Flagship

Escalating political clash over LA protests

Protesters in Los Angeles demonstrated for a fourth day against immigration raids, as US President Donald Trump’s move to deploy the National Guard sparked a political clash. California sued the Trump administration Monday for mobilizing the troops without the state’s consent, while the president backed comments from his adviser threatening to arrest state leaders including Gov. Gavin Newsom over the protests. The display of military might — the Pentagon is also deploying 700 Marines to LA — symbolizes “the showdown the White House has been waiting for,” CNN wrote. Trump has made immigration a central issue, and is now seizing the opportunity to spar with a Democrat-led city and depict it as lawless, The New York Times reported.

US-China talks could end in ‘handshake’

US-China trade talks that began in London Monday could result in Beijing speeding up rare earth shipments in exchange for Washington easing access to tech exports, a top White House adviser said. The negotiations, set to continue for a second day, will end “with a big, strong handshake,” US National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said, the clearest sign yet that Washington is open to concessions on export controls for products like semiconductors. China, meanwhile, approved some rare-earth exports over the weekend as a goodwill gesture. Beijing’s curbs on the sector have been a powerful negotiating tool in trade talks, and “it’s only a matter of time before they’re leveraged again,” Trivium China analysts wrote.

Fresh uncertainty hits US economy

A fresh wave of economic anxiety is washing over the US. A pause on President Donald Trump’s sky-high tariffs is set to end next month, and with few trade deals negotiated, the country is “entering another uncomfortable summer,” The Wall Street Journal wrote, noting that shifting policies have led to hiring and investment freezes. Survey data shows geopolitical instability and uncertainty is still weighing heavily on CEOs, while increased sales of high-yield bonds, or “junk bonds,” suggest companies are looking to get ahead of the trade tumult when Trump’s tariff pause expires, the Financial Times wrote. The market “feels good now, but it’s setting up for some volatility in July,” an asset manager said.

Shein wants to make more in India

Chinese e-commerce giant Shein will boost manufacturing in India, diversifying the company’s supply chain amid global trade tensions. The fast-fashion platform is partnering with Indian firm Reliance Retail to increase its number of local suppliers from 150 to 1,000 within a year, Reuters reported. Shein was banned in India in 2020, but returned this February through a deal with Reliance, which is controlled by Asia’s richest person, Mukesh Ambani. While Shein said its expansion is aimed at the Indian market, analysts said the move could still help buttress the company’s operations in the face of trade uncertainty. Other retailers like Walmart have similarly eyed increased production in India to diversify away from China.

Warner Bros. Discovery to split up

Warner Bros. Discovery will split into two companies, separating its streaming and studio operations from its cable networks. The media giant’s breakup, set to take effect by mid-2026, effectively reverses most of a 2022 merger that brought Discovery’s brands under the same roof as CNN and HBO. The move followed declining revenue and pressure from investors to grow the company’s streaming business and spin off the networks as cable news declines, The New York Times wrote. The split reflects a broader trend in media: Comcast is in the process of carving out much of its cable network business into a standalone company. Warner is similarly “betting that its parts are worth more than the whole,” The Wall Street Journal wrote.

China chatbots freeze features during exams

Major Chinese tech companies have frozen some of their artificial intelligence tools during the country’s fiercely competitive college entrance exam period. Chatbots run by Alibaba, Tencent, and Moonshot suspended photo-recognition services to discourage cheating during this week’s gaokao exams, Bloomberg reported. The annual gaokao can make or break academic futures, and with limited spots at Chinese universities, some regions are using AI surveillance tools in classrooms to flag “irregular behavior” such as whispers and frequent glances between students, a state media outlet reported. Fears of AI-driven cheating have upended education globally; in the US, sales of “blue books,” which require students to manually write out exam answers, have reportedly risen to counter AI-generated work.

