The Information : Silicon Valley’s Favorite Alternative Energy Drinks

Silicon Valley’s Favorite Alternative Energy Drinks
Cupboards in tech land are increasingly cluttered with brands promising to deliver Red Bull–style jolts through ingredients like ketones, paraxanthine and L-theanine.

The Takeaway
Red Bull? So passé. A shelf full of alternative energy drink brands have become popular that promise healthier ingredients:

In Silicon Valley, cutting back on booze has been in vogue for a while. Now the tech elite is going cold turkey on something else: traditional energy drinks like Red Bull and 5-Hour Energy.

That’s led to a fresh wave of beverage startups selling elixirs that purport to give an animating jolt to the system but with starkly different ingredients than the drinks that have long crowded grocery store coolers. “It’s very clear to me—to a lot of people in the industry—that caffeine plus sucralose in a can is done,” said Michael Brandt, co-founder and CEO of Ketone-IQ, referring to common artificial sweetener. His Ketone-IQ has attracted investors like Andreessen Horowitz and Zynga billionaire Mark Pincus for its ketones-based drink. “The market isn’t asking for more of that.”

If Brandt’s company and the others on our list below can get everyone guzzling their products, they’ll almost certainly line themselves up as attractive acquisitions for bigger drink companies. Those larger rivals have been thirsty lately: Late last year, Keurig Dr Pepper said it would pay $990 million for a majority stake in energy drink and supplement brand Ghost, and in February energy drink maker Celsius bought rival Alani Nu for $1.7 billion.

Brez, a brand of THC-infused drinks, is fast growing and launched two new energy drinks this month. (Yes, it promises the same thing as a Four Loko: an upper and a downer together.) Amplify, a watermelon lime flavor, has 80 milligrams of caffeine, as well as 5 milligrams of THC and 5 milligrams of CBD, while Elevate, a strawberry mango flavor, is THC and CBD free.

Brez and other THC-infused drink brands have grown quickly since the 2018 legalization of hemp, which contains the same active ingredient as cannabis but at a lower dose. Brez, which launched sales in 2023, is profitable, founder Aaron Nosbisch has said, and is aiming to do around $50 million in total sales this year. That growth will in part be powered by more THC-free versions of its drinks like Elevate that can be sold in typical grocery stores—a key battleground for expansion, since the THC drinks have to be sold online or in liquor stores.

($48 for eight cans of THC-infused drinks, $40 for eight cans of THC-free drinks; available at drinkbrez.com, Amazon and Sprouts.)

Ketone-IQ
Ketone-IQ co-founder and CEO Michael Brandt first started thinking about energy in the human body when he picked up marathoning as a hobby while working at Google and YouTube in the early 2010s.

Around the same time, keto diets were catching on. Brandt started wondering if there was a way to isolate the ketones that the body produces when it’s burning fat for energy instead of glucose and quickly consume them as a more efficient alternative to caffeine.

After winning a Defense Department contract to research and develop an energy supplement for U.S. Special Forces in 2019, Brandt’s company used that research to launch its line of drinks, which come in 2-ounce bottles. They were expensive at first, which limited sales to Tour de France cycling teams and other elite athletes. As the technology for manufacturing ketone molecules through fermentation improved, Brandt could price the beverage more affordably.
He thinks the brand’s rise is connected to an overall increase in health and wellness and the proliferation of fitness-tracking gadgets, like Whoop bracelets and Oura rings—the “API-ification of the human body,” as Brandt put it. “It’s the norm in my circle: I think everyone’s kind of nerding out on human performance.” Brandt hopes to expand to selling ketones to other companies. “Ketone is going to be as big as electrolytes or protein,” he said. “It starts being an ingredient that we can supply.”
($120 for 24 bottles; available at ketone.com, Amazon, The Vitamin Shoppe, Sprouts, H-E-B and Wegmans.)

Rarebird Coffee
Caption
Rarebird may look like ordinary coffee, but it definitely isn’t. Rather than containing caffeine, it provides paraxanthine, the molecule created by the liver when it metabolizes caffeine. The brand says it has similar effects to caffeine without spiking stress hormones, which can cause anxious and jittery feelings.

Rarebird was founded by Jeffrey Dietrich, who holds a doctorate in bioengineering from the University of California, Berkeley. (Before founding Rarebird, Dietrich co-founded Lygos, a biotech that develops natural alternatives to petroleum-based chemicals like fertilizer additives and cleaning products.) When he initially researched caffeine and possible alternatives, he quickly landed on paraxanthine, or PX for short, as a potential substitute.

