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Agentic AI is being heralded as the future of the generative AI revolution by leaders in the field. From ChatGPT’s integration of agentic features to the rise of Comet (the agent-based web browser from Perplexity) and Chinese-born Manus, the trend of handing more control to AI tools seems inevitable. At least, thats the view of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke, Amazon executive chairman Jeff Bezos, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. But before ceding control completely, its worth weighing the risks. If AI agents are about to flood society, they must first get street-smart. Initial concerns point to their naivety, which could come back to hurt us all. Andy Zou, a researcher at Gray Swan AI, an IT security firm, says AI agents have only become prevalent in the past few months, as the focus has shifted from just talking to the chatbot to giving it tools that can take real-world actionsdramatically increasing the risks. The concern, he notes, is that agentic AI resembles the Hollywood caricature of George of the Jungle: ready to believe anything, no matter the consequences. We found you can essentially manipulate the AI [to] override its programming, Zou says. In a new study, Zou and colleagues tested 22 leading mainstream AI agents with 1.8 million prompt injection attacks, around 60,000 of which successfully pushed the agents off their guardrails to grant unauthorized data access, conduct illicit financial transactions, and bypass regulatory compliance. An earlier study showed even weaker defenses, with AI assistants fooled nearly 70% of the time into wiring money to fraudsters via buried fine print instructions. And just this week, browser developer Brave alleged that a similar website-based attack could manipulate Perplexitys Comet browser. (Perplexity has since patched the flaw, though Brave contends the fix is incomplete.) The lesson is clear: Even modest success rates at this scale translate into dangerous vulnerabilities. Before handing these bots the keys, theyll need sharper critical thinking. This isnt merely hypothetical. One cryptocurrency user lost $50,000 when an AI agent was tricked into sending funds to the wrong wallet through malicious, agent-only instructions. As adoption growseight in 10 corporations now use some form of agentic AI, according to PricewaterhouseCoopersthe risks multiply. Tianshi Li, an assistant professor at Northeastern University who led the earlier study, says agents are designed to complete complex tasks for people, often without direct supervision. While theyre useful for tedious work, Li warns that this capability of doing complex things without direct supervision is also inherently conflicting with security and privacy guarantees. Unlike static chatbots, AI agents are vulnerable because their inputs dont come solely from the userthey interact with tools and pull data from untrusted sources, creating hidden risks. The agent goes out there and talks to a tool, retrieves data from a source that you dont fully trust, [and] without realizing it, you might be exposing yourself to some of these risks, says Matt Fredrikson, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University and Zous coauthor on the study. With focused effort, Zou and Fredrikson managed to compromise agents from 10 frontier AI labs within hours. Security engineers wont be surprised: Treating anything an agent reads on the webor in a calendar invite, email signature, or PDFas trustworthy effectively gives strangers partial control of the system prompt. But the ease of these breaches should be a wake-up call. Theyre putting the agents out there in the real world, Zou says. And there are so many of these real vulnerabilities that exist right now. Enterprise adoption reflects both curiosity and caution. James Robinson, chief information security officer at Netskope, a cloud security firm that recently published guidance on AI agent risks, says companies are experimenting carefully. Agents are just starting to be played with, he tells Fast Company. For now, they arent given full open control [to] make production changes, but are confined to centralized environments such as IDEs [integrated development environments], with guardrails like change control and peer review. In highly regulated industries such as banking, the restrictions are even tighter. Still, Robinson warns against casual adoption, comparing it with having an employee that joins your organization that you never hiredsomeone with 24/7 access to potentially everything you see. Experts share Robinson’s concern that many adopters dont grasp how easily agents can be manipulated or how severe the fallout could be. Fredrikson, the Carnegie Mellon professor, adds that while some organizations do their due diligence, there are some that arent fully aware of all the mitigations and security tools they could use. The imbalance remains clear: Promoters emphasize the benefits of agentic AI far louder than the risks. People are excited to deploy this, and things move very quickly, Fredrikson says. That’s a mix that feels like a recipe for security issues to come out of the woodwork, he warns. This story was supported by a grant from the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism.
