Is Musk a threat to US security? Biden says Tesla CEO's foreign ties ‘worthy’ of scrutiny

After targeting billionaire Elon Musk for purchasing a platform that “spews lies all across the world,” US President Joe Biden said that it is necessary to look into the Twitter CEO’s relations with other countries due to concerns about national security. The president’s latest remarks came at a press conference on Wednesday, when he was asked about Musk’s connections with China and Saudi Arabia.

According to The Independent, Biden said that Musk’s “cooperation and or technical relationships with other countries is worthy of being looked at, whether or not he is doing anything inappropriate – I’m not suggesting that, I’m suggesting it’s worth being looked at. That’s all I’ll say.”

The president’s concerns come as the Tesla CEO’s vehicle factory continues to operate in China, which Musk views as a flourishing market for his company. It also comes with Musk’s history of selling shares and securing large funds from groups linked to Qatar, Dubai, and Saudi Arabia. 

This isn’t the first time that Musk and Biden have engaged in a contentious moment. Recently, the latter accused the Twitter CEO of purchasing a social networking company that propagates misinformation at a global level. “Elon Musk goes out and buys an outfit that spews lies all across the world. There’s no editors anymore in America,” Biden said at a Democratic fundraiser in Rosemont, Illinois last week, CNN reported. 

Musk makes big moves at Twitter following acquisition

Musk, who has called the US President a “damp sock puppet” in the past, closed his $44 billion acquisition deal with Twitter in late October and subsequently introduced a raft of new changes in the company, such as paid verification, reduced workforce, and lesser dependence on advertisers. This has resulted in several companies pausing their paid advertising operations on Twitter as the platform undergoes a period of uncertainty and overall chaos. 

Following his takeover as the CEO, Musk has allowed at least 50 Tesla staffers, especially software engineers from the Autopilot team, to work for Twitter, according to a report by CNBC. The employees include senior staff technical program manager Pete Scheutzow, director of software development Ashok Elluswamy, director of Autopilot and TeslaBot engineering Milan Kovac, and senior director of software engineering Maha Virduhagiri.