Podcasts about commerce department

Today on "The Federal Drive with Terry Gerton" Federal data helps drive everything from economic forecasts to local planning decisions. Now a new Commerce Department policy has experts debating how government should balance privacy, transparency, and access to information Artificial intelligence may be getting the attention, but AI is only as reliable as the data behind it Washington is entering the annual sprint to the August recess. Congress still has major decisions ahead on spending, nominations, and a possible new reconciliation packageSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Most Americans never think about the statistical methods used to protect personal information in federal data products. But a recent Commerce Department order is raising questions about how agencies will balance privacy protections with the need to publish useful public data. Joining me with his concerns is Paul Schroeder, executive director of the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Contemporary technology governance has shifted from rule-based regulation to a landscape defined by administrative leverage and directive-driven decisions. This dynamic is seen in both the cybersecurity and AI sectors, where agencies such as the U.S. Department of Defense and companies including OpenAI and Anthropic navigate obligations and approvals through administrative action rather than statutory change. As a result, MSPs and IT service providers must recognize that the durability of their offerings and client architectures increasingly hinges on how they respond to rapid, unpredictable shifts in the governing environment rather than on fixed compliance deadlines or product release dates. A notable example of this mechanism is the Department of Defense's suspension of the rollout of Phase Two of the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC), as reported by Federal News Network. About 80,000 companies had been preparing for new third-party assessment requirements, but these assessments have been paused pending a 60-day review. Despite the pause, the underlying data protection requirements for defense contractors remain in force, demonstrating that while compliance deadlines can disappear overnight, fundamental security obligations persist. Additional cases amplify the trend toward directive-based governance. The U.S. Commerce Department lifted export restrictions on Anthropic's Fable 5 and Mythos 5 AI models after new safeguards were implemented, following the same pattern previously used to impose those restrictions. Similarly, OpenAI's GPT 5.6 model was released to the public only after a voluntary government review concluded, illustrating that administrative reviews, not boardroom decisions, can dictate technology availability. Concurrently, other governments such as China are employing similar tactics, with Reuters reporting that Chinese authorities have met with local AI firms to discuss restricting overseas access to advanced models. These parallel moves across geopolitical boundaries indicate a structural reliance on executive discretion rather than legislative clarity. The operational impact for MSPs, IT service providers, and technology leaders is a heightened exposure to contract risk and pricing volatility. Service commitments anchored to deadlines, default settings, or product availability are susceptible to abrupt policy reversals or administrative interventions, translating to sudden revenue shortfalls and reactive client management. The recommended response is to audit current commitments, identify those pegged to mutable triggers rather than enduring obligations, and systematically re-anchor contract language and client communication to core outcomes and standing requirements. This preparation mitigates the risk of unpaid work, scope renegotiation, and unplanned operational disruption when another directive-driven policy shift occurs. 00:00 Three Government Switches in Three Weeks  04:07 Why AI Is Governed by Leverage, Not Law 06:46 CMMC Paused — Your Obligations Didn't 09:27 Why Do We Care?  Supported by:  Pax8 Guardz   

Kevin discusses and covers the following stories: payroll processing firm ADP reported June Private Sector Employment numbers; the U.S. Commerce Department's Census Bureau reported May Construction Spending; Associated Builders and Contractors reported National Nonresidential Construction Spending data; the Institute for Supply Management released their Purchasing Manager's Index (PMI); the S&P Global U.S. Manufacturing PMI was released; Ford Motor Company reached a new record; AAA released their projections for Independence Day week travel; California has a new gift for gas and diesel consumers; oil reacts to U.S. - Iran peace talks progressing, U.S. crude inventory data and OPEC+ output announcements; Kevin has the details, digs into the data, puts the information into historical, offers his insights and opinions. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A list of potential cyber vulnerabilities, rightfully called the National Vulnerability Database, is one of the many ways the National Institute of Standards and Technology aims to help industry and government cyber officials keep track of possible weaknesses in IT systems. However, a recent review of the NVD by the Commerce Department's Inspector General, found that a backlog has developed over the years, and NIST officials are in need of more resources to cut it down. For an explanation of what it will take, I had the chance to speak with Chuck Mitchell from the IG's office.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Patrick Moorhead and Daniel Newman unpack OpenAI's reported equity offer to the U.S. government, Anthropic's phased return following export controls, and why AWS and Microsoft are betting billions on the engineers who deploy AI rather than the labs that train it. They also dig into NVIDIA's response to its roadmap critics, Meta's expanding cloud ambitions, and the week's biggest market developments, from SpaceX to Samsung. Catch the full analysis on Episode 311 of The Six Five Pod. The handpicked topics for this week are: OpenAI's Equity Offer to Washington: OpenAI is reportedly considering offering the federal government a 5-10% stake in exchange for a two-year runway on Department of Defense contracts. Pat and Daniel read it as a distribution and IPO hedge rather than a governance concession, especially with a trillion-dollar valuation still the target. (The Decode) Anthropic's Phased Return After Export Controls: Fable 5 is back online, and Mythos remains partially restored to a limited set of vetted institutions following Commerce Department approval, a rollout Pat treats as the first real test case for how future frontier models clear review. Daniel adds that Alibaba's claimed block on Claude in China carries more optics than substance given how easily a VPN routes around it. (The Decode) NVIDIA and Palantir's Open Source Enterprise Play: Alex Karp's viral CNBC interview argued that enterprises pairing Palantir with NVIDIA's Nemotron models can match frontier-level output without a frontier lab in the loop, a clip that pulled nearly 200,000 views once Pat posted it. Both hosts agree the priority for open source models has moved from leading capability benchmarks to closing that gap fast enough for slower-moving enterprises to adopt them. (The Decode) Forward-Deployed Engineering Becomes a Billion-Dollar Line Item: AWS invested $1 billion, followed just two days later by Microsoft's $2.5 billion commitment to forward-deployed engineering teams, signaling a shift in where enterprise AI value is being created. Daniel argues the biggest opportunity now lies in implementation talent rather than model development, while Patrick sees the investments as a strategic hedge, noting that frontier AI labs have already been building their own forward-deployed engineering organizations to help customers put AI into production. (The Decode) Meta's Cloud Ambitions Meet a Trust Problem: Meta Cloud can likely match neocloud-level GPU pricing and performance, but Pat argues the company's record outside advertising makes enterprise-grade services a much harder sell. He expects the offering to function as tactical overflow capacity for labs needing compute, with a shelf life tied to demand rather than a durable AWS rival. (The Decode) The Flip: Has Enterprise AI Value Already Left the Model Layer? Daniel argues that Microsoft and AWS writing nine- and ten-figure checks for forward-deployed engineering in the same week, alongside an essay from Microsoft's Satya Nadella declaring models replaceable, confirms that implementation talent now captures value model providers used to keep. Pat counters that today's models remain far from AGI, and that once frontier labs get there they will spin off cheap narrow models fast enough to keep pricing power on their side. SpaceX Joins the Nasdaq 100 Within Weeks of Its IPO: SpaceX entered the index just 15 days after going public, the fastest addition on record, which Pat says will pull in passive buying regardless of the underlying valuation. Both hosts flag the speed itself as a signal of broader market froth. SK Hynix and Samsung Signal Memory's Return to the Center of the AI Trade: SK Hynix is pursuing a $28 billion US listing that could value the company near a trillion dollars, timed just ahead of Samsung earnings both hosts expect to show a sharp profit jump. Daniel ties the moves directly to NVIDIA's memory demand, and Pat notes most investors had barely heard of SK Hynix before this year. NVIDIA and Microsoft Split Paths in the Magnificent Seven: NVIDIA gained 7% for the half while Microsoft shed 23%, a divergence Pat ties to Microsoft's exposure to OpenAI's fading momentum and its perception as a bundled SaaS play rather than a leading infrastructure provider. Daniel calls the selloff overdone and floats it as a generational buying opportunity. NVIDIA's Roadmap Rebuttal Tests the Limits of Corporate Denial: NVIDIA issued a statement calling its roadmap intact after a SemiAnalysis report raised delay concerns tied to its Kyber rack architecture, and Pat reads the denial as legally meaningful given the liability regulated companies take on when refuting analyst claims. Both hosts land on the same read, that first customer shipment may hold while full volume ramp slips. Palo Alto Networks and CrowdStrike Undercut the SaaSpocalypse Narrative: CrowdStrike climbed 95% and Palo Alto Networks gained 113% from April to June, each posting record quarters that Daniel says quiet the theory that frontier models would simply replace dedicated cyber tools. Pat adds that security was always the wrong category for that narrative, since it ranks among AI's biggest risks rather than one of its casual replacement targets. New episodes of the Six Five Pod land every week. Watch the full video at sixfivemedia.com, and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel so you never miss an episode.   The Decode The American AI Champions Doctrine Comes Into Focus — OpenAI 5% Gov Stake, GPT-5.6 Gated to 20 Orgs, and MGX Closes $49B https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/02/openai-proposes-us-government-own-5percent-stake-to-address-political-blowback.html Anthropic's Super-Week — Mythos + Fable Restored (with California in Tow), and Alibaba Fires Back https://www.axios.com/2026/06/27/commerce-anthropic-mythos-restrictions-lift Palantir–NVIDIA Sovereign AI Alliance — Karp Attacks Token Pricing, Stock +8–9% https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/palantir-secure-ai-us-agencies-nemotron-open-models/ The Embedded AI Engineering Arms Race — AWS $1B FDE Meets Microsoft Frontier Company ($2.5B) https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/amazons-aws-commits-1-billion-toward-new-unit-embedded-ai-engineers-2026-06-30/ Pat's Anthropic Forbes' Article https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2026/05/05/enterprises-need-to-be-careful-before-they-go-all-in-on-anthropic/ Meta Compute — The World's Biggest AI Capex Spender Becomes a Cloud Provider https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/01/metas-plan-to-launch-a-cloud-business-eases-the-biggest-overhang-on-the-stock.html  The Flip: Enterprise AI value has shifted from model providers to implementation partners — the buyer's next big check is for who builds it, not who trained it. FOR: The AI stack has commoditized fast enough that integration is the new moat. https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/microsoft-launches-firm-help-companies-adopt-ai-with-25-billion-2026-07-02/ AGAINST: Frontier-model access is still the scarcity, and enterprise IP is the real moat. https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/26/tech/anthropic-mythos-release Bulls & Bears SpaceX Joins the Nasdaq-100 Effective July 7 — First-Ever Pre-IPO-Type Index Add of Its Kind https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/spacex-joins-nasdaq-100-july-133000124.html SK Hynix Launches ~$28B Nasdaq ADR Listing Today — Potentially the Biggest-Ever First-Time Sale by a Foreign Company https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-05/sk-hynix-seeks-access-to-ai-investors-in-29-billion-us-listing H1 Mag-7 Divergence — NVDA +7.3% While MSFT Shed 22.9% Over the Same Six Months https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/article/tech-stocks-post-best-6-months-since-2023--even-with-much-of-the-magnificent-7-in-the-penalty-box-chart-of-the-day-100000120.html Palo Alto Networks and CrowdStrike Log Best Cyber Quarters Ever — +113% and +95% Between April and June https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/30/palo-alto-crowdstrike-stock-ai-mythos.html Enterprises Need To Be Careful Before They Go All-In On Anthropic https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2026/05/05/enterprises-need-to-be-careful-before-they-go-all-in-on-anthropic/  

