• Special operations forces have a fast and flexible weapons acquisition process.
• It's critical to keeping operators ahead of the curve on what capabilities are needed.
• There are lessons for the larger Joint Force and Pentagon, officials said.

US Special Operations Forces know how to get new technologies and weapons to the warfighter quickly, and there are potential lessons in their approach for the broader military.

At a recent symposium in Washington, DC, speakers argued that the Pentagon needs to move faster.

"The biggest thing we need to do is really fundamentally change the culture of the Pentagon and Congress," Rep. Adam Smith, a Washington Democrat and the ranking member of the US House Armed Services Committee, said last month at the National Defense Industrial Association's US Special Operations Symposium.

"We need to speed up the pace of innovation," he said.

Special operations forces have flexible acquisition processes which not only bring operators and industry partners together but also encourage adaptations in real time.

At the recent symposium, special operations leadership, other military officials, and industry partners spoke about what works and what doesn't in acquiring new weapons and capabilities. 

SOF's agile acquisition process means that it's able to work with industry partners to get its hands on and adjust both hardware and software faster than others. Officials said its approach was a model for how to solve broader issues within the Pentagon. 

Melissa Johnson, a Senior Executive Service member and acquisition executive for Special Operations Command (SOCOM), said the strength in the process is that decision-making on what systems to acquire and when is made through close coordination with the operator, creating a stronger relationship between what the individual operator sees as necessary and what industry partners can provide. 

"I think the recipe is really simple," Johnson said at the symposium, adding that "it's the mindset and culture of being able to take the magic that happens at SOCOM, the way we do business, and how do we scale that and get that across the department."

What slows down DoD acquisition? There are a range of different factors.

As officials said recently, many of the problems are due to the way funding is appropriated and how contracting works across the services and Congress. The other complication is the requirements piece and whether some are too complicated and arbitrary for certain systems. Smith referenced lengthy and sometimes unnecessary requirements for some things, such as paint on the littoral combat ship.

It is not as though US special operations forces are not without their own acquisition problems. For instance, special operations commanders told the House Armed Services Committee last week that US adversaries are modernizing faster than they can, telling congressional leaders that sometimes technology is already obsolete by the time it's fielded.

Lt. Gen. Michael Conley, the commander of Air Force Special Operations Command, said "it's this constant loop of trying to catch up with the enemy threat."

Still, special operations forces tend to move faster than the rest of the military, which is feeling the pressure to modernize for a higher-end conflict amid the emergence of newer combat technologies like uncrewed systems and artificial intelligence and the greater focus on great power competition with China and Russia.

There are lessons to be learned, SOCOM officials said, from the Ukraine war, where drone manufacturers are creating hardware and software solutions to problems on the battlefields even when countermeasures arise.

Chris Brose, the chief strategy officer at Anduril Industries, said that one of the benefits of working with SOCOM is that its work with industry partners is run differently than the requirements for building the next attack submarine or destroyer.

Brose pointed to Anduril's work with SOCOM on counter-drone systems, noting that feedback from operators on threats that outpace new technologies was key to adjusting in real time.

Others have tried this approach with industry, such as US Army Futures Command, which relied on immersive testing and feedback soldier touch points. Still, there is room for improvement in innovation and acquisition within DoD.

Adopting SOCOM's way of doing things comes down to having greater flexibility in the budget. But there's wariness from appropriators, Smith said, and that's been a big battle with questions on oversight. Not every solution presented, officials said, is going to apply to the entire military, as special operations forces purchase smaller quantities of cutting-edge technology with a smaller, flexible budget. But a general focus on problem-solving that's closer to industry could be beneficial.

• McDonald's CEO has three predictions for the fast-food industry in 2025.
• Chris Kempczinski talked about them in an Instagram video posted to his account.
• Kempczinski referenced protein, AI, and sauces.

McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski has some predictions for the fast-food industry this year.

Kempczinski shared three things he expects to see more of at fast-food restaurants, including McDonald's, in 2025. He commented in a video posted to his Instagram account last week.

"I love to sit with the team and make predictions about what we think is going to come in the year ahead," he said.

Here are the three things Kempczinski talked about:

McDonald's CEO predicts that diners will want more protein

"Protein is hot," Kempczinski said in his first prediction.

Many diners are looking to add protein to their diet, especially those trying to lose weight. People who are taking GLP-1 weight loss medications such as Ozempic often look for low-fat sources of protein, for instance.

McDonald's already serves several kinds of protein, from burgers to chicken sandwiches to the Filet-O-Fish, meaning that the chain is well-positioned to serve those customers, Kempczinski said in the video.

Kempczinski says fast-food restaurants will continue looking at AI

Fast food chains have spent years experimenting with AI. Some are moving ahead with bigger rollouts, such as using voice AI to take customers' orders at drive-thru lanes.

McDonald's pulled its own voice-AI ordering system from drive-thrus last year. But Kempczinski predicted that chains — including his own — will keep experimenting.

"We've got a number of teams looking at how we can use AI," Kempczinski said.

Sauces will be a focus for diners in 2025, Kempczinski says

One big theme in 2025 won't be about what's in the center of diners' plates but what kind of sauces they're using, Kempczinski said.

"Spicy is always in," he said. "I think you might see some honey or some sweet stuff."

McDonald's has gotten patrons excited about sauces before. In 2017, it brought back a limited amount of Szechuan McNugget sauce, first released in tandem with the Disney movie "Mulan" in the 1990s, after the animated series "Rick and Morty" referenced the sauce in an episode.

Do you have a story to share about working in the fast food industry? Contact this reporter at [email protected] or 808-854-4501.

• Sabina Hitchen hired her husband as her VP of strategic partnerships in 2020.
• She was looking for someone with his skillset, and the business has grown since he joined.
• They work from separate rooms and prioritize dates to make it work and not affect their marriage.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sabina Hitchen, the 45-year-old founder of Press for Success. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I worked in PR for years before starting my company, Press for Success, a PR platform and community, in 2017. My husband, Alex, has worked in media since he was 18.

We met in 2012 when I was running from a rainstorm in NYC and went into a restaurant where he'd walked in the other entrance — it was like a romcom. I just wanted to read with a glass of wine, and he came up and sat with me. We haven't stopped talking since.

When we finally decided to go 'Facebook official,' we realized we had 200 friends in common but had never met. Even with his background, I never expected to hire him for my company. Now, he's my employee.

Like most couples, we used to weigh in on each other's work

He was there when I had the idea of Press for Success; he even named it when we were newly married.

A year before the pandemic, he left his 9-5 job in media to start media consulting.

When the pandemic hit, our daughter was very young, and I didn't want to quit my job. I love being a mother, but I saw so many women leaving their jobs to care for their kids, and I knew that wasn't the right decision for me.

We decided my husband would quit his job instead

My husband became our daughter's full-time caregiver so I could build my business. He quit in July 2020, and we lost about 60% of our income as I had returned to my business after working at less than full steam as a new mom.

I worked 24/7 to become our primary breadwinner and started making enough to make up for his lost income.

A year into that setup, he suggested we either move back to NYC and he'd start working in consulting again (we'd been staying in Maine during the pandemic as an escape from the city) or we figure out something else. That's when I considered hiring him as VP of strategic partnerships and collaboration for my business.

His skillset fit what I needed

I didn't want to hire him because he was my husband or needed work — his skills fit my company's needs. I needed someone who understood media and PR and could inspire people and command a room. We decided, "Let's just see what happens."

He joined my small team and took a slight pay cut, but we see this as an investment in something bigger.

We saw a therapist to ensure we were approaching it correctly. She told us to give ourselves six months to see if it felt right, and if it didn't, we could walk away without it being a failure in our relationship.

It worked. There are days when one of us has been hurt or upset, but we don't hold grudges and move past it.

He's always been encouraging of my career

I used to say, "My husband works with me," and he said, "No, your husband works for you." I thought that was so sexy. He knows I've been building my business for years and respects what I've built.

Compartmentalization makes working together feel seamless. We can butt heads on a work idea and then leave it behind to go to a family barbecue where I can be who I need to be as a wife and mom.

We both take our daughter to school every morning and on the way there, we sing Kidz Bop and jam out with her. The minute it's just us in the car, we're talking about workshops we're planning and our members' challenges.

We also physically separate while working

We tried to work in the same space initially, but I interrupted him constantly. Working apart while Alex is at an office during the day allows me to miss him. Having separate spaces gives us some of the mystery back.

We also work on separate things: He works on partnerships and collaborations while I'm leading the community and planning workshops.

Even working on individual projects, I had to let go of a lot of ego. I thought, "What is he going to think of me teaching?" and "This is my stage," but when I shared the stage with him, he lit up, and people loved him.

