Financial Mindset

On Friday, just hours after publicly backing rival Anthropic for standing firm against the Pentagon’s demands, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced his company had struck its own deal with the Pentagon. The move came shortly after the US government had taken the highly unusual step of designating Anthropic a “supply chain risk.” OpenAI’s decision drew criticism from across many AI researchers and tech policy experts, even though OpenAI said it had achieved limitations in its agreement around surveillance of U.S. citizens and lethal autonomous weapons that Anthropic wanted in its contract but which the Pentagon had refused. One of the key points of contention was over domestic mass surveillance. Experts have long warned that advanced AI is capable of taking scattered, individually innocuous data—like a person’s location, finances, search history—and assembling it into a comprehensive picture of any person’s life, automatically and at scale. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has said that this ki...

U.S. stock futures pointed to a risk-off trade Sunday evening as investors reacted to the U.S.-Israeli bombardment of Iran over the weekend. The selloff comes after the U.S. military reported the first casualties from Operation Epic Fury, while the FBI is investigating a mass shooting last night in Texas as potential terrorism . Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has suggested the  conflict with Iran could last a while  as he makes regime change a goal, saying on social media Saturday that the bombing will continue “as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!” Futures tied to the Dow Jones industrial average tumbled 482 points, or 0.97%. S&P 500 futures were down 0.85%, and Nasdaq futures sank 0.88%. U.S. oil futures shot up 7.25% to at $71.88 a barrel, and Brent crude gained 8.1% to $78.77. In over-the-counter trading earlier on Sunday, Brent prices jumped 10% to about $80 a barrel,...

As strikes hit Tehran on Saturday morning, millions of Iranians got a strange push notification on their phones. The BadeSaba Calendar prayer app, which has more than 5 million downloads, had been compromised, and the app issued alerts saying, “Help has arrived!” and called for a “People’s Army” to defend their “Iranian brothers,” according to an assessment from cyber intel firm Flashpoint. On Sunday, the app sent with surrender instructions for rank-and-file members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard and safe locations for protesters to gather.  Then regime loyalists quickly struck back. According to Flashpoint, what followed on Sunday was the “most aggressive” use so far of what’s known as Iran’s “Great Epic” cyber campaign, which is a loosely coordinated group of cyber operatives under a channel called the “Cyber Islamic Resistance.” Under the group’s umbrella, various cyber attackers have shut down gas stations in Jordan , and led attacks against U.S. and Israeli military p...

A senior White House official said Sunday that Iran’s “new potential leadership” has suggested it is open to talks with the United States after American and Israeli forces  launched a major attack against Tehran , killing the country’s supreme leader and other high-ranking officials. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations, said President Donald Trump says he is “eventually” willing to talk but that for now  the military operation “continues unabated.”  The official did not say who the potential new Iranian leaders are or how they made their alleged willingness to talk known. Trump told The Atlantic on Sunday that he planned to speak with Iran’s new leadership. “They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them,” he said, declining comment on the timing. The potential future diplomatic opening comes as new details are emerging about  the detailed planning that went into  the ...

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah  Ali Khamenei  was killed in a major attack on Iran launched by Israel and the United States, President Donald Trump said Saturday on social media. Trump said his death is “the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their Country.” The death occurred after a joint U.S. and Israeli aerial bombardment that targeted Iranian military and governmental sites. The president also said “heavy and pinpoint bombing” was to continue “uninterrupted” through the week or longer. There was no immediate comment from Iran. The assassination of the second leader of the Islamic Republic, who had no designated successor, would throw its future into doubt and raise the prospect of a protracted conflict given Iranian threats of retaliation. Trump in his post called Khamenei “one of the most evil people in history.” Trump said that Khamenei “was unable to avoid our Intelligence and Highly Sophisticated Tracking Systems and, working closely wit...

The ability of the US, Israel and Gulf Arab states to weather Iran’s retaliatory strikes will depend on how many missile interceptors they have — and stocks are most likely dangerously low after intense combat with the Islamic Republic last year. Tehran’s main means of offensive operations is long-range attacks with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones, all of which it  launched  after Israeli strikes in June 2025. This time around, Iran reacted to US and Israeli attacks by almost immediately firing on Israel and countries including Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain. Defending against such weapons requires an even bigger number of interceptors — typical military doctrine calls for firing two or three at each incoming target to maximize the chances of hitting it. Stocks of missile interceptors could be in danger of running low within days if the intensity of current Iranian attacks persists, according to a person familiar with the m...

The Supreme Court ruled that President Donald Trump’s global tariffs were illegal, but that’s not going to stop the administration from holding on to the money it’s already collected. Sources told Politico officials are weighing various ideas, including discouraging companies from demanding refunds, arguing revenue collected previously is retroactively legal under new tariffs, and letting claimants skip to the front of the line if they give up a portion of the funds they’re owed. The White House did not immediately respond to Fortune ’s request for comment. Last Friday, the top court struck down tariffs invoked under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, upholding decisions from lower courts. Hours later, Trump announced a fresh set of global levies under a different law as well as investigations that are likely to lead to longer-term duties. But the Supreme Court didn’t detail a process for refunding tariff revenue, leaving it to the U.S. Court of International Tra...