• Southwest Airlines has started warning passengers about the use of power banks on flights.
• It's set to introduce a new safety policy next week.
• The change comes after an Air Busan plane caught fire when a power bank overheated in January.

Southwest Airlines is restricting the use of power banks due to the risk of them catching fire during flights.

A spokesperson told Business Insider that the airline will introduce a "first-in-industry safety policy" on May 28.

"Using portable charging devices while stored in a bag or overhead bin will no longer be permitted," they added. "Nothing is more important to Southwest than the safety of its customers and employees."

Since last week, passengers checking in for their flights on the Southwest app have received pop-up notifications that warn about portable charging devices.

A Reddit user shared a screenshot from the app, which read: "If you use a power bank during your flight, keep it out of your bag and in plain sight. Do not charge devices in the overhead bin."

The devices are powered by lithium batteries that can overheat and catch fire. In such rare cases, keeping the device in plain sight makes it easier for flight attendants to identify any smoke or fire and react quickly to extinguish it.

Last year, the Federal Aviation Administration recorded about three incidents every two weeks, compared to fewer than one a week in 2018.

The FAA has recorded nine confirmed incidents in the US this year.

There have been other suspected cases and disruptions caused just by the risk of overheating.

Last month, a Lufthansa Airbus A380 with 461 passengers had to divert to Boston when a passenger's tablet became stuck in a seat.

The most notable incident occurred in South Korea in January. An Air Busan plane was about to take off when a fire spread through the cabin, injuring seven people.

Investigators later said the fire was likely caused by a power bank, found in an overhead luggage bin.

The Korean government subsequently tightened its rules for airlines, which included prohibiting storing them in the overhead bins.

In the US, there are already many limits on power banks, which are banned from checked luggage. Southwest is going a step further in response to recent incidents.

• Qatar's prime minister said its offer to give the US a Jumbo jet was a "normal thing between allies."
• The Boeing 747-8 could be used as Air Force One for President Donald Trump's second term.
• Critics have questioned the legality, while Trump said that accepting the gift was sensible.

Qatar's prime minister doesn't understand the backlash over its offer of giving a Jumbo jet to the US.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani called the proposed gift of a Boeing 747-8 jet, worth about $400 million, as "a normal thing that happens between allies."

"I don't know why people consider it as bribery or Qatar trying to buy influence with this administration," he said at the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha on Tuesday. The comments were reported by Bloomberg, which is hosting the event.

President Donald Trump said last week that his administration was preparing to accept the gift from the Qatari royal family.

The aircraft would be used as the new Air Force One in Trump's second term and then added to his presidential library.

Democrats as well as some Trump supporters have criticized the deal, voicing worries about its legality.

Trump defended the move, saying he would be a "stupid person" if he didn't accept it.

Sheikh Mohammed described the proposed gift as a Qatar "Ministry of Defense to Department of Defense transaction, which is done in full transparency and very legally."

"Many nations have gifted things to the US," he said, naming the Statue of Liberty as one.

Sheikh Mohammed added that "we need to overcome" stereotypes of Qatar trying to buy influence in the US.

Trump has said the jet would be a gift to the Department of Defense, not him personally.

The DoD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

• Prostate cancer treatment is advancing rapidly.
• New pills and hormone treatments are giving patients better odds and a more comfortable experience.
• Doctors say Biden's diagnosis is a reminder to get screened often with simple tools like blood tests.

When the news broke on Sunday that former President Joe Biden had been diagnosed with prostate cancer that had spread into his bones, Dr. Arpeet Shah was surprised.

Soon, his phone started blowing up with texts from other urologists, who were equally flummoxed as to how this could have happened to a man of Biden's stature.

"That was certainly a conversation amongst urologists yesterday, texting each other," Shah told Business Insider on Monday, the day after Biden's diagnosis was made public. "It is surprising that this wasn't caught, or it was caught at such an aggressive stage."

Shah, a board-certified urologist at Associated Urological Specialists in suburban Chicago says over the course of the decade he's been in practice, he's been alarmed at the number of new, minimally invasive, highly effective prostate cancer prevention and treatment options that have blossomed. This is especially true, he says, when it comes to metastatic cancer cases like Joe Biden's.

"Over the last 10 years, there's just been a robust increase in the number of treatment options," Shah said.

Other cancer experts BI spoke with agree that new therapies allow for longer lives, better outcomes, and many patients can keep on going about their normal life while doing them. Here are three major breakthroughs driving the trend:

1. Patients are taking more cancer-fighting pills at home, forgoing uncomfortable, gooey injections

Testosterone-lowering drugs and procedures have been the bedrock of modern prostate cancer treatment, in use for more than 80 years.

Prostate cancer grows by using testosterone as its fuel. This makes drugs that drive down testosterone levels (androgen receptor blockers) a great first-line treatment.

These treatments can be uncomfortable. Drugs like leuprolide acetate are injected under the skin or into a muscle every three to six months. Those injections are somewhat "gelatenous" Shah said, and they might leave a lump under the skin that lasts for weeks or months as the medication slowly releases in the body.

New pills, in particular the drug relugolix (approved by the FDA in late 2020), can work faster than those old injections — possibly helping a person's testosterone levels to normalize faster after treatment, too.

Patients spend less time weathering the uncomfortable, menopause-like side effects of prostate cancer treatment, like hot flashes, low energy, and bone density issues.

"We see a lot of patients who really enjoy taking the pill more," Shah says. These days, he says, many of his patients just do their own cancer treatment from home using pills.

"Most often, patients are taking multiple pills per day to treat their prostate cancer," he said. "They don't have to go to the hospital to get the medication. And these pills are generally very well tolerated to a point where people are able to do their daily living as they were before their diagnosis."

2. New treatments can outsmart cancer, even when it tries to evade hormone-suppressing drugs

Scientists have gotten better at outsmarting prostate cancer — not only lowering testosterone production.

New innovations prevent cancer cells from absorbing leftover testosterone in the body, meaning the disease can't get a good foothold to grow.

Pills in this category include darolutamide (FDA approved in 2019), apalutamide (2018), enzalutamide (2014), and abiraterone (2011).

"We can oftentimes get this disease to be almost like a chronic disease, like high blood pressure or diabetes, where patients know they have it, but they're getting treated and they can move on with the rest of their life," Shah said.

When that's not enough, other techniques are at hand. These include targeted liquid forms of radiation, as well as gene therapies that target specific mutations.

Dr. Alicia Morgans, a genitourinary medical oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and board member of ZERO Prostate Cancer, says patients today can live with metastatic prostate cancer for years, or even decades, thanks to these kinds of treatments.

The five-year relative survival rate for prostate cancer in the US is near 98% — and getting better year over year.

"Every year we're seeing new approvals in prostate cancer," Morgans said.

3. New types of blood tests and MRIs

Shah said there's also been a ton of advancement in prostate cancer detection and early screening, going beyond the traditional rectal exam and blood tests.

Newer blood tests like the IsoPSA blood test zero in on prostate cancer better than their predecessors. There are also more sophisticated imaging scans doctors can do, like the multiparametric MRI, that can zoom in on suspicious lesions in the prostate.

For Shah, Biden's diagnosis is a "sobering reminder" to screen early and often.

He encourages most men over 50 years old, and some as young as 40 (depending on risk factors) to speak to their doctor and get screened, "because this is such a treatable and most often curable disease when caught early."

• Geoffrey Hinton, often called the "godfather of AI," said arriving at good ideas is easier if you're a contrarian.
• In an interview with CBS, he suggested looking for things you believe are being done wrong.
• Hinton has previously told BI that humans should be "very concerned" about AI's rate of progress.

To hit on ideas that could eventually develop into breakthroughs, the "Godfather of AI," Geoffrey Hinton, says you have to be "contrarian."

"You have to have a deep belief that everybody else could be doing things wrong, and you could figure out how to do them right," Hinton said in a recent interview with CBS. "And most people don't believe that about themselves."

Hinton was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in machine learning and has previously warned of the possible existential risks of AI.

When asked about advice he'd give to the forthcoming generation of AI researchers, Hinton suggested searching for inefficiencies. Though ideas in this vein often lead to dead ends, if they pan out, he said, there's a chance you're hitting on something big.

"You should look for something where you figure out everybody's doing it wrong and you think there's a different way of doing it," Hinton said. "And you should pursue that until you understand why you're wrong. But just occasionally, that's how you get good new ideas."

"Intellectual self-confidence" can be inherent or acquired — in Hinton's case, he said it was part nature, part nurture.

"My father was like that," he said. "So that was a role model for being contrarian."

Hinton said he spent years thinking up ways that existing systems could be challenged — and that he got it wrong far more often than he got it right.

"I spent decades having lots and lots of ideas about how to do things differently," he said. "Nearly all of which were wrong, but just occasionally, they were right."

Hinton did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider prior to publication.

Even now, Hinton still views himself as operating beyond the norm. He said that attitude is essential — if you're not attached to existing methods of doing things, you'll find it easier to challenge them.

"It requires you to think of yourself as an outsider," he said. "I've always thought of myself as an outsider. I'm rather unhappy with the situation now where I'm a kind of insider. I'd rather be an outsider."

Hinton, who told CBS he uses OpenAI's GPT-4 and trusts it more than he should, has previously warned of the potential dangers of AI.

In a 2023 email to Business Insider, Hinton said humans should be "very concerned" about the rate of progress in AI development.

Hinton at the time estimated that it could be between five and 20 years before AI becomes a real threat, and even longer for the technology to become a threat to humanity — if it ever does.

"It is still possible that the threat will not materialize," he previously told BI.

• Mark Cuban said the value of the "brocast" shouldn't be underestimated.
• "Brocasts aren't republican. They are for young guys," Cuban wrote in a post on Bluesky.
• Cuban has been a podcast fixture for months, and recently talked about his business, Cost Plus Drugs, on one.

Mark Cuban said on Monday that politicians should start paying more attention to podcast bros if they want to connect with young people.

"Brocasts aren't republican. They are for young guys. If you want to connect you have to speak to them. If you want to lose by 248k votes in 7 swing states, ignore them," Cuban wrote in a post on Bluesky.

Cuban is no stranger to the world of politics and podcasts.

The "Shark Tank" star endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris in last year's presidential election. Cuban also hit the podcast circuit to campaign for Harris, appearing on shows like Theo Von's "This Past Weekend" and the "All-In" podcast.

While Cuban made the comment in relation to elections, the power of the "brocast" is on clear display when it comes to businesses as well.

Besides chatting about politics, Cuban has also gone on podcasts to talk about his business ventures.

Last week, Cuban made an appearance on the "Hims House" podcast, where he discussed the origins of his low-cost online pharmacy, Cost Plus Drugs.

"Going back to 2018 or 2017, being here in Texas, I had some Republican friends who were asking me questions like, 'Do you have any ideas how the Republicans can replace the ACA, Obamacare?'" Cuban said.

"I'm like: 'No, but it's an interesting question. Let me see if I can come up with some ideas.' So that got me into healthcare. The ideas, you know, never got that far, but it really got me, turned me into a healthcare geek," he added.

To be sure, Cuban isn't the only one who has recognized the value of podcasts in connecting with a wider audience. Business leaders like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sundar Pichai have been making their rounds on the podcast circuit to talk about their companies or share their views on work and life.

Last month, Zuckerberg appeared on Theo Von's podcast, where he shared his take on the value of attending college.

"I'm not sure that college is preparing people for, like, the jobs that they need to have today," Zuckerberg said on the podcast. "I think there's a big issue on that, and like all the student debt issues are like really big issues."

And in April, too, Melinda French Gates appeared in a podcast episode with Scott Galloway, where she talked about the criticism she's faced for her philanthropic efforts.

"I'm not sitting on the sidelines. To me, it's so easy to sit on the sidelines and, as Roosevelt used to say, criticize from the sidelines. I'm in the arena doing the work," French Gates said.

Cuban did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Shortly after we learned I was pregnant in 2014, we decided to get married.
• With the help of my mom and sister, our wedding was planned in just a few months.
• For $16,000, we had a wedding with 66 guests, and it was perfect for us.

Sam proposed in November 2014 on a stormy afternoon overlooking Port Phillip Bay in Melbourne, Australia. We'd been together for eight years and had unexpectedly found out I was pregnant just a few months before. Marriage had never been on my bucket list, but we knew we loved each other, and it seemed like the next logical step.

With the help of our loved ones, we organized a small wedding for only $16,000 in just a few months. It was perfect for us.

My mom and sister helped plan our wedding

I didn't want to look heavily pregnant in the wedding photos, so we set the date for January 3, 2015. At the time, I was working full-time as a journalist and navigating the first trimester of pregnancy, so my mom and sister (who was also my maid of honor) offered to organize the wedding for me. I was so grateful to have someone else take over.

They scouted out wedding venues on the Gold Coast, where I grew up and Sam and I met, and narrowed it down to three. I chose a beautiful vineyard with a chapel and wedding reception venue on-site.

We had a 66-person wedding for $16,000

My parents and my parents-in-law very kindly offered to split the wedding reception. My husband and I wanted to keep the cost down and make it more intimate, so we limited the guest list to 66 people. The reception cost $7,500.

I bought my own wedding dress, which I found in a boutique store in Melbourne for $1600. It was an A-line ivory dress with a sweetheart neckline, a long train, lace, and diamantes. On the big day, I felt a million dollars.

My parents and my husband paid for everything else, including the flowers, a carriage to the chapel (which made me feel like a princess), a photographer, a DJ, the cake, and wedding favors for the guests. All in all, the whole day cost $16,000.

A few things in particular made our wedding so much fun

One of the things that helped make our wedding such a success was that we ate dinner quite early, around 6 p.m., and kept the speeches short during mealtime. Neither my husband nor I particularly like being the center of attention, and I didn't want the evening to drag on with too much chatter about us.

For me, the most important thing was to be present and enjoy the big day. I didn't want to get bogged down in the details. I couldn't care less whether each Champagne glass had a bow on it or even what color the decorations were; I just wanted to enjoy the occasion.

I also pre-selected the music. We'd been to several weddings where the music didn't work, either because the DJ was playing obscure artists that only the bride and groom liked, or old-school tunes like the Time Warp that don't really resonate with our generation.

So, I gave our DJ a list of all the songs we wanted him to play, in order. People were carving up the dancefloor straight after the main meal and didn't stop until the venue kicked us out. It was a blast.

Overall, having a smaller wedding worked well for us, as it meant that we were surrounded by our nearest and dearest — mainly family, and a few close friends. The people who were there were the ones who mattered to us, and because it was a smaller crowd, we could really mingle with our guests. Many told us afterward that it was one of their favorite weddings, and though we may be biased, we couldn't agree more.

• Cruise lines are increasingly focusing their itineraries on their own private islands and resorts.
• By 2027, 90% of Royal Caribbean's Caribbean cruises will sail to one of its in-house properties.
• Almost every major cruise line is expanding its land-based portfolio.

Cruises have always been a vessel for exploration — a way for travelers to see the world. But over the last few years, these floating resorts have increasingly narrowed their focus to just one type of destination: theme parks in the middle of the ocean.

Cruise ships touch virtually every corner of the earth, from Antarctica to Albania, Madagascar to the Mediterranean. They're often the most convenient and affordable way to see several countries in one trip, which is why bookings have remained buoyant despite uncertain economic tides foundering the rest of the travel industry.

However, these exploratory roots are quickly becoming overshadowed by more lucrative, purpose-built beach resorts that not all travel traditionalists may be happy about.

Cruise lines want you at their private resorts

In recent years, commercial cruise lines have increasingly shifted attention, investments, and itineraries toward in-house land-based buildouts. Think branded private islands with waterparks and resorts with the same up-charges as their ships.

Industry titans like MSC Cruises, Carnival Corp, and Royal Caribbean Group collectively operate about 20 Caribbean ports, a number that seems to grow every day. Royal Caribbean expects to launch four more destinations (in addition to the two it currently has) by early 2027: two in Mexico, one in the Bahamas, and one in the South Pacific on Lelepa, Vanuatu.

By the time they open, the cruise line said earlier in May, 90% of its Caribbean voyages will sail to one of these in-house retreats. In some itineraries, they'll be the only ports of call.

Norwegian is expanding its private island and building a pier to accommodate thousands more travelers daily. Carnival and MSC are doing the same, in addition to each building a new getaway in the Bahamas.

Almost all Carnival ships have voyages scheduled for the company's upcoming Celebration Key resort, which will open in July. Similarly, most of Norwegian and MSC's future Caribbean cruises also include stops at their private islands.

If you're lucky, your voyage could visit other nearby, non-cruise-owned ports.

If not, you could spend every day of your cruise vacation at a themed beachfront park.

Take Royal Caribbean's Utopia of the Seas, for example. It's currently scheduled for 96 four-night "Bahamas and Perfect Day Cruise" voyages through April 2027. The itinerary only includes two ports: the cruise line's Perfect Day at CocoCay private island and Nassau, Bahamas, the soon-to-be home for its pay-to-enter Royal Beach Club Paradise Island.

Islands planted with money trees

The shifting focus toward company-created destinations is a no-brainer for the industry.

These ports are often close to the ships' home ports, allowing cruise lines to save on fuel costs. Plus, they don't require third-party operators, which means the companies can pocket all food, beverage, and excursion profits.

And there are plenty of big-ticket activities to entice visitors, be it $100 to enter CocoCay's waterpark or $1,000 for a villa on Norwegian's Great Stirrup Cay island.

If you're traveling with your multi-generational family, it could be a worthy vacation option.

Many of these resorts are accessible only by ship or walled off from the rest of the country (such as Royal Caribbean's Labadee, Haiti beach). They're also relatively small, consistent, and convenient, filled with kid-friendly amenities like kayaks and snorkel gear.

But if your goal is to tick off countries from your bucket list, consider another form of travel — or at least not a voyage to a remote amusement park.

Ziplining around a manicured beach or napping in an air-conditioned beachfront villa might not be the cultural immersion you want.

• SkinCeuticals' pricey vitamin C serum patent expired, leading many to hope for cheaper alternatives.
• C E Ferulic dupes could be on the way, but that doesn't mean they'll work, industry experts said.
• Some industry experts say dupe culture could be hindering innovation in skincare.

Does it sound crazy to spend $182 on a 30 mL bottle of face serum that famously smells like hot dog water?

Tell that to the diehard fans of SkinCeuticals' C E Ferulic.

Despite its high price point, the L'Oreal-owned brand's vitamin C serum has developed a cult following of devoted users over the past 20 years, thanks in part to a closely guarded, patent-protected formula that the company says can protect skin and improve signs of aging.

Months ahead of the patent's expiration date in March, skincare addicts flooded Reddit with hopes of cheaper "dupes" — a comparable product at a more affordable price point.

But the expiration date of that patent has come and gone, leaving many wondering: Where are the dupes?

Skincare industry experts who spoke to Business Insider said lookalike products could be on the way, but they don't expect the patent expiring to immediately result in any major disruptions to the industry, the vitamin C market, or the SkinCeuticals brand itself.

A bigger issue, they say, is the effect of dupe culture on skincare industry innovation — the kind that led to the existence of C E Ferulic in the first place.

The patent factor

SkinCeuticals' C E Ferulic is beloved by celebrities like Hailey Bieber and embraced by many skincare fans as the holy grail of vitamin C serums — sometimes a little begrudgingly, due to the high price.

Niki DeMartinis, an ER doctor who lives in New York, said she has tried various vitamin C serums over the years, but that she always comes back to C E Ferulic.

"I feel like my skin looks and feels the best with it," she told BI, adding it makes her skin look more even and less dull. She said it's the priciest skincare product she uses regularly, but she thinks it's worth the cost.

