SoftBank wants Gulf money to expand AI bet

0:00This episode is brought to you by Hard Lessons, a Morgan Stanley podcast. Iconic investors like Stan Druckenmiller, John Gray, and Rick Reeder break down calls that worked. I knew that this stock would go up for at least two or three years and go up a lot. Ones that didn't. I quite frankly thought the company could have reversed course. They didn't. And what they learned in between. When you buy everything and it goes up, it doesn't train you to be a great investor. It's these hard lessons that make all the difference. Listen to Hard Lessons wherever you get your podcasts.

0:32Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Friday, October 9th, and this is your FT News Briefing. SoftBank is looking to the Gulf for new AI funds, and there was another security incident at a Royal Air Force facility. Plus, we'll take a look at the online life of the fly-to-buy attacker. I'm Mark Filippino, and here's the news you need to start your day.

1:00Thank you.

1:30that would buy companies, then it would use AI to revamp their operations. SoftBank declined to comment. Extra cash would help Sun. It keeps getting tougher to add debt to SoftBank's balance sheet. He's also been affected by OpenAI's delayed IPO. SoftBank has placed a$65 billion bet on the chat GPT maker.

1:55There's been another security incident at a Royal Air Force facility. This one also had links to the U.S. Air Force. Two Latvian men allegedly trespassed at a base near Cambridge. The police arrested them yesterday. Essentially, what happened was that on Wednesday night, they discovered an abandoned car. There had been a breach of the fence. That's the FT's Robert Wright. Two o 'clock in the morning Thursday in the UK, they found these men. They've arrested them. They've not been charged. They could be innocent. They are searching a couple of properties in Peterborough, which isn't terribly far from there.

2:34That's really all we know at this point. This is the second security incident at a Royal Air Force facility in the last two weeks. Seven men were arrested over a suspected terrorist plot near RAF Fairford late last month. Obviously, it's worrying that there have been two incidents. The previous one at RAF Fairford, they didn't get through the fence. They were stalked in a village outside the Air Force base. Well, we do know that there was a considerable tightening up of security following an incident in June last year. There was a breach of security at a facility called RAF Prize Norton where protesters got in and painted some of the aircraft.

3:14So they're insisting that there is good security at these places. But Robert says there are still challenges around securing these kinds of places. These are typically extremely large facilities, so it's really very difficult to make sure that absolutely nobody can ever get through the fence. I don't think they can do terribly much to stop what appear to be unrelated incidents in a relatively short period of time. There is a lot of activity going on over here. There are a lot of cases related to Iran. There are cases related to Russia. There's undoubtedly quite a lot of foreign activity going on.

3:53You can't stop absolutely all of it. And we have absolutely no idea why these two Latvian men were found within the airbase. That's the FT's Robert Wright.

4:09U.S. President Donald Trump is pulling his punches on Iran. He said yesterday that Washington would not strike the Islamic Republic before next month's midterm elections. Trump's war on Iran is deeply unpopular with American voters. It created an energy crisis and caused inflation to shoot up. It's made it harder for voters to afford everyday items. Trump's announcement to pause strikes happened as Iran is stepping up its attacks on ships trying to cross the Strait of Hormuz, which led oil prices to surge on Thursday to their highest level this month. The high fuel prices have been hitting most parts of the economy hard, but we got a taste of what it's doing to the airline industry yesterday.

4:49UK-based EasyJet announced that it was doubling the amounts of cuts to its winter flights. They want to scale back capacity in those quieter months to reduce how much it's spending on fuel.

5:05We've got more details on the Fly Dubai co-pilot who tried to hijack a flight to Tel Aviv. Hamam al-Hamami's online presence shows he's a former cryptocurrency speculator and called women things like, quote, rotten meat on social media. The FT's Chloe Cornish combed through his online posts from 2021 to 2022. She joins me now. Hi, Chloe. Hi, Mark. So I understand that there was a lot of material that you went through, 3 ,000 posts on, you know, back then Twitter. What stood out to you? What really stood out to me was Hamami's views on women. He did espouse some really misogynist views, And they tended to fuse kind of very conservative, social mores with the more modern language of the online manosphere.

5:55There is this kind of toxic internet ideology that denigrates women and has very sexist views. So that really stood out. He would call women old hags or shrewish, disrespectful. And he talked a lot about having tried to invest in cryptocurrency in the stock market. He said he had lost a whole bunch of money not doing this very well and blamed temptation by the devil for having led him astray. Do we have any clues about how and when he might have been radicalized? We really don't know this yet. The posts that we saw were nearly all from 2022. And of course, there was four years that elapsed after that and his attack and attempted hijacking.

6:44So we really don't know from this cache of tweets what radicalized him. It has been reported that his former employer, Oman Eyre, flagged that he had radical views and relegated him to a desk job, took him out of the cockpit. So we understand that that happened. And I understand from people familiar with the first part of the investigation that Hamami did access extremist content when he was studying in Australia, which was a few years before all of these tweets that we analyzed and reviewed. And we should say that Oman Air did not respond to a request for comment on his employment there. So Chloe, what do we know about the investigation into the attempted hijacking?

7:30So the Emirati authorities are leading this investigation and they have said that they believe it was an attempted terrorist attack and that the co-pilot used an emergency axe that's kept in the cockpit to attack the pilot and was trying to take control of the plane. We understand from people familiar with the investigation that Israeli investigators are at this point convinced that Hamami was a lone wolf, that he was not part of a network. But that isn't what the UAE has said yet. And we await further details on that. Yeah, I guess what are you looking for as the investigation unfolds? What is most important, I think, to find out is how this systemic failure was allowed to happen.

8:18How was a pilot who had a known history of radical thinking allowed to get back into the cockpit? How did he slip through Fly Dubai's vetting, also Israel's vetting, because they have a lot of say as to who comes and goes into the country. and then it would be interesting to know how and when he was radicalized, if he was radicalized. And finally, although Israeli investigators are convinced that he is a lone wolf, not everybody is. And so any further details about whether he ascribed to the views of a terrorist organization like al-Qaeda or if he had been recruited into a terrorist organization, those will be key things to learn from the investigation.

9:02But we may not get those details right. It's definitely harder and harder to get leaks. That's the FT's Chloe Cornish. Thanks so much, Chloe. Thanks.

9:17Two crypto companies linked to U.S. President Donald Trump are locked in a$141 million legal battle. DWF has sued the U.S. company BitGo for breach of contract for selling digital tokens before they were supposed to. The dispute puts a spotlight on controversial private sales of tokens. I'm joined now by the FT's Niku Asghari to talk more about this. Hi, Niku. Hi. So what exactly does the lawsuit allege? The lawsuit alleges that DWF and its sister company agreed a contract with BitGo where they would sell two tokens to BitGo for a discount under the conditions that BitGo can't sell these tokens on until three months has passed and some other time has passed.

9:59Now, they're alleging that BitGo actually sold these tokens ahead of schedule without telling them and breaching the contract. They're alleging that this breach of contract and the sale of the tokens before they had agreed to caused a sudden and unexpected reduction in the price of the tokens. Now, Niku, you reached out to BitGo and DWF. What did they have to say about the lawsuit? So BitGo declined to comment on the lawsuit. DWF said that they raised this issue with BitGo in April and May, and with no undertaking forthcoming, found it necessary to take court action. They said they remain hopeful of and open to a resolution.

10:34So I mentioned that both of these companies have links to U.S. President Trump, though I should clarify that this lawsuit has nothing to do with the president or his family. What are these links and why do they matter? So you might remember a company called World Liberty Financial, which was set up by Donald Trump's sons and his associates. This company has a token called World Liberty Financial Token, and DWF bought$25 million worth of this token very publicly, making it one of the biggest public known holders of the token, essentially saying, I support this company, I support this token. Now, the founder of DWF is a man called Andrei Grashev, who previously worked in Moscow.

11:16He was the head of the Russian business of another crypto exchange, and he also worked at the Russian Association of Crypto Industry and Blockchain. Some Democrats have raised this as a concern given his links and his purchase of the World Liberty Financial token. They said that DWF's management previously managed Russian firms accused of enabling Russian banks to bypass sanctions. Now, DWF says that they maintain a normal business relationship with World Liberty Financial, and that accusation is unfounded. So that's DWF. What about BitGo? So BitGo also has close ties to this World Liberty financial company because it issues and it custodies another token that World Liberty creates.

11:58BitGo's chief executive also personally donated$50 ,000 in Bitcoin to Trump and Vance's 2024 presidential campaign. Why does this story matter to people who maybe aren't super immersed in the crypto world? I think it's pretty interesting because these private, they're called over-the-counter token sales, are pretty common in the crypto industry between founders and other investors as a way to raise interest and raise money without immediately selling the tokens and dumping them on the market. They're private deals. They rarely come into the spotlight. And so this lawsuit sheds light on what happens when these agreements go wrong.

12:38Yeah. Nico Azgari is the FT's digital markets correspondent. Thanks, Nico. Thank you.

13:28The new episode of The Next Five is all about CFOs in an AI world. Patrick Villanova at Blackline joins me. CFOs are inherently risk averse. We have to be very prudent when we implement AI. As does Olya Brasi at Highgate. My rule is no human owner means no go live. And Gina Gutsight at FTI Consulting. There's no excuse. You're the CFO. You're signing the name to the financial statements. Listen to The Next Five wherever you get your podcasts. Enjoy. Capital raising is being redefined in real time, from macro disruptions and shifting investor expectations to AI-driven demand and the rise of private credit.

14:07When headlines can tilt markets overnight, how can companies stay on course? Strategic Alternatives, the RBC Capital Markets podcast, explores how corporates and investors are navigating new pathways to raise capital, create value, and drive growth. When conditions change, alternatives matter. Listen to Strategic Alternatives, available wherever you get your podcasts.