This week, the Commerce Department lifted its restrictions on Anthropic's powerful A.I. models, Claude Mythos and Claude Fable. We dissect why the government took such a hands-on approach in the first place, how the restriction on the OpenAI model GPT 5.6 is likely to resolve and what, if anything, this tells us about A.I. competition with China. Then, Dr. Dana Suskind, a pediatric surgeon and the author of the forthcoming book “Human Raised,” stops by to discuss a framework she has developed to help parents make informed decisions about what kinds of A.I. products are safe for children. And finally, we introduce a new segment about prediction markets: Against All Odds. Guest: Dr. Dana Suskind, founder and co-director of the TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health at the University of Chicago and author of the forthcoming book “Human Raised: Nurturing Connection, Curiosity and Lifelong Learning in the Age of A.I.”   Additional Reading: U.S. Lifts Restrictions on Anthropic's Most Powerful A.I. Models U.S. Bars Foreigners From Using Anthropic's Most Advanced A.I. Models Chinese A.I. Models Close the Gap With Anthropic and OpenAI The Donk-ing of a Truth Machine Mark Zuckerberg Directed Meta to Create a Prediction Markets App We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Anthropic announced earlier this week its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models will once again be available to the public as it has reached an agreement with the Commerce Department to deploy the AI models with new guardrails and classifiers meant to address jailbreaks. In a blog posted Tuesday, Anthropic said that export controls that prevented their sale to foreign companies and individuals have been lifted after weeks of negotiation with the White House and Commerce Department. The company has also restored access to the model for U.S. users. The export controls were put in place after the Trump administration became alarmed by a threat intelligence report from Amazon claiming to have jailbroken Fable's cybersecurity capabilities. On X, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick appeared to confirm that the restrictions would be lifted. “Over the past two weeks, we have worked closely with Anthropic to analyze and approve Fable 5 to ensure alignment across the US Government and strengthen America's leadership in AI,” Lutnick wrote. The Department of Veterans Affairs' under secretary for health is resigning effective next week, according to an internal email sent Tuesday and confirmed by the VA on Wednesday. John Bartrum has led the massive rollout of electronic health record modernization since his December 2025 confirmation, but did not explain why he is leaving only months into his tenure. “We successfully relaunched the Electronic Health Record Modernization program, putting it back on a credible path after years of uncertainty,” Bartrum said in the email. “In the spirit of President George Washington upon his retirement from public life, I am persuaded that, with these initiatives now firmly on track, you will not disapprove my determination to retire from public service.” The formerly assailed EHRM effort has been ramping up in recent months, with plans to have 19 sites updated by the end of this year. It's the beginning of an “aggressive timeline” to complete deployment at all sites as early as 2031.

Today's top stories, with context, in just 15 minutes. On today's podcast: 1) US negotiators Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff had positive discussions with regional leaders in Qatar and technical talks with Iran are moving ahead. The US and Iran are seeking to ease tensions and forge a longer-term peace deal after recent attacks imperiled an already fragile ceasefire. Progress is being made in separate technical talks, but major issues such as the release of Iranian assets and the future management of the Strait of Hormuz remain unresolved. 2) Progressive insurgents took down establishment incumbents in Colorado midterm primary elections last night. In the 1st District, 29-year-old democratic-socialist Melat Kiros unseated nearly 30-year Congresswoman Diana DeGette. In the closely-watched 8th District, the more progressive Democrat in that race, Manny Rutinel, beat Shannon Bird in a landslide. In the state's Democratic governor's race, state Attorney General Phil Weiser defeated Senator Michael Bennet. However, in Colorado's Senate primary, incumbent John Hickenlooper held off a challenge from self-described insurgent progressive Julie Gonzales. 3) The US government removed foreign access restrictions on Anthropic PBC's Fable 5 artificial intelligence model, clearing it for wider distribution. Anthropic had disabled its models and been in discussions with officials to satisfy safety concerns after the Commerce Department imposed an export control rule. The company will enable Fable 5 access to users globally and allow usage on cloud services run by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, and will work with Washington to expand access to Mythos 5.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kevin discusses and covers the following stories: the U.S. Commerce Department reported the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index (PCE) and the Core PCE, as well as Personal Income and Personal Savings; Tim Wullenweber, Vice President of Sales and Manufacturing, Coolants Plus - Starfire, joins the show to talk about their facility expansions, the next generation of heavy-duty engine oil and new products; the University of Michigan reported their Consumer Sentiment Survey; oil prices react to Middle East production, Strait of Hormuz traffic, weekend Iranian attacks - U.S. retaliations highlighting the fragility of the interim peace deal; Kevin has the details, digs into the data, puts the information into historical perspective, offers his insights and opinions.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dave Rubin of "The Rubin Report" gives a first look to the stories you need to know to start your day including Democratic Senator John Fetterman breaking with his own party by warning that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is inviting a constitutional crisis after pledging to defy recent Supreme Court rulings that strengthen President Donald Trump's immigration agenda; new Commerce Department data showing the U.S. economy grew faster than expected in the first quarter as business investment, artificial intelligence spending, and exports helped offset slowing consumer demand; and France reporting roughly 1,000 excess deaths after one of Europe's most severe heat waves on record, with officials warning the death toll could continue to rise as extreme temperatures strain public health systems across the continent, and much more.

On this edition of After Dark: Spielberg's flop(?), GLP-1s are melting nightlife, Midjourney's health pivot, and why this is the Bad Place. this episode is exclusive to Future Commerce Plus members – sign up now at futurecommerce.com/plus. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jill and Tom open the show by discussing the shocking news that the Polestar brand will be leaving the U.S. at the end of this model. Tom questions why Polestar is not pushing back against this Commerce Department security decision. Jill notes that as information regarding the all-new Chevrolet Silverado 1500 pickup is released, GMC has begun sharing tidbits--mostly photography--of the redesigned Sierra 1500. These launches are hugely important to General Motors, as the two trucks combined account for roughly one third of the carmaker's annual revenue. In the 2nd segment, Jill and Tom talk to Jimmy Douglas of Plug, an online remarketer of used EVs. Listen in to learn how dealers are acquiring inventory of late-model used electric vehicles, and why this might be a good time to sell your EV. Also, it turns out that Jimmy is a big fan of the Volkswagen VR6 engine discussed recently by Tom. In the last segment, Jill is subjected to Tom's "Bogus Blue" quiz, and has time to review the redesigned 2027 Kia Telluride 3-row crossover, which can now be had in hybrid form.   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

