Elon Musk’s highly anticipated interview with former President Donald Trump on the social media platform X faced significant disruptions on August 12 due to a massive Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack. Musk, who had announced the interview would take place at 8:00 PM Eastern Time, reported the attack via a tweet, saying, “There appears to be a massive DDoS attack on X. Working on shutting it down.”
A DDoS attack aims to overwhelm a network with an excessive volume of traffic, rendering it inaccessible to legitimate users. This led to technical difficulties as many X users struggled to join the live stream, which was initially labeled as “not available.” Despite these issues, approximately 120,000 viewers managed to tune in once the stream resumed around 8:30 PM ET. Musk had earlier stated that the system was capable of handling 8 million concurrent listeners, highlighting the scale of the disruption.
In his opening remarks, Musk attributed the attack to opposition to Trump’s message, stating, “As this attack demonstrates, there’s a lot of opposition to what Donald Trump has to say.” The interview, which lasted for two hours, covered a range of topics including Trump’s near-assassination, illegal immigration, foreign policy, and critiques of current President Joe Biden and his potential rival Kamala Harris. Surprisingly, despite Trump’s known advocacy for cryptocurrency and Musk’s fondness for Dogecoin, cryptocurrency was not mentioned throughout the discussion.
Prior to the interview, there was considerable speculation about whether Trump would address topics like crypto or Bitcoin. Market predictions placed a 56% chance on Trump mentioning these subjects, but this probability plummeted to 1% by the end of the interview.
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The event also drew international scrutiny. Thierry Breton, the European Union’s internal market chief, had sent a warning to Musk, urging compliance with EU regulations regarding potentially harmful content. Breton’s letter expressed concern that the interview could amplify such content. In response, X CEO Linda Yaccarino dismissed Breton’s concerns, arguing that it represented an overreach of European regulations into US political discourse. She criticized the move as an attempt to “patronize European citizens” and undermine their ability to critically engage with political content.
Despite the technical hurdles, Musk’s team successfully conducted the interview with a reduced live audience and planned to release the full, unedited audio shortly after the event. The DDoS attack not only highlighted the technical vulnerabilities of digital platforms but also underscored the contentious nature of political discourse in the online era.
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