The national debt is set to reach $40 trillion in the near future if it continues to grow at its current pace. That has caught the attention of the richest man in the world. 

Elon Musk has joined the likes of Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in supporting a solution to lowering the national debt, made famous by former Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett. 

“I can end the deficit in five minutes,” Buffet said in a 2011 interview with CNBC. “You just pass a law that says that anytime there’s a deficit of more than 3% of the GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for reelection. Now, you’ve got the incentives in the right place.”

The plan received Musk’s full endorsement. “This is the way,” he wrote in June, sharing the interview in a post on X.  

Last year, the national debt ballooned by $2.6 trillion, and currently stands at $38.9 trillion, or 124% of the economy, according to the U.S. Treasury.

Buffett is far from the only one sounding the alarm on the national debt. 

Recently, the nonpartisan think tank Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) warned the average interest rate on the national debt could exceed economic growth by fiscal year 2031. 

“Once interest rates exceed the growth rate…primary deficits will lead debt to grow indefinitely,” the CRFB warned in a blog post on March 9.​ The committee also endorses the 3% of GDP target. 

While members of Congress haven’t warmed to the idea of being replaced over the national debt, a bipartisan group of representatives in January introduced a resolution to lower the deficit to 3% of GDP.  

What Warren Buffett’s 5‑minute plan to cap the deficit at 3% of GDP would actually do

In 2024, under the Biden administration, Buffett predicted higher taxes were coming for businesses. 

“They may decide that someday they don’t want the fiscal deficit to be this large, because that has some important consequences. And they may not want to decrease spending a lot, and they may decide they’ll take a larger percentage of what we earn, and we’ll pay it,” he said at Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting in May 2024. 

At that point, the national debt was more than $34 trillion, or 122% of GDP. Buffett has rebuffed companies that search for the smallest loopholes to reduce their tax burden. Since the first Trump administration, corporations have paid a maximum tax rate of 21%, compared to 35% previously. This tax rate was not changed the Biden administration. 

“My best speculation is that U.S. debt will be acceptable for a very long time, because there is not much alternative,” Buffett said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

This post was originally published here

AI tools are already spurring fierce job competition among Bambi-legged Gen Zers hoping to land their first entry-level job out of college. And the situation could get even worse, one tech boss is warning.

“I think young people coming out of university today [are experiencing] 9% unemployment,” Bill McDermott, the CEO of AI-driven software company ServiceNow, recently told CNBC. “I think it could easily go into the mid-30s in the next couple of years.”

When evaluating what is disrupting the budding workforce, the boss of the $123 billion American tech giant pointed the finger at AI agents. McDermott predicted that there will be about three billion digital, non-human agents added to enterprises by 2030, which have the ability to automate routine tasks typically done by entry and mid-level employees. 

“What’s happening now, for the non-differentiating roles, [is] so much of the work is going to be done by agents,” the ServiceNow CEO continued. “So it’s going to be challenging for young people to differentiate themselves in a corporate environment.”

Already, around 5.6% of recent U.S. college graduates aged 22 to 27 are unemployed, compared to 4.2% of the general population, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. And looking ahead, CEOs and experts alike are hesitant that entry-level hiring will make a comeback anytime soon. McDermott added that if other leaders follow ServiceNow in giving AI agents use cases humans were once assigned, “that will definitely put a damper on who you need to hire.”

Fortune reached out to ServiceNow for comment. 

Fresh-faced graduates are caught in the crosshairs of an AI work revolution 

Tech leaders with a front-row seat to the AI-driven workforce revolution have been sounding the alarm of a job takeover. The “godfather of AI” Geoffrey Hinton warned that unemployment will balloon because “rich people are going to use AI to replace workers”; Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicted that half of white-collar jobs would be automated by 2030; and OpenAI leader Sam Altman said the advanced tech is already giving entry-level workers a run for their money. 

“Today [AI] is like an intern that can work for a couple of hours, but at some point it’ll be like an experienced software engineer that can work for a couple of days,” Altman said during a panel with Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy last year. 

As AI continues to advance at a breakneck pace, employment for vulnerable young workers has taken a turn for the worse. Since ChatGPT took the world by storm in 2022, U.S. job postings have plummeted by nearly 32%, according to a November 2025 analysis of Federal Reserve data. And 2026 reports have failed to drum up optimism, as the American economy unexpectedly shed 92,000 jobs in February, marking the biggest decline since last October.  

And just as McDermott observed, young inexperienced workers are most susceptible to the shift. About 58% of Gen Z students who graduated in 2024 and 2025 were still looking for their first job, compared to just 25% of millennial and Gen X graduates in previous years, according to a Kickresume report released last year. Job postings on early-career talent platform Handshake also fell more than 16% between August 2024 and August 2025, while the average number of applications per role has jumped 26%.

Hiring is down for Gen Z grads, even in tech

Even industries that are famous for plucking young, spry talent right out of college and putting them in high-paying jobs are reeling back. 

Hiring for new graduates in the tech sector at 15 of the largest companies fell by over 50% since 2019, according to a 2025 report from VC firm SignalFire. Before the pandemic, these Gen Z grads made up 15% of Big Tech hires—now, they only account for 7%.

Leaders are split on whether the current job market, marked by massive layoffs and stalled hiring, is reflective of AI automation or a correction of pandemic-era overhiring. But many can agree on one thing: entry-level jobs are the most endangered by AI. J. Scott Davis, assistant vice president of the Dallas Fed, believes young workers primarily have book smarts easily automatable by AI tools—unlike work experience. 

“Returns on job experience are increasing in AI-exposed occupations,” Davis recently wrote. “Young workers with primarily codifiable knowledge and limited experience will likely face challenging job markets.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

This post was originally published here

For many observers, Donald Trump’s prosecution of the war against Iran has been nothing short of confounding — contradictory remarks, a seemingly improvisational strategy, and a nonchalance toward risks and costs that would paralyze a traditional commander-in-chief.

A century and a half ago, author John Churton Collins advised, “In prosperity our friends know us; in adversity we know our friends.” America’s allies are confused. Pundits are reeling. But the surprise is misplaced.

Trump’s approach to the Iranian conflict is not an anomaly. It is lifted directly from a consistent playbook he has relied on for decades. The president’s actions are rarely the random impulses they appear to be. Instead, they follow consistent, discernible patterns of behavior. Here are five of what we call Trump’s Ten Commandments, as we lay out in our new book of the same title. He’s exhibited them throughout his career, and he’s displaying them again in his conduct of this war.

1. Centralizing All Power

Unlike previous military engagements — which typically followed careful interagency planning with input from domain experts — Trump has bypassed the traditional national security apparatus entirely. Instead, he is managing the entire war through his signature “hub-and-spokes” leadership model. In Trump’s universe, he must be the sun around which everything revolves. Rather than deferring to seasoned military leaders, the intelligence community, or veteran foreign service officers, Trump has centralized war-making authority squarely in his own hands, relying on a tight circle of close advisors while other high-ranking officials — in his own administration and across foreign governments — learn what is happening by watching the news.

Freed of institutional constraints, the result is a war directed not by consensus but by singular, unconstrained instinct of Trump and Trump alone — limited, arguably, only by what financial markets will tolerate and how long the munitions stockpile will last.

2. The Punch in the Face

Where traditional diplomacy builds trust incrementally, Trump starts by striking the first blow and staking out the most maximalist position imaginable to create immediate leverage. By decapitating Iran’s leadership and neutralizing core infrastructure on day one, Trump bypassed standard diplomatic escalation ladders entirely. It is the geopolitical equivalent of his classic real estate strategy — inflicting maximum blunt trauma as the opening move, not the last resort.

