Flagship

AI tops Trump’s UAE agenda

US President Donald Trump lands in Abu Dhabi today, with cooperation on artificial intelligence atop the agenda. His visit to the United Arab Emirates comes at the end of a Gulf tour that has covered ground including chips, defense, and investment: Saudi Arabia reached deals to buy $142 billion of defense equipment while Qatar agreed to purchase 210 Boeing aircraft. The UAE, however, is hyper-focused on becoming a global AI hub, and wants to ramp up imports of US-designed chips as a result. The two countries have a preliminary agreement to allow the UAE to import 500,000 of Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips annually, according to Reuters, and Washington this week loosened curbs on selling semiconductors to Gulf nations.

Putin skips Ukraine peace talks

Russian President Vladimir Putin will not travel to Turkey for peace talks with Ukraine today. His Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy is already in Istanbul, and had proposed face-to-face talks with Putin. US President Donald Trump — who has said he may visit Turkey tomorrow, following a Gulf tour — has expressed frustration with Russia’s refusal to engage with peace talks, and Putin’s absence could be a major miscalculation, the former Australian General Mick Ryan wrote: Trump may see it as “a deliberate insult,” and the decision not to attend makes Putin look “smaller and more cowardly.” Zelenskyy’s top aide told Le Monde that a Putin no-show would be “a clear signal… that he does not want to stop the war.”

Transatlantic ties in spotlight

Concurrent NATO and European Union meetings today could shape the future of the transatlantic relationship. NATO defense ministers are meeting in Turkey to discuss boosting military outlays: US President Donald Trump called for the alliance’s members to spend 5% of GDP on defense, a figure none of them, including the US, currently meet, despite increases since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The NATO secretary general wants allies to agree to 3.5%, plus 1.5% on related spending such as cybersecurity: Today’s meeting will discuss what counts towards that 1.5%. Meanwhile the EU is stepping up negotiations with the US over tariffs, hoping to find an amicable agreement, but also readying $108 billion in levies if no deal is met, Bloomberg reported.

Defense’s metals drive

The West is unprepared for changes to the logistics and fighting of modern war, experts warned. A mining executive told the Financial Times that as major powers have ratcheted up defense spending, military demand for metals had “dramatically” increased, whether that be niche metals such as germanium, vital in drones and other advanced systems, or more common ones like copper, needed for ammunition. The growth comes alongside existing increases in demand from renewable energy systems. And a Ukrainian general said the modern battlefield is entirely unlike the wars NATO envisages: Cheap, expendable drones and high-tech weapons could threaten the large, expensive tanks and planes modern militaries are built around.

Latam looks to Asia

Brazil’s president signed a series of deals with China during a state visit to Beijing, showcasing Latin American leaders’ efforts to diversify their ties away from the US. The continent had been upping its trade with China in recent years, but Washington’s array of tariffs — alongside the specter of suspended “Liberation Day” duties being reimposed — has driven regional leaders to accelerate a push to widen their range of trading partners and reduce dependence on the US. The 30-plus deals inked between Brazil and China are just one example: Colombia’s president this week signed a Belt and Road cooperation agreement with Beijing, and Chile’s leader held talks in Japan on deepening bilateral trade ties.

US-SAfrica row worsens

The White House banned all US government agencies from working on this year’s G20, intensifying a row with host South Africa. The decision, reported by The Washington Post, follows US President Donald Trump’s threats to boycott the summit. Washington has withdrawn aid from Africa’s biggest economy and imposed tariffs, and the Trump administration has repeatedly criticized what it calls Pretoria’s racist land expropriation laws, as well as affirmative action policies it says discriminate against minority whites. The US this week welcomed 49 white South Africans it classed as refugees, further raising tensions: South Africa’s president has attacked the move, arguing that they “do not fit the definition.”

