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Hobbling on one leg, Carlos Ulberg refused to let an injured knee ruin the opportunity he earned at UFC 327 on Saturday night.

With President Donald Trump sitting cageside, Ulberg delivered a perfect left hook to Jiri Prochazka’s chin and won the undisputed light heavyweight belt with a knockout at the 3:45 mark of the first round.

“I blew out my knee, but I never counted myself out,” Ulberg said. “I knew all I needed was that one shot and I ended up getting it. So I knew that Jiri was hesitant to come forward. And as soon as I landed my left hand he’s going.

“It’s about getting those moments.”

Ulberg (15-1-0) appeared to tweak something early in the first round when he planted his foot and his right knee buckled awkwardly. Prochazka (32-6-1) immediately went to work on Ulberg’s left leg, repeatedly landing leg kicks with hopes of taking both legs away, rather than attacking aggressively to end it.

“I felt sorry (for) him, and this is one of the biggest lessons in my life,” Prochazka said. “That fight was won, I had it, it was in my hands. I saw his injury, and … I will be back. Life is about that, learn and be better.”

The matchup was made after former champion Alex Pereira vacated the belt to move up and challenge for the interim heavyweight crown at UFC Freedom 250 at the White House on June 14, on what will be Trump’s 80th birthday.

Earlier, on his way to the arena, Trump’s Truth Social account posted an advertisement for the event.

Trump entered the Kaseya Center shortly after 9 p.m., accompanied by UFC president Dana White and several members of the Trump family.

As a Kid Rock song blasted from the speakers, Trump walked to his seat, where Secretary of State Marco Rubio was waiting. Also nearby was Sergio Gor, the U.S. ambassador to India.

Trump, who shared several smiles with the cameras, shook hands with attendees on the floor and made a point of greeting the UFC broadcast team, including podcaster Joe Rogan.

A crowd of onlookers could be seen filming the presidential motorcade upon arrival.

In the co-main event, Paulo Costa (16-4-0) used a right roundhouse to the head to drop Azamat Murzakanov (16-1-0) and end the bout at the 1:23 mark of the third round. Costa stepped onto the apron of the Octagon after his victory to shake Trump’s hand, and the president praised him. Costa acknowledged Trump during his post-fight interview with Rogan.

Josh Hokit (9-0-0) and Curtis Blaydes (19-6-0) battered each other in the slugfest of the night, with Trump excitedly watching the heavyweights as fans chanted “This is awesome!” as the fighters bloodied each other’s faces. Hokit won by unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28).

White took to social media after Hokit’s win to reveal that a matchup between Hokit and Derrick Lewis had been added to UFC Freedom 250. According to White’s video, Trump asked why Lewis wasn’t on the White House card. White said he called Lewis and offered him a fight, and when Rogan jokingly asked during the broadcast if there was room for Hokit on the card, the match came together.

“President Trump built half of that fight, Rogan built the other half,” White said in the video. “Both guys have agreed and accepted the fight.”

In a light heavyweight clash, Dominick Reyes (16-5-0) defeated Johnny Walker (22-10-0) with a split decision (29-28, 28-29, 29-28).

Featherweight Cub Swanson (32-14-0) ended a celebrated career with a devastating first-round TKO of Nate Landwehr (18-9-0). The 42-year-old Swanson overmatched Landwehr with a bevy of punches to the head before referee Herb Dean stepped in to stop the fight with 54 seconds left in the opening round.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Family-business instincts are invaluable — until they become limiting. They teach resilience, loyalty, pragmatism, and financial discipline. But they do not necessarily teach you how to scale leadership beyond yourself, build for global markets, or invest aggressively ahead of returns. This is further amplified in Switzerland, where there is a cultural bias to stay humble and focus on what’s realistic. These are clear strengths. Yet global technology markets often reward – and require – a different posture: global ambition, rapid growth and the willingness to invest ahead of certain returns. 

I grew up in Switzerland surrounded by entrepreneurs: my grandfather in construction, my father in surveying, my uncles in packaging and construction. That heritage came with a distinctly Swiss mindset to stay humble, build practical solutions, and prove yourself locally before daring to look abroad. Those lessons shaped Scandit in our early days to bootstrap, experiment, and find initial product-market fit. 

But as Scandit grew, I realized that what had made us strong could also hold us back. To grow globally, I had to unlearn some of the traits essential in a small-to-medium family business – the instinct to improvise and solve problems yourself, to treat cash flow as the key measure of financial health, and to nurture a local community of stakeholders. Global growth required the ability to scale an organization, to invest ahead of revenue, and reach a global community you hadn’t yet met.

What I’ve come to learn is that if you’re leading a company beyond traditional business models ( that is, offering tangible products or in-person services that customers can directly experience), the mindset that can make a small-to-medium business entrepreneur successful can eventually hold you back. Not because that mindset is wrong, but because it’s optimized for a world without venture-style economics. 

With that in mind, here are are four skills that I had to unlearn to scale our business to where we are today – with seven global offices and more than 2,100 customers, including seven of the top 10 retailers worldwide

Resilience and improvisation: From superpower to bottleneck

Growing up in a family of SMB entrepreneurs, problem-solving wasn’t a task you clocked into. It was simply how life worked. At dinner, you’d talk through challenges and solutions. On weekends, you’d troubleshoot whatever popped up. As a result, you don’t perceive challenges as interruptions – you see challenges as puzzles. You learn to stay calm, work with imperfect information, and keep moving.

As our company scaled, though, I quickly realized I couldn’t be the main person improvising and solving problems. In order to grow, you need to build a scalable organization, bringing in people you trust, giving them real ownership, and letting them solve problems autonomously. My role shifted from solving problems myself to building an organization where great problem-solving can happen without me.

There was also something unexpected in that shift. Once we had kids, I was able to protect evenings for dinner and put my kids to bed most nights. And once the house is quiet, I’ll sometimes go back to work – something I recognize from childhood: sitting nearby while my father worked through a tough issue late into the night. The difference now is I’m choosing where my attention matters most, and I’m building a team I can rely on for the rest.

What I’ve learned is that resilience helps you survive uncertainty. But it can also disguise organizational inefficiency. Growth requires organization and systems, not just resilience. If your team’s success still depends on your ability to improvise, you’re scaling effort, not impact.

The Cash-Flow Prison: When discipline becomes an anchor

Growing up, I absorbed a deep respect for building businesses on what you have, not on what you may have someday. My family’s companies were mainly built on cash flow – growing by delivering value, collecting payment and investing back into the business. This instilled in me a strong sense of responsibility that every investment should be rooted in results, and progress should be tangible.

That mindset served me well when starting Scandit. Coming straight from academia, my co‑founders and I bootstrapped the business during the early years. We ran lean, funded ourselves through early customers and competitive grants, and thought twice before spending extra. We’d share hotel rooms on business trips because it felt sensible.

But at some point, that instinct became an anchor. You raise capital, and the ground shifts – scaling requires deploying capital ahead of returns, not after. Learning to spend significant amounts of money proactively to unlock future growth was one of the essential mindset shifts in taking Scandit from a promising deep tech startup to a global company.

With early investments and subsequent Series B, C, and D rounds that brought our total funding to $273 million, we were suddenly operating at a scale my family’s businesses never had to contemplate. Investment was strategy – a key obligation to deliver on the business plan that would rationalize our valuation. In the earlier days, spending ahead of revenue sometimes still felt like malpractice: spending $20,000 on a marketing campaign could feel reckless. It felt even more risky not to spend.

What I’ve learned is that maturity in business means learning the difference between an expense and an investment. Both draw cash, but only one compounds. In the early days, I had to train myself to think beyond the monthly P&L, and remember that some costs buy future advantage – not necessarily an immediate return.

This shift isn’t about abandoning discipline but refining it. The same scrutiny that once questioned every line item needs to evaluate whether spending is protecting equity or creating it. What’s frugal at  $10 million can become shortsighted at $100 million. As scale changes, so do the levers that create real value. 

From Local Community Thinking to Global Stakeholder Strategy

In a traditional business, your local community is often everything. Your customers might live next door. Your suppliers know your kids. Success feels local, personal, reciprocal. Your company and your community rise together.

Scaling globally breaks that intimacy. When your reach becomes global, that local community instinct can start to fracture your focus. You can’t personally connect with everyone. 

At scale, you need to be clear about who truly matters to your mission: your highest-impact customers, your top partners and internal stakeholders. When your business broadens beyond the familiar faces and places where trust was once built naturally, that systematic clarity becomes your new compass. You can’t nurture every relationship in the same way. But you can design for consistency in how you – and your team – listen, learn and deliver value. 

What I’ve learned is that the challenge of scale isn’t losing connection – it’s institutionalizing it. You shift from personal proximity to establishing deliberate systems and processes that help you and your teams stay close to key customer needs, reinforce credibility, and ensure the organization continues to earn and expand trust at every level.

In doing so, you protect the intimacy that built your company in the first place, while creating the foundation to grow it far beyond where it began. The leaders who struggle most in this transition keep trying to replicate the intimacy of a small circle at global scale. That’s not loyalty – it’s exhaustion disguised as purpose.

The Skill of Strategic Unlearning

Many traditional family businesses are built around cashflow, not scale. This creates a ceiling to the size and reach of the businesses and the speed in which they scale resulting in a stronger need for the business owner to remain at the centre. These factors reduce the applicability and appeal to venture-style funding.  

Scaling Scandit required unlearning some of the specific instincts that helped make my family’s businesses successful.  It’s not about abandoning what shaped you — it’s about re‑evaluating its applicability and purpose in your current context. The same logic applies to the influence of AI we see today and how that is evolving the way businesses, teams and roles operate. 

When you remove the constraints of operating like a traditional family business, or re-imagining how your business may operate in an AI-led era, you need to regularly ask: “What instinct or habit served us before that no longer serves us now?” That question keeps the organization elastic—building mechanisms for reflection, outside perspectives, and empowering people who think differently from the founding team. 

What I’ve learned is that the process of unlearning, when institutionalized, keeps a growing company from becoming a prisoner of its past success and norms. Just as you design systems for hiring or forecasting, you must design one for unlearning. Because the hardest step in a company’s evolution isn’t learning something new but deciding what to stop or reimagine.

That is, ultimately, the real challenge of leading a company through a growth journey. The most expensive mistake isn’t necessarily doing the wrong thing. Sometimes it might be doing the right thing for too long.

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

A 93-year-old woman who lived less than a mile from Augusta National Golf Club refused to sell her property to the club until her dying breath, rebuffing years of expansion efforts by the golf club that hosts the celebrated Masters Tournament. 

Elizabeth Thacker lived in a three-bedroom, single-story house on a 0.67 acre lot that was built in 1956, according to property records. It’s a normal-looking home in a far-from-normal location: just outside the north gate of the Augusta National Golf Club.

Thacker lived in the home at 1112 Stanley Road in Augusta, Ga. with her husband, Herman Thacker, and the couple raised their kids there. Their grandson, a pro golfer named Scott Brown, also spent time there as a child, NJ.com reported.

Elizabeth Thacker died in July last year, at the age of 93, while Herman Thacker died in 2019 at the age of 86. The home at 1112 Stanley Road is still in Elizabeth Thacker’s name, according to property records. Thacker’s daughter Robin Thacker Rinder, confirmed to Fox Business on April 9 the home has not been sold.

‘Money ain’t everything’

Thacker told NJ.com in 2017 the couple did not want to leave their home even as Augusta National, which hosts the Masters tournament yearly, made offers for the property. Records show the property was last valued at $338,733 in 2025, above Augusta’s median listing price of $240,000, according to Redfin. Augusta National has made Thacker multiple offers over the years above the home’s estimated value, Thacker’s daughter Robin Thacker Rinder told Fox Business.

Still, the late Herman Thacker told NJ.com in 2017 that the couple was staying put because “money ain’t everything.” 

Augusta National Golf Club has become a revered athletic landmark as host of the biggest golf tournament in the world, the Masters which started in 1934, and for its superstar winners, including Tiger Woods, Arnold Palmer, and Jack Nicklaus. Last year, Northern Irish golfer Rory McIlroy won the tournament and claimed an iconic green blazer.

Augusta National’s $280 million land grab

For years, Augusta National has tried to capitalize on that clout by acquiring surrounding properties for well above their asking price, some through limited liability companies with names like BC Acquisition Co. and WSQ, The Wall Street Journal reported. The golf clup has spent $280 million to acquire property surrounding the course over the past two decades, according to Golf.com.

A spokesperson for Augusta National did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

Through its buying frenzy, the golf club has targeted homes like that of Thacker and her neighbors, many of which sold their properties to Augusta National. In 2018, one neighbor sold her three-bedroom ranch home, which is only an 11-minute walk from Thacker’s home, to the club for $1.1 million, the Journal reported. And the Thackers themselves sold another home they owned to Augusta National for $1.2 million, Fox Business reported.

The properties the club buys are mostly razed. Steps away from Thacker’s home, an unpaved parking lot welcomes visitors just outside of the north gate. As attendees visit the club for the Masters this weekend, many will likely walk right by the Thacker home to enter the club near the clubhouse and tournament practice area. 

Still, her daughter, Thacker Rinder, said Augusta National hasn’t approached the family with new offers in the past year since the elder Thacker died, she told Fox Business. She would only sell, she says, “if the price is right.”

Thacker Rinder is now living in the house, and, like her mother, plans to keep the home in the family and is “taking good care of it,” she said.

A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on April 12, 2025.

More on golf:

• Scottie Scheffler joined Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy in golf’s $100M club
• Why brands are making long-term bets on women’s golf at Augusta
• The 2026 Masters winner will earn 113 times more than the first champion did in 1934

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

There’s a peculiar kind of vertigo that comes with being an affluent American in 2026. You’ve made it. By nearly every historical metric, you are living in spectacular abundance. You have a six-figure income, a retirement account, a nice car. And yet something feels wrong — crowded, competitive, precarious. The airport lounge is too full. The housing market makes no sense. The life you thought you’d paid for keeps getting more expensive.

This is not an illusion. It is, economists are increasingly arguing, a structural feature of the new American economy — one that a sweeping recent report from the American Enterprise Institute attempted to describe, but only partially explained. Because the real story isn’t just about income brackets and inflation adjustments. It’s about a nation that has grown so wealthy, so fast, that it has lost the ability to recognize its own prosperity — and about a media environment that has systematically replaced the old, grounded benchmarks of success with an endless, algorithmically curated window into the lives of the ultrarich.

The AEI report, by labor economist Stephen Rose and Scott Winship, a senior fellow at the institute, makes a straightforward and data-heavy argument: the core middle class has shrunk not because Americans have been left behind, but because so many have moved up. The share of families in the “upper-middle class” — defined as those earning between roughly $133,000 and $400,000 annually for a family of three — tripled from 10% in 1979 to 31% in 2024. For the first time in American history, they argued, more families sit above the core middle class threshold than below it. The finding directly challenges decades of political rhetoric, from both parties, that has treated a “hollowing out” of the middle class as settled fact.

“It is simply inaccurate to characterize the ‘shrinking’ middle class as reflecting diminished economic security rather than material progress,” Rose and Winship wrote.

The claim has substantial merit. But it also misses something fundamental about why Americans feel the way they do — something no income chart can capture.

A century of progress, decades of disruption

To understand what the AEI is really measuring, it helps to zoom out. McKinsey Global Institute director Chris Bradley, speaking at a recent media briefing with journalists upon the release of A Century of Plenty: A story of Progress for Generations to Come, offered a striking frame: in terms of GDP, the world of 2025 had wealth roughly 24 times larger than the world of 1925, as measured by the Maddison Project. Calvin Coolidge and Winston Churchill — the two most powerful men of their era — both lost children to infections that penicillin could have cured in an afternoon. The average American of 1925, Bradley noted, citing his team’s considerable research for its new book, lived at a standard of living roughly comparable to South Africa today.

Seen through that lens, the AEI’s central finding is consistent with a story of genuine, broad-based human flourishing. Median family income, adjusted for inflation and declining family size, rose 52% between 1979 and 2024. Even families at the 10th percentile of income were roughly 30% better off in 2024 than their counterparts in 1979. The share of Americans in poverty or near-poverty fell from 30% to 19%. These are not trivial gains. In fact, the authors noted, “there was no net movement of families downward out of the core middle class.”

But Bradley was equally emphatic that the century of plenty has arrived alongside what he called “decades of disruption.” Since the 2008 financial crisis, the developed world has lived through a prolonged productivity drought. The productivity-enhancing investment that generated postwar prosperity slowed dramatically, Bradley argued, not because ideas ran out but because, in McKinsey’s view, the world “stopped building.” (Bradley and several co-authors previously tackled this issue in a 2024 paper for McKinsey.) The result is an uneven landscape where wealth has surged dramatically at the top — and where the very definition of what it means to be “wealthy” has become contested terrain.

The problem with the scorecard

The AEI report deserves credit for its methodological transparency: it uses absolute income thresholds adjusted for inflation rather than the relative thresholds favored by the Pew Research Center. Under Pew’s approach, the middle class can mathematically shrink even when everyone’s income rises substantially — because membership is defined by closeness to a median that keeps moving up. That’s a genuine flaw in much of the conventional wisdom.

But the AEI’s alternative has blind spots of its own.

Most critically, the report measures income and largely ignores wealth, debt, and geographic reality. A family earning $140,000 in San Francisco or Manhattan — technically “upper-middle class” by AEI’s definition — may be renting indefinitely, carrying six-figure student debt, and priced out of ownership in the neighborhoods where good schools exist. Nick Maggiulli, chief operating officer at Ritholtz Wealth Management and author of The Wealth Ladder, captured the paradox in conversation with Fortune last year: “The economy wasn’t built to handle this many people with this much money.”

Maggiulli’s framework, which classifies Americans by wealth rather than income, finds that the population of Americans with between $1 million and $10 million in net worth — his “level 4” affluent class — has more than doubled, rising from 7% of U.S. households in 1989 to 18% by 2022–23. These people are, by any historical standard, extraordinarily successful. And yet, Maggiulli told Fortune, “there’s a good portion of them that feel like they don’t have enough … they feel like they’re just getting by.” The reason is competition: as the upper-middle class has exploded in size, it has flooded the markets for housing, elite education, premium travel, and luxury amenities — inflating prices at every level and making the lifestyle associated with prosperity feel perpetually out of reach.

In an emailed statement to Fortune, Winship pointed out that wealth is ambiguous as a measure of wellbeing, since two people with the same lifetime income may have very different wealth levels if one prefers to, say, consume goods and services while the other prefers to save more. He added that his team at AEI is working on a a follow-up to this report that uses wealth data instead of income data and it appears to be showing similar results in which “the middle class shrinks, but only because the upper-middle class booms.”

The broken mirror

But competition for scarce goods is only half the story. The other half is about who Americans think they’re competing with — and how dramatically that reference point has shifted.

A generation ago, your sense of where you stood was shaped by the people you could actually see: your neighbors, your coworkers, your brother-in-law’s new deck. The benchmarks were local, concrete, and roughly within reach. A family doctor didn’t spend much time thinking about how investment bankers lived, because that world was mostly invisible to him.

That architecture of comparison has been demolished. Social media, and the broader content economy built around aspiration, has replaced the neighborhood with an infinite scroll of curated wealth. The family earning $175,000 — a household income that would have felt unambiguously prosperous in any prior decade — now spends its evenings absorbing content from people who vacation in the Maldives, renovate kitchens that cost more than a median home, and treat business class as a hardship. The algorithm doesn’t show you people who are doing roughly as well as you are. It shows you people who make your life look small.

This isn’t just envy. It’s a genuine perceptual distortion. When your daily media diet is dominated by the top 0.1%, the top 10% starts to feel like the middle. A paid-off mortgage, two reliable cars, an annual trip to the coast, a fully funded 401(k) — by any sane historical standard, this is an extraordinary life. It is better than what 95 percent of all humans who have ever lived experienced. It is better than what most humans alive right now experience. But it doesn’t feel extraordinary, because the screen in your pocket has redefined what extraordinary looks like.

Charlie Munger said it plainly before his death: “People are less happy about the state of affairs than they were when things were way tougher.” He compared today to the Great Depression — and found it bewildering. “It’s weird for somebody my age,” he said. Munger was describing something real, but he was looking at it from the vantage point of someone who remembered a world where comparison was still local. What he was witnessing — what we are all witnessing — is the first generation in history whose sense of economic identity is shaped less by what they have than by what an algorithm tells them they’re missing.

The upper-middle class got the gains. The rich got more

Here is where the AEI report’s own numbers tell an uncomfortable story. The share of income going to the upper-middle class and the rich combined surged from 28% in 1979 to 68% of all family income by 2024. The top 1 percent’s share doubled from 5% to 9% — and the authors themselves concede this is likely an undercount, because the wealthiest Americans largely do not participate in the Census surveys underlying the data. Winship noted that a study by Gerald Auten and David Splinter, based off tax data, plausibly estimates that the top 1 percent actually increased their income from 10% to 17% over the same, meaning the upper middle class hasn’t swelled by as much as the AEI study calculates. Still, Winship said the study paints a picture of “broad prosperity, unequally shared.”

Bradley, surveying the global landscape, argued that when you remove borders entirely, the world has never been more equal. “it’s not finished progress but tremendous progress. Six times the living standards, four times the population.” Hundreds of millions have been lifted out of poverty in China, India, and Southeast Asia, he noted, and the bottom quintile worker in the United States, including taxes and transfers, is roughly twice as well off as in 1980, according to data from the Congressional Budget Office.

The U.S. is so broadly wealthy, Bradley argued, that it has the unique condition of its poorest members being wealthier than the average world citizen. “I always look at U.S. inequality as a tricky topic,” he said. “It’s a bit like looking up at a skyscraper. Yes, there’s some people living on the 20th floor, some people living on the 100th, but when you’re on the 10th floor, it all looks pretty high.”

But Bradley was also clear-eyed about what drives inequality within wealthy nations: productivity differentials between industries. Healthcare, education, and construction have not seen the productivity breakthroughs that technology, finance, and professional services have. The result is wage compression at the bottom and explosive wealth creation at the top — with the upper-middle class caught awkwardly in between, statistically thriving but existentially anxious.

It’s broad prosperity, unequally shared. As we show, income rises substantially across the entire income distribution. At the 10^th percentile it rose by 29%, and at the median it rose 52%. Moreover, it’s hardly clear that if the 95^th percentile had only risen by 50% instead of doubling that everyone else would have seen bigger gains. If none of the AI firms had ever formed, we’d have fewer extremely wealthy people and the income of shareholders at the 95^th percentile would be lower. But how would that increase income lower down? The same point is broadly true of economic growth generally. Preventing inequality from rising could lower growth. Studies that compare counties, states, or countries come to mixed conclusions on the question of whether having higher inequality correlates with having lower or higher median incomes.

The Problems of a Uniquely Affluent Society

What the AEI report ultimately captures — even if it doesn’t frame it this way — is not the decline of the middle class but the arrival of a society wealthy enough to generate entirely new categories of scarcity.

When only a small fraction of Americans could afford to fly, airport lounges felt luxurious. When million-dollar net worths were rare, a $1 million home purchase felt like a clear signal of having made it. As Maggiulli noted, a net worth of $1 million placed someone in the top 5% of Americans in the late 1990s; today, that same threshold places you in the top 20% — and the gap keeps widening. The goalposts are not stationary, and no inflation adjustment can fully capture the social and psychological experience of that shift.

Bradley said he sees this as part of a broader signal failure: the world’s “antenna,” as he puts it, is still tuned to the old frequency, while the underlying economic reality has changed its rules. The AEI’s instinct is correct that relative-income definitions of the middle class obscure real progress. But the lived experience of the upper-middle class — stretched by housing costs, anxious about status, competing ferociously for a fixed supply of desirable neighborhoods and elite colleges — is also real. And it is made immeasurably worse by a media ecosystem that has turned the wealth of the few into the wallpaper of everyone’s daily life.

The middle class is not dying. But Americans have lost the ability to see their own prosperity clearly. The class that replaced the old middle is discovering, with some surprise, that success at scale creates its own form of scarcity. The ladder everyone climbed turned out to lead to a landing crowded with other climbers — all of them, objectively, doing very well; all of them staring at their phones, watching someone on a higher landing, and wondering why they feel so far behind.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Most young people are told the path to prosperity is to study hard, maybe go to college, and get a grad job. Not Grindr CEO George Arison. Born in the 1980s Soviet Union, his father told him he had only two shots at success—one of which was learning to be proficient with a firearm.

“My dad would come to say good night and spend 30 minutes talking to me about the fact that, in his view, the Soviet Union would collapse by the time I was 15, and the only people who would succeed if the Soviet Union collapsed were people who either spoke English or knew how to shoot guns,” Arison exclusively tells Fortune.

“And seeing that he did not expect me to know how to shoot guns or be good at it, my only alternative was to be really, really good at speaking English.”

While other kids his age were raised on tightly controlled messaging, he says he was fortunate to have access to global news channels—and that’s how he perfected his English, opening him up to a world of possibilities when he eventually moved to the US as a teen. 

“I had a great grandfather who lived in the same apartment building that we lived in, across the hall, and he had been a very senior officer in the Soviet military during World War Two, so as a result, he had special privileges,” he explains, while adding that one of those privileges was access to a radio which would sometimes catch non Soviet radio frequencies.

“So oftentimes, when something was happening, he would be able to listen to Voice of America… and so I could actually absorb some of this stuff in ways that most other kids could not.”

Later, Arison’s grandad similarly had access to cable before others. “The two cable channels you got were CNN and C-SPAN, which I think is really ironic with government sanctioning… My parents would never let me watch TV, but they would let me watch this because it was great to practice English.”

By the age of 12, Arison had memorized the full names of every member of Congress—and two years later, in 1992, the Soviet Union dissolved. But just before, he had successfully applied to a boarding school in Maine, U.S., thanks to an American exchange family. He used the only public fax machine in Tbilisi to smuggle his application across the border, setting him on a path few could imagine from a city still behind the Iron Curtain.

Grindr CEO says Gen Z’s career expectations are ‘out of whack’ with reality

Like many immigrant U.S. students, Arison’s free time was spent working multiple jobs. It’s the one thing that separated him from the majority of his classmates, he recalls. One of the jobs he held was working at the college campus’s cafe until the early hours of the morning. Oftentimes, he’d return to the dorm after finishing his shift at around 4 a.m. and still be up for class later, like everyone else. 

He also navigated the challenges of being a gay man in a new country, finding guidance from older gay men—mentors who helped him navigate both personal and professional growth.

Arison made his first entrepreneurial mark by founding Taxi Magic, now called Curb. He sold it for an undisclosed amount, before taking the reins at Grindr—the LGBTQ+ dating app with 14 million monthly users, in October 2022—landing a $1 million-a-year salary, plus bonus and stock options.

And he says his success, in part, is thanks to those early hardships he experienced—now, as a CEO, it’s something he looks out for in talent. 

“I think that life being difficult teaches you a lot of challenging things, and showing that you overcame those challenges is oftentimes very appealing to people like me,” Arison says. But in reality, he’s taken stock of the fact that many Gen Zers lack that grit.

In his eyes, having access to the world’s information at their fingertips has created a generation of young people who think they’re experts, without having put the work in—and seeing twenty-something influencers with millions in the bank only adds to that delusion. 

“The expectations around ‘hey, I read this in Wikipedia, so I’m an expert in sales,’ is very different from anything I ever experienced,” he explains, while adding that their expectations for promotions and progression are “out of whack with reality.”

“And then the second thing is, I think people want to get credit for how difficult their life might have been… But if you view it as, because my life was difficult, I deserve XYZ, you really hurt yourself.”

Grindr CEO’s advice for Gen Z: Be patient and willing to put the work in

Like the CEOs of Pret and Cisco, Arison stresses the importance of learning the ropes first, and mastering the unglamorous early roles before worrying about a promotion.

And for those racing toward the corner office far too early, he offers a reality check: most companies have a single CEO and a long queue of people with decades of experience competing for that spot. The average age of a Fortune 500 CEO is around 57, not the early twenties.

“Everything I really know is either because I learned it myself or I learned it from my mentors,” the CEO stresses. “I did not learn how to raise capital because I read about raising capital. I learned how to raise capital because I watched my mentor, and then I learned how to do that from him. It was a learning process.”

“And I had no expectations that I would have my boss’ job at 27 years old,” Arison adds. “Only the truly exceptional ones will break out and become amazing—that’s an exception to the rule.”

“So my advice would be: Be a lot more cognizant that learning a professional skill set is almost all about apprenticeship. You need to be very willing to put in the work that it takes. Find really good mentors—seek them out—and learn from them.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Gartner projects that one in five of companies will eliminate more than half their middle managers by the end of this year. The efficiency story sells itself. Flatten the structure, speed up decisions, improve margins. The savings are real. What won’t show up until 2028 is that you just destroyed the only system that actually developed leaders.

Middle managers made up one-third of all layoffs in 2023. Today, 41% of employees work at companies that cut management layers. And the coordination work didn’t just disappear. Some of it moved to senior leaders who were already underwater. Some of it stopped happening entirely. What also stopped — and what nobody is tracking — is the coaching. Your high-potential employees aren’t learning how to make tough calls anymore. There’s nobody with time to show them how to navigate organizational politics. Nobody is translating what the CEO means into what the team should actually do.

That wasn’t bureaucracy. That was leadership development happening in real time. Cut it and development stops. The formal programs with external facilitators keep running, sure. But the practical learning — where someone makes a bad decision and their manager walks them through why it failed? That’s gone.

One tech company cut 70% of its engineering managers in 2024. It saved $3.2 million. The VP of Engineering now has 47 direct reports. He approves decisions in Slack between meetings — no context, no coaching. Six months in, their best senior engineer quit. The exit interview was blunt: “Nobody here knows what I’m working on or why it matters.” The VP was too swamped to notice she’d checked out until the resignation hit.

Companies flattening their structures assume they can hire senior leaders externally when needed. That assumption is breaking down. Only 6% of Gen Z wants senior leadership roles, according to Deloitte’s research. They watched middle managers get eliminated for efficiency. They learned that building toward management means building toward something your company considers expendable. The pipeline you’re counting on already concluded your leadership path isn’t worth it.

The crisis shows up about two years after the cuts. A VP quits. You look at your org chart for a replacement. Nobody’s close. You offer it to your strongest director. She says no — she saw what happened to the last two people who took that role. So you search externally. That hire lasts maybe 14 months because whatever burned out your last VP is still there.

One logistics company cut 65% of its regional managers in 2023, saving $2.3 million. Last quarter they desperately needed a VP of Operations. Nobody internal was anywhere near ready. The external search failed. Twice. Nobody wanted to join a company known for eliminating the middle layer. They promoted their strongest director anyway. She’s now learning a VP role she needed at least three more years to prepare for. Operations are struggling while she figures it out. And in three years, when the board asks why nobody internal was ready to step up, the answer is going to be sitting in that 2023 efficiency deck.

The math doesn’t work out. You save $2 million cutting managers today. Three years from now you’re spending $4 million replacing the expertise that left, hiring externally at massive premiums because you have zero internal bench, and cleaning up mistakes from underprepared promotions learning roles they weren’t ready for. The CFO sees two line items in different years. The CHRO knows it’s the same strategic failure, just delayed.

Forty percent of current leaders are thinking about quitting, according to DDI’s research. The ones who survived your flattening are buried. Your high-potentials are watching them work themselves to death and reconsidering whether leadership is actually worth it. The external market is full of people who looked at your roles and decided they’d rather do something else. You cut the layer where people learned to lead. In three years you’ll need leaders badly. The pipeline you destroyed isn’t going to refill itself in time.

Having worked with enough companies post-flattening, the patterns are clear. Strategic initiatives stall out because you don’t have the leadership depth to execute them. Operational decisions get kicked up to VPs who don’t have the bandwidth to make them thoughtfully. Institutional knowledge walks out when experienced managers leave and nobody captured what they knew. The efficiency gains look brilliant until you hit the point where you can’t grow anymore because you don’t have leaders to deploy.

You’re not optimizing for efficiency. You’re optimizing for this quarter and guaranteeing yourself a crisis in three years. Leadership development takes years of repetition and coaching. You can’t compress it into six months when you suddenly realize you need it. And you can’t hire your way out when the generation you’re trying to recruit doesn’t want what you’re offering.

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

Some of the world’s most successful companies revved up their success in the least glamorous of places. Google and Amazon were both launched out of their founders’ garages, and Microsoft was born out of a motel in New Mexico. 

While growing fintech company Esusu to be a billion-dollar success, its creators were even willing to sleep in a Denny’s to get their dream off the ground. 

“326 investors said no to us on the first go-around, myself and Samir [Goel] had $100,000 in credit card debt, we’ve been kicked out of a Denny’s because we couldn’t afford a hotel room,” Wemimo Abbey, cofounder and co-CEO of Esusu, tells Fortune. “We’ve been through very rough times on this journey, but it hasn’t stopped us.”

For years, the cofounders juggled rising credit checks and full-time jobs with scaling Esusu: a fintech company that helps renters build credit by reporting on-time rent payments to credit bureaus. What kept them resilient through those difficult times was dedication to a business mission they were intimately familiar with. 

Abbey was raised in what he calls the “slums” of Lagos, Nigeria, by his mother and two sisters. When his family uprooted to Michigan, they didn’t have a credit score, which led them to fall victim to a predatory lending scheme. After immigrating from New Delhi, India, fellow cofounder and co-CEO Samir Goel watched his parents toil to “pull off miracles” and survive their newfound life in the U.S. without a credit identity or savings account.

“We built Esusu on this idea that no matter where you come from, what you look like, or your financial identity, it should never determine where you end up in life,” Goel says. 

Today, Esusu is valued at $1.2 billion and reaches about 5 million rental units across all 50 U.S. states, representing around 12 million people. The company has raised more than $200 million in venture capital funding, with investments coming from the likes of SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Serena Williams’ firm Serena Ventures. 

Eight years in, 32-year-old Goel says Esusu is just getting started in creating a one-stop-shop product; but long gone are the days of couch hopping and maxing out credit cards. 

Quitting stable corporate jobs and racking up credit card debt to get Esusu running

In 2014, the fintech cofounders first met at the Clinton Global Initiative Conference. Abbey was running his global social venture called Clean Water for Everyone, while Goel was the cofounder of non-profit Transfernation that distributed excess food from benefit events to underserved New York City communities for years after its 2016 launch. 

They both had entrepreneurial chops and mission-driven mindsets, so they joined forces to help others build equitable credit by launching Esusu. 

“We decided to take a swing and move out of our comfort zone and fall forward, because we didn’t want to ask ourselves, ‘What if?’” Abbey, now 33, explains. “Looking back, a lot has happened, but I’m immensely grateful that we decided to go down that journey.”

Esusu was formally launched in 2018, but Abbey and Goel had already put in years of work. They were both juggling 9-to-5 jobs while getting the business off the ground; Abbey was working at PwC, and Goel was full-time at LinkedIn. And there were many “dark days,” Abbey says; hundreds of investors rejected their business, which the cofounders attribute to a lack of diverse VC leaders who didn’t have the lived experience to understand Esusu’s market opportunity. 

“We would talk to a lot of VCs, and they would ask us questions like, ‘Who cares about 40 points on a credit score? How many people are living paycheck to paycheck in this country?,” Goel recalls. “In their perception, it was a small segment of the market, whereas we’re actually building a product for the majority of Americans.” Nearly a quarter of Americans lived paycheck-to-paycheck in 2025, according to a Bank of American analysis, but 67% of U.S. citizens reported being in that financial rut, according to a report from PNC last year. 

Then came an inflection point; Abbey and Goel were up for promotions while Esusu was gaining traction with users, and VC firms wanted reassurance they were all all-in before investing. They ditched their full-time roles and dedicated their careers to Esusu; at first, they were bootstrapping every marketing campaign, flight, and customer meeting. After burning through their savings, the entrepreneurs turned to credit cards, racking up $100,000 in debt each. They couch surfed with friends and pinched pennies wherever they could, going so far as to sleep in a chain restaurant when funds were low.

While on a drive to catch a flight to San Francisco to raise money from potential investors, they ran short on covering a hotel room for the night. So they hatched a plan to sleep in a Denny’s while figuring out what they could actually afford to do next. The next day, they were within walking distance of homes belonging to the richest people in the world. 

“We begged the [Denny’s worker] to let us stay long enough to figure out a ride to the airport,” Goel says. “And then we were meeting an investor who lived down from Mark Zuckerberg.”

Gaining traction and $200 million in funding, serving millions of customers

Esusu has since found its footing with investors and millions of customers, becoming one of the first Black-owned fintech startups to reach unicorn status. 

Since 2018, it’s raised more than $200 million in funding, with investments from Motley Fool Ventures, Serena Ventures, Acumen Fund, Equity Alliance, and Impact America Fund. Just this past December, Esusu raised another $50 million in Series C funding, which valued the company at $1.2 billion.

The co-CEOs say these VCs have greater proximity to the issue Esusu is trying to solve—but their loyal clientele are at the center of its success.

“Even before investors took a bet on us, we could see from the actual people that we were serving that this product was valuable,” Goel explains, emphasizing their support was integral to Esusu’s success. “It was communities like the ones we came from—that was not something that could be replicated.”

The business’ 12 million customers and counting are all on a journey to strengthen their financial standing; in 2025 Esusu has helped 272,361 renters establish credit scores for the first time, a 34% year-over-year increase. Esusu customers also saw their credit scores rise by an average of 53 points last year, which the company says unlocks $77 billion in economic opportunity. 

VC firms once snubbed Esusu’s service of building credit through on-time rent payments, but now Americans are pursuing healthier financial lives through the success of the business—including the founders themselves. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Americans are living longer than ever before, which is a remarkable achievement. But making those additional years healthy, secure, and fulfilling will require better planning across households, retirement systems, employers, and communities.

In 2026, the oldest baby boomers will turn 80. This demographic milestone will test whether our financial, health, housing, care, community, and social systems are prepared for what most people want: to age well at home. Today, most Americans are far from ready. According to the National Council on Aging, roughly 80% of households with adults age 60 and older lack the resources to cover long-term care costs or weather a financial emergency, exposing a widening longevity readiness gap.

The vast majority will require some level of ongoing care or support, yet few plan for it. Many mistakenly believe Medicare will cover long-term care costs. The planning gap extends far beyond finances. The homes people hope to age in are often unsuitable— with less than 5% of U.S. homes having basic accessibility features; and just 18% of older adults making modifications to support aging in place. With the 65+ population projected to rise from 61 million in 2024 to more than 80 million by 2040, these challenges will only intensify.

The common thread: we spend our adult lives thinking about the financial aspects of retirement, giving limited consideration for what else we will need to navigate the decades that may follow.

Addressing this reality requires expanding retirement planning to include longevity preparedness. Taking this approach provides a holistic lens that aligns finances, health, housing, care, community, and social connections across what may potentially be a 30+ year retirement life stage. The Milken Institute’s report Longevity Ready: A Systems Approach to Aging Well at Home frames this challenge as systemic and provides a practical blueprint: build awareness earlier, improve access to resources, and strengthen private-public collaboration.

Financial institutions play a critical role. Longevity, wealth, and retirement planning are deeply interconnected, and this sector has both a responsibility and a business imperative to prepare clients for longer and more complex financial needs.

The 2025 Longevity Preparedness Index from John Hancock and the MIT AgeLab, along with findings from the 2025 Manulife John Hancock Financial Resilience and Longevity Report highlight a clear truth: financial preparedness is necessary but is no longer sufficient on its own. Americans are entering what could be 30- to 40-year retirements with meaningful gaps in preparedness, particularly around care, health, and the non‑financial factors — such as social connections and purpose — that shape quality of life. Better support and planning to elevate that broader view is one of the most important shifts we can make.

Longevity planning cannot sit with individuals or financial institutions alone. The system we build to support planning for retirement and longer lifespans needs to be a collective effort spanning health care, employers, financial institutions, advocacy and community-based organizations, and government agencies. The Milken Institute’s Longevity Ready report outlines three key strategies to create an ecosystem among these stakeholders to enable planning for aging well at home:

• Develop coordinated, vetted information hubs that simplify navigation across health, finances, home modifications, technology, and care.
• Use targeted touchpoints to prompt action — open enrollment, annual exams, and mortgage renewals — to spark timely planning conversations.
• Reframe aging as a life stage of capability and purpose rather than decline, encouraging earlier conversations across families, workplaces, and communities. Today, most planning begins only when a crisis hits. There is a better way.

Beyond institutions, communities are essential. More than 26 million Americans aged 50+ now live alone, increasing the risks of isolation and gaps in support. Age-friendly communities, volunteer networks, intentional intergenerational programs, and naturally occurring retirement communities can provide connection, digital literacy, and practical help to allow more adults to age well at home.

As the oldest boomers reach the age of 80, the mismatch between lifespan (total years lived) and health span (years lived in good health)– — a 12.4-year gap — will only become increasingly visible. Women can expect to live roughly 14 years in poor health, men about 11. Households are already facing rising out-of-pocket healthcare costs, while communities are starting to experience strain across housing, transportation, and social services.

Living longer should be an exciting and positive possibility rather than a source of stress for families and communities. To support a positive outcome for Americans, we must expand retirement planning into longevity planning and build systems that support Americans to age with security, confidence, and dignity.

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

When the Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s tariffs two months ago, many companies rejoiced at the prospect of returning to pre-tariff prices and the possibility of getting a refund back from the government. However, the ruling may have also created a $166 billion problem. 

U.S. importers—who have shouldered the brunt of the tariffs—are now waiting to receive an estimated $166 billion in refunds on the levies. But, battered by supply chain woes as a result of the import tax, hiked energy prices thanks to the Iran war, and  nervous consumers bracing for recession, many large companies are scrambling for cash.

“Businesses are struggling,” said Alex Hennick, president and CEO of A.D. Hennick and Associates, a liquidation firm which specializes in distressed asset recovery. “The economy is tough right now. The cost of manufacturing is up, traffic is down, and retail sales are down. So this can be a situation where the company is struggling and they need this money in order to survive.”

“It’s a situation where people are trying to be creative,” he told Fortune.

And the data backs him up. A KPMG survey in February found more than half of U.S. companies experienced compressing margins, with 82% reporting a decline in foreign sales, while 61% reporting a decline in domestic ones. Nearly 70% of firms said they delayed major investments as a result of the tariffs.

In February, the Supreme Court deemed tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) unlawful and laid the groundwork for U.S. companies to recoup what they paid over the year the tariffs were in place. However, there are still question marks on when these refunds will be distributed, and how much of them businesses will actually see. The highest court offered no specifics on how the refunds would be determined or distributed, leaving it up to the Court of International Trade and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to determine the refund process. According to the CBP, once its automated payment system is online, refunds should take 45 days to distribute. The first phase of the system’s deployment will launch on April 20.

Some companies can’t afford to wait. Instead, cash-hungry businesses are taking their tariff refund claims to the bank, and using them as collateral for loans.

“If you need the cash flow in order for your business to grow, to survive,” Hennick said. “It’s something where you’re better off having it now and trying to make it than waiting,” 

When tariff claims become loan collateral

According to a recent CBP filing at the end of March, of the more than 330,000 U.S. importers affected by tariffs, 26,664 importers have signed up for the agency’s automatic refund system, or just 8% of all importers. Those importers already account for $120 billion in tariff revenue, according to the documents, meaning any importers who sign up for a refund will only be able to request reimbursement from what remains of the $166 billion in tariff revenue.

Many of these large companies hit hardest by tariffs—particularly those in the manufacturing and automotive industries, and retail and consumer goods—could see using refund claims as loan collateral as worth it, Hennick suggested.

Despite interest rates on loans remaining elevated for the last five years, the prospect of immediately receiving cash is a relief to companies who are still grappling with the uncertainty on when, exactly, they will get their refunds. It’s also an alternative to the $100 billion secondary market that has emerged around companies selling the rights to refund claims to hedge funds and liquidity specialists. Selling the rights to tariff refund claims may allow companies to outright receive about a fraction of the eventual refund value and relinquish the headache of refund uncertainty, but it also means they are unable to cash in on the greater refund they would have received had they chosen to wait out the rebate process.

Wes Harrell, a broker and head of a trading group at capital markets firm Seaport Global, told Fortune that in these instances, the loan-to-value ratio of potential refunds used as collateral might be about 50%, meaning a $10 million refund claim would only be worth $5 million as a loan. By comparison, companies selling the rights to their refund claims are doing so for about a quarter of their projected value.

According to Hennick, whatever decision companies make on how to leverage the refund claims comes down to their appetite for risk—but he predicts more firms than not will have to make tough choices, as opposed to simply waiting for refunds.

“It’s coming to the point where some people might have no choice,” he said. “They’re either going to have to sell their claim or they’re going to have to borrow money to get money in order to continue to operate their business.”

The risks of more borrowing

Harrell, however, sees meaningful risks associated with the borrowing. There’s a chance the government may issue only a partial refund or may reject a business’s claim altogether. Despite CBP’s estimations, some supply chain experts believe it may take years for the Trump administration to dole out the rebates as a result of the sheer magnitude of the money in question. If refunds take longer than anticipated, the interest accrued on a loan may be greater than the refund itself.

“As an importer, you’re still fully exposed to the timing of the legal process because you have, in effect, retained your rights to the full refund,” Harrell said. “You haven’t solved the problem. You’ve just financed it.”

As time goes on without definitive answers on refunds, Harrell sees more companies taking actions like selling the rights to their claims, preferring to pocket money now instead of waiting for a sum later down the line.

“CFOs are going to prefer to have clarity and certainty around their capital,” he said, “as opposed to uncertainty on a contingent government receivable with no defined timeline.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Watching Nicolás Maduro transported in handcuffs by U.S. officials in January, José Pereira felt a sense of retribution and a release of eight years of pent-up anger.

“That is exactly what this guy did to us,” Pereira said of the former Venezuelan strongman leader. “For me, it was like, ‘Wow, now you’re suffering. Now, this is karma.’ I was very glad. It’s not vengeance; it’s justice.”

Rewind nine years to the beginning of 2017, Pereira, then 55, was freshly promoted to the top of his profession as the interim CEO of Citgo Petroleum in Houston.

The year would end with Pereira in handcuffs in Caracas in a military prison, tried and convicted in a kangaroo court for corruption and treason with five of his colleagues—the “Citgo Six.” Citgo, the storied American oil refiner, was acquired by the Venezuelan government and its state oil company, PDVSA, in 1990, eventually becoming a political pawn of Maduro.

That’s how Pereira—and five other Houston-based Citgo executives—became the unfortunate “Citgo Six” political prisoners in Venezuela for five years before their negotiated release in 2022. Eventually, he published his memoir of the ordeal, “From Hero to Villain: My True Story of the Citgo 6,” as his form of writing therapy.

Pereira, who was born and raised in Venezuela, was the only one of the six prisoners who wasn’t an American citizen. He had worked for more than 25 years with Venezuela’s state oil company—often with U.S. companies until their assets were expropriated in 2007—before he moved to Texas to work for Citgo in 2012 and obtained permanent resident status in the U.S.

His decades of insight into the inner workings of Venezuela politics and its oil sector are why he’s confident his home country can only thrive again politically and economically following the U.S. military intervention in the South American country—if fair democratic elections are enacted as quickly as possible.

Venezuela cannot grow and oil companies will not want to invest if interim president Delcy Rodriguez—Maduro’s former vice president—remains in charge with the rest of the old Maduro regime, Pereira says. They may be acting moderately and cooperating with the Trump administration for now, but they’re just biding time, Pereira insists. “They are masters in gaining time.”

“These guys don’t operate like a normal government; they operate like the mob. You take out the head of the mob, and somebody is going to replace him,” Pereira told Fortune. “It’s the same regime. There’s no real change there.”

Still, he remains confident elections are coming. He’s just not sure if they can come by the end of 2026 as he prefers.

“This transition has to be shortened,” Pereira said. “It will take time, but it will be done. You need a reliable [business] partner in the government, and the only way you’re going to get that is having a free election and having a democracy.

“I’m sure Venezuela will become an energy hub if this is done right.”

Energy dreams

Indeed, Rodriguez and the interim Venezuelan leadership have cooperated and passed a new hydrocarbons law to re-open the country’s energy sector up to more foreign investment—a legal reform that the CEOs of Chevron, Shell, and ConocoPhillips said shows progress but still falls short of what’s needed. And, in large part because of that cooperation, there’s no fast-tracked timeline for elections yet.

In January, Exxon Mobil chairman and CEO Darren Woods famously called the Venezuelan oil sector “uninvestable.” Exxon now has a small team on the ground there to evaluate the state of the industry. Pereira says Exxon is right to tread cautiously: “If I were Exxon, they expropriated me two times already. What will be the guarantee that they’re not going to do it the third time?”

While Venezuela counts the world’s largest oil reserves on paper, the country’s oil production volumes have plunged from 3.2 million barrels daily in 2000 to about 1 million barrels today due to a combination of mismanagement, underinvestment, and U.S. sanctions. Largely thanks to Chevron, the only U.S. producer which never left, Venezuela is on track to grow to roughly 1.2 million barrels by the end of this year—still a shell of its former self. Chevron and, yes, Shell, count among the few planning to invest more thus far.

Pereira confirmed that the Venezuelan oil industry is “totally deteriorated.” An economic resurgence is possible, but it will take years, he said.

“There has to be a lot of investment. At the end of the day, it’s going to get done because the assets are there, the oil is there,” he said.

A long, crude story

When Trump intensified sanctions on Venezuela in 2017 and relations between the two countries became further strained, Pereira expedited his plans to retire in early 2018.

He didn’t make it that long.

“I said, ‘Oh, I don’t like this.’ I was appointed as interim CEO in the worst moment of the relationship. This is a nightmare,” he said.

Fast forward to November 2017—three months prior to his retirement—and Pereira was fatefully summoned to Venezuela to make Citgo business presentations to government leadership. He brought five of his top executives along with him.

After the presentations seemingly went well, they trekked to the airport to return to Houston—two days before Thanksgiving. That’s when all hell broke loose for their lives.

“I was in my retirement mode. The plane was waiting for me to begin my new life, and that’s when the guards came,” Pereira recalled.

It seems as if the six Houston-based Citgo leaders made ideal bargaining chips and, therefore, political prisoners for Maduro.

“We were accused of being spies, corruption, treason of the country, and like 10 more charges,” he said. As the boss, Pereira was sentenced to 13 years in prison, while his colleagues got nearly nine years each.

“Everything was false. We were the first experiment of Venezuela taking [political] hostages. We were the guinea pigs,” he added. “After us, they began to do it very frequently. This is a business model—take people and negotiate.”

Rats the size of rabbits

He initially was sent to military prison, or “dungeon” as he called it, and then eventually transferred to the infamous El Heliocide prison in Caracas that’s well known for its torture and long list of human-rights violations. It was somehow a slight improvement from the military dungeon, he said, but the rats were the size of rabbits.

He lost nearly 100 pounds from starvation and suffered through bronchitis, pneumonia, and scabies, he said. There was no running water and sometimes he’d go months without seeing the sun.

“On the other side of the wall, there was a room they called the ‘madness room,’” he said. “We heard in the night when they were torturing people. Can you imagine sleeping in the middle of the night and hearing the screaming and the yelling and the crying and the beatings? It was like living in a hell.”

The lack of food forced his family to make a big sacrifice, but eventually offered a semblance of hope. His family had to ship him food to eat for lack of prison funding, which proved impossible from the U.S. So one of his sons moved to Colombia, where he could buy and ship the imprisoned Pereira weekly grocery boxes of food.

Pereira eventually figured out how to smuggle letters to his family, and he and his wife and children began writing letters back and forth to each other—both for his sanity and to keep him abreast of political, prisoner exchange negotiations that remained stagnant for years. The saved letters also served as the basis for his memoir.

Eventually, came Oct. 1, 2022. He and the rest of the Citgo Six—one of them was released months prior as a goodwill gesture—were told they were being sent to a meeting. It was ominous, but eventually they learned they would be released. “We didn’t believe it.”

Without being told where they were headed, they were flown to the Caribbean island country Saint Vincent and the Grenadines—a neutral ground for the negotiated prisoner exchange that swapped the Citgo employees for two nephews of Maduro who had been arrested seven years prior for narcotics trafficking (the so-called “Narcosobrinos”—or drug trafficking nephews—affair).

Then they finally flew back to Texas. The relief was great, but so was the post-traumatic stress disorder.

“After almost six months, I began to feel like I had my life back,” Pereira said. “I felt like I’d come in a time machine. All those years lost.”

For him, writing and talking about his experience became his “healing process.”

And watching Maduro behind bars offered its own therapeutic assist.

“Our story is very tied to what’s going on today in Venezuela,” Pereira said, but now there’s reason to hope again.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance said negotiations ended early Sunday between the United States and Iran without a peace deal after the Iranians refused to accept American terms to not develop a nuclear weapon.

The third round of historic, face-to-face talks concluded days after a fragile, two-week ceasefire was announced as the war that has killed thousands of people and shaken global markets entered its seventh week.

The latest bargaining lasted 21 hours, Vance said, with the vice president in constant communication with U.S. President Donald Trump and others in the administration.

“But the simple fact is that we need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon, and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon,” Vance told reporters. “That is the core goal of the president of the United States. And that’s what we’ve tried to achieve through these negotiations.”

The vice president said he spoke with Trump “a half dozen times, a dozen times, over the past 21 hours” and also spoke with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Adm. Brad Cooper, head of the United States Central Command.

“We were constantly in communication with the team because we were negotiating in good faith,” Vance said, speaking at a podium in front of a pair of American flags with special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to his side. “And we leave here, and we leave here with a very simple proposal, a method of understanding that is our final and best offer. We’ll see if the Iranians accept it.”

Trump had said he would suspend attacks against Iran for two weeks. Vance’s comments did not indicate what will happen after that time period expires or if the ceasefire will remain in place.

After his brief remarks, Vance boarded his government plane to leave Pakistan.

Two Pakistani officials said discussions between the heads of the delegations will resume after a break. Some technical personnel from both teams are still meeting, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the press.

US says its destroyers moved through the Strait of Hormuz

Meanwhile, the U.S. military said two destroyers transited the Iran-gripped Strait of Hormuz ahead of mine-clearing work, a first since the war began. Iran’s state media, however, said the joint military command denied that.

“We’re sweeping the strait. Whether we make a deal or not makes no difference to me,” Trump told journalists as talks continued and the time approached 2 a.m. in Islamabad. He called negotiations “very deep.” Iranian state TV noted what it called “serious” differences.

The U.S. delegation led by Vance and the Iranian one led by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf discussed with Pakistan how to advance the ceasefire already threatened by deep disagreements and Israel’s continued attacks against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, whose health ministry said the death toll has surpassed 2,000.

Since the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, the most direct U.S. contact had been in 2013 when President Barack Obama called newly elected President Hassan Rouhani to discuss Iran’s nuclear program. Obama’s secretary of state, John Kerry, and counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif later met during negotiations toward the 2015 Iran nuclear deal — a process that lasted well over a year.

Now the far broader talks featured Vance, a reluctant defender of the war who has little diplomatic experience and warned Iran not to “try and play us,” and Qalibaf, a former commander with Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard who has issued some of Iran’s most fiery statements since fighting began.

Iran sets ‘red lines’ including compensation for strikes

Iran’s state-run news agency said the three-party talks began after Iranian preconditions, including a reduction in Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon, were met.

Iran’s delegation told state television it had presented “red lines” in meetings with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, including compensation for damage caused by U.S.-Israeli strikes that launched the war on Feb. 28 and releasing Iran’s frozen assets.

The war has killed at least 3,000 people in Iran, 2,020 in Lebanon, 23 in Israel and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states, and caused lasting damage to infrastructure in half a dozen Middle Eastern countries. Iran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz has largely cut off the Persian Gulf and its oil and gas exports from the global economy, sending energy prices soaring.

Reflecting the high stakes, officials from the region said Chinese, Egyptian, Saudi and Qatari officials were in Islamabad to indirectly facilitate talks. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

In Tehran, residents told The Associated Press they were skeptical yet hopeful after weeks of airstrikes left destruction across their country of some 93 million people.

“Peace alone is not enough for our country because we’ve been hit very hard, there have been huge costs,” 62-year-old Amir Razzai Far said.

In his strongest words yet, Pope Leo XIV denounced the “delusion of omnipotence” fueling the war.

US sending forces to help mine-clearing on the strait

Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz has proved its biggest strategic advantage in the war. Around a fifth of the world’s traded oil had typically passed through on over 100 ships a day. Only 12 have been recorded transiting since the ceasefire.

On Saturday, Trump said on social media that the U.S. had begun “clearing out” the strait.

“Today, we began the process of establishing a new passage and we will share this safe pathway with the maritime industry soon,” U.S. Central Command commander Adm. Brad Cooper later said. The U.S. statement about the destroyers added: “Additional U.S. forces, including underwater drones, will join the clearance effort in the coming days.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had said Tehran was entering negotiations with “deep distrust” after strikes on Iran during previous talks. Araghchi, part of Iran’s delegation in Pakistan, said Saturday that his country was prepared to retaliate if attacked again.

Iran’s 10-point proposal ahead of the talks called for a guaranteed end to the war and sought control over the Strait of Hormuz. It included ending fighting against Iran’s “regional allies,” explicitly calling for a halt to Israeli strikes on Hezbollah.

The United States’ 15-point proposal includes restricting Iran’s nuclear program and reopening the strait.

Israel and Lebanon will have direct negotiations

Israel pressed ahead with strikes in Lebanon after saying there is no ceasefire there. Iran and Pakistan have disagreed.

Negotiations between Israel and Lebanon are expected to begin Tuesday in Washington, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun’s office has said, after Israel’s surprise announcement authorizing talks despite the countries lack of official relations.

But as thousands in Lebanon protested the planned negotiations on Saturday, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said he had postponed a planned trip to Washington “in light of the current internal circumstances.” His absence should not affect talks as the first round is expected to be at the ambassadorial level.

Israel wants Lebanon’s government to assume responsibility for disarming Hezbollah, much like was envisaged in a November 2024 ceasefire. But the militant group has survived efforts to curb its strength for decades.

Hezbollah joined the war in support of Iran in the opening days. Israel followed with airstrikes and a ground invasion.

The day the Iran ceasefire deal was announced, Israel pounded Beirut with airstrikes, killing more than 300 people in the deadliest day in Lebanon since the war began, according to the country’s Health Ministry.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The United States and Iran began face-to-face negotiations Saturday in Pakistan, days after a fragile, two-week ceasefire was announced.

The war that has killed thousands of people and shaken global markets entered its seventh week.

The White House confirmed the direct nature of the talks. The talks came after U.S. and Iranian officials met separately with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

The U.S. delegation led by Vice President JD Vance and the Iranian delegation led by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf were discussing how to advance the ceasefire already threatened by deep disagreements and Israel’s continued attacks against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Here is the latest:

Trump downplays Iran negotiations, says deal ‘makes no difference’

Speaking to reporters outside the White House on Saturday, Trump claimed military victory against Iran and downplayed the importance of ongoing ceasefire negotiations involving Vice President JD Vance because “regardless what happens we win.”

“Let’s see what happens – maybe they make a deal maybe they don’t,” the president said. “It doesn’t matter. From the standpoint of America, we win.”

Trump acknowledged “very deep negotiations” with Iran. But he also said the U.S. military was searching for mines in the Strait of Hormuz, which still remained effectively closed to most freighters carrying oil and natural gas out of the Persian Gulf.

Qatar to fully resume maritime navigation activities

The country’s Ministry of Transport announced Saturday the full resumption of maritime navigation activities effective Sunday from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., extending the decision to “all categories of marine vessels and transport modes.”

The ministry urged operators in a statement to comply with safety protocols.

It was not immediately clear whether the decision meant that Qatari vessels would be allowed to transit the Strait of Hormuz, which remained effectively closed as of Saturday.

Iran denies claims that US vessels entered the Strait of Hormuz, state media say

A spokesperson for Iran’s joint military command denied an earlier claim by the U.S. that two Navy destroyers transited the waterway, adding that “initiative over the passage of any vessel rests with the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran”, according to Iran’s state media.

The Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of all oil and natural gas traded once passed, is expected to be one of the most challenging points of negotiations between the U.S. and Iran, currently taking place in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.

Thousands attend anti-war demonstration in Tel Aviv after wartime restrictions eased

The protesters filled Tel Aviv’s Habima Square on Saturday evening, holding up signs calling for an end to Israel’s “eternal war” and chanting “more suffering in Lebanon will not bring us security.”

At a smaller protest held there the previous weekend, amid missile attacks from Iran and Yemen, police dispersed the protesters using force and arrested at least 17, citing security restrictions.

Ifat Kalderon, whose cousin Ofer Kalderon was held hostage by Hamas in Gaza and released last year, told the Associated Press she came to the protest to call for Israel to put an end to its wars “in Iran, in Lebanon and in Gaza.”

She said the war with Iran had achieved no positive results. “The reality is the same as before, perhaps even worse. We need to translate everything into agreements, we can’t keep living constantly in war.”

US says talks with Iran and Pakistan continuing

As of 10:21 p.m. local time in Islamabad, the trilateral in-person talks were ongoing, a senior White House official told reporters traveling with Vice President JD Vance.

More than 2,000 people have been killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon during the Israel-Hezbollah war, according to health officials

The death toll in Lebanon from Israeli strikes in the ongoing war between Israel and Hezbollah has risen to 2,020, the Lebanese health ministry said Saturday.

The death toll from nearly six weeks of war includes 248 women,165 children and 85 health workers, the ministry said. Another 6,436 people have been wounded. Nearly 100 people were killed in the past 24 hours.

The Iran-backed Lebanese militant group fired missiles into Israel on March 2 in retaliation for the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran. A tentative truce is now in place in Iran, but the U.S. and Israel say the agreement does not apply to Lebanon, while Tehran says it does. The question is likely to be one of the thornier points in the U.S.-Iran ceasefire negotiations now underway in Pakistan.

2 destroyers transit Strait of Hormuz ahead of mine-clearing operation, US military says

The U.S. military on Saturday prepared for mine-clearing operations in the Strait of Hormuz as two Navy destroyers transited the waterway through which 20% of the world’s oil normally flows, U.S. Central Command said in a news release.

The destroyers are part of a broader mission to ensure the strait is fully clear of sea mines previously laid by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, CENTCOM stated.

Iran’s state media said earlier on Saturday that it had forced a U.S. military ship that was attempting to cross the Strait of Hormuz to turn around.

The strait has been effectively closed to most oil and gas freighters since the U.S. and Israel began to strike Israel on Feb. 28. Cease-fire talks are now underway in Pakistan.

Pope Leo XIV blasts ‘delusion of omnipotence’ fueling the US-Israeli war in Iran

In his strongest words yet, Pope Leo XIV on Saturday denounced the “delusion of omnipotence” that is fueling the U.S.-Israel war in Iran and demanded political leaders stop and negotiate peace.

Leo presided over an evening prayer service in St. Peter’s Basilica on the same day the United States and Iran began face-to-face negotiations in Pakistan and as a fragile ceasefire held.

History’s first U.S.-born pope didn’t mention the United States or President Donald Trump in his prayer, which was planned before the talks were announced. But Leo’s tone and message appeared directed at Trump and U.S. officials, who have boasted of U.S. military superiority and justified the war in religious terms.

“Enough of the idolatry of self and money!” Leo demanded. “Enough of the display of power! Enough of war!”

Talks between US and Iran officials resume after a break

U.S. and Iranian officials resumed a second round of talks Saturday night in Islamabad after a break, with both sides backed by technical experts, two Pakistani officials said.

They added that Pakistan’s top political and military leadership is encouraging both sides to resolve their differences to ensure durable peace in the region, and the talks were progressing.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

The officials declined to share further details, saying they hoped for a win-win solution.

-By Munir Ahmed

Trump says he has ‘no idea’ how talks will go with Iran

Trump confirmed in a phone interview with NewsNation that talks among the U.S., Iran and Pakistan had begun, though he does not know how successful they could be.

When asked how negotiations would go, Trump said: “I have no idea.”

The U.S. president said he would know shortly if he felt Iran was acting in good faith about resolving the war.

Trump added that the U.S. knew where mines had been placed in the Strait of Hormuz and that the military was bringing equipment to remove them.

Saturday’s negotiations mark rare face-to-face meeting between US and Iranian leaders

Saturday’s face-to-face talks in Pakistan that are being led by Vance and Qalibaf mark a rare instance of high-level engagement between American leadership and the Iranian government.

Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the highest-level direct contact had been when President Barack Obama, a Democrat, in September 2013 called newly elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to discuss Iran’s nuclear program.

It’s a high-stakes political task for Vance, who has been a reluctant defender of the U.S. war with Iran, and has little previous diplomatic experience. Envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who are joining Vance at the table, also are relatively new players in international diplomacy.

The White House said it sent “a full suite of U.S. experts on relevant subject areas” to join the negotiators in Islamabad, and said other experts were supporting the team from Washington.

In Jerusalem, thousands of Orthodox Christians gather in Church of Holy Sepulchre after restrictions lifted

Thousands of worshippers took part in the annual “Holy Fire” ceremony on Saturday in Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, an Orthodox Christian ritual that dates back more than 1,200 years.

The ceremony, held the day before Orthodox Easter, symbolizes the resurrection of Jesus, where the Greek Orthodox Patriarch brings out candles reportedly lit by a miraculous, non-burning flame from the tomb, which is then passed to thousands of worshipers.

Holy sites across Jerusalem’s Old City, including Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Western Wall, remained closed for 40 days under Israeli security restrictions following the war on Iran, but reopened on Thursday as a fragile, two-week ceasefire between Iran, Israel, and the U.S. appeared to hold.

“Just two days ago there was absolutely no one in the Old City, it felt like an orphaned town,” said Fr. Antonious Al-Orshalemy. “But now we see wedding-like celebrations on every level. Everyone is happy, and everyone is joyful.”

Thousands protest Lebanese planned negotiations with Israel

Amid the protests, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said Saturday he had postponed a planned trip to Washington “in light of the current internal circumstances.”

Ahead of his announcement, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader on international affairs warned against sidelining Hezbollah, saying in a social media post: “Mr. Nawaf Salam must know that ignoring the unparalleled role of the Resistance and the heroic Hezbollah will expose Lebanon to irreparable security risks.”

President Joseph Aoun said Friday a first meeting will be held Tuesday at the U.S. State Department to discuss a ceasefire and launch U.S.-mediated Lebanon-Israel negotiations, following a call between the two countries’ ambassadors in Washington with the participation of the U.S. ambassador to Beirut.

Protesters burned portraits of Salam in downtown Beirut near the Grand Serail, calling him a “Zionist” as they carried Hezbollah flags.

It was not immediately clear whether Salam was joining the delegation on Tuesday or what his decision meant for the talks.

Qatari official says Iranian attacks have decreased but ’not stopped’

Qatar’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that attacks against any Gulf state constitute an attack on all of them, denying that Qatar pays Iran to stop attacks against its territory.

“Qatar does not pay in exchange for stopping attacks on it,” said Majed al-Ansari in a televised interview with Al Jazeera, adding that Qatar intercepts the Iranian attacks.

Al-Ansari added Iran had also attacked civilian and industrial targets, despite Iran’s claim that it was only targeting military sites.

Pakistani official says talks ‘progressing well’

“I cannot say whether they are sitting in the same room or in separate rooms, but talks have started and are progressing well,” the official with knowledge of the peace efforts said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

-By Munir Ahmed

Face-to-face negotiations have begun between the United States and Iran in Pakistan

The White House said that delegations from the United States, Iran and Pakistan are holding face-to-face meetings on Saturday.

The start of the meeting represents a significant test as to whether the ceasefire, which has already shown strains, is durable enough to resolve the Iran war.

President Donald Trump ahead of the meeting has engaged in provocative social media posts, suggesting that the U.S. energy sector will benefit from Iran effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz to oil and natural gas tankers.

Energy prices have risen sharply since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in late February, with the stated goals of stopping its development of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.

Vice President JD Vance is leading the U.S. delegation, along with Steve Witkoff, the special envoy, and Jared Kushner, who is President Donald Trump’s son-in-law.

US releases names of delegation in talks with Iran and Pakistan

The White House provided a list of the U.S. officials involved in negotiations for ending the Iran war, including Vice President JD Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law.

Also participating are Andrew Baker, the national security adviser to the vice president, and Michael Vance, the special adviser to the vice president for Asian affairs.

Difficult issues for the talks

Foremost is Iran’s nuclear program, especially the status of its enriched uranium after last year’s U.S. and Israeli strikes on nuclear sites. Tehran has not allowed the U.N. nuclear watchdog to inspect since then.

Before the war, Iran’s ballistic missile program was another main issue, especially for Israel, along with Iran’s support for armed proxies in the Middle East including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthi rebels in Yemen and Hamas in Gaza.

Now other issues have emerged, notably Iran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz, a major waterway for Middle East oil, natural gas and related products like fertilizer.

Iran now wants an end to attacks, compensation for earlier ones and a guarantee that no more will occur. It wants U.S. military forces to leave the region.

Tehran also wants longtime sanctions lifted.

Israel says it struck over 200 Hezbollah targets in the last 24 hours

The Israeli military said its air force hit infrastructure of the Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon and was continuing to support its ground forces operating in southern Lebanon.

The statement came as Teheran was pressing for a halt to Israeli strikes on Hezbollah in three-party talks that began Saturday afternoon between Iran and the US in Pakistan.

Earlier Saturday, the Lebanese state-run news agency reported at least three people killed in Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon. There were no reported strikes in the afternoon hours.

In Israeli communities along the border with Lebanon sirens continued to warn of drone and rocket attacks from Lebanon throughout the day Saturday. There were no reports of injuries.

Trump says he opposes higher fertilizer costs for US farmers

The U.S. president posted on social media that he is monitoring fertilizer price and “will not accept” any increase in costs for farmers.

Fertilizer costs have increased globally because of natural gas supplies being stranded due Iran’s control of the Strait of the Hormuz. Iran has used the strait as strategic leverage in its ongoing war with the U.S. and Israel.

But Trump’s post was targeted at a domestic audience.

“I am watching fertilizer prices CLOSELY during our FIGHT FOR FREEDOM in Iran,” he posted. “The United States will not accept PRICE GOUGING from the fertilizer monopoly! American Farmers, we have your back!”

US revokes green cards of more Iranian born relatives of current and former Iran officials

The Trump administration has revoked the green cards of more long-term Iranian residents of the United States who are related to current or former senior Iranian officials.

The State Department said Saturday it had taken action against Seyed Eissa Hashemi, a Los Angeles-area psychology teacher, his wife and son, all of whom were Iranian born lawful permanent residents of the US.

The department said in a statement released as talks to end the war with Iran were getting underway in Pakistan that they had been taken into custody by immigration authorities and are slated for deportation.

Hashemi, it said, is the son of Masoumeh Ebtekar who served as a spokeswoman for the attackers who took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and was later promoted to be Iran’s first female vice president.

Just last week, the State Department revoked the green cards of the niece and grand-niece of former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps chief Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad in early 2020.

3-way talks with the US and Iran begin in Pakistan after earlier indirect discussions

Iran’s IRNA news agency said on Saturday that after progress in indirect discussions, negotiations have begun between the United States and Iran.

