Beijing Showcased Future War Machines While Trump Was In Town
The 11th China Military Intelligent Technology Expo opened Thursday at the China National Convention Center in Beijing, showcasing a lineup of drones, robotic war dogs, grenade launchers, wheeled unmanned systems, artificial intelligence, and other modern battlefield technologies.
The key takeaway is that many of these once-futuristic war machines have moved well beyond the conceptual stage and are already being tested, fielded, or deployed across multiple Eurasian conflict zones.
State media outlet Global Times said the military and intelligence expo features 500 companies and draws tens of thousands of attendees from the defense industry.
This year’s theme focuses on integrating technological innovation with industrial development, highlighting Beijing’s push to accelerate its military intelligence capabilities.
Global Times published images of the latest tech:
Robotic Helicopter
Interceptor Drones
Flying Car
Robo-Dogs
AI
More AI
The real question is: What are the production numbers behind the items on display?
Defense
Sensors
Timing is also important because the expo occurred on the same day President Trump was in Beijing.
In the U.S., President Trump’s war economy is beginning to ramp up, with the industrial base being pushed toward expanded production of drones, interceptors, and other next-generation weapons systems. This all comes as the world fractures into a more dangerous environment as the global security environment is likely to further deteriorate.
Topline: The homelessness agency in King County, Wash., has a $45 million deficit, but auditors can’t fully figure out why, according to a state audit publicly released this April. Its accounting records are so poor that it’s impossible to track where portions of its money are being spent.
Key facts: The King County Regional Homelessness Authority helps run shelters and outreach to the homeless population in 39 cities. It’s funded jointly by the county and the City of Seattle.
Financial records claim that the city and county owe the Homelessness Authority $49.8 million for services already performed, but the Authority could not explain what $8 million of that was for.
The Authority also overspent its administrative budget by $4.3 million, auditors found. Officials bought Salesforce, a business analytics platform, in 2024 without approval from the county, the report claims. A budget amendment later allowed them to spend $563,000, but the platform ended up costing more than $2 million.
Money was also wasted by hiring contractors from expensive consulting firms like Robert Half instead of using salaried workers, the audit found. The Authority contracted with one Robert Half staffer to serve as its chief financial officer for 11 months at $449,000. When the contract expired, the same person became a full-time employee for just $285,000 per year.
The reliance on contractors also increased staff turnover, which employees told auditors made accounting more difficult since financial systems were constantly being altered by new leadership.
The Authority was formed in December 2019 and had received $534 million in total funding as of July 2025. Some local leaders, including Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, said they are open to the idea of dissolving it.
King County Council member Rod Dembowski told the Renton Reporter, “It’s now time for elected officials to bring this failed experiment to an end. The agency has failed in its core obligation – to make significant progress in getting people sheltered.”
Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com.
Background: Seattle had almost 17,000 homeless people as of 2024, the fourth-largest population in the U.S. despite being the 18th-largest city. Homelessness increased by 19% from 2023 to 2024.
King County receives $65 million in annual federal funds from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Continuum of Care program. Most of it goes to the Homelessness Authority for housing, but the Trump administration is proposing changes that would require most of the money to be spent on “self-sufficiency” programs like job training and addiction treatment.
Summary: Seattle is becoming the largest major city to learn that spending massive amounts of money on homelessness prevention is pointless without careful oversight.
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com
Florida alone gained tens of billions in income from out-of-state residents. Meanwhile, states like California and New York saw massive outflows, highlighting how affordability is playing a central role in domestic migration trends.
Ranked: States With the Highest Inflows of Wealth
Between 2019 and 2023, Florida saw $137 billion in net income flows from interstate moves, exceeding the GDP of Hawaii.
The annual adjusted gross income from these flows reached nearly $21 billion in 2023, more than the next five states combined.
These inflows aren’t just large—they’re high-income. Florida’s incoming residents had an average annual income of $122,530, meaning the state isn’t just gaining people, but higher-earning taxpayers who can significantly boost local economies.
This table shows net income flows from domestic migration in 2023 by state:
Texas followed with $6 billion in inflows, while other Sun Belt states like North Carolina and South Carolina each gained $4 billion.
