The D Brief: a conversation between Musk and Putin; Trump’s record; Satellite assistance to the Houthis; Slowdown of submarine production; And a little more.

Rich and despot: Elon Musk has been secretly communicating with Russian leader Vladimir Putin for the past two years, in The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday (gift link). Private talks between the world’s richest man and the world’s most nuclear-armed autocrat are reportedly “raising potential national security concerns” among U.S. officials, as topics of conversation included denying Taiwan access to Musk’s Starlink service (“as a favor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping.”) and Musk blocked Ukraine from using certain Starlink terminals to protect against a full-scale Russian invasion.

We will remind that “Musk established deep business ties with the US military and intelligence services, giving him unique visibility into some of America’s most sensitive space programs.” magazine notes For example, “SpaceX, which operates the Starlink service, won a secret $1.8 billion contract in 2021 and is the primary launch vehicle for the Pentagon and NASA.”

Mask’s duplicity does not end there: “Throughout the first months of the year, Musk said he would refrain from endorsing any presidential candidate, while holding private conversations discussing how he might get Trump elected.” — magazine reminds readers. But that changed in July, when Musk endorsed Trump and began campaigning on his behalf, an effort that has since turned into possibly an illegal scheme handing out millions of dollars to encourage citizens in battleground states to vote if they sign a pledge to support Trump.

Trump also allegedly maintained contacts with the Russian despot. Citing Trump aide, journalist Bob Woodward reported A new book says there have been “perhaps as many as seven” conversations between Trump and Putin since the former left office in 2021.

To learn more about Musk’s contract with the federal government and its implications, to see it New York Times report since the beginning of the week.

Musk has also done Trump’s job in the online information space this year. That includes spreading misleading claims about immigration and conspiracies about alleged election fraud, which are his top tweets, according to analysis Musk’s writing on X was published Thursday by Bloomberg.

The analysis spans over 13 years of Musk’s posts, which changed markedly with the start of the 2024 election season. And as Nov. 5 approached, “Musk’s efforts to popularize his views on the vote and migrants became relentless — and more effective in terms of engagement,” Bloomberg reports.

Why it matters: “In Musk, the former president has found a powerful ally willing to whitewash the false conspiracy theory for the masses, Helping lay the groundwork for Trump to challenge the election results again next month if they don’t go in his favor, according to Melissa Ryan, founder of CARD Strategies, a consulting firm that researches disinformation.”

But perhaps most importantly, “as X’s most followed account, Musk is the single most important influencer on the platform,” and “He’s still the most-read person on the site today,” according to Bloomberg. Read the full analysis (gift link), here.

Reminder: If re-elected, Donald Trump says he will order mass deportations, use soldiers against citizens, persecute your enemies, abandon your allies, and play disaster politics.” New York Times The editors write in a multimedia presentation published on Friday.

“Trust him” warns the editors. “The record shows that Mr. Trump often pursues his stated goals, no matter how clearly they lack legal or moral basis,” they wrote. Unlike his first term, “Trump has learned from this experience to surround himself with suitors who will in return obey his wishes and implement his words and ideas, even if they conflict with the facts, the public interest or the Constitution.”

Using his own words, the board encourages readers to “take the painful step of imagining America as its plans and promises about to come true, to imagine the consequences for our culture, our economy, our security, our shared commitment to the rule of law.” Dive In (Gift Link), here.

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Welcome to Friday’s edition of The D Briefbrought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. Share your newsletter tips, reading recommendations or feedback here. And if you haven’t subscribed yet, you can do so here. On this day in 1945 the Japanese ended 50 years of control over Taiwan.

It is expected that North Korean soldiers will start arriving in the “combat zones” of Ukraine already on Sunday. This was announced by the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi on Friday with reference to intelligence representatives. “North Korea’s actual engagement in hostilities should not be met with indifference or a vague comment, but with tangible pressure on both Moscow and Pyongyang to abide by the UN Charter and hold them accountable for this escalation,” Zelenskyy said.

