AI-skills-dont-guarantee-your-job-Just-ask-these-laid-off.jpeg

AI skills don’t guarantee your job. Just ask these laid-off Block employees.

In the months before Block CEO Jack Dorsey laid off 40% of staff on Thursday, workers were embracing AI tools in what one called an almost “celebratory” way.

Dorsey and other company leaders had made no secret of their interest in AI, but the company was profitable, and some workers couldn’t imagine the technology fully replacing humans at scale any time soon, they told Business Insider.

Still, there were pockets of unease. Block, the parent company of financial tech firms including Cash App and Square, had executed a series of smaller performance-based cuts in previous months. At least one employee said he’d had a nagging feeling that the AI tools he was using had gotten really good.

“I had a hunch that, at some point, the company would cut people because of AI. I just didn’t think it would be right now,” Ivan Ureña-Valdes, a data analyst who was laid off after four years at Block, told Business Insider.

When Dorsey dropped the hammer via a memo posted on X, he said AI was the reason 4,000 workers were losing their jobs.

“A significantly smaller team using the tools we’re building can do more and do it better,” Dorsey told analysts on Block’s earnings call on Thursday following the news.

Two hours after the layoff announcement, Dorsey logged onto a video call with the calendar title “gratitude,” sporting a baseball cap that said “love” to address the staff.

As he spoke with employees about Block’s layoffs and his reasoning for the deep cuts, some sent comments thanking him for the opportunity to work at the company. One asked if his hat was appropriate given the context. Dorsey answered that it was about gratitude.

Throughout the meeting, he was flooded with waves of emojis from muted participants, three attendees told Business Insider. Popular reactions were the thumbs-down, thinking face, and crying-laughing emojis, two people said. Dorsey explained the cuts in his trademark monotone and said he was doing what’s best for the company.

Business Insider spoke to seven former Block employees about the internal push to use AI in the last year; many said they were happy to oblige. Some were laid off on Thursday; others lost their jobs in recent performance-based cuts. Though they adopted AI tools to varying degrees, they view the technology as unable, at the moment, to do all the jobs of the thousands of workers who were let go. So it came as a shock to see half the company chopped in one fell swoop.

While some in the tech world expressed skepticism that AI was the true impetus for the cuts, suggesting that Dorsey had bloated Block’s ranks, others saw it as the first wave in a coming tsunami of job cuts across the industry. The alarm over a potential white-collar jobs apocalypse has gotten louder in recent months. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has signaled that AI could lead to white-collar job cuts at the company. Last year, Salesforce made cuts to its customer support team, thanks to the use of AI agents, CEO Marc Benioff said.

Block’s layoffs are so large in scope and more pointedly attributed to AI than most that they added fuel to a fear sweeping the white-collar world: AI is coming for your job, and learning to use it isn’t enough to save you.

“I’ve seen a lot of public commentary about this layoff and how workers need to be using AI to protect our jobs,” said one nontechnical worker laid off on Thursday. “I was actively building with AI and know that many of my impacted colleagues were doing the same.”

Jack Dorsey ‘loves AI’

Dorsey has planted a flag in painting Block as an AI-forward company. He said on Thursday’s earnings call that Block was “one of the first to harness agentic capabilities.” And in July, Dorsey made headlines for using an internal coding tool called Goose to vibecode a “weekend project” that led to the messaging app Bitchat.

Investors appeared to favor Dorsey’s narrative of cutting costs with AI: After being down roughly 16% year to date before the layoffs, Block’s stock ended Friday up nearly 17% on the day.

“Jack loves AI and was constantly pushing us to use it,” Ureña-Valdes said. “I got to use these tools as much as possible every single day.”

He said he’d “felt the rumblings of AI disruption for a while” because he was using it in his work and noticed the tools were getting better.

One former software engineer said that Block had many internal AI demos and that her coworkers’ feelings about AI were “mostly celebratory.”

Another former software engineer let go during performance cuts earlier in February said the company had warned that output expectations for engineers would increase. He said the company’s head of engineering voiced productivity expectations that left them worried quality would suffer. After this week’s layoffs, his team shrank from eight engineers to one.

One employee laid off on Thursday said she had embraced AI at Block, but saw that it required human oversight. The day before the layoffs, she said, she caught errors in a company chatbot. She said the cuts surprised her manager, who was spared from the layoffs. The two sat together and cried it out.

AI is not ‘layoff insurance’

Several researchers and former Block employees say they’re skeptical about AI’s actual role in the layoffs.

