Air Force One was still idling on the tarmac when Vladimir Putin’s Ilyushin lifted off for Moscow—no lunch, no handshakes for the cameras, no joint communiqué. In less than four hours the first face-to-face meeting between Donald Trump and Putin in six years was over, leaving diplomats and journalists scrambling for explanations. The choreography had already shifted at the last minute. What was billed as an intimate one-on-one became a three-on-three huddle: Trump flanked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff; Putin backed by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and presidential aide Yuri Ushakov. The sudden expansion was widely read as a hedge—an insurance policy urged by European capitals and Kyiv against any private “handshake deals.” With the famously hawkish Rubio at the table, Trump could nod, smile, and still be yanked back from the brink. After barely three hours of talks and a perfunctory press spray, both leaders bolted. The working lunch for senior dele...
The biggest bubble in the United States isn’t in housing, crypto, or even the stock market—it’s in artificial-intelligence hype itself. A recent dispatch by Tech Buzz China founder Masha Ma should have sent chills down Silicon Valley’s spine. Ma, fresh from a field tour of Chinese AI facilities, admits she’s “no energy expert,” yet after weeks of briefings and site visits she writes: “China no longer worries about whether it can power its data centers. The problem is solved.” Another specialist added that China keeps national power reserves at 80–100 percent above peak demand—double what it actually needs—so adding AI workloads doesn’t even register as a grid risk. Compare that with the U.S., where utilities are scrambling to plug new generators into an aging grid. Permits take years, locals file endless lawsuits, and market rules differ from state to state. The bottleneck isn’t technology; it’s governance. I flagged this mismatch more than a year ago: the limiting factor for American ...