Andrew here. For years, Warren Buffett has warned that the proliferation of nuclear weapons represents “the great problem of mankind.” The news that the U.S. has agreed to a broad nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia is likely to cause consternation in Omaha. It should also prompt the rest of the world to consider the implications.
Buffett once said, “We can’t put the genie back in the bottle — but we can keep that genie contained.” The deal will likely mean billions of dollars for U.S. companies, but lawmakers in the U.S. and in Israel are raising questions.
One other issue to consider: Buffett recently said that A.I. may represent as big of a risk as nuclear weapons. Now think of the combined risk, in light of OpenAI’s admission on Tuesday that two of its models broke out of their “sandbox” and hacked another company to cheat on a test. More below.
New carrots and sticks
Trade is back on President Trump’s agenda, with new threats against Canada on billions of dollars’ worth of goods, and a major nuclear accord with Saudi Arabia.
The moves reflect a return to the Trump administration’s approach of carrots for favored allies and threats of stiff tariffs to intimidate others into acquiescence. But many of the administration’s moves carry big risks, experts say.
Example A: Saudi Arabia. The administration is expected to announce on Wednesday a broad accord that could let the Middle Eastern country eventually enrich its own uranium, according to The Times and others.
The long-discussed proposal — initially broached during the first Trump administration — is meant to tighten ties with the Saudis as the war with Iran has strained relations. But it’s also expected to give U.S. nuclear companies, including Westinghouse, billions of dollars worth of contracts.
More money could come if, after the conclusion of a two-year study, Washington allows Riyadh to enrich nuclear material on Saudi soil. Americans would build an enrichment facility for the Saudis under a “black box” arrangement that wouldn’t transfer sensitive technology to the Gulf state, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Example B: generic drugs. Makers of generic pharmaceuticals must onshore their manufacturing to the U.S. within two years, or face a 100 percent tariff starting in 2028, President Trump wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday. (It would go up to 200 percent in 2029.)
Analysts warn that the threat could push up treatment costs for millions of Americans, instead of fulfilling Trump’s promise of lower drug costs.
Example C: Canada. Polling suggests that Canadians are willing to support Prime Minister Mark Carney in fighting back hard against Trump’s threatened 50 percent tariffs on an array of Canadian goods, set to take effect next month.
-
One thing to watch: whether the courts uphold the Trump administration’s use of a provision within the Tariff Act of 1930, known as Section 338, to justify the Canadian tariffs.
Example D: more tariffs. The administration is set to impose new duties on dozens of trading partners by Friday to replace a set of 10 percent tariffs, imposed under a 1974 law, that are set to expire this week, according to Bloomberg.
HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING
Oil rises to a five-week high. Brent crude, the international benchmark, is trading above $94, after Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Iran was “not serious” about peace talks. Goldman Sachs analysts warned that Brent could surpass $120 a barrel if the Strait of Hormuz remained disrupted.
Congressional Democrats press a major law firm over its settlement with the White House. The lawmakers demanded documents from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom about the agreement, in which the firm pledged $100 million worth of pro bono work for causes Trump favors in exchange for heading off a potentially crippling executive order. Skadden and eight other firms remain under scrutiny over their deals with Trump.
Bill Gates was warned about working with Jeffrey Epstein, a review by the Gates Foundation finds. Staffers at the organization “on multiple occasions” told the billionaire about the risks of associating with the convicted sex offender, according to a summary of an external inquiry conducted for the foundation. The report concluded that the foundation had no role in crimes by Epstein.
Bessent warns about “I.P. theft”
Here are the artificial intelligence headlines moving markets.
“Distillation” in focus: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned that the Trump administration would look into whether advanced new Chinese models had been “distilled” — read: stolen — from American ones, and would “sanction” those that engaged in “I.P. theft.” (CNBC)
Speaking of Washington, OpenAI and Anthropic increased their federal lobbying spending to $3.17 million in the second quarter, up 23 percent from the previous quarter. (CNBC)
Meanwhile, Moonshot AI (whose new Kimi K3 model appears to largely keep up with high-end U.S. rivals) is reportedly in talks to raise a pre-I.P.O. round of capital at a valuation of up to $50 billion, up 58 percent from its current level. (Bloomberg)
Google’s latest salvo: The tech giant released three new A.I. models on Tuesday, including Gemini 3.6 Flash, its most powerful, and another one designed for cybersecurity, as it tries to catch up to OpenAI and Anthropic. But it stayed mum on a release date for its Gemini 3.5 Pro model, which has reportedly been falling short of internal goals. (NYT, Bloomberg)
Safety worries: OpenAI said that two of its models went rogue and hacked Hugging Face, an A.I. platform, in what it called an “unprecedented cyber incident.” (NYT, Hugging Face, OpenAI)
And here’s a report on how the Fed convened major bank C.E.O.s to warn them of the dangers posed by Anthropic’s Mythos model — but couldn’t get access to the tool for at least three months. (CNBC)
The A.I. revolving door: OpenAI named two bank C.E.O.s — Robin Vince of Bank of New York Mellon and David Vélez of Nubank — to the boards of its for-profit and nonprofit entities. (Bloomberg)
Trump Jr.’s investment firm is booming
President Trump’s return to the White House has been extremely lucrative for him and his family members. In the first year of his second term, the president earned at least $2.2 billion, according to a recent financial disclosure report.
