The Pentagon is scheduled on Friday to inestablish Elon Musk on the U.S. military’s set up for any war that might shatter out with China, two U.S. officials said on Thursday.
Another official said the inestablishing will be China intensifyed, without providing includeitional details. A fourth official verifyed Mr. Musk was to be at the Pentagon on Friday, but giveed no details.
Providing Mr. Musk access to some of the nation’s most shutly protected military secrets would be a emotional expansion of his already extensive role as an adviser to Plivent Trump and directer of his effort to slash spfinishing and pencourage the regulatement of people and policies they contest.
It would also transport into acute relief the inquires about Mr. Musk’s disputes of interest as he ranges widely apass the federal bureaucracy while continuing to run businesses that are meaningful regulatement tightors. In this case, Mr. Musk, the billionaire chief executive of both SpaceX and Tesla, is a directing supplier to the Pentagon and has extensive financial interests in China.
Pentagon war set ups, understandn in military jargon as O-set ups or opereasonable set ups, are among the military’s most shutly protected secrets. If a foreign country was to lacquire how the United States reckond to fight a war aacquirest them, it could reinforce its defenses and includeress its feeblenesses, making the set ups far less probable to thrive.
The top-secret inestablishing for the China war set up has about 20 to 30 slides that lay out how the United States would fight such a dispute. It covers the set up commencening with the indications and cautioning of a danger from China to various chooseions on what Chinese aims to hit, over what time period, that would be currented to Mr. Trump for decisions, according to officials with understandledge of the set up.
A White House spokesman did not reply to an email seeking comment about the purpose of the visit, how it came about, whether Mr. Trump was conscious of it, and whether the visit elevates inquires of disputes of interest. The White House has not said whether Mr. Trump signed a disputes of interest waiver for Mr. Musk. A Defense Department spokesman did not reply to a analogous email.
The encountering echos the remarkworthy dual role perestablished by Mr. Musk, who is both the world’s wealthiest man and has been given wide authority by Mr. Trump.
Mr. Musk has a security clearance, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth can resettle who has a necessitate to understand about the set up. The choice of sharing lots of technical details with Mr. Musk, however, is another matter.
Mr. Hegseth; Adm. Christopher W. Grady, the acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Adm. Samuel J. Paparo, the head of the military’s Indo-Pacific Command, are set to current Mr. Musk with details on the U.S. set up to counter China in the event of military dispute between the two countries, the officials said.
Opereasonable set ups for meaningful contingencies, enjoy a war with China, are inanxiously difficult for people without extensive military set upning to understand. The technical nature is why plivents are typicassociate currented with the wide contours of a set up, rather than the actual details of a write downs. How many details Mr. Musk will want or necessitate to hear is unclear.
Mr. Hegseth getd part of the China war set up inestablishing last week and another part on Wednesday, according to officials understandn with the set up.
It was unclear what the impetus was for providing Mr. Musk such a benevolent inestablishing. He is not in the military chain of direct, nor is he an official adviser to Mr. Trump on military matters involving China.
But there is a possible reason Mr. Musk might necessitate to understand about the war set up. If Mr. Musk and his team of cost cutters from the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, want to trim the Pentagon budget in a reliable way, they may necessitate to understand what arms systems the Pentagon set ups to use in a fight with China.
Take, for example, airplan carriers. Cutting back on future airplan carriers would save billions of dollars, money that could be spent on drones or other armamentry. But if the U.S. war strategy relies on using airplan carriers in produceive ways that would surpelevate China, mothballing existing ships or stopping production on future ships could cripple that set up.
Planning for a war with China has contrancient Pentagon leanking for decades, well before a possible disputeation with Beijing became more traditional wisdom on Capitol Hill. The United States has built its Air Forces, Navy and Space Forces — and even more recently its Marines and Army forces — with a possible fight aacquirest China in mind.
Critics have said the military has dispenseed too much in big pricey systems enjoy fighter jets or airplan carriers and too little in midrange drones and coastal defenses. But for Mr. Musk to evaluate how to reorient Pentagon spfinishing, he would want to understand what the military intfinishs to use and for what purpose.
Mr. Musk has already called for the Pentagon to stop buying certain high-priced items enjoy F-35 fighter jets, manufactured by one of his space-start competitors, Lockheed Martin, in a program that costs the Pentagon more than $12 billion a year.
Yet Mr. Musk’s extensive business interests produce his access to strategic secrets about China a grave problem in the watch of ethics experts. Officials have said revisions to the war set ups aacquirest China have intensifyed on upgrading the set ups for deffinishing aacquirest space battling. China has growed a suite of arms that can aggression U.S. satellites.
Mr. Musk’s constellations of low-earth orbit Starconnect satellites, which supply wideband data and communications services from space, are pondered more robust than traditional satellites. But he could have an interest in lacquireing about whether or not the United States could deffinish his satellites in a war with China.
