Three Fronts, 87 Days. The Squeeze on China Now Runs Through Silicon Valley.
U.S. strikes on Iran and Venezuela cut China's oil supply. $690B in AI capex depends on TSMC chips from Taiwan, where PLA drills are escalating.
Analysis
Thesis-driven reporting on the forces reshaping AI, tech, and power. We trace the money, the leverage, and the decisions that move markets before the consensus catches up. Not what happened, but what it means and who benefits.
73 articles
ECB Data Shows AI-Intensive Firms Hire More. America's Layoff Alibi Collapses.
ECB data from 5,000 firms shows AI-heavy companies hire more. U.S. firms cite AI for 55,000 layoffs. Economists call it 'AI washing.'
Anthropic Lost the Pentagon Contract. It Won the Argument. Then Offered to Keep the Lights On.
Amodei apologized for the leaked memo, called the designation narrow, and offered to keep Claude running for the military at cost. The Pentagon still can't quit the tool it blacklisted.
OpenAI Stopped Selling Intelligence. GPT-5.4 Sells Labor Instead.
GPT-5.4's benchmarks barely moved on reasoning but jumped 12 points on professional work. OpenAI stopped selling intelligence and started selling
Claude Picked Targets in Iran. Anthropic's Red Lines Never Mattered.
The Pentagon kept Claude identifying targets in Iran even after banning Anthropic. The red lines were never the company's to draw.
Accenture Bought the Internet's Referee. The Conflict Writes Itself.
Accenture acquires Speedtest and Downdetector owner Ookla for $1.2 billion, raising conflict-of-interest questions for telecom's top consultant.
Block's 24% Stock Jump Will Cost More Jobs Than Its AI Ever Could
Block cut 4,000 jobs during record profits. The stock jumped 24%. The market reward creates a template every CEO will copy.
Google Stopped Selling Image Generation. Everyone Else Still Does.
Google's Nano Banana 2 makes Pro-tier image generation free across Search, cutting API prices 50% as Alibaba's open-weight model threatens.
Salesforce Beat Every Number. SaaS-Angst Won Anyway.
Salesforce beat every Q4 estimate but stock fell 5%. Agentforce ARR hit $800M, just 1.9% of revenue. SaaS-Angst is winning.
AI Already Divides Schools by Income. Pew Measured the Gap at 3 to 1.
Low-income teens are three times more likely to depend on AI for schoolwork. Pew's data reveals a class divide, not a cheating problem.
AMD Is Giving Away 20% of Its Stock to Sell Chips. That's a Confession, Not a Win.
AMD offered warrants for 20% of its stock to Meta and OpenAI in four months. The AI chip market's circular financing raises serious questions.
Distillation Attacks on Claude Are Real. So Is the Lobbying Campaign.
Anthropic named DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax in a distillation report timed to the export control debate.
AI's Productivity Boom Is Real. The Prosperity Part Isn't.
A record share of unemployed Americans hold bachelor's degrees. Productivity is surging. Both facts are true at once, and a viral thought experiment from Citrini Research just showed what happens when