Elon Musk makes unannounced visit to secretive US spy agency

WASHINGTON — Elon Musk made an unannounced visit to the National Security Agency on Wednesday, a week after saying the secretive office responsible for foreign-intelligence collection needed to be revamped.

Musk was hosted by Timothy Haugh, the Air Force general who leads the NSA and the U.S. Cyber Command. The visit was Musk’s first as a cost-cutting special adviser to President Donald Trump, the NSA said in a statement. It said “meetings with key advisors ensure we are all aligned.”

The U.S. intelligence community has been bracing for scrutiny from Musk, whose Department of Government Efficiency has overseen a push to slash staff and eliminate entire government departments while fulfilling Trump’s mandate to terminate diversity programs.

“The NSA needs an overhaul,” Musk wrote March 6 on X, the social media platform he owns.

Attached to the post was a picture with the title “NSA on Campus!” that featured dates when NSA representatives would visit six colleges across the U.S., where the agency seeks to recruit new talent.

National security agencies are supposed to be exempt from Musk’s cost-cutting efforts. But Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe offered buyouts to his staff in what the agency said was an effort to sharpen its focus on priorities like China and help Trump’s push to shrink the federal workforce.