Elon Musk Says Robotaxis Are Tesla’s Future. Experts Have Doubts.

Tesla says self-driving taxis will power its growth, but the company hasn’t said when such a service would be ready or how much it would increase profits

Elon Musk, wearing a dark suit and a white shirt, holding his hands together in front of himself.
Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, has said the company’s driverless taxi service will catapult its stock market valuation into the trillions.Credit…Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters

By Jack Ewing and Peter Eavis

Published July 29, 2024Updated July 30, 2024

A Fed Rate Cut Is Finally Within View

By Nick Timiraos

Updated July 28, 2024 12:02 am ETS

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has been weighing the risks of cutting rates too soon and waiting too long. PHOTO: WILL OLIVER/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK

While Federal Reserve officials aren’t likely to change interest rates in the coming week, their meeting will nonetheless be one of the most consequential in a while.

At each of their four meetings this year, interest-rate cuts have been a question for later. This time, though, inflation and labor-market developments should allow officials to signal a cut is very possible at their next meeting, in September.

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Elon?

Linda Yaccarino, the C.E.O. of X, has worked hard to bring back advertisers and fix the platform’s business. But its owner, Elon Musk, is always one whim away from undoing her work.

Listen to this article · 26:59 min Learn more

Linda Yaccarino, wearing a white top, a gold necklace and glasses.
Linda Yaccarino, who joined X last year when it was still called Twitter, has told colleagues she wants it to be “the world’s platform.”Credit…Eliot Blondet/Abaca, via Sipa USA

By Kate Conger

Kate Conger has been covering X ever since she joined The New York Times in 2018, back when it was still called Twitter.

July 27, 2024

Late last year, Linda Yaccarino reached out to Don Lemon’s agent with an offer.

Ms. Yaccarino, the chief executive of X, a powerhouse advertising executive who had been hired away from NBC about seven months earlier, pitched the agent on bringing the former CNN anchor’s new web-based show to the social media platform, citing its massive reach, political influence and connections with advertisers. Soon after, Mr. Lemon became one of the first high-profile names to sign onto Ms. Yaccarino’s plan to help save the company’s sagging advertising business with video and TV-like programming.

Elon Musk, who owns X, agreed to be Mr. Lemon’s first guest.

The interview was held at the Tesla headquarters in Austin, Texas, which, Mr. Musk quickly pointed out to Mr. Lemon, was “about three times larger than the Pentagon.” The two men sat on white Eames-like swivel chairs, a small white table between them. Mr. Musk was in a black T-shirt, Mr. Lemon in a white spread-collar shirt and a dark blue sweater.

The interview started out awkwardly, with Mr. Musk acknowledging that he hadn’t really watched Mr. Lemon when he anchored a 9 p.m. show on CNN. (“I’ve seen a few segments.”) It grew increasingly contentious over the next hour, and Mr. Musk became visibly frustrated with questions about his politics and drug use. “It’s pretty private,” Mr. Musk said when Mr. Lemon asked him about his prescription for ketamine, which Mr. Musk had posted about on X in 2023.

Mr. Lemon brought up complaints of sexual harassment at Tesla and SpaceX, both run by Mr. Musk, then asked if he had advantages in society as a white man. Mr. Musk raised an eyebrow. “You keep putting words in my mouth,” he objected. And when Mr. Lemon asked about the advertiser exodus from X, Mr. Musk shook his head: “Don, I have to say, choose your questions carefully. There’s five minutes left.” As the interview ended, Mr. Musk shot up from his chair, offering an abrupt handshake to the anchor.

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The next day, he texted Mr. Lemon’s agent: “Contract canceled.”

Don Lemon, wearing a gray striped suit and red tie, speaking at a podium.
Don Lemon began a new web-based interview show on X with Elon Musk as his first guest. The next day, Mr. Musk texted Mr. Lemon’s agent: “Contract canceled.”Credit…Krista Schlueter for The New York Times

A day after Mr. Musk called off the deal, Ms. Yaccarino called Mr. Lemon to find out what went wrong. She seemed confident she could patch things up between him and her boss. But Mr. Musk remained firm; Mr. Lemon had to be dismissed. The deal died — and with it, yet another attempt by Ms. Yaccarino to chart a profitable course for the troubled site.

Time and again, Ms. Yaccarino has faced similar situations, as Mr. Musk is always one whim away from undoing her work. Ms. Yaccarino’s task of repairing and remaking X’s business over the past year has been complicated by Mr. Musk’s seeming disregard for the advertising industry and his constant unraveling of her efforts, according to interviews with more than a dozen advertising executives, X employees, former colleagues and friends.

After the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, for instance, Ms. Yaccarino told several major advertisers that she and X would work to fight antisemitism. The next month, Mr. Musk approvingly replied to an antisemitic theory on the site.

On Nov. 18, Ms. Yaccarino called on advertisers to come back to X to show their solidarity with the social media platform’s commitment to free speech. Shortly afterward, in a fit of petulance, and with Ms. Yaccarino sitting a few feet away, Mr. Musk went onstage at The New York Times’s DealBook Summit and used an expletive — three times — to tell advertisers in the audience that they could take their business elsewhere.

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It’s almost like a game of corporate Whac-a-Mole, which Ms. Yaccarino is doing her best to master.

If Ms. Yaccarino is frustrated by Mr. Musk’s actions, she isn’t showing it, at least not publicly. By all accounts, she seems to have accepted that this is the way Mr. Musk operates (in that phone call to Mr. Lemon, she said X was “Elon’s baby”) and that they have enough of a shared vision for X that she can grit her teeth and bear it. Over and over, Ms. Yaccarino has defended Mr. Musk’s actions behind the scenes.

A small group of people backstage with Elon Musk and Linda Yaccarino among them.
Friends of Mr. Musk, right, have counseled Ms. Yaccarino on how she should interact with the willful billionaire, even offering to act as an intermediary with him.Credit…Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times

“The mark of a good C.E.O. is not how many punches you can throw, but how many you can take. She is the Muhammad Ali of C.E.O.s,” said Ari Emanuel, the chief executive of the entertainment agency Endeavor, which is an investor in X. Mr. Emanuel is friends with Mr. Musk and speaks regularly with Ms. Yaccarino about X.

The company’s business has struggled in recent months, as advertisers remain hesitant. Since Mr. Musk took the company private, it no longer publicly reports its earnings, but Emarketer, a market research agency, estimated that last year, X lost about 52 percent of its U.S. advertising revenue, which dropped to $1.13 billion. The firm predicted X’s losses would slow to a 2.5 percent decrease this year.

X executives told employees last month that 65 percent of advertisers had reactivated their campaigns, although they appeared to be spending less than they once did. Internal documents obtained by The New York Times show that, in the second quarter of this year, X earned $114 million in revenue in the United States, a 25 percent decline from the first quarter and a 53 percent decline from the previous year. The company aims to reach $190 million in U.S. revenue during the third quarter, bolstered by advertising associated with the Olympics, football and political campaigns, the documents said — but that target would still set the company’s quarterly earnings at 25 percent less than they were last year.

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Throughout all this turmoil, Ms. Yaccarino seemingly remains resolute. “My job is to clear the path for you all to succeed and for X to become the world’s platform,” she said during a leadership meeting at X’s San Francisco office in May, according to two people who attended.

Ms. Yaccarino, 60, has forged a bond with her 53-year-old boss, chatting often by text message, according to one of the people, who, like many interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details. Some of Mr. Musk’s friends have counseled her on how she should interact with the willful billionaire, or even offered to act as an intermediary with him. More strikingly, some of her friends and former colleagues have begged her to quit.

“You have to know this about Linda: Quitting equals failure, and Linda cannot allow herself to fail,” said Lou Paskalis, a longtime ad executive and friend who has publicly criticized her decision to work for Mr. Musk. “She is cashing in her sterling reputation to be Elon’s chief apology officer.”

Ms. Yaccarino and Mr. Musk did not respond to requests for interviews.

Ms. Yaccarino grew up on Long Island in New York, where her father was an assistant police chief and her mother was a civil servant. Her twin sister became a nurse and now runs her own health care company, and their older sister was a director at Deutsche Bank before retiring.

Ms. Yaccarino attended Pennsylvania State University and met her husband, Claude Madrazo, shortly after graduating in 1985. The couple have two children, a son and daughter. (She hired her son, Matt Madrazo, to sell political ads at X.) She began her career at Turner Entertainment, where she worked in ad sales for nearly 20 years.

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As she rose at Turner, her role expanded to include programming. She worked on the reboot of Conan O’Brien’s show after he departed NBC for TBS in 2010, hammering out ad deals that incorporated sponsored products into the program and lining up Mr. O’Brien to appear in commercials, an early iteration of influencer marketing. When Turner secured the rights to “Sex and The City” from HBO, Ms. Yaccarino pitched it to brands as a “virtual original,” arguing that many Americans would be seeing the show for the first time when it landed on cable, recalled David Levy, the former president of Turner.

“She was a great leader, people loved to work with her. She was demanding, no question. That was what made her great. She worked harder than anyone else, and clients liked to be with her,” Mr. Levy said. “Linda was brash, out there, aggressive. And dominating.”

Her success convinced Steve Burke, then the chief executive at NBCUniversal, to hire her in 2011. She forged relationships with top marketers and on-air celebrities like Paris Hilton.

To develop her personal brand, Ms. Yaccarino hired communications specialists. In flashy presentations at the upfronts, an annual advertising event, she positioned television as the antithesis to Big Tech. “No family has ever gathered around a news feed,” she said onstage in 2018. “We’re not in the likes business — we’re in the results business.”

The next year, Mr. Burke at NBCUniversal started succession planning so that he could step back from his chief executive role. Eyeing an opportunity, Ms. Yaccarino gunned for a promotion, three people who worked with her said. But she didn’t get it. Ms. Yaccarino next made the argument that Comcast cable ad sales should be added to her portfolio. Again, she was denied by NBC leadership.

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Ms. Yaccarino was an adroit negotiator who kept revenue rising even as ratings and viewership declined, those former colleagues said. But some argued she wasn’t detail oriented enough to run a business, something others close to her dismissed as sexism, noting that the male executives she worked with sometimes teased her about her outfits, a sore subject for Ms. Yaccarino. An NBC spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

In a 2018 interview at Davos, she recounted the performance review she received before leaving Turner, in which she said her boss wrote approvingly of her work, but then added, “I only wish she would stop using her high heels as a weapon.”

Linda Yaccarino, seated, speaking on stage.
Ms. Yaccarino, who spoke at Davos in 2018, was known at NBC as a fiercely competitive saleswoman who took pride in getting better deals than executives at other networks.Credit…Sikarin Thanachaiary/World Economic Forum

The comment helped convince her it was time to leave the job, she said. “Today, you might put that under a byproduct of unconscious bias, because who would ever look at a man’s heels to say that’s why they are being aggressive or assertive or powerful.”

Still, she was a fiercely competitive saleswoman who took pride in getting better deals than executives at other networks did. “There is probably no better person that Elon could have hired to restore advertising on X,” Mr. Paskalis said.

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In October 2022, Ms. Yaccarino was in discussions with Netflix about an advertising partnership with NBCUniversal. The streaming giant instead suggested she come run ad sales, she told two of her former colleagues. While the job talks never went far, co-workers said it prompted Ms. Yaccarino to consider a career change. Coincidentally, Mr. Musk was then in the process of acquiring Twitter for $44 billion.

Within weeks of his takeover, hate speech flooded the platform as users tested Mr. Musk’s “free speech” pledge. At the time, Ms. Yaccarino was part of Twitter’s “Influence Council,” a group of advertisers advising the company on working with brands. The council, which was formed in 2015 under the former owners, joined a call with Mr. Musk to discuss advertiser worries, during which he promised a safe environment.

