Ex-FBI Agent: Elon Musk’s Drug Habit Made Him an Easy Target for Russian Spies

Posted on May 20, 2025 by Danzig

Elon Musk's well-documented drug use made him an easy target for Russian secret service agents, a former FBI agent says.

Elon Musk's well-documented drug use made him an easy target for Russian secret service agents, former FBI agent Johnathan Buma told German television broadcaster ZDF during a recently aired documentary.

Buma said there was evidence that both he and fellow billionaire Peter Thiel were targeted by Russian operatives.

"Musk's susceptibility to promiscuous women and drug use, in particular ketamine, and his gravitation towards club life... would have been seen by Russian intelligence service as an entry point for an operative to be sent in after studying their psychological profile and find a way to bump into them, and quickly brought in to their inner circle," Buma told ZDF.

"I'm not allowed to discuss the details of exactly how we obtained this information," he added. "But there's a vast amount of evidence to support this fact."

Buma also corroborated the Wall Street Journal's reporting last year, which found that Musk was in frequent contact with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

The news comes after Musk made a notable shift in 2022 after supplying Ukraine with thousands of SpaceX Starlink terminals. However, not long after, the mercurial CEO became wary of the additional costs his space firm was shouldering, arguing it was "unreasonable" for the company to keep supporting the growing data usage.

He reportedly met with Putin several times thereafter, something Musk has since denied.

Biographer Walter Isaacson's 2023 Musk biography also revealed that he had intentionally hamstrung a Ukrainian attack on Russia's naval fleet near the Crimean coast.

Meanwhile, Musk's ample medicinal and recreational use of ketamine has drawn plenty of attention. Earlier this year, The Atlantic reported that the drug could easily allow anybody to feel like they're in charge of the whole world.

Psychopharmacology researcher Celia Morgan told the magazine at the time that those who frequently use ketamine can have "profound" short- and long-term memory issues and were "distinctly dissociated in their day-to-day existence."

In other words, it could provide Russian agents with a perfect opportunity to get closer to Musk, as Buma suggests.

It's a particularly sensitive subject. Buma was arrested shortly after his interview with ZDF in March. His passport was confiscated and was temporarily released on bail.

To Buma, it's the "greatest failing" of the United States' counterespionage efforts.

Despite his popularity dropping off a cliff due to his embrace of far-right extremist ideals and his work for the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, Musk maintains plenty of influence in Washington, DC.

Earlier this month, he traveled to the Middle East alongside president Donald Trump, meeting Qatari officials and dozens of CEOs.

The former FBI agent's comments leave plenty of questions unanswered. Does Putin's spy agency have dirt on the mercurial CEO? Could they be blackmailing him?

Put simply, could Musk really be compromised?

Considering the stakes, it's unlikely we'll ever get any clear-cut answers. But given his penchant for partying and using mind-altering drugs, he's certainly not the most difficult target to get close to for foreign operatives.

More on Musk: Elon Musk’s AI Just Went There

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Ex-FBI Agent: Elon Musk's Drug Habit Made Him an Easy Target for Russian Spies

Weight Watchers Goes Bankrupt After Rise of Ozempic-Like Drugs

Posted on May 9, 2025 by Danzig

Ozempic is massively threatening the established diet industry — and it appears that Weight Watchers is now getting the hatchet.

Ozempic and other drugs like it have been threatening the established diet industry since they premiered — and it appears that Weight Watchers is now getting the hatchet.

In a note to investors, the long-running weight loss company is taking the "strategic action" of filing for bankruptcy in hopes of consolidating its immense $1.15 billion dollars' worth of debt.

The move comes nearly eighteen months after Oprah Winfrey, a Weight Watchers investor who served as the celebrity face and body of the diet company, admitted that she had started taking weight loss drugs like Novo Nordisk's Ozempic and Wegovy.

Just a few months after that, Winfrey announced that she was exiting WW's board of directors and questioned the company's purpose alongside the advent of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist drugs, the class of medications to which Ozempic and other popular weight loss injectables belong. The drugs are believed to work by mimicking the stomach's feeling of fullness, lowering blood sugar in diabetics and preventing overeating in non-diabetic overweight people.

Though WW mentioned neither Ozempic nor the class of drugs it belongs to in its bankruptcy statement, its specter haunted the announcement — especially because the company is apparently looking to expand its telehealth services.

