The beleaguered U.S. office property market may be bottoming out, analysts told Reuters, pointing to a string of sales of stressed properties at big discounts over the last quarter that have helped set a new pricing benchmark.

The U.S. office property market has been hard hit since the pandemic by higher interest rates and as many office workers worked from home. Prices for office buildings have fallen 12.4% year-over-year as of the second quarter, according to the RCA Commercial Property Price Index, causing speculation about when a bottom in the market would be reached.

“Peak distress is fully behind us,” said Stephen Buschbom, research director at industry research firm Trepp, who added that what was now key is to have more deals struck to give the industry an idea on price.

“We still have price discovery left,” Buschbom said. “An increase in transaction volume will mean that’s becoming more palatable for those holders.”

Throughout 2023 and the start of 2024, many developers and lenders chose to extend maturing loans with new terms or held off a sale to avoid recording a big loss.

Office sales averaged $35 billion per quarter pre-COVID-19 but as property valuations dipped on continued vacancies and high operating costs, they have averaged only $13.4 billion per quarter since 2023, according to data from MSCI Real Capital Analytics.

However, some analysts have seen signs of a pickup in sales of stressed properties, which has led some to think there is a turning point in the market.

“There are growing signs of market-bottom capitulation or sophisticated property owners selling their properties even at large discounts to their purchase price which is helping create some sort of pricing benchmark for office values,” said Kevin Fagan, Moody’s head of Commercial Real Estate Economic Analysis.

Since the end of the first quarter in the U.S., there were seven office properties sold at a discount of more than $100 million compared to just one in the first quarter and just two in the whole of 2023, Moody’s said in an August report which was based on public records data.

The list of sales included a Midtown Manhattan office building – 135 West 50th Street – that sold for a 97% discount to its original price of $285 million for a $276.5 million loss, according to Moody’s, which also listed office sales in Chicago, Seattle and Washington, D.C.

Another example Moody’s listed is 1740 Broadway, which sold at a $416 million loss compared to its previous purchase price. Investors made losses on AAA-rated bonds sold against it, for the first time since 2008.

Yellowstone Real Estate Investments, which bought 1740 Broadway, did not return a request for comment. UBS, which sold the 135 West 50th Street loan, and JLL, which brokered the sale of both properties, declined to comment.

Lower rates boost

With a lack of a pricing benchmark, property owners have been reluctant to sell because lower transaction volumes created a mismatch in pricing expectations. They have instead chosen to extend or refinance existing loans to tide over to a period when interest rates are being cut and improve their ability to retain these properties.

The real estate industry has suffered from a double whammy of low vacancies and revenues, which have made it difficult for property owners to make interest payments on existing loans.

Even with rate cuts, borrowers with nearly 72% of some $19 billion of maturing loans over the next 12 months, could struggle to refinance because they may need to come up with an average 30-35% of equity to get a takeout loan, said the Moody’s study.

“There will be some large balances (in the general market) towards the end of this year and into early next year that go through a sales transaction,” said Ryan Reiss, chief lending officer at D.C. regional lender EagleBank.

The Federal Reserve recently reversed the direction of U.S. interest rates for the first time since 2022 with a 50 basis point cut in September and promised more.

But while the 50 basis point cut could show “light at the end of a very long tunnel” the “(commercial real estate) market revival would need at least 300-400 basis points in interest rate cuts to compensate for the sharp decline in property valuations,” said Alex Horn, founder of private lender Bridgeinvest.

One recent example of a lender pushing forward was Parkview Financial which offered to sell $300 million of seven multifamily and office loans – a mix of performing and some in litigation – in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut in an auction, according to Parkview CEO Paul Rahimian and a confidential offering memorandum seen by Reuters.

Rahimian said his firm received multiple bids at 95-98 cents to the dollar for four of those loans, which it plans to close over the next six weeks. Three loans were on hold, he said. The firm plans to use the proceeds from the sales to hand out new loans, Rahimian said.

Such sales were creating opportunities, said Keerthi Raghavan, head of ABS strategy at Waterfall Asset Management, which has invested nearly $2 billion over the last year in bonds and loans sold at steep discounts.

“Fundamental issues are not something that will disappear overnight in our view with front-end rates being lower, and there (are) still plenty of CRE assets sitting on balance sheets that need to be sold or resolved, which should keep supply elevated,” he said.

—Matt Tracy and Shankar Ramakrishnan, Reuters

Amazon.com has been accused by a U.S. labor board of illegally refusing to bargain with a union representing drivers employed by a contractor, the agency announced on Wednesday.

The complaint from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) claims that Amazon is a so-called “joint employer” of drivers employed by the contractor, Battle Tested Strategies (BTS), and used a series of illegal tactics to discourage union activities at a facility in Palmdale, California.

BTS drivers voted to join the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union last year, becoming the first Amazon delivery contractors to unionize.

The NLRB in a complaint issued on Monday said Amazon broke the law by terminating its contract with BTS after the drivers unionized, without first bargaining with the Teamsters.

The board had said in August that it had found merit to the union’s claims that Amazon exerts control over BTS drivers and should be considered their employer under federal labor law. The NLRB at the time said it would issue a complaint unless Amazon settled the case.

The board said last month it planned to issue a second complaint involving a different group of Amazon drivers.

In a statement, Amazon spokesperson Eileen Hards said the NLRB did not include many of the Teamsters’ claims in its complaint, showing that the union was “misrepresenting the facts.”

“As we’ve said all along, there is no merit to any of their claims. We look forward to showing that as the legal process continues and expect the few remaining allegations will be dismissed as well,” Hards said.

Amazon has said in the past that it does not have enough control over drivers’ working conditions to be considered their joint employer.

Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said in a statement that Amazon is trying to reap the benefits of drivers’ labor without taking responsibility for their well being.

“This decision brings us one step closer to getting Amazon workers the pay, working conditions, and contracts they deserve,” O’Brien said.

Joint employment has been one of the most contentious U.S. labor issues over the last decade, and the NLRB’s standard for determining when companies qualify as joint employers has shifted numerous times since the Obama administration.

Business groups favor a test that requires direct and immediate control over workers, while unions and Democrats back a standard that covers indirect forms of control.

The case will be heard by an administrative judge in Los Angeles, who is scheduled to hold an initial hearing next March. The judge’s decision can be reviewed by the five-member NLRB, whose rulings can be appealed to federal court.

A ruling that Amazon is a joint employer under federal labor law could be applied in cases involving other Amazon contractors and force the company to bargain with drivers’ unions.

The board, meanwhile, is facing claims by a growing number of companies, including Amazon, that its structure and in-house enforcement proceedings violate the U.S. Constitution.

Amazon has filed a lawsuit against the board seeking to block it from deciding whether the company must bargain with a union representing workers at a New York City warehouse. A federal appeals court on Monday temporarily blocked the NLRB from ruling while it reviews Amazon’s claims.

—Daniel Wiessner, Reuters

Guess what word doesn’t appear in Vogue’s recent 1,000-word story on how Hilaria Baldwin takes care of her seven kids?

“Nanny.”

 Or “babysitter.” Or “childcare.”

The story (accompanied by a nine-photo Instagram post that is also childcare-free) is one of those hour-by-hour summaries of a person’s day, starting with Baldwin waking up at 5 a.m. to head out for a run, and then ending at 8:30 p.m. with all the kids tucked into bed.

Baldwin and her husband, actor Alec Baldwin, have seven children together, from toddler age to 11 years old. But nowhere does the story mention all the household help the couple no doubt employs.

This isn’t just tone-deaf. It’s a giant missed opportunity.

Sure, for decades, women celebrities—and the media that covered them—collaborated to keep helpers out of the frame. There was pressure to perpetuate an idealized version of working motherhood, where women somehow do it all.

Admitting you had help was somehow shameful. Not to mention celebrity fathers were never asked about “how they manage it all”—just as male executives rarely are (although Fast Company has endeavored to change that).

National attention for the childcare crisis

But we’ve turned a corner. Childcare is finally part of the national conversation. For all working parents (not just moms).

Not just because of the “question heard ’round the world” that Reshma Saujani posed to Donald Trump at the New York Economic Club last month. Saujani, the founder of Girls Who Code and Moms First, made childcare a hot topic in the presidential race when she asked the Republican contender about his plans. (The issue also notably came up in Tuesday’s vice presidential debate.)

All those Zooms during the pandemic pulled back the curtain on home life. For the first time, it became broadly apparent how much working parents struggle to make everything work. That tension is now one of the reasons there’s so much resistance to mandatory return to office. Most parents simply can’t juggle two sets of full-time jobs without some kind of support.

For some families, that means childcare. But that’s an expensive proposition, even for those who have the money. A report by Care.com this year found that a third of families are dipping into their savings to cover the cost of help. Two-thirds of families are spending more than 20% of their income on these costs.

And even when parents can afford care, the supply of qualified caretakers is dipping as demand shoots up. “The imbalance of supply and demand . . . is now at its most extreme,” Care.com’s report said.

Workplace flexibility can offset some of this. Marissa Mayer’s own experience as CEO of Yahoo famously, though perhaps unintentionally, highlighted this point. After giving birth, she famously brought her infant into the office with her. The arrangement gave her the ability to tend to her work and her family simultaneously. Other parents want the same—just from home, not the office.

The need for flexibility

Much has been written about the shortsightedness of CEOs who demand a total return-to-office. Many observers note that these orders often come from older male leaders with no firsthand experience of what it means to juggle home and work.

Lack of flexibility is one of the reasons senior women leave their employers, according to research from McKinsey and LeanIn.org. But the simple inability to access affordable childcare keeps many talented workers from seeking employment in the first place. And just this year, the surgeon general declared that parents are experiencing unprecedented amounts of stress as they try to juggle competing demands.

The false ideal of “doing it all”

There’s another reason publications like Vogue should start bringing childcare out of the shadows. We need to change our ideas of what it means to have help. For too long, parents, especially mothers, have felt guilt about not being able to “do it all.” But it was always a false ideal.

Vogue has often been a leader on women’s issues. They could have set a new standard here by normalizing the idea of having childcare. By showing how incredibly necessary it is—how it enables parents to manage their many responsibilities.

The Baldwins are reportedly gearing up for a new TLC reality series next year. Let’s hope it showcases the help these stars have in managing their family. Instead of keeping childcare in the shadows, they should bring it out into the open. It’s the only way our ideas will change about how necessary and central parental support is.

Gen Z is back in the headlines. (Color me shocked.) This time, they’re getting fired. According to a new report, six in 10 employers say they have already given Gen Z workers the boot after hiring them fresh out of college earlier this year.

