Pope Compares AI Threat to Tower of Babel

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0:17The U.S. and Iran trade attacks as peace talks bog down. Plus, Decision Day in Texas as Republican Senate runoff tests the power of President Trump's endorsement. And Pope Leo adds his voice to a growing backlash against AI. Artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed. The word is strong, I know, but deliberately chosen because this moment needs words capable of attracting attention, awakening consciences, and indicating paths forward for humanity. It's Tuesday, May 26th. I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. And here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

1:03The U.S. has conducted what are being described as defensive strikes against targets in Iran after tit-for-tat attacks yesterday saw the U.S. sink a pair of mine-laying boats and Iran fire surface-to-air missiles at American warplanes. Despite the flare-up, American officials say the U.S. continues to observe a ceasefire in place since early April, and that talks to end the war are ongoing. Diplomatic progress appears to be slowing, however, as the two sides dug in yesterday over references to Iran's nuclear program and financial relief for Tehran. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio updated reporters today on where talks stand.

1:40With something like this, it's going to take a couple days to settle on even down to the disagreements over a word sentence. So we'll have to work through that. If there's going to be a deal, we're going to have to work through that. But this is, you know, it's either going to be a good deal or there isn't going to be one. The slowdown in talks follows a weekend that began with President Trump and other top officials saying a deal was close. Brent and WTI oil futures are up around 2 % today following yesterday's attacks and uncertainty around peace talks, reversing a prior fall when it looked like the two sides were moving closer to an agreement.

2:17What won Curveball in gauging Iran's willingness to make a deal is how close the country is to running out of room to store oil it can no longer export. In late April, Trump claimed that Iran's clogged oil pipelines could be just three days away from exploding, a prospect key to Washington's pressure campaign. But a month on, Journal Energy Markets reporter Rebecca Fung says that the true situation in Iran remains difficult to pin down. We talked to analysts in our reporting and estimates on Iran's onshore oil capacity storage range widely from 57 % full to 90 % full. And it's actually not very usual that analysts disagree with each other so much.

2:58And then further complicating matters, some of the ship tracking websites are seeing that empty ships are moving into the Gulf, which kind of provides extra storage space for Iran. So I think it's genuinely a mystery right now how much storage space Iran still has. That question itself is quite crucial to the negotiation process and when the war can be over, really. While Iran has been dialing back oil production amid the storage crunch, it's been gradually increasing production at its refineries and by one estimate is now able to export some 200 ,000 barrels a day over land, evading a U.S. naval blockade.

3:39In markets news, we are exclusively reporting that Eli Lilly is expanding a push into infectious disease prevention by acquiring three vaccine developers in deals set to be announced later today. The deals to acquire Curivo, Limitech Biologics, and Vaccine Co. add up to nearly$4 billion and could turn vaccines into a core focus for Lilly alongside obesity and cancer treatments. China's Huawei says it's developed a workaround to allow it to produce advanced chips on par with those made by leading manufacturers by 2031. That's despite the company being barred from accessing specialized machines made by Dutch company ASML used by rivals Intel, TSMC, and Samsung.

4:22Huawei, a central company in Beijing's national push for tech self-sufficiency, says its process for making high-end chips focuses on improving computing efficiency by stacking multiple layers of circuits within a single chip and reducing the time that it takes to move data among them. And Uber has offered to buy Germany's Delivery Hero for almost$12 billion. The potential takeover follows a string of recent stock purchases by Uber, making it the company's largest shareholder in recent weeks, and would continue a pattern of food delivery consolidations after DoorDash agreed to buy Britain's Deliveroo in a roughly$4 billion cash deal last year.

5:01Uber didn't immediately respond to requests for comment, while Delivery Hero has previously said it welcomes Uber's investments. Coming up, we'll preview today's closely watched Texas GOP Senate runoff and look at the latest evolutions in Russia and Ukraine's battlefield strategies. That and more after the break. Sponsored by Wellington Management, one of the world's largest investment managers. You might not know Wellington, but your clients' portfolios probably do. If you're a financial advisor who serves high net worth clients, get to know Wellington. Visit wellington.com slash USA Wealth.

