Mark Zuckerberg's Meta just <a href="https://arresteddevelopment.fandom.com/wiki/I%27ve_made_a_huge_mistake">made a huge mistake</a>.
Or more accurately, a bunch of huge mistakes, which have drawn the wrath of lawyers for Meta's peers Apple, Google, and Snapchat.
The issue is that during the latest phase of its <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/technology/meta-antitrust-trial-ftc.html">massive antitrust trial</a>, Meta lawyers presented slides revealing information it held about other companies. Though technically redacted, third party details compiled by Meta were accessible by anyone with the file — because the redactions were easily reversible.
Luckily, the information revealed wasn't exactly nuclear secrets — one slide notes hat iPhone users prefer Apple's messaging app to Meta's, <a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/648893/meta-redacted-documents-leak-ftc-antitrust-opening-statement">per </a><a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/648893/meta-redacted-documents-leak-ftc-antitrust-opening-statement">The Verge</a> — but the other companies' lawyers say that's not the point: it's that a company the size of Meta shouldn't be treating sensitive court documents, nevermind the entire proceedings, with such utter disregard.
Snapchat's lawyer slammed Meta's "cavalier approach and casual disregard," <a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/649834/meta-redactions-apple-google-snap-angry-ftc-antitrust-trial">according to The Verge</a>, and questioned if Meta "would have applied meaningful redactions if it were its own information that was at stake." Counselors for Apple, meanwhile, implied they might not trust its internal documents with Meta going forward.
Meta has previously been caught trying to leverage user data to <a href="https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/27/meta_snapchat_data/">spy on rival platform Snapchat</a>, a strategy the company called "Operation Ghostbusters." It was also hit with a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ajdellinger/2021/04/03/personal-date-of-533-million-facebook-users-leaks-online/">massive data breach</a> back in 2019, leaking personal information from some 533 million Facebook users after attackers discovered a flaw in the platform's internal security.
The company's most recent privacy debacle comes in the middle of a <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Business/meta-claims-monopoly-landmark-antitrust-trial-gets-underway/story?id=120799633">landmark antitrust case</a> filed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which argues that Meta has made a habit of buying out competitors like Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads, and Oculus rather than competing with them in earnest.
Among other things, the FTC is trying to prove that Meta's attempted purchase of Snapchat — a bid <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-meta-antitrust-trial-snapchat-buyout-bid-2025-4">Snap rejected</a> back in 2013, to Zuckerberg's dismay — represents a standard procedure for the social media giant.
In a recent <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2025/04/ftcs-weak-case-against-meta-ignores-reality/">PR disclosure</a>, Meta raged that the "FTC's weak case against Meta ignores reality," arguing that the company's social media rivals extend far beyond Snapchat, therefore its attempted purchase is no big deal.
"The evidence at trial will show what every 17-year-old in the world knows," Meta's report read, that "Instagram competes with TikTok (and YouTube and X and many other apps)."
Meta's not alone in facing scrutiny for monopolistic practices.
A federal judge recently sided with the Justice Department in a suit alleging that Google was operating a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/17/tech/google-adtech-trial-decision/index.html">web advertising monopoly</a>, a judgment that could shake up the web in a major way. The FTC is likewise taking Amazon to task on antitrust grounds, though that trial <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/03/14/nx-s1-5328202/ftc-asks-to-delay-amazon-trial-over-dire-resources-then-quickly-backtracks">could be delayed</a> now that DOGE has cancelled the leases on some trade commission offices.
More on Meta: <a href="https://futurism.com/zuckerberg-facebook-friends-meta-antitrust">Zuckerberg Tells Court That Facebook Is No Longer About Connecting With Friends</a>

Oh Snap

Whoops.

Meta Made a Wild Screwup in the Documents It Showed in Court

Tech CEOs <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/09/tech/tech-leaders-supported-trump-lost-money-dg/index.html">rallied behind Donald Trump</a> in hopes that he would lower regulations and increase profits — and although he's already done the former, the latter now seems like a pipe dream.
As <a href="https://www.vox.com/technology/409256/trump-tariffs-student-visas-andreessen-horowitz">Vox reports</a>, any gains tech companies have gleaned from Trump's deregulation are minuscule in comparison to the economic havoc the president has wreaked with his foolhardy tariffs.
As the election ramped up last July, tech venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz <a href="https://pmarca.substack.com/p/the-little-tech-agenda">insisted in a Substack blog post</a> that the only way for the United States to maintain "economic and technological preeminence" over China and its "much darker, more totalitarian" policies would be, essentially, to beat our erstwhile trading partner.
Shortly thereafter, the monied pair <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_sNclEgQZQ&amp;ab_channel=a16z">revealed on their podcast</a> that they were all-in for Trump despite being lifelong Democrats because he was, to their minds, America's last best hope at defeating China and becoming the tech utopia they've always wanted.
Though such warmongering sentiments are clearly behind the president's enormous tariffs on Chinese goods, it also undermines the Silicon Valley CEOs who lined up to kiss his ring because, to put it bluntly, almost all the components for American tech <a href="https://www.high-capacity.com/p/chinas-overlapping-tech-industrial">are made in China</a>.
Beyond cutting tech manufacturers off from their Chinese suppliers, the tariffs have also sent shockwaves through the global economy and brought the United States to the brink of a recession. The trickle-down effect from the tariffs has been more like a waterfall, with <a href="https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-trump-tariffs-trade-war-04-14-25/card/companies-are-going-bankrupt-at-the-fastest-rate-since-2010-mkBYAFmgfqRA0ZmAi6uE">tech companies going bankrupt</a>, <a href="https://www.politico.com/newsletters/digital-future-daily/2025/04/09/tech-vcs-feel-their-own-special-tariff-pain-00282047">canceling IPOs</a>, and <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-tariff-bezos-musk-zuckerberg-b2727147.html">losing billions</a> in share value.
Though Silicon Valley's biggest Trump supporters haven't started publicly trashing dear leader just yet, one need look no further than the never-ending drama between the president and his unelected aide Elon Musk to see just how badly this administration's trade war is messing with Big Tech.
Earlier in April, the billionaire <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-raging-against-trump-administration">began a fiery spat with Peter Navarro</a>, the president's trade and manufacturing adviser, calling the Trump surrogate "<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1909605316121198860">dumber than a sack of bricks</a>" as they traded barbs over whether or not the tariffs are a good idea. While that drama played out on Musk's social network, the multi-hyphenate business owner allegedly <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-reportedly-begged-donald-trump-reverse-tariffs">implored Trump in privat</a>e to reconsider the tariffs — a scheme that clearly did not work.
With the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/14/investing/us-stock-market/index.html">stock market rebound</a> following the president's announcement of yet another 90-day pause on his reciprocal tariffs — for everyone except China, of course — it's not a huge surprise that the tech CEOs who threw their weight and money behind Trump are not talking smack where other people can hear.
Behind closed doors, however, there's unquestionably a lot of hand-wringing and regret going on as these short-sighted Silicon Valley-ers look at <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/business/economy/trump-economy-tariffs.html">economic forecasts</a> for the coming years.
More on tech: <a href="https://futurism.com/google-border-surveillance">Google Is Helping Government Build an AI-Powered Border Surveillance System</a>

Silicon Schmucks 

Who ever could have guessed this would happen?