“The frontier AI companies invited the government into the room. Now the government is beginning to behave as if it owns the door, the guest list, the schedule, and the product roadmap.” — Keith Teare Last week, I was away in Europe. So Keith Teare ran our That Was The Week show solo — with a chillingly authentic Andrew Keen bot. So realistic, in fact, that the fake version sounds (to me, at least) more interesting than the real one. The bad news is that I'm back. The good news is it's been an interesting week in tech. That was the week in which the US Commerce Department told both OpenAI and Anthropic that they now need government approval for whom they can sell their frontier AI models. This is supposedly “voluntary” — for now, at least. Keith's TWTW editorial argues that Dario Amodei and Sam Altman have spent over a year crying wolf about the dangers of their own technology, supposedly deliberately seeking government involvement as a regulatory moat against competitors. And now the government has walked through the door that Sam and Dario left ajar. Now, Keith argues, the US government is behaving as if it owns not just the door and the guest list, but the entire product roadmap. “Payback's a bitch,” Keith bristles in his editorial. The other major news this week is the rumour (via David Sacks) that OpenAI has offered the US government a 50% stake in a sovereign wealth fund. If true, this would change everything — not just in Silicon Valley, but in the political debate about public ownership of our AI economy. It's not just tech insiders like Sacks and Altman who are on board the sovereign wealth fund express, but also Bernie Sanders and other leftist critics of Big Tech. So maybe payback, at least when it comes to public investment in AI, isn't always such a bitch. Five Takeaways •       The Fake Andrew Keen: An Hour of Work on a Local Nvidia Card: Keith ran last week's show solo with an AI-generated Andrew Keen: trained on a few episodes of the show, animated from a YouTube still, scripted from Keith's newsletter. No third-party service. Just a local PC with an Nvidia GPU, about an hour of work, three attempts. Andrew, listening back, second-guessed whether he was actually there. The result was “pretty bad compared to our normal actual live shows,” Keith says. But also: really good. The question hanging over this episode and every future one: which Andrew are you listening to? •       Payback's a Bitch: How AI Companies Created Their Own Regulatory Trap: The US Commerce Department has told OpenAI and Anthropic they need government permission for who gets to use their latest models. Voluntary, for now. Keith's diagnosis: AI leadership spent more than a year crying wolf about existential risk — not because they believed it, but because government regulation creates a moat against competitors. Now the government has taken them at their word. Dario and Sam Altman wanted to be wrapped in government clothing. They are. The government now owns the door. They asked for this. They got it. •       American and Chinese State Capitalism: Converging Models: Andrew raises the macro argument: what we're watching is the convergence of American and Chinese models of capitalism toward a more state-centric model. China has always been explicit about state control. America has prided itself on free enterprise — even when the internet, atomic technology, and now AI were all substantially government-funded or government-shaped. Keith agrees at this level: all governments seek to control things they frame as dangerous. The difference is the framing. The direction of travel is the same. •       OpenAI's Rumoured 50% Stake Offer to the Government: Keith has heard — from sources including David Sacks, who should know — that OpenAI has offered the US government a very large stake, potentially 50%, in a sovereign wealth fund that would then distribute dividends to citizens. Sacks is not only unsurprised but in favour: he thinks 50% is too small. Andrew's question: why would OpenAI give away 50% of the company? Keith's answer: because it's the price of the regulatory moat. The government as partner rather than the government as regulator. A company that once aspired to “open” AI is now offering the state a controlling interest in its future. •       Paul Kennedy and America's Inevitable Decline: Keith has Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers on his shelf. His conclusion from it: it is historically impossible for America to retain its first-place status. No country ever has. Newly capitalised countries produce things more cheaply; China, India, and large parts of Asia are where most future growth will be. Does the AI boom change this? Keith's honest answer: no. It may slow the decline. It will not reverse it. America will, like an older gentleman on a rocking chair outside the house, accept its fate. Europe won't even be in the rocking chair. About the Guest Keith Teare is a British-American entrepreneur, investor, and publisher of the That Was the Week newsletter. He is a co-founder of TechCrunch and Andrew's regular TWTW co-host. References: •       That Was the Week by Keith Teare — the newsletter on which this episode is based. •       Azeem Azhar, The Exponential View — his report quantifying the AI economy at roughly $175 billion, referenced in the closing section. •       Alex Lazarow, 99%Tech — referenced for his piece on the emergence of an AI trust layer, the “Lloyds of AI.” •       Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers — on Keith's shelf; referenced in the America-China decline section. •       David Sacks — referenced as the source for the OpenAI sovereign wealth fund rumour. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 3,000 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters: (00:38) - Introduction: the fake Andrew Keen from last week (01:14) - Keith explains how he did it: local Nvidia card, one hour, three attempts (02:11) - The big story: Commerce Department tells OpenAI and Anthropic they need permission ...

This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Kevin Frazier, Roger Parloff, and Molly Roberts to talk through some of the week's big news in AI, including:“Citizen Cain't.” When the NAACP sued Elon Musk's xAI under the Clean Air Act—alleging that the company built dozens of gas-fired turbines to power a data center in Mississippi without relevant air permits and exposing nearby, predominantly Black communities to harmful pollution—the Justice Department opted to do something it has never done before: it intervened in a citizen suit against a private company in order to kill it. DOJ's motion offers two theories: first, that shutting down the turbines would threaten national security because the military relies on xAI's Grok Gov model (including in relation to the Iran war) to secure the nation, and second, that the Constitution's vesting of executive power in the president means private citizens cannot enforce federal law over the executive's objection. How strong are these arguments? And what would it mean for environmental and other citizen-enforcement suits if DOJ were to prevail?“Grok the Vote.” We may be living through the first true “AI elections.” In Manhattan's NY-12 Democratic primary, more than $40 million in AI-industry and AI-safety money turned a little-known assemblyman, Alex Bores, into something of a national referendum on whether voters care about AI regulation and AI safety—though Bores ultimately lost to Micah Lasher this week. Meanwhile, overseas in Malaysia, parties are using chatbots and other AI-driven technologies to reach out to voters in new and novel ways. And just this week in Washington, a new study has concluded that frontier AI is perhaps more persuasive than ever, but also may not be as politically neutral as some suspect or one might hope. What does this all mean for democratic politics when both money and the messaging involved in our politics are increasingly shaped by AI?“Kill, Kill Switch, Kill, Kill!” The government's frontier-AI "kill switch" is now ready to have its first day in court. If you recall, a few weeks ago, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security sent Anthropic an "Is Informed" letter ordering it to suspend all access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models for any foreign nationals, including its own employees. This ultimately led Anthropic to pull access to those models for everyone within hours. But this past Monday, June 22, a technology startup called Legion LegalTech filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government alleging that it has acted in a way that is unlawful and raises a number of statutory and constitutional concerns. How strong is the legal challenge, and what does it tell us about whether courts—rather than the executive—will end up defining the government's power to switch a frontier model on and off?In object lessons, Molly sticks to the script for this week's episode with her call-out of Erik Nitsche's “Atoms for Peace” poster series for General Dynamics. Also inspired by this week's theme, Kevin dives into some “light summer reading” about technology, globalization, and the law with “Rules for a Flat World,” by Gillian Hadfield. Roger, similarly, is “unwinding” with “The Winter Warriors,” by Olivier Norek, a novel about the lesser-known David vs. Goliath story of Finland taking on the Soviet Union in 1939. And Scott says enough already! He's headed on vacation next week, and so is Rational Security. We'll be back with a new episode and a rejuvenated Scott on July 9.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Kevin Frazier, Roger Parloff, and Molly Roberts to talk through some of the week's big news in AI, including:“Citizen Cain't.” When the NAACP sued Elon Musk's xAI under the Clean Air Act—alleging that the company built dozens of gas-fired turbines to power a data center in Mississippi without relevant air permits and exposing nearby, predominantly Black communities to harmful pollution—the Justice Department opted to do something it has never done before: it intervened in a citizen suit against a private company in order to kill it. DOJ's motion offers two theories: first, that shutting down the turbines would threaten national security because the military relies on xAI's Grok Gov model (including in relation to the Iran war) to secure the nation, and second, that the Constitution's vesting of executive power in the president means private citizens cannot enforce federal law over the executive's objection. How strong are these arguments? And what would it mean for environmental and other citizen-enforcement suits if DOJ were to prevail?“Grok the Vote.” We may be living through the first true “AI elections.” In Manhattan's NY-12 Democratic primary, more than $40 million in AI-industry and AI-safety money turned a little-known assemblyman, Alex Bores, into something of a national referendum on whether voters care about AI regulation and AI safety—though Bores ultimately lost to Micah Lasher this week. Meanwhile, overseas in Malaysia, parties are using chatbots and other AI-driven technologies to reach out to voters in new and novel ways. And just this week in Washington, a new study has concluded that frontier AI is perhaps more persuasive than ever, but also may not be as politically neutral as some suspect or one might hope. What does this all mean for democratic politics when both money and the messaging involved in our politics are increasingly shaped by AI?“Kill, Kill Switch, Kill, Kill!” The government's frontier-AI "kill switch" is now ready to have its first day in court. If you recall, a few weeks ago, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security sent Anthropic an "Is Informed" letter ordering it to suspend all access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models for any foreign nationals, including its own employees. This ultimately led Anthropic to pull access to those models for everyone within hours. But this past Monday, June 22, a technology startup called Legion LegalTech filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government alleging that it has acted in a way that is unlawful and raises a number of statutory and constitutional concerns. How strong is the legal challenge, and what does it tell us about whether courts—rather than the executive—will end up defining the government's power to switch a frontier model on and off?In object lessons, Molly sticks to the script for this week's episode with her call-out of Erik Nitsche's “Atoms for Peace” poster series for General Dynamics. Also inspired by this week's theme, Kevin dives into some “light summer reading” about technology, globalization, and the law with “Rules for a Flat World,” by Gillian Hadfield. Roger, similarly, is “unwinding” with “The Winter Warriors,” by Olivier Norek, a novel about the lesser-known David vs. Goliath story of Finland taking on the Soviet Union in 1939. And Scott says enough already! He's headed on vacation next week, and so is Rational Security. We'll be back with a new episode and a rejuvenated Scott on July 9.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Plus: Chinese-owned EV maker Polestar will exit the U.S. market after a Commerce Department ban.. And former Facebook executive Sarah Wynn-Williams sues Meta to overturn an arbitration order blocking her from promoting her book. Julie Chang hosts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, we're joined by Kate Koren, deputy director of the Economics Program and Scholl Chair at CSIS, to discuss the Trump administration's recent move to impose export controls on Anthropic's Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models. We walk through the events leading up to the administration's decision (:47) and explore what authorities the Commerce Department has to restrict access to AI models (6:54). We also unpack the implications of AI industry executives joining world leaders at the G7 Summit in France last week (21:36).

