17: Ukraine

U.S. tries to woo India away from Russia with display of F-35s, bombers The United States brought its most advanced fighter jet, the F-35, to India for the first time this week alongside F-16s, Super Hornets and B-1B bombers as Washington looks to woo New Delhi away from its traditional military supplier, Russia. ........ In contrast, Russia, India's largest weapons supplier since the Soviet Union days, had a nominal presence. Its state-owned weapons exporter Rosoboronexport had a joint stall with United Aircraft and Almaz-Antey, displaying miniature models of aircraft, trucks, radars and tanks. ....... The United States is selective about which countries it allows to buy the F-35. ....... The United States has approved arms sales worth more than $6 billion to India in the last six years, including transport aircraft, Apache, Chinook and MH-60 helicopters, missiles, air defence systems, naval guns and P-8I Poseidon surveillance aircraft. ....... .

How a Tiny NATO Nation Tackled a Big Problem: Arming Ukraine Luxembourg’s challenges in buying arms on the open market underscore the struggle to keep Ukraine supplied until sophisticated Western weapons arrive in the spring........ Luxembourg’s military consists of fewer than 1,000 troops, one cargo plane, two helicopters shared with police forces and fewer than 200 trucks ......... the vexing problem of supplying Ukraine with the arms it needs to hold off Russia until the arrival of sophisticated Western rockets, missiles and tanks later this year. ........ Ukraine has been burning through ammunition at a prodigious rate since the start of the war ........ But determined to make a greater contribution to the war effort, Luxembourg set up a two-man team of in-house arms dealers soon after the Russian invasion. They set out to scour commercial weapons markets in Europe and the United States, and to demonstrate that their country’s commitment to defeating Russia was every bit as big as that of its much larger NATO partners. ......... He also drew a parallel to Luxembourg’s history as an invaded state during World War I and World War II. “We were occupied many times in the last century, so we have an enormous sensibility for what it means for what is now happening in Ukraine” ..............

“We cannot let Putin do what he intends.”

......... Luxembourg spends less on its military than any other NATO country, and was the only state in the alliance to contribute less than 1 percent of its gross domestic product to national defense last year. .......... Luxembourg, with a G.D.P. above $130,000 per person — by far the highest in NATO ........ painstaking, often frustrating negotiations with commercial brokers, cold calls to manufacturers and even Google searches to track down weapons that Ukraine says it needs. .

How Democracy Can Win The Right Way to Counter Autocracy ............ the failed insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Without a doubt, American democracy had been shown to be far more fragile than it was when Biden left the vice presidency in 2017. ......... early 2022 may prove to be a high-water mark for authoritarianism. Putin’s ambitions to dominate Ukraine failed miserably, thanks to the unwavering resolve and courage of the Ukrainian people. Putin made mistake after strategic mistake while the free people of Ukraine successfully mobilized, innovated, and adapted. ......... Graft has rotted the Russian military from within, yielding reports of soldiers selling fuel and weapons on the black market. Russian commanders have taken massive risks with the lives of their soldiers: conscripts arrive at the front having been lied to and manipulated rather than properly trained. To avoid upsetting their superiors, military leaders have supplied overly rosy assessments of their ability to conquer Ukraine, leading one pro-Russian militia commander to call self-deception “the herpes of the Russian army.” ............ Most European countries are in a race to decouple their economies from Russia, and Finland and Sweden are on the brink of joining an expanded and united NATO. Public opinion of Russia and Putin has plummeted in countries around the world, reaching record lows ......... In Russia’s immediate neighborhood, Moscow’s traditional security and economic partners are staying neutral, refusing to host joint military exercises, seeking to reduce their economic dependence on Russia, and upholding the sanctions regimes. Russians themselves are voting with their feet: officially, hundreds of thousands of citizens have fled, but the true number is likely well over one million and includes tens of thousands of valued high-tech workers. ........... Between mid-2020 and the end of 2022, populist leaders saw an average decline of 10 percentage points in their approval ratings in 27 countries ........

Autocrats are now on the back foot.

....... For the last three decades, advocates of democracy have focused too narrowly on defending rights and freedoms, neglecting the pain and dangers of economic hardship and inequality. We have also failed to contend with the risks associated with new digital technologies, including surveillance technologies, that autocratic governments have learned to exploit to their advantage. It is time to coalesce around a new agenda for aiding the cause of global freedom, one that addresses the economic grievances that populists have so effectively exploited, that defangs so-called digital authoritarianism, and that reorients traditional democracy assistance to grapple with modern challenges......... The U.S. Agency for International Development, the institution I lead and the largest provider of democracy assistance in the world, has had “clear and consistent impacts” on civil society, judicial and electoral processes, media independence, and overall democratization .......... .

The Inflation Story Has Changed Significantly. Paul Krugman Breaks It Down. The Nobel laureate economist discusses inflation’s slowdown, the G.O.P.’s incoherent economic agenda and A.I.’s impact on the labor market. ........... Brad DeLong, my friend, an economist and historian, has this wonderful book called “Slouching Towards Utopia,” which is a history of what he calls the long 20th century. And if you just want to understand how the world changed from — he says that 1870 was the pivot point of history ........ “How the War Was Won” by Phillips O’Brien, who’s a military historian. And it’s a book about World War II, but he’s become a prolific commentator on the war in Ukraine, and it’s mostly — it’s this wonderfully unromantic, anti-glory view of war. It’s all about, look, it’s really about — modern war is about production and logistics. The opening sentence is, I think, “There were no decisive battles of World War II.” And it opened my eyes to thinking about how both about that history and about how to think about what’s happening in Ukraine now. ........... a fantasy novel by Leigh Bardugo called “Ninth House,” which is set at Yale. ........... every $10 million of democracy assistance it provided between 1992 and 2000 contributed to a seven-point jump on the 100-point global electoral democracy index maintained by the nonprofit Varieties of Democracy. ........... a host of interrelated factors contribute to democracy’s struggles: polarization, significant inequality and widespread economic dissatisfaction, the explosion of disinformation in the public sphere, political gridlock, the rise of China as a strategic competitor of the United States, and the spread of digital authoritarianism aimed at repressing free expression and expanding government power. ......... must help societies address economic concerns that antidemocratic forces have exploited; take the fight for democracy into the digital realm, just as autocracies have.........

At the core of democratic theory and practice is respect for the dignity of the individual.

