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Lead Inspector General for Operation Inherent Resolve | Quarterly Report to the United States Congress | April 1, 2024 - June 30, 202408/01/2024 01:59 PM EDT This quarterly report describes the activities of the U.S. Government in support of OIR as well as the work of the Department of Defense (DoD), the Department of State (State), and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to further the U.S. Government’s policy goals in Iraq and Syria during the period of April 1 through June 30, 2024. OIR IN BRIEF 38th quarterly report submitted by the Lead Inspector General for Operation Inherent
Resolve (OIR) summarizes the quarter’s key events and oversight of the U.S. mission to
defeat ISIS and train, advise, and assist local partners—including the Iraqi Security Forces
(ISF) and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)—to improve regional stability. ISIS Diminished but Continued
to Attack pp. 10–12 • ISIS appeared to be diminishing in personnel numbers but
was on track to more than double the total number of claimed
attacks in 2023. • ISIS continued to conduct mostly small arms attacks, IEDs,
and ambushes targeting security forces and civilians. Coalition Advising of Iraqi and Syrian
Partner Forces Continued pp. 13–33 • While Iran-aligned militias maintained a temporary pause in
attacks against U.S. and Coalition forces and facilities, force
protection remained a primary concern. • In Iraq, advisors focused on improving the ability of the Joint
Operations Command-Iraq to plan operations against ISIS. • In Syria, training remained paused for SDF guard forces at
detention facilities and security forces at displaced persons
camps. • Forces loyal to the Syrian regime blocked transport of
supplies to the zone around the At Tanf Garrison, creating a
humanitarian crisis. • Turkish airstrikes killed SDF personnel and strained the
SDF’s ability to maintain operations against ISIS. Repatriation from al-Hol
Continued pp. 34–36, 55–56, • Iraqis repatriated from the camp faced security screening
delays and barriers to acceptance into host communities
due to known or perceived affiliation with ISIS. • Security forces continued to conduct patrols and operations
at the al-Hol displaced persons camp but lacked sufficient
resources to curb ISIS smuggling. • While repatriation of residents from al-Hol continued,
about 41,000 people remained at the camp at the end of
the quarter U.S. and Iraq Discuss Future
Relationship pp. 14–15, 40–42
Iraqis and Syrians Continued to Suffer from Inadequate Public Services pp. 47–53 • In Iraq, electricity generation improved but is not enough to
meet summer demand; water for personal use and agriculture
is in short supply. • In Syria, Turkish airstrikes threatened energy, water, and oil
infrastructure in Hasakah governorate. • Elections in northeastern Syria were postponed due to
security threats. • State and USAID funded programs to strengthen public
services, civil society, education, and independent media. • Insecurity limited the ability of USAID’s third party monitors
to access certain parts of Syria to monitor humanitarian
assistance programming. Lead IG Oversight p. 69 • The DoD OIG issued two oversight reports related to OIR. The reports evaluated the combatant command military
deception planning and audited the Army’s management of
prepositioned stock-5 equipment. |
This quarterly report describes the activities of the U.S. Government in support of OIR as well as the work of the Department of Defense (DoD), the Department of State (State), and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to further the U.S. Government’s policy goals in Iraq and Syria during the period of April 1 through June 30, 2024.
Shares slip as the company reports another outage and quarterly earnings report shows a slowdown in growth in core business Azure while capital expenditure rises amid the AI build.
Microsoft has apologised after a global outage, which has now been resolved, affected its products including email service Outlook and video game Minecraft.
The company said in an update that preliminary investigations show the outage was caused by a cyber-attack and a failure to properly defend against it.
It comes less than two weeks after an IT outage, caused by a flawed software update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, impacted businesses across the globe and left millions of computers using Microsoft systems inaccessible.
"While the initial trigger event was a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack... initial investigations suggest that an error in the implementation of our defences amplified the impact of the attack rather than mitigating it," an update on the website of the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform said.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has reported its fourth-quarter earnings for the fiscal year 2024, surpassing analysts' estimates.
Its shares dropped by more than 3% in after-hours trading due to the disappointing growth pace in Azure cloud services, seen as the core segment supporting the tech giant in competing against its artificial intelligence (AI) rivals.
Furthermore, the world's second-largest company increased spending on data centre construction, prompting investors to be concerned about its profit margins.
Microsoft reported earnings per share of $2.95 (€2.72) on revenue of $64.7bn (€59.56 bn), surpassing analyst estimates of $2.94 and $64.5bn, respectively. The sales revenue rose by 15% from a year ago, slowing from the 17% growth in the March quarter. Net income amounted to $22bn (€20.3bn), up 10% from the same quarter last year.
"We closed out our fiscal year with a solid quarter, highlighted by record bookings and Microsoft Cloud quarterly revenue of $36.8bn, up 21% (up 22% in constant currency) year-over-year," CFO Amy Hood said during the earnings call. Cloud business contributed 57% of its total revenue, which is critical for the company's growth.
Despite exceeding expectations on both revenue and net income, the growth of its key metric, revenue from intelligent cloud, including Azure, fell short of market expectations. The segment's sales were $28.5bn (€26.24bn), below the estimated $28.7bn. Azure and other cloud services grew by 29%, missing analysts' forecast of 31%. This also marks the slowest growth in the past three quarters.
On a positive note, AI contributed about 8% of the increase in that segment, up from 7% in the previous quarter and 6% in the final quarter of 2023. Azure Cloud holds the second place for global market share, behind Amazon Web Services (AWS) and followed by Google Cloud.
Otherwise, all other divisions have shown growth and surpassed consensus expectations. The productivity and business process unit, which includes Office 365 and LinkedIn, generated revenue of $20.32bn (€18.71bn), up 11% from a year ago.
The more personal computing segment, including Windows operating systems, gaming, devices, and search advertising, reported revenue of $15.9bn (€14.64bn), representing a 14% growth from the same quarter last year.
Notably, gaming revenue surged by 61%, driven by a 58% growth of the Activision acquisition. However, device revenue decreased by 11% as the company continued to focus on higher-margin premium products. The company started selling surface PCs integrated with its Copilot+ running AI models in the June quarter. In the March quarter, it began selling Copilot access to small businesses, along with Microsoft 365 productivity software subscriptions.
However, the company's capital expenditure has surged to $19 bn (€17.5 bn) from $16bn (€16.2bn) in the March quarter. Microsoft faced capacity challenges as Hood mentioned in the fiscal third-quarter earnings call, which required increased investment in the data centre build amid meeting the fast-growing AI training demands. In the company's Forward-Looking Statements, it noted that "significant investments in products and services that may not achieve expected returns".
CEO Satya Nadella said: "As a platform company, we are focused on meeting the mission-critical needs of our customers across our at-scale platforms today, while also ensuring we lead the AI era."
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