• Tesla is rolling out self-driving features to some cars in China, per a software update log.
• It's not being called Full Self-Driving and Tesla is not offering all the FSD features as in the US.
• BYD is equipping nearly all its models with advanced self-driving tech at no extra cost.

Tesla has started rolling out driving-assistance features to some cars in China that are similar to the Full Self-Driving (FSD) system in the US, according to a software update log.

Tesla said the new features allow Tesla owners in China to use driver-assist features on controlled-access and city roads. These include guiding vehicles to exit ramps and intersections, recognizing traffic signals, making turns, and managing lane changes and speed adjustments.

It does not incorporate all of Tesla's FSD features, including autonomously navigating complex urban environments such as parking lots. Tesla is not branding it as Full Self-Driving.

"For some features, the time of implementation and results may vary based on the vehicle's model and configuration," the company said, adding that the range of models will be gradually expanded.

Bloomberg first reported Tesla's planned deployment of FSD features in China.

The move comes after BYD, Tesla's biggest rival in China, announced earlier this month that it would equip nearly all its models with advanced self-driving tech at no extra cost, and other rivals followed suit.

In contrast, Tesla owners in China have had to pay about $8,800 extra for self-driving features — a sum nearly as high as the cost of BYD's cheapest model.

BYD has racing ahead in China's fiercely competitive EV market. In January it sold sold nearly twice as many EVs as Tesla, with the US carmaker's sales down 11% compared with the same month in 2024.

BYD sold a record 66,000 vehicles outside China in January, indicating that a push to expand outside its home market is starting to pay off.

Last month, BYD overtook Toyota to become Singapore's best-selling car brand and also beat Tesla in the UK for the first time.

Other Chinese brands such as NIO, XPeng, MG, and ORA are also notching up higher sales of their affordable electric and hybrid vehicles outside China amid intense competition in the domestic market.

• Ukraine has become the largest producer of tactical and strategic drones, its defense minister said.
• Ukraine has ramped up its drone production since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022.
• In total, Ukraine delivered over 1.3 million drones to soldiers in 2024, its commander in chief said.

Ukraine has become the world's largest producer of key military-use drones, the country's defense minister said.

"We've become the biggest drone manufacturer in the world, drones of tactical and strategic level," Rustem Umerov said during a Sunday press conference at Ukraine's "Year 2025" forum.

Tactical drones support smaller-scale battlefield actions, often at close ranges, by gathering intelligence and supporting strikes, either as the munition or by providing targeting data.

Strategic drones, meanwhile, are often higher-end, high-altitude systems with the endurance to advance operations against higher-priority targets.

Speaking at the same press conference, Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine's commander in chief, said the country delivered over 1.3 million drones to front-line soldiers in 2024. The general added that its long-range drones can strike targets up to 1,700 kilometers inside Russia.

At a separate press conference on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country produced 2.2 million drones in total in 2024 and planned to ramp up production further in 2025.

Ukraine's defense ministry didn't respond to a Business Insider request for comment.

Up-to-date and comprehensive data on various countries' respective drone production is scarce, making direct comparisons difficult.

June 2024 data from Statista Market Insights, a data analysis service on market trends, said China was set to be the world's largest overall drone manufacturer in 2024 and was on track to produce 2.9 million drones. However, the data does not include drones for military purposes, though off-the-shelf drones for civilian use have been heavily repurposed for military use in Ukraine and further afield.

In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia was ramping up its own drone production to nearly 1.4 million in 2024, a tenfold increase from the previous year.

Drones are increasingly being used in conflicts around the world for intelligence and reconnaissance, bombing missions, precision strikes, and other military purposes by both state-level and non-state actors.

This has led to an increased demand for counter-drone capabilities.

In December, the Pentagon released a new counter-drone strategy aimed at coordinating how different branches of the US military are responding to the threat of drones and making "countering unmanned systems a key element of our thinking."

Drones have been a hallmark of the war in Ukraine, with both sides using the evolving technology to devastating effect.

Even so, Ukrainian tactical drones face significant challenges, according to a February report by the UK's Royal United Services Institute, with a 60-80% failure rate in hitting targets "depending on the part of the front and the skill of the operators."

Despite this, it said that they still account for 60 to 70% of damaged and destroyed Russian military systems.

In an October speech to executives from dozens of foreign arms manufacturers, Zelenskyy said Ukraine was capable of producing 4 million drones a year, up from the one million he predicted in December 2023.

Kyiv has tried to smooth the process of drone acquisitions for its troops.

Last week, Umerov said Ukraine's defense ministry was launching a new drone supply model to facilitate a "fast and uninterrupted supply of the best UAVs for our soldiers," and to provide its armed forces with an additional $60 million a month to purchase drones.

Ukraine's growing defense industry has led some to believe that drones, among other military capabilities, could play an important role in Ukraine's postwar economic recovery.

• The US Space Force needs a "warfighting ethos" to compete with China in space, a new report has said.
• Failure to adapt could threaten the force's long-term chances of success in the space domain, it said.
• The Space Force also lacks a clearly defined role and resources, the authors said.

The US Space Force needs a change in mindset and increased funding to compete with China in the space domain, two retired US colonels argued in a new report for the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

The report, which was released earlier this week, summarizes the findings and recommendations from a two-day workshop held in October at the Mitchell Institute's Spacepower Advantage Center of Excellence.

The event brought together 55 space experts to examine the Space Force Chief of Space Operations' theory of success — called "Competitive Endurance" — against a set of potential crises over the next 25 years, including the Russian deployment of a nuclear antisatellite weapon and an attempted Chinese space blockade.

The workshop found that the role of the Space Force was not well understood by many Americans and that it lacked resources and a "warfighting ethos," which the authors of the new report said threatened its long-term chances of success against China in the space domain.

"Systemic issues exist within the Space Force and Department of Defense that threaten the success of the Space Force in a long-term competition with China," Charles Galbreath, a retired US Space Force colonel, and Jennifer Reeves, a retired US Air Force colonel, wrote.

"Chief among these are: inadequate authorities and resources, a lack of clearly defined and understood roles and missions, and the need for increased warfighting ethos."

Drawing on the workshop's findings, the authors, both senior fellows at the Mitchell Institute, called on Congress to increase funding to the USSF and loosen policy restrictions to allow the deployment of offensive and defensive weapons, which they said would enable the force to "create a stronger posture, capable of deterring hostile actions and conflict."

They also urged the force to develop educational and training programs that aimed to "foster an assertive, warfighting culture," adding that Space Force members — known as Guardians — "must see themselves as warfighters and project a war-winning ethos."

While Galbreath and Reeves praised the "three tenets of Competitive Endurance" — avoiding operational surprise, denying first-mover advantage, and undertaking responsible counter-space campaigning — they said the theory did not "normalize space as a warfighting domain" or allow Guardians to "pursue victory and space superiority," which they said made it difficult for the public and Congress to grasp its military importance.

"If this loophole is not addressed, the Space Force and U.S. Space Command could find itself in a death spiral of waning support and funding, ultimately precluding the fielding of capabilities and conducting of operations necessary to secure U.S. interests in space," they added.