Category:
E-Commerce
China is taking a page from abandoned NASA research in an effort to leave the United States far behind in a new weapon category that the Pentagon believes will be crucial for military supremacy in the near future. Beijings engineers have reportedly designed a hypersonic aircraft carrieressentially a large, super fast drone mothership that can deploy several more drones. It uses an variable oblique wing, a historic, experimental design that has one single wing that rotates depending on the aircrafts speed rather than fixed classical symmetrical wings in traditional planes. To laymen used to regular aircraft it may look bananas, but the Chinese engineers believe that the designoriginally created by Nazi engineers and continued by the U.S. in the second half of the 20th centurysolves some of the key problems of hypersonic flight. This will not be the first flying aircraft carrier. China has already built the Jiu Tian, a subsonic mothership capable of deploying a hundred combat drones. But it’s poised to be much faster than anything we’ve seen. According to defense experts, hypersonic flight is the key for the war of the future. While many intercontinental ballistic missiles fly at more than five times the speed of soundthe definition of hypersonic flightthey follow a predictable ballistic curve trajectory that make them easy to intercept for anti-air weapons like the Patriot batteries. But vehicles like this hypersonic craft will fly in unpredictable manners, like a regular airplane. That combination of speed and flying pattern makes them virtually impossible to intercept. Effectively, this will enable this new Chinese aircraft to cross U.S. defenses carrying combat drones in its belly. Once this happens, it will be free to launch swarms of these drones to destroy key enemy infrastructure in the first minutes of a war. Firing on all cylinders It’s not the first time that China has snatched American weaponry designs. Decades ago, China systematically copied both U.S. and Russia’s devices to try to match their military prowess. In the last few years, however, Beijing has poured billions into university research labs, private companies, and its defense industry in a coordinated effort to turn the People’s Liberation Army into the most powerful and advanced force in the world by 2049. China has have already leapfrogged the U.S. military in many regards, from advanced sixth-generation combat jets to hypersonic weapons that have no match in the American arsenal. One is their orbital hypersonic bombardment vehicle, a hypersonic glider capable of launching hypersonic missiles from low orbit. When its test was first detected by American agencies, then-Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Hyten said that it defies the laws of physics. The test was classified by General Mark Milley, then-chair of the US joint chiefs of staff, as close to a Sputnik moment, drawing a parallel to the nation-shocking Soviet Unions achievement of placing the first satellite in space in 1957. More recently, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said that Chinese hypersonic missiles are capable of sinking all of the U.S. Navy’s nuclear aircraft carriers “in five minutes,” claiming that the U.S. loses all the Pentagon’s combat simulations against the Chinese army. A future built upon the past But even as China develops its own new wonder weapons, the Chinese havent stopped drawing inspiration from classic American breakthroughs to move forward, revisiting projects that the United States once deemed impossible for technical or economic reasons. Their aim: to discover new machines that will give them the upper hand against Washington in the event of a conflict. We’ve already seen several prime examples of this trend, like China’s railgunsfuturistic electromagnetic cannons capable of firing solid metal projectiles at hypersonic speeds up to 105 miles away using rails powered by massive electromagnets (a line of research abandoned by the U.S. Navy). Another example is China’s oblique detonation engine, once an American invention from 1958 that promised aircraft capable of flying at sixteen times the speed of soundabout 12,000 mphbut was shelved when engineers failed to resolve its technical challenges. China has also deburred a design for a new hypersonic commercial and military aircraft that NASA left unfinished in the 1990s. Now, China’s latest borrowed design is the oblique wing aircraft, a concept abandoned by the NASA in 1982. It’s getting a second life thanks to Beijings seemingly unlimited funding, and new computer tools that will make it possible according to this new work led by a team from Northwestern Polytechnical University that was published by Professor Ma Yiyuan in Advances in Aeronautical Science and Engineering in July. The AD-1 aircraft in flight with its wing swept at 60 degrees, the maximum sweep angle. [Photo: NASA] Hypersonic carriers for combat drone deployment The team has reimagined the oblique rotating wing to create a hypersonic unmanned mother shipa near-space platform capable of Mach 5 flight that can dispatch drone swarms behind enemy lines. The proposed carrier operates at the edge of space (about 19 miles above Earth), carries up to 4,400 pounds of payload, and is designed to launch from 16 to 18 autonomous drones for rapid attacks on key enemy infrastructure, such as communication hubs, radars, and command centers, before air defenses can respond. After the strike, the aircraft would return and land under fully autonomous control. The role of the oblique wing in this design is to solve one of aviation’s thorniest problems: How