French police have raided the Paris offices of Elon Musk’s social media platform, X.
The search, conducted on Tuesday, February 3, 2026, marks a major escalation in a long-running criminal investigation into the platform’s operations and its controversial AI chatbot, Grok.
The Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office confirmed that its specialized cybercrime unit led the raid with assistance from Europol. Authorities are investigating a wide range of allegations, including the distribution of child sexual abuse material, the dissemination of Holocaust-denial content and the proliferation of non-consensual sexually explicit deepfakes generated by the Grok AI.
The investigation was significantly widened last month following a study that estimated Grok may have generated up to three million sexualized images in just 11 days.
This included tens of thousands of images depicting minors. Prosecutors stated the raid is part of an effort to ensure that X complies with French law while operating within the country.
In addition to the physical search, the prosecutor’s office has summoned Elon Musk and former CEO Linda Yaccarino for “voluntary interviews” on April 20. The probe also examines suspicions of “organized tampering” with automated data systems and the potential use of biased algorithms for foreign interference – a concern first raised by French lawmakers a year ago.
The raid comes at a time of peak tension between Musk and European regulators. While X has previously characterized French investigations as an attack on free speech, the European Commission has launched its own probe under the EU’s Digital Services Act.
In a symbolic move following the raid, the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office announced it would no longer communicate via X. The office stated it would move its official digital communications to LinkedIn and Instagram, signalling a complete breakdown in relations with the platform.
Voters cast their ballots on the UCLA campus Nov. 4, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
(AP) – As the leadup to the 2026 midterm elections begins, social media users — among them billionaire X owner Elon Musk, who briefly served as a top advisor to President Donald Trump — are using false information to advocate for more voter ID laws in the U.S.
“America should not have worse voter ID requirements than every democratic country on Earth,” Musk wrote in a recent X post, which had been liked and shared approximately 310,000 times as of Wednesday. “California and New York actually banned use of ID to vote! It is illegal to show your ID in those states. The only reason to do this is fraud.”
But voter registration requirements and guidance for poll workers paint a different picture.
Here’s a closer look at the facts.
CLAIM: It is illegal for voters to show ID when casting a ballot in New York and California.
THE FACTS: This is false. Voters in both states need to show ID when it is necessary to complete their registration, but it is not required otherwise. Poll worker guidance published by New York and California instructs workers not to ask voters for ID unless records indicate that it is needed.
“There is nothing unlawful about that voter presenting a form of photo identification at a poll site in addition to fulfilling the signature verification requirement outlined in the state’s consitution,” Kathleen McGrath, a spokesperson for the New York State Board of Elections, said of voters whose identity has already been verified. “In fact, in some counties, voters are allowed to scan their license in an effort to expedite the looking up of their voter record on the e-pollbook, but this cannot be legally required.”
The California secretary of state’s office similarly said that “California law does not prohibit a voter from voluntarily presenting their identification.”
In New York, voters provide their Department of Motor Vehicles number or the last four digits of their social security number when registering to vote. They may also use another form of valid photo ID or a government document that shows their name and address, such as a utility bill or a bank statement. Voters will be asked for ID at the polls if their identify cannot be verified before Election Day, according to the state’s registration form.
Recent guidance for New York poll workers states: “Do not ask the voter for ID unless ‘ID required’ is next to their name in their voter records.”
California has similar identification processes. If voters do not provide a driver’s license number, a state ID number or the last four digits of their social security number when registering, another form of ID must be provided if they are voting for the first time in a federal election and registered by mail or online, according to the secretary of state’s office.
“Poll workers must not ask a voter to provide their identification unless the voter list clearly states identification is required,” reads recent guidance for California poll workers released by the state.
County election officials automatically mail ballots to all active registered voters. In the 2024 general election, 80.76% of voters voted by mail. Some counties in California do not offer in-person voting at all.
Musk’s post also includes an image that lists 114 countries under the title, “Full or partially democratic countries that require ID to register to vote or cast a ballot on election day in all districts.” All of them have a green checkmark to their left except for the U.S., which has a red “x.”
Although many countries listed in the image require ID for one or both of these actions, there are at least two exceptions — New Zealand and Australia. In New Zealand, voters can register without ID by filling out a signed enrollment form and do not need to present ID at the polls. Australian voters do not need ID to cast a ballot and may have someone who is already registered confirm their identity when submitting an enrollment form.
Representatives for Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
DOGE, the agency that shook up the federal bureaucracy in the early months of President Trump’s second term with its efforts to slash spending and headcount, is no more, the administration says.
“That doesn’t exist,” Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor told Reuters earlier this month when asked about the status of the Department of Government Efficiency, the news service reported this morning.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a close confidante of Trump’s at the start of his second term, initially steered DOGE, although he and Trump subsequently had a falling out and Musk returned his focus to the private sector. The program, which still had eight months left on its mandate, was officially slated to end next summer, Reuters notes. But, according to Kupor, DOGE is no longer a “centralized entity,” and the government-wide hiring freeze that accompanied its efforts is over.
The department’s legacy will likely be a point of debate for years to come, including in the next election cycle. Initially focused on reducing the size of the federal government—as well as slashing red tape and incorporating AI into the bureaucracy—critics argued that DOGE was overstating its savings and overstepping its authority in its efforts to gut federal agencies, push out workers, and eliminate contracts.
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According to Reuters, Kupor’s statements about DOGE no longer existing as a discrete entity are the Trump administration’s first formal acknowledgement that the program has been prematurely ended, although Trump has already been referring to the agency in the past tense. The Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, has now taken over many of the same cost-cutting and headcount-reducing efforts, according to Kupor himself as well as documents reviewed by Reuters.
“At least two prominent DOGE employees are now involved with the National Design Studio, a new body created through an executive order signed by Trump in August,” Reuters reported in its exclusive story. “That body is headed by Joe Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb, and Trump’s order directed him to beautify government websites.”
In a post on X, Kupor said that DOGE no longer has “centralized leadership” under its previous organizational structure, the USDS, but that “the principles of DOGE remain alive and well,” including de-regulation, anti-fraud efforts and efficiency.
“DOGE catalyzed these changes,” Kupor wrote. “The agencies along with [OPM] and [the White House Office of Management and Budget] will institutionalize them!”
FILE – Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk arrives on the red carpet for the Axel Springer media award in Berlin on Dec. 1, 2020. Musk says he plays on remaining as Twitter’s CEO until he can find someone willing to replace him in the job. Musk’s announcement came after millions of Twitter users asked him to step down in an unscientific poll the billionaire himself created and promised to abide by. (Hannibal Hanschke/Pool Photo via AP, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — The world’s richest man was just handed a chance to become history’s first trillionaire.
Elon Musk won a shareholder vote on Thursday that would give the Tesla CEO stock worth $1 trillion if he hits certain performance targets over the next decade. The vote followed weeks of debate over his management record at the electric car maker and whether anyone deserved such unprecedented pay, drawing heated commentary from small investors to giant pension funds and even the pope.
The vote is a resounding victory for Musk showing investors still have faith in him as Tesla struggles with plunging sales, market share and profits in no small part due to Musk himself. Car buyers fled the company this year as he has ventured into politics both in the U.S. and Europe and trafficked in conspiracy theories.
The vote came just three days after a report from Europe showing Tesla car sales plunged again last month, including a 50% collapse in Germany.
Still, many Tesla investors consider Musk as a sort of miracle man capable of stunning business feats, such as when he pulled Tesla from the brink of bankruptcy a half dozen years ago to turn it into one of the world’s most valuable companies.
The vote clears a path for Musk to become a trillionaire by granting him new shares, but it won’t be easy. The board of directors that designed the pay package require him to hit several ambitious financial and operational targets, including increasing the value of the company on the stock market nearly six times its current level.
President Donald Trump announced Tuesday he has decided to nominate Jared Isaacman to serve as his NASA administrator, months after withdrawing the tech billionaire’s nomination because of concerns about his political leanings.Trump announced in late May that he had decided to withdraw Isaacman after a “thorough review” of his “prior associations.” Weeks after the withdrawal, Trump went further in expressing his concerns about Isaacman’s Republican credentials.At the time, Trump acknowledged that he thought Isaacman “was very good,” but had become “surprised to learn” that Isaacman was a “ blue blooded Democrat, who had never contributed to a Republican before.”Isaacman had the endorsement of Trump’s former DOGE adviser and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk. The president and Musk had a very public falling out earlier this year but are now on better terms.Last week, Trump told reporters he and Musk have spoken “on and off” since sitting together at conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s funeral last month in Arizona and that their relationship is “good.”Trump made no mention of his previous decision to nominate and then withdraw Isaacman in his Tuesday evening announcement of the re-nomination on his Truth Social platform. And the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s decision to reverse course.“This evening, I am pleased to nominate Jared Isaacman, an accomplished business leader, philanthropist, pilot, and astronaut, as Administrator of NASA,” Trump posted. “Jared’s passion for Space, astronaut experience, and dedication to pushing the boundaries of exploration, unlocking the mysteries of the universe, and advancing the new Space economy, make him ideally suited to lead NASA into a bold new Era.”Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been serving as interim NASA administrator. The president on Tuesday praised Duffy for doing an “incredible job.”Isaacman, CEO and founder of credit card-processing company Shift4, has been a close collaborator with Musk ever since buying his first chartered flight with SpaceX.He also bought a series of spaceflights from SpaceX and conducted the first private spacewalk. SpaceX has extensive contracts with NASA.The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee approved Isaacman’s nomination in late April and a vote by the full Senate had been expected when Trump announced he was yanking the nomination.In his own social media post Tuesday, Isaacman thanked Trump for the nomination and the “space-loving community.” He made no mention of the earlier turmoil.
WASHINGTON —
President Donald Trump announced Tuesday he has decided to nominate Jared Isaacman to serve as his NASA administrator, months after withdrawing the tech billionaire’s nomination because of concerns about his political leanings.
Trump announced in late May that he had decided to withdraw Isaacman after a “thorough review” of his “prior associations.” Weeks after the withdrawal, Trump went further in expressing his concerns about Isaacman’s Republican credentials.
At the time, Trump acknowledged that he thought Isaacman “was very good,” but had become “surprised to learn” that Isaacman was a “ blue blooded Democrat, who had never contributed to a Republican before.”
Isaacman had the endorsement of Trump’s former DOGE adviser and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk. The president and Musk had a very public falling out earlier this year but are now on better terms.
Last week, Trump told reporters he and Musk have spoken “on and off” since sitting together at conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s funeral last month in Arizona and that their relationship is “good.”
Trump made no mention of his previous decision to nominate and then withdraw Isaacman in his Tuesday evening announcement of the re-nomination on his Truth Social platform. And the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s decision to reverse course.
“This evening, I am pleased to nominate Jared Isaacman, an accomplished business leader, philanthropist, pilot, and astronaut, as Administrator of NASA,” Trump posted. “Jared’s passion for Space, astronaut experience, and dedication to pushing the boundaries of exploration, unlocking the mysteries of the universe, and advancing the new Space economy, make him ideally suited to lead NASA into a bold new Era.”
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been serving as interim NASA administrator. The president on Tuesday praised Duffy for doing an “incredible job.”
Isaacman, CEO and founder of credit card-processing company Shift4, has been a close collaborator with Musk ever since buying his first chartered flight with SpaceX.
He also bought a series of spaceflights from SpaceX and conducted the first private spacewalk. SpaceX has extensive contracts with NASA.
The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee approved Isaacman’s nomination in late April and a vote by the full Senate had been expected when Trump announced he was yanking the nomination.
In his own social media post Tuesday, Isaacman thanked Trump for the nomination and the “space-loving community.” He made no mention of the earlier turmoil.
Elon Musk claimed on October 31 that SpaceX will be sending data centers into space. He responded to a post on X from journalist Eric Berger about the viability of the concept.
“Simply scaling up Starlink V3 satellites, which have high speed laser links would work,” he wrote on X. “SpaceX will be doing this.”
As AI tools proliferate, so does demand for quick outputs. But it takes significant energy for AI models to function at the speed and quality that we want it to—both AI training and inference rely on data centers. The data centers that host the GPUs powering these functions are expanding, and with it the amount of electricity needed to operate and cool them.
The environmental impact of new technology is increasingly an issue. So why not just move those data centers to space?
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Musk says that SpaceX’s satellites could incorporate the computing power for data centers. The company’s Starlink satellites currently provide global broadband internet service, orbiting at 550 km from Earth. They’re closer than other satellites, meaning latency is much lower at around 25 milliseconds compared to over 600 ms.
The company’s upcoming V3 satellites are designed to provide gigabit-class internet speeds and could reportedly weigh up to 4,409 pounds. Musk says they could be made even larger to host the data centers.
Still, they need Starship, SpaceX’s enormous rocket, for launch. Starship has had an explosion-filled history but recently had a good launch (its eleventh) in October.
StartupStarcloud is also on a mission to send data centers into space. The Redmond, Washington-based company is about to launch its Starcloud-1 satellite, carrying NVIDIA’s H100 GPU. It’s expected to offer 100 times more powerful GPU computing than any other space-based operation.
The company hopes it’s a step toward its goal of building five-gigawatt orbital data centers around 2.5 miles wide.
“The only environmental cost is the launch,” said Philip Johnston, Starcloud CEO. “After that, we could save 10 times the carbon emissions compared with running data centers on Earth.”
Grokipedia, the encyclopedia powered by xAI’s assistant Grok briefly went online Monday, before it promptly crashed. At the time of this writing, the website appears to be working, and contains more than 885,000 articles, according to a counter on its homepage.
Musk, who has previously railed against Wikipedia, has described the project as a “a necessary step towards the xAI goal of understanding the Universe.” Musk and his allies have long claimed that Wikipedia is biased. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has called Musk’s claims about the crowd-sourced encyclopedia “factually incorrect.”
Musk said last week that Grokipedia’s launch had been delayed in order “to do more work to purge out the propaganda.” Notably, some articles are nearly identical to their entries in Wikipedia, though Grokipedia doesn’t contain in-line links to sources in the same format. Such entries do have a small disclaimer that “the content is adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.”
In other cases, social media users have already spotted instances where Musk’s worldview is more obvious in the “AI-powered encyclopedia.” Here’s an excerpt from the entry for “university,” as captured by Bluesky user Jeremy Cohen.
Bluesky screenshot of a Grokipedia entry for “university.”
(Bluesky)
And here’s a screenshot of Grokipedia’s entry for Musk, which was captured by Bleusky user Miles Lee.
Grokipedia entry for Elon Musk.
(Bluesky)
X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
OpenAI is asking Meta to produce evidence related to any coordination with Elon Musk and xAI to acquire or invest in the ChatGPT-maker.
The request was made public in a brief filed Thursday in Elon Musk’s ongoing lawsuit against OpenAI. Lawyers representing OpenAI said they subpoenaed Meta in June for documents related to its potential involvement in Musk’s unsolicited, $97 billion bid to takeover the startup in February. It’s unclear from the filing whether such evidence exists.
