Semafor Flagship: The World Today.

"Israel allows Gaza aid, Trump-Putin call on Ukraine, China warns US on chips."

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KHAN YOUNIS  TAIPEI CITY  SINGAPORE MAY 20, 2025 READ ON THE WEB Flagship Sign up for our free email briefings→   The World Today Israel allows Gaza aid Trump-Putin call on Ukraine China warns US on chips ASEAN economic worries India data centers boom Ukraine uses ground drones Driverless cars in the UK AI threatens starter jobs... ...and finds drug candidates A media mogul dishes In a new podcast, a novelist unearths disturbing secrets about his ancestors’ departure from Nazi Germany. ↓ 1 Israel allows ‘minimal’ Gaza aid Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu allowed “minimal” aid to enter Gaza Monday, saying that he had to prevent mass starvation for “practical and diplomatic reasons.” Netanyahu said Israel will take full control of Gaza, while acknowledging that the move to let aid through was motivated by mounting international pressure from allies. The UK, France, and Canada threatened sanctions and demanded Israel stop its “egregious” military actions, while US President Donald Trump’s administration has launched a “behind-the-scenes” pressure campaign, The Washington Post reported: “Trump’s people are letting Israel know, ‘We will abandon you if you do not end this war,’” a source said. ↓ 2 Trump-Putin call yields no breakthrough Anatolii Stepanov/Reuters US President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin failed to reach a breakthrough on a Ukraine ceasefire during a two-hour phone call Monday. Trump struck an optimistic note, saying Kyiv and Moscow will “immediately” begin negotiations, while Putin’s more guarded comments signaled he hadn’t softened his maximalist demands. European leaders were reportedly “stunned” after Trump briefed them on the call: He indicated an unwillingness to exert more pressure on Moscow, and suggested that Washington could step back as a mediator in the conflict. “Putin has devised a way to offer Trump an interim, tangible outcome from Washington’s peace efforts without making any real concessions,” a leading Russia expert said. ↓ 3 China says chip curbs hurt trade talks Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters Chinese officials warned Monday that Washington’s recent move to tighten export controls on Huawei chips could undermine US trade talks with Beijing. The US Commerce Department said last week that firms anywhere using the Chinese AI chips could face criminal investigations — Beijing said the measure threatened global semiconductor supply chains. The shifting geography of chip manufacturing is likely to be a focus for tech executives gathered in Taipei this week for Computex, Asia’s biggest tech event. Washington’s targeting of Huawei could offer Taiwan more opportunities to strike deals with American chipmakers, an analyst told Bloomberg: At the conference Monday, Nvidia announced plans to build an AI supercomputer on the island and deepen its partnerships with Taiwan-based chip firms Foxconn and TSMC. ↓ 4 ASEAN faces economic slowdown Southeast Asia is facing an economic slowdown, with five of the region’s six largest economies facing slower year-on-year growth in the first quarter of 2025. Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand have all downgraded their expected growth for the year, and US President Donald Trump’s tariffs are expected to cause further headwinds, Nikkei reported. The region faces the threat of some of Trump’s highest tariffs, and countries are already promising to buy more US goods and lower trade barriers. ASEAN nations also fear they will be left with higher duties than China after trade talks with the US, given Beijing’s leverage over Washington: That could diminish their appeal as manufacturing alternatives to China, an expert said.  ↓ SEMAFOR EXCLUSIVE 5 Gulf investors for India data centers Stephen Nellis/Reuters A Singapore firm is courting Gulf investors for an up to $250 million fund to build data centers in India as the country emerges as an artificial intelligence powerhouse. CapitaLand Investment is looking to deepen its investments in AI infrastructure in the world’s most populous country, Semafor’s Kelsey Warner reported, as tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are seeking to expand their cloud footprint there. Indian conglomerates have also been betting big on the country’s potential as a regional data center hub: The domestic industry is estimated to be worth $10 billion, clocking $1.2 billion in revenues last year. But experts warned that the data center boom could challenge already strained state-owned power grids. Sign up for Semafor Gulf, the stories, ideas, and people shaping the Arabian Peninsula and the world. → ↓ 6 Ukraine deploys fiber-optic ground drones Marko Djurica/Reuters Ukrainian soldiers are using autonomous ground vehicles to deliver supplies to frontline troops. Russia’s war with Ukraine has seen widespread use of drones on both sides, but the so-called “ground drones” appear to be new, allowing resupply with minimal risk to soldiers’ lives. Electronic jamming to stop aerial drones working is widespread, and the ground machines use fiber-optic cables instead, which, while limited in range and easily