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The startup era is back, but this time founders are using AI to avoid one of their biggest early costs—hiring employees. 

A report this week by the Bank of America Institute found the number of “high propensity businesses,” or businesses the Census Bureau identifies as likely to hire employees, jumped by 15.1% year over year in January. Meanwhile, the number of business applications with explicit plans to hire employees fell by 4.4%.

The trend comes amid the record-high investment small companies are making on tech services, which includes AI, according to the Bank of America analysts, who said spending jumped 14% year over year last month. 

“This might be linked to a productivity push,” the report said.

Among small businesses, retail led the charge in tech spending last month with a gain of more than 25% followed closely by manufacturers, BofA added.

Small businesses, usually defined as a company with fewer than 500 workers, employ about 45% of Americans, and a major drop in hiring among this group of companies could hit the labor market hard.

Following the Federal Reserve’s decision to keep rates unchanged this week, Chairman Jerome Powell said private sector hiring had stalled. In February, employers cut 92,000 positions and the unemployment rate stood at 4.4%. 

“Effectively, there’s zero net job creation in the private sector,” Powell added in a press conference this week.

Larger companies are also increasingly leveraging AI to try to do more with less. The latest evidence: fintech firm Block’s decision last month to lay off around half of its workforce, with CEO Jack Dorsey citing intelligence tools that are “enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company.”

Some have said Block’s move constituted “AI washing” and that the layoffs last month were actually meant to correct over-hiring during the pandemic. Block’s chief financial officer and chief operations officer, Amrita Ahuja, told Fortune earlier this month this was not the case.

Meanwhile, AI has been cited in around 8% of all job cut announcements in 2026, or about 12,304 announcements, according to a study by executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. 

To be sure, Apollo Chief Economist Torsten Slok predicted the skyrocketing number of companies being created will be a boon for the labor market overall. 

“As these firms scale, they will create jobs, underscoring that AI is likely to strengthen, not disrupt, the US labor market,” he wrote in a note earlier this month. 

Replacing engineers

Others, such as Andy Tang, a partner at Silicon Valley venture capital firm Draper Associates, aren’t so sure. On average, the startups he talked to last month are reducing their engineering teams by a third, he told Fortune, revealing just how beneficial AI tools are to early-stage founders.

Often, these startups are finding that putting money into AI tokens is a better investment than increasing headcount by producing three to five times the code for a nominal cost.

“If you do the math, you don’t need nearly as many engineers” he said, adding that most knowledge work is easy to replace. 

In the future, AI tools may even enable solo entrepreneurs to cut their staff entirely, and instead create an army of agents who then go on to create their own “founderless unicorn companies,” according to Tang. 

The new playbook

The idea of using AI tools to scale rapidly has quickly caught on with a new generation of young, tech-savvy entrepreneurs.

Two years ago, Rudy Arora and Sarthak Dhawan started TurboAI, an AI-powered tool that converts lecture notes into flashcards and quizzes, with an initial investment of less than $300 while still college students at Northwestern University and Duke University, respectively. 

In the past two years, the now 21-year-old childhood friends have been able to grow their company to 8.5 million users and are generating about $1 million per month with only 13 employees, partly because of AI, the pair told Fortune. And despite raising $750,000 in a funding round two years ago, Arora said they have preferred not to spend it because they are profitable.

“If we were a company two-and-a-half years ago, it would take over 100 employees,” Arora said. “The only reason we’re able to do it with 13 employees right now is because of AI.”

What used to require a product manager and five engineers can now be handled by a single technical employee armed with AI agents, he added. 

Arora’s cofounder Dhawan added that he believes startups are only just discovering how AI can supercharge their businesses. Still, technology is already changing how entrepreneurs function. During the post-2008 startup boom more than a decade ago, creating a company often required experienced programmers and venture capital money, said Dhawan. Yet, the cofounders’ experience building TurboAI proves this isn’t necessarily the case anymore. 

“We’re going to see people even younger than ourselves, building companies with even less resources,” Dhawan said.

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Mark Cuban is notoriously bold in his deal-making. But even by his standards, dropping millions of dollars on a mansion he’s never set foot in is a move that could raise eyebrows.

The billionaire entrepreneur and former Shark Tank star revealed he snagged a $25 million estate at a jaw-dropping 50% discount, a deal he says exemplifies one of his core investing principles.

Cuban reflected on the purchase in a 2022 interview with GQ. During his days at MicroSolutions (the company he ultimately sold for $6 million in 1990), his partner, Martin Woodall, told him about an “amazing house” going into foreclosure. It was a home the owner had spent three years building and a “dream home” to the original owner’s wife and whole family, Cuban said. 

But unfortunately, the owner was forced to sell the home when the stock market crashed, and he lost everything. So, Cuban, who’s currently worth about $9 billion, bought the 24,000-square-foot mansion in Dallas sight unseen, calling it his one “why the f–k not purchase.” He still resides there, and Zillow estimates show it’s currently worth $22 million.

“I’d never seen the house. I saw some pictures. I’d never been there. I was like, F–k yeah. I’m a billionaire,” Cuban said. Essentially, the idea is that buying a home at a discount doesn’t inherently change its value. So when Cuban eventually goes to sell the home someday, he’ll make a pretty penny—at least about $10 million based on the current estimated value of the home (although it could be closer to $28 million, according to the Zillow estimate range).

Buying at a steep discount is “the best guaranteed return on investment” you can make, Cuban said, a methodology he uses for most of his purchases. 

“Saving 30% to 50% buying in bulk—replenishable items from toothpaste to soup, or whatever I use a lot of—is the best guaranteed return on investment you can get anywhere,” Cuban said in a 2010 Forbes interview. The mansion was the same principle, just on a much larger scale.

The former Dallas Mavericks owner also used the home purchase example as a cautionary tale about never taking wealth for granted. He also outlined his four-rule framework for becoming a millionaire, which includes mastering a skill, learning to sell, staying curious, and keeping learning—then start a company once you have those foundations.

“You have to know how to sell,” Cuban said. “You don’t want to be in a position where you’re dependent on other people.”

Billionaires approach finances differently

Cuban’s purchase is a window into how the ultra-wealthy think about real estate differently from average Americans, who would likely think it’s insane to purchase a home they’ve never actually seen in person.

Where most buyers shop for a home, Cuban shopped for a better financial position. The mansion is less a lifestyle acquisition (that was just a bonus for him) than an asset with favorable entry terms. Some billionaires, who would presumably be able to purchase a home outright, will also take out mortgages as a more savvy financial decision. It’s because most of the wealth held by ultra-high-net-worth people is tied up in investments, stocks, and bonds, and they don’t keep as much cash on hand.

“Ultra-high net worth individuals think differently about liquidity and leverage,” Miltiadis Kastanis, executive director of sales at Compass, previously told Fortune. “They’d rather keep their money working for them in investments, businesses—or even art—rather than tying it all up in one property.”

For Cuban, the purchase also signals continued confidence in hard assets at a moment when even some of the world’s most sophisticated investors are questioning where to park capital. Real estate offers something that stocks and crypto don’t always promise: a floor built into the purchase price itself.

Still, it’s important for the average American to make financial decisions that work for them, too.