OpenAI’s lawyers say they discovered that Musk communicated with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg concerning xAI’s bid to purchase the ChatGPT-maker, including “about potential financing arrangements or investments.”
Meta objected to OpenAI’s initial subpoena in July; the ChatGPT-maker’s lawyers are now seeking a court order to obtain such evidence. OpenAI is also asking the court for any of Meta’s documents and communications related to “any actual or potential restructuring or recapitalization of OpenAI” — the core issue in Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI.
In the background of OpenAI’s fight with Elon Musk, Meta has significantly invested in its own efforts to develop frontier AI models. That effort has included poaching several of OpenAI’s leading AI researchers, including a co-creator of ChatGPT, Shengjia Zhao, who now leads research efforts at Meta Superintelligence Labs, the company’s newest AI unit. Meta also invested $14 billion in Scale AI, and reportedly approached several other AI labs about acquisition deals.
Lawyers representing Meta asked the court to reject OpenAI’s request for evidence, arguing that Musk and xAI can provide any relevant information. Meta also argues that its internal discussions of OpenAI’s restructuring and recapitalization are not relevant to the case.
This is a developing story… Check back for updates.
Elon Musk and his brother Kimbal were speaking to a crowd of business leaders in 2013 about creating their first company when the conversation seemed to go off script. Originally from South Africa, Kimbal said the brothers lacked lawful immigration status when they began the business in the U.S.
“In fact, when they did fund us, they realized that we were illegal immigrants,” Kimbal said, according to a recording of the interview from the Milken Institute Global Conference.
“I’d say it was a gray area,” Elon replied with a laugh.
Eleven years later, Elon was back at the Milken Institute last month in Beverly Hills, talking once again about immigration. This time, he described the southern border as a scene out of the zombie apocalypse and said the legal immigration process is long and “Kafkaesque.”
“I’m a big believer in immigration, but to have unvetted immigration at large scale is a recipe for disaster,” Musk said at the conference. “So I’m in favor of greatly expediting legal immigration but having a secure southern border.”
Musk, the most financially successful immigrant in the U.S. and the third-richest person in the world, has frequently repeated his view that it is difficult to immigrate to the U.S. legally but “trivial and fast” to enter illegally. What he leaves out: Seeking asylum is a legal right under national and international law, regardless of how a person arrives on U.S. soil.
But as the election year ramps up and Republicans make border security a major theme of their campaigns, Musk’s comments about immigration have grown increasingly extreme. The chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, who purchased the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) in 2022, has sometimes used his giant microphone to elevate racist conspiracies and spread misinformation about immigration law.
Musk’s business manager did not respond to a request for comment, nor did representatives for SpaceX and Tesla. X does not have a department that responds to news media inquiries.
While Musk’s views are clear, what’s murkier is his influence. Some see him as an influential opinion maker with the power to shape policy and sway voters, while others dismiss him as a social media bomb thrower mainly heard within a conservative echo chamber.
“If you haven’t heard it already, I’m sure you’re going to see members of Congress citing Elon Musk and pointing to his tweets, and that’s a scary concept,” said Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragán (D-San Pedro), who leads the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
She says she believes Musk is influential with her Republican colleagues who are “always looking for new anti-immigrant talking points.”
Polling shows immigration is a top issue for voters. For the third month in a row, it was named by respondents to an open-ended April Gallup poll as the most important problem facing the U.S.
The November election that’s shaping up as a rematch between President Biden and former President Trump will be the first presidential contest since Musk bought X — a site Trump had been banned from for inciting violence before Musk reinstated his account last year.
Musk used the platform to come to Trump’s defense last week after the former president was criminally convicted for falsifying records in a hush money scheme. “Great damage was done today to the public’s faith in the American legal system,” Musk wrote on X, calling Trump’s crime a “trivial matter.”
After meeting with Trump in March, Musk told former CNN anchor Don Lemon that he’s “leaning away” from Biden, but doesn’t plan to endorse Trump yet. He also said he won’t donate to any presidential campaign.
Campaign contribution records show Musk regularly donated to both Republicans and Democrats through 2020. That includes a handful of donations to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who said his relationship with Musk dates back to his time as San Francisco mayor but that they’ve never discussed immigration.
“I think people have formed very strong opinions on this topic,” Newsom said. “I don’t know that he’s influencing that debate in a disproportionate way. Not one human being has ever said, ‘Hey, did you see Elon’s thing about immigration?’”
How Musk talks about immigration on X
Last year Musk visited the Eagle Pass, Texas, border, meeting with local politicians and law enforcement to get what he called an “unfiltered” view of the situation.
He also helped spread viral reports falsely claiming the Biden administration had “secretly” flown hundreds of thousands of migrants into the U.S. to reduce border arrivals.
“This administration is both importing voters and creating a national security threat from unvetted illegal immigrants,” Musk wrote March 5 on X. “It is highly probable that the groundwork is being laid for something far worse than 9/11.”
But the migrants in question fly commercial under a program created by the Biden administration, exercising the president’s authority to temporarily admit people for humanitarian reasons. The program allows up to 30,000 vetted people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela lawfully relocate to the U.S. each month and obtain work permits if they have a financial sponsor.
