• Elon Musk sounded the alarm about Taiwan's vulnerability to a Chinese invasion, per a new book.
• He told Trump and tech CEOs that the US was "headed for disaster" in the event of a Chinese invasion.
• Musk was in a meeting where the CEOs discussed the possibility of bringing chipmaking to US shores.

Elon Musk expressed grave concern about Taiwan's dominance in the chip market — and the possibility of a Chinese invasion — in a tech CEO meeting at the White House last year, according to a book published on Tuesday about President Donald Trump's second term.

The book, "Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump," by The New York Times' Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, reported that the SpaceX owner had met with Trump and the CEOs of firms such as Dell, Qualcomm, and Intel on March 10, 2025.

Haberman and Swan wrote that Musk told the gathering in the Roosevelt Room that he was "shitting bricks about our vulnerability to China."

But Musk had grown increasingly alarmed in recent years, especially over the threat of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, which would jeopardize the supply of high-end chips that Musk's companies depended on.

And now, with these CEOs as his audience, Musk was frantically sounding the alarm about the fact that an island country roughly the size of Maryland, floating eighty-one miles off mainland China, produced around 70 percent of all the semiconductors on earth and 90 percent of the most advanced chips. He was lecturing a gathering more familiar with this problem than perhaps any other group of people in the world. But Musk kept banging away.

"If we don't start building chips outside the zone of confrontation," he said, "we are headed for disaster." He reiterated the point: "Somebody's got to build the damn fabs [fabrication plants] outside the battle zone!"

According to the book, Trump said China's leader, Xi Jinping, had given assurances that Beijing would not launch an invasion of Taiwan while the former sat in the White House.

But Haberman and Swan reported that Trump added a caveat: "Could be lying. Taiwan is the apple of Xi's eye, just like Ukraine was for Putin."

The group of CEOs, alongside Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, then discussed how the US might claw back some of the world's semiconductor supply chain and shift factories from Asia to American soil.

"The United States will only have thirty percent of TSMC's capacity in 2029. If China invades Taiwan, the entire economy crashes," Musk said, per the book.

In May, Musk and other American tech CEOs, including Nvidia's Jensen Huang and Apple's Tim Cook, accompanied Trump on an official visit to China.

Musk was widely regarded as a figure who could help stabilize Beijing and Washington's economic ties.

Tesla operates a major factory, Gigafactory 3, in Shanghai that employs roughly 20,000 workers. The American automaker enjoys the rare arrangement of wholly owning the factory without needing a joint venture with a Chinese firm.

The White House and Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

"Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump" is available for purchase on Amazon.

• Ukrainian troops on the front lines can earn up to $10,270 a month based on how much they fight.
• That's nearly 30 times the average salary in the country.
• The bonuses are part of a new push to overhaul Ukraine's pay and contract system.

Ukraine is implementing a new bonus system that rewards frontline troops with cash for feats in battle or carrying out combat missions.

The incentives are part of a salary and contract overhaul announced on June 12, after years of Kyiv struggling with recruitment and reports of absence without leave, or AWOL.

The defense ministry said on Tuesday that the new system would apply to combat missions or tasks from the start of June, with payouts to be received in July.

The highest bonuses vary based on performance, and primarily apply to troops in the most dangerous roles, such as assault infantry, combat medics, and gunners. Each frontline soldier gets a base monthly pay of 20,000 hryvnias, or $446, but could earn up to 460,000 hryvnias, or $10,270, a month based on their service.

The full payout would be nearly 30 times the average salary in Ukraine before the war began; government statistics from January 2022 said the country's average monthly salary was 14,577 hryvnias.

A day at a Ukrainian-held position earns the soldier another 10,000 hryvnias, while each day carrying out more aggressive missions, such as reconnaissance, evacuation, or recapturing friendly territory, nets them 20,000 instead.

The biggest daily bonus is 40,000 hryvnias for each day spent in assault operations that result in a Ukrainian advance. The bonuses don't stack, so a soldier can only earn one per day — whichever is highest.

Then there are bonuses for taking a Russian soldier prisoner, which is 100,000 hryvnias split among all troops involved directly in the capture, and destroying an enemy asset or killing a Russian soldier, which is worth 15,000 hryvnias.

Commanders and their teams can earn an extra 30,000 hryvnias a month for performing combat tasks, and 50,000 hryvnias for running operations from command posts, depending on the time they spent on missions that month.

The grand total of these payments is capped at 460,000 a month, the Ukrainian defense ministry said.

While stationed temporarily in rear areas, troops instead receive a minimum monthly pay of 30,000 hryvnias. Ukrainian soldiers regularly rotate between fighting near or at the front lines and resting in safer towns and strongholds.

Drone pilots' and specialists' salaries are different, with a scale that pays more the closer they are to the front lines, up to a maximum of 120,000 hryvnias. They can also get bonuses of up to 100,000 hryvnias for participating in combat or performing command roles.

The defense ministry said it was also implementing a new system that allows troops who have gone AWOL to return to the military under the best-rated units and immediately receive gear, meals, and clothing.

The measure seeks to fix a loophole that led dissatisfied Ukrainian troops to avoid the bureaucracy of applying for transfers and force a move by going AWOL.

Ukraine's defense ministry has embarked on an aggressive overhaul since January under Mykhailo Fedorov, who was appointed to lead the ministry after a stint as the country's minister for digital transformation.

The 35-year-old has pledged to address many of the systemic issues and gripes that have plagued Ukraine's forces for years, including low morale and lack of command transparency.

"This is only the first stage of the comprehensive transformation of the Defense Forces of Ukraine," the ministry said on June 12.

• Russia said one of its warships fired warning shots at a British civilian yacht on Sunday.
• The frigate Admiral Grigorovich was in the English Channel when it opened fire with small arms.
• A retired British couple said they were sailing on the yacht when they encountered the frigate.

A Russian frigate opened fire in the English Channel on Tuesday, firing warning shots with small arms near a UK-registered civilian yacht, London and Moscow said.

The warship Admiral Grigorovich fired several shots — single rounds, not automatic fire — near the Bright Future, a sailing yacht, roughly 20 nautical miles south of the Isle of Wight outside UK territorial waters.

The UK assesses that the Grigorovich was signaling to other vessels that it was drifting instead of maneuvering under power, possibly leaving the warship feeling vulnerable. It sounded warnings before opening fire.

"Following attempts to contact a British vessel in the channel, the Grigorovich fired warning shots," a UK defense ministry spokesperson told Business Insider. "These were not aimed at the vessel and were an attempt to prevent a possible collision."

Russia's defense ministry said the frigate had attempted to contact the Bright Future with radio, signal flares, and sound signals, but opened fire after receiving no response and seeing the yacht "following a dangerous course."

"After closing the distance to 150 meters, the frigate's commander decided to carry out the preemptive fire at the vessel's course with small arms," Moscow said.

A retired British couple on board the Bright Future told the BBC that the two vessels were not on a collision course and that the yacht had adjusted its path after the Admiral Grigorovich issued five horn blasts.

The incident follows the UK's Royal Marines' separate seizure of the MV Smyrtos, a tanker believed to be part of Russia's shadow fleet, off the southern coast of England on Sunday.

The boarding operation was a first for the UK, involving two British warships, reconnaissance aircraft, and helicopters.

While both events occurred in the English Channel, the UK defense ministry said that the seizure and Tuesday's warning shots from the Admiral Grigorovich were isolated incidents.

"HMS Mersey has been monitoring the Russian vessel, and support has been provided to the crew of the yacht," the defense ministry spokesperson said.

Still, the Russian navy has been repeatedly reported to be escorting shadow fleet tankers in convoys. The Admiral Grigorovich, part of the Black Sea Fleet, was spotted convoying two tankers in the English Channel in April, just after UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer had given British forces the authority to seize shadow fleet vessels.

Retired Royal Navy Commodore Steve Prest, now an associate fellow at the UK's Royal United Services Institute, said it is possible that the Grigorovich's commanding officer decided to open fire after they got too nervous about an unresponsive yacht near the warship.

However, Prest said in comments shared with Business Insider, given the context of the shadow fleet and the Royal Marines' seizure of the Smyrtos, "I think this is the Russians baring their teeth," adding that Moscow "very rarely will do something like this in an uncalculated, haphazard way."

Prest said Russia may be trying to signal to other ships preparing to go through the English Channel: "Hey, look, we are here, we are serious, and we are prepared to stand our ground, so let's not have any miscalculation."

The 409-foot-long guided-missile frigate is the lead ship of its class and was commissioned in 2016. The ship's main armament consists of eight vertical launch cells for land-attack cruise missiles and a 100mm naval gun.

June 16, 2026: This story was updated to reflect comment from the UK Defense Ministry.

• A new tax meant for electric vehicles has come back to bite Ukraine's surging ground drone industry.
• Without the 20% VAT, Ukraine could have produced 5,000 more UGVs, an industry association CEO said.
• The tax, introduced in January, threw the local ground drone industry into disarray for months.

An electric vehicle tax that came into force this year inadvertently cost Ukraine thousands of ground drones it needs on the front lines, the CEO of a major defense trade association said.

Had the 20% value-added tax, which went into effect in January, not been introduced, Ukraine's military could likely have bought 5,000 more uncrewed ground vehicles in the first half of 2026, said Ihor Fedirko, the CEO of the Ukrainian Council for Defense Industry.

"We know that our government is procuring 25,000 in the first half of this year. If they could procure 20% more, that's 5,000," Fedirko told Business Insider. "For our armed forces, that's a lot."

The new tax also threw the local ground drone industry and military into disarray at the start of the year, causing contracts to dry up for months and several major manufacturers to nearly go out of business, he added.

Ukrainian lawmakers are now racing to undo the tax, with some politicians saying it's handicapped a key war industry that Kyiv is trying to rapidly expand.

Nina Yuzhanina, a lawmaker for Ukraine's European Solidarity party, said in a statement last week that the EV tax "almost ceased" the supply of ground drones to the military in some areas.

She and 44 other Ukrainian parliamentarians introduced a bill on May 19 aiming to fix the core issue: because uncrewed ground vehicles, or UGVs, are so new, they were lumped together with EVs by the country's trade standards. The new law would define the drones as a separate good, exempting them from the 20% tax.

The bill is set for discussion over the next two weeks, but Fedirko estimates that if the law passes immediately, it would still take about two months for its effects to fully trickle down and restore production.

That comes as Ukraine's defense ministry said it plans to buy a total of 50,000 ground drones by the end of the year. Ukrainian UGVs can cost between $5,000 to $100,000 apiece, depending on the type of system and the gear it's equipped with.

"The exemption would save more than eight to 10 billion hryvnias, which is about $200 million," Fedirko said of the tax's impact on the local industry. "For us, it's a huge number."

How Ukraine began taxing its own war production

This year's VAT on ground drones is unusual for Ukraine. Under martial law, most of the country's war industries aren't subject to any such taxes.

This sort of consumption tax is collected at every step of the supply chain, but is typically eventually passed on to the end consumer — in this case, Ukraine's own military.

Ground drone manufacturers didn't actually have to worry about the tax until recently; Ukraine had been exempting EV duties since 2018.

But that exemption expired on January 1.

Military procurers found that their ground drone budgets needed to be 20% higher, but initially were confused by the new process because defense equipment and weapons are exempt from VAT by default, Fedirko said.

Amid the turmoil, drone makers couldn't find state contracts — the lifeblood for major manufacturers — for three months, he added.

"Three months without procurement, that's crazy. It's impossible to live without it," Fedirko said.

Production chaos while at war

The Ukrainian defense ministry highlighted the bottleneck in April, saying it was working quickly to "unblock" contracts and speed up deliveries.

But local firms had struggled to stay afloat in the meantime. A 20% cut to a firm's budget, in an industry already desperate for financing, can be a killer blow.

The new VAT also adds weeks of bureaucratic delay for an industry at war, with firms having to loop in state tax services and meticulously document the procurement process.

Fedirko said some firms may have had to drop capacity to a third of last year's to stay solvent, with cuts to employees or engineers.

A few tried to reclassify their drones as tanks or armored vehicles, while others sold their UGVs to volunteer organizations such as ComeBackAlive, which supplies military units on an ad hoc basis.

Tencore, the manufacturer of the popular tracked TerMIT drone, said it had to rely on these volunteer organizations when it couldn't find state contracts for five months.

"For UGV manufacturers, the VAT issue was not an accounting detail," the firm told Business Insider. It works with the Ukrainian Robotics Force association, which falls under Fedirko's UCDI umbrella.

A fix six months in the making

It's taken Ukraine this long to address the tax problem because military ground drones were so new that lawmakers had trouble defining them, Fedirko said. European Union commodity rules, on which Ukraine bases its own goods classifications, also don't have clear specifications for these uncrewed systems.

Though ground drone procurement resumed in the spring, manufacturers like Tencore say the months of delay have already cost frontline troops the equipment they need.

"For Ukraine, six months feels like infinity," Fedirko said.

