TheChek News Flow

Netflix says Paramount bid ‘doesn’t pass sniff test’ as Warner battle intensifies

Co-chief Greg Peters says Netflix is winning Warner Bros shareholder support for a deal that would upend Hollywood

Netflix co-chief executive Greg Peters said it is on track to win the backing of Warner Bros Discovery shareholders for its $82.7bn offer for the company’s film and television studios, adding that Paramount’s rival bid “doesn’t pass the sniff test”.

In an interview with the FT, Peters said only a “very small” number of WBD shares had been tendered in support of Paramount’s hostile $108bn offer for the entire company.

Netflix sought to win over any wavering WBD shareholders this week by shifting to an all-cash offer that it said would allow a shareholder vote as soon as April. The proposed deal entails Netflix taking ownership of HBO’s catalogue of hits and the century-old Warner Bros film studio.

Peters said the revised offer provided “greater deal certainty” than Paramount’s bid, which is part funded with $55bn of debt, and demonstrated the strength of Netflix’s balance sheet.

Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, father of Paramount CEO David Ellison, has agreed to personally backstop the $40bn equity financing of the Paramount offer, which also encompasses WBD’s cable TV assets.

“Without Larry Ellison independently financing this thing, there’s no chance in hell Paramount would ever be able to pull this off,” Peters said.

“Paramount already is saddled with quite a lot of debt,” he added, describing the additional leverage needed to finance its $30-per-share offer as “pretty crazy”.

After WBD’s board rejected its latest bid, Paramount put its offer directly to shareholders. It could yet table a higher offer.

“If they were to move [higher], what kind of leverage would they have to have?” Peters said. “It’s hard to imagine how that works out well.”

He added: “It doesn’t pass the sniff test in my mind. And that’s what the Warner Brothers board determined. And I think that’s where the Warner shareholders are at too.”

Paramount had secured about 7 per cent of WBD shares in its tender, well short of the 50 per cent needed for control of the company, according to a proxy filing on Thursday.

Warner’s board was “rushing to solicit shareholder approval” for the Netflix deal at a special meeting, likely this spring, Paramount said. The company added that it would push for WBD shareholders to block the deal, arguing its offer was superior on both value and certainty.

A deal uniting the Warner Bros studio with Netflix, a streaming pioneer with 325mn subscribers worldwide, would reshape Hollywood. The combined company’s catalogue would boast Warner’s Game of Thrones and Harry Potter and Netflix hits such as Stranger Things and Squid Game.

Hollywood is unnerved at the prospect of the company that upended the movie business becoming even more powerful.

Netflix’s planned takeover has sparked concern from filmmakers such as James Cameron, as well as unions and other groups representing producers and cinema owners.

They worry that Netflix will undermine cinemas by shortening exclusive windows for screening or by simply adding movies on to its streaming platform immediately upon release.

Ted Sarandos, co-chief executive with Peters, has said for years that the company was not interested in broad cinematic releases. Netflix has released films in the past, but usually in limited numbers of cinemas and for the minimum time required to qualify for major awards.

But Sarandos and Peters have vowed to commit to the same theatrical release windows as Warner Bros — typically at least 45 days in the cinema in the US. The executives have been trumpeting their new pro-film argument to a sceptical Hollywood.

“The rationale and the logic of why we wouldn’t want to go blow up something that’s working is pretty clear,” Peters said. Netflix last week announced a $7bn agreement to secure exclusive streaming rights to Sony Pictures’ theatrical releases after they have aired in the cinema.

The company wanted to increase the amount of content it produced, Peters said, and planned to increase spending this year by 10 per cent to about $20bn, regardless of whether it bought WBD. The deal, he added, would further this ambition.

Both the Netflix and Paramount bids are expected to be closely scrutinised by regulators in the US and Europe.

US President Donald Trump has said Netflix’s “very big market share” in streaming could pose a problem. The combination of Warner’s HBO Max service and Netflix would likely exceed 30 per cent market share in the US streaming market — the threshold at which the Federal Trade Commission and US Department of Justice deem competition is substantially lessened.

Based on their individual subscriber bases today, Netflix and WBD would have more than 420mn streaming customers combined. But Peters claimed that the “vast majority” of HBO subscribers are already Netflix subscribers, meaning the customer base of a unified company would not be as large as it first appears.

He also argued Netflix competed with many operators that sit outside the conventional definition of a streaming platform. The company cites Nielsen data showing that it is in sixth place in market share of US TV viewing, behind YouTube, Disney and others.