........ But among the biggest errors many democracies have made since the Cold War is to view individual dignity primarily through the prism of political freedom without being sufficiently attentive to the indignity of corruption, inequality, and a lack of economic opportunity. ......... building coalitions to tackle these intersecting problems. ......... When we help democratic leaders provide vaccines to their people, bring down inflation or high food prices, send children to school, or reopen markets after a natural disaster, we are demonstrating—in a way that a free press or vibrant civil society cannot always do—that democracy delivers. ....... The task before reformist leaders is enormous. Often they inherit budgets laden with debt, economies hollowed out by corruption, civil services built on patronage, or a combination of all three. When Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema took office in 2021 after winning a landslide victory over an incumbent whose regime had arrested him more than a dozen times, he discovered that his predecessors had accumulated over $30 billion in unserviceable debt, nearly one and a half times the country’s GDP, with very little new infrastructure or return on borrowing to show for it. In Moldova, where the anticorruption advocate Maia Sandu was elected president in 2020, a single corruption scandal had previously siphoned off a whopping 12 percent of the country’s GDP. ........ USAID has also partnered with Vodafone to expand the reach of a mobile app called m-mama to every region in Tanzania. The app is akin to an Uber for expectant mothers, helping pregnant women who lack ambulance services reach health facilities and contributing to a significant decrease in maternal mortality. .......... Even individuals can do their part to support democracy by considering a democratic bright spot for their next vacation. ........... Over the past four decades, Beijing has transformed from one of the largest recipients of foreign assistance to the largest bilateral provider of development finance, mostly in the form of loans. ........... Much of the development financing China offers, even to highly indebted poor countries, is provided at nonconcessional market rates through opaque agreements hidden from the public. According to the World Bank, 40 percent of the debt owed by the world’s poorest countries is held by China. .......... with Chinese lenders rarely agreeing to reductions in interest rates or the principal. ......... Chinese lending to African countries increased closer to elections and that funds disproportionately wound up in the hometowns of political leaders. ....... Together with the rest of the G-7, the United States plans to mobilize $600 billion in private and public investment by 2027 to finance global infrastructure. .......... and expand secure and open 5G and 6G digital networks so that countries don’t have to rely on Chinese-built networks that may be susceptible to surveillance. ............. Authoritarian regimes use surveillance systems and facial recognition software to track and monitor critics, journalists, and other members of civil society with the goal of repressing opponents and stifling protests. They also export this technology abroad; China has provided surveillance technology to at least 80 countries through its Digital Silk Road initiative. .......... We blacklisted flagrant offenders, such as Positive Technologies and NSO Group, both of which sold hacking tools to authoritarian governments. ........ perhaps the biggest threat to democracy from the digital realm is disinformation and other forms of information manipulation. ......... 81 governments have used social media in malign campaigns to spread disinformation, in some cases in concert with the regimes in Moscow and Beijing .............. Both countries have spent vast sums manipulating the information environment to fit their narratives by disseminating false stories, flooding search engines to drown out unfavorable results, and attacking and doxxing their critics. ...........

We also helped support the production of the online comedy show Newspalm, which regularly racks up tens of thousands of views as it skewers Putin’s lies.

........... have heard from independent journalists around the world that one of the major impediments to their work, in addition to death threats and intimidation, is lawsuits brought against them by those whose corruption they seek to expose ......... These frivolous lawsuits can cost journalists and their outlets millions of dollars, putting some out of business and creating a chilling effect for others. ............ Autocrats no longer simply stuff ballot boxes on election day; they spend years tilting the playing field through cyber-hacking and voter suppression. ........... corruption that is occurring on a grand international scale, abetted by an industry of shadowy facilitators. .......... We support global investigative units that unite forensic accountants and journalists to expose illicit dealings, including those detailed in the Luxembourg Leaks and the Pandora Papers. And as corruption grows more complex and global in scope, we are helping link investigative journalists across borders, including in Latin America, where such efforts have uncovered the mismanagement of nearly $300 million in public funding. ............ Democracy is not in decline. Rather, it is under attack. Under attack from within by forces of division, ethno­nationalism, and repression. And under attack from without by autocratic governments and leaders who seek to exploit the inherent vulnerabilities of open societies by undermining election integrity, weaponizing corruption, and spreading disinformation to strengthen their own grip on power. Worse, these autocrats increasingly work together, sharing tricks and technologies to repress their populations at home and weaken democracy abroad. ............ second Democracy Summit—this time, held simultaneously in Costa Rica, the Netherlands, South Korea, the United States, and Zambia— .



How did Hindenburg short Adani stock? People familiar with the firm’s modus operandi say it may have used single stock futures and the help of western banks in Singapore ....... the firm had taken a short position in Adani “through US-traded bonds and non-Indian-traded derivative instruments”. ........ a 100-page report .......... Despite Adani denying the allegations in a 400-page rebuttal, Hindenburg’s report has triggered a sell-off in the group’s listed entities, knocking more than $100bn off their combined market value. ......... Short sellers typically borrow stocks through a broker, sell those shares on the market and hope that the price will go down. If it does, they buy shares to hand back to the lender and pocket the difference........ “I was looking at Adani myself for a short last summer and one of the reasons why I decided not to investigate it further is because of the difficulty of shorting it in India,” said Gabriel Grego, a hedge fund manager at Quintessential Capital, who is waging a short selling campaign at cyber security group Darktrace......... Hindenburg found a way. Investors who want to bet against an Indian company can do so using India’s main stock index, the Nifty 50, in which Adani Enterprises is one of the largest constituents ....... short sellers can do these types of trades, can create a product called a single stock future. ........ In Hindenburg’s case, it would receive the value of Adani Enterprises’ weighting in the index and the rest would be sold in the market. ........ the research took two years. ........... Hindenburg enlisted the help of an outside analyst who focused on Indian companies to investigate Adani. This analyst led the research with the help of a team of five Hindenburg employees. The team decided to release the report days before a planned $2.4bn share sale by Adani last month.......... The timing was crucial because Hindenburg’s report cast doubts on the anchor investor group involved in the fundraising, which included Mauritius-based entities. The short seller alleged these had links to the Adani family and were buying shares to prop up the stock price of the listed businesses in the group. Adani has denied the allegations. .......... a now infamous video that showed a functioning Nikola prototype that the short seller said was actually moving only because it was rolling downhill. ........ Anderson also made a winning bet on Twitter, shorting the company’s stock in May just as Elon Musk sought to get out of his offer to buy it. ......... Shares in property investment group Welltower have risen more than 15 per cent since Hindenburg published a report in December alleging one of its critical partnerships was a “sham”. ......... Shares in medical devices group Establishment Labs are up more than 30 per cent since Hindenburg described it as a “financially stretched silicone safety charade” in October. ........... have portrayed the report as an attack on India and a “hit job” on its markets. ........ accused Hindenburg of spreading “malicious lies” .

Adani hires US legal powerhouse Wachtell in short-seller battle
Ukraine is burning through ammunition faster than the US and NATO can produce it. Inside the Pentagon’s plan to close the gap The US and its allies have already sent nearly $50 billion in aid and equipment to Ukraine’s military over the past year. To keep that up, and to rebuild its own stockpiles, the Pentagon is racing to re-arm, embarking on the biggest increase in ammunition production in decades, and putting portions of the US defense industry on a war-footing despite America technically not being at war. ........ The Pentagon has allocated roughly $3 billion alone to buy munitions overseas from allies and to ramp up production at home. Some of that money will go toward producing what has become a staple of the war – 155 millimeter artillery shells. ........ The Army is planning a 500% increase in artillery shell production, from 15,000 a month to 70,000 ....... Across the US, munitions factories are increasing production as fast as possible. A Lockheed Martin plant in Camden, Arkansas, is cranking out a series of rockets and missiles, including those used by the Army’s Patriot missile system – all of which are in high demand in Ukraine. Bush told reporters in January that the Army was standing up a new plant in Garland, Texas to make artillery shells, while an existing plant is being expanded in Middletown, Iowa that loads, packs and assembles 155 millimeter shells. ........ the Army intends to double the production of Javelin anti-tank missiles, make roughly 33% more Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (GMLRS) surface-to-surface medium-range missiles a year, and produce each month a minimum of 60 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles – which were “almost not in production at all” ........

Ukraine is burning through ammunition faster than the US and NATO can produce them

. ........ As Ukraine prepares for a much-anticipated spring offensive in the coming weeks, the US is still years away from reaching its expected level of increased weapons production. ........ “For Ukraine, the challenges are more immediate and medium term, while much of the added US production capacity appears to be two years in the future” ......... it will take anywhere from 12 to 18 months for the US to reach its “max” production rate of 70,00 artillery shells a month. ........ In Brussels this week, top US defense officials struck an optimistic tone about being able to deliver Ukraine what it needs. ......... the international community “will continue to support Ukraine” until Russian President Vladimir Putin “ends his war of choice.” .........

the rate of weapons production could make all the difference on the battlefield.