to achieve stable, efficient flight from takeoff at hypersonic speeds? Unlike conventional aircraftwith their symmetrical swing-wing designsthe Chinese proposal centers a single wing that rotates up to 90 degrees. At low speeds, the wing is perpendicular for max lift. As speed ramps up, the wing pivots to 45 degrees, redistributing airflow and suppressing shock wave formation. At Mach 5, the wing aligns with the fuselage and merges into the top of the aircraft, transforming the entire vehicle into a “waverider”basically a missile that breathes air and minimizes drag at hypersonic cruise speeds. At this point, the fuselage itself produces 67% of the lift, with the canards and the tail surfaces providing the rest via shock-induced pressure differences. The scientists claim this design achieves unprecedented aerodynamic efficiency in hypersonic travel. Ma and his colleagues write in the research paper: Compared to mainstream morphing configurations such as variable-sweep wings, the oblique wing aircraft features a relatively simpler structural design. The wing remains a single integrated component, and the wing box located at the centre of the configuration stays intact, providing significantly better load-bearing performance than conventional variable-geometry designs. They also say that this architecture holds an advantage in structural strength. But while simpler in structure, the design confronts severe engineering demands. The critical transonic transitionMach 0.8 to 1.2creates shifting shock waves along the wing, moving the aerodynamic center forward and potentially causing dangerous nose-down pitches that could make the craft uncontrollable. Here, the research highlights the need for a sophisticated array of control surfaces: nose-mounted canards and a high-mounted tailplane, which regulate downwash, front lift, and nose-up moments, all while vertical stabilizers actively manage roll and yaw as shock waves evolve. This design was discovered thanks to computerized fluid dynamic analysis and AI tools that NASAand obviously the Nazisdidnt have at the time. Which is why the oblique wing was ahead of its time but it wont be forever, as an unnamed spacecraft designer tells the Taiwanese newspaper South China Morning Post. Things like real-time strain monitoring, microsecond diagnostics, and fail-safe locking mechanisms for the wings central shaft will be key to handle the severe torque loads (the force that strains the fuselage and wing), thermal gradients (the temperature differences from the air particles friction at increased speed), and the general structural fatigue that arise in hypersonic flight. Nazi Germany and NASA paved the way As forementioned, the oblique wing isnt a new dream. German engineers first sketched the concept during World War II. Richard Vogt, working at Blohm & Voss, designed the P.202a jet fighter whose wing rotated obliquely, one side forward and the other back, balancing aerodynamic forces and aiming for a sweet spot between high-speed efficiency and low-speed lift. Though never built or flown, the design set the template for future asymmetric wing studies. After the war, Dr. Vogt and the oblique wing theory crossed the Atlantic. American aeronautical engineer Robert T. Jones picked up the concept in the 1950s, conducting a series of analytical and wind tunnel studies at NACA (the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the predecessor for NASA) Ames Research Center in California. These investigations revealed that a transport-size oblique-wing aircraft, flying at speeds up to Mach 1.4, would exhibit significantly improved aerodynamic efficiency compared to conventional aircraft designs. By the 1970s, Jones and his colleagues moved from theory to hands-on experimentation. NASA built the Oblique Wing Research Aircraft, an uncrewed propeller-driven testbed, and later a small remote-controlled demonstrator aircraft with a 20-foot wingspan that flew once, demonstrating stable flight with wing sweeps from 35 to 50 degrees. These testbeds showed promise in drag reduction and fuel efficiency, but at high sweep angles, they exhibited unpleasant flight characteristics and pronounced roll-coupling modes, foreshadowing the challenges that would later surface. The AD-1 oblique wing research aircraft was photographed during a wing sweep test flight. The aircraft was flown 79 times during the research program conducted at NASA Dryden between 1979 and 1982. [Photo: NASA] The effort culminated in the only crewed aircraft to use the concept: the NASA AD-1 (Ames-Dryden-1), delivered to Dryden (now Armstrong) Flight Research Center in 1979. The AD-1 was built with a low-speed, low-cost philosophythe design specified by NASA and detailed by Rutan Aircraft Factory. Constructed of plastic reinforced with fiberglass and a foam core, the squat aircraft had a fixed tricycle landing gear and was powered by two small Microturbo turbojets. It was limited to speeds of about 170 mph for safety reasons. Over ts three-year flight program (1979-1982), the AD-1 made 79 flights, its unique wing pivoting incrementally from zero to a full 60 degrees. The pilot would control the sweep using an electrically-driven gear mechanism inside the fuselage. Data collected throughout the envelope expansion revealed that, although the oblique wing was mechanically viable, significant challenges emergedespecially at sweep angles above 45 degrees. The aircraft developed problems that led to poor handling qualities and sometimes precarious flight behavior. The fiberglass structures limited stiffness exacerbated these tendencies, making improved control systems and stiffer materials