All News (Page 302)

The United States’ gross national debt crossed $39 trillion on Tuesday, a grim new threshold that a prominent fiscal watchdog says reflects decades of irresponsibility from both Republicans and Democrats — with no signs that Washington is ready to change course.

“Surpassing $39 trillion in gross debt is an embarrassing milestone that both parties have helped build over decades, and neither seems particularly interested in addressing it before we hit $40 trillion,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), in a statement released Wednesday.​

The figure, confirmed by the U.S. Treasury, marks a rapid escalation in the nation’s fiscal slide. The debt stood at $38 trillion as recently as October of last year — meaning Washington added a full $1 trillion in gross debt in less than six months. Debt held by the public, the measure most closely tracked by economists, has separately surpassed $31 trillion for the first time.​

The numbers paint a portrait of a government living far beyond its means. Annual deficits are approaching $2 trillion, and deficits as a share of the economy are running at roughly twice the 3%-of-GDP target that economists and bipartisan policymakers have long identified as a sustainable benchmark.​

“No matter what metric one chooses to examine our fiscal trajectory, we are clearly headed in the wrong direction,” MacGuineas said.​

The milestone arrives at a turbulent moment for the U.S. economy. Conflict with Iran has sent oil prices spiking, and some lawmakers have floated a gas tax holiday in response — a move that CRFB analysts estimate would cost billions of dollars per month and further balloon the deficit. Meanwhile, the CRFB recently warned that unilateral executive tax cuts under consideration could add hundreds of billions more to the debt.​

MacGuineas argued that the consequences of the country’s fiscal drift are already being felt — and will get worse. “Higher debt exacerbates inflationary pressures, squeezes out investment in our economy, allows interest costs to dominate our defense spending, leaves us vulnerable to emergencies and geopolitical turmoil, and could even provoke a fiscal crisis,” she said.​

The CRFB chief also flagged market risk as an underappreciated danger. “Markets are paying close attention to our fiscal situation, and every time we hit a new milestone, we risk spooking them,” MacGuineas warned. That concern is particularly acute given the geopolitical uncertainty already weighing on investor sentiment.​

Bipartisan solutions have been floated but have yet to gain traction. The Fiscal Contingency Preparedness Act, introduced by Rep. Ben Cline (R-VA) and Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME), has built some momentum in the House, though it has not moved toward a floor vote. Former Sen. Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat, and former Rep. Bob Beauprez, a Colorado Republican, have separately called for action on Social Security solvency — one of the key drivers of long-term debt.​

MacGuineas outlined a list of concrete steps she said Washington must take: committing to no new borrowing, adopting a Super PAYGO rule requiring new costs to be paid for twice over, establishing a fiscal commission to broker a bipartisan debt deal, and shoring up the nation’s underfunded trust funds. She also called for a “Break Glass” emergency plan to be put in place in case a financial shock hits before legislators act, as the CRFB has recently recommended.

For now, $40 trillion — once unthinkable — is drawing into view. At the current pace of borrowing, it may not be far off.

For this story, Fortune journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

This post was originally published here

When U.S. and Israeli forces launched a sweeping air and sea campaign against Iran’s military infrastructure in late Feb. 2026, the missiles weren’t the only weapons that flew. Within hours, more than 60 Iranian-aligned cyber groups mobilized, according to Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42, armed with AI-assisted reconnaissance tools and a mandate to strike back where it hurts most: America’s corporate nervous system.

​Within hours, cybersecurity agencies in the UK and Canada both warned about heightened threat levels, followed by similar warnings from Europol and the Department of Homeland Security.

For Fortune 500 CEOs, the message couldn’t be clearer—or more unsettling. The Iran war has blown open a Pandora’s box of AI-powered cyber warfare, and no firewall, no matter how expensive, was built for what’s coming next.

A new attack template

Iran’s cyber playbook has already claimed its first major corporate victim. Iranian-aligned hackers disrupted operations at U.S. medical technology giant Stryker, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal and confirmed by the company—a sobering signal that the private sector is squarely in the crosshairs.

According to threat intelligence firm Flashpoint, the Iranian-aligned hackers executed a sophisticated “no-malware” attack on Stryker—not through traditional malicious code, but by weaponizing Microsoft Intune, a legitimate cloud-based endpoint management service, to remotely wipe devices across the company’s network. The attack has sent a chill through every corporate IT department in America: the tools used to manage your own infrastructure can now be turned against you.​

The more chilling template, analysts warn, isn’t the conventional data breach—it’s a coordinated campaign designed to destroy institutional trust from the inside out. Iran’s state-backed hacking groups, including Void Manticore aka Handala, have already deployed ransomware-style attacks, distributed denial-of-service operations, and “wiper” attacks engineered to permanently erase data from corporate servers. These aren’t smash-and-grab operations. They are psychological warfare at enterprise scale.

According to Flashpoint, the Handala Hack Team claimed responsibility for breaching a Mossad “secret treasury,” allegedly leaking 50,000 confidential emails. In a chilling escalation, the group also claimed to have identified the precise geographic coordinates of a target through cyber reconnaissance—and that a kinetic missile strike followed. Cyber and physical warfare, in other words, are no longer separate domains.

“Aggressive and creative resistance is baked into the ethos of the Iranian security apparatus,” Brian Carbaugh, co-founder and CEO of AI-based security firm Andesite and a former director of the CIA’s elite Special Activities Center, previously told Fortune. “For business leaders and those protecting businesses and making decisions at a very high level, they need to be prepared for this to continue on for some time and for the conflict to take a number of different courses of direction and swerve around the road.”​

AI as the great equalizer—and the great threat multiplier

What separates this conflict from previous cyber flashpoints is the role of artificial intelligence (AI) on both sides of the battlefield. U.S. and Israeli forces have used AI platforms from Palantir and the Pentagon’s Maven Smart System to execute more than 15,000 strikes since the war began—over 1,000 per day—with remarkable precision, according to security columnist Shimon Sherman of the Jewish News Syndicate. AI has compressed the military “kill chain” from days to minutes, he added.​ (Iran, for it’s part, has used its firepower to target data centers in the UAE).

