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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was a difficult decision, but we were determined

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

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

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

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

It was an emotional nightmare at first

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

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

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

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

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

Despite the doubt and hardship, we kept going.

We've been in Argentina for 9 months

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

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

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

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

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

Things are looking up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Manufacturing's long fall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Build what's next — or be left behind

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A trip to Morocco made our relationship even stronger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We open up to each other and have shared beautiful memories

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

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

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

• Some boomers want to pass down an early inheritance to help their millennials kids.
• However many struggle due to financial uncertainty and taboos about money, financial planners said.
• The planners said families should have open conversations and get their own finances in order.

Two financial phenomena are happening at once: Millennials are increasingly putting off having kids, or having fewer than they'd prefer, due to financial reasons. At the same time, boomers are expected to pass down the greatest wealth transfer in history.

So what happens when millennials get an inheritance after it's too late to really change their lives' trajectory?

"There are people right now who are just not having families because they worry about the money, and then someday they're going to be 55 and inherit a shitload of money from their parents. The time to have a family will be over, and they'll be wildly rich," Adam Harding, a financial planner based in Arizona, told Business Insider, calling it a "sad development" but not a surprising one.

Boomers have increasingly expressed interest in passing down an earlier inheritance to their children. Several who have done it previously told BI that they felt their adult kids could use the money now, while they are still in the earlier phases of building a family and career. Others are open to the idea but may not know how to start or if they're in a financial position to do so, and their adult children are too afraid to ask.

A Senior Living survey published in February that included over 2,400 American adults found that 70% of parents expected to leave an inheritance to their children when they die. Of that group, 76% indicated they'd be open to considering passing down that inheritance early. Despite the interest in passing on wealth prior to their death, only 8% of respondents said they had actually done it. Meanwhile, only 4% of adults said they had asked their parents for early inheritance.

Financial planner Stoy Hall told BI many Americans who would like to pass on wealth just aren't sure if they can actually afford to do it. They're trying to make sure they have enough to live on without knowing what their future costs might be, while also trying to figure out what they can pass down.

Compounding the problem, he said, is that "we don't talk about money enough in America." Because talking about money is so taboo, he said parents and their adult children struggle to understand how the other is doing financially and what their needs look like.

"Most kids don't know how much their parents do have or don't have," he said, adding that "makes it harder."

Harding said part of the reason baby boomers are hesitant to part with their wealth is that for much of the generation, it did not come quickly to them but was saved over a lifetime. They were also raised by Depression-era, cost-conscious parents.

"They grew up prudent and they got rich a little bit at a time," he said. "They're just so accustomed to always seeing the number get bigger that they feel uncomfortable seeing it go the other direction."

For boomers who want to help their kids but struggle to part with their wealth, he said getting a clear hold on their finances can help. A third party, like a financial planner, can help assess how much they're able to give, even factoring in the potential costs of assisted living and other expenses.

Adult kids need to get their own finances in order first

Harding agrees that families need to have more open conversations to address these discrepancies between what parents have and what their adult kids need. But in addition to the parents, their children need to understand their finances as well.

He said it's a lot easier for someone to ask for help from their parents if they've got their own finances in order, as opposed to someone who's a spendthrift.

"Get your own house in order without having received help first," he said.

That doesn't necessarily mean getting your student loans or mortgage fully paid off, but rather demonstrating that you have a plan for paying them off, a plan for saving, and specific financial goals that you are actively working toward.

What the boomers don't want to do, he said, is gift $20,000 just so their adult kid can go to Europe a few times a year. Instead, they should have a detailed financial plan that lays out how much they are trying to save and for what purpose, whether it's to own a home or afford to have another baby.

While parting with wealth can be psychologically challenging, Harding recommends parents think about why they have focused on accumulating wealth in the first place. For many of his clients, the reason is to provide for their family, so why not provide when the money will do the most good?

And even from a selfish standpoint, he said, giving early so you can have another grandchild seems like a pretty good way to spend your money.

Do you have a story to share about passing down or inheriting wealth? Contact this reporter at [email protected].

• Nike is trying to regain dominance with a new CEO, strategies, and sports-focused initiatives.
• Collectors and analysts emphasized the importance of using exclusivity to boost Nike's appeal.
• Nike's partnerships with athletes and innovation are keys to its comeback efforts.

Nike's biggest fans have some tips for the retail giant.

The sportswear brand is on a journey to regain its footwear dominance.

Although its $46 billion in annual sales are ahead of smaller competitors like On Running, longtime rival brands like Adidas are nipping at its heels when it comes to mindshare.

Nike's sales fell 10% during its last fiscal year. In October, as growth was stalling, the company brought on a new CEO, Elliott Hill, to get the business back on track. He's been slashing promotions, prioritizing wholesale relationships with major retailers, and putting sports back at the brand's forefront.

Many avid shoe collectors, sometimes called sneakerheads, have followed the brand through its ups and downs over the years. Business Insider spoke with two loyal customers and an analyst who follows the company closely. They had mixed perspectives on the Nike of 2025.

Here's what people who know Nike well have to say about the wins and losses of its comeback efforts.

Nike needs to get better at knowing what to stock and when

Lamar Stewart, a 32-year-old collector who estimates he owns over 100 pairs of shoes, said his love of Nike goes back to his teenage years. Lately, though, he's found some of the brand's drops underwhelming.

Part of the problem is Nike's inventory strategy, including knowing when to limit or increase the quantity of a sneaker. Take the classic University of North Carolina Jordan 1 that Nike reimagined and released in May, Stewart said. Though he and other sneakerheads he knew were hyped for the famous blue and white shoe drop, the company released so many that Stewart saw them "sitting on shelves" in stores and online.

"When they have a lot of stock, people aren't feeding into it," Stewart said.

It's an issue Nike is addressing behind the scenes. Hill, the former president of consumer and marketplace who returned to the company as CEO, is helping Nike lessen its reliance on retro styles, such as Air Force Ones, Nike Dunks, and Air Jordan 1s. Nike has been collaborating with some of the WNBA's biggest stars on new styles and reviving its focus on running, for example.

Some analysts are optimistic that Hill can help manage this "tug-of-war between scarcity and distribution," BMO Capital Markets analyst Simeon Siegel said.

Exclusivity is necessary

Nike did better anticipating demand with the Neon Air Max 95. It's "one of the most legendary Air Maxes," Stewart said, and collectors went crazy for the April release.

Stewart said the drop drummed up feelings of the old days for sneaker collectors like himself, recalling the excitement of waking up early to stand in line for a coveted shoe. It may have been frustrating for those who couldn't get their hands on them, but complaints about not enough shoes are good for the apparel giant. It's better to leave customers wanting more.

Hill said during Nike's earnings presentation last week that the company saw promising results in the fourth quarter with "reintroducing the Air Max 95 to a new generation."

Siegel said creating exclusivity is key to appeasing sneakerheads. Recreational shoe collectors want what their peers can't easily get their hands on. That's part of why the company mixes in drops exclusive to its SNKRS app.

"Nike needs to have many shoes that are hard to get," Siegel said.

Innovation is tricky

Innovation is also critical to Nike's efforts to move beyond its retro styles.

Shu Cheng sells many Nike styles at .IMAGE, the New York City sneaker consignment store he cofounded.

He said he does his best to educate Jordan-obsessed customers about Nike's new technologies, like the Nike x Hyperice Hyperboot, which heats up and massages ankles. His shoppers are more interested in retro styles, though.

"We want to give our customers Nike's innovation, but they're not coming in and asking for it," Cheng told BI.

Still, some of Nike's more innovative shoes have sold well. WNBA star A'ja Wilson's A'One sneaker sold out in under five minutes in May's online release. The A'One was made with Nike's cushioning technology called Cushlon ST2 foam.

"I think where Nike went wrong in recent years was losing focus on what has made the company great for so many years, which is innovating and designing really cool products and telling marketing stories that gets the consumer excited about those products," Jim Duffy, a Nike analyst for Stifel Institutional, previously told Business Insider.

Such innovation comes from putting their "ear to the streets" and listening to consumers, Stewart said. Smaller rivals are flourishing by "giving the people what they want," he said.

Running brand Hoka, for example, has been a leader in the ultra-cushioned shoe trend among athletes. To catch up, BMO analysts suggested Nike take a leaf out of its old playbook and be a "fast copier" of what's working for Hoka.

Nike, which released its cushioned Vomero 18 running shoes in February, is already following the trend.

