Institutional Analysis of the Jackson Hole Symposium: Belated Hawkishness and Credibility Repair

According to foreign media reports, on local time August 28, Chinese chip manufacturer Changxin Memory Technologies (CXMT) filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense, seeking its removal from a blacklist. Bloomberg reported that CXMT stated the chips it designs are used for civilian and commercial purposes, not military applications, and claimed it was incorrectly added to the blacklist. The lawsuit was submitted to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, with U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also named as a defendant. In a statement issued after filing the suit, CXMT said it is not a defense enterprise, and its reputation and commercial interests have suffered continuous damage since it was first placed on the blacklist in January 2025. The company added that the action was taken to protect its business interests. Reuters noted that the U.S. Department of Defense said in a statement that per its policy, it does not comment on undecided or ongoing litigation.

Serenity has published a piece questioning whether the valuations of today’s leading AI labs have become "absurd": If Anthropic goes public with a $2 trillion valuation in the future, its 10% market capitalization would equal $200 billion, theoretically enough to acquire a large number of well-known consumer brands. Serenity cites that this sum is sufficient to cover a host of established consumer brands including Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC, GAP, American Eagle, Levi’s, Victoria’s Secret, The Cheesecake Factory, Krispy Kreme, Calvin Klein, Kohl’s, AMC, Nike, Under Armour, and Canada Goose, with an estimated $51.6 billion remaining after completing these acquisitions. Currently, some investors in the market expect Anthropic’s potential IPO valuation to reach or exceed $2 trillion, with some even assigning a higher valuation based on its rapid growth outlook. Serenity’s core view is that leading AI labs are being priced at levels far exceeding those of traditional consumer and physical enterprises, and this massive valuation gap itself serves as an intuitive indicator of the current AI capital frenzy.

U.S. President Donald Trump unexpectedly called NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang this Thursday while the chipmaker’s all-hands meeting was underway. Huang, who was presiding over the event at NVIDIA’s headquarters in Santa Clara, California, stepped off the stage briefly to take the call. Attendees could hear Trump’s voice through the microphone, though the content of the conversation was unclear. Huang returned to the stage about a minute later to resume the meeting. Later that day, Trump took to social media to congratulate NVIDIA on its latest financial results, describing the company’s quarterly revenue as “incredible.” NVIDIA had previously reported Q2 revenue of $96 billion, a year-over-year increase of 106%. Notably, the timing of Trump’s direct call to Huang comes as NVIDIA continues to boost its policy influence in Washington, D.C. On the same day, the company announced the launch of a political action committee (PAC) funded by its employees. Currently, NVIDIA and the U.S. government remain at odds over issues including the sale of advanced chips to China and the regulation of open-source AI models. Meanwhile, market reports have circulated that NVIDIA is planning to acquire open-source AI platform Hugging Face for over $130 billion, a deal that would likely face U.S. antitrust scrutiny if it moves forward.

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that Nevada has the authority to regulate Kalshi’s sports event contracts as gambling, rejecting Kalshi’s core claim that it is exclusively overseen by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and that state governments lack the right to intervene. The court held that the relevant sports event contracts are essentially sports gambling, not "swap transactions" that should be fully regulated at the federal level. This ruling stands in sharp conflict with a separate federal appeals court decision in April this year that favored Kalshi and limited New Jersey’s regulatory power, marking the emergence of a "circuit split" among U.S. federal courts. The question of regulatory jurisdiction over prediction markets may ultimately need to be settled by the U.S. Supreme Court. Kalshi said it will seek further review, stressing that federal law still restricts states from regulating federally licensed exchanges. Meanwhile, Nevada’s regulatory agency stated that the ruling confirms sports contracts in prediction markets are essentially gambling and should be subject to state-level regulation.

Beating AI News Brief: In response to OpenAI’s plan to terminate its partnership with Cursor after acquiring SpaceX and block Cursor’s direct access to OpenAI models starting November 12, Musk stated he "doesn’t care at all". Musk then launched a scathing attack on OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman, calling the pair "completely untrustworthy" and accusing them of "stealing an open-source non-profit organization". The long-running conflict between Musk and OpenAI has once again escalated publicly.

Six months have passed since the U.S. and Israel launched their first round of military strikes on Iran, and the war’s impacts continue to ripple across the globe, while also plunging the large Iranian-American community in the U.S. into deep division. Some figures opposed to Iran’s government had welcomed the U.S.-Israel military action, hoping it would drive regime change in Iran; others, however, expressed concern over civilian casualties and regional instability, opposing any form of external military intervention. Activist Arezo Rashidian, a long-time supporter of Iran’s former Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, noted that many who once backed the military action now feel disappointed, stating, “The hoped-for regime change never materialized.” She added that as the conflict has de-escalated, security controls inside Iran are being tightened again, and ordinary Iranians have become more cautious about discussing politics and participating in protests. Meanwhile, anti-war advocates argue that some Iranian-Americans who supported military intervention held unrealistic expectations about the war’s outcome and underestimated lessons from past conflicts like those in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. The war has not only failed to bridge political divides among Iranians abroad, but further deepened mistrust between communities of different generations and political stances. As the U.S. continues to ramp up economic pressure on Iran, while Tehran warns of potential further retaliatory measures, divisions among the Iranian diaspora over the war’s next steps and Iran’s future continue to widen.