Last week, shortly after Anthropic launched its most powerful AI models, the U.S. government imposed export controls restricting foreign nationals from accessing them - and rather than try to verify the citizenship of every user on the planet within ninety minutes, Anthropic shut the models down for everyone. In this video we look at what actually happened: the Commerce Department's "is informed" letter, the deemed-export rules that locked Anthropic's own engineers out of their work, the claim that the "national security threat" was essentially an AI fixing software bugs, and the awkward detail that the partner who reported it was Amazon - Anthropic's largest backer and a direct competitor. We also dig into why all of this matters for Anthropic's near-trillion-dollar valuation, the winner-takes-all assumptions behind frontier AI, the rise of cheap open-source Chinese models, and whether there's really any such thing as a monopoly on math.Patrick's Books:Statistics For The Trading Floor: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://amzn.to/3eerLA0⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Derivatives For The Trading Floor: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://amzn.to/3cjsyPF⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Corporate Finance: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://amzn.to/3fn3rvC ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ways To Support The Channel:Patreon: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/PatrickBoyleOnFinance⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/patrickboyle

【聊了什么】 6月12日，美国商务部以国家安全为由，限制 Anthropic/Claude 最新模型 Mythos 5 和 Fable 5 向外国人开放。随后，Anthropic 将这两个刚刚发布、被视为公司最强能力代表的模型全线下架。一个 AI 产品更新，为什么会突然变成国家安全事件？所谓“外国人不能用”，又如何影响到整个 AI 行业？ 本期我们从技术层面解释大语言模型的“护栏”：它为什么需要拒绝回答某些问题，为什么护栏太低会带来安全风险，护栏太高又会误伤正常科研和普通用户。Anthropic 一直主张 AI 监管，但当政府真的出手，监管又立刻变成出口管制、国籍边界、法律灰色地带和政治表态问题。 我们也把讨论推到更大的层面：Anthropic 的价值观、AI 公司与军方合作、硅谷加速主义者的反应、开源模型和 AI 安全之间的矛盾，以及特朗普和桑德斯都提到过的 AI 国有化、主权基金和全民分红。AI 不只是技术产品，也正在成为国家安全、文化战争、劳动力市场和人类社会未来秩序的一部分。 【支持我们】 如果喜欢这期节目并希望支持我们将节目继续做下去： 也欢迎加入我们的会员计划： https://theamericanroulette.com/paid-membership/ 会员可以收到每周2-5封newsletter，可以加入会员社群，参加会员活动，并享受更多福利。 合作投稿邮箱：american.roulette.pod@gmail.com 【时间轴】 01:13 Claude 最新模型被限，Anthropic 全线下架 05:23 技术、政治与意识形态如何交织 05:52 什么是大模型“越狱”和“护栏” 12:37 亚马逊、安全人员与模型漏洞举报 14:01 政府与 Anthropic 各执一词的罗生门 21:47 Anthropic 为什么主动呼吁 AI 监管 23:15 出口管制：美国能否限制外国人使用模型 30:12 Anthropic 的价值观、国家安全和军方合作 41:34 禁令会不会削弱美国 AI 的领先优势 43:40 硅谷加速主义者为何为 Anthropic 被锤叫好 45:03 白宫内部权力变化与 AI 政策走向 49:07 用户数据、文化战争与开源模型争议 53:12 从公司自律到国家入股：AI 巨头国有化想象 54:17 AI 冲击劳动力市场之后，社会如何分配红利 【我们是谁】 美轮美换是一档深入探讨当今美国政治的中文播客。 本期的主播和嘉宾： 小华：媒体人 曹起曈：青椒，政治行为研究者 主播和嘉宾的言论不代表其所在机构或其雇主的观点。 【What We Talked About】 On June 12, the U.S. Commerce Department restricted access to Anthropic/Claude's latest models, Mythos 5 and Fable 5, for foreign nationals on national security grounds. Anthropic then took both newly released models, widely seen as the company's most capable systems, offline for all users. How did an AI product update suddenly become a national security incident? And how does a rule that “foreigners cannot use it” affect the entire AI industry? In this episode, we explain the technical side of large language model “guardrails”: why models need to refuse certain requests, why guardrails that are too weak can create safety risks, and why guardrails that are too strict can interfere with legitimate research and ordinary users. Anthropic has long advocated for AI regulation, but once the government actually intervenes, regulation immediately turns into a question of export controls, national boundaries, legal gray areas, and political signaling. We also broaden the discussion to Anthropic's values, AI companies' cooperation with the military, reactions from Silicon Valley accelerationists, the tension between open-source models and AI safety, and proposals raised by both Trump and Sanders around AI nationalization, sovereign wealth funds, and public dividends. AI is no longer just a technology product; it is becoming part of national security, the culture war, the labor market, and the future order of human society. 【Support Us】 If you like our show and want to support us, please consider the following: Join our membership program: https://theamericanroulette.com/paid-membership/ Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/americanroulette Business inquiries and fan mail: american.roulette.pod@gmail.com 【Timeline】 01:13 Claude's latest models are restricted, and Anthropic takes them offline 05:23 How technology, politics, and ideology become entangled 05:52 What “jailbreaking” and “guardrails” mean for large language models 12:37 Amazon, security researchers, and reports of model vulnerabilities 14:01 The competing narratives from the government and Anthropic 21:47 Why Anthropic has actively called for AI regulation 23:15 Export controls: can the U.S. restrict foreigners from using AI models? 30:12 Anthropic's values, national security, and cooperation with the military 41:34 Will the ban weaken America's lead in AI? 43:40 Why Silicon Valley accelerationists are cheering Anthropic's troubles 45:03 Shifting power inside the White House and the future of AI policy 49:07 User data, culture-war politics, and the open-source model debate 53:12 From corporate self-regulation to state ownership: imagining AI nationalization 54:17 After AI disrupts the labor market, how should society share the gains? 【Who We Are】 The American Roulette is a podcast dedicated to helping the Chinese-speaking community understand fast-changing U.S. politics. Our hosts and guests: 小华 (Xiao Hua): Journalist, political observer 曹起曈 (Thomas Cao): Assistant professor at the Tufts Fletcher School The views expressed by the host and guests do not represent the opinions of their employers or any affiliated institutions.

