Elon Musk wants to turn Twitter into a digital town square, but his much-publicized Twitter Spaces kickoff event, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announcing his run for president, struggled with technical glitches and a near half-hour delay Tuesday.

The billionaire Twitter owner said the problems were due to straining servers because so many people were trying to listen to the audio-only event. But even at their highest, the number of listeners listed topped out at around 420,000, far from the millions of viewers that televised presidential announcements attract.

Theres so many people, said host David Sacks amid the disruptions. Weve got so many people here that we are kind of melting the servers, which is a good sign.

After it concluded without further disruptions, Musk, DeSantis and Sacks played off the event as a success, with Sacks quipping its not how you start, its how you finish and we finished really strong.

Musk a day earlier dubbed the event a historic first for Twitter, saying it would be the first time something like this is happening on social media. The webcast was scheduled to start at 6 p.m. ET but nearly 30 minutes passed with users getting kicked off, hearing microphone feedback and enduring other technical problems before it finally began. The audience remained under 500,000.

DeSantis opponents had a field day with the delayed announcement.

Glitchy. Tech issues. Uncomfortable silences. A complete failure to launch. And thats just the candidate! said Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for former President and current candidate Donald Trump.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, tweeted, We had more people join when I played Among Us, referencing the popular video game.

Twitter has suffered a host of technical issues since Musk took over and fired or laid off roughly 80% of its staff including engineers tasked with keeping the site running. A day before the DeSantis event, speaking at The Wall Street Journals CEO Council Summit in London, Musk expressed confidence about Twitters future and said he is going to start adding people to the company but gave no further details.

Musk bought Twitter last fall for $44 billion. Since then, he has upended the platforms verification system, loosened its content moderation policies in line with his views as a free speech absolutist, spread misinformation and engaged with far-right figures, all the while working to attract jittery advertisers back to the platform to turn it profitable. His grand vision, he has said repeatedly, is to eventually turn Twitter into an  everything app  for everyone a digital town square where people can hear from world leaders and politicians without the need for traditional media as a go-between.

But he seems to mainly be courting conservatives and Republicans lately, referring to Democrats and liberals as infected by the woke mind virus and reinstating extremist accounts that were banned by Twitters previous administration.

Wednesdays campaign launch event with DeSantis continued the trend though it remains to be seen whether the platform can become a go-to destination for mainstream politicians when it continues to show evidence of instability. For instance, the word DeSaster was trending on Twitter Wednesday evening as users mocked the botched campaign launch.

In the world of traditional media and politics, a glitchy half-hour delay and an audience in the hundreds of thousands rather than millions, Wednesdays Twitter Spaces event might look like a failure. But in Silicon Valley, failure is often spun as positive, even essential in developing new products and improving existing ones. Twitter Spaces which Twitter launched in 2020 to compete with the then-popular audio chat site Clubhouse is generally not used for audiences in the hundreds of thousands, so in some ways it was not a surprise that the event was marred with technical problems.

Its much worse for DeSantis than it is for Musk, said Jo-Ellen Pozner, a business professor at Santa Clara University, noting that just a month ago Musks SpaceX launched a rocket that exploded minutes after its launch from Texas. After the explosion, Musk called it an exciting test launch of Starship! Learned a lot for next test launch in a few months in a tweet.

It is clearly a difficult situation for DeSantis, who wants to project competence, who wants to forestall criticism, she said. Musk has an easier out by just saying that this was the first time we tried it, it didnt work out perfectly, but next time well do much better, in the classic Silicon Valley approach to failing fast and learning more.

Pozner said it remains an open question how Twitter is going to be valued as a broad digital platform down the line.

I think will depend on, you know, how he and the top management react to this and how they spin it, she said.

After DeSantis logged off, Musk and Sacks extended an open invitation to any other presidential candidate who wants to do a Twitter Spaces event. Whether or not they get any takers could signal what the future holds for Twitter as a public square.

