BUSINESS

Oil prices were retreating from the key $100 level, after the U.S. government temporarily removed sanctions on Russian oil currently at sea.

“I can draw $4,300 a month in Social Security if I retire this summer.”

Iran conflict and Supreme Court tariff ruling add to air of uncertainty around the economy

The co-founding Duran Duran member and longtime band associate Katy Krassner discuss their picks for this year’s Academy Award winners.

Here’s how the wrong AI strategies are leading retail to a crisis point and what luxury brands (in particular) can do to course correct now.

ConocoPhillips (COP) has been trading on two stories. The first is the obvious one. It is a large upstream oil producer, so the stock reacts quickly to crude price swings driven by war headlines, supply fears, and new concerns about the Strait of Hormuz.The second story may matter more over time. ConocoPhillips has spent the past several months laying out a case built on capital discipline, cost control, and shareholder returns. That gives investors something else to watch when oil stops dominating the tape.As crude turned higher again, COP moved back toward its recent highs and stayed close to the 52-week peak it set earlier this month. That move makes sense. ConocoPhillips has more direct exposure to oil prices than the integrated majors, which have refining and downstream businesses that can soften the impact of big swings in crude.Oil volatility is doing the headline workThe macro backdrop has driven much of the recent action in energy stocks. Crude has surged, then dropped, then surged again as traders react to each new development tied to Iran, shipping disruptions, and supply risks. Brent crude oil pushed back above $100 per barrel on March 12 after the market had already gone through a sharp reversal earlier in the week.That kind of tape tends to pull a name like ConocoPhillips into focus quickly. Investors often use upstream producers as direct ways to trade oil sentiment. When crude rallies, that sensitivity works in the stock’s favor. When crude falls, the same sensitivity can weigh on shares just as fast.That explains why COP keeps landing on watchlists, but it does not fully explain why investors may keep coming back to the stock after the oil spike fades.

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ConocoPhillips wants investors watching costs and cash returnsConocoPhillips gave investors a clear framework in its fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 update. The company said it generated $19.9 billion in cash from operations, or CFO, in 2025 and returned $9 billion to shareholders, equal to 45% of its CFO. That total included $5 billion in share buybacks and $4 billion in dividends. Management also declared a quarterly dividend of $0.84 per share.More Oil:Iran’s shocking threat to boost oil to $200Gas prices get rocked by Iran war volatilityPain at the Pump Intensifies as Iran Conflict Strands TankersThe company paired that return story with a cost story. ConocoPhillips told investors its 2026 plan includes about $12 billion in capital spending and roughly $10.2 billion in adjusted operating costs. It also set a goal of cutting $1 billion in combined capital and operating costs.This matters because it provides investors with a framework that does not depend entirely on oil remaining elevated. If crude cools later in the year, the company can still point to lower costs, disciplined capital allocation, and a clear return strategy.Why COP is different from other major oil stocksConocoPhillips does not trade like Exxon Mobil or Chevron. Those companies have broader business models and often attract investors looking for a more traditional oil major profile. ConocoPhillips offers something different. It gives investors more direct upstream exposure, which can make the upside more attractive when oil rises but also leaves the stock more exposed when crude falls.That difference matters in the current market. If oil remains strong, COP has room to benefit because of that direct sensitivity. If oil loses momentum, the company will need its internal story to do more of the work. That puts more attention on cost reductions, capital returns, and the company’s ability to keep improving the business after the Marathon integration.ConocoPhillips by the numbersEmployees: about 11,8002025 revenue: about $56.9 billionApproximate market cap: about $143 billion2025 cash from operations: $19.9 billionWhat investors should watch nextThere are a few company-specific levers that could matter from here. ConocoPhillips said it captured more than $1 billion in Marathon integration synergies on a run-rate basis in 2025. The company also completed $3.2 billion in asset sales last year and kept its target of reaching $5 billion in total dispositions by the end of 2026.For investors, the setup is fairly clear. If oil stays high, ConocoPhillips benefits from direct commodity exposure. If oil pulls back, the company still has a second story built on cost cuts, synergies, asset sales, and shareholder returns. That is the real reason the stock deserves attention now.Related: Big Oil supermajor stuns with blunt Venezuela message

