• D-Wave on Wednesday announced it had achieved quantum supremacy with its annealing chip.
• Quantum stocks spiked after the news, which suggests quantum machines can outperform classical tech.
• Wednesday's gains helped the industry rebound from a dip spurred by skepticism from Jensen Huang.

Quantum stocks spiked on Wednesday after Canadian company D-Wave said it had achieved the elusive industry benchmark of "quantum supremacy," suggesting its specialized annealing chip can outperform classical computers in certain tasks.

"It's the holy grail for quantum computing. It's what everybody aspires to and is the reason there's so much confusion around quantum supremacy versus quantum advantage versus quantum utility because supremacy — true supremacy — hadn't been achieved yet," Alan Barrett, D-Wave's CEO, told Business Insider. "And so the industry was coming up with terms that were easier to achieve, but this is that demonstration of true supremacy, and we're very excited."

The corresponding market surge — which saw D-Wave's stock spike over 8% by market close and sent other quantum companies like IonQ up over 16% — helped the industry recover from a dip following recent skepticism from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

In January, Huang suggested the industry is at least 20 years away from quantum computing being "very useful," sending quantum stocks tumbling.

While D-Wave's announcement didn't fully claw back the losses that followed Huang's remarks, it sent a jolt through the market and made waves in the industry surrounding the burgeoning technology.

Quantum computing is rapidly evolving, with Big Tech players like IBM and Google racing to scale up the devices enough to be commercially useful. While advancement has long been slowed by deeply technical problems involving error correction and scalability, researchers say cracking the code to unlock quantum computing's potential could help discover new drugs, develop new chemical compounds, or break encryption methods, among other outcomes.

That is why D-Wave's announcement, which follows new quantum chip debuts from Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, is such a big deal. The Canadian company says its annealing quantum computer outperformed one of the world's most powerful classical supercomputers when solving complex simulation calculations related to magnetic materials discovery.

The company says its quantum computer performed a magnetic materials simulation in just minutes — one that would take a classical supercomputer built with GPU clusters nearly one million years and more than the world's annual electricity consumption to solve.

Quantum annealing vs. gate-based approaches

D-Wave's approach is not without its skeptics. The research paper published by the company's researchers in the journal Science stopped short of describing its findings as "quantum supremacy," instead using the milder term "quantum advantage" to outline its findings.

Eric Chitambar, a researcher of quantum information science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said D-Wave's annealing approach has drawbacks — like narrower practical applications and reduced fault tolerance, meaning it's not likely to produce a full-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer.

The narrow scope of the annealing method's potential applications is why the other major players in the quantum space have invested heavily in a gate-based approach. This approach relies on quantum logic gates as the foundation of quantum circuits, similar to how classical logic gates operate for conventional circuits. It has the potential for broader applications despite slower progress in development than the annealing approach.

"But even if they don't have something that is going to be a universal, scalable quantum computer, that doesn't mean there isn't value there," Chitambar said of D-Wave's announcement.

Harley Johnson, the chief executive for Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park, told Business Insider that certain types of computers are better at solving specific problems. D-Wave's announcement is a prime example of a narrowly tailored machine proving its utility.

But now that quantum computing is moving beyond proving its commercial value, Johnson said, it's time to focus on maximizing the return on the massive investment that has brought the quantum industry this far.

"The thinking about quantum advantage, or quantum supremacy, needs to take into account the additional information about economic advantage," Johnson said. "What does it cost me to get to a solution on a conventional computer versus on a quantum computer? Can I solve it more cheaply than I could solve it on a conventional computer? I think that's the next really important way to think about quantum advantage."

• The White House DOGE office has targeted federal Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs for cuts.
• Federal workers told BI about programs that were flagged that aren't related to DEI.
• Some programs, webpages, and jobs that were flagged used specific words in non-DEI contexts.

Business Insider has found examples of government programs that contained keywords like "equity" — but that weren't actually related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives — that have been indefinitely paused after being flagged for review or, in some cases, cut entirely.

This comes in the weeks following President Donald Trump's executive order ending DEI initiatives.

One USAID employee told BI their program on helping people in sub-Saharan Africa "grow equity through savings accounts" was flagged to be reviewed by the DOGE office shortly after it began targeting DEI-related initiatives. The request for review happened prior to the widespread USAID cuts.

The USAID employee, now on administrative leave, said they believe the review was triggered because the program's name contained the word "equity," even though it was geared toward financial equity rather than anything DEI-related. Business Insider has verified the employee's identity and others who spoke to us on the condition of anonymity.

It felt like "they just used Control+F, or some AI did exactly that," they said. "My impression was it was them just being ham-fisted."

Another federal employee, whose primary job function is managing relations with private equity-held businesses, was placed on administrative leave "pursuant to the President's executive order on DEIA," per a dismissal memo reviewed by BI.

"My job has nothing to do with DEIA at all," the federal employee said, adding that they had attended DEI-related training, but such work was not part of their job description. BI reviewed a copy of the employee's job description and verified it did not contain any work tasks or priorities related to diversity, equity, or inclusion initiatives.

It remains unclear exactly why these two jobs were flagged to be cut.

Representatives for the White House and the DOGE office did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

Other DEI language

While it remains unclear exactly how the employees and programs were targeted for removal, Business Insider's reporting expands a growing list of cuts initiated by the DOGE office that appear to target terms like "equity" and "gender" even when used in contexts unrelated to their meanings in DEI frameworks. The USAID employee compared the nature of the cuts to a keyboard shortcut — find and replace — to target DEI-related language.

The Washington Post reported the DOGE office has fed sensitive data into AI software to identify programs to cut.

The Associated Press reported that references to the Enola Gay, the name of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, were among tens of thousands of photos and online posts marked for deletion as the Defense Department works to purge DEI-related content. The AP reported that it appeared the photos were flagged because of the word "gay"; the Enola Gay was named after a colonel's mother.

Per Bloomberg, a DOGE office review led to millions of dollars in canceled affordable housing contracts after their websites and social media posts were combed for terms linked to equity and diversity. It remains unclear what ultimately caused each of the contracts — which addressed homelessness, disaster recovery, and other housing issues — to be flagged.

Business Insider identified over a dozen removed pages of the Internal Revenue Manuals, the official staff instructions for members of the Internal Revenue Service. The pages previously contained notes indicating that their last update — made in response to a Biden-era executive order promoting equity — removed "unnecessary gendered language," such as changing the phrase "he or she" to the gender-neutral pronoun "they."

Business Insider's review of the manual found that the pages were removed after the Trump executive order went into effect. The update note contained the word "gender."

The Wall Street Journal reported that the IRS also removed pages from the manual about the "inequity" of holding on to taxpayer money longer than necessary and the "inclusion" of a taxpayer identification number on a form.

"I feel like this must be reactionary panic at the agencies," one tax attorney told BI about the pages removed from the IRS manuals. "This doesn't seem possible or legal in some cases."

DOGE office cuts reversed and rolled back

Trump said during his address to Congress last week that the DOGE office is being "headed by" White House senior advisor and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. (The White House has said that Amy Gleason is the acting administrator.) The office has been tasked with rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government. But though the office has publicly celebrated its wins, it has quietly reversed some of its efforts and hedged its claims of cost savings.

Although not every cut has been permanent, Trump has cheered Musk on, saying he hopes the billionaire businessman gets "more aggressive" in his effort to slash federal spending.

Critics have lambasted the DOGE office and Musk for employing Silicon Valley's "move fast and break things" maxim rather than a slower, more targeted strategy.

The USAID employee whose equity program was flagged for review said they believed the program was likely permanently cut, along with the vast majority of USAID contracts cut through DOGE office efforts.

"The program was about increasing the impact-per-dollar in these developmental impact programs," the employee said, adding that they were making things efficient "in a measured impactful way."

Have a tip? Contact Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert via email at [email protected] or Signal at byktl.50. Contact Jack Newsham via email at [email protected] or Signal at jnewsham.77. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• The Department of Education announced Tuesday that it's firing over 1,300 employees.
• This will slash the agency's workforce in half, a senior administration official said.
• The official said that these terminations will not impact student aid or grant disbursements.

The Department of Education said on Tuesday that it's firing over 1,300 employees, leaving the agency with just over half the number of workers that were in place before President Donald Trump's took office for his second term.

A senior administration official confirmed to reporters that the department is beginning to send termination notices to 1,315 employees beginning at 6 p.m. EST on Tuesday and that the department's focus with this reduction in force was eliminating full teams the agency deemed redundant or unnecessary.

The official said that of the 4,133 total staff at the department, 259 took the administration's deferred resignation offer, and 313 accepted the department's $25,000 voluntary buyout. About 2,183 employees will remain at the agency after these terminations, the official said.

Fired employees will have 90 days until they are officially terminated, and they will receive full pay and benefits during that time, along with severance payments to follow. These terminations are in addition to the 63 probationary employees who were already fired from the agency, the official said, and they will not impact key functions like the administration of federal student aid, grants for special needs students, and civil rights investigations.

"Today's reduction in force reflects the Department of Education's commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers," Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement. "I appreciate the work of the dedicated public servants and their contributions to the Department. This is a significant step toward restoring the greatness of the United States education system."

The department said that terminated employees will be placed on administrative leave beginning March 21 until the reduction in force is complete on June 9.

One Education Department employee told BI that the news "makes me sick."

"I'm just waiting for 6 p.m ET to roll around to see if I get an email," the employee said. "Of course there will be no rhyme or reason to it. They will indiscriminately fire people without regard to tenure, program, project, performance, impact, or any other useful metric."

The terminations are coming just over a week after McMahon outlined the "final mission" for the department, which she said would include removing "bureaucratic barriers" within the agency. They signal a step toward President Donald Trump's overall goal to eliminate the Department of Education altogether.

Following news of the terminations, the American Federation of Government Employees local chapter president, Sheria Smith, said in a statement that the union will "fight these draconian cuts."

"We will not stand idly by while this regime pulls the wool over the eyes of the American people," Smith said. "We will state the facts. Every employee at the U.S. Department of Education lives in your communities — we are your neighbors, your friends, your family. And we have spent our careers supporting services that you rely on."

Got a tip? Contact this reporter via Signal at asheffey.97 or via email at [email protected]. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

President Donald Trump says he will label attacks against Tesla dealerships domestic terrorism in response to the recent spate of vandalisms against Elon Musk's EV company.

Trump made the announcement on Tuesday at the White House, as Tesla's stock came tumbling more than 50% from recent highs.

"They're bad guys. They're the same guys who screw around with our schools and universities," Trump said. "We're gonna catch you, and you're gonna go through hell."

Spokespeople for the White House and Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.

This story is developing, check back for more information.

• Tech giants Amazon, Google, IBM, and Microsoft are racing to develop a functional quantum computer.
• Each has released a prototype quantum chip with different approaches and potential applications.
• The field is rapidly evolving, but major hurdles remain before it becomes commercially useful.

The quantum race is heating up.

Tech titans Amazon, Google, IBM, and Microsoft each recently announced advancements in their prototype chips, tightening the race to develop a commercially useful quantum computer that could solve some of the universe's stickiest problems faster than a classical computer ever could.

Quantum computing is a rapidly evolving — though still largely theoretical and deeply technical — field. But cracking it open could help discover new drugs, develop new chemical compounds, or break encryption methods, among other outcomes, researchers say.

Naturally, each of the major players in Big Tech wants to be the one to take quantum computing mainstream.

"You're hearing a lot about it because this is a real tipping point," Oskar Painter, the director of quantum hardware at Amazon Web Services, told Business Insider in late February, following the company's announcement of its Ocelot chip.

Stick with us — here's where it gets complicated.

Where classical computing uses binary digits — 0s and 1s, called bits — to represent information, quantum computing relies on a foundation built from the quantum equivalent of bits, called qubits. When they behave predictably at a large enough scale, qubits allow quantum computers to quickly calculate equations with multiple solutions and perform advanced computations that would be impossible for classical computers.

However, qubits are unstable, and their behavior is unpredictable. They require specific conditions, such as low light and extremely cold environments, to reduce errors. When the number of qubits is increased, the error rate goes up — making advancement in the field slowgoing.

Small-scale quantum computers already exist, but the race is on to scale them up and make them useful to a wider audience rather than just scientists.

Recently, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have announced new prototype chips, and IBM has made strides in its existing quantum road map. Each company is using unique approaches to solve the error reduction and scalability problems that have long plagued the field and make useful quantum computing a reality.

Here's how each approach stacks up.

Microsoft

Approach to quantum: Topological qubits

Most powerful machine: Majorana 1

In February, Microsoft unveiled its new quantum chip, Majorana 1. The aim is for the chip to speed up the development of large-scale quantum computers from decades to years.

Microsoft said the chip uses a new state of matter to produce "topological" qubits that are less prone to errors and more stable. Essentially, this is a qubit based on a topological state of matter, which isn't a liquid, gas, or solid. As a result, these quantum particles could retain a "memory" of their position over time and move around each other. Information, therefore, could be stored across the whole qubit, so if any parts fail, the topological qubit could still hold key pieces of information and become more fault-resistant.

"Microsoft's progress is the hardest to get an idea about because it's very niche," said Tom Darras, founder of quantum computing startup Welinq. "Even experts in the industry find it difficult to assess the quality of these results."

Quantum experts agree that Microsoft still has many roadblocks to overcome, and its peer-reviewed Nature paper only demonstrates aspects of what its researchers have claimed to achieve — but some in the quantum ecosystem see it as a promising outcome.

Google

Approach to quantum: Superconducting qubits

Most powerful machine: Willow

In December, Google announced Willow, its newest quantum chip, which the company claims takes just five minutes to solve a problem that would take the world's fastest supercomputer 10 septillion years.

Perhaps more impressive was Google's breakthrough in how quantum computers scale. Historically, the more qubits that are added, and the more powerful the computer becomes, the more prone it is to errors. With Willow, Google's researchers said that adding more physical qubits to a quantum processor actually made it less error-prone, reversing the typical phenomenon.

Known as "below threshold," the accomplishment marks a significant milestone by cracking a problem that has been around since the 1990s. In a study published in Nature, Google's researchers posit this breakthrough could finally offer a way to build a useful large-scale quantum computer. However, much of this is still theoretical, and now Google will need to prove it in practice.

Amazon

Approach to quantum: Superconducting qubits

Most powerful machine: Ocelot

In late February, Amazon Web Services announced its Ocelot chip, a prototype designed to advance the company's focus on cloud-based quantum computing.

An Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider the Ocelot prototype demonstrated the potential to increase efficiency in quantum error correction by up to 90% compared to conventional approaches. The chip leverages a unique architecture that integrates cat qubit technology — named for the famous Schrödinger's cat thought experiment — and additional quantum error correction components that can be manufactured using processes borrowed from the electronics industry.

Troy Nelson, a computer scientist and the chief technology officer at Lastwall, a cybersecurity provider of quantum resilient technology, told Business Insider that Amazon's Ocelot chip is another building block that the industry will use to build a functioning quantum computer. However, its error rate needs to be substantially lowered, and its chips would require more qubit density before they're useful.

"There's lots of challenges ahead. What Amazon gained in error correction was a trade-off for the complexity and the sophistication of the control systems and the readouts from the chip," Nelson said. "We're still in prototype days, and we still have multiple years to go, but they've made a great leap forward."

IBM

Approach to quantum: Superconducting qubits

Most powerful machine: Condor

IBM has been a quantum frontrunner for some time, with several different prototype chips and its development of Q System One, the first circuit-based commercial quantum computer, unveiled in January 2019.

IBM's Condor chip is the company's most powerful in terms of its number of qubits. However, since its development, IBM has focused its approach on the quality of its gate operations and making its newer quantum chips modular so multiple smaller, less error-prone chips can be combined to make more powerful quantum computing machines.

Condor, the second-largest quantum processor ever made, was unveiled at the IBM Quantum Summit 2023 on December 4, 2023. At the same time, IBM debuted its Heron chip, a 133-qubit processor with a lower error rate.

Rob Schoelkopf, cofounder and chief scientist of Quantum Circuits, told Business Insider that IBM has prioritized "error mitigation" over traditional error correction approaches. While IBM has so far been successful in what Schoelkopf calls "brute force scaling" with this approach, he said the methodology will need to be modified in the long run for efficiency.

Who leads the race?

