I’m presenting a thesis: Elon Musk is breaking Twitter as a co-opted asset for the Putin Oligarchy with the purpose of disrupting or damaging the best information coming out of Ukraine to the public that bolsters support in NATO and the west.
Of course this thesis can and will never be proven but I want to make what I think is a compelling case.
I ask you to examine my points with a skeptical view and see if I can convince you. Even if the first thought is “That sounds crazy and conspiratorial” I ask you to remember that “Trump Russia” was real and the Mueller report showed that Vladmir Putin executed an extreme cyber attack on us in that case.
My start point is the Tweet above and yes, it is subjective as a stand-alone but it’s deeply telling when you learn its roots. I will then follow it with more concrete facts to expand the case.
Elon Musk did not come up with this Tweet on his own. I would bet my savings on it.
Quick me — I have my BA from Dartmouth in Government (Political Science) 1990 with concentration in international relations and that focus on US-USSR relations. I also lived in Kyiv in 2017 and have been in a relationship since with a Ukrainian. I’m mildly obsessed with the culture and the history and …..
I had no idea what he was referring to with “Khruschev’s mistake.” I had to look it up. As would anyone who read it who isn’t a deep observer of Vladmir Putin and his published thoughts.
Because ….. The factual history behind this is quick. In 1952, Krushchev assigned administrative control of Crimea to Ukraine, In ‘52 the USSR was fully formed and it appears that this was like redistricting on a grand scale but I couldn’t find almost any details. It certainly wasn’t the focus of western writers (maybe given the breath of Russian history?) Anyhow, its seems that Westerners haven’t written much about it and but even more it seems that no professor in the west had reason to call it “Kruschev’s mistake”. Of course, Elon Musk wasn’t a Russian history PHD but even if he were, he wouldn’t have heard that because …..
When you finally dig in and ask — “Where did this opinion come from? What body of work or scholar said this” from where Elon Musk could have gleaned this idea.
And the answer is Vladmir Putin. In 2021. In an article that he wrote — linked here “Article by Vladimir Putin ”On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians“ (The link is the English translation on the Kremlin Website)
In 1954, the Crimean Region of the RSFSR was given to the Ukrainian SSR, in gross violation of legal norms that were in force at the time.
- Vladmir Putin
Yes, Putin wrote that article which seems to be the first documented instance of this idea about ‘Kruschev’s mistake’ being written down as far as I could find. Here is a link to a 2021 piece that directed me to Putin’s essay www.fairobserver.com/...
Fact #1 Musk used a talking point that is a direct construct of Vladmir Putin which isn’t a popular Russian talking point at that.
One can speculate that maybe he found this talking point in scrolling Russian Telegram or other heavily pro-Russian sources but even this is a stretch because this isn’t one of the primary talking points for selling the war. “DNR and LNR were under attack” is the go-to outside of the absurd “Nazis” and/or “biolabs” but also “NATO threats” or other tankie talking points are the fare that one would expect if one were going to present what is at best a tankie perspective.
As I have hopefully exposed, this is not that. This is pure Putin propaganda and has no shelter of being anything else. It doesn’t hold up under scrutiny, it’s a baseless opinion and it’s never seen the light of day before Putin himself penned it.
We have to ask — why Elon Musk — who is clearly incredibly intelligent regardless of what you think of him — would grab this obscure, questionable and random piece of information on his own to make a Tweet that he was absolutely aware was going to shake the world up? If you ask yourself this question there are not too many answers. You can say that he was doing it on a whim or a lark but at that it needs to be flatly stated that he is very aware of the power of Twitter, and he is aware that he is posting pro-Putin content and as such he’s on a lark that he knows will harm Ukraine’s very clearly stated position in this fight.
It’s my argument that he didn’t come up with it on his own. It’s my argument that this Tweet was not his own construction and that he is compromised and he is connected to the Putin regime.
I know that conspiracy theories are not welcome on this site. I also know that what I have presented above is factual and now I want to extend this into the greater these and ask if it doesn’t make a complete picture so follow below with items that are uncontestable.
When all of these items are combined, for myself it presents a thesis that is hard to ignore.
- A) The Putin power structure uses in social media manipulation as a tool/strategy to achieve goals.
- The Putin Oligarchy has manipulated technological systems at great length and depth in the past to achieve goals. The Mueller report showed that Russia hacked social media with a goal of getting Trump elected. Regardless of outcome it was a massive effort.
- This attack vector was used in Brexit as well.
- This is a strategy that has been effective for his geopolitical agendas.
- B) High profile human assets have been involved in this using techniques of Kompromat, Bribery, Social Engineering, manipulating egos, etc.
- Trump was an asset in Putin’s endeavors, we don't know all of the details but we know he was a component as were Paul Manafort, Rupert Murdoch, Rand Paul, The NRA, the list goes on. It is clear that Tucker Carlson has some kind of connection to the Putin structure. The ideas in his broadcasts that are then repeated on Russian Propaganda are not by chance. The fact is clear. Operators within the United States and the international community are working as operatives for the Putin Oligarchy and have for years.
- C) Twitter is the premiere information forum that drives support for Ukraine worldwide
- With the invasion of Ukraine Twitter became one of if not the best resources for surfacing facts and stories coming out of Ukraine to the west.
- Twitter documents imagery and brutal facts from the war. Reality based information about the war for lack of better words favors Ukraine. While there are opinions that try to spin it, the bottom line is that images of bombed villages and Babushkas are bad for Russia. Russia is the aggressor and Ukraine was invaded. The “war crimes as a strategy” of attacking civilians, looting, torturing, raping and terrorizing are laid bare by Twitter. That’s not to say that the bots, the trolls and the tankies aren’t mixed in but overwhelmingly the information on Twitter and is not good for Russia.
- D) Real information bolsters sympathy, support and allows NATO politicians to make the case to spend the money supporting Ukraine.
- Russia gains significantly by limiting access to actual information. If support of the general public in NATO countries lessens it will be harder to fund weapons for Ukraine.
- E) Musk has a history of mass public dishonesty with no consideration of human cost
- This was displayed in his manipulation of Bitcoin where he destroyed wealth for millions with clear malintent and zero consideration of the human cost of this.
- Musk used his megaphone to first pump Bitcoin by announcing that Tesla would accept BTC (bitcoin) for cars with the obvious goal of making BTC skyrocket.
- Within a few weeks he announced the opposite — knowingly causing BTC to crash.
- He claimed that he learned between the two tweets that BTC was a huge carbon emitter.
- It is not possible that he did not know this at the time or the first tweet. This data point was a simple fact in the crypto space for years. Googling “Is bitcoin bad for the environment” with a data range of 2017 yields thousands of results such as this article from Wired — Bitcoin Mining Guzzles Energy—And Its Carbon Footprint Just Keeps Growing.
- As a crypto expert Musk was aware of this.
- Accordingly, Musk has no scruples with large scale lies with total disregard for harming others. This lie was sociopathic in it’s destruction of the wealth of millions of innocent people.
- F) Musk had an abnormal 180 degree shift on Ukraine
- I’ve proven that Musk used Putin talking points which are 100% supportive of Putin’s goals. This is not subjective and so a person posting them is either wildly ignorant or supporting Putin.
- It is not admissible to declare that Musk’s Tweet was flippant or specious. The content is too obscure and it is inarguable that Musk somehow doesn’t understand the impact of Tweets.
- With this said, he took Russia’s side and given that months earlier he provided Starlink as a critical piece of the Ukrainian effort it absolutely does not equate. These two positions are in direct opposition.
- Factually Musk changed sides regardless of any nonsensical arguments otherwise.
- G) Musk’s actions in Twitter are not rational business actions.
- Musk has a history of running businesses in an “outside of the box” fashion at times but he does not have a history of completely irrational operations that can’t be explained in any reasonable fashion whatsoever.
- H) Twitter is imploding and it doesn’t make sense in any lens unless it was intentional.
Now I will restate this in as less of an outline and I ask you to think about other explanations.
Vladmir Putin has a proven history of using influence and massive, elaborate social media manipulations to achieve goals. His regime has manipulated high profile westerners with any combination of money/blackmail/threats/manipulation of egos to assist in these operations. Also remember it can be like a fishing expedition but a massive one. There isn’t proof that his 2016 cyber attack changed the election and never will be.
Also, it helps to realize that it’s an attack strategy and it may or may not work. Putin knows this but he makes the attack just as he did with the actual war itself. It’s a risk matrix for him and the upside to bribing/co-opting Musk has literally zero downside even if the plan did little or nothing.