This week, Scott sat down with cohost emeritus and Lawfare Research Director Alan Rozenshtein, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien, Lawfare Public Service Fellow Julia Curlee, and Lawfare Contributing Editor and Vice President of Research, Security and Defense at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Ariane Tabatabai, to talk through the week's big national security news stories, including:“Fission Accomplished.” After nearly four months of war, the United States and Iran have reached a deal to end the conflict—with Trump declaring it “complete” and authorizing the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz ahead of a formal signing ceremony set for June 19 in Switzerland. But the agreement leaves enormous questions unresolved, from the fate of Iran's enriched uranium to sanctions relief to whether the ceasefire extends to Israel's campaign in Lebanon. Is this the durable peace Trump claims, or a fragile pause papering over the hardest issues?“Model Misbehavior.” Days after Anthropic publicly released its powerful new Claude Fable 5 model, the Commerce Department imposed export controls barring any foreign national—inside or outside the U.S.—from accessing it, forcing the company to disable the model worldwide. The administration says Anthropic recklessly refused to fix a dangerous jailbreak; Anthropic says it was a narrow, non-serious vulnerability and the order is a misunderstanding. What does this episode tell us about the government's expanding use of export controls on AI—and its increasingly adversarial relationship with one of the country's leading labs?“Bad Vibrations.” In one of her final acts as Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard rescinded two Biden-era intelligence assessments that had cast doubt on whether a foreign adversary was behind “Havana Syndrome,” the mysterious ailments afflicting U.S. spies and diplomats. Gabbard's office says the prior assessments cherry-picked intelligence to support a predetermined conclusion; critics worry about a politically motivated rewrite of analytic findings on the way out the door. What should we make of this last-minute reversal, and what does it mean for the future of the Havana syndrome debate—and Gabbard's legacy as DNI?In object lessons, Tyler remains steadfast in his mission to ensure that no one ever runs out of podcasts, this week plugging A Whole Other Country, a discovery from Tribeca Festival Audio. Alan embraces peak dad-tech with his bbq upgrade—a new, after-market temperature controller. Scott savors a delightfully spicy Supreme Court dust-up in FS Credit Opportunities Corp. v. Saba Capital Master Fund, Ltd. And Julia celebrates her mug, an appropriate mainstay during her post-White-House-PDB “deep state therapy hour.”To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Scott sat down with cohost emeritus and Lawfare Research Director Alan Rozenshtein, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien, Lawfare Public Service Fellow Julia Curlee, and Lawfare Contributing Editor and Vice President of Research, Security and Defense at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Ariane Tabatabai, to talk through the week's big national security news stories, including:“Fission Accomplished.” After nearly four months of war, the United States and Iran have reached a deal to end the conflict—with Trump declaring it “complete” and authorizing the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz ahead of a formal signing ceremony set for June 19 in Switzerland. But the agreement leaves enormous questions unresolved, from the fate of Iran's enriched uranium to sanctions relief to whether the ceasefire extends to Israel's campaign in Lebanon. Is this the durable peace Trump claims, or a fragile pause papering over the hardest issues?“Model Misbehavior.” Days after Anthropic publicly released its powerful new Claude Fable 5 model, the Commerce Department imposed export controls barring any foreign national—inside or outside the U.S.—from accessing it, forcing the company to disable the model worldwide. The administration says Anthropic recklessly refused to fix a dangerous jailbreak; Anthropic says it was a narrow, non-serious vulnerability and the order is a misunderstanding. What does this episode tell us about the government's expanding use of export controls on AI—and its increasingly adversarial relationship with one of the country's leading labs?“Bad Vibrations.” In one of her final acts as Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard rescinded two Biden-era intelligence assessments that had cast doubt on whether a foreign adversary was behind “Havana Syndrome,” the mysterious ailments afflicting U.S. spies and diplomats. Gabbard's office says the prior assessments cherry-picked intelligence to support a predetermined conclusion; critics worry about a politically motivated rewrite of analytic findings on the way out the door. What should we make of this last-minute reversal, and what does it mean for the future of the Havana syndrome debate—and Gabbard's legacy as DNI?In object lessons, Tyler remains steadfast in his mission to ensure that no one ever runs out of podcasts, this week plugging A Whole Other Country, a discovery from Tribeca Festival Audio. Alan embraces peak dad-tech with his bbq upgrade—a new, after-market temperature controller. Scott savors a delightfully spicy Supreme Court dust-up in FS Credit Opportunities Corp. v. Saba Capital Master Fund, Ltd. And Julia celebrates her mug, an appropriate mainstay during her post-White-House-PDB “deep state therapy hour.”To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kevin discusses and covers the following stories: Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh held his first press conference at the helm of the central bank - expectations vs what was said; U.S. Commerce Department's Census Bureau released May Retail Sales Data; the National Association of Realtors released the Pending Home Sales Report; the effects of various interest rates on the mortgage payment for the same house and how much house can be afforded based on various interest rates; oil prices react to President Trump's comments on the ceasefire agreement, reports regarding U.S. Crude Oil Inventories and U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) predictions of crude oil supply vs demand in 2027; Kevin has the details, digs into the details, puts the information into historical perspective, offers his insights and several opinions. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week Jason Howell and Jeff Jarvis break down how Anthropic's most powerful AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, ended up offline after the Commerce Department gave the company 90 minutes to comply with an export control directive. The story involves Amazon triggering the crackdown, political miscommunication between Anthropic and the White House, and an open letter signed by over 100 security researchers calling for the models to be restored.Also in this episode: SpaceX IPOs at $2 trillion and acquires Cursor for $60 billion in stock, Snap and XREAL both announce consumer AR glasses shipping this fall, Jeff Bezos talks publicly about his $12 billion AI startup Prometheus, Allbirds pivots to AI infrastructure, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai skips mentioning AI entirely at Stanford's commencement. New episodes every Wednesday at aiinside.show. Note: Time codes subject to change depending on dynamic ad insertion by the distributor. CHAPTERS 0:00 - Start 0:01:37 - Anthropic, Trump Officials Seek Deal on Restoring Powerful Model Access 0:03:23 - How a 90-minute White House deadline sparked Silicon Valley's biggest AI fight 0:03:23 - How Anthropic lost the White House's trust — and then its flagship product 0:34:12 - SpaceX market cap tops $2 trillion after shares of Elon Musk's rocket company gain 19% on debut 0:39:17 - SpaceX to acquire Cursor for $60B in stock, days after blockbuster IPO 0:43:20 - Introducing SPECS Augmented Reality Glasses 0:47:20 - XREAL's Android XR glasses will cost under $1,500, which isn't as expensive as it sounds 0:52:08 - Bezos opens up about AI startup Prometheus after $12 billion raise: ‘We're not being secretive' 0:55:36 - 5 Things To Know As Allbirds Drops Shoes For Smartbird, AI And New CEO 1:00:44 - Dozens walk out as Google boss Pichai addresses Stanford graduates 1:02:48 - Elon Musk Loses Again to OpenAI as Judge Dismisses xAI Trade Secret Lawsuit 1:03:41 - Microsoft turns to Amazon for help with GitHub's AI-driven capacity issues 1:05:10 - DoorDash's new AI chatbot lets you order with prompts and photos 1:06:18 - DiffusionGemma: 4x faster text generation Hosts: Jason Howell and Jeff Jarvis Download and subscribe to AI Inside in audio and video: https://aiinside.show/  Support the podcast on Patreon for special perks: https://www.patreon.com/aiinsideshow. You'll get ad-free episodes, members-only Discord, T-shirts and stickers you love, and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kevin discusses and covers the following stories: weather is affecting the South and Midwest; the U.S. Commerce Department's Census Bureau released data on Housing Starts and Building Permits; Americas Commercial Transportation Research Co. (ACT), and Freight Transportation Research Associates Transportation Intelligence (FTR) released their respective Class 8 Orders information; oil prices continue to react as the U.S. and Iran get closer to completing the peace agreement; gas prices correspondingly continue to fall; Kevin has the details, digs into the data, puts the information into historical perspective, offers his insights and opinions. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kevin discusses and covers the following stories: weather is affecting the South and Midwest; the U.S. Commerce Department's Census Bureau released data on Housing Starts and Building Permits; Americas Commercial Transportation Research Co. (ACT), and Freight Transportation Research Associates Transportation Intelligence (FTR) released their respective Class 8 Orders information; oil prices continue to react as the U.S. and Iran get closer to completing the peace agreement; gas prices correspondingly continue to fall; Kevin has the details, digs into the data, puts the information into historical perspective, offers his insights and opinions. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A pronounced infrastructure dependence on third-party AI models has emerged across the MSP ecosystem, largely due to the rapid adoption and integration of AI-powered features within vendor products. This structural shift is increasingly opaque, as providers are sold features rather than transparent access to underlying models, leaving MSPs exposed to changes in technologies and policies enacted upstream by vendors or regulators. The episode highlights how this dependency extends to delivery teams and end clients, with operational continuity tightly linked to decisions and actions outside the MSP's direct control. The most consequential development referenced is Anthropic's release and rapid withdrawal of its Fable 5 AI model following a directive from the U.S. Commerce Department, which ordered a cutoff of model access to foreign nationals within 72 hours of public launch. According to published benchmarks, Fable 5 surpassed GPT 5.5 in performance, but the government-mandated suspension exposed how quickly model access can be rescinded. The policy move immediately impacted any MSP or client with offshore or nearshore staff relying on AI features invisibly powered by that model. Further supporting the central theme, companies such as PAX8, Enforcer, and CloudRadio are embedding AI capabilities into platforms used by MSPs to manage Microsoft 365 environments, automate ticketing, and support scalable client operations. In parallel, vendors like Proofpoint are integrating compliance solutions directly with AI model APIs, further entwining risk management tools with the same core AI infrastructures. A Netrio survey cited in the episode found that while 82% of mid-market IT leaders have AI in production, only 26% report organization-wide governance, highlighting an accountability and visibility gap. Operationally, MSPs face heightened contract and vendor risk. Most lack an accurate inventory of which AI models underpin their services and how rapidly these dependencies can be affected by regulatory directives or vendor shifts. The discussion underscores the need for explicit procurement protocols, delivery mapping, and outage runbooks that account for opaque model dependencies. As clients seek greater transparency and contractual assurances regarding model use and continuity, MSPs who anticipate and document these dependencies may be positioned to reduce exposure and establish clearer accountability. 00:00 Switched Off  03:19 Painted Over 05:20 Govern or Absorb 08:41 Why Do We Care?  Supported by: Pax8 Sign up for the SMB Online Conference: www.smbonlineconference.com

What happens to your business when the AI tool you rely on gets shut off overnight, not by a hacker, but by the U.S. government? Last Friday, Anthropic, the maker of Claude, pulled its two newest AI models offline within hours of a letter from Washington. This is the first time that has ever happened to a leading AI company, and it should change how every owner thinks about the tools they depend on. *Every tool you depend on is a switch someone else can flip.* Bryan Hornung, Randy Bryan, and Reginald Andre break down this week's stories for the executives, owners, and operators who don't have time to keep up with cyber news but can't afford to be blindsided by it either. First up: Anthropic. The Commerce Department ordered the company to block its newest models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, for any foreign national, citing national security. Anthropic couldn't separate who was allowed from who wasn't fast enough, so it shut the models off for everyone just six days after launching them. And the trigger reportedly wasn't a foreign spy at all. It was a warning from a competitor, Amazon, which demonstrated a way to bypass the model's safeguards. If your company has wired a critical process to a single AI vendor, you just watched how fast that capability can vanish. Next, the FBI disrupted one of the largest AI-powered scam operations ever seen. A China-based crime ring called "Outsider Enterprise" used artificial intelligence to write flawless scam texts and blasted out 2.5 million of them in two weeks while impersonating brands people trust through AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon. Authorities tied more than one million fake web addresses and 3.8 million stolen credit cards to the operation, with an estimated $1.9 billion in losses. The old advice to "watch for typos" is dead. These messages are clean, personal, and look exactly like the real thing. If your brand gets impersonated, your customers pay the price and your reputation takes the hit. Finally, Russia's military intelligence is hiding inside everyday routers. The group known as Fancy Bear has been quietly taking over the inexpensive routers small offices and remote workers buy off the shelf, including MikroTik, TP-Link, and Ubiquiti EdgeRouters, and using them to steal Microsoft 365 logins in transit. They even hide their commands inside normal cloud services so nothing looks suspicious. At its peak, researchers counted more than 18,000 infected connections across 120 countries. The scariest part: they steal the login token, allowing them to bypass multi-factor authentication and remain logged in even after the password is changed. Three stories. One thread. A government order, a billion-dollar scam ring, and a foreign intelligence unit all reached into technology many organizations assumed they controlled. In this episode, we discuss: • Why the government forced Anthropic to pull its newest AI models and what it means for your business • How an AI-powered crime ring scammed people out of an estimated $1.9 billion • Why the router in your closet might be working for Russian intelligence • How "restrict some" quietly becomes "shut it all off" • Why stolen login tokens can bypass your multi-factor authentication • What concentration risk means when you bet your operation on a single vendor • The Monday-morning moves that actually protect your business Security Squawk is a weekly podcast and livestream for business owners and executives. Support the show: buymeacoffee.com/securitysquawk Subscribe | Like | Share #SecuritySquawk #CyberSecurity #Anthropic #AI #FBI #Phishing #Smishing #FancyBear #VendorRisk #BusinessRisk #SMB #MFA

In this episode, we kick things off by examining a historic first for American energy exports as federal regulators have approved construction of a five-billion-dollar floating platform to produce liquefied natural gas for export in U.S. waters. The controversial project, led by Delfin Midstream of Houston, will be located forty miles off the coast of Louisiana and is expected to begin production in 2030, with Samsung Heavy Industries constructing the platforms and MOL of Japan also connected to the venture. Meanwhile, the e-commerce giant's full entry into the less-than-truckload market is sparking fierce debate over whether Amazon can truly disrupt the LTL space with its asset-light model of roughly thirty terminals. While the announcement sent shares of publicly traded LTL carriers modestly lower, analysts are largely skeptical, noting that Amazon's offering is more akin to what brokers provide and will likely compete primarily with the economy three-to-four-day sub-segment rather than premium service lanes. Finally, we cover a potential lifeline for the embattled van trailer builder as the Commerce Department imposed preliminary countervailing duties on Chinese and Mexican trailer imports ranging from eighty-two to one hundred twenty-nine percent on Chinese products. The decision, which came as S&P Global Ratings downgraded Wabash to B-, will require importers to immediately begin posting cash deposits at the preliminary rates, providing relief to domestic manufacturers facing intense foreign competition. Follow the FreightWaves NOW Podcast Other FreightWaves Shows Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, we kick things off by examining a historic first for American energy exports as federal regulators have approved construction of a five-billion-dollar floating platform to produce liquefied natural gas for export in U.S. waters. The controversial project, led by Delfin Midstream of Houston, will be located forty miles off the coast of Louisiana and is expected to begin production in 2030, with Samsung Heavy Industries constructing the platforms and MOL of Japan also connected to the venture. Meanwhile, the e-commerce giant's full entry into the less-than-truckload market is sparking fierce debate over whether Amazon can truly disrupt the LTL space with its asset-light model of roughly thirty terminals. While the announcement sent shares of publicly traded LTL carriers modestly lower, analysts are largely skeptical, noting that Amazon's offering is more akin to what brokers provide and will likely compete primarily with the economy three-to-four-day sub-segment rather than premium service lanes. Finally, we cover a potential lifeline for the embattled van trailer builder as the Commerce Department imposed preliminary countervailing duties on Chinese and Mexican trailer imports ranging from eighty-two to one hundred twenty-nine percent on Chinese products. The decision, which came as S&P Global Ratings downgraded Wabash to B-, will require importers to immediately begin posting cash deposits at the preliminary rates, providing relief to domestic manufacturers facing intense foreign competition. Follow the FreightWaves NOW Podcast Other FreightWaves Shows Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

(13) Jack Burnham discusses how Nvidia chips reach the Chinese military through loopholes in export controls and subsidiaries. He notes bureaucratic confusion over the "AI diffusion rule" allowed Chinese firms to stockpile high-end hardware. Burnham recommends stricter Commerce Department guidance to prevent further military modernization.

