Nvidia’s Eye-Popping Profit, and Where Those Scam Calls are Coming From

0:02From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Thursday, November 20th. Here's what we're covering.

0:13The chip giant NVIDIA, which has become the symbol of the AI boom, announced its quarterly earnings yesterday and eclipsed Wall Street's expectations. It said its profits hit almost$32 billion, up 65 % from a year earlier and over 200 % from the year before that. NVIDIA's near-total lock on the market for chips used in AI projects has helped it smash records, including becoming the first publicly traded company to ever be worth$5 trillion, a milestone it hit a few weeks ago. There are questions, though, about if this trajectory can last, and for how long. Essentially, is AI a bubble? What happens if all the money pouring into AI infrastructure, like data centers and chip purchases, doesn't pay off with the revolutionary results companies are promising.

1:04Big names like Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Sam Altman of OpenAI, and Jamie Dimon of J.P. Morgan have all said they think the frenzy could be approaching a correction. And there are fears that if those big tech companies stumble or even take a plunge, they could take the economy with them, given how much is riding on them. NVIDIA, for example, by one estimate, now makes up nearly 10 % of the value of the entire S &P 500.

1:34Meanwhile, NVIDIA's success has become a prime example of another reality of the current stock market. How divided it is. Tech stocks with NVIDIA in the lead have been heading up, while several companies that rely on consumer spending have slumped. Target said yesterday that holiday sales would be slower this year, and that factors like the government shutdown and the pause in food stamps had weighed on its business. And today, the Labor Department's going to release jobs data for September. The numbers were delayed by the shutdown. And it'll give the latest snapshot of a labor market under stress.

2:09Already, employers are signaling they're not going all-in on seasonal hiring for the holidays. The grocery store chain Kroger, for example, said it will bring on fewer temporary workers. One economic research firm estimates that seasonal hiring could slip to the lowest level in a decade.

2:34Now, three updates out of Washington. In federal court yesterday, there was a hearing about the Justice Department's prosecution of James Comey, the former FBI director who has a long history of clashing with President Trump. My colleague Alan Foyer was at the courthouse. He said it was an extraordinary spectacle and excruciatingly awkward. In theory, the hearing was to sort of figure out whether or not the prosecution of Comey was an act of vindictive retribution by President Trump. But it kind of went off the rails when the judge really put the prosecutors handling it through the ringer. Lindsay Halligan, Trump's former personal lawyer, has been leading the case against Comey, who's been charged with lying to Congress.

3:22Trump handpicked her to oversee the case after multiple other prosecutors refused to touch it. Allen says the judge grilled Halligan, who admitted that, unlike how things are normally done, she never actually showed the final version of the indictment to the full grand jury before the foreperson signed off on it. What the hearing on Wednesday really showed was just sort of how slapdash this prosecution has been from its inception, the way that it's been handled by Lindsay Halligan, who this is the first criminal case she has ever taken part in. And it really shows her lack of experience and the way that that has affected how the case has moved forward.

4:03Comey's lawyer is asking for the case to be thrown out altogether. The judge didn't immediately issue a decision yesterday, but appeared to be leaning in that direction. Also, the partnership between our two nations is among the most consequential in the entire world. And together, the crown prince and I. At a U.S.-Saudi investment conference yesterday, President Trump capped off a high-profile visit by the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. During his meetings with Trump, bin Salman said that his kingdom would invest up to$1 trillion in the U.S. But the Times has learned that the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which would be used for that kind of commitment, is actually running low on cash.

4:46According to interviews with more than 10 people briefed on its operations, including board members, that's in large part because the prince has spent vast amounts of the country's oil wealth on failing projects. For example, there's been a coffee shop chain that only has one shop, a cruise line with only one ship, and a string of luxury resorts on the Red Sea that are mostly empty. Behind the scenes, representatives of the fund have begun telling global investors that it's basically unable to allocate any more money for the foreseeable future. A spokesman for the fund defended its status, telling the Times, quote, Our investments will be judged over generations, not quarters.

5:30And late last night, President Trump said that he signed the bill calling for the Justice Department to release the Epstein files. They have 30 days to follow through. In the meantime, there's been growing fallout for one of the most prominent people mentioned in some of the files that have already been made public, Larry Summers. Summers is an economist and the former president of Harvard. Previously, he's expressed regret for his longtime connections to Epstein. But emails between the two men that were released last week showed that they had a close relationship even after Epstein had served jail time for sex crimes with minors.

6:06Among other topics, the two talked about a woman that Summers was romantically interested in, and Epstein described himself as Summers' wingman. Since those emails came out, Summers has resigned from his position on the board of OpenAI, stepped back from his teaching job at Harvard, which is now investigating him, and the Times has said that his contract as a contributing writer for the opinion section will not be renewed.

6:39More than a year ago, a 47-year-old man from New Jersey who worked as a pilot for JetBlue went to a summer barbecue. He ate a hamburger. He went home. He mowed the lawn. He started to not feel well. He threw up. Soon, he was unconscious. Later that night, he died. The autopsy called it a sudden, unexplained death. Now, a team of doctors think they may have an answer. They just published their findings in a medical journal that links his death to a growing health issue, an allergy to red meat that people can develop after a tick bite. It's called alpha-gal syndrome. It can make people violently ill.

7:20Even just the smoke from a cookout could trigger symptoms. The doctors who looked into the pilot's case believe his could be the first death linked to it. Diagnoses of the syndrome have been on the rise. The CDC has estimated that somewhere between 100 ,000 and 450 ,000 people may have developed the allergy since 2010. On Martha's Vineyard, for example, so many cases have popped up. Some restaurant menus now even flag what dishes are AlphaGal safe. Since many people may be unaware that they have the condition, health experts told The Times that people should get tested if they find themselves feeling sick after consuming red meat.

7:58They also urged doctors in areas where tics are common to consider that patients coming in because of vomiting could be an anaphylactic shock, not just facing a stomach bug.

8:16And finally Your phone lighting up with a call from an unknown number Maybe from someone saying you've been hacked Or telling you there's a problem at your bank And all they need is your account number to fix it This kind of thing has just become a daily reality The calls, of course, are scams, and the Times has been looking into a recent crackdown on where many of them originate, in cities and towns in Southeast Asia. There, criminal gangs control compounds that look like condos or offices from the outside, but are actually filled with people working the phones. Chinese gangsters, for example, have smuggled tens of thousands of people into Myanmar to work in these facilities.

9:04Authorities say many of them are held against their will and can face physical abuse. Some are from nearby countries, but others come from as far away as Brazil or Eastern Europe. Now, the U.S. has joined with a number of other countries working to shut down the centers. This year alone, officials from Thailand, Myanmar, and China carried out raids to rescue people from some compounds, and hundreds were flown back to their home countries. American authorities recently seized billions in cryptocurrency from a man they said was helping to run some of the schemes. And the Thai government even tried to fight back against one of the scam hotspots by just cutting off the electricity.

9:43Despite those efforts, one expert in organized crime told The Times all of that will still probably not even make a dent in the scammer's profits. It's basically a game of whack-a-mole. As for what you can do to protect yourself when your phone rings, one fraud expert told The Times, quote, just listen to what they're asking for. If anyone is asking you for prepaid gift cards, Bitcoin via ATM machines, gold bars, cash, Venmo, cash app, or social security numbers or Medicare information, stop.

10:18Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, more on the concerns about an AI bubble. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow with the latest and the Friday News Quiz.