Bezos Throws Major Shade at Musk's Twitter Purchase with China Theory
By now, it is well understood that billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk aren’t exactly the best of friends. In fact, the pair seem to hold on to a great deal of disdain for one another, as they continue to duel within the still-tiny space-tourism industry.
Naturally, when Musk decided to purchase Twitter, Bezos felt the need to respond, and did so by positing a wild new conspiracy theory about how the Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s purchase may have benefited China.
Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos on Monday mulled whether China has gained leverage over what happens on Twitter now that Tesla CEO Elon Musk has secured a $44 billion deal with the social media company.
Advertisement - story continues below“Interesting question. Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage of the town square?” Bezos tweeted in response to a New York Times reporter who noted Tesla’s reliance on China for its large market and lithium batteries.
The reporter noted that Tesla’s second-biggest market after the U.S. in 2021 was China and that Chinese battery makers are major suppliers for Tesla’s electric vehicles. He also noted that when China banned Twitter in 2009, the government “had almost no leverage over the platform.” He then suggested that, due to Musk’s acquisition, “That may have just changed.”
And then, in a bit of s softening of the rhetoric:
Bezos, however, went on to say that Beijing likely did not gain leverage over Twitter.
Advertisement - story continues below“My own answer to this question is probably not,” the Amazon founder added. “The more likely outcome in this regard is complexity in China for Tesla, rather than censorship at Twitter.”
“But we’ll see. Musk is extremely good at navigating this kind of complexity,” Bezos added.
As of this writing, Musk has not bitten Bezo’s bait, but we highly doubt that the longstanding feud between these two magnates is over.
