Mind-Reading AI Predicts What Humans Will Do Next

Welcome back and happy Independence Day! 🇺🇸

Here’s your must-read news for this morning:

• Congress passes BBB

• Mind-reading AI

• Mamdani college controversy

I’ve got all the details for you, so let’s dive in.

— Josh

MARKETS

🏛️ Trump Scores Landmark Victory After Congress Passes "Big, Beautiful Bill"

The Scoop: Congress passed President Donald Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” Thursday afternoon, culminating in a 218-214 House vote, sending the sweeping legislation to the president’s desk for a Friday signing.

The Details:

• Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Trump secured GOP support after overnight negotiations, with only Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) voting against the bill.

• The bill extends Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, eliminates taxes on tips and Social Security, raises the SALT deduction cap, and repeals Biden’s green energy credits.

• The legislation allocates billions for border security and deportations, defense, including shipbuilding and a “Golden Dome” missile system, and expands oil, coal, and gas production.

• The bill raises the debt limit by $5 trillion to avert a federal default.

• Democrats, led by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), used delay tactics, including a lengthy speech decrying the 3:28 a.m. debate start.

What’s Next: Trump will sign the bill at the White House Friday at 5 p.m., with Air Force jets marking the occasion. Its passage marks a major victory for the president’s agenda.

Markets Roundup

🏦 Economy & Policy

• ⭐ Editor’s Pick: U.S. job growth in June surpassed expectations, with nonfarm payrolls rising by 147,000, exceeding the 110,000 forecast. (CNBC)

• New orders for U.S.-manufactured goods jumped 8.2% in May, driven by robust demand for aircraft and sustained business investment in equipment. (RTS)

• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that approximately 100 countries are expected to face a 10% reciprocal tariff rate, anticipating a surge of trade deals before a July 9 deadline when tariffs could significantly escalate. (BT)

• The U.S. and EU are nearing a high-level “framework” trade agreement to avoid 50% tariffs on all EU exports, set to take effect next Wednesday. (TG)

• Indonesia will propose increased purchases of aircraft and wheat, alongside near-zero tariffs on key U.S. exports like agricultural products in tariff negotiations with the U.S. (RTS)

• Pakistan is aggressively pitching rare earths and Bitcoin mining opportunities to the U.S. to dodge potential 29% tariffs. (FT)

📈 Stock Market

• ⭐ Editor’s Pick: U.S. stocks hit record highs Thursday, with the S&P 500 up 0.8% for its fourth peak in five days, the Dow rising 344 points, or 0.8%, and the Nasdaq gaining 1%. (BNN)

• India’s Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has temporarily barred Jane Street Group from the country’s securities market and frozen $566.3 million in alleged illicit gains, citing market manipulation. (CNBC)

• Ambiq Micro, a designer of ultra-low power chips for AI computing, filed with the SEC to raise up to $75 million in an initial public offering. (RC)

🏢 Industry

• ⭐ Editor’s Pick: TSMC plans to delay its Japan chip plant project and prioritize U.S. operations to mitigate U.S. tariffs. (WSJ)

• Soham Parekh, an Indian software engineer exposed for secretly working multiple startup jobs simultaneously, blamed his actions on severe financial pressures and expressed remorse, admitting, “I’m not proud of what I’ve done.” (TOI)

• Thoma Bravo has agreed to acquire Olo Inc., a restaurant software provider, for approximately $2 billion in an all-cash deal to take the company private. (BBG)

• Cluely CEO Roy Lee revealed that his AI startup's ARR has surged to approximately $7 million following the launch of its new enterprise product last week. (TC)

• Sky Elements, a leading drone show operator, is staging over 35 Independence Day performances across states from California to Oregon, using 100 to 500 AI-powered drones per event to enhance July Fourth fireworks displays. (QTZ)

💵 Energy & Commodities

• ⭐ Editor’s Pick: White House envoy Steve Witkoff is scheduled to meet Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Oslo next week to resume nuclear negotiations. (AX)

• China has refrained from purchasing U.S. crude oil for three consecutive months, the longest such hiatus since 2018, as it significantly increases imports from Russia and Iran. (OP)

• Saudi Aramco is exploring the sale of up to five gas-fired power plants, potentially raising around $4 billion, as part of a strategic push to boost profits and dividends to the government. (RTS)

• The Treasury Department announced new sanctions aimed at disrupting Iran’s covert oil smuggling network and Hezbollah’s financial operations. (AN)

• CORE POWER, ABS, and Athlos Energy formed a consortium to explore floating nuclear power plants for Mediterranean islands, ports, and coastal areas. (SPL)

🌕 Crypto

• ⭐ Editor’s Pick: House Republicans have designated the week of July 14 as "Crypto Week" to advance the Senate-passed GENIUS stablecoin bill, the crypto market structure legislation, and a bill blocking Federal Reserve-issued digital currencies. (DC)

• JD.com and Ant Group are pressing China's central bank to greenlight a yuan-backed stablecoin in Hong Kong, aiming to challenge USDT's dominance in global trade. (FX)

• The Open Platform (TOP), a key developer for Telegram’s blockchain, secured $28.5 million in an extended Series A round led by Ribbit Capital, valuing the crypto startup at $1 billion. (TB)

• Two Bitcoin wallets, dormant since receiving 10,000 BTC each in 2011, transferred their combined $2.18 billion stash to new addresses, sparking speculation about the owners’ motives. (CR)

• Bitmine Immersion Technologies, led by Fundstrat’s Thomas Lee, soared over 3,000% in a week after raising $250 million to build an ether treasury. (CD)
  

TECH

🧠 Mind-Reading AI Predicts What Humans Will Do Next With Shocking Accuracy

The Scoop: Researchers have unveiled Centaur, an AI that predicts human behavior across psychological experiments with unprecedented accuracy, outperforming decades-old specialized models and raising questions about privacy and cognition.

The Details:

• Centaur generates human-like behavior in simulations, matching human performance in exploration tasks with uncertainty-guided decision-making.

• Trained on Psych-101, a dataset of 160 experiments with 10 million decisions from 60,000 people, Centaur captures patterns in memory, learning, risk-taking, and moral choices.

• Built on Meta’s Llama 3.1, Centaur was fine-tuned in five days to predict behavior, even in new scenarios like altered experiment narratives or added choice options.

• Centaur outperformed legacy cognitive models in nearly every test and mirrored human brain activity, showing stronger neural correlations than its untrained base.

What’s Next: The team aims to expand Centaur’s dataset to include diverse populations and domains like social psychology, envisioning a unified model of human cognition. Ethical concerns about privacy and manipulation loom as the AI’s predictive power grows.

Tech Roundup

🧠 AI

• ⭐ Editor’s Pick: Ilya Sutskever will assume the CEO role at Safe Superintelligence, the AI startup he launched last year, with Daniel Levy now serving as president, following Meta's poaching of its former CEO Daniel Gross. (CNBC)

• Google has globally launched its Veo 3 Fast text-to-video model, exclusively for Gemini Pro subscribers. (TD)

• Elon Musk announced significant improvements to xAI's Grok, saying that users should notice enhanced performance when querying the AI. (X)

• Google's AI Overviews boosted zero-click news searches to 69% in May 2025 from 56% a year earlier, cutting news site traffic. (EM)

• Billionaire Mark Cuban said that the world’s first trillionaire could be “just one dude in the basement” who excels at building with artificial intelligence. (CNBC)

🤖 Hardware & Robotics

• ⭐ Editor’s Pick: Boston Dynamics unveiled its 6-foot-2, 330-pound Atlas humanoid robot, developed with DARPA funding to handle hazardous disaster-relief operations. (DH)

• Kawasaki and Foxconn have partnered to develop humanoid robots for nursing tasks, with plans to expand their application to other sectors. (NIK)

• TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is recruiting AI talent to develop a “next-generation general-purpose robot.” (SCMP)

• A “robot lollipop lady” designed to assist children in crossing roads was tested in Bratislava, Slovakia, as part of a pilot program exploring how automation can enhance urban safety. (SS)

• Swiss researchers are developing robot drones with tails inspired by flying squirrels to enhance maneuverability and stability. (IE)

🚀 Defense & Space

• ⭐ Editor’s Pick: China could deploy a fleet of at least 50 H-20 stealth bombers capable of delivering hundreds of nuclear warheads within just over a decade, according to military analysts. (WM)

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced a landmark deal with Swift Beat, founded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, to co-produce hundreds of thousands of drones. (RFE)

• Northrop Grumman’s Palmdale facility delivers an F-35 center fuselage every 30 hours, enhancing production efficiency for the stealth fighter’s variants. (IE)

• The U.S. Army is testing attack drones in artillery units, pairing first-person view drones with traditional systems in the 25th Infantry Division to bridge a mid-range gap between long-range weapons and closer fires. (DO)

• U.S. Space Force awarded Boeing a $2.8 billion contract to build and deliver the first two satellites, with options for two more, to assure continuity of the Nuclear Command and support strategic warfighters. (DN)

💰 Venture Capital & Deals

• ⭐ Editor’s Pick: Digital bank startup Erebor is seeking at least $225 million in funding at a $2 billion valuation, supported by Founders Fund, 8VC, and Anduril CEO Palmer Luckey. (BI)

• Castelion, a startup developing hypersonic weapons, is seeking $350 million Series B funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Altimeter Capital. (TC)

• Ondo Finance and Pantera Capital have launched a $250 million fund to invest in real-world asset tokenization projects through equity stakes and tokens. (AX)

• UK parcel delivery startup Hived, which uses AI to manage its logistics network, announced that it has raised $42 million in a Series B round led by NordicNinja. (SA)

• Qedma, an Israeli startup specializing in quantum noise resilience technology, secured $26 million in a Series A funding round led by Glilot Capital Partners. (CAL)

FREEDOM

🤔 Zohran Mamdani Identified as Asian and African American on Columbia Application

The Scoop: Zohran Mamdani, a Queens lawmaker and the Democratic socialist frontrunner for New York City mayor, faces controversy after a report revealed he identified as both Asian and African American on his 2009 Columbia University application application, prompting accusations of exploiting affirmative action.

The Details:

• Mamdani, a 33-year-old Muslim immigrant born in Uganda, checked “Asian” and “Black or African American” on his Columbia application, which was rejected, and wrote “Ugandan” to reflect his background.

• The New York Times obtained the application from a hacked Columbia database, part of a cyberattack targeting 2.5 million student records to probe affirmative action practices.

• Critics, including the state Conservative Party chair and Columbia alumni, accused Mamdani of fraud, alleging he misrepresented his race to gain an admissions edge, despite his privileged background.

• A new American Pulse poll shows Mamdani leading the mayoral race with 35% support, ahead of Andrew Cuomo (29%), Curtis Sliwa (16%), Eric Adams (14%), and Jim Walden (1%).

What’s Next: Mamdani’s campaign, buoyed by a progressive platform of free buses and child care, faces scrutiny over his college application and anti-Israel comments as he heads into the November general election against Adams, Sliwa, and potentially Cuomo.

Freedom Roundup

🏛️ Economy and Tech

• ⭐ Editor’s Pick: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) placed 139 employees on administrative leave after they signed a "declaration of dissent" criticizing the Trump administration’s policies. (FOX)

• Billionaire Bill Ackman endorsed New York City Mayor Eric Adams to defeat Zohran Mamdani in the mayoral election. (X)

• Editor’s Pick: ASML, Mistral AI, and over 40 European firms have called on the EU to postpone its AI Act by two years, warning that the regulations threaten the continent’s competitiveness. (BBG)

• The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will expedite the environmental and safety review of TerraPower’s Bill Gates-backed nuclear plant in Wyoming by seven months, aiming for completion by 2030. (WF)

💬 Free Speech & Woke Retreat

• ⭐ Editor’s Pick: State Department announced it has eliminated DEI criteria from foreign service officer hiring and promotions, prioritizing "fidelity" to U.S. policy. (FOX)

• An audit found that the Kentucky Department of Education squandered funds on ineffective DEI programs, failing to narrow racial achievement gaps. (NR)

• Harvard Graduate School of Education has laid off Chief Diversity Officer and closed its DEI office. (WGBH)

• Former Amazon Studios Roy Price said Hollywood’s embrace of politically correct narratives has gutted comedy films and alienated audiences, driving record-low viewership. (CBN)

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