Flagship

Ukraine drone strike destroys Russian jets

A massive Ukrainian drone strike on parked Russian jets offered a glimpse into the future of war. Sunday’s “audacious” operation took more than a year to plan, the Financial Times reported, and hit more than 40 aircraft at four airfields deep inside Russia. Ukraine smuggled the “first-person view” drones in and loaded them onto trucks, before remotely opening the trucks’ roofs and launching them, Meduza reported. Dubbed “Russia’s Pearl Harbor” by pro-Moscow military bloggers, the attack reflects the prevalence of low-end, artificial intelligence-enabled drone technology, The War Zone reported: Such devices can “fly much farther without any radio control and hit targets they recognize autonomously.” The strike comes on the eve of Ukraine-Russia peace talks in Istanbul.

US sends Iran first nuclear deal proposal

The US sent Iran a proposal for a nuclear deal on Saturday, hours after a United Nations report found Tehran has dramatically boosted its supply of enriched uranium. Washington’s proposition, its first formal overture to Iran since negotiations began in April, calls for the country to cease uranium enrichment and for the creation of a regional nuclear power consortium. US President Donald Trump said Friday that the countries were close to a deal, warning that the US would eliminate Iran’s nuclear program if no agreement is reached. But experts are skeptical Tehran would agree to essentially shut down its nuclear facilities: The report’s revelations showing Iran has surged ahead in production could give the regime leverage in talks, The New York Times reported.

Dozens killed near Gaza aid site

More than 30 people were killed and nearly 200 wounded Sunday near a Gaza aid site, Palestinian health officials said, the deadliest incident yet since a new distribution system began. Local authorities said Israeli soldiers fired on civilians; the military denied that account, instead accusing Hamas of attacking people trying to get food. The aid delivery operation, run by a US-backed private foundation, has been in place for less than a week and has been marred by scenes of chaos, increasing international pressure on Israel: Thousands of Palestinians rushed distribution points on Tuesday. Israel’s military on Sunday said it was expanding its Gaza offensive, while Hamas said it was ready to renew indirect ceasefire talks.

Hegseth signals Asia commitment

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s warning that China poses an “imminent” threat to Taiwan won plaudits from Asian allies looking for reassurance from Washington. The US’ partners had reason to be wary of Hegseth’s remarks Saturday at the Shangri-La Dialogue defense conference: Vice President JD Vance used a similar gathering in Munich this year to harangue European allies. But Hegseth’s criticism of China — which Beijing rebuked as divisive — was “a clear statement of commitment to the region,” an expert told The Japan Times. Hegseth also called on regional allies to boost defense spending. Still, while his speech may not have burned diplomatic bridges, it couldn’t allay the region’s economic anxiety over US President Donald Trump’s erratic tariff policy, Bloomberg wrote.

US crackdown raises Sinophobia concerns

The White House’s plan to revoke Chinese student visas threatens to trigger a larger wave of anti-China sentiment, a prominent Chinese American commentator argued. The Trump administration has cited national security concerns for the crackdown, which has been years in the making, Politico reported. But it’s a performative move, Sinica’s Kaiser Kuo wrote, “meant to project toughness to a domestic audience conditioned to see China as threat and Chinese identity as inherently suspect.” The policy also threatens to bleed into the public consciousness: “We have entered a feedback loop in which Sinophobia is both a byproduct and a driver of strategic rivalry. It fuels the antagonism, and the antagonism legitimizes the prejudice.”

White House pulls NASA nominee

The White House pulled its nominee for NASA administrator over his history of donations to Democrats. Jared Isaacman, an entrepreneur and commercial astronaut, was days away from his confirmation vote in the Senate, but President Donald Trump said he decided to scrap his nomination after reviewing Isaacman’s “prior associations”: A source close to the White House told Semafor's Shelby Talcott that the decision came after conservative senators presented Trump with data indicating Isaacman had hardly given to Republicans before the 2024 election. Analysts had predicted Isaacman would increase NASA’s dependence on the private sector, and especially SpaceX, given his close ties to Elon Musk, who recently left the federal government after a tumultuous stint.

