The Hive ransomware gang has been disrupted by international law enforcement action, according to a person familiar with the matter and an announcement posted to the group’s website.
A flashing message posted to Hive’s page said: “The Federal Bureau of Investigation seized this site as part of coordinated law enforcement action taken against Hive Ransomware.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the European law enforcement organization Europol did not immediately return messages seeking comment but the person familiar with the matter said a Department of Justice announcement was coming imminently.
Reuters was not immediately able to locate contact details for Hive.
Hive is one of a wide range of cybercriminal groups that extort international businesses by encrypting their data and demanding massive cryptocurrency payments in return.
In an alert distributed in November, the FBI said that cybercriminals tied to Hive had victimized more than 1,300 companies worldwide and raked in approximately $100 million in ransom payments.
A firearm, registered to the suspect of a mass shooting during Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations in Monterey Park, California, U.S., is pictured in this undated handout image obtained by Reuters on January 26, 2023. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department/Handout via REUTERS
Los Angeles-area investigators have found no connection between the victims of a mass shooting at a Monterey Park, California, dance hall and the elderly man who carried out the massacre last weekend, authorities said.
The 72-year-old assailant, Huu Can Tran, on Saturday killed 11 people and wounded nine others at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio, a venue just east of Los Angeles that is popular with older patrons of Asian descent. The attack took place during the two-day Lunar New Year celebration, one of the most festive events on the calendar for many Asians.
“Based on interviews the investigators are still conducting, they have not been able to establish a connection between the suspect and any of the victims,” Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said during a news conference late on Wednesday.
The Monterey Park rampage was the first in back-to-back mass shootings in California in the past few days. On Monday, a gunman killed seven people at two mushroom farms in the coastal Northern California city of Half Moon Bay.
Investigators have been unable to tie Tran romantically to any of the victims and have determined that he had not frequented the dance studio in the last five years, despite earlier reports that he was a regular at the establishment, Luna said.
In addition to conducting numerous interviews, investigators have searched Tran’s home in Hemet, about 80 miles (130 km) east of Los Angeles. They have yet to identify a motive, he added.
“It’s frustrating when something like this happens that is so tragic. We are trying to understand it, and it doesn’t make sense,” Luna said.
Investigators did find a motorcycle registered to the suspect parked one block from the dance hall. It was parked there just before the shooting as an alternative getaway vehicle, Luna said.
After carrying out the shooting at the dance hall, Tran drove a short time later to a second dance hall in Alhambra, where that club’s operator disarmed him before he could open fire.
The next day, Tran shot himself to death behind the wheel of his vehicle as police closed in on him south of Los Angeles.
Tran used a MAC-10, a semi-automatic gun, in the shooting. He purchased that gun in 1999 but it was not registered with the state of California, Luna said. Police recovered two other weapons, the pistol Tran used to take his own life and a rifle at his home.
Near San Francisco, Chunli Zhao, a 66-year-old immigrant farm worker, was formally charged with premeditated murder on Wednesday in the shooting at Half Moon Bay. The Chinese citizen faces seven counts of murder and a single count of attempted murder, and could be sentenced to death if convicted.
IKEA is using more wood from Sweden and the Baltics to make up for not sourcing it from Russia and Belarus which the company has shunned due to Moscow’s war in Ukraine, its wood supply boss said in an interview.
The world’s biggest furniture brand – one of the world’s top wood users – used 20 million cubic metres of wood in its products, packaging and communication material in the 12 months through August 2022.
“We have managed to replace those (Russia and Belarus) volumes in other countries on a very hot wood market,” Ulf Johansson, Global Wood Supply and Forestry Manager at brand owner Inter IKEA, told Reuters.
Sweden, the Baltics, Poland and Germany are among countries where IKEA’s wood sourcing has increased as a result of the war in Ukraine, he said, adding that some of the solutions might be long-term and others short-term.
Russia and Belarus were IKEA’s fifth and sixth biggest wood suppliers before the war, accounting for 6% and 5% respectively of its supplies, the company’s website said.
The company on Thursday launched a map on its website showing the origin of all its wood to meet customers’ demands for more transparency.
Poland, followed by Lithuania and Sweden were the three biggest suppliers in the 12 months through August 2022.
IKEA says it uses only Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified or recycled wood. It banned suppliers from using Russian and Belarusian wood after FSC suspended its certification in the two countries due to the invasion.
IKEA stores in Russia have been closed since March, while IKEA owned shopping malls remain open. Inter IKEA’s four factories in the country are closed and up for sale.
Johansson said IKEA is now the midst of a review of its long-term wood supply strategy, in terms of alternatives to Russia but also in light of expansion plans for South America where it opened its first store in 2022.
“Now it also looks like the raw material market is going down a bit so it is maybe a little easier situation right now,” he said.
Wood prices are easing after surging in the past few years, partly in response to increased demand for packaging during the pandemic as people shopped online.
IKEA has in recent years been buying and managing forests in a number of countries through its investment vehicle IKEA Investments, from which it might use wood and wood products in the future.
While IKEA says managing forests responsibly will help mitigate climate change, it does not yet include that business in its overall target to be climate positive by 2030 due to difficulties measuring carbon capture and storage.
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FILE PHOTO-A view shows the logo of IKEA on a closed store in Kotelniki outside Moscow, Russia July 5, 2022. REUTERS/Evgenia Novozhenina
A view shows a forest owned by Ingka Investments, the investment arm of Ingka Group, the largest IKEA retailer, in this handout taken in an undisclosed location in Latvia in 2019 and obtained by Reuters on January 26, 2023. Ingka Investments/Handout via REUTERS
Insider spoke to Ne-Yo in an interview tied to a Kennedy Center event for his music with the National Symphony Orchestra.
