In his inaugural address, U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to put the Panama Canal, a key global shipping route, back under the control of the United States, amid fear of growing Chinese encroachment. U.S. senators examined security concerns surrounding the canal Tuesday and looked at next steps. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more.
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Відомство просить громадян України, які перебувають на території ДРК, дотримуватися заходів безпеки
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Штаб повідомляє про 10 відбитих російських штурмів із 11 на Краматорському напрямку та 13 – на Торецькому, де триває один бій
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«Оскільки світ уже небезпечно близький до прірви, рух навіть на одну секунду слід сприймати як ознаку надзвичайної небезпеки»
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TAIPEI, TAIWAN — A little more than a week after Beijing and Manila reached an agreement aimed at easing tensions in the South China Sea, the Philippines has accused Chinese coast guard vessels of fresh incursions, harassment and “aggressive maneuvers.”
Analysts say the pressure campaign, which has stepped up in recent days, is part of Beijing’s attempt to test the United States’ commitment to support the Philippines.
“They want to see how far they can push the Philippines under the new administration in the U.S.,” Ja Ian Chong, a political scientist at the National University of Singapore, told VOA by phone.
In a statement released on social media platform X last Saturday, the Philippine coast guard said two vessels from the Philippine Bureau of Fisheries encountered “aggressive maneuvers” from three Chinese coast guard vessels while heading to Sandy Cay for a marine scientific survey last Friday.
In one video released by Manila, a large Chinese coast guard vessel was seen moving within a few meters of one Philippine vessel. Another video showed a Chinese helicopter hovering above two inflatable boats carrying Philippine crew members.
Philippine coast guard spokesperson Jay Tarriela said the Philippine vessels were forced to suspend the scientific survey due to the “continuous harassment and the disregard for safety” shown by the Chinese coast guard.
In response to Manila’s accusations, Beijing said Chinese coast guard vessels “thwarted” two Philippine vessels’ attempts to “land on” Sandy Cay, which China calls “Tiexian Reef.”
“The vessels attempted to illegally land on the reef and conduct sand sampling. China Coast Guard [CCG] vessels lawfully obstructed the Philippine ships’ course and warned them away,” the Chinese coast guard spokesperson Liu Dejun said in a statement released last Friday.
China views almost all of the South China Sea as its territory and is engaged in a series of disputes with several Southeast Asian countries, including the Philippines, that have overlapping claims over the strategic waterway.
Apart from the incident near Sandy Cay, the Philippine coast guard said its vessels had successfully kept Chinese coast guard vessels from operating in waters near the coastline of the Philippines’ Zambales province since last Friday.
“The Philippine Coast Guard [PCG] vessel has maintained the China Coast Guard vessel to keep a distance of 90-100 nautical miles away from the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone,” said Jay Tarriela from the Philippine coast guard in a post on social media platform X on Sunday.
Then on Monday, the Philippine coast guard said its vessels were hindered by Chinese coast guard vessels while trying to recover the body of a dead Philippine fisherman from a Philippine fishing boat.
The series of incidents comes more than a week after senior Chinese and Philippine diplomats vowed to settle territorial disputes in the South China Sea through dialogues during a bilateral consultation.
Although the agreement has allowed the Philippines to conduct resupply missions to its forces near the disputed Second Thomas Shoal since late last year, some experts say the latest incidents are part of a bigger effort by Beijing to drive a wedge between Manila and Washington.
“Beijing isn’t happy with Manila’s assertive stance in the South China Sea and its close ties with the United States, so [these factors] serve as convenient justifications for Beijing to try to push Manila in the South China Sea,” said Collin Koh, a maritime security expert at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.
Despite the persistent Chinese aggression, Koh said some in Manila think the Philippines can maintain its current approach in the South China Sea since there is bipartisan support for a more assertive position against China in the U.S. and some Trump administration officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, have reiterated Washington’s “ironclad” defense commitment to the Philippines during interactions with their Philippine counterparts last week.
“Manila appears to be more cautiously optimistic that it can maintain the current policy, knowing that there is U.S. backing for that,” he told VOA by phone.
