• Most of the US military’s drone programs will now be overseen by a new office.
• The goal of the office is to accelerate the development of drone technology, Hegseth said.
• There are some notable exceptions, including the US Air Force’s CCA program.

Nearly all of the Pentagon’s drone programs will now exist under one office, giving its officials major power over the future of uncrewed systems in the US military.

The consolidation will accelerate the procurement and fielding of drones, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said in a memo, a major priority of the second Trump administration as it seeks to prepare forces for drone warfare.

Per a memo from earlier this week, the new office, called the Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned Systems, will be “the single joint integrator for all unmanned and autonomous system programs” across the US Department of Defense. DRPM-UxS’ director hasn’t been named yet, but they’ll report to Stephen Feinberg, US deputy secretary of defense.

Aside from Feinberg and Hegseth, the office will have control over a wide range of uncrewed systems, including small ones, surface vessels or drone boats, underwater vessels in coordination with DoD’s submarine office, ground robots, autonomous and artificial intelligence systems, drone swarming technology, and counter-drone systems. DRPM-UxS will also oversee the drone marketplaces that some DoD offices have recently established.

With its oversight of so many programs, DRPM-UxS can decide what drones move forward, prioritize certain capabilities or contracts over others, and cease work on specific systems.

While the organizational shift gives DRPM-UxS major authority over the future of uncrewed systems in the US military, there are some gaps. Major weapons programs that are already following a separate acquisitions process, like the US Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, will remain with the services.

DRPM-UxS will also be in charge of the US’ Joint Interagency Task Force 401, a military and federal government effort to counter small drones, as well as Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, DoD’s office for mass-producing autonomous drones across the military.

The new office is the latest milestone in the US’ broader push to integrate drone technologies across its military forces. It includes what Pentagon officials have called an unprecedented $74 billion budget request for drones and counter-drone systems, as well as massive investments in acquiring, testing, and fielding small, cheap one-way attack drones.

“Adversaries collectively produce millions of unmanned systems each year across all domains,” Hegseth said in the memo. “While global military unmanned systems production has skyrocketed over the last three years, the United States has been slow to field these capabilities at scale. Drones and autonomous systems are the most consequential battlefield innovation of this generation.”

• Joshua Nelken-Zitser reported on Jeff Bezos’ Venice wedding. Taylor Swift’s feels oddly familiar.
• Streets nearby Madison Square Garden, reportedly the couple’s venue, closed on Friday.
• It looks like turning public landmarks into private wedding venues is the latest billionaire flex.

Police-cordoned streets. Paparazzi packed into tiny press pens, long lenses trained on A-listers. Locals and tourists changing travel plans in the sweltering heat as the city makes way for the year’s highest-profile wedding.

No, not Manhattan, where New Yorkers are waiting to see if Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce will really get married at Madison Square Garden this weekend, but Venice last June, where I reported on Lauren Sánchez and Jeff Bezos’ lavish wedding.

A different summer, a different billionaire couple, but the same flex: transforming a world famous landmark into a private wedding venue.

Taylor Swift’s wedding is reminiscent of Jeff Bezos’ Venice party

Bezos and Sánchez’s wedding was impossible to miss while walking along the canals of Venice, even after they moved their celebration from the iconic Scuola Grande della Misericordia to a venue further from the city’s center. There were fears there would be a big showdown between anti-billionaire activists and the couple, involving inflatable alligators, but the venue move put that particular protest on hold.

In blisteringly hot and uncomfortably humid weather in the peak of Venice’s tourist season, I watched police cordon off cobbled streets normally filled with tourists and locals, while paparazzi blocked narrow walkways opposite luxury hotels in the hope of catching a shot of celebrity guests. I’m pretty sure I saw Sydney Sweeney and Khloe Kardashian leaving a hotel by water taxi.

Over the weekend, protesters sporadically climbed up poles or unfurled anti-Bezos banners at St Mark’s Square, Venice’s main piazza. While I was surprised to find many Venetians who were largely indifferent toward the wedding, others were furious. To them, their city had become a playground for the ultra-wealthy, with some of its most famous cultural landmarks being given up as backdrops for a private celebration.

Now it’s New York City’s turn. The New York Police Department confirmed to Business Insider that, starting at 1 p.m. on Friday, five streets were closed to vehicles, two to pedestrians, four had managed access, and certain entrances to Moynihan Train Hall and Penn Station were also closed for an unnamed event. Big weddings happen in New York City and Venice all the time, very rarely — if ever — do they result in road closures.

The Long Island Rail Road, the busiest commuter line in North America, announced “access restrictions at the request of the NYPD,” and urged those traveling through Penn Station to “consider traveling through Grand Central or Atlantic Terminal.”