After experiencing a number of issues with young new hires, one in six bosses say they’re hesitant to hire college grads again, with one in seven bosses admitting that they may avoid hiring them altogether next year. Three-quarters of the companies surveyed by the website Intelligent.com said some or all of their recent graduate hires were unsatisfactory in one way or another.

TikTok creator @justwaynecreative, who works in an organization that hires recent graduates, weighed in on the issue. In his video, which has amassed 176.9K views, he points to a distinct mindset around the individual among Gen Z workers: “that they have a special idea of what is and isnt, what should and shouldnt be.”

@justwaynecreative added that Gen Z has snatched the “entitlement” title from millennials’ open arms. “No generation has ever had more accommodations, more specializations, more curation than Gen Z,” he said.

He argues that while older generations understand that work is not the place to fully express one’s authentic self, Gen Z doesn’t see it that way. In every other aspect of their lives, they’ve been encouraged to be their best, most authentic selves, he said. They don’t view it as entitlement; they see it as a right, to be exactly who they want to be and live how they want to live in every space they occupy.

This mindset, he believes, causes friction with older generations who see the workplace as somewhere you contribute labor in exchange for a wage, not a place for self-expression. “Every other generation understands work is not the place to be your best self.”

He added that Gen Z isn’t contributing enough—either to workplace culture or to the company’s bottom line—to justify the demands they’re making. Ultimately, it boils down to a fundamental difference in how Gen Z sees and experiences the world. “It’s not to shame Gen Z, that’s the reality,” he said. 

In the comments, some agreed with @justwaynecreative’s assessment. “What they fail to realize is you are incredibly replaceable if you don’t fall in line. Business is business – it’s not a social club,” one comment read. “There’s a difference between a workplace being abusive and having rules and expectations. They don’t understand the difference. Imho,” another added. 

But some sided with Gen Z, questioning why workers can’t be their best selves at work, and just because other generations have gotten used to being miserable at work, why should they? As another comment pointed out, “these same articles were everywhere when millennials entered the workforce.” 

Gen Alpha, you’re next.

Much like those annoying political TV ads, the warnings come back every four years: All the uncertainty around the U.S. presidential election could have big consequences for your 401(k)!

Such warnings can raise anxiety, but remember: If your 401(k) is like many retirement savers’, with most invested in funds that track the S&P 500 or other broad indexes, all the noise may not make much of a difference.

Stocks do tend to get shakier in the months leading up to Election Day. Even the bond market sees an average 15% rise in volatility from mid-September of an election year through Election Day, according to a review by Monica Guerra, a strategist at Morgan Stanley. That may partly be because financial markets hate uncertainty. In the runup to the election, uncertainty is high about what kinds of policies will win out.

But after the results come in, regardless of which party wins the White House, the uncertainty dissipates, and markets get back to work. The volatility tends to steady itself, Guerra’s review shows.

More than which party controls the White House, what’s mattered for stocks over the long term is where the U.S. economy is in its cycle as it moved from recession to expansion and back again through the decades.

“Over the long term, market performance is more closely correlated with the business cycle than political party control,” Guerra wrote in a recent report.

Where the economy currently is in its cycle is up for debate. It’s been growing since the 2020 recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Some pessimistic investors think the expansion is near its end, with all the cumulative slowing effects of the Federal Reserve’s hikes to interest rates in prior years still to be felt. Other, more optimistic investors believe the expansion may still have legs now that the Fed is cutting rates to juice the economy.

Politics may have some sway underneath the surface of stock indexes and influence which industries and sectors are doing the best. Tech and financial stocks have historically done better than the rest of the market one year after a Democratic president took office. For a Republican, meanwhile, raw-material producers were among the relative winners, according to Morgan Stanley.

Plus, control of Congress may be just as important as who wins the White House. A gridlocked Washington with split control will likely see less sweeping changes in fiscal or tax policy, no matter who the president is.

Of course, the candidates in this election do differ from history in some major ways. Former President Donald Trump is a strong proponent of tariffs, which raise the cost of imports from other countries, for example.

In a scenario where the United States applied sustained and universal tariffs, economists and strategists at UBS Global Wealth Management say U.S. stocks could fall by around 10% because the tariffs would ultimately act like a sales tax on U.S. households.

But they also see a relatively low chance of such a scenario happening, at roughly 10%.

—Stan Choe, Associated Press business wire

The Department of Homeland Security announced Wednesday that it would ban the import of goods from a Chinese steel manufacturer and a Chinese maker of artificial sweetener, accusing both of being involved in the use of forced labor from China’s far-west region of Xinjiang.

The action broadens the scope of the U.S. effort to counter products from entering the country that the government says are tied to human rights abuses.

The additions to the entity list under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act marks the first time a China-based steel company or aspartame sweetener business have been targeted by U.S. law enforcement, DHS said.

“Today’s actions reaffirm our commitment to eliminating forced labor from U.S. supply chains and upholding our values of human rights for all,” said Robert Silvers, undersecretary of Homeland Security for policy. “No sector is off-limits. We will continue to identify entities across industries and hold accountable those who seek to profit from exploitation and abuse.”

The federal law that President Joe Biden signed at the end of 2021 followed allegations of human rights abuses by Beijing against members of the ethnic Uyghur group and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang. The Chinese government has refuted the claims as lies and defended its practice and policy in Xinjiang as fighting terror and ensuring stability.

The new approach marked a shift in the U.S. trade relationship with China to increasingly take into account national security and human rights. Beijing has accused the U.S. of using human rights as a pretext to suppress China’s economic growth.

Enforcement of the law initially targeted solar products, tomatoes, cotton and apparel, but over the last several months, the U.S. government has identified new sectors for enforcement, including aluminum and seafood.

“That’s just a reflection of the fact that sadly, forced labor continues to taint all too many supply chains,” Silvers told a trade group in June when marking the two-year anniversary of the creation of the entity list. “So our enforcement net has actually been quite wide from an industry-sector perspective.”

He said the law “changed the dynamic in terms of putting the onus on importers to know their own supply chains” and that its enforcement had showed that the U.S. could “do the right thing” without halting normal trade.

Since June 2022, the entity list has grown to a total of 75 companies accused of using forced labor in Xinjiang or sourcing materials tied to that forced labor, Homeland Security said.

Baowu Group Xinjiang Bayi Iron and Steel Co. Ltd and Changzhou Guanghui Food Ingredients Co. Ltd. were the Chinese companies newly added to the list.

—Didi Tang, Associated Press

In 2023, 42 state attorneys general sued Meta to remove Instagram features that Meta’s own studies had shown – and independent research had confirmed – are harmful to teenage girls.

The same year, a report from the nonprofit Sandy Hook Promise found gun manufacturers were targeting the youth market with eye-catching ads and product placements in video games.

And in the run-up to the Paris Olympics, a leading international health journal urged the International Olympic Committee to end its relationship with Coca-Cola because of the increased obesity, diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure associated with sugary drinks.

Social media, guns, sugar: These are all examples of what we call “market-driven epidemics.”

When people think of epidemics, they might think they’re caused only by viruses or other germs. But as public health experts, we know that’s just part of the story. Commerce can cause epidemics, too. That’s why our team coined the phrase in a recent study because you can’t solve a problem without naming it.

Market-driven epidemics follow a familiar script. First, companies start selling an appealing, often addictive product. As more and more people start using it, the health harms become clearer. Yet even as evidence of damage grows and deaths pile up, sales continue to rise as companies resist efforts by health authorities, consumer groups and others to control them.

We see this pattern with many products today, including social media platforms, firearms, sugar-sweetened beverages, ultra-processed foods, opioids, nicotine products, infant formula and alcohol. Collectively, their harm contributes to more than 1 million deaths in the U.S. each year.

How to fight a commercial epidemic

In our study, we asked two critical questions: Is it possible to combat such epidemics by changing the consumption patterns of millions of people? And if so, what does it take?

We found the answers by looking at decades of efforts to reduce unhealthy consumption of three products: cigarettes, sugar and prescription opioids.

In each case, Americans kept consuming more and more of these products, even in the face of growing health concerns, until a tipping point was reached. That was followed by steady declines in consumption.

The immediate cause for each tipping point varied considerably. For cigarettes, it was the trusted, authoritative voice of the U.S. Surgeon General unequivocally declaring in 1964 that smoking causes cancer.

In the case of sugar, one of the key moments was a high-profile 1999 petition titled “America: Drowning In Sugar” submitted by the Center for Science in the Public Interest and supported by 72 leading public health organizations and experts. The petition urged the Food and Drug Administration to require food labels to disclose the number of added sugars and their percentage of the daily recommended intake.

Once enacted, this policy helped consumers make healthier food choices, while also highlighting just how full of sugar many items on the market were.

And for prescription opioids, in 2011, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared an opioid epidemic, signaling to doctors that they were overprescribing, and to the drug industry that it was acting irresponsibly.

In each case, success came after years of persistent efforts by scientists, public health officials and advocates to sway public opinion, often against the deliberate efforts of corporations to undermine them.

The 1964 report on smoking came after a decade of confusion that the industry had sown to distract the public from the scientific consensus about the harms of tobacco. The report offered conclusive authority that changed the narrative. Smoking went from being viewed as a widely accepted social custom to a deadly habit almost overnight. Today, just 1 in 9 American adults smoke, down from nearly half of all adults in 1954.

The push in 1999 by public health leaders connected the dots between rising obesity rates and sugar-laden foods and drinks. People began scrutinizing their diets, especially their sugar intake. As result, annual sugar consumption has since dropped by more than 15 pounds per person, erasing half of the amount of sugar Americans added to their diets between 1950 and 2000.

And the CDC report on opioids effectively communicated to doctors that they couldn’t just rely on patients to avoid misuse of the highly addictive drugs, underscoring their responsibility to help control the epidemic by reducing prescriptions of opioids such as OxyContin. Since the report, opioid prescription has been reduced by 60% – more in line with actual medical need.

Learning from the past

While there are no easy solutions for today’s market-based epidemics, we can learn from history about steps that can be effective in reducing the consumption of harmful products.

Changing attitudes on smoking show that an authoritative governmental voice can still be immensely useful to combat corporate resistance and the spread of corporate mis- and disinformation.

It can be effective to provide clear guidance about products and alternatives, as public health leaders did in telling consumers to cut consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages.

And from opioids, we can learn that applying pressure to those who make decisions about consumption, who are not always the consumers themselves, can be immensely powerful in bending patterns of use.

Despite the progress made in these three cases, the U.S. continues to face ongoing and emerging epidemics of unhealthy products. For example, while smoking has dramatically declined, the shift to vaping and other nicotine delivery products is creating new challenges, especially among teenagers.

Meanwhile, gun deaths keep rising, and firearms are now the leading killer of children under 18, and the gun industry remains committed to opposing public health measures to reduce gun violence.

