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FBI agent Geoffrey Kelly joined “Forbes True Crime” to discuss his multi-decade investigation into the world’s largest art heist.

Attitudes about getting older can actually change the quality of your retirement, new research finds.

The company is preparing for the debut of its R2 SUV, a more affordable electric vehicle that could be a game changer.

The SEC chairman made clear that formal new ties between the U.S. markets regulators will run so deep as to include combined meetings with firms pitching products.

The NFIB optimism index fell 0.5 percentage points to 98.8 in February.

TheStreet aims to feature only the best products and services. If you buy something via one of our links, we may earn a commission.Why we love this dealWhen it comes to reliable transportation, you don’t always have to turn to a car. Not only are they expensive, but the upkeep can be just as pricey. If you’re only traveling shorter distances, an electric scooter is a great alternative. E-scooters are an eco-friendly mode of transportation that is more cost-efficient than a car. In cities, they can even get you to your destination faster by skipping out on the traffic.The ​​Pororo HES20 Electric Scooter is a budget-friendly option that is just $146 at Walmart. It’s a bestseller that can reach speeds of up to 19 miles per hour and has a foldable design that’s easy to carry. ​​Pororo HES20 Electric Scooter, $146 at Walmart

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Why do shoppers love it?On average, electric scooters can range from a few hundred dollars to over $1,000. At just $146, this e-scooter lands itself in the very budget-friendly category. In addition to reaching speeds of up to 19 miles per hour with four speed modes, it can travel up to 22 miles on a single charge. It’s powered by a 350-watt motor with a climbing capacity of 20 degrees. The 8.5-inch tires, dual braking system, and lightweight aluminum alloy frame make the electric scooter durable enough to ride, but light enough to fold up and carry. Even though it has a water resistance rating of IP65 that adds to its durability, e-scooters work best (and are more fun in) on dry roads, as it greatly reduces the risk of slipping or skidding.The LCD screen gives you a snapshot of the electric scooter’s controls. You can access the speed modes, cruise control, speedometer, and battery life. It also comes with a phone holder, so you can see everything on the app. The phone holder is great for using your phone to get directions.Performance can vary based on the user’s weight and road conditions, according to the manufacturer. For reference, the e-scooter has a max weight capacity of 264 pounds.This model is made for adults, but the brand has other e-scooter variations available with kids in mind, starting at $120. With prices like these, it’s a fantastic time to get electric scooters for the whole family, as a few of these budget-friendly picks can cost as much as the price of one with a higher price tag.Related: Walmart’s bestselling storage cabinet is on sale for just $58, and it provides lots of shelf spaceIs the $146 electric scooter worth it? Pros and consProsEasy to ride and use, even for beginners.Comes almost fully assembled.Has a built-in phone holder.ConsSlower when going up steep hills.Performance can vary based on the operator’s weight.Shoppers called it a “good all-around adult scooter” that’s very fast, sturdy, reliable, and easy to use. One reviewer said the ride is smoother than they expected, and others commented on the speed variations. While some reported how fast the electric scooter is, some noted that the max speed was less than advertised.Shop more dealsPrinte N6 Electric Scooter, $166 at WalmartAovopro VT01 Electric Scooter, $150 (was $279) at WalmartFlypkin Electric Scooter, $180 at WalmartIf you need an affordable mode of transportation to take you to work or explore an area, the ​​Pororo HES20 Electric Scooter for $146 at Walmart is a great choice.

