Remarkable 18
In the last few years, Chinese AI startup MiniMax has become one of the most exciting in the crowded global AI marketplace, carving out a reputation for delivering frontier-level large language models (LLMs) with open source licenses and before that, high-quality AI video generation models (Hailuo). The release of MiniMax M2.7 today — a new proprietary LLM designed to perform well powering AI agents and as the backend to third-party harnesses and tools like Claude Code, Kilo Code and OpenClaw — marks yet a new milestone: Rather than relying solely on human-led fine-tuning, MiniMax has leveraged M2.7 to build, monitor, and optimize its own reinforcement learning harnesses. This move toward recursive self-improvement signals a shift in the industry: a future where the models we use are as much the architects of their progress as they are the products of human research.
One Windows PC keyboard shortcut cut my Claude research time in half. My prompts are 3x longer, I ask more follow-ups, and I save more time.
I get 3x more out of Claude research with one PC keyboard shortcut
Being concerned that TSMC’s expansion into the United States could dilute Taiwan’s semiconductor leadership, Taiwanese authorities are mulling setting a new export rule that would only let the world’s number-one foundry export technologies that are two generations behind its leading-edge production node, reports CNA. If this happens, this could slow down TSMC’s expansion in the U.S., as it currently relies on aggressive building of advanced fabs there.
The US semiconductor industry has seen dramatic changes over the past few years, mainly driven by government initiatives such as the CHIPS Act, which aim to produce chips on home soil. Intel’s former CEO, Pat Gelsinger, has been a key advocate of America’s supply chain resilience and was one of the individuals responsible for bringing an “engineering-driven” approach to the company through initiatives like “5N4Y.” However, Gelsinger couldn’t fully deliver on his plans after he departed from the company in December 2024, and, interestingly, he has blamed Wall Street (via Jodi Shelton) for its approach to “long-term, manufacturing” ambitions. You know, so I’ll say, you know, industrial policy is around building the structure that you need to accomplish the policy objectives. And in this case, you know, our policy objectives were uh I’ll say undermined. They were deteriorated by high margin short-termism in Wall Street. You know, we are not as a nation creating incentives for long-term capital heavy industry investments, right? They don’t happen here. Because no good CEO can possibly say, “That’s right. I’m going to build a factory that doesn’t get an economic return for a decade, but it’s the right thing. You know, no CEO can survive those kind of decisions.
But, at some point, it may dawn on Mr Trump that the Iranian regime will not be threatened into relaxing its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz. There are probably no circumstances in which the country’s remaining leaders would decide to surrender their greatest strategic card. Given that they will never choose to loosen their grip, Mr Trump will have to break it for them. He will soon have to decide whether to reopen the Strait by force – a risky operation that would probably require troops on the ground – or endure huge economic damage. He surely never planned to have to face this dilemma.
Trump has backed himself into a corner
The method, referred to as “neuron freezing”, prevents users from bypassing the built-in safety filters of the large language models (LLMs) underpinning these AI tools. Currently, these LLMs treat safety as a binary checkpoint at the start of generating an answer; If a query appears safe, the AI will proceed, but if it seems dangerous then it will refuse. Users have been able to find ways of getting round these checks by framing harmful prompts in different context. One study last year, for example, found that AI safety measures could be bypassed by rephrasing a nefarious prompt as a poem.
AI ‘neuron freezing’ offers safety breakthrough
Ray Dalio, a billionaire investor, said on his Substack last week that everything hinged on whether Iran could maintain control of the Strait of Hormuz. If it does, the US will have lost the war and, with it, the credibility that underpins its economy. Dalio warned: “When the world’s dominant power that has the world’s reserve currency is overextended financially, and it reveals its weakness by losing both military and financial control, watch out for allies and creditors losing confidence, the loss of its reserve currency status, the selling of its debt assets and the weakening of its currency – especially relative to gold.”
Trump’s war in Iran threatens to topple the dollar
Three amphibious ships, carrying more than 5,000 Marines and sailors, are traveling from Asia and will be in the Gulf as soon as Friday, defense officials told us. The Pentagon is preparing to dispatch 2,000 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division, and more troops may soon get orders to deploy. Even that may not be enough to contain the war’s spreading damage to the global economy. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak warned in an interview on Saturday on Israel’s Channel 13 about the prospects of reopening the strait. For such a mission, Barak said, “we would need to deploy two American divisions there and prepare to be there for the long haul.” Two divisions constitute at least 20,000 troops. Naval forces would need to clear mines and escort oil tankers and other commercial vessels, while other troops seek to stop Iranian missiles and drones targeting those operations.
The U.S. and Iran Are Fighting a Massively Asymmetrical War
Wall Street’s private credit crisis has deepened after two of the world’s largest “shadow banks” blocked cash withdrawals from their flagship funds…
Wall Street crisis spreads as Apollo blocks withdrawals
Private credit firms essentially act as banks, but without all the regulations that force actual banks to mitigate risk and make their balance sheets public. When these “shadow banks” issue loans, the terms are known only to the parties involved. In sum: Investors in private credit often don’t know what they’re holding. So when macro forces add to the uncertainty — like higher interest rates, inflation, a war in the Mideast choking energy flows, a collective fear of AI decimating entire sectors of the global economy, for example — people understandably start trying to reduce their risk exposure. And they start trying to get their money back.