The security announcements. The photos of cordons going up. The secrecy surrounding an event in the heart of an iconic city. The inevitable online complaints from frustrated locals. It all took me straight back to Venice.

A private Caribbean island or country estate might offer privacy, but an iconic landmark gives something else: the luxury of celebrating a private occasion at a spot known by millions who could never dream of hiring it themselves.

Both couples sought to give something back to the cities, respectively. Bezos and Sánchez donated €3 million to Venetian institutions, including organizations studying the city’s fragile lagoon system and UNESCO’s Venice office. Swift and Kelce, meanwhile, have made charitable donations to nonprofits in New York City, including a local food bank.

Whether this weekend is remembered for generosity or gridlock will depend on who you ask. For the guests, it’ll be a celebration of the Swift-Kelce Love Story. For those rerouting through Midtown during a heat wave, it may feel more like a Cruel Summer.

• Alex Karp has built an impressive portfolio of residential real estate properties.
• His portfolio includes two mansions next door to each other on Miami’s exclusive San Marino Island.
• Together, the two properties are worth nearly $75 million and could be the start of a Karp compound.

Tech moguls have been snapping up residential real estate like they’re collecting Infinity Stones. Among them is Alex Karp, cofounder and CEO of data-mining giant Palantir Technologies.

Karp, who has said he never learned to drive because he was once “too poor” and is now “too rich,” has quietly built a nine-figure real estate portfolio that reportedly includes as many as 20 properties around the world, many of them in remote or ski-friendly destinations.

The Palantir CEO, whose net worth stood at $14.4 billion as of publication, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, added a former monastery to that collection in late 2025, purchasing a roughly 3,700-acre ranch in Snowmass, Colorado — a ski town about 15 miles north of Aspen — for $120 million.

He bought the property from St. Benedict’s Monastery, whose Trappist monks had stewarded the land for nearly seven decades as their numbers dwindled.

The deal came months after Hibiscus East LLC, a Delaware entity tied to Karp, bought a nearly 10,000-square-foot mansion on Miami’s exclusive San Marino Island for $46 million, according to property records.

From a rural compound in New Hampshire to lavish mansions in Miami, here is a look at some of Karp’s US residential properties.

Karp’s reported primary residence is in a remote New Hampshire town.

Despite making his name in Silicon Valley, where he co-founded Palantir and became one of the tech industry’s most closely watched executives, Karp’s reported primary residence is far from California.

The billionaire is said to own a 500-acre estate in Lyman, New Hampshire, part of which he purchased for $825,000 in 2019. Karp has been known to occasionally work out of the property’s barn.

Lyman is a rural town in Grafton County that got its start as a logging and farming community. The closest major city is Manchester, New Hampshire, nearly a two-hour drive south.

Home to fewer than 600 people, the remote town seems well-suited to Karp, who, despite being at the forefront of surveillance technology, tends to favor a quiet, off-the-grid lifestyle.

Karp joins a wave of billionaires buying homes in Miami.

Palantir moved its headquarters from Denver to Aventura, a Miami-area suburb, in 2026. But Karp’s ties to the area appear to predate the move.

Records show that in June 2025, Hibiscus East LLC, a Delaware entity tied to Karp, purchased a $46 million estate at 55 East San Marino Drive.

Business Insider’s Madeline Berg reported that Hibiscus East is linked to an attorney’s office in Manchester, New Hampshire, and an accounting firm in Bedford, New Hampshire — both of which have appeared on documents tied to Karp’s previous real estate transactions.

The estate is located on San Marino Island, one of the six man-made Venetian Islands in Biscayne Bay. The exclusive enclave has long attracted celebrities, business executives, and professional athletes, including basketball star Dwyane Wade and singer Gloria Estefan.

The enclave is known for its grand, luxurious homes. According to a Zillow listing, Karp’s waterfront property is nearly 10,000 square feet and has six bedrooms, seven bathrooms, and a heated pool.

It’s unclear whether Karp plans to make the property his full-time residence. He is one of several billionaires — including Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin, and Mark Zuckerberg — who have reportedly purchased multimillion-dollar homes in Miami in recent years.

Karp may be building a compound in Miami.

Apparently, one home on San Marino Island was not enough.

The Real Deal reported that Karp also purchased the waterfront house next door to his estate at 55 East San Marino Drive.

The second home, at 29 East San Marino Drive, is a 2,922-square-foot house built in 1935 with two bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms.

It was listed by Dora Puig of Luxe Living Realty for $30 million, but sold to Karp for $28.5 million. Records show that Hibiscus East LLC was also involved in the deal.