Contrary to Musk’s claim that the administration is looking for Democratic voters, those arriving under the program have no pathway to citizenship. The claim gives fuel to extremist ideologies such as great replacement theory, the racist conspiracy that there’s a plot to reduce the population of white people.
Elon Musk, wearing a black Stetson hat, livestreams while visiting the southern border in September in Eagle Pass, Texas. Musk toured the border along the bank of the Rio Grande with Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas).
(John Moore / Getty Images)
Earlier this year, Musk targeted a controversial bill in the California Legislature that would help immigrants with serious or violent felony convictions fight deportation using state funds. Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer (D-Los Angeles) pulled the bill after Republicans slammed it on social media, garnering the attention of Musk, who wrote about it on X: “When is enough enough?”
In February, shortly after a bipartisan group of senators released details of a border security bill that had gone through lengthy negotiations, Musk again echoed great replacement theory, writing on X: “The long-term goal of the so-called ‘Border Security’ bill is enabling illegals to vote! It will do the total opposite of securing the border.”
Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) shot back.
“No, it’s not focused on trying to be able to get more illegals to vote,” Lankford said on CNN. “That’s absurd.”
Musk’s immigration journey
There’s a particular irony in Musk attacking the program that allows limited arrivals for humanitarian reasons while simultaneously saying he favors legal immigration, said Ahilan Arulanantham, a lawyer, professor and co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA. The program offers would-be migrants a lawful pathway to reach the U.S. and reduced arrivals at the border from the beneficiary countries.
“That shows a very deep confusion about a fairly basic point about immigration law and the way the policy works,” Arulanantham said. Musk’s lack of criticism of a similar program for Ukrainians illustrates the undercurrent of racism accompanying attacks on the program for Latin American migrants, he added.
Musk amplifying false claims is counterproductive to rational immigration policy, Arulanantham said.
“Every voice adds to the pile, and the louder the voice, the marginally greater the addition to the pile,” Arulanantham said. “He is a very loud voice.”
David Kaye, a UC Irvine law professor who studies platform moderation, said Musk’s promotion of misleading or false statements, including those about immigrants, is concerning because he can influence conversations on X in a way no one else can.
“There’s already a pretty robust kind of alarmist approach to immigration, so Musk might only add a little bit of fuel to a pretty big fire,” Kaye said. “But the fact is he’s got a ton of followers. To the extent he promotes disinformation, I think that’s a cause for concern for the United States having fair and fact-driven debates over immigration.”
Musk’s own immigration story is described in the biography “Elon Musk” by Walter Isaacson. Musk left South Africa in 1989 for Canada, where his mother had relatives, Isaacson wrote. While in college he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania and, after graduating, enrolled at Stanford but immediately requested a deferral.
He and his brother Kimbal had invented an interactive network directory service, like a precursor to Google Maps.
Just before pitching the idea to a venture company, Kimbal was stopped by U.S. border officials at the airport on his way back from a trip to Toronto “who looked in his luggage and saw the pitch deck, business cards and other documents for the company. Because he did not have a U.S. work visa, they wouldn’t let him board the plane,” Isaacson writes in the book. So a friend picked him up and drove him into the U.S. after telling another border agent that they were seeing the David Letterman show.
After finalizing the investment, the firm found immigration lawyers to help the Musk brothers get work visas, according to Isaacson.
Once Musk married his first wife, he became eligible for U.S. citizenship, and took the oath in 2002 at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds.
Musk’s recent commentary on immigration and other political issues appears to be a reversal from his views a decade ago, said Nu Wexler, who has worked in policy communications at tech companies and for congressional Democrats.
Wexler recalled when Musk left Fwd.us, the political action organization spearheaded by Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg in 2013 to advocate for immigration reform. Musk left because Fwd.us backed conservative lawmakers who wanted immigration reform but supported oil drilling and other policies that went against Musk’s environmental priorities.
“I agreed to support Fwd.us because there is a genuine need to reform immigration. However, this should not be done at the expense of other important causes,” Musk told the news site AllThingsD at the time.
When Zuckerberg created Fwd.us, it made smart business sense for tech executives to make the business case for immigration reform, Wexler said. Now, immigration is a more divisive issue and executives on the left are less willing to dive into politics.
“At some point he decided that being the main character was helpful personal branding,” Wexler said of Musk. “I don’t know if he’s going to change minds on immigration, although he might be able to fire up the base.”
Alex Conant, a GOP consultant and partner at the public affairs firm Firehouse Strategies, said Musk’s influence could grow if Trump wins the election. If an immigration bill were to take shape at that point, Musk’s endorsement or rejection could shape the debate, he said.
“That’s the sort of scenario where all the sudden he might have some power,” he said.
There appears to be growing evidence for that possibility. Trump and Musk have discussed a possible advisory role for the billionaire, the Wall Street Journal reported last week. If Trump reclaims the White House, Musk could provide formal input on border security policies.
Times staff writer Taryn Luna contributed to this report.
BOCA CHICA, TX—Accusing the billionaire tech mogul of dragging down property values, neighbors of Elon Musk told reporters Thursday they were fed up with his eyesore yard covered in broken-down Cybertrucks. “I don’t know if the guy who lives there is sick or has fallen on hard times or what, but I’m sorry—that yard looks like absolute shit,” said Alaina Barett, who was one of several neighbors who had called 311 in response to the mess strewn over Musk’s front lawn, complaining that the ramshackle Tesla trucks were a public health hazard due to the multiple families of rats, opossums, and hornets that had taken up residence inside the vehicles. “You can tell those things haven’t run in a very, very, very long time. Occasionally you’ll see him out in the yard trying to work on one, but most of the time it just starts sparking. I don’t understand why he doesn’t just haul all that junk away. They’ve got to be worth at least something at the scrapyard.” At press time, Musk had been fined $250 by his neighborhood’s HOA.
SpaceX is working with the National Reconnaissance Office to build a classified system of swarming spy satellites, according to a report published by Reuters. And while the $1.8 billion contract was reportedly signed in 2021, news of the program’s ties to NRO just leaked on Saturday—a great reminder that it’s entirely possible for some tech companies to do highly classified work for years without the public learning about it.
Astronomers Could Soon Get Warnings When SpaceX Satellites Threaten Their View
The new satellite spy network is being built under SpaceX’s Starshield unit, which also manages Starlink satellite internet. The program is described by Reuters as consisting of, “hundreds of satellites bearing Earth-imaging capabilities that can operate as a swarm in low orbits.”
The five sources of information on the new program aren’t named in the new Reuters article, though one anonymous source is quoted as saying that “no one can hide” from the new satellite system.
The satellites can track targets on the ground and share that data with U.S. intelligence and military officials, the sources said. In principle, that would enable the U.S. government to quickly capture continuous imagery of activities on the ground nearly anywhere on the globe, aiding intelligence and military operations, they added.
[…]
The Starshield network is part of intensifying competition between the U.S. and its rivals to become the dominant military power in space, in part by expanding spy satellite systems away from bulky, expensive spacecraft at higher orbits. Instead a vast, low-orbiting network can provide quicker and near-constant imaging of the Earth.
The Wall Street Journal first reported on the existence of a new satellite program being developed by SpaceX in February, but Reuters was the first to provide new information about the customer for what sounds like an incredibly powerful new spy system.
SpaceX and its founder Elon Musk have received criticism over the past two years as the billionaire has expressed skepticism that the U.S. should be involved in helping Ukraine during its fight against Russia’s invasion. The war started in Feb. 2022 and has killed tens of thousands on both sides, but Musk has become vocally opposed against the U.S. continuing to help its ally with intelligence and weapons. That would appear to be a big problem for the U.S. military establishment, since Ukraine is so dependent on Starlink satellite internet for command and control in the battlefield.
Musk infamously denied Ukraine use of Starlink to mount a counterattack of Russian forces in Crimea, a story told by his biographer Walter Isaacson, that was awkwardly walked back at Musk’s insistence after the book was published. But whatever actually happened in Crimea, there appears to be nervousness within the Pentagon about how reliant the U.S. military has become on Musk. And the leak of this latest contract between SpaceX and NRO proves the public probably doesn’t know the half of it.
As Reuters explained in the new report on Saturday:
The network is also intended to greatly expand the U.S. government’s remote-sensing capabilities and will consist of large satellites with imaging sensors, as well as a greater number of relay satellites that pass the imaging data and other communications across the network using inter-satellite lasers, two of the sources said.
NRO was formed in 1960 on the heels of some major failures by the U.S. Air Force to get a military satellite program up and running. The shoot down and capture of U-2 pilot Gary Powers by the Soviet Union in May 1960 was a highly embarrassing international incident for Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration, which made it obvious the U.S. needed to get some proper mechanical eyes in the sky that couldn’t be shot down by adversaries.
The establishment of NRO in 1960 was an attempt to make the nation’s spy satellites an independent agency that could service U.S. military customers and U.S. intelligence agencies without causing turf wars. Giving an agency like CIA, for example, sole control of spy satellites could lead to unnecessary internal competition with other agencies. At least that’s the way Eisenhower’s science advisors thought about it at the time.
While a system of swarming satellites deployed by U.S. intelligence may sound futuristic, it’s important to remember U.S. imaging capabilities are already incredibly advanced and frankly make the 1998 surveillance thriller Enemy of the State look like a documentary. As just one example, the existence of ARGUS-IS, a 1.8 gigapixel camera developed by Darpa and BAE Systems, was revealed in a January 2013 episode of the PBS documentary “Rise of the Drones.”
The ARGUS-IS could provide images of an entire U.S. city, while allowing users to zoom in on any part and see enough detail to capture someone waving their arms. And it’s a pretty safe bet that the realities of U.S. spying capabilities in 2013 were much more advanced than what the public was allowed to see on PBS. The mind boggles to think what kind of resolution America’s eyes in the sky can get a decade later, to say nothing of how SpaceX’s swarming satellites might change the game in low Earth orbit.
The new report from Reuters says roughly a dozen prototypes for this new swarming system have been launched on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets alongside other satellites presumably with civilian purposes. But that kind of thing is far from new. As Gizmodo reported back in 2017, NRO was intimately involved in the design of NASA’s Space Shuttle, even if we still don’t know many details about the payloads NRO was hitching a ride to get into space. Same as it ever was, it seems.
Elon Musk has shared a new video on Saturday featuring Optimus, the robot Tesla has been working on since 2021. But anyone who tries to watch the video will immediately notice something weird. The clip of Optimus is so low quality and pixelated that it looks like it was shot on a flip-phone from two decades ago.
Mr. Tweet Fumbles Super Bowl Tweet
The new video was posted in the early morning hours of Saturday and has been viewed over 35 million times as of this writing. But the video appears to show Optimus just walking around without doing much of anything. That would have been quite impressive around 2013 or so, since it’s relatively difficult to get machines to walk like humans, but it’s not entirely clear why Musk would want the world to see Optimus walking like this.
Update, 3:58 p.m. ET: At some point in the past 30 minutes or so Elon Musk’s video was swapped out to include a higher resolution version. Curiously, tweets that have been edited will typically show a note at the bottom that says a tweet has been edited and the time it occurred, but Musk’s tweet doesn’t indicate anything has been changed.
The screenshots below show a side-by-side of what the tweet looked like before it was changed to include a higher resolution video.
Screenshot: Elon Musk / X
We’ve reached out to Twitter to see if Musk has special rules as owner of the social media platform and will update this post if we hear back. The rest of this post is being kept up for posterity.
Incremental technical achievements aside, why does this video look so terrible? We weren’t the only ones to notice the bizarrely pixelated quality, as plenty of Musk fans made jokes about the blurriness.
“Was this filmed with a potato?” one user quipped.
“Same photographer?” another X user quipped with a photo of Bigfoot.
Tesla didn’t immediately respond to questions about this new video of Optimus emailed Saturday.
Musk unveiled Optimus with an unconventional presentation in the summer of 2021 that really felt like the billionaire was desperate to hype virtually anything futuristic. Tesla’s AI Day that year didn’t feature a real robot, but rather someone dressed in a white and black suit moving around like a stereotypical robot before starting to dance a jig.
Tesla’s robot has made progress since that first jokey unveiling, but Optimus still has quite a ways to go before it can catch up to the most cutting edge robots of the 2020s. Atlas, a humanoid robot made by Boston Dynamics, started learning how to pick itself up in 2016, standing on one leg that same year, doing backflips in 2017, and achieved parkour-style jumping in 2018.
And Atlas is still making progress in ways that rival how humans actually move. Last year, the Atlas robot showed off its ability to manipulate its environment to navigate complex worksites.
Optimus has made improvements since it was first announced but it has quite a ways to go if it wants to catch up to a company like Boston Dynamics. Arguably the most impressive thing we’ve seen Optimus do is fold laundry, but if you take a close look at the video, there was a person standing just off-screen mimicking the movements. And, frankly, that’s technology that’s been possible since the 1960s.
Can Tesla develop a truly autonomous robot that can work as a household servant, just as Musk has promised? Only time will tell. But we’ve been waiting on that version of the future for over a century now. Robotics is hard. But we can certainly keep dreaming.
The first human implanted with a Neuralink brain chip can control a computer mouse with their thoughts, Elon Musk claimed in an X Spaces event Monday. The anonymous patient has recovered fully, according to Musk, after having a Neuralink chip implanted into their brain just a few weeks ago.
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“Progress is good, patient seems to have made a full recovery … and is able to control the mouse, move the mouse around the screen just by thinking,” said Musk in a conversation on X Monday night.
Neuralink is working with the patient to get as many “button presses” as possible, purely by thinking, according to Musk. These include the patient moving a mouse around, clicking, and dragging a cursor solely with their brain. There is no evidence for these claims besides what Musk is announcing in brief snippets on X, so these claims should be taken with a grain of salt. However, if true, Neuralink’s advancements would be a major step forward for technology.
In late January, Musk announced that the first human patient had received a Nueralink implant via a tweet on X. The experimental surgery installs a microchip into the top layer of a person’s skull. Musk revealed little else about the identity of the initial patient.
Neuralink’s first product is called “Telepathy,” according to Musk, and it’s specifically designed for people who have lost the use of their limbs. The cursor movement described by Musk appears to be the very first progress on Neuralink’s Telepathy.
“Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a speed typist or auctioneer,” said Musk in a tweet. “That is the goal.”
“Opening up the brain of a living human being to insert a device, particularly someone with serious medical problems, deserves more than a two-sentence report on what is, in effect, a proprietary social media platform not distinguished for its reliability where facts are concerned,” the Center said.
The Hastings Center noted that Neuralink has not publicly shared what it plans to do if things go wrong, nor has the company shared the findings of its animal research that justified this experiment in the first place.
Despite the novelty of this human experiment from Musk and Neuralink, we still don’t know much. The company continues to only share bits of information through Musk’s X account, which is highly unusual for the scientific community but is par for the course from Musk.