C E Ferulic, which hit the market in 2005, is 15% L-Ascorbic Acid, or pure vitamin C, with vitamin E and ferulic acid. Dr. John Carroll Murray, a dermatologist at Duke University who authored a 2008 study showing the formula provided UV photoprotection for skin, said the reason C E Ferulic was such a big deal was the way it was put together.

"It's easy to put vitamin C into a product. It's quite common, quite cheap, and quite safe, but it has to be properly formulated so that it'll be active and effective at removing reactive oxygen species," he said, referring to molecules that can damage skin.

Lina Twaian, a skincare industry expert and brand consultant, told BI that the ability to tout the patent has been a useful marketing tool for SkinCeuticals.

L'Oreal, the largest beauty company in the world, clocked $47 billion in sales last year, according to its annual financial report published in February. The report said its dermatological beauty division grew nearly 10% in 2024 and that the SkinCeuticals brand grew by double digits.

SkinCeuticals' patent for C E Ferulic officially expired in March, the standard 20 years after it was issued. Since then, the company has removed several references to the patent from its product page, according to a review of internet archives. They're now touting the previously "Patented Formula with 15% Vitamin C" as a "Superior Formula."

When reached for comment on the patent expiring, SkinCeuticals told BI the brand is introducing a new, patent-pending "antioxidant protection and performance" formula in 2026.

The brand said in a statement that "SkinCeuticals remains the only brand with exclusive expertise in the precise formulation and production of C E Ferulic."

Experts are divided on whether more dupes are on the way

As dupe culture exploded on social media over the past five years, there's been an even greater appetite for cheaper alternatives to C E Ferulic.

"It's been such a popular and efficacious product, it's pretty clear that brands are going to try to duplicate that," Kelly Dobos, a cosmetic chemist and professor at the University of Cincinnati, told BI of the patent's expiration.

She and the other industry experts said brands have already released their own versions of vitamin C serums, including some that appear similar to SkinCeuticals'. That's because even changing a product slightly can make it safe from a potential patent infringement, according to Larissa Jensen, a senior vice president and global beauty industry advisor at Circana.

"If you have something that's close but not exact, it can still be used in the market, so I don't necessarily know if the patent expiring is going to all of a sudden expose a floodgate of brands with this formula," Jensen told BI.

Still, L'Oreal has fought to protect the formula.

In 2018, L'Oreal sued Drunk Elephant, alleging the skincare brand's vitamin C serum had infringed on its patent. The case was settled out of court, and the terms of the settlement were not made public.

Drunk Elephant, which is owned by the Japanese beauty company Shiseido, sells its C-Firma Fresh Serum for $79, less than half the price of C E Ferulic. The product has 15% vitamin C, 1% vitamin E, and 0.5% ferulic — the same quantities promoted by SkinCeuticals. However, unlike C E Ferulic, the product is designed to be mixed by the consumer before use.

Shiseido told BI it does not comment on company settlements or litigation as a matter of company policy.

Since the patent has expired, Dobos said she expects brands to try to replicate the formula, now without the risk of patent infringement. But she said there's no guarantee that those companies will get it right or that, even if they do, they'll be able to do it at a significantly lower price point.

Not all dupes are created equal

Replicating C E Ferulic won't necessarily be easy, Dobos said. In part, that's because it's unlikely the patent told the full story of how the serum is formulated and made.

There are also many other factors that could impact the effectiveness of a product: the quality of ingredients, the manufacturing process, quality control and assurance, and packaging, which needs to be compatible with and protective of the formula.

Producing effective skincare can also be very finicky, so every aspect matters, Dobos said, adding that without clinical trials on a specific product, it's unclear if it will have the same effect as a product it appears similar to.

Elf Cosmetics announced a new vitamin C serum earlier this month that Dobos said appeared to be positioned as a direct competitor to C E Ferulic, for 91% cheaper. The $16 Bright Icon Vitamin C + E + Ferulic Serum has a similar trio of main ingredients, but at a fraction of the cost, and is being marketed as an alternative to "spendy serums."

But Dobos said it uses a different version of vitamin C, 3-O-Ethyl Ascorbic Acid, which she said was a "more stable version, but it's less substantiated in terms of effectiveness." Other factors that could impact the difference in price include where it's made (Elf produces most of its products in China), regulatory and labor costs, the cost of ingredients and packaging, and research and development, like clinical studies, Dobos said.

Clinical studies would be needed on the Elf product to really compare it to C E Ferulic, she said.

Elf did not respond to a request for comment.

Taking the shine out of dupe culture

Several industry experts have said that dupe culture itself could actually be hurting skincare innovation. Charlotte Palermino, the cofounder of Dieux Skin, recently wrote in a Substack post that dupes have "diluted" the beauty industry. She said innovation is expensive to produce as well as protect.

"But the tragedy of dupe culture isn't just the heartbreak of 'they copied my homework.' It's the slow death of innovation," she wrote, adding, "If you want innovation, perhaps consider valuing it."

Dobos said dupe culture incentivizes companies to focus on putting out products that are in line with the latest trends rather than creating something truly groundbreaking.

"I do think the kind of dupe culture that we're in is hindering innovation in a way because it's taking time and resources away from it," she said. "True, disruptive innovation takes time."

• JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon turned 69 in March.
• Dimon was asked about his succession plan during the company's investor day event on Monday.
• Dimon did not give names but said the company's board was "thinking about succession."

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said on Monday that the company's board is thinking about succession, but he stopped short of saying who will take his place.

"We have built a very deep bench," Dimon said at the company's investor day event when asked about its succession plans.

"What we've told you is that the board has intent. It's not a promise. It's not a commitment. It's intent — to be, and prudent, to be thinking about succession. And we should be doing that," Dimon added.

Dimon instead emphasised the importance of maintaining JPMorgan's culture, no matter who helms it.

"If I'm here for four more years and maybe two more or three, executive chair or chairman, that's a long time," Dimon said.

"But to me, the most important thing, when it gets handed over, you have real teams, real cultures, and hopefully keep on building it. If you look at the best companies in the world, that's what they had. They continued going forward, regardless of, necessarily, who the CEO was," Dimon added.

This isn't the first time Dimon, who turned 69 in March, has been asked about his retirement plans.

During the company's earnings call in January, Dimon was asked who his successor could be. Dimon did not give any names, though he did mention that JPMorgan's board has been interviewing several candidates for the job.

"We have several exceptional people. You guys know most of them. Maybe one or two, you don't know," Dimon said in January. "The board reviews and meets with them all the time."

"And obviously, we're not going to tell the press, but it's not determined yet," Dimon said in the earnings call.

At last year's investor day event, Dimon joked that his retirement timetable was "not five years anymore."

"I have the energy that I've always had. That's important. I think when I can't put the jersey on and give it my fullest, then I should leave basically," Dimon said in May 2024.

Representatives for Dimon at JPMorgan did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• The Big Four dominate the professional services industry.
• AI may disrupt not just job roles, but their organizational structure, business models, and pricing structures.
• Meanwhile, some midsize firms say they are better placed to adapt quickly and benefit from AI.

The Big Four — Deloitte, PwC, EY, and KPMG — are a select and powerful few. They dominate the professional services industry and have done so for decades.

But all empires fall eventually. Large corporations tend to merge, transform, or get replaced by the latest wave of innovative upstarts.

It's hard to see that time coming for the Big Four. With huge revenues, international reach, vast workforces, and numerous service offerings, they're indispensable for many corporations.

Yet AI could be poised to disrupt their business models, organizational structure, and day-to-day roles, while driving opportunities for the mid-market.

Automation is coming

The Big Four advise companies on how to navigate change, but they could be among the most vulnerable to AI themselves, said Alan Paton, who until recently was a partner in PwC's financial services division, specializing in AI and the cloud.

Paton, now the CEO of Qodea, a Google Cloud solutions consultancy, told Business Insider he's a firm believer that AI-driven automation will bring major disruption to key service lines and drive "a huge reduction" in profits.

Most structured, data-heavy tasks in audit, tax, and strategic advisory will be automated within the next three to five years, eliminating about 50% of roles, Paton said. There are already examples of AI solutions capable of performing 90% of the audit process, he said.

Paton thinks automation means clients will increasingly question why they should pay consultants big money to "give me an answer I can get instantaneously from a tool."

Unless they become far more specialized, the Big Four will be in trouble, he said.

Others are less convinced AI will make consultants and accountants obsolete, arguing instead that AI will free up time and drive productivity.

"AI frees up consultants, but it will never replace them," said Casey Foss, chief commercial officer at midsize firm West Monroe.

Businesses will continue to require expertise as AI develops — it's not a "set it and forget it" solution, she said. There will always be a need for the human in the loop who can understand problems holistically and has the "expertise of the gut feel."

The Big Four's vulnerabilities

The debate over how AI will disrupt job roles affects all consulting firms, but some industry insiders say the Big Four's business model is also at risk.

"No one is more exposed to AI disruption than the Big Four," said Foss. AI is bringing price points down, which will hit revenues, and creating demand for outcomes-based pricing models over traditional billable hours that the Big Four have always used, she said.

Firms have to be nimble to adapt to these changes at scale while simultaneously upskilling their staff and rethinking services, Foss said. Pivoting a huge organization like EY, KPMG, PwC, or Deloitte is "definitely harder," she said.

Offshoring, a cornerstone of the Big Four's business model, could also be a handicap.

The Big Four have built their healthy revenue streams on junior-heavy pyramids, with an increasing degree of labor arbitrage, offshoring work to cheaper labor markets, often in Asia.

"If work can be done using AI, where you don't need to have an office in Indonesia, you can actually deliver it from the UK into those services, then I think these companies are going to be deeply challenged," said Paton.

If the way you deliver a service is based on the number of people you have, "you're really vulnerable," he said.

Amid tight market conditions and slow attrition rates, Big Four employees are already suffering. A number of UK and US branches have laid off workers and slowed hiring in the past year. This May, PwC laid off roughly 2% of its US workforce, largely from its audit and tax lines.

Rise of mid-market firms

As disruption heads for the Big Four's established order, AI is proving a boon to mid-market consulting firms.

"AI is a necessary enabler for these firms to proliferate and prosper," said Alibek Dostiyarov, a former McKinsey consultant who is now CEO of Perceptis, a startup that provides AI solutions to smaller firms to streamline "mind-numbing" consulting tasks.

Automation diminishes smaller firms' previous disadvantages, like lacking an army of talent or advanced internal tools, while empowering employees to be more productive, said Dostiyarov.

Perceptis' clients say the tool allows them to reply to about 10 or 12 project inquiries rather than prioritizing two or three, he said.

West Monroe's win rate is higher, and its pipeline is "bigger than it's ever been," Foss told BI. In the past six to 12 months, the firm, which has just over 2,000 employees, has also started to see a new talent set emerge in its recruiting pipeline — leadership candidates from the Big Four.

Foss said ex-Big Four candidates are "excited about how boutique firms can use this technology faster and more iteratively to serve clients differently."

Too big not to adapt

Others say the Big Four's size and expertise make it inevitable that they'll overcome AI disruption.

The four firms have invested billions in artificial intelligence, far more than smaller firms could ever afford.

In 2023, KPMG said its plan to invest $2 billion in artificial intelligence and cloud services over the next five years would generate more than $12 billion in revenue over that period.

Innovation leaders at EY and KPMG told BI the scale and breadth of their offerings were an advantage and helped them deliver integrated AI solutions for clients.

"While small firms may move quickly, we are uniquely positioned to deliver enterprise-grade AI solutions, manage risk, and integrate technology across global operations," said Cliff Justice, a key figure in KPMG's global AI program.

Justice said that while it's true AI is disrupting traditional business models, the assumption that it will break the dominance of the Big Four underestimates their structural advantages, strategic positioning, and ability to adapt at scale.

Raj Sharma, EY's global managing partner for growth and innovation, told BI that the firm's breadth of business made it the perfect "testbed for innovation."

"Our strength is in our ability to bring to clients more than 100 years of deep sector experience and quality data sets, human-centered and supported by the collective knowledge of 400,000 skilled professionals," Sharma said.

Both leaders also said their deep expertise was necessary for handling the increased ethical, security, and regulatory compliance challenges created by AI.

"Businesses need a partner that can do more than provide relevant tech capabilities," said Sharma.

PwC's chief technology officer, Umang Paw, said that his firm was "more than ready" for this "moment of reinvention."

"We're not coming at this cold — we've had an AI practice for more than 10 years and are working with our technology alliance partners to build AI-enabled solutions that embed our expertise and allow clients to access our support in new ways," he said.

"Every industrial revolution has reshaped professional services and AI is no exception," said Paw.

Deloitte did not respond to a request for comment.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at [email protected] or Signal at Polly_Thompson.89. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• France's Turgis Gaillard is developing a long-range rocket and missile system, a type of weapon proven in Ukraine.
• The company called it "sovereign in its design, European in its ambition."
• The system is an alternative to the US-made HIMARS and comes as Europe builds up its own defense.

A French firm is developing an alternative to the US-made HIMARS rocket and missile system as Europe works to reduce its reliance on the US and strengthen its defense industries and arsenals.

Turgis Gaillard's new weapon, Foudre, is a long-range strike system that looks set to rival the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) made by US defense contractor Lockheed Martin. The HIMARS is a combat-proven system that Ukraine has effectively used in its fight against the Russians and several other European nations have purchased over the years.

The French Foudre is a truck-mounted system is designed to be air-transportable and highly mobile, and it fires several types of precision-guided munitions with ranges between 46 and 621 miles, the company told Business Insider.

Earlier French reporting on the system indicates that it can carry M31 rockets, MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), and even the new Precision Strike Missile (PrSM), US-made weapons used by the HIMARS. It can also reportedly launch cruise missiles.

The company told BI that "its open architecture allows for the integration of allied or French effectors, strengthening logistical resilience in the face of international crises."

The company's founders emphasized how Russia's invasion of Ukraine has proved the need for this type of system. It also stressed the European origins of this weapon. Europe is increasingly sorting how best to stand on its own as the US, under President Donald Trump, has become a less reliable ally.

With Foudre, the French company is "materializing a French vision of defensive innovation: sovereign in its design, European in its ambition, and resolutely focused on operational efficiency," the founders of the company, Fanny Turgis and Patrick Gaillard, said in a statement to Business Insider.

A European system

Turgis Gaillard said in its statement to BI that the system is "developed in France with national industrial partners."

European defense budgets are soaring, and there is increased interest in local systems as Trump criticizes allies and suggests that the US might not come to their defense.

French business publication Challenges reported recently that Turgis Gaillard has been secretly developing the system for two years — the company saw an opportunity in observations from Ukraine.

Mark Cancian, a senior advisor on defense and security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told BI that while the "system was not developed in response to Trump," the US president's "unreliability as a military and economic partner may deter some countries from buying US-produced weapons," opening doors to new potential customers.

Some US allies, for instance, have questioned their commitment to the F-35 fighter jet, made by Lockheed Martin, though a lack of similarly advanced alternatives and the difficulty that would come with changing to a new aircraft type could mean partner nations opt to stick with the fifth-gen fighter.

European leaders have been saying Europe needs to make more and more of its own weaponry. Among them is António Costa, who is head of the European Council, telling Politico last month that Europe needs to increase its own weapons production.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has sparked a host of new defense agreements, exercises, and purchases among European militaries, including the European Long-Range Strike Approach that was launched last year.

This development has seen France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Sweden, and the UK coming together to develop a new long-range, ground-launched strike capability. Turgis Gaillard described Foudre as "part of the dynamics" of that project.

A lesson from Ukraine

Russia's war against its neighbor has led Western militaries to rethink their weapons and tactics, as well as move to spend more on their defense. With concerns that Russian aggression could spill into other parts of Europe, there is a recognition in Western capitals that Europe needs to be ready for modern war.

The effectiveness of versatile multiple launch rocket systems, or MRLS, has been a key lesson from the war.

Turgis Gaillard explained to BI in a statement that its system was developed "in response to the lessons learned from recent conflict." The founders said the system "embodies our commitment to providing allied armies with tools that anticipate the conflicts of tomorrow."

Ukraine first received HIMARS in 2022. It was among the first significant weapons Western partners sent to Ukraine. With greater reach than other artillery and rocket launchers, it struck Russian positions in the rear, knocking out ammo depots, troops and equipment, and command and control centers.

Ukraine celebrated HIMARS as a game changer when it first arrived, though Russia has adapted, moving critical potential targets and employing countermeasures like jamming. But the weapon system is still having an effect, taking out Russian helicopters in March.

Cancian said Russia's invasion has shown that mobile "rocket launchers have proven to be very valuable due to their high volume of fire and ability to move quickly." He added that "the guided rockets have been very effective against point targets, such as ammunition points and headquarters."

Turgis Gaillard described Foudre as the kind of weapon needed for a modern war.

"As armies now detect targets hundreds of kilometers away using drones, satellites, and intelligence systems, Foudre complements this chain by striking with precision up to 1,000 km, disrupting enemy lines and protecting friendly forces."

How much of a HIMARS rival the system could be is uncertain.

It is not clear how many of these the company plans to produce, and there are other rivals out there, though European countries might be less likely to choose them over a French alternative.

The company plans to officially unveil the new strike system at the Paris Air Show, June 16 through June 22. It said that "demonstrations of its joint interface and rapid deployment capabilities will be offered" at the event.

• Todd Sheridan Yeary spent 13 years working at the FAA Chicago Air Route Traffic Control Center.
• He says air traffic control is a high-pressure job with unpredictable challenges and safety concerns.
• The field is facing staffing shortages, which is stressing the National Airspace System's safety.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Todd Sheridan Yeary, a pastor and former air traffic controller who left the job in 2002 and is now based in Baltimore. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I spent 13 years as an air traffic controller before pivoting my career. It's a well-paid but very stressful job.

Many dynamics can change your shift altogether. On a normal cloudy day, if a thunderstorm starts, it could get tense — you can't control the weather and must respond in real time.

There's heightened pressure when responding to constantly changing situations. If there's an aircraft incident or a midair collision — which are rare but shocking — the responsiveness needed takes hyperfocus.

Additionally, the government needs to do more than pay lip service to the needs of the National Airspace System to sustain this field.

Some controllers are adrenaline junkies — we like the pressure

I grew up in a house with two air traffic control parents, which influenced my decision to enter the field.

After passing an air traffic control civil service test and completing 10 weeks of training, I chose to work at the FAA Chicago Air Route Traffic Control Center since my stepmother was working there, and my father and I worked together in the same area for almost six years.

I enjoy busy periods, like when I lined up the planes going into O'Hare and Midway, but air traffic controllers need time to recuperate. In today's environment, some controllers work up to a mandatory six-day week with overtime, and there's little reset time available.

Pay is determined by the complexity of the facility you're assigned to. At the end of my career, my base was over six figures annually. With overtime, it's possible to make double that.

Each day has a baseline of predictability, but there's always uncertainty

The midair collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in January is a complicated analysis. When these events occur, air traffic controllers must respond immediately to ensure that the incidents don't cause other incidents. You rely on your training much more when things are shifting than when things are routine.

We can't minimize the significance of these incidents, but we also can't lose sight of the reality that the National Airspace System (even with tech and staffing challenges) is still safe. We still can't take that safety for granted — there is a tipping point.

I think it's safe to fly into Newark Airport right now

The reduction of flights into Newark Liberty International Airport is partly due to concerns about equipment, but the most active runway at Newark is out of service until next month due to runway improvements.

That alone requires the number of flights to be reduced to avoid potential safety issues. Airline demand has still been growing, and companies are often resistant to cutting back on slots at major airports and airline hubs.

There have been countless stressful moments in my career

I was working on 9/11, and we had to clear the airspace over the US immediately. That meant something as simple as telling a commercial flight that may have left DC for LA that it needed to land in Moline, Illinois.

If the pilots said, "That's not on our flight plan," we might counter that it was an emergency. If they refused, we had instructions to notify our military counterpart, the National Guard fighter jets, to escort commercial planes to the ground during an unprecedented national emergency.

Some pilots initially questioned the instructions, but the available information was changing quickly. Between ATC communications and airline flight dispatchers, we kept military interdictions and escorts to a minimum.

There's a shortage of controllers and the system's safety is being stressed

The job is exciting, the controllers are dedicated, and the training is rigorous. However, much more intentional effort is needed for this field to continue to be rewarding.

There's a shortage of air traffic controllers, and others are pending retirement. If the government doesn't step in, you may see more controllers going out on disability because the system's safety is being stressed, and the controllers are being pushed beyond their limits.

I started pastoring a small church in 2001, and I decided to leave my job in air traffic control in 2002 because my congregation needed more of my attention. I moved to Baltimore in 2007 to pastor Douglas Memorial Community Church. I thought I might return one day, but the opportunity never presented itself.

Do you have a story to share about working as an air traffic controller? Contact this editor at [email protected].

• Yale rising senior Alex Schapiro uncovered a security flaw in dating app Cerca.
• Schapiro has spotted vulnerabilities in large companies, leading at least one to start its own bug bounty program.
• Bug hunters who notify companies of flaws can help startups, especially those scaling quickly, secure data.

Alex Schapiro, a rising senior at Yale, likes to play Settlers of Catan with his friends, work on class projects, and lead a popular student website. But from his dorm room, Schapiro moonlights as an ethical hacker, uncovering security flaws in startups and tech companies before the bad guys do.

Schapiro's bug-hunting work gained traction last week after Hacker News readers had thoughts about one of his recent findings: a bug in Cerca, a buzzy dating app founded by college students that matches mutual contacts with each other. The flaw could have potentially exposed users' phone numbers and identification information, Schapiro said in a blog post.

Through an "internal investigation," Cerca concluded that the "bug had not been exploited" and resolved the issue "within hours" of speaking with Schapiro, a company spokesperson said. Cerca also reduced the amount of data it collects from users and hired an outside expert to review its code, who found no further issues, the spokesperson added. (The Yale Daily News first reported on Schapiro's findings in April.)

A frenzy of venture investment, in part fueled by advancements in AI, has hit college campuses, leading students to launch products and close fundraises quickly. And with "vibe coding," or using AI to program swiftly, becoming the norm among even the most technical builders, Schapiro is hopeful that ethical bug hunters can help startups build and scale while keeping security a top priority.

"These are real people, and this is real, sensitive data," Schapiro told BI. "It's not just going to be part of your pitch deck saying, 'hey, we have 10,000 users.'"

Building Safer Startups

Schapiro says he got his proclivity for programming from his mother, a former Bell Labs computer scientist. As many startup founders and AI researchers once did, Schapiro started building side projects in high school, using Spotify's API to curate playlists for friends and making X bots to track SEC filings.

Teaching himself how to "reverse-engineer" websites led to breaking and making them stronger — a side hustle he now uses to poke holes in real companies before bad actors can.

Ethically hacking is a popular side hustle in some tech circles. (A Reddit group dedicated to the practice called r/bugbounty has over 50,000 members.) It's a hobby that startups and tech giants stand to benefit from, as it helps them prevent data from getting in the wrong hands. Heavyweights like Microsoft, Google, Apple, and more run bug bounty programs that encourage outsiders to find and report security flaws in exchange for a financial reward.

In his first year at Yale, Schapiro found a "pretty serious vulnerability" in a company he says generates billions of dollars in annual revenue. (Schapiro declined to disclose the company, citing an NDA he signed.)

His discoveries have even led a company with "hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue" to start working on a bug bounty program of their own, Schapiro said. He has also been contracted by two other tech companies, including part-time work platform SideShift, to pentest their software. And last summer, he pentested Verizon's AI systems during an internship.

"As someone who uses a bunch of websites, I want my data to be taken care of," he said. "That's my mindset when I'm building something. I want to treat all the data that I'm dealing with as if it was my own data."

Slowing His Roll

On paper, Schapiro seems like the archetype of a college-dropout-turned-founder: He has built and tested apps since childhood, and he runs CourseTable, a Yale class review database that receives over 8 million requests a month. Sometimes, Schapiro says, founders looking for a technical counterpart reach out to him, and VCs hoping to back the next wunderkind ask him when he's going to found a company.

For now, Schapiro isn't interested.

"The No. 1 thing stopping me from raising money right now is not funding," he said. "I would need to really invest a bunch of time in it, and I love the four-year liberal arts college experience."

Recently, Schapiro has found himself learning how to become a smarter computer scientist — not in a machine learning class, but in a translations course he took for his second major, Near Eastern languages and civilizations. It helped him think about how he turns English into Python efficiently and effectively.

"You meet so many interesting, cool people here, and this is a time in your life where you can really just learn things," he said. "You're not going to get that experience later in life."

While he's not ruling out the possibility of founding a company in the future, Schapiro is fine slowing his roll until graduation next May. This summer, he's interning at Amazon Web Services, where he'll work on AI and machine learning platforms.

• Despite negative stereotypes, some people are working longer in a hybrid world.
• This "work intensification" has been going on for decades.
• Setting boundaries is crucial to avoid burning out, says organizational psychologist Amanda Jones.

In an era of quiet quitting, the Great Resignation, and lazy girl jobs, the assumption is that workers are slacking.

These trends are actually all symptoms of a workforce that is toiling harder and longer and doing more with less, according to Amanda Jones. The senior lecturer in organizational behaviour and HR management at King's Business School at King's College London specializes in remote working and work-life balance.

Jones told Business Insider that "work intensification has been happening for decades. She remembers hearing about it and becoming interested in the concept while she was at school.

When Jones was doing her doctorate, a professor at Cardiff University called Alan Felsted, agreed to be her examiner. He has studied work intensification extensively.

"One of the things that always fascinates me about this is that it's never gone down," Jones said, pointing to Felsted's research. "We are working harder progressively over time."

The end result isn't increased productivity, it's burnout and detachment.

Jones said that quitting as a concept in response to feeling overwhelmed by one's workload is "quite victim-blaming; it could be just that they can't take it anymore."

'Race to the bottom'

The negative impacts of work intensification include burnout and stress, which can lead to people taking long-term sick leave and putting a strain on the economy.

"You've got people who are economically inactive, so they're not paying taxes, they're possibly receiving benefits instead," Jones said.

"It's going to not only cost more, but if we're doing this to people in the skilled section of the workforce, it's also not going to help us with our skills gaps, so productivity will reduce," she added. "It does feel a bit like a race to the bottom."

Some companies are implementing a four-day workweek, which is a step in the right direction, in Jones' view.

All organizations should be aware that "what's happening isn't going to benefit them in the long run," she said. "I think probably there's a policy intervention that's necessary."

Increasingly intense digital world

Researchers have linked work intensification to the pandemic.

The stereotype is that people who work remotely are less productive, stepping away from their computers to do household chores or run errands.

This has factored into the decisions of several prominent companies requiring their staff to return to the office — sometimes up to five days a week.

This is another misconception, though, Jones said, because people who work from home can actually attend more meetings than before.

"It provides you with more opportunity to participate in work," she said.

"If you can't go to a meeting, in the old days, you couldn't go to a meeting, you couldn't physically get there. Now, we can go to everything."

Setting boundaries

Having work at our fingertips — emails and messaging apps on our phones — has caused our professional lives to bleed into our personal ones more than ever.

"People go on holiday and they do all this extra work," Jones said. "It doesn't feel difficult — you've got your phone in your hand and you're able to let go."

Jones said she's taken note of this and now deletes her email and her LinkedIn apps when she goes on vacation.

"There's this whole requirement to build your brand and to constantly be employable and always be looking for work, which adds to the intensification. It's this 'I must always be marketable' culture, which, for younger people, I worry they're going to be burned out before they're 30 at this rate."

Jones also recommends setting boundaries to avoid getting sucked into the work intensification cycle, even if it's difficult to do so.

"If you are in a context where your organization is not supporting that so much, often people don't feel that they have any choice other than to exit or try to retrain or do something else," she said.

Ultimately, people need to be aware of what is and is not acceptable and healthy for them.

"Some people do just have a propensity toward overwork, and we do have a duty of care to make sure that we are not overburdening those kind of people," Jones said.

"But then again, they're exactly the kind of people who tend to get things done. So I think there's that element of having to have self-awareness and knowing how to look after yourself."

This is an excerpt from "Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI" by Karen Hao.

The book is based on interviews with around 260 people and an extensive trove of correspondence and documents. Any quoted emails, documents, or Slack messages come from copies or screenshots of those documents and correspondences or are exactly as they appear in lawsuits.

The author reached out to all of the key figures and companies that are described in this book to seek interviews and comment. OpenAI and Sam Altman chose not to cooperate.

In November 2022, rumors began to spread within OpenAI that its rival Anthropic was testing — and would soon release — a new chatbot. If it didn't launch first, OpenAI risked losing its leading position, which could deliver a big hit to morale for employees who had worked long and tough hours to retain that dominance.

Anthropic had not in fact been planning any imminent releases. But for OpenAI executives, the rumors were enough to trigger a decision: The company wouldn't wait to ready GPT-4 into a chatbot; it would release John Schulman's chat-enabled GPT-3.5 model with the Superassistant team's brand-new chat interface in two weeks, right after Thanksgiving.

No one truly fathomed the societal phase shift they were about to unleash. They expected the chatbot to be a flash in the pan. The night before the release, they placed bets on how many users might try the tool by the end of the weekend. Some people guessed a few thousand. Others guessed tens of thousands. To be safe, the infrastructure team provisioned enough server capacity for 100,000 users.

On Wednesday, November 30, most employees didn't even realize that the launch had happened. But the following day, the number of users began to surge.

The instant runaway success of ChatGPT was beyond what anyone at OpenAI had dreamed of. It would leave the company's engineers and researchers completely miffed even years later. GPT-3.5 hadn't been that much of a capability improvement over GPT-3, which had already been out for two years. And GPT-3.5 had already been available to developers.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman later said that he'd believed ChatGPT would be popular but by something like "one order of magnitude less." "It was shocking that people liked it," a former employee remembers. "To all of us, they'd downgraded the thing we'd been using internally and launched it."

Within five days, OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman tweeted that ChatGPT had crossed one million users. Within two months, it had reached 100 million, becoming what was then the fastest-growing consumer app in history. ChatGPT catapulted OpenAI from a hot startup well-known within the tech industry into a household name overnight.

At the same time, it was this very blockbuster success that would place extraordinary strain on the company. Over the course of a year, it would polarize its factions further and wind up the stress and tension within the organization to an explosive level.

By then, the company had just 300 employees. With every team stretched dangerously thin, managers begged Altman for more head count. There was no shortage of candidates. After ChatGPT, the number of applicants clamoring to join the rocket ship had rapidly multiplied. But Altman worried about what would happen to company culture and mission alignment if the company scaled up its staff too quickly. He believed firmly in maintaining a small staff and high talent density. "We are now in a position where it's tempting to let the organization grow extremely large," he had written in his 2020 vision memo, in reference to Microsoft's investment. "We should try very hard to resist this — what has worked for us so far is being small, focused, high-trust, low-bullshit, and intense. The overhead of too many people and too much bureaucracy can easily kill great ideas or result in sclerosis."

He was now repeating this to executives in late 2022, emphasizing during head count discussions the need to keep the company lean and the talent bar high, and add no more than 100 or so hires. Other executives balked. At the rate that their teams were burning out, many saw the need for something closer to around 500 or even more new people.

Over several weeks, the executive team finally compromised on a number somewhere in the middle, between 250 and 300. The cap didn't hold. By summer, there were as many as 30, even 50, people joining OpenAI each week, including more recruiters to scale up hiring even faster. By fall, the company had blown well past its own self-imposed quota.

The sudden growth spurt indeed changed company culture. A recruiter wrote a manifesto about how the pressure to hire so quickly was forcing his team to lower the quality bar for talent. "If you want to build Meta, you're doing a great job," he said in a pointed jab at Altman, alluding to the very fears that the CEO had warned about.

The rapid expansion was also leading to an uptick in firings. During his onboarding, one manager was told to swiftly document and report any underperforming members of his team, only to be let go himself sometime later. Terminations were rarely communicated to the rest of the company. People routinely discovered that colleagues had been fired only by noticing when a Slack account grayed out from being deactivated. They began calling it "getting disappeared."

To new hires, fully bought into the idea that they were joining a fast-moving, money-making startup, the tumult felt like a particularly chaotic, at times brutal, manifestation of standard corporate problems: poor management, confusing priorities, the coldhearted ruthlessness of a capitalistic company willing to treat its employees as disposable. "There was a huge lack of psychological safety," says a former employee who joined during this era. Many people coming aboard were simply holding on for dear life until their one-year mark to get access to the first share of their equity. One significant upside: They still felt their colleagues were among the highest caliber in the tech industry, which, combined with the seemingly boundless resources and unparalleled global impact, could spark a feeling of magic difficult to find in the rest of the industry when things actually aligned. "OpenAI is one of the best places I've ever worked but also probably one of the worst," the former employee says.

For some employees who remembered the scrappy early days of OpenAI as a tight-knit, mission-driven nonprofit, its dramatic transformation into a big, faceless corporation was far more shocking and emotional. Gone was the organization as they'd known it; in its place was something unrecognizable. "OpenAI is Burning Man," Rob Mallery, a former recruiter, says, referring to how the desert art festival scaled to the point that it lost touch with its original spirit. "I know it meant a lot more to the people who were there at the beginning than it does to everyone now."

In those early years, the team had set up a Slack channel called #explainlikeimfive that allowed employees to submit anonymous questions about technical topics. With the company pushing 600 people, the channel also turned into a place for airing anonymous grievances.

In mid-2023, an employee posted that the company was hiring too many people not aligned with the mission or passionate about building AGI.

Another person responded: They knew OpenAI was going downhill once it started hiring people who could look you in the eye.

As OpenAI was rapidly professionalizing and gaining more exposure and scrutiny, incoherence at the top was becoming more consequential. The company was no longer just the Applied and Research divisions. Now there were several public-facing departments: In addition to the communications team, a legal team was writing legal opinions and dealing with a growing number of lawsuits. The policy team was stretching out across continents. Increasingly, OpenAI needed to communicate with one narrative and voice to its constituents, and it needed to determine its positions to articulate them. But on numerous occasions, the lack of strategic clarity was leading to confused public messaging.

At the end of 2023, The New York Times would sue OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement for training on millions of its articles. OpenAI's response in early January, written by the legal team, delivered an unusually feisty hit back, accusing the Times of "intentionally manipulating our models" to generate evidence for its argument. That same week, OpenAI's policy team delivered a submission to the UK House of Lords communications and digital select committee, saying that it would be "impossible" for OpenAI to train its cutting-edge models without copyrighted materials. After the media zeroed in on the word impossible, OpenAI hastily walked away from the language.

"There's just so much confusion all the time," says an employee in a public-facing department. While some of that reflects the typical growing pains of startups, OpenAI's profile and reach have well outpaced the relatively early stage of the company, the employee adds. "I don't know if there is a strategic priority in the C suite. I honestly think people just make their own decisions. And then suddenly it starts to look like a strategic decision but it's actually just an accident. Sometimes there isn't a plan as much as there is just chaos."

Karen Hao is an award-winning journalist covering the impacts of artificial intelligence on society. She is the author of "Empire of AI."

Adapted from "EMPIRE OF AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI" by Karen Hao, published by Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2025 by Karen Hao.

• Ukraine has approved a new ground-based drone, which fires thermobaric rounds, for combat use.
• It's now one of 80 uncrewed ground vehicles codified by the military to fight in the war.
• The Krampus is a tracked UGV meant to carry multiple RPV-16 launchers on rough terrain.

Ukraine's defense ministry has officially approved what it described as a flamethrower robot for its military units.

The Krampus, a locally invented uncrewed ground vehicle, now joins more than 80 other supported ground drone designs that Kyiv's forces can use, the ministry said in a statement Monday.

The ministry said the remotely piloted vehicle is equipped with RPV-16 rounds, which are rocket-propelled thermobaric rounds originally designed by Ukraine for infantry to fire from a portable launcher. Thermobaric rounds disperse a cloud of fuel into the air that is then ignited, creating a powerful blast.

Built to "perform assault and defensive missions" against infantry and light armor, the Krampus is a tracked UGV that runs on two silent motors and can fit in the back of a pickup truck, the ministry added.

The statement said its controls were jam-resistant and designed to withstand cold, heat, snow, and rain. It's also supposed to effectively cross off-road terrain such as thick forest, sand, swamps, and steep inclines.

"The platform's battery capacity allows for several hours of continuous movement," the statement said. "Thanks to this, it can remain in position for extended periods in standby mode."

The ministry didn't specify the drone's operational range or ammo capacity. Photos of the Krampus appear to show a tracked platform with a video camera that could fit four RPV-16 launchers. These launchers are typically single-use, so it's likely the Krampus can fire four times before having to be resupplied.

Authorization by the defense ministry can be important for how widely a drone is used, since Ukrainian weapons manufacturing and innovation are dispersed across the country. As the war rages, various firms and military units work simultaneously on their own battlefield tech and often share them with one another.

Official approval means Ukrainian forces can use their budgets to purchase the Krampus UGV.

Their heavier frames offer more deployment options than a typical flying drone, such as carrying larger explosive payloads for attack missions, evacuating the wounded as a last resort, or clearing mines.

"These drones allow us to replace infantry soldiers on the battlefield," Oleksandr Chernyavskiy, an enlisted soldier who helps with fundraising in the 241st Territorial Defense Brigade's drone prototyping team, told Business Insider of UGVs like the Krampus.

His own brigade has created a similar tracked UGV with mounted belt-fed machine guns that he says runs on an operational range of 20 kilometers, or about 12 ½ miles. Typically, such assault UGVs fly in tandem with aerial drones that can help them scout for mines, traps, and targets, Chernyavskiy said.

"It appeared to be quite effective in some kind of operations, like against well-equipped positions and traps," Chernyavskiy said of his brigade's weapons-mounted UGVs. "Usually, it's been used remotely without our infantry nearby."

Ukraine has set a goal of fielding 15,000 UGVs on the battlefield by the end of the year.

Alex Mundo gets a little worked up at the idea of tariffs making the instruments at his music store more expensive, especially for beginners. "There's going to be a lot of kids now who aren't going to be able to get their stuff, aren't going to be able to become musicians," he says. "It's already becoming very cost-prohibitive as it is."

Mundo is a jack-of-all-trades within one trade: music. He spent more than a decade in sales and retail management, mainly at Sam Ash Music, and now works as a guitar technician at a retailer on Long Island, New York. He also moonlights as an audio engineer and plays in a band of his own. He's not optimistic about the impact of President Donald Trump's tariffs on the industry he's dedicated his life to. For families looking to get their kids into music, tariffs mean starter instruments may become tougher to afford. Advancing musicians may have a harder time accessing higher-quality instruments and gear as they progress. Sellers are feeling the pressure on their margins, too. Even professional and semiprofessional musicians aren't immune.

"If my gear is weak and lame, I don't get paid the checks that I need to get paid," says Mundo, who makes about one-quarter of his income from gigging. "I mean, musicians are broke. We need cheap things."

In music, like in many arenas, tariffs stand to make affordable things harder to come by — even the stuff that says "Made in the USA."

