Some of the United States’ most powerful business leaders will descend on Riyadh for the Saudi-US Investment Forum – dubbed “MAGA in the Desert” – to boost investment in America as President Donald Trump prepares for a highly anticipated visit next week to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates to deepen ties with key regional players, according to the New York Post.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink are expected to attend the Saudi-US Investment Forum set to be held on May 13th, sources told the Post. Other corporate leaders slated to attend are OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Palantir CEO Alex Karp, Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg, and Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser.

Top Trump administration officials are also said to be attending the forum, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks.

“This is going to be MAGA in the desert. It is ultimately about creating jobs in the US,” a source said.

The Post reports:

The corporate shindig will take place a day before Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, also known as “MBS,” chairs a summit featuring the US and the leaders of the so-called Gulf Cooperation Council: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar.

The plan for the conference is to ink agreements on everything from defense, AI, tech, and healthcare cooperation worth at least $600 billion—a goal set by MBS on Jan. 23 in Trump’s first call with a foreign leader after winning a second term in the White House.

The Department of Defense recently announced the State Department’s approval of a potential $3.5 billion sale of AIM-120C-8 advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles to Saudi Arabia. The missiles will be assembled by RTX Corporation in Tucson, Arizona.

“This proposed sale will support the foreign policy goals and national security objectives of the United States by improving the security of a partner country that contributes to political stability and economic progress in the Gulf Region,” the Pentagon said in a statement. “The proposed sale of this equipment and support will not alter the military balance in the region.”

On Tuesday, the Saudi Arabian cabinet announced that the Kingdom will discuss a potential cooperation agreement with the United States in mining and mineral resources, according to a Tuesday statement from the state news agency obtained by Reuters.

Trump, while meeting with newly-elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in the Oval Office, teased an announcement potentially connected to the Middle East. “It’ll be one of the most important announcements that has been made in many years about a certain subject,” the president said.

Authored by Sofia Karstens via The Brownstone Institute,

A dear friend had a beautiful, healthy, engaged baby boy. After his first round of childhood vaccinations he went blind, non-verbal, started head banging, having seizures, lost all engagement, and fell into the abyss of autism. Today that child is 40. He is incontinent, cannot speak or feed himself, and is totally dependent upon his father to survive. 

Another friend had a son and a daughter. The daughter, following her first round of childhood shots, experienced almost exactly the same scenario described above, minus the blindness. At the time my friend did not connect the dots and when it came time for his son to be vaccinated, the child began to seize. In the room, my friend put it together and stopped the rest of the shots. Today, his son is only mildly autistic while his daughter, at 26, is non-verbal, incontinent, and often uncontrollable. Since the son is only mildly autistic, I suppose we shouldn’t look into the cause of his issues? It’s a gift, right? 

A mother (a client in one of the many tragic cases) had a teenage daughter who, after a round of the Gardasil vaccine, suffered a seizure and went into a coma. The young girl had been captain of her volleyball team, top of her class, poised for a full and happy life. Today, at nearly 20, she lives in total darkness because she has seizures every 30 seconds – cannot have any light. The neurodegeneration is unquantifiable. She cannot read or watch TV, let alone go on her first date, go to prom…experience the life she should have and would have. 

Another friend had a perfect, beautiful young daughter who was exceeding all of her milestones. After her second round of jabs, she locked in, stopped talking or making eye contact, developed a severe learning disability, and is still struggling today, at 6. 

She, too, will never experience the “normal” milestones we all would like to see for our children. 

Those stories, anecdotal though they may be, are the tip of the iceberg. 

I could share thousands, each one worse than the next, that would make most people sit in a room and cry forever.

The media machinery has conflated mild spectrum disorder with what I just described above specifically so that people will have the reaction they are having right now. This is normalization of extremes by conflating them with non-extremes so that it’s a step-by-step incremental (and coordinated) attack on those who would expose the root cause of the terrible suffering experienced by so many.

It’s executed so that people like RFK, Jr. are hobbled from doing their job. 

How does questioning the environmental harms and risk factors for autism and/or neurodegenerative disorders threaten or even conflict with the idea of autism as neurodiversity? Spoiler alert: it doesn’t. 

