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Financial Times

Financial Times

Newspaper | United Kingdom | Centre
www.ft.com/

International daily newspaper with emphasis on business, economic and financial news and analysis.

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Discussions from Financial Times

Geopolitics

What impact could the meetings between U.S. envoys and Russian leaders have on peace efforts in Ukraine?

A Russian government-operated news outlet reported that President Donald Trump’s special envoys will hold a meeting at the Kremlin before their planned arrival in Ukraine this weekend. Tass claimed in a Friday article that special envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff “expect to arrive in Moscow and then Kyiv on September 5-6,” citing an unnamed […]

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Geopolitics

What are the potential benefits and challenges of the U.S. working with Venezuelan oil leaders?

U.S. officials are defending their work with Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt in the unprecedented White House move to effectively gain control over huge oilfields in the country. Why it matters: Betancourt is the colorful and controversial figure who heads North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), the oil company partnering with the administration in the agreement that gives the U.S. preferential access to output from 17 major fields. The Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital is taking a 35% equity stake in the company.The U.S. also has the rights to buy 20% of the oil at cost after the company pays its taxes to Venezuela. Driving the news: At a briefing with reporters Tuesday, a U.S. official talked up Betancourt as a "proven operator" in the country's oil sector that has been vetted by the administration. The official also bluntly acknowledged the realpolitik in the effort to boost output in the country, which has vast reserves but modest oil production after years of mismanagement and underinvestment. "There's a reality here, okay, and that is that not just here, but in other parts of the world, you have to deal with the dynamics sometimes that are in place in order to get to where you want to get to," the official said. "I'm being blunt: we make choices like this all over the world.""Geopolitics is often not the choice between the ideal and the imperfect. It is often, you're trying to navigate what's the best outcome, and you have to work with the factors that you have in place."In prior conversations with Axios, two other senior administration officials acknowledged the troubles Betancourt has faced, but said they were worth the risk. Catch up quick: Betancourt, 46, is the linchpin to Trump's plan to increase U.S. access to oil and strengthen its dominance in the hemisphere, which became clear after the Jan. 3 removal of Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro. His ties to the first Trump administration, anti-Maduro activity in 2019 and his help in

United States
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Technology

What are the possible benefits and risks of AI becoming more advanced, like with GPT-6 Astra?

OpenAI on Thursday released GPT-6 Astra, which president Greg Brockman called a "generational leap" and said could eventually be seen as the arrival of artificial general intelligence, or AGI. Why it matters: Astra pushes AI agents closer to doing complex professional work on their own — while also raising questions about how safely they can be deployed. Driving the news: Brockman says he personally believes OpenAI has reached AGI, while leaving users to decide whether Astra meets that definition. "I think it might be about this model," Brockman said in a briefing with reporters about whether Astra could mark the arrival of AGI.He ended the briefing by saying: "Welcome to the AGI era." Between the lines: OpenAI said that Astra was built on its largest-ever training run, using more than 100,000 GPUs at its Stargate site in Texas. The company also said this is its first model to use other models in a significant role in supervising Astra's training.GPT-6 Astra will first be available to a limited set of organizations in OpenAI's Daybreak Access program and will be available "in the coming days" for ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise customers and API developers. Catch-up quick: OpenAI said earlier this week that Astra would be released soon, but that its most powerful cybersecurity capabilities would remain limited to a small group of trusted testers. Astra is the first model OpenAI has designated as reaching its "critical" cybersecurity threshold under its preparedness framework — meaning it can potentially find and exploit previously unknown vulnerabilities across well-protected systems without step-by-step human guidance.OpenAI previously slowed Astra's release to add safety testing after determining that its cyber capabilities could reach the critical threshold. Zoom in: Astra is designed to work directly inside software, rather than just recommending what a person should do next. In a video demonstration, Astra formatted a legal contract and built a 3D ga

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Politics

What should be done to improve leadership stability at the Pentagon during times of conflict?

The Pentagon has entered a period of profound institutional turmoil, as a crisis of leadership at home converges with a crisis of capacity abroad. Why it matters: Six months into the Iran war, Pete Hegseth presides over a Pentagon with fewer senior leaders, fewer critical weapons and less public accountability than at any point in President Trump's two terms. Zoom in: The most striking departure yet came Monday from Army Secretary Dan Driscoll — Vice President Vance's close friend and Yale Law classmate, once viewed as a potential successor to Hegseth himself. Driscoll, a rising star whom Trump had tapped for sensitive diplomacy in Ukraine, resigned after months of clashes with Hegseth over the Army's leadership and modernization.His exit, following Hegseth's firing of Army chief Gen. Randy George, leaves the service without Senate-confirmed civilian or uniformed leadership in the midst of the Iran war. Zoom out: Hegseth has fired or forced out senior officers across nearly every service, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Navy's top admiral and the Army chief of staff. The Washington Post counts more than two dozen top officers dismissed under Hegseth, who has remade nearly the entire Joint Chiefs. Only the Marine Corps and Space Force chiefs he inherited are still serving.The New York Times reports that Hegseth has also personally removed at least 45 officers from promotion lists this year — an extraordinary intervention in a system traditionally insulated from political leadership.NBC News reported Tuesday that Hegseth has blocked more promotions in recent weeks, including more than a dozen Black, Hispanic or female officers across the services. State of play: The cumulative effect is a thinner senior command at the precise moment the Iran war is testing the limits of what the U.S. military can sustain. The Post reports that the commanders overseeing Europe, the Pacific and Latin America — along with the Navy's top officer — formally objected to exte

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