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Jared Kushner’s investment fund is not especially large by global finance standards. His $3 billion fund is financed almost entirely from overseas investors with whom he worked when he served as a senior adviser in the Trump White House. He has taken money from government wealth funds in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, as well as from Terry Gou, a founder of Foxconn, the Taiwan-based electronics manufacturer, whose role in Mr. Kushner’s firm has not been previously disclosed. Mr. Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, is collecting approximately $40 million a year in management fees from those investors even before any share of profits earned on investments. He has made 10 investments to date, totaling $1.2 billion, many of them in companies based abroad.

Persons: Jared, Donald J, Trump, Terry Gou, Kushner’s Organizations: Trump White House, United Arab, Foxconn, Securities and Exchange Commission, Mr, Affinity Partners Locations: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Taiwan

☆ Trump Venues Bank on Golf, With Help From Saudi Arabia
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-04 | by ( Eric Lipton | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Amateur golfers will line up on Thursday at the Trump National Doral near Miami, having agreed to pay more than $9,000 apiece to play a friendly round alongside some of the world’s top professionals. Rooms at the resort hotel will fill up with fans as a pro tournament featuring some of the biggest names in the sport gets underway on Friday. The resort’s restaurants and bars will pull in more business, and the Trump name will be beamed around the world on television and the internet. Behind this surge in business at one of former President Donald J. Trump’s properties is his deal to host tournaments for LIV Golf, the upstart league sponsored by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.

Persons: Trump, Donald J, LIV Golf Organizations: Trump National Doral, Saudi Locations: Miami

In 2013, two years before he began running for president, Mr. Trump — Mr. Kushner’s father-in-law — told a top Serbian government official that he wanted to build a luxury hotel on the site. Associates of the Trump Organization traveled to Belgrade to inspect the location. The project did not come together before Mr. Trump’s election in 2016, and after being sworn in he vowed to not do any new foreign deals. But developing the site would again draw interest from Mr. Trump’s circle. Richard Grenell, whom Mr. Trump had appointed as a special envoy in the Balkans, pushed a related plan during the Trump administration that Serbia and the United States jointly work to rebuild the Defense Ministry site.

Persons: Jared Kushner, Donald J, Trump, Kushner, Kushner’s, —, Richard Grenell Organizations: Yugoslav Ministry of Defense, NATO, The New York Times, Serbian, Associates, Trump Organization, United, Defense Ministry Locations: Belgrade, Serbian, Balkans, Serbia, United States, American

Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Donald J. Trump, confirmed on Friday that he was closing in on major real estate deals in Albania and Serbia, the latest example of the former president’s family doing business abroad even as Mr. Trump seeks to return to the White House. Mr. Kushner’s plans in the Balkans appear to have come about in part through relationships built while Mr. Trump was in office. Mr. Kushner, who was a senior White House official, said he had been working on the deals with Richard Grenell, who served briefly as acting director of national intelligence under Mr. Trump and also as ambassador to Germany and special envoy to the Balkans. One of the proposed projects would be the development of an island off the coast of Albania into a luxury tourist destination. A second — with a planned luxury hotel and 1,500 residential units and a museum — is in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, at the site of the long-vacant former headquarters of the Yugoslav Army destroyed in 1999 by the NATO bombings, according to a member of Parliament in Serbia and Mr. Kushner’s company.

Persons: Jared Kushner, Donald J, Trump, Kushner’s, Kushner, Richard Grenell Organizations: Mr, White House, Yugoslav, NATO Locations: Albania, Serbia, Germany, Balkans, Belgrade

Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicU.S. officials have acknowledged a growing fear that Russia may be trying to put a nuclear weapon into orbit. Eric Lipton, an investigative reporter for The Times, explains that their real worry is that America could lose the battle for military supremacy in space.

Persons: Eric Lipton Organizations: Spotify, Amazon Music U.S, The Times Locations: Russia, America

☆ From Land Mines to Drones, Tech Has Driven Fears About Autonomous Arms
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-21 | by ( Eric Lipton | More About Eric Lipton | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Swarms of killer drones are likely to soon be a standard feature of battlefields around the world. That has ignited debate over how or whether to regulate their use and spurred concerns about the prospect of eventually turning life-or-death decisions over to artificial intelligence programs. Here is an overview of how the technology has evolved, what types of weapons are being developed and how the debate is unfolding. Eventually, artificial intelligence should allow weapons systems to make their own decisions about selecting certain kinds of targets and striking them. tech have intensified the discussion around such systems, known as lethal autonomous weapons.

☆ As A.I.-Controlled Killer Drones Become Reality, Nations Debate Limits
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-21 | by ( Eric Lipton | More About Eric Lipton | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

But while the U.N. is providing a platform for governments to express their concerns, the process seems unlikely to yield substantive new legally binding restrictions. The result has been to tie the debate up in a procedural knot with little chance of progress on a legally binding mandate anytime soon. The debate over the risks of artificial intelligence has drawn new attention in recent days with the battle over control of OpenAI, perhaps the world’s leading A.I. company, whose leaders appeared split over whether the firm is taking sufficient account over the dangers of the technology. And last week, officials from China and the United States discussed a related issue: potential limits on the use of A.I.

Persons: “, ” Konstantin Vorontsov Organizations: United Nations Locations: United States, Russia, Australia, Israel, China, New York

☆ The US government won’t quit Elon Musk
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-20 | by ( Zachary Wolf | Analysis Zachary B. Wolf | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

CNN —Condemning Elon Musk is easy. On Friday, the White House joined the uproar over Musk’s endorsement of an antisemitic conspiracy theory on X. On Monday, the White House announced it would be joining X rival Threads, which is owned by Meta, as backlash to Musk intensifies. Musk faced backlash a year ago when he had complained about the cost of that service. The White House bragged early this year that after months of negotiations, Tesla would open up part of its charging network to non-Tesla EVs.

Persons: Elon, Andrew Bates, Bates, Musk, ”, David Sanger, Eric Lipton, ” John Kirby, ” Kirby, Kirby, CNN’s Kristin Fisher, Pat Ryder, Lloyd Austin, He’s, CNN’s Chris Isidore, Tesla Organizations: CNN, NASA, Pentagon, Twitter, White House, Warner Bros, Meta, New York Times, White, SpaceX, National Security, House, Reliant, SpaceX The, Starlink, ” Locations: Ukraine

And the White House and Pentagon both know that. Mr. Musk, rather than apologize, has threatened lawsuits. But SpaceX is privately held, entirely controlled by Mr. Musk. (Tesla, his electric vehicle company, is publicly held.) And so far, while the White House has been outspoken, the Pentagon has been silent.

Persons: Musk, Lockheed Martin —, Tesla, ” Walter Isaacson, Musk’s, ”, Lockheed Martin Organizations: House, Pentagon, Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed, IBM, Apple, Warner Bros, Twitter, SpaceX, Mr, White, U.S, United Launch Alliance Locations: United States

He brought that question to his brother Ryan, a tech whiz who had invented a type of wireless cellphone charger when he was in college. After Brandon Tseng left the military, he joined with his brother to find ways to apply technology to national security challenges and quickly had what he remembers as his “aha” moment. Even fighter jets could perhaps be turned into A.I.-controlled robot drones. The company the Tseng brothers created in 2015, named Shield AI, is now valued by venture capital investors at $2.7 billion. The firm has 625 employees in Texas, California, Virginia and Abu Dhabi.

Persons: Brandon Tseng, Ryan, Tseng Organizations: Navy SEAL, aha, Israel Defense Forces Locations: Afghanistan, A.I, Texas , California, Virginia, Abu Dhabi

☆ Middle East War Adds to Surge in International Arms Sales
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-17 | by ( Eric Lipton | More About Eric Lipton | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Just days after the assault by Hamas ignited a new war in the Middle East, shipments of American weapons began arriving in Israel: smart bombs, ammunition and interceptors for the Iron Dome missile-defense system. When President Biden meets in Israel on Wednesday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, more military aid is a likely topic. The conflict between Israel and Hamas is just the latest impetus behind a boom in international arms sales that is bolstering profits and weapons-making capacity among American suppliers. The surge in sales is providing the Biden administration with new opportunities to tie the militaries of other countries more closely to the United States, the world’s biggest arms exporter, while also raising concerns that a more heavily armed world will be prone to careen into further wars. The surge in sales is also being driven by the rapid pace of technological change in warfighting, pressuring even well-armed nations to buy new generations of equipment to stay competitive.

Persons: Biden, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel Locations: Israel, United States, Ukraine, China, warfighting

☆ Faced With Evolving Threats, U.S. Navy Struggles to Change
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-04 | by ( Eric Lipton | More About Eric Lipton | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

One, the T-38 Devil Ray, which can reach speeds of up to 90 miles per hour — faster than just about any other vessel in the Navy — was awaiting its next assignment. Alongside it was the Ocean Aero Triton, whose solar-power system allows it to operate for three months at a time without any need to refuel. He said he found enormous enthusiasm for the idea among frontline commanders in the Pacific and the Middle East. “We are trying to improve Navy power, but we need to do more than that: We need to reimagine Navy power,” he said in an interview this summer, just after retiring from the Navy. It is vital that we throw off old conventions.”

Persons: Ray, Navy —, Devil Ray, Admiral Selby, ” Organizations: Navy, Triton, Naval Research Locations: Asia, Persian, Bahrain, San Diego, Pacific

☆ Pentagon Vows to Move Quickly to Buy More Drones, Citing China Threat
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-28 | by ( Eric Lipton | More About Eric Lipton | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The commitment came from Kathleen Hicks, the deputy defense secretary. The Pentagon, Ms. Hicks conceded, is “too risk averse” as “our system was built for the industrial age, not the information age, let alone the age of A.I.,” referring to artificial intelligence and citing criticism she has raised or heard from others. “I’ll let you in on a little secret,” she said, according to a transcript of her prepared remarks before the National Defense Industrial Association in Washington. As one of the world’s largest organizations, it’s often hard to see ourselves clearly, and get out of our own way. So I’m far from satisfied that everything is working as it should.”

Persons: Kathleen Hicks, Hicks, “ I’ll, ”, “ Organizations: Pentagon, National Defense Industrial Association Locations: China, Russian, Washington

☆ A.I. Brings the Robot Wingman to Aerial Combat
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-27 | by ( Eric Lipton | More About Eric Lipton | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

It is powered into flight by a rocket engine. It can fly a distance equal to the width of China. It has a stealthy design and is capable of carrying missiles that can hit enemy targets far beyond its visual range. Its mission is to marry artificial intelligence and its sensors to identify and evaluate enemy threats and then, after getting human sign-off, to move in for the kill. On a recent day at Eglin Air Force Base on Florida’s Gulf Coast, Maj. Ross Elder, 34, a test pilot from West Virginia, was preparing for an exercise in which he would fly his F-16 fighter alongside the Valkyrie.

Persons: Ross Elder Organizations: U.S, Air Force, Eglin Air Force Base Locations: China, Florida’s Gulf Coast, Maj, West Virginia

☆ Pacific Seabed Mining Delayed as International Agency Finalizes Rules
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-23 | by ( Eric Lipton | More About Eric Lipton | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The effort to postpone the start has been led by nations including Costa Rica, Chile and France. The three nations urged other countries that are members of the Seabed Authority’s governing council to agree that no permit authorizing mining in international waters should be granted until regulations are finalized. “We are on the side of the ocean,” said Gina Guillén Grillo, Costa Rica’s representative to the Seabed Authority who has helped lead the opposition to seabed mining. While the Seabed Authority continues its work to determine environmental standards, as well as a royalty rate that will be paid by the mining contractors, among other matters, the Metals Company will continue to lobby other nations, Mr. Barron said. The Metals Company and Nauru, along with the delegation from China, which also has been aggressively pursuing seabed mining, pushed unsuccessfully at last week’s meeting for the Seabed Authority to set a goal of finalizing the regulations by 2024.

Persons: ”, Gina Guillén Grillo, Costa, ” Gerard Barron, Barron, Mr Organizations: Metals, Metals Company, The Metals Company Locations: Costa Rica, Chile, France, Nauru, Indonesia, Congo, China

☆ Trump Real Estate Deal in Oman Underscores Ethics Concerns
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-20 | by ( Eric Lipton | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“It’s too hot — too hot,” said Mathan Mp, 38, who is from Tamil Nadu, the southernmost state of India, said as he took a break from supervising dozens of workers at the project site. Executives at DarGlobal, Dar Al Arkan and the Trump Organization declined to comment. The few remaining residents do not know a great deal about Mr. Trump, having only a general impression of him as a rich businessman and politician. “Trump — he is your king from America,” Mr. Talbi said, after inviting a visitor to his village inside to an air-conditioned room to sit on the floor and share a pot of tea. “Welcome to Oman.”

Persons: “, ”, Dar Al Arkan, Trump, Htim Talbi, “ Trump, ” Mr, Talbi Organizations: Mathan, Trump Organization, Trump, Mr Locations: Tamil Nadu, India, DarGlobal, Yiti, America, Oman

☆ Through Ties to Saudis, Golf Deal Promises Benefits to Trump
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-06 | by ( Eric Lipton | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The surprising deal on Tuesday ending a civil war in the world of professional golf stands to produce benefits for former President Donald J. Trump’s family business by increasing the prospect of major tournaments continuing to be played at Trump-owned courses in the United States and perhaps abroad. The outcome is the latest example of how the close relationship between Mr. Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and Saudi Arabia, whose sovereign wealth fund is the force behind the upheaval in the golf world, has proved beneficial to both sides even as it has prompted intense ethical scrutiny and political criticism. Even as it has injected new money and competition into professional golf, Saudi Arabia has been accused of using its wealth to buff its global reputation and obscure its human rights record through sports. That campaign now seems to have yielded business opportunities and a higher profile in the golf world for Mr. Trump as he seeks another term in the White House. Since the establishment of LIV Golf, the Saudi-funded breakaway professional golf circuit, Mr. Trump and his family have aligned themselves with LIV against the PGA Tour at a time when the golf establishment in the United States and Britain had moved to shut Trump courses out of major professional competitions, a trophy that the Trump family had long sought.

Persons: Donald J, Trump, LIV Golf, LIV Organizations: Trump, Mr, PGA Locations: United States, Saudi Arabia, Saudi, Britain

After two years of sniping, lawsuits and ill will, the major men’s golf tours agreed to merge on Tuesday. The PGA Tour, which runs golf in North America; the PGA European Tour, which is known as the DP World Tour and holds events in much of the rest of the world; and the upstart LIV Tour agreed to merge their operations. The Saudi sovereign wealth fund, which spent billions to launch the LIV Tour, will invest in the new company, and the governor of that fund will become its chairman. The LIV Tour started last year and offered big-name players from the other tours huge sums to jump ship. Many players and officials of the PGA Tour were sharply critical of LIV, both for dividing the golf world and for associating with the Saudi government and its poor human rights record.

Persons: Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Patrick Reed, Cameron Smith, Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, LIV, ” Organizations: PGA European, LIV, PGA Locations: North America, Saudi

☆ Start-Ups Bring Silicon Valley Ethos to a Lumbering Military-Industrial Complex
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-21 | by ( Eric Lipton | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

While waiting for a decision by the Pentagon, the company recently moved to lay off some employees. Mr. Roper, the former Air Force procurement boss, said another problem is the Defense Department’s historical insistence on creating its own solutions to problems instead of buying new technologies from commercial firms. He noted that artificial intelligence, for example, still has not been integrated into Air Force flight operations beyond some basic experiments. Mr. Austin, the defense secretary, recently announced that the Defense Innovation Unit will report directly to him, supervised by a new recruit from Apple. But for each success, there are many other tech start-ups struggling to pay bills as they wait for the Pentagon to make a purchase decision.

☆ Living and Breathing on the Front Line of a Toxic Chemical Zone
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Eric Lipton | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Juan López had just returned home from his job supervising the cleaning of giant tanks that hold toxic chemicals produced along the Houston Ship Channel, one of the largest petrochemical complexes in the world. He was ready to sit down to dinner with his wife, Pamela López, and their four school-age children at their small house across the highway from the plants. “I make good money where I’m at,” he said. “But I always felt like it was only me that was getting exposed, because I am working in the tanks with the chemicals. When the smell comes, all we can really do is try to keep everyone inside.

Former President Donald J. Trump provided the first look at his post-presidency business dealings on Friday with a new personal financial disclosure. Though light on specifics, the documents filed with the Federal Election Commission revealed lower-than-expected values on his social media company, two additional hefty bank loans and a new income stream for former first lady Melania Trump. The former president filed his disclosure after requesting multiple extensions. The financial disclosure shows cumulative income from January 2021 to Dec. 15, 2022, as required by the Federal Election Commission, and the value of assets as of December 2022, according to a person familiar with the documents. Trump’s social media company takes a valuation hitThe disclosure valued the parent company of Truth Social, the former president’s social media platform and personal megaphone, at between $5 million and $25 million.

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