But cybersecurity firm CloudSek argued in a blog post that the same compression is now available to Iran’s proxies—and to any hacker group with a laptop and access to an AI reconnaissance pipeline. AI tools have sharply lowered the barrier to identifying and exploiting exposed industrial control systems, default credentials, and internet-facing corporate infrastructure across America. Threat groups with no prior industrial control systems background are now, effectively, sophisticated actors overnight.

​Flashpoint said the 313 Team, an Iranian-aligned Cyber Islamic Resistance group, claimed a complete shutdown of the official British Army website—a clear signal that state-adjacent institutions and critical government infrastructure are primary targets.

The defender is already behind

What makes the current threat environment uniquely dangerous for corporate America is the simultaneous convergence of physical and cyber disruption. On March 17 alone, a drone strike on the Fujairah oil hub in the UAE halted refining operations; a Kuwaiti-flagged LNG tanker was damaged by drone debris near the Strait of Hormuz; and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad suffered its heaviest attack since the war began. These are not abstract geopolitical events—they are direct shocks to the energy supply chains that power global commerce.

“The conflict has entered a stage where the economic and operational impacts are becoming much more visible,” said Josh Lefkowitz, CEO of Flashpoint, in a statement issued Wednesday. “We’re seeing disruption at major transportation hubs, pressure on global shipping routes, and cyber activity targeting private companies already creating ripple effects across supply chains, travel, and day-to-day commercial operations. For organizations connected to the region, the risk environment now includes simultaneous physical disruption and cyber activity.”

The timing couldn’t be worse for corporate America. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)—the federal government’s primary cyber defense body—is hobbled by furloughs, a leadership reshuffle, and the lingering effects of a partial government shutdown. The cavalry, in other words, is understaffed and reorganizing.​

Meanwhile, Iran’s own command structure has been decimated by allied strikes—including the elimination of Ali Larijani and Gholamreza Soleimani, commander of the Basij paramilitary unit—which, paradoxically, makes the threat more dangerous, not less. “The Iranian leadership vacuum is likely going to lead to more unpredictable, decentralized proxy attacks,” Kathryn Raines, a former NSA expert who is now a threat intel team lead at Flashpoint, told Fortune‘s Amanda Gerut. Decentralized means harder to anticipate, harder to attribute, and harder to stop.​

President Trump has also accused Iran of weaponizing AI for disinformation, allegedly collaborating with media outlets to shape narratives around the conflict. Corporate reputations—not just networks—are now targets.​

The boardroom imperative

Every Fortune 500 CEO sitting in a board meeting this week faces the same stark reality: the Iran war has permanently altered the cyber threat landscape. AI hasn’t just made attacks faster—it has made them cheaper, stealthier, and accessible to a sprawling ecosystem of state proxies and opportunistic hacktivists who share the same AI-assisted toolkit.

The Pandora’s box is open. The question isn’t whether the next major attack on a U.S. corporation is coming—it’s whether the C-suite will be ready when it does.

Additional reporting contributed by Amanda Gerut.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

This post was originally published here

Tennessee farmer Todd Littleton expects to pay $100,000 more for fertilizer this season, a 40% spike from his bill last year thanks to the war in Iran — and he is scrambling to cover that extra cost.

“The problem is, is we’re so strained financially coming into this issue,” said Littleton, a third-generation farmer from Gibson County in the state’s northwest corner. “We have had a couple of record losses the last couple years, so everyone’s kind of grabbing at straws anyway, and then to have input prices increase yet again, it just really couldn’t happen at a worse time.”

Littleton, who grows corn, soybeans and wheat, is among thousands of farmers across the country who will pay far more this spring than they expected for fertilizer that is essential to their crops. Nitrogen-based fertilizer is especially vital for corn, usually the largest crop in the U.S. and one that feeds the nation’s livestock and is converted into fuel that helps power most U.S. cars and trucks.

Farmers have complained about costly fertilizer for years, but prices have soared even higher since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, leading to a slowdown in shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for 20% of the world’s oil and natural gas. Besides increasing the price of fuel, which is key in the production of fertilizer, the shipping disruption also has largely stopped the export of nitrogen fertilizers manufactured in the Persian Gulf and limited access to key fertilizer ingredients.

About 15% of fertilizer imports to the U.S. are from the Middle East, and about half the global supply of the key ingredient urea comes from the region, along with 30% of ammonia, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.

“When the ports started raising their nitrogen prices due to the conflict due to shipping concerns, that directly affects me here on the farm,” Littleton said.

Some farmers may not find fertilizer

But it could be worse, as some farmers may not be able to obtain fertilizer at any price, said Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation.

“We’re being told that many of our farmers that haven’t preordered their fertilizer and paid for it may not even obtain the fertilizer that they’re going to need during the season or for spring planting,” Duvall said. “That’s why this situation is so serious.”

Harry Ott, a cotton, corn and peanut farmer who also leads the South Carolina Farm Bureau, said there isn’t enough fertilizer stockpiled in warehouses to meet demand in the coming months.

“It is a really dire situation that our farmers facing,” Ott said.

Experts say don’t expect a quick fix

Even before the current spike in prices, other factors in recent years have led to high fertilizer costs, starting with the war between Ukraine and Russia, which blocked access to raw materials and increased natural gas prices. China also cut phosphate exports as it focused more on domestic needs.

The latest factors worsened those existing supply issues, which means that even if the Iran war was resolved, fertilizer prices likely won’t quickly fall, said Jacqui Fatka, a farm supply economist for creditor CoBank.

“There’s going to be a tail to this that’s going to take time to get everything turned back on, sent back out,” Fatka said.

And then there is the time it takes for shipments from the Middle East to reach the U.S. — typically 30 to 45 days to reach the Port of New Orleans.

Some fertilizer is already stored in the U.S. and can meet demand amid the shortage of Middle East imports, but at some point those supplies will run low.

“We don’t quite know how it’s going to shake out,” said Nancy Martinez, director of public policy, trade and biotechnology for the National Corn Growers Association.

Nitrogen- and phosphate-based fertilizers are largely produced domestically, which helps a little bit, said Anne Villamil, a professor of economics at the University of Iowa.

“But again, energy prices are an input, and so even if you’re producing it in the U.S., if the cost of your inputs goes up, then it’s going to be an increase in price to the farmers who want to buy it,” Villamil said.

Soaring oil prices could result in higher food prices, given the increased cost of diesel needed to transport products to grocery stores and petroleum products used in plastic packaging, said Chad Hart, an economics professor at Iowa State University.

However, the increased fertilizer prices shouldn’t significantly lead to grocery store increases even as they put a crimp in farmers’ profits. That’s because on-farm costs are only a small part of what consumers pay at the supermarket.

Efforts to curb the hit on farmers from costly fertilizer

The Trump administration said it has taken steps to ease the cost of fertilizer, including moving to increase fertilizer imports from Venezuela, which U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins called “a huge step that puts farm security and farmers first.”

The Department of Agriculture also notes it previously announced $12 billion in one-time payments to help farmers offset losses primarily due to tariffs imposed by the Trump administration. In a statement, the USDA also said it has provided more than $30 billion in additional aid to farmers since January 2025, and the agency noted its support for a more competitive fertilizer marketplace that would ultimately lower prices.

Fatka, of CoBank, said the $12 billion doesn’t go far for farmers with a payment of $44 per corn acre when the USDA estimates about $900 per acre for cost of production for the average U.S. farmer.

Still, farm bankruptcies remain rare, with only 315 last year — a tiny percentage of the nearly 1.9 million farms nationally. And prices for the nation’s two largest crops — corn and soybeans — have been climbing recently.

Tom Waters, who farms about 5,000 acres (2,023 hectares) of corn, soybeans and wheat east of Kansas City, said the increase of fertilizer prices along with other costs makes it tough to make a profit when crop prices are so low.

“The margins get smaller and smaller so we just have to really work hard to trim our costs and be as frugal as we can be but still provide the soil and crop what it needs to grow and produce,” Waters said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

This post was originally published here

Main Street is racing to fit artificial intelligence into its business models, but most small businesses are still learning to walk before they can run.

Small business owners have already made up their mind about AI, no longer asking if they should use the technology, but rather how and when to integrate it. More than three-quarters of small business owners are already using AI to some degree, and more than 90% say it’s working, according to a survey of small business operators published by Goldman Sachs on Tuesday.

Higher efficiency and productivity are the primary selling points of AI for small businesses, and nearly seven in ten expect the technology to help grow their revenue. But while many entrepreneurs are experimenting with AI, a huge gap remains between enthusiasts and owners who are able to fully integrate AI. 

The Goldman Sachs survey found that only 14% of owners have embedded AI across their core operations, meaning most small businesses have downloaded the app, but few have read the manual.

The survey polled 1,256 participants in Goldman Sachs’ small business education program between January and February, finding that many entrepreneurs are excited about AI but uncertain how to fully cash in on it. Barriers include a lack of technical expertise, difficulty navigating a crowded tools landscape, and data privacy concerns. More than 70% of respondents said they’d benefit from more training and implementation resources.

High risk, maybe high reward

Small businesses are warming rapidly to AI tools, but struggling to absorb them. A 2025 report from the Chamber of Commerce found 58% of small businesses used generative AI in their operations, more than double the share from 2023. AI tools including ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini vaulted social media to become the second most popular technology among small businesses, trailing only search engines.

Most small businesses use AI for everything from copywriting and content creation to automating customer service, with some even using the technology for complex tasks such as coding and website design. 

But the more revenue-driving applications remain limited to a smaller share of tech-savvy firms. Less than a quarter of businesses surveyed by the Chamber of Commerce use AI to accomplish tasks that would likely translate to greater revenue growth, such as optimizing supply chains, identifying potential customers, and producing new insights on products and services. Distrust of AI remains rife among some small businesses, with data privacy a key concern for half of firms using AI, according to Goldman Sachs.

Another hurdle may lie with the customers themselves. AI currently ranks as one of the least enjoyable topics of conversation in the U.S., with one recent NBC poll finding that only 26% of Americans saw AI positively, and 46% had a negative view. Companies may also hesitate to deploy AI for client-facing tasks given general fatigue about the technology. A Gartner survey published this week found that half of consumers prefer their business going to AI-less brands, with many customers particularly abhorring the reliability of AI-assisted shopping experiences.

One bright spot: jobs. The wave of corporate layoffs and fears of AI-driven job loss fears sweeping white-collar industries does not seem to have affected small businesses yet, with the Chamber’s report finding that 82% of small firms using AI were able to grow their workforce over the past year.

But just as corporate America struggles to figure out how best to adopt the technology, small businesses might remain hesitant. Generative AI pilots at large companies have largely stalled so far and failed to generate significant revenue, and small businesses with fewer resources might be hesitant to take the risk on thousands of dollars’ worth in enterprise models and staff training. 

A bill passed in the House last year, called the “AI for Main Street Act,” aims to allocate more resources to increase AI literacy among small businesses. But until larger companies prove that AI can be worth the investment, smaller firms may be reluctant to follow.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

This post was originally published here

Arizona on Tuesday became the first state to file criminal charges against Kalshi, accusing the prediction market company of operating an illegal gambling business within its borders, a significant escalation in the fight to regulate the popular platform.

The 20-count charging document accuses Kalshi of accepting bets on political outcomes, college sporting competitions and individual player performance in violation of Arizona’s gambling laws. The state prohibits operating an unlicensed wagering business and bans betting on elections.

“Arizona will not be bullied into letting any company place itself above state law,” said Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes.

The criminal case marks a new front in a high-stakes legal battle over whether prediction markets should be subject to the same rules as gambling companies.

President Donald Trump’s administration has thrown its support behind the multibillion-dollar prediction market industry, further amplifying a state-versus-federal fight for regulatory control. The outcome could have sweeping implications for how sports betting — which makes up roughly 90% of Kalshi’s trading volume — is regulated in the U.S.

Kalshi insists it’s a financial marketplace rather than a gambling operation and should only have to answer to federal regulators with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The agency under Trump agrees it has exclusive oversight.

Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., is a strategic adviser for Kalshi. And the Republican president’s social media platform, Truth Social, is launching its own cryptocurrency-based prediction market called Truth Predict.

Elisabeth Diana, a spokesperson for Kalshi, dismissed the Arizona charges as “meritless” and accused the state of trying to circumvent federal court.

Kalshi sued Arizona, Utah and Iowa in attempts to stop anticipated state action against the platform.

But U.S. District Judge Michael Liburdi in Arizona, a Trump appointee, denied Kalshi’s request for a temporary block Tuesday and ordered the company to demonstrate why the case should be in federal court given the new state charges.

At least nine other states have taken some form of legal action against Kalshi, and Utah’s Republican governor has pledged to sign a bill that could undercut the company’s business in the state.

So far, the outcomes have been mixed. Federal and state judges in Nevada and Massachusetts, respectively, issued early rulings in favor of states looking to ban Kalshi and its competitor Polymarket from offering sports betting in their states, while federal judges in New Jersey and Tennessee have ruled in favor of Kalshi. The Nevada lawsuit was remanded to state court.

CFTC chairman Michael Selig said the legal fight between Arizona and Kalshi is a jurisdictional issue and is “entirely inappropriate as a criminal prosecution.”

The state argues Kalshi is a gambling operation that brands itself as a marketplace. But the company says its product is different because customers engage in “swaps” between one another instead of betting against the “house.”

Kalshi operates by allowing customers to buy and sell “Yes” or “No” contracts tied to the probable outcome of an event. Anyone with a smartphone can wager on everything from whether it will snow in Miami to whether Trump will say a certain buzzword in a speech. Contracts are typically priced between 1 cent and 99 cents, which roughly translates to the percentage of customers who believe that event will happen.

The charges in Arizona were filed just days before the start of the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, one of the busiest periods of the year for prediction markets and sportsbooks.

Kalshi announced a $1 billion perfect bracket challenge on Monday without mentioning the NCAA or March Madness, a pair of NCAA trademarks.

An NCAA spokesperson, Saquandra Heath, said Tuesday the organization remains concerned about “unprotected prediction markets that pose a threat to competition integrity and student-athlete safety.”

___

Associated Press sports writer Jay Cohen in Chicago contributed to this report.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

This post was originally published here

Over the course of just 48 hours, Congress moved more aggressively on child online safety than it has in nearly a decade—and a federal court quietly reminded everyone that the entire framework might not survive a constitutional challenge that pits safety against privacy.

On March 4, the App Store Accountability Act passed 26-23 out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The following day, the same committee advanced the Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act—a package including the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA)—to the full House floor in a party-line 28-24 vote. Meanwhile, the Senate simultaneously passed Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) 2.0 unanimously. For the first time in years, both chambers of a divided Congress moved on children’s digital safety in the same week. While the government might be making the rules, social media companies are now struggling to keep up and are walking a fine line between privacy and safety.

The pressure on social media companies to do something about minors on their platforms long predates either act. Meta, Snap, TikTok, and YouTube have faced years of congressional hearings, state attorneys general investigations, and now a mounting wave of personal injury litigation alleging their platforms knowingly exposed children to harmful content and addictive design features.

The industry’s self-regulatory response—age minimums set at 13, parental control settings buried in app menus, terms of service that minors routinely circumvent—has satisfied almost no one. What’s changed in 2026 is that lawmakers have stopped waiting for the industry to find them. Two bills now moving through Congress take fundamentally different approaches to the same crisis, and understanding both requires understanding what each one is actually trying to fix.

Two laws, two approaches

With KOSA and the App Store Accountability Act, the government is trying to attack the problem from opposite ends. KOSA requires companies to conduct risk assessments, restrict default settings on minors’ accounts up to age 17, disclose how their recommendation algorithms work, and give parents meaningful oversight tools. The App Store Accountability Act attempts to stop the problem before a child ever opens an app: requiring age verification at the account level, parental consent for each minor’s download, and the linking of a child’s device to a parent or guardian. Alabama became the fourth state to sign it into law in Feb. 2026, joining Utah, Louisiana, and Texas, with others states looking to put it on the books.

The state laws have added a whole other level of complexity to the issue, especially considering each of the four states’ have various restrictions, meaning no law is the same. Jacqueline Klosek, a partner in global law firm Goodwin’s technology practice, says the overlapping demands are already straining clients. “As a practitioner, I myself am very much challenged by the morass of laws at the state level, and the clients I deal with are also challenged by this. Nobody’s just functioning in one state, and there’s a plethora of laws out there,” she told Fortune. KOSA raising the age of protection to 17 closes off what Klosek calls the industry’s longtime workaround. “There’s no longer going to be this kind of somewhat easy out, and saying, ‘I’ll just focus on users above their teens and not worry so much about this.’ If I’m dealing with minors at all, I have to think more holistically about privacy, security, and safety.”​

Critics — including House Democrats — argue the House version is weaker than its Senate counterpart because it strips out a “duty of care” provision that would require companies to design products with children’s safety in mind.

Roman Karachinsky, Chief Product Officer at Incode Technologies—whose social media clients include TikTok—sees the compliance complexity as a symptom of regulation that hasn’t yet caught up to itself. “There’s a lot of regulatory requirements right now that are well intentioned and written in a way that makes sense, but are not prescriptive,” he told Fortune. “Each company kind of needs to figure out, ‘We have this duty of care to verify that our users are not minors, but how do we do that?’”

COPPA, first passed in 1998 (notably before the social media era), requires websites and apps to obtain verifiable parental consent before collecting personal data from children under 13. COPPA 2.0 covers ages 13 to 16, bans targeted advertising to minors entirely, and creates a dedicated FTC enforcement division, closing the loophole that allowed companies to treat teenagers as unprotected users.

In the ongoing battle of collecting underage users’ private data in the name of safety, Karachinsky said with the new version of COPPA, “at least that particular contradiction has been somewhat resolved. You can process data for minors only for the purpose of age verification, as long as you don’t store it, don’t reuse it for any other purpose, and immediately delete it, which I think is all fairly reasonable.” But the global picture remains chaotic. “If you think about a global company that operates in basically every market in the world, the compliance burden that you have to go through to figure out all these different requirements is really high,” he said.​

Klosek, who has watched clients navigate this landscape for years, says the frustration is structural. “I think industry, parents, and government all see an issue, a problem—we’re just struggling to identify the best solutions.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

This post was originally published here

A “one in a million” malfunction during a live fire demonstration over Camp Pendleton last October led to a misfire that rained shrapnel on Interstate 5, striking two California Highway Patrol vehicles, a U.S. Marine Corps investigation found.

