Tech groups team up to bid for Pentagon contracts

At present’s agenda: Russian nuclear crops abroad; Syria’s Isis detainee camps; central banks and uncertainty; accidents at Amazon UK; and Man Fingers allegations

Good morning. We start with an unique story on Palantir and Anduril, that are in talks with rivals to kind a consortium that may collectively bid for US authorities work in an effort to disrupt the nation’s oligopoly of “prime” contractors.

Who’s participating? Palantir and Anduril, two of the biggest US defence expertise firms, have approached tech rivals corresponding to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, ChatGPT maker OpenAI, autonomous-ship builder Saronic and synthetic intelligence information group Scale AI to turn out to be a part of the consortium, in keeping with a number of folks with information of the matter.

The consortium will carry collectively the heft of a few of Silicon Valley’s most precious firms and can leverage their merchandise to offer a extra environment friendly approach of supplying the US authorities with cutting-edge defence and weapons capabilities, in keeping with an individual concerned with the talks.

What’s driving the transfer? Extra tech firms are searching for to seize a much bigger slice of the US authorities’s enormous $850bn defence finances from conventional prime contractors corresponding to Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Boeing.

Defence tech start-ups have attracted document quantities of funding this yr, as traders wager they are going to be among the many winners of upper federal spending on nationwide safety from the incoming Trump administration.

Wars in Ukraine and the Center East and geopolitical tensions between the US and China have heightened the federal government’s reliance on tech firms creating superior AI merchandise that can be utilized for army functions, and inspired traders to the sector. Read the full report.

Right here’s what else we’re preserving tabs on at present:

• Financial information: The UK and Spain launch third-quarter GDP figures.

• Mozambique: The nation’s prime court docket is about to present a verdict on the nation’s disputed election in October.

• Albania: Opposition events demanding Prime Minister Edi Rama’s resignation are set to dam roads in protest.

5 extra prime tales

1. Russia is constructing greater than 10 nuclear models overseas because it appears to be like to faucet into rising vitality demand pushed by synthetic intelligence and creating markets, in keeping with an envoy of President Vladimir Putin. The plans come as Moscow seeks to spice up its world affect by increasing its nuclear fleet. Here are the countries where Russia is constructing new plants.

2. Syria’s interim authorities is able to take management of Isis detainee camps being run by US-backed Kurdish militants, mentioned Turkey’s prime diplomat Hakan Fidan, the primary international minister to fulfill Hayat Tahrir al-Sham chief Abu Mohammad al-Jolani. Fidan throughout his go to to Damascus additionally mentioned he believed US president-elect Donald Trump would back Turkey over Kurdish forces.

3. Eire’s prime central banker has mentioned rate-setters are dealing with extra uncertainty now than throughout the early levels of the coronavirus pandemic because the agenda and actions of Donald Trump are all however unattainable to learn. Read the full interview with Gabriel Makhlouf.

• Fed flip-flops: The US Federal Reserve’s extremely reactive coverage strategy of latest years has amplified financial volatility, writes Mohamed El-Erian.

• The Economics Present🎧: European Central Financial institution president Christine Lagarde tells Martin Wolf what Europe must do to close the gap with the US.

4. Dozens of Amazon staff within the UK have suffered critical accidents over latest years, together with being blinded or requiring amputations, in keeping with new information that’s resulting in renewed calls on the ecommerce big to enhance the therapy of susceptible employees. The tech group reported 119 serious injuries from work-related accidents between 2019 and 2024.

• UK employment: Extra youthful persons are neither working nor searching for a job, opting out of the labour market fully.

5. Unique: Deloitte desires to slash spending on employees journey and bills within the UK by greater than 50 per cent because it seeks to take care of associate earnings beneath what it referred to as “difficult market circumstances”. The associated fee slicing is an indication of the UK consulting sector’s continued struggles as a chronic slowdown in mergers and acquisitions exercise hits demand for advisory work.

The Large Learn

Within the Italian metropolis of Trieste, a community-based strategy to psychological sickness has professional­duced startling res­ults at a comparatively low price. The mannequin contrasts starkly with others that make a lot better use of psychiatric institutionalisation. The ultimate instalment of the FT’s sequence on psychological well being takes a take a look at the decades-long debate in regards to the best way to care for people liv­ing with mental ill­ness.

We’re additionally studying . . . 

• FT Investigation: Terra Firma founder Man Fingers has been accused of raging at employees and making sexually inappropriate feedback.

• Luxurious scale-back: A softening out there is a harbinger of things to come in equities and the true financial system, writes Rana Foroohar.

• Disinformation storm: Firms want new playbooks for dealing with online falsehoods as AI intensifies the dangers, writes Anjli Raval.

Chart of the day

On the stage of rhetoric, the UK’s Labour authorities is emphasising the precedence of financial development. It’s proper to take action. Nevertheless it wants to grasp that development relies on the confidence of business in that development, writes Martin Wolf.

Take a break from the information

As the primary public steam railway celebrates its bicentenary subsequent yr, writer Simon Bradley has put collectively an pleasurable and extremely readable survey of 200 years of British train history.