And ultra-processed foods now account for nearly 60% of the average American’s diet, yet as new evidence confirms their harms, the food industry defends them.

But our research shows that these problems can be solved – that it is in fact possible to change millions of Americans’ behavior. This is very good news. It means sound evidence and public health action can turn the tide on some of the world’s biggest health challenges, potentially saving millions of lives and billions of dollars in health-care costs.

Jonathan D. Quick is an adjunct professor of global health at Duke Global Health Institute at Duke University.

Eszter Rimanyi is a chronic disease and addiction epidemiologist at Duke University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Sure, everyone loves a Big Mac, but a Chicken Big Mac?

That sandwich has appeared on McDonald’s menus around the world, and now, Americans will finally have a chance to see what the hype is all about. The Chicken Big Mac will drop next week, on October 10, at McDonald’s U.S. locations for a limited time while supplies last.

The Chicken Big Mac is a twist on the original Big Mac, with two chicken patties instead of two beef burgers, and including sauce, pickles, shredded lettuce, and American cheese.

Across the pond in the United Kingdom, the popular Chicken Big Mac sold out in just 10 days. McDonald’s is hoping it will do the same here. Previously, it tested the sandwich in Miami back in 2022.

According to McDonald’s, “it’s not not a Big Mac.” That’s McDonald’s speak for marketing the sandwich to both traditional Big Mac lovers and younger customers like Gen Z, as well as those looking for a cheaper alternative to the double-patty classic.

“We’re excited to introduce it to a whole new generation of fans,” said Tariq Hassan, chief marketing and customer experience officer for McDonald’s USA, in a company statement. “By tapping into some of our fans’ biggest passions from dupe culture to live-streaming, we’re able to serve up more than just a sandwich. There truly is something for everyone to enjoy in this campaign.”

CEO Chris Kempczinski said in the company’s most recent earnings call that McDonald’s is focused on adding “growth drivers like chicken” which now account for just as many sales as beef products.

The new Chicken Big Mac also comes as beef prices have gone up in the U.S., with ground beef averaging $5.58 per pound in August, according to Bloomberg. Chicken, meanwhile, is generally cheaper than beef.

McDonald’s fights to stay competitive

The new menu item also comes as budget-conscious customers have been turning away from the Golden Arches over rising prices. A McDonald’s medium fries costs 44% more today than it did five years ago, and an $18 Big Mac meal in Connecticut recently went viral for the high price tag.

To stay competitive, McDonald’s has been turning to lower-cost, limited-time value meals, hoping to bolster sales.

Last month, McDonald’s extended its $5 value meals to December in most U.S. markets. (Wendy’s and Taco Bell also came out with meal deals this summer.)

That was the second time the fast-food chain extended this deal, which kicked off this summer. It’s another sign that the burger chain wants to win back lower-income customers and fight perceptions that it’s getting too expensive.

Constellation, an energy company that provides electricity and natural gas to customers in 16 states and Washington, announced on Sept. 20, 2024, that it plans to restore and restart Unit 1 at Three Mile Island, a nuclear plant near Middletown, Pennsylvania, that was shut down in 2019. Microsoft has signed a 20-year agreement to purchase electricity generated by the plant to offset power demand from its data centers in the mid-Atlantic region.

Three Mile Island was the site in 1979 of a partial meltdown at the plant’s Unit 2 reactor. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission calls this event “the most serious accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant operating history,” although only small amounts of radiation were released, and no health effects on plant workers or the public were detected. Unit 1 was not affected by the accident. University of Michigan nuclear engineering professor Todd Allen explains what restarting Unit 1 will involve, and why some other shuttered nuclear plants may also get new leases on life.

What is the history of TMI-1?

Three Mile Island Unit 1 is a large nuclear power station with the capacity to generate 837 megawatts of electricity – enough to power about 800,000 homes. It started commercial operations in 1974 and ran until September 2019.

After the accident at Unit 2 in 1979, Unit 1 was shut down for six years, until the operator at the time, Metropolitan Edison, demonstrated to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that it could operate the reactor safely.

Constellation closed Unit 1 down in 2019, even though the plant’s operating license had been extended through 2034 and it had no operational or safety problems. TMI-1 could not compete economically at that point with natural gas-fueled power plants because gas had become extremely cheap.

Pennsylvania also had a policy preference for increasing electricity generation from solar and wind power. The state legislature chose not to reclassify the plant as a carbon-free electricity source, which would have qualified it for state support.

What is the reactor’s current condition?

Since the shutdown in 2019, the plant has sat idle. The NRC calls this status safe storage, or SAFSTOR. The plant is shut down, uranium fuel is removed from the reactor, and the facility is maintained in a safe, stable condition. Irradiated fuel is stored in large steel and concrete casks on a physically secured portion of the site, known as an Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation.

In addition to the fuel, other materials in the plant are radioactive, such as structural channels that direct the cooling water during operation and the large vessel in which the reactor is housed. Radioactive decay occurs during the SAFSTOR period, reducing the plant’s radioactivity and making it easier to dismantle the plant later.

What will Constellation need to do to prepare the reactor to restart?

Constellation will need to ensure that it has enough fuel and sufficiently trained personnel. It also will have to ensure that the reactor’s components are still in a condition that allows for safe operation.

This will require detailed inspections and mandatory maintenance actions to ensure that all components are running correctly. In some cases, the company may need to install new equipment.

The exact work will depend on the results of inspections but could include upgrading or replacing the reactor’s major components, such as the turbine and associated electricity generator; large transformers that move the electricity from the reactor out to the grid; equipment used to cool the reactor during operation; and systems for controlling the plant during startup, shutdown and power generation.

As an analogy, imagine that you move to a city and stop driving your car for five years. When you decide to resume driving, you’d need to ensure you have gas, that your driver’s license is still valid and that all of the car’s components still operate correctly. It would probably need new oil, air in the tires, new filters and other replacement parts to run well.

A nuclear plant is much more complicated than a car, so the number of checks and verifications will take longer and cost more. Constellation expects to bring the restored plant online in 2028 at a projected cost of US$1.6 billion.

What will the NRC consider as it decides whether to relicense the reactor?

The agency needs to independently confirm Constellation has enough fuel and trained personnel, and that the plant can run safely. These checks must be approved by the commission before the plant can operate.

In my view, Constellation will need to show that the plant is in a condition to operate at the same levels of safety that existed there in September 2019 when the company terminated operations.

Do you expect other utilities to try this type of restoration at closed reactors?

Constellation is not the only utility considering restarting a nuclear plant. Holtec International, an energy technology company, bought the closed Palisades nuclear plant in southwest Michigan in 2022 with the intent to decommission it, but then the company decided to restore and reopen the plant.

That work is underway now. Recently, in its first major inspection at the plant, the NRC found a number of components that it said required more testing and repair work.

Wolverine Power Cooperative, a not-for-profit energy provider to rural communities across Michigan, plans to purchase electricity from the restored Palisades plant, with support from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Empowering Rural America program. Holtec is receiving support for restoring Palisades from the U.S. Department of Energy and the state of Michigan.

A third company, NextEra Energy, is considering restarting its Duane Arnold nuclear plant in Palo, Iowa. And others could follow. In the past decade, a dozen nuclear plants closed before the end of their licensed operating lives because they were having trouble competing economically. But with electricity demand rising, especially to power data centers and electric vehicles, some of those plants could also become candidates for reopening.

Todd Allen is a professor of nuclear engineering & radiological sciences at University of Michigan.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Shares of Hims & Hers Health fell almost 10% today following an announcement from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that competitor Eli Lilly’s obesity and diabetes drugs are no longer facing supply constraints, and have been removed from the shortage list.

Hims, a San Francisco-based telehealth company, had capitalized on this drug shortage by developing copycat compounded versions of the medications, as permitted by the FDA.

However, the FDA determined yesterday that the shortage of tirzepatide injection, a glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) medication, has been resolved. (GLP-1 drugs mimic a hormone produced in the gut to tamp down a person’s appetite and regulate their blood sugar.) This means that drugs like Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro, which is used to treat diabetes, and Zepbound, which is used for weight loss, can now keep up with current demand.

The removal from the shortage list could effectively bar the commercial production of knock-off tirzepatide products, according to the Wall Street Journal. It is illegal for manufacturers to produce compounded drugs that are identical or nearly identical to an FDA-approved drug, unless the approved drug is on the FDA’s drug shortage list.

However, Hims’ weight-loss injection does not use tirzepatide. Its injection is a compounded form of semaglutide, the medicine sold by Novo Nordisk as Ozempic and Wegovy, which remains on the FDA’s shortage list. Thus, Hims & Hers contends that the FDA’s move doesn’t affect it at all and doesn’t preclude the compounding of GLP-1 drugs.

“Products that are not essentially copies can continue to be made,” a Hims spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal.

A copycat industry

Drugs prescribed for weight loss, such as Mounjaro, Ozempic, Wegovy, and Zepbound, have been popular, expensive, and in short supply.

To meet the demand, health providers like Hims & Hers had jumped on the opportunity to provide compounded versions of the weight-loss medications, which haven’t been on the market long enough to have generic equivalents.

“As the demand continues to grow, there continues to be a shortage of conventionally manufactured product, and compounding pharmacies are filling that need,” said Tenille Davis, the chief advocacy officer for the Alliance of Pharmacy Compounding, to Stateline in July. “Compounding pharmacies have been able to step in and fill some of those gaps in the marketplace.”

Hims & Hers stock more than doubled after it started offering its compounded weight-loss drugs earlier this year, priced at 85% less than brand-name versions like Ozempic and Wegovy.

However, since the launch, the FDA has warned of patients experiencing adverse reactions to compounded semaglutide, and noted that it does not have oversight over the safety, quality, and effectiveness of compounded versions of the drugs.

Novo Nordisk has also taken legal action against some companies for “unlawful marketing and sales” of compounded drugs claiming to contain semaglutide. Though Novo Nordisk did not explicitly name Hims & Hers in the legal action, the telehealth company’s weight-loss injection is a compounded form of semaglutide.

The FDA confirmed with Eli Lilly that its stated product availability and manufacturing capacity can meet the present and projected national demand. It warned that patients and prescribers may still see intermittent localized supply disruptions as the products move through the supply chain from the manufacturer and distributors to local pharmacies.

OpenAI has just introduced Canvas, a new tool designed to take ChatGPT beyond simple chat interactions and into a more collaborative workspace for writing and coding. Unlike the traditional chat window, Canvas opens a separate work area with a chat window on the right side, allowing users to work side-by-side with ChatGPT, refining and editing ideas directly within their documents or code. With this addition, OpenAI is clearly responding to the main problem of its previous interface: The chat back-and-forth, the rinse and repeat of output, and its character response limitation are just not good to work on more complex, multi-step projects over time.

