Low Earth orbit is already getting crowded. Around 14,500 active satellites are circling Earth, and roughly two-thirds of them are run by SpaceX. Now, in filings connected to Elon Musks plan to fold SpaceX and his AI firm xAI together ahead of an IPO, the company has asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for permission to launch up to one million more.
The figure is so large it would dwarf the number of satellites currently in orbit. In fact, it is more than every object ever sent into space by every nation combined. So why is Musk planning it, and what would it mean for the rest of us?
In a public update posted on the SpaceX website as part of the merger process between SpaceX and xAI, Musk wrote that Launching a constellation of a million satellites that operate as orbital data centers is a first step towards becoming a Kardashev II-level civilization. The Kardashev scale is a measure of technological development first outlined in the 1960s by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev, who died in 2019.
While the scale of the proposal may have impressed Kardashev, many experts are far more skeptical. A million new satellites would represent roughly a 67-fold increase over todays orbital population. Proposals on the scale being discussedup to one million satellitesrepresent a step change that deserves the same level of scrutiny we would apply to any other major global infrastructure project,” says Ruskin Hartley, CEO of DarkSky International, a nonprofit focused on preserving night skies and mitigating the impacts of light pollution.
Satellite deployment at such a scale would have huge knock-on effects. The consequences extend well beyond astronomy, Hartley says. They include cumulative impacts on the night sky, increased atmospheric pollution from satellite launches and re-entries, and a sharply elevated risk of orbital congestion and collision cascades that could impair access to low Earth orbit for all nations. When satellites burn up, they release metals such as aluminum into the upper atmosphere, a process scientists and the U.K. Space Agency warn is still poorly understood but likely accelerating as megaconstellations grow.
There is also the question of safety. Space is already crowded with satellites that power communications, enable GPS navigation, and support countless services we rely on every day. Adding vastly more objects increases the chances of close approaches, which, if not monitored and avoided, can result in collisions and cascading debris. SpaceX will say they can do that stationkeeping successfully, but it doesn’t take many failures to have you end up in a bad situation, says Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and space sustainability analyst based in London and Boston and formerly at the Center for Astrophysics. The SpaceX satellites will be in the higher part of low Earth orbit where it will take a long time for failed satellites to re-enter.
Hartley, for his part, argues that these risks demand far more scrutiny. Decisions made now will shape the near-Earth environment for generations, he says.
Not everyone believes the million-satellite figure is even realistic. As to the question of if its practical, I would think not, says Caleb Henry, director of research at Quilty Space. Filing for 1 million satellites is probably a way for SpaceX to push the envelope before accepting whatever fraction regulators deem acceptable.
That tactic may already be working. The FCC initially rejected a 2022 SpaceX proposal to launch 30,000 satellites, before later approving it in 25% tranches. The commission authorized another 7,500 satellites this January, for a total approval of 15,000 satellites from that filing, says Henry. SpaceX is also asking the FCC to waive standard deployment milestones, and says the economics of the plan depend on Starship becoming fully reusable, a goal it has not yet reached.
In that sense, the million-satellite request is not a signal of imminent growth, but a bid to stake out spectrum and orbital real estate for a future that Musk is already trying to define.
President Donald Trump’s administration is expected to unveil its grandest plan yet to rebuild supply chains of critical minerals needed for everything from jet engines to smartphones, likely through purchase agreements with partners on top of creating a $12 billion U.S. strategic reserve to help counter China’s dominance.Vice President JD Vance is set to deliver a keynote address Wednesday at a meeting that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is hosting with officials from several dozen European, Asian and African nations. The U.S. is expected to sign deals on supply chain logistics, though details have not been revealed. Rubio met Tuesday with foreign ministers from South Korea and India to discuss critical minerals mining and processing.The meeting and expected agreements will come just two days after Trump announced Project Vault, or a stockpile of critical minerals to be funded with a $10 billion loan from the U.S. Export-Import Bank and nearly $1.67 billion in private capital.Trump’s Republican administration is making such bold moves after China, which controls 70% of the world’s rare earths mining and 90% of the processing, choked off the flow of the elements in response to Trump’s tariff war. The two superpowers are in a one-year truce after Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in October and agreed to pull back on high tariffs and stepped-up rare earth restrictions.But China’s limits remain tighter than they were before Trump took office.“We don’t want to ever go through what we went through a year ago,” Trump said on Monday when announcing Project Vault.
Countering China’s dominance on critical minerals
Other countries might join with the Trump administration in buying up critical minerals and taking other steps to spur industry development because the trade war revealed how vulnerable Western countries are to China, said Pini Althaus, who founded Oklahoma rare earth miner USA Rare Earth in 2019.“They’re looking at setting up sort of a buyers’ club, if you will,” said Althaus, who now is working to develop new mines in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan as CEO of Cove Capital. “The key producers and key consumers of critical minerals will sort of get together and work on pricing structures, floor pricing and other things.”The government last week also made its fourth direct investment in an American critical minerals producer when it extended $1.6 billion to USA Rare Earth in exchange for stock and a repayment agreement.Seeking government funding these days is like meeting with private equity investors because officials are scrutinizing companies to ensure anyone they invest in can deliver, Althaus said. And the government is demanding terms designed to generate a return for taxpayers as loans are repaid and stock prices increase, he said.
The stockpile strategy
Meanwhile, the U.S. Export-Import Bank’s board this week approved the $10 billion loan the largest in its history to help finance the setup of the U.S. Strategic Critical Minerals Reserve. It is tasked with ensuring access to critical minerals and related products for manufacturers, including battery maker Clarios, energy equipment manufacturer GE Vernova, digital storage company Western Digital and aerospace giant Boeing, according to the policy bank.Bank President and Chairman John Jovanovic told CNBC that the project creates a public-private partnership formula that “is uniquely suited and puts America’s best foot forward.”“What it does is it creates a scenario where there are no free riders. Everybody pitches in to solve this huge problem,” he said.Manufacturers, which benefit the most from the reserve, are making a long-term financial commitment, Jovanovic said, while the government loan spurs private investments.The stockpile strategy may help spark a “more organic” pricing model that excludes China, which has used its dominance to flood the market with lower-priced products to squeeze out competitors, said Wade Senti, president of the U.S. permanent magnet company AML.The Trump administration also has injected public money directly into the sector. The Pentagon has shelled out nearly $5 billion over the past year to help ensure its access to the materials after the trade war laid bare just how beholden the U.S. is to China.
Efforts get some bipartisan support
A bipartisan group of lawmakers last month proposed creating a new agency with $2.5 billion to spur production of rare earths and the other critical minerals. The lawmakers applauded the steps by the Trump administration.“It’s a clear sign that there is bipartisan support for securing a robust domestic supply of critical minerals that both reduces our reliance on China and stabilizes the market,” Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Todd Young, R-Ind., said in a joint statement Tuesday.Building up a stockpile will help American companies weather future rare earth supply disruptions, but that will likely be a long-term effort because the materials are still scarce right now with China’s restrictions, said David Abraham, a rare earths expert who has followed the industry for decades and wrote the book “The Elements of Power.”The Trump administration has focused on reinvigorating critical minerals production, but Abraham said it’s also important to encourage development of manufacturing that will use them. He noted that Trump’s decisions to cut incentives for electric vehicles and wind turbines have undercut demand for these elements in America.
Didi Tang, Josh Funk and Matthew Lee, Associated Press
The footage was real, verified, and delightful: a security camera clip of a coyote bouncing on a backyard trampoline in Los Angeles. Days after the video went viral, near-identical kangaroos, bears, and rabbits began circulating too, all generated by AI. Millions shared them, believing theyd captured another glimpse of animals behaving hilariously.
It was an amusing mix-up, but it was also a warning.
AI-generated video tools have moved far beyond producing surreal or obviously manipulated clips. They are now convincingly imitating the formats we instinctively trust most: CCTV, dashcams, police bodycams, wildlife cameras, and handheld eyewitness footage. These are the clips that shape public understanding during protests, disasters, violence, and emergencies. And the fake ones are becoming indistinguishable from the real thing.
AI-generated realism has already entered the news cycle
At Storyful, we verify thousands of real-world videos for newsrooms and brands worldwide. This year we ran a test: we fed real breaking-news headlines from our own platform into one of the newest AI video models.
In seconds, we got clips that mimicked the texture and perspective of eyewitness reporting. Not glossy AI experiments, news-like footage that could plausibly land in a newsroom inbox during a breaking story.
Side by side with the original real clips, even trained journalists needed to slow down and scrutinize the details.
Consider this example, inspired by a verified authentic video posted to social media in the wake of heavy monsoon rains in India:
Firefighters Save Man Clinging to Pole Amid Raging Indian Floods
A man was rescued on Tuesday, September 16, in Indias Uttarakhand state after spending more than four hours clinging onto an electricity pole as deadly floodwaters raged around him, local media reported.
Real:
And this fully synthetic video, created by prompting OpenAIs video generator app Sora with the title of the first video.
Fake:
This is no longer a theoretical future. It is happening right now.
Guardrails are already slipping. Tutorials circulate openly on Reddit explaining how to remove the watermark on videos created by one of the most popular AI-video generators, OpenAIs Sora. Restrictions on certain AI prompts can be bypassedwhen they existor models can be run locally without curbs on highly realistic content. And because these tools can create fake CCTV or disaster footage on demand, the question isnt whether AI can generate convincing videos of things that never happened. Its how far will a convincing fake spread before anyone checks it?
Why AI-generated videos feel believable
The most significant shift in AI-generated video is not just its appearance, but also its behavior.
Real eyewitness footage contains the rough edges that come with real life: a shaky hand, the camera pointed at the ground before the action begins, long stretches of nothing happening, imperfect angles and missed details.
AI does not yet replicate these moments. It goes straight to the action, framed center-perfect, lit cleanly, and paced like a scene built for maximum impact. It offers the moment we expect to see, without the messy human lead-up that usually surrounds it.
The reason is simple. Most models are still trained heavily on cinematic material rather than chaotic, handheld user-generated content. They understand drama better than they understand reality. That gap is what allows verification teams to spot the differencefor now.
As models evolve and prompt-writing improves, these behavioral tells will fade. The training data for these video foundation models includes both shaky bystander videos and slick documentaries, allowing them to ably imitate their style and sense of realism.
Public confidence is already eroding
The Reuters Digital News Report finds that 58% of global audiences fear they can no longer tell real from fake online. That fear used to apply mainly to politics and propaganda. Now it applies to harmless backyard videos.
This marks a deeper psychological shift. Once a viewer starts doubting everyday videos, they dont toggle that skepticism on and off. If they question a dog rescue, they will question a protest. If they question a prank, they will question a war zone.
Trust doesnt collapse in a single dramatic moment. It erodes drip by drip, through thousands of small uncertainties. And as AI-generated video becomes abundant, authentic footage becomes scarce.
How to tell when a video is AI-generated
AI detection tools can be a useful part of your workflow, but they are not a replacement for human verification. According to Storyfuls analysis, current tools achieve 6575% accuracy under ideal conditions, but that accuracy drops below 50% within weeks of a new AI model release. These are the signals Storyful’s verification teams use daily, cues the public can learn to recognize quickly.