“The takeaway for the average buyer isn’t to mimic [billionaires’] precise approach, but to understand the principle,” Evan Harlow, real estate agent at Maui Elite Property, previously told Fortune. “Sometimes the smartest financial move isn’t paying everything off, but keeping your money flexible and working for you.”

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In a K-shaped economy defined by a stark divide in household income and spending, there are sure to be winners and losers—but even those considered “rich” are feeling the clinch. Some six-figure earners are “on thin ice” thanks to potential headwinds and a shakier financial footing, according to a recent analysis from consulting firm Kearney.

The wealthy who are at financial risk are “high earners whose lack of budgeting and profligate spending has them overleveraged and exposed,” the report explained. “While they appear to be doing well from the outside, they are only a step away from real financial trouble.”

The top arm of the “K” in the economic model represents the top 20% of high-income households—but nearly half of them could be walking on eggshells, according to the report. Those making $160,000 to $700,000 are divided into two financial groups, with the lower end of the proportion deemed to be “on thin ice” due to their debt and exposure to financial swings.

But there is no defined ceiling as to where the six-figure “on thin ice” crowd enter the “stable/responsible” group, as their financial standing depends on several variables, including where they live in the country.

“There is not a specific number where those two groups split because it actually depends on other factors we cover (such as cost of living area),” Katie Thomas, the report’s author and leader of the the Kearney Consumer Institute (KCI), explains to Fortune. “For instance, making $250,000 is different in San Francisco vs. Pittsburgh, which is why we decided not to make a hard cutoff between the two groups.” 

These wealthy consumers are vulnerable to housing costs, debt and interest rates, and the job market. Six-figure earners “on thin ice” are also highly exposed to stock market swings and lifestyle creep, as keeping up appearances has become more costly.

Meanwhile the 1% of households who are “secure elites,” earning more than $700,000 a year, are sitting “comfortable” in the K-shaped economy. Potential risks like the stock market, AI bubble exposure, and interest rates have little impact on their solid financial standing.

Macroeconomic risks put some six-figure elite more at risk than lower earners

CEOs and Wall Street analysts alike are all talking about the “K shaped economy”: a buzzword describing the growing disparity between the haves and have-nots. The upper part of the K represents higher-income Americans—who see their salaries and wealth rise—while the bottom part refers to lower-income households battling against weaker income gains and steep prices.

However, depending on their susceptibility to financial threats, some six-figure breadwinners are actually more at risk than lower-income earners, according to the Kearney report. 

The 20% of consumers making between $95,000 and $160,000 actually rest in the “comfortable” group at the bottom leg of the K-shaped economy. Similarly to the wealthy “on thin ice,” their biggest risks are job market, lifestyle creep, and interest rates, but the exposure is less severe. 

The report explains that technically these “comfortable” earners are in the bottom of the “K”—which looks to be a worse spot to be in—but their overall financial position is “more secure on a day-to-day, year-to-year basis thanks to a variety of factors.” They’re only mildly exposed to many of the current macroeconomic factors troubling higher-income earners like housing costs, debt, and labor market whims. They may bring home a lower income, but they have more buffers and financial assets to weather the storm. 

“Consumers in the arm of the K ‘on thin ice’ group may be highly exposed to housing and interest costs or stock market dips,” the report noted. Meanwhile, “Those in the leg of the K ‘comfortable’ group are less at risk, despite being on the seemingly unfavorable side.”

Six-figure earners are struggling to keep up with costs—and appearances 

Six-figure salaries may conjure fantasies of a high-flying lifestyle, but in actuality, many Americans find their high incomes aren’t cutting it. 

Instead of balling out on luxuries, around 64% of Americans earning $200,000 or more said they’ve used rewards points to pay for essentials, 50% used “buy now, pay later” for purchases under $100, and 46% relied on credit cards to scrape by, according to a 2025 survey from the Harris Poll. It’s become costly to live a luxe lifestyle.

“Our data shows that even high earners are financially anxious—they’re living the illusion of affluence while privately juggling credit cards, debt, and survival strategies,” Libby Rodney, chief strategy officer and futurist for the Harris Poll, said in a statement last year.

Even the 1% is feeling financial strain. About 41% of American workers earning between $300,001 and $500,000—and 40% of those making over $500,000—say they’re living paycheck to paycheck, according to a 2025 report from Goldman Sachs. And ironically, the financial outlook gets better going down the income spectrum; 16% of workers bringing home $200,001 and $300,000, 25% making $100,001 to $200,000 annually, and 36% earning $50,001 to $100,000 were struggling to make ends meet.

The paradox highlights the “impact of lifestyle creep, the phenomenon of luxuries becoming necessities to certain income cohorts,” according to the Goldman report. Six-figure workers reeling in half a million-dollar salaries are struggling to keep up with the joneses.

“Financial strain is not confined to low-income workers,” the 2025 study revealed. “A meaningful share of higher earners also report living paycheck to paycheck or making only limited progress toward long-term financial goals, underscoring that elevated expenses, debt burdens, and lifestyle inflation can erode savings capacity across the income spectrum.”

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In January, the White House celebrated what they claimed to be the “largest tax refund season in U.S. history,” promising hundreds of dollars more in refunds this tax year as a result of changes to the tax code, thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA).

But economists warn those savings could go up in smoke—or rather exhaust, cancelled out completely by elevated gas prices as a result of the ongoing war in Iran. 

An analysis led by economists at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research found that should the Strait of Hormuz remain closed for another three weeks and oil top out at $110 per barrel in March, gas would peak at $4.36 per gallon in May. As a result, the report found Americans would be paying on average $740 more for gas this year. The economists noted that extra spend would cancel out the $748 more in tax refunds projected for a typical household, according to the Tax Foundation. 

Gas prices have surged more than 90 cents since Feb. 28, to $3.91 per gallon, when President Donald Trump initiated a major military operation against Iran, in a joint effort with Israeli forces. The ongoing strikes and counterattacks have resulted in the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint through which more than 20% of the world’s oil supply is exported. 

With oil prices hovering near $100 per barrel—and spiking above $115 this week—gas prices have subsequently reached their highest levels since 2023.  But even if the conflict ends in a matter of weeks, Americans are still likely to feel pain at the pump.

In a note to clients, Oxford Economics analysts similarly calculated that consumers would spend $60 billion more on gas in 2026, should gas prices average out to $3.60 per gallon, “almost exactly offsetting the boost from refunds.”

These elevated gas prices are likely to impact lower- and middle-income consumers the most, exacerbating a K-shaped economy of wealthier Americans increasing consumer spend and lower-income households struggling to make ends meet. The bottom 80% of earners spend close to 4% of their budget on gas—nearly twice as much as their higher-income counterparts, Oxford analysts wrote. 

Moreover, the tax cuts outlined in OBBBA, such as for overtime and state and local taxes, will likely benefit middle- and upper-class Americans more, “deepening the bifurcation of the consumer that we’ve seen over the past several years,” the note said. As the Act stands now, the IRS estimates refunds on average $360 greater than last year.

Why gas prices are likely to remain stubbornly high

Oil and gas prices are poised to remain elevated until at least the end of the year. The Energy Information Administration (EIA), a semi-independent agency under the purview of the Department of Energy, projected that as things stand now, gas prices will average out at $3.34 this year and $3.18 in 2027. Goldman Sachs analysts likewise suggested oil prices could remain above $100 per barrel through 2027 if supply chain disruptions continue.

Even if the Strait of Hormuz were to reopen, it would take time for global oil supply to rebalance. The closure of the trade passage has resulted in a backlog of oil tankers, and directing the vessels through the waterway could take weeks to resolve. Oil production in the Gulf may also be hampered by infrastructure damage as a result of strikes.

The Trump Administration has made efforts to bring down soaring gas prices, like on Wednesday, when the White House temporarily suspending the Jones Act: a federal law created in 1920 aimed to regulate domestic maritime shipping and trade. It prohibits foreign-flagged ships from transporting goods between U.S. ports. By suspending the law, the Trump Administration aims to ease supply disruptions driving up the price of oil, hoping that by opening up domestic routes to those foreign vessels, it will reduce shipping costs and speed up deliveries.

Policy experts aren’t sure the decision will make much of a difference in gas prices. The Center for American Progress estimated suspending the Jones Act would lower gas prices by three cents per gallon.

Bloomberg reported Vice President JD Vance will meet with oil executives to address soaring oil prices.

“We know they’re up, and we know that people are hurting because of it,” Vance said at an event in Michigan this week. “And we’re doing everything that we can to ensure that they stay lower.”

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Finance chief Dan Durn is turning Adobe’s finance organization into an early proving ground for agentic AI—using autonomous software agents to forecast results, scan contracts, and even answer hundreds of thousands of emails.

The push mirrors Adobe’s broader strategy around agentic AI. For customers, the company lets them choose models, combine them with their own data and Adobe’s, and point agents at specific business outcomes.

Internally, Durn, who is also in charge of technology, security and operations, has taken a similar approach to finance: pairing a rules-based, data-heavy function with AI, within a structure where finance, IT, and security report to one leader so pilots can move to production quickly. “Accuracy is non-negotiable,” he adds; that’s why Adobe is investing in structured data and governance so it can move fast without sacrificing precision, he says. 

The rise of AI is rapidly reshaping corporate leadership, accelerating turnover and elevating executives who can deliver fast, tangible results. Even long-tenured leaders face increasing pressure from investors to move aggressively on AI. Recent leadership changes, including the announced retirement of Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, highlight how little patience markets now have for perceived hesitation. At the same time, Adobe reported that annualized revenue from its AI-first products more than tripled year over year in its first quarter of fiscal 2026, which ended Feb. 27. Across Fortune 500 companies, this dynamic is creating a new internal proving ground where executives are judged by how effectively, and how quickly, they deploy AI to drive growth, efficiency, and innovation.

Using AI in finance

Inside finance, Durn groups AI use into three buckets: forecasting, anomaly detection, and general productivity.

For forecasting, AI uncovers patterns and signals in data that would be difficult for humans to detect quickly, he explains. Anomaly-detection agents flag performance that’s unexpectedly strong or weak—“things that can get lost in the sea of data”—so finance can intervene faster, he says.

However, Durn says the best examples now sit in productivity, citing three use cases:

1. Extracting information from PDFs

One of the most developed use cases involves “containers” of information—collections of PDFs such as investor transcripts, quarterly reports, and analyst research. Finance teams use Adobe’s PDF Spaces to load documents into a shared digital workspace and use an agentic AI assistant to surface themes, insights, and messaging cues in minutes rather than hours.

A recent Forrester TEI study found Acrobat’s agentic AI Assistant increases efficiencies in document summarization and analysis by 45%. Durn says that matters because “the world’s information lives in PDF,” and AI that turns static content into insights that can be used.

2. Cutting contract review time in half

Adobe is also using agentic AI to overhaul contract reviews across finance and procurement functions including revenue assurance, contract operations, product fulfillment, and vendor management. Instead of finance professionals combing through every clause, an AI assistant scans thousands of contracts, highlights provisions relevant to each function, and flags non-standard terms.

The system has cut review time roughly in half, speeding individual reviews and allowing teams to query the entire contract repository—for example, identifying which contracts include auto-cancellation features or foreign-exchange adjustment windows, Durn says. Adobe built its first prototype by April 2024 and began onboarding teams in January 2025.

3. Automating “common” inboxes

A third area is the “common inboxes” that handle high-volume internal and external email—shared addresses for sales, treasury, finance, and supplier questions. Adobe deployed an agentic AI assistant that auto-tags, prioritizes, routes, and, when criteria are met, auto-responds to emails. Typical queries include supplier billing issues or standard credit-quality questions coming into the treasury from Salesforce.

“In 2025 alone, the system auto-responded to about 300,000 emails across 19 inboxes, saving more than 5,000 hours of manual work and freeing teams to focus on more complex issues,” he says. The tool took about six months to build; beta teams began using it around August 2024, with full rollout in January 2025.

The payoff, he stresses, isn’t headcount cuts but the ability to scale more efficiently as Adobe grows.

Grassroots ideas, decade-long build

Durn traces these finance use cases to Adobe’s long AI journey and a bottom-up idea pipeline. The company has invested in machine learning and AI for more than a decade, initially to understand customer usage patterns and embed intelligence into products—work that laid the groundwork for generative and agentic AI.

Many of the best applications come from “reaching down into the organization” and asking employees where AI could remove friction or make their jobs easier, he says. There are more ideas than capacity, so the team prioritizes those with the greatest impact.

When deciding whether to green-light AI investments, Durn focuses on organizational velocity—the ability of back-office functions to keep pace with faster product innovation. If finance doesn’t adopt AI, he argues, it risks becoming a “rate limiter of growth.”

The actual spend is modest, he adds; much of the work involves change management and process redesign layered onto Adobe’s technology.

Durn’s perspective on change management coincides with new research from McKinsey. To capture the full value of AI, organizations need to go beyond “a piecemeal approach and push for a double transformation—both technical and organizational—that includes reimagining how work gets done across functions and workflows,” according to the report. While 88% of organizations surveyed are now experimenting with AI, fewer than 20% report tangible bottom-line results,, the research finds.

How AI is changing his own job

For his own workflow, Durn relies on AI primarily for insight generation. Ahead of earnings, his team loads pre-earnings research reports, Adobe filings, and peer transcripts into an AI-powered workspace to surface themes and likely investor questions.

Scripts and Q&A preparation are then run through models with guardrails to test whether messaging addresses those themes and to ask, “If I were an investor, what are my key takeaways?”

He sees it as a useful check on clarity and consistency—using AI to validate instincts and sharpen how Adobe communicates with the market.

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Iran struck two communities near Israel’s main nuclear research center late Saturday, leaving buildings shattered and at least seven people seriously injured, hours after Tehran’s main nuclear enrichment site was hit as the war spun into a dangerous new direction at the start of its fourth week.

It was the first time Israel’s nuclear research center has been targeted in the fighting. Israel’s military said it was not able to intercept missiles that hit the southern cities of Dimona and Arad, the largest near the center in Israel’s sparsely populated Negev desert.

“This is a very difficult evening,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, adding that more emergency resources were being sent to the scene.

“The war is not close to ending,” Israel’s army chief, Gen. Eyal Zamir, said earlier in the day.

Iran also targeted the joint U.K.-U.S. Diego Garcia military base in the Indian Ocean about 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) away, suggesting that Tehran has missiles that can go farther than previously acknowledged — or that it had used its space program for an improvised launch.

