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All six crew members of a KC-135 refueling aircraft that crashed while supporting operations against Iran are dead, the U.S. military said Friday.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, said the crash in western Iraq on Thursday followed an unspecified incident involving two aircraft in “friendly airspace” and that the other plane landed safely.

The crash brings the U.S. death toll in Operation Epic Fury to at least 13 service members, with the seven others killed in combat. About 140 U.S. service members have been injured, including eight severely, the Pentagon said earlier this week.

The KC-135 has been in service for more than 60 years and has been involved in several fatal accidents, most recently in 2013. Adding to concerns about their reliability, the aircraft don’t always carry parachutes.

Here’s what is known so far about the tanker, which is the fourth U.S. military aircraft publicly acknowledged to have crashed since the war against Iran began on Feb. 28:

Cause of crash not immediately known

U.S. Central Command said the circumstances of the crash are under investigation but that the loss of the aircraft was “not due to hostile or friendly fire.”

A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the developing situation, said the other plane involved was also a KC-135. Yechiel Leiter, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., wrote on X that the other plane landed safely in Israel.

Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon on Friday morning that the crash occurred “over friendly territory in western Iraq, while the crew was on a combat mission” and reiterated that hostile or friendly fire was not the cause.

Speaking at the same news conference, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the crew heroes.

“War is hell. War is chaos,” Hegseth said. “And as we saw yesterday with the tragic crash of our KC-135 tanker, bad things can happen. American heroes, all of them.”

Hegseth and Caine spoke to reporters before the deaths of the six crew member had been made public.

Yang Uk, a security expert at South Korea’s Asan Institute for Policy Studies, said it would be rare for a refueling tanker to be downed by enemy fire because such operations are usually conducted in the rear of combat zones.

Last week, three U.S. F-15E fighter jets were mistakenly downed by friendly Kuwaiti fire. All six crew members ejected safely.

The KC-135 is a long-serving tanker plane

The KC-135 Stratotanker is a U.S. Air Force aircraft used to refuel other planes in midair, allowing them to travel longer distances and maintain operations longer without landing. The plane is also used to transport wounded personnel during medical evacuations or conduct surveillance missions, according to military experts.

“The last of these planes were produced in the 1960s,” Yang said.

Based on the same design as the Boeing 707 passenger plane, the KC-135 is set to be gradually phased out as more of the next-generation KC-46A Pegasus tankers enter service.

According to the Congressional Research Service, the Air Force last year had 376 KC-135s, including 151 on active duty, 163 in the Air National Guard and 62 in the Air Force Reserve.

A basic KC-135 crew consists of three people: a pilot, co-pilot and boom operator. Nurses and medical technicians are added in aeromedical evacuation missions.

Refueling typically happens at the back of the plane, where the boom operator is located. A fuel boom is lowered to connect with fighters, bombers or other aircraft. On many of the planes, the boom operator works lying face down while looking out of a window on the underside of the plane.

Some KC-135s can also refuel planes from pods on their wings. The tankers have room to carry cargo or passengers if needed.

Refueling tankers could play an increasingly important role if the Iran war drags on, as U.S. aircraft may need to fly longer missions to pursue Iranian forces retreating deeper into the country, said Yang.

A question about parachutes

KC-135s have been involved in several fatal accidents. The most recent occurred on May 3, 2013, when one crashed after takeoff south of Chaldovar, Kyrgyzstan, while supporting the war in Afghanistan.

In that crash, the crew experienced problems with the plane’s rudder, according to a U.S. Air Force investigation. While the crew struggled to stabilize the plane, the tail section broke away and the plane exploded midair, killing all three onboard.

The most serious mid-air collision involving the plane happened in 1966, when a B-52 bomber carrying nuclear bombs struck a tanker near Palomares, Spain.

The accident caused the tanker to crash, killing four onboard. The disaster led to an extensive decontamination effort to clean up nuclear material dispersed when conventional explosives in the hydrogen bombs detonated after hitting the ground.

The plane has a good safety record overall, is well-maintained and has been updated often with new equipment, said Alan Diehl, a former investigator for the Air Force Safety Center who examined mishaps that involved KC-135s.

But Diehl said an important question is whether this KC-135 was carrying any parachutes. The one that crashed in Kyrgyzstan was not, according to the investigation.

Diehl said the reasoning for not always requiring parachutes, at least in the 1980s and 1990s, included the expense of maintaining them and training to use them. He said K-135s are designed with an escape hatch on the flight deck and a spoiler to help airmen jump clear of the fuselage.

A 2008 news release from an air refueling unit said the Air Force was pulling parachutes from KC-135s, noting that it was statistically safer to stay with the aircraft, “especially when flying over enemy territory.”

“Removing parachutes from military aircraft may sound peculiar, but KC-135s are not like other aircraft,” the news release stated. “They seldom have mishaps, and the likelihood a KC-135 crew member would ever need to use a parachute is extremely low.”

Diehl stressed that it’s unclear whether parachutes would have helped the crew over Iraq. But he said the second plane landing safety suggests the collision may not have been catastrophic.

When asked if the plane that crashed had parachutes, the military would say only that the cause of the incident was still under investigation.

As for why the KC-135 that crashed had six people on board, Diehl said some could have been back-up crew, given that the aircraft can stay in the air for many hours.

