News
First Twitter Files of 2023 shows how intelligence community gained influence over the platform
The first Twitter Files of 2023 have been released by journalist Matt Taibbi, and they reveal how the intelligence community gained the influence it had over the platform. It begins in August 2017 when Facebook suspended 300 accounts with “suspected Russian origin.”
1.THREAD: The Twitter Files
How Twitter Let the Intelligence Community In— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
However, Twitter’s leaders weren’t worried because they were sure there wasn’t a Russia problem. Screenshots of emails from Twitter’s former Vice President, Global Public Policy & Philanthropy, Colin Crowell, and Twitter’s former legal head, Vijaya Gadde, confirm that Twitter had been in contact with Facebook and agreed that the best public relations strategy was to say nothing on record and to issue a statement bringing them “closer to Facebook, their vulnerabilities on this issue, and the follow-up stories on Russia.”
In another email, Crowell noted that Twitter wasn’t the focus of inquiry into Russian election meddling but that the spotlight was on Facebook. The screenshot revealed that a group of Twitter executives were “due to see the Democratic staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee” in a non-public and private meeting.
In the section of the email titled Important Context, Crowell wrote: “Twitter is not the focus of inquiry into Russian election meddling right now – the spotlight is on FB because FB has better targeting ability than we have for campaign-related advertising; and, because the Trump campaign spent massively on FB during the election compared to what they spent w/us.”
Credit: Matt Taibbi
Following that, Twitter suspended 22 possible Russian accounts and 179 others with “possible links” to those accounts out of a larger set of 2,700 suspects that were manually examined. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, wasn’t too happy with Twitter. He held a press conference to denounce Twitter’s report as “frankly inadequate on every level.”
Crowell’s response was “#Irony” after he received an email from Warner’s re-election campaign asking for $5. Following that, Crowell met with congressional leaders and told his team at Twitter to keep producing material.
“Warner has political incentive to keep this issue at the top of the news, maintain pressure on us and rest of industry to keep producing material for them.”
Credit: Matt Taibbi
He added that the Democrats were taking cues from Hillary Clinton, who said, “It’s time for Twitter to stop dragging its heels and live up to the fact that its platform is being used as a tool for cyber-warfare.”
Credit: Matt Taibbi
This led Twitter to form a Russia Task Force due to anxiety over its PR problems. The task force began with data shared from counterparts at Facebook; however, Taibbi noted that those searches of accounts tied to Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA) were a dud.
One screenshot read: “No evidence of a coordinated approach, all of the accounts found seem to be lone-wolf type activity.”
Another one pointed out that after manually reviewing 2,500 accounts, they thought it was exhaustive. “32 suspicious accounts and only 17 of those are connected with Russia, only 2 of those have significant spend one of which is Russia Today…remaining <$10k in spend.”
Taibbi noted that the search found “only 2” significant accounts based on the same data that later inspired panic headlines such as “Russian Influence Reached 126 million through Facebook alone.”
Twitter’s failure of its Russian task force to produce material made its PR crisis worse. Several stories sourced into the Intel Committee were reported on in the news. This led Twitter to change its thoughts on the smallness of its Russia problem.
Senate staff told Twitter leaders that Senator Warner felt like the tech industry was in denial for months, and Twitter “pledged to work with them on their desire to legislate.”
Following that, Twitter’s Policy Director, Carlos Monje, shared key highlights of the legislation that Senators Warner, Klobuchar, and McCain were introducing.
“Knowing that our ads policy and product changes are an effort to anticipate congressional oversight, I wanted to share some relevant highlights of the legislation Senators Warner, Klobuchar and McCain will be introducing,”
Credit: Matt Taibbi
As Twitter began preparing its ads policy and removing RT and Sputnik to placate Washington, the committees leaked the larger list of 2,700 accounts. This led to a media circus, with Twitter being the star of the show. Internally, Twitter didn’t want to endorse the findings by Buzzfeed and the University of Sheffield, which said they found a new network on Twitter with close connections to Russian-linked bot accounts.
