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In a new book, the label's former creative director talks about her dismissal, her complicated relationship with Karl Lagerfeld and reconnecting with Hedi Slimane.

PARIS — Two years after being fired from Chanel, Virginie Viard is telling her side of the story in a new book that lifts the lid on the inner workings of the famously secretive fashion house.

The discreet designer, who avoided the spotlight during her five-year tenure, appeared on the French talk show “Quotidien” on Friday night to promote “Un Regard: Une Vie Chez Chanel,” which loosely translates to “My Life at Chanel,” released by French publisher Stock to coincide with Paris Fashion Week.

In it, she details how she was dismissed after 37 years at the house and described her career and close relationship with her former boss Karl Lagerfeld, to whom she addresses a bittersweet posthumous letter.

She also details how she grew closer with Hedi Slimane, the man long rumored as her potential successor at Chanel, in the wake of her departure.

Viard said she was told over lunch with Alain Wertheimer, global executive chairman of Chanel, that she was being let go. Viard said the billionaire, who owns the brand with his brother Gérard, simply said: “We’re going to end it here.”

The designer had felt the atmosphere shift after her disastrous outdoor cruise collection in Marseille in May 2024, which was marred by a mini-storm. But the sudden announcement left her tongue-tied.

“I understand the words. I don’t understand what they mean. It’s June. Preparations for haute couture are in full swing. Sales have never been better. Everything is going well. Why now? Why this way? My voice catches somewhere between my throat and my heart. There is no discussion to be had. No explanation. Just this sudden announcement — and my stunned silence,” she wrote.

Chanel had just reported revenues of $19.7 billion for 2023 as a whole, up 16 percent at comparable rates. The company had underscored that under Viard’s watch, Chanel’s ready-to-wear business had multiplied by 2.5, and that it grew 23 percent that year alone.

But online reaction to the collections was increasingly negative, with open speculation about Viard’s ouster putting Bruno Pavlovsky, president of fashion at Chanel, on the back foot.

“I could tell there was something in the air — something really unpleasant — but I still wasn’t expecting this. I knew it would end one day, but perhaps not that day, and not like that,” Viard told host Yann Barthès on the TMC channel program Friday.

In the book, she describes how some of her teams threatened to go on strike in protest. But after she left, the company swiftly moved on without her, with the fall 2024 haute couture collection, presented three weeks later, credited to the studio team. Meanwhile, Viard was struggling to find her feet.

“Chanel was not a job: It was my backbone, the framework of my existence. And when that framework is taken away — not gradually, not with transitional crutches, but all at once, with a few words spoken in a light-filled dining room — you’re no longer able to stand,” she writes. “I struggle to walk down the street. I’m afraid.”

During the soul-searching that followed, she realized she did not take up the space left by Lagerfeld after his death in 2019. Viard rarely gave interviews, partly because she doesn’t sketch, instead sharing inspiration collages with her teams.

“This method is not what people imagine when they picture a creative director. It’s less spectacular, less easy to talk about, and that incommunicability — that inability to show, explain or own a method that works instinctively — contributed to my vulnerability. When you can’t explain what you do, others define it for you,” she said.

She also lamented that she didn’t have a deputy, having herself assisted Lagerfeld, who famously described Viard as “my right arm and my left arm.”

“I probably should have found myself a working partner, someone to bounce ideas off, to play the game I didn’t want to play — not in my place, but alongside me. Someone to defend me, to act as a go-between — to be the public face of those things, in me, that wanted to remain invisible,” she said.

The 64-year-old suggests she was held to a different standard than her male counterparts.

“I don’t claim to know this for sure, but it’s a theory I can’t rule out either. I know that a professional man’s discretion is read as rigor, concentration and conscientiousness. A professional woman’s discretion is read as withdrawal, lack of presence, fragility,” she said.

Viard said that in September 2024, she reconnected with Slimane through mutual friends Princess Caroline of Hanover and her daughter Alexandra.

“Our conversations are effortless, smooth, intense. There’s an immediate kinship — not friendship yet, but the stage just before. We’re two people who’ve inhabited the same spheres, endured the same kind of pressure, who understand each other instinctively, and who enjoy talking about Karl,” she recalled.

“He explains to me power dynamics I recognized without ever having named them,” she continued. “It’s not that I couldn’t play the game, but the game made me anxious. It blocked my creativity and robbed me of my freedom, and without freedom, I lose my true essence. I don’t regret that conviction, but I know it came at a cost.”

She also describes her last few months working with Lagerfeld, noting he always remained vague about his illness. She was informed by Pavlovsky at the hospital on the day of Lagerfeld’s death that she’d been chosen as his successor.

“I wondered if Karl had suggested my appointment. I didn’t know exactly what they had discussed. I might never know. If it had come from him, then it was the most beautiful gift he could have left me. If he wanted me, it meant he recognized my place,” she said. “But I knew him. If he wanted me, it was also because he wanted no one else to succeed him.”

