Las Vegas has long been known as Sin City for its 24/7 access to all kinds of indecencies, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write in a "Behind the Curtain" column.

• America is quickly becoming Sin Nation. Or, as President Trump put it while discussing prediction markets in the Oval Office last month: "The whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino."

Why it matters: Once-forbidden vices — weed, gambling and porn — are no longer confined to back alleys or the desert.

• They're ubiquitous, digital and spreading at a pace that has outstripped the country's social and regulatory guardrails.
• Governments didn't turn a blind eye to most of this behavior. They encouraged it. We're scaling sin in real time.

This shift in American governance, both at the national and local levels, didn't play out all at once — or get kick-started by a singular moment. It happened in a thousand small ones, one app launch and regulatory retreat at a time.

• New York Times columnist Ross Douthat made sense of our "more immoral society" this way: "As our laws have become less moralistic and more libertarian, addictive behaviors have increased."
• Substacker Derek Thompson points out that in a 2023 Wall Street Journal poll, Americans said patriotism, religion, having children and community all mattered less to them than in years prior. The only metric that mattered more? Money.

The biggest factors that ushered in our more addicted, money-hungry America:

🌿 1. Smoking weed. Not long ago, you might've gone to jail for using pot, much less selling it. Now, it's legal for a vast swath of Americans and serves as a primary tax engine for nearly half the country.

• 24 states plus D.C. have legalized recreational marijuana, with 40 states allowing medical use.
• The Trump administration ordered the reclassification of medical marijuana as a Schedule III drug last month, moving it from alongside heroin and ecstasy to the same category as steroids and ketamine.
• States have collected nearly $25 billion in cannabis tax revenue since the first legal sales began in 2014, according to the Marijuana Policy Project — with 2024 alone setting a record at $4.4 billion. California alone topped $1 billion.

🎰 2. Betting. There's no reason to visit a sportsbook when you have one in your pocket. That lack of friction is destroying the lives — and arguably the morality — of countless young Americans, even as it fills state coffers.

• More than half of American men ages 18–49 have an account with an online sportsbook, per a Siena poll out last month. 63% of bettors said they'd bet $100 or more in one day. 31% reported having someone express concern about their sports betting, up from 23% last year.
• A UCLA study found bankruptcy and debt collection rose in states that legalized sports betting — with young men in low-income areas hit hardest.
• Prediction markets have raised the stakes beyond sports. They're not technically gambling — that's what their founders say, even as the public and some state prosecutors disagree. But their purview goes far beyond prop bets: You can now put money on chaos and destruction, gamifying the outcome of war. The money at stake is huge: April saw a 1,200% year-over-year increase in trading volume for Polymarket and Kalshi combined, per The Wall Street Journal.

👀 3. Porn — and its AI-generated shadow. Online pornography was already ubiquitous before AI. Now, deepfake technology has created an entirely new category of harm that barely existed two years ago.

• The average age of first exposure to online pornography is now 12, with 15% of kids first seeing it at 10 or younger, according to a Common Sense Media survey of 1,300+ teens.
• AI is making it worse: Deepfake files online exploded from 500,000 in 2023 to an estimated 8 million by the end of last year, with up to 98% being nonconsensual, according to cybersecurity firm DeepStrike.
• Trump signed the TAKE IT DOWN Act last year, criminalizing the posting of nonconsensual intimate images, including AI deepfakes. But the law can't keep pace: A company named in a recent lawsuit claims to create 1,000 AI-generated "influencers" per week.

🛰️ The big picture: This is what happens when all three of the tectonic shifts we've told you about — in governance, in the post-news era, in the age of AI — collide at once.

• AI is supercharging the supply, creating deepfakes at a pace no law can match. Our shattered information ecosystem means there's no common authority left to set norms or apply social pressure. The government, rather than policing the line, has become the cashier.
• Each shift alone would strain our culture. Together, they've created Sin Nation.

🔮 What's next: There's potential for political agreement that some portion of America's scaling of sin might have been too much, too fast.

• Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) posted on X in March: "Pervasive gambling is not good for society. It turns life into a casino, traps people in addiction & debt, surges domestic violence, and fosters manipulation."
• Figures from varying corners of GOP ideology responded in agreement: Michael Knowles, Ann Coulter, Erick Erickson.

The bottom line: Reining in Sin Nation could be one of the rare issues that unites left and right.

• Don't bet on it — though, of course, legally you could.

Share this column.

Axios CEO Jim VandeHei, in his weekly C-Suite newsletter, isolates the seven most immediate risks facing companies. He asked C-Suite reader and Eurasia Group founder and president Ian Bremmer to help stress-test the list.

• Why it matters: Some of these risks, like China or debt, might feel manageable now but could spike to the top with a single bad decision or day of news.

1. AI. It represents both wild opportunity and wild risk, but the risk part feels particularly acute in the short term.

• Bremmer tells us: "AI is #1 in my view ... because it affects literally everyone, and it's happened faster than almost everyone thought."