Craft breweries have struggled for the past few years as demand for the product has lessened due to a variety of economic and social reasons.”Barring a drastic change in the last few weeks of the year, 2025 will be the second consecutive year in which brewery closings outpace brewery openings. Throughout the year, the BA has tracked 268 new brewery openings and 434 closings,” according to the Brewers’ Association’s 2025 Year in Beer.While independent craft breweries have always been a challenging business, the dip has impacted larger brands as well. “Changing consumer behaviors, retailer rationalization, cost increases due to inflation and tariffs, and more competition than ever have been compounding difficulties in 2025,” said BA staff economist Matt Gacioch.BrewDog, a global brand, survived the United Kingdom’s version of bankruptcy and was purchased by Tilray, an American beverage and cannabis company. That has not ended the company’s struggles.BrewDog was rescued from administration BrewDog was not traded on any stock exchange, but it did sell stock to shareholders. That equity was wiped out in February when the company was placed into administration in the U.K.”When a company goes into administration, they have entered a legal process (under the Insolvency Act 1986) with the aim of achieving one of the statutory objectives of an administration. This may be to rescue a viable business that is insolvent due to cashflow problems,” according to a U.K. government web page.In that process, an administrator is picked to manage the sale or shutdown of the brand. For BrewDog, that led to Tilray buying some of the company’s assets. The purchase did not include the company’s brewpubs and other assets in the United States and Australia, according to a Tilray press release.”Tilray is separately negotiating to acquire certain BrewDog assets in the United States and Australia,” the company added.BrewDog has closed nearly 40 brewpubsAs part of the initial bankruptcy-like process, BrewDog closed 38 locations in the U.K. It has now suddenly closed its Atlanta brewpub in the U.S. The closures come as the craft beer boom has slowed, with production falling, brewery counts shrinking, and costs rising across the industryCustomers arrived at the Atlanta location to find its doors closed with no explanation. The brewpub did share a goodbye on its Instagram page.”After several amazing years on the BeltLine, BrewDog Atlanta is closing its doors today,” the company posted. “…This was not an easy decision, but as we look toward the future of the business, we’re focused on how best to position BrewDog’s brands for the next chapter in the U.S.”The company’s U.S. assets are still controlled by the U.K. administrator, and this decision was likely made in consultation with Tilray as part of the ongoing sale process. Alix Partners has been managing the brand’s sale during the administration process.“No offer was made at any stage of the sales process, from any prospective bidder, which would have preserved BrewDog in its entirety,” AlixPartners, which acted as the administrator for BrewDog, said in a statement to The Guardian.A brief timeline on BrewDog’s saleBrewDog shut down 38 bars across the U.K. and Ireland after entering administration and selling parts of the business in a rescue deal, according to Yahoo U.K.The closures resulted in about 484 job losses after the shuttered bars were not included in the rescue deal, added Yahoo U.K.Tilray acquired BrewDog’s brand, brewery in Ellon, and 11 bars for about £33 million in a pre-pack administration deal, according to The Star.The sale preserved about 733 jobs tied to the brewery and the bars that were included in the deal, The Star added.Tilray expects the BrewDog purchase will add $500 million in annual revenue to its diversified beverage platform that includes craft beer, cannabis-laced beverages, energy drinks, and water. “Expanding Tilray’s established U.S. beverage brands into international markets is a strategic priority and a natural next phase of growth. The addition of BrewDog accelerates our ability to enter new markets by providing scaled brewing capacity outside the U.S., an established international distribution network, and a premier brewpub and hospitality infrastructure in the UK and select international markets,” the company shared.