No other disease has people normalizing a spectrum (no pun intended) of symptoms ranging from terrible to non-debilitating in order to argue that it’s actually great. We don’t say there’s a spectrum of neurodegenerative disorder from paralysis to neuropathy and there are benefits to neuropathy therefore neurodegeneration is great. This is normalization at its best. 

Suddenly everyone’s kid is Rain Man. Suddenly everyone is “on the spectrum.” Ergo, it’s normal. Being a little bit weird is beautiful and normal and we are all a little bit weird so that’s not a disorder. This is a psyop and everyone is falling for it. No one is saying there is something wrong with neurodiversity or that we shouldn’t also be looking into that. But when it comes to discovering the contributing factors and co-factors, the environmental insults, and the increase itself in autism to date, we’re not talking about that. We are talking about, and have only ever been talking about, the above scenarios. 

The tactics to muzzle debate and halt real investigation are duplicated across all levels. (This should all sound eerily familiar when we recall the conflation, normalization, media machinations, and strawmen to emotionally activate opposition tactics used during Covid.)

It should be a red flag and alarm every American that pharmaceutical companies have no liability for vaccines and that they have managed to increase the pediatric schedule from 3 to 72 in one generation, and it should alarm every parent to learn that HHS itself draws a hard line in 1989 for autism – the year when vaccine formulation was changed to allow for combinations because in 1986 the vaccine space became a financial free-for-all. 

Unfortunately, the media is adept at keeping dots that should be connected in silos so that most people do not connect them, and there is no shortage of sock puppet “experts” willing to run around doubling down on the narrative. 

The Burbacher Study, if anyone were to know about it, let alone read it, SHOULD have at least sparked research into these potential harms. Instead, the spokesperson for the pharmaceutical industrial complex assigned to discredit parents and advocates, Paul Offit, dissects a strawman in public view…in this case the strawman is ethyl vs methyl mercury.

Allow me to explain how this tactic works and why it’s effective: Offit’s argument (and also the error in his argument) is that ethyl mercury (Thimerosal) clears from the brain faster than methyl mercury. First of all, that’s omitting the fact that there are organic and inorganic types, and for the organic type, Offit is right, but for the inorganic type, he’s dead wrong. Ethyl and methyl mercury are different, that’s true, but they both break down into organic and inorganic subtypes. The Burbacher study shows that the organic form of Ethyl mercury clears from the brain faster. 

The inorganic clearance rate couldn’t be determined because the slope of the rate of clearance is zero. So, according to this study, that form of mercury is in the brain forever. Compared to mercury derived from Thimerosal, both organic and inorganic forms of methyl mercury clear from the brain. Which goes against Offit’s claim that ethyl mercury is safer. At least the inorganic form clears from methyl mercury, but it never clears from ethyl mercury. 

But the real issue is…why are we comparing different kinds of lighter fluid around matches? No kind is desirable. (Strawman identified!) And no one is suggesting we are going to inject people with methyl mercury either…so he’s wrong to make the comparison in the first place. But once he’s made the comparison, he’s also wrong according to the data if you consider the inorganic form. Simply put, the Burbacher study proves that mercury does cross the Blood Brain Barrier. Did we put a hold on this? No. Instead, we did away with animal studies for mercury. 

This is just ONE example of ONE strawman designed and implemented to marginalize and sideline a set of risks and harms (even if that’s minority harm) and, yes, injury. There are too many others to list. For example, why aren’t we looking into the connection between autism and HHV-6? 

Between autism and chemicals like Glyphosate and PFAS and forever chemicals in our air, our water, our soil, and our food? Hint: it isn’t because I just thought of it now in my living room. It’s because bottom lines, and corporate and regulatory capture and corruption to maintain those bottom lines, are valued above human lives – above our children’s lives. 

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Only ONE vaccine has ever been properly tested, and even then, never fully. If you shine a spotlight over one small area on a dark street and don’t find what you’re looking for, do you presume the entire street is free of whatever it is? Do we abandon first principles in order to pour concrete on our confirmation biases and further our narratives? Or do we ask the difficult, complex, and nuanced questions, do the hard work, and search for the truth? It appears that question has been asked and answered in the affirmative for the former. The latter is vehemently opposed. 

