Category: Business Insider

• The US Air National Guard rebuke a proposal to shift space mission units to the Space Force.
• Internal surveys found that most personnel would rather retrain or retire than join the Space Force.
• Critics say it usurps state governors' authority and the wishes of the Guardsmen who want to stay.

Air National Guard leaders and enlisted Guardsmen on Friday called a legislative proposal to move units focused on space missions to the Space Force a threat to their existence and also said many of those personnel would rather retire or retrain into another job instead.

In a media roundtable with reporters, officers and enlisted from the Alaska, Colorado, and Hawaii Air National Guards took aim at the Air Force proposal, which seeks to move units in their states into the Space Force, usurping their state governors' authority and the wishes of most of the Guardsmen stationed in those areas. Internal polling from 14 Air National Guard units in seven states shows anywhere from 70% to 86% have no desire to become Space Force Guardians.

"Our internal survey indicates about 70% of our personnel would retrain or retire rather than join the Space Force," Air Force Col. Michael Griesbaum, commander of the Alaska Air National Guard's 168th Wing, told reporters Friday. "In our particular case, that would really represent an existential threat to the national security of the United States because the Space Force does not have the experience to replace my space operators who depart."

Rebukes from Air National Guard officials join a chorus of criticisms for the proposal, including a letter of opposition signed by the governors of 48 states as well as five US territories earlier this week.

"Governors must maintain full authority as commanders in chief of these assets to effectively protect operational readiness and America's communities," according to the letter, which was promoted by the National Governors Association. "Legislation that sidesteps, eliminates or otherwise reduces governors' authority within their states and territories undermines long-standing partnerships, precedence, military readiness and operational efficacy."

Air Force officials' legislative proposal 480 to Congress would change the status of Air National Guard units conducting space operations "from a unit of the Air National Guard of the United States to a unit of the United States Space Force; deactivate the unit; or assign the unit a new federal mission" and would do so "without the approval of its governor," Military.com reported last month.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, in response to Military.com last month, waived off the concerns, saying worries that the proposal would set a precedent undermining state governors' authority were overblown.

"We've had much, much more political attention over this than it deserves," Kendall said. "We need a way to integrate these space capabilities, which are very valuable to us, into the Space Force. This is a unique situation. I have no indication that either the Air Force or Army Guard, anybody, is contemplating any other changes."

But Air National Guard leaders have expressed concern, saying it would set a clear precedent for other services to potentially take more resources from the National Guard model.

"Nothing legislatively ever happens once," Griesbaum said. "If LP 480 is successful, it will open the door to a wholesale harvesting of National Guard resources, both from the Air National Guard and the Army National Guard to the regular components."

Enlisted Air National Guardsmen in space missions have concerns about losing the ties to their local communities, as well as potentially uprooting their families or civilian careers by being transferred to the active-duty force and the uncertainty that could come with that transition.

"I love this nation, and I love this state," Air Force Staff Sgt. Robert Brown with the Colorado Air National Guard's 233rd Space Group said. "I wanted to continue my service through the Air National Guard, and I didn't run the risk of getting stationed anywhere far from home. Currently, my wife and I are expecting a daughter in just about a month, so that really enforces our needs."

Since 2019, when the Space Force became the newest service branch under the Department of the Air Force, debates and conflicts have sprung up over what to do with the roughly 1,000 part-time Air National Guardsmen across 14 units operating space-related missions in Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, New York, and Ohio.

Kendall as well as some members of Congress say that the number of those affected would be less than that. But Guard officials are skeptical, saying officials are not counting all the units and all the states supporting those missions, as well as the support personnel.

Brig. Gen. Michael Bruno, director of joint staff for the Colorado National Guard, told reporters Friday that space operators with his state are currently deployed overseas helping with missions, and he worries that if the legislative proposal is approved, it may leave them with an uncertain future.

