Twitter Says Musk Delayed Deal Due To Russia Starting 'World War III'

While the conflict between Russia and Ukraine drags on, some Americans are on edge over a supposed potential Civil War. Warfare was also apparently on the mind of Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who cited concerns over "World War III" before backing out of his planned Twitter takeover, but his legal team says it's unrelated.

The revelation came Tuesday during a court hearing, where private texts revealed the billionaire had allegedly said it'd be wise to "slow down" his Twitter acquisition because the purchase wouldn't "make sense" if a third world war were imminent. He'd previously agreed to acquire Twitter for $44 billion.

Musk's legal team claimed in July that the agreement was being broken because Twitter had withheld information about spam and bot accounts. Yet on May 8, Musk sent texts to a banker in which he mentioned a speech that Russian President Vladimir Putin was set to give the following day.

"Let's slow down just a few days," the texts read, per Insider. "Putin's speech tomorrow is really important. It won't make sense to buy Twitter if we're heading into World War 3."

During the hearing, the billionaire's legal team also argued that Twitter hadn't presented evidence to prove that economic worries had prompted Musk to jump ship.

"Their theory about what really happened isn't what really happened," his lawyer said, according to Insider.

When Musk announced in July that he intended to drop the deal, Twitter clapped back with a lawsuit.

For its part, Twitter has blasted Musk's about-face as "wrongful." An attorney for the social media platform wrote in a July letter: "The purported termination is invalid for the independent reason that Mr. Musk and the other Musk parties have knowingly, intentionally, willfully, and materially breached the agreement."

This isn't the first time that Musk has ruminated on the possibility of a third world war. In September 2017, he opened up about his fears that artificial intelligence would ignite it.

Those remarks were also made in response to Putin, who at the time had predicted that whichever country possessed the best command of AI would "be the ruler of the world."

"China, Russia, soon all countries w strong computer science. Competition for AI superiority at national level most likely cause of WW3 imo (in my opinion)," Musk said in the 2017 tweet.

Musk has also long sounded the alarm over a future AI-fueled doomsday.

In 2014, he told CNBC's Closing Bell that he likes to "keep an eye on what's going on with artificial intelligence." He added: "There have been movies about this, you know, like [The] Terminator. There are some scary outcomes."

Newsweek has reached out to Tesla and Musk's lawyer for comment.