Category: Business Insider

• I visited two Costco stores, one in the Midwest and one in New York City.
• New York City's Costco store was smaller, which made it feel more crowded.
• The prices and offerings were mostly identical, though the food courts featured different sodas.

As someone who grew up in Wisconsin and moved to New York City a decade ago, I enjoy analyzing the similarities and differences between the two regions I call home.

As part of a series comparing nationwide chains like Target and Trader Joe's in the Midwest and New York City, I visited Costco locations in Wisconsin and Manhattan. My Gold Star membership, which costs $60 per year, grants me entry to all Costco stores.

Costco remains a popular brand across the US and the world, offering bulk items at lower prices than many retailers. Its net sales added up to $237.71 billion in the 2023 fiscal year, a 6.7% increase from 2022.

While Costco stores are pretty standardized, which I found when I visited a Costco in Iceland, I was still interested to see if there were any regional variations in their prices, items, and shopping experiences.

Here are the most surprising differences I noticed.

During a trip home to Wisconsin in November, I visited a Costco store in Grafton, Wisconsin, measuring 151,000 square feet.

A large technology section was set up at the entrance.

There were also tables full of winter coats, sweaters, and other apparel.

The store wasn't too crowded on the Thursday afternoon I visited, with plenty of room to move in the aisles.

The Kirkland bakery sold cookies, pastries, and birthday cakes.

The produce was located in a walk-in refrigerated section.

The samples were plentiful, with Costco employees handing out veggie crisps, granola-bar pieces, and cups of sparkling water.

I spotted a few local products like cheddar cheese curds produced in Ellsworth, Wisconsin.

This Costco also stocked coffee beans roasted in Door County, Wisconsin.

The lines for both self checkout and cashiers were only a few carts deep and moved quickly.

The food court was located beyond the checkout counters and sold pizza, chicken bakes, sandwiches, hot dogs, and desserts like churros and ice-cream sundaes.

A sign on the window notified customers about potential allergy issues.

The soda fountain included Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Tropicana lemonade, and Starry lemon-lime soda.

Next to the food court, there were plenty of tables where customers could sit and eat before heading to their next destination.

When I returned to New York City, I visited Manhattan's sole Costco location in East Harlem.

The Costco store is part of East River Plaza, a shopping complex that also includes stores like Aldi, Marshalls, and Ashley Homestore.

Unlike in the Midwest, where free parking lots are the norm at most stores, parking in the East River Plaza's garage costs $6 for up to two hours.

People were already lined up and waiting to get in when I arrived a few minutes before the store opened at 10 a.m. on a Friday in January.

At 110,000 square feet, New York City's Costco store was noticeably smaller than the one I visited in the Midwest.

At times, I found it difficult to navigate my cart through the crowds and smaller aisles.

New York's Costco store had many of the same warm clothing items on display.

There was a large selection of cheeses, but no Wisconsin cheese curds.

Some signs varied slightly between stores — for example, a sign at the Midwest Costco indicated "fresh produce," while the New York Costco just said "produce."

The New York City Costco also had a kosher bakery section where cakes and pastries were prepared in accordance with Jewish dietary laws.

Costco's famous $4.99 rotisserie chickens cost the same at both stores, though they flew off the shelves in New York as shoppers waited for each fresh batch.

I was surprised there weren't any samples available to try, but a Costco employee later told me that the stations hadn't been set up yet so soon after opening.

Both the cashier and self-checkout lines stretched out into the aisles with large numbers of people jostling for spots.

Above the checkout lines, signs advertised the food court's offerings, which were identical to the Wisconsin Costco's menu and prices.

One difference I noticed in the food court was that unlike in the Midwest, no allergy information was posted on the display case.

Additionally, the soda fountain in Manhattan offered Brisk iced tea instead of Starry.

Compared to the Midwest, New York City's Costco felt like a more cramped, hectic shopping experience to me, but the low prices and huge selection make it worth the trip in any region.

