NYTimes | A grainy image of his face drew comparisons to Hollywood heartthrobs. A jacket similar to the one he’s wearing on wanted posters is reportedly flying off the shelves. And the words written on the bullets he used to kill a man in cold blood on a sidewalk on Wednesday have become, for some people, a rallying cry.
United CEO Andrew Witty gave an address to the company today (video leaked to me). Some highlights:
— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) December 6, 2024
- "we guard against the pressures that exist for unsafe care or for unnecessary care."
- "There are very few people in the history of the US healthcare industry who had a bigger… pic.twitter.com/7ihMkHAcia
thedailybeast | UnitedHealth Group’s CEO slammed health insurance industry critics on social media as “vitriolic” and “not in tune with reality” as it is battered by anger in the wake of insurance CEO Brian Thompson’s murder.
Andrew Witty, Thompson’s boss, did not make the comments to the public but in a private video to company staff. He has not spoken publicly since the assassination-style murder outside a Manhattan hotel early Wednesday morning.
Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein initially posted a shortened clip of Witty’s comments to his Substack amid an avalanche of people attacking the health insurance industry on social platforms. He followed up with the full almost three-minute long address Witty gave to staff at UnitedHealth.
Witty, clearly reading from a script and dressed casually, defended his industry against accusations it refuses people vital coverage saying “we guard against the pressures that exist for unsafe care or unnecessary care.”
His extended complaint started by claiming the company puts “patients, consumers and members first, as we always have done,” claiming its mission was to improve their experience–and that Thompson left a legacy of doing that.
“I have never been more proud of this company and our colleagues and what this company does on behalf of people in need across this country,” he said.
He urged them to “tune out that critical noise that we’re hearing right now,” adding, “It does not reflect reality. It is simply a sign of an era in which we live.
“What we must know is focus on what we know to be true. And what we know to be true is that we need a company like UnitedHealth Group and it needs people like Brian within it.”
Witty, a British former pharma executive who is known as Sir Andrew Witty in the UK after being given a knighthood by the late Queen Elizabeth, is facing a Department of Justice probe into insider trading allegations. His last fully calculated compensation package in 2023 was $25 million. The company denies wrongdoing.
“I’d like to give you a little bit of advice around the media,” said Witty. “My strong advice and request to everybody is just don’t engage with the media. If you’re approached, I would recommend not responding and, if necessary, simply refer them to our own media organization.”
Witty added, “You’ve seen a lot of media interest in this situation with a huge amount of misinformation and frankly offensive communication,” calling the coverage “aggressive, inappropriate and disrespectful.”
Representatives for UnitedHealth Group and its health insurance division, UnitedHealthcare—which Thompson led—did not immediately respond to a Daily Beast request for comment on the leaked video.
On the heels of Thompson’s death and the ensuing hunt for his assassin, the company removed his bio from a page that once listed UnitedHealth’s leadership. Now it goes to a broken link.
Thompson was shot dead outside the Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan on Wednesday. He was due to address an investors’ conference for his company, which is one of the largest health insurers in the world. The killer, who experts have suggested is not a professional hitman, fled on an electric bike and remains at large.
Brian Thompson reportedly had a salary of $10 million per year, and $20 million in United Health Care stock. His net worth was $43 million.
— Dr. Andrew Saturn (@badspaceguy) December 4, 2024
He was CEO during the COVID-19 crisis, at a time when UHC was denying 1/3rd of claims.
Not celebrating his murder, just making a point. pic.twitter.com/3zNDxtjB6P
newsmax | Health insurance companies removed executive leadership names from their websites after the assassination of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare.
Brian Thompson. 50, was murdered Wednesday morning in New York City in a shooting that police called a "brazen, targeted attack."
As of Friday morning, UnitedHealthcare's "About Us" page that listed leadership, including Thompson, redirected to a more general page.
A Google search for the UHC leadership team sends users to the company home page. A search-result link to "Our Leaders" page that lists several names, including Thompson's, sends people to a "Page Not Found." Clicking on Thompson's name also results in that.
Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, which Thursday announced it will walk back changes that would charge patients for anesthesia during procedures that went longer than estimated, redirects its own leadership page to its "About Us" page, 404 Media reported.
Blue Cross Blue Shield, separate from Anthem BCBS, now redirects its own leadership page to its "About Us" page. Originally, that BCBS page showed leadership, including President and CEO Kim Keck, Executive Vice President and CFO Christina Fisher, and 23 more executives as of earlier this year according to archives of the page.
On social media platform X, user @GASLIGHTER_ spotted that other major insurers including CareSource, Medica, CVS, and Molina also removed info of their leadership teams.
"Nonprofit health insurance organization Caresource took down the individual pages for all of its executive leadership, including President and CEO Erhardt Preitauer, Executive Vice President David Williams, Executive Vice President for Markets and Products Scott Markovich, Executive Vice President for Strategy and Business Sanjoy Musunuri, CFO Larry Smart and COO Fred Schulz. Snippets from each of these pages are still visible on Google search, but the pages themselves return an error that says 'the requested URL was not found on this server,'" 404 Media reported.
"Another nonprofit health plan, Medica, did the same: Medica's executive leadership page redirects to its homepage, and its foundation leadership staff page now returns an error: 'Oops. That page doesn't exist.'
"Elevance Health took down its leadership page, too, replacing it with a message that says 'Sorry, that page is no longer here.' The most recent archive for that page is from last week."
cbsnews | Bullets that an unidentified gunman used to shoot and kill UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on Wednesday morning had words written on them, CBS News has confirmed.
The words "delay," "deny" and possibly "depose" appeared on shell casings and bullets recovered from the scene of the shooting in New York City, according to New York City Police Department officials. Law enforcement officials said they are examining whether the words relate to a possible motive involving insurance companies and their responses to claims. ABC News first reported this information.
A source briefed on the investigation said each word was meticulously written, not etched, onto the casings in Sharpie. Officials are examining the casings to determine whether the words could be related to a possible motive involving insurance companies and their responses to claims. Investigators believe they could reference "the three D's of insurance" coined by the industry's critics, which are "delay," "deny" and "defend." The alliteration is a comment on the tactics that opponents say insurance companies use to delay or deny policyholders' claims.
Thompson, 50, was shot multiple times before 7 a.m. ET Wednesday, by a masked gunman who fled the area before police arrived. The shooting happened in a busy section of Manhattan outside of the Hilton Midtown hotel, where the executive was set to attend a conference for UnitedHealthcare investors. Thompson had been staying at the Marriott across the street, authorities said.
The NYPD released the first unmasked images Thursday of an individual wanted for questioning in connection with the shooting, asking the public for help identifying that individual. The images were taken from a hostel in the Manhattan Valley area of the Upper West Side. A law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation told CBS News the man used a fake ID with a fake name to check into the hostel. A person briefed on the investigation said it was a fake New Jersey identification card. The hostel said in a statement to CBS News it was cooperating with the NYPD.
thinkingman | Have you ever heard of the Olmecs? They’re the earliest known civilization in Mesoamerica. Not much is known about them, but they have left behind one big thing—a few, actually. Their heads.
You may have seen one of the heads as the host of Legends of the Hidden Temple on Nickelodeon as a kid. Hancock and several others have mentioned the similarities between the features on the Olmec colossal heads and people from modern day Polynesia and Africa. The theory on this is that maybe the Olmecs, or the civilization which predated them, was started by seafaring Africans or Polynesians who crossed the ocean and settled in the area well before the other civilizations in Mesoamerica.
When Joe Rogan asked Dibble if he could at least agree that the Olmec heads had features similar to African or Polynesian people, Dibble still denied it. To me this showed us that he was not going to budge or get anywhere close to agreeing on a single thing Hancock had ever claimed.
Listen. I’m not saying that Hancock is 100% correct. Most of the evidence he had to show were megaliths which he claims look manmade. But I agree with his argument that it is possible for an ancient civilization to have existed, especially when he brings up how these megalithic structures seem to be built by a people with astounding knowledge of astronomy—we’ll get to that later.
The fact that Dibble could not even admit there being a possibility that there was a civilization predating anything we know is a testament to what is wrong with the experts today. He did bring some interesting evidence to the debate. His breakdown of how seeds have developed since the Ice Age was something I didn’t know, but I still didn’t think it ruled out Hancock’s theory. He explained that we can trace back exactly when agriculture first started by the evidence of seed development that suggests that humans didn’t start planting until after the Ice Age—which would rule out anything ever coming before then.
Another one of Flint Dibble’s arguments was the insistence of the evidence of hunter gatherers during the ice age. Since there is a bunch of evidence of hunter gatherers from the time period but none of Hancock’s civilization, it was enough for him to say that Hancock’s theory couldn’t possibly be true. But Hancock never said his civilization and hunter-gatherers couldn’t have both occupied the planet—there are hunter gatherer tribes alive today. But why the evidence of hunter gatherers and not Hancock’s civilization? Who knows—maybe they figured out a way to survive with a way of feeding themselves that was lost to time along with the rest of their culture. It’s possible.
The most fascinating thing about the civilization that Hancock discusses is their connection to astronomy. The sites he has discussed seem to have been built in orientations that line up with the solstices and equinoxes (like Serpent Mound in Ohio). Dive deeper and you’ll find theories on the orientation of the pyramids reflecting Orion’s Belt and the sphinx (which is possibly 12,000 years old).
studyfinds | Could another group of ancient humans have lived alongside Homo sapiens? A new study suggests that they did, and scientists are starting to piece together the clues of their forgotten past. A researcher from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa is revealing new insights into a group called the Julurens — meaning the “big head” people.
The new research is revolutionizing our understanding of human evolution, particularly in eastern Asia, where scientists have uncovered a far more intricate picture of our ancient past than previously thought.
For decades, researchers believed human evolution followed a relatively straightforward path. The dominant theories suggested either that humans gradually evolved in place across different regions or that a single group from Africa replaced all other human populations. However, the groundbreaking study published in the journal Nature Communications is turning those simplistic models on their head.
Paleoanthropologists Christopher Bae and Xiujie Wu introduce a potentially revolutionary concept: a new human species called Homo juluensis. This group, which may include the mysterious Denisovans — ancient human relatives known primarily through fragmentary DNA evidence — lived approximately 300,000 years ago, hunting and surviving in small groups across eastern Asia before disappearing around 50,000 years ago.
Moreover, they found that eastern Asia was home to multiple distinct human species during the Late Quaternary period, roughly 50,000 to 300,000 years ago. Instead of a linear progression, the human story looks more like a complex, branching network of different populations (including the Julurens) interacting, mixing, and coexisting.
The team identified four human species that existed during this time: Homo floresiensis, a diminutive human found on the Indonesian island of Flores; Homo luzonensis from the Philippines; Homo longi, discovered in China; and the recently named Homo juluensis, which includes fossils from various sites across eastern Asia.
“We did not expect being able to propose a new hominin (human ancestor) species and then to be able to organize the hominin fossils from Asia into different groups. Ultimately, this should help with science communication,” Bae says in a university release.
politico | The Washington Post on Friday announced it will no longer endorse presidential candidates, breaking decades of tradition in a move that immediately garnered fierce backlash from both employees and outside critics.
At least one editor has already resigned, and the paper’s legendary former top editor Marty Baron publicly rebuked the move as an act of “cowardice.”
The Post is the second major newspaper this week to punt on a presidential endorsement, following a similar decision by the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday at the instruction of its billionaire owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, that led to the resignation of the editorials editor and multiple staffers.
In a note published to the paper’s website announcing the move, Washington Post publisher Will Lewis called it a “statement in support of our readers’ ability to make up their own minds,” writing that it would help the publication focus on “nonpartisan news for all Americans” from the newsroom and “thought-provoking, reported views from our opinion team to help our readers make up their own minds.”
“We recognize that this will be read in a range of ways, including as a tacit endorsement of one candidate, or as a condemnation of another, or as an abdication of responsibility,” Lewis added. “That is inevitable. We don’t see it that way.”
The Post’s newsroom and editorial team erupted in outrage. Robert Kagan, a neoconservative columnist and editor at large at the Post, resigned in response, he confirmed in a statement to POLITICO. A spokesperson for the Post declined to comment on Kagan’s resignation.
David Maraniss, a 46-year veteran reporter at the paper, publicly called the move “contemptible,” writing in a social media post: “Today is the bleakest day of my journalism career.”
And on Friday evening, nine of the paper’s opinion columnists published a scathing dissent of the decision, calling it “a terrible mistake” that “represents an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love, and for which we have worked a combined 228 years.”
“There is no contradiction between The Post’s important role as an independent newspaper and its practice of making political endorsements, both as a matter of guidance to readers and as a statement of core beliefs,” the columnists wrote. “That has never been more true than in the current campaign.”
"Welp, that's certainly a new type of October Surprise,” Ashley Parker, a senior national political correspondent for the Post, wrote on X.
In a statement, the newspaper's union attributed the decision to billionaire owner Jeff Bezos and said the move "undercuts the work of our members at a time when we should be building our readers’ trust, not losing it."
"The message from our chief executive, Will Lewis — not from the Editorial Board itself — makes us concerned that management interfered with the work of our members in Editorial," the union wrote. "According to our own reporters and Guild members, an endorsement for Harris was already drafted, and the decision to not to publish was made by The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos."
A person close to the decision granted anonymity to discuss it told POLITICO that the decision was made within the Post and did not come from Bezos.
But others were quick to point the finger at Bezos.
Baron, who was executive editor from 2012 until his retirement in 2021, called the move “cowardice, with democracy as its casualty,” writing on X that Donald Trump “will see this as an invitation to further intimidate” Bezos and others.
“Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage,” Baron wrote.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said in an X post that the move “is what Oligarchy is about.”
“Jeff Bezos, the 2nd wealthiest person in the world and the owner of the Washington Post, overrides his editorial board and refuses to endorse Kamala,” Sanders wrote. “Clearly, he is afraid of antagonizing Trump and losing Amazon’s federal contracts. Pathetic.”
Lewis’ announcement comes months after the publisher made headlines over bombshell reports
alleging that he played a role in a phone hacking scandal while he was
an editor at the Sunday Times, an accusation he denies. Lewis had
clashed over the scandal with the Post’s then-top editor, Sally Buzbee,
who reportedly wanted to cover it.
thebulletin | Since the emergence of generative artificial intelligence, scholars have speculated about the technology’s implications for the character, if not nature, of war. The promise of AI on battlefields and in war rooms has beguiled scholars. They characterize AI as “game-changing,” “revolutionary,” and “perilous,” especially given the potential of great power war involving the United States and China or Russia. In the context of great power war, where adversaries have parity of military capabilities, scholars claim that AI is the sine qua non, absolutely required for victory. This assessment is predicated on the presumed implications of AI for the “sensor-to-shooter” timeline, which refers to the interval of time between acquiring and prosecuting a target. By adopting AI, or so the argument goes, militaries can reduce the sensor-to-shooter timeline and maintain lethal overmatch against peer adversaries.
Although understandable, this line of reasoning may be misleading for military modernization, readiness, and operations. While experts caution that militaries are confronting a “eureka” or “Oppenheimer” moment, harkening back to the development of the atomic bomb during World War II, this characterization distorts the merits and limits of AI for warfighting. It encourages policymakers and defense officials to follow what can be called a “primrose path of AI-enabled warfare,” which is codified in the US military’s “third offset” strategy. This vision of AI-enabled warfare is fueled by gross prognostications and over-determination of emerging capabilities enhanced with some form of AI, rather than rigorous empirical analysis of its implications across all (tactical, operational, and strategic) levels of war.
The current debate on military AI is largely driven by “tech bros” and other entrepreneurs who stand to profit immensely from militaries’ uptake of AI-enabled capabilities. Despite their influence on the conversation, these tech industry figures have little to no operational experience, meaning they cannot draw from first-hand accounts of combat to further justify arguments that AI is changing the character, if not nature, of war. Rather, they capitalize on their impressive business successes to influence a new model of capability development through opinion pieces in high-profile journals, public addresses at acclaimed security conferences, and presentations at top-tier universities.
To the extent analysts do explore the implications of AI for warfighting, such as during the conflicts in Gaza, Libya, and Ukraine, they highlight limited—and debatable—examples of its use, embellish its impacts, conflate technology with organizational improvements provided by AI, and draw generalizations about future warfare. It is possible that AI-enabled technologies, such as lethal autonomous weapon systems or “killer robots,” will someday dramatically alter war. Yet the current debate for the implications of AI on warfighting discounts critical political, operational, and normative considerations that imply AI may not have the revolutionary impacts that its proponents claim, at least not now. As suggested by Israel and the United States’ use of AI-enabled decision-support systems in Gaza and Ukraine, there is a more reasonable alternative. In addition to enabling cognitive warfare, it is likely that AI will allow militaries to optimize workflows across warfighting functions, particularly intelligence and maneuver. This will enhance situational awareness; provide efficiencies, especially in terms of human resources; and shorten the course-of-action development timeline.
Militaries across the globe are at a moment or strategic inflection point in terms of preparing for future conflict. But this is not for the reasons scholars typically assume. Our research suggests that three related considerations have combined to shape the hype surrounding military AI, informing the primrose path of AI-enabled warfare. First, that primrose path is paved by the emergence of a new military industrial complex that is dependent on commercial service providers. Second, this new defense acquisition process is the cause and effect of a narrative suggesting a global AI arms race, which has encouraged scholars to discount the normative implications of AI-enabled warfare. Finally, while analysts assume that soldiers will trust AI, which is integral to human-machine teaming that facilitates AI-enabled warfare, trust is not guaranteed.
What AI is and isn’t. Automation, autonomy, and AI are often used interchangeably but erroneously. Automation refers to the routinization of tasks performed by machines, such as auto-order of depleted classes of military supplies, but with overall human oversight. Autonomy moderates the degree of human oversight of tasks performed by machines such that humans are on, in, or off the loop. When humans are on the loop, they exercise ultimate control of machines, as is the case for the current class of “conventional” drones such as the MQ-9 Reaper. When humans are in the loop, they pre-delegate certain decisions to machines, which scholars debate in terms of nuclear command and control. When humans are off the loop, they outsource control to machines leading to a new class of “killer robots” that can identify, track, and engage targets on their own. Thus, automation and autonomy are protocol-based functions that largely retain a degree of human oversight, which is often high given humans’ inherent skepticism of machines.
