Welcome back to your daily memorandum talking tech, business, AI, markets, and more. 🗞️

In today’s edition, we are tackling the following:

🔧 Elon Musk unveils chip manufacturing plans for SpaceX & Tesla.
🎮 AI-dominated gaming's biggest developer conference, not the actual games.
⚠️ Trump's Strait of Hormuz strategy raises questions about U.S. war preparation.
💵 The dollar rises as escalating Middle East conflict spurs haven demand.
🎯 Iran unsuccessfully targeted the Diego Garcia military base, the U.K. confirms.

TECHNOLOGY

• Elon Musk unveils chip manufacturing plans for SpaceX & Tesla (WSJ)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, Fortune, TOI}}

  • Musk revealed plans for a 'Terafab' chip facility near Tesla's Austin headquarters & gigafactory.

  • He says the fab is necessary as semiconductor makers can't meet his AI & robotics demands.

  • The facility aims to support 100-200 gigawatts of computing power annually, plus a terawatt of computing power in space.

• AI dominated gaming's biggest developer conference, but not the actual games (The Verge)
  ^{_{More: CNET, Yahoo!}}

  • NVIDIA's DLSS 5 sparked backlash after AI altered character models without developers' input.

  • 52% of developers now consider generative AI harmful to the industry, up from 30% last year.

  • At GDC, AI was widely discussed but rarely featured in games shown on the floor.

• Cursor admits its new coding model was built on Moonshot AI's Kimi (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: Business Insider, Yahoo!}}

  • Cursor's Composer 2 was revealed to be built on Kimi 2.5, a model from the Chinese firm Moonshot AI.

  • Cursor's VP acknowledged the open-source base but said 75% of the compute came from its own training.

  • The revelation surprised many, given Cursor's $29.3B valuation & over $2B in annualized revenue.

BUSINESS

• Trump's shifting Strait of Hormuz strategy raises questions about U.S. war preparation (AP)
  ^{_{More: CNA, Economic Times}}

  • Trump has cycled through diplomacy, sanctions relief, & direct threats as Hormuz tensions escalate rapidly.

  • His latest ultimatum gives Iran 48 hours to open the strait, or face destroyed power plants.

  • Critics, including Sen. Ed Markey, say Trump lacks an exit plan & risks committing war crimes.

• The dollar rises as escalating Middle East conflict spurs haven demand (Reuters)
  ^{_{More: Economic Times, Investing.com}}

  • Escalating U.S.-Iran threats over the weekend dimmed hopes for a ceasefire & rattled markets.

  • The IEA warned that the current energy crisis is worse than both the 1970s oil shocks combined.

  • Central banks turned hawkish as surging oil prices stoked inflation fears across global markets.

• Trump threatens to deploy ICE agents to airports over DHS shutdown (WSJ)
  ^{_{More: CNBC, Forbes, NPR}}

  • Trump warned he will move ICE agents into U.S. airports as early as Monday if DHS funding stalls.

  • The president urged Democrats to immediately agree on DHS funding, telling ICE agents to "GET READY."

  • Separately, Musk offered to personally cover TSA workers' pay during the government shutdown.

MARKETS

WORLD

• Iran unsuccessfully targeted the Diego Garcia military base, the U.K. confirms (Politico)
  ^{_{More: CNBC, BBC, NBC}}

  • Iran fired two ballistic missiles at the joint U.S.-U.K. Diego Garcia base but missed.

  • The U.K. called Iran's attacks reckless, noting they threaten British interests & regional allies.

  • Israel warned Iran now has missiles capable of reaching London, Paris, & Berlin.

• Tencent integrates WeChat with OpenClaw AI agent amid China tech battle (Reuters)
  ^{_{More: Straits Times, Economic Times, AInvest}}

  • Tencent's ClawBot appears as a WeChat contact, connecting over 1B users directly to OpenClaw.

  • OpenClaw, an open-source AI agent, has rapidly gained traction for automating everyday digital tasks.

  • Alibaba & Baidu have also launched competing AI agent platforms in recent weeks.

• A French Navy officer accidentally leaked his aircraft carrier's location via Strava (NY Post)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, BBC}}

  • A French officer's public Strava run revealed the location of the Charles de Gaulle carrier in the Middle East.

  • Strava accounts are public by default, exposing workout routes & creating recurring military security risks.

  • In 2024, Le Monde similarly tracked President Macron's location through his bodyguards' public Strava data.

FUTURISM

• The SEC drops its four-year investigation into EV startup Faraday Future (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: Yahoo!, Investing.com}}

  • The SEC closed its Faraday Future probe despite staff recommending enforcement action last year.

  • The dismissal reflects a historic SEC slowdown, with only four cases initiated in fiscal 2025.

  • Investigators examined whether Faraday Future misled investors & faked early EV sales in 2023.

• An analyst warns against using Microsoft's Copilot AI on Friday afternoons (Futurism)
  ^{_{More: Yahoo!}}

  • Gartner analyst Dennis Xu warned companies to ban Copilot on Fridays, as fatigued workers skip fact-checking.

  • Copilot has been caught hallucinating police reports, exposing passwords, & leaking confidential emails.

  • Xu noted Copilot amplifies existing data-sharing risks by making over-shared documents far more accessible.

• NVIDIA's GTC featured a robot snowman, Olaf from Disney's 'Frozen' (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: Yahoo!, FindArticles}}

  • NVIDIA's GTC showcased trillion-dollar projections, new graphics tech, & a robot Disney snowman.

  • The Olaf robot demo faltered when his microphone was cut after he began rambling.

  • Analysts debated whether Huang's bold OpenClaw push will prove prescient or quickly forgotten.

• Explore the essential startup reading database*

  • Learning from the best is how you become the best. We've curated a list of top-notch articles, blogs, and readings essential for startup founders.

  • And here's the kicker: we've organized it all in a user-friendly Notion database for easy access and tracking. Double win!

  • As aspiring leaders and innovators, this list serves as a bridge to absorbing the knowledge that has propelled others to success.

CONTENT

• Jessica Fain shares how to influence executives without playing politics (Lenny's Podcast)

  • Fain explains why great ideas often fail to get buy-in from senior executive decision-makers.

  • Executives optimize globally while most employees pitch locally, creating a fundamental misalignment in priorities.

  • As AI grows, Fain argues that human influence & persuasion skills will matter even more.

• Figma's CRO Shaunt Voskanian explains why he doesn't believe in sales quotas (20VC)

  • Voskanian scaled Figma's sales org to over $1B in ARR & more than 400 people.

  • He argues focus & specialization, not quotas, are the keys to building a great sales team.

  • Voskanian gives reps lower quotas for hard strategic work, prioritizing long-term deals over short-term targets.

• Terence Tao shares how the world's top mathematician uses AI (Dwarkesh Patel)

  • Kepler's discovery of the laws of planetary motion shows that scientific verification loops can span decades or even millennia.

  • Copernicus's heliocentric model was initially less accurate than Ptolemy's, yet survived through judgment & heuristics.

  • Tao argues AI's tight feedback loops may not capture the messy, long-term nature of real discovery.

EXTRAS

• Apple CEO candidate John Ternus is well-liked & improved product quality (Bloomberg)
  ^{_{More: MacRumors, NewsBytes}}

  • Ternus, Apple's hardware chief since 2021, is widely seen as the leading candidate to succeed Cook.

  • He is credited with reversing declining product quality & expanding Apple's overall hardware lineup.

  • Cook recently handed Ternus oversight of Apple's design teams, signaling growing trust & responsibility.

• It has been 20 years since Jack Dorsey's first tweet (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: Yahoo!, MEXC}}

  • Dorsey posted the first tweet on March 21, 2006, reading "just setting up my twittr."

  • X, formerly Twitter, has faced controversy under Musk, including Grok's harmful AI-generated content.

  • Dorsey's original tweet sold as an NFT for $2.9M but has since plummeted in value.

• Italy's justice referendum becomes a high-stakes test for Premier Giorgia Meloni (AP)
  ^{_{More: Washington Post, Yahoo!}}

  • Meloni's judicial reform referendum has unified center-left opposition & sharpened Italy's political divisions.

  • The vote is seen as a broader judgment on Meloni's leadership ahead of next year's elections.

  • Turnout hit 38% after day one, the highest ever recorded at that point for a two-day referendum.

AND MORE

• A publisher pulls horror novel 'Shy Girl' over AI content concerns.

• China's emotional economy is growing as consumers buy experiences rather than things.

• Roko’s Basilisk skips the buzz words and cuts straight to what moves markets, products, and careers.

• AI tokens are emerging as the new signing bonus for top talent.

• Online age checks are here, and a VPN crackdown could come next.

• Inside Amazon's Trainium lab, the chip is winning over Anthropic, OpenAI, & Apple.

• The new MacBook Pro remains impressively fast by any measure.