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Over 900 US public safety organizations deploy DJI drones for search and rescue, with at least 278 people rescued from peril worldwide according to DJI's Drone Rescue Map. Notable examples include finding a missing autistic child in 13 minutes using thermal imaging during a thunderstorm. DJI's Disaster Relief Program provides drone technology to first responders during wildfires, hurricanes, and floods. During Hurricane Helene, StormPoint mapped 3,700+ acres of flood-affected areas using DJI drones. In agriculture, 400,000 DJI drones are used globally, saving approximately 222 million tons of water and reducing 30.87 million tons of carbon emissions.

In 2023, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan earned $161.8 million in total compensation, up 167% from the previous year. This represented a CEO-to-median worker pay ratio of 510-to-1, making him the third-highest-paid CEO in the US.

Sam Altman was a significant Democratic donor for years before his 2025 pivot. His contributions included: $200,000 to Biden Victory Fund (2023), $100,000 to Biden Victory Fund (2020), $100,000 each to American Bridge PAC and Senate Majority PAC (2020), $250,000 to Senate Majority PAC (2018), and contributions to Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Andrew Yang during the 2020 primary. His only notable Republican donation was $2,700 to Patrick McHenry in 2018.

In 2023 tax filings, the Carl Victor Page Memorial Foundation disclosed $66 million in grants to climate and environmental organizations - the first substantial direct grant disclosure in over a decade. This included two $23 million grants to the Stitching European Climate Foundation, $10 million to Brazilian Instituto Clima e Sociedad, $4 million to U.S. Energy Foundation, $3 million to Global Fishing Watch, and $1 million to Clean Slate Initiative. This marked a shift from the foundation's previous practice of routing 99.9% of grants through opaque donor-advised funds.

The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December 2023 for using NYT articles to train ChatGPT without permission. The Authors Guild separately sued with 17 authors including John Grisham and George R.R. Martin. By 2025, 51 total copyright lawsuits had been filed against AI companies. In January 2025, a federal judge ordered OpenAI to produce its GPT-4 training dataset to plaintiffs. Canadian and Indian news publishers also filed suits.

A December 2023 HRW report found Meta's content moderation systematically silenced pro-Palestine voices. Of 1,050 cases reviewed, 1,049 involved peaceful pro-Palestine content being censored while only 1 case involved pro-Israel content. Documented issues included content removals, account suspensions, shadow banning, and broken appeal mechanisms affecting users in 60+ countries.

In December 2023, ARM Holdings laid off over 70 software engineers in China, relocating some positions outside the country. The layoffs came as ARM complied with US and UK export controls on advanced chips to China, reportedly preventing exports to companies like Alibaba.

Adobe's proposed $20 billion acquisition of collaborative design tool Figma was terminated in December 2023 after facing antitrust scrutiny from the US DOJ, UK CMA, and European Commission. Regulators expressed concerns that the merger would reduce competition and innovation in the design software market. Adobe paid a $1 billion reverse termination fee. The DOJ Antitrust Division stated the abandonment 'ensures that designers, creators, and consumers continue to get the benefit of the rivalry between the two companies.'

OpenAI developed and published a Preparedness Framework for systematically evaluating AI model risks before release, committing not to deploy models exceeding 'Medium' risk thresholds without sufficient safety interventions. The company committed to allowing US government safety agencies pre-deployment access to test frontier models. In 2024, OpenAI disbursed $7.5 million in AI safety research grants. However, the safety commitments faced criticism after the Superalignment team dissolved in May 2024 and its co-lead Jan Leike resigned citing insufficient safety prioritization.

In December 2023, Tesla informed workers at its battery factory in Sparks, Nevada, that some hourly workers would see pay increases of approximately 10% starting in January 2024, bumping hourly pay from $20-$30.65 to $22-$34.50 per hour. The wage increases came amid growing UAW union activity in the auto industry following successful strikes at legacy automakers. Analysts noted the raises appeared designed to stave off workers' interest in forming a union.

TikTok's original Creator Fund, launched in 2020 with $200M projected to reach $1B over three years, was widely criticized for extremely low payouts of $0.02-$0.04 per 1,000 views ($20-$40 per million views). Creator Hank Green reported earning 2.5 cents per 1,000 views. Creator SuperSaf earned ~$137 in 10 months for 25 million views. The fund was shut down on December 16, 2023, replaced by the Creator Rewards Program with reportedly higher rates of $0.40-$1.00 per 1,000 views, though creators have since reported sharp drops in income under the new program.

In December 2023, Activision Blizzard agreed to pay $54 million to settle the California Civil Rights Department lawsuit alleging employment discrimination and equal pay violations. The settlement included provisions to address pay and promotion inequality for female employees. The settlement agreement stated that no court or independent investigation had substantiated allegations of systemic harassment or that the board and CEO acted improperly, though unions and former employees disputed this characterization.

In December 2023, Tesla issued its largest-ever recall covering 2.03 million US vehicles (nearly all Teslas on US roads) after NHTSA found 467 crashes involving Autopilot resulting in 54 injuries and 14 deaths. NHTSA determined that Autopilot's driver attention monitoring was insufficient and warnings were inadequate. The OTA software update added larger warning text, single-tap activation, and a five-strike system disabling Autopilot for repeat offenders. Consumer Reports later found the recall fix 'addresses minor inconveniences rather than fixing the real problems.'

At the Fortune Brainstorm AI conference in December 2023, Reid Hoffman publicly dismissed calls to pause advanced AI development, calling such ideas 'foolish' and 'anti-humanist.' He argued the focus on AI risks was overblown, stating 'the real important thing is to not fumble the future.' This positioned him against the March 2023 open letter signed by thousands of AI researchers calling for a six-month pause on training systems more powerful than GPT-4, and against broader precautionary approaches to AI safety.

In December 2023, James O'Keefe released a leaked recording of IBM CEO Arvind Krishna promising to fire, demote, or deny bonuses to executives who fail to meet racial and gender hiring quotas. Krishna stated 'Asians are not an underrepresented minority in tech in America' and 'for blacks we should try to get towards 13 percent.' Red Hat chairman Paul Cormier admitted Red Hat terminated employees who refused to engage in racial discrimination. Elon Musk called it 'obviously illegal.' America First Legal filed a federal civil rights complaint. Krishna defended the practice, saying 5% of bonuses are tied to diversity while 95% is performance-based.

In December 2023, IBM and Meta co-founded the AI Alliance, an international community that grew from 50 founding members to over 100 organizations focused on open-source AI development, safety, and responsible innovation. The Alliance promotes open AI models, shared research, and collaborative governance frameworks as alternatives to closed proprietary AI systems.

Spotify cut 17% of its workforce, approximately 1,500 jobs, in its largest round of layoffs. CEO Daniel Ek attributed the cuts to over-investment during 2020-2021 when capital was cheap. Employees received around five months severance. The layoffs notably eliminated Glenn McDonald, creator of EveryNoise, ending that popular music discovery resource.

At Darktrace's 2023 annual meeting, 56.67% of shareholders voted against the election of Patrick Jacob as a non-executive director representing Mike Lynch's interests. Institutional investors cited Lynch's US fraud trial as creating 'unhelpful headline risk' for Darktrace. Lynch later lost his right to a board seat entirely when his stake fell below 10%.

CEO Hock Tan told staff that VMware's remote-friendly policies would end: 'Remote work does not exist at Broadcom.' When asked about exceptions, Tan said 'you better learn how to walk on water, I'm serious.' Only sales workers and those living 60+ miles from an office were exempt.

Following Broadcom's November 2023 acquisition of VMware, the company conducted mass layoffs affecting 2,000-3,000 employees across California, Colorado, Georgia, and Massachusetts. Partners described the situation as 'chaos'.

Checkout.com underwent severe workforce reductions throughout 2022-2023. After publicly cutting 5% in September 2022, the company made 'layoffs by stealth' with 20-30 Slack deactivations weekly. By end of 2023, UK headcount fell 72% from 1,032 to 284 employees. The Technology and Product team dropped from 508 to 99 people. Employees reported being 'treated coldly' with 'no proper justification except budget cuts' and described three layoff rounds in 16 months.

Xiaomi's 2023 ESG report showed the company achieved 95.94% of its product recycling target and significantly expanded its use of renewable energy across manufacturing operations.

In December 2023, GitLab announced that users in mainland China, Macau, and Hong Kong must migrate to JiHu (gitlab.cn), a separate Chinese entity, by February 2025 or have their accounts deleted. Some users reported accounts being deleted with minimal notice. GitLab had licensed its technology to JiHu to serve the Chinese market, but the forced migration raised concerns about data sovereignty and user choice.

Alex Karp has repeatedly condemned 'woke' thinking, calling it 'the central risk to Palantir and America and the world' and 'a regressive way of thinking that is corrupting and corroding our institutions that calls itself progressive... but is actually a form of a thin pagan religion.' He positioned Palantir as a 'counter-example' to 'woke' companies.

Alex Karp has been a vocal advocate for Silicon Valley supporting the US military, stating that technology companies like Palantir have 'an obligation to support the U.S. military.' At the 2023 Reagan National Defense Forum, he said 'Somehow the corporate elite of this country thinks when it's time to make money, you stand up, and when it's time to stand up, you go play golf.' He describes Palantir as 'active in defending the values of the West' and states 'our belief that the West is a superior way to live.'

In 2023, ASML violated a 'gentlemen's agreement' with the United States by selling far more chip-making machines to China than agreed during September 2023-January 2024. According to a book by former Bloomberg journalists, then-CEO Peter Wennink suggested ASML could provide the U.S. with insight into Chinese chip factories in exchange for allowing ASML engineers to continue serving Chinese customers, with a senior American official stating 'ASML could be Washington's eyes and ears in China.' ASML denied the claim, calling it 'factually incorrect and significantly misleading.'

In December 2023, Grab Philippines reduced driver fare rates from P45 to P35 per order and per-kilometer rates from P10 to P7, prompting widespread protests. The National Union of Food Delivery Riders claimed the new fare matrix reduced drivers' income significantly. Drivers alleged that Grab suspended or terminated workers who joined protests against the fare cuts. The National Labor Relations Commission launched an investigation into the alleged illegal terminations. Senator Risa Hontiveros stated 'If the goal of this new fare matrix is to ease the burden of customers, it should not come at the expense of the platform's riders.' Grab denied indiscriminate sanctions, claiming 'proper assessment and due process.'

Despite marketing itself as a climate-focused company, Tesla received F grades from CDP (formerly Carbon Disclosure Project) for its climate change disclosures, while competitors like Ford received A grades since 2019. Tesla has fallen behind other automakers in sharing greenhouse gas emissions data and environmental reporting transparency. CEO Elon Musk dismissed the ESG framework as a scam, saying it 'has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors.'

In December 2023, Rebellion Defense lost a major military contract and laid off approximately 90 employees. CEO and co-founder Chris Lynch had stepped down in August 2023, with Barry Sowerwine becoming interim CEO. The company, once valued at $1 billion, struggled to find widespread product adoption despite close Pentagon ties. Glassdoor reviews averaged 2.3/5 stars, with employees describing leadership as dysfunctional and citing the reduction in force as damaging to morale.

Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) approved Uber's 1.5°C aligned near and long-term science-based emissions reduction targets and verified Uber's net-zero science-based target by 2040. Uber became one of more than 600 companies to have net-zero commitments validated by SBTi. Commitments included: zero-emission mobility platform by 2040 globally, 100% zero-emission rides in US/Canada/Europe by 2030, zero-emission rides in London/Amsterdam and 50% in 7 European capitals by 2025, and $800 million 'Green Future' program for driver EV transition. Note: These commitments were later abandoned in December 2025.