Preview for Later Today: Jack Burnham discusses Commerce Department restrictions on connected Chinese vehicles over espionage concerns. Volvo secured an exception because of its significant American manufacturing presence and its commitment to implementing data security safeguards.1930

SCHEDULE THE JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW, 6-3-2026.1907 TOJO(1) Scott Harold discusses the unprecedented question from Japan's Defense Minister at the Shangri-La Dialogueregarding America's Indo-Pacific commitment. He notes the omission of Taiwan in Secretary Hegseth's speech compared to last year. Japan remains a hawkish front-line ally, despite regional concerns over shifting US national defense priorities.(2) Rebecca Grant describes the proposed Trump class battleship, a nuclear-powered "missile truck" designed for standoff strikes. Unlike traditional battleships, it emphasizes hypersonic attack and laser weaponry. The ship would be highly survivable, defended by Space Force overwatch and advanced electromagnetic warfare techniques.(3) Steve Yates examines the KMT leader's visit to Washington following meetings with Xi Jinping. He expresses concern over the KMT cutting Taiwan's indigenous defense budget. Yates also analyzes Taiwan's "inverted triangle" demographics, where older voters remain more sympathetic to traditional KMT narratives than younger generations.(4) Steve Yates argues the "Thucydides trap" is a manufactured academic concept used by Beijing to suggest inevitable US decline. He emphasizes that the US is not a classical empire and remains globally influential. China uses this rhetoric for political warfare while remaining sensitive to American strength.(5) Michael Bernstam analyzes the humiliating Ukrainian strike on a St. Petersburg oil terminal during Putin's flagship economic forum. Russia's energy sector faces a crisis, forcing a ban on refined exports like gasoline due to refinery damage. Consequently, Russia must increase crude exports to China and India.(6) Michael Bernstam notes the OECD's warning of global recession if the Gulf energy crisis persists. While the US is depleting strategic reserves to maintain supply, it is also increasing domestic production. High prices are triggering "demand destruction," where consumers shift to public transport to mitigate energy costs.(7) Bob Zimmerman reports that Blue Origin's CEO expects to resume launches this year despite a recent launchpad explosion. Meanwhile, SpaceX secured $6 billion in Space Force contracts for tracking and communication satellites. China continues rapid development with its Long March 12B, a Falcon 9-style reusable rocket copycat.(8) Bob Zimmerman highlights Curiosity rover data confirming Gale Crater's shifting climate, which once supported warm water. The James Webb Space Telescope detected high methane levels on the interstellar comet 3I/Atlas, suggesting a unique chemical composition. Webb also captured a spectacular infrared image of the galaxy M77.(9) Jonathan Schanzer describes the "ceasefire war" in the Middle East, where Iran continues attacks despite diplomatic efforts. He argues Iran aims to detach Gulf allies like Kuwait from the West. Schanzer advocates for maximum economic pressure on Tehran and increased IDF activity against Iranian proxies.(10) Jonathan Schanzer reports that Israeli forces have reduced Hamas control in Gaza to roughly 40%, aiming for 30%. Hamas is currently trapped in an Israeli "yellow zone" kill zone, making rearmament or offensive operations nearly impossible. Schanzer believes systematic military pressure is creating a viable theory of victory.(11) Titus Techera critiques the evolution of Animal Farm films, noting the newest version depicts Silicon Valley and AI as villains. He argues this shift denatures Orwell's original anti-totalitarian message for modern ideological purposes. The 1954 version remains the most effective educational tool regarding the dangers of tyranny.(12) Gordon Chang asserts that China is a declining power facing economic stagnation and a massive demographic collapse. He notes that the US economy remains superior, particularly in energy and AI. China's youth unemployment is estimated at 35-40%, forcing university graduates into menial roles like shepherding.(13) Jack Burnham discusses how Nvidia chips reach the Chinese military through loopholes in export controls and subsidiaries. He notes bureaucratic confusion over the "AI diffusion rule" allowed Chinese firms to stockpile high-end hardware. Burnham recommends stricter Commerce Department guidance to prevent further military modernization.(14) Jack Burnham explains that Volvo, though manufacturing in the US, is owned by Geely and must comply with Chinese data-sharing laws. He also warns of China's dominance in the biotechnology supply chain. Through state subsidies and "dumping," China threatens the security of US pharmaceutical and generic drug stockpiles.(15) Ryan Streeter honors economist Ed Phelps, who defined dynamism as a culture of grassroots tinkering and indigenous innovation. He explains that growth is driven by experimental mindsets rather than just scientific labs. Streeter notes that dynamic cultures, like Austin or California, naturally attract global risk-takers.(16) Ryan Streeter discusses human flourishing, defining it as the fulfillment of potential through purpose and upward mobility. He argues that dynamic societies improve job satisfaction for hourly workers by providing more options. Conversely, stagnation in Europe results from heavy regulation and a declining cultural valuation of entrepreneurs.One naming consistency flag: segment (15) uses "Ed Phelps" while your earlier preview blurb and outreach email today used "Edmund Phelps." Both are correct—Ed is the informal—but if you want consistency across the day's broadcast, I can swap to Edmund Phelps.

Kevin covers and discusses the following stories: payroll processing firm, ADP released their May Private Sector Jobs report; the U.S. Commerce Department's Census Bureau reported April New Factory Orders; both Americas Commercial Transportation Research Co. (ACT) and J.D. Power reported April Used Class 8 Truck Sales; both ACT and Freight Transportation Research Associates Transportation Intelligence (FTR) released preliminary April U.S. Trailer Orders data; the Institute for Supply Management (ISM)released their May Services Purchasing Managers' Index, which covers 18 services industries; Oil Companies are scrambling to secure giant tankers to ensure capacity to transport oil; the U.S. Military is providing information and guidance on how to pass through the Strait of Hormuz; oil prices react to an increase in hostilities in the Middle East, little progress in peace talks between the U.S. and Iran and U.S. crude oil inventory data; Kevin has the details, digs into the data, puts the information into historical perspective, offers his insights and opinions.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kevin covers and discusses the following stories: payroll processing firm, ADP released their May Private Sector Jobs report; the U.S. Commerce Department's Census Bureau reported April New Factory Orders; both Americas Commercial Transportation Research Co. (ACT) and J.D. Power reported April Used Class 8 Truck Sales; both ACT and Freight Transportation Research Associates Transportation Intelligence (FTR) released preliminary April U.S. Trailer Orders data; the Institute for Supply Management (ISM)released their May Services Purchasing Managers' Index, which covers 18 services industries; Oil Companies are scrambling to secure giant tankers to ensure capacity to transport oil; the U.S. Military is providing information and guidance on how to pass through the Strait of Hormuz; oil prices react to an increase in hostilities in the Middle East, little progress in peace talks between the U.S. and Iran and U.S. crude oil inventory data; Kevin has the details, digs into the data, puts the information into historical perspective, offers his insights and opinions.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Big Three don't want China selling cars in the U.S., but WWJ auto analyst John McElroy says a move by the U.S. Commerce Department has opened the door to Chinese state-owned Geely, just a crack. (Photo: Getty Images)

Kevin covers and discusses the following stories: a great weekend finishing up the front walk way, front porch and deck with flowers and plants; the U.S. Commerce Department's Census Bureau reported April Construction spending; May's S&P Global Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) data was released; the Institute for Supply Management released their PMI index; a new report on the number of large tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz; Kroger launches plan to lure customers back and better compete with their rivals; oil and gas prices react to Iran halting talks with the U.S., threats to further blocking the Strait of Hormuz, Israel's further advances into Lebanon; Kevin has the details, digs into the data, puts the information into historical perspective, offers his insights and a few opinions along the way.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kevin covers and discusses the following stories: a great weekend finishing up the front walk way, front porch and deck with flowers and plants; the U.S. Commerce Department's Census Bureau reported April Construction spending; May's S&P Global Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) data was released; the Institute for Supply Management released their PMI index; a new report on the number of large tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz; Kroger launches plan to lure customers back and better compete with their rivals; oil and gas prices react to Iran halting talks with the U.S., threats to further blocking the Strait of Hormuz, Israel's further advances into Lebanon; Kevin has the details, digs into the data, puts the information into historical perspective, offers his insights and a few opinions along the way.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kevin covers and discusses the following stories: the U.S. Labor Department reported Weekly Jobless Claims; the U.S. Commerce Department reported the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price (PCE) Index and the Core PCE; the Commerce Department also reported the second revision of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP); oil and gas prices react to reports of a ceasefire extension between the U.S. and Iran, claims by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that they had targeted a U.S. airbase in Kuwait; changes in the U.S. oil, gas and distillate stockpiles; Kevin has the details, digs into the details, puts the data into historical perspective, offers his insights, and opinions.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kevin covers and discusses the following stories: the U.S. Labor Department reported Weekly Jobless Claims; the U.S. Commerce Department reported the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price (PCE) Index and the Core PCE; the Commerce Department also reported the second revision of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP); oil and gas prices react to reports of a ceasefire extension between the U.S. and Iran, claims by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that they had targeted a U.S. airbase in Kuwait; changes in the U.S. oil, gas and distillate stockpiles; Kevin has the details, digs into the details, puts the data into historical perspective, offers his insights, and opinions.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

New federal data showed inflation continued rising in April, with the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index climbing 0.4% during the month. The report also showed a decline in personal income, adding to concerns about the direction of the U.S. economy. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay informed with the latest news from a leading Black-owned & controlled media company: https://aurn.com/newsletter Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Oil Drops – Still highest cost for Memorial Day in years Consumer Sentiment Drops again New Fertilizer coming – Kinda Soilent Green vibe Everyone is talking about SpaceX PLUS we are now on Spotify and Amazon Music/Podcasts! Click HERE for Show Notes and Links DHUnplugged is now streaming live - with listener chat. Click on link on the right sidebar. Love the Show? Then how about a Donation? Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter Follow Andrew Horowitz on Twitter Warm-Up - Oil Drops - Still highest cost for Memorial Day in years - Consumer Sentiment Drops again - New Fertilizer coming - Kinda Soilent Green Concept - Everyone is talking about SpaceX Markets - Nothing Really Matters - Anyone can see - New HIGHS - Governments picking the winners again - CHIPS ! - Concentration NVDA - Over the weekend, Jensen Huang said that his forecast of a $200 billion market for CPUs includes China, signalling Nvidia still sees significant long-term demand in the market amid ongoing U.S.-China technology tensions. - During an earnings call on Wednesday, Huang said Nvidia's new "Vera" central processors give it access to a new $200 billion market. - So, once again the PR machine is running overtime to make sure there is no reason for anyone to sell the stock - needed to make this clarification over the weekend - Nvidia has received licenses from the U.S. government to sell its H200 chips but has not received approval from Chinese officials who are fostering China's own chip suppliers. Consumers - Consumer sentiment has tumbled to a fresh record low in May as fears of higher prices grow due to the U.S.-Iran war and elevated oil prices, the University of Michigan's Surveys of Consumers said Friday. - The index of consumer sentiment fell to 44.8 from a preliminary reading of 48.2. It's also well below the 49.8 level seen at the end of April. Consumers Upset South Korea - Record after record... - This is an impressive chart - Two companies -Samsung and SK Hynix -----40% of the entire KOSPI index's total market capitalization. Kospi Index Who Believes this Crap? - U.S. forces have conducted “self defense” strikes in southern Iran early Tuesday, with U.S. Central Command saying that this was to “protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces.“ - “U.S. Central Command continues to defend our forces while using restraint during the ongoing ceasefire,” Hawkins added. - Meanwhile there was some talk over the weekend that --- 1) We are very close to a deal and it will happen soon ----2) We are in no rush for a deal ----3) How many times is this same line going to be used to try to push the price of oil down (it did move towards $90 after the weekend resumption of futures trading) - Neither side can agree on anything... Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday that the United States has seen some progress towards a deal but that more work was required, while Iran's foreign ministry said the differences remained deep and significant. - Tiresome CEO of Ford - Did you know -??? - The CEO of Ford (Jim Farley) is cousin to Chris Farley Farley and Farley Crops - Farmers worldwide are under pressure due to the Iran war disrupting supplies of conventional nitrogen fertilizers, forcing them to improvise ahead of the fall planting season. - Some farmers are turning to age-old solutions like manure, while others are experimenting with newer technologies, including waste-based inputs and microbial products. -----Circular bio-economy The crisis is giving fresh momentum to products that have long struggled to gain widespread adoption, with demand for biofertilizers and biostimulants rising and companies seeing rising interest and increased sales. - Municipal wastewater and treated human urine, which contain high levels of nutrients that can be processed. ---- So, if your corn is a little extra yellow this summer - now you know... Government's Hand - Quantum computing shares popped last Thursday, as the U.S. government said it would award $2 billion in grants to nine firms operating in the space. - IBM is the biggest beneficiary of the package, with the U.S. Commerce Department agreeing to give the firm $1 billion. - Chipmaker GlobalFoundries is receiving $375 million, while other grant recipients D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti Computing and Infleqtion will be awarded $100 million. - Shares of D-Wave added 33%, Rigetti soared 30% and Infleqtion skyrocketed about 31%. - Funding will come from the 2022 Chips and Science Act. More Money Throwing - Nvidia Corp. bought $500 million worth of rights for shares in Corning Inc. as part of a partnership to expand artificial intelligence infrastructure. - Corning pledged to increase US fiber production capacity by more than 50% to supply more optical fiber for AI data centers. - The partnership includes Corning's plan to construct three new complexes in North Carolina and Texas, which is estimated to create more than 3,000 new US jobs. DEBT - Global debt hits new record, IIF (institute for International Finance) report shows - Global debt rose for a fifth consecutive quarter in Q1 2026, increasing by more than $4.4 trillion to a record high of over $350 trillion, with the increase concentrated largely in the United States and China. - Investors shows signs of shift away from Treasuries - Global debt-to-GDP ratio stable around 305% - NOTHING TO SEE HERE Global Debt More Charts AI Reality? - Starbucks retires AI tool nine months after North American deployment - Tool was part of CEO Brian Niccol's campaign to fix product shortages - AI tool miscounted items, leading to errors, Reuters has reported Starbucks cites need for consistency, supply chain improvements in ending program More AI - Elon Musk's Grok is seeing minimal adoption in US government - even though it's cheap- - Grok lags far behind OpenAI and other rivals that analysts call more capable - Data shows uptake by corporations is also weak, suggesting Grok's problems stretch beyond government - Is it possible that corps don't trust Musk after the way he heavy handled the DOGE process? - Is this going to impact SpaceX growth story? Employment and Ai - The co-founder of AI company Anthropic said on Monday that the development of artificial intelligence cannot be left solely to technology companies, urging greater oversight from religious leaders, governments and civil society. - Speaking at the presentation of Pope Leo's first encyclical, addressing the challenges posed by artificial intelligence, Chris Olah said there was "a real possibility" that AI will displace human labour "at very large scale". Scared - China is restricting overseas travel for top AI professionals in private firms, requiring them to get approval from relevant authorities before embarking on overseas travel. - The government is targeting talent within the AI sphere, including startup founders, researchers, and executives, and adding individuals to the list based on assessments of their critical importance to the country. - The restrictions risk undermining the ability of AI firms in China to recruit and retain talent, and may force engineers with global ambitions to choose between staying home or going abroad earlier in their careers. CHIPS - Micron topped a $1 trillion market value for the first time on Tuesday as shares popped 18%, driven by insatiable artificial intelligence demand for its memory chips. - The stock surge came as UBS tripled its price target on the stock from $535 to $1,625 a share, citing long-term agreement opportunities with partially fixed pricing. - “We believe the market will start to put a more ‘normal' multiple on the stock and MU will continue to re-rate higher as more details emerge about the structural changes AI has driven to the entire memory complex,” the firm wrote. SpaceX - Lots of interest on this... - Lots of clients calling on this and we are working on this for them - Here is a bit of a reality check... --- First - company still losing billions of dollars - some may look past that - - Weird inclusion period for indices and that may take stock up due to required buying ahead of the inclusion (keeping a floor on prices in the beginning) ---- SpaceX plans to allow a large portion of its shares to become eligible for resale before the usual six-month restriction period post-IPO, under a staged system conditioned to the company's performance, a company filing shows. - The approach, designed to avoid a large wave of shares hitting the market at once, would depart from the standard 180-day lock-up that has prevailed in the U.S. Most companies going public restrict early investors from selling shares to help stabilize the stock. - Valuation somewhere between $1.5T and $2T (a year ago it was like $400 million) - Valuation in December was $750 M - Rationale for the big valuation: SpaceX is leveraging its satellite network to build massive, space-based AI data centers, which take advantage of limitless solar energy and off-planet cooling Retail  - Ross Stores Inc. raised its sales and profit guidance after first-quarter results surpassed consensus estimates, aided by strong customer traffic among younger shoppers. - The company reported sales of $6.01 billion and earnings of $2.02 per share, with same-store sales growing 17% in the period, a record for Ross. - Ross now expects full-year same-store sales to grow 6% to 7%, and earnings of $7.50 to $7.74 per share, with executives citing increased customer traffic as a key driver of profit. Meanwhile - Walmart issued a worse-than-expected financial outlook amid soaring gas prices. - Finance chief John David Rainey said high tax returns may have muted some of the impact high gas prices had on shoppers in the first quarter, indicating consumer pressures could rise in the current quarter - The big-box retailer issued fiscal first-quarter results that beat Wall Street's expectations on the top line but were only in line on the bottom. - The retailer said it's expecting adjusted earnings per share to be between $2.75 and $2.85, lower than expectations of $2.91, according to LSEG. - Walmart said it anticipates net sales will rise between 3.5% and 4.5% for the year. Ferrari - Electric - Ferrari (RACE) is trading lower today after the company unveiled its first fully electric vehicle, the Ferrari Luce, marking a major strategic shift away from its traditional combustion-engine supercar identity. - The Luce is a four-door, five-seat ultra-luxury EV developed with former Apple (AAPL) design chief Jony Ive, featuring a quad-motor setup producing over 1,000 horsepower, a 0--60 mph time of roughly 2.5 seconds, and a price tag around $640,000. - Despite these headline-grabbing performance specs, investors reacted negatively because the design is seen as a sharp break from RACE's iconic styling, with many critics arguing it looks closer to a mass-market EV than a traditional Ferrari. Saying goodbye - One of America's once-dominant beer brands is being discontinued after more than 175 years. - Schlitz Premium, a beer brand that traces its roots to Milwaukee in the 1840s and was once among the largest breweries in the country, is being put "on hiatus," parent company Pabst Brewing Co. confirmed Friday after Wisconsin Brewing Company announced it would brew the brand's final batch later this month. - "Unfortunately, we have seen continued increases in our costs to store and ship certain products and have had to make the tough choice to place Schlitz Premium on hiatus," Zac Nadile, Pabst head of brand strategy, said in a statement to Milwaukee Magazine. Love the Show? Then how about a Donation? Announcing the THE CLOSEST TO THE PIN for SALESFORCE (CRM)   Winners will be getting great stuff like the new "OFFICIAL" DHUnplugged Shirt!     FED AND CRYPTO LIMERICKS   See this week's stock picks HERE Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter Follow Andrew Horowitz on Twitter