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Individual income taxes accounted for more than half of the total revenue collected by the U.S. government in 2025. At a total of $2.6 trillion, they make up the largest share of government revenue. But income tax hasn’t always played a key role in tax revenue. In fact, it wasn’t even introduced as a concept until about 100 years into the country’s history after President Abraham Lincoln signed the very first federal income tax—a 3% flat tax on incomes exceeding $800—to fund the Civil War. Just as income tax didn’t always exist, it also may not last forever.

That’s if ex-presidential candidate and CEO of Noble Mobile Andrew Yang gets his way. In an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Yang said it’s time for the U.S. to drop taxes on labor, in favor of taxes on AI. He argued that taxation is a tool used to discourage certain behaviors, and with human employment under threat, the government should stop penalizing the hiring of people. 

“We’re going to be in a position where we want to shore up labor in every quarter, in every organization and environment,” he said. “We should actually try to stop taxing labor,” and instead, start taxing AI.

Yang isn’t the first to float the idea of dropping taxes on labor. It’s a cause that’s caught the attention of billionaires and politicians alike. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) recently introduced a bill that would eliminate income tax on the first $75,000 of earnings. Khosla Ventures founder and billionaire Vinod Khosla said in a recent interview with Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell that presidential candidates should run on a platform to remove income tax for those making less than $100,000. 

However, those making $100,000 or less only contributed to about 15% of the total income tax revenue last year, according to the think tank Bipartisan Policy Center. Business leaders and AI entrepreneurs predict AI will soon take over many jobs in the white-collar workforce, potentially raising unemployment to 20% (according to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei). Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman thinks most white-collar work could be replaced within 18 months. And Yang has recently made a similar prediction. His warnings come from his own observations of the AI industry. 

“I just came from an AI conference out west, and holy cow!” he said, just after agreeing to the host’s question reconfirming his stance to shift the tax to AI. “They said to me that what we’re going to see in the next six months outstrips what we’ve seen in the last ten years, because the rate of change is on a hockey stick and heading up.”

While the labor market has been persistent in recent months, it’s shown signs of wavering, with unemployment ticking up to 4.4% last month, and employers posting 91,000 job losses. And several major tech companies have attributed mass layoffs to AI. Jack Dorsey’s Block last month cut nearly half of its workforce citing productivity gains from AI. And earlier this week, Australian-American tech firm Atlassian cut 10% of its global workforce. (Although Sam Altman of OpenAI has warned some companies are  “AI washing” or blaming layoffs on AI when, in reality, they’re thanks to another cause).

Beyond the AI era: a tax system for humanoid robots

Despite Yang’s thoughts to shift the tax scheme from laborers to AI companies, some tech leaders think taxing AI is unfeasible. But some think the labor threat isn’t coming from the chatbots, but rather the robots, and that the U.S. should actually plan to tax the labor humanoid robots could perform. 

AI-powered tech firm AskHumans founder Zak Kidd is proposing a tax on tasks, where businesses are levied a fee for every specific activity performed by a humanoid robot that replaces a human worker. AskHumans has been used by The World Bank, Fidelity, and The Ned, according to Kidd, who said he is actively pitching governors around the country on his task tax idea. This “tax the task” model is designed to replace the government tax revenue lost when an employer decides to swap a human employee for a mechanical system. 

“What we want to do is actually levy a tax on each of those activities that’s paid back to the state to replace that fiscal gap,” Kidd told Fortune, referring to tasks robots may one day be able to perform that will replace human labor.

Kidd uses a hotel like Marriott to illustrate his proposal, noting that replacing a $28-per-hour human housekeeper with a $2-per-hour robot results in a significant loss of tax revenue. But even with a slight tax on the business, the costs incurred would still total less than the human worker. 

Unlike Yang, Kidd thinks taxing AI raises too many logistical questions because, as more companies integrate AI into workflows, it’s harder to denote where the AI stops and the human interpretation starts. He thinks that while AI threatens white-collar work, robots could come for physical labor. 

“I see AI as an augmentation of knowledge work,” he said.  “But I see robotics, humanoid robotics as a replacement for manual work.”

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Americans have footed the bill for President Donald Trump’s tariffs, and now they’re demanding a refund.

The Supreme Court ruling striking down tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) opened the door for U.S. companies to snap up refunds from the approximately $180 billion in import tax revenue. Now customers who experienced higher prices from the tariffs are demanding their fair share. 

Overwhelming data, including a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, indicated that U.S. importers paid for the majority of the tariffs—up to 90%—with many passing down the increased costs to American consumers. Goldman Sachs estimated the tariffs added a 0.7% increase to inflation over 10 months, with prices to increase another 0.1% in 2026 because of levies.

Some U.S. consumers have taken matters into their own hands to recoup the extra costs they paid on tariffed goods over the last year, including pursuing litigation against U.S. companies, suing for tariff refunds. On Wednesday, plaintiff Matthew Stockov, an Illinois resident, filed a lawsuit against Costco, alleging the big-box retailer raised prices as a result of the tariffs and would receive “double recovery” if it collected the import tax refunds without distributing it back to consumers.

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Illinois, said Stockov purchased electronics, food, appliances, household items, and hygiene products at inflated prices due to tariffs.

“Costco was able to expand margins during the peak of the IEEPA tariff regime by selectively raising prices on tariffed goods,” the complaint said. “The higher prices consumers paid were a consequence of Costco’s increased cost of importation. Absent the imposition of the unlawful IEEPA tariffs, Costco would not have needed to raise prices on consumers in this way.”