“There’s literature going back to the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s that really suggested that paraxanthine had qualities that were far superior to caffeine and still gave you the stimulatory alertness that people want,” Dietrich said.

Dietrich says his scientific background has helped the brand combat the “snake oil” sales tactics he thinks pervade many beverage and supplement brands. “What we’ve been really trying to do is approach this from the scientific perspective.”
($40 for 24 coffee pods, $30 for a 12-ounce bag of ground coffee; available at rarebird.coffee and Amazon.)

Clean Simple Eats
Clean Simple Eats was founded by JJ and Erika Peterson, a husband-and-wife duo, in 2015. The company offers a wide range of items—from protein powders to flavored nut butters. But the “clear protein” canned energy drinks and sodas it introduced last year are what’s become a viral hit on TikTok and Instagram lately. The drinks, which come in flavors like Blizzard Berry and Sun-Kissed Peach, pair 20 grams of whey protein with 100 milligrams of caffeine. Clean Simple Eats has capitalized on its online popularity by expanding retail into some Target stores in April. And it’s attracting some competition: Rival startup Don’t Quit will roll out a protein soda in July.
($32 for a variety pack of eight 16-ounce cans; available at cleansimpleeats.com, Amazon, Target and The Vitamin Shoppe.)

Magic Mind
Magic Mind, a line of “mental performance shots,” says its blend of 55 milligrams of caffeine and other ingredients like turmeric and L-theanine helps boost focus and energy. The brain spark for Magic Mind came to founder James Beshara after he sold his payments startup, Tilt, to Airbnb in 2017 and a doctor told him he needed to cut down on caffeine. The physician suggested L-theanine as a way to extend the impact of the limited caffeine he still consumed, and Beshara began researching other supplements and ingredients that could help with energy and focus.

At Airbnb, he developed a reputation as a supplements guru and handed out samples of an early version of Magic Mind around the office that his co-workers knew only as “James’s Magic Potion.” It became so popular at the company that Beshara recruited William Hicks, a former investment banker and early employee at another food startup, Brami, to help run the business, and the pair launched sales in March 2020.

The company’s primary customer base is still Silicon Valley employees and other white-collar workers looking for ways to focus on work without feeling strung out—craving what Hicks calls a “ticket to flow state.” Meanwhile, the company’s caffeine-free gummies are popular with parents and their young kids.

TechCrunch : Google reportedly plans to cut ties with Scale AI

Google reportedly plans to cut ties with Scale AI
Meta’s big investment in Scale AI may be giving some of the startup’s customers pause.

Reuters reports that Google had planned to pay Scale $200 million this year but is now having conversations with its competitors and planning to cut ties with the startup. Microsoft is also reportedly looking to pull back, and OpenAI supposedly made a similar decision months ago, although its CFO said the company will continue working with Scale as one of many vendors.

Scale’s customers include self-driving car companies and the U.S. government, but Reuters says its biggest clients are generative AI companies seeking access to workers with specialized knowledge who can annotate data for training models.

A Scale spokesperson declined to comment on the company’s relationship with Google, but he told TechCrunch that Scale’s business remains strong, and that it will continue to operate as an independent company that safeguards its customers’ data.

Earlier reports suggest that Meta invested $14.3 billion in Scale for a 49% stake in the company, with Scale CEO Alexandr Wang joining Meta to lead the company’s efforts to develop “superintelligence.”

WSJ : How a Once-Resistant Trump Decided to Back Israel’s Attacks on Iran

How a Once-Resistant Trump Decided to Back Israel’s Attacks on Iran
Trump sought to persuade Israel to delay its military operation, but he shifted course after the strikes began

WASHINGTON—The first act of “Les Misérables” had just ended at the Kennedy Center Wednesday night when Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) pulled President Trump aside for a quick conversation about Iran.

Graham applauded the Trump administration’s handling of the nuclear issue without people getting killed.

“Yeah, we’re trying,” Trump said about the sputtering negotiations with Tehran. “But sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do,” he said.

Graham took that remark to mean Trump was referring to the possibility of an Israeli strike on its longtime enemy.

The encounter came midway through a week that would see Trump go from trying to head off an Israeli attack to backing its sudden campaign of airstrikes targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities and senior military and civilian leaders, an abrupt shift that underscored the fraying prospects for a deal.

Trump said Friday that he had been aware of Israel’s attack plans and argued that the punishing operation makes a nuclear deal even more likely, though Iran said they were pulling out of a sixth round of talks scheduled for Sunday.

“They should have made a deal and they still can make a deal while they have something left—they still can,” Trump told The Wall Street Journal.

Trump had seemed far less optimistic earlier in the week.

