Good morning. A group of employees in the artificial-intelligence industry said they can’t voice concerns about AI’s threat to humanity because of confidentiality agreements, a lack of whistleblower protections and the fear of retaliation.

• Expressing concern: In a letter released Tuesday, more than a dozen current and former employees of OpenAI, Google’s DeepMind and Anthropic said AI companies need to create reporting channels for employees to safely voice concerns within their companies and to the public. They said confidentiality agreements block them from publicly discussing issues.
   
• AI powerhouses: Three leading AI experts endorsed the letter: AI scientist Stuart Russell and Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton, who are so-called godfathers of AI because of their early breakthrough research. Hinton left Google last year so he could more freely discuss the risks of the technology.
   
• Concerns: Hinton and others have been sounding the alarm in recent years over the ways AI could harm humanity. Some AI researchers believe the technology could grow out of control and become as dangerous as pandemics and nuclear war. Others are more tempered in their concerns but believe AI should be more regulated.
   
• Response: OpenAI said in response to the letter Tuesday that it agrees there should be government regulation.

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U.S. prosecutors probe global hacking-for-hire operation.

U.S. prosecutors are seeking to extradite an Israeli private investigator from London as part of a probe into an alleged globe-spanning hacking-for-hire operation that targeted opponents of hedge-fund firm Elliott Management and oil giant Exxon Mobil, according to court documents and people familiar with the matter.

The probe is focused on the investigator’s work with a prominent Washington lobbying and public relations firm, DCI Group, which has counted Elliott and Exxon as clients, the people said.

SEC closing Salt Lake City office after failed crypto case against Debt Box.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said Tuesday it is closing its Salt Lake City regional office later this year, citing “significant attrition” among office staff.

The announcement capped a tumultuous few months at the Salt Lake City office in connection to its failed enforcement action against cryptocurrency platform Digital Licensing, also known as Debt Box.

The decision to close the office was related to, but not solely the result of, the SEC’s failure in the Debt Box case, according to people familiar with the matter.

• Swedish automaker Volvo Cars is rolling out a new supply-chain tracker that will allow customers to identify the source of key raw materials in batteries for the company’s electric vehicles.
   
• The Financial Accounting Standards Board wants to establish requirements on how companies account for government grants in their financial reports, a move to help investors compare businesses with each other as such aid becomes more prevalent.
   
• Private-equity firms have sharply slowed their serial acquisitions of smaller medical businesses, deals that U.S. antitrust regulators say often unfairly reduce competition and harm patients, according to WSJ Pro Private Equity (subscription required). 
   
• A court has reduced the amount Bayer-owned Monsanto must pay in a recent case linked to Roundup by about 82%, or nearly $1.9 billion.
   
• Attorney General Merrick Garland expected fireworks Tuesday when he appeared before a congressional committee packed with Republicans seeking to hold him in contempt. Within 10 minutes, both sides delivered.

Treasury’s financial intelligence and anti-money-laundering units seek budget increases.

The U.S. Treasury Department has requested more money for its sanctions and anti-money-laundering units in fiscal  2025, as it eyes an expansion of its strategic analyses on China and on publicity campaigns for its corporate ownership information database.

The Treasury has requested $231 million for its Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, 6.7% more than in fiscal 2024. The unit, which oversees intelligence and sanctions rollouts, said the increased budget would help it to hire more economists to provide policy analyses that can better inform the design and implementation of sanctions policies, as well as analysts to conduct additional research on China’s economic and financial situation for policymakers.

The Treasury also requested a further $216 million for the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, 13% more than in fiscal 2024. Part of the requested increases would help fund customer service and public awareness campaigns aimed at entities that are now required to file ownership information to FinCEN, the Treasury said.

—Mengqi Sun

Why China’s overcapacity problem is about to get even worse.

Cheap Chinese high-tech goods have flooded the global economy this year, raising alarms in Washington and Brussels as Western businesses complain about what they see as a new round of unfair competition.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has dismissed the charges, saying “there is no so-called problem of Chinese overcapacity.” Instead, Chinese officials say the country’s electric vehicles, solar panels and other products are simply better and more competitive than Western versions.

But a look at China’s industrial sector shows clear signs of overcapacity, especially in industries such as solar panels, automobiles and steel. In some sectors, the situation looks poised to get worse, as China keeps expanding capacity even as domestic demand stays weak.

• Thunderstorms and sudden, unpredictable wind storms called derechos are becoming a bigger threat.
   
• By publicly airing a peace plan to settle the war in Gaza, President Biden is hoping to box both the Israeli government and Hamas into talks on halting a war that neither side seems in any rush to end. The question now, though, is whether they will stay in the box.

• Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is poised to keep power for a third term even after voters dealt the Hindu nationalist a stunning setback by denying him an outright majority following an election dominated by high unemployment and inflation.
   
• Declaring “no one is above the law,” a federal prosecutor kicked off the Justice Department’s case Tuesday against Hunter Biden on gun charges.
   
• Hit by Washington’s export controls, China’s domestic chip industry is striving for self-sufficiency.
   
• Posting memes online can make you really, really rich. That is, if you are Keith Gill, the leader of the GameStop revolution.

Follow us on X at @WSJRisk. Follow Risk & Compliance editor David Smagalla @DSmagalla_DJ and reporters Mengqi Sun @_MengqiSun, Dylan Tokar @dgtokar and Richard Vanderford @VanderfordRich.

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