Credit: Matt Taibbi
Credit: Matt Taibbi
The Senate asked Twitter for a write-up of what happened when the Buzzfeed piece came out. Twitter then apologized for the same accounts it initially told the Senate was not a problem. This led to a new revelation. “Reporters now know this is a model that works.”
Taibbi noted that this cycle would later be formalized in partnerships with federal law enforcement. And this is how the intelligence community gained its influence over Twitter. In public, Twitter would remove content “at our sole discretion.”
Privately, the platform would “off-board” anything that was “identified by the U.S. intelligence community as state-sponsored entity conducting cyber-operations.”
If you would like to access all of the Twitter files, an archival website has been built, which includes all of the threads as organized, long-form blog posts and links to articles written by the independent journalists who have released the Twitter Files.
Your feedback is welcome. If you have any comments or concerns or see a typo, you can email me at johnna@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter at @JohnnaCrider1.
Teslarati is now on TikTok. Follow us for interactive news & more. Teslarati is now on TikTok. Follow us for interactive news & more. You can also follow Teslarati on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
Although the two vehicles are built for completely different use cases, Tesla utilized engineering expertise while developing both the Cybercab and Semi to build a thermal architecture that would fit both vehicles. Of course, with some slight revisions.
The development was noted by Lars Moravy and Dan Priestley last week at Tesla’s Semi Handover event in Sparks, Nevada, where the company showed off its dedicated production facility for the Class 8 truck.
🚨 Tesla designed the integrated thermal systems for Cybercab and Semi at the same time as the vehicles were both in development
Tesla wanted to build one thermal system that worked with both vehicles, apart from small modifications.
Semi and Cybercab share parts 🤯 pic.twitter.com/KmzSsUbrcg
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) September 25, 2026
Tesla’s decision to develop one thermal architecture for both the Cybercab and Semi is one of the more revealing engineering choices in the company’s 2026 lineup:
“We designed it at the same time we designed the Cybercab and we said okay we’re going to take our most efficient vehicle and our biggest vehicle and we’re going to take one thermal system and make it work for both.”
Core parts, meaning the compressor, pumps, and heat exchangers, are shared, with only modest changes to cooling-loop sizing and a larger radiator on the truck. The result, they said, is a compressor and thermal stack already proven across millions of miles, delivering “reliability from day one.”
Priestley also highlighted a practical payoff of the indirect design:
“There’s no AC lines, there’s no refrigerant lines…It comes from the factory fully charged, sealed with refrigerant, and it just exchanges coolant. It doesn’t actually run refrigerant up to the front of the vehicle.”
This eliminates potentially leak-prone plumbing that would otherwise require hands-on service, reducing overall uptime and potentially cutting into business margins. The megamanifold runs cabin HVAC and every powertrain heating and cooling loop at once, recapturing waste heat from motors and the battery instead of dumping it the way a diesel engine does.
The approach is just the latest chapter in a continuing story of stretching thermal solutions across wildly different vehicles. Model Y’s Octovalve evolved into the Super Manifold used on Cybertruck, and later Model S/X refreshes. Cybercab then introduced Supermanifold V3, which Tesla says is 80 percent automated to build and 38 percent more efficient than typical automotive thermal systems.
This thermal system is also shared with Cybercab – one thermal system for both our most efficient vehicle & our biggest vehicle
— Tesla Semi (@tesla_semi) September 25, 2026
Tesla has done the same with the 4680 cells, both being utilized in the Cybertruck and Semi, and with heat-pump compressors that Priestley noted were already common across the passenger-car fleet.
Concurrent development of crucial vehicle elements buys scale and reliability that a truck-only thermal system could not match. High-volume passenger car parts are cheaper and more accessible, which can give fleets a sealed, low-maintenance loop of operation from their first day of operation.
For owners and operators, that translates into less energy spent on cabin heat in the colder months, fewer refrigerant-related repairs, and a thermal architecture already stress-tested at passenger-car volumes before the first high-volume Semi left the lines in Nevada.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk certainly tipped off some details of the Tesla Roadster event with a broadening of information regarding the company’s decision to delay the unveiling for two weeks.
