Elon Musk’s Very Bad Week—And a Convenient Cyberattack?
Tesla stock crashes, X is failing, SpaceX flops. Musk blames Ukraine.
Elon Musk is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week.
Tesla’s stock plummeted 15% in a single day, marking its worst drop in years.
User engagement on X (formerly Twitter) continued its steady decline since Musk’s acquisition.
Advertising revenue on X has cratered by 60%, leaving the platform struggling to replace lost income.
His AI company, xAI, is quietly cutting jobs.
And to top it off, SpaceX just suffered another high-profile rocket failure, spreading debris across a wide swath of the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean, adding to concerns about the company’s rushed timelines and technical setbacks.
Then, just as this multi-front crisis is unfolding, Musk claims that X was hit by a "massive cyberattack." He points the finger at IP addresses in the "Ukraine area" and says X faces frequent attacks. Dark Storm Force, a pro-Palestinian hacker group, has claimed responsibility, and multiple social media posts have pointed to Anonymous and DreadNought.
While users reported disruptions beginning early Monday morning and throughout the day, there’s just one problem. There is no independent verification that a massive cyberattack actually happened. Disruptions aren’t uncommon on the platform, so was this an internal failure, an ordinary hacking disruption, or something more diabolical?
What’s more likely? That sophisticated cybercriminals launched an attack at the precise moment Musk’s empire is crumbling—or that this is just another chapter in his long history of distraction tactics?
Musk Is Losing Big—And He Needs a Scapegoat
Musk’s empire is crumbling. Just this week:
Tesla stock is down 55% since December, wiping out billions. Musk lost $29 billion in a single day when the stock plummeted 15%.
Tesla Takedown protests are occurring daily around the globe and Musk has pointed the finger at his PayPal Mafia former friend Reid Hoffman and other left-leaning operatives.
X’s engagement appears to be continuing its freefall. Reports indicate that by October 2024, it had lost 72% of its value since Musk purchased it.
X ad revenue is down 60%, with a projected $75M loss due to accusations of deplatforming left-leaning voices and amplifying hard alt-right players.
xAI is quietly laying off staff, and many wonder if Musk’s AI venture is already failing.
SpaceX just had another fiery rocket failure. This year alone has seen two losses in addition to several scraped launches. On January 16th, control lost communication, and the vehicle failed near the Turks and Caicos Islands. On March 6th, Starship exploded just after takeoff from Boca Chica, dumping debris across the Caribbean.
Reports emerged that a Cabinet meeting descended into a yelling match between Musk, Rubio, and others, suggesting some in the Trump administration are less than pleased with his DOGE.
On March 10th, Musk admitted to Larry Kudlow that running DOGE & his companies is “very difficult.”
Musk’s entire empire is under siege. A sudden, dramatic cyberattack claim conveniently shifts attention away from all of this.
See our reporting on Musk’s Tesla troubles here:
Musk Blames Ukraine—Experts Say He’s Misleading You
Musk claims that X was hit by a “massive cyberattack” and blames Ukraine. But cybersecurity experts are already poking holes in his story.
Kevin Beaumont, a well-known security researcher, noted that Musk’s claim “is missing a key fact — the attack actually came from IPs worldwide, not just Ukraine.”
Beaumont identified the attack as a Mirai variant botnet, which is made up of compromised security cameras. This attack method is common and hardly a sign of sophisticated nation-state hacking.
While he isn’t sure who is behind it, he sarcastically called it the work of “advanced persistent teenagers” (APT)—not a coordinated geopolitical operation.
Here’s what that means:
If an attack did occur, it wasn’t the targeted, nation-state-level threat Musk is implying.
It was likely a typical botnet attack that happens frequently and isn’t uniquely catastrophic.
Musk’s attempt to tie this to Ukraine is misleading at best and political scapegoating at worst.
We still don’t have independent verification of the severity of the attack. Where is the hard forensic evidence showing whether this was a “massive” breach?
Furthermore, if this was just a simple Mirai attack, why would X have been so vulnerable that it was out of service for hours? Musk— the AI genius, cybersecurity expert, the Golden Boy— should have the country's most secure social media platform. He claims X is always targeted, so one would think he has the most robust defense.
