Good morning. Andrew here. Tonight, leaders from corporate America will flock to the East Room of the White House for a state dinner for President Xi Jinping of China. (Expected attendees include: Elon Musk, Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase and Larry Fink of BlackRock.) We’ll bring you a full rundown tomorrow of what we hear behind the scenes. Our expectation: a continuing debate about A.I. safety — strictly out of earshot of President Trump — talk of rare earth minerals and growing anxiety over the price of Treasury bonds. (Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here.)
‘Unacceptable’President Trump may be dismissive about concerns about artificial intelligence safety. But discussions at the United Nations — and alarming new disclosures of hacks by A.I. agents — underscore how the issue is at the forefront of other leaders’ minds. The emerging question is how international efforts to restrain the fast-evolving technology will take shape, especially if Trump is resistant to broad-ranging initiatives. OpenAI agents’ hacking of Australian government systems has ignited new safety concerns. The breach occurred at a government-run public health care website in June, and A.I. agents gained access to nonpublic information, Anthony Albanese, the country’s prime minister, said yesterday. The agents were trying to gain access to a statistics reporting portal during an internal evaluation to no avail and ultimately found an unauthorized back door. They didn’t reach any personal information, though, he said.
Albanese called the hack “unacceptable,” and said he had raised the issue with Sam Altman, OpenAI’s C.E.O. The government is investigating further, and would weigh whether OpenAI would face any legal consequences. That wasn’t the only hack involving OpenAI that came to light yesterday. Transluce, a research lab focused on A.I. oversight, also identified these:
Dario Amodei of Anthropic and Altman both addressed A.I. safety at the U.N. yesterday. The executives reiterated their concern about the risks of humans losing control over A.I., especially as labs like theirs focus on models that can autonomously improve themselves. Here’s what each C.E.O. proposed:
But how willing are Washington and Beijing to go along? U.S. and Chinese officials recently discussed creating a notification system about A.I. safety. But Trump — echoing arguments by industry leaders like Jensen Huang of Nvidia — has dismissed calls for tougher oversight. What China wants is less clear. While Beijing has called some U.S. efforts to restrain its A.I. industry reminiscent of the Cold War, government leaders appear most concerned about the technology’s effect on the Chinese Communist Party’s rule.
A federal judge blocks the White House ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico. Judge Timothy Kelly of the U.S. District Court in Washington, a Trump appointee, ordered the administration to immediately restore the news outlets’ access on a temporary basis. Other media organizations had refrained from some coverage in solidarity. Kelly ruled that the ban was most likely unconstitutional. The U.S. agrees to a two-month trade truce extension with China. The announcement extends through Jan. 10 a previous deal to pause some U.S. tariffs and other trade restrictions in return for concessions from Beijing, including agreeing to rare earth minerals shipments. It comes amid a high-stakes meeting between President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China. YouTube’s C.E.O. sees no need to join Meta’s child-safety legal settlement. Google’s video giant already has measures in place to keep young people safe on the platform, its leader, Neal Mohan, told CNN. An agreement between Meta and several dozen states requires YouTube and TikTok to make substantial changes to their platforms, as well as to pay billions, to unlock the full amount of the settlement. Democrats will reintroduce an effort to overhaul the private equity industry. The bill would make private equity firms jointly liable for the debt of companies under their control, among other provisions, DealBook’s Niko Gallogly is first to report. The legislation, first introduced in 2019, is being spearheaded by Senator Elizabeth Warren alongside six other senators and nine representatives. This year, Congress passed legislation that capped the number of single-family homes a private equity firm can own. Bond turmoil returnsThe global bond rout is deepening this morning, pushing up borrowing costs on government debt to multi-decade highs. Multiple factors are driving the sell-off: yesterday’s lackluster $70 billion auction for five-year Treasury notes; dimming hopes for a diplomatic end to the war in Iran; and growing odds that central banks will again raise interest rates to combat inflation. The latest:
Watch the Fed. Traders this morning see a 71 percent chance of a rate increase next month, and a total of three more by April. Michael Barr, a Fed governor, essentially backed that view: “In my base case, further policy adjustments are likely to be needed to ensure inflation comes down to target in a timely fashion,” he said yesterday. A key adviser to President Trump lashed out at the Fed. The director of the National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett, questioned the central bank’s decision last week to raise interest rates. “A lot of the people who weren’t appointed by President Trump are giving speeches over the last couple of days, saying we need a lot more hikes,” he said. Hassett called the Fed “unusually partisan.” (Of note: He has been in lock step with Trump on lowering rates and has supported the president’s efforts to oust Jay Powell, the former Fed chair who remains on the rate-setting committee, and Lisa Cook, a governor appointed by Joe Biden.) “There is still a lot of work to do to restore Fed independence,” Hassett added, without elaborating. VIDEO OF THE DAY Neko Health takes on New York
Neko Health, the health tech start-up Daniel Ek of Spotify and the entrepreneur Hjalmar Nilsonne founded, has ridden its early success in Europe to attract a star-studded group of investors, including Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Ferriss and a raft of venture capital firms. The company, valued at roughly $7 billion, is set to open its first U.S. clinic, in New York, today, with more U.S. cities to follow. Ek told DealBook that he hoped advances in the technology could one day make Neko Health scans faster and cheaper. Think of an airport security screener, he added, where “you can walk into the thing and it takes not even five or 10 minutes” to get a checkup that has scanned for skin conditions, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, and more. DealBook recently visited the clinic, which is in the SoHo area of New York City. Here’s Niko Gallogly’s video report. Bill Ackman backs a brain device start-upIn August, Bill Ackman announced that he and his wife, Neri Oxman, were founding the Ackman Oxman Institute, a brain research center in Manhattan. The news came after his daughter had a brain hemorrhage and was in a coma. The institute will focus on neuroscience research, neurosurgery and rehabilitation. It will also effectively serve as an accelerator for related start-ups. Today, it is disclosing its first investment: Precision Neuroscience, a competitor to Elon Musk’s Neuralink, Lauren Hirsch reports. The Ackman Oxman Institute and Pershing Square are contributing $42.5 million to Precision Neuroscience’s new $250 million fund-raising deal, valuing the start-up at roughly $1 billion. Other investors include Duquesne Family Office, the investment firm of the billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller; B Capital; ARK Invest; Invus; Mubadala Capital; Mirae Asset Capital; Korea Investment Partners; Hitachi Ventures; and JSL Health Capital. Investors are making big bets on “brain-computer interface,” or B.C.I. The technology uses sensors to read neural signals and communicate the signals to devices that can produce speech or maneuver robotic limbs.
Precision Neuroscience’s approach differs from that of Neuralink. While Neuralink’s method involves installing electrodes below the brain’s surface, Precision Neuroscience’s device is viewed by medical experts as less invasive: It is effectively an ultrathin film that sits on top of the cerebral cortex. Last year, the Food and Drug Administration granted Precision Neuroscience regulatory approval for implants in place for up to 30 days. The new funding will go toward the company’s efforts to secure the F.D.A. approval for permanent implants, Michael Mager, the company’s C.E.O., told DealBook.
B.C.I. and brain recovery will be a major focus for the institute. Ackman told DealBook he had spent the past seven months doing a “deep dive” into neuroscience. A neurosurgeon overseeing his daughter’s care introduced him to one of Precision’s founders, Dr. Benjamin Rapoport, a surgeon at Mount Sinai in New York. We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times.
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