Archived

Original article behind a paywall.

Retired Lt. General Russel L. Honoré is sounding the alarm on Elon Musk’s potential security risk in his newfound role as close advisor to President-elect Donald Trump.

Honoré took to the op-ed pages of the New York Times to explain in significant detail why he believes the leader of DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency) and holder of multiple federal contracts with the United States industrial space and military complex may be beholden to China over massive loans he received from the foreign government in years past. He opens by citing past comments from his DOGE deputy, Vivek Ramaswamy. Honoré writes:

In May 2023, Mr. Ramaswamy went so far as to publicly state, “I have no reason to think Elon won’t jump like a circus monkey when Xi Jinping calls in the hour of need,” a reference to China’s leader. In a separate X post targeting Mr. Musk, he wrote, “the U.S. needs leaders who aren’t in China’s pocket.”

Mr. Ramaswamy has since walked back his numerous public criticisms of Mr. Musk, but he was right to raise concerns. According to news reports, Mr. Musk and his rocket company, SpaceX, face federal reviews from the Air Force, the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General and the under secretary of defense for intelligence and security for failing to provide details of Mr. Musk’s meetings with foreign leaders and other potential violations of national-security rules.

These alleged infractions are just the beginning of my worries. Mr. Musk’s business ventures are heavily reliant on China. He 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.

The Musk-China concerns might just represent 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.