• There's an ongoing debate in the tech world about whether we're in the midst of an AI bubble.
• That debate is just now starting to make its way into the halls of power in Washington.
• AOC said that we could be in a "massive" bubble — and there should be no bailout if it pops.

Are we in the middle of an AI bubble? Ask a lawmaker, and they probably won't have a definitive take for you.

"If I knew that, I'd be in a different line of work," Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat who represents much of Silicon Valley, told Business Insider.

The AI bubble debate has been raging in the tech world since August, when OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that investors had grown "overexcited" about the technology.

There are also concerns about circular spending patterns among tech companies investing in AI technology, and fears that companies won't be able to recoup the billions of dollars they're spending on data centers and other AI infrastructure. Bill Gates has explicitly compared it to the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s.

However, many in the tech world remain confident that there's no bubble, citing continued high demand for AI products.

"Are we in an AI bubble? I have no idea," Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii told Business Insider. "Even the AI people don't know."

Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said that while she was unsure whether there's a bubble, she's concerned by "how much of the economic activity in the stock market and across the country is driven by this one sector."

"If it is overvalued, when that bubble pops, it's going to be felt everywhere," Warren said. "The concentration makes the economy far more vulnerable than it otherwise would be."

One of the few lawmakers who's been outspoken about the potential for a bubble is Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who said at a hearing last week that we may be in a "massive economic bubble" that could pose "2008-style threats to economic stability."

"Should this bubble pop, we should not be entertaining a bailout," Ocasio-Cortez added.

The debate is slowly making its way to Capitol Hill as the Trump administration and some Republicans in Congress are pursuing ways to make it easier for the AI industry to do business.

President Donald Trump, when asked, has largely shrugged off questions about whether he's worried about a bubble.

"I guess. I worry about everything," Trump said in an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes" earlier this month. "I hope it's gonna be very good. But if it's not so good, we're protected."

Trump has begun to talk up the need to restrict states' ability to regulate AI, reviving a fight that played out over the summer as Congress considered the "Big Beautiful Bill."

The bill originally included a provision that would have blocked states from enacting some regulations on AI for 10 years. It was strongly supported by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee who's positioned himself as an ally of the AI industry on Capitol Hill. It was later stripped out of the megabill in a 99-1 vote.

When asked last week whether he sees a bubble in the AI industry, Cruz was circumspect.

"Will there be uncertainty? Will there be economic challenges? Of course," Cruz told Business Insider. "But for technology of this magnitude, it's in our interest that America win the race, and not China."

Ocasio-Cortez argued that there's a connection between the potential bubble and financial incentives to make AI technology more exploitative.

"People's deepest fears, secrets, emotional content, relationships can all be mined for this empty promise that we're getting from these companies to turn a profit," Ocasio-Cortez said at the hearing.

But for some of those who want to see stronger regulation of AI, the question of a bubble is largely beside the point.

"Bubble, no bubble, whatever," Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said. "We need to focus on the effect on working people."

• People analytics firm Visier analyzed who is more likely to be rehired within 15 months of being laid off.
• Managers and workers in the finance and retail industries were more likely to be called back.
• Andrea Derler, principal researcher, expects the rate to rise as companies deal with AI and uncertainty.

Sometimes a layoff isn't a farewell forever.

Rehires of people who were laid off could become more popular in a shaky job market. Visier, a people analytics firm, looked at how many people were rehired at their previous employers within 15 months of being terminated. Visier found about 5.3% of laid-off employees were rehired, based on global data from 2018 to 2024 covering 142 large organizations with over 2 million employee records.

Andrea Derler, principal researcher at Visier, expects boomerang hires of people who were previously laid off to increase as companies figure out how to handle "AI-induced pressures" and economic uncertainty.

"In times of extreme turmoil, where workforce planning is made even more difficult due to rapid, unexpected, and unpredictable changes, layoff boomerangs seem to be more prevalent," Derler said.

Separately, ADP Research found that the share of new hires who were boomerang employees increased from 26% in March 2022 to 35% this past March. "In an era where the outlook on the jobs market is fuzzy or uncertain, it makes sense for both employers and employees to stick with what they know," Nela Richardson, ADP's chief economist, previously told Business Insider.

The US is in a mostly frozen job market marked by low layoffs, but also low hiring. Job growth slowed from a monthly average of 111,000 between January and March to about 62,000 between July and September.

Layoffs in the US are low, but announcements are adding up. Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas found that there have been over 1 million job cuts announced from US-based employers this year as of October. Verizon, Amazon, government agencies, and others have made headlines for their decisions.

Managers and people in finance and retail are more likely to rejoin their companies

Derler said Visier's data doesn't show a surge in manager layoffs, but they are also more likely to be rehired. "Organizations realize that it's really hard to find a good manager because the manager is responsible for a lot of things: performance, productivity, but also engagement of other employees," she said.

Among the handful of industries Visier looked at, finance and retail had the highest rates of laid-off employees that were rehired at 7.5% each. Derler said retail has a lot of turnover, so it makes sense that workers may go back and forth. She suspects the rate for the finance industry is because the work duties involve certain skills and expertise. Instead of tapping into a new talent pool, businesses may turn to people previously on their payroll and who have already demonstrated their capabilities.

Meanwhile, Derler said tech's rate of 4.3%, below the average rate and the lowest among the five industries looked at, could be because desired skills and knowledge quickly evolve. So, unlike finance, firms may want to look at a new talent pool.

"Prompt engineers a year ago was the big job — nobody talks about prompt engineering anymore," Derler said. "Skills are changing so fast, so that's why I can assume that they'll be looking for new people with new skills rather than those who they know."

Before being laid off, network and develop your skills

Derler said all parties need to have good "layoff hygiene," where both sides are respectful. She said workers should also try not to internalize their layoff or think it's something they did wrong.

She also emphasized the importance of always keeping up your skills, so that if you are laid off, you can confidently add your knowledge to your résumé or talk about it in an interview.

Derler also suggested staying connected with people you worked well with in case you do rejoin — not just so it's pleasant to return, but because they might know about an opening.

Derler said she interviewed some boomerangs and found some were still in touch with their old boss. "When their manager then realized they actually needed somebody again, they would be the first that they would call," she said. "Makes sense, right? Because you know the person, you get on well with them."

Have you gone back to your previous job? Are you a hiring manager who has made boomerang hires? Reach out to this reporter at mhoff@businessinsider.com.

• There is plenty of fear about AI rendering an expensive Stanford degree obsolete.
• While most classes still ban AI, one of the most popular courses encourages students to use AI coding tools.
• A who's who of AI software development engineers has guest lectured in the class.

In a dimly lit Stanford University basement classroom packed with anxious computer science students, lecturer Mihail Eric tells the class he's going to teach them how to code without writing a single line of code.

Eric's class, The Modern Software Developer, has quickly become one of the hottest Stanford CS courses this semester, which bills itself as the first attempt at a major university to embrace coding tools like Cursor and Claude.

It is an unsettling time to be a computer science major, even at a school as prestigious as Stanford, knowing you will be graduating into a world where AI is getting better at programming by the day.

"It can be scary because you think your job security is being compromised, and you might get replaced," said Brent Ju, one of the class's dozens of students. Ju is graduating this spring and so far has no job offers. "The market is a little tough. I am still interviewing."

"If you can go through this entire class without writing a single line of code, more power to you," said Eric, a Stanford alum who purposefully designed the course to be an antidote to the majority of classes that still ban the use of AI.

A who's who of AI coding luminaries has stopped by the bucolic Palo Alto campus to guest lecture, including Boris Cherney, creator of Claude Code, and Gaspar Garcia, head of AI research at Vercel. Martin Casado, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, will address the final class next week.

On a recent morning inside the classroom, Silas Alberti, head of research at Cognition, delivered a lecture called "The Opinionated Guide to AI Coding in 2025."

"I think what you learn in school has always been a little bit behind, so I'm glad that this course exists to teach the newest stuff," Alberti said after his lecture, surrounded by students lined up to greet him like a celebrity. "If you learn with yesterday's methods, you are not going to be super competitive, but if you really lean into the tools, you can be a super engineer."

Excitement and fear

The mood of the students in the class reflects the current zeitgeist of Silicon Valley, with excitement about what many consider one of the most significant technological advancements of our lifetime. But there is plenty of fear about AI rendering an expensive Stanford degree obsolete.

When Eric graduated in 2016, getting a Stanford CS degree was the golden ticket.

"People thought 'I'm going to go to an elite university, and then I'm just going to be set for life and have a cushy six-figure job for as long as I want at a FAANG company,'" he said.

The number of CS students surged as tech companies embarked on a massive hiring spree.

"Meanwhile, a lot of companies that hired a lot during COVID saw that they overhired," Eric said. "Now you have a surplus of young talent and also a surplus of newly laid-off, quite experienced talent."

Making matters worse, AI is already proficient in coding and continues to improve rapidly. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said up to 30 percent of the company's code is being written by AI, while Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei predicted in March that AI had the potential to write "essentially all" of the company's code within a year.

Ju, who says his dream job would be to work at Anthropic, says he is trying to stay positive.

"It's exciting because if the tools aren't going to replace you, but act as an assistant, it can really supercharge your productivity and make you a more effective developer," Ju said. "I'm more of an optimist who leans toward that direction."

Zach Lloyd, founder and CEO of Warp, a developer tool for agentic workflows, delivered a guest lecture last month and maintains he is still very interested in hiring CS students.

"The idea that people from a place like Stanford with a CS education won't be able to get jobs as engineers is a little overblown," he said, adding that knowing the fundamentals of programming is still vital to effectively using Warp or Claude. "These tools are accelerators but not replacements yet, and the actual people who will be best at wielding them are those who have a solid foundation."

