By Emma Tucker

As Iran braced for conflict with the U.S., a key regime financier built a secret payment network to keep money flowing to its military. At its core sat Binance. The network, run by an Iranian who is a self-described "antisanction" operator, made $850 million in transactions over two years on the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange. Binance has been used as a financial artery for the Revolutionary Guard -- the powerful political, military and economic force that dominates Iran. While Binance says it has "zero-tolerance for illicit activity," our reporting shows how extensively crypto has been used to bankroll the country.

Today's Headlines

President Trump's allies and foes are jockeying for payouts from the administration's nearly $1.8 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund."

House Republican leaders yanked a planned vote to restrict Trump's ability to conduct military strikes against Iran.

Cuba has few defenses if the U.S. military moves against it.

Jeff Landry, the emissary picked by Trump to win hearts and minds in Greenland, got a chilly reception on his first trip to the island.

Weight-loss drugs may have a surprising side effect: stalling cancer.

Trump said he plans to send an additional 5,000 troops to Poland.

Live From The Markets

How weird are ETFs getting? Try UFO and Midnight-Bitcoin funds, writes Jason Zweig.

Slumming it with Swatch is a clever move for Audemars Piguet, writes Carol Ryan.

Read It Here First

SpaceX's IPO cements Elon Musk's grip on the company. Here's how.

Musk holds so much power at SpaceX that it is nearly impossible to fire him or make other significant corporate changes without his support. That isn't going to change for investors in the company's IPO. Musk will have a near-unprecedented level of control at a public company of its valuation, which is expected to reach at least $1.5 trillion. The SpaceX founder, who serves as chairman, chief executive and chief technical officer, controls roughly 85% of the voting power at the satellite builder, rocket-launch provider and AI developer. The structure remedies some of the frustrations Musk has faced running Tesla, reports Becky Peterson.

Iran moved billions through Binance to fund the regime -- continuing into this month.

Billions in crypto transactions have flowed through Binance to networks financing Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in the two years preceding the current U.S.-Iran war. Foreign law-enforcement officials said they have continued to track money this year flowing through Binance accounts to Iranian entities associated with the regime -- identifying transactions as recently as this month, report Angus Berwick, Patricia Kowsmann and Ben Foldy. A Binance spokesperson said the information was inaccurate, that Binance didn't permit any transactions with individuals or digital wallets that were sanctioned at the time and that Binance took all appropriate actions once they were.

Expert Take

Q: What is 'vibe slop' and why are AI engineers sounding the alarm on it?

Two engineers who built the core of the massively popular OpenClaw AI agent have a stark warning: The AI supposedly capable of replacing well-paid software developers is flooding the world with bad, potentially even dangerous, code, writes Christopher Mims.

A: "Vibe slop" -- a combination of the terms "vibe coding" and "AI slop" -- is what happens when coders replace the hard work of designing and testing software with the shortcut of prompting AI to do it for them. The resulting systems won't stand the test of time, warn two of the engineers who have built the core of one of the world's most popular AI agents.

Yet building software with AI agents is one of the primary drivers of the revenue -- and valuations -- of Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX, all of which will soon go public.

Vibe slop has become a big enough problem that the world's main repository of open-source code has instituted new policies and features to combat it. OpenAI and Anthropic say they have a solution to shoddy AI-generated code: Use yet more AI to review it.

Mario Zechner, whose software contributions led to the AI agent craze, cautions: "We can play this game for a couple more months, or maybe even years, but eventually it will catch up to us."

Zechner believes a reckoning is coming. He thinks big companies will soon realize that their overemphasis on AI-produced code is driving up costs and leading to sub-par software, and many smaller startups that depend on vibe coding will fold.

See The Story

As the French Riviera heats up, buyers are flocking to the quieter side of Cannes.

This week, the eyes of the entertainment world are on Cannes, where the Belle-Ã%poque grandeur of the Boulevard de la Croisette provides the scenic backdrop for the Cannes Film Festival. But all year round, wealthy home buyers from France and abroad are drawn to the wider area, where a combination of striking scenery, balmy weather, seclusion and convenience make for some of the world's most expensive residential real estate.

Happening Today

Kevin Warsh will be sworn in as the new chairman of the Fed. The swearing-in ceremony will be the first chance to see how Trump and his new Fed chair frame what they each want from the next four years, writes Nick Timiraos.

Earnings: BJ's Wholesale Club

Number Of The Day:

$11 billion

The portion of SpaceX's revenue driven by its Starlink division last year, accounting for more than 60% of SpaceX's total sales. It was the most valuable part of the business -- and the only profitable one. SpaceX consists of three segments: space, AI and connectivity, which is primarily driven by Starlink. Starlink has been essential to the success of SpaceX. As Musk's company prepares for a massive IPO, it's clear that colonizing Mars and cracking AI is going to depend on selling Wi-Fi.

And Finally...

Star Wars turns to a 'Baby Yoda' puppet to break its box-office funk.

Disney has put one of its most important franchises on the shoulders of a tiny analog creation. The knee-high space creature -- known as Grogu, Baby Yoda or just, as his human minders often call him, "the baby" -- is a main character in the first Star Wars movie to hit theaters in nearly seven years, "The Mandalorian and Grogu." An animatronic puppet has been trotted out like a real-life celebrity in advance of the movie's opening, putting Grogu's high-tech internal machinery -- and the puppeteers operating it out of sight with remote controls -- to the test.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 22, 2026 06:39 ET (10:39 GMT)

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