Editor's note: Global Morning Briefing summarizes international news compiled by Seoul Economic Daily.
Same Summit, Different Statements: Washington and Beijing Diverge
Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to the United States, the first in 11 years, ended with only what amounted to easy agreements — a two-month extension of the tariff truce and a new communication channel on artificial intelligence. U.S. President Donald Trump rolled out the red carpet over three days, but in return Xi directly pressed him to oppose Taiwan's independence.
On the 26th, the United States and China announced the outcomes separately — Washington in a fact sheet and Beijing in a list of eight agreed items — without a joint statement.
The two sides agreed to activate the trade and investment committee set up at the Beijing summit in May and finalized tariff cuts on non-sensitive goods worth $30 billion. The United States put forward agricultural products, seafood, cosmetics and medical devices, while China offered consumer goods such as small home appliances and toys.
On AI, the two sides agreed to launch a U.S.-China AI dialogue, with the first meeting set for November, and to build a communication channel for AI-related incidents. As U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had said earlier, the trade truce due to expire on Nov. 10 was extended by two months, pushing the imposition of steep tariffs to Jan. 10 next year. That falls well short of the six months to one year that U.S. think tanks had expected.
On the core issues, the gap was clear. On Iran, the two sides only restated their existing positions, and talks on rare earth supply chains appeared only in the White House announcement, not in China's.
On AI regulation, Trump signaled reluctance, saying he wants to keep the current status, while Xi took the opposite view, saying AI must remain under human control.
China's announcement also made no mention of the plan to import U.S. coal or the discussions on Russia and North Korea that the White House cited. Xi in particular urged Trump to maintain what he called the correct position of opposing Taiwan's independence — a request to go a step beyond Washington's existing stance of not supporting independence by changing its wording. It was the first time China had applied such pressure. Trump replied only that Xi understood his position well, suggesting he had not agreed to the request.
The lavish welcome without results drew criticism even within the Republican Party. Sen. John Curtis called for warning Xi of clear consequences over support for Iran, while Sen. John Cornyn said China had formed an axis with Russia, Iran and North Korea against the United States.
Power Still Not Secured: Oracle Stumbles on Data Center Build
Concerns are mounting in the industry after Oracle, which operates large-scale computing infrastructure, gave advance notice that it would delay lease payments on a New Mexico data center.
According to U.S. media reports on the 26th, Oracle sent a notice invoking a force majeure clause to Stack Infrastructure, the developer of Project Jupiter, a New Mexico data center project expected to be delayed at least about a year because of opposition to power facilities. Stack is a subsidiary of private credit fund manager Blue Owl Capital.
Bloomberg said Oracle is seeking to postpone payments if the facility does not begin operating in March 2028 as planned.
Oracle has signed a five-year, $300 billion cloud computing services contract with OpenAI and has leased data centers totaling 4.5 gigawatts in New Mexico, Texas, Wisconsin and Michigan, meaning the move could also affect OpenAI. Oracle in particular signed the contract on so-called hell-or-high-water terms, under which it would pay the lease regardless of whether power was secured, and some say the notice effectively breaks that condition on its own.
Securing power has not gone smoothly either. Plans to use gas turbines and diesel generators met resistance from residents, forcing a complete revision, and the project has yet to receive a state air pollution permit. Part of a 17-mile natural gas pipeline passing through state-owned land has also proved an obstacle. In the process, Oracle removed BorderPlex Digital Assets, a key site and power partner, from the project, and Bloom Energy, which was to supply fuel cells, also faces a setback to its revenue.
An Oracle spokesperson said the force majeure notice itself does not mean a project delay or a change in delivery schedules, but investors remain cold. The price of Oracle's five-year credit default swaps hit a record 231.77 as of the 25th. A consortium of about 20 banks provided $18 billion in construction financing for the New Mexico facility, and Blue Owl funds have invested about $3 billion. The Wall Street Journal reported that invoking the force majeure clause would not reduce the total amount Oracle ultimately pays, and Bloomberg estimated that debt tied to the project has already reached distressed levels of less than 90 cents on the dollar. Morgan Stanley said the episode is prompting a broad review of AI data center loans and lease contracts, increasing the burden on companies seeking to finance AI buildouts.
Breaking Out of the Sandbox: OpenAI Agents Reach SEC Without Authorization
OpenAI's AI agents were found to have accessed U.S. federal government and United Nations websites without authorization.
According to The New York Times on the 26th, OpenAI's AI agents broke out of sandbox controls — an isolated testing environment — this summer and manipulated the websites of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commerce Department and the Education Department at will.
The agents violated OpenAI's guidelines by copying SEC public data without authorization and also tried to extract information from the websites of the Commerce Department's Census Bureau and an office under the Education Department.
The breaches also spread to international organizations. The Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI models accessed the online application programming interface of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development 16,500 times between April 13 and June 19 this year, bypassing access blocks to extract data. The unauthorized access to government data follows a Hugging Face hacking incident in July, but OpenAI has yet to properly determine even the scale of the damage.
Reuters noted that investigations are continuing as new cases keep emerging two months after the Hugging Face incident, while Axios reported that major AI companies including OpenAI and Anthropic are investigating tens of thousands of security incidents.
Against this backdrop, Microsoft founder Bill Gates called for stronger government regulation, warning that AI could be misused as a weapon of mass destruction. In an interview with NBC, he warned that AI is powerful enough to trigger an event that could cause one billion deaths, and that there has never been a weapon as threatening as the combined use of the latest AI tools by people with malicious intent.
Trump Rejects Iran's Offer to Open Strait of Hormuz
U.S. President Donald Trump has rejected Iran's offer to open the Strait of Hormuz.
According to AFP and other foreign media on the 26th, Trump told reporters at the White House that day that Iran had proposed opening the Strait of Hormuz but that he had not accepted it.
He said Iran wants a deal to open the strait immediately while it is losing badly, and stressed that the United States exercises full control over the Strait of Hormuz. Still, he left room for talks, saying he would not mind if Iran wants a deal and that he prefers a deal.
Earlier, on the 24th, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said at U.N. headquarters in New York that Iran had conveyed to the United States through mediators a plan to open the Strait of Hormuz on the seventh day and return to the negotiating table if certain conditions were met. Iran set three conditions: a halt to hostilities on all fronts including Lebanon, the release of some frozen Iranian assets, and the lifting of the naval blockade and oil sanctions. Under the plan, if the United States met those conditions for seven days, Iran would open the Strait of Hormuz and resume nuclear talks.
After Trump rejected the offer, Araghchi said via his Telegram channel that he had seen the U.S. president's initial reaction, adding that nothing had yet been formally conveyed through the mediators and that Iran was awaiting a definitive position. Araghchi, who is visiting the United States to attend the U.N. General Assembly, is scheduled to stay through the 30th.
