Flagship

Marines deployed to LA

US President Donald Trump deployed 700 Marines to Los Angeles in response to ongoing protests, despite the objections of California’s governor. It is the first time in more than 30 years that Marines have been sent to a US city because of civil unrest. Governor Gavin Newsom sued the federal government over what he called an intrusion into his state’s sovereignty, saying the deployment was “to fulfill the deranged fantasy of a dictatorial President.” Trump is deliberately goading California, the US journalist Harold Meyerson wrote in the Financial Times, to “use the predictable backlash to seize more power.” It may work: Protesters have begun burning Waymo robotaxis, stark images that fuel narratives of a “lawless” city, The Verge reported.

RFK Jr removes vaccine experts

The US health secretary removed all members of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention panel on vaccines. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a noted vaccine skeptic, said the 17 experts on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices were being “retired”, arguing in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that “a clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science.” The committee offers recommendations to the CDC on which vaccines are used and who should receive them; RFK Jr argued that the panel was plagued with conflicts of interest and was simply a “rubber stamp” for vaccine approvals. The American Medical Association said the move would “fuel the spread of vaccine-preventable diseases,” noting the rise of measles in the US.

US pharma lead under threat

US preeminence in the pharmaceutical industry is under threat, two experts argued. Drug discovery was once led by private companies, but now half of new patents stem from academia, with US institutions accounting for 87% of those, Kevin Gardner and Michael Kinch wrote in STAT News. That dominance allows the US to attract the world’s best scientists. But US institutions beset by cuts and competition could soon find their own researchers being poached, Kinch and Gardner warned: 75% of scientists polled say they are considering leaving the US. Trump administration cuts means federal research faces cuts of up to 40%, while China is using its increasing clout to woo talent: It accounted for 33% of drug patents in Q3 2024.

Russia, Ukraine begin POW swap

Russia and Ukraine began an exchange of prisoners of war after direct talks in Istanbul made progress. The two sides agreed to each hand over at least 1,200 POWs and repatriate bodies of the deceased: The first tranche included prisoners aged under 25 and those who had been severely wounded. It’s one of just a few agreements negotiators have reached in the fraught discussions, which the US had hoped would lead to a ceasefire deal. In a sign of how far from peace the belligerents are, Russia launched another major drone strike overnight, hitting a hospital maternity ward in Odesa and parts of Kyiv, killing two, Ukrainian officials said.

Bond auctions test market appetite

Two major auctions this week will test market appetite for US government bonds in light of recent economic upheaval. Some $58 billion of three-year Treasurys will be sold today, followed by $22 billion of 30-year debt, with traders looking to balance the asset’s traditional haven status against concerns over soaring US debt levels and trade restrictions. American borrowing costs stand at multi-year highs, just as Washington appears set to swell national debt under a mammoth spending program backed by President Donald Trump. In particular, analysts are watching whether foreign investors will keep buying US bonds: Many are turning to securities issued by Italy, Greece, and Spain — former fiscal basket cases that have since become market darlings.

Brazil to issue yuan bond

Brazil will issue a Chinese yuan-denominated bond as it seeks to bolster ties with Beijing. Brasília is also keen to issue debt in euros and dollars, the country’s finance minister told the Financial Times, underscoring the government’s bid to shore up ties with the world’s biggest economies. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has in recent months traveled to both Beijing and Paris — where he sought to revive a once-moribund trade deal with the EU — as he tries to position Brazil as one of global trade war’s few winners. But Lula faces enormous domestic challenges: Soaring inflation has battered consumers, while the government’s debt and deficit remain sky-high, hammering Lula’s popularity ahead of elections next year.

Gulf countries expand in Africa

Gulf countries are expanding their footprint in Africa as they seek to deepen their economic ties to the continent. Gulf investors have moved beyond traditional sectors such as mining and agriculture, with the UAE backing a new digital incubator in Ghana, and Qatar mulling infrastructure investments in Tanzania, Semafor Gulf reported. The African Export-Import Bank estimates Gulf countries have invested as much as $100 billion in Africa in the decade to 2022, with the UAE now outpacing China, France, and the UK. However overall foreign direct investment into sub-Saharan Africa has fallen significantly from its peak, with 2023 levels remaining below those seen a decade before.