A Space Force spokesperson told Business Insider that "as China and Russia accelerate the development of counter-space capabilities, the need for a well-resourced Space Force has never been more critical."

"Our Guardians remain committed to ensuring space superiority while safeguarding the long-term stability and sustainability of the domain," they said.

Maj. Gen. Timothy Sejba, commander of Space Training and Readiness Command (STARCOM), said in 2023 that a warfighting mindset was vital to the USSF's work.

Speaking to attendees at the Air & Space Forces Association's 2023 Air, Space & Cyber Conference, Sejba, then Brigadier General, said that STARCOM's mission was to instill the warfighting mindset in every Space Force recruit.

"Even though the Space Force is only four years old, we've built the warfighting mindset for almost 40 years," he said, adding that he thought it was "critical" for the force to train "like we potentially have to fight in the future."

"I think that exists in other domains and other services, but it's one that we just haven't necessarily had to put into place for space in the past," he added.

Officials have long warned of growing international threats facing the US in the space domain.

In an interview with Politico in October, Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, the Chief of Space Operations, said China was developing counter-space capabilities at a "mind-boggling" pace and was of particular concern for the US.

John Plumb, a former assistant secretary of defense for space policy, also warned in 2023 of the increasing quantity and quality of global counter-space threats.

Plumb pointed to China fielding ground-based counter-space weapons and Russia developing its own systems designed at "degrading and denying US space-based services."

"Our competitors have watched us, they have learned from us, they've stolen from us, and they have developed capabilities to hold us at risk. But they are not ready for us. They're not ready for us today," he said.

• Ukraine says it is launching a new supply model to get drones to troops faster.
• Its defense minister said the system would reduce delivery times from months to weeks.
• Ukraine has ramped up its domestic drone production since the start of the war.

Ukraine is launching a new drone supply model that aims to reduce delivery times to troops from months to weeks.

Rustem Umerov, the Ukrainian defense minister, announced the new system in a Facebook post on Thursday after meeting with representatives from Ukrainian drone manufacturers.

The new model is designed to facilitate the "fast and uninterrupted supply of the best UAVs for our soldiers," Umerov said.

As well as reducing delivery times, the system will help support manufacturers by giving them advanced orders, meaning they can plan production scaling, he added.

It is based on the DOT-Chain supply management system, which Ukraine first introduced in September as part of a push to digitize and streamline the process of supplying the military.

It's not the first time Kyiv has tried to smooth the process of drone acquisition for its troops.

The Ukrainian defense ministry announced in January that its armed forces would receive an additional UAH 2.5 billion (around $60 million) a month to procure new drones, in a move designed to reduce brigades' reliance on centralized acquisition efforts and allow them to purchase the equipment they need directly.

Drone warfare has been at the core of the conflict in Ukraine since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, with both sides using the evolving technology to devastating effect.

The relatively cheap yet highly effective devices have proven to be so popular that Ukraine has significantly ramped up production efforts since the war broke out.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in October that Ukraine was capable of producing 4 million drones a year and that Kyiv had contracted 1.5 million so far in 2024. In a Facebook post, Umerov said more than 200,000 drones were delivered to Ukrainian soldiers in December alone.

The country's burgeoning industry has led some to believe that drones could play a role in Ukraine's postwar economic recovery and help it become a key player in the international defense market.

• The Philippines says China is "hindering" its companies from exploring natural resources in the South China Sea.
• The South China Sea is a key shipping route that holds major oil and gas reserves.
• The region has seen rising tensions between Manila and Beijing in recent years.

China's activity in the contested South China Sea is "hindering" Filipino companies from exploring natural resources in the region, Philippines Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo said during a talk at Chatham House in London on Tuesday.

"The ability of our own companies, for example, to develop natural resources, for example, oil exploration, is also being hindered by the need of one country to be involved in those activities," Manalo said while discussing pressures the Philippines has faced from China in the region.

The South China Sea is an important shipping route that holds major oil and gas reserves.

In recent years, the region has seen rising tensions between Manila and Beijing, with a series of clashes making headlines.

In one incident in June last year, a Filipino military commander said Filipino soldiers were forced to defend themselves with their "bare hands" against Chinese coast guard personnel armed with swords and knives.

Other incidents have included the Philippines accusing China of repeatedly firing flares at its aircraft over the South China Sea and China's largest coastguard vessel dropping anchor in Manila's exclusive economic zone.

"These incidents hit home directly," Manalo said, pointing to the June incident around the Second Thomas Shoal, an atoll located within the exclusive economic zone.

"Because one country claims that lies within their area and is questioning our right to be there, they harassed, and in fact, a number of incidents occurred over the past two years, consisting of water cannoning, the use of lasers, even ramming."

"This is also of great concern, obviously, because if these incidents were to escalate further, then obviously tensions would really rise dramatically," he continued, adding that the Philippines was "absolutely committed" to trying to manage such incidents peacefully.

While China has claimed sovereignty over most of the South China Sea, an international tribunal ruled in 2016 that its claims to waters within its "nine-dash line" — which Beijing uses to illustrate its claims to islands and adjacent waters in the South China Sea — had no legal basis.

Under the terms of the 1951 "Mutual Defense Treaty," the US is obliged to defend the Philippines in a major conflict.

After a meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio during the Munich Security Conference last week, Manalo said the US-Philippines alliance was "still on hyperdrive" under President Donald Trump's administration.

"We may even try and aim for an even more enhanced level of cooperation," he said.

• Meta plans a multibillion-dollar global underwater cable project spanning 31,000 miles.
• The project will ramp up data transmission and connect the US to India, Brazil, and South Africa.
• Meta says it aims to improve global connectivity and support innovation in artificial intelligence.

Meta has unveiled plans to spend billions of dollars as part of its multi-year ambition to build the world's longest subsea cable and accelerate AI innovation.

In a blog post on Friday, the company said its new Waterworth Project will cover over 50,000 kilometers, or about 31,000 miles, making the project's cable longer than the Earth's 24,901-mile circumference.

The Waterworth Project aims to connect five continents, linking the US to India, Brazil, South Africa, and other key regions.

A Meta spokesperson told Business Insider the company anticipates the project will be done toward the end of this decade. They said they don't have specifics to share on the cost, but the blog post said it would be a "multibillion-dollar, multi-year investment" to improve global connectivity. Last November, TechCrunch reported the company may spend over $10 billion on a nearly 25,000-mile underwater cable project led by Meta's South Africa office that the company would 100% own.

Subsea cables form an integral part of the world's internet infrastructure, shuttling data around the world at close to the speed of light thanks to their fiber optic technology. In its blog, Meta noted that cables spanning the world's oceans account for the transfer of "more than 95% of intercontinental traffic."

Meta sees the subsea cables as vital to unlocking future AI innovation as CEO Mark Zuckerberg increasingly shifts the company's focus to generative AI.

Last month, the company announced plans to boost its spending up to $65 billion this year as it seeks to build vast data centers capable of training and hosting the increasingly powerful large language models at the heart of the generative AI boom.

