There are two huge national security questions at the heart of the Trump regime

Robert Reich
21 March
U.S. President Donald Trump points towards Tesla CEO Elon Musk, at the White House, in Washington D.C. U.S., March 14, 2025.

The first is whether Elon Musk is working, at least in part, for China’s Xi Jinping. Consider:

(1) China is the location of Musk’s largest Tesla factory in the world in which China invested $2.8 billion. The state-of-the-art facility was built in Shanghai with special permission from the Chinese government, and now accounts for more than half of Tesla’s global deliveries.

(2) China is the world’s biggest market for Teslas and is the only electronic vehicle market where Tesla sales are continuing to grow.

(3) Chinese investors have been funneling money into Musk’s other businesses.

(4) China is a hotbed of other technologies that Musk would like to get his hands on.

(5) In 2022, Musk told The Financial Times that China should be given some control over Taiwan by making a “special administrative zone for Taiwan that is reasonably palatable.”

(6) In 2023, at a tech conference, he called Taiwan “an integral part of China that is arbitrarily not part of China,” and compared the Taiwan-China situation to Hawaii and the United States.

(7) On X, the social platform he owns, Musk has long used his account to praise China, encouraging more people to visit the country.

(8) One of the Pentagon’s biggest worries is that China has developed a suite of weapons capable of attacking U.S. military and non-military satellites.

(9) The Pentagon now relies heavily on Musk’s SpaceX Starlink satellite communications network for military personnel to transmit data worldwide.

(10) SpaceX launches most of the Pentagon’s military satellites on its Falcon 9 rockets, which take off from launchpads SpaceX has set up at military bases in Florida and California.

(11) SpaceX has become so valuable to the Pentagon that the Chinese government has said it considers SpaceX to be an extension of the U.S. military.

(12) The Pentagon has hired Musk’s Space X to build it a new constellation of low-earth orbit satellites to spy on China, Russia and other threats.

(13) Perceived missile threats from China — nuclear weapons or hypersonic missiles or cruise missiles — have led Trump to sign an executive order instructing the Pentagon to start work on “Golden Dome,” a space-based missile defense system, in which Musk’s Space X would almost surely be involved for rocket launches, satellite structures, and space-based data communications systems.

(14) Musk and his SpaceX have repeatedly failed to comply with federal reporting protocols aimed at protecting U.S. secrets, including by not providing some details of his meetings with foreign leaders — leading to at least three federal reviews, including one by the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General and another by the Air Force and the Pentagon’s Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security.

So … is Musk working for Trump, for the United States, for China, or for himself — or for all of the above?

The question of Musk’s allegiance becomes more weighty by the day.

This morning, for example, he met with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other Pentagon brass. According to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, the meeting had been arranged at Musk’s request to give Musk details about America’s preparations for war with China — the most sensitive and secret information anyone can receive.

It appears that after the scheduled meeting and its subject matter were reported yesterday, the meeting mysteriously morphed into something more innocent. Apparently, Trump decided Musk shouldn’t be briefed on war preparations with China.

Musk arrived shortly before 9 a.m. and left about 90 minutes later. When a reporter asked what Hegseth and Musk discussed, Musk shot back: “Why should I tell you?” Trump and Hegseth deny China was even mentioned.

The underlying question is whether Musk can be trusted.

Not even his position in the Trump regime is clear. Congress has not confirmed him for any role. He hasn’t been “vetted” by the FBI, as are all senior appointments. His finances haven’t been reviewed by anyone; they certainly haven’t been made public. He hasn’t even taken the oath of office, pledging his allegiance to the United States and the Constitution.

I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention Musk’s connection to Putin. According to the Wall Street Journal, Musk has been in regular contact with the Russian President —a close partner of China, which has supported Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Which raises the second huge national security concern at the heart of the Trump regime: Is Trump working for Putin? I don’t have to list all the evidence that prompts the question. That evidence also keeps mounting by the day.

Trump and Musk: Manchurian heads of the United States?

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Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/."

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