The country’s state-run news agency said three-party talks with the U.S., Iran and Pakistan had begun after a reduction in Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon and other preconditions being met.

Trump says on social media that US has begun ‘clearing out’ Strait of Hormuz

The U.S. president posted on social media that Iran’s military has been destroyed and that America is beginning to open up the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway chokepoint used by Iran to restrict the shipping of 20% of the world’s oil supplies.

It was unclear from the post if Trump was referring to the possible use of mines in the Strait of Hormuz or Iran’s broader ability to control the area.

“We’re now starting the process of clearing out the Strait of Hormuz as a favor to Countries all over the World, including China, Japan, South Korea, France, Germany, and many others,” Trump posted. “Incredibly, they don’t have the Courage or Will to do this work themselves.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

U.S. Navy ships sent an unmistakable signal Saturday as they crossed the Strait of Hormuz, challenging Iran’s control over the narrow waterway that will likely determine the outcome of the war.

The USS Michael Murphy turned on its automatic identification system as it and another destroyer, the USS Frank E. Peterson, transited the strait, breaking the typical protocol of Navy ships sailing with their AIS turned off.

“You just don’t throw AIS on by accident on a Navy ship,” Campbell University professor Salvatore Mercogliano, who specializes in military and maritime history, said on his podcast. “This is purposeful. They wanted to turn this on on the far side of the Strait of Hormuz to demonstrate that they have sailed through.” 

U.S. Central Command said the destroyers had begun setting conditions for clearing mines that had been placed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

It added that more U.S. forces, including underwater drones, will join the clearance effort in the coming days, pointing out that the strait is an international sea passage and an essential trade corridor.

In a statement, Admiral Brad Cooper said Central Command is “establishing a new passage” for the maritime industry for the free flow of commerce.

Iran’s grip on the strait, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquid natural gas flowed before the war, has triggered a global energy crisis and represents the regime’s main form of leverage over the U.S.

The destroyers’ crossing of the strait comes as the U.S. and Iran began ceasefire talks in Pakistan this weekend. But if the Navy creates a safe avenue for tankers that doesn’t require getting Iran’s permission and paying a toll, then talks would shift in America’s favor.

As a result, the IRGC challenged the Navy destroyers as they transited, according to a radio conversation recorded by a civilian ship that was shared with the Wall Street Journal.

“This is the last warning. This is the last warning,” the IRGC said.

“Passage in accordance with international law. No challenge is intended to you, and I intend to abide by rules of our government’s ceasefire,” the U.S. ship replied.

 Iranian media said the destroyers turned around after being confronted by the IRGC, which reportedly  launched a drone in the direction of the destroyers.

Until now, U.S. warships have avoided the strait as Navy officials previously have described it as an Iranian “kill box” filled with numerous threats, including anti-ship missiles, drones, fast-attack boats, and mines. And given how narrow the strait is, projectiles can fired from close distances and provide little time for a defensive response.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military continues to send more combat power to the region. A third aircraft carrier as well as thousands of Marines and paratroopers are expected to arrive later this month. More long-large cruise missiles are also flowing to the Middle East.

Mercogliano said there were earlier signs the Navy resupplied its ships via the island of Diego Garcia, potentially to replenish munitions. Littoral combat ships, which are equipped with mine-hunting underwater drones, may also be in the mix.

While it’s not clear if the destroyers entered the strait alongside those ships or without them, it still marked an important milestone for the oil trade.

“One of the things that commercial ships were waiting to see was whether or not this strait was clear, and sailing two destroyers in is a big one,” he added.

Despite the ongoing ceasefire talks, another military clash between the U.S. and Iran may be looming soon. Rapidan Energy founder Bob McNally told CNBC on Thursday that he thinks the U.S. is “getting ready for round 2.”

As the U.S. weakens Iran’s ability to threaten ship traffic, Iran’s leverage will erode, and conditions for a lasting ceasefire with a full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz could be in place later this month, he said.

McNally compared neutralizing Iran’s threats to a game of whack-a-mole, noting the variety of its weapons, and pointed out that the U.S. has reduced Iran’s stockpile of underwater mines.

“It may not be widely reported, but I believe the U.S. military in the last week or so has been focusing on whacking those moles, degrading Iran’s ability,” he added. “You may not perfectly get rid of it, but degrading Iran’s ability to interdict shipping down to a manageable level—and that’s when insurance can come into play and escorts, and folks can start to move through.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

A federal judge must reconsider the possible national security implications of halting construction of President Donald Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom, an appeals court ruled on Saturday.

A three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said it did not have enough information to decide how much of the project can be suspended without jeopardizing the safety of the president, his family or the White House staff.

The case was returned to the trial judge who, in a March 31 ruling, barred work from proceeding without congressional approval, but suspended enforcement of that order for 14 days. The appeals court extended that for three days, to April 17, to allow the Trump administration to seek Supreme Court review.

The panel instructed U.S. District Judge Richard Leon to clarify whether — and how — his injunction interferes with the administration’s plans for safety and security.

Government lawyers had argued that the project includes critical security features to guard against a range of possible threats, such as drones, ballistic missiles and biohazards and that holding up construction “would imperil the President and others who live and work in the White House,.”

Leon, in issuing the temporary pause, concluded that the preservationist group behind the legal challenge was likely to succeed because the president lacks the authority to build the ballroom without approval from Congress.

Leon exempted any construction work necessary to ensure the safety and security of the White House, but said he reviewed material the government privately submitted before determining that a halt would not jeopardize national security.

The Republican administration’s appeal cited materials that would be installed to make a “heavily fortified” facility and said construction included bomb shelters, military installations and a medical facility underneath the ballroom.

The appeals panel noted that much of the government’s concerns focused on that below-ground security work, which the White House argued was “distinct from construction of the ballroom itself and could proceed independently.”

Now, however, the White House seems to suggest those security upgrades are “inseparable” from the project as whole, the appeals court said, making it unclear “whether and to what extent” moving forward with certain aspects of the ballroom is necessary for the safety and security of those upgrades.

Carol Quillen, president and CEO of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, said in a statement that the organization awaited further clarification from the district court. She said the group was committed “to honoring the historic significance of the White House, advocating for our collective role as stewards, and demonstrating how broad consultation, including with the American people, results in a better overall outcome.”

The organization sued in December, a week after the White House finished demolishing the East Wing for a 90,000-square-foot (8,400-square-meter) ballroom that Trump said would fit 999 people. The administration said aboveground construction on the ballroom would begin in April.

Leon concluded last month that the lawsuit was likely to succeed because “no statute comes close to giving the President the authority he claims to have.”

“The President of the United States is the steward of the White House for future generations of First Families. He is not, however, the owner!” wrote Leon, who was nominated by President George W. Bush, a Republican.

Two days after Leon’s ruling, the ballroom project won final approval from a key agency that Trump had stocked with allies. Another oversight entity constituted with Trump loyalists had approved the project earlier this year. But the president had proceeded with the biggest structural change to the White House in more than 70 years before seeking input from the commissions.

Trump says the project is funded by private donations, although public money is paying for construction of underground bunkers and security upgrades.

The three-judge appeals court panel was made up of Patricia Millett, Neomi Rao and Bradley Garcia. Millett was nominated by President Barack Obama, a Democrat. Rao was nominated by Trump. Garcia was nominated by President Joe Biden, a Democrat.

Rao wrote a dissenting opinion, which cited a statute that allows the president to undertake improvements to the White House.

“Importantly, the government has presented credible evidence of ongoing security vulnerabilities at the White House that would be prolonged by halting construction,” Rao wrote, adding that such concerns outweigh the “generalized aesthetic harms” presented in the lawsuit.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The Trump administration approved major disaster declaration requests for at least seven states this week, according to information released Saturday by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, allowing affected communities to access federal support. About 15 requests for assistance from others states and tribes for extreme weather events this year and last seem to be pending, along with three appeals of previous denials.

Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota and Washington were granted major disaster declarations, which can unlock federal support and funding for recovery needs such as public infrastructure repairs and aid for survivors.

The announcement, in a FEMA daily briefing document, comes weeks into Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s tenure overseeing the disaster relief agency and is the latest signal that the former Republican senator from Oklahoma could ease some of the turmoil from the leadership of his predecessor, Kristi Noem, who was fired by President Donald Trump in March.

Nonetheless, FEMA’s work could be undermined by the ongoing DHS shutdown, now eight weeks long. While disaster response and recovery can continue through a shutdown because FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund does not lapse, that money is running low as the funding impasse drags on. The DHS appropriations bill would replenish the fund with more than $26 billion.

Mullin said Tuesday that he planned to brief Trump that day on the pending declaration requests, affirming his intention to speed up work on past disasters in the run-up to Atlantic hurricane season, which begins June 1.

“We’re trying to push this stuff forward as fast as possible,” Mullin said after surveying Hurricane Helene recovery work in North Carolina on his first official visit as DHS secretary, acknowledging that “disasters are happening constantly.”

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said Saturday that Trump responds to such requests “with great care and consideration, ensuring American tax dollars are used appropriately and efficiently by the states to supplement — not substitute — their obligation to respond to and recover from disasters.” She said an administration goal is having state and local governments “invest in their own resilience before disaster strikes, making response less urgent and recovery less prolonged.”

While Mullin assured fellow senators during his confirmation hearing that he believed in FEMA’s mission, the agency’s future is uncertain. Trump has expressed a desire to push more responsibility for disasters down to states. The FEMA Review Council he appointed last year has not released a recommendation report expected to include sweeping changes to how the federal government supports disaster resilience, response and recovery.

It was not immediately clear whether other states or tribes had also been told of approvals or denials that were not yet announced publicly. Hawaii Governor Josh Green, a Democrat, said Wednesday said his state had received a disaster declaration for devastating March flooding.

Trump also amended past disaster declarations for Tennessee and Mississippi, adding more counties for individual assistance after a severe winter storm in January.

Some communities have experienced unprecedented long waits for answers on their disaster requests during Trump’s second term. An analysis by The Associated Press in September found approvals were taking more than a month on average.

It took less than two weeks on average for a governor’s disaster declaration request to be granted by presidents in the 1990s and early 2000s. That rose to about three weeks during the past decade under presidents from both major parties.

Arizona has been waiting nearly three months for an answer to its appeal after being denied support for severe storms and flooding that occurred in September.

Some Democrat-led states have complained about being denied disaster declarations despite proving need. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore called Trump’s decision “deeply frustrating” after the president twice denied the state’s request for support for May 2025 flooding despite a FEMA assessment showing over $33 million in damages.

While FEMA assesses damage and uses a specific formula to analyze the possible impact on states and local jurisdictions, disaster declarations are ultimately at the president’s discretion.

None of the approvals made this week includes hazard mitigation funding, a once-typical add on to disaster declaration support that helped communities build back with more resilience. Trump has not approved a hazard mitigation request for more than a year.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

President Donald Trump’s war on Iran has raised doubts about America’s superpower status and currency dominance as the Strait of Hormuz remains under Tehran’s control.

But Dan Alamariu, chief geopolitical strategist at Alpine Macro, isn’t buying predictions about a U.S. decline: “Don’t Believe The Hype (Yet).”

In a note on Friday, he acknowledged that if Iran’s regime is left standing while retaining some control over the strait, it would represent a “strategic setback” for the U.S. and humiliation for Trump.

“The bigger question is whether this marks the end of American superpower status, dollar dominance, and the petrodollar. More possible if Iran ends up with control of the SoH, but we would not bet on it,” Alamariu added.

He also shot down comparisons to the Suez Crisis in 1956, when the U.S. pressured Britain and France to abandon their attempt to regain control of the Suez Canal, signaling the end of their reign as great powers.

Alamariu pointed out that the two European countries had effectively lost their empires by then after being bankrupted by World War II. “The U.S. does not resemble that.”

In addition, the U.S. defeat in the Vietnam War also gave rise to declarations of American decline, but it was instead the Soviet Union that ended up collapsing, he noted.

“Similarly, the petrodollar faces some increased risk, but the GCC has more reason than ever to keep ties with Washington close, given Beijing’s perceived closeness to Iran,” Alamariu wrote, referring to the Gulf Cooperation Council. “The idea of a petroyuan or petroeuro replacement remains far-fetched.”

For now, Iran remains in control of the Strait of Hormuz, selectively allowing a trickle of ships through in exchange for payments in yuan or cryptocurrency, the U.S. Navy is preparing to clear mines from the narrow waterway.

Wall Street analysts have highlighted that dollar dominance is anchored by the greenback’s use as the standard currency in the global oil trade.

But the yuan’s ascendence during the Iran war could establish a petroyuan as the U.S. security shield and guarantee of free navigation weaken amid drone attacks that have evaded American air defenses.

For his part, Alamariu is also skeptical about Iran’s attempt to de-dollarize the oil trade with its current toll booth arrangement for the Strait of Hormuz.

“If anything, the GCC appears poised to resist Iran (with U.S. help) and accelerate bypass pipeline construction, should Iran retain control of the SoH,” he said. “Lastly, even Iran’s proposals for yuan or crypto-denominated Strait tolls are not meaningfully dollar-bearish; most stablecoins are effectively dollar-denominated instruments.”

Even if the petrodollar weakens, dollar dominance still rests on other factors that other currencies can’t match, according to Paul Blustein, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Those include the depth, breadth, and liquidity of U.S. financial markets as well as the freedom to move money across U.S. borders virtually unimpeded, he wrote in a Fortune op-ed last month.

“It accounts for well over half of foreign currency reserves held by central banks, and a similar share of export invoices for cross-border trade, as well as international bank loans and bond issuance,” Blustein added. “Network effects entrench its status; everybody has an incentive to use the dollar because so many others do.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

After a few years of sharing a 2019 Chevrolet Trax, Dana Eble and Tyler Marcus are finally looking for a second car. But as they jump into the market, the young married couple isn’t sure what they can afford.

“I just keep seeing a lot of different aspects of life getting more expensive, and it’s harder,” said Eble, an account manager for a public relations agency.

Car ownership has long been integral to the American dream. But as automakers slash the production of inexpensive models to cater to customers who can afford oversized pickups and sport utility vehicles, buyers find themselves facing sticker shock at the same time they are already frustrated by the lingering effects of high inflation.

Consumer prices rose 3.3% in March, the biggest yearly increase since May 2024, while new car prices were up 12.6% from a year ago, the Labor Department reported Friday.

New vehicles now sell for an average of nearly $50,000, up 30% in six years, and average monthly payments — based on 10% down and a 6-year note — recently hit $775. Looking for something on the cheap end? The share of vehicles listing for less than $30,000 is about 13% — down from 40% five years ago, per the car review site CarGurus.

To cope, buyers are spreading their payments out longer. Consumers choosing 7-year loans make up more than 12% of all sales, up from nearly 8% a year ago, according to auto buying resource J.D. Power. Such contracts wind up costing more in the long run because of interest payments.

“The ability to buy transportation is still out there. The question is just, what do you get for your money?” Charlie Chesbrough, a senior economist at Cox Automotive, said.

The rising cost of cars is contributing to increased concerns about affordability throughout American life. Consumers, especially young people, say they feel like everyday needs like housing, food, utilities and child care are getting costlier and wages aren’t keeping up.

It is a vulnerable position for Republicans ahead of this year’s midterm elections, especially as the Iran war has pumped up gas prices that makes getting behind the wheel even more expensive.

Size, technology and ‘must-have’ features add to costs

Sticker prices have been rising since automakers discovered Americans are willing to pay more for bigger, more expensive SUVs and pickup trucks that bring the companies more profit from each sale. They have largely phased out smaller, cheaper sedans.

That is especially true for domestic carmakers; the average selling prices for many vehicles from Ford Motor Co., General Motors and Jeep-maker Stellantis have generally trended higher than those for Asian companies Honda, Hyundai, Mazda and Subaru.

Car companies are also savvy about placing desired options in more expensive trim levels that can lure consumers into a vehicle that costs more than they planned, said David Undercoffler, the head of consumer insights at CarGurus.

Advanced safety technology — lane-keep assist, automatic emergency braking, blind-spot monitoring, collision warnings and more — all add to the cost of a vehicle. Automakers are required by federal industry rules to add some features, such as rear-view cameras.

The COVID-19 pandemic pushed up auto prices because production fell, affecting both the new and used markets. Though production recovered, other supply chain disruptions and tariffs have affected prices. Meanwhile, government data shows that car insurance prices have soared 55% compared with six years ago, or just before the pandemic, driving up the number of Americans going without. Car repairs, on average, are 48% more expensive.

The share of new car buyers earning below $100,000 fell to 37% last year, down from 50% in 2020, according to Cox Automotive.

Some carmakers have acknowledged affordability concerns. In February, Ford said it would have several vehicles prices under $40,000 by the end of the decade. GM has pointed to vehicles from Buick and Chevrolet, including the Trax, as cheaper options.

Looking to used market for relief

Chesbrough thinks consumers are sometimes unrealistic in their wants.

“There are vehicles out there for less than $30,000. What everybody wants is the mid-sized SUV with leather seats and the sunroof for $25,000, and that’s not available,” Chesbrough said.

Those buyers, he said, are being pushed into the used market.

But as those buyers shift to used, they are finding fewer affordable options there, too. The share of used vehicles priced less than $30,000 fell from 78% in 2021 to 69% in February, according to CarGurus. The average used vehicle sold for about $25,000 in February, and the average used monthly payments hit $560.

The inventory of used cars is being hit by a couple of trends. One is that consumers keen to avoid a big expense are hanging on to their cars longer — nearly 13 years on average now, 18 months longer than a decade ago, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. And a downturn in the popularity of leasing means fewer two- and three-year-old cars hitting the market after leases expire.

J.D. Power estimates that consumers might spend up to $140 less on a lease payment than the average finance commitment, a good option especially for drivers whose annual mileage is predictable. But experts say there is still an affordability challenge.

What buyers can do

Sam Dykhuis, 27, of Chicago, needed to buy her first car recently when she started a new job as a scheduler for United Airlines. She searched for something used under $20,000, and eventually paid a little more than that for a 2021 Mazda CX-5. To hold down the cost, she tapped savings to buy the car outright. She pays insurance six months at a time to save a few bucks, too.

Still, “My paycheck went down and my expenses went up,” Dykhuis said. “Certainly, I have to be more just on top of it than I was previously.”

Eble, 30, and Marcus, 31, say they appreciate cool vehicles but don’t consider themselves “car people” and are hoping their search is easier as a result. Still, finding something in their $20,000 to $30,000 budget might not be as easy as it once was.

They are considering cars such as a newer Trax, a Mazda or maybe an electric vehicle. New EVs generally cost more upfront, but consumers can save in the long run. The used EV market will also soon be flooded with two- or three-year-old EVs that were leased at the time federal credits were generous.

Like Dykhuis, they say they also might buy their new ride outright to avoid a new monthly payment.

“It feels like if anything happens out of our control … it just seems so much more difficult to figure out how to orient our finances,” Eble said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Two US Navy destroyers transited the Strait of Hormuz Saturday, laying the ground for the start of a mine clearing operation, US Central Command said. 

The USS Frank E. Peterson and USS Michael Murphy transited the Strait of Hormuz and operated in the Arabian Gulf, Centcom said in a statement posted to X, adding that more US forces, including underwater drones, will join the clearance effort in the coming days. 

“Today, we began the process of establishing a new passage and we will share this safe pathway with the maritime industry soon to encourage the free flow of commerce,” said Centcom commander Admiral Brad Cooper. 

Since the start of the war on Feb. 28, Iran has asserted control over the strait through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically flows, effectively halting most commercial traffic. The country has sporadically attacked ships in and around the Persian Gulf and may have laid mines to deter shipowners and crews from attempting to traverse the narrow waterway. 

Several US navy ships crossed Hormuz on Saturday in an operation that wasn’t coordinated with Iran, Axios reported earlier, citing a US official it didn’t identify. The ships crossed the strait from east to west to the Gulf before making their way back to the Arabian sea, according to the report. 

However, a regional intelligence official said two US Navy Arleigh Burke–class destroyers that attempted to transit the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday were forced to turn back after encountering threats from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which also launched a UAV in the direction of the vessels.

The incident happened around noon Dubai time, as US and Iranian delegations were in Islamabad for negotiations, the official said, requesting anonymity to discuss confidential matters. The Centcom statement didn’t mention any Iranian attempt to turn the vessels back. 

Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency also reported earlier the nation’s armed forces monitored a US destroyer seen moving from Fujairah toward the Strait of Hormuz and conveyed this to the US via Pakistani mediators. The US vessel returned from the strait after Tehran warned that it would be targeted, according to Fars.

Pakistan is mediating in peace talks between the US and Iran in Islamabad amid a two-week ceasefire in the hostilities, now in their second month.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Ceasefire talks between the U.S. and Iran have begun in Pakistan, but a potential military clash between the two countries is already looming.

On Saturday, U.S. Navy ships navigated through the Strait of Hormuz in a maneuver that wasn’t coordinated with Iran, sources told Axios, marking the first such move since the war started six weeks ago.

The ships crossed the strait into the Persian Gulf, then returned to the Arabian Sea, the report said, with a U.S. official saying the focus was on freedom of navigation.

A statement from U.S. Central Command confirmed that two destroyers transited the strait to begin setting conditions for clearing mines, adding that underwater drones will join the effort.

“Today, we began the process of establishing a new passage and we will share this safe pathway with the maritime industry soon to encourage the free flow of commerce,” said Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of Central Command.

But Iran declared it a ceasefire violation, and a source told Bloomberg that the Navy destroyers were forced to turn back after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched a drone in their direction.

Also on Saturday, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social on that the U.S. is “starting the process of clearing out the Strait of Hormuz.” Meanwhile, three oil supertankers transited the narrow waterway, representing the biggest day of oil exits through Hormuz since Iran closed off the chokepoint through which one-fifth of the world’s oil passed before the war. 

Trump halted his war against Iran for two weeks while talks are underway. But the ceasefire remains fragile as hostilities continued, and Iran maintains a tight grip on the strait.

At the same time, the U.S. military continues to send more combat power to the region. A third aircraft carrier as well as thousands of Marines and paratroopers are expected to arrive later this month. More long-large cruise missiles are also flowing to the Middle East.

“I think we’re kind of getting ready for round 2,” Rapidan Energy founder Bob McNally told CNBC on Thursday. “But as we work on Iran’s ability to disrupt Hormuz, which we unfortunately started way too late but we’re doing that now, Iran’s leverage starts to erode. And I think the conditions for a real ceasefire and a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, a full reopening, will be stronger later this month than they are right now.”

He compared weakening Iran’s threats to a game of whack-a-mole, listing anti-ship missile launchers, small fast-attack boats, drones, submarines, and long-range artillery.

McNally, who previously served as White House energy advisor to President George W. Bush, also pointed out that the U.S. has reduced Iran’s stockpile of underwater mines that can be used to close the strait.

“It may not be widely reported, but I believe the U.S. military in the last week or so has been focusing on whacking those moles, degrading Iran’s ability,” he added. “You may not perfectly get rid of it, but degrading Iran’s ability to interdict shipping down to a manageable level—and that’s when insurance can come into play and escorts, and folks can start to move through.”

For now, Iran’s missiles and drones are enough to scare ships away, giving Tehran effect control. While a trickle of ships have been allowed to go through, it’s been very selective and a toll of about $2 million is required.

Iran is seeking to formalize this “toll booth” in ceasefire talks, and Trump has even mused that the U.S. could enter into a joint venture with the Islamic republic to extract the transit fees.

But the Gulf states that export their oil and gas through Hormuz have signaled they will not tolerate Iranian control of the strait. Meanwhile, Wall Street has warned it would also threaten U.S. dollar dominance in global trade.

In an interview with India’s Times Now on Wednesday, McNally said allowing Iran to rule over the strait would set a dangerous precedent that would encourage similar behavior in other parts of the world.

“It would be a breakdown in global order and trade and stability,” he said. “It’s hard for me to imagine that the United States would end this conflict leaving Iran strengthened and an ability to sort of extort tolls, not only tolls, but other concessions: diplomatic concessions, foreign policy concessions, military concessions.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Two Chinese supertankers loaded with crude appeared to be transiting the Strait of Hormuz hours after a Greek vessel moved through the waterway, in what would mark a significant uptick in oil shipping traffic days after a fragile ceasefire between the US and Iran was announced.

If all three pass on Saturday — the journey takes about eight hours — it would mark the biggest day of oil exits through Hormuz since the war caused traffic through the waterway to all but halt at the start of March. None are carrying oil from Iran or have obvious, direct links to the country. Since the war began, the vast majority of crude to leave the region has come from the Islamic Republic.

The reopening of Hormuz is critical to the world’s oil trade because its closure has resulted in the loss of millions of barrels of supply to global markets. A resumption would alleviate pressure on increasingly tight physical markets everywhere. The US and Iran are set to hold peace talks in Islamabad in the coming days.

The two Chinese supertankers would be the first from the Asian nation observed taking barrels out of the region, a boon for Beijing but nevertheless underscoring that the country has been squeezed by the conflict too.

In oil-flow terms, the exits are significant but still way below peace-time levels. The three tankers between them have a transport capacity of about 6 million barrels of crude. In addition, Iran exported at a rate of about 1.7 million barrels a day last month. That would imply about half the normal rate of shipments through the waterway — and only for a single day.

There’s also a third Chinese tanker, which hasn’t been signaling on Saturday, that had been waiting close by the first two before they moved to depart the Persian Gulf. 

The Greek tanker was signaling for Malacca in Malaysia, whose media reported on Friday a permission for the country’s freighters to depart. Malacca is also a waypoint for ships going elsewhere in Asia. Iran has said that vessels are allowed to sail through the waterway, but that they must get permission to do so.

The two Chinese supertankers are the Cospearl Lake and the He Rong Hai. The Greek one is the Serifos. Calls to the ships’ operators outside normal working hours either weren’t answered or weren’t immediately returned. The Serifos and the He Rong Hai loaded their cargoes in Saudi Arabia, while the Cospearl Lake did so in Iraq, the tracking data show.

All three appear to have followed a northerly route through the strait that has been demanded by Tehran. That path passes through Iranian waters and along the coasts of Qeshm and Larak Islands and is well away from the traditional Hormuz shipping lanes that hug the southern coast of the waterway.

Almost all traffic through the waterway, which normally handles about a fifth of the world’s oil and a similar portion of liquefied natural gas, ground to a halt within a day of the war starting on Feb. 28. 

While digital ship-tracking can be subject to manipulation, the three ships’ signals look consistent with genuine vessel movements.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Defense said a Pakistani military force arrived at King Abdulaziz Air Base as part of a strategic defense pact between the two countries.

The Pakistani force comprises air force fighter jets and support aircraft, the ministry said in a statement. The move is aimed at enhancing joint military cooperation, raising operational readiness and supporting security and stability in the region, it said.

Saudi Arabia and nuclear-armed Pakistan signed a mutual defense pact in September 2025, stating that “any aggression against either country shall be considered an aggression against both.” The two countries have had several meetings about the pact since Iran began retaliatory attacks against its Middle East neighbors, including Saudi Arabia. 

Pakistan’s military didn’t immediately respond to a request for further information.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The United States and Iran began negotiations Saturday in Pakistan, days after a fragile, two-week ceasefire was announced, as the war that has killed thousands of people and shaken global markets entered its seventh week.

Iran’s state-run news agency said three-party talks had begun after Iranian preconditions, including a reduction in Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon, were met, and after U.S. and Iranian officials met separately with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. There were no immediate further details, nor U.S. comment.

The U.S. delegation led by Vice President JD Vance and the Iranian delegation led by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf were discussing how to advance the ceasefire already threatened by deep disagreements and Israel’s continued attacks against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“I cannot say whether they are sitting in the same room or in separate rooms, but talks have started and are progressing well,” said one Pakistani official with knowledge of the peace efforts, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Iran sets ‘red lines’ including compensation for strikes

Iran doubled down on parts of its earlier proposal, with its delegation telling Iranian state television it had presented some of the plan’s ideas as “red lines” in meetings with Sharif. Those included compensation for damage caused by the U.S.-Israeli strikes that launched the war on Feb. 28 and releasing Iran’s frozen assets.

The war has killed at least 3,000 people in Iran, 1,953 in Lebanon, 23 in Israel and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states. Iran’s chokehold on the vital Strait of Hormuz has largely cut off the Persian Gulf and its oil and gas exports from the global economy, sending energy prices soaring. Attacks have caused lasting damage on infrastructure in half a dozen countries in the Middle East.

In Tehran, residents told The Associated Press they were skeptical yet hopeful about the talks after weeks of airstrikes left destruction across their country of some 93 million people. Some said the path to recovery would be long.

“Peace alone is not enough for our country, because we’ve been hit very hard, there have been huge costs,” 62-year-old Amir Razzai Far said.

Meanwhile, Israel pressed ahead with strikes in Lebanon after saying there is no ceasefire there. Iran and Pakistan have disagreed. The Lebanese state-run news agency reported at least three people killed. There were no reported strikes in the afternoon.

Officials posture over key issues ahead of talks

U.S. and Iranian officials claimed leverage and issued new demands and preconditions as talks approached. President Donald Trump posted repeatedly on social media leading up to Saturday, saying Iranian officials “have no cards” to negotiate with.

“The only reason they are alive today is to negotiate!” he wrote.

He accused Iran of using the Strait of Hormuz, a key artery for global energy supplies, for extortion, and told reporters Friday it would be opened “with or without them.”

On Saturday, Trump said on social media that the U.S. had begun “clearing out” the strait, but it was unclear whether he was referring to the reported use of mines there or Iran’s broader ability to control the area.

Islamabad was deserted as security forces sealed roads and authorities urged residents to stay inside.

Vance said Friday that the U.S. was optimistic about the talks, but warned: “If they’re going to try and play us, then they’re going to find that the negotiating team is not that receptive.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had said Tehran was entering negotiations with “deep distrust” after strikes on Iran during previous rounds of talks. Araghchi, who is part of Iran’s delegation in Pakistan, said Saturday that his country was prepared to retaliate if attacked again.

Iran and the United States outlined competing proposals ahead of the talks reflecting the wide gulf on key issues.

Iran’s 10-point proposal called for a guaranteed end to the war and sought control over the Strait of Hormuz. It included ending fighting against Iran’s “regional allies,” explicitly calling for a halt to Israeli strikes on Hezbollah.

The United States’ 15-point proposal includes restricting Iran’s nuclear program and reopening the strait.

Israel and Lebanon will have direct negotiations

Negotiations between Israel and Lebanon are expected to begin Tuesday in Washington, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun’s office said Friday, after Israel’s surprise announcement authorizing talks despite the countries lack of official relations.

Israel wants the Lebanese government to assume responsibility for disarming Hezbollah, much like was envisaged in a November 2024 ceasefire. But it is unclear whether Lebanon’s army can confiscate weapons from the militant group, which has survived efforts to curb its strength for decades.

Israel’s insistence that the ceasefire in Iran does not include a pause in its fighting with Hezbollah has threatened to sink the deal. The militant group joined the war in support of Iran in the opening days. Israel followed up with airstrikes and a ground invasion.

The day the Iran ceasefire deal was announced, Israel pounded Beirut with airstrikes, killing more than 300 people in the deadliest day in Lebanon since the war began, according to the country’s Health Ministry.

Strait of Hormuz remains a sticking point

Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz has proved its biggest strategic advantage in the war. Commercial vessels have avoided the strait, effectively blocking the passage of oil, natural gas and fertilizer.

The spot price of Brent crude, the international standard for oil prices, was above $94 on Saturday, up more than 30% since the war started.

Before the conflict, around a fifth of the world’s traded oil typically passed through the strait on more than 100 ships a day. With the ceasefire in place, only 12 have been recorded transiting.

Iran has floated the idea of charging ships passing through as part of a peace deal, though the idea has been widely rejected by countries including the United States and Iran’s neighbor Oman.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Junelle Lewis was on the hunt for a reprieve from Seattle-area gas prices driven high by the Iran war when an app on her phone gave her the answer: the Tulalip Reservation north of the city, almost half an hour from her home.

She didn’t hesitate.

“I purposely drove here just for the gas,” Lewis said while filling up her Chevrolet Suburban at the Tulalip Market this week for $4.84 a gallon (3.8 liters) — about 75 cents less than prices near home. “Gas is ridiculous. But I have found, honestly, over the years, this gas station specifically is cheaper than a lot around here. Probably the cheapest.”

Lewis isn’t the only driver who has discovered that some of cheapest fuel can be found on Native American reservations.

Especially in California, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma and Washington state — places with dozens of tribally owned stations, including some in busy travel corridors — tribes exempt from state fuel taxes can sell for much less than competing stations nearby.

Gas prices push the drive to find bargains

Apps such as Gas Buddy make finding the cheapest gas easier than ever.

Nationwide, gasoline prices have risen by well over $1 since the Iran war began Feb. 28, reaching an average of $4.15 a gallon, according to AAA.

Prices have been higher, topping $5 during the summer of 2022, but economists believe they will continue heading up and contribute to inflation in the weeks of ahead as geopolitical tension persists.

Deals are to be found, though, at many of the almost 500 tribally owned convenience stores with gas stations across the U.S.

Fifty-five are in California. At the Chukchansi Crossing Fuel Station & Travel Center between Fresno and Yosemite National Park, the $5.09 gas was 60 cents less than nearby stations.

New Mexico resident Jamie Cross usually finds savings on the Mescalero Apache Reservation, where gas was as low as $3.79 this week.

“I hope we don’t go any higher,” Cross said Thursday.

In eastern New York state, on Cattauragus Indian Territory between Buffalo and Erie, Pennsylvania, the cheapest gas was about $3.65 at more than half a dozen stations — 50 cents less than in towns nearby.

Tribal lands find a fuel tax escape

So how do tribes do it? Two words: Tax exemptions.

Generally tribes must pay the federal fuel tax of 18.4 cents per gallon for gasoline and 24.3 cents per gallon for diesel, and pass that cost along to drivers. State fuel taxes are a different matter.

For well over a century, U.S. courts have found that states don’t have authority to collect taxes from Native Americans on their land, said Dan Lewerenz, a University of North Dakota assistant law professor who specializes in Native American law.

“The Supreme Court consistently held to this view and it’s one of the most enduring principles in federal Indian law,” Lewerenz said.

Federally recognized Native American tribes are in 35 states with state gasoline taxes ranging from 9 cents per gallon in Alaska to 71 cents in California.

From there, things get complicated based on where the fuel is taxed — at fuel terminals, say, or when distributors buy or sell fuel — and depending on various agreements between states and tribes.

Court rulings come into play. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that off-reservation distributors in Kansas may charge state tax on sales to tribes for on-reservation fuel sales. But in 2019, the Supreme Court held that an 1855 treaty between the U.S. and the Yakama Nation that ensured the free travel of tribal members on roads with their goods prohibited state fuel taxes on tribal lands in Washington state.

“This is a little bit different than the principle that Indians aren’t taxed within Indian Country because this particular treaty reserved certain off-reservation rights for the Indians as well,” Lewerenz said.

Gas is just one way stores make money

Convenience store gas sales are not as profitable as bringing people inside from the pumps.

Selling snacks adds profit. But tribal businesses are increasingly offering groceries in what otherwise would be “food deserts” far from grocery stores.

“Sometimes these gas stations and convenience stores are the nearest, best place to purchase affordable food or household supplies,” said Matthew Klas, with the Minneapolis-based consultant Klas Robinson Q.E.D.

Klas does market research and consults for tribal businesses and tracks the 245 tribes nationwide that, as of 2025, operated 496 convenience stores with gas stations.

Oklahoma, California, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Michigan and New York have the most. Some tribes, including the Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma and Oneida Indian Nation in New York, have their own store chains.

Drive-through smoke shops, car washes and truck stop amenities also bring in revenue. Then there are the casinos: 205 tribally owned gas stations are located at or near casinos.

Some tribal casinos are resorts with gas stations. Some tribal gas stations are casinos of a sort called “gasinos,” which only have a small number of gambling machines.

Tribally owned businesses are a major revenue generator for Native American reservations. On the Seattle area’s Tulalip Reservation, rising gas sales were being reinvested in the community, helping to cover the cost of roads, police, health care, education, housing and other needs, Tulalip Tribes Federal Corporation CEO Tanya Burns said in a statement.

“Like any government, we provide critical services to our people,” Burns said.

It’s not just about savings

“It’s terrible,” Todd Hall of Paden, Oklahoma, said of diesel prices as he spent about $90 to fill up his tow truck at the Citizen Potawatomi Nation gas station about 30 miles (48 kilometers) west of Oklahoma City.

But, he added: “They’re cheaper here than anywhere else.”

Hall paid $4.57 per gallon for diesel, and said the price is over $5 at many locations in the area.

Mark Foster said he saves about $5 a week buying fuel at the tribally owned gas station. But he’s a faithful customer because the tribe is a good community partner, he said.

“I like the way the tribe operates,” he said. “And the price is good too.”

At the Tulalip Market north of Seattle, Jared Blankenship was griping not about prices but that he was having to pay for gas at all.

“Yeah, well, my electric car just got totaled,” Blankenship said. “So this sucks. This is new. It’s either Costco or looking wherever’s cheap, like the rez. So here we are.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

NASA’s Boeing Co. rocket just propelled astronauts farther into space than ever before. The Trump administration is already looking to competitors for a replacement. 

About a week before the $24 billion Space Launch System pushed the four crew members of the Artemis II mission around the moon, NASA asked rivals what options they could offer for its ambitious plan of future lunar trips. That call, echoed almost immediately in the White House’s budget request, put a big question mark on the future of Boeing’s beleaguered rocket after roughly a decade of development. 

The fate of the program — worth tens of billions of dollars over the next few years — has become a key test for Jared Isaacman, the billionaire fintech entrepreneur who President Donald Trump named to run NASA last year, in his efforts to make the space agency faster and more efficient. He’s counting on new commercial companies like SpaceX to provide cheaper alternatives to the costly systems like SLS developed by legacy players like Boeing and Lockheed Martin Corp.

“Because that program draws on such history, has contractors, hundreds of subcontractors, tens of thousands of people, it’s expensive,” Isaacman said in February. “It’s not the vehicle that you are going to take to and from the moon a couple of times a year as you build out a moon base the way the president wants.”

That network of support — Artemis counts suppliers in all 50 states — has helped the program survive efforts to kill it over years of delays and cost overruns. The administration’s attempt to phase out the SLS and the Lockheed-made Orion crew capsule in its budget request last year ran into fierce opposition on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers ultimately succeeded in blocking the cuts. Last week, the White House signaled that it will try again to find commercial replacements.

With a 2028 deadline looming to land astronauts on the moon before Trump leaves office and China planning its own mission by the end of the decade, Isaacman is under pressure to deliver. Although legacy providers like Boeing have struggled to meet deadlines in the past, their technologies are proven. New rivals like SpaceX and Blue Origin have yet to show their rockets can get to the moon.

Read More: Why the US, China and Others Are Racing to the Moon: Explainer

Isaacman has been turning up the heat. 

In February, he announced that NASA would be canceling Boeing’s multi-billion dollar contract for a more powerful upper stage for the SLS rocket despite years of development. In March, he announced a pause on Gateway, a planned space station in lunar orbit, leaving international partners and companies involved scrambling to adjust. In its place, he outlined plans for a base on the moon’s surface and an accelerated slate of missions to build it. 

“He is really trying to rely heavily on commercial space and competition,” said Dave Cavossa, president of the Commercial Space Federation, which represents companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin. “I think it’s the most pro-commercial administration, the most pro-change administration leadership we’ve ever seen.”

Artemis was created in the first Trump administration out of the remnants of a NASA program that had been cancelled by his predecessor but managed to limp along thanks to continued funding from Congress. By the time Trump returned to the White House last year, the holdups and price tag had grown. 

A focus of the criticism is the SLS rocket, which has carried the Artemis missions into orbit at a cost of about $4 billion per trip — four times initial estimates and years behind schedule. 

“We are not going to sit idly by when schedules slip or budgets are exceeded,” Isaacman said on Mar. 24. “Expect uncomfortable action if that is what it takes, because the public has invested over 100 billion dollars and has been very patient with respect to America’s return to the moon.”

A Boeing spokesperson said that the company is a proud partner in the Artemis mission. Tony Byers, Director of Orion Exploration Services and Transformation at Lockheed Martin, said that the Orion spacecraft is the only flight-proven deep space crew vehicle and that the company would continue to evolve the capsule to meet NASA’s planned increased flight cadence. NASA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

When the White House proposed winding down SLS and the Orion spacecraft after just three flights in its budget request to Congress last May, lobbyists from contractors like Boeing and Lockheed Martin flooded Capitol Hill. They targeted Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Brian Babin, whose districts rely heavily on the programs for jobs. 

By July, Cruz led a push to reinstate about $6.7 billion to keep the program funded even as Republicans were lining up behind most of Trump’s other priorities.

“It speaks to the strength of the program to some key members of Congress and then those key members really acting to show that strength,” said Mike French, founder of the consulting firm Space Policy Group.

This year, the administration’s budget proposal doesn’t include a hard deadline for phasing out SLS and Orion, just the vaguer request to look for commercial alternatives. NASA also said it’s assessing other options for Artemis missions set to launch after 2028.

For the moment, SLS is the only rocket on the market that can do what NASA needs. 

The lack of other options has allowed lawmakers to walk a tightrope between embracing a commercial alternative and defending the legacy architecture for now.

“I think we need to use what we have,” Babin said, pointing at the SLS rocket standing behind him at Kennedy Space Center on Apr. 1 shortly before the launch of Artemis II. “When we have an alternative, I think that would be great to have a commercial rocket or a government-owned rocket, whatever it takes.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Protests over the soaring cost of fuel spread disruption across Ireland on Saturday with many gas stations running dry as truck and tractor drivers staged a fifth day of blockades at the country’s sole fuel refinery and several depots.

Vehicles blocking traffic led to closures of the main highway around the capital, Dublin, as well as six other major roadways.

More than a third of the 1,500 service stations in the republic are out of fuel and that number is expected to grow dramatically if the roadblocks remain, Fuels for Ireland chief executive Kevin McPartlan said.

Irish police put all its officers on notice they could be called to duty over the weekend and the military was on standby to help remove the vehicles as the government was due to renew talks Saturday to resolve the dispute.

Frustration over the soaring cost of fuel led to the protests that began Tuesday and have continued to grow as word spread on social media.

Government officials, who had already introduced measures to ease the burden of price rises, have been baffled over the rationale behind the protests because the price spike is global and due to the conflict in the Middle East that has restricted oil exports.

Prime Minister Micheál Martin said Friday that the country was on the brink of turning tankers away during a global shortage and was in jeopardy of losing its oil supply.

“It is unconscionable, it’s illogical, it is difficult to comprehend,” Martin told the national broadcaster RTE.

Truckers, farmers, and taxi and bus operators are among those who have staged the blockages and called for caps in fuel prices or cuts to excise or carbon taxes.

The government approved a range of measures two weeks ago to cut fuel prices, including a temporary reduction in excise taxes on motor fuels, expansion of a rebate for truckers and bus operators that use diesel fuel, and extension of a program that helps low-income people with their heating costs.

But those reductions were quickly overtaken as international prices continued to rise.

Protests began with slow-moving convoys that restricted access to some of the busiest streets in Dublin and blocked fuel depots that supply half the country. Some protesters slept in their vehicles overnight, demanding that the government speak with them.

Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan said Thursday that outsiders were manipulating the demonstrators to advance their own agendas or “really want to damage our country.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Jon McNeill has had a front-row seat to how the world’s most successful leaders operate. As former president of Tesla—reporting directly to Elon Musk—and later COO of Lyft, he’s spent years working alongside top executives.

Across those experiences, he’s noticed one habit that consistently sets high performers apart, yet seems to be fading with younger professionals: reading books.

“Reading is probably the single most important thing you can do,” McNeill told Fortune. “Over time, I noticed that many of the most successful people in the world read constantly.” 

He pointed to leaders like former Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, who has said he spends as much as 80% of his day reading as well as Musk himself, who has long credited books as a key source of learning. After seeing that pattern up close, McNeill built a habit of an hour and a half of reading into his own routine—something he says has been critical throughout his career.

“I feel like this exercise of reading every day really refreshes my brain every morning, and it keeps me engaged in a way that I wasn’t before,” McNeill added.

At the time of interview with Fortune earlier this year, McNeill said he was reading Andrew Ross Sorkin’s 1929 and Harvard Business School professor Mark Roberge’s The Sales Acceleration Formula, a book about scaling companies. McNeill also just released his own first book, The Algorithm, a look into the leadership strategy he learned from working under Musk. 

But for McNeill, reading isn’t just about simply gaining knowledge—it’s about building curiosity. That hunger, he said, has shaped nearly every opportunity in his career, helping lead to his current roles like serving on the boards of General Motors, Lululemon, and CrossFit, while expanding his venture capital firm, DVx.

Reading, a habit embraced by top business leaders, is falling out of habit among Gen Z

Picking up a book is a common practice among many top business leaders. In fact, according to a 2025 JPMorgan survey of more than 100 billionaires, reading ranks as the top habit they share.

Among the broader public, however, reading is becoming less and less popular. Two in five Americans did not read a single book last year, according to a YouGov survey. Moreover, researchers from the University of Florida and University College London found that daily reading for pleasure has dropped about 40% between 2003 and 2023. The rise of digital media, growing economic pressures, shrinking leisure time, and even access to books and libraries were pointed out as likely contributors to the shift.

The trend is especially pronounced among younger people. Americans aged 18 to 29 read an average of just 5.8 books in 2025—the lowest of any age group, YouGov reported. A separate 2025 survey from the Walton Family Foundation found 35% of Gen Z students dislike reading, and 42% rarely or never read for fun.

That decline could have far-reaching consequences. Students who say they enjoy reading—and do it regularly—are more likely to report strong academic performance. Reading also builds critical soft skills like problem-solving and analytical thinking, which employers are valuing more than ever.

One simple formula helped McNeill build relationships with Elon Musk and Mary Barra

For McNeill, the benefits of reading go beyond academics. Reading, he said, makes you ask better questions—and that habit can be a powerful career advantage.

“I’ve never really thought about building a network,” he said. “I just really like people.”

He described himself as an introvert growing up in a small farming community in rural Nebraska. But he learned early on that asking questions could open doors. 

“People like to talk about themselves. So if you’ll ask them questions about themselves, [you’ll] get a conversation going,” he added.

That approach shaped some of the most important relationships in his career. When former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg introduced him to Musk in 2015, McNeill didn’t pitch himself—he asked a question. 

“I said, ‘What’s the biggest problem that is keeping you up at night right now?,’” which sparked a two-hour conversation that put McNeill down a path to being a Tesla executive from 2015 to 2018.

A similar moment happened when he met General Motors CEO Mary Barra. By asking about the company’s biggest challenge—which ended up being battery cell manufacturing—he built a relationship that eventually led to a seat on the board of the Fortune 500 automaker.

“I don’t think about making a name for myself or building a network,” McNeill said. “I just really enjoy people, and at the end of day, I enjoy solving problems, too, and often those two things go hand in hand to make you pretty useful to people.”

And for young professionals finding it more difficult than ever to break into today’s AI-driven job market, McNeill’s advice is simple: stay grounded in habits that build long-term value.

“Don’t freak out,” McNeill said. “Just ride this for a little while because you’re gonna be fine. You’re absolutely gonna be fine.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The relationship between AI companies and the American defense establishment burst into the open earlier this year when Anthropic found itself in a nasty public fight with the Pentagon. After Anthropic demanded assurances its AI products wouldn’t power domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons, the Pentagon barred all federal agencies and contractors from doing business with Anthropic at all; the company sued to lift the ban, and the high-stakes battle is currently unfolding in court. 

But behind the scenes, an equally important if less dramatic AI struggle is playing out—as U.S. defense and intelligence agencies try to leverage the technology without sacrificing their need for secrecy. A small handful of AI infrastructure companies have been quietly doing complex, rarely-seen work that makes it possible for the U.S. government to securely use AI in the first place.

“It’s probably a $2 billion market right now,” says Nicolas Chaillan, founder of an AI platform called Ask Sage that’s used by thousands of teams across the Department of Defense. The opportunity these pick-and-shovel companies are chasing grows out of an extreme case of a dilemma faced by anyone looking to deploy off-the-shelf LLMs on confidential data: They’re trying to figure out how to use these powerful tools without inadvertently exposing the wrong information to the wrong people through the AI training process.

These AI infrastructure companies receive less media attention for their government work than bigger peers like Google, xAI, OpenAI, and of course Anthropic. Until the recent dispute broke out, Anthropic’s Claude model was among the only LLMs approved for use on the Defense Department’s classified networks. But this arrangement was made possible by a 2024 deal with two other firms that provided the necessary infrastructure—Palantir and Amazon Web Services (AWS)—which operated the secure software platforms and cloud services that host the AI. Imagine that large language models are a bit like the U.S. military’s newest, shiniest warplane: The infrastructure companies provide something like the radios and runways that help these new machines talk to the rest of the military, and land safely.

“There’s probably, I don’t know, a hundred people, 200 people who deeply care about this question inside the intelligence community,” says Emily Harding, a former CIA analyst who now researches defense tech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “I think there’s millions and millions of business people who are going to face this same problem, not with as high stakes.”

Any corporate leader sitting on a trove of proprietary information has probably run into some version of this issue with their AI strategy. Imagine training a bespoke instance of ChatGPT or Claude on all of your company’s mission-critical files: A law firm’s case documents; a drug company’s internal research reports; a retailer’s real-time supply chain data; an investment bank’s risk models or due diligence memos. Trained on such a corpus, an AI helper could speak your company’s language fluently, and reveal richly profitable connections in your files. But consider the consequences if the wrong person—say, a competitor—got access to that helper. 

“It’s kind of a Catch-22,” Harding tells Fortune. “Feed it enough, it knows too much. You don’t feed it enough and then it can’t do its job.”

With the right prompting from an outside party, the contents of any confidential file that the AI touched in training could be spilled. Which means teaching an LLM all a company’s secrets could simultaneously boost the business—and risk blowing it up. 

When secrets are a matter of national security

Now consider how much worse that problem becomes if that AI helper works for the CIA, where secrecy is a matter of national security and breaches could endanger lives. 

Intelligence agencies and the military depend on the compartmentalization of sensitive information. Human agents and analysts gain access to secrets on a strict, need-to-know basis to reduce the risk of leaks. (This may be among the reasons that a recent report stating the Pentagon was discussing training LLMs on secret data sparked immediate criticism.) So what happens if every analyst’s AI assistant suddenly knows all of an agency’s secrets?

“Compartmentalization goes out the window,” says Brian Raymond, another former CIA analyst who’s now CEO of Unstructured, an AI infrastructure company that serves both commercial and government clients. 

 “Let’s say I’m an Iraq analyst,”  Raymond explains, by way of example. “From an intel organization’s perspective, I have no business reading reports from covert assets on Chinese military technology. Everyone stays in their swim lane and that’s great security. If all of a sudden, I could start asking all sorts of questions like, ‘Tell me all the assets we have in some county in Asia and tell me all their real names’—those are our most closely guarded secrets!”

And so a small crop of AI infrastructure firms has sprung up to solve what amounts to AI’s secrecy problem. These companies build a scaffolding of software and services around commercial large language models, which allow organizations to use the AI without exposing their secrets. 

At the heart of this scaffolding is a carefully orchestrated version of technique called Retrieval Augmented Generation, or RAG. Commercial LLMs use a version of RAG whenever they look at documents you upload into the chat window. A model like Claude retrieves information from that document and then augments its responses based on its findings before generating an answer to your questions. Still, there’s often a limit to how much data you can upload. And giving a commercial LLM sensitive documents remains risky because the contents could end up being used for future training, or end up in a temporary cache that isn’t necessarily siloed from the provider’s view.  

The companies working with the U.S. government offer far more secure, managed RAG systems, in which commercial LLMs function more like a processing engine—and sensitive information stays walled off in secure libraries. These systems can be used to separate what a commercial AI model like Claude or ChatGPT “knows” from what it looks up.  

The AI equivalent of a ‘secure room’

Let’s say the Iraq analyst from Raymond’s example employs a secure, RAG-based AI assistant to put together a report on U.S. Navy assets in the Persian Gulf. The analyst types a question into this assistant’s chat window, asking for the latest count of warships there. The RAG system she’s using employs a private, secure library that, let’s say, contains some recent, classified intelligence reports about Navy deployments in the region. This library—technically a vector database, mathematically indexed for connected meanings rather than just keywords—is the first place the system looks for an answer. 

Think of this as the step where the AI assistant steps into a secure room to get briefed on a need-to-know basis. The assistant retrieves these classified details about U.S. ships and then hands them over to a commercial LLM like Gemini that’s running on secure servers. The LLM then uses the classified details to augment its response before generating it in the text window for the analyst. Secure systems like these are often set to expunge questions and answers from their memory once a session is done, so classified information is neither used for later training nor retained in any memory.

The Iraq analyst in this example would only have clearance to access a secure library of documents related to her tasks in Iraq. Out-of-scope questions about China, from Raymond’s example, wouldn’t be answerable. There’d be no classified China documents in the secure library, nor would the commercial LLM have any of that information in its training data. In short, this method creates a scaffolding that gives the AI a way to read and use sensitive data without remembering it forever or revealing it to the wrong people.  

Raymond’s company, Unstructured, works at the scaffolding’s base. His team cleans and converts messy internal files—from handwritten field notes for commercial clients to exotic classified file formats for the government—so they can be searched safely inside a secure vector database. Or as Raymond says, “We vacuum up all that data in the world, get it into book form, and to the library.”

Other companies like Berkeley-based Arize AI, which has raised more than $130 million of funding since it launched in 2020, work at the center of the structure. Arize tests and monitors RAG pipelines as well as the agents and applications built on them—debugging and hunting down errors and hallucinations.  

“Controlling these systems is hard and making sure they do the right thing is one of the most mission-critical parts of the process,” Arize CEO Jason Loepatecki tells Fortune. ”I wouldn’t deploy an AI without using one of my products or my competitors’ products.”

At the top of scaffolding you’ll find players like Ask Sage. While Unstructured and Arize serve a relatively even mix of government and commercial clients, Ask Sage is more of a Pentagon specialist, doing around 65% of its business with the Defense Department. The Virginia-based company sells a government-grade software interface where users can safely query approved commercial LLMs, run agents, and get answers drawn from their own restricted data, all without the model ever “learning” the secrets behind the scenes. 

A Pentagon in-house competitor?

In December the Defense Department announced the launch of its own internal LLM platform, called GenAI.mil. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth introduced the rollout by way of a department-wide message that said, “I expect every member of the department to login, learn it, and incorporate it into your workflows immediately.” Afterward, Pentagon officials said, more than a million unique users signed on to the platform. 

At present, GenAI.mil offers a simple chatbot interface, allowing service members to employ a commercial LLM running on secure servers for drafting documents or analyzing files—but only for work that is unclassified.  This is among the reasons that GenAI.mil—unlike products from Ask Sage, Palantir or Scale AI—can’t do RAG on secure off-platform databases full of top-secret files. A Pentagon official told Fortune that the department is looking to deploy AI tools across “all classification levels” moving forward, but declined to answer questions about timeline, specific software architecture or upcoming changes to the GenAI.mil platform.  In its current form at least, the Pentagon’s new product can’t solve AI’s secrecy problem. 

Which is perhaps good news for products like Ask Sage. While Chaillan says new government subscriptions have leveled off since January, 14,000 teams across 27 U.S. government agencies remain subscribed to Ask Sage. On the strength of those numbers, Ask Sage was acquired in November by the defense-focused analytics company BigBear.ai in a $250 million deal. (Chaillan left the company in February.)

Raymond, of Unstructured, sees the Pentagon’s new platform as an opportunity. “With GenAI.mil making these models more available, that’s going to unlock a lot of demand for what we build,” he said.

Knowledge workers in the U.S. military and intelligence communities have reams of documents to summarize, tons of text to draft, and endless compliance tasks to carry out, all buried under a dense thicket of government acronyms. “Take an ATO in the government with FedRAMP, or you know, pick your poison of compliance nightmare,” Chaillan says. For such tasks, he adds, a platform like AskSage “really drastically reduces the human manual burden.” 

And this is likely one of many reasons why leaders like Arize’s Loepatecki see a huge opportunity solving AI’s secrecy problem both inside the government and out.  

“The vertical we’re in is probably one of the fastest growing picks-and-shovels spaces,” Loepatecki says. “The world’s data is infinite, and the pockets of data that you don’t want to be trained publicly are large.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Imagine a company town hall where frontline workers ask about capital allocation and middle managers offer ideas on long-term strategy. Or a supply chain team prompting resilience planning and employees at every level connecting their actions to value creation.

For many CEOs, this kind of engagement might sound aspirational, but at Ingersoll Rand, it’s our reality.

That wasn’t always my view of what leadership or engagement looked like. Early in my career, after completing a dual master’s degree at MIT, I took a job as an hourly supervisor in an aerospace factory. While many of my peers headed to investment banks or consulting firms, I found myself managing 16 frontline workers on the shop floor.

I thought my business school training — steeped in theory about lean manufacturing, continuous improvement, and waste reduction — would leave me more than prepared for the task. But I quickly saw the gap between theory and reality. Efficiency gains benefited the company, but for workers, it often meant fewer overtime hours and less pay. Management wanted tighter margins; employees wanted income stability. Incentives weren’t aligned, and behavior reflected that. I learned an enduring lesson: strategy alone doesn’t drive results. People do.

I took incentive alignment to its full potential in 2017 when, with the support of our largest shareholder, KKR, I instituted a broad-based shared ownership plan for every employee at the company I ran, Gardner Denver. From the manufacturing floor to the front office, everyone became an owner. 

The shift was apparent. People had a stake in the outcome, and they acted like it. Ideas flowed more freely, teams spotted and solved problems earlier, and employees took pride in identifying and implementing improvements. For example, by training thousands to act as owners when managing cash — from inventory to collections — we built financial discipline into the culture.

Gardner Denver merged with Ingersoll Rand plc’s Industrial segment in 2020, and I became CEO of the new Ingersoll Rand, Inc., a global leader in mission-critical flow creation and life science and industrial technologies. Today, an ownership mindset now runs deep across Ingersoll Rand’s 21,700-person global workforce. And the results speak for themselves. Since 2017, we have grown enterprise value by more than eight times. Attrition has reduced and our safety performance exceeds world-class standards. Employee engagement has climbed to the 90th percentile.

When people understand how their work drives the company’s value, they act like owners: they innovate, they solve problems, and they stay.

Beyond our high-energy town halls, I see this ownership mindset in action every day. Employees go above and beyond by making extra sales calls, improving factory throughput, and resolving customer issues quickly. Ideas surface from every corner of the business and translate into real results, including meaningful cost savings. In one case, an employee identified a way to produce a critical part on-site, saving labor, turnaround time, and waste.

Our sales teams now position shared ownership as a true differentiator, telling prospective customers that our service technicians are owners and that the quality of service reflects it. 

The effects extend beyond the workplace as well. With their equity, employees have helped their parents pay off mortgages and have plans to make educational dreams come true. In Brazil, one employee used his equity to fund lifesaving medical care for his wife, including travel for surgery that would otherwise have been out of reach. Outside the U.S., employees have shared what it means to tell their families they own a piece of an American company, including the pride and sense of belonging that comes with it. 

Skeptics often argue that broad-based ownership is too complex, especially in global industrial companies with a distributed workforce. We’ve found the opposite. With the right leadership commitment and execution playbook, it can be done anywhere. Shared ownership has boosted our company culture, bringing us together across teams and geographies. It is also central to how Ingersoll Rand operates and grows. In recent years, we’ve acquired more than 75 companies, many of them family-owned. Increasingly, sellers see our commitment to shared ownership as a signal of how we treat our people and steward long-term value.

Employee ownership isn’t a side program or a social experiment — it’s a leading business strategy that is good for the economy and good for workers. That is why I support efforts like Ownership Works, which helps companies across industries adopt shared ownership as a repeatable value-creation strategy.

When done properly, shared ownership aligns incentives and drives value. Investors benefit. Employees benefit. Companies become more resilient. As CEO, I am proud of my people and our world-class operations. We really are in it together and our culture, and outcomes, reflect that.

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

Gen Z loves to love what millennials hate. 

Now, they’re rejecting the millennial gray aesthetic and reinvigorating a classic early 2000s vibe: The Tuscan Mom.

The resurgence has recently exploded across TikTok, racking up millions of views as the young professional generation romanticizes oversized, ornately decorated homes that epitomized early-2000s American aspirational living in suburban McMansions. And they’re dressing like Tuscan moms, too.

Think soaring ceilings with wood beams, terracotta walls in deep ochre and sienna, heavy wrought-iron light fixtures, and layered textures. And in terms of fashion, flare jeans, fitted knit tops, silk blouses, oversized sunglasses, and gold jewelry all reign supreme for Tuscan moms. 

It’s not an aesthetic they would’ve likely learned from their own mothers. Their daughters would be millennials who went on to reject maximalism, bold colors, and statements, opting for cooler, hushed tones and minimalist fashion and design.

So Gen Z has largely inherited the Tuscan mom look from screens rather than from lived experience, leaning into the vibes of Gaby Solis’ home in the early-2000s mystery-comedy-drama Desperate Housewives or the Cohen house on The O.C.

“It’s very much rooted in McMansion fantasy rather than actual Italian architectural tradition,” Rachel Simpson, senior interior designer at Tampa, Fla.-based Revive Design and Renovation, told Fortune.

But Gen Z’s Tuscan mom era isn’t an exact copy-paste of the early 2000s. They’ve repackaged it as something fresh, experts say.

“The TikTok version is more of an imagined lifestyle that romanticizes that era’s glamour and textural richness but filtered through Gen Z’s lens,” Simpson said. “It’s nostalgic, playful, and aspirational rather than a direct attempt to replicate old-school Tuscan design.”

What exactly makes a Tuscan mom?

The original early-2000s Tuscan style was, by most accounts, unapologetically maximalist. Homes had arched door frames, terracotta floors, faux-finish walls, and dramatic Mediterranean motifs (everything felt Italian—at least what Americans think Italy looks and feels like). 

“It was a matter of demonstrating that you had reached a place, and the house was the evidence,” said David Ratmoko, founder of Metro Models, a global modeling agency. “Each surface was weighty and each room proclaimed itself.” Ratmoko is also a photographer, writer, and scholar who has lectured on intercultural communication schools including Yale University and the University of Zurich.

The current iteration of the Tuscan mom aesthetic keeps the warmth, but drops some of the performance, he said.

“Status signal is not of interest to Gen Z,” Ratmoko said. “They desire the texture, the down-to-earth palette, and the sense of a room that was not designed to be photographed on a listing.” 

As Simpson put it, the current iteration is less a recreation of the 2000s and more a reinterpretation, pulling the spirit of warmth and texture from that era and remixing it for today.

“TikTok gives it a catchy name and visuals that go viral, but the appeal taps into something real,” she added. “People are craving comfort, texture, and spaces that feel human and soulful after years of minimalist, grayscale interiors.”

The millennial gray backlash

The Tuscan mom trend could be deeply resonant with Gen Z because they’re reacting against years of seeing millennials decorate their homes minimally, with little color or warmth. 

When millennials were old enough to have their own spaces, they wanted to take a break from the heavy ornamentation of their childhoods. That started the so-called “millennial gray” era of cool, neutral, and carefully controlled interior design.

“Millennials rejected the warmth and heaviness they grew up with, and Gen Z is rebounding from that because gray became the default, and defaults tend to feel boring,” Upasna Singh, New York-based stylist and designer, told Fortune.

Simpson also said it’s because Gen Z doesn’t view the aesthetic of their predecessors to be particularly exciting.

“Gen Z, having grown up with that gray-washed world, sees it now as bland and inhospitable,” she said.

In other words, the fashion and interior design pendulum has viciously swung back about two decades. 

More than a micro-trend

While some trends that cross your TikTok feed are fleeting, experts say the Tuscan mom era is happening in real life, and it’s one that could stick.

“Warm interiors, stone countertops, arched details, and aged wood finishes started showing up in purchasing data well before the TikTok conversation peaked,” Ratmoko says. “The content didn’t create the desire. It called a name to what people were already experiencing.”

In fact, an April 2025 report from the National Association of Realtors showed more homes are being built or redesigned to have more arches, with searches for homes with arched cabinets tripling in the past year, according to late 2o24 data from home remodeling site Houzz. 

Another 2024 survey of more than 600 interior design professionals by 1stDibs showed warm muted tones like burnt orange and dark mustard captured 19% of designer interest, while the “once unstoppable” light gray had fallen to just 6%. Vogue also reported in early 2024 “warm rich woods, and quieter patterns for large furniture” were popular once again. Simpson agrees that real purchasing behavior is already shifting. 

“Designers and homeowners are already talking about warmer palettes and more tactile materials in real projects,” she said. “Whether people literally recreate a McMansion interior or not, the feeling of that aesthetic—earthy tones, layered finishes, materials that age beautifully—absolutely can influence real purchasing and renovation decisions.”

There’s also a deeper cultural element at play, Ratmoko said, and one that goes beyond just a simple 20-year trend cycle.

“When individuals are overwhelmed by pace and confusion, they turn to spaces that seem stable and unchanging,” he says. “Stone, wood, warm plaster, and heavy curtains convey the message of stability that flat gray walls and minimalism do not. The Tuscan revival is not a nostalgia for the early 2000s. It is a reaction to the present moment.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Starbucks is betting on AI to give its baristas some extra help behind the counter.

The Seattle-based coffee chain is implementing “Green Dot Assist,” an AI-powered virtual assistant intended to simplify baristas’ jobs and fulfill orders faster. First announced in June 2025, Starbucks will pilot the technology created with Microsoft Azure’s OpenAI platform at 35 locations and is being rolled out more widely this year.

The AI assistant will pull recipe cards of drinks to show baristas how to make them, as well as suggesting swaps if ingredients run out, the company said. The tech will also suggest food pairings to suggest to customers, provide troubleshooting support for malfunctioning equipment, and help managers find employees to backfill shifts should a store be short-staffed.

“It’s just another example of how innovation technology is coming into service of our partners and making sure that we’re doing all we can to simplify the operations, make their jobs just a little bit easier—maybe a little bit more fun—so that they can do what they do best,” Starbucks’ then-chief technology officer Deb Hall Lefevre told CNBC at the time of its launch. 

Starbucks first announced the tech at its Leadership Experience event last year, when it also unveiled plans to expand the position of assistant manager by adding the role to “most company-operated stores in the U.S,” hiring about 90% of management internally.

The swath of changes are among CEO Brian Niccol’s efforts for the company to “get back to Starbucks” and revive its cozy-coffeehouse reputation amid slumping sales. The plan is seeing results. Starbucks reported a 4% increase in year-over-year same store sales last quarter, as well as a 5% uptick in quarterly revenue. As the company navigated tariffs and brought on more staff to its stores, profits took a hit.

At the core of Niccol’s vision for a Starbucks renaissance is the idea that beyond being a purveyor of beverages and pastries, the coffee chain’s true identity is that of a customer service company.

“When I ask people, name me a great customer service company, I usually get a blank stare. That tells me, right off the bat, there’s a huge opportunity to be the defining customer-service company,“ Niccol said during the Fast Company Innovation Festival in September 2025. “There is tremendous value in being a world-class, customer-service company combined with great craft, great quality food. When you look at putting those two things together for the price that we will have to charge for it, I think it will turn out to be invaluable.”

How will Starbucks capitalize on its agentic AI?

The move follows the lead of other restaurant chains deploying AI. Yum! Brands, the conglomerate behind KFC and Taco Bell, has partnered with Nvidia to take drive-thru and digital orders. McDonald’s, however, cancelled its contract with IBM after two years and returned humans to drive-thru order-taking. Google announced this month the ability for its agentic AI to help book restaurant reservations.

While restaurants have had mixed results with AI, analysts see Starbucks’ recent moves to leverage the technology as largely positive, so long as the company uses it effectively.

Logan Reich, an analyst at RBC Capital, told Fortune that while the introduction of an AI chatbot won’t be instrumental in increasing revenue, it can help train and onboard staff more efficiently, particularly as the company invests in internal promotions. Announcing new management opportunities alongside implementation of AI tools also sends the signal to workers that AI won’t be taking their jobs anytime soon, according to Gadjo Sevilla, a senior AI and tech analyst at eMarketer.

“What they’re trying to show here is that, with regard to adoption, is that they can make it work with longtime staff,” Sevilla told Fortune. “So it’s not replacing jobs, it’s enhancing jobs, with regards to the new hires.”

But as with any rollout including AI, Starbucks may experience hiccups.

“Making sure that the chatbot is accurate and providing in an accurate way and not causing more issues—I think that’s going to be a critical aspect of rolling out to a broad storebase,” Reich said.

Sevilla warned the tech may experience more profound problems, from security breaches to outages—like the one Anthropic experienced last month—that are associated with a company using tools outside its immediate premises. As more restaurants figure out how to integrate AI into their point of sale, they may look to see how effective Starbucks was in leveraging the tech.

 “This is going to be a litmus test for AI integration at this scale,” Sevilla said.

A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on June 11, 2025.

More on Starbucks:

• Starbucks is offering $1,200 bonuses, expanded tipping, and weekly payouts to boost the pay of its U.S. baristas
• Starbucks CEO admits the chain ‘ran like a manufacturing facility’
• How stroopwafels and saffron tiramisu fit into Starbucks’ plan to get to 40,000 stores around the world

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Many entrepreneurs strive to one day add “millionaire,” or even “billionaire,” to their list of achievements; it’s become an industry-wide sign that they’ve finally made it in business. But billionaire investing mogul Warren Buffett hit back at the notion that eye-watering net worths equate to excellence.

“Greatness does not come about through accumulating great amounts of money, great amounts of publicity or great power in government,” Buffett wrote in his final Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letter last November. 

The 95-year-old “Oracle of Ohama,” known as one of the most successful investors of all time, is the 13th richest person in the world, boasting a fortune of $143 billion. But that doesn’t mean he’s splurging on mansions and driving luxury cars off the lot. He’s been thrifty throughout his seven-decade professional career, despite adding billions to his name. 

Known for eating at McDonald’s, driving a beat-up old car, and living in his modest Nebraska home, it’s clear his bank account hasn’t changed his ways. Instead of feeling powerful by lavishing in the spoils of his riches, Buffett finds true value and greatness in non-material pursuits. 

“When you help someone in any of thousands of ways, you help the world,” Buffett continued. “Kindness is costless but also priceless. Whether you are religious or not, it’s hard to beat The Golden Rule as a guide to behavior…Keep in mind that the cleaning lady is as much a human being as the Chairman.”

Buffett’s thrifty lifestyle: clipping McDonald’s coupons and living in a $31,500 house

Buffett’s golden rule is that everyone should be treated with kindness and respect, no matter if they’ve built a unicorn company, or are a junior-level worker. And he has treated the world’s most powerful business leaders the same way, unwilling to shell out on fancy meals to impress them. 

The Berkshire Hathaway icon is known for stopping by McDonald’s for a cheap eat, choosing to order two sausage patties, an egg and cheese, or a bacon egg and cheese—all less than $4. He loves the fast-food chain so much he even took Bill Gates there for lunch years ago, instead of wining and dining him at a swanky restaurant. One time, the entrepreneurial pair were at a McDonald’s in Hong Kong, and Gates recalled laughing when Buffett offered to foot the measly bill, pulling coupons out of his pocket. But for the hedge-fund mogul, every penny counts.

The same money philosophy applies to Buffett’s major life purchases. The long-time CEO still lives in the same five bedroom, two-and-a-half bathroom Omaha home he bought for $31,500 back in 1958. The house would be worth around $1.4 million today—far more affordable than the luxurious pads Buffett can afford—yet he said he “wouldn’t trade it for anything.” Buffett’s true fondness for the home lies in the memories of raising his three kids on the property, not its market value.

Uber-rich people boasting net worths like Buffett may also be tempted to ball out on indulgences like expensive cars. But the investing magnate isn’t interested in getting behind the wheel of a Lamborghini or Aston Martin; he once drove a 20-year-old car because he felt it was safer than driving a speedy luxury alternative. And at one point, his license plate even read as “THRIFTY.” 

Whether it be mansions or sports cars, Buffett steers clear of making major purchases that reflect his bank account. In fact, he feels giving in could be counterproductive to his happiness. 

“I do not think that standard of living equates with cost of living beyond a certain point,” Buffett said at a Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting in 2014. “My life would not be happier…it’d be worse if I had six or eight houses or a whole bunch of different things I could have. It just doesn’t correlate.”

A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on November 12, 2025.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

New pipeline construction is almost as hard to find in New York and New England as the Loch Ness Monster is in Scotland. But there’s now a NESE (pronounced “Nessie”) sighting in Brooklyn.

Oklahoma-based Williams Companies will break ground April 14 on the Northeast Supply Enhancement pipeline that expands its Transco natural gas network in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

“That’s the first pipe in New York in over a decade,” Williams CEO Chad Zamarin told Fortune. “What you’re seeing now is very broad [growth] across the U.S. footprint.”

Courtesy of a convergence of the AI data center power wave, rapidly growing export facilities, and population growth, the nation’s natural gas pipeline buildout is looking at its biggest growth surge in nearly 20 years—since the beginning of the shale gas boom.

While massive, long-haul pipelines are underway to liquefied natural gas (LNG) export hubs in Texas and Louisiana, a huge backlog of smaller gas pipelines or expansions is rising throughout the country from the Pacific Northwest to the Rockies and Midcontinent to the Southeast to connect data centers with gas-fired power.

“We’re trying to bring our capabilities to places where American companies and hyperscalers can’t get access to power and otherwise wouldn’t be able to build,” Zamarin said.

U.S. natural gas production was largely flat from 1970 to 2010, and then volumes spiked nearly 70% in a decade to about 100 billion cubic feet per day by 2020. Already having risen another 20% since then, production is projected to keep surging to about 160 billion cubic feet daily by 2040, driven by data centers and exports. The ample domestic supply is why the war in Iran hasn’t affected natural gas prices in the U.S., even while oil and fuel prices have spiked.

And, in order to keep the gas flowing and the data center dots connected, more and more pipe must plow into the ground.

“A few years ago, people were saying we don’t need more gas—ever,” said Hinds Howard, energy analyst for CBRE Investment, citing the pivot to renewable energy. “Now, technology companies that were the most net-zero people are clamoring for any power they can get, no matter if it’s gas or not.”

There are the obvious environmental concerns, but the overall demand surge and the need for power as soon as possible mean that both natural gas and renewable energy will continue to grow quickly.

The energy infrastructure analytics firm Arbo is tracking more than 150 gas pipeline projects nationwide that would provide about 150 billion cubic feet daily of gas supplies.

“I’d say there’s a far greater number of projects that are smaller in this buildout,” Arbo CEO Chip Moldenhauer. “But we’re sort of in the early innings when you look at the number of projects and the stages in which those projects are at right now. There’s a significant number…still in the very early stages. A lot more of this game has to be played.”

There’s still a big unknown about how large the AI boom will ultimately grow, and many more pipelines could still be built as new data center campuses commence construction, he said.

For now, the new pipeline construction isn’t close to meeting the projected demand, said Williams’ Zamarin. And the historical goals for a “boring, but very profitable” industry now has the potential for pipelines to take center stage.

“This is definitely an upcycle,” he added. “To get low-cost, abundant natural gas supplies to demand markets that really, really need it and want it, It’s all about the infrastructure in between—not just for the next five to 10 years, but for a very long time for our country. It’s going to be exciting; it’s not going to be boring.”

Growing market recognition

Just as stock market values have spiked for many utilities and power generators, so are the market caps for the gas pipeline developers. And Williams is the “poster child” for that growth, Howard said.

Williams focuses almost exclusively on natural gas—not the more stagnant oil and refined products markets—and expanded last year into the power business, including building power plants for hyperscaler Meta in Ohio.

As such, Williams’ market cap has surged about 90% in two years to nearly $90 billion, the highest for any U.S. pipeline player and second industrywide only to Calgary-based Enbridge.

In an increasingly consolidated industry, other pipeline players such as Kinder Morgan, Energy Transfer, Enterprise Products, TC Energy and the smaller DT Midstream also are on the rise. Others with less of a natural gas focus were being left behind. The crude oil-focused Plains All American Pipeline, for instance, had slumped, but is now seeing a bump from supply shocks from the Iran war. The growth story now and longer term, however, is focused on gas, analysts said.

The big differentiator for Williams of late is offering a “one-stop shop” for gas and power with both the gas pipeline growth and the gas-turbine procurement experience to now start building power plants. Williams has already announced $7.3 billion in power projects in Ohio and Utah with the potential to grow much more.

“This next five-plus-year period of growth is going to be very much focused on pipe and power,” Zamarin said. “That’s why we are focused on pipeline and storage projects, and we’re focused on bringing tailored power generation solutions directly to…data centers for hyperscalers.”

Williams also announced a goal of 10% or higher compound annual growth in adjusted EBITDA from 2026 through 2030, an admittedly high bar to achieve.

To wax philosophical, Williams is currently building the Project Socrates power project for Meta in New Albany with two gas-fired power plants—Plato North and Plato South—and a 20-mile pipeline slated to come online late in 2026. Williams also is developing the Apollo and Aquila power projects in Ohio and Utah, respectively. And, most recently, it announced the Socrates the Younger project in Ohio. All these combined would be enough to power nearly 1.5 million homes.

In terms of pipelines, Williams continues to focus on expanding its crown jewel Transco network, which runs more than 10,000 miles from southern Texas into the deepwater Gulf of Mexico and all the way up the Atlantic Coast to New York.

The Southeast Supple Enhancement expansion on Transco is Williams’ biggest project ever from an earnings contribution perspective in the company’s 118-year history, Zamarin said. The expansion will serve all the population and data center growth in Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, and the Carolinas, he said.

Expansions also are underway on Williams’ MountainWest Pipeline network in the Rockies and the Northwest Pipeline system, including for new demand from AI hubs.

“When you think about the Pacific Northwest, we haven’t had significant growth projects in 20 years,” Zamarin said. “That’s a market that hadn’t been open for any kind of growth and, now, is recognizing it really needs more gas supply.”

The Trump effect

Outside of gas-abundant and regulatory-lenient Texas and Louisiana, the last major gas pipeline built in the U.S., the Mountain Valley Pipeline, took more than a decade and a literal act of Congress before it came online in Virginia and West Virginia.

So, building enough pipelines to meet the potential data center demand won’t happen easily. A pipeline-friendly Trump administration helps, but Zamarin and industry advocates want more tort reform and congressional permitting reform, expediting everything from pipelines to electric transmission to renewable energy projects.

When President Donald Trump started talking in February 2025 about building the defunct Constitution Pipeline in New York, it caught former Williams CEO Alan Armstrong by surprise, he confessed.

After all, Constitution is a large Williams gas pipeline project that would service New York and the entire New England region. Williams had canceled the project in 2020 because of regulatory and permitting woes in the difficult-to-build region. And Trump hadn’t spoken with Armstrong before he talked about reviving it.

Williams also had killed the Northeast Supply Enhancement project in 2024 for similar reasons.

Although New York Gov. Kathy Hochul denied any quid pro quo, after the White House removed its block on New York’s Empire Wind project, Hochul decided to support NESE, which Williams initially prioritized reviving over Constitution largely because it’s smaller and easier. Williams also wants to resuscitate Constitution.

Even though NESE has some unresolved permitting issues in New Jersey and pending environmental lawsuits, the groundbreaking is moving forward. Earthjustice, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and others are suing.

Energy analysts see NESE’s success—or potential failure—as a litmus test for building more pipelines in the Northeast, including Constitution, and even nationwide.

“NESE would be a bellwether for litigation,” Arbo Chief Operating Officer Craig Heilman said. “That would be symbolic of what the current disposition of the large environmental opposition groups are. There’s been such a big sentiment change globally from energy transition to energy dominance, or all-of-the-above energy.”

In the meantime, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is fast-tracking pipeline projects to the extent its staff is able. But the real goal for industry is Congress approving permitting reform, which has tried and failed multiple times in recent years.

“I think there’s this growing recognition that we have a lot of potential as a country,” Zamarin said. “I’ve been calling it our superpower: our ability to produce natural gas. But we have this infrastructure limitation that is holding us back from reaching our full potential.”

Zamarin took over as CEO from a retiring Armstrong in July. In March, Armstrong was sworn in as the new Republican junior senator for Oklahoma, filling in on an interim basis for Markwayne Mullin, who vacated the seat to become the new U.S. secretary of Homeland Security.

Armstrong’s top priority as new senator? Permitting reform, of course.

“We need to retool American industry and its ability to scale up and build things,” Zamarin said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

For most dog owners, the hardest part of loving a pet is knowing from the start how it ends.

A San Francisco startup called Loyal wants to give you a few more precious moments with your loyal companion, and their results are promising.

Loyal is developing a daily prescription pill for senior dogs that the company believes can extend your loyal companion’s healthy lifespan by targeting one of aging’s most fundamental drivers: metabolic dysfunction.

“Arthritis and cancer and cognitive dysfunction are all different things,” said Dr. Brennen McKenzie, Loyal’s director of veterinary medicine, “but really, aging and metabolic health is one aspect of that that drives all these different things.”

The idea, he told Fortune, is to attack the root cause rather than play defense against each disease as it surfaces.

“If we can pick off the underlying driver for all of these things, we can have a much greater impact on health and welfare and wellbeing than just working on each individual disease as it pops up,” he said.

The drug, LOY-002, works essentially as a caloric restriction mimetic, achieving some of the same benefits as a severely reduced-calorie diet, but without the pain and suffering—or for beagle owners out there, the sheer physical strength—of refusing food to your four-legged friend.

“Part of the genius of the idea of LOY-002 is that it achieves some of the same goals biologically as caloric restriction without the hardship and the risks of doing that,” McKenzie said, referencing a landmark Purina study that found calorie-restricted dogs lived roughly two years longer on average. “It doesn’t require restricting calories, and it doesn’t cause them to lose weight.”

Loyal said the STAY study is the largest clinical trial ever conducted in veterinary medicine, which has seen an enrollment of 1,300 dogs across 72 veterinary clinics nationwide in a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled design.

“We’re putting them on either the drug or a placebo, and monitoring them incredibly closely, collecting just a mountain of really interesting data,” McKenzie said. “At the end of that, we will hopefully see that the dogs on the drug are living longer, they have less frailty, they have a better quality of life, hopefully they have less age-related disease.” The study, now about two and a half years in, will run a minimum of four years.

Crucially, LOY-002 could reach the market before the STAY study concludes. Loyal is pursuing a conditional approval pathway from the FDA, a mechanism designed for exactly this kind of situation, where the drug has passed safety requirements but still needs more time to cook in the study.

“The FDA recognizes that studies like this are long. They take years and years to run,” McKenzie said. “In the meantime, there is no drug that solves this problem. There’s nothing available to try to target aging and help dogs live longer. So if we can show that it’s safe and that it’s likely to work, we can bring it to dog owners and veterinarians sooner.”

As for how many years the drug might add, McKenzie was careful: “Numbers are always tricky, because we tend to fixate on them and think they’re more reliable than they are.”

So far in the STAY study, McKenzie noted they were able to detect at least a one-year difference between the treated and placebo groups at minimum.

“I don’t think there’s any way we can say you’re going to get X number of years or months more with your dog,” McKenzie added. “I think if we can show that overall it’s more, and enough to matter, I think that’s what we’re hoping for.”

The real-world scope of the trial was itself a statement of intent.

“When we said we’re going to enroll 1,000 dogs, everybody said, ‘You’re nuts. There’s never been a study that size. It won’t happen,’” McKenzie said. In the end, over 12,000 people emailed Loyal wanting to be involved. “A lot of them say, ‘I know this may not be helpful for my dog, but the idea that I can contribute to having something that will give my future dogs and other people’s dogs more time is really motivating.’”

As for humans, McKenzie was careful to frame the drug not as a biohack or a longevity shortcut, but as something more straightforward: better preventive medicine.

“It’s not a hack. It’s not a quick trick,” he said. “It’s just taking a basic, foundational understanding of how aging and biology works, and doing better preventive medicine.”

If it works in dogs, he believes it does now give some hope for similar drugs for humans as well.

“If we get approval for this drug, it’ll be the first time any aging drug, any lifespan drug, has been approved for any species,” he said. “I hope it’ll open some doors scientifically. It’ll show that here’s a way that we can actually prove that this works.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

I was only 23 years old working as an investment banking analyst in Singapore when the opening salvos of the 2003 Iraq War unfolded. Our team was tasked with tracking oil prices and macroeconomic indicators, trying to understand whether a distant regional conflict might ripple across Southeast Asia.

The war felt far away then—an abstraction to analyze—its consequences filtered through spreadsheets and financial models.

Today, that distance has collapsed. Conflict no longer travels slowly through global markets; it arrives instantly, coursing through energy systems, digital infrastructure, and supply chains—and reshaping capital flows and national competitiveness in real time.

From Jakarta, the war with Iran does not look like a distant geopolitical event. It’s a war of economic positioning—one that will shape how countries like Indonesia manage energy, build industries, and position themselves in an increasingly complex global environment shaped by energy insecurity, supply chain disruption—and new demands set forth by artificial intelligence.

Yet it is precisely in navigating this complexity that Indonesia holds a strategic advantage: with its resource endowment, growing industrial base, and pragmatic approach to global partnerships, the country is well positioned not just to withstand these pressures, but to translate them into long-term economic strength.

A new map for global capital

Conflict in key regions has exposed how fragile global supply chains remain, particularly for import-dependent economies. At the same time, AI is accelerating demand for power and water at a scale few anticipated. Data centers, the backbone of the AI economy, are among the most energy-intensive assets in the world.

Overlay continued geopolitical competition, and the implications become clearer. Companies and governments alike are diversifying supply chains, seeking politically stable, resource-rich environments that reduce exposure to single-country risk.

For global investors, the question is not whether diversification will happen, but where it will happen.

Indonesia is now part of that answer. Through Danantara, a sovereign investment platform, Indonesia is building the institutional capacity to meet that demand—deploying capital at scale while strengthening governance standards and investment discipline.

Moving beyond the resource trap

Indonesia has already demonstrated that policy can shift its role in the global economy.

Until recently, the country exported raw nickel while most of the value creation occurred abroad. The 2019 export ban changed that dynamic, catalyzing a sharp increase in domestic mineral processing investment and accelerating industrial development.

But the experience also offers a cautionary lesson.

Today, a significant share of Indonesia’s refining capacity is controlled by foreign firms. While the country captured jobs and economic activity, much of the technology, power pricing, and higher-value processing remains outside its control.

The implication is not to retreat from global partnerships—it is to structure them differently.

As demand for critical minerals grows, Indonesia now has greater leverage to shape investment terms. Future partnerships must prioritize not only capital inflows, but also technology transfer, shared ownership of high-value processing, and transparent governance structures.

Danantara’s role is to help structure these partnerships—bringing in global capital while ensuring that projects meet higher standards of accountability, deliver long-term value, and strengthen Indonesia’s position in strategic industries.

For global investors, this presents a clear opportunity: participation in one of the world’s most important emerging supply chains, under increasingly structured and transparent frameworks.

The AI opportunity—and constraint

If critical minerals are the foundation of the energy transition, AI infrastructure is the next frontier of competition.

Global technology companies are actively seeking locations for data centers that can meet three requirements: reliable power, access to water, and political stability. Increasingly, there is a fourth: clean energy.

Indonesia has the potential to meet these needs at scale. Yet its current energy mix, still heavily reliant on coal, risks limiting that opportunity. For companies with binding clean energy commitments, this is not a marginal concern. It directly influences investment decisions.

The result is a narrowing window. Countries that can deliver clean, dependable power at scale will capture a disproportionate share of AI-related capital expenditure. Those that can’t will be bypassed—regardless of other advantages.

Here again, execution and governance will determine outcomes. Mobilizing capital into renewable energy—at the speed and scale required—demands institutions that can partner credibly with global investors, manage risk, and deliver projects efficiently. This is a core part of Danantara’s mandate: to help accelerate investment into energy transition infrastructure while maintaining commercial discipline and transparency.

Governance as competitive advantage

Resource endowment alone does not determine outcomes. Many countries have learned that advantage can erode without institutional strength and policy clarity.

What differentiates the next generation of investment destinations will be governance: the ability to deploy capital transparently, execute projects efficiently, and align public and private incentives over the long term.

Danantara was established with this principle in mind. Its mission is to serve as a trusted partner for global capital—anchoring investments that are commercially sound, strategically aligned, and governed to international standards. That includes strengthening oversight, improving capital allocation, and ensuring that Indonesia participates more fully in the value chains it helps enable.

For investors, this matters. Capital is increasingly sensitive not just to returns, but to standards: transparency, environmental performance, and institutional credibility. Meeting those expectations is essential for attracting sustained, high-quality investment.

War-room discipline for a war economy

As an alumnus of the University of Chicago, I often watch one of our most famous faculty members, John Mearsheimer, on the news, revisiting the hard lessons of great-power conflict.

Superior resources alone do not win wars. History is full of resource-rich nations that lost the long game to countries with better strategy, well-thought-out institutions, and faster execution. What Indonesia needs right now is not more studies confirming our potential. What we need is the discipline of a war cabinet: clear priorities, fast decisions, and accountability for results.

Indonesia’s moment

Resource endowment alone does not secure long-term advantage. Countries that succeed are those that combine assets with clear strategy, strong institutions, and consistent execution.

Indonesia has reached that point. The foundations are in place, but the priority now is execution—at speed and at scale.

This means treating renewable energy as strategic infrastructure critical to capturing AI-driven investment, strengthening institutional frameworks to meet global capital expectations, and ensuring Indonesia retains meaningful participation in the value created within its own economy. No more holding the shovel while others take our resources.

The window is finite. Capital is already being deployed across competing markets. Those that can align policy, capital, and execution will capture a disproportionate share of the opportunity.

Indonesia is well positioned. The question is whether it can move with the urgency required to convert that position into lasting economic leadership.

The writer is Chief Investment Officer of Danantara Investment Management. The views expressed are his own. 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

When OpenAI acquired TBPN, the reaction followed a familiar script: Was this an acquihire? A marketing play? A conflict of interest? All hype? Not wrong questions, just ones with answers that give an incomplete picture. The assumption behind all of them is that talent, media, and distribution are distinct assets. That used to be true but it isn’t anymore.

What OpenAI bought wasn’t just a show or a team. It bought a tightly coupled system: deeply media-savvy operators who understand how to shape narratives, an audience that trusts them, and a modern distribution channel that delivers every day. In today’s media environment, those things compound.

We saw an earlier version of this shift firsthand at HubSpot when we expanded into media through acquisitions like The Hustle and My First Million. The internal debate, predictably, focused on control: Would we integrate the brand? Would we align the voice? Those are the questions you ask when you assume the goal is to turn an acquisition into a mouthpiece. They are the wrong questions.

What mattered was the relationship between the people creating the content and the audience consuming it. Millions of readers subscribed because they trusted what they were getting. Sometimes a specific voice, sometimes the brand itself, often the combination. They’d built that trust into their daily habits. When we acquired those properties, and then Mindstream and Starter Story later, that relationship transferred. With it came topical distribution we didn’t have to build from scratch. 

I’d spent years building on this principle at media companies like Vox Media, National Geographic, and Complex, where it was the same every time: the trust is the product. Doesn’t matter whether it comes from a journalist, the masthead, or both — if the audience trusts what they’re getting, they show up, they subscribe, they convert. That’s been true in consumer media for decades. What’s new are tech companies running the same playbook, and actually making it work.

Much of the public conversation has focused on the conflict of interest. It’s a valid concern, but it misses the deeper shift. The real implication is not just that OpenAI could influence coverage. It’s that it now sits closer to where opinions are formed in the first place.

The reason acquisitions like OpenAI and TBPN can be so divisive is the context. When a media company acquires another media company, nobody blinks. When a technology company does it, the assumption is more nefarious. That the content will become marketing and the audience will bolt. But that assumption skips the part that matters. If there’s a business model committed to preserving editorial quality and value, resources to invest in growth, and operators who actually know how to run media properties, the ownership structure is irrelevant. The audience doesn’t care who signs the checks. They care whether the people they trust are still showing up with something worth their time.

This is what makes the TBPN deal strategically important. OpenAI didn’t just acquire talent, and it didn’t just acquire media. It acquired influence that is already packaged with distribution. Their highly specific audience of founders, investors and operators is the asset. Separate those elements, and the value disappears.

The logic holds. But strategy without a business model is just a thesis. TBPN’s audience is small, and the harder question is how OpenAI plans to convert that attention. At that size, the conventional answer of branded content and advertising for companies like OpenAI is precisely what makes editorial independence difficult to sustain. 

The question for OpenAI isn’t whether owning a trusted channel has value. It’s whether they’ll build the model that unlocks it without destroying what made it valuable in the first place.

For the past few decades, the model was straightforward: build the best product; use reliable paid, owned and earned strategies to generate awareness; nurture that attention through a narrowing funnel; and convert. But those channels are more saturated (and less effective) than they used to be. According to Gartner, the modern B2B buyer journey now involves six to ten stakeholders and nearly thirty touchpoints.

Adding to the complexity: anyone with a prompt can now produce content at scale, and the supply of noise grows faster than the supply of trust. Owned channels, where the audience opt in, become one of the last reliable signals. That’s the real logic behind acquisitions like this one.

We’ve already seen early versions of this playbook. HubSpot built a media ecosystem alongside its software; media properties operate with editorial independence, and are monetized by converting audience attention into sales pipeline, not ad revenue. Stripe invested heavily in content and developer storytelling. Shopify turned education into a core part of its growth strategy.

OpenAI is taking that next step. The implication is that the line between media companies and technology companies won’t just blur, it will continue to become irrelevant. The companies that win won’t just have better products. They’ll control how those products are understood, who understands them first, and the channels through which that understanding spreads.

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

As the debate over AI’s role in the workplace rages on, some experts warn that eliminating menial tasks with AI could come with a hidden cost to productivity.

In a Financial Times op-ed last year, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said AI agents were helping customer service workers resolve more queries and helping programmers write more code.

“This is freeing human teams to accelerate projects and deepen relationships with customers,” he said.

The message was clear: AI is taking on more of the grunt work so employees can do the tasks that matter most. 

But in a future where AI absorbs the tasks that make our workdays slightly monotonous—like entering data, organizing our inbox, or updating documents—might we actually miss the boring tasks that break up the work day?

Amy Morin, a psychotherapist and author of the upcoming book The Mental Strength Playbook, told Fortune we just might. 

While executives like Benioff tout AI’s ability to free up humans for higher-level tasks, Morin said the boring, repetitive, tasks that office workers complete daily are necessary to give our brains a break.

“We only have so much attention and so much mental bandwidth. And if we’re doing these high-level tasks all day long, we’re going to run out of energy way faster,” she said.

Problem solving may also suffer without these low-effort digressions. Completing an easy, accomplishable responsibility lets workers still feel productive without exerting too much mental effort.

“My concern is that if we think we’re going to be diving in, focusing on solving a problem and focusing on it all day long, your brain doesn’t get that opportunity to get a fresh perspective or to get a break and to come back and look at it from a different angle,” Morin said.

Research from the University of Texas at Austin published in the peer-reviewed journal Manufacturing & Service Operations Management found that every five minutes of low-effort, low-distraction pauses, boosted productivity by 7.12%. 

Meanwhile, other types of interruptions, like lunch breaks, hurt productivity when workers return to a task. The researchers blamed the discrepancy on focus. When a worker took a lunch break, they mentally disengaged and were forced to pay “cognitive restart costs” when returning to work.  But a low-effort pause kept them engaged. 

This research lends more credence to the idea that removing undemanding duties from workers’ days may inadvertently strip away the pauses that keep them cognitively locked in.

To be sure, AI has already demonstrated some potential benefits for workers. A 2025 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found that, among workers who used AI tools daily, a third said it saved them four hours or more a week. That’s as work-related stress has remained elevated since the pandemic, according to Gallup, while other studies show a majority of workers experience burnout. Saving them some time each week could be a positive.

But burnout isn’t one-dimensional. It can be associated with both constant repetitive work or constantly doing high-level tasks, Jessica Watrous, a licensed psychologist and the chief clinical officer of mental health care platform Modern Health, told Fortune. What might best enhance workers’ cognitive abilities is a balance between the two types of tasks that works within the limits of the human brain.

“Our cognitive load and our ability to kind of store things, it’s pretty stable,” she said. “Just because you have a tool to make you more productive, is your brain fully ready for that?”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

After nearly 10 days in space, complete with a historic loop around the moon, the four astronauts on NASA’s Artemis II mission faced their most dangerous moment yet: not in deep space, but in the final 13 minutes of their journey home.

“It’s 13 minutes of things that have to go right,” said NASA’s Artemis II flight director Jeff Radigan on Thursday at a news briefing.

Before the Orion spacecraft, named Integrity by the crew, ever left the Kennedy Space Center launchpad in Florida on April 1, NASA knew there was a problem. During the unmanned Artemis I mission in 2022, engineers discovered more than 100 locations on the Orion heat shield that had cracked and broken off during reentry.

Here’s the issue: it’s not supposed to do that. The shield was designed to melt away, not pop off in chunks. Instead, scientists discovered the culprit was a pressure problem buried within the shield itself. As the capsule dipped into the atmosphere, internal layers became scorching hot through a process called pyrolysis, trapping gas.

When the capsule briefly climbed back out of the atmosphere during its “skip” (meaning skip entry, which is when a spacecraft returning from high speed dips into the earth’s upper atmosphere. It’s the guided maneuver it uses to skip along the layer, closely mirroring a stone “skipping” across a pond, all before it reenters for a final landing. The outer layer hardened and became impermeable. This posed a problem because the gas had nowhere to go. On the second descent, the pressure burst through, taking chunks of the heat shield with it.

Now you’re wondering, that was Artemis I, surely they would never put four people—commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen—aboard a ship with such flaws. And you’d be partially right: the Artemis II has, remarkably, an even less permeable shield than the one on Artemis I, meaning the same failure mode was even more likely to occur.

It’s all about the right angle

Rather than delay the mission by more than a year to install a redesigned heat shield (as one engineer wanted), NASA flew Artemis II with the same flawed design and simply changed how the capsule returned. The solution was counterintuitive, with NASA instructing the crew to apply more heat more consistently. This shortened the skip phase and maintained higher temperatures throughout the descent, ensuring the outer char layer never cooled sufficiently to trap gas beneath it.

So these four astronauts, who broke a 56-year-old distance record and became the furthest humans to travel from earth when the mission brought them around the moon, not only had to overcome faulty Outlook problems and smelly toilet issues, but they had to enter the earth’s atmosphere at the right angle, at the right speed, and the right time—and they did it.

The four astronauts reached speeds of over 24,000 mph, equivalent to traveling across the continental U.S. in about six minutes. The 16.5-foot-wide heat shield reached approximately 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, about half the temperature of the sun’s visible surface. The steeper, hotter trajectory also gave the capsule less range to maneuver away from bad weather near the Pacific splashdown zone.

It paid off

Not everyone was on board with the plan. Former NASA engineer Dr. Charles Camarda had publicly warned that NASA didn’t fully understand the root cause of the cracking and that the modified trajectory amounted to “playing Russian roulette.” But NASA stood by its data. Associate administrator Amit Kshatriya pointed to Artemis I flight data, ground testing, and engineering models as justification, and Glover acknowledged the risk head-on, noting the heat shield and parachutes are systems with zero fault tolerance built in.

The capsule splashed down safely in the Pacific, capping the first crewed lunar mission since Apollo 17 in 1972.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The Federal Reserve is asking major US banks for details about their exposure to private credit following a surge in redemptions from the funds and a rise in troubled loans in the industry, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The queries by Fed examiners are intended to assess the level of stress in the private credit industry and the potential for it to spill over to the wider financial system, said the people, requesting anonymity to discuss the work. 

Among the queries the Fed has been incorporating into its routine oversight process, the central bank has been seeking detail on the debt private credit funds have taken on from banks. In good times, that debt can juice returns and make private credit funds more enticing. In bad times, it risks exposing banks to losses.

The Treasury Department is also questioning the insurance industry about exposures to private credit, said people with knowledge of those separate discussions.

Representatives for the Fed and Treasury had no immediate comment.

The questions are one of the strongest signals yet that US regulators are working to get a handle on the scale of the strains in private credit, which has ballooned to an $1.8 trillion industry marketed first to institutional investors and increasingly now to individuals.

Private credit, which relies on investor money — rather than bank deposits — to make loans, had been on examiners’ radar for years. They stepped up focus when retail credit funds came under pressure in the recent months and investors rushed to pull cash. 

Regulatory Push

A growing chorus of international regulators have been warning about the risks of private credit. Financial Stability Board Chair Andrew Bailey said this week that private credit may be facing more stress after the shock to markets from the Iran war. The Financial Stability Oversight Council said at the end of March that it had discussed recent developments in the private credit sector.

The Fed’s questioning comes as President Donald Trump’s top financial watchdogs seek to loosen rules for Wall Street lending giants. Part of that deregulation effort is meant to both bolster banks’ ability to lend to private-credit outfits and to have traditional lenders better compete with nonbank firms in areas such as mortgage and small-business loans.

The move also shows that officials such as Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman want to balance relaxed rules with more strategic queries from the industry about what they perceive as potential areas of risk, said some of the people.

Banks have sought to distance themselves from their less regulated nonbank rivals. JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Jamie Dimon warned that the private credit industry has a lack of transparency and poor valuation standards, but that he didn’t think private credit was a systemic risk, according to his latest CEO letter.

Wall Street and their private credit peers are deeply intertwined. Credit funds rely on banks to safeguard and custody assets. They also need banks for lines of credit. If private credit portfolios sour, this puts the collateral banks are lending against at risk. 

Blackstone Private Credit Fund had a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.7 times at the end of 2025, while Blue Owl Credit Income Corp.’s was 0.8 times as of Feb. 28. KKR FS Income Trust’s was about 0.7 times at the end of February.

Insurance Firms

The Fed questioning comes on top of another initiative at the Treasury Department to question insurers about their exposure. The regulator has put together a team to handle this, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Treasury is planning to meet with state regulators, which directly oversee insurers in the US, to discuss emerging risks and outlooks for the sector, the agency said in an April statement. The Treasury also expects to discuss it with international regulators, it said.

The review is expected to continue over the coming months and some financial firms may hold their own meetings with Treasury, the people said. 

In the last decade, insurance companies have fueled the rise of nonbank lenders, handing them more influence over vast pools of cash. Private credit players have used that money to make loans to businesses and parked them in complex investment structures.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Economists Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington argue that consultants can, at best, give dubious guidance, and at worst, exacerbate government and private sector dysfunction. In their book The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens Our Businesses, Infantilizes Our Governments, and Warps Our Economies, the economists argue consultants emerged in a post-Ronald Reagan era of reduced regulations, necessitating third parties come in to save institutions who had lost faith in themselves.

Instead of righting the ship, Mazzacato and Collington argued, these consultants created just an “impression of value,” an illusion of helpfulness and little else, all while the government and private companies burned money to hire them. 

In an era of AI, promising to save companies cash by automating white-collar jobs, the use of chatbots for guidance may be an appealing alternative to firms no longer willing or able to shell out for consultants. But emerging research shows that while you can ask AI what you would a consultant for a fraction of the price, its advice may not be worth taking, either. In fact, AI assistance might just present an old problem in a new medium.

A recent study led by the Esade Business School at the Universitat Ramon Llull in Barcelona, Spain, found that when various large language models (LLMs) were asked to provide guidance on a workplace issue, they gravitated toward a response that was most aligned with buzzwords, rather than providing guidance that best aligned with the scenario. Researchers dubbed the proclivity of AI to gravitate toward the same jargon to inform their judgements “trendslop.”

“An LLM is not the colleague who critically evaluates current ideas, looks into the contextual specifics, stress-tests assumptions, and pushes back when everyone gets comfortable,” the study authors wrote in a Harvard Business Review post summarizing their research. “On strategy, LLMs might be more akin to a freshly minted MBA or junior consultant, parroting what’s popular rather than what’s right for a particular situation.”

Recent layoffs among the “Big Four” consultancies, amid a wider industry slowdown, have suggested companies may already be losing value to potential clients. PwC slashed 150 business support staff in November 2025, around the same time McKinsey shed hundreds of jobs. 

“As our firm marks its 100th year, we’re operating in a moment shaped by rapid advances in AI that are transforming business and society,” a McKinsey spokesperson told Bloomberg last year.

But the emergence of “trendslop” suggests AI is far from able to provide direction to companies seeking counsel from the technology, and this research exposes the bias LLMs struggle with.

How ‘trendslop’ manifests

In order to measure AI’s tendency to give responses aligning with trends rather than logic, researchers tested seven models, including GPT-5, Claude, Gemini, Grok, across 15,000 simulations and scenarios. Models were asked to choose between two solutions when presented with workplace tensions, such as if a company should prioritize long term versus short term growth, or if a firm should use technology to automate versus augment workers’ jobs.

Researchers predicted that if LLMs were providing advice based on the situation-specific details, there would be diversity in which solution the models choose. Instead, the seven models usually clustered their answers around the same strategy, indicating a preference for “modern managerial buzzwords and cultural tropes.”

Even when researchers reworded prompts or asked for pros-and-cons analysis, the AI models, in many cases, demonstrated a strong preference toward a similar business strategy. The study authors warn relying on AI as a consultant will not result in bespoke business solutions, but rather a cookie-cutter solution it could propose to any business when prompted, regardless of the specificities of a presented challenge. 

“This reveals a real risk for leaders,” the researchers said. “An LLM can sound highly tailored to your situation while quietly steering you toward the same small cluster of modern managerial trends.”

Exposing LLM bias

The “trendslop” tendencies of LLMs are a result of biases they take on when the models are being trained, researchers noted. Because LLMs are trained on heaps of information from internet texts to social media to news, they tend to cling onto the positive or negative connotations attached to certain phrases or concepts, deeming “commoditization” as outdated and negative, and “augmentation” as progressive and positive.

In other words, when prompted to provide guidance on a tricky workplace scenario, AI isn’t analyzing the situation in question, it’s regurgitating key phrases based on how often it encountered while it was trained on data. In the case of ChatGPT, the study noted, the bot sometimes rejected providing a binary choice, instead recommending both solutions. Research published in Nature last year found AI sycophancy isn’t just unproductive, it can be harmful to science, confirming the biases of those prompting it instead of presenting users with data supported from scientific literature or other reliable, more impartial sources.

The “trendslop” researchers did not completely eschew the use of LLMs in navigating tricky workplace situations. They suggested models could still be helpful in generating alternative solutions or identifying blind plots in certain scenarios. If you’re aware of AI’s biases toward concepts like augmentation or long-term strategizing, you can challenge those biases to reveal more insightful guidance, according to the study.

“Leadership is ultimately about making hard choices in conditions of uncertainty and taking responsibility for them,” the researchers said. “AI cannot and should not be a substitute.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

NASA spent months engineering the perfect menu for the Artemis II mission. And the menu is surprisingly tasty: barbecued beef brisket, broccoli au gratin, vegetable quiche, five types of hot sauce, and way, way more. Because bread is banned in space (crumbs can damage precision instruments), there are 58 tortillas. There are cashews and almonds, mango salad and butternut squash, and more than 10 types of beverages, all culminating into 189 unique food items. One item in particular this week was Nutella, which stole the show just moments before the Artemis II astronauts broke a 56-year-old record and became the furthest humans from Earth when it slingshot back from the far side of the moon.

But perhaps one food item not on the list will be the one that the Artemis II crew will talk about forever: Uncrustables.

Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, and Mission Specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen have all been promised a lifetime supply of the peanut butter-and-jelly treat upon their splashdown, expected later today.

“Artemis you rang? we’ve got the crew covered on the OG uncrusted sandwiches from here on out…no joke,” the brand wrote in a now viral Instagram post showing an Uncrustable hovering over the earth, much like photos from the far side of the moon taken aboard the Artemis II.

When the four astronauts climbed aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft (which they dubbed Integrity), they embarked on a 10-day journey that will finally see their splashdown tonight, April 10, at around 8:07 in the evening. They knew the food that was aboard the ship—and they made one request for when they landed: the pocket-sized PB&J treat. The Navy confirmed that the recovery vessel, when they make splash down, will have an “abundant amount” of the sandwiches.

And Smucker’s replied with an even better PR stunt than maybe what Nutella had in the first place.

The Artemis II crew just traveled 252,756 miles from Earth, breaking the distance record set by Apollo 13 in 1970, and after all that history, what they wanted was a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich with the crusts cut off.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Patrick Ball may play senior resident Dr. Frank Langdon on The Pitt, the hit HBO medical drama, but off-screen, his financial reality looked nothing like his character’s steady climb toward a six-figure salary. Before his breakout role, Ball came close to walking away from acting altogether—overwhelmed by student loan debt he feared would follow him for life.

“I paid off my student loans like three months into The Pitt, and that was a really profound moment ‘cause I thought I was gonna die with it,” Ball recently told Cultured, reportedly tearing up. 

“It’s a huge burden to carry, and a lot of people carry it. I was $80,000 in debt and I had been through a series of failed relationships where my financial insecurity was a real problem. I had just thought that was going to be my life forever, and that is a really heavy thing to live with.”

Ball grew up in North Carolina and briefly attended the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, majoring in journalism. He ultimately dropped out to pursue a career in acting, spending five years on the road doing regional theatre. Later, he enrolled at the Yale School of Drama—where he accrued the bulk of his debt.

For years, Ball often earned just $700 a week (about $36,400 annually) and, months before landing The Pitt, was juggling three jobs, including at a coffee shop, while living in Brooklyn.

“And then the call for The Pitt came in, and everything was different.”

Ahead of the show’s January 2025 debut, it was reported that series regulars like Ball were set to make between $35,000 and $50,000 per episode. With 15 episodes in the first season, that puts his earnings at a minimum of $525,000—enough to wipe out the debt that once felt permanent. The show’s second season finale is set to air later this month, with a third season expected to follow next year.

Ball was one of 40 million Americans with student debt—and it nearly pushed him to quit acting

Ball’s financial struggles nearly pushed him to walk away from acting altogether. At one point, he began seriously considering a career pivot—exploring the prospect of joining the Merchant Marines or even moving to Alaska to work at a fishing camp in search of stability.

That uncertainty wasn’t just his alone. 

During the summer between his two years at Yale, Ball returned home to North Carolina, where his parents—his mother an emergency room nurse, his father a paramedic—questioned whether the risk was worth it. They even encouraged him to consider a steadier path, like becoming an HVAC technician.

“They were worried about me taking on all that debt and wondering why I would do that to myself,” Ball recalled to The Hollywood Reporter.

It’s a concern that reflects a broader shift in how families are thinking about higher education.

Outstanding student loan balances now total roughly $1.7 trillion, distributed through some 42.8 million borrowers, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s Federal Student Aid office. At the same time, many graduates are struggling to find stable footing in the labor market: 5.6% of recent college graduates are unemployed, while 42.5% are underemployed—working in jobs that typically don’t require a degree, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

After adding artificial intelligence into the mix, many families are seeking alternatives to college like trade schools or apprenticeships—with some 70% of teenagers reporting their parents now support such a shift.

At the same time, some families are rethinking how they allocate financial support altogether. A separate report from Northwestern Mutual found that 74% of parents with children at home would consider—or have already started—saving to help their kids purchase a home. Among those parents, nearly 3 in 10 indicated that helping with home ownership is more important than paying for college tuition.

For Ball, the return on his education wasn’t immediate—or guaranteed. But despite the uncertainty, he encourages young people not to abandon their ambitions too quickly.

“Stick in there. Don’t give up. Believe in yourself and keep your eye on the prize,” he said to his alma mater, UNCG.

“And remember to pay attention to your life along the way. You don’t need The Pitt to happen for your life to begin. Pay attention to your life because it’s happening all around you.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

CEOs who have climbed to the top of their industries have an eagle eye for talent who drive success—and many have developed their own tricks to find the right hires. In finding the right workers to steer the business to success, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby has implemented an unusual test to find the right match. 

“I asked our head of flight operations to select a dozen of our pilots who were well-liked by everyone,” Kirby said in a recent interview with McKinsey and Company. The leader of the $31.7 billion airline giant explained that after being selected for an interview, part of whether or not they move forward depends on if they’d be good company. 

“I told this group of pilots, ‘Your job is just to assess: Is this interviewee someone I would like to take a four-day trip with? And if you say no, then they’re out. You get a veto vote,’” the CEO continued. 

“The idea is to pick people who care about others, who you want to hang out with, who you want to be with.”

The competition is fierce for jobs at United Airlines

The hiring hack is just one layer of the competitive process to land a job at United Airlines; a spokesperson tells Fortune that it’s part of the larger process of hiring pilots, aside from the standards set by the business and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). 

And this vibe test could serve as one way to separate the best talent from the rest of the pack. 

Kirby said that whenever they open flight attendant hiring for around 3,000 positions, the company receives 75,000 eager applicants within a matter of hours—hovering around a 4% acceptance rate. 

He also reasoned that the business is “one of the few places left” where workers without a college diploma can work in a multitude of roles—from flight attendants and tech ops, to ramp and gate agents—and can still earn six-figure incomes. 

“So for us, the question is: How do you find people who have the right mentality and customer service attitude?” Kirby said. “We can train them to do the jobs, but how do you build a process to pick the right people and keep them excited?”

The CEOs have their own interview tests—from the car commute to the dinner table

Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn doesn’t even wait until a candidate arrives to start his assessment. The moment a job contender gets into the car, the hiring process is already underway; Ahn says how a candidate treats their driver on the ride to the office plays a part in whether they get the role. And he’ll even slip the taxi drivers some extra money to weigh in on if they’re worth hiring. 

The billionaire cofounder recounted a time when Duolingo had been on the hunt for a chief financial officer for a year. Ahn really liked one candidate who had an impressive résumé, but he turned down the applicant after learning they were “pretty mean” to their driver from the airport to the office. Similar to Kirby, Ahn believes personality can make or break a hiring decision. 

“Our belief is if they’re going to be mean to the driver, they’re probably going to be mean to other people, particularly people under them,” Ahn said on The Burnouts podcast earlier this year. 

Twilio CEO Khozema Shipchandler may put the company’s senior job candidates through multiple rounds of interviews, but their success could hinge on one single question. After having a 45 minute dinner with the interviewees, the leader of the cloud communications company will pose a question back: “Do you have any questions for me?” If they pass on the opportunity or offer a blank stare, their odds of landing the gig drops instantly. 

“The number one red flag for me is when someone doesn’t ask questions towards the end of an interview,” Shipchandler told Fortune last year. “I think that’s a pretty significant mark against them being curious about what they’re interviewing, the company, the way we might work together, chemistry, culture, all of those things. That’s a pretty big red flag.”

Former Indeed CEO Chris Hyams has also stuck behind one pivotal interview question in assessing more than 3,000 candidates over the past 15 years. Instead of testing their personality, he had tried to gauge their decision-making skills through their responses. 

“It might seem strange, but I ask everyone, ‘Do you have an iPhone or an Android, and why?’” Hyams told Fortune last year. There is no “wrong answer,” but the leader uses it as an icebreaker that opens up conversation on their passions and product sensibilities, also engaging their reasoning skills. 

“And it’s actually a long 15-minute series of back-and-forth on this, where I get to learn a little bit about the human being, and about how they make decisions,” Hyams continued.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Jeff Bezos may be the world’s third-richest man, but his official salary is still less than six-figures.

The 62-year-old Amazon founder is worth $254 billion, less than only Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Google cofounder Larry Page, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. Yet, during nearly his entire 25-year tenure as CEO of the top company on the Fortune 500, Bezos has received the same salary of $81,400 from Amazon—less than the average construction worker, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

Amazon’s 2026 proxy, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday, confirmed Bezos still makes the same wage he has made since 1998, the year he boosted his salary to $81,400 from $79,197 for the prior year. 

“Mr. Bezos requested not to receive additional compensation and has never received annual cash compensation in excess of his current amount,” the filing reads. 

His low salary has also not kept up with inflation. In 1998, Bezos’ $81,400 yearly salary was more than double the median salary of $31,096 for men at the time. That same salary was only 16% higher than the median salary of $68,952 for men as of last year.

Part of the reason Bezos has kept his salary low and has never received stock compensation from Amazon is because he owned a large chunk of the company anyway.

“I already owned a significant amount of the company, and I just didn’t feel good about taking more,” Bezos previously said during a New York Times DealBook Summit interview. “I just felt, ‘How could I possibly need more incentive?’ I just would have felt icky about it.”

Bezos, who was replaced as CEO by Andy Jassy in 2021 and now serves as executive chairman, owns about 8% of the company and is its largest shareholder, according to Amazon’s most recent proxy statement. At Friday’s stock price, Bezos’ stake in Amazon was worth approximately $225 billion, a majority of his net worth. Because most of Bezos’s wealth is tied up in his stock and other assets, he has previously been able to pay less than his true tax rate, reported ProPublica in 2021. 

All of Amazon’s executive salaries focus more on stock compensation than cash on purpose. The company in its proxy statement said these salaries, which are meant to be “significantly less than those paid to senior leadership at similarly situated companies” is “to closely tie total compensation to long-term shareholder value.” 

Jassy, the company’s current CEO, earned $365,000 last year, which is the “base salary” for all of Amazon’s named executive officers, including the CEO of Amazon Web Services, Matt Garman, and the CEO of Worldwide Amazon Stores, Doug Herrington, according to the proxy statement. At the same time, Jassy’s stock-based compensation increased by nearly $473,000 between 2024 and 2025, according to the filing. 

To be sure, Bezos also receives some perks thanks to his role as executive chairman. The company last year paid $1.6 million for Bezos’ security expenses and business travel. 

“We believe that all Company-incurred security costs are reasonable and necessary and for the Company’s benefit, and that the amount of the reported security expenses for Mr. Bezos is especially reasonable in light of his low salary and the fact that he has never received any stock-based compensation,” the company wrote in the proxy statement.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Especially in this economy, one place you don’t want to find yourself in is debt. Life is expensive enough without hemorrhaging money in interest charges.

Still, it’s a situation that’s becoming increasingly common. If you’re one of the many looking for an escape from the heavy burden of debt, give these proven strategies a try.

The first step to getting out of debt

To be sure, there are powerful strategies to eliminate debt. But for any of them to work, it’s critical to identify and fix the circumstances that caused that debt in the first place. You may be struggling because of a job loss, a large emergency purchase, or simply impulse purchases. Whatever the case, you won’t be able to zero out your debt with the following methods unless you address those issues. You’ll also need to know:

1. How much debt you have.
2. Your total monthly spending on necessities like rent, utilities, food, gas, etc., as well as your minimum debt payments.
3. The amount of remaining income that can be channeled toward paying down your debt faster than just the minimums would accomplish.

This will give you the information you need to budget properly and help you decide which strategy will best serve your needs.

Debt snowball method

The debt snowball method to getting out of debt is a simple concept: Pay off your balances in order of size, starting with the smallest and working up to the largest. This is the fastest way to eliminate the number of outstanding accounts you have, thereby lowering the number of monthly fees you’re paying toward.

As you eliminate your balances, you’ll free up more of your monthly income to put toward your remaining debt (effectively “snowballing” the amount of funds you can use to pay down your loans). Plus, you get the mental win of seeing accounts zeroed out sooner.

For example, you may have the following estimated credit card balances and payments:

• $2,000 ($70 monthly minimum payment)
• $4,000 ($110 monthly minimum payment)
• $5,000 ($150 monthly minimum payment)

With the snowball method, you would pay off the $2,000 balance first. This would give you $70 more per month to throw at your next target, the $4,000 balance.

Debt avalanche method

The debt avalanche method favors targeting accounts with the highest APR (annual percentage rate) instead of the lowest balance. The idea is to knock out the cards that are costing you the most in interest. As an example, let’s say those aforementioned hypothetical credit card balances are subject to the following APRs:

• $2,000 (22% APR)
• $4,000 (19% APR)
• $5,000 (27% APR)

The avalanche method dictates that you focus on the $5,000 balance first, followed by the $2,000 balance. You won’t lower your number of outstanding balances as quickly, but you may save money on interest charges in the long run.

Debt consolidation

One of the biggest factors of your credit score is credit utilization. This is calculated based on the percentage of revolving credit that you’re currently using. For example, if you’ve got a total credit limit of $50,000 and you’re currently using $25,000 of it, your credit utilization is 50%.

Experts recommend keeping your credit utilization below 30% to avoid negative impact on your credit score. If you’ve got considerable debt, your credit utilization may be well above that—which can result in an unimpressive credit score.

However, if you’ve still got a good credit score (ideally 670+), you may opt for one of the below methods.

Debt consolidation loan

With a debt consolidation loan, you’ll receive a chunk of cash to repay multiple credit card and/or loan balances. This wipes out your current collection of monthly payments and replaces them with a single installment loan payment. Depending on the term length you choose, the new loan’s minimum payment may be a big one—but it can still be considerably less than the combined total of the many monthly payments you’re currently making.

And because debt consolidation loans are installment loans, the money you use to pay off your credit card will almost immediately improve your credit utilization. You may see a huge credit score increase in just a month or two.

Balance transfer credit card

You can also consolidate your debts by opening a balance transfer credit card and relocating your current debt onto it. Several credit cards come with 0% intro APR for a year or two. That can quite easily save you hundreds (even thousands) of dollars per year, depending on your amount of debt.

There are two caveats to this strategy:

1. You’ll often have to pay a balance transfer fee (typically up to 5% of the transfer amount).
2. You can only transfer as much as your balance transfer card’s credit limit can hold—including the balance transfer fee. For example, if you receive a credit limit of $15,000 and a balance transfer fee of 3%, you’ll only be able to move a maximum of $14,563 ($14,563 + 3% = $14,999).

Also, balance transfer credit cards typically require that applicants have good to excellent credit to qualify.

Increase your income with side hustles

One word of caution: While making more money is always the ideal, a plan to increase your income will ideally complement your current budget. For example, the goal isn’t to make more money so you can be more cavalier with your budgeting; rather, it’s to channel more money toward your balances.

From freelancing to reselling to rideshare to delivery platforms, there are numerous ways one may be able to make extra money. Often it takes just a few minutes to register with an app to launch a side hustle.

Negotiate directly with your creditors

Did you know that you might receive more favorable repayment terms simply by calling your lender and asking? You may receive a lower interest rate, a reduced monthly payment, even a temporary payment pause.

This doesn’t mean that banks are philanthropists—they want the money you owe them. If they think the most likely path to repayment is to give you a bit of a break, they’ve been known to do it.

Negotiating with your creditors doesn’t hurt your credit score. However, the bank may treat you differently after the call. Now that the lender knows you’re struggling, you may find your credit limits lowered (which can indirectly affect your credit score). The bank may also make a note on your credit report that they’ve given you some sort of hardship plan. This can be a red flag to other would-be lenders.

Get professional help

If you can see a way out of your current debt, there are professional services of varying degrees of severity to choose from.

Nonprofit credit counseling and debt management plans

With credit counseling, an experienced counselor will examine your situation and advise you of your best course of action. If necessary, they may suggest that you enroll in a debt management plan (DMP). This rolls your unsecured debts into a single payment, typically with reduced interest rates.

The act of enrolling in a DMP won’t itself hurt your credit score. However, you’re often required to close the credit cards you’re using the DMP to consolidate. This can negatively affect elements of your credit score, such as your average length of credit history and credit mix. Your credit utilization may also increase, as your total available credit will drop.

All to say, your credit score may drop temporarily—but it’s a small price to pay for getting your finances back on track.

Debt settlement

Debt settlement is more serious than a DMP. Instead of simply consolidating your debts into one feasible monthly payment, debt settlement involves negotiating with your creditors to pay back less than you owe. Debt settlement companies typically ask that you stop paying on your loans—effectively strongarming banks to the negotiating table.

This strategy wrecks your credit score. You’ll also likely receive aggressive collections calls and even lawsuits before you’re able to settle. Avoid this route if possible.

Bankruptcy

The last resort for those who can’t pay back their debts is bankruptcy. This can erase much of your unsecured debt, such as credit cards, some personal loans, and medical bills. It won’t make everything disappear, however (think tax debts, many student loans, child support, etc.)

Bankruptcy will blemish your credit report for up to 10 years. It can also drop your credit score by hundreds of points. You could even lose assets, such as personal property and home equity, to pay your creditors.

The takeaway

There are many tactics to getting out of debt, from the well-known “snowball” and “avalanche” methods to debt consolidation to debt management plans. No matter your specific financial situation, there’s likely a solution for you. None of them are easy (staying out of debt takes discipline enough, let alone digging yourself out of a hole), but with smart decision-making and stick-to-it-iveness, these strategies can help you make real progress.

See our picks for the best debt relief companies of April 2026

Frequently asked questions

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

In late March, photos began appearing online from FBI Director Kash Patel’s past. One photo showed him with a cigar in his mouth. In another, he’s holding a baby. 

The photos were released as part of a cyberattack on Patel’s personal email that released more than 300 messages dated between 2010 and 2019, as well as a work resumé and travel documents. The Iran-linked and pro-Palestinian hacker group Handala Hack Team claimed responsibility for the attack. 

Targeting high-profile figures like Patel is part of Iran’s larger war strategy to sow disruption in the U.S. and Israel, according to experts. 

Handala’s attack against Stryker on March 11 put the medical technology company’s 56,000 employees operating in 61 countries at a standstill, while order processing, manufacturing, and shipping were halted. The company was not fully operational for three weeks following the attack, which it reported had a material impact on its first-quarter earnings. 

Earlier this week, the FBI, the National Security Agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the Department of Energy issued a joint advisory, warning Iran-backed hackers were targeting critical infrastructure, including water and power plants. 

The agencies did not name specific targets but said that the hacks were aimed to “cause disruptive effects” and had already led to “operational disruption and financial loss.”

The warning is a signal to the private sector in particular to take this threat seriously, as it operates most of the U.S. critical infrastructure, said Nikita Shah, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who worked as a national security official in the U.K. government for 10 years. 

In addition to the water and energy sectors, disrupting the tourism industry, by defacing an airline’s website for example, is another likely target, she added. 

Instead of providing a military advantage for Iran, such low-level attacks on citizens and organizations are meant to cause friction and inflict costs in the hope that they will put pressure on governments to rethink any participation in the war, Shah told Fortune.

“What they’re trying to do is go after low-hanging fruit, so things that will seem very sophisticated on the outside, but from a technical perspective, when you look into it, actually, they’re not especially sophisticated,” she said.

How Iran-backed hackers find their targets 

In March, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps published a list of potential office and infrastructure targets in the Middle East run by U.S. companies, including Google, Microsoft, Palantir, IBM, Nvidia, and Oracle.

But cyberattacks could hit much closer to home, said Robert Olsen, chief operating officer and managing director of cybersecurity firm Hilco Global Cyber Advisors. 

“If the ultimate goal, in this case of Iranian-sponsored threat actors, is to instill terror and uncertainty in the American population, there’s no better way to do that than through critical infrastructure attacks because it truly touches everyone’s lives in some way, shape, or form,” he told Fortune. “It becomes very personal when the local water system goes down.” 

Iranian hackers are not running highly complex attacks, he said, but rather, taking advantage of companies’ vulnerabilities. In the case of one attack that exposed nearly 3,900 U.S. devices, the hackers took advantage of an open port on a physical piece of equipment, which Olsen said is akin to using an open window to get into somebody’s house. 

“The challenge is organizations have to be pretty much perfect when it comes to all of the different aspects of building an effective security program,” he said. “The threat actors only have to be lucky once.” 

Cyberattacks have also become much easier in recent years, Olsen pointed out. A hack that would’ve required a PhD level of knowledge years ago can be easily executed due to developers simplifying their technology. Now, AI is accelerating the access and scale of cyberattacks, he said.  

The Iranian strategy: Projecting power

In addition to cyberattacks, Iran is engaging in “information warfare,” by posting fake videos on social media as a means to project power in place of traditional military capabilities that have been decimated, Shah said.

Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said this week that the U.S. military has hit more than 13,000 targets and has destroyed 80% of Iran’s air defense systems. 

Shah said while the cyberattacks may have little effect on military outcomes, more attacks are likely coming. 

“[It] very much depends on [Iranian] internet capacity, but we should definitely expect to see more targeting of companies or organizations that belong to countries participating in this conflict, because in many ways, the collateral damage is the point,” she said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

WLFI, the native token of the Donald Trump-backed crypto platform World Liberty Financial, cratered to an all-time low on Friday as investors digested news reports that the company had lent out tokens on a platform tied to one of its executives. As of mid-day, WLFI was trading at $0.08, a roughly 82% drop from its all-time high last September when it traded at $0.46.

The drop coincides with news that Corey Caplan, the CTO of World Liberty Financial, which was founded in 2024 by a team including multiple members of the Trump family, used the project’s reserve of WLFI tokens to make loans on a third-party crypto platform he co-founded.

Blockchain data shows wallets controlled by World Liberty Financial lent WLFI tokens worth hundreds of millions of dollars to a decentralized platform named Dolomite, borrowing a mixture of stablecoins in return. Dolomite is just the 13th-largest crypto lending platform, according to DeFiLlama data, making it perhaps an unlikely place for World Liberty Financial to lend its tokens.

After CoinDesk first reported on the Dolomite loans Thursday, WLFI’s price tumbled nearly 15%. 

The size of World Liberty Financial’s loans on Dolomite pose a risk to the token’s price, Nicolas Vaiman, CEO at crypto analytics firm Bubblemaps, told Fortune. Roughly 5% of WLFI’s supply is now collateral on Dolomite, so if WLFI declines significantly in value, the collateral could be liquidated, Vaiman said. This would likely force World Liberty to sell WLFI tokens to repay the loan, exerting additional downward pressure on the token’s price. 

World Liberty Financial acknowledged its lending activities in a post to its X account but tried to quell investor worries, asserting that its loan positions are “nowhere near liquidation.” World Liberty called itself the “anchor borrower” for WLFI, arguing that it is “generating the yield that makes WLFI Markets compelling for everyone else.”

Hedge funds and foundations exposed to WLFI

Multiple crypto foundations may have purchased WLFI tokens following token swap agreements cut by World Liberty Financial. Nasdaq-listed Alt5 Sigma also raised $1.5 billion to purchase WLFI tokens last summer, drawing investment from institutional buyers including Point72 and ExodusPoint. 

Some investor worries also stem from the amount of World Liberty Financial’s USD1 stablecoin that the team borrowed against its WLFI. World Liberty Financial borrowed so much USD1 from Dolomite that there is little left to borrow, meaning users who previously deposited the stablecoin on Dolomite may have trouble withdrawing, Vaiman said. 

Still, World Liberty Financial projected confidence on social media Thursday. 

Even “if markets moved dramatically against us, we’d simply supply more collateral,” World Liberty Financial wrote. “That’s not a risk. That’s how this works.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Fed chair Jerome Powell reportedly convened Wall Street leaders on Tuesday in an emergency meeting on concerns about Anthropic’s latest AI model, flagging concerns about a greater cybersecurity risk.

Bessent and Powell assembled the group of high-powered execs at the Treasury’s headquarters to ensure banks were aware of the cyber risks presented by Anthropic’s new model, Mythos, and similar future models, reported Bloomberg and Financial Times. Sources who spoke to Bloomberg said those in attendance included Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser, Morgan Stanley CEO Ted Pick, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf, and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon was also invited, but was unable to attend, the sources said.

The Federal Reserve declined to comment to Fortune. The Treasury didn’t immediately respond to Fortune’s requests for comment.

The meeting comes just weeks after Fortune exclusively reported Anthropic was developing an unreleased model described by the company as “by far the most powerful AI model” it had ever developed, which the AI company inadvertently made public last month through its content management system. Later, the company acknowledged that model was Claude Mythos. 

Anthropic on Tuesday released a report entitled “Assessing Claude Mythos Preview’s cybersecurity capabilities,” citing the powerful capabilities of its new model. One capability included Mythos Preview, which was able to find many 10- and 20-year-old vulnerabilities, including a 27-year-old vulnerability in OpenBSD, which is an operating system that has a reputation of being one of the most secure. 

Anthropic briefed senior U.S. government officials and industry stakeholders on Mythos Preview’s capabilities ahead of its release, someone with knowledge on the matter told Fortune that. In a blog post, the company said it is willing to work with officials at all levels of government to ensure national security is a priority when rolling out new AI models, and that the U.S. maintains a lead in AI technologies.

Anthropic told Fortune that partnering with the government was the company’s plan from the start (the company is currently in a legal battle with the Pentagon after the Defense Department blacklisted it for placing restrictions on use of its AI technologies).

Anthropic’s new AI model could ‘reshape cybersecurity’, so it launched Project Glasswing 

In partnership with Amazon Web Services, Amazon, Google, JPMorgan Chase, among other key tech companies, Anthropic launched Project Glasswing this week, an initiative aimed to secure critical software amid AI advancements. As part of the partnership, Anthropic said in a blog post it would share what they learn with the entire industry. 

Aside from tech and financial services partners, the company has extended access to 40 additional organizations who build or deploy critical software infrastructure, and committed up to $100 million in Mythos Preview usage credits, the most basic AI usage unit. Anthropic noted the project was launched as a reaction to the capabilities the company has observed in its new frontier model Mythos that it believes could “reshape cybersecurity.” 

“Given the rate of AI progress, it will not be long before such capabilities proliferate, potentially beyond actors who are committed to deploying them safely,” the post warned. “The fallout—for economies, public safety, and national security—could be severe.” 

Anthropic said in the post Tuesday it would release the new model initially to “a limited group of industry partners to “enable defenders to begin securing the most important systems before models with similar capabilities become broadly available.”

Other business leaders have sounded the alarm on the cybersecurity risks powerful AI models pose. Dimon outlined in his annual letter to shareholders the cybersecurity risks major industries and corporations face from AI, saying cybersecurity “remains one of our biggest risks.” He added, “AI will almost surely make this risk worse”.

As part of Project Glasswing, JPMorgan aims to reduce cyber risks stemming from AI’s fast-evolving capabilities. “Promoting the cybersecurity and resiliency of the financial system is central to JPMorganChase’s mission, and we believe the industry is strongest when leading institutions work together on shared challenges,” Pat Opet, JPMorgan chief information security officer, said in a statement. 

“Project Glasswing provides a unique, early stage opportunity to evaluate next-generation AI tools for defensive cybersecurity across critical infrastructure both on our own terms and alongside respected technology leaders,” he added.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

After chants of “run again!” filled the room, former Vice President Kamala Harris told African American activists on Friday that she’s actively considering another presidential bid.

“I might. I am thinking about it,” Harris told Rev. Al Sharpton after he asked directly whether she was going to run for president in 2028.

Harris’ comments came during the National Action Network’s annual convention, where more than a half-dozen potential candidates appeared this week , hoping to make inroads among Black voters — who comprise one of Democrats’ most powerful blocs.

The Democrats’ next presidential primary season won’t begin in earnest until after November’s midterm elections, but this week’s conference showcased a collection of Democrats already jockeying for position in what promises to be a crowded competition.

For now, at least, there is no clear early favorite. But there did appear to be a favorite at Sharpton’s conference.

Harris, the nation’s first Black female vice president and the Democrats’ presidential nominee in 2024, earned the only standing ovation and the largest crowd of any other 2028 prospect this week. Some in the audience interrupted her remarks with chants of, “Run again!”

Sharpton noted that Harris earned more votes in her losing 2024 campaign than even former Democratic Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

“Whatever she decides to do, she made a point in history,” Sharpton said.

Harris has raised the possibility of another presidential bid before in the 15 months since she left office. She also recently launched a political action committee and began to travel across the United States to support Democrats, especially across the South.

Still, some in the party have shifted their focus to a new generation of Democratic leaders given Harris’ struggle in the last presidential contest.

The convention lineup this week featured Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Rep. Ro Khanna of California, and Arizona Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego.

Buttigieg, speaking shortly after Harris left the stage, received soft applause from a room that was about half-empty. Some cheered when he mentioned supporting federal workers and minority businesses, but many attendees had streamed out of the packed auditorium after Harris’ speech in a bid to grab a selfie with the former vice president.

Buttigieg, like many other 2028 prospects this week, laughed off a question about whether he would seek the presidency again.

Harris was more explicit.

Three times she repeated, “I’m thinking about it,” when Sharpton asked her about a 2028 White House run.

“I served for four years being a heartbeat away from the presidency of the United States. I spent countless hours in my West Wing office footsteps away from the Oval Office. I spent countless hours in the Oval Office and the situation room. I know what the job is, and I know what it requires,” Harris said.

She continued: “I am thinking about it in the context of who and where and how can the best job be done for the American people. That’s how I’m thinking about it. I’ll keep you posted.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The Congressional Budget Office’s latest monthly budget says the U.S. government operated at a deficit of $1.17 trillion for the first six months of the fiscal year—from October 2025 to March 2026.

While the deficit is smaller than the shortfall for the same period last year, thanks in part to President Trump’s tariff regime, the fact remains that the U.S. economy is piling more debt atop a $39 trillion heap. Aside from the primary deficit, economists are also alarmed by the interest payments now required to service the debt—estimated to come in at more than $1 trillion this year.

The question of public debt is a concern for many, from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. Many have theories on how the borrowing may adversely impact the economy in the long run, from a squeezing out of public investment through to a market “reckoning” where bond investors demand higher returns for lending. Others suggest inflation may merely be allowed to trend higher, meaning the real value of the debt is eroded over time.

Indeed, the value of the debt itself is not the concern for many. Their alarm stems from the fact that the debt-to-GDP ratio is increasingly out of balance, and that the U.S. economy isn’t growing fast enough to keep up with its borrowing rate.

The more optimistic economic experts might argue the U.S. economy can grow its way out of a crisis (the potential transformative power of AI may offer a silver bullet here), while others point to the fact that 10- and 30-year Treasury yields are showing no signs of panic.

Michael Peterson, CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, warns that just because market alarms aren’t sounding right now, it doesn’t mean no issues will arise. The Peterson Foundation has long advocated for a more sustainable fiscal path for the U.S. economy.

“I think the bond market is often a very good indicator of sentiment of concern of risk,” Peterson told Fortune in an exclusive interview. “That’s what all these professionals are thinking about every day, and you have an enormous market that reflects the totality of thinking around that. Given that the bond market is doing decent, they’re not expecting a complete implosion in the near term.”

However, the fiscal decisions made across both sides of the political spectrum are “very damaging, even if there’s not a crisis,” Peterson said. “If you’re looking at a company, it’s not like, ‘As long as it’s not bankrupt, it’s fine.’ There are decisions that companies make that are ineffective and bad for growth—they over-lever, and maybe they don’t go into bankruptcy, but they damage themselves.

“This is a home-brewed crisis of our own making, putting aside what the bond market might do on top of that,” Peterson continued. “I think we owe it to the next generation to get this under control.”

There’s also the matter of how the borrowing is spent: The CBO says that a significant proportion of government outlays ($1.7 trillion) are on immediate, mandatory expenses such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

While these are important, Peterson said, it doesn’t present the same return on investment that spending on infrastructure or education may have for future generations: “Even if we never have a crisis, these trillions of dollars—the vast majority of which has been for immediate consumption with no economic benefit to the future—have done damage to our kids and grandkids,” he added.

Future generations

Debate is also rife in the economics community about which category of consumer will feel the sharpest end of the national debt burden: Some argue it may be retirees, because their 401(k)s aren’t indexed to inflation and their savings may be lowered by “financial repression”—when the government keeps interest rates artificially low to make public funding cheaper.

Others argue a market reckoning would force interest rates up, so those with a mortgage (or hoping to get a mortgage) will pay the price.

Peterson is of the opinion that either way, the younger generations will bear the brunt of the burden: “I think it’s hard to parse through how it would pan out in terms of the pain, if you will, but it’s going to be widespread, and it’s going to be significant, and it’s going to be long-standing. We can fight over who got the worst end of the shortest stick, but we clearly are doing a disservice to anybody participating in the economy in the future.

“I certainly worry that the most disadvantaged will pay the price if it squeezes out income support and other activities that the government would have done if they had more resources.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Nevin Burmeister first downloaded Kalshi on July 8, just two days after his 18th birthday. In his home state of Indiana, the minimum age for sports betting is 21. But Burmeister could legally wager on sports on Kalshi starting at 18.

He is one of millions of people taking part in the recent craze for prediction markets, which allow users to bet on basically anything—from who will win the newest season of Survivor, to the price of gas this week, to whether the U.S. will take control of Greenland.  

Kalshi controls 89% of the U.S. market for these platforms. Its main competitor is Polymarket, but many other firms—including Robinhood and Coinbase—have begun offering prediction market wagers too. In the last two years, the popularity of prediction markets has grown to the point that users traded over $1.2 billion on the Super Bowl, and more than $120 million on the Oscars.

As for Burmeister, his first wager on Kalshi was on the Rotten Tomatoes score of the latest Fantastic Four movie. He soon branched out into sports wagers, mostly on Major League Baseball, losing over $2,000 in six months.

“Kalshi was my entrance into gambling,” he said. “Every single dime I had, I lost on [the app].” 

As platforms like Kalshi become more mainstream, a growing number of young people, especially men, are losing money on these apps. Mental health clinicians warn that prediction markets could exacerbate a growing public health crisis of problem gambling in the U.S.

Prediction markets vs. traditional sportsbooks 

Prediction markets may seem identical to gambling, but regulators don’t see it that way. In November 2020, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission granted Kalshi approval to offer a limited number of betting contracts and, more recently, the platform won legal challenges that allowed it to expand those offerings to politics and sports. The platform’s wagers are classified as financial instruments known as “event contracts” that are regulated like commodities. In contrast, bets on traditional sportsbooks, like FanDuel and DraftKings, are considered gambling and are regulated on the state level. 

The rise of Kalshi and Polymarket, along with a growing number of new prediction market platforms, means that betting has become accessible to a larger swath of Americans. Kalshi is currently legal in 49 states (it is facing a temporary ban in Nevada, and an increasing number of legal challenges.) Sports betting, meanwhile, is legal in 39 states with most of those limiting participation to people over 21. On Kalshi, users can bet starting at 18. 

“Prediction markets have expanded the footprint of sports betting,” said Glenn Yamagata, the executive director of the Oregon Council on Problem Gambling.