Tech CEOs Realizing They Made a Terrible Mistake by Supporting Trump

Shares of Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical company behind the groundbreaking GLP-1 weight loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy, have been absolutely plummeting.
The company's stock price slid over eight percent on Thursday, after its main competitor in the space, US-based pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Wellness/new-weight-loss-pill-benefit-people-type-2/story?id=120899245#:~:text=Drugmaker%20Eli%20Lilly%20said%20that,7.9%25%20of%20their%20body%20weight.">announced</a> promising Phase 3 trial results for its GLP-1 pill orforglipron, which is being marketed under its brand name CagriSema.
According to the results, the once-a-day pill improved blood sugar levels in type 2 diabetes patients while helping them to lose weight, showing very similar benefits to injectable GLP-1 drugs — except in a convenient pill form instead of a shot.
The timing couldn't be worse for Novo Nordisk. The company's shares are down roughly 34 percent so far this year following major supply line disruptions pushing <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/novo-nordisk-downgraded-bmo-eli-184129564.html">physicians to prescribe</a> Eli Lilly's tirzepatide-based injection drugs Zepbound and Mounjaro instead. Over the past six months, its once-ascendant stock value is down a grim 50 percent.
While Novo Nordisk is getting thrashed, Eli Lilly shares shot up by 14 percent in light of the latest news.
As <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2025/04/18/biotech-news-eli-lilly-novo-nordisk-fda-makary-gsk-fda-sanofi-the-readout/">STAT points out</a>, Novo Nordisk doesn't have any comparable small-molecule drug to Eli Lilly's orforglipron. Its own injectable peptide, semaglutide, which is the active ingredient in both Ozempic and Wegovy, is also difficult to manufacture, suggesting Eli Lilly may have a competitive edge.
Eli Lilly's <a href="https://investor.lilly.com/news-releases/news-release-details/lillys-oral-glp-1-orforglipron-demonstrated-statistically">Phase 3 trial results</a> are an early indication of the emergence of a next generation of obesity drugs. The company found that participants lost an average of 16 pounds over 40 weeks, compared to a placebo group.
Side effects included mild to moderate gastrointestinal issues. Not everybody was so lucky; the development of a weight loss pill by COVID-19 vaccine maker Pfizer <a href="https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/wellness/video/pfizer-stops-work-pill-obesity-120817464">was scrapped earlier this week</a> after a participant reported a liver injury during a clinical trial.
Eli Lilly's "promising" results could hint at the pill being a viable alternative to Novo's Ozempic and even the company's own drugs Zepbound and Mounjaro — but it's still too early to draw any definitive conclusions or declare winners just yet.
Next, the company is planning to submit data from its latest trials to the FDA by the end of the year for weight loss management and for treating type 2 diabetes in early 2026.
But considering the major market moves this week, investors have seen enough, embracing Eli Lilly as having taken the lead in the hotly contested obesity drug market.
Whether their call will turn out to be the right one in the long term? Well, if there's one thing we've come to expect in this space, it's a series of radical shakeups.
More on obesity drugs: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/diet-industry-ozempic-meltdown">The Diet Industry Is Reportedly in Total Meltdown Over GLP-1 Weight Loss Drugs</a>

Novo No-Dice

Developments

It's getting hammered.

Novo Nordisk Is Getting Absolutely Destroyed

<h2>Levee Johnston</h2>
A man and his brother in western Tennessee deployed a clever system to save their family home from devastating river surges triggered by a catastrophic storm earlier this month.
As the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2025/04/15/tennessee-floods-mississippi-river/">Washington Post reports</a>, farmers Tucker Humphrey and his brother Justin constructed levees with an excavator that saved the house from flooding.
Dazzling <a href="https://x.com/foxweather/status/1912445873788797332">aerial footage</a> of the flood shows the home and its surrounding rectangular property virtually untouched by the brown floodwater that has engulfed everything else in the region.
The idea of constructing a levee, a technique that humans have <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/a-brief-history-of-levees/402119/">known about and deployed for many thousands of years</a>, was passed down from the two brothers' father, who died several years ago, according to WaPo.
"Just normal things around here," Tucker Humphrey told the newspaper. "Doing what we have to do to save the house."
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Aerial footage shot last week shows a home in the northwestern Tennessee town of Ridgely appearing like an island amid a sea of brown floodwaters. The property was protected by levees the family had constructed, preserving their home as the area around them was devastated. <a href="https://t.co/qffDbaKXXL">pic.twitter.com/qffDbaKXXL</a>
&mdash; FOX Weather (@foxweather) <a href="https://twitter.com/foxweather/status/1912445873788797332?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 16, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<h2>Paul Wall</h2>
To protect the home, the pair constructed a barrier up to nine feet tall in certain places.
And as it turns out, the artificial embankment was sorely needed. In just hours, the Obion River, which runs adjacent to their hometown of Bogota, rose nine feet at the beginning of April.
Around 100 people had to be rescued in the area. The storm itself, which tore through much of the South, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2025/03/16/at-least-34-dead-as-storms-rip-through-south-and-midwest/">killed more than 30 people</a>.
The Humphreys have no plan to move away from the flood-prone area, and are ready to construct even higher barriers.
"I’ll build it 30 feet tall if I got to," Tucker told the WaPo.
More on floods: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/flood-nasa-spacecraft">Flood Wreaks Havoc on NASA Spacecraft</a>

Flood, Sweat and Tears

"I’ll build it 30 feet tall if I got to."

Brothers Build Clever System to Keep Their Family Home Dry While Everything Around It Floods

President Donald Trump's escalating tariff war is putting Tesla in serious danger.
As <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/17/ideological-twist-elon-musk-tariff-opposition-00295173">Politico reports</a>, the trade war has put Tesla CEO Elon Musk in an extremely awkward position politically.
While the president's top henchman's businesses are somewhat insulated thanks to a strong manufacturing presence in the United States, Musk's ambitions to turn Tesla into the "most valuable company in the world" by focusing on autonomous driving and robotics could be thwarted by flatlining international trade.
Free trade is the "lifeblood of the auto industry," Wedbush Securities analyst and Tesla bull Dan Ives told Politico. "It’s the lifeblood of autonomous and robotics and the future, not just thinking about domestically, but globally."
Trump's disastrous trade war could make it extremely difficult for Musk to deliver on his characteristically overzealous promises. For instance, he told investors last year that his EV maker will "solve autonomy," an extremely ambitious goal that will require major breakthroughs in self-driving technologies. (It's worth noting that the mercurial CEO has made such a promise <a href="https://futurism.com/video-elon-musk-promising-self-driving-cars">every year for a decade</a>.)
Musk has also <a href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-electric-musk-confirms-his-mission-has-changed-make-tesla-a-lot-more-valuable?rc=st1fhw">made baffling claims</a> that the company's Optimus humanoid robot "will be overwhelmingly the value of the company" and rake in $10 trillion in revenue, making it the "biggest product in history."
But given China's extremely dominant role as the top producer of humanoid robotics, Trump's extremely steep tariffs could make achieving such a goal extremely difficult, according to experts — if not outright impossible.
Optimus, in particular, "would be the place that you would see [the impact of tariffs] because a lot of those components are not necessarily coming from the US," Constellation Research founder Ray Wang told Politico.
Musk has already aired his grievances with Trump's plan to shut down international trade and economically isolate the US from the world.
Earlier this month, Musk broke against Trump, <a class="underline hover:text-futurism hover:no-underline transition-all duration-200 ease-in-out" href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-rages-against-donald-trump-tariffs">railing against the architect</a> of his catastrophic tariff policy, advisor on trade and manufacturing, Peter Navarro, calling him a "moron."
He also <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tariff-rift-peter-navarro-getting-ugly-2025-4">publicly stated</a> that he thinks people should be able to work in both Europe and North America as they please and that there should be a "free trade zone" between the two.
The reality: no company of Tesla's size and complexity is well-positioned for Trump's tariffs.
"Over the years, we’ve tried to localize our supply chain in every market, but we are still very reliant on parts from across the world for all our businesses," Tesla CFO Vaibhav Taneja warned during an earnings call in January, as quoted by Politico. "Therefore, the imposition of tariffs, which is very likely, will have an impact on our business and profitability."
The EV maker has already seen the effects of those interventions, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/12/business/tesla-china-tariffs-musk/index.html">suspending new orders</a> for both Model S and Model X vehicles on its Chinese websites last week.
The timing couldn't be worse. Tesla has seen <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-sales-data-europe">sales plummet worldwide</a>, in large part thanks to <a href="https://futurism.com/poll-favorability-elon-musk-doge">spiking anti-Musk sentiment</a>. Investors are fearful of terrible news ahead of next week's first-quarter earnings call.
Even Musk's SpaceX could suffer from collapsing supply lines as it relies on Chinese-made tech. The space company begged a US trade representative for tariff exemptions, as <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-spacex-pleads-trump-155049996.html">The Telegraph reported</a> late last month.
SpaceX is now scrambling to move production to the US.
It remains to be seen where Trump and Musk's rapidly deteriorating bromance will lead next. But considering the extremely unfavorable stock market and massive volatility, Musk will likely waste no time in trying to beg Trump for some reprieve.
More on Tesla: <a href="https://futurism.com/cybertruck-disaster-production">The Cybertruck Is Turning Into a Complete Disaster</a>

Tariff'd Up

His businesses greatly depend on free trade.

