Marvel’s first family stumbled in theaters in its second weekend, but still held on to the top spot at the box office.
“The Fantastic Four: First Steps” earned $40 million from 4,125 North American theaters, a 66% drop from a healthy $117.6 million debut. The film was accompanied by comedies “The Bad Guys 2” and “The Naked Gun” in the top three box office rankings.
The superhero movie dipped significantly more than Marvel’s previous film, “Thunderbolts,” which took a 55% dive in its second weekend.
“First Steps” is the last major blockbuster of the summer. It added nearly $40 million internationally in its second weekend, bringing the film’s global total to $369 million. The movie’s box office drop off was surprising given its strong reviews, said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for the data firm Comscore.
Though the movie’s debut weekend may have given box office results a strong push toward the $4 billion summer benchmark, August is off to a slow start, he said.
“It’s a tough lift, but we might be able to get there. It really means that all the films are gonna have to stand on their own,” Dergarabedian said. “It’s gonna be about getting great reviews, having that staying power, that longevity in the marketplace.”
Newcomer comedy “The Bad Guys 2” earned second place at the box office this weekend, with $22 million from 3,852 North American theaters. That was on par with projections and also in line with the first movie in the series, which brought in $23 million in 2022. Paramount’s slapstick comedy, “The Naked Gun,” also in its debut weekend, snagged the third box office spot, earning $17 million from 3,344 locations.
Jim Orr, president of domestic distribution for Universal Pictures, said the solid debut for “The Bad Guys 2,” coupled with strong audience reaction scores, “should point to a very long, very successful run through not only the rest of the summer, but really, I think into the fall.”
James Gunn’s “Superman,” which opened four weekends ago and already crossed $550 million globally, earned $13.8 million domestically this weekend, taking the fourth spot. “Jurassic World Rebirth” followed with $8.7 million.
The horror movie “Together” had a strong debut weekend, coming in at sixth place and earning $6.8 million domestically, proof that August is a month for edgier and off-beat films, Dergarabedian said.
“That’s what this month is about. It’s not just about box office,” Dergarabedian said. “It’s also about providing really interesting, rewarding movie-going experiences for audiences.”
Dergarabedian said he expects highly-anticipated movies hitting theaters in the next few weeks — including “Freakier Friday,” and Zach Cregger’s horror movie “Weapons” — to give August a needed boost.
The box office is currently up 9.5% from last year.
Top 10 movies by domestic box office
With final domestic figures being released Monday, this list factors in the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore:
1. “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” $40 million.
2. “The Bad Guys 2,” $22.2 million.
3. “The Naked Gun,” $17 million.
4. “Superman,” $13.8 million.
5. “Jurassic World Rebirth,” $8.7 million.
6. “Together,” $6.8 million.
7. “F1: The Movie,” $4.1 million.
8. “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” $2.7 million.
Saying “enough is enough,” thousands of workers at three Boeing manufacturing plants went on strike overnight less than a year after the company boosted wages to end a separate, 53-day strike by 33,000 aircraft workers.
On Monday, about 3,200 workers at Boeing facilities in St. Louis; St. Charles, Missouri; and Mascoutah, Illinois, voted to reject a modified four-year labor agreement with Boeing, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union said Sunday.
In a post on X, the union said: “3,200 highly-skilled IAM Union members at Boeing went on strike at midnight because enough is enough.”
“IAM District 837 members build the aircraft and defense systems that keep our country safe,” said Sam Cicinelli, Midwest territory general vice president for the union, in a statement. “They deserve nothing less than a contract that keeps their families secure and recognizes their unmatched expertise.”
The union members rejected the latest proposal after a weeklong cooling-off period.
Boeing warned over the weekend that it anticipated the strike after workers rejected its most recent offer that included a 20% wage hike over four years.
“We’re disappointed our employees rejected an offer that featured 40% average wage growth and resolved their primary issue on alternative work schedules,” said Dan Gillian, Boeing Air Dominance vice president and general manager, and senior St. Louis site executive. “We are prepared for a strike and have fully implemented our contingency plan to ensure our non-striking workforce can continue supporting our customers.”
Last week, Boeing reported that its second-quarter revenue had improved and losses had narrowed. The company lost $611 million in the second quarter, compared to a loss of $1.44 billion during the same period last year.
Shares of Boeing Co. slipped less than 1% before the opening bell Monday.
Tesla is awarding CEO Elon Musk 96 million shares of restricted stock valued at approximately $29 billion, just six months after a judge ordered the company to revoke his massive pay package.
The electric vehicle maker said in a regulatory filing on Monday that Musk must first pay Tesla $23.34 per share of restricted stock that vests, which is equal to the exercise price per share of the 2018 pay package that was awarded to the company’s CEO.
In December Delaware Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick reaffirmed her earlier ruling that Tesla must revoke Musk’s multibillion-dollar pay package. She found that Musk engineered the landmark pay package in sham negotiations with directors who were not independent.
At the time McCormick also rejected an equally unprecedented and massive fee request by plaintiff attorneys, who argued that they were entitled to legal fees in the form of Tesla stock valued at more than $5 billion. The judge said the attorneys were entitled to a fee award of $345 million.
The rulings came in a lawsuit filed by a Tesla stockholder who challenged Musk’s 2018 compensation package.
That pay package carried a potential maximum value of about $56 billion, but that sum has fluctuated over the years based on Tesla’s stock price.
Musk appealed the order in March. A month later Tesla said in a regulatory filing that it was creating a special committee to look at Musk’s compensation as CEO.
Tesla shares have plunged 25% this year, largely due to blowback over Musk’s affiliation with President Donald Trump. But Tesla also faces intensifying competition from both the big Detroit automakers, and from China.
In its most recent quarter, Tesla reported that quarterly profits plunged from $1.39 billion to $409 million. Revenue also fell and the company fell short of even the lowered expectations on Wall Street.
Under pressure from shareholders last month, Tesla scheduled an annual shareholders meeting for November to comply with Texas state law.
A group of more than 20 Tesla shareholders, which have watched Tesla shares plummet, said in a letter to the company that it needed to at least provide public notice of the annual meeting.
Investors have grown increasingly worried about the trajection of the company after Musk had spent so much time in Washington this year, becoming one of the most prominent officials in the Trump administration in its bid to slash the size of the U.S. government.
Russia’s space chief has visited the United States to discuss plans for continued cooperation between Moscow and Washington on the International Space Station and lunar research with NASA’s acting chief, the first such face-to-face meeting in more than seven years.
Dmitry Bakanov, the director of the state space corporation Roscosmos, met Thursday with NASA’s new acting administrator, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, on a visit to attend the planned launch of a U.S.-Japanese-Russian crew to the space station. The launch was delayed by weather until Friday, when it blasted off successfully.