....... “We are still the arsenal of democracy,” Bush said. “And nobody does it better than the United States.”

The Taliban are digging an enormous canal A mega-project in northern Afghanistan risks raising regional tensions some 5,500 people are working around the clock on the project, using over 3,300 bits of machinery. Once completed, the Qosh Tepa Canal will divert water from the Amu Darya river for irrigation. The river, once known as the Oxus, rises in Afghanistan and Tajikistan, flows into Uzbekistan and is one of the longest in Central Asia. The Taliban expects the project to turn 550,000 hectares of desert into much-needed farmland. .

माओवादी कांग्रेसतिर ढल्किन खोज्दा ओलीको नजरमा महन्थ र अशोक ! माघ २७ मा ओलीले गाडीमा लिफ्ट दिएर ठाकुरलाई आफ्नो निवास बोलकोट लिएका थिए । ओली र ठाकुरबीच राष्ट्रपतिका सन्दर्भमा एक घण्टा छलफल भएको थियो । लोसपाका एक नेताका अनुसार ओलीले राष्ट्रपतिका लागि ठाकुरलाई प्रस्ताव गरेका थिए । ....... ओलीको भनाइ उद्धत गर्दै लोसपाका एक नेताले भने, ‘मेरो प्रयत्न पुस १० को सहमति कार्यान्वयन गराउने छ । त्यो परिस्थिति बन्छ जस्तो लागेको छैन । राष्ट्रपतिमा तपाई पनि उठ्नुपर्ने हुन सक्छ । के छ मनस्थिति ?’ ...... प्रमुख दलहरुले राष्ट्रपतिमा आवश्यकता महसुस गरे आफू तयार रहेको ओलीलाई ठाकुरको जवाफ थियो । ....... भारतका विश्वासपात्र ठाकुरलाई राष्ट्रपतिमा प्रस्ताव गरेर ओलीले कांग्रेस–माओवादीलाई अप्ठ्यारो पार्ने नीति लिएको नेताहरू बताउँछन् । ....... ओलीको प्रस्तावपछि ठाकुरले पनि राष्ट्रपतिका लागि आन्तरिक गृहकार्य बढाएको पाइएको छ । लोसपाका नेता डा. सुरेन्द्र झाका अनुसार केही दिनमा कांग्रेस सभापति शेरबहादुर देउवासँग भेटवार्ता गर्ने तयारी छ । ...... ‘उहाँ माओवादी, कांग्रेस र एमालेका लागि स्वीकार्य व्यक्ति हो । गणतन्त्र र संघीयतामा प्रधानमन्त्रीजीसँग स्प्रीड मिल्छ भने कांग्रेसमा उहाँले लामो समय राजनीति गर्नु भएको छ,’ नेता झा भन्छन्, ‘ओलीजीलाई विगतमा गुन लगाउन भएको छ । उहाँको नाममा राष्ट्रिय सहमति भन्ने परिस्थिति बन्दै गएको छ ।’ ... तर ओलीले भने ठाकुरका साथै अहिले एमालेसँग नजिक रहेका जसपाका अध्यक्ष राईलाई पनि राष्ट्रपतिको उम्मेदवार बन्न ग्रीनसिंनल दिएको स्रोतले रातोपाटीलाई बतायो । पूर्व एमाले पृष्ठभूमिका राई गत निर्वाचनमा एमालेको साथमा सुनसरी १ बाट सांसद निर्वाचित भएका थिए । ........ सत्ता दलीय गठबन्धनमा पुस १० मा भएको सहमति कार्यान्वयन गर्न जटिल भएपछि ओलीले एमाले बाहेकको खोजी थालेको कांग्रेस नेताहरू पनि बताउँछन् । ...... साना दलका नेता पनि खोजिराख्नु भएको छ । नागरिक समाजबाट पनि खोजिराख्नु भएको छ ।’ ....... ‘पार्टीले सबैलाई मान्य हुनेगरी उपयुक्त उम्मेदवार उठाउँछ । गठबन्धन कायम रहन्छ ।’

के छ बालेन शाहको मुद्दामा सर्वोच्चले दिएको अन्तरिम आदेशमा ? (आदेशसहित)
डिल्लीबजार कारागारमा रेशम चौधरीको हाइफाई जिन्दगी, पाउँछन् अतिरिक्त सुविधा
राष्ट्रपतिबारे ओलीको प्रस्तावमा प्रचण्डले दिए तीन विकल्प



Moscow’s Military Capabilities Are in Question After Failed Battle for Ukrainian City A disastrous Russian assault on Vuhledar, viewed as an opening move in an expected spring offensive, has renewed doubts about Moscow’s ability to sustain a large-scale ground assault.......... a faltering Russian campaign that continues to be plagued by battlefield dysfunction. ......... as President Vladimir V. Putin’s forces seek to demonstrate progress before the anniversary of his invasion on Feb. 24. ........ a large part of Russia’s army is already fighting in Ukraine. ....... about 80 percent of Russia’s ground forces are dedicated to the war effort. ........ Vuhledar, which sits at the intersection of the eastern front in the Donetsk region and the southern front in the Zaporizhzhia region, has long been in Moscow’s sights. It has been used by Ukraine as a base for harassing shipments on an important rail line supplying Russian forces. ......... He said the attacks on Vuhledar had been no surprise — the Russians even warned the Ukrainians of the coming assault through social media channels, in an apparent attempt to scare them ............. As they have done throughout the war, the Russian commanders made some basic mistakes, in this case failing to take into account the terrain — open fields littered with antitank mines — or the strength of the Ukrainian forces ........ In one week alone in the Vuhledar clash, the Ukrainian General Staff estimates, Russia lost at least 130 armored vehicles, including 36 tanks. ......... “a whole Russian brigade was effectively annihilated” in Vuhledar, where he said that Moscow “lost over 1,000 people in two days.” ......... “a president and a Russian general staff that defies reality or ignores reality and simply doesn’t care how many people they are killing of their own, let alone of the people they are trying to oppress.” ........... The Russians faced another problem in Vuhledar from Ukraine’s deployment of American-made HIMARS missiles that forced commanders to position large concentrations of forces more than 50 miles from the front. That made it hard to attack with either speed or surprise. ....... those who survived the battle were considered deserters. .......... Despite the setbacks, Moscow has continued to insist that all is going according to plan. On Sunday, Mr. Putin said that the “marine infantry is working as it should. Right now. Fighting heroically.” .

In 46 Words, Biden Sends a Clear Message to Israel a concern that the radical transformation of Israel’s judicial system that Netanyahu’s ultranationalist, ultrareligious coalition is trying to slam through the Knesset could seriously damage Israel’s democracy and therefore its close ties to America and democracies everywhere. ......... “I can’t be silent,” Mandelblit concluded. “If there is no independent judiciary, it’s over. It’s a different system of government.” ...... Biden is telling Israel our relationship has never truly rested on shared interests. It’s always been built up from our shared values. That is why it has endured so long — even when we disagree on interests. .

Canned Tomatoes, Explained Whole peeled, crushed, puréed or paste? There’s a time and a place for each. ...... Tomato purée is already cooked, blended and strained, so it’s seed-free and more concentrated ....... .

