Bloomberg Businessweek

In 2017, a small crew gathered in a windowless Pentagon room to put AI at the heart of how America makes war. Led by Drew Cukor, an unyielding Marine Corps colonel driven by the deaths of US troops and the prospect of war with an AI-equipped China, the Project Maven team raced to send AI into combat, igniting controversy and forever changing the US military. Summoning the mayhem of a tech startup, the Maven team wrestled Pentagon bureaucrats and each other. They enlisted an initially reluctant Silicon Valley, supercharged the growth of Palantir, and sent algorithms made by Amazon, Microsoft, and others into hot wars. Maven fielded technology to identify targets at speed and scale, developed AI-infused command systems, and learned where AI fails.

Katrina Manson, Bloomberg News Reporter covering technology and national security, talks about her book Project Maven: A Marine Colonel, His Team, and the Dawn of AI Warfare.

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If you want to build a diversified portfolio, you need to assemble assets that respond to different return drivers. Digital assets can play a central role. For starters, cryptocurrencies like bitcoin behave differently than traditional equities or commodities, giving portfolios exposure to unique sources of risk and return. And within the crypto universe, you can find coins, protocols, and equities that all behave differently under different market conditions. By investing in a wide range of digital assets you can potentially both mitigate risk and improve returns. 

This episode is sponsored by Coinbase.

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This is a special presentation of Businessweek Convenes, a series dedicated to bringing together prominent leaders for frank discussions on vital, often sensitive subjects. In this episode, we delve into a crucial topic: the state of Black leadership in corporate America amid the rollbacks to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives across the country. Bloomberg's Romaine Bostick leads this discussion with prominent business and finance veterans Ursula Burns, Nicole Reboe, Jacob Walthour, Jr., Lisa Wardell, and Chris Williams.

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Featuring some of our favorite conversations of the week from our daily radio show "Bloomberg Businessweek Daily."
Hosted by Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec

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The people, companies and trends shaping the global economy.
Watch Carol and Tim LIVE every day on YouTube: http://bit.ly/3vTiACF.

The Trump administration is signaling to allies that it has no immediate plans for a ground invasion of Iran, even as it deploys thousands of troops to the Middle East, people familiar with the matter said. The people, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations, cautioned that President Donald Trump could change his mind at any moment or go ahead with an attack. They said the troops could serve a variety of roles, including to help with evacuations of American citizens but also to create a sense of strategic ambiguity about US intentions.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday the US can achieve its objectives in Iran without the use of ground troops but their presence gives Trump options.

“The president has to be prepared for multiple contingencies, which I’m not going to discuss in the media,” Rubio told reporters. “We can achieve all of our objectives without ground troops. But we are always going to be prepared to give the president maximum optionality and maximum opportunity to adjust to contingencies should they emerge.”

A White House official, who requested anonymity to describe internal thinking, said it’s the Pentagon’s job to develop plans to give the president optionality, and noted that Trump has previously said he has no plans to send ground troops anywhere at this time. The official said Iran will be hit harder than ever before if they fail to make a deal.

Today's show features:

• Iain Marlow, Bloomberg News National Security Editor
• Spencer Faragasso, Senior Fellow with the Institute for Science and International Security on Iran's stocks of highly enriched uranium
• Dimitra Kessenides, Bloomberg Businessweek Senior Editor and Professor Angel Saz, Director of EsadeGeo – Centre for Global Economy and Geopolitics, a leading B-school in Spain
• Drive to the Close with Mark Luschini, Chief Investment Strategist, President and Chief Investment Officer, Janney Capital Management

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As U.S. companies reassess exposure to tariffs and trade volatility and pull back on international expansion, Bermuda remains a steady destination for U.S. private wealth and business investment. Bermuda’s leading industry clusters are 90%+ dominated by professional services sectors including risk and insurance, digital finance, and private wealth management.

David Parker, Bermuda Business Development Agency (BDA) Head of Business Development, discusses how the jurisdiction has become a competitive region in the global financial and tech markets -- often cited as a “regulatory sandbox” for innovation, modernization and clear neutrality.

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The people, companies and trends shaping the global economy.

Watch Carol and Tim LIVE every day on YouTube: http://bit.ly/3vTiACF.

US President Donald Trump sent conflicting signals on the prospect that talks with Iran would bring a halt to the nearly month-long war, further roiling global energy markets.“I say they’re lousy fighters, but they’re great negotiators, and they are begging to work out a deal,” Trump said Thursday during a Cabinet meeting at the White House.

