The world’s richest man Elon Musk has hit back at the New York Times after it ran an article on Wednesday accusing him of acting as a “geopolitical chaos agent” and critiquing his views on Ukraine, Iran, and China.
In a series of tweets, the billionaire mocked the Times’ understanding of current events – and space flight – comparing the outlet negatively to Twitter, the social media platform he is poised to acquire by the end of the week.
Substituting “the New York Times” for his name, the SpaceX CEO paraphrased the opening lines of the article, which claimed that while his involvement in “some of the world’s most combustible conflicts” had “been a boon” in some cases, it had “also caused problems.” Hammering his point home, he attributed the flipped narrative to “unnamed sources close to the matter who wish to remain anonymous.”
Musk also posted a snippet of a 1920 article in which a NYT writer dismissed the notion that a rocket could function in a vacuum alongside the paper’s correction, which came nearly 50 years later, when humans had been sending rockets into space for years.
Beyond implying he is irresponsible for using his massive social media cache to influence world affairs, the profile excoriates Musk for complaining about the cost of the Starlink satellite internet system he provided to Ukraine’s military free of charge, accusing him of creating “uncertainty” by seeming unwilling to shoulder the lion’s share of the cost indefinitely. The writers blame Musk for a phishing campaign that used the billionaire’s claim that he was “activating Starlink” over Iran to dupe anti-government protesters into clicking on data-harvesting links. They also criticize him for not championing Taiwan against China, even as the piece acknowledges that Tesla produces as many as half of its new cars in Shanghai.
Appearing to revel in the newspaper’s concern regarding his looming takeover of Twitter, Musk also posted a video of himself walking into the company’s headquarters after tweeting that he appreciated the platform for “how it empowers citizen journalism” and allows anyone to “disseminate news without an establishment bias.”