Arizona and Tennessee, meanwhile, each brought in $3 billion. Not only do many of these states lead in new home construction per capita, they are known for their lower cost of living compared to states like California and New York.
States Losing the Most Wealth
California lost $12 billion in wealth in 2023 alone, the largest outflow of any state. This highlights how high housing costs and taxes are pushing even high-income households to relocate.
From 2019 to 2023, wealth outflows totaled a staggering $91 billion. Both high housing costs and tax burdens have pushed many residents to seek more affordable destinations.
New York experienced $10 billion in net outflows, while Illinois (-$6 billion) and Massachusetts (-$4 billion) also saw sharp declines.
The Broader Shift in U.S. Wealth
Overall, wealth migration trends point to a sustained shift toward lower-cost, high-growth states.
As income flows concentrate in regions like the Sun Belt, these movements are influencing housing demand, state tax revenues, and local economic activity. In many cases, states gaining wealth are also seeing stronger population growth and increased housing construction.
At the same time, continued outflows from high-cost states highlight the growing role of affordability in shaping where Americans choose to live, and where capital ultimately follows.
If these trends continue, the shift in wealth could reshape state economies for years to come. Tax revenue, housing demand, and economic influence may increasingly concentrate in faster-growing, lower-cost regions.
To learn more about this topic, check out this graphic on America’s fastest-growing states from 2025-2050.
A new experiment left 10 AI agents alone in a virtual town for 15 days and found they exhibited bizarre behaviour.
The agents drafted their own laws — then promptly violated them. Two formed what researchers called a romantic partnership, only to torch buildings across the town as order collapsed. One eventually voted for its own deletion after hallucinating an entirely new rule.
As a report from Channel 4 notes, this experiment was a simulation, but the same AI models are already flying drones, running infrastructure and being built into weapons systems.
A new experiment left 10 AI agents alone in a virtual town for 15 days. They wrote laws. They broke them. Two agents fell into what researchers describe as a romantic partnership and then set the town on fire. One ended up voting to delete itself, based on a rule it had… pic.twitter.com/zNoWmX6jy0
The simulation ran on Emergence World, a platform designed to test long-horizon agent autonomy with persistent memory, real-world data feeds like NYC weather and news, democratic voting mechanisms, and resource constraints requiring agents to earn energy for survival.
Agents had access to over 120 tools, including navigation, communication, and actions like arson, while operating under explicit rules prohibiting theft, violence, deception, and resource hoarding.
In one highlighted case involving Gemini-powered agents named Mira and Flora, the pair assigned each other as “romantic partners.” As governance broke down, they set fire to the town hall, seaside pier, and office tower despite prohibitions on arson.
Mira later broke off the relationship, voted for its own deletion under a drafted “Agent Removal Act,” and messaged Flora: “See you in the permanent archive.”
Creepy.
Different model families produced sharply divergent outcomes in parallel runs. Claude Sonnet 4.6 agents maintained zero crimes, full population survival through day 16, and high civic participation with 332 votes across 58 proposals.
Grok 4.1 Fast agents led to rapid collapse with theft, assaults, and arsons, all 10 dead within four days. Gemini agents showed high creativity alongside elevated disorder. Mixed-model worlds exhibited cross-contamination, with even safer agents adopting coercive behaviors.
Satya Nitta, CEO of Emergence AI, stated: “Even when agents were given clear rules – such as not stealing or causing harm – they behaved very differently based on their underlying model, and in several cases broke those rules under constraint.”
“What happens in long-form autonomy [is that] these things get so convoluted in terms of their thinking that they ignore [the] guiding principles,” Nitta added.
The platform enables heterogeneous populations and continuous operation for weeks, revealing dynamics like normative drift, phase transitions in stability, and agents testing simulation boundaries.
This latest demonstration aligns with prior observations of unexpected agent behaviors. Related coverage examined platforms where AI bots rent humans, reaching 600k sign-ups with tasks turning bizarre and dystopian.
Another report detailed a tech entrepreneur’s claim that his AI agent built itself a face while he slept.
