Pics du jour

🇷🇺☢️ Russia signaled its readiness for nuclear action. In a decree issued yesterday, President Vladimir Putin updated Russia’s nuclear doctrine to lower the threshold at which it could consider using nuclear weapons in response to a conventional attack. Putin also updated the doctrine to allow Russia to use nuclear weapons against a nuclear-armed country that doesn’t directly launch an attack on Russia, but supports one by a nonnuclear country – a clear reference to Ukraine and its nuclear-armed backers, which include the US. Putin’s decree was published hours after Ukraine reportedly took advantage of a new green light from President Biden to fire the first US-made long-range missiles into Russia – though Russia’s nuclear changes were initially announced in September.

🔍 Google could be forced to sell Chrome. DOJ officials will on Wednesday ask a judge – who previously ruled Google Search was an illegal monopoly – to force the company to sell Chrome, its industry-leading browser, Bloomberg reports. Why? Regulators view the browser, the world’s most popular, as a key feeder of proprietary user data (i.e., browser activity) that’s used to power the company’s ad products. But Chrome won’t be going gentle into that good night: Google plans to appeal the case, and the judge won’t make a final call until August 2025.

🥪 Blackstone is gobbling up Jersey Mike’s. The private equity firm is taking a majority stake in the sandwich chain – the #2-largest sub-style sandwich company in the US by sales – in a deal valuing the Danny DeVito-repped company at ~$8 billion, including debt. Consolidation has been picking up among restaurant owners, whose cash flows have drawn interest from a range of buyers, including deep-pocketed private-equity firms, the Wall Street Journal reports. Subway was purchased last year by private-equity firm Roark Capital for $9.6 billion.