Elon Musk buys Twitter for $44 billion

https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1577607781326233608
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gJgWElT.jpg
 
As I predicted, Musk will go ahead with the purchase and has already said he wants to turn Twitter into a Chinese style super-app. No doubt it will include the "ID-all-humans on the internet" digital initiative and incorporate the social credit score component, along with a "Green Pass/Vax Passport" component and a digital-only CBDC payment system. I wonder what Orwellian name they'll rebrand the app once it's ready for launch?


acptulsa said:
Why are you posting links to communist propaganda on the forum again?

And why does this person apply commas with a salt shaker?
Click to expand...

I thought we figured out long ago that Swordy is a communist larping as a conservative. That handle has followed the Alinsky playbook to a tee ever since the handle showed up on RPF.

If you drill down from that piece into the background of Black(sic) Masters, advocated as being Musk's new Twitter policy enforcement head after takeover is complete, you find this gem on his Senate campaign page:

Abroad, we see the menace of authoritarian countries like China. Blake has an unrivaled understanding of how China uses technology to not only control and terrorize its own citizens, but also to steal our intellectual property and wage digital warfare against America.
Click to expand...

If you read that a certain way, it says he's also very, very qualified to implement such policies for Musk's Chinese style super-app.
 
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devil21 said:
If you read that a certain way, it says he's also very, very qualified to implement such policies for Musk's Chinese style super-app.
Click to expand...

Can't possibly be! Libtards are too dumb to know what's being done to them, who's their friend, and who's their foe. Even so, if libtard heads are sploding over something, it couldn't possibly be bad! Even if someone's fooling them, it just has to be good!!
 
devil21 said:
If you read that a certain way, it says he's also very, very qualified to implement such policies for Musk's Chinese style super-app.
Click to expand...

“If you read that a certain way make stuff up because it suits your preferred narrative, it says he's also very, very qualified to implement such policies for Musk's Chinese style super-app stuff that suits your preferred narrative.”

LOL. Fixed.
 
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Occam's Banana said:
LOL. Fixed.
Click to expand...

How so? Musk plainly stated he wants to model his revamped Twitter after Chinese super-apps, which incorporate a social credit system, digital yuan payments, monitored communication, censorship, etc. If an expert on such Chinese apps is appointed to head up policy of Musk's new Chinese super app, wouldn't it stand to reason that such expert would also know intimately how to mimic one?
 
US Weighs Security Reviews for Musk Deals, Including Twitter Buy
Concerns over Musk’s stance on Russia, threat to cut Starlink
Discussions at early stage as officials consider legal options
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-reviews-for-musk-deals-including-twitter-buy
[archive link: https://archive.ph/Lsrif]​
Jennifer Jacobs & Saleha Mohsin (21 October 2022)

Biden administration officials are discussing whether the US should subject some of Elon Musk’s ventures to national security reviews, including the deal for Twitter Inc. and SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network, according to people familiar with the matter.

US officials have grown uncomfortable over Musk’s recent threat to stop supplying the Starlink satellite service to Ukraine -- he said it had cost him $80 million so far -- and what they see as his increasingly Russia-friendly stance following a series of tweets that outlined peace proposals favorable to President Vladimir Putin. They are also concerned by his plans to buy Twitter with a group of foreign investors.

The discussions are still at an early stage, the people familiar said on condition of anonymity. Officials in the US government and intelligence community are weighing what tools, if any, are available that would allow the federal government to review Musk’s ventures.

One possibility is through the law governing the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to review Musk’s deals and operations for national security risks, they said.

The interagency panel, known as CFIUS, reviews acquisitions of US businesses by foreign buyers. It is not clear if a CFIUS review -- which would involve assessments by the Departments of State, Defense, and Homeland Security, among others -- would offer the government a legal way to conduct a review, the people said.

One element of the $44 billion Twitter deal that could trigger a CFIUS review is the presence of foreign investors in Musk’s consortium. The group includes Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, Binance Holdings Ltd. -- a digital-asset exchange founded and run by a Chinese native -- and Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund.

