Plans to brief billionaire businessman were scrapped over ethics concerns and confusion over who ordered it
Top Pentagon aides were developing a briefing for Elon Musk last month on more than two dozen highly classified weapons programs for fighting China until the department’s top lawyer intervened, people familiar with the plan said.
Acting Pentagon General Counsel Charles Young learned that a memo being drafted to show Musk contained information on 29 China-related “special access programs,” a designation for the military’s most sensitive secrets, the people said.
Young contacted a senior aide to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was traveling in Japan, to ask if the secretary had approved revealing China plans to the billionaire businessman. “The memo is on hold until you guys can get back and discuss,” Young wrote in a text reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
What the fuck are people doing there? By what measure could Elon Musk’s non-role at Doge have any relationship to our intel on Chinese weapons systems? And how could there ever be confusion as to who ordered a classified briefing? That’s so far from how classification is supposed to work it doesn’t make sense how it ever even got beyond a simple rejection.
It was intentional until it leaked. They’d rather look even more incompetent with classified info than just admit whatever the real reason is or make up something fake to cover.
Looking even more incompetent is the best option they thought. That should be extremely worrying. Having yet another classified information scandal is the best option.
Every time something major breaks and it seems like everyone involved is extremely incompetent, this is what I assume.
They knew exactly what they were doing. It was intentional from start to finish. They just don’t want to admit that, because then they would have to admit the real reason, and that thought terrifies them.
I’m talking about the actual people making the reports, not the political appointees. They should have never let things bumble on being uncertain about who ordered the presentation. The systems and bureaucracy of the government have just completely failed to maintain processes and standards.