An artillery shell exploded over the highway that serves as the main corridor between Los Angeles and San Diego during a celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Marine Corps, attended by Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Nobody was hurt, and investigators ruled out any negligence or wrongdoing by Corps members.

The day before the event, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom called the planned demonstration with live artillery dangerous and unnecessary, and he ordered I-5 to be closed during it. That closure drew condemnation from the White House and other Republicans, and the Marine Corps said the exercises wouldn’t endanger motorists.

In a 666-page report dated Dec. 19 and first reported on Monday, the Marines concluded that there “is no definitive answer” to why an M795 high explosive round detonated early at an altitude of about 1,480 feet (450 meters) during the Oct. 18 demonstration. Such a premature detonation is “beyond reasonable expectations and should not have happened, but it did,” the report says.

“It is manufactured to a tolerance of one defect in a million,” according to the report.

Organizers planned to fire 60 rounds of live artillery in 5 minutes over the highway, using six howitzer weapons, according to the report. But a round in the first volley of shots failed and detonated early, and the rest of the demonstration was canceled, the report said.

Days after the malfunction, 26 California U.S. House members and the state’s two senators sent a letter to Hegseth asking who decided to shoot live artillery over the freeway and how authorities prepared for the safety risks.

“We’re thankful to the Marines for their thorough and precise investigation — in stark contrast to the dangerous and performative demands by JD Vance and Pete Hegseth to shoot live ammunition over a civilian area for their entertainment,” Diana Crofts-Pelayo, a spokesperson for Newsom’s office, said in an email Tuesday.

Newsom announced the highway closure in a statement after practice rounds were fired a day ahead of the celebration. The governor described the live fire exercise as a show of force meant to intimidate Trump’s opponents, thousands of whom were demonstrating at “No Kings” protests in and around San Diego that day.

“Firing live rounds over a busy highway isn’t just wrong — it’s dangerous,” Newsom wrote at the time.

The Marine report concluded several factors could have contributed to the malfunction, including the howitzer guns being too close together when fired and the “potential presence of anomalous electromagnetic energy in the vicinity.”

“What was different from the thousands of times before this event employing the same shell-fuze combination, weapons system, and highly trained Marines? There is no definitive answer,” the report said.

The event at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton featured aircraft, ships, and amphibious assault vehicles to celebrate the anniversary.

“It will be a good show regardless of who shows up,” Gen. Eric Smith, commandant of the Marine Corps, said in an Oct. 14 email to Brig. Gen. Garrett “Rainman” Hoffman, of the White House Military Office, according to the investigation.

The first round launched at 1:46 p.m. from M777 howitzers on a beach west of Interstate 5. That artillery round detonated midflight near I-5 southbound, sending shrapnel flying toward a CHP motorcycle and another unoccupied patrol vehicle, according to the CHP report. The vehicles had been part of Vance’s protective service detail and were waiting near a highway ramp after securely getting Vance where he needed to be, the report said.

An officer described hearing what sounded like “pebbles” falling on his motorcycle, and finding shards nearby. Other shrapnel struck and left a dent on the hood of another patrol vehicle.

CHP sergeants conducted a safety sweep and didn’t find any other pieces of metal in the highway lanes, the report said. Both sides of the highway were reopened about 30 minutes later.

Multiple people interviewed for the Marines investigation said they wouldn’t have changed anything about the event. Some noted a drill the day before did not have any problems and routine safety checks were done more than usual.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

This post was originally published here

The CEO of Delta, the world’s largest airline by market cap, said he and his company are “outraged” TSA agents continue to work without pay as the partial government shutdown drags into its fifth week.

CEO Ed Bastian, in an interview with CNBC Tuesday, specifically called out representatives in Washington, D.C., telling them to “do their job.”

“It’s inexcusable that our security agents, our frontline agents, that are essential to what we do, are not being paid, and it’s ridiculous to see them being used as political chips,” he said.

Thanks in part to staffing issues, airlines canceled more than 1,000 flights Tuesday and delayed 4,200 others, PBS News reported citing flight-tracking website FlightAware. Long security lines also accumulated at major U.S. airports such as Delta’s main hub Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport, where travelers were encouraged to arrive three hours before their scheduled departure time, CBS reported. The TSA disruption has added to airport chaos spurred by the Iran war and severe storms in the past week.

Bastian’s comments come as he joined the CEOs of other U.S. airlines including American, Southwest, and JetBlue, in signing a public letter asking Congress “to move forward on bipartisan proposals” that will pay TSA agents, as well as U.S. customs clearing officers, and air traffic controllers. The letter cited a poll by data-science company AlphaROC earlier in March, which found 93% of Americans support paying agents from the Transportation Security Agency who ensure airport security during shutdowns.

The issue is all the more pressing, Bastian added in the interview, because of the war in Iran which has shown no signs of letting up in its third week. In fact, Iran’s military joint command Wednesday reiterated a warning Tehran would escalate the war in “new ways” if its energy facilities are attacked following a strike on its processing facilities in the South Pars gas field, the world’s largest natural gas reservoir.

“It’s outrageous,” Bastian said of TSA workers not being paid. “We got a war going on. Let’s get our people, that are people that are essential to our security, paid.” 

Delta did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

Standing in the way of TSA agents being paid is a stalemate between Democrats and Republicans in Washington that has withheld funding exclusively for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the TSA. Democrats are seeking reforms to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, after immigration officials killed two people earlier this year. Republicans meanwhile have blocked Democrat-introduced bills that would fund the TSA separately.

The results have already rippled through airports nationwide. Even as airport security agents missed their first full paycheck over the weekend, 50,000 are required to keep working without pay and will only receive backpay once funding is restored. 

Without a paycheck, the number of TSA agents calling out of work has surged with unscheduled absences hitting an average of 6% of workers absent, compared to 2% absent prior to the shutdown, CBS News reported citing DHS figures. Some 300 workers have instead opted to quit the TSA since the partial shutdown began on Feb. 14, according to the DHS’s X account. During the longest government shutdown in history last year, TSA agents went without pay for about 43 days and around 1,100 quit, former TSA administrator John Pistole told CBS News.

These agents, who make between $46,000 to $55,000 on average, are facing financial hardships as they go without pay for the second long stretch in six months, said Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, one of the largest unions representing federal employees.