The panel operates behind closed doors and rarely confirms when it is conducting reviews. CFIUS also holds the power to review deals that have already been consummated.

A US Treasury Department spokesperson said CFIUS does not publicly comment on any transactions that may or may not be under review.

Musk, the world’s richest person, has taken to Twitter in recent weeks to announce proposals to end Russia’s war and threaten to cut financial support for Starlink internet in Ukraine. His tweets and public comments have frustrated officials in the US and Europe and drawn praise from America’s rivals.

Musk later backed down from his threat to stop deploying Starlink and said he would continue to bear the costs of the service. Starlink has become an essential tool for communications in Ukraine during the Russian invasion. Musk has been providing the service for free but has said SpaceX loses $20 million a month providing it to Ukraine and he cannot be responsible for that cost indefinitely.

The US government would also use Starlink in the event of a telecommunications outage, according to people familiar with the matter.

Musk did not immediately respond to multiple e-mailed requests for comment.

He tweeted in reply to a fellow reader’s reaction to the Bloomberg article. “It would be hysterical if the government stopped Elon from over paying for Twitter :tears:,” the reader tweeted. “:100::tears:,” Musk replied.

Widely known as the chief executive officer of electric automaker Tesla Inc., Musk is no stranger to Washington, where he is a major player in government contracts.

Musk forced his way into the business of military and intelligence satellite launches after lobbying vigorously in Congress and suing the US Air Force for the right to compete with a longstanding joint venture of defense giants Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp.

In 2019, the Pentagon said it was reviewing Musk’s federal security clearance after he smoked marijuana on a podcast, though the results of that investigation are unclear. A SpaceX official at the time, who asked not to be identified, said the review had not had an impact on the company.

SpaceX flies astronauts to the International Space Station as part of a long-standing partnership with NASA and launches top secret satellites for the Pentagon. The US Agency for International Development, or USAID, has also paid for some of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites that have made their way to Ukraine.
 
Occam's Banana said:
US Weighs Security Reviews for Musk Deals, Including Twitter Buy
Concerns over Musk’s stance on Russia, threat to cut Starlink
Discussions at early stage as officials consider legal options
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-reviews-for-musk-deals-including-twitter-buy
[archive link: https://archive.ph/Lsrif]​

[...]
Click to expand...

The US Government Sees Silicon Valley As Part Of Its Propaganda Machine
https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-us-government-sees-silicon-valley
Caitlin Johnstone (21 October 2022)

The Biden administration is reportedly considering opening a national security review of Elon Musk's business ventures which could see the plutocrat's purchase of Twitter blocked by the White House, in part because Musk is perceived as having an "increasingly Russia-friendly stance."

Bloomberg reports:

Biden administration officials are discussing whether the US should subject some of Elon Musk’s ventures to national security reviews, including the deal for Twitter Inc. and SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network, according to people familiar with the matter.

US officials have grown uncomfortable over Musk’s recent threat to stop supplying the Starlink satellite service to Ukraine -- he said it had cost him $80 million so far -- and what they see as his increasingly Russia-friendly stance following a series of tweets that outlined peace proposals favorable to President Vladimir Putin. They are also concerned by his plans to buy Twitter with a group of foreign investors.
​

The "group of foreign investors" the Biden administration is reportedly worried about oddly includes Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, who has already been a massive Twitter shareholder for years. The White House certainly never had a problem with foreign investors there before.
"Officials in the US government and intelligence community are weighing what tools, if any, are available that would allow the federal government to review Musk’s ventures," Bloomberg writes. "One possibility is through the law governing the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States [CFIUS] to review Musk’s deals and operations for national security risks, they said."

"Musk, the world’s richest person, has taken to Twitter in recent weeks to announce proposals to end Russia’s war and threaten to cut financial support for Starlink internet in Ukraine," says Bloomberg. "His tweets and public comments have frustrated officials in the US and Europe and drawn praise from America’s rivals."

