Two weeks ago I was in a large policy forum discussing Elon Musk’s long standing connections to China and Russia, when someone asked me “is this known publicly?”
“Yes” I said, of course knowing at the same time that some people’s definition of public is different than others.
Anyway, in case you’ve been asleep for the past five years, this is as public as it gets:
Elon Musk has stayed unusually silent after The Wall Street Journal revealed Thursday night that the tech CEO has been speaking regularly with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The newspaper reported that Musk has corresponded with Putin since 2022, discussing personal topics, business, and geopolitical tensions. Putin even made a request of Musk in one conversation: to refrain from setting up his satellite internet service, Starlink, over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Musk has been tweeting around the clock since the story broke at 9 p.m. EST Thursday, but has not mentioned the Journal article once, mostly sticking to right-wing conspiracies and promotion of Donald Trump. According to the Journal, Musk not only had conversations with Putin, but with other high-ranking Kremlin officials as well. He even faced “implicit threats against him,” one source said.
It has become increasingly clear that Russia bought Twitter by using Elon Musk as their puppet. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been discussed enough before now.
Elon Musk’s secret talks with Putin ramped up during his Twitter takeover. […] Russia’s KGB, and its successor agency the FSB have, for decades, been interested in controlling media narratives and reaching as many people as possible with anti-Western or pro-Kremlin messages. The conversations between Musk and Putin, who once ran the KGB, reportedly occurred as Musk was in the midst of a leveraged buyout and takeover of Twitter.
Did I say the past five years? Oops, maybe that isn’t as public yet as these types of stories popping up lately.
“Black Insurrectionist,” the anonymous [xTwitter] persona behind some of the most widely circulated conspiracy theories about the 2024 election, can be traced to a man from upstate New York.
He’s also white.
Black insurrectionist on xTwitter is a white guy? Color me surprised.
At this point, xTwitter seems primarily to be a platform funded by Russia and run by FSB.
Researchers at ISD found that Russian disinformation agents exploited weak content moderation on U.S.-owned social media platforms such as X to spread their content far and wide. Before it was purchased and renamed by Elon Musk, the platform once known as Twitter required labels on content from authoritarian state media. Musk rescinded that rule and gutted the platform’s content moderation efforts, leading to a surge in foreign propaganda, hate speech and extremist recruitment.
As one pundit put it, Elon Musk has been selling out America and destroying democracy for less than the cost of Russia replacing their lame aircraft carrier.
Security experts in the EU showed me their Twitter feeds are flooded with pro-Trump fascist campaign messages sent by Elon Musk himself… as if to expose not just American national security failures but the global threat.