According to Meta's blog post, the Waterworth Project aims to ramp up data transmission capacity by using a fiber optic cable containing 24 fiber pairs instead of the typical systems that use 8 to 16 fiber pairs.

It said the project's features include a first-of-its-kind routing to optimize the cable installed in deep water at depths up to 7 kilometers, or about 4.3 miles. It also said it would use "enhanced burial techniques" in shallow, high-risk areas to protect against damage from ship anchors and potential hazards, which would maintain cable resilience.

"As AI continues to transform industries and societies around the world, it's clear that capacity, resilience, and global reach are more important than ever to support leading infrastructure," it said.

The project's announcement comes after tankers dragging their anchors have severed undersea cables in recent months in the Baltic Sea and East China Sea.

Officials in Europe have accused Russia of sabotaging undersea cables, while Taiwan has said it suspects China is behind the damage off its northern shores.

Cable resilience is key to the global financial system, which depends on a vast network of undersea cables that crisscross the sea floor, carry $10 trillion worth of transactions every day, and power Wall Street's global trading and communications.

"We've driven infrastructure innovation with various partners over the past decade, developing more than 20 subsea cables," Meta's blog post said.

"With Project Waterworth, we can help ensure that the benefits of AI and other emerging technologies are available to everyone, regardless of where they live or work."

• Arms industries could drive Ukraine's postwar economic recovery, its former foreign minister told BI.
• Dmytro Kuleba said Ukraine could tap into military tech and utilize it in its private sector.
• Ukraine could face new challenges whenever the war ends, stifling economic growth.

Defense industries could be the driving force behind Ukraine's postwar economic recovery, the country's former foreign minister told Business Insider in an interview.

Dmytro Kuleba, who led Ukraine's foreign ministry from 2020 to late 2024, said, "When I look at defense industries, I think of how to turn them into a driving force of Ukraine's economic revival.

"What we see today is a complete restructuring of Ukraine's economy," he added.

No one knows when the war in Ukraine will end, although conversations over a peace deal are taking place between President Donald Trump and Russia's President Vladimir Putin.

Ukraine's economy has struggled since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

According to its statistics agency, Ukraine's GDP fell by 28.8% in 2022, before rebounding 5.3% in 2023. Its GDP growth was projected to be about 3.4% to 3.6% in 2024, due in part to defense spending, per the OECD.

Even so, Ukraine's economy has proved resilient, thanks in part to more than $220 billion in Western military aid and to its private and state-run companies shifting their focus toward the country's defense industry.

"Today, a different economy is emerging in front of us," Kuleba told BI, one where he said the private sector could also "massively" leverage Ukraine's defense technologies, such as AI-piloted drones and autonomous vehicles used on the front lines.

"Why cannot the same technology be applied to analyzing the economy, the movement of goods and services in the country, and optimizing them to make them more cost-efficient and customer-oriented?" he said.

Arsenal of the Free World

Kuleba is not the only former official who sees huge potential in Ukraine's defense industries.

Oleksandr Kamyshin, Ukraine's former minister of strategic industries, told The Guardian in November 2023 that Ukraine could become the "arsenal of the free world."

Some economic and military analysts have also predicted that Ukraine will become a European defense powerhouse after the war ends.

William Courtney, an adjunct senior fellow at RAND Corporation and a former US ambassador, told BI that Ukraine could become a cost-competitive producer of a wide range of military equipment.

This would be useful given that many European countries lack the capability to produce some items or the capacity to produce them in sufficient volume, he said.

Courtney pointed to software, AI, robotics, and wheeled vehicles as key areas Ukraine has developed since the start of the war, and where it could lead in Europe.

He also said that a decade after combat operations end and a stable cease-fire or armistice is achieved, Ukraine could become one of the world's top 10 countries in terms of defense production.

Dmytro Krukovets, a macroeconomic analyst at the Kyiv School of Economics, told BI he expects Ukraine to be a strong player after the war.

He pointed to a "rapid rise" in military-tech startups and defense innovations, citing an October 2024 study by Brave1 and the Kyiv School of Economics.

That study found that Ukrainian defense startups raised $5 million in 2023, and looked set to raise $50 million in 2024.

Not plain sailing

However, other economic analysts struck a more cautious tone.

Kateryna Bondar, a fellow with the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told BI that Ukraine will struggle to attract foreign investment due to its weak judicial system and lack of legislation to protect intellectual property rights.

"Capital can come only from abroad," she said, "but we haven't seen really considerable investment, and the reason for that is really the absence of trust in the government, in legislation, and in the judicial system."

Since the outbreak of the war, Western defense companies have opened facilities in the country, including German arms maker Rheinmetall, American defense contractor AeroVironment, and KNDS, a French-German defense group.

But Charles Lichfield, deputy director of the Atlantic Council's GeoEconomics Center, told BI that Ukraine will also need its defense industries to serve domestic needs, to deter future attacks, limiting export opportunities.

"They'll need to keep a lot of what they're producing," he said.

RAND researchers said in a 2023 report that Ukraine would need security guarantees against the threat of another attack to give investors the confidence to take risks and make long-term commitments in the country.

For now, Kuleba, the Ukrainian minister, said his ideas for Ukraine's economy are still uncharted territory, but that "if we want to build a future, we have to start" now.

He added: "Ukraine is open to virtually any idea that can boost economic growth and build a sustainable economy."

• India's prime minister met with President Donald Trump this week.
• Narendra Modi said India and the US had agreed to aim to double bilateral trade to $500 billion by 2030.
• It comes amid Trump's threat of "reciprocal" tariffs on US trading partners.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a new and rather familiar name for his vision for the country: "MIGA."

In a press briefing with President Donald Trump on Thursday, Modi tweaked his US counterpart's famed slogan, saying he wanted to "Make India Great Again."

"When America and India work together, that is, when it's MAGA plus MIGA, it becomes MEGA. A MEGA partnership for prosperity," he said, adding that India and the US had agreed to work toward doubling bilateral trade to $500 billion by 2030.

Modi's visit came as Trump outlined his plans to impose "reciprocal" tariffs on trading partners, including India.

As of 2024, the US is one of India's largest trade partners. US goods trade with India stood at an estimated $129.2 billion in 2024, per the Office of the United States Trade Representative.

But Trump took aim at what he called India's "very strong" tariffs that "limit US access" to the local market.

"We are, right now, a reciprocal nation," Trump said. "Whatever India charges, we're charging them."

He said that going forward he and Modi wanted a "level playing field" regarding tariffs and that they had agreed to a deal for India to import more American oil and gas.

Trump added that the US would also be increasing military sales to India and was "paving the way" to provide the country with F-35 fighter jets.

India's benchmark indices dropped on Friday as investors' concerns over tariffs mounted.

Under Modi's leadership, India has emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic as one of the world's fastest-growing economies, spurred partly by a large, youthful workforce, significant public infrastructure investment, and a growing IT and services sector.

The Indian economy grew at a rapid rate of 8.2% in the financial year 2023 to 2024, boosted by investment in infrastructure and a rise in household investments in real estate, per the World Bank.