According to the lawsuit, the proposed class could contain more than 100 Costco customers allegedly owed more than $5 million in tariff refunds.

Consumers’ fight for tariff refunds

In May 2025, Costco CFO Gary Millerchip told investors the retailer raised prices on some discretionary products like flowers as a result of the levies, but held prices steady on some tariffed produce items like bananas that were staples for shoppers.

The complaint pointed to previous reporting from Fortune, which cited a Goldman Sachs projection from August 2025 indicating consumers had absorbed 22% of total tariffs costs, but were projected to bear 67% of those costs by October 2025 as more costs were passed down.

Costco did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment, but has indicated plans to pass along tariff refunds to customers. The retailer was among the first companies to sue the Trump administration prior to the Supreme Court ruling in February with the goal to ensure the distribution of tariffs and avoid future uncertainty around the eligibility of refunds. In an earnings presentation earlier this month, CEO Ron Vachris said the company would return recovered tariff payments to shoppers through lowered prices, despite the fact that the “future impact of tariffs remains extremely fluid.”

It’s not just Costco that shoppers want on the hook for distributing refunds. Last month, a consumer similarly sued EssilorLuxottica, the maker of Ray-Ban sunglasses, claiming he was entitled to a tariff refund because the price of one sunglasses model increased from $287 in March 2025 to $304 in May. The plaintiff bought his glasses in August.

FedEx customer Matthew Resier in Miami also filed a proposed class action against the shipping company, alleging FedEx acted as a “customs broker,” collecting $36 in import taxes and fees on a pair of German shoes he had shipped to him. FedEx was one of the first of thousands of companies to sue the Trump administration following the Supreme Court ruling. FedEx sought a court order that would force Customs and Border Protects to repay the full amount it paid in tariffs, which executives previously estimated to be near $1 billion.

The company said it is planning to return tariff charges to customers if the government issues refunds.

“Our intent is straightforward: if refunds are issued to FedEx, we will issue refunds to the shippers and consumers who originally bore those charges,” a spokesperson told Fortune in a statement. “When that will happen and the exact process for requesting and issuing refunds will depend in part on future guidance from the government and the court.”

EssilorLuxittica did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

Will American consumers see tariff refunds at all?

Other companies have been explicit about intentions to give refunds to customers. Cards Against Humanity—a game maker which manufactures its products primarily in China—said following the ruling it would transfer recovered tariff charges back to its customers, asking them to fill out an online form with proof of payment during the tariff window.

“When the Trump Administration gives us our tariff refund, we won’t keep it,” the company said in an online post. “We’ll give 100% of the money back to you, our loyal customers, who actually make our business possible.”

Dame Products, a sexual health and wellness company which collected $70,000 in tariff surcharges from customers last year, plans to return the sum to consumers, according to CEO Alexandra Fine. 

Details on how and when the government will disperse the refunds, however, remain unclear. The Supreme Court was mum in its decision on any details about the refunds, leaving it to lower trade courts to determine the process to recover charges. Judge Richard Eaton of the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled last week that importers were indeed entitled to tariff refunds.

Trump previously indicated he would fight the refunds, with courts potentially taking years to litigate them. Supply chain experts said it may take 12 to 18 months.

Meanwhile, the tariff revenue, sitting in the U.S. Treasury, is accruing interest as a result of federal regulations. According to a Cato Institute report this month, the refunds are racking up $700 million in interest each month, which will also be passed down to 130 million American taxpaying households.

Cards Against Humanity acknowledged the uncertainty around the refund timeline: “Unfortunately, not even God Himself knows how long that will take.”

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BlackRock CEO Larry Fink isn’t losing sleep over the possibility that some of the biggest players in AI could go bankrupt. In fact, he’s counting on it.

During a panel discussion at BlackRock’s 2026 Infrastructure Summit this week, the CEO of the world’s largest asset manager made it clear that as AI transforms the economy, at least “one or two” bankruptcies are inevitable.

“That’s capitalism. We’re going to have some huge successes, and we’re going to have a couple failures. OK. I’m good with that,” Fink said.

But that doesn’t mean he wants Big Tech to put a stop to its sky-high AI infrastructure investment. Instead, he wants more investment, which he said is especially important for the U.S. to beat China in the AI race. 

“They may in the short run overinvest, but the long-term demand will catch up,” Fink said.

One CEO of an unnamed hyperscaler told Fink they were happy to keep spending, even if it turns out they are overinvesting. “The one thing I can tell you with certainty, I can’t be third,” Fink said the CEO told him.

The BlackRock CEO’s comments come as capital expenditures from hyperscalers like Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta are predicted to reach $650 billion over the next 12 months, according to investment banking advisory firm Evercore ISI. That’s nearly a 70% increase from the $380 billion they invested in 2025. Some analyses say this spending could reach the trillions in the next three to five years.

For Fink, this type of competition and investment is fundamental to the way the U.S. economy is supposed to work.

“This is the beauty of capitalism, my gosh, having our five hyperscalers, six hyperscalers, and a new entrant beating up each other to try to have the best model. That is capitalism at its best,” he said.

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

Yet, the heavy spending on AI is putting some Big Tech companies at risk of going cash flow negative by spending more than they bring in, Evercore noted in a report last month. While this doesn’t mean a company is unprofitable, Evercore said it is a “red flag” for their stock valuations.

For now, these tech companies have corporate debt levels below the median of S&P 500 companies, but these levels are also rising because of the increased capital expenditures, Evercore noted.

Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle issued $121 billion in corporate bonds in 2025, significantly higher than the $28 billion the companies averaged over the previous five years, according to Bank of America analyst Yuri Seliger. 

Oracle, in particular, stands out among the group, having issued $26 billion in debt last year with plans to issue between $45 billion-$50 billion this year, Fortune reported. To be sure, Oracle in its most recent quarterly earnings reported a 22% year-over-year increase in its overall revenue fueled by surging cloud infrastructure revenue, which is closely tied to AI.

That helped ease concerns about debt-fueled spending eventually paying off. For his part, Fink isn’t worried.

“Their return on equity is still better than mine and I have a pretty good return on equity,” he said with a laugh.

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The Strait of Hormuz is too dangerous right now, even for the mighty U.S. Navy, which has been called upon to secure the narrow waterway and bring relief to the worst oil disruption ever.

Since the U.S.-Israel war on Iran started two weeks ago, traffic around the Persian Gulf choke point has come to a virtual standstill as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps attacks commercial ships and tankers, keeping 20% of global oil supplies bottled up.

President Donald Trump and administration officials insist the Navy can escort ships, perhaps later this month as airstrikes continue to degrade Iran’s ability to launch missiles and drones.

But the U.S. military has reportedly turned down requests for protection so far. Defense officials told The Wall Street Journal Navy escorts aren’t currently feasible because Iran can still attack ships, adding they won’t happen until the threat of Iranian fire has eased.

Navy officials also told the Journal earlier this week U.S. warships and commercial vessels would face enormous risks, describing the Strait of Hormuz as an Iranian “kill box.”

The Pentagon responded to a request for comment by referring to remarks from a press briefing on Friday. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine acknowledged the threat in the strait while pointing out the military has effectively wiped out Iran’s naval fleet and destroyed its mine-laying ships.

“We’ve made progress, but Iran still has the capability to harm friendly forces and commercial shipping and our work on this effort continues,” he told reporters.

Caine later said: “It’s a tactically complex environment. Before we want to take anything through there at scale, we want to make sure we do the work pursuant to our current military objectives to do that safely and smartly.”

Despite reports saying Iran has started laying mines, the Pentagon has said there’s no evidence of that yet. But MIT professor Caitlin Talmadge said Iran has thousands of small vessels that could potentially be used to lay mines, adding that they could have been dispersed before the war started.

“Iran has extensive tunnel networks to protect and launch such vessels surreptitiously, including midget submarines and other submersibles useful for mine laying,” she posted on X on Wednesday.

There are also other threats that are potentially even more serious. For example, Iran’s coastal areas offer spots for launching anti-ship missiles, which can be fired from close distances and provide little time for a defensive response.

Nikolas Kokovlis/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Iran’s Shahed aerial drones, which have a longer range, can also be launched deeper inland and have been used to damage U.S. military and diplomatic targets around the region as swarms of the low-cost aircraft have overwhelmed defenses in some cases.

And despite losing much of its naval capabilities, the regime still has underwater and surface drones, which were used to attack oil tankers off the coast of Iraq, as well as small fast-attack boats that can threaten much bigger ships.

In fact, an Iranian vessel sailed close to the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea, prompting an accompanying Navy destroyer to fire its 5-inch cannon, according to CBS News. But it missed multiple times, and a helicopter had to be sent to fire missiles at the Iranian boat.

To be sure, the Navy has long planned for an Iranian blockade of the strait and previously escorted ships through the Persian Gulf in the past during the so-called tanker wars in the late 1980s.

But Iran’s military capabilities weren’t as sophisticated as today’s, and the Navy’s fleet was twice as large. Meanwhile, numerous ships are still carrying out operations in the Caribbean.

In addition, there are more than 300 ships stranded in the Gulf due to Iran’s de facto blockade, and the slower pace required to escort them though the strait means getting all of them out could take months—or even years.

Top commodity analyst Jeff Currie, chief strategy officer at Carlyle Energy Pathways, told The Economist the cost of a single escort would exceed the value of the cargo it trying to protect.

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Tech CEOs have lauded that AI will turn workers into “superhumans” where work is optional, and more time dedicated to innovating the world—but so far, the opposite has been true for most. 

AI is actually increasing strain for most employees, as the tools add more time to menial tasks, and actually takes away from deep-focus work. Since adopting AI into their workflows, time spent across every job responsibility shot up anywhere from 27% to 346%, according to a recent ActivTrak report that analyzed 10,584 users 180 days before and after their AI adoption. 

The time spent toiling on grunt work like emails increased by 104%, while chatting and messaging climbed by 145%, and using business management tools rose 94%. 

There wasn’t a single activity category where using AI actually saved users time, with the report reaffirming that: “The data is unambiguous: AI does not reduce workloads.” Instead, professionals are now multitasking at a greater rate, and spending less of their days concentrating on complex problems.

“The prevailing assumption about AI and modern work is that both make the workday lighter. Shorter. More manageable. AI handles repetitive tasks, collaboration tools reduce friction and employees do more with less effort,” the ActivTrak report notes. 

“It’s a compelling story. It’s also not what the behavioral data shows.”

To fit these longer routine tasks in their workdays, employees have had to actually sacrifice deep-thinking time—despite CEOs promising AI would increase it. The length of the average focused, uninterrupted work session fell by 9%, and focused work hours dropped by an additional 2%, according to the report. This is a continuation of a three-year downward trend, as the share of time spent “in the zone” fell to 60% in 2025. 

CEOs say AI tools will bring an efficiency wave—and even shorter workweeks 

Tech leaders working fast to win the AI race have been spreading day-dreamy predictions about the future of the world. 

The CEO of Google DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, predicted that we’re only four years away from a “golden era” of prosperity, where the tech will help us “colonize the galaxy” and make people “superhuman” in their roles. And xAI founder Elon Musk believes that traditional work will be completely voluntary in the next 10 to 15 years thanks to the new tools, likening jobs to a hobby. And if AI only continues to get better, even “money will stop being relevant.”

“My prediction is that work will be optional. It’ll be like playing sports or a video game or something like that,” Musk said at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington this year. 

“If you want to work, [it’s] the same way you can go to the store and just buy some vegetables, or you can grow vegetables in your backyard,” he continued. “It’s much harder to grow vegetables in your backyard, and some people still do it because they like growing vegetables.”

Leaders are even speculating that AI efficiency gains will be so great that workweeks will shorten across the board. Zoom CEO Eric Yuan predicts that AI will lighten the load, enabling staffers to only come into the office a handful of days a week. 

“I feel like if AI can make all of our lives better, why do we need to work for five days a week?” Yuan told The New York Times last year. “Every company will support three days, four days a week. I think this ultimately frees up everyone’s time.”

Workers are dealing with ‘AI brain fry’ and burnout 

While some workers are having luck being more productive with the AI tools, they could be burning themselves out.

As employees tap into efficiency gains, they also take on more work in their daily routines, which could lead to burnout, according to a study from the University of California at Berkeley published this year. Burdened by a larger variety of tasks, they’re using the time typically spent for taking natural breaks to complete more AI prompting. Employees need time to recharge—otherwise they run the risk of actually becoming less productive. 

“AI brain fry” has also crept up as an issue in tech-forward workplaces. Employees are overwhelmed by intense oversight of AI tools, and it’s worsening their mental fatigue, according to a 2026 study from Boston Consulting Group. And the data showed that the number of AI tools doesn’t always necessarily link to increased productivity; those who used three or fewer AI tools self-reported improved efficiency, while it plummeted for those who used four or more.

“People were using the tool and getting a lot more done, but also feeling like they were reaching the limits of their brain power, like there were too many decisions to make,” Julie Bedard, study author and managing director and partner at Boston Consulting Group, told Fortune this year. “Things were moving too fast, and they didn’t have the cognitive ability to process all the information and make all the decisions.”

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When Anthropic announced that its Claude® Code tool could help “break the cost barrier” to COBOL modernization, markets reacted as if a long-standing enterprise problem had finally met its silver bullet. The prospect is compelling: AI that can rapidly map, analyze, and refactor decades-old code running mission-critical systems in banking, government, and airlines.

But moments like this often compress complexity into a single narrative. The story quickly became less about what AI is uniquely good at and more about what people hoped it might magically replace.

The truth is both simpler and more exciting: AI isn’t the end of software; it’s the beginning of a new era for it. 

We’ve Never Been Here Before

We’re living through one of the most exciting moments in the history of software. There has never been a better time to work in this industry. AI is reshaping what’s possible, and the level of investment pouring into technology rivals some of the most transformative public infrastructure efforts in modern history.

The national highway system, for instance, didn’t just move cars—it connected economies, created industries, and multiplied human potential. The same is true of AI now.

AI is creating similar conditions for an unprecedented acceleration of innovation. And we should welcome this moment. Every new advance from Anthropic’s breakthroughs in reasoning algorithms to cloud-scale automation makes the entire software ecosystem stronger.

These investments lift everyone working in the software industry, making technology more accessible and extending its benefits across society. But progress, especially rapid progress, often invites misunderstanding.

AI Isn’t a Silver Bullet — It’s a Multiplier

AI is often portrayed as an ultimate solution; a tool that can singlehandedly modernize legacy systems or replace the need for deep architectural work. It’s an appealing idea, but a misleading one.

In practice, AI helps organizations navigate complexity. It can map, refactor, and analyze codebases faster than humanly possible, reducing friction and accelerating discovery. But understanding logic is not the same as redesigning systems. 

Consider a global bank modernizing its risk management platform. AI can read millions of lines of code, identify dependencies, and propose refactoring strategies in hours instead of months. But deciding how that system should evolve, how data should flow, how governance must adapt, and how compliance risk is mitigated requires human reasoning.

Real modernization demands context—reasoning about how applications interact, how governance and data integrity are maintained, and how change unfolds safely across an enterprise. Just as the highway system required sound engineering beneath the asphalt, AI depends on durable infrastructure beneath its models. Intelligence on its own doesn’t guarantee reliability; it amplifies the value of what’s already stable, secure, and well-designed.

This Is a Renaissance, Not a Replacement

This is more than an AI revolution; it’s a renaissance in software itself. For the first time in decades, the industry is rediscovering the power of systems thinking, recognizing that lasting innovation requires harmony between new intelligence and existing architecture. Modernization isn’t about replacement; it’s about evolution at scale.

At Rocket Software, we’ve long viewed modernization as an estate-level discipline—looking across the entirety of an organization’s applications, not just individual programs or platforms. That means understanding how systems depend on one another, how data moves and is governed, and how changes in one layer ripple across the environment. Our focus on explainable AI, governed insights, and architectural visibility helps organizations move forward without abandoning the stability and reliability their businesses depend on. In that sense, modernization is as much about preservation as progress.

The Real Advantage Goes to Builders, Not Chasers

Every major shift in enterprise technology follows a familiar pattern: new capabilities emerge, expectations skyrocket, and then the industry rediscovers the enduring value of the foundations beneath them. AI is the latest and most powerful expression of that cycle.

The opportunity ahead is not to chase disruption, but to build the next generation of systems with intention and reasoning, combining the speed of AI with decades of enterprise software experience. The organizations that will win are the ones that blend speed with structure, innovation with governance, and intelligence with architectural discipline.

It’s a remarkable time to work in software. But the real advantage will go to those who understand that AI is not the finish line, it is the catalyst. The next decade belongs to those who know how to harness its power while strengthening the systems that support 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.

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For generations, AT&T has occupied a familiar place in American business: the phone company, the network operator, the connective tissue behind much of daily communication. But in COO Jeff McElfresh’s telling, that description is no longer big enough. The company’s latest move, a sweeping $250 billion commitment through 2030 tied to fiber, 5G, resilience, public safety, workforce development, and AI era infrastructure, is meant to do more than reinforce its position in telecom. It is designed to position AT&T as the infrastructure layer beneath commerce and AI workloads.

That ambition is framed internally not so much as a pivot but as an escalation. McElfresh describes the decision as a reaffirmation of a role the company has played for decades: investing in the systems that made the modern internet possible in the first place.

He argues that many people still misunderstand what the internet actually is, seeing only the services on top of it rather than the networks that connect servers, devices, and the end users and locations. It is also the pathway through which people and businesses reach cloud computing resources, data centers, AI workloads, and large language models.

That framing matters because it speaks to a deeper strategic question facing AT&T, and really every incumbent in an era defined by AI exuberance. Is the company still best understood as a traditional telecom operator, or is it becoming something more like a connectivity platform or essential digital infrastructure? McElfresh’s answer is expansive. “All the above,” he says.

AT&T remains a telecom company, but one whose future depends on blending wireless and fiber into a single connectivity platform. More than that, McElfresh is making the case that AT&T wants to be the essential network layer of the AI economy. “Our vision is that AT&T becomes the highway upon which commerce and AI workloads traverse,” he tells Fortune.

It is a remark that captures both the scale of the opportunity and the risk. In the AI economy, attention tends to flow toward model makers, chip designers, hyperscale cloud companies, and app developers. But none of those businesses operate in a vacuum. They depend on resilient, high-capacity networks that can quickly and reliably move vast amounts of data. If McElfresh is right, the winners in the next phase of AI will include both those building the intelligence and those building the roads.

From AT&T’s perspective, the company has already been laying the groundwork for that thesis. McElfresh, who has spent some 30 years at AT&T, points to a strategic refocusing over the past several years on its core business of connectivity and convergence, with the company investing heavily in high-performing fiber. Today, he says, AT&T has connected 36 million locations with fiber and aims to reach more than 60 million endpoints, spanning homes, apartment buildings, schools, and government facilities.

The scale of the physical project is striking. Every month, McElfresh says, AT&T is physically installing more than 3,300 miles of fiber optic cable, roughly the distance from New York to Los Angeles. That analogy cuts through the abstraction that often surrounds conversations about AI. Somebody still has to build the underlying network. Permits have to be filed, trenches have to be dug, fiber has to be laid, workers have to be hired, and capital has to be allocated.

That is where the AI narrative shifts from theoretical to operational. McElfresh argues that AT&T is not only building the infrastructure required for an AI-driven economy, but also using AI internally to improve its ability to do so. The company uses AI to support technicians during home visits, assist engineers in determining where to place cell sites, and optimize fiber deployment. He says those tools are already improving productivity and enabling more accurate capital allocation decisions than the company was making just a few years ago.

For all the anxiety surrounding AI’s impact on jobs, McElfresh frames the technology first as a productivity engine that augments work already being done. AI is also becoming part of the machinery that helps AT&T execute its enormous spending plan more efficiently.

The company is already seeing AI begin to alter how data moves across its systems. During the pandemic, AT&T watched remote work redirect network use from downtown business districts to suburban neighborhoods in real time. Now, in the AI era, AT&T is seeing more data fed into the network rather than simply pulled from it, as connected cars and AI-driven software systems upload video, images, and other information to train models or receive their next instructions.

That emerging reality requires AT&T to transform itself alongside the network it is expanding. And that is where one of the interview’s central tensions comes into focus. Spending $250 billion over a decade suggests ambition. Still, it also raises a classic corporate problem: How can a company with the scale and infrastructure footprint of a utility maintain the speed and adaptability of a tech firm?

McElfresh says the challenge is not new, noting that AT&T’s longevity over roughly 150 years has depended on its repeated ability to reinvent itself. He traces that evolution from copper-based voice service to data over copper, then to mobility, and now to fiber-optics and gigabit-speed connectivity.