Eric plans to teach the course again next year, though he says AI is advancing so fast that the class will likely look very different.

"People were asking me if I was concerned that by week seven, things are going to be obsolete that I talked about in week one?" he said. "Yes, it is a concern. So far it hasn't happened yet."

• Beans are a good source of plant-based protein and fiber.
• The CEO of a premium bean company has written two cookbooks to inspire people to eat more beans.
• Amelia Christie-Miller, a former private chef, adds beans to soup and pasta dishes.

If you're looking for an easy, cheap, and delicious way to add protein and fiber to your diet, the answer is simple: beans.

"Everyone's talking about ultra-processed foods. Everyone's talking about gut health, fibre, and protein, and they've just been completely overlooked," Amelia Christie-Miller, the CEO of Bold Bean Co., a premium bean company, told Business Insider.

Christie-Miller is on a mission "to make people fall in love with beans," and part of her strategy has been writing two cookbooks dedicated entirely to bean recipes. "They can fit into so many different cuisines and flavors and recipes," she said.

Legumes, such as beans, chickpeas, and lentils, are excellent sources of both plant-based protein and fiber. Just one cup of black beans, for example, contains around 15 grams of both.

As such, they're something of a cheat for boosting gut health. The fiber in beans is both soluble, which promotes regular bowel movements, and prebiotic, which feeds the "beneficial" bugs in the gut microbiome, the trillions of microbes that live in the colon lining and impact overall health.

She shared three easy swaps to add beans to your meals.

Add beans to your favorite pasta dish

If you're making a pasta dish, consider adding beans or replacing some of the pasta. "You'll realize just how well they meld with the flavors," Christie-Miller said. You can add beans to any sauce you like, from marinara or meat sauce to pesto.

Christie-Miller's go-to pasta sauce is puttanesca, a Neapolitan tomato-based sauce with olives, capers, pecorino cheese, and anchovies.

Swap croutons for crispy beans in soup

Throwing some beans into a soup is a simple and fast way to add protein and fiber. Or you can roast them in the oven or air fryer with some olive oil and sprinkle them on top like croutons.

"Crisping up beans is a really great texture topper," Christie-Miller said.

Soups often don't contain any protein or fat, which help us feel full. This means they often leave us hungry an hour or so after eating them. But, "if you add beans, you're going to feel way more sustained, and it's a really easy way of making a soup way more satisfying," she said.

Try "bean-otto" instead of risotto

Christie-Miller is a big fan of what she calls a bean-otto. "You take the concept of a risotto, but you replace the rice with beans," she said.

Her favorite is a Bold Bean Co. recipe called Porcini mushroom bean-Otto, which she makes with white beans, dried Porcini mushrooms, and chestnut mushrooms. She starts by frying the mushrooms with butter, thyme, and onions, then adds garlic and white wine. Once that's cooked off, she adds mushroom stock, which she makes using the dried Porcini mushrooms, then the beans. After the liquid has mostly evaporated, she stirs through some butter, Parmesan cheese, black pepper, and fresh parsley.

It comes together much faster than risotto because you don't have to wait for the rice to cook, and it contains far more protein and fiber. "You're actually going to feel so great afterward," she said.

• Some workers are getting remote exceptions from their managers — others are finding workarounds.
• Childcare needs and long commutes are pushing some workers to seek more work-from-home flexibility.
• Some managers may be willing to accommodate top performers to maintain team performance.

After months of battling LA traffic, Leslie Snipes decided it was time to talk to her manager.

For the first few months of her job as a director of marketing at a Los Angeles-based creative agency, she drove 60 to 90 minutes to the office a few days a week — but the commute eventually began to take a toll.

"I was wasting hours just sitting in traffic," said the 34-year-old.

In April of last year, Snipes decided to ask her manager whether she could work remotely almost exclusively. She explained that she'd be more productive working from home and that her team's strongest bonding often happened during business trips and off-site projects.

Snipes said she received verbal approval in less than a day — and that she now typically works from the office once or twice a month to "show face" and connect with colleagues.

"I feel less stressed, since I'm not spending hours sitting in traffic," she said. "It's a setup I wouldn't have unless I asked."

While some workers are more than happy to return to the office for camaraderie and a change of scenery, Business Insider spoke to seven people who have found ways to secure flexible work arrangements — whether or not they're officially sanctioned.

Nick Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University who studies remote work, said work-from-home rates have remained fairly stable in recent years, despite companies' implementing stricter return-to-office mandates. He believes that's offset by other employers — many of them smaller companies and startups — offering more flexibility. He also hypothesizes that employees are securing exceptions that allow them to work from home more frequently than their company's official policy permits.

Bloom pointed out a possible motivating factor for allowing these exceptions: Managers are generally judged on how their teams perform, and they don't want to risk their best talent quitting or becoming less productive if they're forced back to the office. For this reason, some managers may choose not to enforce office attendance policies too strictly.

"Managers ultimately care about their team performance," he said.

Securing flexibility to meet childcare demands

Childcare responsibilities are a common factor pushing workers to secure work-from-home flexibility. In November 2024, Georg Loewen began working as a senior director of digital marketing at a public relations agency with a three-day-a-week in-office policy, which required him to make a roughly one-hour commute from New Jersey to Manhattan.

But that commute proved challenging. Loewen was responsible for dropping off his one-year-old daughter at day care most mornings, and the 8 a.m. drop-off often made it difficult to catch the ideal 8:20 train that would get him to the office just before 9 — the next one wouldn't get him in until after 10. Even when he was on time, finding a parking spot at the station wasn't guaranteed.

Early this year, Loewen's manager initiated a conversation about his challenges getting into the office. Eventually, they came to an agreement.

"If drop-off ran long or parking didn't work out, I'd just work from home," said the 34-year-old.

Loewen said he typically works from the office once or twice a week. His current routine involves dropping off his daughter, heading home to park his car, and then riding a foldable bike 1.5 miles to the station, which allows him to avoid the hassle of finding a parking spot.

He said he sometimes worries about how his arrangement might be perceived by coworkers who don't have the same flexibility, but added that he's consistently felt supported. He may need to work from the office more frequently as his team grows, he said, but for now, he's grateful for the leeway he's been given.

A Wisconsin-based mother of three is similarly thankful for the flexible understanding she came to with her manager. In 2023, she'd considered leaving her corporate manufacturing role after the company announced a five-day-a-week office policy. She worried she couldn't meet her childcare responsibilities with a two-hour round-trip commute.

Instead, she had an "off the record" conversation with her manager about how much remote work she could get away with. She said they told her to "be here as much as you can." As long as she was in the office a few days a week — especially on days with key in-person meetings — they wouldn't stand in her way.

"If I need to work from home for whatever reason, whether it's work or personal reasons, then that's OK," she said.

Leaving early and having a remote backup plan

Some workers have found creative ways to spend less time at the office.

When Elysa Ellis began looking for a new role last year, she was hesitant to give up the remote work flexibility she'd grown used to. After landing an interview with a local nonprofit that required employees to work from the office five days a week, she came with a prepared request: a 9-to-3 schedule, instead of the typical 9-to-5.

Ellis said it was important for her to be able to pick up her two children from school around 3 p.m. and spend time with them until her husband finished work.

"My children are young, so I knew that stepping into an in-office role would impact them a lot," she said, adding, "I felt like I had nothing to lose."

By the time Ellis was offered the job, her request had been granted. She would work from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. — and still receive her full salary.

In 2022, when a millennial IT professional heard rumors that his employer might implement a stricter return-to-office policy, he began searching for a new role. Shortly after, he landed an offer for a remote position similar to his current role.

However, he was hesitant to resign while his company's official policy still allowed remote work, so he decided to secretly juggle both roles — earning $250,000 annually, roughly double his previous income. And if his initial employer ever adopted a stricter in-office policy, he figured he had a backup plan.

"I ultimately decided to try it since I could easily just drop one if it was too much," he said.

For a millennial finance manager at Amazon, maximizing his work-from-home time meant doing the bare minimum at the office.

When Amazon announced in 2023 that it would require corporate employees to work from the office three days a week, he began going in the required number of days — but only worked between nine and 12 hours total across all three days. He said it was feasible because he was the only member of his team based at that office.

"I would go into the office for a few hours, avoid rush hour, and fulfill my badging requirement," he said.

Work-from-home flexibility sometimes comes down to your choice of employer

For some, the simplest way to secure work-from-home flexibility is to find a job that offers it from day one.

After being laid off from a remote job, a New Jersey-based e-commerce professional landed an offer last year for a role at JPMorgan — one that would require him to commute to a Manhattan office three days a week.

As he considered the offer, he estimated that commuting would take nine hours a week and cost him more than $7,000 a year. Around the same time, he received another offer — this one for a remote role with a salary about $5,000 lower than the JPMorgan position.

When he compared the two jobs in terms of what he'd earn for every hour he'd have to "invest" in them — factoring in both commuting time and related costs — he said the decision was easy.

"JPMorgan just could not compete," he said, adding: "A 40-hour week plus nine commute hours is basically a 50-hour week for the salary that they were offering."

• Business Insider flew with a Royal Air Force Voyager aerial refueling tanker this week.
• The Voyager refueled British and Swedish fighter jets in Eastern Europe, close to Russian territory.
• This is what it's like in the tanker, which is crucial for enabling long-distance air operations.

ABOARD A BRITISH VOYAGER AIRCRAFT — With rows of economy seats, overhead baggage bins, television screens, and illuminated seatbelt signs, the cabin of this Royal Air Force tanker looks nearly identical to that of a commercial jetliner.

But out the window, NATO fighter jets are flying just a few feet away, receiving fuel from the Voyager at nearly 30,000 feet and at speeds around 300 miles per hour near the militarized Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. It's a fast and dangerous job, where even the slightest mistake could be deadly.

The Voyager — essentially a flying gas station carrying enough fuel to keep fighter jets flying for thousands of miles — is the RAF's only air-to-air refueling tanker, crucially allowing the UK to extend the range of NATO air operations.

Business Insider embarked on a Voyager flight this week for a NATO mission in support of Eastern Sentry, defensive operations that include air patrols launched in mid-September after roughly 20 Russian drones violated Polish airspace.

Since then, NATO fighter jets — enabled by the Voyager aircraft — have regularly flown patrols, missions, and training exercises along the Eastern flank of the alliance, serving as a warning to Russia.

'We can operate anywhere'

Under the cover of clouds and darkness early Thursday morning, the Voyager — call sign KAYAK21— departed from base at RAF Brize Norton, west of London, for a nearly nine-hour journey that took the tanker over the Baltic Sea and Eastern Europe, and on the edge of Russian territory, before returning to England.

Several times during the journey, the Voyager refueled an assortment of British Eurofighter Typhoon and Swedish JAS 39 Gripen multirole fighter jets, a process that takes roughly 10 minutes. Finnish F/A-18s Hornets joined along at one point before splitting off.

The Voyager is based on the twin-engine Airbus A300-200. It became fully operational with the RAF in 2013, replacing the VC10 as the UK's main tanker aircraft. It is typically staffed by two pilots and a mission systems operator, who facilitates the air-to-air refueling process.

The Voyager KC3 variant features two underwing pods for refueling fighter jets, equipped with retractable hoses, and a third centerline hose for larger aircraft.

Tankers like the Voyager or the US military's KC-135 Stratotanker are designed to extend the range of fighter jets, early warning aircraft, and other aircraft, enabling longer-distance and duration air operations.

Aircraft would be limited in range or forced to spend time refueling at bases without the tankers, said one of the Voyager pilots, who, like other members of the crew, could not be named for security reasons.

With the air-to-air refueling capability, "we can operate anywhere in the world," the pilot said.

In a demonstration of this capability, a Typhoon fighter took off from Scotland on Thursday and linked up with the Voyager over the North Sea. The jet traveled with the tanker over Eastern Europe and logged more than 2,000 miles by the time it returned to base.

This aerial refueling capability provided by the Voyager helps enable the NATO fighter jets to monitor Russian threats, as they are tasked with doing under the Eastern Sentry operation, the other pilot said.

The Voyager can carry up to 109 metric tons of fuel and nearly 300 passengers, although there were only 12 people aboard the tanker on Thursday, giving the feel of a severely undersold commercial flight on the world's least-busy travel day.

Fighter jets take a very methodical approach to the fuel hose, inching closer until a locking mechanism connects the basket at the end of the hose trailing the tanker to a mechanical arm at the front of the jet.

Two aircraft operating in proximity are inherently dangerous, but a Voyager pilot said they reckon with this by training a lot and doing the refueling process very slowly.

The Voyager offloaded about 20 metric tons of fuel to the Typhoons and Gripens during the flight, which brought the tanker to the edge of Russian and Belarusian airspace as it slipped through the Suwałki gap, a thin corridor between those two countries that connects NATO members Lithuania and Poland.

Around here, the Voyager crew experienced some GPS interference — a common occurrence near Russian territory and one of the biggest issues that the tankers have to deal with, the mission systems operator said.

The Voyager has a defensive suite designed for some types of surface-to-air missiles, but it lacks protection against electronic attack. Still, the pilots were able to quickly mitigate the effect by switching over to other systems, they said.

GPS interference has been prominent in the Baltic Sea region for several years, but it has worsened amid Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine, the mission systems operator said.

The operational tempo is high right now, with several Voyager flights operating daily out of RAF Brize Norton. The tankers aren't always doing air-to-air missions; sometimes they're transporting personnel or cargo.

Thursday's mission focused on training with other nations, refueling the jets as they engaged in simulated combat with each other. It's all part of NATO's increased efforts to caution potential Russian activity in Eastern Europe just by being present in the area.

The message to Russia, one of the pilots said, is that "we're using this airspace. And we're using our rights to be in this airspace."

• The Cotswolds attracts American tourists and affluent expats seeking old-world charm.
• The area has long been favored by the British aristocracy. Nowadays, it's known as the 'Hamptons of England.'
• These photos show how this 800-square-mile area of the English countryside looks during fall.

With its fairytale cottages, quaint shops, and buildings older than the US, it's no wonder Americans are intrigued by, and increasingly flocking to, the Cotswolds.

Long favored by royals, aristocrats, and exhausted Londoners — including myself on many occasions over the years — it embodies country life in Britain and its old-world charm. In recent years, it has become a magnet for American tourists and affluent expats.

Here's what I saw when I spent a few days in the "Hamptons of England," learning how American newcomers and old money are learning to live alongside one another.

Stow-on-the-Wold always feels like a breath of fresh air from the hustle and bustle of London life.