"If the Twitter acquisition was to be reviewed by CFIUS for national security reasons, the agency could recommend to President Biden that he nix the deal — something Musk himself has tried and failed to do in recent months," writes Business Insider's Kate Duffy on the Bloomberg scoop.

Indeed Musk has already indicated that he'd find it funny if the Biden administration blocked his purchase of Twitter, a $44 billion buy that the Tesla executive has made every legal effort to back out of. But how revealing is it that someone could be forbidden by the White House from purchasing a giant social media company on the grounds that they're not sufficiently hostile toward Moscow?

Neither Bloomberg nor any other mainstream members of the imperial commentariat appear to take any interest in the jarring notion that the US government could end up banning the purchase of an online platform because it views the purchaser as having an unacceptably "Russia-friendly stance." Not only is it uncritically accepted that the US government mustn't allow the purchase of a social media company if the would-be buyer isn't deemed adequately hostile to US enemies, many mainstream liberals are actively cheering for this outcome:


This just says so much about how the US government views the function of Silicon Valley megacorporations, and why it has been exerting more and more pressure on them to collaborate with the empire to greater and greater degrees of intimacy. As far as the US empire is concerned, Silicon Valley is just an arm of the imperial propaganda machine. And empire apologists believe that's as it should be.

None of this will come as a surprise to anyone who's been paying attention to things like the drastic escalations in online censorship since the war in Ukraine began, including on Twitter, or the ongoing expansion of internet censorship protocols that were already well underway before this war started. It will also come as no surprise to people whose ears pricked up when the White House summoned top social media influencers to a briefing in which they were instructed how to talk about the Ukraine war. It will also come as no surprise to those who paid attention to the public outcry when it was discovered that the Biden administration was assembling a "disinformation governance board" to function as an official Ministry of Truth for online content, or when the White House admitted to flagging "problematic posts" for Facebook to take down, or when Mark Zuckerberg admitted that the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop October surprise in the last presidential race was done in conjunction with the FBI.

It is abundantly clear to anyone paying attention that Silicon Valley tech companies are a major part of the imperial narrative control system. The US empire has invested in soft power to an exponentially greater degree than any other empire in history, and has refined the science of mass-scale psychological manipulation to produce the mightiest propaganda machine since the dawn of civilization. Silicon Valley is being used to manipulate the way people think about world events via algorithm manipulation, censorship, and sophisticated information ops like Wikipedia in an entirely unprecedented way that is becoming more and more important to imperial control as the old media give way to the new.

Narrative control centers like Silicon Valley, the news media and Hollywood are just as crucial for US imperial domination as the military. That the US government is weighing intervention to stop the purchase of an online platform, because it lacks confidence that the would-be owner would reliably advance US information interests, is just the latest glimpse behind the veil at the imperial agenda to control human understanding and perception.
 
Occam's Banana said:
The US Government Sees Silicon Valley As Part Of Its Propaganda Machine
https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-us-government-sees-silicon-valley
Caitlin Johnstone (21 October 2022)

The Biden administration is reportedly considering opening a national security review of Elon Musk's business ventures which could see the plutocrat's purchase of Twitter blocked by the White House, in part because Musk is perceived as having an "increasingly Russia-friendly stance."

Bloomberg reports:

Biden administration officials are discussing whether the US should subject some of Elon Musk’s ventures to national security reviews, including the deal for Twitter Inc. and SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network, according to people familiar with the matter.

US officials have grown uncomfortable over Musk’s recent threat to stop supplying the Starlink satellite service to Ukraine -- he said it had cost him $80 million so far -- and what they see as his increasingly Russia-friendly stance following a series of tweets that outlined peace proposals favorable to President Vladimir Putin. They are also concerned by his plans to buy Twitter with a group of foreign investors.
​

The "group of foreign investors" the Biden administration is reportedly worried about oddly includes Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, who has already been a massive Twitter shareholder for years. The White House certainly never had a problem with foreign investors there before.
"Officials in the US government and intelligence community are weighing what tools, if any, are available that would allow the federal government to review Musk’s ventures," Bloomberg writes. "One possibility is through the law governing the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States [CFIUS] to review Musk’s deals and operations for national security risks, they said."

