One of the biggest names in charging is the subject of a major new safety recall. Anker, which makes portable battery packs for mobile devices, is recalling 1.16 million chargers over concerns that their lithium ion batteries could overheat, causing burns or posing a fire risk.
The recall specifically names Ankers PowerCore 10000 power banks with model number A1263, which consumers can find printed on the bottom of the devices. The recall only affects power banks sold in the U.S., and concerned customers can check their Anker products against the companys recall info page.
The risk from the recalled devices isnt just hypothetical. The Consumer Product Safety Commission reports that Anker has documented 19 cases of fires and explosions related to the now-recalled power banks, including two minor burn injuries and 11 instances of property damage totaling more than $60,700.
What to do if you own an affected charger
Anyone with a portable charger affected by the recall can submit a claim with Anker in order to receive a replacement device or a gift card. If youve got a recalled device and arent sure what to do with it, dont throw it, or any other lithium ion battery, in the garbage can, as careless disposal of electronics can pose a real fire risk.
Anker encourages its customers to check their citys specific recommendations for household hazardous waste collection to safely dispose of the potentially dangerous devices.
One of the worst mistakes I ever made applying for a job was ignoring red flags during the job interview process. Looking back, there were several things that made me uneasy. But I was enamored with how the company described its culture, the people, and the role, and so I ignored them.
As it turned out, all of those things were poorly defined or a far cry from what was promised. I had left a toxic work environment only to end up in an equally bad situation.
Sometimes, as job seekers, were so desperate to escape our current situations that we forget job interviews are a two-way street. We overfocus on performing well during interviews and forget to ask questions about the company or role (or ask only surface-level questions).
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But the more you can try to suss out during the interview process, the better shape youll be in when deciding whether or not to accept or decline an offer. Here are some best practices.
Red flags
Some companies are not great at writing job descriptionsor theyll write perfect versions of a role that dont reflect reality.
When youre talking to the hiring manager, ask about day-to-day responsibilities. The manager should have a crystal clear idea of what youre expected to do, even if the description is, You will wear a lot of hats.
Ive worked for many small companies where I was expected to adjust to an ever-changing role. That can be fine, as long as you know upfront and your performance is evaluated accordingly. If the company only has a vague idea of what it needs from the role, odds are it won’t be possible for you to meet expectations.
Its also a red flag if the company asks you to put a significant amount of work into the interview process. During the first interview, you should ask how many additional interviews you can expect. Three half-hour interviews total? Probably fine. Five hour-long interviews, plus a lengthy, unpaid test assignment? That company doesnt value your time, has trouble making decisions, or both.
What to ask the interviewer
Youll want to ask for details about the team structure and the type of work youll be doing. These basic questions will help you determine if its a job youd enjoy. But a few probing questions can help you learn more about the company itself.
Why is this role open? Is the company in growth mode and needs to add to the team? Did the prior person leave because they accepted their dream job? Or has the company experienced a lot of turnover?
How flexible is the work environment? If flexibility is important to you, youll want to ask the right questions. Some companies claim to be flexible when, in reality, they aren’t. A good question to ask is whether people work synchronously or asynchronously. If people work synchronously, the company is probably less flexible. You can also ask how many meetings you can expect per week, which will impact your flexibility.
How is feedback given? This ties into how well the role is defined. Does the company have a formal review process? If so, how often? You want to make sure you can meet expectations, even if expectations are ever-changing at a small company.
Dont end up in the same bad job situation
Companies will likely look at your LinkedIn profile and ask for references, trying to determine what kind of an employee you are. You should do the same.
Check Glassdoor, but read reviews with a grain of salt. Employees of small companies may be afraid to leave reviews, and sometimes reviews are skewed toward employees who had negative experiences.
You can also check LinkedIn. Find former employees and look at how long they were with the company. One employee with a short tenure doesnt say much, but lots of turnover is a red flag. If youre comfortable, you could even send a DM to a former employee and ask about their experience. As a job seeker, its your version of checking references.
Above all, dont ignore your gut. If you get a bad vibe during the interview, it will probably be magnified once youre hired. Unless youre desperate for a new role, its better to keep looking than to end up in a job you regret.