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• Bernie Sanders has become a towering figure in American politics. It wasn't always that way.
• He got his start in government as a small-town mayor, decades before his 2016 and 2020 campaigns.
• Here's everything to know about the Democratic socialist senator.

Bernie Sanders is known today as perhaps the most important leader on the American left. It wasn't always that way.

Long before his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns helped steer the Democratic Party leftward, the Vermont senator was a lonely voice in American politics — the rare politician willing to call himself a "socialist" in a country defined heavily by its opposition to the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Sanders was born on September 8, 1941 in Brooklyn, New York to a working class Jewish family. His father was an immigrant from Poland. He attended James Madison High School, where he was a track star, and graduated in 1959, eight years before his present-day colleague Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

He later attended the University of Chicago, where he was famously arrested for protesting against segregation in Chicago public schools. He graduated in 1964, spent some time on an Israeli kibbutz, and moved to Vermont in 1968.

From mayor of Burlington to the longest-serving independent in congressional history

Sanders's initial foray into politics took place far outside the Democratic party: In the 1970s, he ran for both governor and US Senate multiple times under the banner of the socialist "Liberty Union" party.

His first political victory came in 1981, when he was elected mayor of Burlington — the largest city in Vermont — by a mere 10 votes. He would go on to serve four terms, easily winning reelection each time.

After coming second in a three-way race for Vermont's sole House seat in 1988, he was elected to Congress in 1990 with significant Democratic support. Despite that, he maintained his status as an independent, and would later earn the title of the longest-serving independent in congressional history.

Sanders has been an avowed socialist the entire time, and was forthright in defending that position even when the Soviet Union still existed.

"I am a socialist and everyone knows that," Sanders said in 1990. "They also understand that my kind of democratic socialism has nothing to do with authoritarian communism."

Sanders was elected to the Senate in 2006 and was reelected by overwhelming margins in 2012 and 2018.

The 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns

In April 2015, Sanders took perhaps the most impactful step of his career — announcing that he would run for president, challenging former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the 2016 Democratic nomination under the slogan "A Future To Believe In."

Running on a platform that included Medicare for All, addressing income inequality, and enacting campaign finance reform, Sanders helped awaken a movement on the American left that persists to this day, inspiring the rise of figures like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Though he lost his bitterly fought primary against Clinton that year, he demonstrated that there was a robust appetite for more left-wing economic proposals than the Democratic Party had long offered. In the years between his 2016 run and 2020 campaign, several other potential Democratic presidential contenders embraced Sanders's proposals, especially Medicare for All.

In 2020, Sanders ran again, ultimately coming in second to now-President Joe Biden in the primary. He dropped out on April 8, 2020, roughly a month after the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Who Sanders is today — and what he's fighting for

Since his 2020 campaign, Sanders has assumed a more institutional role in the United States Senate.

During the first two years of Biden's presidency, he served as the chairman of the Budget Committee, a perch that afforded him a key role in shaping Biden's domestic agenda, including the ill-fated "Build Back Better" social spending bill that laid the groundwork for the Inflation Reduction Act.

Since 2023 — a period of divided government — Sanders has been the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, a perch he's used to take on corporations while pushing proposals such as a 32-hour workweek and a $17 federal minimum wage.

He's also been especially outspoken against Israel since the October 7 Hamas attacks, calling for conditions on US aid to the country and voting against bills that don't include those conditions.

Sanders is worth at least $2 million and owns three homes, according to numerous reports. Much of that wealth has come from book sales, a frequent source of outside income for lawmakers with high profiles.

In 2022, for example, Sanders nearly doubled his income via book royalties for his latest book, "It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism."

"I wrote a best-selling book," he told the New York Times in 2019. "If you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too."

The 82-year-old Vermont senator, the second-oldest US senator behind the 90-year-old Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, has not yet said whether he will seek reelection in 2024.