"Musk, the world’s richest person, has taken to Twitter in recent weeks to announce proposals to end Russia’s war and threaten to cut financial support for Starlink internet in Ukraine," says Bloomberg. "His tweets and public comments have frustrated officials in the US and Europe and drawn praise from America’s rivals."

"If the Twitter acquisition was to be reviewed by CFIUS for national security reasons, the agency could recommend to President Biden that he nix the deal — something Musk himself has tried and failed to do in recent months," writes Business Insider's Kate Duffy on the Bloomberg scoop.

Indeed Musk has already indicated that he'd find it funny if the Biden administration blocked his purchase of Twitter, a $44 billion buy that the Tesla executive has made every legal effort to back out of. But how revealing is it that someone could be forbidden by the White House from purchasing a giant social media company on the grounds that they're not sufficiently hostile toward Moscow?

Neither Bloomberg nor any other mainstream members of the imperial commentariat appear to take any interest in the jarring notion that the US government could end up banning the purchase of an online platform because it views the purchaser as having an unacceptably "Russia-friendly stance." Not only is it uncritically accepted that the US government mustn't allow the purchase of a social media company if the would-be buyer isn't deemed adequately hostile to US enemies, many mainstream liberals are actively cheering for this outcome:

This just says so much about how the US government views the function of Silicon Valley megacorporations, and why it has been exerting more and more pressure on them to collaborate with the empire to greater and greater degrees of intimacy. As far as the US empire is concerned, Silicon Valley is just an arm of the imperial propaganda machine. And empire apologists believe that's as it should be.

None of this will come as a surprise to anyone who's been paying attention to things like the drastic escalations in online censorship since the war in Ukraine began, including on Twitter, or the ongoing expansion of internet censorship protocols that were already well underway before this war started. It will also come as no surprise to people whose ears pricked up when the White House summoned top social media influencers to a briefing in which they were instructed how to talk about the Ukraine war. It will also come as no surprise to those who paid attention to the public outcry when it was discovered that the Biden administration was assembling a "disinformation governance board" to function as an official Ministry of Truth for online content, or when the White House admitted to flagging "problematic posts" for Facebook to take down, or when Mark Zuckerberg admitted that the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop October surprise in the last presidential race was done in conjunction with the FBI.

It is abundantly clear to anyone paying attention that Silicon Valley tech companies are a major part of the imperial narrative control system. The US empire has invested in soft power to an exponentially greater degree than any other empire in history, and has refined the science of mass-scale psychological manipulation to produce the mightiest propaganda machine since the dawn of civilization. Silicon Valley is being used to manipulate the way people think about world events via algorithm manipulation, censorship, and sophisticated information ops like Wikipedia in an entirely unprecedented way that is becoming more and more important to imperial control as the old media give way to the new.

Narrative control centers like Silicon Valley, the news media and Hollywood are just as crucial for US imperial domination as the military. That the US government is weighing intervention to stop the purchase of an online platform, because it lacks confidence that the would-be owner would reliably advance US information interests, is just the latest glimpse behind the veil at the imperial agenda to control human understanding and perception.
Click to expand...
Imagine that. A couple months ago Musk wanted out of the deal and was going to be forced to purchase. Now he agrees to purchase and they want to stop the deal. Seems like a win for Musk. Shareholders will be left with a failing worthless company. I guess it is possible it was all prescripted.
 
GlennwaldSnowdenAssanged said:
Imagine that. A couple months ago Musk wanted out of the deal and was going to be forced to purchase. Now he agrees to purchase and they want to stop the deal. Seems like a win for Musk. Shareholders will be left with a failing worthless company. I guess it is possible it was all prescripted.
Click to expand...

If Musk does end up buying Twitter, then "it was all prescripted".

And if Musk does not end up buying Twitter, then "it was all prescripted".

Everything is always "prescripted".