According to The Real Deal, the two properties appear to be part of Karp’s larger plan to build a compound on the island. Together, the lots total more than 0.8 acres and offer 265 feet of waterfront.

Karp owns a one-of-a-kind property in the Colorado mountains.

Karp is an avid skier who trains vigorously. As such, this 3,700-acre ranch about 15 miles north of Aspen at St. Benedict’s Monastery was a fitting buy.

According to its original listing, the property is “situated in a private mountain valley” in Capitol Creek Valley.

The property was originally listed for $150 million in 2024, but ultimately sold to Karp for $120 million, according to The Wall Street Journal, which cited a source familiar with the deal.

Ken Mirr of Mirr Ranch Group, the listing agent who represented the sale, declined to confirm whether Karp was the buyer. But he told the Journal that the deal set a record for Pitkin County.

The land for St. Benedict’s Monastery was purchased in 1956 by the Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance, a Roman Catholic religious order known as the Trappists, for an undisclosed amount. The monastery was built two years later.

For decades, the monks cared for the land, supporting themselves through farming and candy sales. But their numbers gradually dwindled, and by the time of the sale, reportedly only five monks remained.

Today, the compound still has a chapel, prayer areas, monks’ living quarters, a monastery building, and a retreat center.

Business Insider contacted Patrick Collins, the lawyer connected to Hibiscus East LLC; Ken Mirr, the listing agent for St. Benedict’s Monastery; and Dora Puig, the listing agent for Karp’s 29 East San Marino Drive property, but did not receive a response.

• Healthcare and math jobs topped Monster’s workplace experience rankings.
• Construction support workers also made the job site’s list of the 15 best roles.
• The rankings weighed factors such as pay, culture, job security, and work-life balance.

If you want a job you’ll love, you might consider working in healthcare — or crunching a whole lot of numbers.

A recent Monster review of jobs across eight categories found that healthcare workers, math and data science professionals, and science technicians earned the highest workplace experience scores.

Monster based the rankings on pay, workplace culture, job security, quality of management, work-life balance, career outlook, and factors such as CEO approval ratings and diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The highest-ranked jobs came from a range of industries, Monster found. Among the top tier: education, entertainment, law, and finance. Construction support workers made the list, which Monster said shows that skilled, hands-on jobs can also be highly satisfying.

The job site said that the gap between the top-ranked occupations and those further down the list was relatively narrow. That’s an indication that “strong workplace experiences are achievable across a diverse range of professions,” Monster said.

Here are Monster’s top 15 jobs for workplace experience, along with their scores on a five-point scale:

1. Healthcare practitioners (3.86)
2. Mathematics and data science professionals (3.85)
3. Science technicians (3.81)
4. Education and library professionals (3.78)
5. Life science professionals (3.78)
6. Teachers and instructors (3.78)
7. Legal professionals (3.70)
8. Financial professionals (3.69)
9. Engineers (3.68)
10. Entertainment and sports professionals (3.67)
11. Architects and surveying professionals (3.64)
12. Operations managers (3.60)
13. Business operations professionals (3.59)
14. Construction support workers (3.59)
15. Administrative assistants (3.54)

Monster analyzed employee reviews and workplace ratings from major job and employer review sites to identify which roles had the strongest workplace experiences. The company gathered the data from the start of 2026 through April.

While compensation matters, Monster said the findings suggest job seekers should also consider the bigger picture. A range of factors “play a significant role” in fostering a successful and satisfying career, the report said.

“It’s worth looking beyond salary to factors like workplace culture, leadership quality, growth opportunities, and work-life balance,” Monster wrote.

Do you have a story to share about your career? Contact this reporter at tparadis@businessinsider.com.

• Tesla just scored a mega sales beat, but it didn’t stopped its stock from getting punished by investors.
• Shares dropped 8% despite deliveries rising 25% year over year.
• The company’s EV business is still going strong, even as Musk bets on robotaxis and humanoid robots.

Tesla’s deliveries show sales are bouncing back — but investors still dumped the stock on Thursday.

Shares of Elon Musk’s EV maker dropped as much as 8% on Thursday despite the firm blowing past Wall Street’s delivery estimates for the second quarter. If the losses hold, it’ll mark Tesla’s worst single-day loss in a year.

Tesla delivered 480,126 EVs in the second quarter, up 25% year-over-year. The figures handily beat Wall Street’s expectations, given the consensus estimate for 396,466 EVs for the quarter, according to Bloomberg. A separate company-compiled consensus suggested deliveries would reach 406,024 vehicles.

The latest figures are a sign that Tesla sales have largely recovered from a wave of anti-Elon Musk backlash in 2025 and a steep decline in the wider US EV market.