“During the last government shutdown, the longest in American history, TSA officers went through 3.5 pay periods without a paycheck. Some were evicted. Some had their cars repossessed. Some had to send their children to live with relatives because they could no longer afford childcare,” Kelley said in a statement to Fortune. “Now, politicians are putting them through it again, and the long lines travelers are starting to see are a direct result.” 

Bastian, for his part, downplayed any effect of the partial shutdown on long lines or delays for passengers, saying, “we’ll figure that out.” The real issue, he said, is the unfairness in how security agents are being treated.

“These people miss paychecks. Just a few months ago, they’re missing paychecks again,” he said. “It’s outrageous.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

This post was originally published here

The Federal Reserve held rates steady Wednesday for the second meeting in a row as the war in Iran clouds an already murky economic picture. In its statement, the Fed acknowledged the war, but kept its language cautious, saying the economic implications of the Middle East conflict remain “uncertain.”

The decision was nearly unanimous, save for Stephen Miran, the Trump-appointed governor, who cast his fifth consecutive dissent in favor of a quarter-point cut. But the rest of the committee opted to sit tight, citing elevated uncertainty on both sides of the Fed’s dual mandate: inflation that won’t come down and a labor market that shocked economists with its slackness last month. 

The Iran factor

The conflict in Iran, now in its third week, has thrown a wrench into whatever plans the Fed and its watchers had for 2026. Brent crude jumped above $109 a barrel Wednesday, up from around $72 before the fighting started, while gas prices have surged nearly $1 per gallon nationwide since the war began.

Higher oil costs put the Fed in a bind because they have both depressing and inflating effects. High costs of energy function like a tax on consumers, dragging on growth, but they also feed directly into inflation—exactly the problem the Fed has been trying to solve for years.

Jobs going the wrong way

The labor market gave the Fed little comfort heading into this meeting. February’s payroll report showed employers cutting 92,000 jobs, a sharp reversal from January’s surprise gain, and the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4%. The Fed’s own projections don’t see that number getting worse: Officials held their year-end unemployment forecast at 4.4%, but monthly hiring has essentially flatlined.

Inflation still running hot

On the morning of the decision, fresh wholesale price data reinforced the Fed’s caution. The Producer Price Index rose 0.7% in February, with the year-over-year rate hitting 3.4%, much worse than economists expected. The Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, core PCE, is already running hot at 3.1% and hasn’t eased much in two years. 

What comes next

Most officials still see at least one rate cut this year, but the divisions in the Fed seem sharper than ever. Seven of 19 policymakers projected no reductions at all in 2026, while five penciled in a half-point or more in cuts. Markets, for their part, have pushed rate-cut expectations all the way out to April 2027. Fed Chair Jerome Powell will speak with reporters at 2:30 p.m. EST. It is his second-to-last conference as chair before handing the reigns to his successor, likely former Fed governor Kevin Warsh, President Donald Trump’s nominee.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

This post was originally published here

Amit Banati left a CFO job at a Fortune 500 company, signed a contract to become CEO of Fortune Brands Innovations, and then never officially worked a single day in the role. He walked away this week with $18.4 million in cash. 

The epic payday, ostensibly to compensate Banati for what he left behind at his prior job, is the outcome of a remarkable, possibly absurd, confluence of today’s bumper executive compensation packages and activist investor campaigns.

And it’s just one facet of a wild week at the Deerfield, Ill. manufacturer of Moen faucets, Yale locks, and Therma-Tru doors, which sold $4.5 billion in products last year.

On Monday, Fortune Brands moved to clear its leadership slate after Garden Investment Management’s Ed Garden, an activist investor and son-in-law of prolific activist investor Nelson Peltz, struck a cooperation agreement this week with the company to join the board. 

But Garden isn’t the only large investor knocking on Fortune Brands’ door. In yet another twist, Swiss asset manager Pictet Asset Management filed a notice the day after Garden’s deal, disclosing a 7.6 million-share stake in Fortune Brands valued at $493 million. The position is double Garden’s at 6.4%. Pictet said it is engaging with the Fortune Brands board and management team on long-term strategy, governance, and financial performance. The notice allows Pictet to adjust to more aggressive tactics in the future. 

Together, Garden and Pictet’s positions represent nearly 10% of the company but the two investors aren’t working together. Garden’s cooperation agreement bars him from forming or joining any group with any other shareholder or outside parties. As the news broke on Monday, Fortune Brands’ share price fell 2.6%, and it’s down 16% year-to-date.

How it Unraveled

Banati’s $18.4 million, zero-day stint at the helm of Fortune Brands was set in motion last month, and has been marked with drama from the get-go.

Fortune Brands announced on February 12 that Banati would replace CEO Nicholas Fink, with a start date slated for mid-May. But the day after the news dropped—on Friday February 13—Fortune Brands learned that activist investor Garden had built a stake in the company and privately nominated a reported slate of three new board members.

Garden believed the company should have taken more time to find Fink’s replacement as CEO, and he immediately began snapping up shares and planing to intervene when the CEO change was announced, according to reporting by the Wall Street Journal. By the time Monday’s agreement between Garden’s firm and Fortune Brands was struck, Garden’s stake was roughly 3.5 million shares, roughly a 3% position. 

Along with renouncing the CEO job, Banati is also stepping down from Fortune Brands’ board of directors, where he has served for the five years. As for the big cash payout, Fortune Brands describes it as a “make whole” payment for what Banati left behind at Tylenol-maker Kenvue. In his job as CFO at Kenvue, Banati received a $900,000 salary, a cash bonus, and a long-term equity grant valued at $3.2 million. He also left behind nearly 3.3 million unvested shares.

Under terms of the contract Banati signed in February with Fortune Brands, he gets to keep the $8 million one-time, sign-on bonus and gets accelerated vesting on $6 million in restricted stock units.

Banati is not the only exec being swept aside as a result of the company’s deal with Garden. Chief financial officer Jonathan Baksht, who was at Fortune Brands less than a year, stepped down on Monday. To replace Baksht and Banati, ex-Fortune Brands CFO David Barry will fill the gap as interim CEO until the board can find a permanent replacement. And to round it out, Ashley George, senior vice president of business unit finance, will step in as interim CFO. Barry will collect $18,000 a month on top of his $685,000 per year salary, bonus, and long-term comp award of up to $1.67 million. George gets $15,000 a month on top of her $387,130 a year salary and other comp, plus a $150,000 cash retention award.