The Grammy-winning artist reflected on his career in music, film, and TV, and his hit songwriting for other artists.
This weekend, The Kennedy Center will host a two-night event honoring the career of Ne-Yo, where the three-time Grammy-winning artist will perform from his catalog with accompaniment from the National Symphony Orchestra.
In a Zoom interview last week, Insider spoke to Ne-Yo about the event and his decades-long career in the entertainment industry. The Kennedy Center performances follow the release of his ninth studio album, “Self Explanatory,” which dropped in July 2022.
Having sold over 20 million adjusted albums and penned multi-platinum singles for the likes of Rihanna and Beyoncé, Ne-Yo reflected in our interview on the trajectory of his career in music at “43 years young.” We also discussed his work in film and television and what the future holds for his growing line of acting credits.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
I wanted to say off top, congrats on these Kennedy Center shows.
Ah, thanks man. I’m looking forward to it. I performed with a orchestra before, but this is gonna be something special. It’s gonna be something real special.
What’s the process behind that been like though, incorporating the National Symphony Orchestra in your music, in that particular way?
Well this is the part where I have to give credit to my crew and my band, and my sound guy. They’re the ones that are making sure that the orchestra and the band kind of become a well-oiled machine, you know what I mean? You don’t want too much of the band, because then what’s the purpose of the orchestra? But then you don’t want too much of the orchestra because you don’t wanna lose the essence of what the song is. So it’s a very, very intricate dance that has to happen. And I gotta say that it could not happen without these people. So, you know, much love to Dorian and everybody over there that’s making sure that everything sounds as good as humanly possible.
What do you draw on personally to execute something like that? What sort of sources of inspiration do you look at when you’re singing in front of that kind of instrumentation?
So my man, Dorian, who I just mentioned a second ago, he’s my sound guy. He used to be Prince’s sound guy, may he rest. And he’s always musically educating me in some way. Like for example, for this, we started listening to, Sting put out an album with him and an orchestra, and I think it was called, “Symphonicity” … or “Synchronicity,” is the name of the album. And we just sat and kind of listened to that and listened to where his voice sits versus where the instrumentation of the orchestra sits. And that’s just from a sound standpoint.
From a performance standpoint, I’mma just pretty much get up there and do what I do. You know, we change up the way that we dress just slightly, you know what I’m saying? It might might be slightly more pulled up, with a tux or something like that, just to get the full essence of having something as grandiose as an orchestra behind me.
Gotta do it. [Laugh].
Oh yeah, it’s a must. But at the same time, performance is performance is performance, and this is what I do. And I’m just anxious to hear my music accompanied by a full orchestra. That’s gonna be amazing.
Ne-Yo performing at the 42nd Kennedy Center Honors in 2019.
CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images
You know, you’ve leaned into acting in recent years, though you’ve done it in the past. How does film and TV acting compare to the music for you in terms of creative fulfillment?
Well, I gotta be honest. Music is somewhat instant gratification, you know what I mean? You go in the studio, you come up with an idea, you lay it down, you can listen back to it that night if you want to. Even if it’s not all the way complete, you can at the very least have some sort of semblance of what it’s gonna be. When it’s TV and film, you’ll shoot a TV show or you’ll shoot a movie and you might not hear anything for two years almost. And then all of a sudden, that’s when they start advertising for the film, and you go, “Oh, yeah, I did do that, didn’t I?” It’s kinda a hurry up and wait type game, you know? So I’m developing a love for it that I don’t know if it’ll ever equal my love for music.
I grew up with music, you know what I mean? It was the third sibling in the house, me, my sister, and music. But I will say that the concept of stepping outside of oneself and becoming somebody else is something that I’ve always been intrigued by. You know, it’s one of the reasons that I started writing. It’s like, don’t get me wrong, I love myself, but just the ability to look at something from another point of view, you know, make a decision that you wouldn’t make as yourself. Things of that nature. Those are some of the things that kind of attracted me to acting. And, uh, yeah, man, I’m developing a love for it. I genuinely am.
As a man with no particular talent, I gotta imagine …
[Laugh].
… with the tools you’re blessed with … EGOT … That’s a long-term goal for you, I gotta imagine.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Some of my peers have made it there, and I would be lying if I didn’t say I was a little jealous. Yeah. Much love to John Legend. He’s a EGOT. Much love to Jennifer Hudson. She’s a EGOT. Yeah, man, that is definitely a long-term goal. I know that it takes a lot of hard work and a lot of dedication to craft, and that’s something that I’ve never been a stranger to or afraid of. So, yeah, uh, in the future, we’ll do this interview again, and you’ll ask me how it feels to be an EGOT.
That’s wassup.
[Laugh]. Yeah.
I was taken back, prepping for this call, to when, as a white kid in his feelings, I wrote out album cuts from “In My Own Words” long hand, by memory.
Oh, wow.
That’s the power of the pen. [Laugh].
That’s love, bro. That is love. Appreciate that.
Do you get nostalgic for any particular part of your career, looking back?
Uh, you know what, now? Yeah. I’m 43 years old now. When this whole thing started, I was roughly 22, 21, somewhere in there. And, yeah, man, I definitely do get nostalgic. I think back on the first time I went to the Grammys, the first time I left America. You know, all of these moments that, mind you, in the moment, we were kind of moving so fast and so much that we didn’t even give ourselves time to realize, “Oh wow. We’re in London right now. Oh, wow. We’re in Japan right now.” Like, we didn’t have time to sit and really bask in what was going on. It wasn’t until about maybe 10 years after the fact, where I actually got to sit still for a second and go, “Wait a minute. I did win three Grammys. Oh, wait a minute. I did sing at the White House twice, three times, four times actually.” Yeah. So it’s nostalgic now to think back, and and I gotta say, I’m more than happy with what has transpired in my career, but at the same time, I’m anxious to see what the next chapter is, you know? Because I’m 43, but I’m 43 years young, you know what I’m saying? This is not your uncle’s 43, you know what I’m saying? [Laugh]. I’m not…
[Laugh].
