WSJ: Musk to Get Pentagon's Top-Secret China War Plans

Elon Musk will receive a briefing Friday on the U.S. military’s top-secret war plans for China, according to two U.S. officials, giving the wealthy businessman and presidential adviser insight into one of the Pentagon’s most closely guarded operational blueprints.

Musk will be briefed on how U.S. forces would fight in a potential China war, including maritime tactics and targeting plans, the officials said. China will be one of several topics to be discussed at the Defense Department, one of the officials said.

The meeting underscored the crosscutting interests Musk has as a senior adviser to President Trump with a powerful and expansive role in the new administration. It could give him as the head of Tesla, which relies on China for car production, and SpaceX, a U.S. defense contractor, access to sensitive military secrets unavailable to business competitors.

Musk, according to one person familiar with the arrangements, is receiving the briefing because he asked for one. He has a security clearance but isn’t in the military chain of command or known to be a military adviser to Trump.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed that Musk would visit the Pentagon on Friday. In a statement on X, Musk’s social-media site. “It’s an informal meeting about innovation, efficiencies & smarter production,” he said, denying that the presidential adviser would receive a sensitive China briefing.

Michael Sobolik, a senior fellow for U.S.-China competition at the Hudson Institute in Washington, said Pentagon leadership might be trying to protect themselves against Musk cutting sensitive military programs. “But they don’t need to give Musk the full briefing to avoid that outcome,” he said.

Specific details of the U.S. war plans for China aren’t known and are only discussed publicly by Defense Department officials and senior officers in the broadest terms. The Pentagon maintains operational plans for many potential adversaries and updates them regularly.

Adm. Sam Paparo, the head of Indo-Pacific Command, said last month in remarks at a defense forum in Hawaii that the U.S. has “war-winning advantages” in any possible conflict with China in space and cyber capabilities, as well as a “generational advantage” in submarines.

Paparo is expected to participate in the Musk briefing with Hegseth, Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg, and Adm. Christopher Grady, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The National Security Council and Indo-Pacific Command, which is responsible for U.S. military operations in Asia, declined to comment about the Pentagon briefing for Musk, which was first reported by the New York Times.

Musk, who leads the Department of Government Efficiency and obtained a security clearance, has taken a growing interest in U.S. national security policy. The visit will be Musk’s first known appearance at the Pentagon this year.

He has weighed in recently on defense acquisitions, calling on the Pentagon to stop buying Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jets and to shift to a large fleet of drones. “Manned fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones anyway,” he posted to X, his social-media site, in November. “Will just get pilots killed.”

Lockheed Martin owns half of a rocket company that is one of SpaceX’s biggest competitors in space launch.

Musk recently made an unannounced visit to the National Security Agency, an intelligence agency focused on communications intercepts, to discuss operations and staff reductions. He was also involved in dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development and folding its remaining functions into the State Department.

Musk has made positive comments about China in recent years, leading Beijing to hope he could be a conduit to Trump. In 2023, Musk said he was “kind of pro-China” during a conversation about whether Beijing would be helpful in writing global rules about artificial intelligence.

“I have some vested interests in China but honestly, I think China is underrated and I think the people of China are really awesome and there is a lot of positive energy there.”

Musk has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a close partner of China, the country that has supported Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. During one of their conversations, Putin asked Musk not to activate a Starlink internet satellite above Taiwan as a favor to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Top U.S. officials in both parties have warned that China is the greatest danger to American security. China has increasingly threatened Taiwan. Western intelligence officials believe China is working toward being ready to invade Taiwan by 2027, potentially drawing the U.S. into a regional conflict.