Americans are right to ask a simple question about Ukraine: What is in this for us? That question deserves a clear and practical answer grounded in American interests. The strongest case for supporting Ukraine is not based on rhetoric or abstract appeals to the “international community,” but rather a straightforward assessment of what it means for the American economy, U.S. businesses, and America’s long-term security. After four years of resistance to Russian aggression, Ukraine has proven it can defend itself with the support of the U.S. and its European allies. Their practical investment in deterrence, economic stability, and peace is good not just for our country’s future but also for those who have contributed to our security. It is also an investment in American industry. U.S. defense manufacturers provide high-skilled jobs, expand production lines, and strengthen the industrial capacity that America would rely on in any future crisis. American investment in Ukraine has not only helped our defense. It has reinforced America’s own military readiness. Ukraine has become the world’s most active real-time laboratory of modern warfare. Ukrainian engineers, soldiers, and private innovators are advancing drone operations, electronic warfare, cyber defense, and battlefield data integration at a pace rarely seen outside wartime. Ukraine is not just using Western systems; it is rapidly adapting and improving them under combat conditions. For the U.S., this presents a clear military-technology advantage: a chance to accelerate innovation, refine emerging capabilities, and strengthen its defense industrial base at lower cost. Joint development and co-production with Ukrainian partners can deliver faster results while ensuring America stays ahead of evolving threats. In a competition defined by speed and adaptability, Ukraine offers the U.S. a real strategic edge. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not merely a regional border dispute. It is a brazen attempt to prove that brute force can redraw maps, terrorize civilians, and break the will of free nations. World War II began the same way. But Americans do not need to look only at history. They know what economic instability feels like. They have lived through supply chain shocks, rising prices, energy volatility, and uncertainty in global markets. Preventing new shocks is wiser and less expensive than paying for preventable crises later. Yet the larger opportunity lies ahead. When peace returns, Ukraine will become one of the most significant reconstruction and growth markets in Europe. Recovery and modernization needs are already estimated at more than $500 billion, creating one of the largest emerging investment opportunities on the continent for the coming decade. This will not be limited to rebuilding what was damaged. Much of Ukraine will be modernized from the ground up, with newer infrastructure, smarter logistics, cleaner energy systems, stronger digital networks, and more competitive industrial capacity. This will create ideal conditions for American companies that lead in innovation, engineering, technology, finance, and advanced manufacturing. There will be demand for roads, bridges, ports, rail, housing, energy systems, cybersecurity, defense manufacturing, logistics, agriculture, water infrastructure, and digital modernization. American companies can compete and win in those sectors. Ukraine is already one of the world’s leading agricultural exporters. Expanding that capacity will require major investment in grain terminals, storage, food processing, rail links, port infrastructure, and supply-chain technology. American agribusiness, equipment producers, and logistics firms are exceptionally well positioned to lead. Ukraine also offers long-term advantages that investors recognize: a highly educated workforce, globally competitive engineers and IT talent, strategic access to European markets, significant natural resources, and a clear path toward deeper integration with the European economy. The firms that help rebuild critical infrastructure, modernize energy networks, expand food exports, strengthen maritime logistics, and develop new industrial capacity will not be participating in charity. They will be participating in one of the most important growth opportunities of the next decade. My home region on the frontline of the war, Mykolaiv, offers a clear example. Located on the Black Sea gateway to southern Ukraine, Mykolaiv has long been a center of shipbuilding, agriculture, and industry. Before the war, Ukraine’s Black Sea ports handled a significant share of global grain exports, making their recovery critical not only for Ukraine but for global food markets. After victory, Mykolaiv can become a hub for port modernization, grain logistics, ship repair, advanced manufacturing, renewable energy, water systems, industrial parks, and maritime security infrastructure. For American investors, that means practical opportunities: rebuilding port capacity, developing terminal concessions, partnering in agribusiness exports, financing energy resilience projects, expanding industrial production, modernizing water infrastructure, and establishing logistics hubs in a strategically located region with a skilled workforce. This is not a theoretical opportunity. It is a real post-war market where early engagement will define long-term strategic and economic positioning. What we ask from American entrepreneurs is a partnership based on shared interest and shared prosperity. Ukraine has already proven its determination. Our soldiers’ fight. Our workers rebuild under fire. Our communities endure missile attacks and keep moving forward. Peace and security in Ukraine today mean reliable security for Europe tomorrow. It means stable trade and logistics routes for the European continent and the world. It means opportunities for American business. It is a real counterbalance to Russia’s imperial ambitions and aggression. And that is why supporting Ukraine is a strategic opportunity. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