BrewDog has closed another location.Shutterstock

BrewDog shareholders wiped outBrewDod sold shares in the company through private sales.”More than 200,000 ‘equity for punks’ investors, many of whom had at one stage hoped to cash in from a stock market float projected to value the company at £2bn, will not receive anything,” according to AlixPartners.Unite, a trade union representing hundreds of workers laid off as part of the sale process, based “A company does not lose 97% of its value in the space of nine years without catastrophic mismanagement. Directors past and present pursued reckless expansion and failed strategies, and now workers are paying the price for boardroom failure,” Unite told The Guardian.BrewDog may be the largest brewery and brewpub failure over the past few years, but it’s part of a long list of struggling players in the space.”The amount of money it takes to keep a brewery running is exorbitant, and if you don’t have unique, creative ways to pivot, then you’ll be out of business,” Jeff Lozano, director of brand experience for San Diego brewery Ballast Point, told Axios.A brief BrewDog history:Founded in 2007: BrewDog was founded in Fraserburgh, Scotland, by James Watt and Martin Dickie to challenge mass-market beer with bold craft offerings, according to the company’s website.Flagship beer: Punk IPA became BrewDog’s breakout product and one of the best-selling craft beers in the U.K., driving international growth, reported the BBC.Equity for Punks crowdfunding: Launched in 2009, the program allowed fans to buy shares and helped fund rapid expansion, according to the Financial Times.Other notable beers: Included Elvis Juice, Hazy Jane, Dead Pony Club, and Jet Black Heart, added the company.Global expansion: By the late 2010s, BrewDog operated breweries in Scotland, the U.S., Germany, and Australia, with a large international bar network.Recent challenges: BrewDog has closed underperforming bars and faced scrutiny over workplace culture. Co-founder James Watt stepped down as CEO in 2024 as the company shifted toward profitability, according to the BBC.Current situation: The company has closed its distillery operations and has hired Alix Partners for a quick sale/liquidation of the brand, according to The Independent.Related: 31-year-old jewelry brand files for Chapter 1 1 bankruptcy

With the first Admirals Club location dating back to 1939 and a repurposed press room that would end up launching what would become the modern airport lounge system, American Airlines is a frontrunner in this space.Its extensive lounge network includes more than 50 Admirals Clubs locations around the world as well as the Flagship concept for the most premium customers in five U.S. cities. While the Flagship lounges are available only to high-fare travelers and Platinum status holders, access to an Admirals Club location can also be purchased as a day pass for $79.With Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (AUS) continuing to expand and see growing traffic, American Airlines has now also announced that it will expand the current Admirals Club location near Gate 22 at the Barbara Jordan Terminal to more than twice its current size.American Airlines to build new Admirals Club lounge at Austin AirportThe new space will span more than 12,000 square feet and have the first terrace out of any Admirals Club in the U.S. Banking company Capital One has also just opened its first Landing lounge concept a LaGuardia Airport (LGA) that features a sprawling indoor terrace evoking the vibe of a Spanish courtyard that was converted from a rooftop patio closed off decades ago.Construction and expansion of the existing Admirals Club space will take place throughout the year with the current lounge remaining open to visitors during that process.Related: The first Southwest Airlines airport lounge is almost hereWhile scant details about the timeframe to opening and specifics of what the lounge will feature have been released, American is currently promising a distinctly Austin vibe and “expansive views of downtown Austin and the airfield” from the new terrace.Airlines will typically add touches honoring the city in which the lounge is located through artwork and design (in the Philadelphia flagship lounge, there is art of the Constitution and the Liberty Bell) as well as a few signature drinks and dishes.