What's next for Nike

Nike's renewed sports-first approach is smart, Cheng said. Instead of focusing on celebrities — like competitors Puma and On have done with Rihanna and Zendaya — collaborating with athletes leans into Nike's image as a sportswear brand.

However, there's no denying the connection that sports style has with streetwear. The Air Jordan 1 started off as a basketball shoe and grew into a cultural phenomenon and its own brand under Nike Inc. The sportswear company is no stranger to partnering with luxury brands and A-listers like Jacquemus or Travis Scott, either.

Nike is cooking up a unique collaboration with Kim Kardashian's Skims. The launch was recently delayed but is expected to be released in 2025, analysts said. Cheng said it's a good play to continue attracting female customers — something he said is missing from his shop.

"We used to sell a lot smaller sizes, and now less and less females come in," Cheng said. "It might bring back that customer base."

Winning over women is another brick laid in the groundwork of Nike's journey back to the top. Its first Super Bowl commercial in decades starred female athletes, and it's the popularity of the WNBA.

"Nike, the business, still dwarfs the competition," Siegel wrote in an analyst note.

• Slate Auto has quietly removed the "under $20,000" expected price tag for its electric pickup truck.
• Trump's huge tax bill is set to scrap federal EV incentives, which Slate had hoped to qualify for.
• Slate's website now says it expects its modular pickup to be priced in the "mid-twenties."

Slate's plan to sell its no-frills electric pickup for under $20,000 appears to have hit a speed bump.

The Jeff Bezos-backed EV startup previously said its modular Slate truck was expected to start at under $20,000 after federal incentives, but has now changed its website to say the electric truck will be priced in the "mid-twenties."

Slate's website featured the "under $20,000" expected price as recently as Wednesday, according to Internet Archive screenshots viewed by Business Insider. TechCrunch first reported the change.

It comes as the US House of Representatives passed a final version of President Donald Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill," which is expected to kill the $7,500 tax credit for new US-built electric cars from September.

When it unveiled the utilitarian truck in April, Slate said it would cost $25,000. However, the company had been banking on federal incentives, such as the $7,500 discount, to push the price of its first EV under the $20,000 mark.

The company did not respond to a request for comment from BI, sent outside normal working hours.

A lack of affordable options has hampered EV adoption in the US, and Slate Auto's CEO previously told BI the company aimed to help fill that gap.

The startup made a big splash with its first vehicle, with the back-to-basics pickup truck amassing 100,000 refundable reservations in its first three weeks on sale.

Although the base version of the truck, which is set to be built in Indiana with deliveries beginning in 2026, will lack frills such as screens, radios, or power windows, Slate says it will be heavily customizable.

Buyers will be able to buy over 100 accessories, ranging from personalized wraps to an "SUV kit" that transforms the Slate truck into a five-person people carrier.

The average price of an EV in the US is already almost $10,000 more expensive than its combustion-engine equivalent, and experts have warned that the scrapping of the $7,500 tax credit will make electric cars even more unaffordable.

A report by Harvard University's Salata Institute in March found that removing the tax credit would result in a 15% hit to expected EV sales by 2030, and 20 million metric tons extra of CO2 emissions over the same time period.

• The billionaire social calendar for the summer includes more than Sun Valley and the Hamptons.
• It increasingly includes a few high-profile weddings each summer.
• This season is punctuated by the weddings of Alex Soros, Jeff Bezos, and Eve Jobs.

The traditional soundtrack of the billionaire social calendar — the Allen & Company Conference in Sun Valley, the Hamptons, a yacht trip around the Med — has been interrupted by wedding bells.

Over the past couple of years, billionaire weddings have become must-attend events for those who want to see, be seen, and mingle with their fellow masters of the universe.

Last year, the wedding of the summer was undoubtedly that of Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant. Billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Rihanna, who also performed at a pre-wedding bash, attended.

The previous summer, Ari Emanuel, superagent and then-CEO of entertainment business Endeavor, wedded fashion designer Sarah Staudinger. Elon Musk and Tyler Perry were among the billionaires on the guest list.

2025's billionaire wedding season is gearing up to be the biggest yet.

It kicked off in June when Alex Soros, son of hedge fund investor George Soros, married Huma Abedin, the political strategist and former Hillary Clinton aide. Photographed for Vogue were guests like supermodel Karlie Kloss, the wife of billionaire investor Josh Kushner, and fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, the wife of media mogul Barry Diller.

Next down the aisle were Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos, who wed in Venice a couple of weeks later.

Billionaires from the worlds of tech (Bill Gates, Sam Altman), media (David Geffen, Oprah Winfrey), and fashion (Kim Kardashian, François-Henri Pinault) rubbed elbows to celebrate the third-richest man on Earth.

Next on the agenda: Eve Jobs, daughter of late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, will wed Olympian equestrian Harry Charles in the Cotswolds sometime in August.

The question is: Will it be before or after Burning Man?

• Heather Torres first started accessorizing her porch with seasonal decor as a hobby.
• After winning a local Best Yard award, the pandemic hit, and she decided to turn it into a business.
• Since Porch Pumpkins was born, it has scaled to a six-figure business, and she's franchising.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Heather Torres, the owner of Porch Pumpkins, a Texas-based seasonal decor delivery company. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Shortly after my youngest son was born, I went crazy with pumpkins.

I'd always admired the beautiful seasonal decorations that the Dallas Arboretum displays each year, and when he was little, I decided to start trying my hand at creating pumpkinscapes at home as a way to keep him — and myself — busy.

It wasn't long before I got good at it. Really good at it. I won a local award for Best Yard in 2013 and just kept trying to one-up myself. Eventually, my friends started asking me to create displays at their houses, and I got the idea that maybe people would pay for professional pumpkin displays during the fall season, the way they do for Christmas lights.

The idea stayed in the back of my head for a few years while I was busy as a stay-at-home mom raising my children. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and everyone was stuck inside, it felt like the right time to try to make it a small business to earn a little money and use my talents. I decided I could bring the pumpkin patch to you!

I previously worked in the restaurant industry and knew I didn't want to make one-off custom designs. I wanted things to be super simple, so I created four different packages at different price points for customers to choose from.

The most popular package is the smallest display, which costs $325 and includes about 30 pumpkins of varying sizes. Our biggest package is for the true pumpkin lover, and it includes two 50-pound pumpkins, bales of hay, and all kinds of decorative extras for $1,350. We offer delivery and removal services. You can set up your own display, or we can do it for you.

We just celebrated our fifth birthday, and I never could have imagined how things would take off.

It used to be just me and my husband doing deliveries. Then I started hiring other moms I knew to work as part-time display designers and delivery drivers. I hired three people in my first year, and we completed just over 250 displays.

Now, we have over 20 people on our team, and we completely sold out in 2024. My goal was to decorate 1,000 porches, and we ended up doing 1,052.

It has worked out so that, now, I'm busy from August to December, but then I'm pretty much done in the spring and can be fully present to volunteer at my kids' school and do all the things a mom does, like try to cook dinner each night.

This year, it became increasingly evident that people were gravitating toward this business and were really interested in my approach. I get emails all the time asking to pick my brain, so in March, I started coaching other entrepreneurs about how to start their own seasonal pumpkin businesses.

I charge $4,500 for two hourlong sessions teaching you all the lessons I've learned along the way — from sourcing pumpkins to creating the decorative displays — and in just the few months since I launched that service, I've helped 12 people, mostly women, launch their own pumpkin businesses across the US.

We had the foresight to trademark our name and logo, so all the other pumpkin businesses popping up have different names. But we're also beginning to franchise, so soon, there will be official Porch Pumpkins locations across the country.

The whole process has really been a gift for my family. I'm just so excited to see how much we can grow from here.

Do you have a unique side hustle or small business, or has your side hustle replaced your full-time job? Email Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert at [email protected].

• Made-in-US apparel brand American Giant makes two versions of the iconic American flag T-shirt.
• Its top-quality version sells for $65, while one available at Walmart sells for $12.98.
• AG's founder said Walmart's scale and long-term commitment were key to a more affordable product.

Check the tags on much of the American flag-themed apparel being worn this Independence Day weekend, and the country of origin may be somewhere other than the US. Making stuff overseas is typically cheaper, after all.

That doesn't sit well with Bayard Winthrop, the founder of California-based apparel brand American Giant.

"We can think of a lot of other mainstream brands or retailers that certainly don't abide by that for Fourth of July — or for any other thing," he told Business Insider.