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Anna Burgess Yang
Tensions in the Middle East reached a critical point last night as Israel launched an offensive strike targeting Irans nuclear facilities and military installations. Iran responded swiftly, raising fears that the two nationsand possibly the wider regionare on the brink of full-scale war.
In the immediate aftermath, airlines across the globe scrambled to reroute or cancel flights, clearing airspace over Israel, Iran, and neighboring countries. If youre scheduled to travel to, from, or through the region, heres what you need to know.
Israeli, Iranian, Jordanian, and Iraqi airspace cleared within hours
Within hours of Israel launching its offensive, airlines quickly cleared Israeli, Iranian, Jordanian, and Iraqi airspace. The move is a preemptive one meant to ensure that commercial airliners are not inadvertently struck by missiles or other weapons launched between the countries.
As you can see from the embedded FlightRadar24 flight tracker below, shortly after 11:30 p.m. UTC last night, commercial aircraft began being diverted from the affected airspace. By 2 a.m. UTC this morning, nearly all commercial aircraft had been redirected.
9-second video of the clearing of Iranian and Iraqi airspace. pic.twitter.com/VZLWbmk9sC— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) June 13, 2025
Israels Ben Gurion Airport closed
Israels main international airport, Ben Gurion Airport (TLV), which is located 12 miles southeast of Tel Aviv, was quickly closed, according to a report from the Times of Israel.
According to a pop-up notice on the airports website, all flights to and from the airport are canceled until further notice.
Due to the current special security situation, all flights to and from Ben Gurion Airport (LLBG) are canceled until further notice, the notice reads. Please be advised: Do not travel to the airport.
CNN reports that other airports in the region also remain closed, including Tehrans Mehrabad Airport and Ammans Queen Alia International Airport.
Flights from the U.S. affected, too
While the conflict is in the Middle East, it has affected flights operated by U.S.-based airlines. As CNBC notes, Delta and United have canceled flights to Tel Aviv through at least Saturday. Flights that were already in the air when the conflict broke out reportedly turned around to the New York area.
Delta Airlines has posted a travel advisory related to the unrest, in which the airline warns that travel to, from, or through Tel Aviv, Israel (TLV) may be impacted if the flight is scheduled from now until June 30, 2025. The company has listed the options ticket holders have to rebook their affected flights.
What should I do if I have a flight booked?
If you have a flight booked that is scheduled to depart to or from, or travese through, the Middle East areaparticularily the countries of Israel, Iran, Iraq, and Jordanyou shoiuld check with your airline directly to see whether the flight is still operating, has been altered or rescheduled, or has been canceled.
Travelers should also enable notifications from the airlines apps to ensure they receive the latest updates to any affected flights in a timely manner.
U.S. President Donald Trump will arrive Sunday for a Group of Seven summit in a country he has suggested should be annexed and as he wages a trade war with America’s longstanding allies.Trump’s calls to make Canada the 51st U.S. state have infuriated Canadians, and Prime Minister Mark Carney, who won his office by pledging to confront the U.S. president’s increased aggression, now hosts the G7 summit.Carney asserted this week that Washington no longer plays a predominant role on the world stage, imposing tariffs for access to its markets and reducing its contributions to collective security.Carney has decided to abandon the annual practice of issuing a lengthy joint statement, or communiqué, at the summit’s conclusion as French President Emmanuel Macron did at the G7 summit in France in 2019.The document typically outlines the consensus reached by leaders on summit issues and provides a roadmap for how they plan to tackle them.Trump roiled the 2017 meeting in Italy over the climate change passage in that summit’s final statement. He then withdrew his support from the 2018 communiqué after complaining he had been slighted by then Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the host that year.The leaders of the world’s richest countries begin arriving Sunday in the resort town of Kananaskis, Alberta in the Canadian Rockies.
