Morning Briefing

President Trump concluded a summit with President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Friday, with both leaders calling the talks a "milestone" for bilateral relations. China committed to purchasing 200 Boeing jets, but no major breakthroughs were reached on trade, the Iran conflict, or Taiwan despite agreements to keep the Strait of Hormuz open.

An Ebola outbreak in Ituri province, northeastern DRC has resulted in approximately 246 suspected cases and at least 65 deaths, with one imported case confirmed in Kampala, Uganda. Early testing indicates the strain is the uncommon Bundibugyo ebolavirus — meaning existing licensed Ebola vaccines, designed only for the Zaire strain, will not be effective for ring vaccination.

U.S. and Nigerian forces killed Abu Bakr al-Mainuki, a senior Islamic State West African Province (ISWAP) leader, in a joint operation in the Lake Chad Basin on May 15. While Trump described al-Mainuki as IS's global second-in-command, analysts noted he was deputy to the ISWAP leader and that his killing marks the highest-ranking ISWAP figure ever neutralized by security forces.

Harvey Weinstein's third Manhattan sex crimes trial ended in a mistrial on Friday after jurors deadlocked on whether he raped Jessica Mann in a 2013 hotel room. Weinstein, 74, remains incarcerated on a 16-year California rape sentence and faces additional New York charges, while the deadlocked charge stems from a retrial after his 2020 conviction was overturned on appeal.

Mitchell Hashimoto (creator of Vagrant and Terraform) argues that many companies are experiencing "AI psychosis" — a state where organizations become detached from operational and market realities by outsourcing decision-making to AI and pursuing AI hype over fundamentals. The HN discussion elaborates that the problem isn't using AI tools productively, but rather blindly trusting AI outputs for strategic thinking without applying human judgment.

Google Project Zero researchers ported their Pixel 9 0-click exploit chain to the Pixel 10, replacing the missing BigWave driver with a newly found VPU driver vulnerability that allowed userspace to map and modify arbitrary physical memory — including the entire kernel image — via an unbounded remap_pfn_range call, enabling kernel code execution with just 5 lines of code.

OpenAI is reportedly exploring legal options against Apple, alleging that Apple intentionally designed a poor ChatGPT integration into Siri that damaged OpenAI's brand and limited adoption, after OpenAI entered the deal expecting billions in subscription revenue. The strained partnership also complicates Elon Musk's ongoing antitrust lawsuit alleging collusion between the two companies.

A federal judge has delayed final approval of Anthropic's $1.5 billion copyright settlement after authors objected that lawyers' requested $320 million in fees is excessive — yielding individual authors only about $3,000 each — and a group of 25 class members has opted out to file a separate lawsuit.

The preprint server arXiv announced a new enforcement policy where authors who submit manuscripts containing AI-generated hallucinations, fake citations, or other inappropriate AI-produced content will face a one-year submission ban and a permanent requirement that future preprints first pass formal peer review before being accepted.

Indian venture capital firms now dominate startup investing within India, with only one American firm (Accel) ranking among the top 10 investors, while domestic funds move faster and possess deeper market instincts. At the 2026 SelectUSA Summit, Indian companies announced a record $20.5 billion in U.S. investments across technology, AI infrastructure, pharmaceuticals, and advanced manufacturing.

Residents of Vilseck, Germany (population 6,500), fear devastating economic and social consequences from reports that President Trump plans to withdraw the U.S. Army's 2nd Cavalry Regiment — roughly 5,000 soldiers plus 12,000 family members. The town's newly elected mayor estimates the loss of more than $800 million in annual revenue and thousands of jobs, while locals describe deep personal bonds forged over decades of American presence.

Russia has joined the US and China in deploying inspector satellites in geosynchronous orbit (GEO), with its Kosmos 2589 spacecraft arriving in April and immediately being shadowed by a US GSSAP satellite that came within 8 miles, intensifying the Cold War-style "cat-and-mouse" maneuvering between the three space powers.

Frontier AI models — from GPT-4 through Claude Opus 4.5 to GPT-5.5 — have progressively broken competitive open CTFs by agent-solving most challenges, turning the scoreboard into a pay-to-win AI orchestration race rather than a measure of human security skill. Organizers are struggling to design challenges that resist AI without also degrading the experience for human players.

Scott Alexander argues that the truism "all exponentials eventually become sigmoids" is a lazy dismissal of AI risk extrapolations, showing through historical examples that forecasters repeatedly and wrongly predict imminent flattening. In the absence of a concrete alternative model, he suggests the Lindy effect provides a better default: the AI scaling trend should continue roughly as long as it has already persisted.

California's "Protect Our Games Act," which would require game publishers to provide end-of-life plans to keep online games playable, has advanced through several Assembly committees. Supporters argue consumers deserve continued access to purchased games, while the industry's ESA contends games are licensed, not owned, and that indefinite playability is impractical.

Subnautica 2 launched into Early Access on March 14 and sold 1 million copies within its first hour, passing 2 million within 12 hours, while peaking at 467,582 concurrent players on Steam — roughly 9× the original Subnautica's lifetime record. The survival-crafting sequel is available on PC (Steam, Epic) and Xbox Series X/S, including Game Pass.

Lego 2K Drive, the open-world kart racer released in 2023, will be delisted from all digital storefronts on May 19, 2026, with its multiplayer servers following on May 31, 2027 — likely due to expiring licensing agreements.

Stellaris's Nomads expansion, launching June 15th alongside the free 4.4 "Pegasus" update, will introduce fully mobile civilizations with playable origins including Heirs of the Khan, Sacred Path, and Forever Cruise. Game Director Stephen Muray warned the change — which required decoupling colonies from planets — "is gonna break your mods."

The Weinstein mistrial received broad centrist coverage (57% of sources), with left-leaning outlets focusing on the implications for #MeToo accountability and right-leaning outlets giving comparatively less coverage. The third deadlock raises questions about whether prosecutors will pursue a fourth trial.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Virginia Democrats' emergency request to restore a voter-approved redistricting amendment that could have netted Democrats up to four additional House seats. Left-leaning sources framed it as a procedural loss for fair maps, while right-leaning outlets emphasized the Democratic legislature's improper ballot process.