Foreign Powers’ Billion-Dollar Stakes in Musk’s Empire: Uncovering Russia and China’s Strategic Investments in America’s Most Sensitive Defense Technologies
How sanctioned Russian oligarchs and Chinese state-backed financiers gained unprecedented access to SpaceX, Tesla, and Neuralink, raising alarming national security concerns.
The documents are damning. The evidence is indisputable. The national security implications are staggering.
Elon Musk—the man with unfettered access to America's most classified space and satellite programs—has taken billions from Russia and China while holding top-secret clearance and managing contracts worth over $15 billion with the Pentagon and intelligence agencies. This isn't speculation. This is documented fact, hidden in plain sight through a labyrinth of offshore trusts, special-purpose vehicles, and favorable government loans that have never been fully investigated.
While Washington debated phantom deals and Twitter controversies, the real story was unfolding in corporate filings, bank records, and intelligence reports that paint a picture of systematic foreign penetration of America's most sensitive defense infrastructure. The money trail leads directly to Beijing and Moscow, through shell companies and state-owned banks, into the companies building America's spy satellites and brain-computer interfaces.
The Russian Money: A $3.5 Billion Spy Operation Hidden in Delaware
The smoking gun emerged in January 2025, buried in Bloomberg's investigation of Heritage Trust—a Delaware-registered entity that Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov used to hold a 1% stake in SpaceX worth $210 million in 2017. By today's valuations, that stake would be worth $3.5 billion.
But this wasn't just any Russian oligarch. Kerimov is a sitting member of the Russian Federation Council, ranked 17th among Russia's wealthiest individuals with a net worth of $9.84 billion. He was sanctioned by the Trump administration in April 2018 "for aiding President Vladimir Putin's policies" and supporting "Russian actions that violated Ukraine's sovereignty".
The damning detail: Kerimov held his SpaceX stake through Heritage Trust for four years after U.S. sanctions were imposed. Citigroup, managing the trust, consulted with the Treasury Department and concluded there was "no requirement to block the trust". Only in June 2022—four years after sanctions—did Treasury finally freeze the $1 billion trust after investigators uncovered "a complex network of legal entities and proxies designed to conceal his interest in these assets".