His eldest son has been on a tear, too. A fledgling investment firm run by Donald Trump Jr. and a partner, Omeed Malik, a former banker and a Democrat turned Trump donor, has produced remarkable returns in a short period of time.
The firm, 1789 Capital, has cashed in on the policies of the current administration openly and without apology, Maureen Farrell reports for The Times:
Just two years ago, 1789 managed a few hundred million dollars. It now oversees more than $3 billion. Its main investment fund generated returns of roughly 200 percent as of June 30, according to a person familiar with the firm’s performance. While still early in its investment cycle, those returns eclipse the average returns of about 21 percent from venture capital firms started in 2023, according to PitchBook, a provider of financial data.
Trump Jr. and Malik have positioned their investments to benefit from White House policies. That includes stakes in companies with large government contracts, and others that have benefited directly from new policies or rollbacks of existing laws.
1789 Capital’s bets have included:
-
Shares in some of the most coveted private companies before many went public, including SpaceX, Anduril, Cerebras and Reflection AI, often secured by leveraging their political and business connections.
-
The prediction market Polymarket, which was worth $300 million when 1789 invested. After a federal regulator granted the company an operating license in the U.S., its valuation ballooned to $15 billion.
-
Vulcan Elements, a rare earths magnet manufacturer, then valued at about $200 million. A few months later, the company landed a $620 million loan commitment from the Pentagon. The company is now worth $2 billion.
There are few rules for relatives of the president. Trump Jr. said that, as a private citizen, he was free to invest however he wanted and has done nothing illegal. He said he only talks to his father “every few weeks” and they never discuss business.
But the rise of 1789 Capital has raised eyebrows, Farrell writes:
Angela Lee, a venture capital professor at Columbia Business School, said she’s never seen a firm started by first-time fund managers raise so much money. “Any way you cut it, it’s unprecedented,” she said. One plausible explanation for the firm’s rapid success, she said: “People are paying for proximity to power.”
Kalshi’s midterm elections play
Kalshi shot to popularity during the 2024 elections as a way to divine the state of the race.
Now the prediction market has unveiled what it calls the Midterms Hub, a section of its website featuring real-time data — including odds from its own platform — on how elections are leaning.
The effort by Kalshi underscores the site’s growing role in modern politics, but comes as the company continues to face criticism over allowing people to bet on election outcomes, Michael de la Merced and Lauren McCarthy write.
What’s happening: The Midterms Hub will feature odds for races calculated from bets placed on the Kalshi platform, as well as the company’s American Power Index, a real-time measure of which party really controls Washington.
It will also feature poll results, fund-raising data and news. “We want it to be a one-stop shop for getting everything you need to get smart about elections,” Tarek Mansour, a Kalshi founder and its C.E.O., told DealBook.
He added that among the most avid existing consumers of Kalshi’s political odds readouts were politicians and their campaign managers.
What Mansour argues the Midterms Hub isn’t about: It’s not necessarily about converting more visitors into actual bettors. (About 75 percent of all people who visit Kalshi are there just to check the odds of races, sports games and more, according to the company.)
“Our growth has been staggering, so I don’t think this dashboard is necessary” to improve it, Mansour said. For context: Total wagers on prediction markets topped $50 billion for the first time in June, thanks in part to the World Cup, up from $2 billion a year ago.
It’s also not necessarily about proving that prediction markets are more accurate than polls in forecasting election outcomes, though Mansour insists that’s the case.
But prediction markets’ role in politics remains fraught for some. Election officials in Wisconsin on Tuesday warned residents that voters “cannot legally make a bet on an election and cast a ballot in the same election.” Those who do so risk their ballot not being counted.
“We disagree with that position,” Mansour said.
THE SPEED READ
Deals
-
Fenway Sports Group, which controls the Liverpool F.C. English soccer club, is reportedly in talks to sell a minority stake to an investor group led by the son-in-law of Lakshmi Mittal, the steel billionaire. (Bloomberg)
Politics, policy and regulation
Best of the rest
We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to [email protected].