Roscosmos said Bakanov and Duffy discussed “further work on the International Space Station, cooperation on lunar programs, joint exploration of deep space and continued cooperation on other space projects.”
Once bitter rivals in the space race during the Cold War, Roscosmos and NASA cooperated on the space station and other projects. That relationship was beset with tensions after Moscow sent troops into Ukraine in 2022, but Washington and Moscow have continued to work together, with U.S. and Russian crews continuing to fly to the orbiting outpost on each country’s spacecraft.
Plans for broader cooperation, including possible Russian involvement in NASA’s Artemis program of lunar research, have fallen apart.
As Russia has become increasingly reliant on China for its energy exports and imports of key technology amid Western sanctions, Roscosmos has started cooperation with China on its prospective lunar mission.
Speaking to Russian reporters after the talks with Duffy, Bakanov said that they agreed to keep working on keeping the space station in operation to the end of the decade.
“Our experts will now start working on those issues in details,” Bakanov said, praising Duffy for giving a green light for those contacts “despite geopolitical tensions.”
The Russian space chief added that he and Duffy will report the results of the meeting to Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump to secure their blessing for potential space cooperation.
“In view of the difficult geopolitical situation, we will need to receive the necessary clearance from the leaders of our countries,” Bakanov said.
He added he invited Duffy to visit Moscow and the Russia-leased Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan for the launch of another Russia-U.S. crew to the space station scheduled for November.
“I will put my efforts into keeping the channel of cooperation between Russia and the U.S. open, and I expect NASA to do the same,” Bakanov said.
The Senate has confirmed former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro as the top federal prosecutor for the nation’s capital, filling the post after President Donald Trump withdrew his controversial first pick, conservative activist Ed Martin Jr.
Pirro, a former county prosecutor and elected judge, was confirmed 50-45. Before becoming the acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia in May, she co-hosted the Fox News show “The Five” on weekday evenings, where she frequently interviewed Trump.
Trump yanked Martin’s nomination after a key Republican senator said he could not support him due to Martin’s outspoken support for rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Martin now serves as the Justice Department’s pardon attorney.
In 2021, voting technology company Smartmatic USA sued Fox News, Pirro and others for spreading false claims that the company helped “steal” the 2020 presidential election from Trump. The company’s libel suit, filed in a New York state court, sought $2.7 billion from the defendants.
Last month, Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee voted unanimously to send Pirro’s nomination to the Senate floor after Democrats walked out to protest Emil Bove’s nomination to become a federal appeals court judge.
Pirro, a 1975 graduate of Albany Law School, has significantly more courtroom experience than Martin, who had never served as a prosecutor or tried a case before taking office in January. She was elected as a judge in New York’s Westchester County Court in 1990 before serving three terms as the county’s elected district attorney.
In the final minutes of his first term as president, Trump issued a pardon to Pirro’s ex-husband, Albert Pirro, who was convicted in 2000 on conspiracy and tax evasion charges.
As I wrote this newsletter in a Google Doc, I found myself toggling between an overwhelming mix of programs with different functions: Slack, Asana, my company’s HR management software, various spreadsheets, and my Microsoft OneDrive—not to mention the AI applications ChatGPT and Perplexity. I started to wonder: Am I the only one feeling tech fatigue?
Apparently not. In a new study, software company Quickbase found that while 80% of companies are investing more in new tech to improve productivity, more than half of the 2,000 workers surveyed across 10 industries are finding it harder than ever to be productive. The reason? Too many new tools with little connection or compatibility between them—and, it seems, a lack of clarity from up top.
This is not the revolution in worker productivity that AI companies have been promising. Indeed, nearly 60% of workers surveyed said they spend 11 hours or more each week chasing down information that is located in a handful of disconnected technology solutions. That’s more than a quarter of a standard work week! And 90% reported just feeling plain overwhelmed by the number of tech programs they needed to get work done on a typical day. I certainly feel validated.
The study calls this phenomenon “gray work,” which it defines as the work done in ad-hoc situations when technology isn’t connected properly. It’s “the hidden cost of inefficiency—the manual tasks employees do to compensate for disconnected systems and rigid tools,” the report explains. Those in the financial services/insurance and professional services industries felt it the most, reporting the largest increases in this kind of work this year.
It may be costing business leaders more than they realize. In addition to wasting time, half of the workers surveyed said they’d experienced project delays, miscommunication, duplicate work, or budget overruns in the past year. Some 53% said they spend just half their week on meaningful work that drives results for key projects.
So how can companies solve this? After diagnosing where the friction is occurring, business leaders should do a full tech stack audit, cutting redundant tech and prioritizing programs that offer interoperability, the report advises. Then, decide who’s in charge of overseeing and simplifying tech systems and create a plan. Only deploy AI in areas where it offers clear advantages—and make sure employees understand how they can (and how they should not) use it.
Kristin Stoller Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media [email protected]
The Washington Commanders’ hopes of returning to the site of their former home at RFK Stadium cleared a significant hurdle Friday when the District of Columbia Council approved the legislation.
The bill advanced by a 9-3 vote, but it still must be approved a second time by the council before being sent to Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser.
Bowser negotiated an initial plan with Commanders owner Josh Harris in April, with the team contributing $2.7 billion and the city investing roughly $1.1 billion for the stadium, housing, green space and a sportsplex on land bordering the Anacostia River.
“We are one step closer to securing a sure path to transforming 180 acres of land, which has been our promise to D.C. residents all along,” Bowser said Friday.
The Commanders currently play at Northwest Stadium in Landover, Maryland, but aim to open a new venue in 2030.
“Today’s approval by the council is transformational for D.C. and brings the Commanders back to our spiritual home,” Harris said in a statement. “Like many fans, RFK was the site of memories that fueled my love for this team and this city. Now we’re closer than ever to reigniting that energy for a new generation.”
The bill still faces a process called second reading and must be approved again in a vote that is expected in September. And its advancement Friday was not without some reservations. Councilmember Robert White Jr., who opposed the bill, had three amendments rejected. But one of them, proposing stronger penalties if the team fails to deliver on development commitments, drew a sympathetic response from the panel.
“I want to see us do better than where we are, between now and second reading,” said Councilmember Charles Allen, who supported the bill at this stage. “I think you’re going to hear enough voices on this dais that want to see us continue to work on this between first and second reading, to continue to make this better. … The promises made have to be delivered, and we need to safeguard (so) that happens.”
Councilmembers Zachary Parker and Janeese Lewis George supported the measure after announcing earlier in the day that a contract agreement between the Commanders and union partners had been signed.
