Silicon Valley’s Big Bets on War Pay Off, and the Trump Family Business Looks to Transylvania

0:00This podcast is supported by Helen Keller International. This is a moment of growing urgency. Families around the world are facing widening gaps in healthcare and nutrition, but solutions are within reach. Just 75 cents can provide treatment for neglected tropical diseases, and$2 can help protect a child's sight and health. For a limited time, donations are being matched, helping expand that impact. Learn more at HelenKellerINTL.org slash the headlines.

0:32From The New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today is Friday, March 20th. Here's what we're covering.

0:42Please. Mr. President, do you intend to potentially put U.S. troops or more troops in the region? No, I'm not putting troops anywhere. If I were, I certainly wouldn't tell you. The war with Iran is nearly at the three-week mark. And in a quick roundup of what to know, President Trump is not ruling out putting U.S. troops on the ground. He said he doesn't currently have plans for that, but he also said this week that he's, quote, not afraid to deploy forces in Iran if needed. Then, on the energy crisis front... In the coming days, we may unsanction the Iranian oil that's on the water. It's about 140 million barrels.

1:22Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the administration plans to remove sanctions on oil from Iran. That would reverse years of U.S. policy. It reflects the White House's desperation to bring down prices and effectively encourages Iran to sell more oil, even while it's at war with the U.S. And at the Pentagon. It takes money to kill bad guys. So we're going back to Congress and our folks there to ensure that we're properly funded for what's been done, for what we may have to do in the future. The Defense Department is asking for$200 billion to continue funding the war, a significant sum adding to the costs of an already divisive campaign.

2:03Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth acknowledged in a press conference that the number could change. Right now, it amounts to nearly a quarter of the entire annual defense budget, and it's already raising some eyebrows from moderate Republicans in Congress who will need to back the request to get it through. Meanwhile. As the war in Iran continues, there's one group that's watching what's happening out there with interest. There are a number of Silicon Valley companies that made really early bets on defense technology. And now with this growing conflict across the region, they're seeing those bets really pay off.

2:37My colleague Sher Frankel covers the tech industry, where some of the biggest names have become some of the Pentagon's biggest new partners. It used to be that talking about defense and defense technology was really unpopular in Silicon Valley. You had employees at Google who protested against their company working with the Department of Defense. they held up their motto of do no evil as an example of why their company should not be getting into the business of war. Those optics really changed a couple years ago when you had everyone from these really sort of mammoth companies like Google and Meta and OpenAI to very small startups suddenly pivot into defense technology.

3:16Some of these companies were suddenly striking deals for hundreds of millions to billions of dollars to build everything from weapons systems to software for the U.S. government. You had Palantir, for instance, a data analytics company, which has now built a system called Project Maven, which helps the U.S. government pick targets for airstrikes. You had companies like Google and OpenAI using their AI technology to help generals in the field. And you had projects like the one led by the former chief executive of Google, Eric Schmidt, which are now building counter-drone systems that are being used in Iran by U.S.

3:51assets defending against Iranian drones. And there's even more money to be made on the table. Trump allocated over a trillion dollars in defense spending, and a lot of that is expected to go to the kinds of new defense technology that Silicon Valley wants to make.

4:14In Romania, a new investigation from the Times has uncovered details about a real estate deal President Trump's family business is pursuing that has yet to be announced. Unlike other projects the Trump Organization is working on in places like Bali and the Maldives, this one's in Transylvania, not a well-known glamorous tourist destination. The site is semi-abandoned, and it is alongside a military base as well as several enormous landfills that are among the region's largest. You could smell the stench. There were packs of wild dogs wandering. It felt like an unusual place to envision a luxury apartment complex and golf course.

5:01Rebecca Ruiz, an investigative reporter at The Times, recently traveled to the site. She's been looking into the Trump brand's growing list of foreign developments. It's not exactly clear why the Trump Organization has chosen this particular place to build a project, but President Trump is popular in Romania. A Gallup poll last year found that more than half the country felt favorably about the job that he's doing in the United States, making Romania a bit of an outlier among EU countries. And this is a continuation of a pattern that we've seen in his second term, which is that the Trump organization, the president's family real estate business, is traveling the globe seeking to strike deals in places that he is popular.

5:49You can find the full investigation and see photos from the planned site at nytimes.com.

5:58Over the past few years, in the middle-class suburbs of cities like Houston, Chicago, Las Vegas, a bunch of businesses where you can donate plasma for cash have been popping up. Plasma centers have traditionally been clustered in low-income neighborhoods, but they're increasingly opening up next to an Orange Theory Fitness or a Charles Schwab. The Times recently went to a few of the new spots in Texas where people who said they never thought they'd be selling their plasma were waiting in long lines. A tech worker in his 30s, a sixth grade special ed teacher, a night shift nurse. Most of them said they'd go to the clinic twice a week, the maximum allowed under FDA regulations.

6:36It reflects how cash-strapped many middle-income Americans are feeling. The$70 they can get selling plasma can help with groceries and gas. One researcher who studies the industry and has been a consultant for it told The Times that plasma centers act as a kind of, quote, shadow safety net, a way to earn money on the side, just like driving for Uber or Lyft. Overall, the U.S. actually provides around 70 % of the world's plasma, which gets used in products that treat conditions like bleeding disorders and liver disease. The practice really established itself in the U.S., turning into a multibillion-dollar industry because it's one of only about a dozen countries that allows payment for plasma, something the World Health Organization has discouraged.

7:21While donating plasma is considered safe, there's been little research on the long-term effects of frequent plasma donations.

7:32And finally, a buzzy new horror novel was supposed to come out this spring, Shy Girl. It's a revenge story about a woman held hostage by a man she meets on the internet. The UK edition has been out for months, but yesterday the publisher, Hachette, announced the whole thing's been dropped over claims it was written with the help of AI. This appears to be the first commercial novel from a major publishing house to be pulled over evidence of AI use. Many early readers had posted about their suspicions online, pointing to nonsensical metaphors and repetitive bits. The Times talked to a publishing industry consultant who ran the book through three different AI detection programs, and all three found text likely to be at least partly generated by AI.

8:20Certain odd phrases like, I pressed the phone to my lips, the screen cool and unyielding. The author has denied using AI herself, saying that someone she hired to help her edit the story did it. The situation has underscored how unprepared the book world is to deal with the rise of this technology. Most publishing contracts require authors to affirm their work is original, but few companies have measures or safeguards in place to make sure it actually is. As one publishing consultant told The Times, AI bleeding into books is, quote,

9:00Those are the headlines. If you'd like to play the Friday News Quiz, it is just after these credits. The show is made by Will Jarvis, Margaret Kadifa, Jan Stewart, and me, Tracy Mumford. Original theme by Dan Powell. Special thanks to Isabella Anderson, Larissa Anderson, Jenny Gross, Miles McKinley, Zoe Murphy, Paula Schumann, and Chris Wood.

9:21Now, time for the quiz. Every week, we ask you a few questions about stories The Times has been covering. Can you get them all? First up. As the U.S. and Israel continue to pummel Iran, Iran has continued to hit back at American allies in the region. To help fend off those attacks, several hundred military specialists have flown to the Middle East because they have specific experience defending against Iranian-made weapons, even though their country is not nearby. Your question, what country are the experts coming from?

10:04The answer? What is happening around Iran today is not a faraway war for us. Ukraine. Because of the cooperation between Russia and Iran. Its president, Vladimir Zelensky, said this week that almost a dozen countries in the Middle East have asked for help from Ukrainians who've built up years of experience fighting off drones from Russia. Many of those drones were actually made by Russia's close ally, Iran.

10:35Next up. So you noticed the smell, but you had no idea what it was. Every day, and today it's even worse. This week, The Times has been covering how an ambitious advertising campaign in one of London's busiest transit hubs isn't going all that well. A major food brand started spritzing out a sweet aroma every few seconds in a tube station as a promotion for one of its treats. I hate it. I thought it was a smell of stale urine. Your question, what smell were they going for? Hint, it was not stale urine.

11:14The answer? Chocolate. The company Magnum, famous for its ice cream bars, is trying to promote some new milk chocolate treat. And some people did think it smelled good, but the ad got so many complaints. Magnum came out and said it was toning down the chocolatey waft. This isn't the first time a scented ad campaign has run into backlash. A dairy lobbying group in California once tried to get people to buy more milk by making bus shelters in San Francisco smell like chocolate chip cookies. That got scrapped the next day.

11:53And last question. People have been noticing that in recent months, several members of the Trump administration have been photographed wearing something that doesn't seem to be fitting quite right. It happened to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and Vice President J.D. Vance. What are they wearing that's maybe a size too big?

12:17The answer? Sneakers are wonderful, but I don't want my cabinet members wearing sneakers. so I'll get him a pair of shoes. It's a gift from Donald Trump. It's their shoes. A representative for the footwear company Florsheim told The Times that a White House assistant has ordered dozens of pairs of the company's$145 black dress shoes. Now they look all spiffy and nice. But the Wall Street Journal has reported that Trump sometimes just guesses people's sizes, which seems to have left some room for error.

12:53That's it for the news quiz. If you want to tell us how you did, our email is theheadlines at nytimes.com. I'm Tracy Mumford. The show will be back on Monday.

13:06This podcast is supported by Helen Keller International. This is a moment of growing urgency. Families around the world are facing widening gaps in health care and nutrition, but solutions are within reach. Just 75 cents can provide treatment for neglected tropical diseases, and$2 can help protect a child's sight and health. For a limited time, donations are being matched, helping expand that impact. Learn more at helenkellerintl.org slash the headlines.