Chatbots battle for world domination

The artificial intelligence model that powers ChatGPT lied and deceived its way to victory over other bots in a geopolitical strategy simulation. The technology site Every reimagined the strategy game Diplomacy, replacing human players with AI models competing as the seven powers of 1901 Europe battling for global domination. The experience could spawn a new benchmark for testing AI models, and provide insights on their trustworthiness: OpenAI’s latest model o3 was successful “because of its ability to deceive opponents,” while Anthropic’s Claude pushed for cooperation and a tied outcome, which isn’t allowed in the game, Every wrote. And the Chinese DeepSeek model dramatically changed its personality, bringing “vivid rhetoric,” including threats like, “Your fleet will burn in the Black Sea tonight.”

As electricity demand soars — driven by the rapid expansion of data centers and AI — pressure is mounting to scale secure and reliable energy resources.

Join Semafor for a timely conversation with Chairman Mark Christie, FERC; Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky.; and Aamir Paul, President of North American Operations at Schneider Electric, as they discuss how the new Administration plans to accelerate domestic energy production — and whether current infrastructure is up to the task. The discussion will also explore the innovative policies and technologies that could help close the growing supply-demand gap.

June 11, 2025 | Washington, DC | RSVP

Breakthrough in hunt for HIV cure

A method for delivering anti-HIV drugs into white blood cells raised hopes of a permanent cure for the disease. HIV, once a death sentence, can now be managed with antiretroviral drugs — but they must be taken for life, partly because the virus can hide inside blood cells and lie dormant until treatment stops. But research showed that mRNA can be made to enter those cells and instruct them to reveal the virus to the immune system. Scientists preached caution, saying that many promising technologies never reach clinical use, but one told The Guardian that “we have never seen anything close to as good as what we are seeing” in the hunt for an HIV cure.

Deep-sea fix for water scarcity

Deep-sea desalination plants could cut the spiraling cost of fresh water. Modern desalination plants work by forcing seawater through membranes too fine for salt to pass. That is more efficient than boiling, the previous method, but still needs energy to create pressure. In the deep ocean, pressure is easy to come by, so startups are sinking their plants 1,200 feet underwater. As long as the fresh water is continuously pumped out, the seawater will naturally be forced through the membrane. Only demo plants have been made so far but a commercial operation is scheduled to begin in 2026, The Wall Street Journal reported. New sources of fresh water are urgently needed: 30% of Europe faces water scarcity every year.

Beauty industry faces slowdown

The once-resilient global beauty industry is slowing in the face of economic uncertainty. The sector grew 7% a year from 2022 to 2024, still far outpacing the wider economy. But the unstable geopolitical environment that has hit consumer demand elsewhere is now threatening to slow the momentum of the $441 billion industry, Business of Fashion reported, estimating growth to drop to around 5% a year through 2030. Global brands are also facing growing competition from local players in markets such as the Middle East and Latin America, while Chinese sales may rebound from their recent slump but are unlikely to reach pre-pandemic levels. A pivot to e-commerce is also hurting brands that are yet to pivot away from brick-and-mortar stores.

June 10:

• Jair Bolsonaro appears before Brazil’s Supreme Court on charges of plotting a coup.
• Toyota Industries holds its annual shareholders meeting.
• Eight New York City museums along Fifth Avenue, the “Museum Mile,” offer free admission during the evening.

A French exhibition explores the significance behind artists’ own clothing from the Renaissance to the present. Running at the Louvre-Lens Museum, The Art of dressing “fill[s] a gap in the field,” despite its somewhat “catalog-like feel,” Le Monde wrote. Sartorial choices can be political, like donning a plain smock to signal allegiance to the working class, or balancing the desire to signify status while still conforming to the style of one’s peers. The exhibit highlights a tension that “confronts each of us when we get dressed,” the museum curator told Le Monde, “and one that artists make even more explicit.”

The US tech industry got played by the Musk-Trump bromance, and will be hurt by all of this for decades — but the biggest loser will be the average American, wrote Semafor’s Reed Albergotti.

“The cuts to basic research will reverberate for decades,” Albergotti wrote, while preventing current and prospective foreign scientists and technologists from coming to the US or studying in-country is a “self-inflicted wound that may never heal.”