United States President Donald Trump told ABC News on Friday that he is “not particularly interested” in speaking to Elon Musk after the two engaged in an argument on social media yesterday. His response came following reports that the two are scheduled to speak later today. Trump said that Musk “has lost his mind” since leaving the administration last week. ABC News chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl, who spoke to Trump, said he “did not seem angry or even concerned about the feud.”
Tesla tanks over 12% as Trump, Musk exchange blows
The price of Tesla Inc.’s shares continued to dive on Thursday as the brawl between United States President Donald Trump and billionaire and entrepreneur Elon Musk continued to heat up. The fight between the two, who were on friendly terms not too long ago, broke out earlier today as Trump expressed dissatisfaction with Musk’s latest comments about his “big beautiful bill.” While the US head of state insisted that the tech mogul was familiar with the details of the legislation, Musk denied this. He then went on to say that Trump would not have won the election without him, asking his followers on X whether the time has come for a new political party to be formed. Trump then threatened to cut contracts and subsidies for Musk’s businesses. The carmaker’s stock plunged 12.40% at 2:50 pm ET, going for $290.70 apiece.
Trump and Musk to speak on Friday after alliance descends into public feud
WASHINGTON, June 6 (Reuters) – Donald Trump’s aides scheduled a call between the U.S. president and Elon Musk for Friday after a huge public spat that saw threats fly over government contracts and included the world’s richest man suggesting Trump should be impeached. A White House official said the two men would speak on Friday. The official did not give a time for the call, which could ease the feuding after an extraordinary day of hostilities – largely conducted over social media – that marked a stark end to a close alliance.
The Reuters Tariff Watch newsletter is your daily guide to the latest global trade and tariff news. Shares in the electric vehicle maker closed down over 14% on Thursday, losing about $150 billion in market value in the largest single-day decline in value in its history. In pre-market trading on Friday they pared some of those losses, rising as much as 5% after the news that the two men were scheduled to speak. Politico first reported the planned call. Musk had bankrolled a large part of Trump’s presidential campaign and was then brought as one of the president’s most visible advisers, heading up a sweeping and controversial effort to downsize the federal workforce and slash spending. The verbal punches erupted on Thursday after Trump criticized Musk in the Oval Office and the pair then traded barbs on their social media platforms: Trump’s Truth Social and Musk’s X. The falling-out had begun brewing days ago when Musk, who left his role as head of the Department of Government Efficiency a week ago, denounced Trump’s sweeping tax-cut and spending bill. The president initially stayed quiet while Musk campaigned to torpedo the bill, saying it would add too much to the nation’s $36.2 trillion in debt. Trump broke his silence on Thursday, telling reporters he was “very disappointed” in Musk. “Look, Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will anymore,” Trump said. As Trump spoke, Musk responded on X. “Without me, Trump would have lost the election,” wrote Musk, who spent nearly $300 million backing Trump and other Republicans in last year’s election. In another post, Musk asserted that Trump’s signature import tariffs would push the U.S. into a recession later this year. “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” Trump posted.
Musk’s businesses also include rocket company and government contractor SpaceX and its satellite unit Starlink.
Musk, whose space business plays a critical role in the U.S. government’s space program, said that as a result of Trump’s threats he would begin decommissioning SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft. Dragon is the only U.S. spacecraft capable of sending astronauts to the International Space Station.
Late on Thursday, Musk backed off the threat. In another sign of a possible detente to come, Musk subsequently wrote: “You’re not wrong,” in response to billionaire investor Bill Ackman saying Trump and Musk should make peace. Musk hit at the heart of Trump’s agenda earlier this week when he targeted what Trump has named his “big, beautiful bill”, calling it a “disgusting abomination” that would deepen the federal deficit..
