Bezos Returns to the Helm: Takes Co-CEO Role at New AI Startup

Trump tariffs vindicated

Bezos’s AI startup

Media’s DEI retreat

The analysis spans 1870–2020, covering major tariff shifts in the U.S., U.K., and France, using partisan U.S. political divides (Republicans favoring high tariffs for Northern industry, Democrats opposing for Southern agriculture) as a "quasi-random" experiment to isolate effects from economic cycles.

A 4 percentage point tariff increase correlates with a 2 percentage point drop in CPI inflation and a 1 percentage point rise in unemployment, consistent across eras—including pre-1913 globalization, interwar years, and post-WWII—contradicting standard models predicting cost-push inflation.

Even in the low-variation post-1945 period, point estimates align, vindicating Trump's 2018 and 2025 tariffs against mainstream critiques; the paper notes scant prior empirical work on macro tariff effects, mostly limited to partial equilibria.

⭐ Editor’s Pick: The FAA will terminate its emergency air traffic restrictions on Monday morning, enabling a resumption of normal flight operations nationwide. (FBN)

Trump retroactively slashed tariffs on over 200 imported food staples including beef, coffee, bananas, and cocoa. (RTS)

Fed Governor Adriana Kugler resigned after disclosing improper individual stock trades that breached the central bank's ethics rules, triggering an internal probe. (WSJ)

New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) is weighing a corporate tax hike to 11.5% from 7.25%. (INV)

Bessent forecasted a substantial acceleration in the U.S. economy during the first or second quarter of 2026, driven by the Trump administration's success in taming Biden-era inflation. (X)

⭐ Editor’s Pick: Fiserv's shares have tumbled nearly 50% in two weeks to $63.42, yet analysts' $123.25 average price target signals robust upside potential, according to MarketBeat. (MB)

Nebius Group's post-earnings dip masks explosive 355% Q3 revenue growth to $146 million from Microsoft and Meta deals, positioning it for a strong AI-infrastructure rebound play, according to Seeking Alpha. (SA)

Investors are favoring resilient dividend stocks like Taiwan Hopax Chemicals and Japan's Sharing Technology for reliable payouts and financial strength, according to Simply Wall St. (SWS)

Vita Coco's stock merits a buy rating after a 25% year-to-date decline that has compressed its forward P/E to an attractive 18 times despite robust 12% organic sales growth in Q3, according to Barron’s. (BAR)

⭐ Editor’s Pick: Apple is ramping up succession planning for CEO Tim Cook, with hardware engineering chief John Ternus emerging as the frontrunner for the role. (FT)

Peter Thiel's Thiel Macro fund fully divested its $100 million Nvidia stake and slashed Tesla holdings by 76% in the third quarter, while pivoting to bolster positions in Apple and Microsoft. (INV)

Tech moguls, including Sam Altman, Jeff Bezos, and Larry Ellison, are advancing audacious plans to construct massive data centers in outer space. (WSJ)

Tesla is mandating that suppliers eliminate all China-sourced components from its U.S.-built vehicles. (WSJ)

Bill Ackman, the largest common shareholder in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, will unveil a comprehensive privatization blueprint for the mortgage giant. (FBN)

⭐ Editor’s Pick: A "Coin Laundry" probe unmasked a vast shadow economy where crypto enabled the laundering of billions in dirty money, from North Korean hacks to drug cartel proceeds and human trafficking rings. (CD)

Bitcoin slipped to $93,000, grappling with $3 billion in ETF outflows, the steepest since March. (DLN)

Anthony Scaramucci spearheaded a $220 million funding round for American Bitcoin, a crypto mining venture co-founded by Eric Trump and backed by Donald Trump Jr. (FM)

Steak 'n Shake, the pro-Bitcoin fast-food chain, unveiled plans to expand into El Salvador. (CT)

Project Prometheus has raised $6.2 billion, with Bezos personally contributing and sharing the co-CEO title with Vik Bajaj, a former Google X physicist who co-founded Verily and later ran Foresite Labs.

The company is developing AI that extends beyond chatbots to master physical-world tasks like robotics and scientific breakthroughs.

It has quietly hired nearly 100 researchers, many poached from OpenAI, DeepMind, and Meta, while keeping its founding date and headquarters under wraps.

This initiative positions Bezos in the booming race to apply AI to science and robotics, competing with players like Periodic Labs and surpassing recent mega-rounds such as Thinking Machines Lab’s $2 billion raise.

⭐ Editor’s Pick: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned that AI could eradicate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and propel U.S. unemployment to 10%–20% within one to five years. (CBS)

Huawei will unveil this week an AI software breakthrough lifting compute utilization to 70% by unifying Nvidia, Ascend, and third-party chips, nearly doubling industry norms amid U.S. sanctions. (PD)

UNM and Los Alamos researchers unveil THOR AI, which solves century-old physics equations—previously deemed computationally impossible—in mere seconds. (SCI)

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis is championing a pursuit of "profound" AI breakthroughs—such as Nobel-caliber protein modeling—over prosaic profit grabs like trading tools. (RTS)

Former Trump official Dean Ball remains bullish on the U.S. AI edge, citing dominance in frontier models, chips, and cloud infrastructure, plus a historical superiority in complex software systems and financial engineering. (HD)

⭐ Editor’s Pick: Stellantis forged a global alliance with NVIDIA, Uber, and Foxconn to pioneer Level 4 autonomous robotaxis. (MOP)

Russian airline Pobeda Airlines tested a humanoid robot named Volodya on its Ulyanovsk-Moscow route as a cabin-crew assistant. (IE)

Kubota unveiled its KATR100 autonomous field robot, designed for precise seeding, fertilizing, and weeding in orchards and vineyards, boasting 99.9% accuracy. (IVT)

⭐ Editor’s Pick: China's rapid advances in AI-driven drone swarms pose a grave threat to U.S. military superiority, according to an investigation. (NI)

A White House memo accused Alibaba of supplying technology to Chinese military operations targeting the U.S. (FT)

The U.S. Army unveiled sweeping acquisition reforms consolidating its program offices into six streamlined portfolio executives to slash procurement timelines. (DS)

France unveiled the first images of its next-generation ASN4G nuclear-armed supersonic cruise missile, designed for hypersonic speeds above Mach 5 and extended range. (TWZ)

⭐ Editor’s Pick: Sakana AI secured $135 million in Series B funding from Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group and other investors, catapulting its valuation to around $2.6 billion and crowning it Japan's most valuable unicorn. (NIK)

Japanese self-driving AI startup Turing secured ¥15.3 billion ($100 million) in funding led by Denso Corp. with backing from other investors, valuing the firm at $388 million. (BBG)

Biotech startup Lambic secured $100 million in an oversubscribed round led by Abingworth to propel clinical trials of its AI-discovered small-molecule cancer drugs. (MC)

U.S. biotech startup Endolith secured $13.5 million in seed funding led by Squadra Ventures. (MIN)

NBC recently shuttered its dedicated Black, Asian American, Latino, and LGBTQ+ reporting verticals, while CBS eliminated its entire Race and Culture unit.

At Teen Vogue, its only two Black women writers were laid off as the title folded into Vogue, prompting editor-in-chief Versha Sharma to step down.

Across the industry, one-third of the roughly 170 race-and-equality journalism roles created between mid-2020 and 2024 have vanished.

⭐ Editor’s Pick: A record 74% of Americans now believe free speech is trending in the wrong direction, up from 64% in July, according to FIRE. (FR)

South Korea's conviction of a YouTuber for "defamation" over a satirical video mocking President Yoon Suk Yeol serves as a cautionary tale for America, where pushing to criminalize "disinformation" risks eroding the First Amendment, a Washington Post op-ed warned. (WAPO)

UK Technology Secretary Liz Kendall pressed regulator Ofcom to expedite enforcement of the Online Safety Act, delayed a year by lawsuits from platforms like 4chan. (RTN)