tangled, cannot be jammed. Drones now account for an estimated 60 to 70% of casualties in Ukraine: Their use is “a systemic rupture in the conduct of modern warfare,” comparable to the arrival of musketry in the 16th century, War on the Rocks argued. ↓ 7 Uber eyes UK self-driving expansion David Swanson/Reuters Uber said it is ready to roll out self-driving cars in the UK, but the government does not expect to approve the tech until 2027. Uber already runs robotaxis in the US and UAE, and is working with several companies, including UK-based startup Wayve, to expand elsewhere soon. Britons are nervous about self-driving cars — 37% said they would feel “very unsafe,” according to one poll — but an Uber executive told the BBC that consumers’ initial squeamishness tends to be short-lived. That seems to be true: A research firm found last year that people who had never used an autonomous car before rated their confidence in the tech at 20%, whereas those who had rated it at 76%. ↓ 8 AI threatens entry-level jobs Artificial intelligence is eroding entry-level jobs that typically serve as “the bottom rung of the career ladder” in high-skilled professions like law and tech, a top LinkedIn executive argued. College grads face higher levels of unemployment than other workers, and a LinkedIn survey suggests most executives believe AI will replace at least some of the jobs done by early-career hires. Entry-level roles need to be reimagined entirely, Aneesh Raman wrote in The New York Times, to teach “adaptability, not repetition.” Employees are increasingly incentivized to use AI at work secretly, and businesses should be encouraging the open use of the tech to improve productivity, a Financial Times columnist argued. ↓ 9 AI finds antibody drug candidates Nabla Bio A pharmaceutical company said it had discovered dozens of potential antibody drug candidates using artificial intelligence. Our bodies naturally make antibodies to find and attack pathogens, cancer cells, or other unwanted interlopers, and antibody drugs can effectively mimic and boost that capability. But these medicines are hard to make: It can take years of research to identify candidate proteins. Nabla Bio said it used generative AI to produce tens of thousands of possible proteins, and then narrowed them down to a promising few in a matter of months. These newly identified antibodies “promise to work as well as drugs that have spent years in the traditional pipeline,” Science reported. ↓ 10 Media mogul’s juicy new memoir Simon and Schuster American media legend Barry Diller’s memoir Who Knew is a “propulsive” read about the “alpha monsters” of entertainment, his friend and journalist Tina Brown wrote in a review. Diller dishes on “all the conniving and politics” behind his ascent to become one of Hollywood’s most influential figures as the former head of Paramount and founder of IAC and Fox Broadcasting Studio. Diller, who at 83 remains “brilliant at curating his own relevance,” stands in stark contrast to the “spectrum-y tech bros” like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos who dominate media today, Brown argued: “They could not be more different from Barry, a voraciously curious, world-traveling sophisticate, who looks born to wear a suit, but whose inner life is just the opposite.” ↓ Flagging May 20: China is expected to make an interest rate announcement. Battery maker CATL debuts on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The Chelsea Flower Show begins in the UK. ↓ Curio BBC Radio 4 A new podcast follows one novelist’s quest to uncover the truth behind his German-Jewish ancestors’ departure from Nazi Germany, and reveals disturbing secrets he unearths in the process. BBC Radio 4’s Half-Life finds the Welsh writer Joe Dunthorne trekking from Germany — where his grandfather, Siegfried, was employed in a secret chemical weapons laboratory — to Turkey, where thousands of Kurds were murdered at Dersim in 1937, possibly by means of a gas created under Siegfried’s supervision. Featuring “darkly atmospheric” sound design and Dunthorne’s “clear ear for melodrama,” Half-Life gets at “the subjective nature of truth,” the Financial Times wrote, and “how the stories passed down through family generations are not always to be trusted.” ↓ Semafor Spotlight Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons Democrats appear to be headed to another presidential primary dogpile in 2028, whether they want it or not, reported Semafor’s Burgess Everett and David Weigel. “How many presidential candidates can you fit in one caucus room? I don’t know,” Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., told Semafor, adding that it was too early to say whether he would join the fray. Though a 2028 run is on the minds of possibly dozens of Democratic senators and governors, at this stage only a few will admit it — and there is, for now, no clear frontrunner. Sign up for Semafor Principals, what the White House is reading. → You’re receiving this email because you signed up for briefings from Semafor. Manage your preferences or unsubscribe here. Read our privacy policy. Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up now to get Semafor in your inbox. Semafor, Inc. 228 Park Ave S, PMB 59081, New York, NY, 10003-1502, USA

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