President Trump said Tuesday that the U.S. military will bomb Iran's Pickaxe Mountain, a deep underground site that the U.S. and Israel suspect could be used for nuclear activity.

Why it matters: Trump's remarks, at the top of his meeting with the president of Lebanon at the White House, signaled that he is not interested in a ceasefire at the moment and is moving towards escalating the strikes on Iran.

What he's saying: "We'll be hitting that area very probably pretty soon. There's not a thing they can do about it. You know, normally I wouldn't say that. If I thought they could do something about it, I would never say that. But we'll be hitting that area pretty soon, and very heavily," Trump said.

(Continue Reading – Axios)

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer on Tuesday signaled another round of President Donald Trump’s tariffs is on the way.

“We expect to see some action soon,” Greer told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” when asked if new tariffs are forthcoming, in light of an FT report that more duties could be announced as soon as this week.

“I can’t really specify a timeline right now. I have responsibility to brief Congress and other stakeholders before I really reveal that kind of thing,” Greer noted.

“But we do expect action soon,” he added.

(Continue Reading – CNBC)

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Tuesday said the Trump administration will look into whether Chinese artificial intelligence models have been distilled from American models, stating that the government does not support “IP theft.”

Chinese open-weight models are gaining steam against leading offerings from American companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, sparking concerns from tech executives and government officials about the durability of the U.S. lead in the AI race. Moonshot AI, a Chinese startup, released a model called Kimi K3 earlier this month that outperforms those companies across some industry benchmarks. Open weight refers to models whose final trained parameters are publicly released for download, while the underlying code and training data remain private.

(Continue Reading – CNBC)

While geopolitical tensions are pressuring bitcoin and the broader crypto market, a compelling data point has surfaced, highlighting the side effects of this year's AI frenzy.

South Korea's Kospi index, a primary beneficiary of the AI boom, has slumped nearly 25% in just four weeks. Options markets show the index is now viewed as at least twice as risky as bitcoin, a decentralized cryptocurrency frequently criticized for its extreme volatility.

Kospi’s options-based 30-day implied volatility (IV) index has surged to an annualized 81%, more than double BVIV, the bitcoin equivalent, at around 38%, data from Bloomberg and Volmex show. Implied volatility is determined by demand for options, or hedging contracts; greater demand indicates a greater perceived need for protection from price swings.

(Continue Reading – CoinDesk)