If he chooses to run, he will essentially be a lock for reelection. If he chooses to retire, several candidates may seek to replace him, including Democratic Rep. Becca Balint.

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• The Supreme Court rejected Elon Musk's bid to get rid of his 'Twitter sitter.'
• He has to get legal approval for any X posts about Tesla as part of an SEC agreement.
• Musk argued it limits his free speech, but the court shot him down.

The Supreme Court isn't going to step in to help Elon Musk get rid of his "Twitter sitter."

The court on Monday rejected an appeal by the billionaire Tesla CEO over a previous settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission which requires Musk to get legal approval for any posts he makes on X about Tesla.

Musk settled with the SEC in 2018 after he tweeted he had the "funding secured" to take Tesla private in a deal that never came to pass.

He filed a petition with the Supreme Court to undo the settlement in December, arguing it limited his free speech.

Business Insider has reached out to X and Tesla for comment.

The Tesla boss — who also runs SpaceX and X itself — has been no stranger to feuds with government officials.

He's raged against the SEC, called Joe Biden a "damp sock puppet in human form," and picked a fight this year with one of Brazil's top judges.

Meanwhile, the SEC reportedly is opening up a new line of investigation against Musk, Bloomberg reported. This time, the agency is probing Tesla's claims about its self-driving tech.

That tech has also come under fire from federal regulators, who said last week they had linked Tesla's Autopilot feature to hundreds of crashes.

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• AI is being used in the understaffed mental-health-care field to help providers.
• AI-powered software can suggest treatments through mobile apps and analyze therapy sessions.
• This article is part of "Build IT," a series about digital tech trends disrupting industries.

The fusion of human ingenuity and machine intelligence is offering an innovative approach to personalized mental-health care. By leveraging AI technology, clinicians and behavioral-health-care facilities can provide tailored treatments for people with conditions such as depression and addiction. They can also use AI to assess the quality of their services and find ways to improve as providers of mental-health care.

These advancements also bring up important ethical and privacy considerations. As technology becomes more involved in mental-health care, ensuring data security, confidentiality, and equitable access to services must be top priorities.

How an AI-powered mobile app provides treatment

Dr. Christopher Romig, the director of innovation at the mental-health clinic Stella, said he saw great potential with AI "aiding in early diagnosis, personalized treatment plans, and monitoring patient progress."

There's a reason for this anticipated gain in momentum, he added: "Because there's such a huge shortage in this country of mental-health-care providers, AI is going to be a key component moving forward in terms of support and interventions."

Click Therapeutics, a biotechnology company that develops AI-powered software for medical treatments and interventions, helps patients through a mobile app. The software can work independently or in conjunction with pharmacotherapies to treat conditions such as depression, migraines, and obesity.

The company's algorithm collects and analyzes patient data, including symptom severity and sleep-wake cycles, from the app. It uses this information to identify patterns and correlations to provide tailored treatment strategies.

It also leverages digital biomarkers such as smartphone sensors. For example, the sensors can monitor a patient's heart rate to detect high stress; the algorithm can then recommend mindfulness exercises, relaxation techniques, or cognitive-behavioral-therapy modules within the app. "It's bona fide therapeutics that are changing the brain," Shaheen Lakhan, the chief medical officer of Click Therapeutics, told Business Insider.

Patients can share these insights with their healthcare providers to give a more comprehensive understanding of their conditions and behaviors. The metrics can inform treatment decisions and improve care results. "You're the active ingredient, meaning you have to engage in it," Daniel Rimm, the head of product, said.

In January, Click Therapeutics announced the Food and Drug Administration would help accelerate the development of the company's software for treating schizophrenia. Research suggests that this use case could significantly benefit from digital therapeutics.

Dr. Haig Goenjian, the principal investigator and medical director at CenExel CNS, told BI that patients who used prescription digital therapeutics in a schizophrenia-focused study said the approach "changed the way they socialize" and "that they are better able to navigate their schizophrenia symptoms to function in the real world."

