Mr. Musk’s conflicts of interest as he ranges widely across the federal bureaucracy while continuing to run businesses that are major government contractors. In this case, Mr. Musk, the billionaire chief executive of both SpaceX and Tesla, is a leading supplier to the Pentagon and has extensive financial interests in China.”
It’s that last point that is of particular interest. Musk isn’t just a billionaire and Republican megadonor. He also isn’t just overseeing a quasi-governmental “department” in the executive branch. Musk is also businessman with extensive financial interests in China and close contacts with China’s government. All of which is to say, providing Musk with sensitive military information about China represents a profound and unnecessary risk. For his part, Trump published an item to his social media platform insisting that China “will not even be mentioned or discussed” during the DOGE chief’s visit to the Defense Department. Of course, if the president still had any credibility, such a denial might be more convincing. (The Republican added soon after, “Elon is NOT BEING BRIEFED ON ANYTHING CHINA BY THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR!!!” The War Department became the Department of Defense in 1949.) Politico noted that Musk responded to the developments with threatening rhetoric, writing online that he looks “forward to the prosecution of those at the Pentagon who are leaking maliciously false information” to the Times. “They will be found,” he added.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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