• Palantir attracts early-career talent with an interest in defense tech work.
• Federal filings reveal what the defense tech company pays engineers and researchers.
• Forward Deployed Engineers can make as much as $200,000 in base pay.

Palantir is having a moment. The software and defense tech company has been on a tear in 2025; its stock is up over 100% this year, as of Tuesday’s close. As shares soar, what about their employees’ paychecks?

Palantir is gaining ground with early-career talent — including some recruits who haven’t even started college — thanks to cushy software engineering salaries and a growing appetite among younger techies for defense tech work. The company is also riding a tone shift in Silicon Valley, where working with the government is no longer taboo.

Google, for instance, quietly dropped its ban on using its technology to build weapons in February. At elite universities like Stanford, a coding job at a defense tech company like Palantir or a drone startup is becoming as coveted as a traditional tech job, according to the San Francisco Standard.

Palantir builds software that helps institutions — both government agencies and commercial companies — manage and analyze their data. In addition to building defense software for the US and allied militaries, the company also makes AI tools for health systems like Mount Sinai and HCA Healthcare.

The company appears to be hiring across the board, with open roles ranging from entry-level software engineers to government-focused business development staff, according to its job listings. While compensation information isn’t publicized by most tech companies, including Palantir, public records from US work visa applications give some insight into pay for specific positions.

The data comes from filings from the first quarter of 2025 that companies submit to the US Department of Labor when hiring foreign workers on H-1B visas. Business Insider analyzed Palantir’s filings to see where it’s hiring — and what it’s paying. The figures only refer to foreign hires and only account for base pay, not the bonuses and stock awards that employees receive.

Unlike tech giants such as Microsoft, Google, and Meta, which each filed thousands of H-1B applications during the same period, Palantir submitted far fewer. That may be in part due to the nature of its government work; some of these roles at Palantir could require US security clearance, according to Palantir job postings reviewed by BI. Security clearance can only typically be granted to American citizens, according to the State Department.

Palantir didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.

Here’s what Palantir is paying across key roles, from Forward Deployed Engineers to Machine Learning Researchers.

Deployment roles: Forward Deployed Engineers can make as much as $200,000 in base pay.

Forward Deployed Engineer: $143,000 to $200,000

Deployment Strategist: $120,000 to $160,000

Software Engineers can make up to $240,000 in base pay.

Software Engineer: $155,000 to $240,000

Machine Learning Researcher: $210,000 to $250,000

Ayanna Gay was in her 30s and had been married for three years before she and her husband, Nakhaz, began seriously thinking about having a baby. A slew of considerations kept them on the fence, including not just the astronomical cost of childcare and fears about bringing a kid into a world in political and economic turmoil, but also a prohibitive mortgage.

Finally, they decided to take the leap. Gay is due to have her first child in mid-August. “We got to a point where we were like, we can afford this more than we could have afforded it before,” Gay tells me. “But it was never, like ‘Oh, yeah, we’re going to be smooth sailing.'”

The Gays are far from alone. While there are myriad reasons the birth rate in America has been falling since 2008, surveys have found the rising cost of having a kid is at the top of the list. Childcare often costs more than a typical mortgage, nearly three-quarters of private sector workers still don’t get paid parental leave, and the inflated price of everything from eggs to minivans is putting extra pressure on family budgets.

Rising housing costs are a major part of those concerns. A record number of Americans are struggling to afford their rent or mortgage. Restrictive building and land-use regulations and developer norms have made starter homes and family-sized apartments scarce. Birth rates have fallen the most in parts of the country where housing costs have risen fastest. And families now make up the fastest-growing group of Americans falling into homelessness.

The homeownership boom starting in the 1930s helped create the baby boom.

This isn’t a new problem. There has long been a close relationship between housing costs and birth rates in America. While parts of the US with the cheapest housing tend to have higher birthrates (a 2018 Zillow report found that fertility has risen in some places with the least cost inflation), areas with stricter land-use laws that prevent denser, cheaper housing from being built are closely correlated with lower fertility rates. A 10% increase in home prices led to a 1% decrease in births among non-homeowners in the 1990s and early 2000s, the economists Lisa Dettling and Melissa Schettini Kearney found in a 2012 paper published in the National Bureau of Economic Research. In a 2025 paper, Dettling and Kearney also found that the advent of the modern, low-down-payment mortgage in the 1930s made homeownership far more accessible to younger people and was responsible for more than three million additional births — meaning the homeownership boom helped create the baby boom.

These days, rents are unaffordable for half of US tenants, and homeownership is out of reach for a growing share of 20- and 30-somethings. The typical first-time homebuyer in 2024 was 38 years old, a record high. Sixty percent of Gen Z worry they might never own a home, one recent survey found. And that lack of affordable, stable housing — as the prospective parents, new parents, and housing experts I talked to for this story repeatedly told me — is deepening the financial concerns many younger people have about having kids.

While Gay and her husband bought their home in Orlando, Florida, in 2022, their housing costs are straining their budget, especially with the added expenses of a kid. And with both working from home, she thinks they’ll need a bigger house if they ever want to have a second kid. Without cheaper housing options, they won’t grow their family.

“If there’s a world where only one is sustainable, then we will only have one,” she says.

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The country’s declining birth rate isn’t all bad news. Fewer teens are becoming parents. American women are getting more education, making more money, and delaying or not having kids of their own accord.

But it’s also a symptom of darker trends. American women aren’t having as many kids as they say they want. Young people are having less sex and fewer of them, especially those with lower incomes, are getting married or living with romantic partners. As men struggle economically, fewer women are as interested in marrying or having kids with them. A third of US adults over 50 say they’re childless because they never found the right partner.

The conversations Americans are having about starting a family or having another kid are “very layered,” Paige Connell, a mother of four and parenting influencer, tells me. She hears from mothers who feel burned out working and caring for their kids, and worry that having another would overwhelm them or hurt their careers. She also hears from childless people who don’t know how they could afford childcare or a bigger home. Affordability is the biggest concern she hears from parents and people considering having kids.

Housing costs are the single biggest factor preventing Americans from having as many kids as they want, according to a recent report published by the Institute for Family Studies, a conservative think tank. In IFS’s recent survey of more than 8,000 Americans 18 to 54 years old, a quarter of respondents listed housing costs as a concern, while 30% cited the cost of childcare, and 26% said they wanted more leisure time. But of those factors, housing costs had the largest total effect on family size.

“Housing is the biggest affordability hurdle facing families,” Lyman Stone, a co-author of the report and the director of IFS’s Pronatalism Initiative, tells me. “It’s the thing that everybody thinks about first, as soon as they’re thinking about fertility.”

It really is the case that if you give people more bedrooms in their apartments, they’re more interested in having children.Lyman Stone

In Connell’s case, being able to afford her three-bedroom home has allowed her to have the number of kids she wanted, she says. She’s among the lucky millennial homeowners who landed a 3% mortgage interest rate on her suburban Boston house back in 2020. If housing costs had been as high then as they are now, she doesn’t think she and her husband would have had a fourth.

“There’s a growing conversation about not having children unless you, quote unquote, have enough space for them,” she says. “Like, if you can’t afford to give them their own bedroom, then you should have shouldn’t have that child.”

Stone’s research has found that the problem isn’t just the cost of housing, it’s the scarcity of the types of homes most appealing to families: those with two or more bedrooms in communities that are safe, walkable, and have decent schools. People who have kids or want families tend to prefer single-family homes over apartments. Above all, they just want room to grow. “It really is the case that if you give people more bedrooms in their apartments, they’re more interested in having children,” Stone tells me.

The fundamental driver of soaring rent and mortgage prices is a steep housing shortage. Family-sized housing is particularly scarce.

When rents rise, single adults can live with housemates to split costs, says Emily Hamilton, a housing researcher at the libertarian-leaning Mercatus Center at George Mason University. People with kids aren’t likely to do the same, meaning they can’t as easily defray rising housing costs. A group of roommates “can generally pay more for housing than one or two working parents with kids could,” Hamilton says.

Developers also aren’t incentivized to build affordable family-sized housing, especially in expensive cities. They tend to build two more profitable types of homes: detached single-family houses with lots of lawn and square footage on the outskirts of cities, and large apartment buildings with cramped one-bedroom and studio units in the urban core. Neither make for affordable homes for families.

That’s in large part because land-use regulations, building codes, and financing models have made it very difficult or impossible to build anything in between, Michael Eliason, a Seattle-based architect and founder of Larch Lab, tells me. Affordable housing designed for families is increasingly relegated to far-flung exurbs and rural areas. “We’ve hit the limits of sprawl,” Eliason says. At the same time, we “aren’t good at building urban, multi-family housing that is of a quality similar to living in a detached house or a townhouse.”

