• Defense Department civilians were asked to submit ideas to save money.
• The request marked the end of DOGE's five-bullet exercise every week.
• Employees were instructed to exclude classified info from their submissions.

Defense Department employees received an all-staff email asking them to submit ideas on how to "root out waste."

The request marked the end of the controversial five-bullet exercise, in which federal employees were asked by the Department of Government Efficiency to send five bullet points of their accomplishments every week.

The final email, seen by Business Insider, was sent last week by Jules Hurst III, the acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness.

Hurst thanked Pentagon staff for "submitting weekly achievements over the past couple of months," adding that the weekly emails had served as reminders for "the depth and breadth of the Department's mission."

The email said that to conclude DOGE's five-bullet exercise, which was introduced in February, "we need one last input from you."

It asked civilian staff to "please submit one idea that will improve the Department's efficiency or root out waste" by May 28.

"It can be big or small. It can be focused on a particular program or on larger Department operations," wrote Hurst. "I invite you to be creative."

Employees were instructed to "exclude classified or sensitive information" from their submissions.

The email stressed that employees "without email access due to leave, shift work, temporary duty, or other valid reasons must comply with 12 hours of regaining access" and asked the supervisors of warehouse and shipyard employees without regular office or email access to liaise "directly with their employees."

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has said that he hopes that DOGE, overseen by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, can bring "actual businesslike efficiency to government."

Mara Karlin, who previously served as the assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans, and capabilities, wrote in a commentary for Foreign Affairs last month that running the Pentagon like a business could backfire.

She said the DoD has to consider risk "far more soberly and carefully than in the corporate world," because the risk factor in defense is "uniquely high."

The Trump administration has prioritized efforts to increase efficiency at the Defense Department, but it also abruptly fired the department's top inspector general, who was charged with finding waste, fraud and abuse.

The administration plans to shift as much as $50 billion from existing programs to new priorities.

Hegseth announced in April that the DoD would be scrapping billions of dollars worth of IT and consulting contracts, affecting companies such as Accenture and Deloitte.

Last week, Business Insider reported that the Pentagon's IT agency was facing a 10% cut to its civilian workforce.

Karlin said, "The Pentagon needs change, but effective reform will require appreciating the uniqueness of the organization. So far, the signs are not encouraging."

• Tesla sales fell by up to 81% in some key European EV markets in April, signaling a major downturn.
• Growing competition from rivals like China's BYD have affected Tesla sales.
• Demand may have also been hurt by a backlash over Elon Musk's politics.

Tesla has seen a sharp decline in sales in key European markets, with electric vehicle registrations dropping by up to 81% in six major markets in April, compared to the same month last year.

Car registration figures for France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Portugal, and Denmark, revealed double-digit declines for Tesla sales, Reuters reported.

Many of these are high-income countries with robust charging infrastructure — typically fertile ground for Tesla.

Sales fell by 59% year-on-year in France, 81% in Sweden, 74% in the Netherlands, 50% in Switzerland, 33% in Portugal, and 67% in Denmark.

The main exceptions were Norway and Italy, which respectively saw a 12% and 29% increase in Tesla sales compared to April 2024, registration data from the Norwegian Road Federation and Italian Transport Ministry showed.

However, Italian sales were still down an overall 4% in the first four months of 2025, per the Transport Ministry.

Why the two countries didn't follow a similar pattern of decline was unclear, and the overall trend suggests a significant drop-off in crucial markets.

This could partly be attributed to political tensions tied to Elon Musk's divisive role in the Trump administration and advocacy for right-wing European parties.

The "Tesla Takedown" movement arose earlier this year after Musk voiced support for parties including Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany.

So far this year, two Tesla sites, including the vehicles there, were defaced with orange paint in the Swedish cities of Stockholm and Malmö, as well as the Tesla branch in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Demonstrations against Musk and Tesla were held across cities in the Netherlands, and protestors also gathered outside Tesla showrooms in Portugal and Denmark. A further 12 Teslas were set on fire in Toulouse, France.

Alongside resistance to Musk and his politics, the Tesla drop-off in Europe could linked to growing competition in the EV market, notably from Chinese firms.

Tesla's aging model lineup has struggled to match newer EVs from rivals like China's BYD, whose models feature cutting-edge charging speeds and lower prices.

Professor Peter Wells, director of Cardiff University's Centre for Automotive Industry Research, told the BBC News in March: "We've not seen the level of innovation in terms of the product range that perhaps Elon Musk should have been looking for. I think that is a big part of their problem."

In a 2011 interview with Bloomberg, Musk rejected the possibility of BYD becoming a viable competitor.

But last year, BYD reported $107 billion in revenue, compared to Tesla's $98 billion. It also reported its first-quarter earnings increased 100% compared to the same period last year.

BYD has rolled out 1,000 kW chargers that are four times more powerful than Tesla's current chargers. These chargers, it says, can add 200 miles of range in just 15 minutes of charging.

The Tesla rival has also aggressively expanded outside China in recent years.

Tesla's dominance in Europe is waning — and reversing the trend may be Musk's toughest challenge yet.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Reid Hoffman said he uses OpenAI's Deep Research every day to have a "lens" on AI's future.
• He said using "chain-of-thought" models offered an insight into how these products could be "workers in the future."
• He added that "a bunch of folks" were in the race to develop the best agentic AI.

Reid Hoffman has said he uses a specific tool daily to gain insight into how AI products could be "workers in the future."

The LinkedIn cofounder and investor said he did "at least" one prompt daily with OpenAI's Deep Research tool, an agentic tool for automating complex multi-step internet research. He also said there was many companies building "strong" offerings in the race to make AI agents.

Hoffman, who stood down as an OpenAI director in 2023, citing potential conflicts of interest with his other AI investments, was asked about the startup during an interview on Bloomberg Television on Friday.

He said he was using Deep Research once a day, and that it "gives you the lens to the amplification we're going to get with these products as workers in the future."

The rise of agentic AI, which can independently act on a person's behalf and make decisions without human intervention, has fuelled speculation about how and when AI might replace human workers.

A group of Carnegie Mellon researchers ran a virtual simulation designed to test how AI agents fare in real-world professional scenarios. They found that the top-performing model finished less than one-quarter of all tasks.

"While agents may be used to accelerate some portion of the tasks that human workers are doing, they are likely not a replacement for all tasks at the moment," Graham Neubig, a computer science professor at CMU and one of the researchers, previously told BI.

Hoffman, who cofounded Manas AI, said he saw no clear leader in the race to develop agentic AI, saying there was "a bunch of folks who are doing very strong things," and "not just OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, Google."

Bloomberg interviewer Ed Ludlow told Hoffman he was increasingly talking to AI in voice mode, which he called "a psychological thing that, as a consumer, you kind of have to get over."

• Trump and Zelenskyy met at the Vatican before Pope Francis' funeral.
• This was their first meeting since a heated exchange at the White House in February.
• "Very symbolic meeting that has potential to become historic," Zelenskyy later wrote on X.

Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met on Saturday — their first encounter since a heated exchange at the White House two months ago.

The two leaders held a discussion inside St. Peter's Basilica, ahead of the Pope's funeral, with French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer present during the initial moments.

Zelenskyy and Trump had not met since their heated exchange in the Oval Office on February 28, in which Trump said of Ukraine's war against Russia, "You're either going to make a deal or we're out."

Four days later, Trump announced a pause in US military aid, and the EU declared "an era of rearmament," as it unveiled a defense funding boost.

The Oval Office meeting was in the glare of the world's press, but photos of the Rome meeting show Trump and Zelenskyy seated close together, without aides or interpreters.

Andrii Yermak, a senior aide to Zelenskyy, shared a photo of the leaders in St. Peter's Basilica on Telegram. "Constructive," he wrote.

Steven Cheung, White House communications director, called it a "very productive discussion."

Posting X, Zelenskyy said the encounter had been a "good meeting."

"We discussed a lot one on one. Hoping for results on everything we covered. Protecting lives of our people. Full and unconditional ceasefire. Reliable and lasting peace that will prevent another war from breaking out. Very symbolic meeting that has potential to become historic, if we achieve joint results," he said.

The Rome meeting comes after Steve Witkoff, Trump's designated peace envoy, travelled to Moscow for discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Kremlin advisor Yuri Ushakov said the talks centered on "the possibility of resuming direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine."

Following Witkoff's return, Trump said on Truth Social that "most of the major points are agreed to" and that a cease-fire deal between Kyiv and Moscow was "very close."

As he prepared to leave for Rome on Friday, Trump told reporters that the talks were "very fragile." He has also warned that the US might halt its mediation efforts if a deal isn't reached soon.

After the meeting on Saturday, Zelenskyy was greeted with applause when he walked out of St Peter's Basilica after paying his respects in front of the pontiff's coffin.

Trump later wrote a long post on Truth Social, in which he called the war in Ukraine "Sleepy Joe Biden's War, not mine. It was a loser from day one."

The long post ended, "There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days. It makes me think that maybe he doesn't want to stop the war, he's just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through "Banking" or "Secondary Sanctions?" Too many people are dying!!!"