Financial Mindset

President  Donald Trump  is suggesting he has left standing orders for the U.S. military to destroy Iran “  at levels they’ve never seen before  ” if Tehran follows through on its long-standing threats to kill him. But the U.S. government has no way to create an automatic, preauthorized “dead man’s switch” that would prompt immediate retaliation. Instead, if Trump were killed, the transfer of power to his successor is governed by the  25th Amendment  and the  Presidential Succession Act of 1947 . Vice President  JD Vance  instantaneously would become commander in chief and have authority for any retaliation. Under such a scenario, Vance could do exactly what Trump called for, though there also is a chance he could decide not to follow his predecessor’s orders — or offer a direct response in a different way. “The U.S. has, for a whole variety of reasons, never utilized a technical ‘dead man’s switch,’” said G...

Despite the U.S.-Iran ceasefire agreement, the Persian Gulf has seen on-again, off-again fighting as both sides try to assert control over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran insists that all traffic must receive its OK and has attacked ships attempting to cross the narrow waterway outside its approved route along the Iranian coast. The U.S. has retaliated by bombing Iranian sites used for drone and missile strikes while defending ships following an alternate route that hugs the Omani coast. Top U.S. officials have demanded that Tehran make a public statement saying the strait is open and ships won’t be attacked. But the ability to close it off—and threaten the global economy with an oil shock—represents Iran’s main source of leverage. Weeks of U.S. bombardment during the war failed to fully reopen the strait, though the Navy established the alternate channel by guiding ships through and offering protection from Iranian attacks. The result has been a stalemate in ...

OpenAI latest AI model, GPT-5.6 Sol, likely has security vulnerabilities similar to one that led the Trump administration to impose export controls on Anthropic’s Fable 5 model, according to findings from U.K. government agency. OpenAI markets its latest model, GPT-5.6 Sol, as its most secure to date, but the British government researchers who tested it prior to release say the model’s guardrails are susceptible to jailbreaks that can unlock dangerous cyber capabilities. The agency, the U.K. AI Security Institute (AISI), “identified universal jailbreaks in the cyber domain, including jailbreaks that allowed for long-form agentic task completion in domains like vulnerability discovery and exploit development,” according to a summary of its findings contained in a technical report OpenAI published Thursday. In other words, it was possible to trick GPT-5.6 into ignoring controls meant to prevent it from engaging in cyber attacks. Once those guardrails were...

Shares of South Korean memory chipmaker SK Hynix rose 12.8% as they made their debut on Wall Street, at a time when demand for chips is surging thanks to the  frenzy around artificial intelligence . The company is already one of the largest in South Korea, along with Samsung Electronics, and is a member of the Kospi index. Even with a recent pullback, the country’s Kospi index is up 77% so far this year and SK Hynix shares have more than tripled. SK Hynix priced its American depositary receipts, or ADRs, at $149 each Thursday. They opened Friday at $170 and closed at $168.01. The offering of 177.9 million ADRs raised proceeds of $26.5 billion, making it the biggest-ever initial share sale in the U.S. by a foreign company. An ADR is issued by a bank or broker and is a simplified way for U.S. investors to own foreign stocks through the U.S. markets. SK Hynix is going public in the U.S. amid a surge in IPO proceeds. There were 48 IPOs raising a total of $104.8 billion...

President Donald Trump promoted the “Freedom Fuel Network” offering gasoline prices well below the average market price a week ago, yet it is not clear where or how this new chain debuted. The gas stations, located in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, appeared just before July 4, a time when Americans fill up for holiday road trips. “The first Freedom Fuel Network gas station has landed in Philadelphia, lowering the price at the pump to $3.47 for our 47th President,” the White House posted on X. “President Trump is leading the charge to lower gas prices this summer – putting more money in your pocket.” According to AAA, the nationwide average gasoline price sits at $3.88 and the average gasoline price in Pennsylvania sits at just under $4.00. “Just as I promised, oil prices are dropping fast, and gas prices at the pump are dropping too,” Trump said on Truth Social. “Gas prices will soon be back to record low prices Americans enjoyed at the pump before our ver...

Less than 10 days away from the World Cup final, it’s pretty hard to have missed the “FIFA 15” culinary diplomacy that’s happening around the World Cup. We have the Tartan Army drinking the city of Boston dry; the massive lines forcing a famed Joe’s Kansas City BBQ to close on Sundays; and an influx of tourists from all over trying yerba mate for the first time. What’s more, we’ve see the rise of social media surrounding foods that have been ingrained into what foreign visitors see as pure Americana: Buc-cees, Ranch dressing , and of course, Raising Cane’s. “THIS IS THE BEST FRIED CHICKEN FOOD EVER. THE SAUCE MANNN!” A Tartan Army fan wrote on X. “WE NEED THIS IN THE UK!!” Another fan posted a TikTok of her first Raising Cane’s experience, unboxing a chicken finger box combo and proclaiming it to be a “10 out of 10,” before adding: “The sauce is delish.” Raising Cane’s ...

Buried in the Federal Reserve’s June policy statement—the shortest of Kevin Warsh’s young tenure as chair—is a single sentence with no qualifiers, no hedges, and, according to at least one longtime Fed watcher, more signal than anything in the minutes released Wednesday : “The Committee will deliver price stability.” “There’s not a qualifying statement after that,” said Laura Ullrich, a former senior regional economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond who now directs economic research at the Indeed Hiring Lab. “It doesn’t say the committee will deliver price stability while also blah blah blah blah. It doesn’t have a qualifying statement.” Despite its brevity, she called it “a very short, but very strong statement.” It read as an unhedged commitment that doesn’t usually appear in a document over which every word is fought over by the 19 people who make up the Federal Open Market Committee...