Who will attend
The Group of Seven comprises Canada, the United States, France, Italy, Japan, Germany and Britain. The European Union also attends as well as other heads of state who are not part of the G7 but have been invited by Carney.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will attend and is expected to meet with Trump, a reunion coming just months after their contentious Oval Office encounter, which laid bare the risks of having a meeting with the U.S. president.Other world leaders will be meeting with Trump both in a group setting and for bilateral talks, which are often precarious as foreign leaders must navigate between placating and confronting him.“Anything could happen. The Canadians would be crazy not to anticipate something. We can’t tell. That’s Trump stock and trade. He likes to keep everyone guessing,” said Robert Bothwell, a University of Toronto professor of Canadian history and international relations.“It all depends what kind of theater he’s going to want to have,” he said.Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum will attend and said she expects to have her first in-person meeting with Trump. On his way to Canada, Macron is making a notable stop in Greenland, the semi autonomous Danish territory that the U.S. president has also suggested annexing.Among the other newcomers are German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.Starmer will meet with Carney on Saturday in Ottawa before flying to Alberta.Carney also invited Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, despite accusations from Canada’s national police force that agents of Modi’s government were involved in “widespread” violence in Canada.Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, was invited but will not attend.
Will Trump upstage this G7 too?
The 2018 G7 summit in Quebec was thrown into disarray after Trump called Trudeau “dishonest” and “weak,” while complaining that he had been blindsided by Trudeau’s criticism of Trump’s tariff threats at a summit-ending news conference. Trump pulled out of the G7 group statement just as it was released.“We weren’t too happy because we thought we managed to pull off a pretty good summit,” said Peter Boehm, Canada’s deputy minister for the Quebec summit.” The reactionand I was with Mr. Trudeau at the timewas a bit of disbelief.”Boehm expects a chair’s summary from Carney this year instead of a joint statement from the leaders.During the Quebec summit, Trump also insisted on Russia’s readmission to the elite group, from which it was ousted in 2014 following President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea.“Trump raised that at the foreign policy dinner,” Boehm recalled. “It was a bit awkward because British Prime Minister Theresa May was there and some British citizens had just been killed by Russian operatives using a toxic agent.”Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were targeted in a nerve agent attack a few months before the Quebec summit in the English city of Salisbury.
Looming tariffs
U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra has said that Carney has been quietly holding direct talks with Trump about a trade deal in the lead up to the summit. Separately, top Canadian cabinet ministers have also been in Washington for negotiations in recent weeks.Trade tensions may be unavoidable. The United States runs trade deficits with all G7 countries except the United Kingdom. In an effort to balance what he describes as America’s lopsided trade relations, Trump has imposed 10% import taxestariffson almost every country in the world. He also announced bigger tariffs, then suspended them, on countries that sell more to the United States than they buy.“The big X Factor (is) the looming tariffs,” said Max Bergmann of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The G7 is supposed to provide global economic governance. And the way the Europeans see it right now is that the country that’s the source of major instability in global economic affairs is the United States.”Trump’s trade wars are already threatening the world economy. The World Bank on Tuesday sharply downgraded its forecast for global economic growth this year, citing “a substantial rise in trade barriers.”
A prelude to NATO summit
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte will attend the G7 meeting ahead of this month’s NATO summit and has said most U.S. allies in the alliance endorse Trump’s demand that they invest 5% of gross domestic product on their defense needs.Carney said this week Canada would meet NATO’s current 2% target but seemed to suggest he would not support 5%, saying his goal is to protect Canadians, and not to satisfy NATO accountants.
Why such a remote location
Law enforcement overseeing security expect large protests but say protesters won’t be able to get anywhere near Kananaskis, as access roads to the summit will be closed to the public.The Mounties say there will be designated G7 demonstration zones in Calgary and Banff, Alberta that will have live audio and video feeds, which will be broadcast to G7 leaders and delegations at the summit. Kananaskis also hosted a G8 summit in 2002.
Associated Press writer Paul Wiseman in Washington contributed to this report.
Rob Gillies, Associated Press
Megababe and Evvy make personal care and health-related products that, at some point, will be needed by at least half the population. But these companies have had to overcome one hurdle after another in the years since they launched.
Despite the relative successes of their companiesparticularly with identifying markets for products that address taboo topics head-onthese problems still persist, the founders said during a panel discussion at Fast Companys Most Innovative Companies Summit in New York last week.
We get banned on social media advertising all the time, said Priyanka Jain, cofounder and CEO of Evvy, a women’s health company thats focused primarily on the vaginal microbiome.
