Why More Young Americans Are Dying From Severe Heart Attacks

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0:32Daniel Bach:The U.S. scrambles fighter jets to Israel, ramping up the pressure on Iran ahead of the latest nuclear talks. Plus, an increasing number of American adults under 55 are dying of heart attacks.

0:45Frank Lee:The study paints a picture of a youngish but really unhealthy population. So if you're 35 and having a heart attack, aside from the rarest of genetic disorders, it's usually because your health is quite poor.

0:57Daniel Bach:And the Justice Department reviews whether it improperly withheld some Epstein files, including FBI notes detailing a woman's allegations against President Trump. It's Thursday, February 26th. I'm Daniel Bach for The Wall Street Journal, filling in for Luke Vargas. And here's the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

1:24The U.S.

1:25Daniel Bach:has deployed combat jets to Israel for a potential wartime mission ahead of today's high-stakes talks with Iran. Videos posted to social media show F-22 fighters arriving in Israel, although the Trump administration hasn't officially announced the deployment. The move would allow the U.S. to defend Israeli territory and American forces should President Trump proceed with threatened strikes. Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested that no breakthrough is expected in today's talks and that the focus will be on Iran's nuclear program.

1:57Betsy McKay:Iran poses a very grave threat to the United States and has for a very long time. They are in possession, first and foremost, after their nuclear program was obliterated, they were told not to try to restart it. And here they are. You can see them always trying to rebuild elements of it. They're not enriching right now, but they're trying to get to the point where they ultimately can.

2:15Daniel Bach:Rubio's comments come as experts note Iran's nuclear program has not advanced significantly since U.S. and Israeli strikes on the country last June, despite concern in Washington. And the lack of visible progress raises questions about the administration's rationale for a potential strike on Iran. Businesses in Cuba are welcoming a U.S. move to allow some oil shipments to the island, saying it could avert a humanitarian catastrophe. Yesterday, the Treasury said American fuel would be sent on a case-by-case basis to Cuban companies, while sales to the communist government remain illegal under current U.S.

2:52Daniel Bach:sanctions.

2:52Frank Lee:Q.S. small businesses have filled a big hole left by the government, which is basically bankrupt and has greatly mismanaged the economy. They basically have had to step in into areas that the Cuban government has not been able to carry out, especially in importing foods, a lot of the food that Cuba needs, and different kinds of goods.

3:16Daniel Bach:That's the journal's Jose de Cordova. He told us Cuba produces just 40 % of the fuel it needs and is expected to run out in just a few weeks.

3:25Frank Lee:Because of Cuba's fuel shortages, the economy is quickly grinding to a halt. Hospitals are only doing urgent surgeries. Tourism has largely stopped and there are widespread shortages of most goods and inflation is out of control, putting a lot of the food out of the reach for many Cubans who don't have remittances that they can depend on from relatives abroad.

3:51Daniel Bach:Humanitarian aid has poured into Cuba since the oil embargo began back in January, but much of it remains stuck in ports because there is no fuel to transport it to the people who need it.

4:05Daniel Bach:NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wong has rejected any suggestions of an AI bubble after the chipmaker topped analyst expectations, posting a more than 90 percent increase in profit following record sales for the fourth quarter. Speaking to CNBC, Wong said the fears around agentic AI and how that might impact software stocks has been overblown.

4:26Frank Lee:I think a thought experiment that could be helpful is imagine one of these days when we have robots and these robots are in our homes. It's very unlikely that the robot will come up with a new Cuisinart. The robot will just read the manual for the Cuisinart and just use the Cuisinart. It's more likely that instead of coming up with another way of doing microwaving, that the robot will just use the microwave. These tools exist for a good reason. And so I'm fairly certain future robots will use screwdrivers and wrenches and pliers and things like that. And these tools are essentially in their digital form from the companies that you're talking about.

5:06Daniel Bach:Frank Lee is HSBC's global head of technology hardware and semiconductor research. Frank, let's start with the numbers for NVIDIA. What are you reading into their performance this quarter and over the past year?

5:18Betsy McKay:Yeah, I think the numbers are good. It was a pretty good beat and raise. And it's the second quarter in a row. I remember last quarter was the first quarter and six quarters. It's already seen a beat and raise. It's happened again this time. In fact, the first quarter got in, I think, was considerably higher, not only against our number, but the overall street and including some buy side expectations.

5:37Daniel Bach:So the spending now good for NVIDIA, as you say. But does it face headwinds if other companies can't keep up this rate of spending on AI to boost NVIDIA?

5:48Betsy McKay:Yeah, so I think it's a good question. I think the last couple of months, a couple of things have emerged. The first thing is the memory space has become a super positive cycle that we have not seen in a long time. We know that's been a big problem in shortages. So this is resulting in hyperscalers having to pay more money for memory, but not necessarily getting more compute or more hardware performance. So that's one of the things I think people are also questioning is like, okay, are people paying up, but they're not getting more performance from what they were a couple of months ago. The second thing I think NVIDIA has also brought up on this call was the idea of Agentech AI.

6:25Betsy McKay:The inflection point of Agentech AI is mentioned several times on the call, which we agree with. But I think what's interesting, though, is that Agentech AI also seems to be boosting overall server CPU demand. So you see comments from Intel and AMD suggest the same thing. So the question now is, you know, Genentech AI, how much of a boost is this to the pure GPU business that NVIDIA has been dominating? And how much is a bigger boost to the traditional CPU makers or even new guys like ARM? So I think there are some questions about who is the true beneficiary of the Genentech AI from a hardware point of view.

7:00Betsy McKay:It's not as clean clear as it was before.

7:02Daniel Bach:And what of software companies that are customers of NVIDIA? I think Wong, in his comments there, was sort of arguing that the advancement in software will boost AI and agentic AI. But there are concerns in the market that that spending won't really be realized. What do you read into that? Yeah.

7:24Betsy McKay:So, again, I mean, I think the spending for hyperscalers have continued to increase more and more than anybody's expected. So we saw in January, you know, another big revision for most of the hyperscalers. But you're getting to a point now where hyperscalers are having to fund some of this externally. So you see some of these hyperscalers are coming to the market to fund. And this is the first time we're really seeing it. Previously, the first couple of years of AI, it was self-funded, right? So I think there's more scrutiny now in terms of what people are paying for, what hyperscalers are investing in, and perhaps they were earlier.

7:56Daniel Bach:And what about your take on the bubble fears, if they've shifted, if they have been beaten back by these earnings? Are you an AI bull or bear at this moment?

8:06Betsy McKay:I'm still an AI bull. I think the difference is that because of some of these uncertainties persisting right now, companies need to deliver earnings, right? In the first two years of this AI trade, it didn't really matter if the earnings were coming through or they were generating. NVIDIA is not in that camp. They have delivered on earnings. But I think the question is the multiple of how much people are willing to pay for AI names is definitely under more scrutiny than they were previously. So I think that's one of the challenges. In general, what you're seeing is this diffusion of AI moving into hardware names.

8:37Betsy McKay:Clearly, memory has been one of them. Networking, which NVIDIA also mentioned on this call, is another area where we see very clear content growth and perhaps higher growth than the traditional compute, which is where we saw their initial beneficiary of AI.

8:51Daniel Bach:Frank Lee is HSBC's global head of technology, hardware and semiconductor research. Frank, thanks for your time. Thanks. Coming up, the rest of the day's news, including a move by the Trump administration to pause Medicaid funding to Minnesota. Plus, no matter how much sleep we get, we're always getting sleep shamed by someone. Those stories after the break.

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9:46Daniel Bach:The Justice Department is reviewing whether it improperly withheld some Epstein files, including FBI notes that detail unverified allegations made by a woman against President Trump. The exclusion of the FBI interviews raises new questions about the DOJ's handling of the Epstein file's release. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch, who oversaw the release, said that the department complied with the law and that, quote, we didn't protect or not protect anybody. Trump has denied wrongdoing and said his friendship with Epstein ended before the convicted sex offender pleaded guilty to procuring a minor for prostitution back in 2008.

10:23Daniel Bach:The Trump administration is pausing nearly$260 million in Medicaid funding to Minnesota, calling it a way to push the state to better account for how public funds are being distributed. Vice President J.D. Vance made the announcement in his first action as head of the so-called war on fraud, as President Trump put it in his State of the Union. What this means is that, first of all, the providers on the ground in Minnesota have actually already been paid. The state has paid those providers the money. What we're doing is we are stopping the federal payments that will go to the state government

10:55Frank Lee:until the state government takes its obligations seriously to stop the fraud that's being perpetrated against the American taxpayer.

11:05Daniel Bach:The move comes after allegations of fraud involving daycare centers run by Somali residents in Minneapolis prompted the massive immigration crackdown in the city, resulting in widespread protests and the fatal shooting of two U.S. citizens. Democratic Governor Tim Walz said the funding pause wasn't about fraud, but rather a campaign of retribution to punish blue states. Walz said the cuts would be devastating for working people, families, veterans, and people with disabilities.

11:36Daniel Bach:Well, the last thing someone in their 30s or 40s should worry about is dying of a heart attack. But new research shows more young adults in fact are. A new study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association today finds that the rate of adults aged 18 to 54 who died in hospital of a severe first heart attack rose 57 percent between 2011 and 2022. The Journal's Betsy McKay says that's despite decades of medical advances.

12:03Frank Lee:The study paints a picture of a youngish but really unhealthy population. About 60 % of the patients who had a severe first heart attack had high blood pressure, more than half had high cholesterol or smoked, and about a third had diabetes. Many were low income, which the study suggests means less access to preventive care.

12:23Daniel Bach:The study also found that young women died at higher rates than men. And finally, the question keeping us up at night, literally, are we actually getting enough sleep? According to Journal columnist Elizabeth Bernstein, the real culprit isn't the hours we log, but how we feel about them. Sleep shame has turned our resting hours into a high-pressure performance test.

12:45Frank Lee:Sleep shame is the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that we and other people shame ourselves about our sleep. It doesn't matter if you're an early bird, a night owl. No matter what we do, it seems like we're not doing sleep right. Sleep trackers are a big problem. They're tracking all these metrics that the average person doesn't really even understand. In sleep, one size doesn't fit all. Everybody's been told forever that there's eight hours of sleep. Well, that's not actually the case anymore. Now scientists understand that we need between seven and nine. But some people actually can sleep with a lot less.

13:22Frank Lee:So there's solutions to this, thankfully. The first is to own your sleep needs. And then secondly, you have to accept that this is innate and biological to you.

13:31Daniel Bach:Along with understanding your own sleep, Elizabeth explained that this also extends to respecting your partner's needs.

13:37Frank Lee:Research shows that couples with different sleep needs actually have more conflict. The experts say that when couples have different sleep needs, it's important that they go to bed together, spend some time in bed. And then when the early bird wants to go to sleep, then the night owl gets up and continues on with their evening.

13:55Daniel Bach:And that's it for What's News for this Thursday morning. Today's show was produced by Hattie Moyer. Our supervising producer is Sondra Kilhoff. And I'm Daniel Bach for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back tonight with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening.