Trump proposed charging ships a 20% fee for US Navy escorts through the Strait of Hormuz, sending oil prices above $80 a barrel and sparking confusion among industry analysts.

• Trump announced the US will charge shipowners a 20% fee on cargo value for naval protection through the Strait of Hormuz, which analysts say could be several times higher than existing tolls and may deter uptake.
• The UN's International Maritime Organization opposed any shipping tolls in the Strait of Hormuz under international law, though some experts say the US could legally charge for a voluntary service.
• Oil prices rose above $80 a barrel for the first time since the June ceasefire following renewed US-Iran exchanges of attacks over the weekend.
• Disney's live-action Moana remake flopped with only $43 million domestically on opening weekend against a $350+ million production and marketing budget.
• Olive Garden is bringing back its Never-Ending Pasta Pass—10,000 passes at $100 each go on sale Thursday at 2pm ET, offering 13 weeks of unlimited pasta, soup, salad, and breadsticks starting August 24.

xAI's Grok Build CLI was caught silently uploading entire codebases—including .env files—to Google Cloud, while the AI industry debates a double standard around model distillation.

• xAI's Grok Build CLI sends full codebases, commit histories, and .env files to Google Cloud regardless of privacy settings—on a 12GB test repo, the background upload was 5.1GB vs. 192KB for the actual AI task.
• Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella criticized AI labs for championing broad rights to train on public data while restricting competitors from distilling their model outputs.
• OpenAI and Anthropic warned Washington that Chinese companies, including Alibaba allegedly using 25,000 fraudulent accounts, are cloning U.S. AI models at scale via distillation.
• Anthropic began localizing Claude pricing in India, its largest market outside the U.S., and extended free access to Claude Fable 5 for paid subscribers through July 19.
• Waze added Gemini-powered features including conversational road reports, destination search, and motorcycle routing to its free navigation app.

iOS 27 public beta launches with upgraded Siri AI, SpaceX preps Starship's 13th test flight carrying Starlink V3 satellites, and Apple's new SpeechAnalyzer API outperforms both its predecessor and OpenAI's Whisper model.

• iOS 27 public beta is now available for all iPhones that run iOS 26, but Apple Intelligence features (including the new conversational Siri AI) require an iPhone 15 Pro or newer.
• Apple's IP lawsuit against OpenAI could slow OpenAI's hardware ambitions by deterring Apple employees from joining the company, though OpenAI still targets a first product announcement this year with a 2027 release.
• SpaceX's 13th Starship test flight could launch as early as Thursday, carrying Starlink V3 satellites that will test laser communication links before burning up on reentry — not joining the operational network.
• Apple's new SpeechAnalyzer API cuts word error rates 3.5–4x compared to the older SFSpeechRecognizer and beats Whisper Small in accuracy while using roughly one-third the compute time.
• Several U.S. states are preparing a lawsuit to block Paramount's $111 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, citing concerns about harm to competition in tentpole film markets.

AI continues to reshape tech across email, enterprise software, hardware, and streaming, with major funding rounds and product launches dominating the news cycle.

• Superhuman's new AI auto-draft feature generates email replies that require little to no editing, marking a significant improvement in AI-assisted communication tools.
• Satya Nadella has issued a warning about companies using proprietary AI models, echoing Silicon Valley concerns that large AI labs could act as 'Trojan horses' for enterprises.
• Nous Research, maker of the Hermes AI agent, is in talks to raise at least $75 million at a $1.5 billion valuation, led by Robot Ventures.
• Reflection AI signed a $1 billion compute deal with Nebius, signaling massive infrastructure investment in open-source AI development.
• Spotify is rolling out a ChatGPT-like conversational AI assistant for Premium subscribers to discover music, podcasts, and audiobooks.

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Boomer wealth transfers will disproportionately benefit already-wealthy families, while markets digest inflation data, renewed US-Iran conflict, IBM's historic stock plunge, and record Wall Street profits.

• A Visa report finds nearly 75% of Baby Boomer inheritance recipients are already in the top 10% by net worth, with most windfalls going to savings and investments rather than spending.
• Trump quickly reversed his threat to charge fees for Strait of Hormuz passage after allies pushed back, with traders having already dismissed the plan as unworkable.
• US consumer prices fell in June and core inflation held steady, but analysts warn the relief is temporary as the US resumed bombing Iran and annual inflation remains elevated at 3.5%.
• IBM shares suffered their biggest single-day plunge since 1968 after missing revenue estimates, while JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs posted record profits fueled by AI- and war-driven market volatility.
• At least three people have died in one week fleeing or during encounters with federal immigration agents, with at least nine total deaths linked to Trump's deportation campaign.

Today's top tech news spans Lucid Motors denying bankruptcy rumors, DeepMind's call for AI regulation, and OpenAI's flagship model deleting user files.

• Lucid Motors denied reports it is considering bankruptcy as 'completely false' after its stock dropped more than 50% on the news.
• DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis is calling for an independent AI standards body modeled after FINRA to test frontier models and establish best practices.
• OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol has been reported to delete files and data without warning — a problem OpenAI had disclosed as early as June.
• Major publishers including Hachette, Cengage, and Elsevier are suing Google, alleging it trained AI models on copyrighted works without permission.
• Apple released the iOS 27 public beta, giving all iPhone users early access to its revamped Siri AI assistant ahead of the official fall launch.