The result is an increasingly interconnected web of dependencies between technology manufacturers and AI startups. The risk with these “circular” deals is that they can create skewed incentives that may lead to bad decision making and magnify losses if demand for AI fails to match today’s lofty expectations. The stakes are high as the AI boom has sucked in gargantuan sums of money from debt and equity markets and buoyed multiple industries.

 

A Guide to the Circular Deals Underpinning the AI Boom

A web of interlinked investments raises the risk of cascading losses if AI falls short of its potential.

By Cedric SamRachael DottleAgnee GhoshKyle Kim 

TechnologyExplainer

Published: January 22, 2026 at 5:00 PM EST

Updated: July 22, 2026 at 5:00 PM EDT

Trump, the draft dodger, doesn't see how his war with Iran will result with same failure as Lyndon Johnson's defeat in Vietnam where our bombs in the North and our soldiers in the South won every military ecounter yet still lost to an intractable Viet Cong

 

Trump Seethes as Iran War Spirals Anew With No End in Sight

By Josh Wingrove, Catherine Lucey, and Eric Martin

July 24, 2026 at 1:00 PM EDT

Updated on

July 24, 2026 at 3:53 PM EDT

Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin are drastically different men, but they do have one important thing in common: Each thinks he is the smartest person in any room he enters. Alas, though, because they have all done the dumbest thing you can do as a leader — surround yourself with sycophants — they have all blundered into dead-end wars from which they can extricate themselves today only by eating a banquet of crow.

 

Three World Leaders. Three Incredibly Bad Decisions.

By Thomas L. Friedman

Opinion Columnist