Opinion
Elon Musk
Is a National Security Risk
Dec. 29,
2024
By Russel L.
Honoré
Lt. Gen.
Honoré retired from the U.S. Army in 2008.
It is now
fair to ask the question: Is Elon Musk a national security risk?
According to
numerous interviews and remarks, Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency
co-leader, Vivek Ramaswamy, once appeared to believe he was. In May 2023, Mr.
Ramaswamy went so far as to publicly state, “I have no reason to think Elon
won’t jump like a circus monkey when Xi Jinping calls in the hour of need,” a
reference to China’s leader. In a separate X post targeting Mr. Musk, he wrote,
“the U.S. needs leaders who aren’t in China’s pocket.”
Mr.
Ramaswamy has since walked back his numerous public criticisms of Mr. Musk, but
he was right to raise concerns. According to news reports, Mr. Musk and his
rocket company, SpaceX, face federal reviews from the Air Force, the Defense
Department’s Office of Inspector General and the under secretary of defense for
intelligence and security for failing to provide details of Mr. Musk’s meetings
with foreign leaders and other potential violations of national-security rules.
These
alleged infractions are just the beginning of my worries. Mr. Musk’s business
ventures are heavily reliant on China. He borrowed at least $1.4 billion from
banks controlled by the Chinese government to help build Tesla’s Shanghai
gigafactory, which was responsible for more than half of Tesla’s global
deliveries in the third quarter of 2024.
China does
not tend to give things away. The country’s laws stipulate that the Communist
Party can demand intelligence from any company doing business in China, in
exchange for participating in the country’s markets.
This means
Mr. Musk’s business dealings in China could require him to hand over sensitive
classified information, learned either through his business interests or his
proximity to President-elect Donald Trump. No federal agency has accused him of
disclosing such material, but as Mr. Ramaswamy put it, China has recognized
that U.S. companies are fickle. He added, “If Xi Jinping says ‘jump,’ they’ll
say, ‘How high?’”
Sign up for
the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert
analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every
weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
Mr. Musk’s
relationship with China’s leaders could prove a problem for America’s national
security given that SpaceX has a near monopoly on the United States’ rocket
launches. The United States is in an intense space race with China. In a May
interview, Maj. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon, the deputy chief of space operations
for intelligence at the U.S. Space Force, said that there has never been a
buildup comparable to what the Chinese are attempting in space — not even
during World War II — and that “an adversary arming this fast is profoundly
concerning.” The last thing the United States needs is for China to potentially
have an easier way of obtaining classified intelligence and national security
information.
Mr. Musk
already has a history of pleasing the Chinese Communist Party. He heaped praise
on Mr. Xi to commemorate the party’s 100th anniversary. In 2022, earning thanks
from Chinese officials, he went to bat for the party by arguing that Taiwan
should become a special administrative region of China.
In May 2023,
Mr. Musk also reportedly told Qin Gang, then the Chinese foreign minister, that
Tesla opposed the United States decoupling from China, stating that U.S. and
Chinese interests are “intertwined like conjoined twins.”
Although
claiming to be a free-speech advocate, Mr. Musk was the first foreigner to
contribute an article to China Cyberspace, a magazine that is run by the
Communist regime’s internet censorship agency.
Chris
Stewart, a Republican former congressman and senior member of the House
Intelligence Committee, whom Mr. Trump reportedly considered nominating as
director of national intelligence, once pushed for closed-door briefings on Mr.
Musk’s China ties. Mr. Trump’s choice for secretary of state, Senator Marco
Rubio, who previously accused Tesla of covering up for the Chinese Communist
Party, introduced a bill to prevent NASA and other federal agencies from giving
contracts to companies linked to China or Russia.
The question
now is whether the incoming Trump administration will take this risk seriously.
Mr. Musk is
one of Mr. Trump’s top advisers. Mr. Trump may have gone so far as to reject a
bipartisan congressional budget measure because it did not have Mr. Musk’s
stamp of approval. In November, after his election, Mr. Trump traveled to Texas
to watch Mr. Musk’s Starship launch. That is fine, but doing nothing to ensure
America’s space apparatus remains secure from potential vulnerabilities would
not be.
The
Musk-China concerns might be just the beginning. In a November letter to
Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Pentagon’s inspector general, two
Democratic senators asked that they investigate Mr. Musk’s “reliability as a
government contractor and a clearance holder” because of his reported
conversations with Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials. In a separate
letter, the senators asked the Air Force secretary, Frank Kendall, to
reconsider SpaceX’s “outsized role” in America’s commercial space integration.
Mr. Kendall wrote back stating that, while he was legally prohibited from
discussing Mr. Musk’s case, he shared their concerns.
If the
federal investigations demonstrate deep connections to China and Russia, the
federal government should consider revoking Mr. Musk’s security clearance. It
should already be thinking about using alternatives to SpaceX’s launch
services.
The fact
that Mr. Musk spent a quarter of a billion dollars to help re-elect Mr. Trump
does not give the incoming White House the license to look the other way at the
national security risks he may pose. If Mr. Trump and his appointees mean what
they say about getting tough on America’s adversaries, then they will act on
this matter without delay. There is too much at stake to ignore what’s right in
front of them.
Lt. Gen.
Russel L. Honoré led Task Force Katrina after the devastation of New Orleans
and, after retiring from the Army, led a review of security at the U.S. Capitol
after Jan. 6, 2021
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário