On a Musk-Know Basis

There’s alarming reporting that Musk is about to be given access to the crown jewels of our military’s operational planning for a conflict with China.

Photo by Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

Elon Musk is widely known as the world’s richest man, a destroyer of the federal workforce, the top GOP political donor, a purveyor of Kremlin disinformation and a fascist.

Add to that list of horribles, “national security threat.”

Yesterday, The New York Times reported that during Musk’s visit to the Pentagon, set for later today, officials are prepared to show him a top secret military war plan with China.

It’s a big record scratch moment, even in an era known for its many record scratches. Musk was already considered unstable and untrustworthy enough that he was denied the highest level security clearance due to his undisclosed meetings with foreign leaders and his well-known drug use. So there’s no telling what Musk might do with sensitive war plans while high as a kite. Will he act like Donald Trump, for example, and tweet sensitive military information to hundreds of millions of people?

On top of that, Musk has multiple, irreconcilable conflicts of interest and is probably the last person in the world who should be shown something that is so sensitive, valuable and dangerous in the wrong hands.

A leak and some yuge denials

We all have had issues with the editorial decisions of the New York Times. But when it comes to reporting, it still proves itself indispensable. And with a story this big, it’s important to be able to turn to trusted reporting, even if the bigwigs in editorial and the headline writers so often fail to meet the moment.

And when there are no less than five bylines to a story, you have my full attention.

According to reporting by Eric Schmitt, Eric Lipton, Julian E. Barnes, Ryan Mac and Maggie Haberman, the Pentagon had intended to brief Musk later today on U.S. military war plans covering any conflict that might break out with China. That’s according to two different U.S. officials the Times spoke to, which described the plans as follows:

The top-secret briefing that exists for the China war plan has about 20 to 30 slides that lay out how the United States would fight such a conflict. It covers the plan beginning with the indications and warning of a threat from China to various options on what Chinese targets to hit, over what time period, that would be presented to Mr. Trump for decisions, according to officials with knowledge of the plan.

This is probably one of the most closely guarded secrets that the Pentagon has. After all, if it fell into the wrong hands, it would permit China to understand what constitutes a threat in the eyes of the U.S., what the U.S. plans to do in the event of such threats, and how to prepare countermeasures and defense around specific targets.

It is quite remarkable that officials at the Pentagon would leak word of the meeting and the presentation to the press. It’s an indication of how alarmed some officials are at the prospect of Musk gaining access to classified war plans.

Such leaks are happening in other departments, too. Yesterday CBS News reported that it had obtained an “internal government list” of the names of all 238 Venezuelan migrants who were summarily rendered to a prison in El Salvador. It decided to publish that list.

In short, officials at Homeland Security and the Pentagon are pushing back on the administration’s recent insane moves, and you can bet the White House is steaming mad about it and wants to know who is doing the leaking.

In the meanwhile, Donald Trump, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have all denied the story about Musk and the China war plans first published by the Times.

Trump insisted that it was “fake news” and “completely untrue!!!” He also said that “China will not even be mentioned or discussed”—a claim directly undercut by another official interviewed by the Times who independently confirmed that the briefing would be China-focused.

Pentagon Spokesperson Parnell claimed the reporting was “brazenly” and “maliciously” wrong, insisting that “Elon Musk is a patriot” and “We are proud to have him at the Pentagon.” Secretary Hegseth similarly denied the reporting, insisting that this was “NOT a meeting about ‘top secret China war plans’” but rather “an informal meeting about innovation, efficiencies & smarter production. Gonna be great!”

Musk apparently didn’t quite get the memo on how to deny reporting effectively, both calling the New York Times “pure propaganda,” while relishing the prosecution of Pentagon officials who were “leaking” the “false information” to reporters. (Pro-tip: If it’s false, it’s not a “leak.”)

Despite these universal denials, the Times’ reporting was later confirmed separately by The Wall Street Journal, not exactly a left-leaning paper. Reporters from the WSJ spoke to two officials at the Pentagon and noted,

Musk is expected to be briefed on how U.S. forces would fight in a potential China war, including maritime tactics and targeting plans, the officials said. China will be one of several topics to be discussed at the Defense Department, one of the officials said.