"These space professionals may not have a military job to come back to when they return," he said. "They volunteered to serve and sacrifice for their nation, state, and communities. I can only imagine how they and their families must feel if we break that trust with them."

• South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem's forthcoming book incorrectly said she had met with Kim Jong Un.
• After the passage leaked before publication, she said she asked the book's publisher remove it.
• She did her own narration for the audiobook. Why didn't she catch the error then?

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem may have been caught fibbing.

The rising Republican politician claimed last week she ordered changes to her soon-to-be-released book, "No Going Back: The Truth on What's Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward," after learning it falsely said she met with North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un.

"I remember when I met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, I'm sure he underestimated me having no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants. I've been a children's pastor after all," Noem wrote in her book about an interaction with the North Korean leader that never happened, as Politico reported last week.

CBS News' "Face the Nation" host Margaret Brennan pressed Noem on Sunday about the false passage in her book.

"Did you meet Kim Jong Un?" Brennan asked the governor.

"I'm not going to talk about my specific meetings with world leaders, I'm just not going to do that," Noem said. "This anecdote shouldn't have been in the book, and as soon as it was brought to my attention, I made sure that that was adjusted."

Later Sunday, Noem's book publisher released a statement. "At the request of Governor Noem, we are removing a passage regarding Kim Jong Un from her book No Going Back, upon reprint of the print edition and as soon as technically possible on the audio and ebook editions," it said.

In other words, the audiobook version of Noem's memoir narrated by the governor herself will have to be edited as well, meaning Noem read the false North Korea statement aloud for the recording without correcting it.

A representative from Noem's office did not respond to Business Insider's question about why the governor didn't report the error sooner. CBS News asked Noem a similar question during their interview, leading the governor to accuse the host of treating her "differently than every other person" she's spoken with on the show.

The rollout for Noem's forthcoming book has been a diaster.

The Guardian obtained an early copy of Noem's book in late April, and revealed that Noem wrote about shooting her family's 14-month-old dog in a gravel pit.

She's since defended the passage, adding that she recently also killed three horses. Noem has also said that President Joe Biden's dog, Commander, should be put down after it reportedly bit several Secret Service agents.

The Daily Beast reported on May 3 that sources close to former President Donald Trump said Noem's recent negative attention effectively disqualified her from becoming his vice presidential running mate, calling it "political suicide."

But a fundraiser in Mar-a-Lago over the weekend, Trump was recorded saying she was "somebody that I love."

Hamas said in a statement Monday that it's accepted a cease-fire proposal from Qatar and Egypt in the war with Israel, according to multiple reports.

It's unclear if Israel has accepted the terms of the Qatari and Egyptian cease-fire plan.

The militant group's leadership announced it had agreed to the deal, Reuters reports.

Hours earlier, Israel had dropped leaflets on the Gaza city of Rafah, warning citizens to evacuate ahead of military operations.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

• Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is the second richest man in the world.
• He's no longer CEO of Amazon, but he now spends extra time with his space company.
• Business Insider rounded up what Bezos and his fiancee have said over the years about his daily routine.

Jeff Bezos may no longer be running Amazon, but he's kept busy.

The Amazon cofounder has a net worth of $203 billion, according to Forbes. In addition to founding the online retail behemoth Amazon, Bezos also owns The Washington Post and an aerospace company, Blue Origin. 

Bezos stepped down as CEO of Amazon in 2021 to focus on his rocket company Blue Origin.

Bezos has been dating his fiancée Lauren Sánchez since 2019.

So what does daily life look like for the tech mogul? Sánchez described their morning routine in an interview with Vogue.

Here's a look inside his daily routine:

He wakes up every morning naturally, without the aid of an alarm clock.

Bezos makes sure to get enough rest — he sleeps for eight hours every night. The former CEO told CNBC in 2021 that while he could sleep less and be more productive, the quality of his decisions would be lower, which isn't worth it to him. 

