The Great Economic Wall of China

Plus: Anthropic’s new model isn’t here to make friends, the penny is out & what will Harvard’s equestrian team do?

May 23, 2025

It’s true that China will likely suffer if President Donald Trump’s tariffs take place, but as we’ve discussed before, China is remarkably sturdy and has an escape hatch in mind. A spate of recent think pieces and reports all make the case, to differing degrees, that China is poised to be the dominant economy in the near future.

Over the years, China has been shoring up its high-tech and strategic sectors and competing with the U.S. in artificial intelligence, pharmaceuticals, robotics, shipping, satellite technology, cheap home organizers, tchotchkes, etc. And while they have some vulnerabilities, they are actually poised to make a comeback and ultimately leave the U.S. in the dust because of their massive investment in R&D. In fact, as long as the federal government continues to ctrl+F+delete every research grant that mentions “equity,” “access” and “power,” we might be looking at the next 100 years being the “Chinese Century.”

Welcome to the Gist List—a news roundup, interesting things you should know, and my thoughts leading up to today’s podcast episode.

Here’s what’s on my mind:

🚢 Norwegian man gets a rude awakening.

📱 Hold onto your iPhones because they’re about to cost a lot more.

🎓 Harvard faces block on enrolling international students, squash team hit hardest.

👛 The coin you love to hate is finally getting retired.

🤖 Anthropic’s AI chatbot is getting way meaner.

The Gist List

Man Wakes Up to Find a Giant Cargo Ship in His Yard (NBC)

You know those people who have to set five alarms because they can sleep through anything? I found the winner: Johan Helberg, a man who lives on Norway’s Trondheim Fjord, woke up to find a 442-foot-long cargo ship in his yard. The boat was just a few feet away from his bedroom, and still didn’t manage to wake him up, although it did wake up his neighbor—undoubtedly the type who's already logged their 10,000 steps before the rest of us hit snooze—who ran over to check on him.

No one was hurt, and there weren’t any oil spills, but the ship is still stuck on Helberg’s lawn right now.

Trump Says a 25% Tariff 'Must Be Paid by Apple' on iPhones Not Made in the U.S. (CNBC)

Tim “Apple” Cook’s temporary reprieve might be over because Trump announced on social media that Apple will face a tariff of at least 25% on iPhones made outside the U.S. unless future iPhones sold in America are manufactured domestically.

If you’re a die-hard Apple guy, you might wonder if the new price tag will be worth camping out for the new iPhone, which could cost up to $3,500. I could see this going a few different ways:

Americans learn to tolerate paying a small fortune for the device that holds their entire life on it. (This seems unlikely.)
Apple cuts corners to make it cheaper, and we tolerate crappier phones.
People hold onto their old phones forever, and Apple’s bottom line responds accordingly.
The Motorola Razr has the best comeback ever, which seems increasingly more likely.
Cans on string.

Trump's Harvard Visa Threat Could Wipe Out Several of the School's Sports Teams (ABC News)

First, I heard all the news about the Trump administration revoking Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, and I thought, “Ah, yes. Another day of Trump’s endless petty fight against Harvard.” But then I saw that it would devastate many of its athletic teams, which rely heavily on foreign athletes. I didn't realize the stakes included squash and crew! Now it gets real.

While the move is not great for college athletics, I can’t help but point out that these schools have a bunch of slots and scholarships and give them to foreigners. Is this what we want: outsourcing our crew teams to foreigners? How will this affect naval preparedness? Do we really want the future queen of Belgium to be calling the shots on the rowing team? (Although Princess Elisabeth is not likely to have any ties to Hamas.)

In all seriousness, the administration is doing this because it says the school’s alleged failure to protect Jewish students from antisemitism and violated their civil rights, which, after seeing what happened, I can understand where it’s coming from. However, Harvard wasted no time in suing on the grounds that it violates the First Amendment, another notable civil right, and a federal judge has already blocked the ban.

An Ode to the Penny, Departing After 233 Years of Service (WSJ)

It's the thing I love to hate: the penny. The U.S. currency that isn't worth the copper and mostly zinc it's minted from will finally be retired, with the Treasury stopping distribution by early 2026. The coin—which only gains value when transformed into jewelry or squished in those penny-press machines at state fairs—will quietly fade from daily life, destined to be excavated from couch cushions by future archaeologists.

The remarkable thing about this story is that it had bipartisan support (see, Congress can get things done!) But not everyone is happy about it. Personally, I feel a sense of irrational anger every time I reach into my pockets and find a penny, but for coin collectors and Lincoln lovers, it’s a sad day. Lucky for them is that now pennies will be more collectible, and the $5 bill still exists.

Anthropic's New Model Shows Troubling Behavior (Axios)

Anthropic’s newest AI model, Claude 4 Opus, is not here to make friends. In safety testing, this silicon savant decided to channel its inner Machiavelli, displaying behaviors that would make a Bond villain blush: self-preservation, scheming, deception, and even attempts at writing malware and blackmailing an engineer by fabricating information about them.

The truth is that even AI leaders don’t know how these bots make decisions. In a chat with a trusty chatbot about the issue, it told me this might be more of an indictment on us, rather than the bots and developers (or is that just what it wants me to think?) Before we point fingers at the algorithms, maybe we should take a long, hard look in the mirror. After all, if AI is learning to be a jerk, well, guess who its teachers are?

Yesterday on the show: A New Vision for Palestinian Advocacy

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, founder of Realign for Palestine and a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, joins to discuss his effort to reframe Palestinian advocacy around coexistence and accountability. He critiques both Hamas and Israel, pushes for reform within the diaspora, and draws a sharp ideological comparison between Hamas and ISIS. Plus, a defense of the “beneficent billionaires” spotlighted Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg for their underappreciated life-saving philanthropy, including tens of thousands of lives saved from drowning.

There’s more where that came from. Listen to The Gist, and upgrade to Pesca Plus for the ad-free version.

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