For 150 years, Chevron Corporation (CVX) has been one of the world’s largest companies, a major employer, and a top-tier energy producer. It’s also one of the 30 stocks included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, America’s oldest stock market index. It’s involved in virtually every aspect of the oil and gas industry, from exploring for oil and natural gas resources to refining crude oil into fuel, transporting products, and selling gasoline at more than 20,000 Chevron and Texaco stations worldwide — 8,000 of which are in the U.S. alone.How many employees does Chevron have?According to Chevron’s most recent annual report, the company had 39,742 employees as of December 31, 2024.This number included everyone from corporate workers, such as legal and communications specialists, to technicians and engineers at its refineries, drilling sites, and offshore platforms. Another 5,556 employees worked at its service stations and convenience stores.But on February 12, 2025, Chevron announced plans to reduce its workforce by 15% to 20% by the end of 2026 — a number that could total up to 9,000 jobs, according to CNBC. The layoffs are part of a company-wide restructuring plan to improve efficiency, simplify organizational structure, and reduce costs by $3 billion.Where are Chevron’s employees located?Despite the layoffs, Chevron maintains a massive global presence — and has a $395.5 billion market cap, which ranks it as the 16th most valuable company on the Fortune 500.Chevron’s workers are located in 51 countries across six continents, including energy-producing regions such as Australia, Kazakhstan, and Nigeria, where they focus on exploration and oil and gas production.Employees in the United Kingdom specialize in Chevron’s supply chain, including shipping operations.More than half of Chevron’s total workforce — 57% — is on U.S. payrolls.  Related: What does Chevron mean? A look inside its corporate logoHow many employees does Chevron have in California?From its earliest beginnings as the Pacific Coast Oil Company and later as the Standard Oil Company of California, Chevron loomed large in California. Its headquarters were in San Francisco for decades before the company relocated its corporate hub to San Ramon in 1999, where it housed about 2,000 employees in a 92-acre campus known as Chevron Park.But due to stringent energy regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, in 2024, Chevron left San Ramon and relocated its operations to Houston, Texas. In the process, several executives retired; The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the company also cut about 100 employees from its San Ramon payroll and another 75 from its Bakersfield business unit.  Company histories:History of Microsoft: Company timeline & factsHistory of Coca-Cola: Timeline, facts & milestonesHistory of Nike: Company timeline and factsHow many employees does Chevron have in Houston?After moving its headquarters to Houston in late 2024, Chevron’s total workforce in the area numbered around 7,000, making it one of the city’s largest employers.However, following Chevron’s acquisition of Hess Corp. in July 2025, KTRK News reported that a combined total of 575 Chevron employees in Houston and North Dakota lost their jobs.The company released a statement saying: “As part of the integration, we will consolidate or eliminate some positions … These are difficult decisions which we do not make lightly.”The company offered severance benefits and outplacement support to the laid-off workers. Their last day was September 26, 2025.Related: Who owns Chevron? Understanding who controls one of the world’s largest energy companies

