Economics
Meta is tracking employee keystrokes and mouse movements to train AI agents — in the same period it is preparing to eliminate those employees' jobs. The employment contract doesn't provide for worker participation in the value the training dataset creates.
Economics
Mark Zuckerberg announced on April 23 that Meta would cut approximately 8,000 employees — about 10% of its global workforce — and close around 6,000 open roles, for a total headcount reduction of roughly 14,000 positions beginning May 20. The company's 2026 capital expenditure guidance, issued in
The Signal
Iran's parliamentary speaker says the Strait will not return to its pre-war status. The AI infrastructure capex models assumed the energy shock was a temporary variable. They were wrong about the variable.
The Signal
NY State Comptroller DiNapoli has written to 100 portfolio companies demanding AI workforce transparency disclosures. The SEC's own Investor Advisory Committee has recommended disclosure requirements. The information gap between what companies know and what they tell investors is structural and docu
The Signal
The IMF April 2026 WEO is the first primary document from a major multilateral institution framing the current moment as recession risk. The AI buildout was modeled on growth. That model is now being evaluated against a recession baseline.
The Signal
The US seized an Iranian cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz Sunday. The ceasefire expires Wednesday. Iran says talks may not happen. This is the update that changes the probability distribution on energy markets and AI capital economics.
The Signal
Ireland's government survived a no-confidence vote over fuel prices by 14 votes. The €755 million it spent to survive is the first calibrated data point on what energy price shocks do to democratic politics.
Economics
The financial model underlying the AI infrastructure buildout assumed a particular capital environment: patient institutional money flowing from Gulf sovereign wealth funds, low real interest rates, and a federal government borrowing modestly relative to GDP. In the spring of 2026, all three assumptions are under simultaneous pressure. This piece is
Economics
The AI labor market conversation has a frame problem. It has been organized almost entirely around a single question: which jobs will be destroyed? The question is not wrong. But it is incomplete in a way that matters enormously for the 70 million Americans who do not hold a four-year
The Signal
Hormuz commercial transit is reopening. The US naval blockade of Iranian ports is fully implemented. These are not the same instrument. The energy shock has more layers than the ceasefire resolved.
The Signal
The Economist's parenthetical is doing a lot of work. The composition of the cuts — which roles, which levels, what's being rehired — is not consistent with a cyclical correction thesis.
The Signal
Markets were pricing tariff risk as bounded. The Iran war has challenged that assumption. For the AI buildout, the expiry of the Trump put changes the calculus on every tariff-exposed cost line.