TOI Correspondent from Washington: A well-publicized visit by Elon Musk to Pentagon on Friday threw the American strategic community into a tizzy with feverish accounts in the legacy media that has was going to be briefed on US war plans against China. The fact that Musk has extensive business interests in China rattled a constituency that sees the billionaire as an interloper in Washington’s conduct of foreign affairs and strategic planning.
But President Trump broke the China fever.
“The Fake News is at it again….China will not even be mentioned or discussed. How disgraceful it is that the discredited media can make up such lies,” Trump said, hours after “the Failing New York Times” said, incorrectly according to him, that Musk is going to be briefed on any potential war with China.” He called the report “ridiculous.”
But the legacy media doubled down on the story. The Washington Post, citing “people familiar with the matter,” following up the NYT “scoop” by insisting the Pentagon briefing for Musk — to include classified slides and battle-specific plans — focused on the threat posed by China, and not just the billionaire’s work to slash the U.S. government bureaucracy.
Musk himself was agitated enough with the story to warn that he looks forward to the “prosecutions of those at the Pentagon who are leaking maliciously false information to NYT,” calling the paper “pure propaganda.”
The denial did not quell the disquiet among Chinaphobes, who raged that the Trump dispensation is disclosing military secrets to a billionaire with extensive business interests in Beijing.
“China is to Musk what Russia is to Trump,” the former chess champion Gary Kasparov, now a commentator on strategic affairs said. Others pointed to Musk’s dual role as a private-sector billionaire with Pentagon contracts and now potentially a military advisor on China.
China, as Tesla’s second-largest market in the world after the U.S., accounts for nearly a quarter of the company’s $100 billion revenue. Tesla’s largest manufacturing facility is located in Shanghai, producing over half of Tesla’s global vehicle output—approximately 1 million cars annually out of nearly 2 million vehicles delivered worldwide. The factory was built with significant support from Beijing, including $1.4 billion in low-interest loans from state-owned banks.
The Pentagon though maintained that the Musk briefing focused on “innovation, efficiencies, and smarter production,” aligning with his role as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a Trump administration initiative aimed at reducing federal government waste and bureaucracy. The Pentagon has a budget of around $ 900 billion.
The Wall Street Journal later reported that Musk was originally scheduled to receive a briefing on top-secret plans — including operational blue prints — for a potential war with China, but the idea was scrapped after the story leaked.