The assertion that these issues have been looked into is false. In fact it’s been DISALLOWED thus far, and look what’s happening when we try to look into it now. We have everyone outraged over a strawman that was never the point in the first place. It’s all a smoke screen. Once everyone is distracted and chaos ensues, any actual progress is effectively halted, which is precisely the point. It’s not organic. It’s the model, it’s coordinated, and it works. 

People predictably snatch up the dog treats thrown to them by the mainstream. The perpetually offended contingent then reliably muddies the water by coming unhinged. Do we really need to come undone over every single thing? It’s to the point where I apologize for the blasphemy of my reusable Whole Foods bag when I’m shopping at Trader Joe’s. 

Can we please stop getting mad at the trees? We simply cannot become outraged about every single thing…I think we have bigger concerns in this country than coming undone over rich idiots in space, no? But here we are…arguing about what the definition of “is” is when it comes to our children’s health and their futures. Playing constant politics with public (and private) health. 

RFK, Jr’s job is not to be Gandhi, but to stabilize a floundering nation. We cannot prioritize the weakest subset of our population from a government perspective, or we die. The part that matters: We won’t be able to continue serving the already disabled autism population if we continue to overwhelm it. We cannot produce caregivers as fast as we are producing people with autism. So we have to scale back the rate at which we are producing people with autism. That starts with finding the cause(s) and mitigating it. 

I will also say here that for those skeptics reading this right now: I guarantee you that you have friends suffering with these injuries, or have children who are suffering from these injuries, who are too terrified to speak out and frankly don’t have the bandwidth to fight the mob because yes, it DOES tear families apart. 

I hear from them, expressing gratitude for our efforts to end their silent suffering, and tearfully begging me not to “out” them to their friends who believe they are good little compliant soldiers of some awful army all experiencing Stockholm Syndrome in concert. Forward facing, they must agree or lose whatever tenuous support they may have…but it’s not the truth. Not to them. Not to those who live it every single day, 24/7, without a break, ever. Not ever.

A group of pint-sized punks allegedly linked to Tren de Aragua, a Venezuela-based criminal organization, were involved in a violent confrontation with NYPD officers, according to the New York Post.

The skirmish occurred Friday evening following the night boxing match between Ryan Garcia and Rolly Romero in the Crossroads of the World – breaking out after a pair of officers attempted to intervene as the thugs robbed a a pair of teens, a law enforcement sources to the Post.

Alleged raw footage of the attack was shared on X.

Last night in Times Square NYC.

I was told last night that fights were breaking out everywhere .

(Repost) pic.twitter.com/gJeZI5pxlU

— Viral News NYC (@ViralNewsNYC) May 3, 2025

The Post continued:

At least three of the brutes were rounded up by Sunday afternoon — including a 12-year-old reputed ring leader — with police saying the mob is linked to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua through its baby-faced offshoot crew known as Diablos de la 42, or Devils of 42nd Street, the sources said. The cocky brats even flashed gang signs and posted pics on social media while handcuffed inside a Manhattan police precinct after being busted in the attack on cops, according to photos The Post obtained. At least three in the mob were already sought for a string of shocking robberies in Central Park — and were caught red-handed trying to pull off another heist when two cops intervened, they said.

“Is this what a sanctuary city is supposed to be?” an unnamed law enforcement official said. “One of these kids was 11 years old when he was the ringleader of that Central Park robbery pattern.

“What is it going to take for some of this policy to change when you have an 11, now 12-year-old, running around — or anybody — committing these crimes?” the angry source added. “When is common sense going to prevail? Don’t we have a moral obligation?”

An NYPD spokesperson announced that two migrant teens, ages 16 and 17, face serious charges after a violent clash with police. Both were charged with obstructing governmental administration, riot, and menacing. The 17-year-old also faces charges of assaulting a police officer, reckless endangerment, and criminal possession of a weapon, according to authorities.

In the first 100 days of his presidency, President Donald Trump’s administration has taken firm action against Tren de Aragua. The State Department, acting on Trump’s decisive executive order, officially labeled the gang a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) and Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT). The designation targeted the gang with punishing sanctions, asset freezes, and travel bans, choking off their financial lifelines.

