Scrutiny of Elon Musk continues to grow and President Biden weighed in during a briefing at the White House on Wednesday.
Responding to a question about whether or not Musk is a threat to national security, Biden initially laughed before saying “Elon Musk’s cooperation and/or technical relationships with other countries is worthy of being looked at.”
He went on to say he’s not suggesting Musk is doing anything inappropriate, simply that it’s “worth being looked at.” When asked how, Biden said “There’s a lot of ways.”
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The question focused on Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, which appears to have been funded in part by Saudi Arabia. CNBC has previously reported Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy has been pushing for an investigation to “protect the national security interests of the United States and American citizens” as “any potential that Twitter’s foreign ownership will result in increased censorship, misinformation, or political violence is a grave national security concern.”
China is also the elephant in the room as the country is important to Tesla and there are concerns this could impact operations at Twitter. That remains to be seen, but China heavily censors social media and NBC noted there are fears Musk could hesitate to remove “Chinese government propaganda or state-sponsored misinformation campaigns out of concern that it could negatively affect his business relationship with Beijing.”
How all of this plays out remains to be seen, but momentum for an investigation is building and could potentially grow louder now that the mid-term elections are largely over.
