WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump dismissed media reports on March 21 regarding a planned briefing for Tesla CEO Elon Musk about a potential military conflict with China, saying he won’t show such intelligence to the businessman or anyone else.
Musk attended a morning meeting at the Pentagon that went for about 80 minutes. The New York Times cited two anonymous U.S. officials who said Musk would receive a classified briefing with top military officials about the U.S. plan for any war with China, which both Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Musk have denied.
Trump on Friday called the report a “fake story.”
“I don’t want to show it to anybody,” he told reporters at the Oval Office. “We don’t want to have a potential war with China, but I can tell you, if we did, we’re very well equipped to handle it.
“But I don’t want to show that to anybody, but certainly, you wouldn’t show it to a businessman who is helping us so much.
“Elon has businesses in China, and he would be susceptible, perhaps, to that.”
Trump said that he immediately called his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and Hegseth upon seeing the news report to check if there was any truth to the story, and the two described it as “ridiculous.”
“Elon was over there today to address costs,” Trump said, pointing to Musk’s role in leading the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
Hegseth, standing next to Trump, echoed the president. He said the reports were meant to “undermine whatever relationship the Pentagon has with Elon Musk,” who he called a “patriot” and “innovator.”
“Elon Musk provides a lot of capabilities our government and our military rely on, and I’m grateful for that,” the defense secretary told reporters in the joint briefing.
“We welcomed him today to the Pentagon to talk about DOGE, to talk about efficiencies, to talk about innovations. It was a great informal conversation.
“There was no war plans, there was no Chinese war plans. There was no secret plans.”
Musk’s business presence in China has drawn scrutiny amid his U.S. government cost-cutting initiative, which has brought sweeping changes to the federal government.
Musk arrived in a motorcade for the Friday Pentagon meeting. He was joking with Hegseth at departure and said the talks went well.
He said on his social media platform X in the early hours of Friday that he looked forward to “prosecutions of those at the Pentagon who are leaking maliciously false information” to The New York Times, adding: “They will be found.”
