Jeff Bezos wonders on Twitter if Elon Musk just handed China 'a bit of leverage' over U.S. discourse

published 26 April 2022

Twitter users have plenty of questions about how Elon Musk's pending takeover of the social media company will affect their quality of life online, especially the tenor of the national discourse. But Amazon's Jeff Bezos — the world's second-richest man, after Musk — pondered if, given the various ways Musk's Tesla relies on China, "Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square?"

Musk fans, among others on Twitter, noted that Bezos, owner of The Washington Post, also has deep ties with China, including some history of playing ball with China's authoritarian government. For whatever reason, about an hour after his first tweet, Bezos decided to take a crack at answering his own question.

Musk, of course, isn't shy about needling his fellow world's-wealthiest-men on Twitter. Last week, he slammed Bill Gates for holding a short position on Tesla while asking him to contribute to a philanthropic project on climate change, then mocked Gates' weight.

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Musk then tweeted that he's "moving on" from "making fun of Gates," so the real lesson here is probably that even unfathomable wealth, multi-billion-dollar companies, and space rocket enterprises aren't sufficient to keep some people busy enough to stay off social media.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.