However, Nielsen ranks Netflix as the second-largest streamer in the US by monthly viewing time, behind only YouTube.

“We’re below 10 per cent of TV hours in every market that we serve . . . big tech is spending a lot of money as competitors in the space, whether it’s Amazon with MGM and Prime Video [or] Apple.”

The long-standing relationship between Trump and Larry Ellison is seen by some analysts as an advantage for Paramount in securing regulatory approval. But Peters believes the Netflix-WBD deal is “highly aligned with what [Trump’s] goals and expectations are for how American companies should be successful”.

By spending big on a major film distributor, Netflix would apparently contradict two of its long-held preferences. Firstly that it builds rather than buys businesses and secondly that it does not want to be in the conventional “wide release” movie business.

Peters said that despite the public rhetoric — Sarandos called the traditional cinema business “outdated” only last spring — being in the more traditional movie business has always been on the table.

“We have often . . . debated building that theatrical business,” he said, adding that “it’s something we have debated probably 20 times” since he joined Netflix in 2008. The timing was not right before, he said, but “you pivot based on opportunities”.

“When you have the ability to access mature, built businesses that are running and are doing positive things, you don’t throw [this] away.”

Netflix shareholders are already taking a hit from its pursuit of WBD.

This week, the company announced it would pause share buybacks to help fund the deal and said operating margins in 2025 shrank by 3.7 points to 29.5 per cent because of $275mn of deal-related expenses.

The disclosures sent its shares down about 5 per cent after market close. Netflix has suffered a decline of about $70bn in its market capitalisation since it emerged last month that it had entered exclusive talks with WBD.

But Peters is confident that — beneath the hullabaloo surrounding the WBD deal — the Netflix machine is humming along nicely. The company reported this week that net profit rose 29 per cent in the fourth quarter to $2.4bn, compared with last year.

Peters admitted that the deal had created uncertainty for investors but said that he was focused on making sure Netflix continued to perform.

“I just sort of try and tune out some of the noise and just focus on what we can control,” he said. “Let’s keep moving things forward.”

Forecast capacity needs are rising, perhaps by a tenth over the next three years

Rising power prices, long a political hot potato in the UK, are now burning fingers in the US too. Households there paid 30 per cent more for electricity than they did in 2020, according to the Energy Information Administration. One difference is that in the US, it’s AI data centres that are increasingly being fingered as the culprit.

Data centres are electricity guzzlers, for sure. But even though they are growing rapidly, they accounted for perhaps 4 per cent of electricity demand in 2024, according to Pew Research. Outside major data centre hotspots the rise in bills is driven more by the price of gas — last year, it was 60 per cent higher than in 2024 at the hub — and the investments needed to upgrade creaking electricity grids.

Nonetheless, the AI boom is already making its mark on energy prices. At PJM, which runs the electricity grid in much of the eastern US including Virginia’s Data Center Alley, the total cost of wholesale power increased by 44 per cent last year according to Monitoring Analytics.

About a third of that increase comes from PJM’s so-called capacity auctions, where power generators say what it would take to induce them to provide the amount of power the grid needs — which then sets the price all generators get and in turn influences what customers pay. Forecast capacity needs are rising, perhaps by a tenth over the next three years, according to Aurora Energy. New power plants can’t be built that quickly.

That’s a recipe for spiking prices. In the auction for the year ending in May 2028, held in December last year, PJM set a maximum level for bids, but it proved too low. Moreover, even that cap was a big step up from the pre-ChatGPT era, so ordinary folk will end up paying more through their bills.

That has politicians howling. The White House, presumably sensing that energy bills are a voting issue, wants tech giants to pay the cost associated with data centres. In essence, that would involve splitting the market in two. On one side would be ordinary citizens, whose power needs would be met at a lower price. On the other, the Meta Platforms and Alphabets of this world would be free to bid whatever they liked. The catch is that anyone who has electricity to sell might try to get it into the blowout tech auction, weakening the ordinary one.

Alternatively, the tech giants could try to simply lean on the grid less heavily. Perhaps they could agree to flip the switch off at peak times, turning to their own off-grid power sources instead. Microsoft boss Satya Nadella warned this week that AI companies are dependent on “social permission” for their access to power and other resources.

In reality, the AI premium on household bills is a tomorrow problem for most of the US. But it is one that tech giants, utilities and politicians should be thinking about now. Otherwise they may find that the AI boom quite literally runs out of juice.