There’s nothing to see in Ohio. pic.twitter.com/SLNwPt961e

— Douglas A. Boneparth (@dougboneparth) February 16, 2023

“A lost war in Ukraine is a steppingstone to war in the Asia Pacific”
“If the US wants to go to war in Asia,then the most correct path to this is to show weakness in Ukraine as well”
Mikhail Khodorkovsky will speak @MunSecConf this week@CatherineBelton https://t.co/A5FQrGMV2m

— Mikhail Khodorkovsky (English) (@mbk_center) February 16, 2023

The Immediate Work At Hand

Listen to "The Immediate Work At Hand " by paramendra: Son of God: Jesus come back as promised . ⚓ https://t.co/sJpPbPbinJ #god #jesus #krishna #kalki #shiva

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) February 17, 2023

DeSantis

The Drone War in Ukraine Is Cheap, Deadly, and Made in China Crowdsourced donations are fueling eyes in the sky. ...... It’s grimly reminiscent of European conflicts of the 20th century—but it’s also the first war in history where both sides have made extensive use of cheap, startlingly effective small drones, the kind that can be bought at electronics stores or built with simple hobby kits. ........ One company dominates the market. In early 2013, Chinese drone hobby company DJI released the Phantom 1, one of the first out-of-the-box consumer drones that a total novice could use to take aerial photos. Today, DJI is the overwhelming global king of the consumer-drone market, selling extremely affordable, sophisticated, and easy-to-use products that are useful for everything from construction mapping to filmmaking—whose positive attributes tend to overshadow ongoing controversies about just how secure these Chinese-made drones really are. And much to DJI’s irritation, the affordability and accessibility that make their drones so appealing to civilians are also very attractive to soldiers. .......... Ukrainians and Russians certainly aren’t pleased about their reliance on a single product made by a Chinese company .......... and price hikes in Russia, after DJI pulled out of the market there ........ While both Ukraine and Russia are working furiously to spin up their own in-country drone-manufacturing projects, they still need access to huge quantities of consumer, off-the-shelf drones, as well as hobby-grade drone components (which are almost all produced in China). But DJI says that it does not “market or sell our products for combat operations”, and as of April 2022, the company doesn’t officially sell its products in Ukraine or Russia, either. ........... The fact that DJI drones are explicitly sold as consumer, non-military products also makes them much easier to transport across international borders than more heavily controlled, explicitly military technologies ......... Drones are really just flying cameras with pretensions, and what they’re most useful for is looking at things, gaining a perspective you can’t get from the ground, with an intimacy and stealth that planes can’t match. .......... surveillance: tools that fighters can use to figure out where they are, who’s in the area around them, and to project that information out to the rest of the world ........ Ukrainian fighters regularly stream data feeds from consumer drones back to centralized command centers, often relying upon tools as mundane as Google Meet. ........... the ability to send accurate latitude-longitude coordinates back to both centralized command centers and pilots on the ground. .......... At night, drone pilots take advantage of small drones equipped with thermal sensors, devices that are widely used in the civilian world for tasks such as infrastructure inspection, farming, and search and rescue. ........... They’re also a PR tool. Hundreds of war-focused Telegram channels, YouTube accounts, and Facebook pages, maintained by people on both the Russian and Ukrainian side of the conflict, now post dozens and dozens of battlefield videos collected by drones every day—dramatic footage that is constantly replayed by the global news media, shaping narratives and opinions. .......... The world is seeing the Ukraine war through the gimbal-mounted digital eye of a drone: the first war everyone can follow from the god’s-eye perspective of a flying, zoom-lens-equipped camera hovering hundreds of feet over the bloodshed. ........... While drones are best for looking at things, they’re also pretty good at dropping explosives. At the very start of the war, the vast majority of small-drone bombing videos on social media came from Ukraine’s Aerorozvidka unit, which used custom-built, thermal-sensor-equipped, eight-armed multirotor drones to precisely drop modified, often Soviet-era, grenades onto Russian equipment. .............. and increasingly, those grenades were being dropped by DJI drones equipped with 3D-printed dropper devices, which can be ordered in bulk on AliExpress ........... Ukrainians, too, have taken advantage of tools capable of interrupting consumer drone signals, such as the Lithuanian-made EDM4S anti-drone jammer. ........... In late November 2022, a Russian Wagner fighter surrendered not to a human, but to a drone. As the aerial camera watched, he threw down his weapon and began walking in the direction of Ukrainian lines—and he lived to tell the tale for Telegram. ........... Ukraine quickly capitalized on the video’s popularity and began posting detailed instructions on how to surrender to a drone for Russian fighters, part of the evocatively named “I Want to Live” project ............ In January, Ukrainian fighters used a hook-carrying DJI drone to remotely grab a Russian walkie-talkie that had been abandoned on the battlefield. They claimed they were able to then listen in on Russian communications for nine days. .......... small drones continue to exist in an uncertain space in international humanitarian law, and we still lack real mechanisms for telling friend-drone from foe-drone way up in the air. .......... The skies over 21st-century battlefields are going to be filled with dirt-cheap and startlingly effective eyes in the sky for a very long time to come.

The Contradictions of Ron DeSantis He has ignited so many cultural confrontations that they’re difficult to keep track of, but he has acted most aggressively on education......... his record as the chief executive of an economically thriving state ....... DeSantis, through his escalating attacks on what he calls “woke” ideology, has signaled that if he runs, as most expect, he will seek the GOP nomination by emphasizing the same cultural grievances about racial and social change that former President Donald Trump has stressed. Those messages have enabled Trump to energize hard-core conservatives, but at the price of repelling many well-educated suburbanites. .......... DeSantis winning about three-fifths of Florida’s college-educated white voters in a year when that group provided crucial support to Democrats in many other states ......... DeSantis has ignited so many cultural confrontations that it’s difficult to keep track of them, but he has acted most aggressively on education. ............ and “intersectionality,” an academic analysis of how forms of racial, class, and gender inequity intersect ........ This week, after the College Board openly criticized his actions on the AP African American–history course, DeSantis suggested he may try to end Florida’s use of other AP tests and even the SAT. Those threats echoed his successful drive to strip the Walt Disney Company of special administrative privileges for its theme park in Orlando after the corporation criticized his “Don’t Say Gay” bill. ........ DeSantis has been fulsome in his denunciations of “woke ideology” but stingy in his definitions of exactly what he considers that to be. ......... defined woke as “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.” ......... By refusing to more precisely identify what concepts the state considers objectionable, he says, DeSantis has created a “chilling effect” whereby teachers self-censor in fear that “everything and anything” about race, gender, and sexuality “can become fodder for punishment.” ......... copycat bills in many of the other 21 states where Republicans hold unified control of the state legislature and the governorship. .......... the voters most attracted to limiting what students learn about race and gender are those who are already receptive to core Trump cultural messages. ...........