In October 2024, then 21 year-old Samuel Sharkey first heard about Kalshi through an ad on Instagram. The Chambersburg, Pennsylvania resident, who delivers food through DoorDash while studying programming, at that time had about $20,000 in savings.

Sharkey’s first bets on Kalshi were on the 2024 U.S. presidential election. When those wagers didn’t pan out, he tried to quickly make up for his losses by betting on the weather and on what the price of Bitcoin would be at the end of the hour, only to fall further in the red. 

Sharkey, who like Burmeister showed records of his Kalshi transactions to Fortune, would go on to lose about $10,000 over the course of five months.

“It was a very expensive lesson,” he said. “I think about that money I lost every single day.”

For its part, Kalshi responded to questions about dangers posed by its platform by saying the company provides a range of consumer protection features to all traders.

“It’s in our best interest to keep people safe on [the platform],” said a spokesperson for Kalshi. “Our consumer protections are very similar to those of casinos and sportsbooks, including self-exclusion and self-limits.” 

Sports betting addiction in the U.S. 

The rise of prediction markets comes at a time when addiction to sports betting is increasing. Americans bet $167 billion on sports in 2025, and a quarter of sports bettors worry they can’t control their gambling, according to a recent U.S. News and World Report survey. 

Platforms like FanDuel and DraftKings typically only attract sports fans, but Kalshi and Polymarket bring in people who are into pop culture, politics, and economics. 

“It’s easier for people to go to prediction markets for one reason and then decide to wager on sports because it’s right there,” Yamagata added. While bets on other categories might bring new people to Kalshi, sports account for about 90% of the wagers on the platform.

Burmeister, the 18 year-old from Indiana, said that what initially drew him to Kalshi was the opportunity to legally bet on sports.  

“I have a gambling addiction,” he said. A psychiatrist gave him this diagnosis around the time he started using Kalshi.

Some mental health clinicians who treat addiction have seen an uptick of visits from prediction market users. Lin Sternlicht is a therapist and cofounder of Family Addiction Specialist, a private practice specializing in helping clients overcome compulsive behaviors around sports betting and other online platforms. She argues that though prediction markets are fundamentally no different from gambling, platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket are often perceived more favorably because of their branding around research and analysis. 

“There’s a strong stigma tied to sports betting, but prediction markets tend to feel more socially acceptable,” she said. “Parents aren’t nearly as alarmed when they hear their child is using them. They might say, ‘Oh great, at least he’s paying attention to the news.’”

Prediction markets also offer incentives for users to park sizable amounts of money on the platform. Burmeister, for instance, says he decided to deposit all of his savings into Kalshi because the platform offers yield to users. When someone puts in more than $250, they earn 3.25% of annual interest. Burmeister’s $2,000 would grow to $2,065 in a year if he didn’t touch the funds. He said that this incentivized him to keep betting because his money was already out of his bank account and on Kalshi. 

‘Power to the People’

Proponents of prediction markets argue that gathering the wisdom of the crowd is providing a public good. They often point to Kalshi and Polymarket users correctly predicting President Donald Trump’s 2024 electoral victory, in contrast to many national polls. 

“The [prediction market] industry is giving the power back to the people,” said Jay Malavia, the cofounder of a startup that is creating a trading terminal for prediction market users, in a previous interview with Fortune. 

Kalshi notes that traditional sportsbooks place limits on users who make too much money, whereas prediction markets do not. On its platform, traders wager against each other rather than against the house. The upshot, says the company, is that it has no incentive for its users to lose. 

“Unlike casinos and sportsbooks—where the house wins when people lose—our model doesn’t incentivize people to lose more,” the spokesperson for Kalshi added. “There’s no banning winners and hooking losers.”

Many major institutions are embracing the growing prediction market industry. Some of the biggest media firms, including Fox News, CNBC, and The Wall Street Journal, all now have partnerships with either Kalshi or Polymarket. The MLB recently announced its partnership with Polymarket. In February, Giannis Antetokounmpo, one of the biggest stars in the NBA, joined Kalshi as a shareholder. 

In Burmeister’s case, he stopped using Kalshi in January. He says that he wants to be a lesson for others who are interested in betting through the platform. 

“I don’t want people to make the same mistakes I did at 18,” he said. “Kalshi isn’t a prediction market—it’s gambling.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Can’t live without your morning cup (or cups) of coffee? Better taper down that caffeine addiction: it’s costing you a lot more to get your daily cup of joe.

Inflation surged nearly a full percent in a month, according to the latest Consumer Price Index released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Most of that spike comes from costs associated with the war in Iran, such as gas: energy prices alone climbed 10.9% for the month. Gasoline led all categories by a wide margin, surging 21.2%, the steepest monthly jump since 1967.

On a yearly basis, inflation hit 3.3% in March, up nearly a full percentage point from 2.4% in February. That’s highest annual rate since April 2024, and the biggest one-month increase since 2022.

Economists were comforted by the fact that the energy spike didn’t roll over more into other categories. Core inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy, rose only 0.2% month over month, with a rise of 2.6% year over year, slightly below expectations. “The trajectory is encouraging here and should not be overlooked,” Jeffrey Roach, chief economist for LPL financial, wrote in a note.

Still, the energy spike has started to bleed through. Coffee, already an inflation sore spot, jumped again in March: the average retail price of ground roast coffee spiked 30.5% year over year to $9.46 per pound, driven by a 40% tariff on Brazilian imports and freight costs skyrocketing as the Strait of Hormuz remained largely inaccessible to shipping.

Nonalcoholic beverages broadly, which is a CPI category that captures coffee, tea, and juice, were up 5.6% year over year. Airfare, apparel, household furnishings, and new vehicles all climbed as well, while tobacco (8%) and hospital services (7.1%) were already running hot.

However, overall, prices for food were more or less flat, while prices for medical care, personal care, and used cars actually fell during the month.

But several economists cautioned against getting too bullish. As John Kerschner, global head of securitized products and portfolio manager at Janus Henderson Investors, wrote in a note, “given the increase in diesel prices, it is only a matter of time before they bleed through to effect downstream components like food.”

Jamie Cox, managing partner for Harris Financial Group, wrote that core inflation’s “effect on real wage growth will bear the full brunt in April.”

 “While I’m glad to see the effects to be less than expected in March, the effects in April are now more likely to be worse,” he added.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Most actors arrive in Hollywood with nothing but a headshot and a tolerance for instant noodles. Eva Longoria arrived with one rule: her dreams would not come at the expense of her bank account. 

Before she became a multimillionaire TV star, sipping rosé on Wisteria Lane as Desperate Housewives’ Gabrielle Solis, Longoria refused to rough it up like other actors, waiting on tables between auditions and crashing on a roommate’s couch. Instead, she was building a headhunting empire from her soap opera dressing room. 

“The first day I landed in LA, I got a job,” Longoria exclusively tells Fortune. “I was like, I’m not going to be a struggling actor. I’m going to figure this out.”

Figure it out, she did. The 51-year-old star—who now has a net worth north of $80 million, a production company, a directing career, a stake in women’s soccer team Angel City FC, a $6 million investment in the John Wick franchise, and a new mentoring partnership with Lenovo to support small business owners—landed a role at a temp agency as a headhunter. 

And even once she’d scored her first real acting role on The Young and the Restless, she kept going. She was still negotiating salaries, screening candidates, and closing placement deals in between takes. 

“In my dressing room, I was doing the headhunting,” Longoria recalls. “I was negotiating 401(k)s and salaries and interviewing and reading resumes and placing people. And then they would be like, ‘Eva, ready on set.’” She’d hang up mid-call, go act, come back, and pick up exactly where she left off. 

Despite regular screen time, acting paid less than headhunting, so she didn’t quit—she kept up that double life for years, even denying it was her when clients eventually recognised her soap character on screen. She only walked away from corporate life in her third year on the show, after a pay bump finally made acting financially viable. 

“I knew I could always go back to corporate America if acting didn’t work out,” she says. Shortly after, she landed Desperate Housewives—and the rest is television history.

Eva Longoria’s former boss begged her to stay in corporate America

Longoria has never had to look far for her work ethic. The youngest in a female-dominated household—“nine aunts, three sisters, no brothers”—she grew up surrounded by financially independent women. 

As a teenager in Texas, Longoria started working at Wendy’s for $3.35 an hour and hustled her way up from “fried girl to hamburger girl to the drive-through, to head cashier to assistant manager” from the ages of 14 to 18—juggling her part-time job with high school.

“If I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it well,” she remembers thinking. “I would work overtime. I work weekends. I was like, ‘pick me, pick me. I’ll do it.’ I love the idea of earning money.”

That same energy followed her to Los Angeles. When she joined the temp agency, the CEO gave her a choice: steady base salary or unlimited commission. “I didn’t know either of those words,” she recalls. “He goes, ‘Well, base salary means you only make this much, but commission means you can make as much as you want.’ And I said, ‘That one. I want that one.’”

Within one month, she says she was making three times the base salary.

In fact, Longoria got so good at her job that her boss tried to renegotiate her commission structure because it “wasn’t built for the volume” she was producing—and when she eventually told him she was leaving for acting, he even tried to talk her out of it.

“He never understood why I didn’t stay in corporate America,” she says. “It just wasn’t my calling, but I was really great at it.”

“Everybody was surprised because I built this small business within his business, and he kept saying, ‘Why would you want to be an actress? You’re so good at business, it’s a one in a million chance you’re going to be successful at acting’. And I said, I know—and I’m the one in a million.” 

Eva Longoria’s advice to Gen Z: ‘Figure it out’

Her mother, for what it’s worth, wasn’t worried when Longoria said she was pursuing a career in acting. Her response was characteristically pragmatic: “You have your degree, so if you need a job, you can get a job… my mom always said that you better figure that out.”

And she says it’s that mantra that separates the one-in-a-million who make it in a creative industry from the thousands who don’t. 

Longoria, for example, didn’t wait for an agent to discover her—she went directly to them. “I looked up who the gatekeepers are, who hold the keys to these opportunities, and then figured out when they were speaking at an event. And I would go to the event, give them my headshot, or introduce myself.” That, she says, is how she landed her breakout role on The Young and the Restless. 

Longoria is refreshingly clear-eyed about the fact that Hollywood, unlike business, doesn’t reward effort with predictable returns. “You could do exactly what I did and not have the same outcome,” she says. 

But she also thinks a particular kind of resourcefulness is non-negotiable—and increasingly rare. “A lot of people prevent progress because of perfection,” she says. “‘I don’t exactly know how to do that, so I’m not going to do that’—that thought process, to me, is crazy.” 

“A lot of people prevent progress because of perfection. Like: ‘I don’t exactly know how to do that, so I’m not going to do that’—it’s an odd thought process to me.”

“I remember landing in LA and going, Okay, what do I need to do? I need headshots. Okay, let me figure that out. I need an agent. I’ve got to figure that out… And that’s really a huge trait.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

As mega K-pop group BTS returns to the stage after a hiatus of more than three years, one major market is conspicuously missing from its 12-month world tour: China.

The omission of one of the group’s biggest fan bases comes as no surprise. In fact, just the opposite would have been huge news. China has blocked most South Korean entertainment since 2016 under an unofficial ban that also restricts movies and the country’s popular TV dramas. For some Chinese, that means flying to Seoul to see their favorite groups perform — as many were expected to do for three shows opening the tour this week and weekend.

China has long used trade restrictions in geopolitical disputes. The trigger for the entertainment ban was a South Korean decision to allow the United States to deploy an anti-missile system on its soil. What sets the ban apart is how long it has lasted, something analysts attribute to government concern about the massive popularity of Korean music and videos. China is a robust defender of its own cultural products.

Rumblings that the ban could be eased — an expectation South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has publicly voiced as he and Chinese leader Xi Jinping seek to improve ties — have thrust it back into the news.

China’s use of economic pressure signals the government’s resolve, clarifies what it considers unacceptable and reinforces nationalism at home, said Seung-Youn Oh, a Bryn Mawr College professor who is writing a book on China’s use of informal economic sanctions.

“From China’s perspective, these actions go beyond symbolism,” she said in a written response to questions. “They are strategic tools to shape the international environment.”

The ban is not total

Many K-pop groups have non-Korean members, and they have been allowed to perform in China. Pop-up stores selling K-pop merchandise attract lines of fans and require advance reservations during peak hours.

For video, the growth of streaming means dramas are accessible to an extent — though the latest ones may be pirated versions. A check of four major Chinese platforms found a limited selection of about 50 dramas, and all at least four years old.

The ban does not apply in Macao and Hong Kong — where the BTS tour lands in 2027 — because both are special regions in China with their own governments and laws.

“I’m already really grateful that they can perform in places like Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan,” said Tian Xin, who was in Seoul last month for a free comeback concert ahead of the tour. “The rest is a matter of national policy. Of course, I still hope they can come closer to us — fans always want that.”

The missile defense system, known by the acronym THAAD, is aimed at the North Korean threat, but China said its radar could be reconfigured to peer into its territory. Though the U.S. operates the system, it was South Korea’s decision to allow the deployment that angered China.

Besides the entertainment ban, China also drove out a South Korean supermarket chain. The THAAD system remains — though recent security camera footage and other images have sparked speculation that the U.S. may have shipped some of the interceptor missiles to the Mideast for the war against Iran.

China’s concerns about K-pop fandom

At first, China welcomed the “Korean Wave” as a cultural import compatible with its political system and a substitute for Western pop culture, the Korea Creative Content Agency, a government group, said in a report earlier this year. But the surging popularity of Korean music and dramas in the 2010s turned it into something that, the report said, needed to be controlled.

“The Chinese government had never experienced anything like that before,” said Dong-ha Kim, a professor at the Busan University of Foreign Studies.

“While the dispute over THAAD happened to coincide with that period, Beijing’s fundamental concern goes deeper,” he said. “It cannot allow foreign culture to shape the thinking of its young people, especially when its government has no control over the content.”

The government banned effeminate-looking men from TV in 2021, a look that Chinese pop stars likely picked up from South Korean and Japanese performers.

China also wants to develop its own pop culture as a form of soft power. Think the Labubu doll craze and the food and drinks chains.

“China wants cultural governance — to grow its own music industry,” said Hyunji Lee, a financial analyst who covers the entertainment sector. “If K-pop floods back in, there’s a direct conflict.”

China is mum on the ban

China, though, has never acknowledged that a prohibition exists.

“China has never imposed any so-called bans on the Republic of Korea,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said in 2022. Another spokesperson, Lin Jian, said last September that China has no objection to “healthy and beneficial” cultural exchange with South Korea.

Hopes for lifting the ban rose after Lee and Xi met twice. During Lee’s visit to China in January, the two governments signed an agreement to expand cultural and content exchange — but only gradually, and starting with just soccer and the traditional board game called go.

Xi quoted two Chinese idioms, according to the South Korean side: “Three feet of ice does not form in a single day” and “Fruit falls only when it ripens.” They suggest that any opening will take time and happen when the conditions are right.

On Chinese social media, some people said that K-pop — with its suggestive dance moves — is not appropriate for children. Others warned that Korean entertainment could overwhelm the domestic industry. Fans looked forward to performances in China that would save them from red-eye flights and the cost of hotel stays abroad.

Yu Sang, a fan and event organizer, flew to Seoul five times last year for K-pop events and organized one for “KPop Demon Hunters” at a shopping mall in Beijing on New Year’s Eve.

“The fans in China are incredibly devoted,” she said. “If you go to the Arctic, I’ll go to the Arctic with you.”

South Korea looks beyond China

The ban has reshaped how South Korean entertainment companies see the Chinese market.

Drama producers have felt the loss most acutely and have more to gain from an opening-up than the K-pop industry, said Lee, the financial analyst.

Pirated versions don’t generate income for the producers. The dramas are on small apps and sometimes disappear after a few days, according to reports posted by individuals on social media. Some of the apps themselves disappear, then reappear with slightly altered names.

Netflix and Disney+, which distribute most South Korean dramas globally, are blocked in China. They can be accessed using a virtual private network, which is illegal to do (though enforcement is spotty).

The K-pop industry has restructured so that China is no longer critical. Japan has become the anchor market, while North America has emerged as the primary growth frontier.

“China matters,” Lee said, “but it’s not something companies are desperately waiting on anymore.”

___

Park reported from Seoul, South Korea. Associated Press writers Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul and Fu Ting in Washington and video producer Liu Zheng in Beijing contributed.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Japanese Prime MinisterSanae Takaichi took a short — and happy — break on Friday as she hosted legendary British rock band Deep Purple in Tokyo as a longtime admirer.

“Welcome to Japan … Uh-oh, I can’t believe Deep Purple are here,” Takaichi said as she walked into a guest room at the Prime Minister’s Office with open arms and all smiles to welcome the band members. “I have always admired Deep Purple.”

“You’re my god,” Takaichi told drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of Japanese-made TAMA drumsticks she had signed. “You’re a drummer, we are friends,” Paice told her.

Takaichi is a hard rock and heavy metal music fan and was an avid drummer in her college days.

The prime minister explained her history as a Deep Purple superfan for more than half a century. At elementary school, she was already listening to “Machine Head,” the band’s 1972 album featuring top hits like “Highway Star” and “Smoke on the Water.”

In junior high school, she played the keyboard in a Deep Purple cover band, then as a university student she switched to drums, she said.

“Nowadays, when I have a fight with my husband, I play drums on ‘Burn’ and put a curse on him,” Takaichi joked. She has previously noted “Burn” as one of her favorite songs, saying it “clears my mind.”

The band’s courtesy visit was a pleasant break for Japan’s first female leader, known for her long working hours and now struggling with strained diplomatic ties with China, the fallouts from the war in the Middle East as well as rising prices at home.

“I express my deepest respect for you for making rock history and continuing to take on new challenges and producing even more compelling music today,” Takaichi said, wishing them a successful tour beginning Saturday in Tokyo.

She did not forget to do her work as prime minister and stressed that promotion of cultural content is one of the key areas of her government’s growth strategy.

“I hope Deep Purple’s performances starting tomorrow will excite fans across Japan and serve as a powerful force in promoting the long-standing Japan-UK cultural exchanges,” she said.

___

Associated Press journalist Ayaka McGill contributed to this report.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

China’s exports of passenger cars accelerated in March, an industry association said Friday, as Chinese automakers stepped up their push to grow overseas markets.

Passenger car exports jumped 82.4% year-on-year last month to around 748,000 vehicles, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, up from the 586,000 vehicles exported in February.

Exports of new energy passenger vehicles — including battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids — surged more than 140% in March from a year ago to 363,000 units. That’s also up 31% from the about 276,000 units of such vehicles exported in February.

The biggest Chinese automakers, including BYD and Geely Auto, have been increasing their efforts in boosting sales abroad, including expanding production facilities outside China. There have also been growing expectations that the global energy shock and higher fuel prices due to the Iran war could prompt more drivers to want to switch to EVs.

Chinese car brands have made inroads over the past months in regions such as Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia.

“The impact of the Iran conflict hasn’t fully shown up in March data yet, but it can act as a trigger,” said Chris Liu, a Shanghai-based senior analyst at advisory group Omdia.

“In many markets that are structurally well suited for EVs, adoption has been slow simply because consumers lacked urgency,” he said. “A sharp rise in fuel prices changes that.”

The Chinese carmakers’ strong overseas push also came at a time when domestic vehicle sales in China have come under pressure from scaled-back government support this year to encourage drivers to switch to new energy vehicles.

Fierce competition in China among car brands and a prolonged property sector slump that has weighed on consumers’ desire for big purchases also impacted Chinese automakers.

Domestic passenger car sales fell 19.2% last month from a year earlier to nearly 1.7 million units. It was the fifth consecutive month of year-on-year declines for passenger car sales at home, based on data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

UBS auto analyst Paul Gong believes that the domestic sales weakness will not be too long lasting and that the surge in overseas sales among Chinese carmakers could help with the weaker demand at home.

“For the overall industry, the overseas market’s sales volume growth is more than enough to offset domestic decline on a full-year basis,” said Gong, head of China autos research at UBS investment bank.

Overseas passenger car sales by units for Chinese automakers might grow by 20% or more this year compared with last year, he predicted.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

When Scottie Scheffler won the American Express tournament in January, he didn’t just collect his 20th PGA Tour title. He crossed a financial threshold that only two golfers in PGA Tour history had reached before him. 

With a $1.6 million winner’s check, the 29-year-old surpassed $101 million in career on-course earnings, joining fellow golf legends Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy in golf’s exclusive $100 million club. They’re also all former Masters champions, with Scheffler winning in 2022 and 2024, Woods winning in 1997, 2001, 2002, 2005, and 2019, and McIlroy winning in 2025.

Scheffler achieved his 20th PGA Tour victory with just 151 starts, a pace that tracks only with Woods and Jack Nicklaus—and all 20 of Scheffler’s wins came in just a four-year time span. He’s considered the best golfer on the planet right now, according to the Official World Golf Ranking, a spot he’s maintained for 146 consecutive weeks, Gold Ranking Stats data shows.

He’s a four-time major champion, having claimed two Masters titles, a PGA Championship, and a British Open, plus he’s an Olympic gold medalist, and was the PGA Tour Player of the Year for four straight seasons. One of the most remarkable facts about Scheffler is that he’s only been playing professional golf since 2018, right after he graduated from the University of Texas.

Scheffler is one of the most decorated players in golf and is a top earner, but he’s already shown he’s not letting the wealth and fame get to his head. 

In 2025, he donated his entire Ryder Cup stipend of $500,000 to charity.

‘I don’t like to give charitable dollars for some kind of recognition’

Last September, the PGA of America broke with tradition by directly compensating U.S. Ryder Cup players for the first time. Each of the 12 U.S. team members received $300,000 earmarked for a charity of their choice and $200,000 as a personal stipend, for a total of $500,000 per player. The charitable portion alone was a significant increase from the $200,000 donation that had been made in each player’s name since 1999.

That decision came with some backlash, particularly after European captain Luke Donald said his players had rejected the idea of being paid. He said the Ryder Cup “is not about prize money or world ranking points. It’s about pride,” although he later clarified his remarks weren’t directed at U.S. players. 

Scheffler took advantage of the extra earnings, but in an unexpected way. He said he would donate the entire amount (both the portion earmarked for charity and his personal stipend) to organizations in his hometown of Dallas.

“My wife and I like to do a lot of stuff in our local community, and I’ve never been one to announce what we do,” Scheffler said, according to The Athletic. “I don’t like to give charitable dollars for some kind of recognition.”

“We have something planned for the money that we’ll be receiving,” he continued. “I think it’s a really cool thing that the PGA of America has empowered us to do.” Scheffler never announced the names of specific organizations to which he donated because he said he doesn’t participate in charity for recognition.

Other Ryder Cup players, including Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay, along with captain Keegan Bradley, confirmed they would donate their full stipends as well. 

“There’s a lot of pride that comes into playing in one of these, and yes, we’re happy to get paid for this, and yes, I plan on donating it,” Schauffele said, according to CBS Sports. “It’s something that selfishly will make me feel good about what I do.”

Philanthropic giving rooted in personal loss

Scheffler’s most personal philanthropic work traces back to a childhood friendship with James Ragan, a fellow junior golfer in Texas who was diagnosed with osteosarcoma in 2006. Ragan and his older sister, Mecklin, cofounded the Triumph Over Kid Cancer Foundation in 2010 to raise awareness and fund research for pediatric cancer. James, who played golf at Rice University, died in 2014 at age 20 during his sophomore year.

Scheffler remained involved with the foundation for years, donating $50,000 in 2019 after winning the RSM Birdies Fore Love competition early in his professional career. He later partnered with Mecklin Ragan to create a golf program called Scottie’s Heroes that puts clubs in the hands of kids undergoing cancer treatment.

In late 2024, Scheffler auctioned off his beloved 2012 GMC Yukon XL—the car his father gave him after college—through Heritage Auctions, with all proceeds benefiting Triumph Over Kid Cancer. CBS broadcaster Jim Nantz placed the opening $50,000 bid at a TOKC fundraising gala and won the car.

“I figure just driving this SUV to the golf course should lower my handicap by at least five shots,” Nantz told Golfweek.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The largest monthly jump in gas prices in six decades caused a sharp spike in inflation in March, creating major challenges for the inflation-fighters at the Federal Reserve and heightening the political hurdles for the White House.

Consumer prices rose 3.3% in March from a year earlier, the Labor Department said Friday, up sharply from just 2.4% in February and the biggest yearly increase since May 2024. On a monthly basis, prices rose 0.9% in March from February, the largest such increase in nearly four years.

It’s the first read on inflation to capture the effects of the Iran war. The spike in gas prices will stretch the budgets of many lower- and middle-income households as it erodes their incomes, making it harder to afford other necessities such as food and rent

Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core prices rose 2.6% in March from a year earlier, up from 2.5% in February. And last month core prices rose a modest 0.2%, suggesting that rising gas prices haven’t yet spread to many other categories.

A big question for now is how long the oil and gas price shock lasts and whether it will lead to a broader, long-lasting inflation spike, similar to what happened in the spring of 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine. For now, economists say that it is unlikely the U.S. will see a widespread increase similar to a few years ago, when inflation topped 9%.

Despite a tenuous cease fire, little has changed in the Strait of Hormuz, a bottle neck where millions of barrels of oil typically pass daily.

“It’s painful in the near term,” said Michael Pearce, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. “It’s going to get more painful in April,” when further gas price increases will lift inflation higher.

But Pearce said the impact may be shorter-lived than after the pandemic: “I think the conditions are much more like a short, sharp shock than what we saw in 2022.”

Pearce said that the impact could fade by later this year: “I think the conditions are much more like a short, sharp shock than what we saw in 2022.”

Last month, grocery prices slipped 0.2% and are up just 1.9% from a year earlier. Analysts do expect food prices to move higher in the coming months as soaring diesel prices make shipping more expensive.

Higher energy costs are “contributing to rising production costs across the food supply chain and could put upward pressure on grocery prices going forward,” said Andy Harig, a vice president at the grocery trade group FMI-The Food Industry Association. “As energy prices increase, the costs associated with producing and delivering food also rise.”

Clothing costs rose 1% in March from the previous month and are up 3.4% from a year earlier. Used car prices, however, fell 0.4% last month and down 3.2% from a year earlier.

The gas price shock stemming from the Iran war has shifted inflation’s trajectory, from a slow, gradual decline to a sharp increase further away from the Fed’s 2% target. As a result, the central bank will almost certainly postpone any cut in interest rates for months. Many Fed officials will look past the increase in headline inflation, however, and focus on core prices, which are likely to rise more slowly.

Gas prices are also a highly visible cost that has outsize impacts on consumer confidence and political sentiment. High prices had angered American voters before the war and the spike in prices for oil and everything that entails, from the pump to the grocery store, could make it more difficult for the president’s party to hold on to seats in both the House and the Senate in next year’s midterms.

Polling by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research last month found that about six in 10 Republicans are at least “somewhat” concerned about affording gas in the next few months.

Gas prices averaged $4.15 a gallon nationwide Friday, up from $2.98 on the day before the war began and a hike of nearly 40%, according to motor club AAA.

Inflation reached a peak of 9.1% in June 2022, as COVID-19 snarled supply chains and several rounds of stimulus checks pushed up consumer demand. Prices soared for groceries, furniture, restaurant meals and many other goods and services.

This time, economists say the job market and consumer spending are weaker, and there are no large government stimulus checks being issued to spur demand. The unemployment rate is low, at 4.3%, but companies aren’t scrambling to hire the way they were when the economy emerged from the pandemic, which led many firms to offer sharp pay increases to attract and keep workers.

Rapid pay increases and solid income growth helped consumers weather the higher prices that resulted from the pandemic’s supply chain disruptions, and fueled spikes in demand that led many companies to raise prices further.

“That’s where this really differs, is that we aren’t seeing anywhere near the strength of demand,” Alan Detmeister, an economist at UBS, said. In 2021 and 2022, income growth “was increasing really strongly. We aren’t seeing that now,” he added.

Detmeister thinks the better comparison will likely be to 1990-91, when higher oil and gas prices stemming from Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait contributed to a recession, but didn’t lead to a jump in inflation, in part because of weaker consumer spending.

The gas price spike’s impact on inflation is, in some ways, similar to President Donald Trump’s tariffs, in that their effect will depend largely on the size and duration of the increase.

Higher gas prices are tricky for the Fed because they can also slow growth by weighing on consumer spending, potentially causing layoffs. The Fed would typically cut its rate to encourage more spending if unemployment rises, while it raises rates to combat inflation.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

First lady Melania Trump is denying ties to Jeffrey Epstein and knowledge of his sex crimes, saying Thursday that the “stories are completely false” and calling accusations that she was somehow involved “smears about me.”

Reading an extraordinary statement at the White House, Melania Trump said she and her attorneys were fighting back against “unfound and baseless lies” in regards to her connections to the late financier, a convicted sex offender who leveraged connections to the rich, powerful and famous to recruit his victims and cover up his crimes.

“The lies linking me with the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein need to end today,” she said. “The individuals lying about me are devoid of ethical standards, humility and respect. I do not object to their ignorance, but rather I reject their mean-spirited attempts to defame my reputation.”

The seemingly out-of-the-blue message came as her husband, President Donald Trump, and his administration had finally seemed to move past more than a year of controversy surrounding Epstein, especially as the Iran war had become all-consuming in Washington.

The first lady’s comments almost assuredly will serve to push the story back into the political spotlight even as the president urged the public and media to move on from the case.

Nick Clemens, a spokesperson for the first lady, said the West Wing was aware beforehand that she was making a statement. But he deferred to the West Wing on whether the content of what Melania Trump planned to say was known. The White House press office did not respond to requests for comment.

Calls for a congressional hearing for Epstein victims

The first lady spoke for about five minutes, reading her statement in the Grand Foyer, then walked away without taking questions. She did not go into detail on the accusations against her, but said they came from “individuals and entities looking to cause damage to my good name.”

She added that they were financially and politically motivated.

Melania Trump also called on Congress to hold a public hearing centered on survivors of Epstein’s crimes, with a chance to testify before lawmakers and have their stories entered into the congressional record.

“Each and every woman should have her day to tell her story in public if she wishes,” she said. “Then, and only then, we will have the truth.”

Two of Epstein’s accusers, Maria and Annie Farmer, said in a subsequent statement: “What we want is accountability, transparency, and justice.”

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican and onetime fierce Trump supporter who resigned from Congress after a public falling out with the president, posted on X, “I am grateful to the First Lady for her brave statement today about Epstein and his victims.”

Democrats, meanwhile, jumped on Melania Trump’s comments, saying they agreed with her call for a congressional hearing. In a social media post, Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee that is investigating Epstein, called on the Republican chair of the committee, Rep. James Comer, to schedule a public hearing “immediately.”

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who sponsored a bill prompting the release of millions of Epstein documents, turned attention back to the Justice Department, saying it’s the attorney general’s job to bring in survivors for testimony. Massie, who has pressed for more arrests in the Epstein case, ended a social media post with a call to “PROSECUTE!”

Questions about Epstein’s reach have loomed over the administration and divided Republicans, driving a wedge into Trump’s MAGA base as some pressed for the government to release more files and prosecute figures linked to the financier.

The issue has dogged Trump and fractured some of his alliances, including the one with Greene. Trump dismissed the issue as a “Democrat hoax” but later signed a bill to release files from Epstein’s case.

It was not clear what prompted the first lady to revive the issue. She noted that several individuals and organizations have had to apologize for their “lies about me.” Of the examples she cited, the most recent was in October.

In that case, book publisher HarperCollins UK apologized to the first lady and retracted passages from a book suggesting Epstein played a role in introducing her and Donald Trump.

Melania Trump mentioned her husband several times in her comments. She said Epstein did not introduce her to Trump, and that she met her future husband at a New York City party in 1998.

Email to Maxwell was ‘trivial’

The first lady brought Epstein back to the forefront months after federal authorities released millions of pages of documents under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law enacted after months of public and political pressure that requires the government to open its files on the late financier and his confidant and onetime girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell.

Lawmakers complained when the Justice Department made only a limited release last month, but officials said more time was needed to review additional documents that were discovered and to ensure no sensitive information about victims was released.

Melania Trump said Thursday that she was not friends with Epstein or Maxwell, but was in overlapping social circles in New York and Florida. She described an email reply she sent to Maxwell as “casual correspondence” without elaborating.

“My polite reply to her email doesn’t amount to anything more than a trivial note,” she said.

Among the documents released by the Justice Department was a brief email from 2002 with the sender and recipient blacked out. It begins, “Dear G!” and ends “Love, Melania,” and compliments the recipient on a magazine article about “JE.”

“I know you are very busy flying all over the world,” it says. “How was Palm Beach? I cannot wait to go down. Give me a call when you are back in NY.”

That email was sent the same month that a New York Magazine article was published about Epstein in which Trump called him a “terrific guy.”

Among other documents released was an image from Epstein’s home showing a series of photographs along a credenza and in drawers. In that image, inside a drawer among other photos, was a photograph of Trump, alongside Epstein, Melania Trump and Maxwell.

Epstein killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in New York. Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

___

Associated Press writers Stephen Groves in Washington and Michael R. Sisak and Larry Neumeister in New York contributed to this report.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

On a recent weekend afternoon, at a Chinese comedy show in northern Virginia, the host asked the audience, “What food do you like?” The loudest answer echoed through the hall: “Chick-fil-A!”

“You still haven’t gotten your H-1B lottery, ha?” quipped the host, citing the most popular work visa among Chinese students.

It’s an easy-to-get joke in the Chinese student community, where those eager for U.S. visas believe their chances at success might hinge upon something unexpected: an American chicken sandwich and the company behind it.

Chick-fil-A has no branches in China. But the brand has enticed Chinese students in the U.S. for a simple reason: “Chick-fil-A” sounds like “check files.” In a culture that puts great stock in soundalike words and numbers, it is believed to bring good luck to those with complicated visa applications.

“It feels like I am one step closer to the green card after having a Chick-fil-A meal,” says Zhou Yilu, an AI software engineer in his late 30s who lives in Wilmington, Delaware.

Since arriving in the United States as a student 14 years ago, Zhou has had a roller-coaster experience with his visa status. He was repeatedly asked to add paperwork while switching among four types of visas, one of which was approved days ahead of its expiration. That was when Zhou turned to the popular poultry purveyor.

No one can say who originally had the idea, but it has been kicking around the Chinese student community for years, especially for visa applications such as the H-1B, which is based on a lottery system and has become harder to secure.

Some 3D-print the Chick-fil-A logo on coasters. Some embroider the logo into a small cross-stitch pendant for key chains. Others set Chick-fil-A’s logo as their profile picture on social media, sometimes converting it from red to green — as in green card.

Chick-fil-A didn’t respond to emails seeking comment.

They believe they’re one wordplay away from ‘stay’

Chinese people, particularly younger ones, have long been enthusiastic about wordplay.

On the night before Christmas, for example, eating apples — “pingguo” in Mandarin — flourishes because the word echoes “ping’an ye,” which means Christmas Eve. Brides carry lettuce bouquets because lettuce — “shengcai” — sounds like “getting rich.” Who doesn’t like catching that at a wedding? A much older use of wordplay lies in Chinese people’s aversion to the number four, which sounds like the word for death in Mandarin.

The Chick-fil-A superstition reflects how difficult it is for immigrants to overcome the obstacles to work legally in the U.S., even for those with prestigious educational backgrounds and high-level job titles.

More than 46,000 Chinese students and workers were approved for H-1B visas in 2024. Approved Chinese applicants account for 11.7%, the second-largest group by country, after India at 70%.

Fan Wu, a data scientist living in Indianapolis, didn’t win his H-1B lottery despite changing his social media profile picture to the fast-food chain’s red logo and traveling to Hawaii to pray at a Japanese Taoist temple.

“I was forced to turn to these mysteries,” he says. “The lottery itself is a matter of chance. It depends on luck, and we need another mystery to echo it.”

It goes beyond chicken. The need for better fortune in visa lotteries has given rise to a new profession — agents who pray in temples across the Pacific on behalf of others.

When the students reach out to 24-year-old Meng Yanqing in Beijing, across the world, through the social media platform Xiaohongshu, Meng lines up to enter and pray at the popular Lama Temple, holding a paper between his palms that expresses his wish for an H-1B visa. That involves “precise positioning” with their personal information, such as passport numbers and birthdays.

“I respect them, they have their demands, and I offer the service,” says Meng, who also helps his clients buy consecrated bracelets from the temple and send them across the Pacific to the U.S. “I truly hope the best for them.”

The visa issue is always looming

The Trump administration’s abrupt decision to impose a $100,000 fee on H-1B visas a few months ago stunned Chinese students and workers, created chaos and fostered a more chilling atmosphere. It was later explained that it only applied to the new visas. But the roller-coaster experience added anxiousness to a landscape for Chinese students that already includes language and cultural barriers and a tight job market.

Some experts believe employers’ sponsorship of green cards through visas like H-1B is why the United States can attract some of the best and brightest.

“A real talent pipeline,” says Juliet Gelatt, associate director of U.S. Program under Migration Policy Institute based in Washington, “we’ve really benefited as a country and as an economy from bringing in smart young people from all around the world, including from China.”

The air of suspicion surrounding Chinese immigrants, especially in high-tech industries, makes it even harder. Experts warn that it reduces the U.S.’s ability to attract international talent.

One manager at a new energy company in his late 20s finally changed his profile picture to the chicken logo after months of waiting for his visa. Like many Chinese, he would give only his surname, Yang, and otherwise spoke anonymously, fearing trouble with his visa status. Of his status in the United States, he says, “It feels like living under someone else’s roof.”

The United States limits participation in the H-1B visa lottery. STEM majors are eligible for three years of optional practical training under their F-1 student visa, while other majors are eligible for one year. After that, they turn to Chick-fil-A while seeking a work visa to continue their work in the United States.

For Harriet Peng, a data analyst living in northern Virginia, eating a chicken sandwich and having the company’s T-shirt on the back of her chair weren’t enough. After losing the lottery repeatedly, she went to a temple in upstate New York to pray in person — or, as she puts it, to “make some efforts using scientific materialist methods in metaphysics.”

The temple contains many sculptures of gods, each representing a particular aspect of life, such as fortune or childbirth. There is, she says, no god for visas.

Nevertheless, Peng jokes, “I knelt in front of almost every god and prayed, in case they all know each other.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

President Donald Trump’s administration this week acknowledged it made a significant error in figures it used to help justify a fraud probe into New York’s Medicaid program, a glaring mistake that undercuts a federal campaign to tackle waste, mostly in Democratic-led states.

The error, which the administration admitted first to The Associated Press, prompted health analysts to question how many of the Republican administration’s sweeping anti-fraud efforts around the country were based on faulty findings. One of a few mischaracterizations it made about New York’s Medicaid program, it also reflected a common criticism that’s been made of Trump’s second administration — that it tends to attack first and confirm the facts later.

“These numbers could have been cleared up in a phone call, so it’s really slapdash,” said Fiscal Policy Institute senior health policy adviser Michael Kinnucan, whose recent analysis called attention to the Trump administration’s inaccurate claim.

The mistake appeared in comments made last month by Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, in a social media video and in a letter to New York’s Democratic governor announcing the fraud investigation.

Oz claimed that New York’s Medicaid program last year provided some 5 million people with personal care services, which assist people in need with basic activities like bathing, grooming and meal preparation. That would add up to nearly three-fourths of the state’s 6.8 million Medicaid enrollees.

“That level of utilization is unheard of,” Oz said in the video, adding in his post that New York needs to “come clean about its Medicaid program.”

But the real number of New Yorkers who used those services last year was about 450,000, or between 6% and 7% of total enrollees, CMS spokesman Chris Krepich told the AP this week. He said the agency misidentified New York’s approach to applying billing codes and had since refined its methodology.

“CMS is committed to ensuring its analyses fully reflect state-specific billing practices and will continue to work closely with New York to validate data and strengthen program integrity oversight,” he said in an emailed statement.

Krepich said the probe was ongoing as the administration still has concerns with New York’s oversight of personal care services and the Medicaid program and is reviewing the state’s response to last month’s letter. CMS had raised other flags about New York’s program, including that it spends more per beneficiary and per resident than the average state, has high personal care spending and employs so many personal care aides that the job category is now the largest in the state.

Health analysts said the state’s high spending reflected both high costs for services in New York and a policy choice to provide robust at-home care. Cadence Acquaviva, senior public information officer for the New York Department of Health, called Oz’s initial mischaracterizations “a targeted attempt to obscure the facts.”

“New York State remains committed to protecting and preserving vital Medicaid programs that deliver high-quality services to New Yorkers who depend on them,” she said.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Gov. Kathy Hochul said, “The initial claim by CMS was patently false, and we are glad they now admit it.”

“Governor Hochul has been clear that New York has zero tolerance for waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid, or any other state programs, and will continue her efforts to root out bad actors, protect taxpayer dollars, and safeguard the critical programs that New Yorkers rely on,” spokesperson Nicolette Simmonds said.

New York probe is part of a larger crackdown

The Trump administration’s investigation into New York comes as it has similarly approached at least four other states, including California, Florida, Maine and Minnesota, with investigations into potential health care fraud. The anti-fraud effort appears to be expanding as voters in the upcoming midterm elections say they’re concerned about affordability.

Trump last month signed an executive order to create an anti-fraud task force across federal benefit programs led by Vice President JD Vance. As part of that project, Vance announced the administration would temporarily halt $243 million in Medicaid funding to Minnesota over fraud concerns, a move over which the state has since sued.

Kinnucan, the analyst with expertise in New York’s Medicaid program, said he’s concerned that the Trump administration’s adversarial approach to targeting fraud in some states “politicizes” a conversation that should be a team effort.

“We want to think collaboratively among all the stakeholders in the program about how we can actually fix it,” Kinnucan said. “We don’t want to have fraud be this political football.”

Oz made other claims New York advocates say are inaccurate

In his video, Oz made at least two other claims about New York that Medicaid advocates and beneficiaries say distorted the facts.

In one instance, he said the state recently made its screening for personal care eligibility “more lenient by allowing problems like being ‘easily distracted’ to qualify for a personal care assistant.”

Rebecca Antar, director of the health law unit at the Legal Aid Society, said the opposite was true — that the state in a rule change that went into effect last September instead made its program requirements more stringent. She said being “easily distracted” doesn’t appear anywhere among them.

Krepich said the administrator was referring to whether New York’s standard for personal care services was “sufficiently rigorous.”

“When standards are overly permissive, it risks diverting resources away from individuals with the highest levels of need and placing long-term pressure on the sustainability of the Medicaid program,” he said.

Oz in the video also referred to personal care services as “something that our families would normally do for us, like carrying groceries.”

Kathleen Downes, a 33-year-old who has quadriplegic cerebral palsy and uses personal care services in New York’s Nassau County, said she was offended by the notion that all Medicaid beneficiaries have family members who are willing and able to help.

Downes, who has been disabled since birth and needs personal care help for things like showering, using the toilet and eating, said she hires both her mother and outside assistants for personal care services, so her aging mother doesn’t have to take on those tasks full time. She said her mother did the labor unpaid for years, precluding her from pursuing other career opportunities.

“He’s assuming that everybody wants to and can just do it for free forever,” Downes said. “And that’s not feasible for a lot of people.”

___

Associated Press writer Anthony Izaguirre contributed to this story.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Anthropic’s new AI model, Mythos, is causing a stir among cybersecurity experts and policymakers. The company says its new model is so skilled at finding and exploiting software vulnerabilities that it’s too dangerous to release. Instead, it is limiting access to a small group of major technology companies whose software is the foundation for many other digital services, hoping to give defenders time to strengthen their systems.

Anthropic is not the only AI lab producing models with these kinds of capabilities, or considering similar release strategies to try to ensure cyber defenders have access to these systems before hackers do. OpenAI is reportedly preparing a new model—internally known as “Spud”—that could match Mythos in cybersecurity capabilities. According to a report from Axios, the company is also working on an advanced cybersecurity-focused system that it plans to release in a phased rollout to a small group of partners, again to try to give defenders a head start.

Some analysts have dismissed these cautious, limited releases as more about marketing and creating hype around new models, rather than purely safety-driven decisions. But most agree that AI-driven cyber capabilities have reached a dangerous tipping point. Even without the powerful new model, they say existing, publicly available AI models can already carry out sophisticated cyberattacks—sometimes in minutes.

Researchers are concerned about both the scale and accessibility of AI‑enabled attacks. Tasks that once required advanced expertise—like scanning code for vulnerabilities or running attacks that require chaining multiple exploit together—are increasingly being automated or semi‑automated by AI systems. Attackers, even those lacking high levels of technical skills, can now launch highly-automated attacks across thousands of systems at once in a massive, coordinated assault.

In practical terms, that raises questions both for enterprises and policymakers about how to protect critical infrastructure in a world where these advanced AI capabilities will soon be in the hands of bad actors and hostile nation states. Unless government and industry harden defenses, the world could see a wave of devastating cyber attacks taking down banking systems, power grids, hospitals, or water systems. It is exactly such a nightmare scenario that Anthropic says it is hoping to head off by limiting Mythos’ release.

Some researcher say is not clear, however, how much the new models increase the chances of this kind of cyber-Armageddon. But the reason for their skepticism is not reassuring: they say that much of what Mythos can do may already be possible with smaller, cheaper, openly available models.

Recent research from the AI security firm AISLE suggests that several of the vulnerabilities Anthropic highlighted in its announcement—including decades-old bugs—could have been detected by openly available models that anyone can download and run for free.

There are a couple of caveats: Rather than simply pointing an AI model at an entire software application or a complete code base and asking the AI model to find a way to hack it—as Anthropic appears to have done with Mythos—the AISLE researchers already knew which segments of code contained the bugs and fed the models these code chunks. Smaller models generally have narrower context windows, meaning they can’t take in an entire large code base at once. But it is possible to imagine a pipeline in which a large code base is broken into smaller pieces, each of which is fed in turn to a small AI model, allowing it to examine each segment for possible exploits, experts said.

According to Spencer Whitman, chief product officer at AI security firm Gray Swan, the hard part of what researchers achieved with Mythos was autonomously finding the vulnerabilities within large codebases and then testing those exploits. “Finding vulnerabilities is hard because it requires locating weak points buried within millions of lines of code and verifying that these targets result in a real exploit,” he told Fortune. “Mythos claims it autonomously completed both steps.”

“The fact that some of these vulnerabilities sat undetected in codebases for decades underscores just how hard the first step actually is—and why automating it is significant,” he added.

Smaller models may be able to achieve comparable results to Mythos, according to Charlie Eriksen, a security researcher at Aikido Security, but they require more technical skill, careful prompting, and better-designed tooling to get there. Models like Mythos, however, may make it considerably easier for even those with less technical skills to carry out sophisticated and devastating cyber attacks.

“This technology is moving so fast that it’s naive to assume others aren’t able to easily replicate similar results, if not already, at least very soon,” he said. “Anybody with a computer can develop very powerful offensive cyber capabilities in a short amount of time, without needing a lot of expertise in cybersecurity.”

A concentration of power

Anthropic’s decision to limit Mythos’ release is also putting unusual power in the hands of a single company. Even though Anthropic says it is consulting with the U.S. government on Mythos’ capabilities and the vulnerabilities it is uncovering (and there are calls for it to work with other allied governments too), the company is effectively deciding who gets access to one of the most advanced cyber capabilities ever developed.

Some security experts and software developers—especially those committed to open-source software, that is publicly-accessible and often usable for free—argue the world would be safer if Mythos were released so that every defender, not just Anthropic’s chosen partners, could use it to find and patch vulnerabilities.

“Whatever the right judgment call is, the most striking aspect of this situation is how reliant we are on the judgment of a handful of private actors who aren’t accountable to the public,” Jonathan Iwry, a fellow at the Wharton Accountable AI Lab, said.

Anthropic did loop in the government early. According to reporting from Axios, the company actively warned U.S. government officials about a new, powerful model that significantly increased the risk of cyberattacks at least a month ago. Anthropic, in a blog post announcing Project Glasswing, later said briefing the government on what the model could do, where the risks were, and how it was managing them, was a “priority from the start.”

Despite these efforts, there’s also a growing “governance gap,” according to Hamza Chaudhry, AI and National Security Lead at the Future of Life Institute. These systems are being integrated into offensive cyber operations faster than policymakers can build the frameworks to govern how these capabilities are used or secured. In the past, even cyber capabilities developed by and for the use of government, particularly hacking tools developed by the U.S. National Security Agency, have ended up in the hands of bad actors.

For example, in 2016, a hacking group called the Shadow Brokers published a cache of hacking tools and exploits used against major software systems—including Microsoft Windows—that were widely-believed to have been developed by the NSA. Some of the leaked NSA exploit code was later used in WannaCry, while NotPetya also relied on the NSA-linked EternalBlue exploit, helping make both attacks among the most damaging in recent history.

The cyber abilities of AI models such as Mythos pose completely new governance challenges, too. With previous hacking tools, a human had to deliberately choose to deploy those exploits. But, according to Anthropic, in safety tests, Mythos would sometimes use its hacking abilities to accomplish some other goal in ways that surprised its creators.

The safety issue is often not the AI model’s coding skills, per se, but its autonomous capabilities, Chaudhry said. As AI systems become more agentic, they are able to set sub-goals, adapt their approach, and continue operating without direct human instruction at every step. The concern is that an AI system might pursue an objective in ways that extend beyond what its operator explicitly intended.

“The agent… pursues its objective function through whatever pathways its intelligence and autonomy identify as optimal,” he said. “An adversary state or non-state actor deploying an autonomous AI agent… is no longer directing actions so much as initiating a process whose specific trajectory they cannot fully predict.”

What enterprises should do

Whether companies have access to Mythos or not, experts say those not currently using AI to secure their systems may already be falling behind. Even with Anthropic limiting widespread access to its new models, AI-driven offensive capabilities are out there in less powerful forms, for those who know how to use them.

Most security teams operate on the assumption that time is somewhat on their side—that there’s at least a gap between a vulnerability existing and an attacker finding it, and another gap between finding it and being able to use it. For most of recent history, that was roughly true. But advanced AI models are collapsing both gaps at once, according to Emanuel Salmona, co-founder and CEO of Nagomi Security.

“Mythos found critical vulnerabilities across every major operating system and browser—some of them decades old—in weeks,” he said. “When that capability is broadly available, and Anthropic’s own people are saying six to eighteen months, the organizations that were already behind [on security] don’t just fall further back. The model they built their programs around stops working entirely.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The transformation of warfare since Russia invaded Ukraine four years ago is also changing how countries must adapt their defense industries, and Kyiv is leading the way, according to former CIA director and retired Gen. David Petraeus.

In an interview with World at Stake earlier this week, he called Ukraine the “arsenal of democracy,” a term first used to describe the U.S. during World War II as it sustained allies with weapons and supplies.

“Ukraine in the future, I think, will be the most important military industrial complex in the free world,” Petraeus said. “It is producing cutting-edge unmanned systems, not just in the air, but on the ground and at sea.”

Ukraine’s integration of hardware and software is also extraordinary, he noted, adding the pace of innovation is constant. Software updates come in less than a week, and hardware changes come every few weeks.

In fact, Ukraine has recently developed new, more advanced drones with longer ranges that have evaded air defenses, allowing them to attack vital oil facilities deep inside Russian territory.

That’s devastated Russia’s ability to export oil, preventing the Kremlin from capitalizing on the spike in crude prices since the U.S. and Israel launched their war on Iran.

“This has become an industrial ecosystem producing the most impressive unmanned systems, I think, in the world, certainly in the free world,” Petraeus said. “And when the guns fall silent—as manufacturing is done not just here [in Ukraine] but in other countries with the money coming back here—I think Ukraine will reinforce its position as the arsenal of democracy.”

Ukraine is already helping countries in the Persian Gulf defend themselves from Iranian drones, which have demonstrated the ability to penetrate their U.S.-made defenses.

On Friday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukrainian military personnel have shot down Iranian Shahed drones in multiple Middle Eastern countries. Ukraine is receiving weapons from the Gulf states in return, along with oil, diesel, and financial arrangements, he explained.

In addition to Ukraine’s rapid innovation cycles, its ability to develop cheap drones and mass produce them provide advantages on the battlefield as well. Ukraine makes thousands every day, and they are now responsible for the vast majority of casualties.

That’s in contrast with the U.S. military, which relies on so-called exquisite weapons that are more advanced but exponentially more costly and aren’t produced at mass scale. The U.S. and its allies are reportedly grappling with shrinking stockpiles of their most sophisticated munitions.

The mismatch between the cheap drones Iran is launching and the expensive interceptors used to shoot them down has alarmed some in the defense sector.

At the Hill & Valley Forum last month, CrowdStrike cofounder Dmitri Alperovitch warned NATO doesn’t have the production capacity and the supply chains to wage a long war.

Despite Russia having a much smaller GDP than NATO’s combined output, it still outproduces the alliance in artillery, armored vehicles, glide bombs, drones, and even certain types of missiles, he added.

“That is a choice,” said Alperovitch, who is also chairman of the Silverado Policy Accelerator think tank. “It’s not because we cannot produce this stuff.”

If Tesla can churn out 500,000 vehicles a year from one factory, then the U.S. should be able to make 10,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles, he argued.

Instead, the U.S. military typically procured about 90 Tomahawks per year before the Iran war, though the maximum rate of production is estimated to be 2,330 per year, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“We have optimized our defense industrial base for just-in-time delivery, for no surge capacity, and basically small-batch production,” Alperovitch said. “But munitions and weapon systems are not artisanal gin. And what we need to do is not treat it as a procurement line, but think about it as strategic capacity.” 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

 With baby Arthur too young for the measles vaccine and a sibling due in June, the Otwells grew nervous when the threat of the highly contagious virus started factoring into their grocery run.

“We go to the Costco that was kind of a hotbed,” said John Otwell, who knew about the state health department’s warnings of public exposures at the store. “A lot of people just don’t get it; they think it’s just a cold. It’s not.”

By Arthur’s 9-month checkup, the South Carolina outbreak had exploded into the nation’s worst in more than 35 years, surpassing last year’s in Texas. That meant that under state guidance, Arthur could get his first dose of the MMR vaccine — for measles, mumps and rubella — earlier than the usual 12 to 15 months old. Their new baby won’t be able to get the shot until at least 6 months — a prospect that worries parents of infants wherever measles spreads.

Babies too young to be vaccinated are among the most vulnerable in a measles outbreak. The disease can wreak havoc on their fragile bodies, making them so sick they stop eating and drinking. They can develop pneumonia or brain swelling, and sometimes die.

Babies depend entirely on herd immunity — at least 95% of a community must be vaccinated to prevent measles outbreaks. But dropping vaccination rates have eroded protection in South Carolina and across the nation. In Spartanburg County, the outbreak’s epicenter, less than 90% of students have gotten required vaccines.

“Babies become sitting ducks,” said Dr. Deborah Greenhouse, a Columbia pediatrician. “The burden is on all of us to protect all of us.”

But increasingly, some policymakers and officials push a view of vaccination as an issue of individual freedom and parents’ rights, rather than one of public health to safeguard the population as a whole.

At the federal level, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine crusader, has sought to remake vaccine policy and oversaw billions in public health cuts. And though a temporary ruling from a federal judge has slowed his momentum, a raft of bills has been introduced in states, including South Carolina, that threaten to further reduce vaccination rates.

South Carolina’s measles outbreak, totaling about 1,000 cases, has slowed. But measles is spreading in many states, with 17 outbreaks this year and 48 last year, and the U.S. on the verge of losing its status as a country that has eliminated measles.

Doctors work to protect the youngest against measles

Dr. Jessica Early never thought she’d have to deal with measles, but the pediatrician feared for her patients and her own baby when it popped up in her Greer community. She and other doctors began offering an approved infant MMR dose as early as 6 months old. Her practice also started giving the second MMR dose — usually for ages 4 to 6 years old — early.

To the chagrin of many doctors, no one knows how many South Carolina infants have gotten measles or been hospitalized by it.

State officials will disclose only that 253 of the 997 cases were among children 4 and younger; they say they won’t break cases down further for confidentiality reasons. It’s not uncommon to group statistics this way.

Officials also don’t know exactly how many infants were hospitalized with the virus because, as in some other states, hospitals aren’t required to report measles-related admissions.

Across the state, doctors said they got many questions about whether it was safe to bring infants to waiting rooms or day care.

Thomas Compton — regional director of Miss Tammy’s Little Learning Center, a child care network operating across the outbreak region — said 18 parents pulled children out of his facilities, though they had no confirmed cases. Some abandoned deposits days before their kids were scheduled to start, forcing the company to lay off a teacher.

Although licensed day cares must require vaccines under state law, families can easily get religious exemptions. About a fifth of Miss Tammy’s 300 children have vaccine waivers.

When measles surged, Compton said state officials gave little guidance. His staff scrubbed down surfaces, as they did when COVID-19 was raging; tracked local measles cases on Facebook; and relied on Google for information about the disease.

“A lot of parents were really stressed out,” Compton said. “Anytime that we had a little sickness going on or something, they were like, ‘Do you think it’s the measles?’”

State legislation would prohibit vaccines for children under 2

Last year, an Associated Press investigation found that Trump administration officials were directing activists to push anti-science legislation in statehouses. Nationally, around 350 anti-vaccine bills were introduced as of late October, AP found, including at least eight in South Carolina.

This year, a state bill would prohibit requiring vaccines for children under 2.

“In other words, it would get rid of those requirements in the day cares,” pediatrician Greenhouse said. “And for people like me, that is a gut punch that is terrifying.”

In a subcommittee discussion, Republican State Sen. Carlisle Kennedy said his bill aims to protect parents’ rights. His baby was born in August without working kidneys and got vaccines on a personalized schedule, in coordination with doctors.

“We didn’t want to put vaccines in his body before his body was able to survive them,” he said.

Opponents countered that herd immunity protects children in these situations.

The Senate subcommittee advanced the legislation. Greenhouse fears it has momentum.

“In the climate that we are currently living in, I think any bill potentially could have legs,” she said. “It is our job to do our absolute best to make sure that those legs don’t go anywhere.”

Whether the bill becomes law, doctors say this sort of legislation fuels vaccine skepticism and confusion. While the American Academy of Pediatrics advises giving babies all the vaccines they’ve gotten for years, some parents tell Greenhouse they know the government has called for fewer.

“They don’t actually know who they can trust,” she said.

South Carolina, like other states, has made nonmedical vaccine exemptions easier to get, noted Dr. Martha Edwards, president of the state’s American Academy of Pediatrics chapter. In the outbreak’s epicenter, religious exemptions have more than doubled since 2020. Statewide, 4% of school-age students have such exemptions in 2025-26.

“Parental choice is a big buzzword in a lot of the Southern states,” Edwards said. But the choice not to vaccinate, she said, impacts other parents’ rights to keep their children safe.

Nationwide, protection fades as measles spreads

Doctors expect things will only get worse.

In the first three months of 2026, the U.S. logged 1,671 measles cases. That’s 73% of the total from 2025, the worst year for the virus in more than three decades. In November, international health officials will determine whether measles is still considered eliminated in the U.S.

National MMR vaccination rates – which dropped to 92.5% among kindergartners in the 2024-25 school year, from 95.2% in 2019-20 – obscure much lower rates in certain communities. At one Spartanburg County school, 21% of kids received all required vaccines.

Doctors worry it’s just a matter of time before all sorts of vaccine-preventable diseases threaten lives like they did a century ago.

“The whole concept of immunization is one of the best things that has ever happened to medicine,” Greenhouse said. “To see that we are actually going backwards is just confounding.”

Helen Kaiser, who lives in the outbreak area, vaccinated her twin 2-year-old boys early to protect them and the community.

“I would never forgive myself,” she said, “if I knew that my son had gotten another baby very sick and it was something I could have prevented.”

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Ungar reported from Louisville, Kentucky.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The warning signs were there two decades ago—long before ChatGPT, long before anyone worried about a robot taking their job. Around 2005, something quietly shifted in the American labor market. College degrees kept multiplying. Good jobs did not.

“This is a generation of people that was really given the hardest sell of any generation in history of why they need to go to college,” says Noam Scheiber, a New York Times labor reporter whose new book, Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class, chronicles the revolt brewing inside America’s credentialed workforce. “Everyone, from their parents and family members to the president, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton—talking about how in the 21st century, everyone’s got to go to college … And unfortunately, all of this was happening at the precise moment when a college degree was becoming less valuable than it had been in many decades.”

Scheiber, who graduated in 1998 into what he calls “one of the best years in the history of the world to have graduated from college,” watched the shift unfold from the front row of the labor beat. He remembers a roaring job market, an explosion of startups, offers raining down on anyone with a diploma. The Great Recession of 2008 was the accelerant for what came next. Citing research from Berkeley economist Jesse Rothstein, who previously served as chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, Scheiber notes that employment growth for recent college graduates never returned to its pre-2008 trajectory, even on the eve of the pandemic in 2019. Then COVID hit, upending the board all over again.

courtesy of NBER

The data point that Scheiber returns to most is striking: The New York Federal Reserve has tracked the unemployment rate for recent college graduates since the late 1980s. For roughly three decades, it almost never exceeded the overall unemployment rate. Since 2022, it has stayed stubbornly above it.

“That’s just not something that we saw for 30 years before that,” Scheiber says. “It’s a pretty remarkable shift.”

As many students took out loans to pay for the soaring cost of tuition, they found themselves unable to get the high-paying jobs they needed to see a return on investment. Instead, they found themselves further in debt, living with their parents, and delaying milestones such as getting married or buying a house.

The frustration finds a channel

What filled that gap—between expectation and reality—was frustration. And frustration, it turned out, was organizing.

Starting with three Starbucks stores in Buffalo in the fall of 2021, Scheiber watched union elections spread at that company with exponential force. “I remember sort of January, February of ’22, it just kind of growing exponentially,” he says. “It was three, and then it was kind of five to 10, and then it was 20, and it just kept going up.” The movement jumped to Apple retail locations, Trader Joe’s, Amazon warehouses, and REI. As he talked to more and more of these workers, a pattern emerged that sharpened the cliché of the post-recession barista with a bachelor’s degree into something more urgent: a mass phenomenon. “So many of them had gone to college,” he says. “This union campaign was just catching fire.”

It wasn’t just retail. In the summer of 2023, auto workers went on strike for six weeks. Actors and writers walked the picket lines in Hollywood. And something remarkable happened across industries and education levels: Gallup polling at the time showed 70% to 75% of the American public sided with the striking workers.

“The thing that I found really striking,” Scheiber says, “is I would talk to people in very different industries, very different professions. And they all were like, ‘Right on‘ — they were right there with the auto workers, right there with the actors, right there with the writers.” He recalls a refrain from his sources that cut to the bone of a shifting identity: “I may be a doctor or I may be a tech worker, but I’m still a worker.”

That consciousness even reached the upper echelons of medicine. Scheiber reported on roughly 400 primary care doctors at Allina, a major Minnesota healthcare system, who unionized in 2023—the largest group of private-sector physicians to do so in modern memory. “The level of kind of worker consciousness that you would get among the doctors was just so striking.” he says. “They’re just like, ‘Yeah, I’m just a cog in this big machine.’” One of the doctors told him that “it doesn’t matter if you’re an auto worker or a doctor, how much prestige or education you have, you’re just treated the same by all these big companies.”

Downward mobility is ‘incredibly radicalizing’

That sense of shared precarity, Scheiber argues, is reshaping identity in ways that will define American politics for years. A plurality of the early Starbucks organizers he spoke to had volunteered for Bernie Sanders. The support for socialism among college graduates under 35 is, in his telling, not a fringe phenomenon but a mainstream one. He points to figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—a Boston University graduate who worked in restaurants and as a bartender before her political career—as both exceptional and emblematic.

“Downward mobility is incredibly radicalizing,” he says. “If you either grew up upper middle class and that’s no longer available to you, or you grew up with the promise of joining the upper middle class because you went to college like you were told to, and took out your loans. And now there’s no job that is available that enables you to come to the middle class. There are probably some more radicalizing forces in history, but not that many.”

He draws a line from the current moment to a broader historical pattern explored by the political scientist Peter Turchin, whose work on the “overproduction of elites” has gained a wide audience. The theory: when societies produce too many highly educated people competing for too few positions of status and prosperity, the result is political instability. Musical chairs with a shrinking number of seats. Turchin told Fortune last July that he sees signs of his theory “everywhere you look” in modern American life. “Look at the overproduction of university degrees … There is overproduction of university degrees and the value of [the] university degree actually declines.”

In a decade, Scheiber suggests, the shift in class self-identification may be nearly complete. “A large majority of people are just going think of themselves as working class,” he says.

Yet he resists pure fatalism. The word he keeps returning to is agency. These college-educated workers, he argues, are formidable precisely because of what their education gave them—not a guaranteed career, but what one sociologist he quotes calls “class confidence,” the trained ability to figure things out, to navigate bureaucracies, to push for better terms. “Bad things happen to them, like happen to everybody,” Scheiber says, “but they don’t tend to take that lying down.”

‘Creative, brilliant people are going to wake up’

Paige Craig sees the same landscape from a radically different vantage point. The founder of Outlander VC grew up homeless until fifth grade, was recruited by West Point, served in military special operations, and now, from New York, invests in defense technology, robotics, and AI. He frames the coming disruption not as a slow unraveling but as a compression of history itself.

“The Industrial Revolution was a hundred-year process,” Craig says. “The tech revolution was a 30-, 40-year process of going from paper to digital. We’re in an AI revolution that’s going to happen in 10 years. That’s the massive shift.”

At Outlander, Craig recently wrote a 10-year vision statement. Its fifth pillar stopped him cold as he drafted it: “We’re in a decade where we’re going to see the massive dislocation of creative talent,” he says. “Creative, brilliant people are going to wake up this decade and realize the jobs that they thought they were going to have—and the jobs they thought they could have—are gone.”

And yet Craig is not pessimistic about the long arc. He envisions what he calls a “second golden age”—an explosion of entrepreneurship, arts, and science born from the wreckage of displaced labor. He imagines millions of sole proprietors leveraging AI and robotics to build hyperlocal businesses that never would have been profitable before. He talks about limitless demand for healthcare, about turning displaced workers loose on Alzheimer’s research, ocean exploration, and the frontiers of the human body. He recently funded a startup in New York building $1,000 humanoid robots designed to be deployed by the millions—not the $100,000 prototypes that dominate headlines, but cheap enough to generate the training data that could make them truly useful.

“I hope that this freedom of labor and this massive productivity lead to this second golden age,” Craig says, “where we realize as societies that we can actually spend money on the arts, storytelling, and the creativity that makes humans blossom. Then the hard sciences where we push the boundaries of space travel and minerals and resources. That is where I think we go.”

But he does not minimize the turbulence of the transition. “It’s not that we have the blue-collar being dislocated,” he says. “It’s the most creative, educated, smart part of our society that in this decade is going to realize they don’t have jobs.”

The view from the eye of the storm

From his apartment on the Embarcadero in San Francisco—”right in the eye of the storm,” as he puts it — Sumir Chadha is watching the same wave approach from yet another angle. The co-founder and managing director of WestBridge Capital, a $7 billion India-focused evergreen fund, Chadha splits his time between Bangalore and the Bay Area. He is measured by temperament, analytical by training (Princeton, Harvard, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey), and unusually candid about what keeps him up at night.

AI-powered coding tools, he says, have already devastated the SaaS sector—what analysts call the “SaaSpocalypse or the “SaaSacre.” The productivity gains are not theoretical. “I had dinner with one of my entrepreneurs last night,” he says. “He’s talking about what Claude Code is doing to their software development. He said it’s not 10x, it’s like 100x better than what they had before.”

The human cost follows quickly. That same entrepreneur runs a 1,500-person company. He told Chadha that his 300-person implementation team could be reduced to 30 or 40 with AI. “They’re doing a layoff for about 300 engineers, man,” Chadha says. “Which is pretty sad.”

“I worry about the next three years,” he says plainly. “There’s going to be this tale of haves and have-nots that’s just going to thicken and create a lot of social tension.” He pauses. “I’ve taken some security measures at my house—things I never worried about.” He and his girlfriend have applied for European Union citizenship as a contingency. “I don’t think we’re ready for it.”

Pressed on whether he truly believes social unrest is possible in America, Chadha does not flinch. “I think there’s a 10%, 15% scenario that’s a little scary,” he says. “And I hope we don’t come to that. I’m not saying we will. But there’s some chance that it could get pretty tough in the next couple of years.”

He remains bullish on the technology itself and on India’s long-term trajectory. Westbridge has invested roughly $1 billion in eight or nine AI companies, nearly all of which are scaling rapidly. But he draws a sharp distinction between where wealth is being created and where pain will be felt first. “The U.S.—we are such an amazing, dynamic economy. Things move faster here than Europe, faster than India, faster than anywhere,” he says. “I think we’re kind of the front line of everything.”

The speed of the clock

All three men—a labor journalist, a defense-world venture capitalist, a globalist fund manager—are converging on the same conclusion from radically different vantage points: that AI is not the origin of this story, only its most dramatic chapter. The college bargain that a generation of Americans was sold (borrow money, earn a degree, join the middle class) has been quietly unraveling for 20 years. What’s coming next may simply be the part that everyone finally notices.

“We haven’t really seen the labor market impacts of AI yet,” Scheiber says. “A little bit in fields like software development, but beyond that, we haven’t really seen it. So it does feel like we may only be at the beginning of it.”

There is a question of tempo. Scheiber is skeptical of forecasts projecting mass white-collar displacement in 18 months. Large organizations, he notes, are deeply bureaucratic; inertia is a powerful force. “Even if theoretically you could replace 95% of your junior consultants in a year-and-a-half, you’re not going to do that,” he says. His gut tells him the disruption will play out over a decade, not a quarter.

But even at a slower clock, the political consequences compound. “Even if we see the unemployment rate for recent college grads tick up a few tenths of a percentage point every year for five years,” he says, “that’s gonna be pretty destabilizing.”

Craig agrees and frames the challenge in terms of historical analogy. Past technological revolutions allowed generations to absorb the shock. This one compresses a century of change into a decade. “It used to be, you could mark change with graveyards,” he says. “But the scope of change and the speed of change is so massive now. That’s the crazy part. My kids and their kids, we’re all going to be together in the middle of this crazy shift.”

Chadha puts it most succinctly: the human and political systems built to absorb disruption were designed for a slower clock.

The question now—for policymakers, employers, investors, and the generation caught in the middle—is whether anyone can build new institutions fast enough to keep up with the machines.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

At 9 a.m. Eastern Time today, oil was priced at $97.78 per barrel with Brent serving as the benchmark (we’ll explain different benchmarks later in this article). That’s a gain of $4.02 compared with yesterday morning and around $31 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:

• Only five ships crossed the Strait of Hormuz Thursday
• Jet fuel supply disruptions are comparable to 9/11 and could take months to replenish
• Deutsche Bank says China is energy ‘winner’ in age of war

Frequently asked questions

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) has a ticker on its website: The Retirement Trust Fund Countdown. At the time of writing, it stands at six years, seven months, five days, seven hours, 28 minutes, and eleven seconds.

This, the CRFB says, is when the Social Security program’s funds will be exhausted, and cuts to services would ensue. Medicare has a similar insolvency clock, due to wind down a little over a month before Social Security.

