The U.S. government will levy a 15% fee on some of Nvidia's and AMD's chip sales to China as a condition of granting them export licenses to sell in the country, a Trump administration official confirmed to Axios.
Why it matters: While export controls for sensitive products are nothing new, charging a company 15% of its revenue to sell a particular product to a particular country is unprecedented.
Days after the administration confirmed plans to start selling the government's stakes in mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, President Trump suggested they might be combined and trade as "MAGA."
The big picture: Fannie and Freddie are crucial to the mortgage market, which is why the government rescued them and put them under conservatorship in 2008.
David Sacks — famed tech founder & investor, co-host of the "All-In Podcast" ("The Rainman") and now White House special adviser for AI & crypto — declared Saturday on X that "Doomer narratives were wrong" about AI.
Why it matters: The big takeaway from Sacks' post is that the fear of one AI frontier model dominating all now looks far-fetched, since high-performing competing models are diffusing power.
"The AI race is highly dynamic so this could change," Sacks wrote. "But right now the current situation is Goldilocks":
As Google Trendsdatasuggests, people aren't necessarily rallying around a particular song of the summer this year, as they have in the past.
The big picture: If last summer boasted an embarrassment of refrains — "that's that me espresso," "they not like us," "good luck, babe"— this summer is all crickets, according to Google. Unless you're on TikTok.
Donald Trump received a glass disc with a 24-karat gold base from Apple CEO Tim Cook on Wednesday, as the tech titan announced a $100 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing facilities.
Why it matters: The gold bauble is the latest lavish gift presented to Trump in an attempt to curry favor with the president this year, raising both ethical and legal concerns.
Tourism is down by roughly 11% in Las Vegas this year, with visitor numbers, convention attendance and hotel occupancy all lower than usual, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.
Why it matters: Las Vegas' financial health, with its large gambling market attractive to those with disposable income, is typically considered an indicator of the broader U.S. economy's strength.
The 60th anniversary of a shocking uprising in Los Angeles, which foretold similar unrest in cities throughout the 1960s and 1970s, is being marked with calls to revisit solutions to poverty outlined in a famous report.
The big picture: Activists and scholars have unveiled an updated edition of the 1968 Kerner Report that recommends a slew of initiatives to combat inequality, racial injustice and child poverty — issues stubbornly still here.
Former CNN anchor Jim Acosta's interview with an AI-generated avatar of a Parkland shooting victim has reignited debate on the ethics of creating deepfakes of the dead.
Why it matters: As cheap and free generative AI tools become capable of replicating voices, faces and personalities, some people are adding clauses to their wills to prevent the creation of their digital likeness after they die.
