Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Breakfast, your daily source of market news and analysis.

Subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify or Stitcher.

Good morning. Today is Wednesday, April 13th, and I'm your host, Rina Sherbal.

Our top stories today.

Pentagon summons top US defense companies, Mexican truckers protest, and Google pledges 9.5 billion in U.S. offices and data centers.

Leading today's news, the Pentagon is set to host a meeting on Wednesday with eight of the largest U.S. defense contractors,

including Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and L3 Harris technologies.

According to Reuters, the Gathering will center on the industry's capacity to meet Ukraine's

weapons needs if a war with Russia turns into a years long protracted conflict.

The U.S. has already provided Kyiv with more than $2.4 billion in military assistance

since Biden took office, of which more than $1.7 billion was delivered following the start of the Russian invasion on

February 24th. Hundreds of millions of dollars of the assistance has been approved

under presidential drawdown authority which allows President Biden to transfer

equipment from US stocks without congressional approval or budgetary

appropriations. The orders are permitted to respond to unforeseen emergencies that include peacekeeping

operations and anti-terrorism assistance. As the name implies, drawdowns are taken out of existing American inventories,

meaning the government is not going to market to purchase new items.

The U.S. has already sent over 5,000 or about a third of its javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, which would take

three to four years to replace, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

It has also given over more than 1400, or about quarter of its Stinger anti-aircraft missiles,

which would take at least five years to replenish at current production levels.

Raytheon and Lockheed Martin jointly produced the javelin, while Raytheon is the sole supplier of the Stinger.

...