Elon Musk Is in Huge Trouble Over Donald Trump's Tariffs

By pretty much any account, Blue Origin's publicity stunt of sending an all-female crew into space <a href="https://www.theverge.com/blue-origin/651540/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-stunt-flop-katy-perry">was a major flop</a>.
The Jeff Bezos-owned New Shepard capsule spent mere minutes in <a href="https://www.app.com/story/news/2025/04/17/what-is-an-astronaut-is-katy-perry-an-astronaut-for-going-to-space/83138253007/">kinda-sorta-maybe space</a>, giving its extremely wealthy passengers a momentary glimpse of weightlessness — though more in the way a rollercoaster ride causes you to shift out of your seat than in the microgravity of actual orbit (unlike a theme park ride, though, a ticket for the jaunt set passengers like pop star Katy Perry back hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece.)
Adding to the drama, a peculiar moment captured during the live stream had audiences scratching their heads.
As <a href="https://x.com/Mappy6984/status/1912280839636881792">spotted by eagle-eyed netizens</a>, and later <a href="https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/04/17/blue-origin-capsule-door-bezos/">confirmed by Snopes</a>, the door to the capsule briefly opened inwards and shut again after it softly landed in the West Texas desert. A female employee can be seen hurrying over to the door in an apparent attempt to tell the occupants to shut it again, around the 1:45:30 mark in the <a href="https://youtu.be/cSqyRWQooJM?list=PLAXaf_0Jgf8FXcIXZ_pnA8CG6GrbM3yl4&amp;t=6331">official stream</a>.
A nearby Bezos laughs while gazing through one of the windows. Roughly two minutes later, he purposefully walks up to the door to use a tool to open the capsule and greet his fiancée — even though the door could clearly already be opened. A flurry of activity including countless camera shutters can be heard, suggesting this was a moment constructed for maximum publicity.
Even more strangely, the tool in Bezos' hand appeared to temporarily make contact with the door, but didn't seem to actually engage with any locking mechanism.
"Oops, she didn't really close it again!" a laughing Bezos can be heard saying.
The moment raised plenty of questions. Why did Bezos have to use a tool to open the door if the hatch could've easily been opened from the inside? Just how much of the launch was a silly, rehearsed publicity stunt designed for everybody to fall in love with their favorite billionaires again?
A more forgiving interpretation of the moment could indicate that Blue Origin crew members — and not the capsule's passengers — were simply following protocol, forcing the crew to wait until they got the all-clear.
Did the passengers, who spent a mere couple of days in preparation for the stunt, screw up the proceedings by opening the latch too soon?
Naturally, the internet, which already came out in full force to mock the entire charade, had a field day.
"Did anyone catch them prematurely opening the door and clearly being told to close it?" one user on TikTok <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@thejamieleee/video/7493175595317103915">wrote</a>. "AND then Jeff Bezos opens it with a tool?"
Of course, conspiracy theories latched onto the opportunity to argue that the New Shepard launch was entirely faked — despite ample evidence suggesting the rocket did indeed reach the Kármán line, the internationally agreed-upon edge of space.
But considering the media circus surrounding the launch, which was haphazardly played up as a groundbreaking moment in the history of women in space exploration, there's a good chance Blue Origin was simply trying to ensure it milked every photo opp available.
There's already been plenty of speculation about which one-percenter will dare to ride Bezos' rocket next — though considering how this week's launch played out, maybe publicists will think twice before trying to get their client on board.
More on the launch: <a href="https://futurism.com/rich-women-astonished-backlash-trip-space">Zillionaire Girlbosses Astonished by Backlash to Their Frivolous Trip to Space</a>

Open Sesame

What the hell?

There's Something Incredibly Sketchy About How They Opened the Hatch on Katy Perry's Rocket