Shares ticked higher 2% in early morning trading before sinking into the red in the afternoon. The stock, which has weathered a volatile few years amid Musk’s growing involvement in US politics, is down 10% year-to-date.

Like many of its rivals, Tesla has been battling a so-called “EV winter” in the US following the end of the $7,500 tax credit for new electric vehicles in September.

Total US electric vehicle sales fell 27% in the first three months of the year, according to data from Cox Automotive, and a wave of electric vehicle models has since vanished from the market as automakers roll back ambitious EV targets amid weak demand.

However, a spike in gas prices due to the war in the Middle East appears to have given the industry a shot in the arm. Data from Kelley Blue Book, an automotive research firm, estimates EV sales in the US topped 85,000 in May, the highest since the EV tax credit was scrapped in September 2025.

In February, before the war began, average US gas prices were just under $3 per gallon. They peaked in May at about $4.56 per gallon, according to AAA.

Stephanie Valdez-Streaty, Cox Automotive’s director of industry insights, told Business Insider that Tesla’s second-quarter sales have been boosted by high gas prices.

That boost mainly came from markets like Europe, which have seen an EV sales boom in recent months, Valdez-Streaty said. Meanwhile, she added, growth of alternative fuel vehicles in the US has been focused on hybrids — which Tesla doesn’t sell.

“If you think about the European market and the Chinese market, Tesla definitely benefited from those high gas prices,” she said.

In a June note, analysts at Goldman Sachs wrote that they expect EV adoption to accelerate in the coming years, ultimately pushing oil prices down.

All eyes on robotaxis

For Tesla, the latest figures show that its underlying EV business remains strong, even as the company pivots away from it.

In January, Musk said Tesla would end production of its premium Model S and X vehicles to free up factory space for its Optimus humanoid robot, which is set to start production this summer.

Tesla is also ramping up production of its Cybercab, a gold-colored robotaxi that doesn’t have a steering wheel or pedals. The company’s wider robotaxi rollout has been sluggish so far, however, with only a few dozen vehicles operating in Austin, Houston, and Dallas a year after the service began.

The EV pioneer has been eclipsed in recent weeks by Musk’s other public company, SpaceX, which raised $85 billion in a record-breaking IPO and is now valued at almost $480 billion more than Tesla.

SpaceX’s stock market surge has led some Tesla investors to suggest that the two companies should merge. Speaking before SpaceX went public, the rocket maker’s president, Gwynne Shotwell, didn’t rule it out.

“That might make Elon’s life a little easier, actually,” she said.

“There’s no question that there’s synergies between Tesla and SpaceX in our futures, definitely, there’s a convergence of a kind of what we’re all trying to accomplish in the future,” Shotwell added.

• Software engineers are asking themselves why they’re suddenly on the chopping block in the AI age.
• Famed engineer Kent Beck said it’s not just because AI can do some of their work.
• It’s because “we’re kind of assholes, sometimes,” he said.

Software engineers are among the most prized talent at any tech company, so why are they suddenly one of the most vulnerable species of the AI boom?

On a recent episode of “The Pragmatic Engineer,” famed software engineer Kent Beck gave a pretty blunt answer: “We’re kind of assholes, sometimes.”

Software engineers, no matter their level of technical expertise, tend to lack some of the softer skills that are prized in the workplace, he said.

“We don’t necessarily have good emotional regulation skills. We don’t have natural empathy,” he said. “We’re oftentimes more direct than other people can easily handle.” Those, at least, are some of the more “hideous” qualities of a typical software engineer, he said.

As AI changes everything, those softer skills can now make or break a technical career.

As AI writes more code, companies are asking engineers to review, direct, and manage AI-generated work rather than produce every line themselves. Vibecoding is now a commonplace practice in the software industry, enabling seasoned coders to build prototypes more quickly and non-coders to turn their ideas into pilots.

It is also blurring the line between engineering and product work. Anthropic’s head of growth, Amol Avasare, told Business Insider that engineers using tools like Claude Code are seeing their productivity increase by two to three times, putting new pressure on product managers and designers.

That all means companies are now often asking software engineers to take on more product management tasks, which require more interaction with human colleagues.

For smaller projects, he said, Anthropic is already asking engineers to act as “mini PMs,” taking responsibility not just for the code but also for stakeholder coordination and cross-functional work. The rise of that hybrid “product engineer” role suggests that the most valuable engineers may be the ones who can pair technical chops with product judgment and people skills.

Kent described the need for programmers to learn people skills as a “cosmic practical joke.”

He said when you get started coding, you are told that all you need to do is learn everything about this computer, and you’ll be fine. “And then oops sorry there’s this whole human side and your ability to affect change in the world is gated by your ability to communicate and empathize.”