The ownership group led by Harris has been considering locations in Washington, Maryland and Virginia since buying the team from Dan Snyder in 2022. Congress passed a bill transferring the RFK Stadium land to the city that was signed by then-President Joe Biden in early January.
That paved the way for possibly replacing the old stadium with a mixed-use development, including the new playing field for the Commanders.
However, President Donald Trump last month threatened to block federal support for the stadium project unless the team reverted to its former name, Redskins. The debate over the team’s nickname did not come up during Friday’s council meeting, although Councilmember Anita Bonds did stress the need to pass this legislation as a way of avoiding possible federal intervention.
“The land was transferred to us via a bill that passed Congress and signed by President Joe Biden two weeks before he left office. I don’t need to remind everyone that times are very different now,” Bonds said. “There is new leadership in our federal government, a new party controlling Congress, and perhaps others across the country and region that may be waiting for us to not approve this deal, so that they can take over. And trust me — if that happens, D.C. gets nothing.”
Washington Commanders controlling owner Josh Harris, center, is passed a helmet to sign next to District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser, right, after announcing a new home for the NFL football team on the site of the old RFK Stadium, Monday, April 28, 2025, at the National Press Club in Washington.
Former Nike CEO John Donahoe has been hired as athletic director at Stanford.
Donahoe will become the school’s eighth athletic director and replace Bernard Muir, who stepped down this year. He will officially begin in the role Sept. 8.
“Stanford occupies a unique place in the national athletics landscape,” school president Jon Levin said in a statement. “We needed a distinctive leader — someone with the vision, judgment, and strategic acumen for a new era of college athletics, and with a deep appreciation for Stanford’s model of scholar-athlete excellence. John embodies these characteristics.”
ESPN first reported the move.
Donahoe graduated from Stanford Business School and was CEO at Nike from 2020-24. Donahoe also served as the CEO of ServiceNow, a global software company, and as CEO of eBay. He served as chair of the board at PayPal from 2015-25 and he worked for Bain & Company for nearly 20 years, including as the firm’s worldwide CEO.
“Stanford has enormous strengths and enormous potential in a changing environment, including being the model for achieving both academic and athletic excellence at the highest levels,” he said. “I can’t wait to work in partnership with the Stanford team to build momentum for Stanford Athletics and ensure the best possible experiences for our student-athletes.”
Donahoe takes over one of the country’s most successful athletic programs with Stanford having won at least one NCAA title in 49 straight years starting in 1976-77 and a record 137 NCAA team titles overall.
But the Cardinal struggled in the high-profile sports of football and men’s basketball under Muir’s tenure, leading to the decision to hire former Stanford and NFL star Andrew Luck to oversee the football program as its general manager.
The Cardinal are looking to rebound in football after going to three Rose Bowls under former coach David Shaw in Muir’s first four years as AD.
Shaw resigned in 2022 following a second straight 3-9 season and Muir’s new hire, Troy Taylor, posted back-to-back 3-9 seasons before being fired in March following a report that he had been investigated twice for allegedly mistreating staffers.
Luck hired former NFL coach Frank Reich as interim coach.
The men’s basketball program hasn’t made the NCAA Tournament since Muir’s second season in 2013-14 under former coach Johnny Dawkins.
Dawkins was fired in 2016 and replaced by Jerod Haase, who failed to make the tournament once in eight years.
Muir hired Kyle Smith last March to take over and the Cardinal went 21-14 for their most wins in 10 years.
Muir also hired Kate Paye as women’s basketball coach last year after Hall of Famer Tara VanDerveer retired. The Cardinal went 16-15 this past season and in missed the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1987.
Muir also oversaw the Cardinal’s transition to the ACC this past year after the school’s long-term home, the Pac-12, broke apart.
Online creators from dozens of countries, led by MrBeast and popular science YouTuber Mark Rober, are launching a $40 million fundraiser to build water quality projects around the world.
The monthlong crowdfunding campaign, touted as the biggest YouTube collaboration and called #TeamWater, promises to rally their combined 2 billion subscribers around combating unsafe water sources. Funds will primarily benefit WaterAid, an international nonprofit that builds community-tailored infrastructure ranging from solar-powered wells to rainwater harvesting systems.
More than 2 billion people lacked access to safely managed drinking water as of 2022, according to the United Nations. Organizers want to put a dent in that figure by providing sustainable access for 2 million people — and instilling new generations with a lifelong commitment to advocacy.
Joining #TeamWater are smaller creators and some of the biggest names online such as streaming giant Kai Cenat, trendy YouTubers the Stokes Twins and sports entertainers Dude Perfect. Whether they are filming serious explainers or silly water-themed challenges, creators are encouraged to produce content that is authentic to their brand.
Water access was identified as a solvable issue that could also unite their mass global following. But MrBeast CEO Jeff Housenbold acknowledged they are better awareness builders than infield executors So, they sought a partner with global reach, existing community partnerships and long-term change-making abilities.
That led them to WaterAid. The organization first started talking with MrBeast’s team two years ago, according to WaterAid America CEO Kelly Parsons.
She said WaterAid typically engages communities for up to a year designing the proper solution. That work sometimes involves training local water technicians.
“It all begins and ends in the communities we work with and through them to ensure design that lasts,” Parsons said. “It’s about people more than about plumbing.”
While WaterAid would did not provide a list of all the places where funds would go, countries include Colombia, Bangladesh, Ecuador, Malawi and Kenya. Charity partners GivePower and the Alok Foundation are also helping implementation in rural Kenya and Brazil, respectively.
U.S.-based projects include an atmospheric water generator for an assisted living facility in Jackson, Mississippi, where the fragile water system nearly collapsed three years ago. The nonprofit DigDeep is helping fix crumbling infrastructure in the small town of Rhodell, West Virginia.
Alex and Alan Stokes, whose 129 million subscribers make them one of YouTube’s biggest channels, filmed in a Nepalese village where the campaign is building a 15,000-liter tank. The trip recalled their own upbringing in a Chinese town where their grandfather walked miles to fill 5-gallon water jugs.
“Being there in person was definitely one of those experiences that brought it all back for us,” Alex said. “(We) saw these kids there and it just reminded us a lot of our childhood as well.”
The multi-platform drive follows the 2019 #TeamTrees and 2021 #TeamSeas campaigns, which reportedly drew more than $50 million altogether. That money helped plant millions of trees and remove millions of pounds of waste from bodies of water.
Those humanitarian efforts, however, drew criticism that they promoted oversimplified solutions to complicated issues and applied Band-Aids instead of addressing the main drivers of forest loss or ocean pollution.
“Ideally, you would not use philanthropy simply to take away the symptoms of whatever is the problem,” said Patricia Illingworth, a Northeastern University philosophy professor who writes about ethics in philanthropy. “But, rather, you would want to address the root cause.”
Matt Fitzgerald, a digital campaign strategist who has organized the efforts, said the campaigns were never intended to be the “end all be all.” He hopes they serve as an entry point for deeper commitments.
While the previous two campaigns were about “a fist-bump, Mother Earth-style of environmentalism,” he said, this one seeks to center people while still “keeping the planet top of mind.”
“No matter how big a mass internet mobilization moment might be, real progress on these issues demands people continuing to pay attention and continuing to stay involved,” Fitzgerald said. “To me, the way you do that, is you reach people’s hearts before you try to convince them with their minds.”
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Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
Points fatigue is real. What started as a nice-to-have bonus for traveling has ballooned into a sprawl of rewards programs and arcane conversions that requires an advanced degree in statistics to manage.
Brian Kelly made a whole career off the cottage industry, parlaying a side hustle of maximizing credit card and travel rewards into a blog, The Points Guy, that became a verifiable franchise. Now he’s arguing that the points system has jumped the shark. Alongside Lerer Hippeau and Slow Ventures, he’s backing the New York-based startup Journey in a $7.7 million seed round to set it back on the right track.
Maybe this is too much of a first-world problem to care about, but I’m sure plenty of this newsletter’s readers were distraught when Chase announced an abstruse modification of their Sapphire Reserve credit card, or when Marriott acquired Starwood. Who doesn’t love fake internet money that can occasionally give you an airline upgrade or a free hotel night?
John Sutton, the cofounder and CEO of Journey, thinks the system needs a revamp. A longtime tech entrepreneur, Sutton met Kelly while serving as the chief digital officer at Red Ventures, a media-focused investment firm that owns brands like Bankrate, Lonely Planet, and eventually, The Points Guy.
When Sutton left his role in 2021, he took a couple of years off to play professional volleyball before figuring out his next venture. After exploring the idea of investing in short-term rentals like Airbnb properties, he had the idea of building out a loyalty program for travelers. After consulting with Kelly, he realized there was a broader problem—not only of short-term rentals and many independent hotels lacking the infrastructure to create rewards systems, but that points in general were increasingly broken. “They’ve been losing the magic of loyalty,” Kelly told me. “There’s a big opportunity to create a program that people are excited about.”
Journey’s website looks like a cross between a travel platform like Booking.com (an online travel agency, in industry parlance) and an Instagram feed, with lush snippets of desert hideouts and jungle treehouses. On the backend, Journey’s small team curates properties, now totaling more than 1,500 from around the world, that want to participate in their loyalty program—a combination of independent hotels and rental properties. Sutton says they’re not looking for certain price points (with properties ranging from several hundred to many thousand dollars per night) or stars, but whether they’ve “created something special that has a story to tell” (you can check out their portal, which just launched, to judge for yourself).
The upshot for visitors, Sutton and Kelly argue, is that the system is straightforward: You earn five points per dollar spent if you book directly through their platform, with each point worth about two cents, equating to a 10% rebate, which can be instantly redeemed during stays. “Our program is engineered so that you’re not being taken advantage of,” Kelly said.
Journey is the type of consumer-forward, design-first tech product that you don’t see much anymore—a simple concept executed with flair. But this being 2025, there is AI involved, of course. The company has built tools that track visitor preferences and behavior, like whether they’d prefer to be greeted with red wine or mineral water, to help property managers customize the experience. And Journey is also building out a platform for influencers like Kelly that matches them with properties. Eventually, the goal is to build out AI agents that will help tourists. Sutton says it will make platforms like Expedia, where you find a hotel by searching for the top 10 hotels in Paris, look antiquated.
“Travelers will be on a trust journey with us,” he told me.
The globe is a potent symbol, and one that can mean very different things in dif- ferent eras. Fortune has often used the motif—fittingly, perhaps, for the magazine founded in 1929 by Henry Luce, a globalist before that term came into vogue. His famous 1941 essay “The American Century” laid out an idealistic vision of a global era dominated by a nation only recently freed from colonialism—flawed yet aspirational in its democracy, and rich with the promise of a “more abundant life,” both materially and culturally. Luce’s worldview has been reflected on dozens of our covers, as rep- resented in this selection, curated by Fortune creative director Josue Evilla. From the 1933 line drawing of the goddess Fortuna lovingly cradling the globe to the Bauhaus starkness of Walter Allner’s 1957 depiction of global trade to the Rubik’s Cube–like metal globe on the 2015 cover announcing our first Change the World list, Luce’s humane internationalism lives on.
January 1933. Cover by T.M. Cleland.October 1944. Cover by Peter Piening.August 1965. Cover by Eugene Olson.February 1967. Cover by Walter Allner.August 1975. Cover by Robert Crandall.Europe-March 2007. Cover by Jon Valk.September 2015. Photography by The Voorhees, typography by Sinelab.
The dollar, which has lost value all year against foreign currencies, had been making a comeback in recent weeks. But Friday’s jobs number from the BLS—and the downward revisions to previous numbers that accompanied it—“knocked the stuffing out of the dollar’s rally,” ING says.
The U.S. dollar fell off a cliff on Friday after the Bureau of Labor Statistics dramatically revised downward its estimates of how many jobs the American economy was creating. The economy, it turned out, was far weaker than everyone had assumed.
The dollar has lost value all year. It is currently down nearly 9% YTD against the DXY, an index of foreign currencies, as investors flee President Donald Trump’s tariff barriers. In June, the USD hit a low of more than 10%, but in recent weeks, the dollar has been gaining ground.
Until Friday.
The dollar fell from 100.22 on the DXY on Friday to 98.82 this morning—a relatively large move for a currency the size of the dollar.
Credit: Google Finance
“The dollar index suffered its biggest one-day drop since May 23 as markets swiftly reassessed the outlook for rates and growth,” George Vessey of Convera told clients in a note.
In notes to clients from ING, analyst Chris Turner called it: “The dollar’s handbrake turn.”
“Friday’s soft jobs report knocked the stuffing out of the dollar’s rally. Investors now attach an 80% probability to a 25bp rate cut from the Federal Reserve in September,” he wrote. “Uncertainty about the quality of U.S. data is not a good look for U.S. asset markets and could add some more risk premium both into the dollar and Treasuries.”
Goldman Sachs called it “USD: Whiplash week.” The bank also published a subdued note from chief economist Jan Hatzius that forecast U.S. GDP growth would be only 1% in the second half of the year.
His colleague Kamakshya Trivedi argued that although the “media narrative” suggested that Trump had somehow won deals that were “negative” for the U.S.’s trading partners, most foreign exports—which go to other countries—won’t be affected.
“We expect that the U.S. will bear most of the cost of the tariffs, which will weigh on its terms of trade. This is partly because of the breadth of the tariff increases, which will make it difficult for U.S. firms and consumers to find suitable substitutes,” he wrote.
That’s why the dollar is so much weaker on foreign exchanges this morning.
Good morning. We’re in the second half of 2025, and CFO turnover continues.
This time, it’s at embattled UnitedHealth Group—ranked No. 3 on the Fortune 500 and the largest U.S. health care company by revenue in 2024. John F. Rex, who joined the company in 2012 and has served as CFO since 2016, is being replaced—not by an internal candidate, but by an external hire. Rex will become a strategic advisor to the CEO, Stephen J. Hemsley.
Wayne S. DeVeydt, most recently a managing director and operating partner at Bain Capital, will assume the CFO role effective Sept. 2. DeVeydt brings experience in operational improvement and growth acceleration—a skill set that will be valuable as UnitedHealth’s share price is down more than 50% over the past year. The leadership change comes on the heels of a troubling Q2 2025, in which UnitedHealth’s financial results fell far short of Wall Street expectations, further rattling investors.
The company shocked markets on July 29 by reporting unexpectedly weak quarterly results, according to Fortune’s Geoff Colvin.
As Colvin writes: “The crisis first manifested in April. UnitedHealth Group was emerging from the trauma of executive Brian Thompson’s high-profile murder in December when the company released first-quarter profits far below Wall Street’s expectations. The stock plunged, slashing over $100 billion from market value within hours. A month later, CEO Andrew Witty abruptly resigned for unspecified personal reasons, and former CEO Stephen Hemsley returned to the job. The stock plummeted again.” (You can read the complete report here.)
Managing risk and costs
Now, DeVeydt—also former chairman and CEO of Surgery Partners and former CFO at Anthem (now Elevance)—will need to play a significant role in steering UnitedHealth back on course. The company has four main segments: UnitedHealthcare (coverage), Optum Health (care delivery), Optum Insight (software and analytics), and Optum Rx (pharmacy benefits).
Industry analysts say the road ahead won’t be easy. I asked Julie Utterback, senior equity analyst for health care at Morningstar, for her assessment. “UnitedHealth—and, frankly, the entire managed care organization (MCO) industry—needs to figure out how to balance the current mismatch between rates and medical utilization in their risk-bearing operations,” she told me.
This problem spans the U.S. health care system: higher-than-anticipated medical costs with insufficient premium increases began in Medicare Advantage in late 2023, spread to Medicaid in mid-2024, and now pressure individual exchanges and at-risk employer plans, Utterback said.
In other words, rising health costs are outpacing premiums, which is hurting profits for insurers like UnitedHealth.
On average, the medical cost ratio (the percentage of revenue spent on patient care) among the six MCOs tracked by Morningstar is expected to be more than 450 basis points higher in 2025 than in the prior decade.
In addition, UnitedHealth also faces pressures within its Optum Health unit, where, in some arrangements, the firm not only delivers caregiving services but also assumes the risk of managing a patient’s overall health, she said.
For MCOs to return to target margins, they need to secure better compensation for the risk they assume across the U.S. health care system, she added.
Regarding DeVeydt’s priorities as CFO, Utterback said finance organizations will continue to emphasize cost controls. Further adoption of AI and other digital tools to improve back-office efficiency will remain a focus, although UnitedHealth has already prioritized such initiatives for several years, she noted.
DeVeydt steps into the CFO role next month with a formidable to-do list, and the future of UnitedHealth’s financial recovery on the line.
Italy’s competition watchdog said Monday it has fined the company responsible for Shein’s websites in Europe one million euros ($1.15 million) for false and confusing claims about the e-commerce giant’s efforts to be environmentally “green”.
The AGCM watchdog accuses the China-founded fast-fashion colossal of having “adopted a misleading communication strategy regarding the characteristics and environmental impact of its clothing products”.
The fine was imposed on Infinite Styles Services Co. Ltd, the company responsible for managing Shein’s product trading websites in Europe, the watchdog said in a statement.
The AGCM accused it of “misleading and/or deceptive environmental messages and claims… in the promotion and sale of Shein-branded clothing products”.
These were “in some instances, vague, generic, and/or overly emphatic, and in others, misleading or omissive”.
In particular, claims about the recyclability of products “were found to be either false or at least confusing”, it said.
Consumers could easily be led to believe Shein products were made exclusively from sustainable materials and fully recyclable, “a statement which, given the fibres used and current recycling systems, does not reflect reality”.
The AGCM also took issue with the retailer’s claims it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2030 and reach zero emissions by 2050.
These “vague” pledges by a company which has seen phenomenal growth in recent years were “contradicted by an actual increase in Shein’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2023 and 2024”, it said.
Environmentalists have long warned of the damage wreaked by the fast-fashion sector’s wasteful trend of mass producing low-cost clothes that are quickly thrown away.
Fast fashion uses up massive amounts of water, produces hazardous chemicals and clogs up landfills in poor countries with textile waste, while also generating greenhouse gases in production, transport and disposal.
Shein did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
As markets open this week, investors feel more confident about an incoming cut to the base rate—but that’s about as far as their courage goes. July payroll growth came in far below forecasts, and May–June figures were revised down significantly, signaling deeper job market weakness. As a result, investors now see an 87% chance of a September cut. The resignation of FOMC member Adriana Kugler also opens the door for a more dovish Fed shift.
Until Friday, analysts had little confidence that the U.S. Federal Reserve was about to deliver an interest rate cut, but last week’s revisions to labor market data have led many to bet in favor of Jerome Powell cutting at the Fed’s next meeting in September.
On Friday the Labor Department reported payrolls grew by just 73,000 last month, well below forecasts for about 100,000. It also revised down estimates for May and June, by a cut of 258,000.
With the average gain over the past three months now averaging only 35,000, the health of the labor market is in considerably worse shape than previously believed. Full employment is half of the Fed’s dual mandate—so many now expect action (in the form of cheaper money) to spur economic activity to ensure jobs do not take any further hit. Analysts now expect the revisions to at last deliver the cut the Oval Office has been pushing for,
A furious President Trump dismissed Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), for the revisions to the employment numbers. As markets open today, investors are still digesting the ramifications of the data which suggests tariffs are biting harder than previously hoped. On top of that, speculators will also be bracing for further volatility as Trump’s latest tariff deadline—August 7—creeps closer.
On top of that, analysts will also be working through the implications of the resignation of Adriana Kugler, one of the voting members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). This presents an opportunity for the president to appoint a member more open to his agenda of a lower base rate—further bolstering the hopes of analysts looking for a path toward interest normalization.