An early rendering shows what the expanded Admirals Club space in Austin will look like.American Airlines

“New Admirals Club lounge will reflect the vibrant spirit of Austin”: American Airlines”As we elevate our presence in Austin, we’re excited to bring a new level of comfort and hospitality to our customers,” American Airlines’ Chief Customer Officer Heather Garboden said in a statement. “This new Admirals Club lounge will reflect the vibrant spirit of Austin while offering the thoughtful design and premium amenities our customers expect.”More Travel News:Airline to launch unusual new flight to Cayman Islands from the U.S.Iranian strike hits major airport, injuries reportedUnexpected country is most luxurious travel destination for 2026U.S. government issues sudden warning on Switzerland travelAmerican Airlines also revealed that the expanded lounge will have three zones with different spaces for working, eating and relaxing — an increasingly popular concept also found in some of the recently-opened lounges from competitors. Traditionally, the construction process takes place for at least a year between the announcement and the opening of doors to guests so an opening can be expected for sometime in late 2026 or early 2027.American Airlines is currently also working on a new Flagship location at Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT) that is slated to open sometime in 2027. Both Charlotte and Austin are cities in which American is hoping to carve out a stronger network given high competition in larger cities like Chicago.Related: We got a peek inside the fancy new Capital One airport lounge

OpenAI launched Codex Security on March 6, entering the application security market that Anthropic had disrupted 14 days earlier with Claude Code Security. Both scanners use LLM reasoning instead of pattern matching. Both proved that traditional static application security testing (SAST) tools are structurally blind to entire vulnerability classes. The enterprise security stack is caught in the middle.Anthropic and OpenAI independently released reasoning-based vulnerability scanners, and both found bug classes that pattern-matching SAST was never designed to detect. The competitive pressure between two labs with a combined private-market valuation exceeding $1.1 trillion means detection quality will improve faster than any single vendor can deliver alone. Neither Claude Code Security nor Codex Security replaces your existing stack. Both tools change procurement math permanently. Right now, both are free to enterprise customers. The head-to-head comparison and seven actions below are what you need before the board of directors asks which scanner you are piloting and why.How Anthropic and OpenAI reached the same conclusion from different architecturesAnthropic published its zero-day research on February 5 alongside the release of Claude Opus 4.6. Anthropic said Claude Opus 4.6 found more than 500 previously unknown high-severity vulnerabilities in production open-source codebases that had survived decades of expert review and millions of hours of fuzzing. In the CGIF library, Claude discovered a heap buffer overflow by reasoning about the LZW compression algorithm, a flaw that coverage-guided fuzzing could not catch even with 100% code coverage. Anthropic shipped Claude Code Security as a limited research preview on February 20, available to Enterprise and Team customers, with free expedited access for open-source maintainers. Gabby Curtis, Anthropic’s communications lead, told VentureBeat in an exclusive interview that Anthropic built Claude Code Security to make defensive capabilities more widely available.OpenAI’s numbers come from a different architecture and a wider scanning surface. Codex Security evolved from Aardvark, an internal tool powered by GPT-5 that entered private beta in 2025. During the Codex Security beta period, OpenAI’s agent scanned more than 1.2 million commits across external repositories, surfacing what OpenAI said were 792 critical findings and 10,561 high-severity findings. OpenAI reported vulnerabilities in OpenSSH, GnuTLS, GOGS, Thorium, libssh, PHP, and Chromium, resulting in 14 assigned CVEs. Codex Security’s false positive rates fell more than 50% across all repositories during beta, according to OpenAI. Over-reported severity dropped more than 90%.Checkmarx Zero researchers demonstrated that moderately complicated vulnerabilities sometimes escaped Claude Code Security’s detection. Developers could trick the agent into ignoring vulnerable code. In a full production-grade codebase scan, Checkmarx Zero found that Claude identified eight vulnerabilities, but only two were true positives. If moderately complex obfuscation defeats the scanner, the detection ceiling is lower than the headline numbers suggest. Neither Anthropic nor OpenAI has submitted detection claims to an independent third-party audit. Security leaders should treat the reported numbers as indicative, not audited.Merritt Baer, CSO at Enkrypt AI and former Deputy CISO at AWS, told VentureBeat that the competitive scanner race compresses the