Musk's SpaceX facilities might be taking some flak from <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/business/doge-backlash-has-arrived-at-elon-musks-seattle-area-spacex-outpost/">protestors lately</a>, but it's nothing compared to the <a href="https://futurism.com/hundreds-protest-tesla-dealership">mass mobilization of demonstrations</a> that have given his Tesla dealerships a black eye.
That could change with his latest concept: a bid to build Donald Trump's "<a href="https://sam.gov/opp/32d6b477622640e588bb5bbcf89ae646/view">Golden Dome</a>" missile defense system, for which the billionaire's SpaceX has emerged as a frontrunner, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/musks-spacex-is-frontrunner-build-trumps-golden-dome-missile-shield-2025-04-17/">according to Reuters</a>.
Musk's company is leading a coalition of tech corporations in the bidding, including the surveillance platform <a href="https://futurism.com/government-ice-palantir">Palantir</a> and the drone builder <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/anduril-is-building-out-the-pentagons-dream-of-deadly-drone-swarms/">Anduril</a>. The current plan is to pitch the Pentagon on a "subscription-based" missile service, where the US pays for access to armaments owned by the tech companies instead of actually owning — and ultimately controlling — the system.
Under Musk's vision, the three companies would pool their talents to launch between 400 to 1,000 satellites to circle the globe, likely surveilling foreign ballistic installations for signs of action. Meanwhile, Reuters sources say a fleet of 200 attack satellites — themselves armed with either missiles or anti-missile lasers — would bring missiles down once detected.
The Pentagon <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/865408/summary">contracting out military operations</a> is nothing new, though as Reuters notes, this deal would be a massive boost for Musk — a Silicon Valley company has never owned an armament of this size outright.
It's a major departure for the Pentagon as well. One source suggested that Musk's commercial involvement is bought by his role in DOGE, noting that "there's an attitude that the national security and defense community has to be sensitive and deferential to Elon Musk because of his role in the government."
Though we have the richest man in the world to thank for the missiles-on-demand pitch, the bizarre push for missile spending is the brainchild of Trump.
In an otherwise lackluster <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/the-iron-dome-for-america/">executive order</a> from January 27, the president warned that enemy missile attacks are the "most catastrophic threat facing the United States," parroting an ancient talking point held by everyone from <a href="https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/upcoming-exhibit/star-wars-and-sdi-defending-american-and-galexy">Ronald Reagan</a> to the <a href="https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/americans-still-vulnerable-missile-attack">Heritage Foundation</a>.
Disregard the fact that an enemy missile has never been launched against US soil, and the US' own history of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/18/us/airstrikes-pentagon-records-civilian-deaths.html">indiscriminate missile strikes</a> on foreign lands. As of January, the US owns <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/nuclear-weapons-who-has-what-glance">1,419 strategic warheads</a> — second only to Russia, which has 1,549.
Meanwhile, remember that this is the same guy who brought us the Cybertruck, a luxury vehicle <a href="https://futurism.com/cybertruck-held-together-glue">held together by glue</a>. And his non-defense spacecraft have a nasty habit of <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/the-starship-program-hits-another-speed-bump-with-second-consecutive-failure/">falling out the sky</a>.
"It remains to be seen whether SpaceX and these tech companies will be able to pull any of this off," as a source familiar with the discussion told Reuters.
Hell, bombs away.
More on military contractors: <a href="https://futurism.com/nasa-ai-surveillance-software">NASA Caught Purchasing Controversial AI Surveillance Software</a>

Missiles Away

"It remains to be seen whether SpaceX and these tech companies will be able to pull any of this off."