The U.S. and Israel have offered shifting rationales for the war, from hoping to foment an uprising that topples Iran’s leadership to eliminating its nuclear and missile programs and its support for armed proxies. There have been no signs of an uprising, while internet restrictions limit information from Iran.

The war’s effects are felt far beyond the Middle East, raising food and fuel prices.

It is not clear how much damage Iran has sustained in the U.S. and Israeli strikes that began Feb. 28 — or even who is truly in charge. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen in public since being named to the role.

Israel had denied responsibility for attack on Natanz

Footage from Israel’s emergency service showed a large crater next to what appeared to be apartment buildings with outer walls sheared away. The missile appeared to have struck an open area.

Rescue workers said the direct hit in Arad caused widespread damage across at least 10 apartment buildings, three of them badly damaged and in danger of collapsing. At least 64 people were taken to hospitals.

Dimona is about 20 kilometers (12 miles) west of the nuclear research center and Arad around 35 kilometers (21 miles) north.

Israel is believed to be the only Middle East nation with nuclear weapons, though its leaders refuse to confirm or deny their existence. The U.N. nuclear watchdog said on X it had not received reports of damage to the Israeli center or abnormal radiation levels.

“If the Israeli regime is unable to intercept missiles in the heavily protected Dimona area, it is, operationally, a sign of entering a new phase of the battle,” Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said on X before word of the Arad strike spread.

Israel earlier Saturday denied responsibility for the strike on the Natanz nuclear facility, nearly 220 kilometers (135 miles) southeast of Tehran. The Iranian judiciary’s official news agency, Mizan, said there was no leakage.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has said the bulk of Iran’s estimated 970 pounds (440 kilograms) of enriched uranium is elsewhere, beneath the rubble at its Isfahan facility. It said on X it was looking into the strike.

The Pentagon declined to comment on the strike on Natanz, which was also hit in the first week of the war and in the 12-day war last June. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said such strikes posed a “real risk of catastrophic disaster throughout the Middle East.”

Iran retaliated hours later.

US can use Diego Garcia base to protect Strait of Hormuz

U.K. officials did not give details of the strike that targeted the Diego Garcia base Friday, which was unsuccessful. Britain’s Ministry of Defense described Iran as “lashing out across the region.”

It’s unclear how close the missiles came to the island. Iran previously asserted that it has limited its missile range to below 2,000 kilometers (over 1,200 miles).

But military experts said Iran may have used its space launch vehicle for an improvised firing. “If you’ve got a space program, you’ve got a ballistic missile program,” said Steve Prest, a retired Royal Navy commodore.

Israel’s army chief, however, said Iran had fired “a two-stage intercontinental ballistic missile.” There was no statement from Iran.

Britain has not participated in U.S.-Israeli attacks but has allowed U.S. bombers to use its bases to attack Iran’s missile sites. On Friday, the U.K. government said bombers could use Diego Garcia to attack sites used to target ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

Global pressure increases to get shipping back on track

As Iran threatens shipping on the Strait of Hormuz, the United Arab Emirates joined 21 other countries including the U.K., Germany, France and Japan in expressing “readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage.”

The Trump administration announced it was temporarily lifting sanctions on Iranian oil that was already loaded on ships as of Friday, but that does not increase oil production, a central factor in surging prices. The oil ministry of Iran, which has evaded sanctions for years, replied that it “essentially has no crude oil left in floating storage.”

The head of U.S. Central Command, Adm. Brad Cooper, asserted that Iran’s ability to attack vessels on the strait had been “degraded.” He said 5,000-pound (2,270-kilogram) bombs were dropped earlier in the week on an underground facility along Iran’s coast used to store anti-ship cruise missiles and mobile missile launchers.

The U.S. is deploying three more amphibious assault ships and roughly 2,500 additional Marines to the Middle East, an official told The Associated Press. Two other U.S. officials confirmed that ships were deploying, without saying where they were headed. All three spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the operations.

Gulf countries reported more attacks. A missile alert sounded Saturday night in Dubai. Saudi Arabia said it downed 20 drones in its east, home to major oil installations.

Iran’s death toll in the war has surpassed 1,500, the state broadcaster reported, citing the health ministry. In Israel, 15 people have been killed by Iranian missiles and four others have died in the occupied West Bank. At least 13 U.S. military members have been killed, along with well over a dozen civilians in Gulf nations.

Israeli troops and Hezbollah militants clash in Lebanon

Israel’s military said it was conducting a “targeted ground operation” in southern Lebanon and at least four militants were killed. Hezbollah said its fighters clashed with troops in the southern village of Khiam.

Israeli strikes targeting Hezbollah have killed more than 1,000 people and displaced more than 1 million, according to the Lebanese government. Hezbollah’s civilian assets also have been targeted.

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OpenAI plans to almost double its headcount by the end of 2026 as it seeks to fend off competition from companies such as Anthropic PBC and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, according to the Financial Times. 

The maker of AI assistant ChatGPT will look to increase headcount to about 8,000 from about 4,500, the FT said, citing two people with direct knowledge of the matter whom it didn’t identify. The new hires will largely work across product development, engineering, research and sales, according to the report. 

OpenAI has taken new office space in San Francisco to accommodate its growing staff count, taking its footprint in the city to more than 1 million square feet, the newspaper added. 

 OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The hiring plans come amid a race with competitors including Anthropic and Microsoft Corp. to woo corporate customers using AI as coding assistants. 

Firms like OpenAI have unveiled a number of AI models that can take on increasingly complicated tasks — from analyzing company earnings reports to writing code and generating startlingly realistic-looking images and videos.

Last week, OpenAI revealed plans to acquire Astral, a startup that makes Python tools for developers. Earlier in March, it agreed to buy AI security startup Promptfoo, adding tools to test and secure AI agents before deployment, Last year, it bought startups including Software Applications Inc. and Neptune. 

The firm is also in advanced discussions to form a joint venture with private equity firms, including TPG Inc., Brookfield Asset Management and Bain Capital, that would focus on bolstering adoption of its AI software, Bloomberg reported.

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After a four-year break, K-pop supergroup BTS returned Saturday with a massive, free comeback concert in Seoul, where thousands of police locked down a central boulevard for the Netflix-exclusive spectacle that drew tens of thousands of fans.

“Annyeonghaseyo! We’re back,” RM, the band’s leader, told the crowd, using the Korean word for “hello,” as they opened with “Body to Body,” setting off delirious screams from fans waving purple-and-red light sticks and thrusting smartphones into the air.

All seven members of the band — RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V and Jung Kook — recently completed South Korea’s mandatory military service, and hope to reclaim their status as one of the world’s biggest pop acts.

The performance at Gwanghwamun Square launches a global tour spanning dozens of shows across the United States, Europe and Asia, which analysts say could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue per quarter.

The hourlong concert came after the group on Friday released its fifth album, “ARIRANG,” which sold nearly 4 million copies in its first day, said the band’s management company, HYBE. The company also said RM had injured his ankle during a rehearsal, but he still performed with modified choreography.

The BTS concert, which began at 8 p.m., drew several tens of thousands to the Gwanghwamun area, including 22,000 fans who secured free seats in the designated viewing zone and others who watched on screens nearby. The show was streamed live on Netflix.

“It will be amazing because it’s been so long that BTS (was) not with us,” Dallila Di Tullio, a 32-year-old fan from Italy, said before the concert, calling it a once-in-a-century event.

BTS debuted in 2013 and has a legion of global supporters who call themselves the “Army.” It became the first K-pop act to top Billboard’s Hot 100 chart in 2020 with their first all-English song “Dynamite.”

Jung Dukhyun, a pop culture commentator, said that the impact of BTS’ return as a full-group would be tremendous at a time when global fandom for K-pop has grown much stronger, as shown by the success of Netflix’s animated sensation “KPop Demon Hunters.”

Stringent crowd controls

The dark streets blazed with light as waves of fans sang and cheered from cordoned sections, a jubilant scene that unfolded under an unusually heavy police presence managing the crowds.

“I still vividly remember how, at our last Busan concert a few years ago, we asked you to wait for us. Thank you so much for coming here like this,” Jin said.

The group performed songs from their new album, including “SWIM,” alongside hits like “Dynamite” and “Butter.” Some members appeared to tear up while thanking fans who braved the chilly night, before holding hands and bowing to the crowd to close the show.

Police and city officials closed nearby streets and roads, halted the area’s subway and bus services, and sealed off dozens of surrounding buildings, in what amounted to a full-day shutdown of the district.

Thousands of police officers maintained a tight perimeter around the performance venue, channeling the crowds with a maze of fences and buses. Concertgoers began queuing by midday to secure spots along nearby roads, passing through security checks and metal detectors at designated entry points. The restrictions forced nearby shops to close and police to use their buses to shuttle wedding guests to a nearby venue.

“I was hoping to (see) if we can go through some holes or be around. Apparently we cannot because they will be asking people to move,” said Bernice Sanchez, a 52-year-old fan from Switzerland, as she looked for a place to wait.

While South Korean officials have taken crowd safety more seriously since a 2022 Halloween surge that killed nearly 160 people, critics say the controls went too far and undermined the symbolism of performing in Gwanghwamun, seen as Seoul’s spiritual heart and most prominent gathering space.

Hundreds of thousands have gathered in Gwanghwamun in recent years to mourn, protest and celebrate as the country weathered tragedy and political upheaval. The BTS concert came about a year after waves of demonstrators filled the area, calling for the ouster of then-President Yoon Suk Yeol over his brief imposition of martial law in December 2024. Those monthslong rallies were marked by a festive atmosphere and a striking blend of politics and pop culture, with protesters singing and waving colorful K-pop light sticks, and ended without major safety accidents.

Drawing on culture and heritage

The new BTS album, “ARIRANG,” takes its name from a centuries-old folk song, regarded as an unofficial anthem in both Koreas, whose themes of separation, longing and quiet resilience have echoed across generations.

Gwanghwamun and nearby Gyeongbok Palace provided a sweeping historic backdrop to Saturday’s show, which was highlighted by lighting effects that bathed the palace gate and walls in purple, red and blue.

Suga told the crowd that the album’s title and the decision to perform in Gwanghwamun reflected the group’s focus on identity. RM said the band focused on making music that felt true to themselves as they reconvened to work on the new album.

“We wanted to show who we are and how we can come together,” he told the crowd.

South Korean officials, including current President Lee Jae Myung, expressed hope that the event would promote the country’s culture and soft power.

Group’s comeback coincides with K-pop’s global rise

The group’s comeback follows a nearly four-year hiatus driven by South Korea’s mandatory military service, which requires most able-bodied men to serve 18 to 21 months under a conscription system aimed at deterring aggression from North Korea. BTS members began serving in 2022, with Suga the last to complete his service in June 2025.

Some analysts say the group’s “ARIRANG” world tour could become the biggest K-pop tour ever by scale and revenue, with 82 shows planned globally in stadiums of around 50,000 seats. Ha Jae-keun, a cultural critic, said BTS was likely to have a “second heyday,” as they maintained a highly powerful fandom and would benefit from the broader international ascent of K-pop.

“We will do our best to give everything we got,” J-Hope said

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The US has allowed the sale of Iranian oil and petrochemical products that have been loaded onto tankers, its latest effort to counter rising oil prices due to the Middle East war.

The Department of Treasury issued a general license for energy that’s already on vessels as of Friday, with such purchases authorized through April 19. The measure follows similar moves for Russian oil on the water in a bid to ease an unprecedented fuel supply crunch caused by the war.

For now, the vast majority of Iran’s oil is bought by Chinese customers — mainly independent refiners known as teapots. While the US waiver would widen the pool of potential buyers, any new customers would still face the challenge of structuring deals while other restrictions on Iran, including its access to international financial markets, remain in place.

The US and Israeli war on Iran has led to a virtual halt in shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, where 20% of global oil typically transits, with only a trickle of Iranian and Chinese tankers getting through. Brent crude prices have surged more than 50% this month, while Middle Eastern oil like Abu Dhabi’s flagship Murban grade has doubled in value.

The resulting spike in fuel prices for American consumers is heaping immense pressure on the US president and the Republican Party leading up to the November midterm elections. Prolonged inflationary pressures would undercut the GOP’s ability to retain control of the Senate and the House, and the loss of either chamber threatens to derail Trump’s ability to carry out his agenda.

Read More: US Treasury Allows More Russian Oil Sales to Help Tame Prices

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called the Iranian oil waiver a “narrowly tailored, short-term authorization permitting the sale of Iranian oil currently stranded at sea,” in a post on X, adding that the measure will release about 140 million barrels. He also said that Iran “will have difficulty accessing any revenue generated.”

That 140-million-barrel number likely refers to oil on water. That figure probably includes cargoes in transit which may already be booked, and may not reflect actual availability. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. estimates there are 105 million barrels of Iranian oil on water.

Iran disputed the figure, with oil ministry spokesman Saman Ghodousi saying on X that the nation has no floating crude, nor a surplus that’s available for international markets. Ghodousi said the US was simply trying to provide psychological support to the oil market.

In the US, Congressional Democrats slammed the measure, arguing Trump’s move is an economic gift to Iran in the middle of a war that the president started.

“Clown show doesn’t begin to describe it,” Virginia Democrat Don Beyer said in a post on X.

In addition to sanctions waivers, the Trump administration released more than 45 million barrels of oil from its strategic reserves and temporarily waived a century-old shipping mandate in order to lower transport costs.

The global oil benchmark settled Friday above $112 a barrel — the highest level since mid-2022 — before easing in post-settlement trading after Trump said he was considering “winding down” US military efforts against Iran.

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The U.S. war on Iran has laid bare a dichotomy in the world’s most advanced military: high-tech weapons and AI have delivered stunning blows at unprecedented speed, while defending against the swarm of missiles and drones launched in retaliation have come at unsustainably lopsided costs.

Led by a massive air campaign, the U.S. has claimed more than 7,000 strikes on key sites, with Israel conducting a comparable number of sorties, as AI tools like Anthropic’s Claude recommend targets “much quicker in some ways than the speed of thought.” The relentless bombardment has decimated Iran’s military and leadership.

But helped by the mass production of cheap drones, the forces that are left still retain enough combat power to attack Gulf neighbors and scare away commercial tankers from the Strait of Hormuz, keeping 20% of the world’s oil bottled up.

Iran’s retaliatory barrage has also forced the U.S. and its allies to draw down expensive stockpiles of interceptors. The tactic highlights the brutal economics of the current war: missiles that cost millions of dollars each are shooting down drones that cost tens of thousands of dollars. In other words, it’s like the U.S. is using a Formula 1 racer to fight off a used car.

