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Twitter Files part 14 sheds light on “Russian bots” and #ReleaseTheMemo
The Twitter Files part 14, written by independent journalist, Matt Taibbi, shed light on a false narrative of Russian bots and the hashtag #ReleaseTheMemo. Taibbi, who was given access to the internal documents at Twitter by Elon Musk, released a new installment on Thursday.
1.THREAD: Twitter Files #14
THE RUSSIAGATE LIES
One: The Fake Tale of Russian Bots and the #ReleaseTheMemo Hashtag— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 12, 2023
It began in 2018 when Senators Dianne Feinstein and Adam Schiff wrote the platform a letter regarding trending hashtags and Russian disinformation campaigns. Twitter pointed out that both the politicians and the media didn’t only lack the evidence but had evidence the accounts were not Russian. However, the platform was “roundly ignored.”
Backtracking to a week before Twitter received the letter, Republican Devin Nunes submitted a classified memo to the House Intel Committee that detailed the abuses by the FBI in obtaining Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) surveillance authority against those connected to former President Trump. Included was the role played by the Steele Dossier.
Credit: Matt Taibbi
In December 2019, a report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz verified Nunes’ assertions virtually.
“We also found that the FBI’s interviews of Steele, his Primary Sub-Source, a second sub-source, and other investigative activity revealed potentially serious problems with Steele’s descriptions of information in his reports,” the report read. “Among other things, regarding the allegations attributed to Person 1, the Primary Sub-source’s account of these communications, if true, was not consistent with and, in fact, contradicted the allegations of a “well-developed conspiracy” in Reports 95 and 102 attributed to Person 1.”
The report also pointed out that the FBI filed three renewal applications with the FISC in 2017, repeating the seven “significant errors contained in the first FISA application.” Yet, the report found another ten errors in the three renewal applications. Taibbi noted that despite that, the national media denounced Nunes’ report in January and February 2018 in “oddly identical language, calling it a ‘joke.’
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Senators Feinstein and Schiff also wrote an open letter claiming that the hashtag “gained the immediate attention and assistance of social media accounts linked to Russian influence operations.
The senators claimed that Nunes’ memo “distorts” classified information. “But note they didn’t call it incorrect,” Taibbi wrote.
Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal also wrote a letter. “We find it reprehensible that Russian agents have so eagerly manipulated innocent Americans citizens and undermined our democratic processes through our elections and public policy debates.”
The letter asked Twitter to notify users who interacted with tweets created by the accounts tracked by the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD). The senators and members of the media pointed to the Hamilton 68 dashboard created by Clint Watts, a former FBI counterintelligence official, created The letter asked Twitter to notify users who interacted with tweets created by the accounts tracked by the Alliance for Securing Democracy.”
The Hamilton 68 dashboard was described as a project with the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshal Fund and tracked around 600 accounts that it claimed were tied to Russian-sponsored influence and disinformation campaigns. Bret Schafer, an analyst who helped run the project, spoke about the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag.
“I’ve never seen any single hashtag that has had this amount of activity behind it,” he said. Taibbi noted that the dashboard “was vague in how it reached its conclusions.”
Twitter executives didn’t quite trust the dashboard and the key complaints were that Hamilton 68 seemed to be the only source of information and no one was checking with Twitter. Global Policy Communications Chief Emily Horne encouraged skepticism of the dashboard’s take. In the screenshots below, Horne pointed out that it was a comms play for ASD.
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“They’ve made a very strong media push in the last week, piggybacking on Clint’s testimony.”
Off the record, she said, “I encourage you to be skeptical of Hamilton 68’s take on this, which, as best as I can tell, is the only source for these stories. 1) Hamilton 68 does not release the accounts that make up their dashboard, so no one can verify the accounts they include are, in fact, Russian automated accounts, and 2) it is extraordinarily difficult for outside researchers, who do not have access to our full API and internal account signals, to say with any degree of certainty that an account they believe is behaving suspiciously is 1) automated and 2) Russian.”
“If you speak with them, I encourage you to press them on how they can be sure of both of these claims when they do not have access to internal signals and data.”
Twitter’s former head of safety, Yoel Roth, wasn’t able to find any Russian connection to the hashtag and noted that after reviewing accounts that posted the first 50 tweets with the hashtag, none showed any signs or affiliation to Russia. Instead, Twitter found that the engagement was “overwhelmingly organing and driven by strong VIT engagement). VIT is an acronym for very important Tweeters, and these included Wikileaks, Donald Trump Jr., and Congressman Steve King.
When Twitter brought this up to a Blumenthal staffer, the staffer tried to wave them off “because we don’t believe these are bots.”
