This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘Concerns rise over starvation in Gaza’ Marc Filippino Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Wednesday, July 30th, and this is your FT News Briefing. The US and China are talking about a little more breathing room. And a UN panel says there is a famine unfolding in Gaza. Plus, China wants to unseat the US as the world’s biggest player in artificial intelligence, but it wants to do things its own way. I’m Marc Filippino, and here’s the news you need to start your day.

MENU Financial Times Sign In TranscriptAdd to myFT Transcript: Concerns rise over starvation in Gaza Marc Filippino talks to Mehul Srivastava and Eleanor Olcott Transcript: Concerns rise over starvation in Gaza on x (opens in a new window) Transcript: Concerns rise over starvation in Gaza on facebook (opens in a new window) Transcript: Concerns rise over starvation in Gaza on linkedin (opens in a new window) Transcript: Concerns rise over starvation in Gaza on whatsapp (opens in a new window) Save Marc Filippino, Mehul Srivastava and Eleanor Olcott Published16 HOURS AGO Print this page This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘Concerns rise over starvation in Gaza’ Marc Filippino Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Wednesday, July 30th, and this is your FT News Briefing. The US and China are talking about a little more breathing room. And a UN panel says there is a famine unfolding in Gaza. Plus, China wants to unseat the US as the world’s biggest player in artificial intelligence, but it wants to do things its own way. I’m Marc Filippino, and here’s the news you need to start your day. [MUSIC PLAYING] The US and China could extend their tariff truce. The current pause is set to expire on August 12th. The two countries met yesterday to work on a solution, and the Chinese delegation said both sides agreed to pause tariffs on each other for an additional 90 days. But, during the US press conference, Treasury secretary Scott Bessent had a different take. Scott Bessent voice clip Nothing is agreed until we speak with President Trump.  Marc Filippino Bessent did say, however, the negotiations were very constructive.  Scott Bessent voice clip I think we had great momentum going into the meeting thanks to the president’s trade deals. I think the Chinese were . . . they’re never compliant. But I believe that they were, in more of a mood for a wide-ranging discussion. Marc Filippino US President Donald Trump told reporters later that Bessent would brief him today about the meeting, and then he’d make a decision about extending the tariff pause. [MUSIC PLAYING] A UN-backed panel said yesterday that a famine is unfolding across Gaza. Meanwhile, Israel is being blamed for stopping the UN for moving enough food to the strip. And now, world leaders are weighing in on situation. Here to talk to me about is the FT’s Mehul Srivastavain Tel Aviv. Hey, Mehul. Mehul Srivastava Hi guys. Marc Filippino So this distinction of famine, where is this panel drawing that distinction, and how are they measuring that? Mehul Srivastava So there’s a panel called the IPC, which is a basically UN-backed panel made up of a large number of experts that does data collection around the Gaza Strip. They issued an alert yesterday saying that they understood that the worst-case scenario, which is that famine is unfolding in the Gaza Strip, is currently under way. When you dig through the data, it’s really alarming. It basically says there’s widespread starvation. There’s lots of adults who are going two, three days without a meal. There are one in three children in Gaza City, which before the war was the largest population centre of the Gaza Strip, who are severely malnourished. In many ways, this meets the threshold for what they would theoretically consider to be a famine, but the formal declaration of famine is yet to come.  Marc Filippino So the situation is dire. It sounds like, whether or not it’s formally a famine or not, it’s really bad for people living in Gaza. Why has it been so difficult to get food to Palestinians in Gaza? Mehul Srivastava So, the most important thing to remember is that the Gaza Strip is besieged by Israel. Israel has had a blockade on Gaza for many years, but since the war began, it has controlled almost all the entry points, including from the Egyptian side. The Israeli government decide what goes in. In mid-March, Israeli government, this year, decided to, once again, institute a full siege — almost no food, no water — except from a small pipeline. And then, later on, it tried to replace these aid agencies with a foundation called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has its own problems, including the fact that they’re in southern Gaza. People have to travel large distances to get there, including soldiers who have shot at or around the crowds, killing as many as a thousand people, according to local officials. That’s left very little food for civilians. Marc Filippino How have other countries, you know, the US, European countries, and also, you know, Israel responded to the starvation in Gaza? Mehul Srivastava It’s been an evolving political battle. In the beginning, the United States backed the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, but images have started emerging of how bad the situation is. Even President Trump pointed out that you can’t hide the fact that these children are starving. The pressure upon the Israeli government to resolve the situation as quickly as possible is significantly higher now than it was just 10 days ago. One of the things to remember here is that the Israeli government denies that any of this is happening, that any of this is by design. On Monday night, Prime Minister Netanyahu issued a late-night statement saying that they’re gonna ensure that large amounts of monetary aid floods the Gaza Strip, that they’re pausing IDF operations in order to create secure routes, and continue to claim that they allow significant amounts of monetary aid into Gaza every single day. This has been Israel’s claim since the beginning of the war, and this is one that the UN independent agencies have consistently contested, and the evidence is now on the ground, where you see how hungry people are. Marc Filippino Now going back to the report from the IPC, the designation that a famine is unfolding, the situation isn’t officially there yet. If it does get designated a famine, would that change anything?  Mehul Srivastava The fact that people are starving in Gaza today is undeniable. As for the World Food Program, Cindy McCain said on Tuesday to wait for the label in order to flood Gaza with aid is a mistake, but the fact that people are starving in Gaza today is a topic of conversation both in Israel and internationally, and yet, if you go by what the international agencies say, it hasn’t resulted in a large amount of food entry in Gaza, at least not since this weekend. Marc Filippino That’s the FT’s Mehul Srivastava in Tel Aviv. [MUSIC PLAYING] The International Monetary Fund says the global economy is doing better than it thought. The IMF upgraded its global growth forecast yesterday. There are signs that US President Donald Trump’s trade war is gonna do less damage to the global economy than anticipated. You see, the dollar is weakening, which should cushion the impact of US tariffs on its trading partners. The US also got some of its own encouraging economic news yesterday. Job openings last month came in just slightly below expectations, so it looks like the labour market is in pretty good shape and American consumer confidence is up 2 per cent in July compared to June. [MUSIC PLAYING] China absolutely rattled the artificial intelligence industry earlier this year. Remember DeepSeek? The start-up released a powerful model that appeared much cheaper to make than US rivals. China is trying to piggyback off DeepSeek’s success to get to global AI dominance. That was on full display at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai this week. The FT’s, Eleanor Olcott was there and she joins me now to talk about it. Hey, Eleanor.  Eleanor Olcott Hi.  Marc Filippino So, how big of an impact in China has the DeepSeek model made?  Eleanor Olcott So six months ago, DeepSeek released this R1 model, which was a reasoning model. And this was a bit of a breakthrough moment because it really brought the world’s attention to the progress that China had been making on AI. So a lot has changed since then. We’ve had a whole bunch of other models from rival companies, but the lingering impact of that moment is still clear. Firstly, it’s set China on the path of open source. So all of the other companies were forced to adopt DeepSeek’s open source model approach, which also means that the pace of innovation has been faster as everyone’s been learning from each other. It also created this impetus to experiment with AI and deploy it in all sorts of new circumstances. And thirdly, it’s given the overall ecosystem a real boost. And it was clear this year that there was a real sense of optimism that the funding environment had improved somewhat, especially for companies in hot areas like AI and robotics. Marc Filippino OK, so it sounds like DeepSeek has given the country’s AI industry a boost, but you know, how does it fit in with China’s overall AI strategy? What did you hear about it at the WAIC Conference? Eleanor Olcott So there wasn’t a whole lot about DeepSeek, specifically. They’ve been very low key and they’re not really a kind of very public company in contrast to some of the other LLM companies. But DeepSeek has turned into a useful marketing tool for Beijing’s messaging on AI. And that message is that China is developing AI for the common good by adopting an open-source strategy. Now of course, this is just messaging. There’s plenty of reason to be sceptical about this, but this week the message from Beijing, at a bare minimum stands in sharp contrast to the one coming from the White House. Just days before WAIC, the White House released their own version of an AI action plan, which was all about this America First strategy, how to create American dominance in AI, and how to beat China.  Marc Filippino OK, so the Chinese government really wants to challenge US dominance and artificial intelligence. How is it going about doing that?  Eleanor Olcott So there’s a few different things that both the central government and the local governments have been doing, right? On the funding side, we’ve seen a bunch of government funds funnelling money, specifically into the AI industry. The regulators have also made it easier for some of these AI companies to go public, which also creates like more incentive for the private sector to invest in this industry. We’ve also, on the local government level, seen this massive construction of AI data centres across China and specifically kind of in the western regions where there’s cheap electricity.  Marc Filippino OK. So given all this, Eleanor, is China a serious threat to the US dominance in AI?  Eleanor Olcott I think it’s important to remember here that there’s still a very, very big question over Chinese computing power. The US is really strong in AI, in part because it has a monopoly over the chips powering AI development. Nvidia’s AI chips are still the industry standard for training models. Chinese companies have been trying really hard to break Nvidia’s stranglehold, but haven’t really been successful thus far. And so, when we’re talking about the competition or the threat that China poses to the US, it’s important to remember that China remains very, very dependent on US technology to develop and deploy AI. Marc Filippino Eleanor Olcott is the FT’s China technology correspondent. Thanks so much, Eleanor.  Eleanor Olcott Thank you.  Marc Filippino You can read more on all these stories for free when you click the links in our show notes. This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Check back tomorrow for the latest business new