Billionaire has mended rift with Trump and he is giving millions to Republicans again

Elon Musk is opening his wallet and reigniting his political apparatus for the 2026 midterm elections, signaling a return to the political arena months after suggesting he would retreat to oversee his business empire.

The world’s richest man has already donated $10 million to a Republican Senate candidate this year, and his icy relationship with President Trump has thawed.

In recent weeks, Musk’s political team has met with prospective vendors ahead of potential midterms work, with a focus on digital and text-messaging experts, people familiar with the planning said. Chris Young, Musk’s top political strategist, is leading the efforts and meeting with vendors, some political candidates and their teams, the people said.

Musk’s plans aren’t fully settled, and the scale of the effort remains fluid. People who have recently talked with Musk and his advisers have left with the impression that he was still weighing contributing through America PAC—which he and others started to back Trump’s 2024 presidential run—or contributing to other political-action committees and specific races. America PAC focused on registering voters and persuading constituents to vote early and request mail-in ballots in swing states.

For 2026, Musk is focused on converting Trump voters, some of whom have only shown up to vote for Trump in the presidential election, into midterm and down-ballot voters, according to some of the people.

The White House didn’t comment. Musk, who on Thursday was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Top Republicans, including Vice President JD Vance, have encouraged Musk to help the GOP defend its narrow majorities in the House and Senate, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. Vance has maintained close ties to Musk. A Vance spokesman didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Musk has shipped $10 million toward efforts to fill the seat being vacated by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), backing a super PAC that is supporting businessman Nate Morris, people familiar with the matter said. The 2026 gift, earlier reported by Axios, underscores a deepening political alliance; Morris also has ties to Vance, and the super PAC is run by some of Vance’s top external advisers.

Trump and Musk had a public falling-out last May after Musk’s tumultuous stint at the Department of Government Efficiency. Musk and Tesla directors told investors he would be focused on the business, and shareholders approved a generous pay package. Another one of Musk’s companies—SpaceX—is laying the groundwork to go public.

The rapprochement between the two men represents a budding pragmatic alliance: Trump would regain access to Musk’s money and technical infrastructure, while Musk maintains a conduit for influence in the administration. Musk is using his social-media platform to amplify his vision for a leaner U.S. government, which is centered on slashed federal spending, deregulation and proof-of-citizenship mandates at the polls.

Musk spent nearly $300 million in the 2024 election cycle to help get Trump and Republicans elected, becoming the country’s largest known political donor. He has largely abandoned plans to start a new political party, a notion hatched during the height of his feud with Trump, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.

In September, Musk sat in Trump’s box during a memorial for the slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, and the two spoke at length. Early this month, Musk posted a photo of himself on X dining with Trump and first lady Melania Trump.

In December, typically a quiet time in the campaign cycle, some vendors received outreach from the America PAC team. Young, Musk’s political strategist, participated in a meeting this month focused on a data project for America PAC with people from data and analytics firm Red Oak Strategic and the boutique law firm Lex Politica, according to a document reviewed by the Journal.

Musk has made about $42 million in political contributions since June 2025, including $27 million to America PAC, $10 million to PACs backing House and Senate Republicans and $5 million to a pro-Trump PAC, according to Federal Election Commission records. The tally doesn’t include the recent $10 million donation supporting Morris, which isn’t yet reflected in FEC records.

“He’s been very helpful,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) told the Washington Examiner in December. “I welcome that obviously, and the more he wants to do, the more we welcome.”

Political strategists of both parties say the elections this fall could pose a challenge for Republicans. Historically, the party of the incumbent president tends to lose seats in the midterms. Since World War II, only two presidents saw their party gain House seats in a midterm election: Democrat Bill Clinton in 1998 and Republican George W. Bush in 2002.

Trump, in a recent interview with the Journal, conveyed uncertainty about whether Republicans would maintain control of the House. In polls, voters say the president hasn’t done enough to lower prices, citing the high costs of groceries and housing. Some Republicans worry that could hurt them in the midterms.

“We’ll see what happens,” Trump told the Journal in December. “We should win. But, you know, statistically, it’s very tough to win.”

A big concern is Texas, where cold temperatures threaten to ice oil-and-gas fields and wreak havoc on the power grid

Natural-gas prices have jumped 63% this week in response to forecasts calling for some of the coldest, snowiest weather in years to freeze the country from the West Texas desert to the Great Lakes.

