Sierra Club Collapsed After Embracing DEI and Social Justice

Underwater cable investments boom

OpenAI’s tax credit push

Sierra Club implosion

First laid in 1850 (Dover to Calais telegraph), cables evolved through coaxial phone lines to today’s fiber optics carrying the modern internet.

Tech giants now control ~50% of capacity; Meta’s Project Waterworth—a 50,000 km, multi-billion-dollar, sole-owned cable—will span five continents and become the world’s longest when completed.

Amazon’s Fastnet links Maryland to Ireland with 320 Tbps capacity, enough to stream 12.5 million HD movies simultaneously.

Google has backed over 30 cables, including the new Sol route (U.S.–Bermuda–Azores–Spain); Microsoft is also a major investor.

TeleGeography forecasts $13 billion in new subsea projects from 2025–2027—nearly double the 2022–2024 spend—as AI models demand massive inter-data-center bandwidth.

⭐ Editor’s Pick: The Senate passed a procedural measure late Sunday to advance a bipartisan deal ending the 40-day government shutdown, with eight Democrats breaking ranks to secure the 60-vote threshold. (CNBC)

China's $52 trillion real estate bubble, history's largest, is bursting, threatening a third of GDP amid unfinished homes and decades of speculation. (BBG)

Corporate America posted an 11% median profit surge across the Russell 3000 in Q3, its fastest earnings growth since 2021. (FT)

Bessent said Trump's proposed $2,000 tariff "dividend" for most Americans could materialize through tax cuts already enacted in his landmark economic bill. (YF)

⭐ Editor’s Pick: Astera Labs' shares warrant doubling down due to promising pipeline of high-margin products poised for triple-digit expansion that justifies a 32.7x EV/sales premium, according to Seeking Alpha. (SA)

Motley Fool recommends doubling down on Meta citing the company’s AI-driven 26% revenue growth and undervalued 21x earnings despite capex. (MF)

Barron's analyst David Trainer recommends buying Crown Holdings shares, citing the beverage-packaging leader's undervalued 11.3x forward earnings amid robust demand for aluminum cans. (BAR)

Amprius Technologies reported a doubled customer base and 83% backlog expansion to $53.3 million, positioning the silicon-anode battery innovator for profitability and substantial growth in 2026, according to MarketBeat. (MB)

⭐ Editor’s Pick: BBC executives Tim Davie and Deborah Turness resigned amid accusations that a documentary deceptively edited Trump's January 6 speech. (SUN)

Rumble agreed to acquire Northern Data, a provider of high-performance computing and AI infrastructure, in a deal valued at up to $970 million. (WSJ)

Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy threatened to shutter the company's New York City office and relocate to New Jersey, citing his hatred for newly elected Mayor Zohran Mamdani. (FBN)

⭐ Editor’s Pick: Trump directed the Justice Department to investigate major U.S. meatpacking firms for alleged price-fixing and anticompetitive practices driving record beef prices. (WSJ)

China's commerce ministry suspended its export ban on critical metals gallium, germanium, and antimony to the U.S. until November 2026. (RTS)

Hungary's foreign minister claimed an indefinite U.S. sanctions waiver for Russian oil imports, secured by Orban in talks with Trump. (TST)

Gold prices surged back above $4,000 an ounce, climbing 1.4% to $4,053.72. (INV)

⭐ Editor’s Pick: Standard Chartered forecasts a $1 trillion exodus of deposits from emerging-market banks into stablecoins by 2028. (DEC)

Kazakhstan plans to launch a $1 billion crypto reserve fund by early 2026, seeded with seized assets and state mining proceeds. (TB)

Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao expressed surprise at Trump's pardon, insisting he had never met the president and denying any business ties to the Trump family. (CN)

Crypto hardware wallet provider Ledger is eyeing a 2026 initial public offering in New York. (CD)

A letter from Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane to White House OSTP Director Michael Kratsios on Oct. 27 sought broader AMIC eligibility to de-risk investments and unlock private funding.

Requested faster permitting and environmental reviews for AI projects to cut bottlenecks.

CFO Sarah Friar initially suggested government "backstop" for infrastructure loans at a WSJ event but clarified OpenAI seeks no such guarantees.

CEO Sam Altman said no government bailouts or loan guarantees for OpenAI data centers, but supports incentives for U.S. semiconductor fabs.

OpenAI projects $20B+ annualized revenue by end-2025, scaling to hundreds of billions by 2030.

⭐ Editor’s Pick: AI isn't displacing jobs at Amazon or elsewhere, but the tech giant's ballooning $118 billion in 2025 capital expenditures on OpenAI's ChatGPT and other large language models is fueling cost-cutting layoffs. (FM)

Microsoft AI leader Mustafa Suleyman unveiled the company’s "Humanist Superintelligence" vision, championing domain-specific systems that serve humanity and prioritize safety over general AGI. (VER)

Lloyds Banking Group unveiled the UK's first large-scale AI-powered financial assistant, featuring 24/7 personalized coaching, spending insights. (TFT)

University of Minnesota researchers are harnessing AI-driven machine learning to deliver personalized treatment recommendations with 80-90% accuracy in predicting prostate cancer. (STN)

⭐ Editor’s Pick: Surgeons performed the world's first remote robotic thrombectomy on human cadavers, paving the way for expert stroke clot removal across vast distances. (BBC)

Xpeng engineers sliced open the synthetic skin of its lifelike humanoid robot IRON during an AI event unveiling to expose artificial muscles and quash doubts about a human operator inside. (DM)

Robotic woks like RoboWok and TigaWok are revolutionizing fast-casual Chinese dining in Los Angeles, automating precise stir-fries. (LAT)

⭐ Editor’s Pick: Hegseth unveiled a sweeping overhaul of the Pentagon's acquisition system, replacing it with a nimble Warfighting Acquisition System to slash weapons-fielding timelines from years to as little as one. (FNN)

The U.S. Army unveiled its SkyFoundry initiative to produce at least one million drones over the next two to three years through public-private partnerships. (DN)

Blue Origin scrubbed the second launch of its New Glenn rocket on Saturday due to weather violations and ground equipment issues, rescheduling for Tuesday. (SPN)

⭐ Editor’s Pick: Tala Health, an AI healthcare startup under Titan Holdings, raised $100 million in seed funding led by Sofreh Capital at a $1.2 billion valuation. (FM)

DeepJudge, which develops customized search indexes for law firms, secured a $41 million Series A funding round at a $300 million valuation, led by Felicis and prior backer Coatue. (FOR)

AirOps, a startup developing AI tools to empower marketers, raised $40 million in Series B funding led by Greylock at a $225 million valuation. (FM)

Biometrics startup Incognia raised $31 million in a Series B round led by Bessemer Venture Partners. (PY)

Tax filings show the group ran annual surpluses of tens of millions from 2015–2019; revenue and spending broke even in 2020, then expenditures far outpaced income in 2022–2023.

Supporter base fell from ~4 million in 2019 to roughly 1.6 million today.

Under executive director Ben Jealous (ex-NAACP head), the club expanded into racial justice, labor rights, gay rights, and immigrant rights; one budget allocated the equivalent of 108 full-time staff to DEI versus two for Arctic refuge protection.

Longtime environmentalists were pressured to embrace the broader social-justice agenda; some felt investigated for “values misalignment” if they focused solely on conservation.

An internal “equity language guide” flagged terms like “vibrant,” “hardworking,” and “Americans” as problematic.

⭐ Editor’s Pick: Google, Microsoft, and Meta are suspending their annual diversity reports this year amid Trump's crackdown on DEI initiatives. (MNT)

Harvard's decision to bar funding for a conservative student magazine, citing concerns over its editorial independence, ignited a free-speech firestorm. (TAC)

Cornell University settled federal probes into campus antisemitism and DEI-driven admissions practices with the Trump administration, agreeing to a $30 million fine. (TDJN)

Actor Billy Bob Thornton lambasted Hollywood celebrities for foisting unstudied political views during award speeches, advising them to "accept your little award and f**k off." (MED)