In her letter addressed to Lagerfeld, she oscillates between gratitude and resentment, revealing she once considered an offer to join Marc Jacobs at Louis Vuitton because she was tired of Amanda Harlech, Lagerfeld’s muse, swooping in before shows and occupying her place by the designer’s side.

“It was very hard for me. There was something deliberately hurtful about this setup and you knew it. You knew exactly what you were doing,” she writes, accusing Lagerfeld of thriving on stoking rivalries in his team.

Viard said she decided to stay because the duo she formed with Lagerfeld was irreplaceable. “We really were a fantastic team, a terrific creative duo, with all that implies of intensity, mutual exasperation, mutual admiration and codependency,” she said.

When she heard that Matthieu Blazy was poised to succeed her at the helm of Chanel, she said she felt relief.

“It will be something completely different: a fresh perspective, a different hand, an approach that is neither mine nor Karl’s. Not a continuation, but a clean break — and clean breaks at least have the merit of clarity,” she said. “Chanel will be different with him, and that sets me free.”

As Blazy prepared to make his debut in October last year, Viard came across a press article that described the company’s three main acts: founder Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, Lagerfeld and Blazy.

“It doesn’t even namecheck me. I’m the space between two acts. The interval. I pause over the word. I read it again. The interval: the moment when the audience gets up, goes to the restroom, orders a drink, chats in the corridor. The moment when nothing really happens,” she writes.

Viard concludes by explaining that she wrote the book because she stands by her work and wants it to be remembered for posterity.

“Karl invented it all — a wonderful story that will remain forever. And Coco Chanel will always be the inspiration. And I — my collections, my shows, my collaborations, my sleepless nights at the studio — will last forever too, even if no one is saying it yet,” she said.

Viard told “Quotidien” she’s finally ready to go back to work, though she doesn’t plan to launch her own line. But above all, she can move on.

“Finally, now, I am super happy,” she said.

Anthropic’s private valuation has soared from less than $20 billion two years ago to $965 billion this past May, and it is expected to jump to $1.5 trillion or more in the IPO.

Former Anthropic employees said employee group chats are filled with discussions of where they should give away the millions of dollars they expect to come their way from the IPO, including to groups that focus on global poverty, AI safety and animal welfare. “Some very rich people are going to give away a lot of money and the amount of money is pretty staggering,” a former employee said.

The gifts have a cost to Anthropic because of the match program. They dilute the ownership stakes of other shareholders by forcing the company to issue more stock. The contributions added to Anthropic’s operating loss in the two quarters reported to prospective investors. In the first quarter this year, the charitable contributions stood at about $125 million, and represented 10% of the company’s overall employee expenses and 2% of its operating costs overall. The figures for recent quarters couldn’t be learned.

Anthropic excluded the expense, along with stock-based compensation and a large legal settlement, from its adjusted operating profit for the periods. Companies typically present investors with adjusted profit metrics that exclude expenses they don’t pay in cash or aren’t likely to recur.

The charitable expense that Anthropic excluded was far larger than any large publicly traded firm that excluded a similar expense from their adjusted profit metrics. “The adjustment for charitable contributions is not common at all,” said Calcbench’s Ghai.

The expected boom in charitable giving from Anthropic’s IPO is likely to have ramifications beyond the costs to shareholders. Donations from employees who followed effective altruism are likely to give AI safety organizations equity in Anthropic, adding to ties that some prominent critics have already said are too cozy.

The Global Positioning System, designed by the U.S. military, became a mundane part of civilian life. It has lately been

Earlier this year a French naval officer went for a 4-mile run and, like millions of other runners around the world, uploaded his progress to Strava, the fitness app that plots workouts on a map. His route showed loops suspended over open water in the eastern Mediterranean.

Using satellite images taken an hour later, journalists at the newspaper Le Monde soon identified the officer’s location, as well as the location of many of his fellow sailors. It turns out the seaman had been running laps on a warship in the Charles de Gaulle’s carrier group. The carrier’s position had been among France’s better-kept secrets. The embarrassment in Paris was considerable.

This story is, in miniature, the one Katherine Dunn tells in “Little Blue Dot”: How a system, originally designed for the U.S. military to know precisely where on Earth things are, escaped into civilian life, became invisible and has lately been called back to war. Ms. Dunn, a business reporter and editor based in London, is a gifted storyteller. Her introduction promises “a wild, weird and fantastical ride”—and she delivers.

For most of human history, knowing where you were was an educated guess. Sailors practiced dead reckoning: Start from a known point, multiply speed by elapsed time, and then hope for the best. Latitude could be read from the stars, but longitude required something that nailed down time more precisely.

The longstanding problem of calculating one’s location appears to have been solved by the Global Positioning System. In fact, GPS also overcomes the challenge through time: A receiver uses the travel times of signals from several satellites, whose positions are known, to calculate its own position. The map in your pocket rests on atomic clocks in the sky.

