Elon Musk is faced with questions about how much attention he pays to his business as he advises President Trump on the direction of the federal government.
As Musk's business empire (including electric car maker Tesla, social media site X, and rocket maker SpaceX) face challenges, questions have increased.
On Monday, X users reported a widespread outage. On the same day, Tesla shares fell more than 15% amid concerns that included a decline in sales of electric vehicles and politically driven protests against manufacturers. And last week, during launch, a SpaceX rocket exploded in Florida, bombarding several places with debris.
Musk on Monday quickly condemned the X issue of cyberattacks stemming from Ukraine without providing evidence. He posted to X that Democrat donors are once again responsible for seeding protests against Tesla without evidence. In response to the SpaceX explosion, he said in X: “The rocket is hard.”
Questions about Musk's ongoing oversight of his businesses have come to mind as he spends more time in Washington on a major cost-cutting initiative known as the Government's Department of Efficiency and sorts out thousands of government jobs and contracts. But he faces questions about his role last week after a controversial cabinet meeting that limited Trump's ability to advise Musk's department.
The impact of Musk's government involvement is particularly pronounced at Tesla. The company Musk, the chief executive, faces protests and violence at several dealers, including shots fired at an Oregon dealer last week. In Boston, someone set fire to Tesla charging stations and protesters were arrested at a non-violent rally at a Tesla dealer in Lower Manhattan.
Also, last week, the report discovered Tesla car sales in Germany, Europe's largest electric car market. This dug up 76% in February compared to alarm bell ringing across the European market. The stock decline on Monday – more than 50% lower than its mid-December peak – was Tesla stocks' biggest since 2020.
The X, which Musk purchased in 2022, experienced intermittent outages on Monday, mainly on the app, according to Downdetector, which tracks issues reports from users on the website.
The initial outage was reported before 6am Eastern time, and it appeared that the site and app would resume functionality afterwards. However, there were more issues around 10am, with 41,000 reports of X outages, according to DownDetector. A third spike of reported outage appeared just after 11am, leaving many users' sites behind.
“There was a massive cyberattack to try to defeat an X system with an IP address derived from the Ukraine region,” Musk said in an interview with Fox's Larry Kudlow on Monday.
However, a post on messaging app Telegram trusted a group of hacking activists known as Dark Storm caused the suspension on Monday. Cybercriminals may take steps to route attacks through false IP addresses to hide their identity, making it difficult to ensure they know from the country where the attack occurred.
Last year, the live audio conversations between Musk and President Trump about X were confused by technical issues. This also condemned the cyberattack without providing evidence.
X's representatives did not immediately answer questions about what happened on Monday and whether social media platforms have returned to full usability. Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, presented a request for comment on the issue with X on Monday.
Neil Bigder contributed the report.