The townhouses and inns in Stow-on-the-Wold — built using honey-colored local stone — look like they're from a fairytale. They're a far cry from the chaos and crowds of my hometown, London.

The town has held markets since medieval times — but instead of livestock and wool, I saw local dogwalkers and American tourists.

Many of the buildings in the market square, including pubs and galleries, are centuries old. The Porch House, a pub and inn, has timbers that have been carbon-dated as more than 1,000 years old.

There is history everywhere you go, especially in the town's church.

St. Edward's Church, located in the town center, was built in the early medieval period on the site of a former Saxon church, with additions made in the Victorian era.

Inside, a 17th-century painting depicting the crucifixion has hung in the church for almost 200 years.

The building itself is one of 98 Grade I listed buildings in the Cotswolds, meaning that it's considered to be of exceptional historic interest.

The church's north door, thought to have partly inspired "The Lord of the Rings," is one of many reason the town feels magical.

It is believed to have been J.R.R. Tolkien's inspiration for the "Doors of Durin."

Whether or not it was, the yew trees flanking the door are a sight to behold. Tourists love posing in front of it: The Stow and District Civic Society, a local historical preservation group, calls it the "most photographed door in the Cotswolds."

I briefly met a Texan family, all of whom were dressed impeccably, head-to-toe in tweed, and were excited to get a photograph taken by the door.

Stow-on-the-Wold has upmarket stores and quaint tea rooms. I treated myself to some delicious fudge.

Around the market square, and down narrow stone lanes, you'll find fancy boutiques selling everything from antique furniture to the essentials for the classic Cotswolds look: gilets, tweed, and Barbour jackets.

I didn't buy any of the more expensive items, but I did try some vegan vanilla fudge from a small fudge store. It was so good that I went back for more the next day.

About 10 miles away from Stow is Burford, known as the 'gateway' to the Cotswolds. It's cosmopolitan — and very hilly.

High on a hill with views of the River Windrush, the Oxfordshire town of Burford is having a renaissance. While lunch used to be mostly stodgy pub food, now, places like the Bull offer fine dining with a modern feel in the historic town.

As well as remarkable views of the countryside, I learned the hard way that its position on a hilltop means getting from one end of the high street to the other requires a steady climb.

I visited an adorably old-fashioned sweet shop, one of many family-owned businesses in Burford.

Walking into the Sweet Shop in Burford is like stepping into a British time capsule. Jars of boiled sweets, packets of fudge, and other quintessentially British offerings, like lemon sherbet, line its walls.

It's run by the O'Brian family. When I visited, Lauren O'Brian was behind the counter with her daughter, who was helping out after school.

I loved Burford's unusual mix of stores — including a bookshop that sold hats.

The Madhatter Bookshop in Burford is dimly lit, with intriguing displays of hats sold alongside the books. I never say no to a bookshop browse, and I loved the "dark academia" feel of this one. It felt cozy and the perfect place to spend a fall afternoon.

A few doors down on Burford's main street, I peeked into The Oxford Brush Company, a store entirely dedicated to bristle brushes and brooms. This eclectic mix of independent stores is offset by a chain supermarket.

I stumbled upon a patisserie run by a Michelin-trained pastry chef, where everything looked almost too pretty to eat.

The Hugo Lovage Patisserie, also located in Burford, sells luxury pastries to visitors, locals, and, according to its owner Cindy Kosmala, celebrities, too.

The macarons, eclairs, and cakes looked like miniature pieces of art, and tourists wandered in and out to photograph the items on display.

I drove to Daylesford Organic Farmshop, near Moreton-in-Marsh. I'd describe it as the 'Erewhon' of the Cotswolds.

If Erewhon is the most upscale and luxurious place to buy your groceries in Los Angeles, then Daylesford Organic Farmshop is the Cotswolds' equivalent.

It sells organic food and rustic home goods, such as sheepskin throws, caviar, tweed dog blankets. I didn't fancy spending £650 ($861) on a quilt, or £45 on a beef and stilton pie.

Its restaurant was one of the first in the UK to be recognized with a Michelin Guide Green Michelin Star, back in 2021.

It's where locals go to buy caviar and magnums of champagne. I usually just go to people-watch.

The deli counters serve fresh fish, colorful salads, and caviar. The shelves are lined with beautiful packaged condiments, such as a £16.50 organic hot sauce. The drinks section sells magnums of rosé wine — one bottle I saw cost £227.

In my few visits over the years, I've rarely bought anything. I just watch well-dressed people browsing and take in the extravagance of the place.

You can get red light therapy, cryotherapy, and other LA-esque treatments at Daylesford's Bamford Wellness Spa. They've done a great job at perfecting the 'countryside-chic' aesthetic.

The Club by Bamford and the connected Bamford Wellness Spa are where rural life meets LA wellness trends. There are reformer Pilates classes, $300 massages, and everything from sound healing treatments to cryotherapy. The bonfire outdoors and the converted barn gave the place a rustic but fashionable feel.