The Garden Deal

As part of the cooperation arrangement, Garden will join Fortune Brands’ compensation committee, the nominating committee, and he’ll also serve on a CEO search committee if the board decides to create one as they search for Banati’s replacement. Fortune Brands also agreed to reimburse Garden up to $2 million in legal and advisory fees. 

In exchange, Garden withdrew his board nominees for the upcoming 2026 annual meeting and will cap his stake below 9.9% in Fortune Brands. He also agreed to a ban on running a proxy contest for board seats at the company. 

“Fortune Brands is a company with incredible brands, advantaged market positions, and significant long-term potential,” Garden said in a statement. 

Susan Saltzbart Kilsby, chair of the Fortune Brands board, thanked Banati. 

“In dialogue with certain shareholders, we have now decided to commence a comprehensive search process, with the assistance of a leading executive search firm to identify the next CEO of Fortune Brands, and Amit has decided to step aside,” Kilsby said. 

The company will also put a board declassification proposal to shareholders for a vote at its investor meeting this year, a change that activists often push for that would see every board member stand for election annually. Under the current system, three directors stand for election per year on a rotating cycle.

Fortune Brands pushed its full-year 2026 outlook into the first quarter earnings call, and said its financials and fundamentals remain strong in the face of “macroeconomic and geopolitical headwinds.” The company’s net sales have declined slightly from $4.61 billion in 2024 to $4.46 billion in 2025, with net income dropping 37% from $471.9 million to $298.8 million in the same period. 

An advisor for Garden declined comment. Fortune Brands referred to its public disclosures in response to a request for comment.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

This post was originally published here

Today marks the start of a new era for Disney as long-time CEO Bob Iger officially passes the baton to his successor, Josh D’Amaro, at the company’s annual shareholders meeting. 

D’Amaro, a 28-year veteran of the company, was named Iger’s replacement on Feb. 3. He most recently served as head of Disney Experiences, which includes the company’s theme parks, cruise line, resorts and consumer products. 

Disney and D’Amaro have said very little about how he plans to lead the company, and today’s shareholder meeting could offer a first glimpse into the company’s direction at a pivotal moment for the media industry. 

The  company, with a market cap of $175.98 billion,will have to contend with a shifting landscape as competitor Paramount Skydance  prepares to acquire Warner Bros.,potentially cutting into the company’s market share. Since Iger returned as CEO in 2022, the company’s shares have underperformed compared to the wider market. 

The company’s messaging around D’Amaro’s ascension has focused on ensuring a smooth transition following the short, controversy-filled tenure of Iger’s first replacement, Bob Chapek. 

A key difference this time is that Iger will temporarily stay on as a senior advisor and board member, even though he’s stepping down as CEO eight months ahead of schedule. After appointing Chapek in 2020, Iger remained full-time as executive chairman and directed Disney’s creative projects. 

Former Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman, who has been Disney’s board chairman since 2025, led the succession planning committee to replace Iger.

“Bob came to the point where he had developed the talent. And he said, ‘This is for me to step aside now,’” Gorman said in an interview with CNBC last month. “Yes, he could technically be CEO through the end of his contract. That wasn’t the aspiration. The aspiration was to get the company ready and to get the talent ready, not worrying about what the contract says.” He later added that this time there would be no drama. 

This new structure will allow for a “clean break,” and an orderly succession, board advisor and lawyer Richard Leblanc previously told Fortune. 

“There is always pressure on the new CEO when the old CEO is there to not make any sudden moves, and to carry on the CEO’s legacy,” said Leblanc. In contrast, when the old CEO moves on, “they exit the company so that the new CEO can find their way and implement change without feeling as though someone is looking over their shoulder.”

Disney also announced Dana Walden, who was widely reported to be a CEO contender, will become the company’s president and chief creative officer, a new role. Walden previously served as the co-chairman of Disney Entertainment, where she oversaw Disney’s movies, television, news and content businesses. 

Even though D’Amaro will be her boss, Walden’s base salary of $3.75 million is roughly 50% higher than D’Amaro’s starting base salary of $2.5 million, a strategic incentive for an executive who could have left the company after losing the top job. 

D’Amaro will have to fill Iger’s legendary shoes after a nearly two-decade tenure that included the acquisition of the company’s most iconic brands, including Pixar in 2006, Marvel Entertainment in 2009, and Lucasfilm in 2012. Disney has also made major investments in its theme parks and plans to open a new theme park and resort in Abu Dhabi. 

The incoming CEO is well-positioned to lead the company’s growth. Under D’Amaro, Disney’s parks and experiences have become the company’s primary profit engine, accounting for more than 70% of operating income despite representing under 40% of total revenue. Streaming is the other major growth driver for the company, following consecutive quarters of profitability. 

The slow transition aligns with D’Amaro’s leadership style. As he told students at his alma mater, Georgetown University, last year, he prefers to approach new roles by listening.“There’s gravity to a business card with a title on it. You start to take on that identity, but that’s not who you are,” D’Amaro told the students. “Now, every time I walk into a new job, I say, ‘I don’t know.’ But I know you do, and I know I can help.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

This post was originally published here

Democratic senators pressed the U.S. government’s top intelligence official at annual worldwide threats hearings Wednesday about the war with Iran, including whether she had advised President Donald Trump that Tehran was likely to block the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial passageway for oil and gas from the Persian Gulf, if attacked.

Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, repeatedly deflected questions about the intelligence she had offered the Republican president. That exasperated Democrats who tried to use a rare public forum to extract answers about the widening conflict in the Middle East.

She sidestepped when asked by Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, whether she had advised Trump that Iran would attack Gulf nations and shut down the strait if the country was targeted by U.S. strikes.

“I have not and won’t divulge internal conversations. I will say that those of us within the intelligence community continue to provide the president with all of the best objective intelligence available to inform his decisions,” she said.

Trump has urged allies to help safeguard the waterway and ease a chokepoint on the region’s oil exports. He complained on Tuesday that NATO and most other American allies have rejected his calls.

The annual congressional hearings involving the most senior intelligence officials are taking place at a time of scrutiny over the U.S. military campaign in the Middle East and heightened concerns about terrorism at home after recent attacks at a Michigan synagogue and Virginia university.