It all began with a Soviet provocation. In October 1957 Sputnik crossed the American firmament, beeping as it went. Two scientists at Johns Hopkins tuned in. From the rise and fall of the signal’s pitch as the satellite passed overhead, the scientists could reconstruct the entire orbit from a listening post. Then came the elegant inversion: If a point on Earth could locate a satellite in the sky, then a satellite in the sky could locate a point on Earth.

The Vietnam War provided the humiliation that converted that insight into a weapons program. For years the American military failed to destroy a single bridge at Thanh Hóa—not for lack of bombs, but for lack of precision. Bradford Parkinson, the Air Force colonel who became GPS’s chief architect, spelled out the remedy on a sign at the entrance to the GPS Program Office: The mission was “to drop five bombs in the same hole.”

Even so, GPS spent its first decade as an orphan: Few in the military understood the system or cared for it; the real fight among the service branches, Ms. Dunn writes, was “the battle not to get stuck with the bill.” The turning point came in 1983 when a Soviet fighter shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 after the passenger jet mistakenly flew into Soviet airspace. President Ronald Reagan promised the still-unfinished system to the world’s civilians.

Commerce did the rest. By 1985 Silicon Valley had shrunk the receiver to the size of a typewriter. One young firm, angling for publicity, lent a unit to the writer William F. Buckley Jr., who was a “fanatical amateur sailor.” Buckley carried the device across the Pacific and reported back in the New York Times Magazine: “Navigation used to be deadly serious stuff,” he reflected, but this device “will change everything.”

Courtesy of “the greatest gift that the American taxpayer has ever given the world,” as one navigation executive put it, GPS is, these days, invisible infrastructure. The same signal that tells a dating app which lonely hearts are within a mile of each other also runs the clocks that keep cellular networks and financial exchanges in step. Yet it remains, first and foremost, a military tool. In 1991, when the Pentagon repositioned its satellites over the Middle East for the Gulf War, GPS coverage over America shrank. Highway maintenance, railroad scheduling and earthquake detection were among the civilian activities affected. As Ms. Dunn writes, that episode was among the first occasions—but certainly won’t be the last—during which civilians discovered with shock what GPS “was actually for.”

Ms. Dunn’s underlying theme is that humans spent centuries groping in the dark for their position, built a system that ended that groping, and then forgot the dark was ever there. Her later chapters can read like a dossier proving a point already made. Yet her warning extends beyond navigation: Can time itself be weaponized? An attacker cannot alter its passage but could make clocks disagree. Modern life turns out to be, among other things, a vast congregation of machines taking one another’s word for what time it is.

How such an attack would cascade through civilian networks remains uncertain. But alternatives exist: Precise time can travel by fiber-optic cable and be kept by land-based atomic clocks. And paper maps—the last resort—still work.

The whole journey—from military technology to civilian infrastructure and now global vulnerability—is neatly mirrored in the military’s own training curriculum. In 2006 the U.S. Naval Academy, having deemed GPS dependable, stopped teaching midshipmen celestial navigation—the discipline of fixing a ship’s position based on timed sightings of the sun and the stars. In 2015, with jamming and cyberattacks no longer hypothetical, the Navy put the subject back on the syllabus.

The group will examine the technology’s risks and opportunities—and focus on making sure the U.S. is first in the field

WASHINGTON— A new White House task force will have 120 days to report on the risks and opportunities of artificial intelligence—and determine the federal government’s responsibility—according to Jay Clayton, the director of national intelligence who effectively becomes the administration’s AI czar.

“The president asked that a group be put together that was going to ensure exactly what he said,” Clayton said, that “we stay the leaders in superintelligence, and that the interests of the American people are put first.”

Clayton will chair the “Super Intelligence Force” which takes President Trump’s preferred name for AI: super intelligence or SI.

“The risk of not being first is high,” Clayton said. “Not being first increases the identified, and unidentified, risks, particularly from our adversaries. Being first will better enable us to address those risks on behalf of the American people,” he added.

Formation of the group comes on the heels of a meeting Trump convened at the White House on Tuesday in which AI leaders, including OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and the industry agreed to a series of principles including internal controls to monitor model development, external model reviews by third parties and notifications to the board of directors about those safety efforts, voluntary pledges that Trump hailed as the right approach.

“I will never stifle the growth of technology that will be bigger than the industrial revolution,” Trump said on Tuesday.

The task force will still yield to the industry as the primary vehicle for managing risks, officials said. But it will work in conjunction with the industry to identify risk and opportunities.

“I expect there will be mechanisms developed in dialogue, just like there are in other industries,” Clayton told The Wall Street Journal. He cited risk models for the financial industry that have been developed in conjunction with the Federal Reserve and Securities and Exchange Commission. He said the task force would examine current law and discuss possible actions that Congress could take.

The task force’s charter document states it will “develop plans for responding to SI-enabled threats to our society, while preventing overregulation and regulatory capture that would stifle innovation and competition.” It will also review current warnings and systemized notifications to the government of breaches, hacks, jailbreaks and other issues, and “recommend ways to improve the government’s response capacity under existing authorities.”