You know, Black don’t crack. And we still in a good space. So there’s a whole lot of living to do, a whole lot of, uh, other opportunities, and other things to accomplish, other mountains to climb. And I’m more than anxious and willing to climb.
You know, it’s anomalous for a man to write from a woman’s perspective with authenticity and do it well. What do you think it is in your background or character that has allowed you to do it successfully?
Well, so, whenever I’m asked a question like this, a similar question to this, I always have to point out that it’s not possible for me to write from a woman’s standpoint because I’m not a woman. I write from a standpoint of a human being that is not afraid of emotion. That’s where I write from. Now, mind you, I grew up in a house full of women, my mother, my sister, my grandmother, five aunts, and me. However, again, I’m a heterosexual man. I’m not a woman in any way, shape, form, or fashion. However, I was brought up to appreciate emotion as opposed to running from it. You know, some men are raised to only delve in certain amounts of emotion, you know, anger, and things of that nature. “Real men don’t cry.” That’s bull. That’s complete bull. You are given these emotions by God for a reason. You’re not supposed to abandon them. You’re not supposed to ignore them. You’re actually supposed to use them depending on the situation or the circumstance.
You know, and the problem with that is that, in a lot of cases, men tend to let these emotions take control, and then you wind up doing something stupid. I feel like that’s why a lot of people are sometimes afraid of emotion. That’s why a lot of men sometimes shy away from emotion. Whereas my mom raised me, like, “If it hurts, cry. If it feels good, smile, laugh. And never be ashamed or afraid to do either one, because you’re given all of these things for a reason.” So I write from a standpoint of a person that’s not afraid to be vulnerable, a person that’s not afraid to not be the coolest in the room. A person that’s not afraid to cry, you know? And it just so happens that women tend to resonate with that a little bit more than men do. That’s just what that is. So it’s not so much from a woman’s standpoint as it is just a person who is embracing emotion as opposed to running from it.
In your approach to new music, with “Self Explanatory” last year, how have you navigated staying current and, uh, true to you at the same time?
I think the true secret to that is not trying to stay current. You know, when you, when you kind of wrap yourself around a fad or a trend, you kind of put an expiration date on yourself, because trends and fads are meant to come and go. And once that trend and fad goes, if that’s what you’re locked into, then you go with it, you know what I mean? I’ve always been the kind of artist to focus on the parts of this that never go outta style. Like, love will never go outta style. It may not be the most the most popular topic nowadays, you know what I’m saying? It seems like most music is more about the hookup than love and true love and affection and emotion and things of that nature. But at the same time, love is not something that can go outta style. It’s like water and food. We need it to survive. So it’ll never go outta style. Which is why I write from that standpoint.
The sound of a guitar, the sound of a piano. These things don’t go outta style. You know, the cadences might change up, the lingo might change up a little bit. The look might change up, and that’s all fine and good. I’m not saying that you ignore what’s going on in your present, because to be honest, all we have is the present. The past is gone and the future’s not promised. So we got right now. I get that. But if you lock into that as if the past never happened, as if the future’s not possible, then you put an expiration date on yourself that way too. And I just never wanted to be that guy that got washed up. Mind you, my definition of success has definitely changed over the years, you know what I’m saying? I got kids and things of that nature. So success is definitely something different than winning an award every year. I don’t need that. I don’t need that validation anymore. You know, I’ve been there, I’ve done that. Being invited to the MTV Video Music Awards, I don’t necessarily need that anymore. It’s great if it happens and when it happens, but if it doesn’t, I’m not losing any sleep.
Now it’s more about making the kind of music that’s gonna resonate with people, cuz at the end of the day, that’s what this is all about: People, and being relatable to other human beings. We all go through stuff. All of us. None of us are exempt to the trials and tribulations of life. You know what I’m saying? Be it the person with the most money on the face of the planet, or the guy struggling to figure out what he’s gonna eat today, we all go through similar problems, or different problems. But we all go through problems. We all go through things, and we need to know that we’re not alone. And that’s kind of what my music has always been, you know, letting it be known to the people listening, “Yeah. You’re not alone. I’ve been through that too. I’ve gone through that too. And here’s how I handled it. I’m not saying that you should do it the same way, but, you know, it worked for me. Maybe it’ll work for you.” That’s where I write from.
Nick Clegg, Meta’s president for global affairs, has quickly joined Mark Zuckerberg’s inner circle of executives.
Sven Hoppe/picture alliance via Getty; Chris Williamson/Getty; Shayanne Gal/Insider
Nick Clegg has risen quickly to become one of Mark Zuckerberg’s closest confidants at Meta.
Clegg, a former UK deputy prime minister, led the decision to reinstate Donald Trump to Facebook.
People close to Clegg charted his rise from UK politics to Zuckerberg’s inner circle.
This article was originally published on November 19, 2021. It was updated on February 16, 2022 following the news that Nick Clegg had been promoted to the role of President for Global Affairs. It was updated again on January 26, 2023 to include details about Donald Trump’s reinstatement to Facebook and Instagram.
A Facebook insider familiar with the internal discussions at the time said that a former senior UK lawmaker took center stage as Zuckerberg and his inner circle deliberated over how to respond to Trump’s incitements. That lawmaker was Nick Clegg, a former UK deputy prime minister, who left behind a tumultuous career in politics in 2018 to join Facebook, now known as Meta, as its communications chief.