Broadcast Retirement Network’s Jeffrey Snyder discusses how cryptocurrencies are being used by the World’s bad actors with the Henry Jackson Society’s Alexander Browder.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkJoining me now is Alex Browder of the Henry Jackson Society. Alex, thanks so much for joining us on the program this morning. Thanks for having me.You recently released a report for the Henry Jackson Society. I’m very interested in this because it talks about the crypto industry. And I guess my first question is, I know cryptocurrency is becoming popular in kind of the mainstream, but how popular is it among some of the world’s worst actors?Alexander Browder, Henry Jackson SocietyYeah, so with the proliferation of cryptocurrency, criminal use has exploded by both hostile governments and bad actors around the world, creating millions of victims and facilitating an increase in sanctions evasion. So over the past year, I’ve created the largest open source database of cryptocurrency laundering, featuring 164 of the most prominent cases, and in total, over $350 billion has been laundered through cryptocurrency. Notably, Iran, North Korea and Russia all have been prevalent roles or have had prevalent roles within this ecosystem.So it’s really a national security issue at this moment.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkYeah, and why cryptocurrency? Why didn’t they use the traditional ways of, I’m going to call it money laundering, I’m not an expert, but why did they pick cryptocurrency?Alexander Browder, Henry Jackson SocietySo as a tool which isn’t freely controlled by any government or standard institution, it provides an alternate way for criminals and also hostile governments like North Korea, which are cut off from the main financial systems. So they can profit, first of all, of people within the cryptocurrency industry and also use cryptocurrency as a way to launder funds.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkAnd is it possible to hide a transaction? We’ll get into this a little bit later about the regulatory apparatus here in the States and in the UK, but is it possible for these governments to actually hide a transaction, meaning even if the regulators were looking, they couldn’t find it?Alexander Browder, Henry Jackson SocietyYeah, so this is the paradox of cryptocurrency. For most cryptocurrency assets, every time there’s a transaction, it’s recorded on a public ledger called a blockchain. And so this becomes an issue for criminals who want to hide their tracks.So what they’ve come up with is different laundering techniques and even different cryptocurrencies. So firstly, I’ve identified several different kinds of laundering techniques. One of the most prevalent techniques is something called mixing.This is where criminals are able to send their cryptocurrency into a mixing service, and it sends out a completely different address. So it’s harder for authorities to track the incoming and outgoing address together. So I’ve identified 10 of the largest mixes, which have processed a total of 9.7 billion dollars. But this is just one of the many techniques that have popped up, and I’m happy to talk about it more. But secondly, they’ve also gone so far as to set up their own cryptocurrencies, which are much harder to trace. For example, Monero, which is apparently completely untraceable, meaning bad actors can get away without any of this public tracking.And so you’ve seen this pop up a lot in darknet marketplaces where criminals are selling drugs and fentanyl and other serious issues.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkSo let me ask you about, at the outset of our interview, I talked about kind of how cryptocurrency is kind of coming into the mainstream. So there are a lot more retail investors, there’s a lot more institutional investors, both here in the States and in the UK, across the world, really. Should this scare those people?Or should that concern these people who are investing? Does this laundering have an impact on what they’re doing?Alexander Browder, Henry Jackson SocietyI think that definitely the use of crypto by these bad actors should concern legitimate retail and institutional investors. Let me highlight a couple of scenarios for you. So firstly, retail investors who are duped into investing into major cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes can have their life savings disappear.For example, recently, there was this case of the Airbit Club, where it was marketed as a cryptocurrency mining and trading business. And after paying for membership, victims got access to an online portal that displayed profits that accumulated over time. But according to the DOJ, those profits were completely fabricated, and it processed over $100 million in victims throughout the United States.And they were eventually convicted. But this is one of many cases of Ponzi schemes, where they promote themselves as a key trading platform, investment platform, and take in large amounts of funds from everyone. Not only that, people who are just invested in the cryptocurrency space, either through their personal wallets or cryptocurrency exchanges can have their funds stolen within seconds.I’ve got many examples of this, but I want to highlight a few egregious cases, most of which are carried out by North Korea. For example, in February 2025, there was a really prominent case by the North Koreans. They stole $1.5 billion from a cryptocurrency exchange in two seconds. So you can have $1.5 billion in cryptocurrency drained within a few seconds. And this goes directly to funding North Korean nuclear program. And then also, the year before this, there was another major hack from the Harmony Bridge hack, where over $100 million was stolen.And 65,000 people had all their money stolen, and they were left without compensation. And the funds lay dormant for seven months until they were laundered. So this is one of many, but not even that.People who are not even in the cryptocurrency industry, and who are just regular individuals, can also see effects of this. So a key aspect of my report is ransomware. And for your audience, which don’t know specifically what that is, it’s when malicious actors steal data and encrypt it and force companies or governments to pay.So there was a really prevalent case of this when the colonial pipeline in the U.S. had to shut down after it was attacked through a cyber attack. They had to pay $4.4 million. And then, not only that, the pipeline normally moves close to 2.5 million barrels a day in oil, and that completely got shut down. So you saw 70% of all gas stations in Washington, D.C., North Carolina, and other states all ran out of gas. And this meant that the U.S. gas prices topped $3 for the first time since 2014. So even if you’re not in the cryptocurrency space, you can still feel the effects of this.And especially a more recent development where institutional retail investors can feel is in the surge in scams and fake advertising directly targeting senior citizens and people who are less knowledgeable around cryptocurrency.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkNo, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. We’re kind of coming up short on time, but I did want to kind of follow up, and we can bring you back to talk more about this, because this is not going to get solved in eight to 10 minutes.But let’s talk about the regulatory framework. Is it strengthened enough? Is it thorough enough here in the U.S., the U.K., and in other European markets to regulate and define these bad actors? It sounds like they might have some catching up to do. Yeah.Alexander Browder, Henry Jackson SocietySo from what I’ve identified, criminals are running circles around authorities and regulators across the globe. There’s an inequality of arms between the authorities and the criminals. The criminals have billions to launder and have many means to do it, whereas authorities are currently underfunded and overstretched, meaning it’s hard for them to trace down every attack, every complaint, which makes this industry rife for malicious actors.And so what I’m trying to propose, I was in U.K. Parliament earlier this week, is that we increase funding for cryptocurrency teams and even set up their own specialized cryptocurrency enforcement agencies, which can protect victims and stop bad actors like North Korea.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkClearly, there’s a lot of work to do. I think it’s probably really hard for governments. You’re kind of reacting.I just might have thought you’re reacting to what these bad actors are doing. It’s like playing football or Australian rugby. The defense doesn’t know what the offense is going to call, so it kind of has to react.I think governments are probably trying to react, but they need more resources. This is a big issue, especially when it impacts regular citizens, older citizens who have saved money for decades and decades. Alex, we’re going to have to leave it there.Great research, great report. We thank you so much and we look forward to having you back on the program again very soon. Thanks for having me on.

