NASA administrator Bill Nelson called for an investigation into a report that Elon Musk has been having secret conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin while dually involved in classified intelligence contracts with the U.S. government.
“I don’t know that that story is true. I think it should be investigated,” Nelson said Friday at a Semafor conference in Washington. “If the story’s true, that there have been multiple conversations between Elon Musk and the president of Russia, then I think that would be concerning, particularly for NASA, the Department of Defense, for some of the intelligence agencies.”
The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Musk and Putin have had regular contact since 2022. Their conversations, which were reportedly backed up by several current and former U.S., European and Russian officials, allegedly included a request to Musk to avoid putting his Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
In addition to U.S. intelligence and military projects, NASA has turned to relying on Musk’s company SpaceX for many of its space launches and long-term future projects.
Musk, who has recently taken on an elevated role in former President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, has not commented on the Journal’s report. Representatives with his social media company X and SpaceX did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s requests for comment Friday.