U.S.-style warfare doesn’t come cheap. The first six days of the Iran conflict have cost the U.S. more than $11 billion, though a switch to less expensive bombs has since slowed the daily bill.

Pentagon leaders insist the U.S. has enough munitions, though the exact size of the inventory is classified. Still, the heavy usage has raised concerns about the remaining supply, especially as allies consider what’s needed in the event of war with Russia or China.

But lawmakers got sticker shock on reports the Defense Department was seeking an additional $200 billion for the Iran war. Part of the Pentagon’s calculus, however, was to address the shortage of precision munitions and spur the defense industry to quickly restock supplies, sources told the Washington Post.

President Donald Trump summoned top contractors to the White House earlier this month to push them along. But ramping up to high levels of output could take years. For example, Lockheed Martin made 620 PAC-3 interceptors for the Patriot air-defense system last year and plans to make 650 this year. But its goal of producing over 2,000 annually won’t be reached until 2030, according to Bloomberg.

The current dilemma brings to mind a quote attributed to Joseph Stalin during World War II as he weighed the Red Army’s numerical advantage against Nazi Germany’s superior weapons: “quantity has a quality all its own.”

Ukraine tranforms warfare

The U.S. has long prioritized cutting-edge equipment to maintain superiority against any military rivals. But as the pace of technological improvements accelerated in recent decades, costs ballooned and the Pentagon struggled to keep up. During the Iraq war, acquisition officials looked to “off the shelf” commercial options that could be integrated into the military quickly.

The advent of cheap commercial drone technology changed equation dramatically, as demonstrated by the Ukrainian military’s adoption of new tactics to fight off the Russian invasion.

The four-year-old conflict has transformed warfare. Unmanned weapons are now responsible for most battlefield casualties as small first-person view drones hunt down individual troops or vehicles. Ukraine’s defense industry has also evolved to mass produce inexpensive drones that can take down Russia-launched Shaheds from Iran.

Once such drone, the P1-Sun, costs a little more than $1,000 and can fly above 30,000 feet as 3-D printers crank them out in Ukrainian factories.

“The future of warfare is Ukraine producing 7 million drones per year right now,” former CIA director and retired Gen. David Patraeus said earlier this month. “This past year, they produced 3.5 million. That enabled them basically to use 9 to 10,000 drones per day.”

And when combined with AI that makes drones more autonomous, the result will be swarms that are “really, really hard” to counter, he added.

Defending against an onslaught like that may require energy weapons, like high-powered microwaves, that can take down large swathes of drones at once.

“We are not actually where we should be relative to that, based on what we should have been learning from Ukraine for a very long time,” Patraeus warned. “And they’re learning back and forth. They make software changes every week or two, hardware changes every two to three weeks.”

Gulf countries facing Iranian attacks have sought Ukraine’s help in combating the Shahed drone. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said his country can produce at least 2,000 “effective and combat-proven” interceptors a day.

The Pentagon also understands the new economics of warfare and has even incorporated a copycat version of the Shahed in the U.S. military, using the American version against Iran during the war.

Emil Michael, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, said at an industry conference on Tuesday that the Pentagon plans to go big with the new LUCAS drone.

“After only a few years, we continue to refine that and make that something that we can mass produce at scale,” he said. “They’ve worked very well so far and it’s proven out to be a useful tool in the arsenal.” 

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 President Donald Trump said Saturday he will order federal immigration officers to take a role in airport security starting Monday unless Democrats agree on a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security.

In a pair of social media posts, Trump first threatened and then said he had made plans to put officers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in airports if the congressional standoff continues. He made the announcement as a partial shutdown contributes to long linesto pass through screening at some of the nation’s largest airports.

The Republican president suggested ICE agents would bring the administration’s immigration crackdown into the nation’s airports, promising to arrest “all Illegal Immigrants.”

“I look forward to moving ICE in on Monday, and have already told them to, “GET READY.” NO MORE WAITING, NO MORE GAMES!” Trump wrote while spending the weekend in Florida.

The move appears to be a pointed effort to expand the type of immigration enforcement that has become a sticking point in Congress. Democrats pledged to oppose funding for DHS unless changes were made in the wake of a crackdown in Minnesota that led to the fatal shootings of two protesters. Democrats are asking for better identification for federal law enforcement officers, a new code of conduct for those agencies and more use of judicial warrants, among other measures.

The Minnesota operation was tied in part to allegations of fraud involving Somali residents. On Saturday, Trump said ICE officers sent to airports would focus on arresting immigrants from Somalia who are in the United States illegally. Repeating his criticism on Somalis, he said they “totally destroyed” Minnesota.

“If the Democrats do not allow for Just and Proper Security at our Airports, and elsewhere throughout our Country, ICE will do the job far better than ever done before,” Trump said.

Trump’s posts did not offer additional detail on how ICE would take a role in airport security and what it meant for the Transportation Security Administration, which screens passengers and luggage for hazardous items.

The vast majority of TSA employees are considered essential and continue to work during the funding lapse, but they are doing so without pay. Call-out rates have started to increase at some airports, and DHS said at least 376 have quit since the partial shutdown began Feb. 14.

On Saturday, in a rare weekend session, the Senate rejected a motion by Democrats to take up legislation to reopen TSA and pay workers who are now going without paychecks. Republicans argue that they need to fund all parts of the DHS, not just certain ones. A bill to fund the Cabinet department failed to advance in the Senate on Friday.

There were signs of progress, though, with the restarting in recent days of stalled talks between Democrats and the White House. On Saturday, Republican and Democratic senators were set to meet for a third consecutive day with White House officials behind closed doors as Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York spoke of “productive conversations.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., urged the bipartisan group to act quickly. He has said repeatedly that Democrats and the White House need to find compromise as lines at airports have grown.

“If that group that’s meeting can’t come up with a solution really quickly, things are going to get worse and worse,” Thune said Saturday.

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One day at an Idaho hospital, half the newborns Dr. Tom Patterson saw didn’t get the vitamin K shots that have been given to babies for decades to prevent potentially deadly bleeding. On another recent day, more than a quarter didn’t get the shot. Their parents wouldn’t allow it.

“When you look at a child who’s innocent and vulnerable — and a simple intervention that’s been done since 1961 is refused — knowing that baby’s going out into the world is super worrisome to me,” said Patterson, who’s been a pediatrician for nearly three decades.

Doctors across the nation are alarmed that skepticism fueled by rising anti-science sentiment and medical mistrust is increasingly reaching beyond vaccines to other proven, routine, preventive care for babies.

A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which analyzed more than 5 million births nationwide, found that refusals of vitamin K shots nearly doubled between 2017 and 2024, from 2.9% to 5.2%. Other research suggests that parents who decline vitamin K shots are much more likely to refuse getting their newborns the hepatitis B vaccine and an eye ointment to prevent potentially blinding infections. Rates for that vaccination at birth dropped in recent years, and doctors confirm that more parents are refusing the eye medication.

“I do think these families care deeply about their infants,” said Dr. Kelly Wade, a Philadelphia neonatologist. “But I hear from families that it’s hard to make decisions right now because they’re hearing conflicting information.”