"I like to putter in the morning," Bezos told a gathering of Economic Club of Washington, DC. "So I like to read the newspaper. I like to have coffee."

Source: Axios

Bezos and his fiancee like to start off their morning with journaling instead of going straight to looking at their phones.

"We're not quite there," Sánchez said in the interview. "We'll do it, like, three days a week."

Whoever wakes up first makes the coffee, Sánchez said.

While the billionaire Amazon founder drinks his morning coffee in a self-heating Ember mug, Sánchez says she uses a mug Bezos got her from Amazon that says, "woke up sexy as hell again."

Bezos reportedly never schedules early-morning meetings, in order to spend quality time with his family.

Bezos has said he likes a slow morning to spend time with his family. 

Sánchez told Vogue Bezos calls out, "don't learn anything I wouldn't learn," every morning before she drops her daughter Ella off at school. The line has become a staple in their everyday routine and her daughter now finishes it for him.

Bezos also reads the newspaper and chats with his fiancé before heading to the gym for cardio and weightlifting, he said.

"Most days, [going to the gym is] not that hard for me, but some days it's really hard and I do it anyway," he said.

The billionaire said he goes to the gym almost every day.

 

 

But Sánchez said they don't do the same exercises.

"He's on a whole different level than I am," Sánchez said in the Vogue interview. "He is a monster in the gym."

Bezos said in a Lex Fridman podcast on a good day he does 30 minutes of cardio and 45 minutes of weightlifting or resistance training of some kind.

"I have a trainer who you know I love who pushes me," Bezos said in the podcast. "Which is really helpful."

 

 

But he does like to get his more intensive meetings rolling before noon. "I do my high-IQ meetings before lunch," he told the Economic Club of Washington, DC.

"Like anything that's going to be really mentally challenging, that's a 10 o'clock meeting," Bezos said back in 2018, according to Axios.

Bezos usually keeps his afternoons clear of high-intensity meetings.

If something that necessitates a "high-IQ meeting" pops up later in the day, Bezos typically puts it off until the next day.

"By 5 p.m., I'm like, 'I can't think about that today. Let's try this again tomorrow at 10 a.m,'" he told the Economic Club of Washington, DC in 2018.

 

When it comes to meals, Bezos has a taste for unusual dishes.

He was photographed eating an iguana once.

And, during a meeting with Woot founder Matt Rutledge, he ordered octopus with potatoes, bacon, green garlic yogurt, and eggs for breakfast.

"When I look at the menu, you're the thing I don't understand, the thing I've never had," Bezos said. "I must have the breakfast octopus."

 

Bezos and Sánchez like to cook. Sanchez said Bezos makes churros in his deep fryer, a recipe passed down from his Cuban grandfather.

"Abuelo made churros whenever we were with him," Bezos said.

 

 

Bezos also has a fondness for food trucks.

In 2014, he told Henry Blodget, who was then Business Insider's editor-in-chief, about a phenomenally popular truck outside of Amazon's headquarters. "It's out of control, actually," he said.

Bezos said he's never worked harder than he has since he left Amazon.

His day revolves around reading documents and having meetings in person or over Zoom, he told Lex Fridman in a podcast.

Architecture and technology meetings almost every day about different subsystems inside the vehicle and engines.

"My favorite part of it is the technology," Bezos said.

His least favorite part is building the organization, he said. 

Bezos does "little thinking retreats."

The billionaire said he's very good at focusing but he doesn't keep to a strict schedule.

He told Lex Fridman he believes in wandering and his "messy" meetings often go overtime.

 

Family movie nights are a Saturday night tradition in the Bezos household, according to his fiancee.

"Of course, Jeff's favorite movie was Oppenheimer, and I love Barbie. And there you have us summed up in two movies."

Amazon now runs several popular original series, like "The Man in the High Castle" and "Transparent," but the former Amazon CEO is a Trekkie.

Bezos even made a surprise cameo in the 2016 film "Star Trek Beyond."

Other than watching "Star Trek," Bezos has another space-related hobby: gliding about in a submarine looking for old NASA rockets.

He's brought his kids along for the adventure.

Bezos is a big believer in getting enough shut-eye. The billionaire strives for eight hours.

"I prioritize it," he said at a dinner hosted by the Economic Club of Washington, D.C. "I think better. I have more energy. My mood is better."

Bedtime is 9:30 p.m., according to his fiancee. 

"As a senior executive, you get paid to make a small number of high-quality decisions. Your job is not to make thousands of decisions every day," he said, according to Axios.

"Is that really worth it if the quality of those decisions might be lower because you're tired or grouchy?" Bezos asked the Economic Club of Washington, D.C.

• Tesla's Model Y may offer unlocked range for an extra $1,500 to $2,000.
• Elon Musk said the new range provides an extra 40 to 60 miles and is pending regulatory approvals.
• This isn't Tesla's first instance of offering increased range for an extra fee.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk says its recent Model Y models have more range than you thought — but you'll have to pay to get it.

Musk said in a post on X that Model Y vehicles built over the past few months have an extra 40 to 60 miles of range that can be unlocked, depending on the battery.

Musk said Tesla would charge an extra $1,500 to $2,000 for the upgrade and that he's "working through regulatory approvals to enable" the new range.

Musk's range revelation was in response to Tesla investor Sawyer Merritt's post about Tesla launching a new Long Range RWD Model Y.

Merritt said in the X post that the previous Model Y was discontinued.

Tesla replaced the Standard Range Model Y with a 320-mile Long Range rear-wheel drive for about $2,000 more.

The EV costs between $44,990 and $49,490, depending on add-ons. Owners who qualify for the $7,500 federal EV tax credit can get the new version for as low as $37,490.

Tesla is known to use its remote software rollouts to add features or make fixes to its EVs. And this isn't the first time Tesla has locked an EV's range and offered access to it for an additional charge.

Tesla's Model S 70 originally had a 70kWh battery and 220-mile range, but the company later revealed the battery pack had a higher capacity of 75kWh with a 237-mile range, which could be unlocked for an additional $3,000.

Tesla has also made the opposite move by disabling software features like Autopilot when someone buys one of their EVs from a third-party vendor.

When a user asked why the unlocked range isn't offered for free, the CEO replied, "We have to pay the bills somehow."

The decision to attach a fee to locked updates is a growing trend in the auto industry. BMW received backlash for adding a subscription to its heated seats. Mercedes offered an add-on "acceleration increase" for $1,200 a year. Meanwhile, Polestar offered a horsepower upgrade for a fee of $1,195.

With the EV market slumping, these kinds of subscriptions and unlocked offerings seem to be giving companies another ways to generate revenue.

• Ukraine used an exploding naval drone to destroy a Russian military speedboat in Crimea on Monday.
• Footage shows the drone navigating through heavy aerial fire to strike the Russian boat. 
• It's the latest attack on Russia's Black Sea Fleet, which has largely been dispersed.

Ukraine's exploding drone boats appear to be hunting down smaller, high-speed vessels in the Black Sea after Russia pulled back its larger warships following a spate of devastating attacks.

The Ukrainian Main Directorate of Intelligence, or HUR, said on Monday that its forces destroyed a Russian military speedboat with a Magura V5 naval drone in Uzka Bay, located in the northwestern corner of the occupied Crimean peninsula.

The attack marks Ukraine's latest strike against the Russian Black Sea Fleet. This months-long drone and missile campaign has forced Moscow to relocate many of its vulnerable assets away from the fleet's headquarters in Crimea and closer to Russia, on the other side of the sea.

"Since the fear of Ukrainian attacks forces the occupiers to hide large ships of the Black Sea Fleet away from the peninsula, combat work continues against the high-speed maneuverable military vessels of the Russians," the HUR, an arm of Ukraine's defense ministry, wrote in a statement on the Telegram messaging platform, per translation.

Footage of the attack shared by Ukraine shows one of the naval drones take heavy fire from above, most likely from an aircraft. The drone manages to evade the fire, which lands in the surrounding water, and makes its way toward the Russian boat sitting at a pier.

The Russian boat appears to be covered by a camouflage tarp. It's unclear if it was manned by any troops at the time of the attack. The video cuts just as the Ukrainian drone slams into the vessel. Kyiv did not say whether it lost any drones in the attack.

Russia's defense ministry claimed on Monday that the Black Sea Fleet had destroyed five of the Ukrainian drone boats near Crimea's northwestern coast. Moscow published footage to Telegram showing a helicopter open fire on the surface of the water, and at one point, an explosion can be seen. It did not acknowledge any of its own losses.

Business Insider was unable to immediately verify the footage from the two militaries.

The HUR identified the Russian vessel as a "Mongoose," a $3 million multi-purpose ship first produced in 2000 that is capable of engaging in combat operations, patrolling, and carrying out search and rescue operations. These boats can be up to 65 feet long and are equipped with machine guns, automatic grenade launchers, and portable air-defense systems.

Ukrainian forces have heavily relied on their arsenals of Magura V5s and Sea Babies — another type of exploding naval drone — to damage and destroy scores Russian warships in the Black Sea. Many of those targets were larger vessels, unlike the one that was struck on Monday.

Russia has been unable to consistently defend against this asymmetrical style of warfare, despite recent reshuffling in its naval leadership and new efforts to curb the threat. These efforts include added protections in port and outfitting its crews with more machine guns, as well as additional combat air patrols.

A general in the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, previously told Business Insider that Moscow constantly has planes and combat helicopters patrolling around the western Black Sea, which would be consistent with the video shared earlier by the Russian defense ministry. Still, Kyiv has managed to find success in targeting Russian vessels with its drones.

• The development of artificial intelligence technology is happening at a rapid pace.
• That's made it hard for Congress to regulate it, but Biden and Trump have tried by executive order.
• A lack of AI experts in government has also made it difficult for lawmakers to regulate the tech. 

The battle over AI isn't just happening in Silicon Valley among tech giants.

It's also happening within the halls of Congress and the White House as lawmakers try to figure out how to rein in the technology without stalling progress.

Congress hasn't been able to pass a comprehensive set of federal laws and regulations around artificial intelligence — the majority of the restrictions around the innovative advancements have been made on the state level — leading President Joe Biden and former President Trump to fill in the gaps via executive decree, which provide little to no course to fight against bad actors in the industry that cross the line.

Why does the US not have federal AI regulation?

Passing legislation in Congress can be a painfully slow and sometimes impossible process. Bills are often quashed in committee and on the chamber floors. Many legislators will require amendments of their own to be added to the bill for them to consider supporting it, disrupting the process even more.

The chaos of the current session, with Republican infighting leading to the removal of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, has made things even worse.

So far, the 118th Congress has passed just 1% of all proposed bills.

With it being increasingly difficult for Congress to pass substantive laws and establish industry regulations, presidents have used executive orders as a means of establishing precedents in groundbreaking and developing industries, such as AI.

How is the development of AI governed?

During Trump's presidency, he issued several executive orders related to AI. In 2019 he signed into effect "Maintaining American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence," which was an executive order aimed to establish the need for companies to prioritize the development of AI. And in 2020, he issued "Promoting the Use of Trustworthy AI in the Federal Government," which set principles for how federal employees could safely and effectively use AI on the job.

Other than executive orders, Trump created the National Science & Technology Council's "Select Committee on AI" in 2018, which continues to advise the White House on ways the federal government can promote AI growth in the US.

More than 80 bills directly or indirectly addressing AI have been introduced in the current 118th Congress alone, but none have passed and become law, leading Biden and his administration to follow Trump's lead and set precedents using executive order.

Biden signed the executive order on "Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence" near the end of 2023. The 36-page directive set safety standards for AI researchers to follow, though critics say it provided little teeth for federal agencies to enforce it.

How do Trump's and Biden's AI policies differ?

Major AI powerhouses like Microsoft and Google have praised Biden's efforts, but Trump promised in December 2023 that he'd overturn the executive order.

"When I'm reelected, I will cancel Biden's artificial intelligence executive order and ban the use of AI to censor the speech of American citizens on day one," Trump said.

Some conservative lobbyists and think tanks have criticized Biden's regulations, arguing that the executive order abuses the Defense Production Act — a 1950 Korean War-era law empowering the president to unilaterally issue regulations and guidance to private companies during times of emergency — by violating the intended purpose of the act itself.

AI policy advocates don't seem entirely convinced of that argument.

Trump and Biden's "executive orders have contributed to a bipartisan consensus that AI ought to be trustworthy," said Jason Green-Lowe, the Center for AI Policy's executive director.

"It's changed the culture," he said. "You see sort of responsible scaling policies being rolled out on a voluntary basis by some of the more responsible labs, but then you have other companies that are just ignoring it, which right now is their legal right. Nobody's required to make sure that they're dealing with these catastrophic risks."

How are policymakers balancing regulation and innovation?

Several AI-policy experts told Business Insider that they're not completely against setting federal regulations on artificial intelligence as long as it won't cripple research.

Some experts, like Rebecca Finlay, who is the CEO of a non-profit organization called Partnership on AI, said that regulations are necessary to further innovation. Finlay's nonprofit is focused on responsibly promoting the development and regulation of AI.

"We've been very clear that you need to have regulation in place in order to advance innovation," Finlay said. "Clear rules of the road allow for more companies to be more competitive in being more innovative to do the work that needs to be done if we're really going to take the benefits of AI. One of the things that we are advocating strongly for is a level of transparency with regard to how these systems are being built and developed."

She said that she doesn't think there's a right or wrong decision between developing open or closed-source AI tools — she said she's seen "harms" from both types — as long as they're both developed responsibly.

"Rather than arguing between a binary choice between open and closed, I think it's really core that we hold all model developers and deployers accountable for ensuring that their models are developed as safely as possible," she said.

Daniel Zhang, the senior manager for policy initiatives at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, echoed Finlay's hope that regulations don't stifle research.

"We want to make sure the governance around open foundation models are, for the long term, beneficial for opening innovation," Zhang said. "We don't want to too-early restrict the development of open innovation that academia, for example, academic institutions thrive on."

What are the challenges of crafting AI regulation?

One of the biggest hurdles that legislators face in regulating AI, Finlay said, is "just keeping up to the state of the science and the technology as it is developed."

She said it's difficult for lawmakers to draft regulations because most AI companies develop their models not in a "publicly funded research environment," but they do so privately until they choose to share their advancements.

"The ideal solution would be to empower some kind of office or regulator to update the laws as they go forward," Green-Lowe, from the Center for AI Policy, said,

That's not the easiest thing to accomplish.

"We're also in a moment where people are very concerned about overreach from executive power and about the proper role of bureaucracies or the civil service," Green-Lowe said. "And so there are people in Congress who are skeptical that Congress can keep up with the changes in technology, but also skeptical that the power to do so should be delegated to an agency."

He added that failing to implement a formal way of regulating the sector would effectively let companies play by their own rules, something he and the Center for AI Policy don't purport to be the best course of action.

Another challenge comes from AI experts and researchers choosing private sector jobs instead of ones in the government, a kind of "brain drain," Zhang said.

"Most of the new AI Ph.D.'s that graduate in North America go to private industry," he said, citing Stanford's 2024 AI Index Report. "Less than 40% go to government looking to create all those AI regulations and governance structures."

Lacking staffers who can fully understand the complexity of AI and its future puts more onus on an aging US Congress to regulate the far-reaching tech, a difficult task.

Zhang said there's also a common misconception that working in government provides less access to money than working in the private sector.

"That's not a hundred percent true," he said. "For governments to appeal to those technical students, I think they just need to highlight the public service aspect and then give them the resources to be able to do their jobs.

In January, the Biden Administration released a "call to service" aimed at solving this problem.

"We are calling on AI and AI-enabling experts to join us to advance this research and ensure the next generation of AI models is safe, secure, and trustworthy," the administration said.

• A Chinese jet released flares close to an Australian military helicopter.
• This intercept is not the first 'unsafe and unprofessional' incident involving Chinese aircraft.
• China routinely engages in unsafe intercepts of US and allied aircraft.

The Australian government said Monday that a Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force fighter jet released flares dangerously close to an Australian Defence Force helicopter over the weekend.

The PLAAF jet intercepted the Royal Australian Navy MH-60R helicopter attached to HMAS Hobart in the Yellow Sea and "released flares across the flight path of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) helicopter," the Australian government said in a statement.

The Australian warship was in the area in support of Operation Argos, which is aimed at enforcing sanctions on North Korea.

Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles said a Chinese J-10 fighter aircraft popped flares about 300 meters in front of the helicopter and about 60 meters above it, per reporting from the AP.

Canberra called China's flight conduct in this interaction "unsafe and unprofessional."

"This was an unsafe manoeuvre which posed a risk to the aircraft and personnel," the statement said. "While there were no injuries sustained by ADF personnel or damage caused to the MH-60R helicopter, the safety and wellbeing of our ADF personnel continues to be our utmost priority."

Beijing has yet to publicly respond to the allegations.

This isn't the first incident involving a Chinese jet engaging in troubling behavior in the vicinity of an Australian aircraft.

In June 2022, a Chinese J-16 patrolling the South China Sea released flares and chaff, or strips of aluminum intended to confuse the radar on a missile, close enough to an Australian P-8 that the strips got caught in its engine.

The US released records in October 2023 reporting numerous instances of aggressive flight conduct from China.

The 2023 Department of Defense report on Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China found that from fall 2021 to 2023, there were over 180 cases of "coercive and risky air intercepts against U.S. aircraft in the region" linked to Chinese aircraft.

This number of cases recorded over the course of two years is more than in the past decade.

"The PLA's behavior contravenes flight safety protocols and the international maritime rules of the road, and increases the risk of a major accident, incident, or crisis, including the potential for loss of life," the report said.

• I started working as soon as I graduated from college 40 years ago. 
• I've made some bad decisions, thinking I could make up for them later in life. 
• At 62, it feels like I'm going to be working forever as a freelancer. 

Fresh out of college more than 40 years ago, I threw myself into a career in marketing, public relations, and communications. I worked in higher education, healthcare, and operated my own agency not once, but twice. My professional life has taken me around the country and to Europe.

Professionally, I've been there, done that. And apparently, I'll be doing it for the rest of my life.

I made bad decisions thinking I could make up later

I've been fortunate to have the education to warrant good salaries. A lot of people spend their entire adult lives in minimum-wage jobs that offer little hope of being able to retire comfortably if at all. Despite differences in lifetime earnings, we all heard the recommendations of experts for decades about what you need to do to retire.

I admit to making decisions that flew in their face, always believing I could make up ground later.

I allowed my now ex-husband to talk me into cashing in a growing 401k more than 15 years ago in an emergency. He promised that his retirement plan would be "more than enough" to support us in our old age. In my 50s, I used most of my divorce payout and cashed in a minor state retirement fund to buy a house in Slovenian to experience life in another country.

I wasn't so focused on rebuilding my life that I forgot about how close I was to the traditional retirement age. But I was tired of career-building and wanted to see the world. By making that choice, I faced the fact that I'd never be able to retire unless I remarried well or won the lottery. The first was never going to happen. The second would require that I actually play the lottery, which I don't.