NanoClaw, the open-source AI agent platform created by Gavriel Cohen, is partnering with the containerized development platform Docker to let teams run agents inside Docker Sandboxes, a move aimed at one of the biggest obstacles to enterprise adoption: how to give agents room to act without giving them room to damage the systems around them.The announcement matters because the market for AI agents is shifting from novelty to deployment. It is no longer enough for an agent to write code, answer questions or automate a task. For CIOs, CTOs and platform leaders, the harder question is whether that agent can safely connect to live data, modify files, install packages and operate across business systems without exposing the host machine, adjacent workloads or other agents.That is the problem NanoClaw and Docker say they are solving together.A security argument, not just a packaging updateNanoClaw launched as a security-first alternative in the rapidly growing “claw” ecosystem, where agent frameworks promise broad autonomy across local and cloud environments. The project’s core argument has been that many agent systems rely too heavily on software-level guardrails while running too close to the host machine.This Docker integration pushes that argument down into infrastructure.“The partnership with Docker is integrating NanoClaw with Docker Sandboxes,” Cohen said in an interview. “The initial version of NanoClaw used Docker containers for isolating each agent, but Docker Sandboxes is the proper enterprise-ready solution for rolling out agents securely.”That progression matters because the central issue in enterprise agent deployment is isolation. Agents do not behave like traditional applications. They mutate their environments, install dependencies, create files, launch processes and connect to outside systems. That breaks many of the assumptions underlying ordinary container workflows.Cohen framed the issue in direct terms: “You want to unlock the full potential of these highly capable agents, but you don’t want security to be based on trust. You have to have isolated environments and hard boundaries.”That line gets at the broader challenge facing enterprises now experimenting with agents in production-like settings. The more useful agents become, the more access they need. They need tools, memory, external connections and the freedom to take actions on behalf of users and teams. But each gain in capability raises the stakes around containment. A compromised or badly behaving agent cannot be allowed to spill into the host environment, expose credentials or access another agent’s state.Why agents strain conventional infrastructureDocker president and COO Mark Cavage said that reality forced the company to rethink some of the assumptions built into standard developer infrastructure.“Fundamentally, we had to change the isolation and security model to work in the world of agents,” Cavage said. “It feels like normal Docker, but it’s not.”He explained why the old model no longer holds. “Agents break effectively every model we’ve ever known,” Cavage said. “Containers assume immutability, but agents break that on the very first call. The first thing they want to do is install packages, modify files, spin up processes, spin up databases — they want full mutability and a full machine to run in.”That is a useful framing for enterprise technical decision-makers. The promise of agents is not that they behave like static software with a chatbot front end. The promise is that they can perform open-ended work. But open-ended work is exactly what creates new security and governance problems. An agent that can install a package, rewrite a file tree, start a database process or access credentials is more operationally useful than a static assistant. It is also more dangerous if it is running in the wrong environment.Docker’s answer is Docker Sandboxes, which use MicroVM-based isolation while preserving familiar Docker packaging and workflows. According to the companies, NanoClaw can now run inside that infrastructure with a single command, giving teams a more secure execution layer without forcing them to redesign their agent stack from scratch.Cavage put the value proposition plainly: “What that gets you is a much stronger security boundary. When something breaks out — because agents do bad things — it’s truly bounded in something provably secure.”That emphasis on containment rather than trust lines up closely with NanoClaw’s original thesis. In earlier coverage of the project, NanoClaw was positioned as a leaner, more auditable alternative to broader and more permissive frameworks. The argument was not just that it was open source, but that its simplicity made it easier to reason about, secure and customize for production use.Cavage extended that argument beyond any single product. “Security is defense in depth,” he said. “You need every layer of the stack: a secure foundation, a secure framework to run in, and secure things users build on top.”That is likely to resonate with enterprise infrastructure teams that are less interested in model novelty than in blast radius, auditability and layered control. Agents may still rely on the intelligence of frontier models, but what matters operationally is whether the surrounding system can absorb mistakes, misfires or adversarial behavior without turning one compromised process into a wider incident.The enterprise case for many agents, not oneThe NanoClaw-Docker partnership also reflects a broader shift in how vendors are beginning to think about agent deployment at scale. Instead of one central AI system doing everything, the model emerging here is many bounded agents operating across teams, channels and tasks.