Geopolitical and energy volatility dominated the hour as oil prices breached $82 per barrel and the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve dipped to its lowest level since 1983, a backdrop complicated by Donald Trump’s aggressive assertions of authority over the Strait of Hormuz and his demands for Iranian reparations. Iran’s internal landscape is shifting in parallel, with Mojtaba Khamenei overhauling security leadership to solidify a hard-line stance against U.S. political figures. The intersection of sovereign interests and capital also appeared in the defense and security sectors, where Hanwha bid $1.2 billion for Austal’s U.S. operations and international authorities successfully extradited alleged crime boss Daniel Kinahan from the United Arab Emirates to Ireland. In the frontier tech sector, Anthropic is aggressively scaling its infrastructure ahead of a planned fall IPO, having secured a massive $9.1 billion, 20-year cloud services agreement with Riot Platforms, a development that contrasts with the bearish technical sentiment facing semiconductor firm SK Hynix. On the domestic front, election security concerns remain high, with officials seeking proof for Trump’s claims regarding noncitizen voter registration, while establishment Democrats express mounting apprehension over Francesca Hong’s primary lead in the Wisconsin gubernatorial race.