The World Bank projects India will remain among the world's fastest-growing major economies for the next two financial years, with a predicted growth rate of 6.7%.

Modi's government aims to make India a developed nation by 2047, but it faces a number of significant challenges, including high youth unemployment rates, widening economic inequality, regional disparities, a stagnant manufacturing sector, a large informal economy, and challenges in the agriculture sector.

• Elon Musk wore a T-shirt with the words "tech support" during a speech to business leaders in Dubai.
• Musk previously referred to himself as "White House Tech Support" in his X bio.
• Musk heads up DOGE, which has led the Trump White House's efforts to cut federal spending.

Elon Musk wore a black T-shirt with the words "tech support" across its middle during his latest address to global business leaders.

The T-shirt was likely a nod to Musk's previous bio on X, where he described himself as "White House Tech Support."

Musk, who leads the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, was speaking at Dubai's annual World Governments Summit on Thursday via a video link.

DOGE has been instrumental in President Donald Trump's efforts to cut government spending.

During his address, Musk said the US needs to get rid of entire federal agencies.

"I think we do need to delete entire agencies, as opposed to leave part of them behind," he said.

"It's kind of like leaving a weed," Musk added. "If you don't remove the roots of the weed, then it's easy for the weed to grow back."

Musk's speech came amid concern from lawmakers and watchdog organizations about DOGE's access to Treasury systems containing sensitive information about millions of Americans.

Musk showed little sign of wanting to slow down.

He told the audience that reducing government spending would have a "remarkable" effect.

"If the deficit drops from two trillion to one trillion, then there will be one trillion less debt, and, of course, the interest rates will drop significantly, and that means people's mortgage payments, car payments, credit card payments, student loans — whatever debt they have — their debt will be less," he said.

Musk, who founded SpaceX and owns social media platform X, said the US could be thought of as a "big company," comparing it to Twitter, which he renamed X after buying it for $44 billion in 2022.

"In Twitter's case, we reduced the staff by 80% but at the same time improved the functionality and the capabilities of the site dramatically," he said.

Regarding the US, Musk said: "It's like a corporate turnaround but at a much larger scale."

• Elon Musk said on Tuesday that the government stores key retirement paperwork in a converted mine.
• The limestone mine is real, and is in the Department of Government Efficiency's crosshairs.
• The US government started storing records in the underground facility in the 1960s.

A converted mine located in Pennsylvania and used to store and process federal retirement paperwork is actually real, and is now under threat.

In a press conference in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Elon Musk said that the US government stores and processes all retirement paperwork in a limestone mine.

"The elevator breaks down sometimes, and nobody can retire," Musk said, adding: "Doesn't that sound crazy?"

Musk's comments came as the Trump White House continues its moves to radically alter the federal workforce.

Musk said they were trying to "right-size" the federal bureaucracy and that getting people to retire early on full benefits was a good thing.

But he added: "We were told the most number of people that could retire possibly in a month is 10,000 because all the retirement paperwork is written down on a piece of paper, then it goes down a mine."

Musk said that "instead of working in a mineshaft, carrying manila envelopes to boxes in a mine, you could do practically anything else, and you would add to the goods and services of the United States in a more useful way."

The Department of Government Efficiency's X account later published photos of the facility.

It said more than 700 employees work 230 feet underground to process about 10,000 federal employee retirement applications a month, adding that the process can take several months.

According to a 2014 Washington Post report, 600 Office of Personnel Management workers process federal employees' retirement papers by hand at the site, passing thousands of case files from cavern to cavern.

The manual process continues to operate due to successive administrations' failures to automate it, the outlet reported, delaying how fast workers can receive their full retirement benefits.

In an interview last year with Federal News Network, OPM's then-CEO said the agency was testing an online platform for retirement applications, but he said it would take "many years" to implement.

The Office of Personnel Management didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

A 2015 prospectus of the facility by the General Services Administration said the mine, which has been occupied by the OPM since 1970, is located in Boyers, Pennsylvania, and has about 580,000 rentable square feet.

The mine was originally owned by US Steel, which excavated the site from 1902 to 1952, before the US government started storing records there in 1960, according to the Center for Land Use Interpretation.

Iron Mountain, a global management and storage service provider, acquired the mine's owner in 1998, it said, and continues to lease space in its underground facility to the US government.

Iron Mountain didn't reply to a request for comment.

In 2015, the GSA warned that parts of the mine's ceiling were degrading. It proposed acquiring a new space to provide a "long-term solution" for federal agencies operating in the mine. It is unclear if anything came of that proposal.

The mine is also used to store films and documents for private companies and groups, including the Corbis photographic collection Bill Gates sold to Visual China Group in 2016.

• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he's on the same page as Elon Musk when it comes to cutting waste.
• Bessent told Bloomberg the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency can make "gigantic savings."
• He also dismissed concerns about DOGE staff's access to the Treasury's payment systems.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Bloomberg Podcasts on Thursday that he and Elon Musk were "completely aligned" when it came to waste.

"Elon and I are completely aligned in terms of cutting waste and increasing accountability and transparency for the American people," he said.

"I believe that this DOGE program in my adult life is one of the most important audits of government, changes to the government structure we have seen," Bessent added. "I think there are gigantic savings for the American people here."

Since President Donald Trump created the Department of Government Efficiency and brought it inside the White House by executive order, his administration has taken swift actions to roll back regulations and cut spending.

Trump's administration has implemented a hiring freeze across federal agencies. It has also canceled multiple government contracts, including those related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives, and is moving forward with plans to dismantle the US Agency for International Development.

The policies have sparked a slew of lawsuits, legal challenges, unions opposition, and public protests outside federal offices.

Federal worker unions sued the Treasury Department on Monday, accusing the agency of granting Musk access to private sensitive data.

On Tuesday, Trump said he gave DOGE staff "read-only" access to the Treasury's payment systems. These systems control trillions of dollars worth of payments, including Social Security benefits, tax refunds, and veterans' benefits.

In his interview with Bloomberg, Bessent dismissed concerns, saying that DOGE staff had "read-only" access and could make "no changes."

He described the group as an "operational program to suggest improvements."

"These are highly trained professionals, this is not some roving band running around doing things," he said.

Bessent spoke shortly after Musk wrote in an X post that "Billions of taxpayer dollars to known FRAUDULENT entities are STILL being APPROVED by Treasury."

Musk added, "This needs to STOP NOW!"

Bessent also referred to the Grace Commission Report, a study conducted during the Reagan administration that proposed major reforms across various departments and agencies in order to reduce the US national debt in 1984.

"There were some great suggestions that came out of that," he said, but "nothing happened."

• Two House members are unveiling a bill that would ban DeepSeek's AI apps from US government devices.
• The bill is designed to stop China from obtaining sensitive information, just like the TikTok ban.
• "We've seen China's playbook before with TikTok," one of the bill's sponsors said.

Two lawmakers announced on Thursday that they're introducing a bill to ban Chinese startup DeepSeek's AI chatbot from government-owned devices.