It's been amazing, but I did have to tell him he can't call me darling while we're on a live broadcast.

We also prioritize having date nights

In the beginning, every time my parents would babysit, we would work through our date nights. I forgot what it was like to date my husband. Now, we plan a fun date night weekly.

Doing business well is like forced therapy on yourself, which is the same as marriage. Many people say it's a risk working together, but it gives us power over our family's destiny.

Since he joined the company, it has grown in every way, including revenue. What started as a course platform is now a thriving membership community with a new platform, an app, and soon-to-come real-time text alerts.

I get to do what I love with the person I love for a higher purpose, which feels amazing.

• Amazon plans to launch a new AI model with advanced reasoning capabilities.
• The model aims to offer hybrid reasoning, a mix of quick answers and more complex thinking.
• Amazon is prioritizing cost efficiency and external benchmark performance.

Amazon is building its own AI model that incorporates advanced "reasoning" capabilities, Business Insider has learned.

The offering is tentatively scheduled to launch by June under the Nova brand, a group of generative AI models Amazon unveiled late last year, according to a person directly involved in the project. This person asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak with the media.

Amazon wants the new model to take a "hybrid reasoning" approach that provides quick answers and more complex extended thinking within a single system, this person added. An Amazon spokesperson didn't respond to a request for comment.

Reasoning models have recently become the next frontier in AI. They often work more slowly but can also tackle tougher problems by trying multiple solutions and backtracking via chain-of-thought techniques. Companies including Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic have released their own reasoning models recently, while DeepSeek drew a lot of attention for building a similar offering more efficiently.

One of Amazon's priorities is to make its Nova reasoning model more price-efficient than competitors, which include OpenAI's o1, Anthropic's Claude 3.7 Sonnet, and Google's Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking, according to the person involved in the project.

Amazon previously said that its existing in-house Nova models are at least 75% cheaper than third-party models available via its Bedrock AI development platform.

Another goal is to get it Amazon's upcoming reasoning model ranked in the top 5 for performance, based on external benchmarks that evaluate software development and math skills, such as the SWE, Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard, and AIME, among others, this person added.

The move reflects Amazon's commitment to invest in its own family of AI models, even as it preaches the need to offer a variety of model choices through Bedrock. Amazon's AGI team, run by head scientist Rohit Prasad, has been working on this new model.

It also puts Amazon in more direct competition with Anthropic, the AI startup that just launched its newest model. Claude 3.7 Sonnet uses a similar hybrid approach, combining quick answers and longer chain-of-thought outputs.

Amazon has invested $8 billion in Anthropic so far, and the two companies have been close partners, collaborating in areas including AI chips and cloud computing.

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• Several recently fired federal workers are set to attend Trump's joint address to Congress.
• They'll be there as the guests of Democratic members of Congress.
• BI spoke with one of them, whose job was to root out waste in Medicare.

In February, Matthew Fessler was one of thousands of probationary employees fired by the Trump administration amid DOGE-driven cuts to the federal workforce.

On Tuesday night, he'll be seated in the gallery overlooking the House chamber, attending President Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress alongside several other former federal workers whose employment has been terminated in the early weeks of his administration.

All of them are attending as guests of Democratic senators and House members who are using Trump's speech — a nationally televised address akin to the State of the Union — to highlight the impact of his administration's early moves to reshape the bureaucracy and freeze streams of federal spending.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is bringing two New Yorkers recently fired from the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona is bringing a disabled veteran who was fired from his role as a security expert at the Department of Homeland Security. Rep. Ayanna Pressley is bringing a Massachusetts constituent who worked for the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Elon Musk, the man leading much of the charge behind the firings as the de facto head of the White House DOGE office, will also be there.

Fessler, a 35-year-old former health insurance specialist at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, will be the guest of Rep. April McClain Delaney, a freshman Democratic lawmaker from a Maryland district near Washington, DC.

"I ran on common sense, common ground, and I really agree that our government should run efficiently and effectively for the American people," McClain Delaney told BI in an interview on Monday. "But I think the Trump administration's actions thus far have been marked by confusion and chaos."

For Fessler, there's a particular irony to his termination, which he says came after he was told he'd "achieved outstanding results" in an early January performance. His job was essentially to root out waste and fraud in Medicare Part D, the portion of the program that helps pay for recipients' prescription drugs, by keeping track of improper payments.

"These are actually the people that you really need to achieve the things that they purport to want to be doing," McClain Delaney said. "But in fact, it's all smoke and mirrors."

Fessler said that if he could send a message to Trump and Musk, it would be to "make sure you're aware of what the implications are for the actions that you're taking."

The Trump administration has broadly characterized the cuts as necessary to shrink a bureaucracy they view as bloated, and White House Spokesman Harrison Fields cast the Democratic lawmakers' effort as dishonest in a statement to BI for this story.

"Exploiting the American people for political points is par for the course, but it is unsurprising coming from a party that would rather showboat than solve problems," Fields said.

• Building relationships well is widely considered to be a desirable soft skill in the workplace.
• You might call it 'networking.' But Langni Zeng has been calling it 'biz rizz.'
• Zeng, who learned people skills at McKinsey, shared her top tips for developing 'biz rizz.'

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with 25-year-old Langni Zeng, based in LA. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

During my college years studying business at Queen's University in Canada a lot of my fellow students' parents were VPs at big organizations.

There's a certain culture to their backgrounds around the way you dress, how you speak, and what you talk about. One big culture shock for me was learning how to pick wine at dinner.

My dad is an engineer, and my mum is a former lecturer, so I wasn't very exposed to corporate America. I didn't grow up around corporate functions or know what investment banking or the consulting space was like.

At college, I learned more about consulting and saw it as a good field for someone like me who wanted to be a generalist and work on problem-solving. I took part in consulting extracurriculars and landed an internship at McKinsey for the summer of my third year.

After the internship, I joined McKinsey full-time as a business analyst in 2021.

I stayed at McKinsey for around two years and then left to take on a director of strategy and business operations role for a tech company. My tenure at McKinsey strengthened my ability to build relationships in professional environments, a skill that has helped me throughout my career. I've also been using a fun term to describe this skill: biz rizz.

Mentors helped me with relationship-building skills

When I started at McKinsey, I was linked up with a professional development manager who helped staff me on projects. In consulting, you don't really have a set manager and team — it's all project-based. Every few weeks or months, you're working with new people, clients, and often in new cities.

There are obviously hard skills consultants should have, like making Excel models and analysis, but also soft skills — the ability to build relationships with clients. Some of this was formally taught, such as in a training session about trust, but I also developed soft skills organically.

One of my biggest barriers to developing relationships in the workplace was confidence and comfort. At McKinsey, you can be 21 sitting in a room with C-Suite executives, which can be intimidating. You overthink in those situations about what's appropriate to say.

When my parents found out I had this job, they advised me to keep my head down, but I think professional relationship-building is important. I tried figuring out how to network and make small talk.

I was lucky to have great mentors on my first projects. One of my managers coached me to present to a C-suite executive. One of my mentors told me to think about the executive as my friend's uncle or someone I know in real life to make things feel more familiar.

At first, I struggled to relate during some conversations with my peers. Travel came up a lot; I didn't grow up skiing in the Alps or playing golf. Going to business school helped train me for these conversations, and my background wasn't as big of a constraint as I thought. I think the key is to be authentically yourself.

Having 'biz rizz' has helped me throughout my career so far

I used feedback from the teams I worked with to gauge how well I was developing my relationship-building skills.

On one project, I was tasked with preparing a celebration at the end of our off-site. It was a circle of appreciation. Everyone had to say what they appreciated about someone they were assigned, like a secret Santa.

I wrote a funny poem with silly rhymes about the person I was assigned, who was a client. I was more experienced at that point, so could confidently gauge what was appropriate. Earlier in my career, I wouldn't have done something like that. Afterward, the key stakeholder from that client referenced the poem for months after the off-site.

Soft skills like this can strengthen your reputation and relationships at work. They have been helpful beyond my time at McKinsey.

In a previous job, I was a director of strategy and business operations for a tech company. I was trying to facilitate change management and worked with leaders across different functions. You have to build trust-based relationships to get people to align with your vision. This can be hard when you're younger or new, but my time at McKinsey taught me how to engage with senior stakeholders.

At times when I've done coffee chats or mentorship sessions with students, a lot of their questions are about what grades they need or tactical skills they should build to get a certain job. That's all important, but another really important part is how you network and build a personal brand.

Here are some of my top tips for building 'biz rizz'

I've been casually using the term 'biz rizz' among friends for years. "Rizz" became a popular slang term used to refer to charisma, so we'd use 'biz rizz' to describe professional relationship-building. I posted a TikTok about this last year, which really took off.

One of my relationship-building tips is to end every interaction with the question, "How can I help?" or tell them, "If there's anything you need, let me know." This can be seen as strategic because people like it when you help them, but it's also a generally positive thing I'd do with people in my network.

Another big piece is communication. People really respond to a good speaker who is concise and eloquent. I was not naturally a good speaker, but being part of an international case competition team at college and doing presentations at McKinsey helped me with this.

Be authentically positive. Don't think of networking as a ploy to advance your interests, but think about how you can have the most fun working with people.

Many people perceive networking as kissing up to senior leaders, but I think it goes beyond that. I've learned so much and gotten so many opportunities from it.

Do you have a story to share about professional networking? Contact this reporter at [email protected]

• Indiana's data center boom requires a lot more power, and it risks saddling customers with the cost.
• State lawmakers are considering a bill to put tech companies on the hook for 80% of project costs.
• Data centers may need more power than all of Indiana's 7 million residents combined.

When President Donald Trump in January announced a deal with a billionaire in Dubai to build data centers across the US, it immediately raised alarm bells in Indiana.

Trump said the state and seven others were part of the first phase of the $20 billion foreign investment plan. It could add to Indiana's growing fleet of data centers under construction by companies including Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, which need huge amounts of computing power for the artificial intelligence boom. The growth risks saddling residents with hundreds of millions of dollars in additional costs through higher energy bills.

The situation has set off a debate in Indiana over who should foot the bill for the new power plants and transmission infrastructure needed to serve data centers. A bill moving through the Indiana legislature would require tech firms like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google to cover 80% of project costs, which, if enacted, would make it the first state to do so. At the same time, the bill would allow Indiana utilities to try and pass the costs of building smaller nuclear reactors to customers. Tech companies hope these early-stage energy solutions could someday supply cleaner, around-the-clock power to data centers.

It's a mixed bag for Indiana residents that consumer advocacy groups oppose, and underscores a dilemma many states across the country are confronting: how to hold tech firms accountable for their power-hungry data centers and their promises that AI will be powered by green energy. So far, fossil fuels like natural gas and coal plants are expected to meet the demand.

"If companies want to build a data center here, and we have to build new power generation for them, then they need to share in that risk," Indiana Rep. Ed Soliday, a Republican who authored the bill, told Business Insider. "There are a couple of data center folks that have said, 'Oh no, that's not fair.' Yes, it is. Grandma down the street shouldn't have to pay for your dreams."

Indiana courts power-hungry data centers

While Indiana doesn't top the list of major US data center hubs, the Rust Belt state is emerging as another player for many reasons. Indiana has a reliable power supply from coal and natural gas and can draw electricity from two regional grids. That state has a low risk of natural disasters that could disrupt that supply. Indiana lawmakers in 2019 exempted data center equipment and energy use from sales taxes. Land is also cheaper than other parts of the country.

Those perks have attracted large data centers to northern Indiana. Last year, Amazon Web Services started construction on an $11 billion data center campus in New Carlisle. Google announced plans to build a $2 billion data center in Fort Wayne. Microsoft is planning a $1 billion data center in LaPorte; Meta is investing $800 million in a campus in southern Indiana that could operate by 2026.

Projects in the pipeline could consume more electricity than the nearly 7 million residents in Indiana combined by 2035, according to forecasts by state utilities analyzed by the Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana, an advocacy group that opposes data center development in the state.

The coalition has called for a moratorium on new data centers until state leaders can study their potential impact on the electric grid and utility bills. But as more projects enter the pipeline with support from state officials, the coalition last year intervened in negotiations between a utility and the data center industry — including Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft — aimed at ensuring the companies pay a fair share for their energy use and associated power grid infrastructure upgrades. The parties in November reached an agreement aimed at shielding Indiana customers from some of the extra costs by requiring large data centers each month to pay at least 80% of their contracted electricity use, even if they don't use it. New transmission infrastructure and power generation to serve data centers could cost up to $1 billion, the agreement said.

Indiana regulators approved the settlement in February. The utility, Indiana Michigan Power, initiated the changes to what its big industrial energy users pay after forecasting that data centers could increase peak electricity demand by 150% by 2030, to more than 7,000 megawatts. That's equivalent to power for about 4.6 million residents in the state or two-thirds of Indiana's entire population. And that's just one utility's service area. The Northern Indiana Public Service Company's latest forecast shows data centers could double its energy demand by 2035.

Andrew Williamson, Indiana Michigan Power's directory of regulatory services, said in written testimony that the magnitude of demand for electricity was unprecedented and unlike any previous energy load additions the utility had ever experienced.

'More harm than good'

Rather than striking deals utility by utility, consumer advocates said a statewide law could better protect Indiana residents from rising energy bills associated with new data centers.

But the bill moving through the state legislature falls short, said Ben Inskeep, program director of the Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana. He said the bill contains a loophole, in that it doesn't cover special contracts utilities can negotiate with data centers for electricity rates. The bill also would create an expedited process for approving new power generation by a utility that wants to connect large energy loads like a data center, which Inskeep worried wouldn't allow enough time for public input. The coalition also wants lawmakers to eliminate provisions allowing utilities to seek permission from state regulators to recover up to 100% of the costs of building small nuclear reactors from customers.

"We need state policymakers to be thinking about these issues in a comprehensive way," Inskeep said. "But we want to make sure what they do doesn't create more harm than good."

Indiana Gov. Mike Braun told News 10 in February that he supported nuclear power but that utilities should shoulder the costs.

"I'm hesitant about putting that solely on the back of the ratepayers," Braun said, adding that the utility companies will have to absorb those costs through "capitalism."

"They are out there as investor owned, and some of that is going to have to be the risk that they take," Braun said.

The bill passed the House on February 13 and was referred to a Senate committee. The Indiana legislature is in session through April.

Meanwhile, the data center boom shows no signs of slowing in Indiana and across the US, including from foreign investors eager to get a stake in the AI race.

Hussain Sajwani, a real estate tycoon dubbed the "Donald of Dubai," has business deals with Trump and Elon Musk. Whether Sajwani's planned $20 billion investment in data centers is getting underway in Indiana is unclear, but for Inskeep, it wasn't surprising.

"Oh, here comes another one," Inskeep said of his initial reaction. "At this moment in time, we're just seeing so many data centers flood into Indiana that's a bit overwhelming. And it's really hard to fathom the magnitude of the impacts."

Google declined BI's request to comment, Microsoft didn't respond, and Amazon and the Data Center Coalition did not send comment by the time of publication.

Do you have a story to share? Contact this reporter at [email protected].

The reelection of Donald Trump brought Republicans a chance to realize their long-held dream of drowning bureaucracy in a bathtub. Since the Reagan era, many have tried; none have succeeded. But when Trump announced that Elon Musk would serve as cutter in chief and set up a Department of Government Efficiency, many believed the moment had at last arrived. So in November, I posed a question to management and policy experts: Could Musk's history of ruthlessly slimming down his companies and making them wildly successful give him the experience he needs to sniff out and cut Washington waste?

They predicted that Musk would have less unilateral power to enact his will than he does in the headquarters of X or Tesla. The federal government is not ruled by a king, after all, let alone an unelected "special government employee." But they didn't doubt Musk, given that he gutted Twitter's staff and — defying expectations that the platform would break — somehow kept it alive. As the Columbia Business School professor Michael Morris told me, sometimes it takes "creative destruction" to make radical changes to large organizations. On the whole, the experts were cautiously hopeful.

That was the fall, when all anyone could do was speculate. Today, six weeks into DOGE's existence, we have a lot of data. DOGE has created a dizzying tornado of news. Musk has used it to test the limits of the law, such as by dismantling USAID, a move that many legal experts have called unconstitutional. Tens of thousands of federal workers have been hastily fired; some, such as those who regulate the nation's food supply, were rehired once their necessity was recognized. Engineers loyal to Musk have infiltrated government IT systems.

So I went back to the experts and asked for their assessment of how things are going so far. For the most part, their hope had morphed into serious concern. They described DOGE's tactics as "clumsy," "wrongheaded," and full of "political recklessness."

"The arrogance of the whole thing is pretty stunning — even for someone with an ego as large as Elon Musk," Linda Bilmes, a senior lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, tells me. "It appears as if the objective is just to blow things up and hope something better emerges."

Bilmes says Musk's approach thus far has been a huge "missed opportunity." In November she told me she hoped Musk would seek counsel from those who know best where government waste is, including the Government Accountability Office, the inspectors general, and federal workers themselves. DOGE has barely interacted with the GAO, which last week released its latest road map to improving government efficiency. Trump has fired more than a dozen inspectors general as part of the purge of government workers. And Musk has painted federal workers as his enemies rather than his partners. For two weekends in a row DOGE has sent an email to all federal workers asking for a list of their weekly accomplishments; if DOGE deems them lacking in productivity, they could be terminated.

Last month, onstage at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Musk wielded what he called "the chainsaw for bureaucracy." But if Musk were truly interested in understanding the government to root out inefficiencies, Bilmes says, the memelord would have led with an image of a giant ear or telephone. "The wrongheadedness of the approach can be summed up in the image of the chainsaw," Bilmes added.

Two business school professors I talked to said the imagery harked back to "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap. In the 1990s, Dunlap wiped out thousands of employees at the toilet-paper giant Scott, facilitated the sale of the company, and walked off with a $100 million paycheck. Dunlap then took his brutal methods to the appliance maker Sunbeam, where share prices soared in anticipation of his plan to halve the company's staff. But that alone couldn't save Sunbeam. After several quarters of disappointing profits and a scandal involving falsified accounting documents, Dunlap was fired. Sunbeam went bankrupt, and Dunlap was hit with a shareholder lawsuit accusing him of inflating stock prices to acquire two other brands, as well as fines by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which accused him of misrepresenting Sunbeam's financial results. (He settled both.) All that chainsawing left a trail of destruction. "He substituted one kind of trauma for another kind of trauma," Morris says.

Musk is jogging memories of Chainsaw Al because his tactics aren't about simply cutting back on government waste, which can be achieved through things such as killing the penny (Trump did order this), getting rid of unoccupied office space, and telling the Pentagon that its days of lobster dinners are no more. It's about pushing the federal workforce to the brink and expanding the power of the executive branch.

"I'm both appalled and hopeful," Morris says. "Letting young kids who don't know anything about the context just gain access to all kinds of records that it's not clear they're legally allowed to be looking at, that opens the door to privacy issues, to espionage, to all kinds of problems."

On the other hand, Morris maintains some optimism that Musk's wrecking-ball approach may still be the best bet yet to break through entrenched government waste. "Bureaucracies grow because politicians make calculated moves based on the constituencies that they're trying to keep for the next election. You have inertia, you have this snowballing bureaucracy, and that's part of the problem," he says. "It's relatively rare to have an administration and an administrator like Elon Musk with complete political courage, political recklessness even."

The world's richest man doesn't answer to voters, and he even said during Trump's campaign that Americans should expect economic "hardship" as a result of his slicing of government programs and workers. And Trump is only giving Musk more power, requiring agencies to create a centralized system managed by DOGE where they record and justify payments. He has even said he'd like for Musk to "get more aggressive."

Morris says that when bold figures like Musk try to bring about rapid change in business, they create shocks to the system that usually lead to blowback. And that blowback is building. On Thursday, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking the firing of probationary employees at some agencies. DOGE is drawing ire not just from federal workers and Democrats but from within the MAGA movement. Steve Bannon has called Musk a "truly evil person" and last week told an interviewer that Musk "wants to impose his freak experiments and play-act as God without any respect for the country's history, values or traditions."

Recently, federal workers were sent a now notorious email asking them what they accomplished in the past week. They had little time to respond, with the threat of termination hanging over them if they left the email on read. Chaos ensued. Federal workers felt harassed and intimated, and many mulled resignation. Management experts largely told my colleagues that this type of leadership was harmful and could hurt worker morale. Then another email hit workers' inboxes, asking for a list of accomplishments to be sent every Monday. The emails are just the latest example of the ways DOGE and the Trump administration have wreaked psychological havoc on government workers, and Bilmes described them as "total nonsense." Many workers in the government are focused on preventing bad outcomes, such as the spread of disease or terrorist attacks — that work doesn't necessarily lend itself to ideals of efficiency.

Joseph Fuller, a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School, says that DOGE's tactics largely show that "at the root of what they're trying to do, they're trying to get the data." That could allow the government to push toward automating more tasks of its office workers. "In some ways, what they're trying to do is get a better map of how these places work so that they can start using tech to reduce costs and reduce deficits," Fuller says. But the disarray and confusion created by DOGE's tactics could outweigh any benefit. "The extent to which that agenda is overthrown by this kind of almost comically clumsy initiative might be something they regret," he says.

Fuller says tactics similar to the accomplishments emails happen in the corporate world in companies "under pretty significant financial duress." "It's a little bit of a 'break glass, pull lever' mechanism," he says, that "can be useful to allow you to make rapid cuts, which might cause you to live to fight another day in a corporate setting." The federal workforce is heavily unionized. The sources of funding are not controlled by a CEO. The government is not a company that needs to make it through the next quarter in hopes of being acquired. It needs the resources to carry on in perpetuity. DOGE did not respond to questions about whether it plans to work with the GAO as it continues to recommend spending cuts going forward.

The federal government isn't Sunbeam. Or Twitter. Or Tesla. Or SpaceX. When you cut half the people who work at Twitter, it glitches — even if it eventually recovers. When you eliminate USAID, people can die. How are we to measure the efficiency of programs that keep the country safe from terrorist attacks or nuclear disasters? The purge of employees can lead to gaps in systems we can't afford to break now and fix later.

The US government is not a corporation. And it's not a startup, the vast majority of which fail. Some are acquired, which is seen as success. Few turn out like Tesla and SpaceX. Their founders move on to try again, to come up with something new and take it back to investors for another go. The government cannot be put to the same tests — what it does is too important.

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.

• China retaliated with tariffs on American goods after Trump doubled levies on Chinese goods.
• China is taking aim at US agriculture imports, including soybeans, pork, and beef.
• Beijing's targeted approach shows it's trying not to escalate the trade war too much.

China swiftly retaliated against new tariffs from the Trump administration on Tuesday, showing Beijing isn't in a hurry to reach a deal on the trade war.

The new measures from Beijing came within an hour of US tariffs against Chinese goods, which doubled from 10% to 20% at 12:01 a.m. ET on Tuesday.

In retaliation for the levies, Beijing announced additional tariffs of 10% to 15% on some US imports starting March 10.

They include 10% tariffs on US soybeans, pork, and beef imports and 15% tariffs on chicken and cotton imports, according to the Commerce Ministry.

Beijing also targeted American farm imports into China when US President Donald Trump started the trade war in his first term.

Beijing's speedy response on Tuesday — reminiscent of Beijing's swift response on February 4 against the US's first tranche of tariffs — is an indication that Chinese leader Xi Jinping's administration was prepared for the moves.

Markets in Asia were broadly lower early on Tuesday due to worries over the impact of the trade war. But losses were limited as investors were already prepared, said analysts.

Japan's Nikkei 225 closed 1.2% lower after falling by as much as 2.7%. Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index closed 0.3% lower and China's CSI 300 ended little changed.

China's measures also appeared contained, Gary Ng, a senior economist at Natixis, told Business Insider. He said Beijing stuck to its "playbook of retaliation," similar to the moves it used on February 4. Last month, the country announced tariffs on some US goods and imposed export controls and market access restrictions on select companies.

Beijing's agriculture-focused response still appears to be more about posturing than it is about causing significant disruptions to the wider economy, Jun Rong Yeap, a market strategist at IG, an online trading provider, told BI.

"We need to keep in mind that the US imposed tariffs on all China's exports, while China only retaliated on a small share of US exports to China," wrote Zhiwei Zhang, the president and chief economist at Hong Kong-based Pinpoint Asset Management, in a note on Tuesday.

Still, Zhang is sounding caution over investor complacency.

"I think the market underestimates the potential damage of trade wars on the global economy," he wrote.

Separately, Beijing announced on Tuesday it's banning California-based biotech firm Illumina from selling gene sequencing products in China to "safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests."

Beijing also added 10 US companies to a list of unreliable entities and imposed dual-use item export controls on 15 US entities.

DeepSeek confidence is buoying China

China's markets have recently been supported by renewed interest in its tech stocks following DeepSeek's meteoric rise.

At a press briefing on Monday, Scott Kennedy, a China specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said China feels it's in a "much better position" than during Trump's first term in office. Because of significant tech advances, Beijing is not "desperate" for a Trump deal, he said.

"If they're going to reach a deal, they want it to benefit China and not just be a one-way list of concessions from Beijing to Washington," Kennedy said.

Trump is doubling down on tariffs just as Beijing holds its annual political meetings of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference known as "Two Sessions."

Investors are watching for signs that China will step up stimulus measures amid heightened trade tensions, a prolonged economic downturn at home, and weak domestic consumption.

Chinese Premier Li Qiang is expected to deliver the government work report on Wednesday that is set to detail top policy priorities and reveal China's 2025 GDP growth target.

• Jon Stewart says he would be game to have Elon Musk on "The Daily Show."
• The interview can go for as long as Musk likes, Stewart said in his Monday monologue.
• Stewart's invitation follows his criticism of Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.

Jon Stewart says he'd be game to have Elon Musk on "The Daily Show" completely unedited — and they can keep rolling for as long as the Tesla chief likes.

The possibility of a Stewart-Musk showdown was first floated after Stewart's February 24 monologue on the Department of Government Efficiency. During that segment, Stewart criticized DOGE's cost-cutting measures — and got so worked up that he smashed a ceramic mug and cut his hand.

"After the show, Gov. Musk tweeted — or X'd, I guess — that he would like to come on here and talk to me as long as the show airs unedited," Stewart said on Monday night about Musk, who is not an elected official.

"After thinking about his offer, I thought, 'Hey, that's actually how the in-studio interviews normally are. It's unedited," Stewart said. "So sure, we'd be delighted."

Stewart said he would "sweeten the pot" and keep the cameras rolling for as long as Musk wants their dialogue to last.

"The interview can be 15 minutes. It can be an hour. It can be two hours, whatever," Stewart said.

It would not be out of character for a Musk interview to run long. He's done hourslong podcast appearances on shows hosted by Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman.

Stewart, Musk, and the DOGE of it all

Stewart said in his Monday night monologue that he has seen Musk's critiques of him on social media.

Musk initially said on X he would be open to going on Stewart's show if the segment aired unedited.

"@elonmusk we'd be delighted," The Daily Show wrote on its X account in response.

But in separate X posts on February 25, Musk called Stewart "too set in his ways" and "very far left."

Musk followed that criticism up with another post on March 1, calling Stewart a "propagandist."

"Look, Elon, I do have some criticisms about DOGE. I support, in general, the idea of efficiency and delivering better services to the American public in cheaper and more efficient ways," Stewart said on Monday.

"And if you want to come on and talk about it on the show, great. If you don't want to, sure," the late-night show host added. "But can we just drop the pretense that you won't do it because I don't measure up to the standards of neutral discourse that you demand and display at all times?"

Musk first pitched the idea for DOGE to President Donald Trump during a livestreamed conversation on X back in August. At the time, Musk said he'd be "happy to help out" with a government-efficiency commission.

Since taking office, Trump has focused on trimming the size of the federal government. In addition to offering federal workers buyout offers and limiting federal hiring, the Trump administration has also asked federal workers to provide a list of their work accomplishments every week.

Musk did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, sent outside regular office hours.

• Trump's tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China are now in effect.
• The Trump administration is imposing a 25% tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico.
• Trump doubled the US's additional tariffs on China from 10% to 20%.

President Donald Trump's new tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China are here.

Tariffs of 25% on imports from Canada and Mexico went into effect on Tuesday. Energy imports from Canada are subject to a lower 10% tariff.

Trump had initially announced tariffs on both countries in early February, but he reached a deal with the leaders of Mexico and Canada to delay the tariffs by a month.

Also on Tuesday, Trump doubled the tariff on goods from China from 10% to 20% in an effort to push for strengthened drug policy, particularly surrounding the flow of fentanyl into the US.

The president's initial executive order placing tariffs on the three countries said the tariffs would remain in place "until the crisis is alleviated," referring to border and drug policy.

US stocks were little moved in premarket trading, with futures underlying the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 almost flat, and Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.2%. The three indexes had closed 1.5%, 1.8%, and 2.6% lower on Monday.

European stocks were broadly in the red as of 4:25 a.m. ET, with Germany's DAX index down 1.8%, France's CAC 40 down 1.1%, and the Euro Stoxx 50 down 1.6%. BMW shares fell 4.1%, Deutsche Bank shares fell 3.6%, and Siemens, Adidas, BASF, and Volkswagen were all down between 2% and 3%.

Responses from China, Mexico, and Canada

Beijing retaliated swiftly against Trump's additional tariffs, announcing that China will impose additional tariffs of 10% to 15% on some US imports starting March 10.

According to the Commerce Ministry, they include 10% tariffs on US soybeans, pork, and beef imports and 15% tariffs on chicken and cotton imports.

US farm imports into China were also targeted by Beijing when Trump started the trade war in his first term.

Beijing is also banning Illumina — a California-based biotech firm — from selling gene sequencing products in China to "safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests," the country's Commerce Ministry announced separately.

Beijing also added 10 US companies to a list of unreliable entities and imposed dual-use item export controls on 15 US entities.

Canada's prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said in a statement on Monday night that if the White House followed through, his administration would retaliate with 25% tariffs on $155 billion of US goods.

"Canada will not let this unjustified decision go unanswered," he said.

The statement said Ottawa plans to roll out the retaliatory measures over 21 days, with immediate tariffs on an initial $30 billion tranche of US goods. Trudeau added that his government is discussing other "non-tariff measures."

Mexico's president, Claudia Sheinbaum, said on Monday that she would wait to see the scale of the new tariffs before announcing any retaliation.

The US imports a range of key goods from Canada, Mexico, and China, including crude oil, car parts, and electronics. Some companies, like Walmart, have said they will raise prices if tariffs go into effect.

Trump wrote on Truth Social in February that Americans will feel "some pain" with tariffs, but "it will all be worth the price that must be paid."

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

• A top Ukrainian official said Russia beat its 2024 recruitment goal and is still doing so in 2025.
• That's after Moscow already raised its goal to 430,000 troops last year.
• It comes as Russia has poured cash into sign-up bonuses and passed laws to recruit crime suspects.

The deputy chief of Ukraine's military intelligence said Russia is exceeding its recruitment targets, affirming Moscow's earlier claim of hiring over 440,000 soldiers in 2024.

That recruiting success is set to continue in 2025, Maj. Gen. Vadim Skibitsky said in an interview published by the news agency RBC Ukraine on Monday.

"In January, they fulfilled their recruitment plans by 107%," said Skibitsky. "This issue remains relevant, and the Russian authorities have no problem with staffing their troops and filling losses."

Skibitsky said Russia initially set a hiring target of 380,000 troops in 2024 but raised it to 430,000 recruits. And beat that goal, he added.

In December, Dmitry Medvedev, the chairman of Russia's security council, said Moscow had signed contracts with 440,000 new soldiers in 2024.

Skibitsky confirmed that number in his Monday interview and said that Russia officially plans to recruit another 343,000 soldiers in 2025.

"But based on the experience of 2024, we know that these plans inevitably change, in the upward direction," he said.

Recruiting at that scale is allowing Russia to continue fighting intensely in Ukraine, Skibitsky said.

"It is important to understand that almost 80% of those recruited under contract are used to replace combat losses," he told RBC Ukraine.

These reported figures come as the Kremlin has poured cash into one-time recruitment bonuses for the military — just one of many ways it's pushing its economy and spending toward defense.

In July, Russian leader Vladimir Putin signed a decree that more than doubled the baseline sign-up bonus from 195,000 rubles to 400,000 rubles for the rest of 2024.

The 400,000 ruble payout is worth about $4,450 now. But some regions upped their bonuses to nearly 2 million rubles last year, putting them on par with the US military's sign-on payments.

"For the Russian Federation, these are very large sums," Skibitsky told RBC Ukraine.

Federal statistics from the Russian government in December cited the average monthly wage in the country as 86,500 rubles.

Ukraine expects Russia to also significantly ramp up the number of soldiers it recruits from prisons or criminal trials.

With Russia already actively recruiting from prisons, Putin signed a bill in October allowing those who face criminal charges to avoid their trials or convictions if they enlist in the military.

Skibitsky said Russia's plans for 2025 include 30% of its forces being made up of "special contingents," which describe units fielding inmates or soldiers who signed up to avoid charges.

That's up from 15% of its forces involving such troops last year, Skibitsky said.

"This issue is already arising for the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation — what to do with these people and how to work with them," he said.

Analysts from the Washington-based think tank Institute for the Study of War wrote that Russia likely increased its recruitment target in 2024 because that's when it stepped up the intensity of its assaults in Ukraine.

Moscow has, over the last year, started throwing thousands of men daily at Ukrainian positions in ground assaults, sustaining high casualties but also pressuring Kyiv's tired forces on the front lines.

ISW analysts wrote that Russia will likely have to raise its recruitment quota again this year to maintain that strategy.

"Continued Western military aid would help Ukrainian forces inflict additional losses on the Russian military that would likely intensify Russia's economic and military issues and force Putin into making concessions during meaningful negotiations in 2025," they wrote.