Clegg took the spotlight again in October 2021 as Facebook announced its corporate rebrand to Meta and outlined its vision for the “metaverse.” Somewhat unusually for a glitzy tech product launch, Clegg joined Zuckerberg at the virtual presentation to discuss how regulation hasn’t kept pace with the speed of tech innovation.
It wasn’t long before he ascended further up the chain: In February 2022, Zuckerberg announced Clegg had been promoted to a new position of President for Global Affairs. Reporting directly to both Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, Clegg was tasked with leading the company on all policy matters. (Clegg previously just reported to Sandberg.)
With his boss looking to the metaverse, Clegg’s job was to keep the show on the road. This involved battling damaging allegations about Facebook’s motives amid fears about online harms, as well as dealing with claims about its platform’s influence on elections and even genocide. The company faced increasingly vociferous calls from both sides of the Atlantic for it to be more tightly regulated or even broken up.
While some social-media commenters regarded Clegg’s performance in Meta’s unveiling video as cringeworthy, a former UK politician who knows Clegg well took a different view.
“You can see what Nick is up to here: He is asking to be regulated,” the former politician said. “He sees that as the only alternative to a complete breakup.”
Insider interviewed eight of Clegg’s friends and former colleagues. Together they charted how his rise as a charismatic, made-for-TV-debates politician and his rapid fall from grace in UK politics helped set him up to become one of Meta’s key decision-makers — and rapidly become one of Zuckerberg’s closest confidants.
Clegg’s smooth rise and heavy fall in UK politics
Sir Nicholas William Peter Clegg, 56, enjoyed a privileged upbringing. The son of a bank chairman, he was educated at Westminster School, an elite English private school that today charges up to £46,341 ($57,500) per pupil per year. He read archaeology and anthropology at Cambridge before studying at the University of Minnesota and the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium. Along the way, he learned to speak five languages.
Following a spell in the early ’90s as an award-winning journalist at the Financial Times, Clegg worked as a policy advisor and speechwriter to Leon Brittan, a European Union commissioner who had served in top UK government roles under Margaret Thatcher. Clegg was elected as a member of the European Parliament in 1999 and to the UK House of Commons in 2005.
From left: The Conservative Party’s David Cameron, the Liberal Democrats’ Nick Clegg, and Prime Minister Gordon Brown taking part in a televised leaders’ debate in 2010.
Jeff Overs/BBC via Getty Images
In 2007, after a smooth rise through the ranks, Clegg became the leader of the Liberal Democrats, the UK’s third-largest political party at the time. But he didn’t win the public’s attention until he performed superbly in the televised debates of the 2010 general-election campaign. The fresh-faced newcomer charmed TV audiences with his straightforward, answer-the-question approach, a change from the usual circumlocutions of slippery politicos.
A phenomenon that the press labeled “Cleggmania” swept the UK. The Lib Dems went on to win enough seats at the election to form a coalition government with David Cameron’s Conservative Party, and Clegg became Cameron’s deputy prime minister.
In three years, Clegg had become the most successful Liberal leader in Britain for a century, and the first since 1922 to serve in government.
Yet over the next two years, he would become, arguably, the biggest failure ever to hold that post.
In their election manifesto, the Lib Dems had promised to fight government-sanctioned hikes to university tuition fees, a policy that attracted the attention and votes of cash-strapped students.
But coalition means compromise. In a challenging economic climate, the Lib Dems and their Conservative coalition partners voted to raise tuition fees. It was a disastrous move for the Lib Dems that destroyed trust in the party and its leadership. They haven’t recovered since.
Britain’s Conservative Party Prime Minister David Cameron (right) and the Liberal Democrat Party Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg speaking at a press conference inside 10 Downing Street to mark the halfway point in the five-year term of the coalition government on January 7, 2013.
Alastair Grant/AFP via Getty Images
In the 2010 election, the Lib Dems won 57 seats in Parliament. In the 2015 election, after the tuition-fees debacle, they won eight. There would be no coalition government for the Lib Dems in 2015. The Conservatives won an outright majority, and Cameron no longer needed Clegg.
Clegg resigned from the party’s leadership in 2015, but he kept his Commons seat — only to lose it two years later in a snap election.
The demise of the Lib Dems hit Clegg badly, former Lib Dem colleagues said.
“Nick was not used to failure,” one colleague said.
Another said: “Nick went through an awful lot with the coalition. He had to take the chance when it came, but being part of a coalition means swallowing a lot. It requires guts.”
Sean Kemp, the former head of political communications for the Lib Dems, conceded that the party probably didn’t prepare adequately for a coalition. Had the Lib Dems known tuition fees would become a central issue, the party could have left it out of the manifesto, or at least toned down its approach, Kemp said.
“We allowed it to become the monster that haunted us,” he added.
Clegg’s European savvy appealed to Meta executives
After a short stint in the political wilderness, Clegg resurfaced at Facebook in 2018 to serve as its vice president for global affairs and communications. He moved to Atherton, California, with his wife, Miriam González Durántez, a lawyer, and their three sons: Alberto, Antonio, and Miguel.
A close UK confidant of Clegg’s said: “I completely understand why the idea of getting out of the UK was attractive. It was a fresh start in a high-profile, global role.”
Before Clegg joined Facebook, the Lib Dems already had a foothold in the company: Richard Allan, a Lib Dem Party veteran, was the vice president of public policy for Europe, Middle East, and Africa. And Lena Pietsch, Clegg’s former advisor, was also at the company, working in policy communications.
Amid rising tensions with European lawmakers, Clegg brought direct experience of European politics.
