Free Republic

The world’s wealthiest man Elon Musk faced sharp backlash Monday afternoon after sharing his thoughts on how to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on terms far more amenable to Russia than the Western consensus, continuing to opine about global politics on the heels of bad corporate news closer to home. -snip- Musk’s controversial foreign policy proposal came as Tesla shares cratered 9% in Monday trading, hitting a three-month low as the market reacted poorly to third quarter vehicle deliveries falling short of estimates.

The Facebook CEO has lost more than half his fortune since last year.

One of the more tiresome complaints I’ve heard online about Amazon’s Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power show is that it’s pushing a woke agenda—cramming said agenda down our collective throats in an attempt to push some leftist identity politics on the masses. This is a silly critique for the most part, driven by idle speculation and a fandom that has been utterly overwhelmed by culture wars and endless politics. There used to be a time, not so long ago, when we could enjoy movies and TV shows and video games without a constant barrage of politically charged...

Photos that appeared online over the weekend, depicting Russian army armored vehicles on trains rolling out of the army training base Mulino, 200 miles east of Moscow, are a potentially ominous sign. The Russian army’s newest grouping, the 3rd Army Corps, is on the move–toward eastern Ukraine. The 3rd Army Corps is the first big new formation to take shape as a result of the Kremlin’s urgent initiative, beginning this summer, to recruit new soldiers and stand up new units in order to replace the tens of thousands of troops it has lost in the six months since it widened...

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski has won the backing of several billionaire donors in her battle for a fourth term. Leading the pack is hedge fund tycoon Ken Griffin, one of seven moguls who have donated over $25,000 to help Murkowski stay in the Senate. Griffin sent $1.5 million to Alaskans for L.I.S.A., a super PAC that can accept unlimited donations. The group, founded by former Murkowski campaign staffers, claims the acronym in its name stands for “Leadership In a Strong Alaska,” but it only backs one candidate: Murkowski, and has spent $2.7 million on her behalf. In addition to Griffin,...

The Ukrainian army systematically is demolishing Russian ammunition supplies. The strategy could have big implications as Russia’s wider war in Ukraine grinds into its fourth month. Firing new, American-supplied GPS-guided rockets—plus a few old, ex-Soviet ballistic missiles—the army in just the last two weeks has targeted no fewer than a dozen Russian ammo dumps.

The Ukrainian Navy announced Thursday it recaptured Snake Island, a critical Black Sea outpost taken by Russia early in the war, which has since galvanized Ukrainian resistance as a symbol of fortified defiance. Russia confirmed its withdrawal Thursday morning, but called the move a “goodwill gesture”... Natalia Humeniuk, a spokeswoman for the Ukrainian military’s southern command, told the New York Times on Tuesday that it destroyed three anti-aircraft missile systems that Russian had stationed on the island, as well as Russia’s radar station.

The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden plans to offer to Ukraine the General Atomics MQ-1C Gray Eagle, the U.S. Army’s best unmanned aerial vehicle. The possible forthcoming offer, which Reuters first reported, would be subject to approval by the U.S. Congress. But if the president follows through, lawmakers sign off on the deal and the White House can arrange financing—likely via the federal government’s fund for foreign weapons deals—Kyiv’s forces soon could operate one of the world’s best killer drones. But the drone itself—a two-ton, propeller-driven vehicle with a 56-foot wingspan—isn’t the most exciting component of the possible deal...

A Chinese-government-controlled company has put in an offer to buy Forbes, the major American news company that built its name on financial analysis. According to the Free Beacon, Magnum Opus, the CCP-controlled company in question, announced its intent to acquire the property last August. Now, that deal looks to be nearing completion, and it’s drawing outrage from Republicans who are pointing out what a major security risk the move represents.

A Ukrainian air force MiG-29 fighter shot down one of the Russian air force’s best jets—an Su-35—near Russian-occupied Kherson on Friday, according to the Ukrainian defense ministry. The dramatic shoot-down, which reportedly took place as the Su-35 was chasing down Ukrainian attack planes, signaled an even more dramatic development on the ground. Ukrainian army formations supported by American-made M-777 howitzers crossed the Inhulets River around the town of Davydiv Brid, 50 miles northeast of Kherson. The Russians fell back to a trio of towns a few miles to the southwest. Towns whose defenses the Ukrainian general staff described as...

ight years ago, a trio of Ukrainian army brigades fighting Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region made a fatal mistake. They idled their tanks and trucks around a static command post.

