Musk says Trump’s interview was targeted for cyber attack

Elon Musk’s interview with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has been marred by technical problems that the tech billionaire blamed on a cyber attack.

The lengthy chat, which Mr Musk said was aimed at “open-minded independent voters”, started after more than 40 minutes as many users struggled to gain access.

Mr Musk, who owns X, formerly of Twitter, said the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack had “flooded all our data lines”.

Toward the end of the two-hour interview, he doubled down on his endorsement of Trump and called on moderate voters to support the Republican campaign.

“Here’s an exciting, inspiring future that people can look forward to and be hopeful and excited about what’s next,” Mr Musk said.

The conversation got off to a bad start.

More than 20 minutes before the chat was due to start, as many users struggled to access the live stream, Mr Musk blamed a “massive DDOS attack on X” for the problems in the post.

Distributed denial of service attacks – or DDoS attacks – are attempts to overload a website to make it difficult to use or inaccessible.

When the conversation between the two men began, Mr. Musk said that the alleged cyber attack shows that there is resistance in the US to hear what Trump has to say.

It is not clear what caused the technical problems with X’s audio chat or whether he may have been behind any of the alleged attacks.

“A DDoS attack sends a very large number of signals to the Internet that it is intended to disrupt,” Anthony Lim, Director of the Center for Strategic Cyberspace and International Studies in Singapore, told the BBC.

“It is unlikely that it will affect a single service or feature on the website.”

Mr Lim added that it is possible that the large number of people trying to listen may have temporarily crashed the service.

However, Andrew Hay from IT company Damovo said that the problems may have been caused by a cyberattack: “I believe that the DDoS attack was aimed at the streaming part of X’s service, without having a significant impact on everyone’s performance on the website.”

“Performing a large-scale DDoS attack is relatively easy, requiring a large number of vulnerable systems or an identified technical flaw in the target to exploit its resources,” he added.

Mr Musk said in a subsequent post that the show had been tested with “8 million listeners” before his live chat.

During the interview, X Spaces showed almost a million people listening

The rough start was reminiscent of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis entering the White House race in May 2023, which was caught up on X and noticed the live streaming malfunction.

The interview on X comes as Trump, the former president and Republican presidential nominee, tries to reset his re-election campaign.

Opinion polls suggest the Democratic nomination of Ms. Harris has strengthened a close race for the White House.

Harris’ campaign intensified after he became the Democratic nominee when President Joe Biden dropped out of the race last month.

Next week, Ms. Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, could get another bump at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

The Trump campaign has been demanding that Ms. Harris not do interviews and take few questions from reporters since accepting the nomination last month.

In Monday’s interview, Trump said it’s “nice to have a platform like this” at X, where he can speak at length.

Mr Musk, whose platform hosted the event, has become a powerful voice in politics.

He has more than 190 million followers on X, where he often gets involved in political disputes.

He recently joined a new political committee supporting the Trump campaign.

But after his conversation with Trump, Mr. Musk posted on X “I’m happy to host Kamala at X Spaces again”, in an apparent invitation to Vice President Kamala Harris to participate in the same event.

The relationship between Mr Musk and Trump has changed over the years and they have traded online barbs in the past.

But Monday’s conversation between the two was cordial and not hostile.

Trump, who has been skeptical of electric cars and has previously vowed to restore government subsidies, praised carmaker Tesla, which Mr Musk also owns.

He recently said he had “no choice” but to support EVs because of Mr Musk’s endorsement and called Telsa’s product “great” on Monday.

Mr Musk said he would like to offer assistance to the Trump administration on a “proposed government efficiency commission”.

Ahead of the high-profile discussion on the social media platform, which can be accessed by European users, EU industry chief Thierry Breton told Mr Musk in a letter that he must comply with EU digital content law.

The EU accuses X of breaking its rules in areas including combating illegal content and misinformation.

In response, X CEO Linda Yaccarino called it “an unprecedented attempt to extend a law intended to apply in Europe to political activities in the US”.

“It also favors European citizens, suggesting that they cannot listen to the discussion and come to their own conclusions.”

Monday marked something of a return to X/Twitter for Trump, who was removed from the platform shortly after the January 6, 2021, scandal.

Despite a flurry of campaign ads on Trump’s account on Monday, he had only posted once — a mug shot of himself and a link to his campaign site — last year after Mr. Musk reopened his X account in 2022.

It’s unclear whether Trump, who often posts on his Truth Social site, will continue to post more frequently on X.

Monday’s discussion touched on a range of issues, from last month’s assassination attempt on Trump at a Pennsylvania rally, to his demand for the US to acquire an “Iron Dome” missile defense system similar to Israel’s, a key plank of his campaign. – moving to another country.

Trump has also considered closing the Department of Education and moving that responsibility to the states as one of his first actions if he wins the election in November.

The Republican candidate also spoke of Mr Biden’s decision to drop out of the race after a nasty debate and pressure from vulnerable Democrats lawmakers, calling it a “coup”.

Mr. Biden, in an interview with CBS at the weekend, said he left because he was afraid that the fight to run for the election would be a “real distraction” before the election.

In a statement after the event, the Harris campaign described Mr Musk and Trump as “two arrogant guys who will sell out the middle class and not be able to run a live stream in 2024”.

João da Silva contributed to this report