• Mark Cuban has said that AI could create the world's first trillionaire.
• He said the technology, as it rapidly develops, could make "just one dude in a basement" mega-rich.
• Cuban said he uses AI extensively for work and in his personal life.

Mark Cuban said artificial intelligence could make "just one dude in a basement" the world's first trillionaire.

The 66-year-old billionaire said in a recent episode of the "High Performance" podcast that we haven't yet seen "best, or the craziest" that AI can achieve.

"It's just the very beginning, right, you know, we're still in the preseason," Cuban said, adding that, as it becomes more advanced, we'll find more ways to make our lives better and more interesting.

"Not only do I think it'll create a trillionaire, but it could be just one dude in the basement. That's how crazy it could be," he said.

Cuban compared the push for AI to the early days of computers and smartphones. He said people hesitated to make the shift but would now struggle to live without the devices.

Someone who can come up with a way that makes AI as essential "will make a lot of money," Cuban added.

"Most people condemn things when they first happen," he said. "But then, when you see people using it and you realize the value, that's when people come around."

The former Shark Tank investor told the podcast it was "insane" how much he has been using AI.

He said that he uses AI for writing software and its text-to-video function for work. In his personal life, Cuban said he recently used ChatGPT to track his medicine and exercise habits.

"I'm not here to tell you it's going to replace everyone's job — it won't," he said, but the technology is incredible, whether you're innovative or just feeling bored.

The world's richest person, Elon Musk, has a total net worth well short of $1 trillion, at around $360 billion, per the Bloomberg Billionaire Index.

His net worth peaked in December at around $439 billion as Tesla shares soared.

• We owned a stunning house in a lovely UK village, and the boys were happy with school and friends.
• We left all of that behind and moved to Argentina, my home country.
• It's been nine months — nine crazy and intense months. We're still adapting, but I'm glad we did it.

Being an immigrant can be hard. This wasn't the case for me.

I didn't have to flee my country because of life-threatening reasons. I chose to leave Argentina to pursue a Master's in Creative Writing in Madrid.

While I was living there, I traveled to London for the weekend and met a nice guy in a pub, whom I married a couple of years later. Not long after, I was pregnant.

We had our first son and lived in London for another two and a half years, until our second son was born. We needed more space and help with the kids, so we moved to Wales, where my in-laws were 20 minutes away and a nursery was around the corner.

I was able to carry on working remotely. My husband left his job in London and found a new position close by. Life went on. We were fine.

In fact, we were more than fine — we had a stunning house in a lovely village, the boys were happy with their school and friends, and although we didn't have our dream jobs, we were able to pay the bills and had a good work-life balance.

That's why I don't think anyone expected us to announce a move to Argentina.

It was a difficult decision, but we were determined

When we broke the news to friends and family, they understandably wondered if we were sure about our decision.

Of course, we weren't. Who on Earth can be sure of such a move? We'd have to sell our dream home and everything in it, find a new home and new school for the kids, and quit our jobs and find a new way of living halfway around the world.

Not to mention, we lived in a first-world country. Argentina is not first world. We'd be throwing everything away to start a new life in an economically unsteady country. We were determined, however.

I wanted to give my sons a chance to make the most of being part of a multicultural family. They had to experience both heritages in the flesh. They deserved to know what living in their mom's country and speaking Spanish was like.

It was an emotional nightmare at first

The kids weren't happy about the move. The eldest literally said, "You're ruining my life." There was no turning back, though.

Preparing for the move meant we were completely swamped with the logistics of estate agents, removal companies, Facebook Marketplace postings, and video calls with schools in Buenos Aires.

The amount of things we collected as years went by was insane, and because the house was big we kept them all: strollers, teddies, high chairs, rocking chairs, bottles, breast pumps, bicycles, scooters, puzzles, keyboards, microphones, blankets, books, you name it. Not to mention the piano and every single piece of furniture.

My husband drove back and forth from the garbage dump so many times, and each time he came back, his face spoke to me: I'm exhausted, this is hard. We gave things away, too.

I remember the tears every time I put baby clothes in a bin bag and every time I dropped something meaningful at a charity shop. What am I doing? Am I crazy? I remember those thoughts, too.

Despite the doubt and hardship, we kept going.

We've been in Argentina for 9 months

Having my husband's support was what really made the move happen. Even though the move seriously affected his career and finances, he went along with it anyway, for which I'm extremely grateful.

In Argentina, there are no more gardens, mountains, or sheep on our way to school.

We now live in an apartment on the outskirts of the city, the boys share a bedroom, and we drive past three different schools on our way to school.

There's traffic, horns, bikes, buses, and lots of people. When we first got here, my youngest would cover his ears. Yes, son, city life is loud.

It's been nine months now — nine crazy and intense months. We're surviving and still adapting.

Things are looking up

My husband and I no longer have corporate jobs. I work as a contractor interviewing candidates for different clients and also make a living out of my podcast and artistic workshops. My husband works a remote job with fewer hours than in London, which gives him more time to do what he loves: engage with the kids.

When I'm a bit sad, I go to my sister's or arrange to see my friends: they know how to make me laugh. My husband has made some friends through football. And the kids are not asking when they'll be going back to the UK as much.

They like their school and the fact that we have a swimming pool in the building. They enjoy hanging out with my siblings and their little cousin and having lunch with their grandma once a week. And they speak Spanish now.

As much as I loved their British accents, I hated that they couldn't roll the "r" or say anything in Spanish apart from "Hola", "cómo estás". Now they can communicate, for real, and that's truly awesome.

We still don't know how long we'll be staying here, but we know it was right to come, no matter the suffering. We may not have a fixed income, but we have a feeling that no one can take away from us. We feel alive.

• Marc Andreessen says the US must lead in AI-era robotics — or risk a flood of Chinese machines.
• Manufacturing has plunged as a proportion of the US economy since the mid-20th century.
• Andreessen called for "alien dreadnought" factories to reindustrialize and fuel future growth.

Marc Andreesen believes America is at a profound turning point — and it can either lead the next industrial revolution powered by AI, or fall behind in a world dominated by "Chinese robots."

In a conversation at the Reagan Library's Economic Forum on Thursday, the billionaire venture capitalist and Andreesen Horowitz cofounder argued that the path to future growth lies not in nostalgia for old factory jobs but in reindustrializing America around next-generation manufacturing, especially in robotics.

"I think there's a plausible argument — which Elon also believes — that robotics is going to be the biggest industry in the history of the planet," Andreesen said, referring to CEO Elon Musk. "It's just going to be gigantic."

"There's going to be billions, tens of billions, hundreds of billions of robots of all shapes, sizes, descriptions running around doing all kinds of things, and those robots need to be designed and built."

But if the US doesn't take the lead, he warned, it risks "living in a world of Chinese robots everywhere."

Manufacturing's long fall

Andreesen's case comes amid a long-term decline in the importance of manufacturing to the American economy.

In 1947, manufacturing made up over 25% of the US GDP. By 2017, it had plunged to under 12%, according to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis shared by the American Enterprise Institute.

Employment figures are even more stark. Manufacturing accounted for nearly 33% of all US jobs in 1947, but had dropped to about 8% by the end of 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Tariffs have been the Trump administration's preferred solution to this decline, but industry experts and Wall Street have said that won't be enough.

A May report from Wells Fargo estimated that the US needs $2.9 trillion in capital investment to regain 1979 manufacturing job levels, calling it an "uphill battle."

Goldman Sachs analysts echoed that sentiment in June, warning that tariffs can't overcome China's advantages of cheaper labor and government subsidies. Only a surge in technological innovation, they wrote, can reverse the "long-run stagnation" in productivity.

Meanwhile, US manufacturers are struggling to fill the roles already available. In an April 2024 report, the Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte found the US could need 3.8 million new manufacturing workers by 2033, but half of those jobs could remain unfilled due to skill shortages.

Build what's next — or be left behind

Andreesen proposes a different vision: use AI to transform what manufacturing means.

Rather than bringing back low-cost labor, he called for massive investment in "alien dreadnought" factories — hyper-automated factories producing robotics, drones, EVs, and AI-enabled machines that he believes could revitalize rural America and make the US the leader in embodied AI.

"We shouldn't be building manufacturing lines that have people sitting on a rubber mat for 10 hours screwing screws in by hand," he said.

"We should be building what Elon calls alien dreadnought factories," he said.

Elon Musk has repeatedly used the term, including in 2016 and in 2020, to describe his vision for highly automated, roboticized Tesla factories, particularly for Model 3 production.

Andreesen argued that this reinvention would not only reverse decades of deindustrialization but also help solve broader problems, from national security to wage stagnation to the urban-rural divide.

"We have to do we have to do this because it's necessary from a national security standpoint. We have to do it because we need the economic growth. We have to do it because we need an answer for the entire population of the country, not just the cities," he said.

"And we have to do it because if we don't do it, China's going to do it — and we don't want to live in that world."

• The US Army is taking a hard look at what systems and platforms it doesn't need for future conflicts.
• The Army secretary and a top general gave BI some insight into this process.
• The service is undergoing a major transformation initiative after a directive earlier this year.

US Army leaders say Humvees and Robotic Combat Vehicles aren't useful for future fights, but the Infantry Squad Vehicle is.

Ongoing decisions about what stays and what goes are part of a larger transformation initiative that has the Army reviewing its force structure and cutting certain programs it deems no longer necessary for the kinds of wars the US military wants to be ready to fight should worse come to worst.

Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll and Gen. James Rainey, the commanding general overseeing Army Futures Command, talked to Business Insider about some of what is getting axed and why.

Driscoll pointed to the Robotic Combat Vehicle, or RCV, program, which launched in 2019 with the goal of integrating autonomous and remotely operated capabilities into the Army's ground systems. Three versions were initially planned — an expendable light variant, a durable medium variant, and a lethal heavy variant designed for combat against an enemy armored vehicle.

But the development of the RCV hit snags. "We know we need autonomy, we know that we need the ability to move things in a way that is not controlled by human beings," Driscoll said.

But the requirements the Army put together for it ended up making it just this "incredibly large, incredibly heavy, incredibly expensive, relatively exquisite tool," he said. By the time the Army went to purchase them, the threats to the RCV, like small, hostile drones, had grown substantially. In Ukraine, slow, heavy, expensive vehicles have been prime targets for cheap exploding drones.

"It might have been there in the beginning and we got it wrong from the very beginning," he said, "but at a minimum, by the time it came due for us actually purchase a lot of these and get them into formations, it just no longer made sense anymore."

He called the move to end the program "a hard decision."

The Humvee, or High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, is also being phased out. "It's 40 years old. It was useful in its time," Rainey said. "If you look at the ubiquitous sensing drones just in Ukraine and Russia, the survivability of a wheeled vehicle is very low."

The Army also recently ended the M10 Booker Mobile Protected Firepower program just before it was set to go into full-rate production and after spending well over a billion dollars on the project. The decision was made in response to ongoing global conflicts "and in support of the strategic objectives outlined in the Army Transformation Initiative," according to a memo issued by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth earlier this year.

The memo outlined the focal points, timelines, and priorities of the Army going forward, including reducing and restructuring attack helicopter formations and augmenting them with unmanned aircraft, putting thousands of drones into the hands of soldiers, and focusing on the Indo-Pacific theater and China.

The efforts in the directive are estimated to cost around $36 billion over the next five years and represent one of the largest Army overhauls since the end of the Cold War. Army officials have said it's designed to increase lethality and readiness in the service and is focused on the needs of individual warfighters.

In the interview with BI, Driscoll and Rainey identified one platform that represents what it wants more of. "We have a requirements and acquisitions success story with the Infantry Squad Vehicles," Rainey said.

The relatively new M1301 Infantry Squad Vehicle entered service in 2020. Rainey said that the platform was designed well and requirements were useful and thoughtful. "We went fast, but we iterated with soldiers continually through the process. We ended up with a very useful vehicle," he said.

Driscoll said that in conversations with soldiers, the Army learned that they wanted a vehicle to prioritize speed and all-terrain driving over protection.

It speaks to, the service secretary said, the Army "trying to build a menu of offensive and defensive solutions." For some missions, something like the Infantry Squad Vehicle will be more effective. And for others, a heavier, more armored platform could still be valuable and available.

Much of what Driscoll and others say they're focused on comes out of efforts to be smarter and more cost-effective in Army purchases.

"We feel a large enough existential threat, and it is important enough that we can no longer make decisions simply based off where jobs might exist or what private companies may benefit from our decisions," he said. "Instead, we have to optimize for soldier lethality in the fight ahead."

Lethality is a guiding principle for the US Department of Defense under Hegseth and the Trump administration. It was a core objective for the Biden administration and first Trump one, as well as past administrations, though the interpretations were different. Generally, it serves as a subjective measuring stick for DoD programs and projects, the aim being to be able to effectively defeat an enemy.

Right now, that long-standing Pentagon buzzword is the deciding factor for what the Army and other services prioritize.

• My mother-in-law and I connected immediately, but a trip to Morocco recently made us even closer.
• My husband and I bought a house in Italy, and we all went to Morocco to buy accents to decorate.
• She and I enjoyed shopping together and had plenty of deep conversations.

I first met Kathy, the woman who would later become my mother-in-law, on a small island in the Pacific Ocean thousands of miles from where I, she, or her son grew up.

My future husband, Uriah, and I were living on Kaua'i at the time, and he had the brilliant-yet-terrifying idea that we should have both our moms out to visit at the same time so everyone could get to know one another. The week before everyone arrived, I was a jumble of anxiety. I was conscious of Uriah's strong bond with his family and eager to make a good impression.

It turned out that all of my sleepless nights were for naught. Kathy welcomed me into the family with the warmest embrace, both figuratively and literally. She and I clicked immediately, and I couldn't believe how comfortable I felt around her.

A trip to Morocco made our relationship even stronger

It was September 2023 when we first met, and we saw each other again the next month for a few days in Colorado, Uriah's home state. Then, when we got married in Sicily in May the next year, we all spent a week in Sicily together.

Despite having spent a cumulative total of less than three weeks together, we had already established a close rapport. But it wasn't until we traveled together to Morocco this past February that our bond truly solidified.

Uriah and I had just bought a house in Italy, and Kathy traveled with us to Sardinia for the closing. Neither of us had ever owned a house before, and I had the wild idea of flying to Morocco to shop for embroidered bedspreads and other unique accents to make it our own.

I had memories from a trip 10 years earlier of all the gorgeous, colorful textiles and rainbow mosaic lamps casting textured light over the chaotic medina. I sent Kathy a cheap flight I'd found from Milan to Marrakesh and asked if she was up for it. She agreed without hesitation.

When we first stepped out of the taxi in downtown Marrakesh, the teenage daughter of our Airbnb host met us to guide us to our apartment. As I rushed to follow her through the labyrinthine medina, I realized Kathy and Uriah were getting swallowed into the crowd, and I gestured to our host that we should let them catch up.

I felt a touch of trepidation when I saw their nervous faces among the throng of people, and I wondered briefly if I'd made a mistake taking them somewhere that could pose such a sensory overload. I was relieved when we were all safely in our Marrakesh apartment.

Over the next few days, Kathy and I pored over fabrics in stall after stall with endless bolts of silk jacquard, cotton, wool, and tightly-woven berber in every color imaginable. Uriah would lose interest and leave us to our own devices, while we looked at dozens of textures and patterns before choosing our favorites and arranging to have them cut and hemmed.

We open up to each other and have shared beautiful memories

The next week, in Essaouira, we spent more time one-on-one as the 20th place we'd stopped to look at throw pillows proved to be the final straw of Uriah's house-shopping patience.

Leaning back on cushions in a café overlooking the ocean, we spoke not as mother- and daughter-in-law with all the fraught, implied complications those relationships often hold, but as two women sharing stories of love, loss, and heartache. Uriah would find us sometimes, swept up in these discussions, and groan, "Are you two crying again?"

Somewhere in the magic of Morocco, between a crowded medina in Marrakesh and a crimson sunset over a beach in Essaoira, Kathy and I shared experiences that were ours alone. We packed them with us like souvenirs when we flew our separate ways, but the memories we'd woven together were in patterns far more intricate and colorful than the textiles we chose. Like the postcards Kathy always buys but doesn't send because they're too beautiful, we'd keep them with us always.