Due to Elon Musk‘s tight ties to foreign governments and investors, including those who are antagonistic to Biden’s America, U.S. Treasury Department officials are allegedly examining whether they have the legal jurisdiction to probe his recent acquisition of Twitter.
According to The Washington Post, under the conditions of Musk’s purchase of the business, “large foreign investors would have access to confidential information about Twitter’s finances — and potentially its users.”
Although it was unknown where the Bureau was currently at on the matter, the report said that the FBI was also looking into potential counterintelligence risks posed by the acquisition this spring.
In a report by the Bloomberg News, the White House administration specifically wanted to examine SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network and Musk’s Twitter partnership, and last month the White House was also reportedly considering whether to subject his commercial dealings to national security reviews because of the amount of authority Musk has accumulated. However, these claims were disputed by the White House.
The report added that through his role as CEO of Tesla, Musk has extensive ties to communist China, and Binance, a Chinese cryptocurrency exchange, is an even more problematic investor.
It was notably mentioned by The Washington Post two investors in the deal that the areas of concern are related to “a Saudi prince’s holding business and a subsidiary of the Qatari sovereign wealth fund.”
After a 2018 legislative update allowed CFIUS to investigate “not only foreign ownership but minority stakes in critical areas, including sensitive personal data held by businesses,” Treasury staff at the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) are reportedly looking into whether Musk’s acquisition of Twitter could prompt a national security investigation.
Under the Obama and Trump administrations, Andrew Grotto, a former senior director for cybersecurity policy who specialized in CFIUS, issued a serious national security warning about the possibility of hostile actors collecting private information on Americans.
“That is an area where I think CFIUS has some pretty robust authority to ensure that Americans’ personal data isn’t exploited nefariously by a foreign government, that springs to my mind at least as one major vector for CFIUS to pursue an investigation,” he said.
The CFIUS should “conduct an investigation into the national security implications of Saudi Arabia’s purchase of Twitter,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said.
Murphy said, “We should be concerned that the Saudis, who have a clear interest in repressing political speech and impacting U.S. politics, are now the second-largest owner of a major social media platform, there is a clear national security issue at stake and CFIUS should do a review.”
Sources: Dailywire, Bloomberg, Washingtonpost