We get banned, too, added Katie Sturino, founder of Megababe, which sells more than 45 products mostly aimed at addressing issues in the nether regions.
While a hemorrhoid cream named Butt Stuff, in the case of Megababe, or Evvys use of the words vaginal microbiome or pelvic floor raise alarm bells for social media companies, the founders pointed out that advertising for erectile dysfunction medication and pornography seemingly do not. But both women are, by now, accustomed to convincing stakeholders of all varieties that theres a sizable and viable market for their products.
The taboo and stigmatized areas are probably some of the largest opportunity spaces because, by definition, they are areas that have been underserved, Jain told the audience. You have to push past the uncanny valley or that difficult time, but then you actually have a higher upside on the other side because it’s likely an unserved market with a lot of need.
‘No one wants this’
By the time Sturino launched Megababe in 2017, she had amassed a social media following that was about 70,000 strong, and she would ask her community of followers each spring what products they planned to use for thigh chafe. Naturally, when she started the brand for that community, the companys anti-chafing stick was one of its first products.
But she heard a common refrain from people in the beauty industry. It was a lot of: No one wants this, Sturino recalled. Megababe ranks No. 2 on Fast Companys list of the Most Innovative Companies in Beauty for 2025.
Undeterred, she and her startup team created 20,000 units of products. And we actually sold through our entire first run of inventory in the first month we launched.
Leading with education
Meanwhile, when Jain cofounded Evvy about four years ago, she told the audience there were two challenges that proved to be an uphill battle.
One was that we were building a women’s health company, which people inherently believed was niche, that it was a small market, Jain said. And then it was the fact that obviously we were starting a vagina company.
Then, as now, Jain said Evvys marketing strategy is providing education informationincluding a stat she referenced that vaginal discomfort is the leading reason why women seek healthcare advice in the United States. When fundraising, she said she focused on how massive the market was for products that werent solving the real problem.
Look at all of the money that women are spending on wipes, washes, suppositories, whatever will make their vagina smell like a flower because there’s this fundamental root problem that isn’t being solved for them, she said of those conversations. It was very much starting with the data, starting with the numbers, and frankly not talking about the moral rightness of investing in women’s health.
Social media insights
In its early days, Evvy started a TikTok channel and racked up millions of views because, Jain said, people were actively searching for information about vaginal health. Whats more, the company has used three guiding principles to inform its product lineup: Provide what patients actually want, identify the best science, and provide education when theres either a gap or stigma.
While Evvys mission quickly resonated with consumers, Jain advised that entrepreneurs may need to take a different approach to connect on a business level with investors. Lead with the data and lead with the numbers.
And even though Megababe is sold by major retailers, Sturino continues to lean on her community of social media followers, now numbering 800,000-plus on Instagram alone. Its there that she might test product ideas that will bring a solution to women who are already dealing with an issueincluding the aforementioned hemorrhoid cream.
She said its helpful if other entrepreneurs with similar taboo-tackling business ideas are tackling a problem they know is real.
You have to keep going and believing in yourself, she said.
Air taxi maker Archer Aviation on Thursday said it raised $850 million in funding following executive orders signed by U.S. President Donald Trump to boost electric air taxis.
Trump’s orders also focused on bolstering U.S. defenses against hostile drones, and supporting the development of supersonic commercial aircraft.
Earlier this year, Archer secured $300 million in a funding round led by institutional investors, including accounts managed by BlackRock .
In April, Archer unveiled plans to establish an air taxi network in New York City in partnership with United Airlines.
The company has also been named the official air taxi service for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
Reuters
In 1999, I got to work on a literally once-in-a-lifetime project. As the 20th century was wrapping up, the magazine where I worked declared the personal computer the most important invention of the last 100 years. It wasnt exactly a contrarian pick: The magazine in question was PC World.
To celebrate, we put together an article looking back at 100 defining moments in computing history. I was assigned to write blurbs on several of them. One was among the most obvious landmarks, Apples 1984 introduction of the Macintosh, which brought the graphical interface and mouse to the masses.
I had a scant 250 words to recount an oft-told tale. Not wanting to merely rehash its familiar elements, I decided to focus on the Macs roots and emailed the guy who came up with the project in the first place, Jef Raskin.