A former Lib Dem minister said: “The reason Nick must be so valuable to Facebook is that he has impeccable connections with the European elite. He speaks all their languages. He has worked there. He can pick up the phone to anyone in the Commission.”
From left: Nick Clegg, Mark Zuckerberg, and Richard Allan prior to a meeting with the French president at the Élysée Palace in Paris on May 10, 2019.
Yoan Valat/AFP via Getty Images
One of Clegg’s closest confidants in the UK, an ex-minister who served in the coalition government, said they weren’t surprised that he took the job at Facebook.
“Nick can be audacious in taking on challenges,” they said, mentioning the confidence gleaned from an elite education. “Things do not faze him in the way they might faze others. When we were dealing with a crisis in the party leadership, Nick was always the calmest in the room.”
A former senior Lib Dem politician said: “Look, if Nick was still leader of a Liberal Democrat Party that has always been opposed to monopolies and a bastion of civil liberties, what would he be doing? He would be calling for the breakup of Facebook.”
Clegg often compares the euphoria that greeted the arrival of Facebook and other social-media companies to the pessimism of today about their role in society. The pendulum has swung from utopianism to the other extreme, where social-media companies are blamed for everything. But these extremes don’t present the right view, Clegg tells his staff: The pendulum should rest somewhere in the middle.
Clegg declined to be interviewed for this article in 2021. Riki Parikh, his spokesperson at Meta, said Clegg believes a combination of internal action by Facebook and external regulation by governments is the way forward. He believes, Parikh said, that stopping election interference or improving privacy safeguards won’t be achieved by breaking up Facebook or any other company. His line is that Facebook shouldn’t be dismantled because it’s successful, but it should be held to account — and that means getting the rules of the internet right.
A former colleague said Clegg was well aware of Facebook’s problems when Sandberg approached him for the job. They added that Clegg wouldn’t have said yes if Zuckerberg hadn’t accepted his bottom line: That Zuckerberg and his company had to get on the front foot and engage with a divided world.
“When I arrived here, Facebook was just constantly taking just endless incoming fire. If I felt we could just go quiet, boy, would I advocate for it,” Clegg told Politico in 2020. “But I actually don’t think that’s possible. I don’t believe in sitting here behind these lovely walls in Menlo Park and kind of just hunkering down.”
‘Mark listens to him’
Parikh said that one of Clegg’s big achievements at Meta had been getting Zuckerberg on board to talk publicly about having a globally consistent tax policy. Parikh added, “Nick is always drumming the message that 90% of our users are outside the US, and that we must pay attention to what is going on outside.”
Parikh said that Zuckerberg’s inner circle at the company consists mainly of executives who have worked with him for more than a decade. After three years at the company, Clegg is already part of that circle.
“Mark listens to him,” Parikh said of Clegg. “Nick is a guy who has served at the top of a government and has massive pan-European reach. That perspective is valuable to Mark.”
A former minister, recalling how Clegg handled difficult colleagues, felt that he would be able to handle a founder such as Zuckerberg because, as a political leader, Clegg was used to dealing with strong personalities.
Nick Clegg (left) and Chris Huhne appearing on the BBC’s “The Andrew Marr Show” in October 2007.
Jeff Overs/BBC News & Current Affairs via Getty Images
Take Chris Huhne, a former political rival of Clegg’s whom he’d narrowly beaten for the leadership of the Lib Dems in 2007. The former minister described Huhne as a “carnivore among herbivores” who took no prisoners. But, the former minister said, Clegg handled him in an “empathetic, sensitive, way” that got the party through difficult times.
These reasons may be why Clegg and Zuckerberg are said to be as close as they are — and why Clegg was central to events on January 6, 2021, when Facebook deplatformed Trump.
A Meta insider familiar with the internal discussions said Zuckerberg consulted with top executives — including Clegg, Sandberg, and Joel Kaplan, the global policy chief — as events unfolded on Capitol Hill that day. After Trump posted a video on his social-media accounts urging rioters to go home but also praising them as “very special” people, they decided to suspend Trump’s account for 24 hours. The decision came an hour after Twitter had implemented a 12-hour block on Trump’s account.
Later that evening, the Facebook executives discussed the possibility of an indefinite suspension, the insider said, and Zuckerberg asked Clegg to put together a thesis for an unprecedented decision to bar a head of state from the platform. Clegg worked overnight on the rationale, and then the executives reconvened early the next morning, reviewed Clegg’s draft, and decided to suspend Trump “indefinitely,” the insider said.
Clegg then worked with Zuckerberg on the draft for the CEO’s Facebook post explaining the decision, the insider said. In the days that followed, Clegg suggested referring the decision to Facebook’s quasi-independent Oversight Board, feeling that was why the panel of independent experts had been created, the insider said. (Clegg was also one of the figureheads behind the establishment of the board, which reviews the company’s moderation decisions.)
During the week of January 11, Clegg and his team prepared a series of options and a recommendation for Zuckerberg, which was presented on January 15, the insider said. Zuckerberg agreed with the referral to the Oversight Board. But on the matter of what questions should be put to the board, he said Clegg should decide.
The insider added that Zuckerberg said: “That’s up to you, Nick. I defer to you on that.”
The board later ruled that the indefinite penalty was “indeterminate and standardless,” and it insisted that Facebook review the decision. Facebook instead fixed Trump’s suspension at two years.
Meta’s problems grow
Meta’s public-relations crises snowballed after the violence at the Capitol. As Clegg toured US TV studios and global tech conferences in 2021 to respond to issues raised by the whistleblower Frances Haugen and lawmakers across the world, some of Meta’s critics saw Clegg as the fall guy for Zuckerberg and other executives who should be held accountable.
