I am disturbed by recent reporting that Elon Musk is being given a briefing at the Pentagon on our detailed plans should we end up going to war with China. Two anonymous U.S. officials have told the New York Times that the meeting was to discuss our war plans. A third anonymous official said the briefing would be focused on China. And a fourth confirmed that Musk would be at the Pentagon. Donald Trump and other Pentagon officials have denied that the meeting would be about the military’s plan to fight China.
Congress needs to investigate this thoroughly and determine just what Elon was told. Elon Musk is a national security risk, and we must assume that anything he is told will end up in the hands of the Chinese.
Tesla has a $2 billion factory in China. After Musk's briefing, Xi Jinping could tell Musk,
I heard you just had an interesting briefing on America's plans to invade us. Tell us everything that you know. Oh, and by the way, that's a nice little factory you've got there. Shame if anything were to happen to it.
If China were to seize Tesla's factory, it would not only hurt the company directly, but Tesla's share price would plummet harder than we have seen it fall so far. Musk could lose tens of billions of dollars overnight. And perhaps even worse for Musk, Tesla stock is held by over 5,000 institutional investors. And who knows how many individuals own Tesla stocks? There will be tens of thousands---maybe even hundreds of thousands--of shareholders who will be absolutely livid because of this. Some people may lose much of their life savings. Musk is complaining that he is getting death threats now. How many more threats will he get when Tesla tanks? Musk will be under a lot of pressure when (not if) the Chinese give him this ultimatum. (If I am smart enough to figure out how to pressure Musk, you can bet that at least one of China's thousands of intelligence officers will also figure this out.) Can we REALLY trust Musk to safeguard our secret war plans at a great personal price to himself?
I am calling on Congress to hold an investigation. We must know if there is even a possibility of China learning details of our military planning. If there is even a remote chance that Elon has obtained valuable military secrets that he could pass on to the Chinese, then our military must be alerted so that they can draw up new plans. And if Trump has allowed someone with such an obvious vulnerability to blackmail acquire these secrets, then this must become one among many grounds for impeachment.
This infromation is too important to be hidden behind a paywall. That's why I am gifting you this article in the New York Times. You should be able to use this link until April 20 to view this article.