Innumerable social media posts question doctors’ advice on safe and effective measures like vitamin K and eye ointment. And the Trump administration has repeatedly undermined established science. A federal advisory committee whose members were appointed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a leading anti-vaccine activist before joining the administration — voted to end the longstanding recommendation to immunize all babies against hepatitis B right after birth. On Monday a federal judge temporarily blocked all decisions made by the reconfigured committee.

One common thread that ties together anti-vaccine views and growing sentiments against other protective measures for newborns is the fallacy that natural is always better than artificial, said Dr. David Hill, a Seattle pediatrician and researcher.

“Nature will allow 1 in 5 human infants to die in the first year of life,” Hill said, “which is why generations of scientists and doctors have worked to bring that number way, way down.”

Vitamin K and other measures prevent serious problems

Babies are born with low levels of vitamin K, leaving them vulnerable because their intestines can’t produce enough until they start eating solid foods at around 6 months old.

“Vitamin K is important for helping the blood clot and preventing dangerous bleeding in babies, like bleeding into the brain,” said Dr. Kristan Scott of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, lead author of the JAMA study.

Before injections became routine, up to about 1 in 60 babies suffered vitamin K deficiency bleeding, which can also affect the gastrointestinal tract. Today the condition is rare, but research shows that newborns who don’t get a vitamin K shot are 81 times more likely to develop severe bleeding than those who do.

Hill has seen what can happen.

“I cared for a toddler whose parents had chosen that risk,” the Seattle doctor said. The child essentially had a stroke as a newborn and wound up with severe developmental delays and ongoing seizures.

At a February meeting of the Idaho chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, doctors said they knew of eight deaths from vitamin K deficiency bleeding in the state over the preceding 13 months, said Patterson, who is president of the chapter.

Infections prevented by other newborn measures can also have grave consequences. Erythromycin eye ointment protects against gonorrhea that can be contracted during birth and potentially cause blindness if untreated. The hepatitis B vaccine prevents a disease that can lead to liver failure, liver cancer or cirrhosis.

Even if a pregnant woman is tested for gonorrhea and hepatitis B, no test is perfect, and she may get infected after testing, said Dr. Susan Sirota, a pediatrician in Highland Park, Illinois. Either way, she risks passing the infection to her child.

Why are parents refusing routine care?

Parents give many reasons for turning down preventive measures, like fearing they might cause problems and not wanting newborns to feel pain.

“Some will just say they want more of a natural birth philosophy,” said Dr. Steven Abelowitz, founder of Ocean Pediatrics in Orange County, California. “Then there’s a ton of misinformation. … There are outside influences, friends, celebrities, nonprofessionals and political agendas.”

Abelowitz practices in an area with about an equal mix of Republicans and Democrats.

“There’s more mistrust from the conservative side, but there’s plenty on the more liberal side as well,” he said, “It’s across-the-board mistrust.”

Social media provides ample fuel, spreading myths and pushing unregulated vitamin K drops that doctors warn babies can’t absorb well.

Doctors in numerous states say parents refusing vitamin K shots often also decline other measures. Sirota, in Illinois, encountered a family that refused a heel stick to monitor glucose for a baby at high risk for having potentially life-threatening low blood sugar.

Care refusals aren’t a new phenomenon. Wade, in Philadelphia, said she’s seen them for 20 years. But until recently, they were rare.

Twelve years ago, Dana Morrison, now a Minnesota doula, declined the vitamin K shot for her newborn son, giving him oral drops instead.

“It came from a space of really wanting to protect the bonding time with my baby,” she said. “I was trying to eliminate more pokes.”

Her daughter’s birth a couple of years later was less straightforward, leaving the infant with a bruised leg. Morrison got the vitamin K shot for her.

Knowing what she does now, she said, she would have gotten it for her son, too.

Doctors and parents want ‘the best for their children’

Doctors hope to change minds, one parent at a time. And that begins with respect.

“If I walk into the room with judgment, we are going to have a really useless conversation,” Hill said. “Every parent I serve wants the best for their children.”

When parents question the need for the vitamin K shot, Dr. Heather Felton tries to address their specific concerns. She explains why it’s given and the risks of not getting it. Most families decide to get it, said Felton, who has seen no uptick in refusals.

“It really helps that you can take that time and really listen and be able to provide some education,” said Felton, a pediatrician at Norton Children’s in Louisville, Kentucky.

In Idaho, Patterson sometimes finds himself clearing up misconceptions. Some parents will agree to a vitamin K shot when they find out it’s not a vaccine, for example.

These conversations can take time, especially since the parents doctors see in hospitals usually aren’t people they know through their practices.

But doctors are happy to invest that time if it might save babies.

“I end every discussion with parents with this: ‘Please understand at the end of the day, I’m passionate about this because I have the best interest of children in my mind and heart,’” Patterson said. “I understand this is a hot topic, and I don’t want to disrespect anybody. But at the same time, I’m desperately saddened that we’re losing babies for no reason.”

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Robert S. Mueller III, the FBI director who transformed the nation’s premier law enforcement agency into a terrorism-fighting force after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and who later became special counsel in charge of investigating ties between Russia and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, has died. He was 81.

“With deep sadness, we are sharing the news that Bob passed away” on Friday night, his family said in a statement Saturday. “His family asks that their privacy be respected.”

At the FBI, Mueller set about almost immediately overhauling the bureau’s mission to meet the law enforcement needs of the 21st century, beginning his 12-year tenure just one week before the Sept. 11 attacks and serving across presidents of both political parties. He was nominated by Republican President George W. Bush.

The cataclysmic event instantaneously switched the bureau’s top priority from solving domestic crime to preventing terrorism, a shift that imposed an almost impossibly difficult standard on Mueller and the rest of the federal government: preventing 99 out of 100 terrorist plots wasn’t good enough.

Later, he was special counsel in the Justice Department’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign illegally coordinated with Russia to sway the outcome of the 2016 presidential race. Mueller was a patrician Princeton graduate and Vietnam veteran who walked away from a lucrative midcareer job to stay in public service, and his old-school, buttoned-down style made him an anachronism during a social media-saturated era.

Trump posted on social media after the announcement of Mueller’s death: “Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead.” The Republican president added, “He can no longer hurt innocent people!”

The FBI did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.

A second act as an investigator of a sitting president

The second-longest-serving director in FBI history, behind only J. Edgar Hoover, Mueller held the job until 2013 after agreeing to Democratic President Barack Obama’s request to stay on even after his 10-year term was up.

After several years in private practice, Mueller was asked by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to return to public service as special counsel in the Trump-Russia inquiry.

Mueller’s stern visage and taciturn demeanor matched the seriousness of the mission, as his team spent nearly two years quietly conducting one of the most consequential, yet divisive, investigations in Justice Department history. He held no news conferences and made no public appearances during the investigation, remaining quiet despite attacks from Trump and his supporters and creating an aura of mystery around his work.

All told, Mueller brought criminal charges against six of the president’s associates, including his campaign chairman and first national security adviser.

His 448-page report released in April 2019 identified substantial contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia but did not allege a criminal conspiracy. Mueller laid out damaging details about Trump’s efforts to seize control of the investigation, and even shut it down, though he declined to decide whether Trump had broken the law, in part because of department policy barring the indictment of a sitting president.

But, in perhaps the most memorable language of the report, Mueller pointedly noted: “If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment.”

The nebulous conclusion did not deliver the knockout punch to the administration that some Trump opponents had hoped for, nor did it trigger a sustained push by House Democrats to impeach the president — though he was later tried and acquitted on separate allegations related to Ukraine.

The outcome also left room for Attorney General William Barr to insert his own views. He and his team made their own determination that Trump did not obstruct justice, and he and Mueller privately tangled over a four-page summary letter from Barr that Mueller felt did not adequately capture his report’s damaging conclusion.

Mueller deflated Democrats during a highly anticipated congressional hearing on his report when he offered terse, one-word answers and appeared uncertain in his testimony. Frequently, he seemed to waver on details of his investigation. It was hardly the commanding performance many had expected from Mueller, who had a towering reputation in Washington.

Over the next months, Barr made clear his own disagreements with the foundations of the Russia investigation, moving to dismiss a false-statements prosecution that Mueller had brought against former national security adviser Michael Flynn, even though that investigation ended in a guilty plea.

Mueller’s tenure as special counsel was the capstone of a career spent in government.

A transformation of the FBI into a national security agency

His time as FBI director was defined by the Sept. 11 attacks and its aftermath, as an FBI granted broad new surveillance and national security powers scrambled to confront an ascendant al-Qaida and interrupt plots and take terrorists off the street before they could act.

It was a new model of policing for an FBI that had long been accustomed to investigating crimes that had already occurred.

When he became FBI director, “I had expected to focus on areas familiar to me as a prosecutor: drug cases, white-collar criminal cases and violent crime,” Mueller told a group of lawyers in October 2012.

Instead, “we had to focus on long-term, strategic change. We had to enhance our intelligence capabilities and upgrade our technology. We had to build upon strong partnerships and forge new friendships, both here at home and abroad.”

In response, the FBI shifted 2,000 of the total 5,000 agents in the bureau’s criminal programs to national security.

In hindsight, the transformation was a success. At the time, there were problems, and Mueller said as much. In a speech near the end of his tenure, Mueller recalled “those days when we were under attack by the media and being clobbered by Congress; when the attorney general was not at all happy with me.”

Among the issues: The Justice Department’s inspector general found that the FBI circumvented the law to obtain thousands of phone call records for terrorism investigations.

Mueller decided that the FBI would not take part in abusive interrogation techniques of suspected terrorists, but the policy was not effectively communicated down the line for nearly two years. In an effort to move the FBI into a paperless environment, the bureau spent over $600 million on two computer systems — one that was 2½ years overdue and a predecessor that was only partially completed and had to be scrapped after consultants declared it obsolete and riddled with problems.

For the nation’s top law enforcement agency, it was a rocky trip through rough terrain.

But there were many successes as well, including thwarted terror plots and headline-making criminal cases like the one against fraudster Bernie Madoff. The Republican also cultivated an apolitical reputation on the job, nearly quitting in a clash with the Bush administration over a surveillance program that he and his successor, James Comey, considered unlawful.

He famously stood alongside Comey, then deputy attorney general, during a dramatic 2004 hospital standoff over federal wiretapping rules. The two men planted themselves at the bedside of the ailing Attorney General John Ashcroft to block Bush administration officials from making an end run to get Ashcroft’s permission to reauthorize a secret no-warrant wiretapping program.

In an extraordinary vote of confidence, Congress, at the Obama administration’s request, approved a two-year extension for Mueller to remain at his post.

A Marine who served in Vietnam before becoming a prosecutor

Mueller was born in New York City and grew up in a well-to-do suburb of Philadelphia.

He received a bachelor’s degree from Princeton and a master’s degree in international relations from New York University. He then joined the Marines, serving for three years as an officer during the Vietnam War. He led a rifle platoon and was awarded a Bronze Star, Purple Heart and two Navy Commendation Medals. Following his military service, Mueller earned a law degree from the University of Virginia.

Mueller became a federal prosecutor and relished the work of handling criminal cases. He rose quickly through the ranks in U.S. attorneys’ offices in San Francisco and Boston from 1976 to 1988. Later, as head of the Justice Department’s criminal division in Washington, he oversaw a range of high-profile prosecutions that chalked up victories against targets as varied as Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and New York crime boss John Gotti.

In a mid-career switch that shocked colleagues, Mueller threw over a job at a prestigious Boston law firm to join the homicide division of the U.S. attorney’s office in the nation’s capital. There, he immersed himself as a senior litigator in a bulging caseload of unsolved drug-related murders in a city rife with violence.

Mueller was driven by a career-long passion for the painstaking work of building successful criminal cases. Even as head of the FBI, he would dig into the details of investigations, some of them major cases but others less so, sometimes surprising agents who suddenly found themselves on the phone with the director.

“The management books will tell you that as the head of an organization, you should focus on the vision,” Mueller once said. But “for me there were and are today those areas where one needs to be substantially personally involved,” especially in regard to “the terrorist threat and the need to know and understand that threat to its roots.”

Two terrorist attacks occurred toward the end of Mueller’s watch: the Boston Marathon bombing and the Fort Hood shootings in Texas. Both weighed heavily on him, he acknowledged in an interview two weeks before his departure.

“You sit down with victims’ families, you see the pain they go through and you always wonder whether there isn’t something more” that could have been done, he said.

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Andrej Karpathy, an OpenAI cofounder and former director of AI at Tesla, admitted that he’s not on the forefront of the field and feels nervous about it, despite all his accomplishments in AI.

In an interview on the No Priors podcast on Friday, the independent AI researcher, who is also the founder of Eureka Labs, explained a “psychosis” he’s been suffering from, even as AI agents have made his workflow and life at home more convenient.

A tipping point came in December, when he noticed he was writing just 20% of his code with 80% delegated to an agent, reversing from an earlier split with 80% done by himself and 20% by an agent. That trend has continued.

“I don’t think I’ve typed like a line of code probably since December, basically, which is an extremely large change,” Karpathy said. “I don’t think a normal person actually realizes that this happened or how dramatic it was.”

He’s not alone and added that the default workflow for building software has completely changed in recent months as agentic AI has exploded in popularity.

OpenClaw in particular has swept through the tech industry as users connect it to various applications, allowing it to manage calendars, browse the web, shop online, read files, write emails, and send messages via tools like WhatsApp.

Its potential remains massive, and Karpathy described his struggle to fully envision what could come next, saying “I’m just like in the state of psychosis of trying to figure out what’s possible, trying to push it to the limit.”

He added: “I want to be at the forefront of it, and I’m very antsy that I’m not at the forefront of it. I see lots of people on Twitter doing all kinds of things, and they all sound like really good ideas. And I need to be at the forefront or I feel extremely nervous.”

Karpathy also revealed that he went through a “claw psychosis” in January while integrating an agent with various smart functions at his home.

In fact, he’s dubbed it “Dobby the House Elf claw,” and it now controls his home’s sound system, lighting, security functions, shades, HVAC, pool and spa.

Previously, managing each one required using several different apps. But now, Karpathy said he just instructs Dobby what to do by sending messages via WhatsApp in natural language.

Dobby also alerts him with a message when it uses the home’s security cameras to detect a FedEx truck that dropped off a delivery at his doorstep.

“So Dobby is in charge of the house,” he said. “It’s been really fun to have these macro actions that maintain my house. I haven’t like really pushed it way more beyond that, and I think people are doing a lot more crazy things with it.”

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