Regular secret contacts between Elon Musk and Vladimir Putin since 2022 raise security concerns

Regular secret contacts between Elon Musk and Vladimir Putin since 2022 raise security concerns

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a linchpin of U.S. space efforts, has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022.

The discussions, confirmed by several current and former U.S., European and Russian officials, touch on personal topics, business and geopolitical tensions.

At one point, Putin asked the billionaire to avoid activating his Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, said two people briefed on the request.

Musk has emerged this year as a crucial supporter of Donald Trump’s election campaign, and could find a role in a Trump administration should he win. While the U.S. and its allies have isolated Putin in recent years, Musk’s dialogue could signal re-engagement with the Russian leader, and reinforce Trump’s expressed desire to cut a deal over major fault lines such as the war in Ukraine.

At the same time, the contacts also raise potential national-security concerns among some in the current administration, given Putin’s role as one of America’s chief adversaries.

Musk has forged deep business ties with U.S. military and intelligence agencies, giving him unique visibility into some of America’s most sensitive space programs. SpaceX, which operates the Starlink service, won a $1.8 billion classified contract in 2021 and is the primary rocket launcher for the Pentagon and NASA. Musk has a security clearance that allows him access to certain classified information.

Knowledge of Musk’s Kremlin contacts appears to be a closely held secret in government. Several White House officials said they weren’t aware of them. The topic is highly sensitive, given Musk’s increasing involvement in the Trump campaign and the approaching U.S. presidential election, less than two weeks away.

Musk didn’t respond to requests for comment. The billionaire has called criticism from some quarters that he has become an apologist for Putin “absurd” and has said his companies “have done more to undermine Russia than anything.”

During his campaign swing through Pennsylvania last week, Musk talked about the importance of government transparency and noted his own access to government secrets. “I do have a top-secret clearance, but, I’d have to say, like most of the stuff that I’m aware of…the reason they keep it top secret is because it’s so boring.”

A Pentagon spokesman said: “We do not comment on any individual’s security clearance, review or status, or about personnel security policy matters in the context of reports about any individual’s actions.”

One person aware of the conversations said the government faces a dilemma because it is so dependent on the billionaire’s technologies. SpaceX launches vital national security satellites into orbit and is the company NASA relies on to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

“They don’t love it,” the person said, referring to the Musk-Putin contacts. The person, however, said no alerts have been raised by the administration over possible security breaches by Musk.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the only communication the Kremlin has had with Musk was over one telephone call in which he and Putin discussed “space as well as current and future technologies.”

Apart from that, he said neither Putin nor Kremlin officials were holding regular conversations with Musk.

A spokeswoman for Trump’s campaign called Musk “a once-in-a-generation industry leader” and said “our broken federal bureaucracy could certainly benefit from his ideas and efficiency.”

“As for Putin,” the spokeswoman continued, “there’s only one candidate in the race that he did not invade another country under, and it’s President Trump. President Trump has long said that he will re-establish his peace through strength foreign policy to deter Russia’s aggression and end the war in Ukraine.”

Musk has long had a fascination with Russia and its space and rocket programs. Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk said the businessman traveled to Moscow in 2002 to negotiate the purchase of rockets for his fledgling space program, but passed out during a vodka-heavy lunch. The sale ultimately failed, though his Russian hosts gave Musk a bottle of vodka with his likeness superimposed on a drawing of Mars.

The billionaire’s conversations with Putin and Kremlin officials highlight his increasing inclination to stretch beyond business and into geopolitics. He has met several times and talked business with Javier Milei of Argentina, as well as former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, whom he defended in an acrimonious online debate.

Putin is on a different order of magnitude. The Russian leader has created an authoritarian system that oversees fraudulent elections and the assassinations of political opponents, for which President Biden called him a “killer.” With keys to one of the world’s most powerful nuclear arsenals and growing territorial ambitions in Europe, Putin has become the U.S.’s chief antagonist.

Labeling him a “despot,” the Treasury Department took the unusual step in 2022 of blacklisting him for invading Ukraine, putting him in the same company with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus. [Continue reading…]

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