>>> Weekend Summary Papers

FINANCIAL TIMES
-US envoy Steve Witkoff is set to begin talks with Iran's top diplomat, Abbas Araghchi, on Saturday as the Trump administration seeks a deal to curb Tehran's nuclear program and ease the Middle East's next conflict. The negotiations are seen as a crucial first step in resolving the long-standing stand-off over Tehran's aggressive nuclear advances. However, the two countries face significant hurdles due to deep distrust and differing expectations. US President Donald Trump has warned that the talks are not going well and plans to use military force if necessary. Trump's goal is to dismantle Iran's uranium enrichment program, which is seen as a red line for Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who insists Tehran will not be bullied into a deal.
-Susan Collins, head of the Boston Fed, has said the Federal Reserve is prepared to use its power to stabilize financial markets in case of disorderly conditions. Collins stated that markets are functioning well and there are no liquidity concerns. However, she acknowledged the central bank's ability to address market functioning or liquidity concerns. Collins' comments come amid a week of turbulence in US markets following President Trump's global trade war, which has triggered fears of recession. The New York Fed's John Williams warned that Trump's tariffs could increase inflation, increase unemployment, and weaken economic growth.
-Despite their differences, neither Brzezinski nor Kissinger would have advised Trump to offer concessions to Russia ahead of peace talks. Both would have been mortified by Trump and his Vice-president JD Vance's humiliation of Volodymyr Zelensky. Kissinger was a seducer, while Brzezinski was closer to a Venus flytrap. They would not have spoken about Putin in the manner Witkoff recently did to Tucker Carlson, who revealed that Putin had prayed for Trump in church after last summer's assassination attempt. Late in life, Kissinger and Brzezinski nearly swapped their Russia positions, with Brzezinski advocating for the "Finlandization" of Ukraine and Kissinger endorsed Ukraine's NATO membership following Russia's 2022 invasion.
-European travelers visiting the US have experienced a significant drop in March, with a 17% drop in visitors staying at least one night in the US compared to the previous year. This trend is a threat to the US tourism industry, which accounts for 2.5% of the country's GDP. Some countries, including Ireland, Norway, and Germany, experienced a 20% drop in travel. The total number of overseas visitors to the US dropped by 12% YoY in March, the steepest decline since March 2021 when the travel sector was affected by pandemic restrictions. The decline in travel from the EU to the US is seen as a "bad buzz" and a "destructive blow" to the US economy, which could take generations to repair.
-The US-led trade war and a drop in oil prices are causing Russia's budget to be 2.5% lower than expected in 2025, potentially forcing the Kremlin to increase borrowing, cut nonmilitary spending, or reduce reserves. The average price of Urals crude, Russia's main export grade, has fallen to its lowest in almost two years, with Urals trading at about $50 a barrel. Russia's budget for 2025 is based on Urals at $69.70 a barrel. This could force the Kremlin to increase borrowing or cut nonmilitary spending.
-Trump's tariff war has caused chaos in global markets, but among exporters in China's Yiwu, the city famous for its Christmas trees and campaign caps, the mood is more of stoic defiance than panic. Chinese business people on the front lines of the trade war are confident their nation will prevail. Exporter Kenny Qi said Trump wants to steal a slice of China's pie, but was shocked when Beijing retaliated with its own 125% tariffs this week. Trump's new duties on Chinese goods are more than twice the 60% tariffs he threatened during his election campaign, a level many economists considered a worst-case scenario. Beijing has stepped up its nationalist rhetoric to prepare the public for the economic fallout from a hard decoupling with the US. Foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning posted a video of Mao giving a speech during the 1950-53 Korean war on social media.
-Trump's administration has offered asylum to Afrikaners, citing government-sponsored discrimination, cut funding for South Africa's HIV/Aids program, and expelled South Africa's ambassador to the US. This has triggered a crisis for President Cyril Ramaphosa's government, which is struggling to protect economic ties with a crucial trading partner. The situation has inflamed tensions in South Africa, which is considered the world's most economically unequal nation. The idea of taking refuge in the US is anathema to many Afrikaners, who account for almost 5% of South Africa's population.
-Argentina has agreed to relax its strict currency controls as part of a $20B loan from the IMF, as pressures mount on President Javier Milei's plan to revive the economy. The central bank will lift controls for individuals and maintain restrictions for companies. The IMF will partially float the peso's official exchange rate, allowing it to fluctuate between 1,000 and 1,400 pesos to the dollar, replacing a controversial policy that devalued the currency by just 1% a month despite higher monthly inflation. Economy minister Luis Caputo denied the change constituted a devaluation of the peso. The IMF will transfer an initial $12B to Argentina and another $2B in June, which will be used to replenish the central bank's hard currency reserves and calm volatile markets. The IMF's board confirmed approval of the deal late on Friday.

