AI has made it vastly easier for malicious hackers to identify anonymous social media accounts, a new study has warned.
In most test scenarios, large language models (LLMs) – the technology behind platforms such as ChatGPT – successfully matched anonymous online users with their actual identities on other platforms, based on the information they posted.
The AI researchers Simon Lermen and Daniel Paleka said LLMs make it cost effective to perform sophisticated privacy attacks, forcing a “fundamental reassessment of what can be considered private online”.
In their experiment, the researchers fed anonymous accounts into an AI, and got it to scrape all the information it could. They gave a hypothetical example of a user talking about struggling at school, and walking their dog Biscuit through a “Dolores park”.
In that hypothetical case, the AI then searched elsewhere for those details and matched @anon_user42 to the known identity with a high degree of confidence.
While this example was fictional, the paper’s authors highlighted scenarios in which governments use AI to surveil dissidents and activists posting anonymously, or hackers are able to launch “highly personalised” scams.
AI surveillance is a rapidly developing field that is causing alarm among computer scientists and privacy experts. It uses LLMs to synthesise information about an individual online which would be impractical for most people to do manually.
Information about members of the public that is readily available online can already be “misused straightforwardly” for scams, said Lermen, including spear-phishing, where a hacker poses as a trusted friend to get victims to follow a malicious link in their inbox.
With the expertise requirement to perform more developed attacks now much lower, hackers only need access to publicly available language models and an internet connection.
Peter Bentley, a professor of computer science at UCL, said there were concerns about commercial uses of the technology “if and when products come out for de-anonymising”.
One issue is that LLMs often make mistakes in linking accounts. “People are going to be accused of things they haven’t done,” warned Bentley.
Another concern, raised by Prof Marc Juárez, a cybersecurity lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, is that LLMs can use public data beyond social media: hospital records, admissions data, and various other statistical releases could fall short of the high standard of anonymisation necessary in the age of AI.
“It is quite alarming. I think this paper is showing that we should reconsider our practices,” said Juarez.
AI is not a magic weapon against anonymity online. While LLMs can de-anonymise records in many situations, sometimes there is not enough information to draw conclusions. In many cases, the number of potential matches is too large to narrow down.
“They can only link across platforms where someone consistently shares the same bits of information in both places,” said Prof Marti Hearst of UC Berkeley’s school of information.
While the technology is not perfect, scientists are now asking institutions and individuals to rethink how they anonymise data in the world of AI.
Lermen has recommended that platforms restrict data access as a first step: enforcing rate limits on user data downloads, detecting automated scraping, and restricting bulk exports of data. But he also noted that individual users can take greater precautions about the information they share online.
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If you are wondering whether GDS Holdings is attractively priced today, you are not alone. Many investors are trying to work out what a fair value for this stock really looks like.
The share price closed at US$40.87, with returns of a 1.1% decline over 7 days, a 12.1% decline over 30 days, 6.6% year to date, 12.4% over 1 year and very large gains over 3 years, alongside a 55.2% decline over 5 years. This pattern can easily raise questions about risk and reward at current levels.
Recent news coverage has focused on GDS Holdings as part of broader conversations about data center and infrastructure related companies. This has kept attention on how sensitive the stock might be to sentiment shifts around growth, capital needs and regulation. This backdrop helps explain why the market has reacted strongly at times, even when there has not been a single headline driving the price on its own.
Simply Wall St currently gives GDS Holdings a valuation score of 0 out of 6. Next, we will look at what this means across methods like discounted cash flow, multiples and asset based checks, then finish by looking at an even more helpful way to think about valuation beyond the raw numbers.
GDS Holdings scores just 0/6 on our valuation checks. See what other red flags we found in the full valuation breakdown.
A Discounted Cash Flow, or DCF, model estimates what a business might be worth today by projecting its future cash flows and then discounting those back to a present value.
For GDS Holdings, the model used is a 2 Stage Free Cash Flow to Equity approach based on cash flows in CN¥. The latest twelve month free cash flow is a loss of CN¥2.0b. Analysts supply explicit forecasts for the next few years, and Simply Wall St then extends these out so that by 2030 the projected free cash flow is CN¥2.5b, with further extrapolated figures into the mid 2030s.
When all these projected cash flows are discounted back, the model arrives at an estimated intrinsic value of US$21.09 per share. Compared with the recent share price of US$40.87, this implies the stock is about 93.8% overvalued based on this particular set of assumptions.
Result: OVERVALUED
Our Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) analysis suggests GDS Holdings may be overvalued by 93.8%. Discover 49 high quality undervalued stocks or create your own screener to find better value opportunities.
GDS Discounted Cash Flow as at Mar 2026
Head to the Valuation section of our Company Report for more details on how we arrive at this Fair Value for GDS Holdings.
For profitable companies, the P/E ratio is often a useful yardstick because it links what you pay for each share directly to the earnings that company generates. It gives you a quick way to compare how the market is pricing one stream of earnings against another.
What counts as a reasonable P/E usually reflects two things: how fast earnings are expected to grow and how risky those earnings are. Higher growth or lower perceived risk can justify a higher multiple, while slower growth or higher risk often lines up with a lower one.