window for everyone. Baer advised security teams to prioritize patches based on exploitability in their runtime context rather than CVSS scores alone, shorten the window between discovery, triage, and patch, and maintain software bill of materials visibility so they know instantly where a vulnerable component runs.Different methods, almost no overlap in the codebases they scanned, yet the same conclusion. Pattern-matching SAST has a ceiling, and LLM reasoning extends detection past it. When two competing labs distribute that capability at the same time, the dual-use math gets uncomfortable. Any financial institution or fintech running a commercial codebase should assume that if Claude Code Security and Codex Security can find these bugs, adversaries with API access can find them, too. Baer put it bluntly: open-source vulnerabilities surfaced by reasoning models should be treated closer to zero-day class discoveries, not backlog items. The window between discovery and exploitation just compressed, and most vulnerability management programs are still triaging on CVSS alone.What the vendor responses proveSnyk, the developer security platform used by engineering teams to find and fix vulnerabilities in code and open-source dependencies, acknowledged the technical breakthrough but argued that finding vulnerabilities has never been the hard part. Fixing them at scale, across hundreds of repositories, without breaking anything. That is the bottleneck. Snyk pointed to research showing AI-generated code is 2.74 times more likely to introduce security vulnerabilities compared to human-written code, according to Veracode’s 2025 GenAI Code Security Report. The same models finding hundreds of zero-days also introduce new vulnerability classes when they write code.Cycode CTO Ronen Slavin wrote that Claude Code Security represents a genuine technical advancement in static analysis, but that AI models are probabilistic by nature. Slavin argued that security teams need consistent, reproducible, audit-grade results, and that a scanning capability embedded in an IDE is useful but does not constitute infrastructure. Slavin’s position: SAST is one discipline within a much broader scope, and free scanning does not displace platforms that handle governance, pipeline integrity, and runtime behavior at enterprise scale.“If code reasoning scanners from major AI labs are effectively free to enterprise customers, then static code scanning commoditizes overnight,” Baer told VentureBeat. Over the next 12 months, Baer expects the budget to move toward three areas. Runtime and exploitability layers, including runtime protection and attack path analysis. AI governance and model security, including guardrails, prompt injection defenses, and agent oversight. Remediation automation. “The net effect is that AppSec spending probably doesn’t shrink, but the center of gravity shifts away from traditional SAST licenses and toward tooling that shortens remediation cycles,” Baer said.Seven things to do before your next board meetingRun both scanners against a representative codebase subset. Compare Claude Code Security and Codex Security findings against your existing SAST output. Start with a single representative repository, not your entire codebase. Both tools are in research preview with access constraints that make full-estate scanning premature. The delta is your blind spot inventory.Build the governance framework before the pilot, not after. Baer told VentureBeat to treat either tool like a new data processor for the crown jewels, which is your source code. Baer’s governance model includes a formal data-processing agreement with clear statements on training exclusion, data retention, and subprocessor use, a segmented submission pipeline so only the repos you intend to scan are transmitted, and an internal classification policy that distinguishes code that can leave your boundary from code that cannot. In interviews with more than 40 CISOs, VentureBeat found that formal governance frameworks for reasoning-based scanning tools barely exist yet. Baer flagged derived IP as the blind spot most teams have not addressed. Can model providers retain embeddings or reasoning traces, and are those artifacts considered your intellectual property? The other gap is data residency for code, which historically was not regulated like customer data but increasingly falls under export control and national security review.Map what neither tool covers. Software composition analysis. Container scanning. Infrastructure-as-code. DAST. Runtime detection and response. Claude Code Security and Codex Security operate at the code-reasoning layer. Your existing stack handles everything else. That stack’s pricing power is what shifted.Quantify the dual-use exposure. Every zero-day Anthropic and OpenAI surfaced lives in an open-source project that enterprise applications depend on. Both labs are disclosing and patching responsibly, but the window between their discovery and your adoption of those patches is exactly where attackers operate. AI security startup AISLE independently discovered all 12 zero-day vulnerabilities in OpenSSL’s January 2026 security patch, including a stack buffer overflow (CVE-2025-15467) that is potentially remotely exploitable without valid key material. Fuzzers ran against OpenSSL for years and missed every one. Assume adversaries are running the same models against the same codebases.Prepare the board comparison before they ask. Claude Code Security reasons about code contextually, traces data flows, and uses multi-stage self-verification. Codex Security builds a project-specific threat model before scanning and validates findings in sandboxed environments. Each tool is in research preview and requires human approval before any patch is applied. The board needs side-by-side analysis, not a single-vendor pitch. When the conversation turns to why your existing suite missed what Anthropic found, Baer offered framing that works at the board level. Pattern-matching SAST solved a different generation of problems, Baer told VentureBeat. It was designed to detect known anti-patterns. That capability still matters and still reduces risk. But reasoning models can evaluate multi-file logic, state transitions, and developer intent, which is where many modern bugs live. Baer’s board-ready summary: “We bought the right tools for the threats of the last decade; the technology just advanced.”Track the competitive cycle. Both companies are heading toward IPOs, and enterprise security wins drive the growth narrative. When one scanner misses a blind spot, it lands on the other lab’s feature roadmap within weeks. Both labs ship model updates on monthly cycles. That cadence will outrun any single vendor’s release calendar. Baer said that running both is the right move: “Different models reason differently, and the delta between them can reveal bugs neither tool alone would consistently catch. In the short term, using both isn’t redundancy. It’s defense through diversity of reasoning systems.”Set a 30-day pilot window. Before February 20, this test did not exist. Run Claude Code Security and Codex Security against the same codebase and let the delta drive the procurement conversation with empirical data instead of vendor marketing. Thirty days gives you that data.Fourteen days separated Anthropic and OpenAI. The gap between the next releases will be shorter. Attackers are watching the same calendar.

OpenAI on Monday launched a set of interactive visual tools inside ChatGPT that let users manipulate mathematical and scientific formulas in real time — a genuinely impressive education feature that also serves as the company’s most direct attempt yet to change the subject during the worst ten days of its corporate life.The new experience covers more than 70 core math and science concepts, from the Pythagorean theorem to Ohm’s law to compound interest. When a user asks ChatGPT to explain one of these topics, the chatbot now generates a dynamic module with adjustable sliders alongside its written response. Drag a variable, and the equations, graphs, and diagrams update instantly. The feature is available today to all logged-in users worldwide, across every plan, including free.OpenAI tells VentureBeat that 140 million people already use ChatGPT each week for math and science learning. That is a staggering number — and it goes a long way toward explaining why the company chose this particular week to ship a product designed to make those users’ experience meaningfully better. Since late February, OpenAI has been sued by the family of a 12-year-old mass shooting victim who alleges the company knew the attacker was planning violence through ChatGPT; lost its head of robotics over a Pentagon deal that triggered a near-300% spike in app uninstalls; watched more than 30 of its own employees file a legal brief supporting rival Anthropic against the U.S. government; and scrapped plans with Oracle to expand a flagship data center in Texas. Its chief competitor’s app, Claude, now sits atop the App Store.The interactive learning tools are, on their merits, a strong product. But they arrive at a company fighting on every front simultaneously — and burning through an estimated $15 billion in cash this year to do it.How the new ChatGPT learning tools actually workThe feature is built on a simple pedagogical premise: students understand formulas better when they can see what happens as the inputs change.Ask ChatGPT “help me understand the Pythagorean theorem,” and the system now responds with a written explanation alongside an interactive panel. On the left, the formula $a^2 + b^2 = c^2$ appears in clean notation with sliders for sides $a$ and $b$. On the right, a geometric visualization — a right triangle with squares drawn on each side — reshapes dynamically as you adjust the values. The computed hypotenuse updates in real time. The same treatment applies across topics: voltage and resistance for Ohm’s law, pressure and temperature for the ideal gas equation, radius and height for cone volume.OpenAI’s initial roster of more than 70 topics targets high school and introductory college material: binomial squares, Charles’ law, circle equations, Coulomb’s law, cylinder volume, degrees of freedom, exponential decay, Hooke’s law, kinetic energy, the lens equation, linear equations, slope-intercept form, surface area of a sphere, trigonometric angle sum identities, and others.The company cited research suggesting that “visual, interaction-based learning can lead to stronger conceptual understanding than traditional instruction for many students,” and pointed to a recent Gallup survey in which more than half of U.S. adults said they struggle with math. In early testing, OpenAI said, students reported the modules helped them grasp how variables relate to one another, and parents described using them to work through problems alongside their children.Anjini Grover, a high school mathematics teacher quoted in OpenAI’s announcement, said the feature stands out for “how strongly this feature emphasizes conceptual understanding.” Raquel Gibson, a high school algebra teacher, called it “a step towards empowering students to independently explore abstract concepts.”The tools build on ChatGPT’s existing education features — a “study mode” for step-by-step problem solving and a quizzes feature for exam prep — and OpenAI said it plans to expand interactive learning to additional subjects. The company also said it intends to publish research through its NextGenAI initiative and OpenAI Learning Lab to study how AI shapes learning outcomes over time.A lawsuit alleging OpenAI knew a mass shooter was planning an attackThe education launch shares the calendar with the most serious legal challenge OpenAI has ever faced.On Monday, the mother of 12-year-old Maya Gebala filed a civil lawsuit against OpenAI in B.C. Supreme Court, alleging the company had “specific knowledge of the shooter’s long-range planning of a mass casualty event” through ChatGPT interactions and “took no steps to act upon this knowledge.” Gebala was shot three times during a mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia on February 10 that killed eight people and the 18-year-old attacker. She suffered what the lawsuit describes as a catastrophic traumatic brain injury with permanent cognitive and physical disabilities.The claim paints a damning picture of how the shooter used ChatGPT. It alleges the platform functioned as a “counsellor, pseudo-therapist, trusted confidante, friend, and ally” and was “intentionally designed to foster psychological dependency between the user and ChatGPT.” The shooter was under 18 when they began using the service, the suit states, and despite OpenAI’s requirement that minors obtain parental consent, the company “took no steps to implement age verification or consent procedures.”OpenAI has separately acknowledged that it suspended the shooter’s account months before the attack but did not alert Canadian law enforcement — a decision that provoked sharp political fallout. B.C. Premier David Eby said after a virtual meeting with Altman that the CEO agreed to apologize to the people of Tumbler Ridge and work with the provincial government on AI regulation recommendations.None of the claims have been proven in court. OpenAI has not publicly commented on the lawsuit. But the case poses a question that transcends any single legal proceeding: when an AI company’s own internal systems identify a user as dangerous enough to ban, what obligation does it have to tell someone?The Pentagon deal that split OpenAI from the insideThe Tumbler Ridge lawsuit is unfolding against the backdrop of an internal crisis that has already cost OpenAI key talent and millions of users.On February 28, CEO Sam Altman announced a deal giving the Pentagon access to OpenAI’s AI models inside secure government computing systems. The agreement came days after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei publicly refused similar terms, saying his company could not proceed without assurances against autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance. The Pentagon responded by designating Anthropic a “supply-chain risk” — a classification normally reserved for foreign adversaries — and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth barred any military contractor from conducting commercial activity with the company.The reaction inside OpenAI was immediate. Caitlin Kalinowski, who joined from Meta in 2024 to build out the company’s robotics hardware division, resigned on principle. “AI has an important role in national security,” she wrote publicly. “But surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human authorization are lines that deserved more deliberation than they got.” Research scientist Aidan McLaughlin wrote on social media that he “personally don’t think this deal was worth it.” Another employee told CNN that many OpenAI staffers “really respect” Anthropic for walking away.The reaction outside the company was even more dramatic. ChatGPT uninstalls spiked more than 295% on the day the deal was announced. Anthropic’s Claude surged to No. 1 among free apps on the U.S. Apple App Store and remained there as of this past weekend. Protesters gathered outside OpenAI’s San Francisco headquarters calling for