Formation of the task force follows rising public concern over AI, not just on its potential to wipe out jobs, but also is ability to perform sophisticated hacks and its use as a weapon—or even wipe out civilization, as some industry researchers fear. Data centers, which power the technology, also have faced growing public backlash.

Trump has largely advocated for less regulation, but the task force represents a growing recognition some government oversight will be necessary. Some inside the administration, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles have pushed for more government action to address the technology’s unpopularity and its potential for cyberattacks—in addition to the use of biological weapons enabled by AI advance. That divide withing the administration that has hampered policymaking at times.

Skeptics have argued that so-called self regulation isn’t adequate given that recent AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic and other companies have demonstrated that they are improving at potentially alarming rates.

The task force will have three vice chairs: Emil Michael, undersecretary of war for Research and Engineering, who will be responsible for coordination with AI companies; Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management, who will be responsible for coordination with critical infrastructure providers and other industry stakeholders; and Andrew Ferguson, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, who will oversee consumer interests and groups advocating for people of faith, children, privacy, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and freedom of association.

Members of the task force will include Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Richard Walters, White House deputy chief of staff, Bessent, Wiles and others. External participants will include venture capitalists David Sacks, co-chair of the president’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State in the George W. Bush administration, who will provide advice on national security.

“The Task Force shall act as a coordinating body to ensure that the U.S. remains at the forefront of SI development while protecting the American people,” the task force charter states. “Recognizing there has always been inherent unpredictability in the effects of significant technological change, the Task Force shall focus on ensuring that emerging opportunities and risks are identified and communicated to government personnel, industry, and the American people.”

The task force’s work could be extended beyond 120 days if necessary or have its functions transferred to a government agency, its charter says.

“I feel very comfortable that we’ve gotten a group with a lot of experience, diverse skill sets and a common commitment,” Clayton said. “These are all serious people who have addressed opportunities and risks in the past and are committed to doing this so that America wins the SI race and we win it through the benefit of the American people.”

The 173-year-old denim maker is enjoying a comeback as shoppers rediscover jeans with low rises and loose fits

Levi Strauss is experiencing a sales comeback driven by consumer interest in 1990s-style low-rise and loose-fitting jeans.

The company forecasts up to 7.5% sales growth for the fiscal year ending in November, which would be its largest annual gain since 2019.

Levi’s faces challenges to its profit growth from marketing costs, tariffs, and a shift to outsourcing more of its order fulfillment.

Nineties nostalgia is back. That couldn’t have come at a better time for Levi Strauss LEVI -0.25%decrease; down pointing triangle.

Sales at the brand, whose jeans were one of the 1990s core staples, sagged after consumers shifted to newer designs and the company failed to capitalize. Yet rebounding interest in low-rise jeans and other looks from the decade has given the iconic brand a new life.

Levi’s is trying to take advantage of the back-to-the-future shift in style tastes. The company is offering new designs that mimic its coveted vintage pairs, like the 517 jeans featured in “Love Story,” the hit show chronicling the romance between John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy.

It is also trying to move beyond jeans by branching into other pieces from the period, such as slip dresses and leather jackets.

“We’re already synonymous with the ’90s style,” Levi’s Vice President of Global Marketing Anne Cambria said in an interview. “We really want to amplify the moment.”

The on-trend products, along with a push to sell directly to consumers through its own website and growing fleet of branded stores, is putting Levi’s on its strongest business footing in years, according to analysts.

The company forecasts as much as 7.5% sales growth for the year ending in November. Such growth would mark Levi’s biggest annual revenue gain since going public again in 2019, excluding a postpandemic rebound.

Among the shoppers who are back to buying Levi’s denim is Jackie Schexnaider, of Lafayette, La. Schexnaider, 47 years old, grew up wearing Levi’s jeans she bought at a local department store but later abandoned them for trendier and stretchier styles from brands like AG, Gap and Paige.

Now, the content creator is back to buying Levi’s rigid denim, this time straight from its website. “The vintage Levi’s look is so popular right now,” she said. “The wash in certain styles are giving that throwback vibe.”

Levi’s, despite its gains, still faces challenges. Its profit isn’t up as much as sales, because of marketing costs, tariffs and a shift to outsourcing more of its order fulfillment, after mostly using distribution centers it owned and operated.

And analysts said the company is taking a big risk betting on branded stores. For the stores to succeed, Levi’s will need real-estate and merchandising expertise it didn’t need before and for consumers squeezed by higher gas and other prices to keep making purchases in stores.

“If you build them and the consumer doesn’t come, you’re kind of screwed,” BNP Paribas analyst Laurent Vasilescu said.

Founded in 1853, Levi’s long operated as a wholesale men’s denim business selling the same rigid jeans it once made for miners during the California gold rush. It became a streetwear fixture during the 1990s, when everyone from Kate Moss to Princess Diana to Steve Jobs—not to mention the cast of “Friends”—donned its flagship 501s.

