The National Security Grounds For Investigating Musk's Twitter Acquisition

6th November 2022

A report from the Brookings Institution. The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, DC.

On October 27, Elon Musk purchased Twitter in a deal worth $44 billion. Expectations and opinions about the deal vary widely. Critics are concerned that Musk will remove important safeguards against hate speech, online harassment, and incitement of violence, and weaken the platform's rules against mis- and disinformation. Proponents of the deal hope that Musk will improve Twitter's business model and expand the capabilities of the platform, turning it into an "everything app" with a range of products and services.

However, one important aspect of Musk's acquisition of Twitter has received less attention: The acquisition's relevance to national security. Not only has Musk brought on a number of investors to help finance the deal, including entities with links to China, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia (see Table 1), but one of his other companies, Tesla, is increasingly dependent on the Chinese market and the goodwill of the Chinese government. Due to the critical position of Twitter as a platform for political discourse in the U.S., the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), a federal interagency committee tasked with reviewing the national security implications of foreign investment in domestic companies, should investigate the Twitter deal on the grounds of national security.

Read the full report HERE