3. Divide and Conquer

Trump has long viewed the traditional coalitions built by his predecessors — NATO, the EU — as constraints on his own authority rather than assets.

It is entirely consistent, then, that Trump went to war without consulting many of America’s historical allies in Europe, who were left in the cold. Eschewing multilateral consensus, he publicly chastised several allies for their “lukewarm” enthusiasm, demanding they deploy warships and police the waterway themselves. At the same time, he has kept Israel and the Gulf nations close, coordinating carefully in what Israeli President Isaac Herzog described as NATO-like in its intimacy, while talking nearly daily with top Gulf leaders according to New York Times reporting. In this way, he treats foreign nations much like he treats his own subordinates — pitting them against one another so that he alone rises above the chaos as the all-powerful arbiter.

4. The Wall of Sound

To control the narrative, Trump relies on what might be called a Perpetual Noise Machine — an overwhelming barrage of sudden moves and outrageos statements designed to distract and disorient. The sheer scale of the Iran strikes has dominated news coverage since the conflict began, erasing prior negative news cycles from domestic affordability concerns to foreign policy friction over Venezuela and Greenland.

By feeding contradictory remarks to the press practically hourly and issuing escalating threats against Iran’s oil infrastructure — will he or won’t he strike? — Trump keeps the media and international community focused entirely on his unpredictable next move. This relentless cascade ensures he dominates the news cycle, exhausts opponents, and prevents any cohesive counter-strategy from forming.

5. Donald the Great

Trump views himself in messianic terms — the leader who alone can accomplish what no predecessor could. By framing the 2026 war as the decisive strike to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and the culmination of 40 years of Iranian aggression, he casts himself as a historic savior. Critics and supporters alike note that he appears increasingly convinced there is nothing he cannot do. Where traditional presidents weigh constitutional constraints, congressional approval, and allied consultation, Trump views those guardrails with the same dismissiveness he has applied to institutional limits his entire career, as Gulliver viewed the Lilliputians.

Trump’s war with Iran is not an anomaly. It is the ultimate expression of a leadership style decades in the making. The most useful thing global leaders — and observers — can do right now is stop being surprised. The playbook has always been visible. The only question is whether those on the receiving end are finally willing to read it.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

This post was originally published here

Traditional paths to stable careers are undergoing a massive shift. Fields like computer science—once considered the safest bet for a high-paying job—are now facing new uncertainty. At the same time, some business leaders warn that entry-level roles could be hollowed out by AI, leaving many Gen Z workers questioning where opportunity still exists.

Jaime Teevan, Microsoft’s chief scientist, believes the answer may lie in an unexpected place: the liberal arts.

“Metacognitive skills will be very important—flexibility, adaptability, experimentation, thinking critically, being able to challenge things. Developing critical-thinking skills requires friction, doing things that are hard, doing deep thinking,” Teevan told The Wall Street Journal. 

“For that, a traditional liberal-arts education is really important.”

Teevan, who leads the research direction of the company’s experiences and devices division, including Office, Windows, Surface, and Teams, said the shift reflects a deeper change in how humans interact with technology. And for her, the stakes are personal: she has four sons, ages 17 to 21, all navigating higher education decisions in real time.

“Think of what AI does. It used to be that communicating with a computer was deterministic: You press this button, and this thing happens. Now it’s based on natural language, providing context, expressing intent and thinking critically.”

In other words, while liberal arts majors—such as anthropology, psychology, and education—have long been among the worst-paid majors, the very skills often taught in those career paths are becoming more valuable, not less.

 As AI handles more technical and repetitive tasks, the ability to exercise judgement, communicate nuance, and take responsibility is emerging as a differentiator. And it may be just what Gen Z needs to land a job in today’s market.

In today’s AI era, Gen Z may need to take an ‘insurance policy’ on their education

For years, educators and employers pushed students toward STEM fields, pointing to degrees like computer engineering as pathways to six-figure salaries. But early signs suggest that even those once-reliable routes are facing pressure.