After years of mea culpas, Meta’s communications team started going on the offensive, with a “less conciliatory” approach when responding to crises, The New York Times reported in September 2021.
Nick Clegg speaking at Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal in November 20221.
Jim Edwards/Insider
Public trust of Facebook waned further that year. Leaked documents detailed how some of Meta’s own employees felt burned out and frustrated, worrying that the company was in a “failure state.” Haugen wasn’t the only former employee to speak out publicly against the company. Meanwhile, commentators and lawmakers repeatedly compared Facebook to Big Tobacco.
Meta’s fault lines were deep, leaving Clegg with unsteady ground on which to operate, Greg Nugent, a British communications expert who led marketing for the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, said in 2021.
“It is about purpose. Why does it exist? What role does it want to play?” Nugent said of Meta. “If its only purpose is to make shareholders profit, then Facebook will find, just as the tobacco companies eventually did, that it will end badly.”
It didn’t go unnoticed that Clegg, rather than Zuckerberg, made the announcement. Indeed, as Clegg told Axios: “I am the ultimate decision-maker on these kinds of issues in the company.”
It was surely a sign of how much power Clegg now wields at Meta.
Philip Webster, a former political editor of The Times of London, has covered Westminster politics for more than 40 years.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk opens its Berlin factory in March 2022.
Getty Images
Tesla’s Q4 earnings and guidance lay the foundation for the stock to jump back to $200, Wedbush said Thursday.
Wedbush also raised its price target to $200, implying 38% upside for Tesla’s stock from Wednesday’s close.
Tesla’s demand story is “roaring out of the gates” in 2023, analyst Dan Ives said.
Tesla’s shares could recapture the $200 level that’s been elusive for two months, according to Wedbush, which raised its price target after the electric vehicle maker beat fourth-quarter earnings expectations.
Analyst Dan Ives in a Thursday note lifted his Tesla price target to $200 from $175. That implies the shares hold the potential to rise 38% from Wednesday’s close at $144.43. Shares haven’t traded above $200 since early November.
Tesla late Wednesday posted per-share earnings of $1.19, ahead of a Refinitiv consensus forecast of $1.05. CEO Elon Musk said in a call with analysts that its recent price cuts made a “difference” during the quarter.
“[With] Twitter noise starting to dissipate and the demand story roaring out of the gates in 2023 despite a darker macro, we walk away from this call incrementally more bullish on Tesla into 2023,” said Ives.
He also said Musk gave a “hittable/ beatable” delivery target for 2023 that could end up being conservative, given a demand rebound in China following recent price cuts on its Model Y and Model 3 vehicles.
“While in the near-term Tesla is sacrificing margins for higher volumes, we view this as the right strategic poker move to put an iron fence around its customer base and fend off growing EV competition coming from Detroit, Europe, and China,” said Ives.
Tesla stock jumped 9% to %157.74 as Thursday trade got underway. The stock slid by 64% in 2022, landing among the 10 worst-performing on the S&P 500.
A number of investors and analysts, including Ives, have said Tesla’s stock had come under pressure with Musk’s controversial purchase of Twitter in October.
A Ukrainian soldier watches a drone feed from an underground command center in Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine, December 25, 2022.
Libkos/AP Photo
The war in Ukraine has set the stage for the unprecedented applications of autonomous drones in warfare.
The increasing ability for drones to fight autonomously is raising serious ethical questions.
Two drone experts spoke about freewheeling AI development and what it could mean for the future.
Russia’s war in Ukraine provides an unprecedented testing ground for lethal drone technology. But experts are voicing their concerns over the creep of artificial intelligence over human decision-making in warfare.
Unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs — more commonly known as drones — have come to the fore in Ukraine more than in any other past conflict.
They’re not the “decisive factor,” Ingvild Bode, at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU), told Insider. Tanks, trench warfare and artillery still dominate the conflict, she says, but in terms of sheer scale and variety, it’s the first time they’ve been used to such consequence. Insider’s John Haltiwanger has recently reported on this development.
While the governing AI for some drone technology is developing at pace, there are still few international legal norms in place to define the extent to which human involvement is required.
Several manufacturers of drones being used in the conflict — such as Russia’s Lancet and the US-provided Switchblade — claim their machines now have autonomous or semi-autonomous capabilities.
It’s unclear exactly how much these capabilities have been brought to bear in Ukraine. One Ukrainian troop commander in October claimed his troops were already flying autonomous drone scouting missions, as the New Scientist reported, citing Ukrainian media.
According to Bode — whose research focuses on the international norms around the emergence of military AI — the rush to defend Ukraine has meant that the discussion around weaponizing AI is no longer a distant hypothetical.
After claiming a naval drone strike on Russia’s Black Sea fleet last fall, Ukraine began fundraising for what it called “the world’s first naval fleet of drones.”
And Russia’s faltering traditional attack will likely push it to rush systems to the field before international norms are in place.
Bode says she’s worried about the dash to get military AI onto the battlefield “without really thinking about the long-term consequences.”
When is a swarm not a swarm?
Since mid-summer last year, Russian forces have launched Iranian Shahed-136 drones in groups of five or six, in strikes on critical Ukrainian infrastructure.
The Shahed-136s are munitions that self-destruct on impact, giving them the moniker of “suicide” drones.
A drone, considered by Ukrainian authorities to be an Iranian-made Shahed-136, over Kyiv on October 17, 2022.
REUTERS/Roman Petushkov
Attacks involving groups of these weapons have been described as “swarms,” though from an AI standpoint they don’t yet involve true swarming technology.
James Rogers, also of SDU and who advises the UN on future drone technology, told Insider that “swarming drones are technically drones which can communicate with one another.”