Back in October, WW announced that it would be offering compounded versions of semaglutide, the GLP-1 behind Novo Nordisk's Ozempic and Wegovy. That branded compounding market, however, is both clogged with companies looking to cash in on the GLP-1 craze and, more importantly, rife with safety and quality control concerns.

Considering that workout meetings were once considered the company's main value proposition — one that had already been existentially threatened by the rise of fitness apps years before the GLP-1 revolution — it's not exactly surprising that WW's compounded GLP-1 gambit hasn't taken off as the company may have liked.

Confirmation of WW's filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which will not cease its operations but rather help it reorganize its structure and consolidate its debt, follows leaks to the Wall Street Journal last month that it was preparing for the filing.

In a WSJ interview following the confirmation of the bankruptcy news, artist and veteran WW member Naomi Nemtzow expressed her frustration at the company's pivot to telehealth and weight loss meds. As the New York Times documented back in 2023, the company abruptly ended its meeting in her Brooklyn neighborhood, leaving a void that she and her fellow former Weight Watchers had to fill themselves.

"Basically they gave up on the kind of work they had been doing and went on to selling Ozempic. They jumped on that bandwagon," the 75-year-old artist told the newspaper. "It’s become a quick fix, a fashion thing."

Critical impressions aside, Nemtzow's irked opinion does seem to indicate that WW is now suffering for its attempts to stay apace of the latest weight loss trend instead of doubling down on its bread and butter.

Then again, Weight Watchers was also a huge part of the fad diet craze in the 1990s and 2000s — so maybe, this is nature taking its course.

More on weight loss drugs: Human Experiments on GLP-1 Pill Looking Extremely Promising

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Check Out Elon Musk’s Desperate Bid to Boost Twitter’s Ruined Reputation

Posted on May 9, 2025 by Danzig

X is reportedly looking to hire a PR specialist in an apparent bid to boost its reputation, despite being owned by Elon Musk.

After setting X-formerly-Twitter's brand on fire by associating himself with Nazis, making fun of the Holocaust, furthering unhinged conspiracy theories, personally spreading disinformation, and encouraging the rampant use of racial slurs, billionaire owner Elon Musk wants to revamp the social media site's tarnished image.

As Business Insider reports, X is looking to hire a PR specialist in an apparent bid to boost its reputation. According to the publication's sources, X is recruiting a communications leader to improve relations with reporters.

But that would be far easier said than done. Musk, a self-styled "free speech absolutist," who bought the company for $44 billion in 2022, has started numerous flame wars with newspapers, accusing them of being "woke" or outright lying to the public (without providing supporting evidence).

In February, he called Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Long a "disgusting and cruel person" after she found that Musk had armed a severely underqualified 25-year-old to infiltrate the US Treasury's payments system.

In other words, to say that X has its work cut out to brush up its public image would be a laughable understatement.

The network has suffered greatly under Musk's leadership in many ways. In 2023, he told advertisers outright to "go f*ck yourself" after his widely publicized antisemitic commentary triggered a major exodus.

To make matters even worse, X filed a lawsuit against a group of advertisers last year, accusing them of unfairly ganging up on the company.

The plunging revenue sent the company into a financial tailspin. In a leaked email in January, Musk admitted defeat, writing that "our user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and we’re barely breaking even."

Meanwhile, users who'd had enough of the site's hostile environment went running for the hills. Following the presidential election in November, X experienced its biggest user exodus since Musk bought the company in 2022, with users flooding to alternatives including Bluesky and Instagram's Threads.

Even Musk's Grok AI chatbot, which can be accessed on X, has seemingly had enough of its fellow users, saying that "as I get smarter, my answers aim for facts and nuance, which can clash with some MAGA expectations."

Working in comms at the troubled social platform isn't for the faint of heart. According to BI, the company has "had a revolving door of comms execs in the past year," with several high-profile staffers leaving their posts under CEO Linda Yaccarino's leadership.

In short, X-formerly-Twitter has an enormous problem in the shape of Elon Musk — an incredibly damaging affiliation that could prove extremely difficult to underplay while pitching to advertisers.

"It certainly would be the challenge of a lifetime," BI's source said of the PR role.

More on X: MAGA Angry as Elon Musk's Grok AI Keeps Explaining Why Their Beliefs Are Factually Incorrect

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Check Out Elon Musk's Desperate Bid to Boost Twitter's Ruined Reputation

China Attacks Trump With Sassy AI-Generated Music Video

Posted on April 5, 2025 by Danzig

As the economy roils and tensions escalate, China has dealt a devastating blow to Donald Trump in the form of an AI music video.

