(Bloomberg) -- Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has told Democratic senators that he shares their security concerns over Elon Musk’s reported contacts with Russian leaders but added that the Pentagon has adequate competition in its space programs to prevent over-reliance on the billionaire’s SpaceX.
“The Air Force takes security matters very seriously, and I share your concerns,” Kendall wrote Senator Jeanne Shaheen and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed in a Dec. 13 letter obtained by Bloomberg News.
Kendall didn’t elaborate on his worries, and the bulk of his letter emphasized the competition for satellite launch contracts awarded by the Space Force and the Space Development Agency, which is managing the accelerated launch of hundreds of surveillance and communications satellites into low-earth orbit.
The senators wrote Kendall last month expressing alarm over an October Wall Street Journal report that Musk “had multiple, high level conversations with Russian President Vladmir Putin as early as 2022 and sustained contact with high-level Russian officials, including Putin’s deputy chief of staff, Sergei Kiriyenko.”
Russia has denied the conversations took place. Musk ridiculed the Journal story without denying it. He used two laughing emojis in response to a tweet that said, “Welp, the Swamp’s ‘Trump is Hitler’ didn’t work. Might as well give ‘Elon is a Russian agent’ a whirl.”
Musk’s role as co-leader of President-elect Donald Trump’s advisory Department of Government Efficiency has brought new attention to his company as a major Pentagon contractor and to his blunt assessments on US defense spending. He has said that new technology, including advanced drones, will make traditional military systems obsolete, and he has called the builders of the F-35 warplane, America’s costliest weapons system, “idiots.”
Kendall said that SpaceX is cleared to handle Top Secret-level material but the service “does not comment on the status of an individual’s security clearance.”
Musk has possessed a basic “Top Secret” clearance but not higher ones allowing him access to “Special Access Programs” or “Sensitive Compartmented Information,” according to news accounts and a US official with knowledge of the situation.
Day-to-day operations of SpaceX are run by company president Gwynne Shotwell, who deals directly with Pentagon and Space Force officials.
The senators wrote that “these reportedly frequent conversations between a well known US adversary and Mr. Musk, a beneficiary of billions of dollars of US government funding, bring into question the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community’s use of SpaceX’s satellites for our most sensitive military operations.”
The purported calls also underscored “the importance of encouraging competition in the commercial space industry to avoid over-reliance on a single provider for national security purposes,” they wrote.
The New York Times has cited people it didn’t identify saying that concerns about SpaceX reporting practices regarding classified information — and particularly about Musk, the company’s chief executive officer — have triggered at least three federal reviews, including one by the Air Force.
Kendall wrote that the Pentagon “has intentionally diversified its contracts to maximize competition” for Space Force missions and that the Space Development Agency alone is planning to launch as many as 450 satellites. It’s already awarded contracts to SpaceX, L3Harris Technologies Inc., Lockheed Martin Corp. and York Space Systems. For its next two generations of satellites, the Space Development Agency is harnessing others, such as Northrop Grumman Corp., Rocket Lab, Sierra Space, Tyvak International and Millennium Space Systems, Kendall wrote.
(Updates in eighth and last graphs with Musk clearance status and space launch industrial base)
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