Note: The Global Morning Briefing summarizes global news reported by The Seoul Economic Daily.
"Regulate Yourselves": Trump Strikes Non-Binding Voluntary Pact With AI Giants
U.S. President Donald Trump hosted the chief executives of major artificial intelligence companies for lunch at the White House on the 29th and opted for industry self-regulation instead of federal rules. The move is read as a signal that he will not slow the pace of development, given the AI race with China.
After the lunch, Trump said there must be "a tremendous amount of self-regulation." His point was that existing oversight by the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, combined with voluntary controls by companies, would be sufficient. Bloomberg said the meeting could go down as one of the most consequential in human history if concerns about AI prove justified.
Twenty private-sector executives attended, including Nvidia's Jensen Huang, Tesla's Elon Musk, Anthropic's Dario Amodei, Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Alphabet's Sundar Pichai and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, along with OpenAI President Greg Brockman. Vice President JD Vance and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent represented the administration.
The seating drew attention. Trump placed Huang, who is skeptical of calls to slow down, on his right and Musk on his left. Amodei, who has argued for a slower pace, was seated farther away than Pichai. Anthropic nonetheless sent two representatives, including Chief Compute Officer Tom Brown, signaling a willingness to engage. Apple, widely seen as lagging in the model race, was not invited.
A joint set of commitments on frontier responsibility released after the event laid out four control and audit mechanisms: internal controls to monitor models in threat-related areas, an in-house team to run them, assessment by independent external auditors, and an independent committee under the board to ensure corrective action. None of the commitments are binding.
Trump stressed that the U.S. leads by "a very big margin" and signed an executive order changing the term AI to SI, for superintelligence. In one awkward moment, Musk said AI before hastily correcting himself to SI.
OpenAI Unveils Dots, an Assistant That Never Sleeps, to Chase Meta's Muse
OpenAI has unveiled Dots, a personal AI assistant that works on its own around the clock, taking direct aim at Meta's Muse. Chinese companies, spurred by Muse's rapid rise, have followed with their own offerings, extending U.S.-China competition from language models into the agent market.
Sam Altman introduced Dots at DevDay 2026, a developer conference held in San Francisco on the 29th. Dots learns a user's context and handles tasks on their behalf, and can be assigned work not only through ChatGPT but also through Slack and Microsoft Teams. In light of recent security incidents involving agents, it also lets users set their own rules. Altman said he felt he had regained his focus after breaking a habit of being tethered to his phone, calling it the way he had long wanted to use AI.
OpenAI ceded leadership of the enterprise market to Anthropic earlier this year and came under pressure again on the 8th of this month, when Meta released Muse as a free agent. Backed by social media platforms with more than 3 billion daily users, Muse rose to the top of app download rankings. Dots will be offered first to corporate customers and ChatGPT Pro subscribers, while Meta expanded Muse to small and mid-sized businesses on the same day.
According to Bloomberg, OpenAI is also seeking at least $30 billion in new investment at a valuation of $1.4 trillion (about 1,900 trillion won). In China, ByteDance is set to unveil a personal agent soon, while Alibaba and Tencent have already added agent features to their chatbots.
Consumer Confidence Slides to 81.9: Will the Fed Slow Its Rate Increases?
New York Federal Reserve Bank President John Williams signaled another rate increase this year while ruling out a move in October. Weakening consumer sentiment and softer-than-expected inflation data have strengthened the case for a hold in October and an increase in December.
Williams said at an event at the University at Buffalo on the 29th that one more increase in the policy rate within the second half of this year would be appropriate. Because the Fed raised rates by 0.25 percentage point on the 17th, its first increase since 2023, he said there is now room to examine more data without rushing. Immediately after his remarks, futures markets cut the probability of an increase at the Oct. 27-28 meeting to around 50% from about 70%. He projected inflation of 3.5% this year and slightly above the 2% target next year.
Consumer data was weak. The Conference Board's consumer confidence index for September came in at 81.9, down 6.7 points from 88.6 the previous month. That was far below the 89.0 expected by analysts and the lowest level since April 2014.
Inflation came in lower than expected. The personal consumption expenditures price index for August rose 3.4% on a headline basis and 3.0% on a core basis from a year earlier, both below market forecasts of 3.7% and 3.3%. Analysts attribute part of the shortfall to a change by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis in how it measures some service costs. On a monthly basis, however, headline inflation was 0.3% and core inflation 0.2%, in line with or only marginally different from expectations.
Concerns about a slowing labor market eased somewhat. ADP private payrolls rose by 90,000 in September, beating a forecast of 75,000. Final second-quarter gross domestic product growth was also revised up to an annualized 2.2% from a preliminary 1.5%.
Houthis Add Chinese Parts to Iranian Technology, Seizing the Southern Red Sea
Yemen's Houthi rebels, who do not even have a regular army, have emerged as a key variable in the U.S.-Iran conflict in the Middle East, and analysts point to Chinese dual-use components as one reason. Beyond technology transfers from Iran, Chinese firms have supplied goods with both civilian and military applications, helping the group build up its capabilities.
The Wall Street Journal reported on the 29th that the Houthis, once dismissed as a ragtag force, have pushed south from their base in western Yemen to seize the port city of Mocha and islands in the Red Sea. Their influence over the Bab el-Mandeb Strait has also grown. Saudi Arabia has restarted an east-west oil pipeline halted by drone attacks and resumed loading at the port of Yanbu, but there are concerns that the Houthis could strike again at any time.
Citing United Nations reports and weapons experts, the Journal said Chinese companies are supplying electronic components and drone-related equipment, and that China accounts for a growing share of the parts used to build and upgrade drones.
The Houthis field about 350,000 fighters but have no formal navy. Instead they have assembled an asymmetric maritime force of anti-ship missiles, suicide drones, mines, armed speedboats and unmanned surface vessels. Many of their missiles and drones are rooted in Iranian technology, and the group is unusual among non-state armed organizations in having used anti-ship ballistic missiles in combat. The Quds Force of Iran's Revolutionary Guard is believed to have built up local production capacity from around 2015 by supplying components and dispatching technicians.
Their procurement networks are also diversifying. After repeated seizures of goods smuggled aboard dhows, the Houthis turned to Djibouti in Africa as a transit point, and the United Nations has also detected signs that they have exchanged weapons and technology with al-Shabaab in Somalia.