:rolleyes:
 
Funny how the US Govt lets him launch satellites into outer space.... but won't let him own a social media company.
 
Occam's Banana said:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1514564966564651008
ozBnvsG.png


Elon Musk Makes $43 Billion Unsolicited Bid to Take Twitter Private
World’s richest person will offer $54.20 per share in cash
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...unches-43-billion-hostile-takeover-of-twitter
Giles Turner & Maxwell Adler (14 April 2022)

Elon Musk has made a controversial offer to buy Twitter Inc., saying the company has extraordinary potential and he is the person to unlock it.

The world’s richest person will offer $54.20 per share in cash, valuing Twitter at about $43 billion. The social media company’s shares rose just 5.3% to $48.27 at the market open in New York as investors began to assess how one of the platform’s most outspoken users will succeed in his takeover attempt.

Musk, 50, announced the potential deal in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday, after turning down a potential board seat at the company. The billionaire, who also controls Tesla Inc., first disclosed a stake of about 9% on April 4. Tesla shares fell about 1.8% on the news.

Twitter said that its board would review the proposal and any response would be in the best interests of “all Twitter stockholders.”

The bid is the most high-stakes clash yet between Musk and the social media platform. The executive is one of Twitter’s most-watched firebrands, often tweeting out memes and taunts to @elonmusk’s more than 80 million followers. He has been vociferous about changes he’d like to consider imposing at the social media platform, and the company offered him a seat on the board following the announcement of his $3.35 billion stake.

Musk immediately began appealing to fellow users about prospective moves, from turning Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters into a homeless shelter and adding an edit button for tweets to granting automatic verification marks to premium users. One tweet suggested Twitter might be dying, given that several celebrities with high numbers of followers rarely tweet.

Unsatisfied with the influence that comes with being Twitter’s largest investor, he has now launched a full takeover, one of the few individuals who can afford it outright. He’s currently worth about $260 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, compared with Twitter’s market valuation of about $37 billion.

Although Musk is the world’s richest person, how he will find $43 billion in cash has yet to be revealed.

“This becomes a hostile takeover offer which is going to cost a serious amount of cash,” said Neil Campling, head of TMT research at Mirabaud Equity Research. “He will have to sell a decent piece of Tesla stock to fund it, or a massive loan against it.”

Much of Musk’s ire against Twitter has been directed against what he perceives as censorship by the platform. In a letter to Twitter’s board alongside details regarding his offer, Musk said he believes Twitter: “will neither thrive nor serve [its free speech] societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company”

Musk, who is scheduled to speak later today at a TED conference in Vancouver, is offering a 54% premium over the Jan. 28 closing price, the date after which he began building his initial stake in Twitter. The takeover attempt is unlikely to be a drawn-out process.

“If the deal doesn’t work, given that I don’t have confidence in management nor do I believe I can drive the necessary change in the public market, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder,” said Musk.

Musk informed Twitter’s board over the previous weekend that he thought the company should be taken private, according to today’s statement.

The $54.20 per share offer is “too low” for shareholders or the board to accept, said Vital Knowledge’s Adam Crisafulli in a report, adding that the company’s shares hit $70 less than a year ago.

Although Musk said his offer was “best and final,” it opens the gates to rivals, either to team up with or out-bid his offer. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, also on the board of Tesla, previously attempted to buy a stake in social media platform TikTok.

Musk has hired Morgan Stanley as his adviser for the bid. The offer price also includes the number 420, widely recognized as a coded reference to marijuana. He also picked $420 as the share price for possibly taking Tesla private in 2018, a move that brought him scrutiny from the SEC.

“There will be host of questions around financing, regulatory, balancing Musk’s time (Tesla, SpaceX) in the coming days,” said Dan Ives, analyst at Wedbush. “But ultimately based on this filing it is a now or never bid for Twitter to accept.”


Official SEC filing: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001418091/000110465922045641/tm2212748d1_sc13da.htm

Elon Musk’s full letter to Twitter’s board:
w2umA4m.jpg
Click to expand...

wow
 
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