Flagship

Trump, Musk clash erupts

US President Donald Trump and Elon Musk feuded openly Thursday, as disagreements over Republicans’ spending bill quickly turned personal. The implosion of the year’s most consequential political alliance stemmed from Musk’s repeated criticism of the Trump-backed package, and the breakup threatens to spill over into other arenas. Trump threatened Thursday to cut government contracts and subsidies for the tech mogul’s businesses, which include SpaceX and Tesla. Musk said Trump wouldn’t have won the White House without his support, and responded “yes” to a post suggesting the president should be impeached. “This tension is about more than just a bromance falling apart,” WIRED wrote: Some Republicans fear Musk’s criticism could drag down a key part of Trump’s legislative agenda.

Financiers sound alarm over GOP bill

More finance executives are making public their concern over the impact of the GOP’s tax-and-spending bill on the US deficit. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said the US would “hit the wall” if the economy doesn’t grow enough to manage higher debt, while Citadel’s Ken Griffin said the US’ “fiscal house is not in order.” Their warnings follow similar concerns from JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon and billionaire investor Ray Dalio. The bill would add $2.4 trillion to the deficit, according to congressional estimates; fears over the package’s impact have spurred institutional investors to shift away from US markets, the Financial Times wrote. “It should cause people to pause and consider: how much do you want concentrated in one market?” AllianceBernstein’s CEO said.

Trump, Xi agree to hold trade talks

US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke by phone Thursday and agreed to hold more trade talks. The call marked the first known conversation between the two leaders since Trump returned to office and launched a punishing trade war with Beijing. Despite a temporary pause on higher tariffs, US-China tensions have flared up in recent days, as each side accused the other of violating the truce. “It’s positive they’re talking,” one analyst said, but predicted other countries will strike a trade deal first. “The chances of just quickly coming to some resolution seems extremely low.” Beijing’s goal of easing US chip export controls could pose a particular hurdle, Bloomberg noted, given bipartisan concern in Washington over China’s tech advances.

Merz avoids White House clash

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz urged US President Donald Trump to put more pressure on Russia to end the war in Ukraine, even as the American leader suggested there wasn’t much he could do. Merz, who took office one month ago and in February said Europe needed “independence” from the US, avoided an Oval Office blowup with Trump through “a great deal of mutual flattery, which is known to be Trump’s most important currency,” Der Spiegel wrote. Despite the congenial encounter, the meeting highlighted the gulf between Europe and Trump on ending the war: Trump spoke of the conflict as if he were a bystander, The New York Times noted, comparing Russia and Ukraine to “two young children fighting like crazy.”

Curtis Yarvin’s growing influence

A right-wing contrarian blogger whose once-fringe ideas include the dismantling of US democracy is now a key intellectual figure in the second Donald Trump administration, according to a New Yorker profile. Curtis Yarvin, pen name Mencius Moldbug, was an originator of the Neoreaction movement. In a series of blog posts, he called for an autocracy run by a CEO/monarchy hybrid, and blamed society’s ills on a left-liberal media-academia nexus he called the “Cathedral.” His writing has attracted attention among parts of the tech world, notably the billionaire Peter Thiel; Vice President JD Vance is a reader, The New Yorker noted. Some Trump policies, from mass civil service firings to proposals for turning Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East,” echo Yarvin’s theories.

India, China vie for talent

India and China can capitalize on US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on American higher education, but hurdles remain for both countries. India is home to half of the world’s college-age population, and its “best universities have much going for them” as Trump ramps up attacks on international students in the US, The Economist wrote. While Trump’s scrutiny could lead more Indians to stay home for school, the country struggles from low spending on public education and lacks academic freedom. China has been trying for years to attract more talented researchers, and Trump’s recent attacks have helped that effort, The New York Times wrote, though Chinese schools face similar censorship and geopolitical concerns.

Chinese elites draw online resentment

Chinese internet users are growing increasingly resentful toward elites seen as undeserving of their status and success, in a sign of broader socioeconomic discontent. In recent weeks, several scandals have erupted on Chinese social media surrounding figures accused of getting ahead by unfair means: Users questioned how a young actress acquired expensive jewelry, and scrutinized a trainee doctor with high-powered parents who was accused of falsifying education records. The incidents shared a common “anxiety that in China’s fiercely competitive society, merit may be irrelevant,” The New York Times wrote. Those fears have been heightened as the economy slows and “opportunities for upward mobility seem to be disappearing.”

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Waymo ridership up

Waymo’s weekly ride numbers are doubling roughly every six months. California’s transit data shows that the robotaxi firm was doing 10,000 paid rides a week in August 2023; 50,000 by May 2024; 100,000 that August. Now, it’s at 250,000. The numbers show that “Waymo’s cars are self-driving toward an inflection point,” The Wall Street Journal’s Ben Cohen argued, a point on the technology adoption curve followed by everything from the Model T to ChatGPT, where inventions move from niche to everyday. Other firms are racing to catch up, but “the longer that Waymo has the only driverless cars on the road, the bigger its lead gets,” Harris said.

Posthumous promotion for Dreyfus

Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish officer framed for treason by an antisemitic conspiracy in 19th-century France, will finally be promoted. L’affaire Dreyfus has echoes today, as a historian noted in The Atlantic: Many in France denied Dreyfus’ innocence even given irrefutable evidence, much as many US voters denied that Donald Trump had lost the 2020 election. This lack of a mutual reality split the nation, and was crucial in the fall of the Third Republic, James McAuley argued. Then-captain Dreyfus was falsely accused of spying for Germany; he was eventually exonerated, but missed out on years of promotion; France’s National Assembly voted to make him brigadier general.

Reading Dead Sea Scrolls with AI

An artificial intelligence-powered reanalysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls suggested they were up to a century older than previously thought. The scrolls, found after World War II, include the oldest known copies of Old Testament books and other ancient Jewish texts, perhaps hidden around 70 AD to shield them from Roman destruction. They vary in age but some were likely from around the third century BC. But new research puts the dates further back — possibly into the lifetime of the authors of the Bible books Daniel and Ecclesiastes, New Scientist reported. The discovery suggests that literacy became widespread in ancient Judea earlier than believed, and that the region was even more intellectually and religiously diverse than scholars had realized.

June 6:

• The European Union publishes its first-quarter GDP estimate.
• Japanese startup ispace makes a second attempt at becoming the first Asian private company to achieve a soft-landing on the Moon.
• Eid al-Adha is celebrated by Muslims worldwide.

A gigantic, 27-year-old wheel of parmigiano reggiano set a new longevity record for the Italian cheese. The nearly 80-pound wheel was first made in 1998, and sat maturating for six years longer than the previous record before it was opened this week in Poviglio, a small town near Parma — one of the few regions enjoying the European Union’s protected designation of origin status for reggiano; the cheese’s flavor is directly tied to its time spent aging. And the larger the wheel, the longer it remains viable: “It demonstrates how this product can remain amazing over time without the use of preservatives,” the president of the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium told The Guardian. “It’s an authentic jewel of nature.”

Recent remarkable and rapid improvements in vibe coding — using AI systems to write programs — are upending Silicon Valley’s balance of power, away from talented developers and towards startup founders with a good idea, Semafor’s Gina Chua wrote.

Vibe coding is also remaking the economics of scale and the corporate processes built around husbanding and prioritizing scarce resources; a core part of what many companies have done — hoard and apportion tech talent and time — may be in for a real shakeup, and soon.