Before markets open in New York this week, the S&P 500 was down 1.6% at Friday’s close, and the Nasdaq down 2.24%. In Europe, London’s FTSE 100 is up a mild 0.3% and Germany’s DAX up 1.1%. S&P futures were up 0.65% this morning, suggesting that some investors are buying the dip.
Over in Asia—where analysts have been given little hope for an imminent deal with China or India—Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 1.25% while India’s Nifty 50 is up a respectable 0.65%.
Looking ahead, analysts are piling in on the belief that Powell will cut at the FOMC’s next meeting in September, and may even drop a hint about a change of course this month during the Jackson Hole Symposium.
Volumes in the CME’s 30 Day Federal Funds futures and options tripled between July 31 and August 1 (the day the labor data was altered), up from 536,563 on Thursday to near-1.6 million a day later. The price currently equates for a base rate in the region of 3.75%—representing a cut of two measures from the Fed.
Cut likelihood
A surprise downgrade to the economic outlook isn’t the scenario in which investors had hoped for a cut: Many had hoped stable enough inflation would have given the FOMC confidence to lower and support economic activity, as opposed to a forced reduction demanded by negative headwinds.
But, as Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid noted to clients this morning, the broader picture also suggests cuts: “The resignation of Fed Governor Kugler on Friday has created an opportunity for President Trump to appoint a new board member. This individual could potentially be groomed as a successor to Chair Powell or, at the very least, represent another dovish voter. While last week’s FOMC vote was 9-2 against a rate cut, it’s worth noting that the two dissenters—Waller and Bowman—were both appointed during Trump’s first term.”
“The significant revisions in Friday’s payroll release have also increased the likelihood that other members may reconsider their hawkish positions. The probability of a rate cut in September surged to 87% on Friday, up from around 40% before the payroll data was released, and market pricing for cuts by year-end rose from 18 basis points to 41bps.”
Indeed, Macquarie wrote Friday it had pulled forward its timeline for a cut as a direct result of the July employment report.
David Doyle, Macquarie’s head of economics, wrote: “While we don’t see significant further weakness in the labor market, the results of this report are likely to shift the FOMC’s assessment of the balance of risks to the outlook. While a September cut has become more likely, it is not a certainty. The eventual decision will hinge on incoming inflation and labor market developments.”
Even before the disastrous jobs rate announcement Chairman Powell had warned about the Fed’s need to balance inflation as close to 2% as possible, without squeezing employment from a monetary policy stance that was too tight.
In his post-meeting press conference only a week ago, Powell said: “We are attentive to risks on the employment side of our mandate. In coming months, we will receive a good amount of data that will help inform our assessment of the balance of risks and the appropriate setting of the federal funds rate.” Powell mentioned possible “downside risks” to the job market no fewer than six times.
But Bernard Yaros, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, countered in a note this weekend: “This week’s events, namely the July jobs report, were the biggest challenge to our longstanding forecast assumption around monetary policy, but we’re not yet ditching our call for a resumption of rate cuts to occur in December.
“Joblessness ticked higher, but reading the tea leaves from labor force flows and initial claims, there’s little reason to expect a sharp increase in the unemployment rate over the next months.”
Here’s a snapshot of the action prior to the opening bell in New York:
In the traditional playbook of corporate ascension, general counsel isn’t typically seen as a springboard to the CEO suite, especially not at a global technology consultancy. And yet, Julie Sweet has not only defied that assumption, she’s redefined what modern CEO readiness looks like in an era when domain expertise is being eclipsed by intellectual agility.
Before she took the helm of Accenture, the $176 billion consulting powerhouse, Sweet was a partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, the elite Manhattan law firm where partners rarely leave and even more rarely leap into a completely different industry. She had built a career there closing high-stakes M&A deals, not architecting cloud transformations or negotiating AI partnerships.
But in 2010, when Accenture approached her to become its general counsel, Sweet made the jump. Her father had recently died at age 68, a personal loss that left her reflecting on what she wanted her career and life to look like. “It reminded me to make sure I was living life to the fullest,” she told my colleague, Lila MacLellan, in a newly published Fortune magazine feature.
At the time, Accenture was shifting its growth strategy and looking to become more acquisitive. It saw in Sweet a business-savvy legal partner who could help execute on that ambition. Still, she joined with no formal background in technology and admits she didn’t know what the cloud was when she started.
Rather than seeing that gap as a liability, Sweet treated it as a learning opportunity. She enlisted Bhaskar Ghosh, now Accenture’s chief strategy and innovation officer, as a personal tutor. They met every two weeks for 18 months. It was a deliberate, sustained effort to build fluency in an area that would soon become central to Accenture’s future and her own.
Sweet has emphasized that understanding technology isn’t optional for executives; it’s foundational. Leaders today, she says, must understand how tech is changing products, industries, and customer expectations.
In 2019, following the untimely death of CEO Pierre Nanterme, Sweet was named chief executive. Her ability to connect the dots across legal, strategic, and operational domains has proven an asset, especially as the company scales up partnerships with firms like Nvidia and Palantir to embed AI across both commercial and government clients.
In interviews with Fortune, analysts credited her with positioning Accenture for the next wave of enterprise transformation. Clients described her as highly engaged, detail-oriented, and deeply prepared. Former colleagues also highlighted her ability to synthesize complex information and her tendency to keep pressing until she fully understands an issue.
Although Sweet’s path from law to CEO of a consulting and tech services company may be atypical, it reflects what modern leadership demands. Increasingly, the most effective CEOs aren’t those who simply follow a linear path up a single function, but rather those who can cross disciplines, absorb new knowledge quickly, and operate with intellectual range.
In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady on that time Jack Welch claimed the job numbers were being manipulated.
The big story: Trump continues to make false claims about the employment numbers.
The markets: Recovering from Friday’s collapse.
Analyst notes from Analysts ING on the Fed, Goldman Sachs on U.S. GDP, and JPMorgan on corporate earnings.
Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. I’ve never liked how the U.S. measures joblessness. The official unemployment rate doesn’t include the number of people who have given up looking for work or are stuck in low-paid jobs that don’t match their skills and aspirations. It doesn’t capture the difference between long-term vs. short-term employment, contract or full-time jobs. Economists at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) understand that frustration and publish a range of measures to capture the nuance of labor underutilization.
President Trump agrees that the number doesn’t reflect the reality of unemployment, though he reached a very different conclusion last week in deciding the numbers were “phony” and “rigged” to underrepresent the robustness of the labor market. He was so mad about the July jobs report, which showed unemployment ticking up to 4.2%, that he decided to fire BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer on Friday.
