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Everyone is talking about an anonymous memo containing damning—and potentially fabricated—accusations against the hedge fund.

Twitter threads. Texts. Emails. Phone calls. All asking: Have you seen the Tiger Global memo?

Last week, finance circles were abuzz over an anonymously-written and damning memo that’s being sent around. The document, which extensively cites anonymous sources, details some pretty aggressive, and unsubstantiated, accusations against mega hedge fund and startup investor Tiger Global regarding its performance and personnel. While we reviewed the memo ourselves, we’ve decided not to print any of the specific accusations and details, as we have been unable to verify them by press time. Tiger sent a letter to investors on Friday, Forbes first reported, acknowledging the memo, but saying it is “packed with lies,” and that the firm was being “targeted with a series of information attacks.” The firm blamed the memo on a disgruntled former employee, according to the letter seen by Forbes.

The memo does include mention of some issues that have already been publicly reported, including a controversy around a reported large settlement with a female employee, and Tiger’s reported struggles with raising its new fund. The memo is also being circulated far and wide among investors and founders, leading to much speculation over who wrote it—and why. Tiger declined to comment to us beyond the contents of the letter to investors.

“It’s in everyone’s inbox right now,” one venture investor said, adding that founders have been texting them about it. Another fund manager told us: “I think I was sent this by six or more people in the last 48 hours,” they said Friday.

Interestingly, the memo is being billed as a draft of a big exposé from a New York media brand (The New Yorker). But we confirmed that isn’t the case. A spokesperson for The New Yorker told us: “This is not a draft New Yorker article, and we do not know its provenance.” The fund manager told us a similar memo was sent to them six to eight months ago, though The New Yorker was not mentioned in that one.

And from our perspective, as journalists, we highly doubt this was written by anyone in our field. There are some tells, like the fact that the writer doesn’t explain an “asset-liability duration mismatch,” the kind of jargon journalists almost always spell out to a general audience. Not to mention, it’s quite unheard of for drafts of stories to be sent around except to one’s editors. While it’s not yet confirmed who wrote or passed the memo around, one thing is clear: someone has it out for Tiger.

The memo comes at a time when Tiger is reeling from the cratering market. The hedge fund plowed massive amounts of cash into startups in 2021 at a rapid clip, investing at high valuations without taking board seats at companies. Now, the private market is going through a correction, and Tiger has struggled to raise more funding to invest in private companies. Meanwhile, the fund has been trying to offload swaths of its stakes in startups; and The Information reported last week that Tiger is nearing a deal to sell part of its stake in buzzy artificial intelligence startup Cohere at a $3 billion valuation—a boost from Cohere’s most recent raise at a roughly $2 billion valuation in June. (Tiger first invested in 2021 in a $125 million Series B round, although the valuation wasn’t disclosed, per PitchBook.) Per reports, Tiger’s performance has recovered somewhat this year from severe lows in 2022, though its public funds are still underperforming the rebound in public tech stocks so far in 2023. Tiger, which has backed prominent startups like Instacart, Databricks, and OpenAI, is subject to the same kind of valuation headwinds the rest of the industry is facing. Its most recent private fund had reported a 20% paper loss as of December 2022, The Information reported in April.

Whatever way you look at it, the mysterious memo has sparked fear in other fund managers.

“This is a new form of meme warfare that every fund should be petrified of,” the fund manager says. “You can essentially create longform, unsubstantiated claims that can go viral to every major decision maker and to refute them is to only give them more credibility. That’s scary.”

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Taiwanese microchip manufacturer TSMC blames struggle to build Phoenix plant on skilled labor shortage but workers cite disorganization and safety concerns

Posed in front of an American flag and a large banner reading “A Future Made in America Phoenix, AZ,” Joe Biden told a crowd of assembled workers, supporters and media last December: “American manufacturing is back, folks.”

Eight months on, the Phoenix microchip plant – the centerpiece of Biden’s $52.7bn US hi-tech manufacturing agenda – is struggling to get online.

The plant’s owner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the largest chip maker in the world, has pushed back plans to start manufacturing to 2025, blaming a lack of skilled labor. It is trying to fast-track visas for 500 Taiwanese workers. Unions, meanwhile, are accusing TSMC of inventing the skills shortage as an excuse to hire cheaper, foreign labor. Others point to safety issues at the plant.

The success of the plant – in a crucial swing state – is likely to get even more scrutiny as Biden prepares for the 2024 election cycle and US tensions with China over technology, and Taiwan, escalate.

Biden signed the Chips and Science Act, which includes $52.7bn in loans, grants and other incentives, and billions more in tax credits for manufacturers to produce the chips in the US, in August 2022.