WASHINGTON, May 14 (Reuters) – U.S. and Chinese delegations are discussing artificial intelligence guardrails at their Beijing summit and will set up a protocol for best practices to keep non-state bad actors from exploiting the most powerful AI models. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC in a pre-recorded interview on Thursday that it was “of utmost importance” that the U.S. maintain its lead over China in AI, adding that this is why Beijing is interested in discussing guardrails.  “What we don’t want to do is stifle innovation. So our responsibility is to come up with the highest performance calculus where we can get the most innovation and the highest level of safety,” Bessent said. The talks come as Anthropic’s powerful new Mythos AI tool has exposed major software security vulnerabilities, prompting banks and other companies to make urgent repairs and software upgrades to correct weaknesses in their networks. Government officials have raised alarms about non-state, criminal or terrorist organizations exploiting Mythos to disrupt markets and the global financial system. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, whose company’s semiconductor chips power much of the AI ecosystem, is in Beijing for the summit, and Reuters reported that the U.S. has cleared around 10 Chinese companies to buy Nvidia’s second most-powerful H200 chip. Bessent told CNBC that he had no knowledge of the H200 approvals, but said that such decisions would be made by the U.S. Commerce Department, not the Treasury. He said that in addition to Anthropic’s Mythos, there will be similar “step function” gains in other models from Alphabet’s Google and OpenAI. He said the U.S. government is consulting with all three companies, calling them “very good partners.” The U.S. Treasury has been working with the 11 largest banks to ensure that they patch vulnerabilities and will do the same with smaller “super-regional” banks and with community banks, Bessent said, adding that he was confident of a “smooth transition” to AI’s new capabilities. He said that he did not think there would be discussions with China on AI if China was leading the technology race. “So we’re going to put in U.S. best practices, U.S. values on this, and then roll those out to the world,” he said of the AI models. (Reporting by David Lawder; editing by Susan Heavey and Chizu Nomiyama )

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to Victor Davis Hanson’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes. Jack Fowler: All right, Victor, I’m going to just—I’ll just give a drop here on what happened, and please comment. And then I have a very—it’s a little long of a read of the councilwoman from New York City who’s explaining, in her view—she’s a Republican councilwoman, Vickie Paladino—what is this really all about?  So yesterday, on Monday, pro-Palestinian protesters marched through the streets of a Jewish neighborhood in the city, of course, carrying the banners, flags, signs, Hamas, Hezbollah posters, “River to the Sea,” etc. Five hundred police officers had to be called. This is the new New York City. Victor, what’s your take on this?  Victor Davis Hanson: Well, I mean, it’s going according to [Zohran] Mamdani’s plan. I mean, he has Islamists come into [Gracie Mansion]. And he said that he would arrest [Benjamin] Netanyahu when he got there. Most of the people that he has appointed, they have a social media history of being anti-Israel or anti-Semitic. He’s played race. He said he was gonna go after white neighborhoods. This is a white neighborhood. So I guess he’s fulfilling his pledge, and that’s what the people wanted. And he’s unapologetic about it.   When he tapped on that Ken Griffith—you know, got his camera close—he was basically drawing the line and said, we don’t want you here. Get out.  And then if you’re one of the protesters, say if you’re here on a green card, a lot of them looked like they were immigrants or students from the Middle East—not all—but you would say, well, this is what Mamdani sent me. That’s what he wants me to do.   And the police are not allowed to even touch a person that ICE is going for. So the New York PD, which is the best police department in the world, is now forbidden by Mamdani even to help the federal government.  So they get the general impression that New York is on their side, and they look at the wider atmosphere in the United States and say, well, what is the Left doing?   Well, there’s this guy in Maine with a Nazi tattoo, and he’s just a nominee. That’s great. And then you’ve got Benjamin’s baby, you know, Ilhan Omar. And you’ve got Rashida Tlaib yelling and screaming about Jews all the time. And then you’ve got, pretty much, an anti-Semitic campus in the United States.   And then you look on the right and you’ve got Candace [Owens] saying the Mossad killed Charlie Kirk. You’ve got Tucker [Carlson] saying he wants Graham Platner on his show. And that he’s got a World War II revisionist that says you know who started the war and pushed Churchill and Roosevelt into it.  So they get the impression that it’s not going to be—they won’t be culpable. There’ll be no consequences to go into a Jewish neighborhood and rough up—wasn’t that—you know New York so well, wasn’t that where Al Sharpton said we have diamond merchants in Crown Heights or something? He said that a long time ago. Crown something.  Crown Heights is a neighborhood. I’m not sure that that was—this may have been in Crown Heights last night. Yeah. I’m a little confused because—  Jack Fowler: That’s separate, isn’t it? That’s separate.  Victor Davis Hanson: Well, there’s another—I mean, we’re talking on Tuesday, but I saw something on X about there’s expected to be another protest in another largely Jewish neighborhood, Midwood in Queens. So this is very targeting and selective here.  I think people, Americans, they’re all united. They do not want illegal immigration. That polls 70%. But I think there’s a lot of people who say, you know, something’s wrong with legal immigration. We are not assimilating. We are not acculturating. We are not integrating legal immigrants. And we have 16% of the population was not born in the United States. And we have 27% of California not born—and we don’t ask anything of them. So we give licenses to Indian truck drivers. They can’t read.  I just got off of a four-hour drive from Palo Alto to here to the farm, and I can tell you, driving behind—you know, my wife was driving—but driving and watching some big truck with 20 tons on it just fishtail going 70 miles an hour in front of you, it’s pretty scary. And you go by and then—I mean, they’re just out of control.  And then we have, in my neighborhood, we have cartels, and they’re from people who are not citizens. And they’re from people who are citizens.   So I think it’s gonna—I think American people, they’re going to want people to have an ID to vote. And the SAVE Act that should have been passed. I hope it does. And then they’re going to say, we don’t want a million people anymore. We want 100 or 150,000 or 200. And we want to audit them. We want to make sure they know English. We want to know that they’re self-supporting. We want to know that they won’t be on federal entitlements, state entitlements.   Because it’s—you know, if the blue states don’t want that, then they should just handle—they should just, under the system of federalism, say, we want all the immigrants in our state. But don’t take federal funds for it. You pay for it.  And it’s so different than the people who came, the Greek American community, the Armenian American community, all these early—the Hungarian, the Polish—they were all immigrants.   There wasn’t a system that you were gonna—there wasn’t a sense you’re gonna come to the United States, and then you’re gonna be supported like the Somalis or the Afghan community. And then you’re going to be canonized as on the 30% ledger of the victimized, and you’re gonna get exceptions. And then you’re gonna immediately delve into politics. And, you know, it doesn’t make any sense.  And I think people are gonna demand a change. I really do.  Jack Fowler: The concept of, you know, “I pledge allegiance,” which the absence of the necessity of allegiance in many of these communities is just deeply troubling.   Victor Davis Hanson: It is. It is. You saw that with that [Abdul] El-Sayed running for the Michigan Democratic senatorial primary, when he said—I guess it was a hot mic recording—he said, now we have to be very careful about announcing any happiness with the death of [Iranian Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei, in my district. You know, my constituency, they’re gonna be very sensitive. But basically, he was saying, I’m gonna be elected in Michigan on a close vote, and I need every vote of a Muslim American who’s eligible to vote. And they are very strongly in favor of the Iranians beating the Americans. That’s what I got out of it.  Jack Fowler: Yeah. Yeah. Victor, let me read here and please bear with me—you and to our listeners and viewers. This is a statement on X by Councilwoman Vickie Paladino, who is a Republican on the New York City Council.   And by the way, this last night was in Brooklyn—in Midwood in Brooklyn. Tonight in a Queens neighborhood, there’s expected to be another such action where there’s ranting about globalizing the intifada, etc.  So here’s what she wrote: “What’s going on across New York tonight is a disgrace, a sickening display that should embarrass every leader in our city government. A phalanx of 500 police officers should not be needed to protect a synagogue from a violent mob of masked jihadis carrying the flags of designated terror organizations. Make no mistake, this is exactly what Mamdani was elected to facilitate. It had nothing to do with free buses or public services or the working class or anything else lied about during his campaign. It was always about a revolutionary vanguard led by the Islamist Marxist alliance to bring chaos to their political enemies in naked power plays that are meant to clearly announce who’s now in charge here. When they say every issue is Palestine, this is what they mean. When they say globalize the intifada, this is what they mean. This is it. This is what New York now has to look forward to. And it’s going to get much worse for Jews, for homeowners, for businesses, for executives and banks and restaurants and everyone who isn’t part of their radical nexus. Nobody is safe. Everyone is targeted. And they will continue to escalate, likely until they start killing people, all as the mayor looks on and smiles.”  Very powerful and well-written.  Victor Davis Hanson: Yeah, I don’t think they’re going to—they have majorities in these local blue-state enclaves. Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, New York, Boston. But the great majority of Americans don’t agree with what they’re doing. And as long as they keep in their enclaves, the people are live and let live. But once they go into other neighborhoods and try to terrorize people, or once they block—as they have stormed into airports—then you’re going to get a lot of angry people. And that angry group of people is the majority.  