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My flight U-turned midair as war broke out. Now I’m stranded in Doha, and it feels like Covid.

by with No Comment Xpandfy

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Peter Wozny, head of legal at Btomorrow Ventures, the corporate VC arm of British American Tobacco. This piece has been edited for length and clarity.

I was flying home to Europe over the weekend from a business trip in China, connecting through Qatar, when my journey took an unexpected turn.

I landed in Doha in the early hours of Saturday morning, made my transfer, and boarded the onward flight. We took off as normal at 9:15 a.m. local time.

About an hour later, everything changed. As we approached the airspace between Israel and Iran, the plane abruptly turned around and headed back to Doha.

When we landed, we sat on the tarmac for roughly 90 minutes as the crew tried to figure out the next steps. Eventually, they sent us back into the terminal.

By then, anxiety had started to spread. Passengers were glued to their phones, reading reports that war had broken out that morning.


Peter Wozny boarded a flight to Warsaw at Doha's Hamad International Airport on February 28.

Peter Wozny boarded a flight to Warsaw at Doha’s Hamad International Airport early on Saturday morning.

Courtesy of Peter Wozny



Stranded in Doha

Inside the airport, it was chaotic.

Since I was traveling for work, I headed to the Al Mourjan Business Lounge, where I ran into my friend Stuart. We ended up waiting there for a few hours, trying to figure out what was happening.

While we were sitting there, we started hearing loud bangs outside. At first, I wasn’t sure what they were. Then it became clear they were missiles being fired. That’s when it really hit me — it felt ominous.


Stuart McClure and Peter Wozny at Doha's International Airport's lounge on February 28.

Stuart McClure and Peter Wozny at Doha’s International Airport’s lounge on February 28.

Courtesy of Peter Wozny



Qatar Airways moved us to the Fraser Suites in Doha’s West Bay area. It wasn’t great, so I decided to book my own room at the Mondrian Doha, where I’ve been staying since Sunday. It’s about $220 a night.

The authorities have said stranded passengers will be able to claim refunds for their hotel stays from Saturday until the airports reopen.

Once this is all over, I’ll need to submit expenses for flights, taxis, food, the hotel, and even basic things like toiletries and clothes.

For the first four days, we didn’t have our suitcases. I just had the clothes I was wearing and a rucksack with my work laptop.

The explosions woke me up

From the hotel, which overlooks Doha’s port, you can hear the explosions. You’ll be sitting there, and suddenly there are these loud bangs outside. Then you look up and see flashes lighting up the sky. It’s scary.

On Saturday night, I actually slept through most of the noise because I was exhausted.

But at 7:30 a.m. on Sunday, the noise woke me up. On other days, it’s sounded more distant, more muffled.

Sunday was noticeably quieter. From what I understand, Qatar has been intercepting missiles over the Gulf before they reach land. It’s not that they haven’t been fired — it’s that they’re being taken out at sea.

Even so, you can still hear them.


Stuart McClure and Peter Wozny in their hotel room on March 3.

Stuart McClure and Peter Wozny in their hotel room on Tuesday.

Courtesy of Peter Wozny



It feels a little bit like Covid

It feels a bit like lockdown. I’m stuck, and I don’t know what’s going on. I look out on the streets, and there are barely any cars driving around.

I feel nervous. A bit unsettled. I do feel safe, but I just don’t know what’s happening.

I’m generally a glass-half-full person, but all my plans have been turned upside down. I don’t know whether it’s going to be a few more days or a few more weeks stuck out here.


Peter Wozny and other flight passengers received alert messages upon returning to Doha.

Peter Wozny and other flight passengers received alert messages upon returning to Doha.

Courtesy of Peter Wozny



Reassuring friends and family

The hardest part has been friends and family constantly checking in. They’re obviously concerned and want to get updates.

They’re reading things in the news, and there’s misinformation out there. So you’re constantly responding to messages and telling everyone you’re OK.

That’s intense. But when you’re sitting in the hotel, and you’re just hearing explosions around, or you’re looking up, and you just see all the light, the sky kind of lighting up, it’s also a bit scary.