NEW YORK TIMES
-President Trump has shown his pain point in his standoff with China, as Xi Jinping, who rules with absolute authority, has shown he is willing to let the Chinese people endure hardship. However, President Trump revealed he has limits and has to decide whether Russia is an adversary or a future partner. Trump's aides may have to decide on whether Russia is an adversary or a future partner. As a result, Trump did not seem to mind as his worldwide tariffs set off stock market sell-offs and wiped out trillions of dollars in wealth. He told Americans, "Be cool," and then blinked on Wednesday afternoon in the face of financial turmoil, particularly a rapid rise in government bond yields that could shake the dominant position of the dollar and the foundation of the US economy.
-The US government bond market has experienced a significant increase in yields, with the 10-year Treasury yield rising to about 4.5% from less than 4.5% at the end of last week. This is due to the chaotic rollout of tariffs, which have shaken investors' faith in the US's pivotal role in the financial system. Treasuries, issued by the US Treasury, are backed by the full faith of the American government and have long been considered one of the safest and most stable markets in the world. However, the erratic behavior of the Treasury market has raised fears that investors are turning against US assets as President Trump's trade war escalates.
-President Trump's ambitions for the global trading system are being met with tariffs, aiming to rip it down and rebuild it. However, the European Union (EU) is taking action to ensure its position at the center of the future. As one of the world's largest and most open economies, the EU has a lot on the line as trade rules undergo a once-in-a-generation upheaval. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, has been working with global leaders to deepen existing trade agreements and strike new ones, while also negotiating with China to prevent China from dumping cheap metals and chemicals onto the European market as it loses access to American customers due to high Trump tariffs.
-China has raised its tariffs on US imports to 125%, retaliating for the third time in the escalating trade war between the two superpowers. The brinkmanship between President Trump and Xi Jinping, China's top leader, threatens to rip apart trade ties between the world's two largest economies after years of simmering tensions. China accompanied its announcement of the higher levies, which take effect on Saturday, with a mocking statement calling Mr. Trump's tariff policies "a joke." The move comes after the White House ratcheted up its tariff on Chinese goods to 125 percent, on top of an existing 20% tax.
-The Trump administration has continued to pursue its effort against securing the freedom of a Maryland man it inadvertently deported to a Salvadoran prison last month. Despite a court order that expressly said he could remain in the United States, the administration defied a federal judge's order to provide a written road map of its plans to free the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. Trump officials then repeatedly stonewalled her efforts to get the most basic information about him at a court hearing. During the hearing, in Federal District Court in Maryland, the judge, Paula Xinis, called the administration's evasions "extremely troubling" and demanded that the Justice Department provide her with daily updates on the White House's progress in getting Mr. Abrego Garcia back on U.S. soil. The administration's stance on seeking the return of the deported man has been a source of tension and frustration for the administration.
-A federal judge has declined to block the Trump administration from carrying out detention and deportation operations in places of worship, citing a lack of clarity about how President Trump's promised mass deportation campaign has been carried out in practice since he took office. The ruling cast doubt on claims by a coalition of Christian and Jewish groups that their congregations were at heightened risk of becoming targets for raids under the Trump administration. The ruling stemmed from a lack of clarity about how President Trump's promised mass deportation campaign has been carried out in practice since he took office.
-A Trump administration budget proposal would essentially eliminate the Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (NOAA) division, one of the world's foremost Earth sciences research operations. According to internal documents obtained by The New York Times and several people with knowledge of the situation, the proposal from the Office of Management and Budget would abolish the Oceanic and Atmospheric Research office at NOAA. A budget allocation of just over $170M, down from about $485M in 2024, would hobble science as varied as early warning systems for natural disasters, science education for students in kindergarten through high school, and the study of the Arctic, where temperatures have increased nearly four times as fast as the rest of the planet over the past four decades.
-The Trump administration has replaced a portrait of former President Barack Obama with a pop-art painting of Trump pumping his fist after the assassination attempt last year on the campaign trail in Butler, Pennsylvania. This change is not uncommon at the White House, where portraits are rotated frequently. However, the new artwork has drew criticism from some presidential historians, who cannot recall another president hanging a painting of himself during his term in the White House. Typically, paintings of presidents and first ladies are hung in the White House after they have left office. A spokesman for Obama declined to comment.
-The FBI has suspended an analyst on Kash Patel's "enemies list" after Patel told lawmakers that the bureau would stay out of the political fray and not punish employees for partisan reasons. The analyst, Brian Auten, was placed on administrative leave last week due to a fear of retaliation. The reasons for the suspension remain unclear, and the F.B.I. declined to comment.
-US and Iranian officials are set to negotiate today, with the goal of reaching a framework for negotiations and a timeline. The talks, scheduled in Oman, will serve as a feeling-out session to see whether the Trump administration and Iran's clerical government could move to full negotiations to limit Iran's nuclear program. Both sides come in with high distrust, given that President Trump walked away from the 2015 accord that Iran had brokered with the United States and other world powers and slapped harsh sanctions on Tehran during his first term. The goals of Saturday's meeting are modest, reflecting the gap between the two sides: to agree on a framework for negotiations and a timeline. It is not clear whether the envoys will speak directly, as Mr. Trump has insisted, or pass messages through Omani intermediaries shuttling between rooms. The Iranian delegation plans to convey that it is open to talking about reductions to its enrichment and allowing outside monitoring, according to two senior Iranian officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. However, the negotiators are uninterested in discussing dismantlement of the nuclear program, which Trump administration officials have insisted on.
-Boeing, an American aviation giant, is reportedly considering returning to Russia as part of a thaw under President Trump. However, industry skepticism runs deep in the US aviation industry, as the company has been involved in the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Boeing has been selling and maintaining planes in Russia and operating a major design center there. The company also bought much of its titanium, a key material for modern jets, from Russia. As President Trump pursues a rapprochement with Moscow, the company has emerged as an early test of whether American businesses that fled Russia early in the war will return. Boeing has said nothing in public about whether it is considering going back, and it declined to comment for this article. However, the obstacles are considerable.

NEW YORK POST
-The New York City helicopter that crashed into the Hudson River had a mechanical issue months before it broke apart midair and killed all six onboard, including a family of tourists visiting from Spain. The Bell (part of Textron) 206L-4 LongRanger IV aircraft, owned and operated by New York Helicopter, experienced a mechanical issue with its transmission assembly last September, according to Federal Aviation Administration data. The doomed chopper was built in 2004 and had already logged 12,728 hours of flight time when it was forced into repair. An investigation is underway to determine what caused the aircraft to drop out of the sky and plunge into the river. The probe will comb through the pilot's experience, the still-incomplete wreckage, and the Big Apple company that runs the sightseeing tours. Investigators will also review the maintenance work on the doomed aircraft, including the completion of two recent safety airworthiness directives the FAA issued on Bell 206L model helicopters.
-President Trump has authorized the military to control federal lands along the southern border to combat illegal immigration and drug smuggling. The military's role in securing the border is complex due to various threats. Trump instructed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Agricultural Secretary Brooke Rollins to take appropriate actions to ensure the Department of Defense has jurisdiction over federal lands. The military will engage in border-barrier construction and emplacement of detection and monitoring equipment along the US-Mexico border. Hegseth may determine necessary military activities to accomplish the mission.

9to5 : Here’s what Trump’s ‘reciprocal’ tariffs could’ve meant for Apple product

Here’s what Trump’s ‘reciprocal’ tariffs could’ve meant for Apple product pricing

This morning, Bloomberg reported that tech imports would be excluded from the Trump administrations 125% “reciprocal” China tariff. To be specific, this includes “smartphones, laptop computers, hard drives and computer processors and memory chips.” In short, Apple doesn’t really have something to worry about anymore – at least for now. The initial 20% tariff for the “fentanyl crisis” is still in place, however.

While we are safe from imminent price hikes for now, an additional 125% tariff on China would’ve been extremely damaging. Here’s a quick overview bullet we just dodged.

Tariff overview
Tariffs are applied on top of the declared value at the time of import. This means that tariffs would hurt Apple’s margins, but it doesn’t necessarily guarantee price hikes – at least in low increments.

For example, an iPhone 16 Pro 256GB costs Apple $580 in parts, assembly, and testing. With the initial 20% China tariff, that would mean that the effective cost would be $696. While Apple certainly wouldn’t want their margins to be hurt, it would still be viable for the phone to be sold at the current $1099 price point.

However, with a 145% tariff (or even the initial 54% reciprocal tariff) – price hikes would’ve been inevitable:

  • iPhone 16 Pro 256GB parts cost with 54% tariff applied – $893
  • iPhone 16 Pro 256GB parts cost with 125% tariff applied – $1305
  • iPhone 16 Pro 256GB parts cost with 145% tariff applied – $1421

As a reminder, the iPhone 16 Pro 256GB is currently sold at $1099. Apple isn’t in the business of selling products at low profit margins, so there inevitably would’ve been a multi-hundred dollar price hike with any of these more extreme tariffs.

Theoretical prices with tariffs baked in
Some Apple products, like AirPods and Apple Watch, are already widely manufactured in Vietnam, where a 90-day tariff pause was authorized. Many countries are attempting to work out trade deals, so ideally there’d be a zero tariff situation there. Some newer Macs are manufactured in Vietnam as well.

However, Apple is still heavily reliant on China, so it’s still worth highlighting what we could’ve had if nothing had changed.

For another example, let’s use the M2 MacBook Air. According to TechInsights, the bill of materials for an M2 MacBook Air is roughly $506, for both hardware and assembly. Obviously, that’s now 2 generations behind, but it serves as a decent point of reference since the MacBook Air is still largely the same.

With 145% added on top of that, you’re looking at $1239 before margins for a 13-inch MacBook Air with 256GB of storage.

For a last example, we’ll take the 2021 12.9-inch iPad Pro. According to Nikkei Asia, that has a parts cost of roughly $510. With a 145% tariff, the pre-margin parts cost could’ve been as high as $1250. That’s far in excess of the $1099 retail price that it started at.

Granted, that last one was just for the sake of example, as Apple has since redesigned the iPad Pro.

Wrap up
It goes without saying – a 145% total tariff on imports from China simply wasn’t viable for the pricing of new tech products. These are very much so rough estimates, but it illustrates how bad things could’ve potentially become.