The value for Putin to stop Twitter from delivering information to the civilians of countries where politicians need to face their voters and explain the massive expenditure for arms being sent to Ukraine is immeasurable.
If you are still following — I want to reconcile something you may have asked which is
“If the plan was to wreck Twitter than what was the Tweet about — it seems like they are opposites or unrelated”
I agree that in fact they seem like two distinct pathways and I believe that they are/were. I think that the Tweet exposes the connection of Musk as a Putin connected asset and by using that language you can see that assets can be used to achieve more than one objective.
Donald Trump was an asset and there were multiple avenues of attack including attempts to destabilize NATO and at the same time attempts to stop Ukraine from getting weapons.
Hopefully it is clear that those were related but fundamentally different operational attacks.
I would conjecture that the situation in the war at the time of Musk’s Tweet was one at which that it would have been advantageous to negotiate a deal where Russia was allowed to keep the territories that they had claimed in their false referendum, that said this is just a thought as to the “why” isn’t as important than the fact that the Tweet shows the connection between Musk and the Putin regime.
Postscript/Thought Bubble:
I won’t go as far to 100% support that Elon Musk literally did not write the text of the Tweet himself but I want to offer that it’s actually a really tempting proposition because the text itself hints at this … and still, I would think that would be mind-numbingly — well, I don’t even know the word. But let me explain so first let me tell you a bit about the Russian language that you likely “sort of” know.
I learned Russian through my connection to the culture and in Russian there is literally no word “The”. There isn’t a word “A” or “an”. It doesn’t exist. The definite article (‘the’ or ‘a’) does not exist. The sentence “I see a dog” or “I see the dog” is — “я вижу собаку“ — You can check and see there are 3 words there instead of 4. It’s “I see dog”.
Or other examples would translate as: “I see man outside”, “I want to eat apple” and “Give me orange”.
One more piece, The use of the verb “to be” very often left out in ways that it would never be in English — so — “The apple is green” is just two words — “Apple Green”! (яблоко зеленое)
Now that I’ve explained this you probably can think about the character from a movie or your own idea about what Russian sounds like and understand it more! It’s real!
Back when the Russian troll farm was really active I could always tell the Russian Tweets because Russians that speak English are notorious for leaving out “A”,”The” and “Is/am/are”” — even Russians who are truly fluent in English make this mistake constantly.
So now check out the Tweet:
Ukraine-Russia Peace:- Redo elections of annexed regions under UN supervision.
Russia leaves if that is will of the people.-
Crimea formally part of Russia, as it has been since 1783 (until Khrushchev’s mistake).
- Water supply to Crimea assured.- Ukraine remains neutral.
In particular “Russia leaves if that is will of the people.-” …. A native English speaker writes “That is the will”.
and to a lesser degree “Crimea formally part of Russia,” … In native English “Crimea Is formally...”
Devil’s advocate ideas/questions:
- Maybe this is Musk’s style — maybe he omits small words to get more out of a Tweet— and the answer to this is “no, it’s not”. In fact he’s quite verbose in his Tweet language. He doesn’t ever seem to use shorthand to get the character count.
- I read through a couple of hundred of his Tweets. This is literally the only case I found where he omits the article (the or a). He seems to either work hard to make fully correct sentences within the limit or he breaks it into two separate Tweets.
- The reality is that he needed to “find” 5 characters to make the correct English sentence which is his style in literally every Tweet and the way to do this for verbose Tweeters is to find “extras. There are 5 extras here, the dashes can be removed to create the complete sentence and provide something in proper English.
All of that said, it still is hard even for me to swallow that he was passed a Tweet by Russian handlers and simply copied and pasted it verbatim but it is an interesting aspect of this.
The reality is that for myself it allows me to ask “Mark, are you reading too much into this — are you letting yourself go on a conspiracy path that simply doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, and by this what I mean is that — I can look at the words of the Tweet and say “Hey, that lack of a ‘the’ is so Russian in it’s simple existence that it proves that Musk didn’t write the Tweet” — and I have to ask myself if this is what is guiding me….
And the answer for myself is that no, it’s not. There is such a deep set of facts that when organized make a far more compelling case than “It reads in exactly the way a Russian handler would write it”
So I’m just adding this last piece as — yes, just a thought bubble. Hopefully I didn’t damage my larger points. I just find it intriguing.