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Capitalist Insider: 84 days. That’s how long OpenAI sat on Australia’s Medicare breach hack
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Trump flexed America’s might for Xi, Bessent got the China truce extended
President Donald Trump greeted Xi Jinping at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the U.S.-China trade truce will run two months to Jan. 10.
First Andrews tarmac greeting: Trump met Xi at the airplane stairs after a red carpet, his first trip to Andrews to welcome a foreign leader. Obama last did so for Pope Francis 11 years ago.
Truce lasts two months: The South Korea pact from last October was set to lapse in November. Bessent said Beijing still needs more deliverables. Cutler said China hoped it would last Trump’s term.
AI talks, no rails: China’s Commerce Ministry confirmed first U.S.-China AI talks after Bessent met He Lifeng. Trump said Super Intelligence stays “exactly where it is. Our guardrail is the DOJ!”
Stocks slip, dinner set: The CSI 300 fell 1.7% overnight. Thursday’s East Room state dinner includes Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Tesla’s Elon Musk and OpenAI’s Sam Altman. Xi’s expected CEO entourage did not appear.
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Iran just named the next oil front: the Indian Ocean
Brent crude jumped to $106.35 a barrel Thursday after an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader said the war could spread to the Indian Ocean if U.S. attacks resume.
Pezeshkian takes hard line: At the U.N., President Masoud Pezeshkian said Iran would fight “until our last breath” and answered Trump’s terrorist label by calling Iranians “victims of terrorism.”
Safavi warns Indian Ocean: Yahya Rahim Safavi, advising Mojtaba Khamenei, said the front already moved from the Persian Gulf and Hormuz into the Red Sea and could reach “the Indian Ocean and perhaps beyond.”
Aramco maps extra routes: Amin Nasser told Nikkei Asia Aramco is studying a fourth and fifth crude export path, locations undisclosed, and said “the situation will get worse.”
Trump weighs dual track: He called a three-hour U.N. sideline meeting “very good” and said he faces a “big decision” on a deal with Tehran or to “annihilate” the country.
Capitalist Insider: 84 days. That’s how long OpenAI sat on Australia’s Medicare hack
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Big business warns Trump: a diesel export ban raises prices
America’s largest business groups told President Trump a diesel export ban would tighten supplies and raise costs for families, farmers and truckers, as U.S. diesel averaged $6.51 a gallon.
Industry letter lands Wednesday: The Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable, National Association of Manufacturers and American Petroleum Institute said banning or limiting diesel exports would do the opposite of cutting prices.
Farm states apply pressure: Republican lawmakers in states including Iowa are pushing for action before the elections. AAA put the national average $2.82 above the same period last year.
Trump already pushing ban: At the U.N. on Tuesday Trump said, “I’ve said let’s not send out the diesel. We make a lot of diesel,” and that he called for it “within my people.”
Wright rejects blanket ban: Energy Secretary Chris Wright told the New York Times “nobody wants a full blanket ban or zero exports of diesel” and “that’s not being discussed.”
Amodei: AI could cure most diseases in 5 to 10 years
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said Wednesday that AI could help cure most diseases within 5 to 10 years after Claude found a molecular machine that may be a new gene-editing tool.
Claude led the discovery: Anthropic said Claude read literature and genome data, then proposed experiments the team ran. Amodei said it was work he would have been proud to do as a Ph.D. student.
Machine function still unclear: The company said the machine’s precise biological role, utility, or significance is not yet clear and that it may represent a new gene-editing mechanism.
Math sets biology pace: Models went from high-school math in 2023 to top open problems in late 2026. Amodei said biology is on a similar curve, with humans still running lab tests.
No clinical trial shortcut: Faster discovery would not shorten clinical trials. Any treatment would still need standard testing. Claude is not autonomously running lab equipment today.
Starbucks just took a $300 million knife to 250 cafes
Starbucks will close about 250 North American coffeehouses later this week after COO Mike Grams said a small share of more than 18,000 locations has no path to acceptable financial performance.
Portfolio review is done: Grams told Partners most of the 18,000 North American stores are profitable, but some cannot consistently deliver the experience the company wants for customers and partners.
Closures equal one percent: The 250 coffeehouses are about 1% of the North American system. Grams said the cuts hit locations with no acceptable financial path.
Grams calls it difficult: “Closing any coffeehouse is a difficult decision, and we know today’s news will be hard for the partners, customers and communities affected,” the letter said.
Florida deal sits separate: Last week Starbucks paid Florida $1 million and agreed to drop race- and sex-based hiring goals nationwide, with four years of chief-legal-officer certifications.
Chip stocks slip after a six-day, 14% SOX rally
The Philadelphia SOX index fell 1.2% Wednesday after a six-session 14% climb, as UBS kept a $1,625 Micron target and Michael Burry added semiconductor shorts.
UBS holds $1,625 target: Timothy Arcuri reiterated a Buy rating and $1,625 price target Wednesday ahead of Micron earnings next week. Shares were $1,046.37, down 2.4% in Thursday premarket trade.
Rally snap hits SOX: Nvidia, AMD and Micron led the prior six-session advance. Micron has more than tripled this year and gained nearly 600% over the past 12 months.
Street targets now split: Citi’s Atif Malik kept a Buy and raised his Micron target to $1,300 from $1,150. Wells Fargo’s Aaron Rakers kept Overweight but cut his target to $1,400 from $1,525.
Burry adds chip shorts: On Tuesday he added shorts in Micron, Nebius, Palantir and the iShares Semiconductor ETF on Cassandra Unchained, extending a chip short begun at the end of last year.
McDonald’s stock is down 20%. Now comes an $8.5B makeover
McDonald’s said Wednesday it will provide about $8.5 billion in NEXT partnering support for franchisees through 2036, with roughly $5 billion through 2030, to speed restaurant upgrades and technology.
Capital plus rent relief: The NEXT aid mixes capital support and rent relief so franchisees can modernize stores, deploy technology, and change operations faster than they could alone.
Efficiency cash-flow target: The company wants about 250 basis points of gross restaurant-level efficiency, or about $100,000 a year in cash-flow benefit for the average restaurant.
ArchIQ hits the restaurants: The plan includes generative AI-enabled ArchIQ at scale and a multiyear “Make it Golden” service program that starts on Founder’s Day, Oct. 5.
Chicken share, unit growth: McDonald’s wants 1.5 percentage points of chicken and beverage share by 2030, to keep beef leadership, and unit growth adding nearly 2.5% to 2027 systemwide sales.
Nvidia, Amazon and Microsoft fall as yields smash 5.13%
Nvidia led semiconductor stocks lower Thursday as the 10-year Treasury yield sat near 5.1% and the 30-year yield climbed to its highest level since 2004.
Radical safety fallback: Huang is a vocal opponent of new AI regulation, but Barron’s said he has an even more radical solution if there is no way to overcome the problem of unsafe AI.
Yields hit duration trade: The 10-year sat near 5.1% while the 30-year reached its highest level since 2004, extending Thursday’s decline on worries about more Federal Reserve rate hikes.
Tech sector slips early: The XLK technology sector fell at the open, with Amazon and Microsoft also declining as Nvidia pulled semiconductor stocks lower in the first minutes of trade.
Risk assets slip too: Bitcoin dropped near $83,000 and gold slipped to hover near $4,300. November Brent hovered near $105 and WTI near $94 in the same early window.