“What OpenClaw and the claws have shown is how to get tremendous value from coding agents and general-purpose agents that are available today,” Cohen said. “Every team is going to be managing a team of agents.”He pushed that idea further in the interview, sketching a future closer to organizational systems design than to the consumer assistant model that still dominates much of the AI conversation. “In businesses, every employee is going to have their personal assistant agent, but teams will manage a team of agents, and a high-performing team will manage hundreds or thousands of agents,” Cohen said.That is a more useful enterprise lens than the usual consumer framing. In a real organization, agents are likely to be attached to distinct workflows, data stores and communication surfaces. Finance, support, sales engineering, developer productivity and internal operations may all have different automations, different memory and different access rights. A secure multi-agent future depends less on generalized intelligence than on boundaries: who can see what, which process can touch which file system, and what happens when one agent fails or is compromised.NanoClaw’s product design is built around that kind of orchestration. The platform sits on top of Claude Code and adds persistent memory, scheduled tasks, messaging integrations and routing logic so agents can be assigned work across channels such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack and Discord. The release says this can all be configured from a phone, without writing custom agent code, while each agent remains isolated inside its own container runtime.Cohen said one practical goal of the Docker integration is to make that deployment model easier to adopt. “People will be able to go to the NanoClaw GitHub, clone the repository, and run a single command,” he said. “That will get their Docker Sandbox set up running NanoClaw.”That ease of setup matters because many enterprise AI deployments still fail at the point where promising demos have to become stable systems. Security features that are too hard to deploy or maintain often end up bypassed. A packaging model that lowers friction without weakening boundaries is more likely to survive internal adoption.An open-source partnership with strategic weightThe partnership is also notable for what it is not. It is not being positioned as an exclusive commercial alliance or a financially engineered enterprise bundle.“There’s no money involved,” Cavage said. “We found this through the foundation developer community. NanoClaw is open source, and Docker has a long history in open source.”That may strengthen the announcement rather than weaken it. In infrastructure, the most credible integrations often emerge because two systems fit technically before they fit commercially. Cohen said the relationship began when a Docker developer advocate got NanoClaw running in Docker Sandboxes and demonstrated that the combination worked.“We were able to put NanoClaw into Docker Sandboxes without making any architecture changes to NanoClaw,” Cohen said. “It just works, because we had a vision of how agents should be deployed and isolated, and Docker was thinking about the same security concerns and arrived at the same design.”For enterprise buyers, that origin story signals that the integration was not forced into existence by a go-to-market arrangement. It suggests genuine architectural compatibility.Docker is also careful not to cast NanoClaw as the only framework it will support. Cavage said the company plans to work broadly across the ecosystem, even as NanoClaw appears to be the first “claw” included in Docker’s official packaging. The implication is that Docker sees a wider market opportunity around secure agent runtime infrastructure, while NanoClaw gains a more recognizable enterprise foundation for its security posture.The bigger story: infrastructure catching up to agentsThe deeper significance of this announcement is that it shifts attention from model capability to runtime design. That may be where the real enterprise competition is heading.The AI industry has spent the last two years proving that models can reason, code and orchestrate tasks with growing sophistication. The next phase is proving that these systems can be deployed in ways security teams, infrastructure leaders and compliance owners can live with.NanoClaw has argued from the start that agent security cannot be bolted on at the application layer. Docker is now making a parallel argument from the runtime side. “The world is going to need a different set of infrastructure to catch up to what agents and AI demand,” Cavage said. “They’re clearly going to get more and more autonomous.”That could turn out to be the central story here. Enterprises do not just need more capable agents. They need better boxes to put them in.For organizations experimenting with AI agents today, the NanoClaw-Docker integration offers a concrete picture of what that box might look like: open-source orchestration on top, MicroVM-backed isolation underneath, and a deployment model designed around containment rather than trust.In that sense, this is more than a product integration. It is an early blueprint for how enterprise agent infrastructure may evolve: less emphasis on unconstrained autonomy, more emphasis on bounded autonomy that can survive contact with real production systems.

Ulta Beauty’s stock was among the S&P 500’s biggest decliners after a downbeat earnings outlook.