Bayard founded American Giant in 2011 with the mission of revitalizing US textile manufacturing, starting with what it dubbed "the greatest hoodie ever made."

In recent years, the company celebrated Independence Day with a version of the iconic American flag T-shirt made entirely in the US.

But Bayard said it was a challenge to achieve the kinds of production efficiencies that can lower costs.

American factories can produce high-quality clothing, but it often comes at a premium price. For example, American Giant's website lists this year's US flag tee for $65.

Bayard said the reasons for this include finer yarns and a more labor-intensive sewing process.

"Those products are premium," he said. "They're optimized for top, top quality."

About two years ago, Walmart approached him with a challenge to produce a made-in-US T-shirt at the retail giant's famously low prices. This was part of what is now a $350 billion commitment to invest in sourcing products that support American jobs until 2030.

At the time, Bayard thought that the lowest possible price for an American-made shirt would have been $20 and that it would be "incredibly difficult" to make.

The companies were able to make a shirt that is now available online and across roughly 1,500 Walmart stores for $12.98 — one-fifth of the price of the top-of-the-line version.

American Giant developed a design that lowered costs by using a slightly thicker yarn and a tubular-knit pattern, rather than the side-sewn style of his main shirts, Bayard said.

"But the vastly more important part of the costing is when you have Walmart and the volumes that they put there — which are huge — and staying committed to the program for an extended period of time," he said.

Bayard stands firmly behind the quality of the less expensive Walmart product.

"We think we're putting great quality stuff into the market, and we're offering these different entry points for customers," he said.

Bayard said the first design for Walmart, released last year, exceeded sales expectations and was expanded to include four styles this year.

The episode highlights one of the major hurdles to bringing back US manufacturing more broadly. The costs of starting (or restarting) industrial production can be both daunting and inefficient. (Look no further than the complicated and expensive process one team had to go through to make a grill scrubber entirely in the US.)

If the effort to revive US manufacturing is going to succeed, Bayard said that small and large companies need to work together with sustained, long-term commitments that help the supply chain develop and become more cost-effective.

"Poking at the problem with your 500-unit volumes" is "admirable," he said. "But if you actually want to make an impact, get serious about it and figure out ways to join forces with somebody like Walmart that's actually trying to do something good."

• Some gig workers say they're drawn to the job for the flexibility it offers.
• Kreskin Torres, a ride-hailing and delivery driver, has driven around the US while doing gig work.
• Torres has visited all 50 US states while working for apps like Lyft and DoorDash.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kreskin Torres, a gig worker who has visited each of the 50 US states while working as a ride-hailing driver for Lyft.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I've been a rideshare driver for Lyft for about nine years now. I started out in Baltimore.

About a year in, I visited London for a month. I realized on that trip that travel gives you ideas and inspires you to try new things. When I came back, I said, "Now, I want to see my country."

I wanted a flexible job where I could meet different people and plan my own schedule. I also wanted to minimize what I owned and focus on travel.

The first road trip I took was from Baltimore to the West Coast. I left in February 2018. I've been traveling and doing gig work full-time since then. Most months, I make between $2,500 and $3,000 in gross pay.

I've been to all 50 states, and some of them I've visited three or four times. That took about three years to do. I was stuck at 49 for a while because of the pandemic. When I hit my 50th state — Hawaii — I ended up on the local news talking about my travels.

I try to pick a new home base every few months and visit towns nearby to do rideshare and delivery work. At the end of June, I went to Pittsburgh because I wanted to work in West Virginia for a while. I also want to be in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, later this summer. They claim the banana split was invented there, and they have a festival for it every year.

When I get into a new town, the first thing I normally do is stop at Planet Fitness, where I stretch and shower after a long drive. From there, I usually head to an Airbnb for a few days to relax. Sometimes, I sleep in my car.

Ridesharing is my main work. There have been some places where I couldn't drive for Lyft because local laws require drivers to have local licenses. In those places, I delivered through DoorDash.

Driving around the US has taught me how to make money in different areas.

Once, I lived and worked in Phoenix for a year, but I realized that I could make more money in Tucson. It's not as spread out, and it's a college town, so you tend to get more high-paying, short-distance trips. If you go there in the winter, there's even more demand from people who come for the warmer weather.

Some parts of the US are less competitive than others. Many big cities are oversaturated with drivers. In places like Chicago, you'll see hundreds of them waiting at the airport to claim a ride. In Tucson, you may see 10.

Gig work helped me pursue my interest in food

As I started traveling, it struck me how certain regions of the US are known for different foods. I started paying attention to which crops were growing around me and what the places I visited were known for.

I made trying regional foods part of my travels. I created a blog called Rideshare Foodie. I post photos of local cuisines, such as pickles brined in Kool-Aid from Mississippi.

Food is also a great conversation topic with the people I drive for Lyft. They recommend places to eat or foods to try. Sometimes, it's a restaurant, and other times, it's home cooking at a barbecue or a block party.

After I've stayed somewhere long enough, I can also make recommendations. When I was in Rapid City, South Dakota, I picked up a lady from the airport who was from Brooklyn, New York. She asked where she could find some great Italian food. I said, "Ma'am, they're not known for their Italian here," but she should try the beef instead. That area is known for cattle.

One thing I've learned in my work is that many people rarely travel beyond their town or even their neighborhood. And when they do travel, they sometimes eat the same things as they do at home.

My lifestyle lets me try new things and meet lots of new people. The more that I travel, the more that I learn.

Do you have a story to share about gig work? Contact this reporter at [email protected] or 808-854-4501.

• I tried Ina Garten's easy, summery tomato feta pasta salad recipe.
• The dish came together quickly, and I found it more flavorful than other pasta salads I've tried.
• I loved the briny taste, and my leftovers held up for several days.

As a chef, I've always loved Ina Garten's classic, riffable recipes — they're easy to recreate at home, and they're usually a hit with guests.

I've also been looking for a simple side dish to bring to summer cookouts and picnics, so when I found Garten's tomato feta pasta salad, I had to give it a try.

Here's what happened when I tested the dish out for myself. Spoiler alert: I'll be adding it to my recipe rotation.

The ingredients amp up umami more than other pasta salads I've tried.

The recipe calls for short-cut pasta, black olives, feta cheese, and two kinds of tomatoes: fresh and sun-dried. It's key to use sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil, as they're more tender and flavorful than the dry variety.

As for the pasta shape, Garten recommends fusilli, which has a corkscrew-like shape that soaks up extra dressing. After trying out the recipe, though, I'm confident any short-cut shape will work.

The olives (Garten recommends Kalamata), tomato, and feta all bring major umami to this summertime dish. The salty, briny mix-ins give the salad a distinctly Mediterranean taste that felt a little unusual, but I preferred it to the typical mayonnaise-dressed pasta salad.

The noodles and mix-ins are tossed in a dressing made with more sun-dried tomatoes, red wine vinegar, olive oil, capers, and garlic.

You'll also need some freshly grated Parmesan and parsley to top the salad off.

The preparation is quick and easy.

As is the case with every good pasta-salad recipe (in my opinion, anyway), it's not overly complicated or time-intensive to prep the ingredients.

While I boiled a big pot of salted water for the pasta, I chopped the fresh tomatoes, sliced the olives, and diced the feta and sun-dried tomatoes.

Garten calls for diced whole tomatoes, but I used cherry tomatoes and simply sliced them in half for the same effect.

The dressing calls for a food processor, but it's possible to make it without one.

The best way to make this pasta-salad dressing is with a small food processor. You could also try an immersion blender or pitcher-style blender, but expect to spend some time scraping down the sides.

By whizzing more sun-dried tomatoes, red wine vinegar, olive oil, garlic, and capers in a food processor, I was able to break down the capers and tomatoes to maximize their flavor output.

I ended up with a fairly smooth, reddish dressing that was thin enough to coat every nook and cranny of the pasta.

If you don't have any blade-loaded countertop appliances, give everything a fine chop and a good stir. The dressing won't be as smooth and creamy as Garten intended, but your pasta will still benefit from the flavor-packed ingredients.

I dressed the pasta while it was still hot from the stove.

My pasta finished cooking in the time it took to prepare the dressing.

Although Garten recommends letting the noodles cool first, my pasta-salad-making experience has taught me that tossing hot noodles in an oily, salty dressing maximizes flavor. Warm pasta readily absorbs flavors better than after it cools.

I tossed the cooked pasta, salty mix-ins, and dressing together in a large bowl. I then let the pasta cool to room temperature before finishing the dish with Garten's recommended chopped fresh parsley and a generous amount of freshly grated Parmesan.

Here, I made sure to add the cheese after the salad cooled so it wouldn't all melt into a gooey mess. Instead, the Parmesan coated the noodles to hint at the creamy, rich dressing many of us associate with pasta salad.

This version, however, is big on savory flavors and pops of briny, chewy sun-dried tomatoes along with juicy, sweet fresh ones. I loved that the dish felt lighter than a mayo-drenched salad but just as satisfying.

The oil-based dressing holds up well, too. I doubled the recipe, and my household of two enjoyed pasta for several days.

I'm glad I found this recipe right before cookout season — I'll be bringing this easy, crowd-pleasing dish to every summer occasion this year.

• Karen Abarca began her professional journey as a costume designer in California.
• Now, she's an engineer who worked on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.
• Here's how she changed careers and overcame impostor syndrome.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Karen Abarca, a 33-year-old communications engineer in Los Angeles County. It's been edited for length and clarity.

I am very fortunate to have not just one, but two highly sought-after careers.

My mom is a seamstress, so she taught me how to fix my clothes. Once she taught me how to make dresses in high school, it was game over. That's all I wanted to do.

But as a kid, I loved science. I grew up thinking that I would be a scientist or maybe a doctor. I never really saw that path for me because I didn't know anyone who worked in science.

In my early 20s, my family experienced some financial hardships. Since I had cultivated this skill of making garments, I ended up going to the Fashion Institute of Design Merchandising in Los Angeles and got connections to start working in the film industry.

I ended up interning at Maker Studios, which later got bought out by Disney. They gave me stable work in the entertainment industry, which is kind of rare. I also would do commercials on weekends or just pick up gigs on the side. I did that for about four years.

I decided to pursue a career in science after staring at the stars

December is always a hard time in the costume design industry because everything shuts down, but I still have to pay rent. I remember visiting Death Valley with friends on New Year's Eve and looking at he stars.

I thought, "I sort of stumbled into this industry. It was something that I was good at, and I could help out my family, but I no longer have to do that. Why don't I go back and do the thing that I wanted when I was a kid? I want to explore and discover."

So, I went back to community college and later transferred to California State University, Long Beach, where I got my bachelor's in chemical engineering in 2020.

It was not easy.

I had to learn how to fail and how to study. I got a D in my first Calculus II class, and it's a very humbling experience to be told no and that you have to do it again. It was also challenging being older than everyone around me and giving up a career that I was doing well in.

But I knew that this was my choice. I had already seen a different industry, and it just gave me further motivation to keep going and see myself grow. I ended up becoming a mentor to many of my classmates.

I realized that my gift is to bring people together. I'm really good at working in teams, and little did I know that is what makes great engineers. I interviewed with and later joined Northrop Grumman, an aerospace company.

I had impostor syndrome at my first job. Then, I worked on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope

I definitely had a lot of impostor syndrome when I started at Northrop Grumman in 2020. I remember getting hired thinking, "They're going to know that I don't know." I just felt overwhelmed.

At first, I worked with a small team, but it was only a four-month project, so after that, my manager was like, "Where do we put you?"

An opportunity had just opened up to work as a contamination control engineer on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. WEBB is a giant camera, so any contamination will affect the quality of the images. It's a NASA program, so of course I wanted to do it.

Every day, I put on protective gear called a bunny suit and worked on that amazing gold-plated mirror. The cool thing about contamination control is that I got to actually touch WEBB, and not everybody gets to say that.

One day, I was cleaning a black, non-reflective, matte unit delivered from Italy. I had to be very delicate handling it, and I remember thinking, "What's so special about this thing?"

I learned that the unit is how we'll communicate with WEBB when it's a million miles away. It's how it'll be able to send its images.

I thought being able to talk to things in space was amazing, and that's how I found my niche, which is communications engineering. Now, I work on a program called Hydrant. We're looking to build the next-generation space router for interconnectivity in space.

I discovered what I really wanted to do

I'm really grateful to have been a part of that program because WEBB was my teacher. I didn't know much about space when I started, but I got to see different disciplines through WEBB every day. WEBB just gave me an in-person view of what a spacecraft is and how to build one and the different subsystems.

My advice for people who want to change careers is that it's never too late. There are definitely opportunities out there. Sometimes you have to make them, but align yourself with people who may be in those careers and try to find mentors. There's also a benefit to being new to an industry. You bring a new perspective coming from a different background.

And if you don't, you'll always wonder, "What if?"

• The $5.7 trillion hedge fund industry has had an up-and-down year so far.
• Six months into 2025, managers have battled choppy markets and an uncertain geopolitical climate.
• Still, assets and performance are on the rise, and new funds are popping up.

Hedge funds have had an emotionally turbulent ride in 2025, starting the year with soaring interest from big investors and optimism for the incoming Donald Trump administration.

That optimism did not last long, however, as the President's tariff policies disrupted global trade and sent markets into a frenzy.

Big-name managers such as Bill Ackman, Dan Loeb, and Ken Griffin, each of whom voted for Trump, were critical of the tariffs, but the administration used one of the industry's own — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a former macro investor who worked for George Soros — to sell the policies at the Milken conference and on TV. Tariff negotiations are still ongoing, but the administration's 90-day pause is set to end Tuesday.

Meanwhile, choppy markets and the rise of artificial intelligence renewed interest in long-short equity managers, as hedge fund backers sought investors who can pick winners and losers in the new world order. The first quarter of this year was one of the sector's best fundraising stretches in a long time.

Markets have since settled down, and June was a strong month for stocks. One hedge fund founder, BoothBay's Ari Glass, told investors after the first quarter that the portfolio managers and firms his fund backs believe "it is beginning to feel like sentiment is similar to the second quarter of 2020 and we know that while history does not repeat itself, it can rhyme."

While the pandemic slammed stocks in March 2020, many hedge funds had a stellar year by betting on a quick and significant recovery.

Still, there's the possibility of more macro tremors shaking global markets. Trump is still pursuing his tariff agenda. He will sign his "Big Beautiful Bill," which contains about $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and is estimated to add trillions to federal deficits, into legislation on Friday. And the potential for a broader conflict in the Middle East has investors on edge.

According to a recent report from Goldman Sachs' prime brokerage desk, the week the US bombed Iranian nuclear sites was the second-largest net selling of energy stocks by hedge funds in the last 10 years, with many American funds now shorting energy stocks.

Multistrategy giants hitting their peak?

The biggest hedge funds still dominate the conversation as managers like Millennium, Citadel, Point72, and Balyasny continue their long-running war over talent that has sent compensation costs skyrocketing. Many multistrategy funds, even smaller peers without the track record of the so-called big four, can only afford these payouts to coveted personnel thanks to pass-through fees, which leaves limited partners holding the bag for all the costs of running the business.

A Goldman Sachs survey of multi-manager firms running a combined $300 billion from earlier this year found that 61% have changed their terms by adding either pass-through fees or "more onerous" liquidity terms.

End investors have been pushing back for years and finally broke through last year, getting managers as large as Michael Gelband's ExodusPoint to agree to a cash hurdle that requires a fund to outperform Treasury bonds to earn performance fees. Another Goldman report found that close to half of allocators are now looking for managers they back to adopt hurdles.

In other words, after years of explosive asset growth, multi-strategy funds might finally be plateauing. According to Nasdaq's eVestment, the sector had net outflows of $1.2 billion in the first quarter.

Managers with tens of billions in assets like Citadel, Point72, and D.E. Shaw even returned capital to start the year. Other mega-funds, especially Millennium, have focused increasingly on allocating to external managers via separately managed accounts, which has warped the emerging manager space.

SMAs often allow allocators more transparency and customization into a fund's operations and trading, though the independence of these new managers from their behemoth backers is in question. JPMorgan expects 58% of new launches over the next year to be SMAs, despite, as Goldman wrote, the "lines are now more blurred between platform hedge funds vs fund of hedge funds, proprietary vs external."

The shift has meant seed investors feel they can push for even greater transparency into managers' books. According to law firm Seward & Kissel, close to half of those who backed new launches last year required the new funds to provide daily trading reports.

Despite all the ups and downs, the average hedge fund returned 2% through May this year, according to industry data tracker PivotalPath — besting the S&P 500 through the same time period.

• NATO's chief pledged a fivefold increase in air defenses.
• Ground-based air defenses are an area that Western countries scaled back after the Cold War.
• But the way Russia is fighting in Ukraine has proven its need.

NATO pledged to massively increase its air defenses as part of soaring defense spending. The aim is to rebuild a capability that the war in Ukraine has shown to be crucial but has been allowed to wither in the West since the end of the Cold War.

The heads of government for the 32 members of the decades-old security alliance committed last week to investing 5% of their GDP on defense and security by 2035. The increase, based on current GDP size, could be worth more than $1.4 trillion. NATO's secretary general, Mark Rutte, said that one use for the money will be a "five-fold increase in air defence capabilities."

He said the way Russia is fighting proved the need. "We see Russia's deadly terror from the skies over Ukraine every day, and we must be able to defend ourselves from such attacks," he said.

Western countries reduced their ground-based air defense arsenals after the end of the Cold War as they found themselves involved in conflicts with much smaller, less powerful adversaries. This war has shown that Western stocks are insufficient.

Lacking since the Cold War

Western countries have been fighting foes very much unlike Russia. Air superiority has been achieved with ease, enabling ground maneuvers. There hasn't been a pressing need for weapons to shoot down enemy aircraft and ballistic missiles, except in one-off instances.

The US and the rest of NATO scaled back their ground-based defenses "very substantially," Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel who is now a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said.

During the Cold War, as tensions skyrocketed between NATO and the Soviet Union, Western countries maintained substantial defenses. But in the aftermath, he said, "it appeared that fighter aircraft could handle any air threat, and the need for ground-based air defenses was much reduced."

During Operation Desert Storm in the early 1990s, the US took control of the skies, and aircraft largely had free rein in the later wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the main threat being to low-flying aircraft, helicopters in particular.

Ed Arnold, a European security expert with the Royal United Services Institute, said that Europe deprioritized air defense at the end of the Cold War "because the types of missions that the Europeans were doing were, for example, overseas where you only needed a small sort of section of it to be able to protect your forces in the field."

Retired Air Commodore Andrew Curtis, an air warfare expert with a 35-year career in the Royal Air Force, said that there had been "an element of complacency" in recent decades, but also an element of trying to prioritize what was needed when defense budgets shrank as countries felt safer in the post-Cold War era.

Russia's war against Ukraine, which followed earlier acts of aggression, suggests the world has changed. But, Curtis said, the West has to some extent been "asleep at the wheel."

The problem now, Justin Bronk, an air power expert at RUSI, explained, is "that NATO faces a significant shortfall in ground-based air defense systems, both in terms of number of systems, but also particularly ammunition stocks for those systems."

Russia shows they're needed

Rutte warned earlier this month that NATO needs "five times as many systems to defend ourselves," and described the speed Russia was reconsituting its military as "threatening."

Many European countries have warned Russia could attack elsewhere on the continent and are watching closely to see what weaponry and tactics it needs to be ready. The volume and variety of air attacks against Ukraine have thus made air defenses a top takeaway.

Russia can launch hundreds of drones and missiles in a single day, and NATO's air defense networks are not well designed to deal with these kinds of strike threats, like exploding Shahed-136 drones backed by ballistic and cruise missiles.

Western countries need more defenses, as there are just so many air attacks. "Even if only 10% get through, that still does a lot of damage," Cancian said.

Cancian said innovations in this war, like drones being used more than in any other conflict in history, point to evolutions in warfare that make having strong air defenses more necessary than ever before. Nations aren't just facing planes. It's aircraft, missiles, and drones, all able to bring destruction.

And the solutions need to be layered to address threats within their cost range. For instance, high-end Patriot interceptors worth millions of dollars aren't meant for cheap drones worth thousands.

Former Australian Army Maj. Gen. Mick Ryan, a warfare strategist, said that countries have to find "a balance" between the expensive systems like the Patriot or the THAAD system, both made by Lockheed Martin, and lower-end systems.

Ukraine, for example, uses AI-controlled systems equipped with machine guns to stop some smaller drones, and the US military has been experimenting with air-launched rockets as drone killers.

"It's not just all about the exquisite, expensive, and highly capable systems. You also need some of those lower-end systems," the former general said, adding that the last three years have not only shown how important air defenses are, but also "that the array of threats that air defenses have to deal with has broadened."

Smaller weapons used in missile attacks, weapons like drones, can "saturate and overwhelm an air defense system" — a tactic Russia has employed.

For the West, Europe in particular, the new emphasis on bolstering critical air defenses and the push to spend more aren't optional. "It's not a choice. You absolutely have to do this," Ryan said.

It'd be impossibly expensive to protect everywhere, but the West will need to sort its priorities, balancing front-line demands with the protection of civilians in cities, something Ukraine has grappled with throughout the war.

Arnold said that "the biggest change, now as Ukraine is seeing, is you also need air defense to protect your civilians, all of your critical national infrastructure, and your forces in the field. So it's absolutely critical."

NATO's new defense spending will be huge: No member currently spends that new 5% target, and many spent just over or below 2% in 2024, according to NATO's own estimated figures. But spending doesn't automatically solve the problem.

There is a big production backlog with many systems, and increasing production capacity takes years, industrial revitalization, and workforce expertise, much of which has been diminished with time, leading to a hollowing out of the defense industrial sector.

Bronk said fixing this "is much more a question of building production capacity at every stage in the supply chain as rapidly as possible as part of a crisis response rather than just spending more money." More production capacity is needed for interceptors.

More money and big orders help, though, by giving industry confidence to invest more in facilities and processes, but there has to be sustained investment.

Rutte pledged that NATO's increased spending would also be used on "thousands more tanks and armoured vehicles" and "millions of rounds of artillery ammunition," but that many plans are classified.

• Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck said customers know his company "just builds rockets and satellites."
• Rocket Lab is a primary rival of Elon Musk's SpaceX.
• Beck told BI he hadn't seen any "obvious" datapoint on how Musk and Trump's feud is impacting him.

As Elon Musk and President Donald Trump continue to butt heads, the CEO of Rocket Lab said that public and private sector customers alike are drawn to his company's stability.

"It's fair to say that folks, both government and commercial, come to us and they know that they have a very even-keeled public company that just builds rockets and satellites, and executes against that and nothing else," Peter Beck told Business Insider in June when asked whether the feud between the world's richest man and the president benefited his company. "That becomes valuable to people."

Beck added that he hasn't seen any "obvious" data point about the impact of the ongoing disagreement about Trump's spending bill. And, as of mid-June, Beck told BI that Musk hadn't come up more frequently in conversations, either. Representatives for Musk and SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment from BI.

Rocket Lab is headquartered in California, though Beck is based in New Zealand. It's an end-to-end space company, meaning it offers launch services, spacecrafts, satellite parts, and on-orbit management. Despite being much smaller than SpaceX — Rocket Lab has about 2,600 employees, Beck said, compared to around 13,000 at SpaceX, according to Forbes — it has emerged as a key rival. Musk himself once called Beck "impressive."

Rocket Lab's partially reusable two-stage rocket vehicle, Electron, has completed 67 launches and deployed more than 230 satellites as of the end of June, according to the company. Beck told BI that Neutron, its reusable medium-lift rocket, is scheduled to launch later this year. SpaceX's Falcon 9 currently rules the medium-lift space, having completed almost 500 missions by the end of June.

"Right now, there is essentially a pseudo-monopoly on medium lift. I don't think anybody went out intentionally to create that. But nevertheless, that's a status," Beck said. "So we have both government and commercial customers cheering us on very loudly to get Neutron to the pad, because there needs to be some launch site diversification."

At the time of writing, Rocket Lab's stock was rising, and the company's market cap was more than $16.8 billion. While SpaceX is a private company, BI reported it was valued at $350 billion at the end of 2024. It's suffered some recent setbacks with its Starship rockets, a successor to the Falcon model — four consecutive launches have blown up, most recently in June. Musk downplayed the latest explosion as "just a scratch," and said the company learns from data collected during failed launches.

Some of Musk's companies have suffered due to his public, sometimes ugly, on-again-off-again relationship with Trump, especially Tesla. Polling indicates that Musk's favorability is still underwater, even after he left his government role.

• For the last few years, Business Insider has been spotlighting up-and-comers on Wall Street.
• We've asked the rising stars about the books that informed both their careers and personal growth.
• We've compiled their picks for anyone entering the world of finance or kick-starting their career.

Aspiring to build a career on Wall Street? One of the best ways to learn the ropes is by picking up the books that helped industry insiders get to where they are today.

Over the past few years, we've asked up-and-comers across Wall Street to share the titles that shaped their thinking, sharpened their skills, and inspired their career paths.

Their recommendations span everything from billionaire biographies to practical handbooks on leadership, time management, and decision-making.

Whether you're just starting out or looking to level up, this list of 35 books offers a curated look at what ambitious professionals on Wall Street have read—and why it matters.

"Give and Take" by Adam Grant

"It's about striving to be somebody who gives to others and then expects nothing in return," she said, "and how ironically fruitful that can be for your own life and career."

- Lacey Vigmostad Giliberto, JP Morgan

"It shows that it's not just about you. In the grand scheme of things, it's how you help others along the way. How you can grow the pie for everyone."

- Rachel Murray, Moelis

"How to Lead: Wisdom from the World's Greatest CEOs, Founders, and Game Changers" by David Rubenstein

"It's kind of an anthology of various industries. A key takeaway from these stories is the importance of finding your passion. I'm obviously very passionate about finance."

- Will Boeckman, Citadel Securities

"Liar's Poker" by Michael Lewis

"I am a little biased because I started my career at Citigroup, which is formerly Salomon Brothers. I also recommend 'Panic!' by Michael Lewis, and I generally like all the 'Market Wizards' series, which are helpful in knowing what fits your trading style and what doesn't."

-Tian Zeng, Nirvana Capital

"Young Money" by Kevin Roose

The book holds insights into "all the wrong reasons why you can go into finance." 

- Daniel Costanza, Yieldstreet

 

"Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams" by Matthew Walker

"This book explores sleep's impact on your body and mind."

"Before the coronavirus pandemic, I was a daily 4:30 A.M. workout warrior and advocate for holistic nutrition, but I certainly was not prioritizing sleep in my health equation. This was an eye-opening and convincing read that has helped me to get significantly more shut-eye."

- Lacey Vigmostad Giliberto, JP Morgan

"I'm a bad sleeper. This book puts in layman's terms why you need to sleep and why it's important for so many reasons."

- Julia Dworkin, Jefferies

"The Master: The Long Run and Beautiful Game of Roger Federer" by Christopher Clarey

"I recently read 'The Master' the biography of Roger Federer, who some would argue is one of the best (tennis) players, if not the best player, of all time. Every time I read one of the tennis biographies, you're reminded that it's a very all-consuming commitment to be one of the greatest. At least in the case of tennis, it's a very lonely existence. You're the only person out there. You in your mind battling it out. The key is making sure you surround yourself with the right team.

"Every player, at least in the major tournaments, has a player's box. You'll have the family, the coach, and some friends in the player's box. 

"The lesson I think is who's in my player's box?  How do they help me keep going? And, similarly, at least in the investing world, am I in the player's box for others? How do I be the best person on the sidelines supporting?"

- Vinay Trivedi, General Atlantic

"Dare to Lead" by Brené Brown

"Leaders are in the arena, and there are lots of people in the stands who are there just to criticize or comment on what you're doing. But being in the arena takes courage. It gives you a lot of advice around, how do you think about having that courage?" 

- Alexis Rosenblum, Capital Group

"The Most Important Thing" by Howard Marks

"It taught me that all decision-making should be driven by the gap between expected value and market price, and expected value is calculated by weighing each outcome by its probability of occurring.

"Second-level thinking is all about finding value that others don't appreciate yet. It's risk/reward times the coefficient of likelihood for being right."

-Mark Stearns, Goldman Sachs

"Active Portfolio Management: A Quantitative Approach for Producing Superior Returns and Selecting Superior Returns and Controlling Risk" by Richard Grinold and Ronald Kahn

"It's pretty technical, but a must-read for any quant."

-Robert Lam, Man Group's Man Numeric 

"The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace" by Jeff Hobbs

"It was a really interesting dichotomy. It's about a young African-American man who grew up in a rougher neighborhood in Newark but went to Yale and ended up being really successful in his academic work. But he struggled at times to mesh the two worlds together."

"It shows that the path to equality isn't always as easy and seamless. Going to Yale on a scholarship, it can still be really hard for people. People often don't get that."

-Mir Subjally, Compass Rose Asset Management

"Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World" by Liaquat Ahamed

"It's a great book about monetary policy in the Depression era that has major implications for how monetary policy and currencies have evolved."

- Phil Salinger, former Bridgewater Associates 

 

"Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup" by John Carreyrou

"Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was a few years ahead of me at Stanford. It's one of the greatest diligence misses of all time. As you think about that as investor, there are a lot of lessons to be learned."

-Katherine Wood, TPG

"Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World" by Adam Grant

"I spend a lot of time with founder-led companies within the tech world. I like working with them because they're very focused on disrupting the status quo, not just in the businesses they're building but in anything they do, and that includes working with bankers and advisors writ large."

"They really force their advisors to think outside the box and challenge the traditional way of doing things. Part of Adam Grant's book is talking about what makes founders founders, and it's been incredible watching them ask a question that might be perceived as basic, but there's really sort of that double layer of, 'Why is it being done this way, and why can't we do it in a better, more efficient way?'" 

- Lalit Gurnani, Goldman Sachs

 

"The Happiness Equation" by Neil Pasricha

"He wrote this book that really shares some tips about how to have a happier life and ways that you can streamline things in your work; how to find a better work-life balance; and how to think about where you'd like to spend your time and how you're spending your time and the types of things you're investing in." 

"I've picked up so many helpful tips and tricks from there. I feel like it's a must-read for people — financial-related or not, I think it applies to all different industries — on really how to take a step back and identify what is meaningful to you. And are you spending the right amount of time on things that you deeply care about versus things that are just, you know, background noise?"

- Samantha Merwin, BlackRock

 

"Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us" by Daniel Pink

"I always thought a lot about what motivates people, how humans work, and what motivates them. I really appreciated his research and his take on that."

- Julia Jaskólska, HarbourVest Capital

"The Effective Executive" by Peter Drucker

"It's one of the best management books. I think what's unique about the book is when I first looked at the title, I was a little bit intimidated by it — like, this is just for executive positions.

"But he looks at everyone being an executive in their role, and he provides some extremely practical advice on how to become more effective in anything we do in our everyday life. Some are well-known — such as time management, focusing on strengths.

"Even those obvious things that he brings up, he makes it so simple to apply in your everyday life. For example, on time management, there are just two questions you need to ask yourself on a regular basis: What would happen if I don't do certain things? And can these things be done by somebody else?

"That helps you to eliminate a lot of time-wasters and use time more wisely. Super simple, but at the same time, quite practical."

- Mikhail Krayzler, Allianz Global Investors

"The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials Into Triumph" by Ryan Holiday

"It's a book framed through the teaching of Marcus Aurelius, who was also a Roman emperor, and it covers how to optimize situations and make the best out of everything. The book does a great job of translating philosophy into modern context."  

"As for how that translates to me: Clients expect a trusted advisor to maintain poise and equanimity in situations that are stressful to them. So this has been helpful in taking a teaching that is 2,000-plus years old and transferring it to the 21st century."

 - Christopher Oglesby, Bank of America 

"Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World — and Why Things Are Better Than You Think" by Hans Rosling

"What the author is trying to do is to help the reader look at the world and analyze global trends in a more objective way. In a very engaging and comical way, he shows you that human beings tend to think that the world is more dramatic than it really is. So people's brains are systematically misinterpreting the state of the world. 

"Something that really hits on that point is the beginning of the book. He presents the reader with a set of 13 questions. Each question has three multiple-choice answers. The bottom line is that most people actually score lower than the theoretical chimpanzee would have on these questions.

"He tries to walk you through a formula to avoid looking at the world in this overly dramatized way. I think he's not talking specifically about the financial markets, but I think it's so relevant to investing because this is part of the way you can capitalize on opportunities."

- Unoma Okolo,  Artisan Partners

"Mindset" by Carol Dweck

The book emphasizes "how a growth mindset — or the belief that talents can be developed with hard work and good strategies and input from others — can enable much better outcomes than people with a fixed mindset, which is believing that talents are just innate gifts." 

"The reason that a growth mindset matters so much is that it fosters an emphasis on learning and intellectual curiosity instead of trying to seem like the smartest person in the room, and that's something that I often reflect on for my own personal development as well, as a quality to look for as we bring on really amazing management teams." 

