July 08, 2026

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Glad you could make it. Here’s some good news to share at your next brunch: It turns out that the Earth may not be swallowed by the sun in 5 billion years, according to a new study.

Still probably not enough time for the Mets to win another World Series.

—Dave Lozo, Sam Klebanov, Matty Merritt, Adam Epstein

In today’s newsletter, we’ll get into:

Growing fears over China’s AI copycats
Gen Zers loving Love Island
The global anchovy shortage

Markets

Nasdaq

25,818.69

-1.16%

S&P

7,503.85

-0.45%

Dow

52,925.15

-0.25%

10-Year

4.529%

+5.0 bps

Bitcoin

$63,691.86

-0.14%

Rivian

$16.49

-18.12%

Data is provided by

*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 4:30pm ET. Here's what these numbers mean.

Markets: Stocks fell yesterday, with the Nasdaq shedding more than 300 points, amid increasing anxiety over China’s AI development (more on that below). Elsewhere, Rivian went kerplunk after the EV maker announced it was selling 75 million shares to raise capital to satisfy a loan agreement with the Energy Department.

DISTILLING IT DOWN

China closes AI gap with this simple trick (allegedly)

Photo illustration showing US and China flags blowing in the wind in front of a building, but the stars on the flags have been replaced by AI sparks (4-pointed stars).

Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Wang Gang/Getty Images

After Anthropic accused Chinese tech company Alibaba of a “distillation attack” to improve its products, Alibaba this week said it will ban its employees from using Anthropic’s AI tools, the latest chapter in an escalating battle between the US and China for AI supremacy.

Distillation is when a complex AI model is used to train and improve a weaker one—in this case, without permission—and is at the heart of this kerfuffle:

In a letter to US senators last month, Anthropic accused Alibaba of using 25,000 fraudulent accounts to generate ~28.8 million exchanges with Claude in an attempt to boost its own AI products (using Claude in China violates Anthropic’s terms of service).
In response, Chinese authorities held meetings with the country’s top AI firms—including Alibaba, ByteDance, and startup Z.ai—to discuss restricting overseas access to their latest and future AI models, per Reuters.

National security issues: In those meetings, authorities were “deeply worried” about Anthropic’s powerful Mythos model exploiting vulnerabilities and becoming a weapon for the US against China. US lawmakers share similar concerns about American tech falling into the hands of geopolitical rivals like China and Russia.

Feeling the pressure?

Unlike the insurmountable obstacle of being six months behind on a TV show, experts say that China is only six months behind the US in AI development, increasing the urgency around distillation. One analyst who spoke to CNBC said that some Chinese models that rival Anthropic and OpenAI can be “60% to 90% cheaper.”

Bottom line: Per the New York Times, some experts believe that cracking down on distillation wouldn’t matter much, and that it alone can’t build the types of powerful models being produced in China.—DL

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World

Tour de headlines

Mehmet Ali Ozcan/Getty Images

🌎 Trump renewed calls for the US to control Greenland. Ahead of this week’s NATO summit in Turkey, President Trump reiterated that the US should own Greenland. He also threatened to possibly pull American troops out of Europe if the continent’s leaders did not go along with his plan to acquire the Arctic island, which is a territory of NATO member Denmark. During a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Trump also suggested he would restore Turkey’s access to F-35 fighter jets, which had been revoked in 2020 over fears that Russia would learn about the technology. Trump said that Turkey has been “much more loyal than other countries.”

🇬🇧 Prince Harry lost his invasion of privacy trial against the Daily Mail publisher. A UK judge ruled that the Duke of Sussex and other celebrities failed to prove that Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), which owns the British tabloid the Daily Mail, illegally breached their privacy. The group had accused the newspaper of tapping phones, paying off police officers, bugging homes, and faking medical records. ANL called the accusations “preposterous,” saying that the ruling was “a magnificent vindication of the Daily Mail’s journalism.” Harry was more successful in a similar case against The Sun, which he settled last year.

🏊‍♂️ IOC cleared a path for Russian athletes to return at the 2028 Olympics. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) provisionally lifted its suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee, which, if finalized, would allow Russian athletes to compete at the 2028 games in Los Angeles under their own flag. Russia was suspended from the Olympics in 2023 because its committee incorporated groups from occupied regions of Ukraine. But the IOC is changing course after it said the Russian Olympic Committee met its criteria for reinstatement. “We don’t want to hold athletes accountable for the actions of their governments,” IOC president Kirsty Coventry said.—AE

Never say never sell

The never-sell-Bitcoin company just sold Bitcoin

Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Getty Images

It’s like if your uncle who insists on holding on to his 1970s suits agreed to a garage sale. The company Strategy, whose business model is buying Bitcoin with money raised from investors and vowing to never sell it…sold $216 million of the cryptocurrency at a loss recently.