Some top ad agencies recommended clients pause spending on Twitter until Mr. Musk determined how to police offensive content. Ignoring that advice, Ms. Yaccarino contacted Mr. Musk to pledge NBCUniversal’s continued advertising and to decry the pause in spending by others, two people familiar with the conversation said. She offered to help inform other marketers that their fears were overblown and convince them of the power of the platform.

Mr. Musk soon laid off more than 75 percent of the company’s employees, including most who kept watch for problematic posts. He changed the platform’s rules and reinstated hundreds of previously banned accounts. Hate speech on the site surged, according to researchers tracking it, and more advertisers left.

By December, stock prices at Tesla, where Mr. Musk is chief executive, were plummeting. Investors questioned whether Mr. Musk was too distracted with Twitter to oversee the carmaker. On Dec. 20, Mr. Musk announced he was seeking a C.E.O. “foolish enough to take the job” to replace him at his social media company.

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Mr. Musk and Ms. Yaccarino were in touch in early 2023 about NBC Universal running ads on X during the Super Bowl, and then started speaking more regularly. Ms. Yaccarino invited him to appear at the POSSIBLE advertising conference in Miami that April. “You challenge legacy, you challenge habits,” she told Mr. Musk during an onstage interview.

Elon Muska and Linda Yaccarino speaking onstage in front of a large audience.
A few weeks after Mr. Musk and Ms. Yaccarino appeared together at an industry event, he announced that he had just hired the NBC executive as his C.E.O.Credit…Chandan Khanna/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

He asked advertisers to return. “If somebody has something hateful to say, it doesn’t mean you should give them a megaphone,” Mr. Musk said. “They should still be able to say it — but Twitter shouldn’t amplify it.”

On May 11, Mr. Musk posted that he had selected a chief executive. It was Ms. Yaccarino.

Ms. Yaccarino, who was in the middle of preparing for another upfronts presentation, hadn’t yet told her NBCUniversal colleagues about the job offer, and began receiving text messages asking if she was Mr. Musk’s pick. She rushed home from the company’s studios.

Many of her longtime peers in the advertising world were shocked that Ms. Yaccarino accepted the job — they feared she would tarnish her reputation by associating herself with Mr. Musk. But several colleagues who worked with her at X said she and Mr. Musk were more alike than their public personas might suggest. They share a fervent belief that their responsibilities range beyond running a viable business into rescuing the principle of free speech, a paranoia of sabotage from employees and associates, and a willingness to pursue legal action against critics.

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When Ms. Yaccarino took the helm on June 6, 2023, she confronted an immediate crisis: Mr. Musk’s unconventional cost-cutting methods had resulted in a stack of unpaid rent, utility and software bills. She brought her most trusted deputy, a communications executive named Joe Benarroch, with her from NBCUniversal to help with the mess. (In a move that surprised many, Ms. Yaccarino abruptly fired Mr. Benarroch last month, having him escorted out of X’s New York office.)

In her early days, Ms. Yaccarino renegotiated a cheaper contract with Google Cloud, which helped host Twitter’s services. She resumed payments for databases and software that helped the company detect and remove child sexual exploitation material. And, at one of the company’s international offices, she settled an unpaid heating bill. Before that, employees wore jackets indoors and tried to heat the space using a kitchen pizza oven.

She found a cadence with Mr. Musk, overseeing sales and partnerships while he controlled technology. They both weighed in on decisions about moderating content, although Mr. Musk made the final calls. Still, advertisers were spending in spits and starts.

Ms. Yaccarino met with several advertisers and researchers in June 2023 to reveal her plan for protecting brands from unsavory content — tools which would allow advertisers to ensure that their posts did not appear next to specific keywords. X also planned to begin sharing ad revenue with popular users on the platform.

After the meeting, Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, asked in an email if he could present research on the rise in hate speech on the site. He also expressed concern that the new tools wouldn’t protect advertisers, since ad dollars could still be funneled to hateful content creators through the revenue-sharing program.

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“The challenge you face will soon become an even more acute concern when you implement your plans to ‘revenue share,’” Mr. Ahmed wrote. “This will present a real moral challenge to advertisers who know that the money they give you goes directly to people like Andrew Tate and a rogue’s gallery of homophobes, racists and snake oil salesmen.” (Mr. Tate, a manosphere influencer who is facing criminal accusations over sexual misconduct, has more than 9.5 million followers on X.)

Ms. Yaccarino’s team didn’t reply to Mr. Ahmed’s email. He later went on to publish research showing that hate speech and misinformation were rising on the platform.

Within weeks, Ms. Yaccarino suggested to Mr. Musk that Twitter sue the C.C.D.H. The resulting lawsuit, filed in late July, claimed that the C.C.D.H. had harmed the company’s advertising business and that the group used improper methodology to gather its findings. (The suit was dismissed in March; X has appealed.)

In July 2023, Mr. Musk renamed Twitter as X. Although he had spoken publicly about wanting to turn the company into X, an “everything app,” he announced the rebranding abruptly on social media without warning Ms. Yaccarino that it was coming, a person familiar with the matter said. Ms. Yaccarino, who learned about the name change from Mr. Musk’s online posts, later said it signified the creation of an entirely new company.

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Groups including the Anti-Defamation League were pressuring Mr. Musk to remove antisemitic content from X. Mr. Musk introduced Ms. Yaccarino to Jonathan Greenblatt, the A.D.L.’s director. “We had previously had what I would characterize as a good relationship,” Mr. Greenblatt said of his connection to Mr. Musk.

Jonathan Greenblatt, seated on a stage, speaking.
Jonathan Greenblatt, the director of the Anti-Defamation League, clashed with Mr. Musk over what he saw as antisemitic posts on the newly renamed X.Credit…Jp Yim/Getty Images

During their discussion, Ms. Yaccarino pledged to crack down on hate speech. “Linda and I had a very cordial and constructive conversation,” Mr. Greenblatt recalled. At the behest of an X policy team member, Mr. Greenblatt said in a post on X that the conversation was “frank + productive” and that he would give “credit if the service gets better … and reserve the right to call them out until it does.”

