🚨HUGE: The war between Apple and OpenAI is getting UGLY. Apple is suing OpenAI, accusing former employees who joined the company of stealing trade secrets. The ChatGPT maker has fired back, calling the lawsuit “a mess of Apple’s own making” and accusing Apple of trying to slow its AI ambitions. It says 400 Apple employees have already left to join its ranks, and warned: “Apple cannot stop the next 400 employees from leaving by filing baseless lawsuits.” There’s also a much bigger fight brewing. OpenAI confirmed its first planned hardware product will be a consumer device that was developed with legendary former Apple design chief Jony Ive.

I’m the Under Secretary at the Treasury, responsible for the side of the dollar that rarely gets mentioned. This week, I did something the United States has claimed for 28 years it would never do: I bought a foreign currency. The last time we did this was back in 1998. A reporter described it as a new era of currency activism, and I let that stand, since activism is the word you use when you plan to keep intervening. Before this week, here’s what we always said—and I helped write some of these statements. The United States supports exchange rates set by the market. We do not buy foreign currency. We said the market should set the price, and we would accept whatever it decided. We stuck to this for 40 years, through every Secretary, and we meant it as firmly as you mean a rule you’ve never had reason to break. But then the yen dropped to its lowest point in 40 years, and I finally lost patience with the market’s choices. So we stepped in. 'Intervened' is the straightforward word, and I’ll explain the softer term soon. To boost the yen, you have to buy it, and that means spending something else. Here’s the part I’m proudest of, and I want you to pay attention to the money, because that’s what matters most. I didn’t spend dollars. Using dollars to buy yen would have weakened the dollar, and protecting the dollar is my main job. Instead, I used euros. To help Japan’s currency without hurting America’s, I used Europe’s. The euros were already available, and using them didn’t affect the dollar at all. Europe wasn’t asked. It just happened to be the source we turned to when we needed funds. The trade followed the usual path, moving through the bank at 33 Liberty Street and then through Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. The yen rose from its 40-year low to the 155 range. Tokyo said it would do this again if needed, and so would we. We called our reason 'disorderly movements.' I like that term. A disorderly movement means a price goes somewhere we didn’t approve. Order is when the price matches what we want. The market became disorderly simply because it stopped matching my view. Now, the word. Now, about the word. For 28 years, we used the honest term 'intervention,' but it’s an awkward word. It means the market was right and we stepped in anyway. It’s a word you use once, apologize for, and say you won’t do again. 'Activism' sounds better. Activism is when someone cares enough about a result to stop waiting and take action. Activism is seen as a good thing. No one apologizes for activism or promises to do it just once. Newspaper handed me activism; I took it. I crossed intervention out of the talking points and wrote activism over it, in the same pen we use for everything, because the pen is the only tool in this building that has ever changed a price. This new era is really the same actions with a better name. We will support market-determined exchange rates, but also decide which ones the market can support. We don’t buy foreign currency—unless we use other foreign currency—on the days when the market forgets who maintains order. The yen is now at 155. The dollar hasn’t been affected. Since Friday, the market has agreed with me on every price, and that’s the only order I’ve ever needed. And Europe still hasn’t asked where its money went.

I’ve made over $12M in this industry. The biggest advantage I had wasn’t a secret strategy or something I found on a YouTube breakdown It was an almost unreasonable belief that I was going to become the industry leader. Even before I had the numbers to prove it. 4 things I wish I understood sooner: 1. Nobody is going to validate your vision before you execute it. If you need everyone around you to agree with you, you’ll always move too late. You have to get comfortable being misunderstood. 2. Some of the decisions that created the biggest jumps in my business looked completely irrational to people who weren’t playing the same game. 3. You can’t keep asking people at your current level what you should do to reach the next one. Their advice is based on the ceiling they’ve already accepted. 4. You need an insane level of self-belief AND the humility to admit when you’re wrong. That’s the sauce. Believe you’re capable of anything, but don’t become so attached to your ideas that you refuse to change them. $12M+ later, I can tell you: The biggest difference between where I was and where I am wasn’t information. It was how strongly I believed I could figure it out.

I’ve been thinking for a while about how to make this last month of summer a little more fun for you… And I think I finally came up with something 🥰 🎡 MY SECRET LUCKY WHEEL IS BACK! 🎡 One little spin, and you might get exactly what you’ve been hoping for 🥹 Stay tuned… 夏の最後の1ヶ月、みんなにどうやって楽しんでもらおうかなって、ずっと考えてたんだけど… ついに思いつきました MY SECRET LUCKY WHEEL が帰ってきます！ ちょっとだけ回してみたら、ずっと欲しかったものが当たっちゃうかも… お楽しみに…