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Waymo Jaguar driverless car drives on urban street in San Francisco
A Waymo Jaguar driverless car on a street in California last June.
Trump Bump

Tesla’s Trump gamble might pay off even more for Google’s Waymo

What’s good for Tesla is good for Google.

Rani Molla

Tesla Technoking Elon Musk’s big bet on President-elect Donald Trump to pave the way for US-wide autonomous-driving policies could pay off for Musk’s competitors, too.

“As far as a national framework, that’ll be great,” Tekedra Mawakana, co-CEO of Waymo, the Google-owned Tesla competitor, said during a private dinner at CES last night, Fortune reported. She added, “It’s just that that framework should require people to demonstrate their safety record.” It was a potential dig at Tesla, whose “full self-driving” feature requires an attentive driver and is still considered “unreliable” and “potentially dangerous.”

Musk says Tesla’s autonomous robotaxi will “probably” be in production next year.

Waymo, of course, has already been conducting more than 150,000 autonomous commercial rides per week in three US cities — Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles — with plans to grow into Austin and Atlanta this year.

Mawakana declined to comment directly on whether she thought Musk, given his para-governmental role in the Trump administration, would treat competitors fairly. Instead, she said, “Making the road safer is an important mission, and it’s too big for one company.”

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Max Knoblauch

Big four airlines sink as Transportation Secretary Duffy says parts of US airspace could close if shutdown continues

The US may close parts of its airspace as early as next week if the government shutdown continues, according to comments made by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Tuesday.

“If you bring us to a week from today, Democrats, you will see mass chaos. You will see mass flight delays. You’ll see mass cancellations, and you may see us close certain parts of the airspace, because we just cannot manage it,” Duffy said at a news briefing on Tuesday.

The shutdown, which entered its 35th day on Tuesday, has fueled already problematic shortages of air traffic controllers. This week, airlines said 3.2 million passengers have faced delays or cancellations because of the shortages. Last week, about 13,000 air traffic controllers and 50,000 TSA agents received their first $0 paycheck amid the shutdown.

Shares of the big four US airlines all sank on Duffy’s comments, with United Airlines, American Airlines, and Delta Air Lines all down more than 5%.

power
Jon Keegan

Trump’s deal offering top Nvidia chips to China was nixed at last minute, the WSJ reports

Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, really wants to sell the chipmaker’s most powerful Blackwell GPUs to China. He almost had his way.

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, President Trump was ready to put Blackwell chips on the negotiating table for his meeting with Chinese President Xi to seek relief from China’s decision to block crucial rare earth exports to the US.

But according to the report, Trump advisers presented a unified front and were able to dissuade him from giving up the most powerful chips to China at the last minute. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer were among those opposed to the chip deal. After the meeting, Trump said he did not talk with Xi about Nvidia’s “super duper” chips.

Reportedly those opposed to the deal cited national security concerns, as well as wanting to keep a competitive edge as China seeks to challenge the US’s current dominance of the AI industry.

Exclusive | Trump Officials Torpedoed Nvidia’s Push to Export AI Chips to China

Exclusive | Trump Officials Torpedoed Nvidia’s Push to Export AI Chips to China

But according to the report, Trump advisers presented a unified front and were able to dissuade him from giving up the most powerful chips to China at the last minute. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer were among those opposed to the chip deal. After the meeting, Trump said he did not talk with Xi about Nvidia’s “super duper” chips.

Reportedly those opposed to the deal cited national security concerns, as well as wanting to keep a competitive edge as China seeks to challenge the US’s current dominance of the AI industry.

Walt Hickey
shutdown watch
10/21/25
Traders are getting more and more pessimistic about the government shutdown ending any time soon

The market expects the shutdown to last well into November.

The Capitol Building in Washington DC
Jon Keegan
10/10/25
OpenAI’s internal Slack messages could cost it billions in copyright suit

Authors and publishers suing OpenAI over copyright infringement were granted access to internal OpenAI communications about the deletion of a pirated books dataset, and now want to review attorney communications.

Frightened Man
Max Knoblauch
10/9/25
US corporate spending on private flights for executives has ballooned in recent years

The median expense spent by America’s largest companies on air travel jumped 66% from 2020 to 2024.

1990s Business man private jet

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