Kodiak discloses cartel-linked settlement talks as Vance weighs Iran talks

Vance weighs face-to-face talks with top Iranian security official

Kodiak Gas Services, a Texas-based oil-field services provider, said it is in settlement discussions with the Justice Department and the U.S. Treasury over payments it likely made to Mexican cartel affiliates, as Risk Journal’s Max Fillion reported.

The company disclosed the settlement discussions in a securities filing on Monday, saying it would likely have to make a payment to U.S. authorities to resolve the matter. Kodiak said it intends to disclose how much money it will set aside for the settlement in its fourth-quarter securities filing, and that the resolution could exceed that amount. No amount has been disclosed.

In foreign policy, Vice President JD Vance is considering face-to-face talks with a top Iranian security official as he emerges as the lead negotiator with Iran, according to U.S. and Middle East officials and people familiar with the negotiations, in an effort to end a war the report described as a drag on the Republican Party.

In recent days, President Trump has told top aides and counterparts he is open to Vance restarting talks with Iran and has empowered him to negotiate, U.S. and Middle Eastern officials said. U.S. officials stressed that discussions about sending Vance to meet directly with Iranian officials remain preliminary.

The report framed its economic warning as a message from the violent swings in stock markets over the past week: the fallout from an artificial-intelligence bust would not stop at the U.S.’s shores.

The AI build-out has been an engine of growth not just for the U.S. this year but for the whole global economy, the report said. Squeezed by the energy crunch caused by the Iran war, the world has relied heavily on U.S. data-center investment to power otherwise lackluster growth.

“There is very little that can be done to prevent a global recession should the AI boom collapse,” Frederic Neumann, chief Asia economist at HSBC in Hong Kong, said in the report.

A slowdown in AI investment would punish exports in economies that in many cases show few other signs of growth, the report said. A sustained stock slide would crush mom-and-pop investors all over the world who have piled into technology stocks in anticipation of bumper returns, and overstretched budgets mean governments have limited room to respond with more spending.

Anxiety has grown post-midterm elections about the outsize role AI is playing in the world economy and about what might happen should the pace of AI investment slow or if the boom turned to a full-blown bust, the Journal reported.

In a separate item, United Airlines said Wednesday that it will prevent personal artificial-intelligence assistants from accessing its systems to book tickets. The airline cited concerns that the third-party agents could expose customers’ sensitive information or make unintended purchases, and said automated AI actions could violate Federal Aviation Administration and Transportation Department rules governing the information airlines must present to customers.

Banks, retailers and a range of other companies are grappling with how best to handle the rise of agents such as Meta’s Muse and OpenAI’s Dots, which promise to take care of many of life’s nuisances, from online shopping to scheduling appointments, the Journal reported. Companies haven’t seen an onslaught of agentic commerce — the report pointed to the number of Uber and Uber Eats orders made by AI agents over the busy Halloween week, out of 320 million total orders that week — but many are proactively throwing up restrictions, including United Airlines.

The Nvidia development sat in the same report as background. Nvidia’s board is preparing to oust Chief Executive Jensen Huang after he had two extramarital affairs, including one with a suspected Chinese spy and another with an employee, The Wall Street Journal reported. The board met Wednesday to discuss his future, and the company hasn’t made an announcement regarding any decision. His departure would “bring down the curtain on an era” during which Huang stoked the global artificial-intelligence boom and became “a geopolitical star,” the Journal reported, and would leave one of the world’s most valuable companies in need of a new leader.