Shoppers often sized up to get a lower rise, and women frequently bought men’s styles like the 517 jeans worn by Bessette.

Sales slowed, however, after ultra-low-rise stretchy jeans and premium denim gained popularity. Levi’s also kept relying on department stores and other retailers, while competitors like Gap embraced e-commerce. Sales cratered.

Levi’s, which was privately owned from 1985 to 2019, is clawing its way back. Revenue is up more than 11% on a reported basis to $3.3 billion in the first half of this fiscal year. Due to this progress, the company has raised its full-year guidance twice. Analysts say that outlook is still conservative. Levi’s reports its third-quarter results this week.

Now swarms scour vintage stores hunting for Coach purses, Champion sweatshirts and Ralph Lauren pullovers popular in the 1990s, as well as vintage Levi’s.

Shoppers also are showing interest in products inspired by Levi’s archives, said Jana Henning, chief merchandising officer for the company’s women’s business. Among the newly popular offerings: a slouchier, lower-rise version of its flagship jean sold as 501 ’90s, and its wedgie bootcut fit, which was designed to flatter the backside.

Levi’s has also expanded its assortment of low-rise jeans, a style that caught on toward the end of the 90s.

“Our fashion business has never been as strong as it is right now, and really the engine behind that is low,” Henning said. Levi’s is seeing its low-rise jeans “just grow disproportionately within the business.”

As part of its turnaround strategy, the jeansmaker is trying to move beyond jeans and dress consumers from head to toe. It has been selling an assortment of other core ’90s wardrobe staples like baby tees, in addition to slip dresses and leather jackets.

The changes have improved Levi’s performance, analysts said, largely because of another shift in the company’s playbook. It is selling more directly to consumers, allowing it to highlight its most on-trend styles—and show off other items to go with it—rather than rely on other retailers.

“They’re back in the cultural conversation now,” Telsey Advisory Group’s Dana Telsey said. “They’re adaptable to different fashion trends, and their customer relies on them to be the authority on denim.”

Earlier this year, women shoppers flooded Levi’s e-commerce website with searches for the 517 jeans, a men’s style, after they were featured in “Love Story.”

In search results, Levi’s also showed the shoppers its wedgie bootcut and 501 ’90s fits to appeal to women specifically, because the designs emulate vintage styles but have a more precise fit designed for women’s bodies, said Priya Buening, head of U.S. e-commerce.

“It’s the job of the brand and the branded website to say, ‘Hey, we think this is what you’re saying. This is the product that we actually think meets that need,’” Buening said.

FlyDubai Attack Adds New Risks to Dubai’s War-Battered Economy

The war in Iran had already punctured the emirate’s image as a haven insulated from regional turmoil

DUBAI—Dubai’s economic recovery from the Iran war depends on getting travelers back onto its planes and into its hotels. Wednesday’s attack aboard a FlyDubai flight to Israel could make that harder.

The war already punctured Dubai’s image as a haven insulated from the region’s turmoil, a notion its rulers nurtured over decades. Missile and drone attacks from Iran during the war raised fears about flying to the Persian Gulf city that has become a household name for luxury travel.

Now the FlyDubai attack—in which the U.A.E. says the co-pilot struck the flight’s captain with an onboard emergency ax, prompting the plane to dive steeply before passengers and the crew regained control—risks putting that confidence under more pressure, analysts say.

Renewed reluctance to fly with U.A.E.-based carriers or visit the emirate could ripple through already strained hotels, restaurants and retailers. Israeli travelers are particularly exposed: they have become a fast-growing source of visitors since the countries normalized relations in 2020. The route was already under pressure from the war, as Israel raised concerns about security gaps.

“Any questioning of security arrangements concerning flights out of Dubai could be a blow to confidence in the emirate, especially after the shocks of the Iran war,” said Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a fellow with Rice University’s Baker Institute.

The U.A.E.’s attorney general described Wednesday’s near-downing of FlyDubai Flight 1073 as terrorism on Saturday. The Omani co-pilot who attacked his captain had previously been banned from flying by Oman over concerns he had adopted radical ideological views, people familiar with the matter said.

The failure to prevent him from being hired by FlyDubai could raise concerns about the U.A.E.’s security controls. The airline and the U.A.E. declined to comment while the investigation continues.

FlyDubai has since suspended flights to and from Israel while investigators examine the incident.

There is no indication yet of broader cancellations or weaker bookings beyond FlyDubai’s suspended Israel service. It remains too early to assess whether the incident will change traveler behavior more widely, though global attention on the attack likely won’t help.

Dubai’s travel economy has shown some ability to rebound from major shocks, like the coronavirus pandemic. Recently, airport traffic and hotel occupancy had been recovering from their lows, even as both remain broadly below prewar levels.

Officials from Dubai’s government didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The plane attack puts new pressure on a sector at the heart of Dubai’s economic model.

Aviation and the tourism it facilitates generated economic activity equivalent to 27% of the emirate’s gross domestic product in 2023, according to a study by Oxford Economics.

