Shaving profiles were “the most emotional military-personnel matter I worked on,” former Assistant Secretary of the Air Force Alex Wagner writes. He explains what he learned about the origins of the facial-hair policy and why Hegseth’s ban is troubling.

Some people are becoming reliant on AI to navigate basic aspects of daily life, @LilaShroff reports. “We’re still in an earlier era of AI where companies haven’t necessarily turned up the volume all the way in terms of making their tools super addictive,” Shroff explains. But “it’s not hard to imagine a near future where companies start doing a lot more to keep us hooked in conversation.” Read more about the people dependent on AI—and the consequences they’re facing at the link.

If the AI revolution fails to materialize as expected, the financial consequences could be ugly, Rogé Karma argues: “The last time the economy saw so much wealth tied up in such obscure overlapping arrangements was just before the 2008 financial crisis.”