Schwab ‘at war’ with WEF

The head of the World Economic Forum is increasingly at war with the elite conference he founded. Klaus Schwab had been set to transfer power at WEF over the next two years, but instead has been forced out and is the subject of an investigation over financial impropriety, accusations that follow claims that WEF under his leadership was a toxic work environment. Schwab denies the allegations, and argues that WEF in fact underpaid him, putting him “at war with the organization he started and led with an iron grip,” The Wall Street Journal reported. As the Financial Times put it, WEF must now determine “how far and fast it might distance itself from the man who created it.”

Why Buffett is stepping back

Warren Buffett decided to step down from the leadership of Berkshire Hathaway after noticing visible signs of aging, the 94-year-old investor told The Wall Street Journal. Buffett — whose investments and maxims are the stuff of finance legend — began losing his balance, forgetting people’s names, and struggling with his vision after turning 90, shifts that coalesced into his announcement this month that he would hand over the reins of his investment firm in December: Many Buffett watchers had assumed he would stay in charge until his death. He will remain Berkshire’s chairman, and intends to continue going into the office. “How do you know the day that you become old?” he said. “But when you start getting old… it’s irreversible.”

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DeepMind’s evolving AI

Google DeepMind’s latest artificial intelligence model designs its own algorithms, something its maker says is a big step toward AI that can do science. AlphaEvolve works by mimicking natural evolution: It generates several potential algorithms, tests them, then “breeds” from the ones that work best, before reiterating the process to create ever more efficient code. DeepMind says the model has redesigned Google’s own Tensor chips and improved its data centers’ efficiency by 0.7%. It also made progress on several mathematical conundrums, including one which goes back to Isaac Newton: The “kissing problem” of how many spheres can be in contact simultaneously. Semafor’s Reed Albergotti said it was another step towards being able to say “Hey Google, create the world’s best AI model.”

AI’s impact on radiology

Predictions that artificial intelligence would replace radiologists have not, so far, materialized. The “godfather of AI,” Geoffrey Hinton, said in 2016 that universities “should stop training radiologists now” because AI would outperform them in five years. Instead, the number of US radiologists has gone up, and the field has become more efficient. It’s comparable to how ATMs did not replace bank tellers, but changed their roles, taking over routine tasks and freeing humans for more complex ones. There are other models of technology’s economic impacts: Agricultural mechanization reduced farm worker numbers, but humans found other work. Horses, though, were straightforwardly replaced by the invention of the automobile. What path AI will take us down remains to be seen.

• The International Energy Agency publishes its monthly analysis of the oil market.
• European energy firms Engie and RWE report Q1 earnings.
• Germany’s president and chancellor lay to rest a Holocaust survivor who died aged 103.

How much money the British retail giant Marks & Spencer is losing every day since a hack brought down its online store. A ransomware group which has previously hacked Las Vegas hotels attacked M&S in late April. The Co-operative supermarket was also hit, rendering its online services inaccessible and leaving some shelves unstocked in its physical stores. Ransomware attacks, in which hackers lock organizations out of their own systems or data, are on the rise worldwide: A UK National Cyber Security Center report last year called them an “immediate and disruptive threat to our critical national infrastructure.”

Bob Dylan: Point Blank, the Halcyon Gallery, London. This collection of Dylan’s paintings is, to the surprise of The Times of London’s art critic, not bad. After decades of painting on the side — Dylan is best known as a popular musician of some kind — “he has developed into a rather good, interesting painter,” with “a quiet wit and what feels like a sideways look at the world,” according to Nancy Durrant. As with his music, some works are more successful than others, but “overall this is an absorbing invitation to see through Dylan’s eyes.” Learn more here.

China’s domestic and international energy investments are getting greener, but face some big challenges ahead, according to two new reports shared first with Semafor’s Tim McDonnell.

The US-China trade war truce agreed over the weekend is good news for Chinese exporters of batteries and other clean tech and their customers in the US. But the two studies, taken together, illustrate how China is navigating a moment of heightened external volatility by falling back on its enormous domestic market, McDonnell wrote.