For the Press Box: Final Edition, Bryan and David hand out some year-end awards! They cover many categories, including the Media Company Makeover of the Year (4:20), the Erratic Executive of the Year(15:01), and the Newsroom Intruder of the Year (40:23). Then, they close the show with one final strained pun of 2023 (1:03:09).
Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Brian H. Waters
Image: Dimitrios Kambouris / Sony / Kotaku (Getty Images)
PlayStation 5 is ditching its integration with Twitter, the social media platform recently rebranded as “X” after Elon Musk bought it for $44 billion and then promptly crashed it into a brick wall like a dad coming home from a mid-life crisis bender in his brand-new Ferrari. Nintendo Switch will soon be the only gaming console you can still tweet from.
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Sony announced the change in a new notification to PS5 users today. “As of November 13, 2023, interaction with X (formerly known as Twitter) will no longer function on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 consoles,” the company wrote. “This includes the ability to view any content published on X on PS5/PS4, and the ability to post and view content, trophies, and other gameplay related activities on X directly from PS5/PS4 (or line an X account to do so).”
Twitter was one of three main social media platforms alongside Facebook and YouTube that the PS4 directly connected to when its new sharing feature first debuted back in 2013. There was an entirely new button on the DualShock 4 dedicated just to capturing images and quickly flinging them across the internet. The ease with which secrets, spoilers, exploits, glitches, and all kinds of other gameplay discoveries could be instantly shared completely changed how people played games and talked about them.
It won’t be impossible to keep sharing game moments to social media when Twitter integration ends later this month, but it’s another reminder that the current internet is dying. YouTube is a pain and Facebook is, well, Facebook. Neither facilitate the constantly updating wire service-like feed Twitter once embodied. The best way to get images of your PS5 and PS4 now is to have them automatically sync with Sony’s dedicated PlayStation app. From there you can repost them to one of Twitter’s many new clones, make a video on TikTok, or send them to your favorite Discord server.
Microsoft bailed on Twitter back in April, shortly after Musk announced he would start charging companies to have access to the platform’s API, the tool needed to make two programs work together. The tech billionaire accused the trillion dollar tech company of stealing Twitter’s idea to train its AI products. In the months since, celebrities, brands, and average users have all continued to abandon the dying platform. It lost roughly 13 percent of its users from a year ago, half its ad revenue, and is now apparently worth over $20 billion less than what Musk originally paid for it.
South African-Canadian immigrant Elon Musk promised on September 27 that he’d test livestreaming on X (you know it as Twitter) “with some silly stuff,” he said, like a Diablo IV speedrun with no powerful Malignant Heart add-ons. On September 28, he decided to livestream the Texas-Mexico border in Eagle Pass, a five-hour drive from the border town he supposedly lives in, instead.
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With an awkward black cowboy hat sitting on his head and a black Dead Space shirt clinging to his red skin, Musk had the look of what he thinks is a real Texan (“My hat is ten years old,” he insisted. “I’ve hip-fired a 50 cal while walking”) concerned about “the border crisis.” He’s hoping his stuttering, freezing “citizen journalism” livestream will change the world, he wrote on Twitter.
But, unlike the powerful pieces of citizen journalism that provide primary-source insight into some of the world’s biggest crises, Musk did not organically capture the Texas border; he interviewed a local congressman and sheriff about “the illegals” and all the cars they’re stealing.
“All over the country,” Sheriff Randy Brown said.
“New York City is buckling under the load [of immigration] already,” Musk wrote on Twitter. This year, NYC reached its peak of homes-per-person since 1940, though many residents can’t afford to live in any of them.
Can Elon Musk solve the border crisis?
“As an immigrant to the United States,” Musk said during his stream, “I am extremely pro-immigrant. I believe that we need a greatly expanded legal immigration system.”
“But, then, by the same token, we should also not be allowing people in the country if they’re breaking the law,” continued Musk, who is currently facing criminal investigation by the Department of Justice. “That doesn’t make sense. The law is there for a reason.”
I have a personal relationship with immigration, too—both of my parents are immigrants, and throughout my life, I’ve seen the challenges that status guarantees you if you, unlike Musk, do not have a father to allegedly fund your move through emeralds. Immigrants whose lives are not studded with emeralds face a number of dehumanizing challenges once over the border, including a higher poverty rate than citizens, family separation, and a justice system built to crush them.
Immigration is a gargantuan, global and historical issue—the first “real Americans,” as we now understand that term, were law-breaking immigrants—and its many scar marks aren’t going to be massaged away by one billionaire…at least not one who keeps all his money.
“Pronouns in bio means the woke mind virus ate your brain,” Musk said on Twitter 16 minutes after writing that “Illegal immigration needs to stop.” Ugh, all his inflammatory opinions are giving me a headache. Next time, stick to Diablo IV.
Twitter has officially rebranded to X after owner Elon Musk changed its iconic bird logo Monday, saying the change was to “embody the imperfections in us all that make us unique.” What do you think?
“Now where am I supposed to see birds?”
Edwin Foster, Gasket Replacer
This Week’s Most Viral News: June 2, 2023
“You have to respect a man who refuses to have a good idea.”
Tyler Ihnat, Optical Illusionist
“It takes a true visionary to realize that X is more computery than a bird.”
