Tech Talk: Elon Musk buys Tesla a pounding Chinese headache – Gulf Digital News

Tech Talk: Elon Musk buys Tesla a pounding Chinese headache – Gulf Digital News

Elon Musk may not be concerned about making money from Twitter. But his $44 billion deal read more for the social media network has bought what could be a huge political headache.

Musk, who Breakingviews estimates could earn an unimpressive 1% investment return on the transaction, won’t be the first tycoon to prop up a struggling news operation in the name of the public good. Musk says he is supporting free speech, and there’s no reason to doubt him. But as with Alibaba’s purchase of Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, there’s lots of hidden risk.

Since the Hong Kong demonstration movement prompted a massive counterattack by Chinese state actors on foreign social media, Twitter has removed hundreds of thousands of Chinese accounts and slapped labels on state media tweets. It stopped taking advertising from government mouthpieces like Xinhua and declined to cooperate with Chinese government requests. Twitter also gives critics a global platform from which they lambast Beijing. The recently passed National Security Law explicitly targets seditious speech including on overseas websites. Twitter, like most foreign media, has not cooperated.

Twitter’s servers, staff and customers are almost entirely out of President Xi Jinping’s reach. But Tesla produces half of its automobiles in