The "No DeepSeek on Government Devices Act," sponsored by Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and Republican Rep. Darin LaHood of Illinois, comes amid concerns that US citizens are sharing sensitive information — such as contracts and financial records — with the chatbot.

DeepSeek's sudden emergence shook Wall Street last month. The company has said its new R1 model matches the performance of US rivals such as OpenAI but at a lower training cost. DeepSeek's privacy policy states that user data is stored in China, prompting concerns that the Chinese Communist Party could access US user data.

In a statement, LaHood and Gottheimer referenced research published on Wednesday by the Toronto-based cybersecurity firm Feroot Security. The company said it had found DeepSeek contained a hidden code capable of transmitting user data to CMPassport.com, the online registry for China Mobile, a telecommunications company owned and operated by the Chinese government.

"DeepSeek's generative AI program acquires the data of US users and stores the information for unidentified use by the CCP," said LaHood in a statement to BI. "Under no circumstances can we allow a CCP company to obtain sensitive government or personal data."

Days after the release of its flagship model, DeepSeek became the most downloaded free app on Apple's App Store in the US.

Other countries have taken steps to block DeepSeek. Australia banned DeepSeek from all government devices on Tuesday on national security grounds. Last week, Italy's data protection authority said it had ordered DeepSeek to block its chatbot in the country.

LaHood and Gottheimer's proposal echoes the first steps that led to an effort to prevent TikTok from operating in the US.

"We've seen China's playbook before with TikTok," Gottheimer said in a statement. "We cannot allow it to happen again."

In December 2022, the Senate unanimously approved a bill to block federal employees from downloading or using the app on government devices.

In April 2024, the Biden administration passed legislation banning TikTok unless its parent company, ByteDance, divested the social media app.

That came into force on January 19, and TikTok was briefly unavailable in the US. On January 21, President Donald Trump signed an executive order giving TikTok a 75-day extension to comply with the law.

LaHood, Gottheimer, and DeepSeek did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

• Daniel Penny, the Marine veteran acquitted in a subway killing, has been hired by Andreessen Horowitz.
• A16z said Penny would take the role of deal partner to support the VC firm's American Dynamism team.
• He was found not guilty of criminally negligent homicide last year after choking a subway rider.

Daniel Penny, the Marine veteran who was cleared last year in a subway killing that drew widespread attention, has joined Andreessen Horowitz as a deal partner.

Penny will support the venture capital firm's American Dynamism team, its website said.

In 2023, Penny was arrested and charged in connection with the death of Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old homeless street performer whom Penny restrained using a chokehold on the New York City subway in May of that year. Neely, who had a history of mental illness, was said to be yelling at passengers.

A New York jury deadlocked on a manslaughter charge, which was dismissed, but found Penny not guilty of criminally negligent homicide in December.

In an internal statement seen by The Free Press, David Ulevitch, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, also known as A16z, said, "Daniel is a Marine Corps veteran who served his country and, in a frightening moment in a crowded New York City subway car, did a courageous thing."

Vice President JD Vance reacted to Penny joining A16z in an X post, saying, "Incredible news."

A16z did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

An early investor in Silicon Valley giants such as Facebook and Stripe, the firm set up its American Dynamism group in 2023 to invest in founders and companies that support "the national interest."

The venture capital giant, led by the investors Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, has defined the national interest broadly, including aerospace, defense, and public safety as well as education, housing, and manufacturing.

Among the group's top investments so far is Anduril, a drone maker cofounded by the billionaire Palmer Luckey. It was most recently valued at $14 billion.

Advising the new White House administration has been a top priority for A16z's Andreessen. In a podcast episode in December, the firm's cofounder said he had spent about "half" his time at Mar-a-Lago after Election Day discussing policy issues with Donald Trump, then the president-elect.

• Russia is using non-sanctioned vessels and rerouting others to keep exporting oil, per maritime data.
• Western countries have imposed sanctions on Russia's "shadow fleet" to try to reduce its oil revenues.
• Russia is now risking sanctions on more ships, economists and energy experts told Business Insider.

Russia is increasingly relying on non-sanctioned vessels to try to maintain its oil exports, but is putting those ships at risk of being sanctioned too.

Russia has relied heavily on a "shadow fleet" consisting of often aging, uninsured vessels to evade international sanctions.

Last month, the US Treasury announced sweeping sanctions on 183 Russian-controlled ships, affecting more than two-thirds of tankers servicing Kozmino, Russia's key oil export hub in the country's Far East.

Russia's shadow fleet has an estimated 1,300 ships, but once a vessel is sanctioned, most ports will likely refuse to unload it, forcing Russia to find a replacement, Petras Katinas, an energy analyst at the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, told Business Insider.

"Moscow now faces the challenge of acquiring many new tankers to sustain its export flows," Katinas said.

Western countries have rolled out sanctions on Russia's shadow fleet in recent months, in an effort to stifle oil shipments and limit the country's ability to maintain its invasion of Ukraine.

Energy and sanctions analysts told BI that Russia's use of non-sanctioned vessels should come as no surprise, and nor should the risks.

Barbados and Panama delisted more than 100 sanctioned Russian ships last month alone.

Benjamin Hilgenstock, a senior economist at the Kyiv School of Economics, said that Russia risks losing significant oil revenue.

With Russia's largest crude oil export trading at around $70 per barrel — $10 per barrel above the G7's price cap — "every single load of 650-675k barrels means $6-7 million in additional export earnings," Hilgenstock said.

He pointed to the Breeze III oil tanker, which was loaded with 660,000 barrels of oil for the first time last month at the Russian port of Ust-Luga on the Baltic Sea, according to ship-tracking data from Kpler.

Per Kpler's data, tankers are also now operating in the Pacific region, including the Suvretta, which made a port call at Kozmino over the weekend and loaded more than 670,000 barrels of crude oil before heading to China, and the Bhilva, which appeared to be on its way to Kozmino from Singapore on Tuesday.

Hilgenstock said that every sanctioned ship removed from operations means significant costs for its operator, and that Western countries can sanction each new ship that enters the fleet.

"While designations have now reached a quite substantial level — around 275 ships sanctioned in one or more jurisdictions according to our count — the job is not done yet," he said.

Even so, analysts believe Russia will continue to look for ways to export oil, given its importance to the country.

Oil and gas revenues accounted for about 30% of Russia's federal budget in 2024, Alexander Novak, Russia's deputy prime minister, said in Energy Policy last week.

And Russia is gearing up to spend the equivalent of $126.8 billion on national defense this year, 32.5% of its federal budget.

Gonzalo Saiz Erausquin, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute's Centre for Finance and Security, said the G7 and countries close to it "have to remain vigilant and dedicate huge efforts in identifying shadow fleet vessels."

Meanwhile, he said, oil revenue remains Russia's "lifeline" when it comes to its war in Ukraine.

"They will continue investing, hopefully increasingly incurring higher costs, to keep exporting that oil," he added.

• The US, UK, and EU have imposed a flurry of sanctions on Moscow's "shadow fleet."
• The fleet comprises often aging, uninsured ships that aim to evade sanctions on Russian energy exports.
• Some countries have begun delisting sanctioned Russian shadow tankers.