• Pfizer's CEO said he may move manufacturing back to the US in response to Donald Trump's tariffs.
• Albert Bourla said he was not surprised by Trump's victory in November.
• Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China.

Albert Bourla, Pfizer's CEO, said on Monday that the company may move overseas drug manufacturing back to the US if President Donald Trump's tariffs affect it.

Bourla was speaking at TD Cowen's annual healthcare conference when he was asked about the impact Trump's tariffs could have on Pfizer's operations.

While most of Pfizer's generic drugs are produced overseas, Bourla said the company has a large manufacturing network in the US.

"We have 13 manufacturing sites in the US right now, up and running," Bourla said, adding that some facilities are "mega, mega sites."

"So we have all the capabilities here, and the manufacturing sites are operating in good capacity right now. It's not that they are not, but if something happens, we will try to mitigate by transferring from manufacturing sites outside, to manufacturing sites here, the things that can be transferred quickly," Bourla continued.

Bourla also said at the conference that he was not surprised by Trump's victory in November.

"I was expecting him probably to win. It was very big win," Bourla said, adding that there will be "risks and opportunities" with the new administration.

"But the important thing is, what are you doing about it? And what are you doing about it, is you try to influence the environment. From our perspective, the whole pharma industry and us as Pfizer, try to stay as close to the administration," Bourla added.

On Monday, Trump said the White House would proceed with its plans to impose 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada starting Tuesday. The tariffs were originally meant to take effect in early February but were delayed after both countries promised to strengthen their border security.

The Trump administration imposed a 10% tariff on China last month and said it would levy an additional 10% tariff starting Tuesday. In February 2024, Trump told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo he would introduce tariffs of more than 60% on Chinese goods if he won the election.

"When it comes to China, it's not affecting us. As Pfizer, we haven't any reliance on China right now, nor Canada or Mexico," Bourla told CNBC in an interview on February 18.

"We are waiting to see how that could play out with the tariffs in places that have not been announced yet," Bourla added.

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

• California is mandating that state employees return to the office four days a week starting July 1.
• The move aligns with a White House mandate for federal workers to return full-time.
• Companies like Amazon and JPMorgan also require in-person work, ending remote policies.

California is requiring most state employees to come into the office at least four days a week starting July 1.

Gov. Gavin Newsom's office said on Monday that the state employs 224,000 full-time workers and that over half have returned to daily in-office work.

"When we work together, collaboration improves, innovation thrives, and accountability increases," Newson said in a statement.

The announcement said telework would be granted on a case-by-case basis, including for employees who do not live near their offices.

The order follows a White House mandate to return federal workers to the office full time. President Donald Trump signed the return-to-office mandate during his first hours in office.

Changes are also being rolled out on the state level. Some states, including Ohio and Oklahoma, require their employees to work in person, ending pandemic-era telework policies.

Similarly, companies including Amazon, JPMorgan, and Salesforce have required their employees to return to in-person work.

California's order has gained criticism from one of the largest public sector unions in the country.

On Monday, SEIU Local 1000 called Newsom's decision "out of touch, unnecessary, and a step backward" and asked him to "reverse this reckless decision."

"Forcing workers back into the office hits them financially," the union, which said it represents 96,000 people employed by California, wrote in a statement. "Many will face higher costs for gas, parking, and commuting — expenses that telework helped avoid."

The order reverses Newsom's outlook and policies toward remote work. During the pandemic and until the end of 2023, his administration encouraged remote work for California government employees. It also gave individual agencies within the government autonomy over remote or hybrid work policies. Newsom has been pushing for in-person work since April 2024.

Newsom also asked state human resources to streamline the hiring of former federal workers who want jobs in areas such as firefighting, weather forecasting, natural resource management, and medical and mental healthcare. Mass layoffs and employee buyouts across US government agencies led by Elon Musk's DOGE have left thousands of federal employees unemployed.

President Donald Trump and Musk have said the moves are meant to improve productivity and slash federal spending.

Newsom's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.

• Dolly Parton's husband, Carl Dean, has died at age 82 in Nashville.
• Parton and Dean first met outside a laundromat in 1964 and married two years later in 1966.
• Dean has largely stayed out of the spotlight since then, but he inspired Parton's hit "Jolene."

Dolly Parton's husband of nearly 60 years, Carl Dean, has died at age 82, the singer said in a post on Instagram on Monday.

"Carl Dean, husband of Dolly Parton, passed away March 3rd in Nashville at the age of 82. He will be laid to rest in a private ceremony with immediate family attending. He was survived by his siblings Sandra and Donnie," the post read.

"Carl and I spent many wonderful years together. Words can't do justice to the love we shared for over 60 years. Thank you for your prayers and sympathy," the post continued. "The family has asked for privacy during this difficult time."

Parton and Dean met outside a laundromat on the day she moved to Nashville in 1964.

"I was surprised and delighted that while he talked to me, he looked at my face (a rare thing for me). He seemed to be genuinely interested in finding out who I was and what I was about," Parton said of the meeting in a post on her official website.

Sparks flew between them almost immediately.

"My first thought was 'I'm gonna marry that girl,'" Dean told Entertainment Tonight in 2016 in a rare public statement for the couple's 50th wedding anniversary. "My second thought was, 'Lord she's good lookin.'" And that was the day my life began. I wouldn't trade the last 50 years for nothing on this earth."

After two years of dating, they married in 1966 in a private ceremony in Georgia.

Since their marriage, Dean has largely stayed out of the spotlight.

Parton received her first songwriting award in 1966 for "Put It Off Until Tomorrow" recorded by Bill Phillips. Parton and Dean attended the ceremony and dinner together, but they did not continue making joint public appearances.

"After the dinner, we walked back out, and they brought us our car — I don't even remember what we were driving then — and we got in it and headed for home," Parton said at the Marty Stuart Jam in 2011, per country music news site The Boot. "Carl turned to me and said, 'Dolly, I want you to have everything you want, and I'm happy for you, but don't you ever ask me to go to another one of them dang things again!'"

Dean also inspired one of Parton's biggest hits, "Jolene."

The story for the song came from a bank teller who had a "terrible crush" on her husband, Parton said in a 2008 interview with NPR.

"And he just loved going to the bank because she paid him so much attention. It was kinda like a running joke between us — when I was saying, 'Hell, you're spending a lot of time at the bank. I don't believe we've got that kind of money.' So it's really an innocent song all around, but sounds like a dreadful one," she told NPR.

In 2019, the singer told Business Insider that a typical date night with her husband involved a romantic dinner at home, during which they would both get dressed up for each other.

"We've always been sweethearts as well as being best friends, as well as being husband and wife," she said. "So we just decide what we want to do."

A representative for Parton told BI that the singer had no additional comment.

• Canadians are angry over Trump's tariff threats and 51st-state comments.
• In response, they're abandoning US consumer brands in favor of locally-made alternatives.
• The country's largest retailer said sales of Canadian goods are up by double digits.

In response to President Donald Trump's tariff threats and comments about adopting the 158-year-old nation as the 51st US state, Canadians are hitting back with a bit of economic populism of their own.

"Every single person I meet, they want help and guidance how they can buy more Canadian products, and we're really trying to do everything we can to help them," Loblaw Companies CEO Per Bank said on the company's fourth quarter earnings call last month. Loblaw, which owns several grocery and pharmacy brands, is the largest retailer in Canada.

In a LinkedIn comment a week before the call, Bank said sales of products prepared in Canada were up double digits in the second week of February, especially in grocery, dairy, and frozen sections as shoppers were "already in a patriotic state of mind."

The sentiment goes well beyond the grocery aisles.

"It's a combination of we're hurt and angry," said Mike Moffatt, a former economic adviser to Justin Trudeau, in an interview with Scott Galloway published last week. "Weirdly, we're actually more we've come together more as a country. I think we are less divided than we have been in probably a decade here."

Moffatt noted that Canada is significantly more dependent on foreign trade than the US is, and that new tariffs — as well as any retaliatory tariffs — would create a host of supply chain challenges and new price increases.

Trump said Monday that Canada had "no room left" to avoid the tariffs.

Canadians aren't mincing words about how they're feeling and what they hope to accomplish with their next grocery run.

"I'm a little bit horrified. I'm very scared," Pearl Whamond, a nurse who has lived in Montreal all her life, told Business Insider. She said she's personally witnessed an outpouring of Canadian patriotism even in Quebec, a primarily French-speaking province that is not typically considered very patriotic.

"If Quebec is pissed off enough to become nationalistic and fly the Canadian flag, something's really wrong," she said.

Whamond is among the many Canadians who are trying to boycott American companies in favor of Canadian ones. She said her local Facebook groups are full of people asking for Canadian alternatives to specific products and brands.

She personally hasn't shopped at Amazon in nearly a month — despite her husband previously referring to her as the "Amazon queen" — and is also avoiding brands like McDonald's and Walmart.

Another Canadian based in Alberta who asked to remain anonymous for fear of political backlash, told BI he also has been trying to avoid buying American products, opting for goods made in any other country but especially Canada when it's feasible.

"Patriotism is definitely way up," he said. "I feel like we're actually a united front as Canadians. We're collectively rejecting the divisive rhetoric that has led to all this."

The renewed patriotism even spilled out onto the ice during the final game of the Four Nations Face Off hockey tournament, which replaced the otherwise sleepy NHL All Star Game.

After the US handed Canada a decisive defeat in their round-robin match-up, Canada returned with a vengeance in the final to win a sudden-death overtime victory on par with the Olympics or the Stanley Cup.

"You can't take our country — and you can't take our game," Trudeau posted on X.

It's a mood that has more Canadians reaching for Crown Royal over Maker's Mark.

• CentralReach has tapped investment bank William Blair to weigh a potential sale, BI has learned.
• The company makes electronic health records software for autism care.
• One person with knowledge of the efforts said CentralReach could seek a valuation of over $1 billion.

Autism care software maker CentralReach has been exploring a sale, Business Insider has learned.

CentralReach has tapped the investment bank William Blair to pursue a potential sale, according to people with knowledge of the efforts.

Founded in 2012, CentralReach sells electronic health records software to providers caring for autism and related intellectual and developmental disorders. The company also builds AI-powered tools within its platform to help providers automate tasks like reviewing clinical notes.

CentralReach and William Blair didn't respond to requests for comment for this story.

Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based CentralReach has been publicly quiet about its financials to date. It's backed by venture and private equity firm Insight Partners, which invested an undisclosed sum into CentralReach in 2018.

Two people with knowledge of CentralReach's efforts said the company has soared as a market-leading maker of software for autism care. One of those people said CentralReach is doing about $75 million in earnings before deductions like taxes and interest.

That person said they expect CentralReach to seek a valuation north of $1 billion, based on current market standards.

A number of healthcare companies have been looking to sell themselves after a slow year for company combinations in 2024.

Investors and bankers told Business Insider in February that healthcare companies that are profitable and can demonstrate stable revenue will be far more attractive to buyers, especially private equity buyers.

Medical practice tech maker ModMed announced Monday that it sold a majority stake to PE firm Clearlake Capital from Warburg Pincus, which first invested in ModMed in 2017. The company didn't disclose the terms of the acquisition, but the Financial Times reported the day before that the deal valued ModMed at $5.3 billion.

CentralReach has also made multiple acquisitions in the past few years, most recently buying Behavior Science Technology, which built a platform for measuring and tracking the efficacy of autism therapy, in September. In its 13-year history, CentralReach has made 14 acquisitions.

CentralReach said in a September release that its tech is used by more than 175,000 healthcare professionals globally.

• Litia Garr is one of the contestants on Grant Ellis' season of "The Bachelor."
• She's a 31-year-old venture capitalist based in Salt Lake City.
• After their one-on-one date in Edinburgh, Grant told Litia he's falling for her.

Grant Ellis and Litia Garr's blossoming romance on season 29 of "The Bachelor" could make it to the finish line.

Prior to the season premiere, Grant told Business Insider he had "a really special connection with Litia," and said it grew throughout the season.

Their connection has indeed been one of the strongest and most consistent of the season, and Litia, 31, is now one of the remaining four contestants vying for Grant's heart.

Here's everything to know about her.

Litia's job is working at a venture capital firm

According to her LinkedIn profile, Litia attended Brigham Young University—Hawaii.

She's been working at Pelion Venture Partners, a venture capital company based in Utah, since 2016. Litia started as a receptionist and is currently Head of Platform & Community at the company.

Litia comes from a big family and was raised Mormon

Litia's mom, who's from Idaho, and her late dad, who was from Fiji, met in college in Hawaii. Three months after her birth in Hawaii, Litia's dad died in a car accident.

"Even though he's gone, I still feel his love and his presence in my life," Litia says during the season premiere.

Litia remains close with her mom, whom she calls the "greatest example of strength and resilience," and her extended family.

Religion is also a significant part of Litia's life. She was raised Mormon and says on the show that religion is a "guiding light" for her.

During her one-on-one date with Grant during week five, Litia speaks about her religious upbringing and says she wants her future children to know they're loved by God. Grant and Litia bond over their desire to have big families, and although the Bachelor isn't familiar with Mormon beliefs, he agrees that he'd like God to be a presence in his kids' lives.

She's a Swiftie

Litia attended one of Taylor Swift's concerts in Vancouver as part of the Eras Tour in December and documented the experience on social media.

"swiftie core 🫶🏽," she captioned an Instagram post that included photos and videos of her trading friendship bracelets and belting out Swift's songs with her mom and other attendees.

Grant has already told Litia that he's falling for her

Grant and Litia's connection starts off strong, and it's strengthened by an emotional one-on-one conversation during week three.

"After tonight, Litia could be my wife," Grant says.

Then, after their one-on-one date in Edinburgh during week five, Litia says that she can see a life with him.

Their feelings grow even stronger that evening during dinner when Grant cries while opening up about feeling lonely as a child and trying to put on a brave face. In response, Litia is comforting and assures Grant that he's "enough."

"Knowing I have a safe space with Litia, knowing that I have somebody that I'm comfortable with, that I can let her in and she can know my biggest insecurities and that she's accepting of it is big for me," Grant says. "I know she sees that, and I know she sees me for me."

"I feel like you're somebody who I could see myself building a life with and I am falling for you," Grant tells Litia.

Even though Litia doesn't tell Grant that the feelings are mutual, she shares the same sentiment.

"I feel grateful that he opened up to me and it just made me want to love him," Litia says in the voiceover.

Fans will have to keep tuning into "The Bachelor" to see if Grant and Litia's relationship goes the distance.

New episodes of season 29 of "The Bachelor" air Mondays on ABC.

• Two of Ruby Franke's kids participated in a new docuseries about her.
• The former vlogger was convicted of child abuse and sentenced to up to 30 years in prison.
• Shari Franke says she'll never speak to her mother again; Franke's son Chad still has love for her.

One of the most harrowing parts of "Devil in the Family," Hulu's new docuseries about the downfall of former mommy vlogger Ruby Franke, happens minutes before it ends.

Shari Franke, her eldest daughter, was an internet personality as a child alongside her five younger siblings Chad, Abby, Julie, Russell, and Eve, who were all featured on their mother's popular YouTube channel "8 Passengers." Shari participated in Hulu's series alongside her father, Kevin Franke, and her younger brother, Chad Franke.

In an interview near the end of the third and final episode, Shari reflects on her fractured current relationship with her mother as she watches old footage of herself as a child with her mother.

It's a dark moment for Shari. The now 21-year-old saw her family, presented for years as idyllic and perfect, crumble in the public eye.

Ruby Franke, who started her YouTube channel in 2015, was convicted on four counts of child abuse and sentenced to between four and 30 years in a Salt Lake City, Utah, prison. Before that, she'd become controversial in 2020 over her parenting style, which some viewers called abusive.

The true depth of her crimes was uncovered in 2023, when her younger son, one of the two kids she abused, escaped from the home of Franke's friend and collaborator Jodi Hildebrandt and told authorities he and his sister had been subjected to horrific abuse.

Here's where Ruby Franke's six kids are now, amid their mom's imprisonment.

Ruby Franke's 4 youngest kids are being kept out of the spotlight

Ruby and Kevin Franke's four youngest children are still minors. Though they were prominently featured in their mother's YouTube channel and on her Instagram for years — and even had "official" individual Instagram accounts managed by their parents — their identities were concealed in footage shown in the Hulu docuseries. The kids' faces were blurred out in old videos, and they weren't named.

In legal documentation related to Franke's trial and conviction viewed by Business Insider, the four youngest were also referred to by their first initials. The two youngest kids, "R." (Russell) and "E." (Eve), were 12 and 10 at the time of Franke's arrest and were the ones subjected to physical abuse.

The abuse stemmed from Franke and Hildebrandt's belief that they were possessed by the devil, and that their "deviance" needed to be addressed with harsh punishments. Those punishments, chronicled in Franke's detailed journal about the abuse made public by authorities during the trial, included withholding food for days, making them stand in the hot sun for hours, and having them run shoeless in the Utah desert.

As the docuseries recounts, the two middle sisters, Abby and Julie, did not appear to be physically harmed at the time Franke and Hildebrandt were arrested in August 2023. All four kids were taken into the custody of Utah's Department of Child and Family Services when Franke was arrested; their father, Kevin Franke, alleged in the docuseries that he had been pressured to leave the family home and cut off contact with all his children for over a year by his wife and Hildebrandt.

Kevin Franke's attorney told Today.com in September 2023 that he was "focused on doing what is best for his kids" and was "making an effort to rebuild and bridge these relationships." Kevin filed for divorce that year and has been seeking to regain custody of his four youngest children. It's unclear whether the kids are still in the custody of the state, in Kevin Franke's custody, or elsewhere, as the status of his guardianship case isn't publicly accessible.

As of a June 2024 filing in Kevin Franke's lawsuit against Hildebrandt, viewed by BI, all four kids were residing in separate homes while in the state's custody.

When reached via email, a representative for Utah's DCFS declined to comment further on specifics of the case or the whereabouts of the Franke children "in order to protect the integrity of the necessary working relationships with those we serve, and to respect the privacy of children and families."

Chad Franke still has love for Ruby Franke despite her crimes

Chad Franke is Kevin and Ruby Franke's second-eldest child and eldest son. He and his older sister Shari, who are now both adults, participated in the Hulu docuseries where they opened up about their family's vlogging career and their mother's abuse case.

In the docuseries, Shari and Chad recalled how the two of them were the most popular of the Franke siblings among viewers, remarking that photos with the two of them in the thumbnail tended to perform best on "8 Passengers." Chad in particular became something of an internet celebrity in his own right, and he said he played into the charming goofball character.

Kevin admitted in an interview for the docuseries that he was living vicariously through preteen Chad, who was much cooler and more confident than he ever was, and said he and his wife exploited that for monetary gain. At its peak, Kevin said they were making over $100,000 a month in YouTube revenue.

As a teen, Chad started to act out, culminating in his expulsion from school. At that point, the Frankes brought in Jodi Hildebrandt, a therapist referred by a family friend, to help keep Chad in line. He was sent to the Anasazi Foundation Wilderness Therapy Program, a troubled teen program.

In the docuseries, Chad said he didn't mind working with Hildebrandt at first, as she mostly focused on trying to get him to be more spiritual. He even grew to love her, despite her encouragement of Kevin and Ruby Franke's harsh punishments. It was Chad's revelation in a 2020 YouTube video that he'd had his room taken away and was made to sleep on a bean bag chair in the basement for seven months that kickstarted the backlash against the Franke family and precipitated their downfall.

Chad was ultimately kicked out of the family home by Franke and Hildebrandt, who'd moved in with them, when he was 17 for admitting to watching pornography in the house. He went to live in an apartment nearby and didn't have contact with his parents or siblings for a year. He recalled in the docuseries finding out about his mother's arrest when someone at his lifeguarding job saw it on the news and told him.

Initially, Chad still believed that his punishment and his siblings' treatment were appropriate and that Hildebrandt and Franke had been acting as "God's chosen people." It was only after his father finally realized they'd both been lied to and told Chad that he realized the extent of the abuse.

In the docuseries, Chad said it was "heartbreaking" seeing his mother on trial. He admitted that his feelings about her are complicated, though he believes she belongs in prison — at least for now.

"I miss a mother figure. I miss how she was when I was very young. But I think what she's going through is deserved," he said. "I don't think she should get out, at least until the kids, all the kids, turn 18 years old. But that doesn't mean I don't have love for her."

Chad now works as a real estate agent in Utah. He's also started his own influencing career, growing his personal following on Instagram and TikTok, where he posts videos with his girlfriend.

Shari Franke says she'll never speak to Ruby Franke again and is lobbying against family vlogging

In the docuseries, Shari and Chad recalled how their mother grew her following by forcing all the kids to constantly create content for the channel, which began when Shari was a preteen. Shari managed to break away before the situation deteriorated, leaving the family home to attend Brigham Young University in 2020; Shari says Franke kicked her out of her room two weeks before she left for college in order to move Hildebrandt in.

She recalled being immediately suspicious of Hildebrandt and found negative reviews of her online that said she'd destroyed other families and even had her license revoked. Shari told her mother, but Franke didn't listen. Ultimately, Franke cut Shari off after Shari refused to stop contacting her father Kevin and brother Chad from college.

In the docuseries, Shari and a family friend who was her former teacher recalled going to the Franke home to confront Franke, who was unmoved even as Shari cried and begged Franke not to cut her off. From that point, Shari didn't have contact with her family, but neighbors would keep her updated on the situation with her siblings amid their father's absence.

In 2022, they alerted Shari that Franke appeared to be gone for hours at a time, leaving the younger kids home alone. Shari placed a call to the Springville Police Station in September 2022 asking for a welfare check; a case opened by the DCFS was eventually closed because according to documentation previously viewed by BI, there was no evidence of wrongdoing.

Shari addressed cutting ties with her family on a podcast in 2023, months before Franke's arrest, saying that they'd left her "spiritually drained." When Franke and Hildebrandt were arrested that August, Shari reacted to the news on Instagram, sharing a photo of a police car with the word: "Finally."

"Today has been a big day," Shari said in another post. "Me and my family are so glad justice is being served. We've been trying to tell the police and CPS for years about this, and so glad they finally decided to step up."

She also appealed to her followers and former "8 Passengers" fans to help her crowdsource "questionable or concerning" video evidence against Franke and ConneXions, the controversial group started by Hildebrandt that Franke had joined, shortly after the arrest.

Today, Shari is an outspoken critic of family vlogging, testifying at an October 2024 Utah Senate committee hearing in favor of laws to protect child influencers. In her speech, she called herself a "victim of family vlogging" and said "there is no such thing as a moral or ethical family vlogger."

"If I could go back and do it all again, I'd rather have an empty bank account now and not have my childhood plastered all over the internet," Shari said. "No amount of money I received has made what I've experienced worth it."

She also published a memoir, "The House of My Mother," in January ahead of the Hulu docuseries, about her family life with Franke.

"Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke" is streaming on Hulu.

• My wife and I want to be parents, but we need to find a sperm donor.
• The process of finding a sperm donor is strange because we can only look at documents.
• It's also expensive, and we have not yet gotten pregnant.

The calling to have children and be a mother came from deep in my soul — and has remained consistent over the years.

When I came out as queer, I worried about how much more difficult it would be for me to become a parent.

"Modern science is great. You'll be able to have children," a friend said encouragingly. I hoped they were right and now I'm learning the truth.

When my wife and I decided to become parents, we needed a sperm donor. The process has been difficult, strange, and expensive.

We chose our sperm donor based on documents

My wife and I have been in fits of laughter, browsing the sperm banks and seeing some of the photos and descriptions. Each donor provides photos (adult and baby), a personal essay, a voice recording, and a medical profile.

It's weird. Several times, we thought we had found a donor we liked, but then we heard their voice, and it was off-putting — or they'd say their favorite animal is a small bird or ladybug.

We were looking for a donor who was more analytical or mathematical, given that we're both creative and artistic. Physically, we wanted someone tall, with dark brown curly hair — to match the traits of my wife, given that I'd be carrying the baby.

It's hard because the process forces us to emphasize the things that don't matter — looks, career, genetic greatness, and astrological signs. There's no formula. It's all feeling.

When we finally found the donor we wanted, it felt like an instant connection with "the one." It just felt right.

But that connection never goes beyond documents or forms. It's a strange kind of pseudo-relationship and quasi-emotional connection.

We're spending a lot of money

So far, we have spent thousands of dollars on this process, and we've had no pregnancies.

We're also sinking our money into an unregulated industry.

Most of these sperm banks don't adhere to the family limit number, meaning one donor can have anywhere from 10 to 150 children.

Avoiding half-sibling pods can be difficult, but right now, this expensive path seems like our only option.

My wife and I are leaning on each other for support

The process hasn't been easy. Since my wife's DNA won't be involved in the making of our baby, we are navigating a strange territory. We're trying to ensure my wife will leave her park on the child during pregnancy and early life.

"This shift in perspective does not change the facts but gives an optimistic way to see a scenario and gives back some of the control these individuals may feel they lost during the process," Jennifer Teplin, clinical director at Manhattan Wellness, who specializes in maternal mental health and treats LGBTQ+ patients, said told me.

But my wife and I are getting through this together. Luckily, she's always cracking jokes, bringing levity to a strange scenario.

I've also found peace in the fact that no one gets to choose their family. We found a donor my wife and I both felt drawn to, which I'm grateful for. In the end, if we only have one child, they will be born with a much wider support system and family beyond our home.

That's a beautiful gift to give.