This dusty memory resurfaced in my brain this week when I read my colleague Jesus Diazs article about Apples upcoming iPadOS 26 operating system, one of the major announcements at this weeks WWDC conference. By giving the iPad a new interface with floating, overlapping windows, the software upgrade pushes the tablet far closer to the Mac. Jesus argues that the shift not only overcomplicates the iPad but also violates Raskins decades-old principles about how to make computing easy and intuitive.
It might sound strange to say that the iPad is getting both more Maclike and more removed from the original vision of the guy who initiated the Mac project. But both facts can coexist. Apples 31st employee, Raskin started at the company as its publications manager. In 1979, he got the go-ahead to work on an easy-to-use computer he namedwith a slight spelling modificationafter his favorite kind of apple, the McIntosh. He put together a team oozing with talent, including people who would become some of the most legendary Apple staffers of all time, such as Bill Atkinson (who died last week), Burrell Smith, Bud Tribble, and Joanna Hoffman.
Unfortunately for Raskin, Apple cofounder Steve Jobs not only took an interest in the Mac project but took it over. Under Jobs, the computer evolved into something only tangentially related to Raskins concept. After leaving Apple, Raskin oversaw the development of a short-lived machine that stuck closer to his vision, the Canon Cat. In later years, he continued exploring ways to make computing more approachable as a software designer, author, and teacher. He died in 2005.
I no longer have the email I sent Raskin when working on that PC World article. But I managed to preserve the reply that landed in my inbox on August 16, 1999. Rereading it for the first time in years, I saw that it mentions me having asked about the degree to which the Mac was modeled on ideas developed at Xeroxs PARC lab, a font of inspiration for the entire computer industry. I also seem to have requested his take on the state of interface design a decade and an half after the Macs debut.
Heres what he had to sayverbatim, except for the name of a publication he misremembered and some relevant Internet Archive links Ive added.
Harry,
For background, if you have not read my article “Holes in the Histories” (published in Interactions, also at www.jefraskin.com), you might want to take a look at it. My c.v., in case you need dates or references, is also at that site. The most accurate account of the Mac’s history that I have seen in print is in Linzmayer’s book Apple Confidential.
So much for background.
I do not think that the famous visit to PARC had much influence at all on the design of the Mac’s (and therefore Windows’) interface. What it did do was get rid of Jobs’ antipathy to interface-oriented design and allowed us to proceed without his earlier opposition to the Mac project. On the other hand, the migration of designers and engineers from PARC made the Mac interface more PARClike (and, in my opinion, harder to use, but spiffier and probably more marketable). Whether we would have had fewer such people if Jobs had not made his visit is not clear, because a number of us had been recruiting from PARC even before Jobs was on board with the Mac.
You ask where we are, with respect to interfaces, in 1999: To put it briefly, in a mess. Our “personal” computers, whether PC or Mac, are more complex, larger in every way (except external physical dimensions), and more powerful than the mainframes and minicomputers we were rebelling against when the microcomputer revolution started.
While today’s interfaces are far more pleasant and interactive, at least on the surface, than what they replaced, they are in fact convoluted, complex, opaque, and remarkably prone to crashing at the least provocation, or just out of natural inanimate perversity. The present GUI paradigm is inefficient, and has not scaled to today’s needs. It also violates much of what we know about how people can most effectively use computers. A complete rethinking is in order (some aspects of my rethinking of interface design has appeared in a number of articles, and a more complete account is the subject of my forthcoming book, The Humane Interface, to be published early next year by Addison Wesley.)
To answer your question: Are we anywhere near where we should be? No.
And it will take a company with guts and financial strength to stand behind the radical improvement we need. On the other hand, they stand to make billions if they do it right, and consumers will be standing up and cheering to be out from under the yoke of today’s (mainly, Microsoft’s) antihuman interfaces.
At the time, I was probably most interested in Raskins stance that the Mac drew less inspiration from Jobs having seen PARCs work than conventional wisdom would have it. Now, 26 years later, what sticks out for me is his astringent view of where computing had gotten by 1999. Maybe it was pleasant and interactive, but it was also convoluted, complex, opaque, and remarkably prone to crashing at the least provocation, or just out of natural inanimate perversity.
