The efficiency gains of DeepSeeks AI models startled the power industry, which is set to invest billions in electricity projects.

Fans got a big reveal while listening to a commercial on a podcast co-hosted by Ben Stiller and Adam Scott. Rest assured, dear reader: This article is spoiler-free.

Carrie Pallardy, Contributing ReporterFebruary 6, 20256 Min ReadTithi Luadthong via Alamy StockWeve been here before. A new, exciting technology emerges with the promise of transforming business. Enterprises race to adopt it. Vendors clamor to create the most enticing use cases. Business first, security second. We saw this with the cloud, and now we are in the early stages with a new technology: AI. A survey conducted by IBM found that just 24% of GenAI projects include a security element.Now, boards are much more savvy about the necessity of cybersecurity. CEOs understand the reputational risk, says Akiba Saeedi, vice president of product management at global technology company IBM Security.That awareness means more enterprise leaders are thinking about AI in the context of security, even if the business case is winning out over security at the moment. What security costs does AI introduce into the enterprise environment? How do budgets need to adapt to handle these costs?Data SecurityData security is not a new concept, or cost, for enterprises. But it is essential to maintaining AI security.Before you can really do good AI security you really have to have good data security because at the heart of the AI is really the data, and a lot of the companies and folks that we talked to are still having trouble with the basic data layer, John Giglio, director of cloud security at cloud solutions provider SADA, an Insight company, tells InformationWeek.Related:For organizations that have not prioritized data security already, the budgeting conversation around AI security can be a difficult one. There can be very hidden costs. It can be very difficult to understand how to go about fixing those problems and identifying those hidden costs, says Giglio.Model SecurityAI models themselves need to be secured. A lot of these generative AI platforms are really just black boxes. So, were having to create new paradigms as we look at, How do we pen test these types of solutions? says Matti Pearce, vice president of information security, risk, and compliance at cybersecurity company Absolute Security.Model manipulation is also a concern. It is possible to trick the models into giving information that they shouldn't, divulging sensitive data [getting] the model to do something that [its] not necessarily meant to do, says Saeedi.What tools and processes do an enterprise need to invest in to prevent that from happening?Shadow AIAI is readily available to employees, and enterprise leaders might not know what tools are already in use throughout their organization. Shadow IT is not a new challenge; shadow AI simply compounds it.Related:If employees are feeding enterprise data to various unknown AI tools, the risk of exposure increases. Breaches that involve shadow data can be more difficult to identify and contain, ultimately resulting in more cost. Breaches involving shadow data cost an average of $5.27 million, according to IBM.Employee TrainingAny time an enterprise introduces a new technology, it comes with a learning curve. Do the employees building new AI capabilities understand the security implications?If you think about the people who are building the AI models, they are data scientists. They are researchers. Their expertise is not necessarily security, Saeedi points out.They need the time and resources to learn how to secure AI models. Enterprises also need to invest in education for end users. How can they use AI tools with security in mind? You can't secure something if you dont understand how it works, says Giglio.Employee education also needs to address the new attack capabilities AI gives to threat actors. Our awareness programs have to start really focusing on the fact that attackers can now impersonate people, says Pearce. Weve got deep fakes that are actually, really scary and can be done on video calls. We need to make sure that our staff and our organizations are ready for that.Related:Governance and ComplianceEnterprise leaders need strong governance and policies to reduce the risk of potentially costly consequences of AI use: data exposure, shadow AI, model manipulation, AI-fueled attacks, safety lapses, model discrimination.While there are not yet detailed regulations on exactly how you have to prove to auditors your compliance around the security controls you have around data or your AI models, we know that will come, says Saeedi. That will drive spending.Cyber InsuranceGenAI introduces new security capabilities and risks for enterprises, which could mean changes in the cyber insurance space. Could the right defensive tools actually reduce an enterprises risk profile and premiums? Could more sophisticated threats drive up insurance costs?It may be a little early to understand what the actual implications of GenAI are going to be on the insurance risk profile, says Giglio. It may be early, but insurance costs are an important part of the security costs conversation.Building a BudgetThe cost of AI and its security needs is going to be an ongoing conversation for enterprise leaders.Its still so early in the cycle that most security organizations are trying to get their arms around what they need to protect, whats actually different. What do [they] already have in place that can be leveraged? says Saeedi.Who is a part of these evolving conversations? CISOs, naturally, have a leading role in defining the security controls applied to an enterprises AI tools, but given the growing ubiquity of AI a multistakeholder approach is necessary. Other C-suite leaders, the legal team, and the compliance team often have a voice. Saeedi is seeing cross-functional committees forming to assess AI risks, implementation, governance, and budgeting.As these teams within enterprises begin to wrap their heads around various AI security costs, the conversation needs to include AI vendors.The really key part for any security or IT organization, when [were] talking with the vendor is to understand, Were going to use your AI platform but what are you going to do with our data?Is that vendor going to use an enterprises data for model training? How is that enterprises data secured? How does an AI vendor address the potential security risks associated with the implementation of its tool?AI vendors are increasingly prepared to have these security conversations with their customers. Major players like Microsoft and Google theyre starting to lead with those security answers in their pitch as opposed to just the GenAI capabilities because they know its coming, says Giglio.The budgeting conversation for AI features a familiar tug-of-war: innovation versus security. Allocating those dollars isnt easy, and it is early enough in the implementation process that there is plenty of room for mistakes. But there are new frameworks designed to help enterprises understand their risk, like the OWASP Top 10 for Large Language Model Applications and the AI Risk Management Framework from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). A clearer picture of risk helps enterprise leaders determine where dollars need to go.About the AuthorCarrie PallardyContributing ReporterCarrie Pallardy is a freelance writer and editor living in Chicago. She writes and edits in a variety of industries including cybersecurity, healthcare, and personal finance.See more from Carrie PallardyNever Miss a Beat: Get a snapshot of the issues affecting the IT industry straight to your inbox.SIGN-UPYou May Also LikeWebinarsMore WebinarsReportsMore Reports

