• We sold our Washington house and moved across the country to live with my parents in Maryland.
• I'm glad my child gets to spend more time with her grandparents and we're saving money on housing.
• However, I miss my life in Washington and am struggling to build community here.

I always knew selling our house in Washington and moving across the country to live with my parents in Maryland was not my dream.

However, the practical side of me thought it might at least be a good idea.

For several years, my partner and I had been struggling with the high cost of living in Western Washington. And, like many millennials, I've struggled to juggle parenting, work, and a social life.

By moving, I hoped we'd feel less stretched financially and mentally, and that our daughter (who was 2 years old at the time) would have more support from and involvement with her grandparents.

As much as we loved Washington and the friends and family members we had there, we decided to take a risk and pursue a different life across the country.

I spent months hawking our things on Facebook Marketplace and our local "Buy Nothing" group. We sold our house, said goodbye to our community, and crammed the rest of our belongings into a truck and a small U-Haul.

One week and many hours of driving later, we pulled up to my childhood home and moved in.

Moving in with my parents was a smart financial decision — but I've lost a lot

Living with my parents in Maryland has come with a lot of clear benefits.

My daughter gets to have rich involvement with a lot of our adult relatives, including daily interactions with her grandparents. I get support from nearby family members who can often provide care for her when I need it.

My partner and I no longer have a mortgage to cover or any of the other expenses that come with owning a home. We have a community style of living that means shared responsibilities for things like making dinner and taking care of household costs.

Despite the support and financial benefits, there are many things I miss since moving. I've thought of Washington as its own "person" in my story to mourn losing.

I fell in love with our slice of the state, a small walkable city right on the Puget Sound. I treasured the environment where we lived — full of rich outdoor adventures, moody weather moments, magical sunny days when they came, and the best coffee culture.

We left behind a small but mighty community, and moving back home meant starting over.

A year later, I'm still working to make deep connections, and I have many days when I feel lonely.

The last time I lived in Maryland was more than 10 years ago, so I didn't have a group of friends here waiting for me. I've had to dive into building a community from scratch, which can take a lot of time.

I'm still deciding if the trade-offs were worth it

Though I grew up in Maryland, it still doesn't feel like home as much as Washington did.

I know we're in the right place for us right now, but I can't help but wonder about the life I left behind. Were the higher costs of living worth it? Should I trade this newfound financial stability for a scrappier, penny-pinching life with a fuller heart?

Perhaps finding community and falling in love with the place I live now just takes more time than I'm willing to give at the moment.

Either way, for now, I'm embracing the financial stability and family support this move has given me, even as I continue to miss our life in Washington.

Maybe the real lesson is that financial decisions can't be measured in dollars alone — and sometimes the biggest cost is what you give up.

• The White House salary report shows its top-paid staffers earn up to $225,700 annually.
• Senior advisors, legal counsel, and policy directors are among the highest earners listed.
• Government salaries can fall below private sector pay but far exceed the national average income.

Working at the White House might be one of the most exclusive and prestigious jobs in America, but you'd be surprised by how much some of the people around the president make each year.

For starters, having the top job — that is, being the president of the United States — brings in a salary of $400,000, which some independently wealthy presidents, such as John F. Kennedy, Herbert Hoover, and Donald Trump, have chosen to donate instead.

While the figure is significantly higher than what the average American makes — $69,846 in 2024, according to the Social Security Administration — it's also less than you would need to be in the top 1% of earners across all US states.

In 2025, the top 1% of earners in Maryland and Virginia, which border the District of Columbia, make an annual $677,543 and $701,792, respectively.

Government salaries can often fall behind what professionals make in the private sector, as serving the public isn't quite as lucrative as maximizing shareholder value. Still, to say that those working at the White House are underpaid would be an overstatement.

On July 1, the White House shared with Congress the salaries of all employees inside the president's executive office, including aides, advisors, and staff leaders, as it is legally required to.

Some of the highest-compensated workers around the president include policy advisors and legal counsel, while others are responsible for the president's communications and personnel management. Lower-paid roles include research assistants and press assistants.

A few at the top of the White House's payroll at the time of the list's reporting to Congress have since left their roles, like Taylor Budowich, who went to work for the private sector, or moved around the government, like Mike Waltz, who began acting as the US ambassador to the United Nations after being dismissed from his role as national security advisor.

Other notable names, like Marco Rubio and David Sacks, declared a $0 salary from the office of the president due to either forgoing their salary or receiving compensation from other branches of government.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

See the 35 people who get paid the most inside the White House, after the president himself.

Jacalynne Klopp

Role: Senior immigration advisor

Salary: $225,700

Klopp, who earns the maximum salary possible in the senior executive service, is a top advisor to border czar Tom Homan and has worked in the government for over 17 years, including roles at the Department of Homeland Security and in Immigration and Customs Enforcement's enforcement and removal operations, Fortune reported.

Edgar Mkrtchian

Role: Associate counsel

Salary: $203,645

According to Mkrtchian's LinkedIn profile, the attorney began working as an advisor for the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission in June 2024.

Brittany Baldwin

Role: Senior policy advisor

Salary: $195,200

Michael James Blair

Role: Deputy chief of staff for legislative, political, and public affairs

Salary: $195,200

Kyser Blakely

Role: Senior policy advisor

Salary: $195,200

Taylor Budowich

Role: Deputy chief of staff for communications and public liaison and cabinet secretary

Salary: $195,200

Budowich left his role at the White House to work in the private sector in October. Neither Budowich nor the White House commented publicly on his departure.

In February, he was named in a lawsuit by the Associated Press over his move to block the outlet's access to the Oval Office and Air Force One after they refused to adopt Trump's naming of the Gulf of America.

In response, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who was also named in the lawsuit, said, "We feel we are in the right in this position. We're going to ensure that truth and accuracy is present at that White House every single day."

The case is ongoing.

Steven Cheung

Role: Director of communications

Salary: $195,200

Elizabeth Cilia

Role: Senior policy advisor

Salary: $195,200

John Coale

Role: Deputy assistant to the president and deputy special envoy to Ukraine

Salary: $195,200

Blake Deeley

Role: Special assistant to the president and deputy executive director of the National Energy Dominance Council

Salary: $195,200

William Doffermyre

Role: Senior advisor

Salary: $195,200

In October, Doffermyre began serving as the solicitor for the US Department of the Interior after being a senior advisor to the president for the first months of his second presidency.

Joshua Fisher

Role: Director of the Office of Management and Administration

Salary: $195,200

Sergio Gor

Role: Director of the Office of Presidential Personnel

Salary: $195,200

In August, the president nominated Gor, who was then serving as the director of the Office of Presidential Personnel, as the US ambassador to India, and he was sworn into the role in November.

Vince Haley

Role: Director of the Domestic Policy Council

Salary: $195,200

Hayley Harrison

Role: Chief of staff to the first lady

Salary: $195,200

William 'Beau' Harrison

Role: Deputy chief of staff for operations

Salary: $195,200

Kevin Hassett

Role: Assistant to the president for economic policy and director of the National Economic Council

Salary: $195,200

Tom Homan

Role: Border czar

Salary: $195,200

Hope Renee Hudson

Role: Advisor

Salary: $195,200

Joseph Keith Kellogg

Role: Special envoy for Ukraine and Russia

Salary: $195,200

Peter Lake

Role: Senior advisor and senior director of power at the National Energy Dominance Council

Salary: $195,200

Karoline Leavitt

Role: White House press secretary

Salary: $195,200

Nick Luna

Role: Deputy chief of staff for strategic implementation

Salary: $195,200

Earl G. Matthews

Role: Senior associate counsel

Salary: $195,200

In July, Matthews was sworn in as general counsel of the Department of War after serving as senior associate counsel to the president during the first months of his second term.

Stephen Miller

Role: Deputy chief of staff for policy and Homeland Security advisor

Salary: $195,200

Peter Navarro

Role: Senior counselor for trade and manufacturing

Salary: $195,200

Dan Scavino

Role: Deputy chief of staff

Salary: $195,200

After Sergio Gor was confirmed as the US ambassador to India in October, Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino took over as the White House's director of personnel.

Will Scharf

Role: Staff secretary

Salary: $195,200

Mike Waltz

Role: National security advisor

Salary: $195,200

After the leak of Signal chats discussing US strikes in Yemen, the national security advisor was dismissed from his role and announced as the 32nd United States ambassador to the United Nations, a role he assumed in September.

David Warrington

Role: Counsel to the president

Salary: $195,200

Stefanie Wehagen

Role: Associate counsel

Salary: $195,200

Kara Westercamp

Role: Associate counsel

Salary: $195,200

Susan Wiles

Role: Chief of staff

Salary: $195,200

Patrick Witt

Role: Deputy director of the Presidential Council of Advisors for Digital Assets

Salary: $195,200

Ross Worthington

Role: Director of speechwriting

Salary: $195,200

• Meta plans to raise prices on its VR devices to ensure long-term sustainability, per an internal memo.
• Metaverse executives told staffers it will extend the replacement cycle of in-market devices.
• Meta also aims to deliver high-quality software experiences alongside its virtual reality devices.

Meta is planning to raise prices for its virtual reality devices, executives said in an internal memo seen by Business Insider.

Metaverse leaders Gabriel Aul and Ryan Cairns told employees that the company must "make a shift" in its business model to ensure long-term sustainability. This will include measures such as price increases, accounting for new costs like tariffs, and extending the replacement cycle of its in-market devices, per the memo.

"Our devices will be more premium in price going forward, but we'll have a healthier business to anchor on and free ourselves from feeling existential about any singular device's success," Aul and Cairns wrote in the memo, shared with staff on December 4.

They also called for delivering high-quality software experiences to customers that can match the "excellence" of its devices, adding that this may mean "we ship new hardware at a slower cadence going forward."

Meta did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

The company's flagship virtual reality (VR) headset, the Meta Quest 3, retails for $499.99, while its entry-level model retails at $299.99.

The move comes as Meta pushed back the release of its new mixed reality glasses, codenamed "Phoenix," from the second half of 2026 to the first half of 2027, as outlined in a product strategy note to staff that Business Insider previously reported.

The memo announcing the price increases from Aul and Cairns did not refer to its mixed reality glasses. The document outlined three major themes derived from a recent Reality Labs strategy meeting with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and CTO Andrew Bosworth. They included how Meta can build a sustainable VR business for the long term, how it can build "world-class" software experiences, and how it can accelerate its pace on mobile.

They also sought to reassure staffers that it remains focused on VR. Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that Meta plans to make budget cuts of up to 30% to Reality Labs, the division responsible for Meta's hardware.

"We're committed to VR for the long-haul so we need to align our business model and roadmap to an approach that will make this possible," they wrote in the memo. "We've been working hard to bend the curve and accelerate ahead of the category's natural growth rate, which means running multiple programs in parallel as well as carrying costs like tariffs and subsidies for content, GTM, and devices."

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at jmann@businessinsider.com or Signal at jyotimann.11. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• A new Work AI Institute report said generative AI is quietly eroding core worker skills.
• Coauthor Rebecca Hinds said early-career staff risk losing vital skills as AI replaces apprenticeship.
• Hinds said leaders focusing on AI usage encourage shallow use over real learning.

Have you caught yourself feeling unusually confident at work — or unsure about errors slipping through your workflow?

You may not be imagining it.

A new report from the Work AI Institute, produced with researchers from universities including Notre Dame, Harvard, and UC Santa Barbara, and released on Wednesday, said that AI is turning ordinary office workers into people who feel smarter and more productive while their underlying skills slowly erode.

"AI is putting expertise into our hands in a way that's not always predictable," Rebecca Hinds, head of the Work AI Institute at workplace search company Glean and the report's coauthor, told Business Insider.