Thanks to Microsofts Windows XP and Apples OS X, computers got less crash-prone in the new century. Nothing else about them changed all that much in Raskins lifetime, though. As they bulked up with more features, they may even have ventured further astray of his ideal of streamlined, appliance-like efficiency.
But in the 20 years since Raskin left us, new productshave never stopped fundamentally changing how people interact with technology. Reducing the cognitive load involved has nearly always been an overarching goal.
Lets recap. The iPhone and iPad were conceived entirely for touch input. Googles Chromebooks turned the web browser into a full-blown computing environment. Amazon gave us Alexa, an assistant you could summon by talking to a speaker on the other side of the room. OpenAI turned its LLM into ChatGPT, a bot thats eerily adept at understanding typed requests and responding in fluid language.
Yet what Raskin told me still resonates. The present GUI paradigm is inefficient, and has not scaled to today’s needs, he wrote. With iPadOS 26, Apple is applying that same paradigmresizable windows and menus, manipulated by a pointerto the iPad. In 1999, the company had just the Mac to worry about; at this years WWDC, it rolled out interface updates for computers, phones, tablets, watches, TV boxes, and headsets. Even if youre impressed by themI loved the demo I got of the Vision Pros VisionOS 26 and will write about it next weekthat sounds like the scaling problem Raskin saw in 1999, times six. And once a platform exists, it quickly grows resistant to the kind of complete rethinking he told me was in order.
I dont mean to bash Apple alone. After giving Windows its most dramatic makeover ever with Windows 8 in 2012, Microsoft has spent the subsequent years trying to dial in an experience that somehow looks to the future while also pleasing people who might be satisfied with Windows XP if it remained an option. Chromebooks, which started out rejecting native apps as an idea before succumbing to the temptation to support Android ones, have wrestled with similar issues.
Back in 1999, faced with cramming the prehistory of the Mac into a tiny write-up, I quoted Raskins point about Jobss PARC visit warming him to the potential of the embryonic Mac project, and didnt get into his harsh assessment of current interfaces. But even that didnt see print. Like most things that get published in dead-tree magazines, my Mac origin blurb was trimmed by an editor to fit the layout. I must have noticed that Raskins quote didnt make the final cut, and regret its excision today.
At least Ive been able to belatedly share his entire email heresomething that wouldnt have even occurred to me was possible in the space-constrained days of computer magazines. In it, he posed a question about computer usability: Are we anywhere near where we should be? The answer, he said, was no. I dont presume to know how he might feel today. But the question remains a good starting point for judging new products. It always will be. And holding them to high standards, as Raskin did, is the best way to answer it.
Youve been reading Plugged In, Fast Companys weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if you’re reading it on FastCompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard.
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In an age defined by self-driving cars, autonomous spacecraft, and artificial intelligence, it may come as no surprise that the science of effective water management often goes unnoticed. Many of usespecially in the U.S.have grown accustomed to the convenience of clean, reliable water, and often take it for granted.
In fact, most Americans engage with the U.S. water system only via a series of fleeting touch pointswhen they turn a faucet, water their lawn, or start their dishwasherand have come to expect a seamless experience.
And yet, behind the scenes, there is a complex, intricate network dedicated to providing safe and dependable water to hundreds of millions of Americans. But over the past several years, faced with unrelenting pressure, that system has started to crack.
The truth is that water infrastructure across the U.S. is under immense strain. Decades of underinvestment, extreme weather events, and a huge increase in demand mean our nations water system is no longer fit for purpose.
Wasted water
One of the most significant areas of concern? Waste. The way we currently use, transport, and capture water is tremendously wasteful. In fact, the U.S. wastes more than 6 billion gallons of treated water a day due to pipe breaks and leaksenough to fill more than 9,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. Not only is that irresponsible, its also incredibly expensive: Water main breaks alone cost Americans $2.6 billion a year in repair and maintenance costs.
