In a new book, the Arkansas senator Tom Cotton condemns Elon Musk for “chasing Chinese dollars” and having “shamefully supplicated China’s Communist rulers”, in order to advance his own interests as chief executive of companies including Tesla and SpaceX.
It’s an explosive charge from the Republican chair of the powerful Senate intelligence committee, given that Musk, the world’s richest person, is a major donor and close adviser to Donald Trump, now working at the heart of the president’s administration to slash costs and reshape the federal government.
Disapprovingly, Cotton quotes remarks from 2021 in which Musk told Chinese state television he was “very confident about Tesla’s future in China” and “very confident that [the] future of China is gonna be great”.
Trump has long attacked China on trade grounds, implementing tariffs on Chinese products, though he recently changed his position on TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media app that Congress and Joe Biden banned on national security grounds, only for Trump, who previously supported a ban, to order a delay in implementation.
Musk’s interests and investments in China are widely discussed, contributing to speculation that he could be involved in a US purchase of TikTok should its parent company, ByteDance, concede to pressure to sell. Though Musk said in comments released last week he was not currently interested in doing so.
Cotton is a foreign policy hawk and vocal China critic who last month openly criticized Trump’s changing position on TikTok.
The senator’s first book, Only the Strong: Reversing the Left’s Plot to Sabotage American Power, hinted at ambitions for higher office, perhaps after Trump leaves the national political scene. His new book, Seven Things You Can’t Say About China, will be published in the US next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.
In his book Cotton includes Musk in a group of American “tech titans” he accuses of “Chasing Chinese dollars” whom he says “have … shamefully supplicated China’s Communist rulers”.
Cotton writes: “Microsoft founder Bill Gates praised China’s dictator, saying that ‘I am impressed [with] how hard President Xi works … he’s quite amazing.’
“Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg bought copies of Xi’s book The Governance of China and gave them to his employees because ‘I want them to understand socialism with Chinese characteristics.’”
At a White House state dinner honoring Xi the next year [2015], Zuckerberg bizarrely asked the Communist dictator to name his unborn daughter.
Cotton continues: “Elon Musk told China’s state television, ‘I’m very confident that the future of China is going to be great and that China is headed towards being the biggest economy in the world and a lot of prosperity in the future.’”
Musk made those comments in 2021, in an interview with China Central Television.
Four years on, with Musk ensconced in the heart of government, accessing sensitive government systems and classified information with apparent impunity, his Chinese ties are prompting growing concern.
Last month, Russel L Honoré, a retired US army general, used a New York Times column to highlight business interests including $1.4bn in loans from Chinese banks used to build a Tesla factory in Beijing. The headline was stark: “Elon Musk Is a National Security Risk.”
Cotton, however, widens his sights to include US companies outside the tech sector, writing: “Silicon Valley isn’t the only accomplice in China’s crimes: a shocking number of American companies are complicit in the party’s use of Uyghur slave labor.”
Listing companies named by Congress in such context in 2020, Cotton says the US giants “Nike, Coca-Cola, Adidas, Calvin Klein, Campbell Soup Company, Costco, Patagonia, and Tommy Hilfiger all likely employed forced labor in their supply chains”.
The senator also criticizes Apple for lobbying with Coca-Cola and Nike “against a law blocking imports made with Chinese slave labor”. Nike’s lobbying “should come as no surprise”, he writes, “given that its then CEO, John Donahoe, said in 2021 that ‘Nike is a brand that is of China and for China.’ When it comes to Chinese genocide, maybe Nike’s slogan is ‘Just Do It’.”
Despite writing at length about TikTok – repeatedly advising readers to boycott all Chinese apps and remove them from children’s phones – Cotton does not single out Trump for criticism on his policies and rhetoric concerning TikTok or China.
But the senator does obliquely criticize Trump regarding Chinese investment in US educational institutions, a growing phenomenon which Cotton deplores.
“A senior Chinese Communist purchased New York Military Academy, Donald Trump’s alma mater, and then appointed several of his Chinese associates to its board of trustees,” Cotton writes.
That sale was finalized in 2015, a year before Trump began his climb to two terms in the White House, two impeachments, 34 criminal convictions and complete dominance of the Republican party.
But as Cotton writes, “the Department of Defense has granted the academy hundreds of thousands of dollars since its Chinese takeover”, with federal records showing such grants made during Trump’s first term, between 2017 and 2021.