“Block must have uncovered a secret sauce, perhaps within the software development process, to claim all of these jobs are AI-related,” said Jason Schloetzer, a business professor at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business. “From the dozens of executives across industries that I’ve spoken with about AI deployment, they certainly aren’t seeing these types of gains outside of the software development process.”

On Thursday’s earnings call, Dorsey said there has been a marked improvement in AI’s capabilities and that “Block wanted to get ahead of this shift rather than be forced into it reactively.”

“The models just got an order of magnitude more capable and more intelligent,” Dorsey said. “And it’s really shown a path forward in terms of us being able to apply it to nearly every single thing that we do.”

Some former Block employees, as well as others in the industry, said pandemic overhiring, rather than AI, spurred the layoffs — a common refrain for Big Tech in recent years.

“Over the course of my time at Block, leadership did repeatedly signal the need for a ‘smaller Block,'” the laid-off nontechnical worker, who worked at Block for two years, said.

Companies like Block are conducting layoffs “with a chainsaw, not a scalpel,” said Chris Kaufman, a leadership consultant in Detroit.

“They’re not conducting audits of who took an AI course,” Kaufman said. “They’re making macro decisions about cost structure and organizational design. That’s usually just looking at headcount and salary across the board.”

Being AI savvy, Kaufman said, “can increase productivity, but I don’t think it is any way layoff insurance.”

Danielle Bell, a business communications professor at Northwestern University, said it’s obvious the workforce — both inside Block and out — is worried about AI. “If this is the new reality that we’re in, executives need to be more honest with themselves, with stakeholders, with the board, Wall Street, and particularly employees about what AI is here to do.”

Whatever the reason, one of the engineers cut on Thursday said there was a feeling in the air that something was coming. This engineer said she noticed that performance reviews were moved up from their February start. She thought she was safe after the earlier performance-based cuts — until she was laid off on Thursday.

“People were tense, even after good news would come through,” she said. “Lots of rumors flying around the office in person.”




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Safety advocates say GOP effort won’t mandate needed cockpit alarm

Lawmakers appear to be at an impasse after the failure of a bipartisan bill that would have mandated something most airline cockpits still lack: a real-time view of other aircraft.

The ROTOR Act failed in the House by a single vote. It had passed with bipartisan support in the Senate and backing from families of crash victims of the January 2025 collision involving an American Airlines jet. It also had the support of pilot and flight attendant unions, airlines, and the National Transportation Safety Board.

Advocates say they will oppose a new GOP bill that does not mandate cockpit monitors.

Families were unhappy with the bill’s failure to garner the two-thirds majority needed to pass a procedural measure on Tuesday: “It was defeated by eleventh-hour objections built on misleading technical claims the NTSB’s own investigators have publicly refuted,” they said in a joint statement.


Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., speaks during a news conference to discuss aviation safety reform legislation

Rep. Don Beyer, a Virginia Democrat who supported the ROTOR Act, speaks during a news conference to discuss aviation safety legislation. He’s surrounded by families of the victims.

AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib



The bill split House Republicans, with some of the 132 opponents saying the additional monitoring systems would be expensive and were unproven; some are advocating for an alternate bill, the ALERT Act, that leaves air traffic controllers primarily responsible for collision alerts and allows some military flights to opt out of transmitting their positions.

At the heart of the debate was a proposed requirement to equip commercial aircraft with GPS-based “ADS-B In,” which would display nearby air traffic on the flight deck screen — potentially closing the gap revealed by last year’s AA crash with an Army helicopter near Ronald Reagan National Airport that killed 67 people. Overstretched air traffic controllers had struggled to track the mix of commercial and military flights in DC’s crowded airspace that day.

Commercial aircraft have been required to carry the sister technology, “ADS-B Out,” since 2020, which feeds their position to air traffic control. Think of it like ADS-B Out is talking and ADS-B In is listening. ADS-B Out has drastically improved safety by being more precise than radar and enhancing pilot situational awareness.


Example of ADS-B

Example of a generic Garmin ADS-B traffic monitor in an aircraft.

Garmin



Supporters of the ROTOR Act — which would also require certain military planes to broadcast their position in civilian airspace — argued that adding these monitors would allow pilots, as the last line of defense, to react to hazards when seconds count.

In comments shared with Business Insider, Syracuse University professor and aviation safety expert Kivanc Avrenli said the use of ADS-B In on the American jet would have given its pilots 59 more seconds to react before impact. In reality, the traffic-avoidance collision alert came only 19 seconds before, he said, and maneuver instructions weren’t possible due to altitude limits.

