Good afternoon and welcome to Markets Desk.
A federal judge has ordered the White House to immediately restore press credentials to CNN, MSNBC, and Politico, overturning a ban President Trump announced earlier this month. District Judge Tim Kelly ruled the outlets must have access restored without delay, marking a significant First Amendment rebuke to the administration.
Across the Pacific, China is sending a pointed message ahead of U.S.-China talks. A surge of new domestic AI chips and models from Beijing's national champions has given President Xi Jinping fresh leverage, signaling that American export controls have not succeeded in cutting China off from frontier technology. The timing is deliberate and the message unmistakable.
And in a story rattling confidence in consumer AI, the founder of viral AI assistant Instinct has acknowledged the product can hallucinate and appear to surface a stranger's personal data. Noah Shinn says the system fabricates a proper noun and then amplifies the error through its own reasoning chain, raising serious questions about privacy guardrails in the race to deploy personal AI agents at scale.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