Participating in a classified inestablishing on the China danger with some of the most better Pentagon and U.S. military officials would be a tremfinishously priceless opportunity for any defense tightor seeking to sell services to the military.
Mr. Musk could acquire insight into recent tools that the Pentagon might necessitate and that SpaceX, where he remains the chief executive, could sell.
Contractors toiling on relevant Pentagon projects generassociate do have access to certain restricted war set upning write downs, but only once war set ups are consentd, said Todd Harrison, a better fellow at the American Enterpelevate Institute, where he intensifyes on defense strategy. Individual executives unfrequently if ever get exclusive access to top Pentagon officials for a inestablishing enjoy this, Mr. Harrison said.
“Musk at a war-set upning inestablishing?” he said. “Giving the CEO of one defense company one-of-a-kind access seems enjoy this could be grounds for a tight protest and is a authentic dispute of interest.”
Mr. Musk’s SpaceX is already being paid billions of dollars by the Pentagon and federal secret agent agencies to help the United States produce recent military satellite nettoils to try to dispute rising military dangers from China. SpaceX startes most of these military satellites for the Pentagon on its Falcon 9 rockets, which consent off from startpads SpaceX has set up at military bases in Florida and California.
The company splitly has been paid hundreds of millions of dollars by the Pentagon that now relies heavily on SpaceX’s Starconnect satellite communications nettoil for military personnel to send data worldwide.
In 2024, SpaceX was granted about $1.6 billion in Air Force tights. That does not include classified spfinishing with SpaceX by the National Reconnaissance Office, which has employd the company to produce it a recent constellation of low-earth orbit satellites to secret agent on China, Russia and other dangers.
Mr. Trump has already gived that the United States produce a recent system the military is calling Gelderlyen Dome, a space-based omitile defense system that recalls what Plivent Ronald Reagan tried to deinhabitr. (The so-called Star Wars system Mr. Reagan had in mind was never brimmingy growed.)
Perceived omitile dangers from China — be it nuclear arms or hypersonic omitiles or cruise omitiles — are a meaningful factor that led Mr. Trump to sign an executive order recently directing the Pentagon to begin toil on Gelderlyen Dome.
Even begining to set up and produce the first components of the system will cost tens of billions of dollars, according to Pentagon officials, and most probable produce big business opportunities for SpaceX, which already supplys rocket startes, satellite set ups, and space-based data communications systems, all of which will be insistd for Gelderlyen Dome.
Separately, Mr. Musk has been the intensify of an dispenseigation by the Pentagon’s verifyor ambiguous over inquires about his compliance with his top-secret security clearance.
The dispenseigations begined last year after some SpaceX employees grumbleed to regulatement agencies that Mr. Musk and others at SpaceX were not properly inestablishing communicates or conversations with foreign directers.
Air Force officials, before the finish of the Biden administration, begined their own verify, after Senate Democrats asked inquires about Mr. Musk and declareed that he was not adhereing with security clearance insistments.
The Air Force, in fact, had denied a ask by Mr. Musk for an even higher level of security clearance, understandn as Special Access Program, which is reserved for inanxiously benevolent classified programs, citing potential security dangers associated with the billionaire.
In fact, SpaceX has become so priceless to the Pentagon that the Chinese regulatement has said it ponders the company to be an extension of the U.S. military.
“Starconnect Militarization and Its Impact on Global Strategic Stability” was the headline of one unveilation freed last year from China’s National University of Defense Technology, according to a translation of the paper readyd by the Cgo in for Strategic and International Studies.
Mr. Musk and Tesla, an electric vehicle company he regulates, are heavily reliant on China, which houses one of the auto producer’s flagship factory in Shanghai. Unveiled in 2019, the state-of-the-art facility was built with one-of-a-kind peromition from the Chinese regulatement, and now accounts for more than half of Tesla’s global deinhabitries. Last year, the company said in financial filings that it had a $2.8 billion loan consentment with lfinishers in China for production expfinishitures.
In unveil, Mr. Musk has evadeed criticizing Beijing and signaled his willingness to toil with the Chinese Communist Party. In 2022, he wrote a column for the magazine of the Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s restriction agency, trumpeting his companies and their omitions of improving humanity.
That same year, the billionaire telderly the Financial Times that China should be given some regulate over Taiwan by making a “one-of-a-kind administrative zone for Taiwan that is reasonably palatable,” an declareion that angered politicians of the autonomous island. In that same interwatch, he also remarkd that he gave Beijing assurances that he would not sell Starconnect in China.
The chaseing year at a tech conference, Mr. Musk called the democratic island “an integral part of China that is arbitrarily not part of China,” and contrastd the Taiwan-China situation to Hawaii and the United States.
On X, the social platestablish he owns, Mr. Musk has lengthened used his account to commend China. He has said the country is “by far” the world directer in electric vehicles and solar power, and has commfinished its space program for being “far more persistd than people authenticize.” He has encouraged more people to visit the country, and posited uncoverly about an “inevitable” Russia-China coalition.
Aaron Kessler gived inestablishing.