The Arizona project is the flagship in the president’s efforts to tout the law’s effects and TSMC’s promised $40bn investment in US chip production plant is one of the largest foreign investments in US history and the largest ever in Arizona.

The stakes could not be higher. Semiconductor chips are the essential components of computers, smartphones and other electronic devices, and the coronavirus pandemic exposed how vulnerable the US had become to imported chips. About 12% of semiconductor chips are made in the US, down from 37% in 1990. Boosting US production will add thousands of jobs as well as securing US supplies at a time of worsening relations with China, whose rapidly growing industry accounts for about 9% of global semiconductor sales.

The Phoenix semiconductor manufacturing facility, or “fab”, is a huge undertaking, encompassing a 1,000-acre area north of Phoenix, set to include two fab facilities. Construction is expected to generate 21,000 construction jobs, with the workforce at the facilities estimated at about 4,500, and thousands of additional jobs at suppliers in the area.

But the construction of the plant has been hampered by accidents and misunderstandings, according to insiders who spoke to the Guardian.

A former supervisor at the site explained all contractors at the site operate under the management of two companies affiliated with TSMC, United Integrated Services (UIS) and Marketech International Corp, and blamed delays on disorganization from management and a lack of knowledge by bosses from Taiwan on adhering to safety codes and regulations in the US.

If you disagreed, they threatened “to take work from you and give it to somebody else”, they said. They requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from their general contractor employer. “Then the non-union contractors couldn’t get enough guys out there who were skilled enough.”

They said when they started working at the site, all workers went through a safety training program, but out in the field, they never saw the people who ran that program or safety protocols enforced.

“There were multiple general contractors all in the same little areas, all of them saying different things. Nobody ever coordinated anything; everybody was always in each other’s way, people were storing material everywhere, and it was constantly holding up little projects,” they said.

They explained the main contractors would give them a priority task to complete, but that it would change daily, or they would completely change their mind, making it impossible to complete tasks and add to delays.

“When you have to put stuff up, tear it down, put it up, tear it down, literally five or six times, that’s going to cost five or six times the original quote, probably more because you have to get demolitions involved,” the worker said. “This was constantly the whole process. Everything was rushed. They weren’t giving us actual blueprints, just engineer drawings. It felt like a design-as-we-go type of deal. The information we were getting was really strange, never complete, and always changing. We would get updates constantly and these were big updates to the point where we would have to start pulling things down.”

The worker also criticized frequent evacuations of the job site that occurred mostly due to false alarms and other communication issues that delayed work. They described long traffic lines and wait times to travel in and out of the job site that worsened whenever it rained because of the mud and said the constant turnover of contractors for different job tasks made it even more hectic.

They also noted that portable toilets were too few and were never properly cleaned or stocked with toilet paper and soap, probably resulting in workers getting sick. The worker said instead of calling 911 for safety emergencies, workers were directed to call an internal safety hotline, but that those medical services always took a long time to respond.

“I’ve never been on a job site like this. A job site this big with this many people, you have to be super safe, everything kind of has to slow down because you’re always in somebody’s way, so you have to have a perfect plan if you want to pull this off,” they concluded. “I think they need to get those Taiwan contractors out of there because they are not used to building in America at all. They’re hiring us as professionals to give them a quality installation and advice and direction on how to install things, but they would not listen to us at all.”

Workers and local unions have disputed TSMC’s characterization of the workforce and reasons for the delays. The Arizona Pipe Trades 469 is currently petitioning against TSMC’s application for 500 visas for workers from Taiwan to build the facilities.

A TSMC spokesperson characterized these new visa applications as part of a new phase of construction in the project to install process equipment.

“To ensure this critical phase of tool installation goes smoothly and successfully, it is a very common practice in the semiconductor industry to have a very limited number of experienced specialists from different overseas locations onsite to assist with important steps in the process. These experienced individuals have deep familiarity with our supplier equipment and will partner with our strong local workforce during this phase,” said the spokesperson in an email.

In an op-ed, Aaron Butler, president of the Arizona Building and Construction Trades Council, criticized TSMC’s announcement as an attempt to endanger American jobs and disputed claims from TSMC that the US workforce lacks the experience and skills required to complete construction.

“Blaming American workers for problems with this project is as offensive to American workers as it is inaccurate,” Butler wrote. “TSMC is blaming its construction delays on American workers and using that as an excuse to bring in foreign workers who they can pay less.”
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“Who would have declared such a war on us in Moscow?”

After six consecutive days of drone attacks on the Moscow region this week, one would think the shock of sudden late-night explosions might compel some Russians to consider what Ukrainian civilians have endured during 550 days of relentless Russian attacks.