Drones Are Changing Modern Warfare
The targets were Russian warplanes, including strategic bombers and command-and-control aircraft, worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The weapons were Ukrainian drones, each costing under $1,000 and launched from wooden containers carried on trucks. “Operation Spiderweb,” which Ukraine said destroyed or damaged over 40 aircraft parked near air bases across Russia on Sunday, wasn’t just a blow to the Kremlin’s prestige. It was also a wake-up call for the West to bolster its air defense systems against such hybrid tactics, military experts said.Ukraine took advantage of inexpensive drone technology that has advanced rapidly in the last decade and combined it with outside-the-box thinking to score a morale-boosting win in the 3-year-old war that lately has turned in Moscow’s favor. How deeply the attack will impact Russian military operations is unclear. Although officials in Kyiv estimated it caused $7 billion in damage, the Russian Foreign Ministry disputed that, and there have been no independent assessments. Moscow still has more aircraft to launch its bombs and cruise missiles against Ukraine.
Still, the operation showed what “modern war really looks like and why it’s so important to stay ahead with technology,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Where the West is vulnerable
For Western governments, it’s a warning that “the spectrum of threats they’re going to have to take into consideration only gets broader,” said Douglas Barrie, senior fellow for military aerospace at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London.In the past decade, European countries have accused Russia of carrying out a sabotage campaign against the West, with targets ranging from defense executives and logistics companies to businesses linked to Ukraine. Unidentified drones have been seen in the past year flying near military bases in the U.S., the U.K and Germany, as well as above weapons factories in Norway. High-value weapons and other technology at those sites are “big, juicy targets for both state and non-state actors,” said Caitlin Lee, a drone warfare expert at RAND in Washington. “The time is now” to invest in anti-drone defenses, she said. Low-cost options to protect aircraft include using hardened shelters, dispersing the targets to different bases and camouflaging them or even building decoys. U.S. President Donald Trump last month announced a $175 billion “Golden Dome” program using space-based weapons to protect the country from long-range missiles.Not mentioned were defenses against drones, which Lee said can be challenging because they fly low and slow, and on radar can look like birds. They also can be launched inside national borders, unlike a supersonic missile fired from abroad. Drones “dramatically increase” the capacity by a hostile state or group for significant sabotage, said Fabian Hinz, a missile expert and research fellow at IISS.“How many targets are there in a country? How well can you defend every single one of them against a threat like that?” he said.
Ukraine’s resourceful, outside-the-box thinking
In “Operation Spiderweb,” Ukraine said it smuggled the first-person view, or FPV, drones into Russia, where they were placed in the wooden containers and eventually driven by truck close to the airfields in the Irkutsk region in Siberia, the Murmansk region in the Arctic, and the Amur region in the Far East, as well as to two bases in western Russia.Ukraine’s Security Service, or SBU, said the drones had highly automated capabilities and were partly piloted by an operator and partly by using artificial intelligence, which flew them along a pre-planned route in the event the drones lost signal. Such AI technology almost certainly would have been unavailable to Ukraine five years ago. “The way in which the Ukrainians brought this together is creative and obviously caught the Russians completely off guard,” Barrie said. Experts compared Sunday’s attack to Israel’s operation last year in which pagers used by members of the militant group Hezbollah exploded almost simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria. Israel also has used small, exploding drones to attack targets in Lebanon and Iran. With drones, “we are in the phase of figuring that out, and things are changing so rapidly that what works today might not work tomorrow,” he said The Tu-95 bombers hit by Ukraine are “effectively irreplaceable” because they’re no longer in production, said Hinz, the IISS expert. Ukraine said it also hit an A-50 early warning and control aircraft, similar to the West’s AWACS planes, that coordinate aerial attacks. Russia has even fewer of these.
nn: The drone represents the biggest change in warfare since the cannon
Oil firms amid geopolitical which will get worse
The price of oil climbed 1.7% on Thursday as ongoing geopolitical hotspots in the Middle East and Ukraine remained in focus and amid the strained trade relations between the United States and China, the two of the world’s largest economies. Simultaneously, the Chinese media reported that US President Donald Trump held a phone call with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. If confirmed, it would mark the first time the leaders spoke since the beginning of Trump’s second term and could have wide-reaching implications on bilateral relations between the two countries and the global economy. West Texas Intermediate futures for July contracts rose 1.59% at 9:45 am ET to exchange for $63.85 per barrel while Brent for the same month’s settlements advanced 1.37% at the same minute to go for $65.72 per barrel.
nn: this is just the start
Putin tells Trump he will respond to Ukraine’s strike
US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that Russian president Vladimir Putin “very strongly” told him in a call today that he’ll have to respond to Ukraine’s recent attack on Russian airfields. “It was a good conversation, but not a conversation that will lead to immediate Peace,” Trump wrote. Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) launched a major strike against four Russian air bases on Sunday, reporting successful hits on over 40 military planes “that bomb Ukrainian cities every night.” Ukraine stated the operation eliminated approximately one-third of Russia’s strategic bombing aircraft. “We also discussed Iran, and the fact that time is running out on Iran’s decision pertaining to nuclear weapons, which must be made very quickly!” Trump posted on Truth Social. “President Putin suggested that he will participate in the discussions with Iran and that he could, perhaps, be helpful in getting this brought to a rapid conclusion.”
IEA Weekly Petroleum Report
Weekly Petroleum Data for the week ending May 30, 2025
U.S. commercial crude oil inventories (excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) decreased by 4.3 million barrels from the previous week. At 436.1 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are about 7% below the five year average for this time of year U.S. crude oil refinery inputs averaged 17 million barrels per day during the week ending May 30, 2025, which was 670 thousand barrels per day more than the previous week’s average. Refineries operated at 93.4% of their operable capacity last week. Gasoline production decreased last week, averaging 9 million barrels per day. Distillate fuel production increased by 183 thousand barrels per day last week, averaging 5 million barrels per day. U.S. crude oil imports averaged 6.3 million barrels per day last week, decreased by 5 thousand barrels per day from the previous week. Over the past four weeks, crude oil imports averaged about 6.2 million barrels per day, 9.6% less than the same four-week period last year. Total motor gasoline imports (including both finished gasoline and gasoline blending components) last week averaged 845 thousand barrels per day, and distillate fuel imports averaged 166 thousand barrels per day.. Total motor gasoline inventories increased by 5.2 million barrels from last week and are about 1% below the five year average for this time of year. Both finished gasoline inventories and blending components inventories increased last week. Distillate fuel inventories increased by 4.2 million barrels last week and are about 16% below the five year average for this time of year. Propane/propylene inventories increased by 6.8 million barrels from last week and are 2% above the five year average for this time of year. Total commercial petroleum inventories increased by 12.9 million barrels last week. Total products supplied over the last four-week period averaged 19.8 million barrels a day, down by 0.9% from the same period last year. Over the past four weeks, motor gasoline product supplied averaged 8.8 million barrels a day, down by 3.1% from the same period last year. Distillate fuel product supplied averaged 3.6 million barrels a day over the past four weeks, down by 4.3% from the same period last year. Jet fuel product supplied was down 2.2 % compared with the same four-week period last year
Iran’s Khamenei dismisses US nuclear proposal
DUBAI, June 4 (Reuters) – Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday that abandoning uranium enrichment was “100%” against the country’s interests, rejecting a central U.S. demand in talks to resolve a decades-long dispute over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. The U.S. proposal for a new nuclear deal was presented to Iran on Saturday by Oman, which has mediated talks between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff.
The Reuters Tariff Watch newsletter is your daily guide to the latest global trade and tariff news. After five rounds of talks, several hard-to-bridge issues remain, including Iran’s insistence on maintaining uranium enrichment on its soil and Tehran’s refusal to ship abroad its entire existing stockpile of highly enriched uranium – possible raw material for nuclear bombs. Khamenei, who has the final say on all matters of state, said nothing about halting the talks, but said the U.S. proposal “contradicts our nation’s belief in self-reliance and the principle of ‘We Can'”.
“Uranium enrichment is the key to our nuclear programme and the enemies have focused on the enrichment,” NN: and since he is proven enriching to weapons grade that is proof his nuclear program is to make nukes
Khamenei said during a televised speech marking the anniversary of the death of the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. “The proposal that the Americans have presented is 100% against our interests … The rude and arrogant leaders of America repeatedly demand that we should not have a nuclear programme. Who are you to decide whether Iran should have enrichment?,” he added. Tehran says it wants to master nuclear technology for peaceful purposes and has long denied accusations by Western powers that it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Reuters reported on Monday that Tehran was poised to reject the U.S. proposal as a “non-starter” that failed to soften Washington’s stance on uranium enrichment or to address Tehran’s interests. Trump has revived his “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran since his return to the White House in January, which included tightening sanctions and threatening to bomb Iran if the negotiations yield no deal. Trump wants to curtail Tehran’s potential to produce a nuclear weapon that could trigger a regional nuclear arms race and perhaps threaten Israel. Iran’s clerical establishment, for its part, wants to be rid of devastating sanctions. During his first term, Trump ditched Tehran’s 2015 nuclear pact with six powers and reimposed sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy. Iran responded by escalating enrichment far beyond the pact’s limits.
Iran’s clerical establishment is grappling with multiple crises — energy and water shortages, a plunging currency, losses among regional militia proxies in conflicts with Israel, and rising fears of an Israeli strike on its nuclear sites — all intensified by Trump’s hardline stance.
Iran’s arch-foe Israel, which sees Tehran’s nuclear programme as an existential threat, has repeatedly threatened to bomb the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Tehran has vowed a harsh response.
Russia’s ‘Pearl Harbor
WASHINGTON − Ukraine destroyed dozens of enemy bombers using a horde of drones smuggled deep into Russia in a stunning attack that Russian war bloggers are calling Moscow’s Pearl Harbor. It was the most damaging Ukrainian attack on Russia in the three years since Moscow invaded. Ukrainian intelligence said the coordinated strikes on June 1 took a $7 billion toll on Russia’s military and demolished more than a third of Moscow’s strategic cruise missile carriers, including planes capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the massive attack, which he said used 117 drones, his country’s “longest-range operation.” Ukraine defends nation against Russian invasion Ukraine’s outgunned forces fight to repel Russia’s wide-ranging assault as invasion continues. “It had an absolutely brilliant outcome,” Zelenskyy said on Telegram. “Russia has had very tangible losses, and justifiably so.” Oksana Markarova, Kyiv’s ambassador to the United States, called the attack a “very successful defensive operation in Russia against Russian aircraft that, on a daily basis, bomb our hospitals and schools and kill our kids.” Speaking at an AI event in Washington, Markarova said it was “the best example of how innovation can and should work in defense.” With Ukraine set to meet Russia for U.S.-brokered peace talks the next day and amid aggressive Russian advances on the battlefield, the ambitious June 1 attack showed neither side is counting on a breakthrough in negotiations. “We hope that the response will be the same as the US response to the attack on their Pearl Harbor or even tougher,” Russian war blogger Roman Alekhin wrote on Telegram, comparing the Ukrainian strike to the 1941 Japanese raid on a U.S. base in Hawaii. “It is impossible to restore these losses,” reported Rybar, a pro-Kremlin Telegram channel. The comparisons between the Ukrainian drone attack and the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack bandied by pro-Russian bloggers were not historically accurate. The operation, code-named “Spider’s Web,” was characteristic of the style of warfare Ukraine has made its brand as it attempts to undercut Russia’s larger military – flooding the zone with cheap, deadly drones. But the scope of this attack set a new precedent. The drones, strapped with explosives, were hidden inside the roofs of wooden sheds, which were dropped off by trucks at the outer edge of Russian military bases, a Ukrainian security official told Reuters. Ukraine’s intelligence service said 41 Russian aircraft were hit at four air bases stretching from the Finnish border to Siberia. One targeted base, in the Irkutsk region, lies more than 2,600 miles from the front lines, making it the farthest target Ukraine has hit during the conflict.
Ukraine launched a massive attack on Russia’s military bases using more than a hundred hidden drones on Sunday.
Sofiia Gatilova, REUTERS
Russia’s defense ministry acknowledged in Telegram messages June 1 that drones launched “from an area in close proximity to airfields resulted in several aircraft catching fire.”
NN: brilant!!
Oil Bulls Bite Back as Prices Defy Expectations
- OPEC+ confirmed another 411,000 bpd production increase for July, but oil prices rose instead of falling.
- Additional supply disruptions from Alberta wildfires and strong seasonal demand expectations helped offset concerns over weaker Asian oil imports.
- Analysts expect demand to rise into the summer, with ING and Goldman Sachs both citing tighter market conditions
OPEC+ did what everyone expected it to do last weekend, announcing another production ramp-up. Prices, however, did something that not everyone expected them to do: they went up. All eyes are now on demand—and the disruption of supply. The eight members of OPEC+ that were keeping their production of crude oil under restraints agreed on Saturday to add another 411,000 barrels daily to their combined total in July after making identical agreements for May and June. The news followed speculation reported by the media that the cartel could add more barrels this time just to teach everyone a lesson. That speculation had weakened prices. The OPEC+ decision essentially had no effect on them. But events that coincided with the OPEC+ meeting did have an effect.
First, there was the Ukrainian drone attack on targets within Russia. The attack prompted expectations of more, with the targets this time part of Russia’s oil infrastructure, leading to supply disruptions.
Then there is the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal, which just got more unlikely, with media reporting Iran was about to reject the latest proposal of the United States. This, in turn, means, that U.S. sanctions against the country will remain in place, notably the noose around Iran’s oil industry. Iran was not going to agree to completely halt its uranium enrichment activities, which the U.S. has proposed as a condition for reaching a deal, Reuters reported, so the prospect of a deal became distant again.To add to the bullish developments, wildfire season in Alberta has started prompting production shutdowns, to date affecting more than 340,000 barrels daily. This is equal to 7% of the total, Reuters noted, but it has been enough to fuel a price rally—and imply that demand for oil is healthier than many like to argue. Once again, oil market players were reminded that it’s not so important what this forecaster or another says about demand and how global supply exceeds it. It’s important what happens in the real, physical world, and in that world, demand for oil remains as robust as it has been since the end of the pandemic lockdowns, the gradual weakening of China’s appetite for crude notwithstanding. “Demand is set to pick up as we move into the summer months, suggesting prices are likely to remain relatively well supported,” ING commodity analysts wrote in a new note today, after earlier this week Goldman Sachs somewhat grudgingly acknowledged seasonal oil demand patterns that point to equally stronger prices ahead. “Relatively tight spot oil fundamentals, beats in hard global activity data, and seasonal summer support to oil demand suggest that the expected demand slowdown is unlikely to be sharp enough to stop raising production when deciding on August production levels on July 6th,” the bank said in a note Monday.
Indeed, not only is geopolitics making oil bears nervous, but summer driving season is advancing, and the shock of Trump’s tariff-first approach to trade policies is subsiding.
Oil is currently quite affordable, which would stimulate demand, and its immediate supply outlook is uncertain, which often acts as fuel for prices.
Pioneer Of AI Warns “Everyone Will Die” If It Isn’t Shut Down
AI technology has been developing at an exponential rate, and it appears to be just a matter of time before we create entities that can think millions of times faster than we do and that can do almost everything better than we can. So what is going to happen when we lose control of such entities? Some AI models are already taking the initiative to teach themselves new languages, and others have learned to “lie and manipulate humans for their own advantage”. Needless to say, lying is a hostile act. If we have already created entities that are willing to lie to us, how long will it be before they are capable of taking actions that are even more harmful to us? Nobody expects artificial intelligence to kill all of us tomorrow. But Time Magazine did publish an article that was authored by a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence that warned that artificial intelligence will eventually wipe all of us out. Eliezer Yudkowsky has been a prominent researcher in the field of artificial intelligence since 2001, and he says that many researchers have concluded that if we keep going down the path that we are currently on “literally everyone on Earth will die”…
NN: something to think about