For many GOP voters, “this is a psychological, not policy, threat”

........... “The feeling is the other side is calling me racist, calling me and my country evil, and blaming me as a man for every problem … It’s about shame, guilt, and self-worth, and it’s existential—for them and their country. Obviously, that’s going to motivate Republican base voters more than crime policy or inflation.” ............ these ideas generate much less demand outside the red states ........ frame these moves as an attempt to empower parents against an arrogant educational bureaucracy and other “elitist” forces, like Hollywood and teachers’ unions. ......... For many GOP strategists, the proof that these ideas appeal beyond the conservative base was Republican Glenn Youngkin’s victory in the 2021 governor’s race in Virginia, a state that had been steadily trending blue, after he stressed “parental rights.” ........ majorities of voters said they would be more likely to support a candidate who argued that schools should focus less on racism and more on core academic subjects ........... backed a “Don’t Say Gay” law for the early grades; would give parents more control over curriculum; and would ban transgender girls from high-school sports ........... not only did about four-fifths of 2020 Trump voters say they would support a candidate expressing each of those beliefs; so did about one-third of those who voted for President Joe Biden. ......... a significant majority said they worried less that kids are being taught values their parents don’t like than that culture-war fights are diverting schools from their real mission of educating students .......... a two-to-one majority said that providing schools with more resources was more important than providing parents with more say. ............. “Banning books is very likely to raise eyebrows and opposition among the narrow segment of voters who truly are swing voters” .......... the larger implications of the DeSantis agenda are likely to turn off the suburban swing voters the GOP is hoping to recapture in 2024. .......... not “let him claim to be there speaking for parents; what this is really about is politicians coming in and deciding what is going to be taught.” .......... people will definitely trust teachers and principals way more than they trust politicians ........ Trump has already released a pair of bristling videos staking out militant positions on censoring teachers and restricting LGBTQ rights (to combat what Trump called “gender insanity.”) ......... the GOP primary could see a culture-war arms race that tugs all of the contenders to the right and creates more hurdles with swing voters for the eventual winner. ......... In the Democratic portrayal, DeSantis looks like an intolerant bully with authoritarian and bigoted inclinations; in the Republican version, he’s a buttoned-down, business-friendly manager imposing commonsense constraints on unaccountable forces threatening families. The picture that ultimately commands the frame will likely determine whether DeSantis can broaden the GOP’s appeal beyond its constricted boundaries under Trump.

Dismiss Ron DeSantis at Your Peril political analysts and journalists marvel at, chew over and second-guess his failure to return Donald Trump’s increasingly ugly jabs. ....... where those critics spot possible weakness, I see proven discipline. Brawling with Trump doesn’t flex DeSantis’s muscle. It shows he can be baited. And it just covers them both in mud. .......... DeSantis “has a lot more in common with Barack Obama or Ronald Reagan” when they were gearing up for their first presidential bids than with Walker, Kamala Harris or Rick Perry, whose sizzle fizzled fast. ........ DeSantis has the very venom that Bush didn’t. He’s a viper to Bush’s garter snake. ......... A few months ago, “Ron DeSanctimonious” made its puerile and lavishly syllabic debut. “Meatball Ron” is apparently under consideration. .......... And this month Trump insinuated on social media that when DeSantis was a secondary school teacher decades ago, he behaved inappropriately around female students. ......... DeSantis’s response? “I spend my time delivering results for the people of Florida and fighting against Joe Biden,” he told a reporter who asked him about the vague and unsubstantiated allegation. “I don’t spend my time trying to smear other Republicans,” he added. ........... What he mostly spends his time doing is peacocking and planting unignorable markers along every fault line in the culture wars. ........... He’s methodical and relentless, and that compensates for his oratory, more yawn-stoking than heart-stirring, and his debating, more bluster than luster. ......... Attention to politicians on the rise and on the make comes in predictable phases. They are built up, each observer outdoing the breathlessness of the previous ones, until they must be torn down, because the existing story is stale and new adjectives and anecdotes are in order. ......... So DeSantis has gone from cunning (which he is) to unlikable (ditto), from someone who has outperformed expectations (that 19-point margin) to someone who cannot possibly meet them.

What Putin Got Right The Russian president got many things wrong about invading Ukraine—but not everything. ........ He exaggerated his army’s military prowess. He underestimated the power of Ukrainian nationalism and the ability of its outmanned armed forces to defend their home soil. He appears to have misjudged Western unity, the speed with which NATO and others would come to Ukraine’s aid, and the willingness and ability of energy-importing countries to impose sanctions on Russia and wean themselves off its energy exports. He may also have overestimated China’s willingness to back him up: Beijing is buying lots of Russian oil and gas, but it is not providing Moscow with vocal diplomatic support or valuable military aid. ........... No matter how the war turns out, Russia is going to be weaker and less influential than it would have been had he chosen a different path. ........... The Biden administration hoped that the threat of “unprecedented sanctions” would deter Putin from invading and then hoped that imposing these sanctions would strangle his war machine, trigger popular discontent, and force him to reverse course. Putin went to war convinced that Russia could ride out any sanctions we might impose, and he’s been proved right up till now. There is still sufficient appetite for Russian raw materials (including energy) to keep its economy going with only a slight decline in GDP. The long-term consequences may be more severe, but he was right to assume that sanctions alone would not determine the outcome of the conflict for quite a while. ............ Putin correctly judged that the Russian people would tolerate high costs and that military setbacks were not going to lead to his ouster. He may have begun the war hoping it would be quick and cheap, but his decision to keep going after the initial setbacks—and eventually to mobilize reserves and fight on—reflected his belief that the bulk of the Russian people would go along with his decision and that he could suppress any opposition that did emerge. .......... Putin understood that other states would follow their own interests and that he would not be universally condemned for his actions. Europe, the United States, and some others have reacted sharply and strongly, but key members of the global south and some other prominent countries (such as Saudi Arabia and Israel) have not. ............. Putin understood that Ukraine’s fate was more important to Russia than it was to the West. ......... Given this asymmetry of motivation, we are trying to stop Russia without U.S. troops getting directly involved. ......... If you listen to them, Russian control over Crimea or any portion of the Donbas would be a fatal blow to the “rules-based international order,” an invitation to China to seize Taiwan, a boon to autocrats everywhere, a catastrophic failure of democracy, and a sign that nuclear blackmail is easy and that Putin could use it to march his army all the way to the English Channel. Hard-liners in the West make arguments like this to make Ukraine’s fate appear as important to us as it is to Russia, but such scare tactics don’t stand up to even casual scrutiny. ............ The future course of the 21st century is not going to be determined by whether Kyiv or Moscow ends up controlling the territories they are currently fighting over, but rather by which countries control key technologies, by climate change, and by political developments in many other places. ........... because a nuclear exchange is such a fearsome prospect, bargaining under the shadow of nuclear weapons becomes a “competition in risk taking.” Nobody wants to use even one nuclear weapon, but the side that cares more about a particular issue will be willing to run greater risks, especially if vital interests are at stake. ............. we cannot entirely dismiss the possibility that Russia would use a nuclear weapon if it were about to suffer a catastrophic defeat, and this realization places limits on how far we should be willing to push it. Again, not because Western leaders are weak-willed or craven, but because they are sensible and prudent. ........... neither the United States nor the Soviet Union ever engaged in successful nuclear blackmail during the long Cold War—even against non-nuclear states—despite the enormous arsenals at their disposal. ............ The more aid, weaponry, intelligence, and diplomatic support that the United States and NATO provide to Ukraine, the more their reputations become tied to the outcome. This is one reason why President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainians keep demanding more and more sophisticated forms of support; it is in their interest to get the West tied as closely as possible to their fate. .......... In 1969, Henry Kissinger understood Vietnam was of little strategic value to the United States and that there was no plausible path to victory there. ........... The more arms we commit, the more committed we become. ......... when both sides start thinking that their vital interests require inflicting a decisive defeat on the opponent, ending wars gets harder and escalation becomes more likely.

A World Marching Towards World War III

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— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) February 16, 2023

As hostilities intensify, Russian and Iranian cells are expected to take out lightly guarded soft targets in the U.S., including reservoirs, bridges, electrical grids, and fiber-optic cable systems – and insiders believe the attacks have already begun............ In the last three months, at least nine electrical substations have been attacked in North Carolina, Oregon, and Washington State, cutting power to tens of thousands of people and sparking a review of security standards for the national power grid.......... While three white supremacists recently pleaded guilty to conspiring to disrupt generating stations throughout America, key intelligence experts believe the domestic terrorists were following a path trail-blazed by Russian saboteurs.

