Israel’s First Election Since Oct. 7, and What Anthropic’s I.P.O. Means for the Whole Economy

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Tuesday, October 27th, here's what we're covering. It is election day in Israel. The first national election since the Hamas led attacks on October 7th, which upended life there and ignited Israel's devastating war in Gaza. Many in the country view today as the most consequential vote in Israel's history, as people decide between two blocks offering very different visions for the future. On one side is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is seeking reelection as the leader of the most far right government Israel's ever had. His coalition offers the promise of a more religious Israel, with an ever tighter grip over the West Bank in Gaza. On the other side is a coalition of opposition parties loosely led by Gadi Eisenkot, a former Israeli military chief of staff whose son was killed in the Gaza war. That coalition is painting the vote today as the last chance to preserve democracy in Israel and pull the country back from becoming a pariah state, isolated internationally. My colleague David Halbfinger, who is the Times' bureau chief in Jerusalem, is on the ground today covering the voting. It's striking how dark the mood has been around this election. It's more of a grim apprehensiveness than it is excitement about getting the chance to vote. People, particularly in the opposition, but really across the board have a lot of fears. In some cases, bordering on despair that the Israel they thought they knew, that they grew up in, that they moved to, is really on the verge of collapsing or changing into something very different, perhaps into a kind of place that they might not see themselves being able to raise their children in. More Israelis have left this country than have immigrated to it in the last couple of years, and there is a lot of talk and concern that those departures could accelerate depending on how the election turns out. Meanwhile, the Times has learned that in the weeks leading up to today's elections, Netanyahu tried to push through a new attack on Iran. But he ran into resistance from Israel's military chief of staff, according to multiple Israeli defense officials and others briefed on the matter. Netanyahu's rationale for an attack right before the election was not clear, but a return to war could have potentially disrupted or even delayed the vote. Spokesman for the Prime Minister did not respond a request for comment. News of Netanyahu's behind-the-scenes efforts come as his messaging around the election has turned increasingly apocalyptic. In the last few days, Netanyahu has posted an AI-generated image of a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv, and warned on TV that the vote will decide, quote, "Israel's existence." Voting will close tonight at 10pm local time, and the Times will have live updates all day. The big thing to know is that there's unlikely to be a clear immediate verdict on who will be the next Prime Minister because of the way Israel's parliamentary system works. It could take weeks or even months to assemble a governing coalition. Now switching gears to elections in the U.S. There's just one week to go until the midterms and beyond the very tight races that will determine control of Congress. We're also looking at some of the major policy issues that voters are weighing across the country. Last week, we covered how some states are considering new taxes on the ultra-wealthy. Today, we're looking at transgender rights issues, which will be on a number of state ballots. In four states in particular, Nebraska, Arizona, Colorado, and Washington, voters will weigh in on trans sports participation, and in other states, voters will decide whether to ban gender transition medical treatment for young people. Since 2020, more than two dozen Republican-led states have passed similar restrictions, even in states that don't have any of these measures up for a vote, though, there's been a flood of messaging. Republicans have focused on the topic to try and portray Democrats as radical and out of touch. GOP strategists say the questions of transgender athletes in girls' sports or gender-related treatment for minors are effective for mobilizing their base. And an analysis out of Wesleyan University found that last month, transgender issues were a bigger focus in ads for Republican Senate candidates than crime or immigration. Transgender advocates say the barrage of ads fuels anti-trans bigotry. They've also criticized how some Democrats have responded to the GOP attacks by seeming to pivot away from their earlier support of trans rights. The Anthropic took a major step toward becoming a publicly traded company. It laid out its financial prospectus for potential investors ahead of what could be the largest IPO ever surpassing SpaceX from earlier this year. The prospectus revealed a couple of key things. One is how much Anthropic's revenue has skyrocketed recently. It showed the company brought in over $16 billion in the first half of this year. It's up 14 times from the year before, largely from businesses using its AI software, including Claude. The second thing the filing showed is how much Anthropic is on the hook to spend to keep funding its intense infrastructure needs. That number, which will go to data centers, chips, computing power, etc, over the next decade, is about $800 billion, according to a tally by the times. So we are four years into this AI boom. Anthropic is the first one that is actually going public, and it's happening just at a moment when the markets are really starting to get jittery and nervous about all the money that's been dumped into these AI companies and the infrastructure around them. Erin Griffith covers Silicon Valley for the times. She says that when Anthropic does make its market debut, which could happen as soon as next month, it will be viewed as a kind of litmus test for the whole industry. The stakes are very, very high. If this IPO goes well, it could open the door for a lot more companies to start going public. It could mean, you know, the markets are open and investors are eager to take on risk and really believe in the potential of these AI companies. If it goes poorly or if it's disappointing, you know, it could take a lot of the air and the excitement out of the market and we could sort of see the beginning of a correction. Erin says one other thing that was unique about Anthropic's filing yesterday is the risk factors it disclosed to investors. Its chief executive wrote that anything so powerful can be used for ill as well as good. And the company warned that its products could bring about disasters, including loss of control of the technology and authoritarian abuses. Going further, it said that advanced AI systems could quote, "pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity." And finally, the scariest thing about Halloween this year might just be the price of candy. In the last five years, the average cost for a bag of a hundred pieces has jumped more than 70% according to one personal finance site. And while we all know the price of everything at the grocery store has risen in the past year, Halloween candy has seen bigger increases than things like vegetables or beef, which you should probably not hand out to trick or treaters. One reason for the jump, the price of chocolate, thanks to a climate-driven cacao shortage that's rocked the industry. Luckily, according to a market research executive, the kids these days are more into chewy, tangy sour stuff like nerds gummy clusters, so you can try and save there. You can also try and get creative. One woman in Illinois told the Times, "She's going to be passing out packs of ramen noodles, ten for a buck." Other people are filling out the bowl with temporary tattoos or little low-cost trinkets, but the pressures are real. The Times talked with another woman who's agonizing over how to make a good impression in her new neighborhood in North Carolina this Halloween. She would like to be the king-sized candy barhouse, but thanks to prices, that's not going to happen. For now, she's not sure what she's going to do, saying, quote, "No one wants to be the raisin house." Those are the headlines. Today, on the daily, a look at how the federal government ended up prosecuting ICE protesters in Texas. This was really the first time that the federal government has ever tried American protesters on either the right or the left for terrorism-related charges. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.