Elon Musk is a bigger threat to the UK in terms of disinformation than Russia, an expert has warned.
Vera Tolz-Zilitinkevic, Russian professor at the University of Manchester, told a House of Commons committee that the social media owner’s “potential influence in the UK is greater than that of Russia.”
Tolz-Zilitinkevic was responding to a question from Scottish Labour MP Blair McDougall at the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee.
McDougall said “people like Musk are now using their power and their platform to try to take control of our politics and distract us” from challenging the super rich.
When asked by East Renfrewshire MP McDougall how X owner Musk compared to states as a threat of disinformation, Tolz-Zilitinkevic said: “When we talk about risk to states, either from individual actors or these organised influence campaigns, I think there’s a huge distinction between… if we take operations from Russia specifically to established Western democracies such as the UK or US internally, the influence on the population, the threat is not great.”
She continued: “The influence of Russian state actors and actors loosely affiliated with the Kremlin on the UK or the US is much lower than of actors who are internal to democracy.
“Musk’s potential influence in the UK is greater than that of Russia.”
Musk dominated the UK news for the first week of the year after a flurry of posts on his social media site X, in which the billionaire claimed Labour minister Jess Phillips “deserves to be in prison” and called her a “rape genocide apologist” for denying requests for the Home Office to lead a public inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Oldham.
The South African also suggested Prime Minister Keir Starmer was “complicit in the crimes” of child sex offenders, and in a separate post added: “Prison for Starmer.”
He accused former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown of having “committed an unforgivable crime against the British people” and “sold those little girls for votes”, over his handling of grooming gangs while in office.
McDougall said the UK “won’t be manipulated by rich foreigners” and that we “don’t want Musk’s style of politics in the UK”.
He told the Record: “While the rest of us struggled over the last decade, a tiny number of people have become unimaginably rich and powerful.
“They know that the system they built of insecure work, crumbling public services, and hollowed out communities has made people desperate for change and for more control over our lives. That threatens their power and their wealth, so people like Musk are now using their power and their platform to try to take control of our politics and distract us from that broken system.
“But we’re smarter than they give us credit for. We won’t be manipulated by rich foreigners. We’ve seen what Musk’s style of politics leads to in Washington and we don’t want it here in the UK.”
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