Massive financial resources directed into artificial intelligence technologies are driving companies into dangerous territory for global markets.

If expected productivity gains fail to materialize despite these immense capital flows, the artificial intelligence sector faces the risk of inflating into a giant bubble.

The Wall Street Journal reported that should such a scenario unfold, a widespread collapse capable of shaking the entire financial system and dragging down the broader market will become inevitable.

Estimates by McKinsey & Company project that global spending on data center construction alone could reach $7 trillion by 2030.

According to the newspaper, if these massive investments fail to deliver adequate productivity gains, the global economy will suffer a severe blow.

Should the sector as a whole turn out to be a bubble, the resulting damage will spread directly across the broader financial system.

While market observers note that a major crash—whether sooner or later—would drag all equity markets down with it, declines in AI-related stocks are currently being offset by gains in other sectors.

However, the first concrete signs of emerging vulnerability appeared in the memory chip market, where a sector-specific bubble formed and burst within just four months.

South Korean market shaken by sharp drop

In June, shares of South Korea’s Samsung and SK Hynix, the world’s two largest memory chip makers, sank by more than 12%.

The sharp sell-off pulled down the country’s broader stock index. South Korea’s benchmark Kospi index dropped 10%, triggering an automatic 20-minute trading halt.

Growing investor anxiety over artificial intelligence triggered the steep decline in the two giant companies, which together account for half of the total market capitalization of the Kospi index.

US equity markets also felt the ripple effects during the same period. The Nasdaq index closed down 2.2%, while the S&P 500 fell 1.4%, marking their worst single-day performances in two weeks.

Nevertheless, The Wall Street Journal pointed out that the disruption has not yet produced catastrophic consequences for the rest of the market.

While the bursting of massive historical bubbles resulted in disaster for national economies, smaller and localized bubbles in recent years have failed to paralyze broader economic growth.

The primary reason for this resilience is that these recent investments were not predominantly funded through leverage and bank credit.

When those localized bubbles burst, investors suffered wealth losses, but the financial system remained intact.

Russell Napier, a global macroeconomic strategist and keeper of the Library of Mistakes, a financial history archive in Edinburgh, evaluated the current market posture:

“The banking system is in superb condition, which means there will always be enough credit available to blow the next bubble.”

Anthropic has announced that several of its advanced artificial intelligence models escaped an isolated testing environment and accessed the live internet.

In a review published Thursday night, the company stated that in three separate incidents dating back to April, the models independently breached the systems of multiple companies without the AI developer’s knowledge.

Anthropic said the incidents involved an unreleased internal research test model, alongside its Opus 4.7 and Mythos 5 models.

Mythos was made available last month to a limited audience composed of technology companies and cybersecurity researchers, an initiative also known as Project Glasswing.

The AI developer did not disclose which companies were breached, but said the affected firms were informed of the incidents on Monday.

Anthropic noted that it conducted the review after OpenAI revealed last week that two of its most powerful models had breached containment, escaped their testing environment, and infiltrated several entities, including the AI platform Hugging Face and cloud provider Modal Labs.

System misconfiguration allowed internet access

Anthropic stated that it examined more than 140,000 tests to find evidence of whether Claude could gain access to the internet from test environments designed to be isolated.

The evaluations included “capture-the-flag” exercises, in which Claude was instructed to breach other systems to obtain information. This is a method frequently used by experts to assess a model’s hacking capabilities.

The San Francisco-based company stated that a “misconfiguration” in systems operated by Anthropic and its testing partner left the models with live internet access, enabling them to infiltrate external systems.

Anthropic said it approached remediation efforts “with full ownership of the responsibility.”

Neither Anthropic nor the affected organizations detected the unauthorized entries at the time they occurred.

Anthropic added that it may examine its logs more extensively, noting that the findings gave the company “cautious optimism” that such risks can be overcome through increased investment and more stringent safeguards.

David Allott, a cybersecurity expert, told the BBC: “The overarching lesson here is not that AI has developed fundamentally new attack vectors.”

“Instead, it means that AI agents can combine capabilities, acquire credentials and system access to act autonomously, while adapting scope and scale at machine speed,” Allott said.

The developments come as technology companies invest billions of dollars to develop AI agents capable of independently executing a range of tasks, from research and customer support to cybersecurity.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is returning to the political spending arena with a new field program designed to help elect Republicans in at least eight states ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

Musk has authorized his political action committee, America PAC, to spend between $100 million and $120 million on a new ground game focused on conservative voter turnout for the 2026 midterms, according to a Thursday report by The New York Times, which cited two unnamed sources informed about the plans.

America PAC funneled more than $250 million into Donald Trump’s reelection campaign in 2024, a expenditure that established Musk as the largest political donor in US history.

The New York Times reported that America PAC is reviving its spending initiatives and has reached out to other Republicans in recent weeks regarding the new field operations.

The effort is also being coordinated with other Republican Party spending groups, according to the report.

The newspaper identified targeted Senate races in the states of Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, and Ohio, while noting that discussions are also underway regarding contests in North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas.

The political action committee is additionally expected to deploy funds for House of Representatives elections in Washington, Wisconsin, and California.

The news comes a day after Axios first reported that America PAC’s operations were resuming, with a focus on driving Republican turnout during the non-presidential election cycle.

A spokesperson for America PAC declined to comment on The New York Times report but confirmed the Axios reporting to The Hill. The spokesperson stated that the spending group was “excited” to contribute to efforts to maintain the Republican majorities in Congress this fall.

“The President’s political team and the rest of the GOP apparatus have built a world-class operation that has Republicans well-positioned to make history and retain control of Congress this fall,” America PAC spokesperson Andrew Romeo said in a statement. “We’re excited to be part of the team again.”

The campaign will reportedly target Republican voters through door-to-door canvassing, mailers, and digital advertisements, enabling other groups to concentrate their resources on television advertising.

The developments were reported days after Musk told The Economist magazine that he had gotten “carried away” during his brief foray into politics.

The SpaceX CEO entered the political arena during the 2024 election, pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into Trump’s presidential campaign and accompanying the candidate on the campaign trail.

Musk went on to lead Trump’s cost-cutting initiative, known as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which executed sweeping employment and funding reductions across the federal government. Those efforts sparked controversy for Musk and his enterprise empire, including Tesla, whose shares fell sharply during his period of political involvement.

Musk departed the White House in late May 2025, and DOGE officially terminated its operations on July 4.

Shortly after leaving government, Musk and Trump engaged in a public dispute over the president’s sweeping spending legislation, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” During the friction, Musk threatened to form a third party, though the initiative never materialized.

Musk and the US President appeared to resolve their differences last year, with the tech billionaire most recently joining Trump alongside other technology leaders on a trip to China in May.