How the Oscars and Grammys Thrive on the Lie of Meritocracy Despite all the markers of excellence, contenders like Danielle Deadwyler, Viola Davis and Beyoncé weren’t recognized for the highest honors. Niche awards don’t suffice. ........ Beyoncé, one of the most prolific and transformative artists of the 21st century, can win only in niche categories. Her music — a continually evolving and genre-defying sound — still can’t be seen as the standard-bearer for the universal. ......... Black women artists, despite their ingenuity, influence and, in Beyoncé’s case, unparalleled innovation, continue to be denied their highest honors. ........ the false myth of meritocracy upon which these institutions, their ceremonies and their gatekeepers thrive. ......... we saw a new Oscar strategy playing out before our eyes. A groundswell of fellow actors, including A-listers like Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet and even Cate Blanchett, who would go on to be nominated herself, publicly endorsed Riseborough’s performance on social media, at screenings and even at a prize ceremony. ......... “So it’s only the films and actors that can afford the campaigns that deserve recognition?” Ricci wrote in a now-deleted Instagram post. “Feels elitist and exclusive and frankly very backward to me.” ........ What fascinated me, however, was that what was being framed as a grass-roots campaign to circumvent studio marketing machines revealed another inside game. A racially homogeneous network of white Hollywood stars appeared to vote in a small but significant enough bloc to ensure their candidate was nominated. .......... As conceived by Dominik, Monroe merely flits from injury to injury, all in the service of making her downfall inevitable. ....... another pattern: Oscar voters continue to reward women’s emotional excess more than their restraint. In most films with best actress nominations this year, women’s anger as outbursts is a common thread .......... “Everything Everywhere All at Once” brilliantly explores it as both a response to IRS bureaucratic inefficacy and intergenerational tensions between a Chinese immigrant mother and her queer, Asian American daughter. ............ “Blonde” is again an exception, for de Armas’s Monroe expresses no external rage but sinks into depression and self-loathing, never directing her frustration at the many men who abuse her. .......... Unlike the main characters of the other films, Till-Mobley, in real life, had to repress her rational rage over the gruesome murder of her son, Emmett, to find justice and protect his legacy. Onscreen, Deadwyler captured that paradox by portraying Till-Mobley’s constantly shifting self and her struggle to privately grieve her son’s death while simultaneously being asked to speak on behalf of a burgeoning civil rights movement. ............

female protagonists are often lauded for falling apart.

............ even that assumes that all women’s emotions are treated equally, when the truth is that rage itself is racially coded ....... depict Black women’s rage as an individual emotion and a collective dissent, a combination that deviates from many on-screen representations of female anger as a downward spiral and self-destructive. ............... the “Till” director Chinonye Chukwu critiqued Hollywood on Instagram for its “unabashed misogyny towards Black women” ........ “What is this inability of Academy voters to see Black women, and their humanity, and their heroism, as relatable to themselves?” ......... there are far more Black women directors and complex Black women characters on the big screen than ever before

@salamishah says https://t.co/pJMtrk8sUT

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) February 15, 2023

At the Oscar Nominees Luncheon, a Crowd in Cruise Control The “Top Gun: Maverick” star and producer is mobbed as Austin Butler, Angela Bassett, Ke Huy Quan and others angle to chat with him........ lk into the ballroom of the Beverly Hilton. ....... Cruise even posed for pictures with Steven Spielberg, a once-frequent collaborator whom the star has not been publicly photographed with in over a decade. ..... there was no mistaking Cruise as the ballroom’s top dog ........ In the schmoozy hour before lunch was served, he was so mobbed by his fellow nominees that he was hardly able to move more than a few feet. ........ I watched for a while as “Elvis” star Austin Butler drifted with slow, inexorable determination toward Cruise, who finally pulled the younger man toward him by clamping a hand on his shoulder like a stapler. ....... Yang pleaded with the nominees to keep their speeches short: “We need to be sensitive to our running time,” she said. “This is live television, after all.” .......... “I’ve been acting since I was 19 and I’m 64 — do the math,” Curtis told me. “That’s many years of watching this photograph being taken.” Her late parents, the actors Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, had both been Oscar nominees. “To be connected through this legacy of their work and my work and now being included here, it’s very powerful,” she said. ......... “I’ve got one more expression,” shouted best-actor nominee Colin Farrell (“The Banshees of Inisherin”). ...... “We talked about how we both did very badly at school,” she said, “and now here we are, at the coolest graduation picture ever.”

What Should I Do About a Neighbor Who Verbally Abused Her Child? A reader who overheard a neighbor shouting cruelties at her young son wonders whether, and how, to intervene.

‘Our Losses Were Gigantic’: Life in a Sacrificial Russian Assault Wave Poorly trained Russian soldiers captured by Ukraine describe being used as cannon fodder by commanders throwing waves of bodies into an assault........ The soldiers were sitting ducks, sent forth by Russian commanders to act essentially as human cannon fodder in an assault. ........ relying on overwhelming manpower, much of it comprising inexperienced, poorly trained conscripts, regardless of the high rate of casualties. ........ two main uses of the conscripts in these assaults: as “storm troops” who move in waves, followed by more experienced Russian fighters; and as intentional targets, to draw fire and thus identify Ukrainian positions to hit with artillery. ....... “The next group would follow after a pause of 15 or 20 minutes, then another, then another.” ........... By luck, the bullets missed him, he said. He lay in the dark until he was captured by Ukrainians who slipped into the buffer area between the two trench lines. ......... The soldiers in Sergei’s squad were recruited from penal colonies by the private military company known as Wagner, whose forces have mostly been deployed in the Bakhmut area. There, they have enabled Russian lines to move forward slowly, cutting key resupply roads for the Ukrainian Army. ........ Russia’s deployment of former convicts is a dark chapter in a vicious war. Russia Behind Bars, a prison rights group, has estimated that as many as 50,000 Russian prisoners have been recruited since last summer, with most sent to the battle for Bakhmut. ........... Russia has deployed about 320,000 soldiers in Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s military intelligence agency. An additional 150,000 are in training camps, officials said, meaning there is the potential for half a million soldiers to join the offensive. ........

But using infantry to storm trenches, redolent of World War I, brings high casualties.

......... Russia’s regular army this month began recruiting convicts in exchange for pardons, shifting the practice on the Russian side in the war from the Wagner private army to the military. ......... rates of wounded and killed at around 70 percent in battalions featuring former convicts ......... over the past two weeks, Russia had probably suffered its highest rate of casualties since the first week of the invasion. ......... “Nobody could ever believe such a thing could exist,” Sergei said of Wagner tactics. .......... The soldiers arrived at the front straight from Russia’s penal colony system, which is rife with abuse and where obedience to harsh codes of conduct in a violent setting is enforced by prison gangs and guards alike. The same sense of beaten subjugation persists at the front ........... enabling commanders to send soldiers forward on

hopeless, human wave attacks

. ................ “We are nobody and have no rights.” ......... Sergei said he had worked as a cellphone tower technician in a far-northern Siberian city, living with his wife and three children. In the interview, he admitted to dealing marijuana and meth, for which he was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2020. ......... was not offered to rapists and drug addicts, but murderers, burglars and other prisoners were welcome. .......... On the night of Jan. 1, they were commanded to advance 500 yards along the tree line, then dig in and wait for a subsequent wave to arrive. One soldier carried a light machine gun. The others were armed with only assault rifles and hand grenades. ........... “It’s effective. Yes, they have heavy losses. But with these heavy losses, they sometimes advance.” ........... they are being used to conserve tanks and armored personnel carriers for the expected offensive. But they could also serve as a template for wider fighting. .......... are herded into the battlefield by harsh discipline: “They have orders, and they cannot disobey orders, especially in Wagner.” .......... “They brought us to a basement, divided us into five-person groups and, though we hadn’t been trained, told us to run ahead, as far as we could go” ............ From his time as a stretcher bearer, he said, he estimated that half of the men in each assault were wounded or killed, with shrapnel and bullet wounds the most common injuries. .........