So, at least for now, we can enjoy current Apple product prices. For at least a couple weeks, this will be the end of speculating on the possibility of imminent Apple product price increases.

In case the pricing uncertainty has you frightened, and you’re interested in some of the best Apple product deals right now, here they are:

  • MacBook Pro (M4, 14-inch, 512GB/16GB) – $1469 on Amazon ($130 off)
  • iPad 11 (A16, 128GB) – $329 on Amazon
  • Mac mini (M4, 256GB/16GB) – $557 on Amazon
  • MacBook Air (M3, 15-inch, 512GB/16GB) – $1099 on Amazon ($200 off)
  • AirPods Pro 2 (USB-C) – $199 on Amazon ($50 off)

Given how frantic everything with the Trump administration and tariffs has been, I wouldn’t hold my breath on this news lasting forever.

TechCrunch : The xAI–X merger is a good deal — if you’re betting on Musk’s empir

The xAI–X merger is a good deal — if you’re betting on Musk’s empire

When Elon Musk announced that his AI startup, xAI, had acquired his social media company, X (formerly known as Twitter), in an all-stock deal, it raised some eyebrows. But in many ways, the deal made sense. xAI’s chatbot, Grok, was already deeply integrated with X, X was floundering financially, and Musk needed a way to make his $44 billion Twitter acquisition look less like an impulsive takeover and more like a strategic play for AGI dominance.

It also pointed to something deeper about how Musk’s empire works: investing in any one of his companies isn’t about a quick return on investment. It’s about buying into the mysticism around Musk and swallowing whole a narrative of success that outpaces the actual numbers.

Some call it a grift, pointing to Musk’s history of overpromising and underdelivering. But the market is increasingly more tolerant – welcoming, even – of narrative-led investments, particularly when the thread that ties the tale together is one of the president’s right-hand men.

“All of Elon’s companies today are basically one company,” Yoni Rechtman, a principal at Slow Ventures, told TechCrunch. “It’s all already Elon, Inc. There are people who work across multiple companies simultaneously. They share a web of capital connections. They do business with one another, and he treats them all effectively as one company. So [the xAI-X merger] just ends some of the fiction that the two businesses were separate.”

The thinking among Musk bulls like Ron Baron, the founder of investment management firm Baron Capital, is that “every single thing [Musk] does is helping everything else he does,” as Baron phrased it. Other businesses under Musk’s control include Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company, and Neuralink – some of which reportedly share resources.

“When [Musk] bought Twitter, did he have in his mind that there’s an opportunity to have this data, a tremendous value for licensing? When he decided he wanted to go to Mars with SpaceX, did he really think initially that there’s a real opportunity here for the internet around the world, and there’s gonna be hundreds of billions of dollars of revenue opportunity? When he started off with EVs for Tesla, did he really think that this is gonna merge into self-driving, where you can make hundreds of billions of dollars a year of extra profits, and Grok […] and you’re gonna have connected cars all around the world? […] All these businesses link up. It’s the ecosystem. It’s the Elon ecosystem, and I think it’s really interesting when you look at it that way.”

Baron Capital has invested across Musk’s ecosystem, an example of the investor crossover between the billionaire’s various companies. Firms like 8VC, Andreessen Horowitz, DFJ Growth, Fidelity Investments, Manhattan Venture Partners, Saudi Arabia’s PIF, Sequoia Capital, Vy Capital, and others also hold positions throughout Musk’s corporate web.

That brings us back to the xAI-X deal. Pundits questioned how the acquisition could value X at $33 billion, more than triple its valuation just a few months ago, and how it could value xAI at $80 billion considering the AI company reportedly has little in the way of revenue. But valuations aren’t always based on what exists today. Rather, they take into account what investors are hoping for – and that’s particularly true when it comes to Musk’s ventures.

Just look at Tesla. The electric vehicle maker has been treated like a tech stock for years despite the fact that it has automaker margins, based largely on the belief that Tesla will one day unlock groundbreaking autonomy in the form of self-driving cars and humanoid robots.

“The reason why [Tesla’s] stock trades at 80 times earnings and the comp group trades at 25 times earnings is that people are making a bet on the long term, and it’s not about what happens to numbers this year,” Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, told TechCrunch. “That’s one of Elon’s superpowers, this ability to keep investors engaged for the long term.”

Munster’s firm has invested in X, xAI, and Tesla. It’s exactly the type of all-in Musk backer that stands to benefit the most from a deal like xAI buying X, assuming Musk can indeed deliver on his pledge of marrying X’s real-time data trove and distribution platform with xAI’s infrastructure and AI expertise.

Of course, consolidated value also comes with increased risk.

Dan Wang, a professor at Columbia Business School whose research lies at the intersection of business and society, told TechCrunch that the biggest immediate risk factor for investors is the ongoing lawsuit that X is facing from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The suit accuses Musk of misleading investors by delaying the disclosure of his previous investments in Twitter. The SEC has argued that this allowed Musk to buy more Twitter shares at artificially low prices.

Wang listed a few other risk considerations, such as anticompetition and user privacy concerns, particularly regarding how X quietly opted all users into data collection for AI model training. The opt-in change has already raised the ire of one regulator, Ireland’s DPC, which recently began investigating it as a potential breach of Europe’s GDPR law.

“Another kind of risk here is that there isn’t a consensus framework for how the AI market is going to be regulated, but you’re already seeing traces of this in Europe and, up until recently, in California,” Wang said. “A lot of these frameworks have to do with how AI models are deployed in terms of distributing information […] They ascribe responsibility to the companies that are creating AI models, as well as providing access to those models.”

Musk might also simply lose interest in a project, Rechtman said.

“I think that is what a lot of Tesla shareholders are feeling right now,” he said, “where for the last several months, Elon’s number one company has been the Trump campaign, and his other projects have languished.”

When asked about some of these risk factors, Munster appeared nonplussed. He suggested they’re inconsequential given the enormity of, for example, xAI’s value proposition and potential to become a dominant player in AI.

“We’re betting the firm on the belief that AI is going to be more transformative than what people think,” he said. “What is the value […] of one of the four brains that the world is going to run on?”

Rechtman said that Musk bulls aren’t blindly loyal, per se, but simply trust in Musk’s superpower to “bend capital markets to his will” in a way that allows him to do things and build businesses that nobody else can.

“The people who are in these businesses have just gone long Elon, and they will continue to go long Elon,” Rechtman said. “So it’s not surprising to me that they will just continue to tell you that the emperor is wearing clothes.”

Not for nothing, buying into Musk’s more speculative bets, like X, is one way to potentially unlock more investment opportunities in the Muskverse, Rechtman said.

“SpaceX is a real thing, and it will never go public,” he said. “So the only way to invest in SpaceX is to get access to the tenders. And the only way to get access to the tenders is to be in Elon’s good graces.”

TechCrunch : OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence reportedl

OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence reportedly valued at $32B

Safe Superintelligence (SSI), the AI startup led by OpenAI’s co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, has raised an additional $2 billion in funding at a $32 billion valuation, according to the Financial Times.

The startup had already raised $1 billion, and there were reports that an additional $1 billion round was in the works. SSI did not comment on the new funding, which was reportedly led by Greenoaks.

Sutskever left OpenAI in May 2024 after he appeared to play a role in an ultimately failed attempt to oust CEO Sam Altman. He founded SSI with Daniel Gross and Daniel Levy, and they said the company had “one goal and one product: a safe superintelligence.”

That product is presumably still in the works, with SSI’s website little more than a placeholder with a mission statement.

WSJ : Star Wars Is in a Slump. Is ‘Andor’ Its Only Hope?

Star Wars Is in a Slump. Is ‘Andor’ Its Only Hope?
Tony Gilroy was once a Star Wars outsider. Then he created a series focused on political drama and the roots of rebellion—no Baby Yodas in sight.

Tony Gilroy is a jedi of screenwriting. He was a longtime Hollywood script fixer, wrote most of the Jason Bourne movies and was Oscar-nominated for “Michael Clayton,” a George Clooney legal thriller that film buffs and fellow writers speak of in reverential tones.

If only Gilroy, 68, could sell everyone on the show he spent the last six years crafting.

“I can’t get people who have loved all my work to watch it because, you know, it’s Star Wars,” he said. “It just drives me crazy.”

“Andor,” the series he created, has a rarefied place in a galaxy far, far away. Hits like “The Mandalorian” have been harder to come by in recent years for the franchise, which has dealt with canceled movie projects and panned TV shows. That has raised fears of stagnancy among a fan community that’s been more pissed off than passionate.

“Andor,” which debuted in 2022 and earned an Emmy nomination for best drama series, became a bright spot for fans and the franchise’s reputation, if not a ratings hit.

It’s a show for grown-ups featuring spycraft, heists and sophisticated political themes. Nobody brandished a lightsaber or mentioned the Force in the first season. The plot follows the sketchy beginnings of a rebel movement that exists as a staple of the Star Wars movies. “Andor” devotes equal time and human detail to the bad guys, an array of career-obsessed intelligence agents trying to ferret out an insurgency.

The story expands in the second and final season, launching April 22. The rebels (including the title character, a mercenary-turned-leader played by Diego Luna) fight among themselves and reckon with the bloody costs of escalating a revolution. Imperial bureaucrats use this insurrection as cover for a fascist power grab, planting news in the galactic media and implementing draconian laws.

“It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. It’s the biggest thing I’ll ever do,” Gilroy said, reciting his sales pitch to friends who are hesitant or oblivious about the show. “Get the freaking Disney+ app. If you don’t like the show, write me, I’ll send you a check.”

The head writer and showrunner of “Andor” controlled his corner of the Star Wars universe from a cozy home office on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York. The townhouse where Gilroy has lived for 25 years became his headquarters when the pandemic halted preparations for “Andor,” then he kept it that way.

At a desk on the ground floor, with a trio of prints by artist Robert Mangold at his back, he wrote scripts and honed those by other writers, including “House of Cards” creator Beau Willimon and Dan Gilroy, Tony’s brother. (His other brother, John Gilroy, was an executive producer and the editor of “Andor.”)

Using a proprietary Lucasfilm portal, Gilroy had all the raw materials for “Andor,” from audition videos to daily footage from the set. That allowed him to oversee a cast and crew of more than 2,000 people, most of them operating in a studio complex outside London.

“The entire show was run from that cockpit,” he said during a recent interview there. “From 6 o’clock in the morning until the second vodka at the end of the day.”

It’s easy to see the political turmoil of 2025 in the plotlines of “Andor.” A senator who funnels secret funding to the rebellion (Genevieve O’Reilly) gives a speech invoking the gulf between truth and the government’s version of it. Protesters who face off with imperial forces chant “the galaxy is watching.”

Gilroy plays down the show’s parallels to real-world news cycles, saying the writers were drawing from history’s repeated patterns of uprising and clampdown.

He was into all this before “Andor.” “I never really spent much time in school, so you learn how to teach yourself as life continues,” Gilroy said. The son of a screenwriter and Pulitzer-winning playwright, Frank D. Gilroy, he dropped out of college to play music and tend bar while establishing his own writing career.

In the sitting room adjoining Gilroy’s office, Alexei Navalny’s memoir of his battle against Vladimir Putin tops a stack of books; on another stack, a thick novel set amid the Stalinist purges of the 1930s, Yuri Trifonov’s “The House on the Embankment.”

Elsewhere there are books on the insurrections of Toussaint L’Ouverture in Haiti, Mao Zedong in China and Emiliano Zapata in Mexico. Gilroy ate up a multiseason history podcast called “Revolutions,” and ranks Hilary Mantel’s novelization of the French Revolution, “A Place of Greater Safety,” as one of the best books he’s ever read.

Gilroy remembers going to the original “Star Wars” in 1977 and the excitement of being part of a mass happening. But he wasn’t much interested in the narrative saga that carried on in later sequels and prequels.

That detachment made Gilroy a mercenary when he was hired to revise a Star Wars script that would become the 2016 movie “Rogue One.” It was set in a time leading up to the original Luke Skywalker trilogy, and introduced Diego Luna’s character, Cassian Andor. Gilroy’s overhaul of the movie resulted in the franchise’s most hard-bitten version of the hero’s quest to date. In the main characters’ mission to steal the blueprint for the infamous Death Star, they sacrifice their lives.

As a long-form prequel to “Rogue One,” “Andor” is about the radicalization of Luna’s character. In season 2 he clashes over strategy with the architect of the rebellion, played by Stellan Skarsgård. The character, who leads a double life as a smiling antiquities dealer, pushes for explosive action, no matter the cost in lives, to trigger full-scale revolt.

Gilroy compares Skarsgård’s character to a tech founder: “He built a startup company in his garage and it has to go public, but secrecy doesn’t scale up well.”

Before he signed on as showrunner, Gilroy said, he had months of discussions with executives at Disney and Lucasfilm about his intention to ”take the Latin mass out of the Church.” There’d be no jedi knights; there would be a brothel.

Once under way, however, the executives let Gilroy and his team cook, he said. “It will sound insane, but we really didn’t have any notes on this show, ever.”

“We had economic issues,” he added. “A lot of them.”

Unlike other Star Wars productions that use virtual settings displayed on wraparound screens, “Andor” came to life on intricate physical sets. Season 1 was produced when the streaming war was still hot, and companies were spending heavily to stockpile premium content.

“It was like an arms race. Go, go, go,” Gilroy recalled.

By season 2, the whole industry had reined in production budgets. While producing about new 10 hours of television, Gilroy had to repeatedly ask executives for more money to visit additional planets and mount bigger set pieces, such as a lavish wedding that spans several episodes.

The budget skirmishes involved “a lot of emails that everyone wants to forget,” and the showrunner had to roll with the resources available. “Some days you’re Ho Chi Minh, some days you’re Napoleon,” he said.

The “Andor” writers had unwritten commandments for their scripts: “No cynicism. No winking. Total truth all the time, without pretension,” Gilroy said. “Every character, totally vivid…and keep the freaking thing moving, because you’re carrying 15 to 20 characters.”

Some of the show’s most bracing scenes unfold in a conference room. Staffers in the Imperial Security Bureau compare rebel intel while jockeying for leverage in their jobs.

The “Andor” team wanted their actors grounded, too: “Don’t play Star Wars for us,” Gilroy said. “There’s an altitude sickness that people get when they come on these shows. I think the reverence is beautiful, but it’s not helpful.”

For season 2, episodes will drop in four weekly batches of three episodes each, which correspond to time jumps in the story that spans four years total. As “Andor” concludes, Gilroy is exiting the Star Wars universe, he said, then added, “I mean, never say never.”

WSJ : What Apple Has at Stake in China

What Apple Has at Stake in China
The iPhone-maker just received some reprieve from tariffs, but is still heavily reliant on the Chinese manufacturing economy it helped build

Planes filled with iPhones have been leaving the Chennai airport in southern India for months, a last-ditch effort by Apple AAPL 4.06%increase; green up pointing triangle to delay a tariff calamity.

