Elon Musk’s Future May Depend on the Midterms

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There’s no mystery why Elon Musk has spent an eye-popping $442 million to help Republicans win next week’s midterms—way more than the already-staggering $290 million that he gave GOP campaigns in 2024, including Donald Trump’s bid to regain the White House.

Musk’s motives are personal. If the Democrats win back control of the House, they will surely launch investigations into the Trump administration’s many misdeeds and malfeasances. They will very likely include Musk’s multibillion-dollar contracts with military, space, and intelligence agencies—and how their security is affected by Musk’s eccentric behavior and his companies’ business ties with China and Russia.

Toward the end of the Biden administration, the New York Times reported that Musk and his companies were under at least three federal investigations—by the Air Force, NASA’s inspector general, and the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security.

After Trump’s inauguration and the installation of Musk to head an intensive budget-cutting agency, all of these probes were shut down. Some of the officials in charge of the investigations were fired; others saw their departments slashed or terminated.

While the probes were still in process and some of their tentative findings were leaked to the press, members of Congress—mainly Democrats but also a few Republicans—criticized Musk’s violation of federal protocols and questioned whether his management of top secret programs posed a security risk.

They are likely to revive these issues if the Democrats win back control of the House, with the subpoena powers of its investigative committees—or at least Musk has every reason to fear that they will.

As the chief executive of SpaceX, Musk holds a “top secret” security clearance, which requires him to report to the U.S. government on all meetings or conversations he has with foreign officials. Yet he has had several with Russian and Chinese officials—including Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping—without notifying anyone before or after, according to anonymous sources close to Musk who spoke to the Times in 2024.

These are not small matters. The Times story revealed that the Air Force turned down Musk’s request for a still higher-level clearance, giving him access to extremely classified special access programs, precisely because of concerns related to his contact with foreigners and his refusal to explain what they talked about.

The Air Force officers were also concerned about Musk’s foreign investments. Gigafactory Shanghai, Tesla’s operational center in China, accounts for over half of the car company’s global deliveries. In 2019, Musk also received a $1.4 billion loan from Chinese state-controlled banks. (He paid back the loan ahead of schedule.)

Officers, intelligence agents, and some of Musk’s own employees have wondered whether the head of a major U.S. defense contractor, who holds a high-level security clearance, should depend for so much of his business—and his personal wealth—on China.

If the Democrats win back a majority of the House, the chairs of a few House committees can be counted on to wonder as well.

Partly through his relationship with Trump, partly through technological prowess, Musk has positioned himself in a place where his companies—especially SpaceX—are invaluable: at least for a while, irreplaceable. But Musk himself is not irreplaceable. In fact, if any of those three federal probes had proceeded, and if they’d found Musk guilty of violating security regulations, he might have had his top secret clearance revoked—and without that clearance, he could no longer have the access to information that a chief executive would need. In short, he would lose his executive perks.

This is a crucial election for millions of Americans, whether they realize it or not. Elon Musk understands his own stake in the outcome very deeply. It amounts to billions of dollars in his personal wealth and his continued ability to shape government policy, which could boost his fortunes by tens of billions more. That’s why he’s spending hundreds of millions of dollars. If the Democrats take back Congress, they should also start thinking seriously about whether anyone should be allowed to do this.