AI starts at the climax.Real footage almost always includes dead time or fumbling before the action.
Subjects sit perfectly in the center of the frame.Eyewitnesses rarely capture the chaos of breaking news like cinematographers.
Motion is too smoothReal user-generated content stutters, shakes, refocuses, and slips.
Timestamps, signage, and license plates break down under scrutinyAI often approximates these details instead of rendering thm accurately.
Disaster and wildlife clips look too composed.Real life is uncertain. AI often looks staged.
These cues wont hold forever, but right now they offer critical protection.
Authenticity is now an asset
Tech platforms can add more guardrails to their video generator tools, regulators can update frameworks, detection tools can improve, and so can our own critical faculties. And as newsrooms help audiences navigate through the morass of fakery, the most impactful way they can rebuild trust is to be transparent.
Audiences no longer trust sources say. They want to see how a journalist or a newsroom knows something is real.
More news organizations are adopting verification-forward formats, including BBC Verify and CBS News Confirmed, which integrate open-source and forensic checks into reporting, examining provenance, imagery, metadata patterns, and geolocation when relevant. Storyful Newswire equips all of our partners with these basic but essential details about every video on our platform.
This transparency is becoming the primary differentiator in an environment where AI-generated video is cheap, fast, and everywhere. The more AI-generated footage floods the ecosystem, the more credibility belongs to organizations that make showing their work a key part of the story.
The internet’s most unforgettable videos were never perfect. They were unpredictable, flawed, and human, the kinds of moments AI still struggles to imagine. AI-generated footage can now mimic the visual language of truth. But it cannot yet reproduce the randomness of real life. What’s at stake when it does isn’t simply misinformation. It’s the public’s ability to trust what it sees in the moments that matter most.
James Law is Editor in Chief of Storyful, a news agency used by 70 percent of the top 20 global newsrooms specializing in verifying breaking news and viral video.
In procurement documents quietly published last month, Immigration and Customs revealed that the Veterans Affairs administration abruptly cut off its access to vaccines that the agency has historically provided to the people it detains. It was one of a series of medical support services that were suddenly halted, and comes amid long-standing and growing concerns about the health care provided at ICE facilities.
ICE subsequently pursued an emergency procurement to access vaccines in another way, according to the contracting documents released by the government. The Department of Homeland Security, in which ICE is housed, claims there was no gap in the vaccine service provided by the agency. Still, the document is a small window into the state of ICE operations as the agency continues to ramp up immigration enforcement efforts.
ICE had for decades secured what calls seasonal and routine vaccines from the VA Financial Services Center, which provides support to both the veterans agency and other federal departments. Earlier government documents, previously reported by Popular Information, show that the VA suddenly cut off services for the ICE Health Corps back in October, which created subsequent issues for both medical claims processing and the pharmacy benefits management for people detained at ICE facilities. Now, another set of documents show that disintegration of the collaboration between the VA and ICE even extended to vaccines and created what the document, as an absolute emergency.
ICE reveals relatively little about the extent to which it actually provides vaccines to detainees, and the agency did not comment on which particular vaccines it actually provides. The agency did distribute tens of thousands of COVID-19 vaccine doses during the height of the pandemic, but further information isnt available.
There are already serious concerns about the quality and extent of health services provided to ICE detainees. The transmission of illnessesincluding the flu and Hep Aare well documented at ICE facilities, and the risk of an outbreak has grown as ICE has sought to round up and detain more people, overcrowding detention centers. ICE recently paused movement at one detention facility in Texas because of a measles outbreak, and the agency is facing several class action lawsuits over the state of detainees health care.
Over the years, there have been many documented outbreaks of measles, mumps, influenza, chickenpox, and other infectious diseases in detained migrants in ICE detention centers, Nathan Lo, a Stanford professor who studies infectious diseases, tells Fast Company. Many of these outbreaks are quite unusual which underscore that its these conditions that predispose to these outbreaks. Adults are often not even offered vaccines, Lo adds.
ICE claimed in the documents, which were posted publicly in January, that the VA abruptly and instantly terminated the agreement in October, leaving the DHS component with no mechanism to provide vaccines to undocumented people. It is an absolute emergency for ICE to immediately procure vaccine support because lack of this support will delay critical and life-saving vaccines, the procurement justification said. DHS tells Fast Company that there was never a gap in services because they were able to secure a new vendor. ICE did not answer a series of questions about its vaccine provision, including which vaccines the agency offers detainees, or provide further details about its reliance on the VA.
When Fast Company asked the Veterans Affairs Department about the situation, the agencys press secretary Peter Kasperowicz only said that under the new administration, the VA does not provide any services or support to illegal immigrants. We are solely focused on providing the best possible care and benefits to the Veterans, families, caregivers and survivors we serve.
Under the Trump administration, ICE has aimed to deport a record number of people, which has exacerbated existing and serious concerns about the health and safety of detention centers and extremely limited oversight. More than 32 people died in ICE custody last year, making 2025 the deadliest year for the agency in decades, The Guardian reported.
ICE has systematically neglectedand actively harmedthe health and well-being of the people it detains for as long as the agency has existed, just like all the U.S. government agencies throughout history that have caged and deported people, says Ana Linares, a paralegal focused on mental health care at legal access at the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, one of the groups leading lawsuits against ICE. The only solution that centers real health and safety is to end ICE detention and allow people to pursue their immigration processes in freedom with the support and care of family and community.”
