Trump confidant Elon Musk’s China ties pose security risk, ex-general warns
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Op-ed highlights business interests of tech billionaire who spent a quarter of a billion dollars to elect Trump. Elon Musk’s mounting influence in Donald Trump’s inner circle has triggered alarm from a former US military chief, who warns the tech billionaire and Trump confidant’s deep ties to Beijing could compromise national security.
Lt Gen Russel Honoré condemned Musk’s web of Chinese business interests – including $1.4bn in state bank loans and a Tesla factory subject to Beijing’s stringent information-sharing laws – in a New York Times op-ed as he questioned the SpaceX chief’s fitness to shape White House policy.
“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 licence to ignore these risks,” Honoré wrote. Three separate bodies – the air force, the defense department’s inspector general, and the undersecretary of defense for intelligence – are reviewing Musk’s failure to disclose meetings with foreign leaders, a requirement under his security clearance.
Whether the concerns will incur bipartisan scrutiny remains to be seen. In 2022, the Florida Republican senator Marco Rubio – Trump’s pick for secretary of state – accused Tesla of being part of the problem of “nationless corporations” that help the Chinese Communist party “cover up genocide and slave labor in the region” in a post on X, and later introduced legislation to restrict federal contracts to companies with said Chinese party connections.
