A Thursday report in the New York Times claiming Elon Musk would be briefed by the Pentagon on top-secret war plans against China is now getting pushback, including from President Trump. First, per the Guardian, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday denied Musk saw any such plans during an early Friday visit to the Pentagon. The DOGE leader was there to "talk about efficiencies, to talk about innovations," Hegseth said. "There was no war plans. There was no Chinese war plans. There was no secret plans. That's not what we were doing."
An official claiming knowledge of Musk's visit tells Politico that the meeting had been set to include the topic of China, but in a more general way regarding its threats to the region, with Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell calling the war plan story "egregious" and "fake." President Trump weighed in himself Friday on the reports, first with a Truth Social post that called the New York Times "failing" and "purposely inaccurate" and reporter Maggie Haberman "Maggot Hagerman." In his post, Trump deemed the story "absolutely ridiculous and false" and "probably libelous" and blamed CNN for helping to spread it.
He concluded with an apparent reference to a US agency that dissolved after World War II: "Elon is NOT BEING BRIEFED ON ANYTHING CHINA BY THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR!!!" Later Friday in the Oval Office, Trump praised Musk as a patriot but seemed to acknowledge that there should be some limits to his powers within the US government, per the AP. "Elon has businesses in China," Trump said, alluding to a conflict of interest. "And he would be susceptible, perhaps, to that."
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Musk himself was mum as he left the Pentagon after his visit, saying only on camera to CNN that he was prepared to do "anything that could be helpful," per the AP. He didn't answer questions on whether he'd seen any classified briefings on China. The Wall Street Journal backs up the original Times report, noting that Musk was indeed scheduled to sit in on a top-secret China briefing over a potential war, but that it was later changed to be an unclassified meeting. A source tells that paper that Musk had requested the original classified war-plan meeting. (More Elon Musk stories.)
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