With a looming IPO, intense competition from Anthropic, and Chinese and open-weight rivals nipping at its heels, OpenAI has plenty of reasons to move fast. Instead, it hit the brakes.

On Tuesday, the company said it had slowed the pace of some AI development while it tightened security and safeguards. That included a two-week pause in reinforcement learning training on its "latest models intended for deployment," and an ongoing delay to its "largest planned frontier RL run."

The decision is a very public test of an idea AI safety advocates have pushed for for years: that companies should be willing to bow out of the AI race and slow things …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The U.S. phone provider escaped a large-scale breach of its network after identifying Chinese-backed hackers early on.

Can President Donald Trump pen a new chapter in his love story with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un? 

In Trump’s first term, the two leaders, in Trump’s words, “fell in love” after exchanging letters and held three historic meetings, but failed to make much progress toward the goal of denuclearizing the heavily armed hermit state. 

Now, Trump appears to be trying to recapture the magic, reportedly urging aides to set up a meeting with Kim as soon as this fall. This news comes soon after Trump’s Truth Social post on Sunday announcing he had ordered the US military to “substantially reduce” joint military exercises with ally South Korea in part because it would send “a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful” — North Korea. 

Trump has claimed, without elaborating, that Kim has responded to this overture, but there’s been no public response from Pyongyang yet. 

Trump’s outreach didn’t come entirely out of nowhere. Trump has made clear since the beginning of his term that he would like to meet with Kim again, and there was speculation that a meeting might happen when Trump traveled to South Korea for a summit last fall. North Korea’s UN Mission in New York has also rebuffed several attempts by US officials to deliver a personal letter from Trump seeking to restart dialogue. 

In the midst of an unpopular conflict with Iran that seems unlikely to end in anything resembling a victory, it makes sense that Trump might be reaching back to what he sees as one of the foreign policy high points of his first term. “Kim Jong ​Un has always treated me with great respect,” Trump told reporters on Monday. “I understand him. He understands me.”

Beyond reconnecting with an old friend, it’s not entirely clear what Trump actually wants out of North Korea. But if his goal is a new diplomatic breakthrough, that will be even harder than it was the first time: The country is a much different place than it was the last time the two leaders sat down and even if they were to meet again, Kim seems even less likely to make real concessions. 

Like it or not, North Korea is a nuclear power now

Analysts believe North Korea possesses around 50 nuclear weapons with enough fissile material to build 40 more. It has missiles that are theoretically capable of reaching the US mainland. There was a time when the North Koreans were willing to at least discuss giving up their program in exchange for sanctions relief and major concessions on US military support to South Korea, but that time is probably over, partly thanks to Trump’s own actions. 

“There is no chance that North Korea is going to denuclearize. Zero chance,” said Joseph Yun, a veteran US-North Korea negotiator who recently served as acting US ambassador to South Korea. “They have seen what happened to Iran. They have seen what happened to Ukraine. The way they see it, their nuclear weapons are what protects them.” Last year, the country’s official news agency dismissed denuclearization as an “unrealizable pipe dream.”

On top of that, North Korea is in a much stronger negotiating position than it was the last time these two leaders met for a photo op.

“It’s a very different North Korea now. It’s stronger geopolitically, and Kim is stronger domestically.”

Jung Pak, served as US special representative for North Korea in the Biden administration

In 2018, North Korea was heavily isolated and struggling under an international sanctions regime that was at least officially — if not always in practice — supported by China and Russia as well as the United States. For a young leader still looking to establish his internal legitimacy and international standing, a meeting with the sitting US president was a major coup. 

But things improved dramatically for North Korea after the pandemic. After it began lifting its Covid-era lockdown — one of the toughest in the world — North Korea has become what the Wall Street Journal has called “the world’s most unlikely growth story.”

The country’s economy has grown for three straight years, and while it’s still an impoverished country where nearly half the population is malnourished, Pyongyang is by all accounts booming, with thousands of new homes built along with a surge in Western-style restaurants and ride-hailing apps. 

“North Korea emerged from the pandemic stronger, despite the odds,” said Jung Pak, who served as US special representative for North Korea in the Biden administration. “It’s a very different North Korea now. It’s stronger geopolitically, and Kim is stronger domestically.”

North Korea has been one of the main beneficiaries of the war in Ukraine, sending thousands of soldiers and munitions to help the Russian war effort. While thousands of those troops have died, the North Korean regime has gained billions of dollars in revenue and military aid from Russia in response, as well as invaluable battlefield experience for its commanders and weapons systems.     

Russian President Vladimir Putin has come through for the North Koreans in other ways. In 2024, Russia vetoed the mandate of the UN body that monitored the enforcement of international sanctions on North Korea, effectively shredding the international sanctions regime. In 2025, trade between North Korea and China, its main economic partner, rose 25 percent.  

The regime has found other innovative ways of raising revenue, reportedly netting billions through cybercrime targeted at foreign banks and cryptocurrency exchanges. 

Kim is also less desperate for legitimacy these days. In September 2025, he stood alongside Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin at a massive military parade in Beijing, a powerful demonstration of unity among three US adversaries. These days, Kim likely feels he’s the one being wooed. Xi’s high profile trip to Pyongyang in June was interpreted by many as a sign that China, warily eyeing the increasingly close relationship between Russia and North Korea, was looking to shore up its ties with its longtime ally. 

Domestically, when the world’s first millennial dictator took power after his father died in 2011, many wondered how long he would last. Today, he’s feeling secure enough to be thinking about long-term handoff plans, publicly positioning his 13-year-old daughter as his future successor. 

Kim is clearly not desperate to meet with Trump, and these days, the United States has fewer means to pressure him. Without Chinese and Russian support, the US can only dial up international sanctions so much. As for military pressure, the US has been moving military assets out of the Korean peninsula to the Middle East and recently redeployed its last aircraft carrier out of Asia. 

As Trump’s actions this week demonstrate, he’s not all that interested in working with US allies in the region to pressure the North Koreans. But if he were considering pairing his warm overtures to Kim with a stick, a “fire and fury” threat wouldn’t pack the same punch today.  

Is there any reason for new US-North Korea talks?

Still, there are reasons Kim might want to sit down with Trump again. North Korea would still like US sanctions lifted. Kim’s influential sister has stated that the regime is looking for the US for formally accept its status as a nuclear power, as Russia has now done.  

Former US State Department North Korea negotiator Joel Wit suspects that given Trump’s desperation for talks, Pyongyang might try to press it advantage even further. 

“If I was a North Korean, I would ask the United States for what I would call a ‘peace agenda,’” he said. “That would mean more than just reducing the size of US-[South Korean] exercises. It could include cutting back on US troops in South Korea or even Guam.”

Trump, who has repeatedly, including in his recent Truth Social post, made clear that he sees the US military presence in South Korea as a waste and the South Koreans as coddled, wealthy freeloaders, might be amenable to concessions like this. 

But what could the US get out of talking to North Korea if denuclearization is off the table? Some analysts have suggested a limited deal might be possible, which could see North Korea dismantle its reactors or some of its centrifuges, slowing down the growth of its nuclear program if not eliminating it. 

Pak also noted that given North Korea’s refusal to engage in nearly any diplomacy with the US since 2019, just holding talks and building some confidence between the two sides would be progress. “The meeting itself would be the win,” Pak said. 

On the other hand, holding talks that do not explicitly aim at eliminating North Korea’s nuclear program would be seen as effectively accepting that North Korea is a nuclear power now. At this point, there’s a strong realist case to be made for accepting North Korea’s nuclear status and proceeding from there, but it’s hard to square with the administration’s stance on Iran’s nuclear program. 

It’s also likely that the kind of incremental concessions North Korea might, in the best of circumstances, be willing to offer, would not satisfy a US president with a penchant for grand bargains. 

In his first term, just the fact that Trump and Kim sat down made history. Now that that’s been accomplished, they may find that, like many a romance a few years in, they’ve run out of things to talk about. 

The cyberattack at CareCloud resulted in one of the largest reported data breaches in the U.S. healthcare industry this year.

In dieser Episode sprechen Pauline von Pezold und Frederik Schindler dem Spitzenkandidaten der AfD für Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Leif-Erik Holm. Im Vorfeld der Landtagswahlen am 20. September geht es mit Holm um seine Ambitionen auf das Amt des Ministerpräsidenten und sein Vorhaben, notfalls durch eine Kooperation mit der CDU oder Tolerierungsmodelle an die Macht zu kommen. Obwohl er sich gleichzeitig die „Altparteien“ auf den „Müllhaufen der Geschichte“ wünscht.

Zudem konfrontieren die beiden Holm mit seiner energiepolitischen Kernforderung nach einer Rückkehr zu russischem Gas. Sie haken nach, wie sich diese Strategie mit den Importverboten der EU und dem Angriffskrieg Russlands gegen die Ukraine vereinbaren lässt und ob die AfD damit nicht sehenden Auges neue energie- und sicherheitspolitische Abhängigkeiten für Deutschland in Kauf nimmt.

Ein weiterer kritischer Fokus des Interviews liegt auf dem Personal des Landesverbandes.
Schindler und von Pezold befragen Holm zum neuen Generalsekretär seiner Partei sowie Vorstandsmitgliedern der Parteijugend Generation Deutschland, die teils eine Vergangenheit in der rechtsextremen NPD haben.

„Inside AfD“ ist der POLITICO-Podcast über die umstrittenste Partei des Landes. Trotz Radikalisierung und Beobachtung durch den Verfassungsschutz wächst die AfD weiter. Wie ist das möglich? Was treibt ihre Anhänger, Strategen und Gegner an? Wie funktioniert das Innenleben der Partei? Und was bedeutet ihr Aufstieg für das politische System Deutschlands?

Antworten liefern immer mittwochs Pauline von Pezold von POLITICO und Frederik Schindler von WELT — unaufgeregt, aber kritisch.

Fragen und Feedback gern an insideafd@politico.eu.

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France will expel two Iranian diplomats after Tehran’s security services detained and interrogated two French Embassy staffers last month, Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot announced Tuesday evening.

The row dates back to July 19, when two French Embassy employees in Tehran — one of them the cultural attaché — were questioned for several hours and “beaten,” according to Barrot. Paris accused Iranian security services of carrying out a “premeditated and deliberate” act of intimidation in “flagrant violation” of diplomatic protections, summoning Iran’s chargé d’affaires two days later.

“It is precisely because France stands alongside the Iranian people” that the July 19 incident was especially outrageous, Barrot wrote on X Tuesday. The two French diplomats were “scandalously and deliberately assaulted,” he said, calling their treatment “intolerable.”

Tehran disputes that account. Iran’s foreign ministry says the French diplomats violated the Vienna Convention through activities it considers interference in Iranian affairs and has since declared both persona non grata, barring them from returning to Iran after they left the country.

French foreign ministry spokesperson Pascal Confavreux hit back Tuesday, accusing Tehran of making “completely false accusations” against the French diplomats and of “fabricating an interference case” to justify its actions.

The people-search tool ClarityCheck says its reverse image search service is “private and secure”—but it left a database containing more than 9 million image files exposed.

Flock’s surveillance cameras have already sparked outrage. WIRED reconstructed its next-generation AI system, already in use by some police, to confirm it goes much further than tracking license plates.

President Donald Trump dropped a political bombshell on the Korean peninsula this week.

But security officials say the president’s threats to curtail a major military exercise with South Korea will do little to undermine the detente between Seoul and Pyongyang.

Trump’s declaration Sunday that he would instruct the Pentagon to cut back on annual drills sent Seoul’s leaders scrambling to repair the damage. But the president appears more focused on pushing for investment from the country than trying to upend defenses against North Korea’s nuclear threat. And that means security on the world’s most militarized border hasn’t significantly changed.

The U.S. has more than 28,000 troops stationed on the peninsula, along with thick layers of air defenses. It has worked hand in glove with the Korean military for decades, a powerful joint force that works closely at every level. The border between a nuclear-armed North Korea and the U.S. ally to its south is a case study in mutually assured destruction. And top commanders in Seoul and Washington remain in tight contact.

“I don’t think this is cataclysmic,” said Sydney Seiler, former national intelligence officer for North Korea at the National Intelligence Council.

Defense officials were tight-lipped about what Trump’s announcement would mean in terms of concrete changes to military exercises. The Pentagon would only say that it is “is actively working on executing the commander-in-chief’s directive.”

Trump’s order, and his praise of dictator North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s “unthreatening and respectful” behavior, came days after the secretive nation launched its second ballistic missile test in a week. It flew over 430 miles before landing just outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone.

Some American lawmakers said the optics were horrible, particularly Trump’s seeming desire to appease a totalitarian regime.

“Kim Jong Un has won a propaganda victory and South Korea, one of our strongest allies, has been punished for no reason beyond Trump’s ego,” said Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee. “China and Russia are watching how easily this president abandons America’s allies, and they will remember it the next time they test us.”

The order affects a major exercise, Ulchi Freedom Shield, a staple of the alliance since it was first held in 1976. The drills this year were scheduled to begin Monday and encompass 14 different exercises over 11 days, ranging from cyber warfare to defending against drone attacks and GPS jamming. Officials are especially worried that North Korea received Russian technologies and know-how about electronic jamming after it sent tens of thousands of troops to help Russia’s war against Ukraine.

“The alliance will manage through, [although] this is clearly a rough patch,” said Victor Cha, a former National Security Council official during the George W. Bush administration and now Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Trump’s criticism of South Korea is particularly surprising because it’s a departure from comments by top Pentagon officials, who have repeatedly praised Seoul for increasing defense spending.

Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby called South Korea “a model ally” in a January speech in Seoul, and lauded its commitment to the alliance. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also praised the relationship several times this year, including when his South Korean counterpart visited the Pentagon in May.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on Tuesday sought to soothe concerns over a rift. He said in a Cabinet meeting that “a strong alliance makes the foundation of security stronger, and strengthening our own capabilities increases our value and necessity as an ally.”

Many officials remain puzzled about why Trump would abruptly curtail an annual exercise that has taken place reliably for 50 years. There’s some precedent. He had railed against expensive exercises in South Korea during his first term and the Pentagon did scale back some large joint operations. But Ulchi Freedom Shield is a cornerstone of the military-to-military relationship.

The effort — a combination of a tabletop, virtual event and physical exercises — will continue in some form. But U.S. officials indicated that military leadership is trying to find ways to modify the event to meet the president’s demands. And the announcement underscores that American support remains at the whim of an unpredictable president.

Some of the president’s motivation is likely financial. South Korea pledged last year to invest $350 billion in the U.S., but Trump officials believe its government is slow-walking its commitment, POLITICO has reported.

“The thing about Trump is it’s all very transactional,” said Cha. “So if they announce a first tranche of investments, he’ll be fine, right?”

But Asian allies are closely watching whether the distancing from traditional backers will continue, particularly movement of some critical American military assets out of the Pacific region. The USS George Washington aircraft carrier left port in Tokyo this month and is heading west. It will presumably go to the Middle East and replace the beleaguered USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, which is on the ninth month of an extended deployment.

The Pentagon relocated some elements of the THAAD missile defense system earlier this year from South Korea as part of a wider shift to the Middle East.

Lawmakers are also watching warily. Congress voted last year to restrict the Pentagon from reducing troop levels on the Korean peninsula below 28,500 unless the Pentagon certifies doing so is in the national interest and conducted after consultation with South Korea and other allies.

Lawmakers appear poised to extend those restrictions again in the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act.

“Reduced training hurts American preparedness too,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.). “If we have moral clarity, then we’d treat [South Korea] as our ally and know North Korea is a dictatorship and slave labor state. … The president is wrong here.”

Conor O’Brien and Leo Shane contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump is waiting for Iran to cave to his economic pressure. Tehran may be willing to wait even longer.

Even as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent promises a level of economic isolation “never seen before,” former Trump administration officials, U.S. ambassadors and other Middle East experts are skeptical that tightening the economic vise will force Iran to relinquish its desire to toll ships passing through the State of Hormuz and make the other concessions Trump is demanding to bring an end to the war.

“It’s an attrition campaign, and I am sure Treasury tweaks this or that to fill gaps or expand coverage of sanctions,” said James Jeffrey, a former ambassador who served in the Middle East during three presidential administrations, including Trump’s first term. “But, it’s hard to believe [there will be] something decisive after 20 years of U.S. sanctions and Iranian experience of going around them.”

It’s an acknowledgement that underscores the asymmetry of the situation. The Trump administration is staring down a consequential midterm election amid an unpopular war that has sent oil prices back up to roughly $90 a barrel and helped push long-term borrowing costs to their highest level in nearly two decades as hope dims that a peace deal is near.

Iran’s leaders, meanwhile, see the conflict as existential, giving Tehran reason to absorb the extraordinary economic pain rather than accept terms it believes could imperil the regime — especially as U.S. inflation remains elevated and treasuries sell off.

The yield on 30-year U.S. government bonds, a figure Trump has in the past been attuned to, jumped on Tuesday to its highest level since just before the global financial crisis.

The increase in the yield to its highest level in nearly two decades isn’t solely because of the six-month war; global fuel shortages and broader instability have kept energy prices higher for longer, increasing the threat of persistent inflation. And that’s heaped even more risk on global bond markets that have repeatedly blanched at Trump-related shocks.

“We are in a situation where we’re spending more and more to finance more and more,” said Julia Coronado, founder of MacroPolicy Perspectives. And the war has created “a riskier world full of more frictions, full of more supply shocks.”

Iran’s outsized incentive to muscle through the pain is partly why some former administration officials doubt that the naval blockade, while unprecedented in its scale in the modern era or whatever new strategies Bessent may unveil, will change Iran’s calculus.

“I think the economic pressure would need to hit them in new ways we haven’t seen so far to change the mindset of the regime,” said one former Trump administration official, granted anonymity to candidly assess the impact of the U.S.’s economic pressure campaign.

The administration has yet to indicate what further action it plans to take, but options include going after major Chinese banks that facilitate Iran’s oil trade, expand secondary sanctions on countries doing business with Iran and confiscating Iranian assets under U.S. jurisdiction instead of just freezing them.

Iranian leaders publicly mocked U.S. efforts to sanction them into submission.

“Americans think squeezing Iran harder will win concessions that were never part of the agreement,” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, posted on X Tuesday.

“Bessent and [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth are way out of their league,” he wrote. “Stop waiting for the clown crew to pull a rabbit out of their hat and clean up the mess you made.”

White House aides, however, continue to contend that the leverage is on its side.

“The crushing sanctions and one of the most successful blockades that have crippled Iran’s economy and has left Iran completely broke,” said one administration official, granted anonymity to share the U.S.’s thinking. “There are many levers the president can crank harder in the weeks and months ahead.”

In the half-year since the Iran war began, the president has deployed an array of pressure tactics to choke Iran economically, including physically preventing the country from selling its most important export — oil — as part of an ongoing naval blockade of Iranian ports. The administration has also sanctioned foreign buyers of Iranian oil, targeted the country’s shadow fleet of ships that ferries it and sought to cut the country off from the financial networks it uses to move money.

That economic pressure has sent Iran’s economy, which was already troubled before the war, into a deeper tailspin. Now, Iran is grappling with year-over-year inflation of 88 percent, long lines and rationing at gas pumps and food prices that have more than doubled.

But those who have worked on previous Iran negotiations say that’s far from enough to get the regime to cave, especially after six months of U.S. bombing that has killed, by Tehran’s own measure, more than 3,000 Iranians.

“It’s undeniable that there is economic pressure. The question is whether there is a breaking point, and I would say for a regime that is fighting for its life and has never hesitated to transfer economic pain to its population, there is no breaking point,” said Ali Vaez, the International Crisis Group’s Iran project director, who helped work to bridge differences between Iran and world powers during negotiations over the 2015 nuclear agreement.

Yet Trump continued to project patience on Tuesday, signaling that he was prepared to let the pressure campaign play out.

“There are no talks or conversations going on, or scheduled, with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Naval Blockade remains in full force and effect. The Hormuz Strait is open and operating. All water mines have been removed or detonated. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

A senior White House official, granted anonymity to discuss the situation in Iran, insisted that Iran will cave long before the pain in the U.S. or world markets become intolerable.

“Ultimately we want a deal, but in the interim, the Iranian economy is tanking … people are lining up for gas, just for a half gallon of gas. And there’s a lot of civil unrest going on in Iran, that’s not being played on the news for whatever reason,” the official said late last week. “We’re fine if that’s the route they want to take.”

Still, there are signs inside the White House that the economic impacts are a growing concern. Vice President JD Vance last week said on Fox News that the administration’s first goal in the Iran war was to “keep oil and gas cheap for Americans all over the country.” The president, meanwhile, has repeatedly insisted voters will bear the pain of higher gas prices for an end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The voters have a more dyspeptic view. A Reuters/Ipsos survey released this week showed Trump’s approval rating at 33 percent, the lowest level of his presidency. Roughly 80 percent of Americans — 87 percent of Democrats and 71 percent of Republicans — think U.S. involvement in Iran “will go on for an extended period of time,” the poll found.

But some former Trump administration officials, however, are holding out hope that patience will be rewarded and that the administration’s economic pressure campaign will work, in part because they see the other options on the table, including putting U.S. boots on the ground in Iran, as politically untenable.

Fred Fleitz, Trump’s former National Security Council chief of staff and vice chair of the American First Policy Institute’s American Security, predicted that the U.S. could be “dealing with a different Iran” in 30 to 60 days.

“I think patience is the best approach,” Fleitz said. “I don’t believe that a large-scale military attack right now is going to make a difference in changing the regime’s position, and I strongly oppose the idea of seizing Kharg Island or sending in American troops. The American people don’t want that. That would really bog us down in a quagmire.”

OpenAI is announcing security updates following the July news that its AI broke out of a sandboxed environment and accidentally hacked Hugging Face, including improvements to its research environments, monitoring, and alignment techniques. The company had already put the brakes on a new model, Astra, that it thinks could have "critical" cybersecurity capabilities, and the company says it instituted a two-week pause in reinforcement learning (RL) training on its "latest models intended for deployment" while it tightened up security. The company's "largest planned frontier RL run remains on hold."

For its frontier model research, OpenAI now r …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The ChatGPT maker says its upcoming Astra model may have reached “critical” cyber capabilities, prompting it to halt a significant number of training runs while it tightens internal safeguards.

The new safeguards include more detailed monitoring of models during the development process, as well as greater emphasis on alignment and security during the post-training process.

A deal between the U.S. and Canada to stave off new tariffs on Canadian goods is now on President Donald Trump’s desk, according to three people familiar with the discussions who were granted anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks.

Now it’s up to Trump whether the 50 percent duty goes into effect, as scheduled, at midnight.

U.S. and Canadian officials have been in wall-to-wall talks for several days, with the administration pressing Canada to drop retaliatory measures it took against Trump’s tariffs last year — including provincial bans on U.S. liquor and tariffs on U.S. automobiles — and Ottawa looking to lower U.S. duties on autos, among other goods. The potential deal taking shape also includes Canadian concessions on its tariff-rate quota on dairy — an issue that has frequently come up in Trump’s missives against Canadian trade policy, according to two of the three people.

Negotiators hope a small deal on these issues can unlock broader talks between the two countries on a North American trade agreement that is up for review this year. But automobiles remained a major sticking point in negotiations Monday as U.S. and Canadian officials huddled in the afternoon, according to three other people familiar with the status of the talks, granted anonymity to discuss them. While the duties set to go into effect Wednesday only hit a small percentage of trade between the two countries, they could poison the broader negotiation on nearly $1 trillion worth of goods and services trade between the two countries.

“You can think of it as effectively trying to come up with an early harvest, an interim deal, a smaller package of what ultimately will land as part of the USMCA talks,” said Kelly Ann Shaw, who served as deputy assistant for international economic affairs during Trump’s first term.

The political stakes are high on both sides of the border. After repurposing a hockey fighting slogan to describe his approach to the U.S. during last year’s campaign, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is now confronted with U.S. officials who are adamant that Canada will have to drop longstanding trade protections, like loosening its supply management program that protects the dairy and lumber industries.

“There’s going to be a political cost for Carney on any type of concession with some portion of the public,” said an industry figure, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the trade discussions. “I cannot understate how upset the average Canadian is with the United States, and really specifically with Trump.”

If the tariffs go into effect, the Trump administration risks creating more economic pain ahead of midterm elections — particularly in Maine and Michigan, two states that could help determine the control of the Senate.

“At the end of the day, [U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson] Greer cannot bring something to the president that doesn’t address some of the president’s personal core concerns,” Shaw said. “And I think Carney recognizes he’s got to bring something back where he can say, ‘Look, not only are we just at the table, but we actually got something for it.’”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Gabriel Brunet, the spokesman for Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc, said the Canadians were “in a holding pattern at this time.”

Trump sparked the frenzied negotiations last month after he used a Great Depression-era tariff law to impose tariffs on a wide swath of Canadian goods, like hockey equipment and Canadian bacon, if Canada did not remove its tariffs on U.S. automobiles, eliminate provincial bans on U.S. alcohol and make changes to its dairy supply management laws. But his proclamation included a one-month lag before the duties to kick in, to allow more more talks. The tariffs officially take effect at midnight Aug. 19.

At the time, trade experts saw the tariffs as a way for Trump to force Canada to the negotiating table after struggling for months to make progress — to U.S. officials’ growing frustration.

“I think these three issues must be resolved before Canada can get into the room on USMCA with the United States,” said a former USTR official, shortly after Trump unveiled the new tariffs on Canada last month. “And the U.S. side is wanting a situation where Canada is in the room and so they’re trying to help prompt fixes to these three.”

Of the three issues, auto tariffs have emerged as a key sticking point. Canada is looking for reductions in the 25 percent auto tariffs Trump imposed last year on countries around the world and wants the duty to apply only to vehicle content produced outside North America, according to one of the people.

Automobiles could also be key to unlocking progress on U.S. demands. The United States has made clear that getting American wine and spirits back on Canadian shelves is a red line in the negotiations. But that issue is up to the individual provinces maintaining the bans, which will mean winning over premiers like Doug Ford of Ontario — a car-making hub.

Whether Ford caves will “come down to where we land on autos,” one of the people said, calling the automobile piece of the talks a “domino” in the discussions.

Ford exerted his control over his province’s liquor stores in March 2025, removing U.S. alcohol from shelves in the country’s most populous province. Other premieres soon followed, delivering a nearly $150 million blow to the U.S. distilled spirits industry, alone. While Alberta and Saskatchewan lifted their bans after just a few months, the two provinces account for less than 20 percent of the Canadian population.

Even if the premieres do end their boycott, there’s no guarantee that Canadians — who are also upset by Trump’s jabs that Canada should become the 51st U.S. state — will be quick to resume purchases.

“I would be surprised, even if the liquor goes back on the shelves, if Canadians buy it,” said the industry figure.

While Trump officials have repeatedly faulted Canada for being one of two countries that retaliated against the president’s tariffs — along with China — Trump is also attempting to get the country to drop longstanding protectionist measures for its dairy industry, a source of tension between the two neighbors for decades.

On the Canadian side, negotiators LeBlanc and Janice Charette have been pushing for reductions to U.S. national security tariffs imposed on automobiles and steel and aluminum. But the Trump administration has held firm on the 50 percent steel tariffs, according to three people familiar with the status of the metals discussions.

“That’s probably going to be something that is much more of a longer term” discussion, one of the people said, “if at all.”

Greer stressed to reporters last week that he has been satisfied with the steel tariffs and their impact on the domestic steel industry.

“This is working,” he argued, pointing to rising domestic steel production. Through mid-August, U.S. steelmaking was up more than 5 percent year-to-date on the same period last year, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute, and capacity utilization was up two percentage points.

“We’re seeing huge success in the American steel industry, which is exactly what President Trump wanted,” Greer said during a trip to Iowa Thursday.

Mike Blanchfield contributed to this report from Ottawa.

A new feature added to Comcast's newest routers can detect if there is motion inside your home without needing traditional motion sensors.

This is the latest large-scale DDoS attack to hit the social networking site this year.

One advertisement featured a pornographic video with a deepfake closely resembling a prominent US politician. Apple removed the app from the App Store after an inquiry from WIRED.

LONDON — British Prime Minister Andy Burnham insisted on Tuesday he handled a message back-and-forth with someone impersonating Donald Trump’s chief of staff in the “right way.”

He told broadcasters he is not embarrassed by the incident, reiterating that “nothing of consequence” was discussed.

POLITICO first reported Monday that the U.K. prime minister had engaged with messages from somebody pretending to be Susie Wiles, a top adviser to the U.S. president. The key aide has previously been the victim of a phone hack, although the White House said the two incidents were not connected.

“All politicians are, you know, receiving these pressures and these challenges, but I did everything right,” Burnham said during a visit to Wolverhampton. “There was a minimal exchange of information of zero consequence, and it was quickly reported,” he added.

“I realized that this needed to be reported, and I did so. So I handled it in the right way,” he also said.

The incident has raised questions about potential national security vulnerabilities when it comes to the communications of senior politicians.

Defence Secretary Wes Streeting was among three Cabinet ministers whose numbers were found online by POLITICO on Monday.

Liberal Democrat MP James MacCleary on Tuesday called for an inquiry into the Burnham message exchange, which he described as a “dangerous security breach.”

In a letter to the chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, he wrote: “This is an unacceptable breach. The security of the Prime Ministers’ communications ought to be absolute priority — and yet it appears, in this case, that routine measures to guard against these kinds of breaches were not followed.”

Burnham would not say whether the government planned to change procedures in response to the dupe, but insisted that “the correct action has been taken here and in the U.S.”

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