Plans to brief billionaire businessman were scrapped over ethics concerns and confusion over who ordered it

Top Pentagon aides were developing a briefing for Elon Musk last month on more than two dozen highly classified weapons programs for fighting China until the department’s top lawyer intervened, people familiar with the plan said.

Acting Pentagon General Counsel Charles Young learned that a memo being drafted to show Musk contained information on 29 China-related “special access programs,” a designation for the military’s most sensitive secrets, the people said.

Young contacted a senior aide to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was traveling in Japan, to ask if the secretary had approved revealing China plans to the billionaire businessman. “The memo is on hold until you guys can get back and discuss,” Young wrote in a text reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.