- Lexie Bartlett, General Atlantic 

"Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming" edited by Paul Hawken

"For me, it's a game plan of how to actually seek solutions to the biggest existential threat that we actually face as a species and as a planet. Whenever I introduce people to the book, you see people get obsessed with the kinds of things that we can be doing, whether that's regenerative agriculture, renewable energy, or reducing food waste."

- Jay Lipman, Ethic

 

"Beating the Street" by Peter Magellan

"Being a Fidelity person, I had to pick a Peter Lynch book. Beating the Street has been one of my favorites, such a classic. It's about how Peter ran Magellan day-to-day. And so I've just found it to be an excellent guide to investment processes for new fund managers."

- Jennifer Fo Cardillo, Fidelity

 

"Security Analysis" by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd

"Much has been said about 'Margin of Safety' over the years, but in my opinion nothing quite compares to the original "Security Analysis" by Benjamin Graham and David L. Dodd. They epitomized the concept through their careful approach, still relevant to this day."

- Paul Kamenski, Man Group's Man Numeric 

"Shoe Dog" by Phil Knight

"I recently read 'Shoe Dog,' which is Phil Knight's autobiography and the story of how he founded Nike. I chose it because our firm is, in some respects, a startup, as we are launching new lines of business and building upon others, and I wanted to learn about an entrepreneur's success story. Nike certainly had some difficult and existential issues in its early years, and the book was a good reminder about the importance of perseverance and believing in the value of one's work."

- Jackie Klaber, Rockefeller Capital Management

"Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling: Career Strategies for Asians" by Jane Hyun

We read it as part of an Asian-American affinity group at TPG. It's a very tactical book on how Asian Americans can advance in the workplace, and it's written in a style that gives stories of actual people but gives very tangible advice. I enjoyed it quite a bit. 

- Akash Pradhan, TPG

"How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie

"Everything in the investing business is relationship-based, and Henry and George, the KKR founders, often talk about doing business with people you like and trust. This is a book I've read three or four times and is really a staple."

- Evan Kaufman, KKR

"The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned From 15 Years as a CEO" by Bob Iger

Bob Iger, a former CEO at Disney, "early on saw the need to create digital channels for his customers and understood the virtuous cycle he could create around the right types of content, which informed his M&A strategy. Some of the M&A moves that he did in the preceding 10 years were really prescient."

- Tyler Parker, EQT Group

"A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market" by Ed Thorp

"Reading the stories of great investors is both fun and informative. What's most interesting is the commonalities you see between the two investors despite radically different approaches and asset classes."

- Philip Dobrin, Bridgewater Associates

"Foundation" by Isaac Asimov

"There's a lot of game theory involved, analyzing big data to predict outcomes. The concepts in that book and trilogy are very relevant today."

- Vlad Moshinsky, Miller Buckfire

"Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World" by David Epstein

"Looks at the benefits of late specialization and a diversity of experience, and how knowledge in a variety of arenas can pay off, especially when solving complex problems that require creative solutions." 

- Shaan Tehal, Morgan Stanley

"Contrarian Investment Strategy: The Psychology of Stock Market Success" by David Dreman

"Compared with what has now often become fairly complex and evolved, his works as an early adopter of the approach were simple, intuitive, and persuasive, establishing clear roots for what it means to use a systematic approach." 

- Paul Kamenski, Man Group's Man Numeric 

"Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers" by Geoffrey A. Moore

A "must-read" for any aspiring tech investors.

- John Curtius, Cedar Capital

"The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success" by William Thorndike Jr.

"The book best represents how I think about investing and also articulates the success stories and habits of the best CEOs of the 20th century."

- Sims Lansing, Lansing Management

"Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt" by Michael Lewis

"'Flash Boys' was a prime example of how technological innovation and forward-thinkers can reshape an entire industry. In 'Flash Boys,' novel computer algorithms and communications networks caused both market structure and behavioral changes to the trading industry.

"Similarly, today we're experiencing the confluence of cryptography, blockchain technology, and distributed systems, which are meaningfully challenging preconceived notions of not just the financial industry but what constitutes money."

- Michael Sonnenshein, Securitize

"Fooling Some of the People All of the Time," by David Einhorn

"It is an interesting read, and I enjoy how David Einhorn seems so relentless when he believes in something."

- Tanaka Maswoswe, Carlyle Group

"Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential" by Tiago Forte

"We have all this data and information on our laptops and on our phones, but it's not organized. So is it really serving us, is it really useful for us?

"The book talks about knowledge management systems and how to organize the data in such a way that works for the individual, and ultimately, getting to a point where we can share that with others."

- Richesh Shah, Oaktree

• As a veteran NYC legal reporter, I've now watched Sean 'Diddy' Combs beat the odds twice.
• Wednesday's racketeering and sex-trafficking acquittals follow a 2001 guns-and-bribery trial victory.
• The throughlines? Combs' reckless behavior and some persuasive, expensive lawyering.

Back in 2001, he was "Puffy."

For two months, Sean "Puffy" Combs strode through a dense press scrum and into his Manhattan guns and bribery trial wearing a different crisp, shiny suit each day.

I remember neckties and matching pocket squares. And one morning, before the judge took the bench, he sat at the defense table, arms outstretched, as defense attorneys Johnnie Cochrane and Ben Brafman sat on either side, affixing his cufflinks.

"If it doesn't make sense, you must find for the defense," the late Cochrane, a dapper dresser best known for his defense of OJ Simpson six years earlier, quipped for reporters.

I covered that state-level case for the New York Post, watching as Combs, then 31, won a full acquittal after his lawyers convinced a jury that he did not fire a bullet from a 9mm semiautomatic Smith & Wesson into the ceiling of a Times Square nightclub.

Jurors also acquitted him of offering his chauffeur $50,000 to take the rap for another gun found under the seat of the Lincoln Navigator he shared with then-girlfriend Jennifer Lopez. Combs had faced up to 15 years in prison in that case.

"This has changed me and matured me," he promised after the happy outcome, saying he had given up nightclubbing in favor of church-going.

On Wednesday, 24 years later, I watched as a senior correspondent for Business Insider as a very different-looking Combs won surprise acquittals on federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges in a federal courthouse barely a block south of where the prior trial was held. A jury found him guilty of lesser Mann Act charges related to transporting his victims for prostitution.

This Combs — now "Diddy" — remains in custody, as he has for the past 10 months. Each day of the trial, he was escorted into the courtroom by federal marshals, wearing jail-approved khakis and a rotation of five thin, blandly colored sweaters over white collared shirts.

His hair is mostly gray now, deprived by his jailers of the "Just For Men" brand dye that one of his personal assistants testified he kept in his toiletry bag.

A quarter century ago, Sean "Puffy" Combs exuded swagger in court — even something approaching menace. "I'm a human being," I remember him saying as he glowered at me in the hallway once, unhappy about his coverage.

But Sean "Diddy" Combs could be Puffy's pleasant uncle, passing out Post-it notes full of advice and encouragement from his seat at the defense table like so many half-wrapped Jolly Roger candies.

"GREAT JOB!!!" read a note I once saw him hand lead attorney Marc Agnifilo.

Each morning and again at day's end, Diddy greeted most of his nine lawyers with hugs and fist bumps.

Puffy, circa 2001, was too aloof to be a hugger of attorneys — not until the verdict, when Combs, Brafman, and Cochran leaned in for a euphoric, seated embrace.

But there are throughlines linking then and now.

For both trials, an international press corps was drawn, moth-to-flame, by the certainty of a celebrity defendant and the hope that a still-bigger celebrity might steal the show.

J-Lo had been briefly in custody soon after the nightclub shooting, after a stolen gun was found inside her and Combs' chauffeured car. She was not charged, and while she testified at Combs' grand jury, neither side called her as a trial witness.

This time around, Kanye, too, disappointed; his cameo appearance at Combs' courthouse last month was over in a blink, 30 minutes tops. He was turned away from the courtroom by federal marshals, and Combs, like many in the press, didn't even see him.

Combs' recklessness is another parallel.

His lawyers acknowledged in closing arguments last week that Combs used drugs and committed domestic violence.

Federal agents testified at trial that they seized three AR-15 rifles with defaced serial numbers when search warrants were executed at Combs' homes in March, 2024, at a time when prosecutors allege he knew he was under investigation.

Combs was not charged for the weapons, and maintained through his lawyer that the guns belonged to his security guards.

"His brazenness is unmatched," lead prosecutor Maurene Comey told US District Judge Arun Subramanian during successful arguments against bail on Wednesday.