AI allows them to behave symbiotically, “like a flock of birds in the sky,” as he put it. “You see them move as one and react together to external stimuli.”
But true swarming capabilities are on their way to the battlefield. In January 2022, Raytheon technology was used in a DARPA exercise in which just one human operator controlled 130 adapted commercial off-the-shelf drones as they swarmed autonomously and surveilled an area, the company claimed.
As part of the exercise, the drones were able to autonomously identify and decide which parts of a building they had not yet explored, Raytheon said.
The loop of control
Switchblade operators are likely “in the loop of control,” as Rogers frames it, meaning drones can fly autonomously, circling an area until a target appears, but are otherwise operated by a human.
But more advanced drone technology is enabling what Rogers calls “on” the loop of control.
That’s then relayed back to the operator, who makes a decision on whether or not to strike.
But we may soon reach a horizon where no human is involved at all, Rogers said, adding: “Its here, then, that you start to see how AI and robotics can start to take the decision about whether or not humans live or die.”
Trust the machine?
Even with a human still firmly in the loop and making decisions, the involvement of AI presents unique problems, Bode told Insider.
“In the case of the systems that we have seen used, there’s still a human operator authorizing the use of force,” she said. But she questioned if operators put too much stock in the machine’s algorithmically-informed judgement.
Ukrainian soldiers launch a drone at Russian positions near Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine, December 15, 2022.
Associated Press
“If this system says: ‘Okay, this [target] should be attacked,’ on what basis can the operator actually decide to doubt that target prompt?” she asked.
Under pressure and potentially under fire, a drone operator may take the machine’s prompt less as a suggestion and more as an infallible instruction. It’s human nature, Bode suggested.
“There’s lots of research into automation bias,” she said. “We tend to trust outputs presented to us by computer assisted systems more than our own judgment.”
What do drones see when they see a human?
Military targets like tanks are relatively easy to program a machine to recognize, Bode said. But it’s different when a target is human.
A still from an instructional video issued by the Armed Forces of Ukraine on December 12, 2022 showing Russian soldiers how to surrender to a drone.
General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine/Facebook
The process appears to involve commercial drones directly operated by a human. But as the idea of drone-mediated surrender — previously a rare occurrence — becomes normalized, both Bode and Rogers raised concerns about whether AI will really have the capacity to distinguish a surrendering human from a combatant.
“That is a hard judgment call to make even for a human, right?” Bode said.
Rogers suggested it’s an untested area in international law. In a fully autonomous future of drone warfare, he asked, will drone AI be programmed “to avoid those who are waving a white flag?”
With the speed of developments related to AI and the conflict in Ukraine, it is one of many questions left unanswered.
A trader works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange January 6, 2014.
REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
Stocks climbed Thursday following the release of better-than-expected fourth quarter GDP data.
The Commerce Department reported that GDP rose last quarter at a 2.9% annualized pace, above the expected 2.8%.
Meanwhile, Tesla reported record revenue in its Wednesday earnings report.
US stocks climbed Thursday following the release of better-than-expected economic growth data, as well as a strong fourth-quarter earnings report from Tesla.
The Commerce Department reported that gross domestic product for the fourth quarter rose at a 2.9% annualized pace, above the 2.8% expected from Dow Jones economist.
The figure was below the 3.2% pace in the third quarter, however, and concerns about economic growth for the year ahead remain.
Separately, weekly jobless claims dropped by 6,000, down to 186,000. That’s below the 205,000 expected by Dow Jones economists, and marks the lowest level since April 2022.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Tesla reported record revenue of $24.32 billion for the fourth quarter, above the expected $24.16 billion. Earnings per share came in at $1.19, versus the $1.13 expected.
Here’s where US indexes stood as the market opened 9:30 a.m. on Thursday:
Blackwater founder and former Navy SEAL Erik Prince told Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM that according to one of his “well-placed sources” in the New York Police Department, “The NYPD wanted to do a press conference announcing the warrants and the additional arrests they were making” in the Anthony Weiner investigation, but received “huge pushback” from the Justice Department.
“I mean, it’s not like the foreign intelligence agencies leave a thank-you note after they’ve hacked and stolen your data,” Prince said to SiriusXM host Alex Marlow.
Prince claimed he had insider knowledge of the investigation that could help explain why FBI Director James Comey had to announce he was reopening the investigation into Clinton’s email server last week.
“Because of Weinergate and the sexting scandal, the NYPD started investigating it. Through a subpoena, through a warrant, they searched his laptop, and sure enough, found those 650,000 emails. They found way more stuff than just more information pertaining to the inappropriate sexting the guy was doing,” Prince claimed.
“They found State Department emails. They found a lot of other really damning criminal information, including money laundering, including the fact that Hillary went to this sex island with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Bill Clinton went there more than 20 times. Hillary Clinton went there at least six times,” he said.
“The amount of garbage that they found in these emails, of criminal activity by Hillary, by her immediate circle, and even by other Democratic members of Congress was so disgusting they gave it to the FBI, and they said, ‘We’re going to go public with this if you don’t reopen the investigation and you don’t do the right thing with timely indictments,’” Prince explained.
“I believe – I know, and this is from a very well-placed source of mine at 1PP, One Police Plaza in New York – the NYPD wanted to do a press conference announcing the warrants and the additional arrests they were making in this investigation, and they’ve gotten huge pushback, to the point of coercion, from the Justice Department, with the Justice Department threatening to charge someone that had been unrelated in the accidental heart attack death of Eric Garner almost two years ago. That’s the level of pushback the Obama Justice Department is doing against actually seeking justice in the email and other related criminal matters,” Prince said.