State-backed Chinese hackers have been targeting U.S. critical infrastructure and could be laying the technical groundwork for the potential disruption of critical communications between the U.S. and Asia during future crises, Microsoft said Wednesday.

The targets include sites in Guam, where the U.S. has a major military presence, the company said.

Hostile activity in cyberspace from espionage to the advanced positioning of malware for potential future attacks has become a hallmark of modern geopolitical rivalry.

Microsoft said in a blog post that the state-sponsored group of hackers, which it calls Volt Typhoon, has been active since mid-2021. It said organizations affected by the hacking which seeks persistent access are in the communications, manufacturing, utility, transportation, construction, maritime, information technology and education sectors.

Separately, the National Security Agency, the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and their counterparts from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Britain published a joint advisory sharing technical details on the recently discovered cluster of activity.

A Microsoft spokesman would not say why the software giant was making the announcement now or whether it had recently seen an uptick in targeting of critical infrastructure in Guam or at adjacent U.S. military facilities there, which include a major air base.

John Hultquist, chief analyst at Googles Mandiant cybersecurity intelligence operation, called Microsofts announcement potentially a really important finding.

We dont see a lot of this sort of probing from China. Its rare, Hultquist said. We know a lot about Russian and North Korean and Iranian cyber-capabilities because they have regularly done this. China has generally withheld use of the kinds of tools that could be used to seed, not just intelligence-gathering capabilities, but also malware for disruptive attacks in an armed conflict, he added.

Microsoft said the intrusion campaign placed a strong emphasis on stealth and sought to blend into normal network activity by hacking small-office network equipment, including routers. It said the intruders gained initial access through internet-facing Fortiguard devices, which are engineered to use machine-learning to detect malware.

The maker of Fortiguard devuces, Fortinet, did not immediately respond to an email seeking further details.

For years, China has conducted aggressive cyber operations to steal intellectual property and sensitive data from organizations around the globe, said CISA Director Jen Easterly, urging mitigation of affected networks to prevent possible disruption. Bryan Vorndran, the FBI cyber division assistant director, called the intrusions unacceptable tactics in the same statement.

Tensions between Washington and Beijing  which the U.S. national security establishment considers its main military, economic and strategic rival have been on the rise in recent months.

Those tensions spiked last year after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosis visit to democratically governed Taiwan, leading China, which claims the island as its territory, to launch military exercises around Taiwan.

U.S.-China relations became further strained earlier this year after the U.S. shot down a Chinese spy balloon that had crossed the United States.

There was Kevin McCarthy, saying the White House was refusing to give on spending as the speaker returned to the Capitol one morning this week. Just a few short hours later, there was McCarthy again, this time telling reporters that the sole concession that Republicans were making to the White House on the debt limit was in fact, raising the debt limit.

As representatives from the White House and the GOP-controlled House race toward a deal that would pave the way for lawmakers to lift the debt limit, one side has been eager to speak publicly about the closed-door talks trying to shape public perceptions of the negotiations.

Its not the side that typically wields the bully pulpit.

President Joe Biden has made a deliberate decision to go quiet as his team gets down to the wire in the debt-limit talks, according to White House officials. Its his deeply held view that speaking in public about negotiations does nothing to produce an outcome.

The already voluble McCarthy, by contrast, is especially chatty these days, as he aggressively tries to set the terms of the public debate. His own negotiators also engage at length with journalists on the debt-limit talks.

We have to get an agreement thats worthy of the American people, the speaker told a small clutch of reporters outside the House chamber late Wednesday afternoon, which by his aides count was at least his 12th gaggle or news conference with reporters this week alone.

In comparison, Biden has said little publicly on the standoff since he returned from an international summit earlier this week to deal with the debt disarray in Washington. He spoke for less than three minutes as he opened an Oval Office meeting with McCarthy late Monday afternoon, but aside from that, has not talked in public about the issue.

