This is one of those times when we’re getting the information that we need to get from somebody who is in a position to know about such things. But the question is, in this day and age, will this opinion published as an op/ed in the New York Times by retired Army General Russel L. Honore be heeded or will it get buried? I think we know the answer. It will get buried and only after the prophecy has been fulfilled will somebody come forth and say, “We were told the truth but we ignored it.” Assuming that we’re still able to communicate with one another without jackbooted thugs kicking in our doors. General Honore led the Hurricane Katrina task force so he’s no stranger to disasters.
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.
The Musk/China concerns stem from the fact that Musk “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.” If that’s not a situation where Musk could be required to hand over classified information to the Chinese, then I don’t know what one would look like. And this is all being ignored. MAGA and enough of America was just fine with the boxes of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. I blame the legacy media for not making the urgency of these matters more clear.
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.
Precisely. There is too much at stake for us to ignore what’s right in front of us. But what will be done? I guess our best hope is for Joe Biden to safeguard America’s secrets to the extent that he is able in his last days in office. After that, who knows what will happen. Trump gets security briefings now and of course they go to Musk — and then they go to Beijing. Trump 2.0 may be the only administration in history where people whose job it is to prepare security briefings for a president may be called upon to decide what to conceal from the incoming president for the greater good.
What an absolute mess.
How does it look if a Biden administration opens such an investigation? How does it look if a Trump administration closes it down?
We should never have contracted our space exploration to Space X. Never. And Honors is an honest to Goddess hero, one of the few good things that came out of Katrina. He and his Cajun Navy represent the best of America,,risking their lives to rescue others, while Trump.and Musk represent the worst.