Instead, some residents near the Russian capital have taken to social media to vent about the inconvenience of being woken up in the middle of the night, question why the “international community” isn’t coming to their rescue, and blame Ukrainian “terrorists” for targeting civilian areas. (Never mind that Moscow has repeatedly attacked residential areas in Ukraine with Iranian-made Shahed drones.)

No injuries have been reported in the recent string of attacks, and Russian officials claim to have shot down most of the drones that they say caused only “minor damage” to a building in Moscow City and several broken windows elsewhere. Kyiv has not confirmed or denied involvement in the drone strikes.

Russian media widely covered the attacks, airing interviews with residents who showed off their broken windows.

“It was scary to go up to the window,” said one man recounting his shock to wake up and find his window shattered. “This is the first time anything like this has happened to me.”

Separately, he told Deutsche Welle, “At first, there was panic. I thought the building had been hit by a shell.”

“It’s very scary. What if it hits the house next time?” another resident told DW, noting that she has a young child in the home. “Who would have declared such a war on us in Moscow?” she asked, unironically.
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Protesters say classification as ‘domestic terrorists’ for opposing planned Georgia police facility has upended their lives

Before boarding a flight from San Francisco to New York last month, Luke “Lucky” Harper was pulled aside and subjected to a search of his body and his belongings in front of other passengers waiting to board.

The experience would have been even more upsetting if it wasn’t the third time in several weeks. Harper was also searched in airports in Nashville, Tennessee, and Salt Lake City, Utah. His name was called out on a loudspeaker; officials swabbed his hands, seeking traces of explosives.

The 27-year-old aspiring writer had recently been released from jail in Dekalb county, Georgia, after being arrested on state domestic terrorism charges at a music festival on 5 March. He is one of 42 people facing the same charges in Georgia in connection with ongoing protests against a planned police and fire department training center known as “Cop City”. Another dozen or so people have been arrested and charged with felony stalking of a police officer – after handing out flyers – and money laundering, among other charges. Some were jailed in solitary confinement for days without explanation.

Although nearly a year has passed since the earliest arrests, no one has been indicted. The terrorism charges have been denounced as part of a “broader attempt to smear protesters as national security threats” in a letter by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other groups.

As with Harper, the lives of the arrestees have been upended. Some have lost jobs or been barred from attending school. Most are living with the psychological impacts of the criminal justice system being wielded against them with little to no publicly released evidence of having committed any crimes. At least 13 of them have posted fundraisers online to help with everything from housing to mental health.

Harper was arrested after arriving at the public park near the Cop City site the day before a 5 March music festival, part of a week of activities against the training center.

“I was there because I was curious,” Harper said.

He had never been to the forest before. During the festival, at least 100 people walked into the woods, crossed a creek and knocked over a fence where construction of the training center had begun. Some of them threw rocks and burned equipment. Harper was arrested hours later and accused of participating, in part due to his clothes being muddy and to a photo allegedly showing him at the scene.
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Land privatization and water depletion set the stage for the Lahaina fire 150 years ago. Now, land companies may benefit even more

In the late 18th century, when the Hawaiian Kingdom became a sovereign state, Lahaina carried such an abundance of water that early explorers reportedly anointed it “Venice of the Pacific”. A glut of natural wetlands nourished breadfruit trees, extensive taro terraces and fishponds that sustained wildlife and generations of Native Hawaiian families.

But more than a century and a half of plantation agriculture, driven by American and European colonists, have depleted Lahaina’s streams and turned biodiverse food forests into tinderboxes. Today, Hawaii spends $3bn a year importing up to 90% of its food. This altered ecology, experts say, gave rise to the 8 August blaze that decimated the historic west Maui town and killed more than 111 people.

“The rise of plantation capital spawned the drying of the west side of Maui,” said Kamana Beamer, a historian and a former member of the Hawaii commission on water resource management, which is charged with protecting and regulating water resources. “You can see the link between extractive, unfettered capitalism at the expense of our natural resources and the ecosystem.”

Drawn to Hawaii’s temperate climate and prodigious rainfall, sugar and pineapple white magnates began arriving on the islands in the early 1800s. For much of the next two centuries, Maui-based plantation owners like Alexander & Baldwin and Maui Land & Pineapple Company reaped enormous fortunes, uprooting native trees and extracting billions of gallons of water from streams to grow their thirsty crops. (Annual sugar cane production averaged 1m tons until the mid-1980s; a pound of sugar requires 2,000lb of freshwater to produce.)

Invasive plants that were introduced as livestock forage, like guinea grass, now cover a quarter of Hawaii’s surface area. The extensive use of pesticides on Maui’s pineapple fields poisoned nearby water wells.