The primary messaging vehicle for the White House has been press secretary Karine Jean-Pierres daily news briefings. On Wednesday, she began by highlighting comments from Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., openly saying that Republicans were holding the debt limit hostage in talks with the White House.

This is a manufactured crisis, said Jean-Pierre, who would not elaborate on any specifics of the ongoing talks during her 46-minute briefing.

But no surrogate can be a substitute for the principal, and Biden, by relinquishing the public megaphone to Republicans this week, risks ceding the narrative over the debt-limit talks. Some Democrats signaled that the White Houses current communications strategy was due for an adjustment.

The president needs to be more forward-leaning in making his case, Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., said Wednesday. He continued: But the media is treating as reasonable a position that is inherently unreasonable. The position that Kevin McCarthy has taken is extreme. Hes leveraging the threat of default to export political concession that he could never have achieved through the normal democratic process.

The White House has defended its communications approach, noting that Biden has made his policy priorities clear for months and that by taking a step back from the limelight, he was letting the negotiators have space to maneuver.

I feel strongly by saying this: The president is certainly not media shy, Jean-Pierre said Wednesday, as she chuckled slightly. The chief spokeswoman for the White House noted that Biden spoke on Monday (albeit briefly) and on Sunday at a news conference in Hiroshima, Japan, and that the president has been very clear where he stands on what Congress should be doing, which is dealing with the debt limit something that is their constitutional duty.

Earlier in the debt-limit talks, Biden was not shy about hammering on so-called MAGA Republicans, most notably holding an event in suburban New York City one day after his first Oval Office meeting with the top four congressional leaders on resolving the standoff.

But this week, the president decided not to speak publicly after he sat down one-on-one with McCarthy because, Biden believed, that would be more productive in trying to get a debt-limit outcome, said one White House official, who requested anonymity to discuss internal West Wing deliberations.

A second White House official also emphasized that Biden did not think it made much sense to be public about negotiations when the talks were productive, but no deal had yet been reached.

Its my expectation that if Republicans continue to play games with the American economy, threaten default and drive us into a very dangerous situation that well begin to hear from the Biden administration, if not the president himself, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said Wednesday when asked whether the president himself needed to be more outspoken on the ongoing talks.

Jeffries added: I have full confidence in the goodness of President Biden, who wants to find a resolution that protects everyday Americans and is engaging in good-faith discussions to try to arrive at that conclusion.

Its also a tale of two different negotiating styles.

Bidens team, all veteran Washington operators who have spent most of their public service careers as senior aides, have been perennially loathe to speak to the press, particularly in the middle of tense and unfinished negotiations. The White House team is being led by Steve Ricchetti, counselor to the president, legislative affairs director Louisa Terrell, and Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young, who spent much of her career as staff director of the House Appropriations Committee.

On the other side, McCarthys emissaries are Reps. Garret Graves of Louisiana and Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, who are fluent in talking to the press as elected officials and as key allies of the speaker.

What Im telling you is that every once in a while, I feel like Im buying a used car, Graves said of dealing with the White House during one 42-minute gaggle with journalists on Tuesday afternoon, when negotiations seemed to be at a standstill.

Still, there are times when even the most talkative people go quiet. After returning from the White House late Wednesday afternoon from another negotiating session, Graves and McHenry hurried away from reporters pestering them for details a notable contrast to the past several days.

___

Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed to this report.

The U.S. economy grew at a lackluster 1.3% annual rate from January through March as businesses wary of an economic slowdown trimmed their inventories, the government said Thursday in a slight upgrade from its initial estimate.

The government had previously estimated that the economy grew at a 1.1% annual rate last quarter.

The Commerce Departments revised measure of growth in the nations gross domestic product the economys total output of goods and services marked a deceleration from 3.2% annual growth from July through September and 2.6% from October through December.