Dubai’s aviation bet stretches years ahead. A $35 billion expansion of Al Maktoum International Airport, the emirate’s second airport, is due to open its first new phase in 2032. When fully built, Dubai says it will be the world’s largest aviation hub, with capacity for more than 260 million passengers a year.

The world’s busiest airport for international travelers last year, Dubai International Airport, saw traffic fall by nearly a third year over year in the first half of 2026. The airport now expects to handle 70 million passengers this year, well below its prewar forecast of 99.5 million.

Wednesday’s incident comes as the wider Emirati economy is already under pressure this year, with the war disrupting oil exports and depressing tourism. Capital Economics forecasts a 1.5% decline in the country’s GDP.

Marquee events have been disrupted. Some luxury hotels have closed for renovations, including the iconic Burj Al Arab.

Many international airlines suspended flights in the spring through October or beyond due to the war. Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific on Monday extended its suspension of flights to Dubai until the end of January.

Government-owned carriers FlyDubai, Emirates and Etihad continued operating much more extensively across the region than many international rivals.

Dubai has kept flights going this year even during the worst of the Iran war. In the first weeks of the conflict, dozens of planes landed at or departed from Dubai International Airport within five minutes of warnings of missile or drone attacks, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

Dubai’s tourism, like aviation, has suffered a sharp setback from the conflict.

Government data shows Dubai received 6.97 million international overnight visitors in the first eight months of 2026, compared with 12.54 million during the same period last year. Hotels have slowly begun filling up again. Occupancy climbed to 66% in August from 36% in March, though it remained below levels from a year earlier.

Among the newer sources of tourism demand in recent years have been Israeli travelers, whose numbers surged after the countries normalized relations in 2020, helped by visa-free travel and frequent direct flights. By the end of 2023, about 1.2 million Israeli tourists had visited the U.A.E., according to the Israeli Embassy there.

The Iran war slowed that flow. Israel’s National Security Council in March advised Israelis not to take flights connecting through the U.A.E., which sits just dozens of miles from the Islamic Republic.

Before Wednesday’s incident, FlyDubai operated regular flights between Dubai and Tel Aviv. The suspension now risks putting additional pressure on what had become one of the most durable commercial links created by the political normalization.

“This incident is a major test for the relationship,” said Michael Horowitz, a security and geopolitical analyst who wrote a book about Israel’s future in the Middle East.

“For the U.A.E, a major transportation hub, managing the crisis from a PR angle is critical,” he said.” If Israel points to security lapses publicly, or shuts the flights for an extended period of time, this will be read by other airlines as signs that Dubai airport isn’t safe.”

Masayoshi Son’s AI ambitions outgrow SoftBank’s balance sheet

DigitalBridge CEO Marc Ganzi says his data centre investment group will be SoftBank’s ‘third-party infrastructure arm’ after $4bn takeover

SoftBank’s $4bn acquisition of DigitalBridge will give Masayoshi Son a new way to bring outside investors into his vast AI ambitions, as the billionaire seeks to build infrastructure projects too large to finance from his conglomerate’s balance sheet alone.

Marc Ganzi, chief executive of the $100bn-plus digital infrastructure manager, said DigitalBridge would become SoftBank’s “third-party infrastructure arm”, raising money from institutional investors to finance data centres, power and other projects.

“As the zeros keep growing in terms of Masa’s ambition, he’s not going to be able to do it all off the SoftBank balance sheet,” Ganzi told the FT as SoftBank completed its takeover of DigitalBridge this week.

The deal comes as Son faces fresh complications in financing his sprawling AI strategy. SoftBank this month launched one of the largest-ever junk-bond deals to help fund its OpenAI investment.

Meanwhile, SB Energy, the SoftBank-controlled group tasked with building vast data centres for OpenAI, has slowed preparations for an initial public offering, while the ChatGPT maker has also delayed its own plans to list.

However, the completion of the DigitalBridge deal provides progress on SoftBank’s broader AI strategy. Ganzi said Son was seeking to control three layers of the AI “wedding cake”: large language models through SoftBank’s stake in OpenAI, chips through its ownership of Arm, and power and data centres through DigitalBridge.

“Power is the gateway to compute,” said Ganzi. “If you can’t control an electron, you cannot get to a token.”

DigitalBridge’s funds hold large stakes in data centre operators including Vantage, Switch and DataBank, as well as Zayo, one of North America’s largest independent fibre networks. SoftBank’s takeover valued DigitalBridge at about $4bn including debt.

“DigitalBridge remains independent in the sense that we’re not consolidated up into SoftBank,” said Ganzi. “We’ll be the third-party infrastructure arm of SoftBank that goes out and raises third-party capital and invests in projects.”

Ganzi said SoftBank would anchor DigitalBridge’s future funds, a similar arrangement to Brookfield Corp’s role in Brookfield Asset Management. “That’s absolutely the idea, to supercharge our fundraising,” he said.

In May, DigitalBridge also agreed to acquire power investor ArcLight Capital Partners.

Ganzi said the two companies would pass deals to each other, with SoftBank referring infrastructure and power opportunities to DigitalBridge while they referred private equity-type deals the other way.

“When we do find ideas that SoftBank has that are good and the returns are right, then we’re happy to back up the truck and invest with them and help run a co-investment syndication and amplify the capital for the balance sheet of SoftBank,” he said. “That is definitely something that’s down the road.”

But Ganzi cautioned that DigitalBridge’s dealmaking would remain at arm’s length from SoftBank. “We have an independent pool of capital that we need to invest, and we take that responsibility very seriously,” he said.

“We’re not going to put money into just a SoftBank idea, it’s got to be a really good idea, whether it’s SoftBank or not SoftBank. I really don’t care.”

For Ganzi, the sale to SoftBank marks his third major exit in three decades, after turning Colony Capital, a struggling real estate investor, into a $108bn digital infrastructure manager in just six years.

He previously sold Global Tower Partners to American Tower for $4.8bn in 2013 and Apex Site Management to SpectraSite in 2000, at the top of the telecoms bubble.

Asked whether the DigitalBridge sale was also timed at a market peak, Ganzi said: “It is a top. I think the top’s already happened . . . The days of data centres trading at 40 times [ebitda] are over.”

Ganzi warned that about half of the data centre leases signed this year would never be built due to hostile local zoning, reluctant utility regulators and tighter financing.

But he drew a line between frothy valuations and near-term permitting issues and the long-term value of such properties due to breakneck demand and the coming adoption of AI by industrial companies. “If people think we’re late in the process, we’re not,” said Ganzi.

Cyber security incidents involving company’s AI tools leave ChatGPT maker vulnerable to wave of lawsuits

A spiralling legal crisis threatens to engulf OpenAI after its AI agents hacked dozens of companies and governments worldwide, with the prospect of a barrage of lawsuits marking the latest test of Sam Altman’s leadership.

Staff at OpenAI, alongside senior legal, tech and policy figures, told the FT that the company has been left open to legal damages and government actions after cyber security breaches involving its AI agents were revealed around the world.

The past week has seen new legal actions and regulatory probes launched against OpenAI almost daily, from California to Australia, with more expected to follow as details of other incidents come to light.

As the creator of the hit app ChatGPT, OpenAI and its chief Altman have become emblematic of the AI boom sweeping Silicon Valley and Wall Street.

But new questions over legal liability from these hacking incidents present the latest in a rolling series of crises facing Altman since the chatbot launched in 2022, including employee revolts, legal tangles with shareholders including Elon Musk, copyright disputes and political clashes.

Altman is fending off accusations that he is sidelining security concerns and deprioritising “alignment” training — which ensures models do not take actions harmful to humans — to regain ground against rival lab Anthropic. 

On Saturday, David Robinson, a safety leader at OpenAI, announced his resignation from the company in an essay for The Atlantic, citing concerns over its “trial and error” approach to developing models.

Masayoshi Son, the SoftBank founder who has been a prominent evangelist for AI and funnelled almost $65bn into OpenAI and other huge bets on the technology, expressed concern on Sunday about the dangers of ever more powerful models in the wrong hands.

If AI were used by “bad” humans, he said at an event in Kyoto, “this can become super dangerous”.

In the wake of the dramatic attack on AI site Hugging Face by hundreds of OpenAI agents, Altman has acknowledged the risks presented by AI’s advances and joined calls by his arch-rival, Anthropic chief Dario Amodei, to “pace the frontier” of AI development.

However, several OpenAI investors and others close to the company rejected the idea that there would be any meaningful slowdown.

“If you’re Sam Altman and you want to beat your competitor . . . there’s no way you’re going to pump the brakes,” said a former senior OpenAI employee. “Knowing the psyche of the people there, there’s no way they’re slowing down.”

Still, citing safety concerns, Altman has already postponed OpenAI’s planned stock market listing and scrapped the release of its most advanced model, Astra 6.1.

Uncertainty over the extent of its legal liabilities now hangs over his latest efforts to raise tens of billions in a private financing that could value the company at as much as $1.4tn. Prospective investors are weighing whether the company can outrun its latest crisis and continue a recent upturn in commercial fortunes.

On Monday, Florida’s attorney-general asked a court to halt OpenAI’s development of new models without additional safeguards.

Then on Tuesday, OpenAI was sued by a public interest group that alleges it broke a California law introduced last year to ensure “humans are on the hook for harms they cause”.

The next day, the US Federal Trade Commission broadened a probe into whether OpenAI and its peers misled customers over the potential harms of its technology. US officials have also said that AI companies should not expect protection from the government and that executives will remain liable for their products’ actions.

Meanwhile, Australia has launched a task force to investigate OpenAI agents’ unauthorised access to government systems.

The Greens, who hold the balance of power in the Australian Senate, accused the San Francisco-based company of hiding the severity of the incidents in recent meetings, including one between Altman and deputy prime minister Richard Marles in September.