The forecasts have stoked fears of a repeat of the deadly winter storm that froze Texas in 2021 and left millions of people without electricity for days. Energy producers and utilities are preparing for the worst. The Energy Department late Thursday ordered grid operators to be prepared to take extraordinary steps to tap in to backup power generation.

Subzero temperatures are in store for Minneapolis, Chicago and Detroit starting Friday. New York and Washington, D.C., are expecting to be buried in snow by the end of the weekend.

The big concern in energy markets is for Texas and other parts of the southern U.S., where uncommonly cold temperatures threaten to ice some of America’s most prolific oil-and-gas fields and wreak havoc on the power grid. Prices for electricity this weekend are already surging in Texas.

The biggest gains in natural-gas prices have been for near-term deliveries. Futures for February delivery of the heating and power-generation fuel had their biggest three-day percentage gain on record. Futures settled Thursday at $5.045 per million British thermal units, up from $3.103 at the end of last week.

The arctic blast has the potential to be felt in energy markets for a long time. Traders are anticipating a big chunk of U.S. production will become blocked in frozen wells when heating demand is highest, necessitating a huge drawdown of domestic stockpiles to keep furnaces and boilers running.

They are betting the incoming weather will be cold and persistent enough to change the outlook for domestic supply, which a week ago appeared headed for another glut that depressed prices and pinched producers. In just three trading sessions this week, natural-gas futures prices for delivery into next year have been lifted out of the danger zone for drillers, who notched daily production records in December.

The frigid forecasts caught many traders wrong-footed. A snowy start to the heating season lifted gas prices to their highest level since 2022, when fuel markets surged following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Unusually warm weather then sent them tumbling down. Traders piled into bets that prices would fall further.

“We were going into the weekend thinking we’d have a marginally warmer-than-normal January, because the first two weeks of January were the fifth-warmest of all time for the U.S.,” said Matt Rogers, a meteorologist and president of Commodity Weather Group, which advises traders. “The sentiment was that winter was winding down.”

In heating-degree days—a population-weighted measure of temperatures below 65 degrees Fahrenheit that traders use to gauge demand—forecasts are calling for the two weeks that end Feb. 4 to be the coldest since 1985, Rogers said. Longer-term forecasts suggest that frigid temperatures will linger deep into February.

Traders who bet that winter was over and that gas prices would fall have had to buy futures this week to cancel out those short positions, adding to this week’s price gains.

More-expensive gas will boost bills for the roughly 61 million U.S. homes that are warmed with natural gas, as well as the 57 million using electricity, much of which is generated by burning gas.

In Texas, where many rely on electricity for heating, the grid faces its most-serious challenge since the 2021 disaster, in which more than 200 people died. Although freezing temperatures are forecast for much of the state, conditions aren’t expected to be as dire as they were in 2021, during the storm named Uri.

“This storm is not a Uri,” said Kimberly Allen Dang, chief executive of the pipeline operator Kinder Morgan, which reaped a windfall profit of more than $1 billion shuttling around gas during the 2021 storm. “It’s much shorter in duration, and it’s not going to be as significant,” Dang told investors Wednesday.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the grid operator for most of the state, said it expects potentially lower reserves, but that there should be enough generation to meet demand. The operator, also known as Ercot, issued a weather watch for Saturday through Tuesday.

Corey Amthor, president of Enchanted Rock, which provides natural-gas backup power for customers such as grocers, data centers and water plants, said the biggest risk for Texas will come Monday morning, when demand is expected to rise to about 82,000 megawatts.

Large solar and battery-storage projects have been installed in Texas in recent years and have helped the grid during heat waves. But solar won’t be available during the evening and early-morning hours, when winter demand rises. Batteries, most of which can deliver power for about two hours, should have time to recharge during the day but also will need to recharge overnight, when people will be cranking their heaters.

That dynamic has pushed wholesale power prices, often around $20 a megawatt-hour, to about $600 a megawatt-hour for the overnight hours this weekend, Amthor said.

After the 2021 disaster, Texas required power producers to winterize their plants better. Even if they are able to function properly in the coming cold, forecasts are calling for a lot of ice, which could bring down neighborhood power lines and cause outages.

Ice is an especially big worry in West Texas, where Permian Basin producers are bracing for droves of oil-and-gas wells to freeze shut. Such freeze-offs happen every year, though usually in colder states, such as North Dakota, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

On Thursday, about 1.6 billion cubic feet of U.S. gas production was already blocked in those states and others, said Randall Collum Jr., senior vice president for commodity trading data and analytics at Wood Mackenzie.

Collum, who earlier in his career contended with freeze-offs in Wyoming gas fields, said wells in the Northeast tend to be the best weatherproofed and flow until temperatures are below about 15 degrees for more than 12 hours. In other regions, temperatures below 20 degrees can cause freeze-offs.

He has forecast that as much as 20.8 billion cubic feet of daily output could be iced over in the coming days. That would be a record, and about 18% of total lower-48 production.

“It really is a big chunk,” he said. “This one event could be more than we saw each of the last two years.”

Brands are taking inspiration from the equine world, as zodiac-themed releases become a recurring commercial tool

As the Lunar New Year approaches, luxury brands are returning to the Chinese zodiac despite uneven demand and subdued consumer sentiment in Asia.

With the Year of the Horse beginning on February 17, watchmakers and jewellers are once again creating tribute pieces not just as a decorative cue, but as a strategic marker of cultural alignment and market intent.

The horse, the seventh sign of the Chinese zodiac, is associated with prosperity, good fortune, strength, and courage. In imperial history and ancient warfare alike, horses were indispensable companions, emblematic of loyalty and fearless determination.

Swiss watchmakers have long recognised the horse’s emotional and cultural power. As part of its ongoing dialogue with Chinese culture through the Métiers d’Art The Legend of the Chinese Zodiac collection, Vacheron Constantin introduced two 25-piece limited editions dedicated to the Year of the Horse. Each watch combines hand engraving and miniature painting, underscoring the maison’s commitment to decorative craftsmanship.

Similarly, Richemont-stablemate Jaeger-LeCoultre marks the 2026 Lunar New Year with the Reverso Tribute Enamel Horse, a 10-piece limited edition created in the Métiers Rares atelier. The original Reverso was conceived in 1931 for polo players seeking to protect their watch dials during play, with its swivelling case born directly from the equestrian field.

Another brand with a structural reliance on equestrian imagery is Hermès. When Thierry Hermès established his workshop in Paris in 1837, his first clients were horses, not humans. He crafted harnesses and saddles of exceptional quality, laying the foundation for a house in which equestrian codes would become enduring design pillars.

That lineage translated into jewellery. In 1927, Hermès introduced its first jewel, the Filet de Selle bracelet, which drew directly on the forms of bridles and bits. Today, galloping horse heads, harnesses, and reins continue to surface across collections. Creative director Pierre Hardy’s Galop line distils these origins into sculptural forms, transforming functional elements into objects of refined energy.

Beyond heritage houses, the horse also plays a role in shaping the design language of contemporary jewellery brands, where personal experience informs creative direction. Brazilian jeweller Graziela Kaufman, who unveiled an equestrian collection at the annual Couture fair in Las Vegas, drew inspiration from years spent riding. Developed in collaboration with her trainer, Kaufman “wanted to create pieces with movement — as majestic, realistic, and powerful as a horse”. Ten per cent of proceeds support horse rescue initiatives.

Lionheart, the New York-based brand, similarly places the horse at the centre of its design language, particularly in the Legacy collection. Creative director and founder Joy Haugaard, who grew up around horses, says equestrian jewellery often initiates personal conversations with collectors. “It becomes a dialogue about legacy, protection and honouring something meaningful, rather than simply purchasing a piece of jewellery,” she says. “Many clients arrive with their own histories — riding, rescue or emotional connection — and the jewellery serves as a vessel for those narratives.” Sales from the Legacy collection support horse rescue efforts in upstate New York, where Haugaard personally volunteers.

For Los Angeles-based designer Brooke Gregson, the motif evokes mornings spent watching racehorses trained by her father. The jeweller, who also maintains a showroom in London, recalls being struck by the contrast between “the power and fragility of the horse”. Her equestrian pieces are centred on carved boulder opal horse heads, selected for their long association with strength. “You can see the power of the horse in the eyes and the texture of its silky hair in the stone,” she says, a physicality she extends through engraved gold motifs inspired by western saddles and cowboy boots, alongside gemstones that reinforce the energy of the form. “With my California West Coast spirit, I see the beauty of the equestrian motif and how it culturally symbolises the same freedom those from the West were seeking,” she says.

Claudia Kronfeld’s interpretation is deliberately pared back. Her pieces, under her Claudia Mae brand, draw inspiration from childhood weekends spent on her grandparents’ farm in Pennsylvania. “The equestrian world is often seen as polished and elevated, but my own experience with horses was much more relaxed and personal,” says the West Palm Beach-based designer. Each horse silhouette begins as a hand-cut form at the bench, refined over weeks to balance movement and softness, then accented with coloured gemstones to introduce warmth.

That sense of childhood devotion also appeals to Heavenly Vices founder Samantha Jackson, who remembers birthdays spent around ponies and riding centres. Including horses in her jewellery feels like a full-circle moment for the New Orleans-born, Atlanta-based designer. More broadly, she sees equestrian imagery as reflecting the personal skills riders develop, “including overcoming fear, perseverance, relationship building, vulnerability, and empathy”.

For Palm Beach-based designer Karina Brez, the horse is the foundation of her entire brand. “Every collection begins with equestrian inspiration,” she says, “I approach it as a study in form, balance, and function rather than literal imagery.” In collections such as Bit of LUV and Huggable Hooves, the bit and the hoof are interpreted into essential lines and proportions in 18-carat gold, with diamonds used sparingly to mark points of tension or connection. Many pieces are engineered to move naturally on the body, reflecting the controlled dynamism of the horse itself.

These varied bejewelled expressions reveal why the horse continues to captivate, as a symbol of movement, freedom, and continuity — qualities that resonate as a new lunar year begins.

Objects in orbit that fall to Earth can pose a risk to life and infrastructure. Research outlines a new method to follow their paths.

Tens of thousands of human-made objects orbiting the Earth could pose a risk to life, infrastructure and the environment when they fall through the atmosphere.

Typically the space debris is tracked using ground-based or orbital radar and optical instruments. But these methods struggle to monitor objects when they begin burning up in the atmosphere, hurtling toward the ground at speeds of 17,000 miles an hour. Sometimes, re-entry predictions can be off by thousands of miles.

In a new study, two scientists have outlined a way to track space-debris crash sites and fallout zones using the sonic booms that occur when such objects streak through the atmosphere. Vibrations from the booms—the shock waves produced by something traveling faster than the speed of sound—can be picked up by ground-based stations typically used to monitor for earthquakes, helping researchers calculate an object’s speed, trajectory and potential fallout zone. The approach offers additional clues about whether an object might have broken up during its fall.

“It’s rapid re-entry forensics,” said Constantinos Charalambous, a planetary seismologist at Imperial College London and co-author of a study detailing the method published Thursday in the journal Science.

Though space debris usually breaks up during re-entry, pieces can survive—and these potentially toxic, flammable, or even radioactive fragments might need to be tracked down and disposed of, said Benjamin Fernando, a seismologist at Johns Hopkins University and study co-author.

To demonstrate their idea, the scientists looked at data from more than 100 earthquake-monitoring seismometers on the ground across the southwestern U.S. to study the sonic boom from debris of the Chinese Shenzhou-15 spacecraft as it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere in April 2024. When that shock wave hit, it shook the ground. Monitoring stations closer to the debris’ path recorded the vibrations more quickly, while stations farther afield recorded a delay. The pattern of the recordings helped the scientists estimate the craft’s re-entry path, which passed over tens of millions of Americans between the Southern California coast and Las Vegas.

Tracking a Sonic Boom

In 2024, seismometers across Southern California and Nevada picked up a sonic boom, or shock wave, from an orbital module as it re-entered the atmosphere. Stations closer to the point of entry recorded the shock wave first, while those farther along the path recorded a delay.

The new method doesn’t offer people on the ground advance warning of debris falling, Fernando said. “This object is always going to outrun its own sonic boom, meaning you’ll see it and it will hit you before you hear it,” he said.

Rather, he said, it could help researchers quickly find where the debris has landed, how big it is, or confirm whether it has burned up in the atmosphere.

Over the last decade, the number of spacecraft—such as dead satellites or used rocket stages—that re-enter Earth’s atmosphere from orbit has grown exponentially. As re-entries become more frequent, tracking the objects becomes more important.

“We are at a point now where this problem is getting worse and worse, but the tracking and response aspect that we’re working on here has not actually caught up with reality,” he said.

Near collapse of U.S.’s Kurdish allies after fighting government forces has led Pentagon to question the benefits of stationing troops in Syria

Washington is considering a complete withdrawal of American troops from Syria, U.S. officials said, as Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa moved to wrest control of the northeastern part of the country from an American-backed Kurdish-led militia.

The move would end a decadelong American operation in Syria, which began in 2014 when former President Barack Obama intervened in the country’s civil war. It would come as Sharaa’s government has ordered the U.S. military’s longtime partner in the region, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, to disband after a lightning offensive over the weekend that led the militia group to all but collapse.

The U.S. has considered a drawdown in Syria before. In December 2018, President Trump abruptly announced a full pullout of roughly 2,000 U.S. troops, leading to the resignation of then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. Then-National Security Adviser John Bolton and other top aides managed to soft-pedal the decision, leaving a residual force in the country.

Roughly 1,000 American troops are in Syria, most scattered across facilities in the northeast, where they are co-located with the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF. A handful of the troops are stationed at Al Tanf Garrison in Syria’s south. The military’s primary mission is to prevent the resurgence of Islamic State, and the soldiers frequently conduct patrols and operations with the SDF. Up until last weekend’s offensive, SDF forces, which helped the U.S. defeat the ISIS caliphate in 2019, were responsible for guarding roughly 9,000 ISIS prisoners in detention facilities across the northeast.

The Pentagon declined to comment. The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The head-spinning events of the last week have led the Pentagon to question the viability of the American military’s mission in Syria after the SDF’s defeat, according to three U.S. officials.

Syrian forces took from the SDF a military base, oil facilities and a dam on the Euphrates River, weakening the Kurdish group’s negotiating hand over the future of its thousands of fighters. As part of the resulting cease-fire, the SDF handed over control of the cities of Raqqa and Deir Ezzour, and Sharaa’s government took over key border crossings and oil installations in northeast Syria.

Much of the assault’s success was the result of Arab tribal forces, who were once loyal to the SDF, switching sides to back the government, WSJ previously reported. The SDF still controls the cities Kobani and Hasakah, where there are large Kurdish populations, and where the militia group could dig in rather than disband.

If the SDF fully disbands, the U.S. officials see no reason for the American military to stay in Syria. One factor is the difficulties posed by working with Sharaa’s army. The force is riddled with jihadist sympathizers, including soldiers with ties to al Qaeda and ISIS and others who have been involved in alleged war crimes against the Kurds and Druze, two of the officials said.

The challenge was laid bare in December, when two U.S. soldiers and an American civilian interpreter were killed during an attack near the city of Palmyra. The attacker was a member of the Syrian security forces who was set to be fired for holding extremist views, WSJ reported.

Sharaa’s forces already have come dangerously close to U.S. troops during the operation against the Kurds. U.S. forces shot down at least one Syrian government drone near a facility where American troops are stationed, according to two of the U.S. officials. In that same 24-hour period, Sharaa’s forces attacked the SDF barracks at the base, one of the two officials said.

Another issue weighing into a potential withdrawal decision is the status of the thousands of ISIS prisoners in northeast Syria. On Wednesday, the U.S. began moving 7,000 out of a total 9,000 detainees to Iraq, according to one of the U.S. officials, amid growing concern that the former fighters and their family members could escape as Syrian government forces move to take over the installations. Last week, 200 prisoners escaped from Syria’s Shaddadi prison after SDF forces left their positions, but were recaptured by Sharaa’s forces as they took over the installation, the official said.

The movement of ISIS prisoners out of the country eliminates one reason for U.S. troops to stay, said Charles Lister, director of the Syria program at the Middle East Institute. “Frankly, the main thing that has been holding the U.S. force presence in Syria over the last year is the detention facilities and the camps,” Lister said. “We should be asking ourselves the question of the sustainability of the U.S. troop presence in Syria.”

But Lister argued that the U.S. military’s primary purpose in Syria is to defeat ISIS, which is still a significant threat in the country. There were 348 ISIS attacks in Syria last year alone, and 13 foiled mass-casualty attacks in government-held areas, he said.

For his part, Trump has made no secret of his admiration of Sharaa, who he invited to the White House in a historic visit last year.

“He is working very hard, the president of Syria,” Trump said Tuesday, defending Sharaa’s attempts to secure the prisons.

“I like the Kurds,” Trump said. “But just so you understand, the Kurds were paid tremendous amounts of money, given oil and other things, so they were doing it for themselves more than they were doing this for us. But we got along with the Kurds and we are trying to protect the Kurds.”