Despite the first-quarter slowdown, consumer spending, which accounts for around 70% of Americas economic output, rose at a 3.8% annual pace, the most in nearly two years and an encouraging sign of household confidence. Specifically, spending on physical goods, like appliances and cars, rose 6.3%, also the fastest growth rate since April-June of last year.

A cutback in business inventories shaved 2.1 percentage points off January-March growth.

The steady slowdown in economic growth is a consequence of the Federal Reserves aggressive drive to tame inflation, with 10 interest rate hikes over the past 14 months. Across the economy, the Feds rate increase have elevated the costs of auto loans, credit card borrowing and business loans.

With mortgage rates having doubled over the past year, the real estate market has already taken a beating: Investment in housing fell at a 0.2% annual rate from January through March. In April, sales of existing homes were 23% below their level a year earlier.

As the Feds rate hikes have gradually slowed growth, inflation has eased from the four-decade high it reached last year. Still, consumer prices were still up 4.9% in April from a year earlier well above the Feds 2% target.

The economys slowdown is widely expected to lead to a recession later this year.

In addition to higher borrowing rates, the economys other obstacles include a cutback in lending as banks conserve cash after three big bank failures in recent months.

There is also the looming risk that House Republicans will refuse to raise the statutory limit on what the government can borrow, if President Joe Biden and the Democrats dont agree to sharp spending cuts. That would leave the Treasury unable for the first time to pay all its bills on time. Economists say a protracted debt default would cause downgrades of the U.S. credit and likely trigger a recession deeper and sooner than the one that is already expected.

For now, though, most sectors of the economy other than housing are showing surprising resilience. Retail sales have continued to rise. So have orders for manufactured goods.

Most significantly, the nations job market remains fundamentally solid. In April, employers added 253,000 jobs, and the unemployment rate matched a 54-year low. The pace of layoffs remains comparatively low. And job openings, though declining, are still well above pre-pandemic levels.

Even as Silicon Valley magnate Sam Altman captures headlines with his world-eating artificial intelligence startup OpenAI, his side project Worldcoin continues to attract eyeballsliterally.

Worldcoin, if youre unfamiliar, anticipates a future where A.I. bots are indistinguishable from humans online, and the global economy has been disrupted by automation. To solve this, the company proposes scanning every adults iris with a plastic orb to verify ones personhood, rewarding them with a crypto token in return that could one day replace traditional incomes.

It sounds like a sci-fi movie, but investors are taking it seriously. Today, Worldcoins developer, Tools for Humanity, announced a $115 million Series C funding round led by crypto-native venture fund Blockchain Capital, with other investors including a16z crypto, Bain Capital Crypto, and Distributed Global. The company declined to provide a valuation.

As we embark on the age of A.I., it is imperative that individuals are able to maintain personal privacy while proving their humanness, said Alex Blania, the CEO and cofounder of Tools for Humanity, in a statement. In doing so we can help ensure that everyone can realize the financial benefits that A.I. is poised to deliver.

Worldcoin began in 2019, with Sam Altmanfresh off his stint as the president of the influential accelerator Y Combinatorrecruiting the fintech entrepreneur Max Novendstern and physics Ph.D. student Alex Blania as founding members. Novendstern left the company in 2021.

In its early days, the founders positioned Worldcoin as a company focused on universal basic income, or UBI, where users would be scanned, and the resulting crypto token rewardsalso called Worldcoinwould become a new global currency. The project previously raised a $100 million Series B in 2022 at a $3 billion valuation from a16z and Khosla Ventures.

Although Worldcoins founders have stated their long-term goal is to create a fully decentralized system, the development of the project is now managed by Tools for Humanity, with plans to eventually spin out control to a nonprofit foundation.  

Despite its hefty backing, Worldcoin hit snags during the bear market, with plummeting crypto pricesalong with media reports alleging exploitation and corruption in the projects rollout in developing marketsextending its beta testing period. The rising hype of A.I., and especially Sam Altmans ChatGPT, provided Worldcoin with renewed purpose.

