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• US weapons could begin arriving in Ukraine in a matter of days, according to The New York Times.
• Russia is intensifying attacks on Ukraine in the window before aid arrives. 
• There is a vital problem that US aid can't fix: a lack of Ukrainian troops.

The release of a $61 billion aid bill by the US Senate on Tuesday is a massive boost to Ukraine in its battle against Russia's invasion.

According to The New York Times, US weapons could start arriving in Ukraine within days. But on parts of the front line, Ukraine's situation is desperate. And it still has a major problem that aid can't fix: a lack of troops.

"The most important source of Ukrainian weakness is the lack of manpower," Konrad Muzyka, director of the Rochan military consultancy in Poland, told Reuters.

Oleksandr, a battalion commander, told The Washington Post in February that companies in his unit are staffed at around 35% of normal levels.

With this shortage of manpower, Ukraine is fighting off intensifying attacks as Russia seeks to exploit the window before crucial aid arrives, think tank The Institute for the Study of War said Sunday.

US President Joe Biden said he'll sign the US aid bill Wednesday, meaning that US military equipment from bases in Europe can begin arriving in Ukraine in a matter of days.

But it's unclear how long it'll take to arrive in sufficient amounts at the front line to make a difference, with one Ukrainian MP telling The Associated Press it could take months.

In the strategically crucial city of Chasiv Yar in Donestk, East Ukraine, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the situation is increasingly desperate for Ukraine's military.

Russia has used glide bombs to devastating effect on Ukrainian positions in the city, and Ukrainian forces are being outfired at a 10 to one ratio, the report said.

Russian drone strikes, the report said, mean that crucial supplies and reinforcements aren't getting through.

"During that time, soldiers sometimes run out of food, water and medicine. Attack drones hunt vehicles bringing materiel and fresh troops to the front line. Soldiers with treatable wounds die waiting days for evacuations because no one can reach them," reported The Wall Street Journal.

American weapons will help Ukraine's forces counter the attacks. Meanwhile, Ukraine's government has reduced the draft age from 27 to 25, meaning thousands of new recruits will soon be deployed on the front line.

This week, Ukraine said it had suspended consular services for military-age male Ukrainians abroad, in an apparent attempt to get tough on young men who fled the country to avoid being sent to fight.

In the meantime, Russia is battling against a weakened enemy.

"I would expect the situation to probably continue to deteriorate over the next three months, but if mobilization goes according to plan and the US aid is unblocked, then the situation should improve from autumn onwards,"Muzyka, the Polish analyst, told Reuters.

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• The Lincoln Project, a prominent super PAC, lost $35,000 to hackers via fraudulent transactions.
• The group said that one of its vendors was hacked and sent it authentic-looking invoices.
• The Lincoln Project, which opposes Trump, said the loss wouldn't affect its operations.

A prominent super PAC vocally opposed to former President Donald Trump has been swindled out of $35,000 by hackers, according to Raw Story.

In its filings to the FEC, the Lincoln Project reported two February transactions, of $15,000 and $20,000, as "under dispute" and marked as "fraudulent."

A spokesperson, Greg Minchak, told Raw Story: "A vendor's email was hacked, with the hackers producing authentic-looking invoices that were sent from our vendor's legitimate email account."

The Lincoln Project did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment, sent outside of US working hours.

The hack affected several of the unnamed vendor's clients, Minchak told the outlet.

The Lincoln Project took immediate action to mitigate the issue, he added, including improving how it confirms payments and notifying its bank's fraud department.

The hack "did not impact our operations in any way in the fight for a democratic future for our nation," Minchak said.

The Lincoln Project burst into public view in 2019 as a hub for disillusioned conservatives to signal their dislike of MAGA Republicanism.

The group raised more than $87 million in that election cycle, according to Open Secrets — partly due to its scrappy and sometimes controversial approach to publicity.

Its fundraising is far more muted this time around, with the group having raised just under $11 million in the 2024 election cycle so far.