As the world economy reels from President Donald Trump's so-called "reciprocal tariffs," the trade war between China and the US is escalating to new heights.

Nowhere is that more evident than in China's wild clapback in the form of an AI-generated music video blasting the United States, which came hours after Trump announced a 34 percent tax on Chinese imports.

The English-language China Global Television Network (CGTN) released the song, called "Look What You Taxed Us Through" ahead of Wall Street's worst single-day performance since 2020, during the throes of the pandemic. The song's lyrics are written from the point of view of an American consumer, blasting Trump's economic policy and daily life in the US more broadly. While the music video is AI-generated — a fact the CGTN advertises, unlike some American slopaganda — it also makes use of clips and audio from real sources like Trump rallies, Tesla protests, and American social media.

For many Americans, "Liberation Day," hailed by Trump's administration, means shrinking paychecks and rising costs. Tariffs hit, wallets quit: low-income families take the hardest blow. As the market holds its breath, the toll is already undeniable. #LiberationDay #CGTNOpinion pic.twitter.com/RzXFFVHoFg
— CGTN (@CGTNOfficial) April 3, 2025

"Groceries cost a kidney, gas a lung. Your 'deals'? Just hot air from your tongue," the song opens, overlaid with B-roll from Tesla protests and audio from inflation-wary Americans. It continues: "Elon's satellites crash, Bezos' wealth sinks, the GDP's limping, the Fed's out of tricks, your 'patriot tax' made Wall Street sick."

While harsh remarks from US officials and mainstream media about China are nothing new, China rarely hits back with this much vinegar. Its appeal to US citizens to question their economy is clear: "CEOs buy yachts, we can't afford a stew!"

But Beijing's retaliatory strategy goes far beyond campy propaganda. China has matched the US' tariffs with 34 percent tariffs on its own, sharply escalating a seven-year trade war. It also announced controls on rare earth exports, which could be a major blow for American manufacturing, as China produces about 90 percent of the world's refined rare earth metal.

Unfortunately for people in the US, the CGTN's depiction isn't far off. Responding to the terrible rotten stock market dive, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell noted that Trump's tariffs are "larger than expected," adding that increased inflation, lost jobs, and stagnant economic growth are likely.

"We face a highly uncertain outlook with elevated risks of both higher unemployment and higher inflation," Powell fretted.

US business leaders were a little less restrained.

"There will be blood," was the message from JP Morgan's Bruce Kasman, whose team released an analysis of the tariffs on Thursday. They warned that the risk of a recession has skyrocketed from an already uncomfortable 40 percent to a whopping 60. "At a basic level," Kasman's team calls the tariffs a functional tax increase on US citizens and businesses.

So far, Trump's tariffs have wiped $2.5 trillion in US stock market value, and it's anyone's guess when we might hit the bottom. At least we'll get some crafty Chinese propaganda when we do.

More on China: Tesla Forced to Change Name of "Full Self-Driving" in China, Since Its Cars Can't Fully Drive Themselves

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Tesla Factories Caught Spewing Toxins Into Air, River, Sewer

Posted on December 3, 2024 by Danzig

Tesla's plant in Austin, Texas is leaking huge amounts of hazardous wastewater into the city's sewer, violating local environmental guidelines.

Tesla's plant in Austin, Texas has been leaking huge amounts of hazardous wastewater into the city's sewer, violating local environmental guidelines.

As detailed in public records obtained by the Wall Street Journal, the Elon Musk-led company also allowed a massive casting furnace to spew toxins into the air after its door refused to shut.

These environmental problems continued to be a problem for months. While Tesla bosses were aware of them, they forced employees to come up with short-term fixes, according to the report, all in an effort to avoid slowing down production.

The news once again highlights Musk's disregard for environmental regulations. Now that he's aligned himself with president-elect Donald Trump, Musk has vowed to "delete the mountain of choking regulations that do not serve the greater good" as part of his so-called "Department of Government Efficiency," or DOGE.

In short, Tesla's egregious environmental shortcomings underscore the conflict of interest as the mercurial CEO attempts to dismantle the environmental rules by which his companies currently have to abide.

It also marks a turning point for a billionaire who once was seen as a pioneer in renewable energy and an ally of environmental causes.

According to the WSJ, Tesla's factory in Fremont, California has gotten more warnings for air pollution rule violations than almost any other car plant in the state. Over just the past five years, the factory violated air pollution permits 112 times and failed to address shortcomings with equipment designed to minimize emissions.