"If you walk to any music store, big box or mom-and-pop, right now and grab anything off the wall, it'll either say Taiwan or China on it, maybe Indonesia on some guitars," Mundo says. "Even when you get to the American-made stuff, I always have to ask, where are they getting the parts?"

The US music products industry is relatively small, worth about $20 billion in sales a year. Music may be a luxury, but it's profoundly impactful on our economy and collective psyche. The music industry generates billions of dollars in economic activity each year (see: Taylor Swift). It's one of America's greatest cultural exports. Music programs are a fixture in American schools. Music keeps us entertained and allows us to express ourselves and make connections. Not to be too soft, but it's one of those things that makes life a bit more worth living.

"There are geopolitical trade issues much bigger than clarinets out there in the world, I understand that," says John Mlynczak, the president and CEO of the National Association of Music Merchants. "But at the same time, music making is one of the most universally joyous, peaceful, uniting art forms since the dawn of time."

The biggest exporter of musical instruments and parts to the US is — surprise, surprise — China. It accounted for about $560 million in imports in 2024, followed by Indonesia and Japan at $166 million, with Mexico and Taiwan just behind. So when Trump initially put a 145% tariff on imports from China (though he's since temporarily reduced that to 30%) along with a blanket 10% tariff on imports globally, it caused quite a lot of heartburn in the industry. The worldwide nature of Trump's trade actions is particularly worrisome because, given the number of instruments and parts made abroad, music manufacturers and retailers have nowhere to hide.

Cullen Hendrix, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, recently crunched the numbers on instruments and tariffs. He found that orchestral strings (think violins and cellos) and brasswinds (trumpets and tubas) would be among the instruments hard hit, along with electronic keyboards and electric guitars and basses.

"While there will be escalating costs across a range of musical instruments, the most acute effects are going to be on the entry-level instruments, the ones that are the cheapest and therefore the most accessible to student musicians and, in particular, school music programs," he says. He worries about what it means for the future: "You don't get adult serious hobbyist musicians like myself, for instance, who spend thousands of dollars on musical equipment per year, if they never got an instrument in their hands in the first place."

About two-thirds of Americans in a 2022 YouGov survey said they had learned to play an instrument at some point in their lives. Most, of course, won't become the next John Mayer or Yo-Yo Ma or Slash, or play in Beyoncé's band, but learning to play an instrument is good for the brain. It helps with coordination, motor skills, and creativity. On the list of hobbies, it's a pretty healthy one.

The crux of Vermont Violins' business is instrument rentals, largely to students, and about 1,300 of the business' 1,500 loaners are imported from overseas. Its three primary manufacturers are in China, and all of them are having stock issues and raising their prices. Vermont Violins is limited on how much more it can charge customers in response — it doesn't want to price people out of playing, and its larger competitors have more wiggle room on margins. So to get ahead of prospective price increases, it just bought about $125,000 of instruments in one shot.

"We essentially did an entire year's worth of purchasing in one order," says Nate Webster, a shop manager at the company. It's borrowing from the future to survive in the present.

Stephanie Pensa helps run her dad's guitar shops, called Rudy's Music. The operation is fairly small: one location in Scarsdale, New York, and another in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan. She worries this is going to be the "last hoorah" of reasonable price points. While some manufacturers are trying to absorb import costs, increases are inevitably starting to come through. One Chinese manufacturer Pensa works with has paused sending guitars to the US altogether, so all that's available is the dwindling inventory that's already warehoused stateside. The other day, Pensa was shocked to see that a supplier had raised the price of power adapters she usually paid about $8 for to $18.50.

Customers have started to inquire about tariffs and price increases, and she's generally happy to explain what's going on so people don't think it's just "this small business that got greedy." She can tell customers are uneasy — Rudy's has seen an uptick in inquiries from people looking to sell their guitars, too. "There is a little bit of a feeling of, 'We should buy a lot right now and have it,' but then there is a little bit of a fear if people are sort of hanging onto their money a little more," she says. "It's a very iffy time."

The purported intent of Trump's tariffs is for manufacturing to move back to the US. It's a heavy lift in a lot of industries — nobody can really snap their fingers and build a factory overnight and then recruit people to work it. In music, there are some particularities that make the proposal perhaps even more daunting.

Making all the instruments stateside, with labor costs and revamped supply chains, would be so expensive that the price of lower-end items would skyrocket. That would hurt the entire pipeline, since many American companies manufacture their starter items abroad to keep the price points low before graduating people to more expensive, domestically made specialty equipment.

"A top-level brand wants that customer to want that top-level product, but you want to start and build brand loyalty," Mlynczak from NAMM says. "So you might have products that are the top level made in the US, but you might rely on products from other countries at that entry level."

Many of Fender's budget guitars and their parts are made in Indonesia and China. Some of the nicer options are assembled just over the border, in Mexico.

It's not easy to swap parts and materials for domestic options. Certain woods that produce certain sounds come from certain places. The same goes for rare earth metals, such as neodymium, which is used in microphones and primarily mined in China. Some instruments, culturally and historically, have belonged to specific countries. If you want a high-end string instrument, such as a violin or a cello, you'll lean toward a more "authentic" version from Italy or Germany. Or, for an electric guitar, you'll want something American. Instrument making is highly specialized, and it requires customized machinery and skillsets.

Vermont Violins has begun to invest in its own manufacturing capacity in recent years, ostensibly doing the very thing that Trump wants to happen. It makes about 100 instruments a year right now, and it's taken years of effort to get to that point. Kathy Reilly, who owns the store with her husband, estimates it took them three to five years to perfect the model — developing supply chains, sourcing the wood, purchasing equipment, and teaching people how to do the work. "You've got to practice. You've got to make all your mistakes," Reilly says.

Now, instead of investing more in its manufacturing operation, the tariffs have forced Vermont Violins to divert resources to manage the chaos of the moment. It's impossible to figure out what's being tariffed at any given time; handle currency fluctuations, partner relationships, and vendor price changes; and still try to build.

"We were trying to do what they wanted everybody to do," Reilly says. "But now we just got the bottom pulled out from under us."

Many instruments and equipment that are assembled in the US still have foreign parts, meaning their makers can't avoid tariffs, either.

The guitar effects pedals Electro-Harmonix is known for are generally assembled in New York City. Its three main components — the circuit board, chassis, and packing carton — are sourced from China and other countries in Asia. Mike Matthews, Electro-Harmonix's founder, who's been in the business since 1968, tells me some of his competitors assemble offshore, but it's a "huge risk" he won't take. "If there's a screw-up, and there are screw-ups, then you can get killed," he says.

Matthews hasn't had to raise prices yet — he's built up his stock in recent years, concerned about runaway inflation. But eventually, he'll have to act. "We will do the right, prudent thing at the right time," he says.

This isn't Matthews' first rodeo with tariffs in recent history. Electro-Harmonix also manufactures vacuum tubes — think old-school versions of microchips for equipment such as amps. It makes the equipment in Russia and had to hike prices after the US put a 35% tariff on imports from the country in 2022. "We're constantly battling with that," he says. While the vacuum tubes are still a significant part of his business, given how few competitors there are in the space, sales have fallen because of the "extreme, higher cost."

Much of the conversation around tariffs has focused on their impact on big industries, such as automotives and electronics, and the costs and merits of moving their manufacturing to the US. On the other end of the spectrum, the White House has framed tariffs as a way to wean Americans off cheap, disposable stuff. Consumers, in turn, are panic-buying cars and wondering whether they'll have to bid farewell to Shein and Temu. In the tariff landscape, musical instruments occupy a middle ground that often goes overlooked: not big enough to weigh heavily on policy (or the discourse), not small enough to be shrugged off as another trivial consumer indulgence.

Most instrument makers, even recognizable names, are relatively small firms. They don't have extensive logistics teams or armies of fancy lawyers to navigate a trade regime changing at this whipsaw pace. Nearly every manufacturer, retailer, and expert I spoke with for this story acknowledged that they're not entirely sure which tariffs are and aren't owed on any given day. NAMM provides resources for its members, but Mlynczak says he's still heard some say they just can't keep up.

The industry doesn't have the lobbying muscle behind it to make its case on getting more favorable trade arrangements. There's no Tim Cook of guitars to charm Trump into granting an exception for strings and tuning pegs. Gibson and Fender executives weren't sitting behind the president at his inauguration.

"The industry is not the automobile industry. It's not a giant industry. So most all the companies that make things in the musical instrument industry have to deal with the tariffs," Matthews says. "In general, when prices go up, total sales do come down."

Like most businesses and consumers, people in the instruments industry just want to know the drill on tariffs. The White House's version of "strategic uncertainty" is starting to feel pretty unstrategic at this point, and on the ground, it's making it very hard to strategize.

"Everyone looks at tariffs and says, 'Oh, well, if this costs more, that may cost more.' But we have to think about just supply chain disruption, small-business confusion, consumer confidence, all these little things that have hiccups," Mlynczak says.

Pensa from Rudy's says she's heard from sales reps at various companies that April — on the heels of "Liberation Day" — was terrible. "That was the height of, I think, the uncertainty," she says.

Instruments and equipment getting pricier or harder to get isn't the most important economic impact of tariffs. Obviously, someone not being able to afford groceries or a car to drive to and from work is different from a parent deciding not to get their kid a guitar for graduation. But music is woven into our cultural and social fabric. A trumpet or drum set is more than just an appliance.

"Musical instruments account for about one-tenth of 1% of the US trade deficit with China, but the cultural impact of musical instruments and the iconography around them is vast. If you think about famous musicians, many of them are kind of inseparable from the instrument they play," Hendrix of the Peterson Institute says.

We picture Slash with a Gibson Les Paul, Jimi Hendrix with his Fender Stratocaster, whether we know the exact names or brands of the instruments or not. But you never get a Slash or Jimi Hendrix if they don't get access to a guitar in the first place. The vast majority of people start out practicing with whatever they can get their hands on, and if tariffs make that harder, that's a challenge up and down the price point spectrum.

