Elon Musk is dealing with questions on how a lot consideration he’s paying to his companies as he advises President Trump on the course of the federal authorities.
The questions have mounted as Mr. Musk’s enterprise empire — which incorporates the electrical automobile maker Tesla, the social media web site X and the rocket maker SpaceX — has run into challenges.
On Monday, customers of X reported widespread outages. The identical day, Tesla’s inventory fell greater than 15 p.c amid considerations that embody declining electrical automobile gross sales and politically pushed protests in opposition to the producer. And final week, a SpaceX rocket exploded in Florida throughout launch, showering some locations with particles.
Mr. Musk on Monday shortly 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 laborious.”
Questions on Mr. Musk’s persevering with oversight of his corporations are coming to a head as he spends extra time in Washington on a main value chopping initiative often known as the Division of Authorities Effectivity, trimming hundreds of presidency jobs and contracts. However even there, he’s dealing with questions on his function following a contentious cupboard assembly final week by which Mr. Trump restricted Mr. Musk’s energy to advising the departments.
The consequences of Mr. Musk’s authorities involvement are notably distinguished at Tesla. The corporate, the place Mr. Musk is chief government officer, has confronted protests and violence at a few of its dealerships, together with photographs 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 automobile gross sales in Germany, Europe’s largest marketplace for electrical autos, dove 76 p.c in February in contrast with a 12 months earlier, sounding alarm bells for all the 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 line with 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 at about 10 a.m. extra issues arose, and there have been 41,000 studies of outages on X, in line with 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 often known as Darkish Storm took credit score on Monday for inflicting the outage. Cyber criminals generally take steps to route their assaults by false IP addresses with the intention to conceal their identities, making it tough to know for sure from which nation an assault originated.
A dwell 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.