Biden says Musk’s ties to other nations ‘worth being looked at’

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden said Mr Elon Musk’s relationships with other countries are “worthy of being looked at”, though he declined to say whether the world’s richest man was doing anything inappropriate.

“I think that Elon Musk’s cooperation and or technical relationships with other countries is worthy of being looked at,” Mr Biden said at a White House news conference on Wednesday. “Whether or not he’s doing anything inappropriate – I’m not suggesting that. I’m suggesting they’re worth being looked at. But that’s all I’ll say.”

In October, people familiar with the matter said the Biden administration was discussing whether the United States should

subject some of Mr Musk’s ventures to national security reviews,

including his deal for Twitter and SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network.

One element of the US$44 billion (S$62 billion) Twitter deal was the presence of foreign investors in Mr Musk’s consortium. The group includes Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, Binance Holdings – a digital-asset exchange founded and run by a Chinese native – and Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund. Mr Musk’s Tesla electric-vehicle company derives about 25 per cent of its revenue from China.

Mr Musk, who once called Mr Biden a damp sock puppet “in human form” has frustrated officials in the US and Europe and drawn praise from America’s rivals for tweets to announce proposals to end

Russia’s war in Ukraine

and threaten to cut financial support for Starlink internet service in Ukraine. 

On Monday, a day before the midterm elections, Mr Musk urged Americans to vote for Republicans, arguing that “shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties”.

Once he acquired Twitter in late October,

Mr Musk embarked on a flurry of changes.

After unseating top management and the board, he laid off roughly half the company’s workers – though some employees were asked to come back. BLOOMBERG