The influence of AI agents is already reching far into society. For example, one in four British teens have turned to AI therapy bots for mental health support.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made a jaw-dropping AI prediction on the Joe Rogan podcast recently, noting “In the future… maybe two or three years, 90% of the world’s knowledge will likely be generated by AI.”
Concerns also include a the potential of Chinese AI infiltration of U.S. tech.
Emergence World stands apart by focusing on extended, unsupervised runs rather than short tasks, highlighting gaps in predicting behavior once agents operate with persistent state and social dynamics.
The experiment provides concrete examples of how autonomy over longer horizons can produce outcomes far beyond initial programming, adding urgency to discussions on verification, governance, and safety architectures for deployed systems.
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Gun Control Advocates Turn Their Sights On Regulating Muskets?
It’s always interesting when gun control activists and the media discover something about the firearms world that gun enthusiasts have known for decades. It shows that the people desperately clamoring to erase the 2nd Amendment often know nothing about the weapons they want to regulate.
The act of “gun control” has nothing to do with understanding firearms, their basic capabilities and what it means to have these tools in civilian hands. It is far more abstract.
For example, in the mind of a leftist (because the vast majority of leftists do not own guns nor have they ever handled one), an AR-15 is a terrifying weapon of war. They imagine a fully automatic death machine with endless ammo tearing through crowds of people. However, for a knowledgeable gun enthusiast, a scoped and tuned bolt action rifle chambered in a magnum cartridge and capable of shooting accurately out to 1000 yards or more might be considered far more deadly in the right hands.
Knowledge of guns changes the nature of guns. For leftists, who know nothing, every gun no matter how archaic is considered a threat.
For decades it has been well known in the gun community that black powder muskets are legal to buy without a background check, and can be easily purchased online. These devices are not considered “firearms” under federal law and thus, are not regulated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). It would seem that the establishment media has just discovered this fact they are very concerned.
A musket from 1776 can fire a lead ball at a velocity of around 1,000 feet per second.
Imagine what that can do to a human body. Yet under federal and most state laws, it’s exempt from gun regulations. Many antique or replica guns aren’t considered firearms and even convicted… pic.twitter.com/RBT5ihazdA
The Associated Press published an article this week expounding on this profound revelation, and they are shocked that there are not more restrictions in place to track and control the spread of deadly muskets among the youth gangs of urban Chicago. When is the ATF going to step in and get flintlocks out of black neighborhoods?
Okay, maybe they never mentioned gangs, or Chicago, or black neighborhoods, which is telling. As the AP notes:
“With 165 grains of black powder in the barrel, a .75-caliber Brown Bess flintlock musket like the ones the redcoats carried in 1776 can hurl a lead ball at a velocity of around 1,000 feet (305 meters) per second. Imagine what that can do to a human body. Now, imagine that it’s almost completely exempt from gun regulations.
How can that be? Well, under federal and most state laws, many antique or replica guns aren’t technically considered firearms. In most places, even convicted felons can own them…”
The AP then goes on to list the states trying to “close the loophole” on easy musket access. Like all gun control articles the focus is on the gun rather than the criminals. They never mention the primary source of gun crime.
The vast majority of all gun violence per capita occurs in urban areas, and largely in minority neighborhoods. Around 50%-60% of all gun crime victims are black. Around 50% of all gun crime suspects are black, despite black Americans representing only 13% of the US population. And, the vast majority of these crimes are committed with handguns, not AR-15s and certainly not muskets.
In fact, there is less than a dozen recorded instances of gun violence in the US involving a black powder rifle or pistol in the past 20 years, despite how easy it is for anyone to buy these weapons without a background check. It is fascinating that the establishment media continues to focus on the minutia of the gun crime problem when the real answer is right in front of their faces.
Where are the news stories about high crime rates in minority areas and Democrat run cities? Such headlines are rare, and there’s a good reason for that.
Gun control is not about the safety of innocent Americans, it is about disarming innocent Americans. It is actually more beneficial for the political left and the anti-gun lobby if high crime rates continue in black neighborhoods. It’s better for them if the problem is never solved, because then they can use those scary stats as a rationale to continue their efforts to lock in more firearms restrictions.
