Elon Musk is wearing multiple hats this election season, sparking questions about how his dual role as a tech leader and vocal surrogate for former President Trump could lead to conflicts of interest.
Musk, the owner of Tesla and SpaceX, holds government contracts worth billions of dollars with more than a dozen federal agencies.
While Trump has waffled on whether Musk would be a part of his second administration, the tech magnate has been floated to lead a panel focused on cutting government costs.
Former government officials and ethics experts suggest Musk’s leadership of a new “government efficiency commission,” which could oversee the agencies that grant government contracts and subsidies to Musk-owned companies, could risk the panel’s objectivity and fairness.
Regardless of whether Musk takes on an actual role in the administration, the “optics” of his alliance with Trump will raise questions for voters, according to John P. Pelissero, the director of government ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.
“A reasonable individual can look at a situation such as that of a very wealthy individual who has government contracts coming into the government where he would be put in a position where he could influence current and future contracts and regulations of his businesses,” he said.
A New York Times analysis published Monday found Tesla, Musk's electric vehicle company, and SpaceX, his aerospace firm, have inked $15.4 billion in government contracts over the past decade.
NASA and the Department of Defense have the largest contracts with SpaceX, equal to $11.8 billion and $3.6 billion, respectively, over the past 10 years, according to the analysis.
Space Force, the military branch formed under Trump, is a major supplier of these contracts. Just last week, it awarded SpaceX more than $733 million for a new batch of rocket launches.
NASA is an even bigger supplier of grants as it becomes increasingly reliant on SpaceX for government........