On Sunday, he summoned his national-security team to Camp David and told them during a discussion on the Middle East that he was increasingly pessimistic Tehran would agree to a deal, according to U.S. officials.

Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were due to speak the next day, and the president said he would tell the Israeli leader to delay any attacks until special envoy Steve Witkoff’s diplomatic effort had run its course, U.S. officials recounted.

In a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in March, Trump had set a two-month time limit once talks got under way to reach a deal, a deadline that was due to expire this week. But Khamenei rejected a U.S. proposal to allow Iran to temporarily continue uranium enrichment in the country if it agreed to eventually halt its domestic centrifuge operation.

Always in the background was Netanyahu’s push to launch strikes against Iran’s nuclear sites, a threat that loomed ever larger.

In a call Monday with Netanyahu, Trump said he wanted to see diplomacy with Tehran play out a little longer, according to U.S. officials. But even Trump was losing faith in his strategy.

Netanyahu raised his oft-expressed objection that Iran wouldn’t make the deal Trump wanted and that Israel needed to keep preparing strikes, the officials added.

Trump seemed to internalize the message.

“I’m getting more and more—less confident about it,” he said of the prospects for a nuclear deal with Iran in a New York Post interview published Wednesday. “They seem to be delaying, and I think that is a shame, but I’m less confident now than I would have been a couple of months ago.”

Netanyahu had been seeking to head off a U.S.-led negotiation with Iran over its nuclear program for years, arguing that only the destruction of its vast enrichment centrifuges and other facilities could guarantee Tehran wasn’t secretly developing a bomb.

The Israeli leader rejoiced when Trump in his first term tore up the 2015 nuclear deal brokered by then President Barack Obama, and he recoiled when Trump pushed for a tougher agreement during his second term in office.

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in January that Israel was considering strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. The intelligence analysis concluded Israel would push Trump’s new team to back the assault, viewing the incoming president as more likely to join an attack than former President Joe Biden. The Israelis, according to the assessment, believed the window for halting Tehran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon was closing.

In a sign of mounting concern about an Israeli attack and Iranian response, the State Department on Wednesday ordered the departure of all nonessential personnel from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and authorized the departure of nonessential personnel and family members from Bahrain and Kuwait. At the same time, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth authorized the voluntary departure of military dependents from across the Middle East.

Army Gen. Erik Kurilla, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, canceled a congressional testimony scheduled for the next day and returned to Central Command’s headquarters in Tampa.

As anxiety grew in the Middle East and Washington, Trump was enjoying the performance of his favorite musical at the Kennedy Center, joined by Graham and other supporters.

When Trump and Netanyahu spoke again on Thursday, the Israeli leader told Trump that it was the last day of his 60-day timeline for Iran to make a deal. Israel could wait no longer, Netanyahu said, according to officials familiar with the call. Israel had to defend itself and enforce the deadline Trump himself had set.

Trump responded that the U.S. wouldn’t stand in the way, according to administration officials, but emphasized that the U.S. military wouldn’t assist with any offensive operations.

At the White House, Trump told reporters he wouldn’t describe an attack as imminent, “but it is something that could very well happen.” While the U.S. and Iran were close to a deal, he claimed, Israeli strikes could “blow it.”

Israel launched its operation as Trump was at a picnic Thursday evening on the White House grounds for members of Congress. He later joined Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Hegseth, and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and other senior officials in the Situation Room to monitor events.

Israel had acted unilaterally and the U.S. played no role in the attack, Rubio said in a statement that acknowledged Israel notified Washington before the operation began.

That was the only comment from the U.S. as the attack unfolded. Bombs struck and damaged a key Iranian nuclear facility at Natanz, and senior military leaders including Major Gen. Hossein Salami, commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, were killed.

In all, Iran claimed that Israel’s first attack killed 78 people and injured around 320 more in multiple waves of Israeli strikes. Netanyahu pledged that the operation would last for as long as necessary.

Trump, who began the week resistant to an assault on Iran, quickly embraced it as a successful campaign that could boost his diplomatic effort.

“Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left,” he posted on social media Friday, “and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire.”

WSJ : How Elon Musk Is Reinventing Tesla’s Strategy

How Elon Musk Is Reinventing Tesla’s Strategy
CEO’s embrace of AI is a shift from days when company used off-the-shelf technology for electric cars

Elon Musk’s pivot to robots isn’t just shifting Tesla’s TSLA 1.94%increase; green up pointing triangle business model. It is changing its DNA.

The electric-car maker was founded almost 22 years ago on a simple, if not radical, idea: Electric vehicles were possible not with some sort of breakthrough in batteries but rather through integrating proven technologies in a new way.

Today, Tesla is taking an alternate route. It is betting a still-nascent artificial-intelligence technology can remake the company, enabling, perhaps, one million driverless cars by the end of next year.

Musk’s gamble that Tesla can be a robot company rather than one dependent on cars driven by people has helped keep the company’s market value at a level befitting a tech titan rather than an automaker.

After many false peaks, Musk’s deployment of robot cars for the public is supposed to begin this month, possibly on June 22, in Austin, Texas. That said, Musk this past week raised the possibility that this timeline could be further delayed.

Musk has been saying Tesla’s autonomous cars were near for roughly a decade. The delays underscore the challenge of offering such technology safely and efficiently. In that time, Waymo, General Motors GM -1.24%decrease; red down pointing triangle, Zoox and others have demonstrated vehicles on public roadways without drivers behind the wheels.

The genesis of Tesla Motors, as it was originally called, was in the idea of using a common technology, essentially laptop batteries, to power a vehicle. Until that point, the automotive industry had grown frustrated with efforts to develop EVs as engineers looked for the perfect battery—something that could overcome cost and range hurdles that plagued their mostly abandoned efforts.

“As justification for quitting the EV business, the auto makers pointed out that battery technology had stagnated—that the fundamental problems of weight, range, and battery lifespan could not be overcome,” an early business plan for Tesla read in 2004.

The business plan noted that the industry’s favored technology, heavy lead-acid batteries, provided an EV with a range under 100 miles. It also had to be replaced as soon as within 25,000 miles of use. “The auto makers are right: these limitations render even the best performing EV unappealing,” Tesla’s founders concluded.

But lithium-ion batteries held great promise. So, Tesla was created around the idea that the fat-finger-size lithium-ion cells made popular in consumer electronics years earlier could be wired together by the thousands to create a battery pack to power a sports car. “It is not only possible but surprisingly advantageous to use many small commodity Li-ion batteries to power an electric car,” the business plan said. “This is not simple, but the technology has been developed and works exceptionally well.”

It was a pitch that clearly spoke to Musk, who became the company’s biggest initial investor and then chairman.

The real breakthrough for Tesla came when it used a combination of savvy software and mechanical engineering to keep the battery pack from becoming a fire hazard. This gave the startup a huge advantage when traditional car companies eventually realized the potential that lithium-ion cells held.

Later, as CEO, Musk would spend years working first to prove that there was demand for electric cars and then racing to scale production. More recently, he has become narrowly focused on the robotics vision for the business—driverless cars and humanoid robots.

Some might see what Musk is doing today with autonomous vehicles as simply an extension of the original integration play. He is using Tesla’s manufacturing muscles to integrate robot technology into cars.

Yet autonomous-vehicle technology is still in its relatively early days. This time around, Tesla isn’t just pulling off-the-shelf cameras and wiring up them to work. The company has spent years developing its own AI to be the brains of the car.

Tesla fans point to the success of the company’s advanced driver-assistance systems, known as Autopilot and FSD, as proof of how far along Musk’s team is toward fully autonomous vehicles. They conveniently leave out that what Tesla is selling, by the company’s own admission, isn’t, in fact, fully autonomous. The driver remains legally responsible, no matter how much the experience might feel as though the car is driving itself. In other words, FSD is just a glorified cruise control.

What Musk is promising next is something different—a car that is responsible for making the driving decisions. He argues that Tesla has a leg up on rivals given the fleet of vehicles it has sold, providing his team with real-world data to build out his system.

Still, robot cars, even for industry leader Waymo, are something just a step or two beyond an R&D project. GM gave up on its costly robotaxi ambitions. For Waymo-parent Alphabet, the robotaxi service is nowhere near replicating its Google advertising revenue.

With all of its success, Waymo has just over 1,500 vehicles on the road. Or a little more than the number of EV1 electric cars built by GM more than 25 years ago in California.

That failed car experiment by GM helped inspire Tesla’s creation. The EV1, which had an initial range of less than 100 miles, was a great example of an automaker failing to commercialize a vision.

Ahead of the robotaxi deployment, Musk fans have mocked the small number of Waymos compared with Tesla’s vehicle-making capacity.

“These are unmodified Tesla cars coming straight from the factory, meaning that every Tesla coming out of our factories is capable of unsupervised self-driving!” Musk tweeted this past week. He was talking about a video showing a Tesla Model Y driving without anyone in the front seat, presumably part of the company’s testing in Austin.

Despite his bluster, Musk has cautioned that Tesla’s early efforts will look small. Maybe 10 vehicles in the first week before scaling to a thousand in a few months and hundreds of thousands, if not more than one million, by the end of 2026.

“We are being super paranoid about safety,” Musk posted this past week, “so the date could shift.”

After all, what he is promising isn’t easy—even if many believe it will be.

WSJ : These Charts Show Why Wall Street’s Gloom Over Deals Is Overblown

These Charts Show Why Wall Street’s Gloom Over Deals Is Overblown
The total number of U.S. deals is down from last year, but transactions worth $1 billion to $10 billion


Key Points
Wall Street bankers haven’t gotten the surge in deals they had hoped for under President Trump, but the picture hasn’t been all bad.
U.S. deal value so far this year is up around 3.8% at $750 billion, though the number of deals is down.
Global deal value is up over 28%, with countries like Japan and Canada seeing big jumps.

Wall Street bankers who were bemoaning a slowdown in deals are finding themselves now looking at a reasonably solid year. Maybe.

The mood in M&A circles has been lukewarm under President Trump despite a number of megadeals this year, including Google’s $32 billion agreement to purchase the cybersecurity startup Wiz and Charter Communications’s $22 billion deal for Cox Communications. The damped enthusiasm is partly a result of dashed hopes: Many bankers had believed the Trump administration would usher in a surge in mergers and acquisitions after a relative lull in the past few years.

The reality has been mixed. The number of deals in 2025 so far with U.S.- based target companies is down sharply from the same period a year earlier. But the total value of those deals is up around 3.8% at $750 billion, according to the London Stock Exchange Group.

The number of deals worth between $1 billion and $10 billion, including debt, has jumped compared with last year. It is the relatively smaller deals—those worth less than $1 billion—that have fallen, and those account for the biggest share of transactions.

The biggest deals—those worth more than $10 billion—don’t come along as often. So far this year, there have been 13 such megadeals for U.S. targets, including debt. That is down from 16 during the same time last year.

Even the biggest deals this year have been more modest in size. Blockbuster deals in recent years have included ExxonMobil’s $60 billion deal for Pioneer Natural Resources in 2023 and Microsoft’s $75 billion acquisition of Activision in 2022, which dwarf the biggest transactions so far this year.

Many dealmakers have said they are still unsure about the Trump administration’s approach to antitrust regulation.

The picture also varies by sector. Some industries that are more insulated from tariffs, such as finance and technology, have seen a big pickup in transactions from last year. Consumer-products deals, meanwhile, are down from last year.

Dealmaking has been looking a lot better outside the U.S. Global deal value is up more than 28%, with countries including Japan and Canada seeing big jumps.

Still, the U.S. remains by far the biggest M&A market.

FT : Oil in the new age of volatility

Oil in the new age of volatility
High prices will undermine Trump’s plans to drive inflation lower and make it harder for the Federal Reserve to cut rates

In recent years, June Fridays have often been viewed by financiers as a good moment to work from home. Not now. 

As news spread about the Israeli air strikes on Iran, traders across Wall Street and London — not to mention Asia — rushed back to their offices to prepare for the inevitable storm.

It swiftly materialised: oil prices surged (initially by around 13 per cent), stock prices fell (initially by 1 per cent in the US), and the dollar reversed its recent downward slide. And while these moves were later partly erased, volatility is likely to stay high; particularly since US President Donald Trump has warned that without a deal the next “already planned attacks” by Israel will be “even more brutal”.

So what should investors think? There is good(ish) and bad news. The former revolves around the issue of oil. At first glance, it seems reasonable to assume that higher oil prices will be a nasty blow to global growth.

For while Iran “only” produces about 3.3mn barrels of oil a day, according to S&P — about 2 per cent of the global total — the real threat is that if further conflict shuts the Strait of Hormuz it will undermine shipping. Indeed, ING Barings expects that in an extreme, worst-case scenario — ie a long blockage of the strait — oil prices could double to a record high of $150 later this year.

Twentieth century history has shown how damaging oil price jumps can be. And with the World Bank having just cut its outlook for global growth by almost half a percentage point to 2.3 per cent — the lowest since 2008 — now is a bad moment for another shock.

While Trump claimed on Friday that the strikes would eventually be the “greatest thing ever for the market”, the repercussions create short-term stress. High oil prices will undermine Trump’s team’s plan to drive inflation lower. It will also make it harder for the Federal Reserve to cut rates, given the risks of stagflation. For Europe, it is even worse.

But here is the good news, or at least the less depressing issue: one of the more remarkable but oft-ignored developments in recent decades is that the so-called “oil intensity” of global economies — ie the amount of barrels needed to fuel each unit of growth — has inexorably fallen.

In 1975, for example, the World Bank calculates that 0.12 “tonnes of oil equivalent” (TOE) was needed to produce $1,000 of GDP. By 2022, however, that was just 0.05, due to spreading renewable energy sources, like solar, and rising industrial efficiency.

Thus we do not face your grandfather’s — or father’s — economy, to cite the tagline. Shocks like the Israeli attack need not be as devastating as before; or not if the main transmission channel of this shock is oil.

However, the bad news is that oil is not the only transmission channel right now; instead, I suspect that the most important channel is investor psychology.

For what the Israeli strikes have done is intensify the perception that we are not just beset by rising geopolitical instability, but a zeitgeist shift too. A vicious competition for hegemonic power seems to be displacing even the fig leaf of international collaborative norms and laws.

Or, to cite Trump again, events are being driven not by a sense of universal law, but by the question of who has “the cards” (or not) of power; Israel thus feels free to bomb Iran using its military “cards”, irrespective of any UN norms.

That is disorientating — if not terrifying — for investors raised to predict the future with neat economic models. After all, in the neoliberal era those models typically excluded messy politics — and assumed that the rule of law was consistent, in the domestic and international sphere. “The traditional world order — in which economics shaped politics — has been turned on its head,” as Pimco told its clients this week: “Politics [are] now driving economics.”

So what should investors do? One essential step is to realise that while the old economic models are often useful, they are also now dangerously incomplete.

A second is to read more financial history, sociology and psychology. I personally find that useful ways to frame today’s events can be found in the writings of political scientists like Albert Hirschman and Carl Schmidt or economists John Maynard Keynes and Charles Kindleberger. Anthropologists such as David Graeber, Arjun Appadurai and James Scott help too.

Third, we must recognise that in a world where “the fragmentation of trade and security alliances is becoming a potent source of volatility”, to cite Pimco again, it is essential to diversify portfolios, take a long view of events — and a deep breath.

The bottom line, then, if you work in finance, is don’t plan many Fridays off this summer. That is not just because of rising Middle East tensions; soaring debt, currency dislocation, disrupted trade — and a US president determined to remake the global order — all present risks too. Volatility is now a feature, not a bug.

FT : UK moves jets to Middle East after Iran threat

UK moves jets to Middle East after Iran threat
Sir Keir Starmer says move is ‘contingency’ measure to support regional security

The UK is moving additional fighter jets and other military aircraft to the Middle East, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said on Saturday, after Iran threatened to attack British bases in the region if they assisted Israel.

Starmer said the move was a “contingency” measure to support regional security but hinted the UK might also provide defensive support to Israel in its confrontation with Iran.

“We are moving assets to the region, including jets, and that is for contingency support in the region,” Starmer told reporters after being asked about the Iranian threats.

“I will be clear-eyed in relation to our duties and obligations and my duties as prime minister . . . I will always make the right decisions for the UK and our allies.”

Starmer declined to discuss operational issues but said the situation was “intense” and “fast moving”.

The UK was not involved in Israel’s defence during the first wave of Iranian retaliatory attacks on Friday evening, according to people familiar with the situation.

On Saturday Iran’s state media said that UK, French and US bases in the region would come under attack if the countries helped Israel in any way. Britain has access to bases in Qatar and the UAE and a site in Bahrain.

Starmer said he had a “good and constructive” discussion with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, on Friday, adding that it included talks “about the safety and security of Israel, as you would expect between two allies”.

Starmer, who is flying to Canada to meet Prime Minister Mark Carney in Ottawa before travelling on to the G7 meeting in Alberta, emphasised that the UK was urging all sides to back away from further conflict.

“The message is: de-escalate,” Starmer said. “We do have long-standing concerns about the nuclear programme Iran has. We do recognise Israel’s right to self-defence. But I’m absolutely clear that this needs to de-escalate. There is a huge risk of escalation for the region.”

He also warned of the effect a heightened conflict could have on the global economy. “You can see the impact already on the economy and oil prices. And of course, all of this is linked to what’s going on in Gaza. So you can see why my strong position is: this needs to de-escalate,” he said.

The government said that as part of the contingency measure, additional “fast jets” and “refuelling aircraft” were being sent from the UK to the Middle East.

The aircraft began preparing to deploy on Friday morning, the government said, “when it was clear the situation in the region was deteriorating”.

The UK already has RAF jets stationed in the region as part of its contribution to Operation Shader, which targets remnants of the Isis jihadi group.

Starmer said he had discussed de-escalation with US President Donald Trump on Friday and with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Saturday. He said he expected to hold more calls with world leaders while on the flight to Canada.

>>> Weekend Papers Summary

FINANCIAL TIMES
-Allies of Donald Trump and Elon Musk have urged the US president and his billionaire backer to repair their relationship to limit the political and commercial damage from the recent split over the president's signature tax bill. The fissure threatens to derail the White House's legislative agenda and wreck a hard-won alliance between Silicon Valley and Washington. Texas Senator Ted Cruz expressed disappointment and hope for a reconciliation. Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded positively to hedge fund manager Bill Ackman's urging to "make peace for the benefit of our great country." Trump claimed he was not even thinking about Elon and urged the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates.
-Cyber crime and espionage have become a significant security and economic threat due to the revolutionary capabilities of artificial intelligence. Cybersecurity companies, police, military, intelligence services, and think-tanks have issued warnings about the dangers of a lax approach to network security, but the message can fail to reach the public due to cost or complacency. Recent hacks against Marks and Spencer, the Co-op, and Harrods have generated attention and concern, but cyber security professionals have been frustrated that Synnovis, a blood testing and transfusions company, did not receive the same scrutiny. Marks and Spencer is expecting a £300M reduction in annual profits due to the cyber-attack, while Synnovis suffered a ransomware attack in June.
-Donald Trump has announced a new round of high-level trade talks between the US and China in London, following a phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The talks will be attended by Treasury secretary Scott Bessent, commerce Howard Lutnick, and US trade representative Jamieson Greer. The meeting is expected to go well, as the Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment. The talks come two months after Trump's "liberation day" tariffs escalated levies between the world's largest economies, reaching as high as 145%.
-Palestinians, desperate for supplies after Israel's over two-month blockade, have been forced to seek food from GHF. The Israeli army has used tanks, quadcopter drones, and snipers to attack Palestinians waiting for the distribution site. Telecoms worker Ehab Jomaa and five friends took cover in the ruins of a bombed-out beach hotel before being shot by a quadcopter. Witnesses reported that the run down the final stretch to the distribution site began around 5am, and many Palestinians found all the food gone. Many Palestinians have tried to reach the site several days in a row, despite the killings, as they are hungry after Israel's siege.
-FT's network of correspondents has analyzed the biggest global movers since the inauguration to identify which are struggling and which are triumphing under Donald Trump's policies. European defense companies and Chinese technology giants are among the winners, while Silicon Valley has some winners and many losers.
-The OECD annual meeting in Paris brought together world trade ministers for the first time since Trump imposed his "liberation day" tariffs. The collective challenge was clear, as governments seemed busier than ever cobbling together deals with Washington. The US message was clear: "We have a big trade deficit we need to deal with; what matters is unilateral power, which we have." This is the way the world is going to look, so you better get used to it. When a clutch of ministers later met to discuss reforming the World Trade Organization, the 30-year-old global body that has become increasingly marginalized, the conversation was no easier.
-St Louis Fed president Alberto Musalem has predicted that Donald Trump's trade war could lead to a sustained inflation burst at "50-50". He warned US rate-setters would face uncertainty through the summer, with Trump's levies potentially boosting inflation for a quarter or two. However, the impact of tariffs on prices could last longer. The Trump administration has already raised US tariffs on trading partners to the highest level in almost 90 years, threatening to fuel higher inflation and slow economic growth. Policymakers have adopted a wait-and-see approach after cutting interest rates by 1 percentage point in the second half of last year.
-Gemini, a cryptocurrency exchange run by the Winklevoss twins, has filed to list in the US to capitalize on the increasing demand for digital asset companies. The company filed confidential paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering, following the double-digit increase in stablecoin operator Circle. The US election of President Donald Trump has rekindled investor enthusiasm for crypto assets, with Gemini being one of the beneficiaries. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who founded Gemini in 2014, were vocal critics of the regulatory clampdown on digital asset companies and became active supporters of Trump. They are also among the largest personal holders of bitcoin, with about 70,000 coins. Bitcoin is currently trading at about $105,000, just shy of its record high.
-South Korean solar cell maker OCI Holdings is boosting production in the US despite President Trump's push to cut clean energy subsidies. The company plans to invest $1.2B to increase its Texas plant's annual cell-making capacity to 10GW by 2027, equivalent to 10 nuclear power plants. The increased energy demands from data centres in the US will fuel demand for solar power, and South Korean makers could fill the gap, especially as Chinese groups face tariffs. OCI's chair and co-chief executive, Woohyun Lee, believes that the US has big growth opportunities due to tight energy supply and the need for solar power to meet rising energy demand.
NEW YORK TIMES
-Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, has been flown back to the US to face charges of transporting undocumented migrants. The Trump administration's decision to bring him back could end the most high-profile court battle over President Trump's authority to seize and deport immigrants. The decision to pull Garcia out of El Salvador and put him on trial in an American courtroom could provide an offramp for the Trump administration, which had opposed court orders requiring the government to return him after his wrongful removal in March. The 10-page indictment filed in Federal District Court in Nashville may also be an effort to save face, as it may avoid a broader legal confrontation.
-Cybercrime and espionage have become a significant security and economic threat due to the revolutionary capabilities of artificial intelligence. Cybersecurity companies, police, military, intelligence services, and think-tanks have issued warnings about the dangers of a lax approach to network security, but the message can fail to reach the public due to cost or complacency. Recent hacks against Marks and Spencer, the Co-op, and Harrods have generated attention and concern, but cyber security professionals have been frustrated that Synnovis, a blood testing and transfusions company, did not receive the same scrutiny. Marks and Spencer is expecting a £300mn reduction in annual profits due to the cyber attack, while Synnovis suffered a ransomware attack in June.
-The Supreme Court has granted Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency access to sensitive records of millions of Americans held by the Social Security Administration. The Trump administration sought the data to combat waste and fraud and modernize operations. Two labor unions and an advocacy group sued to block access, arguing that the information was deeply personal and protected by privacy laws. The court allowed DOGE access to the necessary records, allowing the agency to continue its work.
-The Trump White House has raised concerns about potential security threats from Chinese Communist Party visitors to the US. However, the administration has allowed a Chinese government group member to access the president and the White House through a plan to sell memecoins. President Trump launched memecoins just before his inauguration, and his business partners created a contest in April offering top buyers a tour of the White House and a private dinner with Trump at his Virginia golf club. One buyer, He Tianying, is a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
-Vice President JD Vance's practice of blocking Biden administration nominees for U.S. attorney during his tenure in the Senate has been cited by a senior Democrat as a precedent for insisting on the same standard for President Trump's federal prosecutor nominees, potentially jeopardizing their confirmation. Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois plans to adhere to the Vance precedent for Trump prosecutors unless Republicans offer some concessions. U.S. attorney nominees typically pass through the Senate expeditiously once they clear an FBI background check and scrutiny by the Judiciary Committee. Durbin noted that Democrats had followed this practice in agreeing to confirm scores of prosecutors in Trump's first term.
-President Trump has suggested that he might eliminate Elon Musk's federal contracts to save money in the budget. However, this is not as easy as Trump suggests, as the Pentagon and NASA are heavily reliant on SpaceX for orbiting and moving government data. Trump could use his ability to instruct federal regulators to intensify oversight of Musk's business operations to punish him. This would reverse a slowdown in regulatory actions that benefited Musk's businesses after Trump was elected. Steven L. Schooner, a former White House contracts lawyer and professor at George Washington University, believes that selectively ramping up oversight would be difficult in an administration that has defined itself by reducing regulation and oversight.
-On June 6, 2025, federal agents in tactical gear threw flash-bang grenades during an immigration raid on a clothing wholesaler in Los Angeles's Fashion District. The operation was part of three immigration sweeps in Los Angeles, including one at a Home Depot where day laborers gather for work. The raid began at 9:15 a.m. and involved dozens of agents wearing helmets and green camouflage, some carrying riot shields and others with rifles and shotguns loaded with less-than-lethal ammunition.

NEW YORK POST
-Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has been criticized by several Trump administration officials for her opposition to federal efforts to arrest illegal immigrants. Bass stated that she will not stand for this, as police used flash bangs to disperse the violent mob of protesters who descended on the arrest sites. She also stated that her office is in close coordination with immigrant rights community organizations. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller dismissed Bass' declaration, stating that she has no say in this at all and that federal law is supreme and will be enforced.
-The public breakup between Elon Musk and President Trump has sparked concerns about SpaceX's future. Trump relies on Musk's privately owned firm to fulfill the administration's plans for NASA's return to the moon, ongoing operations at the International Space Station, a classified deal with US intelligence to build hundreds of spy satellites, and expanding internet access to rural parts of America. SpaceX, known for building and launching rockets and the Starlink satellite internet network, has approximately $22B in government contracts on the books. Musk threatened to decommission a roughly $5B deal to build the Dragon spacecraft for NASA, which Trump later reversed course on. A Republican consultant connected with Trump said that Trump could cancel most deals and contracts if he wants, but the government may still have to pay them based on contract details. The split likely works in both of their favors, as Elon distanced himself from Trump in a public way to get his businesses back on track.