Elon Musk’s bloodhounds reach Europe

It’s just one of hundreds of jobs that electric car maker Tesla has advertised for its Brandenburg factory. But upon closer inspection, the position titled “Security Intelligence Investigator” differs significantly from the other ads the American company is seeking for automotive mechatronics and software engineers, service associates and sales consultants.

The reason: it requires very special training. Several years of professional experience in a secret service or a police authority is required. But not because the company needs to be protected only from external dangers: the enemy must be found within its own ranks, that is, employees willing to pierce internal media. It is a preview of what could happen to German Tesla employees. Because in the US such departments with internal detectives are already notorious.

Tesla security operations

The entrepreneur, seen by some as a technological pioneer, has long since built up a questionable reputation: Tesla is said to relentlessly hunt for (former) employees who provide the media with information.

A “Security Intelligence Investigator” would be responsible for such operations, as Tesla is now seeking in Brandenburg.

The job posting says something different: the person you’re looking for is responsible for protecting Tesla’s “intellectual property, trade secrets, and confidential information.” This person must investigate and address internal and external threats.

The job description

However, the job description suggests that no ordinary security post is being advertised here: the investigator gathers information on the ground “inside and outside” the Tesla compound and conducts “highly sensitive, complex and confidential investigations” involving “data breaches, intellectual investigations”. Property theft, misuse of technology and conflict of interest”. The goal: to prevent “subversion of business activities”.

Apparently this requires special qualifications: the requirement for applicants is several years of professional experience in law enforcement, intelligence or corporate security.

In addition, value is attached to experience in “complex, global” investigations, knowledge of the German language and knowledge of the legal framework for activities in Europe. Applicants must be able to communicate “at management level”.

The hunt for whistleblowers

If Tesla’s reputation were better, such a tender might not be worth mentioning. Large companies are regularly involved in industrial espionage and so try to use their own staff to fend off hacking attacks, for example, before law enforcement has to get involved.

But Tesla’s security intelligence division already has a very disturbing story. It started in 2018 with a report from Business Insider. At the time, the American portal reported on alleged abuses at the Tesla plant in Nevada.

According to a source from the company, huge amounts of material are wasted due to inefficiency in production – which incurs enormous costs and does not meet the carmaker’s climate-friendly requirements. The company contradicted the report. And internally a real hunt for the informant of “Business Insider” began.

The never-planned massacre

Because company boss Musk was apparently beside himself and put the company’s researchers on the whistleblower. This was reported by the former head of security at the Bloomberg news agency, who also became a whistleblower. According to him, his team was tasked not only with finding the informant, but also with outright “destroying” him. According to this, the reputation of the quickly found employee would have been publicly damaged.

According to the reports, this went so far that the company called the police to prevent an alleged planned killing spree by the whistleblower. When the police realized such a killing spree was never planned, they didn’t send out a press release – the company did it itself and spread the claim anyway.

Tesla has called the images “untrue” and said they were only intended to attract media attention. A legal battle with the first whistleblower ended when he had to pay the company $400,000 in damages — a fraction of what Tesla originally wanted to win. But the accusations did not stop.

Another former security guard accused Tesla of tapping his employees’ cell phones. The television channel CNBC also published research that showed that the company had observed disgruntled employees on social networks.

If you believe these descriptions, there is probably also plenty to do for a “Security Intelligence Investigator” in Germany: The Tesla factory in Bandenburg regularly makes headlines big and small – also because journalists get internal information from the factory.

Musk’s Political Struggle

Only recently did Elon Musk buy the short message service Twitter for 44 billion euros: under the pretext of finally making free change of opinion possible again, he has since shut down numerous conspiracy believers – with the support of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as an investor. , neo-Nazis and anti-Semites have regained reach on the platform that was previously locked there. Since then he has been spreading some of her stories himself.

At the same time, an extraordinary campaign was launched: Using internal documents, Musk had so-called “Twitter files” created, which are intended to prove political censorship of conservative voices by the previous operators.

Essentially, though, they showed little more than a company overwhelmed by right-wing hate speech and political disinformation campaigns. A former employee had to flee because of death threats. Before Christmas, Musk’s politically motivated campaign culminated in the accounts of countless American journalists being blocked.

Against this backdrop, the vacancy for the “security researcher” with Secret Service skills for Musk’s Tesla factory in Brandenburg has become even more explosive. Because his battle with journalists and their sources didn’t just start with the takeover of Twitter.