Call me crazy, but I’m going to go with the seven top reporters at the NYT and WSJ speaking to multiple officials at the Pentagon over the word of the serial liar, the paid lackey, and the drunk.

Conflicts up the wazoo

The reporting, along with subsequent commentary from experts, noted that Musk has multiple, serious conflicts of interest. These make the very idea of giving him this level of access to top secret military plans against China completely bonkers and so very dangerous.

To be honest, when experts talk about “conflicts of interest,” it can feel a bit abstract. Yes, Musk is taking a chainsaw to the government. Yes, he has billions in government contracts. And yes, he has big factories for cars and batteries in China. So it sure feels like there must be conflicts galore, yet the reporting rarely spells them out in plain terms. So I’m going to give a few concrete examples. To make it fun on this Friday, let’s do it from inside Musk’s head.

The Tesla chainsaw massacre

I took the stage at CPAC with a literal chainsaw in hand. So badass! Now everyone understands I am the MAN, like a supervillain, mercilessly clearcutting the government and slashing department budgets at the stroke of a keyboard. Me and my DOGE bros can physically occupy a building with the U.S. Marshals at our back, infiltrate its systems, log in with special credentials or force others to turn over the passwords and authorizations, and cancel billions in contracts while laying off thousands of those lazy, woke federal workers. Department leaders are scared, and that’s good. They definitely don’t want to be on our bad side. What a rush!

So what might officials do to keep Musk happy and not slashing through their departments with his metaphorical chainsaw? This moment with the Pentagon is a good example. They could try to impress him with how important their work is, show him things no other department can. Look at these cool war plans, Elon! Be nice to us, and you could even get to sit in their situation room!

Also, they can talk to him about their plans, maybe even about how his awesome companies can help make them better—as Pete Hegseth put it, a meeting about “innovation, efficiencies & smarter production. Gonna be great!!”

The inside track

Sitting with the military planners and hearing all about their top secret preparations sure must feel awesome after all those years of people thinking he’s just weird and awkward. But it was all worth it to get an insider’s view, right?

Now I know what the military knows, especially about the vulnerability of all my Starlink satellites to Chinese attack. I’ll remind them they need to build in—and pay for—redundancies and security measures. That’s some real big ticket stuff. Gotta be worth billions in new government contracts.

In fact, now I know things my big competitors don’t, so I can even design my satellites and technology with all these war plans in mind…

Along the way, he might continue to recommend the military stop buying those F-35s from competitor Lockheed, which also happens to own a competing space business. “Invest in drones instead!” Musk has already insisted.

Ha, that will show those Lockheed guys who’s the boss of them.

That’s what Xi said

Musk is probably tired of everyone saying he cozies up to the Chinese too much. Sure, he loves to tout how wonderful it is to do business, to manufacture his cars and batteries in his mega-factories there, but it’s true! And business is business. Why bite the hand that feeds you, right?

But now it’s starting to get awkward….

I’m one of the few people on Earth who’s seen the Pentagon’s plans around a conflict with China. But now those politicos in the CCP keep mentioning how important I must be, especially to be given access to such top secret material.

In other words, “Nice factory you have there, Elon. Would be a shame if anything ever happened to it…”

What’s it gonna take to keep the Chinese happy? The vice premier just requested a private dinner next week in Shanghai. There are whispers I might offer Starlink to Taiwan. But of course I never would. What would the Chinese say? LOL.

If they only knew what the real risk to their forces in the Straits of Taiwan was. Talk about a valuable bargaining chip…

These are just a few of the obvious conflicts of interest that Musk’s existing power and position within the government already expose, including his ability to affect military plans and purchases and his dual loyalties to our government and to the Chinese.

But giving him actual access to top secret plans that no other businessperson gets to see? Now that’s something to which only someone like Elon Musk could buy access.