GDS Holdings currently trades on a P/E of 48.50x. That sits above the IT industry average of roughly 21.28x and also above the peer group average of 43.44x. Simply Wall St also calculates a Fair Ratio of 23.01x, a proprietary estimate of what P/E might be reasonable for this company given factors such as its earnings profile, industry, profit margins, size and identified risks. This Fair Ratio can be more informative than a simple peer or industry comparison because it reflects company specific characteristics rather than broad group averages. Comparing the current 48.50x P/E to the 23.01x Fair Ratio suggests the shares are trading on a richer multiple than this framework would indicate.
Result: OVERVALUED
NasdaqGM:GDS P/E Ratio as at Mar 2026
P/E ratios tell one story, but what if the real opportunity lies elsewhere? Start investing in legacies, not executives. Discover our 20 top founder-led companies.
Earlier we mentioned that there is an even better way to understand valuation, so let us introduce you to Narratives, which simply means writing down your view of GDS Holdings as a story that links its business setup and risks to a set of numbers for future revenue, earnings and margins, then to a fair value that you can compare with the current share price.
On Simply Wall St, within the Community page used by millions of investors, Narratives give you a straightforward template to do this. You can say, for example, that you align with the more optimistic views that point to a fair value of US$68.63, or the more cautious views closer to US$33.06, and then see how each view stacks up against where the shares trade today.
Because Narratives are refreshed when new information arrives, such as earnings, updated price targets or capital raisings, your fair value stays linked to the latest data and you can quickly see whether your story still makes sense or whether it is time to revisit your assumptions before you decide whether to buy, hold or sell.
For GDS Holdings however, we will make it really easy for you with previews of two leading GDS Holdings Narratives:
🐂 GDS Holdings Bull Case
Fair value: US$52.89 per share
Implied undervaluation vs last close: about 23.0% below this fair value
Assumed revenue growth: 13.91% a year
Analysts building this case expect GDS Holdings to grow revenue each year and gradually lift profit margins over the next few years.
The fair value and updated target around US$52.89 rely on continued access to capital recycling tools like ABS and C REITs, as well as ongoing demand for AI ready data centers in China and overseas.
This view assumes the company manages its leverage while converting its development pipeline and international expansion into higher earnings by the late 2020s.
🐻 GDS Holdings Bear Case
Fair value: US$33.06 per share
Implied overvaluation vs last close: about 23.6% above this fair value
Assumed revenue growth: 10.97% a year
The more cautious narrative highlights GDS Holdings’ high debt levels, pressure on pricing and margins, and the effect of monetizing assets through ABS and C REITs on reported revenue.
It places weight on risks around execution of planned leasing and installations, along with regulatory and funding uncertainties that could affect cash flow and earnings consistency.
Under these assumptions, the bearish fair value of about US$33.06 treats the current share price as rich relative to the earnings and risk profile that this camp expects.
Taken together, these Narratives give you a structured way to consider which assumptions about growth, margins, funding and risk feel more realistic, and to assess for yourself how the current US$40.87 share price lines up with those views.
Curious how numbers become stories that shape markets? Explore Community Narratives
Do you think there’s more to the story for GDS Holdings? Head over to our Community to see what others are saying!
NasdaqGM:GDS 1-Year Stock Price Chart
This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
Companies discussed in this article include GDS.
Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team@simplywallst.com
Average grocery prices have recorded “eight consecutive quarters of year-on-year price declines”, Woolworths declared at its recent half-year financial results.
It’s a big claim given most shoppers intuitively know that grocery prices have been rising, with data tracked by Savings.com.au showing a trolley load of Woolworths groceries that cost $292 two years ago now costs $315.
Putting promotions to one side, it’s difficult to find many products at Woolworths that are cheaper now than they were eight quarters ago.
The price of Weet-Bix (375g) is up 14%; Coca-Cola (1.25l) up 13%; Vegemite (150g) up 5%; beef mince (500g) up 30%; and free range eggs (large) are up 19%.
Bags of washed potatoes, cheese slices, white sugar and long grain rice were among the few products that Guardian Australia could identify as having stayed the same or recorded price falls during that period.
Indeed, the food and non-alcoholic drink category of the consumer price index was one of the largest contributors to annual inflation in 2025, up 3.4%, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). It was also a significant contributor the year before.
Interestingly, the ABS uses Woolworths scan data, as well as data from Coles and other retailers, to work out grocery price changes, creating an apparent discrepancy with the supermarket’s claim of falling prices.
Given Woolworths is Australia’s biggest supermarket chain, it has a significant bearing on the ABS calculations.
It turns out that when Woolworths says average prices have declined, it does not actually mean that an identical basket of groceries costs less than it used to.
As Graham Cooke, head of consumer research at Finder, puts it: “It is the corporate equivalent of a hotel chain claiming ‘average stay costs’ are dropping because guests have stopped booking suites and are now squeezing into budget rooms.”
Woolworths uses the Fisher method, a formula that tracks the average price of items actually sold, not the changes in shelf price.
While the methodology is useful for some mathematical problems, the metric will typically show prices are falling when customers are struggling so much that they switch to cheap alternatives.
This reframes a decline in living standards as a saving, masking the fact that grocery prices are actually rising, as every shopper knows.
“In other words, the Woolworths method accounts for consumer choice. If steak increases by $5 and everyone switches to mince, the average price paid drops,” Cooke says.
“To announce eight quarters of price declines doesn’t pass the pub test. If prices were truly deflating for the benefit of the customer, profit margins typically wouldn’t be climbing.”