a necessity for any future higher-speed designs. NASA retired the AD-1 after fulfilling its research objectives. The aircraft never went beyond subsonic trials or into larger commercial or military applications, remaining an exhibition piece at the Hiller Aviation Museum in California. Subsequent plans for larger, transonic and supersonic oblique-wing aircraftincluding airliners and DARPAs Switchblade demonstrator created with Northrop Grummanwere canceled before reaching full realization, as engineers assessed that the control and structural challenges remained unsolved with then-existing technology. Why China believes it will succeed Despite these historical setbacks, Chinas engineers argue that todays advancescomputational fluid dynamics, artificial intelligence, and smart materialscan finally make the oblique wing workable for high-speed strategic aircraft. The engineering challenges at the core of the design are immense. The wing pivot shafta single hinge connecting the rotating wing to the fuselagemust endure tremendous bending moments during high-speed flight, often beyond the endurance of conventional aerospace materials. Torque demands increase with the square of velocity, and the motors that drive the wing must overcome significant aerodynamic resistance, particularly as speed climbs. At Mach 5, leading-edge temperatures exceed 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, while the shaft remains inside the cooler fuselage, resulting in severe thermal gradients and stressing lubrication systems. Fatigue from repeated stress cycles poses another threat, risking microscopic cracks or catastrophic failure if the shaft breaches the pressurized cabin. To address these risks, the Chinese team emphasizes redundancy: multiple backup systems, real-time strain monitoring, microsecond-level diagnostics, and fail-safe locking mechanisms designed to freeze the wing in a safe position should any fault emerge. Combined with self-regulating smart structures and rapid-response flight control electronics, these measures form the technological bedrock for Chinas efforts to finally realize the oblique wings potential as a next-generation strategic weapon. If they succeed, China wouldnt be just resurrecting abandoned American experiments or Nazi-era ambitions for the sake of academic ego. It can really give them a huge edge against the U.S. By transforming the oblique wing into a hypersonic drone carrier, Beijing aims to deliver a new kind of strategic weaponone designed to outpace and outmaneuver anything the Pentagon can field in the race for future military supremacy. Even if China fails to make it happen, the research highlights how America is getting more and more behind Beijing. Chinese aerospace engineers have recaptured the daring spirit of the supersonic 50s and the Apollo program, coming up with new ideas and remaking old ones into new designs that the American industryfocused on quarterly reports, shareholder value, and convoluted Pentagon contractsare simply not considering anymore.
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E-Commerce
Respect isnt a buzzword or a line in a mission statement. Its a strategy, and one that I used to build an empire during my time leading Syms, the first truly off-price retail chain in America. When my father, Sy Syms, and I grew our business from a single store in lower Manhattan into a 50-location national retailer, we werent just selling clothes. We were proving that dignity could be a competitive advantage. We respected customers’ time by color-coding tags by size and keeping every store layout identical. Walk into one Syms, and youd know how to navigate them all. We respected their intelligence by refusing to hard-sell. Our employees werent sales associatesthey were educators, trained to answer questions about fiber content, tailoring, and fit. We respected their wallets with no-frills décor that kept prices down. It wasnt fancy. But it worked. Because people remember how you make them feeland respect is unforgettable. Below I’ve outlined how you can infuse respect into every aspect of your business. The 10 (or 13) Commandments of Customer Respect As the company scaled, we codified these behaviors into what became known internally as our Ten Commandments of customer service. These werent optional. They were embedded into onboarding, posted in every break room, and upheld from the stockroom to the C-suite. Here they are: 1. Treat every customer with the respect you yourself expect to receive. They are the reason we stay in business. (Note: Respect is rule Number One, sort of like the First Amendment.) 2. Greet each customer with a smile, direct eye contact, and a good morning, afternoon or evening as soon as they enter our store. Your expression, body stance, and tone of voice should say, Welcome, Were Glad You Came To Shop. 3. Determine the customers need once youve said hello. 4. If a customer requests a certain item or specific size, never point or give directions; escort the customer to the proper area. 5. Always look up while doing stock to say hello to shoppers in your area. Smile to show that you are available for any questions they might have. 6. Be aware of suggestive selling opportunities. Let the customer know we have tops to match the bottoms theyve selected. Escort them to the tops and excuse yourself to let them look through the merchandise. 7. Be knowledgeable about the various brand names, fiber contents, and sizes throughout your area. 8. Remember to remain cool and levelheaded. Be extra kind and respectful to customers. Management presence is of the utmost importance. 