The Pentagon is scheduled on Friday to temporary Elon Musk on the U.S. navy’s plan for any battle which may escape with China, two U.S. officers mentioned on Thursday.
One other official mentioned the briefing might be China centered, with out offering extra particulars. A fourth official confirmed Mr. Musk was to be on the Pentagon on Friday, however supplied no particulars.
Offering Mr. Musk entry to a number of the nation’s most carefully guarded navy secrets and techniques can be a dramatic enlargement of his already intensive function as an adviser to President Trump and chief of his effort to slash spending and purge the federal government of individuals and insurance policies they oppose.
It might additionally convey into sharp reduction the questions on Mr. Musk’s conflicts of curiosity as he ranges broadly throughout the federal forms whereas persevering with to run companies which might be main authorities contractors. On this case, Mr. Musk, the billionaire chief govt of each SpaceX and Tesla, is a number one provider to the Pentagon and has intensive monetary pursuits in China.
Pentagon battle plans, identified in navy jargon as O-plans or operational plans, are among the many navy’s most carefully guarded secrets and techniques. If a overseas nation was to learn the way the US deliberate to battle a battle in opposition to them, it may reinforce its defenses and tackle its weaknesses, making the plans far much less prone to succeed.
The highest-secret briefing for the China battle plan has about 20 to 30 slides that lay out how the US would battle such a battle. It covers the plan starting with the indications and warning of a menace from China to varied choices on what Chinese language targets to hit, over what time interval, that might be introduced to Mr. Trump for choices, based on officers with information of the plan.
A White Home spokesman didn’t reply to an electronic mail in search of remark in regards to the goal of the go to, the way it took place, whether or not Mr. Trump was conscious of it, and whether or not the go to raises questions of conflicts of curiosity. The White Home has not mentioned whether or not Mr. Trump signed a conflicts of curiosity waiver for Mr. Musk. A Protection Division spokesman didn’t reply to an analogous electronic mail.
The assembly displays the extraordinary twin function performed by Mr. Musk, who’s each the world’s wealthiest man and has been given broad authority by Mr. Trump.
Mr. Musk has a safety clearance, and Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth can decide who has a have to know in regards to the plan. The selection of sharing plenty of technical particulars with Mr. Musk, nevertheless, is one other matter.
Mr. Hegseth; Adm. Christopher W. Grady, the performing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Workers; and Adm. Samuel J. Paparo, the pinnacle of the navy’s Indo-Pacific Command, are set to current Mr. Musk with particulars on the U.S. plan to counter China within the occasion of navy battle between the 2 international locations, the officers mentioned.
Operational plans for main contingencies, like a battle with China, are extraordinarily troublesome for individuals with out intensive navy planning to grasp. The technical nature is why presidents are sometimes introduced with the broad contours of a plan, somewhat than the precise particulars of a paperwork. What number of particulars Mr. Musk will need or want to listen to is unclear.
Mr. Hegseth acquired a part of the China battle plan briefing final week and one other half on Wednesday, based on officers acquainted with the plan.
It was unclear what the impetus was for offering Mr. Musk such a delicate briefing. He’s not within the navy chain of command, neither is he an official adviser to Mr. Trump on navy issues involving China.
However there’s a potential cause Mr. Musk may have to know in regards to the battle plan. If Mr. Musk and his crew of value cutters from the Division of Authorities Effectivity, or DOGE, need to trim the Pentagon funds in a accountable approach, they might have to know what weapons techniques the Pentagon plans to make use of in a battle with China.
Take, for instance, plane carriers. Slicing again on future plane carriers would save billions of {dollars}, cash that may very well be spent on drones or different weaponry. But when the U.S. battle technique depends on utilizing plane carriers in progressive ways in which would shock China, mothballing current ships or stopping manufacturing on future ships may cripple that plan.
Planning for a battle with China has dominated Pentagon pondering for many years, properly earlier than a potential confrontation with Beijing grew to become extra standard knowledge on Capitol Hill. The US has constructed its Air Forces, Navy and House Forces — and much more not too long ago its Marines and Military forces — with a potential battle in opposition to China in thoughts.
Critics have mentioned the navy has invested an excessive amount of in massive costly techniques like fighter jets or plane carriers and too little in midrange drones and coastal defenses. However for Mr. Musk to judge find out how to reorient Pentagon spending, he would need to know what the navy intends to make use of and for what goal.
Mr. Musk has already referred to as for the Pentagon to cease shopping for sure high-priced gadgets like F-35 fighter jets, manufactured by certainly one of his space-launch rivals, Lockheed Martin, in a program that prices the Pentagon greater than $12 billion a 12 months.
But Mr. Musk’s intensive enterprise pursuits make his entry to strategic secrets and techniques about China a major problem within the view of ethics consultants. Officers have mentioned revisions to the battle plans in opposition to China have centered on upgrading the plans for defending in opposition to house warfare. China has developed a collection of weapons that may assault U.S. satellites.
Mr. Musk’s constellations of low-earth orbit Starlink satellites, which give broadband information and communications providers from house, are thought-about extra resilient than conventional satellites. However he may have an curiosity in studying about whether or not or not the US may defend his satellites in a battle with China.