Across the U.S., the rise of extreme weather events has exacerbated these issues. When there is too much water for one system to take, like during a hurricane, communities face excessive flooding, erosion, inefficient stormwater management, and unsafe water supply. When there is too littlefor example, during a heat wavetowns, cities, and entire states must navigate depleted aquifers, groundwater reservoirs, and, in the most severe cases, sustained droughts.
Put simply, water managementour ability to effectively control and leverage water as a holistic resourcehas become an area of critical importance.
The good news is that were not starting from scratch. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, signed into law in 2021, allocated more than $50 billion to water infrastructure projects, including $20 billion for safe drinking water and $15 billion to replace lead pipes.
But much more is needed. According to the 2025 American Society of Civil Engineers report: In 2023, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determined that the nations water infrastructure needs stand at $625 billion over 20 years. That exceeds the EPAs 2018 assessment by more than $150 billion.
The reality is that if we want to future-proof water infrastructure for the next generation, we need distinct, separate funding streams dedicated to improving water management programs, addressing the existing shortfall, and ensuring that no American suffers the consequences of poor water management, no matter where they live.
Innovation is required
Of course, solving such an immense challenge will require more than funding alone. We also need to embrace the transformational power of innovation.
At its core, technology significantly improves our capacity to understand, react to, and solve complex water problems, making the entire water network more resilient, accessible, and easily managed. Fundamentally, it makes the invisible visible.”
One of the reasons this is such a complex problem is because almost everything is underground. Thanks to technology, we are able to remove some of that obscurity, generating a degree of insight that previously we never thought was possible.
Nowhere is that commitment more evident than in the work being done across the industry to integrate and scale artificial intelligence. By combining predictive and real time AI-driven analysis, innovative companies across the U.S. are developing the tools required to detect areas of elevated break risk and allow cities and counties to prioritize repairs to the most urgent areas of the network. Cutting-edge companies like Voda.ai, an AI software in which my company just invested that helps utilities create plans and do risk modeling, are a great example of that commitment in action, demonstrating just one of the many exciting projects were seeing across the sector.
But AI isnt the only technology changing how water infrastructure is managed. Today, digitally powered smart drainage systems can adjust flow rates in response to real-time climate datahelping to mitigate flood riskand provide more control over when and where water is diverted. These systems can be integrated into major infrastructure projects, protecting critical buildings and reducing the potential damage to at-risk communities.
Unfortunately, like with most technologies, there is no silver bullet that can address all the problems we face. Instead, what we have is a wide range of capabilities that, when used effectively, help drive down risk, mitigate major disruptions, and protect the most vulnerable parts of the network.
The path ahead
When you look at the challenges facing U.S. water infrastructure, its clear that significant hurdles remain. But there are also tremendous opportunities.
The continued onshoring of critical services (including the production of computer chips fueling next-generation AI) should provide our country with additional motivation to address existing water infrastructure shortfalls so that we can ensure our communitiesas well as our manufacturing and services industrieshave access to safe and reliable water, wherever they need it most.
The time has come for the U.S. to pay back its water infrastructure debt, and give one of our most precious and economically important resources the attention it deserves.
Israel launched a wave of strikes across Iran on Friday that targeted its nuclear program and military sites, killing at least two top military officers and raising the prospect of an all-out war between the two bitter Middle East adversaries.
It appeared to be the most significant attack Iran has faced since its 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran quickly retaliated, sending a swarm of drones at Israel as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned of severe punishment.
The attack comes as tensions reached new heights over Tehrans rapidly advancing nuclear program. The Board of Governors at the International Atomic Energy Agency for the first time in 20 years on Thursday censured Iran over it not working with its inspectors. Iran immediately announced it would establish a third enrichment site in the country and swap out some centrifuges for more advanced ones.
Israeli leaders cast the attack as necessary to head off an imminent threat that Iran would build nuclear bombs, though it remains unclear how close the country is to achieving that.
Associated Press
In three years, a fellow tech executive recently told me with serene confidence, Everyone will be able to make a full-length movie in AI, totally personalized for them, by just typing up a few prompts.
I considered pointing out that this would destroy one of the central functions of art, and one of its greatest pleasures: to connect individuals across time and space through a single act of imagination. But I didnt bother. The furious debate around AI and art mostly consists of opposing sides talking past each other. Tech evangelists offer breezy assertions that generative AI empowers everyone to become an artist, while creators across multiple mediums rage against the technology as a threat to their livelihoodor even to the future of human creativity. Disney and Universals lawsuit against Midjourney will likely intensify this cultural clash.
Its painful to hear the hyperbole flying from both directions, especially since I have a foot in both camps. After a lifetime honing my craft, Im proud to have written several New York Times-bestselling novels and every episode of my TV show Panic. In recent years, after researching various technologies for creative projects, Ive also contributed to the development of new AI models.
As someone who works in both AI and the arts, let me point out some of the key nuances getting lost in the noise.
Generative AI needs artists. Not the other way around
Heres a secret that hyperbolic AI execs dont like to acknowledge, but artists should definitely hear:
LLMs like ChatGPT have already consumed virtually all the data available online. To meaningfully improve, they now need a continuous influx of new content, including original art. Without it, theyre headed for a recursive loop: generating content that feeds on other AI-generated content, leading to increasingly low-quality or bizarre results.
To put it bluntly, generative AI companies need artists and the work they havent made yet. OpenAIs infamous Studio Ghibli meme stunt rightly drew criticism for disrespecting Miyazakis well-known disdain for AI, but it also underscored a key point: theres only so much beloved art in the world at the level of Studio Ghibli, and AI has already devoured it.
Artists should recognize the leverage this gives them. They could collectively establish terms AI companies must follow for any content published online, or risk starving the models of fresh creative input.
At the same time, artists might reconsider viewing generative AI solely as a threat. That defensive posture underestimates the enduring value of their talent and risks missing out on new avenues of creativity.
If anything, the deluge of AI-generated sludge may actually elevate the value of handmade artbooks, paintings, sculpture, live performancemaking these physical forms more precious than ever. Media history supports this. In the early 2000s, with the rise of podcasting, radios demise seemed imminent. Yet today, radio remains twice as popular as podcastsnearly 80 years after TVs debut supposedly heralded its end.
Its also clear how much generative AI companies struggle without artists to guide them. Consider the endless parade of AI-generated social media influencerspale imitations of their human counterparts. Why not create an influencer that looks and acts like a dragon or a new alien species? Without someone to infuse the process with joy and imagination, generative AI content fails to engage, inspire, or unite. Or in creative industry terms: its not compelling IP.
Artists may not need generative AI, but its a toolset worth exploring. Im excited about what happens when this technology is wielded by real artists. They, not coders, will be the ones to discover new forms of storytelling and visualization that were previously unimaginable.
What Art and AI Already Share
Im hopeful that well see more collaboration between AI companies and artists. But first, each side must recognize that while they may share a goalcreating something disruptivetheir approaches are radically different.
In tech, efficiency is often the end goal of innovation. For artists, inefficiency is the process. The noodling, tweaking, perfecting, and obsessing: these are usually ignored by tech when designing generative AI platforms, but theyre essential to the creation of truly unique art. And, I would argue, essential to the joy of creating at all. Creativity is fundamentally the act of imprinting imagination onto the world; it is visible in the whorls, details, and choices that reflect the makers expressive spirit.
My tech executive friend, who believes AI movies can be prompted into existence, overlooks how the inefficiency of the creative process is integral not just to the final product but to the pleasure of making it. It often takes me a full day to write a single page, agonizing over every metaphor and word choice. And the writing is only one phase: I recently sold a novel, The Girl in the Lake, based on my decades-long fascination with past lives and near-death experiences, and their possible scientific underpinnings.
Still, I believe the friction between art and tech is partly fueled by an uncomfortable truth: They have more in common than theyd like to admit.
Both are highly elitist and gatekeeping industries, often skeptical of anyone outside their preferred colleges, institutions, or circles. Both are ego-driven, with a belief that their work is among the most important contributions to humanity.
In their own ways, both technologists and artists are bidding for immortalitywhether by creating a timeless novel or a godlike AI. A little humility from both sides could go a long way toward making future conversations more productive.
I first got into developing technology while researching for my novels, and Ive never forgotten that the word technology comes from techneGreek for a system for making art. Heres to an AI-driven future that expands artistic possibility, rather than one locked in outdated, binary debates.
