Category: Audio Posts: Selected Articles

Elon Musk said Friday that his artificial intelligence startup, xAI, had acquired his social media platform, X.

He said that the deal was an all-stock transaction that valued X at $33 billion.

“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent,” Musk wrote in a post on X.

The deal combines two of Musk’s most high-profile companies, but because they are not publicly traded, no details about the deal were made public outside of Musk’s post. It’s unclear if the deal included any immediate windfall for Musk.

X recently raised $1 billion from investors, valuing it at $44 billion, according to Bloomberg. Musk took X (then Twitter) private in 2022 at nearly the same valuation. Musk was recently served with an SEC summons in the long-running lawsuit over Musk’s alleged failure to disclose his ownership in Twitter before bidding to buy it entirely.

Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of X, reposted Musk’s message adding: “The future could not be brighter.”

Musk launched xAI in 2023 and rolled out Grok, an AI-powered chatbot similar to those from OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and many other AI companies. Since then, Grok has been infused into X, with many users now often asking it to respond to posts and weigh in on arguments.

Musk has billed Grok as an anti-“woke” AI that is “truth-seeking,” though it has been found to disagree with him on many issues.

“This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach,” Must wrote. “The combined company will deliver smarter, more meaningful experiences to billions of people while staying true to our core mission of seeking truth and advancing knowledge. This will allow us to build a platform that doesn’t just reflect the world but actively accelerates human progress.”

Amid the broader boom in AI companies, Musk’s xAI has found interest from investors. Major Wall Street firms Blackrock, Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, Sequoia Capital, and the top chip companies Nvidia and AMD invested in xAI in December. That funding took the AI company’s value to $45 billion. As recently as last month, reports said xAI was considering another fundraising round that would value the company at $75 billion.

The rush to develop — and invest in — advanced AI has included billions of dollars in plans to build out the computing power, electricity infrastructure and human capital necessary to develop increasingly powerful models capable of performing complex tasks. Money has poured into AI startups while tech giants including Google, Amazon and Meta have announced plans for significant spending on all things AI.

Meanwhile, both AI and Musk have grown more political. Musk has emerged as among the most high-profile of President Donald Trump’s advisers, and Trump made AI a campaign issue, promising to rein in regulation. Just days into his second term, Trump signed an executive order aimed at undoing Biden administration efforts to put some safeguards on AI development while encouraging its growth.

Many AI and tech executives as well as technologists and industry watchdogs have warned about the implications of an all-out AI arms race, particularly as other countries including China are pushing to lead on the technology.

U.S. shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls Industries announced this week that it will develop a new high-energy laser weapon for the Army to combat drones.

Huntington Ingalls said Monday that it will develop the weapons system for the Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office. Its open architecture system will be capable of fixed-site defense and will easily integrate into Army vehicles, the company said.

“We are proud to provide a critical enabler for the Army, delivering an effective, interoperable, sustainable and scalable system that will meet force protection requirements and support U.S. strategic objectives,” said Grant Hagen, president of the Mission Technologies’ Warfare Systems division. “We look forward to collaborating with the RCCTO on this important effort that will protect the warfighter with an affordable counter-UAS solution.”

The company added that the open architecture design is perfectly in line with the goals of the Army.

“Aligned to the system’s Modular Open Systems Approach architecture, this data directly supports Army’s objectives for interoperability, affordability, scalability, supply chain resilience and rapid innovation,” a statement from Huntington Ingalls reads. “The weapon system will allow the Army to interchange subsystems and software as the weapon evolves to meet national security demands.”

Huntington Ingalls will develop a prototype laser system that can track and destroy unmanned aircraft. Before transitioning into low-rate initial production, the system will undergo field testing to determine its operational capabilities.

Huntington Ingalls’ new contract follows a solicitation last July in which RCCTO called on contractors to deliver white papers on systems that could defeat unmanned aircraft systems. The July solicitation asked specifically for fixed-site defense and rapid integration capabilities.

Vladimir Putin has made it abundantly clear that he is unbending regarding the war in Ukraine.

