Elon Musk claims the US government had ‘full access’ to private Twitter DMs

Twitter CEO Elon Musk claimed in an interview that the U.S. government has “full access” to users’ private direct messages, saying knowing that information blew his mind. 

In an excerpt of his Fox News interview with host Tucker Carlson, Musk told Carlson that he was shocked to find out about the government’s ability to read users’ direct messages on his platform. 

“The degree to which government agencies effectively had full access to everything that was going on on Twitter blew my mind,” Musk, who recently founded an artificial intelligence company called X.AI, told Carlson in the interview set to air on Tuesday. “I was not aware of that.”

“Would that include people’s DMs?” Carlson asked Musk. 

“Yes,” Musk replied to Carlson.

Musk also expressed his concern about the latest wave of artificial intelligence, referred to as A.I., telling Carlson that he believes the technology has the potential to destroy civilization.

“AI is more dangerous than, say, mismanaged aircraft design or production maintenance, or bad car production in the sense that it has the potential — however small one may regard that probability, but it is non-trivial — it has the potential for civilizational destruction,” Musk said.

The remarks come as Musk, who officially purchased the social media platform last month, has embroiled himself in another feud with National Public Radio (NPR), an independent news organization. 

NPR announced last week that it would let its Twitter accounts go dormant and no longer post on the social media platform in response to Twitter adding a “state-affiliated media” label to a number of media outlets that receive some public funding.

Twitter then dropped the “state-affiliated” label and changed it to say “government funded,” after receiving widespread pushback from the decision. 

In a statement, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said that NPR is an independent news organization, saying “If anyone were to follow their coverage, it is clear that they are indeed an independent news organization.”