9. Help a customer with a zipper or the buttons on the back of an outfit in the dressing room. 10. Be honest to customers. If the suit doesnt fit, suggest another manufacturer or size; dont tell the customer what you think he/she wants to hear. Id add only a few more: 11. Be aware of the competition, including online sellers, but never disparage anyone else. 12. People are always in a hurry. Save them as much time as possible with clear and relevant advice that helps them find what they want quickly. 13. When in doubt, see rule 1. But respect isnt just a checklist. Its a mindset. And in one moment, that mindset saved a store opening from disaster. When Permits Fell Through, a Car Hood Became Our Checkout Counter One of our new suburban New Jersey locations was set to open on a Saturday morning. Hundreds of people lined up outside. But due to a last-minute paperwork error, we didnt have the permits to legally open our doors. Most companies would have sent everyone home. We didnt. My father and I grabbed a pen and set up shop on the hood of a car in the parking lot. We handwrote $10 discount coupons for every person who showed up. That gesture turned disappointment into goodwilland when we officially opened the following week, the turnout shattered expectations. That wasnt marketing. It was respect in action. How I Interviewed for Respect And Screened for Selfishness Respect also defined our hiring practices. During interviews, Id ask each candidate: What eight questions do you need answered before deciding to work here? I wasnt just listening to the questions. I was evaluating why they asked them. If more than one question was self-servingHow soon can I be promoted? or Do you reward employees when they get compliment letters?they didnt get a callback. Sometimes even one red flag was enough. The best candidates showed curiosity, not entitlement. They asked about our values, our stores, our customers. And the biggest red flag? Never visiting a store before applying. To me, that showed a fundamental lack of respect for the brand, the customer, and the opportunity. Hiring for respect helped us build a workforce that embodied our culture from day one. When Respect Isnt Returned Respect cant be a one-way street. And not every boardroom I entered treated me the way I treated them. As the youngest woman to ever lead an NYSE-listed company, I spent many years as the only female voice at the table. During Syms reorganization, I negotiated with hedge funds that spoke over me, questioned my competence, and ignored my insight. Was it ageism? Sexism? Maybe both. But I kept showing up with respect. Not because I felt it, but because I believed in it. It became a strategy to disarm ego and move the conversation forward. I refused to mirror their dismissiveness, because doing so would only validate it. Eventually, that approach gave me leverage. You can’t lead people you look down on. And you can’t win partnerships without mutual respect. Why Respect Still Matters Todays business leaders spend a lot of time chasing engagement, culture, and retention. Heres a shortcut: build respect into everything. From how you onboard to how you communicate. From how you acknowledge work to how you handle missteps. From how you treat employees behind closed doors to how you show up in the market. Respect isnt “soft.” It drives loyalty, innovation, and performance. Companies that lack it bleed talent and trust. Companies that live it turn employees into advocates and customers into evangelists. And most importantly: respect scales. It works whether youre running one store or 50. Whether youre selling suits or software. As leaders, we often search for the next breakthrough. But sometimes the most powerful ideas are the oldest ones. Respect is one of them.
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E-Commerce
As I illustrate in my forthcoming book, we live in an age of authenticity worship. From corporate mission statements urging employees to bring their whole selves to work to self-help gurus insisting that being real is the only path to fulfillment, weve elevated authenticity to near-spiritual status. But our obsession has a curious twist: we tend to grant a special premium to negative authenticity. A leaders blunt criticism, antisocial rant, public sulk, or contrarian tirade is often praised as refreshingly honest, while their polite diplomacy is dismissed as fake. Somewhere along the way, we started believing that authentic displays of antisocial emotion (e.g., anger, contempt, derision) are somehow more real, and thus more valuable, than well-mannered restraint. As if telling a colleague their idea is idiotic is more admirable than smiling politely and redirecting the conversation. In reality, antagonizing people doesnt make you authentic; it just makes you antagonistic. Moreover, between fake politeness or honest rudeness, most people will typically prefer the former, especially if they are on the receiving end. Genuine social skill is not the absence of self-censorship, but rather the mastery of it. The real work of emotional intelligence, which is basically a form of social desirability or strategic self-presentation, lies in resisting the urge to broadcast every feeling and thought, especially those that would derail relationships, alienate others, or erode trust. High-stakes environments, such as boardrooms, negotiations, and crisis situations, reward those who can keep a poker face, not those who turn every meeting into an open mic night for their grievances. The EQauthenticity paradox If authenticity were the sole measure of leadership quality, then every temperamental, impulsive boss would be a management