The dawn of large-scale agriculture dramatically changed land practices in Maui, where natural resources no longer served as a mode of food production or a habitat for birds but a means of generating fast cash, said Lucienne de Naie, an east Maui historian and chair of the Sierra Club Maui group.

n the late 18th century, when the Hawaiian Kingdom became a sovereign state, Lahaina carried such an abundance of water that early explorers reportedly anointed it “Venice of the Pacific”. A glut of natural wetlands nourished breadfruit trees, extensive taro terraces and fishponds that sustained wildlife and generations of Native Hawaiian families.

But more than a century and a half of plantation agriculture, driven by American and European colonists, have depleted Lahaina’s streams and turned biodiverse food forests into tinderboxes. Today, Hawaii spends $3bn a year importing up to 90% of its food. This altered ecology, experts say, gave rise to the 8 August blaze that decimated the historic west Maui town and killed more than 111 people.

“The rise of plantation capital spawned the drying of the west side of Maui,” said Kamana Beamer, a historian and a former member of the Hawaii commission on water resource management, which is charged with protecting and regulating water resources. “You can see the link between extractive, unfettered capitalism at the expense of our natural resources and the ecosystem.”
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archive link: https://archive.is/of1Ln

The second-largest planet in our solar system will glow extra-bright with a golden light in the coming days.

One of the year’s must-see stargazing events is underway, giving us an incredible look at one of our solar system’s outer planets.

Once a year, Earth passes in between the sun and Saturn, which brings the famously ringed planet opposite the sun in our sky — an alignment astronomers call “opposition,” which in 2023 will occur overnight on August 26-27, according to the astronomy site EarthSky.

Opposition is the time during the year when Saturn is at its closest to Earth and shines its brightest, making this weekend, and the days following, an exceptional time to view this impressive planet. You don’t need special equipment to see Saturn’s glow in the night sky, but a telescope of any size can dramatically change the experience by revealing its spectacular rings.

To the unaided eye, Saturn will be visible in the night sky as a bright, faintly golden point of light. Its shine will be steady, not twinkling.

A telescope, however, will show Saturn’s rings — an awe-inspiring sight. A small backyard telescope is enough to see Saturn’s distinct ringed shape, though larger telescopes can provide even more gasp-inducing views, so check with local astronomy groups and planetariums for public stargazing events.

Look for Saturn to rise in the east around sunset; it will be visible all night. It will reach exact opposition at 4 a.m. ET on August 27, when it will be in the constellation of Aquarius, the water bearer. If the weather doesn’t cooperate for viewing this weekend, don’t worry; while it will diminish in brightness, Saturn will be visible in the evening sky for the remainder of the year.

archive link: https://archive.is/wip/k9wOa

Get ready for the flood of kompromat

As Vladimir Putin sits thinking in his bomb-proof office, he may come to regret the fact that the entire world is sure that he ordered the death of the mutinous mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin. The Kremlin is a Camorra, a mafia style parliament, running a gangster operation to fill Putin’s pockets and those of his oligarchs and elites. But as the Japanese found in Burma in 1944, if you prosecute a war with terror you will likely come unstuck against a well led, motivated and moral organisation like General ‘Bill’ Slim’s ‘Forgotten Army’.

Putin may in fact have signed his own death warrant. His fingerprints may not have been on the firing button when Prigozhin’s jet was brought down, and may not have been on the Polonium or Novichok which killed some of his other opponents, but his DNA is all over the orders. He now has two very powerful groups to worry about – quite apart from the International Criminal Court, which no doubt has so much evidence that if he ever gets to the Hague he will never leave.

Firstly, Putin must worry about his oligarchs who have now been holed up in their dachas in Moscow for over 18 months, unable to use their superyachts or villas in the Mediterranean. As their leader is further vilified around the globe over this latest murder, the oligarchs may come to see that their only chance to break out of Russia, now so diminished economically and socially, is to dispose of Putin.

Secondly, the Wagner Group might have lost their ‘cowboy’ leader and his deputy, but they remain a large force of thugs and murderers. Prigozhin was no military commander, but the Wagner Group is the most successful military outfit that Russia has managed to put into the field, no matter that they are paid mercenaries, many of them recruited out of Russian jails. To control such a rabble, you need some very hard ‘lieutenants’ running the show and these men will now be considering the future in Belarus and Africa. How ironic it would be if somebody showered them with riches to go and create mayhem within Russia. My experience of mercenaries is that they are not too picky about whose money they take.

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These rare kills in Washington State have biologists searching for answers. “Everyone always assumes wolves have the upper hand,” says one scientist. “But that’s not always the case.”

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Soft landing achieved.