Do Smartglasses Belong in Public Spaces?

AI giants are embracing blockbuster debt deals to fund their voracious appetite for chips. Plus, Norway's government considers whether AI smart glasses should be legal to use in public places. We must avoid making the same mistakes that we did like 15, 20 years ago with social media. At that time, we didn't quite understand what we were like unleashing on society. And energy prices are rising as the Houthis ramp up attacks on Saudi Arabia and Hurricane Isaias takes aim at the Gulf Coast. It's Thursday, October 8th. I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. Stocks are slipping today, and oil futures have resumed their rise after Houthi militants attacked a pair of Saudi airports, including in the capital Riyadh, killing three people and leaving dozens injured. The Houthis had previously warned international carriers using Saudi airspace to halt their flights, with the exception of those over the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Meanwhile, Hurricane Isaias, which is approaching the U.S. Gulf Coast, is also driving up oil prices as the storm shuts down some U.S. production, as are fresh attacks on at least one ship in the Middle East, and a report from The Atlantic that President Trump is considering striking Iran before the midterms. Well, a suspected Iranian plot to target U.S. B-1 bombers at Britain's RAF Fairford last month, which led to the sudden removal of a dozen aircraft, is exposing the vulnerability of air bases to drones. While Iran's ability to execute the attack remains uncertain, U.S. officials say they had intelligence that Iran was plotting to target the planes with drones and other devices. Our U.K. correspondent Max Colchester says that drone tech is increasingly putting militaries on the back of the line. So what recent events at Fairford show is that there are two things that are preventing bases from being effectively drone-proof. One is archaic British laws, which prevent the military from downing drones in public spaces. The second is the drones themselves, which have evolved to make them much harder to be jammed. So what we're seeing militaries across the board doing is starting to invest more in anti-drone capabilities. In the U.K., they're changing the law so that from now on, they're going to be able to do whatever they want to do. The military will be able to down drones in public spaces near military bases. And back in the U.S., we know that the Pentagon are investing in counter-drone systems. The recent events really highlight this shift in the way that wars are now fought across the world. You can see smaller military powers using cheap equipment that can even be bought off the shelf to inflict very big damage on very expensive items such as bombers, which really does shift the way that wars are fought. Big AI firms are lining up a series of blockbuster financing deals as part of a rush for capital to help fund the massive build-out of data centers. As the journal's Ben Dummett explains, Broadcom, Oracle, and SpaceX are working to raise tens of billions of dollars in order to buy or build their own chips for AI computing. Cloud providers, they're trying to find financing, right, billions and billions of dollars of financing that they need to build out their AI. Infrastructure. They're in talks with Apollo and Goldman Sachs. Blackstone is another lender. These new names are coming into play as lenders because the traditional bond markets where the likes of Oracle and so on have relied on getting their financing have become saturated. So that's forcing cloud providers to seek out other alternative sources of lending. And they're looking at sort of non-traditional bank lenders like the likes of Apollo, and Blackstone, which have, you know, have amassed huge, huge sums of money as alternative asset managers. And they're very keen to look for new ways of investing their money. Typically, they're known as private equity investors, and they're buying companies and then selling them. But increasingly, they're getting into credit. And this is a big way of making that kind of bet. Three former OpenAI safety researchers are urging the company to work with independent auditors and preserve the ability to monitor advanced AI models. The former employees, who were recently fired for allegedly sharing confidential information with an outside safety group, warned board members that losing the ability to track an AI step-by-step reasoning process creates major safety risks. In the letter, the researchers denied any misconduct, stating that their terminations have created a chilling effect among remaining staff. In response, OpenAI said it agrees with the safety recommendations, but maintained that the dismissals were strictly due to policy violations regarding sensitive data rather than speaking out. And we should note that News Corp, the owner of The Wall Street Journal, has a content licensing partnership with OpenAI. Samsung is expecting its quarterly operating profit to surpass $80 billion for the first time, putting the world's largest memory chip maker on track to extend its run of record earnings. Preliminary third quarter profit of the company jumped nearly ninefold thanks to high-end companies like Apple and Qualcomm. And Levi Strauss is riding the wave of 90s nostalgia, with revenue rising 4% in the third quarter. While the company shaped its back-to-school campaign around baggy jeans and pants, CEO Michelle Gause said the U.S. market is more interested now in low-rise jeans and remakes of its 517s that are synonymous with 90s style. And as a result, the brand is tapping into other styles from the era, including slip dresses and leather jackets. Levi's now expects full-year sales to increase by 7% for the year ending next month, at the lower end of its previous guidance. The denim giant is planning to reinvest about $60 million in tariff revenue. Levi's is hoping to get refunds into the company this year, including its direct-to-consumer business, which fell short of expectations on the back of lower quarterly sales in the U.S. and Europe. Coming up, Norway's government is pushing back on smart glasses. We'll speak to the minister proposing a new law to limit their use in public spaces over privacy concerns after the break. AI-enabled glasses, capable of protecting the eyes of the public. Everything you see and hear are hitting the market around the world. Meta sells a range of such glasses, including collabs with Ray-Ban and Oakley. Warby Parker is teaming up with Google and Samsung on new intelligent eyewear, and the list goes on and on. But as those devices proliferate, privacy advocates are pushing back and challenging whether smart glasses belong in public spaces. Well, Norway's government this week waded into the debate, saying that it plans to propose a law that would temporarily reduce the use of smart glasses in public spaces. And here to talk about that effort is Thorgir Mikkelsen, Norway's Minister of Digitalization and Public Governance. Minister, I know you're still drafting this law, but share with us what you can. What sort of regulation do you think is needed around AI glasses? I'm concerned about the introduction of what you could describe as powerful new technology, that risks having people, like you mentioned, photograph, film, recorded, assisted with kind of powerful AI capabilities without their knowledge. And what I think that for me is most important right now is that we must avoid making the same mistakes that we did like 15, 20 years ago with social media. At that time, we didn't quite understand what we were unleashing on society. A lot of great stuff about social media platforms and social media, but I guess it's fair to say that the politics of social media, the politics didn't quite follow the technological advances. And so regulating this time of technology is complex. And we have a lot of number of questions that we have to figure out. But we aim to propose a temporary ban for use in specific locations in the kind of public area, especially where young people attend. It could be like in, swimming halls, it could be on practice, for kind of different sports activities. It can be in schools and in other areas, areas or locations, where kind of privacy issues are extremely important, such as hospitals, doctoral, doctor offices, and so on. But I must admit, this is complicated stuff. And I don't know if anyone has tried to do this before. But I don't know if anyone has tried to do this before. But we aim to try, because we need time to have a large debate in our society and not make the mistakes we did like 15, 20 years ago with social media. I think you're right to bring up the difficulties in doing this, because where do you draw the line even on devices? Isn't a pair of smart glasses that doesn't have a camera just as capable of invading someone's privacy as a phone? Let's say that's recording audio in someone's pocket. The distinctions can feel a little immaterial, no? No, I don't agree. I agree with you on that. It's something with the kind of device where it looks ordinary. It's what you not expect these kind of devices to have these capabilities. So I guess I totally agree that you can film someone with your phone. But with kind of wearables that you're not sure if it's there to record me or that it's for other purposes. That's what really bothers me. I guess the scientists, they call it the chilling effect. When people, and especially young people, do not exercise their right to be themselves in a public space. Because they're afraid of what kind of new devices with different capabilities actually can do. We think it's problematic to introduce new kind of devices. That people are not sure that have the capabilities to exactly do camera and AI features. And that's not something that we like. So I'm not saying this will be easy. But I think it's doable. And I'm glad to be like at the frontier of regulating these kind of devices in Europe for now. I'm sure you've seen the BBC investigation from this year that found that women were being secretly filmed with smart glasses. And that footage was. Ending up on Tik Tok. Does a law around AI glasses need to touch on social media platforms and where this footage goes as well? Absolutely. But that's kind of a tough one. And we're working on this on a broad basis. We're proposing an age limit on social media because this is something that we have done dealt with for so long now. That absolutely fantastic products, fantastic services, but at the same time. Yeah. The society has changed our youth culture has changed and now it's time to do what we can as political leaders to be a little bit more on top of things and try to think and try to do more than we have done in the past and it's not going to be easy. But politics and policymakers should also try to be more on top of things and more innovative and how to to. To to to to to attack these kind of issues and this is one of them I'm I'm sure there will be more. I've been speaking to Thorger Mikkelsen, Norway's Minister of Digitalization and Public Governance. Thorger, thank you so much for being with us on what's news. Thank you. Meta spokesperson said the company provides guidance to users on how to wear smart glasses responsibly, that its policies prohibit posting harassing content and that its devices are designed to stop recording when red LED indicator lights are covered. Or tampered with. So what do you think? Do I smart glasses belong in public places and should the government be making that call? Let us know in our Spotify comments. And that's it for what's news for this Thursday morning. Today's show was produced by Hattie Moyer and Daniel Bach. Our supervising producer is Sandra Kilhoff and I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show. And until then, thanks for listening. We'll be right back.