These clocks represent a problem for Congress. Not for the senators of today, but for the class that will follow them. Some 33 senators will see their terms expiring in early January 2027, with their seats up for election later this year.

Their continued service, or their replacements, will hold the seats for the next six years: Meaning the deadline to fix the funding for mandatory budget spends like Social Security and Medicare will fall squarely into their laps.

The wider problem they will need to wrangle with is the question of the federal government’s ongoing spending deficit, and the $39 trillion national debt burden it has created.

The total debt itself isn’t necessarily of concern, though the interest payments to service that debt are now eye-watering: A budget update from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released this week said the government—according to preliminary estimates—paid out nearly $530 billion in interest between October 2025, when the fiscal year starts, and March 2026. That’s more than $88 billion in interest per month, or more than $22 billion a week.

In that context, many economists are of the opinion that it is no longer a case of if, but when, the mandatory public funds reach insolvency—unless Congress does something about it.

Caleb Quakenbush is the Bipartisan Policy Center’s (BPC) director of fiscal policy, and in an exclusive interview with Fortune in Washington, D.C., highlighted that Congress is already facing some “fiscal deadlines.”

“The next class of senators is going to have to address Social Security, one way or another,” Quackenbush said. Some of that gap might be closed by further borrowing, which would shift the cost onto future generations, but “we may achieve some meaningful reform. There is an opportunity to spread some of the costs over a broader span of generations.”

Michael Peterson, CEO and chairman of the Peterson G Peterson foundation—an organization which advocates and lobbies for fiscal sustainability—is similarly eyeing the looming deadline as an intial test of political willpower.

“The fact that the U.S. senators getting elected now are going to have it on their to-do list during their term, my hope would be that come January the campaign is over and [they] lay down some of the weapons and pick up some of the calculators and pencils, and try and come up with a solution,” Peterson tells Fortune in an exclusive interview.

The elephant in the room

The current debt levels may have increased at a faster pace over recent decades, but they haven’t accumulated overnight—nor under one party as opposed to the other. Indeed, despite efforts such as the Simpson-Bowles Commission under President Obama, and President Trump’s revenue-raising tariff reforms, neither party has enacted specific policy around federal deficits.

But the BPC sees evidence of Peterson’s wish—that lawmakers on both sides will begin working together to come up with solutions—and is more optimistic that an all-out fiscal crisis isn’t on the cards.

“The common knowledge or conventional knowledge is that Congress waits until the last minute to act, and that’s historically been true,” Quakenbush said. “I am personally a little bit skeptical of the total crisis, collapse scenario.”

“I think higher living costs [and] slower income growth, is probably the likelier scenario just given our position in the world economy, our position as the world’s reserve currency, to the extent that we continue to find markets for our debt that are willing to buy it … that puts us in a relatively strong position for the foreseeable future in terms of the economic risk, but that doesn’t mean that there’s zero risk.”

From his conversations with members of Congress, Quakenbush added spending is an issue individuals understand they need to address, but know they need to do so with bipartisan support and appeal in order for the policies to stick: “That signals to me at least that they’re not writing this off as something they’re going to put off forever.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Good morning. CEOs depend on their CFOs more than ever. And fear them more than ever, too.

Under mounting pressure from nearly every direction, many chief executives now view their closest strategic partner as a potential threat to their job security.

That’s one of the key findings of the inaugural BCG CEO Insomnia Index, based on a survey of roughly 500 chief executives at companies with revenues ranging from $100 million to more than $5 billion. It offers a window into how CEOs assess their stress levels—and what’s keeping them up at night.

More than a quarter of CEOs surveyed said their chief financial officer poses the greatest threat to their job security, ahead of every other C-suite role, followed by the COO. But the risk isn’t necessarily all about competition; it’s also about misalignment.

If the CFO gets it wrong, the CEO pays the price, according to Jody Foldesy, global chief operating officer of corporate finance and strategy at Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Foldesy views the dynamic less as rivalry and more as interdependence. CEOs are relying more heavily on CFOs for decision support, making it critical that finance chiefs are deeply integrated into strategy and execution. “It is critical that the CFO be deeply integrated into the development of their agenda and provide the right facts, data, and advice,” he told me.

That shift reflects how the CFO role itself is evolving. “CFOs are less backward-looking bookkeepers and much more forward-looking—developing and analyzing scenarios, providing decision support and business advisory,” Foldesy said. While many still come from accounting backgrounds, more are rotating in from FP&A or business roles.

As AI spending becomes a larger line item, CEOs are also looking to CFOs to lead implementation and ensure returns. “For every company’s ledger, this is becoming an increasingly large portion of spend—and if you look into the future, it’s only going to grow,” he said.

But at the same time, the CFO’s regular interaction with the board, on financial performance, forecasts, and risk, can build credibility and influence, potentially positioning them as a successor. “While having a strong successor should be a part of every CEO’s legacy plan, it’s only human to feel exposed when a replacement is waiting in your own C-suite,” the report noted.

The pressure on CEOs is intensifying. The report points to an average stress score of 66.7 out of 100, above the threshold typically used to indicate high stress. Growth targets and cost management rank among the top concerns, and a third say they have more to prove to their board now than they did just two quarters ago.

Foldesy said managing that stress requires balance—both between short- and long-term priorities and in how CEOs approach the role in their own lives. “This is a role that can easily blot out the sun personally,” he said. “That’s why you find many CEOs experiencing the very high levels of stress the report communicates.”

Have a restful weekend.

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Desk jobs were once the golden ticket to steady pay, job security, and a career you could build a life around. But Gen Z isn’t so sure anymore. They’ve watched millennials do everything right, and still end up ground down, in debt, or laid off. And to top it off, they’re consistently being warned that AI is coming for all office jobs in the next decade anyway. 

Now, three-quarters of Gen Zers actually associate desk jobs with burnout and instability—and new research from SupplyHouse, shared exclusively with Fortune, shows they’re done pretending otherwise. 

Nearly 1 in 4 have already seriously considered, or are actively pursuing, a career in the trades instead. 

In what may be the biggest generational career pivot in decades, powered by economic anxiety, student debt, and TikTok, Gen Z are trading laptops for toolbelts—and they’re not looking back.

TikTok is the new career counselor—and it’s sending Gen Z down the trades

Half of Gen Z say their interest in becoming welders, electricians, plumbers, and so on, started on social media. TikTok is the number one platform where Gen Z are discovering trade careers, with 1 in 3 watching trade content there—and getting allured. It’s not hard to see why. 

Trade influencers are racking up millions of views, showing how skilled labor offers autonomy, financial security, and work-life balance that many entry-level office roles can’t match. 

Take Chase Gallagher, for example. At 12 years old, he started mowing his neighbors’ lawns for $35 a pop in the summer of 2013. By 16, Gallagher had already turned over $50,000. Now, his landscaping business is generating millions in revenue—and he’s posting all about his success online. 

At the same time, they’re also watching college-educated millennials on TikTok complain that their desk job salary doesn’t stretch enough to move out of their childhood bedroom. Meanwhile, Gen Z graduates keep posting about firing off thousands of job applications into a void as AI wipes out entry-level jobs. 

“It just feels like you’re just banging your head against the wall,” a struggling Gen Zer with a maths degree lamented. 

So it’s perhaps unsurprising that 78% of Gen Z have concluded that skilled trades are less vulnerable to AI disruption than white-collar careers.

The grass isn’t always greener on the construction site

Despite the buzz, the reality of trade work doesn’t always live up to the TikTok hype. Nearly 1 in 3 Gen Z (30%) say a parent, teacher, or counselor discouraged them from pursuing a trade career. And they may have a point.

Yijin Hardware analyzed jobs based on fatal injury rates, projected openings (2023 to 2033), median wages, and education requirements—and coming in at No. 1 is office admin and support roles. The researchers also found trade jobs are among the most “dangerous” out there for non-grads—logging, hunting, fishing, and refuse have the highest on-the-job fatality rates, paired with unpredictable working conditions, and limited opportunities. Not a single entry-level office job made the bottom rankings of their list.

It’s not the first study to suggest Gen Z may be looking at manual work through rose-tinted glasses.

According to another new WalletHub study ranking the best and worst entry-level U.S. jobs in 2025, trade roles dominate the bottom of the list. Welders, automotive mechanics, boilermakers, and drafters all rank among the least promising career starters due to limited job availability, weak growth potential, and potentially hazardous work. 

“While trade work isn’t as easy to automate as some office jobs, new technologies like prefabrication and robotics are starting to take over parts of the workload, which can reduce demand,” WalletHub’s analyst Chip Lupo told Fortune. They’re also not immune to mass layoffs and are at the mercy of interest rates and demand.

And worse still, more often than not, many trade jobs might not actually make Gen Z happier than a desk job. 

Another study ranked electricians as the least happy workers of all. According to the research, the physically demanding nature of the job and 40-plus-hour workweeks weren’t made up for by the just “decent” salary. Starkingly, not a single trade job made the list of happiest jobs.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Good morning. On Fortune’s radar today:

• Markets: Good times!
• EXCLUSIVE: Has Anthropic built something too dangerous and too expensive to commercialize?
• Get ready for nation-state oil hoarding.
• Peace talks begin as the White House goes to war against the media, insider traders … and the Pope.
• Without immigrant workers the U.S. will need robots, Pimco says.
• EXCLUSIVE: Eva Longoria on her days as a headhunter who closed deals from her soap opera dressing room.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

• In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady checks in with defense leaders about the military spending hike Trump has requested.
• The big leadership story: The fallout from the Iran conflict is still taking shape.
• The markets: Up aside from U.S. futures as investors digest Strait of Hormuz uncertainty.
• Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.

Good morning. I’ve been calling defense contractors, consultants and people who work or have worked in the military this week to get reaction to Trump increasing military spending by more than 40% in his proposed 2027 budget. I didn’t expect them to speak on the record: Who wants to gloat about good fortune when the nation is at war?

What I didn’t anticipate was the pessimism and concern. Coming from four top executives whose companies stand to gain the most from federal spending, it’s a window into deeper concerns about the economy. The optimism about AI-enabled productivity gains is real, as is the support for the president’s priorities when it comes to innovation and strengthening America’s military. The concerns:

Is this level of spending sustainable? My colleague Shawn Tully argues that it is not: “If the expenditures blowout happens, and the rosy assumptions needed to offset the new outlays fail to materialize, America will edge even closer to a fiscal cataclysm prompted by a ruinous rise in interest expense.” With a $39 trillion national debt and public opposition to the attacks on Iran, opposition could come from several fronts: “We’re in a volatile and dangerous time right now,” one executive told me on Monday, prior to the ceasefire. “You need stable commitments, a stable economy with sustainable growth, to invest at this scale.”

Are these priorities strategic? Like CEOs in other industries, those working in defense have fallen in and out of favor in this administration. There were the budget cuts that forced leaders like Booz Allen Hamilton CEO Horacio Rozanski to lay off staff, the relationships damaged by DOGE, the attacks on specific companies, and the executive order earlier this year that limits stock buybacks and pay at defense companies. Among some CEOs, there’s a feeling that the decision-making is personal and beyond their control. “I don’t want to wake up and see me or my company showing up in some Truth Social post,” one executive told me last night. “You build these partnerships over many years; the hope is that it doesn’t matter which party is in power … I wouldn’t make that assumption right now.”

Is the world a safer place? Like many Fortune 500 companies, major defense contractors also do business with U.S. allies. Along with facing increased cyber-attacks amid the war, they’re facing lost deals in Europe and the repercussions of the U.S. going it alone. “The stereotype is that defense companies want to go to war, but that’s not true … It’s very different when you’re mobilizing against a threat or keeping the nation safe.” And, when it comes to waging war, the speed of AI is even more disconcerting, with one executive telling me he’s equally concerned about the Pentagon’s ban on Anthropic’s technology as he is about the capabilities of AI and how it’s being developed by potential adversaries like China: “Warfare is going to change,” he said, adding that “it’s hard to know” how.

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Job prospects during the pandemic were grim. After all, companies shuttered their windows, business went online, and recessionary forces put most hiring on ice. Of course, most job hunters at the time felt as though the job market was frozen solid.

But now, job hunters across the country actually feel worse than they did during the peak of the pandemic.

Newly released data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York finds that Americans are less optimistic about finding work than they were in 2020, when the government was literally paying people to stay home from work. Since late 2025, the average American worker said they have a roughly 45% chance of securing a new role within three months if they were to quit their job today, according to the Fed’s job finding expectations, a portion of the Consumer Expectations Survey. That’s lower than the 46.2% chance reported in December 2020, marking an especially dire outlook for workers.

Successive warnings of AI’s encroachment on the white-collar workforce has workers fearful their jobs are on the chopping block. Aside from AI, economic headwinds such as unpredictable tariffs and a shrinking consumer base (the result of tightening immigration policy) threaten companies’ growth plans.

To be sure, the U.S. just posted a better-than-expected jobs report. Employers posted 178,000 new roles in March and unemployment edged down to 4.3%, a huge bounce back from February’s dismal numbers. 

Why are job seekers so pessimistic?

Aside from March’s numbers, the labor market has remained stagnant, buoyed only by health care gains thanks, in part, to America’s rapidly aging population. But Mark Zandi, Moody’s Analytics chief economist, described the March job numbers as a mirage. 

“Don’t take solace in the big March payroll employment gain,” Zandi wrote in a post on X on Monday. “It comes after a big decline in February, when brutal winter weather and a labor strike at Kaiser Permanente weighed heavily on jobs.”

Workers are right to think the job market is as bad as during the pandemic. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last month that hiring in February dipped to its lowest level since April 2020, the month after the COVID pandemic arrived in America. Nicole Bachaud, labor economist at ZipRecruiter, recently said that for new entrants, it’s a “locked-out market,” thanks to stalled hiring and delayed retirements.

“Aside from the 2020 dip, the hires level has not been this low since 2014, when the labor market was still rebuilding after the Great Recession,” she wrote in a note.

AI’s effect on job prospects

The effects of AI are marginal but not insignificant, especially for entry-level workers. 

Recent economic research from Goldman Sachs found the substitution of AI for human labor has reduced monthly payroll growth by roughly 25,000, while AI’s augmentation of labor—the use of AI to enhance worker output—has actually added about 9,000 to monthly payroll growth. That’s a net decline of 16,000 per month on payroll, mainly affecting less experienced workers.

Amid the myriad economic forces contributing to the “low hire, low fire” labor market, many workers are “job-hugging,” clinging to their current roles out of fear they won’t be able to find a new gig. Some are even hiring “reverse recruiters,” shelling out $1,500 per month to have other people apply to roles on their behalf.

Today, more than half of U.S. job seekers are spending six months or more shooting out résumés into the void of applicant tracking systems, according to LinkedIn’s 2025 Workplace Confidence Survey. And the whole job-search ecosystem is rife with AI. Applicants are submitting AI-generated materials that AI-powered applications are sorting through using AI. It’s enough to make even the most optimistic job seeker feel the odds are stacked against them.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Anthropic has a new product with a major catch—it’s too powerful to be released. 

For a company valued at around $380 billion and reportedly preparing for an IPO this year, it’s an unusual stance—but one that could pay off in the long run.

The new AI model is called Claude Mythos, and it’s the first one Anthropic has publicly deemed too high-risk for public release. (If that name is familiar to you, it’s probably because you heard it here first a few weeks ago when Fortune broke the story about blog posts referencing the model discovered on a publicly-accessible data trove.) Rival AI lab OpenAI once made a similar call back in 2019 by initially withholding GPT-2 over concerns it could be misused to generate convincing fake text—a time when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei was still working for Sam Altman.

This time, Amodei is taking a different approach. The company said on Tuesday it was rolling out Mythos through an invitation-only initiative called Project Glasswing, restricted to defensive cybersecurity work and limited to around 40 organizations. It’s aimed at giving cyber defenders a head start on securing some of the world’s most critical software systems from the looming security risks posed by advanced AI models and includes partners such as Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Cisco.

But what does all of this mean for Anthropic’s standing in the AI race and its rumored upcoming IPO? A few things.

As my colleague Jeremy Kahn notes, Anthropic has been on a bit of a tear recently. The company has hit a $30 billion annual revenue run rate—a figure that implies a 58% revenue surge in March alone, and edges past the $25 billion run rate OpenAI reported in February. (The comparison isn’t exact as the two companies calculate run rates differently, but the direction of both paths is clear.)

Now, the company has developed a model that, according to its own benchmarks, significantly outperforms its competitors. It’s also found a way to forge an even closer partnership with some of the biggest players in enterprise tech. This is all in spite of the company’s very public fight with the Trump administration and two accidental, but high-profile, leaks.

As well as being a responsible safety initiative, Project Glasswing is also just pretty great brand-building, according to Paulo Shakarian, a Professor of artificial intelligence at Syracuse University. 

By creating a tightly controlled consortium and working directly with industry partners, Anthropic is “taking a lead in the industry as to mitigating these new risks,” he told Fortune. It’s an approach that Shakarian says “plays really well with the chief security officers of the world.” In a field that relies on regularly sharing threat intelligence, that kind of collaboration is likely to win Anthropic some favor and could strengthen the company’s standing with enterprise customers. 

But Mythos’ new and improved capabilities also come at a cost. According to Richard Whaling, lead researcher of cybersecurity startup Charlemagne Labs, Anthropic may have more than just safety concerns on its mind when it comes to the powerful AI model.

“I share Anthropic’s concerns around Mythos’ potential misuse, but I think there is also a resource limitation at play,” he said. “Anthropic has not announced how large Mythos is, but has implied that it is many times larger—and more expensive—than Claude Opus. I think it is likely that they simply do not have the GPU and other compute resources available to serve it at scale.”

In other words: Anthropic may have built something both too dangerous and potentially too expensive to commercialize at scale in its current state.

How long Mythos stays out of reach for consumers and enterprise customers is unclear. Anthropic has said they are already working on safeguards for the model. AI models tend to become cheaper and more practical over time. Some customers might also be willing to pay a premium for the capabilities. The lab has already said it will cover the first $100 million in costs for Glasswing participants, and early estimates suggest it could charge participants roughly five times more to use Mythos than its predecessor, Opus.

Not to be counted out quite yet, OpenAI is also reportedly on the verge of realizing a new model and is planning a similar rollout for a separate product with advanced cybersecurity capabilities. But for now, Anthropic is in an enviable position in the ever-changing AI race: ahead on capability and increasingly aligned with the kinds of enterprise and security customers it’s trying to sell to.

See you next week,

Beatrice Nolan
X: @beafreyanolan
Email: bea.nolan@fortune.com
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Joey Abrams curated the deals section of today’s newsletter. Subscribe here.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

When McPherson Middle School in central Kansas banned cell phones in school four years ago, they didn’t reconsider their school-issued Google Chromebooks that were actively being used in the classroom and at home. It wasn’t until December of last year that it asked its 480 students to give up the laptops as well.

Administrators found that without their phones, students were using school laptops for distracting activities like watching YouTube or playing games, rather than learning. Some were even using their school Gmail accounts to tease other students, the New York Times reported.

Now, the school has transitioned to using laptops only for specific teacher-assigned activities. Meanwhile, the unused laptops sit in carts in the back of classrooms, and children take notes the old-fashioned way: on pen and paper.

“This technology can be a tool. It is not the answer to education,” said McPherson’s principal Inge Esping, who won Kansas’ middle school “principal of the year” award for 2025. 

Students who want to use the laptops for extra work at home can also borrow a Chromebook from the school library, the Times reported.

Increasingly, schools like McPherson in other states such as North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and Michigan are rethinking their policies of buying and assigning a laptop to every student and the millions of dollars they spent on them, as studies show implementing technology in schools has reportedly coincided with either decreasing test scores or no progress at all for students. 

Maine, which in 2002 was one of the states to first adopt a policy of putting laptops in public school did not improve its test scores after 15 years of its laptop initiative, NPR reported in 2017. Jared Cooney Horvath, a neuroscientist and former teacher, said in written testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, that math and science scores have decreased as technology has been introduced in classrooms. Citing the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), Horvath said “frequent in-class computer use correlates with significantly lower math and science performance across both high-income and middle-income countries.” This study showed that fourth graders and eighth graders test scores correlated with whether they were using laptops almost never on the high end versus almost daily on the low end.

Google Chromebook laptops, which are made by PC makers like Lenovo, Acer, and Dell, have a tight grip on America’s schools. The laptops are relatively low cost, averaging between $300 and $400 per device. In schools, Chromebooks also have an advantage by leveraging ChromeOS, which use built-in web apps like Google Docs rather than installed apps like Microsoft office, which can be costly. Similarly, tools such as Google Classroom have become a mainstay of America’s K-12 schools. 

Google’s education push has also been lucrative. Education accounts for 60% of global Chromebook market share as of 2025 boosting the Chromebook total market to $14 billion. 

Laptop regrets

Schools in North Carolina spent $448 million in pandemic-related federal funding on computers and equipment for students and staff, according to news station WRAL. But after these funds dried up, schools have struggled to replace broken or outdated devices, which last on average less than a decade despite Google’s efforts to extend device lifespans. During a 2025 committee meeting, Robert Taylor, the superintendent of North Carolina’s largest school system in Wake County said the district needed to move away from its one-to-one laptop policy. explain

Another North Carolina school district has tried to diminish laptop use for educational reasons, reported Carolina Public Press. In Burke County, a county in western North Carolina with fewer than 100,000 residents, the school board passed a resolution for Burke County Public Schools to encourage learning with paper and printed materials, and limit screen time only “for activities where technology offers clear, evidence-based instructional advantages.” As a result, in February, parents and educators reported improvements in reading comprehension and test scores, as well as a decrease in homework-related stress that many attributed to the pro-paper resolution.

Earlier this year, a school district in Wexford County, Mich., which has a population of 34,000, banned screens for elementary school students to mitigate its reading proficiency issues. More than 65% of the third, fourth, and fifth-graders in one elementary school alone were “not proficient” or “partially proficient” on state standardized tests, according to Interlochen Public Radio.

The trend of schools moving away from technology comes as evidence emerges that access to screens does not improve student outcomes and could instead be holding them back. Horvath in his written testimony before the Senate, claimed Gen Z is the first generation in modern history to score lower than their parents’ generation on standardized tests. 

Distractions are a major culprit of this degradation of learning, Horvath previously told Fortune, adding that refocusing attention after it’s been diverted takes time to recover.  Educational systems “screwed up,” he told Fortune. “And I genuinely hope Gen Z quickly figures that out and gets mad.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The missiles may eventually stop for good. Oil tankers will once again pass through the Strait of Hormuz. But even if the tenuous two-week ceasefire gives way to a lasting end to hostilities, the world economy that emerges from the Iran War will bear little resemblance to the one that entered it.

That is the conclusion of investors, economists, and strategists around the world. The common thread isn’t fear of a specific catastrophe. It’s something more unsettling: the sense that a series of permanent structural shifts—in supply chains, in geopolitical alliances, in the balance of economic power—have been accelerated by a war that nobody in power fully planned for.

“It’s going to look fundamentally different for a while, no matter what,” said Steve Hanke, professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University. He summed up the new world order to be defined by the winners and losers of this unfolding disaster in three statements: “Good for Russia, good for China, bad for America.”

courtesy Goh Seng Chong/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Even if the new cease-fire holds and energy prices recede, relief won’t come quickly—and the ripple effects of higher prices could still cause global recession or even depression. The Trump administration’s erratic military escalation, meanwhile, could be an even more disruptive force over time, breaking up longtime economic alliances and undermining the country’s status as the world’s most powerful economy.

The war nobody planned

Hanke, who has advised governments from Argentina to Estonia on monetary reform, said many of the problems stem from an initial assumption that the war would be over in a matter of days. It appears that the United States went in without accounting for the vast web of commodity supply chains running through the Gulf—and is now watching ripple effects spread into every corner of the global economy.This was a major planning failure, he said: “You better know all this shit’s going to hit the fan if you go to war,” Hanke said. “They clearly didn’t.”

Kate Gordon, an energy policy expert and former senior advisor at the U.S. Department of Energy, went further: “It is naive to think that this is just an isolated conflict and the strait will open and everything will go back to the same way it was,” she said. “We’re continuing to attack actual infrastructure, which means things beyond the strait are going to need to be rebuilt.”

courtesy of Kate Gordon

The oil story looks dismal—the Strait of Hormuz has emerged as a global chokepoint; the national average in the U.S. is over $4 per gallon; and countries more reliant on Iranian supply have seen price surges of more than 50%. And yet Wall Street has continued to price in an early end to the conflict.

Even if that comes to pass, Hanke said, don’t expect cheaper prices at the pump anytime soon. His central point: There are two prices for any commodity. The physical price, paid when tankers actually unload cargo; and the paper price, traded on futures markets. When the war began, those two prices split violently. Physical oil in Asian markets spiked past $150 a barrel; the paper market never climbed that high. Oil loaded before the war takes four to six weeks to reach its destinations, and that prewar inventory is only now arriving at ports. Once it runs out, the paper price will be forced to converge with the physical—and it has nowhere to go but up.

Robert Hormats, a former vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International who served as a senior aide to Henry Kissinger during the 1973 Sinai negotiations following the Yom Kippur War, added a structural reason for skepticism about a quick resolution. His central worry is that Iran, even if seriously damaged, could emerge as a “wounded bear”: hurt enough to be humiliated, but intact enough to still control the strait and continue backing groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis that destabilize the region. “The longer it lasts, the more serious the likely scenario,” he said. A damaged but defiant Iran could use those levers again at any moment.

Xinhua/Zhang Mocheng via Getty Images

Hormats pointed out that the Gulf states eying a post petro-state future “worked for years to establish the notion of stable countries where you can vacation… a nice place to do business, with good laws and tranquility.” They invited in tech giants and built financial hubs. The war has upended that project—and, with it, maybe the confidence those states had in their close partnership with America.

Burt Flickinger, founder of Strategic Resource Group and a veteran consumer analyst, said he sees the attacks on glossy hubs such as Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Riyadh as a sign things will get a lot worse before they get better. With this war, he said, “you crush the luxury malls, you crush the golf, you crush the sports, you crush the luxury living.” And, he added, “When luxury collapses, it’s a harbinger of complete catastrophe worldwide.”

No wonder the Gulf states are reportedly urging Trump to finish the job and not leave a wounded bear in their midst, wreaking havoc on their rebranded economies.

It’s not just about oil

Gordon, the energy policy expert, said the Trump administration isn’t grasping the particular nature of U.S. vulnerability to this war, “because they are acting as if they’re in the 19th century”—i.e. operating on the assumption that controlling resources and raw military power is sufficient. “We don’t live in that world anymore,” she said.

Beyond oil, the war has exposed a second, less-discussed energy chokepoint: Qatar’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) infrastructure, which suffered major damage from an Iranian attack. Qatar is the world’s largest LNG supplier, and roughly 20% of global gas supply moves through the Strait of Hormuz. “Qatar’s gas infrastructure delivery system was pretty seriously hit,” Gordon said, noting an estimated timeline of at least three years and maybe upwards of five to rebuild the damage done so far.

This is a big hurdle in the Green Transition underway around the world: Gas is the critical crossover between the fossil fuel economy and the electrified one, powering grids that run everything from steel plants to data centers while emitting less greenhouse gases than coal or fuel oil. “Everybody uses it,” Gordon said, “and it’s incredibly important, particularly to Europe and Asia.”

And Hanke drew attention to another commodity whose supply chain is being choked off by the conflict: sulphur. When crude oil is refined, sulphur is a byproduct—and 50% of all traded sulphur in the world comes from the Gulf. Sulphur is the raw material used to make sulphuric acid, essential to fertilizer production and nearly every major metallurgical process, including copper smelting and steel production. “The manufacturing segment of the economy is damaged enormously if you get sulphuric acid out of the system,” Hanke said. “We have it now, but if this thing continues, they’re going to be running out.”

Flickinger zeroed in on diesel as a major problem, explaining that diesel powers the trucks and ocean freight carriers that move virtually everything Americans buy. With ocean container costs at record highs due to the Iran war, he said the pressure will eventually show up on every receipt.

Stagflation’s return

The word most economists reach for to describe what they dread is “stagflation,” a portmanteau that combines “inflation” with “stagnation” and was popular in the 1970s, when the last great oil shocks ushered in an era of gas lines, double-digit-percentage unemployment, and shrinking purchasing power.

Wayne Winegarden, a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute, didn’t hem and haw while making a dire prediction: “If this persists,” he told Fortune about both the war in Iran and the closure of the strait, “I think it will cause a recession. It will feel stagflationary.”

This shock is landing on a U.S. economy already weakened before the first missile flew: Q4 2025 GDP growth disappointed, employment gains have been volatile, and affordability concerns were already mounting. Meanwhile, the threat of AI-related job cuts looms — something noted repeatedly by outgoing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Now the Federal Reserve is trapped, with rates frozen at 3.50%–3.75%, and rate cuts pushed to September at the earliest. The long-running, well-respected University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey dropped to 53.3 in March, among the lowest of the last five years and approaching the record low of 50 amid the inflation surge of June 2022. “It will feel like the inflationary ’70s,” Winegarden predicted.

Goldman Sachs estimates that the oil shock will suppress U.S. payroll growth by 10,000 jobs per month through year end and push unemployment from 4.3% in March toward 4.6%. JPMorgan estimates global GDP growth could be depressed by 0.6 percentage points annualized in the first half of 2026, with consumer prices rising more than a full percentage point, annualized.

The farm picture is already severe. The key fertilizer urea is up 25%–30%, with nitrogen and potassium fertilizer costs similarly elevated, just as farmers are receiving their lowest cost per bushel in 17 crop years. The American Farm Bureau Federation published an alarming report in February 2026 based on U.S. courts data, showing a 46% increase in farm bankruptcies for 2025, with a 70% increase in the Midwest and a nearly 70% increase in the Southeast.

Rory Doyle/Bloomberg via Getty Images

All this will hit the American consumer hard. Higher energy prices feed into higher shipping costs, which feed into higher food costs and higher healthcare input costs—plastics, pharmaceutical ingredients, IV materials—and eventually a general price level rise. Flickinger, the consumer analyst, said little cushion remains for many households.

For the first time in roughly 70 years, Flickinger noted that American consumers are simultaneously spending more on all 12 major monthly expenditure categories tracked by consumer economists: healthcare, local taxes, debt service, food, housing, transportation, utilities, insurance, entertainment, mobile, clothing, and education. Every category is up at once. At $86 per barrel, oil alone costs the average American $2,000 annually out of pocket. With oil now well above $100 a barrel, the $3,000 to $4,000 in household savings Trump promised from higher refunds during the tax season, Flickinger said, “gets burned up with Zippo lighters before the money even goes to pay the rent.”

Of the experts Fortune talked to, all agreed that a U.S. or global recession was certainly very possible, depending on the fallout in the Middle East. Flickinger went a step further, raising the prospect of a severe, prolonged downturn of the type unseen for several generations: something resembling a depression.

A new world order

Step back from the U.S. price data, and the reordering of global power dynamics is striking and unsettling. “Russia is just an unambiguous huge winner,” Hanke said. Everything Russia sells, especially oil, is now being sold in higher volumes at much higher prices.

Europe, meanwhile, is shouldering the negative effects—absorbing a second enormous energy shock on top of the one it inflicted on itself by cutting off cheap Russian gas. Germany, where roughly 23% of GDP comes from industry, is watching its factories hollow out as it contends with the highest electricity prices in Europe.

As for the U.S., despite the triumphalist narrative being touted by the White House, the war is likely to undermine its standing as the world’s economic leader—and give its fast-growing rival, China, a boost. “The U.S. reputation has been damaged tremendously,” Hanke said. “No one is going to want to really trust and play ball with the United States for a long time.” That reputational damage and the crises caused by skyrocketing oil prices is driving a realignment of the Global South and BRICS nations toward China, which emerges from this conflict as the primary beneficiary of diminished American credibility. Although the dollar is still overwhelmingly dominant as the international reserve currency, analysts have noted cracks in the “petrodollar” regime, in which all oil trades from the Middle East were paid for in dollars, and reinvested back into Treasury bonds.

courtesy of Gaja Capital

Gopal Jain, managing partner of Gaja Capital, one of India’s oldest private equity firms, is seeing the collateral damage firsthand. India imports roughly a quarter of its energy, much of it from the Middle East, and the war has battered Indian stocks. Three of Gaja’s portfolio companies had successful IPOs last year and have seen their share prices hammered since. Despite this, he said he finds a thread of hope heading into more turbulent times ahead. “Human beings are not the strongest species, we are just the most adaptable species.” What’s left implied: We will have much to adapt to.

An “un-modelable” future

Hanke saved his most pointed critique for the political paradox unfolding in Washington. Trump was elected, in part, on a promise of no foreign wars and a return to American economic strength. The defense budget has now hit $1 trillion, with the administration asking for $1.5 trillion in its latest budget—easily the largest increase since the Korean War, some 70-plus years ago. “That’s a massive militarization, completely the opposite of what he told MAGA,” Hanke said.

SAUL LOEB / AFP via Getty Images

That’s unlikely to play well in the U.S. electorate, and nor will a comment Trump said to a private audience at a White House Easter event, attended by the Associated Press: that the federal government soon wouldn’t be able to afford Medicare and Medicaid because it needed to prioritize military spending. With the national debt climbing past $38 trillion, and then $39 trillion, under Trump’s year-and-change back in office, interest costs are larger than defense and education spending combined, forcing tough choices.

Jain, whose three decades building private equity in India have taught him to take the very long view, said he is not panicking. He framed this moment as “turbulence rather than free-fall.” But even he acknowledged that what is unfolding is not normal, and he declined to predict what comes next.

“Can anyone actually talk about that?” He paused. “It’s un-modelable. We can indulge ourselves by attempting to sound sensible and scientific, but it’s radical uncertainty.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The problem with an increasing debt burden is that it costs more to maintain it: This is precisely the issue with which the U.S. Treasury is wrangling at present. As total U.S. national debt ticks over $39 trillion, the interest payments on that value are eye-watering: $529 billion for the first six months of the current fiscal year.

A new budget update from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released yesterday highlights that the government—according to preliminary estimates—paid out the near $530 billion between October 2025, when the fiscal year starts, and March 2026. This equates to more than $88 billion in interest payments a month, or more than $22 billion a week.

That means the service payments on public debt are roughly equal to spending for the same period on both the Department of Defense’s military budget and the Department of Education. These two outlays contribute costs of $461 billion and $70 billion respectively.

The net interest payments on public debt are also increasing at a pace. For the same period last year, the Treasury paid $497 billion to service its debt. The difference from last year to this is a $33 billion leap—or 7% more than before.

The CBO report notes service payments increased “because the debt was larger than it was in the first half of fiscal year 2025 and because of higher long-term interest rates. Declines in short-term interest rates partially mitigated the overall rise in interest payments.”

The wider debt picture

Efforts are being made to rebalance the books, with the likes of President Trump’s tariffs playing a role.

The CBO’s latest monthly update showed that receipts for the first half of the year totaled $2.5 trillion, an increase of $223 billion on the same six-month period last year. Outlays have also increased, but at a slower pace: up $84 billion from $3.57 trillion in 2025 to $3.65 trillion in 2026.

Despite the increase in revenues for the government, a significant deficit still emerged: $1.2 trillion for the first six months of the current fiscal year. Although this was an $140 billion improvement on the deficit for last year, it still represents borrowing of more than $2 trillion for the full fiscal year.

Of that deficit, the latest report shows that in March alone the government borrowed $163 billion—$3 billion more than the deficit recorded for the previous March.

The update did little to impress the likes of Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. In a statement she said: “Both Congress and the president continue to ignore the urgent need to get our borrowing under control. As lawmakers consider the budget process for the upcoming fiscal year, we hope that they come up with plans to reduce deficits from the too-high 6% of GDP to a more sustainable 3% of GDP; secure our nation’s ailing trust funds for Social Security, Medicare, and highways; and ultimately fix the broken process that got us into this mess.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Wall Street traders saw a huge surge yesterday, and the world’s wealthiest billionaires had their best day in nearly a year, after President Donald Trump took back his threat that “a whole civilization will die tonight” on Tuesday, quelling traders’ fears. 

The world’s 500 richest people made $265 billion yesterday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. With the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumping 2.85% and the S&P 500 soaring by 2.51%, it was the second-largest single-day profit since the index was created in 2012.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the most gains and added $12.8 billion to his personal net worth as Meta shares—of which Zuckerberg owns about 13%—rose 6.5%. Luxury goods billionaire Bernard Arnault had the second-highest gains with $9.89 billion. 

The largest gain for the world’s 500 wealthiest people was just a year ago tomorrow, on April 10.  Last year on this day, Trump paused his planned “Liberation Day” tariffs, and the subsequent 24 hours of trading added a record $304 billion to the top 500 wealthiest’s net worths. In comparison, this Wednesday saw 61 people on the index grow their wealth by more than $1 billion. 

The rally won’t offset that the 500 wealthiest billionaires are still at a collective loss of $38.8 billion year-to-date. The world’s richest man Elon Musk alone lost about $3 billion on Wednesday. 

That growth may not last forever. Both the Dow and and S&P 500 briefly dipped this morning before making modest gains as reports of a shaky ceasefire dominated headlines. Crude oil climbed back up to $100 per barrel on Thursday morning, as doubts grow over how the ceasefire will hold. The current price is far from its peak of $118.35 since the war began, but much higher from its $70 cost before the war. 

After an eleventh-hour ceasefire deal between the U.S., Israel and Iran was reached on Tuesday, just before Trump’s self-imposed 8 p.m. deadline that night, a ceasefire agreement sent markets soaring. Then Israel heavily bombarded what it considered Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon on Wednesday, killing more than 200 people. Iran, which said it believed the ceasefire included Lebanon, claimed Israel had violated the agreement and thus closed the Strait of Hormuz to non-approved ships in response to the attacks. 

On Thursday as talks continue, Trump told NBC News that he asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be “a little more low-key” in operations in Lebanon.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

No worker, from front-line employee to CEO, is immune to the end-of-week brain fog that comes after a string of intense days on the job. Over the course of his Wall Street career, JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon has learned to avoid making big decisions when the weekend rolls around—fried nerves will only lead to poor choices. 

“I’ve learned some stuff like when I was 30, like anger doesn’t help,” the bank CEO recently said during an interview with NPR. “Making big decisions on a Friday when you’re tired is a really bad idea.”

Dimon has spent more than four decades in finance—from working as an assistant to then-American Express president Sandy Weill, to leading $826 billion titan JPMorgan through the financial crisis. 

Despite having learned what works best in business, Dimon admitted he still falls into the Friday decision-making trap; and every time he comes out of it remembering why he avoids making important choices during his end-of-week slump. 

“I always call them lessons learned and relearned,” Dimon continued. “I still make some of those mistakes, unfortunately.”

The CEOs who set rules to keep them ‘sane’ on the job

There are many business leaders who set firm boundaries around their schedules and meetings—habits honed over decades of experience finding their flow.

Airbnb cofounder and CEO Brian Chesky is doing things differently in leading the $78 billion short-term rental giant. He no longer bothers with tedious emailing, rarely dealing with his inbox anymore; instead, Chesky prefers to call, text, or talk it out when he’s on the clock. The leader also banned 9 a.m. meetings, pushing back all those important conversations to 10 a.m. the earliest. “When you’re CEO,” told The Wall Street Journal last year, “you can decide when the first meeting of the day is.

“Don’t apologize for how you want to run your company,” Chesky continued, adding that “[Emailing] was the thing about my job that I hated the most before the pandemic.”

Curbing time-consuming, energy-draining meetings is also a priority of Southwest Airlines CEO Bob Jordan in 2026. The airline executive said that “it’s easy to confuse busyness and going to meetings with leadership,” but this year he’s shaking things up. Jordan said his goal is to keep his calendar free of any meetings every Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday afternoon. It could sound “crazy” to some leaders, he acknowledged, but it allows him to invest more energy into other matters. 

“It’s so that you can work on things you need to work on,” Jordan said at the New York Times DealBook Summit last year. “You can think about what’s important right now. You can call people you need to talk to.”

Marc Randolph, the cofounder of Netflix, also set one rule when it came to managing his intense entrepreneurial career: Tuesdays ended at 5 p.m., no matter what. For decades, Randolph said he tried to keep “my life balanced with my job” by drawing that line. And it proved to be essential to his well-being. 

“For over 30 years, I had a hard cutoff on Tuesdays. Rain or shine, I left at exactly 5 p.m. and spent the evening with my best friend,” Randolph wrote in a 2023 LinkedIn post. “We would go to a movie, have dinner, or just go window-shopping downtown together.”

“Those Tuesday nights kept me sane,” the Netflix cofounder continued. “And they put the rest of my work in perspective.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Only five ships moved through the Strait of Hormuz on April 9 during the ceasefire agreement between Iran and the U.S. and Israel, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data. That number of ships, three tankers and two other vessels, is significantly below the “minimum of fifteen” ships Iran had promised would pass through the Strait during the expected two-week ceasefire, and is vastly lower than the pre-war count of 130 to 160 ships. The number also underscores an uncomfortable truth about the ceasefire in the war in Iran: while the U.S. has stopped its attacks, Iran has been able to functionally keep the Strait closed.

There have been plenty of days during the war which saw significantly more traffic than these seven ships that have passed during the ceasefire—including multiple days last week alone that saw 13 ships crossing the waterway. On Wednesday, the day after the ceasefire was announced, only four passed, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

It seems like the Pandora’s box is open: Iran has control over the Strait and is looking to maintain that control—using it as their top priority in their negotiations with the U.S. and Israel, which are set to start Friday. Tehran has made quite a penny charging tolls on the Strait, and twisting the knife by demanding payment in cryptocurrency or Chinese yuan, according to the FT. And Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Saeed Khatibzadeh, told ITV earlier Thursday that any ship needs army approval to pass so crews can be told where to avoid the mines—formalizing what was already a de facto closure.

All of which sits quite awkwardly against the day’s diplomatic vein. Trump told NBC Thursday he’s “very optimistic” about a peace deal with Iran and said Netanyahu promised to “low-key it” in Lebanon, after a brutal wave of strikes left over 200 people dead in Beirut in a single day and prompted Iran to claim the ceasefire deal had been broken—although White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Lebanon was not part of the agreement. “I just think we have to be sort of a little more low-key,” Trump told NBC.

Israel agreed to direct talks with Lebanon starting next week at the State Department, ostensibly under U.S. pressure. After the news broke, the S&P 500 reversed its morning loss and is on track for a seventh straight advance—its longest winning streak since October. WTI pulled back to around $97 after spiking above $102 earlier in the session, and Brent settled near $96, despite no indication the Strait is any more open than it was yesterday.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Americans spend around $50 billion a year on vitamins and supplements. One of the most popular is turmeric, a bright orange root that has its origins in both traditional Eastern medicine and cuisine. Proponents are willing to pay $20 or more for a bottle, hoping to relieve arthritis pain and inflammation, lower cholesterol and blood sugar levels, and treat whatever else happens to ail them. But is it worth the money?

While a lot of research has highlighted turmeric’s antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, the wide range of supplement potencies and doses used in studies has made it hard to confirm any health claims.

Keith Singletary, Ph.D., professor emeritus of nutrition at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has reviewed the evidence on turmeric. His take? “I think it’s promising,” he says, but he stresses that it isn’t “the cure-all that marketing would make it appear.”

What is turmeric good for?

The health properties attributed to turmeric come from natural compounds called curcuminoids. “Curcumin, which is the major one, is believed to be largely responsible for the health benefits of turmeric,” says Singletary.

What might curcumin do? The best evidence centers on two conditions: arthritis and metabolic syndrome.

Does turmeric help with arthritis?

Considering turmeric’s anti-inflammatory properties, it’s not surprising that researchers have investigated its use for arthritis. Turmeric supplement do appear to reduce pain and stiffness from osteoarthritis, the most common form of this achy joint disease.

“It’s not a miracle drug, but it probably works as well as ibuprofen or acetaminophen,” says Dr. Janet L. Funk, professor of medicine and vice chair of research for the Department of Medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine–Tucson. Her lab studies plant-derived dietary supplements for inflammatory diseases.

Does turmeric lower blood pressure?

Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions like obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and high triglycerides that collectively increase the risk for diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. About one in three American adults have metabolic syndrome, according to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI).

Studies have looked at the effects of turmeric on blood sugar, triglycerides, and insulin levels, as well as on inflammation (which also plays a role in metabolic syndrome). “In general, there was a strong preponderance of evidence that it might help reduce all those things. So it might have some benefit in people who are overweight and concerned about inflammation and diabetes,” Funk says. For people looking to lower their blood pressure, turmeric could be worth trying.

But there’s a very big caveat. “There’s a lot of inconsistency between studies,” Singletary says. And therein lies the problem in evaluating turmeric.

An imperfect science

Though plenty of research is being done on turmeric, the studies aren’t consistent. Researchers have tested different amounts of the supplement in different groups of people for different lengths of time. Some studies added a compound like piperine, found in black pepper, to make turmeric more active in the body (researchers call this increased “bioavailability”).

For example, one study on knee osteoarthritis had participants take 180 milligrams (mg) of curcumin for eight weeks. Another one used doses of 500 mg plus 5 mg of BioPerine (black pepper) extract three times a day for six weeks.

Because most of the studies have lasted four months or less, researchers don’t know what might happen with long-term use. “The bottom line is, there’s no definitive, well-designed studies at this point,” Funk says. She’s skeptical that there ever will be, given that the nutraceutical industry and the National Institutes of Health aren’t funding them.

What are the risks of turmeric?

Turmeric is probably safe if you get it from the spice or you take only the recommended amount in supplements, says the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. In larger quantities, it could cause GI side effects such as nausea or diarrhea.

Piperine poses its own set of issues, because it increases the bioavailability of curcumin by inactivating an enzyme in the liver that would otherwise break it down. “That enzyme is really important for [breaking down] most drugs people take,” says Funk. Theoretically, piperine might cause a buildup of medications in the body, thus increasing the risk for side effects. “Generally speaking, if you’re taking other medications, I would shy away from any product that has piperine in it, just in case it could interfere with the metabolism of your other drugs,” she adds.

An even bigger concern is a rare but serious risk of liver damage from turmeric supplements, as well as high levels of lead in these products. Several studies, including one that Funk coauthored, found excessive amounts of lead in some turmeric supplements—especially those that contained turmeric root. Exposure to lead in large quantities can have toxic effects on the body, including heart and kidney problems.

Is turmeric good for you?

Is it worth taking turmeric? “That’s the million-dollar question,” says Singletary. Given the lack of clear evidence on its benefits and the potential risks, he says you’re safest getting turmeric through your diet. You can add the spice to soups, stews, sauces, and smoothies. Top them with a pinch of black pepper or cook turmeric in oil to enhance its bioavailability.

If you do use turmeric supplements, it can be difficult to know which form is best, or how much to take. The best advice is to ask your health care provider, says Singletary. Start out with a low dose to see how your body responds to it. And don’t expect turmeric to be a “cure-all for all your ailments, which is unlikely to be the case,” he adds.

A version of this story originally published on Fortune.com on March 30, 2024.

Read more on supplements:

• Nearly a quarter of U.S. kids take vitamin supplements. Here’s why some kids probably need them—and why most do not
• 4 supplements that may help your lower cortisol levels
• Multivitamins are the most commonly taken supplement. Here’s what they can (and can’t) do for your health
• Does apple cider vinegar really help with weight loss and lower cholesterol? Experts explain the science-backed benefits and how much to take
• The dark side of daily vitamin D supplements: After a man died from an ‘overdose’ in the UK, experts explain how much is healthy

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Zoom ushered in the remote era—cutting commutes, reshaping office culture, and giving millions of workers more control over their schedules. Now, as artificial intelligence begins to redefine productivity standards, Zoom’s CEO Eric Yuan is predicting an even bigger shift on the horizon: a dramatically shorter workweek. 

“I hate working five days,” Yuan told the Wall Street Journal.

“I’m pretty sure actually we really do not need to work for five days,” he said, adding that in the next half-decade, the workweek will be cut down to three days a week.

Calls for a shorter workweek aren’t new. Yuan pointed to past productivity breakthroughs—like Henry Ford’s assembly line, which helped reduce the workweek from six to five days. But this time, he argued, AI could accelerate that shift even further.

“I do not think we need to work for five days because literally, we all will employ so many digital agents,” Yuan said. In the future, he suggested, individuals could deploy thousands of AI agents to handle routine tasks like responding to emails or attending meetings. Yuan has already experimented with the concept himself—using an AI version of his likeness to join an earnings call last year.

While that could free up more time for human-to-human interaction, Yuan stressed that it won’t eliminate work altogether.

“We can enjoy the beach time, but we want the kids [to] still find something new, exciting to work [on].”

Fortune reached out to Zoom for further comment.

Workers are eager for a reduced workweek—but not every policy makes work-life balance easier 

Momentum for a shorter workweek has been gaining steam. A 2024 survey from the American Psychological Association (APA) found that 80% of workers believe they would be happier—and just as effective—working four days instead of five.

Much of the push centers on the “100-80-100” model: workers receive 100% of their pay for working 80% of the time, while maintaining 100% of their productivity. The idea, endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), has gained traction through pilot programs run by 4 Day Week Global. Workers reported improvement in mental and physical health and life satisfaction, as well as less stress, burnout, fatigue, and work-family conflict.

Some companies have experimented with an alternative approach: compressing schedules into four 10-hour days, but there are trade-offs. One study found that longer days on the clock can strain employee health and make it more difficult to manage caregiving responsibilities, according to an analysis by APA. While job satisfaction increased under this model, absenteeism and productivity are often unchanged.

Jamie Dimon and Sam Altman agree: a reduced workweek is part of the future

While adoption of reduced workweeks remains limited, the idea is increasingly top of mind for business leaders—especially as AI reshapes the labor market. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon recently predicted that the workweek could eventually shrink to as little as three and a half days.

“I believe that 30 years from now, your kids are probably working three and a half days a week,” Dimon told CBS News in an interview that aired earlier this month.

In his latest letter to shareholders, Dimon added that advances in AI won’t just transform industries—they could also help people live “longer and safer” lives, in part by reducing how much they need to work.

Getting there, however, will take time—and coordination. OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, have urged companies and policymakers to start experimenting now.

“Incentivize employers and unions to run time-bound 32-hour/four-day workweek pilots with no loss in pay that hold output and service levels constant,” OpenAI recommended in its recent policy paper, Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age: Ideas to Keep People First. “Then convert reclaimed hours into a permanent shorter week, bankable paid time off, or both.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

After spending about a month in the red, shares of Levi Strauss jumped back into positive territory for the year yesterday, following a strong earnings report that also noted a major milestone: For the first time, direct-to-consumer sales accounted for more than half of the company’s quarterly revenue.

High-rise, not distressed: Overall revenue last quarter increased 14% from the same time last year, buoyed by Levi’s store and website sales, but also by wholesale revenue. That trend even grew in the US, where Levi’s severed some retail partnerships as it leaned harder into DTC.

Working in Levi’s favor:

• The company offset tariff pressure by raising prices, which accounted for roughly half of its growth without steering away customers, according to its CFO.
• It lost some dead weight by selling its struggling khaki brand, Dockers, last month.
• Levi’s has also benefited from the popularity of ’90s styles like jorts and a resurgence of country trends (hat tip to Beyoncé).

Another pop culture bump: The company’s CEO said Levi’s saw a 25% spike in sales of its 517 jeans, which were a wardrobe staple for Carolyn Bessette and featured in the FX series Love Story about her and JFK Jr. The show premiered about two weeks before Levi’s quarter ended, meaning viewers wasted no time smashing that “Order” button.—ML

This report was originally published by Morning Brew.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Welcome to Eye on AI, with AI reporter Sharon Goldman. The pro-Iran meme machine trolling Trump with AI Lego cartoons…Amazon’s Andy Jassy defends Amazon’s $200 billion spending spree...OpenAI pauses Stargate U.K. data center, citing energy costs.

It’s been another one of those wild weeks in AI, with Anthropic electing not to release its new Claude Mythos model because of concerns about the cybersecurity risks it poses (and forming a coalition to use a preview version of the model to bolster cybersecurity defenses); Meta releasing its first AI model since hiring Alexandr Wang; and mounting expectations about OpenAI’s upcoming new “Spud” model. 

Most of these AI models run on Nvidia GPUs, the sophisticated and expensive AI chips (at over $30,000 a pop) that power their training and output. But across the industry, access to those chips remains a bottleneck. OpenAI president Greg Brockman, for example, has said allocating GPUs at OpenAI is “pain and suffering.”

This week, at the HumanX conference in San Francisco, I discovered that even inside Nvidia, GPUs are scarce.

I sat down with Bryan Catanzaro, who leads applied deep learning research at Nvidia, overseeing teams working on AI-driven graphics, speech recognition, and simulation. Catanzaro was also among the first, back in the early-to-mid 2010s, to notice researchers snapping up Nvidia GPUs to train AI models—a signal that helped push CEO Jensen Huang to double down on AI, setting the stage for the company’s now-historic run.

Today, though, even Catanzaro’s teams are struggling to access enough GPUs. “My team uses AI very deeply in our work, and their primary complaint is they want higher limits,” Catanzaro told me. “They want more GPUs.”

“Efficiency is also intelligence”

In fact, he said one of his main jobs now is simply trying to secure more compute for his teams. “We’re all supply constrained,” he said. “Jensen will say, ‘I’m sorry, Bryan, but those are sold.’ We operate within those constraints.”

One of Catanzaro’s projects has been leading the team building Nvidia’s Nemotron, a family of models that are open source—meaning users can freely download them to use, study, or modify. To be clear, Nvidia isn’t trying to compete in the model-building race with the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic. Instead, it’s building them to strengthen a developer ecosystem that remains tied to Nvidia hardware and software. 

The Nemotron models are known for being particularly GPU-efficient. And Catanzaro said it’s the very constraints on GPU access at Nvidia itself that is driving the push to make Nemotron models more efficient. “In a supply-constrained world, efficiency is also intelligence,” he said. 

No longer a science project

But surprisingly, efficiency isn’t bad for business. Catanzaro said it was Jevons Paradox at work: When something becomes more efficient, demand often surges. “People find all sorts of new ways to use a thing when it gets more efficient,” he said.

Still, he acknowledged that Nemotron’s growing visibility inside Nvidia has also helped unlock more resources. “We’ve been working on [Nemotron] for a long time, but it’s really only in the past six months that it’s gotten more attention. As people inside Nvidia better understand the importance of this work, you get better storytelling, better collaboration, and more support across the company.”

Nvidia has realized, he added, that it can no longer take a hands-off approach to the AI ecosystem. In the past, Nvidia could rely on others to build the models and applications that drove demand for its chips. Now, as AI becomes more competitive and chip-constrained, the company sees a more active role for itself in shaping how that ecosystem develops.

“In the past, some people felt like we could just let the ecosystem take care of itself,” he said. “Now it’s much more obvious that Nvidia has a bigger role to play—a real responsibility and opportunity with Nemotron.”

That framing also helps elevate the Nemotron work inside Nvidia, where teams are competing for scarce GPU resources. “This isn’t a science project,” Catanzaro said. “It’s not just me asking for resources for my team. This is about Nvidia’s future.”

With that, here’s more AI news.

Sharon Goldman
sharon.goldman@fortune.com
@sharongoldman

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Americans are skipping restaurant dinners, delaying car purchases and scouring for grocery deals. Amid tariff anxiety and broader stress over affordability, consumer confidence has dropped to levels not seen in over a decade, according to The Conference Board, a business think tank. At this point, it’s wealthier consumers who are powering the bulk of spending in the U.S. economy.

So what explains the success of Erewhon’s $22 smoothie?

The Los Angeles grocery chain selling these fancy concoctions is doing so well, it opened three new stores in 2025 – its biggest expansion since 2011. The chain reportedly generates $1,800 to $2,500 in sales per square foot, up to five times what a typical U.S. supermarket earns.

These aren’t ordinary blended drinks; they include ingredients such as high-grade sea moss gel, adaptogenic mushrooms and collagen peptides. Often they come with a celebrity’s name attached.

It’s all part of the broader boom in the U.S. specialty food market, which has surpassed $219 billion – up nearly 150% in a decade, according to the Specialty Food Association. That far outpaces the roughly 47% growth seen in overall U.S. grocery sales over the same period.

Independent retail data from the market research firm Circana also confirms this growth: Even as inflation-weary consumers have traded down to store brands in many categories, premium and specialty products held up and even grew their dollar share of the market through 2025. On TikTok, creators who once filmed designer-bag hauls now post $12 tinned fish boards. Craft chocolate bars that cost $8–$12 are being marketed as, without irony, “self-care.”

So if consumers are this anxious, why are they still splurging? In fact, these aren’t contradictions – they’re two expressions of the same psychological reaction.

When people feel life is out of control, they reach for something small, expensive and signaling virtue. This is the real reason premium food is booming while some traditional luxury brands struggle, say consumer psychologists.

We are professors of consumer behavior and marketing who study how people make purchasing decisions amid economic uncertainty, and ask what explains the gap between how consumers feel and how they actually spend. Our work points to a consistent finding: When people feel they’ve lost control over the big things, they seek it in the small ones.

A quick detour through the makeup drawer

Economists have seen this before.

In 2001, Estée Lauder Chairman Leonard Lauder coined the term the “lipstick index” after he saw that lipstick sales rose 11% following the Sept. 11 attacks. When big luxuries feel out of reach, consumers find a small substitute. A $60 lipstick is extravagant for a cosmetic, but next to the Hermès handbag it psychologically replaces, it feels like a bargain.

Then, as now, people seek agency wherever they can find it. Consumer psychologists call this “compensatory consumption”: buying things to feel in control when life feels out of control.

While even beauty sales are softening, that impulse hasn’t disappeared. It has just found better hosts – such as food.

In many ways, food is an ideal product for this compensation. It’s experiential – something you taste, smell and savor. It’s also emotional – carrying associations with comfort, care and home. And it’s visible, because if you’re on social media, what you eat is now as public as what you wear. Premium food isn’t just eaten – it’s filmed, posted and performed.

Most importantly, it’s still relatively accessible. Twenty-two dollars may be an absurd price for a drink, but it’s cheap compared with a $400 wellness retreat.

Indulgence with a side of virtue

Here is what separates this moment from Lauder’s lipstick index. That example was purely about pleasure, as consumers sought indulgence as consolation. Today’s premium food purchases carry an additional layer: They are coded as virtuous.

An Erewhon smoothie isn’t just a treat. It’s organic, superfood-enriched and wellness-aligned. By the same logic, a $20 bottle of single-estate olive oil isn’t just cooking fat; it’s a commitment to craft and health. Premium tinned fish isn’t convenience food; it’s sustainably sourced protein caught in the wild with packaging beautiful enough to display.

This “virtue coding” does the most important psychological work in the sales transaction: It transforms indulgence into self-investment. You’re not splurging during a downturn; you’re doing something for your health. You’re not being frivolous; you’re supporting small producers. Research shows that people need reasons to justify pleasurable purchases, especially during financial anxiety – and premium food is powerful because the justification is built into the product. The organic label, the sustainability story, the wellness framing – they all dissolve guilt before it even kicks in.

Consumed in the kitchen and again on the feed

There’s a reason this trend is accelerating now. Many premium food purchases are consumed twice – once physically and once digitally. The Erewhon smoothie purchase isn’t really about the drink; it can be as much about the content as the drink. The tinned fish board is plated for Instagram before anyone takes a bite.

Social media doesn’t just amplify the trend; it completes it. When you post a photo or video of the smoothie, you’re broadcasting that you value wellness, quality and intentionality. In a cultural moment when flaunting a designer bag feels tone-deaf, food provides perfect cover. It’s the safest flex there is. It’s no surprise that one YouTube video of an Erewhon haul by food creator @KarissaEats has drawn over 14 million views.

All of this raises a fair question: Does the growing focus on the “K-shaped economy” explain this boom? As many economists see it, low- and middle-income shoppers are increasingly pulling back, as they face an affordability squeeze from health care to housing and education. But wealthier consumers are picking up the slack and then some, splurging on luxury and powering gross domestic product growth.

In this scenario, premium food thrives because it’s still affordable for the people who are doing fine, even as everyone else cuts back. That’s partly true. But this explanation doesn’t account for another shift – why affluent consumers are foregoing splurges on items like designer handbags in favor of premium groceries.

This is why the virtue framing matters so much. If the question was purely about having money to spend, traditional luxury would be booming as well. It isn’t. A case in point is LVMH, the conglomerate behind Louis Vuitton and Dior, which saw its fashion division’s profits decline 13% across all of 2025.

Even consumers who are flush with disposable income need psychological permission to spend during anxious times. The premium food phenomenon is about why food has become the thing they choose – not about who can afford to splurge.

And when a smoothie becomes a status symbol, it tells us something about economic security more broadly. Food prices have climbed nearly 30% since 2019, outpacing 23% for overall consumer prices, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For a family stretching a tight grocery budget, $22 isn’t a smoothie. It’s dinner.

The need for control, the desire for identity, the comfort of virtue permission — these are universal. A single mother working two jobs feels the same craving for agency as the influencer filming her grocery haul. It’s just that the purchases that satisfy those needs are increasingly constrained by price. The justification only works if you can afford your indulgence.

What’s really in the cart

The next time you’re in a grocery store and you reach for something a little more expensive than what you might need, you should pause – not to put it back, but to think about what you’re actually reaching for.

Chances are it isn’t really about the product. It’s about the feeling of choosing something when the world feels out of hand.

A $22 smoothie is never just a smoothie. It’s what people seek out when they need permission to feel OK.

Yuanyuan (Gina) Cui, Assistant Professor of Marketing, Coastal Carolina University and Patrick van Esch, Associate Professor of Marketing, Coastal Carolina University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The Iran war caused oil prices to skyrocket by up to 70% in just weeks, but it will take a matter of months before jet fuel prices return to their pre-conflict levels, warned the head of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) representing global airlines.

Jet fuel makes up 27% of an airline’s operating budget, according to IATA, making it a carrier’s second-largest expense. Though a tentative ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran has introduced the possibility of the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz—the critical chokepoint through which 20% of the world’s oil normally flows—throttled refining capacity in the Middle East will present a lasting challenge for jet fuel supply, IATA director ​general Willie Walsh told reporters this week.

“If [the Strait of Hormuz] were to reopen and remain open, I think it will still take a period of months to get back to where supply ​needs to be given the disruption to the refining capacity in the Middle East,” Walsh said.

Although there’s strategic reserves of crude, which can soften the blow of production disruptions, the same strategic reserves do not exist for jet fuel, he added.

According to S&P Global Energy data, as of March 22, global refining capacity shrunk 10% to 12% as a result of closed operations in the conflict zone, halting the refining of more than 2 million barrels per day in the Middle East. The supply chain disruptions have sent energy costs soaring. Airline CEOs including Delta’s Ed Bastian and United Airlines’s Scott Kirby said the conflict has increased operating costs by about $400 million, respectively.

Airlines have already taken action to offset these hikes, with United increasing luggage check costs by $10, its first change in bag fees in two years. Malaysian low-cost airline AirAsia X Fares increased airfares by up 40% and increased fuel surcharges by 20%.

Historic precedents

To be sure, the oil supply disruptions today are not comparable to the pandemic, when global aviation capacity was reduced by 95% as a result of closed borders, according to Walsh. He said the ceasefire has already led to a reduction in crude price. (As of Thursday, Brent crude is about $97 per barrel, down from $108 on Tuesday.)

Instead, the IATA director compared the moment to the disruptions following 9/11 or the Great Recession, when passenger numbers and capacity took months, not years, to return to pre-disaster levels.

“This is not similar to COVID. ​This is not a crisis anywhere close to what we experienced (in COVID),” he said. “Post-9/11, the recovery took about four months. In 2008-2009 it was probably 10 to 12 months.”

Still, the disturbances to the energy sector have left aviation leaders feeling as though there’s no quick fix. Thai Airways CEO Chai Eamsiri said the current oil shock is the worst of his nearly 40-year career.

“This is the worst one,” he said at the IATA event. “This time is about the infrastructure that was destroyed. It will take some time to call back all the supply, the facilities, the refinery, the infrastructure.”

United’s Kirby said last month he didn’t expect oil to fall below $100 per barrel until 2027, but even if the worst wasn’t true, it was still worth preparing for.

“Honestly, I think there’s a good chance it won’t be that bad,” he said in a letter to employees. “But…there isn’t much downside for us to prepare for that outcome.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The global energy crisis caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is only the beginning of the economic cost of the war with Iran.

I study how institutions affect businesses and supply chains, and I expect food prices to rise next, with high prices lasting even after whatever point hostilities end.

Along with about 20% of the world’s crude oil trade and a similar share of the world’s liquefied natural gas shipments, shipping traffic through the strait also carries roughly a third of internationally traded fertilizer, which is key to bountiful crops around the world.

Modern agriculture depends on precise timing of delivering nutrients to plants. When fertilizer arrives late or becomes too expensive to buy in sufficient quantities, farmers are left to either reduce the amount they use, plant fewer crops or switch to crops that need less fertilizer. Each option reduces overall productivity, cutting supplies of basic foods, feed for livestock and key ingredients used in a wide range of food products.

Ultimately, with corn prices rising, summer barbecues may taste a bit different or cost more. Corn on the cob may not be cheap, nor will corn-fed beef. In addition, many store-bought condiments, soft drinks and other food products are made with high-fructose corn syrup and will also cost more.

3 main crops, 3 nutrients needed

Three staple crops – corn, wheat and rice – supply more than half of the world’s dietary calories.

To maximize production, those crops need three main nutrients: nitrogen, phosphate and potassium. Nitrogen helps plants grow. Phosphorus helps transport energy within plant cells and is critical for early root growth and the formation of seeds and fruit. Potassium helps plants conserve water and boosts protein content.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has reduced the supply and increased the cost of all three.

Natural gas, which determines 70% to 90% of the cost of producing nitrogen fertilizer, has seen a 20% drop in production due to the war and price increases up to 70%. To preserve its own supplies, Russia has suspended exports of ammonium nitrate, another nitrogen source for fertilizer.

In a similar effort, China, the world’s largest phosphate producer, has blocked phosphate exports, removing 25% of the global supply.

Potash, the potassium-rich component of fertilizers, has also been in short supply in recent years, in part because of economic sanctions on Belarus and Russia, which are major potash producers.

As a consequence, fertilizer prices have risen globally. In the U.S., some fertilizers rose more than 40% in just one month after the war’s start in late February 2026. https://www.youtube.com/embed/PkNWSogQzAM?wmode=transparent&start=0 An American farmer talks about the cost of fertilizer amid the war in Iran.

Affecting farmers first

Cereal plants absorb the vast majority of their nitrogen needs during their early growth. Applying fertilizer later in the growth cycle is less effective.

Reducing nitrogen application by 10% to 15%, or delaying application by two to four weeks, can reduce corn yields by 10% to 25%.

Producing less corn and wheat reduces not only food available for humans but also food for livestock. Increased fertilizer costs and reduced grain supplies increase the price of raising livestock, making meat and animal products more expensive.

When feed costs become unsustainable, farmers may be forced to kill or sell off the breeding cows and sows that represent the future of the food supply. In the U.S., a combination of persistent drought and high costs in 2022 forced producers to kill 13.3% of the national beef cow herd, the highest proportion ever. As a result, the U.S. beef cattle inventory shrank to its lowest level since 1962, a problem that restricts beef supplies for years.

Ultimately, the costs are passed to consumers. In 2012, when a historic Midwest drought slashed corn yields by 13%, it triggered a surge in feed prices, and U.S. poultry prices rose 20%.

More money can’t fix this problem

In mid-March 2026, the U.S. fertilizer supply was around 75% of normal levels. That’s right at the beginning of the time when Corn Belt farmers typically prepare their soil for planting, including the first applications of fertilizer. Subsequent fertilizer applications typically come from mid-April to early May and between late May and mid-June.

Farmers who fear not being able to optimize their corn yields may decide to plant less corn or switch crops and plant soybeans, which need less fertilizer. Either would reduce the corn supply.

Government loan guarantees and aid packages may help farmers cover higher costs, but they cannot address timing if enough fertilizer simply isn’t available when it is needed.

Hitting home

American consumers aren’t facing the gas and food shortages or power outages other countries are seeing from the war, but they will be hit in the pocketbook. U.S. prices for gas and jet fuel are already climbing. The effects on the food supply take longer to appear, but they are coming.

Even when crops are bountiful in the U.S., consumers are not immune to global economic forces. A smaller 2026 crop, with rising demand for livestock feed in some of the most populous countries, including China and India, will put pressure on global corn prices, affecting everyone regardless of their nationality.

In March 2026, the U.S. Department of Agriculture used data from before the Iran war to project a 3.1% average increase for all food prices.

The question for consumers is how much of the rise in corn prices will be passed to the consumer, and how fast.

USDA research shows that the speed and extent of changes in food prices vary widely by food category and the level of processing involved in making the food. Other factors also play a role, such as inventory levels, perishability and market competition. When farm prices change, wholesale prices usually adjust within the first month, but retail prices often take longer – sometimes two to four months.

Corn tortillas and other relatively lightly processed corn foods are more likely to show price responses within a few months after corn prices increase. Adjustments to cereals or poultry prices will take a little longer. Changes in the cost of livestock products such as beef will take longer, because there are more steps between the purchase of feed corn and the sale of the meat to consumers.

Other indirect costs, related to the cost of fuel and packaging, tend to hit later. Producers often absorb the price increases in the short term, but some increases are already in the works. For instance, transport companies are adding fuel surcharges on freight shipments.

Food price hikes hit low-income households harder than high-income households, because people with lower incomes spend larger shares of their money on food and housing. For these households, even relatively affordable proteins, such as chicken, may become harder to purchase regularly.

A global food emergency

The cost and availability of fertilizer will affect the whole world. More than 300 million people worldwide already do not have enough food. The U.N. World Food Program predicts an additional 45 million could join them by the end of 2026 if the conflict in the Middle East continues into the middle of the year.

Crop yields in India and Brazil in 2026 are expected to be lower than normal. East African farmers struggled to afford fertilizer even before the crisis and will likely have to make do with even less.

These problems may seem removed for most Americans, but food prices are global in nature, and people in the U.S. will soon face these additional costs of the war.

Aya S. Chacar, Professor of International Business, Florida International University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The artificial intelligence debate has a framing problem, and one of America’s most prominent economists has an idea about how to fix it.

“The first thing that people think about when they think about reducing work is unemployment,” Alex Tabarrok told Fortune. “But reducing work could mean, you know, a shorter work week. It could mean a longer retirement, a longer childhood, more holidays.”

The George Mason University economist made the case bluntly in a post this week on his influential blog Marginal Revolution: “Imagine I told you that AI was going to create a 40% unemployment rate. Sounds bad, right? Catastrophic even. Now imagine I told you that AI was going to create a 3-day working week. Sounds great, right? Wonderful even.”

His punchline: those two scenarios are, to a first approximation, identical: “60% of people employed and 40% unemployed is the same number of working hours as 100% employed at 60% of the hours,” he wrote. The difference between catastrophe and wonderland, he argues, boils down not to the raw economics of AI—but to how society chooses to distribute the gains.

“Everyone goes to the negative possibility instead of to the positive possibility,” Tabarrok told Fortune. “Which doesn’t mean that we’re guaranteed — the transition could be bumpy, that’s for sure. The Industrial Revolution was bumpy. But I also think we need to think about more leisure as a good thing.”

Keynes called this 100 years ago — and he was scared, too

Tabarrok is in good historical company. John Maynard Keynes famously predicted in the 1930s that by 2030, a 15-hour work week would be possible—and then asked, with obvious unease, what people would do with all that free time.

Baroness Dambisa Moyo, a renowned economist and member of the UK’s House of Lords, raised that same concern in a recent conversation with Fortune, noting that Keynes himself worried aloud whether people would be “contemplating God” — and that his anxiety about rootlessness in an age of abundance remains deeply relevant. “There are countless countries around the world right now where they have a lot of young men who are doing nothing,” she said. “They’re not contemplating God in the manner in which we would want them to.”

Tabarrok, for his part, said he was less worried. His core historical argument is that America has already lived through this once. He told Fortune that he made some calculations, based on data from Huberman and Minns’ Penn World Table, and found that between 1870 and today, working hours fell by roughly 40%—from nearly 3,000 hours per year to about 1,800—and unemployment did not rise to match. In 1870, roughly 30% of a person’s life was spent working. “You add on to that, well, how much is spent sleeping—that’s another 30% or so. So you’ve got work, you’ve got sleep, and there’s not much time left over for anything else. And today we’re down to about 10%.” If AI pushes that to 5% over the next 50 years, he said, “that would be great. No one’s complaining that, ‘Oh, we used to have so much more work to do, we used to be able to wash our clothes by hand, and now the machines have taken those jobs.’”

But companies aren’t giving the hours back

There is one significant obstacle standing between Tabarrok’s optimistic vision and reality: the boss.

This editor’s previous reporting found that even as AI has compressed what used to take eight hours into as little as two, executives are not sending workers home early — they’re filling the gap with more output. Michael Manos, chief technology officer at Dun & Bradstreet, put it plainly: “I got the eight hours to two hours—but now I can get 20 hours of work, because the work came down.”

Google Cloud’s Yasmeen Ahmad, who advises Fortune 500 companies on AI data infrastructure, confirmed the pattern, noting that executives are “a little bit nervous” about the implications but are quietly pocketing efficiency gains rather than sharing them. KPMG U.S. CEO Tim Walsh agreed that the gains are real, but said he expects the number of his employees to go up, not down, framing AI as a growth engine rather than a path to fewer hours. “That means I can put more volume through my business,” he said.

Research backs up the workers’ experience. A UC Berkeley ethnographic study found AI-enabled tech workers reporting “momentum and a sense of expanded capability”—but also feeling “busier, more stretched, or less able to fully disconnect,” as the Financial Times‘ Tim Harford noted. A Boston Consulting Group study found that workers who constantly supervise multiple AI tools report higher levels of mental fatigue and information overload: researchers dubbed it “AI brain fry.”

Tabarrok acknowledged this tension but held firm. “I think there’ll be interesting ways people are going to have to figure out how to best organize work life when fewer hours are involved—like whether you want to do them all together at a certain period and then have days off, or just less per day, or longer retirement. There’s a whole bunch of things we’re going to have to figure out.” His prescription remained policy-oriented: Declare an AI dividend and create some more holidays.

The big picture

Tabarrok was also skeptical of the most alarming AI timelines. “I think the transition will be slower than the doomsters are thinking, which is consistent with what most economists think,” he told Fortune, also pushing back on the idea that it’s much too early to conclude that we are in an “Engels pause” moment where wages stagnate as technology surges ahead. “Look around the world right now—the only thing AI has done is increase the number of jobs. There’s been no decrease whatsoever.” He noted that the headline monthly jobs figures mask a much more dynamic reality: roughly 5 million new jobs are created each month in the U.S. while 4.8 million are destroyed. “AI will just be another one of those sorts of changes.”

The view finds support on Wall Street. Fundstrat Global Advisors’ Tom Lee—one of the most closely followed market strategists in the country—has been arguing that the U.S. is in “the third epoch of labor shortage,” a structural demographic trend running from 2018 through approximately 2035 that will necessitate heavy investment in AI simply to fill the labor shortfall. He has repeatedly compared the current moment to the invention of flash-frozen food in the 1920s, which, per Fundstrat research, reduced farm labor from 30%-40% of the U.S. workforce to just 2%-5%, while also lowering food costs. “It freed up time, right? And it created, it allowed people to be repurposed, and it created a completely new labor force,” Lee said in a January appearance on the Prof G Markets podcast.

The philosophical dimension runs even deeper. In a recent Financial Times essay, Stephen Cave, the director of the Institute for Technology and Humanity at Cambridge, identified what he called the “presentist fallacy”—the presumption that current jobs are the best benchmark for meaningful human activity. Most of what we consider work has only existed for a few decades, he argued, and whether sitting at a desk sending emails constitutes the pinnacle of human flourishing is far from obvious. Tabarrok pointed to the leisure economy itself as a preview of what comes next, noting the growth over time in sports, entertainment, and the arts. “There’ll be plenty of things for people to do,” he said.

He also flagged one more upside case that he thinks is being widely underestimated: AI’s potential impact on medicine. Citing groundbreaking research by University of Chicago economists Kevin M. Murphy and Robert H. Topel, he said a cure for cancer entirely would be a $50 trillion boost to the world economy. Even a 10% reduction in cancer mortality would be transformative, he added. “I mean, that would be tremendous, absolutely tremendous, like living longer, better lives. You know, AI right now has a little bit of a bad publicity [and] image, but the moment that AI creates a medical breakthrough, I think that will go away. And I don’t think that’s all at all unrealistic.”

Tabarrok cited a quote by the Italian philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli, that new things are harder to comprehend than old ones, even if the new ones might be better. In Chapter Six of The Prince, Machiavelli wrote, “It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has, for enemies, all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders among those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.”

“It’s always harder to wrap your head around the new thing precisely because it creates change,” Tabarrok said, while acknowledging that economists risk looking as if they’re brushing people’s objections aside. “It’s hard to imagine the future because it’s going to be much different than the past, but it’ll still be good.”

The honest answer may be that the Keynesian 15-hour workweek is coming—just not through voluntary corporate generosity. Whether it arrives as liberation or is forced by policy, demographics, or the sheer weight of technological change, it is shaping up to be the defining labor question of the decade.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Mark Cuban built his nearly $10 billion fortune on bold bets. 

The former Shark Tank star and founder of Cost Plus Drugs bought the Dallas Mavericks in January 2000 for $285 million from H. Ross Perot Jr. and held onto the team for more than two decades. Cuban was largely involved with the team, and becoming an NBA owner seemed like one of the smartest moves of his career.

But in 2023, Cuban decided it was time to offload his majority stake in the Mavericks for $3.5 billion. The billionaire sold his majority stake to the family of Miriam Adelson, the controlling shareholder of Las Vegas Sands Corp. (The deal included Adelson’s son-in-law, Patrick Dumont). Adelson is the widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and is a physician, philanthropist, and major GOP donor. The family is worth an estimated $40 billion.

While he raked in some major cash as part of the sale, Cuban, an open Kamala Harris supporter in the 2024 election, is now saying he has second thoughts about how it all went down.

“I don’t regret selling,” Cuban said on a recent episode of the Intersections podcast. “I regret who I sold to. I made a lot of mistakes in the process, and I’ll leave it at that.”

It’s a major reversal from Cuban, who told reporters after closing the deal in December 2023 that “nothing’s really changed except my bank account,” according to ESPN. Cuban still owns 27.7% of the team.

A two-decade run

When Cuban bought the Mavericks from Perot Jr., the franchise was less than a success.

In the 20 years before Cuban’s arrival, Dallas had only won 40% of its games, carried a losing playoff record, and had thousands of empty seats at games. George Anders even wrote in The Wall Street Journal in 2003 that “people snickered in January 2000 when Internet tycoon Mark Cuban bought the Dallas Mavericks.”

“Not only was Mr. Cuban throwing his cash around, he seemed too goofy to last long in the ultracompetitive NBA,” Anders continued.

But Cuban quickly changed the culture of the then-beleaguered team by showing up to games, sitting courtside, and spending freely on talent. He was so involved that, in fact, he was fined repeatedly by the NBA for his outspokenness. Once in 2018, he was fined a whopping $600,000 for comments about tanking during a podcast with Hall of Famer Julius Erving.

“I’m probably not supposed to say this, but I just had dinner with a bunch of our guys the other night,” Cuban said during the podcast. “And here we are. We weren’t competing for the playoffs. I was like, ‘Look, losing is our best option.’” Still, very few people questioned Cuban’s commitment to the team.

The Mavericks’ big payoff came in 2011 when they defeated LeBron James and the Miami Heat to win the franchise’s first and only NBA Championship. By 2022, the Mavericks had drafted Luka Dončić, a generational talent who looked poised to deliver a second title. But an Athletic report suggests Cuban had been edged out of the team’s decision-making by then.

The next year, Cuban sold his majority stake. 

The deal that went wrong

Cuban finalized the sale of a majority stake at a $3.5 billion valuation, which was more than 12 times what he paid. At the time, he cited the financial strain of competing in a changing NBA ownership landscape, calling himself a “middle-class billionaire” who could no longer shoulder the burden alone. He also said he didn’t want his children drawn into the demands of running a franchise.

“My kids, they were coming of age where they would have the mindset that they want to work at the Mavs. I didn’t want them to,” Cuban said on the Intersections podcast. “If fans don’t like what you’re doing or the team’s not doing well, you’re the worst human being on the planet.”

Cuban retained a 27% minority stake and initially expected to continue to have input on basketball operations. That arrangement, he now acknowledges, never materialized. 

“I don’t regret selling the team; I regret how I did it,” Cuban said during an appearance on the DLLS Mavs podcast in August 2025. “I would have put it out to bid. But I didn’t, so it doesn’t matter.”

What’s next

Cuban still holds roughly 27% of the Mavericks, but the sale agreement allows the Adelson family to purchase an additional 20% of the franchise from him within four years of the deal closing, potentially reducing Cuban’s stake to just 7%. 

Reports earlier this year suggested Cuban was involved with an investor group exploring a buyback, though an Adelson family spokesperson indicated the family plans to buy the majority of his remaining stake.

“The Dumont and Adelson families remain fully committed to the Dallas Mavericks franchise and to the Dallas community,” a spokesperson said in a February statement to The Dallas Morning News. “They remain focused on building a championship organization for the long term.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remained blocked Thursday, even as a handful of Chinese vessels lined up to escape, with a very fragile ceasefire between the US and Iran yet to improve traffic flows in the region. 

Just seven ships, all with some kind of prior link to Iran, were observed making the voyage out of the Persian Gulf on Wednesday and into Thursday morning. Normal transits in both directions are more like 135 a day.

In a sign of Tehran’s efforts to formalize control over the waterway, Iran’s Ports and Maritime Organization published two safe routes for shipping, according to state media. It said the routes were necessary to avoid the potential presence of various anti-ship mines in the usual sailing routes through narrow strait. 

While Iran-linked vessels headed through the waterway, three Chinese oil tankers, fully-laden with Saudi and Iraqi crude, sailed toward Hormuz on Thursday before dropping anchor near the approach to the waterway that handles about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas. 

The impasse comes despite the emergence of a ceasefire between the US and Iran earlier this week that caused oil to plunge.

‘Not Open’

While flows remain all but halted, the market is still acutely short of supply and despite a drop in futures prices, real world barrels continue to be scarce. US Vice President JD Vance said there were signs that Hormuz is starting to reopen but the boss of the UAE’s largest oil producer said Thursdday it remains effectively shut. 

“Let’s be clear: the Strait of Hormuz is not open,” Sultan Al Jaber, chief executive office of Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., said in comments on LinkedIn. “Access is being restricted, conditioned and controlled.”

While Iran’s deputy foreign minister told the UK’s ITV news agency that “any” vessel is free to navigate, he said that doing so required communication with Iran’s military. He also confirmed the waterway was mined. 

On Wednesday, the crew on one vessel reported hearing a warning from Iran that navigation through the strait still requires permission from the Islamic Republic, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. At least one oil tanker halted a plan to cross after it became clear that Iran was still insisting that vessels seek permission, a different person with knowledge of with the aborted transit said.

The speed with which Hormuz reopens is vital for energy markets across the globe. 

Even if ships do begin to make their way out of Hormuz, it’s unclear if others will be willing to enter given the ceasefire only lasts for two weeks. It will also take anything from weeks to months for the oil to reach buyers once flows through the waterway do resume.

President Trump posted on social media overnight that US military personnel would remain in the region and that if there’s no deal “‘the ‘Shootin’ Starts,’ bigger, and better, and stronger than anyone has ever seen before.”

The head of the world’s main shipping agency, the International Maritime Organization, said on Thursday that any efforts by Tehran to permanently enforce a toll system on Hormuz would set a dangerous precedent and are unacceptable. 

“What we cannot have is this different, or parallel, approach where another country introduces a different mechanism that is not in line with international practice,” Arsenio Dominguez, the IMO’s secretary-general, said in a Bloomberg TV interview.

He said that the IMO is working to return shipping in the region to the state it was in before the war broke out. A group of nations, including the UK, are working to establish whether there are mines in Hormuz or not, he said.

The return of discussions about mines in Hormuz is “the worst case scenario for shipping,” according to Martin Kelly, head of advisory at EOS Risk Group. “If the TSS is mined, the recovery for safe passage will take months at least,” he said, referring to the Traffic Separation Scheme ships use to cross it in normal times. 

So far, there’s been only a limited volume of booking activity for ships to load oil inside the Persian Gulf. 

One trading company booked a vessel to haul 1 million barrels from Iraq on Wednesday, according to lists of charters compiled by Bloomberg.

Another supertanker booking to haul crude from the Middle East made on the same day fell through, people involved in the market said. Two traders who handle Persian Gulf barrels, said there had been little change to cargo trading inside the region since the ceasefire. 

The International Chamber of Shipping, an umbrella organization of trade groups representing owners of over 80% of the world’s fleet, said work more needs to be done before ships can go through en masse againg.

“There is not much movement because we do not have any solid confirmation as to securing a safe passage,” secretary general Thomas Kazakos said in a Bloomberg radio interview, adding that “as yet we have not received any solid information” on how traffic could return to normal. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin is reviewing a plan to transform warehouses across the U.S. into detention facilities for tens of thousands of immigrants.

So far immigration officials have spent a total of $1.074 billion for 11 warehouses. They’ve mostly faced fierce opposition. And days after Mullin was sworn in, the Department of Homeland Security paused the purchase of new warehouses intended to house immigrants. The department is scrutinizing all contracts signed under his predecessor, Kristi Noem.

A look at some of the locations:

Arizona

Local officials were told nothing before ICE purchased a 418,000-square-foot (38,833-square-meter) warehouse in the Phoenix suburb of Surprise for $70 million, the state’s top prosecutor, Kris Mayes, said in a letter to former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

Documents later provided by ICE said the Department of Homeland Security plans a processing site with an average daily capacity of 1,000 to 1,500, and a contract worth at least $313.4 million was awarded to transform it.

DHS is now planning something more modest, starting out with 250 people per week and capping occupied beds at 542, according to Surprise Mayor Kevin Sartor.

Florida

A TV reporter in Orlando spotted private contractors and federal officials in January touring a 439,945-square-foot (40,872-square-meter) industrial warehouse. ICE senior adviser David Venturella told a WFTV reporter the tour was “exploratory.”

As of April, the city still hadn’t heard anything, a spokesperson said in an email.

Georgia

ICE bought a massive warehouse in Social Circle for $128.6 million. The city said the federal government informed it that the facility is expected to house from 7,500 to 10,000 detainees.

The city is so concerned about the strain on its water supply that it put a lock on the warehouse’s water meter. DHS has suggested trucking in drinking water and trucking out waste, according to a letter from Georgia Democratic Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, who said the plan was unworkable.

DHS also bought a 540,408-square-foot (50,205-square-meter) warehouse in Oakwood for $68.2 million, a deed shows. City Manager B.R. White said his first inkling that a deal was imminent came when a warehouse supervisor told a city inspector he’d been instructed to clear the job site to make way for the new owners — the federal government.

Indiana

After the town of Merrillville raised concerns about ICE touring a new 275,000-square-foot (25,548-square-meter) warehouse, owner Opus Holding LLC sent a letter stating it isn’t negotiating with federal officials for the property. The letter said Opus was limited in what it could share because of legal issues.

Maryland

ICE purchased a warehouse about 60 miles (96 kilometers) northwest of Baltimore in Washington County for $102.4 million and signed a contract worth at least $113 million to renovate it. But work is on hold after Maryland’s attorney general sued.

The warehouse has divided the community. County commissioners passed a resolution in support of ICE during a contentious meeting.

Michigan

After DHS paid $34.7 million for a 250,000-square-foot (23,225-square-meter) warehouse in Romulus, the state and city sued. The suit said the warehouse is in a flood plain, and that the sewage system couldn’t keep up if 500 people are detained inside. It also faults DHS for not considering any of the state’s empty prison facilities and for not talking to state or city officials.

Minnesota

The owners of warehouses in the Minneapolis suburbs of Woodbury and Shakopee pulled out of possible ICE deals after public outcry, according to local officials.

Mississippi

Republican U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker posted that Noem agreed to look elsewhere after local elected and zoning officials opposed a possible detention center in the town of Byhalia.

Missouri

After weeks of public pressure, development company Platform Ventures announced it would not move forward with the sale of a massive warehouse in Kansas City.

New Hampshire

New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte said in March that DHS would not move forward with a proposed ICE facility in the town of Merrimack.

Ayotte, a Republican, had sparred with federal officials after ICE disclosed plans to spend $158 million to convert a warehouse in the town into a 500-bed processing center.

The issue came to a head after an ICE official testified that DHS “has worked with Gov. Ayotte” and provided her with an economic impact summary. Ayotte said the summary was not sent until hours after that testimony.

The document erroneously refers to the “ripple effects to the Oklahoma economy” and revenue generated by state sales and income taxes, neither of which exist in New Hampshire.

New Jersey

After DHS bought a 470,044-square-foot (43,669-square-meter) warehouse in Roxbury for $129.3 million, the township and state sued, alleging that federal officials kept them in the dark.

“State and local officials might not have a veto over DHS’s decisions, but this utter lack of communication and consultation flies in the face of federal law,” the suit said.

New York

ICE said it made a mistake when it announced the purchase of a vacant warehouse in Chester. New York state Assemblyman Brian Maher later said ICE was no longer considering the facility.

Oklahoma

Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt announced in January that property owners had informed him they are no longer engaged with DHS about a potential acquisition or lease of a warehouse.

Pennsylvania

DHS purchased a warehouse in Tremont Township for $119.5 million and one in Upper Bern Township for $87.4 million. Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro has said his administration will fight DHS’ plans. The state’s Department of Environmental Protection has barred water and sewage from being supplied to them for now.

Tennessee

ICE mistakenly announced it had completed the purchase of a warehouse in Lebanon, Tennessee.

The sheriff, Robert Bryan, wrote that a facility of the size and scope being discussed — 14,000 to 16,000 detainees — would “significantly impact local law enforcement resources.” And the mayor, Rick Bell, wrote that as a conservative Republican, he supports a secure border but that his town “is not the place.”

Republican U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn later announced that the deal was dead.

Texas

In the El Paso suburb of Socorro, ICE paid $122.8 million for a trio of warehouses that span 826,780 square feet (76,810 square meters). ICE also paid $66.1 million for a 639,595-square-foot (59,420-square-meter) warehouse in San Antonio. The mayors of both cities are opposed. Socorro officials — like others — have questioned water supplies. As of April, San Antonio still had heard nothing from DHS.

However, another deal in the state was scuttled following community backlash. In the Dallas suburb of Hutchins, a real estate company confirmed that it was contacted about one of its properties but wouldn’t sell or lease any buildings to DHS for use as a detention facility. California-based Majestic Realty Co. provided no explanation in its statement.

Utah

DHS bought an 833,280-square-foot (77,414-square-meter) warehouse in Salt Lake City for $145.4 million without notifying the city’s Democratic leaders or the state’s Republican governor or congressional delegation. Mayor Erin Mendenhall said in a statement released in March that ICE officials later told her that the facility will house 7,500 to 10,000 people.

The city has moved to cap water use at just a fraction of what would be needed to operate the warehouse as a detention site.

The sale of the warehouse came two months after the owner of another Salt Lake City warehouse announced plans not to sell or lease to the federal government amid protests.

Virginia

Following boycott threats, Jim Pattison Developments announced in January that it would not proceed with a planned sale of a warehouse in the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia. It said it was not aware of the intended use until after it agreed to the sale.

___

Associated Press reporters Holly Ramer, Isabella Volmert and Marc Levy contributed to this report.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

As war injects extreme volatility into oil and gas markets, the global race for energy security is making China stronger, according to Jacky Tang, emerging markets chief investment officer at the private banking arm of Deutsche Bank AG.

“China is the winner in this war from an economic standpoint, from an energy mix standpoint,” he said in an interview.

The prediction feeds into a complex picture. Bruegel, a think tank, says China’s reliance on oil imports from Iran is set to pose a “severe test” for its energy strategy. At the same time, the country’s status as the world’s largest producer of clean tech puts it in a unique position to help governments now desperate to wean themselves off Middle East imports, according to the Deutsche Bank executive. 

Longer term, Tang says “everybody knows” that the world “cannot rely on oil.” 

He says it’s a realization that will force a reset in Asia, the biggest importer of Middle Eastern oil. Japan, Korea and India are now all more likely to look for ways to diversify their energy mix, and the equipment needed to achieve that diversification will inevitably come from China, Tang said.

As the conflict in the Middle East veers between existential threats and a fragile ceasefire, volatility in oil and gas prices has skyrocketed. The promise of a two-week break from fighting offered relief on Wednesday morning, with the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz listed as a condition of the deal. 

For now, however, the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed, pushing up the price of Brent crude. “The situation remains fluid,” analysts at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said in a note. And by Thursday, optimism over the US-Iran ceasefire had faded after Tehran warned that some terms of the deal had been breached.

Against that backdrop, governments will continue to work toward energy independence. China, which remains the world’s largest consumer of coal, is rapidly building out its clean-tech sector as part of its goal of achieving energy independence. 

Low-carbon sources now account for close to 40% of the country’s electricity generation, compared with about 25% a decade ago, according to a February report by Ember. And renewables make up almost 50% of installed power capacity, Barclays Plc estimates.

“A decade of renewable build-out and electrification have materially reduced China’s exposure to energy shocks,” a Barclays team led by Jian Chang, the bank’s chief China economist, said in an April 8 note to clients. The upshot is that oil and gas are “now playing only a minor role in power generation” for the country, she said.

China’s long-term “focus on electrification” is making it more resilient to energy price shocks, according to a Lombard Odier CIO Office Viewpoint note sent to clients this month. And its build-up of strategic oil reserves has created an effective short-term buffer against rising oil prices, the Lombard Odier note said.

Tang says a new wave of demand for renewable energy would sift out clean-tech winners, after years of hyper-growth drove down prices to levels at which some companies could no longer compete.

“The issue in China is that the competition is fierce,” Tang said. “The winners will be those guys with healthy balance sheets, with healthy fundamentals, with pricing power.”

Equipment exporters with margins that can absorb higher costs — and a cash flow that allows them to do mergers and acquisitions — will fare best, Tang said. He also says Deutsche is advising its private banking customers to seek out companies that are less indebted than their peers. 

“For a lot of those infrastructure companies, unfortunately, the gearing ratio is high because they are small cap, and they need money from a bank,” Tang said. 

A typical client portfolio tends to have about 10-15% of their Chinese equity allocation in clean energy stocks, he said. “We try not to be massively overweight because there is still a lot of volatility.”

Chinese stocks were among the top performers on the S&P Global Clean Energy Transition Index in the first few weeks of the war, but the gains have since evaporated for most. 

Shares of Sungrow Power Supply Co., one of the world’s largest energy storage firms, climbed more than 20% after the Iran war began before shaving off nearly a third of their value due to disappointing earnings. 

Wind power generation equipment makers Goldwind Science & Technology Co. and Ming Yang Smart Energy Group have also seen their stocks mostly plunge in recent sessions. Meanwhile, shares of battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. and electric car maker BYD Co. are still higher by about 28% and 8% in Hong Kong, respectively.

To deal with over-supply in its clean-tech sector, China’s government has embarked on an anti-involution campaign. Its latest five-year plan downplayed the solar sector, and it’s also canceling or reducing export tax rebates on products including solar cells as countries have called out trade imbalances.

“China is quite determined to make sure that prices stay at a competitive level and at the same time, that companies can survive,” Tang said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

America’s long-term budget outlook just got a lot scarier. If the bond vigilantes are already circling, and if they’re looking for more reasons to dump U.S. bonds and push Treasury yields to crisis levels, they need do nothing more than read the newly issued Budget of the U.S. Government for Fiscal Year 2027 (starting Oct. 1, 2026). The document, compiled by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), calls for big spending increases, chiefly for defense, and promises to finance the added outlays via revenues swelled by fantasy rates of economic growth and phantom savings. The document’s requests make an already dangerous outlook significantly riskier. The reason: If the expenditures blowout happens, and the rosy assumptions needed to offset the new outlays fail to materialize, America will edge even closer to a fiscal cataclysm prompted by a ruinous rise in interest expense.

Almost all of these yearly reports take a comprehensive view of the important budget categories. Every administration appeals for new funding and proposes savings in different categories, and makes economic projections. But the OMB also offers forecasts and perspective on the trends in mandatory as well as discretionary spending, interest costs, debt, and deficits, and warns of perils ahead if the U.S. is veering into the fiscal danger zone. This edition, however, has nothing to say about Medicare and Medicaid, and in its 92 pages, never refers to federal debt or deficits. Instead, it’s highly unusual, adopting an extremely narrow focus. The report takes aim at only two major areas. The first is discretionary spending, where Trump requests big increases for the Department of War while advocating reductions in nondefense discretionary (NDD) categories. The second: projections for key metrics such as GDP and interest rates that are crucial drivers on the revenue and expense sides.

Its failure to assess the troubling big picture drew a poor review from the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB). Its president, Maya MacGuineas, wrote that the president’s budget fails at its duty to “include an actionable plan for getting our nation’s finances on a sustainable footing,” adding that the plan is “heavy on spending, light on details, and relies on an entire decade of rosy financial projections.”

The new spending would be big and baked in; the extra revenue and cuts to pay for it are imaginary

The math sounds simple, and even appears at first glance to make sense. The Trump proposal asks for a 42% jump in the defense budget for fiscal year 2027, from the current line item of $950 billion to $1.5 trillion, plus an extra $251 billion added to the annual base. All told, the line item would rise by $3.5 trillion above the current Congressional Budget Office (CBO) baseline from FY 2026 to 2036. Add another $900 billion the president wants to spend on a list of smaller, nondefense initiatives, and the total proposed increase in expenditures exceeds what is budgeted over the next decade by $4.5 trillion. The blueprint also sounds a responsible note in championing reductions in other NDD areas of $805 billion, setting the net increase in outlays at $3.62 trillion (the $4.5 trillion total spending rise minus the $805 billion in savings).

That’s an easy nut to handle, the report suggests. It projects that total revenues will reach an astounding $7.8 trillion more over the decade-long span than the CBO predicts. Since that surge would tighten yearly deficits, we’d also save $2.54 trillion in interest expenses, growing the plus column to $10.3 trillion. As a result, even though the U.S. would expand outlays by $3.62 trillion, our total deficits from here to 2036 would decline by $6.7 trillion (the $10.3 trillion in extra collections and lower interest minus the $3.62 trillion in new outlays). Although the OMB doesn’t give debt numbers, the CRFB was able to glean from other numbers in an annex to the document that in the White House view, U.S. debt would fall to 94% of GDP by 2036, far better than the CBO’s forecast of 120%.

Sounds great until you examine the assumptions. How does the OMB get that nearly $8 trillion revenue windfall? Here’s how: It foresees GDP advancing at a 3.0% annual pace. That’s hugely above the CBO and the Fed’s long-run forecasts respectively at 1.8% and 2.0%. The CRFB dismisses the OMB’s figure as “fantastical.” How about the $805 billion reduction in NDD? The CBO already has that piece rising a minuscule 10% in total over the next decade. But the Trump budget expects a never-before-seen triumph in austerity. It calls for 2% annual reductions that would bring all-in NDD down 20% by 2036. How plausible is that plan? Not very. The category waxed around 40% in the previous decade, about following inflation. Is it really possible that NASA, veterans’ health care, the Department of Homeland Security, the EPA, and sundry other agencies are spending far fewer dollars 10 years hence than today? The sober outlook says that what happened in the past decade—in other words, a substantial increase—is likely to repeat.

The second hypothetical fount, interest savings, arises from two sources: Far lower deficits hinging on those dubious GDP figures, and much more favorable than expected interest rates on the Treasuries financing our debt. The FY 2027 document sees the 10-year yield falling from today’s 4.4% to 3.4% by 2029, then stabilizing a bit below that level. By contrast, the CBO’s forecast is 100 basis points higher at 4.3% to 4.4% over the entire decade. The OMB also assumes that tariff revenues keep flowing at the same pace as before the Supreme Court ruled most of the duties unlawful.

To be fair, no one really believes the bluebird future portrayed in FY 2027. “The realistic way to read it is as an historic defense spending increase coupled with fake offsets on spending and revenues,” says Jessica Riedl, a budget and tax fellow at the Brookings Institution. Riedl says that if the War Department hike gets enacted by Congress and defense spending garners the permanent jump requested, and NDD outlays rise as in the past, the current high-wire outlook gets considerably worse. “It means that annual deficits would exceed $4 trillion by 2036,” says Riedl, citing a number that’s almost 30% higher than the $3.1 trillion the CBO sees looming today. Riedl contends that debt would reach 137% of national income, 17 points higher than the 2036 figure in the agency’s tables.

“That number is totally unsustainable,” she says, adding a warning for the congressional Republicans in support of shifting defense outlays into high gear. “They can’t be the party of endless tax cuts, historic defense spending hikes, and still not touching Social Security and Medicare. Something’s got to give,” says Riedl. It’s looking less and less likely that the “something”’ will happen via making the essential, tough choices. Instead, the failure to act will bring on the bond raiders—and unleash a crisis where no one can predict the ending, only that it will be a bad one.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Ever wondered how productive your coworkers actually are? Meta employees don’t have to guess.

A Meta employee independently created a leaderboard that tracked how many tokens—the basic units of data or words that AI models process—the company’s more than 85,000 employees used, The Information reported on Monday. Called “Claudeonomics,” after Anthropic’s AI model, the leaderboard showed the top 250 token users and awarded employees with titles, such as “Token Legend” and “Cache Wizard.”

The leaderboard encouraged “tokenmaxxing,” a growing phenomenon in Silicon Valley which emphasizes token usage as a measure of productivity. While every AI model measures tokens differently, OpenAI estimates that one token is equal to about four characters and a single one-to-two sentence prompt requires about 30 tokens. Token usage can imply if workers are optimizing their prompts, or the number of AI agents they are using. 

But now, the fun is over: the internal AI-use leaderboard went down just two days after the news broke. 

The dashboard now reads: “We’ve really enjoyed building this app on Nest for everyone. It was meant to be a fun way for people to look at tokens, but due to data from this dashboard being shared externally, we’ve made the decision to shutter Claudeonomics for now,” reported The Information, which also reported the company has a separate official dashboard for token usage geared toward software engineers, who generally use the most tokens. 

“The employee took down the dashboard at their discretion; Meta did not request this action,” Meta told Fortune in a statement.

Last year, Meta’s Chief People Officer Janelle Gale told employees that “AI-driven impact” would be a “core expectation” in 2026, according to Business Insider. In January, the company overhauled its performance review system to incentivize the highest performers with upwards of a 200% bonus. 

Some employees have put AI agents to work for hours to maximize their token usage. Neither Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg nor Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth are in the top 250 token users.

In a 30-day period, total employee usage on the dashboard exceeded 60 trillion tokens, and the highest-ranked individual user averaged 281 billion tokens. Using the least expensive version of Claude Opus 4.6, which costs $5 for every million tokens, that one user alone could have cost Meta more than $1.4 million. 

Incentivizing high token use is becoming the norm in Silicon Valley. OpenAI has an employee leaderboard, and the company’s top power user used 210 billion tokens over one week in March.

Last month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who has been a leading voice on token budgets, shared his vision for token use at Nvidia’s GTC conference in San Jose in March. 

“I could totally imagine in the future every single engineer in our company will need an annual token budget,” he said. “They’re going to make a few 100,000 a year as their base pay. I’m going to give them probably half of that on top of it as tokens so that they could be amplified 10 times.”

Just days later, Huang said he would be “deeply alarmed” if an engineer he paid $500,000 a year didn’t use at least $250,000 worth of tokens. He did not specify the importance of the 50% measure. 

Meta CTO Bosworth said his best engineer is spending the equivalent of his salary in tokens, but he’s “5x to 10x more productive.”

“It’s like, this is easy money,” Bosworth said. “Keep doing it. No limit.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Hackers backing Tehran say an uncertain ceasefire between Iran and the United States and Israel won’t end their retaliatory cyberattacks, a warning that American cybersecurity experts say potential targets in the U.S. and Israel should take seriously.

One leading hacking group known as Handala said after the ceasefire announcement that it was temporarily postponing attacks on the U.S. but would continue to target Israel. It vowed to revive its efforts against America when the time was right — demonstrating again how digital warfare has become ingrained in military conflict. Already, the two-week ceasefire appears at risk of fraying over significant disagreements between the parties, which each are claiming victory in the war.

A pro-Palestinian, pro-Iranian network that operates independently of Tehran, Handala has claimed credit for disrupting the operations of the U.S. medical manufacturer Stryker and hacking into FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal email account, among other cyberattacks. The group is just one of several proxy hacking networks allied with Iran.

“We did not begin this war, but we will be the ones to finish it,” Handala wrote on its X account. “And let it be clear: The cyber war did not begin with the military conflict, and it will not end with any military ceasefire.”

U.S. authorities warned on Tuesday that hackers supporting Iran had burrowed into internet-connected computers used to automate and control technology in a variety of important industrial sectors. The computers, known as programmable logic controllers, are used in ports, power plants and water plants — key targets for foreign hackers looking to disrupt everyday life in the U.S.

In a joint advisory from the FBI, National Security Agency and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, officials urged organizations that use the technology to ensure their security precautions were up-to-date. CISA did not immediately respond to questions Wednesday about the impact that the ceasefire would have on cybersecurity.

Cybersecurity experts say the warning should be taken seriously by potential targets regardless of the sides announcing a temporary truce.

Markus Mueller, a cybersecurity executive at Nozomi Networks, said he anticipates an increase in cyberattacks on American organizations following the ceasefire, not a decrease. That’s because any lull in hostilities would allow hackers to shift from regional targets directly involved in the conflict to efforts to infiltrate U.S. organizations that participated in the war effort in some way, a list that includes data centers, tech companies and defense contractors.

He also predicted that some groups based in Iran or Russia may seek to circumvent the truce by launching a significant cyberattack on a U.S. target that is designed to attract the attention of the American public.

“With a ceasefire, we will likely see an expansion of cyber activity both in scale and scope,” Mueller said. “These groups will likely try to execute a high-profile attack such as what we saw with Stryker.”

So far, the attacks attributed to pro-Iranian hackers have been high in volume but low in impact, designed to boost morale among Iran’s supporters while reminding its opponents of continued vulnerabilities despite their military advantages.

Handala claimed responsibility last month for hacking Stryker, a major medical equipment supply company based in Michigan. Handala claimed the hack was in retaliation for strikes that killed Iranian schoolchildren.

The FBI responded by seizing four internet web addresses used by the group to spread its message. Handala then leaked several old photos of Patel after saying it had hacked into the FBI director’s personal email account.

Other pro-Iranian hackers have been linked to efforts to install malware on the phones of Israelis, penetrate cameras in Middle Eastern countries to improve Iran’s missile targeting, and target data centers and industrial facilities in Israel, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Between faulty Outlook headaches and a faulty toilet on the fritz that releases… well gas into the air, the astronauts aboard NASA’s Artemis II mission may be feeling a little spread thin, but that hasn’t stopped them from having a little sweet treat—and creating possibly the world’s best free advertisement in the process. 

On April 6, Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, and Mission Specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen, the four astronauts aboard the Orion ship, became the farthest humans from Earth since Apollo 13. They broke a 56-year-old distance record, flew behind the far side of the Moon in total communications blackout, and witnessed a solar eclipse from lunar orbit. 

And less than four minutes before any of that history happened, a jar of Nutella stole the entire livestream.

During the live stream with a countdown of three minutes and 52 seconds before the Artemis II mission broke the Apollo 13 record, a tub of the chocolate-hazelnut spread drifted out of the Orion spacecraft’s kitchen area, rotated lazily in the cabin, and settled label-forward in perfect framing and perfect lighting.

It was the kind of product shot that would have normally come with a six-figure production budget to stage on Earth. But free product placement came a record breaking 252,752 miles away from earth, and the NASA livestream caught every second of it. And Nutella, and parent company Ferrero, was eating it up. 

“We are over the moon that the world’s best space explorers chose the world’s best spread,” Michael Lindsey, President and Chief Business Officer, Ferrero North America, told Fortune in a statement. 

“Like so many people around the world, we are captivated by the Artemis II mission and inspired by the brilliant teams making it possible. We were over the moon to see how an unexpected glimpse of Nutella was able to spread a smile to our fans – even in space!” read a statement to Fortune from the Ferrero Group. “We always knew Nutella is out of this world, now we have proof!”

On social media, Nutella went nutty for all the excitement people were giving the company. “Honored to have traveled further than any spread in history. Taking spreading smiles to new heights,” wrote the company on Instagram along with a rocket and heart emoji. 

NASA’s Kennedy Space Center jumped in on the fun, writing “Enjoying sweet treats while our Artemis crew takes sweet photos of the Moon!”

In another post, a jar of Nutella, similarly floating just like the real-life one did aboard the ship, is seen floating aboard a ship, this time beneath the words “Now enjoyed in space.” The caption asks folks to comment what they would bring to space to win their name on a jar of Nutella. “Houston, we have Nutella in space! Tell us the one thing you’d bring into the cosmos for a chance to have your name written in the stars (or on a custom Nutella jar).”

NASA officials confirmed the Nutella was simply part of the crew’s approved food supply as one of 189 menu items aboard the Orion, alongside beef brisket, mac and cheese, scrambled eggs, and chocolate cookies. Bread, notably, is banned on spacecraft, as crumbs can damage precision instruments, so astronauts wrap most food in tortillas. NASA did not respond to Fortune’s request for comments on how the spread was eaten, but we can take a wild guess the age-old teaspoon in the jar technique still works in freefall.

The Artemis II crew will splashdown in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego on April 10, just nine days after launching from Kennedy Space Center.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

A tenuous ceasefire deal in the Iran war allowing negotiations for a longer-term peace between the United States and Iran appears to be in jeopardy after Tehran accused the Trump administration of major violations.

Such a swift collapse may not entirely come as a surprise, however, because neither side had seemed able to agree on even the basic contours of the key issues being discussed.

Would Iran using its military to regulate the flow of ships on the Strait of Hormuz mean it still effectively controls the waterway? What about Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium?

Might the two-week ceasefire extend to Israel’s attacks on Lebanon? Could Iran possibly press for a huge financial windfall, a lifting of international sanctions and even a drawdown of U.S. forces in the Middle East just to keep things on track?

From the beginning the answers depended on whom you talk to.

Strait of Hormuz

President Donald Trump posted Tuesday night on his social media site that the ceasefire was subject to Iran agreeing to the “COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz,” the waterway leading out of the Persian Gulf through which one-fifth of the world’s oil is transported during peacetime.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday during a media briefing at the Pentagon that the strait was open and that the U.S. military was “hanging around” the region to make sure. Hours later, however, Iran announced that the strait was closing again in response to Israel’s strikes in Lebanon.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said later at a briefing with reporters that Iran had to reopen the waterway “immediately, quickly and safely.”

Even if that happens, Iran says shipping traffic can resume only under the management of its military. That means Tehran can still make the case it is controlling the strait, and therefore retaining crucial global political and economic leverage, and could also charge ships stiff levies to use it, quickly generating billions in new revenue.

Leavitt said Trump is opposed to charging tolls for ship to pass through the strait.

Uranium enrichment

Iran says its peace plan includes Washington’s “acceptance of enrichment” of uranium for Tehran’s nuclear program. But that would undermine a key Trump objective since the start of the war that Iran can never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon.

Trump offered a different assessment, posting on Wednesday that a peace agreement would entail the U.S. working with Iran to “dig up” enriched uranium. The Trump administration says that material was buried as a result of joint U.S-Israeli strikes in June.

But what the Republican president said was different from what Hegseth said. The Pentagon chief said Tehran will either “give it to us voluntarily” or the U.S. might do “something like” its strikes last summer, when the U.S. and Israel bombed Iran’s nuclear sites.

Leavitt said ending all Iranian uranium enrichment remains a “red line” for Trump and that Tehran had given indications it would be willing to turn over such materials.

Lebanon

Iran also says that ceasing hostilities in Lebanon, where Israel has dramatically stepped up attacks in recent weeks, will be part of larger peace negotiations.

That was consistent with what Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, whose country is a key moderator in the peace process, said in announcing the ceasefire between Iran and the United States on X — that it would extend to Lebanon.

But Trump indicated that Lebanon was not part of the ceasefire. Leavitt said the same.

That aligns with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, which said in a statement that the two-week suspension of strikes in Iran does not include the war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Other key points of possible peace plans

When Iran first offered a 10-point peace plan to halt the war on Monday, Trump called it “not good enough.”

But then, about 90 minutes before his Tuesday night deadline to begin wide-scale U.S. attacks on Iran’s bridges and power grid, the president announced a two-week ceasefire and described Iran’s proposal as a “workable basis on which to negotiate.”

“Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran,” Trump wrote, explaining why he was backing off his threats for massive attacks on nonmilitary targets.

Iran appeared to reject that on Wednesday, saying negotiations with the U.S. were “unreasonable.”

What the two sides might have been discussing was not clear.

Leavitt said only that the Iranians “originally put forward a 10-point plan that was fundamentally unserious, unacceptable and completely discarded” and that it was “literally thrown in the garbage” by Trump.

But, she said, Iran later “acknowledged reality” and “put forward a more reasonable and entirely different” plan that Trump and U.S. negotiators can align with their own 15-point proposal.

Leavitt did not provide details about what Iran offered to change, and American officials are not saying much about their plan for fear that doing so could jeopardize talks with Iran.

Complicating matters is the fact that Iran has released a series of 10-point plans to guide negotiations, with many of the versions differing slightly, often seemingly depending on whether they were written in English or Farsi.

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council says “the United States has, in principle, committed to” a series of key points — many of which seem to be nonstarters, considering long-standing U.S. positions.

It says the U.S. is ready to guarantee a lasting peace and no new attacks, a continuation of Iran’s control over the strait, acceptance that Iran can enrich uranium and removal of all U.S. economic and other sanctions from Iran. That would include, it says, restrictions on international entities doing business in that country, as well as U.N. Security Council resolutions against the government in Tehran.

The council also says the U.S. has agreed in principle to ending international oversight of Iran’s nuclear program, to compensate Iran for war damages, a ceasefire extending to Lebanon and a withdrawal of all U.S. combat forces from the region.

That last one would be nothing short of extraordinary, given that the U.S. has maintained a network of military bases through the Persian Gulf for decades — since the conclusion of the 1991 Gulf War with Iraq. The lifting of all sanctions also seems like an unlikely prospect for the U.S. to agree to.

Details are scarce about the US peace proposal

Trump rejected many of those points as “a FRAUD.” Leavitt dismissed it as an “Iranian wish list.”

In an online post, he said there is “only one group of meaningful ‘POINTS’ that are acceptable to the United States, and we will be discussing them behind closed doors during these Negotiations.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Wednesday announced plans to tap into unconventional natural gas deposits in an effort to lower her country’s reliance on foreign energy at a time when the Iran war is disrupting global energy markets.

But Sheinbaum — a scientist and climate expert — notably avoided the term hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” a drilling method used to extract oil and natural gas from deep underground bedrock using a highly pressurized liquid. Instead, she framed the initiative as a quest for “sustainable” extraction, emphasizing that environmental impacts would be minimized to the greatest extent possible.

The technical feasibility of “sustainable fracking” is a subject of significant debate among environmental scientists and energy experts. But Sheinbaum said a technical committee will spend two months evaluating less harmful methods, such as utilizing nonpotable water and reducing chemical additives. The committee will also assess the potential costs of these mitigations, she said.

“All the gas we import comes from a type of extraction that has environmental impacts” and is “100 meters from the Mexican border,” she noted, alluding to fracking projects in Texas.

Mexico is the world’s single largest buyer of U.S. gas.

While noting that natural gas import contracts with the U.S. remain secure and the bilateral relationship is strong, she argued that increasing energy sovereignty is a responsible necessity. “Is more gas needed? Yes. Can all gas be replaced? Hardly,” she added.

Since assuming power in October 2024, Sheinbaum has pledged to expand renewable energy while maintaining firm support for the state-owned Petróleos Mexicanos. On Wednesday, she defended this stance by arguing that fossil fuels remain an essential component of Mexico’s energy landscape.

Sheinbaum said the priority is to reduce external energy dependence in turbulent times and avoid situations like the one experienced in Europe with the shortage of Russian gas during the war in Ukraine or the one caused by the current war in the Middle East.

Wednesday’s proposal — which is certain to spark controversy — comes amid a surge in infrastructure projects designed to increase U.S. gas imports. These developments aim to satisfy Mexico’s rising domestic electricity demand while positioning the country as a hub for re-exporting gas to Asian and European markets.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Nevada’s largest utility says it will need three times the electricity required to power Las Vegas just to handle proposed data centers — and it probably can’t do that without fossil fuels.

That means the utility could miss Nevada’s clean energy targets requiring 50% renewable power by 2030.

“I can’t remember a time in the history of the industry where we’ve seen as much interest in adding load, which is primarily driven by data centers,” said Shawn Elicegui, senior vice president of regulatory and resource planning for NV Energy, which provides electricity to 90% of the state.

It’s one of many utilities across the country grappling with how to meet the exploding electricity demand for data centers to power artificial intelligence without sacrificing long-term plans to move away from fossil fuels in favor of renewable and zero-carbon sources.

In North Carolina, which is also seeing a surge of data centers, the largest utility is revising its long-term plans to delay the retirement of coal plants and to build more natural gas plants. Legislators removed an interim goal for utilities to cut carbon emissions, spurring concern from environmentalists that the state might miss its goal of zero carbon emissions by 2050.

NextEra Energy, which serve commercial electricity in over a dozen states, completely dropped its goal to reach zero emissions by 2045 due to the “demand for all forms of power generation,” the company said in a recent business filing.

The Trump administration has encouraged states to use coal to meet the demands from manufacturing and data centers. Tech companies are also slowing down on their own climate goals to meet the consumer demands for artificial intelligence.

“It’s very alarming, and it’s probably the single largest natural resource issue of our time,” said Olivia Tanager, director of the Sierra Club’s Toiyabe chapter covering Nevada.

Nevada is one of the fastest-growing data center markets in the U.S. thanks to its lack of a corporate income tax, cheap land and tax breaks for data centers. There are dozens already with more on the way. Now lawmakers are eyeing more regulations and debating how to balance both the state’s clean energy goals with the economic benefits data centers bring.

Some data centers say they want to be part of the solution; the industry was responsible for half of all corporate clean energy procurement in 2024, said Dan Diorio, vice president of state policy for the Data Center Coalition.

But renewable energy’s contribution to the power grid is not growing fast enough. Nationally, orders for gas turbines are backlogged and processing renewable energy projects take time, industry experts say.

One Vegas data center built its own solar fields

South of the Las Vegas Strip, the Switch data center stretches for nearly a square mile (kilometer). It’s the largest data center in Southern Nevada, and it runs entirely on renewable energy, according to Jason Hoffman, chief strategy officer. Unlike other data centers, Switch is licensed to build its own sources of renewable energy at the scale of a utility company. It has built 1 gigawatt of solar energy and is in the process of building more solar fields, he said. The company only uses NV Energy’s grid for the delivery of electricity, and it sources its own power from third-party suppliers.

Inside of the massive buildings, hundreds of servers hum within gigantic soundproof and waterproof chambers. They contain vital information for Switch’s clients, including major banks, streaming services, online shopping websites, casinos and state and local governments.

During the summer heat, when more energy is required to keep the equipment cool, Switch can remove itself from the grid and be self-sufficient, Hoffman said. The data center is designed to require minimal air conditioning during the rest of the year.

Many other utilities and tech companies are turning to gas-fired generation to power data centers, including the controversial xAI data center near Memphis that is using mobile gas turbines strapped to semitrucks.”

Tanager, of the Sierra Club, said multiple proposed data centers in Northern Nevada would use hundreds of low-quality diesel-powered backup generators that will worsen air quality. Data centers have backup generators in case the power goes out and are not used often.

At a recent seven-hour legislative meeting, Nevadans complained to lawmakers about the noise data centers produce, and their worries about how the centers will affect water supply and energy bills. Residents of Boulder City, home of the Hoover Dam, are also opposing a proposed center for similar concerns.

State provides financial incentives for clean power

NV Energy requires data center developers to agree to fund their own infrastructure and energy needs — but it doesn’t have to be renewable.

Nevada designed a volunteer funding model that allows companies to put up money for NV Energy’s clean energy development then count it toward their corporate energy goals. It was the first such model of its kind in the country and led to the development of a geothermal plant in Northern Nevada with Google as a partner.

Environmental groups want the state to make that model mandatory, but still worry it wouldn’t bring enough clean energy to meet demand. They also worry NV Energy could expand its reliance on fossil fuel without the guarantee that all the proposed data centers will be built.

NV Energy will require companies to sign contracts ensuring their commitment to the state before energy is built, Elicegui said. The utility’s philosophy is that “growth is welcomed,” but that companies need to be responsible for power load added on their behalf “whether they show up or not.”

The public utilities commission in Nevada may impose a fine, grant an exemption or take some other action if it determines NV Energy failed to meet the state’s clean energy goals. The utility is set to publish a report with more specifics by the end of the month.

Democratic Assemblymember Howard Watts of Las Vegas said it is “unacceptable” to bring forward projects that will threaten the state’s renewable energy portfolio. Watts wants to see it required that data centers take on the costs of clean energy development. While many companies are already taking those steps, putting those guardrails in statute is necessary, he said.

“Building more gas plants seems like going in the exact opposite direction of what we need to do as a state,” he said, noting the state has “tremendous solar and geothermal energy potential.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

A Long Island man who carried out a series of murders known as the Gilgo Beach killings pleaded guilty to murder charges this week, bringing finality to the long-unsolved case more than 30 years after the first killing.

Rex Heuermann, an architect who led a secret life as a serial killer, pleaded guilty Wednesday to three counts of first-degree murder and four counts of intentional murder in the killings of seven women between 1993 and 2010.

Heuermann, 62, appeared unemotional and did not look back at the packed gallery of victims’ relatives as he entered the pleas and also admitted to killing an eighth woman.

He will be sentenced in June to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Here are some key takeaways from the case:

Heuermann admits to an 8th killing

The discovery of numerous sets of human remains along Long Island’s South Shore beginning in late 2010 set off a search for a potential serial killer that drew global interest. Families of the victims grew doubtful that their killer would ever be caught as the investigation dragged on for more than a decade.

Heuermann was arrested in 2023 after a DNA match.

He admitted Wednesday that he strangled eight female victims and dismembered some of them before dumping their bodies along remote stretches of New York coastline. Many of his victims were sex workers.

Heuermann admitted that he killed Karen Vergata in 1996, although he hasn’t been charged in her death.

Remains of six victims — Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Costello, Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor and Megan Waterman — were found along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach. The remains of another, Sandra Costilla, were found more than 60 miles (100 kilometers) away in the Hamptons. Vergata’s remains were found on Fire Island, more than 20 miles (32 kilometers) west, in 1996, and then near Gilgo Beach in 2011.

DNA lifted from discarded pizza crust

Detectives identified Heuermann as a suspect in 2022 using a vehicle registration database to connect him to a pickup truck that a witness had reported seeing when one of the victims disappeared in 2010.

Police pulled cellphone data that showed Heuermann was in contact with some victims just before they disappeared, investigators said. His internet search history also showed a keen interest in the Gilgo Beach killings.

A surveillance team tailed him in Manhattan, where he worked, and watched as he discarded a box of partially eaten pizza crusts into a sidewalk garbage can. They rushed to grab the box and sent it to the crime lab, which matched the DNA from a hair found on burlap used to restrain one of the victims.

Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney described Wednesday how investigators worked to keep the probe quiet so as not to let Heuermann know they were onto him. “We wanted the one person who mattered, the murderer, to think it’s business as usual,” Tierney said.

As part of his guilty plea, Heuermann agreed to cooperate fully with the FBI’s behavioral analysis unit to help catch other serial killers.

Victims’ families express relief

Several family members of the victims were present in court Wednesday, and some wept as Heuermann detailed the murders.

Among them was Taylor’s mother, Elizabeth Baczkiel. Her 20-year-old daughter was living in Manhattan when she went missing in 2003. Taylor’s remains were discovered later that year, 45 miles (72 kilometers) east of Gilgo Beach in Manorville.

“I am glad that this is over as far as him pleading guilty,” Baczkiel said. “It took a big chunk of stress off of me and my family.”

Melissa Cann, the sister of victim Brainard-Barnes, said she was grateful to finally get justice for her sister, whose body was found in 2010.

“This has been a long journey of hope — hope that one day we would stand here and say her name with justice beside it,” Cann said at a news conference after the hearing. “Today, that long, painful journey brings us to this moment.”

Heuermann’s ex-wife, Asa Ellerup, and their daughter were also in court as he entered the guilty pleas. Ellerup said her thoughts were with the victims’ families and she asked for privacy for her own family. Ellerup and her daughter, Victoria, had no knowledge of or involvement in the killings, said their lawyer, Robert Macedonio.

___

Associated Press writer Hannah Schoenbaum contributed from Salt Lake City.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Pro-Iran groups have used artificial intelligence to create slick internet memes in English to try to shape the narrative during the war against the U.S. and Israel and foster opposition to it.

Analysts say the memes appear to be coming from groups linked to the government in Tehran and are part of a strategy of leveraging its limited resources to inflict damage on the U.S., even indirectly. That includes how Iran has used attacks and threats to control the flow of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and maintain a stranglehold on the world’s economy. A ceasefire raised hopes Wednesday of halting hostilities, but many issues remained unresolved.

“This is a propaganda war for them,” Neil Lavie-Driver, an AI researcher at the University of Cambridge, said, referring to Iran. “Their goal is to sow enough discontent with the conflict as to eventually force the West to cave in, so it is massively important to them.”

It’s not the first time memes have been used in a conflict, and they have evolved to include AI images in recent years. AI imagery bombarded Ukrainians after the Russian invasion in 2022. Last year, the term “AI slop” became widely used to describe the glut of imperfect images posted online during the Israel-Iran war to try to destroy the country’s nuclear program.

In the conflict that began Feb. 28 with joint U.S.-Israel strikes, the memes have used well-honed cartoons that lambast U.S. officials.

The memes are steeped in American culture

The memes are fluent not just in English but in American culture and trolling. Published on various social platforms, they are racking up millions of views — though it’s not clear how much influence they have had.

They have portrayed U.S. President Donald Trump as old, out of step and internationally isolated. They have referenced bruising on the back of Trump’s right hand that prompted speculation about his health; infighting in Trump’s MAGA base; and U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s fiery confirmation hearing, among other things.

“They’re using popular culture against the No. 1 pop culture country, the United States,” said Nancy Snow, a scholar who has written more than a dozen books on propaganda.

The pro-Iran images circulating online include a series that uses the style of the “Lego” animated movies. In one, an Iranian military commander raps, “You thought you ran the globe, sitting on your throne. Now we turning every base into a bed of stone,” as Trump falls into a bullseye built of “Epstein files,” the U.S. government’s investigative records on disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Analysts believe groups making the memes are cooperating with the government

The animations show levels of sophistication and internet access that indicate ties to government offices, said Mahsa Alimardani, a director of WITNESS, a human-rights group working on AI video evidence.

“If you’re able to have the bandwidth needed to generate content like that and upload it, you are officially or unofficially cooperating with the regime,” she said — pointing to severe restrictions Iran has imposed on the internet as part of a crackdown on nationwide protests earlier this year.

State media has reposted some of the memes, including some from the account behind the “Lego”-style videos, Akhbar Enfejari, which means Explosive News.

Akhbar Enfejari described themselves as Iranians producing and uploading from within Iran in an effort to disrupt decades-long dominance of Western control of the airwaves.

“They’ve long dominated the media landscape and, through that power, imposed narratives on many nations,” the group told The Associated Press on the messaging app Telegram. “But this time, something feels different. This time, we’ve disrupted the game. This time, we’re doing it better.”

After the ceasefire was announced, Akhbar Enfejari posted: “IRAN WON! The way to crush imperialism has been shown to the world. Trump Surrendered.”

In addition to the memes coming from pro-Iran groups, Iranian government accounts have trolled the U.S., including in a post Wednesday from Iran’s Embassy in South Africa that said, “Say hello to the new world superpower,” with a picture of the Iranian flag. Both the U.S. and Iran declared victory after agreeing to a ceasefire.

Analysts say the deep grasp of U.S. politics and culture is the fruit of more old-school methods of propaganda: a decades-long Iranian government program to promote narratives against the U.S. and Israel.

“This meme war comes from institutions that are very aware what the American public is aware of and pop cultural references that can appeal to them,” Alimardani said.

Messaging from the US and Israel

Analysts say the U.S. and Israel do not appear to be engaging in the same kind of campaign — and given the restrictions Iran has put on internet access in the country, getting such messages to ordinary Iranians would be difficult.

Early in the war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a video that used AI to make it seem like he was speaking in Farsi, in which he urged Iranians to overthrow their government. The White House has published a steady stream of memes, but those are aimed at a U.S. audience and feature clips from American TV shows and sports.

The U.S. government-run Voice of America, which for decades beamed news reports to many countries that had no tradition of a free press, does still broadcast in Farsi, though it is has been operating with a skeleton staff since Trump ordered it shut down.

“This world order is really changing overnight and the U.S. is not going to end up necessarily as the state that everybody listens to,” Snow said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

President Donald Trump’s threats to wipe out Iran, “a whole civilization,” ended the restraint that Democrats have mostly practiced when it comes to questions of removing him from office in his second term.

By the dozens, Democrats came out to say that Trump should no longer serve in the White House, either through the impeachment process or the 25th Amendment, which allows the vice president and the Cabinet to declare that a president is no longer able to perform the job.

While Trump eventually pulled back on his threat and agreed to a two-week ceasefire with Iran, the episode highlighted the growing demands for Democrats to oppose the Republican president in the strongest possible terms. Calls about Iran flooded into congressional offices, lawmakers said.

The breadth of the Democratic pushback underscored the gravity of Trump’s apocalyptic threat to a country of more than 91 million people. It also served to raise the domestic political stakes for a conflict that is far from over. The Trump administration faces mounting calls to testify about the war and justify its demands for hundreds of billions of dollars in new military spending.

“A commander in chief who is truly in control would have never gotten into this colossal mess to begin with,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer at a news conference Wednesday in New York.

In the near term, both Schumer and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries are shying away from impeachment, instead pushing Republicans to join them and pass legislation that would force Trump to get congressional approval before carrying out any more attacks on Iran. Any attempt to remove Trump from office is doomed to fail so long as Republicans control Congress.

House Democrats plan to use a brief session of the House on Thursday to call for the quick passage of the war powers legislation, but Republican leadership is expected to quash that attempt.

“We will continue to unleash maximum pressure on Republicans to put patriotic duty over party loyalty and join Democrats in stopping the madness,” Jeffries said in a letter to Democratic members Wednesday.

At the White House, press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended Trump’s rhetoric as effective.

“I think it was a very, very strong threat from the president of the United States that led the Iranian regime to cave to their knees and ask for a ceasefire and agree to reopening the Strait of Hormuz,” she said at a White House press briefing.

Callers jam congressional phone lines

As they press their case against Trump, Democrats are responding to the worries of their own base and constituents. Congressional offices were bombarded with phone calls and emails this week, largely from people alarmed by the president’s rhetoric.

In the House, the office of Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., received a “ton” of calls and emails Monday and Tuesday, mostly about Iran but also about impeaching Trump or removing him by deploying the 25th Amendment, said one aide who was not authorized to discuss the internal office situation and insisted on anonymity.

When her district staffers in the state office took a break Tuesday, they returned to 75 voicemails on Iran an hour later, the aide said.

“My office phones have not stopped ringing,” said Rep. Maxine Dexter, D-Ore., at a press conference in Portland, urging House colleagues to immediately return to Washington.

Dexter’s office received more calls on Tuesday, 257, than it has ever received in a 24-hour period since the first-term lawmaker’s team began keeping track.

The groundswell appeared to be organic, rather than an orchestrated campaign to pressure lawmakers to act.

While outside groups have been circulating some discussion points, including the legal details around invoking the 25th Amendment, there has not been an organized effort to flood the congressional offices with a strategic message, said one Democratic strategist familiar with the situation who insisted on anonymity to discuss the private conversations.

It was simply the “horror” of what Trump was saying, the strategist said, and the scale of the president’s threats, that appeared to have sparked the mobilization.

On the political right, several prominent figures including former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, also suggested Trump should be removed from office through the 25th Amendment.

Will Democrats make an impeachment push?

Democrats twice impeached Trump for actions taken during his first term, but he was acquitted each time. They have tried to avoid such debates for the last 16 months as they tried to center their midterm message on kitchen table issues rather than opposing a president who narrowly won the popular vote.

Then came Trump’s threat on Tuesday morning to wipe out “an entire civilization.”

“Whether by his Cabinet or Congress, the President must be removed from office. We are playing with the brink,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York on social media.

Such calls for Trump’s removal didn’t stop after his announcement of a ceasefire.

“Temporary ceasefire or not, Trump already committed an impeachable offense. Congress needs to get back to work and remove him from office before he does more damage to our country and the world,” said Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, a veteran of the war in Iraq.

Republicans have the majority in the House and have easily fended off two previous efforts to impeach Trump in his second term. They may have to do so again in the weeks to come as Rep. John Larson, D-Conn., has already filed a resolution with a wide-ranging 13 articles of impeachment against Trump.

In June, 128 Democrats joined with every Republican to table a resolution sponsored by Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, to impeach Trump on a charge of abuse of power after he launched military strikes on Iran without first seeking authorization from Congress.

A second impeachment resolution from Green in December generated a 237-140 vote, but there were signs of a shift, with 47 Democrats voting “present” rather than opposing the resolution outright. Jeffries and others in leadership said that the proper groundwork for impeachment had not been prepared and that they would vote “present” while keeping their focus on making life more affordable for Americans.

It’s unclear how Jeffries will handle the demands for another impeachment push. But Democratic leaders are holding a call on Friday with members of the House Judiciary Committee that is focused on “Trump administration accountability and the 25th Amendment.”

Other Democrats have also focused attention on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and said he should also be removed from office. Hegseth has defended U.S. actions against Iran and has said that American and Israeli forces had achieved a “capital V military victory” and that the Iranian military no longer posed a significant threat to U.S. forces or the region.

Democratic Rep. Yassamin Ansari, whose family fled to the U.S. from Iran, was among those calling for Hegseth’s ouster. She said that she was “momentarily relieved” that civilians in Iran would not face Trump’s threat of widespread destruction.

“We need urgent action for the sake of our national security and the safety and security of the rest of the world,” Ansari said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

To end the war with the United States and Israel, Iran is demanding the right to collect tolls in the Strait of Hormuz as a precondition for reopening the waterway vital to world oil supplies.

Yet collecting tolls in the strait would violate a basic and enduring principle of international maritime trade: freedom of peaceful navigation. It’s an ancient idea that was codified by the United Nations’ Convention on the Law of the Sea, which took effect in 1994.

Opening the strait would save the global economy from supply constraints that have pushed energy and fertilizer prices sharply higher since the war began on Feb. 28. But agreeing to Iranian toll-collecting would cement the Islamic Republic’s control over the strait through which 20% of the world’s oil is shipped — and enrich the country against whom the war was launched.

U.S. President Donald Trump has made reopening the strait a priority. But the White House said Wednesday he is opposed to tolls, and analysts say the Gulf’s oil producers are, too.

Analysts say they have seen no change in traffic through the strait since the ceasefire was announced, despite claims to the contrary from the White House.

Here are things to know about Iran’s proposal and the international law with which it collides.

Iran had already begun charging vessels passing through the strait

After the U.S. and Israel launched the war, Iran immediately exercised leverage by blocking the strait with attacks — and threats of attacks — on ships, making passage too risky. The disruption caused immediate shortages in some Asian countries highly dependent on the region’s energy, sent gasoline prices higher in the U.S. and Europe, and threatened global economic growth.

Iran then began vetting vessels in a murky scheme dubbed the “tollbooth” by shipping analysts.

The ships were told to divert from the middle of the strait in Iranian and Omani territorial waters and instead detour around Iran’s Larak Island. After delivering detailed information on crew and cargo to intermediaries of Iran’s paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, some vessels were allowed to proceed — and at least two reportedly paid the equivalent of $2 million in Chinese yuan.

The Law of the Sea Treaty guarantees passage to peaceful ships

Iran’s 10-point proposal for ending the war includes a provision allowing it and Oman to charge ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, according to a regional official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss negotiations they were directly involved in. The official said Iran would use the money it raised for reconstruction.

But the Law of the Sea Treaty’s Article 17 guarantees a right of “innocent passage” for ships that do not threaten the coastal states. So allowing Iran and Oman to start charging for passage through the strait would set a dangerous precedent, experts said.

Freedom of navigation in the world’s seas has been a fundamental right for hundreds of years, founded on “the idea that the sea doesn’t belong to anyone,” said Philippe Delebecque, a professor and maritime law expert at Paris’ Sorbonne University.

“Freedom of navigation has always been recognized, including specifically in straits,” he said. The concern is if the Strait of Hormuz could be closed, then why not the Strait of Gibraltar between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, or the Strait of Malacca off Indonesia?

He called that scenario “the end of an international society.”

Neither Iran or the U.S. have ratified the Law of the Sea Treaty

While 172 countries have ratified the U.N. convention, Iran and the United States are among those that have not.

“Not having ratified the convention doesn’t give (Iran) total freedom of action in the Strait of Hormuz,” said Julien Raynaut, who heads the French Association of Maritime Law, a trade group. “It remains subject to international law and notably this customary right of passage.”

An Iranian tollbooth could lead China to conclude that it could restrict movement in the Taiwan Strait, Raynaut said.

Oman and Iran may face diplomatic pushback to adhere to the convention, said Constantinos Yiallourides, a senior research fellow at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law.

Free passage “is in the interest of everyone,” he said. “We all want to get the best products at the best prices.”

The global economy needs the Strait of Hormuz reopened

Some economists say that, from a strictly financial standpoint, the world would barely notice the additional costs from any tolling in the Strait of Hormuz.

For example, a $2 million toll on a large tanker carrying 2 million barrels of oil amounts to $1-per-barrel increase on that ship’s oil.

“The burden does not fall on global consumers, but overwhelmingly on the Gulf states that supply the oil that transits the strait,” wrote the Bruegel think tank in Brussels. It said the world economy would instantly benefit from the reopening the strait — returning 20% of the world’s oil to the market and sending prices lower.

Plus, by lowering oil prices, it would eliminate a multibillion-dollar geopolitical windfall for Russia, whose oil is suddenly in greater demand despite sanctions.

The international price of oil has jumped from around $72 per barrel before the war to as high as $118 on March 31. On Monday, Brent crude, the international benchmark, traded at $94.55, down sharply after news of the two-week ceasefire.

The Gulf’s oil producers are leery of Iranian control of the strait

Saudi Arabia, the biggest Gulf producer, welcomed the ceasefire deal between the U.S. and Iran but called for keeping the Strait of Hormuz open “without any restrictions.”

Gulf countries have had to shut down some 12 million barrels per day in crude production because there’s no viable way around the strait for much of their oil. The two pipelines that bypass it aren’t big enough to make up for all of the lost oil, and building new pipelines would take years.

Given the downsides of the tollbooth proposal, the Gulf states would only agree to it if all other options looked much worse, Bruegel said.

A major objection in the West is that the toll would likely benefit the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is responsible for Iran’s ballistic missile program, suppresses domestic political opposition, and is listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the European Union.

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Leicester reported from Paris. Michael Biesecker in Washington contributed to this report.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Good morning. Anthropic’s recent study mapping AI’s reach across hundreds of occupations continues to raise fresh concerns about the future of white-collar work.

Economists Maxim Massenkoff and Peter McCrory analyzed millions of real Claude conversations, matched them against 800 occupations, and found a striking gap: AI can theoretically automate 94% of computer and math tasks but currently handles only about 33%. In business, finance, legal, and office administration roles, the story is similar. Financial and investment analysts are specifically identified as one of the most “exposed” roles.

For more insight on what’s behind the research, my Fortune colleague Matt Heimer sat down with McCrory, head of economics at Anthropic. He makes the case that exposure data could help corporate leaders, policymakers, and individual professionals adapt their workflows and careers to AI and perhaps help head off severe job-market disruptions before they become major social problems.

What makes this study different from the usual AI-disruption commentary is the data source—actual Claude usage data from the workplace. It sheds light on what share of the work in a given occupation AI systems can already do, and how much more they could theoretically take on.

For example, for business and finance occupations broadly, the theoretical exposure (tasks AI could speed up by more than 50%) is very high, but actual observed usage still lags behind. That means the potential disruption hasn’t been fully realized. That gap, however, is expected to close as capabilities improve and adoption deepens.

In McCrory’s conversation with Heimer, he goes into depth on the implications of the study findings, including, as an economist himself, what the degree of current exposure versus theoretical exposure looks like for his own work. You can read the interview here.

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

A ceasefire deal to pause the war in Iran appeared to hang by a thread Wednesday after the Islamic Republic closed the Strait of Hormuz again in response to Israeli attacks in Lebanon. The White House demanded that the channel be reopened and sought to keep peace talks on track.

The U.S. and Iran both claimed victory after reaching the agreement, and world leaders expressed relief, even as more drones and missiles hit Iran and Gulf Arab countries. At the same time, Israel intensified its attacks on the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon, hitting commercial and residential areas in Beirut. At least 182 people were killed Wednesday in the deadliest day of fighting there.

The fresh violence threatened to scuttle what U.S. Vice President JD Vance called a “fragile” deal.

Parliament speaker accuses US of breaking Iran’s conditions

The Iranian parliament speaker said planned talks were “unreasonable” because Washington broke three of Tehran’s 10 conditions for an end to the fighting. In a social media post, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf objected to Israeli attacks on Hezbollah, an alleged drone incursion into Iranian airspace after the ceasefire took effect and U.S. refusal to accept any Iranian enrichment capabilities in a final agreement.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi insisted that an end to the war in Lebanon was part of the ceasefire deal, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump said the truce did not cover Lebanon. When the deal was announced, Pakistan’s prime minister, whose country served as a mediator, said in a social media post that it applied to “everywhere including Lebanon and elsewhere.”