“In dense airspace, that extra 40 seconds can be the difference between having time to sort out a conflict and having no real options left,” he said. “Delaying these upgrades means continuing to rely on systems that simply were not built for this kind of scenario.”

ADS-B In would not only help in flight but also on the ground, where a series of runway incursions has exposed the limits of what controllers can handle in real time. In the months after the January accident, two separate military aircraft had close calls with US passenger jets.

The Pentagon initially supported the original bill. On Monday, it changed its position and said the technology risks “significant unresolved budgetary burdens and operational security risks affecting national defense activities.” Some Republicans came out against the bill and threw their weight behind a different effort.

House Republicans Mike Rogers and Sam Graves, who voted no to ROTOR, have instead pushed a revised version of the bill.


Families of the victims at sante hearing.

Families of the victims supported the ROTOR Act.

Heather Diehl/Getty Images



During a Senate hearing on Monday, Graves said ALERT would be a “comprehensive package” that would enhance military coordination and pilot training and address all 50 NTSB recommendations. He said the ROTOR Act only addresses two of the recommendations.

ALERT would not require ADS-B use — essentially maintaining the current system that relies on air traffic controllers to detect potential conflicts in and around airports and communicate with pilots. It would also absolve military aircraft of having to use the anti-collision technology in certain airspaces, citing security risks.

Graves added that ADS-B In would be a burden to implement on the 5,500 planes in the sky, would “unintentionally lead to an operational crisis in 2031,” and be an “unworkable” mandate.

NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy — who oversees the research and writing of the agency’s recommendations — said on Thursday that the House’s ALERT bill is “watered down” and won’t do enough to prevent future accidents, adding that the bill doesn’t address all of the NTSB’s recommendations because it takes out the ADS-B In requirement.

The NTSB has recommended ADS-B In on cockpit displays since 2008. The Federal Aviation Administration has never mandated it, partly because it lacks a clear funding mechanism. Regulators have argued that the system, which provides visual and audio alerts, would impose a cost burden on airlines and on private plane owners who may not operate in congested airspace.

Homendy told a Senate Committee in February that American Airlines paid less than $50,000 per plane to retrofit roughly 300 Airbus A321s, as an industry example. That adds up fast across hundreds of aircraft. She said general aviation planes could carry portable receivers that cost as little as $400.

Some airlines, including American and JetBlue, have voluntarily added ADS-B In to their planes.




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Kelsey Baker, Military and Defense Reporting Fellow

Defense secretary says Scouts America must end ‘woke’ merit badges

The Pentagon is pulling back on plans to cut ties with Scouting America, as long as the nonprofit organization adopts policies that echo new military directives, including eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and banning transgender youth from the Scouts.

In a video posted to X Friday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said he had been “very seriously considering” cutting all military support to the organization, citing what he described as its failure to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at ending “illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunity.”

The move is part of a growing Pentagon campaign to pressure private institutions like AI giant Anthropic, journalists who cover the US military and universities attended by troops to accept the Trump administration’s policies and preferences. The move put the defense secretary in the position of telling a private youth organization who can join and what their application asks, and doing so amid a tense build-up in the Middle East that could see the US striking Iran within days or hours.

Military support for Scouts has traditionally included logistics to the group’s National Jamboree event (which is also a significant military recruiting event) and hosting of Scouts aboard military bases.

The Pentagon is essentially enforcing Trump’s executive order, applicable to government agencies, onto private institutions, said Dan Maurer, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and associate law professor at Ohio Northern University.

“The fact that they’re capitulating at all is a little weird to me, because they can withstand the loss of the connection, frankly,” Maurer, a former Eagle Scout, said of Scouting America, expressing astonishment that the defense secretary personally focused on this. “His attention could be focused on other things.”

Scout leaders agreed to “review and replace politicized, divisive, and discriminatory language throughout the organization,” Hegseth said in the video, adding, “no more DEI. Zero.”

Merit badges that “mask” DEI “activism” have been “discontinued,” he said, and a new military service badge will be added, in partnership with the Pentagon.

A spokesperson for the Defense Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Friday.


Soldiers took part in the 2023 National Jamboree held in West Virginia.

Soldiers took part in the 2023 National Jamboree held in West Virginia.

Edwin L. Wriston/West Virginia National Guard



Scout participants will only be allowed to join based on their birth sex, which may amount to a ban on transgender youth.

“That means that the application, any application, will have only two sex designations, male and female, and the application must match the applicant’s birth certificate,” the defense secretary said.

It is not clear how many Scouts would be personally affected by such a shift, and it remains to be seen how families will feel about the Pentagon’s involvement in setting terms of their organization.

Hegseth said he believed Scouting should return to being a boy-only group, but added that such a change is not imminent.

In November, an NPR report revealed the Pentagon was weighing whether to sever ties with the organization. As many as 16% of recent cadets at the US Military Academy have scouting in their backgrounds, a percentage that rivaled that of students from high school JROTC programs and reflected the Scouts’ deep military ties. Many cadets were also Eagle Scouts.

Beginning in 2012, “the Boy Scouts lost their way,” Hegseth said in the Friday post. “A once great organization became gravely wounded. Diversity, equity and inclusion, DEI, crept in. The name was changed to ‘Scouting America.’ Girls were accepted. The focus on God as the ruler of the universe was watered down to include openness to humanism and Earth centered pagan religions.”

“They even welcomed the destructive myth of gender fluidity and transgenderism to infiltrate their membership. Along the way, standards were lowered and merit destroyed in favor of an insidious, radical woke ideology that is anti-America and anti-American.”

The Scouts said they had made changes to comply with the Trump administration’s policies after months of discussion.

“Scouting America is proud to uphold our longstanding commitment to military families across the globe through a renewed, strengthened partnership with the Department of War,” Scouting America said in a statement to Business Insider, referring to the Trump administration’s unofficial name for the Defense Department that Congress has not approved.

“Over several months, we engaged in dialogue with Department leadership to align on how we could deepen our service to military families, while making programmatic updates to comply with Executive Order 14173.”

Hegseth did not specify what policy changes he was referring to in 2012, though in 2013 openly gay youth were allowed to join.

The Boy Scouts adopted changes to address declining participation that was caused, in part, by thousands of decades-old child sexual abuse cases finally made public in 2012, said David Chetlain, a Navy veteran and former Boy Scout, who expressed concern about the Pentagon’s pressure campaign.

The so-called ‘perversion files’ eventually contributed to Scouting America filing for bankruptcy in 2020. Opening ranks to a more diverse array of participants was part of the group’s attempt to maintain relevance and cleanse its reputation, Chetlain said.

Various religious merit awards have been around for decades, he added, and reflect the diversity of the group, which has foreign members across the world. Two Japanese exchange scouts were in his own troop, he said, recalling his time as a young Scout in the 1970s and 1980s, and as an occasional leader since then.

“It’s always been multicultural. It’s always been agnostic to religion or accepting of all religions,” said Chetlain, though he noted that Scouts previously barred atheists for decades. “Even as a kid, I loved that inclusivity and having a place where everybody belonged and we were all accepted. And it was a safe place for me.”




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Microsoft is considering a new AI-loaded software bundle for Microsoft 365, sources say

  • Microsoft is considering releasing a new AI revamp of its software bundle, sources say.
  • The bundle could include Microsoft Copilot and its new AI agent hub, Agent 365.
  • The company could charge up to $99 per user.

After years of internal buzz and false starts, Microsoft is considering rolling out its long-rumored E7 enterprise productivity software bundle, a pricier, AI-loaded version of Microsoft 365, according to two people familiar with the plans.

Microsoft 365 is a popular suite of productivity software that includes widely used tools such as Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Microsoft sells this software primarily in bundles called E3 and E5, where the E stands for “enterprise.” E3 is a more basic offering, while E5 has more bells and whistles.

A larger, more expensive “E7” software bundle has long been rumored and has earned a kind of mythical status inside Microsoft, with employees and salespeople debating and guessing whether it will ever appear.

Microsoft’s AI-packed E7 bundle comes as competitors like Google, Salesforce, and nearly every major software-as-a-service company rush to embed AI tools and autonomous agents into their products. Software stocks have taken a significant hit this year as investors worry that generative AI tools will upend traditional software products.

Microsoft declined to comment.

The new E7 bundle under consideration includes everything in the E5 bundle, plus AI features such as Microsoft Copilot and the company’s new AI agent hub, Agent 365, the people said.

Microsoft is looking into per-seat and consumption-based pricing for E7, but could charge up to $99 per user per month, the people said. E5’s current advertised price is $57 per user per month while Copilot is advertised as an add-on for $21 per user per month.

The company previously floated a new AI software bundle in 2024, but paused the plan.

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.




