Musk Regularly Talks to Putin: Concerns Rocket Up

Is there anyone on the right who doesn’t have Vladimir Putin in contacts? It was just last week that we learned that Donald Trump has had at least seven phone calls with the Russian president since he left office – calls in which Trump asks people to leave the room. Encouraging. Now we hear that Elon Musk is also tapped in – perhaps the wrong word – with Putin.  What is going on?

Musk speaking to Putin is not necessarily a bad thing. Concerns arise over secret conversations and, obviously, which possible secrets get discussed. Musk does control what might be the world’s most active space agency – maybe second to China, but who could know? So one shouldn’t necessarily freak out. Do feel free to wonder why Musk has become such a freak in the last 18 months, to the point that phone calls with Putin actually raise concerns.

The calls concerned The Wall Street Journal, which reports:

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a linchpin of U.S. space efforts, has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022. At one point, Putin asked the billionaire to avoid activating his Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, said two people briefed on the request.

Yes, noted above were worries about the topics in these talks? Musk is big enough to have Space X, which means he’s big enough to have his own foreign policy. Fine. So long as it mostly aligns with that of the nation in which he’s made his fortune. If it crosses? Well that would seem bad.

But which U.S. foreign policy? The Trump-Right regards Russia in a way that remains concerning. We already know that Trump has a deep fascination with Putin, it’s long been a domestic concern. In a world in which even Justin Trudeau finds himself the butt of Trump’s fury, the warmongering Russian leader has managed to escape criticism, nickname and all.

There is an even more practical worry, possible leaps in technology going to the Motherland. Back to the Journal:

Musk has forged deep business ties with U.S. military and intelligence agencies, giving him unique visibility into some of America’s most sensitive space programs. SpaceX, which operates the Starlink service, won a $1.8 billion classified contract in 2021 and is the primary rocket launcher for the Pentagon and NASA. Musk has a security clearance that allows him access to certain classified information.

Right. And so if a sweet business deal includes missions for Russia the worries arise to how much information and technology must Russia access to participate in those deals and on whose terms.

At this point there is the chance that people no longer care what Elon says just so long as he isn’t tweeting it all day every day. There is also the fact that this goes beyond Elon’s relationships with the Right and smack into American reality under anyone. None of this is confined to one administration and is already playing a role pernicious enough that it must mostly remain secret:

Knowledge of Musk’s Kremlin contacts appears to be a closely held secret in government. Several White House officials said they weren’t aware of them. The topic is highly sensitive, given Musk’s increasing involvement in the Trump campaign and the approaching U.S. presidential election, less than two weeks away.

Comforting. No, not really. Because the concern is more Musk and Putin, less the U.S. government. It could easily become much more – too much – as early as next January.

Should we freak out? Probably not. At some point we best just come to grips with the fact that the world’s half dozen richest people – of whom Musk has a substantial lead – are already functioning as small nations themselves. How much longer until Bezos is in active negotiations with the Chinese government over drones servicing the Chinese people? For all we know it’s already happened. Neither Musk nor any of them can really hide their foreign policy.

And this would be especially true when the topic is access to space, the ultimate high ground in Sun Tzu’s doctrine concerning foreign relations. With regard to space, you probably can’t get there from here anymore without crossing Musk. He does need to be watched – the guy remains weird. The thing about one-man nations is that any given day, one’s “mood” could quickly impact what was a steady situation, one that the U.S. government happened to share.

The government should retain some serious regulatory authority over Space X and Musk’s eclectic nature. It is not hard. The road to space necessarily includes a trip through someone’s air, usually ours. Under any authority it remains paramount that the U.S. government have relations with Space X such that Putin’s concerns never “trump” the nation’s. We wouldn’t worry so much about all these private calls.

God Bless: I can be reached at [email protected] and @JasonMiciak

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