Trump also invoked the powerful 1798 Alien Enemies Act, declaring Tren de Aragua’s activities an outright “invasion” of the United States. This historic move greenlit the swift arrest, detention, and deportation of non-citizen gang members. The administration deported hundreds of alleged Tren de Aragua members, with approximately 250 sent to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in March.

In April 2025, the Department of Justice hit 27 individuals tied to Tren de Aragua with federal charges, including racketeering, sex trafficking, drug smuggling, robbery, and illegal firearms offenses. 

Authored by Philip Wegmann via RealClearPolitics,

As the Trump administration slashes and burns its way through Washington, D.C., in search of waste, fraud, and abuse to eliminate, one area of the federal budget remains conspicuously off limits for cuts: The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

The White House is leaning on a Republican Congress to spend big to preserve and rebuild the marquee center for the arts favored by a beltway elite. The administration has lobbied lawmakers behind the scenes for over a quarter of a billion dollars in new funding.

And Congress seems set to deliver.

When the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved a budget reconciliation proposal earlier this week, including $241,750,000 for repairs to the center itself and another nearly $15 million for operating and administrative expenses, the White House was thrilled. In fact, they were directly involved. A source with direct knowledge told RealClearPolitics that the administration “collaborated with members on Capitol Hill through every step of the process.”

Republicans aren’t the typical patrons of the arts, and conservatives argue that taxpayer dollars shouldn’t prop up liberal cultural expression. The Heritage Foundation, for instance, has long recommended that the public-private opera house be cut off. According to that Trump-friendly think tank, privatizing the Kennedy Center entirely would save hundreds of millions in public funds each year.

But Trump plans on building instead. Reviving the Kennedy Center, a White House official told RCP, remains “essential” to his “vision of restoring greatness to our nation’s capital.”

This may puzzle the cultural and political elites who balked when Trump named himself chairman, fired the old board, and installed loyalists as trustees earlier this year. Protests followed. Most notably this included a troupe of 34 dancers, who silently performed The Nelken Line on the steps of the center earlier this year and who earned widespread derision on conservative corners of the internet.

The White House sees at least two problems with the Kennedy Center. First, it has become “woke.” While the center hosts a variety of programming, last year it hosted a number of drag brunches on its rooftop and booked a performance of a “Drag Salute to Divas” on the Millenium Stage. A White House called ending that kind of “anti-American propaganda” as critical “to protecting children and fostering patriotism.” Second, it has become “broke.” Visiting the facilities earlier this spring, the president bemoaned how the theater had fallen into “tremendous disrepair.”

Hence the coming overhaul of the infrastructure and changes to the programming.

“President Trump recently toured the Kennedy Center and saw first-hand how waste, fraud and abuse has robbed America’s premier arts center. The back of the house and the front of the house have been left in an embarrassing state,” said Ambassador Richard Grenell, whom Trump appointed president of the center.

The White House was looking past “partisan politics” to restore excellence in the arts, Grenell told RCP, because Trump “believes we deserve to have a national arts center that all Americans can be proud of.”

This is too much for some thespians. The hit musical Hamilton canceled its run at the Kennedy Center earlier this year in protest to changes Trump made to the board. Jeffery Seller, the producer of that show, wrote on social media that the changes fly “in the face of everything this national center represents.” The president has never cared for that musical. He prefers other Broadway shows. During his March tour of the center, Trump was overheard by reporters discussing a number of other musicals, including “Phantom of the Opera,” “Camelot,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Cats,” and “Hello, Dolly!”

While Washington powerbrokers can often be found on the red carpets of the theater, Trump largely avoided it during his first term. When winners of the 2017 Kennedy Center Honors threatened a boycott, the president and first lady Melania Trump bowed out “to allow the honorees to celebrate without any political distraction.” Meanwhile, many Democrats, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, an ex-officio member of the board, regularly attend.

Audiences are decidedly liberal – judging, at least, from the reception that Vice President J.D. Vance and second lady Usha Vance received when they stepped into the presidential box for a National Symphony Orchestra concert in March. The crowd booed. A heckler shouted, “You ruined this place!”

Less than two months later, the administration has green-lit hundreds of millions to renovate it.