Bobby Fijan, a real estate developer who’s been pushing for more family-centric dense housing, tells me there’s a lot developers could do under the current constraints to make their buildings more family-friendly. That could include designing two-bedroom apartments for a couple and a child, rather than two roommates, by featuring just one bathroom and reallocating square footage to an additional bedroom. Or apartment buildings could include a children’s playroom in their common space instead of a dog washing station.

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President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance talk openly about their concerns with the falling birth rate. Vance has famously blamed society’s ills on “childless cat ladies,” while Trump has promised to usher in a baby boom. Their pro-natalist policies are focused on expanding federal cash benefits for parents, including Trump’s proposal for a $5,000 baby bonus. But they’ve also talked about opening up federal land for housing construction. Some Democrats have gotten behind the idea as well.

Brad Wilcox, cofounder of IFS, previously told BI that the group has had conversations with the Trump administration’s Domestic Policy Council about pronatalist policies. He pointed to the administration’s efforts to sell federal land for housing construction as a promising path forward.

As part of their “big beautiful bill,” Republican lawmakers expanded the child tax credit from $2,000 per kid to $2,200. The proposal excludes the neediest families who don’t make enough money to be eligible for the full benefit. The reconciliation package also includes a baby bonus in the form of investment accounts with $1,000 of seed funds for every American baby born from 2025 through 2028.

While some researchers, including Stone, have found that an expanded child tax credit would increase birth rates, it wouldn’t be enough for many Americans.

Catherine, a 43-year-old physician in the San Francisco Bay Area, and her husband, a neuroscientist, make about $500,000 a year combined. But the couple and their two young daughters live in one of the most expensive housing markets in the country and bought their three-bedroom house in Carmel for nearly $1.7 million in 2023.

While their 1,700-square-foot home has enough space for a third baby, Catherine worries that expanding their family would deplete their financial safety net and make their fixed costs — mostly their mortgage — unaffordable. If either she or her husband takes a step back at work to help take care of a third baby, they’d likely struggle with their sky-high mortgage payments. She asked that her last name be excluded from the story because she fears her employer would discriminate against her if they knew she was considering having a third kid.

“For us, it’s not so much maternity and paternity leave guarantees that would lead us to have a third child, it’s really about reducing that fixed cost long term,” Catherine says. “We’re doing OK now, but if we add this third element and something else happens, how are we going to pay our bills?”

Moving doesn’t make sense for them. A cheaper three-bedroom home is nearly impossible to come by in their school district. And Catherine’s job, which requires her to be in the office five days a week, means they can’t decamp to a cheaper state. If she or her husband were to lose their jobs or want to find other work, the opportunities in their niche fields are much more abundant in the Bay Area than they are elsewhere.

Not to mention, they love living in Carmel. There are robotics and surfing camps, a plethora of museums, and access to the outdoors — all great for raising kids.

“We’re paying for the neighborhood, for the school options, for the safety, for our jobs,” Catherine says. “The Bay Area is just really, really, really expensive.”

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Eliza Relman is a policy correspondent focused on housing, transportation, and infrastructure on Insider’s economy team.

• Jason Brown rebuilt his wealth through options trading after early investment losses.
• Brown’s skepticism of traditional investing led him to focus on self-directed options.
• He emphasizes understanding options to mitigate risk and protect financial assets.

Jason Brown built wealth his own way.

After a disappointing early experience handing over his money to professionals — he took $2,000 worth of high school graduation money to the bank to invest and, two years later, his account had dropped to $700 — he decided if he was going to lose money, at least it would be on his own terms.

As a college student, he started buying stocks and grew his modest savings to six figures before losing it all on one trade. After selling his car, moving back home, and taking a job at Verizon selling cellphones, he started trading again — this time, with a set of investing principles that would prevent him from going broke again.

Brown, 43, gradually rebuilt his portfolio and hit the seven-figure mark by trading options. Business Insider confirmed his net worth by reviewing an account summary that shows his 2024 investment activity.

An option is a type of financial contract giving you the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell an asset at a specific price before a specific date. Options are generally more complex than traditional investing, such as buying and holding stocks or index funds, but Brown’s adamant that traditional investing doesn’t cut it.

“I don’t really believe in index funds,” he told BI.

He became skeptical after digging into his 401(k) plan when he worked for Verizon. Specifically, he looked at the fund his 401(k) money was invested in. It was comprised of about five major companies like Apple and Google that he knew and trusted, but “the rest of it was junk,” he said. “That’s when I was like, I want to move it over to a self-directed IRA, and I just want to pick these five companies. Why are they forcing me to buy all this other stuff?”

Index fund investing has helped many regular investors build wealth, but for Brown, who prefers to be more hands-on with his investments, options trading made more sense.

‘Options are not risky. The way people use them is risky.’

Brown, who trades full-time, runs a financial education company, and is the author of “Five-Year Millionaire,” believes there is a lot of misunderstanding around options trading.

“When people don’t understand options, they’ll say, ‘That’s risky what he’s doing.’ The reality is, it’s risky not knowing how to use options,” he said.

Stock options can be compared to renters’ or car insurance, depending on whether you’re buying or selling options and whether you’re using calls or puts.

For example, buying a put is like buying car insurance. You pay a premium (the cost of the put), and hope nothing bad happens (the stock doesn’t crash), but if it does, you’re protected: You can sell the stock at the agreed-upon price (the strike price), just like insurance would reimburse you if your car gets totaled.

“If options are so risky, then stop paying your homeowner’s insurance or your car insurance, because that’s what you’re doing every month when you cut a check: You are buying a put option to protect yourself in case something happens,” said Brown. “Why don’t we buy protection for our investment accounts when a COVID-19 happens, when an ’08 real estate market crash happens, when a tariffs situation happens, and the market tanks?”

Options can require careful timing and market-watching, and Brown knows he won’t make money on every trade.

“You cannot be right on every trade,” he said, which is why he has a robust emergency fund, multiple revenue streams, and follows investing principles, including: Know your “I’m wrong level.”

When he lost everything in his early 20s, he never considered his “I’m wrong level,” he explained. “I only thought, ‘What would happen if this goes right? I’m getting a condo.’ I never stopped to think, ‘If I’m wrong, I’ll lose it all and I have to move back home.'”

Now, he knows exactly when he needs to cut his losses and shut down a trade.

“Options are not risky. The way people use them is risky,” said Brown. “You can use them to gamble and treat it like a casino, or you can use them to protect some of your most valuable assets — protect your accounts and grow your accounts.”

• Microsoft’s internal pay guidelines show how much the company generally offers new hires.
• The documents include pay ranges for engineers and researchers in the US.
• There’s a carve-out allowing recruiters to get approval for higher offers in competitive cases.

Microsoft pay guidelines obtained by Business Insider reveal how much the software giant generally will pay technical talent, shedding light on an opaque hiring process.

The documents, last updated in May, do come with a carve-out: In competitive situations, recruiters can seek approval for higher offers for exceptional candidates.

That’s a key caveat considering big tech companies are in an all-out battle for AI talent, with some offering staggering pay packages to engineers and researchers. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Meta is offering engineers $100 million signing bonuses. Meta also reportedly poached a former top Apple AI engineer with a pay package worth more than $200 million.

Microsoft has a level system to denote seniority. Levels 57 to 59 are generally considered entry-level engineers, while senior engineers begin at level 63, and principal-level engineers begin at level 65. The higher levels are more rare. Partners start at level 68 while distinguished engineers are at level 70.

According to the documents, Level 70 candidates can earn a yearly salary of as much as $408,000, depending on location. Their compensation would also include a one-time stock award upon hiring of as much as $1.9 million and could include an additional signing bonus, though a range isn’t specified. Their future compensation would include an annual stock award worth as much as $1,476,000, according to the documents.

Microsoft has different salary ranges for different locations. For example, there’s a “main” pay range for workers at the company’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters, along with a “high” pay range for workers in higher cost-of-living areas such as San Francisco. Most of Microsoft’s hiring happens in these locations, according to a person familiar with the hiring process.

The packages outlined in these documents include ranges for salaries, on-hire stock awards, signing bonuses, annual stock awards, and percentages for annual bonuses based on levels. Microsoft declined to comment.