When President Trump last week ignited a trade war, it was clear that Apple could be hit hardest. And for more than a week, it looked like time was running out for the world’s largest company.

Then, late Friday night, the company got some reprieve when the White House exempted iPhones, computers and other electronics from its reciprocal tariffs. Trump had targeted China, where Apple overwhelmingly makes its devices, slapping the world’s second-largest economy with 54% tariffs that swelled to 145% amid tit-for-tat retaliation.

The lower figure threatened to cut deeply into Apple’s big profit margin from China-made devices sold in the U.S. The higher figure could have obliterated it. It is unclear how long that relief might last.

Apple shares are down about 11% since Trump’s April 2 tariff announcement.

Like Nike and other top American brands, Apple became a globalization pioneer working with China. A young executive named Tim Cook recognized the potential of the country’s low-cost, hungry workforce. He built a supply-chain colossus there and became Apple’s chief executive along the way.

More than one million workers churn out cutting-edge devices on a tight schedule. Their work is one of the strongest economic ties between the world’s two superpowers—one in which Apple is essentially one of the largest indirect employers, the other where it delivers the device most essential to daily life.

Cook has deftly played politics in both countries to protect his creation, making strategic investments in China to buy goodwill and working out a tariff exemption during Trump’s first term.

Friday’s exemption could spare Americans from paying more for iPhones, iPads and Macs. It also protects Apple’s substantial profit margins.

Still, it may be a temporary solution to what appears to be a more lasting rift between the U.S. and China.

Apple’s Chinese supply chain is so large and intricate, it can’t be moved easily. The company is studying how it could move some iPhone production to the U.S., according to a person familiar with the matter, but doing so will likely take years.

Diversifying final assembly of its products to other low-cost countries, including India and Vietnam, could help Apple dodge some of the impact of any China tariffs, but it can’t offset its dependence on the U.S.’s primary global rival, where many of the key parts inside the device will continue to be made.

Cook has said it would be difficult for Apple to make iPhones in the U.S. There isn’t enough labor, skilled and unskilled. If there was, it would be too expensive. A fully American iPhone could cost $3,500, Wedbush Securities suggested.

“It took China 40 years to build a complex manufacturing supply chain,” said Doug Guthrie, a professor at Arizona State University who previously worked on organizational development for Apple in China. “We used to have that. It’s a disaster that we let it go.”

An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

One reason Apple is so closely tied to China’s electronics supply chain is that the company helped build it. It began working with Chinese suppliers more than two decades ago, and increased production there in 2004 as a new hit product, the iPod, was taking off. It had help from a friendly government, and Apple in turn trained suppliers to meet its exacting standards.

‘iPhone City’
In time Apple helped build an ecosystem of more than 1,000 suppliers in China. The iPhone maker taught them how to operate more efficiently, so they competed with one another, driving down Apple’s costs, said Guthrie. Apple manufacturing partner Foxconn built a compound so large in Zhengzhou that it is known as “iPhone City.”

Combining low costs with premium-price devices means Apple’s share of profits for all smartphone production globally can top 80%, even when its share of device shipments is below 20%, according to Counterpoint Research.

Other countries don’t offer the same promise as a manufacturing hub, Guthrie found when he studied alternatives for Apple. India has lots of workers, but bureaucracy can make it more difficult to move quickly. Apple suppliers in India have focused on two southern Indian states that have more streamlined processes. Apple supplier Foxconn has its main India factories near Chennai. Indian officials hoped the new tariffs on China would help the country take on more of the Apple supply chain beyond final assembly. But such an effort would take years.

When Stephan Kruger worked in Apple’s supply chain from 2014 to 2018, he saw firsthand the advantages of Chinese production.

At one point he helped suppliers spin up production of the iPhone’s “taptic engine”—the part that simulates clicks, vibrations and other tactile feedback.

In the early part of the year he worked with suppliers to get machines in place, test them and refine the production process so that Apple was ready to boost production later in the summer, ahead of its annual September iPhone event.

No step in the process could be matched in the U.S. It required skilled laborers on the front end who could set up machines to stamp out the metal parts. Those workers also train the low-skilled workers in the production process.

Cook and China
“The U.S., over time, began to stop having as many vocational kind of skills,” Cook told CBS’s “60 Minutes” in 2015. “You can take every tool and die maker in the United States and probably put them in a room that we’re currently sitting in. In China, you would have to have multiple football fields.”

But it is also the low-skilled workers whom Apple needs. In China there isn’t only a massive supply of them available, but under the country’s mobile labor system, they work for only a few months. This army deploys to help Apple increase production volumes ahead of the U.S. holiday season, and then retreats when volumes fall, limiting Apple’s costs.

Not long after Cook succeeded Steve Jobs at Apple’s helm, some criticized the low-key Alabama native for his inability to follow up Jobs’s iPhone with a blockbuster of his own. The assumption was that the iPhone’s growth would slow.

Few appreciated how Cook’s supply-chain genius matched Jobs’s product genius. Cook wrapped the blockbuster with ancillary products and services, and delivered huge revenue growth.

Last year, Apple sold 233 million iPhones, up from 93 million the year Cook became CEO, according to IDC. In December the company’s market capitalization peaked at nearly $4 trillion, and it has been the world’s largest company by that metric for most of the past decade.

Cook has saved his supply chain from political threats before.

In China, Apple has made strategic investments including in research-and-development centers to curry favor with government officials. It was also able to continue production in China despite the country’s strict Covid-era lockdowns.

WSJ : Trump Exempts Smartphones, Other Electronics From Chinese Tariffs

Trump Exempts Smartphones, Other Electronics From Chinese Tariffs
Announced in a filing late Friday, the move is a big reprieve for Apple and other tech companies

Smartphones, laptop computers, memory chips and other electronics will be exempt from President Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs, another step back that could ease some consumer concerns about an immediate jump in costs for tech products imported from China.

New guidance published late Friday by U.S. Customs and Border Protection also exempts machines used to create semiconductors, plus products including computer monitors, tablets, Apple watches and computers from the tariffs Trump imposed in his April 2 executive order, which mandated levies of 10% of the value of almost all U.S. imports, and set higher rates on imports from some countries. Trump later boosted the level of these reciprocal tariffs on China to 125%, and issued a 90-day pause on tariffs above 10% for other countries.

In all, 20 categories of products are affected. The biggest impact is on imports from China, because of the heights to which tariff rates had risen in recent days. In addition to the reciprocal tariffs, the Trump administration has imposed tariffs of 20% on Chinese imports over that nation’s role in the fentanyl trade, which the White House said aren’t subject to the exemptions.

The reprieve was the latest twist in a turbulent week for U.S. trade policy and could benefit companies such as Apple AAPL 4.06%increase; green up pointing triangle, Samsung 005930 -2.13%decrease; red down pointing triangle, HP, Dell Technologies DELL 3.79%increase; green up pointing triangle and Microsoft MSFT 1.86%increase; green up pointing triangle that manufacture electronics outside the U.S. The change could effectively erase the latest tariffs that were imposed on many consumer electronics.

Apple shares have fallen about 11% since Trump’s April 2 tariff announcement. As the U.S. and China subsequently raised tariffs on each other’s products in rapid succession, Apple was among the companies with the most at stake because it makes most of its devices in China.

“My hope would be that they’re pulling back from the brink and finding a way to stabilize markets,” said Adam Thierer, a senior fellow at the R Street Institute think tank focused on technology and innovation. “Technology companies, analysts and investors are breathing a brief sigh of relief and hoping for a return to normalcy.”

Thierer and other experts have warned that tariffs on tech products would undermine the U.S. in its artificial-intelligence race with China. Ongoing trade uncertainty will still be a challenge, he said.

If the exemptions last, they could mark an initial victory for the tech industry in the new Trump administration. Executives flocked to Mar-a-Lago after Trump was elected and donated millions of dollars to his inauguration. So far, their efforts hadn’t resulted in many public victories. Many of the companies continue to face antitrust cases and are lobbying for favorable AI regulation.

Some analysts said the exemptions would lift markets when futures trading opens Sunday evening. “It could be a tech rally for the ages,” said Dan Ives, managing director at Wedbush Securities.

The exempted tech products accounted for roughly $100 billion in U.S. imports from China in 2024, according to Census Bureau data, or 23% of total imports from the country. Last year, 26% of all imports of the excluded products were from China—but 81% of smartphones and 78% of computer monitors came from there.

Trump hinted at exemptions when he spoke to reporters late Friday on Air Force One. “There could be a couple of exceptions for obvious reasons, but I would say 10% is a floor,” Trump said.

Earlier, administration officials said that the tariffs on China would encourage the manufacturing of electronics in the U.S. Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick last Sunday told CBS News that “great American workers” would build and operate new factories in the U.S. and an “army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones, that kind of thing, is going to come to America.”

On Saturday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that “President Trump has made it clear America cannot rely on China to manufacture critical technologies such as semiconductors, chips, smartphones, and laptops.” She added, “Companies are hustling to onshore their manufacturing in the United States as soon as possible.”

On Saturday night, Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he will talk more about the exemptions on Monday, adding that “we’ll be very specific.”

Microsoft, Google and Apple declined to comment.

Some analysts say the exemptions highlight the chaotic nature of Trump’s trade policy, adding that it is unrealistic to move manufacturing to the U.S. in many industries because of high labor costs and other factors. There are no substitutes for these products in the U.S. and price increases would be unpopular as consumers have been battered by high inflation in recent years.

“We welcome [this] action on exemptions and encourage the administration to continue to take steps towards a comprehensive exclusion process,” said Sean Murphy, executive vice president of policy at the Information Technology Industry Council, a trade group.

Trump will issue a Section 232 study on semiconductors soon, according to a White House official, referring to a section of trade law that allows a president to adjust imports that pose a threat to national security. Section 232 investigations have resulted in tariffs in the past, and many of the tech products exempted on Friday may be affected if semiconductors face additional levies.

Some tech firms are bracing for more volatility. Lutnick recently called some computer-industry chief executives and told them consumer products would be part of the coming semiconductor action, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Tech executives generally haven’t criticized Trump’s tariffs publicly. Only a few tech companies, including Hewlett Packard Enterprises and Dell Technologies, have reported earnings since trade uncertainty surged in February. They warned that tariff uncertainty would ding business.

Some tech products may still be subject to additional levies, but the exemptions signal that for now, smartphones, chips and other devices won’t face tariffs at the same rate currently imposed on goods imported from China. Trump is still expected to impose tariffs on some additional sectors, such as lumber and pharmaceuticals.

White House officials said they are in the process of negotiating trade deals and have been approached by more than 70 countries, although details have been scarce and it is unclear how much progress has been made. Administration officials said they have held initial discussions with Japan, Taiwan and Israel.

Trump told reporters on Friday he is “very comfortable” with where tariffs are currently set with China but expressed optimism that he will be able to reach some kind of deal with President Xi Jinping.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.) criticized the exemptions and Trump’s tariffs on social media as a “regime to reward big businesses like Apple that can make giant contributions to Trump.” Many big companies donated to Trump’s inauguration.

Apple CEO Tim Cook personally donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration after the election, as did other tech companies and leaders including Meta along with Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. Other American corporations also made donations. Cook won several tariff exemptions for Apple in the first Trump administration.

WSJ: Europe Scrambles to Break Its Dependence on Musk’s Cheap Satellites

Europe Scrambles to Break Its Dependence on Musk’s Cheap Satellites
Authorities count on a homegrown alternative to Starlink and its unpredictable owner

PARIS—Eva Berneke was traveling to meet European officials when Elon Musk posted on his social-media site X that “Ukraine’s entire front line would collapse” if he turned off his satellite internet service Starlink there.

“This is going to be extremely positive,” thought Berneke, a Danish engineer who is the chief executive of Eutelsat, Europe’s smaller rival to Starlink.

Musk’s words sent shudders through Europe’s security establishment. European governments were already nervous about the Trump administration’s tone of disdain for traditional U.S. allies, pressure on Ukraine and pursuit of a rapprochement with Russia. Much of the continent is looking to reduce its reliance on the U.S., including the mercurial Musk.

Owned by Musk’s SpaceX, Starlink is indispensable for Ukrainian soldiers, who have relied on its terminals for communication, drone control and artillery coordination since Russia invaded in 2022.

But Starlink’s dominance has highlighted the risk of relying on a single U.S. company and its unpredictable owner.

European authorities now want Eutelsat, based in a nondescript office district outside Paris, to provide a backup to Starlink in Ukraine as quickly as possible, via its satellite-internet service OneWeb.

In the longer term, they are counting on Eutelsat to help build a space communication network that would make the continent more autonomous.

Doubts abound that Eutelsat can compete with Starlink anytime soon.

“OneWeb is not a suitable alternative to Starlink in any way, shape or form,” said Christopher Baugh, a satellite-industry expert at consulting firm Analysys Mason. “Launching many satellites doesn’t happen overnight.”

Eutelsat wants to increase capacity. The question is how fast—and who will foot the bill. Working in the company’s favor is the momentous geopolitical shift since President Trump returned to the White House.

Berneke, a 56-year-old who professes little taste for politics, said she first noticed the change in mid-February after Vice President JD Vance lambasted Europe’s democracies at a security conference in Munich, alleging that European suppression of free speech and isolation of far-right parties posed a greater threat than Russia.

Soon after, Trump and Vance gave Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a dressing-down in the Oval Office, and Washington temporarily cut off Ukraine’s military aid and intelligence-sharing—including access to high-resolution satellite images from Maxar Technologies, a vital battlefield resource for Ukraine’s defenders.

Starlink didn’t freeze its services in Ukraine—but Europeans were anxious about the potential vulnerability.

“If SpaceX proves to be an unreliable provider we will be forced to look for other suppliers,” Poland’s foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, wrote on X in early March, responding to Musk’s assertion that Ukraine would collapse without him. Poland pays for around half of the cost of the roughly 50,000 Starlink terminals used by Ukraine’s military and civilian authorities, according to Kyiv.

Musk’s response shocked Europeans: “Be quiet, small man. You pay a tiny fraction of the cost. And there is no substitute for Starlink.”

Berneke said her phone blew up after that. Panicked European officials wanted to know what Eutelsat could deliver in Ukraine, and how fast. “Can you launch more capacity right now?” she said they asked.

Berneke pored over her company’s inventory and found 5,000 OneWeb terminals that could go to Ukraine within weeks. Another 5,000 could be sent within a year. Eutelsat is now waiting for a green light from the European Union to deploy the terminals.

“If you can get 5,000 to 10,000 terminals there, it is a real backup option,” said Berneke.

There are currently around 1,000 OneWeb terminals in Ukraine. They are bulkier than Starlink’s slim dishes, and costlier. The starting price of Starlink’s user terminals is less than $400; OneWeb’s start at $3,200.

To truly compete with Starlink, Eutelsat is likely to need billions of dollars in funding from its three biggest shareholders: the French and British governments and a conglomerate controlled by Indian billionaire Sunil Bharti Mittal.

Competition in the satellite-internet sector is heating up. Amazon is preparing a satellite network called Project Kuiper, and China is launching its own.

Eutelsat is “the only non-U.S., non-Chinese constellation that’s going to be out there,” said Berneke. In the new geopolitical context, “that’s become a stronger selling point,” she said.

Worries about Musk’s reliability have even jeopardized Starlink’s bid to win an Italian government contract to provide secure communications. Italy’s right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a friend of Musk’s who has warm relations with the Trump administration, was leaning toward Starlink. But the European backlash against Musk has delayed a decision. Rome says it is examining Starlink alongside alternatives including Eutelsat.

“If you put all your eggs in an American basket, it will not be good for Italy,” said Christophe Grudler, a French member of the European Parliament. “Imagine if tomorrow Musk says: I want to cut the signal to Italy.”

European governments founded Eutelsat in 1977 with the goal of developing and launching satellites independently from the U.S. For decades, the company’s main business was operating satellites 22,000 miles above the Earth’s surface that move in sync with its rotation, with each satellite beaming continuously to a fixed territory. The main customers were television stations around the world.

In 2021, Eutelsat bought a 24% stake in OneWeb, a British company with a network of satellites that traveled much closer to Earth, like Starlink’s.

Low-orbit networks cost more to build because far more satellites are needed for worldwide coverage. Their advantage is that signals need much less time to travel to and from the Earth’s surface, allowing for near real-time communication.

Berneke became CEO in early 2022 after running a Danish IT company. She had no experience in the space industry or of navigating geopolitics. Her crash course began within weeks when Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

As Russian tanks rolled toward Kyiv, her team learned that tens of thousands of Eutelsat terminals connected to a geostationary satellite serving Europe had shut down. Russian hackers, aiming to disrupt Ukrainian military communications, had exploited a software weakness to upload malware onto the terminals.

“Welcome to space,” Berneke recalled thinking. “Everywhere in Europe, all the terminals died overnight.”

Ukrainian authorities urgently hunted for replacements. A minister asked Musk for help in a post on Twitter, as X was then called. “Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route,” Musk replied.

Starlink soon became a lifeline for Ukraine as Russia bombed the country’s telecommunications and other infrastructure. At first, schools, hospitals and bomb shelters used Starlink terminals, but tech-savvy Ukrainian soldiers quickly recognized their potential.

The sleek white terminals, the size of a pizza box, were easy to carry around the battlefield and difficult for the Russians to jam. The number in military use quickly ballooned. Sporadic Starlink outages in fall 2022 that disrupted military operations drove home how dependent the country’s defenders had become.

But Musk’s tweets about the war were tilting toward Moscow’s warnings, including about the risk of nuclear escalation. He tried to set limits on Ukraine’s operations, denying Ukraine’s request to extend Starlink coverage to Crimea to support a naval drone attack on the Russian fleet.

SpaceX, which donated some of the terminals while the U.S. government paid for others, was also complaining about the cost of supporting Ukraine. Poland and other European countries eventually took over most of the funding.

Meanwhile, the EU and France are hoping Eutelsat can get more satellites for its OneWeb service into space quickly. Berneke said the company needs 4 billion euros, or about $4.5 billion, to renew and expand its satellite fleet.

Starlink’s advantages include the large launch capacity of its parent company, SpaceX, whose fleet of partially reusable rockets send hundreds of Starlink satellites into orbit every month. To reach space, Eutelsat often relies on SpaceX’s rockets.

FT : Europe Scrambles to Break Its Dependence on Musk’s Cheap Satellites

Europe Scrambles to Break Its Dependence on Musk’s Cheap Satellites
Authorities count on a homegrown alternative to Starlink and its unpredictable owner

PARIS—Eva Berneke was traveling to meet European officials when Elon Musk posted on his social-media site X that “Ukraine’s entire front line would collapse” if he turned off his satellite internet service Starlink there.

“This is going to be extremely positive,” thought Berneke, a Danish engineer who is the chief executive of Eutelsat, Europe’s smaller rival to Starlink.

Musk’s words sent shudders through Europe’s security establishment. European governments were already nervous about the Trump administration’s tone of disdain for traditional U.S. allies, pressure on Ukraine and pursuit of a rapprochement with Russia. Much of the continent is looking to reduce its reliance on the U.S., including the mercurial Musk.

Owned by Musk’s SpaceX, Starlink is indispensable for Ukrainian soldiers, who have relied on its terminals for communication, drone control and artillery coordination since Russia invaded in 2022.

But Starlink’s dominance has highlighted the risk of relying on a single U.S. company and its unpredictable owner.

European authorities now want Eutelsat, based in a nondescript office district outside Paris, to provide a backup to Starlink in Ukraine as quickly as possible, via its satellite-internet service OneWeb.

In the longer term, they are counting on Eutelsat to help build a space communication network that would make the continent more autonomous.

Doubts abound that Eutelsat can compete with Starlink anytime soon.

“OneWeb is not a suitable alternative to Starlink in any way, shape or form,” said Christopher Baugh, a satellite-industry expert at consulting firm Analysys Mason. “Launching many satellites doesn’t happen overnight.”

Eutelsat wants to increase capacity. The question is how fast—and who will foot the bill. Working in the company’s favor is the momentous geopolitical shift since President Trump returned to the White House.

Berneke, a 56-year-old who professes little taste for politics, said she first noticed the change in mid-February after Vice President JD Vance lambasted Europe’s democracies at a security conference in Munich, alleging that European suppression of free speech and isolation of far-right parties posed a greater threat than Russia.

Soon after, Trump and Vance gave Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a dressing-down in the Oval Office, and Washington temporarily cut off Ukraine’s military aid and intelligence-sharing—including access to high-resolution satellite images from Maxar Technologies, a vital battlefield resource for Ukraine’s defenders.

Starlink didn’t freeze its services in Ukraine—but Europeans were anxious about the potential vulnerability.

“If SpaceX proves to be an unreliable provider we will be forced to look for other suppliers,” Poland’s foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, wrote on X in early March, responding to Musk’s assertion that Ukraine would collapse without him. Poland pays for around half of the cost of the roughly 50,000 Starlink terminals used by Ukraine’s military and civilian authorities, according to Kyiv.

Musk’s response shocked Europeans: “Be quiet, small man. You pay a tiny fraction of the cost. And there is no substitute for Starlink.”

Berneke said her phone blew up after that. Panicked European officials wanted to know what Eutelsat could deliver in Ukraine, and how fast. “Can you launch more capacity right now?” she said they asked.

Berneke pored over her company’s inventory and found 5,000 OneWeb terminals that could go to Ukraine within weeks. Another 5,000 could be sent within a year. Eutelsat is now waiting for a green light from the European Union to deploy the terminals.

“If you can get 5,000 to 10,000 terminals there, it is a real backup option,” said Berneke.

There are currently around 1,000 OneWeb terminals in Ukraine. They are bulkier than Starlink’s slim dishes, and costlier. The starting price of Starlink’s user terminals is less than $400; OneWeb’s start at $3,200.

To truly compete with Starlink, Eutelsat is likely to need billions of dollars in funding from its three biggest shareholders: the French and British governments and a conglomerate controlled by Indian billionaire Sunil Bharti Mittal.

Competition in the satellite-internet sector is heating up. Amazon is preparing a satellite network called Project Kuiper, and China is launching its own.