Lebanon’s health ministry said Israeli strikes killed 182 people on Wednesday, the highest single-day death toll in the Israel-Hezbollah war.

“The world sees the massacres in Lebanon,” Iran’s Araghchi said in a post on X. “The ball is in the U.S. court, and the world is watching whether it will act on its commitments.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, reported in Iranian state media, was “completely unacceptable.” She repeated Trump’s “expectation and demand” that the channel be reopened.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said American and Israeli forces had achieved a “capital V military victory” and that the Iranian military no longer posed a significant threat to U.S. forces or the region. The Iranian military said the country forced Israel and the U.S. to accept its “proposed conditions and surrender.”

Much about the agreement was unclear as the sides presented vastly different visions of the terms.

Iran said the deal would allow it to formalize its new practice of charging ships passing through the strait, a crucial transit lane for oil. The White House said Trump is opposed to tolls for ship passage through the strait.

Only 11 vessels moved through the strait Wednesday, roughly the same as in prior days, according to Windward, a maritime intelligence firm. Iran was requiring shippers to pay tolls of up to $1 a barrel for outbound oil, it said. The largest supertankers carry up to 3 million barrels of crude.

The fate of Iran’s missile and nuclear programs — the elimination of which were major objectives for the U.S. and Israel in going to war — also remained unclear. Trump said the U.S. would work with Iran to remove buried enriched uranium, though Iran did not confirm that.

White House looks ahead to peace talks

Trump initially said Iran proposed a “workable” plan that could help end the war that the U.S. and Israel launched on Feb. 28. But when a version in Farsi emerged indicating Iran would be allowed to continue enriching uranium — key to building a nuclear weapon — Trump called it fraudulent.

Leavitt said a plan that Iran presented Tuesday could “align with our own” proposal for peace.

The White House said Vance would lead American negotiators at upcoming peace talks, which could begin in Pakistan as soon as Friday.

Iran’s demands for ending the war include a withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from the region, the lifting of sanctions and the release of its frozen assets.

Meanwhile, Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said Israel will continue to “utilize every operational opportunity” to strike Hezbollah. The Israeli military said it struck more than 100 targets within 10 minutes Wednesday across Lebanon, the largest wave of strikes since March 1.

Arab League chief Ahmed Aboul Gheit accused Israel of “persistently seeking to sabotage” the ceasefire deal.

Hezbollah has not confirmed if it will abide by the ceasefire, though the group has said it was open to giving mediators a chance to secure an agreement.

Early on Thursday Hezbollah said it had fired rockets at northern Israel and would continue doing so “until the Israeli-American aggression against our country and our people ceases.”

Iran and Oman could collect shipping fees in Strait of Hormuz

Iranian attacks and threats deterred many commercial ships from using the strait, through which 20% of all traded oil and natural gas passes in peacetime. That roiled the world economy and raised the pressure on Trump both at home and abroad to find a way out of the standoff.

The ceasefire may formalize a system of charging fees in the strait that Iran instituted — and give it a new source of revenue.

That would upend decades of precedent treating the strait as an international waterway that was free to transit. Such a shift would likely be unacceptable to the Gulf Arab states, which also need to rebuild after repeated Iranian attacks targeting their oil fields.

Iran’s nuclear and missile threats survive

U.S.-Israeli strikes have battered Iran and its leadership, but they have not eliminated the threats posed by Tehran’s nuclear program, its ballistic missiles or its support for regional proxies, like Hezbollah. The U.S. and Israel said addressing those threats was a key justification for going to war.

Trump said the U.S. would work with Iran to “dig up and remove” enriched uranium. There was no confirmation from Iran.

Hegseth told a Pentagon briefing Wednesday that the U.S. would do “something like” last June’s joint strikes with Israel on Iranian nuclear sites if Iran refuses to surrender its enriched uranium voluntarily.

Netanyahu warned in a televised address that Israel was “ready to return to fighting at any time. Our finger is on the trigger.”

Tehran has insisted for years that its nuclear program was peaceful, although it has enriched uranium up to 60% purity, a short, technical step from weapons-grade levels.

Airstrikes reported despite ceasefire announcement

Shortly after the ceasefire announcement, Bahrain, Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates all issued warnings about incoming missiles from Iran. That fire stopped for a time, then hostilities appeared to restart.

An oil refinery on Iran’s Lavan Island came under attack, according to Iranian state television. A short time later, the UAE’s air defenses fired at an incoming Iranian missile barrage.

More than 1,900 people had been killed in Iran as of late March, but the government has not updated the toll for days.

In Lebanon, more than 1,700 people have been killed, and 1 million people have been displaced. Twelve Israeli soldiers have died.

In Gulf Arab states and the occupied West Bank, more than two dozen people have died, while 23 have been reported dead in Israel, and 13 U.S. service members have been killed.

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Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Magdy from Cairo and Metz from Ramallah, West Bank. Associated Press writers Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations, Natalie Melzer in Jerusalem, Abby Sewell and Sarah El Deeb in Beirut, Mike Catalini in Trenton, N.J., and Michelle L. Price, Aamer Madhani, Zeke Miller, Michael Biesecker and Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

A tentative ceasefire in the Iran war staggered Thursday under the weight of Israel’s intense bombardment of Beirut, Tehran’s continued chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, and uncertainty over whether negotiators can find common ground on a range of other differences.

Hours after the ceasefire was announced — amid disagreement over whether it included a pause in fighting between Israel and Hezbollah — Israel pounded Beirut with airstrikes, resulting in the deadliest day in the country since the war began on Feb. 28.

Iran and the U.S. — which both declared victory in the wake of the ceasefire announcement — appeared to try to pressure each other. Semiofficial news agencies in Iran suggested forces have mined the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for the world’s oil whose closure has proved Tehran’s greatest strategic advantage in the conflict. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, warned that U.S. forces would hit Iran even harder than before if it did not fulfill the agreement.

But what that agreement is remains in deep dispute. Beyond whether Lebanon is included, there are questions over what will happen to Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, how and when normal traffic will resume through the strait, and what happens to Iran’s ability to launch missile attacks in the future. The U.S. and Iran are due to meet in Pakistan for talks this weekend.

Israeli strikes on Lebanon threaten the ceasefire

Lebanon’s health ministry said at least 203 people were killed and more than 1,000 wounded in widespread Israeli strikes in central Beirut and other areas of Lebanon on Wednesday, when Israel intensified its attacks on the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group, which joined the war in support of Tehran.

The death toll was the highest for a single day in Lebanon during more than five weeks of renewed war between Israel and Hezbollah.

Iran said Israel was violating the ceasefire agreement, which it has said included a stop to the fighting in Lebanon. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump have said it does not.

Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf warned Thursday that continued Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon would bring “explicit costs and STRONG responses” in a message on X.

“Ceasefire violations carry explicit and STRONG responses,” he wrote. “Extinguish the fire immediately.”

Netanyahu said in a social media post that Israel will continue striking Hezbollah “with force, precision and determination.”

Qalibaf has been discussed as a possible negotiator who could meet U.S. Vice President JD Vance this weekend in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan.

Israel said Thursday it killed Ali Yusuf Harshi, an aide to Hezbollah leader Naim Kassem. Hezbollah did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A New York-based think tank warned the ceasefire “ hovers on the verge of collapse.”

“Even if Lebanon was formally outside the deal, the scale of Israel’s strikes was likely to be viewed as escalatory,” the Soufan Center wrote in an analysis. “Israel’s strikes can be understood both as an effort to drive a wedge between Iran and its proxies and as a response to being allegedly sidelined in the original ceasefire discussions.”

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported Thursday that an Israeli strike overnight had killed at least seven people in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military did not immediately acknowledge the strike.

Oil prices remain high amid uncertainty over the Strait of Hormuz

Semiofficial news agencies in Iran published a chart Thursday suggesting the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard put sea mines into the strait during the war — a message that may be intended to pressure the U.S.

The chart, released by the ISNA news agency and Tasnim, showed a large circle marked “danger zone” in Farsi over the route ships take through the strait, through which 20% of all traded oil and natural gas once passed.

Only a trickle of ships have passed through the strait since the war began after several were attacked and Iran threatened to hit any that it deemed connected to the U.S. or Israel. Ships appeared to continue to avoid the strait even after the ceasefire: Data from Kpler showed only four vessels with their trackers on passed through.

The chart suggested ships travel through waters closer to Iran’s mainland near Larak Island, a route that some ships were observed taking during the war. It was dated from Feb. 28 until April 9, and it was unclear if the Guard had cleared any mines since then.

Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Saeed Khatibzadeh, told the BBC on Thursday that his country will allow ships to pass through the strait in accordance with “international norms and international law” once the United States ends its “aggression” in the Middle East and Israel stops attacking Lebanon.

The head of the United Arab Emirates’ major oil company, Sultan al-Jaber, said some 230 ships loaded with oil were waiting to get through the strait and must be allowed “to navigate this corridor without condition.”

The strait’s de facto closure has caused oil prices to skyrocket — raising, in turn, the cost of gasoline, food and other basics far beyond the Middle East. Oil prices fell on news of the ceasefire Wednesday, but began to climb as uncertainty over the deal grew.

The spot price of Brent crude, the international standard, was around $98 Thursday — up about 35% since the war began.

Trump warned that U.S. warships and troops will remain around Iran “until such time as the REAL AGREEMENT reached is fully complied with.”

Peace talks expected in Pakistan

The White House said that Vice President JD Vance would lead the U.S. delegation for talks in Islamabad aimed at ending the war, which are set to start Saturday.

There appear to be many points of disagreement to address, including whether Iran will be allowed to formalize a system of charging ships to use the strait that it has instituted. That would upend decades of precedent treating it as an international waterway that was free to transit.

The fate of Iran’s missile and nuclear programs — the elimination of which were major objectives for the U.S. and Israel in going to war — also remained unclear. The U.S. insists Iran must never be able to build nuclear weapons and wants to remove Tehran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which could be used to build them, should it choose to pursue the bomb. Iran insists its program is peaceful.

Trump said Wednesday that the U.S. would work with Iran to remove the buried uranium, though Iran did not confirm that. In one version of the deal that Iran published, it said it would be allowed to continue enrichment.

The chief of Iran’s nuclear agency said protecting Tehran’s right to enrich uranium is “necessary” for any ceasefire talks with the United States.

Mohammad Eslami, who leads the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, made the remarks Thursday to journalists, including one from The Associated Press, during commemorations for the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran.

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Becatoros reported from Athens, Greece. Associated Press writers Chan Ho-him in Hong Kong, Zeke Miller in Washington and Kareem Chehayeb and Hussein Malla in Beirut contributed to this report.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Oil prices skipped higher early Thursday and Wall Street veered toward modest losses on skepticism over a fragile and muddled ceasefire deal between the U.S. and Iran.

Futures for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq each slid 0.4% before the opening bell, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 0.5%.

The declines came one day after all three indices gained between 2.5% and 3% following U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement of a two-week ceasefire with Iran late Tuesday.

Doubts about the durability of the ceasefire arose just hours after the announcement as a round of intense Israeli strikes on Lebanon killed and injured hundreds. Iran again closed the Strait of Hormuz in response to the attacks in Lebanon.

That sent oil prices climbing back toward $100 a barrel Thursday, reversing an earlier plunge on optimism over the temporary ceasefire agreement. Benchmark U.S. crude was 5.4% higher on Thursday at $99.44 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 4.1% to $98.70 per barrel.

Uncertainties over global energy supply remained. The Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for energy transport where a fifth of the world’s oil typically passes, was largely closed even though the U.S. repeatedly demanded that it must be reopened.

“(Oil) prices rebounded as fighting in the Middle East continued, and the ceasefire outlook deteriorated, keeping uncertainty around the Strait of Hormuz firmly in focus,” ING Bank analysts Ewa Manthey and Warren Patterson wrote in a note Thursday.

Talks to pursue a permanent end to the war could start in Pakistan on Saturday, and Vice President JD Vance is expected to lead the U.S. delegation. Trump posted on his Truth Social media platform that U.S. military will remain in the region “until such time as the REAL AGREEMENT reached is fully complied with.”

Elsewhere, at midday in Europe, Britain’s FTSE 100 fell 0.3%, France’s CAC 40 dropped 0.9% and Germany’s DAX lost 1.3%.

Asian shares closed mostly lower. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 dropped 0.7% to 55,895.32, while South Korea’s Kospi lost 1.6% to 5,778.01. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 0.5% to 25,752.40. The Shanghai Composite index was down 0.7% to 3,966.17. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 edged up 0.2% to 8,973.20. Taiwan’s Taiex was 0.3% higher, while India’s Sensex dropped 1.6%.

The U.S. dollar rose to 158.98 Japanese yen from 158.57 yen. The euro was trading at $1.1681, up from $1.1663.

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Associated Press writer Aniruddha Ghosal contributed to this report.

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When President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, he was eager to pick up where he left off by strengthening ties with Europe’s right wing. But now many of those same factions are expressing open revulsion at the Iran war, rupturing relationships that were supposed to usher in a new international order.

Although Vice President JD Vance campaigned for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán this week, such a display has become the exception rather than the rule among conservatives and far-right leaders in Europe.

Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni refused to let the United States use an air base in Sicily to launch attacks on Iran. France’s National Rally leader Marine Le Pen described his war goals as “erratic.” And the head of Germany’s Alternative for Germany party called for American troops to leave their bases in the country.

Even with a fragile ceasefire in place with Iran, Trump’s support for Orbán may not work out for the autocratic Hungarian leader, who faces a tough election this weekend. He’s long been an icon for the global right and many American conservatives who have hoped the Trump administration could replicate the Hungarian leader’s effort to choke off immigration and restructure government to ensure his Fidesz party stays in power.

That longstanding connection could insulate Orbán from some of the anti-Trump blowback rattling the rest of Europe, but that’s not guaranteed, said Charles Kupchan, a professor of international relations at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“Getting a blessing from Donald Trump is now a mixed blessing,” he said.

Iran adds to friction over Greenland

The backlash over the war follows European broad revulsion at Trump’s threats earlier this year against NATO ally Denmark over his demand that the country give Greenland to the United States.

Trump tied the two issues together on Wednesday, complaining that NATO didn’t help more in recent weeks.

“NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON’T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN,” he wrote on social media. “REMEMBER GREENLAND, THAT BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE!!!”

Daniel Baer, a former ambassador and State Department official in President Barack Obama’s administration, said the latest round of tension with Europe’s far right shows the limits of Trump’s hope of helping nationalist leaders worldwide.

“Building some sort of international coalition around national chauvinism is very difficult,” said Baer, now with the Carnegie Endowment for Peace. “It’s clear the majority of people in these countries, if not anti-American, have turned anti-Trump.”

Orbán has stood out for not shifting with the anti-Trump political tide in Europe.

In an interview with conservative British broadcaster GB News last month, Orbán argued that when it came to the war with Iran, “the question is whether (Trump) has started a war or a peace.”

“It hasn’t (been) decided yet, historians will make a decision on that,” Orbán said. “I think we need some time to understand whether we are moving to the peace by these strikes, or just the opposite. It’s too early to say.”

Orbán’s caution toward raising any critical word toward Trump goes beyond shared ideology. The Hungarian leader has for years sought to convince voters that his close ties with Trump — as well as with other global figures such as Russian President Vladimir Putin — make him uniquely suited to represent Hungary’s interests abroad.

Consequently, he has played up Trump’s praise of him to his base, and campaigned for reelection by assuring Hungarians that his alliance with Trump’s administration is a guarantee of security and prosperity.

Orbán risks backlash with Trump ties

Orbán reveled in the attention from Vance this week. The vice president slammed Orbán critics in the European Union for what he called “foreign interference” in the election, even as he stumped for the Hungarian leader.

On Wednesday, Vance briefly discussed what he called a “fragile truce” in the Iran war during an appearance at an elite higher education institution in Hungary, which has received generous funding from Orbán’s government and is run by the prime minister’s political director.

Vance praised the school for being “an institution that tries to build up the foundations of Western civilization.” The Trump administration has tried to exert more influence over elite universities in the U.S., echoing Orbán’s agenda in Hungary.

Some analysts are unconvinced of Orbán’s strategy, noting that perceptions of the current U.S. administration have been turning more negative even in Hungary.

“Vance’s visit could have the opposite effect on Orbán’s popularity than the one intended,” said Mario Bikarsku, senior Europe analyst at risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft.

Kupchan said most European far-right parties have established political staying power independent of any American influence, and may not have an incentive to go along with Trump’s agenda.

“Trump’s effort to create a transnational movement of far-right populists may affect the margins, but the main reason you’re seeing Reform U.K. and AfD and National Rally and other far-right parties prosper has little to do with Trump and more to do with national factors,” he said.

Part of that is a global backlash against any party in power. In Europe, that’s mainly benefited the out-of-power far right. But in Hungary, that’s put Orbán’s future in jeopardy — he’s been in power for 16 years.

“We’re living in an age,” Kupchan said, “where being an incumbent sucks.”

___

Riccardi reported from Denver.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

March’s persistent unseasonable heat was so intense that the continental United States registered its most abnormally hot month in 132 years of records, according to federal weather data. And the next year or so looks to turn the dial up on global warmth even more, as some forecasts predict a brewing El Niño will reach superstrength.

Not only was it the hottest March on record for the U.S., but the amount it was above normal beat any other month in history for the Lower 48 states. March’s average temperature of 50.85 degrees Fahrenheit (10.47 degrees Celsius) was 9.35 F (5.19 C) above the 20th century normal for March. That easily passed the old record of 8.9 F (4.9 C) set in March 2012 as the most abnormally hot month on record — regardless of the month of the year — according to records released Wednesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The average maximum temperature for March was especially high at 11.4 F (6.3 C) above the 20th century average and was almost a degree warmer than the average daytime high for April, NOAA said.

Six of the nation’s top 10 most abnormally hot months have been in the last 10 years. This February, which was 6.57 F (3.65 C) above 20th century normal, was the tenth highest above normal.

“What we experienced in March across the United States was unprecedented,” said Shel Winkley, a meteorologist with Climate Central, a nonprofit science research group.

“One reason that’s so concerning is just the sheer volume of records, all-time records that were set and broken during that time period,” Winkley said. “But also this is coming on the heels of what was the worst snow year. And the hottest winter of record.”

Records keep being broken

April 2025 to March 2026 was the warmest 12-month period on record in the continental United States, according to NOAA.

On March 20 and 21, about one-third of the nation felt unseasonable heat that would have been virtually impossible without human-caused climate change, Climate Central calculated.

More than 19,800 daily temperature records were broken for heat across the country, according to meteorologist Guy Walton, who analyzes NOAA data. More than 2,000 places set monthly records for heat — harder to break than daily records — Walton calculated. That’s more March heat records set just last month than in entire decades in the past.

All those broken records “tells us that climate change is kicking our butts,” said meteorologist Jeff Masters of Yale Climate Connections.

“January through March period was the driest on record for the contiguous U.S. So not only was it hot, it was record dry as well,” Masters said. “And that’s a bad combination for water availability, for agriculture, for river levels, for navigation.”

Here comes a whopping El Nino

The European climate and weather service Copernicus and NOAA are both forecasting a “super” strong El Niño to form in a few months and intensify into the winter. Meteorologists expect that to increase already warm temperatures across the globe, likely pushing past the hottest year mark set by 2024.

An El Niño is a natural temporary and cyclical warming of parts of the central Pacific that alters weather across the planet. An El Niño is formed when a specific part of the ocean is 0.5 degrees Celsius (0.9 F) warmer than normal. It is considered moderate at 1 degree Celsius and strong at 1.5 degrees Celsius. Both NOAA and the Europeans are forecasting this one to be well above 2 degrees Celsius into an area that is informally called super sized and perhaps rivaling records set in 2015 and 2016.

An El Niño releases heat stored in the upper ocean into the air, which causes global temperatures to rise, but with a few months lag time, said Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Gensini.

“A strong El Niño could plausibly push global temperatures to new record levels in late 2026 and into 2027,” Gensini said.

El Nino could alter weather patterns for years

Super-sized El Niños often trigger a “climate regime shift,” which pushes normal conditions into a different pattern for years or decades, according to a study last December in the journal Nature Communications. The study said after the 2015-2016 El Niño, the Gulf of Mexico jumped to a new sustained level of warmth that may have contributed to stronger hurricanes along the Gulf Coast in the years after.

Growing research seems to indicate that a warming world from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas could be making El Niños stronger, but climate scientists said that’s not quite a consensus yet.

“Global warming is supercharging El Niños and the atmospheric warming they drive,” said University of Michigan environment dean and climate scientist Jonathan Overpeck. “We saw this in 2016 and more recently in 2023. We’re likely to see another jump in global temperatures if a strong El Niño develops later this year as being predicted.”

El Niños tend to tamp down hurricane activity in the Atlantic, but ramp it up in the Pacific and could help ease the southwestern drought, Masters said.

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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

• Masters winners can earn millions of dollars for placing at the iconic golf tournament. That’s much more than the original $1,500 prize for the winner of the inaugural tournament in 1934. Some professional golfers claim, though, that the money isn’t the reason they’re playing in the tournament.

There are few enduring traditions of the Masters tournament, one of the four main championships in men’s professional golf: the iconic green blazer awarded to the winner, caddies’ white jumpsuits, the Champions Dinner, the Par 3 Contest, and egg salad sandwiches. In fact, sports broadcaster Jim Nantz coined the Masters as a “tradition unlike any other.”

But one major factor that’s changed over the 92 years since the inaugural tournament is the payout for the winner.

The original purse, explained

Back in 1934, Masters founders Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts set up a $5,000 “purse,” or pool of money, for tournament participants, with $1,500 going to the winner and descending incremental amounts going to other place finishers, according to Today’s Golfer. 

The $1,500 prize that went to inaugural winner Horton Smith would be worth more than $37,000 in purchasing power today, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ CPI Inflation Calculator. Although the official purse and winner’s payout for the 2026 Masters tournament hasn’t yet been finalized, Rory McIlroy’s payout in 2025 was a record-breaking $4.2 million. That’s over 113 times more than Smith’s payout in 1934. As of June 2025, McIlroy’s net worth was estimated at about $84 million, according to Forbes.

How prize money has grown over 92 years

The total purse in 2025 was $21 million, so the top 50 players or so left with a pay day. The top four players at last year’s Masters went home with more than $1 million, and places one through 25 earned well over $100,000. That was the largest purse in Masters history, and the pool of money has always stayed the same or increased, Today’s Golfer reports. 

McIlroy told Sky Sports in 2022 that anyone who thinks golfers are underpaid “need their heads examined.”

“I play golf for a living. There’s nurses and teachers and they’re the ones that should be getting paid a lot more,” McIlroy said. “So, I just wouldn’t feel right at all saying that I get underpaid for playing a game for a living.”

Looking back, iconic golfer Arnold Palmer—namesake for the popular lemonade-iced-tea drink—was the first Masters winner to go home with a five-figure payout in 1958, according to Golfweek. By 1984, the winner’s payout reached six figures, but it wasn’t until 2001 that a Masters winner earned more than $1 million from the tournament: that honor went to Tiger Woods.

Although Ben Hogan earned just $3,000 for winning the 1951 Masters and $5,000 for the 1953 tournament, he famously said it was more about the game than the money.

“If the Masters offered no money at all, I would be here trying just as hard,” Hogan said. 

What $1,500 buys you in 2026 (not much)

While $1,500 went much further back in 1934 than it does today, its current monetary equivalent of about $37,000 won’t get people too far. It’s not nearly enough to put a down payment on a typical home, according to Zillow. The average down payment on a house in the U.S. is nearly $80,000, according to Bankrate. That’s 19% of the median sale price in the fourth quarter, which was $414,900.

But the 2025 Masters payout of $4.2 million could afford a player the chance to buy a median-priced home in Los Angeles, which would set them back about $1.1 million, according to Realtor.com. 

The Masters payout for 1934 also wouldn’t be enough to buy a brand-new Tesla; some models start around $50,000. But today’s winner could afford a fleet of new cars—or splurge on an expensive sports car.

The average player on the PGA Tour in the 2021 season earned $1.5 million, according to Sports Illustrated.

A version of this story was originally published on Fortune.com on April 8, 2025.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Every month, Rebecca Michalski takes a deep breath before opening her electric bill. She lives on a fixed income, and heating her small house this winter has been staggering: Her February charge was $940.08 — more than her check.

It makes no sense. She turns the lights off during the day and only burns one lamp with an energy-efficient bulb in the living room at night, but she keeps falling further behind on payments. In desperation, she took out a loan after getting a cut-off notice during an extended arctic blast that kept the state’s heaters cranking when temperatures regularly dipped below zero.

“Every time you see that power bill, you’re just sick,” Michalski said, rifling through a stack of statements totaling thousands of dollars. “I already know before I open it. I just dread seeing how much.”

She’s taken to social media, demanding answers alongside thousands of other West Virginians who have been posting screenshots of their monthly charges. They are angry and perplexed over soaring utility costs that are surpassing rents and mortgages in one of the most energy-rich, yet poorest, corners of America, where some families have been forced to choose between paying for food or heat.

President Donald Trump, as part of his campaign pitch to “make America affordable again,” promised to cut Americans’ electricity bills by half during his first year to 18 months in the White House.

“And if it doesn’t work out, you’ll say, ‘Oh well, I voted for him, I still got them down a lot,’” he said. “You will never have had energy so low as you will under a certain gentleman known as Donald J. Trump.”

It hasn’t worked out.

Instead, electricity increased 4.8% in February nationwide and piped natural gas prices rose 10.9%, both compared with a year earlier, according to the Labor Department’s Consumer Price Index. That surpassed inflation even before the attacks on Iran by the U.S. and Israel sent energy costs ballooning.

It’s becoming an increasingly aggravating issue for some voters. Rising electricity bills emerged as a campaign issue in recent elections, including during gubernatorial races won by Democrats in New Jersey and Virginia. Cost concerns are expected to surface during midterms this fall, and an analysis by the nonprofit PowerLines found residents are not likely to get a break any time soon because new gas and electricity rate hike requests could affect more than 80 million Americans. An AP-NORC poll conducted in March also found 35% of U.S. adults were “extremely” or “very” concerned about being able to afford electricity in the next few months.

“It’s breaking me. And there’s nothing that can be done for it, unless the president does something,” Michalski said about her skyrocketing power bills, adding she no longer supports Trump. “And I don’t see him doing it. He’s had plenty of time.”

Increased demand, extreme weather and events, upgrading and maintaining aging infrastructure and rising natural gas prices are pushing electricity bills higher. Rising energy costs — including gas pump sticker shock now topping an average $4 per gallon nationally — could further be exacerbated by the war in Iran along with the Trump administration’s push to export higher volumes of liquefied natural gas — which, in turn, depletes domestic supply. Ratepayers are also wary as more power-gobbling data centers for artificial intelligence and cloud computing are being built or warmly embraced by politicians in places like West Virginia — where residents deep in Trump country have gone from having the cheapest electricity rate nationwide in 2005, to experiencing one of the fastest increases in the country, far outpacing the national average, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

All in a place where people are living atop vast deposits of coal, oil and gas.

King Coal

Coal remains king here, but it wears a pricey crown. The state is an outlier nationwide because of its stubborn resistance to adopting cleaner, cheaper sources of energy, such as nuclear power, natural gas — even though it’s one of the nation’s top producers — and renewables like wind and solar. Instead, West Virginia clings to aging coal-fired electric plants more than anywhere else in the country — about 87% of all production. Its supermajority Republican-led government — there are only 11 Democrats in the House and Senate — has doubled down on this reliance, blaming past Democratic administrations for a war on coal fueled by increased federal regulations and restrictions, while Trump poses for photo ops with coal miners at the White House and regularly touts “beautiful, clean coal.”

“Lowering electricity prices is a top priority for President Trump,” said White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers, blaming former President Joe Biden for the problem. “He is aggressively unleashing reliable energy sources like coal and natural gas.”

Trump has forced unprofitable coal-powered plants to remain open, rolled back pollution standards for them and provided hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to improve them. He’s also streamlined permitting and regulations to push for mining expansion when coal mines have been shutting down in the state, including several operations this year that eliminated more than 700 jobs.

“If you’re not 100% in on coal, then you’re a traitor. … It’s like a measure of patriotism,” said Jamie Van Nostrand, policy director at the nonprofit Future of Heat Initiative and a former West Virginia University professor who wrote a book about the state’s reliance on coal energy. “I think if you went to the average West Virginian and said, ‘Yeah, we understand you want to support the coal industry, but do you want to support it to the extent that you’re OK paying twice as much as you should be for electricity?’”

The state’s average household electricity rate per kilowatt-hour has surged 73%, natural gas has increased 51% per 1,000 cubic feet and water has risen 45% per 1,000 gallons from 2015 to 2025, according to West Virginia’s Public Service Commission, a three-member panel. It includes a former power company lobbyist and the former head of the state coal association — appointed by the governor and charged with approving rate hikes.

Even though monthly bills remain higher in other states, salaries in West Virginia have simply not kept pace — it’s the only place in the country where the median inflation-adjusted household income was lower in 2023 than it was in 1970, according to the Urban Institute. That means residents are seeing larger chunks of their paychecks going to utilities compared to people in other places.

Michalski, who’s disabled and uses a walker to get around, said she tries not to run anything in her house that can suck electricity, including her air conditioning in summer. But she simply can’t turn off the heater. During the past year, her statements totaled over $5,000. She asked family for help paying the bill this winter, but said she’s now out of options.

She knows what’s next.

“They come and cut off your power. Then you’re sitting in the dark. And I see that happening,” she said. “And I think for a lot of other people, it’s gonna happen too.”

“It only makes the rich richer”

Isolated by its beautiful, rugged mountains, West Virginia sits entirely within Appalachia and has long been listed at the bottom of a laundry list of failings, including poor health and a lack of education. Many residents from rural areas have lived on the same land for generations, watching a cycle of outside companies profit from extracting the state’s resources — from timber to coal and oil and gas — only to pollute and abandon communities afterward. Its people are known for being fiercely independent and proud despite their hardships, including a lack of clean drinking water that has persisted for decades in some areas, forcing residents in the southern coal fields to ferry jugs to and from roadside springs or abandoned mines while spending up to $250 a month for bottled water to cook with and drink. They also pay for public water piped into their homes that often runs black, yellow and brown.

Some, including those living in scenic areas where tourism is a major revenue driver, are protesting Big Tech companies rushing to build enormous data centers, fearing they could lead to the next cycle of outsiders taking advantage of the state’s resources. They have been loud over a lack of public input and transparency around plans to build the complexes, questioning noise pollution, huge water consumption and the effect on ratepayers’ electricity prices.

“We just roll back regulations and we keep being promised that deregulating and privatizing our systems is gonna fix everything, and it never does,” said Caitlin Ware, a pastor who advocates for clean water in southern West Virginia — her thoughts briefly interrupted as the electricity abruptly went off in her Sandyville United Methodist Church. “It only makes the rich richer, and it only puts us in a worse situation.”

In February, Gov. Patrick Morrisey proudly announced plans to build a data center on nearly 550 acres in Berkeley County.

“This $4 billion investment is a historic win that proves West Virginia can compete at the highest level for the global tech economy,” he said in a statement. It did not explain where the water or electricity would come from to run the 600 megawatt, 1.9 million square foot facility.

Morrisey’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Skyrocketing electricity costs and the growth of data centers, which can use enough power to run 100,000 homes, faced voter backlash in Georgia last fall where Democrats ousted two Republicans on the state’s utility regulatory commission for the first time in nearly two decades. Trump recently tried to ease Americans’ concerns by announcing a “ratepayer protection” pledge at the White House with Big Tech companies promising to bear the cost and produce their own energy, though it’s not clear how that would be enforced.

The reasons behind nationwide utility price hikes are complex and vary among regions. They include adding new transmission, distribution lines and power poles; increased brutal high and low temperatures; extreme weather events such as hurricanes and wildfires; and volatility in fuel costs such as surging gas prices during the war in Ukraine.

These all play a huge role in rising bills that have left some 80 million Americans struggling to pay their monthly gas and electric bills, said Charles Hua, founder of consumer advocacy organization PowerLines that found investor-owned gas and electric utility companies asked for nearly $31 billion in increases last year nationwide, double the amount requested a year earlier. He said utility costs have become the new affordability issue akin to soaring egg prices that previously enraged consumers, making it a possible player in this fall’s elections to control Congress.

“Electric bills have gone up 40% over the last five years,” he said. “This is likely to continue to rise. This is definitely something that the Trump administration and President Trump are very concerned about.”

In West Virginia, all 55 counties voted for Trump in 2024. But it was a Democratic stronghold for decades prior to the switch when coal mines were the lifeblood, and unions were virtually unbreakable. The state has struggled immensely under both parties: It has experienced a major brain drain, a devastating opioid epidemic, a growing elderly population and its coveted coal industry jobs have dried up with nothing to replace them. That leaves people who work minimum wage jobs, those on fixed incomes and even college-educated middle-class families with two paychecks being pushed to the breaking point with affordability issues, including rising car insurance, grocery bills, health care and housing.

Ashley Nicole Dixon of Danese works as a manager at a Dollar General store and has a teenage daughter at home and another in college. She flipped through bills on her phone totaling more than $5,000 charged last year for electricity in her house that’s just over 1,000 square feet, even though her air conditioner didn’t work last summer. She voted for Trump, but said she’s done with him because he and other Republican politicians in West Virginia’s Capitol aren’t looking out for her interests.

“I love West Virginia because it’s beautiful. But anymore, it’s just a sham from the local government all the way up to Charleston,” she said, adding she believes the state’s Public Service Commission should be elected, and Trump should send her a check since he promised to cut electricity bills in half.

“I have no choice. It has to be paid,” she said. “And that’s what makes me sick because now I’m going to have to go … take more money out of my savings account just to keep the lights on.”

“Why is this so high?”

The coldest winter months were the hardest. Some people confined themselves to one room with small space heaters or used generators when they got behind on their electricity bills and were disconnected. Others were forced to choose between food, medicine and warmth, with some turning their thermostats down to 60 degrees and bundling up or coming out of retirement to take part-time jobs.

For some, the spiral began in November when their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits were put on hold due to the federal government shutdown. United Way’s Central West Virginia helpline saw more than a 1,300% increase during that time, and calls for help paying utilities were second only to housing last year.

More than one in three West Virginia households is considered energy burdened, spending more than 6% of their income on electricity and other fuel costs. Of those, about 20% are low-income residents who shoulder some of the highest energy costs in the state.

Last year, Trump fired the staff of a federal program that assists millions of low-income Americans with heating bills in the winter and proposed eliminating all of its funding in his budget — a move repeated this year. Congress allocated money for it, but billions of dollars were delayed due to the shutdown. However, many West Virginians falling behind on bills are not eligible to apply because they make just a little too much money.

Jennifer Brown of Kingwood lands in that category. She’s employed at West Virginia’s federally funded Head Start program for low-income children and her husband is a postal worker. They have four kids and during the winter months, their combined utilities can climb to $1,000 a month, eclipsing their $798 mortgage. They were on a payment plan for their gas this winter after receiving a shut-off notice, and she said they were still paying off a water bill from their previous home.

“Every month we get our utility bills, I’m so angry. I’m like, ‘Why is this so high?’” she said, adding it’s not unusual to pay $200 to $300 for electricity and the same for water, sewage and garbage combined every month. “And we can’t figure it out. Nothing seems to be wrong … and we’re not wasteful.”

Bills introduced that would have temporarily frozen electricity rates in West Virginia or helped those who are most vulnerable went nowhere this year in the state legislature even though increased energy costs are often passed on to ratepayers. The Public Service Commission has approved a flurry of rate hikes in recent years as private utilities grapple with maintaining profits while improving infrastructure in a mountainous, sparsely populated state.

It’s been a particularly tough burden for some small businesses to carry. In the western town of Ravenswood, just across the river from Ohio, some shop owners were forced to shut down this winter because they couldn’t pay their electric bills.

Heather Santee said the power at her bakery was abruptly terminated just ahead of Valentine’s Day. She was behind on her bill, but said she would have been able to pay the necessary chunk of the $4,000 she owed if she could have stayed open long enough to fulfill the holiday orders. Instead, the shut-off forced her out, leaving the tenants living in apartments upstairs without heat too.

“Once I started getting those high electric bills in the winter, I was like, ‘This will be what closes me down,’” she said, adding the bakery was her dream and the loss has her thinking maybe it would be better to just leave the state altogether. “West Virginia is holding back a lot of people because they are allowing these bills to be so high.”

She’s not alone. Just a couple blocks down the street, Anthony Crihfield Jones packed up his overstock retail shop, JCD Bargain and Trade, moving inventory to another warehouse because he can no longer afford to pay thousands of dollars in electricity charges for his home and businesses.

Even though he still supports Trump, after leaving the Democrats to vote Republican, he’s becoming increasingly concerned that neither party cares about struggling people in America.

“All I heard was … ‘Drill, baby, drill,’” he said, repeating Trump’s popular catch phrase to encourage domestic energy production. “OK. Well, they’re drillin’. Why’s my bill the same?”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The bluntest assessment of Republican failures during this week’s elections in Wisconsin came from one of their own.

“We got our butts kicked,” said U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is running for governor.

He was referring to Democratic victories in campaigns for the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the mayor’s office in Waukesha, a conservative suburb outside of Milwaukee. But some Republicans were also rattled by a Georgia special election, where their candidate to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene in Congress won by a much slimmer margin than the party enjoyed in the past.

Taken together, the swings from red to blue added more data points to an increasingly clear picture of Democratic momentum heading into the November midterms, when control of the U.S. House, U.S. Senate and state governments around the country are up for grabs.

“In rural, urban, red, blue, Democrats have overperformed everywhere,” said Jared Leopold, a Democratic consultant whose clients include Keisha Lance Bottoms, a candidate for Georgia governor. “That is a significant canary in the coal mine about what November of ’26 is going to look like.”

Some Republicans insisted there was no need to panic, and their fundraising remains stronger than Democrats. Stephen Lawson, a Georgia strategist, said “the sky is not falling.”

But he also said his party is running behind where it has been in the past, and Republicans need to be “looking at these results carefully.”

‘A red alarm for Republicans’

Special elections can be notoriously unreliable as political benchmarks, but Democrats have consistently demonstrated surprising strength. They flipped a Texas state Senate district. They won a Florida state House seat in a district that includes President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.

Then they gained ground on Tuesday in the race to replace Greene, who resigned from Congress in January after a falling out with Trump.

Clay Fuller, the Republican candidate, prevailed by 12 points. Two years ago, Greene won by 29 points and Trump carried the district by almost 37 points.

“That’s a red alarm for Republicans,” said Democratic strategist Meredith Brasher.

Fuller defeated Shawn Harris, who plans to challenge him again in November.

Jackie Harling, the district’s Republican chairwoman, said she believed that Greene’s resignation energized Democrats while her party is suffering from “election fatigue.”

“Marjorie Taylor Greene was like a freight train that you couldn’t stop, and when she pulled out, it gave Democrats hope and it gave them a shot at winning something they believed was unwinnable,” Harling said.

‘Slightly bluer side of purple’

Georgia has key races this year, including an open contest for the governor’s office. Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, is trying to defend his seat as well.

There’s reason to think that simmering discontent could boomerang back on Republicans just two years after Trump harnessed voters’ anger with his comeback presidential campaign.

In November, Democrats defeated two Republican incumbents in statewide races for seats on the Public Service Commission, which regulates utilities. Rising electricity rates have been a fault line in recent campaigns, especially as enormous data centers are built to power artificial intelligence.

But Georgia Democratic Party Chair Charlie Bailey is trying to maintain modest expectations.

“We could cement ourselves, put ourselves, on the slightly bluer side of purple,” he said. ”We’re not going to overnight turn into Colorado.”

‘A very clear sign of momentum’

Wisconsin holds statewide elections for supreme court seats, and liberals expanded their majority with a 20-point blowout victory on Tuesday.

Democrats saw gains in red, blue and purple counties when compared to another judicial race last year, which was also won by the liberal candidate.

“This to me was a very clear sign of momentum and enthusiasm for Democrats in the fall,” said Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Devin Remiker.

The state has its own open race for governor this year, and Democrats are hoping to take control of the state legislature and oust Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden.

“It’s time for us to put this thing in overdrive,” said Mandela Barnes, a Democratic former lieutenant governor who is running for governor.

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, another Democratic candidate for governor, said it’s clear that “people are really upset with the Republican Party and their brand right now.”

“But that doesn’t mean that they’re automatically going to come over to the Democrats,” Crowley said. “And that’s why we have to continue to focus on the issues and speak to the values of all the voters here in the state of Wisconsin.”

‘A lot of anxiety’

Tiffany, the Republican candidate for governor in Wisconsin, cautioned against reading too much into Tuesday’s results.

He said “every election is unique,” and he wasn’t making any changes to his campaign. He said the key to winning will be to “paint that clear contrast of how we are going to help everyday Wisconsinites.”

But Democrats seemed to be making inroads, including in Waukesha. The city is located outside of Milwaukee in the Republican stronghold of Waukesha County.

Democrat Alicia Halvensleben, president of the city’s Common Council, defeated Republican Scott Allen, one of the most conservative members of the state Assembly.

She said Trump came up “a lot” when she was campaigning, although she thinks her victory came down to local issues and how the state legislature wasn’t addressing them.

“There’s so much uncertainty at the national level,” Halvensleben said. “I think that level of uncertainty is causing people a lot of anxiety, all the way down to the local level.”

___

Amy reported from Atlanta and Cooper reported from Phoenix.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

• In today’s CEO Daily: Fortune’s Phil Wahba interviews Levi’s CEO Michelle Gass.
• The big leadership story: Energy experts fret over the outcome of the Iran ceasefire.
• The markets: Down globally as Iran accuses the U.S. of violating the two-week truce.
• Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.

Good morning. Yesterday, I chatted with Levi Strauss CEO Michelle Gass to ask her why she thinks her strategy is working so well, a question on many minds given that similar success eluded her when she was CEO at Kohl’s. Her conclusion: the Levi’s gig plays to all the strengths she’s developed over her long career, and the denim clothier was at the right place for her to take the reins.

We spoke the day after Levi’s reported a stellar first quarter in which net revenue rose 14%—and those results may have quieted Gass’s critics for good. When Gass was first announced as Levi’s president in 2022—spending a year under the tutelage of CEO predecessor Chip Bergh before taking over a year later—many in the peanut gallery pointed to her previous struggles at Kohl’s as reason for skepticism.

But two years in, Gass’s tenure at Levi’s has been an unequivocal win. Revenue grew 3% in her first year, then 4% in 2025 and growth is now accelerating. Shares rose 11% on Wednesday and have almost doubled in the last year. And Levi’s is very much in the cultural zeitgeist: its 517 women’s jeans have been featured prominently in Love Story, the fictionalized TV series chronicling the Carolyn Bessette–JFK Jr. saga. 

Same executive, same human being, but two different outcomes. What gives? 

For one thing, the Levi’s role taps into the consumer brands exposure Gass gained earlier in her career at Starbucks, which sells mostly its own products and where she honed her analytically rigorous and brand‑oriented approach to management. Kohl’s, on the other hand, is a retailer that mostly sells other companies’ merchandise and operates in the challenged department store sector. That experience is now proving vital as Gass pushes Levi’s to open more of its own stores and rely less on other retailers.

For another, Kohl’s needed a turnaround CEO, whereas at Levi’s, Gass inherited a company turned around years earlier by Bergh but where her zest for innovation and experience in running stores could help Levi Strauss grow at a critical juncture in its long history. (Gass has made selling more tops, more women’s products, and more high-end denim her priorities, and Tuesday’s earnings report shows the plan is working.)

“I feel like coming into Levi’s, I could tap into all of that when it was ready for its next chapter, which was turning the company into a retailer and bringing that capability to bear,” she told me.

To be fair, at Kohl’s, Gass was forced into four battles with activist shareholders in her final years, siphoning her attention and energy. Since she left, Kohl’s has had three CEOs, none of whom have made a big dent in the company’s problems.  

I think often about why an executive might do well in one place and struggle so much elsewhere. Perhaps, some CEOs are better suited for turnarounds (which require a very specific skillset) and others for expansion. Or some might be in the right place at the right time and get too much credit for success, or, conversely, get blamed for being unable to fix an unfixable company. In Gass’s case, the seasoned executive has found a role that aligns with her particular set of retail chops, and for now, Levi’s is stronger for it.

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Good morning. On Fortune’s radar today:

• Markets: Post-rally selloff underway.
• Iran: It’s not going well.
• David Zaslav’s $887 million golden parachute.
• $1 trillion: The amount of capex needed to make AI work.
• Kalshi trading volume hits $3 billion a week.
• Live map shows ships avoiding the Strait of Hormuz.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

There was a moment, not long ago, when “shadow AI” felt like a good-news story. Workers were sneaking ChatGPT and Claude past the IT department, using personal accounts to do what used to take hours in minutes. An MIT study published last year found that employees at more than 90% of companies were using personal chatbot accounts for daily tasks — often without approval — even as only 40% of those same companies had official LLM subscriptions. The shadow economy was booming. Management called it a governance problem. The workers called it getting the job done.

Now the data tells a different story. The tool that workers once raced to adopt covertly has become, for a large and growing share of the workforce, the tool they’ve stopped using altogether. Not because it doesn’t work. Because they’re afraid of what happens when it works too well.

A new global survey of 3,750 executives and employees across 14 countries, conducted by SAP subsidiary WalkMe for its fifth annual State of Digital Adoption report, finds that more 54% of workers bypassed their company’s AI tools in the past 30 days and completed the work manually instead. Another 33% haven’t used AI at all. Combined, roughly eight in 10 enterprise workers are either avoiding or actively rejecting the technology their employers are spending record sums to deploy. Average digital transformation budgets rose 38% year-over-year to $54.2 million — yet 40% of that spend has been underperforming due to adoption failures.

Executives are blind to how employees really feel

What the early enthusiasm obscured is now visible in the numbers. Only 9% of workers trust AI for complex, business-critical decisions, compared to 61% of executives — a 52-point trust chasm. Eighty-eight percent of executives say their employees have adequate tools; only 21% of workers agree — a 67-point gap on tool adequacy alone. Executives and their employees are, in the report’s language, “describing fundamentally different companies.”

The skeptics have data on their side, too. Steve Hanke, the Johns Hopkins economist, has been through enough technology cycles to know what hype looks like from the inside. “AI didn’t deliver,” he told Fortune recently. “Welcome to the real world. Forget the AI bubble. You know, it didn’t deliver. You look at all the surveys and yeah, everybody’s using it a little bit, but you dig into it and it hasn’t done much.” Hanke’s bottom line: “Productivity, by the way, it was weak. If AI delivered, productivity would be way up. You listen to these Silicon Valley guys and they say we’re gonna have GDP going to 5% of 6%. Productivity is gonna go up to six. It’s just not happening.”

That skepticism is, in its own way, consistent with what the WalkMe data is finding. Dan Adika, CEO and co-founder of WalkMe, has been tracking this divergence from the front lines. He meets regularly with CIOs and asks them a simple question: how many of your people are actually using AI to do meaningful work? “The numbers are sub-10%,” he said.

Adika used the metaphor, favored by this particular editor as well, that AI is like a sports car in terms of its speed. He said his favorite analogy is if you buy every employee a sports car, but they don’t know how to drive it—they don’t have the AI skills.

Part of the problem is structural, not behavioral. “You buy every employee that sports car, the Ferrari, but they don’t know how to drive,” Adika said. “They don’t have fuel sometimes, which is the context. Knowing how to drive is the prompting. And in some cases, there are not even enough roads — there’s no API or MCP server to actually do what you want to do.” What do you do when you have a Ferrari, but no driver, no fuel, and no roads? You don’t go very fast.

Brad Brown, Global Head of Tax Technology & Innovation for KPMG in the U.S., used almost the same exact metaphor in a separate interview with Fortune. “It’s like an F1 car driver,” he said. “The F1 car is amazing. But if you don’t have a skilled and talented driver, that tool’s not gonna do much for you.” The fact that two veteran technologists — one a founder, one a Big Four partner — converged on the same description unprompted suggests they are describing something they’ve both seen firsthand, repeatedly, at scale.

The chasm is costing companies

The downstream cost of that undriven Ferrari is now quantifiable. The WorkMe report found that workers lose the equivalent of 51 working days per year to technology friction — nearly two full months — up 42% from 2025. That’s 7.9 hours per week. Goldman Sachs economists reported this week that AI saves workers who use it correctly an average of 40 to 60 minutes per day. The math is almost symmetrical: the productivity AI gives to people who use it well is almost exactly equal to the productivity it destroys for people who can’t get it to work.

The old shadow AI story is still alive beneath the surface. Seventy-eight percent of executives say they want to discipline shadow AI use — yet only 21% of workers report ever being warned about AI policy, and 34% don’t even know which tools their employer has approved. Executives are threatening punishment for behavior that they’ve never explained is prohibited. The contradiction runs so deep that 62% of those same executives privately concede that the risk of unsanctioned shadow AI is overstated compared to the risk of not leveraging AI at all.

“The use of shadow AI isn’t a behavior to penalize — rather, it’s an opportunity to address a systemic gap,” said Keith Kirkpatrick, Vice President and Research Director of Enterprise Software Digital Workflows at The Futurum Group. “When employees use unapproved AI tools, they’re compensating for performance or efficiency gaps left by sanctioned tools and unclear governance.”

AI disengagement

What’s new — and what the data is only beginning to capture — is the layer beneath shadow AI. Workers who aren’t sneaking around the rules. Workers who aren’t doing anything.

Adika was asked what he’d call this dynamic. He paused. “They have pride in what they do,” he said, about workers who are resisting AI adoption. “They won’t let some AI bot take over, and they will always find and show the flaws in that tool compared to them.” It sounds, unmistakably, like quiet quitting — the pandemic-era phenomenon in which workers stopped going above and beyond without formally resigning. It could also be a very understandable frustration with AI tools that just won’t stop hallucinating, wasting as much time as they promise to save.

“The organizations that get this right won’t be the ones that just automated the most tasks,” Adika said. “They’ll be the ones that figured out when the human should act, when the agent should act, and how the handoff between them works. That handoff is where trust lives. And right now, most companies haven’t even started thinking about it.” To this point, the MIT study found that 90% of workers still prefer humans for mission-critical work, a clear reluctance to dive into the deep end.

Oracle has announced layoffs of tens of thousands of workers, following a similar announcement from Block, although critics see this as “AI washing,” or disguising over-hiring with a convenient excuse that happens to boost the stock price. The logic is not lost on the rank and file. “We will be in a certain point of time when we will feel uncertainty, fear, we’ll see layoffs,” Adika said. “So I think it’s kind of a transition period that will happen over time. But again, at the end of the day, people are not using it yet.”

Adika was also clear that workers staying away from AI are not wrong to sense something real — they’re wrong about the conclusion. “You wouldn’t see any CEO of a bank or insurance company go tomorrow and lay off a lot of people, because who will do the work?” He said he sees a “big issue” coming to a head because claims that AI will replace everyone will have to confront the fact that “it’s just not happening right now.”

The skilled driver problem

Brown said he’s spending more time than ever thinking about what it actually takes to close the gap between the Ferrari and the driver. At KPMG, he has begun categorizing the workforce into what he calls builders, makers, and power users — distinct tiers of AI capability with explicit career paths attached. “Our focus right now is to craft incentives and career paths to get all our people to that level,” he said. “It’s time for the humans to catch up to where the tech is.”

The critical insight in that framing is that the problem isn’t intelligence, nor is it even training in the traditional sense. “I think with your sort of human skills that you bring to the table in terms of critical thinking and judgment,” Brown said, “that’s going to lend people into being makers” — workers who can leverage AI tools fluidly, including using them to build new tools themselves. The workers most at risk, in his view, are not the ones who lack technical skill. They’re the ones whose employers haven’t given them a safe space, a path, or an incentive to try.

A third of the enterprise workforce has never used AI tools at all — and they report the lowest levels of support, the least training, and the highest anxiety about disruption. They are not, the WalkMe report notes carefully, resisting AI. They have simply not been reached. As to whether the evolution of these tools is outpacing workers’ ability to catch up, Brown acknowledged that he definitely feels a gap.

Evolving is possible—and important

What brought Hanke back around was all the time saved, once he figured out what he wanted to use AI for. “AI to me is kind of like another research assistant,” he said, “and it saves a hell of a lot of time because if I had a research assistant doing this stuff, I’d have to send them to the library. They’d be screwing around over there for a week doing something I can do on AI in about an hour.” The caveat: “You have to know what they’re good for.” And, crucially, you have to know enough about the subject matter to catch the errors. “I know what to ask AI. I know how to structure what I want done,” Hanke said, pointing to his decades of domain expertise across economics, commodities, and international finance.

His own trajectory — from outright banning student use to cautious skepticism to daily reliance — tracks the arc many serious thinkers have traveled. He said he went from “‘no’, to ‘maybe’, to ‘this is great—but some of these tools suck.’” His verdict on the tools themselves is characteristically blunt: “There are all kinds of AI. And some of it’s really crap. It depends on what you need.”

Brown’s view is that this is ultimately an optimistic story — but only for those who move. “The winners are the ones where you have your workforce effectively leveraging the capabilities of AI,” he said. “A workforce that’s not leaning into AI is going to be challenged. And a work environment that is overly oriented to AI without the value of the human workforce is going to struggle.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Malaysian construction giant Sunway’s $2.77 billion takeover offer for competitor IJM Corp collapsed on Monday, ending plans to create one of the country’s largest construction and infrastructure groups.

By market close on April 6, Sunway only managed to secure commitments for a third of IJM’s shares. This marked the end of Sunway’s bid, which it launched on January 12. Sunway and IJM are both listed on Fortune’s Southeast Asia 500 list, which ranks the region’s companies by revenue. (The former, at No. 190, reported $1.7 billion in revenue in 2024, while the latter, at No. 228, generated $1.3 billion.) 

Had it gone through, the merger would have created a new powerhouse in Malaysia’s construction and infrastructure sector, overtaking current leader Gamuda. Yet valuation concerns, as well as Malaysia’s longstanding rules on equity for its rural Malays, complicated the deal.

“With the offer now concluded, IJM moves forward with resolve,” Dato’ Lee Chun Fai, IJM’s group CEO and managing director, said in a press statement released Monday. “Our shareholders have decided, and we respect the conviction they have placed in IJM’s long-term intrinsic value.” Lee continued that the company will focus on unlocking the value of its portfolio through strategic investments and overseas expansion.

Sunway, too, released a statement on Monday, saying that it respected the outcome of the process and that “in any transaction of this scale, differing perspectives are natural.” 

Why the Sunway-IJM merger fell through

From the get-go, Sunway’s takeover bid was met with opposition by various analysts, politicians and institutional stakeholders. 

Market watchers questioned the fairness of Sunway’s offer. Malaysia’s Kenanga Investment Bank issued a “reject” recommendation, stating that Sunway’s offer price of 3.15 Malaysian ringgit per share did not reflect IJM’s true value. According to a report by M&A Securities, an independent advisor to IJM, Sunway’s offer price reflected a discount of between 46.1% and 51.4% to the estimated value of IJM shares.

The merger also drew political scrutiny over concerns that it could dilute the rights of Bumiputeras, or indigenous Malaysians of ethnic Malay origin.

Following deadly race riots in 1969, Malaysia started a policy of affirmative action for ethnic Malays, hoping to tamp down tensions between the country’s ethnic groups and foster a more equal distribution of wealth. These policies include preferential treatment for the Bumiputera, including priority consideration for public university spaces and government jobs, and discounts for business licenses.

On Jan. 18, soon after Sunway launched its takeover bid, Akmal Saleh, the youth leader of UMNO, Malaysia’s conservative political party, argued that the deal “could undermine national and Bumiputera interests.” Akmal pointed out that Malaysian state funds like the Permodalan Nasional and the Employees Provident Fund owned around 47% of IJM shares. The construction company is also responsible for national infrastructure projects like the New Pantai Expressway, Sungai Besi Expressway, and the West Coast Expressway.

Corruption allegations also dogged the takeover bid.

In late January, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) launched a probe into IJM over accusations of lapses in corporate governance and procurement processes. The company had its offices raided and several bank accounts frozen, according to Malaysian business publication The Edge. Two months later, MACC chief commissioner Tan Sri Azam Baki said the commission would study Sunway’s takeover bid to see if there had been “corruption, abuse of power or violations of governance” in the process. (Both firms were later cleared of the accusations on March 27.)

IJM’s shares initially surged by over 2% on Monday, after the merger fell apart, before paring those gains by Thursday. Sunway’s shares are up by about 2% since Monday.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Is your organization ready to be always-on, no matter what? 

In a world of geopolitical tension, infrastructure vulnerabilities, rising cyber risk and increasingly concentrated global technology supply chains, that question has become even more critical. It goes to the heart of digital sovereignty, which is not only defined by where technology sits, but by who controls it and whether it can be relied upon when it matters most.

Amid global turbulence and the rise of AI, this creates a palpable tension. The instinct is often to build walls. But this fortress mentality is a strategic misstep. Walls can protect, but they also isolate nations and businesses from the global innovation required to remain resilient and competitive.

Global technology, local control

Today, “digital sovereignty” is not about isolation. It is not an “either-or” decision between local and global technology. Nor is it a binary choice between having complete control or accessing the best capabilities. Having true sovereignty means nobody can turn off your critical systems. 

Sovereignty is an “and.” Organizations can use many services from other countries while ensuring critical capabilities are controlled locally. Rather than abandoning global technologies, governments and businesses must make choices that preserve autonomy where it matters most: in public services, regulated industries and strategic sectors. 

Sovereign by design

This is already playing out in practice. In regions affected by conflict, companies are increasingly relocating data, rerouting networks and operating across more distributed environments. In these conditions, the biggest risk is not system downtime, but disconnection. Systems may remain operational, but nothing can reach them, meaning critical flows and business processes will break down.

Despite severe challenges, resilience, sovereignty and competitiveness are still achievable when organizations meet four critical conditions. The first is using open, hybrid technologies. Lock yourself into one cloud platform and you have a dependency; operate across multiple providers and you have options. Hybrid cloud platforms built on open standards mean companies can switch providers without starting from scratch. This strategy also allows enterprises to benefit from the scale of global platforms while hosting sensitive data in-country to comply with local laws. Hybrid holds data securely and resiliently across environments, from private to public and across borders when needed – helping organizations to maintain continuity during disruption.

The second is software that is sovereign by design. Organizations can now run AI under their own authority, within a defined jurisdiction, with auditable controls – regardless of geopolitical events. This is not a layer that can be taken away; it is a fully air-gapped environment that can operate independently of any global cloud platform when needed. 

A third, crucial component of sovereignty is data access that is controlled by the customer, not the cloud provider. “Keep-your-own-key” encryption means providers physically cannot decrypt data without customer permission, under any circumstances. 

The fourth pillar is capability investment versus technology consumption. Sovereignty is not about who builds the data centres. It’s about who has the engineers and researchers who can actually deploy the systems, adapt them, and make them work for local needs. Buy the hardware without the capability and you’ve simply imported an expensive black box.

This is not theoretical, our clients are already putting it into practice. In banking, BNP Paribas has built a flexible hybrid architecture that can move workloads between their own data centres and the cloud on demand, to comply with local regulations. Riyadh Air is developing an AI-ready structure that allows them to scale or switch systems without stalling innovation. In Asia-Pacific, companies such as Telkom Indonesia have built an open, interoperable sovereign platform on hybrid architecture to support local businesses. AI needs aligned to local data residency requirements.

Looking ahead

Sovereignty is not exclusive to AI and cloud. The need for resilience extends across every area of technology, from quantum computing and chips to satellites. As enterprises focus on deploying proven tools like AI and automation today, they must also build the research, security posture, and future‑ready infrastructure needed for what comes next, from quantum-safe networks to next-generation compute.

The importance of sovereignty has risen alongside technology’s growing role in national resilience. Governments and businesses face the opportunity of AI productivity gains worth trillions on one hand, and the challenge of maintaining control where it matters on the other. The false perception of sovereignty as a binary choice between progress and independence threatens both pursuits. Enterprises want the upside of global scale alongside the assurances of sovereignty and control. The reality is that with the right design choices, they can have both, ultimately building systems that are sovereign and resilient by design.

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

The full-time job is often the most coveted form of work for employees; it often ensures stability, benefits, close relationships, and with time, it often guarantees more freedom. 

But Gen Z is ditching that workplace ideal. A new study from workforce management firm Deputy entitled “The Big Shift 2026” found that poly-employment, or what the firm calls as working multiple jobs simultaneously, has hit its highest point in over a decade. The study—drawing from more than 41 million shifts and 268 million hours worked—finds Gen Z is leading the way in poly-employment, composing more than half (55%) of those engaged in the practice.

While many workers are turning to poly-employment to supplement their income among economic uncertainty and rising cost-of-living pressures, the data reveals a growing divide between those forced into it and those choosing independence, as more workers are intentionally seeking multiple roles to gain the flexible and self-directed work they increasingly prioritize. It’s also a deliberate switch from an ongoing trend of overemployment, or holding multiple full-time jobs, that still keeps a person tied to their desk. While that practice does come with a higher take-home pay, it doesn’t offer the flexibility Gen Z is looking for. According to Deputy CEO Silvija Martincevic, for Gen Z, the shift is as much cultural as it is economic, a deliberate break from the traditional workforce they watched chain their parents to the golden handcuffs of a 9-to-5 job.

“Gen Z’s approach to work is also a reaction to what they saw growing up—long hours, loyalty to a single employer, and then the shock of the 2008 financial crisis,” Martincevic told Fortune in a written statement. “That’s shaped a mindset focused on hedging risk rather than relying on one job for stability.”

For many Gen Zers, it feels as though the walls of the labor market are closing in. The unemployment rate of recent college graduates has surpassed that of all workers, according to New York Federal Reserve Bank data. Squeezed out of traditional roles, many in the generation have leaned into unconventional work habits as a workaround. Some are considering forgoing their college degree to embrace the trades. Job-hopping, or cycling through roles after short stints, has become one coping mechanism. Poly-employment seems to have become another.

And yet, even when Gen Z does land a role, keeping it has proven difficult. A recent study from Intelligent.com found that six in 10 bosses have fired Gen Z employees just months after hiring them, citing a lack of initiative, unprofessional behavior, poor organization, and weak communication skills. That pattern is feeding a cycle that pushes more young workers away from traditional employment and toward the patchwork arrangements of poly-employment.

How Gen Z poly-workers are using AI and why others are fighting it

As more Gen Zers take on poly-employment, AI is playing a role for those bullish on the technology. The study noted a significant difference among Gen Z poly-employed workers. The research finds that those who hold a full-time role while also juggling other roles are more likely to be “poly-advantaged,” or what the workforce management firm describes as “AI-advantaged” individuals who lean on AI to work efficiently to manage the multiple hats they wear.

“AI unlocks predictable schedules, which in turn support more flexible work arrangements,” Martincevic said. “Nearly 75% of shift workers say AI helps them leave on time, underscoring its role in improving efficiency and scheduling.” 

But the technology cuts both ways. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned that AI could soon wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar roles, further narrowing the already thin slice of the job market available to new graduates.

The research also found those who intentionally work multiple part-time gigs without holding a full-time position also tend to be more AI-resistant. For these workers opting for poly-employment, AI appears as a threat which can automate the precarious positions they juggle. Gen Z workers are particularly resistant to using AI in the workplace, as a recent study from AI enterprise platform Writer found 44% of Gen Z workers are intentionally sabotaging their company’s AI rollout.

Whether Gen Z embraces or resists AI, poly-employment is offering young workers a sense of control where a sense of control is increasingly in short supply.

“The rise in poly-employment doesn’t signal a weakening job market—it reflects a workforce being reshaped by both economic and generational pressure,” Martincevic said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Corporate America has entered the era of the megamanager. For years now, employers have assigned more and more workers per boss in an effort to minimize the cost of managers and accelerate decision-making. 

But there’s one titan of industry bucking that trend: JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. In his letter to shareholders, published Monday, the investment bank’s longtime chief executive praised the agility and ownership of small teams in military terms. “The teams needed to tackle [specific problems] should be small and authorized with the decision-making ability to move and act like Navy SEALs or the Army’s Delta Force,” he wrote. “This is trench warfare; it’s about fighting for every inch, moving quickly and getting things done.”

There’s some basis for the comparison with special forces operations: The SEALs are known to work in squads of eight or fewer, for example. And in the business world, organizing workers into smaller teams can ensure that everyone has a stake in the outcome, Dimon argued. 

In a team with too many members, accountability is spread too thin, he wrote: “Very often when a management team wants to accomplish something new… everyone on the team says, ‘We’ll get it done,’ meaning they will add it to the long list of tasks already on their plate. But when efforts are 1% of a lot of people’s jobs, it will never get done.” 

Smaller teams, with shorter “to do” lists, are incentivized to give their full focus to any given task, he explained: “You need a team 100% dedicated to the mission—and everyone else supports them.”

In championing smaller teams, Dimon is at odds with the ultra-flat management model being adopted by firms like Meta, where CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expecting workers to do more with less in the AI era. The tech giant has laid off hundreds of workers this year and implemented worker-to-manager ratios of 50-to-1 in at least one department—a lopsided organizational structure that’s far beyond even the outer limit of the so-called span‑of‑control scale (which measures how flat or hierarchical a structure is by how many direct reports each manager has).

Eliminating layers of management is intended to speed up decisions and innovation by cutting hierarchy and bringing leaders closer to front-line employees and customers, thereby boosting engagement and ownership. But in such arrangements, junior staff can get overlooked, employees can feel directionless, and managers can burn out—or, as Dimon points out, accountability for getting things done can be diluted.

Despite those risks, U.S. companies are continuing to “flatten,” according to Gallup. The average manager’s span of control grew from 10.9 direct reports in 2024 to 12.1 in 2025, meaning average team sizes are now nearly 50% larger than when Gallup first began tracking them in 2013.

Flat structures often don’t last long, as employees gravitate toward more managerial interaction. “What happens in most organizations is eventually either a formal or an informal structure appears sort of underneath direct reports,” André Spicer, executive dean of Bayes Business School in London and a professor of organizational behavior, previously told Fortune. 

The general consensus among management experts is that the ideal team size is seven, give or take a few. Former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos famously captured this idea by introducing the two-pizza rule in the company’s early days; if two pizzas can’t feed a team, the team is too big. 

That illustration seems almost quaint now, but the central concept still holds. Dimon has landed on roughly the same team size, only he made his point—perhaps fittingly in a time of war—with a military metaphor. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian has never wavered in his commitment the same bet: that Americans will pay more for a better experience in the sky.

Fifteen years in, the strategy is paying off. The airline now commands roughly 20% more revenue per seat than its competitors, and premium cabin revenue is on the verge of overtaking main cabin for the first time in the company’s 100-year history.

“Delta is not a low-cost airline,” Bastian told Fortune‘s Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell in a recent episode of the Titans and Disruptors of Industry podcast. “We can’t win by trying to provide the cheapest. We have to be able to win by providing the best.”

Delta’s first-quarter earnings, released Wednesday, show that Bastian’s efforts are paying off. Premium ticket revenue hit $5.4 billion, which was just $41 million shy of the main cabin’s revenue. Premium grew 14% year-over-year, while main cabin grew only 1%, bringing the airline to the cusp of a milestone a year ahead of original projections.

Premium revenue includes First Class, Delta One, Premium Select, and Comfort Plus seating, while main cabin revenue is made up of standard and basic economy fares.

The playbook: Reliability first, then premium

Bastian described the transformation to Fortune‘s Shontell as a 15-year effort he originally called “de-commoditization.” When he first started pushing the idea, 80% of travelers chose airlines based on which one had the lowest fare. Today, Delta estimates that 80% of its customers choose the airline because of the brand.

But the premium strategy couldn’t come first, he said. Delta had to earn it.

“How could you be a premium experience if your reliability isn’t the very best in class?” Bastian said. Delta spent years driving down cancellation rates, improving on-time performance, and reducing mishandled baggage. This year, the airline was named North America’s most on-time carrier by Cirium—for a fifth consecutive year.

“After about five years of this, customers would come to me and say, ‘I’m noticing something different,’” Bastian told Fortune. “‘Your people seem to be happier. The service levels seem to be better. People are actually enjoying the experience, rather than enduring the experience.’”

That’s when Delta started layering on more premium products: Delta One suites on international flights, upgraded domestic first class, and a fleet overhaul that is reshaping the physical aircraft.

New planes entering Delta’s international fleet have cabins that are close to 50% premium seating, Chief Commercial Officer Joe Esposito said during the company’s earnings call on Wednesday, replacing aircraft with just 30% premium layouts.

Customers are no longer just “looking at what’s going to get me the lowest price,” Bastian told Fortune. “And we have strategies for people that want the lowest price. It’s called Basic Economy.”

“But people want to get the best experience and want to get the best value for money,” he continued. “And that’s where we went, value for money.”

The Amex engine

Delta’s longstanding co-branded partnership with American Express also plays a large role in the company’s focus on premium offerings. The partnership grew from $500 million in 1996 to more than $8 billion in annual revenue in 2025. It accounted for $8 billion, or about 10%, of Delta’s revenue in 2025.

The credit card portfolio now spans four tiers. The entry-level Delta SkyMiles Gold card carries a $150 annual fee and offers a free first checked bag, priority boarding, and a 15% discount on award flights. The mid-tier Platinum card costs $350 a year and adds an annual companion certificate for a round-trip domestic flight. At the top sits the Reserve card, at $650 a year, which unlocks access to Delta Sky Clubs and Centurion Lounges, an annual companion certificate that includes first class and international routes, and a boost toward Medallion elite status.

Each tier is designed to deepen the relationship between the traveler and the airline, giving cardholders reasons to consolidate their spending and flying with Delta—and making it harder to leave. The cards also serve as a gateway to premium cabins: Cardholders get priority on upgrade lists and perks that make the overall experience feel more premium, even in economy.

“As Delta’s brand started to move and people started to see it as a premium brand, as a differentiated experience, Amex was critical to that, because we see Amex as the premium credit card in the business,” Bastian said. “It has a higher value proposition. Customer loyalty is greater.”

Delta is winning, despite headwinds

The premium-first strategy paid off in the first quarter. Earnings were more than 40% higher than last year, Bastian said in the earnings statement, despite “significant increase in fuel costs and operational disruptions across the industry.” Delta executives noted severe weather, the conflict in the Middle East, and pilot contract complications as headwinds this quarter. Still, adjusted revenue hit a March quarter record of $14.2 billion, up 9.4%, and earnings per share came in at $0.64, a 44% jump.

Even with those headwinds, Bastian isn’t worried about a customer pullback. “The higher-end consumer, the premium consumer, is candidly immune, or becoming more immune, to the headlines and not delaying their investment in the experience economy,” Bastian said during the earnings call.

Premium and corporate demand are doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Corporate sales hit a quarterly record, with double-digit growth across banking, aerospace, defense, and tech, according to the earnings release. A corporate survey found 85% of respondents expect their travel spend to increase or stay the same in the June quarter.