Taking part in a categorized briefing on the China menace with a number of the most senior Pentagon and U.S. navy officers can be a tremendously helpful alternative for any protection contractor in search of to promote providers to the navy.
Mr. Musk may acquire perception into new instruments that the Pentagon may want and that SpaceX, the place he stays the chief govt, may promote.
Contractors engaged on related Pentagon tasks usually do have entry to sure restricted battle planning paperwork, however solely as soon as battle plans are authorised, mentioned Todd Harrison, a senior fellow on the American Enterprise Institute, the place he focuses on protection technique. Particular person executives hardly ever if ever get unique entry to high Pentagon officers for a briefing like this, Mr. Harrison mentioned.
“Musk at a war-planning briefing?” he mentioned. “Giving the CEO of 1 protection firm distinctive entry looks like this may very well be grounds for a contract protest and is an actual battle of curiosity.”
Mr. Musk’s SpaceX is already being paid billions of {dollars} by the Pentagon and federal spy businesses to assist the US construct new navy satellite tv for pc networks to attempt to confront rising navy threats from China. SpaceX launches most of those navy satellites for the Pentagon on its Falcon 9 rockets, which take off from launchpads SpaceX has arrange at navy bases in Florida and California.
The corporate individually has been paid tons of of tens of millions of {dollars} by the Pentagon that now depends closely on SpaceX’s Starlink satellite tv for pc communications community for navy personnel to transmit information worldwide.
In 2024, SpaceX was granted about $1.6 billion in Air Drive contracts. That doesn’t embody categorized spending with SpaceX by the Nationwide Reconnaissance Workplace, which has employed the corporate to construct it a brand new constellation of low-earth orbit satellites to spy on China, Russia and different threats.
Mr. Trump has already proposed that the US construct a brand new system the navy is asking Golden Dome, a space-based missile protection system that remembers what President Ronald Reagan tried to ship. (The so-called Star Wars system Mr. Reagan had in thoughts was by no means absolutely developed.)
Perceived missile threats from China — be it nuclear weapons or hypersonic missiles or cruise missiles — are a significant component that led Mr. Trump to signal an govt order not too long ago instructing the Pentagon to begin work on Golden Dome.
Even beginning to plan and construct the primary parts of the system will value tens of billions of {dollars}, based on Pentagon officers, and almost certainly create giant enterprise alternatives for SpaceX, which already offers rocket launches, satellite tv for pc constructions, and space-based information communications techniques, all of which might be required for Golden Dome.
Individually, Mr. Musk has been the main target of an investigation by the Pentagon’s inspector common over questions on his compliance along with his top-secret safety clearance.
The investigations began final 12 months after some SpaceX workers complained to authorities businesses that Mr. Musk and others at SpaceX weren’t correctly reporting contacts or conversations with overseas leaders.
Air Drive officers, earlier than the top of the Biden administration, began their very own evaluate, after Senate Democrats requested questions about Mr. Musk and asserted that he was not complying with safety clearance necessities.
The Air Drive, actually, had denied a request by Mr. Musk for an excellent greater stage of safety clearance, referred to as Particular Entry Program, which is reserved for very delicate categorized applications, citing potential safety dangers related to the billionaire.
In actual fact, SpaceX has change into so helpful to the Pentagon that the Chinese language authorities has mentioned it considers the corporate to be an extension of the U.S. navy.
“Starlink Militarization and Its Affect on World Strategic Stability” was the headline of 1 publication launched final 12 months from China’s Nationwide College of Protection Know-how, based on a translation of the paper ready by the Heart for Strategic and Worldwide Research.
Mr. Musk and Tesla, an electrical automobile firm he controls, are closely reliant on China, which homes one of many auto maker’s flagship manufacturing facility in Shanghai. Unveiled in 2019, the state-of-the-art facility was constructed with particular permission from the Chinese language authorities, and now accounts for greater than half of Tesla’s world deliveries. Final 12 months, the corporate mentioned in monetary filings that it had a $2.8 billion mortgage settlement with lenders in China for manufacturing expenditures.
In public, Mr. Musk has prevented criticizing Beijing and signaled his willingness to work with the Chinese language Communist Celebration. In 2022, he wrote a column for the journal of the Our on-line world Administration of China, the nation’s censorship company, trumpeting his firms and their missions of bettering humanity.
That very same 12 months, the billionaire advised the Monetary Occasions that China must be given some management over Taiwan by making a “particular administrative zone for Taiwan that’s moderately palatable,” an assertion that angered politicians of the impartial island. In that very same interview, he additionally famous that he gave Beijing assurances that he wouldn’t promote Starlink in China.
The next 12 months at a tech convention, Mr. Musk referred to as the democratic island “an integral a part of China that’s arbitrarily not a part of China,” and in contrast the Taiwan-China state of affairs to Hawaii and the US.
On X, the social platform he owns, Mr. Musk has lengthy used his account to reward China. He has mentioned the nation is “by far” the world chief in electrical automobiles and solar energy, and has counseled its house program for being “much more superior than individuals notice.” He has inspired extra individuals to go to the nation, and posited brazenly about an “inevitable” Russia-China alliance.
Aaron Kessler contributed reporting.