"At the end of our studies, many patients asked how they can continue to use this digital therapeutic," he added.

How an AI platform is helping mental-health-care providers improve their services

The AI platform Lyssn is another tech-driven tool for mental-health services. It provides on-demand training modules for clients such as behavioral-health-care providers who want to improve engagement and sessions with their patients.

Providers can record therapy sessions with the consent of their patients and use Lyssn's AI tech to evaluate factors such as speech patterns and tone from both parties to better understand how to effectively converse and improve their approach to sessions.

"There's a need for more, and there's a need for better," Lyssn's cofounder and chief psychotherapy-science officer, Zac Imel, said, referring to the countrywide shortage of mental-health workers.

Imel and Lyssn's chief technology officer, Michael Tanana, said it's hard to evaluate the quality of service being provided because sessions between mental-health-care professionals and patients are private and, therefore, difficult to monitor. Lyssn aims to hold providers accountable for improved care, especially because "the quality of mental-health care is highly variable," Imel said.

Tanana, who also cofounded Lyssn, added that "we need ways to ensure quality" as more people seek access to mental-health services. The developers at Lyssn keep this in mind as they train their AI tech to recognize both problematic and successful conversation styles, Imel said.

For example, Lyssn can analyze a provider's responses during conversations that require cultural sensitivity; this includes gauging how curious they are about the client's experience and whether they're anxious when talking about such topics. Based on its evaluation, the platform can give providers immediate feedback on their skills and suggest certain training and tools to help them learn and improve.

Darin Carver, a licensed therapist and assistant clinical director at Weber Human Services, uses Lyssn to improve patient outcomes. "Clinicians have near-immediate access to session-specific information about how to improve their clinical work," he told BI.

He added that supervisors also have access to skills-based feedback generated from session reports, which they use to transform fuzzy recollections from clinicians into hard facts about which skills they used and need improvement.

Carver said feedback and advanced analytics are essential treatment decisions. "We can drill down to what our real training needs are and which clinicians and areas need help," he said. "It's been a game changer."

Concerns with AI in mental health

There's still a need for human-led regulation when using AI in mental-health services. AI algorithms can perpetuate biases and stereotypes from the data they're trained on.

To account for issues, Lyssn creates a detailed annual report that evaluates the performance of its training and quality-assurance models for helping people from historically marginalized communities. The company also partners with leading universities to assess the tech's multicultural competency.

Stringent compliance regulations are also needed to protect patient privacy and confidentiality. Lyssn, for instance, uses encrypted data transfers and storage, two-factor authentication, and regular external compliance audits to help thwart data leaks. Now that tech-driven care is evolving, Carver said, mental-health professionals have a duty to ethically use AI to improve people's health and well-being.

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• The US economy already looks like it's in a recession, according to Danielle DiMartino Booth.
• The chief strategist of QI Research pointed to weakness in the job market, with layoffs rising.
• She said that puts the economy in a precarious state, especially with US debt-taking already looking similar to China's.

The US economy is already in a downturn — and it could be following in the footsteps of China as the government assumes a growing amount of debt to prop up growth, according to veteran forecaster Danielle DiMartino Booth.

The chief strategist of QI Research has warned for months that the US economy is already in a recession, despite Wall Street's upbeat outlook for a soft-landing. But a downturn is already evident in the weakening job market, Booth said, pointing recent downward revisions in monthly job growth figures.

The job market remains on solid footing by historical standards. The economy added a more-than-expected 303,000 jobs in March, while the unemployment rate remained near a record-low. 

But new payrolls were revised slightly lower for the month of February, falling to just 270,000. Meanwhile, layoffs and unemployment have inched higher in recent months, with total discharges rising to 1.7 million in February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"These revisions, they keep pushing us back further and further from where we thought we were," Booth said in a recent interview with Fox Business. "It seems like every time companies report their earnings, they're doing it with a kicker that says hey, we're going to lay off 2,000 people or 1,500 people or whatever it is."