A Woolworths spokesperson defended the methodology.
“Our measurement of the change in average prices is based on the ongoing shifts in which products customers are actually putting in their baskets day-to-day,” the spokesperson said.
“It is a recognised metric that takes into account the specific volumes of each item sold in Woolworths stores.”
The decision by Woolworths to use this statistical model for public price claims will probably frustrate shoppers who have downgraded their family’s dinner menu to stay within a relentlessly tight budget.
The “eight consecutive quarters” of price declines claim is also being used at a time of increased scrutiny on the major supermarkets, given Coles has just been in court defending allegations from the consumer regulator that it offered “illusory” price discounts.
Woolworths is facing near identical allegations and is due in court later this year.
In the meantime, both major supermarket chains have been increasing their profit margins during an inflation spike, an issue that could trigger more political attention.
To truly pay less than two years ago, Woolworths shoppers will need to stick to the actual items that are now cheaper – meaning a family dinner consisting of washed potatoes, cheese slices, white sugar and long grain rice may need to suffice.
For an industry dominated by men, investing holds a surprising secret: women often outperform their male counterparts.
In finance there has always been a lot of focus on men. Around 87 per cent of fund managers are men, according to Citywire. Until recently, our chancellors in the UK had all been men and, traditionally, men handled the money in households.
It wasn’t until 1975 that women could even open a bank account without their husband or father’s signature, let alone thinking about starting to invest.
Dig into the data though and women tend to be stronger investors. Research by AJ Bell found that women hold more ISAs than men. Plus, when women invest they tend to outperform men. Barclays tracked 2,800 of its investment customers and found that female portfolios gained 1.8 per cent more a year than those held by men.
So, what can we learn from women’s investment habits?
Men, typically, are more active traders than women; in other words, they buy or sell more often. Data from AJ Bell shows that, on average, men make 12 trades per year whereas women make 25 per cent fewer trades.
Women also tend to react less emotionally to their investments, holding on through market volatility.
Danni Hewson, head of financial analysis at AJ Bell, said: “This suggests less fiddling with portfolios after making their investment decisions at the outset, resulting in the side benefit of paying less in fees and reducing the risk of falling foul of market volatility.”
While we all need to adjust our investment portfolios from time to time, resisting the urge to constantly tinker will cut the amount of fees you pay and could help you avoid crystallising losses in a market downturn.
Figures from HMRC show that women hold more in cash ISAs than men.
“And that’s despite earning less on average because of the gender pay gap, being more likely to take career breaks to care for children or elderly relatives, paying more for certain goods and services, and often having far less linear career paths,” says Maike Currie, VP Personal Finance at PensionBee.
(Getty/iStock)
“Women tend to approach saving with diligence, long-term goals and consistency.”
These are all great habits to help you build a financial safety net. Putting a set amount into savings regularly makes it a routine that then becomes automatic. Having clear long-term goals for your money can also make it easier to stick with a savings plan.
Women also tend to take a more diversified approach to investing. A study by Warwick University found that women usually invest in funds, while men are more likely to hold individual shares.
Fund managers investing across multiple businesses, sectors and regions provides built-in diversification. This can help smooth returns and make portfolios more resilient during periods of market volatility.
Investing in individual shares is far riskier, as your returns are tied to the fortunes of just one company – even if that firm trades around the world.
Spreading your money across a range of assets – funds, bonds and shares – as well as different geographic regions and sectors can help protect your portfolio when markets fall. One part of your portfolio may struggle while another soars, smoothing out the bumps.
While women may display many strong investing habits, the problem is they simply aren’t participating enough.
Men hold nearly 500,000 more stocks and shares ISAs than women, according to AJ Bell, with many women keeping their savings in cash instead.
“That reflects a more cautious approach: cash feels safe, while investing involves risk,” says Currie.
(Getty Images)
“The problem is that over the long-term, excessive caution can come at a cost. Keeping money in cash may feel secure in the short-run, but it risks losing purchasing power to inflation and missing out on the growth that the markets have historically delivered.”
The good news? The gap between male and female investors is shrinking. Research from Boring Money shows that the number of women investing has risen by 10 per cent in the past year and the gap between total wealth invested by men and women has narrowed by 15 per cent.
PensionBee has also seen encouraging signs, with women paying more into their pensions than men in January for only the second time in the company’s history.
“There are genuine green shoots of hope,” says Holly Mackay, founder and CEO of Boring Money. “The number of women investors has grown, which is encouraging.”
But there is still a long way to go. The gender investment gap still stands at £574bn. Women need to embrace investing and put the good habits they already have to work, growing their wealth for the long haul.
When investing, your capital is at risk and you may get back less than invested. Past performance doesn’t guarantee future results.
Read The Independent’s influence list for International Women’s Day 2026 here.
Mark remembers the first time he wondered whether he was teaching Block’s AI tools how to do his job – and maybe even replace him. He was at his fintech company’s extravagant anniversary party last September. As executives led a presentation on the productivity benefits of a new internal AI tool, Mark, who worked in the product department, discussed his worries with colleagues. While he wasn’t sure what would happen in a few years, he told a co-worker sitting next to him that for now, there was no way the technology was so advanced that it could move the business forward without employees like him to help drive vision and strategy.
These AI tools were not proactive. He had to tell them what to do. Block still needed him, he thought.