5:40Voters in Texas are heading to the polls today in a closely watched Republican Senate runoff, pitting Trump-backed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and incumbent Senator John Cornyn. The vote is latest test of the power of Trump's endorsement, which Paxton has been playing up on the airwaves. Trump says Paxton is a true MAGA warrior who has always delivered. Paxton will help Trump make America bigger, better, and stronger than ever before. Trump endorsed Texas first Ken Paxton. I'm Ken Paxton. Cornyn, meanwhile, has been playing up headlines calling Paxton a gift to Democrats in what could be a close general election battle in November against state representative James Tallarico.

6:22Here is Cornyn speaking to CBS News Texas. It's not just about me. It's about the future of our state, the future of the Republican Party, the future of President Trump's agenda. and whether we're going to basically throw away a safe Senate seat by nominating someone who could well lose that election. We will be digging into the results of the runoff on tomorrow's pod. Russia over the weekend staged one of its largest attacks on Kiev since launching its war on Ukraine four years ago using hypersonic missiles in strikes that it said were a retaliation for recent Ukrainian drone assaults. Journal correspondent Matthew Luxmore says that with progress stalled on the battlefield, both sides have been stepping up their strikes on cities, infrastructure and military targets, with Ukraine feeling emboldened.

7:11Ukraine really has churned out drones over the last couple of years and has really expanded its ability to produce these small flying explosive and reconnaissance craft. And they've enabled Kiev to hold back Russian troops on the front lines and really brought Russia to the point where it's not even using armored vehicles anymore, since anything that is moving along the front lines is quite an easy target for Ukrainians. Now, with the coming of warmer weather and more tree cover, the Russians are trying to take advantage of that to kind of move small groups of troops forward. But the other element is very far from the battlefield, this aerial campaign by both sides to try and strike each other's cities and infrastructure and military targets.

7:56And Ukraine has been producing long range drones that are able to fly far into Russian territory. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky calls this Ukraine's long-range sanctions against Moscow. He's been calling for many years for financial sanctions against Russia's economy. And now the Ukrainian narrative is essentially we're taking things into our own hands, trying to destroy or at least substantially damage their ability to produce the energy that is a lifeline of their economy. And Matthew says that despite tens of thousands of Russian soldiers being killed or wounded each month, Moscow is continuing to send troops to the front lines in eastern Ukraine.

8:33Publicly, the Kremlin says nothing essentially is going to change until they achieve a victory. And unless Kiev concedes to their demands, which at a minimum means that Ukraine surrenders the entire eastern Donbass province, there's really not going to be any backing down by Russia. But privately and of course, behind the scenes, they understand that the war is not going to plan. And that has especially been the case over the last few months. Even putting aside the colossal loss of life, it's becoming in some ways not necessarily unsustainable, but far harder for Putin to justify the war to his people.

9:17And finally, Pope Leo has equated the threat of artificial intelligence with the biblical Tower of Babel, joining a growing backlash against the impact of the technology. In a long-awaited encyclical letter yesterday aimed at sparking discussions across the Catholic faith, Leo warned of tech-driven mass unemployment and called out private actors whose pursuit of AI, he said, risked reducing humans, quote, to mere cogs in a system driven toward ever greater efficiency. It's a message that Greg Epstein, the humanist chaplain at MIT and Harvard, said is hitting a nerve with young people who've lately been booing commencement speakers who evoke AI and one that could forge alliances across religious and non-religious communities alike.

10:00I think we have to see the phenomenon of the Catholic Church responding to Silicon Valley as part of a bigger whole where you can now see Catholics, mainline and evangelical Protestant Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and atheists and agnostics working together to think about what a better technological future would look like, because it's a problem for literally everyone on earth right now. Labor has historically been a way to bring religious and non-religious people together. And so as Silicon Valley emerges as its own religion with its own rituals, you know, our stained glass black mirror altars that we carry in our pockets and genuflect to all day, etc.

10:48Secular and religious leaders, communities and people of all sorts are now coming together to push back. We've left a link to the WSJ's full coverage of the papal encyclical in our show notes. And that's it for What's News for this Tuesday morning. Today's show was produced by Hattie Moyer. Our supervising producer was Daniel Bach. And I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show. And until then, thanks for listening.

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