The US Treasury and the US Trade Rep office announced simultanousely, just after 6pm ET, that the US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer will travel later this week to Switzerland to meet with a Chinese delegation led by Vice Premier He Lifeng, jump-starting negotiations between the two nations.

The travel was announced in statements Tuesday from the Chinese and US governments. It will be the first confirmed trade talks between the countries since President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs, led by punishing levies on China.

Secretary of the Treasury @SecScottBessent to Travel to Switzerland.

Release: https://t.co/HdFJH9AFjY

— Treasury Department (@USTreasury) May 6, 2025

“Economic security is national security, and President Donald J. Trump is leading the way both at home and abroad for a stronger, more prosperous America,” said Secretary Bessent. 

“I look forward to productive talks as we work towards rebalancing the international economic system towards better serving the interests of the United States.”

US equity futures spiked as much as 1% on the news.

The planned talks could encourage investors eager to see a reduction in tariffs that risk crippling trade between the world’s two largest economies. Trump placed duties as high as 145% on many Chinese imports, and Beijing retaliated with import taxes of 125% on American goods, escalations which rattled markets and threaten to drive up prices for manufacturing equipment as well as affordable goods that many Americans rely on, including clothing and toys.

Trump has said in recent days that he is willing to lower tariffs on China at some point, but also said this week that the US is “losing nothing” by not trading with Beijing. He claimed Chinese ships are “turning around in the Pacific Ocean.” The president has also said American consumers would be willing to accept higher prices and less selection in order to rebalance the trade relationship with China. 

Young girls don’t need “to have 30 dolls,” Trump said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press. “I think they can have three dolls or four dolls, because what we were doing with China was just unbelievable.”

China said on Friday it was assessing the possibility of trade talks with the US, the first sign that negotiations could begin between the two sides. 

Earlier Tuesday, Bessent said that while the US could announce trade deals with some partners as soon as this week, negotiations with China had not yet begun.

“China, we have not engaged in negotiations with as of yet,” he told lawmakers while testifying on Capitol Hill.

“You have Trump, who’s locked in on tariffs; you have the Fed, who’s locked in on not cutting rates,” said Jones, founder of macro hedge fund Tudor Investment Corp., speaking on CNBC. “That’s not good for the stock market.”

Bessent and Greer will also meet with Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter, the Treasury Department and USTR said in a pair of statements.

Citing a need to “remove redundant force structure,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Monday announced that he’s ordered a major reduction in the number of generals and admirals serving in the US military. Specifically, the DOD is charged with reducing active duty 4-star officers by at least 20% and National Guard generals by 20%, followed by a second round of reductions that will target another 10% of all generals and admirals — collectively called “flag officers.” Hegseth said he informally calls the policy, “Less Generals, More GI’s.” 

“Keeping with President Trump’s commitment to achieving peace through strength, we’re going to shift resources from bloated headquarters elements to our warfighters,” Hegseth said in a video posted to X. Putting the number of generals and admirals in historical perspective, he said that, in World War II, it only took 17 four- and five-star generals to lead 12 million troops. Today, America has 44 four-stars overseeing only 2.1 million service members. Overall, the ratio of generals to troops has gone from 1 to 6,000 in World War II to 1 to 1,400 today. 

“More generals and admirals does not mean more success,” said Hegseth. “This is not a slash-and-burn meant to punish high-ranking officers…this has been a deliberative process working with the joint chiefs of staff with one goal: maximizing strategic readiness and operational effectiveness.” No specific timeframe for the reductions has been announced, and it’s unclear to what extent the cuts may occur via attrition as opposed to forced retirements. Since they “serve at the pleasure of the president,” generals and admirals can be pushed out with relative ease. That’s even more true for the top brass, as retired Air Force Maj Gen Charles Dunlap explained in a 2016 essay at Lawfire:

The most senior generals — that is, the three and four star generals — only hold those grades during the period in which they occupy positions designated as being ones of “importance and responsibility.” Accordingly, if the President chooses to terminate that assignment, and the officer does not apply for voluntary retirement, then he or she will typically revert to their permanent grade, usually as a two-star major general. There are very significant financial implications to the reversion…  

Hegseth has been looking to cut some fat not only in the figurative sense, but the literal one as well. In April, he decried the American Security Project’s finding that nearly 68% of National Guard and Reserve troops are overweight or obese. “This is what happens when standards are IGNORED — and this is what we are changing. REAL fitness & weight standards are here,” he wrote on X. “We will be FIT, not FAT.” The previous month, Hegseth ordered “sex-neutral” physical fitness requirements for combat positions.  