To counter Beijing’s pressure campaign, Don McLain Gill, a lecturer in international studies at De La Salle University in the Philippines, said it’s important for the Philippines and its allies, including the United States, to maintain close collaboration in areas such as joint maritime exercises.
Since China is expected to “continue pressing the Philippines into submission with its grey zone operations, which are now shifting from low intensity to high intensity, this must be addressed with more robust presence operations between the alliance and like-minded partners, along with continued support in the Philippines military modernization in line with the Comprehensive Archipelagic Defence Concept,” he told VOA in a written response.
With the Trump administration’s announcement to suspend new funding for almost all U.S. foreign assistance for 90 days, however, Chong in Singapore said Beijing may think there is a window of opportunity to pressure countries like the Philippines.
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«Направлення на ВЛК можна буде згенерувати за допомогою Єдиного державного реєстру призовників і отримати через застосунок «Резерв+»
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Washington — U.S. President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders on Monday to remove diversity, equity and inclusion, DEI, from the military, reinstate thousands of troops who were kicked out for refusing COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic, and take aim at transgender troops.
Earlier on Monday, Pete Hegseth, who narrowly secured enough votes to become defense secretary, referred to the names of Confederate generals that were once used for two key bases during his remarks to reporters as he entered the Pentagon on his first full day on the job.
Trump signed the executive orders while flying back from Miami to Washington, D.C.
One of the executive orders signed by Trump said that expressing a “gender identity” different from an individual’s sex at birth did not meet military standards.
While the order banned the use of “invented” pronouns in the military, it did not answer basic questions including whether transgender soldiers currently serving in the military would be allowed to stay and, if not, how they would be removed.
Trump’s plans have been heavily criticized by advocacy groups, which say his actions would be illegal.
“President Trump has made clear that a key priority for his administration is driving transgender people back into the closet and out of public life altogether,” Joshua Block, with the ACLU, said earlier on Monday.
During his first term, Trump announced that he would ban transgender troops from serving in the military. He did not fully follow through with that ban his administration froze their recruitment while allowing serving personnel to remain.
Biden overturned the decision when he took office in 2021.
The military has about 1.3 million active-duty personnel, Department of Defense data shows. While transgender rights advocates say there are as many as 15,000 transgender service members, officials say the number is in the low thousands.
When Trump announced his first ban in 2017, he said the military needed to focus on “decisive and overwhelming victory” without being burdened by the “tremendous medical costs and disruption” of having transgender personnel.
Internal focus
Hegseth has promised to bring major changes to the Pentagon, and he has made eliminating DEI from the military a top priority.
Trump’s executive order on ending DEI in the military said service academies would be required to teach “that America and its founding documents remain the most powerful force for good in human history.”
The Air Force said on Sunday that it will resume instruction of trainees using a video about the first Black airmen in the U.S. military, known as the Tuskegee Airmen, which has passed review to ensure compliance with Trump’s ban on DEI initiatives.
Hegseth was warmly greeted on the steps of the Pentagon by the top U.S. military officer, Air Force General Charles Brown, whom Hegseth criticized in his latest book. Asked if he might fire Brown, Hegseth joked that he was standing right next to him.
“I’m standing with him right now. I look forward to working with him,” as he patted Brown on the back.
Reuters has previously reported about the possibility of mass firing among top brass, something Hegseth repeatedly refused to rule out during his confirmation process.
Hegseth referred to Fort Moore and Fort Liberty by their previous names, Fort Benning and Fort Bragg, while speaking with reporters.
The names honoring Confederate officers were changed under former President Joe Biden as part of an effort to reexamine U.S. history and the Confederate legacy.
“I’m thinking about the guys and gals in Guam, Germany, Fort Benning and Fort Bragg,” Hegseth said.
Much of Hegseth’s focus at the Pentagon could be internal to the military, including making good on Trump’s executive order on bringing back troops discharged for refusing COVID vaccines.
Thousands of service members were removed from the military after the Pentagon made the vaccine mandatory in 2021.
US missile defense
Trump also signed an executive order that “mandated a process to develop an ‘American Iron Dome’.”