For years, people have speculated about what the Roadster will be capable of. While there have been plenty of things said about what it *could* do, we have not seen or been told by Tesla what it will actually be capable of.
However, over the past few days, Tesla’s weather updates have truly pushed the speculation into Plaid Mode, basically all but confirming the car will have some sort of aerial capability — whether that would be hovering or fully flying remains to be seen — but it definitely seems that it will be able to leave the ground intentionally.
“Because this event can only be held outdoors…”
Tesla posted on Monday that it would delay the Roadster event until October 15, and it indicated that it had to do this because the event “can only be held outdoors.”
With the potential SpaceX collaboration to develop cold-gas thrusters that will help the vehicle go airborne, doing this indoors is probably not a safe, or even plausible, possibility.
Roadster event update
We’ve been tracking the weather closely with local meteorologists, but given the severe conditions predicted & because this event can only be held outdoors, we’ve made the difficult decision to reschedule.
New date is October 15. Additional details to…
— Tesla (@Tesla) September 28, 2026
FAA Airspace Restriction
The FAA gave Tesla a Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) for 10,000 feet above ground level, much higher than the typical 2,000-foot restrictions that are usually placed at SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas site.
Tesla Roadster event requires restricted airspace, and the FAA obliges
Some have said that this massive increase is due to Tesla’s need to restrict unauthorized drone use for spying on the event.
Elon Admits High Winds
“Due to high winds, the new Roadster demo is postponed by 2 weeks,” Musk said in a post on X yesterday.
Due to high winds, the new Roadster demo is postponed by 2 weeks https://t.co/dV3ojDh1iT
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 30, 2026
A reply reading, “What’s strong wind got to do with a car demo with four grounded wheels?” was directly below Musk’s post, satirically and sarcastically probing for more details.
All signs are pointing toward an aerial demonstration for the Roadster.
Tesla has secured $30 billion in fresh credit lines from Citibank and Wells Fargo in an effort to scale its biggest current projects.
Tesla agreed to a $20 billion three-year delayed-draw term loan facility from Citibank, it announced on Tuesday. Additionally, it signed a five-year, $8 billion revolving credit facility and a $2 billion, 364-day term credit facility with Wells Fargo.
In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), that it “may draw” from the $20 billion delayed-draw term “from time to time” and “no more than ten times during the 18 months following the closing date.” This loan matures on September 29, 2029.
The five-year revolving facility from Wells Fargo will also be accessed by Tesla “from time to time,” and will become due and payable on September 29, 2031. Tesla can request two separate one-year extensions.
On the $2 billion, 364-day revolving loan, it becomes due and payable on September 28, 2027. Tesla can also increase its additional commitments to an additional $4 billion across the Revolving Facilities. This would increase the total facilities to $14 billion. Tesla said it does not plan to utilize any of these loans in 2026.
Tesla plans to utilize the money to help prop up its ambitions to scale its biggest products, each of which is either in early launch phases or still in development. Of course, we’re talking about Cybercab and Semi, which have launched, and Optimus, which is still under heavy development and working toward initial release.
All three Tesla products have one thing in common: they’ve all required Tesla to build new manufacturing lines for them.
For the Semi, Tesla built a brand new factory in Sparks, Nevada, adjacent to the Tesla Gigafactory. For Optimus, Tesla sunset Model S and X production at the Fremont Factory, which brought an end to the two flagship models, thus creating manufacturing space for the humanoid robot. Finally, Cybercab is being built at Gigafactory Texas and officially entered production earlier this year.
The cash will help Tesla bolster its finances for the continuing development of these products. Tesla said that it forecasts its CapEx to be over $25 billion, up from just over $8.5 billion last year. These loans surely help with that spending.
Tesla Cybercab and Semi have more in common than you might think
Elon Musk weather update tips Tesla Roadster speculation into Plaid Mode
