The world’s richest man made spurious claims in an interview with Fox News after suggesting in a post on X while the attack was ongoing that a “country was involved”
Elon Musk has sensationally claimed Ukraine was responsible for a “massive cyber attack” that left X unable to operate for several hours today.
The controversial tech mogul, who currently heads the so-called Department for Government Efficiency (DOGE) under US President Donald Trump, was left humiliated today after both the X app and site went down. The severe outages started as early as 5.30am ET (9.30am GMT) and lasted into the evening in the UK, with people reporting being unable to use any services.
The site’s roughly 611 million users were locked out, but have since regained access as X tries to rectify remaining service outages, according to site status trackers. But, while platform managers are carefully trying to restore services, the world’s richest man has taken to the news to make baseless claims about the purported attack’s origins.
Speaking to Fox News, Mr Musk said: “We’re not sure exactly what happened but there was a massive cyber attack to try to bring down the X system with IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area.” Mr Musk appeared to set up his Fox News statement before he participated in the interview tonight after saying on the platform while it was ongoing that his teams were looking into the alleged attack.
He wrote on the platform that “a country is involved” before suggesting Ukrainians may have been the perpetrators. He wrote: “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…”
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has a long running feud with Ukraine, and has used his platform to share misinformation about the country and other European nations, including previously the UK, while also boosting Russian talking points. While taking up position as a key advisor to Mr Trump during his second term, he has also advocated for the US to exit NATO, suggesting it “doesn’t make sense” to remain in the alliance, which has since its inception spread American influence through Europe and beyond.
Responding to a demand to “leave NATO now!” by controversial Republican senator Mike Lee, Mr Musk baselessly claimed the US pays for the “defence of Europe”. He wrote: “We really should. Doesn’t make sense for America to pay for the defence of Europe.”