At most, he appears willing to accede to turning that country into a pro-Russian puppet state. And he certainly wants the Ukrainian land he has occupied, including Crimea, recognized legally as part of Russia.

A real pro vs. the amateurs

Meanwhile, the United States seems now led by a bunch of foreign policy amateurs led by Donald Trump, the great geopolitical strategist.

Grave doubts are in order that they can be relied upon to act as an honest broker toward Russia in any meaningful sense of the word, to say nothing of looking after Ukraine’s interests as a true ally should.

The community of nations definitely needs an innovative idea

Given that, the community of nations definitely needs a new idea to temper Putin’s territorial acquisitiveness. Ideally, a nation with a reasonable counterclaim to block Putin’s demands on Ukrainian territory.

The best-positioned nation to initiate a proper blocking move is Turkey, Russia’s neighbor on its Southern flank.

Turkey has the second-largest army in NATO, numbering one million strong. Its soldiers are experienced and well-armed. Its military has far more operational discipline and intelligence than Russia’s human-wasting army.

A look back into history

Turkey and Russia go way back, and their relationship has historically been very far from friendly. The Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire fought several major wars from the 17th century onward.

Almost all of them ended with the Ottomans losing territory, which was either annexed by Russia or became independent.

Eventually, Russia occupied the entire northern shore of the Black Sea and then set its sights on the Straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. In the 1877-78 war, Russian troops came close to capturing Istanbul.

In the First World War, when Turkey fought on the side of the Central Powers, Britain and France agreed to let Russia annex the European parts of modern Turkey as well as much of Anatolia. Only the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia prevented an effective dismantling of Turkey.

The Crimea belongs to whom again?

In the contemporary context, things become truly interesting if one looks at the Crimean Peninsula. The home of the Muslim Crimean Khanate, it had been an Ottoman protectorate for 300 years before(!) Russian Empress Catherine II annexed it in 1783.

That is a significant fact, given that Putin loves to use presumable “historical” facts as justification for his desire for territorial expansion.

So what if Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan turned the tables on Putin and demanded Crimea back – and assuming that the government Kyiv, whose internationally recognized territory it remains eleven years after Crimea’s occupation by Russia, acquiesced?

Turkey’s ambiguous role

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Turkey has played an ambiguous role, sitting on two chairs at once. Unlike other members of NATO, it refused to impose sanctions on Russia.

In addition, the Istanbul Airport has become a hub for Russians travelling to Europe since Western airlines have refused to fly to Russia since the start of the war. Turkey may also be supplying some sanctioned goods to Russia.

On the other hand, it sold Bayraktar drones to Ukraine, which were extremely useful in early fighting. It is also building a drone factory in Ukraine and is keeping Russian navy ships out of the Black Sea.

Erdogan’s gargantuan ambitions

Meanwhile, Erdogan has emerged as a major political leader in the Muslim world. He has accumulated a string of successes by supporting Muslim Azerbaijan in its war with Christian Armenia as well as, notably, by backing the winners in the Syrian civil war.

Erdogan, who sees himself as a historic figure, would definitely love to get back a major piece of land which the Ottomans lost to Russia.

The particular charm for Erdogan of taking back Crimea is that, with that move, he would also be protecting another oppressed Muslim people – the Crimean Tatars.

Focus on the Crimean Tatars

Crimean Tatars, the original inhabitants of the peninsula, were falsely accused by Joseph Stalin of collaborating with the Germans during the Second World War.

Over a period of three days in May 1944, some 180,000 Tatars, mostly the elderly, women and children, were loaded into cattle cars and deported to Central Asia. An unknown number of them died along the way. Their houses were confiscated and given over to arriving Russian settlers.

The Tatars spent nearly half a century in exile and were allowed back to Crimea only in the waning days of communism. Small wonder they were bitterly opposed to the Russian occupation of their peninsula in 2014.

Today, Tatar activists in Crimea are being routinely arrested or kidnapped by Vladimir Putin’s police.

Putin historically defenseless against Erdogan

The beauty of Erdogan claiming Crimea is that Putin won’t have a leg to stand on. He justifies his claim on Ukraine by citing ancient history when Moscow was founded by a Kyivan princeling sometime in the 12th century.

When interviewed by American rightwing influencer Tucker Carson, Putin mouthed a somewhat deranged 30-minute history lesson about all those half-forgotten events. By Putin’s own logic, Turkey’s claim to Crimea long predates Russia’s.

A Ukrainian-Turkish deal

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is in dire need of new allies.

Ukraine could agree to honor a Turkish claim less so by ceding Crimea to Ankara outright, but rather by proposing autonomy to the peninsula under joint Turkish-Ukrainian authority.

It so happens that Turkey is a great ally to have. Just consider that, unlike many Western European countries, Turkey has well-developed arms production. It has the strongest navy in the Black Sea.

Whether the United States under Trump is rejecting its traditional global commitments or is becoming an outright ally of Putin’s Russia, Ukraine can use Turkey as a strong ally.

Conclusion

Turkey’s support is critical for Ukraine. And to give Erdogan a dog in this fight would be a stroke of brilliance on Kyiv’s part.

Better yet, it would be a deal that Trump, for all his bragging about being a genius negotiator, could never have dreamt up.

Donald Trump’s indictment in Georgia this week over alleged attempts to overturn results from the 2020 election has yet again exposed the former president to legal challenges that could harm his chances of a White House return.

The 98-page indictment spurred by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis‘ investigation includes charges against Trump and others under the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. In total, there are 41 charges connected to the criminal indictment. The former president denies any wrongdoing.

In the lead-up to the grand jury indictment this week, rumors of other legal woes began breaking through online including suggestions the former president could be handed divorce papers from Melania Trump.

The Claim

A post on X, formerly Twitter, by @PopularLiberal, on August 11, 2023, viewed more than 770,000 times, said: “It appears that leaked emails have revealed Melania Trump‘s apparent threats of divorce towards Donald Trump, along with her inquiries about his pension and the terms she would be entitled to in a $2 billion divorce settlement.”

The tweet also includes a video that repeats these lines and adds: “Apparently, as I said, she’s left him. It’s over.”

The Facts

This allegation appears to be based on a misquote of a gossip article, which itself is based on unverified and anonymous quotes

The social posts are a near-verbatim copy of an article published by gossip site Radar on August 8, 2023.

However, that article does not say that emails have leaked and bases its claims entirely on unnamed sources.

It states how a number of “insiders” claim Melania Trump was anxious about the possibility that her personal emails could be leaked in a subpoena.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg recently attempted to subpoena her messages as part of the indictment against Trump over alleged hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. The request was quashed by Judge Juan Merchan for being too broad, reported CBS News.

One anonymous source told Radar that Melania Trump had “likely written multiple emails to counsel asking for guidance on her rights if her husband is convicted on all these charges and if she should use whatever she knows to squeeze him in divorce court.”

Another source was quoted as saying “blistering email exchanges between the first lady and the president focused on his seeming betrayal, her lack of trust and her desire to pursue a divorce.” And another reportedly added: “If these emails were to go public, it would rip the Band-Aid off Donald and Melania’s marriage, and almost certainly drive her into divorce court!”

None of these anonymous quotes were verified with further evidence. Radar, unlike the posts on X, does not say that the emails have been leaked or have revealed details of a divorce settlement.

Although the headline of the article may suggest the emails have already been revealed, the copy shows no such messages have been published yet.

Crucially, outside of the story and social media speculation, there is no verifiable evidence, such as court filings, that shows the couple is getting or planning to get divorced.

While we cannot rule out behind-the-scenes discussions, there is simply no concrete proof that the pair are splitting, as is speculated online.

Newsweek has contacted a media representative of Donald Trump for comment.

The Ruling

False.

There is no verifiable evidence that suggests Donald Trump and Melania Trump are getting a divorce.

The claims on Twitter are a misquote of a gossip article that is based on the accounts of unnamed Trump “insiders.”

The article claims, based on anonymous sources, that as yet unrevealed emails may include information about divorce. The article does not substantiate that claim any further and does not state the emails have been leaked.

FACT CHECK BY Newsweek’s Fact Check team