Elon Musk Following Short X Disruption

Elon Musk’s Focus on Business After X Suspension

On Saturday, social media platform X experienced a two-hour outage, prompting Elon Musk to reflect on the need to dedicate more time to his company. His remarks echoed earlier comments about possibly scaling back his involvement with government roles, particularly in relation to Trump’s administration.

Musk, known for his roles as CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, already has a full agenda. As Tesla’s stock price dropped and cuts intensified, he distanced himself from governmental engagements. Recently, he confirmed that he’s only involved with the government one or two days a week, partly under a concept labeled “government efficiency.”

Despite his reduced engagement, Musk, who has contributed over $235 million to Trump’s campaign, attended a meeting at the Oval Office with the South African president this past Wednesday and continues to be an adviser to the current administration.

Following the X downtime, Musk hinted he might have strayed from his company for too long, stating, “We need to make major operational improvements as evidenced by this week’s X-Uptime issue,” acknowledging that a supposed failover redundancy hadn’t functioned as intended.

By 11 am US Eastern Time (1500 GMT), X was mostly operational again. The hacking group Dienet claimed responsibility for the outage, dubbing it a “test” involving a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, where excessive online traffic makes a system unavailable. However, the AFP could not verify this claim, nor did X provide immediate comments regarding the incident.

Increased Commitment

Musk expressed his intention to return to a more hands-on approach, stating, “Back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in a meeting/server/factory room.” He mentioned the importance of focusing on X, Xai, and Tesla, especially with the launch of the Plus Starship. SpaceX plans an attempt to launch the Mega-Rocket Starship next week despite previous explosive failures during testing.

This spacecraft is central to Musk’s aspiration to colonize Mars, and he remains committed to launching multiple prototypes to swiftly address any challenges that arise.

For weeks, the billionaire has hinted at a desire to shift his political focus back to business. Earlier in the month, he recognized that, despite significant job and budget cuts, his efforts to trim federal spending hadn’t fully succeeded. Recently, he noted a retreat from political spending but didn’t entirely dismiss future contributions, saying he would support causes “if there’s a reason.”