When reached by Business Insider, the defense ministry declined to comment on the parliamentary bill introduced last week, saying it's not allowed to influence its consideration or debate.

However, it said Ukraine's UGV industry has so far grown to over 280 companies, with 550 types of drones for sale.

As the war moves into its fifth year, Ukrainian troops are increasingly relying on these platforms to conduct missions on the front lines, including logistics, evacuations, and attacks on Russian positions.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in April that his forces had used ground drones to carry out over 22,000 missions in the first three months of 2026 alone.

• A Ukrainian corps has released a video of its troops using exoskeletons on the battlefield.
• Two soldiers can be seen loading artillery shells on a Howitzer with the help of the tech.
• The 7th Air Assault Corps said they reduce physical load by 30% and help troops move faster.

Ukrainian forces say they're testing exoskeletons in battle for the first time, deploying them in logistics and combat positions on the Pokrovsk front.

The 7th Air Assault Corps posted a video on Friday of its 147th Separate Artillery Brigade demonstrating the new tech.

The exoskeletons are designed to be buckled at the waist and legs, with the apparatus wrapping behind the user's back and weaving toward the front of their knees. It also features two actuators at the hip that serve as hinges.

Each exoskeleton, the corps said, is meant to reduce the load on leg muscles by 30%, helping troops move at up to 12 mph for about 10 miles.

Clips showed two soldiers using the exoskeletons to carry and load artillery shells on a French CAESAR self-propelled Howitzer.

"Every day, artillerymen endure heavy physical loads. They carry 15 to 30 shells daily, each weighing 50 kg," said Colonel Vitalii Serdiuk, the corps' deputy commander, in a statement attached to the video.

The exoskeleton appears to be foldable, allowing it to fit inside a briefcase; the corps said the device itself weighs about 4.4 pounds.

Captions on the video said the exoskeletons are equipped with artificial intelligence that adapts in real time to the load on the soldier's legs and spine, allowing them to function in 10 different modes.

The 7th Air Assault Corps said this was the first time that any Ukrainian unit had trialed such technology in combat, and that the exoskeletons it received were test samples.

The US has also been designing its own exoskeletons, such as the Army's SABER, a soft, wearable exosuit that is strapped to the back and around each leg to reduce spinal strain.

Another example is Lockheed Martin's ONYX, a lower-body exoskeleton with knee actuators that wraps around the legs, but it hasn't been made standard-issue for the US military.

• Russia has clawed back about 10% of its 2026 oil trade deficit this month, Zelenskyy said.
• Two weeks of war in the Middle East earned Moscow about $10 billion, he said, citing Ukrainian intel.
• The Trump administration is also easing sanctions on Russian oil for about 4 weeks.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday that Russia had earned $10 billion in two weeks of the US-Israeli war with Iran.

That's about 10% of what Moscow has lost in the oil trade so far this year, he said in a post on X.

Zelenskyy wrote that Ukrainian intelligence reports indicated that global oil sanctions and Kyiv's strikes on Russian energy infrastructure had pushed Moscow's deficit for 2026 to over $100 billion.

"Now we see they have made around 10 billion over two weeks of the war in the Middle East," Zelenskyy wrote. "This is really dangerous. It gives Putin more confidence that he can continue the war."

"The situation around Iran brings him more money," Zelenskyy added of Russia's president, Vladimir Putin.

His remarks come as oil prices skyrocketed in the weeks after the US and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury on February 28. Both have heavily bombed Iran's oil infrastructure, which produces crude primarily for Asian markets, while Tehran's retaliatory strikes have also damaged energy facilities in the Middle East.

More critically, Tehran is effectively stalling traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane for about a fifth of the world's oil, with a string of attacks on commercial ships plying the waterway.

Russia, meanwhile, stands to gain from rising oil prices as one of the world's largest exporters, though its dominance has been partially stymied by Western sanctions to punish and inhibit its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The Trump administration also announced on Friday that it was temporarily easing those sanctions to relieve the global oil supply, allowing trade of Russian crude for roughly four weeks.

In his post, Zelenskyy also warned that easing sanctions would be "helpful" to Putin.

Oil and gas are crucial pillars of the Russian economy, even as it faces global sanctions, and much of the government's revenue comes from taxing these industries.

In January and February, for example, Moscow said it earned about $$10.2 billion in both months from oil and gas revenue, down 47% year-on-year when accounting for currency swings. Its total revenues for the same period were about $58.7 billion, its finance ministry said.