14: Ukraine

It was a crazy week in AI.

• Bing Challenges Google (And Spills Secrets)
• Opera Enters the AI Space
• Mindblowing Video-To-Video

I wrote about it yesterday 👇

— Alex Banks (@thealexbanks) February 13, 2023

This is my favorite uplifting song of 2023 thus far. I was singing bits and pieces this morning.#jesus #holyghost #bible #hechoseus #formanyarecalledfewarechosen #god #love pic.twitter.com/Iu3e71TDmg

— Maverick Approved (@TheMan2Day) February 12, 2023

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— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) February 10, 2023

Some Of My Photos

9: Modi

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$TSLA is up a 110% in just the last 24 trading days. wow. Last time it was at this price was on November 4th. pic.twitter.com/5T7k3Dqu1X

— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) February 9, 2023

7: ChatGPT

Meta, Long an A.I. Leader, Tries Not to Be Left Out of the Boom It has long had technology to rival chatbots like ChatGPT, but can’t afford to back artificial intelligence that can spread misinformation and toxic content. ........ Called Galactica, it was designed for scientific research. It could instantly write its own articles, solve math problems, generate computer code and annotate images. ........ One user coaxed the chatbot into talking about the history of bears in space. When asked who runs Silicon Valley, Galactica replied, “Steve Jobs.” ........ OpenAI, the tiny San Francisco lab that made ChatGPT ........ OpenAI has taken center stage, even though Meta and many other companies have built similar technologies. ........ On Monday, Google said it would soon release an experimental chatbot called Bard. And on Tuesday, Microsoft, which has invested $13 billion in OpenAI, is holding an event where it is expected to introduce a version of its Bing search engine that uses chatbot technology. ........ Zuckerberg is directly involved in steering the initiatives, holding weekly meetings with product leaders and top A.I. researchers ........ it would “enable many new products and additional transformations within our apps.” .......... described ChatGPT as “not particularly innovative” and “nothing revolutionary” because it relied on technologies developed and deployed by Meta, Google and other companies. ......... One of its mottos — “move fast and break things” — became an anthem of Silicon Valley start-ups in the early 2010s. ......... “hacker culture,” embracing new technologies and preferring to throw small teams on them to develop them as soon as possible. ......... culminated with Mr. Zuckerberg flying to Lake Tahoe, Nev., that year to offer millions of dollars in salary and stock to A.I. researchers who had gathered for a conference.

Our City Could Become One of the World’s Greenest, but It Won’t Be Easy New York City’s buildings are responsible for over 70 percent of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions, most generated on site. ........ the carbon footprint of the average New Yorker household is still only a third to a half of what the same family would be likely to emit were it to move to a house in the suburbs or beyond. ......... From a climate perspective, living closely and densely, without the two-car garage, is the best way to live. ......... property taxes account for around a third of New York City’s $100 billion annual budget. ........... the city’s hard-to-bear summers, when the asphalt, steel and brick absorb the sun’s rays and turn the city into a heat island

ChatGPT Gets Fresh Competition Google and Baidu are set to introduce their own A.I.-powered chatbots to challenge OpenAI, Microsoft and the rising popularity of ChatGPT....... Now Google and the Chinese tech giant Baidu have unveiled their own chatbots, hoping to convince the world their efforts in so-called generative A.I. — tech that can spout off conversational text, make images and more — are just as ready for prime time.

Racing to Catch Up With ChatGPT, Google Plans Release of Its Own Chatbot The internet giant said it would begin testing its new chatbot, Bard, with a small, private group before releasing it to the public in the coming weeks. ......... In a blog post, Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, also said that the company’s search engine would soon have artificial intelligence features that offered summaries of complex information. ........... they generate a wide range of digital text that can be repurposed in nearly any context, including tweets, blog posts, term papers, poetry and even computer code. ......... They are poised to remake internet search engines like Google Search and Microsoft Bing, talking digital assistants like Alexa and Siri, and email programs like Gmail and Outlook. .......... Because the chatbots learn their skills by analyzing vast amounts of text posted to the internet, they cannot distinguish between fact and fiction and can generate text that is biased against women and people of color. ......... Google has plans to release more than 20 A.I. products and features this year .......... The A.I. search engine features, which the company said would arrive soon, will try to distill complex information and multiple perspectives to give users a more conversational experience. ................ In a recent tweet, Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, said the company spent “single-digit cents” delivering each chat on the service. That translates to extremely large costs for the company, considering that millions of people are using the service. ......... Google said Bard would be a “lighter weight” version of LaMDA that would allow the company to serve up the technology at a lower cost.

Google Calls In Help From Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. Fight A rival chatbot has shaken Google out of its routine, with the founders who left three years ago re-engaging and more than 20 A.I. projects in the works.......... They approved plans and pitched ideas to put more chatbot features into Google’s search engine. And they offered advice to company leaders, who have put A.I. front and center in their plans. ......... amazed users by simply explaining complex concepts and generating ideas from scratch. More important to Google, it looked as if it could offer a new way to search for information on the internet. ......... Google now intends to unveil more than 20 new products and demonstrate a version of its search engine with chatbot features this year ........ Vic Gundotra, a former senior vice president at Google, recounted that he gave Mr. Page a demonstration of a new Gmail feature around 2008. But Mr. Page was unimpressed by the effort, asking, “Why can’t it automatically write that email for you?” In 2014, Google also acquired DeepMind, a leading A.I. research lab based in London. .......... Image Generation Studio, which creates and edits images, and a third version of A.I. Test Kitchen, an experimental app for testing product prototypes. ......... Shopping Try-on, a YouTube green screen feature to create backgrounds; a wallpaper maker for the Pixel smartphone; an application called Maya that visualizes three-dimensional shoes; and a tool that could summarize videos by generating a new one ........... a tool to make it easier to build apps for Android smartphones, called Colab + Android Studio, that will generate, complete and fix code, according to the presentation. Another code generation and completion tool, called PaLM-Coder 2, has also been in the works. ........... Google executives hope to reassert their company’s status as a pioneer of A.I. The company aggressively worked on A.I. over the last decade and already has offered to a small number of people a chatbot that could rival ChatGPT, called LaMDA, or Language Model for Dialogue Applications. ........... You.com and Perplexity.ai, are already offering online search engines that let you ask questions through an online chatbot, much like ChatGPT.

