AI Token Costs Turn Into Opex at 300 Companies; Korea's Critical-Mineral Reliance on China Hits 94%

Non-human identities—the credentials, keys, and machine accounts used by AI agents, scripts, and automated workflows—are multiplying to a 45-to-1 ratio against human users, becoming a major cybersecurity vulnerability. (Source: Thenextweb)

Roughly 300 companies flagged AI token costs on their April–May 2026 earnings calls, more than triple the 93 from the same period a year earlier. It's a signal that token costs are entering earnings not as a one-time capital expenditure but as an operating cost booked again every quarter. (Source: Wired)

Mobileye has announced plans to launch a roughly 100-vehicle robotaxi service in the US in 2027 and to scale it to about 17,000 vehicles within five years. It lays out both the opening volume and the expansion path for commercializing autonomous driving. (Source: Channelnewsasia)

In August 2025, Google formed a partnership with Kairos Power and the Tennessee Valley Authority to receive up to 50 MW of clean small-nuclear power for its data centers in Alabama and Tennessee. It shows how data center power sourcing is broadening into nuclear. (Source: Techradar)

According to a BNEF report, Australia's data center pipeline runs to about 20 GW, with roughly 50 GW of solar, storage, and wind expected to be added over the next eight years. It's a structure in which data center power demand and renewable buildout move bundled together. (Source: RenewEconomy)

Anthropic has signed a deal to pay SpaceX's xAI unit USD 1.25 billion a month for compute, and Google has struck a short-term compute deal to pay SpaceX USD 920 million a month. AI infrastructure costs are settling into long-running monthly billing. (Source: TechCrunch)

According to Sensor Tower's 2026 AI report, ChatGPT's global market share fell below 50% for the first time, to 46.4% as of the end of May 2026. At the same point, Gemini stood at 27.7% and Claude at 10.3%. (Source: TechCrunch)

South Korea's import dependence for critical minerals tops 99.7%, and across the six key minerals—gallium, germanium, antimony, indium, graphite, and tungsten—China's share of imports runs from 14.8% to 94.2%. The figures lay bare the structural risk of a supply chain tilted to one side. (Source: The Diplomat)

After China announced export controls on gallium and germanium in August 2023, China's share of South Korea's gallium imports plunged from 73.6% in 2024 to 26.0% in 2025. The gap was spread across Germany at 25.9%, the US at 24.3%, and Japan at 18.2%. (Source: The Diplomat)

China's share of South Korea's indium imports actually rose, from 44.1% in 2015 to 94.2% in 2025, while graphite ran the other way, from 52.4% to 71.0%—and in 2025 those imports were worth USD 86.5 million and USD 207.2 million, respectively. (Source: The Diplomat)

With the UAE formally leaving OPEC in May 2026, roughly 15% of OPEC's production capacity walked out the door, structurally weakening the cartel's sway over the market. (Source: OilPrice)

With the US Supreme Court approving an interstate water compact along the lower Rio Grande, New Mexico must buy out and retire 9,200 acres of irrigated farmland over the next decade. It's a case of the water burden in a desert region where data centers are moving in turning into administrative and legal costs. (Source: NPR)

UK exports of aluminum waste and scrap reached 624,314 tons in 2025, up 43% from 2016, while exports to India nearly doubled over the same period to 198,779 tons. The flow of recyclable feedstock leaking overseas is becoming pronounced. (Source: Circularonline)

Make UK estimates that UK aluminum demand will reach roughly 8 million tons by 2035, and that meeting it would require the recycled aluminum scrap sector to grow 25% a year. (Source: Circularonline)

To skirt sanctions, Russia is running a shadow fleet of hundreds of tankers, dodging enforcement through falsified shipping registrations, changes in ownership structure, and GPS jamming. Sanctions dent Russia's revenue but fall short of halting its oil exports outright. (Source: Al Jazeera)

The number of export-restriction measures on global industrial raw materials surged from 193 in 2009 to 507 in 2023. An analysis by South Korea's Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP) argues that, absent binding international cooperation, a non-binding MOU alone cannot guarantee supply chain security. (Source: The Diplomat)

South Korea plans to deliver 120 KF-21 fighter jets by 2032. An initial 40 aircraft focused on air-to-air capability will be delivered by 2028, followed by 80 more that add air-to-ground and air-to-ship capability. (Source: Yonhap News)

On June 15, 2026, a B-52 Stratofortress bomber crashed shortly after takeoff at Edwards Air Force Base in California, killing all eight people on board. The aircraft was on a radar-modernization test mission. (Source: South China Morning Post)

Following the US-Iran MoU, follow-on talks over the nuclear program and sanctions relief will run for 60 days. (Source: Al Jazeera)

The Trump administration has directed the National Science Foundation (NSF) to dismantle a USD 386 million ocean observation initiative, ordering that monitoring equipment off Oregon, Washington, Alaska, North Carolina, and Greenland be removed by 2027. (Source: Mongabay)

A US official said an Iran peace agreement covered the release of frozen funds, sanctions relief, and the possibility of a USD 300 billion Iran reconstruction fund, and Vice President Vance confirmed as much in a CBS interview, conditioned on Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) financing. Trump, however, denied it. (Source: The Hill)

According to As You Sow's corporate 401(k) sustainability scorecard, Microsoft's retirement plans hold more than USD 2 billion in high-carbon sector investments. It shows that the next front in corporate decarbonization is retirement-plan assets. (Source: Trellis)

Switzerland's foreign-born share now stands at about one-third of the total population, and over the past generation the population has grown by more than a quarter. The figures form the backdrop to a referendum over a population cap. (Source: NPR)

A Korea Gallup survey found that 46% of South Koreans in their 20s have used an AI chatbot to check their fortunes. It's a glimpse of how deeply AI chatbots have moved into everyday life. (Source: MIT Technology Review)

A Reuters Institute survey of roughly 100,000 people across 48 markets found trust in social media at 22% and trust in AI chatbot news at 20%, both below trust in news overall. Weekly use of AI chatbots, by contrast, rose from 7% to 10%, and to 16% among those under 35. (Source: BBC World)