We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. This website uses cookies. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence (if different), and our use of cookies as described in our Cookie Policy.
Elon Musk is getting all the tech bro attention these days, and Mark Zuckerberg can NOT stand it.
Watch more PUPPET REGIME!
Subscribe to GZERO Media's YouTube channel to get notifications when new videos are published.
Elon Musk aside, does anybody else love Twitter? The platform’s 280-character tweets are an essential tool for governments, institutions, politicians, and journalists — as well as eccentric billionaires, of course — but in the grander scheme, not a lot of regular folks are hooked. We look at the brave — and scary — user numbers of social media, where not many care whether you RT’d or simply liked their thread.
Following news of Tesla CEO Elon Musk's plan to buy Twitter, one of the most bizarre and viral reactions came from … his Chinese doppelgänger.
“My man, my man. I love you,” said the self-proclaimed Yi Long Ma, who’s become an internet celebrity for his videos spoofing Musk on Douyin, the Chinese-language version of TikTok. The world’s richest man himself gave “Yi Long” a thumbs-up late last year, joking that perhaps he’s part-Chinese.
His lookalike in China is clearly excited about Musk owning the social media platform. But will the world's richest man’s ties to China hurt him and Twitter? There are two sides to that argument.
On the one hand, China could become a big headache for Musk in his new role. That’s the prevailing Western media narrative, which argues that since Tesla is heavily invested in China, Beijing could influence Musk to relax some Twitter rules that Xi Jinping doesn’t like.
Chinese diplomats and state media outlets have long complained about their accounts being labeled "state-affiliated." Also, Musk's plans to turn Twitter into a bastion of free speech by relaxing content moderation rules and getting rid of bots threaten China's widespread use of fake accounts to push pro-Beijing propaganda and misinformation.
More broadly, Musk, the world's most famous libertarian, will be running a social media platform while still doing business with the world's most powerful authoritarian regime. You don't have to be a jealous fellow billionaire to ask whether there might eventually be some tension there.
What’s more, China has leverage on Tesla. The country accounts for almost a quarter of global sales of the electric vehicle company, which has built a massive data center in Shanghai, China's largest city. If push comes to shove, Beijing has ways to hurt Tesla in the Chinese market — perhaps by regulating in favor of its local competitors, or stealing its data and tech.
"Tesla stock is already under the gun because Musk has sold billions of dollars worth of his shares and is using his remaining stake as collateral to pay for Twitter," says Eurasia Group analyst Scott Bade. "China is important to Tesla, not only as a market but also as a source of rare earths for its EVs, and there are fears it could use both to influence Musk on Twitter."
Interestingly, when Shanghai entered its COVID lockdown over a month ago, we didn’t hear a peep from the billionaire, who earlier cited California's pandemic restrictions — and high taxes — to justify moving Tesla’s US headquarters to Austin, Texas.
On the other hand, maybe these China jitters for Musk are overblown. Why? For one thing, Twitter, which has been blocked by China since 2009, had barely 10 million daily active Chinese users (via VPN) in 2016, the last time the US-based platform checked. Compare that to the whopping 573 million on Sina Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter — which Chinese censors fully control.
For another, any gesture perceived as kowtowing to China would pose huge risks for Tesla and Musk himself in the US, where Twitter is most influential. In today's highly polarized US political environment, being anti-China is perhaps the only thing the extremes of Twitter can agree on. Musk certainly loves a good culture war, but getting caught on the wrong side of the US-China rivalry could lead many Americans to stop buying Teslas.
Also, Twitter, although growing in importance, is still hardly a big part of China’s broader social media strategy to win over foreign netizens.
"Musk is unlikely to be under major pressure to quash 'anti-China' voices on Twitter, or grab the personal data of Chinese dissidents in the near term," says Bade. "Beijing has many other tools available to counter negative news and track its enemies."
Finally, China needs Tesla as much as Tesla needs China, at least for now. Tesla has invested billions of dollars there, and its presence has spurred local EV makers to become more competitive. China wants to become an EV powerhouse by riding on Tesla's coattails — and it’s hard to imagine Xi will let Twitter get in the way of that as the Chinese economy keeps sputtering due to his zero-COVID policy.
What do you think? Let us know here.Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, discusses the political impact of Elon Musk's plan to buyTwitter.
Why will Elon Musk be in a political hotspot if he buys Twitter?