Introducing the “Less Generals More GIs Policy.” pic.twitter.com/bQLRL2MqSC

— Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (@SecDef) May 5, 2025

In February, President Trump took the extraordinary step of firing the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and five more senior Pentagon officers. The next month brought the sudden ouster of the three-star general leading the Defense Health Agency, which comprises a vast medical system serving more than 9.5 million service members, retirees and family members around the world via more than 700 hospitals and clinics with a staff of more than 130,000 service members, civilian employees and contractors.  

Sadly, none of this overhauling will result in lower Pentagon spending. Far from it: Hegseth and Trump are poised to take most of the savings squeezed out by DOGE and throw it into the gaping maw of the military-industrial complex. Last month, Trump announced the Pentagon will have its first $1 trillion budget — up from $895 billion in the 2025 defense authorization bill. “Nobody’s seen anything like it. We have to build our military, and we’re very cost-conscious, but the military is something we have to build, and we have to be strong,” Trump said as he hosted Israeli prime minister and military-aid welfare-queen extraordinaire Benjamin Netanyahu. 

Via Middle East Eye

A climate scientist working as an adviser on Saudi Arabia’s Neom project has warned that the new city could change local environments and weather systems, including the path of wind and sand storms. 

The $500+ billion megacity – which organizers claim will be 33 times the size of New York City – is planned to include a 170km straight-line city, an eight-sided city that floats on water, and a ski resort with a folded vertical village, amongst other grandiose projects.

Donald Wuebbles, a researcher atmospheric physics and chemistry who advises Neom, told the Financial Times that he frequently raised concerns about how the project could impact the climate.

“Part of my concern was, what impact is The Line and those [projects] going to have on the local environment…  you start affecting the local weather and climate,” said Wuebbles. 

He added that the potential damage could include things that have “not been studied enough”, including changes to rain patterns and the amplification of wind and storms in desert areas. 

The megacity is being built in the Tabuk province of northwestern Saudi Arabia, much of which has a dry, desert climate. The Line is touted to include two mirrored buildings that are nearly 500 meters tall running along a portion of the straight-line city, according to designs uncovered in 2022.

Wuebbles said that other questions he raised included emissions from the use of cement and a slow transition away from combustion engine construction vehicles and machinery.

Neom budget cuts

Wuebbles, who is at the University of Illinois, said academics were commissioned by Neom to study his concerns, but that the findings were not shared with him. 

He said the sustainability advisory committee, which he sits on, was told during a recent meeting that the climate concerns were escalated to a “higher priority” since the abrupt departure of Nadhmi al-Nasr, the former chief of Neom. 

A second member of the advisory team, who wished to remain anonymous, affirmed to the FT the issues raised by Wuebbles. Neom said that it was a responsible development company and sustainability was one of its core priorities.

Last week, the CEO of Neom launched a “comprehensive review” of the project, in what appeared to be belt-tightening partly due to falling energy prices.

Every building needs a roof – and ours spans 2.3Km. Trojena’s Ski Village takes design to extraordinary heights. The world’s largest skiable rooftop is a marvel of engineering and breathtaking architecture to provide a glimpse into the future of adventure. pic.twitter.com/VrJG94scoA

— TROJENA (@NEOMTROJENA) May 1, 2025

One person familiar with the review told the FT that the scope of several projects surrounding Neom was being reviewed due to “an environment of limited resources”. As part of the review, the sustainability advisory committee’s future is being reconsidered, according to Wuebbles. “The whole operation has been slowed down by six to 12 months,” he said. 

The Saudi government has been accused of forcibly displacing members of the Howeitat tribe, who have lived for centuries in Tabuk province, to make way for the $500bn city. At least 47 members of the tribe were arrested or detained for resisting eviction. 

