Good morning. The worst cyberattacks now behave more like economic shocks than technology failures, James Rundle reports for Risk Journal. 

When large companies are knocked offline by hackers, the fallout can snarl supply chains, pressure vendors and often require government intervention, say experts working to quantify the economic costs of cyber disruption. (free link)

• Operational downtime: “When people think about cyber events, people often think about the data-breach element and data being exfiltrated,” said Will Mayes, chief executive of the Cyber Monitoring Centre. Speaking Thursday at the Dow Jones Risk Journal Summit in London, Mayes noted that the most significant damage now stems from operational downtime.
   
• Tough to quantify: Efforts to measure cyber losses have long challenged insurers, policymakers and economists. Companies typically disclose little about the real costs of hacks, fearing reputational and legal risk, while truly systemic cyber events remain rare compared with financial crises and natural disasters. Actuaries have struggled for years to model how a large-scale cyber event ripples through interconnected industries.
   
• Case study: The CMC, a U.K.-based nonprofit, recently assessed a August 2025 cyberattack on Jaguar Land Rover, which forced the carmaker to halt production for five weeks. The scale of the disruption became clearer in November 2025, when the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics said the British economy grew by just 0.1% in the third quarter. 
   
• Collapsed production: Economists and the Bank of England attributed much of the slowdown to the production halt at JLR, which triggered a 28.6% collapse in U.K. motor-vehicle production in September 2025–the sharpest monthly decline since the 2020 pandemic lockdowns.

The insider-trading scandal that is rocking M&A law firms.

Someone kept making winning trades just before big acquisitions that were being handled by the same Boston law firm. Authorities initially thought it was another case of foreign hackers stealing valuable information from a U.S. law firm.

But hackers weren’t swiping secrets. Investigators discovered it was an inside job. After closely analyzing the deals and other information, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents traced the well-timed tips back to a single lawyer: Nicolo Nourafchan, who worked at Goodwin Procter.

The case marks one of the most brazen insider-trading schemes in years, ensnaring several of Wall Street’s biggest M&A advisory firms and multibillion-dollar deals that they worked on for clients including Amazon.com, Johnson & Johnson and Burger King. 

An FCC Commissioner tells Disney the agency is on a campaign to censor it.

ABC has been a victim of a “sustained, coordinated campaign of censorship and control” by the Trump administration, Federal Communications Commissioner Anna Gomez told Josh D’Amaro, chief executive of Disney, the network’s parent company.

The FCC under Republican Chairman Brendan Carr has been weaponized to pressure “a free and independent press and all media into submission,” Gomez wrote in a letter sent to D’Amaro on Monday and viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

• Iran is using shell companies and bank accounts outside of Iran to move money related to its sanctioned oil sales and evade U.S. sanctions, the Treasury Department’s financial intelligence unit said. (free link)
   
• Victoria’s Secret is ratcheting up its proxy fight with billionaire investor Brett Blundy by accusing the Australian businessman of spying on the lingerie retailer to gain trade secrets.
   
• The Trump administration said it would delay a plan to address high beef prices, which would have suspended tariffs on imported beef.

• Honesty up front: For the companies dealing with a public-relations crisis, focusing all efforts on protecting the bottom line might be the surest way to sink it, writes Angus Loten.
   
• Role of insurers: Companies could be making better use of insurers to identify and mitigate climate and sustainability risks in their operations, writes Paul Berger for Risk Journal. 
   
• Law firms and AI: Law firm clients have turned from pushing back on the use of artificial intelligence to asking lawyers how they will be using it to save time and money, legal technology experts said.

For a complete listing of coverage from our recent London summits see: Technology, Politics Dominate Discussion at London Risk Journal Events

The U.A.E. has been secretly carrying out attacks on Iran. 

The United Arab Emirates has carried out military strikes on Iran, people familiar with the matter said, casting the Gulf monarchy as an active combatant in a war in which it has been Iran’s biggest target.

Its military is well-equipped with Western-made jet fighters and surveillance networks. And the attacks suggest the country is now more willing to use them to protect its economic power and growing influence across the Middle East.

The strikes, which the U.A.E. hasn’t publicly acknowledged, have included an attack on a refinery on Iran’s Lavan Island in the Persian Gulf, the people familiar with the matter said. That attack took place in early April around the time President Trump was announcing a cease-fire in the war after a five-week air campaign and sparked a large fire and knocked much of its capacity off line for months.

See also: 

• U.S. and Iran Are Locked in a Stalemate That’s Neither Peace Nor War
• Trump Says Iran Cease-Fire Is on ‘Massive Life Support’
• U.S. Increases Iran Sanctions Over China Oil Sales
• Trump’s Complaints About Iran War Leaks Prompt Aggressive DOJ Investigations

• Corporate decarbonization programs have been slated as a waste of money, a form of greenwashing and even a scam. But they might still be helping to protect nature and drive emissions reductions over the long term, according to two recently published studies.
   
• Arms maker Rheinmetall said it would work with Deutsche Telekom to develop a drone defense shield, stepping up efforts to protect critical infrastructure in Germany from potential acts of sabotage.
   
• Tesla CEO Elon Musk will be part of a U.S. business delegation for President Trump's upcoming visit to China, according to people familiar with the matter.
   
• President Trump said he supports suspending the federal gasoline tax, responding to a surge in fuel prices driven by the war in Iran.
   
• Mosaic is facing surging costs due to the war in the Persian Gulf. The fertilizer producer said Monday that prices for key ingredients such as sulfur, ammonia and urea are continuing to climb as demand increasingly outstrips supply.
   
• China’s central bank warned of imported inflation risks from higher global oil and commodity prices, but pledged to maintain “moderately loose” monetary policy to support economic growth.
   
• Ukraine’s anticorruption authorities said a former top presidential adviser is a suspect in a sprawling investigation, a blow to the country’s leadership in the midst of the war with Russia.

• EBay’s board rejected GameStop’s unsolicited $56 billion takeover proposal.
   
• Prime Minister Keir Starmer is moving his Labour Party to the left in an attempt to save his premiership, announcing Monday the nationalization of British Steel, one of the U.K.’s last steelmakers, and closer ties to Europe. Several of his own cabinet members urged him to set a timetable for his departure. The turmoil spilled into financial markets
   
• President Trump privately complained to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche about media leaks in the wake of the Iran war last month, according to administration officials familiar with the matter, prompting an aggressive push at the Justice Department to pursue those investigations.
   
• U.S. authorities said they had repatriated 18 American passengers from the cruise ship struck by a rare hantavirus outbreak, transporting them to a specialist quarantine center after one tested positive and another showed symptoms.
   
• Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella took the stand in a landmark trial, testifying at length about OpenAI’s temporary ouster of Sam Altman in a case pitting the tech giant and the startup against billionaire Elon Musk.

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