Joe Biden, left, and Elon Musk
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters; Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Pictures
Requested on Wednesday whether or not Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter CEO Elon Musk posed a menace to nationwide safety, President Joe Biden stated that the centi-billionaire’s “relationships with different international locations is worthy of being checked out.”
At a White Home press convention on Wednesday, the President was particularly requested: “Do you assume Elon Musk is a menace to U.S. nationwide safety and will the U.S., with the instruments you could have, examine his joint acquisition of twitter with overseas governments, which embrace the Saudis?”
Biden stated, “Elon Musk’s cooperation and/or technical relationships with different international locations is worthy of being checked out. Whether or not or not he’s doing something inappropriate — I am not suggesting that. I am suggesting it is value being checked out and that is all I am going to say.”
Musk will not be a fan of Biden and actively bashes Democrats.
All through 2022, Musk has accused the President of ignoring his electrical automobile enterprise, Tesla, regardless of its success, and favoring legacy automakers and their unions. He has sworn to vote Republican.
On November seventh, as voters have been poised to make poll choices, Musk wrote on Twitter: “Shared energy curbs the worst excesses of each events, due to this fact I like to recommend voting for a Republican Congress, provided that the Presidency is Democratic.”
Musk acquired and have become CEO of the social community Twitter in a $44 billion deal that closed on Oct. 28. Whereas Musk has invested billions of his important private wealth into the acquisition, he additionally raised funding from exterior fairness and debt financing companions, and requested some main present shareholders to roll their stakes into his holding firm.
Longtime shareholder Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal owns tens of tens of millions of shares of Twitter, and relatively than promoting them, he held onto these making the Saudi royal household the second largest shareholder within the social community, now privately held. The dominion of Qatar additionally participated in Musk’s Twitter deal.
Twitter has grow to be a go-to platform for politicians to current their views to the general public on-line and to struggle with each other and reply some press questions. It is usually utilized by a variety of federal, state and native authorities workplaces to convey details about every part from local weather disasters to lacking individuals, and by journalists and activists the world over to share their tales.
Not too long ago, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) who leads a International Relations subcommittee, sent a letter to the Committee on International Funding in the US looking for a assessment of the financing behind Musk’s Twitter deal.
Murphy stated in his letter to CFIUS: “Setting apart the huge shops of information that Twitter has collected on Americans, any potential that Twitter’s overseas possession will lead to elevated censorship, misinformation, or political violence is a grave nationwide safety concern. Saudi Arabia is among the most repressive international locations on the earth, with little to no tolerance at no cost expression.”
Starlink
Elon Musk’s aerospace firm, SpaceX, beforehand donated a portion of Starlink web terminals to Ukraine, which have confirmed essential to conserving the nation’s navy on-line throughout Russia’s invasion.
Musk was seen as a hero when Starlink service in Ukraine was first made out there. However after the SpaceX founder posted a sequence of tweets Oct. 3, looking for assist for his opinion on the perfect decision to Russia’s battle on Ukraine, he confronted a serious backlash.
Musk proposed UN-supervised votes in Ukraine to find out whether or not sure areas of the nation ought to be part of Russia. He additionally stated Ukraine ought to hand Crimea over to Russia and that the nation ought to then stay “impartial” relatively than aligning with both NATO or Russia.
Kremlin officers praised Musk for his opinion, however the entrepreneur drew sharp criticism from many others, together with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., and Russia-born human rights activist and former chess champion Garry Kasparov.
By mid-October, Musk tweeted that Starlink in Ukraine has price SpaceX $80 million thus far, and can exceed $100 million by the top of this yr. He didn’t point out that SpaceX has additionally been paid by U.S. Assist, and worldwide governments in Poland and France, amongst different sources, for this operation. It’s not shouldering the price alone.
The Ukrainian authorities, which typically praises SpaceX and Musk, is now on the lookout for options to Starlink, Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov stated final Thursday.
Tesla
Along with his concepts on Russia, Elon Musk has sounded off about China and Taiwan and instructed that Taiwan grow to be “a particular administrative zone” of China with an association that would probably be extra “lenient” than Hong Kong.
Taiwanese politicians have beforehand rejected the thought of “one nation, two programs” like Hong Kong, and instantly hit again at Musk. However his feedback have been praised by China’s ambassador to the U.S.
The success of Musk’s electrical automobile firm, Tesla, hinges on its entry to a variety of suppliers and to the broader market in mainland China.
Tesla operates its best, and largest automobile meeting plant in Shanghai at the moment, though it’s constructing out and ramping up manufacturing at two different new factories now, in Austin, Texas and outdoors of Berlin, Germany.
The Chinese language authorities gave Tesla a mortgage to assist it construct that Shanghai plant. And China has allowed Tesla, however no different U.S. automaker, the precise to function its manufacturing facility independently within the nation with out forming a three way partnership with another native automaker or producer.
