Elon Musk is going through questions on how a lot consideration he’s paying to his companies as he advises President Trump on the path of the federal authorities.
The questions have mounted as Mr. Musk’s enterprise empire — which incorporates the electrical automotive maker Tesla, the social media website X and the rocket maker SpaceX — has run into challenges.
On Monday, customers of X reported widespread outages. The identical day, Tesla’s stock fell greater than 15 p.c amid considerations that embrace declining electrical automobile gross sales and politically pushed protests in opposition to the producer. And final week, a SpaceX rocket exploded in Florida during launch, showering some locations with particles.
Mr. Musk on Monday rapidly blamed the X points on a cyberattack stemming from Ukraine, with out offering proof. He posted on X that Democratic donors have been accountable for seeding protests in opposition to Tesla, once more with out proof. In response to the SpaceX explosion, he mentioned on X: “Rockets are onerous.”
Questions on Mr. Musk’s persevering with oversight of his firms are coming to a head as he spends extra time in Washington on a major cost-cutting initiative generally known as the Division of Authorities Effectivity, trimming 1000’s of presidency jobs and contracts. However even there, he’s going through questions on his position after a contentious cupboard assembly final week by which Mr. Trump limited Mr. Musk’s power to advising the departments.
The results of Mr. Musk’s authorities involvement are significantly distinguished at Tesla. The corporate, the place Mr. Musk is chief govt, has confronted protests and violence at a few of its dealerships, together with pictures fired final week at a dealership in Oregon. In Boston, somebody set hearth to Tesla charging stations, and protesters have been arrested at a nonviolent rally at a Tesla dealership in Decrease Manhattan.
Additionally final week, a report discovered Tesla car sales in Germany, Europe’s largest marketplace for electrical autos, dived 76 p.c in February in contrast with a 12 months earlier, sounding alarm bells for your complete European market. Monday’s inventory decline — greater than 50 p.c decrease than a mid-December peak — was the most important for Tesla inventory since 2020.
X, which Mr. Musk bought in 2022, skilled intermittent outages on Monday, totally on its app, in response to Downdetector, which tracks studies of issues from customers on web sites.
The primary outages have been reported earlier than 6 a.m. Japanese time, after which the positioning and app appeared to renew functioning. However about 10 a.m. extra issues arose, and there have been 41,000 studies of outages on X, in response to Downdetector. Shortly after 11 a.m., a 3rd spike of reported outages emerged, and the positioning remained down for a lot of customers.
“There was an enormous cyberattack to attempt to convey down the X system with IP addresses originating within the Ukraine space,” Mr. Musk mentioned throughout a Monday interview with Fox’s Larry Kudlow.
However in a put up on the messaging app Telegram, a hacking activist group generally known as Darkish Storm took credit score on Monday for inflicting the outage. Cyber criminals typically take steps to route their assaults by false IP addresses so as to conceal their identities, making it tough to know for sure from which nation an assault originated.
A stay audio dialog on X between Mr. Musk and President Trump final 12 months was disrupted by technical issues, which Mr. Musk additionally blamed on cyberattacks with out offering proof.
Representatives for X didn’t instantly reply to questions on what had occurred Monday or whether or not the social media platform had returned to full operability. Mr. Musk didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company, which is a part of the Division of Homeland Safety, referred a request on Monday for touch upon the matter to X.
Neil Vigdor contributed reporting.
