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It’s been a wild few days for tech billionaire Elon Musk. On Wednesday, the Justice Department warned him that his $1 million giveaway to swing state voters might be illegal. And then on Thursday The Wall Street Journal broke the news that Musk has been having private conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin for years.
According to the Journal, Musk has been chatting with Putin since 2022. The Journal based its reporting on conversations with officials in the U.S., Europe, and Russia. It’s been an open secret in powerful political circles for years.
What do the world’s richest man and a brutal authoritarian have to discuss? Quite a bit as it turns out. They’ve chatted about business, personal issues, and the state of the world. Musk is an important government contractor with a security clearance and hands in a lot of different companies.
SpaceX alone has billions in government contracts and some of them are so sensitive that the very nature of them is classified, including one issued in 2021 for $1.8 billion. Musk’s Starlink has proved an incredible battleground tool. The satellite internet service has been instrumental in keeping lines of communication open in the war in Ukraine.
Musk has donated more than a thousand Starlink terminals to Kyiv and the Pentagon has footed the bill for hundreds more. But they don’t always work like they should. Last year, Ukrainian drone operators complained that the signal to drones above the Black Sea cut out as they approached Russian-occupied Crimea.
Starlink has repeatedly said that its terminals are not meant to be weapons of war and should be reserved for civilian use. But the terminals keep popping up in Russia as well, arriving there from other countries. And Moscow has been using them for war. When Starlink catches the rogue terminals, it cuts them off.
According to the Journal, Musk and Putin have chatted about Starlink during their various private conversations. Putin asked Musk to not activate Starlink terminals in Taiwan. He wanted the billionaire to do it as a personal favor to Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Again, Musk has a security clearance. He’s an important military contractor who the Pentagon relies on to efficiently conduct the business of war. He’s also a reckless fool who has involved himself with a foreign dictator and injected himself into domestic politics. The man is a national security risk, full stop.
And though the Pentagon has investigated him and reprimanded him over his public and rumored drug use, it has yet to pull his security clearance. When Semafor asked NASA Administrator Bill Nelson about the story on Friday, Nelson said he’d mostly dealt with people other than Musk and that SpaceX had been “phenomenally successful.” “I don’t know if that story is true. I think it should be investigated.” Nelson added. “If it’s true there have been multiple conversations with Elon Musk and the president of Russia, then that would be concerning, particularly for NASA and the Department of Defense, for some of the intelligence agencies.
Asked about the WSJ report on Elon Musk's conversations with Putin, @SenBillNelson tells @burgessev:
"[SpaceX] have been phenomenally successful … I don't know that that story is true. I think it should be investigated. If the story is true … that would be concerning." pic.twitter.com/5Mlo2AEDNx
— Semafor (@semafor) October 25, 2024
None of it may matter if Donald Trump becomes the next president of the United States. And Musk is doing his damndest to make that happen.
The billionaire has been spending money on the Trump campaign like it’s going out of style. He’s never been politically neutral, but he’s also never been this personally involved in a candidate. Through his America PAC and other offerings, Musk has shoveled an estimated $118.5 million into the campaign since the summer.
Musk is also offering $47 to registered swing state voters willing to sign a petition saying they’re in support of free speech and the Second Amendment. Signing the petition also enters people into a lottery with the chance to win $1 million. Musk has promised he’ll give away a huge cash prize to one petition signer every day until the election as he attempts to make himself into the Mr Beast of politics.
If that sounds weird and illegal, you’re not the only one who thinks that. Only petition signers in the states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and North Carolina are eligible for the payday. And though the petition and its rules aren’t explicit about who those voters should cast a ballot for, it’s hard to imagine anyone signing doesn’t know who Musk would prefer.
After Musk announced the sweepstakes, the Justice Department sent a letter of warning to his America PAC. Justice told the PAC that the lottery may violate federal election law. But Musk is still giving away prizes. Last night, just before 11 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, the America PAC published a picture of Jason Holland of Michigan holding a large novelty check. Holland grinned in his photo above a link directing people to sign the petition.