In April 2020, activist Abdul-Rahim al-Howeiti was shot dead by security forces shortly after making videos protesting against his eviction to make way for the megacity.

Last year, Middle East Eye reported that Saudi security officers were ordered to use lethal force to kill people who resisted eviction from areas earmarked for the city, according to a former Saudi intelligence officer. Senior executives leading the project have also been accused of racism, misogyny and corruption.

OpenAI, the world’s most valuable artificial intelligence company, is likely being targeted by espionage from multiple nation-states, warns Josh Steinman, a former Trump National Security Council staffer and cybersecurity company founder.

.@JoshuaSteinman: “I would be willing to bet a large amount of information that OpenAI is completely penetrated by multiple intelligence agencies—and has been for a while.” pic.twitter.com/a8JCSeijFD

— Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) May 6, 2025

“I would be willing to bet a large amount of information that OpenAI is completely penetrated by multiple intelligence agencies—and has been for a while,” Steinman, co-founder and CEO of Galvanick, a cybersecurity company building tools to secure industrial infrastructure and AI systems, 

said in an interview with World of DaaS with Auren Hoffman.

When asked how companies can prevent espionage, Steinman conceded it’s challenging but emphasized that rigorous and selective hiring practices are key. “You just have to be very mindful of who you’re hiring and where you are putting them in your company,” Steinman told Hoffman. “You need to be realistic about who your employees are.”

Watch the full interview:

Steinman referenced a bombshell Wall Street Journal report that alleges Chinese officials, during a secret meeting in Geneva, Switzerland in December 2024, privately acknowledged their role in the Volt Typhoon cyberattacks targeting U.S. critical infrastructure. According to the Journal, the officials’ remarks were “indirect” and “somewhat ambiguous” but sufficient to tie Volt Typhoon and the Chinese government to the relentless cyber assaults on American systems.

The campaign, believed to have started no later than 2023, has unleashed chaos, breaching major U.S. phone carriers, electric utilities, IT firms, internet providers, and government agencies. Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon, two Chinese groups, have been repeatedly linked to these hacks.

In July 2024, OpenAI disclosed it was the victim of a security breach in 2023 that exposed internal AI technology secrets, sparking fresh concerns of espionage by foreign adversaries, particularly China. According to the New York Times, a hacker infiltrated OpenAI’s internal messaging systems, accessing employee discussions about AI designs.

As president-elect, Trump’s transition team signaled a more aggressive stance against Chinese cyberattacks. Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the Trump-Vance transition, told News News that the administration was “committed to imposing costs on private and nation-state actors who continue to steal our data and attack our infrastructure.”

“The Trump Administration is committed to imposing costs on private and nation state actors who continue to steal our data and attack our infrastructure,” Hughes added at the time. 

Nuclear stocks jumped mid day Tuesday after Axios reported that The White House is poised to issue executive orders aimed at accelerating the deployment of nuclear reactors across the United States.

One of our favorite names in the space, Oklo, spiked to new highs heading into the closing 30 minutes of the cash session on strong volume:

The White House actions are expected to leverage the Departments of Defense and Energy to expedite reactor deployment, potentially circumventing delays from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

This initiative aligns with the administration’s strategy to meet the surging energy demands driven by sectors like artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing.

Publicly traded companies positioned to benefit from this nuclear expansion include our favorite, Oklo, formerly backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

The company is among eight companies selected to provide microreactors for U.S. military bases, aiming to supply 100% of critical energy needs at these sites.

These developments are part of a broader trend toward revitalizing the U.S. nuclear energy sector.

The ADVANCE Act of 2024, signed into law in July, aims to streamline the licensing process for advanced nuclear technologies, reduce regulatory costs, and promote the development of next-generation reactors.

Additionally, in a rare show of bipartisan agreement, the Biden administration had formerly expressed intentions to triple the nation’s nuclear power capacity by 2050, recognizing nuclear energy’s role in achieving carbon-free electricity goals.

The anticipated executive actions reflect a concerted effort to modernize the U.S. energy infrastructure, with nuclear power playing a central role in ensuring energy security and meeting future demands.