A few miles away is Diddly Squat Farm, one of the 'Clarkson's Farm' sites that has become a draw for American tourists. I wasn't impressed.

Diddly Squat Farm, with its long lines for the farmshop, and the Farmer's Dog, are tourist hot spots. I visited both, and left disappointed. Some companies offer tours of the sites, which provide a window into the show, as well as the history of farming in the Cotswolds.

The Cotswolds may be dubbed the "Hamptons of England" — but, in many ways, it feels quintessentially British.

While the comparisons between the Cotswolds and the Hamptons are easy to make, with their luxury shops, high-end spas, celebrity residents, and proximity to a big city, the Cotswolds are very much their own place.

There are centuries of history on nearly every corner, and the kind of charming British traditions you won't find on the eastern end of Long Island, be that having scones with clotted cream made at a local farm or cozying up in a pub with a cider brewed in the Cotswolds.

This wasn't my first time visiting, and it certainly won't be my last.

• EVs were once the future in the US. Now, they're at risk of short-circuiting.
• Policy changes, tariffs, and supply chain disruptions have sparked warnings of an EV deep freeze.
• One analyst told BI that the US was at risk of falling behind just as China's EV giants race ahead.

Electric vehicles are facing a perfect storm in the US — and it's threatening to throw the industry into a deep freeze.

A nightmare combination of policy changes, tariffs, and supply chain upheavals has prompted automakers that once set ambitious EV targets to revise their strategies, lay off workers, and double down on hybrids and gasoline vehicles.

CEOs have been sounding the alarm bells for a while.

The end of the $7,500 tax credit for new electric vehicles in September prompted Ford boss Jim Farley to predict that EV market share in the US would nearly halve to around 5% in the near term, while Tesla CEO Elon Musk warned in July that the company could face a "rough few quarters" as federal support for electric cars was rolled back.

The initial signs suggest they may have been right. After hitting a record in September as buyers rushed to beat the tax credit deadline, EV sales collapsed nearly 49% in October, according to data from Cox Automotive.

Stephanie Valdez Streaty, Cox Automotive's director of industry insights, told Business Insider that the rollback of government support would "shift the timeline" for EV adoption.

She estimated that EVs would now make up around 24% of new car sales by 2030, far from the aspirational target of half set by the Biden administration four years ago.

"We're not going to see a huge growth in the next couple of years," Valdez Streaty said, adding that a lack of affordable EVs was still the main barrier for adoption.

A perfect storm

With the outlook for EV demand looking decidedly chilly, carmakers are tightening their belts.

GM announced plans to lay off 1,750 workers last month, citing slowing electric vehicle demand after taking a $1.6 billion charge over changes in its EV strategy. Rivian also announced layoffs last month, equivalent to 4.5% of its workforce.

The global auto industry is still reeling from the impact of US tariffs and has faced a pileup of supply chain headaches, including a temporary shortage of crucial chips and a fire at a major Ford aluminum supplier.

"The whole combination of everything in the water right now is causing some automakers to either cancel or delay electric vehicle programs," Stephanie Brinley, an associate director at S&P Global, told Business Insider, adding that the impact would leave consumers with fewer choices over the next few years.

The combined effect of the tariffs and the EV slowdown has led some automakers to pull electric models from the US market entirely.

Nissan said in September it would stop selling its Ariya SUV in the US, a week before Honda cut its Acura ZDX electric crossover due to what it called "market conditions."

Meanwhile, Jeep has put some planned EVs for the US on hold, while Ram has canceled its all-electric Ram 1500 REV and is focusing on a plug-in hybrid pickup instead. Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported that Ford was considering scrapping its flagship F-150 Lightning electric truck.

Give it some gas

Facing heat from all directions, some automakers are doubling down on a tried-and-tested strategy: build more hybrids and combustion engine vehicles.

Toyota announced a nearly $1 billion investment this month to boost hybrid production in the US, while GM unveiled plans to build several new gas-powered vehicles in June as part of a $4 billion manufacturing overhaul.

These efforts have received a boost from the Trump administration, which opened the door for carmakers to sell combustion engine vehicles for longer by gutting emissions rules that levied massive fines on automakers who failed to sell enough EVs.

Speaking at a tech conference hosted by Barclays last week, Ford CFO Sherry House said she expected a "contraction" in the US electric vehicle market, adding the company would likely respond by investing in gas-powered vehicles like its Mustang and Raptor lines.

"We're going to be leaning into these products that are just passion products. I mean, these are vehicles that people love," she said.

Tesla switching gears?

One company that is confident it can ride out the EV winter is Tesla.

Musk may have warned of a bumpy road in the summer, but the billionaire has struck a more confident tone since then, telling investors this month he expects the company's AI and robotaxi initiatives to vastly boost demand for its vehicles.

Tesla also weathered the steep drop-off in EV sales in October better than its rivals, with deliveries falling 35.3% month-over-month compared to nearly 50% overall per Cox Automotive data.

