After Brief X Outage, Musk Says Refocusing on Business

AFP/APP

Washington: Social media platform X experienced a two-hour outage on Saturday, prompting owner Elon Musk to announce a renewed focus on his core businesses.

Outage and Response

X returned to normal by 11:00 am US Eastern time (1500 GMT).

Musk acknowledged the platform’s technical failures, stating:

“The failover redundancy should have worked, but did not.”

Hacker-activist group DieNet claimed responsibility, calling it a test of its DDoS capabilities, though this claim remains unverified.

Musk’s Shift in Priorities

The incident prompted Musk to state he had been away from his companies “for too long.”

He vowed to refocus, saying:

“Back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms.”

Focus Areas

Musk highlighted his priorities:

X (formerly Twitter)

xAI, creator of the chatbot Grok

Tesla

SpaceX, with a Starship launch scheduled next week

Scaling Back Political Role

Musk has gradually reduced his political involvement:

He had been assisting US President Trump in efforts to drastically shrink the federal government via the “Department of Government Efficiency.”

Recently confirmed he’s down to 1–2 days a week at that department.

Despite scaling back, he remains a close adviser and recently attended an Oval Office meeting with the South African president.

Political Contributions

Musk contributed over $235 million to Trump’s election campaign.

Despite earlier statements about reducing political spending, he noted:

“I did what needed to be done,”

but didn’t rule out future involvement if necessary.