The focus is on the Iran war

The focus was on the war, and among the issues expected to be raised was reporting that outdated intelligence likely led to the U.S. firing a missile that hit an elementary school in Iran and killed more than 165 people. The outdated targeting data was reported to have come from the Defense Intelligence Agency, whose director, Lt. Gen. James H. Adams, was to testify. The White House says the strike is under investigation.

The hearings, which continue in Thursday in the House, are also likely to delve into the administration’s internal debate over the war, given the resignation this week of Joe Kent as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Kent said Tuesday he could not “in good conscience” back the war and did not agree that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States.

Hours later, Gabbard, whose office oversaw Kent’s work, wrote on social media that it was up to Trump to decide whether Iran posed a threat. She did not mention her own views of the strikes and asserted at the outset of the hearing that she intended to deliver the perspectives of the intelligence agencies, as opposed to her own viewpoints.

Trump has sought to distance himself from Kent. CIA Director John Ratcliffe tried to do the same Wednesday when he was asked whether intelligence supported Kent’s assessment that Iran was not an imminent threat.

““The intelligence reflects the contrary,” Ratcliffe said.

Gabbard’s presence at a domestic legal search questioned

Apart from Iran, Gabbard was pressed on her presence at an FBI search in January of an election hub in Fulton County, Georgia, where agents seized voter data from the 2020 presidential election. Her appearance at a domestic law enforcement operation raised eyebrows given that Gabbard’s office is meant to focus squarely on foreign threats.

Warner said it was “an organized effort to misuse her national security powers to interfere in domestic politics and potentially provide a pretext for the president’s unconstitutional efforts to seize control of the upcoming elections.”

Gabbard responded that she was present for the search at the request of the president but did not participate. But she continued to tangle with Warner, who at one point told her: “If you want to ask the questions, you should have stayed in Congress.”

Also under scrutiny is Kash Patel’s leadership of the FBI. He was making his first public appearance on Capitol Hill since video surfaced last month showing him partying with members of the U.S. men’s hockey team after their gold medal win at the Winter Olympics.

Patel has fired dozens of agents in his first year on the job, raising concerns about an exodus of national security experience at a time when the United States is confronting an elevated terrorism threat.

This month alone, a gunman wearing clothes with an Iranian flag design and the words “Property of Allah” killed two people at a Texas bar; two men who authorities say were inspired by the Islamic State group were arrested on charges of bringing homemade powerful explosives to a protest outside the New York City mayoral mansion; a man with a past terrorism conviction opened fire inside an Old Dominion University classroom in Virginia; and a Lebanese-born man in Michigan drove his car into a synagogue.

The FBI has said that it is working continuously to protect the country.

_____

Associated Press writers Mike Catalini and Ben Finley contributed to this report.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

This post was originally published here

It was the weekend before last Thanksgiving when Kate Johnson, the president and CEO of Lumen Technologies, called then-Nationwide Chief Technology Officer Jim Fowler to discuss hiring a new top technologist for the telecommunications company.

Fowler, who had served on Lumen’s board since 2023, quickly realized that the conversation with Johnson wasn’t about a board director and CEO working together on succession planning. He was being recruited.

Less than two weeks later, Fowler left insurer Nationwide after more than seven years and joined Lumen (ranked No. 325 on the Fortune 500) as chief technology and product officer, departing the board immediately to take on the C-suite role. He succeeded Dave Ward, who had served as CTO for two years and left in January to become president and chief architect at software giant Salesforce.

Fowler joins Lumen’s leadership as the provider of internet, cloud, IT, and communication technology services undergoes a strategic transformation led by Johnson, who joined Lumen in 2022 after a brief retirement. She has focused on reducing Lumen’s debt load and narrowing its focus to prioritize serving private companies and public sector organizations. The $5.75 billion sale of Lumen’s consumer fiber businesses to AT&T helped on both fronts. The deal closed in February and Lumen has said it would use about $4.8 billion of the proceeds to pay down debt.

Another key area of focus, and this is where Fowler comes in, is a commitment that Lumen made to Wall Street back in 2024 that it would achieve annualized run-rate savings of $1 billion from its network by the end of 2027. Fowler says AI is at the “heart of how we’re going to do that.” 

“Each one of our senior leaders has a single target that they are going after,” he adds. Legal’s focus is on deploying AI-enabled applications that can speed up the contracting process, while marketing is looking at ways to use AI to create more personalized marketing materials.

For Fowler’s technology team, his goal is a 50% reduction in the cycle time for new product development. “That’s what my teams are going to march toward,” says Fowler.

Many elements of Lumen’s internal technology strategy have impressed Fowler as he settles into the role. He says his predecessor had a strong vision on cloud computing and there has been encouraging progress on AI. More than 90% of Lumen’s employees have a Microsoft Copilot license and the tool is being used for a variety of purposes including meeting assistance, strategy, and research.

Lumen’s engineers use the AI coding assistant GitHub Copilot and are authorized to switch between different AI models from providers including OpenAI and Anthropic. As a result, Fowler says he is seeing up to a 50% improvement in productivity for some tasks like re-platforming applications. 

He says one “hidden gem” he uncovered is that Lumen’s engineering team has developed an agentic AI framework already deployed across the entire company. Employees can build their own AI agents on an internal, proprietary dashboard that Lumen created. Workers can deploy custom AI agents using large language models from providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. They are encouraged to explore the models that they believe will produce the best outcomes at the most efficient cost.

Still less than 90 days into his new role, Fowler has identified a few projects he will prioritize going forward. They include modernizing Lumen’s disparate operations that stem from its legacy of growing through acquisitions. To extract the most value possible from Lumen’s AI investments, Fowler’s team will need to continue to rewrite and reimplement those systems.

Other projects include expanding the physical layer. Lumen is planning to more than double the amount of fiber in the ground, from over 17 million miles today to over 47 million miles over the next two years. Then, there’s the digital layer, making it easier for customers to opt in to Lumen’s various services through agentic AI-enabled support.

“This has been a network infrastructure company for 50 years,” says Fowler. “Getting it to think like a tech company—with software development and engineering practices that scale with demand from our customers—has been a focus of mine in the first two months that I’ve been here.”

John Kell

Send thoughts or suggestions to CIO Intelligence here.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

This post was originally published here