Social media users, including a Republican lawmaker, have encouraged Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to audit Fort Knox, the military installation that houses about half of the country’s gold reserves.
Newsweek has contacted the Treasury Department—which operates the United States Bullion Depository, known as Fort Knox—for comment.
Why It Matters
As the head of DOGE, a newly formed advisory task force, Musk has been leading a campaign to eliminate perceived waste from government spending while also reviewing other aspects of the federal budget.
If a review is conducted, any discrepancy between the reserves in Fort Knox and the figures that have been reported could send shock waves through global gold markets.
What To Know
A complete review of the gold reserves held at Fort Knox, famously one of the most secure facilities in the world, has not been conducted since the 1950s, according to the Sound Money Defense League, a public advocacy organization focused on state and federal monetary legislation. The organization added that the government last conducted a partial audit in 1974.
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In 2017, Steven Mnuchin and Mitch McConnell—then the Treasury secretary and Senate majority leader, respectively—received a tour of the facility, though this was not an official inspection.
According to the U.S. Mint, Fort Knox contains about 147.3 million troy ounces of gold, or 4,581 tons, equivalent to half of the Treasury’s total stored gold. With gold valued at just under $2,900 per troy ounce, according to the foreign exchange service Xe, the gold in Fort Knox could be worth up to $426.3 billion.
Social media users and some lawmakers have questioned whether the reported numbers can be trusted without a comprehensive audit.
“It would be great if @elonmusk could take a look inside Fort Knox just to make sure the 4,580 tons of US gold is there. Last time anyone looked was 50 years ago in 1974,” ZeroHedge, a financial news aggregator, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Saturday.
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Musk replied, “Surely it’s reviewed at least every year?”
Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, responded: “Nope. Let’s do it.”
Paul’s father, former Texas Representative Ron Paul—whom Musk recently endorsed for the next chair of the Federal Reserve—was skeptical of the official Fort Knox figure throughout his career.
In 2010, the former representative called for an audit of the vault, telling Fox Business Network, “It’d be nice for the American people to know whether or not the gold is there.”
Bills have also been introduced to the House of Representatives calling for regular reviews and re-assays of the U.S.’s gold reserves, including those held at Fort Knox.
Attorney and investment banker James Rickards told Newsweek that an audit would “help restore the confidence of U.S. citizens in government representations,” but that there was “no reason to doubt that the U.S. has exactly the amount of gold that it represents, about 8,133 metric tons.”
He said an interesting revelation could be how much of the U.S. gold is leased—i.e., given to borrowers in exchange for fees, which Rickards described as “a way to inject more gold into the banking system than actually exists in physical form.”
“That’s a can of worms that only a few experts understand and the government has definitely not wanted to acknowledge. DOGE may open the can of worms,” he continued.
Rickards added that an inspection would show variations in the purity and dimensions of the gold in Fort Knox.
Adrian Ash, the director of research at BullionVault, told Newsweek that if a comprehensive review of U.S. gold reserves took place and showed a much smaller stockpile than previously thought, the effect on global gold prices would be “a curveball,” but it would most likely be minimal, given that “the metal is already not available to the markets.”
He added that the revelation “from a geopolitical point of view [would] cause much hilarity in Moscow and Beijing” and “fit perfectly well with DOGE’s narrative of corruption and lies.”
Ash said that while much of the recent talk has revolved around an “audit,” that is a misnomer, as reviews of Fort Knox’s paperwork are conducted fairly regularly.
“You don’t want an audit per se, you want an inspection and a tally count,” he said, which means conducting a comprehensive examination of each bar, assessing its weight and purity, and ticking these off against the official records.
Doing this, however, would be a monumental task. “There could be a tenth of the gold in Fort Knox that’s reported, and it would take forever to do a reweigh and a reassay [of the stockpile],” he said, adding that the process would be expensive and require the involvement of hundreds of experts, taking them out of commission and causing disruptions to the U.S. gold market.
He continued, “If they were to go through with this properly, it’s not going to be cheap.”
What People Are Saying
Then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin wrote on Twitter following his 2017 visit to Fort Knox: “Thanks to @usmint staff for hosting at #FortKnox #USBD. First @USTreasury Secretary to visit since John Snyder in 1948. Glad gold is safe!”
Then-Representative Ron Paul said during a Financial Services Committee hearing in 2011: “For far too long, the United States government has been less than transparent in releasing information relating to its gold holdings.
“Not surprisingly, this secrecy has given rise to a number of theories about the gold at Fort Knox and other depositories. Some people speculate that the gold has been involved in gold swaps with foreign governments or bullion banks, others believe that the gold has secretly been shipped out of Fort Knox and sold, and still others believe that the bars at Fort Knox are actually gold-plated tungsten.”
James Rickards, the author of The New Case for Gold, told Newsweek: “An audit of the U.S. gold reserves is an excellent idea … Some of the bars have been sitting around since the 1920s or earlier and may be only 97 percent pure gold and may be of irregular shape and size. Some are a bit gnarly. That’s not a big deal. It’s easy to adjust for the differences. Still, this may come as a surprise to some.”
What Happens Next
Musk seems intent on conducting an inspection of Fort Knox, replying to an X post from Alex Jones, saying, “It would be cool to do a live video walkthrough of Fort Knox!”
It remains unclear whether the billionaire and his nongovernmental task force will be permitted access to the highly secure facility or whether a comprehensive inspection, as advocated by some, will occur.
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