Elon Musk Working on Attack Satellite System for the Pentagon

Tesla is reportedly pulling back production of its much-maligned Cybertruck.
According <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-cybertruck-production-drops-sales-slump-2025-4">to Business Insider</a>, the EV maker has dropped production targets for several Cybertruck lines over the last few months – and is going as far as to move workers from the line entirely at its manufacturing facility in Texas.
"It feels a lot like they're filtering people out," a worker with knowledge of the situation told the publication. "The parking lot keeps getting emptier."
It's yet another sign Tesla's highly divisive pickup truck is turning out to be a major sore point for the carmaker. According to an eighth recall issued last month, Tesla has sold a mere 50,000 Cybertrucks since it went on sale in late 2023.
That's well short of the "quarter million Cybertrucks a year," which the company would "reach sometime in 2025," as Tesla CEO Elon Musk <a href="https://www.morningstar.co.uk/mobile/Article.aspx?Site=uk&amp;articleid=240640">promised</a> during the company's Q3 earnings call in 2023.
As <a href="https://electrek.co/2025/04/01/tesla-is-sitting-on-200-million-worth-of-cybertruck-inventory/">Electrek pointed out last week</a>, 2,400 unsold Cybertrucks, worth roughly $200 million, are piling up. Even Tesla is no longer <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-refusing-cybertrucks-trade-ins">accepting its own trucks as trade-ins</a>, due to the massive disparity in demand.
The carmaker is facing <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-stock-crashing-bad">plummeting sales worldwide</a> across the board, with fuming investors accusing Musk of having abandoned the company in favor of gutting the United States' government.
A number of high-profile execs have left the company over the last couple of weeks, including <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-software-vp-leaves-robotaxi">longtime Tesla software VP David Lau</a>, <a href="https://newmobility.news/2025/04/07/leadership-exodus-at-tesla-continues-as-software-chief-leaves/">continuing a major leadership exodus</a> that kicked up late last year.
Tesla shares are <a href="https://247wallst.com/investing/2025/04/15/wall-street-price-prediction-teslas-share-price-forecast-for-2025/">down almost 50 percent</a> since hitting all-time highs in December, shortly after president Donald Trump was elected.
Meanwhile, the Cybertruck has <a href="https://futurism.com/rent-cybertruck-flipped-off">turned into a major target</a> of a growing anti-Musk movement, dubbed Tesla Takedown.
Whether a <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-cheaper-slower-cybertruck-worse-deal">recently-released entry-level Cybertruck</a>, which still goes for an eyewatering $69,990 before incentives, will reinvigorate interest in the issue-ridden vehicle remains to be seen.
Tesla has since slashed prices in a last-ditch effort to inflate demand and offload "Foundation Series" trucks, which the company stopped building in October 2024, per Electrek.
By many accounts, the rollout of what was once Musk's "pet project," has been a disaster, from <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/youtuber-melts-down-lemon-cybertruck-replacement">delivering lemons</a> to giant <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-stops-cybertruck-deliveries-trim">trim pieces that become delaminated</a>.
The timing couldn't be worse, as Tesla's brand crisis continues to deepen. The longer resentment for the company's mercurial CEO continues to simmer, the harder it will get for Tesla to breathe new life into lagging demand.
And the competition keeps on growing, with Chinese EV maker BYD <a href="https://futurism.com/byd-crushing-tesla">outpacing Tesla's revenue numbers</a> for the first time last year.
Next week, Tesla is expected to hold a key Q1 earnings call — and given its current predicament, investors will likely have some burning questions for Musk.
More on the Cybertruck: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-cheaper-slower-cybertruck-worse-deal">Tesla Shows Off Cheaper and Slower Cybertruck That's an Even Worse Deal</a>

Who Wants a Cybertruck?

A catastrophe of epic proportions.

The Cybertruck Is Turning Into a Complete Disaster

A team of astronomers announced this week that they've <a href="https://futurism.com/james-webb-signs-life-exoplanet-k2-18b">detected a possible sign of life</a> on an exoplanet 124 light years away using the <a href="https://futurism.com/james-webb-stares-asteroid">James Webb Space Telescope</a>. Even more enticingly, the exoplanet, dubbed K2-12b, was already suspected to be an ocean world.
The biosignature is a molecule called dimethyl sulfide. On Earth, it's exclusively produced by phytoplanktons and other microbes. Thus, the authors of the <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/adc1c8">new study</a>, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, maintain that the best explanation for the detection is that K2-12b is brimming with life.
But the situation may not be so clear cut. While dimethyl sulfide is an organic material on our planet, there's a body of evidence suggesting that nonbiological processes elsewhere in the cosmos could produce the compound, notes science writer Corey S. Powell <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/coreyspowell.bsky.social/post/3lmyazhduv22z">in a Bluesky thread</a>. 
A <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/adafa7">study</a> published this February reported a possible detection of dimethyl sulfide in the interstellar medium, the clouds of gas and dust found in the space between stars. Another <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ad74da#apjlad74das4">paper</a> published last year showed that the molecule could be produced from interactions with UV light in a lab analog of an exoplanet atmosphere. Astronomers have also found the putative biosignature <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/what-presumed-sign-life-doing-dead-comet">on a completely barren comet</a>. 
Needless to say, all this strongly call into question if the mere presence of dimethyl sulfide's is anything approaching a definite indicator of extraterrestrial life.
The researchers behind the latest paper, for their part, seem to want to have it both ways: a splashy announcement with quotable moments about its immense significance, but sprinkled with notes of caution that cover their butts if the findings turn out to show something else.
"It is in no one's interest to claim prematurely that we have detected life," Nikku Madhusudhan, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge and lead author of the recent discovery, said at a Tuesday news conference, as quoted by the NYT. 
Nonetheless, he called it a "revolutionary moment."
"It's the first time humanity has seen potential biosignatures on a habitable planet," Madhusudhan added.
Notably, NASA, which released a press release for Madhusudhan's previous work that found methane and carbon in K2-12b's atmosphere, <a href="https://futurism.com/nasa-sign-alien-life-k2-18b">didn't comment</a> on this latest study.
K2-12b appears to be larger than Earth, with five times the mass, but is smaller than Neptune. It orbits in its star's "Goldilock's zone," where temperatures are just right to have liquid water on its surface. Madhusudhan's work indicates that the exoplanet's atmosphere is swamped with levels of dimethyl sulfide thousands of times higher than on Earth.
Even if dimethyl sulfide is a reliable biosignature, some astronomers are skeptical that it's been detected here.
The detection seems "tentative," Edward Schwieterman, an astrobiologist at the University of California, Riverside who wasn't involved in the research, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/04/16/nx-s1-5364805/signs-life-alien-planet-biosignatures-exoplanet">told </a><a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/04/16/nx-s1-5364805/signs-life-alien-planet-biosignatures-exoplanet">NPR</a>. "It is not a sure thing." 
Schwieterman suspected that the signal might go away when other teams take a look.
"I think this is one of those situations where extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," Laura Kreidberg, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany who was not involved in the research, told NPR. "I'm not sure we're at the extraordinary evidence level yet."
More on exoplanets: <a href="https://futurism.com/james-webb-planets-star-system">James Webb Space Telescope Captures Images of Individual Planets in Distant Star System</a>

Gas Bags

Hold your horses.

There's a Striking Flaw in That Claim About Alien Life on a Nearby Planet

At UnitedHealthcare's headquarters in Minnesota, a young man was arrested with a weapon after calling in threats against the insurance giant.
As <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/person-arrested-unitedhealthcare-campus-minnesota-rcna201197">USA Today</a> and other outlets report, police arrested 26-year-old Ian Wagner with a gun and bullets near UHC's Minnetonka campus after an hour of phone negotiations led to his surrender.
Though he's the same age as <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-fail-uhc-killer-luigi-mangione">Luigi Mangione</a>, the suspect accused of killing UHC CEO Brian Thompson in December, the two alleged gunmen couldn't be more different.
While Mangione appears to have been an ideologue <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/luigi-mangione-notebook">driven to mortal violence</a> by his hatred of the insurance industry, it doesn't seem that Wagner, who was well known to Minnetonka police due to <a href="https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/armed-intruder-arrested-at-unitedhealthcare-could-make-first-court-appearance-tuesday/">prior felonies</a> and open felony and misdemeanor cases, was similarly principled. When the suspect called 9-1-1, he allegedly told the police dispatcher that he would shoot into the UHC facilities if the charges against him were not dropped — and apparently, he made similar demands when he phoned the FBI's Minneapolis field office, too.
"While the investigation is still in its early stages," the FBI told USA Today, "there is currently no indication that the individual had specific grievances against UnitedHealthcare."
Following Wagner's arrest earlier in the week, Twin Cities broadcaster <a href="https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/power-money-corruption-man-accused-of-showing-up-to-uhc-with-gun-sends-message-in-court/">KTSP reported</a> that the 26-year-old's threats against UHC came just after police made multiple attempts to arrest him over probation violations stemming from his other charges.
Cheryl Wagner, the suspect's mother, told the ABC affiliate that her son suffers from mental health issues and was set off by the arrest attempts. He apparently drove to his grandparents' house, retrieved a gun there, and headed to the insurer's headquarters.
Though the young man had been wearing an ankle monitor as part of his electronic home monitoring from his felony convictions — details about which have not been shared with media — authorities told KTSB that the device was not equipped with GPS and could only tell them when Wagner was out of range.
In a sense, that technology fail echoes the way Mangione was apprehended: not with the <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-fail-uhc-killer-luigi-mangione">NYPD's expensive facial recognition</a> and AI surveillance tools, but thanks to a random eagle-eyed employee at a Pennsylvania McDonald's who recognized him from the news.
Though authorities insist Wagner only made his threats for attention, the would-be gunman seemed to intentionally echo Thompson's assassination when he appeared in court while wearing an anti-self-harming flak jacket after his arrest. According to KTSB, he shouted the words "power, money, [and] corruption" during his hearing — a reference, perhaps, to the words "<a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/bullet-casings-words-killing-ceo">deny, defend, [and] depose</a>" that were found on the bullet casings from the UHC CEO's slaying.
More on UHC: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/unitedhealthcare-threatens-legal-action-doctor">UnitedHealthcare Threatens Legal Action Against Doctor Who Says They Interrupted Her in the Middle of Surgery</a>