“There’s five different parts of the FBI conducting investigations into these things, with constant downdrafts from the Obama Justice Department. So in the, I hope, unlikely and very unfortunate event that Hillary Clinton is elected president, we will have a constitutional crisis that we have not seen since, I believe, 1860,” Prince declared.
Marlow asked Prince to clarify these revelations.
“NYPD was the first one to look at that laptop,” Prince elaborated. “Weiner and Huma Abedin, his wife – the closest adviser of Hillary Clinton for 20 years – have both flipped. They are cooperating with the government. They both have – they see potential jail time of many years for their crimes, for Huma Abedin sending and receiving and even storing hundreds of thousands of messages from the State Department server and from Hillary Clinton’s own homebrew server, which contained classified information. Weiner faces all kinds of exposure for the inappropriate sexting that was going on and for other information that they found.”
“So NYPD first gets that computer. They see how disgusting it is. They keep a copy of everything, and they pass a copy on to the FBI, which finally pushes the FBI off their chairs, making Comey reopen that investigation, which was indicated in the letter last week. The point being, NYPD has all the information, and they will pursue justice within their rights if the FBI doesn’t,” Prince contended.
“There is all kinds of criminal culpability through all the emails they’ve seen of that 650,000, including money laundering, underage sex, pay-for-play, and, of course, plenty of proof of inappropriate handling, sending/receiving of classified information, up to SAP level Special Access Programs,” he stated.
“So the plot thickens. NYPD was pushing because, as an article quoted one of the chiefs – that’s the level just below commissioner – he said as a parent, as a father with daughters, he could not let that level of evil continue,” Prince said.
He noted that the FBI can investigate these matters, “but they can’t convene a grand jury. They can’t file charges.”
“The prosecutors, the Justice Department has to do that,” he explained. “Now, as I understand it, Preet Bharara, the Manhattan prosecutor, has gotten ahold of some of this. From what I hear, he’s a stand-up guy, and hopefully he does the right thing.”
Marlow agreed that Bharara’s “sterling reputation” as a determined prosecutor was “bad news for the Clintons.”
Prince agreed, but said, “If people are willing to bend or break the law and don’t really care about the Constitution or due process – if you’re willing to use Stalinist tactics against someone – who knows what level of pressure” could be brought to bear against even the most tenacious law enforcement officials?
“The point being, fortunately, it’s not just the FBI; [there are] five different offices that are in the hunt for justice, but the NYPD has it as well,” Prince said, citing the Wall Street Journal reporting that has “exposed downdraft, back pressure from the Justice Department” against both the FBI and NYPD, in an effort to “keep the sunlight and the disinfecting effects of the truth and transparency from shining on this great evil that has gone on, and is slowly being exposed.”
“The Justice Department is trying to run out the clock, to elect Hillary Clinton, to prevent any real justice from being done,” he warned.
As for the mayor of New York City, Prince said he has heard that “de Blasio wants to stay away from this.”
“The evidence is so bad, the email content is so bad, that I think even he wants to stay away from it, which is really telling,” he said.
Prince reported that the other legislators involved in the case “have not been named yet,” and urged the NYPD to hold a press conference and name them.
“I wish they’d do it today,” he said. “These are the unusual sliding-door moments of history, that people can stand up and be counted, and make a real difference, and to save a Republic, save a Constitution that we actually need and love, that our forefathers fought and died for. For any cop that is aware of this level of wrongdoing, and they have veterans in their family, or deceased veterans in their family, they owe it to them to stand up, to stand and be counted today, and shine the light of truth on this great evil.”
“From what I understand, up to the commissioner or at least the chief level in NYPD, they wanted to have a press conference, and DOJ, Washington people, political appointees have been exerting all kinds of undue pressure on them to back down,” he added.
Marlow suggested that some of those involved in keeping the details quiet might want to avoid accusations of politicizing the case and seeking to influence the presidential election.
“Sure, that’s it. That’s the argument for it,” Prince agreed. “But the fact is, you know that if the Left had emails pointing to Donald Trump visiting, multiple times, an island with underage sex slaves basically, emails, you know they’d be talking about it. They’d be shouting it from the rooftops.”
“This kind of evil, this kind of true dirt on Hillary Clinton – look, you don’t have to make any judgments. Just release the emails,” he urged. “Just dump them. Let them out there. Let people see the light of truth.”
Prince dismissed the claims of people like Clinton campaign CEO John Podesta and DNC chair Donna Brazile that some of the damaging emails already released by WikiLeaks were fabricated, noting that “forensic analysis done shows that, indeed, they are not fabricated; they are really legitimate.”
“This is stuff coming right off a hard drive that was owned by Weiner and his wife Huma Abedin, Hillary’s closest adviser for the last 20 years,” he said of the new bombshells. “This is not from some hacker or anybody else. This is a laptop seized from a warrant in a criminal investigation.”
Prince confirmed that based on his information, Abedin is most likely looking at jail time, unless she cuts a deal with prosecutors.
“There’s a minimum of obstruction of justice and all kinds of unlawful handling of classified information,” he said. “Because remember, this laptop was in the possession of Weiner, who did not have a security clearance. And many, many of those emails were from her Yahoo account, which had State Department emails forwarded to them, so she could easier print these messages, scan them, and send them on to Hillary. That’s the carelessness that Hillary and her staff had for the classified information that the intelligence community risks life and limb to collect in challenged, opposed areas around the world.”
“That’s not who you want in the White House,” Prince declared.
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
#FBI FBI #DOJ DOJ Was Weiner’s sexting affair ORCHESTRATED? By whom, and why, Mr. McGonigal? How did Prince, Giuliani, and Kallstrom knew about it in advance? Whose idea was it? Tell us all.
