Social media users shared an alleged post from Elon Musk in early March 2026 in which the Tesla co-founder purportedly said the company's vehicles could not be "used to avoid civic duty."
Posts on Threads (archived), Facebook (archived) the Musk-owned X (archived) included an alleged screenshot of what appeared to be X post where Musk said Tesla vehicles could be remotely deactivated when a driver attempts to "flee the country."
The alleged post read in full:
If a national draft ever becomes necessary, Teslas will not be usable to flee the country.
Vehicles can be remotely restricted from crossing certain borders if required by law.
Hopefully it never comes to that, but technology shouldn't be used to avoid civic duty.
However, the alleged screenshot was a fake; the post did not appear on Musk's social media.
A search of Musk's X page for the contents of the post in question returned no results. A broader search of Musk's X account for the word "draft" returned only four unrelated results.
A reverse image search on Google conducted with the screenshot of the alleged post returned only other users sharing the fake post from early March.
A reverse image search on TinEye of the same screenshot returned zero results.
The fake post spread online after White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to a question that mentioned a potential military draft in light of the U.S. and Israel initiating conflict with Iran by saying U.S President Donald Trump "does not remove options off of the table."
Fake posts by political figures are a growing source of misinformation. Snopes has previously looked into claims about Trump purportedly posting he was "proud" of his "ICE boys" and Musk allegedly posting that he planned to ban anti-Trump users from X.