guru. Instead, such characters make toxic workers who destroy team morale and impair organizational effectiveness, not to mention harm the culture. Indeed, the data show quite clearly that emotional intelligence (EQ), the ability to recognize, regulate, and influence emotions, is one of the most consistent predictors of career success, managerial effectiveness, and leadership competence. Some unpopular news: EQ is negatively correlated with unfiltered authenticity. The leaders who score highest on EQ arent known for wearing their hearts on their sleeves, broadcasting their unsolicited political views or divisive opinions, or expecting others to tune into their feelings and put up with their emotional tantrums: instead, theyre known for playing their cards close to their chest. Like skilled poker players, they control the game by controlling their tells. Fundamentally, they dont assume that others must adjust to their feelings or moods but rather make an effort to understand and adapt to other peoples preferences, views, and emotions (as in, they dont believe they are the center of the universe, which, in normal child development patterns, humans tend to comprehend at the age of 6). The best leaders understand that the right to be yourself ends where your responsibility to others begins. Venting in public, rolling your eyes in meetings, or delivering a scathing tweetstorm about your teams shortcomings may feel cathartic, but its rarely productive. In most cases, a leader who cant filter themselves is less a truth-teller and more a low-EQ liability. Think of Winston Churchill, famous for his wartime resolvenot for publicly berating his generals. Or Angela Merkel, who built influence not through Twitter rants, but through disciplined understatement. Contrast that with the modern crop of leaders whose personal brand doubles as a rolling PR crisis, and the EQauthenticity paradox becomes painfully clear. Authenticity as a luxury good Ironically, some leaders deploy rudeness and rebellion precisely because it makes them appear authentic. Theres a certain seductive quality to the CEO who says what everyone is thinking but no one dares to say, never mind that everyone is actually just their own reflection in a $2,000 conference table. But, just like disagreeing with everyone doesnt make you right, violating social norms doesnt make you authentic, let alone creative, virtuous, or courageous. Social psychology offers a clue: norm violation by powerful people often gets reframed as charisma. When you have the status and resources to survive the fallout, you can break etiquette with impunity. Its not that youre braver than everyone else; its that youre insulated from consequences. In this sense, authenticity is less a moral virtue than a status symbol. The freedom to be unapologetically rude is a perk of the privileged elite, whose power shields them from the accountability that constrains the rest of us. For them, telling it like it is isnt a courageous act, its a performance of dominance, namely boasting or showing off for having the freedom to offend without any major consequences, and many people cheering you! Needless to say, this is a terrible model for leadership. When leaders flaunt their disregard for civility, they legitimize those behaviors in others. What begins as a performative show of realness trickles down into the culture, corroding trust, cooperation, and psychological safety. And while anger, bullying, and public belittling may unite a few sycophants, they alienate far more people than they rally. The leadership that actually works Leadership, at its core, is about uniting people toward a shared goal. History offers plenty of examples of leaders who inspired loyalty not through shock value, but through steady, respectful, and measured behavior. Jacinda Arderns calm empathy after the Christchurch mosque shootings. Barack Obamas disciplined cool in moments of crisis. Indra Nooyis blend of strategic rigor and personal warmth at PepsiCo. These leaders didnt let it all out in public, they exercised judgment over what to share, when, and how. Thats not inauthenticity; its responsibility. They understood that the role of a leader is not to model emotional indulgence, but to model emotional discipline. By contrast, the authentic tantrums of some celebrity executives resemble less a leaders rallying cry than a toddlers supermarket meltdown. If you cant imagine a behavior being effective in a kindergarten classroom, its probably not great in a company boardroom either. AsJennifer Jason Leighs character, Lorraine Lyon, alludes in one of the most iconic scenes of Fargo season 5, in which she confronts the tyrannic, megalomaniac and self-centered Sheriff Roy Tillman played by John Hamm, the only people who can rightly aspire to having absolute freedom without any responsibilities are babies. Sadly, there are many examples of adults, including those in very powerful positions, who appear to behave like babies in this precise way, but just because they may use their power and status to get away with such behaviors doesnt mean they are a role model to emulate. Warning signs If you are interested in knowing whether seemingly contrarian and nonconformist leaders are being authentic or just rude, obnoxious, or toxic, consider these five red flags: 1. Authenticity is one-directionalThey insist on radical honesty from their teams but treat dissent as betrayal. You can tell them exactly what you think, provided what you think is flattering. The moment feedback points upward, the mood shifts from openness to insubordination. True authenticity goes both ways; selective authenticity is just control in disguise. 2. The truth is always negativeTheir so-called candor has a narrow emotional range: somewhere between irritated and outraged. Praise is rare, appreciation rarer still. These leaders wear bluntness like a badge, but in reality, theyre simply defaulting to criticism because its easier than building people up. Its not that they tell it like it is, its that they only tell the parts that sting. 3. Accountability is for everyone elseWhen theyre late, its because theyre busy. When they miss a target, its because the market shifted. But when you slip up, its a character flaw, a cultural fit issue, or a sign youre not fully committed. They frame their own outbursts as passion and others as unprofessionalism. In other words, the rules are flexible, just not for you. 4. They confuse disruption with visionTheir proudest leadership moments are breaking rules, ignoring norms, or defying expectations, regardless of whether the outcome is useful. Disruption, for them, is not a strategy but an identity. The problem is that true visionaries break rules to create something better; these leaders break them because the chaos keeps them in the spotlight. 5. The audience is the pointTheir most authentic moments always seem to have a convenient audience: an all-hands meeting, a media interview, or a viral LinkedIn post. When theres no crowd, the grand moral stands tend to vanish. This isnt about honestyits about performance. Like reality TV contestants, they thrive on the optics of being real, even if the script is as calculated as any PR campaign. Weakness vs. wisdom In short, we should be careful not to confuse the absence of manners with the presence of truth. The value of authenticity isnt in broadcasting your inner monologue, its in aligning your actions with your values in a way that strengthens your relationships and your organization. A leader who controls their impulses is not being fake; theyre being strategic. A leader who spares you their worst thoughts isnt hiding the truth, theyre prioritizing the relationship over their ego. Thats not weakness; thats wisdom. So next time you see a leader praised for their refreshing honesty because theyve insulted a colleague, bullied a journalist, or turned a shareholder meeting into a personal grievance session, ask yourself: is this authenticity, or is it just power dressed up as courage? Because while anyone can be authentic, only the truly skilled know when not to be. And in leadership (as in poker) sometimes the smartest move is the one you dont show.
Category:
E-Commerce
Over the course of a decade at Amazon, Vikas Enti helped lead the retail giants deployment of robots in its fulfillment centers. Then he started thinking about how the same skills could be applied to one of the worlds biggest challenges: how to build low-carbon, affordable housing. The biggest catalyst was me becoming a dad of twin daughters, he says. My kids being born prompted introspection on where else I could be applying my skills that had greater benefits to society. He knew that the U.S. has a shortage of millions of homes, and a shortage of hundreds of thousands of construction workers. He also knew that buildings, which are responsible for around 40% of global emissions, are a key part of tackling climate change. And he realized that the approach his team had taken at Amazon could translate to the construction industry. Vikas Enti [Photo: courtesy Reframe Systems] In 2022, along with two other former Amazon employees, Enti cofounded Reframe Systems, a startup thats using software and robotic microfactories to drive down the cost of building housing. Today the company announced that it raised $20 million in a Series A round of funding led by Eclipse and VoLo Earth Ventures. [Image: courtesy Reframe Systems] Rethinking factory-built housing The construction industry has been relatively slow to embrace new tech. Its been a function of how fragmented the industry is,” Enti says. A home might be built with 25 subcontractors, and each subcontractor is typically a small business. “Construction as an industry has chronically underinvested in R&D because there have actually been very few players that have grown large enough to be able to afford an R&D budget,” he says. In theory, modular construction in factories could help bring down costs and build more housing faster. But of the handful of companies that have tried to scale up factory-built homes, some have struggled, like Katerra, which raised more than $2 billion before eventually filing for bankruptcy in 2021. Reframe’s founders started by talking to 18 different housing factories around the world to understand what worked and what didn’t. Some, particularly in Europe and Japan, had succeeded. Others had failed. Reframe also talked to developers to understand what it would take for them to consider switching to a new method of construction. [Photo: courtesy Reframe Systems] Before jumping to the step of designing robots, “we really obsessed over the problem,” Enti says. “What does it look like for us to build millions of residential homes that are great for the planet but also great for people’s wallets?” They landed on three main requirements. If they were going to build factories, they needed to be very cost-efficient and fast to buildless than $5 million and possible to deploy within 100 days. (By contrast, one of Katerra’s factories reportedly cost $150 million to build.) Additionally, each home needed to be cost-efficient to build, with at least 35% gross margins. And the factories needed to be easily adaptable to local zoning requirements that change from city to city. [Image: courtesy Reframe