Elon Musk reportedly setting up move for Twitter within 10 days

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is willing to invest up to $15 billion of his own cash to take Twitter private and will make a bid within 10 days, according to Tuesday reports.

The New York Post reported Tuesday that Musk, with a 9.1% stake in the social media company, has tapped Morgan Stanley to help raise an additional $10 billion.

Musk’s massive $43 billion bid to purchase the company – or $54.20 per share – may require borrowing against both the company and his stock in addition to raising money from private equity investors, The Post reported, citing two sources close to the situation.

The estimated $10 to $15 billion Musk is reportedly willing to invest is well above his roughly $3.4 billion stake in the company.

The sources told The Post that the co-investors will collectively have more equity in Twitter, but Musk will remain the single largest shareholder.

ELON MUSK TWEETS HIS PHILOSOPHY ON SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY AMID BID TO BUY TWITTER

The co-investors will reportedly finance a hostile tender directly to Twitter shareholders, which happens when an outside investor’s ambitions to take over another company do not have management’s approval or blessing.

Musk will launch the tender officer within roughly 10 days, according to The Post. It remains to be seen how successful Musk will be in raising the necessary cash, as his propensity for contWhen he made his offer public, Musk provided no details on financing, but such a disclosure could improve his chances. He could raise money by borrowing billions using his stakes in Tesla and SpaceX as collateral, and he could bring in other investors.

The poison pill would give stockholders as of April 25 the right to buy one one-thousandth of a share of preferred stock for each common share they own, at a price of $210. The rights are triggered if any person or group of investors buys 15% or more of the company's shares without board approval.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/elon-musk-reportedly-setting-up-move-for-twitter-within-10-days

Pentagon official resigns, issues warning about US losing technological battle

by Mike Brest, Defense Reporter | | April 19, 2022 05:59 PM

A top Pentagon official has resigned, issuing a warning about the ongoing technological races between the United States and its adversaries.

Preston Dunlap, who spent more than three years as the founding chief architect officer for the Space Force, appears to have resigned this week, posting a lengthy note on LinkedIn detailing what he believes his former colleagues need to focus on moving forward.

Dunlap’s eight-page letter includes four steps “to fight the beast of bureaucracy,” and they are: “1) shock the system, 2) Flip the Acquisition Script, 3) Just Delivery Already, and 4) Slay the Valley of Death and Scale.”

UKRAINIAN MILITARY USED CLUSTER MUNITIONS TO RETAKE CITY: REPORT

“There are any number of forces at work in a large organization: friction, sand in the gears, the frozen middle, bureaucracy, tradition, culture, stovepipes, analysis paralysis, risk aversion, programming and budgeting, and so on. The System is generally set up to pull everyone and every idea down to the status quo,” he said. “Driving changes requires defying gravity.”

He concluded the letter with a warning to his former colleagues not to “lull ourselves into complacency, when we should be running on all cylinders,” “distract ourselves with process when we should be focused on delivering product,” and “compete with each other, when we should be competing with China,” among other ideas.

"These are accessible to anyone with resources and academics and capabilities, and so our adversaries or potential adversaries are able to have access to that technology, not only inside their own economies, but because of the benefit of our free and open society, which is a great thing," Dunlap said in a subsequent interview on Fox News.

His comments are similar to those of the former inaugural chief software officer at the Pentagon, Nicolas Chaillan, 37, who worked for three years on a Department of Defense-wide effort to enhance cybersecurity and became the first chief software officer of the Air Force before resigning, which is when he shared his belief that the United States has already lost the technological battle against China.

“We have no competing fighting chance against China in 15 to 20 years. Right now, it’s already a done deal; it is already over in my opinion,” he told the Financial Times in an article published on Sunday, adding there is “good reason to be angry.”

Chaillan argued that emerging technological advances represent a much more important aspect of defense than commonly thought of military hardware such as fighter jets.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/pentagon-official-resigns-issues-warning-about-us-losing-technological-battle

Russia pours in more troops and presses attack in the east

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia assaulted cities and towns along a boomerang-shaped front hundreds of miles long and poured more troops into Ukraine on Tuesday in a potentially pivotal battle for control of the country’s eastern industrial heartland of coal mines and factories.

If successful, the Russian offensive in what is known as the Donbas would essentially slice Ukraine in two and give President Vladimir Putin a badly needed victory following the failed attempt by Moscow’s forces to storm the capital, Kyiv, and heavier-than-expected casualties nearly two months into the war.

The eastern cities of Kharkiv and Kramatorsk came under deadly attack. Russia also said it struck areas around Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro west of the Donbas with missiles. Multiple explosions were heard early Wednesday in the southern city of Mykolaiv, the regional governor said. A hospital was reported shelled earlier in the nearby town of Bashtanka.

In Mariupol, the now-devastated port city in the Donbas, Ukrainian troops said the Russian military dropped heavy bombs to flatten what was left of a sprawling steel plant and hit a hospital where hundreds were staying.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Moscow’s forces bombarded numerous Ukrainian military sites, including troop concentrations and missile-warhead storage depots, in or near several cities or villages. Those claims could not be independently verified.

In what both sides described as a new phase of the war, the Russian assault began Monday along a front stretching more than 300 miles (480 kilometers) from northeastern Ukraine to the country’s southeast. Ukraine’s military said Russian forces tried to “break through our defenses along nearly the entire front line.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Russian military was throwing everything it has into the battle, with most of its combat-ready forces now concentrated in Ukraine and just across the border in Russia.

“They have driven almost everyone and everything that is capable of fighting us against Ukraine,” he said in his nightly video address to the nation.

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https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-putin-kyiv-world-news-europe-61ac8636ddb2d75a6df4605492889d7b