Two senior Democratic senators are calling for the Pentagon and law enforcement agencies to investigate reports of Elon Musk’s communications with Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin.
Jeanne Shaheen, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Jack Reed, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, expressed national security concerns in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Pentagon’s inspector general.
In the letter seen by Reuters on Nov. 15, the senators argued that Musk’s involvement in SpaceX programs should be reviewed for potential debarment and exclusion due to these alleged contacts. Debarment would bar him from certain contracts and privileges.
“These relationships between a well-known U.S. adversary and Mr. Musk, a beneficiary of billions of dollars in U.S. government funding, pose serious questions regarding Mr. Musk’s reliability as a government contractor and a clearance holder,” the senators wrote.
The letter followed reports of Musk’s conversations with Russian officials as recently as October.
The Wall Street Journal’s recent report cited U.S., European, and Russian officials who claimed Musk had several conversations with Putin and Russian Deputy Chief of Staff Sergei Kiriyenko. Shaheen and Reed found it “deeply concerning” that Musk reportedly spoke with Kiriyenko, who faced charges from the U.S. Justice Department this year for leading an AI-based propaganda campaign promoting Russian interests ahead of the U.S. presidential election.
Musk’s communications with Russian figures first drew attention in 2022 when Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, said Musk had spoken to Putin about the Ukraine war and the Kremlin’s “red line” regarding nuclear weapon use. Musk denied Bremmer’s claim, saying he had only discussed space-related topics with Putin 18 months prior.
Musk oversees SpaceX, which holds billions of dollars in U.S. government contracts with the Pentagon and NASA, and has a $1.8-billion intelligence community contract to develop a spy satellite network. Musk has claimed he possesses a U.S. security clearance, allowing him access to classified information.
“Communications between Russian government officials and any individual with a security clearance have the potential to put our security at risk,” Shaheen and Reed emphasized in their letter.
The U.S.-Russia space rivalry has intensified since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022. Pentagon officials have condemned suspicious maneuvers by Russian satellites and accused Russia of working on a space-based nuclear weapon capable of disabling satellite networks.
SpaceX’s dominance in the U.S. space sector, with its Starlink network of almost 7,000 satellites, plays a critical role in U.S. military communications, including those of Ukraine’s armed forces on the battlefield.
Oleg Sukhov