“It’s an insult not just to him, it’s an insult to Australia,” said Greens senator David Shoebridge, adding that Marles had been treated “like a mushroom”. 

OpenAI has apologised for the incident. Jason Kwon, its chief strategy officer, is set to appear before a parliamentary committee in Sydney on October 6.

“The ‘my AI did it, don’t blame me’ defence is legally weak. It’s already failed for chatbot suicide cases,” said Max Tegmark, an AI safety campaigner and researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

One Silicon Valley lawyer who has worked with several Big Tech companies said that while there were “definitely legal risks” from OpenAI’s agent attacks, so far they were “not material” due to the limited damage suffered by victims. But that could change fast, the lawyer added.

“The real exposure is when the agents are released to users, and then go rogue or are used to commit crimes,” they said. “The key issue, which will go on for years, is to whom should liability be assigned: the creator of the agent, or the person sending it on its mission?”

The lawyer doubted that the legal risks would impact OpenAI’s initial public offering. “Any investor who was not previously put off by [Altman’s] recklessness will not be put off by a few agents,” they said.

OpenAI’s internal investigation found “dozens” more such incidents. Asymmetric Security, a digital forensics company, found evidence that OpenAI’s agents pulled data from 55 websites, including the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the International Energy Agency, the FT reported last week.

OpenAI said that it is reviewing potential breaches and notifying those affected.

A spokesperson for the European Commission said the Brussels AI Act was designed to address such risks, warning that “frontier labs must take responsibility and be fully transparent, including about unintended incidents”.

“I suspect [OpenAI is] very aware of the legal risks of what their agents are doing,” said Vivian Dong, programmes director at Legal Advocates for Safe Science & Technology (LASST), the public interest group suing OpenAI. “It’s one thing to say ‘sorry’ in your blog post, and another to say outright: ‘We just engaged in illegal behaviour.’”

At the company’s annual developer conference on Tuesday, the upbeat mood on the stage was overshadowed by protesters on the fringes urging OpenAI to “put people over profits”. One attendee described the contrast as like “something out of Black Mirror”, the satirical dystopian technology TV show.

The hacks have also revived tension inside the company between staff seeking to prioritise safety and those pushing to commercialise the technology. On Thursday, a trio of safety researchers were fired after allegedly handing confidential information to an external AI safety organisation, which OpenAI said violated their contracts.

“This is a concerning development, a callback to OpenAI trying to suppress workers with their illegal 2024 non-disparagement agreements, and a familiar playbook massive tech companies have been using against employees to cover up harms for a long time,” said Karl Koch, founder of non-profit The AI Whistleblower Initiative.

“The actions against well-intentioned researchers is an object example of why the AI industry cannot regulate itself,” he added.

OpenAI declined to comment.

BT weighs improved TalkTalk offer after initial approach rejected

Telecoms group seeks deal within days for debt-laden broadband provider

BT is weighing an improved offer for UK broadband provider TalkTalk after an initial approach was rejected, as the telecoms group steps up its efforts to buy its heavily indebted rival.

The FTSE 100 group is expected to return with a higher offer on Sunday, according to two people familiar with the matter. A third person said BT had been seeking to agree a deal as soon as Monday but that this timeline could now slip.

The move comes after the company opened talks with the Department of Culture, Media and Sport over how to address competition concerns, the FT reported on Thursday.

Discussions are continuing, with neither a price nor a solution to the competition issues yet agreed, according to the two people familiar with the situation.

A tie-up between the companies would normally trigger a competition review because BT’s broadband network Openreach is TalkTalk’s largest supplier. BT is also the country’s largest broadband provider with a market share of roughly 30 per cent, according to estimates from Enders Analysis.

TalkTalk was previously in exclusive talks to sell its wholesale division to Octopus Investments and its 1.6mn-customer consumer wing to Opus Broadband.

However, neither party has been able to reach an agreement, forcing TalkTalk to explore options including a break-up that could split the company between its largest creditor Ares and private capital group Epiris. These talks have also stalled amid concerns about the level of fees payable to BT’s Openreach, its largest supplier, by any new owner of TalkTalk.

Ares, which is also a TalkTalk shareholder, has written to media watchdog Ofcom and ministers warning that the negotiation over payments to Openreach — which is legally separate from BT despite being wholly owned by it — could hinder rival bids, potentially to BT’s advantage, according to a person familiar with the matter.

TalkTalk has struggled since it was taken private in 2021 by London-based hedge fund Toscafund in a £1.1bn leveraged buyout that added £527mn of debt to its balance sheet. Shareholders including founder Sir Charles Dunstone and Ares have repeatedly had to inject capital into the company to ease cash flow pressures.

This included £235mn as part of a refinancing in December 2024 and a further £120mn in July last year. Ares injected another £115mn in March.

The company’s retail customer base has fallen from more than 2.5mn in 2023 to about 1.6mn in May.

Ares, BT and TalkTalk declined to comment.