As of early 2025, 411 nuclear reactors operated worldwide with a combined 371-gigawatt capacity. Amazon, investing over $1 billion in nuclear projects, is exploring small modular reactors, while Meta and Google are also considering the emerging technology.

We’ve been following the story since late 2023. We wrote back in early November that Mark Zuckerberg reportedly told Meta workers that plans to build an AI data center powered by nuclear energy were scrapped after rare bees were discovered on the proposed site.

But by December last year it looked like things could be back on track, according to reporting from Axios, who noted first that Meta is joining industry heavyweights like Amazon and Google in exploring nuclear energy as a zero-carbon solution.

And as we have continued to report, accelerating power demand growth from AI data centers has sparked a nuclear power revival in the US:

• Amazon To Invest More Than $500 Million In Small Modular Nuclear Reactors To Power AWS

• Nuclear Names Surge After Three Mile Island Planned Restart To Power Microsoft Data Centers

• Nuclear Is Back: US Closes On $1.5 Billion Loan To Resurrect Holtec’s Palisades Nuclear Plant

• Sam Altman-Backed Nuclear Startup Oklo Signs Agreement With Dept. Of Energy For Next Phase Of Siting In Idaho

For those who missed it, in our note “The Next AI Trade” from April 2024, more than one year ago, we outlined various investment opportunities for powering up America, most of which have dramatically outperformed the market since then.

While most global car companies – even Tesla – are suspending guidance, cursing tariffs for plunging demand and barely treading water at a time when Chinese dumping of its own cars has flooded the European market with ultra cheap alternatives while Democrats in the US have sworn to never again buy anything from Elon Musk, one car company stands above all others. Shares of Italian supercar maker Ferrari rose over 1.0%, and was trading not far below its all time high, after the Italian luxury carmaker reported Ebitda for the first quarter that met analyst estimates, with Bernstein saying the company stands out against rivals after it maintained its guidance.

Another reason why Ferrari’s stock is likely to take out record highs on short notice: demand for the company’s supercars in the US remains “hot” despite price increases to offset Donald Trump’s tariffs, the CEO said as the company maintained its guidance for profit growth this year.

The Italian company is exposed to Trump’s 25% tariffs on imports of foreign-made cars since it makes all of its cars in Italy, even though the US is its largest market and is where it sells about one in four cars. But, unlike virtually every other company, the luxury-car maker also has enough brand strength to pass on the tariff costs to consumers. In other words, if you can pay $300K for a car, you will be just as likely to pay $400K.

The company on Tuesday said it had not received cancellations in its order book — which already covers the whole of 2026 — even after it announced plans in March to raise prices for some of its models by up to 10 per cent.

“Today, we don’t see any weakening of the order book,” said chief executive Benedetto Vigna. “When it comes to the tariff, specifically, I think the order book and the portfolio we have allow us to navigate with better visibility.”

According to the FT, Ferrari reported a 23% YoY increase in Q1 operating profit to €542 million while revenue increased 13% to €1.79bn. Both metrics, which beat estimates, reflected continuing demand for personalisation, with buyers adding expensive features to their supercars.

While many other carmakers have withdrawn or sharply reduced their guidance over the past week, Ferrari broadly stuck with its previous forecast for an adjusted operating profit of at least €2bn and a profit margin of at least 29%.  Ferrari cautioned that the guidance faced a potential risk of a 50bps reduction on profitability percentage margins, but considering how its peers Ford and GM have been slashing guidance, 0.5% seems like a joke by comparison.

“Ferrari stands out, reporting consensus-beating first-quarter results and confidently reiterating its fiscal 2025 guidance,” Bernstein analysts wrote, describing the outcome as “rock steady”.

The company has managed to generate higher margins even as shipments only increased 1% from a year earlier to 3,593 vehicles. The group delivered five hybrid models in the first quarter, representing 49% of total shipments.

Meanwhile, what was once the company’s fastest growing market continues to shrink as shipments to China, Hong Kong and Taiwan fell 25% during the first three months of the year as luxury car brands continue to grapple with slowing demand in China.

But China represents a relatively small market for Ferrari because the carmaker sets a cap of 10 per cent on deliveries to the country.

Vigna said on Tuesday that the company was also on track to unveil its first electric vehicle in October, with sales due to start a year later in 2026.