"It does kill the fire," Mundo says. "When something's completely out of your reach, how many times can you hear no before you're just like, screw this."

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

• A high school diploma or an associate degree can sometimes lead to high-paying work.
• About a dozen jobs that typically don't need a bachelor's degree had six-figure median annual pay.
• Air traffic controller is a high-paying job that doesn't usually require a bachelor's.

If you don't have a bachelor's degree but want to earn a lot, you could consider becoming an air traffic controller, a power plant operator, or a dental hygienist.

Business Insider ranked median annual wages of jobs that usually just need an associate degree, a high school diploma or the equivalent, a postsecondary nondegree award, or no formal education using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Almost a dozen jobs that typically don't need a bachelor's degree had a median annual pay in the six figures. Radiation therapists and nuclear technicians, where the typical requirement for entry is an associate degree, and power distributors and dispatchers, who typically need a high school diploma or the equivalent, had median annual wages of more than $100,000.

Below are the 20 highest-paying jobs that typically don't need a bachelor's or more advanced degree. Employment and pay estimates are for 2024, and the education needed for entry reflects 2023.

20. Models

Median annual pay: $89,990

Typical education: No formal educational credential

Employment estimate: 5,350

19. First-line supervisors of firefighting and prevention workers

Median annual pay: $92,430

Typical education: Postsecondary nondegree award

Employment estimate: 93,680

18. Electrical power-line installers and repairers

Median annual pay: $92,560

Typical education: High school diploma or equivalent

Employment estimate: 123,680

17. Postmasters and mail superintendents

Median annual pay: $92,730

Typical education: High school diploma or equivalent

Employment estimate: 13,810

16. Detectives and criminal investigators

Median annual pay: $93,580

Typical education: High school diploma or equivalent

Employment estimate: 110,790

15. Dental hygienists

Median annual pay: $94,260

Typical education: Associate degree

Employment estimate: 219,070

14. Nuclear medicine technologists

Median annual pay: $97,020

Typical education: Associate degree

Employment estimate: 16,960

13. Petroleum pump system operators, refinery operators, and gaugers

Median annual pay: $97,540

Typical education: High school diploma or equivalent

Employment estimate: 34,860

12. Power plant operators

Median annual pay: $99,670

Typical education: High school diploma or equivalent

Employment estimate: 30,720

11. Electrical and electronics repairers, powerhouse, substation, and relay

Median annual pay: $100,940

Typical education: Postsecondary nondegree award

Employment estimate: 23,040

10. Ship engineers

Median annual pay: $101,320

Typical education: Postsecondary nondegree award

Employment estimate: 8,580

9. Radiation therapists

Median annual pay: $101,990

Typical education: Associate degree

Employment estimate: 18,700

8. Transportation, storage, and distribution managers

Median annual pay: $102,010

Typical education: High school diploma or equivalent

Employment estimate: 213,000

7. Nuclear technicians

Median annual pay: $104,240

Typical education: Associate degree

Employment estimate: 5,990

6. First-line supervisors of police and detectives

Median annual pay: $105,980

Typical education: High school diploma or equivalent

Employment estimate: 153,130

5. Elevator and escalator installers and repairers

Median annual pay: $106,580

Typical education: High school diploma or equivalent

Employment estimate: 23,340

4. Power distributors and dispatchers

Median annual pay: $107,240

Typical education: High school diploma or equivalent

Employment estimate: 9,180

3. Nuclear power reactor operators

Median annual pay: $122,610

Typical education: High school diploma or equivalent

Employment estimate: 5,720

2. Commercial pilots

Median annual pay: $122,670

Typical education: Postsecondary nondegree award

Employment estimate: 51,830

1. Air traffic controllers

Median annual pay: $144,580

Typical education: Associate degree

Employment estimate: 22,400

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Bernita Clark, 82, who retired 18 years ago and has been financially comfortable since. Clark, who lives in Texas, said she never expected to retire at all until she reached her late 40s after years as a single mother. Through years of careful saving and long-term planning, she retired a few years before retirement age, though she took on part-time work in her 70s. Her words have been edited for length and clarity.

I'm not wealthy, but I'm not poor either. I own my home. I don't have a mortgage. It's in a great neighborhood, and the college students nearby are very helpful. I'm still fairly healthy, and I'm not spending time in the hospital.

Everyone in my age group worries about the end of life, but nobody knows what will happen. I'm wealthy from the perspective that I can run my life the way I want to.

I was the first in my family to go to college. My parents grew up in the backwoods of south Arkansas in a cabin that had no electricity, water, or gas. We had a lot of mosquitoes, though, when there were endemic diseases like malaria. It was a difficult place to live, and opportunities for jobs were not there.

My father worked very hard and managed to pull the family out of that and support four children. All of us have had careers that supported us.

I went to the University of Arkansas, where I finished my degree in medical technology. I had three years of pre-med, but I didn't go to medical school. I went to med tech schools instead.

I worked in neonatal research at the university for a couple of years and got married. This was during the Vietnam War, and my husband at the time was up for the draft. Instead of the draft, he went to the United States Air Force, and they transferred us to several different cities. I worked in medical technology during that time, mostly in clinical chemistry.

After the Air Force, my husband went to work for a pharmaceutical company in sales, and his career moved him frequently. We moved every year, staying somewhere for between 10 and 16 months. I worked off and on part-time.

Recovering from a divorce and a housing market downturn to retire early

When I turned 40, we divorced. At that point, I went back to school for computer science. I wasn't able to finish that degree because life interferes. Still, I got a job at an innovative firm that gave me a lot of opportunities in computer science. I was doing computer support for them for five years until they went bankrupt.

In 1985, I had just bought a house, and my children were reaching 18, so I didn't need help with child support anymore. Unfortunately, the housing market went down in Texas, and we weren't getting help from anybody. I was underwater on my mortgage. I also had lots of debt

I was 46 and struggling, so I looked for a job with a defined pension plan. I worked with Burlington Northern Railroad as a computer systems analyst for almost 20 years until I retired.

At 64, I was tired. I had developed congestive heart failure, so it was difficult for me to work a stressful job every day. I really wanted to retire. I'd planned to retire later, but I lost my sister, and I realized life is short.

As a single person, you don't have a fallback, so I was reluctant. It's a scary decision to make, but I felt like I could do it. Turns out, I was in a better financial situation than I realized, and because of my retirement income, I have more expendable income now than I did at any other point in my life.

My costs are way down. I own my home outright with no mortgage, and I have no debt. My property tax was cut in half when I turned 65, and then cut in half again by the Texas legislature. My auto insurance rates went down because I drive much less and moved away from a high-traffic area. Texas also has no income tax.

Sometimes, you don't have to pay the ultimate price for everything you did that was a mistake. I've gotten to the point where I feel I can do pretty much anything I want to.

After I retired, I spent a lot of time just hanging out and having some fun. I had hobbies that I wanted to get back to doing. I tried painting and gave that up, but I got really into photography. I did some genealogy work. I started sewing things for myself and my friends.

After a couple of years, I decided to go back to work. I worked part-time at Tarrant County College in Fort Worth, training railroad dispatchers.

Though I really liked the job, some personal family things happened that caused me to realize I needed to be close to family. I moved to College Station to be closer to my daughter and her family and went to work part-time for Texas A&M University in their admissions program, reading the essays that applicants submit.

I was kind of like a checkerboard, working here and there and holding several different careers, including being a wife and mother, which, in my opinion, is a career in itself.

Nowadays, I don't do too much. I talk with a few friends on the phone. I'm the coordinator for a group of neighbors scheduling lunches together once a week. I have dermatology and cardiology appointments. I still pursue my hobbies.

I would tell younger people that they will make mistakes, but most mistakes are recoverable. They should love their families and put them first.

Still, you should always put on your own mask first on the airplane. I know several caregivers who had part-time careers, but not enough to earn a decent retirement, and they live in poverty. We need to do more to take care of the people who take care of us.

• Ryanair's CEO slammed multiple parties during an earnings call on Monday.
• Michael O'Leary called a Spanish minister a "lunatic" over the country's stance on baggage fees.
• He also said some of Ukraine's airport directors were "very lazy."

Ryanair's CEO, Michael O'Leary, slammed several parties during the company's earnings call on Monday.

O'Leary first criticized the Spanish government for its stance on baggage fees.

"We have this lunatic Spanish minister running around trying to force all airlines to take unlimited bags on board free of charge," O'Leary said

O'Leary did not specify who the "lunatic Spanish minister" was. He has repeatedly criticized Spain's consumer rights minister, Pablo Bustinduy. In February, O'Leary brought out a life-sized cutout of Bustinduy in clown garb, with a red clown nose pasted on the minister's face.

In November, Bustinduy's Ministry of Consumer Affairs fined five budget airlines, including Ryanair, a combined 179 million euros, or about $187 million. The ministry said the airlines were conducting "abusive practices" like charging extra carry-on luggage fees.

In a statement relayed through his ministry, Bustinduy told Business Insider that the comments O'Leary made on Monday did not offend him.

"My obligation is to defend consumer rights. No campaign of insults or defamation will distract me from that objective," he said.

Later in the call, O'Leary slammed airport directors in Ukraine when asked whether Ryanair saw an opportunity in the Ukrainian market.

O'Leary said he was disappointed that Ukraine's airports have refused to engage with Ryanair in a "postwar marketplace," and have not offered airlines discounts to return. The war in Ukraine is ongoing.

"And there's a couple of very lazy airport directors in Ukraine, who need to get them off their fat arses and do a deal with us quickly if they want real radical growth and real radical economic rebuilding and development in Ukraine," he added.

On Monday, Ryanair reported yearly revenue of 13.95 billion euros, 4% higher than the previous year. It also reported profits of 1.61 billion euros, a 16% decline from the previous year.

Representatives for Ryanair and Ukraine's Ministry of Infrastructure did not respond to requests for comment from BI.

May 20, 4:01 a.m. — This story was updated to reflect comments from Spain's Ministry of Consumer Affairs.