Eutelsat is “the only non-U.S., non-Chinese constellation that’s going to be out there,” said Berneke. In the new geopolitical context, “that’s become a stronger selling point,” she said.

Worries about Musk’s reliability have even jeopardized Starlink’s bid to win an Italian government contract to provide secure communications. Italy’s right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a friend of Musk’s who has warm relations with the Trump administration, was leaning toward Starlink. But the European backlash against Musk has delayed a decision. Rome says it is examining Starlink alongside alternatives including Eutelsat.

“If you put all your eggs in an American basket, it will not be good for Italy,” said Christophe Grudler, a French member of the European Parliament. “Imagine if tomorrow Musk says: I want to cut the signal to Italy.”

European governments founded Eutelsat in 1977 with the goal of developing and launching satellites independently from the U.S. For decades, the company’s main business was operating satellites 22,000 miles above the Earth’s surface that move in sync with its rotation, with each satellite beaming continuously to a fixed territory. The main customers were television stations around the world.

In 2021, Eutelsat bought a 24% stake in OneWeb, a British company with a network of satellites that traveled much closer to Earth, like Starlink’s.

Low-orbit networks cost more to build because far more satellites are needed for worldwide coverage. Their advantage is that signals need much less time to travel to and from the Earth’s surface, allowing for near real-time communication.

Berneke became CEO in early 2022 after running a Danish IT company. She had no experience in the space industry or of navigating geopolitics. Her crash course began within weeks when Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

As Russian tanks rolled toward Kyiv, her team learned that tens of thousands of Eutelsat terminals connected to a geostationary satellite serving Europe had shut down. Russian hackers, aiming to disrupt Ukrainian military communications, had exploited a software weakness to upload malware onto the terminals.

“Welcome to space,” Berneke recalled thinking. “Everywhere in Europe, all the terminals died overnight.”

Ukrainian authorities urgently hunted for replacements. A minister asked Musk for help in a post on Twitter, as X was then called. “Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route,” Musk replied.

Starlink soon became a lifeline for Ukraine as Russia bombed the country’s telecommunications and other infrastructure. At first, schools, hospitals and bomb shelters used Starlink terminals, but tech-savvy Ukrainian soldiers quickly recognized their potential.

The sleek white terminals, the size of a pizza box, were easy to carry around the battlefield and difficult for the Russians to jam. The number in military use quickly ballooned. Sporadic Starlink outages in fall 2022 that disrupted military operations drove home how dependent the country’s defenders had become.

But Musk’s tweets about the war were tilting toward Moscow’s warnings, including about the risk of nuclear escalation. He tried to set limits on Ukraine’s operations, denying Ukraine’s request to extend Starlink coverage to Crimea to support a naval drone attack on the Russian fleet.

SpaceX, which donated some of the terminals while the U.S. government paid for others, was also complaining about the cost of supporting Ukraine. Poland and other European countries eventually took over most of the funding.

Meanwhile, the EU and France are hoping Eutelsat can get more satellites for its OneWeb service into space quickly. Berneke said the company needs 4 billion euros, or about $4.5 billion, to renew and expand its satellite fleet.

Starlink’s advantages include the large launch capacity of its parent company, SpaceX, whose fleet of partially reusable rockets send hundreds of Starlink satellites into orbit every month. To reach space, Eutelsat often relies on SpaceX’s rockets.

FT : British Steel’s nationalisation is a ‘likely option’, says business secreta

British Steel’s nationalisation is a ‘likely option’, says business secretary
MPs vote in favour of bill giving the government powers to seize control of British Steel

Business secretary Jonathan Reynolds told MPs that nationalisation of British Steel was a “likely option” as his government took the unusual step of recalling parliament to prevent the company’s owners from shutting the plant.

Reynolds said the decision to recall parliament for an emergency sitting on Saturday had not been taken lightly, as he defended the government’s negotiations with Jingye, the Chinese owner of British Steel.

The bill, he said, was a “proportionate and necessary” step to preserve primary steelmaking in the UK and protect 3,500 jobs, although he did not want to keep the new power for “longer than necessary”.

MPs in the commons voted in favour of the bill on Saturday afternoon after no members opposed it. Royal Assent was granted later in the day, meaning that the bill has become law.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer met steel workers and trade union officials in Scunthorpe after the debate to talk about the importance of the industry to the UK.

Although the bill has wide support from across political parties in the House of Commons, Starmer has come under fire from the Conservatives who said his party had bungled negotiations with Jingye.

“Instead of addressing it earlier in the week when parliament was sitting, their incompetence has led to a last-minute recall of parliament,” Tory leader Kemi Badenoch wrote on X.

The debate marked the second time that the house had been recalled from recess on a Saturday, the only other time related to the Falklands War in 1982.

The 10-page bill will give Reynolds sweeping powers to take control of any steel assets deemed to be at risk of shutting down. Steel companies or managers who fail to comply with the government’s orders could be fined or sent to jail for two years, according to the draft.

The bill will allow the government to instruct steel companies to keep assets running, and to take over those assets if companies fail to comply with those instructions. It also provides for a compensation scheme for costs incurred by a company. 

Reynolds admitted the emergency legislation was not a magic wand and that finding a private sector partner remained the government’s preferred option. Nationalisation, however, remained the likely option in the long term, noting that the company’s market value was zero.

Reynolds told MPs during the debate that it had become clear in recent days that the Chinese company’s intention was to cancel and refuse to pay for additional orders for raw materials to ensure continued operation of British Steel’s blast furnaces, the only two remaining in the UK.

The government, he added, had offered to pay for the materials but Jingye instead made a counter-offer for ministers to pay hundreds of millions of pounds without any conditions.

Chinese executives from the company had earlier on Saturday been blocked from entering the site by workers. There were concerns that they might sabotage the works, according to two people familiar with the situation. The Times newspaper first reported the incident.

Andrew Griffith, shadow business secretary, accused the government of “nine months of dither and delay” and a “botched nationalisation of steelmaking with the British taxpayer on the hook”.

People close to chancellor Rachel Reeves said that it had taken considerable time and effort to shift the mindset of officials in Whitehall to make them accept drastic government intervention and potential nationalisation of the steelworks.

The emergency debate comes after talks with Jingye to keep the furnaces going foundered. Jingye, which took over British Steel in 2020, has been in talks with the government for more than 18 months over taxpayer support to move to greener forms of steelmaking.

It rejected an offer of £500mn from ministers last month after warning that the operations were no longer “financially viable”. The company said it has been losing more than £700,000 a month due in part to higher tariffs and uncompetitive energy costs.

Tory and Reform UK MPs have seized on this reasoning to argue that the UK government’s transition to net zero is driving the price of energy higher and should be watered down.

Reform has argued for renationalisation of British Steel, in a position that put it at odds with the Conservatives but is aligned with the majority of the British public.

A YouGov poll this week suggested about 60 per cent of the public support renationalisation.

Jingye was not immediately available for comment on Saturday.

Industry minister Sarah Jones said earlier that MPs faced a choice between passing the government’s bill or seeing the end of primary steelmaking in the UK.

She told Sky News: “If blast furnaces are closed in an unplanned way, they can never be reopened, the steel just solidifies in those furnaces and nothing can be done.”

Maintaining Britain’s steelmaking has become a strategic priority for the government, which has put aside £2.5bn to support the sector. Closing British Steel’s two blast furnaces would leave the UK as the only G7 country without the ability to make steel from scratch.

Starmer’s government is developing an industrial strategy to back crucial sectors, and is particularly concerned about the threat to steel from US President Donald Trump’s 25 per cent global tariff on steel and aluminium imports.