While I haven’t been able to try it live yet (the company said it has started rolling it out to Plus subscribers today, but it hasn’t reached me yet), the demos clearly show both its cool powers and its limitations. The new user experience is a reaction to what others have already done in the AI-enhanced productivity space. Both Google and Microsoft have been working on their own AI integrations—Gemini in Google Docs and CoPilot in Microsoft Word—well before Canvas appeared. In fact, Gemini and CoPilot both have taken basically the same approach to collaboration between humans and AI within document editing.

What’s Canvas exactly

Canvas brings a new UX and workflow to ChatGPT, especially in its ability to understand and adapt to the context of what users are trying to accomplish. It’s mean to function like a collaborative editor, offering feedback directly on the text or code. For writers, the company says, it can suggest edits, adjust document length, and even modify the reading level to adjust the tone.

For coders, the tool reviews code, adds debugging logs, and comments, translating code between programming languages when necessary. OpenAI claims that “Canvas can provide inline feedback and suggestions with the entire project in mind,” enhancing the interaction between user and AI in a way that wasn’t possible with just the chat interface.

Rather than repeatedly iterating on ChatGPT’s output to get what you want, or asking it to rewrite a specific section in a prompt, Canvas allows people to select text from a live document, then ask the AI to help refine the selected part. Just like Docs and Word does.

According to OpenAI, Canvas is available for ChatGPT Plus and Team users starting today, with Enterprise and Educational users gaining access next week. The broader rollout for all ChatGPT Free users is planned after the beta phase. For now, the tool is an exclusive feature for GPT-4 users, automatically launching when ChatGPT detects writing or coding scenarios where it could assist. Users can also trigger it manually by typing “use canvas” in a prompt.

Following Google and Microsoft’s trail

From the demos, it’s clear that Canvas will be a lot more useful than the current mode if your objective is to write longer documents or code. But its simplicity and elegance—again from what I’ve seen—make it way more limited than Google Gemini in Google Docs when it comes to writing and word processing. Docs’ side icon bar is similar to Canvas’s, but it gives you more options including the ability to adjust tone, summarize, create bullets, elaborate, shorten, rephrase, and an open-ended prompt that can do anything you ask it to, like rewriting your prose into a poem.

Docs might currently be more powerful, but its interface is also more complex and cluttered than Canvas’s. For example, pop-ups take over the part of the text you want to edit to show the results of your commands before committing them to the page. This modal window adds the option to refine the output further before replacing the selected text or inserting it as new paragraphs. The ChatGPT Canvas, on the other hand, has the quality of being quite simple, writing directly over the text as if some invisible collaborative editor is taking over the writing duty. The result feels sharper and more inviting.

Perhaps I’m speaking from a writer’s mindset, but this simplicity and cleanliness of the interface helps you to get into the zone, focused and undistracted by the unnecessary UI elements of a classic word processor. I’m a fan of iA Writer, an extremely clean word processor designed for writers that is the closest thing to writing in a typewriter with some added benefits of being digital. Canvas feels a bit like that, except it has artificial intelligence to benefit from.

Canvas can switch into its “programming persona” when it detects coding tasks. It can help users review, debug, and port code between languages. OpenAI’s blog post seems to indicate that the company will be embracing this morphing personality, adapting to what it feels the users may want. Maybe in the future it can change automatically from “novel writer persona” to “college essay persona,” tailoring the available tools in its sidebar. That seems like a nice, distinctive UX path to take.

For now, Canvas appears to be a response to the limitations of its current UX. It offers a more focused, cleaner workspace, but its underlying approach mirrors much of what Google and Microsoft have already implemented, rather than introducing a truly innovative UX to approach the same problem. It’s a cool thing to have, and it will be very useful for pure ChatGPT fans, but will it be enough to replace an old fashioned word processor or programming environment with an AI helper on the side?

The dockworker strike at ports along the Eastern Seaboard and Gulf coast has already resulted in some panic buying by consumers and a torrent of doom-intense forecasts from economists. At issue is the supply chain on a number of products as well as the flow of everything from consumer goods to critical electronics.

Members of the union on strike are seeking higher pay and guarantees against some forms of automation at ports, which would protect their jobs. As they walk the picket lines, though, shipments are stuck at the port and others could be caught at sea or in warehouses.

The ports where strikes are taking place make up more than half of U.S. imports traveling by sea in containers, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. And this is the first work stoppage of its kind since 1977. Wondering what products are—and aren’t—facing possible shortages as the strike goes on? Here’s a look.

How soon will it be before we see shortages due to the dockworker strike?

A lot of that depends on the product. Food supplies, like bananas and tropical fruits, will be where consumers feel things first, since stores tend to have lean inventories of those products, as storage is an issue. (Roughly 75% of bananas imported into the U.S. come through the eastern or Gulf ports. A large portion of imported cherries, hot peppers, and chocolate also go through the ports.)

Non-perishable goods and factory supplies should have a longer runway. The dockworker strike was something that was well telegraphed—and retailers had some time to prepare for it by stocking up on goods. 

Which are the biggest imports on the eastern and Gulf coast ports?

While the catch-all “undefined” category is the largest (coming in at $1 billion per month), the largest segmented category was machinery, which includes farm and construction equipment. That brought in an average of $678 million per month between August 2023 and July 2024. The vehicles and parts category was second with $541 million.

Other notable imports (and their monthly averages) include:

Electronics – $482 million

Chemicals – $219 million

Apparel – $198 million

Pharmaceuticals – $181 million

Furniture – $141 million

Toys, games and sports equipment – $73 million

Perfume and cosmetics – $69 million

Will there be oil and gas shortages as a result of the port strike?

That’s unlikely. The Department of Energy, on Tuesday, issued a statement Wednesday saying “the strike at these ports will not impact crude oil, gasoline, natural gas, and other liquid fuel exports and imports, as such operations are handled by other workers.” Officials said they plan to work with oil and gas companies and other agencies to monitor operations and supply chains.

Still, the threat of escalated violence in the Middle East, following Iran’s attack on Israel and the devastation brought by Hurricane Helene, which included wiping out parts of some interstates in North Carolina, could disrupt distribution chains in the weeks and months to come.

Which products come through which ports?

Ports aren’t broken up by category. That is to say, one product doesn’t just go to one of the 36 ports that’s on strike right now. But some ports do see a bigger percentage of the overall shipments.

New York/Newark and Philadelphia/Wilmington, for instance, get a large portion of the fruits and nuts that come into the country.

Baltimore is where most vehicle imports land, taking in $2.7 billion last year, according to the Census Bureau.

Texas, meanwhile, is a heavy importer of industrial machinery ($1.7 billion in 2023) and electrical equipment ($14.8 billion).  

Which products are unlikely to see shortages due to the dock worker’s strike?

Ironically, the products some people are panic buying right now are the ones they’re most likely to be able to find in the weeks to come without much trouble. Things like toilet paper and paper towels are largely produced in the U.S. (Just 10% of the country’s toilet paper is imported.)

How will the dockworkers strike affect U.S. exports?

While much of the focus of this strike has been on the day-to-day impact on Americans, it could be highly disruptive to farmers. In 2023, over 143 million metric tons of agricultural products, worth over $122 billion were transported through ocean ports, says the American Farm Bureau Federation. (Soybeans, animal feed, cotton are the top three.) About 14% of those totals stand to be impacted by the strike (the remainder either ship out of West Coast ports or are transported on specialty containers that are serviced by a different union, which is not on strike).

Each week the strike goes on will cost farmers an estimated $318 million. 

From Maine to Texas, 45,000 dockworkers went on strike Tuesday after the International Longshoremen’s Association’s (ILA) contract with the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) expired. The two sides had reached a stalemate over pay, but also the union wanted a guarantee that technology would not be used to replace them.

On Thursday, the parties reached an agreement to suspend the strike, increase wages 62% wage over six years, and to extend the existing contract until Jan. 15, 2025. However, they did not come to a final agreement on automation.

Now the ILA and the USMX will return to the bargaining table to negotiate dockworkers’ demands for a ban on all automation at the ports.

In a Facebook post prior to the tentative deal, Jack Pennington, president of the ILA’s local 28 chapter, emphasized how important this guarantee is for dockworkers. 

The ILA is “taking a hard stand on the never ending threat of automation that is infiltrating our industry, and I have heard the remarks from those that say we need to learn how to deal with it!” wrote Pennington. “Well I have a message for those people ‘kiss my fat A$$’!”

Pennington and the ILA aren’t the first to see automation as an existential threat. From autoworkers to screenwriters, there is a decades-long history of workers fighting to limit automation. But now, as advancements in technologies like generative AI, machine learning, and robotics accelerate, experts say we are witnessing a make-or-break moment for workers. Many see AI as the defining labor issue of our time. 

Douglas Calidas, senior vice president of government affairs for the nonprofit Americans for Responsible Innovation, says we are currently at “an inflection point.”

“Right now, we’re in a period of such rapid technological change, particularly with regard to AI and, to some extent, robotics,” says Calidas. “It seems that more jobs are at risk of automation than at any time in recent history. And it seems like the scope of the risk is only going to accelerate.”

Organizing against automation

At the beginning of negotiations in May, the ILA demanded a 77% pay raise for its members over the six years of their new contract—as well as a ban on the use of automation in the use of cranes, gates, and moving shipping containers. The USMX issued a counteroffer promising a 50% pay raise over six years, but only agreed to keep the existing limits on automation that the old contract covered.

In June, the ILA discovered that two of the biggest companies in the industry, APM Terminals and Maersk Line, had been using an “Auto Gate” system, which autonomously processes trucks without ILA labor. Organizers argued that this technology breached previous agreements about the use of automation.

Many ports have adopted new data-driven tools over the past several decades. For instance, some workers now use hardware and software tools to autonomously coordinate the arrival of trucks with shipping containers. However, ILA has drawn a clear line in the sand around technology that replaces, rather than augments, workers. 

“The ILA is steadfastly against any form of automation—full or semi—that replaces jobs or historical work functions. We will not accept the loss of work and livelihood for our members due to automation,” reads the ILA’s message on Oct. 1. “Our position is clear: the preservation of jobs and historical work functions is non-negotiable.”

Automation and safety

The U.S. Government Accountability Office recently analyzed the adoption of automotive technologies in the country’s biggest ports and found that automation can improve worker safety by “separating humans from machines.” However, the GAO report also found that automation had “mixed effects on the workforce, security, and performance.”

“I guess the argument is there are fewer people to be hurt,” says Greg Regan, president of the AFL-CIO’s Transportation Trades Department.

