Elon Musk visited the Pentagon on Friday morning with plans to be briefed about unspecified military matters, as the Trump administration denied reports that he is to discuss secret US plans should a war break out with China.
Donald Trump and others pushed back against a New York Times report on Thursday night that the key aide to the US president was to be filled in on strategy in the event that China and the US go to war.
Two anonymous officials told the Times about the plans. A third said the briefing would be focused on China, but did not specify further, while a fourth confirmed Musk would visit the Pentagon.
As a key adviser to Trump and the head of the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), Musk has exercised broad powers in the two months since Trump returned to the White House, conducting mass layoffs and slashing budgets across the federal government. But while the Pentagon was also in line to be a target for job cuts, Musk has yet to play any role there, including in defense intelligence and military operations.
Musk’s involvement in any US plans or dealings with China would raise not only security concerns but questions over a major conflict of interest, as he has considerable economic interests in China as the owner of Tesla and SpaceX, which also has contracts with the US air force.
Hours after the report, Donald Trump said on X that “the story is completely untrue” and that “China will not even be mentioned or discussed”. The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, tweeted that Musk would visit the Pentagon on Friday but it “is NOT a meeting about ‘top secret China war plans’”.
“It’s an informal meeting about innovation, efficiencies [and] smarter production,” Hegseth wrote. “Gonna be great!”
In the early hours of Friday morning, Musk denied the reports, calling it “pure propaganda” and threatening to find those who leaked the information.
“I look forward to the prosecutions of those at the Pentagon who are leaking maliciously false information,” he wrote. “They will be found.”
Musk repeated his demand for such prosecutions upon arrival at the Department of Defense on the outskirts of Washington DC on Friday morning. He left the Pentagon about 90 minutes after arriving.
A Pentagon spokesman, asked by email to explain the true purpose of Musk’s briefing given administration denials that it would putative war plans with China, referred the Guardian to a statement posted on social media by Hegseth.
The Wall Street Journal later confirmed the New York Times’ report, also citing two anonymous US officials, and the Washington Post and other outlets followed up with additional reporting.
In a Friday meeting at the White House to announce new air force fighter planes, Trump and Hegseth both firmly rejected reports that Musk was shown any Pentagon plans regarding a potential conflict with China during his visit earlier that day.
“They made that up because it’s a good story to make up. They’re very dishonest people,” Trump said about the New York Times reporting. “I called up Pete [Hegseth] and I said, ‘Is there any truth to that?’, absolutely not, he’s there for Doge, not there for China. And if you ever mentioned China, I think he’d walk out of the room.”
Hegseth tacked on to Trump’s notion that the visit was focused on discussing government efficiency initiatives and innovation opportunities, adding that there are “no Chinese war plans”.
“We welcomed him today to the Pentagon to talk about [the “department of government efficiency”], to talk about efficiencies, to talk about innovations. It was a great informal conversation,” he said.
Hegseth suggested the reporting was deliberately intended to “undermine whatever relationship the Pentagon has with” the Tesla CEO.
According to the Times’ report, the meeting was set to take place not in Hegseth’s office, where informal meetings about innovation would normally take place, but in a secure conference room known as “the Tank”, which is typically used for higher-level meetings. Musk was to be briefed on a plan that contains 20 to 30 slides and details how the US military would fight a conflict with China.
Officials who spoke anonymously with the Times and the Journal offered up potential reasons why Musk was receiving the briefing. The Times suggested that Musk, in his Doge capacity, may be looking into trimming the Pentagon’s budget and would need to know what military assets the US would use in a potential conflict with China.
One source told the Journal that Musk was receiving the briefing because he asked for one.
Though Musk has a “top-secret” clearance within the federal government, lawyers at SpaceX advised him in December not to seek higher levels of security clearances, which would probably be denied due to his foreign ties and personal drug use.