Sankar Das Sarma, a theoretical condensed matter physicist at the University of Maryland, told Business Insider that the Amazon Web Services Ocelot chip, Google's Willow, and IBM's Condor use a "more conventional" superconducting approach to quantum development compared to other competitors.

By contrast, Microsoft's approach is based on topological Majorana zero modes, which also have a superconductor, but in "a radically different manner," he said. If the Majorana 1 chip works correctly, Das Sarma added, it is protected topologically with minimal need for error correction, compared to claims from other tech companies that they have improved conventional error correction methods.

Still, each company's approach is "very different," Das Sarma said. "It is premature to comment on who is ahead since the whole subject is basically in the initial development phase."

Big Tech companies should be cautious about "raising expectations when promoting results," said Georges-Olivier Reymond, CEO of quantum computing startup Pasqal. "Otherwise, you could create disillusionment."

Reymond's sentiment was echoed by IBM's VP of quantum adoption and business development, Scott Crowder, who told Business Insider he is concerned "over-hype" could lead people to discount quantum technology before its promise can be realized.

"We think we are on the cusp of demonstrating quantum advantage," said Crowder, referring to when a quantum computer outperforms classical machines. "But the industry is still a few years from a fully fault-tolerant quantum computer."

• Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa Hackman, died of natural causes, officials announced Friday.
• The pair had been found dead in their New Mexico home on February 26 under unusual circumstances.
• Hackman died of complications from heart disease about a week after Arakawa Hackman died of hantavirus.

The Santa Fe County chief medical examiner said on Friday that Gene Hackman died of natural causes.

The 95-year-old Oscar-winning actor, his wife, Betsy Arakawa Hackman, and one of their dogs were found dead on February 26 at their New Mexico home. For over a week, it was unclear how they'd each died, though authorities said they'd been dead for quite some time and their deaths were "suspicious enough in nature to require a thorough search and investigation."

The investigation has now concluded. At a Santa Fe County Sheriff press conference on Friday, chief medical examiner Dr. Heather Jarrell said Hackman died of complications from heart disease and Alzheimer's disease.

Arakawa Hackman, who was 65, died of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome. Hantavirus is a flu-like disease carried by infected rats, which is rarely passed between humans.

Both deaths were classified as natural.

Pills were previously reported to have been found on-site; Jarrell said they were prescribed thyroid medication and not a matter of concern.

Jarrell said it was unprecedented for her office to comment on deaths but felt it was important in this case to disseminate accurate information and said she had spoken to Hackman's family about the autopsy findings before the conference.

Arakawa Hackman collapsed in a bathroom at the couple's New Mexico residence and succumbed to the virus "pretty quickly" after it had progressed enough that fluid began to fill her lungs, Jarrell said. The medical examiner added that she does not believe Arakwa Hackman was alive for an extended period after she collapsed.

Given Hackman's advanced Alzheimer's disease, Jarrell said it is likely he was home with his deceased wife for over a week before he died. She said it is unclear whether he knew she had died or if he attempted to get help.

"Mr. Hackman showed evidence of advanced Alzheimer's disease — I'm not aware of what his normal daily functioning capability was," Jarrell said in the Friday press conference. "He was in a very poor state of health, and he had significant heart disease, and I think ultimately that is what resulted in his death."

Jarrell said she found no evidence that Hackman was dehydrated but said there was no food in his stomach at the time of his death.

The dog that was found deceased at the Hackman residence had been left in its crate following a recent medical procedure. The results of its necropsy are still pending.

This story is developing. Check back for updates.

• President Donald Trump on Thursday again delayed enforcing tariffs on Canada and Mexico by a month.
• The president's flip-flopping on international trade has caused price hikes and diplomatic friction.
• Supply chain scholars say economic uncertainty is a feature of Trump's trade policy, not a bug.

President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that his 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada would be delayed another month, once again backtracking on his aggressive international trade policy proposals.

Trump's repeated reversals are key to his economic strategy, though they may not pay off in the long term as they erode relationships with the nation's allies, supply chain and conflict resolution scholars told Business Insider.

The continued flip-flopping has left the US economy with a sense of whiplash. Businesses and markets have to keep up with the latest policies amid a budding trade war, while uncertainty in the world's biggest economy makes waves across the rest of the globe.

The tariff tension between the North American trade partners is creating diplomatic friction between the US and its allies, in addition to driving cross-industry cost increases and consumer price hikes, Nick Vyas, the founding director of the University of Southern California's Randall R. Kendrick Global Supply Chain Institute, told Business Insider.

He said that's a feature of Trump's trade policy, not a bug.

"Everyone has to understand that you're on the long ride here with this jolt, this is not just turbulence for a few seconds," Vyas said.

Since Trump prides himself on being a master dealmaker, Vyas said the president seems to believe he'll be able to achieve his policy goals by increasing the pressure on Canada and Mexico — and that means keeping each country's leader off balance at the negotiating table.

"It all fits into his America First strategy," Vyas said. "But I think we're going to have to make sure that we don't alienate our allies."

While his tariff threats may be an attempt to strengthen the US' economic standing, Trump's repeated backtracking may not help the implementation of his other policy priorities in the long term, Andrea Schneider, the director of the Kukin Program for Conflict Resolution at the Cardozo School of Law, told BI.

"When you threaten and then continue to walk things back, obviously, the threat loses its power," Schneider said. "Whatever strategy message we're trying to send is confusing and is less strong because of it."

Schneider said the mixed signals and confusing trade policies don't give businesses the predictability needed to make decisions like hiring, expanding research and development, or developing a new product. These factors increase market volatility, making consumers unhappy, and can drive social unrest as prices of everyday goods continue to rise.

"The world is watching. Markets are watching," she said. "The chaos and unpredictability might, in certain instances, make sense in diplomatic relationships or one-on-one negotiations. But it doesn't work in a situation like this, where every US business is trying to figure out what to do tomorrow and can't predict what the policy will be."

A game of tariff brinkmanship

Thursday's announcement is the second monthlong delay Trump has imposed since he signed executive orders calling for sweeping tariffs in February. The duties — including 25% tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods and 10% on Chinese goods — went into effect on Tuesday. Energy products from Canada were also subjected to a separate 10% tariff.

China and Canada retaliated immediately on Tuesday with tariffs on US products. Mexico said it would follow suit on Sunday, a move that Gladys McCormick, the Moskowitz endowed chair in Mexico-US relations at Syracuse University, told BI was likely in anticipation of an enforcement delay.

"To be honest with you, I wasn't surprised, nor do I think Mexicans were surprised," McCormick said. "That lag, in essence, gives the Trump administration an off-ramp to really kind of think through how catastrophically devastating this would be to both countries, not just Mexico."

Trump is playing a game of brinkmanship, or pushing a risky situation to the brink of disaster before backing down in the hopes of a positive outcome, which has been an "intrinsic part of the Trump playbook," McCormick said.

"If and when Trump does follow through with tariffs, it's not going to be this sort of wholesale 25% on everything. Rather, they will ultimately end up taking a selective approach to certain industries or certain sectors," McCormick said. "For example, I think that manufacturing, and then especially the automobile industry, would be so severely hard hit on both sides of the border that that's going to be off the table."

'This is very much about political theater'

In the meantime, the US and its major trading partners are stuck in a battle of wills instigated by Trump. The president has repeatedly said the duties will help drive down immigration and fentanyl flowing across US borders. However, Christopher Tang, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and scholar of global supply chain management, told BI he isn't convinced that's Trump's primary goal.

"Trump claimed that this tariff is a penalty for Canada and Mexico for not doing enough to curb illegal immigration and illegal drug trade," Tang said. However, he added that the rates of crossings for both migrants and drugs are down at both borders, so he thinks that rationale is "an excuse."

Instead, Tang said he believes Trump's tariffs are more likely an attempt to "close the backdoor" for Chinese products using Mexico as a transition point to avoid tariffs. China has used Mexico as a workaround to avoid tariffs by shipping the parts or semi-finished products — like furniture — to Mexico, performing final assembly in Mexico, and then shipping the finished goods to the US without paying its own tariffs, Tang said.

"If the goal is to close the backdoor for importing Chinese goods without paying tariffs, it can be effective, but the implementation can be complicated due to the mass volume and limited manpower," Tang said. "If the goal is to nudge Canada and Mexico to expand its control of illegal immigrants and illegal drugs, only time will tell."

Mexico, in particular, has already spent years addressing both problems by sending its National Guard to the Mexican-US border to cut off immigrants and working to shutter fentanyl labs in the nation, McCormick, the Syracuse University professor, said. She added that the demands from the Trump administration have been "vague," which has been "worrisome" to those who wonder when enough will be enough.

"The absence of metrics suggests that this is not about fentanyl and it's not about immigration. This is very much about political theater," McCormick said.

• Sam Altman announced in a late February post on X that his son had been born prematurely.
• In a Tuesday update, the OpenAI CEO said his company is no longer his proudest accomplishment.
• "Turns out I am now more proud of a preemie baby for learning how to eat on his own!" Altman wrote.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, in a Tuesday post on X, shared his first update about his infant son, who was born prematurely in late February, and declared his AI company is no longer his proudest accomplishment.

"Very proud of the openai team for what is perhaps the most impressive scientific/technical breakthrough of recent decades," Altman wrote. "Thought that was the thing i'd always be most proud of in life."

He added: "turns out i am now more proud of a preemie baby for learning how to eat on his own!"

Altman and his husband, software engineer Oliver Mulherin, welcomed their son, the couple's first child, in late February. The pair, who live together in San Francisco, have led a relatively private relationship and have only publicly shared one previous statement about their child since his birth.

"He came early and is going to be in the nicu for awhile," Altman wrote in the child's birth announcement, referring to the neonatal intensive care unit, where newborns receive specialized medical treatment after birth. "He is doing well and it's really nice to be in a little bubble taking care of him. i have never felt such love."

The OpenAI CEO hasn't said whether he plans to take paternity leave, but the new addition to his family has comes as the artificial intelligence company is in the middle of its transition away from a nonprofit entity. OpenAI announced plans in December to transfer control of daily operations to its for-profit subsidiary, in a move that has attracted legal challenges from OpenAI's competitor Elon Musk.

Representatives for OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Linda McMahon says the Department of Education needs to be overhauled.
• The newly confirmed education secretary described the task ahead as a "historic final mission."
• President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for the department to be shut down.

Newly confirmed Education Secretary Linda McMahon told staffers on Monday that the department must embark on a "momentous final mission" as it undergoes a "historic overhaul."

"This review of our programs is long overdue. The Department of Education is not working as intended," McMahon wrote in an email.

Business Insider viewed McMahon's email, titled "Our Department's Final Mission." McMahon was confirmed as education secretary on Monday, and the email was also posted to the Department of Education's website late Monday evening.

In her email, McMahon asked Department of Education staff to apply "dedication and excellence" to the agency's "historic final mission."

"As I've learned many times throughout my career, disruption leads to innovation and gets results. We must start thinking about our final mission at the department as an overhaul — a last chance to restore the culture of liberty and excellence that made American education great," McMahon wrote.

"True change does not happen overnight — especially the historic overhaul of a federal agency," she added.

In her email, McMahon called for the removal of "red tape and bureaucratic barriers" and an "effective transfer of educational oversight to the states."

She also outlined three department "convictions," one of which states that parents should be the primary decision-makers in their children's education. In another, she wrote that education should focus on math, reading, science, and history instead of "divisive DEI programs and gender ideology."

McMahon also wrote that postsecondary education should result in a "well-paying career aligned with workforce needs."

McMahon's stance on the DEI convictions aligns with the Trump administration's broader move to clamp down on diversity-related initiatives.

Trump has called for the elimination of the Department of Education

Trump announced McMahon's nomination as education secretary in November.

McMahon, who was the WWE's CEO from 1997 to 2009, was part of the first Trump administration and headed the Small Business Administration from 2017 to 2019.

While on the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly called for the Department of Education to be shut down.

"We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on November 19.

In 2017, during his first term, Trump proposed a $9 billion cut to the department's budget.

"I told Linda, 'Linda, I hope you do a great job and put yourself out of a job.' I want her to put herself out of a job," Trump told reporters on February 4 when asked about McMahon's nomination.

During her confirmation hearing on February 13, McMahon said the department can only be abolished with congressional approval.

"It is set up by the United States Congress, and we work with Congress. It clearly cannot be shut down without it," McMahon told the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions during the hearing.

McMahon, the White House, and the Department of Education did not respond to requests for comment from BI.

• Microsoft, Amazon, and Google have recently announced prototypes of new quantum computing chips.
• Some physicists are skeptical that the field has advanced as much as the companies say.
• Scientists say the field remains dynamic and evolving, with hurdles to overcome before it's useful.

The field of quantum computing has become increasingly prominent after recent announcements of new quantum chip prototypes from Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. Still, some industry insiders remain skeptical that the technology has advanced as far as the companies claim.

Amazon Web Services on Thursday announced the Ocelot chip, a prototype the company said represents a breakthrough in error correction and scalability — two key issues that have long slowed advancement in the field.

Amazon's announcement followed one from Microsoft on February 19 saying it had created a new state of matter to power its own new quantum chip prototype, the Majorana 1, in a development that would propel quantum computing forward.

Google's Willow chip prototype debuted in December. The company said Willow could perform a standard benchmark computation in under five minutes — a task that would take the current fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years to complete, a timeframe that exceeds the age of the universe.

The tech giants say their respective developments are massive advancements in the quantum computing field, which could eventually lead to major social advancements such as discovering new drugs, developing new chemical compounds, or breaking our current encryption methods.

However, some computer scientists and physicists told Business Insider the field remains dynamic and evolving, with hurdles to overcome before quantum computing is useful.

'The joke is, it's always 25 years away'

Virginia Lorenz, a professor of atomic, molecular, and optical physics at the University of Illinois' Grainger College of Engineering, said there are still many technical roadblocks in the way of fully functional and commercially relevant quantum computing — meaning, quantum computers that do something useful for the average person, rather than just scientists.

"The joke is, it's always 25 years away," said Lorenz, who founded the first publicly available quantum network, which allows citizen scientists to experiment with the tech while visiting the Urbana Free Library. "At least if you keep the current approaches, the problems are technical, and there are many of them, versus the situation being everyone trying different ways of solving one problem."

Quantum computing is a rapidly evolving field of technology that relies on units of information called qubits rather than the binary bits used in classical computing. Qubits exist in multiple states at once and require specific conditions such as low light or extremely cold environments to replicate results reliably and without errors, which has made advancement in the field slow going.

Researchers who spoke to BI agree that the two main roadblocks to advancing the quantum field lie in scalability and error correction. However, there is no consensus about how to approach, much less solve, either problem.

In early February, Google told Reuters that the company plans to release commercial quantum computing applications within five years, despite skepticism from some industry insiders.

A spokesperson for Google told Business Insider they're confident in their approach with Willow and the company's projected timeline for commercial quantum applications. However, they added that it's important to discern between what a company describes as a breakthrough and what the broader quantum community considers a breakthrough, highlighting the significance of the peer-review publication processes of scientific journals.

While the tech giants have made some strides in showing progress on the error reduction and scalability issues using various approaches, quantum technology experts told BI they haven't come close to solving them.

Troy Nelson, a computer scientist and the chief technology officer at Lastwall, a cybersecurity provider of quantum resilient technology, told Business Insider that each company's announcement represents another building block that the industry will use to create a functioning quantum computer rather than a solution in and of itself.

"There's lots of challenges ahead," Nelson said. For example, he said what Amazon gained in error correction with its Ocelot chip "was a trade-off for the complexity and the sophistication of the control systems and the readouts from the chip."

Rahul Mahajan, chief technology officer of the digital business transformation unit at Nagarro, a technological engineering and consulting firm, told BI the key to real advancement in quantum technology is not just about measuring or observing qubits' behavior, which the tech giants' recent papers largely focus on, but about reliably getting them to conduct the complex calculations they are capable of solving.

"One step is storing qubits and observing, the second is transformations," Mahajan said. "As humans, we evolve; in chemistry, molecules evolve; nature evolves. So there are simulations now for us to do — controlled simulations — that's the next big, important stuff."

These remaining hurdles have prompted high-profile skeptics like Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to suggest we're still 20 years away from the technology being "very useful." Even Oskar Painter, the director of quantum hardware at AWS, told Business Insider when discussing the company's Ocelot chip debut that the 20-year timeframe is probably accurate.

"I think somewhere in between 10 and 20 years, I have some good confidence that we'll have practical, useful quantum computers in that timeframe," Painter said. "But we also need to take a sort of humble and realistic approach to the work we have to do going forward."

Previous retractions of research

Microsoft-backed researchers have been wrong about quantum computing before.

Two papers published in Nature by Microsoft-funded researchers in 2017 and 2018, which claimed to have created similar Majorana states as the company's latest announcement about its Majorana 1 chip, were later retracted.

In Microsoft's latest Nature paper about its recent Majorana findings, a passage in its peer-review file suggests the journal's editorial was still skeptical of the company's claims.

"The editorial team wishes to point out that the results in this manuscript do not represent evidence for the presence of Majorana zero modes in the reported devices," the peer review file reads. "The work is published for introducing a device architecture that might enable fusion experiments using future Majorana zero modes."

A Microsoft spokesperson told Business Insider that the company has received some general questions about its methodology since its most recent Nature paper was released. They said that Microsoft has continued advancing its quantum approach since the paper was first submitted on March 5, 2024.

"Discourse and skepticism are all part of the scientific process," the spokesperson said. "That is why we are dedicated to the continued open publication of our research, so that everyone can build on what others have discovered and learned."

The spokesperson added, "There is a lot of science to explain when it comes to quantum computing, and in the coming weeks and months, we look forward to sharing our results along with additional data behind the science that is turning our 20-plus-year vision for quantum computing into a tangible reality."

A leading quantum physicist and CEO of a quantum software company told Business Insider that Microsoft's claim of inventing a new state of topological matter amounts to little more than marketing. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to prevent their skepticism of Microsoft's announcement from causing backlash on their own company; BI has verified their identity.

"It is an important distinction that there is no topological quantum computer today," the quantum physicist said.

Still, the buzz around the advancement of quantum computing is a net positive for researchers, even if the announcements from the tech giants don't pan out scientifically, Lorenz, the physics professor, said.

"It's a bit of a self-feeding cycle since more funding means more interest, which means more capability and more promise, you know?" Lorenz said. "And I think that's a bit of why it's so suddenly in the public sphere and a major element as to why we're seeing so much news around it — because there's still a lot of work to be done to make a quantum computer that shows a definite advantage over classical computers, and actually fulfills some of the promises we've heard."

• The Trump Administration's OPM emailed federal workers again requesting a list of accomplishments.
• The latest email tells employees to expect to complete a productivity summary weekly going forward.
• Federal workers who shared the email with BI said the doubling down is "nuts" and "infuriating."

Federal workers across agencies are once again getting emails asking them to detail what they did this past week.

The second email, received by federal employees Friday night, promises weekly check-ins going forward. Elon Musk, a senior advisor to President Donald Trump who is closely tied to the White House DOGE office, hinted that this was coming after doubling down on the email check-ins this week.

"Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets describing what you accomplished last week and cc your manager," the email, reviewed by Business Insider, reads. "Going forward, please complete the above task each week by Mondays at 11:59pmET."

Federal workers from agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Veterans Affairs received the email from the Office of Personnel Management around 9 p.m. ET Friday night.

Representatives for the White House and the Office of Personnel Management did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

"Nuts. They did it again," one Department of Education employee told Business Insider upon receiving the email.

Federal workers who have spoken to Business Insider have expressed frustration over the emails from OPM, which circumvent each office's chain of command and are sent during late or weekend hours.

The heads of various agencies have offered differing guidance regarding how their employees should respond, with at least eight offices, including the Department of Defense and the State Department, previously telling workers they don't have to respond to DOGE's emails.

On Monday, Musk said that employees who had not yet responded to the email would be given "another chance," but "failure to respond a second time will result in termination."

Less than half of the federal workforce responded to the first email, the White House said Tuesday.

The productivity-tracking emails, first sent on the afternoon of February 22 from an HR account in the Office of Personnel Management, followed President Donald Trump's request that Musk "get more aggressive" with DOGE's budget cuts and layoffs. The emails are among the latest of the office's sweeping initiatives that have resulted in mass firings, funding pauses, and work stoppages in departments and agencies across the federal government.

Musk had teased that the emails would be coming in a post on X, writing: "Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation," but the emails received by employees have not detailed any potential consequences for failing to reply by the deadline. The email sent Friday night also made no mention of those consequences.

The email has two key differences from the one sent last weekend: It makes clear the request for accomplishments will be ongoing, and stipulates that employees working with sensitive information do not need to respond with specific tasks.

"If all of your activities are classified or sensitive, please write 'All of my activities are sensitive,'" the Friday email reads.

One nurse who works with the Department of Veterans Affairs told Business Insider said the emails are "infuriating," adding that they'd responded to the last one after installing a read receipt tracker on their emails. Their initial response still hasn't even been opened, they said.

"They're such cowards," the nurse said. "Nobody has the guts to sign their name to this, and we're expected to respond to some faceless entity like we're shouting into a void. It's not coming from my supervisor or anyone in my actual chain of command, just another generic 'HR' email with no accountability."

Other federal employees who previously spoke to Business Insider said they were considering quitting rather than dealing with the emails and conflicting guidance about how to respond to them.

The Department of Education employee said they are looking for a new job, but have been struggling to find work since so many federal employees are recently out of work in the area where they live. As a single parent with dual citizenship, the Department of Education employee said they are considering moving abroad with their children.

Earlier Friday, Department of Education employees received a buyout offer "in advance of a very significant Reduction in Force," according to an email reviewed by Business Insider. Employees who have worked at the department for at least 3 years were offered $25,000 in addition to any retirement funds they are eligible for. Interested employees have until 11:59pm ET on March 3 to accept the offer.

And on Thursday, a memo seen by Business Insider was sent to employees in the Social Security Administration offering voluntary early retirements as part of a "restructuring that will include significant workforce reductions."

President Donald Trump's administration officially announced its plan for federal staff reductions in a Wednesday memo, telling agencies to prepare to cut staff and reorganize their departments by March 13.

The Department of Education employee said they would "probably not" take the buyout offer, adding that "it's crazy to give people just the weekend to think it over."

"I don't trust anything these people do," the Department of Education employee told BI.

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• Amazon Web Services on Thursday debuted its new quantum computing chip, a prototype called Ocelot.
• The company says the Ocelot represents a breakthrough in error correction and scalability.
• The quantum computing field is heating up with recent advancements from Google and Microsoft.

Amazon Web Services on Thursday debuted its prototype quantum chip, the Ocelot, making headway in the race to develop functional quantum computers.

"What makes Ocelot different and special is the way it approaches the fundamental challenge we have with quantum computers, and that is the errors that they're susceptible to," Oskar Painter, the director of quantum hardware at AWS told Business Insider.

Amazon, in research published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, says the Ocelot represents a breakthrough in error correction and scalability — two key issues that have long slowed advancement in the field. The Ocelot prototype demonstrated the potential to increase efficiency in quantum error correction by up to 90% compared to conventional approaches, the company says.

"And that efficiency is something on the order of a factor of five to 10x so it's a pretty significant reduction," Painter said. "We still have about a factor of a billion to reduce the error rate — so that it's a huge gap — but it turns out that quantum error correction is up to the challenge, and it turns out that we eventually can bridge this massive gap."

Schrödinger's qubits

Quantum computing is a growing field of technology that combines computer science, math, and quantum mechanics. It relies on units of information called qubits rather than the binary bits used in classical computing.

Qubits hold more information than binary bits and can exist in multiple states simultaneously. However, they are unstable, difficult to measure, and require specific conditions — such as low light or extremely cold environments — to reliably replicate results without errors, which has slowed progress in the field for years.

But when they behave predictably at a large enough scale, qubits enable quantum computers to solve more complex calculations more quickly than classical computers can. Researchers in the field agree that computations solvable through quantum computing could help discover new drugs, promote sustainable food growth in harsh climates, develop new chemical compounds, or break our current encryption methods, among other outcomes.

Amazon said the Ocelot chip uses a kind of qubit technology called cat qubits, named after the famous Schrödinger's cat thought experiment. This technology intrinsically suppresses certain forms of errors, simplifying and reducing the quantum error correction required to build a full-fledged quantum computer, a spokesperson said.

An Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider the chip has a unique architecture that integrates the cat qubit technology and additional quantum error correction components into the chip that can be manufactured using processes borrowed from the electronics industry.

A quantum 'tipping point'

Before fully-fledged and functional quantum computers can become commercially useful, Painter and other quantum researchers agree they must make more progress in error reduction and scalability. While Amazon's new chip doesn't mean commercially useful quantum computers are in production now, it's the latest in a series of recent advancements in the field that has galvanized the industry and suggests commercial adoption will come sooner than expected.

Rob Schoelkopf, cofounder and chief scientist of Quantum Circuits, said Amazon's research results "highlight how more efficient error correction is key to ensuring viable quantum computing. " He described the company's progress as "a good step toward exploring and preparing for future roadmaps" in further developing quantum technology.

Amazon's announcement comes about a week after Microsoft unveiled its quantum chip, the Majorana 1. Microsoft says its chip is powered by a new state of matter and allows for more stable, scalable, and simplified quantum computing.

Similarly, Google in December announced its quantum chip, Willow, which the company says can perform a standard benchmark computation in under five minutes. It's a task that would take the current fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years to complete — a timeframe that exceeds the age of the universe.

"We really are at a very exciting time in quantum computing, and you're hearing a lot about it because this is a real tipping point," Painter said.

Who is in the lead?

Sankar Das Sarma, a theoretical condensed matter physicist at the University of Maryland's Joint Quantum Institute, told Business Insider Amazon's Ocelot chip is a "more conventional superconducting chip, perhaps similar to the ones developed by Google and IBM," than the one recently unveiled by Microsoft — though he added it's too soon to say which company is ahead in their findings.

"The MSFT work is based on topological Majorana zero modes, which also has a superconductor, but in a radically different manner," Das Sarma wrote in an email to BI. "In particular, the MSFT device, if it works correctly, is protected topologically with minimal need for error correction, whereas the AWS claim seems to be that they have made some improvement in the conventional error correction schemes. The two approaches are very different."

Researchers in the field are closely monitoring Amazon's and other companies' advancements, hoping to prove that quantum technology will become commercially viable sooner than anticipated. In January, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang suggested we were still 20 years away from the technology being "very useful," sending quantum stocks tumbling.

Troy Nelson, the chief technology officer at Lastwall, a cybersecurity provider of quantum resilient technology, told Business Insider that each company's announcement represents another building block that the industry will use along the way to a functioning quantum computer.

"There's lots of challenges ahead. What Amazon gained in error correction — and it has led to some new scientific knowledge and discoveries in error correction — was a trade-off for the complexity and the sophistication of the control systems and the readouts from the chip," Nelson said. "We're still in prototype days, and we still have multiple years to go, but they've made a great leap forward."

• In a Wednesday memo, Trump administration officials advanced a plan for federal staff reductions.
• The memo said departments across agencies should prepare to cut staff and reorganize by March 13.
• Federal workers told BI they were frustrated but not surprised by the planned restructuring.

President Donald Trump's administration officially announced its plan for federal staff reductions in a Wednesday memo, telling agencies to prepare to cut staff and reorganize their departments by March 13.

Federal workers who spoke with Business Insider after the memo was announced said the move was "crazy and illogical." Still, some were determined to continue working until they were removed from office.

The memo, sent by the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management, didn't identify specific targets for cutbacks, which they described as advancing the White House DOGE office efficiency initiatives. But during a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Trump suggested as an example that as much as 65% of staff at the Environmental Protection Agency could be cut.

"As outlined in yesterday's memo to agencies, this administration has created a thoughtful, phased process to carry out workforce restructuring that will reduce unnecessary waste and bloat while continuing to deliver high-quality services to the American people," an OPM spokesperson said in a statement.

Representatives for the White House and OMB didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from BI.

"I think what is going on is unfair to us. I have been told my job is exempt, but I truly don't believe it," an employee from the Department of Veterans Affairs said. "I know that we are shorthanded but also don't trust the government or my supervisors here. I have seen nothing in writing. That scares me also."

One NASA employee described it as "ungenerous to the point of cruelty."

"Not only do they want people to lose their jobs, they want them to lose their jobs quickly," they said.

Another longtime federal worker, meanwhile, told BI they had "no faith that this will be fair or measured."

The memo outlines a timeline for most agencies — with exemptions for federal law enforcement, military, border security, and US Postal Service employees — to prepare and execute a layoff and reorganization strategy. Agencies must submit their restructuring plans by March 13 and "outline a positive vision for more productive, efficient agency operations" by April 14, with an implementation deadline in September.

"My thought is, "Will I be out of a job come April?" one Department of Defense employee said. "At this point, conversations revolve around, if I exit the workforce, will I reenter it? As a military spouse, that is not a given."

"Throwing military families into financially unstable situations is a great way to thank them for their service — and their votes," the employee added.

The memo also requires field office operations to be consolidated or closed, which one employee of the Social Security Administration said would impact frontline offices that handle claims and issue Social Security cards, as well as disability hearing offices that handle appeals of unfavorable decisions in disability cases.

"So, the people who complain about long wait times and nobody answering the phone are talking about those entities, maybe there are a lot of layers of bureaucracy above us, but those exist to provide support for us frontline people," the Social Security Administration employee said. "This is crazy and illogical, motivated by a blind, stupid hatred of the public sector as a whole."

An Internal Revenue Service employee told BI that "it will take years, if not decades, to fully recover" from the federal government cuts.

"Americans are going to feel this very deeply," they said. "Services are going to be nonexistent."

An employee from the Department of Housing and Urban Development said they were prepared to be moved to a different department after a meeting with their supervisor about the memo.

"There's so much confusion — respond to the productivity email, don't respond, and now being told to get ready to move departments — I see how this Elon tactic can mentally drain you because this week was so hard to log in and be productive," the HUD worker said.

The restructuring memo came just days after the White House DOGE office sent a weekend email asking all federal employees to list what work tasks they had accomplished last week, prompting confusion among some employees about how and whether to reply outside their chain of command.

While some federal workers who previously spoke with BI said the confusion created by the emails and subsequent conflicting guidance from department heads had caused them to reconsider their work in the government, others said they were resolved to stick it out.

"I've never seen morale so low in my 18 years of service," an employee from the Bureau of Reclamation said, adding that they "believe we are witnessing the final days" of their agency.

Still, they said they saw their department's work protecting water resources as essential for the country and had no plans of stopping unless they were forced out of public service.

"They'll have to fire me," they said.

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• Federal workers were emailed Saturday with a request to list productivity details from their week.
• Elon Musk said that those who don't reply by 11:59 p.m. on Monday will have forfeited their role.
• Many federal employees told BI they feel frustrated by the request. Some have already been told not to respond.

Several federal workers across agencies told Business Insider they're frustrated and scared for their jobs after Elon Musk said they must email their work accomplishments or risk losing their jobs.

Some say they're skeptical of the ramifications — others have been told not to respond.

The productivity-tracking email, sent Saturday afternoon from an HR account in the Office of Personnel Management, followed President Donald Trump's request that Musk "get more aggressive." It's the latest of DOGE's sweeping initiatives that have resulted in mass firings, funding pauses, and work stoppages in departments and agencies across the federal government.

Musk, the face of the White House DOGE office, teased that the email would be forthcoming in a post on X Saturday, writing: "Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation."

"It's terrible," one Department of Education employee whose work has been slowed by executive orders and layoffs said. "It feels like harassment, especially sending it out on a Saturday and boasting about it in advance on X so that everyone could be checking their email afternoon in anticipation of its arrival."

Another federal employee — from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — said they "can only imagine how many people they'll fire based on the responses/non-responses to this."

An additional employee wondered "how much money is being wasted" on having federal employees respond to the email, while yet another questioned who would review the replies.

A probationary federal worker told BI that they agreed with the need to cut waste, but felt that "taking a sledgehammer" to federal agencies isn't the best way to approach the issue.

"As part of the Trump Administration's commitment to an efficient and accountable federal workforce, OPM is asking employees to provide a brief summary of what they did last week by the end of Monday, CC'ing their manager," an Office of Personnel Management spokesperson confirmed to BI in a statement. "Agencies will determine any next steps."

Many of the federal workers who spoke with BI said that hours after the DOGE email had been sent, they had still not received any communication from their supervisors regarding how or whether to respond.

"No idea how to respond being as this is from outside our chain of command," one federal worker told BI.

Others said they had been instructed by their union representatives or managers to wait for further direction before replying.

"Once again, agencies were caught off guard by these emails, just like the chaotic "Fork in the Road" email," the National Treasury Employees Union wrote in an email to its members, urging them not to respond until they receive further guidance. "This email is yet another attempt by the administration to scare hardworking civil servants who deliver for the American people every day. It is shameful. We will update you soon."

The American Federation of Government Employees said in a Sunday letter to the OPM that the email "fails to identify any legal authority permitting OPM to demand the requested information."

"Federal employees report to their respective agencies through their established chains of command; they do not report to OPM," the AFGE letter reads. "The email was nothing more than an irresponsible and sophomoric attempt to create confusion and bully the hard-working federal employees that serve our country."

The productivity email that was sent to federal workers did not include Musk's comment on X that employees who did not respond by the Monday night deadline would be considered as having resigned. Several workers who saw his post said they wondered whether that would be possible — or legal.

"I question whether them firing people based on a nonresponse to this would be legal," the Department of Education employee said. "There are a number of agencies, like DOJ, which has attorney-client privilege, or DHS, which engages with national security topics, where people will surely be told by supervisors not to respond."

Some of the federal workers who spoke to Business Insider had resolved not to respond. Others, disheartened by the aggressive funding and job cuts propelled by the White House DOGE office, said they had begun looking for other work even if they didn't believe they'd be fired.

A member of the Department of Health and Human Services' Disaster Medical Assistance Team, part time disaster workers who respond to federal disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes, suggested they might resign either way.

"I have another job like the rest of us and I don't need this type of stress," the DMAT member said. "Maybe I'll just resign."

The employee said they're part of a group of people that thrives "in stressful situations," but that the stress of having their job in limbo "is different."

Are you a federal employee who received this email? Share your thoughts by using a non-work device to email [email protected] and [email protected].

• Sam Altman, in a Saturday post on X, announced his baby had been born "early."
• The newborn will be "in the NICU for awhile," the OpenAI CEO said, but added, "he is doing well."
• "I have never felt such love," Altman wrote.

Sam Altman has welcomed a baby, he announced Saturday in a post on X.

"welcome to the world, little guy!" the OpenAI head wrote, alongside a close-up photo of the newborn, with the baby's hand grasping an adult's finger.

"He came early and is going to be in the nicu for awhile," Altman continued, referring to the neonatal intensive care unit, where newborns receive specialized medical treatment after birth. "He is doing well and it's really nice to be in a little bubble taking care of him. i have never felt such love."

Altman, who is married to software engineer Oliver Mulherin, hasn't said if he plans to take paternity leave, but the new addition comes at a busy time for the OpenAI leader. The artificial intelligence company is in the middle of a significant transition from a nonprofit entity, having announced plans in December to transfer control of daily operations to its for-profit subsidiary. The move has attracted legal challenges from OpenAI's competitor, Elon Musk.

Representatives for OpenAI declined to comment on the birth when reached by Business Insider.

In a January 6 episode of the Re:Thinking podcast hosted by Adam Grant, Altman said he was expecting a child, adding that children in the future will never know a world without AI that's smarter than they are.

"And that'll be natural," Altman told Grant. "And, of course, it's smarter than us. Of course, it can do things we can't, but also who really cares? I think it's only weird for us in this one transition time."

The birth announcement quickly made waves through the tech world, with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sending well wishes in a response on X, writing: "My heartfelt congratulations, @sama! Parenthood is one of life's most profound and rewarding experiences. Wishing you and your family the very best."

Altman and Mulherin married in January 2024 in an intimate ceremony. The pair, who live together in San Francisco, have led a relatively private relationship, making one of their first public appearances in 2023 when the OpenAI CEO brought Mulherin to a White House dinner.

In a September 2023 interview with New York Magazine, Altman said that the pair planned to have kids soon.

• The White House DOGE office is continuing to crack down on federal employees.
• On Saturday, federal workers got an email asking them to list what they accomplished last week.
• Some federal workers told BI they weren't sure how to respond, given work stoppage orders.

The White House DOGE office had an email sent to federal employees on Saturday asking them to list what work they accomplished in the last week.

The subject of the email, which was seen by Business Insider, read, "What did you do last week?"

"Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager," the message sent from the OPM's HR email address reads. "Please do not send any classified information, links, or attachments. Deadline is the Monday at 11:59pmEST."

The emails followed President Donald Trump's instruction to Elon Musk to "get more aggressive" in reducing the size of the federal bureaucracy. Musk had teased that the emails would be forthcoming in a subsequent post on X, writing: "Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation," but the email received by employees did not detail any potential consequences for failing to reply by the deadline.

One Department of Education employee whose work has been affected by executive orders and layoffs told Business Insider that they planned to check in with their supervisor before responding to the email and were uncertain how to reply.

"Everything I normally do is on hold because they are reviewing it so I'm at a total work stoppage," the Department of Education employee said. "I could go into everything I normally do that they are currently holding up. Another approach would be not to respond."

Are you a federal employee who received this email from the DOGE office? Tell the reporters of this article how you plan to respond by using a non-work device to email [email protected] and [email protected].

The email also confounded and frustrated other federal employees who spoke to Business Insider.

"No idea how to respond being as this is from outside our chain of command," one federal worker told BI. "This is pure harassment."

Another federal employee — from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — said they "can only imagine how many people they'll fire based on the responses/non-responses to this."

"I'm not running cover for this horseshit," one employee of the Federal Communications Commission told BI.

In just a matter of weeks, Trump and the White House DOGE office have gone full steam ahead to reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy.

About 77,000 federal workers accepted the buyouts Trump offered shortly after he took office for his second term. The administration has laid off scores of workers at the US Agency for International Development, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and other key agencies. Several top-level officials who initially pushed back against Musk's efforts have now resigned or retired.

DOGE on Thursday said it had so far saved $55 billion in taxpayer dollars, largely through canceled contracts.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

• In a Friday ruling Judge Carl Nichols allowed President Donald Trump to resume putting USAID employees on leave.
• Nichols reversed a prior order halting the plans, saying the plaintiffs "overstated" the need for intervention.
• USAID workers may still prevail as the case progresses, but the agency is left gutted for now.

After being targeted in the DOGE office's efforts to cut federal spending and root out waste, USAID on Friday lost a major court battle, leaving the international aid agency gutted while legal challenges play out.

US District Judge Carl Nichols, in his Friday ruling, allowed President Donald Trump's staff reductions at USAID to proceed, reversing his prior order to halt them pending a request for a temporary injunction brought by the American Federation of Government Employees, a union that represents about 800,000 federal workers, and the American Foreign Service Association.

Nichols had previously issued a temporary restraining order in the case, forcing the staff reductions to stop while he considered the plaintiffs' argument that an agency shutdown and the immediate recall of international employees back to the US would cause irreparable harm to the employees and their families, who are stationed abroad in service of the agency's humanitarian missions.

"The Court was concerned by this alleged harm when issuing the TRO: it observed that recalling employees on such short notice could subject them to non-financial injuries—like harms to the continuity of their healthcare and their children's education—that no future lawsuit could redress," Nichols wrote in his Friday ruling. "But again, the government's subsequent submissions have convinced the Court that plaintiffs' initial assertions of harm were overstated."

While the USAID workers may still prevail as the case progresses through court — some legal scholars have argued Trump's cuts to federal agencies are "flatly illegal" — the rescinded temporary restraining order leaves the aid agency with the bulk of its US employees on administrative leave.

"We are disappointed in today's decision and believe the harms faced by USAID workers are real," Skye Perryman, CEO of Democracy Forward, the legal services firm representing the USAID workers, said in a statement. "We remain confident that the court will find the administration's efforts to decimate USAID contrary to law. We will continue to pursue all legal options in this case in order to ensure the safety of Americans at home and abroad."

Representatives for the White House and the plaintiffs' legal team did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

• Lawyers for Charlie Javice on Friday moved for a mistrial in her fraud case.
• Defense argued her right to a fair trial was "compromised" after opening statements were shortened.
• Prosecutors allege Javice defrauded JPMorgan Chase before it bought her student aid startup, Frank.

Lawyers for Charlie Javice on Friday moved for a mistrial in the fraud case against her, arguing her right to a fair trial had been "irreparably compromised."

Her lawyers argued that Javice's right to a fair trial was compromised when the judge unexpectedly ordered her defense counsel's opening statement to be shortened, which they called a violation of her Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights.

"Our motion for a mistrial was based on the fundamental principle that Ms. Javice has a constitutional right to a fair trial, which includes adequate time for her counsel to present a full and complete opening statement," a representative for Javice's legal team told Business Insider. "The abrupt and unexplained reduction in our time significantly hindered our ability to provide the jury with a clear and comprehensive presentation of the facts and legal arguments central to this case."

In addition to having the defense's opening statement cut short, Javice's lawyers argue that the court misstated jury instructions regarding the elements of wire fraud, which prejudiced them against the defendant.

The court told the jury that, in order to convict on the wire and bank fraud charges facing Javice, the government has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Javice made intentional false and misleading statements with the intention to deceive, her lawyers say.

However, her lawyers argued in their motion for a mistrial that the court did not adequately inform the jury panel about a key element of the law, which requires the government to prove any false statements amounted to material misrepresentations — a higher legal standard requiring the prosecutors to prove a reasonable person would have been convinced to act due to the false claims and that the false claims were relied on when deciding to enter the deal.

"To guarantee Ms. Javice's Fifth Amendment rights, a mistrial is the only appropriate remedy," the motion from Javice's attorneys says.

The mistrial motion stems from the trial's opening statements, which began Thursday in the fraud case against Javice and her Olivier Amar, who prosecutors say defrauded JPMorgan Chase before it bought the student aid startup.

Javice and Amar are charged with bank fraud, securities fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud after prosecutors say they exaggerated the customer base of their student loan-focused fintech startup in an effort to trick the bank into buying it.

JPMorgan Chase bought Frank in 2021 for $175 million after Javice and Amar said the company had more than 4 million users — a number that prosecutors now argue had been artificially inflated.

Representatives for the US Attorney's Office Southern District of New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• The celebrity video messaging company Cameo is giving workers $10,000 raises to return to the office.
• CEO Steven Galanis said the raise and other perks have boosted productivity and recruitment efforts.
• Galanis told BI that coming to the office requires more of workers, so it "makes sense" to pay more.

The celebrity video messaging company Cameo this week rolled out $10,000 raises for employees returning to work in-office four days a week at its Chicago headquarters.

CEO Steven Galanis told Business Insider the raises and other perks announced this week — such as catered lunch, paid parking, and a free gym membership — have immediately boosted productivity and recruitment efforts.

Chicago-based workers all attended the first four required days in office without absences, they completed more sales outreach together in just a few days than they had in the previous six months, and the move has helped them recruit new employees, he said.

"It's been pretty amazing to watch the reception that we've seen from applicants," Galanis said. "People are coming out of the woodwork that want to work for us now, and ex-employees want to come back, which is awesome."

Cameo, which has gone through three rounds of highly publicized and contentious layoffs since the COVID-19 pandemic, now employs 50 people, with about half living in the Chicago area, Galanis said.

Those who don't live within commuting distance of Chicago aren't eligible for the raise unless they move there, and will not be required to report to the office, he said. If Cameo sets up satellite locations in other cities in the future, Galanis said the option for an in-office work raise would apply to them, as well.

Galanis said he believes the company thrives on in-office brainstorming and participation, but he wanted to try to lure his workers back into the company headquarters organically.

"We really wanted this to be a FOMO-inducing perk versus a punishment," Galanis said."I believe if we're requiring you to come in four days a week, we are literally asking more out of you than if you didn't have to. So, to me, if we're asking more out of you, it totally makes sense that we should pay you more."

The $10,000 raise stands in contrast to other companies' RTO mandates, though Galanis said he has a preference for in-office collaboration shared by many top executives.

JPMorgan Chase's CEO, Jamie Dimon, last week made headlines for a viral, expletive-laden rant against working from home. In it, he said he didn't care how many of the banking giant's employees signed a petition against its five-day return-to-office mandate that takes effect next month.

"Don't waste time on it," Dimon said. "I don't care how many people sign that f—ing petition."

Other major companies, such as Starbucks, have threatened employees with termination if they refuse to comply with RTO orders, Bloomberg first reported in October.

Still, some major return-to-office rollouts have been bumpy. As Business Insider previously reported, Amazon delayed its RTO initiative for some employees because it didn't have enough workspace for returning employees.

Galanis said he understands the vitriol over working from home espoused by some executives — "what Jamie said is something that myself and many other CEOs have felt before or talked about behind closed doors," he said — and he gets the need for some extra large companies to be more strict in their approach to returning to the office. That just wasn't for him, he said.

"I can't judge what's the right thing for another company's culture," Galanis said. "But I know the way our company is, and I know how much we cherish our employees and so this, for us, was the right approach."

• George Youmans is a self-described amateur biohacker and the cofounder of Hiyo, a nonalcoholic tonic.
• Constellation Brands, the largest beer import company in the US, just acquired a minority stake in Hiyo.
• The nonalcoholic market is expanding, but customers want to feel different when they drink, Youmans said.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with George Youmans, cofounder of the social tonic Hiyo, a non-alcoholic beverage startup that recently partnered with Constellation Brands. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I cut my teeth out of college at Red Bull in their entertainment and music marketing division — it was awesome, but I had a bit of cognitive dissonance with the product itself.

I consider myself an amateur biohacker, so I'm very conscious about what I put in my body. Drinking Red Bulls all the time wasn't exactly what I wanted to be putting my time and effort into. I learned a lot working there, but ultimately, you want to be able to really believe in the brand that you're building, so there was a bit of a misalignment.

The idea for Hiyo came when one of my co-founders, Evan, and I were thinking through a bunch of different ideas around starting a company — he was getting his MBA at UCLA, and for the final project for his thesis, he had to start a business. During that period back in April 2019, we both had family members hospitalized with some alcohol-related issues.

It was a weird coincidence and, frankly, a pretty traumatic experience, but it caused us to cut back on our drinking out of solidarity with those family members. And as we did, we saw a pretty profound need for a product like Hiyo in our lives and in the lives of those we loved. The options were boring soda water and lime or sugary, syrupy mocktails — and those were not really leading to a healthier lifestyle.

A growing market for non-alcoholic drinks

It was obvious that there was a surging demand for high-end non-alcoholic drinks that didn't feel like a sacrifice, so we wanted to try to create an alternative to alcohol that you could be proud to hold. We wanted the flavor profiles to be complex and refreshing enough to deserve their place at that table when you usually have cocktails or full-bodied wines.

We also wanted a nutritional facts panel that felt guiltless, with all organic ingredients. Finally, it had to be functional. I think the main reason people drink is that they want to feel something; they want stress relief, to feel relaxed and social. So we tried to tap into those feelings by using adaptogens and nootropics.

We worked for a very long time to finalize that perfect stack of ingredients that elicited that feeling. For me, drinking Hiyo almost feels a little bit like a runner's high. I don't know exactly how to describe what I feel, but I know that I feel good, and it's pleasant, so we called it the "float." I think the functionality of the drink is such a critical piece of this because the world's f—ing stressful, and people need a way to unwind. We wanted to be able to provide a healthy version of that thing that we all need at the end of the week or the end of a long day.

A deal with Constellation Brands

We launched in May 2021. We grew 3 times in retail last year and are looking to double this year — and we've just announced a new deal with Constellation Brands.

I think what attracted Constellation to Hiyo is they're recognizing the shifting landscape of consumer behavior, with people drinking alcohol less often, and they're focused on really owning that celebration and that social occasion space.

People are looking to drink less, whether they're completely sober or they're moderating. About 87% of our customers are people who are just drinking less, not completely sober people, and I think Constellation saw us as one of — if not the — fastest-growing brands in our space.

Typically, when strategic investors come in at this stage, they're looking to potentially have a path toward an acquisition. Part of their investment is to help support that brand to accelerate its growth, and, in our case, Constellation has come out and said they want 25% of their portfolio to be non-alcoholic by around 2030. So we know they have that intentionality, and a big way they're going to do that is through the ventures group of the Constellation Brands team of finding great, younger, non-alcoholic brands — I'm just so proud Hiyo is one of them.