U.S.-Iran Strikes, Tech Money, and the Week's Best Sports Moment

Maya: Good morning, good morning. All right, you found us, the morning rundown. David: Big show today. Like genuinely big. Maya: Yeah, so the U.S. struck Iran for a second straight night. Axios and the WSJ are both all over this. Iran hit back. U.S. assets in three countries targeted and three Indian sailors were killed near Oman. David: That's not a small development. Defense Secretary Hegseth called the approach negotiating with bombs. Maya: Wow. David: That phrase is doing a lot of work right now. Maya: Yeah, a lot of work. David: We're also watching Oracle today. AI spending way past what analysts expected, and the debt load is raising some eyebrows. Reuters has the numbers. Maya: Oh, and Axios had this piece, China-based operatives actually used ChatGPT to run influence campaigns on U.S. policy debates. That's wild, right? David: And the SpaceX IPO. Market watchers on CNBC are calling it a referendum on Musk himself, not just the company. Maya: Then we've got the Knicks, 29 points down in the Finals, and they pulled it off. NBA.com confirmed it's the largest comeback. in Finals history. David: Okay, that one I did not see coming. Maya: Plus Diddy, Shakira, and more, Iran is where we start right after this. All right, so if you woke up this morning and felt like the news was a lot, yeah, it is. The U.S. struck Iran for a second straight night, and we are in what looks like a full-on military exchange right now. David: And this is not a surgical airstrike situation. Axios reported that President Trump said, quote, we will strike them hard tonight and hopefully Iran makes a good decision. That's the framing from the top. Maya: Which, I mean, that's pretty direct. No diplomatic vagueness there. Speaker 3: None. And Defense Secretary Hegseth put it even blunter. CBS News reported he said the U.S. will quote negotiate with bombs if it has to. So the administration is not hiding the ball here. The strategy is pressure until Iran comes to the table. Maya: Okay, so walk me through the logic, because I think a lot of people hear negotiate with bombs and their brain short-circuits. Speaker 3: Right. So the administration's position is basically Iran has been stalling, Trump's been waiting for a deal, and, according to the Wall Street Journal, he-and I'm paraphrasing here-boiled over after Tehran kept him waiting. So these strikes are the consequence of that. Yeah." Iran testing that patience is not a great idea, turns out. Apparently not. And here's what makes this complicated: Iran didn't just absorb the hits. The Washington Post reported that Iran struck back, targeting U.S. assets in three countries. Three countries? Three. So this is not contained to Iran's borders anymore. And then BBC News reported something that really stopped me: three Indian sailors were killed by a U.S. missile near Oman. Oman." The vessel, a Guinea-Bissau flagged ship called the Jolvere, was reportedly struck because U.S. Central Command said it violated a blockade. Right; and CENTCOM said they hit two other vessels near Oman as well. So there's a naval component here on top of the aerial strikes. And now India is in the middle of this. Three of its citizens are dead-that's a third country pulled into the fallout-and India is not a small player. No, it's not; and look, the Administration is framing all of this as strength. Not Escalation.--Their argument is that letting Iran drag out negotiations is the real danger. You respond with force, you shorten the timeline. Maya: That tracks as a strategic argument; whether it plays out that way is a different question. Speaker 3: Yeah. And the thing about tit for tat dynamics is, once they start, both sides have domestic pressure to keep swinging. Iran's government can't just absorb strikes and say nothing to its own population. Maya: Right, so the "off ramp" has to come fast or this gets bigger. Speaker 3: Washington Post also noted Iranian media reported earlier U.S. strikes hit a water facility. That kind of detail matters for how this looks on the world stage. Maya: Yeah, civilian infrastructure. That's going to be a talking point internationally. Speaker 3: And Trump's position, per CBS News and multiple other outlets today, is that Iran will quote, pay the price until it comes to an agreement. He's not softening that message. Maya: So the stakes right now. Second night of U.S. strikes, Iran retaliating across three countries. Three Indian sailors dead near Oman, and the administration saying they'll keep going. That's where we are this morning. Speaker 3: And the question that nobody can fully answer yet, does the pressure produce a deal or does it produce something wider? Maya: Which honestly also applies to something we're watching in a completely different arena. While the U.S. military is projecting force overseas, China was apparently running a very different kind of operation, using American AI tools to try to shape what we think about AI infrastructure in. and trade policy. Speaker 3: Same adversary, different battlefield. So the question is, when you're fighting on two fronts at once, which one are you actually watching more closely? Maya: Shifting gears a bit, let's talk about where a lot of money is quietly moving. Oracle just dropped earnings, and Reuters reported their AI spending came in well past analyst estimates. But here's what's getting buried in the headline. Their debt is climbing fast to fund it all. David: Right, and that's the part worth sitting with. Oracle is planning to raise another $20 billion on top of what they've already borrowed. CNBC flagged the stock actually dropped after earnings because of that. Beat the numbers, stock falls. That tells you where investor anxiety is. Maya: So they beat earnings and the stock dropped? David: Yeah, the market's saying, okay, the AI revenue is real, but is the debt load sustainable? And nobody has a clean answer to that yet. Maya: So it's not a question of whether AI is growing, it's whether the spending to build it actually pencils out. David: Exactly. And that's a question a lot of these companies are going to face. Oracle's just the one showing it most visibly right now. Maya: Okay, so while we're on the subject of AI and people trying to shape what it does, Axios had a story today that I think deserves way more attention than it's probably getting. David: The China influence operation? Maya: Yes. David: Yeah. Maya: So according to Axios, China-based operatives were using ChatGPT. like OpenAI's own tool to run influence campaigns targeting U.S. policy debates, specifically around AI data centers and tariffs. David: So they use an American AI product to try to influence American AI policy. I mean, come on. Maya: That's wild, right? And it shows how pro-China actors are testing these tools, which is what Axios said directly. This isn't some fringe thing. David: Now-and it raises a real question about how you even defend against that-when the influence operation runs through a commercial product that millions of people use legitimately, the line gets blurry fast. Maya: The signal looks just like the noise. David: Exactly. File that one away because I Maya: I don't think we've seen the last of it. David: Not even close. Okay, speaking of people whose profile is complicated right now, SpaceX. Maya: Yes. David: CNBC had a piece saying the IPO is based Basically a referendum on Elon Musk. Not on rockets, not on revenue. On him. Maya: And that framing tracks. SpaceX has real revenue, serious government contracts, Starlink is growing, on pure fundamentals that's a strong business. But market watchers quoted by CNBC are saying investor sentiment around Musk personally is now part of the valuation calculus. David: Which is just a weird place for a rocket company to be. Maya: Right. Speaker 3: It is. Maya: When your IPO narrative is less about growth and more about whether your founder's Twitter feed is a liability, that's a different kind of risk to price in. David: And there's no clean way to separate them right now. Maya: No, so the question investors are sitting with is, do you believe in the business enough to take the Musk risk on top of it? David: Not a question most IPOs have to answer. All right, I'll be honest. After Iran, Oracle's debt spiral, and AI espionage, I need something that doesn't make my brain hurt, and the NBA delivered last night. Maya: Oh, the Knicks game? David: The Knicks game. NBA.com confirmed it, largest comeback in NBA Finals history. 29 points down and they won. So we've got that and a new lawsuit involving Diddy that just dropped. We should get into both. Okay, shifting gears because the Knicks just did something absolutely unhinged last night. Maya: I watched every painful minute of it. David: So NBA.com recapped this and I had to read it twice. The Knicks completed a 29-point comeback in Game 4 of the NBA Finals, the largest comeback in Finals history. Maya: 29 points? That's not a deficit. That's a disaster. David: Right? Like at some point you're down that much and you're thinking, okay, just play for pride at this point. Maya: And instead they, I mean, the crowd must have lost its mind. David: Lost it completely. I mean, come on, that's the kind of game you'd tell people about for years. Maya: Or the kind you spend years trying to forget depending on which bench you were sitting on. David: Fair point. Either way, it's one of those moments. You don't get many of those. Maya: No, you really don't. All right, we should touch on the Diddy story before we move on. David: Yeah, CNN is reporting a former child actor has filed a new sexual assault lawsuit. lawsuit against Sean Combs. This is on top of his existing conviction. He's currently serving over four years after being found guilty on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. Maya: And his rep denied the allegations in this new lawsuit. But at this point, the legal record against him just keeps growing. David: It does, and every new filing adds more to a picture that's already pretty grim. We'll keep watching how this develops. Maya: Okay, you had something else. David: Oh, one more thing. Billboard ran a fan poll. Best official FIFA World Cup song of all time. Maya: And? David: Shakira and Burna Boy's Dai took the top spot. Maya: Over Waka Waka? David: Over Waka Waka. I know, I don't make the rules, David. Maya: The fans have spoken. Respect the process. David: That's wild, right? But honestly, Dai Waka slaps, I'll allow it. Maya: High praise from you. David: Look, I stand by it. Alright, that's our sports and culture drop for the morning. All right, that's the rundown for today. A lot to sit with. U.S. and Iran in a second night of strikes. Hegseth's whole negotiate with bombs framing still echoing. Maya: Yeah, and the fallout pulling in third parties, those three Indian sailors near Oman, that one hit different. David: It really did. You know what I mean? This isn't staying contained. Maya: Nope, plus Oracle, SpaceX, Chinese operatives using ChatGPT. It was a full morning. David: Understatement! Hey, if you got something out of today, subscribe, leave us a review, seriously, it helps. Maya: Big time! Thanks for starting your morning with us. David: And that's The Rundown. See you tomorrow.