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Bill Clinton brushes off ’20-year-old photos’ in Epstein files and says he wasn’t aware of sex trafficking

At the start of his Congressional deposition Friday, Bill Clinton addressed the trove of photos of himself with Jeffrey Epstein released by the Justice Department last year.

In opening remarks posted on social media, the former President said he didn’t have any knowledge of Epstein’s sex trafficking operation — despite anyone’s “interpretation of those 20-year-old photos.”

“I had no idea of the crimes Epstein was committing,” Clinton said of the convicted sex offender, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. “No matter how many photos you show me.”

Clinton posted the remarks ahead of his closed-door deposition in Chappaqua, New York, before members of the House Oversight Committee, which has been investigating Epstein’s connections to powerful people.

In December, in response to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the Justice Department released several photos showing Clinton with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, who is now serving a 20-year prison sentence for trafficking girls to Epstein for sex. The photos show Clinton and Maxwell swimming together in a pool, along with a woman whose face is redacted. They also show Clinton in what appears to be Epstein’s private jet with a female, whose face is redacted, on his lap.

The photos also show Bill and Hillary Clinton at parties and dinners with Epstein.


Bill Clinton Ghislaine Maxwell pool

A photo of former President Bill Clinton, Ghislaine Maxwell, and an unidentified woman was included in the Justice Department’s Epstein files.

Department of Justice



The former president has long maintained he had no knowledge of Epstein’s sexual abuse. Epstein occasionally visited the White House while Clinton was president, and Clinton has said he traveled internationally with Epstein on his private jet four times between 2002 and 2003, following his presidency, for Clinton Foundation initiatives. There’s no indication the two were still in contact by the time Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor in Florida in 2008.

“As someone who grew up in a home with domestic abuse, not only would I not have flown on his plane if I had any inkling of what he was doing — I would have turned him in myself and led the call for justice for his crimes, not sweetheart deals,” Clinton said in the opening statement of his deposition.

Maxwell appeared to have her own relationship with the Clintons.


bill clinton jeffrey epstein

Epstein files previously released by the House Oversight Committee include a photo of “Margaritaville” singer Jimmy Buffett, his wife, Bill Clinton, Ghislaine Maxwell, and Jeffrey Epstein.

House Oversight Committee



She worked to obtain funding for the Clinton Global Initiative, records released by the Justice Department show. Maxwell also said in an interview with Justice Department Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche last year that she was closer to Clinton than Epstein was.

“President Clinton was my friend, not Epstein’s friend,” she said.

“President Clinton liked me, and we got along terribly well. But I never saw that warmth, or however you want to characterize it, with Mr. Epstein — so I didn’t see that,” Maxwell said in her interview. “I didn’t see President Clinton being interested in Epstein. He was just a rich guy with a plane.”

Bill Clinton’s deposition on Friday follows Hillary Clinton’s on Thursday. She said she didn’t think she ever met Epstein. She has said she met Maxwell on “a few occasions” in social settings.

Republicans on the House Oversight Committee said they would publicly release videos of the depositions of Bill and Hillary Clinton, as they did with a deposition of Les Wexner, the billionaire founder of L Brands, who previously hired Epstein as a financial fixer.

Clinton’s deposition marks the first time a former president has been compelled to testify to Congress pursuant to a subpoena.

Democrats on the committee say Clinton’s deposition marks a precedent that should require President Donald Trump, who has also been photographed with Epstein, to testify before the committee.

If you are a survivor of sexual assault, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline (1-800-656-4673) or visit its website to receive confidential support.




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Kelsey Baker, Military and Defense Reporting Fellow

It’s not just Harvard. The Pentagon is barring troops from attending more Ivy League schools and other top universities.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Friday that the Pentagon is formally cutting ties with Ivy League schools and other top universities, barring all active-duty troops seeking graduate-level education from attending specific institutions.

Military attendance at select schools will be canceled starting this coming academic year, Hegseth said in an X post, accusing schools of indoctrinating service members with an unexplained “woke” ideology.

It is not clear how this change will affect active-duty students already in the middle of multi-year programs.

The military’s professional military education system has “been poisoned from within by a class of so-called elite universities who’ve abused their privilege and access,” Hegesth said, and have instead become “factories of anti-American resentment and military disdain.”

Elite schools, such as Princeton, Yale, Columbia, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have “taken our best and brightest, the men and women who pledged their lives to this nation, and subjected them to a curriculum of contempt,” the secretary said. “They’ve replaced the study of victory and pragmatic realism with the promotion of wokeness and weakness. They’ve traded true intellectual rigor for radical dogma, sacrificed. Seek free expression for the suffocating confines of leftist ideology.”

