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AI leaders issue stark warning on risks

Concentration of power is a key AI risk, the heads of leading AI companies told the UN Security Council on Wednesday. “No one person or company or country should be able to use the most powerful AI models to impose their worldview on everyone else,” OpenAI’s Sam Altman said, while Anthropic’s Dario Amodei warned that “if managed poorly, AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole.” The CEO of Hugging Face, which was hacked by rogue OpenAI agents, cautioned against the “asymmetry of powerful AI” leaving the world vulnerable to the capabilities of big AI companies. Their calls for global safeguards and a slowdown diverged sharply from US President Donald Trump’s dismissal of AI’s existential risks as a “hoax.”

Iran won’t ‘bow’ to US

Iran’s president said Wednesday that he was open to talks to end the war, but warned that Tehran wouldn’t surrender its nuclear program or “bow” to the US. His defiant UN speech came after US President Donald Trump threatened to “annihilate” Iran. The rhetoric doesn’t bode well for Trump, whose popularity has sunk to record lows as the conflict drags on: One outgoing Republican lawmaker warned of a midterm “bloodbath” and several GOP candidates released ads criticizing the war. Still, Trump appears reluctant to appeal to China’s leader to exert pressure on Tehran or to sanction Chinese banks facilitating Iranian transactions — “the last line to cross” if “you really want to put the squeeze,” a former Trump official told Semafor.

Chinese CEOs unlikely to attend summit

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is set to arrive in Washington on Wednesday, but likely without a coterie of corporate leaders, dimming already-low expectations of potential business deals between the superpowers. Earlier reports suggested Xi could be accompanied by BYD and CATL executives among others, but US officials were reportedly reluctant to host firms with possible links to China’s military. Top Chinese AI leaders were absent from reported lists, and disagreements between Beijing and Washington over a proposed Board of Trade further complicated plans. Beijing declined to comment and plans could change, but regardless of who attends, the Trump administration has little appetite to strike deals “perceived as easing up on China” ahead of tough midterm elections, a Reuters columnist argued.

China’s Xi battles two-speed economy

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is expected to bargain from a position of strength in his meeting with US President Donald Trump this week, even as Beijing battles mounting economic headwinds at home. As youth unemployment hovers near 20%, many graduates are now “pretending to go to work,” clogging up public spaces to avoid worrying their families about their joblessness. Contending with weak consumption and slower growth figures, China is betting that advanced technologies will spur new growth, steering more investment toward competing with the US in semiconductors and AI, which creates relatively few jobs. “That’s one of the reasons that Chinese people aren’t seeing their pocketbooks grow in ways that their fathers’ did,” one expert told The Washington Post.

US 10-year Treasury yield surges

The US 10-year Treasury yield surged to a new 19-year high Wednesday, as more hot economic readings boosted expectations of further interest rate increases. The latest manufacturing data underscored the boom in US business activity and showed the “greatest recorded [increase] since early 2015,” an economist said, noting that input costs — mostly fuel and transportation — also jumped at the steepest rate in four years. Oil ticked higher after Iran’s president delivered a defiant speech at the UN, stirring inflation fears. Odds of another rate increase at next month’s US Federal Reserve meeting approached 70%, as one Fed governor said Wednesday that further tightening would be required to tame inflation.

US mulls 90-day diesel export ban

The US is reportedly preparing a plan to ban diesel exports for 90 days, as the White House mulls acting on record-high fuel prices over the objections of several cabinet members. The Treasury secretary has privately lobbied against the idea, according to Politico, while the energy secretary said that such a “blunt tool… definitely doesn’t work,” echoing the interior secretary. US President Donald Trump’s former energy chief said a ban sends a “terrible investment signal,” concurring with analysts: S&P Global estimated that a full ban would drive US refineries to reduce their run rates by up to 10%. The ban would also raise global diesel prices, rebounding on American consumers who depend on imports. European diesel prices spiked 7% Wednesday morning.

Paramount eyes Musk for investment group

Paramount is considering tapping Elon Musk for a syndicate of equity investors, Semafor’s Rohan Goswami reported, as the company looks to firm up its financial picture after taking over Warner Bros. Discovery. Paramount CEO David Ellison’s father, Larry Ellison, previously served on Tesla’s board and is close to Musk as well as US President Donald Trump. A check from Musk would reduce the elder Ellison’s financial burden, but would also be politically fraught. Though it’s unlikely that Musk would have formal input in operations, the prospect of a second prominent Trump ally’s involvement could raise alarm bells in Washington if Democrats wrest control of congress in November’s midterm elections; one lawmaker said Wednesday, “This merger is already looking like a disaster.”

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S.Africa faces US investment freeze

Washington’s ambassador to South Africa said the country’s mandatory local equity transfers in mining and telecoms were holding back “billions with [a] capital B” in US investment, in comments that reflected the Trump administration’s campaign against Pretoria’s post-apartheid Black empowerment rules. The US has imposed visa restrictions on unspecified South African officials, part of a series of measures against Pretoria, which is trying to forge commercial ties with Washington. Africa’s largest economy urgently needs outside investment, as organized crime drains resources from the legitimate economy: Illicit business has grown from 5% to an estimated 12-15% of GDP in the last two decades, The Economist reported. “Whether South Africa can stop the rot will be a defining test of its democracy.”