Good morning. Andrew here. Relief. That is the word of the day, for now. Stock markets are soaring and oil prices are falling after the U.S. and Iran agreed to a two-week cease-fire. But given the demands of both sides, it is hard to see how lasting peace will be achieved. Ultimately, as Ray Dalio has said, who wins this war will depend on who controls the Strait of Hormuz — and right now, that’s Iran. We go deep this morning on how U.S.-Iranian negotiations may play out. We also highlight a must-read today: an investigation by John Carreyrou into the man who might be Satoshi Nakomoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin. It’s a lengthy piece — but well worth your time. Also, here’s a tip worth knowing. If you’ve noticed that Google News isn’t surfacing the results it once did, there’s a simple fix: You can take control of what you see by adding your favorite news sites here. (Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here.)
“TACO Tuesday”A global relief rally is in full swing as investors cheer a two-week pause to fighting in the Middle East. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said his government would “cease their defensive operation” and permit the “safe passage” of ships through the Strait of Hormuz for two weeks. That could effectively end a blockade of the conduit for 20 percent of global oil and gas supplies, which has created an energy shock worldwide. President Trump called the cease-fire “a total and complete victory.” But can the U.S., Israel and Iran bridge seemingly vast differences and avoid putting the global economy back at risk if hostilities flare up again? The latest:
Everyone’s laser-focused on the Strait of Hormuz. Since the start of the five-week war, more than 800 ships have been stranded in the region, Bloomberg reports. Analysts warn it could take months before ship traffic returns to prewar levels. The cease-fire plan reportedly allows Iran and Oman to charge tolls for ships looking to use the strait, according to The Associated Press, citing an unnamed official in the region. Such a move would violate international law. Complicating matters, Trump wrote on social media that the U.S. would “be helping with the traffic buildup” in the strait, that the U.S. would be “just ‘hangin’ around’” and that “big money will be made.” What that means isn’t clear. How will Pakistan-led peace talks play out? High on the agenda for the discussions, which are scheduled to begin on Friday, is Iran’s 10-point peace proposal. It’s unclear what’s in the offer, though Trump has called the proposal “a workable basis on which to negotiate.” But Iran has previously demanded tough conditions, including guaranteed control over the Strait of Hormuz, acceptance of its nuclear enrichment activities, removal of sanctions and repatriation for financial losses. As David Sanger of The Times notes: It took two and a half years for the Obama administration to negotiate the 2015 nuclear accord, which Mr. Trump dispensed with in 2018, and that was in peacetime. This negotiation will be held under the sword of a possible resumption of hostilities. That said, Trump just wrote on social media that there would be “no enrichment of Uranium” and that the U.S. and Iran would work together to dig up and remove what he called nuclear “Dust.” Trump added that potential relief from tariffs and sanctions are on the table. The talks “carry a high degree of risk and further escalation,” as well as a potential return to $100 for a barrel of oil, predicted Randy Ollenberger, an oil and gas analyst at BMO Capital Markets. (The title of the investor note he sent last night? “TACO Tuesday.”) Trump may have been politically weakened at home. The hugely expensive war has become deeply unpopular among American voters. Trump’s threat yesterday to kill Iran’s “whole civilization” drew condemnation from Democrats and Republicans and a rebuke from Pope Leo XIV. What to watch: Assessments of the war’s impact from C.E.O.s as earnings season gets underway. Delta Air Lines reported this morning that it expects a $2 billion hit this quarter from rising fuel prices.
Bill Gates is reportedly set to testify about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. The tech mogul is scheduled to appear before the House Oversight Committee in June, Politico reports. Also scheduled to testify are Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, on May 6, and Ted Waitt, the founder of Gateway who was romantically linked to Ghislaine Maxwell, this month. Elon Musk seeks Sam Altman’s ouster from OpenAI’s board. That demand was among the amendments that Musk made to his lawsuit against the artificial intelligence start-up, which he co-founded. Musk’s legal fight, in which he’s seeking $150 billion damages from OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, is set to go to court this month. Moody’s warns of potential trouble for a Blue Owl Capital private credit fund. The ratings agency downgraded the outlook for a $36 billion fund run by the beleaguered investment firm to “negative” from “stable” after a wave of investor redemption requests last quarter. The move will probably compound investor fears about the health of the private credit sector. Apple is said to be close to unveiling a foldable phone. The device is expected to be introduced in September around the time of the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, Bloomberg reports. Investors have been eager for details on the new model, which is seen as Apple’s attempt to catch up to Samsung and Chinese rivals. The A.I. model Anthropic won’t release widelyLast month, Anthropic inadvertently leaked some of the code powering its newest artificial intelligence model, forcing the company to acknowledge the model’s existence and what it called a “step change” in capabilities. Now the A.I. giant has formally taken the wraps off the model — but said it wouldn’t make the software publicly available. Meet Claude Mythos Preview, which an Anthropic executive told Kevin Roose of The Times was “the starting point for what we think will be an industry change point, or reckoning, with what needs to happen now.” More specifically, Mythos is capable of advanced cybersecurity, including finding and patching security vulnerabilities in critical software programs. That, Anthropic said, is why it’s making Mythos available to only a few dozen companies, including competitors like Google and hardware providers like Cisco. The move may also be meant to subtly burnish Anthropic’s reputation. The company says it’s more focused on safety than its rivals. But it’s also in a heated race with Google, OpenAI and others to produce ever more powerful A.I. tools. Having a model it says is too powerful to be widely released is good advertising on both points. That said, cybersecurity researchers with access to Mythos say that it represents a significant step-up in risk, if tools with these capabilities fall into the hands of bad actors. “What we are about to see is nothing short of the complete democratization of cyberattack capabilities,” Craig Mundie, a former Microsoft executive and tech adviser to President Barack Obama, told Tom Friedman, a Times Opinion columnist. (Mundie says that access to the most powerful A.I. models should be carefully controlled, and that the U.S. should work with China and other countries to protect critical services.) An intriguing development: The Financial Times reports that Anthropic has continued to hold talks with the U.S. government about Mythos, despite the Trump administration’s efforts to bar government contractors from using its software. The news outlet previously reported that the Pentagon was interested in A.I. tools to identify infrastructure targets from adversaries like China. Has Satoshi Nakamoto finally been found?The identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, has been a parlor game — and the subject of litigation and documentaries — for years. Was it a Hungarian American programmer? A collective of coders? Someone else? Now the Times investigative reporter John Carreyrou has identified who he believes is the man behind the technology: Adam Beck, a British cryptography expert who has been floated as a possibility before. Carreyrou dove into Beck’s background and, with the help of Dylan Freedman, a Times A.I. expert, used software to analyze his writing style. Definitely spend the time reading Carreyrou’s 10,000-word article on why Beck is the most likely candidate. Here’s an excerpt, when the reporter finally confronts Beck with his suspicions: I walked up to him, reintroduced myself and explained why I had come. He was slightly flustered but, to my pleasant surprise, he agreed to meet with me the next morning in the lobby of his hotel, which was doubling as the conference venue. When I arrived at the appointed hour, Mr. Back was flanked by two executives from a new Bitcoin treasury company he had co-founded. He explained that the company was in the process of going public, forcing him to be more careful about how he interacted with the press. I had completely missed this new development. Bitcoin treasury companies borrow money and use it to amass bitcoins, providing investors with a more aggressive way to bet on the cryptocurrency. Mr. Back had started his last summer and was merging it with a publicly traded shell created by Cantor Fitzgerald, the Wall Street firm formerly led by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. As chief executive of the merged company, Mr. Back was required under U.S. securities law to disclose any information that was material to its investors. A secret stash of 1.1 million coins that could crash the Bitcoin market if it were suddenly sold, for example, would probably be considered material.
DEALBOOK QUIZ Google’s A.I. has your answer. Is it accurate?This question comes from a recent Times article. Click an answer to see if you’re right. (The link will be free.) Google processes more than five trillion searches per year. Since 2024, the top result for many of those queries has been an A.I.-generated answer from a Google product called AI Overviews. The Times asked an A.I. start-up, Oumi, to assess the accuracy of AI Overviews. Oumi first tested the system in October and found that AI Overviews’ answers were accurate 85 percent of the time. Then Google upgraded to Gemini 3, a more powerful A.I. model, and Oumi tested AI Overviews for accuracy again. According to analysis done for The Times, how accurate were search results from AI Overviews using Google’s Gemini 3 model? We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times.
Deals
Politics, policy and regulation
Best of the rest
|