And how it works out to the midterms, if the war will end in two or three weeks, whether there has to be kinetic to end it, I don’t know. And he pivots to the economy and there’s a redistricting fight and these victories are in play. I’m not sure they’re going to win the midterms.   And I just think that there’s the counterrevolution of the MAGA people has not even ended yet. I know there’s been defections, but people are getting—there’s no alternative. You see, there’s no alternative to it because one party says, wind and solar, we don’t need to drill oil or gas.  Or crime—all these people have been getting out. They go down the street in Boston, they shoot, he’s been out. Somebody cuts the throat of a poor immigrant girl, he’s been out. All of them have been out. And the prisons are half full in some states.  So that agenda does not work, and people are not going to support it. And we hear the loud supporters. They make the news, but they’re not the majority.  We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The majority of Americans across both political parties would support President Donald Trump taking executive action to vet new artificial intelligence models for safety, a new poll from Institute for Family Studies and YouGov shows.  The new poll of 1,000 American voters, obtained by The Daily Signal, shows that 82% of American voters want the White House to vet AI systems for safety. Only 4% oppose such a measure, with 14% being neutral on the issue.  President Donald Trump is expected to sign an AI safety executive order after he gets back from Beijing, sources familiar with the matter tell The Daily Signal. The president is currently in China with multiple U.S. tech leaders, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, and Apple CEO Tim Cook. While the New York Times reported that the draft order would require pre-deployment vetting for all frontier AI models, sources told The Daily Signal that vetting would apply to AI companies seeking government contracts. However, a move to making vetting optional for potential contractors is also under consideration, sources familiar with the matter said. Companies would be encouraged to share frontier models before release so the tools can be evaluated, and the United States can prepare better against potential cyberattacks. The substance of the order is still in flux and subject to change, sources said, as many administration officials have different visions for the future of AI regulation.  The poll, performed Thursday, May 7, found that 90% of Trump voters support pre-deployment vetting of AI models, compared with only 3% who oppose it.  Similarly, 79% of Kamala Harris voters support this measure, while only 5% oppose it.  The measure is popular across all age groups; at least 79% of every group said they support safety evaluations.  Additionally, 88% of voters want AI systems to be evaluated for national security, while another 87% support vetting for the wellbeing of children and families.  The role of vetting would likely fall to the Center for AI Standards and Innovation, the Commerce Department’s safety-centered artificial intelligence arm launched under the Biden administration. The agency originally tapped Collin Burns, a former researcher at Anthropic and OpenAI, to lead it, before moving in a different direction and appointing Dr. Chris Fall, who served in the first Trump administration as the director of the Office of Science at the Department of Energy. On May 5, Google DeepMind, Microsoft, and xAI agreed to work with the Center for AI Standards and Innovation, but the Commerce Department has since deleted the details from its webpage.

This is all you need to know about Washington’s poisonous partisanship: Not a single Senate Democratic senator showed up for a major Senate oversight hearing on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the role of senior officials of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in formulating America’s flawed response to the deadliest global pandemic since the 1918 flu.   Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky., chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, observed, “For years, Americans were told to stop asking questions about COVID’s origins. Today, a whistleblower with firsthand knowledge will testify that intelligence officials may have buried evidence, altered conclusions, and concealed the truth from the public.” The whistleblower, James Erdman III, a career CIA operative, revealed in sworn Senate testimony how CIA management participated in undercutting the initial career staff assessment on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic in China. While Erdman appeared voluntarily before the Committee, and previously in executive session, he was also the recipient of a formal subpoena. It was a blockbuster event. Erdman told the Committee that in August of 2021, a CIA team of experts had assessed that the pandemic originated as a lab leak. In 2022, he told the Senate, there were 10 CIA analysts who did the review of the origins issue, and seven of them who had scientific expertise assessed the coronavirus as the product of a lab leak. In 2023, the team did a reassessment, and six of the seven technical experts in the CIA task force still assessed that the pandemic was the product of a laboratory leak.  In fact, during the entire period between 2021 and 2023, CIA staff assessed that a Chinese lab leak was the most likely source of the global pandemic.  Biden-era CIA management, however, changed the final report to read that the agency could not “know precisely” whether the deadly coronavirus was the product of a lab leak. That estimate remained in place as the official CIA position until the Trump administration reversed it, and the CIA position became formally aligned with the previous assessments of scientists at the Department of Energy and the analysts of the Federal Bureau of Investigation that the pandemic had a laboratory origin.   