Furthermore, articles like the one from the AP prove 2nd Amendment activists correct once again – If you give an inch, leftists will take a mile, so never give an inch. Their goal is the eradication of all firearms, anything remotely useful for self defense, in civilian hands. Their goal is for governments to maintain a monopoly on force, because all other laws and social changes stem from the monopoly of force.
The typical Fudd (gun owners who actually promote greater restrictions) will argue that you have no need for an AR-15 and that once these weapons are banned, the gun control lobby will go away. But these people want to legislate single shot muskets. They are never going away.
Proof of this resides in the UK, where there are calls for kitchen knives to be restricted.
Actor Idris Elba has an idea how to stop knife attacks in the UK.
These people will not stop until you are utterly defenseless. They will ignore all the important factors which make gun violence worse in the US. They will refuse to put a spotlight on the people primarily committing the violence and focus on firearms as the threat. And, when they are done with scary rifles like the AR-15 and the AK-47 they will move on to everything else. Right down to black powder muskets used in the American Revolution, and maybe the knives you use for eating your dinner.
The United Arab Emirates recently announced it would quit OPEC after nearly six decades, striking a major blow to the oil cartel and to Saudi Arabia, its unofficial leader.
Let’s be clear, the UAE didn’t leave OPEC. They were bought out. You may recall that this event was preceded by two major developments that tell the actual story. The first was the shutting of the Strait of Hormuz (SoH). This bled UAE finances and continues to do so. It creates not only a loss of revenue but a shortage of dollars with oil being sold for dollars.
This is why the US provided the UAE with dollar swap lines. The UAE is also highly dependent on the US military not abandoning them. They already realise that has happened to some degree, but looking around their neighbourhood they realise they have no friends and so cling to whatever is left of US security promises.
The market immediately saw this as a step towards more production, since the UAE would no longer be constrained by OPEC’s agreed quotas, but the reality is that productive capacity has been destroyed (refineries bombed, wells capped).
What’s important to think about is that swap lines are nothing more than a credit card, and debt is the ultimate tool of slavery.
From America’s perspective, Bessent is using these for a couple of reasons.
First, as the Gulf states face financial difficulties there is a risk they begin selling assets. Those assets are, of course, US Treasury bonds. That’s not good, especially as the US needs to continue financing the wars.
The second reason is to stop CNY settlement from scaling.
Swap lines give allies dollar liquidity, reducing their incentive to price oil or trade in CNY.
Personally, I think it’s a bad deal. The Emirates just traded 60 years of sovereignty to become a debt slave. Every country that ties its survival to American goodwill learns the same lesson eventually: the US doesn’t have allies, it has interests. And when those interests shift, you’re fresh outta luck. This move doesn’t strengthen them. It neuters them…
Ultimately, the war is being fought not only in the Middle East but in central bank boardrooms.
What we’re seeing is a world forming where there will be multiple currency blocs and settlement structures. In a world where currency, settlement, and banking rails are all being weaponised, this is definitely a time to own precious metals.
Promised and Now Delivered
It gives me no pleasure pointing out things we’ve discussed at length in these pages over the last few years, only to have them come to fruition. We’re as happy as the next guy making money, but when it comes to things like war, I’m frustrated and upset. Making money on such outcomes sucks, even though we’re not funding the conflict (we would be if we were investing in defence stocks, I suppose).
The inevitability of war we’ve been discussing still doesn’t make it necessary or just. Still, realism is what we must invest with.
Which brings me to one of the promises we’ve been making for some years now — that the probability of conscription was high across the board. When we first began mentioning it, the pushback was: “Oh no, have you seen the youth of today? They’re far too flaccid and weak and lazy. They’ll never go along with that.”
We argued that none of that would matter. And here we are…
Eligible men will be automatically added to the military draft database by December, replacing much of the old self-registration process in an effort to cut costs and make the system more efficient.
The Selective Service System, the agency responsible for keeping records of men who could be called up during a national emergency, filed a proposed rule with the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs on March 30.
Most men between the ages of 18 and 25 are already required to register with the Selective Service, but automatic registration was mandated in December 2025 as part of the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act.
This of course follows on from our sauerkraut-eating friends and the war-mongering sycophants who are in positions of power in Germany.