Layoffs could end up rising from 150,000 to 370,000 by the end of the year, Booth predicted in a previous interview. 

Other economists also foresee a weaker labor market, which raises the risk of a recession. The economy could enter a hard-landing by the end of the year, causing the unemployment rate could surge to 5%, top economist David Rosenberg recently predicted.

The economy is already in a rocky position, especially when considering ballooning US debt levels, Booth added. Government debt-taking makes the US economy look precariously similar to China's, she said, where state-owned enterprises once accounted for as much as 60% of the nation's GDP, according to a 2019 estimate from FactSet.

"It is not different in any way shape or form," Booth said on the similarities between America's and China's economies. "Right now the public sector is sucking the life out of the private sector … We have to spend less as a country to let the private sector really come out and drive the economy."

The federal debt balance is at all-high of $34.5 trillion, according to Treasury Department data. Ballooning debt levels could eventually spark an array of problems for the economy, experts have warned, including higher inflation, greater market volatility, and a lower quality of life for Americans.

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• Walmart CEO Doug McMillon received total compensation of $26.9 million in the last fiscal year.
• The median compensation for associates was $27,642, according to Walmart's annual proxy statement.
• Since 2009, McMillon has received a combined $136 million for his work as a Walmart executive.

The CEO of the world's largest company just had another very good year.

Walmart's Doug McMillon received total compensation last year of more than $26.9 million, up $1.6 million from the year before, according to the company's annual proxy statement filed Thursday with the SEC.

The pay package consisted of $1.5 million in base salary, $19.6 million in stock awards, and $5.8 million in other compensation.

It's a sizable increase from his first wage job unloading trucks for the retailer earning $6.50 an hour in 1984, which would be about $19.79 in today's dollars.

The 57-year-old Arkansas native is now in charge of 2.1 million workers across more than 10,000 retail stores around the globe, and annual sales of $648 billion — that's more people and higher sales than any other private employer in the world.

Of those 2 million-plus workers, the median employee was paid $27,642 last year, up 1.8 percent from last year. McMillon's compensation is 976 times that amount.

By comparison, Target CEO Brian Cornell's most recently disclosed compensation package was $17.6 million, while Craig Jelinek made $16.8 million in his final year as Costco CEO. Their pay ratios were 680 and 336, respectively.

Under a new calculation that companies are required to disclose as of last year, McMillon saw his net worth grow by nearly $47.5 million last year after adjustments to recognize the fair value of his stock awards.

Since 2009, Walmart has paid McMillon a combined total of nearly $163 million for his work as an executive. Prior to becoming CEO, McMillon was in charge of the corporation's international division from 2009 to 2014, and head of Sam's Club from 2005 to 2009.

McMillon now owns more than 5.1 million shares of Walmart stock, worth $306 million at Friday's closing price.

Do you work at Walmart? Contact Dominick Reuter via email or text/call/Signal at 646-768-4750. Responses will be kept confidential, and Business Insider strongly recommends using a personal email and a non-work device when reaching out.

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• Mohamed El-Erian named three key risks that will determine where US growth is headed in 2024 through 2025.
• That includes changes to the Fed's inflation target and low-income consumer spending.
• Investors will also watch for a balance between technological innovation and geopolitical tension.

If Wall Street was wrong about recession odds in 2023 and 2024, forecasting for next year won't be any easier, Cambridge economist Mohamed El-Erian wrote in Project Syndicate. 

In his view, chances of a US soft-landing scenario still remain strong for the near-term, but there are three key risks that will determine how likely this really is.

First, all eyes are on the Federal Reserve as to whether it will double down in its 2% inflation chase, or if it can live with a slightly higher rate.

According to El-Erian, the central bank's fixation on this figure could trap it between a rock and a hard place, in the case that US growth starts slowing before the target is reached.

In fact, the first quarter is already showing signs of this, with the latest GDP reading declining markedly against hotter-than-expected inflation. That has led to "stagflationary" alarm on Wall Street, a situation the Fed could only combat by hiking interest rates higher.

Since last year, El-Erian has warned 2024's inflation would get stuck between the 3%-4% mark, and called on the Fed to readjust its target a percentage higher; otherwise, the central bank risks crushing the economy to achieve its goal, he's said before.

Second, America's growth trajectory will also depend on consumer spending, but especially among lower-income households. Though US consumption has generally stayed strong, lower-income brackets have taken the brunt of a declining environment. The cohort is increasingly strained by higher debt and eroded savings.

"Given high interest rates and some creditors' loss of enthusiasm, this cohort's willingness to consume will hinge on whether the labor market remains tight," El-Erian wrote.

Third, US growth is at the mercy of where the broader narrative goes — which could either mean an innovative boost or a international rupture:

"While technological advances promise a new favorable supply shock that could unlock higher growth and drive down inflation, geopolitical developments could do the opposite, as well as limit the scope for macroeconomic policy," he said. 

For instance, while technology such as generative AI and sustainable energy could mean transformative growth for at least a few years, international strife could spark stagflationary instability — such as in the case that crude surges over $100 a barrel, El-Erian wrote.

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• Kari Lake is the all-but-certain GOP nominee in Arizona, a key battleground state this cycle.
• But she's spent much of this cycle traveling out of state — including to Mar-a-Lago.
• According to one report, even Trump is miffed by Lake's travel schedule.

Democrats have long pointed out Arizona GOP Senate candidate Kari Lake's frequent out-of-state travel. Now, Donald Trump has apparently taken notice as well.

According to the Washington Post, the former president is annoyed by Lake's frequent jaunts to Mar-a-Lago, Trump's resort and political home base in Palm Beach, Florida.

At one point, according to the report, Trump even "gently suggested to Lake that she should leave the club and hit the campaign trail" in Arizona, where she's set to face Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego in a high-stakes Senate race this fall.

While not the most important Senate race this cycle — Republicans have generally focused more on unseating incumbent Democratic senators in Ohio and Montana — Lake's race still matters. If she's able to make the race more competitive, it increases Republicans' chances of retaking the chamber, which could make or break Trump's ability to govern if he wins a second term.

Spokespeople for Trump and Lake did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment. A Trump spokesman did not directly address the Post's reporting, but told the outlet that Lake is a "Smart and Fearless Leader who will WIN in Arizona." A senior advisor to Lake told the Post that the Senate candidate is "running a strong campaign."

Yet Lake has traveled out of state numerous times for speaking engagements and campaign events in the midst of her current campaign. On a semi-regular basis, the Arizona Democratic Party has sent out newsletters entitled "Where In The World Is Kari Lake?" highlighting the candidate's latest travel.

During one recent appearance before a Republican crowd in Idaho, Lake even appeared to backtrack on her stated opposition to Arizona's newly instated abortion law, saying that "unfortunately" it was not being enforced.

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• George Santos will be making Cameo videos as his drag persona, Kitara Ravache, he said.
• Santos previously denied having been a drag queen despite evidence of him dressed in drag.
• After being expelled from Congress, Santos has used Cameo to earn money.

Disgraced former Congressman George Santos announced on Monday that he is bringing his drag persona Kitara Ravache "out of the closet" for a limited time.

Santos, who was expelled from the House in December after a brief scandal-ridden stint representing New York's third district, said in an X post that he would be offering personalized Cameo videos as his drag persona.

According to Kitara Ravache's Cameo page, 20% of the money earned from the videos, which cost $350 each, would go to charitable causes.

In a message to "you messy bitches," Santos said 10% of the money would support Tunnel to Towers, which helps the families of 9/11 victims, while another 10% would go to the pro-Israel philanthropic organization, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.

"It's going to be super limited to a couple of days," he said in a video on the page.

While Santos was still in Congress, images of him dressed in drag emerged. He eventually confirmed the authenticity of the photos but denied having performed as a drag queen.

Santos told reporters at the time: "I was young and I had fun at a festival."

However, claims from Eula Rochard, a drag performer from Brazil, appeared to contradict this.

Rochard said that she had known Santos as a drag queen and that he'd competed in drag in a beauty pageant as Kitara Ravache in 2008.

Additionally, a series of videos suggested that Santos had dressed as his drag persona over a period of at least three years, casting doubt on his claim that it was a one-off occurrence.

In January 2023, "RuPaul's Drag Race" star Jan Sport said that Kitara Ravache's drag was pretty good but suggested that Santos might be hypocritical for aligning himself with far-right lawmakers, elements of which have demonized drag shows.

Several states, such as Montana, Texas, and Florida, have attempted to enact legislation prohibiting drag shows in certain public venues, with varying levels of success.

These efforts are part of a broader campaign within the Republican Party against drag culture.

Last week, Santos suspended his campaign to return to Congress.

His political career has been marred by controversy, starting with reports emerging while he was a Congressman-elect, accusing Santos of fabricating aspects of his life story and details of his résumé.

He's also been facing legal troubles, having pleaded not guilty to 23 fraud-related charges. He is accused of identity theft, stealing donors' credit card details, and lying to the FEC, and is awaiting trial.

Following his expulsion from Congress, Santos turned to Cameo as a source of income.

According to Semafor, Santos made more on the platform in 48 hours than during his entire time in Congress, where he was on a salary of $174,000.

Santos did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

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• Ukraine continues to target Russian energy facilities despite reported White House objections.
• The attacks are an attempt to weaken Russia's economy, straining its primary foreign currency source.
• Strategists argue that consistent pressure on Russia's energy sector could have a long-term impact.

Four days after the US voted to sign off a long-awaited $61 billion in aid, Ukraine did the one thing that the White House has reportedly been asking it not to do: It struck another oil facility on Russian soil.

Ukraine says that Wednesday's drone attack took out about 900,000 cubic feet of Russian fuel. This was followed on Friday by 10 drones slamming into an oil refinery in Krasnodar, shutting the plant down, The Telegraph reported.

These are just the latest in a ferocious string of attacks on Russian energy facilities, launched by Ukraine since the start of the year.

Ukraine's rationale for hitting Russia's energy infrastructure came in response to the muted impact of Western sanctions, as well as delays in Western aid as it struggled to hold the front line.

Ukraine needed to be "more creative, or think in more 3D terms about the battle space," Ann Marie Dailey, a geopolitical strategist at the RAND Corporation, told BI.

"You need to find other ways to weaken your opponent and stretch their resources," she added.

While the US dithered over aid, Ukraine had a robust argument for prosecuting the war pretty much as it pleased.

But now that the aid bill has passed, "there's a bit more political leverage on the side of the US," Rafael Loss, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told BI.

Reports suggest that President Joe Biden's administration has tried to dissuade Ukraine from attacks on energy infrastructure. (Ukraine has denied this, while the White House has not commented directly.)

Reported concerns from the US include the impact on global oil prices, and the risk of a Russian escalation in the war, The Washington Post reported.

The debate over the attacks has also exposed fault lines in the relationship between Ukraine and its most powerful ally.

"It is a risky move to continue that," said Marina Miron, a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of War Studies at King's College London.

Defying a powerful ally

Ukraine risks alienating its most powerful ally by going against the US just days after Congress approved a hefty military aid package.

But, as multiple analysts have said, the aid package alone isn't going to win the war. Ukraine needs ways of weakening Russia, and that includes striking its energy infrastructure, Dailey said.

She likened the situation to a boxing match in which one fighter is only allowed to hit the other's arms.

