Twitter CEO Elon Musk expressed shock at the amount of intrusion the U.S. government had at the social media giant, including access to private messages and direct messages.
The revelations come in an interview previewed on social media and will air Monday night.
"The degree to which our various government agencies effectively had full access to everything that was going on at Twitter blew my mind," Musk says in a clip of the interview posted to Twitter.
"I was not aware of that."
Musk added that includes private direct messages shared between Twitter users.
The revelations have been dissected in the Twitter Files put together by independent journalists, including Matt Taibbi.
In other clips, Musk laughed at a past "metaphor" of The New York Times being "the Twitter equivalent of diarrhea."
Also, Musk repeated his frequent warning on the dangers of artificial intelligence being an existential threat to humanity.
"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 says in a clip posted to Twitter.
Musk acquired Twitter last year for $44 billion and immediately began cutting staff, costs, and opening up revenue streams with the company.
Musk said last week the company is "roughly breaking even," as most of its advertisers have returned and its aggressive cost-cutting efforts have started bearing fruit after massive layoffs.
Musk, in an interview with BBC broadcast live on Twitter Spaces, said Twitter has about 1,500 employees now, a sharp decline from "just under 8,000 staff members" it had before he took it over in October.
He says Twitter was in a $3 billion negative cash flow situation and had to take drastic actions, referring to its large-scale layoffs.
"We could be cash-flow positive this quarter if things go well," he said in the interview that attracted more than 3 million listeners, adding the company currently has all-time high user numbers.
Information from Reuters was used in this report.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.