The unemployment rate for computer engineering majors has climbed to 7.8%—the highest of any major except anthropology, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, underscoring how quickly the job market is shifting in the AI era.

It’s a concern echoed by Ethan Mollick, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School known for his AI research. With so much uncertainty, Mollick argued that overspecialization can be risky. Instead, he emphasized the value of broad, foundational learning—an approach central to liberal arts education—where students build critical thinking, problem-solving, and communication skills across disciplines. 

“Take an insurance policy by being broadly educated, being deeply educated, being flexible in the face of change, maybe saving money to get through the disruptions—the things you’d do in any time of uncertainty,” he told the WSJ. “A liberal-arts education matters more than ever.”

Employers are on the hunt for liberal arts graduates

The shift to hiring liberal arts majors is already showing up in the hiring process.

At McKinsey, candidates are now being evaluated in part on how well they can work alongside AI tools—a signal that technical knowledge alone is no longer the primary differentiator. The firm’s CEO admitted its hiring priorities have changed, with a new focus on “looking more at liberal arts majors, whom we had deprioritized.”  

It’s an idea echoed by Ravi Kumar S, the CEO of IT firm Cognizant Technology Solutions Ravi Kumar S, who said he’s also changed his hiring practices in the wake of AI.

“We are now going to hire non-STEM graduates,” he told Fortune. “I’m going to liberal arts schools and community colleges.”

Even leaders building out AI systems said human-centered skills are becoming more—not less—critical. Daniela Amodei, cofounder of AI firm Anthropic, said studying the humanities will be “more important than ever.”

“The things that make us human will become much more important instead of much less important,” she told ABC News last month. “And what I mean by that is when we look to hire people at Anthropic today, we look for people who are great communicators, who have excellent EQ and people skills, who are kind and compassionate and curious and want to help other people.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

This post was originally published here

Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, announced his resignation on Tuesday, citing his concerns about the justification for military strikes in Iran and saying he “cannot in good conscience” back the Trump administration’s war.

Kent said on social media that Iran “posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

Kent, a former political candidate with connections to right-wing extremists, was confirmed to his post last July on a 52-44 vote. As head of the National Counterterrorism Center, he was in charge of an agency tasked with analyzing and detecting terrorist threats. His resignation reflects unease within Trump’s base about the war and shows that questions about the justification for the use of force in Iran extend to the right of President Donald Trump’s base and to senior members of the administration.

Trump has offered shifting reasons for the strikes and has pushed back on claims that Israel forced the U.S. to act. Earlier this month, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., suggested that the White House believed Israel was determined to act on its own, leaving the Republican president with a “very difficult decision.”

A spokesperson for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard did not immediately respond to questions about Kent’s resignation. The White House also had no immediate comment on Kent’s resignation.

Before entering Trump’s administration, Kent ran two unsuccessful campaigns for Congress in Washington state. He also served in the military, seeing 11 deployments as a Green Beret, followed by work at the CIA.

Democrats strongly opposed Kent’s confirmation, pointing to his past ties to far-right figures and conspiracy theories. During his 2022 congressional campaign, Kent paid Graham Jorgensen, a member of the far-right military group the Proud Boys, for consulting work. He also worked closely with Joey Gibson, the founder of the Christian nationalist group Patriot Prayer, and attracted support from a variety of far-right figures.

During his Senate confirmation hearing, Kent also refused to distance himself from a conspiracy theory that federal agents instigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol, as well as false claims that Trump won the 2020 election over Democrat Joe Biden.

Democrats grilled Kent on his participation in a group chat on Signal that was used by Trump’s national security team to discuss sensitive military plans.

Still, Republicans praised Kent’s counterterrorism qualifications, pointing to his military and intelligence experience.

Sen. Tom Cotton, the GOP chair of the intelligence committee, said in a floor speech that Kent had “dedicated his career to fighting terrorism and keeping Americans safe.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

This post was originally published here