In March, Worldcoin launched a new feature called World ID, a protocol that would allow other platforms to use Worldcoins proof of personhood system to act as a kind of digital credentialing system to tell humans and bots apart. Its team argues that iris scans are the only effective way to prove someone is a unique person, with alternatives like fingerprints, face identifications, and state-issued licenses either too hackable or unscalable.

Then in May, Worldcoin launched its World App, a wallet that includes both its World ID for users along with the ability to hold Worldcoin tokens, along with other cryptocurrencies. Some critics pointed out that Worldcoin, with its new emphasis on combatting the pernicious effects of A.I., is addressing problems created by Altmans other venture.

Courtesy of Tools for Humanity

Even with its new funding, Worldcoins main challenge will be to convince billions of people to be scanned by its orbcurrently, fewer than 2 million have signed up. The main concern for onlookers is still privacy, with many balking at the idea of volunteering biometric data to a private company. While Tools for Humanity members tout their privacy-first technological innovations, black markets have emerged to sell World ID credentials.  

Worldcoin also faces regulatory challenges, with the project deciding not to launch its token in the U.S. as crypto legislation stalls. The app is also not available in other markets that have banned crypto, such as China.

Tools for Humanity aims to launch its token later this year.

Pershing Square founder Bill Ackman has warned that his investment firms rival, Icahn Enterprises, could prove to be another Archegos, a hedge fund whose spectacular 2021 implosion caused losses of over $10 billion for Wall Street banks.

In early May, Hindenburg Research accused the holding company and its famous controlling owner, Carl Icahn, of employing Ponzi-like economics by paying off existing retail investors with unsustainably large dividends funded by new investors buying its stock exchange-listed depositary units.

Ever since the allegations were leveled by Hindenburg, which stated from the outset it was selling Icahn Enterprises short in a bet its price would fall, the holding has shed half its market value and is now worth $8.9 billionless than Ackmans $10 billion Pershing Square.

On Wednesday, the Pershing Square billionaire said he was fascinated by the accusations and in particular the discovery of personal loans taken out by Icahn and secured against the depositary units in his eponymous investment holding, since it could prove highly unstable.

This, he said, reminds me somewhat of Archegos, where Wall Streets prime brokers were left in the dark about just how much money their over-leveraged client was borrowing around town. 

If Icahn were to sell any shares, the stock would likely drop precipitously as the overhang of additional sales and the further resulting loss in confidence would catalyze other shareholders to exit before the deluge, Ackman wrote.

Bill Hwangs Archegos family office collapsed like a house of cards two years ago, resulting in numerous banks losing money, most notably Credit Suisse. The Zürich lender, caught holding the proverbial bag, suffered a $5.5 billion hit that helped cement its status as Europes worst-managed bank and proved a key contributor to its ultimate downfall in March. 

Hwang is now being prosecuted for fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which warned that even a single hedge fund like Archegos can have far-reaching implications for investors given enough banks willing to lend it money for speculation.

Icahn Enterprises could not immediately be reached by Fortune for comment.

Ackman said he was neither long nor short on Icahn Enterprises, but merely was watching with interest from the sidelines how Icahns precariously financed margin loans would play out.

All it takes is for one lender to break ranks and liquidate shares or attempt to hedge, before the house comes falling down, he wrote. The patsy is the last lender to liquidate.

Icahn blames Federal Reserves QE for his failed bets

On May 10, Icahn Enterprises reported it swung to a quarterly net loss of $270 million from a profit of $323 million a year earlier amid a negative return of 4.1%.

Despite the poor Q1 performance, the sharp drop in the price of its depositary units and, most importantly, Hindenburgs allegations of impropriety, CEO David Willets ended the investor call after just 12 minutes following his teams scripted remarks. Apparently there are no questions, we thank you for your time, he said.

Hindenburg went on the attack once more the following day after filings revealed that Icahn had now pledged nearly 203 million units against his margin loans, up from 181 million previously, representing a near-term critical threat to unitholders.