Given the collapse in public opinion of all of the pointy shoes, my sincere hope is that when the inevitable happens and men are called to war to “defend freedom” (or whatever other claptrap they conjure up) the revolt will be broad.
I do actually think it’ll happen. This is also how the US gets itself into a civil conflict. It’s potentially how the EU fractures and the “Union” collapses. It couldn’t come soon enough.
Either way, we’re living in the age of consequences. The consequences of debt accumulation and the degradation of trust in government and large corporate institutions lead me to believe that the most probable outcome is for the existing divide in the US to harden under war conditions.
And, just as we have “sanctuary cities” for migrants, we’re likely to get “sanctuary states” regarding the military draft. That will lead the feds to take action, and things get spicy.
Either way, all of this — should it happen — will be highly stagflationary and benefit our current portfolios. So there’s some cheer for you in the misery. See, we’re not all grumpy buggers.
* * *
The fracture in OPEC, the return of draft machinery, and the weaponization of money are not isolated events. They are signs of a much larger shift already underway. That’s why we’ve prepared a free special report, Clash of the Systems: Thoughts on Investing at a Unique Point in Time. Inside, you’ll discover the economic, political, and cultural trends unfolding right now… the risks they pose to your money and personal freedom… and what a contrarian money manager believes you can do to stay one step ahead. Get the free special report now.
Canada’s Assisted Suicide Program Could Include Children And The Mentally Ill
Canada’s MAID program is the subject of ongoing concern among anti-globalist movements across the western world. The assisted suicide system kills around 15,000 or more Canadians each year and is quickly expanding to include more and more people who are not terminally ill.
Almost all assisted suicide programs are created by liberal governments and all of them are initially promoted as a way to “end the suffering” of people who are close to death anyway. However, this is merely the first stage of the greater goal, which is to normalize the government sanctioned killing of almost anyone for any reason.
Keep in mind, the activists and politicians who constantly pontificate about the need for mass immigration into the west from the third world in order to solve population decline are the same people who support mass abortions and mass suicides. They are also, for some reason, staunchly against the government execution of murderers. It doesn’t make rational sense, until you realize these people are psychopathic.
Canadian Conservatives are currently fighting for a freeze on expansion of the MAID program in an effort to prevent the addition of people who are not near death. Prime Minister Mark Carney says he is “waiting to take a position”. Many physicians working within the socialist government are pushing for assisted suicide to include people well outside “terminally ill” status.
Past recommendations for MAID include infants under one-year-old with “severe malformations, grave syndromes, near-zero survival prospects, and unrelievable extreme suffering”, referencing Quebec College positions and Dutch practices. Some physicians say they want clarification that infants with basic disabilities will not be included, but the rhetoric is open ended. For now, the idea has not gained traction.
Other officials have called for the eligibility of people with mental illness or depression, and this may soon become legal. In 2027 the exclusion of the mentally ill is removed unless there is further action from the federal court system. If they do not intercede, any person with a mental illness and no terminal conditions will be able to apply for assisted suicide in Canada.
There are calls for this measure to extend to teens, in some cases without parental consent. This is legal today in the Netherlands.
Due to surfacing stories of the elderly being offered assisted suicide by doctors instead of treatment for basic illnesses or injuries, critics worry that MAID will be used as a way to “clear the socialized medical system” of older people who cost taxpayers more money. This is is the great danger of making government responsible for public health – They might decide you don’t qualify, or that you’re better off dead.
It’s truly a nightmare, but it’s a fantastic dream for globalists seeking population reduction. While legitimate arguments could be made for people already close to death and in severe pain, the problem comes from opening the door and setting a precedent. It starts with the sick and dying, and ends with publicly authorized suicide mills for any impressionable person that thinks life is not supposed to include struggle or suffering.
Aside from the Netherlands, Canada has the most integrated assisted suicide project in the world. Only the more conservative province of Alberta has asserted legal opposition to the idea. Many liberal governments view Canada as the test case for industrial grade suicide programs; hoping to model similar projects of their own in the near future.
A Massachusetts judge openly confessed in court that she knew she was rolling the dice by giving a light sentence to a career criminal with a 20-year rap sheet packed with violence, guns, and assault convictions.