I immediately thought about the reaction when former GE CEO Jack Welch tweeted his disdain about the job numbers under the Obama Administration back in October of 2012. Welch, a lifelong Republican, was skeptical that the unemployment rate had fallen below 8% for the first time in four years with an election looming. He tweeted: “Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can’t debate so change numbers.”
Welch had been retired from GE for more than a decade at that point and had plenty of opinions as a columnist for Fortune. Nevertheless, there was outrage that a leader of his stature was attacking the integrity of a vital nonpartisan government agency and the integrity of the U.S. itself by suggesting that core economic data was politicized. Welch quit the Fortune gig amid uproar over the tweet.
But he didn’t back away from his assertion. “I’m not the first person to question government numbers, and hopefully I won’t be the last,” he wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. He likened the blowback he was facing to Soviet Russia and Communist China. What Welch, a man who famously claimed to cut the bottom 10% of GE’s workforce every year, did not do: Call for the BLS commissioner to be fired.
Billionaire Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates says the ability to use AI tools is both “fun and empowering,” and he encourages Gen Z to embrace it early. But whether that adoption is enough to save graduates from the pace of workplace disruption remains unclear. In response, applicants are already shifting their strategy in response.
Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates has advice for recent graduates: Embrace AI tools, but don’t expect any stability when it comes to the job search.
Gates said smart systems have generally unearthed opportunities that are “fun and empowering,” he told CNN. However, that may not mean ambitious college graduates will land their dream jobs just by using AI; it’s still a tough job market despite understanding these applications.
“Embracing [AI], and tracking it, will be very, very important,” Gates said. “That doesn’t guarantee we’re not going to have a lot of dislocation.”
Gates said he hasn’t changed his recommendations for young people: “Be curious, read, and use the latest tools,” he said.
AI has shaken up entry-level careers
Gen Z is increasingly burnt out from job hunting before even getting started. Frustrated applicants have lamented on TikTok about the number of rejection emails they have received from companies and expressed fears that the job market feels broken. And recent data backs them up: Entry-level job postings in the U.S. overall dwindled by about 35% since January 2023, and roles that are easily automated by AI are experiencing a disproportionately large impact.
AI replacing entry-level work is already being felt across all industries. At global investment firm Carlyle, previous entry-level hires who evaluated deals used to turn to Google for articles and request documents manually. Now, the work is being done by AI, and the firm is shifting toward hiring junior-level employees who can ensure the work is accurate.
CEOs have also iterated their hiring strategy. Bill Balderaz, CEO of Columbus-based consulting firm Futurety, told The Wall Street Journal he decided not to hire a summer intern this year, opting to run social-media copy through ChatGPT instead.
How Gen Z is positioning itself
For Gen Z entering the workforce, the career game is shifting. Much like investors turn to Treasury bonds during times of economic uncertainty, many younger workers are reveling in the security of blue-collar work and roles rooted in human connection, creativity, and physical skills.
A recent survey of 1,000 Gen Z workers showed 53% are gravitating towards skilled or licensed trades in construction, plumbing, and electrical. Jobs installing elevators earn up to six figures and don’t require a college degree, for instance. Next in line are people-focused professions, such as healthcare, education, and social work.
Gen Z job applicants are facing headwinds when entering the job market due to AI. Tech billionaire Bill Gates encourages younger generations to embrace the tool, but can’t guarantee it won’t cause any “dislocation.”
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer sounded a cautiously optimistic note on discussions with China on rare earth flows, following trade talks that further steadied ties between the economies.
Greer said the key industrial components were a focus of negotiations in Stockholm last week that Beijing said led to an extension of their tariff truce. Without going into detail, he said the U.S. secured commitments about their supply on CBS’s Face the Nation aired Sunday.
“We’re focused on making sure that magnets from China to the United States and the adjacent supply chain can flow as freely as it did before the control,” Greer said in the interview, which was taped Friday. “And I would say we’re about halfway there.”
That assessment came some four months after China imposed export controls on rare earth magnets—used in products from home appliances to missiles—in retaliation for U.S. tariff threats. Beijing has agreed to speed up their shipments after Washington suspended sky-high levies on Chinese exports.
U.S. President Donald Trump is set to make the final call on maintaining the tariff truce, which expires Aug. 12, Greer said.
“We’re working on some technical issues, and we’re talking to the president about it,” he said.
Flows of rare earth magnets from China to the U.S. rose to 353 tons in June, up from just 46 tons in May, according to the latest customs data. Total shipments were still substantially lower than before Beijing launched export controls in early April.
Greer earlier said Trump’s trade team hopes to be done discussing magnets with China, after he and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wrapped up a third round of trade talks with Beijing in the Swedish capital end of July. If the U.S. can get over the magnets issue, it can move to a further discussion of the U.S.-China relationship, he added.
The discussions have helped stabilize relations between the world’s two largest economies, although many frictions remain, including over the U.S.’ curbs on exporting advanced AI chips to its main competitor.
Beijing authorities on Thursday summoned Nvidia Corp. to discuss alleged security vulnerabilities related to its H20 chips. The Trump administration only recently pledged to drop export restrictions on the less-advanced technology to China, in a reversal that spurred talk of a potential broader deal with Beijing.
The Cyberspace Administration of China cited comments by U.S. lawmakers about the need to install tracking capabilities into advanced chips sold to other countries. The agency asked staff at the world’s most valuable company to explain potential risks and provide documents as needed, the CAC said without elaborating.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Sunday that the key industrial components were a focus of negotiations in Stockholm last week that Beijing said led to an extension of their tariff truce.
The North Korean IT worker conspiracy is ramping up in intensity, with the regime’s software developers getting hired at hundreds of new companies in the past year, despite scrutiny from law enforcement and security firms. Crowdstrike cybersecurity expert Adam Meyers said the company investigates about one incident a day at this point because the attacks have grown so prolific.
Terrifying new fronts have emerged in a highly successful employment- fraud scheme in which trained North Korean operatives get jobs at companies around the globe under fake or stolen identities.
The number of companies that hired North Korean software developers grew a staggering 220% during the past 12 months—and most of their success is due to automating and optimizing the workflow involved in fraudulently obtaining and holding tech jobs, Crowdstrike’s 2025 Threat Hunting report released on Monday revealed. The IT workers infiltrated more than 320 companies in the past 12 months.
To level set: The North Korean IT worker scheme is a vast conspiracy to evade punishing financial sanctions on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea due to authoritarian ruler Kim Jong Un’s human-rights abuses and relentless quest to develop weapons of mass destruction. To dodge the sanctions and make money to keep funding its nuclear program, North Korea now trains young men and boys in tech, sends them to elite schools in and around Pyongyang, and then deploys them in teams of four or five to locations around the world including China, Russia, Nigeria, Cambodia, and the United Arab Emirates.
