In This Story
Elon Musk wasted no time in finding a convenient scapegoat for the global IT outage caused by a botched software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
“Not very ‘bright’ right now, is it?” Musk wrote on X, formerly Twitter, Friday morning in reply to a more than two years old post from CrowdStrike. In that post, the Austin, Texas-based firm said it was proud to be a “Gold Partner” of recruiting company Bright Network’s panel on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
It’s an on-brand pivot for the Tesla CEO, who has made diversity initiatives a frequent target for his criticism.
Tesla dropped language referencing diversity from its annual shareholder report just weeks after Musk tweeted that DEI is “just another word for racism.” The billionaire has also been criticized for claiming that Boeing’s issues with the 737 Max 9 were caused by hiring too many non-white pilots and factory workers.
In an interview with former CNN host Don Lemon in March, Musk accused Duke University of “literally” lowering its standards for students to promote more diverse candidates, although he could not provide any evidence for his assertion. Duke has said it has not lowered its standards and continues to rely on GPA and MCAT scores.
Read More: What to know about the massive global tech outage grounding flights, disrupting banks and more
On Friday morning, businesses across the world — including banks, airlines, retailers, and hospitals — began reporting that their systems were down. CrowdStrike, which provides cybersecurity services to more than half of Fortune 500 companies, said a defect in an update for Microsoft’s Windows operating system was the cause.
“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz wrote on X Friday morning. “This is not a security incident or cyberattack.”
Kurtz later told the Today Show that CrowdStrike is “deeply sorry” to anyone impacted by the issues, including customers and travelers. A fix for the issues has been deployed and the firm is working with customers to ensure systems come back online.
On Friday, Musk wrote on X, which he owns, that “we just deleted CrowdStrike from all our systems, so no rollouts at all,” in reply to another user commenting on the incidents.
It’s unclear which of his businesses Musk is referring to. In addition to Tesla and X, Musk leads aerospace firm SpaceX, tunneling and construction company The Boring Co., brain chip implant startup Neuralink, and artificial intelligence startup xAI.