Russia's "shadow fleet" is running out of options to export oil.

The US, UK, and EU have all levied heavy sanctions on Russian shadow fleet vessels in recent months as part of an effort to hamper Russian oil exports and hinder the country's ability to fund its invasion of Ukraine.

In January, the US Treasury announced sweeping sanctions on 183 Russian-controlled and shadow fleet ships — the latter of which are often aging, uninsured vessels Moscow uses to evade international sanctions. The EU and the UK have together sanctioned more than 140 such vessels.

Russia's shadow fleet has used a number of different tactics to try to evade these sanctions and deliver Russian crude oil while obscuring its source, including turning off automatic identification systems (AIS), providing false positions, and carrying out ship-to-ship transfers.

However, the fleet, which has an estimated 1,300 ships, is now facing another problem — a growing number of registries delisting sanctioned vessels. Between Barbados and Panama alone, more than 100 sanctioned Russian ships are being delisted.

"These ships lose their legal right to operate under those jurisdictions, making them less likely to access international ports or insurance services," Petras Katinas, an energy analyst at the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, told Business Insider.

To enter a port, vessels typically need a valid flag issued by a country's maritime authority, insurance coverage, and a classification society verification, which verifies safety standards.

With more registries cutting ties, Russian shadow tankers are forced to change flags frequently, a practice known as "flag hopping," according to Ami Daniel, CEO of maritime AI firm Windward.

Russia has long used this tactic to evade the G7's $60-per-barrel price cap on its oil, which has been in place since December 2022, with Panama, Liberia, the Marshall Islands, and Malta among the favored flags used by the shadow fleet's vessels.

"This is a Whack-a-Mole game," Daniel said. Russia's shadow fleet vessels will "go to whatever random flag will take them."

Some of the Russian ships previously registered in Barbados have already switched flags to Tanzania and São Tomé and Príncipe to evade sanctions, according to the Equasis marine database.

Nevertheless, the latest sanctions have proven "very effective" in pushing shadow fleet vessels out of commercial operations, Benjamin Hilgenstock, a senior economist at the Kyiv School of Economics, said.

"The buyers of the oil, banks involved in the transactions, and port authorities fear being hit by sanctions themselves if they interact with listed tankers or their cargo," he told BI.

Financial impact

The crackdown on Russia's shadow fleet could have serious financial consequences for Moscow.

Oil exports, alongside gas, are one of the Kremlin's most important sources of cash. Oil and gas revenues accounted for around 30% of Russia's federal budget in 2024, Alexander Novak, Russia's Deputy Prime Minister, wrote in Energy Policy last week.

And Western sanctions already appear to be having an effect.

The Kyiv School of Economics said Russian oil export revenues dropped by $1.1 billion to $14.6 billion in November amid US, UK, and EU countermeasures.

"The unified 'triple pressure' strategy raises the risks and costs of violations, prevents sanctions evasion, and reinforces accountability for shipowners and third countries," it said.

Reuters reported last week that sanctions have also triggered a surge in shipping costs, prompting China and India — two of the largest importers of Russian crude — to suspend March purchases of Russian oil.

While those countries "continue to import substantial amounts of Russian oil and raise revenue for the Kremlin, they are also reacting to the stick of the US secondary sanctions," said Gonzalo Saiz Erausquin, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute's Centre for Finance and Security.

Analysts say the West must now expand the list of sanctioned shadow fleet ships to effectively hit Russia's oil revenues, as Moscow will likely be able to mitigate short-term impacts with its schemes to evade such measures.

Erausquin said Western countries should also look to crack down on third-country intermediaries, brokers, and fraudulent registries that allow substantial amounts of Russian crude to be imported.

"We have to make sure that we're making life harder for Russia's shadow fleet," Erausquin said.

• Ukraine says it's designed four upgraded versions of the Chinese-made Mavic drone.
• It said they can conduct reconnaissance behind the front lines and resist electronic warfare.
• Ukraine's military requested the tech after China limited exports and many drones were shot down.

Ukraine says it's developed upgraded versions of the Chinese-made Mavic drone after China limited its exports.

Brave1, a Ukrainian government-supported defense innovation program, told Business Insider that three domestic developers had created drones that met NATO standards, and that Ukrainian troops were already using some on the front lines.

Business Insider was unable to independently verify the claim.

The Mavic drone, designed by DJI, one of the world's largest drone manufacturers, was created for personal and commercial use but has become one of the most widely used drones on the front lines in Ukraine.

However, Ukraine has faced supply challenges.

In December, Bloomberg reported that China was limiting the export of critical components used in Ukraine's drones, including motors, batteries, and flight controllers.

This, coupled with the drone's high loss rates — up to five Mavic drones a day in some units — prompted Ukraine to look for alternatives.

New drones for Ukraine

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's minister of digital transformation, unveiled the new models in a Telegram post in December.

The four drones can carry out reconnaissance missions, Brave1 said, adding that, unlike their Chinese counterparts, the Ukrainian variants are equipped with communication systems that make them resistant to Russia's electronic warfare.

"These drones significantly enhance the situational awareness of our military, enabling them to plan more effectively and conduct operations more efficiently," it said, adding that it was "actively working on scaling up production to eventually achieve a complete replacement of Mavics."

Oleksii Kolesnyk, the founder of Reactive Drone, a Ukrainian military company that is developing one of the drones, told BI that its Shmavik drone can fly for up to 60 minutes, has an operation radius of about 9.3 miles, and can carry up to 2.2 pounds.

He said its purpose was to conduct frontline reconnaissance operations and stream live footage from the front.

Maria Korneva, a commercial director at Bravery Invest, a nonprofit, told BI that its Ukropter drone was an upgrade compared to the Mavic drone.

She said it had a heavier payload capacity of over 4 pounds, a longer flight time of up to 60 minutes, and could travel at about 46 miles per hour.

By comparison, the latest Mavic drone has a similar speed but a payload capacity half that, and a flight time of around 46 minutes, according to DJI's website.

Korneva said its Ukropter drone had been "highly" effective during trials, meeting all technical and tactical specifications, and contributed to saving Ukrainian lives in battlefield conditions.

Breaking dependency on China

Mark Cancian, a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told BI that these kinds of drones have become "absolutely vital" at this stage in the conflict.

"With the front lines stable, short-range FPV drones have become a major weapon, on par with artillery," he said.

"If Ukraine cannot get Chinese-made drones, then it needs to make its own," he added.

John Hardie, deputy director of the Russia Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Ukraine's new capability upgrade is a "good thing" for the country — assuming the claims are true.

He told BI that Ukraine's effort to reduce its dependence on China's military components is also beneficial.

However, given the Ukrainian minister's statement that some components are manufactured in Ukraine, he suspects others still come from China.

Hardie also pointed to issues around Ukraine's domestic production. "Hopefully, it can make these Ukrainian-made drones cheaply and quickly enough to keep up with demand," he said.

• An explosion at a Rheinmetall munitions factory in Spain injured six workers, local emergency services said.
• The German arms manufacturer told BI that the company saw no indication of an attack.
• Russia is suspected of being behind a plot to assassinate the CEO of Rheinmetall.

An explosion at a Rheinmetall munitions factory in Spain injured six workers on Thursday, local emergency services have said.

One person was left with serious injuries following the incident, which occurred in the southeastern Spanish city of Murcia.

Oliver Hoffmann, a spokesperson for the German arms manufacturer, told Business Insider that the cause of the explosion was still under investigation but that the company saw no indication of an attack.

Hoffmann said the site's production facilities were not damaged in the incident.

According to Spain's state register of emissions and pollutant sources, the depot's main activity is the manufacturing of explosives.

Rheinmetall has been a key military aid provider to Ukraine, supplying Kyiv with artillery ammunition, combat vehicles, tanks, and more.

Rheinmetall vehicles delivered to Ukraine include the Leopard 1 and Leopard 2 main battle tanks, the Marder and Lynx infantry fighting vehicles, and the Gepard antiaircraft tank.

The company has also helped train Ukrainian specialists in maintenance and repair tasks.

In February, Rheinmetall said it aimed to produce up to 700,000 rounds of artillery ammunition a year by 2025 at its plants in Germany, Spain, South Africa, Australia, and Hungary.

Armin Papperger, Rheinmetall's CEO, said in a March interview with the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung that the company planned to increase production capacity to 1.1 million rounds a year by 2027.

In 2024, US intelligence reportedly helped thwart a Russian plot to kill Papperger.

James Appathurai, NATO's Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Innovation, Hybrid, and Cyber, confirmed the plot at a European Parliament committee meeting earlier this week.

"What we have seen over a period of the last couple of years in particular, is incidents of sabotage taking place across NATO countries, by which I mean derailment of trains, acts of arson, attacks on politicians' property, threats to…plots to assassinate industry leaders, like publicly the head of Rheinmetall," he said.

The German newspaper Der Spiegel previously reported the Russian scheme had been spurred on by Rheinmetall's plan to establish a tank factory in Ukraine as part of a push to bolster the country's arms industry.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov rejected the reports at the time.

Russia is believed to have been behind dozens of hybrid attacks on NATO members in recent years, including a number of incidents targeting the air freight industry.

• A passenger jet collided with a Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan Washington National Airport.
• Four crew members and 60 passengers were aboard the jet, and three were aboard the helicopter.
• President Donald Trump said there were no survivors.

Sixty-seven people are presumed dead after an American Airlines flight crashed into a military helicopter Wednesday night during the jet's final approach to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

President Donald Trump confirmed there had been no survivors, calling the crash "a dark and excruciating night" for the country.

American Eagle Flight 5342, operated by PSA Airlines and flying from Wichita, Kansas, was on approach to land at the airport when it struck a UH-60 Black Hawk, officials said. Several federal agencies, including the National Transportation Safety Board, are investigating the crash.

A NTSB spokesperson told Business Insider in an email on Thursday evening that the "cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder," known as black boxes, were recovered from the Bombardier CRJ700 passenger jet.

"The recorders are at the NTSB labs for evaluation," the spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, crews are still searching the waters as part of the investigation and recovery efforts, while boats remain on the scene for security and search operations, according to the DC Fire and EMS Department.

"Our divers have searched all areas that are accessible," a statement from the department read Thursday night. On Friday, the statement said, "divers will work with NTSB to conduct additional searches to locate aircraft components, to support the investigation, and begin operations to salvage the aircraft.

Three Army crewmembers were aboard the Black Hawk from Bravo Company, 12th Aviation Battalion at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, whose identities will be withheld until their next of kin have been notified, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a Thursday morning video.

"It was a fairly experienced crew, and that was doing a required annual night evaluation," he said in the video. "They did have night vision goggles."

He said investigators deployed Wednesday night and that the 12th Aviation Battalion has an "operational pause on contingency missions" for 48 hours.

"We anticipate that the investigation will quickly be able to determine whether the aircraft was in the quarter at the right altitude at the time of the incident."

At the Thursday morning press conference, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that both aircraft had been flying in a "standard pattern" that was not unusual, with no breakdown in communication between them.

"The helicopter was aware that there was a plane in the area," he said.

Duffy added that the fuselage of the American Airlines plane was inverted in the water.

"It's been located in three different sections," he said. "It's in about waist-deep water."

A livestream taken from the Kennedy Center by EarthCam showed an explosion as the helicopter collided with the passenger plane.

A spokesperson for US Figure Skating, the country's governing body for the sport, told BI that "several members" of the organization were aboard the flight.

"These athletes, coaches, and family members were returning home from the National Development Camp held in conjunction with the US Figure Skating Championships in Wichita, Kansas," the spokesperson said.

She added: "We are devastated by this unspeakable tragedy and hold the victims' families closely in our hearts."

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, said Russian nationals were aboard the flight, according to the Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti.

At a press conference Thursday morning, Trump said he didn't know what caused the crash before laying out a series of diversity initiatives within the FAA that he suggested without evidence could have contributed to the crash.

In a video posted to the American Airlines website, CEO Robert Isom said the airline was "cooperating fully" with the NTSB's investigation of the crash.

"Anything we can do, we are doing, and right now, that means focusing on taking care of all passengers and crew involved, as well as their families," he said.

Isom said that the plane's pilot had six years of experience with PSA, and the first officer had almost two years.

Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport was closed to all aircraft after the crash and reopened around 11 a.m.

United Airlines and Southwest Airlines said they were allowing passengers booked on flights to the airport to change their travel plans without fees.

Anthony Brickhouse, an aviation expert, told BI that the crash was tragic but that he was not surprised it happened.

"We've had so many close calls with runway incursions and commercial flights almost colliding, and when something repeats over and over again, we call that a trend," he said.

"We've been trending in this direction for two or three years now, and unfortunately, tonight, it happened," he added.

Several near misses have taken place in recent years, in cities such as Austin and New York.

But this marks the first major commercial plane crash in the US since 2009, when Colgan Air Flight 3407 crashed over Buffalo, New York, killing 49 on board and one person on the ground.

Kathleen Bangs, an aviation safety analyst and former pilot, told BI that she used to fly into Reagan Washington National Airport as a regional airline pilot and that the "extremely busy" airport had challenging flying conditions, including two runways of 5,000 feet and 5,200 feet, and proximity to water.

"The conversation now will be what safety steps need to be modified to ensure there's never another similar collision in the nation's capital," she said.

This was the third major plane crash worldwide since December.

An Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer plane crashed last month, with some blaming Russian air defenses. Thirty-eight people died.

A few days later, a Boeing 737 operated by the South Korean carrier Jeju Air crashed in South Korea, killing 179 people. Two people survived.

• Russia's latest economic figures show it had a strong 2024.
• But economists are suspicious, believing its data don't stand up to scrutiny and is inflated.
• This week, Trump threatened high tariffs and more sanctions if Russia doesn't end the Ukraine war.

Economists are questioning Russia's latest economic data, as they say recently published and cited figures don't seem to match its real economic predicament.

During an economic meeting on Wednesday, President Vladimir Putin claimed that 2024 was a "strong year" for Russia.