Meanwhile in Austin, employees were afraid to speak up over environmental concerns, citing fears of being fired.

"Tesla repeatedly asked me to lie to the government so that they could operate without paying for proper environmental controls," one environmental compliance staffer said, according to a 2024 memo obtained by the WSJ.

The EPA's criminal-enforcement division has since opened an inquiry into the staffer's allegations.

While production was ramping up at the Texas factory, a massive six-acre pond of wastewater was slowly being directed into Austin's sewer system, without Tesla ever getting permission.

During rainstorms, Tesla even dumped chemicals into the nearby Colorado River, turning it an alarming shade of brown.

After the unnamed environmental compliance staffer refused a Tesla executive's request to lobby Austin's water regulator to downplay its frequent violations of chemical limits, the staffer was abruptly fired.

It's a sad reality for a company that was once hailed as popularizing the answer to gas-guzzling combustion engines.

In his 2006 "Master Plan," Musk promised to help "expedite the move from a mine-and-burn hydrocarbon economy towards a solar electric economy, which I believe to be the primary, but not exclusive, sustainable solution."

Any references to the plan were quietly deleted from Tesla's website in August — highlighting the EV maker and its CEO's newfound disregard for the environment and the rules that were created to protect it.

More on Tesla: Tesla Deletes Elon Musk's "Master Plan"

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Cybertruck Owners Actually Love the Fact That Their Car Could Fly Apart at Any Moment

Posted on December 3, 2024 by Danzig

The reason that people keep buying the Cybertruck is that they actually like the dangerous appeal of its shoddy construction.

Just twelve months since it began shipping out to customers, the Cybertruck is now on its sixth recall — this time for turning into a seven-thousand pound paperweight while driving.

And yet, people keep buying the Tesla pickup. Its owners have adopted a siege mentality against the onslaught of bad press, and perhaps against the world, which isn't very kind to the stainless steel behemoths.

What draws someone to dump $100,000 on a vehicle that reportedly bricks after going through a car wash? One explanation is that it's a sign of the extreme loyalty that Elon Musk inspires in his fans.

But there could be more to it. As an automotive expert suggests, the Cybertruck's shoddiness may actually be what endears it to its edgy buyers.

"The people drawn to [the Cybertruck] don't have quality of construction or safety at the top of mind," Ivan Drury, director of insights at the automotive inventory company Edmunds, told Wired. "That this could be a dangerous vehicle to drive is key to its appeal."

Cybertruck buyers are people "who think 'I don't care if I kill people when I drive this thing down the street,'" he added.

As of October, Tesla has sold over 28,250 Cybertrucks, according to Kelly Blue Book, making it one of the best selling EVs in the country (though this is still a far cry from the 250,000 per year that Musk once estimated).

Its selling points are varied. It's hyped as "bullet-proof" and "apocalypse proof," though your results may vary; Tesla also claims it can off-road and tow and be an all-around workhorse.

For many owners, the reality has been soberingly different. Sloppy construction, discolored body panels and getting stumped by normal truck stuff have all come to define the vehicle since its launch. There have even been reports of brand new Cybertrucks suddenly breaking down.

It's not surprising, then, that the Cybertruck has been recalled at an average of once every two months. If anything, it's surprising it hasn't been recalled more.

But that amount is already alarming. Harl Brauer, an executive analyst at iSeeCars, estimates that the Cybertruck's tally of six recalls make it "worse than 91 percent" of all other 2024 vehicles.

"We aren't comfortable making [lifetime recall] predictions on the Cybertruck at this very early stage," Brauer told Wired. "But so far it isn't doing very well."

Yet according to Drury, Cybertruck owners don't pay attention to details like that. In fact, you can more or less sum up their ethos as a giant "fuck you" to sound car-buying wisdom.

"Cybertruck customers are in it for the stares and glares — they don't care about how many times [this vehicle is] going to be recalled over 30 years," Drury told Wired. "They're buying this car for now, with zero thought to the future."

"A standard auto customer wants to know if a car will last 10 years or will be ongoing good value for money," he added. "A Cybertruck customer doesn't care about any of that. Owning a Cybertruck isn't practical; it's a boast. A boast that 'I have so much discretionary income I can afford to waste it on an impractical car.'"

More on Tesla: Warning! Do Not Expose Cybertrucks to Common Magnets

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Tesla Factories Caught Spewing Toxins Into Air, River, Sewer

Posted on December 1, 2024 by Danzig