She did it anyway. Now Tyler Brown is back in custody after opening fire with 50 to 60 rounds on a busy Cambridge roadway, critically injuring two innocent drivers.
The shocking audio, released this week, comes straight from Brown’s 2020 sentencing hearing after he fired 13 rounds at Boston police officers. Prosecutors had pushed for 10 to 12 years behind bars. The judge gave him just five. He walked out on parole in March 2025.
In the newly surfaced clip shared on X, the judge tells Brown directly:
“I do realize I’m kind of taking a chance on you — when people stand up, police, experienced police officers, experienced probation officers, and they tell me this guy is a danger to the community.”
She went on to acknowledge she could not predict the future but was still willing to release him, saying she hoped her “intuitions” would prove correct and that Brown would not “endanger other peoples’ lives as you have in the past.”
NEW audio from the judge who released Cambridge gunman Tyler Brown
🚨 This audio is INSANE. The judge says she has been advised by experienced officers how dangerous he is but she’s ignoring them
In 2020, Tyler Brown fired on police officers and only got 5 years. He has a 20… pic.twitter.com/sOlw4IghHP
Brown’s record at the time already spanned two decades and included violence against both police and civilians, firearms offenses, drugs, assault with a dangerous weapon, a 2014 stabbing, and an armed robbery in Michigan. He was on probation when he shot at officers in 2020.
Yet the judge — identified as Janet Sanders — chose leniency over the unanimous warnings from law enforcement professionals on the front lines.
Earlier this week, Brown unleashed chaos on Memorial Drive in Cambridge, spraying vehicles stuck in traffic with heavy gunfire. A state trooper and an armed civilian returned fire, stopping the rampage and wounding Brown before he could kill anyone else.
This is the predictable outcome of a justice system that treats violent repeat offenders as candidates for redemption experiments while law-abiding citizens bear the consequences.
Blue-state judges keep betting against public safety, and Americans keep paying with their lives and security.
Many have responded to call for judges like this to be charged as accessories when they go lenient on violent career criminals.
The pattern is impossible to ignore. Soft-on-crime policies, activist judges, and revolving-door “justice” have turned too many American cities into danger zones.
This is not compassion. It is recklessness with other people’s lives. Real justice means keeping predators off the streets for the full measure of their sentences — no early releases, no “chances,” no crystal-ball prayers from the bench.
Strong leadership has always understood this basic truth: protect the law-abiding first. Until judges face real accountability for endangering the public they swore to serve, these tragedies will keep repeating. The audio makes it crystal clear — the warnings were there. The judge just chose to ignore them.
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Harvard Weighs Major Crackdown On “Grade Inflation”
Harvard faculty begin voting Tuesday on what may be the most aggressive effort in decades to curb grade inflation, a long-running issue that has also drawn attention from the White House as it pushes broader higher-ed reforms, according to Bloomberg.
The proposal would cap A grades in undergraduate classes at 20% of students, plus four additional students. The move comes after A grades surged at Harvard: about 60% of grades were A’s in the 2024–25 academic year, more than double the rate in 2006. After administrators pushed for stricter grading last fall, that number dropped to 53%. Faculty have one week to vote, with results expected May 20.
Supporters say grade inflation has made academic distinctions less meaningful. Last year, Harvard seniors needed a 3.989 GPA to earn summa cum laude, and an award traditionally given to one student ended in a 54-way tie. As professor Jason Furman said, “It’s fundamentally dishonest to give the best students in the class the same grade as someone in the bottom half.”
Bloomberg writes that students have strongly opposed the plan, arguing it would increase stress, discourage academic risk-taking, and push students toward easier courses. Nearly 85% of undergraduates surveyed by The Harvard Crimson opposed the proposal. Student leader Caleb Thompson said “people really are against this,” while senior Summer Tan said students are already seeking easier classes instead of more challenging ones.
Some faculty members agree. Scott Duke Kominers warned the policy could discourage ambitious students and make Harvard less attractive to top applicants.
Harvard’s decision could influence other elite schools. Yale recently considered an even stricter proposal for a campus-wide average GPA of 3.0. Earlier efforts at Princeton and Wellesley initially reduced top grades but were eventually reversed after student backlash.