And Russia has been landing body blows. On Saturday, Russia unleashed a massive attack on Ukraine's energy facilities, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

Russia has previously said that attacks like these are a direct response to Ukraine's own attacks, according to the Post, a stance that, on the surface at least, seems to validate US fears.

Even so, Ukraine has a point to prove about its own agency in the war, Olga Tokariuk, an academy fellow at London's Chatham House, told BI.

Russia has repeatedly tried to paint the conflict as a proxy battle between itself and the US, diminishing Ukraine's role, she said.

By ignoring the White House on key issues of military strategy, Zelenskyy can demonstrate that Ukrainians "have their own agency, they have functioning democratic institutions, even amid war, and they're able to make their own decisions," Tokariuk added.

And, as some analysts have noted, the political situation in the US — with former President Donald Trump vying to regain the presidency — could mean that this is the last aid package Ukraine gets from the US.

This "somehow frees them to actually keep on conducting those strikes," Miron said.

Whittling away at Russia's war economy

Ukraine's attacks are taking place hundreds of miles behind enemy lines, far from the home territory it is trying to defend.

Part of the US' unease, Pentagon official Celeste Wallander told a House panel earlier this month, rests on the fact that energy infrastructure is a civilian target and not a military one, as the Post reported.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin previously said that the US would prefer that Ukraine target Russian airfields, the outlet reported.

But there is also the question of how effective the attacks are in military terms. As Carnegie scholar Sergey Vakulenko wrote recently, even if Ukraine took out every oil and gas facility within reach, Russia would likely still have enough for its own uses.

"Taking out a particular refinery is not going to immediately undermine Russia's war effort," said Dailey, the RAND strategist. "But consistently putting pressure on Russia's oil sector would have a significant impact on Russia's ability to fight this war."

She said that, in the long term, lower oil output would cut into Russia's access to export earnings — vital foreign currency it uses to buy materials it needs for advanced weaponry.

Vakulenko, in his article, also noted that that strikes on Russian oil refineries have "little impact on Russian export earnings."

But, he said, if Ukraine keeps up the same pace of attacks it set in March, it "will be able to keep damaging Russian refineries faster than they can be fixed, slowly but steadily eroding the country's refining capacity."

There are already some signs of strain.

In February, Russia announced a six-month gasoline export ban. Later, Ukraine said that its attacks had reduced Russian oil production and processing by 12%. The attacks have some other indirect military benefits, experts told BI.

They likely create headaches for Russia's air defenses, given the size of the country and the amount of air space it has to worry about, Loss said.

There's also the political impact, Tokariuk added.

One of the reasons Russians support the war is the sense that it is a distant conflict — but incoming attacks on home soil give "a sense that the war is near," she said.

No sign of a pause

There's every sign that attacks like this will increase even after the influx of military aid, Britain's defense chief Admiral Sir Tony Radakin told the Financial Times last week.

Some experts BI talked to agree.

"I would expect at least some strikes deep behind Russian lines" to continue after the aid package arrives, said Loss.

He added that with sanctions on Russia still failing to really bite, "the urgency of the situation" means that Ukraine is right to try to hurt Russia's economy in other ways.

Loss also pointed out that despite the Biden administration's reported concerns, there's no sense that the US has actually withheld intelligence or otherwise tried to stop the attacks from happening.

James Patton Rogers, executive director of Cornell Brooks Tech Policy Institute, told BI that "the reports of US concerns about these strikes are often exaggerated."

The Biden administration's statements are a reflection of a standard NATO position on the matter, and "not because they expect Ukraine to stop," he said.

Patton Rogers also pointed to their impact on Ukrainian morale.

"They are publicly popular at a time when morale is low and Ukraine outgunned," he said. "When faced with delayed funds, shortfalls in munitions, and the relentless Russian bombing of urban centers, what else does the US expect Ukraine to do?"

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