The short-range Iron Dome air defense system was built by Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems with U.S. backing, and it was built to intercept rockets fired by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza toward Israel.
Each truck-towed unit fires radar-guided missiles to blow up short-range threats such as rockets, mortars and drones in midair.
The system determines whether a rocket is on course to hit a populated area. If not, the rocket is ignored and allowed to land harmlessly.
Any such effort would take years to implement in the United States.
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«Укрзалізниця» з 1 лютого зменшує знижки на міжнародні поїзди до Польщі й Угорщини. При цьому розмір знижки на поїзди до Австрії і Молдови не зміниться»
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WASHINGTON — The Justice Department said Monday that it had fired more than a dozen employees who worked on criminal prosecutions of President Donald Trump, moving rapidly to pursue retribution against lawyers involved in the investigations and signaling an early willingness to take action favorable to the president’s personal interests.
The abrupt termination targeting career prosecutors who worked on special counsel Jack Smith’s team is the latest sign of upheaval inside the Justice Department and is consistent with the administration’s determination to purge the government of workers it perceives as disloyal to the president.
The norm-shattering move, which follows the reassignment of multiple senior career officials across divisions, was made even though rank-and-file prosecutors by tradition remain with the department across presidential administrations and are not punished by virtue of their involvement in sensitive investigations. The firings are effective immediately.
“Today, Acting Attorney General James McHenry terminated the employment of a number of DOJ officials who played a significant role in prosecuting President Trump,” said a statement from a Justice Department official. “In light of their actions, the Acting Attorney General does not trust these officials to assist in faithfully implementing the President’s agenda. This action is consistent with the mission of ending the weaponization of government.”
It was not immediately clear which prosecutors were affected by the order, or how many who worked on the investigations into Trump remained with the department as Trump took office last week. It was also not immediately known how many of the fired prosecutors intended to challenge the terminations by arguing that the department had cast aside civil service protections afforded to federal employees.
The action was the latest effort to turn the table on criminal investigations that for years shadowed Trump, resulting in separate indictments that never went to trial and were ultimately abandoned.
On his first day in office, he issued sweeping pardons and sentence commutations to the more than 1,500 supporters charged in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, a massive clemency grant that benefited even those found guilty of violent attacks on police, as well as leaders of far-right extremist groups convicted of failed plots to keep the Republican in power.
Trump has long sought to exert control over a Justice Department that investigated him both during his first term as well as during the last four years under former Attorney General Merrick Garland. He has repeatedly said he expects loyalty from a law enforcement community trained to put facts, evidence and the law ahead of politics.
He’s moved to put close allies in high-level positions, including replacing his first FBI director, Christopher Wray, with loyalist Kash Patel.
Trump’s pick for attorney general, Pam Bondi, said at her confirmation hearing this month that she would not play politics but did not rule out the potential for investigations into Trump adversaries like Smith.
Smith resigned from the department earlier this month after submitting a two-volume report on the twin investigations into Trump’s efforts to undo the 2020 presidential election and his hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. At least one other key member of the team, Jay Bratt, also retired from the department this month after serving as a lead prosecutor in the classified documents case.
Both the election interference case and the classified documents prosecution were withdrawn by Smith’s team following Trump’s presidential win in November, in keeping with longstanding Justice Department policy.
The firings were first reported by Fox News.
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Chinese researchers backed by a Hangzhou-based hedge fund recently released a new version of a large language model (LLM) called DeepSeek-R1 that rivals the capabilities of the most advanced U.S.-built products but reportedly does so with fewer computing resources and at much lower cost.
High Flyer, the hedge fund that backs DeepSeek, said that the model nearly matches the performance of LLMs built by U.S. firms like OpenAI, Google and Meta, but does so using only about 2,000 older generation computer chips manufactured by U.S.-based industry leader Nvidia while costing only about $6 million worth of computing power to train.
By comparison, Meta’s AI system, Llama, uses about 16,000 chips, and reportedly costs Meta vastly more money to train.
Open-source model
The apparent advance in Chinese AI capabilities comes after years of efforts by the U.S. government to restrict China’s access to advanced semiconductors and the equipment used to manufacture them. Over the past two years, under President Joe Biden, the U.S. put multiple export control measures in place with the specific aim of throttling China’s progress on AI development.