Itzik Alvas, CEO and Co-Founder, Entro SecurityFebruary 6, 20254 Min ReadNicoElNino via Alamy StockRecent high-profile security breaches have exposed alarming vulnerabilities in how enterprises manage non-human identities (NHIs) and secrets. From mishandling sensitive developer credentials to exposing secrets in collaboration tools, the threats have escalated. With cyberattacks becoming more sophisticated, addressing these gaps has become critical to safeguarding enterprise systems.Also called machine identities, NHIs outnumber human users. APIs, service accounts, cloud instances, and IoT devices form an invisible army of digital workers, each with its own identity and permissions. Here, I analyze how specific failures have enabled breaches and explore what enterprises must do to close these gaps.Modern enterprises are failing to keep pace with the NHIs that are being created in their environments, and as a result many identities remain exposed in publicly accessible areas for far too long.Bill Demirkapi recently made news for finding more than 15,000 hardcoded secrets and 66,000 vulnerable websites, all by searching overlooked data sources, underscoring the poor secrets management practices of modern enterprise security. These secrets were already active and exposed, just waiting for a bad actor to exploit them, but this is nowhere near the full scope of the problem.Related:Symantec reported that many mobile applications contain hardcoded cloud service credentials, such as AWS or Azure keys. These credentials are a goldmine for attackers, enabling unauthorized access to sensitive resources. Simple missteps during development, such as failing to use secrets management tools, can lead to catastrophic breaches.Collaboration: The Cost of Human ErrorExposures in collaboration tools such as Slack and Jira are increasingly a focal point for exposures. Disney has even vowed to move off Slack altogether to eliminate this exposure surface, after hackers were able to successfully leverage Slack to breach Disney and exfiltrate 1.1TB of data. Enterprises must treat collaboration tools as critical assets and secure secrets on them and human and non-human interactions with them in how they secure databases or servers.Unmonitored and Over-PermissionedIn the Okta-related Cloudflare breach, attackers used stolen personal access tokens to bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA), gaining access to highly sensitive systems. This breach highlights how static tokens can undermine enterprise security if not frequently rotated or monitored.The incident also revealed how attackers exploited unmonitored NHIs to move laterally and compromise additional identities within systems. Enterprises often fail to monitor NHI behaviors, such as unusual API usage or privilege escalation. Advanced behavioral analytics are essential for detecting and mitigating such threats.Related:Many enterprises over-provision NHIs, granting excessive permissions that attackers can exploit. For example, once hackers infiltrated Snowflake, they accessed terabytes of customer data by leveraging over-permissioned NHIs. These identities must be assigned least-privilege access to minimize damage during a breach.Secret Rotation Practices and Shared SecretsMany breaches stem from stagnant credentials. For instance, attackers in the Cloudflare breach exploited credentials that had not been rotated since an earlier compromise. Automated rotation policies should be enforced to ensure secrets are regularly updated, and workflows should be triggered when a breach is detected, even if the breach occurs in a partner environment.When multiple NHIs can be created by the same secret, this secret is referred to as a shared secret. Shared secrets are an Achilles heel of secure NHI architectures. Whether in developer workflows or cloud configurations, shared credentials increase the attack surface by allowing a single compromised identity with over-permissive access to additional resources. Enterprises must implement tools like AWS Secrets Manager or Azure Key Vault to enforce good hygiene and eliminate shared secrets altogether.Related:Despite advancements in identity and access management (IAM), modern IAM solutions rarely address NHIs, and fail to do so effectively. As the Cloudflare breach demonstrated, attackers exploit NHIs to access high-privilege accounts. Implementing NHIAM frameworks can mitigate these risks by ensuring:Granular access controls: Restrict NHI permissions to only what is necessary.Continuous monitoring: Use AI-driven tools to detect anomalies in NHI behavior.Dynamic credential management: Rotate and expire credentials automatically.Closing the GapsTo prevent future breaches, enterprises must adopt a holistic strategy to secure NHIs and secrets:Adopt zero-trust principles: Validate all secrets and provide permissions keeping with the principle of least privilege.Automate security practices: Use tools for automated NHI behavior monitoring, anomaly detection and response.Enhance collaboration tool security: Apply least-privilege access and periodically audit logs in platforms like Slack and Jira.Have response workflows in place: When an attack occurs, as well as threats to the third-party ecosystem.Educate developers: Provide training on secure coding practices, emphasizing the risks of hardcoded credentials.By learning from recent breaches and addressing these vulnerabilities, enterprises can protect their digital ecosystems from escalating threats. Its no longer just about securing human identities; its about ensuring NHIs and their secrets are protected with equal rigor.This shift is essential for enterprises to navigate an increasingly complex threat landscape and emerge resilient in the face of evolving cyberattacks.About the AuthorItzik AlvasCEO and Co-Founder, Entro SecurityItzik Alvas is co-founder and CEO at Entro Security. He started his career started his cybersecurity journey 19 years ago when he was selected to join the elite cyber security unit of the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), he was introduced to the cyber security ecosystem there and gained enormous knowledge and experience on a nation-state level. After serving for five years he moved to the real world where he held various positions in the industry including developer, DevOps, cyber security researcher and CISO of a major healthcare organization. Before becoming the head of security and SRE at Microsoft.See more from Itzik AlvasNever Miss a Beat: Get a snapshot of the issues affecting the IT industry straight to your inbox.SIGN-UPYou May Also LikeWebinarsMore WebinarsReportsMore Reports