The post incited an immediate backlash. Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist livestreamer, and others campaigned for Mr. Musk to ban the A.D.L. from X. A hashtag calling for a ban spread rapidly, and Mr. Musk replied to several posts about it, then threatened to sue the A.D.L.

Mr. Greenblatt quickly struck back. “I am not daunted. I am not deterred. I am not frightened. I am going to continue to ferociously fight antisemitism,” the A.D.L. director said.

The episode lent credence to the theory that Mr. Musk was boosting hate speech and that his C.E.O. was powerless to stop him. Ms. Yaccarino worked to undo the damage, setting a meeting at One World Trade Center with Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue and chief content officer of Condé Nast. The company spends tens of millions of dollars on advertising on X a year.

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Ms. Wintour told Ms. Yaccarino that she had worked well with Mr. Greenblatt, implying that the feud with the A.D.L. would need to stop, according to two people with knowledge of the conversation. Ms. Yaccarino was reassuring: X wouldn’t tolerate antisemitism, she promised.

Condé Nast kept advertising, and the A.D.L. later resumed spending, too.

On Sept. 28, Ms. Yaccarino arrived in Laguna Niguel, Calif., to speak at CODE, an annual tech and digital media summit. But as she arrived in the green room at the Ritz Carlton, she was blindsided by the news that a former Twitter trust and safety executive, Yoel Roth, had been added as a last-minute speaker at the conference.

Mr. Roth had quit the company in the wake of Mr. Musk’s takeover and penned an editorial in The New York Times that sharply questioned some of the actions being taken by the new owner. Mr. Musk responded by engaging with an online harassment campaign against Mr. Roth that accused the former executive of inappropriate conduct. Mr. Roth warned Ms. Yaccarino from the stage that Mr. Musk might someday turn on her, too.

Julia Boorstin, a CNBC anchor who was scheduled to interview Ms. Yaccarino, apologized backstage for the sudden change of plans and coaxed her not to cancel her appearance. When they took the stage that afternoon, both appeared rattled. The tense interview that unfolded shocked the audience — Ms. Yaccarino stumbled over basic company stats and fixated on Mr. Roth’s earlier interview, a dramatic fumble after her many skilled presentations to advertisers at previous upfronts.

When Ms. Boorstin asked for her response to Mr. Roth, Ms. Yaccarino said, “Chuckles. Chuckling.” But then she continued to dispute his claims about the safety of the platform. When Ms. Boorstin tried to redirect her to talking about X, Ms. Yaccarino complained: “Yoel had 25 minutes to talk.”

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Her appearance quickly spread on social media, all but drowning out her optimistic assertion that X would be profitable by early 2024. On the site itself, observers called it a “dumpster fire” and a “train wreck.”

Afterward in the green room, tensions boiled over. Ms. Yaccarino confronted Ms. Boorstin, then rushed to the white Tesla waiting outside to whisk her away, Ms. Boorstin trailing behind in tears.

The disastrous interview capped Ms. Yaccarino’s most tumultuous month on the job. Afterward, she retreated, canceling another public appearance at a Wall Street Journal conference and rehearsing endlessly for congressional testimony she was set to present in January.

A new threat arose as Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, and violent images from the resulting conflict spread rapidly on X. Ms. Yaccarino held daily meetings with X staffers grappling with content moderation in the politically fraught environment. But, on Nov. 15, Mr. Musk yet again seemed to undermine Ms. Yaccarino’s efforts by endorsing the “great replacement” theory, an antisemitic conspiracy theory that minorities are replacing white European populations.

“You have said the actual truth,” he replied to a user who posted it on X. Making matters worse, the advocacy group Media Matters for America released research on Nov. 16 showing ads on X adjacent to neo-Nazi posts.

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On Nov. 18, during a conference call, several longtime advertising executives spoke to Ms. Yaccarino about their concerns with Mr. Musk’s seeming embrace of antisemitism and encouraged her to resign, two people familiar with the call said. She had a duty to her team, she responded, and she did not think Mr. Musk’s comment was out of line.

In a meeting with X sales employees days later, Ms. Yaccarino said the conference call amounted to sabotage, trying to disrupt plans for her daughter’s upcoming wedding. “I am quite sure that that was not a coincidence,” she told her colleagues.

Later that month, Mr. Musk admitted that endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory had been a mistake. But then came that expletive-ridden screed against advertisers at The Times’s DealBook Conference, again bedeviling Ms. Yaccarino’s efforts to calm the waters.

For once, Ms. Yaccarino seemingly had enough.

Elon Musk seated onstage speaking to a reporter, in front of a blue wall.
Elon Musk at the 2023 DealBook Summit at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City.Credit…Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times

That evening, she and one of Mr. Musk’s trusted confidants called him, making it clear that his onstage outburst had not been helpful. Ms. Yaccarino insisted that Mr. Musk had to smooth things by attending a dinner that night hosted by WPP, a giant advertising holding company. At first, Mr. Musk resisted, arguing he did not want to beg for money, two people said.

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Ms. Yaccarino remained firm: Mr. Musk had to attend the dinner, she told him. He finally agreed.

Attendees welcomed Mr. Musk, and he ended up in a friendly chat with Mark Read, the chief executive of WPP, giving Ms. Yaccarino a rare chance to demonstrate her ability to influence Mr. Musk when it was crucial that she do so.

A few months later, as part of the technology conference CES in Las Vegas, a private dinner attracted more than 40 people, including curious marketing executives from Salesforce, the National Football League and the computer company Lenovo. Ms. Yaccarino, who hosted, had a message: “Get comfortable.” Mr. Musk’s vision of X as an anything-goes platform without strict content moderation wasn’t going to change, she said.

Of course, X would police hate speech and child exploitation, she assured the marketers. But Twitter, which was governed by a mandate of ensuring “healthy conversations” and policed its users’ toxic speech, was in the past.

“I was left with a strong impression that she is very much in charge of running the business-side operation,” said Brendan Carr, a Republican commissioner for the Federal Communications Commission who attended the dinner. “She’s really articulating this vision that X can be a place for robust, wide open debate.”

If advertisers hoped Ms. Yaccarino might waver in her support of Mr. Musk’s “anything goes” vision, the recent developments in the 2024 presidential campaign put an end to all that.

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In late April, Ms. Yaccarino told colleagues that she would team up with the cable channel NewsNation to host a live-streamed presidential debate on X. Ms. Yaccarino later shifted to a town hall format that would allow former President Donald J. Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to respond to questions from X users. No date has yet been set, but Mr. Musk has been eager for X to play a role in the presidential race.

In the last few weeks, he has made clear his full-throated support of Mr. Trump. Roughly 30 minutes after the former president was shot and injured at a rally in Pennsylvania on July 13, Mr. Musk backed his bid for the White House. “I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery,” Mr. Musk wrote on X. (His political leaning seems to dovetail with Ms. Yaccarino’s — she served on a presidential commission during Mr. Trump’s last term and currently follows several Melania Trump fan accounts on X.)

The internal documents about X’s revenue show that Ms. Yaccarino hopes to net $8 million in political advertising this quarter. If she succeeds, it would represent a marked increase from the company’s political earnings when it was still Twitter — the company earned less than $3 million from political advertisers during the 2018 U.S. midterm elections, the last cycle before it banned political advertising.

And Mr. Musk seems to be backing up his words with the kind of influence that his enormous wealth can buy. A super PAC created by Mr. Musk and some of his closest allies has committed to spending tens of millions of dollars over the next few months to elect Mr. Trump.

As for X itself, the onslaught of political news has reminded the world of its potential, as when President Biden used the social media platform to announce he was dropping out of the presidential race.

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That post from his official account — which got 106 million views over the subsequent 24 hours — gave Ms Yaccarino an opportunity for a victory lap. “X is where history happens,” she boasted in a repost of Mr. Biden’s announcement.

But what Ms. Yaccarino failed to mention — or was perhaps unaware of — was that Mr. Biden’s announcement had been posted almost simultaneously on the rival sites Instagram, Threads and Facebook.

Ryan Mac, Benjamin Mullin, David McCabe and Sapna Maheshwari contributed reporting.

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A correction was made on

July 27, 2024

An earlier version of this article misstated the relationship between Linda Yaccarino and Lou Paskalis. Mr Paskalis said the two remain friends; he is not a former friend who has cut ties.


When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.Learn more

Kate Conger is a technology reporter based in San Francisco. She can be reached at kate.conger@nytimes.com. More about Kate Conger

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The World of Elon Musk

The billionaire’s portfolio includes the world’s most valuable automaker, an innovative rocket company and plenty of drama.


John Malone Has Hit a Rough Patch. How to Play His Liberty Empire Now.

Sirius XM, Charter Communications, and Warner Bros. Discovery have come under pressure. But investors shouldn’t count the media titan out.

By Andrew BaryFollow

July 26, 2024, 11:01 am EDTShare

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Throughout his long career, John Malone has stayed at least one step ahead of the pack. In the 1980s, he was the “cable cowboy,” beating just about everyone in wiring America for cable TV. Then he evolved into a wheeling, dealing media mogul, assembling an array of investments under the banner of Liberty Media. He did so well that his name and Liberty’s were often mentioned alongside those of Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway.Throughout his long career, John Malone has stayed at least one step ahead of the pack. In the 1980s, he was the “cable cowboy,” beating just about everyone in wiring America for cable TV. Then he evolved into a wheeling, dealing media mogul, assembling an array of investments under the banner of Liberty Media. He did so well that his name and Liberty’s were often mentioned alongside those of Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway.

Now, it seems, the world is catching up with Malone. At 83, he is facing challenges in broad swaths of his empire. Sirius XM Holdings 

SIRI-5.10%, the satellite radio company, and Charter CommunicationsCHTR16.62%, the country’s No. 2 cable operator behind Comcast, have been pressured as a result of sea changes in media and cable TV. Other companies associated with Malone, including Warner Bros. DiscoveryWBD4.01%, have taken some real lumps. And Malone’s basic modus operandi, which often relies on debt, has lost its luster as interest rates have risen.

But don’t count Malone out. Just as Buffett, 93, has defied skeptics in his twilight years, Malone could do the same. Some of his holdings, like Formula One racing and the Atlanta Braves, are thriving. And Malone is still making deals. These deals, real and contemplated, provide the key to unlocking the value of his empire—and an opportunity for investors with the patience to navigate his complex web of stocks.

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“Malone would rather do things sooner rather than later,” says Pivotal Research Group senior research analyst Jeffrey Wlodarczak, who is bullish on Charter and Sirius XM and views Liberty SiriusXM and Liberty Broadband 

LBRDK

14.96%, which holds a 26% stake in Charter, as good plays. “His level of patience is less than it used to be.”

Malone is known for turning Tele-Communications Inc., better known as TCI, into a cable behemoth, before selling to AT&T in 1999. From there, Malone built Liberty Media, where he developed a knack for nurturing media-related companies, seeing around corners, and knowing when to sell, as he did with DirecTV nearly a decade ago.

These days, Malone keeps a relatively low profile—he declined to speak to Barron’s —and lets Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei do most of the talking. Malone, estimated to be worth $9.2 billion, according to Bloomberg, often spends summers in Maine—he is one of the country’s largest landowners—but “no major decision gets made without John’s approval,” Maffei said at a conference in May.

Malone’s Magic

Unlike Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, Malone doesn’t keep his investments in one entity. There is no single Liberty Media stock, and Malone uses supervoting shares through which he parlays modest economic stakes into outright or effective control. The typical Malone business has three classes of stock: Class A shares with one vote, Class C shares with none—they tend to have a K in their tickers—and thinly traded Class B shares, with 10 votes. Malone controls nearly 50% of the vote at Liberty Media but his economic stake, at under $2 billion, accounts for less than 10% of the financial value of the companies.

