Why does Elon Musk still have a security clearance?

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Yesterday, The New York Times reported that people around Donald Trump are trying to figure out how to “quickly install loyalists in key positions without subjecting them to the risk of lengthy and intrusive FBI background checks.” Unsurprisingly, Trump’s people are concerned about whether they would pass a background check: As Atlantic Ocean contributor Peter Wehner wrote in September, the MAGA-dominated GOP was “a moral freak show, and freak shows attract freaks” – struggling to get security clearances. The first Trump administration was full of people (included his son-in-law Jared Kushner) who faced national security risks, none worse than Trump himself. A second term, in which Trump would be free from adult supervision, would be even worse.

Incidentally, chosen government leaders (even if they are convicted criminals) not go through a background check or actually have it done security clearances. Their access to classified information is granted on the basis of the trust placed in them by voters; the president, as CEO, has access at will to information produced by the military, the intelligence community, and other executive organizations.

However, for many other federal employees, security clearances are a necessary part of government service. Over the course of some 35 years, I have received relatively routine secret and top secret clearances while serving in a variety of jobs, including my work for a defense contractor, my time as an advisor to a U.S. Senator, and then in my position as a professor at New York University. a war college.

All of this, even at the lowest levels, means letting the government peek uncomfortably into your lives: your finances, your family, even your romantic relationships. Declarations are intended to reduce the risk of compromising important information. So the goal is to ensure that you are not emotionally unstable, or susceptible to being exploited by blackmail, or vulnerable to offers of money. (Want to get a really thorough investigation? See if you can get clearance for CNDWI, or “Critical Information on Nuclear Weapon Design.”)

You mess with this process at your own professional and legal risk. Don’t want to admit that you cheated on your wife? Shame. Finally, if you lie to her and then lie to the government about lie to her, what else are you going to lie about? Are you a little too loose at the poker table, or are you an occasional drug user, but you think neither is a problem? That’s not up to you to decide: it’s better to fess anyway. (And of course you have to promise not to do it again.)

Once you have a clearance, you will be given refresher training on how to keep it, and you will be required to re-examine yourself regularly. You also have to persevere training on ‘insider threat’in which you will learn how to recognize which of your colleagues may pose a safety risk – and how to report them. Red flags include not only signs of money problems, emotional problems or substance abuse, but also extreme political views or foreign loyalties.

Which brings me to Elon Musk, who runs SpaceX, America’s private space contractor and an organization supposedly full of permissioned people. (I emailed SpaceX to ask how many of its employees are allowed. I received no response.) Trump is surrounded by people who shouldn’t be allowed to open a checking account, let alone a set foot in a highly secretive environment. . But Musk has maintained this for years, despite ringing the bell of insider threat louder than a percussion maestro hammering a giant chime.

Leave out Musk smoking marijuana on Joe Rogan’s show in 2018, did a stunt with such a casual complacency that it would have cost almost everyone’s consent. (The FBI, including the US militarydon’t care about state laws about pot; they still require license holders to treat weed as a prohibited substance.) But sharing a joint with brother-king Rogan is nothing. Six years later, The Wall Street Journal reported much more about drug use:

The world’s richest person has used LSD, cocaine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, often at private parties around the world, where attendees sign non-disclosure agreements or give up their phones to enter, according to people who have witnessed his drug use and others with expertise. It.

A lawyer for Musk denied the report, but even the rumor this type of drug use would mean a five alarm fire for most high clearance holders. But hey, even if the report is true, it might just mean that Musk is just a patriotic, if somewhat reckless, pharmaceutical cowboy. It’s not like he’s negotiating with the Russians or anything, right?

Bad news. Musk (according to another bombshell story by The Wall Street Journal) has reportedly been in contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin several times.

The discussions, confirmed by several current and former US, European and Russian officials, cover personal topics, business and geopolitical tensions. At one point, Putin asked the billionaire to prevent his Starlink satellite internet service from being activated through Taiwan as a favor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, two people briefed on the request said.

Now it’s not necessarily a problem to have friends in Russia – I even had a few when I worked in government – but if you’re the guy next to me who has access to highly classified technical information, and you’re chomping at the bit the fat every now and then the president of RussiaI’m pretty sure I should at least give a warning about a possible insider threat.

So why hasn’t that kind of report happened? Apparently it is: Last week, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said said that Musk’s alleged contacts with Russia “need to be investigated.” But the US government seems to think Musk is too big to fail and too important to fire. Like one op-ed in Government official say it last winter:

In Musk’s case, it’s clear that the government has decided that the benefits of maintaining his eligibility are worth the risks. That’s easier if you create groundbreaking technology and help get people to Mars. It may be harder for you to argue this point if your name is Joe and your job is to get a truck to the Navy yard… That may seem like a double standard, but it is if you forget that there no universal standard exists.

If Trump is re-elected, Musk probably has nothing to worry about. But at what point does Musk’s erratic behavior — including allegations of drug use, allegations of some two years of regular conversations with Russia’s leader, and his obvious, intense devotion to one party and its candidate — become too much of a risk for any party? tolerate another US government?

It’s bad enough that Musk is careless with classified data or exposes himself to blackmail; it is even more disturbing to imagine him undermining American security because of poor judgment, political grudges, and ill-advised foreign associations. Remember, this is a man who had to pay a $20 million fine for talking about taking Tesla private and it had to be agree to have some of his social media posts checked by a Tesla lawyer – and that’s not even close to classified information.

As a former clearance holder, I also worry that giving in to Musk (and allowing future Trump appointees to bypass the clearance process) would send a poisonous signal to the conscientious officials who have protected America’s secrets. They have allowed the government to intrude deeply into their personal lives; they have worked to keep their finances in order; they have avoided the use of banned substances and the abuse of legal substances.

If only they were more important; they could get away with almost anything.

Related:

**There are four new stories from this The Atlantic Ocean:

Today’s news

There were two ballot boxes set on fire in Oregon and Washington. Hundreds of ballots were burned in Washington and police said they believe the fires were related.

The Philadelphia District Attorney Elon Musk sued and his America PAC for “running an illegal lottery” by promising to pay $1 million a day to registered voters who signed America PAC’s petition in defense of the First and Second Amendments.

The Pentagon announced that if North Korea joins the war in Ukraine, the US will not impose new restrictions on Ukrainian use of American-supplied weapons. In an updated estimate, the Pentagon said there were about 10,000 North Korean troops have entered Russia.

Shipments**

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Illustration by Joanne Imperio / The Atlantic Ocean. Source: Pamela Littky / Disney / Hulu.

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