“I don’t know if we’ll be able to do that. I don’t know if we’re willing to do that,” he said, and separately threatened to intensify military action if talks failed.

Asked whether his five-day deadline for a deal would be extended, the US president was blunt: “I don’t know yet.”Trump said special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, as well as Vice President JD Vance “will tell me whether or not they think it’s going along.” He added “we have a lot of time” before the deadline, issued Monday morning in Washington, expires.

“It’s a day. In Trump time, a day, you know what it is? That’s an eternity,” he added.
Oil prices surged, with optimism fading of a quick resolution to the conflict. Brent crude climbed 6% to more than $108 a barrel, while stocks and bonds fell worldwide.

Today's show features:

• Michelle Jamrisko, Bloomberg News White House and National Security Editor on latest from US war with Iran
• Len Tannenbaum, Founder of Tannenbaum Capital Group (TCG), on private credit and real estate credit markets
• Amy Rubenstein, CEO at Clear Investment Group on real estate market
• Axel Merk, President and Chief Investment Officer at Merk Investments on the Gold Market

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The patient-provider relationship is at the heart of healthcare. But that relationship is starting to shift. There's a new presence in the exam room. One that lives on patents' phones, shows up before the visit begins, and too often stays hidden. It's artificial intelligence.

Oliver Kharraz is Founder and CEO of Zocdoc, the healthcare access infrastructure that connects patients to health care. He discusses why patients are turning to AI, why many are not disclosing AI use and the future of care given the support of patient AI use from doctors.

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The people, companies and trends shaping the global economy.

Watch Carol and Tim LIVE every day on YouTube: http://bit.ly/3vTiACF.

The White House insisted that peace talks with Iran are ongoing, even as Tehran publicly rejected US overtures and issued fresh conditions of its own to end the conflict that’s wreaked havoc across the Middle East and global markets.

“The United States has been engaged over the last three days in productive conversations,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Wednesday. “You’re beginning to see the regime look for an exit ramp.”
“If Iran fails to accept the reality of the current moment,” Leavitt added, “Trump will ensure they are hit harder than they have ever been hit before. President Trump does not bluff and he is prepared to unleash hell.”

Her comments ran counter to Iran’s earlier statements through state-run media publicly rejecting Trump’s push for talks. Tehran is also seeking its own guarantees, including that the US and Israel won’t resume their attacks, reparations for war damages and recognition of its authority over the Strait of Hormuz, state-owned Press TV said.

Trump on Monday set a five-day deadline for Iran to negotiate a deal to end the war. Halfway through that period, there are lingering questions over the status of negotiations and the likelihood for a deal.

The US has compiled a 15-point peace proposal that Pakistan delivered to the Islamic Republic, according to people familiar with the matter, highlighting the urgency within Trump’s administration to resolve a conflict it started alongside Israel almost a month ago. Leavitt on Wednesday said there were “elements of truth” to the reported US proposal, but cautioned against speculating on anonymously provided plans.

Vice President JD Vance may travel to Pakistan for Iran talks this weekend, CNN reported. Asked for comment on that report, Leavitt said “this is a fluid situation, and speculation about meetings should not be deemed as final until they are formally announced by the White House.”

Today's show features:

• Michelle Jamrisko, Bloomberg News White House and National Security Editor
• Dan Letter, CEO of Prologis
• Rachel Metz, Bloomberg News AI Reporter on OpenAI Discontinues Support for Sora, Winds Down Disney Deal
• June Grasso, Bloomberg Law host, on Meta, Google Found Liable in Social Media Addiction Case

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When Elon Musk took the stage on Saturday to unveil his plans to get into semiconductor production, he didn’t spare the superlatives. No one has ever proposed anything quite like what Musk calls Terafab. The project, as outlined, would be a massive operation to build cutting-edge semiconductors for artificial intelligence, robotics and space forays. He would not only try to take on the best chip manufacturer in the world — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. — he wants to do it at volumes far beyond the industry’s current capacity. The scale boggles the mind. The project would require something like $5 trillion to $13 trillion in capital spending, according to estimates from Bernstein analysts. That would fund 140 to 360 new factories, each making 50,000 wafers per month in order to reach the 1 terawatt of annual computing capacity he proposed.

Max Chafkin, Bloomberg Businessweek Senior Reporter, discusses how Musk, by far the richest person in the world, has accomplished what others believed impossible before — creating a commercially viable rocket business with SpaceX, bringing electric vehicles to the mainstream with Tesla Inc., and delivering internet connectivity from space with Starlink.

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