As the sale of Twitter to Elon Musk has carried an extraordinary amount of twists and turns already, reports are emerging over the sale being further scrutinized by the federal government for “national security.”
According to Bloomberg News, the former Vice President Biden administration is looking into Elon’s potential deal with Twitter, along with his Starlink network of satellites.
By reviewing the business dealings of Musk’s companies, the government could theoretically end the deal with Twitter. Actions the Biden administration could take involve the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CHIUS). This committee reviews security issues of private business dealings if a “transaction threatens to impair the national security of the United States.”
If the deal is found by the committee to threaten national security, Biden could intervene and put a stop to Musk purchasing Twitter.
After Bloomberg report released on Thursday, Twitter’s stock fell 13%.
The national security review of the Twitter sale, along with Starlink satellites, may be due to Musk threatening to remove his satellites network from the skies above Ukraine. In a letter to the Pentagon, the company expressed the losses Elon’s company has been incurring since the beginning of the war. They further implied that SpaceX’s Starlink is “not in a position to further donate terminals to Ukraine, or fund the existing terminals for an indefinite period of time.”
In a tweet, Musk said, “The hell with it, even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free.”
This led to the Pentagon, and potentially other European countries, to decide to help fund Starlink operations over Ukraine. However, these developments also made politicians question Musk’s influence over foreign affairs, unless there was a contract in place.
According to Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, “I figured that it’s probably way better to have this as a contractual agreement between, let’s say, a coalition of countries that could purchase a service from Mr. Musk, the Starlink service, and provide it to the Ukrainians and keep on providing it to Ukrainians.”
The revelation comes after additional reports emerged noting how Twitter is expected to layoff about a quarter of its current staff. Musk has been fighting the impending sale, as he has attempted to counter is previous purchase-offer of $44 billion. Musk has maintained Twitter has too many “bots” in the system. Thus, the purchase price he originally offered is no longer valid.