The deal Icahn is making to retail investors is, essentially, buy ~$9 worth of value for ~$32 and Ill give you back $2 of your own money per quarter, for free, it wrote, referring to the quarterly dividend payout. The price of Icahn Enterprises depositary units have since further declined, closing on Wednesday just below $24 each.

A week later, an analysis by the Financial Times showed Icahns investment portfolio had in fact lost money ever year since 2014. In the past six year alone, the newspaper found $6 billion in gains failed to offset $8.8 billion from losses on bearish bets. 

Speaking to the FT, Icahn acknowledged he had made mistakes and failed to heed his own advice and trading strategies that would have limited his losses. I obviously believed the market was in for great trouble, he explained, adding he was foiled by the Federal Reserves quantitative easing that helped bolster equity prices. 

Companies looking to protect themselves from financial ruin must do more to protect themselves from corporate psychopaths like Bernie Madoffsuch is the conclusion of a new research article published this month in the International Journal of Market Research.

Psychopathya neuropsychiatric disorder that features a lack of emotions and empathy, usually resulting in poor behavioral control and antisocial behavioris often associated with criminality.

But a subtype of psychopathsdubbed successful psychopathsoften go undetected because theyre better able to control their aggressive, anti-social impulsive inclinations than typical criminal psychopaths, writes Clive Boddy, a research methodologist at Anglia Ruskin University in the U.K. and a pioneer in the field of corporate psychopathy.

Psychopaths are generally charming and intelligent, at first blush and successful psychopaths all the more so. Because of this, theyre able to work relatively undetected in corporate society, according to Boddy. Such individuals have also been referred to as industrial, organizational, business, workplace, and executive psychopaths.

Psychopathic leadership may be discovered in senior roles in the financial services sector, which can impact economies and influence unethical practices found in financial markets, he writes. Boddy encourages companies to identify these leaders before they ascend to power in their institutions.  

This article arguably adds to critical contemporary views of prevailing capitalism by illustrating the traits, behavior, and outcomes of one of its more infamous 20th century leaders, he writes, referencing Madoffone-time chairman of Nasdaq and mastermind of historys largest Ponzi schemewhose behavior he explores.

How to identify corporate psychopaths

Boddy uses documented observations of Madoffs behavior, which he examines via two psychopathy assessments used by psychologists. Among the traits of psychopaths, according to the the assessments:

  1. Superficial charm and apparent intelligence
  2. Untruthful and insincere nature
  3. Cheating personality
  4. Totally egocentric personality
  5. Has no remorse about how their actions harm other employees
  6. Emotionally shallow
  7. Unresponsive to personal interactions
  8. Sense of uniqueness
  9. Sense of entitlement
  10. Sense of invulnerability
  11. Detached
  12. Uncommitted
  13. Chaotic sense of self

When Maddoff is assessed, he appears to embody, to a very close degree, all behavioral traits of psychopathy mention in the assessments, in addition to many others, Boddy writes, mentioning British media tycoon Robert Maxwell, WorldCom co-founder Bernard Ebbers, former Sunbeam CEO Albert Dunlap, and Enron founder, CEO, and chairman Ken Lay as other potential corporate psychopaths.

Psychopathically led organizations like Maxwells Mirror group, Lays Enron, Dunlaps Sunbeam, Ebbers WorldCom, and Madoffs investment firm ultimately fail and/or go bankrupt, he writes. Typically, investors, pension funds, pension holders and other stakeholders are impoverished, often severely.

Market researchers could help help identify business leadership that is non-ruthless, socially responsible, [and] non-polluting (i.e., non-psychopathic), and offer this information to consumers, pension funds, and other investment firms to help them make better-informed decisions, Boddy suggests.

Improved and more sustainable societal outcomes may result from this, such as helping to avoid further global financial crises, he concludes.

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