Some have suggested that reducing worker injuries and worker mistakes could improve shipping company’s bottom lines. “Apart from accidents, mislabeling or misdirecting cargo at a port could also hit businesses’ revenue. Replacing fallible human workers could thus save port operators a lot of money,” wrote Kit Eaton, a news writer for Inc. 

Stephen Edwards, the Port of Virginia’s chief executive, recently touted that automation helped his port perform well when cargo shipments surged in 2021 and 2022—and again in 2024 when a container ship crashed into the Baltimore Key Bridge, diverting shipments to Virginia. 

Worker safety has been a common argument used by companies dating back to the invention of the assembly line. For instance, when Amazon announced that it would adopt new robotic arms and sorting machines fueled by artificial intelligence into its warehouses in 2023, the retail giant promised that the new tech would also help address safety issues for its workers.

At the time, Chris Smalls, president of the Amazon Labor Union, told Fast Company that it seems inevitable that Amazon may eventually use the new technology to cut jobs, even if it didn’t happen overnight. “I just hope to see that these jobs are unionized and they have some say in how the AI and technology is being incorporated,” he said. 

Amanda Ballantyne, director of the AFL-CIO’s Technology Institute, stresses that automation does not inherently increase worker safety. 

“It is a myth that automating technologies automatically makes everything safer,” she says. “The labor movement is not anti-technology. We are pro-worker and we are totally in favor of technologies that make our jobs better and safer and more efficient. But it is not the case that technology in general just does that. There are good technologies and bad technologies for workers.”

And many, including Regan, don’t buy the argument that employers’ investments in autonomous technology is an altruistic attempt to help workers. “Historically, when our employers try to use any sort of new technological advancement in their operations, it’s never done with a mindset toward improving operations, improving safety, or using it as a tool to make workers better able to do their jobs effectively and safely,” says Regan. “Instead, it’s almost always used as a way to reduce headcount.” 

Historical precedent

Bruce Kogut is a professor of economic sociology and director of the Sanford C. Bernstein Center for Leadership and Ethics at Columbia Business School. His grandfather and father both worked as dockworkers at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. But as the shipping industry evolved, Kogut’s father was retrained to be a doctor, right down at the Navy Yard.

He suggests there may be opportunities for AI to augment dockworkers’ work, rather than replace them—similar to how a pilot might use technology. “It’s one of those stories of generational change, but I don’t want to be too [much of a] Pollyanna,” says Kogut.

But what he hopes people learn from his family’s story is that “it’s good when workers have negotiating power.” 

Kogut explains that from New York to New Orleans to Long Beach, dockworkers have historically wielded a particularly high level of political power because they often employ a large volume of workers and because their work impacts a large swath of the economy. Analysts estimate that shipping industry profits have topped $400 billion from 2020 to 2023.

It appears automation is the final sticking point of negotiations today, and it was back in 1977, too. “The final hurdle, a dispute over job security, was cleared yesterday,” wrote The Washington Post when the 1977 strike officially ended. “The ILA, whose ranks have [shrunk] in the growing automation of the waterfront, had been demanding new income and benefit guarantees.”

And though dockworkers were given a 30% pay increase, then-ILA President Thomas W. Gleason said that the deal would not increase shipping costs because “productivity has gone up 1,500%” thanks to automation.”

Since then, automation—and by association, job security—has been a primary concern for many major labor actions, says Kogut, pointing to the 2007 autoworkers’ strike at GM.

During negotiations, GM pushed hard to offload $51 billion in unfunded retiree health costs for the company’s 339,000 retirees and surviving spouses into a health care trust called a Voluntary Employees Beneficiary Association, or VEBA. Workers were still more concerned about job security.

“This strike is not about the VEBA in any way shape or form,” said Ron Gettelfinger, then-president of United Auto Workers. “The No. 1 issue here is job security.”

A more recent example is of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and SAG-AFTRA‘s 2023 strikes. The WGA’s 150-day-long walkout notched wins for union members, including compensation increases and minimum staffing requirements for writers rooms, better residual payments for streaming, and protections against AI being used to replace writers or being trained on their work. (Editor’s note: Fast Company is unionized through WGA East.)

The SAG-AFTRA strike lasted 118 days and established rules that studios must give workers notice, consent, and compensation regarding the use of AI-created digital replicas of actors. In 2024, California Governor Gavin Newsom also signed a bill prohibiting studios from making AI replicas of deceased actors without their consent—a victory that SAG-AFTRA fought for. 

The rise of automation

While pay, benefits, and working conditions remain significant priorities for workers across all industries, Ballantyne says many labor unions are focused on limiting AI, fearing it will eliminate jobs, make workers less autonomous, and reduce transparency.

“All of the recent big bargaining that’s happened has included elements of data-driven technology and AI,” says Ballantyne. “What you see consistently is that workers want transparency. They want to know what technology is operating in their shop. They want a say in how that technology can and can’t be used. They want a say in whether and when they use that technology. And they want a share in the benefits that that technology creates.”

A wide range of industries have introduced additional automation in recent years. In 2023, the World Economic Forum reported that automation will lead to 26 million fewer jobs by 2027. And the International Monetary Fund predicts that 40% of jobs worldwide and 60% of jobs in “advanced economies” such as the U.S. are exposed to AI-driven disruption. 

The use of robotic technologies is also increasing dramatically. The International Federation of Robotics estimates that the use of robots increased by 10% last year and that a record-breaking 4,281,585 robots are currently automating production around the world.

Going forward, Calidas says he expects automation to be a major sticking point of labor negotiations because of how far-ranging the impacts are. 

“The risks of automation are, all of a sudden, metastasizing, and hitting all swaths of the economy. And a lot of people [who] never really thought that their jobs were vulnerable will probably start feeling more and more insecure over the coming years,” he says. “That has all kinds of effects on [politics], on the way that people train for new jobs, and on how they consider their careers.”

Alphabet’s Waymo will add electric vehicles from South Korea’s Hyundai Motor to its robotaxi fleet, the companies said on Friday, as Waymo expands in the United States.

On-road testing for IONIQ 5 SUVs—assembled at Hyundai’s Georgia facility and equipped with Waymo’s autonomous technology—will begin by late 2025, they said.

Waymo has about 700 vehicles in its fleet and is the only U.S. firm operating uncrewed robotaxis that collect fares.

The partnership with Hyundai comes days before Tesla CEO Elon Musk is set to unveil plans for a robotaxi product that is expected to use a custom-built vehicle. Musk may also discuss plans for his company to run a ride-hailing platform that will allow Tesla owners to list their vehicles when not in use.

Waymo now uses I-PACE vehicles from Jaguar Land Rover, owned by India’s Tata Motors. Waymo is also testing its technology using vehicles from Zeekr, the EV brand of China’s Geely. A spokesperson for Waymo said the Hyundai partnership will not directly replace any of its current vehicle platforms.

This year, Waymo opened its service to everyone in San Francisco, without the need to join a waitlist, while expanding its operations in metro Phoenix. It also extended services to the San Francisco Peninsula and to certain parts of Los Angeles.

“The team at our new manufacturing facility is ready to allocate a significant number of vehicles for the Waymo One fleet as it continues to expand,” Jose Munoz, global COO of Hyundai Motor said in a statement. “We are actively exploring additional opportunities for collaboration.”

Despite widespread skepticism, tight regulatory scrutiny and federal investigations on AV technology, Alphabet said this year it was planning a multi-year $5 billion investment in Waymo.

In August, Waymo said it had doubled its paid rides to 100,000 per week in just over three months as it expanded its areas of service and allowed more people to ride its robotaxis.

Others in the race include General Motors’ Cruise, which is testing cars with human safety drivers after an accident last year led it to pull all vehicles from the road, and Amazon’s Zoox, which is expanding testing for its vehicles built without steering wheels and pedals.

—Abhirup Roy, Reuters

Chain Bridge Bancorp, Inc. is having its initial public offering today. The company is a Delaware-chartered bank holding company that owns Chain Bridge Bank, N.A.

It’s one of the newer banks in America and when compared to the country’s national or even regional banks, is very, very small. Here’s what you need to know about Chain Bridge and its IPO:

What is Chain Bridge Bank?

Chain Bridge was founded in August 2007, making the bank just 17 years old this year. It is based in McLean, Virginia, and if you have never heard of it before, there’s a good chance you’re not a Republican operative.

The bank, which has only one physical branch, is popular with Republicans. While it offers both commercial and personal accounts—and other services such as mortgages—it is best known for holding the money of Republican political entities, lobbying organizations, and think tanks.

According to Axios, the bank is also used by the RNC, various GOP state parties, and The Trump Victory Committee political action committee. That the bank seems to have a powerful Republican clientele is of little surprise considering it was founded by former Illinois Senate Republican Peter Fitzgerald.

Of course, being a Republican isn’t required to use the bank’s services. Anyone can apply for a digital banking account or other financial offerings. The bank says it serves deposit clients in 48 states.

According to the company’s recent S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the bank held total assets of $1.4 billion as of June 30, 2024.

When is Chain Bridge’s IPO?

Chain Bridge priced its shares yesterday. They are expected to begin trading today: Friday, October 4, 2024.

What is Chain Bridge’s stock ticker?

Chain Bridge shares will trade under the stock symbol “CBNA.”

Which exchange will Chain Bridge trade on? 

Chain Bridge shares will trade on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

How many Chain Bridge shares are available in its IPO?

Chain Bridge’s IPO offered 1.85 million of its Class A common stock to the public.

What is Chain Bridge’s IPO price?

CBNA shares were priced at $22. At that price, Chain Bridge raised just over $40 million in its IPO.

What will Chain Bridge use the proceeds from the IPO for?

In a press release, Chain Bridge says it plans to use the profits from the IPO “primarily for general corporate purposes (which may include supporting continued organic deposit growth and funding potential strategic expansion) and to repay the $10 million outstanding principal balance under its unsecured line of credit.”

How much is Chain Bridge worth?

According to a September 30 report from Reuters, Chain Bridge could be worth as much as $167 million after its IPO.

However, Reuters was basing that figure on the assumption that the bank’s IPO share price would be slightly higher—between $24-26 per share. Its final share price came in below expectations at $22.

Could the upcoming presidential election affect Chain Bridge’s fortunes? 

That’s unknowable. But Chain Bridge makes no apprehensions when it comes to highlighting just how tied to the Republican Party it is. 

In its S-1 filing, the company said, “Our deposit base is vulnerable to changes in the Republican Party’s candidates, political fortunes, strategies, or fundraising. Any event that negatively impacts the Republican Party, including its ability to raise funds or its popular support, could lead to significant deposit outflows. For example, controversies, leadership changes, or shifts in party strategy affecting the Republican Party could adversely affect our deposit levels.”