"He's an extremely violent man with an extraordinarily dangerous temper, who has shown no remorse and no regret for his violence toward multiple victims," she said.

There was reckless behavior the last time Combs was arrested, too. An evening of clubbing with a gun-toting entourage nearly cost Combs his freedom and burgeoning career as a multimillionaire music and lifestyle entrepreneur.

New York Supreme Court Justice Charles Solomon sentenced Combs codefendant Jamal "Shyne" Barrow to 10 years in state prison. (Barrow, then 21, had the unfortunate timing of running out of the club and into the arms of two arriving cops, a recently-fired gun still warm in his waistband.)

Solomon told me Thursday that he would have sentenced Combs to three and a half years in prison and remanded him on the spot, had he been convicted of gun possession for the firearm police recovered under the front seat of the Navigator.

Combs could have received more time, the now-retired judge said, given that the car had fled up Eighth Avenue with Combs and J-Lo in the back seat and the NYPD in pursuit.

"Another gun came flying out the car from the back seat" during the chase, Solomon recalled.

Another through-line — good lawyering.

"He had Ben, one of the best criminal defense lawyers in the city, and of course Johnnie Cochrane," Solomon said of the 2001 trial.

"And it worked. They certainly had enough to find him guilty," Solomon said.

"That weapon in the car — there was a presumption of possession," Solomon said. "Maybe it was jury nullification, who knows."

"He's a lot of things to a lot of different people. He's probably helped a lot of people make a lot of very good music, helped a lot of careers, started a lot of businesses," he added.

Combs' acquittal on sex trafficking and racketeering means he no longer faces a potential life sentence. He faces anywhere from zero jail time to as much as 20 years in federal prison for the two counts he was convicted of on Wednesday: transporting two ex-girlfriends across state lines to engage in sex acts with male escorts — the so-called "freak offs" at the heart of the trial.

"It's a partial win. He didn't win this case. He still faces considerable time," Solomon said.

"Oh my god I certainly would," he said when asked if he'd give Combs' prison time if he were once again Combs' judge.

"I would give him a lot of time," he added. "Because of what he did in the past, obviously, his background, and the violence involved here now. A leopard doesn't change his spots."

• The recent NCAA settlement allows schools to directly pay athletes.
• That will be a boon for players in top-earning sports like football and men's basketball.
• Other sports, however, might see cuts, which could raise Title IX issues.

DI track and field athlete Sabrina Oostburg isn't celebrating the recent NCAA settlement, which allows colleges to pay athletes directly.

The Belmont University student said she was standing next to a volleyball player and two football players when the news came out. One of the football players reacted positively and then turned to the volleyball player to get her take.

"It's good for you because you're going to get paid, but some of your female athlete friends might get cut," Oostburg recalled the volleyball player saying.

The recent settlement, which ended multiple antitrust cases against the NCAA, sets up a system in which football players will likely get the lion's share of the money. The settlement's back-pay portion, for example, allocates 75% to football, guided by how much revenue the sport brings in.

Colleges that opt into the settlement can pay up to $20.5 million to their athletes for the year starting July 1 (with increases in subsequent years).

"It's going to be focused on football, basketball," Craig Weiner, a partner and litigator at Blank Rome, told Business Insider.

While schools are free to distribute the money to different teams as they wish, there is a clear incentive for them to want to remain competitive in football to generate revenue. That could mean some athletic programs — if we take that 75% figure as guidance — will need to cover $15 million in new expenses to pay football players.

Where is the money going to come from? Oostburg said she's worried about cuts to her team and others that don't make money for the college. She fears they could lose roster spots, places where they practice and train, or even snacks.

"I think you're going to see cuts potentially in the non-revenue sports," Weiner said. "As far as support, athletic facilities, athletic support. Money that is that is earmarked to help the non-revenue producing sports, because they're going to focus on the money makers."

The settlement ruling could create Title IX issues

The skew toward football and men's basketball in the $2.8 billion back-pay part of the settlement has already attracted a legal challenge.

Dan Ain, an attorney at Reavis, Page, Jump, noted that current and former DI female athletes had filed an appeal. They argued that 90% of the back pay going to former football and men's basketball players was a violation of Title IX, which requires schools to give male and female athletes equitable opportunities.

Ain also pointed out that Judge Claudia Wilken, who oversaw the case, said that athletes could sue if they felt there was any infringement on Title IX due to the nature of the revenue share model.

"This is new territory for schools," Ain said. "Schools, for the first time, will be deciding how to allocate tens of millions of dollars in revenue share to individual athletes. The expectation right now is that the distribution is going to be grossly unequal between men and women, and that will open schools up to Title IX litigation."

Athletes have to run their deals through a clearinghouse

Oostburg said she also had concerns about a new clearinghouse that will oversee deals athletes strike on their own with brands, called NIL deals (short for "name, image, and likeness").

Athletes with deals of over $600 will have to report them to the clearinghouse, operated by Deloitte, which will determine the athlete's value. If the deal is higher than their assessed value, it can't go through. Athletes who don't report deals or violate them by taking something of a different value could have their eligibility taken away.

For athletes like Oostburg in "non-revenue" sports, NIL deals — often driven in part by their social media footprint — are the biggest money-making opportunity.

"That does concern me," Oostburg said. "If I get a deal over $600 and they decide, no, that doesn't make sense for someone like a track athlete like me to get a $1,000 deal."

• Top CEOs have shared their book recommendations.
• Books like "Good to Great" and "The Lean Startup" offer insights on leadership and innovation.
• Business leaders emphasize deep reading as a tool for career growth.

Not a fan of fiction? Top CEOs have shared their favorite reads that help them navigate the world.

From Bill Gates' fascination with memoirs to Citadel founder Ken Griffin's suggestion that you may have chosen the wrong career if you don't enjoy reading about your own field, literature could serve as your compass, especially during an era that may be less than friendly to fresh graduates.

Business leaders from across the industry have emphasized the value of deep reading and have recommended a range of books, many aimed specifically at those just starting their careers.

Here is your summer reading guide, according to business leaders who have reached the peak of their careers.

'Good to Great' by Jim Collins

In a recent interview with S&P Global, Citadel founder Ken Griffin recommended "Good to Great," which outlines the keys to running a business, such as building a good team.

The book lays out what separates good companies from truly great ones, highlighting the importance of humility in leadership and the importance of getting the right people on board with the "First Who, Then What" concept. Collins argues that great companies prioritize building a strong team first, because who you work with matters more than having the perfect plan from the start.

'Business Adventures' by John Brooks

Former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates once wrote in his personal blog that Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, sent him a copy of "Business Adventures" as his favorite book, which features a collection of 12 essays about financial and corporate life in the US.

The book dives into classic cases from Wall Street and corporate America — like the rise and fall of Xerox and the Ford Edsel disaster — showing how companies succeed or stumble based on leadership decisions, market forces, and human behavior.

'The Lean Startup' by Eric Ries

LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman appeared on Eric Ries' podcast to recommend "The Lean Startup," a book about entrepreneurship and building a resilient business.

The book teaches lessons on real-world experimentation, rapid iteration, and launching quickly with a "minimum viable product" instead of starting out with a very elaborate product.

'Chasing Hope' by Nicholas Kristof

In a personal blog called Gates Notes, cofounder and former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates called "Chasing Hope" a "terrific memoir" and credited veteran journalist Nicholas Kristof for inspiring his philanthropic work.

Blending personal storytelling with a deep sense of purpose and resilience, Kristoff shares his experiences as a journalist covering global crises and injustices. The book teaches valuable lessons on how ordinary people can make an extraordinary impact in the face of overwhelming circumstances, and how to maintain a sense of hope in difficult moments.

'Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World' By Adam Grant

Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd recommended "Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World" during her appearance on "The Tim Ferriss Show" podcast in June  2018. The book focuses on how people can drive change without conforming to the status quo.

For someone starting out, the book provides practical advice on how to express new ideas, challenge the existing standards without burning bridges, and build influence among peers who are similarly new to the field.

'High Output Management' by Andy Grove

Recommended by Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky in September 2024 during his keynote at a Y Combinator event in San Francisco, "High Output Management" is where Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel, shares his experiences on how to build and run a successful company.

The book breaks down the fundamentals of effective management in clear, actionable terms and provides a practical toolkit for those new to leadership roles. Grove's approach emphasizes output over effort, which could be crucial for young entrepreneurs aiming to grow fast without losing focus or quality.