"There's often this illusion that you have more expertise, more skills than you actually do," she said. "Even if you're very well aware you're using the technology, it's often unclear where your knowledge ends and where the technology begins."

Hinds drew a parallel to the rise of search engines, when people began to mistake easy access to information for genuine understanding.

With generative AI, she said, that illusion is even more powerful — and the risks are higher.

When AI erodes skills instead of sharpening them

Hinds said these risks are most obvious in creative and knowledge-intensive roles.

Workers are increasingly using AI to beat the "blank page," she said, and generate first drafts of writing.

That speeds things up, she said, but it also strips away the messy, time-consuming work of wrestling with ideas.

"The more you poke holes in it, the more it feels yours and the more you commit to it, and the more you're able to fight for it in a meeting if someone pushes back," she said.

"That process is highly inefficient," she added, "but it's also really healthy." And if workers lean too heavily on AI to skip it, "your skills are going to atrophy."

The report suggested that AI can create either a "cognitive dividend" or "cognitive debt."

Used intentionally, as a partner in domains where you already have expertise, it can free up time and sharpen judgment. However, used as a reflexive shortcut, it leads to weaker skills and misplaced confidence, it said.

Early-career workers are most exposed

Hinds said that the roles with the highest exposure are early-career jobs.

Those are the roles that traditionally function as apprenticeships: junior developers learning from senior engineers, entry-level marketers learning how to build campaigns, and young analysts learning how to structure a model from scratch, she said.

If those tasks are automated away or if juniors rely entirely on AI to do them, they may never develop the underlying skills they need to advance, she said.

Hinds said leaders are often unintentionally exacerbating the illusion-of-expertise problem.

A big red flag, she said, is "organizations stack-ranking employees based on how many times they're clicking an AI tool as a marker of AI adoption or AI productivity or AI success."

In some companies, usage metrics are tied directly to performance reviews.

Employees "are incentivized to click the tool more rather than invest in a deep understanding of the tool," she added.

Instead, she said, companies should tie AI to existing business goals — quality, customer satisfaction, innovation — and measure whether it actually improves those, not just how often it's used.

How to avoid becoming an 'AI-powered amateur'

Hinds doesn't think the solution is to shun AI. She thinks it's to be far more deliberate about its use.

She recommended three questions for workers and leaders:

• What roles should stay deeply human? Identify the parts of your job that build judgment, creativity, and motivation — and resist fully automating those.
• Where is AI truly adjacent? Use AI first in areas close to your existing expertise, not as a shortcut into domains you don't understand.
• What are you measuring? Focus less on how often people use AI and more on whether it's improving real outcomes.

AI "does not magically transform you as a leader," Hinds said. "More often, it amplifies what already exists within the organization."

• Shapes raised $24 million for its AI-powered modular HR platform.
• The startup offers customizable HR tools and AI agents for onboarding, payroll, and retention.
• Business Insider got an exclusive look at the pitch deck it used to raise the funding.

A Tel Aviv startup that uses AI agents to automate HR processes like onboarding and compensation has raised $24 million in funding.

The HR platform from Shapes essentially offers an app store of AI-based HR tools.

"It means that you can manage your employees your own way. You can install different apps and agents in order to do the job for you," Shapes cofounder and CEO Arnon Nir told Business Insider.

For example, an AI agent can proactively notify a member of HR that an employee is at risk of leaving, based on data points such as low salary, high performance, and recent absences.

The startup's AI agents can automate other workflows, such as payroll or contract drafting, based on prompts from HR staff. Employees can use the platform for HR tasks such as booking time off and also ask AI agents for information, including details about company policies.

Shapes, which has rebranded from DreamTeam, was founded in 2020 by Nir and Shirley Baumer, who were previously founding members of HR tech company Monday.com.

In addition to the app store-like structure, which the startup calls "PeopleOS," customers can build their own bespoke applications on the platform using prompts, similar to vibe coding.

Shapes says its modular design can help companies scale up and down as the size of workforces fluctuates in the AI era.

"Every company needs to rethink its structure, its people, its culture. And every company needs to kind of find itself from scratch," Baumer told Business Insider.

The HR tech market is highly competitive, with an increasing number of players — such as Workday and HiBob — integrating AI into their solutions. Nir said the modular nature of its software is one of its competitive advantages.

"Every company works differently. You want to give them the power to decide what they want to use," Nir said.

Shapes says it has "hundreds of customers" located in 79 countries and spanning 14 industries, including retail, manufacturing, and technology. Its customers include Quantum Machines, NextSilicon, Healthee, Arena Entertainment, and Imagen, according to Shapes. It operates as a software-as-a-service business model, charging a flat rate per employee at the company.

The funding consists of $15 million in Series A, closed in October, and a previously unannounced $4.5 million seed investment, as well as a $4.5 million seed extension. The Series A round was led by Entrée Capital, with participation from NFX and F2 Venture Capital, which led the seed round.

Shapes said it would use the funding to more than double its head count over the next year and expand into new markets.

Here's an exclusive look at the 10-page pitch deck Shapes used to raise $24 million.

• Howard Marks warned that AI threatens purpose and structure, not just workers' paychecks.
• He said UBI can't replace the self-worth and identity people get from work.
• He called AI's employment outlook "terrifying" as jobs and meaning erode.

"Terrifying."

That's one of the words legendary investor Howard Marks used to describe the impacts of AI on the workforce.

"I find the resulting outlook for employment terrifying. I am enormously concerned about what will happen to the people whose jobs AI renders unnecessary, or who can't find jobs because of it," Marks wrote in his latest blog post on Tuesday.

The billionaire and cofounder of Oaktree Capital Management has been writing memos for 35 years; in one recent post, he experimented with using AI to assist him in writing.

Tech leaders such as Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have called for versions of a universal basic income — a guaranteed income paid regularly to all adults if jobs become obsolete — as a solution to AI-related job and pay loss.

But Mark said that even if governments find a way to fund universal basic incomes, it doesn't account for a key issue: That people get a lot more from jobs than just a paycheck.

"A job gives them a reason to get up in the morning, imparts structure to their day, gives them a productive role in society and self-respect," he said.

"How will these things be replaced? I worry about large numbers of people receiving subsistence checks and sitting around idle all day," he added.

The estimates on how many jobs will be affected by AI vary. An IMF analysis from 2024 suggested that around 60% of jobs in advanced economies will be affected by AI, with half benefiting from the technology and the other being negatively impacted by it.

A McKinsey Global Institute report released last month found that technologies could automate more than half of US work hours.

But Marks isn't alone in worrying about what happens to meaning when work vanishes.

Kate O'Neill, a tech advisor who helps companies navigate AI ethics and digital transformation, said in a recent TED Talk that as we hand more decisions and language over to AI, we risk surrendering a fundamentally human capacity — creating meaning from lived experience — not just losing tasks to machines.

James Barrat, author of "The Intelligence Explosion: When AI Beats Humans at Everything," told Business Insider he believes people can find new purpose in a universal basic income world through volunteering and community service work — but only after a long, painful transition in which many lose jobs before rebuilding meaning somewhere else.

What careers should the next generation prepare for?

If AI is set to reshape work as profoundly as some people expect, tech leaders say young people will need to develop skill sets machines can't easily mimic.

Geoffrey Hinton, the so-called godfather of AI, has said that "mundane intellectual labor" roles are most at risk because of AI.

"I'd say it's going to be a long time before it's as good at physical manipulation," Hinton said of AI earlier this year. "So a good bet would be to be a plumber."

OpenAI's chief economist, Ronnie Chatterji, said he is teaching his kids the importance of critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and flexibility — preparing them for a world in which job titles shift faster than curricula can keep pace.

Elon Musk recently said that while some of his older children recognize how quickly their skills could be overtaken by AI, he still supports them going to college.

"If you want to go to college for social reasons, I think that's a reason to go — to be around people your own age in a learning environment," he said.

"If you do, just try to learn as much as possible across a wide range of subjects," he added.

• I've always loved receiving holiday cards, but since I'm not married, I was hesitant to send my own.
• However, 10 years ago, I started sending annual cards that highlight my extensive solo travels.
• My loved ones look forward to receiving my card, and it's become one of my favorite traditions.

Since I was a child, receiving holiday cards has been one of my favorite parts of December.

I love seeing the snapshots families choose to represent their year and reading the little updates that I don't get on social media.

When I was in my 20s, I wanted to start sending my own, but I felt I had to wait for traditional milestones — like getting married and having kids — before it would feel "appropriate."

In my mind, holiday cards seemed like a privilege reserved for conventional lives.

As the years went by, I continued to see stories about unmarried, single, or child-free women sending holiday cards that poked fun at their status. They'd pose with sad faces and wine bottles or include clever quips about being alone once again.

Every year, without fail, someone would send me these articles as if I could relate, but I couldn't. To each their own, of course, but I never saw my life as something to be made fun of, and I definitely didn't feel sorry for myself.

So, I created a new holiday card tradition — one that celebrates my beautiful and full life.

I realized I was proud of my life and wanted to share that pride with friends and family

As I neared 30, I started doing a lot of solo traveling and set the goal of visiting all 63 major US national parks on my own by the time I turned 40.

Though I was posting some of my trips on social media, I also wanted to share them more personally with my friends and family.

Finally, I decided to print a holiday card featuring a photo from a summer trip I took to Canada — a simple shot of my backpack overlooking the mountains of Banff National Park.

I hesitated for a while before mailing them, worried that friends and family might find it narcissistic or odd to receive a card with only me in it.

However, many who received the card reached out to express their love for the photo and how happy they were to get it in the mail.

My card has become a way to celebrate the life I've built

I've kept the tradition going ever since — for nearly 10 years now, through my entire 30s, I've sent a card filled with my favorite photos from the year's solo adventures.

Friends and family often ask well in advance if they're still on my mailing list and tell me how much they look forward to receiving them.

For me, sharing these more personal photos — the ones I cherish most — in a tangible, intimate way has become a highlight of the season.

Creating the cards each year makes me feel empowered, proud of my accomplishments, and confident in the life I've chosen.

More than anything, it's a reminder that holiday cards can celebrate joy, connection, and the version of life you're proud to live — however unconventional it may be.

• This post originally appeared in the Business Insider Today newsletter.
• You can sign up for Business Insider's daily newsletter here.

A startup nabbing a $14 billion investment from one of the top tech companies seems like a good thing. The reality is a lot more complicated.

Scale AI has faced a turbulent five months since Meta purchased a 49% stake in the startup, write BI's Charles Rollet and Ben Bergman. Once a leader in the field of stress testing and perfecting AI models for Big Tech, Scale AI has faced pay cuts, poaching, and pivots since the Meta deal.

It's representative of how dealmaking with big players can be a double-edged sword in the age of AI.

For some, like Scale AI cofounder Alexandr Wang, who's now a high-level Meta exec, the deal was a windfall. However, according to interviews with five current and former contractors and internal correspondence obtained by BI, Scale AI has faced some inner turmoil following the Meta deal.

Joe Osborne, a Scale AI spokesperson, strongly disputed that the startup's business has been in trouble since the Meta investment and said this quarter is on track to be the company's biggest of the year.

Not all of Scale AI's issues are related to the Meta deal. A BI investigation this June found Scale AI routinely used public Google Docs for work with its Big Tech clients. (There was no indication of a breach, and Scale did lock down the documents after BI's report about the issue.) It also faced litigation over claims it misclassified and underpaid contract workers.

But one of the larger problems stems from some Big Tech companies pausing work with Scale now that one of their competitors — Meta — is its biggest backer.

The AI environment means more startups could encounter similar issues.

The Scale AI-Meta deal was unique in many ways, but there are still lessons to be learned from the aftermath.

The top-heavy ecosystem of the AI marketplace means there are a limited number of landing spots for startups looking for exit opportunities. Add in the ultra-competitive nature of the space, and a deal with one company could mean the end of business with the others.

Of course, not every startup will get acquired by a tech giant. And yes, some startups will have products that companies will need to use regardless of their backers. But for the vast majority of young AI companies, that's not a reality.

So, if the industry faces a bit of turmoil and funding dries up, startups may have some difficult decisions about who they cut deals with and which doors could close to them.

• A Ukrainian arms maker says future warfare is one soldier controlling drone swarms with autonomy.
• It's tech Ukraine and some partners are working on because it gives a single soldier greater impact.
• Ark Robotics' CEO said it's "kind of a prerequisite" for any coming drone warfare.

The future of warfare will demand one soldier being able to control huge swarms of drones that can work together autonomously, a Ukrainian arms maker predicted.

Achi, the CEO of Ukrainian defense firm Ark Robotics, told Business Insider the shift from one drone per pilot to one pilot controlling many is "kind of a prerequisite to be successful in the total drone warfare that is coming to all of us."

With a one-pilot, one-drone system, the only way to scale up drone fleets is by expanding the number of operators.

"This is just not sustainable," Achi told Business Insider, using a pseudonym as a security precaution. "You can scale drone manufacturing much more than you can pilots," he added.

Ark Robotics develops autonomous robots used by over 20 Ukrainian brigades and is creating a system that enables thousands of aerial drones and ground robots, including those not manufactured by the company, to collaborate with minimal human intervention. It's working toward single operator control of many drones.

Countries around the world, from Ukraine to Western allies to rivals like Russia and China, are supercharging combat drone manufacturing. "You can have all these fancy drones," Achi said, but "what is the use of them if you can't really deploy them at scale?"

A need for drone mass

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has involved more drones than any other conflict in history, and innovation in their capabilities has been rapid. The West is paying attention, thinking about what it may need as it worries that Russia could spark a wider conflict with NATO.

Drone technology is critical for Ukraine, vastly outnumbered by Russia's significantly larger military, as it offers mass. But one drone per operator doesn't offer anywhere near the advantage that swarming could. And reducing human involvement and embracing autonomy can accelerate combat action. That's why interest in swarm technology is surging.

There is no confirmed deployment of large, fully autonomous swarms of drones that can act without significant human oversight on the battlefield, but it would be absolutely game-changing.

That kind of capability opens up "a whole world of tactics and strategies that we've not even thought of yet," James Patton Rogers, a drone expert at the Cornell Brooks Tech Policy Institute, previously told Business Insider.

The combat system that Ark is working on, called Frontier, is still in the prototype stage and is just one example of many efforts in Ukraine. The Ukrainian government says the country is pushing for the technology, but "these systems are also just getting started," Achi said.

Ukraine demonstrates that quantity can become a kind of quality, he said, explaining that "to really get an advantage of that, you need these asymmetrical systems that allow you to work with multiple drones at the same time."

That's a lesson for the West as much as it is for Ukraine.

Western officials, defense experts, and industry insiders have cautioned that to meet Russia's style of warfare — heavily attritional, masses of drones and missiles, and intense artillery barrages — militaries need a greater volume of cheap weapons developed and produced quickly, not a limited stockpile of highly advanced systems developed over decades and produced over years.

Drone swarms are key to that kind of war.

The West is working

There's no guarantee that drones would play as significant a role in a war involving the West as they have in Ukraine — in part because Ukraine's reliance on them is tied to shortages of other weaponry and other capability disadvantages.

But many officials still warn that the West needs far more drone and counter-drone capabilities. Swarming systems are among them.

Swedish Defense Minister Pål Jonson told Business Insider that his country identified the need for drone swarms from watching this war and that it has rushed to produce technology to allow one soldier to autonomously control up to 100 drones. It's not clear when that could be operational. Other NATO members are working on this technology, too.

However, there is still no broad NATO-wide investment in these capabilities and no clear sense of when — or whether — they could be fielded. Across the alliance, many officials warn that lessons aren't being acted on fast enough and that production of weaponry remains too slow. It's also unclear how autonomous future systems will actually be.

Achi said the current autonomy in defense systems is "greatly overhyped," but noted that the battlefield shows autonomy is necessary and "past the point of no return."

There is acknowledgment, from industry and officials, that autonomy is needed to break past manpower limits, increase speed, and keep troops safer.

The CEO of Origin Robotics, a drone maker in NATO member Latvia that supplies Ukraine, previously told Business Insider he sees autonomy as essential to NATO’s defense, especially for the smaller member states bordering Russia.

"For a NATO country, you need a scalable solution," Agris Kipurs argued. "Autonomy, in our case, is what allows us to scale. We don't have the numbers in terms of infantry."

Achi said he wants Europe not only to learn from Ukraine and catch up to its drone leadership, but to think further ahead. He described Europe as "having the time" compared to Ukraine, which is fighting for survival.

If Europe's increased defense spending "goes to outdated technology or just wrongly copied technology, it doesn't make any sense to me," he said. "So I want to see them thinking a few steps ahead and taking lessons from the lessons."

• Carinne Meyrignac spent her maternity leave in France, where her baby played with musical books.
• She couldn't find similar products in English, so they had them made.
• She left her corporate job during her second maternity leave.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Carinne Meyrignac, founder of Cali's Books. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I'm French, but I absolutely love living in LA. Still, during my maternity leave, I returned to Paris to be closer to my family. There, my baby adored singing books. She was only a few months old, but they kept her engaged.

When we returned to America, I couldn't find anything similar. At the same time, I was learning all the English nursery rhymes I hadn't grown up with. I loved singing rhymes like "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and "Patty Cake."

Many French nursery rhymes are surprisingly inappropriate. One popular rhyme translates along the lines of "I have some great tobacco, but I won't share it with you." I didn't want to sing that to my baby.

I liked how most of the English rhymes were happy and upbeat, even if they dealt with dark topics like death (as "Ring Around the Rosie" does). I decided to print music books that were fun, joyful, and distinctly American, based on the rhymes my daughter and I both loved.

I had 6,000 books printed, and other people loved them, too

I've always been someone to take action once I have an idea. I came up with the concept in October 2016, and in November, my husband and I travelled to China to meet with a printer. I've worked in Asia before, and have passable Mandarin.

The manufacturer had a minimum print run of 3,000 copies, and I wanted two titles: "Twinkle Twinkle" and "Patty Cake." We had been saving for a new-to-us used car, but instead of upgrading, I spent that money on books.

By my daughter's first birthday in March, I had 6,000 books in my garage. I figured I had presents to give for the rest of my life, but when I started showing the books to local baby stores, people loved them. I calculated how much I would have to make to quit my corporate banking job, but it wasn't financially feasible.

Later that year, my son was born. I again went to France on maternity leave, but when I returned, I found I could no longer do my job. I was awarded a settlement during mediation with my employer.

It was gratifying to have a court say that I had been treated badly. The settlement also gave me the seed money to launch a business — which was important, since I knew I had burned bridges in the niche corporate role I was in.

My husband now works for the business, too

I was able to leverage my corporate skills, like organization, to effectively grow the business. There were significant adjustments, however, such as not receiving a paycheck every month. Although my husband was still working, I felt a lot of pressure to provide for my family, so that was sometimes scary.

Between 2019 and 2021 the business revenue exploded. It was bittersweet though: my mother had just been diagnosed with cancer. Because I owned my own business, I was able to spend time in Europe with her until she died. I'm so grateful for that.

Another milestone came in 2022, when I was able to hire my husband. I don't pay him as much as his previous employer, but now the whole family has flexibility. Then, in 2023, I started paying myself.

Today, the business has published more than 50 titles, and last year we did more than $4.8 million in revenue. I appreciate the independence I have, and I'm proud to be building something tangible that I can leave to my children.