The Pentagon did not respond to Business Insider’s request for specific details on Hegseth’s allegations. BI also requested a full list of schools affected by the Friday announcement, which was not provided.


US service members fly above the Pentagon in northern Virginia.

The Pentagon is scrutinizing its partnerships with institutions of higher learning.

DoD photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Alexander Kubitza



If a senior officer selected for graduate school is already a top performer, it’s unrealistic to think a one- or two-year program would fundamentally change them, said Dan Maurer, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and associate law professor at Ohio Northern University who called the thought of such a sudden personal philosophical change “far-fetched.”

He also said it’s valuable to have troops and civilians exposed to one another, as it helps bridge the ever-widening gap between American civilians and their military.

Hegseth made the announcement on X on Friday afternoon, just hours after using the platform to announce that the military’s relationship with Scouting America (formerly Boy Scouts) will hinge on the nonprofit’s acceptance of Pentagon requests to change the program, including halting DEI efforts and barring transgender youth from openly participating in Scouts.

These universities teach service members “to despise the very nation they swore to defend,” and enforce a “creed of globalist submission,” he said in the most recent announcement.

A list of 33 schools undergoing DoD review emerged online last week after an Army JAG notified active-duty troops and prospective students that certain schools may no longer be available to them and advised troops to “have a backup plan.”

That leaked guidance noted that Harvard was “fully off limits,” a reflection of the Pentagon’s previous decision to sever ties with Harvard University. Hegseth, who has a master’s degree from Harvard, accused it of being “one of the red-hot centers of Hate America activism.” Other schools were marked as risks.

One prospective student on active duty who hopes to attend one of the schools previously marked for review by the Pentagon told Business Insider the latest announcement from Hegseth has deflated them and may contribute to their decision to leave the military early. They spoke on the condition of anonymity due to concerns about professional repercussions.

A new review is forthcoming for “senior service” schools and internal war colleges, the secretary said, “ensuring they are once again bastions of strategic thought wholly dedicated to the singular mission of developing the most lethal and effective leaders and war fighters the world has ever known.”

He did not specify which institutions the review could include, though schools like the National Defense University and each service’s war college could be targeted.




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Paramount officially announces Warner Bros. Discovery takeover

  • Read the memo Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison sent about the Warner Bros. Discovery merger.
  • The companies made it official on Friday with an announcement.
  • Netflix, which was also vying for WBD, declined to raise its bid for the company on Thursday.

Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery have made it official, and CEO David Ellison sent a memo out to staff about the merger.

Paramount said in an official announcement on Friday that it had entered into a definitive merger agreement with Warner Bros. Discovery, giving the David Ellison-run media firm valuable assets such as HBO, CNN, and DC Studios.

Netflix, which was also vying for WBD, declined to raise its bid for the company on Thursday, effectively walking away from its offer to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming and studio assets.

Paramount made multiple offers for all of Warner Bros. Discovery, including its film studio, HBO, and cable networks such as CNN, rather than the slimmer asset package Netflix had pursued. WBD accepted its revised $31-per-share offer that Netflix declined to counter.

Politics may have played a role in the bidding war. President Donald Trump publicly expressed disapproval of Netflix’s bid, and Republican lawmakers sharply criticized the company at a recent congressional hearing, accusing it of promoting “woke” programming. Trump had also demanded that Netflix fire a board member.

Investor sentiment compounded those headwinds. Netflix shareholders had been signaling discomfort with the scale and risk of the acquisition for weeks, dragging down the stock. Shares rebounded sharply once it became clear that Paramount’s bid was gaining momentum.

Read the memo Ellison sent:

Team,
Today we announced that Paramount has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. You can read the full details in our press release here.
I want to begin by thanking each of you for your patience, resilience, and commitment throughout this process. It has not been easy. Shortly after launching the new Paramount in August, we announced our plans to pursue this transaction. The months since have required a lot of hard work and resolve as together we have navigated the complexities and uncertainties that come with a deal of this scale.
That perseverance has brought us to this exciting moment.
By uniting two iconic studios, complementary streaming platforms, established cable and linear networks, expanding international businesses, world-class intellectual property, and the extraordinary talent behind all of this, we have a rare opportunity to help shape the future of our industry. Together, we can build a more dynamic, more competitive and more creatively ambitious company — one that better serves storytellers, entertains audiences around the world, and delivers long-term value for shareholders.
From day one, our vision has been clear: to build the next-generation global media and entertainment company. Acquiring WBD meaningfully accelerates that ambition. It expands our reach and enhances our ability to create the world’s most compelling stories and experiences.
While we have signed a definitive agreement, the transaction remains subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals and WBD shareholder approval, with a vote expected in the early spring of 2026. Until closing, Paramount and WBD will continue to operate as separate companies.
I know you will have questions about what this means for our company and for you and your teams. And as I said on Day 1, you have my commitment that we will be as direct as possible and share important updates as they become available.
Thank you again for your patience throughout this process and for your continued dedication. I am confident that, together, we will seize this incredible opportunity and build something truly extraordinary.
Let’s go!
David




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Trump orders federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s technology

President Donald Trump says federal agencies won’t be using Anthropic’s technology anymore.

“We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday.

It comes amid a dispute between the AI giant and the Department of Defense.

Trump said that there would be a six-month phase-out period for departments, including the Department of Defense, that are “using Anthropic’s products, at various levels.”

“WE will decide the fate of our Country — NOT some out-of-control, Radical Left AI company run by people who have no idea what the real World is all about,” Trump wrote.

Trump’s announcement comes just a few hours before the Friday evening deadline defense officials had given Anthropic to agree to the military’s terms of use for the company’s frontier model, Claude.

Earlier this week, the two parties came to an impasse over how the military can deploy Claude.

The issue appeared to revolve around two safeguards Anthropic was not willing to drop: mass surveillance of US citizens and autonomous weapons.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had given Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei until Friday, 5:01 p.m. Eastern Time to get on board with the military. Hegseth also warned that the government could invoke the Defense Production Act — a wartime law that gives the president broad authority over a company’s resources — and designate Anthropic as a supply chain risk.

Both would be unprecedented moves by the government against an American technology company, experts previously told Business Insider.

On Thursday, Amodei published a blog post stating that the Defense Department had added language to its contract allowing for “any lawful use” of its model.

A source familiar with the negotiations told Business Insider that this language effectively gave the military discretion over how it uses Claude.

The Anthropic CEO said in his post that the company would prefer to continue serving the department but that it could not “in good conscience accede to their request.”




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Ayelet Sheffey

Trump’s attempt to quickly axe a key affordable student-loan repayment plan gets shut down in court

Student-loan borrowers might not lose a key affordable repayment plan just yet.

On Friday, a court dismissed a proposed settlement announced by the Department of Education and the state of Missouri in December that would have eliminated the SAVE income-driven repayment plan ahead of schedule.

President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful” spending legislation called for phasing out SAVE by 2028. This latest update means that the department has to stick with that timeline, and it cannot eliminate the plan before 2028 without court approval or a lengthy negotiated rulemaking process.

John Ross, Missouri’s district court judge, wrote in his ruling that the settlement was not presented to the court, and that federal law allows courts to “exercise jurisdiction only over cases or controversies,” which he said does not exist in this case because both the Department of Education and Missouri have agreed on the outcome they’re seeking without debate.

“It appears that there is no longer a live case or controversy sufficient to authorize the Court to enter a judgment on the merits,” Ross wrote.

The SAVE plan was created by former President Joe Biden in 2023, and it intended to give borrowers cheaper monthly payments with a shorter timeline to loan forgiveness. The plan has been halted since 2024 due to lawsuits seeking to block it, and while Trump’s “big beautiful” spending legislation included a provision to eliminate SAVE over the next few years, the settlement would have done so much sooner than anticipated.

Ross also wrote in a footnote that it’s “not lost on the Court that millions of borrowers who enrolled in the SAVE plan have patiently awaited clarity while this litigation has proceeded. However, that clarity must come from the Department of Education, and not from this Court, which is no longer empowered to weigh the merits of a case that is now moot.”

Winston Berkman-Breen, legal director at advocacy group Protect Borrowers, said in a statement that the court’s ruling means the department can now move forward with relief under the SAVE plan.

“As of today, not only is there no legal barrier to delivering those rights through the SAVE plan, but the Secretary has a legal obligation to do so,” Berkman-Breen said. “The U.S. Department of Education must immediately identify borrowers who are eligible to have their loans cancelled under SAVE and instruct their student loan servicers to cancel those loans.”

A Department of Education spokesperson told Business Insider that the department is evaluating the court’s decision.

The department said in December that, should the settlement be approved, it would not enroll any new borrowers in the SAVE plan, it would deny pending applications, and move the 7 million enrolled borrowers to other repayment plans. Those borrowers would have a limited time to prepare to make their payments.

Have a story to share? Contact this reporter at asheffey@businessinsider.com.




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I started drinking when I was 14. When I finally got sober, I lost 100 pounds and saved over $55,000.

This interview is based on a conversation with Emily Susman, 42, a chef and cookbook author from Tulsa, Oklahoma. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I don’t blame anyone else for my alcoholism — it was all on me — but I grew up in a family where beer, wine, and liquor were part of the culture.

I’m half Lebanese, and every holiday and other social occasion centered on eating and drinking.

At 14, my grandfather handed me a vodka and tonic and said, “This is the way to drink responsibly, surrounded by your family in the safety of home.”

I dealt with stress by reaching for the bottle

In college, I joined a sorority where we partied hard. During rush season, our older sisters presented us with bottles of hard liquor covered with ribbons.

I was never far away from alcohol, whether I was working for my uncle as a bartender or establishing my own successful restaurant and catering firm in Dallas in my thirties.

But the bad habits really set in after I sold the business and started working with my husband, Drake, 43, at his gas-and-oil brokerage. I was in charge of the books and dealt with the ongoing financial stress by reaching for the bottle.


A woman in a sombrero taking a shot of tequila.

Susman was an emotional drinker who spent an average $30 a day on alcohol.

Courtesy of Emily Susman.



It got to the point where I was getting through a large bottle of vodka every few days. I’d hide the evidence in the pantry because I didn’t want Drake to see how often it was happening.

I’d use any excuse to drink, whether it was to celebrate the good times or commiserate with myself when something went wrong.

The tell-tale signs were there. I was overweight from all the wasted calories and my habit of eating more when I was drunk. I’d experience crushing hangovers, get the shakes, and vomit the morning after.

My family started to get on my case. “This is a problem for you,” they would say. “You need to get your act together.” Every time, I’d make an excuse. I’ll tell them that I’d cut down after Thanksgiving or give up entirely on New Year’s Day.

I tried fad diets and didn’t exercise

Inevitably, I’d be back drinking by Blake’s birthday in the middle of January.

Things got even worse when the pandemic began in March 2020. I was often confined to the house and passed the time drinking. I disregarded the needs of my body by not exercising and trying fad diets that weren’t sustainable.

Then, a month into 2021, I awoke from a particularly bad episode and stared at myself in the mirror. At 5ft 8in, I was 230 pounds and a size 16. I bawled my eyes out because I was so miserable.


A before-and-after photograph of a woman who lost 100 pounds in weight

Susman before and after she quit drinking and lost almost half of her body weight.

Courtesy of Emily Susman



Something changed. I came downstairs and said to Blake, “I can’t do this anymore.” I sought therapy and had my last drink in early February.

I realized the all-or-nothing approach that fueled my alcoholism could be redirected to something positive.

It was a simple process without frills. I took pride in reaching each milestone: five days, then 30 days, then 120 days, and so on.

My weight-loss journey was slow and steady

Distractions made all the difference, whether I was using adult coloring books, painting with acrylics, or even sucking on lollipops when I craved sugar or the oral fixation of drinking.

Best of all, I reignited my love of cooking. I relied on my professional culinary background to make nutritious, balanced meals, which broke the cycle of binge-eating, restricting, and guilt.

My sensible diet, combined with simple exercises such as walking and strength training, helped me lose 100 pounds. I did it slowly and surely — losing around one pound a week — and now weigh 126 pounds.


A man and woman holding two dogs in front of the ocean.

Susman with her husband, Blake, and their Pomeranians, Bonnie and Clyde.

Courtesy of Emily Susman.



I’m a size zero to two and no longer hide my figure in baggy clothing. I’ve been sober for five years.

Another benefit is the amount of money I’ve saved. I found an app that took my average spending on alcohol of $30 a day to calculate that I’ve saved nearly $55,500 since 2021.

Meanwhile, I launched my company, Emma Claire’s Kitchen, the same year I got sober. It offers practical, tasty recipes and products, such as spices and, soon, mocktail powders.

I’m so grateful to my husband and my family

I’m a completely different person from the wreck I saw in the mirror that terrible morning. I love and value myself and am so grateful to Blake and the rest of my family for staying by my side.

It’s scary to think that I nearly lost everything — including my life — to alcohol. I’ll never go back to what passed as an existence, just getting through the day.

I have a bright future ahead of me now.




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