Level 57

• “High” salary range: $95,800 to $124,600
• “Main” salary range: $83,000 to $108,000
• On-hire stock award: $5,000 to $13,000
• Annual stock award: “By career stage”
• Signing bonus: $0 to $9,000
• Annual bonus: “NA”

Level 58

• “Main” salary range: $94,100 to 122,300
• “High” salary range: $105,900 to $137,700
• On-hire stock award: $6,000 to $20,000
• Annual stock award: “By career stage”
• Signing bonus: $0 to $18,000
• Annual bonus: 0 to 20%

Level 59

• “Main” salary range: $101,400 to $152,000
• “High” salary range: $109,000 to $163,600
• On-hire stock award: $15,000 to $120,000
• Annual stock award: $0 to $20,000
• Signing bonus: $0 to $18,000
• Annual bonus: 0 to 20%

Level 60

• “Main” salary range: $110,200 to $165,200
• “High” salary range: $120,200 to $180,400
• On-hire stock award: $20,000 to $130,000
• Annual stock award: $0 to $24,000
• Signing bonus: $0 to $27,000
• Annual bonus: 0 to 20%

Level 61

• “Main” salary range: $123,200 to $184,800
• “High” salary range: $131,400 to $197,000
• On-hire stock award: $30,000 to $150,000
• Annual stock award: $0 to $36,000
• Signing bonus: $0 to $36,000
• Annual bonus: 0 to 20%

Level 62

• “Main” salary range: $132,600 to $199,000
• “High” salary range: $143,600 to $215,400
• On-hire stock award: $40,000 to $170,000
• Annual stock award: $0 to $44,000
• Signing bonus: $0 to $45,000
• Annual bonus: 0 to 20%

Level 63

• “Main” salary range: $145,000 to $218,400
• “High” salary range: $158,400 to $237,600
• On-hire stock award: $55,000 to $220,000
• Annual stock award: $0 to $64,000
• Signing bonus: $0 to $45,000
• Annual bonus: 0 to 30%

Level 64

• “Main” salary range: $156,500 to $234,700
• “High” salary range: $172,000 to $258,000
• On-hire stock award: $70,000 to $270,000
• Annual stock award: $0 to $80,000
• Signing bonus: $0 to $54,000
• Annual bonus: 0 to 30%

Level 65

• “Main” salary range: $172,800 to $259,200
• “High” salary range: $188,000 to $282,000
• On-hire stock award: $100,000 to $320,000
• Annual stock award: $0 to $130,000
• Signing bonus: $0 to $90,000
• Annual bonus: 0 to 40%

Level 66

• “Main” salary range: $183,200 to 274,800
• “High” salary range: $202,800 to $304,200
• On-hire stock award: $180,000 to $640,000
• Annual stock award: $0 to $200,000
• Signing bonus: $0 to $126,000
• Annual bonus: 0 to 40%

Level 67

• “Main” salary range: $197,800 to $296,400
• “High” salary range: $220,800 to $331,200
• On-hire stock award: $380,000 to $850,000
• Annual stock award: $0 to $420,000
• Signing bonus: $0 to $180,000
• Annual bonus: 0 to 60%

Level 68

• “Main” salary range: $212,800 to $319,200
• “High” salary range: $236,000 to $354,000
• On-hire stock award: $500,000 to $1,150,000
• Annual stock award: $0 to $754,000
• Signing bonus: Not listed
• Annual bonus: 0 to 90%

Level 69

• “Main” salary range: $225,600 to $338,400
• “High” salary range: $247,000 to $370,800
• On-hire stock award: $657,000 to $1.35 million
• Annual stock award: $0 to $1,150,000
• Signing bonus: Not listed
• Annual bonus: 0 to 90%

Level 70

• “Main” salary range: $252,000 to $378,000
• “High” salary range: $272,000 to $408,000
• On-hire stock award: $827,001 to $1.9 million
• Annual stock award: $0 to $1,476,000
• Signing bonus: Not listed
• Annual bonus: 0 to 90%

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at astewart@businessinsider.com or Signal at +1-425-344-8242. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here’s our guide to sharing information securely.

• The IMF has downgraded Russia’s 2025 growth forecast due to policy tightening and lower oil prices.
• Russia’s economy faces a slowdown after defying sanctions and a military spending boom.
• President Donald Trump is threatening tariffs if Russia doesn’t reach a ceasefire with Ukraine in 10 days.

Russia’s wartime boom is faltering — and the International Monetary Fund is the latest to weigh in with a downgrade.

“We are expecting Russia’s economic growth to slow down in 2025, and that is very much due to the policy tightening and lower oil prices,” said Petya Koeva Brooks, a deputy director of the research department at the IMF, on Tuesday.

After two years of defying sanctions and riding a military spending boom, the country is now facing a sharp slowdown, according to the IMF. The organization has slashed its growth forecast and flagged weakness across key sectors.

The IMF now expects Russia’s economy to grow 0.9% in 2025, down from the 1.5% it had projected in April. It’s also expecting the country’s economy to grow 1% in 2026

Koeva Brooks said the downgrade was prompted by recent economic data in Russia’s retail sales, industrial production, and official monthly GDP figures, which reflected “relative weakness.”

Russia’s manufacturing activity contracted last month, employment has softened, and GDP growth slowed to 1.4% in Q1, down sharply from 4.5% the previous quarter.

The latest downgrade comes just months after an upward revision to 2024 growth, which the IMF raised to 4.3%, citing stronger-than-expected momentum in the fourth quarter. That compares to full-year growth of 4.1% in 2023.

While Moscow has managed to dodge economic collapse since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — in part by pouring cash into defense contracts — the wartime boom that once risked overheating now appears to be unraveling.

Just last month, Russia’s economy minister, Maxim Reshetnikov, warned that the country was “on the brink” of a recession.

Pressure from Washington

IMF’s updated outlook on Russia’s economy came days after the country’s central bank cut its key interest rates from 20% to 18% to boost demand as inflation slows.

Meanwhile, geopolitical pressure on Moscow is intensifying.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump issued a sharp warning to Russian President Vladimir Putin saying the US would impose tariffs and other punitive measures if Russia fails to agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine within 10 days.

The ultimatum sent oil prices surging to around $70 a barrel, their highest level in over a month. But Trump downplayed concerns about potential blowback from additional sanctions.

“I don’t worry about it. We have so much oil in our country. We’ll just step it up even further,” he said, referring to a potential boost in production.

• Ukraine’s intelligence released footage of an aerial drone attack that it said was from the sea.
• It’s the country’s first recorded instance of launching quadcopters from boats at maritime targets.
• Past drone warfare at sea typically featured surface vessel drones or munitions launched from land.

Ukraine’s intelligence department posted footage on Tuesday of what it said were first-person-view attack drones launched by boat crews on the open sea.

The Main Intelligence Directorate, or GUR, wrote in a statement on its Telegram channel that the clips were archival footage of a raid on September 11, 2024.

“Thanks to this component of the operation, the GUR soldiers were able to suppress enemy fire on the Petro Godovanets gas production platform in the Black Sea,” it wrote.

GUR said the attack was carried out on the coast of Crimea by the Raven Group, a unit in its special forces. Business Insider could not independently verify the authenticity of the footage.

The clips appear to show a nighttime attack, where at least three first-person-view, or FPV, drones take off from a boat and crash into the ocean platform. Surveillance drone footage captured flashes and explosions.

“The occupiers suffered losses in personnel and equipment,” GUR wrote. Based on the clips posted, the true extent of the damage is not immediately clear.

GUR also posted clips of its troops traversing the open sea in lightweight combat craft, likely rigid inflatable boats such as the Zodiac.

The intelligence division said the raid was Ukraine’s first known instance of attacking with FPV drones via boats on the open sea.

Such an operation is markedly different from how drone warfare is typically conducted at sea, which primarily emphasizes uncrewed surface vehicles — essentially boat drones designed to ram into a target with explosives.

FPV drones, however, are usually remote-controlled quadcopters that require a radio or cable connection to the operator.

Loitering munitions have been used in combat at sea before, such as by Yemen’s Houthi rebels to attack ships on the Red Sea. However, they’ve typically been understood to be launched from inland locations and flown out to the coast.

While GUR didn’t say what equipment was used, an FPV drone operation from a boat would typically require drone pilots to bring control and navigation gear such as headsets, tablets, and GPS modules.

The platform identified, Petro Godovanets, is a Black Sea drilling site that has seen back-and-forth fighting since at least 2023.

• Elon Musk says he’s doing away with the “researcher” job title at xAI.
• Musk’s move echoes the approach used by OpenAI and Anthropic.
• Both use a single title, “Member of Technical Staff,” for their engineering and research hires.

Elon Musk says he has banished the job title “researcher” from his AI startup, xAI.

The distinction between researcher and engineer is a “thinly masked way of describing a two-tier engineering system,” Musk wrote in an X post on Tuesday.

“There are only engineers,” Musk said.”Researcher is a relic term from academia.”

Musk then drew a comparison to his rocket company, SpaceX, which he said did more “meaningful, cutting-edge” research on rockets and satellites than “all the academic university labs on earth combined.”

“But we don’t use the pretentious, low-accountability term ‘researcher,'” Musk said.

xAI did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

OpenAI, which Musk co-founded with Sam Altman and Greg Brockman in 2015, uses a similar naming approach for its technical hires.

Brockman, the president of OpenAI, wrote in an X post in February 2023 that they did not want to “bucket people into researchers and engineers” and “thought hard about what job titles to use.” OpenAI later decided to use the term “Member of Technical Staff.”

Brockman said the term was first used by Xerox PARC, a research laboratory known for its pioneering innovations, such as the mouse and the graphical user interface used on computers.

Anthropic, a company founded by former OpenAI employees, said on its website that its “research and engineering hires all share a single title — ‘Member of Technical Staff.'” The company said it listed its engineers as authors on their research papers, “often as first author.”

“While there’s historically been a division between engineering and research in machine learning, we think that boundary has dissolved with the advent of large models,” Anthropic wrote on its career page.

• Starbucks is looking for a local partner to help run its stores in China.
• CEO Brian Niccol said he believes there will be thousands more Starbucks outlets in China’s future.
• Niccol added that he sees “no reason why this can’t be one of the best businesses in China.”

Starbucks isn’t giving up on its China dream and is seeking a helping hand to run its stores there.

CEO Brian Niccol said in an earnings call on Tuesday that the Seattle-based coffee chain is looking for a local partner to manage its stores in China. The country is Starbucks’ second-largest market after the US, and has seen sales stagnate in recent quarters.

He said Starbucks is evaluating a pool of 20 interested parties who wish to partner with it.

“What this is about is how do we ensure that the Starbucks brand is in a much better place in the future because I do believe there’s going to be thousands of more Starbucks in China,” Niccol said. “And I think there’s no reason why this can’t be one of the best businesses in China.”

“And so we’re looking for a partner that shares that passion and shares that belief that there’s this opportunity to grow one of the special brands in China,” he added.

Starbucks released its third-quarter 2025 earnings on Tuesday, reporting its sixth straight quarter of sales declines. Global same-store sales were down 2% compared to a year ago.

However, it reported an 8% net revenue increase in China in the third quarter compared to the same period last year and a 2% increase in same-store sales.

Starbucks’ results in China showed signs of improvement compared to past quarters. Same-store sales were flat in the second quarter and dropped 6% in the first quarter.

The chain also opened 522 new stores in China in the past year, which represents a 7% increase in its retail footprint in the country.

This is a welcome sign for the chain, which has been struggling with a challenging market in China. Weakened local consumer spending power and strong competition from local players have resulted in declining sales.

Chinese brands like Luckin Coffee have eaten into Starbucks’ market share, offering similar products at lower prices and drawing customers in with aggressive discounts.

Despite recent weak performance, Niccol has repeatedly expressed confidence in the Chinese market. In a February interview with Bloomberg, he talked about a large-scale expansion in China, saying the market “is going to continue to grow for us.”

While China’s Starbucks stores are company-owned, most of its other international stores are run by domestic partners, like the Alshaya group in the Middle East.

The company’s stock was up nearly 5% in after-hours trading on Tuesday.

A representative for Starbucks China declined a request for comment from BI.

• India became the top US smartphone exporter, thanks to Apple’s supply chain shift, according to Canalys.
• Apple’s ‘China Plus One’ strategy boosted India’s export share, dethroning China.
• The Trump administration has been pushing Apple to produce in the US instead of India or China.

India has overtaken China to become the top smartphone exporter to the US, and the country has Apple to thank for its new ranking.

India’s share of smartphone exports in the quarter that ended in June rose sharply from the same time last year.

The country’s dethroning of China is largely driven by Apple’s shifting supply chains, according to analysis from research firm Canalys published on Monday.

“Apple has scaled up its production capacity in India over the last several years as a part of its ‘China Plus One’ strategy and has opted to dedicate most of its export capacity in India to supply the US market so far in 2025,” wrote Sanyam Chaurasia, principal analyst at Canalys.

Still, much of iPhone manufacturing takes place in China, and the company depends on manufacturing hubs in China for Pro model parts, Canalys said.

Smartphones assembled in India made up 44% of US imports in the second quarter, a significant jump from 13% in the same period last year. The total volume of smartphones made in India soared 240% from a year earlier, Canalys said.

Vietnam came second, taking 30% of the market share. China’s share fell from 61% to 25% year over year.

Samsung and Motorola have also increased their share of US-targeted supply from India, but their shifts are significantly slower and smaller in scale than Apple’s, the Canalys report said.

Apple has been rapidly shifting iPhone production to India, in an effort to reduce reliance on China and cut back on geopolitical risks. The iPhone 16 is being assembled in India.

In the company’s first quarter earnings call, Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, addressed Chinese diversification and said the company expects “the majority of iPhones sold in the US will have India as their country of origin” in the quarter ending in June.

Apple’s manufacturing in India and China has been repeatedly scrutinized by President Donald Trump’s administration.

In May, Trump threatened Cook with a 25% tariff on iPhones if the devices were made in India or elsewhere, in a move to pressure Apple to build its flagship product domestically. Trade experts have said that making iPhones in the US will push their prices higher.

Earlier this month, White House trade advisor Peter Navarro said Cook isn’t doing enough to move manufacturing out of China.

“Going back to the first trump term, Tim Cook has continually asked for more time in order to move his factories out of China,” Navarro said on CNBC. “I mean it’s the longest-running soap opera in Silicon Valley. My problem with Tim Cook is he never takes the steps to actually do that.”

While many of Apple’s core products, including iPhones and Mac laptops, have received exemptions from Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs,” officials have warned that it could be a temporary reprieve.

• A new video appears to show one of Putin’s bodyguards equipped with an interceptor drone.
• The footage aligns closely with Putin’s inspection of commanders at this year’s Victory Day parade.
• The device closely resembles the Yolka, designed to crash into incoming attack drones.

A newly surfaced video appears to show a member of Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s security detail holding an interceptor drone while watching over his boss.

The undated clip was posted on Tuesday by Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov, a Ukrainian analyst known locally for his expertise on drone warfare.

The video appears to depict Putin inspecting and greeting senior uniformed officers in a parade-like fashion at Moscow’s Red Square — a sign that the footage was filmed during a Victory Day parade on May 9.

In the footage, shot on the sidelines of the parade, a man can be seen in the foreground following Putin’s movements while holding a device resembling a Russian Yolka interceptor drone and its launcher.

The Yolka, fired from a handheld launcher, features four fins on its front and another four larger fins with propellers on the back. In the clip, similar fins with propellers can be seen on the device in the man’s hands.

The Yolka is a kinetic interceptor that’s meant to fly into the path of an incoming first-person-view drone and destroy the attacking device by collision.

Business Insider could not independently verify the authenticity of the footage.

However, parts of the video align closely with a livestream of Putin meeting contingent commanders at this year’s Victory Day parade. Several officers, such as a colonel of the Russian army and a colonel of the Russian airborne forces, are seen in both videos saluting and shaking hands with Putin.

The man seen holding the device is also dressed consistently with what Putin’s bodyguard detail was wearing on that day: with a suit, navy blue tie, and a red lanyard.

Additionally, two of Putin’s other bodyguards, seen in the clip of the apparent drone, can also be seen in official TV footage of the parade segment.

The appearance of a Yolka drone in Putin’s security detail coincides with Russia’s heightened drone defenses at this year’s parade, which Ukraine threatened to disrupt with uncrewed aerial system attacks.

Long-range drone strikes that month had forced Moscow’s four airports to close multiple times.

The Yolka, however, is more suited to fighting lighter drones, and its appearance at the parade could indicate that Russia also prepared a contingency for a drone attack from within the city.

While militaries have historically relied heavily on electronic warfare to counter uncrewed aerial threats, the recent rise of unjammable fiber-optic drones, which use cables instead of radio, has put greater emphasis on air defenses that use kinetic force.

Volgens het nieuwste State of the Global Workplace-rapport van onderzoeksbureau Gallup is een daling in werknemersbetrokkenheid een van de grootste remmen op wereldwijde economische groei. In 2024 daalde het percentage betrokken werknemers wereldwijd van 23% naar 21%. Die afname, de tweede in twaalf jaar tijd, kostte de wereldeconomie naar schatting $438 miljard aan verloren productiviteit.

