The battle lines between Iran and Ukraine are intersecting. The same week Russia equipped Iran with Starlink drones, Ukraine blew up 40% of Russia’s oil export capacity. Capital markets finally understood it: this isn’t two isolated conflicts—it’s a single global risk web that’s merging.
1｜Two wars converge: Ukraine blows up Russia’s oil ports; Russia equips Iran with Starlink
This week, Ukraine launched a series of drone strikes on three major Russian oil export ports. On March 23, Primorsk; on the 25th, Ust-Luga; and on the 26th, the Kirishi refinery. Reuters calculates that with about 2 million barrels per day of export capacity taken offline—accounting for 40% of Russia’s total export capacity—this amounts to “the most severe oil supply disruption in modern Russian history.”
In the same week, Fortune reported that Russia is providing Iran with an upgraded version of the Shahed drones, adding an AI computing platform, jet engines, Starlink communications capability, and anti-jamming devices. Western intelligence indicates that Russia is also providing Iran with real-time satellite positioning of U.S. military assets. On the other side, Ukraine signed a security agreement with Saudi Arabia, sharing anti-drone technology, while Zelenskyy made a secret trip to the UAE and Qatar.
University of Pittsburgh political science professor Spaniel said, “We’re not yet at a true world war,” but the participants in the two conflicts, the weapon supply chains, and the intelligence networks are already overlapping. Washington is still considering shifting some Ukrainian military aid to the Middle East. (Continued from yesterday’s report)
(Source: Fortune / Reuters / Moscow Times / FPRI / Time)
2｜Mag 7 evaporates more than $2 trillion; the market first prices in rate hikes this year
The Magnificent 7 have cumulatively shed more than $2 trillion in market value from their historical highs. Microsoft has fallen 32% from its October peak last year, marking the worst start in the company’s history. Meta is down 25%, Alphabet down 15%, and Nvidia and Amazon have turned their year-to-date earnings negative. The S&P 500 has dropped for five straight weeks, recording its longest consecutive decline since 2022.
A key expectation flip has appeared in the futures market. Traders have pushed the probability of a rate hike this year to 52%, crossing 50% for the first time. The Atlanta Fed tracker shows a 19.8% probability of a 25-basis-point hike. The Federal Reserve’s March meeting kept interest rates unchanged, but Powell “expressed concern” about inflation progress. Global forecasting agencies have raised their CPI expectations to 4.2%, far above the Fed’s 2.7% forecast. EY-Parthenon has increased the probability of a U.S. recession to 40%.
Institutional capital has rotated from tech growth stocks to energy, defense, and domestic manufacturing. Mag 7 gained 107%, 67%, and 25% over the past three years—now all seven stocks are down for the year. The problem isn’t just oil prices; it’s that $650 billion in AI capital expenditures have turned into a burden during the rate-hike cycle.
(Source: Fortune / CNBC / Yahoo Finance / EY-Parthenon / Atlanta Fed)
3｜Anthropic warns the government: Mythos models make large-scale cyberattacks “more likely”
Anthropic is privately warning top U.S. officials that its yet-to-be-released “Mythos” model makes large-scale cyberattacks in 2026 “more likely” to occur. Earlier, the company accidentally leaked information about the model due to a CMS system outage, then confirmed that Mythos is the “most powerful model to date,” representing a “step-change in capabilities.”
Axios reports that the model “far exceeds any other AI model in cyber capabilities,” enabling agents to “autonomously penetrate enterprise, government, and municipal systems with astonishing precision.” A Dark Reading investigation shows that 48% of cybersecurity professionals rank agentic AI as the top attack vector for early 2026, surpassing deepfakes and all other threats. Cybersecurity stocks fell on the news, and Evercore issued commentary.
In a report from Quantum Wei around the same time, Claude found a system vulnerability that has existed for 20 years within 90 minutes. These two developments point to the same turning point: the growth rate of AI attack capabilities has already accelerated beyond defense capabilities. Frontline labs are no longer just selling products—they’re redefining who can break into whom.
(Source: Axios / Fortune / CNBC / Evercore / Quantum Wei)
4｜Eli Lilly bets $2.75 billion on AI drug discovery; the traditional R&D timeline is rewritten
Eli Lilly signed an AI drug discovery agreement with Hong Kong-based YSisi (Insilico) Intelligence worth $2.75 billion, with an upfront payment of $115 million, to obtain global exclusive development and commercialization rights. Insilico Intelligence has already used generative AI to develop 28 drugs, with nearly half entering clinical stages. The two companies have cooperated since 2023, aiming to compress the cycle from target discovery to new drug application from traditional years down to months.
This is the biggest single deal by a major pharmaceutical company for AI drug discovery. Previously, most AI drug discovery transactions stayed at the level of research collaborations and milestone splits. Lilly instead directly bought commercialization rights—effectively pricing an AI drug pipeline using the valuation logic of traditional pharma. STAT News notes that Insilico Intelligence’s core competitive strength is using AI to do both target discovery and molecular design, parallelizing the two most time-consuming stages. When AI isn’t just an assistive tool but the pipeline itself, the valuation logic of the pharmaceutical industry may be rewritten.
(Source: CNBC / Bloomberg / STAT News)
It’s also worth knowing ↓
The CLARITY Act reaches a compromise on stablecoin yields; DeFi tokens face headwinds. Senators Tillis and Alsobrooks reach a principle-based agreement: passive holding of yields is banned, while active rewards are preserved. Protocols such as Uniswap, Aave, and dYdX may be constrained. The bank committee review is scheduled for late April. Stablecoins are redefined by legislation from speculative tools into payment tools, and DeFi’s yield model faces a structural adjustment. (Source: CoinDesk / Congress.gov)
Musk warns that U.S. chip production capacity is about to exceed power supply, and China doesn’t have this problem. In a conversation with BlackRock CEO Fink at Davos, he said that the fundamental limiting factor for AI deployment is electricity; chip capacity grows exponentially but electricity can’t keep up. The limiting factor shifts from chips to energy, and the bottleneck of the AI arms race is moving from the supply chain to the power grid. (Source: Fortune)
Southeast Asia’s stablecoin payments are becoming “invisible,” and crypto card business surges. Users no longer directly perceive crypto assets; stablecoins are embedded into everyday consumer payments. This aligns with the CLARITY Act’s direction of positioning stablecoins as payment tools. Signals that crypto is moving from speculation toward infrastructure are appearing on both the legislative side and the product side at the same time. (Source: CoinDesk)
A new memristor chip from the University of Cambridge will reduce AI switching currents by a million-fold. New materials address the energy-consumption and precision bottlenecks of traditional memristors and could fundamentally change the energy-efficiency ratio of AI inference. It’s still at the laboratory stage, but the direction resonates with Musk’s point that “electricity is the limiting factor.” (Source: Tom’s Hardware)
Trump’s AI agenda for the first time becomes an independent campaign issue in midterm elections. A new political group is formed, specifically to push AI policy into the 2026 midterm elections. AI governance shifts from the executive order stage to the electoral politics stage. (Source: The New York Times)
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