Elon Musk faces questions about the attention he pays to his companies while advancing President Donald Trump about the Federal Government’s leadership.
The questions have increased as Musk’s business empire – which includes the Electric Automobile manufacturer Tesla, the social media site X and the Spacex rocket manufacturer – has faced difficulties.
On Monday, X users reported generalized cuts. The same day, Tesla’s shares fell more than 15 percent amid concerns that include the decrease in sales of electric vehicles and protests for political reasons against the manufacturer. And last week, a Spacex rocket exploded in Florida during its launch, watering some places.
On Monday, Musk quickly attributed the problems of X to a cyber attack from Ukraine, without providing evidence. He published in X that Democratic donors were responsible for sowing protests against Tesla, also without evidence. In response to the Spacex explosion, he said in X: “The rockets are difficult.”
The questions about the current supervision of Musk about their companies are reaching their peak as he spends more time in Washington, in an important cost cut initiative known as the Government Efficiency Department, cutting thousands of government employment and contracts. But even there, he faces questions about his role after a controversial cabinet meeting last week in which Trump limited Musk’s power to advise the departments.
The effects of Musk’s participation in government are especially prominent in Tesla. The company, of which Musk is a general director, has faced protests and violence in some of its concessionaires, including shots at an Oregon dealership last week. In Boston, someone set fire to Tesla’s charge stations, and arrested protesters in a non -violent concentration against a Tesla dealership in Lower Manhattan.
Also last week, a report revealed that Tesla car sales in Germany, the largest European market for electric vehicles, fell 76 percent in February compared to the previous year, which made alarms jump throughout the European market. The fall in Monday’s actions – more than 50 percent below the maximum reached in mid -December – was the largest of Tesla’s shares since 2020.
X, which Musk bought in 2022, experienced intermittent courts on Monday, especially in its application, according to Downdector, which tracks the reports of user problems on websites.
The first interruptions were recorded before 6 hours of the East, after which the site and the application seemed to work again. But by 10 hours more problems arose, and there were 41 thousand reports of cuts in X, according to Downdetector. Shortly after 11 am, a third peak of court reports emerged, and the site remained inactive for many users.
“There was a massive cyber attack to try to drop the X system with IP addresses from Ukraine,” Musk said Monday in an interview with Larry Kudlow, of the Fox.
However, in a publication in the Telegram messaging application, a group of hacking activists known as Dark Storm attributed on Monday the merit of having caused the cut. Cybercriminals sometimes take measures to direct their attacks through false IP addresses in order to hide their identities, which makes it difficult to know with certainty which country an attack originated.
Last year, a live audio conversation between Musk and President Trump about X was interrupted by technical problems, which Musk also blamed cyber attacks without providing evidence.
The representatives of X did not immediately answer the questions about what happened on Monday or about whether the social media platform had been fully operational again. Musk did not respond immediately to a request for comments.
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The Infrastructure and Cybersecurity Security Agency, which is part of the National Security Department, referred to X a request for comments on the matter.