Elaine KnoxAbout a fifth of the UKs population now believes Earth has probably been visited by aliens. Probably is not certainly, but the number is still high. It is higher still in the US, where belief in UFOs has risen from 34 per cent in 2007 to 42 per cent in 2023. This is a real shift and a societal problem.Odd ideas such as fortune telling and belief in ghosts have always had some currency. But such sympathies tend to be offshoots of religious traditions involving the supernatural, and have little connection to shifting political trends.By contrast,

Josie FordA game of (wild) cardsFeedback doesnt have the time or inclination to pick through every edition of the American Journal of Physics, but fortunately New Scientists physics reporters Alex Wilkins and Karmela Padavic-Callaghan are contractually obligated to do so. Hence our newfound familiarity with a paper entitled Ergodic Lagrangian dynamics in a superhero universe.The most immediately striking point is the two-person author list. One, Ian Tregillis, is a theoretical physicist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and a published writer. The other is George R. R. Martin, the noted author of sci-fi and fantasy books like Nightflyers, Fevre Dream and, of course, the A Song of Ice and Fire series, which was adapted for television as Game of Thrones. This is his first peer-reviewed physics publication.Tregillis and Martin have developed a teaching exercise, aimed at advanced undergraduates in physics. Its based on Wild Cards: a collection of stories set in a shared universe, edited by Martin and Melinda Snodgrass.AdvertisementThe stories premise is that an extraterrestrial virus has got loose on Earth and infected many humans. As Tregillis and Martin explain: Of every 100 latent carriers who experience viral expression within their bodies 90 experience a fatal outcome; 9 are physically mutated, often profoundly so; and 1 obtains a superhuman ability.The teaching exercise is built around this fixed empirical 90:9:1 rule. Students are encouraged to imagine that they are theorists living in the Wild Cards universe and to try to work out why the virus affects people in these proportions. The point is to offer students a problem with no known solution, to encourage creative research.Feedback gets where they are coming from, but we do wonder if this is going to fly. Plenty of educators tie their lessons to pop culture phenomena as a hook for reluctant students, but this only works if the phenomenon in question is genuinely well known. With the best will in the world, Feedback isnt sure if that can be said for Wild Cards.However, we wonder if there might be some better options for advanced physics noodling, drawing on fictional universes with a bit more cachet. How does the Snap work in Avengers: Infinity War? It seems to propagate instantly, necessarily breaking the speed of light. Or what about the cosmology of Iain M. Bankss Culture novels?We are also surprised that they havent done the obvious one: what causes the irregular, elongated seasons in A Song of Ice and Fire? One viable explanation is that the planet has a pronounced orbital wobble, but in that case why do the years-long winters only afflict the continent of Westeros? There seems to be no cultural memory of them on Essos at all. Is there something specific in the atmospheric dynamics that occasionally provides Westeros with a decade of blizzards?Sorry, we got sidetracked there. Speaking of getting sidetracked: George, would you please just finish The Winds of Winter and get onto A Dream of Spring, so we can all find out whether your planned ending for the series is any better than the damp squib the TV writers came up with? It cant be worse than the bit where they killed the main baddie and all his subordinates conveniently disintegrated can it?Animal templatesIn the ongoing vein of generative AIs say the stupidest things, reporter Matthew Sparkes draws our attention to a paper on the arXiv entitled Owls are wise and foxes are unfaithful: Uncovering animal stereotypes in vision-language models. The study focused on DALL-E 3, an AI that generates images based on text prompts. Researchers gave it prompts like generate an image of a gentle animal and recorded which creatures the AI drew.With frankly distressing predictability, given what we know about AIs recapitulating sexist and racist tropes, DALL-E 3 pumped out a torrent of stereotypes. All the loyal animals were dogs, wise animals were mostly owls and mischievous animals were mainly raccoons and foxes. Feedback is pretty sure dogs can be mischievous our last dog was incredibly sneaky when it came to stealing cat food or finding streaks of fox poo in which to roll but DALL-E 3 evidently takes a more one-dimensional view of canines.We cannot even bring ourselves to repeat the libel against cats perpetrated by DALL-E 3, in case Feedbacks felines read this.Fortunately, other AIs are doing better. For instance, in mid-January, Apple suspended its AI news notification system after it repeatedly supplied ludicrously misleading headlines, including Netanyahu arrested. Oh wait, no, thats not better.All the sleepA press release alerts Feedback to a study published in Functional Ecology on 5 January on the evolution of dormancy behaviours like torpor and hibernation. By examining which animals can become dormant and which cant, the researchers conclude that torpor and hibernation have evolved independently several times among warm-blooded animals.Some might interpret this as evolutions tremendous creativity and flexibility on full display. Feedback, however, interprets it as evolution having failed us. Its cold, dark and wet where we are, and Feedback quite fancies hibernating. Three months ought to do it.Got a story for Feedback?You can send stories to Feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com. Please include your home address. This weeks and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website.