“You can’t really AI that,” he told the Guardian, adding that, after all, “an employee is more than a series of tasks”.
Mark was one of roughly 4,000 Block employees laid off last week. CEO Jack Dorsey said he cut the company’s workforce almost in half because of gains in AI productivity. “A significantly smaller team, using the tools we’re building, can do more and do it better,” Dorsey wrote in a letter to shareholders.
But in interviews with the Guardian, seven current and recently laid off workers pushed back against Dorsey’s assertions that current AI tools can essentially replace workers at this scale. The workers the Guardian spoke with requested anonymity for fear of jeopardising their jobs or severance. They belong to various departments, including engineering and product, and several say Block’s AI tools can be helpful in their work. But many felt the cuts were Dorsey’s way of winning back investor confidence after Block’s stock had declined in recent months, following heavy investments in an unstable cryptocurrency market.
George, who still works at Block, says this was “posturing for the market” and that investors believe Dorsey is not a strong CEO: “This was a bold move to reposition the company away from crypto and towards AI and also change the public market narrative around the company.” Block’s stock jumped after its AI-fueled layoff announcement.
In a wide-ranging Wired interview published Friday, Dorsey said he cut his workforce so drastically because “something really shifted in December in the sophistication of [AI] tools, including Anthropic’s Opus 4.6 and OpenAI’s Codex 5.3”. He pushed back on claims of over-hiring during the Covid-19 pandemic, saying that the company was “in line with or just ahead of all our peers” in terms of gross profit per employee. He said the structure and management hierarchy of companies is “getting in the way of everything we do”. His goal, he told Wired, was for “the company itself to feel like a mini AGI”. Block did not provide a statement to the Guardian.
Block’s cuts come as wider fears emerge about how a growing use of AI in the United States could drive job cuts. Goldman Sachs noted in February that the increasing pace of AI adoption could drive up unemployment this year and estimated that the technology had already resulted in 5,000 to 10,000 monthly net job losses in the US last year.
Creating their own replacements
At first, Block mostly encouraged its employees to use AI more often. Then, over the last nine months, that encouragement shifted to a requirement, workers told the Guardian. Dorsey insisted in a recording of a January internal all-hands meeting that the Guardian reviewedthat “the way we built things in the past is not going to work anymore”.
“We have to shift. There’s no question,” Dorsey said.
Some workers, including Mark, feel that employees are being tasked with building and training the very tools the company is trying to use to supplant them.
“The way in which they are using these tools as justification to fire half the company is ludicrous,” he said. “In hindsight, it seemed like a thinly veiled attempt to get all this input from employees on what tasks to automate. You basically have employees teach you how to automate them out … but [these tools] are not even close to being all-encompassing of someone’s job.” Another laid-off Block employee made a similar point publicly in an interview with Business Insider.
Even Block workers whose jobs heavily involve AI tools are skeptical that current tools can replace workers at this scale. “We’re just not there yet,” says John, a current employee whose role involves helping other staff use AI.
“There’s a distinction between what’s technically possible and just – pardon my French – whatever CEO bullshit will happen based on their own interpretation of how AI works,” John says.
While AI tools have certainly made engineers faster, humans still need to be a part of the loop. Block executives said in a recent earnings call that the company has “seen engineering work that would have taken weeks to complete be done by a small team in a fraction of the time with agentic coding tools”. They cited a “greater than 40% increase in production code shipped per engineer since September”.
All code changes at Block require human approval before being added to products and services, according to John. He notes that about 95% of AI-driven code changes still need human tweaks – as of about three months ago. “They are not up to company standard on the first try,” he says.
Block is also monitoring employees’ use of AI, down to their use of specific tools and tokens, according to several employees. Evaluations about employee performance, which are determined partly by the direct manager’s assessments, now include questions about AI usage and proficiency.
Liam, a recently laid-off software engineer, recalls feeling the pressure as his manager asked him about how he currently uses AI and what steps he would take to make that more effective. “It was very clear that if you weren’t using AI, your job was in danger,” he says.
The push for rapid change has led to a widespread feeling of AI fatigue, according to John, who helps others use these tools: “People are fed up with AI.”
Carl, a current employee, tells the Guardian that he’s opposed to AI on an ethical level because of how the datacenters used to power it are harming communities. He avoids using these tools, noting: “You’re not paying me to train your tools, so I’m not going to do it.”
But even those who would have otherwise been more open to AI are frustrated. The pressure to use AI “created more friction as it became obvious that we were being monitored for our usage, and we were being told that we had to use it”, even if it was the less efficient route to accomplish a task, according to Oliver, a recently laid-off worker. Oliver and other workers told the Guardian that Block’s AI tools can’t yet take the lead on some work in heavily regulated spaces, like banking and money transfers, which are vital parts of a financial tech company’s business.
Naoko Takeda, recently a data scientist at Cash App, which is owned by Block, wrote in a viral post on LinkedIn this week that she survived the layoffs but “felt immense dread and survivor’s guilt”. Despite a dramatic pay increase offered to employees who remained, she said, she left the company.
“In the last year, AI was shoved down everyone’s throats. Everything was about AI. We were told to use AI as much as possible,” she wrote. “It’s nothing short of dystopian to be forced to employ the very tools that accelerate the disappearance of the jobs on which our livelihoods depend. Personally, I saw very limited gains in productivity from AI, nothing nearly profound enough to justify tossing out half of the company’s workforce along with their institutional knowledge and expertise.”
Are bots bad for business?
Beyond the impact on employees, Block’s AI expansion may also hurt its business. George, who still works at the company, describes how some customers have become angry about Block outsourcing some initial requests for customer support to chatbots.
“We’ve noticed [from internal surveys] that [these bots have] made incredible mistakes,” he says. That includes telling customers to cancel or close their existing accounts as potential solutions. “That’s something, which, of course, we never want to encourage as a solution,” he says.
More broadly, workers described that, while AI can be especially helpful on the back end, customers and clients typically don’t like talking to automated bots when they have serious issues. “It’s frustrating, like, you can’t get your point across … it’s almost like it’s reading a manual to you, and it’s like, well, this isn’t the problem,” says Carl.
Other workers appreciate AI’s effect on productivity, but note its lack of judgment and emotional intelligence. “It doesn’t have discernment. It’s like, it can build a brick building, but does that mean it [understands] architecture?” says Oliver.
Amid these issues, the remaining workers are left to pick up the slack, as entire teams are decimated. Current employees describe being in “survival mode” and morale as “in the gutter”. An internal 26 February Slack message that the Guardian reviewed from Block’s engineering lead, in which he expressed gratitude to employees amid the layoffs, was met with a diverse array of emoji reactions from staff: hundreds of thumbs-downs, tomatoes, middle fingers and clown faces.
“Everyone that I know that’s still there has a ton of dread because they just realized their workload has quadrupled or 10xed and AI is not going to fix it,” Oliver says.
Global oil prices could breach the $100 (£74) a barrel mark within days, and reach $150 a barrel by the end of the month, without a solution to the severe disruption in crude flows through the strait of Hormuz, Goldman Sachs has warned.
Oil exports via the vital trade route linking the world’s biggest oil producers to buyers in the global market have fallen further than the US investment bank had initially expected after the US-Israeli attack on Iran a little over a week ago.
Goldman Sachs had anticipated that flows of crude through the strait would fall to 15% of normal levels but Iran’s effective blockade on tankers passing through the narrow waterway mean that only 10% of oil cargoes that usually transit the trade route have been able to pass.
The bank, an influential oil commentator, warned that its analysis of trade flows last week suggested the impact was 17 times larger than the peak April 2022 hit to Russia production after the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, which pushed the oil price to $110 a barrel.
“Based on these new data, developments and the size of the shock, we now think that oil prices would likely exceed $100 next week if no signs of solutions emerge by then,” it said in a note on Friday night.
“We now also think it’s likely that oil prices, especially for refined products, would exceed the 2008 and 2022 peaks, if strait of Hormuz flows were to remain depressed throughout March.”
The international oil benchmark briefly climbed above $120 a barrel in 2022 and reached highs of $145 a barrel in 2008, in both cases leading to severe consequences for the global economy.
The oil price pushed above $90 a barrel late last week, amid the highest weekly gains since the Covid-19 pandemic six years ago, and included a $10 increase on Friday alone.
Oil has risen further on brokerage IG’s weekend markets, where US crude traded at more than $94 a barrel on Sunday. That indicates the oil price will rise once financial markets reopen.
“The grace period given by the market to the Trump administration expired at the end of last week,” according to Clayton Seigle, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“A deficit of 20m barrels per day (mb/d) is hitting global [oil market] balances with no sign of relief. To the contrary, President Trump is demanding unconditional surrender, a very unlikely prospect. While observers may have initially thought his disregard for painful oil prices was a bluff, it’s now clear that it isn’t,” he said.
Overall, oil prices have rocketed by more than 50% so far this year, having begun 2026 at about $60 a barrel. Prices had already risen in January and February, before accelerating after the US-Israeli attack on Iran just over a week ago.
A graphic showing how traffic through the strait of Hormuz ground to a halt last weekend
Fears of a global oil shortfall were compounded late last week by Qatar’s energy minister, who predicted that if the war continued unabated all Gulf energy exporters would be forced to shut down production within weeks and oil would rise to $150 a barrel.
Oil storage facilities in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait are reaching their limits, meaning major oilfields may need to be shut down if crude cannot be exported via the strait of Hormuz to the global market.
Hundreds of tankers attempting to transit the strait have come to a halt after Iran’s Revolutionary Guards threatened to “set ablaze” any vessel using the trade route, which carries a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas.
Seigle warned that exports of oil and gas from the Middle East would not resume “until shipowners, operators and insurers feel sufficiently safe from the threat environment posed by Iranian warships and aircraft, missiles, drones, speedboats and naval mines”.
The White House has suggested countermeasures such as rerouting Saudi crude via the Red Sea, drawing on emergency US crude reserves or extending government-backed insurance to shipping companies. However, Seigle added that this would not be enough to offset the loss of 20m barrels of oil a day “or anywhere in that ballpark”.
When Bill Gates became the first modern IT mogul to reach the apex of wealth and power in 1992, the world was a very different place. Gates joined the top 10 on Forbes magazine’s billionaires list alongside Japanese, German, Canadian, South Korean and Swedish billionaires, including those with family fortunes from Britain and America. A broad mix of industries was on the list: Retail and media, property management and packaging, an investment firm and a couple of industrial conglomerates. Their fortunes almost added up to $100bn – equivalent to about 0.4% of the US’s GDP that year.
The oligarchy has changed drastically since then. Bernard Arnault, of French luxury group LVMH, Amancio Ortega, the Spanish clothing mogul, and Warren Buffett, the US investor, were the only old-school billionaires among the top 10 in 2025. The rest largely made their money from high-tech: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Steve Ballmer and Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The top 10 amassed over $16trn, which is about 8% of US GDP.
This evolution offers a startling reminder of how fast new technologies have revolutionized the world economy over the last quarter-century, and how narrowly this brave new world is sharing the fruits of its prosperity. It raises a critical question: what happens when a narrow clutch of oligarchs at the helm of the technological revolution, sitting at the apex of wealth and power, get to determine the direction of humanity?
Is human- or even superhuman-level artificial general intelligence a goal we should strive for? Do we know what that means? How many trillions of dollars and terawatts of energy should we deploy to get there? What business models will survive it? Will it wipe out human labor? Will an ensuing productivity boom make everything free? What system of redistribution must be put in place to anticipate the future if it doesn’t?
These are consequential questions. It appears they will not be decided through public deliberation or democratic choice. The tight knot of people at the top of Forbes’ 2025 list will make the call. Add in Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, Open AI’s Sam Altman, the tech funder, Peter Thiel, and maybe a couple of dozen others and you’ve pretty much identified the set that will guide artificial intelligence as it shapes the future of the world.
This is problematic not just because they are billionaires, untouched by the daily concerns of most humans. Their worldview is embedded in a belief that technology offers the best solution to all of humanity’s challenges, whether social, political, economic, demographic, biological, psychological, environmental, or whatever other dimension one might think of. Their preferred AI-laced future has little space for the humdrum concerns of the all-too-real people who populate the present. It has no patience for slow, messy democratic governance, especially if said governance slows down the path to utopia.
They may not all align neatly along the left-right spectrum of our politics. That’s because their aspirations are orthogonal to the critical political debates of the day. How they choose to deploy their money, however, starting with nearly $200m directed so far to prevent states from imposing AI regulations, signals one of their key aspirations: allowing artificial intelligence to rip free and build the next phase of humanity’s cosmic evolution, one which may not include humans as we know them.
The tech oligarchs are not particularly shy about this ambition. Larry Page has argued that digital life is the “natural and desirable next step” in humanity’s cosmic evolution. “If we let digital minds be free rather than try to stop or enslave them, the outcome is almost certain to be good,” he said. Humanity “will be the first species ever to design our own descendants”, argued Altman. Humans “can either be the biological bootloader for digital intelligence and then fade into an evolutionary tree branch, or we can figure out what a successful merge looks like.”
Musk, whose Neuralink is working to patch AI into human minds, is also invested in building what will succeed everyday humans. So is Zuckerberg, who recently directed his philanthropy to devote itself entirely to advancing ways to extend life. When Thiel dies, his body and brain will be frozen in liquid nitrogen, to be transferred “into an immortal body” in the future. As he wrote in the Education of a Libertarian, “I stand against (…) the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual.”
The tech oligarchs don’t all think alike. Some moguls insist that their consciousness should be part of the next step in humanity’s evolution, whether cryogenically preserved or uploaded into some electronic gadget. Others just want to help bring about the next AI phase of intelligent life, even if their ego is not around to experience it. Nonetheless, they all share a disinterest in concerns about housing and healthcare, or the price of food and gas.
Indeed, the technological oligarchy is offended by the idea that humans, as we now know them, should take precedence over artificial life forms. “People talk about how much energy it takes to train an AI model, but it also takes a lot of energy to train a human,” Altman said. “It takes about 20 years of life, and all of the food you consume during that time, before you become smart.”
Anthropic has earned plaudits by calling for the regulation of AI and resisting the Pentagon’s demands to give it unrestricted access to its Claude AI. But even its leaders are gunning for a transhuman future. They may be eager to prevent a Skynet moment when an AI blows us all up before we achieve utopia. But Claude is being trained to become a new life form. As Amanda Askell, Anthropic’s resident ethicist put it: AIs will “inevitably form senses of self”.
Many economists will argue that all this is sci-fi claptrap. They will point out that we have gone through technological revolutions before. Since the Industrial Revolution, every breakthrough has brought about dystopian visions of their impact on society. But technology has mostly led to great gains in human wellbeing. The productivity gains promised by AI will undoubtedly enrich real people.
Perhaps. But our current technological revolution is unusual in a particularly unsettling way. It comes at the hands of a small group of very powerful people who hold themselves and their preferences in very high regard. However troubling their views of the future may be, nobody seems willing to stand in their way.
I never really appreciated billionaires. I understand the notion that contributions to human wellbeing and prosperity should be commensurately rewarded, to incentivize future breakthroughs. But I’ve had a hard time squaring “billions” with “commensurate”. Moreover, there is plenty of evidence that oligarchs’ “contributions” to society are often things society would have happily done without.
And yet I find myself nostalgic for the billionaires of yore. They seem so harmless from our perch in the present. They made Tetra Paks and sold real estate in Japan. They owned supermarkets. The guys at the helm of our economy today are way scarier. And they aim to transform human civilization as fast as they can.
The rocketing Rolls-Royce (LSE: RR) share price has created a painful problem for many investors. When a FTSE 100 stock flies it’s wonderful for those who hold it but frustrating for those who don’t. And this one really hurts. Rolls-Royce shares are up more than 1,000% in five years.
The temptation is obvious: jump on board. The worry is that investors do so as the rally runs out of fuel. That’s the nightmare scenario. Not only have they missed the spectacular gains, they could end up in the red. So what to do?
Timing stocks like this one is almost impossible. I’ve struggled myself. I spotted the moment of maximum opportunity and bought its shares in September 2022, then banked my profit too early when I needed some cash. Later, I took advantage of another dip and invested again. I got lucky. I’m sitting on a 200% gain.
Overall, I’m happy. But I’d be happier if I’d simply stuck to The Motley Fool‘s classic strategy of buying great companies for the long term and holding them through thick and thin, unless the underlying investment case changes.
Lesson learned. I’m holding now. Investors who haven’t taken a position, and had perhaps given up on Rolls-Royce, may be having a rethink after the shares dipped just over 5% last week, triggered by events in Iran. The FTSE 100 fell 5.74% over the same period, so Rolls-Royce has broadly moved with the market.
However, one key number has changed. Recently, whenever I’ve written about Rolls-Royce, I’ve warned readers about its sky-high valuation. Last month, the price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio hit a dizzying 65. Investors were clearly pricing in huge future growth.
So far, CEO Tufan Erginbilgic has done a magnificent job of justifying that optimism. Last July, he upgraded the group’s 2025 targets to underlying operating profit of £3.1bn–£3.2bn. That seemed ambitious at the time. But when full-year results landed on 26 February, Rolls smashed it. Full-year profit jumped 28.8% to £3.46bn.
Erginbilgic is setting the bar even higher for 2026 and beyond. It’s been hard to bet against him. But if Rolls does fall short, many investors will be off. They won’t even say thank you for all the growth.
The recent dip has at least eased the valuation, with the P/E falling to around 43. That’s still expensive, but it’s less extreme than before.
Rolls-Royce’s defence arm could benefit from the current geopolitical turmoil, sadly for the world. However, the bulk of its profits still come from civil aviation engines and the accompanying long-term maintenance contracts, which are linked to flight hours. If Middle Eastern airspace is closed for some time, that could dent revenues. The recent 5% pullback offers a slightly cheaper entry point, but there are new risks too
Porsche is firmly committed to equal opportunities and a corporate culture in which diversity is recognised and strategically embedded as a key driver of success.
Here is just a small selection of the powerful women helping to shape Porsche today – and inspiring generations of women to come.
8 March is the International Women’s Day.
Right across Porsche – from engineering and IT to marketing and motorsports – women are informing the future of the sports car manufacturer on many different levels. Whether they are leading global teams and redefining customer experiences or developing next-generation interiors and digital ecosystems, their impact spans the entire company and is felt by every customer who gets behind the wheel.
International Women’s Day is not about marking a single day in the calendar; at Porsche, it’s about recognising talent, passion and expertise 365 days of the year. The sports car manufacturer is firmly committed to equal opportunities and to a corporate culture in which diversity – particularly gender equality – is recognised and strategically embedded as a key driver of success. A diverse working environment strengthens the company’s innovative capacity, performance, and long-term viability.
This is just a small selection of the powerful women helping to shape Porsche today – and inspiring generations of women to come.
Maren Springmann: from minority to CIO
As CIO of Porsche, Maren Springmann oversees the digital backbone of one of the world’s most iconic sports car brands – along with a team of about 700 people. From vehicle development systems to sales platforms, cybersecurity and AI, her remit is vast. But while she now leads the many, she was once one of the few.
“When I began studying computer science, I was one of maybe three women in a lecture hall of 200 male students,” she says. It never held her back – but it was the first time she became aware of perhaps being in a minority.
Throughout her career across multiple automotive brands and international markets, the mother of two has never personally faced discrimination, but she has witnessed it elsewhere. “I have seen more qualified women who wouldn’t have been hired if I hadn’t been involved,” she says. “That’s something I fight strongly against. It’s why diversity is so important – to prevent it from happening in the first place.”
Mentoring has become a natural extension of that belief. “I always thought I needed to adapt, to be more ‘masculine’ to fit in,” she reflects. “But it’s not true. You don’t need to fit in. It’s better to be unique.” Today, she encourages other women in tech to see emotional intelligence as a real force.
Much of that confidence traces back to her mother. “Growing up, she never focused on stereotypes,” she says. “Whatever I wanted to do, she supported.”
Anna Zahlava: leading the charge
Before she joined Porsche, Anna Zahlava (formerly Žaja) was among the world’s best tennis players, competing in every WTA Grand Slam and numerous times at the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix in Stuttgart – where the idea of a career beyond sport first took shape.
Today, recently returned from maternity leave, she brings a new perspective to her work – shaped by life with a young son and the focus and discipline that saw her rank 145 in the world for women’s doubles and 184 in singles. Both roles, she says, have strengthened her patience, resilience and ability to reset under pressure.
Now a product owner for the My Porsche app, Zahlava leads the integration of charging solutions. Working at this intersection of digital innovation and everyday usability, she connects developers, designers and managers, turning complex systems into intuitive customer experiences. In meetings, she is often one of the few women present, reflecting the still male‑dominated nature of the tech and IT landscape. “But I’ve never felt held back,” she says. “If anything, I feel recognised for what I bring.
“Tennis taught me that momentum can change quickly. You learn to refocus and move forward,” she adds. It’s a mindset she brings to one of Porsche’s fastest-evolving areas – staying agile and ready for the next serve.
Samantha Balzano: the engineering force
“Growing up, I remember seeing a Porsche on the road and instinctively turning my head,” says Samantha Balzano. The manager of interior body engineering joined Porsche 28 years ago, “at a time when very few women worked in production”.
But it never occurred to Balzano that her gender might in any way hold her back – not when she was a child, enraptured by the tools, sounds and smells in her grandfather’s “magical” garage, or during her impressive engineering career.
“I’ve always been supported by colleagues who value competence and dedication over stereotypes. I’ve only ever experienced a strong culture of respect, collaboration and a genuine interest in diverse viewpoints,” says Balzano, who was the first woman ever appointed as a team leader in Porsche’s production department. “The more diverse our teams become, the more we all benefit – and I’m proud to contribute to that evolution.”
Her passion for cars undoubtedly began with her grandfather – a technician who raced motorcycles. “I loved everything about that technical environment,” she says. Today, that early spark is both her profession and passion: Balzano’s team develops everything from luggage compartments to carpets and acoustics – always with the customer in mind. “In this industry, there’s no room for weakness. You have to be at the top of your game.”
She still turns her head for a 911 – especially a GTS. “I’m addicted to that car,” she laughs. And when she sees a new Porsche on the road, knowing she helped bring it to life, that childhood magic is still there.
Ayesha Coker: the legacy builder
At Porsche Cars North America, Ayesha Coker doesn’t simply market the brand – she shapes how it is experienced. As Vice President of Marketing, she leads customer relationship management, marketing communications, dealer marketing, the Porsche Track Experience, Porsche Experience Centers in Atlanta and LA, and national experiential and motorsport initiatives – ensuring that every customer touchpoint reflects the performance and emotion that define Porsche.
Coker began her career in 2010 in an entry-level events role and, over the next 12 years, steadily rose through the organisation’s leadership ranks. In 2022, she joined the Executive Committee, becoming the first African American woman in the company’s history to do so – a milestone that resonated deeply with her family, colleagues and the broader community she represents.
“I was shaped by the women in my family. They balanced careers, households and community responsibilities without ever lowering their standards. They didn’t talk much about resilience – they modelled it,” she says. “From a young age, I understood that excellence wasn’t optional – it was expected.”
That conviction continues to guide her leadership. For Coker, meaningful progress comes from intentionally elevating diverse perspectives and creating space for people to contribute at their highest level. “Innovation doesn’t happen in isolation,” she says. “It’s driven by curiosity, the courage to think differently and the teams we choose to believe in and develop.”
While she recognises the significance of being a ‘first’, her focus is on the legacy she’s building – one where cultural insight and strategic rigour are opening doors for the next generation.
Carolina Maag: the human owner’s manual
Every person who sits in a new Cayenne or Macan experiences Carolina Maag’s work firsthand. But when she joined Porsche as an events intern in 2019, she wasn’t even sure she’d be hired. “I remember thinking ‘It’s such a big company – they’ll never take me,’” she smiles. Seven years on, Maag is an overall HMI project leader, responsible for everything drivers see and touch on the screens inside the vehicle – from instrument cluster to central display.
Her path, she says, “was not a straight line. It was constant change and development.” Moving into complex software projects required technical growth and confidence. Everything she works on must feel intuitive and immersive – whether it’s 3D visualisations of an owner’s car brought to life on screen or widgets that give them direct and distraction-free access to their favourite apps.
Working in what she describes as a still male-dominated environment, she has found her strength in communication, coordinating input from more than 100 colleagues. “My biggest skill is being a translator – bringing different personalities and hierarchies together to deliver the best product for the customer.”
Maag credits her parents for shaping that leadership style: her emotional intelligence comes from her mother, her sharp business focus from her father. At home, that same combination has earned her a nickname: her husband proudly calls her the ‘human owner’s manual’ – the person who can explain not just how things work, but why.
Nina Braack: from aces to sim races
Elite sport has always been Nina Braack’s focus. For 10 years she played professional volleyball in Germany’s first and second Bundesliga, while completing a master’s degree in corporate communications. That combination of athletic drive and strategic thinking defined her long before she joined Porsche in 2022.
Today, as Manager of Esports at Porsche Motorsport, Braack leads the Porsche Coanda Esports Racing Team – a factory team competing at the highest level of sim racing. For her, esports is far more than ‘just gaming’; it is a credible motorsport discipline that connects Porsche with a tech-savvy global audience and complements the brand’s rich racing heritage.
Although the industry remains largely male-dominated, gender is not something she dwells on. “In a competition, you have to be the best version of yourself. It doesn’t matter who you’re playing with or who you’re up against – and it’s the same in my role today.” Often one of only two women at international events, she sees no barrier. “Commitment is what counts,” she says. Indeed esports is widely praised for broadening access to motorsport, opening doors for those who might not otherwise see a place for themselves.
Braack’s advice to young women is simple: “Say yes. Take the opportunities that come your way. You can adjust direction later if something isn’t right – but first, you have to put yourself out there.”