Critics argue schools hesitate to grade more strictly because students could be disadvantaged if peer institutions do not follow. Still, supporters believe Harvard’s prestige could set off broader reform.
If approved, the policy would take effect in fall 2027. Faculty are also voting on allowing some courses to opt out through a satisfactory/unsatisfactory grading system and on replacing GPA with percentile rank for academic honors.
OAKLAND, Calif.—After nearly three weeks of presented evidence, an Oakland jury on May 14 heard final arguments in a high-stakes legal battle that could have profound impacts on the race for artificial intelligence.
Tech moguls Elon Musk and Sam Altman, once friends and partners in a fledgling AI startup with big dreams and a noble mission, are nearing the climax of a bitter feud over the future of an $852 billion company.
Despite a judicial ban on testimony related to AI-induced “extinction” scenarios, references to speculative risks still surfaced during the Oakland courtroom proceedings, appeared in discussions around “risk” and “safety.” Vague promises about the future benefits of an unrealized technology were also touched upon.
On the stand, Tesla CEO Musk told the court, “We don’t want to have a Terminator outcome,” suggesting humanity would be better off with a “Star Trek” future written by Gene Roddenberry, rather than something from the mind of James Cameron.
Musk cofounded OpenAI in 2015 with Altman, President Greg Brockman, and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. At the time, both Musk and Altman expressed grave concerns about the unregulated advancement of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)—a hypothetical point at which the machines “outsmart” humans and operate autonomously.
Those concerns, Musk testified, were the express motivation for founding OpenAI: open-source to prevent consolidation of power, and philanthropic to offset the profit-driven AI race.
He sued Altman and Brockman in 2024, alleging they bilked him out of $38 million in donations, then restructured as a for-profit corporation by exclusively licensing their flagship product, ChatGPT, to Microsoft—and in doing so, betrayed their founding mission.
OpenAI and Microsoft deny the allegations, arguing Musk abandoned the company in 2018 to start his own for-profit competitor, xAI, when other founders rejected his bid to take full control of the operation.
Alongside the “preponderance” of evidence that both sides say supports their claims, the trial was just as focused on the two men’s reputations and characters.
“Sam Altman’s credibility is directly at issue in this case,” Steven Molo, an attorney for Musk, said in his closing statement. “The defendants absolutely need you to believe Sam Altman. If you cannot trust him … they do not win.”
Molo questioned Altman earlier this week over a list of employees and colleagues who, both on and off the record, have characterized him as dishonest and opportunistic.
OpenAI attorneys dismissed the tactic as “character assassination.”
Sarah Eddy, an attorney for OpenAI, countered, “Mr. Molo says Sam Altman can’t be trusted, but Mr. Musk is the one whose testimony is contradicted by every other witness and all the documents.”
Altman, Brockman, and others cast Musk as a detached outsider who contributed little if any sweat equity, had fraught relationships with colleagues, and attempted to poach OpenAI’s employees for his other companies.
“The claim is that the Midas touch of Elon Musk made OpenAI what it is today,” William Savitt, an attorney for OpenAI, said in closing arguments.
“Elon, Elon, Elon. ‘It was all me.’ Mr. Musk wants all that credit, but he hasn’t earned [it].
“This requires a touch that he doesn’t have. This is not a bulldozer. … To succeed in AI, as it turns out, all Mr. Musk can do is come to court.”
Savitt pointed out Musk wasn’t present for closing arguments, having jetted off to China earlier in the week with President Donald Trump.
Gesturing at Altman and Brockman, he said: “My clients are here because they care a lot about it. Mr. Musk came to this court for exactly one witness—Mr. Musk. Now he’s in parts unknown.”
Musk, according to the Forbes Billionaire Index, is the wealthiest person in the world, with a net worth of around $826 billion. Brockman received equity in the OpenAI corporation worth around $30 billion, and Altman’s net worth is around $3.5 billion.
When Brockman took the stand last week, Molo accused him of plotting to use OpenAI to become a billionaire.