The announcement that Twitter has agreed to be acquired by billionaire Elon Musk has set both the social media site and Washington political analysis ablaze. Liberals and conservatives both agree that Twitter is an essential town square, an important tool for political communication and outreach.
But liberals are concerned about policing hate speech and abuse, as well as misinformation on the platform, things they have criticized Twitter for in the past, while conservatives have criticized what they see as Twitter's overly aggressive content moderation policies that's resulted in the removal of several prominent conservative figures, including former President Trump from the platform, but has also resulted in the censorship of discussion around issues like the efficacy of mask mandates and stopping the spread of coronavirus, the potential origins of the pandemic in a Wuhan laboratory, and discussion about the contents of the laptop stolen from current President Biden's son. Musk has promised to be a free speech absolutist suggesting he will reinstate many of the banned accounts and not censor freewheeling speech about controversial topics online.
But one thing to watch is that Musk's approach is likely to create massive regulatory challenges for both Musk and the website, particularly in Europe, which has much stricter speech codes than the United States, requiring content moderation and banning things like hate speech. The EU just recently passed a law that would censor and fine companies that do not comply, and several high-ranking EU officials have already sent warnings to Musk that he must moderate illegal and harmful content online. Musk has developed a reputation as being an aggressive disruptor of the status quo in Washington, breaking into industries, such as space launch and broadband deployment, and he has also a long history of flouting US regulators, leading to sanctions from securities regulators, as well as admonishment from transportation safety and labor regulators in Washington, and this is unlikely to stop.
For his part, President Trump has said he doesn't want to get back on Twitter, but it seems likely that if Twitter lifts its ban on his account, the platform and the fundraising opportunities will be too great for him to ignore. Much like how Trump's tweets are too difficult for political journalists to ignore, setting up a stage for a return to the Trump-dominated political discourse that existed in the United States from 2015 until he was banned from Twitter in early 2021.
Elon Musk's account seen through a Twitter logo.
The social media site has agreed to sell itself to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, for a mere $44 billion. Aside from the financial fireworks involved, there is a huge political angle to consider. Musk has criticized Twitter’s content moderation approach as a threat to free speech in what he calls “the digital town square.”
If this deal goes through, he’d be in a commanding position to change things. He wants to boost trust by making the app’s algorithms open source, and by better verifying that all users are humans, not bots.
But some big questions loom: First, forcing users to identify themselves would help address the problems of trolling, misinformation, and abuse in open societies. But they could also put opposition activists or dissidents in authoritarian countries at greater risk.
Second, would Musk push the board to reverse its lifetime ban of former President Donald Trump? Doing so ahead of the midterms or the 2024 election could have a major impact on both races – even if Trump says, for now, he has no interest in roosting with the little blue bird again.
Third, would Musk do away with the app's content moderation altogether? If so, how would he balance the ideal of free speech with the destructive impact of disinformation? As a private company, Twitter is not beholden to the First Amendment, but its power as a platform for political discourse is undeniable.
And lastly, it's no secret that China is one of Tesla's largest and most promising markets. If Musk owns Twitter, he'll be both selling to the world's powerful dictatorship while also owning one of the most influential communication platforms. You don't have to be a jealous fellow billionaire to ask whether there might eventually be some tension between those two things.
.
With evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine mounting, how will the West respond? Is Imran Khan done in Pakistan? Is Elon Musk joining the Twitter board good or bad news for free speech? Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
With evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine mounting, how will the West respond?
With further escalation. We're a month and a half into this war and every week, the most consistent thing we're seeing is further economic sanctions from the West, further diplomatic isolation from the West with all these Russian diplomats being thrown out of countries, and of course, further military support for Ukraine. I think that continues to accelerate and step up from the Europeans. We are moving towards oil and coal being cut off from Russia, though not gas, which is still the critical issue and the big money spinner but that's where we're heading right now. And of course, that also means that negotiations are very far from what we're talking about.
Is Imran Khan done in Pakistan?
Well, not yet, not yet. We will see where the Supreme Court decides to rule. On balance, I still think that they're going to just reject it and then he's out on the basis of the confidence vote, which will go against him in parliament. But if that doesn't happen, then you're going to have new elections. And if he's taking a scorched earth policy saying that this is all about Americans with foreign intervention to take them out, which is fake news, but very, very provocative in Pakistan, anything could happen. So it is a gambit. I understand it, and it's all about him, right? We see a lot of those politicians these days and it never goes well for the country. By the way, Pakistan's economy is in free fall right now and there ain't no way they're where IMF support in this environment. That's really unfortunate, especially at a time we have all this inflation.
Is Elon Musk joining the Twitter board good or bad news for free speech?
I'm actually going to say it's good news for free speech, narrowly defined. I'm not sure it's good news for civil society. I mean, for example, free speech is one piece of the anyone should be able to say anything they want and you don't want people to be thrown off of a platform for having political opinions. On the other hand, there's an immense amount of disinformation, which is ill intended, which comes from by bots and trolls, which don't come from real people. I don't think Elon Musk is going to be good for that at all. I mean, for example, I have no problem with free speech for actual human beings, but I'd love to see everyone on Twitter verified. So if you aren't a real person, you don't have free speech. There's no free speech for bots. I suspect that Elon Musk is very uninterested in addressing that. So we have different problems. On balance, I think this is problematic for Twitter, but hey, he gets to spend his money. We'll see where it goes.
The UN wants to prevent an arms race in space. How? By reforming international space law, which hasn't been updated in more than 50 years.
The current treaty was negotiated during the Cold War, when only two countries — the US and the Soviet Union — had viable programs. Ratified by 111 countries, it bans space nukes and grants all countries the right to peacefully explore space — including the Moon.
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty also says countries can’t claim sovereignty over celestial bodies. But that was before private space exploration by the likes of Richard Branson or Jeff Bezos.
The UN thinks it's time to update the law with more concrete rules and norms not only to prevent conflict, but also to regulate things like future mining on the Moon.
Watch this episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer: Will Putin invade Ukraine?
A scent of Musk in US-China space spat. Pull up! pull up! Beijing earlier this week accused the US of creating danger in space after Chinese astronauts commanding their country’s sparkling new space station nearly crashed into a satellite launched by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Beijing says the US government has to ensure that Musk’s satellites honor a 1967 treaty on safety in space. Given that SpaceX plans to launch thousands more satellites as part of its Starlink global internet access project, an already cluttered orbit is going to get even more dangerous. Governments will have to sort out who is responsible for policing private spacecraft. In the nearer term, we wonder whether this week’s near-miss space spat will have implications for Musk back on earth: China is currently the only country outside the US where his Tesla electric car company runs a factory (Germany is next, beginning early next year.) Chinese social media has reportedly lit up with criticism of Musk, with anecdotal accounts of calls for a Tesla boycott. That could hurt. Last year, Tesla sold $3 billion worth of cars in China, more than a fifth of its overall sales.
Abbas meets Gantz in Israel. In a meeting decried by hardliners on both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas travelled to the home of Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz for a two-hour meeting on security and economic relations. The trip, Abbas’s first official visit to Israel in a decade, came against the backdrop of escalating attacks by Jewish settlers in the West Bank, as well as increasing violence by Palestinians in the West Bank and inside Israel. After the meeting, Israel announced “confidence-building measures,” including an advance transfer of taxes to the PA and additional permits for Palestinian businesspeople to cross into Israel. But the militants of Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, blasted Abbas’ move as treasonous, while the rightwing Likud party of former PM Bibi Netanyahu warned of dangerous “concessions” to the Palestinians. Still, some 60 percent of Palestinians polled say that anything to improve their daily lives is worth pursuing. That puts Abbas on the spot to deliver — the same poll shows three-quarters of Palestinians want him to resign. Overall, the Abbas-Gantz meeting is hardly a breakthrough. The official position of Israeli PM Naftali Bennett is that “there won’t be” a renewed peace process anytime soon. But in a conflict that has rarely seen significant leaps of progress, merely opening the way to constructive talks is always worth keeping an eye on.
Putin requests call with Biden. The Biden administration has announced that the US president will hold another call with Russia’s President Putin on Thursday afternoon “to discuss a range of topics, including upcoming diplomatic engagements with Russia.” Crucially, the White House says Putin asked for the meeting. The presence of tens of thousands of Russian troops near the border with Ukraine has set Europe and the US on edge and NATO on alert. But the threat of a Russian invasion is tempered by the high economic and political costs that Russian casualties and an occupation of parts of Ukraine hostile to Moscow would impose. We’ll be watching for any sign that Putin can draw some concession from Biden that can help him claim a political victory without a shot being fired.
