Category: Semafor

Chinese AI lab Z.ai is releasing an open-weight model on Friday that it says rivals frontier Western AI in cybersecurity capabilities, reigniting debates over whether advanced technologies should be publicly accessible. After several hacking incidents, AI firms are rethinking how they test powerful models: Some are considering disconnecting tests from ...

US President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran’s economy is doomed to fail, a former member of his Iran negotiating team argued. Washington’s effort to sanction countries doing business with Tehran “poses a greater threat to US credibility” than to the regime’s economy, Nate Swanson wrote in Foreign Affairs. ...

CIA Director John Ratcliffe was in Moscow Tuesday for unannounced talks with the Kremlin, in the first such visit by a US spy chief since 2021. Washington asked Kyiv to pause strikes during Ratcliffe’s four-hour trip. While details of his meetings weren’t released, the talks could have touched on a ...

The chorus of voices criticizing US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s bond buyback strategy grew Tuesday, with the harshest rebuke yet coming from a former mentor. “Governments defending prices against fundamentals always lose,” investor Stanley Druckenmiller argued — with the help of AI — in The Wall Street Journal. “The only ...

Shares in Chinese robot maker Unitree have retreated more than 45% from their debut peak, inflicting pain on retail investors and prompting bubble fears. “Investors were carried ​away by the technology revolution narrative,” a Beijing asset manager told Reuters. China’s newest corporate star, Unitree’s founder has downplayed expectations, saying the ...

The capacity of gas-fired power plants currently being planned to supply power to US data centers nearly doubled in the first half of 2026. A new study from Global Energy Monitor counted 189 gigawatts of gas-fired capacity in development in the first half of 2026. But it remains unclear if ...

Denmark’s state-owned export bank lent €100 million to build a large new wind farm in Ukraine. The project, which will use turbines from the Danish manufacturer Vestas and be operated by the Ukrainian agricultural company Kernal for both its own use and power sales to the country’s battered grid, stems ...

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman concluded a visit to France with a raft of agreements covering many of his top priorities including AI, geopolitics, and even his favorite pastime: video games. France has become the fourth-largest investor in Saudi Arabia, and MBS is returning the favor: A €6 billion ...

Kuwait is advancing its citizenship crackdown under new rules introduced Sunday that bar naturalized citizens from voting and replace paper nationality certificates with electronic ones. Naturalized citizens could previously vote once they had held citizenship for 30 years, though they could not run for office or be appointed to parliament. ...

A viral bakery in London has fired a warning shot at an alleged copycat in Khobar, whose owners had built an almost like-for-like replica in the Saudi port city. “It has recently come to our attention that a bakery is operating using our brand name and logo in Saudi Arabia,” ...