The VA did not provide any more details over its decision to cut off vaccine support to ICE, but its possible the agency made the decision in the wake of Executive Order 14218, which the Trump Administration announced in February and dubbed the Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders. The order directed agencies to analyze taxpayer-funded funds that went to unqualified aliens and take any appropriate actions to end those programs. In response to the order, several other agencies, including the Department of Education and the Department of Labor, began reviews of their programs. As detailed by Popular Information, the VA had previously faced right-wing backlash for providing this service to ICE, but its not clear if that backlash was related to the VAs decision.
When asked for comment, the Department of Homeland Security said it was a long-standing practice for the agency to provide medical care to people in ICE custody, including various medical and mental health screenings and health assessments. As we transitioned contracts, there were no gaps in medical careincluding access to necessary vaccines, which are being provided. Illegal aliens in ICE custody still have access to vaccines like they always have, Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary for the agency, told Fast Company.
We live in a world of increasing change. The international order is shifting and political certainties are evaporating day by day. Technological shifts are changing how we experience the world and interact with others. And in the workplace, AI is poised to unleash what might be the most revolutionary set of changes humanity has experienced since the first hunter-gatherers settled down to grow crops and build cities.
But while change is everywhere, we still find it hard to manage. The statistics around organizational change have always been brutal. For at least the last quarter century, corporate transformation efforts have failed at a remarkable rate: only three out of ten are brought to something approaching a successful conclusion. The age of AI will make things even more challenging. We will need to adapt more rapidly and more comprehensively, and we will need to manage multiple layers of continuous change at any one time.
How will we cope? Many different factors contribute to making change hard, but one in particular stands out: change is tiring. At the human level, constant transformation depletes our energy, attention, and commitment. At the organizational level, this depletion translates into stalled initiatives, institutional resistance, and a diminishing capacity for further adaptation.
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To make the process of change navigable for real humansrather than the compliant ideals who often appear in strategy deckswe need to rethink how we understand change. We need to find the stable foundations that persist amidst the maelstrom of transformation.
The adaptation fallacy
The standard response to the reality of ever-increasing change is to insist that individuals and organizations simply adapt to it. Everything flows, as the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus is reported to have said. The world is in flux, nothing is fixed, and we should all get used to the idea that the stability of the past was just a temporary illusion.
This ancient wisdom has become something of a cliché, the It is what it is of the business world. It is offered up as a slogan to hold onto, a manifesto that distils the increasingly rapid change of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. But it doesnt do much to help people stay afloat.
Human beings are not infinitely malleable. There is a psychological and physical toll to constant, chaotic change that compounds in two distinct ways.
The first is the sheer quantity of simultaneous initiativesthe burden of switching between half a dozen transformation efforts at once. People find themselves juggling competing priorities, each with its own vocabulary, metrics, and demands on their attention. It becomes hard to see the big picture because the parts never stay still long enough to focus. The cognitive overhead of keeping track of everything crowds out the close attention that each single initiative requires.
The second is the exhausting length of individual change processes that can stretch over many months, or even years. The reasons for the change, once vivid and urgent, become abstract and distant. Champions move on, new people arrive who werent part of the original vision, and maintaining momentum becomes harder with each passing quarter.
The demand that team members adapt to the new reality addresses neither problem. The flux pushes and pulls them in different directions with no coherence, giving them no stable ground to stand on. Expecting people to get used to it amounts to expecting people not to be human.
Leaders who demand adaptation without addressing the underlying human experience are not solving the problem. They are adding to it.
The other Heraclitus
Heraclitus has some real wisdom that can help here, but we need to move past the most common versions of his sayings.
Heraclitus most famous aphorism is usually rendered as You cannot step into the same river twice. The idea is that when you step into the river, the water flows on and so it is not the same when you take your next step. Panta rhei. Everything flows.
But there is another version of this saying that comes closer to capturing what Heraclitus actually meant: We step and do not step into the same river twice.
The difference is small, but it matters. Yes, the water flows. Yes, the river is never the same from one moment to the next. But the river itself remains. The river has an identity that persists through its constant flow.
There is an important lesson here for organizations seeking to manage change. Recognizing that things flow is important. But we also have to identify and spotlight what it is that persists through that change.
Finding, defining, and celebrating the order that underlies the chaos is essential if we do not want to be swept away. The task is not to eliminate fluxthat is neither possible nor desirablebut to identify and preserve the stability that gives change its meaning.
Purpose, identity, strategic clarity: these define the organization and give it its identity. They provide the stable vessel that allows people to float happily along on the flowing water rather than being pulled under by the constant motion.
Providing this stability is the leaders responsibility. The constants that allow people to navigate change do not maintain themselves. They must be deliberately established, clearly communicated, and actively protected.
What leaders must do
If change fatigue is not a failure of individual resilience but a failure of organizational design, then leaders must take responsibility for building organizations in which change happens more easily. Here are five principles that can help provide stability in a changing world.
Be discerning about what you change. Not every transformation deserves equal energy. The familiar danger of chasing shiny objectsconstantly running from one initiative to the nextundermines the efforts that actually matter. Every proposed change should be tested against the organizations strategic purpose. If it doesnot clearly advance the core mission, it should not be adding to the cognitive burden on your teams.
Communicate the why, not just the what. Much of change fatigue comes not from the pace of change itself but from the cognitive burden of not understanding how changes connect. When people cannot see how a new process, tool, or structure contributes to an outcome, changes feel arbitrary and exhausting. Often, even C-suite executives are not fully aligned on precisely why things matter. That confusion cascades downward, multiplying fatigue at every level. Leaders must articulate the purpose behind each initiative and show how it fits into a coherent whole.
Build a unified narrative. When organizations pursue multiple change initiatives simultaneously, a unified story smooths the cognitive burden by holding the pieces together. Rather than experiencing six disconnected transformations, people can understand themselves as participating in a single journey with multiple dimensions. The narrative does not eliminate the work, but it reduces the sense of fragmentation.
Create systemic anchors that survive turnover. Long-term change efforts may see key leaders depart before the work is complete. If the change depends entirely on individual champions, it will falter when those individuals leave. There must be a process coregovernance structures, documentation, embedded practicesthat can survive personnel changes and maintain momentum independent of any single person.
Co-design the change with the humans who must live with it. Change fatigue intensifies when transformations are handed down fully formed, only to collide with realities about which leaders were unaware. Co-design reverses this logic. Frontline staff know the constraints they face; customers know what the change feels like on the receiving end. When the people involved help shape the new way of working that will affect them, compliance turns into ownership, and the change arrives already adapted to the world it must survive in.
Principles in practice
A clear illustration of these principles being put into successful practice comes from Gold Coast Mental Health and Specialist Services in Queensland, Australia, which undertook a sustained transformation to support the adoption of a Zero Suicide approach. The case is instructive both for the ambition of the goalto permanently shift the culture of a whole health systemand for the care that was taken to make the change sustainable over time.
From the outset, the program was framed as a system-wide approach rather than as the heroic efforts of individual practitioners. This distinction matters. When success depends on personal endurance, organizations quietly burn through their people. By treating transformation as a collective endeavor supported by organizational structures rather than individual willpower, the program avoided placing impossible burdens on staff already working in an emotionally demanding field.
The new practices were institutionalized, not merely announced. Training reached more than 500 staff and was then embedded into orientation for new hires and supported by online modules, face-to-face sessions, and custom-produced materials designed with the local culture in mind. The change was designed to outlast the people who initiated itthe kind of systemic anchor that keeps momentum alive even as personnel turn over.
Crucially, the service built feedback loops to prevent drift. Staff received timely data on adherence to the new pathway, followed by supervision and coaching to embed skills. This continuous improvement cycle meant that standards did not have to be constantly re-litigated; the system itself kept reinforcing what good practice looked like.
Co-design was an essential component of the Gold Coast approach. The services culture change strategy explicitly integrates suicide attempt and loss survivors in leadership and planning roles, recognizing that effective prevention requires perspectives beyond those of clinicians. The result is that change is shaped by those most exposed to its failure modes.
Gold Coasts transformation success did not depend on asking already-stretched professionals to simply try harder. Instead, the program leaders ensured that their teams could see the unifying structures that provided stability, meaning, and identity through change.
Conclusion
The 70% failure rate is not a law of nature. It is the predictable result of asking people to navigate constant change without giving them anything constant to hold onto.
Purpose, identity, strategic claritythese are not luxuries to be addressed once the real work of transformation is complete. They are the vessel that keeps people afloat. Without that vessel, you are asking your people to swim through every change. And eventually, swimmers tire.
Build the structures. Communicate the purpose. Shine a clear and steady light on what endures. That is how transformation succeedsnot by demanding more adaptation, but by providing stable foundations on which to build something new.
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Much to the chagrin of investors, the value of Bitcoin continues to slide.
As of Wednesday morning, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency was trading around $75,000 per coin. Thats down more than 10% over the past five days, down 18% over the past month, and down a whopping 34% over the past six months.
It’s a far cry from October of last year, when Bitcoins price topped out at nearly $125,000. Values are now roughly where they were in early April 2025, and before that, in November 2024.
From bump to slump
Notably, Bitcoins value is now lower than it was when Trump took office last January, effectively giving up all of the Trump Bump gains that it and other crypto assets saw over much of 2025.
That bump was real, too: Bitcoin returns were down around 12% during Q1 2025, but jumped to nearly 30% during Q2, and then 6.3% in Q3, according to data from Coinglass.
The downturn seemingly took hold at some point during Q4, when returns were down 23%. Ethereum, the second-largest crypto on the market, saw a similar trajectory: It saw huge increases (37% during Q2 and 67% during Q3), followed by a big drop in Q4 (down 28%).
Here are a few notable crypto slumps year to date as of this writing:
Bitcoin (BTC): Down 13.86%
Ether (ETC): Down 25.56%
XRP (XRP): Down 15.13%
Why are crypto values declining?
As for whats causing the sell-off? A lot of things, but mostly, investors looking for off-ramps from riskier assets.
This can partially be blamed on a government shutdown delaying the release of important economic data (the jobs report was supposed to come out on Friday, but has been delayed), geopolitical tensions rising in many parts of the world, on-again off-again tariff threats, and even the fear of increased regulation on the crypto industry, according to reporting from CNBC.
The crypto markets are also caught in the maelstrom of other downturns. The stock market has been flat for the past month, with some earnings announcementsnotably Microsoftscausing fervor and worry among investors.
President Trump has also named a new Fed Chair, who if confirmed will take up the position in mid-May, adding another variable of uncertainty into the mix.
As a cherry on top, precious metals have seen a steep sell-off, too. Gold and silver prices had shot to the moon in recent months, last week, silver experienced its worst day ever, falling nearly 30%.
The confluence of all of these factors is whats led to massive crypto volatility.
This story is developing…
President Donald Trump says history is on his side.He wants to build a towering arch near the Lincoln Memorial and argues that the nation’s capital first clamored for such a monument two centuries ago even going so far as to erect four eagle statues as part of the project before being derailed by the attack on Fort Sumter.“It was interrupted by a thing called the Civil War, and so it never got built,” Trump said aboard Air Force One as he flew to Florida last weekend. “Then, they almost built something in 1902, but it never happened.”Trump’s history is off the eagles he references are actually part of a bridge connecting Virginia and Washington that was built decades after the Civil War. The closest Washington came to an arch was a wood and plaster construction built in 1919 to mark the end of World War I and even that was always meant to be temporary.“For 200 years they’ve wanted to build an arc,” Trump said, meaning an arch. “They have 57 cities throughout the world that have them. We’re the only major city Washington, D.C. that doesn’t.”Chandra Manning, a history professor at Georgetown University, said Washington was fledgling in the 19th century, dealing with a housing shortage, a lack of boarding houses for visitors, roads that went nowhere and an incomplete U.S. Capitol.“Washington coming into the Civil War was still this unfinished city,” Manning said. “There’s no push for decorative memorialization in Antebellum Washington because it’s still such a place that doesn’t even have all the functional buildings it needs yet.”
Trump has offered a similar historical rationale for the $400 million ballroom he demolished the White House’s East Wing to begin building arguing that officials for 150 years have wanted a large event space.That claim, too, is dubious. While space at the White House has indeed long been an issue, there’s no record of public outcry for a ballroom. Trump nonetheless is employing a similar argument to justify the arch.“I think it will be the most beautiful in the world,” he said.
‘Biggest one of all’
The arch would stand near the Arlington Memorial Bridge, which spans the Potomac River.Trump first unveiled the idea at an October dinner for top donors to his ballroom. Without divulging how much the arch would cost, who would pay for it or whether he’d seek approval from planning officials, the president showed off three different-sized arch models, all featuring a statue of Lady Liberty on top.The president acknowledged then that the largest one was his favorite, and The Washington Post reported that Trump is mulling building an arch standing 250 feet (76 meters) tall. Asked about that aboard Air Force One, Trump didn’t confirm the exact height he desires, but offered: “I’d like it to be the biggest one of all.”“We’re setting up a committee, and the committee is going to be going over it,” Trump said. “It’ll be substantial.”The president says he’d like the new structure to be reminiscent of the Arc de Triomphe, at the end of the Champs-Élysées in Paris, which was built to honor those who fought for France during the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars.But that monument stands only 50 meters (164 feet) high. A 250-foot Washington arch would dwarf the Lincoln Memorial and White House, and even rival the Capitol, which stands 288 feet (88 meters).The finished arch would be part of a building boom Trump has personally triggered, anxious to use his background as a onetime New York construction mogul to leave a lasting physical mark on the presidency.In addition to the ballroom, Trump is closing the Kennedy Center for two years of renovations amid backlash from artists over changes he’s made at the nation’s premier performing arts venue. He replaced the lawn in the Rose Garden with a patio area reminiscent of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, and redecorated the Lincoln Bathroom and Palm Room in the White House’s interior.Trump also installed a Walk of Fame featuring portraits of past presidents along the Colonnade, massive flagpoles on the north and south lawns, and golden flourishes, cherubs and other flashy items to the substantially overhauled Oval Office.The arch would extend the president’s influence into Washington, where he has talked of beautifying “tired” grassy areas and broken signage and street medians and also deployed the National Guard to help break up homeless encampments.Harrison Design, a local firm, is working on the project, though no construction start date has been announced. Trump wants to unveil the new structure as part of celebrations marking America’s 250th birthday.
The bridge actually came after the Civil War
Pressed on what Trump meant by the four eagles, the White House sent a photo showing eagle sculptures at the four corners of the Arlington Memorial Bridge, but no further details.“President Trump is right. The American people for nearly 200 years have wanted an Arch in our Nation’s capital to showcase our great history,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said in a statement. “President Trump’s bold vision will be imprinted upon the fabric of America and be felt by generations to come. His successes will continue to give the greatest Nation on earth America the glory it deserves.”The president’s timing is off, though.The Arlington Memorial Bridge was first proposed in 1886, but it wasn’t approved by Congress until 1925. According to the National Park Service, the bridge was conceived after the Civil War and meant to memorialize the symbolic reunification of the North and South.It was originally built to link the site of the Lincoln Memorial with the home of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee where Arlington National Cemetery now stands. At the time, the direction the eagles would face right or left, meant to symbolize inward toward the city or outward facing visitors sparked controversy.The park service says the bridge was constructed between 1926 and 1931, and an engineer’s report lists only slightly different dates still decades after Trump’s timeline.Washington also once had a Victory Arch built near the White House in 1919, to commemorate the end of World War I. It was wood and plaster, however, and meant to be temporary. That structure was torn down in the summer of 1920.A 2000 proposal called for a peace arch in Washington, but those plans were abandoned after the Sept. 11 attacks the following year.Manning, who is also a former National Park Service ranger, said that, Washington aside, “I don’t know of a long U.S. tradition of building arches for things.”“That sounds like an import from elsewhere to me,” she said.
Will Weissert, Associated Press
Norwegian skier Nikolai Schirmer on Wednesday handed the International Olympic Committee a petition signed by more than 21,000 people and professional athletes who want to stop fossil fuel companies from sponsoring winter sports.Schirmer delivered the “Ski Fossil Free” petition to the IOC’s head of sustainability, Julie Duffus, at a hotel in the Italian city of Milan two days before the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics kick off.The petition asks the IOC and the International Ski and Snowboard Federation, FIS, to publish a report evaluating the appropriateness of fossil fuel marketing before next season. Schirmer, a filmmaker and two-time European Skier of the Year, spoke exclusively with The Associated Press outside the hotel, and said the IOC informed him that it would not allow media to witness their meeting.“It seems like the Olympics aren’t ready to be the positive force for change that they have the potential to be,” Schirmer told the AP afterward. “So I just hope this can be a little nudge in the right direction, but we will see.”
Norwegian skier Nikolai Schirmer walks out of a Milan hotel, Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026, after privately meeting with the IOC’s head of sustainability, Julie Duffus, to hand her a ski fossil free petition with over 20,000 signatures two days before the Opening Ceremony for the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics. [Photo: Fernanda Figueroa/AP Photo]
Retreating winters spurred the skier to take action
Schirmer is a freeride skier who documents his adventures exploring Europe’s steep terrains. While freeride skiing is not currently an Olympic event, he said he felt like he needed to bring attention to fossil fuel marketing.“The show goes on while the things you depend on to do your job winter is disappearing in front of your very eyes,” he said. “Not dealing with the climate crisis and not having skiing be a force for change just felt insane. We’re on the front lines.”Burning fossil fuels coal, oil and gas is the largest contributor to global climate change by far. As the Earth warms at a record rate, winters are shorter and milder and there is less snow globally, creating clear challenges for winter sports that depend on cold, snowy conditions. Researchers say the list of locales that could reliably host a Winter Games will shrink substantially in the coming years.Schirmer launched his petition drive in January. He surpassed his goal of 20,000 signatures in one month, and people continue to sign.It’s a first step, he argues, much like a campaign nearly 40 years ago that led to a ban of tobacco advertising at the Games. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has urged every country to ban advertising from fossil fuel companies.In his meeting on Wednesday, Schirmer said, the IOC’s head of sustainability pointed to the organization’s commitments to renewable energy. He said he feels that isn’t enough.The IOC told the AP in a statement that climate change is one of the most significant challenges facing sport and society. It didn’t say whether it will review fossil fuel marketing, as demanded by the petition.Olympic partners play an important role in supporting the Games, and they include those investing in clean energy, the statement said.FIS welcomes mobilization campaigns like this one, spokesperson Bruno Sassi said. He noted that He noted that no fossil fuel companies are partners of the FIS World Cup and FIS World Championships.
Athletes say the petition is the start of a conversation
Athlete-driven environmental group “Protect Our Winters” supported the petition drive. This is the first coordinated campaign about fossil fuel advertising centered around an Olympic Games, POW’s CEO Erin Sprague told the AP.American cross-country skier and Team USA member Gus Schumacher said he signed because it starts the conversation.“It’s short-sighted for teams and events to take money from these companies in exchange for helping them hold status as good, long-term energy producers,” he wrote in a text message.American cross-country skier Jack Berry said he’s hopeful this is an influential step toward a systemic shift away from the industry. Berry is seeking a spot on Team USA for the Paralympics in March.
An Italian oil and gas company is sponsoring these Olympics
Italy’s Eni, one of the world’s seven supermajor oil companies, is a “premium partner” of these Winter Games. Other oil and gas companies sponsor Olympic teams.Eni said it’s strongly committed to the energy transition, as evidenced by how it’s growing its lower carbon businesses, reducing emissions and aiming for carbon neutrality by 2050. And the company defended its role in the Winter Games.“Through the partnership with the biggest event hosted by Italy in the next 20 years, Eni wants to confirm its commitment to the future of the country and to a progressively more sustainable energy system through a fair transition path,” spokesperson Roberto Albini wrote in an e-mail.A January report found that promoting polluting companies at the Olympics will grow their businesses and lead to more greenhouse gas emissions that warm the planet and melt snow cover and glacier ice. Albini disputed the emissions calculations for Eni in the Olympics Torched report.Published by the New Weather Institute in collaboration with Scientists for Global Responsibility and Champions for Earth, the report also looks at the Games’ own emissions.“They have lots of sponsors that aren’t in these sectors,” said Stuart Parkinson, executive director at Scientists for Global Responsibility. “You can get the sponsorship money you’re after by focusing on those areas, much lower carbon areas. That reduces the carbon footprint.”
McDermott reported from Cortina D’Ampezzo, Italy.
AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
Shares of Chipotle Mexican Grill are down over 6% in premarket trading following a relatively humdrum fourth-quarter earnings report.
The report, released on Tuesday, February 3, showed a 2.5% decrease in comparable restaurant sales from quarter-three and a 1.7% drop year-over-year.
However, it appears Chipotle has a plan to fix all that: more limited-time offerings.
Yes, the companys secret weapon of choice is to bump up its number of fresh menu options. This shift will include four limited-time offers throughout the year, Chipotle CEO Scott Boatwright said in an earnings call. He described the move as an increase in Chipotle’s “menu innovation cadence.”
The limited-time offers (or LTOs) will start next week with the return of Chicken al Pastor, which Boatwright called the most celebrated limited-time offer in history, with two times the requests on social media to bring it back compared to any other LTO.”
Boatwright adds that Chipotles data shows a core guest is more likely to choose a restaurant that has a new menu item.
Protein, rewards, and of course AI
Chipotle has also recently rolled out its high-protein line, with Boatwright nodding to the increased use of weight-loss drugs. It includes a $3.50 taco with 15 grams of protein as an addition to an 80-gram double-protein bowl.
Theres also a $3.80 high-protein cup that is inspired by hacks that our guests rely on to boost their intake and offers a solution to those looking for smaller portions, which is a fast-growing trend with the adoption of GLP-1s, Boatwright stated.
Furthermore, the fast-casual chain is relaunching its rewards program and using AI to create more personalized and impactful experiences.
Even with these steps, Chipotle predicts its comparable restaurant sales for 2026 will be flat.
The company did report some wins for quarter-four. It reached $2.98 billion in revenue, beating Wall Streets expected $2.96 billion, according to consensus estimates cited by CNBC.
What happened to that Chipotle boycott?
Quarter-one for 2026 has brought its own uncertainties to the fast-casual chain thanks to misinformation spreading online.
Chipotle faced boycott calls in January after Bill Ackman, the billionaire CEO and founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, donated $10,000 to a GoFundMe campaign for Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Nicole Good as she turned her vehicle away from him.
In 2016, Ackman bought a 9.9% stake in Chipotle, valued at about $1 billion, Newsweek reports. At the time, Pershing Square Capital was one of Chipotles top shareholders, but the company sold all of its shares as of November 2025.
In response to the boycott, Chipotle took to social media to clarify that Ackman is no longer connected to the brand.
Chipotles stock price (NYSE: CMG) was down more than 33% over 12 months when the market closed on Tuesday.
Your beauty and skincare products are full of fats and oils. Theyre what makes that cream so moisturizing or that emollient so good at repairing your skin barrier.
Often, those lipids come from palm oil or even animal fats, both of which are environmentally damaging to produce. But soon, the lipids in your personal care products could come from upcycled carbon, skipping the agriculture industry entirely.
Savor, a tech company that makes fats and oils directly out of carbon, has already proven this technology through the launch of its butter, which began commercial production in 2025.
Now, Savor is announcing a personal care and beauty division, bringing its plant- and animal-free fats beyond food to what it calls a “new era” of clean beauty.
[Photo: Savor]
How Savor makes fats without plants or animals
Savor turns the typical production of fats on its head. The usual formula to create fat starts with energy (from the sun or even grow lights), which grows plants, which can then be turned into oilsor be fed to livestock, which produce milk that becomes butter or fat that goes into skincare, such as beef tallow.
Those processes require lots of land and have intense climate consequences. Both livestock farming and palm oil, which is used in a majority of beauty and personal care products, drive deforestation, leading to biodiversity loss, greenhouse gas emissions, and more.
Savor, however, skips all those agricultural steps. Instead, the company turns energylike captured carbon dioxide, methane, or green hydrogendirectly into fats through a thermochemical process.
[Photo: Savor]
That carbon is combined with hydrogen, oxygen, and heat to create fatty acids, which can then be composed and rearranged into chains that mimic different fats, from butter to palm oil and cocoa butter.
Technically were making beautiful ingredients from thin air, says Jennifer Halliday, an advisor across the biotechnology, beauty, and life sciences industries who is working with Savor.
Its a replica of ancient chemistry. Billions of years ago, hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean created a chemical reaction that formed fatty acids out of hydrogen and carbon dioxide.
[Photo: Savor]
Opportunities in the beauty industry
Savors butter has already been adopted by chefs and restaurants, including Michelin-starred SingleThread, in Healdsburg, California, and Jane the Bakery, in San Francisco. It launched commercially in March 2025.
Expanding from food to personal care makes sense for Savor, says Kathleen Alexander, cofounder and CEO of the startup, because the two industries overlap in terms of ingredients, environmental impact, and opportunity for change.
Two of the main pillars associated with our platform are sustainability and versatility, or tunability,” she says. “Those wind up being very important in food, and they’re very important in the beauty space as well.”
By using its animal- and plant-free lipids, Savor says beauty companies could reduce their products emissions by more than 90%, compared to tropical oils like coconut or palm.
Palm and tropical oils wind up showing up a lot in the beauty sector, and those are products that we can really only grow in some of the most rich and biodiverse areas of the world. Alexander adds.
The agricultural industry at large takes up half of the worlds habitable land, and produces 25% to 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Savor skirts this entirely; the company says it requires 800 times less land to make its fats and oils than the agricultural industry.
Currently, Savor has a 25,000-square-foot pilot facility outside of Chicago, with plans for a large-scale commercial plant by 2029.
The startup, founded in 2022, has raised $33 million, according to PitchBook. Its Series A, funded in 2024, was led by food tech VC firm Synthesis Capital and Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy.
[Photo: Savor]
Vegan tallow and more
To launch its beauty and personal care division, Savor created three unique products. First, a Vegan Tallow, a colorless and odorless alternative to beef tallow, which has become a recent skin care craze.
We first made that for food customers, and we absolutely still have food customers that are interested in that, Alexander says. But the market pull in food for vegan tallow, it turns out, is a little bit lower than the pull were seeing in beauty and cosmetics.
Savor also created what it calls Climate Conscious Triglycerides, a palm-free emollient; and Mimetic, made to mimic the skin barriers structure to nourish and repair it.
Dont expect to see Savor-branded beauty products on store shelves, though. The startup created these three products to show what is possible, but ultimately, its a B2B company that will give its ingredients to brand formulations.
Savor says its actively engaged with beauty brands, ingredient distributors, and personal care formulators to bring these materials to market, but cant yet share names.
And theres lots of room for interest to grow, it adds, as brands adapt to regulatory pressure around their supply chains.
Traditional feedstocks from plants and animals are also subject to increasing volatility, because of climate changes effects on crops, geopolitics, traceability concerns, and general price swings.
We’ve actually just had a change in the GHG Protocol Standard to require corporations to start including land use in their accounting, which is just huge, Alexander says as an example. That is one of the biggest advantages from an environmental perspective of our platform, that we require less land to make our fats and oils.
Humans have always had an inherently extractive relationship with the planet, she adds. It’s how our food chain works; it’s how we make all sorts of products.
“What we’re doing at Savor is rethinking, what if humans could make molecules ourselves?” she says. “What would it mean to really exist on this planet in a way where we can actually not necessarily have to have to make use of other creatures in order to nourish ourselves.”