Systems] Mass customization Most factory-built housing takes an assembly-line approach. But Enti argues that it doesn’t work. “People say if you could only mass-produce homes the way you mass-produce cars, everything would be better,” he says. “The reality is when you look at the nuances of site conditions with 30,000 zoning jurisdictions in the country and with different state codes, it’s very hard to get one product that actually fits all these constraints.” Instead, he says, Reframe Systems embraces the idea that construction is highly local and diverse. “We’re not going to fight it,” he says. “So what technology do we need to develop so we can actually build snowflakes at scale?” [Image: courtesy Reframe Systems] It’s not unlike the challenge they faced in Amazon’s fulfillment centers, where each order was unpredictable. “You let the customer pick and choose anything they wanta red pen, blue pen, and teddy bear in the same orderand the job of the software and the robotics in the background was to make sure that the marginal cost to deliver this variability was zero,” Enti says. For housing, that meant developing custom software that can adapt to zoning codes, site requirements, or the architectural style that the property owner prefers. (Cosmic, another startup, is taking a similar approach.) The system also needed the ability to easily switch between housing types, from accessory dwelling units to single-family homes to apartment buildings. Reframe is particularly focused on missing middle housing, like duplexes and other small multifamily buildings. [Image: courtesy Reframe Systems] “We effectively have to invent what we call a high-mix, high-volume manufacturing process, which breaks the assembly line,” Enti says. In two of its first projects, currently under construction in Somerville, a suburb of Boston, the company is building two three-story triplexes. The designs are similar, but because one building sits on a corner, it has different requirements, including additional windows on one side. It’s the type of change that could be complex in traditional construction, but it took Reframe only a day to adjust and produce new plans. [Photo: courtesy Reframe Systems] How the system works At the company’s first microfactory, near Boston, it builds modules that are as fully finished as possible, such as kitchens complete with appliances. Then the modules can be delivered nearby and assembled on a building site. So far the company’s robot performs only a tiny fraction of the work: A robotic arm frames walls and ceilings. Reframe Systems aims to eventually automate around 60% of building tasks. Wiring and plumbing is installed in walls and floors by workers at the factory. Parts are precut and printed with instructions. The company’s goal is to make it feel more like assembling Ikea furniture or a Lego kit, in an industrialized way. Enti says even workers who are new to construction can handle complex steps through the process. The company’s approach can cut costs in a few different ways. First, Enti says, by eliminating subcontractors, it can reduce the markups that get passed on to customers. Building in a systematic way in a factory helps cut the use of materials, another major source of cost. The process is more efficient for workers, cutting the cost of labor. It’s also two to three times faster than traditional construction, so if a building is constructed for a developer, they can start getting returns more quickly. The houses are also ultra-efficient and wired for solar power and batteries, so residents can save money on electric bills. A network of microfactories The first microfactory is around 18,000 square feet, but later factories will be 50,000 square feet, or roughly the size of the garden center at a Home Depot. Reframe envisions running a network of factories across the country. The next location will be in Southern California, where the company plans to help rebuild homes in Altadena that were destroyed by the wildfire in January. The team is currently getting feedback from residents on single-family bungalows designed to fit into the neighborhood, from a Spanish-style house to a Craftsman cottage. [Image: courtesy Reframe Systems] At first, the company plans to build a handful of homes at its Massachusetts factory and ship them to California. Then, as it proves the demand is there, it plans to build a second microfactory in Los Angeles. “This is going to be our playbook to enter new markets,” Enti says. “We will always try to have demand precede capacity because we can launch our factory in 100 days. So the goal is that we ship product from existing factories to a new market, use that product to drum up demand, and then we convert that to go set up a new microfactory.” [Image: courtesy Reframe Systems] Reframe wants to build a million homes by 2045. (For reference, it took D.R. Horton, the largest builder in the U.S., about twice as long to build a million homes.) That would require around 800 microfactories to be up and running. [Image: courtesy Reframe Systems] “They might seem like large, scary numbers,” Enti says, but he points to Amazon, where the robotics team built only 300 robots in its first year a decade ago, but recently built its millionth robot. “It’s very hard to forecast exponential growth and scale,” he says. “My message to the team is it’s always going to be one home at a time, one microfactory at a time. But every microfactory that we build will be responsible for seeding the team that’s going to build five more microfactories. The demand is therethe need for housing is there.”
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