2. Middle East and its aftershocks. Even in a best-case de-escalation scenario with Iran, we're left with oil prices structurally above prewar levels, rising Saudi-UAE competition and a persistent Israel-Hamas conflict.

• Bremmer says: "The markets don't tell the story the CEOs are focused on, which is massive supply chain disruption that is coming soon ... oil shortages, plastics shortages and longer-term food inflation."

3. Rare earth reliance. Every emerging technology — AI chips, electric vehicles, defense systems, clean energy, medical imaging devices — runs on rare earth minerals. China controls roughly 70% of mining and 90% of the processing of these materials.

4. China. It's simultaneously our largest geopolitical rival, our most dangerous AI competitor and our biggest supply chain vulnerability.

5. Debt, both public and private. Nearly $39 trillion and counting in national debt. The Congressional Budget Office projects that interest payments will eat nearly 15% of all federal outlays by 2028. You can't even call it a crisis. It's an obvious slow bleed with no attempt to stop it.

6. Political volatility. Tax policy, regulatory posture, antitrust enforcement — none of it is predictable on a 12-month horizon. And it's all happening as the federal government becomes more content to govern by executive action that can be overturned with the stroke of a pen.

7. Anti-wealth backlash. AI is making the wealth gap visibly wider, accelerating a trend that was already bad. That's a genuine talent, retention and consumer risk constantly bubbling under the surface.

• Share this item.

💡 If you're a CEO or on a CEO's team: Apply now to join Jim's new Axios C-Suite weekly newsletter.

The White House invited a splashy group of more than a dozen top American business leaders — including Elon Musk — to accompany President Trump on his visit to Beijing on Thursday and Friday, Bloomberg reports.

• Why it matters: The delegation includes financial, tech, aerospace and agricultural giants.

The list includes:

• Elon Musk, Tesla and SpaceX
• Tim Cook, Apple
• Dina Powell McCormick, Meta president
• Kelly Ortberg, Boeing
• David Solomon, Goldman Sachs
• Larry Fink, BlackRock
• Stephen Schwarzman, Blackstone
• Jane Fraser, Citigroup
• Cristiano Amon, Qualcomm
• Larry Culp, GE Aerospace

✈️ Between the lines: A massive Boeing sale for 500 737 Max jets — one of the largest orders in its history — is set to be unveiled during the trip, per Bloomberg.

• Full list (gift link).

The U.S. is exporting a record amount of oil and other petroleum products during the Iran war, Axios' Emily Peck writes.

• America's export surge is being fueled by inventories — including strategic reserves — rather than by higher oil production this year.
• That means it's unclear how long the country can keep exports up.

Get Axios Markets.

Google says it has identified what may be the first known case of cybercriminals using AI to discover and weaponize a previously unknown vulnerability, Axios Future of Cybersecurity author Sam Sabin writes.

• Google said it found evidence of several "prominent cyber crime threat actors" partnering to identify a bug that would let them bypass two-factor authentication on a popular open-source system.

⚠️ Threat level: Google warned that AI models are getting better at finding subtle security weaknesses in software.

• John Hultquist, chief analyst at Google's threat intelligence group, said: "There's a misconception that the AI vulnerability race is imminent. The reality is that it's already begun."

Share this story.

Harvard's faculty begins voting today on limiting the number of A's professors can award, Axios Boston's Mike Deehan writes.

• Why it matters: The steady rise of A's and B's at elite universities since the early 2000s has eroded GPAs as a screening tool for employers and graduate schools.

📈 Stunning stat: In 2010, A's accounted for one-third of all marks, according to an internal Harvard report. By 2025, that number doubled to over 60%.

• More on Harvard's proposal ... Get Axios Local.

Amazon is expanding its 30-minute delivery service "Amazon Now" — escalating the race among retailers and delivery apps to fulfill online purchases almost instantly, Axios' Kelly Tyko writes.

• Amazon announced today that the service is widely available in Atlanta, Dallas–Fort Worth, Philadelphia and Seattle.
• Expansion is also underway in Austin, Denver, Houston, Minneapolis and Phoenix.

📦 Zoom in: Uber, DoorDash and Instacart have already conditioned shoppers to expect near-instant fulfillment. Sam's Club told Axios some orders through its new Express Delivery service arrive in as little as 15 minutes.

• Share this story.

🐻 Bad news Bears: The NFL's schedule for next season — out Thursday at 8 p.m. ET — hands Chicago the league's toughest lineup (charted above).

• The league announced three games yesterday ahead of the official schedule release:

🌃 1. The Giants will host the Cowboys in the first "Sunday Night Football" game of the season on Sept. 13.

• Stunning stat via The Athletic (gift link): The Cowboys have won 11 of the 12 season-opening games they've played against the Giants since 1965. New York's only win: 2016.

🦬 2. The Bills will open their new stadium outside Buffalo on Sept. 17 — the first "Thursday Night Football" game of the season.

👢 3. The Cowboys will play the Eagles on Thanksgiving in Dallas.

• 10 games to watch.