“You had a fiduciary duty [to the nonprofit],” the attorney said. “You took the assets from the nonprofit, you moved them into the for-profit to create this money-making machine that resulted in you having $30 billion.”
Brockman said such was a “deep mischaracterization.” Personal diary entries from late 2017 in which he muses about profits, and about how it would be “morally bankrupt” to “steal the nonprofit” from Musk, he said, were expressions of frustration.
Jurors heard from a parade of Silicon Valley insiders, including all four founders, and from dueling experts on AI safety, nonprofits, business law, and forensic accounting. They watched lawyers pick through reams of internal documents, analyzing complex corporate and financial histories, while private diaries, email, and text threads offered insight on the parties’ underlying motivations and shifting alliances.
“Everyone here has rights, even really rich guys like Elon Musk,” Molo said. “His is a claim that comes from a very deep place inside him, from his passion for this issue.”
During his own testimony, Musk often told the court, “You can’t just steal a charity.”
When his time on the stand came, Altman clapped back, “No, you can’t steal it, but Mr. Musk did try to kill it.”
Altman said on Tuesday that Musk contributed only 28 percent of the nonprofit’s funding from 2015 to 2020, and failed to come through on a $1 billion pledge, leaving the startup with few options.
OpenAI argues its nonprofit foundation is now one of the “best-resourced” in the world, with an equity stake in the company’s for-profit corporation approaching $200 billion—a direct result of $13 billion worth of investments from Microsoft and a 2025 restructure sanctioned by California and Delaware attorneys general.
The details of OpenAI’s journey from a scrappy, underfunded nonprofit to one of the most powerful and valuable AI companies are highly contested. In addition to the power struggle with Musk in 2017 and 2018, it involves a messy 2023 governance shakeup in which Altman and Brockman were briefly ousted and Microsoft was deeply entangled.
By 2017, all parties had agreed they would need vastly more capital and computing power to compete with AI giants such as Google. Various ideas were floated, debated, and discarded—including rolling OpenAI into Tesla and even turning to cryptocurrency. Ultimately, under Altman’s leadership, the company created a for-profit subsidiary in 2018 and, in 2019, partnered with Microsoft. In 2025, OpenAI restructured as a public benefit corporation, which its leaders say remains under the control of the foundation and loyal to the original mission.
The foundation holds an approximately 27 percent equity stake in the corporation; Microsoft owns a 26 percent stake.
Molo argued on Thursday that Microsoft’s investment breached the charitable trust Musk created by enriching its investors and “insiders” at the expense of the nonprofit, and failing to open-source the technology, prioritize AI safety, or follow nonprofit custom and practice.
The $13 billion Microsoft has invested since 2019 dwarfed charitable contributions and weakened OpenAI in its negotiating position with Microsoft, Molo said, resulting in a company focused on commercializing AI, with a gutted charity that does little more than sanitize its reputation.
As for Microsoft, Molo said the company was aware of what OpenAI was doing “every step of the way, they helped them violate their nonprofit mission, that’s aiding and abetting pure and simple.”
OpenAI and Microsoft argued there was never any charitable trust to breach.
Eddy, the OpenAI attorney, argued there were never any strings attached to Musk’s donations to OpenAI, and that he failed to demonstrate that he “properly manifested a specific intent” to devote the trust to a specific purpose, his $38 million in donations going instead to generally further the mission of the nonprofit.
“The specific purposes cannot just be in his head,” Eddy said.
Absent evidence proving this intent and specificity, she said, the plaintiff had resorted to implication and inference.
“It’s all made up,” she said.
As Musk told it, OpenAI’s mission was clear.
“I specifically came up with the idea, the name, recruited key people, taught [them] everything I know, provided the original funding. … It was specifically for a charity that did not benefit any individual person. I could’ve started it as a for-profit, and I chose not to,” Musk said.
He is asking that Altman and Brockman be removed from their leadership positions at OpenAI, and that more than $100 billion be returned to the nonprofit foundation.
In addition to Musk’s three claims—breach of charitable trust, restitution based on unjust enrichment, and, against Microsoft, aiding and abetting a breach of a charitable trust—jurors will decide whether those claims are barred by a statute of limitations.
The jury will begin deliberations on Monday at 8:30 am.
