While other sectors stall, AI investment is accelerating — showing up in earnings calls, corporate budgets, and real-world deployment. Capital is quietly concentrating around companies with clear demand and long-term relevance, and selective opportunities are forming right now.

A new research brief identifies 2 AI stocks trading under $15 that may be positioned for the next phase of growth — including key developments that could move these names in the months ahead.

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Today marks 25 years since September 11, 2001. We remember the nearly 3,000 people who were killed, the first responders who ran toward danger, and the families who have lived every day since with a chair that never filled again. The country was changed in ways both visible and quiet, but the human cost remains the most important fact. Remembering still matters today because a free society has to keep faith with its losses, and learn from the choices it made afterward.

Image via The Hill

In the Shadow of the Towers: The Long Post-9/11 Trade-Off Between Security and Liberty

A quarter-century after the attacks, Congress is again being pressed to revisit how the U.S. expanded government power in the name of counterterrorism and what that has meant for civil liberties. The argument, advanced in a new commentary, is that the post-9/11 era produced real security gains but also enduring harms: expansive surveillance authorities, broad material-support prosecutions, watchlisting practices with limited transparency, and policies that fell most heavily on particular communities.

What’s changed is less the historical record than the political moment. A generation has grown up with airport security theater, sweeping data collection, and a national-security mindset embedded across federal agencies. The piece contends lawmakers now have an opportunity to narrow authorities, strengthen oversight and due process, and modernize civil-rights protections without pretending the terrorism threat has vanished.

Any legislative course correction will run into predictable headwinds: intelligence agencies will argue that friction costs lives, while civil-liberties groups will argue that weak guardrails invite mission creep and distrust that ultimately undercuts security. The workable path is not a wholesale rollback, but targeted reforms tied to measurable standards: clearer warrants for sensitive data, meaningful redress mechanisms for watchlists, stronger transparency reporting, and sharper limits on programs that persist largely because they’ve become bureaucratic defaults.

Source: The Hill

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France’s Slowing Growth Puts Fiscal Promises Under a Microscope Ahead of Europe’s Votes

France is heading into a more fragile economic stretch after a downgrade to its growth outlook underscored how tight the country’s fiscal math has become. With debt already high and deficits stubborn, the weaker forecast raises the political cost of any platform that assumes robust growth will do the hard work of balancing budgets.

The near-term problem is familiar: an economy that is not expanding fast enough to generate revenue growth, paired with a state that spends like it expects stronger conditions. That leaves Paris juggling competing imperatives: keeping households insulated from cost pressures, protecting competitiveness, and satisfying investors and European partners that it can put debt on a credible path.

With elections looming across Europe, France’s numbers matter beyond Paris. If one of the euro zone’s largest members struggles to show fiscal discipline, it complicates EU efforts to enforce budget rules evenly and can add pressure to bond markets—particularly if investors decide political risk is rising faster than reform capacity. The upshot is that French politics may become a test case for whether European governments can sell voters on restraint without choking off growth.

Source: Bloomberg

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Image via NBC News

Houthis Tighten Control of Yemen’s Red Sea Coast, Raising the Stakes for Global Shipping

Iran-backed Houthi forces have effectively completed a rapid push to seize control of Yemen’s Red Sea coastline, tightening their grip near the Bab el-Mandeb strait—one of the world’s most strategically important maritime chokepoints. The move strengthens the group’s leverage over commercial traffic in a corridor that links the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden and influences trade flows to and from the Suez Canal.

For shipping and energy markets, the immediate implication is not just the risk of disruption, but the pricing-in of persistent insecurity. Even when vessels continue transiting, insurers, carriers, and navies respond to elevated threat conditions with higher costs, rerouting, or convoy-style protections. The Houthis have used missiles, drones, and maritime attacks in recent years, and coastal control can improve targeting options and staging capacity.

Strategically, the development puts regional and Western governments in a bind. A more entrenched Houthi position can be harder to dislodge without a wider war, but leaving it unchallenged can normalize coercion over international waterways. Any response—diplomatic, economic, or military—will be judged on whether it deters attacks without widening the conflict with Iran or deepening Yemen’s humanitarian crisis.

Source: NBC News

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Image via Axios

Axios: MBS Presses Trump for Strikes as Red Sea Crisis Intensifies

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman urged President Trump in two calls to launch strikes against the Houthis as the group advanced around a vital Red Sea corridor, according to a new report. The outreach reflects Riyadh’s view that the threat has moved beyond a chronic nuisance into a strategic danger—both to Saudi security and to the economic stability that depends on predictable maritime routes.

The request also highlights a shift in the regional calculus: Saudi Arabia has tried to manage Yemen with a mix of de-escalation and diplomacy after years of costly conflict, but Houthi gains along the coast can force a harder line. For Washington, the decision is fraught. Limited strikes might degrade capabilities and signal deterrence; they can also invite retaliation, expand the battlefield, and complicate any diplomatic channel aimed at reducing Iran-backed proxy pressure.

Politically, a U.S. military response would come with second-order questions: what the operational objective is (protect shipping, roll back territorial gains, or punish attacks), how to measure success, and what authorities and coalition support would underpin it. The core challenge is matching means to ends—deterrence that is credible, proportional, and sustainable, rather than episodic action that leaves the underlying threat intact.

Source: Axios

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Image via ABC News

Federal Bulletin Warns Terror Groups Still Encourage Attacks as 9/11 Anniversary Arrives

U.S. federal agencies issued a new bulletin ahead of the 9/11 anniversary warning that foreign terrorist organizations continue to encourage attacks, emphasizing the persistent risk of violence inspired or enabled by extremist propaganda. The advisory is aimed at state and local partners as well as the public, reinforcing vigilance around commemorations and other high-visibility moments.

While the U.S. has degraded several large terror networks since 2001, the threat picture has evolved rather than disappeared. Online radicalization, decentralized plotting, and “self-directed” actors can reduce the need for complex overseas coordination—making detection harder and the warning landscape more dependent on behavioral indicators and community reporting.

The bulletin serves a practical purpose: aligning security postures and information-sharing without implying specific, credible threat reporting for a particular event. The balancing act for officials is to encourage preparedness without feeding panic or normalizing a permanent emergency mindset—an approach that, over time, can erode public trust and civil liberties while delivering diminishing security returns.

Source: ABC News

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