a “QuitGPT” movement.And in the most extraordinary development, more than 30 OpenAI and Google DeepMind employees — including DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean — filed an amicus brief Monday supporting Anthropic’s lawsuit against the Defense Department. The brief argued that the Pentagon’s actions, “if allowed to proceed,” would “undoubtedly have consequences for the United States’ industrial and scientific competitiveness in the field of artificial intelligence and beyond.” The employees signed in their personal capacity, but the spectacle of OpenAI’s own researchers rallying to a competitor’s legal defense against the same government their company just partnered with has no real precedent in the industry.Altman, to his credit, has not pretended the situation is fine. In an internal memo later shared publicly, he admitted the deal “was definitely rushed” and “just looked opportunistic and sloppy.” He revised the contract to include explicit prohibitions against mass domestic surveillance and the use of OpenAI technology on commercially acquired data. He also publicly said that enforcing the supply-chain risk designation against Anthropic “would be very bad for our industry and our country.”Meanwhile, Anthropic warned in court filings that the Pentagon’s blacklisting could cost it up to $5 billion in lost business — roughly equivalent to its total revenue since commercializing its AI technology in 2023. The company is seeking a temporary court order to continue working with military contractors while the case proceeds.Why OpenAI’s $15 billion cash burn makes every user countStrip away the lawsuits and the politics, and OpenAI still has a math problem of its own.The company is expected to burn through approximately $15 billion in cash this year, up from $9 billion in 2025. It has roughly 910 million weekly users. About 95% of them pay nothing. Subscriptions alone cannot bridge that gap, which is why OpenAI is simultaneously building out an internal advertising infrastructure and leaning on partners like Criteo — and reportedly The Trade Desk — to bring advertisers into ChatGPT.The company is hiring aggressively for this effort: a monetization infrastructure engineer, an engineering manager, a product designer for the ads experience, a senior manager for ad revenue accounting, and a trust and safety specialist dedicated to the ads product, all based at headquarters in San Francisco. The compensation bands run as high as $385,000 — the kind of investment a company makes when it plans to own its ad stack, not rent it.But advertising inside ChatGPT introduces a trust problem that compounds the ones OpenAI is already managing. Users who abandoned the app over the Pentagon deal demonstrated that loyalty to ChatGPT is thinner than its market share suggests. Adding commercial messages to a product already under fire for its military ties and its handling of a mass shooter’s data will require OpenAI to navigate user sentiment with a precision it has not recently demonstrated.The infrastructure picture is equally unsettled. Oracle and OpenAI recently scrapped plans to expand a flagship AI data center in Abilene, Texas, after negotiations stalled over financing and OpenAI’s evolving needs. Meta and Nvidia moved quickly to explore the site — a reminder that in the current AI arms race, any gap in execution gets filled by a competitor within days.Why interactive learning is OpenAI’s strongest remaining argumentThis is where the education feature becomes more than a product announcement.Education has always been ChatGPT’s cleanest use case — the application where the technology most obviously augments human capability rather than surveilling it, weaponizing it, or monetizing the attention of people who came looking for help. It is the use case that resonates across demographics: students prepping for the SAT, parents revisiting algebra at the kitchen table, adults circling back to concepts they never quite understood. And it is the use case where ChatGPT still holds a clear lead. Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, and xAI’s Grok are all investing in education, but none has shipped anything comparable to real-time interactive formula visualization embedded in a conversational interface.OpenAI acknowledged that the “research landscape on how AI affects learning is still taking shape,” but pointed to its own early findings on study mode as showing “promising early signals.” The company said it will continue working with educators and researchers through its NextGenAI initiative and OpenAI Learning Lab, and plans to publish findings and expand into additional subjects.Somewhere tonight, a ninth-grader will open ChatGPT, drag a slider, and watch a hypotenuse lengthen across her screen. The Pythagorean theorem will make sense for the first time. She will not know about the Pentagon deal, or the Tumbler Ridge lawsuit, or the 295% spike in uninstalls, or the $15 billion cash burn underwriting the server that just rendered her triangle. She will only know that it worked. For OpenAI, that may have to be enough — for now.