Another Twitter executive pointed out that if Blumenthal would lay off on this, “it seems like there are other wins we could offer him.” However, the senator published his letter, which led to the platform’s executives being frustrated over what they viewed as a circular process.
“Twitter spent a lot of resources to respond to the initial request, and the reward from Blumental shouldn’t be round after round of requests for user notice. It also doesn’t do anything to fix the problem. That distracts our team from the real iq fight.”
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Twitter executives later realized that they were”feeding congressional trolls” and compared the requests to a popular children’s book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.
Although Twitter believed that there were no Russians in the story, it stopped challenging Russia’s claims on the record. Outside counsel from firms advised Twitter to use language such as “With respect to particular hashtags, we take seriously any activity that may represent an abuse of our platform.”
This resulted in reports from several mainstream media outlets pushing the “Russian bots” story without any evidence. Taibbi noted that several media outlets that played up the “Russian bots” story declined to comment. So did the staff for Senators Feinstein, Schiff, and Blumenthal. Nunes shared a comment.
“Schiff and the Democrats falsely claimed Russians were behind the Release the Memo hashtag, all my investigative work… By spreading the Russia collusion hoax, they instigated one of the greatest outbreaks of mass delusion in U.S. history.”
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SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell outlined ambitious plans for Starlink Mobile during the company’s August 4 Earnings call, signaling a direct challenge to U.S. wireless giants like AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon.
Shotwell noted that the three companies generate roughly $600 billion in combined annual revenue. “I anticipate us to be able to acquire quite a few of their customers because I think our service will be better,” she said. “We will eliminate dead zones leveraging the satellites in orbit. It will be better during any natural disaster… I’m quite excited about Starlink Mobile.”
SpaceX President & COO Gwynne Shotwell on @Starlink Mobile and its impact on Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile:
“Roughly, between them, $600 billion a year. I anticipate us to be able to acquire quite a few of their customers. Our service will be better. We will eliminate dead zones… pic.twitter.com/UYZUkrGc0L
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) August 4, 2026
SpaceX intends to combine its satellite constellation with terrestrial infrastructure. The company has acquired about 65 MHz of spectrum from EchoStar and plans to deploy next-generation Starlink Mobile satellites in 2027, with upgraded service targeted for the end of that year.
Shotwell described the enhanced network, leveraging more satellites and spectrum, as potentially “100 times better” than the current direct-to-cell offering, which already supports basic texting and app-based voice/video in coverage gaps through partnerships. She also indicated plans for low-cost cellular base stations that could integrate with existing Starlink dishes, creating a hybrid system for broader capacity in urban, suburban, and rural areas.
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For the general public, Starlink Mobile promises significant advantages. Satellite connectivity can fill gaps where traditional cell towers fail, delivering service in remote locations, mountains, or during outages caused by storms, wildfires, or infrastructure damage—conditions in which ground networks often collapse.
Users could enjoy more consistent coverage without relying solely on dense tower builds, potentially at competitive prices as SpaceX scales. The hybrid approach aims to support full mobile services, including higher-speed data, while working with unmodified smartphones over time.
These developments revive long-standing but unfounded rumors of a Musk-developed “Tesla phone.” Speculative claims of a “Pi Phone” or similar device with built-in Starlink connectivity have circulated for years on social media, often featuring fabricated images and details. Elon Musk has repeatedly denied any such plans, stating Tesla has no intention of entering the smartphone market unless forced by extreme circumstances with app stores.
No official product, filings, or development announcements have ever materialized; the rumors remain hoaxes.
The announcement quickly pressured telecom stocks. Shares of AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile fell between roughly 2 and 4 percent in after-hours and premarket trading as investors weighed the competitive threat from a hybrid satellite-terrestrial network.
While execution challenges remain—spectrum deployment, infrastructure rollout, and regulatory hurdles—Shotwell’s remarks mark SpaceX’s clearest signal yet of entering the consumer mobile market as a full competitor.
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Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya has cautioned investors shorting SpaceX shares, drawing a direct parallel to the intense short-selling pressure Tesla faced in its early public years.
Responding to reports of elevated short interest in the newly public rocket, satellite, and AI company, Palihapitiya noted that similar dynamics played out with Tesla, where aggressive short sellers ultimately “went broke.”
SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) went public on June 12, 2026, in the largest IPO on record, pricing at $135 per share. Shares quickly surged to an all-time high of $225.64 just days later, briefly implying a valuation exceeding $2 trillion. The stock has since retreated sharply amid valuation concerns, lockup expiration fears, and broader market dynamics.
By early August, it traded near $108–$125, representing a roughly 50 percent decline from the peak and bringing the market capitalization closer to the $1.5–1.7 trillion range. On August 4, shares closed up more than 9 percent at $125.33 ahead of earnings before facing pressure in after-hours and premarket trading.
Short interest has climbed dramatically. According to S3 Partners data widely cited in market reports, short positions reached approximately 219.3 million shares by late July, about 34 percent of the limited public float of roughly 640 million shares, and represented a notional value of around $24.6 billion.
Utilization of shares available to borrow hit 95 percent, with borrow fees rising. This level of shorting exceeded the dollar value of short bets against Tesla at the time and built rapidly ahead of two catalysts: the company’s first post-IPO earnings and an August 6 lockup expiration that could free up to 911.5 million additional shares.
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CEO Elon Musk has issued warnings of his own. In mid-July, as short interest approached one-third of the float, he posted that “the survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low,” reiterating his view that the company could ultimately be worth more than Earth if it achieves its goals.
On August 4, just before earnings, Musk responded to the latest short-interest data by saying, “I try to warn them, but they just double down.”
SpaceX delivered its first quarterly results as a public company after the close on August 4. Second-quarter revenue rose 92 percent year-over-year to $7.8 billion, beating consensus estimates near $6.8–6.9 billion.
The net loss narrowed to $541 million, or 9 cents per share, better than the roughly 23–24 cent loss expected. Starlink/connectivity contributed about $4.3 billion (up 66 percent), while the AI business generated $2.6 billion (up roughly 250 percent). Capital expenditures were heavy at $18.4 billion, largely tied to AI infrastructure. Management projected a $100 billion annualized revenue run rate by year-end 2026 and outlined a path toward $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2030.
The combination of Chamath’s historical reminder, Musk’s repeated alerts, and the company’s ambitious growth targets underscores the high-stakes debate surrounding SPCX. Short sellers are positioned for near-term supply pressure from the lockup, while long-term bulls point to Starlink scale, Starship progress, and AI compute expansion as reasons the bears may ultimately face the same fate as many early Tesla skeptics.
Investor's Corner
SpaceX and Nvidia team up on Musk’s orbital AI bet
SpaceX revealed a new Nvidia satellite partnership, then Musk pledged an exclusive Nvidia hardware commitment.
SpaceX and Nvidia are now working together on the hardware that will power Musk’s orbital data center ambitions. SpaceX announced on X on Tuesday that it is partnering with Nvidia to design the compute payload for Starmind AI1, the first satellite in a planned constellation built to run AI workloads directly in orbit. Each Starmind satellite will carry Nvidia’s Rubin GPUs and Vera CPUs, according to the post, which included renderings of the payload design.
The announcement landed hours before SpaceX’s first earnings call as a public company, where Musk went further, saying the company has committed to building its AI infrastructure exclusively on Nvidia hardware. “We think the Vera Rubin architecture is the best architecture. We think it’s the best AI computer, and we greatly value our close cooperation and partnership on many levels with Nvidia,” Musk told investors on the call,. “So we’re exclusive to Nvidia.”
Musk said SpaceX plans to deploy Nvidia’s Vera Rubin NVL72 rackscale system, codenamed Kyber, both on the ground and in space. He set a target of 2 gigawatts of compute capacity online by the end of this year, scaling to roughly 10 gigawatts by the end of 2027.
SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete
Starmind has been in development since Musk confirmed the name in June, following an xAI trademark filing that tipped off the project before SpaceX made it official. The idea is massive in scope and instead of moving data down to ground based servers, satellites equipped with onboard processors and large solar arrays would compute AI workloads in orbit and beam results back to Earth. SpaceX has already filed with the FCC for a constellation of up to one million satellites to support the effort, citing constant solar power and the absence of zoning restrictions as advantages over terrestrial data centers.
The Nvidia exclusivity marks a shift in tone from just two weeks ago, when Musk was busy knocking down a report that SpaceX had ordered $52 billion worth of Nvidia GPUs through Foxconn, calling it fake news at the time. The dollar figure in that rumor may have been wrong, but the underlying direction seems correct. SpaceX’s AI division already leases Colossus compute capacity to Anthropic and Google, and Tuesday’s earnings report showed AI revenue climbing sharply as those deals ramp up.
Nvidia shares rose roughly 3% in Tuesday trading on the news, while SpaceX stock climbed nearly 9% during the day before giving back gains after hours as investors digested the earnings report’s capital spending figures.
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SpaceX is coming for wireless giants with Starlink Mobile
SpaceX shorts get warned by Musk ally, echoing Tesla’s early struggles