Vooral managers kregen het zwaar te verduren: hun betrokkenheid daalde van 30% naar 27%, met extra scherpe dalingen bij vrouwelijke managers (-7%) en jongere managers onder de 35 jaar (-5%). Ondertussen bleef de betrokkenheid onder niet-leidinggevende medewerkers stabiel op 18%.

Managers onder druk: tussen beleid en personeel

De oorzaken zijn veelzijdig. Managers bevinden zich in een spanningsveld tussen veranderende strategische doelen van het management en de verhoogde verwachtingen van medewerkers sinds de pandemie.

Denk aan flexibiliteit, hybride werken en psychologische veiligheid. Tegelijkertijd worden budgetten aangescherpt, personeelswisselingen zijn aan de orde van de dag en de druk op prestaties blijft hoog.

Gallup adviseert organisaties om het managersvak opnieuw vorm te geven. In plaats van klassieke taakverdeling draait het in de moderne werkomgeving om coaching, ontwikkeling en prestatiebegeleiding. Goed getrainde managers zorgen voor meer betrokkenheid, betere resultaten en stabielere teams.

Welzijn opnieuw gedaald: impact op leven en werk

Naast betrokkenheid nam ook het algehele welzijn van werknemers af; voor het tweede jaar op rij. Slechts 33% van de werknemers wereldwijd beoordeelt zijn of haar leven als ‘bloeiend’. Opnieuw zijn het vooral managers die hierin achteruitgaan, terwijl de cijfers bij gewone medewerkers licht verbeterden.

Werknemersbetrokkenheid blijkt daarbij een sterke voorspeller van welzijn: van de betrokken medewerkers voelt de helft zich bloeiend, tegenover slechts een derde van de niet-betrokken medewerkers.

Triljoenen aan potentieel onbenut

Volgens Gallup gaat er wereldwijd $9,6 biljoen aan productiviteit verloren doordat organisaties hun medewerkers onvoldoende weten te betrekken. Dat komt neer op ongeveer 9% van het wereldwijde bruto binnenlands product.

De oplossing? Wetenschappelijk onderbouwd leiderschap en een strategisch HR-beleid dat inzet op managementontwikkeling.

Zelfs eenvoudige trainingen laten al positieve effecten zien, maar bij best practices stijgt het prestatieniveau van managers en hun teams met 20% tot 28%.

• Anthropic’s cofounder said the key to advancing AI is asking “very naive, dumb questions.”
• AI is an “incredibly new field” and “a lot of the most basic questions haven’t been answered,” said Jared Kaplan.
• Dumb questions can make big trends “as precise as possible,” the chief science officer added.

Anthropic’s cofounder said the key to advancing AI isn’t rocket science — it’s asking the obvious stuff nobody wants to say out loud.

“It’s really asking very naive, dumb questions that get you very far,” said Jared Kaplan at a Y Combinator event last month.

The chief science officer at Anthropic said in the video published by Y Combinator on Tuesday that AI is an “incredibly new field” and “a lot of the most basic questions haven’t been answered.”

For instance, Kaplan recalled how in the 2010s, everyone in tech kept saying that “big data” was the future. He asked: How big does the data need to be? How much does it actually help?

That line of thinking eventually led him and his team to study whether AI performance could be predicted based on the size of the model and the amount of compute used — a breakthrough that became known as scaling laws.

“We got really lucky. We found that there’s actually something very, very, very precise and surprising underlying AI training,” he said. “This was something that came about because I was just sort of asking the dumbest possible question.”

Kaplan added that as a physicist, that was exactly what he was trained to do. “You sort of look at the big picture and you ask really dumb things.”

Simple questions can make big trends “as precise as possible,” and that can “give you a lot of tools,” Kaplan said.

“It allows you to ask: What does it really mean to move the needle?” he added.

Kaplan and Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Anthropic’s AI breakthroughs

Anthropic has emerged as a powerhouse in AI‑assisted coding, especially after the release of its Claude Sonnet 3.5 model in June 2024.

“Anthropic changed everything,” Sourcegraph’s Quinn Slack said in a BI report published last week.

“We immediately said, ‘This model is better than anything else out there in terms of its ability to write code at length’ — high-quality code that a human would be proud to write,” he added.

“And as a startup, if you’re not moving at that speed, you’re gonna die.”

Anthropic cofounder Ben Mann said in a recent episode of the “No Priors Podcast” that figuring out how to make AI code better and faster has been largely driven by trial and error and measurable feedback.

“Sometimes you just won’t know and you have to try stuff — and with code that’s easy because we can just do it in a loop,” Mann said.

Elad Gil, a top AI investor and No Priors host, concurred, saying the clear signals from deploying code and seeing if it works make this process fruitful.

“With coding, you actually have like a direct output that you can measure: You can run the code, you can test the code,” he said. “There’s sort of a baked-in utility function you can optimize against.”

BI’s Alistair Barr wrote in an exclusive report last week about how the startup might have achieved its AI coding breakthrough, crediting approaches like Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback, or RLHF, and Constitutional AI.

Anthropic may soon be worth $100 billion, as the startup pulls in billions of dollars from companies paying for access to its models, Barr wrote.

• Starbucks is phasing out mobile order-only stores, converting some to full-service locations.
• The shift comes as Starbucks faces declining same-store sales for six consecutive quarters.
• Starbucks has a new store prototype and a $500 million investment plan to improve operations.

Starbucks’ grab-and-go stores are on the way out.

On Tuesday, the coffee store chain announced that it’s discontinuing its mobile order-only store model.

Around 80 to 90 pickup-only locations in the US, many of which are located in office buildings and offer no seating, will be phased out, said CEO Brian Niccol. Some will be converted into full-service stores with room to linger.

“These stores felt too transactional and didn’t deliver the warmth or human connection our customers expect,” Niccol told investors on the third-quarter earnings call.

A Starbucks spokeswoman declined to comment, including on how much the store renovations would cost.

The company has also been working with CloudKitchens, the ghost kitchen company run by Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick, to broaden Starbucks’ network in locations like San Francisco, Business Insider reported in 2023. These ghost kitchens, with private kitchens and no corporate storefronts, get Starbucks orders out on platforms like DoorDash to lessen the burden on brick-and-mortar stores.

Starbucks announced on Tuesday that it is developing a new “coffeehouse of the future” prototype that includes 32 seats and a drive-thru, which it plans to debut in the company’s next fiscal year. Starbucks is investing $500 million over the next year to bolster staffing and improve in-store wait times.

These changes come as Starbucks tries to boost sales — same-store sales dropped for a sixth quarter in a row. Niccol, who took over as CEO last year, has issued memos telling employees to spend more time in the office as part of his effort to “turn things around.”

On Tuesday’s call, Niccol said unpredictable coffee prices and ongoing pressure from tariffs may mean challenging financials until 2026. He said that “momentum is building” and that the company is “ahead of schedule.”

Throughout the day, Starbucks shares dipped on Q3 earnings that came in below analyst expectations, but rose around 3% in after-hours trading. Shares are flat this year.

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Cameron Brink is scheduled to make her return to the WNBA tonight. We’ve compiled everything you need to know about how to watch the Sparks vs. Aces, including live streaming options for those without cable.

Following a 13-month recovery period, Brink has finally been cleared to return to action with the Los Angeles Sparks. The No. 2 overall 2024 draft pick tore her ACL early in her rookie season with the Sparks and has spent the past year recovering from the injury.

Los Angeles will host the Aces at Crypto.com Arena for tonight’s game. With an 11-14 regular-season record, the Sparks have already seen a much better season so far than last year, thanks in no small part to the addition of Aces alum Kelsey Plum. The Aces, who won the 2022 and 2023 WNBA championships, are 13-13, marking a much rougher season than the team is used to. A’ja Wilson, Jackie Young, and Chelsea Gray are at the helm of the Vegas team.

Whether you’re rooting for the Aces or the Sparks, we’ve got you covered when it comes to tuning in. Keep reading to learn some of the best ways to live stream the game, including services that will unlock a variety of other WNBA games this season.

• See also: How to watch UFC | How to watch MLB | Where to watch WNBA

What channel is Aces vs. Sparks on?

The Aces vs. Sparks game will air on NBA TV in the United States. The game, which takes place on the West Coast, is scheduled to tip off at 10 p.m. ET.

How to watch Aces vs. Sparks in the US

Cord-cutters or cable subscribers without access to NBA TV have a few different options for watching the channel. Some of the best live TV streaming services we’ve tested — including DirecTV, Sling TV, and Fubo — carry the channel in their lineups. These are month-to-month streaming services that function like cable alternatives, although you can cancel anytime and don’t need to worry about long-term contracts.

DirecTV is the best cable alternative you can stream, and the new genre packs allow people to stream top-rated channels at a reduced rate. The service’s MySports pack carries NBA TV, and about 20 other popular live sports channels, including ESPN, TNT, and local channels (where regionally available). MySports also bundles in access to ESPN Plus. Subscriptions cost $70 a month, but new users can get a five-day free trial to decide whether the service is right for them.

Sling TV is another popular way to live stream NBA TV. You’ll need to subscribe to a base plan, either Sling Blue or Orange (for $46 a month), and then add on the Sports Extra ($11 a month). This will cost a total of $57 a month, but new users can get $23 off their first month of service. A base plan and the Sports Extra will unlock anywhere from 45 to 50+ popular live channels, including TNT, CNN, and AMC.

WNBA fans can also live stream NBA TV through Fubo’s Elite plan. The Elite tier includes access to 200+ live channels, including nearly everything you’ll need to watch the 2025 WNBA broadcast schedule. Subscriptions cost $95 a month, but new users can get their first month for $75 after a five-day free trial.

How to watch Aces vs. Sparks from anywhere

WNBA fans traveling outside the US don’t need to worry about missing out on any of the action. They can keep up with their usual streaming methods from anywhere with the help of a VPN. Virtual private networks are easy-to-use tech tools that allow people to change their virtual locations. Plus, they’re instant ways to boost cybersecurity. The services we’ve highlighted require US methods of payment, so this option will work best for Americans who are just traveling abroad at the moment.

NordVPN is one of the best VPNs on the market, thanks to its user-friendly interface and impressive selection of global servers. Plus, it comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. You can learn more about the app in our official NordVPN review.

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Note: The use of VPNs is illegal in certain countries and using VPNs to access region-locked streaming content might constitute a breach of the terms of use for certain services. Business Insider does not endorse or condone the illegal use of VPNs.

• Starbucks on Tuesday released its Q3 earnings, reporting its sixth straight quarter of slipping sales.
• CEO Brian Niccol’s “Back to Starbucks” revitalization campaign aims to fix slumping sales.
• Niccol said price changes are his last resort — but they’re “absolutely” coming.

Price changes are the last resort for Starbucks’ CEO, Brian Niccol, he said on Tuesday’s Q3 earnings call, but he won’t rule them out as part of his revitalization efforts of the coffee giant.

A quick-service restaurant veteran, Niccol has led successful revitalization campaigns at Taco Bell and Chipotle. His “Back to Starbucks” campaign is proceeding ahead of schedule, the CEO told investors on Tuesday.

“But with that said, you know, pricing will be a part of our business model,” he added. “There are times where it makes sense to take some price — and when those situations present itself, we’re going to do it in the least amount of pricing necessary. I prefer to always hold back on that one as much as possible. So will we have to use it in the future? Absolutely — it’s going to be the last lever I’d like to pull. And when we pull that lever, I probably want to do as little as possible.”

Since Niccol took over, Starbucks has already implemented changes to its pricing model. The company has removed surcharges for non-dairy milk substitutes and started charging more for some syrups and powder add-ins.

It is unclear when any additional price changes may take place or what menu items may be affected. A spokesperson for Starbucks declined to comment when reached by Business Insider.

Niccol’s comments on changes to the menu prices came as Starbucks reported a decline in sales for the sixth consecutive quarter while the company continues its turnaround plan.

Global comparable store sales declined 2% overall, driven by a 2% decline in comparable transactions, according to Starbucks’ Q3 earnings report. The decline was partially offset by a 1% increase in the average ticket price. Most of the decrease was seen in North American markets, as international comparable store sales were mostly flat.

The company’s revenue — up 4% to $9.5 billion — beat analysts’ tepid expectations, Reuters reported. However, it missed on earnings, with an adjusted EPS of $0.50, a 46% decline over the prior year, missing estimates of 65 cents, the outlet reported.

Starbucks’ stock increased more than 3.5% in after-hours trading following the earnings call.

“While our financial results don’t yet reflect all the progress we’ve made, the signs are clear — we’re gaining momentum,” CEO Brian Niccol said in a statement included in the report. “Our ‘Back to Starbucks’ plan is working. It’s grounded in what makes us Starbucks: handcrafted beverages, welcoming coffeehouses, and the human connection that brings it all together.”

Niccol’s preferred turnaround method starts with customer service, making the chain’s new Green Apron Service model the heart of the revitalization campaign. Niccol and CFO Kathy Smith said on the call that the foundational operating model, focused on crafting cravable coffees and enhancing consumer connection, is being rolled out early across stores nationwide after being tested in pilot stores.

Coffee houses already using Green Apron Service techniques have driven improvements in transactions, sales, and customer service times, outperforming the broader North American portfolio, Niccol said Tuesday.

Niccol’s “Back to Starbucks” campaign, which he launched upon taking over last September, aims to improve slumping sales and customer experience complaints that have plagued the international coffee giant.

Starbucks has since rolled out a series of changes in-store, including remodeling stores with comfy chairs and ceramic dishes to encourage visitors to stay longer, bringing back the self-serve condiment bar, and asking baristas to hand-write smiley faces and inspirational messages on to-go orders.

On the corporate side, the company has cracked down on its return-to-office mandate, requiring most support staff to work from the Seattle headquarters or Toronto office four days a week — or leave the company, Business Insider previously reported.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert at ktangalakislippert@businessinsider.com or Signal at byktl.50. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here’s our guide to sharing information securely.

• Wall Street firms were on guard Tuesday in response to the shooting at Blackstone’s headquarters.
• The fatal shooting on Monday left five dead, including a top Blackstone executive.
• Firms are racing to hike security spending at offices and for CEOs. Here’s a look at their reaction.

Corporate America is on guard.

A deadly shooting at a New York City office tower on Monday has companies and executives boosting security across Wall Street and corporate America. Firms are scrambling to hire armed guards, conduct risk assessments, review security protocols, and reassure employees that they’re safe, security experts said on Tuesday.

“The phone hasn’t stopped since this morning,” Sean Crowley, the cofounder and CEO of CTS Research and Investigations, told Business Insider. CTS, based in NYC, is a partner and co-owner of Illuno, an app — “Like Uber for hiring security guards,” Crowley calls it — that makes it easy to hire law enforcement for security jobs.

Most of the calls, Crowley said, are coming from commercial and office property managers in Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn who want to bring in armed security guards, clad in suits and ties, to post in their lobbies. “This will more than double our workload,” said Crowley, a former NYPD captain and commander of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office detective squad.

Corporate leaders are on edge after the second deadly shooting involving business executives in six months. Monday’s attack, which played out at the New York City headquarters of the private equity firm Blackstone, left five dead, including real estate executive Wesley LePatner and the gunman. Monday’s shooting followed the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December. Companies are now rushing to reassure staff and bolster security as haunting images—like barricaded office doors—underscore growing fears that working for corporate America is no longer safe.

Don Aviv, president of Interfor International, a security firm that works with asset managers, told BI on Tuesday that roughly 80% of his firm’s clients had “retained additional security for their lobbies and foyers,” with some hiking protective services through next week.

“The issue with our society is that we’re reactionary and not proactive,” Aviv said.

Heightened security comes at a cost

Banks like Goldman Sachs and Citi sought to assuage employees about workplace security on Tuesday.

Goldman Sachs “has robust protocols in place to keep our people safe every day, and is proactively assessing and monitoring the safety of the firm’s global campuses to protect our people and facilities around the clock,” Goldman said in a memo authorised by Jacqueline Arthur, head of human capital management and corporate and workplace solutions.

“This includes our dedicated team of NYPD officers and security guards at the entrance of and within our buildings, who are trained to carefully manage entry to our offices and respond to any potential incident,” Arthur said, adding that Goldman “is constantly assessing” its security protocols.

Citi told New York-based employees on Tuesday that the firm had “increased the security presence and capabilities at our headquarters” within the past year. “This includes working closely with the NYPD,” he said. “While we feel confident with the protocols we have in place, we will not hesitate to adjust if necessary,” said the memo by Ed Skyler, Citi’s head of enterprise services and public affairs.

For companies seeking to boost security, the extra layer of protection won’t come cheap. Two security executives in New York City say posting an armed former or off-duty police officer in your lobby will cost building managers $75 to $200 an hour or more. Hiring an armed escort to protect a CEO or other prominent person will cost in the $135 to $200 range per hour.

For now, it’s not prohibiting demand. Herman Weisberg said his security company usually hires about 15 armed former military and NYPD officers to protect CEOs and other high-profile individuals in New York and Washington, DC. On Tuesday, that number was up to 30 — and the managing director of SAGE Intelligence thinks it will grow further.

Weisberg, a former NYPD detective, said he is also seeing an increase in requests for “threat assessments,” including risks tied to former disgruntled ex-employees.

“One firm,” he said, “wants us to work with their customer service department on analyzing current people who are complaining ‘outside the norm.'”

He pointed to the back-to-back tragedies of the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, followed by Monday’s attack.

“When this stuff happens more than once, I think anybody with controversial or, at this point, even non-controversial businesses are starting to look at security and take it a little bit more seriously.”

• The judge in Elon Musk’s racketeering lawsuit against Sam Altman chastised both sides on Tuesday.
• She accused both of “gamesmanship” in their year-old battle while granting a small victory to Musk.
• In a previous judicial eye-roll, she termed the tech titans’ tiff “billionaires vs billionaires.”

The California judge for Elon Musk’s racketeering lawsuit against Sam Altman granted the Tesla CEO a small legal victory Tuesday, but not before dinging both sides for trying to waste her time with “excessive” court filings.

“The court will not waste precious judicial resources on the parties’ gamesmanship,” US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers wrote.

“Here, the parties to this action have repeatedly over-litigated this case,” she wrote.

The judge’s terse, two-page decision grants Musk’s request that she trim Altman’s bulky response to the bulky, 2024 lawsuit, which accuses OpenAI and Microsoft of civil racketeering, fraud, breach of contract, and violating antitrust laws.

Altman’s lawyers responded by filing a list of 55 “affirmative defenses.” (Affirmative defenses are to be proven at trial by the defense.)

Filing 55 affirmative defenses was an overblown response on Altman’s part, Gonzalez Rogers wrote Tuesday, agreeing with Musk’s lawyers on that point.

“Plaintiffs are correct that defendants have inappropriately asserted an excessive number of defenses, many of which appear to be irrelevant, redundant, insufficient or immaterial,” she agreed.

But Musk’s lawyers answered Altman’s excessiveness with still more excess, she said.

Musk’s side “failed to take the high road, instead moving to strike all of the asserted defenses,” the judge wrote Tuesday. “They too over-reached.”

It’s not the first time Gonzalez Rogers voiced her impatience with the two clashing tech titans. At a court hearing in February, she said she was skeptical of Musk’s claim of irreparable financial harm, noting that this was a case of “billionaires versus billionaires.”

“How can I say, as a matter of law, there is a likely restraint of trade when your client has raised $11 billion” for rival xAI, she asked then.

Lawyers for Altman had hoped to defend all 55 affirmative responses at an August court hearing, but Gonzalez Rogers cut things short Tuesday, trimming their number down by 16.

These 16 were “plainly insufficiently alleged, irrelevant, redundant or immaterial,” she said.

They include Altman’s assertion that the lawsuit should be tossed out because its claims are too old, that it was brought with “unreasonable delay,” and that it is voided by “Musk’s unclean hands,” a reference to alleged misconduct that was left unspecified.

Altman’s 55 defenses were “untethered,” Musk’s side had countered in a filing last month, “to any coherent legal theory, facts, or cause of action.”

In their July 10 filing, Altman disagreed and called Musk’s attempt to strike all 55 defenses “nothing more than a tactical maneuver” to delay turning over evidence in the case.

Musk is accusing Altman’s OpenAI of abandoning its “not for profit” origins and raking in millions through a self-dealing “unregulated merger” with Microsoft. He seeks monetary damages and a judgment voiding OpenAI and Microsoft’s licensing agreement.

Altman’s side denies Musk’s allegations in their entirety and seeks to fight them at trial using the surviving 39 defenses. Gonzalez Rogers has set a March 30 date for jury selection in her Oakland, California courtroom.

• The Park Avenue building where Monday’s shooting occurred remains closed, as the NYPD investigates.
• Midtown workers expressed anxieties about the recent violence but planned to return to their jobs.
• Workplace-crisis experts said there are ways companies can support affected employees.

Scores of workers funneled into New York city offices this morning just like any other weekday, hours after a lone gunman killed four people in a Midtown building.

While the site remains closed, nearby workers who spoke with Business Insider expressed sorrow over the shooting and anxiety about returning to their in-person jobs. Workplace-crisis experts, however, told BI they didn’t anticipate a lasting effect on office attendance.

“Unfortunately these things are happening all the time,” said Bo Mitchell, president of 911 Consulting, a Wilton, Connecticut-based provider of emergency-preparedness services.

Less than a year ago, UnitedHealthcare’s CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down in the same vicinity. There were 524 fatal injuries due to homicides in the workplace in 2022, up 8.9% from 2021, according to the latest figures available from the US Department of Labor.

“It’s a little bit eerie” and “weirdly feeling like a new normal,” said Virginia Gersham, who works at the Museum of Modern Art, close to where Thompson was killed.

Another local worker, Jim Santana, who works at an assisted-living facility in Midtown, described the incident as nerve-racking. He told BI he was still on his way to his job.

“Yeah, I’m going to go to work,” he said, “just to get my mind off of that.”

How impacted employers are reacting

The Park Avenue building where Monday night’s shooting occurred remains surrounded by barricades as police conduct their investigation. The property is home to several companies including investment firm Blackstone and the National Football League. In multiple interviews, Mayor Eric Adams said the NFL was the gunman’s apparent target.

Wesley LePatner, a star executive in Blackstone’s real-estate business, was among those killed. She was 43 years old.

Blackstone’s employees worldwide have been given the option to work from home for now and are being encouraged to take as much time off as they need, according to a person familiar with the matter. They are also being provided counseling and other resources, this person said.

Another building resident, accounting firm KPMG, told staff in a memo late Monday that its office there would be closed Tuesday and that they should work from home or from a different company office. The memo, which Business Insider has seen, was signed by Yesenia Scheker Izquierdo, the managing partner for KPMG’s New York office.

Other companies directly impacted didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Employer support is crucial

Ross Eisenberg works a few blocks from both shooting locations and said despite the somber mood, it’s mostly been business as usual for him and his staff.

“There’s a strong pattern of New Yorkers putting things aside and staying strong,” Eisenberg, CEO of real-estate brokerage firm RDE Advisor, told Business Insider. “It’s not a matter of forgetting about it, but it’s not letting it interrupt their life.”

If workers are worried, though, leaders ought to reiterate their safety policies and protocols to help ease everyone’s anxiety, said Michelle Sinning, a principal at Bernstein Crisis Management in Mission Viejo, California.

“It should be made clear that this topic isn’t taboo, and the company will provide any resource necessary to help employees feel comfortable and confident returning to work,” she said.

It might also make sense to let employees temporarily work from home and allow them to ease back into the office, Sinning added.

“A gradual or phased approach would help employees acclimate,” she said. “Employees will need time to heal.”

For people who experience workplace violence firsthand, employers should go out of their way to provide support, added Mitchell, the emergency-preparedness executive.

“They need a lot of counseling, communication, and hand-holding,” he said. “They’re suffering from PTSD.”

• President Donald Trump says he won’t budge on Friday’s tariff deadline.
• His Treasury secretary said businesses shouldn’t be concerned if the delayed tariffs go into effect.
• Some major US trading partners are racing to reach an agreement with just days to spare.

The White House says businesses shouldn’t worry if President Donald Trump’s tariffs go into effect on Friday.

“I would think that it’s not the end of the world if these snapback tariffs are on for anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, as long as the countries are moving forward and trying to negotiate in good faith,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday on CNBC.

Trump and his trade team have said that August 1 is the final deadline for countries to reach an agreement with the US. Otherwise, the White House will unilaterally impose a new rate, a reality that Bessent said would make the president “equally as happy.”

“I think, for President Trump, the — for me, what’s given us a lot of negotiating leverage is, he’s happy to do the deal, but he’s equally as happy, sometimes in more cases — in some cases, more happy just to have the tariff income,” Bessent said.

Major US trading partners — including Canada, Mexico, South Korea, and India — still haven’t reached an agreement. Trump has threatened to impose a 50% tariff on Brazil if authorities don’t end the trial of former President Jair Bolsonaro.

Separately, Trump has sent letters informing roughly two dozen nations of the rate the US will impose if a deal isn’t reached. Some of those rates differ from the original ones Trump announced when he rolled out his so-called reciprocal tariffs in April.

Earlier on Tuesday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that deals with the rest of the world will be done by Trump’s deadline. The only exception will be for China, where talks have proceeded on a different timeline.

“For the rest of the world, we’re going to have things done by Friday. And Friday is not that far away,” Lutnick said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” ‘So you should expect, we said August 1st is the date that we’re setting all these rates, and they are off to the races after that.”

Trump said before July 9 that he was reluctant to delay the tariffs further. He later did so, setting up the August 1 cutoff.

• Trump said he’s “thinking about” sending checks to Americans paid for by tariff revenue.
• GOP senators say that’s a bad idea, and that they’d prefer the money be spent on the debt.
• It’s similar to what they said about the “DOGE Dividend” earlier this year.

If you think you’re about to get another stimulus check in the mail from Uncle Sam, think again.

First, it was the “DOGE Dividend.” Now, it’s a rebate check paid for by tariff revenue.

President Donald Trump said on Friday that he’s “thinking about a little rebate” for Americans of “a certain income level.” That would require an act of Congress, so Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri introduced a bill on Monday that would send $600 tax rebate checks to lower-income Americans.

Yet the proposal faces some of the same headwinds that quickly scuttled the DOGE check idea earlier this year: Most Republicans simply don’t like it.

“It’ll never pass,” Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio flatly told reporters on Tuesday, rejecting the idea. “We have a $37 trillion debt.”

Trump also didn’t propose the idea himself, but was responding to an idea floated by a reporter.

“You just made a lot of news,” Trump told the reporter at the time.

It’s similar to what happened in December, when Trump said he’d “consider” raising the minimum wage after being asked about it by a reporter, or when he said DOGE checks were “under consideration.”

Ultimately, both ideas ended up fizzling.

How the tariff rebate check would work

Trump’s tariffs, ever-changing as they are, have brought in some additional revenue. The rebate check is one proposal for how to spend it.

According to US Treasury data, the federal government has collected over $100 billion from customs duties so far this year, and Secretary Scott Bessent said earlier this month that the US could be on track to collect $300 billion this year.

Hawley’s bill would use that money to provide checks of at least $600 for each individual and dependent child in a family. Thus, a family of four would receive at least $2,400.

The bill also allows for larger checks if the tariff revenue soars higher than current projections, which Hawley’s office estimates to be around $150 billion.

It’s designed to primarily benefit lower-income Americans: the rebate would be phased out for joint filers making more than $150,000, a household head making more than $112,500, and an individual making more than $75,000.

“I mean, who better to benefit from that than working people who could use a break?” Hawley asked reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday.

At the very least, Hawley’s legislation does not suffer from the same math problem that beset the $5,000 DOGE checks, which were based on Elon Musk’s lofty and ultimately unrealistic expectation of $2 trillion in savings as the result of cost-cutting.

Hawley’s plan is modeled after the pandemic-era stimulus check programs. The second round of stimulus checks, which were also $600 per person, ultimately cost roughly $141 billion, according to Internal Revenue Service data.

Hawley said he had not yet spoken with Trump about the idea. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

‘It’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard’

For the most part, other GOP senators say they’d prefer to use tariff revenue elsewhere.

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said the idea was “ridiculous” given the size of the national debt, which currently stands at more than $37 trillion.

“We’re gonna basically borrow money to send it to the American people? There is no rebate if there’s no money,” Paul said. “I mean, it’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.”

“Well, when we have a surplus, I’d be all for it,” said Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said of the tariff rebate checks. “But we’re $37 trillion in debt, running a deficit that’s about $2 trillion as far as the eye can see. I would oppose it.”

Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming told BI she’d also prefer to see any tariff revenue be used to pay down the debt — or to fund a strategic Bitcoin reserve.

“You can take at least a portion of those tariff revenues, hold them in reserve, and they would appreciate in value at a pace that far exceeds any other asset,” Lummis said. “I think rebating it is not as good an idea as either paying down the debt or saving it in a reserve. I think it’s kind of a lost opportunity.”

For Hawley, a self-styled populist who recently introduced a bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, the proposal is another attempt to focus attention on the GOP’s working-class base.

“Why shouldn’t working people benefit from the president’s policies, is my question to my fellow Republicans,” Hawley said.

For now, he appears to be going it alone, telling reporters he’s not aware of any GOP colleagues who also support the idea.

“I don’t know, good question,” Hawley said. “Let me know if you find somebody.”

• Cruise lines could help the Navy with ship maintenance issues, President Trump’s pick for chief of naval operations said.
• The Navy’s been examining what can be learned from cruise lines for ship maintenance for years.
• The service could adopt some strategies from these companies, but there are challenges.

The US Navy faces significant problems keeping its ships ready to sail. President Donald Trump’s pick for top admiral says that he is looking to cruise lines for ideas.

The Navy has long been interested in what it can learn from cruise lines, like how to stick to planned maintenance schedules, but the sea service faces challenges in adopting those lessons and ensuring readiness, naval affairs experts says.

Last week, Adm. Daryl Caudle, Trump’s nominee for chief of naval operations, told the US Senate Armed Services Committee that the Navy needed to fix how it conducted ship maintenance.

“And learning from the best in the world,” he said, referencing some cruise ship companies, “certainly should be on the table.”

He noted that during Miami Fleet Week earlier this year, he’d met with executives from Norwegian Cruise Line, and that the Navy was working with Carnival Cruise Line on the issue.

Last fall, Caudle said during the Fleet Maintenance & Modernization Symposium that borrowing industry practices was vital, explaining that the Navy is “looking across industries like shipping and cruise lines for ideas and best practices to improve maintenance and modernization by the professionals that are financially motivated for their business survival.”

While Caudle and other Navy officials have acknowledged differences between fixing military vessels and cruise ships, such as various classes of ships and capabilities, the service is taking steps to see what practices are applicable — and how they can be implemented in order to fix maintenance woes.

Chronic maintenance problems

The Navy has been dealing with issues tied to regularly scheduled maintenance for its ships for decades. These range from shipyard backlogs and limited dry dock availability at a small number of shipyards to scheduling errors, workforce shortages, lack of clear and consistent data, and more repair work being needed than expected.

Earlier this year, the US Government Accountability Office, a watchdog agency, tracked many of these persistent issues, including shortages of spare parts and materials. Previously, the GAO assessed that between the 2015 and 2020 fiscal years, 75% of planned maintenance availabilities were delayed.

Many of these problems run concurrently with larger Navy shipbuilding problems and have raised questions in Washington, the service, and across experts and observers about whether the Navy can adequately maintain its force while shipbuilding delays slow the process of acquiring new ones. And then there’s the big question about what that could mean in a high-end fight against an adversarial power like China.

Cruise lines could have some answers

The Navy has acknowledged that it could take a page or two from some of the world’s biggest commercial cruise lines. In 2019, then-Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer revealed that Navy personnel “spent some time with Carnival Cruise Line,” saying he was impressed that “they turn a 700-foot floating hotel on a maintenance avail around in 28 days,” while it can take the Navy months, even years to turn some ships around.

And earlier this year, prior to his retirement, Rear. Adm. William Greene said that the Navy was partnering with cruise lines to develop better maintenance skills. The Navy is eager to get its surge readiness rates up to 80% by 2027.

The Navy could learn lessons in planning and scheduling from cruise companies, as well as others on reducing dry dock wait times and having clearer pictures of the work that vessels will require before the ships get to the yard. 

The key approach for cruise lines is sticking to consistent and planned schedules.

“The ships go into refits and overhaul at specified periodicities, and the condition of the ship is predictable because the operational profile is well known,” Bryan Clark, a retired Navy submarine officer and defense expert at the Hudson Institute, told Business Insider.

Clark said there is more the Navy can do to stick with planned maintenance schedules and push back against changes. Alternative ways to meet operational needs are also an option. The Navy can also “ensure the work package reflects assessments done on the ship before it enters the maintenance period,” he added, so that unforeseen problems with the vessel don’t arise while it’s being worked on. 

Challenges in adoption

The Navy’s schedules change for a number of reasons including where the fleet needs to be deployed around the world, what specific classes of vessels and capabilities need to be available, and how those requirements fit with vessels that are already undergoing maintenance.

Similarly, the condition of Navy ships isn’t as well known or predictable as cruise ships. There could be specific problems related to a ship’s systems or weapons, and there are then processes for those who are specifically authorized to fix that.

One big issue facing Navy maintenance is the limits on the “right to repair” for sailors at sea. During his confirmation hearing, Caudle said sailors aboard Navy vessels needed better training and authorization to repair equipment while underway, saying, “We can’t rely on a contractor’s permission to do maintenance in the middle of the ocean.” That said, the issues run much deeper for the Navy.