Investors remain optimistic despite an uncertain backdrop in the Middle East. Plus: Shares of quantum-computing companies climb further after the Commerce Department announces $2 billion in grants. IMAX shares jump after the WSJ reports sales talks. Alexis Green hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. An artificial-intelligence tool assisted in the making of this episode by creating summaries that were based on Wall Street Journal reporting and reviewed and adapted by an editor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Back in 2010, author Ian Bremmer warned “We are no longer in a global, free-market economy. There are now two systems out there. There is a free-market system, largely in the developed world. There is a state-directed capitalist system in China, Russia and the Persian Gulf. The systems are mutually incompatible. When your principal actors are multinational corporations in the private sector and they rely for their growth on unfettered access to global markets, and state capitalist systems don't do that, you are going to have a problem. And we are just at the beginning of that problem.” Here in 2026, that is starting to look like a prophecy that is now being fulfilled under Donald Trump with the rise of state-directed capitalism, the antithesis of America First. That warning shot to Trump's ear back in 2024 at the rally in Butler, PA, is now paying big dividends for the Deep State.“And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.” Luke 4:5-7 (KJB)On this episode of the Prophecy News Podcast, 16 years ago Ian Bremmer warned that the world was no longer operating under one global free-market system. He said there were now two systems: the free-market system of the United States and other western nations, and the state-capitalist system of China, Russia, and the Persian Gulf. Sixteen years later, under Trump, America is not merely confronting that system, Washington is busy adopting it. Government equity stakes, national-security industrial policy, strategic corporate ownership, and taxpayer-backed national champions are exactly the mechanics of state-directed capitalism. The latest reports say the Trump administration is moving beyond traditional grants, loans, and tax credits and is now taking direct equity stakes in strategic companies. Today's reporting says the Commerce Department is backing a roughly $2 billion quantum-computing initiative involving equity stakes or minority-investment arrangements across companies including IBM, Intel, US Steel, GlobalFoundries, Quantinuum, PsiQuantum, Atom Computing, Rigetti, D-Wave, Infleqtion, and Diraq. State-directed capitalism is ripped straight out of the Council on Foreign Relations playbook going back as far as 2016 when Trump first became president. The global economic model is shifting under our feet. The same state-capitalist machinery once associated with China and Russia is now being repackaged in America with patriotic language and labeled as ‘America First'. This is where we are on Day 2,258 of 15 Days To Flatten The Curve!

The U.S. will invest $2 billion in grant funding in return for equity stakes in nine quantum computing companies, the Wall Street Journal first reported citing the Commerce Department, including a $1 billion grant for IBM as the Trump administration's push to take equity stakes in tech and industrial manufacturers continues. Legacy tech firm IBM is expected to receive the largest grant, worth about $1 billion, which it will use alongside $1 billion of its own funds to build a quantum chip foundry to build the specialized semiconductors necessary to power quantum computers in the U.S., the company announced in a separate press release on Thursday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anthropic is making the AI infrastructure race look less like software and more like an industrial arms race. The company reportedly committed $200 billion to Google Cloud over five years, stacked on top of its existing Amazon compute arrangement, while also striking a separate agreement tied to SpaceX and xAI's Colossus supercomputer infrastructure. Cerebras is blowing past expectations in what could become the largest tech IPO of 2026. The wafer-scale AI chip company is reportedly oversubscribed more than 20x, with a potential valuation up to $26.6 billion. After years of NVIDIA dominating the AI hardware story, public markets are now showing real appetite for the next layer of AI infrastructure.Meta is cutting roughly 8,000 jobs and canceling another 6,000 open roles as it redirects up to $135 billion toward AI infrastructure in 2026. The AI labor transition is no longer theoretical. The Cleveland Fed's inflation nowcast is projecting May headline CPI at 3.89%, while the S&P 500's Shiller P/E ratio reached 41.83, the second-highest reading in more than a century of market history. Stocks are expensive, inflation is reaccelerating, and rate cuts are moving further out of reach. Stagflation risk is back in the market conversation.Runner-up: The Trump-Xi summit is reportedly adding AI to the agenda for the first formal U.S.-China bilateral AI dialogue. The talks are expected to focus on autonomous weapons, frontier model behavior, and risks from open-source models in the hands of nonstate actors. Runner-up: OpenAI released GPT-5.5 Instant as the new default ChatGPT model, with a focus on reducing hallucinations in legal, medical, and financial use cases. The model wars are increasingly being fought on reliability, latency, and enterprise trust rather than raw benchmark dominance.Runner-up: Google, Microsoft, and xAI joined OpenAI and Anthropic in giving the U.S. Commerce Department's AI standards office pre-release access to frontier models for evaluation. Government review is becoming part of the frontier AI release process.Runner-up: AMD and Arista both posted blowout Q1 results, showing that the AI capex boom is spreading beyond NVIDIA into accelerators, networking, optics, power, and cooling. The picks-and-shovels trade is broadening.If you want a prize, send us a DM on Instagram:http://instagram.com/rickerandbonttps://www.tiktok.com/@rickerandbon

15. US Chip Restrictions and Chinese Cyber Espionage Guest: Jack Burnham Jack Burnham details the Commerce Department's targeted restrictions on Chinese chipmakers and reports on the successful extradition of a Chinese hacker from Italy for stealing COVID-related data during the pandemic. 151900 BROADWAY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

SCHEDULE JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW, 5-1-2026.1900 LA FIESTA DE LOS ANGELES, CHINESE DRAGON1. California Gubernatorial Race and Infrastructure Guest: Jeff Bliss Jeff Bliss discusses the crowded field for the California gubernatorial race and the failures of the high-speed rail project, which faces massive cost overruns and significant design scaling back in the state. 12. Los Angeles Mayoral Race and Fentanyl Crisis Guest: Jeff Bliss Jeff Bliss reports on the LA mayoral race, highlighting Spencer Pratt's rising popularity and the visible toll of the fentanyl crisis, described as the "fentanyl fold," on the city's vulnerable street populations. 23. Supreme Court Ruling on Racial Gerrymandering Guest: Richard Epstein Richard Epstein analyzes the Supreme Court striking down a Louisiana congressional map, discussing the complexities of racial gerrymandering and the resulting political polarization from redistricting efforts under the current Voting Rights Act. 34. Potential Escalation of Ground War in Iran Guest: Richard Epstein Richard Epstein evaluates the risks of a potential ground war in Iran, comparing it to Vietnam and Iraq while critiquing the current administration's military strategy and its mismanagement of the domestic economy. 45. Economic Observations in Lancaster County and DC Guest: Jim McTague Jim McTague reports on tariff impacts slowing business at Costco and local layoffs, while observing heavy construction activity around the White House and high occupancy at the Army Navy Club in Washington. 56. International Diplomacy and Maritime Chokepoints Guest: Emily Wang Emily Wang examines the difficulties of securing maritime chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz, suggesting that private insurance premiums could be a more effective tool for regional stability than traditional diplomatic negotiations. 67. Private Space Industry Successes and Bureaucratic Hurdles Guest: Bob Zimmerman Bob Zimmerman covers SpaceX's legal victory in California and Amazon's satellite progress, while critiquing bureaucratic "red tape" that significantly delays spaceport development in the United Kingdom and the Canadian space program. 78. NASA's Budgetary Future and Space Exploration Guest: Bob Zimmerman Bob Zimmerman discusses NASA'sbudget hearings, noting a shift from science toward exploration, and the ongoing debate over the necessity of manned missions to Mars versus the use of robotic probes. 89. Vermeer's Artistic Journey and Spiritual Context Guest: Andrew Graham Dixon Andrew Graham Dixonexplores Vermeer's early life and how he transitioned into painting spiritually symbolic scenes of women for members of the hidden Remonstrant church during the 17th century in the Dutch Republic. 910. Medical Symbolism in Vermeer's The Lacemaker Guest: Andrew Graham Dixon Andrew Graham Dixonprovides a speculative interpretation of The Lacemaker, arguing the painting contains coded references to blood circulation and placental science that were being discovered by medical scholars during that era. 1011. Utopian Visions and Global Exploration in Vermeer's Art Guest: Andrew Graham Dixon Andrew Graham Dixon analyzes Vermeer's View of Delft as a utopian vision of peace and explores how his paintings of astronomers reflected Dutch spiritual efforts to find the lost tribes of Israel. 1112. The Forgotten Legacy and Spiritual Depth of Vermeer Guest: Andrew Graham Dixon Andrew Graham Dixonexplains how Vermeer was lost to history for centuries and argues that his domestic scenes were actually spiritual acts of prayer intended to depict moral goodness and divine radiance. 1213. Nuclear Non-Proliferation and the Iranian Dispute Guest: Henry Sokolski Henry Sokolski discusses the NPTreview conference, debating whether an "inalienable right" to enrich uranium exists and the lack of enforcement mechanisms to prevent countries from manufacturing nuclear weapons. 1314. Space Warfare and Middle East Missile Defense Guest: Henry Sokolski Henry Sokolski warns of China'sdevelopment of satellites capable of "stealing" others and notes the UAE's new reliance on Israeli Iron Dome technology for defense against increasing Iranian missile threats. 1415. US Chip Restrictions and Chinese Cyber Espionage Guest: Jack Burnham Jack Burnham details the Commerce Department's targeted restrictions on Chinese chipmakers and reports on the successful extradition of a Chinese hacker from Italy for stealing COVID-related data during the pandemic. 1516. USMCA Review and Canada-US Trade Relations Guest: Conrad Black Conrad Black discusses the upcoming USMCA review, highlighting major Canadian concerns regarding the protection of its auto and steel industries while navigating complex trade relations and diversification efforts with the United States. 16