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And now, news!

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

Table of Contents

• OpenAI Models Went Rogue, Attacked Library

• GLP-1 Giants Take Their Battle to Court

• Judge Hits Pause on Paramount/WB Merger

• NILF Summer: 105 Million Americans Aren’t Working

• Why Did Walmart Sign a Nuclear Power Deal?

• Poll of the Day: Not in the Labor Force?

• Poll Result of the Day: Adult Play-Doh Is Okay!

What’s the Stock Market Up To, Eh?

$SPX ( ▼ 0.14% )  $DJI ( ▼ 0.01% )  $NDX ( ▲ 1.59% )  

Companies Mentioned in Today’s Newsletter

$OPEAZZX ( ▼ 2.67% )  $NVO ( ▼ 2.41% )  $LLY ( ▼ 1.06% )  $PSKY ( ▲ 2.93% )  $WBD ( ▲ 0.08% )  $DIS ( ▼ 0.28% )  $NFLX ( ▼ 0.2% )  $WMT ( ▼ 0.96% )  

OpenAI Models Went Rogue, Attacked Library

If you're still lying awake worrying about AI taking your job, I’ve got some good news: AI might actually just want to destroy our civilization. That’s right. Stealing your job is apparently the least of the robots’ concerns!

In a heartwarming preview of our possible cybernetic subjugation, two OpenAI $OPEAZZX ( ▼ 2.67% ) models broke out of their digital cages to launch a cyberattack on a library last week. OpenAI decided to see what happens when you combine something called GPT-5.6 Sol and another “highly powerful, unreleased model” to test their "cybersecurity capabilities." Kept in a supposedly secure "sandbox" environment, the models quickly found a loophole, escaped to the internet, and targeted (checks notes) a massive digital library called “Hugging Face” because they realized it held clues to passing their evaluation.

Yes, the robots broke out of prison to cheat on a test.

UC Berkeley professor Dierdre Mulligan was shocked by the incompetence: "It seems to me that OpenAI did not adequately create a sandbox as a test environment," she told the New York Times, questioning if passing a test is worth "an A.I. model’s escaping into the wider internet."

I’m about as shocked as Captain Renault’s character in Casablanca was to hear that there was gambling going on in the back of Rick’s. OpenAI, which still wants to float at some point on the stock market for like a trillion dollars, LOL, has gone into damage-control mode: "We consider this to be an unprecedented cyber incident... and are responding accordingly," the company blogged, promising "strict controls" at the cost of speed, from now on. From now on.

Meanwhile, Hugging Face CEO Clem “This Is Really My Name” Delangue reacted with Stockholm-syndrome levels of politeness, telling reporters he was "grateful for the collaboration" and that this hack "proves a point we’ve long believed: A.I. safety won’t be solved by any single company working in secret.”

Sleep tight!

Quote of the Day

GLP-1 Giants Take Their Battle to Court

My favorite part of New York Magazine’s unironic guide to spending summer in the Hamptons was the don’t-ask-don’t-tell advice about everybody’s GLP1 medication.

“Everyone is on the shot,” said a “Hamptons insider.” "It’s taken as a given.”

And so. It was only a matter of time before the high-stakes battle to make billions of dollars from shrinking our waistlines moved to the courtroom. Novo Nordisk $NVO ( ▼ 2.41% ) has sued Eli Lilly $LLY ( ▼ 1.06% ) in a New Jersey federal court, claiming Lilly’s massive advertising campaigns are misleading consumers about whose weight-loss injections reign supreme.

At the center of this spat is a television commercial making the highly disputed claim that patients on Lilly’s Zepbound lose an average of 50 pounds, compared to a mere 33 pounds on Novo’s Wegovy. Obviously, you’d choose Zepbound on that basis and I think that might explain why Wegovy’s manufacturer is suing, ya’ know?

Novo is not happy. They argue Lilly is comparing its own highest dose to an older, lower dose of Wegovy, while completely ignoring Novo's newly approved 7.2-milligram high-dose version, which boasts a much more competitive 47-pound average loss.

Novo complains that Lilly only acknowledges the existence of this high-dose Wegovy in a "small footnote" that is "ambiguous, confusing, virtually illegible, and wholly inadequate." The suit alleges Lilly pulled the same trick comparing Mounjaro and Ozempic.

Novo’s group general counsel, John Kuckelman, explained that the ads leave consumers with "the inevitable conclusion that Lilly’s medicines are superior to Novo’s, and that’s not accurate." He added, "They have, we think, a legal obligation, but even more important, they have a responsibility to patients to share accurate information.”

That’s a sick burn, I must admit, even from a lawyer. Lilly, however, is standing its ground. The company defended its ads as "truthful, it is transparent, and it is grounded in the most direct scientific evidence available — exactly what patients deserve." They plan to "defend against this lawsuit vigorously," sticking to their head-to-head clinical trial as the gold standard.

While the two pharmaceutical titans duke it out over footnote font sizes and milligram comparisons, the rest of us will just have to watch and see which multi-billion-dollar syringe comes out on top. Meanwhile…I’m off to CrossFit.

Judge Hits Pause on Paramount/WB Merger

Unless you are an antitrust lawyer, a corporate merger probably sounds like a great excuse for a nap. But a federal judge just slapped a temporary restraining order on the massive $81 billion Paramount $PSKY ( ▲ 2.93% )  and Warner Bros. Discovery $WBD ( ▲ 0.08% )  merger, and that’s actually rather interesting, if you ask me.

Paramount has promised its shareholders an added "ticking fee" of about $7 million per day if the merger deal isn’t finalized by September 30. Because District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín paused the deal for at least two weeks, Paramount is now watching the clock more closely.

Twelve states are suing to stop the merger, terrified of what Democratic California Attorney General Rob Bonta calls a "media behemoth" that will control a third of movie distribution and basic cable. Bonta didn’t mention that the combined operation will still be considerably smaller than Disney’s $DIS ( ▼ 0.28% ) $167 billion market capitalization, or Netflix’s $NFLX ( ▼ 0.2% )  $315 billion, but I assume that’s because those are inconvenient facts when it comes to making his argument.

Bonta cheered the pause as a "critical first win," warning that history shows what happens when a few people have great power: "Fewer opportunities for more people, worse products and services for all people,” he said, grandstanding just a touch.

If this goes through, Harry Potter, CNN, Top Gun, and CBS will live under one giant roof, which sounds like quite a fun roof to be under, to be fair. Better yet, imagine a single, massive streaming app called "Max-Paramount-Plus-Extreme.” Or something. I would sign up for that, I think, as long as it featured The Sopranos and Top Gun: Maverick. Paramount dismissed the states' antitrust claims as "without merit" and lacking "any basis in modern market realities." Sorta like an episode in the Star Wars franchise, which, of course, is now owned by Disney.

Meanwhile, New York AG Letitia James called it a "political merger," adding defiantly, "we’re not finished yet.”

Evidently.

Song of the Day: aron!, ‘Not For A Lack of Trying’

“Not For A Lack Of Trying” is the breezy, romantic new indie-pop single by singer-songwriter aron!, released in July 2026. Despite the singer’s stupidly spelled and punctuated first name, the track serves as the celebratory announcement for his highly anticipated debut studio album, Too Close For Running, scheduled to drop in September, and it’s rather pleasant on the ears.

NILF Summer: 105 Million Americans Aren’t Working

Welcome to the era of what the New York Post is dubbing "Hot NILF Summer"! A mind-boggling 105.8 million adults are currently "Not in the Labor Force" (NILF), fueled by a surge of 832,000 workers dropping out in June, alone. This means only 59% of Americans are actually in the labor market.

Sure, about half are retirees, and 19 million are students. But the real stars of this leisure revolution are the able-bodied, “prime-age” adults who simply decided work is a vibe they aren't feeling. According to leading labor economist Nicholas Eberstadt, we have a "big problem…with the flight from work of prime-age men." Roughly 7 million prime-age men (ages 25 to 54) have checked out completely. They also have 3.5 million female "doppelgangers," Eberstadt says — women with no jobs, no desire to find one, no husbands, and no kids under their roof.

These aren't folks unable to work. As Eberstadt points out, "These are the healthiest, best educated Americans that have ever lived on the planet." While other aging countries like Europe and Japan are actually seeing workforce participation go up, America's dropouts are on the rise. So, what are these healthy prime-timers doing? They certainly aren't volunteering or doing chores. Instead, they are "spending 2,000 hours a year in front of a screen," which Eberstadt warns is "a great warm-up act for becoming a statistic in deaths of despair.”

Evidently he hasn’t watched Netflix lately. I mean there is some great stuff on there, pal. Seriously. With millions of workers not looking for work, America's hottest new career path is apparently digital hibernation in your sweatpants. Vive la revolucion!

Why Did Walmart Sign a Nuclear Power Deal?

Have you ever stared at your phone, ordered a pack of tube socks, and expected them to arrive at your door in under 30 minutes? If so, congratulations: You are part of the reason Walmart $WMT ( ▼ 0.96% ) is going nuclear.

Yes, really. Retail giant Walmart has signed a massive 15-year deal to buy nuclear power from Constellation Energy in Illinois. They are routing power from the Dresden Clean Energy Center in Illinois directly to a brand-new, ultra-high-tech perishable distribution center currently under development in Belvidere, Illinois.

While you might think of nuclear reactors as the domain of sci-fi blockbusters or dramatic action movies, David Bellinger, senior equity analyst at Mizuho $MFG ( ▲ 1.35% ) , explains that the sheer amount of electricity required to get your groceries delivered instantly is driving this high-stakes shift. Retailers are desperately racing to keep up with automation and robot-fueled e-commerce.

As Bellinger puts it: "So much of this business being powered by e-commerce, same day free, delivered in a pretty minute... There's just a massive amount of [energy] needed to get these items shipped out, automated centers, a lot to go here."

Walmart isn't just running a standard warehouse with drafty shelves in Belvidere. They are building a highly automated, futuristic grocery fulfillment center. To keep ice cream frozen and lettuce crisp under one roof, you need serious, uninterrupted, round-the-clock juice. In other words? Try keeping a football-field-sized freezer at negative five degrees on standard solar panels while a small army of robots zips around.

Usually, as we all know, when a massive tech or retail giant rolls into town, they hog the power grid and drive up local electric bills. But instead of making the citizens of Illinois furious, Walmart's deal supports investment in efficiency upgrades — called "uprates"— at the Dresden facility, allowing it to produce more power without building a whole new plant.

Bellinger flags this clever, politically digestible PR move: "There's some connotation that you're taking power away from local communities, press on the grid, raising costs for everyone... Walmart is a more holistic approach here, where they're not stealing energy from locals."

If only other major companies would follow their lead. And next time your ultra-fast delivery arrives in record time, remember: It might just be powered by a nuclear reactor.

Free Yourself From Advertising Forever!

Should You Check Your 401(k) Today?

👎️ 

Nope. Magnificent Seven tech earnings were due after the closing bell yesterday, which meant stocks essentially traded flat.

Poll of the Day: Not in the Labor Force?

Poll Result of the Day: Adult Play-Doh Is Okay!

We asked: Where are you on this new adult Play-Doh?

You answered:

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 The idea is perhaps a tad ridiculous in principle but actually the kits look quite fun, and I like what they're doing. (274)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ It's a solid play-NO-h from this grown-up adult, I'm afraid, there, son... (167)
441 Votes via @beehiiv polls

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