The Attack on Elon Musk’s X – The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

The headline over in NPR back there in the stone age of early February was this: “Elon Musk is barreling into government with DOGE, raising unusual legal questions.”

The story reports:

Elon Musk has launched a campaign from inside the federal government to radically upend agencies, exercising a level of control so sweeping that it is stunning former top White House officials, even in a political moment when many things are described as unprecedented.

Musk, the world’s richest man and an adviser to President Trump, is leading a team called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Despite the name, DOGE is part of the White House and not a Cabinet agency. In recent days it has gained access to the Treasury Department’s payment systems, which are responsible for processing trillions of dollars of spending every year.

Now, the world has moved on barely a month from the launch of DOGE. Musk’s work and, as this is written, the headline from Newsweek on the latest involving Musk’s ownership of X, reads: “Dark Storm Team Claims DDoS Attack on X, Causing Major Outage: Live Updates.”

This story from the beginning this very week — Monday — reports:

X (formerly Twitter) is experiencing its third major outage of the day, with users reporting widespread login and loading issues. The hacking group Dark Storm Team has reportedly claimed responsibility for a DDoS attack on the platform, according to a public Telegram post.

In other words?

Assigned by President Trump to lead the team charged with reducing the out-of-control size of the beyond-mammoth federal bureaucracy, Musk finds his business attacked by what the media describes as “the hacking group Dark Storm Team.”

Newsweek also reports the specifics of what’s going on as a result of the cyberattack:

• More than 40,000 reports flooded Downdetector during the second outage.

• The current outage peaked at 29,143 reports and is now slightly declining.

• Dark Storm Team claims to have targeted X with a cyberattack.

• Users are unable to access the site, with many receiving error messages.

• This marks the third significant disruption to X’s service today.

All of which is to say, there is Musk the billionaire and private sector savant taking up as a good American his presidentially-assigned task to streamline the federal bureaucracy. And, for doing so, his business property — X — is directly targeted with a “cyberattack” designed to ruin his business.

Cut to the chase, and the realization dawns of the danger that is manifest here.

This may be the Trump presidency, but the reality is that any presidential directive from a duly elected president of the United States can now be subjected to massive cyber disruption via some left-wing crazy group or groups.

But at the moment, this cyberattack specifically arrives after Musk has said: “America is going bankrupt extremely quickly, and everyone seems to be sort of whistling past the graveyard on this one.”

In short, there is the United States of America, the leading democracy on the planet, now targeted with a massive cyberattack designed to destroy Musk’s business — and to push the U.S. into a bankruptcy that is designed to destroy the country completely by ruining its cyber infrastructure.

What has just happened is a 21st-century cyber-Pearl Harbor attack.

It would be important at this juncture, it would seem, for Americans who are averse to reading history to understand that after the massive destruction of World War I, a twenty year “peace” was at hand. A “peace” in which seriously bad actors with names like Germany’s Hitler, Italy’s Mussolini, and Japan’s General Tojo plotted and schemed to launch World War II. A war that resulted in massive destruction stretching from the United Kingdom, across Europe, and on to Russia and Asia.

Indeed, had not America entered that war and, with its European allies, defeated the bad guys, America (fortuitously separated from Europe and Asia by two oceans) would ultimately have been targeted itself. The December 7, 1941 attack by the Japanese on Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor was merely the beginning of larger attacks on the physical United States.

All of which is to say, the attack on Musk’s X business is a signal of American vulnerability.

A signal, as if another is needed, that yet again, as in the 20th century, there are bad guys out there who are targeting America for destruction.

Who are these bad guys? The speculation abounds. China? Putin’s Russia? Hamas? Who knows.

The only difference between now and back there in the long ago — and it’s a big difference — is that Americans are living today in the 21st century. If a 21st century Pearl Harbor arrives, it can arrive this time without a single enemy plane swooping in and dropping bombs. It can arrive courtesy of some bad guys somewhere who merely press a handful of buttons and … boom! The cyberattack begins.

In light of the attacks on Elon Musk’s X, attacks that follow a decidedly legal directive to Musk from the elected president of the United States to reduce the size of the U.S. federal bureaucracy, it is time — past time — for the United States government to understand how to defend itself and the American people. And to do so in an era where missiles, warplanes, tanks, and guns are increasingly irrelevant.

Welcome to 21st-century warfare.

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