Wall Street’s reaction to conflict in the Middle East has been muted, even as President Donald Trump suggested Monday that the fighting will intensify.

In the first day of trading since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes against Iran, the S&P 500 was mostly flat, though the travel sector suffered as airspace closures in the region forced carriers to cancel thousands of flights. Trump told CNN “the big one is coming soon,” while he has refused to rule out boots on the ground.

“The more intense and prolonged the geopolitical shock, the larger the likely market impact,” LPL Financial’s Head of Macro Strategy Kristian Kerr wrote.

This is a published version of the Forbes Daily newsletter, you can sign-up to get Forbes Daily in your inbox here.

American consumers are already feeling the impacts of the Iran war at the pump, as average gas prices hit $3 for the first time since November.

Costs are expected to increase as the week goes on, as crude oil prices continue to spike, with the Brent Crude Futures index already hitting a new 12-month high. Though Iran produces less than 5% of the world’s oil, it has major influence over the Strait of Hormuz, and more than 20% of the world’s daily oil supply is transported through this sea passage.

As Iran increased its retaliatory strikes on U.S. assets and allied Gulf states—including their oil refineries—the U.S. State Department ordered the evacuation of non-emergency diplomatic staffers from six Middle Eastern countries and temporarily shut down operations at the Kuwait Embassy on Tuesday.

MORE: Despite being prohibited due to sanctions, Iranians have turned to Elon Musk’s Starlink to stay online, including an Iranian hacker group called Handala, which has also used X to threaten the West with cyberattacks in retaliation for the recent strikes. Numerous cyber experts told Forbes that Handala is either operated or directed by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security—one of a number of groups operating under the guise of hacktivism that are actually linked to the government.

WEALTH + ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Stranded wealthy travelers are paying more than $140,000 for flights on private jets and driving more than 10 hours to leave the United Arab Emirates, as missile and drone attacks from Iran forced the closure of the Dubai airport. The major global hub has been closed since Saturday, leading demand for private jets to surge while the number of operators willing to fly in the region has plummeted, according to Altay Kula, a spokesperson for private jet brokerage JetVIP.

A doomsday report from Citrini Research predicting that AI would destroy almost any kind of white-collar work and cause economic chaos shook markets last week. But even if you’re skeptical of such a grim trajectory, it may be worth rethinking portfolio allocations, as much of the stock market’s exuberant valuation hangs on data centers.

Google plans to spend up to $185 billion on capital expenditures related to AI this year, and that eye-popping sum could just be the beginning. In an exclusive interview, Google’s new AI infrastructure chief Amin Vahdat says the tech giant has a “significant investment” planned—and if it increases that annual spend any further, over a decade, the investment would be nearing $1.9 trillion.

Accused Of Copying U.S. AI, Chinese Founders Mint Billions

Anthropic isn’t just sparring with Washington over military use of Claude. It’s also accusing Chinese AI labs of siphoning off value from the AI model.

Last month, OpenAI and Anthropic publicly alleged that Chinese AI companies have been improperly extracting capabilities—coding, reasoning and other behaviors—from their proprietary models to train their own competing models, using a technique called “distillation.” In a February 24 press release, Anthropic claimed DeepSeek, MiniMax and Moonshot AI prompted its Claude models 16 million times through roughly 24,000 fraudulent accounts. Earlier this month, OpenAI sent a letter to U.S. lawmakers alleging that DeepSeek similarly improperly trained their models on outputs from OpenAI’s models. Google’s threat intelligence arm, without naming a company, warned in a February report of a rise in distillation attacks targeting Gemini.

The accused companies have not publicly commented on allegations of wrongdoing, and didn’t respond to Forbes’ requests for comment. But the broader point is hard to ignore: Several of these Chinese models are now nearly as good as their American counterparts. Many are open source. Most are cheaper. And that combination is starting to erode confidence in the expensive economics of the entire sector.

Jenny Xiao, a venture capitalist at Leonis Capital who was formerly on OpenAI’s trust and safety team, puts it bluntly: “Open source models are essentially a kill line.”

WHY IT MATTERS “Every industry gets commoditized at some point,” says Forbes reporter Phoebe Liu. “For AI model makers, that point could be now. Distillation accusations against Chinese open-source AI companies are one piece of evidence as more, cheaper models get better, faster. Valuations are still sky-high and printing billionaires, for now, but the first big AI lab—whether Chinese or American—to fall is likely to have ripple effects on the entire market. Now, what it takes to win the AI race between the U.S. and China may depend more on commercialization than scientific prowess.”

MORE AI’s Biggest Builders Are Now Its Biggest Lobbyists

Paramount CEO David Ellison unveiled a plan to combine Paramount+ and HBO Max into a single streaming service, after his firm reached an agreement to buy HBO parent company Warner Bros. Discovery last week:

7.6 million: The number of people who currently pay for both Paramount+ and HBO Max, according to Antenna data

200 million: How many direct-to-consumer subscribers the newly merged company would have globally, according to Ellison

$13.99 per month: The current cost of an ad-free subscription to Paramount+, while an ad-free HBO Max subscription starts at $18.49 per month

It’s harder than ever to land an entry-level role right out of college—and new graduates may need to consider a different strategy. Employers are looking for new hires with job-specific skills, and one way to build those could be through taking a role that doesn’t relate to your degree, such as retail, hospitality or logistics. While it may not be the job you envisioned, treat it as a proving ground where you gain real-world experience solving problems in the workplace.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, closed on a new home—for a record-setting, $170 million price. What city is it located near?

Thanks for reading! This edition of Forbes Daily was edited by Sarah Whitmire and Chris Dobstaff.

© Forbes