Tech teams crew as much as bid for Pentagon contracts

Right this moment’s agenda: Russian nuclear crops abroad; Syria’s Isis detainee camps; central banks and uncertainty; accidents at Amazon UK; and Man Arms allegations

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Good morning. We start with an unique story on Palantir and Anduril, that are in talks with rivals to kind a consortium that can collectively bid for US authorities work in an effort to disrupt the nation’s oligopoly of “prime” contractors.

Who’s participating? Palantir and Anduril, two of the most important US defence know-how corporations, have approached tech rivals equivalent to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, ChatGPT maker OpenAI, autonomous-ship builder Saronic and synthetic intelligence knowledge group Scale AI to change into a part of the consortium, in response to a number of individuals with information of the matter.

The consortium will convey collectively the heft of a few of Silicon Valley’s most precious corporations and can leverage their merchandise to offer a extra environment friendly approach of supplying the US authorities with cutting-edge defence and weapons capabilities, in response to an individual concerned with the talks.

What’s driving the transfer? Extra tech corporations are searching for to seize an even bigger slice of the US authorities’s large $850bn defence funds from conventional prime contractors equivalent to Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Boeing.

Defence tech start-ups have attracted file quantities of funding this yr, as traders guess they are going to be among the many winners of upper federal spending on nationwide safety from the incoming Trump administration.

Wars in Ukraine and the Center East and geopolitical tensions between the US and China have heightened the federal government’s reliance on tech corporations creating superior AI merchandise that can be utilized for navy functions, and inspired traders to the sector. Learn the total report.

Right here’s what else we’re conserving tabs on right this moment:

• Financial knowledge: The UK and Spain launch third-quarter GDP figures.

• Mozambique: The nation’s prime court docket is about to offer a verdict on the nation’s disputed election in October.

• Albania: Opposition events demanding Prime Minister Edi Rama’s resignation are set to dam roads in protest.

5 extra prime tales

1. Russia is constructing greater than 10 nuclear models overseas because it seems to faucet into rising power demand pushed by synthetic intelligence and creating markets, in response to an envoy of President Vladimir Putin. The plans come as Moscow seeks to spice up its world affect by increasing its nuclear fleet. Listed here are the international locations the place Russia is developing new crops.

2. Syria’s interim authorities is able to take management of Isis detainee camps being run by US-backed Kurdish militants, stated Turkey’s prime diplomat Hakan Fidan, the primary international minister to fulfill Hayat Tahrir al-Sham chief Abu Mohammad al-Jolani. Fidan throughout his go to to Damascus additionally stated he believed US president-elect Donald Trump would again Turkey over Kurdish forces.

3. Eire’s prime central banker has stated rate-setters are dealing with extra uncertainty now than throughout the early phases of the coronavirus pandemic because the agenda and actions of Donald Trump are all however unimaginable to learn. Learn the total interview with Gabriel Makhlouf.

• Fed flip-flops: The US Federal Reserve’s extremely reactive coverage method of latest years has amplified monetary volatility, writes Mohamed El-Erian.

• The Economics Present🎧: European Central Financial institution president Christine Lagarde tells Martin Wolf what Europe must do to shut the hole with the US.

4. Dozens of Amazon employees within the UK have suffered critical accidents over latest years, together with being blinded or requiring amputations, in response to new knowledge that’s resulting in renewed calls on the ecommerce large to enhance the remedy of weak workers. The tech group reported 119 critical accidents from work-related accidents between 2019 and 2024.

• UK employment: Extra youthful individuals are neither working nor searching for a job, opting out of the labour market utterly.

5. Unique: Deloitte desires to slash spending on workers journey and bills within the UK by greater than 50 per cent because it seeks to keep up accomplice earnings below what it known as “difficult market situations”. The price slicing is an indication of the UK consulting sector’s continued struggles as a chronic slowdown in mergers and acquisitions exercise hits demand for advisory work.

The Large Learn

Within the Italian metropolis of Trieste, a community-based method to psychological sickness has professional­duced startling res­ults at a comparatively low value. The mannequin contrasts starkly with others that make a lot better use of psychiatric institutionalisation. The ultimate instalment of the FT’s sequence on psychological well being takes a take a look at the decades-long debate concerning the finest approach to look after individuals liv­ing with psychological unwell­ness.

We’re additionally studying . . . 

• FT Investigation: Terra Firma founder Man Arms has been accused of raging at workers and making sexually inappropriate feedback.

• Luxurious scale-back: A softening out there is a harbinger of issues to return in equities and the actual economic system, writes Rana Foroohar.

• Disinformation storm: Corporations want new playbooks for coping with on-line falsehoods as AI intensifies the dangers, writes Anjli Raval.

Chart of the day

On the degree of rhetoric, the UK’s Labour authorities is emphasising the precedence of financial progress. It’s proper to take action. However it wants to know that progress will depend on the confidence of enterprise in that progress, writes Martin Wolf.

Take a break from the information

As the primary public steam railway celebrates its bicentenary subsequent yr, writer Simon Bradley has put collectively an pleasing and extremely readable survey of 200 years of British prepare historical past.