Legal precedent looms over tariff case

The same legal argument that blunted some of former US President Joe Biden’s biggest policy moves could end up undoing Donald Trump’s tariff regime. The US Supreme Court used the “major questions doctrine” to block Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan and his effort to set power-plant pollution limits, ruling that federal agencies can’t take sweeping political and economic action without congressional approval. That doctrine could now determine the fate of Trump’s tariffs, a case likely to end up before the nation’s highest court, Bloomberg reported. The White House argues the concept only applies to administrative agencies rather than the presidency, and the court has “left its options completely open” on that front, an expert said.

Semafor’s Ben Smith and Max Tani will be in Cannes to cover media and marketing’s biggest annual gathering, where many of the most powerful people in media come to make deals, rub shoulders, win awards, and sip Aperol spritzes on the Côte d’Azur.

Starting June 16, they’ll deliver news, scoops, and insights on the year ahead in media — with all its deal-making, gossip, and pretentious grandeur, from one of the industry’s true epicenters.

Subscribe to our pop-up newsletter, Semafor Cannes.

US science funding reaches record lows

US science funding is at its lowest level since at least 1990 thanks to the White House’s cuts. National Science Foundation grants are down 51% this year from the 2015-2024 average, and the Trump administration has called for slashing the foundation’s budget by 55% next year. While President Donald Trump said he wanted to reduce funding for ideologically driven, “woke” programs, especially in social science, he has canceled funding for grants across math, physics, chemistry, computer science, and other scientific disciplines. “These cuts are the height of self-inflicted harm,” the head of a science policy research institute told The New York Times, adding that they will lead to slower economic growth and diminished competitiveness with China.

China softening to K-pop

Two large K-pop companies are deepening their China ties, the latest sign of a potential softening in Beijing’s stance toward Korean culture. Hybe, which created boy band BTS, established its first office in China, while Chinese tech giant Tencent bought a stake in SM Entertainment, a K-pop powerhouse, announcing plans to create a new Chinese pop group. Beijing effectively banned K-pop in 2016 after Seoul deployed an American missile defense system, but “we’ve seen early signs of thawing,” one analyst said, noting that the left-wing frontrunner in South Korea’s presidential election Tuesday favors stabilizing ties with China. K-pop is less sensitive to protectionist trade measures, and could also help both countries economically as they grapple with US tariffs, experts said.

Takeout surge fuels ghost kitchens

Takeout food accounts for 75% of US restaurant orders, an industry report found. The National Restaurant Association said that younger people in particular are ordering more takeout than they were a year ago, driven by the use of delivery apps such as DoorDash and Grubhub, which allow even those restaurants that used to be on-premises only to offer a takeout service. The apps have created a subspecies of restaurant, the “ghost kitchen,” which exists only to service delivery orders, without any customer-facing presence: Rebel Foods and CloudKitchens, two of the biggest cloud kitchen companies, each run hundreds of sites representing multiple major restaurant brands. The Qatar Investment Authority recently injected $25 million into the India-based Rebel Foods.

June 2:

• The final results of Poland’s presidential elections are set to be announced.
• China’s Dragon Boat Festival concludes.
• The inaugural SXSW London conference begins.

A movie about women forced to taste-test Adolf Hitler’s meals is releasing in Germany, but historians have cast doubt on the purportedly true story that inspired it. The Tasters is based on a 2018 historical fiction novel rooted in a 2012 account by Margot Wölk, who at 95 revealed that she was one of the 14 women coerced into tasting vegetarian dishes prepared for Hitler over concerns of poisoning attempts. Scholars who have studied the Nazi leader’s time at the Wolf’s Lair haven’t found evidence of such women food tasters. But the film’s director dismissed the skepticism, telling The Guardian how rare it was to tell “a story about war and violence, without focusing on the man at war.”

Yahoo’s heritage as a former tech titan is a double-edged sword for anyone running it in 2025, and CEO Jim Lanzone has only been at the helm since 2021. But, as he likes to remind people, the company is still one of the internet’s five busiest destinations, with 3 billion visits last month according to Similarweb — more than the traffic to Amazon.

“We had to come in here and think about why Yahoo exists,” he told Semafor’s Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson. That has meant taking inspiration from the company’s original mission of being users’ trusted guide through “the Wild West of the internet,” but not being trapped by it.