He cited what he described as a manageable 1.7% deficit, and a 26% increase in non-oil and gas revenue to 25.6 trillion rubles, about $257.9 billion.

A day earlier, Russia's finance ministry released a report saying that the country's budget revenue in December was over 4 trillion rubles, or about $40 billion — a 28% increase compared to December 2023, and the highest level recorded since 2011.

However, some are growing skeptical of the data shared by Russian authorities.

On a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday, Elisabeth Svantesson, the finance minister of Sweden, said Putin "wants us to believe that Russia's economy is strong" and that Western sanctions aren't effective.

"But when you dig a bit deeper, you'll see that's not the case," she said, pointing to a report commissioned by the Swedish government.

That analysis, published in September by the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics, found mounting imbalances and an inconsistent policy mix in the Russian economy — including massive stimulus and subsidies amid record-high interest rates.

The report also warned that official statistics like GDP growth and inflation rates were tainted by the Kremlin's propaganda machine and "manipulated to support the narrative that the Russian economy is stable."

"It's very clear that Russia's economy isn't as strong as Putin wants us to believe," Svantesson said, pointing to capital flight and nighttime satellite photos as potential evidence.

Iikka Korhonen, head of research at the Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies, made a similar statement.

Korhonen said that Russia has largely stopped publishing its foreign trade data and fiscal data, in sharp contrast to before its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

"Of course, Putin will put a positive spin on all pieces of data," he said.

As such, the published data may be correct, he added, "but they always leave out negative data and important context."

Economists on the MMI Telegram channel, a Russian discussion group, also highlighted a December Bank of Russia report on the country's balance of payments.

On Wednesday, the group said that Russia's fiscal surplus dropped last month to its lowest level since August 2020, at an estimated $5.6 billion.

While the Bank of Russia described the fiscal surplus as "stable," the MMI Telegram channel said $5.6 billion was not enough to cover the deficit in trade in services, repayment of foreign debt, and demand for foreign assets from citizens and businesses.

It added that the falling fiscal surplus was also piling pressure on the ruble, which fell to a two-year low against the dollar in November.

In a note on Thursday, TsMAKP, a think tank linked to the Russian government, highlighted what it said appeared to be inconsistencies and miscalculations in Russia's official economic data.

It said that while reported GDP growth of 3.8-4% in 2024 appeared strong, real production activity has stagnated since the third quarter of 2023 and investment estimates appeared inflated.

At the same time, the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington DC-based think tank, has questioned Russia's finance ministry report, which said that Russia's revenue hit a record high of about $40 billion in December.

It said Russia's figures failed to account for its unsustainable defense spending, high rates of inflation, a widening deficit, and the depletion of its sovereign wealth fund.

Anders Åslund, a Swedish economist and former fellow at the Atlantic Council, said this month that Russia's financial reserves could run out before the end of the year.

Not everyone is so down on the Russian economy.

Vasily Astrov, an economist at the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, acknowledged indicators showing a slowdown in Russia's GDP growth and high inflation, but said that Russia's defense spending of 6% of its GDP could be sustainable for "quite some time."

Exiled Russian economist Vladislav Inozemtsev wrote in November that Russia's war economy isn't in imminent danger of collapse.

And Alexander Kolyandr, a financial analyst and non-resident senior scholar at the Center for European Policy Analysis, told BI in an interview last month that with all "extraordinary" factors remaining unchanged, he didn't see any economic "collapse or meltdown" in Russia.

Even so, the US tightened sanctions against Russia earlier this month, and on Wednesday, President Donald Trump threatened high tariffs and more sanctions if it doesn't end the war.

Anders Olofsgård, a deputy director at the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics, said oil and gas exports are by far the most important lubricant of the Russian economy, so global prices, the discount on Russian oil, and the ability to shut down Russia's shadow fleet are key.

Right now, however, Roman Sheremeta, an associate professor of economics at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University, said that Putin "needs to show that he can continue this war, that his economy is capable of sustaining the Kremlin war machine for the next 2-3 years."

Otherwise, he said, Putin's "future negotiation position will be drastically undermined."

• President Donald Trump granted Ross Ulbricht a full and unconditional pardon on Tuesday.
• Ulbricht was the founder of Silk Road, the online drug marketplace.
• He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 2015.

Ross Ulbricht, the founder of online drug marketplace Silk Road, received a full and unconditional pardon on Tuesday from President Donald Trump, who announced the move in a Truth Social post.

Ulbricht has been held at the US Penitentiary in Tucson since the FBI arrested him in 2013.

The FBI described Silk Road as a "digital bazaar" for illegal goods and services that buyers and sellers accessed through Tor — a network designed to conceal its users' identity and location.

The FBI said it generated hundreds of millions of dollars in sales, as well as more than $13 million in commissions.

In 2015, a judge sentenced Ulbricht, now 40, to life in prison for drug trafficking, computer hacking, and money laundering without the possibility of parole, ruling that Silk Road was "destructive to our social fabric."

Libertarian cause célèbre

Ulbricht has become a cause célèbre for the libertarian movement.

The Libertarian Party, which has long supported criminal justice reform and drug legalization, has continuously pushed for his release, viewing his life sentence as an example of government overreach.

In a speech at the Libertarian National Convention in May 2024, Trump pledged to commute Ulbricht's sentence on the first day of his administration if he was reelected president.

Trump said in his post on Tuesday that he granted Ulbricht's pardon in honor of Ulbricht's mother "and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly."

According to a 2015 Wired report, Ulbricht developed an interest in libertarian economic theory while at university and embraced the political philosophy of Ludwig von Mises, a staunch opponent of interventionism and advocate for the moral purpose of free-market capitalism.

In a letter he wrote to the trial judge in 2015, he said he created Silk Road not to seek financial gain but because he "believed at the time that people should have the right to buy and sell whatever they wanted so long as they weren't hurting anyone else."

"Silk Road was supposed to be about giving people the freedom to make their own choices, to pursue their own happiness," he added.

Ulbricht also said, "While I still don't think people should be denied this right, I never sought to create a site that would provide another avenue for people to feed their addictions."

However, according to the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, the "vast" majority of goods sold on Silk Road were illegal drugs.

Preet Bharara, the then-US Attorney for Manhattan, said at the time that: "Make no mistake: Ulbricht was a drug dealer and criminal profiteer who exploited people's addictions and contributed to the deaths of at least six young people."

Ulbricht was convicted of seven offenses after a four-week jury trial and sentenced to life in prison. He was also ordered to forfeit $183,961,921.

Trump's pardoning power

In his Truth Social post, Trump called Ulbricht's sentences "ridiculous."

In a statement on Tuesday, Angela McArdle, the Libertarian National Committee Chair, thanked Trump for following through on his promise.

"I'm proud to say that saving his life has been one of our top priorities, and that has finally paid off," she said.

"This is an incredible moment in Libertarian history," McArdle added.

On Monday, Trump also issued sweeping pardons for roughly 1,500 people related to the January 6 Capitol riot, fulfilling a campaign promise to wipe clean the records of most people connected with the riot.