What is Beijing Trying to Say? Possible Reasons Behind Why a Chinese Cybersecurity Firm Inserted Itself into the Trump-Musk Interview

In the midst of the heated U.S. presidential race, tech billionaire Elon Musk’s recent interview on X with former President and Republican nominee Donald Trump attracted wide attention for several reasons, and the technical glitch that delayed the interview by about 40 minutes was certainly one of them.  

While many mainstream U.S. media outlets attributed the delay to a technical issue, Musk insisted that it was a DDoS attack, a type of cyberattack that attempts to interrupt a server or network by flooding it with fake internet traffic, preventing user access and disrupting operations.

To China watchers in the United States, what’s even more intriguing is that a Beijing-based cyber security firm, Qi An Xin (QAX,奇安信 in Chinese), claimed they had evidence to back Musk’s claims in a post on WeChat, China’s most popular social media App, on August 13.

As U.S.-China relations are at their lowest point in decades and China is on the top list of possible foreign bad actors to interfere in U.S. elections, why did XLab, part of Qi An Xin, suddenly inject itself into such a mess? What are their intentions? What is the message that they are trying to send?

The Trump interview, which Musk dubbed “the interview of the century,” was held on August 12. To ensure technical reliability, Musk, the owner of X, conducted a stress test the day before the interview with 8 million concurrent viewers.

The Associated Press reported that “over 878,000 users were connected to the event more than 40 minutes after its scheduled start time, yet the interview had not begun.” Many users received messages stating, “Details not available.” Glenn Beck, a conservative political commentator, expressed his frustration on X, saying, “Not available????? I planned my whole day around this. I don’t want to miss a word.”

When the interview finally proceeded, Musk apologized for the delay, claiming it was due to a massive cyberattack. He wrote, “There appears to be a massive DDoS attack on 𝕏. Working on shutting it down.” Without seeing any evidence, media outlets like the Associated Press, CNN, and The New York Times speculated that the delay was likely due to the platform being overwhelmed by too many users.

The Associated Press indicated that X’s staffing cut after Musk took over the social media site may have contributed to the technical glitches during the Trump interview. “X has suffered a host of technical issues since Musk took over the company. He has fired, laid off or driven out most of its staff — including engineers tasked with keeping the site running,” wrote the article.

On August 13, the day after the interview, Trump returned to Truth Social, the social media site that he founded and owns a majority stake in, and vented his frustration and anger against the media for over-emphasizing technical issues.

“…..all the Fake News wants to report is that the servers crashed (because of the tremendous volume!), and the show opened a little late. What they should be reporting was the incredible number of people that were listening,” he wrote.

Around the same time, the Chinese cybersecurity company Qi An Xin posted a blog article on WeChat, indicating that they captured 34 waves of DDoS attacks on X during the Trump interview, which backed Musk’s claims.

The post wrote: “The large-scale threat detection system of Qi An Xin’s XLab promptly detected the recent attack on the X platform. Gong Yiming, the head of the laboratory, stated, ‘We observed that four Mirai botnet controllers were involved in this attack. Additionally, other attack groups also participated in the attack using reflection attacks, HTTP proxy attacks, and other methods. Monitoring data shows that the four botnet controllers launched at least 34 waves of DDoS attacks. The four control servers were mainly located in the UK (2), Germany (1), and Canada (1). The attack started at 8:37 AM Beijing time and lasted until 9:28 AM, with a duration of 50 minutes, which roughly corresponds with the delay in interviews.’”

According to the company’s profile information on LinkedIn, Qi An Xin was founded in 2014, and is one of the largest cyber security companies in China. “With a workforce of 8,000+ employees, our products and service have been adopted by over 90% of China’s central government departments, central government-led enterprises, and large banks,” the post said.

Reading Gong’s words carefully, the four places where the attacks were launched were all located in the U.S.’s close allies: the UK, Germany, and Canada. Is this a subtle rebuttal from Beijing that not all attacks were from the so-called “rogue states” as defined by the United States? After all, Trump’s “America First” policy and its attitude toward NATO have made the U.S.’s Western allies uneasy about a possible second term of the Trump administration.

In a recent Foreign Affairs article, China’s top expert on U.S.-China relations, Wang Jisi and co-authors conclude that regardless of whether Harris or Trump wins, U.S.-China relations are unlikely to be smooth in the foreseeable future. Therefore, supporting either the Republican or Democratic parties is not of significant importance to China.

“Beijing recognizes that sustaining economic growth is essential for domestic stability and takes incremental measures to enhance foreign trade, investment, and technological cooperation. In this context, China sees no benefit in antagonizing the United States and the West,” the article wrote.

In this regard, is the evidence that Qi An Xin posted for cyberattacks during the Trump interview an attempt by Beijing to signal to the U.S. that China has no interest in meddling in the US election and that the country should not be on the top list of foreign infiltrators?

As the U.S. presidential election unfolds, perhaps only time will tell Qi An Xin’s move.