In 2021, Lincoln Project cofounder John Weaver admitted sending "inappropriate," sexually charged messages to a number of men, as Axios first reported.

In 2022, after anti-Trump GOP Rep. Liz Cheney lost her seat, the group declared that the Republican Party had become an "authoritarian nationalist cult."

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• Millennials' wealth saw historic growth from 2019 to 2023, according to a new report.
• Despite the pandemic recession, millennial wealth increased due to factors like a robust labor market.
• The wealth growth even likely impacted lower-income millennials.

After years of killing off brands, languishing with student loans, and splurging on avocado toast instead of buying houses, millennials might finally be emerging on top.

A new report from the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, looks at how wealth changed for different age cohorts from 2019 to 2023 by analyzing data from the Federal Reserve's Distributional Financial Accounts.

The analysis found good news for the much-beleaguered millennial generation: Their wealth grew at a historic clip.

Per CAP's analysis, from the end of 2019 to the end of 2023, the average wealth of households under 40 grew by 49% — a $85,000 increase from $174,000 to $259,000. That rate of rapid wealth growth has never happened before in the data series' history, per the analysis, and it comes after wealth growth remained relatively stagnant for young Americans pre-pandemic.

Here's the whopper: Wealth gains were even higher when looking just at millennials, who were ages 23 to 38 in 2019; they saw their wealth double from the end of 2019 and 2023.

To be sure, a cohort entering their prime earning years is expected to see a big wealth gain as its members buy houses and begin to invest in earnest. Indeed, housing wealth rose, and more households under 35 owned property in 2023 than in 2019; at the same time, credit card and student loan debt fell.

But the most surprising piece of the findings is that those gains came during and after the pandemic recession — a type of contraction that, historically, has meant far worse economic outcomes for the younger workers caught up in its wake.

"Millennials weathered the pandemic recession much better financially and with an improved financial security outlook than Gen X and the Baby Boomers did when they experienced recessions at similar ages," report authors Brendan Duke and Christian Weller write.

For instance, during 2007's Great Recession, Gen X was between 27 and 42 — similar to millennials heading into the pandemic. But their real wealth only grew by 4% in the four years following that recession. Similarly, baby boomers were 26 to 44 during the 1990 recession and saw their real wealth grow by 46% in the four years after their recession started. All of those pale in comparison to how well millennials made out.

The wealth gains come after millennials also weathered the Great Recession early in their careers and have borne a substantial brunt of the student loan crisis. It's yet another data point showing how the pandemic economic recovery diverged from past contractions and may have chipped away at the tough odds millennials were facing down.

Why millennials are faring so well in the wake of the pandemic recession

You might be able to chalk some of millennials' gains up to the robust labor market that pandemic-era stimulus birthed.

"The pandemic and unprecedented support we gave families—including young people—through cash payments, student loan pauses, and more helped drive the initial surge in wealth for younger Americans," Duke, one of the report's authors, told Business Insider. "We have sustained this wealth boom with a historically strong labor market that is pulling in younger workers and delivering strong inflation-adjusted wage growth at the beginning of their careers."

Other research has unearthed similar findings. As BI's Noah Sheidlower previously reported, Americans under 35 saw their real median net worth grow by 143% from 2019 to 2022; that's per the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances, which mostly recently tracked wealth and net worth data through 2022. This data, as the authors of the CAP analysis note, suggests that wealth gains weren't just reserved for the top-earning millennials since both median and average wealth grew.

"This suggests that the strong wealth growth for younger Americans is broad-based and not the result of strong growth of a handful of wealthy younger households," the authors write.

However, the wealthiest Americans, on the whole, saw their net worth grow at higher rates, per SCF.

Meanwhile, the Liberty Street Economics blog at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that Americans under 40 saw their real wealth grow by nearly 80% from the first quarter of 2019 through the last quarter of 2023. As that report notes, financial assets were a major component of younger Americans' wealth growing.

And so, it might finally be time for millennials to shine. They still might not be able to buy houses, though.

"We need to keep this robust labor market going and Congress needs to set its sights on younger Americans' greatest affordability challenge: housing," Duke said.

Are you a millennial who fared economically better during the last few years? Contact this reporter at jkaplan@businessinsider.com.

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• The Senate passed a bill that contains a TikTok ban, and President Biden could sign it this week.
• But that doesn't mean TikTok will be banned in the US anytime soon.
• At the very earliest, a ban wouldn't kick in until 2025. It could take a lot longer than that, though.

The US Senate passed a foreign-aid bill late Tuesday that contains a measure that would ban TikTok.

Does that mean TikTok is getting closer to being banned in the US?

Absolutely.

Will TikTok get banned in the US anytime soon?

No.

President Joe Biden is expected to sign the bill into law this week, but TikTok won't go anywhere immediately.

At the very earliest, the ban wouldn't go into effect until nine months after Biden signs the bill — meaning 2025. But even that is unlikely to happen.

Let's explain.

I remember reading about a maybe-TikTok-ban bill last month. Has something changed?

A little bit.

In March, the House passed a bill requiring ByteDance, TikTok's Chinese owner, to sell the US operations of TikTok to someone who isn't based in a "foreign adversary" country; if not, the app would effectively be banned in the US.

Since then, the bill's sponsors made two changes: The first and most important one was bundling the bill along with measures calling for US aid to Ukraine and Israel. While forcing TikTok to sell or leave has had mixed political support, the aid packages had been a priority for much of Congress. Combining all three things meant the TikTok bill would likely be approved as part of the package deal.

The language around the proposed ban has also been tweaked. Instead of requiring ByteDance to sell off its US operations in six months, the company now has nine months to get a deal done. And the bill also gives a US president the power to extend that new deadline by another three months if there's a deal in the works.

So you're saying ByteDance really has a year to sell TikTok to a different owner?

Yes. But also, no.

If Biden signs the bill, as he's expected to this week, that nine-months-to-one-year countdown starts. Except that ByteDance has already said it will challenge the law in court, and will presumably seek an injunction — putting the entire thing on pause. And a court battle could take a very long time.

For reference: In May 2023, Montana lawmakers passed their own TikTok-ban bill; in November, a federal judge blocked the measure. That case is working its way to federal appeals court.

OK. But the bill has passed, and what if it does hold up in court? What happens then? Does TikTok disappear from my phone?

No.

If ByteDance can't or won't find a buyer for US TikTok, the bill requires Google and Apple to remove TikTok from their app stores — something they have practice doing in other countries. But that wouldn't shut down TikTok in the US itself — it would just make it very difficult for the app to add more US-based users.

The bill would also prohibit US-based internet companies from helping TikTok maintain or update the service. So TikTok could continue to operate in the US, but its owner would have a harder time keeping it going and growing.

I remember hearing about people who wanted to buy TikTok to keep it going in the US. What's going on with that?

Good question. The first thing to resolve is whether China would actually allow ByteDance to sell one of the country's biggest internet successes at metaphorical gunpoint. Then there are plenty of technical questions about how a sale would work and how TikTok could function if cleaved off from its main owner.

In any case, the most prominent would-be buyer for US TikTok, so far, is Steve Mnuchin, the former treasury secretary from the Trump administration. But Mnuchin himself doesn't have the money for the deal. More important, he's reportedly telling investors that he would essentially rebuild TikTok's vaunted algorithm himself, which makes some observers skeptical about its chance of success.

Wednesday, April 24, 2024 — This story has been updated with news of the US Senate's passage of the bill that includes the TikTok ban.

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• A Dutch auction house is selling the seized yacht of a pro-Kremlin oligarch, per a Ukraine agency.
• Ukraine said it's the first seized asset to be sold to help support the country.
• The move is a "turning point" that could pave the way for similar efforts abroad, it said.

A Dutch auction house is gearing up to sell a yacht belonging to a pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarch, the first time a seized asset is being sold and the funds sent to Ukraine, according to Ukraine's Asset Recovery and Management Agency.

The agency, a governmental body responsible for finding, tracing, and dealing with assets derived from corruption and other crimes, said Troostwijk Auctions would manage the sale of the 92-meter-long yacht.

The MY Royal Romance was owned by Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian lawmaker who had his Ukrainian citizenship revoked for his pro-Russian activities.

The US sanctioned Medvedchuk in March 2014 for his alleged role in the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, and Ukrainian counterintelligence officers arrested him in April 2022 after he was charged with treason.

He was swapped for 200 Ukrainian prisoners of war in September 2022 after requesting such an exchange shortly after his arrest, according to the Security Service of Ukraine.

Selling yachts owned by those sanctioned by Ukrainian and Western governments has proved to be a headache.

Many of the yachts are "frozen" — not seized — and technically don't belong to overseas governments, meaning they can't be sold without special permission.

As BI previously reported, Russia's invasion of Ukraine prompted many governments to enact sanctions against Russia's richest, including seizing superyachts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

But over two years later, it's still unclear whether they can be sold or, indeed, who'd buy them.

Ukraine's Asset Recovery and Management Agency described attempts to sell the Royal Romance as 10 months of "tireless" work.

It also described the move as a "turning point" that could pave the way for more similar efforts in Ukraine and abroad.

The "sale of Medvedchuk's yacht is not only symbolic, as it can be the first impetus and demonstration to the entire community that the assets of traitors to Ukraine will be used for the benefit of Ukraine," it said.

The agency did not specify where or when the auction would take place. It also failed to mention the expected price tag.

Ukraine's Asset Recovery and Management Agency and Troostwijk Auctions did not immediately respond to BI's request for comments.

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• Google's CEO Sundar Pichai says the sudden public interest in AI surprised the company.
• During an event at Stanford University, Pichai said he had a "different sense of the trajectory."
• Google has been fighting rumors that it was thrown into panic mode after the launch of ChatGPT.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has admitted that the generative AI boom caught Google by surprise.

During an event at Stanford University earlier this month, the tech boss said his company was "surprised" by the sudden public interest in AI.

Despite saying he recognized the tech's significance years ago, he admitted he had a "different sense of the trajectory in mind" when it came to society's adoption of AI.

Google has been dogged by rumors it was thrown into a panic following the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Pichai reportedly issued a "code red" over the chatbot's sudden popularity, later pouring resources into Google's AI development and bringing the company's cofounders back into the fold to help with product efforts.

Since ChatGPT launched, Google has been pushing its own AI, releasing a rival product, and combining its AI teams. Last year, the company merged its two AI research groups, Google Brain and DeepMind, into one new team, Google DeepMind.

But while old rival Microsoft benefited from its early investment into OpenAI and quick-to-market products, Google has struggled to control the narrative around AI in the same way.

The company has also suffered two embarrassing setbacks on the AI front. First when its chatbot Bard made a mistake during a demo and later when its Gemini model failed to generate historically accurate images, provoking a firestorm of backlash.

Pichai later said the company had "got it wrong" with Gemini, acknowledging that some of the model's responses had offended users and "shown bias."

However, according to Pichai, it's still early days for AI, and Google is ready for battle.

"I feel incredibly well positioned for what is coming, and we are still in the very early days," he said at the event.

Representatives for Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment, made outside normal working hours.

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• Former Bing chief Mikhail Parakhin appeared to subtly criticize Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman.
• Parakhin wrote it's "hard to disagree" when an X user said "we need you."
• The comment was in response to a post quoting Suleyman's recent TED Talk that was blasted by VCs.

Microsoft's former Bing chief appears to have thrown shade at Mustafa Suleyman.

Mikhail Parakhin, who stepped down from his role just days after Suleyman became CEO of Microsoft AI, commented under an X post about the DeepMind cofounder.

An X user wrote "We need you ngl" (short for "not gonna lie") under a post summarizing Suleyman's TED Talk last week, which some critics have been ripping into.

Parakhin responded in a comment that looked like a low-key dig at Suleyman: "Hard to disagree :-)."

Some venture capitalists have been taking aim on X at Suleyman's AI remarks in his TED Talk.

Martin Casado, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz's firm a16z, said: "Good god. Make it stop. Total fucking nonsense."

John Chu, a VC firm Khosla Ventures partner, wrote: "This is what happens when you hire the business cofounder who doesn't really understand the tech."

Pedro Domingos, a computer science professor at the University of Washington also chimed in: "When you give a midwit a platform."

Microsoft executive vice-president Rajesh Jha announced in an internal memo last month obtained by The Verge that Parakhin had "decided to explore new roles."

Parakhin would have reported to Suleyman after Satya Nadella's reshuffle in which he was tapped to lead its consumer AI products and research including Copilot, Bing, and Edge.

Parakhin, who led the company's Bing search engine and advertising businesses, will now report to Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott instead.

Suleyman's first big move at Microsoft was announcing an AI hub in London. He cofounded Inflection AI firm in 2022 alongside Karén Simonyan and "Paypal mafia" member Reid Hoffman. Before that he cofounded DeepMind in 2010, which was acquired by Google in 2014.

Microsoft didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

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• Tesla has reportedly been considering building a new factory in India, the world's third-largest car market.
• MG Motor India executive Rajeev Chaba told CNBC the move could boost India's EV market. 
• Only a fraction of vehicles sold in India are electric, but that could be about to change. 

Tesla has been eyeing an expansion into India — and one local auto executive thinks it'll be good for business.

MG Motor India's CEO Emeritus Rajeev Chaba told CNBC that Tesla's potential entry into the Indian market could help boost the country's low rate of EV adoption.

"Tesla is really welcome. It'll be good for the industry, good news for the country, and for serious players like us," Chaba told CNBC.

MG Motor currently sells two types of EVs in India; it recently announced a joint venture with JSW Group to roll out more EVs in India and capture a larger slice of the market.

"I wish more and more players come, with more and more choices. Because that will give the consumer a chance to look at the various options and go for it," he added.

The auto exec told CNBC that a lack of competition was hampering India's EV industry.

The Indian government has set a target of 30% of all vehicle sales to be electric by 2030. Between October 2022 and September 2023, EVs accounted for around 5% of total vehicle sales, according to data from Bain and Company.

"Competition is limited at this point of time. Numbers are still constrained because consumers don't have compelling choices," Chaba said.

Tesla has been eyeing India as a potential area for expansion as it grapples with a slowdown in EV demand and growing competition in markets such as China.

Foreign EV companies have previously been deterred from entering the world's third-largest vehicle market because of high import taxes on electric cars.

However, a new policy that provides an exception for automakers who invest at least $500 million to produce their cars in the country and who set up manufacturing facilities within the next three years — suggests that may be about to change.

Reuters reported earlier this month that Tesla is planning to build a new factory in the country as part of a $2 to $3 billion investment, and CEO Elon Musk was due to meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi this week to announce the move.

Those plans may have to wait. Musk postponed his trip to India due to "very heavy Tesla obligations," with the automaker recently announcing a 10% cut to its staff and a high-profile Cybertruck recall.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment made outside normal working hours.

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• US consumer finances are solid but economic and geopolitical risks are looming, Jamie Dimon said.
• The JPMorgan CEO warned sticky inflation, more interest-rate hikes, and a recession remain threats.
• The world order is being challenged, and crypto's done little despite a decade of hype, Dimon said.

Most people are financially healthy, but economic and geopolitical threats could spoil the party, Jamie Dimon warned on Tuesday.

Consumers have seen their homes and stock portfolios surge in value in recent years, and they're spending a historically low percentage of their incomes on debt repayments, the JPMorgan CEO told the Economic Club of New York.

People are also benefiting from strong economic growth and near-record employment, but they won't be immune if disaster strikes, Dimon said.

"Even if we go into recession, the consumer's in good shape," he said in a clip of the interview posted by Bloomberg. "That doesn't mean you can fight off the effects of stagflation, something like that, if it gets much worse."

"So far we're in pretty good shape, and so far it looks like a soft landing type of scenario, but put me on the cautious side of that one," he added.

Dimon's circumspect comments speak to the murky outlook for the economy.

Inflation has cooled from 40-year highs of more than 9% in the summer of 2022 to below 4% in recent months, but remains well above the Federal Reserve's 2% target.

The US central bank has raised interest rates from nearly zero to north of 5%, but has held off on reversing those increases until it's certain inflation is under control, and could even raise them if prices take off again.

Higher borrowing costs discourage spending, hiring, and investing, and tend to pull down asset prices, which can help to curb inflation but can also choke economic growth to the point a recession sets in.

Dimon underlined the sweeping effects that further hikes and a downturn could have, the Economic Club of New York said in a X post: "If rates go up and you have a #recession, that will hurt leveraged companies, jobs, profits, and real estate. So you can have circumstances where it's a triple whammy negatively affecting the #banks."

'Little bit of chaos'

The Wall Street heavyweight also flagged the fraught state of the world, echoing his recent annual letter and comments on JPMorgan's first-quarter earnings call.

"The geopolitical situation is probably the most complicated and dangerous since World War II," he said, pointing to US-China tensions and the Russia-Ukraine and Middle East conflicts.

Dimon underscored the impact that foreign conflicts can have on oil and gas prices, international trade, and military relationships, and how those effects can disproportionately hurt poorer countries.

He added that the world order is being "challenged" and could descend into a "little bit of chaos" as it realigns.

Dimon, a vocal skeptic of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, took a fresh potshot at them, per the Club's X feed: "Blockchain is real, we use it, but we've been talking about #crypto for 10 years and not a whole lot has come of it."

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• A major consumer survey found that Alaska Airlines is the most popular airline in the US for the second year running.
• The airline topped the American Customer Satisfaction Index, despite its infamous panel blowout in January.
• Overall, US air travel customers were happier than last year with their experiences.

Alaska Airlines is the most popular airline in the US for the second year running, according to a major consumer survey.

The airline comfortably topped the annual American Customer Satisfaction Index with a score of 82, a one-point improvement compared to 2023.

American Airlines was second with 79 points, while low-cost carrier Allegiant Air beat better-known legacy names like United and Delta to take third place. Allegiant registered a four-point rise in overall customer satisfaction, making it one of the fastest climbers this year.

United Airlines was the only carrier to lose ground, sliding three points to a score of 75.

The index, which has been running since 1994, tracks customer satisfaction across five travel industries — airlines, car rentals, lodging, online travel agencies, and ridesharing platforms.

To determine the rankings, 16,352 customers were asked to rate their experiences with companies based on nineteen different factors, such as ease of making a reservation, check-in process, cleanliness of cabin and lavatory, courtesy and helpfulness of flight crew, and timeliness of arrival. By collating this information, the American Customer Satisfaction Index says it provides a "definitive measure of passenger satisfaction."

Alaska Airline's top ranking comes despite the airline's nightmare safety incident in January 2024, during which a decommissioned door plug flew off during one of its flights at an altitude of 16,000 feet.

The plane, a Boeing 737 Max 9 made a safe landing back at Portland International Airport 35 minutes after takeoff, with all 177 people on board surviving.

14 passengers on the flight have since filed a class-action lawsuit against Boeing and Alaska Airlines, asking for monetary damages to cover injuries sustained during the incident and claims that some oxygen masks malfunctioned.

US airlines are getting better

Overall, the data found that customers were increasingly happy with airline travel, with ratings for all nineteen areas of customer satisfaction across airlines either improving or staying level with responses from 2023.

The polled customers were particularly happy with app services, the ease of making reservations, and airlines' websites, pointing to the importance of developing customer-friendly technology offerings.

As they become happier with travel experiences, customers are also travelling more. This February, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) reported a 21.5% rise in global air passengers compared to the previous year.

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