Good morning, you're tuned in to Markets Desk.
Manufacturers are pouring capital into artificial intelligence, but the productivity gains aren't materializing on the balance sheet. Wharton research and a fresh Forbes analysis point to the same culprit — not the technology itself, but sloppy procurement discipline and a failure to integrate AI into core operational workflows before writing the check.
That theme of integration runs deeper than any single sector. Wharton vice dean Eric Bradlow, one of the sharper academic voices on applied AI, argues that businesses broadly still lack the organizational architecture to deploy AI in any coherent, enterprise-wide way. The tools are consequential, he says — the most of his lifetime — but the strategic thinking hasn't caught up.
Shifting to defense and technology, NATO officials are sounding a pointed warning about drone stockpiling strategies. Ukraine's battlefield has demonstrated that drone technology becomes obsolete faster than traditional hardware procurement cycles can accommodate. Officials are cautioning alliance members that buying millions of units and warehousing them solves nothing if the threat environment has already moved on by the time conflict arrives.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
