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Pentagon to brief Musk on plans for potential war with China

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Billionaire Elon Musk, U.S. President Donald Trump’s close ally, is due to be briefed today by the Pentagon on the U.S. military’s plan for any war that might break out with China, the New York Times reported on Thursday, citing U.S. officials.

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Access to the closely guarded military plan would mark an sharp expansion of Musk’s role as a Trump adviser who has spearheaded efforts to cut U.S. government spending.

It would also fuel questions about conflicts of interest for Musk, who as the head of both Tesla and SpaceX has business interests in China and with the Pentagon.

The White House has previously said Musk will recuse himself if any conflicts of interest arise between his business dealings and his role in cutting federal government spending.

The briefing for the China war plan has about 20 to 30 slides that lay out how the United States would fight such a conflict, the New York Times reported.

The Pentagon confirmed that Musk will be visiting today but did not share further details.

“The Defense Department is excited to welcome Elon Musk to the Pentagon on Friday. He was invited by Secretary (Pete) Hegseth and is just visiting,” a Pentagon spokesperson said.

But another official Pentagon account on X, known as DoD Rapid Response, said: “The NYT is a propaganda machine that desperately needs to clickbait people into reading their FAKE news articles.”

A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the briefing for Musk would be attended by senior U.S. military officials in the Pentagon and would be an overview on a number of different topics, including China.

After Baltimore collapse, reviews urged for dozens of US bridges

(NYT) — Maryland had not conducted a recommended risk assessment on the Baltimore bridge that collapsed after it was struck by a ship last March, the National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday.

In a news briefing, the board’s chair, Jennifer L. Homendy, said if Maryland officials had conducted the assessment, they would have found that the bridge, the Francis Scott Key, was at serious risk of collapse from a strike by a large ship.

Six workers on a crew doing overnight repairs to the bridge roadway died in the collapse, which paralyzed one of the nation’s busiest ports for days.

Dozens of other bridges across the country, including landmarks like the Brooklyn Bridge, have not had the same recommended assessment, and thus carry an unknown level of risk, Homendy said.

“Frankly, we’ve been sounding the alarm on this since the tragedy occurred,” she said at the news conference in Washington.

Investigators with the board found that dozens of bridges in 19 states had not been assessed for risk of collapse, even though the volume of vessel traffic passing underneath these bridges suggested a strike by a ship was a distinct possibility. The NTSB has contacted the operators of these bridges — in most cases, state transportation departments and regional port authorities — to urge them to conduct assessments and, if needed, come up with measures to reduce the risk of collapse.

The report comes almost exactly a year after the Dali, a 984-foot-long container ship, crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge.