How Trump Got His Face On The Dollar Coin & Tesla's Cybercab Is Coming

Hi readers, hope your summer is going well! Daily Pnut will be going on a brief summer break for the next two weeks – we won’t be publishing any full stories, but will still be sending out links to articles covering the biggest news so you can keep up with the headlines while we’re out. Enjoy the brief break and we’ll be back in full force (with a tan) on September 22!

“A child who does not play is not a child, but the man who doesn't play has lost forever the child who lived in him and who he will miss terribly.” – Pablo Neruda

When Your Drones Don’t Work Like They Used To Before

On Tuesday, Germany dropped a bombshell. Diplomatically speaking. According to a statement from Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, Russia had tried to attack eastern Germany’s Leipzig/Halle Airport by attempting to fly a drone strapped with explosives into a group of Ukrainian cargo planes parked on the tarmac. 

The failed attack, which was allegedly carried out on August 4, failed because the drone detonator malfunctioned – a second drone apparently collided with a nearby aircraft on the same day, and a third drone was found near the airport 10 days later. According to Dobrindt, the attempted attack followed a “well-established pattern of Russian hybrid operations in Europe,” though the Kremlin of course denied those accusations, instead accusing Berlin of planting evidence to back up its false claims.

Yesterday, NATO and the E.U. released statements strongly backing Germany. “Leipzig marks a new escalation on European Union soil directly attributed to Russia,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, adding that the attack involved “military-grade material carried out by Russian operatives on European Union soil.” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte also spoke up on behalf of the U.S. and its allies, stating that the alliance is “in full solidarity with Germany.” The E.U. is reportedly looking to tighten its restrictions on people with Russian visas, and the bloc is inching closer to using €193 billion ($223 billion) in frozen Russian assets to help fund Ukraine’s war against the Kremlin.

Much Ado About Bonds

You might have heard some buzz about U.S. bond yields rising recently. Some groundwork first: a bond is essentially a government IOU – the government sells its debt to the public, promising to pay its holder back the amount borrowed plus a set amount of interest each year. Bond yields, then, are the annual expected return on a government bond, calculated by dividing the bond’s annual interest payment by its current market price (bonds can be bought and sold on the secondary market).

Those yields have increased recently because investors have been selling off their bond holdings. When more investors rush to sell off their bonds, they’re forced to sell at lower prices – this means their yield is higher, because the buyer is earning a bigger return (percentagewise) on the bond. This selloff is occurring because investors are worried about inflation, the U.S. government’s growing pile of debt, and the government’s lack of action on either of those issues, all of which could harm the government’s ability to pay back all its debts.

So bond yields are increasing. Why does that matter? Well, bond yields essentially set interest rates for the entire U.S. economy – when yields rise, interest rates follow suit, making it harder for businesses and consumers to access money through loans, including credit card and mortgage rates. Think of it like this: why would a bank lend someone $1 million for a mortgage with a 5% interest rate (which they might not actually pay off) when it could buy $1 million worth of government bonds with a 4.8% yield, a much safer investment? Now bond yields across the globe are rising, which could force governments to make quick policy changes to cut spending and address inflation. If not, interest rates across the economy will stay high (or rise even further), pushing home and car ownership further out of reach for more people.

Operation Save Our Gold

• Yesterday, the Dutch National Bank (DNB) announced that it had moved 86 metric tons of gold out of the U.S. and Canada in a delicate operation that took several months to complete. The bank said that the gold had been relocated to London, citing “increasing geopolitical unrest” as the reason for the move.

• Before the operation, DNB held 31.3% of its gold in New York and 19.7% in Ottawa – now, the U.S. and Canada hold 18.5% of its gold each. According to the bank’s president, the secret operation was “necessary to strengthen our resilience and preparedness,” as it’s easier to trade gold out of the Bank of England “in a crisis situation.”

• The bank is mostly keeping quiet on the details of the operation, but we do know a few things about how the operation went down. 27 metric tons of the gold were somehow moved across the Atlantic Ocean to a heavily guarded DNB vault located inside a military base in the Dutch town of Zeist, with an equivalent amount moved out of Zeist and into London. The rest of the gold was “moved” by selling it off in North America in order to purchase a similar amount in London. “Combining the processes of buying and selling and physical transport has allowed DNB to spread the risks associated with such a complex physical gold relocation,” the bank said.

More War For Sure

• The U.S.-Israel-Iran war has re-escalated yet again as both sides have traded increasingly-vicious strikes over the past few days. Wednesday marked the biggest day for attacks since July, with the U.S. firing missiles at multiple sites along Iran’s southern coast while Tehran took aim at various U.S. bases across the Middle East.

• According to Iran, the U.S.’s recent strikes have killed 18 people and injured 108 others. One of those strikes, according to Tehran, hit a wedding party in the southern Iranian town of Sirik, killing four ​people (including a 4-year-old) and injuring at least 68 others. “We are aware of reports, which originated from Iranian state media. The U.S. military never targets civilians, unlike the IRGC,” said a spokesperson for the U.S. Central Command, though the 120 Iranian schoolchildren killed by a U.S. double-tap missile strike in February would probably beg to differ.

Additional World News

• Attacks in Black Sea Threaten to Strangle Global Grain Supply (NYT, $)

• Italy has started exporting a delicacy prized abroad, reviled at home (AP)

• ‘Supersizing before our eyes’: UN warns of record El Niño approaching (Guardian) 

• US, China arm for space warfare: hunter satellites and orbital weapons (Reuters)

• Climate change past the point of no return, UN says, as worst impacts are now unavoidable (CBC)

• Israel ‘organised and prepared’ to remove Gaza population if US gives green light, Katz says (France24)

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The Trump Coin Is Real

• Trump has now joined the ranks of Lincoln, Washington, and Jefferson. Not for his leadership decisions – starting a war with Iran isn’t exactly on par with founding the U.S. or abolishing slavery – but because he’s now featured on a piece of U.S. currency. On Wednesday, the U.S. Mint began circulation of $1 coins sporting Trump’s face, marking the first time a living person has been featured on U.S. currency since 1866.

• The coins are being issued in celebration of the U.S.’s 250th anniversary, and are the latest in a series of attempts by Trump to attach his name (and face) to various parts of the federal government. His name is in the process of being added to the Kennedy Center, limited-edition passports, national park passes, and even his million-dollar “gold card” visas.

• In 1866, Congress passed a law preventing living people’s portraits from being printed on “currency notes, bonds or securities” as a response to a Treasury official having his face printed on 5-cent notes. But in 2020, Trump managed a workaround to that law by getting Congress to pass a new piece of legislation allowing the U.S. Mint to issue a special series of $1 coins “with designs emblematic of the United States semiquincentennial” in 2026. I guess betting on yourself really does pay off sometimes!

Eyes On ICE

• On August 23, a 51-year-old Chinese national named Lianyong Wei was taken into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody. Just a few hours later, he died, but ICE only announced his death in a statement this Tuesday. China is now pressing the U.S. for answers about his death.

• Let’s do a bit of math. According to an estimate by the Migration Policy Institute, there were roughly 2.4 million people born in China living in the U.S. in 2023. Dividing that number by the total U.S. population at the time – 337 million – we see that roughly 0.7% of the U.S. population is made up of people born in China, though this number fluctuates slightly from year to year.

• Here’s where things get interesting (or grim). Since January 2025, at least 57 people have died while under ICE custody. Counting Wei, 5 of those deceased were Chinese nationals. That means just under 9% of all people who die while in ICE custody are of Chinese nationality – a massive tenfold increase above their representation in the wider population. China’s government is now calling for an investigation into Wei’s death, but the only response has been from the corrections facility where he died, which says it’s “reviewing relevant procedures and will implement any necessary corrective actions to strengthen prevention and response measures.” ICE hasn’t clarified why it took over a week to report his death.

Additional USA News

• Lindsay Clancy jurors say they’re deadlocked for a second time (Guardian)

• In a Big Win, Google Avoids a Breakup of Its Ad Tech Business (NYT, $) 

• How freaked out should you be about Trump’s plot to disrupt mail voting? (Vox)

• Trump signs bill to avert government shutdown before midterm elections (Reuters)

• Lawmakers ask Army to explain why it told a military unit to stop specializing in drone warfare (AP)

• 2 dead and multiple people injured — including police officers — in mass shooting at downtown Minneapolis apartment building (CNN)

The Cybercab Crashes The Party

• Later today, Tesla is set to unveil the Cybercab, the electric automaker’s answer to robotaxi services like Waymo. The Cybercab should be immediately identifiable if you see it on the street – each two-seater robotaxi comes in a metallic gold finish, sports gull-wing doors, and has no rear windshield. Inside, the cars are expected to have no steering wheel or pedals; the only way they’ll get around is by using Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology.

• Riding around in a self-driving golden two-seater sounds pretty cool, but of course there’s controversy surrounding Tesla’s robotaxi. You see, “normal” robotaxis and self-driving cars generally get a sense of their surroundings by using a combination of lidar, radar, and camera sensors. The Cybercab only uses an array of cameras instead, as Elon Musk believes the expensive nature of lidar sensors plus the computing power needed to combine their data with camera inputs in real-time will prevent self-driving technology from being financially scalable. Plus, he claims, humans only rely on their eyesight to drive, so robots should be fine with just using cameras!

• But according to experts, camera-only systems can easily struggle in less-than-perfect weather conditions. Sudden glare from the sun, thick fog, or heavy rain can all make video feeds unreliable, while lidar systems can still provide accurate 3D maps to their vehicles in those situations. Either way, the biggest question heading into today’s Cybercab launch event is whether Tesla will be allowed to operate its robotaxis on roads across the country without human drivers – otherwise, the company will be stuck with a bunch of gold cars that need steering wheels installed. 

Additional Reads

• An Inflection Point for Prediction Markets (Atlantic, $)

• Get ready for a really busy month of smartphones (Verge)

• Chasing a perfect sleep score? You could be making it worse (BBC)

• Smelling test: children need education in sniffing aromas, scientist says (Guardian)

• NBA: Los Angeles clippers fined $30m over Kawhi Leonard scandal (BBC)

• Pangram Has Emerged as the Gold Standard of AI Detection. Should You Trust It? (Wired, $)

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