So far, all we have is Musk’s word about what happened. And history shows that his word alone isn’t good enough.
Musk Has Lied Before—Why Trust Him Now?
Musk has a long, documented history of using drama to distract from his failures.
2018 “Pedo Guy” Insult → When Tesla was struggling with Model 3 production, Musk picked a public fight with a Thai cave rescuer to shift headlines.
2018 “Funding Secured” Scandal → As Tesla stock became volatile, Musk falsely claimed he was taking the company private at $420 a share, triggering an SEC investigation.
2021 Tesla Bot Announcement → When Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software was under fire, Musk hyped up a humanoid robot that didn’t exist. It was obviously a person in a costume.
2022–2025 Twitter Chaos → Every time Tesla faced bad press, Musk stirred up drama on Twitter/X, from reinstating banned accounts to pushing conspiracy theories.
This isn’t speculation. It’s pattern recognition.
If Musk has misled the public before, why believe him now?
See our extensive reporting on Musk, DOGE, and the chaos crew here:
Final Thoughts
Listen, we’ve all had a rough week. So far this year, I’ve personally had seven terrible weeks in a row. However, Musk’s descent from Tech God to nearly abject failure is happening at an unprecedented rate.
Musk’s empire is falling apart. Tesla is bleeding value, X is collapsing, SpaceX is failing, and DOGE is becoming increasingly unpopular. Even he admits that running all of them is challenging.
The wealthiest man in the world lost more in one day than millionaires Laurene Powell Jobs and Leonardo Del Vecchio are reportedly worth. It seems convenient that his massive cyberattack claim shifts the focus away from these mounting failures and attempts to garner sympathy. And blaming it on Ukraine? This is an interesting assertion considering his recent spat with Poland, who proposed replacing StarLink service to Ukraine with another option when Musk implied he would (again) disrupt service.
You were distracted, bro. You gutted the company and have been experiencing service disruptions since you acquired the platform. You’ve spent the last seven weeks running around the country on a ketamine high with a motley crew of teen tech homies cutting, gutting, and waving a chainsaw at CPAC, doing interviews from Joe Rogan to Hannity. It is a lot.
Elon, here is some free advice: You don’t have to do it all. No one would blame you if you stepped away from DOGE. Some of us might even celebrate a deceleration of the federal government's gutting.
Take a break.
Enjoy Spring Break with the Tates in Florida.
Have another baby.
Then, focus on your businesses.
We’ve survived nearly 250 years without your meddling. We can manage a few more.
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Bibliography:
“Elon Musk’s Net Worth Drops $29 Billion as Tesla Stock Crashes” – Business Insider (March 10, 2025) https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-net-worth-drops-billion-tesla-stock-2025-3
“Twitter Under Elon Musk” – Wikipedia (Citing Pew Research & Sensor Tower) (Last Updated March 2025) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_under_Elon_Musk
“Twitter’s Active Users Decline, Bluesky Surges” – SOAX Research (2024) https://soax.com/research/twitter-active-users
“After the election of Donald Trump, Bluesky, a competitor of X, is preparing to exceed 20 million users” – Le Monde (November 2024) https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2024/11/18/apres-l-election-de-donald-trump-bluesky-concurrent-de-x-s-apprete-a-depasser-les-20-millions-d-utilisateurs_6400506_4408996.html
"SpaceX's Starship lost control, spun wildly, and exploded just as it reached space" – Business Insider (March 6, 2025) https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-starship-flight-eight-loses-control-2025-2
“Musk blames X outage on cyberattack” – Reuters (March 10, 2025) https://www.reuters.com/technology/social-media-platform-x-down-thousands-users-downdetector-shows-2025-03-10
“Elon Musk claims X being targeted in ‘massive cyberattack’ as service goes down” – AP News (March 10, 2025) https://apnews.com/article/0268a8b035aaa277c0287e7c82b6081e
“Elon Musk Settles SEC Fraud Charges; Tesla Charged With and Resolves Securities Law Charge’” – SEC Filing (2018 https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-226
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