Perhaps the clearest sign of AT&T’s seriousness about its AI plans is the accounting. McElfresh says that beginning in 2026, AT&T will separate its financial reporting into an advanced connectivity profit-and-loss statement and a legacy one, giving investors a clearer view of where future services are growing and where older parts of the business are shrinking. That move suggests a company trying to force discipline around transformation. Separate reporting creates visibility for investors and gives management a scoreboard, making it harder to hide behind the inertia of a mixed legacy-and-growth portfolio.

There is a cultural dimension to all of this that McElfresh returns to repeatedly. He is a second-generation AT&T employee and has spent roughly three decades at the company, a fact that seems to inform both his reverence for the institution and his impatience with complacency. Asked what a company with this much history needs to guard against if it wants to define the next era rather than merely preserve the last one, he answers without hesitation.

“It’s being too comfortable with maintaining the status quo and managing the company that you have today, as opposed to stepping forward with a clear lens on the market, what kind of competition or technology is orbiting around your industry, and charging ahead on that to go build the company you want.”

That, he suggests, is the central challenge behind AT&T’s infrastructure push. The risk is not any single threat. Cyber threats, infrastructure failures, and geopolitical disruptions are real, but familiar. What keeps McElfresh up at night is the organization’s pace. “What AI is doing to us as a publicly-traded company, as an industry, or just in general, is the expectation that we can all move at a quicker clock speed, which requires a little level of discomfort.”

That brings him back to the $250 billion commitment, which he describes as a bet that AT&T, as both a telecom company and a connectivity platform, will remain central to the future it is helping build.

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At 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time on March 13, 2026, oil was priced at $99.84 per barrel with Brent serving as the benchmark (we’ll explain different benchmarks later in this article). That’s a rise of $1.08 compared with yesterday morning and around $29.47 higher than the price one year ago.

Will oil prices go up?

It’s impossible to forecast oil prices with detailed precision. Many different elements affect the market, but ultimately it boils down to supply and demand. When worries about economic recession, war, and other large-scale disruptions increase, oil’s path can shift fast.

How oil prices translate to gas pump prices

Gas prices at the pump don’t only track crude oil. They also include what it takes to refine and move that fuel, the taxes layered on top, and the extra markup your local station adds to stay in business.

Since crude oil generally makes up a majority of the per-gallon cost, changes in its price have an outsized impact. When oil surges, gas prices typically rise in tandem. But when oil retreats, gas prices often lag on the way down, a trend sometimes described as “rockets and feathers.”

The role of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve

In case of emergency, the U.S. has a store of crude oil known as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Its primary purpose is energy security in case of disaster (think sanctions, severe storm damage, even war). But it can also go a long way toward softening crippling price hikes during supply shocks.

It’s not a long-term answer and is more meant to provide temporary relief, assisting consumers and keeping critical parts of the economy running, like key industries, emergency services, public transportation, etc.

How oil and natural gas prices are linked

Both oil and natural gas are key sources of the energy we use every day. Because of this, a big change in oil prices can affect natural gas. For example, if oil prices increase, some industries may swap natural gas for some segments of their operations where possible, which increases demand for natural gas.

Historical performance of oil

To gauge oil’s performance, we often turn to two benchmarks:

• Brent crude oil, the main global oil benchmark.
• West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the main benchmark of North America

Between these two, Brent better represents global oil performance because it prices much of the world’s traded crude. And, it’s often the best way to track historical oil performance. In fact, even the U.S. Energy Information Administration now uses Brent as its primary reference in its Annual Energy Outlook.

Looking at the Brent benchmark across several decades, oil has been anything but steady. It’s seen spikes due to factors such as wars and supply cuts, and it’s also seen crashes from global recessions and an oversupply (called a “glut”). For example:

• The early 1970s brought the first big oil shock when the Middle East cut exports and imposed an embargo on the U.S. and others during the Yom Kippur War.
• Prices dropped in the mid-1980s for reasons such as lower demand and more non-OPEC oil producers entering the industry.
• Prices spiked again in 2008 with increased global demand, but it soon plummeted alongside the global financial crisis.
• During the 2020 COVID lockdown, oil demand collapsed like never before—bringing prices below $20 per barrel.

All to say, oil’s historical performance has been anything but smooth. Again, it’s hugely affected by wars, recessions, OPEC whims, evolving energy initiatives and policies, and much more.

Energy coverage from Fortune

Looking to stay up-to-date regarding the latest energy developments? Check out our recent coverage:

• Oil and fertilizer prices are climbing. Your grocery bill may follow
• Google and Tesla know electricity is expensive. They’re teaming up to bring you an alternative
• Exxon, Chevron, and other US oil and gas producers and refiners hit all-time-high stock values

Frequently asked questions

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Good morning. Just as more than 100,000 U.S. financial advisors are expected to retire over the next decade, Thrivent is racing to hire the next generation.

The Minneapolis-based financial services company announced this week plans to hire 600 financial advisors in 2026 as part of an effort to expand its workforce. The company exceeded the same hiring target in 2025 and said continued recruitment will help meet rising demand for purpose-driven financial advice.

“This is part of our growth plan,” Nick Cecere, Thrivent’s chief distribution officer, told me. “Adding new advisors is how we continue to grow our business.”