DeepSeek appears to have innovated its way to some of its success, developing new and more efficient algorithms that allow the chips in the system to communicate with each other more effectively, thereby improving performance.
At least some of what DeepSeek R1’s developers did to improve its performance is visible to observers outside the company, because the model is open source, meaning that the algorithms it uses to answer queries are public.
Market reaction
The news about DeepSeek’s capabilities sparked a broad sell-off of technology stocks on U.S. markets on Monday, as investors began to question whether U.S. companies’ well-publicized plans to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in AI data centers and other infrastructure would preserve their dominance in the field. When the markets closed on Monday, the tech-heavy Nasdaq index was down by 3.1%, and Nvidia’s share price had plummeted by nearly 17%.
However, not all AI experts believe the markets’ reaction to the release of DeepSeek R1 is justified, or that the claims about the model’s development should be taken at face value.
Mel Morris, CEO of U.K.-based Corpora.ai, an AI research engine, told VOA that while DeepSeek is an impressive piece of technology, he believes the market reaction has been excessive and that more information is needed to accurately judge the impact DeepSeek will have on the AI market.
“There’s always an overreaction to things, and there is today, so let’s just step back and analyze what we’re seeing here,” Morris said. “Firstly, we have no real understanding of exactly what the cost was or the time scale involved in building this product. We just don’t know. … They claim that it’s significantly cheaper and more efficient, but we have no proof of that.”
Morris said that while DeepSeek’s performance may be comparable to that of OpenAI products, “I’ve not seen anything yet that convinces me that they’ve actually cracked the quantum step in the cost of operating these sorts of models.”
Doubts about origins
Lennart Heim, a data scientist with the RAND Corporation, told VOA that while it is plain that DeepSeek R1 benefits from innovative algorithms that boost its performance, he agreed that the general public actually knows relatively little about how the underlying technology was developed.
Heim said that it is unclear whether the $6 million training cost cited by High Flyer actually covers the whole of the company’s expenditures — including personnel, training data costs and other factors — or is just an estimate of what a final training “run” would have cost in terms of raw computing power. If the latter, Heim said, the figure is comparable to the costs incurred by better U.S. models.
He also questioned the assertion that DeepSeek was developed with only 2,000 chips. In a blog post written over the weekend, he noted that the company is believed to have existing operations with tens of thousands of Nvidia chips that could have been used to do the work necessary to develop a model that is capable of running on just 2,000.
“This extensive compute access was likely crucial for developing their efficiency techniques through trial and error and for serving their models to customers,” he wrote.
He also pointed out that the company’s decision to release version R1 of its LLM last week — on the heels of the inauguration of a new U.S. president — appeared political in nature. He said that it was “clearly intended to rattle the public’s confidence in the United States’ AI leadership during a pivotal moment in U.S. policy.”
Dean W. Ball, a research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, was also cautious about declaring that DeepSeek R1 has somehow upended the AI landscape.
“I think Silicon Valley and Wall Street are overreacting to some extent,” he told VOA. “But at the end of the day, R1 means that the competition between the U.S. and China is likely to remain fierce, and that we need to take it seriously.”
Export control debate
The apparent success of DeepSeek has been used as evidence by some experts to suggest that the export controls put in place under the Biden administration may not have had the intended effects.
“At a minimum, this suggests that U.S. approaches to AI and export controls may not be as effective as proponents claim,” Paul Triolo, a partner with DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group, told VOA.
“The availability of very good but not cutting-edge GPUs — for example, that a company like DeepSeek can optimize for specific training and inference workloads — suggests that the focus of export controls on the most advanced hardware and models may be misplaced,” Triolo said. “That said, it remains unclear how DeepSeek will be able to keep pace with global leaders such as OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Mistral, Meta and others that will continue to have access to the best hardware systems.”
Other experts, however, argued that export controls have simply not been in place long enough to show results.
Sam Bresnick, a research fellow at Georgetown’s University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology told VOA that it would be “very premature” to call the measures a failure.
“The CEO of DeepSeek has gone on record saying the biggest constraint they face is access to high-level compute resources,” Bresnick said. “If [DeepSeek] had as much compute at their fingertips as Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, etc, there would be a significant boost in their performance. So … I don’t think that DeepSeek is the smoking gun that some people are claiming it is [to show that export controls] do not work.”
Bresnick noted that the toughest export controls were imposed in only 2023, meaning that their effects may just be starting to be felt. He said that the real test of their effectiveness will be whether U.S. firms are able to continue to outpace China in coming years.
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NEW YORK — U.S. public health officials have been told to stop working with the World Health Organization, effective immediately.
A U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official, John Nkengasong, sent a memo to senior leaders at the agency on Sunday night telling them that all staff who work with the WHO must immediately stop their collaborations and “await further guidance.”
Experts said the sudden stoppage was a surprise and would set back work on investigating and trying to stop outbreaks of Marburg virus and mpox in Africa, as well as brewing global threats. It also comes as health authorities around the world are monitoring bird flu outbreaks among U.S. livestock.
The Associated Press viewed a copy of Nkengasong’s memo, which said the stop-work policy applied to “all CDC staff engaging with WHO through technical working groups, coordinating centers, advisory boards, cooperative agreements or other means — in person or virtual.” It also says CDC staff are not allowed to visit WHO offices.
President Donald Trump last week issued an executive order to begin the process of withdrawing the U.S. from WHO, but that did not take immediate effect. Leaving WHO requires the approval of Congress and that the U.S. meets its financial obligations for the current fiscal year. The U.S. also must provide a one-year notice.
His administration also told federal health agencies to stop most communications with the public through at least the end of the month.
“Stopping communications and meetings with WHO is a big problem,” said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a University of Southern California public health expert who collaborates with WHO on work against sexually transmitted infections.
“People thought there would be a slow withdrawal. This has really caught everyone with their pants down,” said Klausner, who said he learned of it from someone at CDC.
“Talking to WHO is a two-way street,” he added, noting that the two agencies benefit from each other’s expertise. The collaboration allows the U.S. to learn about new tests, new treatments and emerging outbreaks — information “which can help us protect Americans abroad and at home,” Klausner said.
The CDC details nearly 30 people to WHO and sends many millions of dollars to it through cooperative agreements. The U.S. agency also has some of the world’s leading experts in infectious diseases and public health threats, and the two agencies’ staffers are in daily contact about health dangers and how to stop them.
The collaboration halt isn’t the only global health effect of Trump’s executive orders. Last week, the president froze spending on another critical program, PEPFAR or the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
The anti-HIV program is credited with saving 25 million lives, including those of 5.5 million children, since it was started by Republican President George W. Bush. It was included in a Trump administration freeze on foreign aid spending slated to last at least three months.
PEPFAR provides HIV medication to more than 20 million people “and stopping its funding essentially stops their HIV treatment,” International AIDS Society President Beatriz Grinsztejn said in a statement. “If that happens, people are going to die and HIV will resurge.”
A U.S. health official confirmed that the CDC was stopping its work with WHO. The person was not authorized to talk about the memo and spoke on condition of anonymity.
A WHO spokesperson referred questions about the withdrawal to U.S. officials.
Officials at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services didn’t immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. And CDC officials didn’t respond to the AP’s request to speak with Nkengasong about the memo.
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WASHINGTON — On Jan. 22, Donald Trump — just two days after being inaugurated for his second term as U.S. president — again called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate an end to the “ridiculous” war with Ukraine, but this time he added a threat.
“If we don’t make a ‘deal,’ and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social.
The following day, Trump told reporters that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had told him he’s ready to negotiate an end to the war. In an interview with Fox News aired that same day, Trump said Zelenskyy is “no angel” and “shouldn’t have allowed this war to happen.”
Does the new U.S. administration have sufficient economic leverage over Russia to force it to make peace, or at least talk about peace?
According to Konstantin Sonin, John Dewey distinguished service professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and former vice rector of Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, the U.S. has economic leverage, but some of its levers are clearly weaker than others.
“Russia’s trade with the U.S. is very small — less than $3 billion a year,” he told Danila Galperovich of VOA’s Russian Service. “Accordingly, even if any opportunity for U.S. companies to trade with Russia is completely closed, the damage to Russia will be small. There is an opportunity to strengthen secondary sanctions — that is, additional pressure, first of all, on China, on India, on other countries, so that they more strictly comply with the primary sanctions.
“There is also an opportunity to continue what [former U.S. President Joe] Biden did with sanctions against the Russian shadow tanker fleet,” Sonin added, referring to vessels that Russia uses to sell oil and evade Western sanctions.
“This requires great international cooperation, but, in principle, it can be done,” said Sonin.
Economist Vladislav Inozemtsev, a special adviser to the Russian Media Studies Project at MEMRI, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, and director of the Moscow-based Center for Post-Industrial Studies, also stressed the significance of secondary sanctions on countries that do business with Russia.
“Trump can somehow influence other countries so that they do not buy Russian products,” Inozemtsev told VOA. “For example, let’s say he can say that if India buys Russian oil, then the United States will impose 15% duties on all goods from India. This would have the most radical consequences. [I]f… countries trading with Russia are getting serious problems in the United States for all their products, then I think that this will be a very sobering moment. If it is possible to impose a virtually complete trade blockade through U.S. sanctions, then these will be devastating sanctions, of course.”
Sonin said that, over the longer term, deregulating oil production internationally would reduce world oil prices and thereby hinder Moscow’s ability to finance its military operations against Ukraine.
“Trump is famous for his good relations with Saudi Arabia, although they are unlikely to be so good that they will reduce oil prices at his request,” he said. “But nevertheless, it is possible to work towards lowering oil prices, which even without sanctions will reduce Russian income.”
Trump spoke with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in a Jan. 22 telephone call.
Still, Sonin said that economic levers, in and of themselves, cannot force Putin to do anything. “I would say that the most direct impact is still the supply of more powerful weapons to Ukraine. I do not know to what extent Trump wants to do this, but he mentioned it, and, in principle, it is possible to supply Ukraine with more powerful weapons in larger quantities.”
Inozemtsev, however, said that Putin, who has not previously changed his behavior in response to ultimatums, could do so this time.
“Trump is a person whose degree of radicalism and unpredictability corresponds to Putin’s,” he said. “Here, perhaps, it would be better for Putin to change his mind a bit. If Trump offers him: ‘Vladimir, let’s go, we’ll meet there, sit down at the negotiating table, bring your team, I’ll bring mine, and we’ll agree on something, we’ll discuss it for a day or two, but the issue needs to be resolved,’ I think Putin will go.”
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Israel’s leaders have high expectations for President Donald Trump’s second term, and analysts say Israeli officials hope his unconventional approach to foreign policy will get them the results they want on their top security priorities. But as Linda Gradstein reports from Jerusalem, Trump’s push for a peace deal with Saudi Arabia could cause tensions with the Jewish state. VOA footage by Ricki Rosen.
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New York — Wall Street is tumbling Monday on fears the big U.S. companies that have feasted on the artificial-intelligence frenzy are under threat from a competitor in China that can do similar things for much cheaper.
The S&P 500 was down 1.9% in early trading. Big Tech stocks that have been the market’s biggest stars took the heaviest losses, with Nvidia down 11.5%, and they dragged the Nasdaq composite down 3.2%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which has less of an emphasis on tech, was holding up a bit better with a dip of 160 points, or 0.4%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time.
The shock to financial markets came from China, where a company called DeepSeek said it had developed a large language model that can compete with U.S. giants but at a fraction of the cost. DeepSeek’s app had already hit the top of Apple’s App Store chart by early Monday morning, and analysts said such a feat would be particularly impressive given how the U.S. government has restricted Chinese access to top AI chips.
Skepticism, though, remains about how much DeepSeek’s announcement will ultimately shake the AI supply chain, from the chip makers making semiconductors to the utilities hoping to electrify vast data centers running those chips.
“It remains to be seen if DeepSeek found a way to work around these chip restrictions rules and what chips they ultimately used as there will be many skeptics around this issue given the information is coming from China,” according to Dan Ives, an analyst with Wedbush Securities.
DeepSeek’s disruption nevertheless rocked stock markets worldwide.
In Amsterdam, Dutch chip company ASML slid 8.9%. In Tokyo, Japan’s Softbank Group Corp. lost 8.3% and is nearly back to where it was before spurting on an announcement that it was joining a partnership trumpeted by the White House that would invest up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure.
And on Wall Street, shares of Constellation Energy sank 16.9%. The company has said it would restart the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear power plant to supply power for Microsoft’s data centers.
All the worries sent a gauge of nervousness among investors holding U.S. stocks toward its biggest jump since August. They also sent investors toward bonds, which can be safer investments than any stock. The rush sent the yield of the 10-year Treasury down to 4.53% from 4.62% late Friday.
It’s a sharp turnaround for the AI winners, which had soared in recent years on hopes that all the investment pouring into the industry would lead to a possible remaking of the global economy.
Nvidia’s stock had soared from less than $20 to more than $140 in less than two years before Monday’s drop, for example.
Other Big Tech companies had also joined in the frenzy, and their stock prices had benefited too. It was just on Friday that Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg was saying he expects to invest up to $65 billion this year, while talking up a massive data center it would build in Manhattan.
In stock markets abroad, movements for indexes across Europe and Asia weren’t as forceful as for the big U.S. tech stocks. France’s CAC 40 fell 0.6%, and Germany’s DAX lost 0.8%.
In Asia, stocks edged 0.1% lower in Shanghai after a survey of manufacturers showed export orders in China dropping to a five-month low.
The Federal Reserve holds its latest policy meeting later this week. Traders don’t expect recent weak data to push the Fed to cut its main interest rate. They’re virtually certain the central bank will hold steady, according to data from CME Group.
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Pentagon — New U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth promised more changes are coming to the country’s military before even walking through the doors of the Pentagon.
Hegseth, a decorated veteran and a former Fox News host, was greeted just outside the Pentagon by General Charles Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, after arriving for his first full day of work.
Hegseth said serving as defense secretary was the honor of a lifetime, telling reporters that the Defense Department will operate at a faster tempo.
“The lawful orders of the president of the United States will be executed inside this Defense Department swiftly and without excuse,” Hegseth said. “We’re going to hold people accountable.”
Hegseth won Senate confirmation late Friday by a 51-50 vote, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking ballot.
He was sworn in on Saturday and spoke Sunday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in what the Pentagon described as an “introductory call.”
“We will be no better friend to our allies and no stronger adversary to those who want to test us and try us,” Hegseth told reporters Monday before entering the Pentagon.
He said that President Donald Trump is expected to sign additional executive orders on Monday impacting the military, including orders calling for a U.S. version of Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, the removal of all diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives from the Pentagon, and the reinstatement of troops forced to leave the military after refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccination.
Hegseth also said the Pentagon will make sure Trump has all the resources needed to secure the U.S. southern border.
“Whatever is needed at the border will be provided,” the defense secretary said. “This is a shift. It’s not the way business has been done in the past.”
“The Defense Department will support the defense of the territorial integrity of the United States of America, the southern border, to include reservists, National Guard and active duty in compliance with the Constitution and the laws of our land and the directives of the commander in chief,” he added.
Asked about the fate of Afghans who worked alongside the United States before the U.S. withdrawal in August 2021, Hegseth said, “We’re going to make sure there’s accountability for what happened in Afghanistan and that we stand by our allies.”
Hegseth also deflected questions about whether he plans to fire the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.
“I’m standing with him right now,” Hegseth said. “I look forward to working with him.”
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«Поки ми ще тільки з’яcовуємо, фінансування щодо яких підрядників буде зупинено. Але поки ситуація – не критична»
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Part of a U.S. military aid package to Ukraine in April 2022, the M113 armored personnel carrier has proved vital in conducting assault operations and providing protection for Ukrainian infantry. And many of these vehicles are still up and running nearly three years later. Anna Kosstutschenko has the story. Camera: Pavel Suhodolskiy
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