After assuming control, Musk laid off thousands of employees, reducing headcount from about 7,500 to less than 2,000 by February of this year, according to TechCrunch.

Zuckerberg delivered the comments on the Lex Fridman Podcast on Thursday. The way he sees itand laid-off Twitter employees would surely beg to differMusk was right in trying to make the company more technical and decrease the distance between engineers and himself, with fewer layers of management. 

His actions led me and I think a lot of other folks in the industry to think about, Hey, are we kind of doing this as much as we should? he said. Could we make our companies better by pushing on some of the same principlesMy sense is that there were a lot of other people who thought that those were good changes, but who may have been a little shy about doing them. 

It was something Musk was quite ahead of a bunch of the other companies on, he added.

Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, announced in March that it would lay off 10,000 employeesadding to the 11,000 job cuts it started last Novemberand would also freeze hiring on 5,000 more positions. In a blog post, Zuckerberg said he would make our organization flatter by removing multiple layers of management, part of a year of efficiency.

While Meta employees have described shattered morale, Wall Street has responded positively, with Meta shares up about 112% year to date.

Other big tech companies have also shed workers this year, among them Salesforce, Microsoft, and Amazon. Tech layoffs in 2023 are the highest theyve been since the dot-com bubble burst 22 years ago, according to a report released earlier this month by the recruiting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Part of the problem was that many tech companies had simply over-hired in recent years, both because the pandemic increased demand for their products and services and because it was a period of easy money given Fed-induced low interest rates.

Stewart Butterfield, the former CEO of Slack, recently described a dynamic within tech companies behind much of the over-hiring. He noted on Bloombergs Odd Lots podcast  in late May that when theres no real constraint on hiring, you hire someone, and the first thing that person wants to do is hire other people. The reason is that the more people who report to you, the higher your prestige, the more your power in the organizationSo every budgeting process is, I really want to hire, and that to me is the root of all the excess.

Zuckerberg said it was very hard to know from the outside whether Musk fired too many or not enough workers at Twitter, but said the trend he helped kickstart hopefully can be good for the industry and make all these companies more productive over time.  

In May, Musk admitted that not all the employees he fired were superfluous. Desperate times call for desperate measures, he told CNBC. Theres no question that some of the people who were let go probably shouldnt have been let go.

He told the BBC in April that Twitter was going to go bankrupt if we did not cut costs immediately. This is not a caring-uncaring situation: If the whole ship sinks, then nobodys got a job. Musk took on billions in debt to finance his takeover, making the situation even more pressing. 

At Meta, Zuckerberg did not face the same kind of financial urgency. 

Its a kind of strategy decision and sometimes financially required, but not fully in our case, he said. A lot of it was more culturally and strategically driven by this push where I wanted us to become a stronger technology company.

He explained that he wanted to empower engineers more, the people who are building things, the technical teams, and part of that was making sure those employees are not the leaf nodes of the organization. I dont want like eight levels of management and then the people actually doing the work.

He added, I think over time companies just build up very large support functions that are not doing the kind of core technical work, and those functions are very important but I think having them in the right proportion is important. 

Almost the entire world breathes air that exceeds the World Health Organizations air-quality limits at least occasionally. The danger grows worse when that bad air is more persistent than the nightmarish shroud that hit the U.S.  usually in developing or newly industrialized nations. Thats where most of the 4.2 million deaths blamed on outdoor air pollution occurred in 2019, the UNs health agency reported.

Air pollution has no boundaries, and it is high time everyone comes together to fight it, said Bhavreen Kandhari, the co-founder of Warrior Moms in India, a network of mothers pushing for clean air and climate action in a nation with some of the worlds consistently worst air. What we are seeing in the U.S. should shake us all.

This is a severe air pollution episode in the U.S., said Jeremy Sarnat, a professor of environmental health at Emory Universitys Rollins School of Public Health. But its fairly typical for what millions and millions of people experience in other parts of the world.

Last year, nine of the 10 cities with the highest annual average of fine particulate matter were in Asia including six in India, according to air quality company IQAir, which aggregates readings from ground level monitoring stations worldwide.

Fine particulate matter, sometimes denoted as PM 2.5, refers to airborne particles or droplets of 2.5 microns or less. Thats far smaller than a human hair, and the particles can reach deep into lungs to cause eye, nose, throat and lung irritation and even affect heart function.

Sajjad Haider, a 31-year-old shopkeeper in Lahore, Pakistan, rides his motorbike to work daily. He wears a mask and goggles against frequent air pollution in the city of 11 million, but suffers from eye infections, breathing problems and chest congestion that get worse as smog grows in winter.

On his doctors advice, he relies on hot water and steam to clear his chest, but said he cannot follow another bit of the doctors advice: Dont go out on his motorbike if he wants to keep his health.

I cant afford a car and I cant continue my business without a motorbike, said Haider.

Last year, Lahore had the worlds highest average concentration of fine particulate matter at nearly 100 micrograms per cubic meter of air. By comparison, New York Citys concentration hit 303 at one point on Wednesday.

But New Yorks air typically falls well within healthy levels. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agencys standard for exposure is no more than 35 micrograms per day, and no more than 12 micrograms a day for longer-term exposure. New Yorks annual average was 10 or below the past two years.

New Delhi, a heaving city of more than 20 million where Kandhari lives, usually tops the list of the many Indian cities gasping for breath as haze turns the capitals sky gray and obscures buildings and monuments. Its worse in autumn, when the burning of crop residues in neighboring states coincides with cooler temperatures that trap deadly smoke over the city, sometimes for weeks.

Vehicle emissions and fireworks set off during the Hindu Diwali festival add to the murk, and the results include coughs, headaches, flight delays and highway pileups. The government sometimes asks residents to work from home or carpool, some schools go online and families that can afford them turn to air purifiers.

On Thursday, even as a hazardous haze disrupted life for millions across the U.S., New Delhi still ranked as the second-most polluted city in the world, according to daily data from most air quality monitoring organizations.

Kandhari, whose daughter had to give up outdoor sports over health scares related to the bad air, said the air pollution is constant but policymakers only seem to notice its most acute moments. That has to change, she said.

We should not compromise when it comes to access to cleaner air, Kandhari said.

Many African countries in the Sahara Desert regularly grapple with bad air quality mainly due to sandstorms. On Thursday, AccuWeather gave nations ranging from Egypt in the north to Senegal thousands of miles west a rating of purple, for dangerous air quality. It was the same rating given this week to New York and Washington, D.C.

Senegal has suffered from unsafe air for years. Its especially bad in Senegals east as desertification the encroachment of the Sahara onto drylands carries particles into the region, said Dr. Aliou Ba, a senior Greenpeace Africa campaigner based in the capital of Dakar.

The Great Green Wall, a massive tree-planting effort aimed at slowing desertification, has been underway for years. But Ba said pollution has been growing worse as the number of cars on the road, burning low-quality fuel, increases.

In the U.S., the 1970 passage of the Clean Air Act cleared up many of the countrys smog-filled cities by setting limits on most sources of air pollution. The landmark regulation led to curbs on soot, smog, mercury and other toxic chemicals.

But many developing and newly industrialized nations often have weak or little-enforced environmental laws. Those nations suffer increased air pollution for other reasons, too, including a reliance on coal, lower vehicle emissions standards and the burning of solid fuels for cooking and heating.

In Jakarta, capital of Indonesia, the worlds fourth-most populous country, its often difficult to find clear blue sky. In one apartment building in the north of the city, between two busy ports where coal is shipped and stockpiled, residents tried filtering coal dust with a net. It didnt work.

My family and I often feel itching and coughing, Cecep Supriyadi, a 48-year-old resident, said. So, when there is a lot of dust entering the flat, yes, we must be isolated at home. Because when we are outside the house, it feels like a sore throat, sore eyes, and itchy skin.

Theyve also tried mediation and advocacy to force companies and the government to clean up the air, with limited success.

China has improved since Beijing was notorious for eye-watering pollution that wreathed office towers in haze, diverted flights and sent the old and young to hospitals to be put on respirators. When the air was at its worst, schools that could afford it installed inflatable covers over sports fields with airlock-style revolving doors and home air filters became as ubiquitous as rice cookers.

Key to the improvement was closing or moving heavy industries out of Beijing and nearby areas. Heavily polluting older vehicles were taken off the road, many replaced with electric vehicles. China still is the worlds largest producer and consumer of coal, but almost none is consumed at street level. The average PM 2.5 reading in Beijing in 2013 of 89.5 well above the WHOs standard of 10 fell to 58 in 2017 and now sits at around 30. China had just one city Hotan in the worlds top 10 for worst air.

Mexico City, ringed by mountains that trap bad air, was one of the most polluted cities in the world until the 1990s, when the government began limiting the number of cars on the streets. Pollution levels dropped, but even still, the citys 9 million people 22 million including suburbs rarely see a day when air pollution levels are considered acceptable.

Each year, air pollution is responsible for nearly 9,000 deaths in Mexico City, according to the National Institute of Public Health. Its usually worse in the dry winter and early spring months, when farmers burn their fields to prepare for planting.

Authorities havent released a full-year air quality report since 2020, but that year not considered particularly bad for pollution, because the pandemic reduced traffic Mexico City saw unacceptable air quality on 262 days, or 72% of the year.

In the rainy summer months, intense rains clean the citys air somewhat. Thats what brought Verónica Tobar out on Thursday with her two children to a small playground in the Acueducto neighborhood near one of the citys most congested avenues.

We dont come when we see that the pollution is very strong, Tobar said. Those days you feel it in your eyes, you cry, theyre itchy, she said.

Her son was diagnosed with asthma last year and changes in temperature make it worse.

But we have to get out, we cant be locked up, Tobar said as her children jumped off a slide.

___

Naishadham reported from Washington. Associated Press reporters Yu Bing in Beijing; Babar Dogar in Lahore; Mark Stevenson and Teresa de Miguel in Mexico City; Sheikh Saaliq in New Delhi; Sam Mednick in Dakar, Senegal; Edna Tarigan and Victoria Milko in Jakarta; and data journalist Camille Fassett in Seattle contributed to this report.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that U.S. intelligence officials believe a plant in Russias Alabuga special economic zone could be operational early next year. The White House also released satellite imagery taken in April of the industrial location, several hundred miles east of Moscow, where it believes the plant will probably be built.

President Joe Bidens administration publicly stated in December that it believed Tehran and Moscow were considering standing up a drone assembly line in Russia for the Ukraine war. The new intelligence suggests that the project, in the Yelabuga region of Tatarstan, has moved beyond conception.

Iran has said it provided drones to Russia before the start of the war but not since.

Kirby said that U.S. officials also have determined that Iran continues to supply the Russian military with one-way attack drones made in Iran: The drones are shipped via the Caspian Sea, from Amirabad in Iran to Makhachkala, Russia, and then are used by Russian forces against Ukraine.

As of May, Russia had received hundreds of one-way attack drones, as well as drone production-related equipment, from Iran, according to the White House.

This is a full-scale defense partnership that is harmful to Ukraine, to Irans neighbors, and to the international community, Kirby said. We are continuing to use all the tools at our disposal to expose and disrupt these activities including by sharing this with the public and we are prepared to do more.

Kirby said the Democratic administration on Friday would announce a new advisory meant to help businesses and other governments put in place measures to ensure they are not inadvertently contributing to Irans drone program. The United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom in recent months all have issued rules designed to cut off the flow of drone components to Russia and Iran.

The Biden administration has repeatedly publicized intelligence findings that detail how Iran is assisting the Russian invasion.

The persistent drip of intelligence findings from the administration is intended to detail what U.S. officials say is a deepening defense partnership between Russia and Iran. Its also part of a broader administration effort to spotlight Moscows prosecution of its war in Ukraine in hopes of further promoting global isolation of Russia.

The White House last month said Russia was looking to buy additional advanced attack drones from Iran after using up most of the 400 drones it had previously purchased from Tehran.

The Biden administration last year first publicized satellite imagery and intelligence findings that it said indicated Iran sold hundreds of attack drones to Russia. For months, officials have said the United States believed Iran was considering selling hundreds of ballistic missiles to Russia, but White House officials have said they do not have evidence a deal was consummated.

The White House has noted that Iran also has weapons flowing its way from Russia.

Iran is seeking to purchase additional military equipment from Russia, including attack helicopters, radars and YAK-130 combat trainer aircraft, according to the White House. In April, Iran announced that it had finalized a deal to buy Su-35 fighter jets from Russia.

No exclusivity or legal docs required! Musk wrote in his Thursday tweet. You will receive our full support. The digital town square is for all.

The Twitter owners offer comes amid a chaotic time for CNN, the network where Lemon was a star anchor but was ultimately ousted for making sexist comments. CNN went through another convulsion on Wednesday when it terminated its CEO, Chris Licht, amid a decline in viewership. 

Lichts firing came shortly after a damning article in The Atlantic that described him as a hubristic leader without a real plan. His stint as CEO lasted only 13 months.

CNNs profitability is also suffering. It only averaged 535,000 prime time viewers in the first quarter, compared to 1.7 million for all of 2020. CNNs profits were down to $750 million last year versus more than $1 billion each year of the Trump presidency.

In recent years, CNNs leadership has had a fraught relationship with its reporters. In 2021, John Malone, a billionaire who sits on the board of CNNs parent, Warner Bros. Discovery, told CNBC that it would be refreshing if CNN would actually have journalists. Tensions between talent and leadership intensified under Licht, who said he wanted to redirect the network away from activist journalism.

Lichts decision to host a town hall with former president Donald Trump last month created controversy and drew the ire of several CNN reporters. During the town hall, Trump made repeated misstatements and called CNN moderator Kaitlan Collins a nasty person to cheers from his supporters in the audience. 

The combination of CNNs cultural and commercial problems come during an already troubled time for cable news more broadly. The number of Americans who own televisions and watch TV news is shrinking, and viewership of many broadcast networks have declined during the digital news era. 

Musk, a self-proclaimed free speech absolutist, wants to establish Twitter as a platform straddling broadcast, social media, and digital streaming. 

On this platform, unlike the one-way street of broadcast, people are able to interact, critique and refute whatever is said, Musk tweeted last month.  

Musk also wants a liberal anchor to balance out Carlson, the conservative who launched his show Tucker on Twitter on Tuesday. Musk tweeted saying that he hoped many others, particularly from the left would become Twitter content creators.

Since Musk bought Twitter and relaxed policing of what users post, hate speech and disinformation has increased on the service. Coming two weeks after Ron DeSantiss glitchy presidential bid announcement on the platform, Musks Thursday invitation to liberal hosts Lemon and MSNBCs Maddow is a continuation in his quest to turn Twitter into a digital town square. 

However, the tech billionaire has been at odds with journalists since acquiring Twitter, including temporarily banning reporters on a whim, according to critics. Musk also officially labeled NPRs account as state-affiliated media, leading to the outlet leaving the platform. Twitter later reversed the label, but NPR has not returned.

Maddow and Lemon have not yet responded publicly to Musks invitation to create shows on Twitter.