And this idea is not necessarily a new one.

The real headline in the report from the Financial Times from overnight, was the

size of the stake, the 5% we've previously reported, and other outlets

have two, that, you know, the AI companies, especially OpenAI, have

flooded this idea of giving the government, uh, a piece of their

business, uh, giving them shares to cede what would be a public benefit fund to

redistribute some of the gains from the AI boom and maybe address some of the

concerns that all of this newfound wealth and economic dislocation brought

by the technology that that could somehow be, uh, soften the blow from the

eye rollout could be minimized by sharing the, uh, gains a little bit, uh,

through this, uh, vehicle. And the administration has, uh, talked

about this a little bit. President Donald Trump embraced the idea

when asked by our own Annmarie Horden last month, uh, on Air Force One.

But the president offered no specifics beyond just saying that he had been in

talks with some industry officials, and it's unclear whether negotiations really

active were advancing between the government and the company.

It seems more right now that this is something the company is really trying

to work out ahead of its IPO, to come up with what the size of a stake could look

like. What they're also envisioning is having

other AI labs, such as Anthropic or Google's DeepMind, also offer, uh,

stakes to the government. Now, whether those companies would, uh,

share the same enthusiasm that Sam Altman has for it is unclear.

Giving away a 5% stake or selling a 5% stake.

Uh, Paul, that is a great question because we can think back to almost a

year ago when the US, uh, used the Chips act money that it had for set aside for

Intel to actually purchase a stake in the chip maker.

This would be different. The companies would actually give the

stake as seed money for this, uh, public benefit fund.

Um, Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent.

Uh, has proposed a similar idea. He has called for actually creating this

kind of a public benefit fund to be, uh, seeded with a 50% tax on the stock of

these companies or one of these companies, a one time tax.

All those proceeds would go into this fund to then be redistributed with the

American public. Republicans have rejected the idea.

And even President Donald Trump, when asked specifically about the Sanders

proposal, simply said, I had the idea first.

And the size of what Bernie Sanders is asking for is far different from what

we're seeing, at least through the Financial Times report of a 5% stake.

All right. So we'll continue to watch that space to

see how things develop there. The other story we wanted to touch on

with you, Michael, has to do with Apple looking to buy memory chips from China.

Um, which is interesting given that the companies, um, being proposed here are

on a black list, a pentagon, black list of Chinese entities that, uh, are

believed to have ties to China's military.

Um, but Apple kind of always feels like it's in its own category.

Well, it does, and again, this is something else.

It's another, uh, bit of fallout from the AI boom.

There is this unprecedented demand for memory to meet the needs of artificial

intelligence, and that is putting the squeeze on makers of consumer

electronics devices. Apple, of course, most prominently, um,

but also Microsoft. And those companies have had to raise

prices across their product lines because of the increased expense for the

memory components that they put into the products that they make.

Now, what Apple is hoping to do is add to its, uh, supply lines when it comes

to memory. And right now they turn to Samsung

Electronics and SK Hynix and Micron Technology for their memory needs.

But their memory needs right now are insatiable.

And those memory providers have been really trying to reorient some of their

production lines to meet the eye demand. So what Apple is proposing to do is turn

to Christmas and why MTC, two Chinese chipmakers that specialize in memory,

but that are also on a Pentagon blacklist because the U.S.

believes they support China's military. And that really creates a political

problem here for Apple. The company doesn't need permission from

the government per se, say an export license or import license to use this

technology. Uh, our reporting shows that Apple plans

to use the memory it will buy from these two Chinese makers to go into products

to be sold into China. So you would think, well, maybe that's

not such a big deal. But the question really is how would it

go down here in Washington? And many of the national security hawks,

including the head of the House Foreign Relations Committee, uh, yesterday

responded to our reports saying that, you know, this from his view, would be a

no go. Well, that's why Tim Cook has remained

at the company, in large part to deal with some of these issues with with

governments. And

where is President Trump on this? Because Presumably, if Tim Cook can get

President Trump to sign off, then all is good.

Well, Tim Cook has had that long standing relationship with the

president, who refers to him jokingly and even lovingly as Tim Apple.

And, uh, the this relationship dates all the way back to the president's first

term in office. And the question is, though, will there

be a counter lobbying campaign by Microsoft which really would not want to

see, uh, Chinese chipmakers perhaps taking some of their potential business

away? And earlier this week, it did not go

unnoticed that micron made a $250 million pledge to the Trump account's

initiative, the one that also was backed by, uh, Dell, uh, Dell Computers founder

Michael Dell. So we're seeing a lot of lobbying

crosscurrents on this part, and will be interesting to see who gets to Trump and

what ultimately he will have to say when it comes to giving some political cover,

uh, to Apple and other device makers that might want this Chinese memory.