WSJ What’s News - U.S. Government Reopens, But Slowly

Episode Date: November 13, 2025

A.M. Edition for Nov. 13. The U.S. government is back in business, but as WSJ’s Ken Thomas explains, don’t expect things to run at full tilt just yet. Plus, Democrats release a tranche of new emails from Jeffrey Epstein, in which the late financier discussed Donald Trump. And, WSJ’s Stu Woo details how a Chinese AI company worked around U.S. rules to access Nvidia’s highly coveted chips. Caitlin McCabe hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The U.S. government is back in business, but don't expect things to run at full tilt just yet. Plus, Democrats release new emails from Jeffrey Epstein in which the late financier discussed Donald Trump. And we explore how a Chinese AI company worked around U.S. rules to access NVIDIA's top chips. Directly sending those chips to China not allowed. But there is this gray area. if they're sent to a third country, like Indonesia, can a Chinese company access those chips there? And it turns out that in many cases, yes, they can do that totally legally. It's Thursday, November 13th.

I'm Caitlin McCabe for the Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of What's News. The top headlines and business stories moving your world today. The U.S. government is officially reopened after being closed for a. record long 43 days. The Republican-led House passed a spending package late yesterday that extends funding for the federal government through January, after which President Trump signed it into law. The bill package passed yesterday includes full-year funding for the Agriculture Department, military construction, and legislative branch. It also ensured paychecks for federal employees and included language guaranteeing the reversal of federal layoffs that were initiated by the Trump

administration to try and pressure Democrats during the shutdown, as well as a moratorium on future cuts. But as journal political reporter Ken Thomas explains, getting the government up and running won't necessarily happen overnight. The return to work process will vary agency by agency, but many employees were told to be prepared to return to work on Thursday. Once employees are back, they will have a lot of work that's piled up. Aviation, officials said it will take days, perhaps longer, before U.S. air travel goes back to normal. Airlines will need time to adjust their schedules. For more than 40 million Americans who receive benefits through the supplemental nutrition

assistance program or SNAP, it still remains unclear how quickly states will receive SNAP funding. Tourists should see a resumption in services in places like the National Park. many of the parks around the country stayed partially open during the shutdown, but were staffed with a limited number of employees. The government reopening also doesn't mean an immediate return of government data releases like today's CPI print. White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt says the two major government reports on inflation and the labor market for October are likely never to be released, blaming the government shutdown. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, hasn't yet said when it is likely to start catching up on the backlog of important economic

reports or which ones might be compromised by the shutdown. A BLS spokesperson didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. And if you're wondering what alternative indicators to look at for a steer on the U.S. economy, our latest What's News podcast series has been looking at just that. The second episode landed in your feed yesterday. In it, we look at copper prices, which for decades have corresponded to how the economy is doing. We dig into why that is and whether it's still true now. Check it out in the What's News podcast feed, wherever you get your podcasts. Now, while the shutdown deal was moving through Washington yesterday, lawmakers' attention turned to the release of a cash of emails belonging to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Late yesterday,

Representative Adelita Griehalva became the crucial two. 218th lawmaker to sign on to a bipartisan petition aimed at forcing a House vote on releasing files related to Epstein. The Democrat from Arizona did so moments after being sworn in seven weeks after she won a special election in Arizona to fill the House seat last held by her late father. Speaker Johnson purposefully obstructed my swearing in by canceling vote after vote. And the Epstein Files discharge petition sat one signature short. With my signing, we move one step closer to the truth, the truth that they will try to deny, but that survivors deserve their day of justice and the American people demand it. Johnson told reporters that he expected to bring the

matter to the floor next week, although the legislation to compel the Justice Department to release Epstein files is unlikely to become law. It still faces a Senate vote and could be vetoed by President Trump, but the House vote serves to put lawmakers on record. Earlier in the day, Democrats released a handful of emails from Epstein in which he discussed Trump, which prompted the Republican-led House Oversight Committee to release more than 20,000 pages of other Epstein documents. Trump and White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt accused Democrats of releasing the emails as a distraction. in Washington, D.C., and it is not a coincidence that the Democrats leaked these emails to the fake news this morning ahead of Republicans reopening the government. This is another

distraction campaign by the Democrat in the liberal media, and it's why I'm being asked questions about Epstein instead of the government reopening because of Republicans in President Trump. Trump has said he cut off ties long before Epstein was first arrested in 2006. You can find a link to read some of the emails that mentioned Trump and other documents. released yesterday in our show notes. Coming up, with China blocked from getting coveted AI chips made by U.S. companies, Beijing is taking a new aggressive approach in the AI arms race. More on that story after the break.

U.S. restrictions on AI chip exports to China are really starting to bite, and that's prompting Beijing to intervene. China's government is directing who gets the bulk of domestically made AI chips, and some Chinese tech companies are using workarounds like bundling thousands of chips together. Crucially, some are smuggling or acquiring through legal means chips made by Nvidia to train AI models. The journal Stu Wu helped trace a chain of deals across several countries that show how American technology was ultimately made available to a Chinese company. Stu, let's start with a little background.

Where do things stand with NVIDIA, which is a California-based company and its ability to sell chips to China? Yeah, so here's the interesting thing. For the past three years, the U.S. government has made it forbidden for NVIDIA to sell its most advanced chips to China. That's because NVIDIA is the world's best AI chip company, and the U.S. government is afraid that those chips can be used to help China simulate military intelligence operations or to develop nuclear weapons, for instance. So directly sending those chips to China, not allowed. But there is this gray area. What if they're sent to a third country, like Indonesia, can a Chinese company access those chips there? And it turns out that in many cases, yes, they can do that totally legally.

Yeah, you've got a really interesting story here that looks at that. You found a case where more than 2,000 Nvidia chips ended up in a building in Indonesia's capital, ready to do work for a Chinese AI company. can you tell us more about what you found? Okay, so the first thing to know is that Nvidia often doesn't sell chips directly to its customers or the people who use them to train AI, that is. They'll sell them to another company that makes computer servers with them.

So in this case, Nvidia sold it to a company that made these servers. This company sold it then to a different company, one in Indonesia that sells computing power. And that Indonesian data center, in fact, was the one that found the Chinese customer. So it took four companies. It starts with Nvidia. Then it starts with somebody who buys NVIDIA chips to make servers.

Then it goes to an Indonesian data center. And finally, the final customer is the Chinese AI company. That sounds pretty complicated. Is there evidence that these deals violated U.S. law in any way? I ran this exact scenario by some folks who helped design some of the expert controls. And they said, no. If all the companies are doing what they say they did, then there's no evidence that they broke any law. Now, the question here is that did they break the spirit of,

of the law because, as you said earlier, President Trump says he doesn't want China accessing these chips. And the answer is, well, that's kind of unclear. The U.S. government has left a lot of this in a gray area. And in the weeks and months ahead, they might take steps to make it so that Chinese companies can't do things like this. Yeah, I was going to say your story mentions that under the Biden administration, a rule was created that would have tightened controls over the sale of advanced American chips to countries such as Indonesia, but that the Trump administration said it wouldn't enforce the rule. Can you talk us through how that rule would have worked and why the Trump administration decided to not enforce it? So what happened is that in the last days of the Biden

administration, they passed this rule that said, if you're a company that has Nvidia chips, hey, you can't sell it to a third country without applying for permission from the U.S. government. A lot of businesses complain about that, including Nvidia. They said, whoa, whoa, it'd be better if the world were hooked on Nvidia chips because they can buy our chips and keep on financing our R&D so we can stay ahead. So they lobbied hard against that. So the Trump administration apparently heard those arguments, and they thought, okay, that is a good argument. But there's still some disagreement within the Trump administration about that.

And they've indicated that they're still working on these export controls. So over the next weeks and months, we might see the Trump administration clarify what they meant. That's Stu Wu, who covers business in Asia for the journal. Stu, thanks for joining us. Thanks, Caitlin. And while announcements of new data centers are seemingly a dime a dozen these days, it's not every day that you encounter one that is slated to be built and run by AI itself. As the journal's Giung-Sone explains, a $35 billion facility under development in South Korea

could be the world's first large-scale data center designed, built, and run by artificial intelligence. In the beginning stages, AI will be the one making optimal decisions on things like how to design the layout of the floors and ceilings, how to set up the facility's energy usage, how to set up the cooling systems using the least amount of water, and so on. And once the data center is up and running, the company expects that AI will be able to run it in the most efficient manner. For instance, they expect AI to be very good at adapting the data center to better accommodate the different types of AI work. that it will be given. And these are tasks that AI will be able to do faster and more efficiently compared to humans. G. Young says humans will still be involved, but in more of a supervisory role. If completed by 2028, the data center is expected to pack up to three gigawatts of power, which Giyang says will make it one of the biggest in the world.

Most data centers today are capped at a capacity of one gigawatt of power due to the difficulty of getting enough electricity and resources like water that's needed to cool down all the servers that are inside. But this envisioned data center in Korea aims to be much bigger than that. So to give you a comparison, it'll be nearly three times the planned capacity of a data center complex in Texas that Open AI is preparing as part of their Stargate project in the U.S. And that's it for what's news for this Thursday morning. Today's show is produced by Daniel Bach. producer was Sandra Kilhoff. And I'm Caitlin McCabe for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back tonight with the new show. Until then, thanks for listening.