Uptick in Tesla vandalism amid DOGE backlash
Elon Musk’s Teslas are being vandalized at a higher rate as he faces backlash for federal cuts and firings.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed that Elon Musk visited the Pentagon on Friday, even as the Trump administration vigorously denied a New York Times report that Musk was briefed on the military’s top-secret contingency plan for war with China.
Musk was set to receive a briefing on the military’s most classified plans on how a hypothetical conflict with China would play out, according to the report, published Thursday evening.
It prompted denials from the Trump administration as Musk threatened to hunt down and prosecute the leakers behind it. “I look forward to the prosecutions of those at the Pentagon who are leaking maliciously false information to NYT,” Musk said on X. “They will be found.”
“The fake news delivers again — this is NOT a meeting about ‘top secret China war plans.’ It’s an informal meeting about innovation, efficiencies & smarter production,” Hegseth posted to X. The Defense Department declined additional comment.
President Donald Trump told reporters at the Friday briefing that Musk wouldn’t be shown the plans, alluding to possible conflicts of interests created by his business dealings with China.
“I don’t want to show that to anybody, but certainly you wouldn’t show it to a businessman,” he said.
“Elon has businesses in China, and he would be susceptible, perhaps, to that,” Trump added.
Musk’s business deals with China draw concern
Musk’s senior, yet hazily defined role in the Trump administration has sparked concern over his possible conflict of interest issues. Even as he has taken a leading role in the widespread sacking of government employees and the shut down of entire federal agencies in the name of rooting out waste and inefficiency, Musk still holds the reins of his companies, which have received billions of dollars in government contracts.
Musk also has significant business interests in China, many of which run through Tesla, his electric car company. With the opening of Tesla’s Shanghai-based “gigafactory” in 2019, he became the first foreigner to run an independent car manufacturing plant in the country. Last month, he opened a second energy storage plant nearby to produce batteries for the cars.
Companies seeking to set up shop in China are normally made to sign onto a joint venture with a Chinese firm, a way for China to make sure its own companies are dominating its internal market – Tesla has been exempted from that requirement.
Musk “is influenceable by virtue of this kind of preferential treatment in China, and by virtue of the fact that so much of his businesses depend on China as a market,” said Lindsay Gorman, managing director and senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund’s Technology Program. The outsized power Xi wields over Chinese markets means he could, on a whim, expel Musk’s businesses from China, or hold that possibility over his head as a threat, she added.
At a meeting when Musk visited the country in April, Chinese premier Li Qiang called Tesla a “successful model” for U.S.-China collaboration, CNN reported.
Chinese officials are also weighing the role that Musk play in arranging a summit between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in June, according to Ali Wyne, senior research and advocacy advisor for U.S.-China relations at the International Crisis Group. The “birthday summit” – first reported by the Wall Street Journal – could take place in June, when both leaders have birthdays.
“Musk’s opposition to decoupling between the United States and China carries outsized weight within the administration” because of his wealth, influence with Trump and ownership of X, Wyne said.
After Musk threw his weight against a government spending bill in December, Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro accused him of opposing it over a provision it contained that would screen U.S. tech investments in China – potentially cramping Musk’s businesses.
“Musk is, in some ways, the poster child for U.S.-China intertwinement to technology,” Gorman added. “If he has a say in those conversations, then we could see a real about-face when it comes to U.S.-China policy.
Musk’s conflict of interest issues also come into sharp focus at the Defense Department where his company SpaceX holds millions of dollars in defense contracts, the scope of which is unknown because many are classified.
Pentagon meeting also concerns DOGE, Hegseth says
According to Hegseth, Musk’s meeting at the Pentagon was also related to the efforts of his Department of Government Efficiency, which has also ordered the firings of thousands of Defense Department employees.
This week, a senior Defense official speaking on condition of anonymity told reporters that the department approved almost 21,000 acceptances of Musk’s “fork in the road” email, which offered federal workers eight months of back pay if they agreed to resign by Feb. 6.
The department was also in the process of laying off 5,400 probationary workers, according to the official, but was stopped in its tracks by a federal lawsuit. The Trump administration has moved to reinstate more than 24,000 workers after a pair of judges ordered last week that the Trump administration’s firings of tens of thousands of employees across six agencies, including the Defense Department, were illegal.
The department will fully comply with every applicable court order, the official said.
On Wednesday, Hegseth publicly touted the termination of around $580 million in government contracts for a human resources software program, grants for diversity, equity and inclusion-related research and “analysis products,” according to a memo he signed. He ordered the department last month to find $50 billion in possible cuts from “low-impact and low-priority” to redirect towards Trump’s priorities.
The Defense Department is the largest of Washington’s agencies, with an annual budget of around $850 billion, including $456 billion in contracts, according to the Government Accountability Office.