The global workforce is at an inflection point. New tech continues to impact how we work, and managers are struggling as organizations undergo major changes.

Join Rep. Jennifer McClellan (D-VA); Judy Gilbert, Chief People Officer at ŌURA; Maureen Conway, Executive Director of the Economic Opportunities Program at the Aspen Institute; Mark Rayfield, President and CEO of Saint-Gobain North America; and other leading voices for a conversation on workplace productivity, resilience, and well-being. The discussions will examine how leaders and policymakers are responding to rapidly shifting expectations around work.

Semafor will host newsmaking conversations in partnership with Gallup’s 2025 State of the Global Workplace report to explore new data on how employees and managers are navigating ongoing uncertainty in the global labor market.

June 12, 2025 | Washington, DC | RSVP

Huawei chips ‘one generation behind’

Huawei’s chipmaking abilities are not as advanced as Western officials fear, the company’s own chief executive said. In an interview with the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily, Ren Zhengfei said Huawei chips were at least a generation behind US-designed semiconductors. His remarks largely confirmed a report in The Information which said the chips regularly overheated when tested by Chinese tech firms. While Ren’s comments indicate the hurdles facing Huawei’s development, they tally with market leader Nvidia’s warnings of the intensifying competition its Chinese rival poses, arguing that years of US chip restrictions have spurred Beijing to focus on domestic innovation.

UK goes all-in on nuclear

The UK is going all-in on nuclear energy, after years of dithering. The government moved to back a major new plant with $15 billion in funding, and said Rolls-Royce would make the country’s first small modular reactors. Britain has not built a new nuclear plant since 1995, but one much-delayed, over-budget project capable of powering six million homes is expected to be completed this decade. The shift to nuclear comes as Westminster seeks reliable, zero-carbon energy to buttress intermittent renewables, having “run out of road” for ignoring its power supply problems, Politico reported. The US would do well to boost its own nuclear ambitions, three energy strategists wrote in Foreign Policy: A nuclear revival has bipartisan support, but regulatory hurdles remain.

Rise of ‘fine water’

A rise in “fine water,” which proponents claim is analogous to fine wine, has led to awards ceremonies, water sommeliers, and blind taste tests. Winners of the ninth annual Fine Waters awards in the US included “melt​ed snow that had been filtered through Peruvian volcanic rock” and dew gathered from a Tasmanian pine forest, The New York Times reported. Alcohol-shy young people are “increasingly skeptical of municipal tap water,” and “water influencers” are gathering followers. The movement apparently wants to “[elevate] water away from hydration” into an experience, as with wine, one enthusiast said, arguing that “if you think water’s just water, you are missing out.” A possible counterpoint would be that water — H₂O — is, in fact, just water.

• Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz is due to meet the acting Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof in Berlin.
• Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. publishes its monthly sales announcement.
• Alcoholics Anonymous celebrates its 90th anniversary.

The projected market for trading cards in 2030, according to research firms Global Information and QY Research — more than double its size in 2023. Growth in trading cards skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic as more people stayed home, and their value as keepsakes has also surged. Japanese cards are driving the market expansion, with franchises such as Pokémon particularly popular, as a decline in the number of young people in aging Japan forces firms to look abroad for new customers: “We have no choice,” one executive told Nikkei.

All His Spies: The Secret World of Robert Cecil by Stephen Alford. Cecil was Queen Elizabeth I’s spymaster, a secretive figure who maintained a network of informants across Tudor England. Alford’s book, nominated for the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography, is a “subtle, probing, interesting analysis” both of how the state was run and of how Alford achieved primacy in a tangled, dangerous political environment, the chair of the prize’s judging panel told Five Books. Buy All His Spies from your local bookstore.

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.”