Thrivent recruits advisors through both its traditional field network and a newer Virtual Advice Team, an employee channel where advisors serve clients remotely rather than through a traditional in-person practice. Participants typically spend 12 to 24 months in the program before joining an established advisor team or launching their own practice.

The program attracts both early-career professionals and second-career candidates, Cecere said, like teachers, coaches and business professionals, for example, seeking a career focused on helping clients.

The hiring push also reflects a broader talent shortage in the financial advice industry, as many veteran advisors approach retirement. According to McKinsey, addressing this gap requires changing the advisor operating model to increase productivity (lead generation, teaming, and an AI- and technology-enabled shift toward value-adding activities) and also attracting new talent to the industry faster than before.

Thrivent, No. 388 on the Fortune 500, is led by CEO Terry Rasmussen. It has more than $212 billion in assets under management and advisement, more than 4,500 employees, and serves 2.4 million clients. Thrivent was founded in 1902 as an aid association for Lutherans, and its banking and investment services are open to nonmembers, regardless of religious affiliation, according to the company.

It operates regional hubs in Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Minneapolis and Milwaukee that support the virtual advice program, and the company is considering further expansion.

Thrivent is investing in AI to support, not replace, its advisors. “We’ve made the strategic decision to hire more financial advisors because it will enable us to serve even more people,” according to David Royal, Thrivent’s EVP and chief financial and investment officer. 

The personal relationships and trust between Thrivent’s advisors and clients are “deeply important” for planning the future, building legacies, and improving their communities, Royal said. Technology, including AI, helps modernize the business and “gives our teams better tools so they can focus on high‑value, purpose‑driven work,” he said.

Strong advisor retention and client satisfaction remain central to Thrivent’s long-term growth strategy, Cecere said, as the industry adapts to changing demographics and new digital tools.

Have a good weekend.

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

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The Iran war is reshaping global flight paths, posing a threat to Southeast Asia’s key tourism sector. Iranian missile and drone attacks have shut down key Middle Eastern aviation hubs like Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha, cutting off popular travel routes for European and U.S. travelers to get to Southeast Asia’s beaches and temples. Travel experts now fear that countries like Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia may soon see a dip in tourists. 

“There aren’t non-stop flights between Europe and destinations like Bali and Cambodia,” Brendan Sobie, a Singapore-based independent aviation analyst, tells Fortune. “These countries, which are heavily dependent on tourism, are also more impacted due to the trickle down effect on their economies.”

Tourism is a mainstay of Southeast Asia’s economy. In 2024, tourism accounted for 9.4% of Cambodia’s GDP, and 12% of Thailand’s. 

Major Gulf carriers including Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad have scrapped thousands of flights to and from the Middle East. This has ripple effects on some Southeast Asian carriers; Malaysia Airlines, for instance, relies on Qatar Airways to move tourists from the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East into Southeast Asia.

“Malaysia Airlines doesn’t fly into Europe much, except for London and Paris,” said Mayur Patel, the Asia head at aviation consultancy OAG. “A lot of their codeshares were through Doha with Qatar Airways, and if airplanes can’t fly into Doha, it would certainly put a constraint on traffic flow.”

How have global airlines been hit?

Airline networks worldwide have been rattled by airspace closures and skyrocketing jet fuel prices, which have doubled since the Iran conflict began. Airlines are suspending some routes to the Middle East for weeks, if not months. Carriers are also slapping fuel surcharges on flights, and Air New Zealand pulled its guidance on Tuesday due to increased fuel costs.

“In the first week of the war, we saw a 50% drop in total bookings,” said Lucy Jackson Walsh, the co-founder and managing director of Lightfoot Travel, a luxury travel firm with offices in Dubai, London, Singapore and Hong Kong. Bookings for Middle Eastern destinations—about 15% of Lightfoot’s business—vanished almost immediately.

“We’re shifting our focus towards Asia‑to‑Asia regional travel and also trips to further‑flung destinations like Australia which don’t have to route through the Middle East,” she said.

Supply chain disruptions from closed airspace and waterways are also delaying aircraft maintenance, repair and operations (MRO), and exacerbating existing aircraft delivery delays from manufacturers like Airbus and Boeing.

“There’s a shortage of aerospace spare parts and components, which may be delivered from Europe or the U.S.,” Kent Yar, an independent aerospace consultant, told Fortune. “To manufacture airplane parts, you also need raw materials… everything boils down to supply chain issues.” He estimates that airplane spare parts have seen a 15% jump in price since the Iran war began.

Do any airlines stand to benefit?

Still, some Asian carriers like Singapore Airlines and Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific, which fly several non-stop routes between Asia and Europe, might have an edge over other disrupted carriers. “Existing non-stop flights between Asia and Europe have already re-routed in light of the Russia-Ukraine war, and don’t necessarily use Iran or Middle Eastern airspace,” Sobie explained. 

But this will be a slim silver lining compared to the overall hit to the sector. 

“I don’t think anybody’s happy,” Sobie said. “Some airlines will have routes that see an extra surge in load factor and revenue—and that’s natural—but it does not offset the negative of how this crisis has impacted the overall industry.”

Even so, some in the industry hope things will recover when, or if, the conflict dies down. 

“What I’m hoping is that we’ll see revenge travel after the conflict dies down,” says Walsh of Lightfoot. “Like after the COVID‑19 pandemic, when markets came back, travel took off again.”

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