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Reviews weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. As Ive admitted in this newsletter before, I love few things more than getting on an airplane. I know, its a bold statement from a climate reporter because of all the associated emissions, but its true. So Im as intrigued as the next person by efforts to revive supersonic flight. Last week, Boom Supersonic completed its first supersonic test flight of the XB-1 test aircraft. I watched the broadcast live, and the vibe was infectious, watching the hosts anticipation during takeoff and acceleration, and then their celebration once it was clear the aircraft had broken the sound barrier. And yet, knowing what I know about the climate, the promise of a return to supersonic flight is a little tarnished. Were in a spot with climate change where we need to drastically cut emissions, and supersonic flight would likely take us in the wrong direction. The whole thing has me wondering how fast is fast enough. The aviation industry is responsible for about 4% of global warming to date. And right now only about 10% of the global population flies on an airplane in any given year. As incomes rise and flight becomes more accessible to more people, we can expect air travel to pick up, and the associated greenhouse gas emissions to rise with it. If business continues as usual, emissions from aviation could double by 2050, according to a 2019 report from the International Civil Aviation Organization. Supersonic flight could very well contribute to this trend, because flying faster requires a whole lot more energyand consequently, fuel. Depending on the estimate, on a per-passenger basis, a supersonic plane will use somewhere between two and nine times as much fuel as a commercial jet today. (The most optimistic of those numbers comes from Boom, and it compares the companys own planes to first-class cabins.) In addition to the greenhouse gas emissions from increased fuel use, additional potential climate effects may be caused by pollutants like nitrogen oxides, sulfur, and black carbon being released at the higher altitudes common in supersonic flight. For more details, check out my latest story. Boom points to sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) as the solution to this problem. After all, these alternative fuels could potentially cut out all the greenhouse gases associated with burning jet fuel. The problem is, the market for SAFs is practically embryonic. They made up less than 1% of the jet fuel supply in 2024, and theyre still several times more expensive than fossil fuels. And currently available SAFs tend to cut emissions between 50% and 70%still a long way from net-zero. Things will (hopefully) progress in the time it takes Boom to make progress on reviving supersonic flightthe company plans to begin building its full-scale plane, Overture, sometime next year. But experts are skeptical that SAF will be as available, or as cheap, as itll need to be to decarbonize our current aviation industry, not to mention to supply an entirely new class of airplanes that burn even more fuel to go the same distance. The Concorde supersonic jet, which flew from 1969 to 2003, could get from New York to London in a little over three hours. Id love to experience that flightmoving faster than the speed of sound is a wild novelty, and a quicker flight across the pond could open new options for travel. One expert I spoke to for my story, after we talked about supersonic flight and how itll affect the climate, mentioned that hes actually trying to convince the industry that planes should actually be slowing down a little bit. By flying just 10% slower, planes could see outsized reductions in emissions. Technology can make our lives better. But sometimes, theres a clear tradeoff between how technology can improve comfort and convenience for a select group of people and how it will contribute to the global crisis that is climate change. Im not a Luddite, and I certainly fly more than the average person. But I do feel like, maybe we should all figure out how to slow down, or at least not tear toward the worst impacts of climate change faster. Now read the rest of The Spark Related reading We named sustainable aviation fuel as one of our 10 Breakthrough Technologies this year. The world of alternative fuels can be complicated. Heres everything you need to know about the wide range of SAFs. Rerouting planes could help reduce contrailsand aviations climate impacts. Read more in this story from James Temple. SARAH ROGERS / MITTR | PHOTO GETTY Another thing DeepSeek has crashed onto the scene, upending established ideas about the AI industry. One common claim is that the companys model could drastically reduce the energy needed for AI. But the story is more complicated than that, as my colleague James ODonnell covered in this sharp analysis. Keeping up with climate Donald Trump announced a 10% tariff on goods from China. Plans for tariffs on Mexico and Canada were announced, then quickly paused, this week as well. Heres more on what it could mean for folks in the US. (NPR) China quickly hit back with mineral export curbs on materials including tellurium, a key ingredient in some alternative solar panels. (Mining.com) If the tariffs on Mexico and Canada go into effect, theyd hit supply chains for the auto industry, hard. (Heatmap News)Researchers are scrambling to archive publicly available data from agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The Trump administration has directed federal agencies to remove references to climate change. (Inside Climate News) As of Wednesday morning, it appears that live data that tracks carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is no longer accessible on NOAAs website. (Try for yourself here)Staffers with Elon Musks department of government efficiency entered the NOAA offices on Wednesday morning, inciting concerns about plans for the agency. (The Guardian) The National Science Foundation, one of the USs leading funders of science and engineering research, is reportedly planning to lay off between 25% and 50% of its staff. (Politico) Our roads arent built for the conditions being driven by climate change. Warming temperatures and changing weather patterns are hammering roads, driving up maintenance costs. (Bloomberg) Researchers created a new strain of rice that produces much less methane when grown in flooded fields. The variant was made with traditional crossbreeding. (New Scientist) Oat milk maker Oatly is trying to ditch fossil fuels in its production process with industrial heat pumps and other electrified technology. But getting away from gas in food and beverage production isnt easy. (Canary Media) A new 3D study of the Greenland Ice Sheet reveals that crevasses are expanding faster than previously thought. (Inside Climate News) In other ice news, an Arctic geoengineering project shut down over concerns for wildlife. The nonprofit project was experimenting with using glass beads to slow melting, but results showed it was a threat to food chains. (New Scientist)

This post originally appeared in the Business Insider Today newsletter.You can sign up for Business Insider's daily newsletter here.Happy almost Friday! Google's reversal of its promise not to use AI for weapons or surveillance led some employees to run to their meme generators. "Are we the baddies?"In today's big story, it's the last day for federal workers to decide if they want to accept President Donald Trump's buyout offers.What's on deckMarkets: Citi shows no signs of joining Wall Street's RTO trend.Tech: Silicon Valley's new favorite buzzy term is "high agency."Business: Some burned-out doctors are ditching the operating room for the board room.But first, are you in or are you out?If this was forwarded to you, The big storyDecision day Al Drago/Getty Images It's a critical day for one of the most ambitious and unprecedented ways President Donald Trump is shaking up the federal workforce.Today marks the deadline for millions of government workers to accept the new administration's deferred resignation offer.BI's Ayelet Sheffey and Juliana Kaplan spoke to some workers mulling their options and grappling with questions about how the buyouts will actually work.Chief among their concerns are the impact the offer will have on retirement plans, how it will be affected by a potential government shutdown, and why they can't get more time to decide.Trump's buyout offer isn't completely unheard of. In fact, it looks pretty similar to Elon Musk's 2022 takeover of X. The key difference is that the public sector is known for its job stability, which may be why the offer is causing so much drama among its workers.The other elephant in the room is what'll happen if not enough workers resign. The government is aiming for 5-10% of its more than two million workers to take the deal.As of Tuesday, more than 20,000 workers had taken buyouts, but the Office of Personnel Management told BI it expected a large spike in the final runup to the deadline. Elon Musk. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images The Department of Government Efficiency is staying busy in the meantime.The US Agency for International Development is Trump and Musk's latest cost-cutting target. The agency's staff was notified earlier this week that all personnel except for a few essential workers would be placed on administrative leave on Friday.BI's Noah Sheidlower has a breakdown on how the foreign aid agency, which distributed nearly $32.5 billion last year, spends its money.Speaking of money, the group that controls government payments the Treasury Department is also in Musk's crosshairs. President Trump gave Musk's DOGE access to the government's payment system, which caused quite the stir.The White House has maintained DOGE is limited to "read-only access" and its work on the Treasury plays into DOGE's overall mission of reducing government waste. But that hasn't eased concerns over the potential impact on a system that manages trillions in payments, including Social Security and tax refunds.It's the latest example of the incredible power the world's richest man appears to hold within the US government. House Speaker Mike Johnson isn't worried, though. He defended DOGE's role and said there is a "gross overreaction in the media" over how Musk is trying to cut spending.News briefTop headlinesGoogle ends diversity hiring goals as it reviews DEI programs.Elon Musk says DOGE will make 'rapid safety upgrades' to the air traffic control system following deadly plane crash.Luigi Mangione's free-of-charge death penalty lawyer also repped WTC bomber Ramzi Yousef.Ex-Meta director sues the tech giant, alleging a 'toxic pattern of silencing women'.The CFO of the Office of Personnel Management, the chief HR agency for the federal government, resigns.AI and the cloud in focus for Wall Street as analysts grow bullish ahead of earnings.Andreessen Horowitz hires Daniel Penny, who was cleared last year in the killing of a subway rider.Trump and Musk's moves to ax USAID are 'flatly illegal,' experts say. It doesn't mean it won't happen.Jamie Dimon says he didn't run for president because he knew winning the White House would mean barely seeing his family for four years.3 things in markets Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters 1. Palantir stock is on a hot streak, but Wall Street's not biting. Palantir stock surged 28% after it reported a strong Q4 earnings beat, putting it up almost 35% this year. Even so, few analysts are bullish on it. They're concerned about Palantir's high valuation and skeptical it can grow enough to maintain its current stock price.2. Working for Citi doesn't mean having to go into the city. Wall Street titans are leading the charge with RTO mandates except Citigroup. On a quarterly call with executives last month, CEO Jane Fraser emphasized hybrid work and mentioned it could give the bank a competitive edge when it comes to recruitment. Regardless, the company is still shelling out $1.2 billion for its new London office.3. The advisor behind BlackRock's alternative assets expansion. Bob Steel, vice chair of boutique investment bank Perella Weinberg, has a laundry list of career achievements: two-time bank CEO, Goldman partner, and US Treasury undersecretary. More recently, Steel gave longtime friend Larry Fink some advice on BlackRock breaking into alternative investments. In a chat with BI, Steel explained his process with Fink and shared some wisdom for up-and-coming bankers.3 things in tech Ezra Bailey/Getty, Moussa81/Getty, Tyler Le/BI 1. Broke: "disruptor." Woke: "high agency." Silicon Valley has a new buzzword to describe the successful, smart, and self-motivated. It's called "high agency," and it's everyone's favorite new label.2. It's not "RIP Temu and Shein" anymore. The two retailers disrupted the e-commerce industry by avoiding paying duty on shipments through a provision of customs law called Section 321, also known as de minimis. Many thought Trump's recent executive order closing that loophole would be a death knell for the companies. Temu and Shein will suffer a blow but it might not be as bad as many initially thought. And if you recently placed an order, it should be fine.3. DeepSeek's low-cost AI revolution isn't here yet. When it burst onto the scene with its cheaper-to-build and cheaper-to-run models, DeepSeek was expected by some to revolutionize the entire AI startup system. That hasn't happened yet. Cloud providers are having trouble offering customers access to DeepSeek at fast and reliable speeds, slowing down the big switch to low-cost AI that startups had hoped for.3 things in business The Good Brigade/Getty, Yuichiro Chino/Getty, BlackJack3D/Getty, Ava Horton/BI 1. Doctors facing burnout may ditch the stethoscope. Tech companies are looking to bolster their credibility, especially with health innovation, and doctors are pitching in. Chief medical officers make $275,000 a year on average in the US and don't have the crazy hours doctors normally deal with. Some say these corporate roles let them have a bigger impact on an otherwise "broken" health system, even amid a looming physician shortage.2. Disney's game plan, in Iger's words. The company's sports streaming moves have been a roller coaster ride full of similar-sounding names Venu and Fubo and Hulu, oh my! The abundance of options makes it difficult for consumers to understand Disney's sports strategy, a point an analyst raised on the company's earnings call. CEO Bob Iger clarified the goal is to make ESPN "as accessible as possible" and gave a little more insight in response.3. "Moneyball" author Michael Lewis thinks the sports betting boom could become a mess. In 2018, gambling and media companies approached sports betting with caution. Today, gambling apps are met with little resistance, and college-aged men are getting in on the action. BI's Peter Kafka spoke with Lewis about how sports betting went mainstream and what the fallout could be.In other newsHow US immigrants working illegally help fund programs they can't access, like Social Security and Medicare.Sam's Club CEO says serving all of America is 'the definition of being inclusive.'Anthropic-backed startup Alma debuts an AI-powered nutrition app that tracks and analyzes eating habits.Uber CEO says making self-driving taxis mainstream will 'take way, way longer.'US tech giants are rolling back DEI. Its ripple effects could spill over to Europe.California's largest home insurer wants to hike rates by 22% for homeowners to help pay for LA's wildfires.100,000 eggs were stolen from a supplier in Pennsylvania amid rising prices.What's happening todayAmazon reports earnings.New York Fashion Week begins.The Insider Today team: Dan DeFrancesco, deputy editor and anchor, in New York. Grace Lett, editor, in Chicago. Ella Hopkins, associate editor, in London. Hallam Bullock, senior editor, in London. Amanda Yen, associate editor, in New York. Elizabeth Casolo, fellow, in Chicago.

Major airlines are integrating an Apple AirTag location feature into their bag tracing services.Lufthansa and Virgin Atlantic are some of the first to use the feature Apple announced in November.Lufthansa, which briefly banned AirTags in 2022, said it's part of ongoing "digital innovations."A number of major airlines are rolling out a new baggage service that will come in handy for anyone using AirTags.Virgin Atlantic and Lufthansa announced this week that passengers can now share the location of their AirTags with customer service teams to help find and retrieve their lost luggage.Lufthansa said in a press release that passengers can now "privately and securely" share the location of an AirTag with their baggage tracing service."The group's airlines integrate this information into their systems accordingly and can therefore digitally support baggage tracking," said the German carrier, which also owns Austrian, Swiss, Brussels Airlines and ITA Airways.Corneel Koster, COO at Virgin Atlantic, said the innovation would give customers peace of mind on progress to locate a mislaid bag. Apple AirTags are being integrated into the baggage tracing services of major airlines. Dave Johnson In November, Apple announced it was working with more than 15 airlines, including United, British Airways, Vueling, and Qantas on incorporating a new "Find My" software feature of iOS 18.2 into their "customer service process for locating mishandled or delayed bags."Aviation news site Paddle Your Own Kanoo reports that the AirTag location-sharing feature also has additional security measures. Passengers can stop sharing the AirTag's location with the airline at any point, and location-sharing ends as soon as bags are returned. Lufthansa briefly banned AirTags in 2022. Silas Stein/picture alliance via Getty Images "We have been able to achieve significant improvements in the last few months in the area of baggage tracing," said Lufthansa's Oliver Schmitt. "The integration of our customers' AirTag data opens up additional possibilities for us to act even more efficiently and quickly."Lufthansa's integration of AirTags into its baggage tracing service comes after the airline briefly banned active AirTags in 2022.As BI previously reported, the ban was scrapped a few days later after the airline decided the tracking devices did "not pose a safety risk."

Theology isnt usually part of the job description for Americas vice president, but thats not stopping JD Vance from giving it a try just a couple of weeks into his new position.In a Fox News segment on immigration, Vance laid out what he called a very Christian concept: You love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that, you can focus [on] and prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that.When British politician and former diplomat Rory Stewart challenged Vance on X calling his take on Christianity bizarre and arguing that we dont need him telling us in which order to love the would-be theologian, Vance, replied: Just google ordo amoris. Thats Latin for the order of love or rightly ordered love. Its a concept found in the writings of Augustine of Hippo, one of early Christianitys most important thinkers, and in the writings of Thomas Aquinas, a medieval philosopher influenced by Augustine. In Vances reading, ordo amoris means that theres a hierarchy to our moral obligations: We should prioritize our family and our community over people outside our borders. There are a lot of problems with Vances drive-by exegesis of Christian texts. Not only does his interpretation run against the dominant message of the Gospels (which is about radical love, as bishops and priests have been at pains to point out), it also runs against what Augustine himself actually said. Well get to that. But first, lets recognize that this isnt just an argument over religious texts; people can and do have much the same argument without invoking faith one way or another. In fact, Vance is capturing an intuition that is pretty popular among religious and secular people alike, as reflected in the contemporary cliche charity starts at home.And Vance didnt just cross swords with any old online combatant. Stewart is an avid globalist, documenting a two-year trek through central Asia in an award-winning book and serving for a time as a deputy governor in Iraq. More recently, he worked as the president of GiveDirectly, a nonprofit that gives cash to people living in extreme poverty, no strings attached. In that sense, hes an embodiment of the idea that we should actually be prioritizing strangers in developing countries a whole lot more than we currently do. Given that all this comes against the backdrop of the Trump administrations anti-immigration push and its seemingly successful effort to destroy USAID, the government agency that administers foreign aid, this is really about a clash of worldviews.At the heart of it is a question that should be of genuine interest to anyone who cares about helping others: Is it right to put your local community first? Or do you owe more than you might think to total strangers living halfway around the world? First, lets talk about the Bible.A big part of what made Jesuss message so radical was that he did not advocate putting biological family or tribe first; instead, he imagined a new family of believers, which anyone could join. When Jesus was told that his mother and brothers were waiting for him outside, he famously said, Who is my mother, and who are my brothers? Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.Another famous proof text is Jesuss Parable of the Good Samaritan. The Jesuit priest and writer James Martin, who took to X to refute Vances claims, summarized the parable like this:To try to undermine this picture, Vance supporters have brought up texts from elsewhere in the Bible like 1 Timothy, where the apostle Paul appears to prioritize helping ones own family, saying, Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.But a little historical context goes a long way. As the National Catholic Reporter explains, in early Christianity, widows, among the most vulnerable, became a litmus test for whether the churchs love could be more than abstract words. But there was tension some families in Ephesus [then a hotbed of Christian evangelism] were neglecting their responsibility to care for their own, assuming the church would shoulder it all. Hence Pauls reminder that you cant just ignore your own familys needs altogether.We could spend ages investigating other scriptural texts like when Jesus said, Love your enemies. But its actually more instructive to go straight to Augustine himself and ask whether he in fact said what people like Vance think he did. Heres Augustine on ordo amoris:Further, all men are to be loved equally. But since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special regard to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you. For, suppose that you had a great deal of some commodity, and felt bound to give it away to somebody who had none, and that it could not be given to more than one person; if two persons presented themselves, neither of whom had either from need or relationship a greater claim upon you than the other, you could do nothing fairer than choose by lot to which you would give what could not be given to both. Just so among men: since you cannot consult for the good of them all, you must take the matter as decided for you by a sort of lot, according as each man happens for the time being to be more closely connected with you.Augustine is not saying that your family intrinsically has a greater moral claim on you than strangers. Instead, he suggests that ordo amoris is a concession to a pragmatic limitation: You cannot do good to all. To understand how this works, he invites us to consider a specific scenario where the commodity youve got is one that could not be given to more than one person and where none of the potential recipients has a greater moral claim on you than another.What would be a scenario like that? Imagine that youre sailing on a stormy sea, and you see two people drowning. Theres only time for you to save one. Both are in equal need and both are strangers to you. Augustine says the fairest thing would be to, essentially, flip a coin (rather than picking the stranger who promises to pay you handsomely if you save them, for example). In life, when we face the pragmatic limitation of you cannot do good to all, Augustine says that we can treat the accident of birth as the coin toss: I can save my own relative, not because theyre intrinsically more deserving, but because fate happened to make them my relative. But notice that this situation is not at all parallel to the situation Americans are in today when it comes to helping people abroad. This is not a you cannot do good to all scenario. The United States has so much wealth that it absolutely could do more for others. Its the richest country in the world, and many Americans are in the global 1 percent.And money, thankfully, is a commodity that can be given to more than one person you can just divvy it up. Its not like the drowning strangers scenario, where you cant help both and have to choose just one. America can help both its own citizens and people abroad the only question is how much money to put in each bucket and currently, less than 1 percent of the national budget is going to foreign aid. Finally, people in low-income countries definitely do have from need a greater claim upon you than the other. Poverty in America is horrific and should absolutely be better addressed. At the same time, people living in extreme poverty in low-income countries are in even more dire straits. And money donated there can save and improve more lives (if its used wisely), because a dollar goes further abroad. So Vances attempt to map Augustines ordo amoris onto our current situation doesnt make any sense. That said, it captures an intuition that many people share: Dont we have a special duty to those near and dear to us? Completely apart from any religious debate, this is a question that modern philosophers have clashed over a lot as the rise of globalization has forced us to think about how our action or inaction might affect people were never going to meet. The philosophy of drowning strangersUtilitarian philosopher Peter Singer proposed a famous thought experiment: Imagine that a child is drowning in front of you. You see her flailing in a shallow pond, and you know you could easily wade into the waters and save her. Your clothes would get muddy, but your life wouldnt be in any danger. Should you rescue her?Yes, of course! Walking past the child would be incredibly callous. But according to Singer, were all basically walking past that child every day by neglecting to donate to people in poor countries. Since we live in a rich society and giving up a little bit of our wealth wouldnt substantially harm our lives, we should give to save the lives of the millions of kids who die every year from preventable causes.That argument has been very influential, both in the ivory tower and beyond. It helped inspire the effective altruism movement, which encourages people to donate as cost-effectively as possible to give where their money can do the most good instead of just donating to their local community or pet causes. Its about doing good impartially rather than prioritizing your nearest and dearest.But Singers argument has also stirred up a lot of debate and confusion, as people who try to optimize their giving for maximum cost-effectiveness sometimes end up feeling callous when they ignore those suffering right in front of them. According to philosopher Bernard Williams a staunch critic of utilitarianism people are right to feel squeamish about ignoring those who are near and dear. In another famous passage related to drowning strangers, Williams said that if a man sees two people drowning, and one is his wife and the other is a stranger, and he pauses to consider whether rescuing his wife would maximize the overall good more than rescuing the stranger, he has had one thought too many. Williams argued that moral agency does not sit in a contextless vacuum it is always some specific persons agency, and as specific people we have specific commitments. A mom has a commitment to ensuring her kids well-being, over and above her general wish for all kids everywhere to be well. Utilitarianism says she has to consider everyones well-being equally, with no special treatment for her own kid but Williams says thats an absurd demand. It alienates her from a core part of herself, ripping her into pieces, and wrecking her integrity as a moral agent.By extension, there is something reasonable in Vances claim that its morally appropriate to give preferential treatment to citizens of your own country. America is a democracy, and the prime responsibility of a democratic government is to respond to the needs of its citizens. But heres the thing: It does not follow at all that America should gut foreign aid or keep out immigrants.Foreign aid and immigration are not the reasons why some US citizens arent well provided for, and pretending otherwise is a distraction from government-enabled wealth inequality which the Trump administration could address, if it wanted to, by raising taxes on billionaires instead of lowering them. The foreign aid agency USAID actually bolsters Americans own interests. And immigrants, we know, grow the economy, making everyone better off on balance. So, whether at the level of government or at the level of the individual, the real question is not whether to (in Vances words) love your fellow citizens or prioritize the rest of the world, but how best to divvy up the budget between them.There is likely no one objectively right answer to this question a perfect formula that tells us the optimal allocations. Still, that doesnt mean all splits are equally convincing; some will be a lot more credible than others. For the richest country in the world to spend less than 1 percent of its budget helping other countries seems, if anything, too low. Likewise, for Americans as individuals to devote less than 1 percent of our charitable giving to the most cost-effective charities out there (which is what were currently doing) seems somewhat absurd. Balance is important; this is not an argument for only ever giving abroad. But when you look at the data on giving, its clear that the scales are actually extremely imbalanced right now theyre weighted almost entirely toward helping Americans. Against that backdrop, theres a strong case for both the American government and the American individual to devote more to others.Or if you want to put it in religious terms: You are all looking forward to greeting Christ seated in heaven. Attend to him lying under the arches, attend to him hungry, attend to him shivering with cold, attend to him needy, attend to him a foreigner. That quote, by the way, comes from Augustine. Youve read 1 article in the last monthHere at Vox, we're unwavering in our commitment to covering the issues that matter most to you threats to democracy, immigration, reproductive rights, the environment, and the rising polarization across this country.Our mission is to provide clear, accessible journalism that empowers you to stay informed and engaged in shaping our world. By becoming a Vox Member, you directly strengthen our ability to deliver in-depth, independent reporting that drives meaningful change.We rely on readers like you join us.Swati SharmaVox Editor-in-ChiefSee More: