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Good morning from the Financial Times, today is Tuesday, April 1st and this is your FT News briefing.
Google's AI division is getting more secretive and Elon Musk is shaking up a state election in Wisconsin.
It's both a test of Donald Trump and the Republican Party's popularity, but also a test of Elon Musk's influence.
Plus Lebanon has a controversial new central bank governor.
I'm Sonya Hudson and here's the news you need to start your day.
Google's artificial intelligence division DeepMind is scaling back how much research it releases.
This is a big turnaround for the group.
it has long prided itself on its reputation for releasing groundbreaking papers.
Those have played a major role in creating today's boom in generative AI.
The shift is a sign that DeepMind wants to stay competitive in the industry.
Sources told the FT that the group is most reluctant to share papers that could benefit its rivals or ones that make Google's own Gemini AI model look bad.
Wisconsin is voting today to pick a new state Supreme Court Justice.
They could decide cases like a state abortion ban, and new congressional district maps.
Now, the election is supposed to be non -partisan.
But this year, Elon Musk has poured a ton of money into it, and has been using controversial tactics.
The FT's Washington correspondent Joe Miller recently went to Wisconsin, and he joins me now to talk about it.
Hey Joe. JOE MILLER So with so much going on in Washington right now where you're based, why go to Wisconsin to cover a state Supreme Court race?
JOE MILLER It's the exact question my editors asked me when I proposed this trip.
But there is a very good reason, the first of which is this is the first major electoral test since the presidential election but it's also interesting for the insertion into the race of Elon Musk uh he has poured to date more than 22 million dollars alone into this race and Democrats and their wealthy donors have also piled in and it's looking like more than a hundred million dollars will be spent in total on this election which is more than double the amount spent on the last Wisconsin Supreme Court race.
And another reason that people are paying very close attention to this race is that Elon Musk has also reheated one of his tactics from the presidential campaign, offering registered voters $100 each to sign a petition against so -called activist judges and handing out $1 million awards to signatories chosen at random.
So it's both a test of Donald Trump on the Republican Party's popularity, but also a test of Elon Musk's influence.
So clearly there's a lot at stake here.
Who are the candidates in this race?
So firstly it's important to stress that this is supposedly a nonpartisan election in that there are no Democratic candidates and Republican candidates.
There are of course, candidates that are leaning liberal or leaning conservative.
So non -partisan in name only.
Exactly, non -partisan in name only.
The quote -unquote liberal candidate is a woman called Susan Crawford, who's been a judge for many, many years in Wisconsin.
I went to a town hall of hers in Appleton, Wisconsin, which is not far from Green Bay.
She describes herself as a working class mom.
I scraped a lot of plates in the cafeteria dish room there, down the cafeteria to help pay for my tuition.
as someone who had to pay her way through college.
I talk about these early experiences because they made who I am today.
And she's running against the quote and quote conservative candidate Brad Schimmel.
He's a former state attorney general.
He's also a judge in Wisconsin.
I didn't plan to run for Wisconsin Supreme Court, but after I watched what happened in 2023 when the court threw away objectivity and began going through a political agenda, I resolved to get in this race.
And he is strongly allied to, I would say, the Trump Administration's policy agenda.
So, how are voters viewing all of this?
I mean, what is normally a local not -super -exciting race all of a sudden has all of this national and international media coverage?
The Democrats essentially seized on Elon Musk's involvement in this race, And they rolled out this campaign called the people versus Musk where they say, look, this guy is unpopular, he's trying to buy a race in Wisconsin, and you can't let him do that.
And what they're trying to do is both energize their base, but also target moderate voters who may lean Republican and don't like the idea of a billionaire pouring all this money into a local race.
And I went door to door and I found some people who lean Republican, but who didn't like Musk buying his way into this election.
Will you normally turn out for a kind of election like this?
I...I hadn't known in the past I would not have, probably.
But it's concerning, I mean, that the world's richest person is getting involved in politics, right...
and...and certainly has the resources available to him to possibly sway some elections, right?
So, if the liberal candidate Crawford were to win, what would that signal about Musk's power in politics?
that it has some limitations.
It's worth pointing out that this is a race that Crawford would have been expected to win quite comfortably before Musk inserted himself into the race, but Musk's money and the TV ads that Schimel has been able to run as a response has made it into a nail -biter, and it would prove, I suppose, if Crawford won, that there is a limit to what money can do to an election.
When I spoke to the state Democratic Party chair, a guy named Ben Wyckler, he thinks that this election is important not just because of the money that Musk has put in but what it tells you about his popularity in general.
If he can buy this race, it's a demonstration of his power that his ownership of the Republican Party will be total.
Musk is far less popular than Donald Trump countrywide.
He's especially less popular than Donald Trump on polling in Wisconsin.
And Wichler told me that he thinks that if Musk is defeated, It will demonstrate that his money is, at best, a double edged sword. This tactic might provide lessons for Democrats countrywide on how you combat Republicans who are running with Musk's backing.
Kat Kerlin, The New York Times New York Times.
Joe Miller is a Washington correspondent for the FT. Thanks, Joe.
Thank you, Sonya. Lebanon has a new central bank governor, Karim Suaid, was elected last week.
The former wealth manager is taking on the role at a crucial time for Lebanon.
The country's experiencing a financial crisis and its ceasefire with Israel is unstable.
But not everyone is happy about the new governor.
Some people think he's too close to the banking sector.
Here to talk about it with me from Beirut is the FT's Ria Jalebi.
Hi, Ria. Hi. So, first off, you know, I mentioned that the country is experiencing a financial crisis.
Can you remind our listeners what Lebanon's economy looks like right now?
So Lebanon's been mired in a pretty profound economic, financial and banking crisis since 2019.
And the roots of that crisis lie in years of government mismanagement, profligate spending and decades of corruption.
And that was all aggravated by a series of catastrophes in Lebanon, including the 2020 Beirut port blast, the COVID -19 pandemic and more recently war with Israel.
So the state of the economy is pretty dire.
Since 2019 the currency has tumbled by 95%.
And you've got sways of the country that's really in desperate poverty.
So tell me about Karim Suede.
Who is he? And how important is his role as the head of the Central Bank?
So up until recently, very few people in Lebanon had actually heard of him.
And his name sort of started popping up a few weeks ago as someone who's a potential contender for the Central Bank position.
And that role is very contentious in Lebanon, because many people in the country and outside of the country blame its previous veteran, Central Bank Governor Riyadh Salameh, who governed the central bank for 30 years.
Many people place him at the foot of the entire crisis as he sort of ran what many people have called a national Ponzi scheme.
And so, since January, a new government's been in place, so you have a new Prime Minister and a new president, both of whom have promised fast reforms to the country, and key to that is economic reforms that will help the country get back on its feet.
A lot of international donors have pledged to help Lebanon, but that won't happen until they've seen some kind of reform of a very corrupt laden system.
And why was Suede's candidacy so controversial?
It's a complicated question because at the root of Lebanon's financial crisis is this interwoven relationship between the central bank and the banking sector, who most people blame for this debilitating financial crisis.
There's been no regulation, no reform, and no laws passed to try and regulate the crisis, and so banks have pretty much been able to act at will.
And so Karim Syed, sort of, when he emerges as the candidate, he's been seen largely by reformists, by politicians, and by many people that the FT spoke to as the candidate that the banks prefer.
And so that is very tainted in Lebanon because the banks are seen as complicit in this entire scandal and they've never really been held accountable.
So what has Suede indicated that he is actually going to do with the economy?
I mean, in meetings in private with diplomats with various Lebanese politicians, as well as in foreign capitals, he's indicated a disdain for the IMF's policies.
Sayed has said he would want to limit the IMF's intervention, claiming that it undermines Lebanese sovereignty.
He's also said that he would use the central bank's gold reserves to compensate depositors and said that he would block a banking restructuring bill as well as the overhaul of banking secrecy laws.
So largely his policies are in line with the banking lobby's policies that to absolve most of the banks from the liabilities in the sector and the complicity in the crisis.
Ryah Jollibee is the FT's Middle East correspondent.
Thanks, Ryah. Thanks.
You can read more on all these stories for free when you click the links in our show notes.
This has been your daily FT News Briefing.
Check back tomorrow for the latest business news.
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