When a Russian tank army swept southwest from the Russia-Belarus border region into northern Ukraine on the morning of Feb. 24, a single Ukrainian tank brigade stood between it and the eastern suburbs of Kyiv. The Ukrainian army’s 1st Tank Brigade was outnumbered—not only by the 10 or so battalion tactical groups belonging to the Russian 41st Combined Arms Army, but also adjacent Russian formations. Incredibly, the 1st Tank Brigade not only halted the larger Russian force in the first few days of Russia’s wider war in Ukraine, it swiftly transitioned to an active defense and, for the next five...

Earlier this year, researchers at Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky witnessed a cyberespionage campaign targeting Microsoft Windows PCs at government and telecom entities in China and Pakistan. They began in June 2020 and continued through to April 2021. What piqued the researchers’ interest was the hacking software used by the digital spies, whom Kaspersky had dubbed Bitter APT, a pseudonym for an unspecified government agency. Aspects of the code looked like some the Moscow antivirus provider had previously seen and attributed to a company it gave the cryptonym “Moses.” Moses, said Kaspersky, was a mysterious provider of hacking tech known as...

Dr. Anthony Fauci is the most highly compensated federal employee and the most visible. So, it’s incumbent upon all of us to give him oversight. In 2011, I founded a national transparency organization called OpenTheBooks.com. Last year, we filed 47,000 Freedom of Information Act requests, the most in American history. We successfully captured and displayed online $12 trillion of federal, state, and local spending. Over the past 14 months – since January 2021 – we investigated Dr. Fauci’s financials by filing FOIA requests. When I published our original reporting at Forbes, here is what happened. The National Institutes of Health,...

A longtime Forbes contributor claims he lost his job after he was pressured to stop his investigative reporting on Dr. Anthony Fauci, which revealed his looming $350,000 retirement package. Adam Andrzejewski, CEO and founder of OpenTheBooks.com, said that he was let go by the magazine he was “admonished” for his coverage of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director. “Forbes couldn’t resist the pressure from the National Institutes of Health,” he told The Post in an email on Tuesday. “Forbes editors — in email and on the phone — admonished that I wrote too many columns on Fauci.”...

Former U.S. Secretary of State and twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will receive the inaugural Forbes International Women’s Day Lifetime Achievement Award next month. The honor is being granted, according to Forbes, for “her leadership and influential voice on the global stage in advancing the cause of women and fighting for gender equity.”

T esla CEO Elon Musk called President Joe Biden “a damp sock puppet in human form” on Twitter Thursday as Tesla stock plummeted 11%. Musk’s lack of restraint on social media is, as the saying goes, a feature not a bug, having landed him in legal hot water multiple times. Another Musk tweet—“Biden is treating the American public like fools”—was part of a one-sided Twitter offensive waged against the president. Biden didn’t retaliate, at least not directly. The White House did post a tweet with the president extolling Tesla rivals General Motors and Ford for their work on developing electric...

The U.K. Health and Security Agency (UKHSA) announced Friday it is investigating a sub-lineage of the omicron coronavirus variant—known as BA.2 and nicknamed by some scientists as “stealth omicron”—that appears to be outpacing other forms of the variant around the world and is raising fears of an even more transmissible strain of the virus. KEY FACTS In a statement Friday, the UKHSA said it has designated BA.2 a “variant under investigation,” the agency told Forbes, confirming news reports and a since-deleted tweet from the agency. Just 53 samples of BA.2 have been identified in the U.K. by January 10, it...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said on a podcast episode that aired Friday one of his biggest regrets in office was not speaking “much louder” against the Trump Administration’s calls for lockdowns in the early days of the pandemic, with the comments coming just days after former President Donald Trump appeared to label DeSantis “gutless.” DeSantis said on the conservative podcast “Ruthless” he believes Trump Administration officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci “panicked” as Covid-19 quickly spread around the U.S. in March of 2020, leading to calls for lockdowns. Tensions are reportedly growing between Trump and DeSantis, who was one of...

Former President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit against New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) on Monday, claiming her investigation into his business practices violates his constitutional rights, as the ex-president seeks to stem a growing trend of legal problems. * James has been overseeing a civil investigation into the Trump Organization to determine whether it purposely undervalued properties, according to reports. * James is reportedly set to subpoena Trump, asking him to appear for a deposition on January 7 as part of the investigation. * The suit was filed in federal court for the Northern District of New York,...