The Trump-Musk Feud Revealed Two Massive National Security Concerns

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The spectacular falling out last week between U.S. President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, the billionaire who became one of his closest aides, put the spotlight on two dangerous developments affecting U.S. national security.
The breakup provided Schadenfreude to the two men's critics and delivered entertainment value to social media audiences across the world. But it also revealed crucial vulnerabilities deriving from the ways in which important elements of U.S. military and intelligence operations, among others, have been personalized in both men's hands. While this is particularly alarming for the U.S., its repercussions extend beyond U.S. borders, to U.S. allies and others.
When the world's most powerful man and the world's wealthiest entrepreneur started lobbing verbal missiles at each other from the social media platforms they each own, the crossfire included threats with serious geopolitical consequences. It may have looked like a high-profile schoolyard scuffle, but the two people involved are so powerful that the clash was far more consequential.
It all started when Musk blasted Trump's massive budget bill currently making its way through Congress. If approved, the legislation would add trillions of dollars to the national debt. That was anathema to Musk, whose ostensible role in the Trump administration was to strengthen the government's finances. He initially vowed to slash $2 trillion in spending, later lowering his sights to $1 trillion. Ultimately the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, cut less than $200 million, and by some estimates it produced more costs than savings. Still, Musk lambasted the budget bill, and when Trump criticized him for that, it unleashed the furies, with Musk going as far as suggesting Trump should be impeached.
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Among the many threats the erstwhile allies traded was a warning Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that '[t]he easiest way to save money … is to terminate Elon's Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,' to which Musk responded on his X platform that his SpaceX company 'will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately.' The U.S. depends on the Dragon to send astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station, making it no small threat.
Focusing on just these two posts, we can see the danger.
First, there's the deeply alarming fact that Trump openly threatened to use the power of the presidency to exact personal revenge. We've seen this many times already since he returned to the presidency less than five months ago, but it's an undemocratic, corrupt practice that may be routine in dictatorships but should be unacceptable in solid democracies.
Over the weekend, Trump once again threatened to use the power of his office against Musk, warning of 'very serious consequences' if Musk opted to fund Democratic candidates in next year's midterm congressional elections. In other words, he would use his office for political retribution, another affront against democracy. In addition to canceling contracts, as he suggested on Thursday when the war of words started, Trump could also unleash regulators on Musk's firms.
As president, Trump's duty is to make decisions in the national interest. If the contracts made sense before the falling out, they should still make sense after it.
But the contracts were actually deeply troubling before, and the dispute and threats highlight just how dangerously dependent the U.S., as well as other countries, have become on companies controlled by a single individual, and a volatile one with a troubling ideology at that.
Musk retracted his threats to decommission Dragon, but the mere mention of the possibility alarmed NASA and shocked the space travel community. As mentioned, without Dragon, the U.S. has no way to send its astronauts and supplies to the ISS for now, as an alternative built by Boeing proved unreliable.
But the threat to shut down Dragon is minimal compared to other off switches on Musk's console.
The Pentagon and the entire U.S. security apparatus have become perilously dependent on Musk's companies. In addition to its contracts for the ISS, SpaceX carries out the overwhelming majority of all satellite launches around the globe, including those of military and intelligence satellites. Then there's the SpaceX subsidiary Starlink and its military version Starshield, both of which have become indispensable communications platforms, and not only for the United States.
In 2022, when Russia launched its all-out invasion of Ukraine, Musk provided Starlink equipment to Kyiv, allowing Ukrainian troops to access the internet and communicate with each other and their commanders. A large part of the cost of that arrangement is borne by the Pentagon. The dangers of relying on Musk's company for such a fundamental function in the midst of an active war was already becoming evident when Musk started echoing Russian talking points. Then, a recently published biography of Musk claimed that when the Ukrainians asked for Starlink support in 2022 as part of an operation in Russian-occupied Crimea, Musk refused, saying that attacking the illegally annexed territory was 'going too far.'
The revelation raised red flags at the Pentagon, where officials started speaking about the risk represented by Musk's ability to simply deny access to his products in the midst of a conflict.
And yet, despite urgent calls by military officials for competitors to provide alternatives, few viable options have emerged. The Boeing space vehicle for taking astronauts to the ISS was a disappointment, and Eutelsat, a Franco-British competitor of Starlink, has launched only 600 satellites compared to Musk's 7,000, which represents the majority of the satellites orbiting Earth. What's more, Eutelsat's user equipment is more cumbersome.
This March, while he was still working closely with Trump, Musk posted that 'Ukraine will inevitably lose' the war and noted ominously that Kyiv's 'entire front line would collapse' if he turned Starlink off. That's a not-so-veiled warning about Musk's power to cause havoc not only for Ukraine but for all of Starlink's users, of which the U.S. government is the biggest.
The U.S. has a reported $22 billion in federal contracts with SpaceX. Musk already controls the launching of spy satellites as well as much of the communications systems the U.S. uses and would use should it go to war. If Trump launches construction of his promised missile shield, the Golden Dome, Musk would be a major player.
This risky dependence on Musk is not the reason Trump has threatened to abuse his presidency against his former friend. That is all about revenge. But the U.S. should do everything in its power to ensure it can carry out its policies and objectives without being at the mercy of any single individual or company, even if that was not something Trump was concerned about before he had a reason to punish Musk.
The acrimonious breakup, while entertaining, has also delivered two important warnings. It showed that Trump's use of his office for personal vendettas has become a regular, openly deployed practice in this presidency. And it has provided an urgent reminder that the U.S. and other countries have become dangerously dependent on the unpredictable and untrustworthy Musk.
Frida Ghitis is WPR's senior columnist and a contributor to CNN and The Washington Post. Her WPR column appears every Thursday. You can follow her on Twitter and Threads at @fridaghitis.
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