The company also noted: “Our association with Republican-affiliated organizations may impact our ability to attract or retain clients with different political affiliations. It could also expose us to public relations challenges, including negative media coverage, social media criticism or potential boycotts from supporters of other political viewpoints.”

East Colfax Avenue was the best place to find a job. That’s what everyone told Sofia Roca.

Never mind the open drug use, the sex workers or the groups of other migrant women marching the sidewalks soliciting work at the very same Mexican restaurants and bakeries.

On East Colfax in Aurora, Colorado, bosses and customers would speak Spanish and might be willing to hire someone like Roca—a 49-year-old immigrant from Colombia—without legal authorization to work. That was the rationale for going back to Colfax each morning, fruitless as it was.

“Do you know how to cook Mexican food?” asked one woman, looking up from the limes she was quartering, when Roca inquired about a kitchen position advertised on the door. Roca’s accent was a giveaway: not Mexican.

“I can learn,” Roca replied in Spanish.

Responded the woman: “We’re not hiring.”

As record numbers of South Americans attempt to cross the U.S. southern border seeking better economic opportunities, many are landing in communities that are unprepared for them—and sometimes outright hostile.

And many migrants have also been unprepared for the realities of their new home.

An influx of migrants strains one town

Women are leaving Colombia, and to a greater extent Venezuela, to escape starvation and violence, to provide for their children and to seek medical care. They represent some of the more than 42,000 migrants who have arrived in the Denver area over two years. Many didn’t know anyone in Denver. But it was the closest city to which Texas was offering free bus rides, both to relieve pressure on its towns and to make a political point to liberal-leaning cities about immigration’s impact on the border.

From Denver, untold numbers made their way to the neighboring suburb of Aurora, lured by cheaper rent and abundant Spanish speakers. But finding a job and an affordable place to stay has been anything but easy, and women face their own particular challenges.

Last year, nearly 900,000 women and girls tried to cross the U.S. southern border, more than a fivefold increase over the last decade, U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows. Like many of them, Roca came to the United States to help her children. Her adult daughter back in Colombia suffers from lupus and can’t afford “the good medicines.”

The economy in Colombia never recovered from pandemic shutdowns, and Roca heard from acquaintances that in the United States she could earn $1,000 a week. “That’s a lot of money in Colombia,” she said. Back home, “one U.S. dollar can buy breakfast for your entire family.”

Roca set out for the United States with an uncle. He was detained in Mexico, but Roca made it across the border in Juárez and told U.S. agents she was seeking asylum. She heard from a shelter worker in El Paso that Denver was offering free housing for migrants and Texas would pay to get her there.

As of September, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has bused at least 119,000 migrants from the border to cities run by Democratic mayors, including Denver, New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., according to a press release from the governor’s office.

Roca arrived in November and stayed for two weeks in a hotel-turned-shelter paid for by the city of Denver. When she went looking for work in front of Home Depot and along East Colfax, she observed an icy reception from locals. “They said horrible things about Venezuelans,” she said.

She didn’t know the benefits many recent migrants have received—specifically, a path to a temporary work visa and with it better-paying jobs—were causing resentment among Aurora’s large Mexican community. Many have loved ones in the country illegally or have themselves lived for years in the United States without legal permission to work.

As chaos and economic collapse drove more migrants to the border, President Joe Biden’s administration created and expanded legal pathways to enter the U.S., with the possibility of applying for work permits. However, in June, Biden temporarily suspended asylum for new immigrants who cross illegally, ending a main pathway to legal work.

Roca never was eligible for a work permit, but Mexican residents in Aurora still associate her with the many migrants who are.

Resentment for newcomers was building in another corner of Aurora, too—City Hall. Aurora officials in February had warned other communities against housing migrants there, vowing not to spend city money to help them. This summer, Aurora’s mayor repeated a landlord’s claim that a notorious Venezuelan gang had taken over an apartment building, saying he would investigate how so many Venezuelans ended up living in Aurora. Even though police say gangs hadn’t taken over the building, former President Donald Trump took up the claim, mentioning it at his campaign rallies. The mayor last month walked back some of his comments.

She wants a job—but not in ‘the business’

Roca never made a deliberate decision to settle in Aurora. To her, it wasn’t clear where Denver ended and Aurora began, or that Denver was more eager to help migrants coming to the area.

So when her time is almost up at the Denver shelter, she does the only thing she knows to do: She heads to East Colfax in Aurora.

She walks up and down the sidewalks, dodging people who’d taken over the bus shelters to shoot up drugs or smoke fentanyl and who sell apparently shoplifted toiletries on the sidewalks. She approaches migrants holding cardboard signs and begging for money outside Walmart, asking if they know of work or a place to stay.

A man standing by his truck parked outside a Goodwill thrift store catches her attention. He is singing along to rap music in Spanish. He seems happy, she thinks. He seems like a good guy.

He says he can help her and her cousin, who arrived a few weeks earlier. But not in Colorado. She can come back to Kentucky with him and his family. To hold her over in the short term, the man—El Cubano, she calls him—gives her $10 and invites her for ice cream.

After more than a week of staying with the family in Kentucky and cooking and eating meals together, Roca learns El Cubano’s wife works in el negocio, or “the business.” There is not much work in Kentucky, so she earns her money through sex work, she tells Roca, while her kids play a few feet away.

A few days later, while they are cooking dinner together at the couple’s trailer, a Mexican man in his 30s pulls up outside in a pickup truck.

He’d seen a picture of Roca and liked her—and would pay $1,000 for two nights with Roca, the wife says. Roca would keep $600, the couple would get $400. Roca would have to pay him $6 for each ride to and from his house.

Roca stops chopping the onion and looks at her cousin. Don’t go with that man, the cousin says. You don’t know him.

Roca considers all of the jobs she’s done in her life. Caring for Alzheimer’s patients as a home health aide. Answering phones at a call center. Selling beauty products on the street in Mexico.

In her month in the United States, she has quickly come to understand she’ll have to make sacrifices in this country. That the reports she’d heard back in Colombia about earning $1,000 a week were likely hyperbole. That she’ll have to push her body to its limits doing manual labor. She’ll have to accept below-standard wages until she gets work permission, if it ever comes. She’ll have to stay in someone’s living room with other new arrivals and give up her privacy.
But subjecting herself to the whims of a stranger in such an intimate and vulnerable way?

“No,” she tells the woman. “I’m not going anywhere with anyone.”

The man is told to leave. The insults start immediately.

How are you going to earn money, girl? asks the woman. You’re not going to just live here for free. The food here is good, isn’t it? But it’s not free.

Roca doesn’t know what to expect—maybe violence. She and her cousin have no money or transportation. They’re essentially trapped. But a few days later, Roca leaves as El Cubano yells insults from his trailer. A Venezuelan woman she met outside Home Depot finds someone to help them leave Kentucky.
Where did they want to go? Somewhere she knew people, she remembers thinking. Somewhere with other migrants.

Back to Aurora and East Colfax Avenue.

Even among Aurora’s migrants, life isn’t better

Back in Aurora, Roca reached out to a Venezuelan woman she’d met briefly begging for money outside the Walmart on Colfax. Soon she took a place in the woman’s living room, sharing a queen-sized blow-up mattress with the woman’s teenage son.

Roca found a job on the weekends helping a man set up and break down his stall at an outdoor flea market. She hefted large sacks of used clothing over her shoulders, put out the clothing on display, talked to customers. All for $10 an hour. “It’s an abusive wage,” she said, “but it’s a job.”

She tried standing outside Home Depot, but found many people propositioned her for sex or wouldn’t pay her after she completed legitimate jobs. She gave up standing outside a day laborer’s center in Aurora when she didn’t feel safe trying to jockey for work against dozens of men, who would push her out of the way and jump onto moving trucks rounding up workers.

On most days walking along Colfax Avenue, Roca says, men would solicit her for sex, holding up their fingers to signal how many hundreds of dollars they were willing to pay.

As she looked for work in March, she came across what looked like an old motel, a place she hadn’t tried before. “Is this a hotel or a motel? I don’t know,” she said as she opened the heavy metal door. “Let’s check.”

In the small vestibule, a 1970s-era cigarette vending machine stood in the corner. A grandfatherly man waited behind a plexiglass sliding window. There were no vacancies, but he urged her to try the bar in the back. “They’re always looking for girls,” he said.

Roca walked to the rear of the building and recognized the name of the bar. “I know about this place,” she said.

At a few Mexican cantinas around Aurora and Denver, women are paid to talk and drink with men. “Ficheras,” as the women are known in Spanish, sell beers at a significant markup to men and pocket the profits. It can be a fast way to earn money, but also a route to sex trafficking or the drug trade. Visit these establishments, and you can see some “ficheras” wearing government-issued ankle bracelets with their sky-high heels. The bracelets were given to them by federal immigration officials to monitor their movements while they await immigration hearings.

“I don’t think I have to do that yet,” Roca said. “But this street—it only offers prostitution.”

She boards another Greyhound—and moves on

Since returning to Aurora, Roca had discovered she has few options for establishing legal residence or working legally in the U.S. She told U.S. Border Patrol officials she plans to plead for asylum at her deportation hearing next year, but she doubts they will grant it. Ironically, what happened to her in Kentucky could help her win a visa. The U.S. government issues special visas to victims of sex trafficking here, but Roca has never wanted to report the Cuban couple, fearing they might come after her.

She had gotten in touch through Facebook with a high school friend from Colombia living for the last year in the northeastern United States. “She’s told me she can get me a job at a hotel and I can stay with her,” she said. “What would you do if you were me?” she asked a reporter. “Would you go?”

The idea of learning to move around a new American city exhausted Roca. But without more work, there wasn’t much keeping her in Aurora. Her roommates were headed to eviction court the next week. She didn’t know where she would go if they lost the apartment.

Two days later, with about $80 in her pocket, Roca boarded a Greyhound bus paid for by the city of Denver. She landed in a new town—one that hasn’t received busloads of migrants from Texas—and reunited with her high school friend. (The Associated Press is not identifying her new location, since Roca is afraid the Cuban couple might seek her out after she spoke about them in the media.)

Roca’s friend followed through on her promises, allowing her to live with her and connecting her to a job cleaning hotel rooms. Roca has already changed jobs and has found one she likes better. She walks through the city with ease—and anonymously.

“It’s a huge difference from my life in Denver,” she says. “There’s less chaos, and no one has disrespected me. It’s been a great refuge.”

She’s not sure how long she’ll stay. But Sofia Roca will never live in Aurora, Colorado, again.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

—Bianca Vázquez Toness, AP Education Writer

The future was once dazzling for IronNet.

Founded by a former director of the National Security Agency and stacked with elite members of the U.S. intelligence establishment, IronNet promised it was going to revolutionize the way governments and corporations combat cyberattacks.

Its pitch—combining the prowess of ex-government hackers with cutting-edge software—was initially a hit. Shortly after going public in 2021, the company’s value shot past $3 billion.

Yet, as blazing as IronNet started, it burned out.

Last September the never-profitable company announced it was shutting down and firing its employees after running out of money, providing yet another example of a tech firm that faltered after failing to deliver on overhyped promises.

The firm’s crash has left behind a trail of bitter investors and former employees who remain angry at the company and believe it misled them about its financial health.

IronNet’s rise and fall also raises questions about the judgment of its well-credentialed leaders, a who’s who of the national security establishment. National security experts, former employees and analysts told The Associated Press that the firm collapsed, in part, because it engaged in questionable business practices, produced subpar products and services, and entered into associations that could have left the firm vulnerable to meddling by the Kremlin.

“I’m honestly ashamed that I was ever an executive at that company,” said Mark Berly, a former IronNet vice president. He said the company’s top leaders cultivated a culture of deceit “just like Theranos,” the once highly touted blood-testing firm that became a symbol of corporate fraud.

IronNet’s collapse ranks as one of the most high-profile flameouts in the history of cybersecurity, said Richard Stiennon, a longtime industry analyst. The main reason for its fall, he said: “hubris.”

“The company got what was coming to” it, Stiennon said.

IronNet and top former company officials either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.

The general

IronNet’s founder and former CEO Keith Alexander is a West Point graduate who retired as a four-star Army general and was once one of the most powerful figures in U.S. intelligence. He oversaw an unprecedented expansion of the NSA’s digital spying around the world when he led the U.S.’s largest intelligence agency for nearly a decade.

Alexander, who retired from the government in 2014, remains a prominent voice on cybersecurity and intelligence matters and sits on the board of the tech giant Amazon. Alexander did not respond to requests for comment.

IronNet’s board has included Mike McConnell, a former director of both the NSA and national intelligence; Jack Keane, a retired four-star general and Army vice chief of staff, and Mike Rogers, the former Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who is running for the U.S. Senate in Michigan. One of IronNet’s first presidents and co-founders was Matt Olsen, who left the company in 2018 and leads the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

Alexander’s reputation and the company’s all-star lineup ensured IronNet stood out in a competitive market as it sought contracts in the finance and energy sectors, as well as with the U.S. government and others in Asia and the Middle East.

IronNet marketed itself as a kind of private version of the NSA. By scanning the networks of multiple customers, the company claimed, IronNet’s advanced software and skilled staff could spot signals and patterns of sophisticated hackers that a single company couldn’t do alone. The company dubbed the approach the “Collective Defense Platform.”

The South African

Venture capital firms were eager to invest. Among IronNet’s biggest early boosters was C5 Capital, an investment firm started and run by Andre Pienaar, a South African who had spent years serving the needs of the ultra-rich while cultivating business relationships with former top national security officials.

C5’s operating partners – essentially expert advisers—include former Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen and Sir Iain Lobban, who used to lead the U.K.’s signals intelligence agency equivalent to the NSA. Former C5 operating partners include National Cyber Director Harry Coker Jr. and Ronald Moultrie, who resigned earlier this year as undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security.

Prior to going into venture capital, Pienaar was a private investigator and started a firm called G3 Good Governance Group whose clients included blue chip companies, wealthy individuals and the British royal family. Pienaar also worked at the time to help Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg cement relationships with London’s rich and famous, according to William Lofgren, a former CIA officer and G3 co-founder.

“The relationship was steady and frequent because both Andre and Vekselberg saw merit in it,” said Lofgren.

Pienaar also helped Vekselberg win a share of a South African manganese mine in 2005 and then later served as one of the oligarch’s representatives on the mine’s board of directors until early 2018, internal G3 records and South African business records show.

Vekselberg has been sanctioned twice by the U.S. government, first in April 2018 and again in March 2022. The U.S. Treasury Department has accused him of taking part in “soft power activities on behalf of the Kremlin.”

In 2014, the FBI publicly warned in an op-ed that a Vekselberg-led foundation may be “a means for the Russian government to access our nation’s sensitive or classified research.”

Pienaar’s long association with Vekselberg should have disqualified him from investing in IronNet, which was seeking highly sensitive U.S. defense contracts, former intelligence officials said.

The company’s leaders “absolutely should have known better,” said Bob Baer, a former CIA officer.

He added that Russian intelligence services would have had a strong interest in a company like IronNet and have a history of using oligarchs like Vekselberg to do their bidding, either directly or through witting or unwitting proxies.

Pienaar also sponsored a swanky Russian music festival that Vekselberg and a close associate, Vladimir Kuznetsov, put on in Switzerland. Kuznetsov, who served as a key investment adviser to Vekselberg, was also an investor in Pienaar’s investment firm.

Alexander and others at IronNet either did not know the details of Pienaar’s relationships with Vekselberg or did not find them troubling: A month after Vekselberg was first sanctioned in 2018, Pienaar joined IronNet’s board and C5 announced it was putting in a $35 million investment.

C5’s investment would grow to $60 million by the time IronNet went public, giving the investment firm around a 7% stake in the company.

Vekselberg did not respond to requests for comment. Kuznetsov told the AP he stopped speaking to Pienaar about five years ago but did not say why.
“I’m not commenting on that,” Kuznetsov said.

Pienaar’s attorneys said he has never had a relationship with Vekselberg. The lawyers said the mine’s filings with the South African government’s regulatory agency that listed Pienaar as a director were incorrect and should be “viewed as suspect” because news reports indicated the agency has been hacked.

Pienaar filed a defamation lawsuit last year against an Associated Press reporter who sought interviews with Pienaar’s former associates. The AP said the suit, which remains pending, was meritless and an attempt to stifle legitimate reporting.

The fall

Not long after Alexander rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange in September 2021, IronNet’s stock price soared, making its founders and early investors extremely wealthy on paper.

Top officials were prohibited from unloading their stock for several months, but Alexander was allowed to sell a small amount of his shares. He made about $5 million in early stock sales and bought a Florida mansion worth the same amount.

IronNet was projecting exponential growth that required the company to land a handful of major contracts, according to confidential board documents obtained by the AP.

Those prospective deals included one valued at up to $10 million to provide cybersecurity for the U.S. Navy’s contractors and a more than $22 million deal with the government of Kuwait.

It did not take long for IronNet’s promises to slam into a tough reality as it failed to land large deals and meet revenue projections. Its products simply didn’t live up to the hype, according to former employees, experts and analysts.

Stiennon, the cybersecurity investing expert, said IronNet’s ideas about gathering threat data from multiple clients were not unique and the company’s biggest draw was Alexander’s “aura” as a former NSA director.

The AP interviewed several former IronNet employees who said the company hired well-qualified technicians to design products that showed promise, but executives did not invest the time or resources to fully develop the technology.

When IronNet tried to land contracts with the NSA, officials dismissed the company’s offerings as unserious, according to a former member of U.S. Cyber Command who was at the meeting but not authorized to discuss government procurement proceedings publicly.

The failure to win large contracts quickly derailed IronNet’s growth plans. In December 2021, just a few months after going public, IronNet downgraded its annual recurring revenue projections by 60%.

Another sign that things were not well: IronNet and C5 were engaging in a questionable business practice in an apparent effort to juice the cybersecurity firm’s revenues, according to C5 records and interviews with former employees at both firms.

In addition to being a major investor, C5 was also one of IronNet’s biggest customers, accounting for a significant part of the cybersecurity firm’s revenue when it went public.

C5 had signed two multi-year customer contracts with IronNet for $5.2 million, according to internal C5 records.

Contracts of that size were typical for large clients with thousands of employees, not a small investment firm like C5 that had a couple dozen employees and partners, former IronNet employees said.

“That’s an inflated number,” said Eddie Potter, a former top sales executive at IronNet, when told by the AP of the size of C5’s contracts with IronNet. He added there was “no way” that C5 required services “worth $5 million.”

Indeed, one C5 internal record obtained by the AP shows it budgeted only about $50,000 a year for IronNet’s services.

Pienaar’s attorneys said C5’s contracts with IronNet were to help protect the U.K. government’s hospitals and other entities against “escalating cyberattacks during the COVID-19 pandemic.” His attorneys said the work was coordinated through a charity Pienaar and C5 created in 2020.

Securities and Exchange Commission filings and C5 records show C5’s contracts with IronNet were signed in the summer and fall of 2019—several months before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Pienaar’s attorneys said Alexander and Pienaar were “briefed on the shocking scale of hostile nation-state cyberattacks on hospitals” in 2019, which created the “foundation” for IronNet’s work with C5.

Pienaar’s charity never registered with the IRS, as one of Pienaar’s companies claimed in U.K. business filings, and former C5 and IronNet officials said they did not see it do any substantive work.

“It was marketing, fluffy crap,” said Rob Mathieson, a former IronNet vice president.

Pienaar’s attorneys said his charity was successful but there was “insufficient time” for it to register with the IRS.

After reporting millions in revenue from C5 from 2020 to 2023, IronNet wrote off $1.3 million from C5 in what the cybersecurity firm claimed was “bad debt,” IronNet’s filings with the SEC show. Pienaar’s attorneys said the write-off represented a reduction in the cost of providing services to his charity and denied that C5 had not fulfilled its financial obligations to IronNet.

IronNet was not alone in having trouble getting money from Pienaar and his firms.

A group of nuns sued C5 in 2022, court records show, alleging it failed to return their $2.5 million investment in a tech incubator that Pienaar had promoted as a way to boost socially conscious start-ups. C5 agreed to refund the nuns’ investment, plus attorney fees and expenses, to settle the lawsuit, records show. The nuns’ financial adviser, Carolyn LaRocco, told the AP that Pienaar used the nuns’ investment to pay expenses she believed were unwarranted.

An affiliate of the United States Institute of Peace, a nonprofit established by Congress, sued Pienaar in 2020 after he failed to pay a promised $1.5 million personal donation, federal court records show. The nonprofit’s affiliate then took Pienaar back to court after he failed to make payments on time as part of a settlement. Pienaar used $500,000 from a C5 bank account to meet a court-ordered deadline for payment, court records show. C5 staff were concerned about Pienaar’s use of the firm’s funds to cover his personal debt, according to C5 records.

In the last year, Pienaar-controlled entities have been sued by a top former CIA executive who alleged C5 owed him back wages and a Washington landlord who accused Pienaar’s firms of failing to pay more than $140,000 in rent and associated costs. The suits were dismissed soon after they were filed, indicating the parties likely settled, court records show. A lawsuit recently filed by a financial services firm alleges C5 owes it more than $1 million in unpaid debts.

The crash

After slashing revenue projections in December 2021, Alexander tried to project confidence and said IronNet was still on track to see its revenue rise.
It didn’t work. IronNet’s stock went into a prolonged skid and the company underwent multiple rounds of layoffs.

In April 2022, the company was hit with a class-action lawsuit from investors who alleged IronNet had fraudulently inflated its revenue projections to boost its stock price.

The company has denied any wrongdoing but recently agreed to pay $6.6 million to settle the lawsuit, according to a proposed settlement filed in federal court. Alexander told Bloomberg News this past January that IronNet’s troubles stemmed in part from his naivety about how the business world worked.

C5 began loaning money to IronNet to keep it afloat starting at the end of 2022 while Pienaar continued to try and boost the company’s brand.

In September of last year, IronNet announced it had run out of money and was closing its doors.

A Pienaar-controlled entity stepped in shortly afterwards with $10 million in loans to allow the company to restructure via bankruptcy.

A dramatically scaled-down version of IronNet led by Pienaar’s allies went private in February and announced Alexander had stepped down as chairman of the board.

Pienaar remains bullish on the company, which he said continues to successfully protect clients in the U.S. and Europe from cyber threats. IronNet’s more recent activities have included looking to partner with the government of Ukraine.

“Any accusation that IronNet has been anything other than successful is categorically false,” his attorneys told the AP.

Many of C5’s investors and former employees are baffled by Pienaar’s continued heavy bets on IronNet after it has been soundly rejected by the market.

During bankruptcy proceedings earlier this year, an investment bank approached 114 prospective buyers for IronNet, federal court records show. None of them made an offer.

—Alan Suderman, Associated Press

The pipeline from OpenAI to Anthropic remains strong as ever, with cofounder Durk Kingma becoming the latest high-profile figure to make the move. On Tuesday, Kingma, one of the lesser-known cofounders of OpenAI, joined Anthropic, best known for developing the rival AI chatbot Claude. 

In a series of posts on X, Kingma revealed that he’ll be working mostly remotely, from the Netherlands (where he’s based), but didn’t say which Anthropic team he’ll be joining—or leading.

“Anthropic’s approach to AI development resonates significantly with my own beliefs; looking forward to contributing to Anthropic’s mission of developing powerful AI systems responsibly,” Kingma wrote on X.  “Can’t wait to work with their talented team, including a number of great ex-colleagues from OpenAI and Google, and tackle the challenges ahead!”

Kingma holds a PhD in machine learning from the University of Amsterdam and spent several years as a doctoral fellow at Google before joining OpenAI’s founding team as a research scientist. After leading OpenAI’s algorithms team, Kingma joined Google Brain (later merged with DeepMind) in 2018, where he focused on generative models for text, image, and video.

Kingma follows a trio of leaders who announced their departures last week: chief research officer Bob McGrew; VP of research Barret Zoph; and chief technology officer Mira Murati, who briefly took over as interim CEO when the board fired Sam Altman last November. 

As of now, only three members of the original OpenAI founding team remain: CEO Sam Altman, research scientist Wojciech Zaremba, and company president Greg Brockman (who is currently on sabbatical until the end of the year). 

Anthropic, founded in 2021 by seven former OpenAI employees, aims to position itself as more safety-centered alternative to OpenAI. CEO Dario Amodei, previously VP of research at OpenAI, split from the company due to its growing commercial focus. Amodei brought with him a number of ex-OpenAI employees to launch Anthropic, including OpenAI’s former policy lead Jack Clark.

Anthropic has since recruited over five former OpenAI employees, including fellow cofounder John Schulman, who left this past August, and former safety lead Jan Leike, who resigned in May. Many former employees cite safety as a primary concern.

Leike, who was part of a team that focused on the safety of future AI systems, expressed his disagreement with OpenAI’s leadership priorities and said that these issues had reached a “breaking point.” 

“Over the past years, safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products,” he wrote on X.

OpenAI’s former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever co-led the company’s Superalignment team with Leike and also resigned in May. He backed Altman’s brief outster in November, though later expressed regret over that support.

Since his resignation, he has founded and raised a $1 billion round for his new startup, Safe Superintelligence, which aims to produce superintelligence while emphasizing safety. 

Earlier this year in June, 13 ex-OpenAI and Google Deepmind employees warned in an open letter that advanced AI companies, like OpenAI, stifle criticism and oversight. They warned that current whistleblower protections “are insufficient” because they focus on illegal activity rather than concerns that are mostly unregulated—namely AI safety. They called for frontier AI companies to provide assurances that employees will not be retaliated against for responsibly disclosing risk-related concerns.

Reminiscent of the Paypal mafia, a variety of company departures, like Sutskever’s, have spawned into major tech startups and OpenAI competitors. 

Former OpenAI researcher Aravind Srinivas is one of the cofounders of Perplexity, the AI-powered search engine. Cresta, a generative AI service for contact centers and sales employees, was founded by former technical staff member Tim Shi, while Daedalus, which builds AI-powered precision manufacturers, was founded by former tech lead Jonas Schneider. Gantry, a machine learning infrastructure company, was founded by former OpenAI research scientist Josh Tobin. 

“You’ve got 20-30,000 companies [across Silicon Valley] that have exploded because more people were willing to leave the lab,” says HP Newquist, executive director of the Relayer Group and an AI historian. “It’s a core group of people who are really able to understand how this all works.”

This past Tuesday, OpenAI finalized a deal to receive $6.6 billion in new funding from investors, who valued the company at $157 billion. 

Over three decades, the Electronic Arts (EA) built its soccer video game into a $2 billion annual franchise, and it had one name: FIFA. That ended last year after a financial dispute with the global sport’s governing body, and the game was rebranded EA Sports FC. 

The FC stands for football club, and the company took that designation seriously with a brand positioning that leaned into the idea that players should feel like members of a new football club and not just a video game customer. Created with agency Uncommon, its “Welcome to the Club” campaign launched in April 2023, attempting to get fans of all the world’s football club’s to feel a collective sense of ownership around their favorite game.

The fan-centric perspective across live events and other content helped drive 14.5 million active player accounts in its first 24 days, compared with FIFA 2023′s initial numbers of 10.3 million, and propel the game into the Top 10 sales for 2023, despite launching in September.

Now, as FC 2025 launches, the brand and agency are faced with the challenge of following up a hit; not only keeping the club vibes going, but building on the success of last year. 

“In year one of FC, we asked fans to ‘Join the club’, and we felt that as we entered our second year we needed to continue to reflect the passion of football fans globally in a meaningful way,” says Charlie Villiers, EA Sports FC’s senior director of franchise marketing. “We wanted to create a stronger connection to FC, allowing more fans to feel part of something, and to better represent their emotions and feelings towards their favourite club.”

“For The Club”

One way to do that is through content. EAFC (and formerly FIFA) has long gone beyond its game status to become a full-fledged cultural institution. Not only are fans playing as their favorite stars, the stars themselves are just as obsessed.

The new extended trailer film, “For The Club” is packed with both. From the game’s coverboy Jude Bellingham—getting taunted by his brother Jobe—and icons like David Beckham, Zinedine Zidane and Gianluigi Buffon, to Ballon d’Or Féminin winner Aitana Bonmatí and Liverpool star Trent Alexander-Arnold. Then there’s F1 World Champion Max Verstappen, and music artists Dave and Tiakola. 

There’s a long tradition in football advertising revolving around bringing fans and stars closer together. Like in 2016, when Nike put a regular kid in the big time for the wonderful body swap story, “The Switch.” Or Adidas pretending for World Cup 2022 that stars like Bellingham, Karim Benzema, and Messi all live under the same roof. The big names are mingled in with everyday players, showing the trash-talk, the obsession, the laughs, and the blisters involved with being a FC superfan. The message? They’re all in the same club. 

Uncommon co-founder, Nils Leonard, says one important thing to remember in any rebrand is that it’s never really over. “Building a brand like FC isn’t a one and done, it’s a constant, living and breathing task where you look to establish new icons and behaviors in the entire experience of the brand,” says Leonard. “It’s also about giving the new energy and experience of the brand some depth, this work enriches the new FC brand with the real love and sacrifice of fans around the world.” 

More to come

In addition to the main trailer, EA Sports will roll out a series of talent shorts and thematic chapters, further exploring the essence of what it means to put it all on the line “For The Club.”

The extended trailer isn’t a one-and-done of content revolving around this gaming “club.” The brand will be gradually rolling out a series of shorts and chapters, around certain fans, players and stories hinted at in the trailer. 

“As we built out the strategy for FC 25, we looked at how the landscape has evolved—what is working, what needs changing and how the way fans engage with football has shifted,” says Villiers. “Building on this, we wanted to create an additional dimension to the work this year. This allowed our teams to tell multiple stories in enough detail, and then to be more intentional and relevant as we roll them out across the various platforms our fans engage with.” 

Rwanda’s Ministry of Health has confirmed that the ongoing outbreak of Marburg hemorrhagic fever has killed 11 people, with 36 confirmed cases as of this week, according to an update from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The outbreak, first reported on September 27, has spread across multiple districts in the country, raising fears of contagion due to its proximity to the capital city of Kigali.

The highly infectious Marburg virus, similar to Ebola, was first traced to patients in health facilities. Over 70% of the confirmed cases are healthcare workers, and the source of the infection remains unclear. 

The Rwandan government, supported by the World Health Organization (WHO), is conducting contact tracing, with 300 individuals currently under followup. Public health authorities are isolating patients to prevent further spread of the virus, which causes severe symptoms like high fever, vomiting, internal bleeding, and often death.

Key facts about the 2024 Marburg outbreak

• Date of confirmation: September 27  
• Total confirmed cases: 36 as of October 2
• Deaths: 11 
• Healthcare workers impacted: Over 70% of confirmed cases are healthcare workers  
• Districts affected: 7 out of 30  
• Contact tracing: 300 individuals under followup  
• Treatment availability: No specific treatment or vaccine; only supportive care  

International concern

The outbreak has drawn international concern. In Hamburg, Germany, two people were isolated after returning from Rwanda, where they had contact with Marburg patients. Although both tested negative for the virus, authorities took extreme precautions, cordoning off part of a railway station when one of the travelers reported symptoms. 

According to a WHO assessment, risk of further spread is very high at the national level and high at the regional level. (Kigali’s international airport and transport links to other East African cities.) However, the global risk remains low, the WHO says.

Rwanda’s health officials continue to investigate the source of the infection while expanding public health measures to contain the outbreak. As of now, there are no approved treatments or vaccines for Marburg, but early supportive care has been shown to improve survival rates.