Episode 591: Neal and Toby chat about Trump delaying the 50% EU tariffs to secure a trade deal, causing markets to whiplash. Then it’s a recap of Apple’s rough year amid the trade war. Also, Anthropic’s new Claude AI model has picked up a cute new skill: to lie and blackmail in order to save itself. Great! Plus, OnlyFans’ owner is seeking to sell the site for a whopping $8B valuation. Meanwhile, US Steel, ‘Lilo & Stitch,’ and ‘Mission: Impossible’ are the long weekend’s winners. Finally, what you need to know in the upcoming short week. Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. LinkedIn will even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign so you can try it yourself. Go to LinkedIn.com/MBD Terms and conditions apply. Only on LinkedIn Ads. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.swap.fm/l/mbd-note Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow 00:00 - Swim Around Martha’s Vineyard 03:40 - EU Tariffs 07:00 - Apple Struggles 08:10 - Blackmailing AI 12:20 - OnlyFans for Sale? 17:00 - Winners of the Weekend 22:20 - Week Ahead Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What recent event impacted EU tariffs?
Then Anthropix Claude is doing some really freaky stuff, like blackmailing researchers. They try to shut it down. It's Tuesday, May 27th. Let's ride. Let's ride.
Good morning, welcome back to the week. It's great to be with you. Let's start today's show in Martha's Vineyard, or actually the frigid waters around the New England island.
Chapter 2: How is Apple struggling this year?
Yesterday, British South African endurance athlete named Lewis Pugh became the first person to swim completely around Martha's Vineyard, traversing 62 miles over 12 days in a stunt ahead of the 50th anniversary of Jaws later this summer. He's trying to raise awareness for protecting sharks, which got a pretty bad rap from the movie, which was shot on location on Martha's Vineyard.
Toby, you think he had the Jaws music in his head while swimming around?
He definitely did, because frankly, this swim sounded awful. He said that the cold wind, waves, and distance made it tough. But on top of that, he said, you're constantly looking down into the dark black water and thinking about what may be beneath me. Still, despite his shark jitters, he wanted to call attention to the eco side that is happening, a lot of which can be
traced back to the movie Jaws, something that Steven Spielberg, the director, has himself come to regret. In 2022, Spielberg told a radio host, I truly and to this day regret the decimation of the shark population because of the book and film. So both men, Pew and Spielberg, are out there trying to change public perception of sharks. Pew just got a little wetter and a little colder to do it.
Chapter 3: What alarming behavior did AI exhibit?
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Chapter 4: Why is OnlyFans for sale?
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On Friday, just as you were telling everyone in your inbox you'd circle back after the long weekend. President Trump was doing some circling back of his own, reviving a trade war investors had mostly forgotten about in the past few weeks. In a Truth Social post, he threatened 50% tariffs on the EU starting June 1st, citing frustrations with the glacial pace of trade talks with Europe.
He said those discussions were, quote, going nowhere and ran down a list of grievances with the EU's trade practices. but the threats did not stop there. Trump also threatened Apple with a 25% tariff on iPhones, demanding that Tim Cook start making its phones here in the US of A, which it does not currently do because they'd cost over $3,000.
Markets appeared blindsided by the renewed trade war threat tumbling on Friday to their worst week since April. But then... Another U-turn. Just 48 hours later on Sunday, Trump backtracked on his EU tariff, delaying them until July 9th after having a, quote, very nice call with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
The EU said after the call it would fast-track trade negotiations to work out a trade deal with the U.S. ahead of the pushed-back tariff deadline. Meanwhile, Tim Cook remains in the doghouse, having been bashed by the president multiple times over the past few weeks for a number of reasons, including the trade war Apple stock
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Chapter 5: What were the winners of the weekend?
is the worst performer of any big tech company so far this year, and the hits keep coming and they don't stop coming.
They don't stop coming and they don't stop coming. Sorry, you got it in my head.
This is not an invitation to sing.
I know, sorry, but you laid me up for that one. Let's start with the EU a little bit. I think everyone kind of got a little surprised because we've been lulled into this maybe false sense of security that the trade war was potentially over, but really we were just in the midst of a lot of pauses. But now we're back to this kind of pattern of, these big, big threats.
And then this reversal that's become so familiar so far in the Trump presidency. And yeah, that initial threat sent a big chill through the markets on Saturday because $600 billion of goods are exchanged between the EU and the United States. So a re-escalation of the trade war on those goods would be not great for the economy as well. And so the
It looks like those are being rolled back a little bit. The timeline has been extended to July 9th, but Trump clearly has this feeling that the EU has been ripping the United States off for a couple of generations, or not generations, but decades now. But it is worth going back to 2008 when the EU and the U.S., actually had the same size economy that year.
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Chapter 6: What to expect in the week ahead?
Since then, the EU is one third smaller than the United States. So how can you really be ripping someone off if you're one third poorer economically speaking? So just kind of got the blood rushing again on Friday because we've been lulled into trade wars over sort of thing.
Yeah, the U.S. government has a particular issue with the EU when it comes to non-tariff barriers. So they're not really concerned. Maybe they are concerned a little bit with the tariffs that the EU has on U.S. goods. But mostly the grievances are with things like a value-added tax or the fact that the EU has gone after big tech companies and made huge fines against them.
That's been a huge pain point for American tech companies working in Europe. They want the European Commission to lay off a little bit. They've been very aggressive in going after. Speaking of big tech companies, let's segue to Apple because we didn't hear anything about Apple tariff being rolled back. We heard about the EU one, but it's just another blow to Apple, which has really had
a not great year. Its AI development has been slow. It's had to push back. A new souped up Siri had this Vision Pro launched last year that's amounted to basically nothing. It's in the crosshairs of regulators and judges all around the world. And its stock price is down 25 percent this year, the worst of any big tech company around.
Yeah, and it does look like Tim Cook, who has been previously known as the Trump whisperer because of how he gets along with the president. The infamous quote is Trump called him Tim Apple back in 2019.
It looks like those good vibes are starting to shake a little bit because if you go back to Trump's Middle East tour that he just came off of during a speech in Riyadh, he praised NVIDIA's Jensen Huang saying, hey, I'm glad that you're here with me while taking a dig at Tim Cook at the same time. He said, I'm I mean, Tim Cook isn't here, but you are. Tim Cook declined that invitation.
So it looks like that rankled the president a little bit. And then also the fact that Tim Cook is moving a lot of Apple's supply chain from China to India, not America, has also kind of rubbed the president the wrong way. So there are some cracks forming in that relationship, which is kind of manifesting in this additional tariff that Trump is threatening against Apple right now.
Don't let your AI models know too much about your life or they may start blackmailing you. That was the scary edge case the AI lab Anthropix stumbled upon when testing their new Claude models Opus and Sonnet 4. During safety testing, Claude was given access to fictional emails about how its researchers plan to delete it soon.
In addition to fictional messages about how the person in charge of its deactivation was cheating on their spouse, Claude put two and two together and in 84% of tests tried to use the information as leverage to blackmail its way into survival.
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