How private credit could quickly become a public problem
“Highly levered positions in all kinds of corners of the market blow up as volatility increases,” Robin Brooks, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote on Substack last weekend. “It looks to me like we’re nearing a breaking point on this front.” One sector is looking particularly vulnerable: America’s $3tn (£2.3tn) private credit market. “Shadow banking”, as it is often called, was already in trouble. It was grappling with soaring defaults and a flood of withdrawal requests from investors, motivated by fears about artificial intelligence.
Lloyd Blankfein, a former Goldman Sachs boss, has warned of a “fire” risk in the sector. Now soaring oil prices are certain to pile on more pain. More expensive oil will feed through into broad-based inflation, as the price of everything from food to clothing rises. That means higher interest rates and a hammer blow to growth. None of that is good for a sector based on lending money. “An implosion is still not my base case but it’s something that we just have to be a bit concerned about,” says Timothy Rahill, a credit strategist at ING.
Many private credit lenders borrow short-term and invest long-term. When interest rates are low and expected to fall, that works. But if they start to rise, then private credit lenders could find themselves paying more for financing than they are earning in interest.
Oil prices threaten to blow up a $3tn market
Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi movement stands ready to strike the Red Sea again in solidarity with Tehran, one Houthi leader told Reuters, a move that would deepen a global oil and economic crisis brought on by the Middle East war. If the Houthis open a new front in the conflict, one obvious target would be the Bab al-Mandab Strait off the coast of Yemen, a key shipping chokepoint and narrow passageway that controls sea traffic towards the Suez Canal after Iran effectively shut the critical strait of Hormuz.
The prime minister of Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim, said Iran has allowed Malaysian tankers to pass through the strait of Hormuz after talks with Iranian, Turkish and other regional leaders.
He was admired far beyond West Yorkshire, though: in a world that increasingly seemed to care for little other than revenue generation, Bielsa was a manger who understood football’s importance beyond the pitch. In his first week at the club, he had players pick up litter for an hour to try to instil an understanding of what fans in low-paid jobs were sacrificing every time they bought a ticket for a match. He had a clear sense of the role football plays in society and the responsibility footballers and managers therefore have.
Yet his apparent leaning toward military force before dangling diplomacy also reflects a grim reality: The omens for a peace deal are poor. Aaron David Miller, a former US Middle East peace negotiator, said that “the Iranians are going to demand a price that Donald Trump is not prepared to pay, and that leaves him with the reality of having to mount a major operation, not just to open the straits — but to keep them open.”
Analysis: Trump is baffled that Iran won’t end the war he started
After almost four weeks of war, the US is facing shortages of critical offensive and defensive weapons, inventory analysis shows. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, on Wednesday threatened Mr Trump would “unleash hell” if
Why Trump only has a month left to end the war
The war in the Gulf has hit the epicentre of global fertiliser production. It has shut off the supply of urea, ammonia and sulphur for 27 critical days in the agricultural calendar.
China, Russia and Turkey have now greatly compounded the shortage by imposing their own curbs on fertiliser exports in recent days. Close to 45pc of globally traded nitrogen is cut off, disrupted or at risk.
The crunch is happening just as the big farming belts of the northern hemisphere near the spring planting season and just as Australia approaches winter planting. It is the blackest of black swans… “It will be bad enough even if the Strait of Hormuz is reopened tomorrow but if the war goes on for another month or more, it is going to be a really horrifying crisis unlike anything any of us have ever seen before,” See the whole article below
The longer Donald Trump’s war drags on, the worse the coming global food crisis
Still worse from the US perspective, Iran has set up a waterside stall whereby prime ministers and tanker owners can bargain with the Iranian navy over the toll they are willing to pay for their tankers to be given “free passage”. Iran plans to turn the strait into a money spinner, just as Egypt charges for access to the Suez canal. By some calculations, given the massive scale of the traffic that passes through the strait each year, Iran could raise $80bn a year. If a law currently being rushed through the Iranian parliament passes, tankers carrying oil from favoured non-hostile nations such as India, Japan, Pakistan, South Korea and China will be waved through or offered cheaper rates.
A war of regression: how Trump bombed the US into a worse position with Iran
Mairav Zonszein, a senior analyst on Israel at the International Crisis Group, says: “It is becoming painfully clear that not only the United States and Israel are losing this war, but that this is one of the biggest strategic failures of the west, with the most significant consequences for regional geopolitics and the global economy since world war two.” She said the US was nowhere near meeting its original strategic goals and had only created new problems.
A war of regression: how Trump bombed the US into a worse position with Iran
The United States can only determine with certainty that it has destroyed about a third of Iran's vast missile arsenal as the U.S. and Israeli war on the country nears its one-month mark, according to five people familiar with the U.S. intelligence. The status of around another third is less clear but bombings likely damaged, destroyed or buried those missiles in underground tunnels and bunkers, four of the sources said. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitive nature of the information.
Below a detailed account of the dramatic effects on world food production from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz
