• The cost of a permit to climb Mount Everest will soon jump by 36%.
• A permit for the spring season will cost $15,000, up from $11,000.
• A veteran mountaineer says new prices will have little impact on people's desire to climb Everest.

Conquering Mount Everest is no easy feat for the body, mind — and the bank account.

Nepal plans to increase the price of Everest climbing permits by about 36% in the first rise for almost a decade.

Narayan Prasad Regmi, the director-general of Nepal's tourism department, told Reuters the fees "had not been reviewed for a long time. We have updated them now."

From September 1, foreigners must pay $15,000 for a climbing permit for the spring season, up from $11,00.

Permits for the less popular autumn and winter seasons will rise from $5,500 to $7,500 and $2,750 to $3,750 respectively.

The increases may be aimed at boosting Nepal's revenues, but if the intention is also to reduce the number of climbers on Everest, veteran mountaineers like Jake Meyer say it will have little impact.

Business Insider previously reported on the growing discontent in Nepal about the volume of climbers on Everest and all the trash they leave behind.

In 2024, officials began requiring climbers to carry poop bags while scaling the mountain.

"Chances are that the price increases are extremely unlikely to reduce numbers on the mountain," Meyer, who has climbed Everest twice, told Business Insider via email. "There remains an ever-increasing interest by 'climbers' from across the globe to attempt to summit the highest mountain in the world."

Meyer, who compares the costs of climbing Everest to "buying a new car," also said the price hikes may seem significant but only represent "an equivalent average increase of 3.5% a year over the last 10 years."

As the full cost of Everest expeditions can range from $40,000 to $150,000, he said new permit prices might only raise the total price of the cheapest expeditions by 10%.

Meyer added: "What is still very clear is that the 'cheaper' your ticket to climb, the higher the likelihood of death." That's a reference to the number of deaths over the past two years involving climbers or guides on relatively cheaper expeditions.

"The sad reality is that it's often the most inexperienced climbers who sign up for lowest-cost services, which are the ones which essentially require the most self-sufficiency."

• Sweden uses nighttime satellite photos to gauge Russia's economic health, said its economic minister.
• Elisabeth Svantesson said the inflation figures from Russia's central bank are an understatement.
• Images of Moscow before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine are noticeably brighter, she said.

The declining health of Russia's economy is as clear as day — or night, a finance minister said Wednesday.

Elisabeth Svantesson, the finance minister of Sweden, said she and her officials are skeptical of how Russia's official figures describe its economy.

One measure they use instead, she said at a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, was comparing photos of Moscow by night.

The lights there, she said, were darker in 2023 than in 2021, showing a capital and a nation in trouble.

Business Insider found some public photos showing the Moscow skyline in the years Svantesson mentioned. Here is one from March 2021:

And another from November 2023:

It's hard to make a precise comparison — the time of day and cloud cover are different.

But in the 2023 image, the pools of light showing Moscow's suburbs so appear larger and more frequent in the pre-invasion image.

"It's very clear that the Russian economy is definitely not as strong as Putin wants us to believe," Svantesson said.

She said that Moscow's inflation is "much higher than the public figure says." Russia's most recent figure puts it at 9.5%, which Svantesson said was out of kilter with its main interest rate of 21%.

She also said levels of capital leaving Russia suggested a struggling economy, as do the space photos of Moscow.

"There is over Moscow, for example, a much darker picture," she said.

"They're not using as much electricity," said the panel moderator, Ravi Agrawal, the editor in chief of Foreign Policy.

"No, no, no. It's much darker," Svantesson said.

Western countries imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia in the wake of its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, mostly designed to cut off the oil and gas exports crucial to its economy.

The Kremlin claims it has withstood the worst potential effects of the sanctions. Per Svantesson, that vision of a strong economy is a tactic, to convince Ukraine and its allies that sanctions don't work.

"We don't know," the true state of Russia's economy, she concluded. "But what we know is that his narrative and his truth is not true."

• I had dinner at Gordon Ramsay Steak, located inside the Paris Las Vegas Hotel and Casino.
• The wagyu filet was cooked perfectly, and the mac and cheese was full of flavor.
• I'd definitely recommend dining at the Gordon Ramsay restaurant for great food and an upscale vibe.

As someone who has been living in Las Vegas for almost 20 years, I'm always asked about the best places to eat.

Recently though, I decided to take a chance on a restaurant I'd never been to — Gordon Ramsay Steak at the Paris Las Vegas Hotel and Casino.

The steakhouse chain, which now has six locations in cities like Baltimore, Vancouver, and Kansas City, first opened in Las Vegas in 2012. Here's what our experience at the celebrity-chef-owned restaurant was like.

I visited the restaurant on a Thursday evening.

After making a reservation on the restaurant's website, I visited Gordon Ramsay Steak for dinner on a Thursday.

Once I arrived, I was seated almost immediately. As I walked through the red, neon tunnel into the restaurant, the hostess explained that the entrance was meant to be an artistic representation of the Channel Tunnel connecting England to France.

The restaurant's interior was trendy and elegant.

The steakhouse is laid out in a two-story tiered design. My table was on the second floor and had an amazing view of the rest of the restaurant, including the iconic Union Jack flag painted on the ceiling and a neon-red chandelier.

I later learned the red lighting fixture was designed to represent Chef Ramsay's hands as he cooks.

I started with the warm breads and spreads.

Although all the starters sounded incredible, I decided to try the warm breads and spreads ($17). The dish came with a baguette, a triangle of crunchy lavash bread, and a fluffy roll that was half honey whole wheat and half French onion.

It also came with chimichurri oil, English butter, and another butter made with beef fat and red wine. Both butters were topped with Hawaiian lava salts.

I loved the variety of breads and tried them all with each spread. The baguette, however, was my favorite.

For my entrée, I ordered the wagyu filet, which was cooked perfectly.

Everything on the menu sounded delicious, but there was no way I was going to a steakhouse and ordering anything but a steak. So, I opted for the wagyu filet.

The presentation was beautiful, with a swirl of red-wine reduction and a pyramid of mustard seeds on the plate.

The filet was seared perfectly on the outside and was cooked to a buttery-soft rare temperature on the inside. In my opinion, the 8-ounce filet was well worth the hefty $105 price tag.

The mac and cheese made a delicious side.

Along with my steak, I ordered the mac and cheese, which the waitress said was the most popular side.

The description on the menu sounded delicious, and it also felt like the most robust choice, since all the sides were $19 each.

The amount of flavor in the dish blew me away. Mac and cheese is usually on the heavier side, but it was surprisingly light despite having bacon, smoked jalapeño cream, onion jam, smoked Gouda, and white cheddar packed in with the noodles.

The bacon added texture to the dish, and the jalapeño cream and onion jam added bursts of flavor. The breadcrumbs on top gave it just the right amount of crunch, making the dish immensely satisfying.

I would highly recommend dining at Gordon Ramsay Steak.

From start to finish, my experience at Gordon Ramsay Steak was top-notch. The staff was friendly, attentive, and knowledgeable about the menu and the restaurant.

I would definitely go again, if for no other reason than to make sure I save room for the delicious-looking sticky toffee pudding for dessert.

In my opinion, Gordon Ramsay Steak is the perfect choice if you're looking for an upscale restaurant with a trendy edge.

• Before having kids I was an editor at "Parenting" magazine and shared parenting advice.
• I thought I was ready to be a mom and used the techniques experts shared in our magazine.
• My kids did not respond to them, and that's OK because all kids are different.

Before I had kids, I was an editor at "Parenting" magazine, where I gave expert-backed advice on sleep training, potty training, and using training wheels on bikes. So, when I had my first child in 2014, I thought I was well-trained.

A couple of years later, I became the editor in chief of "Working Mother" magazine — and a mom of two. Now that my boys are ages 6 and 10, I can safely say that the advice I printed on those pages has done little to help me successfully parent my sons.

Parenting is not so simple

For instance, we gave an oft-repeated tip in "Parenting." "If your child is having trouble picking what they want, or you need them to do something they're refusing to do, give your kid two choices you can live with. They'll happily pick one because they'll feel like they're in control without being overwhelmed." So I felt like a genius when I whipped out this old trick on my then-preschooler who wouldn't choose a meal at a restaurant.

"OK, you get to decide," I told my 3-year-old, ensuring he felt like he was in the driver's seat. "Do you want chicken nuggets or mac and cheese?" I envisioned being met with a wide smile and sheer elation to have a mother so well-versed in child psychology, followed by a definitive choice and contented peace.

The reality was far different. And louder.

"None of these!" my son shouted. Wails and flails followed. We had to cool off with a walk outside.

I tried this trick many more times on both kids. After all, I promised others it'd work. "Do you want to bring a pretend ice cube or an Indiana state magnet for I day for show and tell?" "Do you want to wear your green or black jacket?" "Do you want to hop into day care or tiptoe in?"

"None of these!" "None of these!" "None of these! (I had to stifle the urge to squeeze in a grammar lesson: "You mean neither of these.")

My kids did the opposite of what I thought they'd do

As the kids got older, I imparted wisdom ripped from the magazines, like telling them, "We don't talk about other people's bodies." Surely, my oldest would wind up being one of the good guys, given how often we discussed this.

On the last day of summer camp, a director called to say my 10-year-old was part of a group of boys who told a girl she'd break the trampoline because she was so big. Cue my shock and horror. My former fat self couldn't look at my son that night — probably not the most successful parenting strategy either.

We've given our kids chores, as I'd always written parents should do. The idea is to foster responsibility and instill confidence. Instead, there are weekly screaming matches about bringing out the trash. The tantrums over child labor subside more quickly when I up my firstborn's allowance. We've gone from a dollar for garbage schlepping to $5. I'm sure an expert I've quoted in articles would tell me I'm teaching my kids to throw a fit when they don't get their way. I'm also sure they've never seen the depths of destruction my 5'1 tween is capable of when he doesn't want to do something without pay.

Kids can suck sometimes

Now that I'm a decade into parenting, and not just a parenting editor, I know at least some of this is to be expected — and at least some of this isn't my fault. Every kid sucks a little. And some kids (like mine) can suck a lot.

But my kids aren't me, nor are they always a reflection of my parenting. They sometimes can't control their stupid impulses. Not everything I teach them sinks in. Besides, not every tip in parenting magazines applies to every kid anyway. Plus, parenting advice is more likely to work in a vacuum, not a desperate moment when a parent needs to do whatever it takes to calm their child.

So, I'm focusing on little wins. We recently had excellent parent-teacher conferences. My kids are usually kind to their classmates and try to be helpful. If our children are progressing toward being useful more than they're hurtful, then we parents are all doing something right. Even if we don't feel like the paragons of success magazine editors like me led us to believe we could become.

• Todd Fox founded Close Protection Corps and provides protective services, assessments, and training.
• The Marine veteran started the business in the 1990s doing ad hoc bodyguard trips to Mexico.
• Fox shares what it takes to protect C-suite execs and reflects on the UnitedHealthcare shooting.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Todd Fox, the 50-year-old CEO of Close Protection Corps about his work as a bodyguard for high-profile clients. He has no affiliation or direct involvement with UnitedHealthcare's security operation. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

In the late '90s, I came out of active duty in the Marine Corps to start my own private security business, Close Protection Corps, specializing in working with celebrities, dignitaries, and C-suite executives.

I did the bulk of my "on-ground" close protection of C-suite individuals from 1999 up until the COVID-19 pandemic while also managing my company. Now, I primarily spend my time consulting and training.

I've followed the news about the UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting. Since the event, representatives from corporations have contacted us to assess their security programs. It's been a wake-up call for companies.

I started my own company after doing stints as a bodyguard

I joined the Marine Corps in 1992. I was based in California and trained in combat, riflery, and fitness, as well as general orders relative to security, like learning to protect a convoy or individual and plan for advanced military operations.

While a Marine, I was also a professional MMA fighter in LA. I would meet actors, producers, and directors in the gym or while working on sets as an advisor.

These people in the industry knew about my fighting skills, military background and that I could speak Spanish. They would sometimes ask me to work as their bodyguard and accompany them to Mexico on their vacations or work trips.

In 1999, Guy Ritchie was training at my gym in LA. He was dating Madonna at the time and asked if I'd join her security team so he could keep training with me while she was on tour. It was around this time that I started my company, Close Protection Corps. We provide protective services, assessments, and training.

Protecting a C-suite executive looks different from protecting a celebrity

When I start working with a close protection client, I initially collected information about the principal, or client: what is important to them, what sways them to make decisions, and what might make them vulnerable.

I then built a plan or structure of protection. It would cover their home, office, and vehicles, especially considering spaces that are exposed — such as the walk from the car to the office. I'd think about where their weaknesses were and try to "harden the target" by limiting exposure to risks.

On the job, I would be constantly aware of what is not normal compared to what is normal.

If I noticed something out of the ordinary — an anomaly — I'd evaluate whether it was benign or critical. If it was critical, then I'd make a choice. Maybe we'd change or modify our initial plan or behavior, cancel operations, or evacuate.

I'd wake up before the principal and meet them at the start of their day with a driver. In most cases, there'd be a second man, the advance guy, who'd go before us to check the environment we were heading into. I'd spend the rest of my day going wherever the principal went.

When the principal went to bed, I'd plan for the next day. I typically only got between four and six hours of sleep and worked 16 to 18 hours each day. It was very busy, and you see a lot of burnout.

C-suite individuals are extremely wealthy and will ultimately do what they want to do. They may not stick to the plan I set, so I'd put measures in place if things didn't go as planned.

When I was protecting a C-suite individual, my life became their life. I saw what they saw and heard what they heard. It's why NDAs and discretion are so important with bodyguards — we have access to things we shouldn't have access to, but there's no way around it.

C-suite individuals tend to be on the go, on private jets, in hotels and restaurants, and at speaking engagements. There's a lot of movement, and we move with them.

Protecting a celebrity requires even more fluidity. They don't have the same structured world that a business leader does and change plans on a whim. It can be challenging to create order. As a broad stroke, it's easier to find the baseline and anomalies for C-suite executives than it is for celebrities.

The UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting should be a wake-up call

When Brian Thompson arrived at that building, which was an expected plan, there appeared to be no one to advance the site he'd be arriving at, to receive him, or to look out for people who were acting weird or doing odd things that would have been concerning indicators.

Since the shooting, we've had large corporations' executive assistants and operations managers contact us to assess their existing in-house security programs.

I think the shooting was a wake-up call for companies. They need to protect their chief assets — their people — and if there's any known or documented threat or risk, it's overwhelmingly worth it to have security in place. The knowledge someone like a CEO has is worth the cost of a security protection team.

Editor's note: In response to a request for comment from Business Insider, a UnitedHealth Group spokesperson shared the following:

"We appreciate the media's interest in the real security threat that sensationalist media coverage can pose, but publishing an interview with a security expert lacking actual knowledge of the facts is simply another example of just that."

• A Swiss International Air Lines pilot started feeling unwell mid-journey.
• The flight from Zurich to Miami then turned around over the Atlantic.
• A return flight from Florida to Switzerland was also canceled because the aircraft was diverted.

Swiss International Air Lines passengers endured a four-hour flight to nowhere after a pilot fell ill.

Two hours after flight LX66 left Zurich for Miami on Monday, it U-turned over the Atlantic Ocean about 300 miles off the French coast, according to Flightradar24 data.

"One of the pilots did not feel fully fit after starting the flight," an airline spokesperson told Business Insider. "As a precautionary measure, the cockpit crew decided not to continue the flight and instead returned to Zurich Airport."

There were 123 passengers on board the flight, which landed back in Zurich at 2:24 p.m. local time — some four hours after departure.

The Swiss spokesperson added that the fire department was standing by, which was standard procedure given that the Airbus A330 was landing at a higher-than-normal weight.

The aircraft had enough fuel for a 10-hour flight, but lacked a fuel-dump system.

A diverted flight is not only frustrating for the passengers on board, but can also have knock-on effects on other journeys. People scheduled to fly on the same A330 from Miami to Zurich later on Monday had their flight canceled.

"We have rebooked the affected passengers onto alternative connections and would like to sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused," the airline spokesperson said.

They added that Swiss would cover expenses for passengers' hotel accommodations, taxi rides, meals, and phone calls until the next possible departure, rebook free of charge, or cancel the trip with a full refund.

• Airlines are facing a growing headache over rocket launches after Starship's fiery lift-off last week.
• Elon Musk's mega-rocket exploded over the Turks and Caicos islands, sparking airspace closures and widespread chaos.
• Experts told BI it's a sign of things to come, with the new commercial space race threatening more disruption for airlines.

Elon Musk celebrated Starship's explosive launch last week, writing on X that "entertainment is guaranteed." For some pilots and passengers, it was anything but entertaining.

Dramatic videos and images posted on social media showed fiery trails of debris streaking across the sky near the Turks and Caicos islands, minutes after the upper stage of SpaceX's mammoth Starship rocket exploded shortly after launching for the seventh time on Thursday.

The rocket's "rapid unscheduled disassembly" sparked chaos as some airspace throughout the Caribbean was closed for an hour and a half.

The Federal Aviation Administration activated a Debris Response Area, which it said is only used if a space vehicle's debris falls outside identified hazard areas.

Numerous flights entered holding patterns, circling around as they waited for the debris to pass.

Four Delta Air Lines flights diverted for refueling purposes due to the closed airspace, an airline spokesperson told Business Insider. Flights from JetBlue and Amazon Air were also among those forced to unexpectedly change course, as the FAA warned there was a risk of being hit by chunks of Elon Musk's rocket as it fell to Earth.

"SpaceX had a rocket launch and, uh, it didn't go so well," relayed one air traffic controller, per an audio recording archived by LiveATC.net. One pilot reported seeing "a major streak (of debris) going from at least 60 miles, with all these different colors."

As the chaos set in, pilots complained to air traffic control and expressed concerns about fuel levels. One pilot from Spanish airline Iberia appeared to run out of patience, declaring mayday so he could pass through the debris response area and land in Puerto Rico.

Those not already heading to Puerto Rico couldn't divert there, as one controller explained there was no parking space due to congestion, per LiveATC.net.

"It's been a rough day today," he added.

Rockets and planes face off

The incident — which saw the FAA launch an investigation and temporarily ground future Starship launches — is the latest disruption airlines have faced as a result of space launch activities.

Earlier this month, the Australian flag carrier Qantas spoke out about the disruption it has faced due to SpaceX.

It said it had to delay several flights between Johannesburg and Sydney due to the re-entry of SpaceX rockets over "an extensive area" of the southern Indian Ocean.

While the booster, or first stage, of a Falcon 9 is reusable, the upper stage is disposed of in the ocean. Qantas is asking SpaceX to be more precise with the areas and timings for such events.

Disruption has also occurred in both directions.

SpaceX was preparing to launch a Falcon 9 rocket on Sunday morning but called off the launch with just 11 seconds to go. The incident was put down to an aircraft possibly encroaching on the launch zone, though it remains unclear which aircraft, if any, was to blame.

Space race puts airlines under pressure

Airlines and rocket companies will likely find themselves sharing the sky even more in the coming years as the commercial space race heats up.

Hours before Starship's fiery demise, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin successfully launched its giant New Glenn rocket for the first time.

The Amazon cofounder's rocket company joins a handful of rivals, including SpaceX and startup Rocket Lab, in successfully reaching orbit. All three companies are planning to dramatically increase the number of launches in the coming years, with SpaceX potentially planning as many as 25 Starship launches and 180 Falcon 9 launches in 2025.

"The problem is there because we have also not only an increase in the number of launches, but also an increase in the number of entities with launch capabilities," Luciano Anselmo, an aerospace engineer at the Space Flight Dynamics Laboratory in Pisa, Italy, told BI.

"Just coordinating all these different actors is quite demanding. The system as it is up to now is under a little bit of stress," he said.

Anselmo added that the increased cadence of launches and the inherent riskiness of the space industry mean further incidents like the Starship explosion are unavoidable.

Ewan Wright, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of British Columbia who studies space debris, told Business Insider that unplanned disruption from rocket explosions and controlled re-entries of upper-stage rockets, such as the Falcon 9, can have a significant economic impact on airlines, with delays and diversions in the air more costly than those on the ground.

Out of control

The bigger concern for Wright and Anselmo, however, is uncontrolled entries — large satellites or rockets that are left abandoned in orbit to plunge down to Earth at random.

Unlike controlled re-entries or debris falling from rockets that explode mid-flight, it is hard to predict where these objects might fall.

"The uncertainties are massive," said Wright, adding that forecasts are often so vague that they are "totally useless from an aviation perspective."

One such incident happened in 2022, when part of China's Long March 5B rocket made an uncontrolled re-entry into the atmosphere. In response, Spain briefly closed 100km of its airspace, although Italy and Portugal, which were also in the rocket's path, did not. Long March 5B eventually splashed down in the Pacific Ocean.

Although the individual chances of an aircraft being hit by a piece of debris from an uncontrolled re-entry are low, Anselmo said the risk of such an incident happening was starting to grow.

With the number of controlled and uncontrolled re-entries rising, Anselmo said regulators, launches, and airlines will eventually have to discuss who pays for the growing risk of disruption to commercial flights.

According to the Outer Space Treaty and Liability Convention, widely ratified agreements that form the basis of international space law, the "launching State" has absolute liability for any damage caused by falling space objects to the surface or to any aircraft. It is unclear whether that applies to travel disruption caused by such debris.

"If you do start closing airspace more and more frequently, then that is going to cost airlines money," said Wright.

"I think this is a sign of things to come. These things have a price and they will happen more frequently," he added.

• Some athletes who took podium spots at the Paris Olympics say their medals are deteriorating.
• Chaumet, a fine jewelry brand owned by LVMH, designed the medals.
• The International Olympic Committee said it will replace all "defective" medals.

All that glitters is not gold — and, as some athletes who competed in the Paris Olympics are finding out, even gold can lose its luster.

Since the 2024 Olympic Games last August, some Olympians who took home bronze, silver, and gold have taken to social media to complain that their medals are already showing signs of wear and tear.

They include French swimmers Clément Secchi and Yohann Ndoye Brouard, who posted photos on X of their gold medals in less-than-ideal shape in December.

"Paris 1924," Brouard wrote alongside crying face emojis in a post with images of his deteriorating gold medal.

The complaints mirror those of Team USA skateboarder Nyjah Huston. Shortly after the Games, he took to social media to show that his medal was already "looking rough."

"Olympic medals, we've got to step up the quality a little bit," Huston said in an Instagram story.

The medals were produced by the Monnaie de Paris, the French Mint, in partnership with the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Last week, the IOC said in a statement to France 24 that it was reviewing complaints and replacing "defective" medals.

In a statement to Business Insider, the Monnaie de Paris said it first received medal complaints in August, after which it "modified the varnish" used and "optimized its manufacturing process" to make them "more resistant to certain uses by athletes."

It also said it would replace and identically engrave "all damaged medals."

While the French Mint did not reveal the number of medals replaced, The New York Times reported on Tuesday that more than 100 athletes have issued complaints since the games.

Questions have also arisen for LVMH, the luxury conglomerate that partnered with the Olympics in 2024.

Ahead of the games, LVMH said that its fine jewelry brand Chaumet would design each medal — a task that the Maison embarked on with "creativity and passion," according to the LVMH website.

The Olympics marked one of the few highlights of 2024 for LVMH, a year in which its brands reported disappointing sales amid a widespread downturn in the luxury industry.

At the time, the Olympic partnership was a major marketing boost for LVMH, which — in light of the unfortunate medal situation — may no longer be the case.

This year is shaping up to be more promising for the French company. Its stock has risen sharply and and CEO Bernard Arnault's net worth is up almost $18 billion since January 1 to $194 billion, putting him in fifth place on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

LVMH and the IOC did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

• An AI startup in China just showed how it's closing the gap with America's top AI labs.
• Chinese startup DeepSeek released a new AI model on Monday that appears to rival OpenAI's o1.
• Its reasoning capabilities have stunned top American AI researchers.

Donald Trump started his new presidency by declaring America must lead the world. He just got a warning shot from an AI crack team in China that is ready to show US technological supremacy is not a given.

Meet DeepSeek, a Chinese startup spun off from a decade-old hedge fund that calculates shrewd trades with AI and algorithms. Its latest release, which came on Trump's inauguration day, has left much of America's top industry researchers stunned.

In a paper released Monday, DeepSeek unveiled a new flagship AI model called R1 that shows off a new level of "reasoning." Why it has left such a huge impression on AI experts in the US matters.

Some of Silicon Valley's most well-resourced AI labs have increasingly turned to "reasoning" as a frontier of research that can evolve their technology from a student-like level of intelligence to something that eclipses human intelligence entirely.

To accomplish this, OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and others have focused on ensuring models spend more time thinking before responding to a user query. It's an expensive, intensive process that demands a lot from the computing power buzzing underneath.

As a reminder, OpenAI fully released o1 — "models designed to spend more time thinking before they respond" — to a glowing reception in December after an initial release in September. DeepSeek's R1 shows just how quickly it can close the gap.

DeepSeek narrows the gap

What exactly does R1 do? For one, DeepSeek says R1 achieves "performance comparable to OpenAI o1 across math, code, and reasoning tasks."

Its research paper says that this is possible thanks to "pure reinforcement learning," a technique that Jim Fan, senior research manager at Nvidia, said was reminiscent of the secret behind making Google DeepMind's AlphaZero a master at games like Go and Chess from scratch, "without imitating human grandmaster moves first." "This is the most significant takeaway from the paper," he wrote on X.

DeepSeek, which launched in 2023, said in its paper that it did this because its goal was to explore the potential of AI to "develop reasoning capabilities without any supervised data." This is a common technique used by AI researchers. The company also said that an earlier version of R1, called R1-Zero, gave them an "aha moment" in which the AI "learns to allocate more thinking time to a problem to reevaluating its initial approach."

The end result offers what Wharton professor Ethan Mollick described as responses from R1 that read "like a human thinking out loud."

Notably, this level of transparency into the development of AI has been hard to come by in the notes published by companies like OpenAI when releasing models of a similar aptitude.

Nathan Lambert, a research scientist at the Allen Institute for AI, noted on Substack that R1's paper "is a major transition point in the uncertainty in reasoning model research" as "until now, reasoning models have been a major area of industrial research without a clear seminal paper."

Staying true to the open spirit, DeepSeek's R1 model, critically, has been fully open-sourced, having obtained an MIT license — the industry standard for software licensing.

Together, these elements of R1 provide complications to US players caught up in an AI arms race with China — Trump's main geopolitical rival — for a few reasons.

First, it shows that China can rival some of the top AI models in the industry and keep pace with cutting-edge developments coming out of Silicon Valley.

Second, open-sourcing highly advanced AI could also challenge companies that are seeking to make huge profits by selling their technology.

OpenAI, for instance, introduced a ChatGPT Pro plan in December that costs $200 per month. Its selling point was that it included "unlimited access" to its smartest model at the time, o1. If an open-source model offers similar capabilities for free, the incentive to buy a costly paid subscription could, in theory, diminish.

Nvidia's Fan described the situation like this on X: "We are living in a timeline where a non-US company is keeping the original mission of OpenAI alive — truly open, frontier research that empowers all."

DeepSeek has shown off reasoning know-how before. In November, the company released an "R1-lite-preview" that showed its "transparent thought process in real time." In December, it released a model called V3 to serve as a new, bigger foundation for future reasoning in models.

It's a big reason American researchers see a meaningful improvement in the latest model, R1.

Theo Browne, a software developer behind a popular YouTube channel for the tech community, said, "The new DeepSeek R1 model is incredible." Tanay Jaipuria, a partner investing in AI at Silicon Valley's Wing VC, also described it as "incredible."

Awni Hannun, a machine learning researcher at Apple, said that a key advantage of R1 was that it was less intensive, showing that the industry was "getting close to open-source o1, at home, on consumer hardware," referring to OpenAI's reasoning model introduced last year.

The model can be "distilled," meaning smaller but also powerful versions can run on hardware that is far less intensive than the computing power loaded into servers in data centers many tech companies depend on to run their AI models.

Hannun demonstrated this by sharing a clip on X of a 671 billion parameter version of R1 running on two Apple M2 Ultra chips, responding with reason to a prompt asking if a straight or a flush is better in a game of Texas Hold 'em. Hannun said its response came "faster than reading speed."

AI censorship

R1 does appear to have one key problem. Former OpenAI board member Helen Toner pointed out on X that there are demos of R1 "shutting itself down when asked about topics the CCP doesn't like."

Toner did suggest, however, that "the censorship is obviously being done by a layer on top, not the model itself." DeepSeek did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

It is worth noting, of course, that OpenAI has introduced a new model called o3 that is meant to be a successor to the o1 model DeepSeek is currently rivaling. Lambert said it was "likely technically ahead" in his blog, with the key caveat that the model is "not generally available," nor will basic information like its "weights" be available anytime soon.

Given DeepSeek's track record so far, don't be surprised if its next model shows parity to o3. America's tech leaders may have met their match in China.

• Natascha Turner, 47, started a marketing agency and employs her own husband.
• There are perks — the couple have been able to move to Spain as remote workers.
• But she says it's "no walk in the park" and they've had to set some boundaries.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Natascha Turner, 47, who runs her own marketing agency. It has been edited for length and clarity.

It's funny how things work out — I never really wanted to start my own business.

The security of a regular paycheck was always the most important thing for me. It was instilled in me by my mom, who was a single parent, so financial security was always the top priority.

I was moving up the corporate ladder in the world of marketing and advertising, and after getting a few promotions, I realized I could probably actually do this working for myself. So in 2016, I started my own marketing agency.

My husband's career was going in the opposite direction; he'd joined a startup business that turned out to be on the brink of failure. Everyone he worked with was dodgy. He was chronically stressed because he wasn't making any money.

After two years of him working at the startup business, I put my foot down and said: that's it, no more of that. I've had enough of you going through this and not getting money in return for your skills. You're coming over to work with me. So, a year ago, that's what he did. I now employ four people, one of whom is my husband.

Our dynamic at work is different from our regular dynamic

At work, I'm more alpha, and he's more passive, which is a reversal of how we typically are in our relationship. We've been together for 16 years and married for 11. Back then, nobody would've believed we'd ever work together. We're just so different. He's quiet, data-driven, and will go down into rabbit holes. I have to put my foot down and say, "This multi-layered spreadsheet isn't what the client needs. Stop wasting time, focus on their needs."

The hardest part is balancing my role as a leader with my role as a wife. Women don't often talk about how hard it is to lead with strength without feeling like we're losing a piece of our femininity.

But it's my job to make the big calls. He appreciates it because, he admits, it's not his strong point. If graphics came in and weren't right, he'd dance around it rather than just say, "This isn't right; you need to go back and fix it."

It's hard to keep the work conversations from coming home with us

Working with your partner is no walk in the park. Sure, there's this glossy idea of "building a dream together," but the truth is, it's juggling spreadsheets with side-eye and trying not to kill each other over emails.

Those tough decisions can hit differently once we get home. Work conversations don't just end at the office; they follow us to the dinner table, the sofa, and even into the shower.

After a long day of meetings and calls, instead of decompressing, the same work chat sometimes bubbles up. "Why'd you veto that idea earlier?" or "You seemed sharp in that meeting — are you upset?"

The lines blur, the feelings flare, and suddenly it's not just a conversation — it's a thing. The number of times I've had to say, "Can we just not right now?" or "Do you want to keep talking about this or move on?" It's like being a referee, a therapist, and a CEO all rolled into one.

Focusing on boundaries has been helpful

In June last year, we relocated from Perth, Australia, to Valencia, Spain, so we now schedule time together to make space for being a couple: holding hands, switching off, and exploring this new city. Here in Valencia, they have these big public baths full of jacuzzis so we'll go there twice a week, and they've become a space where we've agreed not to discuss work.

It's important to remember to just be silly as well — I do that by dancing to music around the house with him so things feel less serious, and we laugh together.

I still get it wrong sometimes. Last week, I snapped and shouted, "You've got to do it this way!" After a stressful moment like that, I make sure we sit down and discuss it, and I'll apologize for being dismissive. I think that's key, too — being self-aware enough to admit you're wrong. He gets it. He'll accept my apology, and we'll move on.

It's recognizing your flaws, too. I'm pretty quick to temper when it comes to deadlines; a bit of a control freak. That's what makes me really good at some things but I know when I've pushed too hard and need to back off. It took a lot of working on myself to get to this point, though.

I see things getting better and better now that we have systems and processes as a couple, not just as colleagues. It's taught us the art of boundaries, the value of switching off, and the importance of saying, " No more business talk tonight, OK?"

• The rich and powerful are in Davos, Switzerland for day three of the World Economic Forum.
• BI is talking to people on topics from AI to the economy to how consulting firms are gearing up for a big year.
• This is what we're hearing on the ground.

The World Economic Forum has brought the rich and powerful together to discuss topics ranging from Donald Trump's impact on the economy to AI's impact on their industries.

This is what Business Insider is hearing and seeing on the ground.

Trump is the main character here

It seems a conversation at Davos can't go three minutes without Trump's name coming up. In an interview at Bloomberg House on Tuesday, Google's chief investment officer Ruth Porat said she saw a "tremendous opportunity" to work with Trump 2.0.

"I think the president and his team have been clear that they see technology as an asset for the country," she said. — Hugh Langley

It feels like Europe is missing in action

The need for Europe to step up has been the recurring theme in my conversations with business and government leaders. Geopolitical and economic uncertainty is at the forefront of everyone's mind.

While business leaders are excited about the new US president and Asia boasts some of the world's fastest-growing economies, Europe seems to be missing from the action. Walking along the promenade in Davos, the presence of American, Asian, and Middle Eastern delegations is unmistakable. But where is Europe? And where is the UK?

One CEO I spoke with Tuesday night stressed that Europe's regulatory landscape had to change to make it easier for businesses to operate there. "What Asia is gaining, Europe is losing," he said.

Another executive observed that Europe was a major topic of discussion in Davos, but its presence feels muted. Srini Pallia, Global CEO of Wipro, highlighted that growth and regulatory challenges in Europe are key concerns this year. "I was in a session just before this, where the European president was present, and she was asked how the EU could reduce regulatory barriers that are hindering growth. I think that's one of the big conversations happening here." — Spriha Srivastava

Meta is trying to reassure advertisers about its moderation changes

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta makeover has had some advertisers concerned about what changes to content moderation might do for what people start seeing across Facebook and Instagram.

In a Davos roundtable discussion with BI, Nicola Mendelsohn, head of Meta's global business group, said the company had been speaking with advertisers in recent days and trying to reassure them that nothing will change. Mendelsohn said advertisers would still be able to stop ads appearing next to political content if they wish.

"What they've shared back actually is the reassurance that all the commitments that we have to brand safety, brand suitability on the platform, none of that changes," she said. — Hugh Langley

We need a new institution to ensure human-like AI doesn't harm humanity, Google DeepMind's CEO said

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis had a busy Tuesday here with two near-back-to-back interviews at Google Haus. If there was one big takeaway, it was Hassabis saying we're not thinking enough about the AI bigger picture. "I think there's way too much hype in the short term," he said. "Actually it's underrated still, underappreciated, the amount of transformation that's going to happen in the medium to long term, so the five to 10 years," he added.

In response to a question from BI, Hassabis said he believed there were big questions around capitalism and society that need to be pondered. "One of the big things economists should be thinking about is what does that do to money, the capitalist system, even the notion of companies. I think all of that changes."

Hassbis said we need an institution that can "meet the moment" — a governing body that can ensure artificial general intelligence, or AGI, is managed in a way that benefits humankind.

"That would be where you put a wise council, an international council of very diverse and smart people from different backgrounds. Not just technologists. I'm talking about philosophers, social scientists, writers, et cetera. But who is building that institute, is what I would ask. And I think we really need that."

He also discussed his work on protein folding with AlphaFold, which recently earned him a Nobel Prize. And who better to discuss the science than Bill Nye, "the science guy," who took the mic for the second interview. — Hugh Langley

Consulting firms are ready for a big year

Consulting firms are ready for what is expected to be a big year for their business thanks to a flurry of potential changes on the horizon.

"There are several macro factors that have been in play for a while: AI certainly, but also strong economic indicators in the US, as well as the current pro-growth sentiment in the market as a result of the incoming administration. So, there might be an uptick in business activity," Sharon Marcil, BCG's North America chair and a managing director and senior partner, told me.

A massive ramp-up comes with issues, though, as was evident in 2021 when the surge in M&A activity led to employee burnout across financial services.

A complete repeat of 2021's record year seems unlikely, but there are still staffing considerations. It's a tricky balance. You need enough workers so resources aren't stretched too thin while avoiding a surplus where there is not enough work to go around.

An immediate fix also isn't easy, as bringing on new talent requires a necessary training period. And good luck telling clients to hold off on deals, especially after so many have been sitting on the sidelines waiting for the market to open up.

"For us, periods of increased activity force us to predict staffing. And that can sometimes be hard. There is a sweet spot between being understaffed and overstaffed. If we find we haven't gone far enough, we try other approaches like off-cycle hiring. It's definitely a balancing act," Marcil said. — Dan DeFrancesco

Proper snow boots are the way to go here

We're three days in, and we've yet to touch one of the most interesting debates I've found at Davos: footwear. Being that we're in the mountains, the abundance of snow and ice means opting for typical business shoes or heels isn't necessarily your best bet.

Boots of varying degrees of heftiness and fashion sense are a popular choice. (They don't call it "suits and boots" for nothing.) Others wear spikes that can be taken on and off.

Personally, I've gone all in, opting for proper snow boots. Wearing them with my suit every day is a bit … jarring. However, my daughter thinks I look like Kristoff from "Frozen," so that's a win.

Of course, some people throw caution to the wind and still opt for their dress shoes. Davos is a lot about status, and the luxury of wearing normal shoes since you're being chauffeured around speaks to that. — Dan DeFrancesco

• Ritesh Verma earns almost $15,000 monthly from side hustles alongside his Capital One job.
• Verma's side hustles include AI agents, YouTube, mentorship, and software services.
• He uses automation to work on multiple projects at once and earn more money.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Ritesh Verma, 23, a software engineer in Jersey City. It's been edited for length and clarity.

After graduating from college in 2023, I was hired as a software engineer at Capital One with a $136,000 base salary, but it's not my largest source of income.

I've been building side hustles for years, and they now earn me almost $15,000 a month.

When I got hired at Capital One, I was worried about a full-time job disrupting my side hustles, but I've created a system that makes it manageable. Here's how I stay on top of my work and why I won't take my side hustles full-time — yet.

AI agents are my main side hustle

In late 2019, a friend of mine asked me to code a purchasing bot to help him buy and resell sneakers. I had no idea what bots, or AI agents, were, but I agreed and spent over six months teaching myself how to make software programs that perform tasks.

In 2022, I decided to post a YouTube tutorial on how to create a simple bot, and it got 200,000 views. A man saw my video and asked me to make him a purchasing agent for high-end golf clubs. I accepted the offer and made $600 every time I got him a golf club. Suddenly I was earning $1,800 a month.

Word spread, and I started getting more clients in the golf club collection space and other niche communities. I built purchasing bots for anything from hats to wine bottles to baby clothes.

I didn't want to be known as just the bot guy, so I started building services and tools as well. I built a scheduling bot that helps shift-based workers, such as servers, in the Nevada area snag competitive shifts.

I started using Reddit to find clientele

Early last year, I watched a YouTube video where the creator described how he used Reddit to grow his startup. I decided to give it a try.

I made a Reddit post saying, "I suck at getting these shifts, and I need help. Does anyone else relate?" Then I DMed the roughly 20 commenters who sympathized and pitched them my tool. I got eight of my clients from Reddit and now make about $9,000 monthly from it.

I also trained AI assistants to make Reddit posts for me, advertising my services and sending potential clients my phone number.

Reddit takes my posts down because they're promotional, but within 30 minutes of them being up, I'll usually have several people in my DMs. I've been kicked off Reddit and had to make multiple accounts, but it's all part of the process, and I think it's worth it.

I also have less lucrative side hustles

1. YouTube: I use my YouTube channel to gain clientele and as a side hustle. I get ad revenue from videos, and in one month, I made $1,400 from three sponsors.
2. Mentorship program: I also started a six-week mentorship program where I teach others how to code bots. For $3,000 in any given month, usually, two to three students get bi-weekly meetings to discuss assigned projects and learn concepts.

3. SaaS products: In 2024, I launched two SaaS products, which are basically just more conventional software engineering services. One is Instagram outreach software, which earns me $900 a month. My other SaaS product, which allows people to put Instagram reels on their website, has yet to turn a profit.

How I manage my side hustle and 9-to-5

My secret to success is working on several projects at once. I can stay on top of so many because it's highly automated.

I might spend 20 hours building a new AI agent or project, but after that, my weekly commitment might only be two hours. I also might spend a few additional hours getting clients or troubleshooting, but the hard work is done.

My Capital One job is a hybrid 9-to-5 with two days in the office each week. After work, I eat and have a four-hour deep work session where I focus on my side hustles. I also work a few hours each day of the weekend.

It's a lot of work, but I find it fun. I also make sure to have time for myself. A few friends and I travel every three months. In 2024, I spent a total of a month overseas in places like Brazil, Japan, and Italy, doing no work. Those trips are a good sanity check and keep me looking forward to something.

I won't leave my full-time job until I meet a specific metric

A mentee asked me why I don't leave my full-time job, and I told him I don't feel like it's taking up space.

I've probably tried 15 projects recently, and most fail. I give every project a month or two of serious dedication before deciding if it's worth continuing. Sometimes, the project is just too hard, and growing it is a pain.

Other times, I just lose the spark of the idea. In those cases, I'll put it on a major backburner or ask a mentee if they'd like to take responsibility for equity in the product.

Plus, I'm following a rule that I won't leave my full-time job until I make three times my Capital One base salary from my side businesses. Once I achieve that, I'll drop it. That's the goal.

If you make six figures from a side hustle and would like to share your story, please email Manseen Logan at [email protected].

• Francesca Lagerberg is CEO of Baker Tilly, one of the world's 10 biggest accounting firms.
• In an interview with BI, Lagerberg explained why her firm has managed to buck the downward trend in the sector.
• Lagerberg doesn't want to turn Baker Tilly into a lesser version of a Big Four firm, she told BI.

The Big Four professional services firms lead the accounting and advisory market globally. They have a combined 1.5 million employees, generate billions in annual revenue, and their easily recognizable names draw in scores of eager young graduates annually.

But for all their status, the Big Four have seen a marked drop in growth rate over recent years, and their consultants have been leaving.

Bucking that downward trend in the market is Baker Tilly, a midsize network of around 140 member firms.

Its offering of tax, advisory, and legal services generated global revenue of over $5 billion for the year ending December 2023, an 11% increase from the previous year and a record high for the firm. It's now one of the top 10 accounting firms in the world.

For Baker Tilly, though, the goal isn't growing to the point where the Big Four becomes the Big Five, its CEO Francesca Lagerberg told Business Insider.

"Am I ambitious? Yeah, very," she told BI. "But am I ambitious to be a lesser version of something else?"

"The Big Four Super Tank is an amazing organization, very successful and really good at what they do. We just operate in an environment where midsize firms excite us."

Lagerberg said Baker Tilly's success is due to its great proposition, strong member firms within the network, and the moves those firms have made into bigger markets.

"It's a very good time for us. We've been able to offer what the market needed. We've been in markets where growth has continued and the kind of work that we specialize in seems to have a bit more of an ongoing level."

"In the mid-tier, where we are strongest, firms are looking for that kind of input and advice. So we've been able to offer the services they want, and there hasn't been that drop-off."

Smaller-scale growth has also meant the firm didn't follow the overstaffing fallout that has afflicted bigger names.

On paper, all accounting firms like Baker Tilly appear to offer the same services, but Lagerberg, who's spent her career in professional services, says it's the culture that helps differentiate the firm. It's not just about the services you provide, but offering them in a way that clients would like to have them delivered, she said.

"It is fundamentally about the values and behaviors that we have. We have a very strong people-first approach, and we genuinely mean it," she said.

There are no strict work hours at Baker Tilly that other firms are renowned for. Instead, the company offers its employees unlimited holidays and flexible working. It's an organization whose staff actually get on with each other and that attracts like-minded clients, Lagerberg said.

Being people that others like to do business with is a "much-misunderstood part of how the world goes around," she added.

The private equity wave

The mid-tier sector of professional services firms hasn't avoided the slowdown hitting the Big Four.

Together with economic pressures and high interest rates, the strain is helping drive a new wave of private capital investment in mid-tier accounting firms.

Firms have typically paid out profits to equity partners, who also get a vote on how the firms are run. External cash injections are divesting the control historically promised to partners and shaking up the culture at firms.

In the US and UK, firms like Grant Thornton, Cooper Parry, and EisnerAmper have gone down the private equity route. In 2024, Baker Tilly US did the same, selling a majority stake to private investment groups Hellman & Friedman and Valeas. It was the second-largest deal to be done in the sector.

PE has lots of advantages, but it isn't a golden bullet, Lagerberg told BI. One benefit is that it's providing an influx of capital that's necessary for firms as they evolve with technology and data.

"We used to be a really cap-light business. Now, we're a cap-heavy environment, so it's not surprising that PE is seeing growth," the Baker Tilly CEO said.

It's also bringing about a huge change in the culture that not all partners are happy about.

"A lot of partners they've operated in an environment that's been very similar all their careers, and suddenly in comes an external stakeholder," Lagerberg said. But they also bring a new rigor to firms.

"PE houses are very good at running organizations in an efficient way. I think you'll see an even stronger emphasis on the financials and looking for a return."

The reality for any business is that you can't be future-proof, Lagerberg said. In this era of instability, this is part of the reason companies keep turning to Baker Tilly.

"You will not make all the right decisions because no one quite knows where something is going to go. But you can be future fit. How can you get yourself to a position where you're going to ride out most of it? Some things are going to be amazing opportunities. Are you ready to take them?"

Do you work at a consulting or accounting firm? Contact this reporter in confidence at [email protected] to talk about your experience and the industry.

• DARPA seeks to modify red blood cells to enhance troop performance.
• The Red Blood Cell Factory program aims to insert biologically active components in cells.
• The agency says this research could one day lead to longer-lasting meds and blood-cell drug delivery systems.

The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, the Pentagon's top research arm, wants to know if red blood cells can be modified in novel ways to protect troops and help them manage extreme battlefield environments.

The DARPA program, known as "Red Blood Cell Factory," is looking for researchers and is interested in inserting "biologically active components" or "cargoes" in red blood cells. The hope is that modified cells would bring with them special enhancements, "thus allowing recipients, such as warfighters, to operate more effectively in dangerous or extreme environments."

Red blood cells could act like a truck, carrying "cargo" or special protections, to all parts of the body, since they already circulate oxygen everywhere, Christopher Bettinger, a professor of biomedical engineering overseeing the program, told Business Insider.

"What if we could add in additional cargo … inside of that disc," Bettinger said, referring to the shape of red blood cells, "that could then confer these interesting benefits … protective capabilities that we're trying to sort of imbue to our warfighters?"

What could these modifications do?

DARPA does not expect the researchers to experiment on people or animals, just on bags of blood. The research is foundational, Bettinger said, but could allow scientists to identify how red blood cell modification could evolve over time.

The research could impact the way troops battle diseases that reproduce in red blood cells such as malaria, for example, Bettinger hypothesized.

"Imagine an alternative world where we have a warfighter that has a red blood cell that's accessorized with a compound that can sort of defeat malaria," Bettinger said. In this scenario, a red blood cell could be "accessorized" with a countermeasure.

"It's kind of like an automatic drug delivery system," he said, "that could then protect the warfighter from the harmful effects of subsequent infection and sort of replication of the parasite."

It could also be possible to modify the red blood cells in ways that would allow medications to last longer without a service member having to ingest them daily — instead, relying on doses that protect a person for weeks or months instead of just 24 hours.

Another potential use of modified cells could be stopping a hemorrhage from trauma, including battlefield wounds.

"Trauma induces a kind of host of biological responses, one of which is rupturing of red blood cells," Bettinger said. DARPA's research efforts could ascertain from its blood research whether a catastrophic injury that would normally mean death from blood loss instead sees blood automatically coagulate.

A path to a more capable warfighter

"Each red blood cell stays in the blood for about four months, and it accesses pretty much every organ in the body," said Samir Mitragotri, a professor of bioengineering at Harvard. Their prevalence and relatively long lifetime are partly why red blood cells are such an attractive target for scientists.

Part of the challenge, Mitragotri said, is that the cells can't be so radically changed that the body no longer recognizes them as red blood cells, thus prompting quicker bodily digestion.

Such advances in bioengineering could be a game-changer in fields like infectious disease treatment and oncology, said Mitragotri, illnesses which require long periods of drug treatment. Though the science is still emerging, it's "a very promising area," he said.

The Department of Defense has long been interested in learning how biomedical engineering could benefit troops.

For years, the US military has been looking into the benefits of biofeedback technologies to better understand mental and physical health. And there's also been research into potential physical enhancements through various lines of effort.

In 2019, for instance, the Army released a "Cyborg Soldier 2050" report detailing how the military is thinking about a future where troops could benefit from things like neural and optical enhancements, though the report acknowledged ethical and legal concerns surrounding such possibilities.

US rivals like China are, as the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies noted in a new report, also exploring this space, but with less concern for ethical considerations.

The Chinese People's Liberation Army "has long recognized the strategic importance of biotechnology, engaging in extensive collaborations with Chinese biotechnology behemoths," the report said. "These and other partnerships have yielded research with potential military applications, including efforts to enhance Chinese soldiers' physical and cognitive abilities."

• US federal agencies were told to put their workers in DEI roles on leave by 5 p.m. ET on Wednesday.
• President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order terminating DEI roles and initiatives.
• It's part of a wider right-wing pushback against DEI, which Trump says is discriminatory.

US federal agencies have been told to put their workers in diversity, equity, and inclusion roles on paid leave as DEI initiatives, offices, and programs are dismantled under the Trump administration.

CBS News obtained an Office of Personnel Management memo, dated Tuesday, that said all federal employees in DEI roles should be placed on leave by 5 p.m. ET on Wednesday.

Agencies were instructed to tell those in DEI offices that their leave would be "effective immediately" as the agency works to wind down DEI initiatives.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday, his first day in office, declaring the termination of DEI "mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities" in the federal government.

The order required agency, department, and commission heads to work with the attorney general and the directors of the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management to take action within 60 days.

As well as the termination of DEI roles, the order also called for the termination of "environmental justice" offices.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, confirmed the memo's authenticity.

"To every reporter asking about this: I can gladly confirm!" she wrote on X.

The memo also urged heads of departments and agencies to immediately take down all "outward facing media," including social media and websites, of DEI offices and cancel any related training.

It also said the heads of departments and agencies needed to report to the Office of Personnel Management by midday ET on Thursday detailing steps taken to implement the memo, including by providing lists of DEI offices, personnel, and any related contracts as of Election Day 2024.

Additionally, the department and agency heads were asked to submit "reduction-in-force" plans for DEI offices to the OPM by the end of the month.

Trump's executive order accused the Biden administration of forcing what it called "immoral discrimination programs" into "virtually all" aspects of the federal government.

The move is part of a wider effort to clamp down on DEI, which has increasingly become the subject of criticism in conservative circles.

On Tuesday, the White House issued a separate presidential order ending DEI-based hiring in the Federal Aviation Administration, including hiring that considers race, sex, or disability.

Trump said in his inauguration speech on Monday that the US would "forge a society that is colorblind and merit-based."

He also announced that it would become official US policy that there were "only two genders: male and female."

Correction: January 22, 2025 — An earlier version of this story misstated the name of the federal agency affected by an executive order Tuesday. It's the Federal Aviation Administration, not the Federal Aviation Authority.

• There's no single definition for artificial general intelligence.
• Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, previously predicted that "powerful AI" could arrive by 2026.
• Amodei recently told CNBC that AGI was more of a "marketing term."

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei seems confident that we're rapidly approaching a new technology threshold — the creation of AI systems that are "better" than humans at most things.

He's just not willing to pin the buzzy term "AGI," or artificial general intelligence, on it.

"AGI has never been a well-defined term, for me," Amodei said on a recent appearance on CNBC's "Squawk Box." "I've always thought of it as a marketing term. But, you know, the way I think about it is, at some point, we're going to get to AI systems that are better than almost all humans at almost all tasks."

AGI is top of mind for various tech leaders, with many predicting that the technology is rapidly approaching viability.

The issue is there is no widely agreed-upon definition of AGI, much less a concrete timeline for reaching it.

In general, many describe it as a form of AI that can meet or exceed human capabilities. In Amodei's case, he said he preferred to think about future advanced AI systems as a "country of geniuses in a data center."

"It's a sort of evocative phrase for all the power and all the positive things, and, you know, all of the potential negative things," Amodei said. "That's the thing I think we're quite likely to get in the next two or three years."

Amodei previously wrote an essay on the subject of AGI, which he prefers to call "powerful AI." In it, he laid out a series of parameters for the technology, including being "smarter than a Nobel Prize winner across most relevant fields." In the same piece, he predicted it could arrive by 2026.

After a decade in the AI field, Amodei said he was more confident than ever about such a timeline.

"Throughout the 10 years that I've been working in this field, I've always said, 'You know, I don't know for sure, this is the direction it seems like it's going in, we could be getting to very powerful or human level systems,'" Amodei said.

"I still think there's uncertainty, I think it's important to be humble, but over the last six months, I would say that uncertainty, for me, has decreased a great deal," he said.

As for recent concerns about the practicality of continued scaling of AI models, Amodei said he wasn't worried. He said that there had been only "five or six" times throughout his career in AI in which the tech appeared to be hitting a wall and that "something slightly different" was always invented that allowed for continued progress.

"The scaling of AI, it feels like this river," Amodei said. "That, you know, every once in a while it runs into a stone, but it'll — it always finds a way to go around."

• At firms like CapitalG and CRV, an increasing amount of VCs are former college athletes.
• Some firms like Benchmark have specifically sought out college athletes in recent hires.
• Athlete VCs say that the skills and lessons they learned on sports teams make them better investors.

Maggie Basta's first experience as a teammate came early in life: She grew up playing soccer and was on the soccer team at Harvard University. Today, Basta is an investor at Scale Venture Partners and focuses on AI infrastructure and developer tools. Basta is part of a growing number of venture capitalists around the country who are former college athletes and bringing the lessons they learned from years of playing sports to enhance their investing careers.

One of Business Insider's rising stars of venture capital in 2024, Basta said that her experience playing soccer taught her the importance of accountability.

"Your portfolio companies are counting on you, and your investing team is counting on you, so showing up and doing what you say you're going to do as an investor is incredibly important," she told BI. "If you don't show up for your team, you're letting everyone else down and holding everyone else back."

Some VCs are openly seeking out college athletes as employees. In a recent job posting for an associate position at Slow Ventures, the firm called out athletes as great potential candidates.

"The easiest people for us to hire: You got a 1600 on your SATs, and played sports seriously (++ for endurance athletes)," the posting said.

Investor Peter Fenton, whose work at Benchmark has led to notable exits including Twitter and Yelp, is a runner and previously looked to hire student-athletes for assistant positions at the firm, Business Insider previously reported.

In 2022 he hired Vanessa Fraser, a standout Stanford University athlete who inked a deal to run professionally for Nike.

"Running has grounded me into a more disciplined routine, which translated to higher functioning and higher performance," Fraser previously told BI. "The biggest surprise to me is that I'm almost less tired than when I was a full-time professional athlete. I'm more mentally stimulated."

VC firms are seeking out college athletes with transferable skills that could make them great investors.

For investors like James Green, a background in sports has been a value-add for his VC firm, CRV. Growing up in a small town in the United Kingdom, he was one of many young people tapped by the British government as part of an elite-sports development initiative. He spent 15 years as a rower, culminating with a spot on Harvard University's rowing team.

Green, who focuses on investing in cybersecurity and fintech startups, told BI that VC and rowing are similar because they're both team and individual sports.

"Without a team, you can't win, but you're only as good as your slowest person," he said. "It's kind of the same in VC — we're all a team, individually making our own investments. When I make an investment, the team wins."

Green added that sports have also taught him patience. Training for years towards an athletic goal has parallels to a long career investing in startups and dealing with high and low periods.

"I rowed at a high level for years, which takes a lot of patience," he said. "You're doing sets on the rowing machine and working out multiple times per day, sometimes just to get one second faster or even plateau. It's the same when you're in the early stage for startups. You have to prepare for it to be nonlinear."

CapitalG vice president Kelly Barton also says that playing sports — in her past and present life — has made her a better investor. The former Massachusetts Institute of Technology rower, who joined CapitalG In 2021, transitioned to running marathons after graduating and later found success in the triathlon.

When she spoke to BI in mid-December, she was about to embark on a trip to Taupō, New Zealand, to compete in the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championships.

"One thing that I've appreciated is that workouts create a forced space for me to think about the companies I back," she said. "Stepping back for two-plus hours a day helps me find the space to think about their next steps."

CapitalG general partner Jesse Welder — who himself was on the University of California-Berkeley's sailing team — told BI that Barton and the other members of his team, who all happen to be former college athletes, have extra drive. There are mulitple former student athletes at CapitalG, including AI investing partner Jill Chase, who was captain of Williams College's women's basketball team, and managing partner Laela Sturdy, who was captain of the women's basketball team at Harvard.

"Athletes are competitively driven people who are driven to succeed more than the average person," he said. "In an investing job, there is so much that you can keep learning, and it never stops mentally. Endurance athletes, and athletes in general, are a good fit for this."

Barton's work at CapitalG has continued to complement her sport: she won her age group at December's IRONMAN 70.3 World Championships and became a world champion for women ages 25-29.

"I'm my best athlete when I'm my best self, and that means that I'm well-rested, and I'm devoting time to my relationships and my work, too," she said.

• JPMorgan's David Kelly said US workers have been too timid when it comes to asking for raises.
• One career advisor suggests you create a "brag sheet" to outline your accomplishments.
• Experts also recommend doing research on pay, knowing your worth, and leveraging tech for raises.

A top Wall Street exec thinks most of us need to get better about asking for a raise.

David Kelly, the chief global strategist at JPMorgan Asset Management, told Bloomberg that many US workers appear timid when going to their employer for more money — even though there are some 8 million job openings across the country.

"Everybody knows it's hard to find a good employee," he said.

Kelly said that, in some cases, discussions about layoffs can make workers believe it's not a good time to ask for a boost.

"It's good messaging from these companies," he said, adding, "There's nothing like announcing prospective layoffs to quiet down the labor force."

So, if you're thinking it's time for a bump, here are four tips from workplace experts on how to talk with your boss.

Keep a record of your wins

It's easy to lose track of all the things you've accomplished at work, especially as the months roll by. Jasmine Escalera, a career expert with MyPerfectResume, recommends that workers keep a "brag sheet" of the major contributions they've made in their role and to their team — and on behalf of their manager and the organization.

"What are the top things that really showcase the impact that you've made?" she said.

Escalera said it doesn't have to be an exhaustive list. She added that if there are smaller accomplishments that don't warrant being mentioned in a discussion over compensation, they could serve as the basis for asking a client or a colleague for a LinkedIn endorsement.

Keeping a list can also help identify when it might be time to ask for an increase in compensation or a heftier title, even outside an annual review cycle, Escalera said.

Too often, she said, workers shy away from discussing their achievements because they want to avoid the appearance of bragging.

"We stop ourselves from self-promotion because we think it's bad, but self-promotion is the breadcrumbs that lead to the titles and the promotions and the pay raises," Escalera said.

Know your financial worth

One way to feel less uneasy about promoting ourselves is to have a sense of what others in similar roles at other organizations are earning.

Having that data on hand can appeal to many bosses' desire to be competitive in the marketplace and even to live up to the values the organization espouses, Maria Ross, who researches empathy and is the author of the book "The Empathy Dilemma," told BI.

She said workers who have information about pay rates at other organizations and who have deep knowledge about the state of their employer's business are likely to fare better in a discussion about pay.

Ross suggested people should consider how getting a raise might benefit the organization. A hike in pay might come with added responsibility or taking on some of your boss's work. Or, she said, if you get a promotion, that could create an opening for someone to move into your old role.

"How can you frame the ask as a benefit to the organization?" Ross said.

Don't make it an easy 'no'

Often, workers consider themselves lucky to have a job. While that might be true, the organization can also be lucky to have you, Julie Smith, author of the book "Coach Yourself Confident," told BI.

"It's kind of a scary thing to ask, 'Do you think I'm worth more?'" she said.

Smith said the discussion over a bump in pay might end up spilling into more than one conversation — and that's OK. That's because, sometimes, raising the topic of a pay increase can prompt a busy boss to pay more attention to all of the things you're doing.

She said that instead of asking for a raise immediately, you might benefit from asking your boss to consider a pay bump, or that your boss brings it up with senior leaders or HR.

The one-off ask can make it easier for your boss to say "no," Smith said.

It can also be helpful to ask others at your job who are ahead of you how they asked for a raise and what steps they took to advance.

"How did it go down?" she said. "What can I take from that?"

Smith also suggested that you practice asking aloud before the conversation with your boss. You might prepare with a friend. It doesn't have to be a full-on role-play, Smith said. Yet hearing yourself make your case can help you edit out apologetic phrases that can creep in and can help you get a sense of how your statements come across.

"Don't say the words out loud for the first time with your boss," she said.

Show you're keeping up

Many employers are investing in artificial intelligence tools with the goal of improving productivity and efficiency. If you can, learn how to use this technology so you can boost your own productivity — and your value to the business, Ger Doyle, country manager for the staffing firm ManpowerGroup US, told BI.

He said workers who are thinking about how they can use tech — including, in some cases, an AI copilot — to do their jobs more effectively and efficiently will look good in the eyes of the boss.

"How do you use that copilot to make your job more effective, make your department more effective, make the company more effective?" Doyle said.

• US President Donald Trump said he could impose 10% tariffs on Chinese goods from February 1.
• China's stock markets fell after Trump's comments, breaking several straight days of gains.
• Trump had said he could slap tariffs of 25% on Canada and Mexico from February 1.

On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed a raft of executive orders and threatened Canada and Mexico with 25% tariffs that could come as soon as next month.

China got a pass on day one, but the break didn't last long.

On Tuesday, his second day in office, Trump said he could impose tariffs on China next month.

"We're talking about a tariff of 10% on China, based on the fact that they're sending fentanyl to Mexico and Canada," Trump said at a press conference.

"Probably February 1 is the date we're looking at," Trump said.

Trump previously threatened 60% tariffs on Chinese goods while on the campaign trail.

China is calling for better dialogue and cooperation for mutual benefit.

"Keeping business ties sound and stable serves the fundamental interests of both countries and both peoples, it is also conducive to global economic growth," China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Guo Jiakun, said at a scheduled press conference on Tuesday.

China's stock markets fell on Wednesday following Trump's comments, breaking several straight days of gains.

The CSI300 Index closed 0.9% lower. Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index closed 1.6% lower.

Trump's consistent threats of tariffs reflect his "American First" trade agenda, which he outlined in a presidential memo on Monday.

In the memo, Trump asked the US Trade Representative to assess China's compliance with a trade deal the two countries signed in early 2020 and recommend actions — including tariffs — as needed.

China did not meet the import requirements in the trade deal, economists from Nomura wrote in note on Tuesday.

"The concern here is that this gives the Trump administration another reason to impose additional stiff tariffs or trade demands on China to force compliance with the original trade deal," the economists wrote.

On Tuesday, Trump also took aim at the European Union.

"We have a $350 billion deficit with the European Union. They treat us very very badly, so they're going to be in for tariffs," Trump said.

• If you get knee pain or injuries in the gym, that could be from sitting all day.
• Exercises that strengthen and stretch the leg muscles effectively will help protect knees.
• For healthier joints, aim to move regularly and work on your balance and stability.

Simple exercises can help prevent knee pain from derailing your routine, according to a physical therapist.

Andrey Simeonovski, a physical therapy doctor, recently spent a week in Kathmandu as part of Operation Walk, helping rehabilitate patients who'd had knee replacement surgeries.

He said a major takeaway from the experience is that consistently putting your body through the same motions can cause problems, whether you're sitting all day or doing repetitive physical tasks.

"It's a variety of movements that are important for your health in your body," Simeonovski said.

Here are some exercises that offer your joints a range of motion to strengthen the surrounding muscles. As always, it's best to work with a qualified trainer, or talk to a doctor first if you have existing injuries.

Lateral "monster walks" can relieve knee and back pain

Resistance bands are a great tool for strengthening muscles that help stabilize the knee joint.

Simeonovski said a common exercise he uses for the knees, hips, and back is the "monster walk," taking steps from side to side with a band around the legs or feet.

The band provide tension to engage the glutes, which can be underdeveloped from sitting all day, so firing them up helps to stabilize the rest of the body.

"It reduces strain on the low back," Simeonovski said.

Quad stretches help take pressure off your knees

Knee pain can often result from tightness in the quads, which then pull on the knee and create problems, according to Simeonovski.

A couch stretch can help lengthen and loosen up the quads while opening up the hip flexors.

Simeonovski typically recommends an elevated version of the stretch, which is easier on the knee:

Rest one knee on a bench or box near the wall. Bend that knee while moving the shin and top of the foot to rest flat up against the wall.

If it's painful, ease up on the stretch, especially if you have an injury.

Simeonovski said the best way to avoid injury is pay attention — if something is painful enough that it's distracting, or if you stop the exercise and the pain persists, don't continue.

"Pain that lingers is a red flag," he said.

Hamstring curls can protect your knees from injury

Simeonovski said the hamstrings, the muscles on the back of the leg, are often overlooked. We tend to focus on the quads on the front of the leg. But that can increase the risk of damaging ligaments in the knee because the quads can put too much pressure on the ACL without the hamstrings to counteract them.

To strengthen the hamstrings, try Nordic hamstring curls.

Start in a kneeling position with your feet secured (you can use a special mat or bench, tuck them under a couch or other furniture, or have someone hold them). Keeping your torso, hips, and shoulders in a straight line, slowly lower yourself to the ground, landing on your hands as if in the bottom of push-up.

This exercise can be challenging. If you feel like you don't have control, use a resistance band secured behind you to help offset some of your body weight. That will make the movement easier.

Step-ups strengthen the knee and help fix imbalances

One of Simeonovski's go-to exercises for improving lower body strength and joint health is the step-up.

Stand in front of a stool, bench, box, or stairs, and place one foot on the elevated surface. Pressing through that foot, lift your body up onto the step, and then return to the starting position. Repeat, alternating the starting foot.

Step-ups are low-impact and work the glutes, hamstrings, and quads as well as the core muscles. Alternating sides can also help improve your balance.

Go slow and gradually increase weight, height, or intensity as you get comfortable with the exercise. Squats and lunges offer similar benefits, but may need modifications if you have an existing injury.

Simeonovski said he prefers these movements to exercises like knee extensions, which aren't necessarily bad for your joints, but don't offer as much stability.

Rotational exercise helps to offset damage from sitting

Tightness in one area can cause a chain reaction and create aches and issues elsewhere.

For instance, back problems can worsen strain and pressure on the knees.

That's why Simeonovski recommends the open book exercise for patients who have knee pain and spend lots of time sitting. It doesn't directly involve the knees but can improve overall mobility.

Lie on a mat or the floor with your knees and hips bent at 90 degrees and your arms extended in front of you. Slowly rotate the top arm up and across your body as far as you comfortably can, gently twisting your spine. Return to the starting position and repeat, being sure to perform the exercise on both sides.

You can also do a similar rotation from a half-kneeling position.

Take breaks for movement throughout the day

The key to strengthening and protecting your joints is consistency, especially if you sit all day, according to Simeonovski.

Find opportunities to get up and move around at regular intervals, setting an alarm if needed to remind yourself to take a stretch break, go for a short walk, or otherwise give your body a rest from repetition.

"Staying in one position is a problem long-term," he said.