Elon Musk suspects coordinated attack as X, Tesla, and DOGE face turmoil

On Monday morning, the X (formerly Twitter) platform was inaccessible to thousands of users, including many in the U.S. After about eight hours of outages, Musk posted that the platform was facing a “massive cyberattack.”

“There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against X. We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources. Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved. Tracing …” he wrote on X.

In March 2023, the platform also experienced over an hour of glitches, as links stopped working, some users were unable to log in, and images did not load for others.

Elon Musk faces cyberattacks, falling Tesla sales, and targeted vandalism

Over the last few days, Elon Musk has been tackling a slew of problems across his businesses, X, Tesla, and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). He is growing increasingly suspicious that these are actually all part of a coordinated attack on his companies.

Elon Musk explained the outages in terms of a “massive cyberattack” that, he said, took a lot of resources to carry out, perhaps implicating a large coordinated group or a state actor. He said the attack originated from IP addresses in the Ukraine region but did not offer evidence to support that assertion.

At the same time, Tesla has been facing plummeting sales and public blowback. Recently, the company reported a 15% decrease in stock value. Tesla stores have also been the targets of vandalism and protests. For example, an AR-15-style rifle was used to attack a Tesla showroom in Salem, Oregon, in February, while four Tesla Cybertrucks in Seattle were set on fire.

In an interview with Fox’s Larry Kudlow on Monday, billionaire Elon Musk admitted that his involvement with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Donald Trump’s initiative to reduce federal spending, is making it tougher to run his many businesses: X, Tesla, xAI, SpaceX, The Boring Company, and Starlink.

#Teslatakedown protests escalate as Musk suggests coordinated attack

Meanwhile, the incidents come on the heels of the #Teslatakedown movement that protests Musk’s role in the Trump administration as well as his management of DOGE. Demonstrators have staged sit-ins outside Tesla showrooms across the country, calling on consumers to stop buying Tesla products and divest from the company.

While the convergence of events has spurred theories of a coordinated opposition to Musk’s endeavors, Musk himself chimed in affirmatively to a user that recent accusations, including protests against DOGE, attacks on Tesla stores, and the cyberattack on X, might all be connected.

Details are still developing, but so far, there has been little evidence to link the incidents. Experts have warned against jumping to conclusions without thorough investigations. Nicholas Reese, an adjunct professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs, said a state conducting such a cyberattack was not likely, and the outages were relatively short-lived. He said technical data from X should support such claims.

Elon Musk’s businesses are grappling with a wave of scrutiny, from hackers and public protesters to falling stock prices. Although Musk believes there’s an organized effort behind these occurrences, concrete proof has not materialized.