How ChatGPT Kicked Off an A.I. Arms Race Even inside the company, the chatbot’s popularity has come as something of a shock. ......... GPT-4, a new A.I. model that was stunningly good at writing essays, solving complex coding problems and more ......... In the months since its debut, ChatGPT (the name was, mercifully, shortened) has become a global phenomenon. Millions of people have used it to write poetry, build apps and conduct makeshift therapy sessions. It has been embraced (with mixed results) by news publishers, marketing firms and business leaders. And it has set off a feeding frenzy of investors trying to get in on the next wave of the A.I. boom. .......... Some employees, desensitized by daily exposure to state-of-the-art A.I. systems, thought that a chatbot built on a two-year-old A.I. model might seem boring. ......... two months after its debut, ChatGPT has more than 30 million users and gets roughly five million visits a day .......... one of the fastest-growing software products in memory. (Instagram, by contrast, took nearly a year to get its first 10 million users.) ......... would begin selling a $20 monthly subscription, known as ChatGPT Plus. .......... ChatGPT’s success has vaulted OpenAI into the ranks of Silicon Valley power players. The company recently reached a $10 billion deal with Microsoft, which plans to incorporate the start-up’s technology into its Bing search engine and other products. ......... Mr. Altman has said his goal at OpenAI is to create what is known as “artificial general intelligence,” or A.G.I., an artificial intelligence that matches human intellect. He has been an outspoken champion of A.I., saying in a recent interview that its benefits for humankind could be “so unbelievably good that it’s hard for me to even imagine.” (He has also said that in a worst-case scenario, A.I. could kill us all.) .......... OpenAI is an unusual company, by Silicon Valley standards. Started in 2015 as a nonprofit research lab by a group of tech leaders including Mr. Altman, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman and Elon Musk, it created a for-profit subsidiary in 2019 and struck a $1 billion deal with Microsoft. It has since grown to around 375 employees .......... In addition to the $10 billion Microsoft deal, Mr. Altman has met with top executives at Apple and Google in recent weeks ........... OpenAI also inked a deal with BuzzFeed to use its technology to create A.I.-generated lists and quizzes. (The announcement more than doubled BuzzFeed’s stock price.) ........... Then there’s GPT-4, which is still scheduled to come out this year. When it does, its abilities may make ChatGPT look quaint.

average is probably single-digits cents per chat; trying to figure out more precisely and also how we can optimize it

— Sam Altman (@sama) December 5, 2022

44 billion divided by single-digits cents = ?

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) February 7, 2023

ChatGPT is incredibly limited, but good enough at some things to create a misleading impression of greatness.

it's a mistake to be relying on it for anything important right now. it’s a preview of progress; we have lots of work to do on robustness and truthfulness.

— Sam Altman (@sama) December 11, 2022

Gautam Adani’s Rise Was Intertwined With India’s. Now It’s Unraveling. The tycoon often said the Adani Group’s goals were in lock step with India’s needs. Now, the company’s fortunes are crashing, a collapse whose pain will be felt across the country. ......... Gautam Adani began the year as one of the richest men who ever lived, an upstart billionaire whose conglomerate, one of India’s largest, had surged in value by 2,500 percent in five years. ........ Now, in spectacular fashion, the fortunes of his Adani Group are crashing down even faster than they had shot up — a collapse whose pain will be felt across the country, rippling through its economic and political spheres. ........... More than $110 billion in market value — roughly half of the Adani Group’s worth — has vanished in just over a week, like air from a burst balloon. The pinprick was a report by a small New York investment firm, Hindenburg Research, whose description of “brazen accounting fraud” and stock manipulation sent investors fleeing, just as the Adani Group was beginning a sale of new shares to investors, India’s biggest-ever secondary share offering. .......... Hindenburg retorted that Adani was waving the flag to obfuscate shady dealings, like the use of offshore shell companies to exaggerate its stocks’ valuations in order to paper over its excessively debt-fueled ascent. .......... The debacle could damage confidence in the rest of the Indian stock market. At their peak, Adani shares accounted for more than 6 percent of India’s two main exchanges; today, the figure is barely 3 percent. ........ Adani’s fall could jeopardize the idea of India as the world’s next great hope as a driver of global economic growth. ......... The country’s chief regulator has had a sterling reputation in the three decades since it was empowered by market-crashing stock scam. Now, the concern is that India’s financial oversight has bigger holes than believed, or that the politically connected Mr. Adani somehow got a free pass. ........ of Mr. Adani’s many entities, Adani Enterprises, the flagship, “was the only profit-making company.” ......... “It was almost lock step between the government and Adani,” Ms. Gopinath said. “That was when we all started looking at his debt position, his leveraged position, and there was something very off about the group.” ......... India is not short of companies with experience of the sort that Mr. Modi’s ambitions demand. But if debts overwhelm the Adani Group, India could find itself without an industrial champion......... Fraud and failure are hardly the image that Mr. Modi or India want to convey, this year in particular, with the country freshly minted as the world’s fifth largest economy and asserting itself more forcefully on the global stage. .......... Parliament was suspended for a second day running on Friday, as the opposition loudly demanded answers to questions about what regulators knew about the Adani Group’s finances. ......... It was the Gujarati business community that came to Mr. Modi’s aid then. Mr. Adani helped create an organization to diminish the trade association locally and, working with Mr. Modi’s state government, helped create an annual conference for investors with the name “Vibrant Gujarat.” Under Mr. Modi’s steady ......... A “Gujarat model” soon emerged, by which market-based or at least private development displaced the creaky, state-driven model of earlier governments. ......... When he ran for national office in 2014, he was able to stand as an icon of modern, tech-driven economic development. After he triumphed, he flew to Delhi, the seat of national power, on Mr. Adani’s private jet. ........... Once Mr. Modi took office, shares in Adani jumped — Adani Enterprises, one subsidiary, was suddenly worth 23 percent more — as investors seemed to calculate that closeness to the new government would bring rewards in time. ........... In the budget that Nirmala Sitharaman, India’s finance minister, delivered in the midst of Adani’s market-cap destruction, she announced that the government would be relying on a “virtuous cycle” that starts with private investment and is reinforced with public money. The Adani-Modi approach as national policy. ........... Building roads and bridges, connecting remote villages to electrical supply, even building toilets — these have all been set as visible targets, and achieved at greater speed under Mr. Modi. .......... In 2018, Adani became the operator of six profit-earning airports after the government changed rules restricting ownership to companies with aviation experience. ........ Ms. Sitharaman, the finance minister, was solemnly reading out the annual budget in Parliament, making no mention of the blood bath on India’s stock exchanges. Eventually, her silence, like that of her boss, Mr. Modi, came to seem otherworldly.

America’s Trade Deficit Surged in 2022, Nearing $1 Trillion The gap between what the United States imports and what it exports hit a record as more foreign goods came into the country. .......... The goods and services deficit reached $948.1 billion, its largest total on record, after rising $103 billion from the previous year. .......... The U.S. trade deficit in goods with Mexico, Canada, India, South Korea, Vietnam and Taiwan all grew strongly last year as manufacturers sought new sources of foreign products. ........... China, which continues to house the world’s largest concentration of factories ........ After cutting many economic ties with Russia, the European Union has turned to purchasing more energy products from the United States. ......... One beneficiary of the shift has been Mexico, now a destination for more global factories hoping to serve the United States. .......... The U.S. trade deficit with Mexico grew 20.7 percent to $130 billion.

The Pandemic Used-Car Boom Is Coming to an Abrupt End Dealership are seeing sales and prices drop as consumers tighten their belts, putting financial pressure on companies, like Carvana, that grew fast in recent years. .......... In the last 12 months, Carvana piled up debt. Its stock price has fallen more than 95 percent in the last 12 months, and three states temporarily suspended its operating license after consumer complaints. ......... The buying and selling of used cars is an enormous business. Cox Automotive expects about 36 million used vehicles will be sold in the United States this year. Fewer than half as many new cars and trucks are expected to be sold in 2023. ........ Many consumers turn to slightly used cars to avoid paying the full price of a new vehicle. For consumers with lower incomes or weak credit ratings, older used cars with a lot of miles on the odometer are often the only option. ........ In December, the average interest rate on used-car loans was 12.37 percent, up from less than 10 percent a year before ......... The son has sought to create the Amazon of used cars, a fully online retailer where shoppers can buy a car on a website or app, and have the vehicle delivered to their door.