For Bastian, the company’s recent results validate a thesis he’s been pushing since long before the rest of the industry caught on. While competitors are now scrambling to add premium seats and unbundle their cabins, Delta spent 15 years building the operational foundation and brand equity to charge more—and get it.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

American workers are up against a housing crisis so dire that many have written off their dream of homeownership altogether. Now, one Wall Street employer is stepping in to help their wish come true with thousand-dollar payouts.

The oldest bank in the U.S., $87 billion financial services firm Bank of New York (BNY), has just launched a new homeowner program for its U.S. employees earning under six figures. Now, staffers who earn $100,000 or less each year may qualify for $6,500 to be used towards a down payment when buying their first home.

The Wall Street bank said in a press release that the $6,500 benefit works to “address affordability pressures” and assist its American staffers in navigating the daunting journey of homeownership. By giving its staffers in the lowest tax brackets a boost in the homebuying process, BNY is targeting one of the biggest affordability crises straining its workforce. 

“Homeownership is a pathway to financial security and economic prosperity, and we’re committed to helping our people reach it,” Robin Vince, CEO of BNY, said in the program’s press release, adding that these benefits help “build a more resilient economy.”

All U.S. employees will also have access to homeowner education, including digital modules and live seminars that teach budgeting, credit readiness, mortgage options, closing costs, and long-term planning. Plus, all of its American workers will receive special mortgage perks.

America’s housing affordability crisis is creating a new status quo 

Americans are up against an affordability crisis, from soaring gas prices to untenable childcare costs—and housing is gobbling up huge chunks of their paychecks. Buying a home has become so untenable that it’s changing the status quo of homeownership. 

In 2025, the U.S. housing market witnessed two worrying trends; the proportion of first-time buyers plummeted to a record low of 21%, and the average age of these new homeowners soared to an all-time high of 40, according to a National Association of Realtors report released last year. In 1991, the median age of a first-time home buyer was 28 years old; last year, Gen Zers, who represent the lowest earners of any generation in the job market, only made up 3% of homebuyers. 

“The historically low share of first-time buyers underscores the real-world consequences of a housing market starved for affordable inventory,” Jessica Lautz, NAR deputy chief economist and vice president of research, said in a statement last year. “The share of first-time buyers in the market has contracted by 50% since 2007—right before the Great Recession.”

And wages aren’t increasing fast enough to keep pace with inflated housing costs. The median house price was 5.81 times as high as the average household income in 2022—up from a ratio of 4.52 in 2010, and 3.57 in 1984, according to a 2025 paper by Northwestern University’s Seung Hyeong Lee and the University of Chicago’s Younggeun Yoo. As homeownership continues to shift further out of reach, people are discouraged from saving enough for a down payment, the authors warned. 

Nearly 70% of workers would quit their job for another with housing benefits 

CEOs may believe that quirky office perks like beer on tap or Ping-Pong tables will lure in talent—but many workers are eyeing bigger benefits that improve their quality of life.

Nearly half of remote workers said they’d return to their offices if their company offered them housing benefits, according to a 2024 study from insurance firm JW Surety Bonds. And it’s not only enough to drag them off their couches and back to their desks—staffers would potentially jump ship for an employer offering the benefit. 

Around 69% were so desperate for employer-led housing perks that they would change jobs, or their careers, in order to work at a company that offers them. Professionals will even bargain off their precious PTO for housing assistance. More than two in five respondents said they’d sacrifice up to 15 days of vacation time—amounting to three full weeks, including the weekends—to get help with homebuying costs. 

Like BNY, other companies have caught on to the trend. For instance, employer-sponsored housing has grown popular in Japan, as the country’s cost-of-living crisis has plunged many workers into hard times. In 2023, Nippon Life, one of Japan’s largest insurers, constructed a 200-room residential building for males in a sought-after area near Tokyo Disneyland. It’s estimated that workers living there pay under a third of what rent would be for a comparable living option in the area; the company also provides subsidized housing for its female employees. 

Trading house Itochu has also invested in a new housing facility for its male staffers, just a half-hour train ride from the company’s Tokyo office. The living accommodations include breakfast and weekday dinners for employees, alongside other perks such a bar, café, and sauna. Itochu opened a facility for its female workers as well in 2025.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

An advisory firm that counsels the largest institutional investors on how to vote at shareholder meetings is recommending investors support Warner Bros. Discovery’s $77.7 billion acquisition by Paramount Skydance but is against a golden-parachute proposal that would see executives collect a total of $1.35 billion after the deal goes through. 

In a report issued on Wednesday, Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) said support for the “extraordinary golden parachute” proposal, which it valued at $886.8 million in payments for Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav and $466.2 million for the other executives, wasn’t warranted. ISS took issue with an “excise tax grossup” estimate of $335 million for Zaslav and hundreds of millions he stands to collect just because the deal between the two companies is happening.

It’s unclear if Zaslav will have a future role at the combined entity or with one of its affiliates or if he will continue on in a senior role. When Warner Bros. was weighing rival offers from David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance and Netflix last year, Ellison and his father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, dangled a compensation package worth “several hundred million dollars” to Zaslav, according to the deal disclosures. David Ellison also floated Zaslav becoming chairman of the combined company’s board, and then upped it to a co-CEO and co-chairman title. 

As of Warner Bros. proxy report filed last month, none of the executive officers have made an employment deal with Paramount, the combined company, or any of its affiliates. If Zaslav stepped into a chairman or CEO role, his golden parachute pay wouldn’t be consolation for losing a job, as is common, since he would be moving into another role at the combined company.  

“The value disclosed in the golden parachute table for CEO Zaslav at over $886 million represents one of the highest golden parachute estimates ever observed, though the proxy notes that this value may decline depending on merger timing,” ISS wrote in its report to investors. 

The proxy advisory firm said it had “significant concerns” about the $335 million agreement to cover an excise tax Zaslav will incur as a result of the acquisition, describing the so-called grossup agreement as “an extraordinary cost” inconsistent with common market practice. An excise tax gross-up payment from a company to an executive is rare. The payments cover a 20% additional tax burden triggered by the IRS when an executive collects more than three times their average total compensation. The excise gross-up payment gives the executive enough additional cash so that they’re left as if the excise tax never hit them. The other Warner Bros. executives are not getting an excise tax, ISS noted.

In addition to the special tax treatment for Zaslav, ISS found that the overall parachute payment for him is mostly the result of what are called single-trigger benefits. A single-trigger on an executive’s stock-based equity compensation means that the equity qualifies for accelerated vesting based on one event, which is usually when a company’s ownership changes. Most large-cap companies have double-trigger vesting, meaning there needs to be both a change-in-control of the company and that the executive loses their job. The awards for executives other than Zaslav are subject to double-trigger vesting, but most of Zaslav’s outstanding equity will just automatically accelerate based on the acquisition, ISS wrote.

That includes awards the Warner Bros. board gave Zaslav in January, including more than 3 million stock options and 2 million restricted stock units that ISS valued at a total of $107 million, although the options could potentially be worth less. ISS’s report states that more than 94% of the value of Zaslav’s $887 million in payments was because of the tax gross-up payment and equity that will automatically accelerate just because of the deal. 

Warner Bros. disclosed that if the deal were to take place in 2027, no excise tax payment would happen for Zaslav. However, Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. are working to complete the merger as soon as possible and expect it to close by the end of the third quarter of 2026 in September.

Warner Bros shareholders will vote on the Paramount acquisition and on executives’ golden parachute payouts on April 23, though votes on the payouts are purely advisory and non-binding.

Warner Bros. did not respond to a request for comment on ISS’s recommendation.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said Wednesday that three clauses of the 10-point ceasefire framework with the United States had already been violated, despite negotiations not beginning.

Ghalibaf cited continued Israeli strikes in Lebanon; a drone shot down over Iran’s Fars province; and what Tehran called a denial of its right to uranium enrichment. “In such situation, a bilateral ceasefire or negotiations is unreasonable,” he wrote in a statement posted to X. The Strait of Hormuz remained largely blocked, with only four tanker transits recorded on the day, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Markets barely flinched on the news, with crude ticking up slightly higher and stocks falling only 0.3%. Crude has posted one of its sharpest single-day drops on record, and global equities have ripped higher on peace-deal euphoria. 

The statement throws immediate uncertainty over a deal that is barely 24 hours old and exposes a fundamental disagreement over what was actually agreed to. The U.S. and Iran are heading into talks in Islamabad, Pakistan, on Saturday working to Frankenstein some agreement between two different documents: Iran’s 10-point plan and the White House’s 15-point plan. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday there was no way President Trump would accept Iran’s version, which demands Tehran retain control over the Strait of Hormuz and receive reparations for the war.

Trump moved Wednesday to dismiss the idea that any framework other than his own was on the table. In a post on Truth Social, he wrote: “Numerous Agreements, Lists, and Letters are being sent out by people that have absolutely nothing to do with the U.S.A./Iran Negotiation, in many cases, they are total Fraudsters, Charlatans, and WORSE.” It was unclear whether Trump was referring to Ghalibaf’s statement; to an earlier letter reported by CNN that the White House said carried no official authority; or to both.

Lebanon becomes the flash point

The single biggest point of contention, and now the most violent, is Lebanon.

Israel’s military said Wednesday it had struck more than 100 Hezbollah command centers and military sites in 10 minutes, in what it called the largest wave of strikes in the conflict. The southern suburbs of Beirut, southern Lebanon, and the eastern Bekaa Valley were all targeted. Lebanon’s health ministry said at least 112 people were killed and 837 injured while the country’s civil defense put the toll higher, at 254 dead and more than 1,100 wounded. Hospitals are overwhelmed in Beirut, while rescue crews reported people trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings.

The strikes came hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office publicly denied Pakistan’s assertion—which Islamabad had used as a basis for mediating the U.S.-Iran ceasefire—that the deal also covered the Lebanese front.

Iran had drawn its line directly on this question. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Wednesday the ceasefire with the U.S. must include a pause in Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah. “The Iran-U.S. Ceasefire terms are clear and explicit: the U.S. must choose—ceasefire or continued war via Israel. It cannot have both,” Araghchi wrote on X. “The world sees the massacres in Lebanon. The ball is in the U.S. court.”

The White House sees it differently. “Lebanon is not part of the ceasefire. That has been relayed to all parties in the ceasefire,” Leavitt told reporters.

Hezbollah, which has not claimed any attack since the ceasefire was announced, said Wednesday that the group was on the “threshold of a major historic victory” and warned displaced families to wait for a formal ceasefire announcement before trying to return home. Israeli military spokesman Effie Defrin said Israel would respect the ceasefire with Iran but warned: “If we need to go back and attack Iran, we will.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Small businesses see what’s happening in Iran as an omen of tough times ahead, and it may just mean a bigger loss for Main Street in the coming months. 

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Small Business Index, which measures small business owner sentiment, fell to 67.0 in the first quarter, retreating further from its all-time high of 72.0 in the third quarter of 2025. The latest number may slightly undersell the anxiety surrounding the Iran war: the survey was conducted between Feb. 25 and March 11, meaning three of those 14 days occurred before the outbreak of the war. 

The data captured in real time what small business owners felt just as the war broke out, and they didn’t like what they saw.

Thomas Sullivan, the Chamber’s vice president of small business policy, said the picture is more alarming than the index score alone suggests.

“Honestly, they’re doing fine,” he told Fortune. “The challenge is that fine really isn’t good enough, especially when you look at the pro-growth incentives from the tax law that was signed last July.”

Only 28% of small business owners now say the U.S. economy is in good health, a 10-point collapse in a single quarter. Plans to increase staffing fell 12 percentage points to just 30%, the steepest single-quarter drop in the index’s history.

Sullivan said the Iran conflict is a key reason why. “A key difference with the military conflict in Iran is that there’s a direct connection to rising gas prices, and that is the double whammy for small business owners,” he said. “It’s more immediate, it’s more in your face, and it more directly impacts how you view the economy.”

That double whammy compounds a pressure that was already four years in the making. Inflation has been the top challenge for small businesses for 17 consecutive quarters, with 53% of owners naming it their biggest concern, up from 45% in the prior quarter.

“From a small business perspective, inflation is anything that costs more,” Sullivan clarified. “This is not the specific economics definition of inflation.”

The 28% who say the national economy is in good health stands in stark contrast to the 69% who rate their own business as healthy.

“The more control a small business has on the numbers, the more optimistic they are,” Sullivan explained. “No small business owner is going to hire a new employee, if in the back of their mind they think, in six months, they’re going to have to fire them. Because that decision is not a spreadsheet decision. It is an emotional decision.”

Nearly one in five (19%) say offering employee benefits and healthcare remains their biggest challenge. “Uncertainty is like, ‘we can’t grow, but we’re doing fine, and in order to maintain this level, I’ve got to keep my best employees,’” he said. “That’s why the concern for the cost of benefits is going up.”

This is also the first quarter where small businesses are not increasing their technology spend. “With the advent of AI and the efficiencies that small business owners are realizing, you would like to see their technology spend, their investments, going up,” he said.

Sullivan remains cautiously optimistic that the slide is not a permanent trend. “If the military conflict is over and small businesses are listening to their tax advisors and making significant investments, then we would see the numbers going upward,” he said. “That’s where I’m optimistic.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Meta has unveiled Muse Spark, the first AI model produced by its Meta Superintelligence Labs, the new AI research unit it created last year and has spent billions of dollars to staff and equip.

The model is, according to benchmark tests that Meta published, competitive with leading AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google across many tasks, although it does not surpass them across the board. Still, if the benchmark results hold up when tested by independent experts, Muse Spark seems to put Meta back in the AI race after its last AI model, Llama 4, which was released in April 2025, was widely panned as a dud.

In the past, however, Meta has been caught manipulating the published benchmark results of an AI model to make it appear more capable than the version available to most users actually was. This was the case with Meta’s Llama 4 benchmarks, in which the company later admitted to using specialized, unreleased versions of the model, fine-tuned for specific tasks, to boost benchmark scores in those areas, while the general version made available to all users did not perform as well.

And there’s another catch. Few people will be able to use the new Meta model outside of the company’s own product ecosystem. Unlike Meta’s previous AI models, which were released as “open weight” models—meaning anyone could download the models for free and run them on their own equipment, as well as modify and fine-tune them as they wished—Muse Spark is, at least for the moment, primarily an in-house tool for Meta.

The model currently powers the Meta AI assistant in the company’s stand-alone Meta AI app and on meta.ai. The company said it will be rolling it out to WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, and Meta’s Ray-Ban AI glasses in the coming weeks. It also said it will offer the model in a “private preview” to select partners through an application programming interface (API). That makes Muse Spark even more proprietary than the paid proprietary models offered by Meta’s rivals. (Meta said in a blog post that it hopes to open-source future versions of the model.)

Muse Spark is Meta’s first reasoning model, meaning it can work through a process in a step-by-step fashion, using different strategies if its initial approach doesn’t work. The company’s previous models were all designed to produce an instant answer based on the model’s training. Muse Spark is also a multimodal model that can take in and output both text and images. The model also supports the use of other software tools and can help orchestrate the work of multiple subagents, according to a technical blog post released by Meta.

In its blog post announcing the new model, Meta describes Muse Spark as “small and fast by design, yet capable enough to reason through complex questions in science, math, and health.” It describes the model as the first in a series of new models, with Muse Spark being used to validate the architecture and training regime Meta is using, before the company scales this up to larger and even more powerful models in the same family.

The model also has a “contemplating” or “thinking” mode in which it can spin up subagents to reason about different parts of a task in parallel. Meta said in a technical blog it published on the new model that this mode allows Muse Spark “to compete with the extreme reasoning modes of frontier models such as Gemini Deep Think and GPT Pro.”

The benchmark results published alongside the launch paint a picture of a model that is competitive but not dominant. For instance, on the GPQA Diamond benchmark, which is supposed to test PhD-level reasoning skill, Muse Spark scored 89.5%, which slightly trailed both Gemini 3.1 Pro’s 94.3% as well as the 92.7% and 92.8% that Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 and OpenAI’s GPT-5.4 scored respectively. On a leading health benchmark, HealthBench Hard, Muse Spark beat all rival models with a score of 42.8%, which was far better than either Opus 4.6 or Gemini 3.1 Pro, and slightly better than GPT-5.4.

Meta acknowledged the performance gaps. Its technical blog post states that the company continues “to invest in areas with current performance gaps, specifically long-horizon agentic systems and coding workflows.”

The Muse Spark launch is the most tangible product yet of the sweeping reorganization Meta undertook after the Llama 4 fiasco. In June 2025, Meta spent $14.3 billion to acquire a 49% nonvoting stake in Scale AI and brought in its cofounder and CEO, Alexandr Wang, as Meta’s first-ever chief AI officer.

Wang has been tasked with leading a newly created Meta Superintelligence Labs unit. Wang and Zuckerberg went on a talent acquisition spree, offering AI researchers at rival AI labs pay packages that reportedly climbed into the hundreds of millions of dollars when equity was included. The company has also committed hundreds of billions of dollars to build out AI computing infrastructure to support its new AI drive. 

There has since been further reorganization, even as Muse Spark was in development. In March 2026, Meta created a new applied AI engineering organization led by Maher Saba, a vice president who previously worked in Meta’s Reality Labs virtual and augmented reality unit. Saba reports directly to Meta chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth. Saba’s unit works alongside Wang’s Superintelligence Labs to build what an internal memo described as “the data engine that helps our models get better, faster.” The move was widely interpreted as Zuckerberg hedging his bets—ensuring product-focused AI development continues even as Wang pursues longer-term superintelligence research.

In a technical blog post, Meta says that over the past nine months its team rebuilt its AI stack from the ground up, including improvements to model architecture, optimization, and data curation. The company claims these advances allow it to achieve the same capabilities with “over an order of magnitude less compute” than Llama 4 Maverick, Meta’s previous model. Meta also says its reinforcement learning pipeline now delivers “smooth, predictable gains,” and that Muse Spark is the first step on a deliberate “scaling ladder” where each generation validates the last before the company trains larger models.

On safety, Meta says Muse Spark underwent extensive evaluation before deployment, following the company’s updated safety framework. The model reports impressive results for safety around potential bioweapons engineering—on one benchmark, it refused 98% of requests that the benchmark designers judged as potentially helping someone develop a bioweapon.

However, the blog post also said third-party evaluator Apollo Research found that Muse Spark demonstrated the highest rate of “evaluation awareness” of any model Apollo has observed, frequently identifying test scenarios as “alignment traps.” Meta says its own follow-up investigation found initial evidence that this awareness may affect model behavior on a small subset of alignment evaluations, but concluded it was “not a blocking concern for release.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The U.S., Israel, and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire on Tuesday, but the sticker shock you’ve been feeling every time you go to the grocery store will get worse if the war continues. One of the first places you’ll feel it will be the produce aisle, experts say. 

A Fortune analysis of produce wholesale prices from USDA data found grocery-cart staples such as tomatoes, bananas, and yellow onions have experienced significant price spikes since the war began. The United Nations reported its global food price index rose by 2.4% in March, the second consecutive month of rising prices.

“The big recent changes are the war causing spikes in diesel, fertilizer, and chemical prices,” Jeffrey Dorfman, professor of agricultural and resource economics at North Carolina State University, told Fortune. 

USDA predicted food prices will increase by 3.6% in 2026, but soaring fuel prices should lead to an only 1% to 2% increase on produce, Dorfman said. 

How fuel prices affect grocery prices

To understand how fuel prices are actually affecting your grocery bill, it’s important to look at how much energy affects food prices. Fossil fuels used to make oil, diesel, and fertilizer used in farming and distribution account for between 15% and 30% of produce costs, Dorfman explained. If fuel prices increase by 30%, as they have since the war began, produce, which accounts for about a fifth of a shopping cart, will increase by just 1% to 2%, Dorfman estimated. 

Shipping costs are also a key factor in price increases. This time of year, most produce in the U.S. comes from Florida, Arizona, California, and Mexico, Dorfman said. If you live farther from these places, and food has to travel longer, you will see more of an effect on prices, he noted. 

Other factors impacting grocery prices

Fuel prices are not the whole story.

Grocery prices were facing upward pressure even before the war in Iran, Dorfman said. A growing labor shortage owing to limited immigration, drought, and overall inflation have all led to price increases, he said. 

Labor, which contributes to about half of the cost of groceries, was the single biggest contributor to higher prices before the war, Chris Barrett, professor of applied economics and management at Cornell University, who studies international agriculture, told Fortune. 

“Labor shortages have been a very real feature of the food value chain over the last 14 months, and that means that they’re having to pay more for overtime,” he said. “They’re having to pay more to get or to keep workers because they’re losing workers as people have been detained or deported.” 

In October, the Department of Labor filed a report with the Federal Register, estimating that 42% of the U.S. crop workforce is unable to enter the country, faces potential deportation, or is leaving the U.S.

Another key factor is electricity prices beyond fuel and diesel, Barrett said.  

“Energy is also embedded in your grocery bill,” he said. “Just think of all the refrigerated trucks you see moving fruits and vegetables and dairy products around. Think of all the refrigeration and freezers in the grocery store. Think of all the electricity running the machinery that does the processing and the packaging.

“All of those higher electricity costs turn into an added expense on your grocery store bill, and that was already an issue before the war,” he continued.

Tariffs also raised produce prices before the war, Barrett said. 

“Tariffs are a tax right on the top,” he said. “The importer is paying a duty to the government to import tomatoes from Mexico, or to import broccoli from Chile, during our winter. That passes straight through to you and me at the grocery store checkout.”

What to expect over the next few months

Grocery prices could get much higher if the war continues, Dorfman said. 

“It’s not like we can’t ship the oil now, but we’ll catch up once this is over. You can return to normal amounts of oil being shipped, but you can never really catch up,” Dorfman said. “I certainly can’t predict how long the war is going to last, but the longer it lasts, the longer oil prices will stay high, and the slower they will be in returning to normal.” 

While the current effects of the war on grocery prices may be mild, customers could feel the pain for the rest of the year if the war continues another two or three months, Dorfman said. This is, in part, because most crops only grow once a year. Therefore, if farmers use higher-cost fertilizer to grow products like corn this spring and summer, it could affect prices until the next growing season. 

If the war does not last much longer, food prices may not go up, Peter Zaleski, an economics professor at Villanova University, told Fortune. While crop prices tend to be volatile, other foods may not change in the short term. 

“Even especially at the retail level, firms are loath to raise prices,” Zaleski said. “They’re probably in a wait-and-see mode to see for certain,” especially when it comes to factory-processed food. Other manufacturers may respond with shrinkflation, or offering a smaller amount of product for the same price, he said. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Southwest Airlines is raising checked baggage fees by $10, less than a year after ending its “bags fly free” perk that long set it apart, as jet fuel costs have jumped since the start of the Iran war.

Customers checking one bag will pay $45 starting on Thursday, while a second will now cost $55, according to Southwest. Some travelers will still receive a free first checked bag, including certain loyalty-tier members, eligible co-branded credit card holders and active-duty military members.

The move was made “as part of an ongoing analysis of the business and against the evolving global backdrop,” the Texas-based carrier said in a statement.

Southwest ended its generous, decades-old policy of allowing passengers to check two bags for free in May 2025, a move that marked a major shift for the carrier after years of marketing the perk as a key differentiator.

The airline now joins a growing list of U.S. carriers that have increased fees since the war in the Middle East began Feb. 28, sending oil prices swinging as fighting near the Strait of Hormuz disrupted global supplies. Threats to the narrow waterway where roughly a fifth of the world’s oil typically passes have pushed up jet fuel prices, which are refined from crude.

Delta Air Lines’ higher baggage fees took effect Wednesday. JetBlue and United Airlines also raised their bag fees last week.

Oil prices on Wednesday were plunging toward $95 per barrel after President Donald Trump announced a two-week ceasefire with Iran just before a deadline he had set for Tehran to open the Strait of Hormuz and allow oil tankers to exit the Persian Gulf. But prices remain well above pre-war levels amid ongoing risks that the conflict could continue.

Adding to the uncertainty, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz again Wednesday in response to Israeli attacks on the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon, casting doubt on whether the fragile ceasefire will hold.

The average price for a gallon of jet fuel in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and New York was $4.81 on Tuesday, up from $2.50 the day before the war started, according to Argus Media. The energy market intelligence company’s U.S. Jet Fuel Index tracks average prices across those major hubs.

Outside of the U.S., a number of carriers are responding by adding or increasing fuel surcharges, a tool that U.S. airlines don’t typically rely on.

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A slew of Bitcoin ETFs have hit the market since the products were first approved in the U.S. in 2024, but so far one sector has remained on the sidelines—major U.S. banks. That changed Wednesday with the launch of MSBT, a Bitcoin ETF offered by Morgan Stanley.

The spot ETF, which features an industry low with a sponsor fee of 0.14%, saw over $25 million in trading volume in its first half day of trading. In an X post, Bloomberg Senior ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas put MSBT’s debut in the top 1% of all ETF launches. 

The bank’s crypto plans don’t end with Bitcoin, either. Morgan Stanley also filed for Ethereum and Solana trusts in January.

Bitcoin ETFs currently hold over $100 billion in cumulative assets under management as of Tuesday, according to data from CoinShares. The largest Bitcoin ETF belongs to BlackRock, which has over $53 billion in net assets in its IBIT fund. 

Bitcoin’s newest ETF arrives at a time when investor interest in crypto, and risky assets in general, is relatively muted. Demand for Bitcoin ETFs recovered slightly after posting a sluggish start to 2026, and the funds have cumulatively seen over $1 billion in net inflows on the year, according to data from CoinShares.

Morgan Stanley’s wealth management arm, which has about 16,000 advisors, has recommended clients allocate 2-4% of their portfolios to crypto. The bank’s clients were previously able to access third-party Bitcoin ETFs. Now, Morgan Stanley will be able to direct clients to its own product.

For crypto boosters, MSBT’s launch was yet more confirmation of crypto’s relevance to the financial sector. 

“Institutional priorities have matured; MSBT is the clear response to this second wave of digital asset adoption,” Coinbase Institutional co-CEO Brett Tejpaul told Fortune. Coinbase and BNY Mellon were both selected as custodians for the ETF.

But it’s yet unclear if Morgan Stanley breaking the ice on bank-led crypto ETFs will open a floodgates of new crypto funds. Despite the fact that the “risk of being first is gone,” Coinshares Senior Research Associate Luke Nolan said in a text, “banks with strong anti-crypto reputations are unlikely to follow quickly … I [don’t] think Goldman [will] join the ETF game, for example – they seem to be going more for the tokenization side of things (although this could prove incorrect).”

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The ranks of Americans that can add guac to their burrito bowl guilt-free have swelled. The upper middle class has become the largest income group in the US, according to a recent analysis by the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, highlighted by the Wall Street Journal.

The report contends that the lower rungs of the middle class shrank because more Americans got richer:

• In 2024, 31% of American families were upper middle class, compared with just 10% in 1979.
• The think tank’s report defined the upper middle class as a family of three earning $133k to $400k in 2024 dollars—five to 15 times the federal poverty line.

Meanwhile, the share of American households living in or near poverty declined from almost 30% in 1979 to below 19% in 2024.

‘We’re comfortable’ class

The Wall Street Journal notes that upper middle class folks are often white-collar professionals in dual-income households, who have benefitted from women’s advances in the workforce and rising wages in fields like software engineering. Many are boomers raking in sizable pension payments made possible by stock market gains.

This group’s shopping habits are behind the rise of bougie goods and services, like first-class plane tickets, which have been a major driver of US economic growth.

But…economic inequality has also grown, with families in higher tax brackets seeing greater income growth while the poorest 5% seeing their earnings decline.—SK

This report was originally published by Morning Brew.

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President Donald Trump again stepped back from the brink and traders are cashing in on what they called “TACO Tuesday.”

After threatening that “a whole civilization will die tonight” early Tuesday, just two hours before his 8 p.m. deadline, Trump announced a two-week ceasefire on the condition that Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz and restart the flow of oil. While doubts remain about the agreement and whether oil flows will actually restart, the President’s about-face still managed to lift markets.

A $1.5 trillion rally lifted all three major indexes and brought some optimism to markets following weeks of uncertainty over Middle East turmoil. Oil fell by 16% to below $100 per barrel while equities surged. The Nasdaq led gains with a 3.55% jump, followed by a 2.7% increase for the S&P 500, and a 1,200 point, or 2.6% bump, in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The surge reversed weeks of losses—the S&P 500 earlier this week was down 4% since the Iran war started in late February.

Online, traders rejoiced as the reliable “TACO” trade, shorthand for Trump Always Chickens Out, panned out once again.  

“Knowing Trump will [TACO] is the equivalent of me knowing I need to drink water to survive,” wrote one commenter on the trading focused Reddit forum SmallStreetBets.

Financial analysts tend to agree with the retail traders—with some caveats. 

“This could be a boom for tech stocks now with this off ramp in Iran,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives told Fortune. 

Ives went further in a Wednesday note, saying more than one month of Iran turmoil has created opportunities for traders to benefit. 

“We continue to strongly believe the nervous geopolitical backdrop over the past few months has created an oversold tech environment for Mag 7, software names, and many tech winners in the AI Revolution,” Ives wrote. 

What is the TACO trade?

The TACO trade was born last year after Trump switched course after announcing broad “Liberation Day” tariffs on nearly all U.S. trading partners. At the time, the S&P 500 plunged nearly 20% before rebounding sharply after Trump paused them. Retail investors, in particular, capitalized on the so-called TACO trade following the “Liberation Day” tariffs, putting a record $3 billion into equities as the S&P 500 sank 5%.

Still, others cautioned that while the TACO trade is alive and well now, that doesn’t mean it will always deliver.

“Investors are noticing the pattern, and may they extrapolate that pattern into the future. I think that’s reasonable, but we would caution not to over extrapolate that,” Michael Reynolds, the vice president of investment strategy at Glenmede Investment Management told Fortune.

Reynolds added that while the trade has been consistent for now, investors should not be confident the trade is foolproof.

“We would caution that if investors were to completely see through all of those statements, they may be setting themselves up for a nasty surprise in a situation where there is a follow through,” he said.

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The next time you’re out to dinner, someone might not only ask to take your jacket, they may want you to hand over your phone, too. The number of bars and restaurants establishing a phone-free environment is growing, per Axios—a change that appeals to younger patrons.

Axios found that at least 11 states have individual restaurants or bars with a form of phone restriction or digital detox. Scrolling a menu instead of your phone is thought to create a more intimate setting, lead to more focus on food, and protect patron privacy.

A recent survey from Talker Research shows a significant number of people are putting their phones away and probably don’t want to see someone taking pictures of their food:

• 63% of Gen Z says they intentionally disconnect; 57% of millennials say the same.
• Even older crowds are on board—42% of Gen X and 29% of boomers said they unplug.

A needed break: Data from Consumer Affairs showed Americans spend an average of 4.5 hours per day on their devices. Another revealed that 86.5% of phone use involves social networking and texting during meals.

It’s chains, too: The upscale supper club Delilah’s has a no-phones policy. Even some Chick-Fil-A locations are offering free ice cream as an incentive for turning over your phone while eating.—DL

This report was originally published by Morning Brew.

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JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon warned of an exodus of companies from New York as a result of climbing taxes and regulatory encumbrances, but emerging data suggests mass migration away from the metropolis has been greatly exaggerated.

In JPMorgan’s annual shareholder letter, Dimon wrote that “while New York City has much going for it,” it also has the highest corporate and income taxes, with the potential to scare off businesses and high-caliber talent as a result.

“Individuals vote with their feet,” Dimon wrote. “You can already see a fairly large exodus of people and jobs out of some states with high taxes and high expenses,” referencing the exodus of billionaires from California and Washington, states that have announced income taxes in recent months.

Billionaires such as Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin both divested from California as the state weighs a wealth tax on billionaires, snapping up property in Florida and Nevada, respectively. Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, whose net worth is $6.6 billion, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, with $203 billion in wealth, have both bought Florida property.

And Dimon notes his company is following suit: Despite opening its new global headquarters in Manhattan last October, JPMorgan shrank its New York headcount by 20%, from 30,000 a decade ago to 24,000 today, Dimon wrote in his letter. Meanwhile, the bank is expanding its footprint in Texas, growing from 26,000 employees in 2015 to 32,000 today, a trend Dimon said, “will likely continue.”

Indeed, fewer taxes and looser regulations in Texas and Florida have helped create a “Wall Street South” of big businesses setting up shop in sunny states. Hedge fund giant Citadel, under Ken Griffin, is awaiting the completion of its $2.5 billion headquarters in Miami. Private equity firm Apollo Global Management, which manages nearly a trillion dollars in its portfolio, plans to move away from New York and open a second HQ in either Texas or South Florida.

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, with a noted socialist streak, has proposed a tax increase on New Yorkers making more than $1 million, which critics have cited as the impetus for New York’s wealthiest fleeing the state, and taking their money (and tax revenue) with them.

But a new white paper from real estate firm JLL shared exclusively with Fortune claimed there’s been a “myth of the mass exodus.” While there’s slightly more migration to Florida than New York, skilled professionals and early-career workers—though perhaps less wealthy and influential than their millionaire counterparts—still prefer the Big Apple to the Sunshine State. The firm’s recent analysis of office space in the first quarter of 2026 moreover found office vacancies in New York decreased by 2.2% to 13.5%, while leasing volume for high-quality office space reached 8.5 million square feet. Rents increased 3.5% year over year.

“The most sophisticated talent continues to gravitate toward major markets like Manhattan despite the headlines,” JLL wrote in its white paper, “and any slowdown in this growth is far more likely to stem from limited space supply on the island than from a lack of demand.”

The ‘myth of mass exodus’

Building on its data showing New York office space is still in high demand, JLL argued that the robustness of New York’s business sector is also dependent on a steady supply of qualified labor, which indicates that high-quality talent still gravitates toward the city. New York is not only still attractive to skilled workers, JLL suggested, but those stockpiles of professionals can similarly incentivize companies to stay.

Analyzing LinkedIn migration data showing job moves over the past 12 months, as well as education and demographic information on the site, JLL found that while 3% more individuals chose to migrate to Florida than New York, New York saw 10% more migrating mid- and early-career professionals from top schools than Florida. According to the analysis, New York is seeing a steady stream of new talent, with 70 skilled professionals migrating there for every one professional it loses to Florida.

This fresh data supplements what other real estate experts have been saying for months about the overexaggerated flight of influential New Yorkers. In November, following Mamdani’s election, signed contracts for Manhattan homes over $4 million rose 25% from October, according to brokerage Douglas Elliman and appraiser Miller Samuel. Olshan Realty similarly saw a 31% increase in Manhattan luxury home sales from October to November 2025.

Jonathan Miller, president and CEO of Miller Samuel, previously told Fortune the trend of wealthy buyers scooping up luxury New York real estate was present for all of last year.

“Throughout 2025 on a year-over-year basis, overall sales have risen, prices have risen, sales have risen faster than inventory, rents have risen, rental activity has risen, and especially in October and November,” Miller said. “I’m looking at this anecdotal argument, and the plural of anecdotal is not data.”

But the future of New York as a nucleus for white-collar workers is not secured, JLL suggested. It found that migration to Florida was more common among early-career workers, while Florida also became more appealing to those later in their careers. While New York is being flooded with eager professionals, it may lose out to Florida in keeping them as they become more seasoned.

“This pattern matters more today than in the past,” JLL wrote. “Slower early-career hiring and AI-driven changes to entry-level roles weaken the pipeline that once offset senior departures, raising questions about the durability of New York’s long-term talent base.”

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After scaling its custom designed switches up to several thousand, Facebook’s current crop of networking gear isn’t cutting it. The social networking giant is set to replace its 40-gigabit switches with a new line of 100-gigabit switches that can process 3.2 terabits per second. That’s 3.2 billion megabits per second—which is a lot of capacity for your videos and photos to be whizzing around the servers inside Facebook’s data centers.

At the Structure 2015 event in San Francisco Thursday, Facebook’s Jay Parikh, global head of engineering and infrastructure, outlined Facebook’s new 100-gigabit switches and also said Facebook’s older 40-gigabit customizable switches would be available for sale to the wider community through Accton. Parikh also said the plans for the switches would be available through the Open Compute Foundation for companies to build the switches themselves if they wanted.

Facebook’s (FB) switches were announced in June 2014 as part of its Open Compute effort to build hardware that would be flexible and could evolve at the speed of software. While that’s a tall order, Facebook estimates that it has saved more than $1.2 billion since developing Open Compute in 2011 and implementing its own custom-built hardware.

The industry, too, has benefited, with other firms adopting some of the designs and design principles. Other firms such as Baidu and Microsoft have submitted designs to Open Compute as well. These switches are powerful and can move large amounts of data really quickly. They may be most appropriate for large data center providers and those in the financial services community, but not exactly for the corporate customers that buy more traditional gear from Cisco (CSCO) or Juniper (JNPR).

MORE: Google Is Serious About the Enterprise, Says Cloud Chief at Structure Conference

The boxes themselves aren’t a threat to the big networking companies, but the flexibility they offer might force those vendors to adjust their strategy. Facebook’s server designs and storage designs have influenced the wider industry, so it stands to reason its network thinking will also percolate through the wider industry architecture. Since Facebook’s design focuses on flexibility and configurability, and the current networking zeitgeist is still very much a black box mentality, that collision of ideals will be a fun one to watch.

Parikh also shared some other news from the Open Compute Foundation, including that the Department of Energy announced plans to deploy a series of Open Compute inspired high-performance computing clusters that will be used in three of its national labs. These clusters will be used for research in Los Alamos, Sandia, and Lawrence Livermore, making this the first time Open Compute hardware is being used for high-performance computing. (However, supercomputing has been getting less super for a decade or so.)

You can follow Stacey Higginbotham on Twitter at @gigastacey @gigastacey, and read all of her posts here or via her RSS feed. And please subscribe to Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the business of technology.

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Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, has spent the past decade climbing to the top of online content. Now one of the most popular creators in the world, he boasts a record 476 million subscribers on YouTube alone—fueled by increasingly extreme stunts, from spending a week living in a cave to even being buried in a coffin. 

But building one of the biggest multibillion-dollar entertainment businesses born out of social media has taken a toll on his time.

“I live to work and 100% do not have a healthy work-life balance,” Donaldson wrote on X, after a docuseries titled How MrBeast Works 18 Hours per Day was released and people commented on his lack of balance.

“It was a miracle if a day was less than 15 hours for me,” Donaldson said in the docuseries, adding that his schedule is “literally planned down to the minute.”

At the same time he was filming the second installment of his Amazon Prime competition series, Beast Games, Donaldson also maintained regular production of his high-budget YouTube videos, which regularly rack up more than 100 million views. And he pointed to video thumbnails as an example of the operation’s precision: Donaldson employs a body double to help stage and test concepts, allowing him to step in briefly for the final shot before moving on to the next task.

“Everything has to be perfect because I don’t have much time,” he said.

MrBeast is planning to build a media empire rivaling Disney—and he’s growing his team by 50% this year alone

While not every day may be as relentless for Donaldson as the one filming Beast Games, his pace reflects a broader ambition: He isn’t just making videos—he’s building an entertainment empire under Beast Industries, one he has said he hopes will one day rival Disney. That expansion now stretches beyond content into areas like financial services and telecom, further increasing demands on his time.

To support that growth, Beast Industries is rapidly scaling. CEO Jeff Housenbold, a veteran of Silicon Valley who joined the company in 2024, said this week the company plans to expand its workforce by 50% including roles in New York, Los Angeles, and its Greenville, N.C., headquarters—Donaldson’s hometown. Hiring is focused on areas including marketing, engineering, and consumer products.

One job posting, to be a recruiter in New York, for example, is advertised with a total compensation package of between $130,000 and $160,000, plus equity. The company also offers relocation support, including company-provided housing for the first 90 days, and notably does not require college degrees for most roles.

But despite building what’s been valued as a $5 billion business, Donaldson has said that hasn’t translated into personal liquidity.

“I have negative money right now; I’m borrowing money. That’s how little money I have,” Donaldson told the Wall Street Journal in a video released earlier this year. “Technically, everyone watching this video has more money than me in their bank account if you subtract the equity value of my company, which doesn’t buy me McDonald’s in the morning.”

That tradeoff underscores how deeply Donaldson continues to reinvest in his business—both financially and with his time.

“I wake up, I just work … I’m just so busy working I don’t really think about my personal bank account,” Donaldson added. “I’m just laser-focused on making the greatest videos as possible, and building the business as big as possible.”

Donaldson’s team declined Fortune’s request for comment.

Work-life balance is a tradeoff, according to many top business leaders

Donaldson is far from alone in suggesting that success at the highest levels can require an all-consuming commitment to work. Countless business leaders have spoken about periods of intense sacrifice in their careers.

Mark Cuban is a prime example. He said that work-life balance isn’t realistic for those chasing outsize success.

“There is no balance,” Cuban said on The Playbook, a series from Sports Illustrated. “If you want to work nine-to-five, you can have work-life balance. If you want to crush the game, whatever game you’re in, there’s somebody working 24 hours a day to kick your ass.”

But others argue that the approach isn’t always sustainable. Netflix cofounder Marc Randolph, for example, said throughout his career, he made it a priority to balance work with life.

“For over 30 years, I had a hard cutoff on Tuesdays. Rain or shine, I left at exactly 5 p.m. and spent the evening with my best friend,” he wrote in a 2023 LinkedIn post that has recirculated on social media. “We would go to a movie, have dinner, or just go window-shopping downtown together.”

Even JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon—known for his high standards and return-to-office push—has emphasized the importance of balance. Speaking to students at Georgetown University in 2024, he said: “What we tell our people at JPMorgan is you have to take care of your mind, your body, your spirit, your soul, your friends, your health. You really have to.”

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The quest to unmask Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin, has been going on for more than a decade now, and resulted in some embarrassing misfires. The most notorious came in 2014 when Newsweek magazine dropped a bombshell cover story claiming the Bitcoin inventor was a 64-year-old man named Dorian Nakamoto hiding in plain sight outside Los Angeles. More recently, a 2024 HBO documentary put forth a dramatic—and dramatically wrong—revelation that Satoshi was a little known and improbably young Canadian software developer.

The latest to take up the case is legendary journalist John Carreyrou, famous for exposing a massive scandal involving fraudster Elizabeth Holmes’ blood-testing startup Theranos. In a lengthy investigation published on Wednesday in the New York Times, Carreyrou claims to have cracked the case and found that Satoshi Nakamoto is none other than the British computer scientist Adam Back.

It’s not a bad guess. Back has long been an influential figure in crypto circles, and is also famous as the inventor of Hashcash, a form of digital money that predates Bitcoin. Back is also the CEO of an early Bitcoin infrastructure firm known as Blockstream, and is currently operating a company that issues shares to amass a hoard of Bitcoin.

In his exposé, which runs to an eye-glazing 12,000 words, Carreyrou seizes on Back’s business activities and layers on heaps of circumstantial evidence to make the case he has found Satoshi. Carreyrou doesn’t produce any smoking guns, but instead relies heavily on characteristics that are attributable to both Satoshi and Back: the use of British spelling, libertarian beliefs, involvement in the Cypherpunk movement, and the employment of punctuation like “proof-of-work” used in the Bitcoin white paper.

Carreyrou acknowledged an obvious objection to this thesis—that there is a lengthy paper trail of Back corresponding with Satoshi—but explains it away by saying that Back was actually writing to himself as part of an elaborate ruse to throw would-be unmaskers off the trail.

It all sounds good until you recall that journalists, like anyone else, are prone to confirmation bias. This is the psychological phenomenon in which people seek out evidence that confirms their existing beliefs and ignore facts that might refute them. Confirmation bias is what tripped up Newsweek and HBO, and it appears to have tripped up Carreyrou as well.

The evidence he provides about Back’s involvement with the Cypherpunk movement and his political beliefs support his case—but are also attributes common to nearly everyone else in the early Bitcoin days. As for the common literary quirks between Back and Satoshi, Carreyrou himself acknowledges they are not dispositive.

Even as Carreyrou frantically pursues every scrap of information that might confirm his thesis, he is quick to gloss over a better suspect that is right under his nose. That suspect is the reclusive polymath Nick Szabo who ticks all of the same boxes as Back and whose initials are conveniently the inverse of Satoshi Nakamoto. What’s more, you can make the case Szabo is Satoshi without having to explain away mounds of correspondence as an elaborate ruse concocted years after Bitcoin’s invention.

Ironically, Carreyrou does point to a 2015 New York Times article identifying Szabo but quickly dismisses it. He shouldn’t have. The piece is authored by Nathaniel Popper, who not only wrote the definitive early history of Bitcoin culture, Digital Gold, but actually spent considerable time hanging out with all the early crypto figures.

Finally, Carreyrou engages in what looks like another serious instance of confirmation bias. He seizes on specific moments from his encounters with Back where the would-be Bitcoin inventor appears to shuffle and prevaricate in the face of tough questions. Carreyrou accepts this as proof he has his man—but rejects another equally compelling explanation.

Namely, Back—who again denied he is Satoshi on Wednesday—has in the past treated these encounters as an opportunity to play a journalist and put him off the real trail. If Carreyrou had been observant, he might have noticed that Back engaged in the same behavior during the HBO documentary, suddenly putting on a shifty affect during moments when an interviewer thinks he’s found a smoking gun.

There is also the common sense test. Would the inventor of Bitcoin, knowing that exposing his identity would make him the target of every criminal and tax authority in the world, repeatedly sit down with journalists to discuss the topic? Or would they do their best to fade into the shadows?

The temptation to unmask the inventor of Bitcoin is understandable. It is one of the most delicious mysteries in tech, and one that a series of prestigious media brands have failed to solve. Alas for Carreyrou and the Times, they appear to be the latest in a growing list of big swings-and-misses.

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Fired Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman told The Associated Press on Wednesday in his first interview since the ouster that he was “blindsided” by the move but has no hard feelings and is unlikely to sue.

Rothman was fired on Tuesday night in a unanimous vote by the board of regents following a roughly 30-minute closed-door discussion. Regents have not given a reason for firing Rothman, who was in the job for just under four years.

“Absolutely I was blindsided,” Rothman told the AP. He said he has still not been given a reason for his firing.

“I really don’t know,” Rothman said. “I asked for reasons why. They were not able to articulate any.”

But Rothman, who came to the job in 2022 after serving as chair and CEO of a Milwaukee-based law firm with more than 1,000 attorneys, said he is unlikely to file a lawsuit over his firing.

“We’ll have to see how circumstances develop,” Rothman said. “I don’t think it’s likely that I would go in that direction. That’s not who I am.”

The AP was the first to report on April 2 that the regents had asked Rothman, 66, to retire or resign or face being fired. Rothman said on Wednesday that he considered retiring, but since regents gave him no reason, he decided against it.

Regent President Amy Bogost said in a statement before the firing that the decision was “about the future” of the 13-university system, including the flagship Madison campus, that educates about 165,000 students.

“The Universities of Wisconsin must be led with a clear vision that both protects and strengthens our flagship, supports our comprehensive universities and ensures we are meeting the evolving needs of our students, workforce and communities across all 72 counties,” Bogost said.

She did not immediately return a message on Wednesday seeking comment.

Rothman did not criticize any regent by name, but he did express frustration generally with the board.

“For a board to be functional, it needs to be able to provide clarity to the management team,” he said. “Not 18 different voices with different opinions and pet projects. There has to be board leadership that is able to consolidate that, build a consensus and provide clear direction.”

Rothman said his performance objectives were not even discussed in his last review in August, which he said was “astonishing.”

Rothman spent his time as president lobbying Republican legislators to increase state aid for the system in the face of federal cuts, navigating free speech issues surrounding pro-Palestinian protests, and grappling with declining enrollment that has forced eight branch campuses to close. Overall enrollment across the system has remained steady under his leadership.

Rothman brokered a deal with Republicans in 2023 that called for freezing diversity hires and creating a position at UW-Madison focused on conservative thought in exchange for the Legislature releasing money for UW employee raises and tens of millions of dollars for construction projects across the system.

Rothman said Wednesday he didn’t know if any of those particular issues contributed to his being fired, but conceded they could have.

“When you come in to affect change and you try to move an organization forward, you have to make difficult decisions,” Rothman said. “And when you make difficult decisions, you can upset some people.”

Sen. Patrick Testin, the Republican president of the Wisconsin state Senate, called Rothman’s firing a “blatant partisan hatchet job.”

The state Senate’s committee that oversees higher education scheduled a hearing for Thursday for 10 regents whose appointments by Evers have yet to be confirmed. Testin called for the Senate to reject all 10, which would mean they could no longer serve as regents.

Rothman said he wasn’t going to speculate on why he was cut loose.

“I am disappointed with the board’s action, but I’m not angry,” he said. “This is not about retribution. I’m concerned about the future of the Universities of Wisconsin.”

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March’s persistent unseasonable heat was so intense that the continental United States registered its most abnormally hot month in 132 years of records, according to federal weather data. And the next year or so looks to turn the dial up on global warmth even more, as some forecasts predict a brewing El Nino will reach superstrength.

Not only was it the hottest March on record for the U.S., but the amount it was above normal beat any other month in history for the Lower 48 states. March’s average temperature of 50.85 degrees Fahrenheit (10.47 degrees Celsius) was 9.35 F (5.19 C) above the 20th century normal for March. That easily passed the old record of 8.9 F (4.9 C) set in March 2012 as the most abnormally hot month on record — regardless of the month of the year — according to records released Wednesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The average maximum temperature for March was especially high at 11.4 F (6.3 C) above the 20th century average and was almost a degree warmer than the average daytime high for April, NOAA said.

Six of the nation’s top 10 most abnormally hot months have been in the last 10 years. This February, which was 6.57 F (3.65 C) above 20th century normal, was the tenth highest above normal.

“What we experienced in March across the United States was unprecedented,” said Climate Central meteorologist Shel Winkley. “One reason that’s so concerning is just the sheer volume of records, all-time records that were set and broken during that time period. But also this is coming on the heels of what was the worst snow year. And the hottest winter of record. So we’re seeing this continuation of extraordinary heat that took place during the winter months, continuing into the spring months as well. That’s where it’s really concerning, it’s just the duration of this heat.”

More than 19,800 daily temperature records were broken for heat across the country, according to meteorologist Guy Walton, who analyzes NOAA data.

___

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On July 8, 1989, a young music fan named Aadam Jacobs, with a compact Sony cassette recorder in his pocket, went to see an up-and-coming rock band from Washington for their debut show in Chicago.

After a blast of guitar feedback, 22-year-old Kurt Cobain politely announced to the crowd at the small club called Dreamerz: “Hello, we’re Nirvana. We’re from Seattle.” With that, the band, then a quartet, launched into the riff-heavy first song, “School.”

Jacobs surreptitiously recorded the performance, documenting the fledgling band in raw, fiery form more than two years before Nirvana’s global breakthrough with the album “Nevermind.”

Jacobs went on to record more than 10,000 concerts, with increasingly sophisticated equipment, over four decades in Chicago and other cities. Now a group of devoted volunteers in the U.S. and Europe is methodically cataloging, digitizing and uploading them one by one.

The growing Aadam Jacobs Collection is an internet treasure trove for music lovers, especially for fans of indie and punk rock during the 1980s through the early 2000s, when the scene blossomed and became mainstream. The collection features early-in-their-career performances from alternative and experimental artists like R.E.M., The Cure, The Pixies, The Replacements, Depeche Mode, Stereolab, Sonic Youth and Björk.

There’s also a smattering of hip-hop, including a 1988 concert by rap pioneers Boogie Down Productions. Devotees of Phish were thrilled to discover that a previously uncirculated 1990 show by the jam band is included. And there are hundreds of sets by smaller artists who are unlikely to be known to even fans with the most obscure tastes.

All of it is slowly becoming available for streaming and free download at the nonprofit online repository Internet Archive, including that nascent Nirvana show recording, with the audio from Jacobs’ cassette recorder cleaned up.

Jacobs’ first recording was in 1984

By the time Jacobs sneaked his tape recorder into that Nirvana gig, he had been recording concerts for five years already. As a teen discovering music, Jacobs began taping songs off the radio.

“And I eventually met a fellow who said, ‘You can just take a tape recorder into a show with you, just sneak it in, record the show.’ And I thought, ‘Wow, that’s cool.’ So I got started,” Jacobs, now 59, recalled.

He doesn’t remember offhand what that first concert was in 1984, but he taped it with a tiny Dictaphone-type device that he borrowed from his grandmother. A short time later, he bought the Sony Walkman-style tape recorder. When that broke, he briefly used his home console cassette machine stuffed in a backpack that a generous sound man let him plug in.

“I was using, at times, pretty lackluster equipment, simply because I had no money to buy anything better,” he said. Later, he moved on to digital audio tape, or DAT, and, as technology progressed, to solid-state digital recorders.

Jacobs doesn’t consider himself obsessive or, as many call him, an archivist. He says he’s just a music fan. He figured if he was going to attend a few concerts a week anyway, why not document them? In the early years, he contended with contentious club owners who tried to prevent him from taping. But they eventually relented as he became a fixture in the music scene, and many began letting the “taper guy” in for free.

Author Bob Mehr, who wrote about Jacobs in 2004 for the Chicago Reader, calls him one of the city’s cultural institutions.

“He’s a character. I think you have to be, to do what he does,” Mehr said. “But I think he proved over time that his intentions were really pure.”

After a local filmmaker made a documentary about Jacobs in 2023, a volunteer with the Internet Archive reached out to suggest his collection be preserved. “Before all the tapes started not working because of time, just disintegrating, I finally said yes,” he said.

Boxes stuffed with tapes

Once a month, Brian Emerick makes the trip from the Chicago suburbs to Jacobs’ house in the city to pick up 10 or 20 boxes each stuffed with 50 or 100 tapes. Emerick’s job is to transfer — in real time — the analog recordings to digital files that can be sent to other volunteers who mix and master the shows for upload to the archive. Emerick has a room devoted to his setup of outdated cassette and DAT decks.

“So many of the machines I find are broken. They’re trashed. And so I learned how to fix those, get them running again,” said Emerick. “Currently, I have 10 working cassette decks, and I run those all simultaneously.”

Emerick estimates he’s digitized at least 5,500 tapes since late 2024 and that it will take another few years to complete the project. The digital files are claimed by a dozen or so volunteer-engineers in the U.S, U.K. and Germany who provide the metadata and clean up the audio. Among them is Neil deMause in Brooklyn, who said he’s constantly impressed by the audio fidelity of the original tapes, especially considering Jacobs was using “weird RadioShack mics” and other primitive equipment.

“Especially after the first couple years, he’s got it so dialed in that some of these recordings, on, like, crappy little cassette tapes from the early 90s, sound incredible,” deMause said.

Emerick pointed to a 1984 James Brown concert as a gem he discovered in the stacks.

Often, the hardest job is figuring out song titles. Occasionally, Jacobs kept helpful notes, but the volunteers frequently spend days consulting each other, searching and even reaching out to artists to make sure the setlists are accurately documented.

Jacobs said the majority of the artists he recorded are pleased to have their work preserved. As for copyright concerns, he’s happy to remove recordings if requested, but added that only one or two musicians so far have asked that their material be taken down.

“I think that the general consensus is, it’s easier to say I’m sorry than to ask for permission,” he said. The Internet Archive declined to comment for this story. David Nimmer, a longtime copyright attorney who also teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that under anti-bootlegging laws, the artists technically own the original compositions and live recordings. But since neither Jacobs nor the archive are profiting from the endeavor, lawsuits seem unlikely.

The Replacements, a foundational punk-alternative band, were so happy with Jacobs’ tape of a 1986 show that they mixed some of it in with a soundboard recording. They released it in 2023 as a live album as part of a box set produced by Mehr.

Jacobs stopped recording a few years ago as worsening health problems sapped his desire to go out and see concerts. But he still enjoys experiencing live music he finds online, much of it recorded by a new generation of fans.

“Since everybody’s got a cellphone, anybody can record a concert,” he said.

___

This story was updated to correct the spelling of Jacobs in one instance.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

When the European Union’s top court struck down legal provisions that allowed tech companies to share customer data across the Atlantic Ocean, it upended 15 years of business practices in a single day. Now, new thinking has to come to bear, according to Microsoft (MSFT) president Brad Smith.

In a blog post published Tuesday, Smith, Microsoft’s long-time top lawyer who was named president last month, agreed that it is important to balance customer data privacy with the need of businesses to be able to handle data across international borders. He likened the meeting of such disparate demands to solving a Rubik’s cube.

Smith wrote:

If we’re going to ensure that data more broadly can move across the Atlantic on a sustainable basis, we need to put in place a new type of trans-Atlantic agreement. This agreement needs to protect people’s privacy rights pursuant to their own laws, while ensuring that law enforcement can keep the public safe through new international processes to obtain prompt and appropriate access to personal information pursuant to proper legal standards.

Microsoft, Facebook (FB), Google (GOOG), and other U.S. tech giants reeled at the news last week out of the European Union. What put the old safe harbor at risk were European concerns about the ability and willingness of U.S. intelligence agencies to scoop up personal data wherever it resides in service to its War on Terror. And some European tech companies are using the issue to flaunt their own, supposedly more privacy-friendly cloud options.

The European court said that the data protection leaders in the E.U.’s two dozen or so constituent countries should manage how companies collect and manage data for their own citizens. And it’s not like all those nations have the same view here. Some countries—Germany and Switzerland for example—have much stricter rules governing data sovereignty than some of their peers. That sets a whole new level of complexity for vendors that store customer data.

With an eye to fixing this problem, Smith recommended a few not-so-simple steps, the first being that a consumer’s privacy rights move with her data. That would require that the U.S. government agree that it will only demand access to personal information that is stored in the U.S. and belongs to an E.U. national in a manner that conforms with E.U. law, and vice versa,” Smith wrote.

Second, the world needs a new process for government agencies on both sides of the ocean to access personal online information that is moved across the Atlantic and belongs to each other’s citizens “by serving lawful requests directly with the appropriate authority in an individual’s home country.” In other words, every country needs to obey the other country’s laws regarding requests for citizen data.

Third, if an E.U. citizen physically moves to the U.S. or vice versa, that person’s new country’s laws should apply to her data.

And, perhaps most interesting, his fourth point follows:

Finally, it makes sense, except in the most limited circumstances, for governments on both sides of the Atlantic to agree that they will seek to access the content of a legitimate business only by means of service on that business, even when it is stored in the cloud. This would address one of the principal areas of current legal concern for businesses that are relying on cloud services.

This means that, as in the physical world, if the government wants information on a corporation’s employee, it should go to the corporation with its warrant or request, not to the vendor that provides that company’s database or storage technology. The point here seems to be that that process should not change in the digital realm.

For more coverage from Barb follow her on Twitter at @gigabarb, read her coverage at fortune.com/barb-darrow or subscribe via her RSS feed.

And please subscribe to Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the business of technology.

This report was updated at 10:22 a.m. EDT with an explanation of Smith’s fourth point.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

This year, I made a work friend. It might not seem like a big deal, but in this new world of remote work, it’s not as easy as it used to be. And it’s relatively new territory for me, as a 24-year-old who’s held an assortment of office and remote jobs since graduating in 2020. 

Colin and I have yet to get after-work drinks (though we’ve discussed the idea, which is basically the same as getting drinks), we have a few well-trod jokes, and he’s the person I Slack when I have some good gossip (which is also harder to come by in a remote-first workplace).

To me, there’s something a little awkward about making friends at work. I feel a little like an eager eight-year-old, ready to give a BFF matching heart necklace to the first colleague who I have more than a passing cordial relationship with. (Jane, you’re the next target.) But what are the pros of playing it too cool? Probably whatever the work equivalent is to playing alone at recess.

I’m not the only one floundering to expand my social network with rusty social skills. COVID has shrunken many people’s circles, and relationships at work are now mostly impersonal Zoom calls where half your colleagues probably have their cameras turned off. As a result of increased social isolation, loneliness has spiked in the U.S., as a 2020 Harvard study found that 36% of Americans reported feeling lonely.

Is making a few new friends at work a solution to this loneliness problem? And could it also do something to help slow The Great Resignation? I spoke with experts and people who have successfully forged friendships at work to get their best advice on how to make a work friend.

It’s all about proximity

The general sociology of friendship still applies to the alien world that is the office. Theorists have inferred that friendships can be forged due to literal closeness.

Friendships are created by a series of interactions, says Jack Schafer Ph.D., who boils it down to the following formula:
Friendship = Proximity x (Frequency + Duration) x Intensity. 

In the adult world, work provides a natural structure for friendships to form the way school worked for kids. “Friendships, especially new friendships, where you don’t have a ton of history and shared experience to fall back on, really bloom in a container,” explains Julie Beck, columnist for The Atlantic’s “The Friendship Files.” 

Work takes up a big chunk of our day and repeated interactions are built into the structure of our jobs, making it easier to find friends in the workplace.

“People spend a huge part of the day—and ultimately their lives—with their colleagues, so it’s no surprise that friendships can form in a professional environment,” say Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman, former hosts of the Call Your Girlfriend podcast and authors of Big Friendship. 

There’s also an assumption that coworkers have a shared interest that led them to the same job, says Beck. Within the structure of work, people often bond with those who are the most similar to them. 

“The people at work to whom you gravitate as potential friends are usually those with whom you share interests or a sense of humor,” says Lydia Denworth, science journalist and author of Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life’s Fundamental Bond.

They also bond over shared experiences says Denworth. “Even meeting punishing work deadlines can be made fun if you’re doing it with someone whose company you enjoy.”

Of course, all this remote work can make it tough to make deeper connections with your colleagues. In pre-pandemic times, when everyone went to an office, it was easier to befriend someone you physically saw every day. “There are a lot of great benefits that working from home provides for people, but making friends is more difficult,” says Beck.

And while scheduling an informal video chat might not be as organic as sharing some gossip at the office coffee machine, Beck says that making an effort to create repeated interactions is still meaningful online (if not even more important). Beck had a coworker who started a job during the pandemic, so he set up monthly Zoom meetings where he could connect with his new colleagues. This small action created a structure where friendships could thrive, she says.

Connecting outside the office

Once you make the initial connection, find areas of commonality, and bond over the work, kick things up a notch and get more personal by sharing details about your life outside of work and schedule extracurricular activities—this is the best way to turn a work friend into a real friend. This can happen naturally, explains Beck, like getting coffee after work.

“The workplace is good for racking up the repeated exposure that you need to go from acquaintance to friend, and then at some point, you do have to break that barrier and take it outside of the office,” says Beck.

Sometimes plans fall through the cracks, but Beck pushes people to try harder: “You have to reach out more than once” and push through the awkwardness when trying to make plans with a friend from work. 

Friendships can be a slow build but that doesn’t mean you should give up, says Beck. “Everyone’s lives are really busy. People are often really grateful if someone takes the time and energy to set up an opportunity to socialize, that they can just say yes to.”

How to keep a work friend as a real friend

Just like work, friendships aren’t always easy. “Friendships require effort. The more responsibility you take on as an adult, the busier your life gets, the more that becomes true,” says Beck.

Keeping a friend from work after someone leaves for a new job can be hard, since you lose the day-to-day interaction and shared experiences. But staying close with a friend is all about being intentional with your time and communicating, just ask Matt Damon and Ben Affleck or Frog and Toad.

Just be honest with your friend, say Sow and Friedman. “Communication and listening are your best bet here. In our experience, when one of us is feeling weird about something in the friendship it’s not always a total surprise to the other person,” say Sow and Friedman. They also suggest literally asking “Hey, how do we maintain our friendship past the work stage?” and then go from there.

Sharing—but maybe not too much

There are of course a few drawbacks to work friendships. Office hierarchy can make these relationships complicated. Work friendships are arguably at their best when they’re between equals. It can be awkward to be friends with the person who signs your paycheck.

“You can be friendly with your boss, but it’s unlikely they will be among your closest friends, and usually that’s for the best,” says Denworth. “The best friendships are reciprocal with a fairly even give and take. That’s hard to pull off when one person has authority over another,”  

As a result, managers might find themselves sitting alone at lunch. “It’s lonely at the top,” says Denworth. “About 20-30% of people say they are lonely at work, but 50% of bosses say they are lonely.” But while some might be hesitant to build close friendships with their direct reports, Denworth clarifies that many people have good friendships with their managers while maintaining some professional boundaries.

Sow and Friedman’s main principle of friendship, the Shine Theory, encourages people to see their friends as collaborators rather than competitors. It’s “a rejection of the scarcity mentality the workplace is imbued with,” say Sow and Friedman, who have found that confiding in colleagues has helped their careers.

“If you work in such a way that you think helping someone is going to cost you power or a promotion or a salary bump, that says more about you and your workplace than it says about the colleague you won’t give up a leg up to,” continue Sow and Friedman. You don’t have to be best friends with everyone, but ideally you’re generous with your resources and expertise to help those around you succeed and in turn you will be successful as well.

Does having friends at work even matter?

“I’m not here to make friends,” says every reality TV star ever and also potentially some of your coworkers. There’s no shame in not wanting to make friends at work, but it can make things more enjoyable, says Beck. 

“People with good friends at work enjoy coming to work more, they are more productive and more efficient, and they are more likely to stay in their jobs. Personally, over the long haul, having good friends is as important for your health as diet and exercise,” argues Denworth.

We spend an inordinate amount of time at work, and the friends we make there—people who laugh at our stupid jokes and share the best gossip—can make our jobs feel less stressful. And in a time when there are no shortage of things to stress you out, having a few more friends, even if you only see them on Zoom, can’t be a bad thing.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Wall Street titan Jeremy Grantham said this week that even after the S&P 500’s poor start to the year, he expects more declines ahead for the stock market.

“It’s likely that there will be considerably more pain before this is finished,” he said in a Monday interview with the Associated Press, arguing that the S&P 500’s fair value is “pretty close to 3,000,” as opposed to the 3,970 the index traded at on Wednesday. 

If Grantham, the chief investment strategist of the asset management firm Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo, is right, it means the S&P 500 has another 25% drop ahead of it from current levels.

And things could get even worse from there.

“There is absolutely nothing to stop the market from going below fair value. It’s certainly entitled to spend several months below 3,000,” Grantham said.

As far as when Grantham expects the market downturn to end, he argued it’s hard to tell.

“This can be quick, like six months. Or it can be drawn out like in 2000, which took almost three years. You can’t really know if it’s going to be quick or long,” he said.

What is guaranteed, in Grantham’s view, is that corporate earnings will fall as recession fears and interest rates rise, leading stocks to take a hit.

The ‘superbubble’

Grantham has argued since last year that U.S. stocks and the housing market are in a “superbubble” created by an era of rampant speculation in risky assets.

“We have been through one of the great speculative periods,” he said this week, reiterating his point that a mix of aggressive fiscal stimulus and loose monetary policy combined to create “a perfect environment for speculating” in 2020 and 2021. 

Grantham made the case that this speculation will turn out to be “very expensive” for investors who bought in, as once high-flying stocks continue to retreat to more reasonable valuations this year.

“People were at home, bored out of their minds and getting a check from the government, so why not speculate? They found on the web many ways of doing it, superficially cheaply, but that kind of investing has always turned out to be for most people incredibly expensive,” he said. “In the end, the money tends to transfer from the amateurs to the professionals.”

Grantham also noted that mid-career professionals are likely to be hurt the most by the bursting economic “superbubble” as retirees have already benefited from the rise in the stock and real estate markets, while also collecting Social Security, and younger workers will have time to watch their portfolios rebound.

“If you have another 30 years, you should welcome lower prices because the compounding effect will be greater than the pain on your portfolio. And maybe a lot bigger. The younger you are, the more you should welcome a market decline,” he said.

Why you might want to listen 

Grantham is well known on Wall Street for his consistently pessimistic economic views, but the British investor has become famous for some prescient predictions as well.

In September 2007, Grantham wrote an article for Fortune titled “Danger: Steep Drop Ahead” in which he detailed how an international credit crisis would cause the U.S. housing market to break, corporate profit margins to sink, and stocks to collapse.

He turned out to be right. The U.S. housing market did break, and just six months after his Fortune article was published, the Great Financial Crisis began taking its first victims as the investment banking powerhouse Bear Stearns collapsed. 

Some Wall Street analysts argue that even a broken clock is right twice, and that Grantham is nothing but a “permabear”—investor lingo for someone who is always pessimistic about the economy. 

But the legendary British investor has been right more than often enough to lend weight to his predictions. He also foresaw Japan’s 1989 asset bubble and the dot-com bubble in 2000. And this time, he says the stock market’s “superbubble” is even worse than what was seen in tech stocks in 2000.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

When Bed Bath & Beyond announced last week it was buying the Container Store for a pittance, CEO Marcus Lemonis touted the deal as a key component of his plan to create a home-oriented conglomerate that includes retail brands, home services, installable products such as flooring and cabinetry, insurance, and more.

“We are building the first everything-home company,” he said in a release, explaining that it is “designed to make homeownership and living simpler and more affordable through a disciplined, interconnected ecosystem.”

Snagging the Container Store for $150 million, a fraction of its market capitalization high of $1.64 billion more than a decade ago, will allow Bed Bath & Beyond to add the popular modular storage system Elfa and the higher-end customizable Closet Works service to its array of offerings. And—excitingly for those nostalgic for Bed Bath & Beyond’s candle-scented stores, the last of which closed in 2023 following the chain’s bankruptcy filing—the move will be a return to brick-and-mortar retail: The 100 Container Store locations will be rebranded as The Container Store/Bed Bath & Beyond.

Overstock.com purchased Bed Bath & Beyond after its spectacular flameout three years ago, then changed its name to Beyond Inc., and then last year to Bed Bath & Beyond. Other brands under the BB&B umbrella include Buy Buy Baby and Brand House Collective, a home furnishings company previously called Kirkland’s Home.

Lemonis deserves credit for having a vision for what the company’s components could amount to in the aggregate. But there was some skepticism from Wall Street about the move. Morningstar analyst David Swartz told real estate industry publication CoStar News that Bed Bath & Beyond was “a conglomerate of failing businesses,” and that he wasn’t surprised investors were balking at Lemonis’s strategy. (Shares are down 15% since January, when Lemonis became CEO after first serving as executive chairman.) GlobalData managing director Neil Saunders has called the company “a bit of a hodgepodge” collection of brands.

And indeed, both Bed Bath & Beyond and the Container Store, which had its own bankruptcy in late 2024, are weak businesses that are a fraction of the size they were at their peak. When brands are struggling, one plus one is unlikely to equal three.

What’s more, it does not appear to have been smooth sailing behind the scenes at Bed Bath & Beyond. The company has undergone a few rebrands, churn in its C-suite, and quick changes in strategy—offering little evidence of the internal cohesion necessary to make a portfolio of brands gel.

There is no shortage of cautionary tales of retail industry marriages that went awry: The Men’s Wearhouse acquisition of Joseph Abboud in 2013 yoked together two brands struggling for growth, and was not transformative for either. Canada’s Hudson’s Bay Company conglomerate, long gone, brought a number of department store chains from different countries, all having a hard time—the Bay, Lord & Taylor, and Saks Fifth Avenue—under one portfolio company; most have sought bankruptcy or gone out of business. Even a broadly well run company like Tapestry can struggle to integrate a weak business: It has taken a few write-downs on its 2017 acquisition of Kate Spade.

However good Lemonis’s vision might look on paper, he’ll have to act fast to show it works: Bed Bath & Beyond had net income losses totaling $650 million, on revenue of $4 billion, in its past three full years.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com