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| This week’s world-famous-news-haiku-competition™ is about how Anthropic caught ‘rogue actors’ making bioweapons with Claude. Send me your entry — to haiku at cheddar dot com — by noon ET Thursday, for consideration by your Cheddar peers. (Don’t worry if you get a bounceback email. The mailbox is working, it’s just been inundated with haikus lately, thank goodness!) | Now, news! | Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor | | Table of Contents | | | What’s the Stock Market Up To, Eh? | $SPX ( ▼ 0.48% ) $DJI ( ▼ 0.29% ) $NDX ( ▲ 1.59% ) | | Companies Mentioned in Today’s Newsletter | $ANTHZZX ( ▲ 0.44% ) $OPEAZZX ( ▼ 0.07% ) $SPCX ( ▼ 2.02% ) $SFTBY ( ▼ 15.13% ) $INTC ( ▼ 5.59% ) $AMD ( ▼ 4.4% ) $ASML ( ▼ 7.25% ) $NVDA ( ▼ 3.36% ) $AMZN ( ▼ 1.26% ) $ORCL ( ▼ 3.65% ) $CSCO ( ▼ 1.85% ) | | Tech Stocks Slide Over 'AI Slowdown' |  | (Google) |
| Wall Street has survived inflation, soaring interest rates, and geopolitical chaos. Now, AI executives are asking to slow down before their creations destroy the world. | Anthropic $ANTHZZX ( ▲ 0.44% ) CEO Dario Amodei and other tech leaders want to slow the pace AI development. OpenAI's $OPEAZZX ( ▼ 0.07% ) Sam Altman and even Elon Musk $SPCX ( ▼ 2.02% ) agree. That prompted tech stocks to drop on Monday. The big question, of course, is whether slowing development means investors make less. In the short term, tech investor Softbank $SFTBY ( ▼ 15.13% ) fell shaply, along with chipmakers Intel $INTC ( ▼ 5.59% ) , AMD $AMD ( ▼ 4.4% ) , ASML $ASML ( ▼ 7.25% ) , and Nvidia $NVDA ( ▼ 3.36% ) . | Emmanuel Cau, head of European equities strategy at Barclays, told the Financial Times: “Fundamentally, the question that would come up is whether increased AI safety means slower and lower capex spending and subsequently what that means for global growth and earnings from an equity standpoint.” | Washington has a very different take on software guardrails. President Trump dismissed catastrophic AI warnings as a "HOAX." He posted that “the only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” He also called out Anthropic's CEO for “pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel.’” | Cheddar also has a big question: | | | | Quote of the Day | | | Bond Markets Further Rebuke Scott Bessent |  | (Google) |
| Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent doubled down on his “I am the house” chat about bond markets in an interview with Steve Bannon last week, dismissing skeptical traders as misguided “Bloomberg terminal bros” who were choosing their “pocket book over patriotism” rather than trusting his market vision. | Well, the terminal bros took the bet. On Monday, the 10-year Treasury yield surged briefly past 5 percent, hitting a “psychological ceiling” milestone recorded only once since the 2008 global financial crisis. That’s despite Bessent ordering the Treasury Department to aggressively buy back $5.2 billion of long-dated debt to artificially suppress borrowing costs. | An irony is that Bessent previously understood the ruthless power of sovereign debt markets. Back in June at the Economic Club of New York, he warned President Trump that “the bond market has taken out more governments than howitzers.” Yet, as a former hedge fund titan who built his wealth betting against foreign currencies, he apparently convinced himself that a $40 trillion national debt load could be tamed by a bit of political posturing. That turns out not to have been the case. | Bessent insists the market turmoil is just a “fever dream” driven by traders looking to create panic. But investors are staring down triple-digit oil prices, massive corporate debt for the AI boom, and exploding deficit spending. They want higher returns from lending to the U.S. Government. It turns out that no matter how high your title is, if you try to bully the bond market, the house doesn’t always win. | | | Amazon Suspends Plane Crash Contractor |  | (Reuters) |
| Amazingly, Amazon’s $AMZN ( ▼ 1.26% ) “Prime Air” jet which crashed in Miami this weekend, killing five people, was operated by a third-party called “21 Air.” Can you believe it? I’m not sure I can, because the words “Prime Air” were emblazoned across the side. Still, it’s Amazon. They’d treat everyone as a contractor if they could. | Amazon spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said: “Safety has always been our top priority, whether in our own operations or when we’re working with partners... we’ve decided to pause our operations with 21 Air.” | Cockpit voice recordings revealed a p |
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