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✏️ It may seem like Zohran Mamdani came out of nowhere…but he's been building his brand since middle school. Much of New York City's political and financial establishment spiraled into a panic this week after the 33-year-old won the city's Democratic mayoral primary. But the same boyish charm that made Mamdani stand out all his life also made it hard for his well-funded opponents to slow down his exuberant campaign. Over at Meta, the star AI researchers on Mark Zuckerberg's secret recruiting list all know each other, and now they're plotting their futures together. | |
Emma Tucker
Editor in Chief, The Wall Street Journal | |
| Zohran Mamdani's charm helped power his improbable ascent. | |
The socialist scored a stunning victory in New York's Democratic mayoral primary on Tuesday, defeating former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and upending an entire system. The earthquakes triggered by his triumph are now rippling in many directions, from the Democratic Party's aging establishment to Wall Street, Joshua Chaffin and Victoria Albert write. Though New York's business elite spent millions to halt Mamdani's rise, it turned out to be hard to demonize a charming young man who raps about his beloved Indian grandmother and displays an Obama-like magnetism that attracts young people—and some old ones, too. | |
| In Iran, airstrikes have given way to executions, arrests and paranoia. | |
As soon as U.S. and Israeli bombs stopped falling, the country's theocratic leaders and security forces began targeting alleged spies, dissidents and opposition figures at home, report Sudarsan Raghavan, Sune Engel Rasmussen and Margherita Stancati. After the attacks showed how deeply Israel's Mossad had infiltrated Iran, the government announced the hasty execution of at least six men. More than 1,000 people have been detained over the past two weeks for allegedly aiding Israel, according to Amnesty International. The atmosphere in Tehran remains tense as people begin trying to resume normal life. | |
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| Q: Mark Zuckerberg made a secret file of AI geniuses. Who is on "The List"? | |
A: The universe of engineers with deep experience pursuing the type of AI research Zuckerberg is looking for is tiny. The recruits on "The List" typically have Ph.D.s from elite schools like Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon, and experience at places like OpenAI in San Francisco and Google DeepMind in London. Most of these researchers are in their 20s and 30s—and they all know each other. Their loyalty to each other transcends companies. As they decide whether to leave for Meta, they're comparing notes, trading intel and plotting their futures together. Some are even teaming up as package deals. Others are negotiating lavish counteroffers to stay at their companies. One of these top researchers, Lucas Beyer, works in multimodal vision-language research and describes himself as "a scientist dedicated to the creation of awesomeness." Another, Yu Zhang, specializes in automatic speech recognition and barely has an online presence besides his influential papers. And Misha Bilenko is an expert in large-scale machine learning who also enjoys hiking and skiing—or, as he puts it on his website, "applying hill-climbing search and gradient descent algorithms to real-world domains." | |
| Ukraine's front lines are filled with grandfathers. | |
| | PHOTO: SERHII KOROVAYNY FOR WSJ | |
Kyiv has resisted drafting young men to protect the country's long-term future, which has resulted in a lot of gray hair on the battlefield. Mykhailo Mendeluk, above, is one of the many Ukrainian soldiers known as "Did," or "Grandpa." The 52-year-old—who really is a grandfather of two—serves in the infantry, a challenging job that often requires long hours in the trenches. | |
How much the S&P 500 has rallied between the depths of April's tariff-induced selloff and Friday's close, when it notched its first new high since February. The wild 89 trading days in between records marked the swiftest-ever recovery back to a closing high after a decline of at least 15%, according to Dow Jones Market Data. | |
| Your hotel could be too young for you. | |
Many hotels target hyperspecific customers, and they will tailor everything from decor to guest amenities accordingly. So how do you avoid unintentionally booking a suite above a nightclub, or a similar mishap? Deep research is the answer, writes Amy Thomas. For example, the pool parties and free-flow cocktails advertised on a hotel's website might be the first hint. | |
| | About Us | The 10-Point is your guide to The Wall Street Journal's reporting and analysis you can't get anywhere else. Your subscription makes our journalism possible. Today's newsletter was curated and edited by Conor Grant and Cristina Roca in collaboration with Editor in Chief Emma Tucker. | |
