Who Pays for War? | Rewire News Morning Digest

The Iran war has been going on for a month, and Trump has started to demand payment. The bond market gave its own answer on the same day—it's not inflation, it's recession.

1 | Iran War Enters "Payment" Phase: Trump Wants Gulf States to Pay, G7 Admits No Solution

White House spokesperson Leavitt confirmed on Monday that Trump is "interested" in asking Arab countries to share the cost of the war. This proposition is extremely rare in diplomatic terms, equivalent to openly treating allies as clients for military services. On the same day, Trump threatened that if Iran does not reach an agreement soon and the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened immediately, the U.S. will "completely destroy" Iran's power, energy, and water infrastructure. Al Jazeera cited legal experts stating that targeting civilian facilities constitutes the international law prohibition of "collective punishment."

G7 finance and energy ministers held an emergency video conference on Monday, pledging to "take all necessary measures" to stabilize the energy market. However, the IEA had already coordinated the release of 400 million barrels from strategic reserves on March 11, and oil prices have not fallen. IEA head Birol likened the current situation to the 1970s oil crisis. CSIS estimates that $3.7 billion was spent in the first 100 hours of the war, the Pentagon reported to Congress that it spent $11.3 billion in the first six days, and current daily spending is around $10-20 billion.

(Source: Al Jazeera / Fortune / CSIS / NBC News / Euronews)

2 | Bond Market Signals Recession: Oil Price Tops $100, Yield Falls

An abnormal decoupling of oil prices and bond yields has occurred. WTI rose 2.7% to surpass $102 per barrel, Brent rose to $114, with a cumulative gain of over 50% in March, marking the steepest single-month increase since the 1990 Gulf War. However, the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield fell 9 basis points to 4.35% on the same day. Oxford Economics believes that "economic growth risks are beginning to overshadow inflation risks."

The market completed a full narrative reversal in one week. Last Friday, traders had pushed the probability of a rate hike this year to 52%, but on Monday, Powell told undergraduates at a Harvard economics class that the Fed believes inflation expectations remain stable and that there is no need to raise rates due to oil price shocks. As soon as he finished speaking, the probability of a rate hike this year plummeted from over 50% to 2.2%. Societe Generale forecasted an average April Brent price of $125, with a "credible peak" of $150. Citi strategist McCormick bluntly stated that stagflation lies ahead, which is bad for bonds and bad for stocks as well.

(Source: Fortune / CNBC / Goldman Sachs / Axios / Crédit Agricole)

3 | Asian Semiconductor Divergence: China Acknowledges Gap, South Korea Bets on Inference

At SEMICON China 2026, a rare collective confession took place, with Chinese semiconductor leaders openly admitting to lagging behind the international level by 5-10 years in the AI data center chip field, while facing tight equipment and talent supply. However, Wallan Technology saw its revenue triple in 2025, surpassing 1 billion RMB, with the BR106 and BR166 general-purpose GPUs in mass production and shipping. The contradiction lies in the soaring revenue while recording losses as high as 16.5 billion RMB. The Chinese semiconductor industry is following the path of "first scale, then pursue accuracy," trading scale for time.

South Korea has taken a different path. AI inference chip company Rebellions completed a $400 million Pre-IPO financing, valuing the company at $23.4 billion, led by Future Fund and the Korean Growth Investment. Founded six years ago, the company has raised a total of $850 million, $650 million of which was raised in the last six months. On the same day, the Taiwanese authorities announced an investigation into 11 Chinese companies for illegally poaching chip talent. The three economies are on the same track, each with its own strategy.

(Source: Tom's Hardware / Bloomberg / TechCrunch / CNBC / Reuters)

4 | Swift Blockchain Ledger to Go Live This Year, Traditional Finance's On-chain Migration Enters Execution Phase

Swift has announced the integration of a blockchain shared ledger into its infrastructure to process real transactions within the year. This is not another proof of concept. Swift has conducted tokenized asset interoperability tests with over 30 financial institutions, including BNP Paribas, Banco Santander, and Crédit Agricole, achieving settlement across blockchain platforms and traditional systems simultaneously in a single transaction for the first time. The first use case is 24/7 real-time cross-border payments, covering over 200 countries and territories. The underlying technology is provided by ConsenSys, using smart contracts to replace manual reconciliation.

On the same day, Connor Dougherty and Lily Yarborough from the former Blackstone Private Credit team secured a $25 million investment for their new company Valinor, aiming to rebuild the issuance and routing mechanism of private credit using smart contracts. The team currently consists of only 6 people. From global interbank settlement networks to private credit infrastructure, the on-chain migration of traditional finance is no longer confined to whitepapers but is entering the engineering execution phase.

（Source: Finextra / Fortune / Swift / CoinDesk）

5｜Midjourney Revenue「Significantly Exceeds」 $200M, 40-Person Team Outpaces Burn Race

The Information reports that Midjourney's revenue has 「significantly exceeded」 $200 million. With only about 40 employees and no venture funding, the company finds itself in a starkly different position compared to its competitors. Amid controversies surrounding OpenAI's video generation tool Sora and ongoing losses and management upheaval at Stability AI, Midjourney has emerged with a subscription-based model as the healthiest in the image generation space, with a unit economics far superior to its peers.

Of particular note is its growth trajectory. Sacra estimates that Midjourney's 2025 revenue has already reached $500 million, with 2026 ARR expected to reach $500 to $600 million, driven primarily by enterprise subscriptions targeting creative agencies. In a realm where the prevailing narrative is 「more funding, more losses」 in the generative AI space, Midjourney has proven to follow a counterintuitive path: no fundraising, no team expansion, no chasing full stack, and focusing on a single product line can also capture the market.

（Source: The Information / Sacra）

Also Worth Knowing ↓

Aave V4 launches on Ethereum, connecting to real-world credit markets with a 「hub-and-spoke」 model. This marks the largest architectural upgrade for a DeFi lending protocol. On the same day, the Trump administration considers opening up 401(k) funds to crypto and private equity investments, involving trillions of dollars in retirement savings. The maturation of DeFi infrastructure and the opening of traditional finance channels are happening simultaneously.（Source: CoinDesk / Washington Post）

Import AI 451 introduces the concept of 「political superintelligence.」 Jack Clark suggests that the political advocacy capability of AI systems may produce societal impacts faster than their coding abilities, but transforming this capability into positive effects requires intentional design. The next frontier for AI may not be technical prowess but political engagement.（Source: Import AI）

Stripe's AI coding agent 「minions」 trigger 1,300 PRs weekly from Slack reactions. Engineer Kaliski dissects how Stripe embeds AI coding agents in its engineering culture on the Lenny's Newsletter podcast. AI coding is no longer an auxiliary tool but part of the engineering pipeline.（Source: Lenny's Newsletter）

Chinese Humanoid Robot Agibot Rolls Off 10,000th Mass Production Line. The leap from lab to 10,000 units in mass production happened within a year. The Information reported that this is the first time the global humanoid robot industry has reached this scale. (Source: The Information)