Senator Ron Johnson, R-Wis., asked Erdman if there was evidence that any of the CIA analysts had been “bribed”—a rumor that surfaced in the media a couple of years ago—and Erdman definitively stated that there was no such bribery. In fact, Erdman reaffirmed his view that the vast majority of CIA personnel were “barrel-chested freedom fighters,” true patriots dedicated to protecting America. The Fauci Factor The Committee also addressed the role of Dr. Anthony Fauci, then Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on the deliberations of CIA personnel. Erdman affirmed that Fauci “significantly” influenced CIA decision-making, including the agency’s non-committal assessment on COVID’s origins. Fauci was publicly committed to the theory that the deadly pandemic had a “natural” origin, and he also introduced CIA officials to the likeminded scientists who had been working with him on the issue.   Erdman also noted that there was a “pervasive undercurrent” of reluctance to embrace the lab leak theory among CIA management. Specifically, he told the Senate that on scientific issues there was a tendency to embrace “groupthink” and identify with one preferred position—in this case the “natural origins” of the coronavirus—rather than investigate the possibility of a lab leak in China.  Dr. Steven Quay, for example, provided powerful evidence to the Senate two years ago supporting the likelihood of a lab leak, but that impressive work was simply ignored. In hindsight, Erdman observed, Congressional leaders should recognize that the problem is much bigger than the biases of a few CIA officials. Instead, he indicated that they should consider the whole ecosystem of interagency and academic/government agency relationships—a confluence of large amounts of grant funding and vested professional and institutional interests. Following up, Sen. Paul observed that these relationships formed a “circle,” not a group of “independent” and unbiased experts.   Sen. Paul asked Erdman if anyone had even asked whether Fauci—whose agency funded gain-of-function coronavirus research in China—might have had a conflict of interest. Erdman answered “no.”   Cover-up Senator Josh Hawley, R-Mo., called attention to the fact that Congress enacted a bipartisan bill, which President Joe Biden signed into law, calling for the intelligence community to release “any and all” documents relating to the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. In response Avril Haines, then the director of the Office of National Intelligence, produced a paltry five-page report, later telling Sen. Hawley that this was all they could release. In response to Hawley’s question on that point, Erdman said that the agency had, in fact, been reviewing more than 2,000 pages of documents on the topic. At which point, Hawley charged the intelligence agencies of blatantly violating the law with impunity, going so far as to say, “Our government is no longer a democracy.”   Please note: even under the Trump administration, the relevant documents have yet to be delivered to Congress as required by law. In a similar vein, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said that as early as March 21, 2021, Dr. Peter Marks, top vaccine regulator at the Food and Drug Administration, was provided with data that showed “safety signals” (early warnings) for COVID-19 vaccines, including serious cardiovascular conditions. But neither Marks nor Fauci nor President Biden refused to raise any “red flags” on that issue. Instead, said Johnson, President Biden went ahead with a failed attempt to impose an illegal vaccine mandate on employers and employees in the private sector. “I cannot explain it all,” said Johnson, “but the mainstream media in this country are simply ignoring the fact that there were safety signals for the vaccines and have thus far refused to report on it.” Toward the close of the hearing, CIA Public Affairs Director Liz Lyons criticized the Committee for holding the public session, calling it “dishonest political theater masquerading as a congressional hearing.” In an extravagant exercise in the fine art of missing the point, Lyons also said that the CIA, under Trump’s leadership, had “already assessed” that COVID most likely originated from a lab leak and that efforts to challenge that conclusion were disingenuous.” Lyons obviously missed the fact that for the past five years, most congressional investigators, including Sens. Paul and Johnson, argued that the evidence supported a lab origin of the pandemic. Johnson said he would call on CIA Director John Ratcliffe to apologize to the Committee, while assuring Erdman that the Senators would defend him if he faced retaliation for his public testimony. Next Steps    During the proceedings, the Senators suggested several remedies. First, they advocated for the enactment of the bipartisan Risky Research Review Act (S. 854), which would create an independent commission of scientific experts to give final approval to any gain-of-function research. As Sen. Paul argued, Scientists doing such research cannot be the scientists overseeing it. Second, they called for the creation of a new select committee to oversee the CIA and other intelligence agencies, like the Church Committee of the 1970s, to curtail agency abuses. Third, they argued that the Trump administration needs to undertake a serious interagency effort to prepare for the next pandemic, including agency reforms and strong research and development of effective anti-viral medications. Meanwhile, Ms. Lyons might ponder ample public-relations opportunities in the private sector.