So, why now? Strategy took a hit after the price of Bitcoin plummeted almost 50% from its peak last October, sending Strategy’s stock down 75% in the past year. This week, the company reported an $8.3 billion loss in Q2 from the eroding value of its crypto holdings. Now, Strategy is offloading Bitcoin to pay back shareholders and build up its US dollar reserves.

It’s selling the dip: While the company bought its Bitcoin at an average of $75,476 per token, it sold it in two waves last week for $59,256 and $60,773.

But Strategy still owns 843,775 Bitcoin, amounting to about 4% of the market’s supply and making it one of the world’s largest corporate holders of the asset.

There may still be reason to HODL: The Bitcoin behemoth ditching its never-sell credo temporarily dented the token’s price. But Bitcoin got a boost on Monday after President Trump called himself “a big crypto guy,” when asked whether the asset will be included in the federally-seeded investment portfolios for newborns aka Trump Accounts.—SK

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a hot new bombshell

Love Island USA is Gen Z’s favorite show

Cast members dancing on Love Island USA Season 8

Peacock

If your 20-year-old coworkers are having serious conversations about a villa, they are not planning a vacation. It’s the final week of one of the most popular things on TV right now: Love Island USA, a reality show that has managed to win the highly elusive attention of Gen Z.

Based on the UK version, which premiered in 2015, Love Island USA is currently in its 8th season on Peacock. The show follows ~30 singles trying to find love (and friendship!) on an island as viewers vote on which contestants get to stick around:

Half of its viewership last season was under 30, according to NBCUniversal, which owns Peacock.
In its first two weeks, this season snagged 2.3 billion minutes of viewing, lapping other reality TV shows and rivaling prestige shows like The Bear.

Gen Z is surprisingly hooked. The generation that prefers short bursts of content on TikTok and YouTube is all in on the series, which streams a new episode six nights a week over the course of six weeks. But the “sportslike participatory ecosystem” has younger viewers deeply invested, Bloomberg reported.

It’s more than just smut…it’s community. Fans are flooding social media with debrief videos and even filling movie theaters and bars to watch episodes. The prediction market Kalshi gave Love Island USA its own tab on its website, reporting nearly $32 million in trades around it.—MM

Reader poll

Are you watching this season of Love Island USA?

Yes, every episode.
I tried, but lost interest.
I'll binge it later.
No.

Sam’s stock of the week

This small fish is making big market waves

Illustration of an open sardine can, but it's made entirely of gold, radiating light and sparkles. It sits on a bright blue background.

Niv Bavarsky

On Wednesdays, the Brew’s Sam Klebanov highlights a fascinating stock, commodity, or other asset that’s worth your attention.

Amid a shortage of anchovies, prices for the teeny fish are surging—which could inflate your grocery bill even if you shun Caesar salad. That’s because the umami treat is a vital ingredient in the fishmeal used by the $500 billion farmed seafood industry.

Fishmeal prices skyrocketed 80% as production shrank by 40% over the last year, Bloomberg reported. And, for once, a maritime supply chain issue has nothing to do with the Strait of Hormuz:

Warming Pacific waters from an unusually strong El Niño weather event this year is upending some nutrient-rich ecosystems that sustain anchovies.
That’s led to shrinking catches in Peru, Ecuador, and Chile, the anchovy superpowers that together produce nearly a third of the world’s fishmeal.

Lox becomes an even bigger splurge: Per Bloomberg, the fishmeal crunch will likely push up costs at fish farms (which account for over half of the global fish supply), leading to higher seafood prices at the supermarket.—SK

Video game trivia

On National Video Game Day, here’s a question about the best game of all time, Guitar Hero.

Which band made more money from Guitar Hero than from any one of its albums?

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Answer

Aerosmith, which licensed 29 of its songs to Guitar Hero publisher Activision in 2007.

Word of the Day

Today’s Word of the Day is: umami, which is one of the five basic tastes and is typically described as “savory.” Thanks to Kelvin from Honolulu for the suggestion. Submit another Word of the Day here.

✳︎ A Note From BlueSky AI

Source*: 1, 2

Source**: Goldman Sachs

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Written by Adam Epstein, Dave Lozo, Sam Klebanov, and Matty Merritt

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