Although I could never retire, I could change the type of work I'd done for 30 years. So, I took a job doing something I had no training for. I worked as a paralegal for a personal injury attorney friend. I thought I would be there three years but ended up doubling that. At least that stint produced a new, albeit small 401k I'm saving for later.

My current job doesn't necessarily pay well

Shortly before the pandemic hit, it was time to venture back out on my own, once again with no safety net, like a hefty savings account or a spouse's income. This time, I chose to write, because it's something I love to do, which is a good thing if you have to work for the duration of your earthly existence.

Nearly five years later, I'm still freelancing, writing content for a client agency, regularly contributing to a magazine, and pitching stories to other publications. I also carve out time to pursue my creative writing. None of them pay particularly well.

I supplement with my share of my ex's retirement, but only for as long as he's alive. And at the age of 62 and one month, I made another move financial advisors tell you not to do: I started drawing my Social Security. It's mine. I earned it. Why not use it now to free myself from the remainder of my debts and make my life a little easier?

Ernest Hemingway once said that retirement is the ugliest word in the English language. Maybe that's because he never wanted to put his typewriter away to gather dust. I get that. My cobbled income isn't enough for me to retire and never will be. But I'll always eke out enough to keep traveling and writing about it. For this boomer, that's enough.

• Apple is increasingly emphasizing the growth of its services business.
• Apple's definition of "services" includes advertising, which Apple routinely says is a major driver of its services growth.
• But Apple's definition of advertising may surprise you.

Apple is the iPhone, and the iPhone is Apple. But as we've pointed out many times, iPhone sales won't grow forever. Last quarter, they actually dropped.

Which is why, for the last several years, Apple has been taking pains to highlight its growing "services" business.

"Services," per Apple's description, is a fast-growing grab-bag of stuff, all of which doesn't directly involve Apple hardware: money Apple makes from App Store sales; money Apple makes selling warranties and cloud storage; and money Apple makes selling you music and TV subscription services.

Services also means advertising sales, which Apple points out almost every time it talks to investors: In 14 of the company's last 16 quarterly filings, it has cited "advertising" as one of the three reasons service revenue has increased.

If you're a normal person, you'd think that means, you know … advertising. In Apple's case, that means selling the promotional slots it sells on results pages in its App Store. (This can be alternately useful or frustrating, depending on your perspective: When I recently searched the App Store for "Twitter," the top result was an ad for Facebook; when I typed in "Facebook," the top result was an ad for TikTok.)

But in Apple's case, "advertising" also means a much, much bigger business: the money Google pays Apple to be the default search engine on iPhones and other devices — more than $20 billion in 2022 alone.

Apple doesn't come out and say that, exactly. Which makes sense because Apple has been reluctant to talk about the money it gets from Google, period. So far, the only concrete numbers about the payouts have come from disclosures in the US government's antitrust case against Apple.

But each year, in Apple's annual report, when it breaks down each of its business lines, Apple does say that "the Company's advertising services include third-party licensing arrangements." Like renting out its search exclusivity to Google. (Apple declined to comment, but two analysts I checked with confirmed my reading of that disclosure.)

Apple does have a traditional advertising business, and it does appear to be growing: The folks at BI sister company EMarketer think it will hit $6.3 billion this year, up from $5.4 billion last year.

And that's not nothing. For context: That's more than the $4.5 billion in ad sales Twitter generated in 2021, its last full year before Elon Musk bought the company; it's also more than the $4.6 billion Snap generated in 2023.

But in Apple terms traditional ads still don't mean that much — they make up perhaps 6% of Apple's annual services revenue. The Google deal, meanwhile, represents more than 20% of that number.

So, the next time you see Apple talk about the strength of its advertising business, bear in mind that it's likely referring to its Google business.