The Texas-based company introduced cut-price versions of its most popular vehicles last month following the loss of the tax credit.

However, Tesla has not launched a new vehicle since the Cybertruck in 2023, and Musk has been clear that the company's future lies in its Optimus robot and Cybercab robotaxi, both of which he said are set to begin mass production next year.

Last year, the billionaire said it would be "pointless" for Tesla to build a more affordable non-robotaxi EV, suggesting the company's future may be less dependent on conventional vehicles.

"Tesla feels like a company that is maybe changing some of its direction in terms of where it expects its revenue to come from in five or 10 years," said Brinley.

Other automakers are racing to fill the affordable EV gap, with GM launching a new version of the Chevy Bolt starting at just under $30,000 last month and Ford teasing an electric truck set to roll out in 2027 at a similar price tag.

With electric vehicles still around $10,000 more expensive on average than their gas-powered counterparts, Valdez Streaty said that more affordable options are needed for EVs to shake off their winter blues and become mainstream in the US.

Without them, she warned that the US risks ceding the rest of the globe to China's EV makers. The likes of BYD have crushed foreign automakers in China, where more than half of new car sales are electric, and are now expanding rapidly in a host of global markets.

"The world's going electric, right? The Chinese players are continuing to innovate and come out with new products that are inexpensive and high-tech," Valdez Streaty said.

"With the delay in growing that market share in the US, I think there's a risk the US could fall further behind," she added.

• Black Friday online sales reached $8.6 billion by early evening, according to Adobe.
• AI-driven shopping traffic is expected to surge 600% as more buyers use AI tools online.
• Mobile shopping and Buy Now, Pay Later services fueled strong growth.

American shoppers are delivering a record-breaking Black Friday, with online spending already reaching $8.6 billion by early evening and projections suggesting the final tally could exceed initial forecasts, according to data from Adobe Analytics.

Black Friday online spending through 6:30 p.m. ET represents 9.4% growth compared to last year, slightly outpacing Adobe's earlier forecast of 8.3% growth for the day.

Adobe now expects consumers will spend between $11.7 billion and $11.9 billion by the time Black Friday concludes, up from its earlier projection of $11.7 billion. This would set a new single-day record for online shopping. Adobe also found that more buyers are turning to AI tools and Buy Now Pay Later options to make purchases.

The data comes from analyzing commerce transactions across over 1 trillion visits to US retail sites, covering 100 million products across 18 categories.

"Adobe surveyed over 1,000 US consumers and nearly half believe the best deals this season will come on Black Friday, pushing many to hit buy on products before Cyber Monday," said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, in a statement. "Given the strong spending so far today, we anticipate the final tally for online shopping on Black Friday will exceed our initial forecast."

The strong Black Friday performance sets the stage for what Adobe expects to be a robust Cyber Week, the five-day period spanning Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday. The company forecasts that period will account for 17.2% of the entire holiday season's spending, totaling $43.7 billion, up 6.3% from last year.

Black Friday's hottest products

The hottest sellers so far include televisions, the newly released Nintendo Switch 2, Apple AirPods 4, and the Oura Ring 4. Kitchen items, such as KitchenAid stand mixers and storage containers, have also been flying off virtual shelves, along with washers and dryers, bicycles, and basketball hoops.

Adobe's survey found that 50% of respondents planned to shop for apparel and accessories online on Black Friday, followed by toys at 40% and computers and electronics at 36%.

The surge in spending has been fueled by discounts that ran deeper than analysts initially anticipated. Electronics saw the steepest markdowns at up to 29% off list prices, followed by toys at 28%, apparel at 25%, and televisions at 24%. Computers, appliances, furniture, and sporting goods all saw significant price cuts ranging from 19% to 23% off.

Buyers turn to AI and mobile shopping

Shoppers are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence for help navigating deals and finding the right products. AI-driven traffic to retail sites, measured by shoppers clicking on links from AI assistants, is expected to surge 600% compared to last year.

In Adobe's survey, nearly half of respondents said they have used or plan to use AI for online shopping this season, primarily for finding deals, conducting product research, and getting recommendations.

The growing reliance on AI shopping tools comes as companies race to integrate the technology into the holiday shopping experience. Earlier this week, OpenAI introduced a shopping research feature in ChatGPT that builds personalized buyer's guides by asking clarifying questions and surfacing information from across the web.

Mobile shopping continued its dominance, accounting for 58.6% of online sales so far and driving $5.1 billion in spending, a 11.3% year-over-year increase. That represents a higher mobile share than last year's Black Friday, when phones and tablets accounted for 55% of purchases.

Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) services also experienced heightened activity, with the payment option expected to drive $761.8 million in Black Friday spending, representing an 11% increase from the previous year.

The vast majority of these installment purchases happen on mobile devices, which account for 82.4% of BNPL transactions this holiday season. Consumers are most likely to use the payment option for electronics, apparel, toys, and furniture.

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