The workers are each required to earn $10,000 a month, according to a defector, and have managed to do so by getting remote jobs doing IT work at U.S. and European companies while earning good salaries, court records show. Since 2018, the UN estimates, the scheme has generated between $250 million to $600 million per year on the backs of thousands of North Korean men.
For the Fortune 500, the IT worker scheme has been a flashing red alert about the evolution of employment-fraud schemes. Court records show hundreds of Fortune 500 companies have unknowingly hired thousands of North Korean IT workers, in violation of sanctions, in recent years. In some cases, the IT worker scheme is purely about generating stable revenues for the regime. In others, FBI investigators have found evidence IT workers share information with more malicious hackers that have stolen nearly $3 billion in crypto, according to the UN.
Under siege
Crowdstrike’s investigations revealed North Korea’s tech workers, an adversary Crowdstrike dubs “Famous Chollima,” used AI to scale every aspect of the operation. The North Koreans have used generative AI to help them forge thousands of synthetic identities, alter photos, and build tech tools to research jobs and track and manage their applications. In interviews, North Koreans used AI to mask their appearance in video calls, guide them in answering questions, and pass technical coding challenges associated with getting software jobs.
Critically, they now rely on AI to help them appear more fluent in English and well-versed in the companies where they’re interviewing. Once they get hired, the IT workers use AI chatbots to help with their daily work—responding in Slack, drafting emails—to make sure their written offerings appear technically and grammatically sound and to help them hold down multiple jobs simultaneously, CrowdStrike found.
“Famous Chollima operatives very likely use real-time deepfake technology to mask their true identities in video interviews,” the report states. “Using a real-time deepfake plausibly allows a single operator to interview for the same position multiple times using different synthetic personas, enhancing the odds that the operator will get hired.”
Crowdstrike investigators have observed North Korean IT workers searching for AI face-swapping applications and paying premium prices for subscriptions to deepfake services during active operations.
“Laptop farms” move beyond U.S. borders
Adam Meyers, senior vice president of CrowdStrike’s counter adversary operations, told Fortune his team generally investigates one incident a day related to the North Korean IT worker scheme. The program has broadened beyond U.S. borders as U.S. law enforcement has cracked down on domestic operations with indictments and advisories, and as more U.S. companies have tightened their security practices and girded their defenses.
Last month, a 50-year-old Arizona woman, Christina Chapman, was sentenced to 8.5 years in prison in July after pleading guilty for her role in operating a “laptop farm” from her home. Prosecutors said she accepted and maintained 90 laptops and installed remote-access software so North Koreans could work for U.S. companies, prosecutors said. Authorities revealed Chapman’s operation alone helped the workers get 309 jobs that generated $17.1 million in revenue through their salaries. Nearly 70 Americans had their identities stolen in the operation, authorities said. These weren’t just attacking smaller companies with looser hiring infrastructure; Nike was one of the companies impacted, according to its victim impact statement in Chapman’s case. The sneaker and activewear giant unwittingly hired a North Korean operative affiliated with Chapman. Nike did not respond to Fortune’s requests for comment.
“U.S. law enforcement has put a big dent in their ability to operate the laptop farms, so as it gets increasingly expensive or difficult to get remote jobs here in the U.S., they’re pivoting to other locations,” said Meyers. “They’re getting more traction in Europe.”
Meyers said Crowdstrike has seen new laptop farms established in Western Europe across to Romania and Poland, which means the North Korean workers are getting jobs—typically as fullstack developers—in those countries and then having laptops shipped to farms there. The scheme is the same as it works in the U.S.: A supposedly Romanian or Polish developer will interview with a company, get hired, and a laptop will get shipped to a known laptop-farm destination in those countries, he said. In other words, instead of shipping devices and onboarding materials to an actual resident where the supposed developer works, the laptop gets shipped to a known farm address based in Poland or Romania. Typically, the excuse is the same type that has proven effective at U.S. companies, said Meyers. The developer will claim to be having a medical or family emergency necessitating a change in the shipping address.
“Companies need to stay vigilant if they’re hiring overseas,” said Meyers. “They need to understand these risks exist not just domestically, but overseas as well.”
AI advancements will neutralize defenses
Amir Landau, malware research team leader at defense firm CyberArk, told Fortune traditional cyber defenses are likely to eventually become insufficient against the threat as genAI used by the North Koreans becomes advanced enough to break through companies’ defense wards. Therefore, what companies need to do to defend themselves requires a fundamental shift in thinking in terms of how much trust and access companies grant their own employees.
The military and intelligence principle of a “need-to-know basis,” which originated during World War II, will become more important, said Landau. Not every developer needs to know or have access to certain assets or documents, even after they’ve been with a company for a certain amount of time, he explained.
Landau also advocates for minimum and limited-time privileges for developers, giving them a short window of time for work, rather than unlimited access that could eventually make a company vulnerable.
Landau also said companies should take some additional common-sense measures in the hiring process. If a job applicant gives a reference, don’t call the phone number or message the email address you’ve been given. Look them up and get in touch with what you see from public databases, he advised. If someone’s personal information sounds bizarre or inconsistent, pay attention. Use the internet to double check what you can find against what you’ve been told.
“There are a lot of small things you can do to defend against these threats,” he said.
And ultimately, while small companies are typically more vulnerable, that doesn’t mean larger companies aren’t also susceptible to fraud schemes, Landau said. Meyers said as long as the IT workers can find work, they’ll keep evolving their tactics through the use of genAI.
“These are basically exploited people from North Korea making money for the regime,” said Meyers. “As long as they can continue to generate revenue, they’re going to keep doing this.”
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un attending a meeting with a committee of the Workers' Party of Korea about the test of a hydrogen bomb, at an unknown location. North Korea said it detonated a hydrogen bomb designed for a long-range missile on September 3, 2017 and called its sixth and most powerful nuclear test a "perfect success", sparking world condemnation and promises of tougher US sanctions.
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![](https://fortune.com/img-assets/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/GettyImages-842418008.jpg?w=300 "North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un attending a meeting with a committee of the Workers' Party of Korea about the test of a hydrogen bomb, at an unknown location. North Korea said it detonated a hydrogen bomb designed for a long-range missile on September 3 and called its sixth and most powerful nuclear test a "perfect success", sparking world condemnation and promises of tougher US sanctions.")
![](https://fortune.com/img-assets/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/GettyImages-842418008.jpg?w=2048 "North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un attending a meeting with a committee of the Workers' Party of Korea about the test of a hydrogen bomb, at an unknown location. North Korea said it detonated a hydrogen bomb designed for a long-range missile on September 3 and called its sixth and most powerful nuclear test a "perfect success", sparking world condemnation and promises of tougher US sanctions.")