Peter Wozny in the Mondrian Doha Hotel on March 2

Peter Wozny is shown in the Mondrian Doha Hotel on Monday.

Courtesy of Peter Wozny



From my company’s perspective, the guidance has been straightforward: stay in touch, keep people updated, and don’t leave the hotel unless necessary.

Beyond that, we’re just waiting to see whether the situation escalates.

The last update from Qatar Airways was that there won’t be any flights out of Doha until at least Friday.

I’m now considering getting a car and driving to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, and then flying to London from there.

For now, I’m just hoping it doesn’t escalate further, that no one gets hurt, and I can head home soon.




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AI CEO warns AI’s disruption will be ‘much bigger’ than COVID: ‘The people I care about deserve to hear what is coming’

by with No Comment Xpandfy

It’s never a good sign when a CEO warns something more disruptive than COVID is heading our way.

In an essay titled “Something Big Is Happening,” Hyperwrite CEO Matt Shumer said AI can now do all of his technical work — and he thinks your job could be next.

“I’m writing this for the people in my life who don’t… my family, my friends, the people I care about who keep asking me ‘so what’s the deal with AI?’ and getting an answer that doesn’t do justice to what’s actually happening,” Shumer wrote in his nearly 5,000-word post published Tuesday on X.

As of Wednesday morning, Shumer’s post had 40 million views and 18,000 retweets.

Shumer said that the reason people in tech “are sounding the alarm” is that they have already experienced what’s coming for everyone else.

“We’re not making predictions,” he wrote. “We’re telling you what already occurred in our own jobs, and warning you that you’re next.”

Shumer said that many people outside tech wrote off AI years ago after a clunky experience with an early edition of ChatGPT.

“The models available today are unrecognizable from what existed even six months ago,” he wrote. “The debate about whether AI is ‘really getting better’ or ‘hitting a wall’ — which has been going on for over a year — is over.”

It’s not the time to panic, Shumer said. Instead, the best thing to do is to become deeply familiar with AI. “This might be the most important year of your career,” he wrote.

“I don’t say that to stress you out. I say it because right now, there is a brief window where most people at most companies are still ignoring this,” he wrote. “The person who walks into a meeting and says ‘I used AI to do this analysis in an hour instead of three days’ is going to be the most valuable person in the room.”

He’s far from alone in sounding the alarm. Despite disagreement from other tech leaders, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei remains adamant that AI could wipe out up to half of white collar, entry-level jobs in the next one to five years.

xAI CEO Elon Musk and others have warned that if your job doesn’t involve physical labor, it’s likely to be replaced by AI much more quickly, a view that dovetails with a growing base of economic research.

Shumer’s essay struck a chord, especially with those in tech. Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian replied, “Great writeup. Strongly agree.”

“Great advice for how to get ahead in your job at any large company right now,” A16z general partner David Haber wrote.

While the response to the post has been overwhelmingly positive, some X users pointed out the limitations still present in many current AI products, like hallucinations and general inaccuracies.

What changed Shumer’s mind

Shumer said that this moment feels like February 2020, when in a short span of time, news of a spreading pandemic gave way to a worldwide upheaval unseen in modern times that continues to reverberate to this day.

The potential of what AI will change, he wrote, is “much bigger than Covid.”

For Shumer, this moment of realization came with the recent dueling releases of Anthropic’s Opus 4.6 and OpenAI’s GPT-5.3 Codex. Both models are primarily aimed at software engineering. OpenAI said in its release notes that GPT-5.3 Codex “is our first model that was instrumental in creating itself.”

“It wasn’t just executing my instructions,” Shumer wrote of his experience with OpenAI’s latest Codex model. “It was making intelligent decisions. It had something that felt, for the first time, like judgment. Like taste. The inexplicable sense of knowing what the right call is that people always said AI would never have.”

AI is now so intelligent, Shumer said, that he can tell the agent what he wants and “walk away from my computer for four hours, and come back to find the work done. Done well.”

In a post on LinkedIn Wednesday morning, Shumer addressed his viral X post.

“Every time someone asks me what’s going on with AI, I give them the safe answer,” he wrote on Wednesday. “Because the real one sounds insane. I’m done doing that.”




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