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Malone also likes to create pure-play investments, even if it means slicing and dicing his empire, and he uses tracking stocks when a direct spinoff of the underlying business isn’t possible for tax and other reasons. Malone has set up trackers for companies controlled by Liberty, notably Liberty Formula One 

FWONK

2.33%, which holds the auto racing business; Liberty SiriusXM, which owns an 83% interest in Sirius XM, the satellite radio operator; and Liberty Live, which owns a 30% stake in Live Nation Entertainment. Tracking stocks offer investors a play on a company’s financial performance without direct control. They are rare outside Malone’s world, and even he recognizes how unpopular they can be: His goal is to spin off companies as soon as practicable and end their tracking-stock status.

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The Malone playbook often involves putting considerable debt on companies to maximize shareholder returns, while favoring stock buybacks over dividends. These strategies work well if asset values rise but backfire if they decline—as has been the case with Charter, which is more leveraged than Comcast. Higher interest rates can also make these strategies less effective.

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TV Troubles

Some of the legacy media businesses Malone controls or has stakes in are in a tough spot. Cable providers like Charter have been pressured by slowing broadband subscriber growth and cord-cutting. Even satellite radio operator Sirius XM has felt the pinch. Malone-controlled Liberty Global, meanwhile, has struggled amid competitive conditions in European cable and telecommunications—its shares, at some $19, are down by a third over the past five years.

It has been a similar story for investors in Malone’s Liberty Latin America, which offers cable, broadband, and telecommunication services in Puerto Rico and over 20 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Its shares, around $10, are off more by than a third during the past five years.

Malone is also a small but influential investor in Warner Bros. Discovery. He is a director of the company and close to CEO David Zaslav. Malone helped create the media company in 2022 when Discovery, in which he held a key stake, merged with AT&T’s WarnerMedia. That deal has been a disaster due to declining cable viewership, advertising softness, and leverage—the company has $40 billion in net debt. The stock is down over 65% since the deal closed, to $8.50 a share.Cable WoesCharter has had a tough year; Liberty Broadband has had it worse.Source: FactSetCharter CommunicationsLiberty BroadbandAug. 2023’24-50-40-30-20-1001020%

Another company in Malone’s sphere of influence is Qurate Retail, owner of home-shopping networks HSN and QVC. Qurate, controlled by Maffei, has seen its stock fall 90% in recent years due to erosion in the business and the acquisition of Zulily, an online retail site, that was sold in 2023. The drop also reflects the company’s high leverage and concerns about home shopping amid declining TV viewership. Qurate’s equity market value is just over $300 million, against more than $6 billion in net debt plus preferred stock. There are signs, perhaps, of a turnaround in the business, though the stock, at a recent 72 cents, is a speculative inevstment. “If the recent trends of lower customer attrition and higher gross margins are sustainable, I expect investors will reconsider their view that Qurate’s business is a melting ice cube and instead focus on the company’s significant free cash flow generation and revalue the stock much higher,” says private investor Carney Hawks, a former partner at Brigade Capital Management.

Sirius Issues

Malone’s dealmaking could benefit investors. In December 2023, Liberty reached a deal to merge Liberty SiriusXM and Sirius XM. The merger, set to close this quarter, fulfills a long-sought goal of Malone to simplify the corporate structure and eliminate what had been a 35% discount on the tracking stock to the value of its Sirius stake.

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Shares of Sirius, home to Howard Stern, have been pressured after a larger-than-expected drop in its paid satellite radio subscribers in the first quarter. It also has an aging base of auto subscribers, its most important customer base. Buffett, 93, is a big fan of the service and of the Siriusly Sinatra channel. Maffei has acknowledged in-car audio competition, and that the company needs to do a better job of attracting a younger audience. “This was originally built for 40-year old males,” he said, noting they are now 60. “We need to make sure that new 40-year old males are finding our stuff attractive.”

While Maffei said in May that results “will get better as we go through the year,” the stock’s recent rally, likely driven by a short squeeze, has it trading for about nine times projected 2024 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, or Ebitda, and 12 times estimated 2024 earnings, with a 2.7% dividend yield.Mind the GapA deal to merge the two companies could finally end the valuation disparity.Source: FactSetLiberty SiriusXMSirius XM HoldingsAug. 2023’24-80-60-40-2002040%

The best way to play Sirius XM is through Liberty Sirius. The tracking stock trades at a 25% discount to the current value of the transaction, and that gap should narrow by the time the deal closes in early September. Liberty Sirius holders are due to get 0.83 Sirius shares for each of their shares after a 1-to-10 reverse stock split on Sirius XM. That’s now worth over $30, against the current Liberty Sirius price of under $23.

Berkshire Hathaway is the largest holder of Liberty SiriusXM, at more than 30%, or $2.5 billion, having boosted its stake by 50% this year. The investment is rumored to have been initiated by Ted Weschler, one of two Berkshire investment managers (with Todd Combs) who together run about 10% of Berkshire’s $400 billion equity portfolio, and often make investment decisions independent of Buffett.

Endgame for Liberty Broadband

Chris Marangi, a senior portfolio manager at Gamco Investors, and others see investment opportunities in the Malone empire. A similar strategy to Sirius could be applied to Charter and Liberty Broadband, which trades at a 35% discount to the value of its 26% stake in Charter, which was worth about $13 billion as of Thursday. (Liberty Broadband also owns an Alaskan cable-TV business valued at more than $2 billion and holds nearly $4 billion in debt.) The nonvoting shares traded around $55, and Barron’s estimates the asset value at about $90 a share (Charter stock was up 17% after reporting earnings on Friday).

“Everybody knows the endgame is to combine with Charter,” says Marangi. “There is no tax or other barrier to combining the two companies. The question is when.”

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A deal likely would benefit investors by closing much—or potentially all—of the discount, but that hasn’t been enough to entice them to buy the stock. Marangi said there is some “investor fatigue” with Liberty companies that are proxies for other publicly traded companies. Investors are also unclear about when a deal with Charter may materialize and on what terms. The stock was down 20% this year through Thursday amid a slowdown in its best business, broadband, due in part to competition from wireless companies and traded for seven times Ebitda.

Other issues with Charter are debt of nearly $100 billion against a market value of $50 billion and limited free cash flow this year. But the company trades well below its estimated replacement value of its broadband and cable network, and dominates the industry with Comcast. With Liberty Broadband, investors can win two ways—a continued rally in Charter and a narrowing of the discount.

A Live Discount

Liberty Live stock has been flat since it was spun out of Liberty Sirius last year, though the initial investment has paid off handsomely. The tracking stock now fetches around $36, an estimated 40% discount to the value of its stake in Live Nation, worth $6.5 billion, plus an estimated $300 million in other assets, notably a 7% profits interest in the owner of the Denver Nuggets basketball team and Colorado Avalanche hockey team.

Why the big discount? Less liquidity in the tracker relative to Live Nation and no clear path to a tax-free spinoff. Maffei said in May that a “tax efficient” resolution of Liberty Live is “more complicated” than for other Liberty companies.

Seaport Research analyst David Joyce has called the Liberty Live discount “inexplicably wide,” and Jason Bazinet of Citigroup sees it as a cheap play on Live Nation, which he views as inexpensive given a Justice Department lawsuit against the company. Live Nation trades around $93, close to what Bazinet sees as its breakup value if the Justice Department wins. If Justice loses, it could be worth $130.

Success in Sports

The Atlanta Braves, which were spun out of Liberty Media a year ago, are one of only two public plays on major U.S. sports teams—the other is Madison Square Garden Sports, owner of the New York Knicks and Rangers—and the stock has returned 15% over the past 12 months. The Braves are consistently one of the best teams in Major League Baseball, and the team’s loyal fan base covers a huge territory in the South. The company also owns a valuable real estate development called the Battery around the Braves ballpark, Truist Park.Let’s PlayMalone’s investments in Formula One and the Atlanta Braves have paid off.Source: FactSetAtlanta Braves HoldingsFormula OneAug. 2023’24-20-15-10-505101520%

The nonvoting shares trade at $43, which values the company at about $2.7 billion, but Marangi values the stock in the mid to high $50s, based on a team valuation of at least $3 billion and the value of the real estate.

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The best way to close the gap between where the stock trades and what the team is worth would be to sell the company, which many analysts and investors think Malone is poised to do in the next year. “The Braves are a well-run organization,” Joyce says. “They have one of the highest levels of fan engagement in baseball. It’s free to be acquired by a billionaire who wants a trophy asset.”

Tax expert Robert Willens sees no impediment from a tax standpoint to a sale, and Maffei did nothing to play down the possibility when asked about it in May. “We’re always trying to be good stewards of shareholder value, and we’ll see what gets presented or not,” he said.

Formula One doesn’t need a sale for the investment to pay off, even if a deal is always a possibility. Liberty bought the business in 2016 and has since significantly boosted profitability. Analysts think there is more to come from greater sponsorships and more lucrative TV rights. The sport’s popularity has increased particularly in the U.S., due in part to the Netflix reality show Drive to Survive. A new race in Las Vegas has also generated buzz.

“This is a rare asset, a global sport,” says Pivotal’s Wlodarczak.

While a tracking stock, Formula One doesn’t carry a tracker discount. Its shares have gained 26% this year, and its deal to buy motorcycle racing circuit MotoGP could offer another growth opportunity. The voting A shares, which trade at a discount to the nonvoting stock, fetch around $73, or almost 25 times projected 2025 free cash flow of about $3 a share.

“Free cash flow is just starting to take off,” says Wlodarczak, who says investors can buy and hold Formula One. He thinks it will ultimately be sold and that Liberty could get about $30 billion for the franchise, or more than $100 per share, up nearly 40% from Thursday’s close.

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Write to Andrew Bary at andrew.bary@barrons.com

Opinion: The stock market’s cruel summer is about to get much worse

Bears control the S&P 500 now. Plus: This small stock trades like it could have big news

By Lawrence G. McMillanFollow

Last Updated: July 27, 2024 at 9:15 a.m. ET
First Published: July 25, 2024 at 1:20 p.m. ETShareResize

We now have a pattern of lower highs and lower lows — and that is the hallmark of a bearish market.PHOTO: UNIVERSAL PICTURES VIA AP

Referenced Symbols

The S&P 500 index 

SPX1.11% has quickly turned down from its all-time highs. In fact, a pattern of lower highs and lower lows has already emerged, which is quite bearish. We are no longer recommending a “core” bullish position, and we are acting on new sell signals.

How did this happen so quickly? SPX made new all-time highs in the first half of July, and there was no negative divergence in place. In fact, small caps were beginning to come alive for the first time in quite a while. Even now, with SPX having broken support, the small-cap indexes are outperforming (although they are also fallin

Canada owes First Nations for treaty breaches, top court rules

The negotiated settlement is expected to be sizable after Canada’s top court ruled that the government “made a mockery” of the 1850 Robinson Treaties.

By Frances Vinall

July 28, 2024 at 12:14 a.m. EDT

Treaties signed more than 170 years ago between Canada’sBritish colonial settlers and several Indigenous groups have not been honored by successiveCanadian governments, which for generations deprived the First Nations of fair compensation for resource revenue, the country’s top court has ruled.

The Supreme Court of Canada on Friday ordered the government to enter into negotiations to determine the compensation it owes to groups of Ojibewa (Anishinaabe) people for breaking its promises, leaving their descendants mired in poverty.

The decision could have significant implications for how resource revenue, such as from mining and forestry, are shared with the country’s Indigenous communities and for the role of courts in reconciliation between First Nations and Canadian governments.

The negotiated settlement is expected to be sizable. During the case, Canada argued that the beneficiaries were owed at most about 1.8 billion Canadian dollars, or about $1.3 billion. But Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz — who was called by the First Nations groups to testify — told the court that his economic model showed the figure was upward of $90 billion.

In its decision,the court rebuked Canada’s “longstanding and egregious” breach of the treaties — which the country entered into in 1850, more than a decade before Canada confederated — between the Crownand the Anishinaabe of Lake Huron and Lake Superior in what is now Northern Ontario. The Crown was represented by Ontario’s attorney general in the case, and Canada’s attorney general was also a respondent in the claim.

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“For well over a century, the Crown has shown itself to be a patently unreliable and untrustworthy treaty partner,” Justice Mahmud Jamal wrote. “… It has lost the moral authority to simply say ‘trust us.’”

At the time, the Anishinaabe and the Crown agreed that the Anishinaabe would cede their territories in exchange for, among other things, an annual payment. A novel clause in that agreement said that if the land produced an amount in the future that would allow the government to increase the annuity “without incurring loss” then it “shall” be increased “from time to time.”

Jamal called for a “declaration setting out the rights and obligations of the treaty parties, including the Crown’s obligations under the Augmentation Clause,” in addition to the negotiated settlement. If a settlement cannot be reached between the parties, he said, the Crown must “exercise its discretion” to determine an appropriate amount of compensation.

The federal government had agreed that some compensation was owed, but Ontario argued it has no legal obligation in part because it has incurred billions in losses from building infrastructure needed for development.

The two agreements, commonly called the Robinson Treaties, were not followed, the descendants of the First Nations people who signed it successfully argued.

“Billions of dollars have since been generated from the Treaty territories from forestry, mining, and other resource development,” First Peoples Law, which was involved in the case, said in a statement last year.

“At the same time, the Anishinaabe Treaty beneficiaries continue to receive the same annual payment of $4 per person that they received in 1875.”

The court found that paying the treaty beneficiaries a “shocking” $4 each per year without an increase since 1875 “can only be described as a mockery” of the document’s intended promise.

It also commented on how historical treaties should be interpreted, emphasizing that courts “must consider both the words of a treaty and the historical and cultural context” and take into account how the agreement would have been understood by each party at the time. The Canadian government recognizes 70 historical treaties between the Crown and 364 First Nations signed between 1701 and 1923.

Harley Schachter, counsel for Red Rock First Nation and Whitesand First Nation, celebrated the ruling in a news release: “The Supreme Court has ruled today that governments are not above the law,” he said. “It is a sacred relationship between First Nations and the Crown. It is a partnership, not a dictatorship.”

The Robinson Huron Treaty Litigation Fund, which represents another group of Huron claimants who reached a 10 billion Canadian dollar settlement with the federal and provincial governments last year, said it was “very happy with the decision.” The ruling vindicated its position,it added,including that “the Treaty contains a sacred promise to share the wealth of the territory in accordance with the Anishinaabe legal principles of reciprocity, respect, responsibility and renewal.”

Amanda Coletta contributed to this report.

‘Dark oxygen’ discovery: Study finds lumps of metal producing ‘dark oxygen’ on ocean floor

Oxygen is being produced over 13,000 feet underwater without photosynthesis, but how?

Julia Gomez

USA TODAY

“Dark oxygen” is being produced deep in the ocean, and scientists are baffled by the strange phenomenon, according to a new study.

In science class, kids learn that plants need sunlight to do photosynthesis and create the oxygen we breathe. But, oxygen is being produced on the abyssal seafloor, which is so deep that sunlight cannot reach it, according to a study published on Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Not only is oxygen being produced, but plants aren’t creating it.

Instead of green, photosynthesizing plants, the oxygen is created by metallic “nodules” that look like lumps of coal. But, instead of heating a grill, they’re splitting H2O (water) molecules into hydrogen and oxygen.

A bright beam of sunlight shines underwater illuminating a shallow sandy seafloor in Alor, Indonesia.

New study:Prehistoric crystals offer clues on when freshwater first emerged on Earth, study shows

Faulty readings

The phenomenon was first observed in 2013, when the lead scientist of the study, Andrew Sweetman, a professor at the Scottish Association for Marine Science, was studying the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, an area in the Pacific Ocean between Mexico and Hawaii. He believed his equipment was faulty when it showed that oxygen was being made on the dark sea floor, reports CNN.

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“I basically told my students, just put the sensors back in the box,” Sweetman, who also leads the institution’s seafloor ecology and biogeochemistry group, told CNN. “We’ll ship them back to the manufacturer and get them tested because they’re just giving us gibberish. And every single time the manufacturer came back: ‘They’re working. They’re calibrated.’”

Sweetwater ignored the readings because he’d only been taught that you can only get oxygen from photosynthesis, according to the BBC.

“Eventually, I realized that for years I’d been ignoring this potentially huge discovery,” Sweetman told BBC News.

Behold, Kermitops: Fossil named after Kermit the Frog holds clues to amphibian evolutionDinosaur extinction: New study suggests they were killed off by more than an asteroidMexican gray wolf at California zoo is recovering after leg amputation: ‘Huge success story’Team led by Oxford biologist discovers long-lost mammal: See video of long-beaked echidnaCould scientists resurrect the extinct Tasmanian tiger? New breakthrough raises hopes

What produces the ocean’s oxygen?

Around half of the Earth’s oxygen comes from the ocean, states the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA.

Scientists attributed the production to the following:

  • Oceanic plankton
  • Drifting plants
  • Algae
  • Some bacteria

All the organisms listed are capable of photosynthesis, thus creating oxygen. But they wouldn’t be able to do that so deep underwater.

Mining companies want to collect oxygen-producing modules

The modules, which form over millions of years, are made of ingredients needed to create batteries: lithium, cobalt and copper, according to the BBC. And mining companies are interested in collecting them.

However, Sweetman’s new study raises concerns about the risks involved in collecting these deep-sea minerals.

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