The first tranche of North Korean troops arrived in Russia’s western Kursk region on Wednesday, Representatives of Ukrainian intelligence claimed next day. “North Korea has transferred approximately 12,000 North Korean military personnel, including 500 officers and three generals, to Russia, and this Russian Deputy Defense Minister, Colonel General Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, is responsible for overseeing the training and adaptation of North Korean military personnel,” Washington said in a statement. . – the Institute for the Study of War wrote on Thursday ratingreferring to the Main Directorate of Military Intelligence of Ukraine.

The commander-in-chief of the South Korean military called the North Korean troops “just cannon fodder”. North Korean soldiers are “disguised in Russian uniforms and operating under Russian military command without any operational authority,” Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun told parliamentarians in Seoul on Thursday. “Kim Jong-un has sold his people’s army for an illegal war of aggression,” he said. of South Korea Yonhap news agency more.

New: Russia helped the Khusa terrorist group attack commercial vessels in the Red Sea and along the coast of Yemen The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing “a person familiar with the matter and two European defense officials.”

The help consisted in data from Russian satellites which was “passed through members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who were embedded with the Houthis in Yemen.”

Why it matters: Target data “shows how far Russian President Vladimir Putin is willing to go to undermine the US-led Western economic and political order,” magazine writes

Related reading:

More bad news for the U.S. Navy on submarine construction. Electric Boat announces it will slow construction of Columbia-class nuclear submarines and Virginia-class nuclear attack boats due to ‘major component delays’, USNI News reports from General Dynamics’ third-quarter earnings call with investors on Thursday. CEO Phoebe Novakovich: “Given the recent supply chain forecasts for deliveries, we need to synchronize our pace with the supply chain and reduce costs from the business if we are to expect incremental margin growth.” read this here.

Background reading from Protection is oneLauren K. Williams:

CBO responds to Navy’s 2025 shipbuilding plan. “The service’s budget would have to increase significantly in real terms for the service to purchase, maintain, and operate a larger fleet,” writes Eric Labs of the Congressional Budget Office. presentation he spoke on Tuesday at a recent NDIA event. It’s not surprising, but perhaps it is: “Although the Navy’s 2025 plan calls for more ships and costs more than the alternatives in the 2024 plan, the capabilities it will provide are in the middle of the range of capabilities that would lead to of these alternatives”. Read the slides yourself, here.

Northrop expects the next B-21 production award to be awarded before the end of the year. This will be a low initial production contract 2, the second of five annual LRIPs expected to build 21 aircraft and cost the company a total of 1.2 billion dollars. Air Force Expects to Pay About $780 Million for LRIP Aircraft — Officially, 550 million dollars per aircraft in 2010 dollars, based on an overall plan to purchase at least 100 Raiders.

Northrop executives say the program will eventually become profitable. The company has discussed a higher cost ceiling for the 19 aircraft that will follow the first 21. Protection is one Audrey Decker reports from CEO Cathy Worden’s third-quarter call with investors on Thursday.

Finally Today: Problems With German Rail Contract Slowed U.S. Ammunition To Ukraine, IG Says. Deliveries were delayed in December 2022 and January 2023 due to issues with the U.S. European Command’s contract with Germany’s Deutsche Bahn, according to a report by the Defense Department’s inspector general. In at least one case, “the railroad was not available to transport ammunition.”

Later, the problem was solved by chartering boats to deliver it instead, at a cost of US$1.6 million. The report was published in a heavily redacted form Protection is one on Thursday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

The delays occurred around the same time Ukraine began to run out of US-supplied ammunition— making this one of several cases where a shortfall in U.S. aid has affected the Ukrainian military following a full-scale Russian invasion. Protection is oneSam Scove has a little more here.

This does it for us. Thanks for reading; have a safe weekend and see you again on monday!